Log 2014051201

I drove my car down to the Cuyahoga National Forest today to acquire a free map at Happy Days Camp.  On my way back, I stopped at a local gas station and just before I got out of the car, the emergency sound played on my smartphone Weatherbug Elite app, alerting me that I was in an area declared to be in a tornado warning.  The gas station clerks quickly shut down the station and reluctantly, I had to drive another 3 miles in to the nearby City of Hudson.  I stopped at a local McDonald's to prepare to take shelter.

The point that I want to make is that I was rather impressed with the way that app worked under the circumstances.  My AM/FM head unit wasn't on at the time.  Also, I got emergency text alerts from Verizon Wireless as well.  Weatherbug played the emergency weather sound again when the app changed over to another county.  That's something that the text alerts didn't do, but they probably work on a much wider area, whereas, the app goes from the nearest weather station to the next one based on my GPS position.

They are probably more frequent, but I'm not sure if that makes the text alerts inferior?  Right now, I'm going to reserve judgment on that.  Weatherbug is inferior to the text in the way that I won't get its updates if I don't have any data signal.  But the texts will come in if I have so much as one unstable bar of roaming.  As for today, it's good to see this get a test.  It wasn't even on my list of things to experiment with and I'm glad it happened.

My back sprain continues to become more minor

Log 2014041001

At 133,975 miles on my 2008 Chevy HHR, I noticed that the USB cigarette lighter adapter was powering up and down while I was driving and the adapter and 3 port splitter's rocker switch was no longer lighting up. Furthermore, I don't remember turning it on to begin with.  So either it over heated, or took a surge? Either way, they need to be replaced this month if I leave for my 4 day cycling trip.

I took some tracks along the Valley Bridle Trail in the Everett area in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Two days ago, I was tracing some trail on Google Earth for an amenity spur on the Ohio Transit Hiker's Resource - 2014 Edition. And the application was giving me some conflicting readings.  I've noted in the past that the NP doesn't always upload every one of their trails to Google.  And I think I saw something that I could use in the imagry,  but I didn't realky know what it was. So, I went down there today to find out just that. Some times, you can't do it all from behind the desk.

For instance... there's a new map update for the Old Man's Cave Section in South Central Ohio.  Because some of it takes place on an off-road bridle path in a heavily forested area (impossible to determine a trail's course in places like this from the desk), unless the BTA updates it's tracks, I won't have any new data until I'm there to get it myself.

Work on OTHR's guide is progressing.  I only have the Akron, Road Fork & Whipple Section's left to do. The latter two are easy, they're just I'm putting the information on the county lines. The Akron Section. .. I'm about a 1/3rd through inputting it's information, but I needed to stop to get that GPX data today in the NP and in person.

Log 2012102201

I have been on the road for 47 days so far.  I think that beats my last record by 10 days. 
After getting my bike repaired in Cambridge, I dropped it off without test riding it out of the store.  Well, I pre positioned the bike a day later at Campground H on the Stockport Section - Buckeye Trail in the evening.  The next day, I got off to a late start, but it was only a 15.6 mile hike and about 1/3rd of it was on-road.  So, departed Basecamp Alpha anyways on foot. 
The remainder of the Belle Valley Section was easy, even on the off-road.  And that's partly because the portion of off-road trail on Belle Valley was recently built.  And for the most part, the trail surfaces didn't usually angle parallel to my feet.  The only thing that I didn't like there was that the grass surfaces were not benched.  Benching is used when the trail is coming around a hillside and rather have the hiker walk on a tilted surface, they dig under level it out.  There's probably a reason why they didn't do that.  I must admit that I've never maintained a surface under those conditions before.
The Belle Valley is the 18th section that I've completed.  Currently, the Stockport, Road Fork, Whipple and West Union Sections are in progress. However, RF & Whipple are connected and I could finish both up in one hiking day.
The Stockport Section in AEP is older and looks like the segment needs a adopter, or they're filling in with other maintainers, or they have a maintainer whose adopted a large off-road segment and hasn't gotten back to groom parts of the off-road yet.   I think I've mentioned before that Whipple Section off-road was difficult to navigate.  Stockport 1 - 3 was not like that.  It just looked like it's missed 1 maintenance session.  For all I know, somebody's coming back to maintain it and I just got there before hand... it happens.
So, I got to my bike, got on and realized that the new chain wasn't holding gears. And that's when I realized that I had a 16mi, 5 hour walk back to The Cramper in addition to the 15.6mi that I already hiked.  Well, I'm no expert at tuning a rear dérailleur, but I got my screwdriver out of my swiss army knife and managed to lock it into 7 HI. 
That night, I got back to camp in 2 hours, instead of 5 thanks my "handy work."  Well, this after noon, I gave up on trying to tune the transmission.  So, I took the bike to a shop in Zanesville.  And the technician looked at it, tuned the tranny, but when I got back to pick it up, he showed me that the top of the chain was sagging.  Turns out that the previous technician over looked that there was an extra link in the chain and I had Zanesville take it out. 
But he also alerted me that the gear cassette might have needed to be replaced.  This all 7 gears on the rear wheel.  I took it for a test drive and found that after the link was removed and transmission was tuned, that it still wasn't holding any gears.  So right now, the bike is still at the shop, having a new gear cassette installed and tomorrow we'll see if my old seat post, which is wider than the one currently installed, can be modified for use with my noseless seat?
I'm currently investigating the possibility of cycling the independent east stem of the American Discovery Trail.  My measurements show that Belpre of Washington County to the Buckeye Trail junction is only 31 miles.  A 62+mi trip by bike, or hike and bike is certainly possible in a day.  What bothers me is that it's nearby right now.  The question is do I want to cease that day?
Tonight, I didn't get the outer shell on The Cramper just right.  And now that my corners are exposed, the electric ceramic heater won't heat beyond 61F.  Usually this unit at 47F outdoor temp can heat my bunk upto 72F+.  The old tarp wasn't wide enough to cover the corners.  I guess that I know now that it really did need to be upgraded.

Log 2013072001

Trail guides and GPS waypoints were procured for Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana on the American Discovery Trail.  As I'm MD Edmonds a.k.a "Treeman," "Treeman of the North," "Matthew Dexter Edmonds" and the author of the Ohio Transit Hiker's Resource, I realized that my data which was supposed to include the American Discovery, omitted the "north loop."

The American Discovery is a 6,800mi multi-purpose trail, or route that spans from the Atlantic in Delaware to the Pacific in San Francisco.  It is attached to the Sea-to-Sea Route when it is concurrent with the Buckeye Trail/ North Country Trail Connector in southern Ohio from Village of Chesterhill of Morgan County to City of Milford of Clermont County, about 12 miles northeast of Cincinnati. 

Since about 1,000 miles of North Country Trail is concurrent with the Buckeye, I also have the goal get my patch, or to "get patched" (as I call it) in Ohio.  At the moment, I have the Ohio/ Pennsylvania line to the Village of Zoar on NCT's independant east arm.  Then from the City of Napoleon of Henry County to the intersection of the Evergreen and Wabash Cannonball Trail - North Fork in Spencer Township of Lucas County.

As concurrent with Buckeye, I still have between the threeway intersections for Road Fork and Whipple Sections on the Belle Valley Section.  I tried to conquer this on my last 32 day trip.  Despite lightning outside of the Village of Belle Valley in Noble County, I rode my bicycle to my starting point outside of the unincorporated area of Reinersville in Manchester Township of Morgan County.

I still have half of the Whipple Loop from Road Fork Section, Pt. 21 to a little west of Whipple Section, Pt. 2 where I began a previous hike at Archer's Fork Road/ Co Rd 14.  And then from the 3 way BT Whipple/ Stockport Section intersection in the American Electric Power ReCreation Lands in Reinersville in Manchester Township of Morgan County across southern Ohio to US-68 just south of the Village of Mount Orab in Brown County.

Other than the southern tier of the Buckeye Trail circuit, I did about 12mi of the mainline American Discovery Trail as it was concurrent with the Loveland Section - Buckeye Trail from the southern terminus (near the Eden Park conservatory) to the three way Loveland/ Williamsburg intersection in the City of Milford.  To complete the independant arms of the ADT, I estimate that it will take me 4 days on bicycle.  As for the last remaining segment of the North Country Trail, that will take me one day hiking.  That which remains on the BT's southern tier... estimated at 2 - 3 weeks.  The amount of mileage already covered on the BT in the last 3 years: about 1,070mi.  I think at this rate that the four arms are so short that I might as well.