Night Ride for Cleveland Beer Week a huge success

From Century Cycles Blog...

Night Ride for Cleveland Beer Week a huge success: Ale? Hailed! Last Saturday's Century Cycles Night Ride for Cleveland Beer Week was a huge success, proving that 'bikes-n-brews' are still a match made in heaven! Nearly 200 cyclists came to the ride, many of whom sported some awesome beer-inspired costumes and all of whom biked on a chilly yet perfect fall evening.

Our hearty congratulations to the 26 lucky folks who won prizes from us and our event partners -- cycling jerseys, gift cards from Winking Lizard and Century Cycles, pint glasses, Cycle-opoly games, and more! And YES, we are already planning to do it again next year!

Our thanks, too, to Cleveland Beer Week (which named us 'Pick of the Day' on Saturday -- a gigantic honor considering the number of CBW events!), the Winking Lizard (which did a great job of accomodating our big post-ride crowd and sourced/tapped some terrific beers), Sierra Nevada Brewing Company (mmm...that Porter in cask was delicious!), and Left Hand Brewing Company (for their super-tasty Twin Sisters Double IPA).

Here are over 100 photos from the 'All Hail the Ale!' Night Ride - see how many 'beers' you can spot!



(Click here if the slide show is not appearing for you. Photos: Mike Petcher)

Image Sprites

I just finished a web page at work that used what I learned from my last web tutorial listed in my previous post. I also taught myself how to code some nifty rollover buttons as shown here and included these as well. W3Schools calls them "image sprites." It took some troubleshooting though in my application that had to do with the absolute positioning. But I'm pleased with the results.

I also used Adobe Fireworks for the first time. Simple PNG files crash my Photoshop CS4 all the time and I had a hunch that Adobe wants you to use Fireworks instead to create and edit graphics for the web and interactive apps. Fireworks is very nice in that it gives you pixel accuracy in ways that Photoshop did not. And, of course, being part of the creative suite it plays nice with all the other apps in the suite.

Web Tutorials

I've completed Adobe's Developer Connection tutorial Creating Your First Website in Dreamweaver CS4.

I'm used to creating CSS by hand, as like when I design table-based eblasts at work, which seems to have been a great point of entry in learning code. What I've learned about designing eblasts might be worth it's own post, for sure. Very interesting stuff.

So what was new to me here was Dreamweaver's CSS style palette which allows you to change and apply the styles on the fly. And when you use this palette it not only applies the styles right away to your html source code, but it also updates the linked external style sheet...very intuitive. Also learned in this area was the ability to position div tags in a layout using CSS and not table structure, something I was keen to start to learn.

Similar to the CSS styles palette is the Files palette. If used to manage files, instead of managing them outside Dreamweaver, it will relink and auto-update across your predefined site which is pretty cool.

I was also introduced to Spry elements. Are these element specific only to Adobe products? I think so. In this case we used a dropdown javascript menu bar. And then modified the associated CSS. Pretty complex but the tutorial points you to the only files you will need, so that helps. I don't know how much I'll be interested in using these items in the future.

I read somewhere that you should do tutorial with your own files. So having done this once, I might do it again to with my own files and post the results to my server. Stay tuned.

What's Important

"Focus" is what we ask the kids to do a lot of. To stay on task. I could use a bit of my own medicine I think. I've found I can make a difference when working on something by figuring out what is most important about that given task. And using that to guide my decisions. Often I get bogged down in the details. They really trip me up, frustrate me, and I lose sight of the big value of what I'm doing. Asking myself "what's important" is a simple way to help me get past the sticky details and more easily achieve the full value of the task I'm doing at that given moment. Something to think about anyway.

Thanks for the Links!

OK, it's been a long summer and I've been preoccupied with other things. But I was checking out a few personal blogs that I enjoy, and I noticed that I'm on their blog feed. Wow, thanks! And then I noticed that I haven't posted in 2 months, uh, sorry.

Here are a few things that I'd like to blog in the near future, so please stay tuned.

-- I set the goal for myself to learn a bit of Dreamweaver and create a portfolio website for myself by the end of the year. I've found some great free tutorial resources out there and will make a point to share the links and my musings on the subject.

-- Earlier in the year I wrote about book illustrations. There's a specific illustrations in a sailing manual that I've been meaning to share. They've long been a source of inspiration for me.

A Windy, Hot Saturday Ride

View Wayne Co and back in a larger map

I had done this route a couple years back and thought I'd give it another try today.

OK, let's set aside the idea that I was lazy this morning and wasn't able to get on the bike until noon or so. How hot was it? I went through my entire water bottle by the end of the ride, could feel the heat from the road coming up through my shoes. The SSW wind was enough to mostly cut my regular speed by 5mph or so especially coming south. On the southern border of the ride, I come down this big hill that I should have easily hit 30mph on, but was held to 15mph due to the unencumbered wind that cut across the cropless field to the south.

Other features of note was the fact that Ryan Rd. Was just tarred and graveled this week. Aside from the loose stone, the sun reflecting off the clean white rock seemed to elevate the road temp enough to make me consider taking a different route back. No dogs to speak of.

With all this said, I kept as much energy as I could in reserve for the ride back and the strategy seemed to work. I was fatigued when I returned but not wiped out.

A good ride overall. 25.76mi; 1:42. I'm almost at 200mi since late June.

Tonight's Ride

View Spencer Lake Ride in a larger map
Relatively flat and long township roads with very little berm or traffic. Noteworthy on the ride were a sawmill and some Amish farms. Wind was blowing north, so the backstretch felt great. There absolutely no traffic on Smith Road on the way back to the car. Spencer Lake was larger than I imagined and seems like a nice fishing spot for the kids. My right wrist was bothering me tonight, I may have to invest in some cycling gloves. I drove Smith road all the way home and saw a berry farm just west of Medina that I'll have to remember to go back to. Another beautiful night to do some riding.