USO Fresh Ride Eastbourne

Another enjoyable ride, I'm well used to going down this route. There are some places where the road doesn't allow a car and a cycle to be side by side, luckily most drivers are patient and give us preference until they can pass safely.

As you will see in the video, my nick name has been determined - Tarantino. I'm just grateful it wasn't Dumbledore or Gandalf.

Snow in Wainuiomata ?

Clearing out some hard drive space I came across this small video. I have no idea what I used to create this, most likely a mobile phone so the quality is poor. Still it's proof that strange things can happen and I thought I'd upload it anyway :-)

Sunday Ride Whitemans Valley

All night it rained and Sunday morning it was a hit and miss whether to go out on a Cycle Ynui so we canceled it. Typically as the day progressed, the clouds disappear, the wind drops, so mid-day Iha and myself decided to ride into Wellington city. Invited a few people to come along at short notice so when we parked at the Woburn Railway Station we realized it was only going to be the 2 of us.

It was at this point I decided we should try Whitemans Valley, Upper Hutt. Neither of us have ever cycled over there and it is a favorite training route of my brother (who rides the Taupo Challenge). So we rode up to his place in Trentham and he gave us advice on which starting route to start out with.

Up and over Walliceville Hill, turn right at the intersection, straight on until we hit Blue Mountains Rd on the right, over the hill then into Pinehaven, Silverstream.

Really enjoyed this ride, somehow I need to work this into a regular routine, maybe do it once a month. Going up Walliceville Hill was a brilliant hill climb workout, not too steep but a good manageable distance I reckon USO Fresh could handle (possibly). Going down Blue Mountains Rd is a different matter LoL steep, long and windy. Feathering the breaks is a must and I doubt I would even attempt this if there was any sign of moisture on the road. Interesting enough, we saw a lot of cyclists going up this way, I know I'm not quite ready for that yet. Chances are the USO elite ride up here on a weekly basis.

Mounting UFS HDD in Linux Mint

I haven't used FreeNAS in a while so I thought I would try and re-use some of the hard drives (HDD) assigned to this setup.

The problem is, the hard drive partitions are formatted using the UFS standard which Linux Mint cannot use. My computer with Linux Mint uses the EXT4 standard.

Thankfully there is a BASH work around, Linux will READ but cannot write to these drives. So here I used a HDD docking station -

Bash command:-

To find out the label of an external hard drive, open up a terminal, and use the following command

lsblk

Result (depends on what you already have connected)

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 149.1G  0 disk
└─sda1   8:1    0 149.1G  0 part /
sdc      8:32   0  74.5G  0 disk
└─sdc1   8:33   0  74.5G  0 part
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

from this I can see sdc as external drive
(normally linux is installed on sda)

Now we to mount the drive using the following command

 sudo mount -t ufs -o ro,ufstype=ufs2 /dev/sdc1 /mnt/

Now I can read/copy the files to another location before reformatting the drive with ext4 (or FAT32 for windows). Note pay special attention to the error that comes up on the monitor, this tells you the actual mount name you have to use, in this case it is sdc2. Last time I tried another HDD, itcame up as sdc1, all depends on how many usb devices you have connected at the time.

Hindsight ... I really need to rebuild a new NAS setup .. pref with an i5 intel processor and 4x 4TB HDD's.

USO Whanau Ride

I really enjoyed this ride, not only getting to meet a few seasoned USO members with their families, but was surprised to connect with new riders from Lower Hutt and Wainuiomata. Wellington is famous for it's wind and rain we never got it on this day.

This Endomondo image includes our ride out from Hikoikoi Reserve, Petone and along the Wellington SH1 motorway.

Thoughts

Making video content has become an issue, due to the fact I wish to hold onto the originals, which take up a lot of hard drive space. For example, this 1080p50 video is only 896MB (pre-youtube upload 4min25sec), created from a folder containing all footage, GPS information totaling 37.5GB (1hr44mins).

Does one upload to youtube then delete all originals/edited versions knowing that one day youtube will cease, and moment in time will be gone forever.

3 possible solutions come to mind.:-

• buy hard drives to store only original content (creating edited version to upload to social media platforms  is easy to do). Using these hard drives in a docking station makes them a permanent storage solution, there is always that possibility they still can fail.
• Use an on-line cloud storage service, if I went this route it would probably be www.mega.nz , from 200GB at 4.99euro/month $8.50NZ/month to 8TB at 29.99euro/month $50.95NZ/month. This is not cheap.
• Only keep the edited version, delete all originals. This is the practical solution and easily affordable. From a creative point of view, as time goes by, my editing/creative skills will improve and it would be nice to revisit some old videos and give them a new make over. Actually I'm going to do this shortly, I have kept all the original raw files from an Ironmaori ride in 2015.

It would've been nice to have uploaded this on the day, but it took me this long to free up some space to allow editing. I'm already way behind, Oh well LoL

USO Fresh Ride (yesterday): Porirua to Johnsonville

Enjoyed this ride now that I'm getting used to this route. We added a little bit more to the ride going up Raiha Street before heading on back to the Cafe.

While out in Porirua we got to visit the new re-opening of the Torpedo7 Cycle store. Some really nice outfits in there and on sale (still expensive).

Cycle Ride

hmm is our coffee time longer than our riding time LoL

I'm really happy at the kms covered this morning

This morning we had 7 in the group, the warm up circuit to Norfolk Street went really well. A nice straight line with Eric leading the group, Terina at #2 dictating the speed, Iha 3rd and myself at the rear calling traffic information up the line. The group is starting to learn the signals needed to travel on suburban roads which helps to keep us all safe.

We split up into 3 groups for various reason and finished of with a bit of chat at the village cafe.

Thoughts

At the cafe we was approached by a local and wanted to know if he can ride with us. He spotted our warm up ride earlier and of course we all said yes. We are not a club and we welcome anyone who enjoys social or serious riding.

We have 2 NZ certified cycle riders in our group, Iha and myself and we realize chances are the group is going to increase in numbers and it would be ideal to put another person through the course.

Aotearoa Bike Challenge 2018 March

1st time monitoring this statistic (top male rider), I thought 123km for the month was pretty good, 260 riders disagree LoL.

Goal for April 200km

So far already done 20km yesterday, and considering cycling has been my main focus over the last week, this seems to be quite achievable.

TriAbility 2018

Eric assisting us on how to layout the cycle transition area

day before the event, crowd control fencing gets installed

Shamefully this is all the photo's I took of this wonderful event. Being a lead volunteer kept me busy both days and I really enjoyed my role.

On the day of the event, I got to organize the volunteers for the 2nd part of the cycle leg. Moores Valley Road to Whitcher Grove up Reservoir Road to the turn around point at the waterworks.

The volunteers I got made me so proud, the way they encouraged the cyclists at crucial points along the route. It was a good idea providing a mountain bike so that volunteers can share the role as a floater for me, traveling up and down our route reporting back to me any problems. Having a trained nurse at the top turn around point which was also set up as a drinking station made my job so much easier.

Being out here we got to miss the "exciting controlled chaos" at the main transition area, ie where they change from swimming to cycling to running, and where the kids did there events. That is where most of the supporters and families would be watching, after packing up and returning we all got to see the end ceremonies, prize giving and closing speeches.

The free BBQ sausages for the volunteers at the end finished of the day nicely.

Can't wait to do this again next year!

PS for more photo's check out https://www.sportwainuiomata.com/

2018-03-33 USO Fresh Ride

click here to watch the video

click here to watch the video

My second ride with the USO group. Turned out to be a great day for riding, a little bit of wind and cloud cover ensured a pleasant ride.going up the slight hill climb of Hay Street reminded me of my high school days pushing those milk carts at 5am in the mornings. So relieved I didn't get a tube puncture this time round. Also met more existing USO members so at the end of the ride I approached a leader and requested to apply for membership.

Going through Naenae brought back a lot of memories,this is where I grew up, went to primary, intermediate and college here.