I'm On A Roll... Actually, A Mountain...

I'm on a roll. Actually, A mountain, but you'll get my point when I take the time to explain.

I've just posted the second Trail of the Month for 2008, which given my record over the past year is an amazing accomplishment. For some reason in 2007 I only posted one Trail of the Month. So I believe that makes it a "Trail of the Year," but lets not get caught up in semantics.

I have a New Years resolution to write one more write-up than last year. I'm not the type to set myself up for failure by expecting myself to write twelve even though that would make it a true "Trail of the Month."

Well, I've officially met my goal and the pressure is off. Anything posted beyond this is icing on the cake. Having met this goal and not having anything more to prove to myself makes it more likely that I'll continue to post future Trail of the Months. I don't know if you are anything like me, but I tend to perform better when there are no expectations to live up to.

Having said that, the roll will continue from here. But before I get ahead of myself I think it is important to bask in the glory of my accomplishment by letting you know what I wrote about this month.

A couple weeks ago I stood on the top of Mt Bierstadt with my buddy, Dwight. This 14er is located in Clear Creek County and is the subject of the March 2008, Trail of the Month.

As I said, by standing on top of the mountain I'm able to say I'm on a roll. A roll I hope will continue. Time will tell.

Happy Easter!

I Can Ride My Bike With No Handle Bars...

Over the past several weeks I've gotten in the habit of letting you know what song or album is getting a lot of play time on my player. I don't plan on breaking the habit this week.

This week a Denver band called Flobots is spinning, er... humming?... buzzing?... What in the hell does a song being played on a flash memory stick do?! I easily get off track...

Back to my point; I recently downloaded the Flobots song, Handlebars. When I played it for my wife she laughed and said, "You just like it because it has a bicycle reference in it." I shook my head and said, "That is what makes the song great, but even without the bicycle reference this song has strong lyrics and rhythm. I like it."

If you were listening to CAKE a decade ago, like I was, you'll notice that the first half of this song has a sound very similar to CAKE, which is probably a lot of the reason I like it as much as I do.

I've attached a video of the song if you haven't heard it yet. Enjoy!

Mt. Bierstadt - Slideshow and Map...

On March 09, 2008 my buddy, Dwight and I hiked our first winter 14er, which was Mount Bierstadt. Honestly, by the end of the hike I was thinking this would be my first and only winter ascent. However, a few days of rest later and I'm excited to make winter ascents next year.

I'll be writing about this trail in detail for the TrailCentral Trail of the Month, but until then I wanted to share some of the pictures and the map.

Slideshow:

Map:

View Larger Map

Winter 14er - Success!

Mount Bierstadt
14,060'

03.09.2008

How To Join a Ride Proposal...

Yesterday I documented how to create a ride using the new ride proposal functionality on the TrailCentral.com trail pages. Yesterday I walked through the flow of creating a ride proposal from beginning to end. Today I'm going to pick up where I left off and document how easy it is to join a ride that has already been proposed.
Assuming a rider has previously submitted a ride proposal for Hall Ranch, a link labeled 'View Rides (x)' is displayed with 'x' representing the number of ride proposals currently active for this trail. By clicking on this link you will be anchored to the Ride Proposals section of the trail page, where ride details including the date, time, number of riders, and ride notes are displayed for each active ride. In addition, two new links appear for the ride and they are labeled 'Join This Ride' and 'View Rider List.'

If you choose to click 'View Rider List' link the page will expand and a list of all riders currently on the ride roster are displayed.

Ride roster includes the riders names, experience level, where they will be commuting from, the date they joined, and contact information. When you are done reviewing the roster, simply leave the page expanded or choose to hide it by clicking 'Hide Rider List.' The page then contracts and leaves only the ride details displayed. If you would like to join the ride, click 'Join This Ride.'

One of the benefits of being registered with TrailCentral and being logged in when joining a ride is that you are able to eliminate a step in the process, which collects the joining rider's information. Since you are registered with TrailCentral your information will be accessed and you will be quickly and painlessly added to the ride roster.

If you are not registered when clicking 'Join This Ride' the page will expand and you will see a form asking for necessary information before being added to the ride roster.

Non registered members will be required to add their name, experience, and email address. If they choose to 'Cancel', the form collapses from view and the roster is not updated. However, if the required fields are entered and 'Join This Ride' is selected, the form collapses and the rider is added to the ride roster.

When the rider is added to the list the leader of the ride will be notified by email if they chose to be notified when creating the ride proposal.

That is all there is to it. This functionality is extremely simple and whatever mystery their may have been I hope the previous documents have cleared it up. I hope the popularity of this feature increases with the new ability for non registered users to create and join rides. More importantly, I hope this functionality makes it easier for you to hook up with other riders who want to ride a trail with you.

How To Create A Ride Proposal...

Creating a ride proposal is now easier than ever and the intention of this document is to outline the process in which a non-registered user of TrailCentral is able to create a ride proposal. It is important to note that both registered and non-registered users of TrailCentral are able to create these and although some benefits are offered by being registered it isn't necessary. When differences do occur between registered and non-registered users I will note these differences.

The first major change is that the ride proposal functionality has moved to the trail pages. So, visit a trail page (Hall Ranch). If no rides have been submitted the top navigation will look like the image below where a link labeled 'Propose Ride' is available. If rides have been previously added, the link will be labeled 'View Rides (x)', with 'x' denoting the number of active ride proposals for this trail.


By clicking the highlighted link above labeled 'Propose Ride' the page will anchor to the Ride Proposals section of the trail page as seen below.

Click 'Submit Ride Proposal." The page will expand and a form will be displayed. This form automatically populates the ride date with the current date and the rest of the form fields will be blank. However, if you are logged in, your name, experience, location, and email will be pre-populated. Even though fields may be pre-populated it is understood that privacy may be a concern, which is why all fields are editable.

When creating a ride you have an option to be notified by email whenever a person joins your ride. This is defaults to 'No', but for those who are not interested in checking the website for their roster status should set this option to 'Yes.'

If clicking 'Cancel' the form will collapse and no saves will be saved. If 'Submit Ride Proposal' is selected the appropriate processing will be done and assuming all checks pass the ride will be added to the database. You will see a 'Congratulations!' message in place of the form

At this point your ride has been successfully added to TrailCentral and it will be visible to all those who visit this trail or subscribe to the RSS feed. If you wish to see your ride; simply refresh the page.

After refreshing your screen you will notice that your ride details will be displayed on the screen. In addition to the 'Submit Ride Proposal' link you will now see the option of two new links labeled 'Join This Ride' and 'View Rider List', which will be covered in a different post.

You can add as many ride proposals as you wish to a trail. If you wish to add more ride proposals to other trails; simply navigate to the trail you wish to add a ride proposal to and follow the same steps outlined in this post.

If you do not see a trail that you want to create a ride proposal for you simply need to add the trail to the directory by uploading the GPS data to TrailCentral and creating a trail page.

Next, I'll document how to join a ride.

Stay tuned...

New Ride Proposal Functionality On Trail Pages...

For the past week this blog has been rather quiet, which can mean one of two things. I've been abducted by the cute, but sometimes scary gnomes that live in my garden -or- I've been nose deep in my code inspired to make TrailCentral a better place to surf. Lucky for me (Those gnomes can bite, you know?), I've been inspired to code.

I've been busy making improvements to the section of the trail pages that allow you to submit ride proposals. What is a ride proposal? Well, it was my attempt at making TrailCentral a bit more Web 2.0 before it was cool to say "Web 2.0." Truly, I had the idea of ride proposals years ago and it was simply a method to allow members of my site to propose a time and a place to meet for a ride. Other members would then be allowed to add themselves to the ride roster. Really, it is a simple way to organize a ride with others riders who may be friends or future friends that want to ride with you.

I always thought it was a cool idea, but I never truly implemented it correctly, which in turn never gave it a fair shake at being successful. Let me explain why.

First off, I use to only allow members of my site to create and join ride proposals. In hindsight, this was a big mistake and vastly limited the usefulness of the feature. I've changed that and I now let anyone create and join rides.

Plus, I upgraded the method in which a rider joins. It was once a clunky series of screens and drop down that you would have to navigate. Now, thanks to AJAX, I do everything on the fly and it doesn't require a single page refresh, which makes creating and adding rides a more efficient process.

Finally, ride proposals are available in a feed, allowing you to know whenever a trail on TrailCentral has a ride proposal submitted. I updated the code today and for some reason I was limiting the ride notes to 250 characters, which was nothing sort of a dumb thing to do. What was I thinking? The web is meant to be free and if you want the information, you should get all of it, right? Well, I fixed that and now when you subscribe to the feed, which I encourage you to do, you will be notified in your reader within hours of the ride proposal being submitted on TrailCentral.com.

So, this is actually just me writing for the sake of writing. I plan to write several more posts about the new functionality as a means of documentation. I hope you will take the time to read them because although the functionality is incredibly simple to use it is also nice to know exactly what it does.

Stay tuned...

Oh Yeah, It's Winter...

Last Friday I had the absolute joy of riding my bike during lunch. The weather was in the mid 60s, there was no wind, and there was no excuse for not riding.

I hopped on my bike to say hello to my old friend, The Dirty Bismark. As I rode I soaked up the sun and enjoyed the hard packed trails and dirt roads that would give me an hour of peace during the middle of my day.

As my route headed on the dirt road (a.k.a Coalton Trail) I assumed the most likely places for wet and snow were behind me. I was wrong. This trail must get a lot of drifting snow. This section, which I thought was going to be extremely fast and dry, turned into the slowest part of my ride.

The pace didn't bother me, but the snow drifts did snap me out of my thinking that spring had sprung. It is still winter until March 20th, 2008. And to drive that point deep into my head, Mother Nature gave me one more day of record breaking temperatures (70+) on Saturday and slapped me in the face with a winter warning that brought cold temperatures, snow and wind on Sunday (less than 12 hours later.)

Crazy Colorado weather... Gotta love it!

Flooding My Ears...

After my nostalgic trip back in time by listening to Crash Test Dummies I opted to resurrect some other old albums I once listened to, which sent me looking for Flood by They Might Be Giants.

Unfortunately, when I went looking for it it was nowhere to be found. I thought, "Damn Karma!" Yeah, I believe this particular CD keeps disappearing as a result of some bad karma I created.

I have bought this CD four separate times and each time it somehow disappeared. Be it from someone borrowing it and not returning it, loosing it in a move, or it could possibly be vanishing into thin air... You ask, "How was the bad karma created?"

This is one of a couple occasions where I borrowed a CD and never returned it. My brother introduced me to the group and I'm pretty sure he let me borrow it. I lost it before I returned it; thus creating the bad karma. I'm pretty sure I'm now cursed to always loose this CD whenever I own it.

Cursed or not, I bought the CD a fifth time. I bought it knowing it will likely disappear in the next several months, but at least I'm enjoying it again as I type this.