Tri-Pride event coming up!

So tonight i'm getting all my stuff in order for Tri-Pride this weekend. Shining up my bicycle, making sure my trainer still functions (i did after all find abaondoned in the basement of the farmhouse, and that is THE creepiest basement i have ever ventured into, but i digress..) getting all my posters and jars and all ready to set up at tripride and cycle my little buns off hoping to get people to drop a little spare change in my jar.

How did i get so lucky as to get a table at Tri-Pride you ask. Well it actually started at Guelph Pride Dance, one of the organizers of tri-pride came over to me and we gots ta chatting and he wanted to help me raise some more money. so this lovely man has been getting me contacts at tri-pride and put my name in for a complementary community table. SOLA (the southern ontario leather assosiation) bought a few community tables that they then donated to causes/groups who might not otherwise be able to afford to table there. So this lovely man at tri-pride got me a free table to fundraise from.

You see this is another reason i do this ride. it contstantly reminds me of the amazingly good nature of people. people I don't even know wish me good luck and empty their pockets into my donation bucket. people i barely know go out of their way to help me raise doantions. makes me think back to the ride last year, where along the route, there would be people, just random people on the street, stopped to watch all the bikes go by, and they clap, they clap and cheer for all of us riding our way to montreal. they have no idea who we are or what we're doing, but still they clap, they smile as we ride by, they feel the strength and the love that is embodied in this ride. this is why i ride.  your support, and the support of people i don't even know keeps my legs spinning, long after i've compleatly lost feeling in them.

so if you're out and about kitchener city hall on saturday. have look for me on my trainer. come say hi and bring me water and carbs. also as a side note the rainbow chorus will be singing on the mainstage! come sing along!

lots of love to you all.
jaye

oh May. where did you go?

so may kicked my butt. i havn't been on a training ride since my last post. i feel crummy about it. i really like my bike. and need to mke time to do those longer rides. i'm up over 50 kms now and it takes a chunk of time to complete that. and even more time to eat enough so i don't pass out while riding.  but i have been doing what i like to call sprint training. on my way to or from (or both) from work. i basicly bike as hard and as fast as i can for the majority of the ride. this isn't really a poor excuse for not doing  long distance. apartently some of the best long distance runners in the world train by doing sprints as the main part of their training program. so maybe it'll work for me? who knows. seems to be doing alright so far. i need to tackle the 50km boundery this week. should be alright just finding the time, and energy (farming=lots of energy) to do it... arg.

may did have some amazing moments. i set up on my bike trainer at the opening dance to Guelph Pride. The amamzing folks there to dance and have a good time dropped a cool $249.50 into my donation bucket. Amazing. totally amazing. rode for about 4 hours straight (ha! straight at a gay dance ha!) it was great. awesome people.

well i gunna sign off and go dream about riding my bike. i'll be over 50 soon. promise.

BAM 45km!

Just got home from a beautiful 45 km ride, now i'm sipping my yummy chocolate peanut butter protien drink. yum!
so yes beautiful day, great for a ride. i started out heading towards my friends place who lives out in the countryside west of guelph to drop something off fo them. gets good and hilly out those parts. i tried out a few new roads today. as a point dirt roads and paved roads look a whole latta the same in google maps. so ya. i hit a dirst road. but it actually wasn't that bad some of the roads in guelph have bigger bike eating pot holes. and plus dirt roads and bumpy roads are good for building up the butt callus. yes that's what i said. butt callus. there are points on your (and my) prosterior that are in regular contact with the seat. if you just start out biking. those points will be quite sore indeed. after a little while you develop "butt callus" your tooshie gets tougher and more able to handle the rigours of the road. butt callus, use it in a sentance today and get 5 points.

but back to the ride. so it took me 2.5 hours. no shabby. and thats with snack breaks and shaking fists at drivers breaks and pee breaks. oh pee breaks! i used my sneekee outside for the first time at the side of the road. how fricken awesome was it you ask? well it was pretty fricken awesome. important thing to take into account - which way is the wind blowing. yep i'll get better at that one.
and! i'm recovering from a cold so my nose was running like crazy, and i forgot my hankie at home. i can only sniff fos much before i start to go cross eyed (not good on a bike), so i did it. i did something that usually totally grosses me out. i shotguned. for those of you that live wonderfully sheltered lives shotguning involves covering one nostral (on your nose), and blowing like the dickens, shooting the snot out of your nasal cavities and onto the ground. charming isn't it. so i was desperate. so i did it and needless to say i need more practice and again the wind was my enemy. ew.

i took a new route from niska to laird, i cut though a subdivision. it was super nice riding. roads were quiet and really wide, no bike lanes but it didn't matter. man i wish all the roads were like that. then out to arkell i went and headed down watson to stone. now i didn't think it would be possible to have a section of road worse than victoria near york. but watson has taken the cake. yay for butt callus building. and again my beefs with random bike lanes that start and stop without reason and generally make no sense. on stone from watson to victoria there is an awesome bike lane. then as soon as you get into town (where there are more cars and the roads are narrower) the bike lane disapears. instead you get a nice soft dirt shoulder as wide as a lane of traffic. really how hard would it have been to continure that sucker into town. arg.

alright that's my rant for today. let's celebrate something. like fundraising awesomeness! you've all helped my raise $930.15, this is so incredable! and the peezees are going fast. act now for your first choice in colours. for more details click here for the facebook event.

have an amazing evening folks. wear your fricken helmet!

i love bears

it's true. i really love bears. last night i went to the tri-city bear meat at sizzle in cambridge, set up on my little bike trainer and donation box, hoping to get a few donations towards the rally. and boy are those folks awesome, all night long folks would stop by and chat to me and drop some change into my donation box. (sizzle is an awesome dance space btw) i started biking at 8pmish and kept peddling through to 130am (with a few pee breaks). what at awesome night, great crowd, sexy folks, great music, bears, did i mention i love bears. i must say the one liners you hear when ridieng a bike trainer for hours and hours at a gay bar are very different then the ones i get at the farmers market, a little more x rated and awesome. bit of a step up from the "well you're going nowhere fast" of the market. haha. not to mention i've never had my ass grabbed at the farmers market....

going to events like this are just one of the ways that being a part of the ride is helping me expand my comfort zones and learn more about myself. by nature i'm a shy wee person, i don't really like new situations, being by myself in new sitiatons, going places by myself where i won't know anyone. but every time i do it, everytime i do something i've nevere done before, go a pace new by myeslf,  i realise it usually will work out fine, and can acutlly be really fun. not the aniety inducing event that i make it out to bei in my brain. oh brain you do exagerate soemtimes. there there it's ok. i can be fun, outgoing and sociable, even it situations where my brain tells me i souldn't do it cause i'm a shy wee person. don't get me wrong my stomache was in knots on the drive over there, but ya everytime i go someplace new, i grow a little. expand my ideas of myself and what i can accomplish and retrain my brain to think i'm capable of more than i think i can do. hey i can ride a bike for 5.5 hours, not feel super aweful the next day my body amazes me sometimes. 

oh and all those amazing folks dropping their pocket change into my donation box donated 237.15. see when everyone gives a little it can turn into something amazing.

thank you all again for your support you keep my legs spinning and my wheels a'turning.

first training ride done!

so after work today i decided to go for a wee ride. i thought 40km would be a good starting point. and i had already mapped out a decent looking 38km ride last week.
i must say what a beautiful evening for a ride. i got started around 630pm and as i made my way out to the feilds and farmland that surround guelph the light was just incredible. all gold and warm feeling, which was good casue i was in my bike shorts. i did think to put on mitts though that was a smart move. so this was a new route. i thought i had it easy and could use all my routes from last year, but then i remembered that i moved. so the kms are off. arg. but that's ok new routes are fun. this one was quite hilly, for the first half. ah guelph -latin for giant f'n hills all over the place. many a time i remembered that "oh shit" feeling i get when i look up to see a nice long steady incline. but hills did end up being my forte in the actual rally last year. i have yet ot find a route with less than 3 intense hills. and silly me each time i hit them i try to do them faster. but the ride went well. i got home just as the sun was going down. very pretty.
one thing i ddin't have was my trusty waterbottle backpack thing. it was packed away and i have no idea where it is. i must find it. i really hope it's not in one of the "random" boxes of stuff that was packed at the end and is just a mishmash of lots of stuff. i'd really like to find it before saturday. casue this saturday as you can remember i'm heading to the Bear Meat at sizzle, with my bike and trainer to try to drum up some donations. i'm sure it'll be a great time. well shoot i'm knackered. hense why this blog is slightly train-of-thought-disjointed-like so i'm off to bed.

Amazingness of amazingness

first off that last blog post, i forgot to make go live.... so it's a little late and out of order but there it is.

So awesome news! Peezee the makers of the Sneekee stand to pee device, are super amazing and are going to let me sell their product as a fundraiser. so this is amazing for a number of reasons
1- the product is awesome
2- peeing standing up is awesome
3- you could get one, AND donate to an awesome cause all at the same time

so what is a skeekee and why is it awesome.
what it is: it's a stand to pee device. check out thier fb page, to see what it looks like.  it's device that makes it super easy for anyone to stand to pee without even taking off your pants!  i found it really easy to get the hang of.

why it's awesome:
-no more need to squat in the bug infested woods, just unzip. no pesky skeeters biting your special places
-dirty roadtrip washroom? not a problem. no more hovering over the yucky seat.
-so easy to use
-they fold flat! easy to slip into a pocket or purse (or man purse)
- they come in colours other than purple! (thought you can get purple if you like)
-you can write your name in the snow!(if we ever get snow again...)

who it's aweome for:
-outdoorsy folks (bikers, hikers, campers etc)
-people who travel
-people who really don't like public washrooms
-people who have always wanted to use a urinal
-folk festival hopppers
-farmers
-you!
-etc

i know you're thinking "how do i get one of these amazing devices?" well that is easy too! simply go to my sponsorship page and donate 15 bucks (per peezee) to the cause. then send me an email at crawford.jaye at gmail dot com. with your mailing address and  peezee in the subject line and i'll pop one in the mail (or drop it by your house if you live in guelph).

they come in a selection of colours and i should have the order to me this week and will let you know the selection of colours as soon as i have them.

awesome! oh and did i mention it is really fun to pee standing up. like really.

bike safe y'all and wear your helmet. (and pee standing up!)
jaye

more pee!

Hello again. so if you read along with my training last year, you will remember that peeing was a issue on my training rides. not like an issue in that i wet myself, but that i needed to stop and pee alot. and there are not many places in guelph and surrounding area where one can discretely water a tree, if you catch my drift.
and i found the same along the ride itself. i need to pee often. gas stations and other pee freindly places do not happen often. and if you're just catching on, i can't stand to pee. i remember on the ride biking by all these lucky folks who just tucked into a fence row along the road and way we go! all the while i'm wondering where the next mcdonalds is. not fun. so this year i have a plan. some genius folks have devised ways for those of us who find standing to pee challanging, to pee standing up with ease!they're called STPs or stand to pee. unfortunatly these same awesome folks have decided that the only accepetable colours for STPs are purple (lavender), pink (rose), bright blue, orange, basicly any colour that is not easy to keep a secret. and some of these things are huge. the folks at diva cup just came out with one
so i just ordered me one of these  puppies (no it's not actually a puppy), it's a sne-kee.  looks awesome. comes in some descrete colours, folds flat, is nice and small and hopfully easy to use