October 2008 – Palm Beach Bike Tours

October 27, 2008September 27, 2018

Man Versus Bike Versus Horse: 100 Miles to Go

“100 miles (160km) in one day: There could not be a higher target to achieve. It’s tough, gruelling, technical and requires phenomenal fitness, balance, training, dedication, and concentration of both horse and rider.” — Competitive Long Distance Horse Riding Society

Riding a horse 100 miles is the apex of horse endurance achievement?

Horsepower Versus Manpower

A couple weeks ago in the Palm Beach Post, I read an article about a Wellington (Florida) woman who rode a horse 100 miles in a competitive event. I wasn’t all that impressed. It took her and the horse 14 hour or so hours.

I did my first bicycle century in less time and I’m sure I was in worse shape than her horse. Is that time an anomaly? Certainly I can’t be faster than a horse, right?

The American Endurance Ride Conference, the governing body for long distance horse riding, posts scores online. The best score I could find in 2008 over a 100-mile distance was 8:41 for Carol Giles riding SAR Tiki Stranger. That comes out to about 12 miles an hour. I’m still not impressed.

South Broward Wheelers Century Ride: Nov. 2

This coming Sunday, I’ll be riding the 2008 South Broward Wheelers Century Ride.

My goal for this ride is to finish in less than eight and a half hours. If I make that goal, I will consider myself superior to a horse in terms of endurance distance riding.

Anyone else up for taking on a horse?

Horsepower to Watts to Marketing

James ‘Fast Jimmy’ Watt was in marketing and wanted to sell steam engines. He did some math on the back of a flour sack and decided that a pony mule working in a mine could do a certain amount of work. He then guessed that a horse could do twice that amount of work. Based on that, he decided that a horse could do 33,000 foot pounds of force per minute. Thus, horsepower was born.

Based on Fast Jimmy’s analysis one horsepower is about 746 watts.

An average cyclist in good shape can produce 200 watts for hours at a time. A top-level professional cyclist can generate 500 watts. All else being equal, a horse produces two to four times more horsepower than a cyclist.

Why Cyclists Go Further, Faster than Horses

Gears and efficiency, mostly. Possibly SportLegs. No, mostly gears.

While cyclists are human, their bikes are machines. A great cyclist can translate about 20% of his energy into power. The rest is wasted.

Given that a horse is starting out with so much more raw power, you gotta wonder how efficient a horse is at converting energy to power. I guess you also have to wonder how far and fast horses could go if they road bikes.

Cyclists also aren’t bound by the rules of PETA. We are allowed to abuse ourselves long past the point where the average person would consider it cruel and unusual.

You Versus a Horse

The next time you ride a century, please let me know how you did versus your friendly neighborhood horse.

(Next up, why I think humans are smarter than dolphins no matter what Flipper says.)

—Matt

October 26, 2008September 27, 2018

50 Years and the Hills Have Gotten Steeper

Nearly half a century ago, when I was 12 years old, I delivered The Southeast Missourian as a sub. I never knew whether that meant “substitute,” “subordinate” or what, but it paid $2.50 a week plus meager tips to throw papers six days a week in all kinds of weather and collect for them on Saturday mornings.

That came out to about 14 cents an hour.

After working for another kid, The Missourian offered me a route of my own. I started with 90 customers and built the route up to about 300 when I gave it up.

Yellow track is part of route

The yellow track shows the parameter of the route. In addition to those streets, I also had to ride about a mile to a filling station to pick up my papers and all of those cross streets in the middle.

This was NOT a flat route. Some of those grades hit 20% and a lot of them are greater than 10%.

Oh, yes, back in those days they were almost all gravel.

My kids have heard my stories about having to ride uphill both ways, in the snow, on a bike with no seat. Let me tell you, when you have a huge basket full of newspapers on the front of a bike with no gears, it might as well be all of those things.

This was spooky when you were a kid

Right at the edge of my route was a pasture that had an overgrown cemetery in it. Even as a kid, I was fascinated by old things, so I got up enough nerve to brave the grass, brambles, chiggers and the snakes that I knew were there, to explore the old tombstones.

Today, the Hanover Lutheran Cemetery, also known as the Old Bertling Cemetery, is in the middle of a housing development and is very well kept.

It was a whole lot cooler when it was out in the middle of a cow pasture, though.

Lots of stones are broken

Based on the number of broken and missing tombstones, I get the feeling that not every kid exploring the graveyard was as respectful of the dead as I was.

Still, it’s great to know that someone’s taking care of the place today. When I walked the grounds today, I noticed that the area around the site had been sloped away at quite an angle.

I wondered if they had cut it a little close and hit any of the old graves when they were grading it.

Ran into a woman

At the crest of one of the hills, I saw an elderly woman walking a dog. I commented to her that the hills seemed to have gotten a little steeper over the last 50 years.

As I pulled away, I wondered if she might have been one of my former customers. Then I realized that she would have had to be about 130 years old for that to be true.

Bosses make more money

When I got my own route, I started making big bucks – about 25 bucks a week. That doesn’t sound like much until you consider that I only made twice that as a reporter for The Missourian.

Dad, who would occasionally grouse that I cost him more in cold medicine than I made delivering the papers, made me keep a full set of books on my route, something that paid off in later years. I still believe the three years I spent carrying papers was the best training I ever received.

Paperboy of the Year Twice

I won a $25 savings bond as Paperboy of the Year the two years I was eligible for it. The award was based on growing the size of your route, the number of complaints you received and how well you paid your bill. (We had to buy the papers, then we would collect for them. If a customer skipped town, it came out of our pocket.)

Scheming worked

Paying my bill was no problem. Dad kept a close eye on my books to make sure I didn’t do anything foolish. In fact, almost all my personal expenses for my first year at Ohio University came out of paper route savings.

Getting customers was easy, too. I’d always order several more papers than I had customers so I could give prospective subscribers a week or two of free papers to get them hooked. I was a pretty persuasive – read obnoxious – salesman, too. Maybe that’s why I hate ’em today.

I had business cards printed up so that subscribers would call me at home if they missed their paper instead of calling The Missourian. As far as the paper knew, I NEVER had dissatisfied customers.

October 24, 2008October 24, 2008

Off the Bike in Las Vegas

I haven’t run off the road and been swept away by the Mississippi River.

I’ve been in Las Vegas speaking at a Voice Report telecom seminar on auditing phone bills. I shared war stories about cell phone bills on Thursday and I’ll be in a BYOB (Bring Your Own Bills) session and a panel discussion today.

Sounds really exciting, doesn’t it?

Here’s the view from our Caesar’s Palace hotel window

We’re in Caesar’s Palace, overlooking the Bellagio Fountains.

We fly out Saturday, spend the night with Mark in St. Louis, then head down to Cape on Sunday. I plan to ride in Cairo, IL, for a couple of hours documenting old buildings and then we’re on our way home.

Wife Lila has to be back to do Steinhoff Consulting payroll and we have to be ready to vote.

October 21, 2008September 27, 2010

Nikon D700 Review and Camera Commentary

Nikon D7000 Reviews Come Too Late, Order Today

Update: 2010-09-27… If you’re looking to get the latest Nikon digital SLR, the Nikon D7000, you better order it today. If Nikon’s delivery history is any indication, supplies will be limited after its initial launch. Don’t wait to read the Nikon D7000 reviews to order. Grab yours today and return it if you don’t like the digital camera.

Based on several online reviews of the Nikon D7000, it looks like this camera sits between the Nikon D300 and Nikon D90, possibly replacing both. It comes with some really nice features (data mirroring), HD Video and a rugged body.

Nikon D700 Review Summary: Just Buy One. Now.

Using the Nikon D700 DSLR for the first time was a life-changing experience on par with the birth of my son. If you love photography, gave up photography when the world went digital and miss shooting with your beloved Nikon 35mm SLR camera, buy the Nikon D700 today and find happiness.

This is not a technical review but more of a commentary on what this Nikon D700 camera means to me. No brick walls were photographed in the creation of this article. If you absolutely must ogle the Nikon D700’s technical specs please read what Thom Hogan and Ken Rockwell have to say.

(I promise there is a D700 analysis here somewhere. If don’t care about how I got to the D700, skip down to the end where I tell you it is wonderful or, better yet, just buy one and find out for yourself.)

Film is Dead. Long Live Digital

Film is Dead. Long Live Digital. World Cup Soccer 1994. I don’t know exactly when film died but I have a guess. When I went through the family Nikon stockpile, I found this 1994 Fuji film box end on the back of a Nikon FE2. So, 1994, or pretty close to then.

I can still remember shooting film after 1994 but it stopped being fun. Digital was coming. It was clunky and nowhere near the quality of film but, by 1998, the only place I wanted to show my pictures was online. Shooting film, processing, printing and then scanning was too much work.

Enter the Nikon Coolpix 950. Image quality was low. Shutter lag was measured in seconds. It could only take two frames a minute. Color reproduction was poor. In every respect, it was worse than a 1967-era Nikon F. Except, it was digital. I started shooting pictures again. It wasn’t a lot of fun but at least it was immediate.

As soon as I touched the Coolpix 950, I knew I’d never shoot another roll of film.

Cameras I have Known and Loved

My father, Ken of PBBT Fame, was a photojournalist and has been shooting for 50 years. I picked up photography from him. I have used a lot of camera hardware over the years.

While having used a lot of equipment doesn’t make me a great photographer, it does give me an idea as to what I like and dislike in camera equipment.

My first real camera was a Nikon FG-20. I used it for several years but never loved its feel — it felt small and the plastic film advance lever wasn’t nearly as solid as the metal advance on the Nikon F2. The Nikon N8008 was an amazing, functional camera with lots of technological bells and whistles but felt plastic. I took some of my best photos with the ‘8008 but it didn’t have the classic camera feel of my next camera: the Nikon FM2.

The FM2 was a real camera. It was metal. With the MD-12 motor drive, it had the heft and balance of a fine piece of photographic equipment. Unlike the older F2, it had an accurate meter and was modern enough to not to be temperamental. For being a step backwards technologically, the FM2 was satisfying for both the images it captured and the style in which it took them.

A Word About Nikon Lenses

Metal: good. Plastic: bad.

Yes, just about any plastic Nikon lens you buy today will out-perform any 1970s- or 1980s-era Nikon lens. The production quality and science of lens design and construction today is wonderful. Still, today’s lenses feel cheap. A big, heavy 180mm f/2.8 lens from 1972 (did they even have ED glass then?), with its smooth-as-glass focus ring warms one’s heart. The current generation wonder lens, the Nikon 18-200mm AF-S G-Wiz VR Nikkor Nanotaco Lens, will outperform those Nikon classic fixed-length lenses even though it is a 10x-zoom lens and half their weight.

Nostalgia aside, today’s zoom lenses are optically awesome. Today’s Nikon Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom Nikkor lens allowed me to stop carrying a 105/2.5, 135/2.8 and 180/2.8. (I never had an 85mm or it would be gone, too.) One lens replaced three. At each focal length, side by side, the zoom produces better quality pictures. Factor in the ability to have those lengths as well as everything between 70mm and 200mm and you have a clear win for the zoom.

At the short end, too, zooms rock. My Nikon Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8D ED-IF AF-S Zoom Nikkor replaced a 24/2.8 and 35/2. If I had been fortunate enough to have a 20/2.8, it would have been gone, too.

With just two lenses in my bag, the 17-35/2.8 and 70-200/2.8, I can shoot just about anything I come across. Toss in a 60/2.8 macro and a 300/2.8 (with a 1.4x teleconverter?) and the entire photographic world is my oyster.

(As a side note, even the AI-converted Nikon 24 f/2.8 lens my father bought used in 1968 works just fine on the D700. Does that blow your mind or what? Manual-focus Nikon lenses made a decade before I was born will matrix meter on the D700. You can’t even come close to saying that about Canon and their digital cameras.)

Nikon D70 and the Age of Fun Digital

The Nikon D70 and my son were both born in 2004.

The D70 was announced in January 2004. Malcolm was due to arrive the end of August.

At long last, there was a good reason for me to upgrade from the Coolpix. The D70 was everything I wanted in a digital camera except that it was a DX-cropped camera instead of a full 35mm frame. (Basically, what that mean is that the 24mm lens and its correct angle of view effectively became a 36mm lens. Every lens I had was suddenly 1.5x longer. This is an oversimplification. Go read some technical blog if you care to know more.)

Still, I had a kid on the way and the D70 was the first digital camera that was mostly okay for under $1,000. Thanks to lowered expectations, a hard deadline and the price point, I made the jump to a digital SLR.

D70 — DX Crop Means Never Wide Enough

If you never used a 35mm film camera with a lens wider than 35mm, you don’t care that your new digital camera is cropped by a 1.5 multiple. The 18mm-70mm or whatever zoom lens that came with the camera is plenty good at its effective 27mm view. Best of all, at the long end your 200mm lens is now a 300mm lens. All the better to shoot pictures of your kid’s soccer game.

I, on the other hand, wanted to be able to see 24mm of view. In fact, my 17-35mm zoom lens at 17mm is nirvana.

The D70 was functionally awesome. The color was spot-on most of the time. Image quality was good. Its crisp response was worlds better than the Coolpix. Photography was fun again and the quality was once again near film (except in low light). But, just like the FG-20 and N8008, the D70 didn’t have the right feel. I always knew I was shooting digital. I always knew the camera was plastic. I knew the D70 wasn’t a classic.

D700 Review and Commentary

The Nikon D700 is everything I have ever wanted in a camera.

Not only does the D700 meet all my technical requirements for a camera, it meets all my tactile and emotional requirements. It feels like a classic camera.

All the buttons and knobs are in the right place. It is well balanced and crisp. The quality of design and thought involved in its creation is clear. Never do I have to think about how to do something or try to mold my mind to fit the camera. The camera is the one that changes to meet my photographic needs.

I’m sure this sounds like simple slash camera porn but the truth of the matter is that the D700 is a wonderful piece of photographic equipment.

Within moments of unboxing the camera, it simply felt right. Everything I had learned in using the D70 for four years was applicable. Yet, as I started using the camera, the camera faded away and the captured images took center stage. The viewfinder on the D700 is huge compared to the D70.

And, oh yes, the 17-35mm zoom is oh-so-wide again: 104 degrees to do with as I please. (On a DX camera, you only get 79 degrees for your angle of view.)

What Digital SLR Camera Should You Buy?

That is really simple. Today, you really have three choices and they cover the entire dollar range.

Nikon D700: Buy this camera if you like shooting wide, remember 35mm film and want the same feeling as when you first picked up any of the Nikon classic cameras. It really is the most wonderful camera I have used in my entire life.

Nikon D40: Here is the camera for you, if you love taking pictures with your Canon PowerShot point-n-shoot camera, but it isn’t responsive enough. You push the button to take a picture, the kid moves before the shutter fires and you end up cursing the day you ever bought the camera. This is the camera if you enjoy photography but you aren’t getting the results you want and need something a lot better but don’t want to spend an arm and a leg. The Nikon D40, for less than $400 with 18-55mm zoom lens (refurbished), is the perfect camera for you. Dad got one as a retirement present and is loving every minute of the camera. Honestly, at this price, you are getting an great DSLR for the price of a point-n-shoot.

Nikon D90: Let’s say you already have a digital SLR and it is getting a little old. Maybe you picked up a D100 or a D200 a few years back. You have first or second generation technology, want more but couldn’t justify buying a D300 even if it did have wonderful low-light sensitivity. Maybe you never shot film or, if you did, you really don’t care about angle of view. You want the best DX digital camera on the market today. The Nikon D90 is a year newer than the previous champ, the Nikon D300. While a year may not be a lot of time for some products, in the rapidly advancing world of digital cameras, a year is forever. For about what I paid for the D70 ($1,000) four years ago, you can get today’s top of the line digital DX SLR.

Notice Anything Missing in this Review?

I didn’t mention megapixels once. Here is the reason: megapixels ceased to be a factor when cameras passed the four megapixel mark. For anything up to an 8×10 print, four or six megapixels are fine. The D700 has 12 megapixels but that wasn’t even a factor in my purchase. More megapixels just mean I need more RAM and more disk space. I’d be perfectly happy with a six megapixel D700.

Got questions? Wanna express your undying love for a camera? Comment below.

October 20, 2008October 22, 2008

Cape’s Fort D Gets a D-Minus

Brother Mark and I woke up to temps in the low 40s Saturday. Even HE wasn’t ready to hit the road until the thermometer thawed out. He had to be in St. Louis for a concert in the evening, so we decided to do a short historical ride, starting in South Cape Girardeau.

When I worked at The Southeast Missourian, South Cape was the euphemism we used for what everyone else in town called Smelterville (or, going back even more, Leadville). It was in the area of town that frequently flooded and was inhabited almost exclusively by poor black families.

While I was still in high school, I launched myself into a daring anthropological expedition to venture into Smelterville with my camera. If I wasn’t on the road, without access to them, I’d stick in some of those old pix. I think they stand up pretty well.

None of the dire things I had been warned about happened. Instead, I found myself and my camera being invited into homes and I discovered something that served me well throughout my whole newspaper career: most folks are pretty darned nice if you treat them with respect and dignity.

You can’t fight the river

Old Man River took its toll over the years. More frequent and worse floods damaged many of the homes beyond repair; the roadbed passing through the community was raised and white flight to the suburbs opened up housing nearby that didn’t go under water. In 1996, after two “100-Year” floods in 1993 and 1995, many homes qualified for a government buyout program.

I didn’t see a single home in the area on this trip. Only the roof of this old furniture company sticks up above the roadbed.

I miss the Blue Hole

A green house trailer sits where the Blue Hole Restaurant used to serve up the best BBQ sandwiches in the area. I can remember going with my dad in his truck and wolfing down Brown Hots served on authentic Coca Cola metal trays.

The place was named after the limestone quarry next to it. When it filled with water, it looked like a Blue Hole.

Well, it sounded like a good idea

The quarry provided limestone for the Cape Cement Plant (since sold and renamed numerous times), once one of the largest employers in the area. Back before anyone ever thought about pollution control, the cement plant would billow out huge plumes of white dust that would cover everything for miles around.

The quarry started as a deep pit, and then was mined horizontally, leaving huge stone pillars to support the roofs. Back in the days of the Red Menace, I covered a city council meeting where it was discussed that those deep caverns would make a great fallout shelter.

How long can you hold your breath?

“Remember that they used to call that the Blue Hole because it fills with water if it’s not constantly being pumped out? How long do you think we could hide in those holes if the quarry filled up?” I asked innocently.

I never heard any mention of quarry-based fallout shelters again.

About 30 or 35 years ago, the pillars were blasted out and it changed to a deep pit quarry again. I managed to talk my way into the caverns to document them just before they were blown.

Everyone in Cape has heard of Fort D

Nobody ever goes to see it, but they’ve heard about it. Larry J. Summary posted this image of Cape’s forts. Fort D is the only one that has survived.

The site is nicely landscaped and the fort itself looks good until you notice that it has no roof.

Here’s an account good enough to borrow

Scott House, a retired teacher, and a member of the city’s Civil War Round Table, is leading an effort to interpret the fort’s history.

The forts were ordered built by Gen. John Fremont, the Western Department’s Union commander in St. Louis. Fremont dispatched a contingent of engineers to the town to lay out the forts. Assisting in the project was an officer, John Wesley Powell, who after the war would earn a name for himself exploring the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon.

Built in the summer of 1861, the four forts formed a crescent along the outskirts of town. House said a copy of an 1865 map drawn by Army engineers, now in the Library of Congress, provided a period look at the forts‚ dimensions and their proximity to the town. Continue reading “Cape’s Fort D Gets a D-Minus”