Check this out... I did this several years ago... basically this is an 'album' of original compositions (except for the "live" track, which of course is Miles Davis' All Blues, another track is my interpretation of Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch, the rest are all my originals) I recorded in my home-studio - 'live' guitar & bass-tracks with digital accompaniment (yes, including the "sax solos" in a couple of the tunes) courtesy Apple's Garage Band. Enjoy!
Video highlights of the 2nd round of the UCI Women's Road World Cup in Italy.. the final sprint won by Emma Johansson (Orica-AIS) over World Cup leader Lizzie Armitstead (Boels-Dolmans Cycling Team) and Alena Amialiusik (Team Astana-BePink), courtesy Sportissimo. More video highlights to come as they arrive... check with prowomenscycling.com for updates (which includes an exclusive podcast-interview with Johansson, recorded prior to today's race).
Strava details here.
Today's ride was a late-afternoon jaunt (roughly 24 miles altogether) around East Arlington, mainly the hillier sections along Fort Caroline Road. It was quite windy (a pre-frontal trough passed through that dumped a lot of rain last night & this morning, with a thunderstorm around noontime). The portions of the ride that were the hilliest (upper-right sections in the map above) had residential streets that had some really short yet punchy climbs averaging about 5-6% gradient - one hill in particular was quite steep with an 11-13% gradient near the top - that one was marked in Strava as a segment: the "(Un)Pleasant Hill Dr Climb" (tee-hee!). There's no need to tell you that this is one of my favorite riding areas in Jacksonville! Strava details here.
This ride had everything! Speed, a few climbs (well, overpasses anyway!), headwinds - even danger in the form of a large & rather mean dog deep in redneck-country who gave chase but I was able to channel my inner Mark Cavendish and out-sprinted the mangy mutt - it was pretty fast, I'll give it that - that little spike in watts & speed just after the 5-mile mark is where that happened. Lizzie Armitstead (Boels Dolmans Cycling Team) wins the first round of the 2014 UCI Women's Road World Cup in Drenthe, in a 2-up sprint with Anna van der Breggen (Rabobank Liv). More info on the race (& series) at prowomenscycling.com.
UPDATE: A more extensive highlights-video (produced by the UCI) is now available with commentary by Ant McCrossan and Wiggle Honda's Rochelle Gilmore. This is the first of, what I hope will be, a series of photo-galleries of some of my weekend bike-rides. This first gallery is of a location in the Amelia-Fernandina Beach ride I usually do on some weekends (the map & profile in the slideshow is courtesy of Strava, recorded on my Garmin Edge 605 GPS-unit). It is of the scenic & historic village of American Beach, one of Florida's oldest African-American communities, known during its heyday as the "Black Hyannis-Port". Located on Amelia Island (just south of Fernandina Beach, in the extreme northeast-corner of the State where the St. Marys River defines the easternmost boundary between Florida and Georgia), American Beach was founded during the Jim Crow-era South as a place where people of color, who couldn't - |