Good Morning Internet

I did it! After months of (barely) train­ing and wor­ry­ing too much, I made it across the fin­ish line and com­pleted my first met­ric Seag­ull Cen­tury on Sat­ur­day. That’s 100 kilo­me­ters, or 62 miles. It’s been six or seven years since I’ve done it and, shock­ingly, I think I logged my best time yet, com­ing in just a few min­utes over five hours.

Con­grats to my par­ents, who both also fin­ished the met­ric cen­tury, and beat my time, too!

The weather couldn’t have been bet­ter this past Sat­ur­day. It was a clear, warm day, with no seri­ous head­winds until the last 20 kilometers.

Along the way, I used Cycleme­ter on my iPhone to track my progress and post updates to Twit­ter. It’s an ridicu­lously cool app. It tracked my posi­tion via GPS and gave me reg­u­lar updates about my speed, time, and dis­tance through my head­phones. Plus, any time some­one replied to me on Twit­ter or Face­book, it read the mes­sage to me via friendly robotic voice. I was sure my bat­tery wouldn’t make it the whole way through the cen­tury, but I was hap­pily sur­prised to dis­cover I still had a few per­cent of bat­tery life after I crossed the fin­ish line. I’m not sure if that’s a tes­ta­ment to the improved bat­tery in the iPhone 4, some code magic in Cycleme­ter, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two, but I was really impressed.

More than once, I got hilar­i­ous tweet fed to my head­phones from peo­ple that cracked me up on my bike, undoubt­edly mak­ing me seem like some kind of nut to any­one cycling around me at the time.

At the risk of sound­ing com­pletely sappy, the real-time notes of encour­age­ment really helped moti­vate me. I was sur­prised so many of you were awake that early on a Sat­ur­day, and com­pletely hum­bled by your sweetness.

Cross­ing that fin­ish line felt great. I had a nice cool-down walk around Sal­is­bury Uni­ver­sity, my alma mater, and barely rec­og­nized some parts of cam­pus. That place has grown a lot in the past eight years.

After clean­ing up and sleep­ing hard after din­ner, I was sur­prised at how refreshed and ener­getic I felt Sun­day morning.

I’m feel­ing really moti­vated today. Who knows, if i can keep up this kind of men­tal momen­tum, maybe I can get myself into shape for the full 100-mile cen­tury next year.

In the mean­time, here are some pho­tos and videos from Seag­ull Cen­tury 2010!

Related Posts:

• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• The year of adven­ture continues
• Tom Green at the DC Improv

2009 was kind of a rough year for every­one. The econ­omy did a swan-dive into an empty pool and a lot of us lost our jobs.

This year, I declared, would be dif­fer­ent. While watch­ing Olympic hockey and a space shut­tle land­ing (I’m a mul­ti­tasker), I could tell this year would be filled with adven­tures. And wow, yes, it sure has. It’s been bet­ter than I had imag­ined, and I feel so lucky to have had so many expe­ri­ences this year. A quick ver­bal montage:

• Sur­vived the snowpocalypse
• Played a reunion show with Three Track Mind
• Turned 30
• Went to South by Southwest
• Saw the final (sched­uled) launch of Space Shut­tle Atlantis
• Went to MaxFunCon
• Quit an unful­fill­ing job
• Watched the World Cup
• Watched fire­works from my roof
• Met Tom Green
• Found an amaz­ing new job
• Started my sec­ond year of grad school

And now it’s Octo­ber. It’s autumn, my favorite sea­son, and I still have a few adven­tures before the year wraps up. Next week­end, I’m bik­ing 100 kilo­me­ters in the Seag­ull Cen­tury. In Novem­ber, I’m one of the lucky ones going to the NASA Tweetup for Space Shut­tle Discovery’s last trip to space. (That’s right: Two shut­tle launches in one year!) A week later I get to see my all-time favorite band, The Posies, play in DC. And then it’s the holidays.

I feel so incred­i­bly lucky. As I write this, I’m sit­ting at the same table where I was back in Feb­ru­ary, day­dream­ing about all these adven­tures. I couldn’t be hap­pier with how every­thing turned out. 2010 has been filled with expe­ri­ences, friends, and fam­ily I wouldn’t trade for anything.

What was your favorite adven­ture of 2010? How do you plan on top­ping it in 2011?

Related Posts:

• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• I’m lead­ing a panel at SXSW Interactive!
• The Posies at the 9:30 Club
• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• 13 days until the NASA tweetup