Driving a Big Red Firetruck

I wish I could attend more of the training nights with the fire department, but my tutoring schedule precludes it during the school year. I'm always glad when I can make it to training or a meeting, and tonight I had a chance to drive a firetruck.

We regularly cycle thru a regimen that includes dealing with car fires, ladders, hoses, air tanks, and so on, but tonight was the first time I've made it to a session with the trucks. We drove a pickup-style firetruck thru a short slalom course with a few pylons in the parking lot of the high school, and then we did the same route with one of the longer trucks. In both cases, we had to drive the trucks up to a stopping point to see how close we came to a cone, and then we had to do the same course in reverse! I was surprised how well I did -- backing up towards a cone in the dark while driving a huge truck is not something I expected to have much skill in, but I attacked the task with a sort of mathematical approach, and that worked for me. I also got some excellent advice from one of our members who drives a truck for a living. In a nutshell, it involved shadows.

I don't think I'll be driving a firetruck on my own anytime soon, but I'm glad I got to try them out this evening.

New Paltz resident loves to race unicycles -- Poughkeepsie Journal, 7.13.08, by Nancy Haggerty

Think unicycle and image 1 might be a clown or street performer teetering side to side at all of a mile or two per hour.

But now think 500 miles of unicycle racing, often at 20-plus mph, of riding roads that not only go up and down hills but also mountains.

Think Ride the Lobster, the recent 35-team relay held in Nova Scotia.

The June 16-20 race, officially 800 kilometers or 497.1 miles, included four days of 35-rider mass-start, roughly 120-mile road racing and one day of time trials and criterium.

It also included riders from as far away as Korea, Germany, Denmark Singapore, Britain, New Zealand and Australia.

By comparison, David Stone was a local.

The 41-year-old New Paltz resident teamed with John Foss, 46, of California and Dave White, 52, of Ohio on The Centurions. The name represents the fact the three, who met through unicycle conventions, have among them 101 years of unicycling experience, Stone the least at 28.

Stone, president/founder of the Manhattan-based New York Unicycle Club, had done long unicycle rides, including a New York City century in which he logged 102 miles in one day. But his longest previous races were only 10Ks.

"I treated this racing as if I had to do about six to eight of those each day for four days," he said.

Stone, who works in Manhattan as a private tutor, trained for two months, logging 13 to 25 miles a day, sometimes in Central Park, but most often on the rail trail out of New Paltz.

Going in, his team's goal was a top-10 finish and that's exactly what it got, finishing 10th in 40 hours, 27 minutes, 34 seconds. That was four-plus hours behind the winning German team and more than 19 hours ahead of the last-place team. But 10th was a battle, with the 11th-place squad finishing just seven minutes back.

"When I rode, I always thought, 'Never let up.' I didn't want to give up even a second to another team... I rode like gangbusters the whole way," said Stone, whose motto was "None shall pass" and who noted, "It was very rare when someone did."

Enjoys speed aspect

Stone, a former high school runner who explained, "Speed is what I always had as a weapon in any sport," logged 87 of the final day's 180 kilometers, cycling mostly flats and downhills, his strengths.

He rode one three-mile, paved mountain downhill at 19 mph.

"On a unicycle that's way too fast to fall off," he remarked.

But while one opponent broke a leg crossing train tracks, even on gravel, Stone's team had no falls. It was on a gravel downhill, that the gravel-loving Stone hit 22.5 mph, his top race speed.

"That was just amazing," Stone said, adding, "I see gravel and it's almost like I get hungry."

Foss' wife, Jacquie, drove the team's support van routinely six or more miles ahead of the team's current rider. Then, at the van, a GPS tracking baton was passed to the next rider, who'd already be pedaling.

Stone, who owns 30 unicycles, rode a 29-inch, wheel-geared unicycle throughout the race. Other racers rode geared and ungeared unicycles of various sizes. The winning Germans, who took home a $4,000 prize (The Centurions split $125 for 10th place) used a more difficult to handle but very fast 36-inch, wheel-geared unicycle.

The race, run through areas that reminded Stone of the Hudson Valley, was designed to boost tourism. Rooms and breakfast and dinner were provided free to participants, who shared information and more with each other.

"Imagine a new golfer coming along and wanting tips on how to avoid a slice and he started chatting up Tiger Woods. It's never going to happen. ... The nice thing about the sport is it's in its youth. We're still so innocent," said Stone, who noted his and others teams loaned unicycles to competitors and one team actually built one for another team.

The camaraderie extended to fans. Schoolchildren lined parts of the route and gave teams care packages.

"... As a tutor, former teacher and father, the kids were the best (part of the race)," said Stone.

While his own kids, Fiona, 12, a five-year rider; Emmett, 8, a two-year rider; and Maeve, 4, were home in school and his wife, Shirra, was running her New Paltz shop, Knit and Be Happy, the GPS baton allowed them to follow The Centurions' progress online.

This was the first ever Ride the Lobster and if Nova Scotia hosts it again, Stone plans to be there.

He also dreams of someday unicycling cross-country with his brother, John, who has unicycled across the Alps, the Pyrenees and Norway.

More immediately, though, Stone plans to do a New York century ride on Sept. 7. And he's also talking about teaming with John and Emmett in a race.

The name of that team? The Rolling Stones.

Still Loving the Smart! Can You Say HYPERMILER?

The car has only gotten better. Or maybe I should say that the driver has only gotten better.

I've learned some hypermiling techniques, and they've paid off. My mileage the first few fillups was about 41-42 mile per gallon. My last two tanks averaged nearly 49 mpg. In fact, last week I managed to squeeze nearly 419 miles out of my 8.7-gallon tank, with about .2 gallons to spare (an average of 50.4 mpg).

Here are my hypermiling tricks:
1. Drive slowly. No car can really perform better at 70 than at 60, due to aerodynamics and other reasons, so I drive at a steady 55-63 mph, pretty much. I think my average speed these days is about 57 mph on the highway. Hypermilers say that this can improve gas mileage like nothing else, and in my old car, I saw that this was definitely the case. I think that driving 70 costs 15-20% of your fuel efficiency compared with driving 60 mph. I think I'd drive 50 mph if I could, but that's almost dangerously slow, so I'll stick near 60. I won't mind when highways go back to a 55 mph speed limit.

2. Avoid using the brakes. I let the car slow itself down whenever possible, and I leave space before the car in front of me when I'm in any kind of traffic. The smart car's engine slows itself down as soon as your foot's off the gas pedal, and the deceleration is pretty strong because the car actually has an automated manual transmission -- it's like a stick-shift that does the shifting automatically. I've had trips from Manhattan to New Paltz where I used the brakes a total of three times.

3. Avoid hard accelerations, too. I like the advice that you should drive as tho there is an egg under the pedal. I read that the smart car has the slowest acceleration of any American car. Well, that makes my job easier! It just means I have to be careful when entering traffic to leave enough room behind me that I don't need to 'gun it.'

4. Draft when possible. I usually don't get to do this on account of point #1, but when a slow truck lumbers along, I'll sometimes keep up with it, watching my ScanGauge to make sure that the drafting is actually working (and it is, but it's still a bit hard to believe).

5. Drive other than in the center of the lane. This is some advice I read on a hypermiler site. I'm not sure if it's true or whether it makes a significant difference, but the idea is that the lane tends to wear out in the area where most cars drive, so you will do better by driving a bit left or right of that line.

6. Air in the tires! Make sure your tires are properly inflated. Some hypermilers even over-inflate theirs, but I'm not going to risk it in my tiny car -- the tires are small and hard enough as it is!