COVER story

So I am officially finished with classes this year! I still have finals, but classes are over. I turned in final projects, papers and problem sets, it's a great feeling. Last Saturday drove with four other Dartmouth Bike and Builders (Kate Davison '07, Pen Vineyard '11, Craig Lee '08, and Reed Stephens '11) to Randolph Center, VT to help with a COVER project. I can't remember if I have talked about COVER before but essentially COVER takes existing homes for those in need and makes necessary repairs. This time we were working on a trailer belonging to a lady living in rural Vermont. We were working on two major projects, the first was to waterproof the roof, which consisted of scraping off all the old stuff and then reapplying a coating. The second project was to build a porch so she can get in and out of her front door. I worked on the porch for the entire day so I'm not really sure what was going on ontop of the roof.

There was one post that was already there from either some other workers or the previous deck, but it was pretty solidly in there. We then dug down to put in another post but much to our despair there were two huge rocks that weren't going anywhere. Luckily we were able to slip the post between the two rocks and it was perfectly placed. While that was going on, Kate and I put some siding that was missing under the door. After that was all done with we put up the frame of the deck and I cut the horizontal braces with a chop saw and we put those into place. As people were finishing up the nail pounding (at the end of the day we found a nailgun and air compressor we could have used, but oh well), I cut a few of the floor boards for the top of the deck/porch. All that needs to be finished is a few more boards put up, the stairs, and a railing (okay that sounds kinda like a lot) but it was a great experience.

It is definitely something that is missing from a lot of affordable housing campaigns - a way to fix up places that don't need to be completely replace. Many groups such as Habitat for Humanity have a very define (and successful) model of building a new house with the new owners putting in a lot of time and effort and then in the end they sell the house at cost with a no interest mortgage. But how about people who already own their own house but have a leaky roof or rotting floors? That's where an organization like COVER will come in - they will find volunteers to help fix the problem at no cost to the owner. I just wish there were bigger organizations like that, but since they have no way of recouping the cost of construction I think it's hard to make larger organizations like that. We did what we could to reuse old wood that wasn't rotted and be as efficient with things like siding so we wouldn't waste anything, but I could see how getting all this wood would be difficult, relying mostly on donations.

In other news I picked out my classes for next fall - Engineering Sciences (ENGS) 21: Intro to Engineering (basically we get to make a big project), ENGS 33: Solid Mechanics , and I'm on the waitlist for Government 30: A seminar on American Elections and Voting Behavior. If I don't get into GOVT 30, I'm not quite sure what I want to do, I might take a French class, or an Anthropology class... I don't know, we shall see.

I've gone pro

well sort of. I won a dollar, a whole dollar, from a prime (pronounced preem for non-cyclists). Basically the Claremont Points Series Race is a "criterium" held on a quarter mile car racing track. Doing the A race, I made my way around the track approximately 60 times. The beauty of this race is, if you get dropped, you can just go to the top of the track and wait for the pack to come around again. Since I drove down and got an approximately 26.9 second warm up, I was not so prepared for the off-the-bat sprinting my wonderful Dartmouth teammates did (they had biked down and I drove their extra stuff down the 20 miles or so to Claremont). So about lap 5, I got dropped, and instead of stopping and getting lapped, I decided to keep going and catch up. Another guy who had gotten dropped and I had a good pace going, trading off every lap, and eventually Ben Jones from Dartmouth joined up after letting us lap him. Eventually the guy who gave out the primes yelled "Dollar for you three, and rang the bell" so the next lap we sprinted out for the dollar and I won, so I got a dollar prize money, ergo I received money for cycling, meaning I am a professional cyclist (yeah it's a stretch, but hey I'll take whatever I can get).

In the end, once I got warmed up it was really fun. I got comfortably into the pack, even took a turn at the front when the pace slowed up a bit. And hey I was drafting of a National Champion, Toby Marzot, not bad, considering how much better shape he is in than I am. So overall a good race, can't complain.

I'd like to thank the Bradley's for their donation to the cause!

EDIT: Don't worry mom I won't get kicked out of NCAA competition, you can accept prize money in one sport and still be an amateur in another and compete in NCAA

Ride Bikes! Ride Bikes!

So this last week or so has been quite busy and I haven't had the time to sit down and write something up so here goes. A week or so ago I ordered 250 business cards from VistaPrint.comThats the business card there. I plan on giving them out to people I meet on the road if they want to learn more about affordable housing and Bike and Build. So that is really cool.

Also this weekend I had my first USCF sanctioned race. Beforehand I got a full USCF license (instead of just a collegiate one), and using my 6 mass starts at collegiate races and half a dozen more at home in Alaska I was able to upgrade to Category 4. So then early Saturday morning I went down to Sunapee, NH and raced 46 miles twice around the lake. The race went very well, I narrowly avoided one crash on the first lap and settled into a place about 2/3rds the way back of the pack, far enough forward I wouldn't get dropped but far enough back that I wasn't breaking much wind. The one downside was I wasn't in a very good position to get on breaks or finish well, but since it was my first USCF race I wasn't all that worried. The finish was all uphill which allowed me to gain about a dozen or so places because I am a pretty good climber. I was still not in the right gear and wasn't able to move up more than I could have. But a 21st place finish in a field of 80 or so, not too bad for the first time.

Looking forward to tomorrow I'll be going down to Claremont, NH for a training criterium race. It should be fun, nothing too serious, but I'll be racing the A race (there's only A and B) so I get to race against the big dogs tomorrow! The race is around a quarter mile go-cart racing track, so that will also be fun, so if I get dropped I can just catch back on the next time around.

That is about all, oh and I finally built up a singlespeed campus bike for myself. And for a closing quote:

Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.
-- John F. Kennedy

peace, love, and bikes

It's a long way to the top...

if you want to Rock and Roll...

Also it's a long way to the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge from Hanover. This weekend is DOC (Dartmouth Outing Club) Spring weekend so there were tons and tons of trips (none of which I went on for some reason), but Saturday night concluded with everyone meeting up at the Lodge and having hearty dinner, dancing to some bluegrass music and then either going home or staying overnight at the Lodge. In my desperate attempt to be social Saturday afternoon I biked up to the Lodge. Two other skiers and I made the three hour trek, which was all uphill, and we had a headwind. It was one of the harder rides I've done not racing because we pushed the entire time in an effort to get to the lodge for 6pm dinner (we got there at 6:15, coincidentally dinner was at 6:30, leaving me just enough time to soak my sore calves in the cold stream). A good time was had by all, great food, dancing to bluegrass music, and general revelry celebrating the start of spring/summer.

So in other news I just bought a full on USCF (United State Cycling Federation... I think) license, and then was able to upgrade to Cat 4 with my ECCC races and races back home in Alaska. So that means that I will be able to race this Saturday with people who have actually raced before, and possibly win some prize money if I do well!

Well there is lots going on in Hanover, mostly because it is sunny and I also have a lot of school work to do... I wish I could get out and ride everyday, but that just isn't feasible, so I'll have to settle for 3 or 4 longer rides a week. Oh well. Oh yeah I finally got my physical for BNB so that's one more thing crossed of the list. Now I just need to complete my sweat equity (8 hours of work with an affordable housing group before the trip) and I'll be all set. Hopefully I will be able to complete most of that with an organization in White River Junction called COVER, they fix up homes for those who can't afford to do it themselves. Information about them can be found here. I also might do some work with the Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity working on a project in Norwich.

In biking news, Jen Stebbins '09 from Dartmouth won the US Collegiate Nationals Division 2 Crit! Yay Jen way to kick butt.

Also thanks to Chris and Mimi Beck for their donation which pushed me over the $7000 mark!

Hey it's not normal mail it's Royal Mail!

So nothing that new and exciting in my life... But it is sunny out so I can enjoy the outdoors. I finished my physics mid-term last night and am just about done with my engineering computer science program that's due tomorrow. I can't remember whether or not I wrote this on here, but my Continental GatorSkins came in the mail all the way from across the pond. I was pleasantly surprised by the quick shipping from the UK (but then again, New Hampshire is pretty close to England... at least compared to Alaska). I am going to put in a plug for Probikekit.com, shameless I know, but I'm not getting any money out of the deal... I ordered two sets of the folding Gators from them for a very good price and they came very quickly in a nice little blue Royal Mail bag.

There are still quite a few things I need to get, like another pair of Dartmouth bib shorts, if there are any left, a good compressible pillow, and some other things that I can't remember right now... But wait there's more, in the past week I've got a couple more donations. So I'd like to thank Jeff Scott, Alice and Gunnar Knapp, and Meg Kremer and Mark Sterns for their support of myself, Bike and Build, and affordable housing causes across the country.