Local Impact of our Unquenchable Thirst for Oil

It looks like our love of the car will trump common sense in "The Region." British Petroleum (BP) gets to dump more pollutants into the lake for the sake of increasing their refining capacity at their Whiting plant. The best they can do is to assure everyone that they've complied with existing laws. If that's true, maybe the laws need re-examination. Indiana officials seem content to inform us it could be worse and that it will create jobs (the article says 80). Here's the link.

July Bike Miles

Did an 80 miler this month on July 22nd. My longest ride in awhile. It helped boost my July miles. A also had a Sunday 50 miler this month. Steve says I should just improve on my last month's mileage by a mile or two-kind of like the East German weight lifters used to do-so I can break last month's mark every month. I think I may be tapped out unless I cut back on my run miles. With cross country gearing up I doubt it.

July miles=588
2007 miles=2374.4
Miles since June 2006=5313.4

21 commute days. The running store is now closed on Sunday so I don't have quite as many commute opportunities.

Rally Cap

It worked! Yeah, I'm a sorry Cubs fan!

Tour Day France

I know, I know...almost the entire month of July has passed and I haven't blogged a word. I'm not all that good at this blogging stuff anyway, but I've been glued to the Tour Day France as is usual for me in July. It's good stuff...maybe better now that there is no clear favorite. I'm playing the Fly to the Finish Sweepstakes too. I want to win one of those Cervelo bikes the CSC guys are riding. I find the flat stages pretty boring but the mountain stages are awesome. The new guy on the Discovery team is really shaking things up. Now if only someone in the United States with deep pockets and the love of the sport will pick up the sponsorship so we have at least one United States team in the race (Discovery's sponsorship will end at the end of this season). I did hear mention that there may be another US team next year too.

June Biking

I didn't ride my bike except to commute again this month.

June miles=499
2007 miles=1786.4
Miles (since June 2006)=4725.4

22 commuting days in June. Longest ride 29 miles.

Have you Never Been Mellow...

Why I had this Olivia Newton-John song going through my head during Saturday's ridge run with the cross country team at the Dunes State Park is beyond me. It's hard to get mellow with the summertime flies zooming around my head.

Road Trip

Steve and I took our yearly road trip to the Indiana State Track Meet in Bloomington, Indiana, last weekend. For the second year we camped at Yellowwood State Forest. Yellowwood is a wonderfully undeveloped area that suits our purposes well. It has primitive, uncrowded, camping and plenty of trail to run on. Yellowwood is home to the Tecumseh Trail Marathon in the fall. We ran about the last eight miles of the marathon course on Saturday.

Steve brought out his new ThermaRest sleeping pad (the ProLite 4) for this year's trip. Although Steve is relatively new to camping, he's the master when it comes to the cool stuff. He's also got a JetBoil that we use on this trip to heat water for coffee in the morning. Me, I've got my 25 year old Sierra Designs three person tent. This tent refuses to wear out. It's on the heavy side so we haven't used it to backpack, but it's roomy and easy to pitch when we're car camping. Between the two of us, we've always got all sorts of camping/backpacking gadgets, although I did forget my sleeping bag one time! I won't do that again.