Declan's Blog

Our hosts:

Gabe show his power move:

Looks like he’s boring Elaine to sleep…

TJ, between poses:

We even got a special appearance by Nathan!

Erin’s got a power move too:

Click here for more pictures.

Happy Birthday, kiddo!

More Pictures Here.

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Here are the wedding weekend pictures (medium size):

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3


Here’s a link to Sue’s Hardy’s pictures.

Here’s a link to Matt Hardy’s pictures.

It was so nice seeing old faces and meeting new ones!

I’d like to get everyone’s pictures into one big collection online.  Please mail me at declan@declan.net and we’ll figure out the best way to get your stuff to me.  I can also make DVD or CD copies of the big originals for people if they’d like.

UPDATE

I’m slowly loading the full size, high quality images to Flickr.  Click here to see my sets of pictures.  Look for the ones with “HQ” in the title.  So, if you like one of the pictures and want to make a print for yourself, grab a high quality copy.

Ok, downloading a picture can be a bit convoluted, but it works.

For example, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigdpix/sets/72157594150754780/ and click
on a picture.  At the top of the picture are some icons, pick the “All Sizes” one.  Then select “Original”.  This will show the biggest image.  There will be a link called “Download the Original size.”  Click that and you can save the image to your disk.

UPDATE to the UPDATE

Sue has pointed out a flaw in my directions!

None of the icons show up on top of the pictures, unless you have a Yahoo account (Yahoo owns Flickr).  I was automatically logged in, so it just worked for me.

So, if you want the instructions above to work so you can download the files, Sign up for a free account from the link on the picture page.  Sorry, it’s a bit of a pain to do this, but it then lets you get to more functions.

I wanted to make a map of the ride that uses real GPS data and would work with just a web browser and not require Google Earth.

Check this out:

http://www.declan.net/wp-content/gpx_loader.html

This uses Google maps with an overlay of the route we took. The data comes from a rider’s GPS device, so it is very accurate.

All of the roads we took are marked and you can zoom and pan over the whole ride. Click on Satellite view or Hybrid to get a neat view of some of the terrain.

For me, this was the hardest day. We’re all sore from three days of riding, and the prospect of sitting in a bike again all day just was not a thrill. But ya gotta do what ya gotta do…

Here’s how today started:

And it went on like that for 15 miles, with a killer headwind, for 4 hours. Headwinds are just nasty. They kept our forward pace to 3-5 miles per hour and just wore us out. We kept hearing that the turn on to Route 78 would put the wind more at our backs, so that kept us going.

I don’t have many pictures from this leg of the race as I was too miserable to take any, my battery on the little camera had died, and Elaine was out wandering the desert taking pictures of flora and fauna:

That’s another ocotillo in bloom. Here’s a teddy bear cactus:

Here’s our team of riders on that day:

Erin’s apparently flashing some sort of gang sign. Make a note to look into elementary school gang activity… Hailley’s dad, Damon, joined us this day and we all stuck together for most of the rest of the ride. Here we cross the San Diego County Line:

Erin and I stop to soak up the view of the nuclear devestation the Carrizo Badlands:

By the time we got to lunch, Erin was still in good spirits:

And I was about done:

But there’s nothing like a dry, white sandwich to perk me back up:

I LOVE what that helmet does to my hair. I’d wear it everyday if it would fit into the headroom of the car.

Our next destination was Agua Caliente, which is Spanish for “Crowded Pool”:

We’d taken so long getting across the desert that the pool was just about to close when we arrived. Erin said, “Oh yeah, this is just about the best 5 minutes of my life.” I think she was being sarcastic, but she’s very subtle, like her dad, so it was hard to tell…

Then it was back on the bikes for a few more miles to Vallecito:

Which apparently has a stagecoach house museum thing, which Elaine thought to take pictures of and which I didn’t even notice because I was so tired I wanted to die:

Elaine got a neat shot of the sunset and an ocotillo:

I’m sure someone has a picture of Plaster City. This is my main memory of that day, riding in the blistering heat (95-100F) and avoiding the huge drywall trucks coming and going to the factory there.

For more pictures from Day 4, click here.

For more Nuala Pix, click here!

Fox News was at the beach when we arrived. Here’s the link:

Video – http://video.fox6.com/launcher/160364

Wednesday was designed to be an easy day to rest up from the 54 miles the day before, and get us ready for the trek across the desert on Thursday.

The Imperial Valley is flat and lush, lined with irrigation ditches. Most of the fields we passed by were for making hay:

Here is a chase team who cheered us on for the whole ride. They had the greatest energy!

We got to El Centro pretty quickly, and I got some pictures of its beauty:

Ok, there’s not much in El Centro… But, they do have a pool! Our Pit Boss, Gary, is a Navy Seal or something, and he broke us onto the El Centro Navy Air Facility to use the pool. It was tough cutting the barbed wire and drugging the dogs, and I’m sure the guards we subdued will all be just fine. Thankfully, once you penetrate the perimeter of the base, they let you take pictures:

This plane has its engine removed, or I would have taken it for a spin.

Here are Hailey, Divia, and Erin:

Erin has fun in the pool, and Divia gives me the stinkeye for yelling at her all the time:

CANNONBALL!

These poor people didn’t know what hit them. It was like Caddy Day at the pool in “Caddyshack.” Minus the Baby Ruth.

Here’s where the parents hung out, under the awning, or in the hot tub in the back of the picture. I spent some time there myself. When I told Erin that I met one of her friends’ Dads in the hot tub, her reply was, “That’s awkward. You met some guy in a hot tub.” If you know me at all, I never let anything go, so “awkward” was the watchword for the rest of the trip. Erin’s still not talking to me…

After a few hours at the pool, we had about 5 miles of easy riding to the next school to camp. Or to park my bike then get a ride to the El Centro Ramada. I believe I’ve made my feelings about camping known….

We did hang around the school for quite a while, because they have a merry-go-round. I remember we had these torture implementations on the play ground when I was a kid, but they have been banned for a long time. I guess country kids are just tougher, or more expendable. I went to take a picture of Erin on the ride, and she said, “I can’t look up or I’ll barf!!!” Good times!

We had dinner, settled the bikes in with the Blackmans, then walked to the campfire. As I passed through the dining area, I sniffed the distinctive odor of clay chips, and, sure enough, there was a Texas Holdem poker game about to start. I firmly lectured the group of men about to play about the immorality of cards, then noticed they had a spot open. While Elaine and Erin went to the campfire, I almost went bust, then fought back to about double my original chip stack. Elaine walked back from the campfire and said she’d wait in the car, so I kept going All In to bust out and get to a real bed at the Ramada. Sadly, I kept winning, so eventually I gave my chips to a guy who had already been busted out. It was almost the perfect poker game. I didn’t lose, and all night I had the hope that I won! I didn’t. John went all in on a straight, and lost to a flush. At least that’s the story I got from all the guys the next day… 🙂

Click here for more pictures from Day 3.

I made some maps earlier based on the chase drivers maps. This map comes directly from the tracks files from a GPS one of the Dads had on the ride, so it is totally accurate.

Here are the data files so you can play with them yourselves:

KMZ File – works with Google Earth
GPX File – GPS eXchange Format
GDB File – the base Garmin DataBase that came from the device