roadskater.net

Location

Dale put up a site for the ride. He says rest stops will stay open as long as the paying customers are out. That's good after last year's Tour de Guilford had a rest stop on a spur (extra skating and cycling required off the main course) and when we arrived they had checked out. Admittedly we were slow that day, but had paid and there was no posted cutoff time on that one. It won't be a problem at this ride, I'm confident.

Location

Part of a series of excellent free skrides (bike rides where skilled inline skaters are welcome) put on by the NC Central Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. The rides are well-supported, marked, and free to all, including those who may not end up participating in the annual Tour to Tanglewood for MS (but you will love the training rides so much you'll be more likely to do the tour after trying most training rides). These rides are for beginners who've trained a little and everyone else on up to experts. SAG and rest stop and bike support team are great.

Location

Part of a series of excellent free skrides (bike rides where skilled inline skaters are welcome) put on by the NC Central Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. The rides are well-supported, marked, and free to all, including those who may not end up participating in the annual Tour to Tanglewood for MS (but you will love the training rides so much you'll be more likely to do the tour after trying most training rides). These rides are for beginners who've trained a little and everyone else on up to experts. SAG and rest stop and bike support team are great.

Someone on a semi-private internet email list (is there such a thing?) asked a question I thought was well-asked, and I wanted to answer it for them, and for everyone out there who might be thinking about inline skating but doesn't know what to think about all the choices.

Here are the main points of the question, or the ones I wanted to address...

Another sidebar news item...WRAL reports that the Greensboro News and Record reports that Greensboro has "made the cut" in bidding to become the new home of the United States Cycling Hall of Fame. Supposedly GSO is in the "final four." Who knows how significant this could be, but at least it shows there are people in Greensboro trying to bring more visitors to the city, especially those who are interested in bicycling and other forms of active transportation. Thanks to Neil Belenky and the rest of the Greensboro task force involved in making the application.

Hey to all. If you've missed it so far, Tour to Tanglewood this year is September 26 & 27, 2009. This is perfect, coming 2 weeks before Athens to Atlanta, so Tanglewood can be your last hard weekend of hills if you want to make it that way. Or it can be a leisurely group skate for you fasties who want a longer taper. Regardless, it's music for the soul so come join us to help people who can't.

This year we wimped a bit on the skating in the new year bit, but we did go out for 20 or 30 minutes in Glenwood neighborhood, eebee and myself. The temp was in the upper 20s so we didn't stay out too long. We took a few photos, and I'll probably include a couple of them here. Enjoy.

Well after many months of running on empty on an overused underpowered system, Roadskater.net is rolling on the same slow road to the internet highway but with a faster machine...a dual-core amd cpu (not blazing, just 2.2 GHz or so), lots of hard drive space, and 3 gig of DDR-2 800 RAM (waiting to go to 8G soon). I'm not sure if this kit is a bit overclocked but my memtest reports moving faster than claimed. Anyway this whole kit (3G RAM version) ended up at $215 pre-tax as a demo sale so cross thy fingerettes me skateys.

Check out my 570 photos from the Carolina Century at:

http://roadskater.net/photos/carolina-century-2008-greensboro-nc-102-mil...

The photos are from three cameras in time sequence, the vast majority (510) from my road cam and the rest at the start/finish at Gospel Baptist Church.

Here's the kmz file for Google Earth for 510 geolocated thumbnails from my road cam (additional photos available on the above collection):

For those who don't know we had 8 skaters (4 from Georgia, 4 from NC) and 57 cyclists at the inaugural Roadskater.net Carolina Century (carolinacentury.com), which raised $1025 after expenses. The proceeds will be donated in the names of the volunteers to the MS society (or at their option to select charity cycling events that benefit individuals with sudden catastrophic challenges in their lives).

It's an idiotic compulsion of mine to buy new speedskate boots and skate 102 miles on them three weeks later. I love it so much I've done it twice: once in 2003 at Cruisin' in the Country in Claxton, Georgia, and once this past weekend in the smooth Piedmont of North Carolina at the first-ever Carolina Century to benefit MS. Other than earning myself a nice set of double-ankle-bones, I had an easier time skating for 10 hours than I had anticipated.

Location

We're hard at work on the 2nd Annual Carolina Century for MS 102/51/31/21-miler with 10 hours of support for those of you who want a nice leisurely century on 2 or more wheels. This year's date is Oct 24, 2009. More info soon. For now, here's what it was like last year.

Roadskater.net Carolina Century Roadskate and Bike Ride for Charity

The latest info on our skride will always be at CarolinaCentury.com (currently, this page).

I was just wondering, for those who did the 2008 Tour to Tanglewood, how did it go? Tell us whatever you can while you can still remember it. Share stuff about...

Once the tropical storm/hurricane Hanna had passed on through during what would have been the Saturday morning ride to Tanglewood, the Roadskater.net Team had to decide whether to get in our cars and ride to Tanglewood or hit the roads and burn some calories. We decided to do 48.5 miles on our skates and bikes on a route of supersweet asphalt north of Greensboro.

The Tour to Tanglewood 2008 was shortened to Sunday-only due to the storm, Hanna, which made conditions unpredictable and untenable for an official Saturday ride from Greensboro to Clemmons. The Sunday event had three distances of roughly 25ish, 46 and 74 miles. I took the 46 mile route with eebee and we took it at touring pace, snapping lots of photos and taking in the sights along the way. My speed topo map is at this link: http://roadskater.net/photos/tour-to-tanglewood-2008-greensboro-clemmons-nc-bike-ride-inline-skate/tour-to-tanglewood-2008-09-07-sunday-speed-map.htm

Here's the latest word from the Tour to Tanglewood Bike Ride & Inline Skate. We're on, provisionally, for Saturday, and it is very likely there will at least be a Sunday ride & skate. Again, while I'm not a wxpert, I believe Saturday will be a go as well. But it's not up to me, thank goodness! Here's the word from Derrick Huff: