Well we did it! 106 miles completed. We rode with Jeremy for the first 26 miles then Ed, Chance and I went to finish the Century. Notice Ed got a new bike as well, he was tired of carrying a 5lb wrench to fix his crank. More pics here

Bike riding in Florida has its challenges. One is the storms that can come out of nowhere. While riding by the airport I was able to see clearly that the path home was to head father south from my position. For 20 minutes I stayed behind trees and lost sight of the storm when I came out into a clearing I saw that I was still north with no way to get below it. I called home to a family laughing at me?? I hung up and pedaled with everything I had. As I was going through the neighborhood a neighbor running his trash can up from the curb yelled that I was not going to stay dry. Within seconds the drops started , they were big and cold but home was less than a minute away. Then Chance came out of the house to come find me in the van. I can't wait until he needs me to bail him out!

Well in June there were no excuses, Chance and I purchased him a bike from a starving college student and with Eddie we started to ride together. I got back on my 1999 Cdale and Eddie on his 1980something Trek. We were a rag tag team that was barely making 30 miles in 3 hours. We were determined to get better so we set a goal to do the Savannah GA Century ride in September.

In January 2009 Chance pulled my road bike down and told me I should sell it. I had not been on it for six years. He felt the weight of it and said what is it like to ride this thing??? So off to the orange trail and I clipped him in and pushed him off like I did when he was 5 and he was gone. I followed on Sally's hybrid after a quick mechanical fix but he was long gone. An hour later we met up and he was smiling from ear to ear.

He started going to bike stores and reading online. Then in February he found an article about a 100 mile to raise money for MS. He read about MS and said I am going to do this. Being the optimist :) I explained training for a century would take a lot of training and 10 weeks would be pushing it. Well in the end he pushed himself and finished the ride with a horde of friends at the end to meet him. He raised around $1700 and was just shy of being in the top 100 riders. See here for more pictures

During a training ride he dragged me into a bike store and showed me a poster of Lance saying "No excuses get on your bike and ride"....

Spring Break 2009 found the Wagner's on a 7 day Cruise. We ended up going the Eastern route to St. Croix and St. Thomas. We had a blast as always on the ships. Samuel and Dwight were our wait staff and took great care of us. One thing really stood out was our visit to St. Croix. We ran into Gecko's Island Adventures and took a ATV tour. Chance was thrilled to be able to drive the ATV to the top of the Island. We rode on paved roads, well maintained dirt roads and a few really steep back woods trails. The rented ATVs were 4X4s which were needed to get up a few of the hills while maintaining a safe speed.
The day ended back at the base camp along Emancipation drive where we were given tickets to Rhythms Bar and grill at Rainbow beach. This beach side bar offers good food, liquor, beautiful beach and wifi! We didn't rent a jet ski but they work with Gecko tours for a land sea package. The beach is about a mile from the cruise dock so getting there was a nice walk. If you cruise into Frederiksted, St. Croix plan on spending it with the gang at Gecko Island tours and the laid back folks at Rhythms.
Photos

It sucks getting old!

My road bike took me many places during my five year stint in Statesboro. I rode quite frequently with a group of people from "The Bike Shop". I was comparatively a weak rider but I did accomplish the Bike Ride Across GA, a metric century and two centuries. I trained and trained for those rides and put over a thousand miles on that R800. So my son who is 17 decides he wants to get Dad's road bike down and see what it is all about. It was not long ago he was giving me grief about keeping something that I never ride. I take him to the West Orange Trail explain how the pedal clips work and off he goes. I took our hybrid bike to chase him with but it was mucked up so I lagged about thirty minutes. He was gone by a good ten miles. We talked to each other by cell and then he turned around and we met up and went back to the car. He knocked out 24 miles day one.

Day Two, on his own he went back to the West Orange trail and did both sides, from SR 50, and knocked out about 60 miles. He doesn't seem tired. I keep thinking he was a just a few miles shy of a metric century on his second outing!

Last weekend I took him to the General Van Fleet Trail. I barely could drive the truck to the two stops along the desolate route and beat him. I rode the last 11 miles to the end and back m on my mountain bike. He continued back to the Trailhead but he needed to be back in Otown by 6PM so bailed at about 50 miles.

Today he his on the "fresh air" ride out of Inverness, FL. He plans on riding 48 miles. Hundreds of people are at the event and he is fascinated.

Dinner Club

For the past many months Sally and I have been going out with friends from church to eat dinner. We meet once a month and really enjoy the company. We are very cognitive to not eat at a chain restaurant and we have been trying different ethnic cuisine. Below is a list of the restaurants that we have tried. Each restaurant was great and the group would recommend any of them. We have been very lucky in this regards as we have been doing this for more than a year and a half.


Ceviche House (Peruvian) - Great service and large portions of food. We are all so glad that it is on our neighborhood.
12213 S Orange Blossom Trail
Orlando, FL 32837
(407) 812-1717

Asia Bagus (Indonesian) - My lunch spot, but dinner was a great surprise!
2923 vineland road
Kissimmee, florida 34746
407.397.2205

Bauern-Stube Authentic German Restaurant - Authentic in every way!
8015 South Orange Ave Orlando, FL 32809
407-857-8404

Restaurant Marrakesh (10-2009) - The dancer was mesmerizing and I am talking about the one in jeans!
at Morocco Pavilion at Epcot
(407) WDW-DINE

Epcot Food and Wine Festival (11-2009) – Was there food?

Nono's Italian restaurant (01-2009)– We were pleasantly surprised
13636 village park dr
Orlando, FL 32837
(407) 407-4074

Ichiban Japanese Restaurant
May not be the correct name but it does not matter as it has gone out of business. Huge portions, cooked at your table and many different kinds of sake.

Logan's Bistro (03-2009)– (Eclectic American European influences. Simple but very tasty. ) Excellent fish and chips, Sally had the pot roast which she raved about. We didn't get the name but they had a red Italian wine that was so smooth.
802 Virginia Drive
Orlando, FL 3280
407-898-5688

High Tide Harry's (04-2009)
A casual seafood restaurant and saloon where their goal is to satisfy hunger and thirst with a variety of foods and drinks. Their specialty is reel seafood. The pricing is more than reasonable and the portions are plentiful. The group had crawfish, oysters, shrimp, scallops and crab cakes. The crawfish were boiled with Ball's creole seasoning and I consumed about a pound and a half. Kayla our waitress was a blast, she leaves, well graduates from UCF in 6 months unfortunately for Harry's. This restaurant was Eddie's choice and was a great one. Check Harry's website for specials.

925 N. Semoran Blvd.
Orlando, Florida
(AT 436 & HWY 50)
(407)273-4422

07-09 Three Sisters SpeakEasy in Downtown Kissimmee. This place really surprised us. Not only was the food great but the service and ambiance was perfect for our group. I did not get the waitress name but she was great. It is an upscale restaurant in the heart of Downtown. This is not a Fridays or Bennigans, do not expect a $10 meal. This is great food made by locals and worth every penny!


08-09Mambo is tucked away in a strip mall in St. Cloud. Not the best way to get noticed, so they decided they'd get attention with the food. I never heard the story about how Eddie found this place but it was great. This is award-winning Cuban food with traditional delicacies makes you never want to go to Miami for Cuban food.
4579 13th St. St. Cloud, FL 34769 407-891-7022


Memories of India09-09
This popular Indian eatery, located in a shopping center in the Dr. Phillips area, offers authenticate Indian dishes. There are napkins on the table and wooden-inlaid scenes of Indian life on the walls but the atmosphere remains casual. Gary and Liz brought us here, the food was wonderful but I will admit I let Gary order for me. Amazing how we still have not been disappointed!


Back to the Epcot Food and Wine Festival10-09. This year the event was different but no matter we had a great time drinking with good friends. This was our first repeat!


Chef John's Dockside restaurant 11-09
Back to Kissimmee, this night we almost repeated and went to Three Sister's Speakeasy but stopped at the local wine bar. Vintage Vino Wine Bar is a Tuscan themed wine, cheese and specialty beer bar located at the City's Center in historic downtown Kissimmee. The owners swept the girl's off their feet by finding the exact wine they each preferred. The guys were happy with one of there three specially selected beers. When we started to get hungry they offered to have a waiter from John's or 3 sisters come take our order. We went with John's and were amazed! The girls had Crepes while the men hung with the blackened Salmon over cheese grits. I say it every month but this was the best meal ever!

Gwagg's thoughts on Cloud Computing

When it comes to computing I worry about my data. My home network has a Network Access Shared drive. Network attached storage (NAS) systems are storage devices that can be accessed over a computer network, rather than directly being connected to the computer (such as an external USB hard drive). This enables multiple users to share the same storage space at once. My SimpleShare NAS allows my family to share their data to one location. That is fine when we are in the house but it does not help when on a public network. The tech world has a name for the solution, CloudComputing. Google seems to have the early jump on consumer Cloud Computing. With email (Gmail), Calendar (GCalendar),Pictures (Picasa) and Office documents (GoogleDocs). Google's Blogger and Maps can also be thought as Cloud Computing. Micro$oft is offering similar sites but the only one notable is SkyDrive. It is Cloud storage for any file format and you get 25Gigs for free. Of
course I am waiting for Google's rumored Gdrive. My Motto is go ahead and join them now because Google will take over our Internet usage.

Edit, minutes after posting this I found the below link in my email. This will give alternatives to my my Google mantra. It seems to be from Aug 2008.
Build Yourself A Virtual Cloud To Fall Back On

I am looking at the possibilities of the OS in the cloud; Micro$oft is developing this but I signed up for an account with Cloudo.com.

Went MAC and I am not looking back!

I have been in the Microsoft camp since the DOS days. In 1986 the 1st owner of Tele-Acoustics purchased a IBM PC with a whopping 64MB RAM and a 10MB hard drive. From there I have tried all the Window iterations. I finally grew tired of the overhead of my time. If you are a Windows user think about all the supporting applications it takes to get anything done! I have been watching the costs of supporting Windows servers in an Enterprise environment grow at an exponential pace. All of this cost and there has not been vast improvements with stability in Windows for years.

My shopping for a new computer brought me to some basic needs:
*Portability
*Fully functional web browsing
*Rugged
*Photo viewing, editing and publishing
*Easy to use so my family can enjoy it as well.
The new Netbooks caught my eye and a colleague bought a ASUS eee which was small, ran a flavor of Linux but the screen could not do Internet videos or pictures justice. When I saw the video of the making of the macbook unibody case I was sold on the MAC hardware.


Talks in my office found that 50% of the geeks I surround myself were closet MAC users. Comparison of PC to Macbook specs saw a $400+ premium on the Mac side. The marketing people can easily justify a net zeros difference. With EBAY i was able to shave dollars off and save from paying sales tax. So without further research or trying one I placed a bid on a 2.4GHz 13" unibody Macbook with a upgraded 500Gig HD.

Protecting your portable devices

After Christmas we had a few items that needed cases such as Sally's IPhone and Chance's Android. I stumbled on a YouTube video about ZAGGs skins. Right before I was to place an order I found a site called Best Skins Ever. Seems BestSkins has access to the same military grade material as Zagg and offer it as a cheaper alternative. The skins offer protection from scratches as well as provide a better grip.

After putting the skins on the phones I have some advice. It is imperative that you make sure the skin is equal around all edges. Use a bowl of water/soap to dip your fingers into as you are working the skins on. Chance's phone started to peel just slightly. I think during the squeegee process it moved toward one corner which is the corner that is now peeling. I asked the company about options to fix it and I received a replacement piece along with a hint to use baby shampoo as the wetting agent. I used Dawn which had some additives that might have been a poor choice. Tonight I installed skins on my 13" MacBook. Use rubbing alcohol first to get all oils off. make sure to watch for dust and hair that like to stick to the adhesive. Take your time and they look great.

Rants, Tips, Tricks and Traps

This Blog will be a place where I put my random thoughts on items or places that intrigue me and might be of interest to my friends and family.