08-11-2024 Ride

A somewhat bittersweet ride, the last one with Dave Helfrick for the foreseeable future, as he is moving back to PA on Wednesday. All four of us - me, Dave, Jim and John - came out for the ride from Jim's house, and we followed the time trial route. I rode a little faster than I normally have been doing on these rides, and John also put in a bigger effort than usual. After the ride, we stopped at Jim's house and had smoothies.

Avg speed = 16.5 mph. Total mileage = 17.6 mi

Avg power = 144 W. Weighted avg power = 169 W

Total elevation gain = 990'

Avg heartrate = 116 bpm (Coospo), 

https://www.strava.com/activities/12121224382

I took it easy when I got home, while Ann went to church. Throughout the morning and afternoon, I worked on the coding and dataset collection that would allow me to process my downloaded Fitbit steps data for creation of a dataset of total steps/day going back to early 2019. It took me a while to figure out how to define my input set of dates and times as UTC, but I got it done. Then I was able to create a separate list of converted dates and times, which has been cleverly adjusted to account for the time zone I was in on a specific date. I retrieved that information by creating a separate date file with locations based on the data captured in Google Maps Timeline. This is a really handy feature, but it does raise some privacy issues. Later in the afternoon, I grilled the vegetables and meat for the dinner with Emily and Caleb to celebrate his birthday. It was a nice evening, but I was pretty tired and the conversation went on a little long for my taste.

Also started a new book, Ernest Cline's Armada, which is about a teenage gamer who gets involved with repelling an alien invasion. Seems pretty simple in its setup so far, taking a while to get to the action parts.