a canuck in cyclefornia

'Tis the tubular season

2009-09-06T23:23:00.001-07:00

So maybe I missed the first 'cross race of the season in Livermore--but I have my first set of tubular tires stretching on my first set of tubular rims. I'll be out there, eventually.

Two photos

2009-08-31T21:49:00.000-07:00

Two photos of my own, 'cuz I like them.

First photo, taken this summer with an in-phone camera:

Little did I know that my in-phone camera seems to want everything to look like a watercolor, sorta smudgey-like. In the end, it's a nice effect, but couldn't it be applied afterward, by choice? The pictures is of the beach at Cosens Bay, Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park.

Second photo, taken last December in Mexico City with an actual digital camera, and my desktop background photo ever since (be warned, 2-3 MB file size when I uploaded):

The original 640x480 photo was taken hand-held, about 2 feet above my head, macro setting-point-click before the bird turned around, and came out looking quite crude. However, by some magic, when set up as a desktop wallpaper, all sorts of details "appear" as it's stretched, and the photo that you get by clicking through is actually from taking a screenshot of my desktop. The original is this:

Petty office kitchen politics - win?

2009-04-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

Work is nice: every Monday, they order a bunch of food and stock the office kitchen, to keep us well-fed and happy (and presumably working). So, with people eating a lot, it implies dirty dishes, which were accumulating in the small and awkward office kitchen sink with depressing regularity. There's a sign posted asking people to wash their dishes, with humor but sad ineffectiveness.

Last week, failing to find a single clean knife with which to spread Nutella for a snack, I decided something had to be done to make a point. Tempering my first instinct to simply throw all the dirty dishes left behind into the dumpster, I boxed them and hid them. (Not too carefully, a couple of knives were recovered by another spreader-seeker.) I also made the point to the few present at the time that any more dirty dishes left in the sink would also be "disappeared".

Results? Upon arriving at work the next morning, and indeed for the past week, I have failed to find a single dirty dish in the sink. Perhaps more of them are collecting on people's desks instead, but I don't have to live with that mess.

I was kindly asked to return the missing dishes this morning, and did so, washing them and putting them away. However, the threat of disappearing dishes has not been revoked. I'm interested to see how long it can last.

PS. Long time, no post. What drove me to it? The alternative activity for the evening is to do my tax return, due in the mail on Wednesday.

Ahoy, Mexico!

2008-12-20T11:28:00.000-08:00

Hopefully I'll have something to say about it. Back in 2009.

Better CX racing through technology

2008-11-23T23:04:00.000-08:00

1. The front cantilever brake noodle. Changing the brake cables and housing probably helped too.

2. Ankle protection. I've been scraping the skin off the side of my ankle in CX races for near three months now. Hm, maybe time to do something about it? Bought cheap shinguards, cut off the shin part, kept the ankle protector, and wore it for the race. Bingo, no more scraping.

3. Doping. I don't usually drink coffee or tea, let alone espresso like the pros, so giving me a beverage that recommends limiting intake to no more than three a day is pretty much putting me on the juice. Why this brand? 'Cuz they sponsor CCCX and I can swipe a can or two at the finish line to save for the next weekend; plus, I'm a sucker for any non-alky foodstuff flavored like Irish cream (er, sort-of flavored like Irish cream in this case).

Raced Livermore B and SSA on Saturday and it was fun, fun, fun (the best Bay Area race that no one does!). Raced CCCX B and SSA today and it was fun, fun, fun. Both bikes were working with no stupid mechanicals. I didn't have any major cases of stupid while passing or being passed. I had people to heckle me and cheer me on. My worst injury for the weekend is a set of puncture wounds from the neighbor's tomcat. Okay, the results were modest, I could go faster if I trained and did fewer races, but the weekend is not the time to worry about that.

I think the caffeine had me pretty well perked before and after the races, too, so thank you to all who put up with my inanity. Time to return to regularly scheduled programming...

CX futility index

2008-11-16T20:10:00.000-08:00

A measure of achievement for those not fighting for podium spots in cyclocross races:

1. For each given race in a weekend, find your finishing position (number A).

2. For each given race in a weekend, determine how many finishers there were in your category, not counting DNS/DNF (number B).

3. For each given race in a weekend, determine A/B, your race finish ratio (maximum value 1).

4. Total your race finish ratios from the weekend to determine your futility index.

Whoever has the highest total "wins". What they win, I don't know. It's not just a competition about being mediocre, it's about being mediocre over and over again. (A DNF doesn't count because it implies some recognition of futility.)

Needless to say, I don't have any wonderful race results to report from this weekend, though I feel happy to have not destroyed any equipment or suffered any injuries beyond scratches and bruises. I couldn't pull off the "double double", not having enough left to finish a singlespeed race at CCCX after racing twice at Saturday's night race, and so lost a possible full point in my futility index--I'm okay with that. Once the results are up from Pilarcitos, I'll report my numbers...

In Canada only, I guess

2008-11-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

CX Santa Rosa #2 - Thick friggin' mud

2008-11-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

By the end of my racing, I was sweating mud.

The forecast was for heavy rain on Saturday, not so heavy on Sunday--so we'll see whether Candlestick gets sloppy for tomorrow's race, but today's race in Santa Rosa seemed a lock for wet, soupy mud, and it was delivered. In the car on the way there, a little voice in my head was anticipating the conditions, as my best-ever results, a couple C wins, were at super-slop races. There wasn't much time for daydreaming, though, as Hwy 101 had little floods and heavy spray--definitely high-speed windshield wiper conditions.

I arrived a little after 11 and watched the women's race: dirty, dirty women...seemed sort of ominous. The spectators beside me were C racers who had finished and cleaned up, and reports were of inches-thick mud on the backside of the course.

With that little bit of intelligence, I went back to sit in the car, pin numbers and gear up for the 12.30ish start of the 35+B/B/45+B race. When time got close, I did a single lap to scout the course...and soon was filthier than I've been in a long time. Some of it soupy, some of it goopy, some of it spreadable like peanut butter, all mud. The bike was OK with it, except for one little catch of the chain that would come back to haunt me.

My B wave started at a gap behind the 35+B's (logic? don't know) with a short sidewalk stretch before hitting the good stuff. A makeshift plank bridge crossing a waist-deep creek led into the really tricky bit of mud, and the wiser little voice in my head told me to get off and run...so I did, and started passing all the riders trying bravely and "honorably" to pedal through the stuff. A more rideable stretch followed, then more thick muck that I ran--and it seemed as though, just maybe, I was leading the B's and tickling the back of the 35+B field!

All for nought, though. When it came back to the rideable sections, that little skip of the chain came back. I can't tell if it was a sticky link or a front derailleur issue, but if I tried to power down (which happens a lot in the mud), the chain would jam between the cage and the rings and forward motion stopped. After much swearing and a couple forced dismounts, I figured out that backpedaling could get the chain to reseat itself, so better; but there's a reason they don't teach you the cha-cha (two steps forward, half a step back) on a bike: it doesn't move you very fast. Soon, I was losing positions, and more positions, and more forced dismounts...

I would've liked to ride more. It felt good to be pushing under those conditions, and being able to run the ugly bits was really helpful in the B's, but if the bike don't roll, y'ain't gonna do so good. We'll see where I ended up in the results.

Once the B's were through, I suited up for the singlespeed race right afterward. Dave C. pointed out to me that the SS bike was perfect for the conditions, and he was right--who needs gears in all that goo? Things didn't start well in this race, as I almost immediately took a great glob of mud straight into my left eye, which took some furious blinking to clear out (I'm still scraping mud out of my eyesockets now). Three laps in, Josh S. lapped me, my back and a knee were whining, and I was too tired to be able to solve those sections of the course that perhaps I could've ridden earlier with a working drivetrain, so I pulled myself and was done.

Cleanup was a bitch. I would hose myself off, turn to cleaning the bikes, look back at myself and I was dirty again. So: sweating mud. Even after a shower, I'm sure I'll be picking grit out of crevices for a while. And there's yet more 'cross racing tomorrow!

Sorry, no pictures: it was pouring rain and after just a little bit of riding I was filthy enough to dirty anything I touched. Several photogs were prowling the course, though, so I hope some of those shots (though not those of me) end up circulating. Alternatively, I am totally empathizing with the top-flight riders in Belgium today: there are some glorious mud shots in this gallery at cyclingnews.com.

Surf City film

2008-10-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

Putting together a cyclocross video was sorta fun the first time, so when I felt no inclination to actually race this past Sunday, it was pretty easy to fall back on Plan B and wander around, camera in-hand, to see what I could film. Did I miss stuff? Heck yeah, like the hecklers on the runup and the entire elite men's race, but one man can only do so much.

Love it? Hate it? It may not be "hardcore"; instead, it seems sorta like a promo video. Probably someone else would make different edits given the footage I have.

I did learn:
--Do not mess with your iPhoto folders when using iMovie--my first draft was all for nought when I tried importing some pictures and messed up the file structure.
--No matter how cool a song seems at first, after listening to dozens of bits and pieces of it for a few hours, it gets old.
--The dismount at the front of the cluster at about 1.42 is nifty, and smoothly executed. Had he been practicing foot-over-top-tube?
--Youtube compression plays hell with video resolution. I don't know if uploading a more detailed (and larger) file would help. The audio seems all right, at least.
--Without me publicizing a darn thing, in the 30 minutes since uploading the video to the time I'm now typing this, it has 5 views. Ah, the randomness of the internet...

Pink

2008-10-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

I tried to get some clips and photos at the Surf City race today, and we'll see if I can cobble together some of the footage; but the only photo that I can tell turned out in full, unretouched, uncropped glory is the following, which perhaps does capture some of the spirit of the event. (Click on it for full-size...)

Training plan of champions

2008-10-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

Took a week off to sit in a car, drive to Vegas and back, and hike around the mountaintops.

Did one 'cross race (CXSR #1), more than adequate to blow my engine and render me hopelessly incapable of following up in the singlespeed race (didn't stop me from trying for a while--it was free, after all--and hurtin' some of the soft tissue...).

Flew to Ottawa for a long weekend and Canadian Thanksgiving--including massive amounts of dessert (why have just one?):

So, my last three weeks or so have not been a paragon of cyclocross preparation. With Pilarcitos #1 at McLaren Park looming this Sunday, the holy c#$@ instinct to actually do some prep kicked in this morning. 20 minutes of hill intervals were enough to make my legs rubbery and leave me feeling vaguely nauseous once off the bike--those are good signs, right?

One week's vacation

2008-09-22T13:57:00.001-07:00

All the kiddies should be stuck in school and their parents should be making sure that the kiddies go to school, leaving the roads and parks open for me to go see some Things I Have Not Yet Seen.

A far from comprehensive list but one that's relevant to the week ahead:
Hwy 120 through Yosemite NP
Death Valley NP
Las Vegas
Interbike (Actually, I probably won't get in, but I can be in its presence)
Cross Vegas
Hoover Dam (maybe)
Sequoia and King's Canyon NPs

Would've left already except that glass class starts up again tonight. Hopefully I can wake myself up early tomorrow and get on the road.

That's not supposed to happen

2008-09-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

It's a bad thing when your chainring bolts get loose at any time, let alone in the middle of a cyclocross race. It made for some good spectating and a pseudo-heroic finish, I hope.

CCCX #1 was held at the Fort Ord DOD building, a roughly counter-clockwise loop of the roads and sandy singletrack. My B race at 10am went OK, but the field was clearly much stronger than the LAPRD field. The CCCX course was also hillier than LAPRD's, so I got to say hello to my back muscles for the first time this year...Got 11th out of 18-19, and frustrated that I couldn't figure out how to ride up the sandy climb.

After two hours, lunch, and some advice from Josh Snead on how to ride the sandy climb, I lined up for the singlespeed A race. I had a reasonable start, but spun out/slowed down before the first corner and that was the last I saw of most everyone else in the field. It gave me time to think more about lines through the loose stuff (having my speed governed by the fixed gear ratio probably helped too).

Last corner, just after getting lapped by J.S., I hopped back on after the last barriers, pushed on the pedal, and rather than moving forward, I bent the bejeezus out of my chainring (see pic above). Since it was the last corner, I picked up the bike to jog over the finish line, no effect on final results. I had heard suspicious pinging noises from my drivetrain somewhere and thought I might've broken a spoke, but it seems to have been a chainring bolt or bolts coming loose. I lost two of five in the end. Yes, I feel a fool, but let my story be the cautionary tale: when's the last time you checked if your chainring bolts were tight?

Thanks to Gannon M. for advice on tire inflation, J.S. on the riding advice (worked a charm), the SS field for the commiserations/mocking, and Rod for not making me do another lap post-Chainring Incident. We'll see if I "man up" to a 42t or replace my girly-man 38t...

Big X

2008-09-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

I moved to California ten years ago today.

I was supposed to have moved to California ten years ago as of yesterday, but a little confusion while coming through the immigration desk the first time meant that I got to watch my flight leave the gate and take off while I was standing in line to come through immigration the second time.

Two suitcases and a bike box...and now all this crap around me is mine!

larp'd #2

2008-09-14T20:56:00.000-07:00

Livermore was blessedly cool compared to last week--the forecasted high was only 92F/33C. Heck, I may have even felt a chill before the races started.

Men's B: bigger field than last week. Similar pattern: 8-9 guys in a group at the front after the first lap, then hanging on to see who could last. After a couple more laps, I saw the group split in front of me...never good to see that gap. I wasn't rolling as well as last week, both in my own head and compared to how the others were rolling, but just how so will remain unknown: I flatted just before the bell. Thanks to the spectator with "cool hands" who helped me after I flubbed switching out my rear tire. Still picked up 7/12.

Sarah Maile came out and raced against the B's (and beat me!). Josie JM and Sarah Kerlin showed up for the women's race just beforehand, and so it could have been a three-way battle--but oddly, JJM and SK finished at the front of the women's race hand-in-hand without a sprint, and SM held off until the B race. Maybe it's just too early for racing for those with the real goods, so a little detente for the time being.

I lined up on-time for the singlespeed race--I know at least Gianni was swiveling and looking for me at the start line this time! Cesar "Big Dog" Chavez showed up for the SS race, though, so G and I both knew we were done for. AJM lined up in stars-and-bars trimmed kit and that's the last I saw of him for a while...

At lap 3 or so I was running second-to-last when my rear tube blew. Never good on a singlespeed bike, especially since I had no spare wheel. But there was a spare tube in the car...

Picked up the bike.
Walked back to the car.
Got a tube, pump, tire levers, wrench.
For some reason, walked over to the pit tent to fix things.
Realized I had dropped the tire levers somewhere.
Watched the leaders go by...again...
Was somewhat pleased to find that a forgiving rim-bead combination allowed me to get the clincher tire off with my bare hands (whatcha gonna do...?).
Tube out, tube in, bead back in, pump it up, off we go!
Oops, chain fell off--what a fool. Back to the pits to adjust to loosen the axle bolts and try again...
Watched the leaders go by...again...

So it wasn't much of a race, even less so than last week's. I got back on the course, though, and rode 'til the end, good enough for third! Yes, out of three.

Double dippin' in the hot, hot sun

2008-09-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

A cyclocross race in Livermore when the forecasted high was 38 C/101 F was a dubious proposition, and doubling up under the conditions was really just not wise...

But you know me.

First race of the 2008 'cross season (at least a month before it could really be considered 'cross season) was hosted by Shane & Co. of the parks and rec dept. in, yes, Livermore. My start time #1 was 10.30am, and it was already hot enough that basic motions like walking led to sweating.
The course was wide and flat, leaving lots of room to pick different lines and pass people--nice.

After my lousy start and a lap, the B field was a bunch of 10 at the front, with me hanging on to the back.

A lap or two later, I had passed and moved up, and there were maybe five. Fitness and heat were taking a toll.

And then I was chasing two.

Halfway through the penultimate lap, #2 pulled up--flat!--and I took his spot. Unfortunately, #1 had decided to stop toying with us and had shot out of sight. One more heat-blasted lap, and the second step on the podium was mine!

Um, except that I had the single speed race to prep for in 15 minutes, and missed the podium. Instead, I was slapping a bag of ice on the back of my neck, drowning myself in Gatorade, etc. I hadn't mentioned anything to CaseyK about doubling up, though, so in the middle of repinning my number the race was started and away without me.

A minute later I was off playing "catch-up", but there wasn't too much response from my legs. Given the gap, the fatigue, the heat, and the $5 entry fee, I was pretty content to do practice laps for an hour. On the bright side, 1) Josh Snead lapped me a second time about 100m from the finish line, so I didn't have to do that last lap, and 2) with only 5 single-speeders starting, everybody was on the podium!

End of race: more water, more Gatorade, more ice, shade, shade, shade. Some folks had the strength left to hop the fence and stand under the sprinklers in the neighboring field. There were some blasted-looking bodies strewn about the finish line. Some familiar faces, too, and it was nice to catch up.

Make it stop

2008-09-01T21:45:00.001-07:00

Labor Day weekend--

Friday night: Athletics game from behind home plate, thanks to a friend getting "Diamond Level" tickets. Upside, free ballpark food. Downside, probably showed up stuffing my face on TV. And what do I do with this bobblehead?

Saturday: laps of Redwood Park on the 'cross bike. New tires to test. Clockwise on the ridge trails, it's all good except for the hill climbing up West Ridge--mmm, trudging uphill in bike shoes...It was good to get offroad but starting in a pack of riders will probably still freak me out come race time.

Sunday: morning swim followed by afternoon culture, Chihuly at the de Young. Showed up and there was a huge line just to buy tickets, but not 10 seconds after getting into the line a guy walked up to us and scalped us some tix for face value--sweet! Popular exhibit, crowded, lots of gaudy glass baubles on display, incredibly hyperbolic curation. Eating dinner afterwards, the miso soup was brilliant--umami!

Monday: back into SF for the Giro di San Francisco. A crit course giving spectators lots to watch. Checked out the cat 4/5's thinking I might be able to keep up in some crits and road races next spring. Watched and wandered al fresco au velo from 10am 'til 5pm, listening to the occasional meaty thuds of cyclist hitting asphalt. Happy to see pab and xbunny, 'cuz it sounds like I won't see them at the 'cross races this fall.

It's not even 10 and I want to/need to/will go to bed now.

Swimming doesn't make me a bad cyclist

2008-08-24T18:47:00.000-07:00

...does it?

I've been in a bit of a running funk after finishing the half marathon in San Francisco three weeks ago, leaving me with lots of time to contemplate going for a swim. The Temescal pool in Oakland is just a short walk away and is open for lap swimming at all the right times (i.e. mornings until 8.30am, weekends at noon). It's oddly a 100 ft pool, but it's been so long since I've swam regularly that intervals and splits are pretty meaningless.

Swimming, even doing laps in a small pool, even while sharing a lane with 5-6 people with other agendas, is fun. It's engaging to focus on all the little motions and positioning that make a difference between my pace and world record pace, much more so than simple strength and conditioning (though some of that wouldn't hurt either).

From a bike-centric point of view, I can claim that I'm improving my core strength before 'cross season. Also, if I have a little bit of upper body strength, maybe it'll help prevent me breaking a collarbone--how many cyclists have bone strength in their upper limbs comparable to osteoperotic chickens?

Bike meets world

2008-08-16T17:34:00.001-07:00

New baby:

Getting my hands on this one took longer than I would've thought: Cervelo is still a small company with limited production runs. When I put a deposit down in the spring, the hope was to get one from the immediately upcoming shipment, but someone underestimated how many long, lanky folks like myself would want this model in this size and I lost out. A few months have since passed, but it's finally here, built up, and I took it out for a maiden voyage this morning.

It's so quiet. The Easton wheelset doesn't make a whisper--heck, the freehub on the back wheel doesn't even tick when you pick it up and spin it. No creaks or pings or squeaks, nothing to indicate that the bike is holding me back in any way. (In other words, no excuses.)

Is it any faster than my beloved, venerable, deep red, steel-framed Cramerotti? On paper, it better be. I rode a hilly 39-mile loop over to Moraga and Orinda that I've done a couple times on the red bike before, and finished about 8 minutes faster (stopwatch auto-pausing at traffic lights, etc.), about a 5% improvement. Was it the bike itself? New bike enthusiasm? A better bike fit? No exercise for two weeks leaving me well-rested? All of the above? ...My general feeling was that it hasn't and won't transform me into a brilliant climber--that takes training and weight loss--but it has something special on the flats and descents. Slow is still slow, but the fasts are faster.

For the record, the bike count is now back up to five.

Bicycle Film Festival 2008

2008-07-27T22:45:00.000-07:00

I came, I saw, I...was sometimes entertained, sometimes puzzled. Maybe there aren't that many cycling films out there, maybe there isn't that much separating film from Youtube these days.

I went to two screenings on Saturday, the 5pm and 9pm. 5pm session first: three films, two shorts and a long. The two shorts sounded promising as they were intended to be tributes to Pantani and Coppi, but...well, the filmmakers may have considered themselves seriously, but the Pantani film was little more than messed-up footage from the 1994 Tour de France, while the audience could only laugh--out loud--at the pretentious abstraction of the Coppi film (corpa...nervo...ossa...corpa...nervo...ossa...corpa!...nervo!...ossa!...)(sigh...) and hope for it to end quickly (not quickly enough).

The long film was "Les ninjas de Japon", which cuts between following five road racers from Japan and following the 2006 Tour de Burkina Faso in West Africa. It's an interesting juxtaposition of scenes in a highly developed country and in a badly underdeveloped country, neither of which resembles the USA or Canada at all. Well worth seeing if you have a chance, in my opinion, even if you're not a cyclist.

Then, the 9pm screening, whose program was clearly aimed at the urban fixed gear scene. Thorough reviewing was already done by Beth, so I'll stick with a few observations:

(a) While film of fixie riders pedaling at high cadence may be impressive to the cognosceti, to most of us it just looks like a guy pedaling fast--which is NOT THRILLING in itself, regardless of your choice of music.

(b) Lucas Brunelle is to messenger biking what Warren Miller is to skiing, but it's a lot harder for Average Joe to go heli-skiing. Heaven knows how many idiots will be encouraged to skid through red lights by LB's work. At the same time, I admit to the visceral thrill of watching a rider make an awful decision and almost get smeared (literally) by a bus.

(c) The obvious crowd favorite was a 10-12 minute film featuring fixed gear riders on the streets of San Francisco, "Macaframa". There was much of the above-mentioned guys pedaling fast, ho-hum. Regardless of how not-interesting the cycling was inherently, the cinematography--great panning, tracking, deep focus, a little slo-mo--was really, really good. Darn good. Those kind of shots could make riding Muni seem sorta cool, while in this case some guys on bikes were sorta there.

In terms of things that I think you, my faithful reader, could spare some change to go see, stick with "Les ninjas de Japon", though it's unlikely to visit a nearby theater anytime soon. The rest was ignorable. If the filmmakers are reading (ha!), two words, even for a 3-minute film: character development. Make me give a damn, please. "Belle Epoche" managed it in 3, why can't you?

Festival Life

2008-07-20T21:12:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to the Fire Arts Festival in West Oakland. It's put on by the Crucible, the place where I had my glassworking class a few weeks ago, as one of their major fundraisers. I wish I had pictures, if I could take pictures that could do the display justice, but picture-taking is discouraged, I imagine since (a) a lot of the displays are from artists actually trying to make a living off this stuff and (b) flashbulbs just would not be cool.

Without pictures, it's a bit hard to describe the first five minutes of the show. The doors opened at 8pm, letting everyone file in and take a look in the remaining daylight at the inventions and contraptions filling the lot below the BART tracks.

At 9pm, on schedule, the Opening Flare fired, and I could feel the heat on my face from 100+ ft away. Within 5 minutes, I was experiencing the vertigo of all hell breaking loose around me: a keyboard-fired menorah, a 25-ft wide candelabra beating flames in time with someone's pulse, hyrogen bubbles popping and pounding my eardrums, a Tesla coil giving off clouds of ozone as the Tin Man danced around it, a Baba Yaga treehouse belching steam high in the air, as a troupe of (I kid not) black vinyl-clad, flame-wielding go-go girls aboard their vehicles, the results of crossbreeding Amish wagons with Mad Max, shot roaring flames 30 ft into the air while the blackened iron sculptures scattered about them were fired to a roaring, glowing red...

First five minutes was pretty intense, and I was actually wondering if I was feeling okay, but a little time and a little fresh air later, glowing iron sculpture and go-go girls were pretty cool.

We had great fun watching the Flame Vortex folks send a swirling tornado of fire curling and lapping at the BART cars (an unexpected bonus with your fare!). The Flamethrower Shooting Gallery was sadly not available to members of the general public. Firebots: remote controlled conflagration! The stage show had some music, lots of fire dancing, and the highlight of an acrobatic pas de deux aboard a hula hoop craned 40 ft into the air...noticeably without any safety equipment (say, a net?) that we could see. Or fire, for that matter, but still spectacular. Grand finale: a turbojet powered flame cannon generating 150 dB and continuous plumes of 100 ft flames.

Good fun, highly recommended to anyone not completely pyrophobic. If you've ever been Burning Man-curious but are put off by various aspects such as the dust, the FAF has all the spectacle, takes much less time, and involves far less inconvenience.

-----

This Week: the Bicycle Film Festival is coming to San Francisco, Wednesday-Saturday. Uh, there aren't any films to speak of in the program on Wednesday or Thursday, but they do show up Friday and Saturday. They're showing at the Victoria Theatre right atop the 16th St BART station making it super easy to get there. I may have to get tickets for a couple film sessions on Saturday (probably the 5pm and 9pm) with a break for dinner in between. Anybody else? C'mon, my festival-picking mojo is working pretty hard right now.

TdF coverage quibbles

2008-07-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my life, I have unfettered access to live Tour de France coverage on television--even better, I can tape delay and fast forward through commercials, which are even more boring than watching a 4-man breakaway get slowly, inevitably gobbled up over 100 km or so. It's not like suddenly having indoor plumbing after a lifetime without, but still, it's a nice addition to life, though it (TdF coverage) doesn't help me get to work any earlier. (Indoor plumbing just gets me to work smelling better.)

Phil "The Voice" Liggett and Paul "The Vet" Sherwen obviously are still the commentators; Al Trautwig has been shipped off somewhere else. Robbie Ventura is possibly competent but I can (and do) fast-forward through anything he has to say. Bob Roll is around but I haven't watched any of the repackaged evening shows, so I have no idea if his French is as bad as ever (I expect it is).

Quibbles:

--Why list the nationalities of riders? It's been decades since teams were organized by country. Is Kim Kirchen riding for Team Luxembourg? No! (Side note: it was a curious and dirty little trick of the press to start talking about the Luxembourg "rivalry".) It would be far more useful to list riders by their team names, which would go a long ways towards matching name (e.g. Jegou) with team kit (Francaise des Jeux) while watching. Nationality is a bit of trivia Phil and Paul should banter about during nature breaks.

--Team Columbia = America's team, rah, rah, rah. Yes, Team Columbia is registered in San Luis Obispo, CA, but I also know that the company I work for in Berkeley, CA, is registered in Delaware. The only American on the start list for Team Columbia is George Hincapie, and there are only 3 Americans on the entire men's roster (plus one Canuck). And since the idea of Columbia's sponsorship is to increase its exposure in Europe, I don't expect to see an American grassroots program anytime soon.

--Not a quibble, just an observation: T-Mobile should be rolling on the floor in agony at the lost marketing after withdrawing their sponsorship (just imagine Kirchen on the podium every day, Cavendish winning sprints, in pink shorts).

--Hincapie is experienced, yes, but Phil and Paul spend a lot of time describing him as a "road captain" without ever mentioning that Team Columbia in fact has a DS who may be pretty sharp himself: Rolf Aldag, of (!) ex-T-Mobile fame. Oh, oops, are people allowed to say that name at the Tour after his doping confession last year? Perhaps Phil and Paul don't want to be blacklisted by ASO.

Hello, uh, Mr. Nobel-Prize-winner, uh, sir...

2008-07-08T20:56:00.000-07:00

Had lunch across the table from a Nobel Prize winner today. I will claim to have not been star-struck, but it was a bit hard to keep up with the intensity of his agenda--frankly, he's been doing a lot more research on it than I have--so perhaps just staying quiet at all times would've been for the best. Gotta give the man credit, he has done well to get into an excellent position to actually address climate change and energy use in scientifically and practically relevant way.

--

After spending the day in my concrete box of a lab and reading the lead news stories online of the heat wave passing through the Bay Area, I was expecting to come outside and get the hair-dryer feeling while biking home. Instead, it was a bit cool for shirtsleeves to start. Hm, there are advantages to living in Berkeley/Oakland...I'm still going to hang out in the frozen foods section tonight, but that's 'cuz the cupboards are stripped bare.

But don't quit the day job

2008-06-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

Glass class was fun.

Old bike: fixer-upper or moneypit?

2008-06-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

Three months of bike commuting and my legs are loosening up for the daily ride--okay, okay, I blamed my initial slowness on the vintage of my commuter bike and its parts, but most of it was me. But, there was that bit that was the 10-year-old bike.

A 10-year-old mountain bike: hardtail steel frame, no disc brakes, a suspension fork with a whole 2.5" of travel (they don't make those anymore, I checked), cheap wheels that I'd bought when my net worth was below zero.

And yet...

If the bike fits, ride it, right?

Well, there's not much to be done about the fork and brakes, but it's a commuter bike. New brake pads at least; a new, less-slumpy saddle bag; new tires (slicks), new wheels (and those make a world of difference), and someday soon even a new bottom bracket (square taper!).

The set of decent wheels alone probably cost more than the bike is worth as a whole, so the sceptic would say I'm throwing good money away that I could be spending on, oh, I don't know, braces? Or a new toy with actual easy-riding capability like Option A or Option B. But those would look pretty silly with a pannier rack on the back...

You're shitting me

2008-06-11T23:07:00.000-07:00

Went to a new dentist this morning for regular checkup and cleaning, and I have come away feeling like I was being scammed. I mean, sure, you have to poke around and see if there's decay, but this guy was ramming into teeth as if he was trying to make holes--not a gentle touch. Younger guy, with way too much gel in his hair. One cavity found, so that'll have to get fixed, but then:

"So, your top front teeth are slightly intruded."

"They're slowly wearing the lower front teeth."

"You should consider orthodontics."

"It would cost about $6,000 to $8,000."

"We could do it right here."

What the fuck? I'm 32 years old and not one of my previous dentists--who I trust far more than this guy--have ever mentioned anything about getting friggin' braces. Gee, isn't it convenient that Mr. Dentist would recommend a few thousand dollars' worth of work that he could do--not covered by insurance, of course, it being a cosmetic procedure?

Now, I do think of teeth as being a worthy investment; hey, here I am scheduling appointments without my mother telling me. And I've donated generously by having rotten teeth, then having mercury amalgam fillings to be replaced, which will someday degenerate into crowns and the whole deal. But I'm sorry, you cannot sit in front of me after seeing me once for a matter of minutes and get $8,000 from me.

Learnin' the roads

2008-06-07T14:19:00.000-07:00

I'm finally coaxing myself out for decent road rides on the weekends, with the first step being to figure out how to get up Tunnel Road to reach the other side of the hills to the east. It turns out that Tunnel falls into a black hole of sorts on most maps: Google Maps is car-centric; the "West of the Hills" map by East Bay Bike Coalition is out of print; Tunnel falls at the 4-corner intersection of the varying-scale pages of the scanned-in online version of the EBBC WotH map; and my Berkeley bikeways and walkways map doesn't reach far enough east to make things clear. Finally, the text directions from Missing Link for a loop ride out to Pinehurst Road made things relatively clear (points for the bike co-op).

It's a little funny to get back on the road bike after riding the commuter bike pretty regularly for three months. I think I should get out a measuring tape and see what the BB-to-seat and seat-to-handlebar distances are; my legs didn't seem to be extending and my arms didn't seem to be reaching as far (caveat on the BB-seat of different pedals/shoes/cleat stack height). Huh.

So let's see:

Tunnel Road. What a pussycat of a climb. The road must've been laid out with horse-drawn carts in mind, as it doesn't seem to get much over 5% grade--similar to the San Jose approach to Mt. Hamilton, though only up to what, 1200 ft?, instead of 4000 ft. Which is nice, because climbing Tunnel seems to be necessary to do any other East Bay rides if you want to ride from home in Berkeley or Oakland. Plus, it has great views.

Pinehurst Road. Um...is Pinehurst an up road or a down road? I was going down, and everyone else coming up seemed a bit surprised to see someone descending such a narrow road. It seems to have been repaved recently, but it is rather narrow. Pinehurst does carry you past Canyon, CA, which seems to consist of the post office, a school, and not much else. And riding under the trees is good for the soul.

Moraga Way. This 5-mile, two-lane highway connects Moraga (quaint, hoity-toity community to the south) to Orinda (quaint, hoity-toity community to the north), with plenty of room on the sides for shoulder/bike lane--nice! Um, except no one told me that the pavement is currently grooved. Not knowing any alternative routes, I plowed over the grooves for what, 3 of the 5 miles? Not fun, though it was good practice for relaxing my grip on the handlebars. I hope that the repaving is imminent.

Wildcat Canyon. Another pussycat climb--more of a traverse, really. No shoulders, so it's narrow and things have to be negotiated with all the cars driving up to visit Inspiration Point and Tilden Park, but the road is twisty enough to keep those cars from doing 50, which seems to give everyone time to figure things out.

Euclid Road. Having climbed back over to the west side of the hills, Euclid is a traverse to match Wildcat Canyon on the east side. Going down, it seemed to be an efficient through-way for a bicycle with a minimum of stops and not much traffic to deal with.

Past that, there was the messiness of finding my way back to Oakland. Some of Berkeley's bikeways work, and others are just complete nonsense. I think I forgot to wipe a bike commute (~4.5 miles) from my computer before starting, as it's telling me almost 35 miles while Missing Link claims a 29.5 mile distance from the shop. Anyway, if I know a 30 mile, a 50 mile, and a 70 mile route to ride, that oughta keep me occupied.

Another note to self: cut toenails. Road shoes fit tighter than commute shoes.

Where the hell is the autowash

2008-05-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

After driving around on errands yesterday morning, I came home to discover that I had one more: the clicker to open the gate on my building's car park wasn't working, dead battery. To deal with it later, I parked on the street...under a tree. Oops.

So Car is now covered with little specks of Tree Gunk, the windows are a mess, it's probably overdue for a little TLC, and I can't expect rain to wash any of it off. After going in to work for while this afternoon, I drove past a few of the gas stations I know, and none of them have an automatic car wash: y'know, the kind with the spray and the big rollers and brushes that as a child was a terrifying thrill, that takes 5 minutes. It's all I need: I don't want a hand wash or wax or anything like that.

I've now searched online--Google and Yelp--for car washes in Oakland/Berkeley. The only listings are for hand car washes which almost universally get panned in their reviews, even for $20+ it seems. There are detailing outfits with good reviews, but for $100+ I'd expect even my car to be frickin' sparkling inside and out.

There may be a couple things going on here. First, Alameda County may have different ideas about water use, which may discourage the installation of automatic car washes. Second, the balance of the high capital cost of the equipment versus the availability of dirt-cheap unskilled labor may favor hand washes. This area does not seem to like investing in itself.

Crap. Well, Car doesn't get used during the week anyway.

Watching the corks pop

2008-05-15T21:07:00.001-07:00

In general, I'd say buildings in Berkeley are unprepared for genuinely hot weather. Realistically, it doesn't happen very often: the winds just blow off the ocean and keep things cool. However, on days like today, that wind stops--and things get noticeably less comfortable.

The thermostat in the lab at work is usually set to 72F, moderate. As the outside temps climbed to 98F today, though, the indoor temperatures (in our one-story, thin-walled building) also started to rise. 74, 76, 78...I work in a chemistry lab. Ether boils at, oh, 87F. 80, 81, 82...OK, so we topped out at 83F or so, so nothing started overpressurizing or boiling over when we didn't expect it to, but try putting on neoprene gloves and standing over a bath of rubbing alcohol for any length of time when it's 83F. Arms sweating until it runs and fumes, fumes, fumes...

I wonder how many batches of ginger beer in Berkeley garages blew up today?

The other aspect of this hot, dry weather (18% humidity, woo-hoo!) is that it released a hellish cloud of god-knows-what dust and pollen this morning. It was Bike to Work Day, so I rode past a couple of the "energizer stations" checking for schwag (at 9am, good luck). Every 10 seconds it felt like a piece of broken glass had blown into my eye. I didn't see my face until I got to work (25? minutes of riding), by which point my eyes looked like ripe tomatoes.

(not actually my eye)

I can only wonder what the volunteers at the BTWD stations thought of my Hellboy look, yeesh. (I'm a normal...er, relatively normal person! Really!)

High and tight

2008-05-08T21:14:00.000-07:00

Having not had blog inspiration for a while, time to get back in the saddle with a bit of petty complaining...

If you know how to fix a flat, chances are you ride a bike equipped with a saddle bag. Heck, some people even race crits with them. Most saddle bags have a velcro'd strap to go around the seatpost and another that loops through the saddle rails to hold them in place, and the manufacturer's photos show them snug and secure:

Typically, though, saddle bags fall victim to the combined effects of vibrations and gravity: the bag contents shift aft, the saddle rail loop shifts forward, and truth is many bags look like a bad case of...hmm, this is a family show...so let's call it "half-mast":

I had to move my blinky light down to keep it from getting masked by Limpy the Saddle Bag...Now, I realize Limpy serves perfectly well and I can't even see behind/under my seat while riding, but out of sight does not always mean out of mind. Yes, in those quiet moments when I can't be bothered to do or think about something useful, it sometimes occurs to me to think about why I can't get my saddle bag to stay up.

Whether or not their bikes are actually any good or simply represent another version of technical parity compared to the umpteen other manufacturers out there, Trek has made saddle bags with a "quick cleat" attachment that indeed provides unfailing support to its saddle bags. The tradeoff is that you can't switch the saddle bag from bike to bike quickly unless you buy another "quick cleat" for the other bicycle...but how often do you use the same saddle bag on more than one bike?

Anyway, I had a Trek bag for years until some yutz decided to steal it, gathering for him-or herself a patched tube, a set of levers, a patch kit, maybe a crescent wrench, and the bag itself--but they failed to take the "cleat" attachment, so it was gone from my life and useless to them, thanks for that. But the memory of that saddle bag faithfully tucked up high and tight when compared to the vision of Limpy above will probably send me to a Trek dealer sometime soon for an upgrade.

...what the hell am I writing about? Good lord, just push the "publish" button and be done with it...

Rules of news-browsing

2008-04-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

1. When reading an American newspaper or magazine, always read any article that mentions Canada, if only for the novelty of reading about Canada in an American newspaper or magazine.

2. When reading any mainstream newspaper or magazine, always read any article that mentions bicycles, if only for the novelty of reading about bicycles in a mainstream newspaper or magazine.

...and following from rule #2, while reading a Canadian news site (thus making rule #1 inapplicable), I came across this bizarre way of riding across America. It looks like he's spinning pretty well, but...what muscles is he using?

Odd how the BBC can put things in perspective

2008-04-16T21:32:00.001-07:00

I guess it's been a long time since I've seen or done something that seemed completely improbable or unlikely or oddly profound.

Oddly enough, then, coming across this clip from Top Gear, the BBC show putatively concerned with cars, set me back a little.

Not to mention that it made my inner engineer a bit giddy.

Oh, hell, if the BBC is going to post it up, might as well put this good bit of editing and trivia in, too:

I loves me some data

2008-04-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

This is where I live.

Try searching your own zip code. It always seems that some numbers are obvious while others can be a surprise. Around here, too, it can be interesting to look at the differences between neighboring zip codes (like 94611 vs. 94609).

9 min diversion: Canadian cyclists on the loose in China

2008-04-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

Canadian trackies starting in Sydney and arriving in Beijing for the World Cup track events in December, 2007.

Run Russell Run

2008-03-31T21:02:00.000-07:00

It's been a long, lazy winter. And now the folks at work have signed us up to do the Big Sur Marathon as a relay. Gotta represent...

Then a week later, I get invited to rejoin last year's Wildflower triathlon relay team as the runner. OK, we won last year, but that was mostly due to the monster swimmer and ringer cyclist; I hung on enough to not lose the lead.

I've tried Tilden and Redwood parks in the East Bay hills for runs so far, and Redwood so far is hands down the winner--the Stream Trail is the closest thing to Huddart Park (a little slice of heaven in Woodside) I've been through in a long time. Tilden is a bit strange: it's back-to-nature vibe is definitely spoiled by the view of people's houses on the ridgelines, which gave me the feeling that I was running through their backyard.

Still, that's two runs in the past week, and I felt the first one in my legs for the following four days. Bike commuting will help to flush out a little lactate, but I've gotta be doing those little bread-'n'-butter runs during the week as well. Lift those heels!

High praise for my hack photo

2008-03-24T23:09:00.000-07:00

Hi Russ,

I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo
has been selected for inclusion in the newly released
second edition of our Schmap Canada Guide:...

Well, that was a fluke occurence. They had actually written a few weeks ago to ask for "permission". Do these people ask for everyone's photos? Or maybe they just have room to include a bazillion thumbnails for any given landmark.

If Cyclingnews.com took a look at my commuter bike

2008-03-20T22:47:00.000-07:00

That is, if they could ever stop laughing:

Full specification

Frame: 1998 Specialized Rockhopper Comp, "Nitanium" steel alloy*
Rear shock: uh, no
Fork: Rock Shox Jett T2, never serviced, 2 inches travel if I hit a real big hole*

Critical measurements
Rider's height: 1.9m (6'3"); Weight: 84kg (185lb)
Seat tube length, c-c: 495mm
Seat tube length, c-t: 508mm
Top tube length: 597mm (horizontal)

Bottom bracket: Unknown*
Cranks: Specialized, 180 mm, 22-32-44*
Chain: SRAM PC-951 (new!)
Front derailleur: Shimano STX RC*
Rear derailleur: Shimano Deore LX*
Shift levers: Shimano Deore
Front brake: Dia-Compe VC733*
Rear brake: Dia-Compe VC733*
Brake levers: Dia-Compe DP7 *
Rear sprockets: Shimano HG70, 11-32T

Wheelset: No logo
Tyres: Specialized Nimbus EX 26x1.50

Bars: Specialized aluminum*
Stem: Specialized aluminum*
Headset: Aheadset*
Tape/grip: Fox rubber

Pedals: Performance Bike Campus pedals
Seat post: aluminum*
Saddle: WTB Rocket V
Computer: yeah, right

Rack: Mountain Equipment Co-op

Total bike weight: 32 lb with pump, saddlebag and lights; 40 lb with typically loaded panniers

*original componentry

I believe they call it "training effect". A few weeks/months of riding this thing to work again and my legs are going to be like cannons.

78.75" x 31.5" x 3.825" x 80#

2008-03-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

...or 200cm x 80cm x 10cm x 36.5kg, for those of you who may be more metrically inclined.

Anyone reading this who owns a pickup is laughing at me, I know, but I love it when the little car overperforms. And now I'll have a couch.

Loft life

2008-03-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

New job, new apartment. Isn't it trendy? Really, it was the first place I saw that I thought I could actually live in. Most places I saw in my price range were, uh, small and old ("cozy with character").

The concrete playground of the downstairs was big enough for riding a bike in circles--until I filled it with my boxes and boxes of crap.

Bedroom space upstairs, and the windows now have curtains so I can sleep.

Look way, way up and there's a third floor, though I don't yet have a way of getting up there to see how many dust bunnies have collected or put stuff away.

I need curtains

2008-03-05T12:23:00.001-08:00

Creatures of the night

2008-02-25T22:56:00.000-08:00

I walked through downtown Los Gatos after dinner, 'round 8.45pm or so, to burn a little energy after pretty much sitting in front of a computer all day (...which I'm still doing, hmmm...). Yup, LG on a Monday evening in February.

The streets are pretty empty, no need to wait for a crosswalk signal. A bit of a chill wind to make me appreciate that wearing a jacket was a good idea. The Victorian and Craftsman houses on University are dark, their porch lights off, dim light showing in the front windows from families tucked away in the back rooms and bedrooms. The occasional car swishes by, Audis and BMWs and SUVs and one customized rice rocket for variety.

Walking past Carry Nations, there's a fellow out front with a buzz cut talking on a cell phone about coming home and finding the house trashed. It's only when I'm a couple steps past him--downwind--that I smell the alcohol from his breath.

Passing the row of restaurants, a look in the window reveals the repeated scenes of counting out the till, setting chairs on tables, wiping down one last time before going home.

The bike store's window display is disappointing: a Bianchi 928, nothing to write home about.

Last stop before heading home is Safeway. It takes no time at all to get what I need, but I can't help raising an eyebrow at the pair of fellows shopping in their pyjama bottoms--flannel, oversized, plaid. They're in front of me at the only checkout open, putting a few dozen cans on the belt while I stand there with a single, simple bag of frozen veg.

The time it takes the checker to start scanning the canned goods gives the young woman time to pipe up and mention her list of athletic accomplishments that should make it no surprise that she can lift a flat of water bottles onto her shoulder. Within a minute I'm being instructed that she was on the Jessie Owens track team in LA and won several medals. Frankly, I'm relieved when another checkstand opens and I can conveniently gallantly let her go first in the next line over.

It occurs to me that it's been a long time since I'd run into the Hill People, those who inhabit the little-known and less-visited corners of the Santa Cruz Mountains. I could understand the attraction of coming into town late on a weekday evening: little traffic, both in terms of cars and people in the aisles. Leaving the store, my athletic friend and her companion seem to be wrangling a teamster-worthy ratcheting tie-down in the bed of a pickup, presumably to make sure that their 24 bottles of water don't fly out the back.

And there I am, proud new owner of a bag of frozen veg, walking around Los Gatos at 9.45pm on a Monday night in black pants and white running shoes.

Keeping it together

2008-02-24T20:06:00.000-08:00

Last week was my introduction to the wonders of commuting on 880 from Los Gatos to Berkeley. It's less than ideal. Somehow, regardless of whether I left at 8am or 8.45am, I seemed to arrive at 9.45am.

On the things-are-looking-brighter side, I did find a loft apartment to rent near Broadway and 51st on the northern edge of Oakland. I can't tell if it's in "Rockridge", "Piedmont", or "Temescal", but those are all good places to be, apparently. Hopefully I haven't fallen through the cracks in between them all. Safeway is a block away for quick grocery trips, it's a short walk to BART, by total fluke there's a 50m pool only 4 blocks away, and there's a bike shop 4-5 blocks away in the other direction. It's 4-5 miles from work, and it'll be interesting to figure out what a good bike commute route is, if it exists. I'm thinking of totally converting my old MTB to a full-time commuter: anyone got a rigid fork with fender braze-ons?

For now, though, I haven't moved anywhere, and the 2+ hours a day of driving combined with essentially learning a completely new field to the point of being conversant at a PhD level has left my brain feeling mushy. I bought "Great Expectations" as an audiobook to listen to in the car, but my attention span is noticeably diminished in the evenings, so it may take a while to get through. The slimy weather this weekend hasn't helped me to feel energized, either. Yesterday I was pretty much a shut-in slug. Today I focused on the domestic things--cleaning, groceries, laundry--as well as getting a run in, which left my mind a bit more at ease.

Legs are burning

2008-02-16T14:53:00.000-08:00

It's been a long, lazy winter, and doubling up vacations (Christmas in December plus passport renewal layover in February) has left my legs a little wobbly. Even keeping to the flats on a flat, aerobic ride up to the Stanford campus today, there's a little something-something in the thighs afterwards...not to mention hunger!

Checked out the setup for the Tour of California prologue on the way through. For now it's mostly chaos of tents and trailers without any actual team identification visible, though the fencing around the Oval was being put in place. My friends at Front of the Pack will be in the expo tomorrow and won't be bringing in the gear 'til early tomorrow morning. Only saw a few jerseys from the Kelly Benefit Stategies/Medifast team, cruising around the Oval on their TT bikes, though rumor has it there were pros aplenty on Old La Honda and Kings Mountain today.

Brief observations/recommendations for ToC tomorrow:
--If you're coming to watch the prologue, carpool or take the train. Stanford has parking to accomodate 30,000 football fans, but it gets a bit ugly come time to go home.
--Even better, park farther away and ride in to watch. There is bike valet service at Lasuen St and Museum Way, Stanford, CA . Don't know the cost, and there may be other locations, but it's probably nicer than hauling your bike beside you all the time while watching.

There and back again - once

2008-02-15T22:27:00.001-08:00

I gritted my teeth this morning and set off for the first of what be a few dozen commutes up I-880 this morning.

Departure time: 8.22 am.
Distance: 55 miles
Time to destination: 1h15m

Hm. Not bad. After a few hours at work figuring out things like health insurance and where the washroom is, I set out in the evening to fight my way back home through traffic.

Departure time: 6.52 pm
Distance: 55 miles
Time to destination: 1h00m

Odd how a person can feel elated that their commute was only 1 hour long.

A trip to the city

2008-02-12T00:26:00.000-08:00

Took a break from warming the cat today to go into Vancouver, with the ultimate goal being a dinner gathering for cheap, good Chinese noodles. I wandered down Broadway through gently falling rain during the afternoon, including a visit to Campione Cycles, center of all things Italian cycling in western Canada. My road bike has a steel Cramerotti frame, which I purchased with a bike fit from Giuseppe Cramerotti himself. I've checked the website over the past few years and noticed that there didn't seem to be anything newer than 2005, but happily that reflects the state of the website (a low priority), not the state of the business. Campione and Cramerotti continue on today with a range of steel, aluminum, titanium, and carbon frames for road, track, and time trial.

What I especially like about Campione is that when you walk in, you don't see bikes: you see frames. Behind the frames are glass cases holding Campagnolo gruppos like they were museum pieces. On the wall are rims of all kinds in all colors--not wheels, just the rims. When you buy a bicycle from these folks, everything is built up from scratch.

Monday is a slow retail day, so the fellow manning the front desk had a lot of time to talk (Giuseppe was in the back talking animatedly in Italian with a rep from Deddiaicai). Turns out Tio has been living in Canada for 25 years since moving here from the Netherlands in his mid-20s following an early career as a top Dutch time trialist. He's a bit disappointed with the cycling culture locally and doesn't believe that it can produce any top riders, but he also has been volunteering to build a new indoor velodrome in nearby Burnaby (only 200m--that's a lot of corners). Tio may not race anymore, but he certainly hasn't lost his passion for the sport.

I'm not sure the conversation would have ended if a fellow riding a fixie hadn't walked in asking for help with his flat tire (?--dude, if you're gonna ride a fixie, learn how to fix it). Tio was helpful--once the fellow walked his straight-from-the-wet-road bike off of the Berber carpet surrounding the Campagnolo clothing racks and around on the lino work surface. A wink from Tio, and I was back on my wander.

Campione: snooty? At some level, yes. A reminder that cycling is a beautiful sport and that bicycles are beatiful machines? That too.

Nothin' but a pillow

2008-02-10T11:30:00.000-08:00

Still in Canada, now being hosted by DP and DT in a lovely (if rainy) rural bit of the Fraser Valley after a few days at the parents'. The local menagerie consists of three dogs, two cats, and one horse. The cats have figured out that I am (a) attentive and (b) warm, and I may be able to knit a sweater with their collected sheddings by the time I leave. Thankfully the horse has shown no signs of wanting to sit in my lap...yet.

There's a lot of interest in Canada in the American presidential race, particularly in Barack Obama, despite Canadians' inability to vote, or make campaign contributions, or otherwise participate. While partially explicable by Canadians' frustration with the GWB presidency, it probably owes something to Canada's terribly uninspiring politics: nobody much seems to like the current prime minister, but nobody has sprung up as an appealing alternative. And so, the minority government limps on...

Foreign foods

2008-02-02T13:06:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in my friend's attic apartment here in Vancouver and it's beautiful and sunny outside. I'd show you, but this computer running XP seems incapable of communicating with my digital camera (in contrast with my Mac, which in such predictable constrast really has its shit together--thank you, Steve Jobs). So, some purely verbal bitching about why can't I get these foods in California?

Cereals: Shreddies and Just Right. Shreddies are an absolute Canadian classic. Most people of a certain vintage will even remember Freddie and Eddie, the Shreddies mascots. I even appreciate the billboard at the end of the street advertising new "Diamond Shreddies". And Just Right is just about the best bowl of flakes that money can buy.

Cookies: Dare Digestive Biscuits. Yes, there is a market in the world for a not-so-sickly-sweet cookie, with only 7g of sugar per 36g serving. Those of us with sugar-hyper issues appreciate something we can eat for dessert after dinner without it making us sleepless. Not to mention that the taste is just downright wholesome goodness.

Juice: Five Alive. Of any kind. OK, it's a lot like Sunny Delight as a citrus blend, but it's better. Way better.

OK, I'd best get some sunshine now--who knows how long it will last!

Last day at work

2008-01-31T20:14:00.000-08:00

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.

-T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

Very strange to try to clean out the office today. Not everything is finished and tied off; little ends are sticking out everywhere. But it's time to go.

And lordy, T.S. Eliot rocks.

W-w-w-wimped out

2008-01-27T21:53:00.000-08:00

I could have gotten out of bed this morning and gone a-racin' cyclocross.

I was tired and the weather really, really sucked--though it could have improved.

I slept in, rose refreshed, and the weather never got better.

I am happy with my decision. Cyclocross season is now over.

--

Went up to SF to see a friend yesterday, spent a few hours trotting around from Market to the Marina. 'Twas a beautiful day for it, all the more so since Friday and today have ended up being downpourful. The rain had washed all the dust and haze and fog out of the sky, so you could see all the distant edges of the Bay.

--

Four more days of work, then back to Canada on Friday for paperwork reasons.

Another New York whack job

2008-01-23T00:47:00.000-08:00

Saw I Am Legend a couple weeks ago.

Saw Cloverfield this past weekend.

What is it with filmmakers needing to (virtually) beat the #$%& out of Manhattan these days?

Hm, though I guess it's simply a continuing tradition. There was The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, Independence Day, Escape from New York...and the godfather of the monster movies, King Kong. Probably the only city to have taken as much cinematic abuse is Tokyo courtesy of Godzilla & Co.

London and Paris have just as many icons but they don't seem to get crushed nearly as often. San Francisco got a bit of a thrashing in X-Men 3.

I guess a film about Los Gatos, or Santa Cruz, or even San Jose getting whacked would have fairly narrow appeal.

Yup, change is a-comin'

2008-01-13T18:55:00.000-08:00

So: I accepted a darn good job offer from a start-up in Berkeley, which will be a big change from working for GlobeCo in south San Jose in so many ways. Not quite as many as if I were moving to the Maldives, OK, but still, change. Change. CHANGE!

I don't know Berkeley terribly well: e.g. plunked down at Shattuck and University, I'd have no idea where to go to get groceries. But I won't be moving up there until after I start working, which won't happen until after I get a work visa, which won't happen until I get my passport renewed, which won't happen until I go back to Canada Feb. 1 or so...assuming ticket prices have not radically changed (!) since I last checked. For the interim working-but-not-yet-moved period, I'm really looking forward to those Los Gatos-Berkeley commutes on Hwy 880 (a.k.a. where hours and day of your life go to die).

Oddly enough, I'm still motivated to get something done at Old Job, but the time constraint has me thinking and experimenting a bit frantically. It'd probably be best to trim the to-do list down considerably at this stage to make sure a few things get done, as opposed to getting a lot of things not done.

Oh yeah: bike race this morning. Gooey, play-doh-like mud (Carr index #3) in places.* And I have no fitness. Didn't sleep in quite enough to sabotage any chance of racing, but it was enough to guarantee that there was no chance for me to warm up or pre-ride the course.** The small B field took off in front of me and I plugged along behind, which worked out well enough for me to pass a few mechanicals and outgassed riders--5.5 long laps later it was done, and I was 7/11 (+2 DNFs).

*I can plow through mud, oddly enough. Is it my size? Bike position? Big glutes? You tell me. Oh, and the pedals with their advertised "open body [that] sheds mud easily and yields easy cleat entry and exit in all types of riding conditions"? Not in mud #3. I don't know if any pedals were working well today, mind you.

**Cyclocross is a completely different beast when you do not have a chance to pre-ride a course and have no idea what's at the bottom of the hill, around the corner, under the mud, etc. It would be interesting (though impractical and unlikely) for a promoter to somehow enforce a "no pre-ride" event simply to see who can learn the fastest on the fly...or is that like MTB?

Maybe I should write something

2008-01-06T21:16:00.000-08:00

Lacking rantable or ravable material:

1) Raced 'cross this morning after not riding a bike for three weeks. My body did not respond well to the shock therapy of reactivating, so no spectacular result (though I was v. pleased to not crash). The 1.5 hour après-ride through the trails of Fort Ord w/ the Fantastic Four was probably closer to what I should be doing.

2) My Xmas break was pretty inert: good to see the fam, but I should've coaxed myself out into winter wonderland (see the Flickr pics in the sidebar) a bit more. And the hassle of travelling over the holidays really makes me wonder if it's worth it. I should pick another tropical destination for next year and visit the parents on Jan. 25.

3) My most recent man-on-the-street-discovers-pop-culture find: muffintop, when the pants are too tight and the Christmas belly fat rolls over the edge. It's just so spot-on.

4) In a strictly financial sense, I got a shiny new radiator for Christmas. Not a stupendous present, but reassuring.

5) A better present: a job offer! Change may be a-comin'.

Heading: North

2007-12-19T21:41:00.000-08:00

Time to check out for a week.

Here's the forecast for where I'm headed:

...which may imply shoveling.

Happy holidays, readers...

Reportage

2007-12-16T20:48:00.000-08:00

The short, punchy version:

Men's B race: crappy. Singlespeed A race: happy.

Gory details:

Got one practice lap in for the CCCX #6 Men's B race at the Fort Ord day camp, then off we went at 10am. I found myself mixing it up with Dave P. and others like last week, a good sign. However, I found some aggro passing maneouvres from the 35+B leaders coming up from behind a tad offputting and I got gapped from my group, and then the real fun started when my chain started sucking and wedging into the spaces between my frame, crank, and chainrings, causing major delay. A soft slideout on a sharp right turn and a stupid encounter with a pole that resulted in complete dismount didn't help either. I ended up softpedaling through my sporadic and persistent mechanical difficulties, having dark thoughts of "If I can't enjoy this, does that mean I never have any fun?", and got lapped by the end. Bah, humbug! In after-race cleanup this evening, I found that a couple of links in my chain are now twisted--that takes some serious torque. I hope there's a new chain in my Xmas stocking this year...

It sucked, but I had plenty left in my legs and decided to stay for the singlespeed race. The in-between time was good, with a couple sandwiches for refueling, chatting with the friendly folks and their friendly dogs, and good racing to watch in the master A's and women's races.

With spirits restored, I took off with the men's A and singlespeed A fields for a shot at redemption. The course featured an infamous, nagging climb to start that would sap strength on every lap, leaving my legs wobbly for the barriers at the top. Some downhill singletrack followed for recovery, which got more and more fun as I figured out lines around the washboard. It bottomed out at a sharp gully followed by a single barrier that many could bunnyhop, but us earthbound-types had to run it for 20 yards or so. Twistys through the woods followed, interspersed with a long, paved out-and-back and three logs to cross (hoppable for the able, more forced dismounts for we, the unable). Grassy lumps and a final set of barriers led back to the start line. My major concern wasn't the course so much as my hands: after democratically crashing on both sides in the B race and cooling down, my bruised palms made it painful to hold onto the handlebars.

After the first lap, I found myself in pitched battle with Geoff W., also racing singlespeed as a second race. I had the gearing and go to get up the hill; he had mad bunnyhopping skills. Seriously, I was wondering if he had hydraulics tucked into his frame somewhere. I'd be running past the single barrier, hear a slight thud of wheels landing behind me, and then whoosh there would go his damn green skinsuit ahead of me as I was fumbling with remounting. Damn him! It was then half a lap of grunting to keep up before reaching the hill again and pulling ahead for the descent, only to get passed again at the barrier...

For once, though, I had the last laugh. After 4-5 laps, I reached the top ahead of him, descended, dismounted and ran, and entirely expected to have him pass me again...but no! A look behind showed naught but an empty trail! As Geoff put it afterwards, he experienced "vapor lock" after going hard for 1.5 races. Now, Geoff's a good guy with a wife and kid and all, but it does feel sorta good to have put that kind of hurt on someone else.

Cruising along, I wasn't noticing any hand pain (mmm, adrenaline), and I managed to catch Gianni C. later on. Ron escaped my clutches--I had inklings that I was catching up, but he was taking it easy before dropping the hammer for the last couple laps and he beat me by a comfy margin. Finish: 5th, out of a dozen or so, and I see no shame in having Cesar C., Scott C., and Tim C. ahead of me (note to self: must get last name starting with C). Speaking of dropping the hammer, the report from the A race is that Aaron Odell was ahead for most of the men's race before putting in some serious time and distance into the rest of the field over the last couple of laps--and he blessedly lapped me to end the pain. 2nd place in the A's went to a young fellow, Eric E., who looks to be an ass-kicking mountain bike rider.

In review: in the end, I had fun. I find it ironic that the last time I raced the singlespeed, it was having mechanical issues (I tore the brake lever loose mid-race), making the geared bike feel like a rock of dependability. The chain going to crap probably has root in me not cleaning it last week: leftover goo led to the chainsuck, chainsuck led to wedging 'twixt chainring and crank, and a little torque and mashing led to twisted metal. And I don't think my derailleurs are the happiest of mechanical beasts right now. I'll try to be a good boy and fix it all...

And to put things in perspective, I had a heck of a better day than the defending US Men's cyclocross champion, who got coldcocked in a bizzare accident in the championship race today...

OK, time to finish the frickin' Christmas cards, ho ho ho...

This is not how I spent Monday

2007-12-10T19:08:00.001-08:00

...in a way a good thing, 'cuz I would've broken something trying...hmm, day jobs...

'Cross at Coyote Point

2007-12-09T20:28:00.000-08:00

The beautiful thing about racing bikes at Coyote Point is that whenever you get bored, you can just look over and watch the planes land at SFO.

Given how well my race went at GGP a couple weeks ago, I tried to duplicate my race prep: arriving pretty early to pre-ride before the 35A/45A race in street clothes, then another lap and a half before the Open A race in race get-up. I then tried to find a warm-up loop, but the Polo Grounds in GGP have nothing to fear from the sketchy industrial park I found today. Still, the legs felt a lot better than they did last week, so things seemed good to go.

And boy, the Open B race started with a bang. The start was the same as in the past, with a 300yd straight on the pavement leading to uphill pavement leading to a hard right onto the dirt. I had spotted a stump on that transition corner in warm-up and thought it would mess things up, and felt vindicated when some fellow in blue (found out later it was Kea H.) went sliding off of it to block the right side of the course while I could swoop by on the left (yes!). The dusty climb up wasn't over yet, though, and before it was over I was running with the bike with my chain dropped and I'm pretty sure my front tire had roughed up someone else's rear end...and I'm not talking about his bike...

Things didn't improve through the remainder of the windy path laid out through the "Enchanted Forest" as fast straights and slow corners made for complicated forward progress. On the bright side, I seemed to be carrying a lot more speed into corners than the guys I was trying to get past. By the end of the race, that may not have been a good idea, as my corners were definitely getting sloppier, but hey, there's something there to work with.

Exiting the Forest, riders then had the gravelly sand of the beach to deal with. The first time through I ran it and lost no time. The following times through, I rode it, but it was ugly. My stupid dumb bike pride wanted to ride it every time, but I really should have been running it.

Eventually I settled into a back-and-forth, leg-burning, saddle-swinging, snot-blowing battle with Dave P. from the Altezza 40 Horde. He could outspeed me on the pavement, and I would come back on the dirt. I think. DP's a pretty respectable racer so it felt good to be sort of on par with him. At the same time, I couldn't drop him, and at every corner I could hear his tires rolling behind me, and his fans' cheers weren't letting me forget he was right there...

The rubber band snapped on the last lap: coming down the washboarded trail out of the Forest, with my arms and shoulders getting tired and my cornering getting sloppy, I lost it and crashed. No harm done really, but there's always a bit of shock and my chain was doing twisty things around my chain rings, and just my luck, nine guys were right there ready to pass me. I swung back on and managed to catch one of 'em, but there was no catching the rest. As a reference, Dave P. ended up in 13th; I got 21st out of 43.

It was fun. A wide-open course, a really mixed bag of terrain (they should try wood chips on the European courses), a little bit of star-gazing as Barry Wicks showed up to play in the dirt, and the bittersweet satisfaction of finishing the Pilarcitos series (with free socks as door prize for the 5/5 racers). The 'cross racers were, as usual, super-duper fun; heck, even the mechanics were fun. There is a tinge of regret, though, 'cuz I think I wasn't riding smart today. Riding the beach when going in running would've been faster; a rise that I was riding in the wrong gear; sloppy corners...

Bah, I was racing. Now I need to find a way to force myself to practice the snot-blowing effort that racing requires.

Canadian cuisine

2007-12-06T22:22:00.000-08:00

I pulled out one of my mom's recipes for dinner this week: "California casserole". It definitely still qualifies as comfort food, though what Mom liked most was that she could stick in the oven before a soccer game/music lesson/other kid activity, come back 2 hours later, and take it straight out of the oven for dinner.

1 onion, peel and chop. 1 pepper (green or red), remove stem and seeds then chop. Mix in bowl with 1 pound ground beef, two 14oz cans of diced tomatoes, 1-2 cups grated cheddar. Salt and pepper to taste. Stir in 16oz of dry pasta (macaroni works well). Put mix into casserole dish, cover with foil, and bake for 1 h at 350F. Or 2 h, it'll be fine, though 325F might be better for the longer time. Remove from oven. Eat.

Using the same ingredients, you could make spaghetti with a nice meat sauce...but that would involve stirring sauce on the stovetop and boiling water and draining pasta. Far better to throw everything into one bowl, then into one casserole dish, and cook it once.

I'm not sure anyone here would call it "California casserole", mind you. As we (myself now included) know, only Midwesterners make casseroles. And it's hard to say what is exactly Californian about this casserole. But hey, comfort food is comfort food.

And comfort food was needed after bike commuting today. My timing can be really off: it's been beautiful fall weather up until, oh, Monday, but now, today, in the rain both ways, I make a point of riding my bike to work. At least (a) you always feel fast when you're riding at night, and (b) dinner was a ready-to-be-reheated plate of leftovers (casserole, of course).

And so it goes

2007-12-02T21:16:00.000-08:00

All work and no play makes me a piss-poor cyclocross racer.

So I was a bit preoccupied with two full-day job interviews this past week, and hadn't had a shred of physical activity since a 20-minute jog Monday morning. Saturday afternoon, I finally changed out of the PJ's and went cruising along the creek trail for an hour...not very intense.

This morning, I get to Fort Ord for CCCX #5 with enough time to register and do a practice lap. About halfway through, I dismount to look back at a rough patch and see what's to be done--and my heart feels like it's going at 200 bpm. And I feel a bit nauseous. Yeah, body wasn't ready for any exertion.

I go off with the Men's B start at 10am. Within 20 seconds, I'm dropped by everybody by 50 yards. Things compress once we got offroad and I catch up, but by then the 35+ B wave is barking up my backside. Shortly thereafter my front wheel starts ticking; I stop and check and it's nothing; but now the 35+ B's are passing me, it's singletrack, uphill, and sandy, and there's no way I can jump back in without being a complete ass.

I never really got any faster from there, though I did spend a couple laps providing the leader of the 55+ wave with a nice draft. The sand was challenging in many corners, providing something of a California equivalent to the mud up in Portland today...but let's not try to match their rain and snow.

With no power in me, doing the singlespeed race was going to be a waste of time. I ate the sandwiches I had packed, volunteered to do some handups for xbunny, and decided to practice using my newer camera some during the Elite Men's race (a Rock Lobster festival, with the top 'Berries being out of town). The following is my first attempt at combining new camera, new computer, and Youtube, for anyone who missed today's CCCX race or just wants to relive some memories.

Discount Xmas shopping

2007-11-30T18:46:00.000-08:00

Every room needs a TV. Stick this combo in the corner of the garage while you're working on the bike and watch TdF DVDs:

click here for listing

And friends in San Carlos have a free couch--free, as long as you can take it away. It's big. It's puffy. It doesn't smell or have nasty stains, I swear. Let the kids jump on it and don't worry.

Do the math

2007-11-26T21:24:00.000-08:00

One billion. 1,000,000,000.

Big number.

Let's see...60 seconds to the minute, 60 minutes to the hour, 24 hours to the day, 365.24 days to the year, makes 31,556,736 seconds per year. That means one billion seconds is about 31 years, 8 months, 8 days, 24 minutes, and 30 seconds (give or take). So, at some point this week, I will pass my billionth birthsecond.

Despite doing these endurance sport-like things, I am not blessed with the cardiovascular system to give me a resting heart rate of 28 or the like--y'know, the kind that confuse medical instruments expecting to find a pulse in a reasonable amount of time. My ticker usually clocks in at 65 bpm or so, it seems. So the poor blessed thing has contracted, most likely, at least a billion times.

Assuming a car engine revs at 2500 rpm when doing 60 mph (about right for my car), a billion revolutions would allow it to travel 400,000 miles/640,000 km.

Mind you, a billion atoms of uranium only weighs 0.0000000000004 grams, which is small even if you convert it from metric.

OK, I should probably return to preparing for an interview tomorrow...

Racing in Golden Gate Park

2007-11-25T23:24:00.000-08:00

Today's race went awfully well. I got to SF in plenty of time to wobble around the course on my bike in jeans and running shoes, enough to see that the layout was little changed from last year save the placement of one barrier. Lots of time to get changed, hydrate, eat lunch, and do some warmup laps on the track with Mr. Hole Shot from last week's race before the ~1pm start.

The Open B field seemed pretty big, especially compared to last week's field of 13. My sprint at the start was adequate, and left me pushed over to the right side on the first loose corner--a mixed blessing. It taught me that the right side was far firmer than the middle or left where I had ridden in practice. It also taught me that shortly thereafter, the right side turned into pillowy dust into which my front wheel seemed to sink endlessly. I had predicted before the race that someone would go tail over teakettle in that section at the start, of course hoping it wouldn't be me...Ah well, it was soft, and I was soon back up and on my way. Everyone else was flailing too, so I don't think I lost much time/distance.

The race then progressed into a steady series of catches. There were three long straightaways favoring, well, going fast, which many riders seemed to forget. A couple times I passed strings of riders drafting off some poor guy--drafting's great and all, but if you're drafting off someone who's going slow, you're not helping yourself. The barrier-rooty runup worked in my favor: other people dismounted way early while I found riding up to the barrier pretty manageable, I could power up the hill pushing the bike rather than shouldering, and then most of my remounts were clean. And the right-hand line in that one corner saved me all sorts of misery as I watched all sorts of riders sink their rims into the dust.

I remember looking up at the race timer after 4 laps and seeing 17 minutes and change. I totally expected to come around again and see a "2", indicating 2 laps to go. It said "3". Oof. Hey, more racing for my money.

Still, today, it was probably in my favor. The legs were turning over the big ring over the entire course, and I kept catching people as they slowly blew...I was following one Altezza rider for 2 laps at least, before pulling away on the start/finish straight. I was really surprised to see myself catching up to Kea, who's normally way ahead of me in the results (turned out he had fuzzed out on laps remaining and sprinted with 2 laps to go, emptying his tank). When I passed Josh in the last lap (he was leading a string of riders at the end of straightaway #2, at the rise where you passed the pit tent a second time) I knew I was having a good day. The goal after that pass was to ride clean to the finish, but I was getting tired and could've ridden a couple sections a lot smoother. So, when I turned onto the pavement and started trying to sprint, a couple guys from Josh's train had the chance to pull around and outdash me to the line.

Even getting nipped twice at the end, I had a great race. My legs felt good every lap, my accelerations were good, and mentally I felt I was a lot more interested in going fast than most of the guys I passed (why draft off a slower rider?). It'll be interesting to see how I actually did in the results--I expect it'll be a significant improvement from my, uh, 51st? at the last Pilarcitos race.

A nice twist at the end of the day was that Olaf announced that Lauren had won the raffle for all race entrants for a brand-new, custom cyclocross frame from Sycip. She and her man already purchased custom frames this year and I imagine they already have one of the most expansive collections of bicycles in the Bay Area, so we'll see what happens there...

(added 10 minutes later) It was all fun and games, but I was pretty sore afterwards. Just keep popping those ibuprofen...

And: I saw in the singlespeed race today that Tim C. was having an off day. Usually he's pushing the lead, and here he was sorta spinning along, not in last, but not near the front. I ran into him afterwards and it turns out he was riding with several separated ribs and general bruising. It seems that when descending the fire road after making a night deposit of some beverages for the Thanksgiving fest atop Kennedy, his front light cut out and he quite literally flew off the edge...forget about going slow, the man's probably lucky to be alive. I hope the beverages were worth it.

RussellP does domesticity

2007-11-21T23:20:00.000-08:00

1. Baking

The price of admission for Thanksgiving dinner this year: 2 pies.

All they need now will be a garnish of, oh, I don't know--bacon chocolate?

2. Laundry

Bike commuting exacerbates my lack of cycling kit--I don't have enough jerseys and shorts to get from one laundry day to the next without rewearing something. To avoid utter nastiness, I've been handwashing them. Problem is, without a dryer, I could only get so much water out by wringing, and it took forever for them to dry, risking moldiness--until I started using the salad spinner.

A few spins and the jerseys and shorts come out drier than I could ever get 'em just by squeezing. Now, some would suggest that it's easier to wrap the clothes in a towel, but (a) the spinner works just as well if not better and (b) it doesn't create a wet towel which will get moldy. I'm also sure that no one who reads this will ask me to make a salad.

Happy American Turkey Day!

Homestyle 'cross

2007-11-18T20:25:00.000-08:00

I haven't been terribly useful since getting home from today's cyclocross race, but in a good, warm, fuzzy, endorphin-induced way. But first, let's go back a bit...

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I did no physical activity whatsoever. It's great for reducing the laundry load, not so good as a training regimen. Work and finding work have been my preoccupations, and combined with a disinclination towards waking up early and severely curtailed evening daylight, rides and runs have not been happening. To compensate, when going to bed Friday night, I set myself to going on a long road ride on Saturday. I haven't been doing those in favor of either riding my 'cross bike on the trails to train, or just to "save my legs" for Sunday's races. After three days of inactivity and general deadleggedness on my bike commutes, a 60-mile ride seemed like a recipe for disaster.

It was fantastic. This was a beautiful November weekend, even for California: the sun was shining, the winds were calm. I hadn't been on the roads up to Woodside and Palo Alto in months, but they're still familiar. I kept looking down to find to my surprise that I was ticking over the big ring pretty much all the time, without strain. Around the Stanford campus, I ran into two friends from my masters swimming days for some chatting, then was on my way home. Without dehydrating, without bonking, without straining: 3 1/2 hrs continuous riding, 60 miles. It can be so relaxing to not have to worry about cavernous bumps underneath your wheels.

I was a bit scared to get up this morning to find out what my legs felt like--and things were a bit stiff, but maybe I'm just getting older. I did sleep in, but still had plenty of time to drive down to Watsonville for the race and get some practice in. I hadn't done a Peak Season race before, though I watched one race last year post-eye surgery and noticed the smaller, more local crowd. When I lined up for the B race, well, it was a field of 15, tops.

The course was fun. Swirly descending down to the lakeside, and a steep-but-rideable return; a nifty chicane; some nice singletrack; a good run-up on a log staircase; uphill and off-camber corners. Two negatives: first, the boardwalk/pier over the lake was gimmicky and sorta even dangerous, and I hope the course designers don't use it again; and second, oh, the bumpty bumps.

First I limp to the side like my leg was broken
Shakin' and twitchin' kinda like I was smokin'
Crazy wack funky
People say ya look like M.C. Hammer on crack, [B]umpty
That's all right 'cause my body's in motion
It's supposed to look like a fit or a convulsion
Anyone can play this game
This is my dance, y'all, [B]umpty [B]ump's my name
No two people will do it the same
Ya got it down when ya appear to be in pain
[B]umpin', funkin', jumpin',
jig around, shakin' ya rump,
and when the dude a chump pump points a finger like a stump
tell him step off, I'm doin' the [B]ump.

I sorta doubt that anyone in Digital Underground ever raced 'cross, but there are some striking parallels. There were some looong transition sections over some very bumpy ground today, and not even a few hundred bike-crossings flattened them out. It's totally legit for 'cross, but wow, I was hankerin' for some suspension.

The race (Men B) was fun. Before the start, we were all anti-trash talking about how we all sucked, but there was some good racing goin' on. Self-Trasher #1 even got the hole shot, but when he looked around to see where everyone had gone, he sorta missed the first hairpin turn...He was up and bouncing, if a bit startled, by the time the field passed him, but more importantly, he had a glorious moment. After a lap or two, I was trying to catch two guys who kept 5-10 sec ahead of me: Red Jersey and Belgium Jersey. If the race had been a lap shorter, I may not have caught them, but with 2 to go, Red Jersey blew and fell back. On the last lap, I screwed up riding up from the lake, but was fresh/adrenaline-accelerated enough to sprint up the hill and keep the gas on. Good thing, because Belgium Jersey was soon ready to blow too--the bumps sucked out his soul. I wanted to be in front coming off the pavement into the last section of grassy turns (and bumps) because passing there would've been difficult, but Belgium let me by on the big swooping 180 on the back before the run up and didn't keep up. The race-within-the-race was mine! I have no idea of the bigger picture, but I ended up 5th out of 13 finishers. Top 1/2 of the field!

The singlespeeder was left at home today--and this course would've hurt on a SS--so I was free to eat and socialize and take pictures, in some beautiful fall sunshine. I was trying out a new digital camera, so I'm still unsure on best settings for action shots, and there's a noticeable soft-lens effect in most of the photos, hmmm. I had the most fun with the rapid-shoot feature. I'm sure professionals use something like it a lot, rather than try to guess exactly when the exciting moment will happen. I just like the sequence of events that you capture, for instance:

(My apologies if it's completely tasteless to post pictures of someone crashing--anyone objects, and it's gone. The guy was fine--I asked--and raced on.)

Anyway: why "homestyle" 'cross? Well, could be 'cuz it's Thanksgiving week, and everyone's feeling all family-like. I think having a field of only 13 racers makes you feel more a part of things compared to 70+. The sheer number of racers I could recognize and cheer for when my race was done. Having a barbeque with footlongs after the race. Soccer games in the background. Well done, Peak Season, and I'm looking forward to your next race.

Ramblings

2007-11-13T22:58:00.000-08:00

--Need a reasonable couch? Off-white, on the loosely puffy side, lightly embroidered pattern in the fabric. My friends want to sell theirs to make room for what sounds like an "installation". Never exposed to cigarettes, no nasty stains.

--Checked my back tire to see what exploded at the end of the B race on Sunday. A 2-inch gash in the tube matched a place where the tire bead had been shredded to where I could see the steel wire. It's hard to say what abuse I laidon to cause that kind of damage, but they're both gone.

Checked the wheel too, and it's maybe good that I did, since I found in a completely different, unrelated location on the rim that the weld is corroding and cracking. It's a 9-yr-old Campy Berlin rim (ever have one of those? didn't think so) on a 105 hub that was original spec on my road bike. It's mostly scrap metal now.

--With the change to standard time, bike commuting requires riding home in the dark. It's sorta nice in the dark: no matter how slow you're really going, you only really have the breeze on your face to gauge your speed, and you feel fast. There's also the practicality that if you're going to ride home in the dark anyway, you may as well work 'til 7 and wait for most of the cars to get off the road.

--Dinner: thyme-roasted eggplant with julienne carrots wrapped in warm garlic naan bread.

--Riding in the dark also makes me grateful for all the drivers who have passed me and not run into me over the years, which I'm happy to say is all of them so far. Reflective clothes, blinky light, a bright headlight, and a good route make it OK. Still, I was thinking on the ride tonight about all the things that could go wrong. Probably the #1 thing that makes me nervous on the road are drunk drivers--day or night, whether I'm riding or driving, it's so not cool. I have no idea my DUI/DWI is treated so casually in this country: it's a frickin' crime, and for good reason.

If you're going to have beers after a race, make sure someone else who's not drinking is going to drive you home. I'm asking, that's all.

--I may have gots me a phone interview, which is the first glimmer of a future I've had in a while.

Return to Manzanita

2007-11-11T19:55:00.000-08:00

There was a good ol' rain coming down last night, so I brougt enough raincoats and clothing changes to swim across the Atlantic...and it was sunny, gorgeous, beautiful, all day. Thank you, California.

Still, water had fallen from the sky, and not all of it could drain away before the 'cross races started. A 10am start for the B race should be easy enough to get to, but I still managed to sleep in and dawdle to the point where I hadn't time to pre-ride the course. It would've been a good thing: frankly, the mud freaked me out at first, and there were some changes from last time's course that left me wondering to the end of the day what the right lines were. On the bright side: no blood! It was also a little exciting when my rear tube exploded (bang!) right close to the end--hadn't done that before. I'm curious to find out what failed and how: that tire may have earned its pension.

The CCCX schedule also gives a very reasonable 2+ hours to recharge after the B race before trying out the singlespeed race. Had lunch al fresco (well, al back-of-carro), made meaningless tweaks to bike, and had just a wee bit of time to watch the women's race (Lloyd won speeding away, but I couldn't help wondering if/what Kerlin was holding back). My singlespeed start was atrocious even for my standards as I pushed off heading straight into some other guy's back wheel; in retrospect, I don't know which of us was swerving more, but it left me flailing at the back. In the 2 hr of sun and breeze between my races, the course had dried out to become mostly flat, tacky stuff--the good stuff--with the occasional mud puddle to liven things up. I caught a few wheels in the first 3-4 laps, then the gaps to the riders ahead of me started getting bigger...time for safety mode (still no blood!). I tried goading Jeff/Geoff from Altezza to make up the 5sec gap I had on him, but he was pretty blown too after the 35A's so I got to hold my ignominious spot in the results. Just good ol' fun.

Now I have a large Bag of Filth to deal with, thanks to the flying chunks of peanut butter and glop and ooze on the course that have sunk into jerseys, gloves, shorts, socks, shoes...Digging the stuff off my derailleur pulleys was a non-trivial task. I appear to be dealing with Bag of Filth for now by ignoring it.

Something very noticeable during the singlespeed race was how many bad lines had been cut into the corners. One person leads, another follows the wheel, and eventually a berm gets molded that is not where you (well, I) want it to be. Not only that, but all the dirt that got pushed out of the way mucks up the better line. Someone give the C's a tutorial on apexing, wouldja? (As if I know what I'm talking about.)

Downer about the double race is that socializing and photographing become well-nigh impossible, which makes for pretty dry reportage. I didn't even remember to ask Lauren to get an envelope for me when she's in Manila. Many thanks to Swiggco for storing my keys during the races, too.

Skinny tire day

2007-11-04T22:58:00.000-08:00

Just, like, ow.

Starting with warmup laps today, I so noticed the lack of suspension in my 'cross bikes after riding Big Green yesterday (see previous post): it was another lumpy bumpy dusty course, the type of surface that the full-suspension rig soaked right up while my 'cross bikes were letting me feel it a bit more directly, shall we say. At the same time, I can appreciate the comments from the shop guy who said he had tried 'cross after riding mountain bikes, and didn't do so well: suspension takes away a lot of decision-making that has to be done on a rigid frame.

It was so totally inappropriate for me to race singlespeed at today's McLaren Park CX race. I don't have the power-to-weight ratio to ride up steep stuff and haven't been running enough to compensate. In the cloud-with-silver-lining column, my brake hood came loose again (that'll get replaced now) forcing me to descend in the drops--and whaddya know, I had better control. The loose corners on the descent also reminded me how much better control I have when pedalling versus when coasting: delivering power, keeping the chain tensioned, and keeping leg muscles active are all good. In further cloud-with-silver-lining news, I got lapped twice by the leaders of the A race, keeping me from trotting up Evil Runup any more--for this race. The race-site results credited me with a lap I didn't do, but checking online results this evening show that the error has been corrected...darn, they're fast with posting those. They must be catering to the obsessive 50% of 'cross folks who can't sleep until the results are online.

The B race came right after the SS race, and I lined up at the very back fully expecting to stay there. The first couple laps sucked 'cuz I was so tired already, but surprisingly I was feeling better and better and kept going (at the start, I thought managing a couple laps and then pulling out would've been plenty honourable). Bits unrideable on the single speed became rideable again, and I started catching people: at first, just those knocked out by flats and mechanicals, but eventually some guys who I think were genuinely trying to pedal. It didn't last. Despite going "fast", my muscles and brain were probably desperately tired, and I lost focus/balance in an easy corner and slid out. Normally I'd just bounce back up, but in my condition I pretty much went into shock, with wobbly legs and feeling cold. So, I pulled over for a couple minutes and sat in the sunshine. I think I lost about 10 positions (including watching Nemesis pass me, grrr), but it was okay, I was cooked. Rolled home one lap down and guzzled all available liquids.

While it's fun to attempt the double, I won't do it for the Pilarcitos races any more: back-to-back is a bit too much pain. Some pain is good for you, too much is suffering. Hopefully I can improve my B results a little for the next 2 races (not hard when my last two placings were in the 50s).

Big thank yous to Morgan and Lauren for feeds, and to Michael and Sabine for not driving away with my car keys, and to my friends on the peninsula for the impromptu early chicken pot pie/pizza/ice cream dinner, and good to see so many of you fine folk out enjoying a balmy November Sunday.

Fat tire day

2007-11-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

Things I learned:

1. It's a long, twisty road to Soquel Demonstration Forest--but worth it for the MTB riding. Great place for it, great trails.

2. My 9-yr-old Specialized Rockhopper is sorta crap. Still, with some patience, I hauled it around a circuit with some fairly difficult bits. As a hardtail, it climbs well, but its descending is not confidence-inspiring.

3. Sometimes old bike bits aren't that bad. For instance, when I went over a dropoff that I didn't intend to go over and at too low a speed regardless, my seat saved me from a self-inflicted proctological exam. Too bad for the seat, though.

Despite the...uh...drooping, it was really quite functional for riding back to the parking lot and I thanked providence for causing me no more damage than that. Still, it's done for; not even a handful of little blue pills are going to help this one.

4. After doing a test loop on old bike, I got a demo bike to try out. I had thought it would be nicely systematic to progress through a modern hardtail to a mid-range full-suspension to a glitzy whiz-bang machine, but (a) the loop was longer than I expected, so not enough time for all that, and (b) there was only one large bike left--this demo thing was quite popular! And so, enter the whiz-bang, high-end-componentry-laden, full-suspension 29er:
Better everything, shock-absorbing, and big, big tires. And probably no heavier if not lighter than my bike. Just as I had been getting back to camp, OV and VB came riding up, and they kindly waited for me to get checked out on Big Green before leading me yonder.

Oh what a difference it made. I was searching for potholes on the road to see if I could feel anything-no. Washed-out ruts? Climbed through them like a champ. Spinning, it could accelerate uphill without hesitation; standing, yeah, it flexed, but why stand when these things have such ridiculously low gears?

That was just the uphill climb. On the downhills, despite only having 4-inch travel in both shocks, this bike was point-and-shoot, except for some truly nasty rocky bike-killer stuff. This was my first time out mountain biking in about 2 years and I've probably never taken stuff on with such confidence--all because of the bike. In the end, I can't tell you how much was due to components, suspension, or 29er wheels, but the combination was supernatural compared to the Ol' Silver Hardtail.

5. Conclusion: I am a believer. If say a friend somehow convinces me to ride a 24h relay again, I'd definitely want to be on Big Green or something like it. But of course, the catch: there's a price to be paid. Big Green retails for a cool US$4100. Ol' Silver Hardtail was $600, 9 years ago. There'd better be a dramatic difference.

Ah well, maybe it's time to start another piggy bank...or not. I'm really not sure if I have time or inclination to use one of these bikes enough to justify that kind of investment. And now I'd better get some laundry done, otherwise I'll smell like a dead horse at tomorrow's 'cross races...

What am I thinking

2007-10-31T21:02:00.000-07:00

Warning: this post is gonna ramble.

--

When I was home in Vernon, BC, Canada, this summer, I took the chance to finally ride up the local big hill, Silver Star Mountain. It's a 1200m rise over 21 km--that's what, 4000 ft over 13 miles. A good long climb. At the top is the ski village, which in summertime transforms into a summer activity wonderland, including downhill courses and chair lifts for the MTBers. Those bikes start looking funny when you never have to worry about going uphill.

So there I am in tight roadie clothes, Lycra and jersey and swoopy helmet and skinny tires. And there are the MTBers, baggy shorts and T-shirts and crash helmets and fatty tires. And we're sorta looking at each other, mutually thinking "what the hell kind of biking is that?"

--

I ride a bike a heck of a lot more than the average person, though perhaps less than the average reader of this blog. Still, I find it off-putting that I can walk into a bike store these days and find large sections which are a complete cipher: that being the fatty tire section. After looking at the number of frame styles and suspension linkages available for MTBs, the road bikes start looking all alike in comparison. And the fine points of MTB categories: what, pray tell, is the difference between "all-mountain" and "cross-country"?

--

I have no idea what triggered the urge, exactly, beyond maybe just having too much free time. And probably unpacking my venerable 1998 Specialized Rockhopper, which has served mostly as a commuter/townie bike--it got my through a 24hr relay race in 2005, even with the pannier rack still on the back, even on the original 1998 tires. But Monday night I sat down and clicked over to Specialized to see what was up.

In 1998, I remember there being the Rockhopper, above which was the Stumpjumper, of which at the top end you could find the FSR full-suspension job. Now our good friends in Morgan Hill have the Rockhopper (still a hardtail) and Stumpjumper (hardtail and FSR) and Epic (FS) and Enduro (FS) and on and on...all of which seem to overlap in price and function. Again: difference between cross-country and all-mountain and marathon is...? Um, it's also seems even easier in the MTB world than in the road world to find a bicycle with a list price higher than the value of my car. Heck, the price of most after-market suspension forks is higher than the cost of my Rockhopper, comlete.

A look at mtbr.com revealed that there are umpteen million full suspension XC bikes, and everyone rates them at 4.5-5.0. Gee, that really narrows things down. Knowing little else, a Santa Cruz Superlight might be nice...in my size...if I ever rode it.

--

Further investigations led me to the website of Trail Head Cyclery, in San Jose, CA. I could've glanced and moved on, but for some reason I poked around. And found:

DIRT DEMO IN THE DEMO, NOV. 3rd & 4th
When: Nov. 3rd and 4th, 9 a.m. 'till 3 p.m.
What: Demo bikes from Specialized, Intense, Ibis and Yeti
Where: Soquel Demonstration Forest

Dammit, it's the middle of 'cross season, I own 4 bikes already, and I have no regular urge to ride on trails, but regardless I've rung up a friend and it looks like we're going to show up Saturday to try to get some test rides. The regrettably timid rational part of my brain is saying that it's a good chance to see what the big deal is about full suspension, and that a trip to the SDF is long overdue if it's half as good as its reviews. Hopefully Timid Brain also has the foresight to keep the Credit Card far, far away. Oh wait, must bring a credit card as a deposit for test riding...

This could be trouble.

'Cross shorts

2007-10-23T21:48:00.000-07:00

i. Kudos to VeloNews, part one

Full article coverage of the Canadian 'Cross Championships. Aussie-o-philic cyclingnews only came up with a type sheet of results.

ii. About those championships

Not only did someone find a way to beat Lyne Bessette, but two people beat her! If it was Wendy Simms (the champ) and Alison Sydor, though, is it really that shocking? In the men's race, the winner was Max Harrigan (haven't met him, sorry) over last year's champ, Greg Reain. Both elite titles came down to 1 second gaps, it would've been a sight to see.

iii. Kudos to Velonews, part two:

Anecdotal coverage of this past weekend's Granogue race:

With three laps to go, Wicks tried to bunny-hop the barriers, something that nobody could remember having been attempted since they were placed in their current position three or four years ago. He cleared the first barrier, which brought gasps from the crowd. Then he rode into the second barrier like Wiley E. Coyote crashing into a canyon wall while chasing the Roadrunner, stunning the crowd into silence. Standing astride his bike at a standstill, Wicks looked up to find the Cyclocrossfiles.com video camera happily recording the whole incident. Wicks laughed, then got back to racing as though nothing unusual had occurred.

I'd like to think he would've had a good laugh even without the camera there. Sadly, Cyclocrossfiles.com isn't a real website (yet?), so who knows where the footage may be. This little report did make me feel better about my own follies at Sunday's races.

iv. About those Sunday races

During the single-speed race, I managed to rip my left brake lever loose--geez, I musta been torquing it to get up those hills. Let's see how I do on retaping...

v. Found while bloghopping

Everything I know about cyclocross I learned from Clark Natwick and Dave Carr. Though I guess OV has chastised me into attaching my race number in such a way that it doesn't act like a drag chute. Anyway, to complete a trinity of 'cross resources, maybe I could get Simon Burney's book--but why do that, if he has his own blog?

Get it over with

2007-10-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

(a) See poll in right sidebar.

(b) Bash out a race report before bed:

Pilarcitos CX #2 was at Candlestick Park beside the football stadium, on infill much like Sierra Point, only...softer. Greener. Inviting. And the course designers had done their best to make use of the earthworks, leading riders up and down several of the steep artificial banks. There were some really pleasant, smooth grassy bits, and then there were the bumps, the little hard bumps, hidden under grass...oh, bumpy on the rumpy...

After shirking double duty at least weekend's CCCX race, I wasn't letting myself out of doubling up in the B's and singlespeed races this week. Singlespeed came up first, following the wave of the Men's A field. With only about a dozen SS starters, it was nice and wide open. After my trademark slow start, I started reeling in people after a couple laps, which was really satisfying, but the short, steep climbs started to grind me down: my 42/18 gear was just long enough to spin up nicely on the straight and flat, not so much on hills.

It was a long race (60 min), so I got in 8-9? laps--leaders minus one, I got lapped by the lead trio of A's about halfway through. Somewhere in there, I had a spectacular dismount failure and literally slid into a barrier on my butt, which got all sorts of attention from spectators who heard the resounding thunk and expected to see body parts flying off. Happily (sort of), the only thing flying off was my ever-diminishing pride...

Finished off the SS race, then had 10 minutes to prep for the Men's B race. This was, is, and will be less than ideal. Oh well. Had half a bottle of Gatorade and a gel, swigged some water, swtiched bikes and headed out for more.

The B start was much busier with much more contact--there's no shame in that field about cutting people off, and I spent a couple seconds having a good tire rub with a bike that swerved not-quite-in front of me. Major clusters happened at the first corner, the first hill, the first barriers...In a couple of places, my top-secret strategy of using the SS race to scout the course worked very well and I could scoop a couple positions by timing a good dismount-run-remount, very satisfying, very 'cross-skillful-feeling. However, it was getting to be a long day...

Judging from the results sheet afterwards, mid-race, I was about middle of the pack, 30th to 35th out of 60. On the large up-down-Uturn-up-down after the start, I had felt a little twitch in my thigh, a little twitch of overworked muscle...On the same lap, approaching the runup, I just touched the little stump of a bush on the right side. I started twisting to keep my balance, but oh, ow, ow, OW---

The Crampster.

Cramp-o-rama.

Leg cramping in the middle of a bike race.

The Cramp-inator.

I promptly dropped like a tranquilized rhino into the remains of said bush. Nice, long, springy branches, good for supporting an inert body. No thorns, thank heavens. A couple of heads-up spectators got my bike out of the way (I was now outside the course tape). All the folks I had spent the past thirty minutes passing then came by, and I can only wonder if they noticed me curled up in the fetal position in a bush in the middle of the race.

Well, my calf calmed down somewhat, and I could keep going. The last couple laps were pretty sedate, molto tranquillo, and the race leader mercifully lapped me and ended my pain. Still, I wasn't last--just, like, 52/61 or so.

Lesson: doing SS and B's back-to-back is quite doable, and I don't think my results suffered terribly, aside from the cramp. Unlike in a one-off race or in two races with a 2-3 hour break between, though, fuelling is necessary, starting in the first race. Whoever doesn't look busy two weeks from now is getting recruited for hand-ups!

The other sorta sucky thing is that all that racing does get in the way of socializing, and I hadn't more than a word or few with all the cool cats who show up to the 'cross races. Merci beaucoup to OV and the QB for letting me crash their tent--the shade felt so good post-race, mm-mmmm.

Canuck 'Cross Championships - Saturday and Sunday

2007-10-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

Um, no, I'm not getting a callup.

They're taking place in BC for the second year in a row: last year, they were within spitting distance of my relatives on Vancouver Island and included mud and a river crossing; this year, they're in the interior semi-desert near Kamloops, BC. You're forgiven if you don't know where Kamloops is, but it's only 1-1.5 hrs drive from where I grew up.

Defending champions are Gregg Reain, who's racing mostly in Europe but recently came back across the water w/ Vervecken to race in New York, and Lyne Bessette, one of the two North American cyclocross dominatrices along with Katie Compton. Both GR and LB had stiff competition last year though, with Geoff Kabush and Wendy Simms close on their heels. It'll remain to be seen who comes to Kamloops or spend time chasing UCI points elsewhere...

And as usual, I will spend Sunday trying mostly to not fall down.

Edit: Trying to not fall down at the Pilarcitos race at Candlestick. It'd be nice to go back to Canada for a race, maybe I will someday, but for now I'm still a racing chump.

For whom the charming start-up chime tolls

2007-10-16T21:23:00.000-07:00

It was only a matter of time.

I decided to get a new digital camera after having fun playing with Morgan and Lauren's point-and-shoot a couple weeks ago and having less success with my own camera this weekend. Over the summer, too, my camera was having trouble keeping up sometimes during the road trip. Darn it if the 7 MP camera didn't cost half as much as my 2 MP camera did 5 years ago.

The power of having a 7 MP camera though is going to start straining the limits of my home computer: a Mac laptop, from 2000.

The screen still works, if perhaps a bit dim; it browses the web just fine, if perhaps Youtube clips run a bit ragged; its 384MB of RAM are enough, if asking for a bit of patience; but lest I forget, it was the vehicle for my graduate thesis. The hard drive is a once-massive 12GB, now half-full with system software alone, and the size of the camera's memory card will exceed the available space on my computer.

The final nail in the laptop's coffin was today's spam from Apple announcing the imminent arrival of the new version of OS X.

Finally, Apple has decided to discontinue making new versions of OS X compatible with my G3 processor. I'm running version 10.4.10 now, and it's the end of the road.

Hmm, so if it's time for a new computer, how about a few reality checks: do I need a laptop, or do I just like something that doesn't take up much room? Is it my work computer and/or my home computer? Do I pay retail for a Mac or get a work-discounted PC? Does it come with luxurious burled wood trim?

CCCX #3

2007-10-13T22:40:00.000-07:00

The rains of Friday had me wondering what the conditions would be like in Seaside/Marina for CCCX #3. That, combined with anticipation of doing both the B's and a singlespeed race, had me loading the car with enough gear for an Antarctic crossing. The weather turned out beautiful and I only did the B race...but it never hurts to be reminded of how much bike stuff I already own.

I woke up late and cranky and only got to the course with enough time to do a half-practice lap. There could've been more time, but with the start and finish separated by 5 minutes' riding, it was hard to tell. The course was mostly (a) long road sections, with a good bit of uphill to make lungs burn, and (b) tacky singletrack through the chaparral. A couple of runs, one with barriers, one because of the loose sand--I didn't know the right-hand line people were riding to get around it, so just loped through as best I could. Also, a set of barriers on a slight downhill that you could carry crazy speed into--fast-twitch muscles required to take those at full speed!

The singletrack was fun and seemingly innocuous in practice, and finally provided some of the "soft, loamy ground" I was pining for last week. At race speed, though, cornering became a whole new game. First lap, I lost the line on a zig, then lost it completely on the next zag, and came to a complete halt to safely extract myself from a bush as most of the field passed me by (again!). On the bright side, that's the closest I came to crashing today--no lost skin!

On lap 3, Hernando watching from the sidelines noticed that I had picked up nicely, so I had probably done enough to warm up by then, and there was a group of 3-4 I was trying to keep with. I blew soon after, though--not good in what was a 7?-lap race. I ended up 16/22, and I know I was behind several guys I beat last week.

In the aftermath, I felt spent. Both that and the result are signs of dwindling fitness on my part. I need to remember that for three months, I'm a cyclist who happens to have a day job, and should train appropriately! It took doing the singlespeed race out of my plan, so I hung out, played retriever for Hernando as he did hand-ups for the women's race (a good battle), tried and failed to get some decent race photos, and enjoyed the fine weather.

Northern turkey 'cross

2007-10-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

This was the weekend of Canadian Thanksgiving, not that many people in the US notice either that or Columbus Day. Still, Happy Thanksgiving to you all--eh?

Sunday was the first installment of the Pilarcitos Superprestige cyclocross series, at a new/old venue, Sierra Point. The grounds were "reclaimed" from the Bay, so the dirt was, well, sort of like ground concrete. Hard, powdery. We don't get to play on soft, loamy dirt around here very much, do we? Others have described the spidery course, so on to a race report:

I started near the back, hoping more for a clean race than a high placing. Indeed, the clustering in the first sequence of up-and-down-and-up U-turns made a high placing pretty much impossible: by the time I got through, the leaders had long since hopped over the triple barrier way up the course. Still, I managed to sabotage my hopes for a clean race on the first drop after the barriers/run-up by sliding out on the oversized gravel at the bottom (gravel? well-aged asphalt). After getting up, dusting off, and checking to see if my bike still worked, there was a woman doing a warmup lap behind me. So, I was either DFL or really close to it.

The nice thing was that I was strong enough to catch up and pass people after that--clearly I was far more motivated after crashing than I was last week. The two running sections really played to my long legs and running background as I could make up gobs of time and space. Somewhere in there, I came up behind Nemesis, the rider who had caused me to crash the two weeks previous by boggling in front of me--he was picking himself up after a failed attempt to scuttle someone else's chances. I followed for some ways, leaving enough space to allow for dodging, then passed on some straight where it'd be really hard for him to find a place to boggle. And that's the last I saw of Nemesis...this time. We will meet again--he's better at lining up second row for the start, methinks.

The race ended with me in a pack-filler position (36/58) but without getting lapped. Key points: start better, somehow, and don't fall over. Really, I just need to stop falling, and things could improve mightily. And repairing skin is getting old.

Great fun to see all the folks with their tents (and precious shade) and barbeques and coolers out for the races: running a team competition that includes points for all of those things is possibly one of the best aspects of this series. Morgan even handed me his camera to take a few pictures 'round the course, which was fun--hanging out at the races post-Lycra is always fun--and some of them were even in focus. I think it also allowed Morgan to focus on, well, beer.

Now writing this post is mostly redundant because (a) I think I ran into everyone who reads this blog and knows cyclocross at the race, so they know my story already, and (b) anyone who reads this and doesn't know cyclocross will probably get as much out of it as they would an advance Swahili reader. But it's good practice.

My country, my countrymen

2007-10-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

Discussion of the Canadian men's performance at yesterday's World Championship on cyclingnews.com:

"The 270-kilometre course was tough and to be honest, this was a completely different level of competition," said Canadian team manager Kris Westwood. "It's as if the guys went from junior hockey to the NHL."

Dammit, if they had gone for the body and finished their checks, they woulda done good...

Waaaah

2007-09-29T22:39:00.000-07:00

Sadly, I don't think today's cyclocross race reached a critical measure: namely, would I have enjoyed my day more if I had just sat in a chair. This was recently made into a higher standard since I got a better chair, but still...

As far as rest/hydration/nutrition goes, it was fine. I got there early, scouted the course for a few laps, knew there were difficult bits...and more difficult bits...OK, it was not the course I might've hoped for, or that the race director would've hoped for, but you usually just have to be glad that there's a venue at all and make do. Racing for the first time last weekend, riding on the rough stuff wigged me out at first, but eventually I figured out how to go. Pain was in legs and lungs. On today's course, you could smell approaching flesh wounds.

Out the start, I got blown away by all the guys who are happier to play bump 'n' grind for the hole shot, so was probably in the 2nd half of the field by the time I got to the first full lap. Going 'round the fields, I recognized the jersey and bike of a rider who had boggled in front of me last week resulting in my own crash...and I didn't quite get past him. We got to the off-camber nastiness, he boggled, I crashed. I remounted, couldn't get bike to go, crashed again and clusterfucked the group behind me. I recognized a guy in that group too, having heard his favorite epithet ("Fuck, dude!") last week, also in the context of the guy who boggled in front of me. The other riders got around me, I tried to get my wits back, and rolled on...

About 50 feet later, in the middle of nothing, the front wheel locked up and I was lucky to run over the handlebars and not endo onto my face. In the middle of nothing. Walked back to the bike and discovered that in the middle of my little induced crashing escapade, I had picked up a rather large stick which had found its way into my front spokes--ergo, front wheel lock up. Stick removed, I could continue.

At this point, I was (a) out of sight of the entire field and (b) not having fun anymore. The chair was ahead by miles.

There was no need to try and no need to risk further injury to myself or my equipment. I soft-pedalled on. I seriously considered just pulling over at the finish line and handing in my number. But, I had paid my $35 and was in goofy bike clothes, so I soft-pedalled some more. By the end, I had figured out lines--sort of--on the goofy rocky off-camber things. I got lapped by the race leader only in the last lap (and he was ahead by a long shot), and when he came around I could sorta keep up with him, at least enough to know that I wouldn't have got lapped if I was in any mood to go hard earlier. Russell the Red Lantern was first to shake the winner's hand when I crossed the line right after him.

Then things got stupid again. My rear tire had developed a slow leak in the last quarter-lap. After crossing the finish line, I kept going on-course to pick up my water bottle from the start line. Anyone who did the race today knows that right after the finish line was the nastiest rockiest off-camber slope of them all, and I tried getting up it on a near-flat tire. Afterwards, I had fresh scrapes, my chain had escaped irrecoverably underneath my chain watcher, the tire was flat, and as I picked up the bike to carry it away, noticed that some funny steering sensations I had during the race probably came from my headset being almost completely frozen.

Now I only wanted to go home.

The drive home--still dirty, bloody, now hungry, cranky, with a bike non-functional at both ends--just wasn't happy.

This better be an isolated incident, 'cuz it's not worth it to spend so much time (75 miles drive each way) or money ($35 reg, $20 gas, $45 new headset) to not be entertained.

Yeah, this is a long whine.

Daily highlight: good to see pabcid and xbunny and migo, live 'n' kickin'.

Double 'cross

2007-09-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

Race reportage from CCCX #1, Manzanita Park:

Fun course. Not rolling, but half-up and half-down, with more technical bits going down. Wide in most places, so it avoided the single-track sheep-in-a-line phenomenon.

I joined the B men for the first time, starting at 10am (a nice respite from 8.30am-9am in the C's last year). I was 2nd row, and within a few seconds of the start saw at least a dozen riders shoot off the front never to be seen again. I and others chugged away for lesser places in the back. Barriers went surprisingly smooth given the awkwardness of dismounts in practice. No major mechanicals, just a dropped chain that eventually jigged back on. No major biffs, 'cept running into two others tangled up on the whoop-te-doos at the top--that left me with a good scratch on my forearm. The dirt U-turn at the bottom confused me since dismounting left was downhill, so I ended up dismounting right every time--worked a couple times, but as I tired I never found an elegant way through. After 7 laps, I ended up about 15th out of 25, not bad and what I deserved, I think.

The question was then whther or not I should also ride the single speed A's at 1.15pm. I waffled...thought no at first...but got the bike together for a practice lap and it wasn't so bad. Morgan F. pushed me over the edge, along with the discovery that there was a discount on a second registration...

After trying to stay fed and hydrated and not sunburnt between races, we finally were off, 30 seconds behind the Men's A field. Again, I saw half the field go zooming off, never to be seen again--in the B's, I wasn't warm, and for the SS race, I think I was on my way down...It was still fun, though I didn't have the power to overtake any other racers; I could try to keep from being overtaken a couple times, but eventually lost out. Still, bouncing around on the trails was good, and I was using my brakes less and less and pedalling more and more (SS racing is probably good for that). One more biff when in the aforementioned dirt U-turn my foot hit the guy behind me while I was trying to dismount--he finished his pass on the run-up-and-out. 8 laps later, my back was screaming at me, I got lapped by part of the A field (though I'm fine with that: the first three to pass, Robinson, Snead, and Wyatt, are of course national-caliber).

Conclusion: I've got work to do if I'm going to be powerful and fit enough to give anyone a run for their money. And doing two races is probably not a bad way to get there.

Stopping at the corner grocery on the way home, that half-liter of chocolate milk tasted so good...They can keep their post-race beers.

Since getting home, I've been responsible all afternoon, and now I want to veg in my easy chair and watch Ken Burns' documentary on PBS for the evening. G'night, good luck, and I'm looking forward to seeing Morgan and Lauren's photos of the whole thing...

Freaky Flickr-viewers and the Fajitas From Mars

2007-09-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

With a full-time internet connection in hand, I decided to revive my Flickr account and get some pictures online for friends, families, and complete strangers. Some from my road trip in July, some from Thailand last December, some stretching back to 2003...I'm not an artist, just snaps. And I picked up the little Flickr sidebar widget from Lauren's website.

Photos are still being uploaded, organized, labelled, etc. but some viewers have already come by--I don't know who. Since Flickr counts views, though, you can tell which photos people are coming to look at. So, with photos of mountains and waterfalls and the mighty rivers of British Columbia and exotic Oriental locations and the like, which photo has the most views? My caption:

"9am on a Sunday morning and there's a family splashing in the pool--dad was wearing a Speedo and a 10-gallon hat."

Now the wider world knows what the courtyard of the Super 8 in Wells, NV, looks like. Apparently it's in demand.

Out of mercy to myself, I did not take a photo with sufficient resolution and zoom to reveal the dad in all his glory, but the Flickr-passersby must be squinting to catch a sight of him...heaven knows there have been enough Speedos in the local blogs lately...

----

In a long overdue discussion of food, cooked up some fajitas for dinner this evening. All was well until I pulled out the wraps..."Spinach Garden Herb" seemed fine at the time (and was on sale), but little green bundles on the plate just looked a little extraplanetary.

I switched my eyes to black-and-white and all was fine. Yum.

Fine, I'll wash the dishes now instead of net-dawdling...

Humbility for the aspiring cyclocrossist

2007-09-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

Went for a ride this morning to practice cyclocross dismounts and remounts. The first two attempts at dismounts left me sitting on my ass on the ground. Not good.

Things improved, though my remounts are too stuttettery, and they may be that way for a long time until I overcome, uh, nard fear.

On the way home, things were goin' good, and I started playing around with hopping over little things. Gee, fun!--POP. So much for that tube, and like a dumbass I didn't have a spare or patch or pump, and thereby earned a 2-mile Walk of Shame. Oh well, got some shouldering practice.

A lot of people on bikes passed me, but I was nearly home before one of them (roadie in kit) asked if I could use a hand. I probably would've said I was okay but thanks anyway (as I did to Roadie), but there was nary even an offer. Not feelin' the bike community love today.

Feel the heat

2007-09-12T22:49:00.000-07:00

I've got a hot body.

No, really: I tend to feel warm most of the time. Some of us (and usually those of us holding a Y gene) are so blessed. Blessed, that is, until it is time to go to bed.

At some point, I was trained to feel comfortable in bed when the blankets on top of me were essentially heavy enough to prevent me from moving. Blankets that heavy also tend to be very warm, which for those of us with high internal body temps, leads to rather humid in-bed conditions. So the usual choice is heavy sheets and sweaty versus light sheets and not sleepy.

This evening, it is with some giddiness that I see the temperature in by bedroom has dropped below 70°F before bedtime, for the first time in many weeks. Within a month, it may be below 60...sweet cool relief.

Oo, wait: courtesy of the internet, maybe I should get one of these before next summer...

Slow for sale

2007-09-08T16:41:00.000-07:00

Despite the sentimental value, the new apartment is small, and Slow is gonna go elsewhere. Anyone interested? Check the ad on craiglist (tips on advertising a bike like this on craigslist appreciated).

Loopiness

2007-09-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

Argh. Despite convincing myself I had the best of intentions, I failed to ride my bike to work once this week. Had a good, hard ride on Labor Day, including riding up nasty old Hicks Rd, but failed to build on it.

In an attempt to get back in the saddle, and as a break from researching my potential career in laundry, I went noodling up the LG creek trail this morning on what I guess will be my bread-and-butter cyclocross training loop.

Some up, some down; some attempts at mounting and remounting, and as a result my first mild CX scrape of the season. Like most CX scrapes, I'm left wondering how I twisted and flexed in order to make bike/skin contact in that particular location.

It did earn me the luxury of whether time is now better spent showering or watching US Open tennis...

Unleashed

2007-09-04T20:40:00.000-07:00

Over the last weekend of August, I moved into a studio apartment across the way in Los Gatos. No more sharing of house with two other people, time to have my own space to do with as I please (within the limits of being a tenant).

This is now the 10th street address I've had in California in just under 9 years, not counting two periods spent sleeping on people's couches for which I did not formally change my address. Yes, I feel like a transient, and/or like I've got some as-yet-unnamed pyschological twitch, possibly induced by living in the same house from the beginnings of consciousness until I was 18 years old.

The title of this post refers to the viciousness with which I have wielded my poor, unsuspecting credit card for the past week and a half as I try to turn this place into my home. Some shelves, ironing board, stand for the rediscovered TV, doohickey that allows me to watch DVDs on said old TV, internet connection, rug to protect new carpet from bikes. Hmm, bikes: new suspension seatpost for Slow (!--sweet ride), 'cross tires, freewheel remover and freewheel, chainring...Let's not forget filling all those empty cupboards in the kitchen, and a decent-sized stockpot...

A little swipe of the plastic and it's mine, so easy, so easy. Now I shouldn't be too concerned, as I'm not actually that extravagant, but it's a heck of a lot more spending that I've done in a long time and it would be nice for it to - just - slow - down - a - little...

...and contemplate that I may be moving again at the end of December. (11!)

Where have all the blue boxes gone

2007-08-29T09:55:00.001-07:00

I put off sending in a check to AJM's Medical Recovery Fund/Raffle until now, and the drawing is on Labor Day--so if you haven't sent in a twenty for a ticket, do so now. Darn good prizes available. Heck, I even like the bowl.

I wrote the check last night just before going to bed and wanted to mail it on the way in to work this morning--while bike commuting. The mail slot at the apartment complex into which I just moved is behind a funny gate thing, not bike-convenient, so I thought I'd just drop it in a USPS blue box on the way to work. Stuffed the envelope in my jersey pocket and away I went.

And rode, and looked for a postbox.

And rode some more.

And got to work without seeing a single blue box.

It's either (a) I'm still blind despite laser eye surgery or (b) they're all gone, be it because they're too troublesome for the post office to maintain, or they're too easy to hide bombs in during these days of fear and wonder.

So I'll drop the envelope off at work, but after riding with it in my jersey pocket for 45 minutes, I'm afraid the envelope and check may have absorbed some, uh, cycling funk. Sweat, to be sure. Do letter carriers wear protective gloves? Do the JMs?

spotted during downtime at work

2007-08-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

Oh, the irony.

From www.sfgate.com:

"(08-28) 11:27 PDT BLACK ROCK DESERT, NEV. - A San Francisco man was arrested on felony arson charges today after the 40-foot-tall "Man" statue whose torching is the annual highlight of the Burning Man festival in Nevada went up in flames four days early, authorities said."

Talk about premature immolation...

Too long

2007-08-23T22:12:00.000-07:00

Not a post inspired by any great happenings, merely by the lack of posting.

Got back from Boston yesterday evening, having attended another gathering of 10,000+ chemists. As time goes on, I'm noticing that the motivation to attend these things doesn't come so much from presenting new research findings (the few I have) or listening to other people's research findings (the few they have) but rather from seeing familiar faces. I guess networking can happen after all, even for us quiet types.

Boston's transit system ("the T") works well--always refreshing to note when travelling outside of California.

Boston's convention center, like most, looks to have been built over decrepit land and/or buildings as an urban renewal project. However, it is still close enough to civilization that we could walk out of it and have a remarkably good lunch for not more if not less than what the convention center's typically mediocre food court was charging. This is in contrast to the Chicago convention center, which is truly surrounded by urban wasteland.

The weather in Boston was probably even better than it was in California. I brought a sweater and felt silly for it.

Watching environmental-cataclysm movies on the plane while flying back to California probably wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. Still, to watch "The Day After Tomorrow" and then look out the window to see the scars from miles-thick ice etched into the colossal granites of the west, to see it tinted orange by the sunshine filtering through smoke, to see a forgotten wildfire burning lazily across the acres and miles of sagebrush...felt curiously profound.

That fire north of Santa Barbara has burned an area larger than Rhode Island.

Dangnabbit

2007-08-15T20:48:00.000-07:00

Back to bike geekdom.

I bought a single-speed 'cross bike this spring, pretty much the cheapest complete SSCC bike available, just to get a machine under me. I figured that since I've given everybody else a 20-year head start on this "training" thing that I've got to do some catchup. And, if I'm going to drive 50 miles to do a 30-40 minute race, I should do another one while I'm there. Since there are separate single-speed cross categories, one geared bike plus one single-speed equals two races equals twice as much racing/training.

I was also looking forward to racing in the B's this year so as to not have any 8.30-9am start times. I need my beauty sleep on weekends. And weekdays, for that matter.

So Pilarcitos and CCCX have now posted their start times. Pilarcitos: SS at 12pm for 1 h, B's at 1.10pm for 45 min. Am I insane enough to even try? It's just gonna hurt...so maybe it's the C's for me there again this year (it's not like I broke the top 20 in their C's last year). CCCX: B's and single-speed B's, both at 10am for 45 min; single-speed A's at 1pm for 1 h. Well, B's + SSA's is sorta doable...just gotta stay outta the way of the big boys.

---

I need a job, else I get deported in January.

Anybody need a cyclochemist? Er, chemocrosser?

---

Outside water faucet has broken a gasket and is leaking all over. This house is losing any faint semblance of charm quickly.

Confessions of gargantuan geekdom

2007-08-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

I played Dungeons and Dragons as a youth.

When my parents moved, the box of D&D books was uncovered in the bottom of my closet, after all these years. I think...there were moments of weakness as I considered whether or not I might want to try playing again, after all these years.

I remember the rules, I remember the dice, I remember how much damage a long sword does, I remember that extra-healing potions were ounce-for-ounce a better deal than regular healing potions. Gold pieces, gnomes, efreeti, search for traps, fireball (level 3 magic-user spell), save against dragon breath...but I never got to fight a beholder.

Thirty pounds of books.

Unsurprisingly enough, there is an online community of enthusiasts who propagate the original ("1st edition") AD&D rules from the mid-'80s (the publishers are now on edition 3.5, which only used 20-sided dice; no more d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12, let alone figuring out what to roll for "45-75"). A quick forum post, and within 24 hours people from all across the land descended like cyberwolves to tear the collection apart. It all got mailed away today, to Iowa, Michigan, Texas, Pennsylvania, and New York.

Movin' on...

Deblackled for greater readability

2007-08-13T20:19:00.000-07:00

Scientific rationale for black-on-white being easier to read than white-on-black:

The average brightness of the screen will determine whether the pupil is dilated (open) or contracted (closed). Photographers can tell you that the depth of field (minimum and maximum distances between which all is in focus) increases as the aperture size decreases.

If the screen is white (with only a small amount of black print), the pupil will contract, decreasing the aperture size and increasing the depth of field. The lens then has to do less fine adjustment in order to keep the screen in focus as our head wobbles around. Ergo, a more relaxing read.

Wobble, wobble, wobble...

Yes, this blog has been blackled

2007-08-10T15:41:00.000-07:00

Points to xbunny for calling me on it.

Do I get credit for being first to use "blackle" as a verb?

Go pick on someone your own size

2007-08-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

After a slightly inappropriate debut in the C's back in June, I signed in to ride with the B's (cat 4/5) at the twilight training crit last night. I was slacking in July--would I make it in August?

I circulated, moved around. Sometime in lap 4-5 I was on the front. Thereafter tried to "float" to the back. Overfloated and practiced sprinting to catch onto the back again, yo-yoed for a couple laps. Recovered enough to take a little dig on the 3rd-to-last lap, got space with one other guy...and couldn't hold it. Subsequently got dropped on the last lap and did not contest the finish, but easily guessed the winner of the bunch sprint.

List of things to improve:
--cornering at speed without going waaaay wide
--maintaining speed through corners
--strength
--endurance
...y'know, little things.

--

Rode into work this morning, single-speeding a 42/17. At first I thought I was going sooo fast 'cuz I was spinning out so easily. Then realized the legs were too tired to spin. Oh...

The doctors should stick those needles up their a$$es

2007-08-01T20:49:00.000-07:00

This started as a reply to a comment on this blog before taking on a life of its own, in response to an editorial in the science journal Nature posing the possibility of doping-legal sports.

One counter-argument to the idea that sports could or should progress towards allowing "enhancements" as a modernization is that allowing "enhancements" might turn the sport into a contest of doctors rather than a contest of athletes.

Cynics have pointed out that the best-funded teams also seem to have the largest medical staffs. A friend's brother is a Euro pro and he was busted for using EPO due to high hematocrit: he couldn't microdose because he didn't have anyone to smuggle it over the border for him, let alone set up a dosing regime, so he had to use a large injection before a stage race and before the end his hematocrit had spiked. Others with more staff had help and could manage their hematocrit to be consistently in the high 40's.

(The suspension didn't do wonders for his career: his team (who had been "helpful", shall we say) canned him and he found himself persona non grata for a while. I believe he's still racing, cleanly I hope--I think he found a level he could compete at without "enhancement", but he ain't gonna be playing with the Protour boys much ever.)

Anyway, back to the doctors thing: if the biggest teams are paying for the best "medical assistance", they're not getting their money's worth: T-Mobile, Astana, and Saunier Duval have pretty big budgets (Cofidis less so) and they're the ones getting busted. Perhaps the lower expectations laid upon, say, AG2R or Francaise des Jeux or Gerolsteiner are enough to allow them to run clean(er) programs.

Is it simply a romantic notion that cycling (or any other sport) should be drug-free? I think a major difference between cycling and other professional sports is the intermingling of professional and amateur athletes: how many amateur racers have participated in a Pro/1/2(.../3... maybe /4...) race? Well, thousands. If doping is to be legal, I guess it would be legal for amateurs too, or else those Pro/1/2+ races would be silly. But that raises an even uglier spectre than the commonly held view of the present situation that there are amateur idiots already doping on the sly. Can you imagine bike conversations held post-legalization? Rather than "how often are you doing interval workouts? How hard?"*, would you want to discuss "how many injections are you doing? What dose?" Bike geek conversations are geeky enough without being medically geeky too.

Other sports, in my view, do far more to isolate their professional ranks from the amateurs--I'm not aware of too many guys playing full-contact football after college. Drug tests for any of the "Big 4" sports are a non-issue, not that I think any of them are clean (and American football, both college and pro, gets the biggest raised eyebrows from me). At first glance, I wouldn't be worried if football, or baseball, or basketball, decided that "enhacement" wasn't a problem--they're businesses, and bigger bangs, faster plays, etc. are what they're need to supply. The inevitable fallout would be the knock-on effects as the pressure to dope at the college and high school levels would be too great.

So, as romantic and impractical and backward-looking an opinion as it may be, I do not think that "enhancements" should be legalized for athletes at any level. Medicine should not concern itself with improvement of human stock; its mission is to address need, not want. I'm sure Doctors Without Borders would appreciate the donation of $50,000 that an athlete or team has paid in order to get someone across a line half a second faster and do far more to "enhance" the quality of life of many individuals. If or when doctors follow the demands of the free market and pursue "enhancement", my view is that they are no longer practicing medicine and their peers should expel them.

*haven't done an interval workout yet; clearly, not working on them very hard

Boxes and boxes of books and books

2007-07-29T20:40:00.000-07:00

Assuming my identity hasn't been stolen in the past few months, a credit check should go through Monday or Tuesday and I'll be moving in August. Moving inspires consideration of what there is to be moved--and whether it's worth keeping.

I read a lot, and especially since finishing school and leaving the campus library behind, I've been accumulating books (I know there are public libraries, but I allow myself book purchases in lieu of spending the money on, say, heavy drinking.) This is in addition to the large number of books that I annexed from my parents' shelves as a teenager and recently brought from Canada with me as a consequence of my parents' own move. It's becoming quite the heavy pile of paper.

Now it's rare that I re-read a book, since my memory seems to keep track of enough to content me and I've yet to find a book remarkably different ten or more years later. Oddly, my gut feeling is that if I were to display my library, it would be in the hopes of someone else reading all the books--either as validation, or as a means to some sort of commonality. Regardless, I'm not likely to read them again. So why keep them?

A friend has offered space in a mostly-empty attic in which to store the many boxes (I assume I'll do most of the lifting to get them up there). Or, as a more permanent solution, there do exist a few used bookstores in the south Bay Area (though not as many as there could be) that might pay me a pittance. I was even thinking that I could try selling them at work (~800 people on-site) and donate the proceeds--they're currently collecting for back-to-school gear for needy kids. ...By even considering their possibility, I'm probably headed for one of the two latter options. Jacta alea est, the books will go.

The Rocks, Trees and Water Tour - 2007

2007-07-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

Finally, a little bit of time to try sorting out some sort of road trip recap. Things have not been mellow since I returned as I'm looking for an apartment and I've received a 6-month ultimatum at work...so here's a little escape back into the recent past.

Statistics:
departure date: june 30, 2007
return date: july 18, 2007
miles travelled (by odometer): 3970
gallons of gas used: not yet calculated, but often got 30+ mpg
direction travelled: counter-clockwise (darn it, had to pay the toll to cross the Golden Gate)
states crossed: 7
provinces crossed: 2
relatives visited: 11
national parks visited: US 5 (+ 1 national monument), Canada 4
national forests crossed: I lost count, really
former nuclear reactor sites visited: 1
live bears spotted in Yellowstone NP: 1
live whales spotted from Redwoods NP: hard to tell, they're underwater most of the time
Old Faithful eruptions: 1
nights spent camping: 4
nights spent camping in rain: 0
nights spent at Super 8's: 2
nights spent at Motel 6's: 1
number of bug bites on me: <10
number of bugs splattered on front of car: countless (I won!)
runs: 2 (including half-marathon in Calgary)
bike rides: 4 (Grand Teton NP, Glacier NP, Silver Star Mtn, Vancouver Island)
attempts to swim: 1 (Lake Lewis, Yellowstone NP...cold, so cold...)
laundry days: 2
bagels eaten: 11
boxes of cereal eaten on the road: 2
cooler ice refills: 5
number of days requiring air-conditioning in car: all
highest recorded surface temperature in Craters of the Moon NM: 178 deg F
highest altitude attained: Continental Divide in Yellowstone is about 8900 ft
number of CDs played while driving: 59
number of CDs played twice: 3
number of CDs played more than twice: 0
reasons to stay more than one night in Wells, NV: 0

Pictorial review, the short course--Rocks, Trees and Water:

Grand Teton NP

Pictorial review, the long course--Rocks;

Yoho NP, BC, Canada

Trees;

Mt. Revelstoke NP, BC, Canada

and Water.

Takakkaw Falls, Yoho NP, BC, Canada

We can also play Spot The Critters:

l-r: Yellowstone NP, Glacier NP, Glacier NP

Hint: left to right is fish, goat, sheep. The fellow in the middle photo took a look at the mountain goat and then proclaimed, "Yup, that's a big male all right." Um, precisely what I was thinking...

It was a great trip and I'm glad I did it. My only regret is forgetting to get a keychain from each national park (my usual keepsake). Still, it'll be a while before I try something like it again...

Time to head back

2007-07-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

My last evening in Canada, here in beautiful Vancouver, BC, with a view of Burrard Inlet, ships passing, and cedar forests, and a fantastic salmon dinner.

But it can't last forever.

1600+ km to go by Wednesday night and two national parks on the way--time to get comfy in the driver's seat again.

2007-07-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

I'm in Calgary, Alberta

after driving 2000+ miles

being kindly hosted by aunt, uncle and cousins

I have many photos

but there are none for you to see

because they're stuck on the flash card

and I left the adapter in Cali

4 nights camping
3 national parks
2 national historic landmarks
1 national monument

and it felt so good to sleep in a real bed last night

Something's gonna be forgotten

2007-06-29T15:12:00.001-07:00

My room has exploded with junk.

I'm leaving for a 3000+ mile road trip across the Pacific Northwest/Canadian Southwest tomorrow morning.

But darn it, I'm gonna find time to go to Hellyer.

A different kind of crit-ter

2007-06-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

I came out for the San Jose BC twilight crit yesterday evening.

So far, that's my first and only crit.

I think I managed to not embarass myself.

Though p'r'aps I should ride with B's next time rather than C's.

I hope the fellow who crunched on lap one is okay--too bad, he was a friendly type who really seemed to be looking forward to riding.

Little training pleasures

2007-06-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

I'm not a very goal-oriented person. Biking and running are most often things I enjoy while doing them, more than in anticipation of beating the pants off of someone weeks later. And so, it's the little things along the way:

--Running past Westcliff in Santa Cruz to the UCSC marine station, with a whale skeleton on display you can see from space and a view of the ocean from the chiptrail you get all to yourself.

--The friendly cat beside the running path that purrs away at a good ear-scritching.

--The monarch butterfly boardwalk in Natural Bridges State Park. Even without the butterflies, it's like walking into a cathedral whose floor happens to be occupied by a bed of blooming blackberries full of lumbering bumblebees.

--Public parking in downtown Santa Cruz (okay, not a training thing). 100 minutes for 25 cents, which is mindblowing compared to the highway robbery committed in San Francisco.

--Riding Skyline Rd between Black Rd and Bear Creek Rd above Los Gatos. One-lane, twisty as heck, dipping and rising, surrounded by trees and greenery. (bypassing the poison oak--look but don't touch)

--Earning a turkey + avocado + cranberry sandwich from Togo's. It's sorta Christmas-y, and it works for me.

Dear me, it appears to be a race report

2007-06-18T20:59:00.000-07:00

The folks at PCTR have a good thing going.

Got down to Santa Cruz on Saturday to participate in PCTR's Santa Cruz Mtns trail run--21 km with only a hint of ashphalt when crossing Hwy 9. A lot of people (most of my coworkers) think it's sorta crazy to run 13 miles all in one go, but my run was started 10 minutes after the 29 km and 50 km runners left, putting my piddly 21 km in perspective.

Great day for running, in that it never rained and never got hot. On the way home I was wondering why all these people were going to the beach--too cold!

Anyway, thankfully I had gone through the course description the night before, so I was aware of two special features for the day. First, the water crossing halfway through the out-and-back course (i.e. two crossings required); second, the big-ass hill just past it on the way out and on the way back. Other than that, the trails were wonderful soft loamy redwood forest humus (not hummus) with trees and shade and space.

I confess to being dainty for the water crossing: I even brought a little towel to wipe my feet off on the other side. More seasoned folks just plowed through the thigh-deep waters and kept going in waterlogged shoes, but they probably have soles on their feet like elephant hide. I figured I didn't want to learn about running in wet feet by running 10 miles in wet feet.

The big-ass hill? Well, 'nuff said, but it wasn't actually so bad. Between my long legs and my overdeveloped-by-cycling glutes, I can climb. At least while running. At least better than people with waterlogged shoes. Who have been running for 1 1/2 hrs already. OK, maybe not a good reference point.

After crossing back over the creek and reaching the home stretch, my left knee started hurting, making me think "ohno, I'm undertrained, it's going to explode, will somebody carry me or do I have to drag myself with my lips"...Happily nothing so dramatic happened. The knee stopped hurting. I finished. Only a few seconds before the first 29 km runner came through en route to finishing the 50 km--a 2 min/mile faster pace than mine, ouch...but I was too busy munching away at the race-food smorgasbord the organizers bring out every time to really notice. Yum. I may have to get me some of their favorite drink mix too ("Conquest").

Two days later, my ankles have yet to forgive me, but I'm still biking to work tomorrow.

Photos ruthlessly ripped from the PCTR website.