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My bro Will Strohl has challenged me to a little fundraising for the Team LIVESTRONG Challenge in Davis coming up next month.

He has stepped up, in addition to his previous donations to my ride, to donate $1 for every mile I ride a bicycle between today (May 22nd, 2012), and Sunday May 27th at 11:59PM. Why is he doing this? He knows I haven’t been on a bike in over a week, so he figures it is probably a safe bet, and perhaps it is.

Are you willing to do the same?

Will you donate $1 to my #LSCDavis ride, for every mile I ride by bike between now and 11:59pm PDT this Sunday?

If so, add your comment below to join the cause, I’ll be sure to follow up with you via email to let you know how I do! I’ll also update this blog post with details

Starting Mileage: 0 miles
Current Mileage: 106.1 miles
Total Raised: $106

Donations from:
Will Strohl $1/mile

The following is an update email that went out to everyone who has donated to my LIVESTRONG fundraising. Wait, you haven’t donated yet? That’s okay, there is still time, head on over to my Philanthropy page and get started.

<begin email>

I wanted to send out a quick thank you to everyone who has donated to my ride for the 2012 Team LIVESTRONG Challenge in Davis. With your help I have already surpassed 50% of my initial goal for fundraising for the ride, I will likely be raising that goal to a larger amount here over the next few months, due in part to your very kind donations.

Year to date riding

I've been riding a lot here over the past couple of months as I try to get my body prepared for a 100 mile bike ride. I've been able to ride three, sometimes 4 days a week just about every week in 2012. In 2011 I rode around 580 miles total for the year, so far this year I am up to 458 miles, I should hit 500 before the end of the month, and if I keep this pace up (it will likely just increase) I should easily exceed 1000 miles before the Challenge on 6/24/2012.

Fundraising efforts

As part of my efforts to increase my fundraising for LIVESTRONG I have been making some changes to the Philanthropy page of my website (https://www.chrishammond.com/philanthropy.aspx) and have decided to include a list of everyone who has donated.

Your name in lights (get a link)

As an added bonus for donating, I am also adding a link with your name, pointing to the website of your choice (within reason of course). Please feel free to email me a link that you would like associated with your name on the Donor list and I will gladly add it to the site.

You've been ranked

On that Donor list I am currently listing of the donors in descending order of the donation amounts. If you are at the top, that's because you've donated the most. If you want to move to the top? Well, you could always donate more.

If you would rather not be included in that ranked list, or even included in the list of donors at all, please let me know and I will remove your name.

Tell a friend

Now that you've donated, perhaps you have a friend who might be interested in donating? If so, send them to the following website: https://www.chrishammond.com/philanthropy.aspx

Future emails

If you would rather not be included in future status emails please let me know, otherwise I will occasionally send out emails like this updating everyone on how things are progressing.

Once again, thank you for taking the time and effort to donate to the cause, no matter how little or big your donation is it is all greatly appreciated.

Chris Hammond

This year I said one of my goals is to ride in a century, a 100 mile bike ride. I’ve chosen the LIVESTRONG Challenge in Davis California on June 24, 2012.

As part of the ride I have set a goal to raise $1,000. You can donate to my campaign at https://laf.livestrong.org/goto/chrishammond

All I am asking is that you donate $5 (more if you like) to the cause. Just $5 to help people around the world effected by Cancer. Below is more info on why I am riding in the LIVESTRONG Challenge this year.

My Story

I am riding the 105 mile distance at the 2012 Team LIVESTRONG Challenge Davis for four special people in my life, all affected by cancer. As part of the event I have set a goal of raising $1,000, I would appreciate any amount that you can donate to my cause, you can use the link on the left side of this page to DONATE NOW.

Who am I riding for?

I am riding the #LSCDavis for four people, all affected by cancer.

My father and daughterMy father Bill was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer in August 2011, he had treatment for the cancer in November 2011 and we are hopeful that it was caught early enough to be eradicated by the treatment. (Photo right with my daughter Jacqueline on her first birthday 10/9/2011)

My uncle John, married to my father's sister, has been battling cancer for a number of years now.

My auntie Carol was diagnosed with breast cancer and successfully beat the disease.

One of my best friend's mother Janice was very recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is going through the treatment process now.

These close friends and family are my motivation for doing the LIVESTRONG Challenge in Davis this year. As of January of 2012 the longest bike ride I've ever done was 30.3 miles, that was in August 2011. If all goes as planned, I will surpass that total multiple times this year. Please stay tuned to my training and ride results by checking out the LIVESTRONG blog posts here no my site.

Last year I purchased a 2011 Cannondale Quick CX 1 to start riding on my quest to hit 500 miles for the year. I was able to do that fairly easily on the bike, it is a great machine.

As I am getting more into riding though I wanted to do longer distance road riding, and continue to use the Quick CX 1, but on a different basis than I did in 2011. I intended to take that bike, with the OEM wheels, and put a set of mountain bike tires on it and use it as a semi mountain bike trail bike.

My awesome brother sent me a set of 29x2.1” mountain bike tires, and I picked up some tubes at REI a few weeks ago. This evening I tried to put the tires on the rim, the first thing I ran into was thinking that there was no way the tire would mount to the rim, it looked huge with the likely hood of it fitting being very small.

imageWell I was wrong about that, the tire and tube went together well and everything fit on the rim nicely. That is when it went downhill though. I put the wheel on the bike and immediately noticed it wouldn’t rotate, I figured I had the quick release off and the disc brake was rubbing. Upon further inspection though, after resetting the quick release I noticed that the tire was actually rubbing on the top of the fork. Here’s a picture of the original tire and fork, taken after removing the MTB tire and tube.

So I guess the answer to the question, if the question is “Will a 29x2.1” tire fit on a 2011 Cannondale Quick CX 1?” is NO. Unfortunately it will not.

I’m still going to try to find something that will work on the bike though, I would like to use it off road more, though I don’t think I’m ready to invest in a full on mountain bike anytime soon as I still see putting in a lot more road miles this year.

Dark Morning For 2011 I personally set 3 goals, you can read about them fully on my post from 1/1/2011. Basically they were to lose 30 lbs (goal weight of 255, I’m a big guy), inline skate 100 miles (I do like me some skating, I’m a freak I know this) and ride a bike 500 miles. At the beginning of 2011 the bike I had was a 2004 Diamondback XTS Moto, not exactly something you could see yourself riding 500 miles on (at least not me). So in June I picked up a Cannondale Quick CX 1 and began my journey.
So I did it, (with the help of Natalie). I made it to 50 miles on the bike this week. Actually 52.36 miles according to Garmin Connect. I rode 4 out of the last 7 days, I hope to try to keep that up, at least 3 out of 7 days at minimum. My average speed for the 52 miles was 10mph, (including stops for photos) with an average heart rate of 159bpm. Read more ....
That’s my goal for this week, to ride 50 miles. In all honesty, it isn’t that much, but I can with about 99% confidence say that I have never ridden a bike 50 miles in one week. Yesterday afternoon I went for a ride up Highway 1 to Moss Beach, and then over towards the ocean. My first time really climbing on a bike. It wasn’t much of a climb, but according to my Garmin I did gain 1,118ft in elevation, far more than any other ride as of late.

It’s been a busy few days. moving, unpacking, trying to get things organized, driving to civilization to pick up supplies (a couple of times now). We had a few things that required trips to Home Depot.

1) The shower here had some major flow issues (there was hardly any), not to mention it was at a height which required kneeling to wash your hair. So we picked up a new pipe to raise the shower up, and a new shower head that helped greatly to bring the water pressure back to a livable level. $30 later and the shower rocks!

2) The house appears to have an ant problem, nothing too major, but definitely ants have made it in, and are roaming around. So we picked up some bug killer and sprayed it around the house. It appears to have killed off the flow of ants into the house, we’ll see how the ones that are already here survive. We put some ant bait around.

We also had to head to the old place to set the garbage out last night, and then take the cans back in this morning. Only one, maybe two more trips over there for us. Natalie is meeting a cleaning company there on Thursday to clean things up, then we’ll do the inspection when the landlord is back in town.

Baby's new trailerAfter running around this afternoon I got the Burley D’Lite bike trailer that Natalie and I picked up over the weekend (used off of Craigslist). It came with the jogger attachment for it so I put it together and we took the baby for a walk.

After the Natalie made dinner while I dug through the garage franticly trying to find the box with my bike helmet and racing helmet in it. I couldn’t find it and was starting to get angry when I went inside and found it sitting just inside the house. Thankfully the helmets were there! After dinner I took off on a little bike ride. I wanted to see how far it was to get to the beach, so I took off that way to see. I had my trusty Forerunner 305 so I could track the ride. About a mile into it and I was at the beach!

Cannondale Quick CX 1I headed down a single track trailer, really pushing the limits of the CX1 (alright not really, but pushing my limits) through the brush and finally having to walk about 20 feet through a very sandy patch. I rode down the trailer for a while and came across a paved trail that seems like it would be a perfect spot for towing the baby around when she’s big enough.

I ended up riding about 5.75 miles, heading down the trail a ways and then back up towards Highway 1. I took 1 back to the house to call it a night. I’m hoping that I can get a ride in 3-4 times a week, but to do that I am going to have to start getting up early and heading to work, so that I can get home and ride after work. We’ll see how that goes!

Tomorrow will be my first day commuting from Half Moon Bay to San Mateo, I’m not sure what to expect.

Here are a few additional photos I took on the ride tonight.

Bike ride before sunset Before sunset in Half Moon Bay Before sunset in Half Moon Bay

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Chris Hammond

Chris Hammond is a father, husband, leader, software developer, photographer and car guy. Chris focuses on the latest in technology including artificial intelligence (AI) and has spent decades becoming an expert in ASP.NET and DotNetNuke (DNN) development. You will find a variety of posts relating to those topics here on the website. For more information check out the about Chris Hammond page.

Find me on Twitter, GitHub and LinkedIn.