Commute Loop w/ Kant Support – 2024.01.10

Oof, just when I thought yesterday was cold! Today was even worse. Thankfully my “deep winter” gear kept me warm. Even opened up the shell on the way in to cool me off a little.

All morning long while sitting in the office I knew Kant was out riding his century attempt along Lake Mead Blvd on the west side of town. The weeks immediately before the start of a semester are always the busiest for my team and this semester is no exception. Since I’m the resident Windows and automation platform guru (Ghost Solution Suite) I’m usually the one who ends up experimenting with and creating procedures for various maintenance tasks for our fleet of Windows workstations.

The goal over the winter break was to move management of the workstations in our classroom lecterns from the AV department to our team. Thankfully the future configuring of those workstations will be easy, but it’s the management transition that is kinda sticky. We have a couple different tools (Ghost and Deep Freeze) that we need to point to our stuff rather than the AV team’s stuff.

Late yesterday afternoon I put the finishing touches on a job to perform the majority of the heavy lifting for us. Instead of trying it right then and there I held off until today. Last time I went gung ho I ended up leaving campus an hour later than I wanted. By mid-morning I had finished some other things that were a higher priority, aka hiring of student employees, and could dedicate some time to testing this job. Much to my delight, witnessed by the boss, the job worked perfectly on the first try. This was amazing news as it meant we could make this change en masse without having to touch a single workstation and saving hundreds of man hours of labor. After seeing it finish, I explained it to my boss, like an excited school girl, and then shared that my brain was fried and I was going to leave early. He agreed that I deserved it, and went about migrating more machines before leaving for the day.

I left campus around 2:00 p.m. and made my way over to the Smith’s serving as Kant’s basecamp at Lake Mead Blvd and Rampart. The route and ride over was pretty chill. I’ve ridden some of it before when going back and forth to the medical school, but I hadn’t done it while CES was in town. Thankfully everything went great.

I couldn’t have timed my arrival much better than I did. I came around the corner in the parking lot and there was our boy Kant hanging out at his car. I pulled in behind him and screamed “Aadddoooobbbbboooooo”. He turned around and I watched as his sleep addled mind processed what was happening and who it was standing in front of him.

As we hung out and talked he shared that Jennifer had gone up the road while he was waiting. I think he’d stopped for a snack and rode on, I can’t recall exactly now. Either way it was only a few minutes later that Jennifer pulled in and after a quick chat we all rolled out to start another summit/lap in Kant’s everesting attempt.

Starting up the road was surprisingly easy. I honestly expected the climbing to start immediately, but that first stretch right out of the parking lot wasn’t bad at all. As we rode, Kant was super curious about how I got to Smith’s. I couldn’t help but mess with him a little. I joked that he’d have to wait until he was done and check Strava. I said I could have parked on the other side of the parking lot and rode over from there. Things like that before ultimately admitting that I rode over from work. Which of course was followed with how was I going to get home? I told him I’d ride, of course. I think he thought I was crazy. I assured him that I’m accustomed to riding late at night in the dark. That I wouldn’t be riding in conditions I’m not already familiar with when I commute home from campus. The only difference is I would be riding on roads I’m more used to riding during the day versus at night. I will say that he came back to this concern multiple times which really goes to show the type of person he is.

The first summit and back for me was an eye opener. Going up wasn’t too terrible, but coming down, wow was that cold. It was made worse by the fact that the climbing had me opening my jersey and trying to get some cool on me. Once I rounded the corner to make the descent I couldn’t get bundled back up fast enough. Back at Smith’s, Jennifer had to split to go for a trail run that she’d already had planned which left Kant and I for another summit.

On our way up for my second summit, we heard a horn give a friendly beep going the opposite direction and we recognized it as Josh heading the opposite direction towards Smith’s. Kant had his headphones on and was able to send him a text via Siri to hang out and wait for us to get back. The rest of the up and back went the same as before, but this time I was a little more prepared for the descent.

Once we were back at Smith’s we were surprised to see no sign of Josh. Kant sent him another text and I guess he’d gone up to meet us and missed us. So Kant and I started off up the hill again. Then at some point Kant gets another text that Josh had gone back to Smith’s to meet us. Kant shares that we were already rolling and I guess Josh set out to catch us because a few minutes later here he comes up behind the two of us. He must have really poured it on because he was breathing hot and heavy.

So the third and fourth summits were with Kant, Josh, and I. In between Kant had tried to mount a fresh light on his bike, but broke the mount. The light would stay on, but could easily slide off the front of the bike if he had some heavy braking. I went inside to use the restroom and before coming back out I picked up a roll of electrical tape and bag of zip ties to hopefully salvage the light. Kant was able to make magic happen and he was good to go. While all this was going on Josh had had to take a phone call for work. He pops back out of his car and exclaimed, “You already go up and back?” Kant and I looked at each other in disbelief and just laughed. This guy thinks we’re so much stronger that we are.

At the top of my fourth summit I said my goodbyes to both Kant and Josh. I had a very rough estimate of how long it would take me to get home and I didn’t want to be out too late because I still had work in the morning. I made the quick ride down to Kettle Ridge to turn south through Summerlin, Mountains Edge, and Southern Highlands before heading through Inspirada and up to my house.

Along the way I felt I was cruising pretty good. Then at some point the winds started kicking up pretty good out of the southwest. I received my fair share of solid shoves that left me worried that I’d be calling the wife to get me if it got too much worse. The sketchiest part was along the southern end of Fort Apache after Mountains Edge Pkwy where there were no buildings to block the wind. Felt like I was nearly blown over. Thankfully it was only the one strong gust and I was ok for the remainder of the ride home.

I was pleasantly surprised when I hit stop on the computer to see that I’d wrapped a century for my troubles. Not a bad hump day at all if I say so myself. Only thing better than supporting your friends is when you can do it on a bike!

New bike fund: $38.23 (+$0.29)
11.04 new miles
🏘 Completed 25% of 18b Las Vegas Art District
— From Wandrer.earth
985 vehicles @ 10.4 per mile, 2.5 per minute, Speeds: 35.0 mph (avg), 67.2 mph (max) — by MyBikeTraffic.com
Mostly sunny-Clear, 29°F-49°F, Feels like 32°F-48°F, Humidity 48%-34%, Wind WSW 1mph-SE 5mph — by Klimat.app