Sour Swinger Predominantly follows my Army & Iraq Deployment. Also has some Geek, School, and other talk.

!!!Joe has reached Virginia!!!

 

If you’re just tuning in, Joe Frambach is raising money for Gilda’s Club Western Pennsylvania by attempting to hike the Appalachian Mountain in 100 days.  If you haven’t yet, you can donate via that flashy little display at the top left of my blog.  Click here for more details.

“Joseph went to a Baptist church in Tennessee this past Sunday.  He took his wallet out to give an offering and he forgot his wallet at the church. ‘Mom, it is at a Baptist church in Tennessee somewhere’ So after he explained where the church might be, I called around.  I did find the church!!! It looked hopeless, really. Do you have any idea how MANY Baptist churches are in Tennessee!!!!! The church is mailing the wallet and cell phone back to me. Yes, he forgot his cell phone, too. Then I am going to mail it to his friend in Virginia. Joe will meet up with his friend in Virginia and she will give it to him. This is the second time on a Sunday that he found a church to go to! Happy Memorial Day!”

~~~Diana”

 

If you’re just tuning in, Joe Frambach is raising money for Gilda’s Club Western Pennsylvania by attempting to hike the Appalachian Mountain in 100 days.  If you haven’t yet, you can donate via that flashy little display at the top left of my blog.  Click here for more details.

“I’m at S.B.F. and I got your package. Thank you so much. The people here really love the cookies.  I’ll be in Hot Springs in 2 days, and Erwin a few days later. I’m not sure when I’ll be in Erwin, but I’ll try to call from Hot Springs to let you know.”

~~~Joe Frambach

 

If you’re just tuning in, Joe Frambach is raising money for Gilda’s Club Western Pennsylvania by attempting to hike the Appalachian Mountain in 100 days.  If you haven’t yet, you can donate via that flashy little display at the top left of my blog.  Click here for more details.

Well, not direct communication but a means for us to know what’s up with Joe.  His mother contacted me on this blog so that she could keep me up to date with things.  Here’s what she had to say thus far:

“Joe called on Mother’s Day and he said he’ll be at Standing Bear Farm Hostel, 4255 Green Corner Road, Hartford, TN, 37753, in about 4 to 5 days.” [That's 16/17 May]

“Joseph’s trail name is: Grandpa Joe
He earned that nickname as a child because he was extremely slow whenever we went to the store, on a trip, anywhere. We always had to wait on Grandpa Joe.He said that when he is in the Smokies that he will not have phone reception so he can’t call. He also said that he will not make it to Maine. He met up with a group of hikers and they are all taking their time and whenever they pass through a town, they will eat at a restaurant.”

Keep trucking away Grandpa Joe!!! Its amazing enough you’re willing to spend 100 days hiking on the trail.

If you’re just tuning in, Joe Frambach is raising money for Gilda’s Club Western Pennsylvania by attempting to hike the Appalachian Mountain in 100 days.  If you haven’t yet, you can donate via that flashy little display at the top left of my blog.  Click here for more details.

Yesterday, I joined Jonathan and Kim on a training bike ride for their Haleakala bike race.  Jonathan just bought a brand new Garmin Edge 705 so he let me take his older Garmin Edge 305.  I was totally blown away by what it measures, calculates, and displays for you in real time while training.  This includes calories spent, distance, time, % grade, elevation, GPS with map, heart rate, and much more.  It also supports the Garmin Training Center software (mac compatible!!!) to display all the results on my computer in an organized manner.  Even better is the MotionBased website which allows you to store ride information online, interface with google maps/earth, and display even more information then the software.  MotionBased will also automatically look up and attach the weather for the specific time and date the exercise took place.

To sum up the basic results of my ride:

Distance: 42.81 miles Avg Speed: 11.1 mph Avg Heart: 154 bpm Ascended: 4697 ft

Ride Time: 3:52:26 Max Speed: 51.9 mph Burned: 2941 Cals Descended: 4650 ft

My average speed was low since this ride entailed a lot of climbing.  I specifically hit two climbs, NCAR and Super Flagstaff.  The highest grade I came across was 18% on Super Flagstaff.  That was a bitch!  The straightaways weren’t much quicker as the average wind speed for the day was 12.4 mph with a max of 23 mph.  Unfortunately I didn’t break my speed record of 52.4 mph.  Got close though.  I attain these speeds on NCAR.  Super Flagstaff’s road is way to windy.

Heart Rate VS Elevation over Distance.

The heart monitor was messed up for the first 5 miles.  Probably because I didn’t start sweating right away.  The chest band that measures heart rate requires sweat/water in order to function properly.  Also towards the end of my ride, it measured again off the charts.  Not sure why.  I took a breather at the top of Super Flagstaff and forgot to unpause my Garmin for the descent back down.  Hence the cliff/drop off on the graph.  If you click pic, it’ll take you to a much larger version on my Flickr.  There you can see all my notes for the graph.

MotionBased allows your data to be made publicly available.  For anyone curious for more in-depth analysis, follow my route with google maps, or just marvel at what technology can do for training rides; check it out here.

Back in April, I posted about a coding competition held at my school.  The winning team, OMGWTFBBQ, had won with a pretty awesome game.  Wilkie posted the game with source on his website.  Unfortunately its missing a DLL file and doesn’t work.  I’ve re-compressed the zip with the missing file.  Download here.

The game is a combination of Tetris and Breakout.  Once you clear a certain number of lines, the game will flip over and you play Breakout for a few seconds with whichever Tetris piece was next.  The game also supports network play in which you “battle” the other person.  When one player scores a Tetris, the other player may suffer additional lines or have their board rotated.  As the board rotates, the keys flip accordingly to further frustrate the opponent.  Here’s some screen shots.

Took two videos from drill this past weekend.  First one gives a view of what its like to sit in the driver’s seat of a stryker.  Its very similar to driving a car except you have thirty million buttons on the panel.  The second video is a quick shot of us parked at the Lowes during a convoy operation.  You can read all about this drills events here.  All my military YouTube videos can be found here.

 

Inside The Drivers Seat

In Lowes Parking Lot

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