My Peer review...

You are very welcome! I feel special!

PE&RS Peer-Review list.

"Thank you to the following people who have served as reviewers of peer-reviewed articles in PE&RS over the past year. These people provide the expertise needed to ensure the high quality of articles we publish each month."

Oh (little) Christmas Tree...

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, of all the trees most lovely
Each year you bring to me delight, meaning in the Christmas night
Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, of all the trees most lovely

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, with faithful leaves unchanging
Your boughs are green, in summers glow and do not fade in winters snow
Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, with faithful leaves unchanging

Each year you bring to me delight, meaning in the Christmas night
Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, of all the trees most lovely

If you're looking for motivation.......

.......look no further than this!


This is SO DOPE!

You can't wrap this

Crazy Good

During my last trip home the girls wanted to hit the Dollar General store. It was Crazy Good!

Lucy's Retirement Party

The Great Gobble Days of Bicycling

The Turkey Day ride consisted of 3 hours, 37 miles and 3,862 feet of climbing.

The post Turkey Day ride consisted of 4 hours, 49 miles and 6,043 feet of climbing.

The post-post Turkey Day ride consisted of 3:34, 42 miles and 2,392 feet of climbing. This ride finished in the rain, but we had an awesome tail wind racing back home! No profile posted since there is not much elevation change to see.

5 Pounds of Coffee....

Yeah, I'm ready for the GobbleDays! I have my 5 pounds of Ethiopian Coffee straight from the Yirgacheffe's! Lets Worka!

Disclaimer:
The Cane Creek water bottle and the iPod are of actual size and are used as a reference to demonstrate just how freaking big that bag of coffee really is. This image was not enhanced in any way. Let Me Be Frank is not responsible for any skeptism based on dis-beliefs on whether or not you believe the bag of coffee is the actual size as seen in this digital photograph. This blog post was NOT posted during work hours.

Team Velosports Banner Design

Over the last couple weekends I have been working on web banner designs for Team Velosports. Check them out.

A Bicycle Ride with Floyd Landis

It was a Friday. I received unsolicited intelligence from an undisclosed source that Floyd Landis was in town. A few minutes later that intelligence was independently verified twice by two 4th-hand observers. Yes indeed "Floyd Landis is in town". My suspicion started to rise that Mr. Landis would show up at a local ride the following day. So my peeps convened via mobile-cellular technology (texting) and we decided to discretely rendezvous at the non-disclosed location the following morning at O-10-hundred hours. We arrived and waited and looked around. No sign yet. Then and after a while the one and only, 2006 Tour de France champion, Floyd Landis arrived at the location of the ride departure. There were about 20 cyclist gathered. There was no "star-struckness". I remained cool.

We were off. At times he was on my wheel. At other times I was on his wheel. We stopped at stop signs and red lights together. I heard the same voice in the paceline that I have heard on OLN and VERSUS interviews during the Tours de France. My friend (codename) "Butterscotch" unknowingly tried to run him off the road as we climbed up the short and steep Potato Gap. Floyd was boxed in as we were climbing more slowly in front of him. I blurted, "don't let him out!". We chuckled. Ha ha. There goes Floyd up the climb ahead of us. I can't hang with that. I am hurting. I hoped that I would not get dropped on this rare-opportunity ride. I dropped my chain. Oh, the team car is waiting on me. I hang on to the car as we go up a few of the short climbs. I wasn't going to get dropped. There were no officials, so pull me all the way up. Thanks! ...again, over and over....thanks!

It was like a normal ride.....a normal ride with Floyd Landis. It was pretty cool. He had yellow shoes on. He once wore a yellow jersey. Outside of Marshall, we raced a locomotive going down the tracks beside us. I witnessed Floyd waving at the train conductor. The train conductor waved back. Oh how cool, "he is normal" I thought to myself. The train blew its horn loud. I was getting dropped. I got dropped. Behind me the team car was closing in with several other cyclist drafting behind it. I "got on" and was saved from getting dropped all-together. We rode at 32 mph drafting the team car up the slight grade to catch Floyd's group. This ride would have been fun even if Floyd wasn't here. This is a good day.

My bicycle recording device gathered this elevation-distance profile. I did not take any pictures to protect the innocent. I have memories and some sore legs. It was a great ride. Now I can say that I rode with Floyd Landis. That is cool. Just another day in the Life of Frank. Let me be. Over and out!

Rory Sutherland was on the ride too. The 2008 NRC individual winner.

Cabin Build: The cement is hard and the temps are cold

The cement is poured! The rush was to get this in before the winter set in. Just in time, it was freezing cold this weekend when I visited the cabin site.

To stay warm, I set up my tarp as close as possible to the fire. It was forecasted to easily be in the 20's! I was prepared.

I built a big fire! This thing kept me very warm and it was a peaceful, clear and cold night. The moon was very bright. Made it easy to get around at night without any lights.

What a collection of strange shots.




Gotta go? This is where you go!

Cabin Build: The Last Pour

The winter is coming but the cement needs to be poured to finish the footers.

The forms are set.

The cement mix is ready.

The mixing and pouring begin.

Cats Eyes

Took a trip to Ohio and saw kitties!

Cabin Build: Stepping It UP!

Since the cabin site is on a sloped mountain side, we need to include steps in the form-work for the footers. There was also some bedrock impeding our trenching efforts. We had to work around this. We were not going to get any cement poured this weekend, but wanted to make a lot of progress on the form-work to finish the cement pour before the winter sets in. The race is on!

Here is one big step. Lots of digging, leveling and filling!

Here is the other side and working on two-steps.

Cabin Build: Cement Pour Part 1

Recall the Big Dig post from last fall? Well, our team of cabin builders assembled this particular weekend to start the cement pour. Andy had scheduled a delivery of supplies to be delivered at an undisclosed staging location near his land. The delivery was "supposed" to occur between 7AM and noon on Saturday morning. Hmmmm? This sounds like a cable guy appointment......yeah, "we'll be there between 12 and 3"....and they NEVER show up! Lets see how all this turned out!

We arrived the Friday night before to start work on clearing the trenches that we dug during the Big Dig. We did not realize (I don't think) how much MORE work we had to do. So we re-surveyed and squared up the cabin site. We had a generator and lights so that we could work through the night.

We traded several phone calls with the people in charge of delivering the 150 bags of cement mix, lumbers and rebar. Finally they told us they would be there a little after noon. We watched the sunlight move across God's canvas of fall colors as we waited. This place is heaven!

Finally the delivery arrived around 3:30 on Saturday afternoon. We lost a lot of time during The Big Wait but tried to stay busy to quickly get the form-work in place for the cement pour.

Andy picked up a good mountain pick up truck with some lift and big tires to transport the building materials to the cabin site. I had misplaced my pouch of Red Man Chewing Tobacco, but really felt that I needed it now! It takes a good sturdy 4-wheel drive to traverse the old logging road beds and deliver the materials to their final destination.

Night sat in and it was getting cold, so we started a nice camp fire and then resumed work. We would not actually start pouring the cement until Sunday......I'm glad that I had requested Monday off work.....I kind of figured something like this would happen.

Early Sunday morning we had breakfast and coffee and got an early start. The form work proved to be much more confusing than expected, but finally we took the time to go through the dimensions and we got it right. Eriks is the brains behind all the planning and work.

Before the forms were in place there was still a lot of leveling to do and some bedrock to punch through. I was on my knees digging with my fingers to help get the form-work level.

Late Sunday we started pouring and we finished around 9 PM. We had to finish the lower section of the footers. We would have to come back and finish the rest at a later date when we could all get together again. Hopefully we would before the winter sets in.

Monday....the morning after. The coffee is hot and the cement is hard. Wow....my first cement job and my smoothing looks pretty good!

In a couple weeks we would come back to first finish the form work for the top part of the cabin site.

le minor de E and yo maja le G

I put in some guitar time this morning to clear my mind. Here we have a acoustic doodle in and about the notes within the key of E minor / G major....the same notes really....just so many creative ways to get around the fret board....adding a few triads here and there. Yes, I know the video is dark. The original always looks brighter. Oops!

Diminishing your E minor scales

Here we are combining the E minor standard scale with the E harmonic minor scale, or the D# diminished. I use interchangeably scales that root from the E minor to F# diminished, G major to G diminished, and D major 5th to D# diminished. Sounds pretty cool huh?

Bear

Since I've seen 5 bear since the Labor Day weekend, I figured I would start mapping these locations.


View Larger Map
Saw 3 yesterday, A momma and her two cubs.
Saw one today.

Making Maps

Sometime back in June, my daughter and I were asked by John Wood to draw maps.....any maps that we could think of. So we did. We were amongst several map-makers in the Asheville area. Here is the link.

Pizza: Tom-e-ato your phat feta

I couple Fridays ago I had a pizza from the Apollo Flame that had Feta, chicken and tomatoes. It was so good that I wanted to recreate it at home. So, I created something similar.

In the midst of a floury mess, I kneaded the dough myself. I totally forgot about the chicken. Instead of a traditional pizza sauce base, I used an olive oil and Smart Balance buttery spread base enhanced with store-bought powdered garlic in which I melted in the microwave for a few seconds and stirred with a fork. Then I sequentially topped the pizzas off with golden raisins, bran buds, spinach, tomatoes, Feta cheese and a mix of shredded fancy Mexican 4-cheese delight. Over the duration of 4 hours, I ate both pizzas!

Later that night (it was reported that) I had a chaser of high-fiber cereal to rush those culinary wonders through The System smooth, slow and easy....but fast.

Racing the last ROF of 2008

Last Ring Of Fire race for 2008. I actually rode pretty well.

More Folk n Ashe with some Beau

Took a nice ride through Folk n Ashe and included Beaucatcher mtn. Lots of cyclist out this morning.

Lets see.....that is about 21 hours of riding since last Saturday, 9/13!

All the rave about US74 and the Bat Cave

Been wanting to hit the road to Bat Cave and climb up US 74. This was fresh scenery for us and another great ride.

You just wait Mr OJ Simpson!

Too flat!

This was a team ride and it was a bit flat for our liking.....so after the rest of the group split off we climbed up Pinners Cove!

Burnsville Burning

Wanted to try some different roads.....needed to ride some different roads. Some of the best roads in the Appalachians are in Madison and Yancy Counties.....and across the state line in TN. I was riding slow, but having fun!

This was no picnic at Craggie

Back in the day a ride up to Craggie was the best way to reconnect with my love for riding and any physical uncertainties there were. So, it had been a long time, but we hit the parkway and visited the Craggie Picnic area. The parkway beyond this point was still closed.

Climbing Doggett and Chilling in Hot Springs

On this ride we ate everything and drank everything between Marshall and Hot Springs. We stopped many times to refuel the batteries and by the end of the ride that made a huge difference. This was a great ride! We put in about 170 miles for the 3-day weekend!

Folk n Ashe and Reynolds Mtn

It is possible to ride just over 60 miles in and around Asheville and climb well over 100 feet per mile. This was a HOT day and the climb up Reynolds mtn was almost

Weekend Cabining - Bday Bash

So this was a great weekend to celebrate one of my best friends birthday...in addition to my own.....Andy turned 50 and we rented out some cabins for the weekend and had a great group of friends, which were many old co-workers from my time in Atlanta. Amazing that my closest friends are still from my time in Atlanta from 2000 to 2003. That was a great work experience for me that resulted in long last friendships. There are near horizons vista new opportunities from peoples who really appreciate my creativity and work from a time when I thrived professionally and my skills grew immensely. Outside the walls that contain me there are green meadows!

So here we are out on a boat at 12:40 AM. Cruising......Andy has been trying to get me on a boat for years.

So, the next day I have to go on a bike ride....wanted to do some climbing in the areas of the Dragons Tail and Deals Gap. I think more than 200 motocycles passed me on my ride. Check out the dude in the left-hand part of the picture.....I think he ate a warshing machine!


Ahhhhh......purdy view crossing the bridge just below Lake Fontana Dam. Such a nice ride.

Yes, had to climb the infamous Yellow Creek Gap from the west side.....never done that before....and OMG, it kicked my buttocks good! But, I made it to the top without stopping!

So, Andy's brothers and I gave our own arrow heads that we found at his mountain property to him for his birthday. The one that I found was the 4th from the left.....one of the two best specimens found at his property.

Blowing out the candles!

So, here is what the dock of our cabing looked like. Nice huh! Wow! This was actually a nice weekend on boats and bikes.

The Sunday morning spread! This was a yummy breakfast!

Nice to hang out with the ERDAS crew! Here is Ian, Andy and me.

A shot of me and Andy on one last boat ride before departure.