River cruise

Todays ride took me south along the Muskingum River south on St Rt 60 all the way to Marietta, Ohio. From there, I took St. Rt 26 northeast up to Woodsfield, Ohio and backtracked towards Zanesville to Newark.


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I started at 8am today with partly cloudy skies and temperature around 63 degrees, which was warm enough and only required wearing a light sweatshirt. By the time I reached Marietta, temperature had climbed to 84 degrees. Traffic was light all the way to Marietta.

Once in Marietta, I wandered around a bit doing some sightseeing, took some pics along the Ohio River, and then stopped & had lunch at the First Settlement Restaurant at 124 Putnam St in Marietta. I figured I'd steer away from the chain restaurants and try a hometown eatery. It was an old style restaurant with barstools that lined a very long lunch counter, in addition to booth & table seating. Lunch portion & food quality on a scale of 1-10 I rated at a 4. The food portion was small for the price paid and the quality was not what I had hoped for. Not a big deal, but not someplace I'd visit again.

Once lunch was out the way I topped off the tank on the Vulcan and made my way to St. Rt 26 and proceeded to head northeast toward Woodsfield. St Rt 26 is a very pretty drive with lots of twisties. I found this ride on OhioBikers.com. Roger "Gandalf" Davis sums up this ride perfectly.

"One of the best rides I've had is Rt. 26 between Marietta, OH and Woodsfield, OH. Better get gas either in Woodsfield or Marietta because there isn't much in between. Traffic is light. It's only about 1 1/2 hours but it goes through Wayne National Forest and has some beautiful scenery. The route follows the Little Muskingum River for part of the way. There are some beautiful reflections off the water of the surrounding trees. So you have the water on one side of the road and rock walls with ferns and greenery on the other, but don't look too long, there's a curve ahead just around the bend. Seriously, you are hardly out of sight of a yellow squiggly arrow sign. Take your time around the sweeping curves and slow down for the tight bends and you'll have an exhilarating ride."

I couldn't have stated any clearer. The bonus to the ride was when I came across two beautifully restored covered bridges, one of which was still in use for normal traffic (see slideshow above). This was the highlight of the trip coming across these historical gems, in addition to carving some serious twisties on a technically challenging road. I also happened upon a cable & wood suspension bridge (see slideshow above) which crossed the Little Muskingum River near Wingett Run. This is only the 2nd suspension bridge I've ever discovered and walked upon, although I would use discretion on this bridge because the timbers used have seen better days and are suspect to cross.

After I reached Woodsfield, Ohio and meandered across country back to Zanesville and on to Newark where I finished the day enjoying a Hazelnut Latte at Twilight Coffee in downtown Newark before going to watch my daughter Paige's softball game at Mound City baseball park (they won 16-5 and are now in 1st place in the league).
A fine day of traveling on my Vulcan and putting exactly 300 miles on the bike today. Not bad for 1 day of riding.

Firecracker 5 mile run-Granville, Oh

Today the Firecracker 5k took place in Granville, Ohio which was part of the many 4th of July Independence Day activities this year in Licking County. I am very proud of my brother Mike and his wife Nancy! To see them both actively compete as a couple in 5 mile runs and dedicate time daily together to their passion is inspirational & moving.

This morning I watched as Mike & Nancy prepared for the 5 mile run, and as they each later, crossed the finish line. You could tell from the looks on their face the race hadn't been easy, but they did it in good time, and I cheered them on as they each entered into the runners chute. I was grateful I could be there to witness each of their individual accomplishment of crossing the finish line.

Congratulations Mike & Nancy! You're both champions & athletes of the highest caliber!

Setup your website for little to nothing

I can still vividly remember the early days of my computing experience back in 1994.

I had a PC with Windows 3.1 Operating System and DOS 6.2. This new PC had an Intel 486DX2 CPU, and 14.4 kbps modem, which was one of the "faster" machines at that time. With this PC I soon learned about Bulletin Boards . I soon became an administrator of one board called "Insight " which one connected to via dial-up modem. The interface was strictly text based. This new technology opened up a whole new realm of computing and social networking which I would never fully understand or grasp, let alone realize how fast it would grow or how important it was until the last couple of years.

It was a very short time after that the Internet became the "buzz" which soon began to grow, expand, and now become the medium of choice today. Before long I was creating my own websites using a text editor (Windows notepad) and adding my own custom images using Windows Paint. Crude tools, but nevertheless, valuable tools in the growth of my experience in developing web content and setting up a complete website for free which I could share with friends and family.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, to share information on the internet you had to have a website. This required having a domain name, which required domain hosting, software to create the web pages, and tools to upload the content to the internet. This then created the need for knowledge on how to do all of the above, which resulted in a steep learning curve which could be rather intimidating to the average person.

Fast forward to today. Today the internet is actively used by young and old alike. It's in most homes via broadband. It's actively used for marketing, advertising, paying bills, reading up-to-the-minute news, share information, and more. Of all the different reasons people use the internet, social networking is the buzz today. Through social networking one can catch up on the latest news, share photos, share calender events, music, hobbies, and so much more.

Through the evolution of the Internet and it's growing importance in our daily lives, one can now have a blog, a website, a domain address, an online photo album, and advertise & market products for other websites for free thru social networks and web-based tools such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, Blogger, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and many others. With these readily available tools, one can setup a website, execute viral marketing & advertising for next to nothing.

Next up, I will discuss how to begin to setup your presence on the Internet.

Nancy & Jimmy's Wedding 6/13/2009

The Graduate

Finally, the little girl we helped to deliver into the world now is a shining light that is stepping into adulthood. Yesterday she graduated from C-Tec and today we celebrated her accomplishments in a family graduation celebration. Several of our family members were on hand to rejoice in Deonna's accomplishments.
Congratulations Deonna!
We're very proud of you!!

Southern Ohio Run

Today was sunny & bright. Temp at 68 degrees. Overall clear with no rain on the horizon. A perfect day to ride. My son Jericho & I left Newark to ride into distant lands. We traveled east on St. Rt 16 to 146 into Zanesville, where we picked up St. Rt 60 South along the Muskingum river. The ride along 60 was quite enjoyable. 60 parallels the Muskingum River the entire distance to Marietta, Ohio. About half way to McConnelsville, we stopped at Rokeby Lock and Dam #8 to give our rumps a much needed rest and to stretch our legs for a few moments. Hard to imagine the volume of water moving down river until you see how fast it travels over the dam (see slideshow or visit website by clicking on slideshow above).

Upon leaving, we stopped to read a state marker that explained about Morgan's Raid and that at a point at Rokeby Lock Confederate General John H. Morgan and his raiders had crossed the Muskingum river to continue their northern raid into Ohio.

We then traveled south on 60 to McConnelsville, Ohio and turned east onto Rt 78 toward the Ohio AEP Recreation lands in search of campgrounds & fishing. What we found was the Big Muskie, which was once the World's Largest Earth Moving Machine. Miner's Memorial Park is well worth the time to stop & visit and puts into perspective the massive scale of strip mining that took place in the region. The view where this park sits is awesome (my son Jericho even remarked about it). I can only imagine the view here in the fall when the leaves are turning colors in October! After taking several pictures, enjoying the view, and taking advantage of the available facilities, we continued eastward on Rt 78 traveling about 10 miles past Reinersville, Ohio. It was at this point I realized I was down to an 1/8 of a tank of gas and the nearest gas station was back in McConnelsville. We then turned around and traveled back to McConnelsville. Fortunately, I have a 1 gallon reserve and flipped the gas petcock over and made it town without incident where I filled up.


View Larger Map After leaving McConnelsville, we crossed the Muskingum river on St. Rt 37 & traveled east toward Junction City. About halfway there, a white truck tailed me closely on 37, which by the way is a joy to ride. St. Rt 37 on this stretch of road has lot's of twisties, sweeping turns, and a couple of straight aways. It was at one of these straight aways near Malta, Ohio that the white Dodge truck passed me and then proceeded to flag me over. Upon pulling over, the driver of the truck, Dan, informed me my rear license plate flew off about 3-4 miles back and he took me back to the area where he saw it depart my Vulcan. Withing 5 minutes of searching, Jericho found the wandering license plate. Dan, a welder, then helped me bolt the plate back on before proceeding on his way. I offered to pay for his help, but he gracefully refused. I thanked him and truly appreciated him being the Good Samaritan and helping us out. I would've never known about the missing plate until I would've gotten home, barring being pulled over my the Ohio State Patrol. Does make one truly wonder at times if God's angels are watching over us when we travel.

After that incident, my son & I proceed home without event and enjoyed a nice run home on 37 to St. Rt 13 north back into Newark. Not a terribly long run, but a very nice way to enjoy an entire afternoon with the company of my youngest son.