Seattle to SF – Bike Ride, are you game?

UPDATE: We successfully completed the ride, detailed ride reports on Chris’ blog. I still need to finish mine but here are the pics.

Myself and my colleague Chris Tremont are planning to ride from Seattle the San Francisco around July 24 – Aug 3. Now, Chris is almost a pro Triathelete and he wants to do this 800+ mile ride in around 10 days.

I’m not exactly any athlete so I’m taking a sissy approach and I'll join Chris in Eugene and ride to SF from there. I’ll take the Amtrak CoastStarlight to Eugene. Eugene is 50 miles from the coast and about midway between Yachats and Reedsport.

Route Research.

• Great route description in this blog.
• The mountaineers book, and the lonely planet guide.

Our Plan

We will shortly put together close to final day by day itinerary* (with elevation gain, camping spot) but for now here is how it look like:

Start	End	Day Mileage	Cumulative Mileage	Date	Potential Place To Stay
Seattle	Centralia	94.2	94.2	Fri 24 July
Centralia	Kelso	55.7	149.9
Kelso	Astoria	57.2	207.1	Sat 25 July
Astoria	Manzanita	37.8	244.9
Manzanita	Netarts	40.1	285	Sun 26 July
Netarts	Lincoln City	48	333
Lincoln City	Yachats	49.9	382.9	Mon 27 July
Yachats	Reedsport	48.8	431.7
Reedsport	Bandon	54.8	486.5	Tue 28 July
Bandon	Gold Beach	57.5	544
Gold Beach	Crescent City	55.8	599.8	Wed 29 July
Crescent City	Orick	39	638.8
Orick	Eureka	46	684.8	Thu 30 July
Eureka	Redcrest	41.8	726.6
Redcrest	Leggett	55.8	782.4	Fri 31 July
Leggett	Fort Bragg	43.4	825.8
Fort Bragg	Point Arena	44.4	870.2	Sat 1 Aug
Point Arena	Jenner	51.6	921.8
Jenner	Point Reyes Station	42.5	964.3	Sun 2 Aug

* Thanks to Chris

Now few things which suck about the above itinerary, there is no time to party in SF. Well I’m going to pain Chris to start early so that we can keep some time to be in SF!

So what is the cause ?

Personal
Earlier I got email from Aparajita suggesting like Alok’s Rainier Climb, we can fundraise for Asha with our bike ride. I like Asha’s cause and zero-overhead approach, so please donate for Asha to support our cause. Asha has supported a project in my hometown in India – the Mayaboli school for hearing impaired. For those who know me and would like to personally donate for this cause I would be really happy to receive donations for the same. Please note unlike the general Asha the donations for Mayaboli are not tax deductible

Mayaboli School For Hearing Impaired

Team Cause
We want to promote our team HealthVault and make this a road trip to spread the word about need to improve the state of health care, particularly we want to talk to individual citizens and express the need to assert right to Health Data.

Endorse HealthDataRights

To share to your success stories and learn more about what other folks are doing to make themselves an active participant in the Health eco-system – do take a look at http://www.iamenabled.com (please note – this is Microsoft sponsored venture).

Share your stories, join the movement

How are we going to roll?

We still need to finalize our gear but this will be an essential part – the Helmet Camera. (if Chris can get it time).

We will also post our progress on twitter with geo location, and potentially make a graphic of our progress. For now here is feed from our twitter account:

Call to action

• Join us - I know this is call to all my friends, well-wishers and bike enthusiasts, saddle up and join us!!! Seriously if you have any inhibitions let me know, and i can help you put them at ease.
• Endorse the HealthDataRights
• Share your story on IamEnabled
• Donate

My First 5K Race - Lesson Learnt : Pace Yourself.

This morning I ran my first 5K - the Susan G. Komen Race for cure. It was a great experience, I was astonished my the number of people who showed up to show their support for the breast cancer cause. Microsoft has a booth showcasing HealthVault, and thanks to Anna, myself and Maris could participate in race as part of HealthVault team.

I started a little too fast as the table below will show, my first mile was a little too fast (started 7:00, averaged 7:53), which affected the third mile (avg 8:50min). Overall all I finished my first 5K in 26:04 mins, I was hoping to be in ball park of 22 mins but oh well, lesson learnt to pace myself and it was all for a good cause :). Here are the stats for the graphical and analytical folks:


Thanks to Maris for pushing me mile 2 onwards, she paced herself well, caught up with me around beginning of mile 2 and hey seemed like a machine on mile 3 when I was panting and barely able to keep up with her. She could easily have finished the race in 22-23 mins, if i didn't hold her back ;).

Anyways, it was a morning well spent with lots of friends (yay! Maggie...) and colleagues (yay! HealthVault..) participating in the race. Oh and the yogurt at finish line was delicious...