tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89226033036354700292024-02-21T06:32:06.414-05:00Pedal and WrenchMountain bike endurance racing, gear, training, and geekery.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.comBlogger140125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-33058911318985651012012-11-12T01:11:00.000-05:002012-11-12T01:11:22.943-05:00LED Retro-Hacking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If you've been around mountain bikes as long as I have, you probably remember halogen bike lights. You know, the ones that sucked so much power (and turned it directly into heat) that to get more than a couple of hours of pathetic yellow light you needed a battery that replaced your water bottle? (Don't worry, if this concept is new to you, you didn't miss much). <div>
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Anyway, it turns out that I have one of <a href="http://www.niterider.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/UserGuide_EvolutionSmart.pdf" target="_blank">these monstrosities</a> in my basement, and being a die-hard New England cheapskate, it felt wrong to throw it away for something more modern. A little internetting (yes it's a word), found<a href="http://dx.com/p/ssc-seoul-p4-u-bin-sw0-bare-emitter-2026" target="_blank"> these LEDs</a> for a trivially small amount of bling, and I couldn't help but wonder if the gigantor heat-sink of old might be convertible to something usably modern. </div>
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Spoiler: it can. and Here's how...</div>
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<b>Step 1:</b> Cut apart the original reflector and remove the bulb (yay, DREMEL). </div>
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<b>Step 2: </b> Solder some wires to the original pins and epoxy everything in place (forgot pic...)</div>
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<b>Step 3:</b> Solder the LEDs in series on a little circuit board (I repurposed the board from an old garage door opener for this, cutting up the ground plane to make the layout I needed. This was nice for heat dissipation too (then I forgot to take a picture). Some thermal paste can be used here to make sure the board pulls heat from the LED, but it may not be necessary. </div>
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<b>Step 4: </b> Attach the power wires to the circuit board</div>
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<b>Step 5:</b> Superglue the circuit board to the old reflector, which was ground down to have a bigger opening. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTwqHDH4QbvHJ0K_SjEhtB5QFtGozvSl-xoJQ0IAaxhmdZszZZpMTxpYSf0PRudMTb8cGYrWW7EydAO9YuhqDgjwhdnlsyk2mISJumpAO1itjwnp6ELfiH9J-CeiaKtMz_vYbvKCJZdfyK/s1600/IMG_20121110_160451.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTwqHDH4QbvHJ0K_SjEhtB5QFtGozvSl-xoJQ0IAaxhmdZszZZpMTxpYSf0PRudMTb8cGYrWW7EydAO9YuhqDgjwhdnlsyk2mISJumpAO1itjwnp6ELfiH9J-CeiaKtMz_vYbvKCJZdfyK/s400/IMG_20121110_160451.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<b>Step 6:</b> Superglue the base of the old bulb to the back of the circuit board </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhowh4ypuW36W6GYhQWqP2rjwiBfnyXCTPp5QezAs137cB7uULsFpHshf0SUVy3Zyn5KEWwuOZ-h38kj9PYGlMOFQ0iJKL0xr9Ly_u5HZyDK1V0cmiAoSj1e7Kd-6LbJGCovqxKqZCrsiSG/s1600/IMG_20121110_160505.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhowh4ypuW36W6GYhQWqP2rjwiBfnyXCTPp5QezAs137cB7uULsFpHshf0SUVy3Zyn5KEWwuOZ-h38kj9PYGlMOFQ0iJKL0xr9Ly_u5HZyDK1V0cmiAoSj1e7Kd-6LbJGCovqxKqZCrsiSG/s400/IMG_20121110_160505.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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Step 7: Install modified bulb / reflector (with the right polarity!)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9PvcdlQZSPu6M_7bxOIfB_6k8VI5CzHMn7XIpWFMTS1mjFvOwE5rEvNkcDXviFN7JjSqIw5_Q23SffHzcZL8IGZfolmNiX0j7vhLNiokhAKARMeylWahMkOUvz_NG0-aAl37UTPV12v5U/s1600/IMG_20121110_160608.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9PvcdlQZSPu6M_7bxOIfB_6k8VI5CzHMn7XIpWFMTS1mjFvOwE5rEvNkcDXviFN7JjSqIw5_Q23SffHzcZL8IGZfolmNiX0j7vhLNiokhAKARMeylWahMkOUvz_NG0-aAl37UTPV12v5U/s400/IMG_20121110_160608.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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Step 8: retake the night!<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-89738567053988349982012-06-07T23:57:00.000-04:002012-06-07T23:57:39.224-04:00Goals, struggles, winning, not necessarily in that order<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
They say<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=122322542" target="_blank"> time passes faster as you age</a>. Nonetheless, I was more than a little surprised when I noticed my last post, which I feel like I wrote last month, was more than a year old. The reason for the prolonged absence from [a variety of things, including] blogging, comes down to one word: Priorities. <br />
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There's really nothing I like more than whipping up some good snark to plaster on the internet, but sadly, public equivocation on topics of human powered transportation wasn't, and is not, the path to a comfortable retirement, or even a hot lunch. Given that I'm not the spring chicken I used to be (someone recently dared to make the joke that I was eligible to race with the masters!), entertaining you all had to take a temporary back seat to making some progress on my future. This brings me to the topic of the post...<br />
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The last year has been filled with a lot of successes: a graduate degree, an awesome job and my best cyclocross season yet (despite being 100% on the race-into-shape plan). While it may seem like all unicorns and rainbows, the last year has also been one of the most psychologically difficult ones I've ever experienced (life changes are rough like that). In the process of climbing over the center-console to get between the passenger seat and the driver's seat of my own life, I learned a few things and, as is <i>de-rigeur </i>for this blog, most of them relate nicely to sport.<br />
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So... before I get back to being my snark-tastic, rambling self (don't you worry, California has plenty of fuel for that fire), let me share three things you should all take to heart if you want to kick some ass and take some names, on the bike or in your daily grind:<br />
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First and foremost, <b>no matter how intelligent, talented and motivated you are, you will achieve nothing without well-defined, actionable goals</b>. In today's world we are inundated with choices. A person can customize everything from the music on the radio, to the way his car responds to pedal input. Similarly, there are a zillion companies out there doing a zillion things in a zillion different fields. With human knowledge doubling every few years, there's really no end to the number of things a person could choose to spend an entire career on. If a person does not simply choose <i>something</i>, he can get lost in improving his personal radio station until he's old and gray, while never making an inch of progress. There is no optimum, only the travelled and the untravelled road. <br />
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On the flip side, simply defining a goal can often be enough to achieve it. I recall early in this year's cyclocross season, the team captain asked everyone to go around at dinner and define a goal for their next race. After articulating the goal of a top 25% finish in my field (a result I had yet to have that season), I succeeded for the next three races running, starting the very next day. It is all in your head, so you might as well point your head in the same direction as your bars (or career)...<br />
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Second, while focus is a priceless virtue, having laser beams for eyes can only go so far without some base[line skills] to back them up. <b>Wanting something is not the same as going after it, and while the former may be required to motivate the latter, desire alone is insufficient to achieve anything truly difficult; and can, in fact, be debilitating.</b> <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=F21-T-BYprQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+upside+of+irrationality&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nGvRT-raF8_16gHg7NixAw&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=the%20upside%20of%20irrationality&f=false" target="_blank">Dan Ariely articulates this beautifully in his book <i>The Upside of Irrationality</i>, with some experiments on over-motivation</a>. The short summary, if you want something too badly, yearning will distract you from the work you need to do to achieve it. Worrying about bike racing will not make you faster as efficiently as riding your bike. In the professional case, worrying about doing well in a technical interview will not get you as far as two months reading algorithms textbooks and coding practice problems (the latter DOES, in fact work, in case you were wondering). Of course the latter is a big investment, requires planning and is difficult to be disciplined about, especially when you're spending half your time thinking about how badly you want to succeed and worrying about what will happen if you don't. <br />
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Enter #3: <b>You are not alone, provided you weren't a D-bag right up to the moment you needed something. (Translate: social capital is real, and you should build some)</b><br />
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Over the past year, as I was grinding through a thesis, some screwed-up relationships, a job search and an existential crisis or two, I came to find a lot of people who were genuinely interested in seeing me succeed, and would always go out of their way to give me a hand up in little ways when I needed it. While some help came in the form of recommendations or job leads (and OMG thanks for those, btw). The majority came in the form of intangible support. A pint here, a dinner there, an extra fifteen minutes lingering in the street chatting after a long ride: small gestures that communicate loyalty and camaraderie. These gestures don't answer the interview questions or write the thesis chapters, but they give you the emotional stability that allows you find the answers on your own. Value your friends, take good care of them, and they will take care of you.<br />
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Until next time, on the left coast!<br />
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-59194264819821991232011-05-15T00:04:00.001-04:002011-05-15T00:05:22.910-04:00Supercommuter, the Tire<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGYvNPZyATDdax-ga68E__cZVQNeLXL2Hv0xZLpY-bbVlSlq3h3bsMWqmITZSbwEpcY0v-GkC4sssjnh8aY_1LslYPI4yvoWRhUR75_tsuxZb-G3xox28KM4jk_XKk4Sob0vQzWXiRulY8/s1600/11_05_15_tserv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGYvNPZyATDdax-ga68E__cZVQNeLXL2Hv0xZLpY-bbVlSlq3h3bsMWqmITZSbwEpcY0v-GkC4sssjnh8aY_1LslYPI4yvoWRhUR75_tsuxZb-G3xox28KM4jk_XKk4Sob0vQzWXiRulY8/s400/11_05_15_tserv.jpg" width="346" /></a></div><br />
Being someone who rides a bike like most people drive cars (but way harder), a good tire is more than a little important. A tire needs to roll fast, wear long, grip in any weather, and resist assaults from all manner of roadside detritus. Some years ago I find the Panaracer T-Serv (28mm), and have been riding them ever since. This week I wore my third Panaracer T-Serv PT in a row all the way down to the threads with a grand total of two punctures over the life of all three tires. That's less than 1 puncture per tire lifetime. I don't know how many thousands of miles that is between punctures, but whatever the number is, it's a lot... Panaracer, your messenger tires rock. Please send me free ones. <br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-4009078812926169242011-05-06T17:17:00.000-04:002011-05-06T17:17:49.463-04:00Saving you from yourself<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Continuing on the theme of injuries (I'm nearly all the way better, yeay!) <a href="http://scripts.mit.edu/%7Eemu/fab/">Amy</a>'s dog, <a href="http://phoben.com/photos/archive/2008/2008_09_26/fullSize/IMG_2882.jpg">Everett</a> had knee surgery today (and seriously, if I could recover like this guy I'd actually be invincible). In the to-go bag from the vet came one of those giant collars that dogs with wounds wear. We decided to see how it worked for injured cyclists.<br />
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Moms, you'll never have to tell your kids not to pick their scabs again:<br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-44612529553412237262011-04-17T03:03:00.000-04:002011-04-17T03:03:42.366-04:00All bleeding stops, one way or another.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Mountain bikers (and cyclocrossers), in sharp contrast to most roadies (present team affiliates excluded), are usually a lot of fun to hang out with. I've often tried to put my finger on exactly what makes this true, and I'm sure there are a few key elements, but it was the one roughly described by the title of this post that pressed on me today. Those who love riding trail tend to have a pleasingly casual approach to adversity (and risk) that ensures just about whatever craziness occurs, it's gonna be a good time: If you survive it makes for a decent story; if you don't, the story is probably much better. In either case, you're laughing all the way home. Even if you are (this is a real list from the last few years):<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Duct taped into your bike shoes for a 7 day stage race</li>
<li>Having gravel scraped out of your face with a piece of gauze</li>
<li>Wearing a monocle-shaped black eye from face-planting on the end of your handle bar</li>
<li>Braking by jamming your shoe in your rear tire</li>
<li>Freezing your entire hand to a CO2 cartridge</li>
<li>Falling in a river on a 25-degree day</li>
<li>Bending back a derailleur hanger with a rock</li>
<li>Riding singletrack all morning with only one crankarm</li>
</ul>Or, as today might have it, finding out how fast you can ride a flat downhill on your way home from the woods:<br />
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It's cool, he races cross...</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-42400340395126485682011-04-12T21:21:00.001-04:002011-04-13T17:32:32.448-04:00Things to Like About Being Injured<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">You're probably thinking to yourself, <i>"man, this is gonna be a short post"</i> but don't go jumping to conclusions already. I'll admit the <i>Things to Like About NOT Being Injured </i>list is a little longer, but if you think about it for a minute, you might agree that a little bit of gimp isn't such a bad thing every once in a while. <br />
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As an endurance athlete, a professional or any other position in life where people are respected for strength, resilience, hard work, etc. being good at what you do doesn't necessarily make your life any easier. For a person with any ambition, success makes life harder. Ever heard the saying, "people are promoted a level of incompetence"? Whenever you succeed you get pushed harder until you're going flat out can't hold it together any more. Despite knowing about this trap, must of us type-As end up falling into it anyway.<br />
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For the professional type, just deciding to have a rest is usually considered a sign of weakness. Having to take a rest, for instance because you killed yourself getting that last big deal, is a badge of honor. Similarly, shirking your training schedule because you don't feel like riding is lazy. Watching movies all day with a bowl of popcorn and a beer because you had a spectacular crash in the reckless pursuit of glory is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged.<br />
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In a world of keeping appearances, a well gotten injury is the surest socially acceptable path to indulgence and sloth. Let's examine some of the specific benefits:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Personal Appearance: While some elements of hygiene are pleasurable, like showers; others are a pain in the ass, like shaving and hair primping. Injured? No problem. That five-o-clock [last Wednesday] shadow helps you communicate to the world just how badly you're hurting without having to complain (complaining is counter-productive, see #2).</li>
<li>Around the Office: If you manage to hurt yourself in a sufficiently spectacular way, the highly exaggerated stories of your near-death experience will precede you. You'll get toughness points for playing down your injuries when your co-workers ask "OMG, are you okay?"</li>
<li>Life's Little Annoyances: Forgot your keys downstairs? "No, no, no! Don't get up. You're hurt! I'll get them for you."</li>
<li>Prescription Painkillers: There's a reason they keep these things away from regular people, but now you're special! (and as high as a kite)</li>
<li>Priorities: In athletics, most of your life resolves around causing yourself different sorts of pain: Lactic acidosis, eschemia, fatigue. You've learned to endure it; even convince yourself that you like it. Now your only objective in life is to make pain go away. Refreshing isn't it?</li>
<li>Significant Others: All relationships are a compromise, but if you're hurt you get what you want. My mom reads this blog, so let's just say you get to pick the TV shows. </li>
</ol>While all this is pretty sweet, one must be careful not to milk it too hard. The entire magic of the injury phenomenon is that the perception of how bad you're hurting or how honorably you sustained your injury exceeds the reality. Like airlines pricing into the demand curve, you're merely capturing the surplus sympathy between your actual disability and the perception of that disability. The moment the perception and the reality come into line the gig is up, and if you get caught setting monopolistic sympathy prices for your gratitude you'll never enjoy being hurt again.<br />
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See, being hurt isn't that bad, as long as you get better before it gets old...<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(now back to that thesis)</span><br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-88713331595252235382011-04-10T22:27:00.008-04:002011-04-12T19:20:17.209-04:00Always Wear a Helmet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">So I've always been a dirt rider, and an endurance rider a that, but sometimes all your friends decide to jump off a bridge and despite your better judgement you decide the drop looks like fun. < leap >. Rumor has it my current alma mater is pretty good at road racing, and since I used to ride bikes all the time, said pretty good road team is incessantly trying to to get me to pedal on pavement. Fine. You Win. But I'm not gonna be fast! (the last time I was on a road bike was 2010). And so begins the story of Hubris' ride and fall...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ8v0SyV04FZiMP-NZLWDCzRilSbuT5_V82SFQtjZorj3q8H4kKSf_qgKSBS_taEyGVc4y1EickOLYSD5dKndRkv3hQNq5C9ofMRkZN6gZnj6xxemAr0JpROy5oUbUU8PLq1BxSPK_bKs/s1600/bikenbleed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ8v0SyV04FZiMP-NZLWDCzRilSbuT5_V82SFQtjZorj3q8H4kKSf_qgKSBS_taEyGVc4y1EickOLYSD5dKndRkv3hQNq5C9ofMRkZN6gZnj6xxemAr0JpROy5oUbUU8PLq1BxSPK_bKs/s400/bikenbleed.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
It all started in last weekend at the Tufts campus crit, which I'm told is one of the most technical criterium courses on the east coast. As a trail rider who knows his way around a bike, I was excited and terrified all at the same time: Excited because I'd be bringing Cat 1 off-road bike handling guns to a Cat 4 roadie knife fight; terrified because I'd be trying to ride a bike through a Cat 4 roadie knife fight. Really, it's a wonder they avoid stabbing themselves most of the time. (while concurrently making me look like a couch potato fitness-wise)<br />
<br />
Let's digress a moment to understand my perspective on this road racing thing: I'm a guy who races with big spacing at average speeds of 14mph; on dirt, which is soft; dodging trees, which don't move; on a bike that eats obstacles the size of baseballs for breakfast. Now take this same guy and put him on a bike that feels like a toy, speed him up to double the pace, replace dirt with concrete and add a couple dozen clean shaven 20-somethings as fit and aggressive as they are squirrely bike-handlers to swarm about while whipping around in circles until everyone is blind from oxygen-deprivation. They tiptoe on the brink of disaster where the minimum penalty for failure is ending up like a lemon skin after an evening in a french kitchen. This is pretty much the definition of scary. <br />
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With the above perspective in mind, you can understand why the strategy for said most technical crit on the east coast was "Get to the front. Stay there. Don't get in a wreck. [win?]". At the start of lap 2, I took the lead in an effort to test the field's cornering jones. At the end of lap 2 it was me, two tails (Tufts, Villanova) and gaaaaaaaaaaap. "Sonofa---, umm guess we gotta make this stick?" With my current level of fitness (none), and the number of for-real crits I'd raced before (none), this development was less than ideal. On the other hand, it was better than sitting-up in a writhing ball of sketchiness for 35 min, and we did eventually stick the break. The few that managed to hang (the two originals plus a few that bridged on, including Steve from MIT) were glad to keep the ante up in the corners until we were sliding out one guy about every three laps in corner 2 (ouch). Only five guys rolled to a sprint in the end, but MIT's winning move was blocked by yet another crash that ruined my lead out for a teammate. If only we had a few more laps, we could have just crashed out the rest of the sprint and gone 1-2, but I'll take 3-5 any day.<br />
<br />
Fast-forward to this week:<br />
<br />
Coming off a successful race at Tufts, I was ready to make some moves in New Haven. I was a little under the weather so the hilly circuit race was not my best performance, but this crit, man, this one was gonna be AWESOME. I had one other teammate in the race (Loomis) and since I sprint like a little girl with a sprained ankle, the plan was to drag his 200lb diesel tractor to the finish and make him a hero on the downhill sprint. I'd cover all the attacks, but otherwise sit in until the last lap where I'd bury myself on the the back stretch and give Loomis the clean line to the finish. Deal? Deal. <br />
<br />
Everything started out according to plan. Loomis and I were right up in the top five, and I was lazily grabbing all the wheels of riders trying to ride off the front. Then came the first prime lap. Now, remember that I sprint like a little girl but I'm also easily bored, and being up near the front I was in a great position to make some moves. Even better, the guy making an early break for it was the climber who exploded the pack the day before in the hills. In other words, the little girl with the busted ankle had a chance to throw down against another little girl with two broken legs. GAME. ON. <br />
<br />
With 100yds, a 90-degree corner and a long downhill straight to the finish, I jumped into chase. He was on the inside. Coming through fast, I wanted the inside but with the pack coming on I couldn't count on a clean cut behind him from the wide side so I opted for the wide line. In retrospect, I should have given the rest of the pack a curt, "I'm cutting in and if you're there, I WILL run you over", then taken the inside line but hindsight is 20/20. I went wide and hot. <br />
<br />
Unsurprisingly, the leader (Williams) took a terrible line through the corner from the middle of the road and took it all the way out to the curb, cutting me off and causing me to scrub all my speed. I still had position so I got on the gas, coming out of the saddle to a full sprint. Being cut off turned me into a ball of blind, snarling rage. BLIND. SNARLING. RAGE. Williams would be buried for his insolence, save for divine intervention, and I don't have much belief in god at the moment so I was pretty confident of the outcome. <br />
<br />
God may or may not exist, but if he does he realllly wants to remind me that I am NOT a sprinter. Three pedal strokes into my merciless attack, my left cleat released on an upstroke and threw me over my bars at a speed I care not estimate. Thanks to some MTB ninja skills I managed to roll through the impact with only a bit of road rash (and maybe a cracked rib) but returning to my bike I found my wheels would not spin. My helmet, well, looked like this: <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFSXglGhKCg1N98O10VEJ0dvQUA1wVjxzFuvyf6TTKdveIukg5F-z4v_j_syje4Q1nxUpjWG3ZasYw59vrLl71O1-lREAhyphenhyphenqDeeiOinBtsXAnx80vxWI7uaUiP9h-m6WWquFxcru825VA/s1600/IMG_0572.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFSXglGhKCg1N98O10VEJ0dvQUA1wVjxzFuvyf6TTKdveIukg5F-z4v_j_syje4Q1nxUpjWG3ZasYw59vrLl71O1-lREAhyphenhyphenqDeeiOinBtsXAnx80vxWI7uaUiP9h-m6WWquFxcru825VA/s400/IMG_0572.JPG" width="305" /></a></div><br />
...and so ended my second for-real criterium. Down two wheels, short a pound of flesh and in the market for pedals that don't suck. As a whole, this pretty good road racing team of ours had a pretty solid week, running away with the team omnium and taking top 5 spots in lots of categories.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUYNBEyDtc01rE4tx4ySaIRw3zhpqZcvlzCa6-QFQ3bvWpcaCxYR2TNxG6-AomBPR-ymzR0pclAF7NBQpAjJuDU1Hg2MznsuJ31f-sNb9I5T7O_80jH2LT9auT2uDvcKU09G1IUecAiio/s1600/IMG_0568.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUYNBEyDtc01rE4tx4ySaIRw3zhpqZcvlzCa6-QFQ3bvWpcaCxYR2TNxG6-AomBPR-ymzR0pclAF7NBQpAjJuDU1Hg2MznsuJ31f-sNb9I5T7O_80jH2LT9auT2uDvcKU09G1IUecAiio/s320/IMG_0568.JPG" width="161" /></a>The MIT success story is not in small part due to the fact that they're a scrappy bunch, Including this lady at right who rode back to a top 5 after dragging her crashed butt out of a ditch, and her teammate who blew out a knee on Saturday and then finished not one, but two crits on Sunday. If only we could get some of them on mountain bikes!<br />
<br />
Fortunately the collegiate field as a whole, but especially team MIT, has a great sense of humor. While I may not be much of a roadie I toss a mean heckle, and our team has its own megaphone... </div><br />
Thanks team MIT for a great weekend, even if you did try to kill me. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-47361968862206537272011-02-26T10:52:00.008-05:002011-02-26T13:25:21.054-05:00Couch Surfing Nairobi, big goals, small world<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<i>Again I suck at blogging real-time, so here's a little retrospective wrap up of the last couple months crashing an ex-colonial African state:</i><br />
<br />
<a href="http://juliahhnna.wordpress.com/">A friend of mine</a> recently mentioned in a blog post about how when you become more and more at home in a place it gets harder and harder to step back and remember to write about it (that's sort of how I feel about my head and extracting its contents for a graduate thesis, but I digress...). After a couple months in Kenya, I completely get what she's talking about. It only takes a few friends on top of a full-blown project to make stepping outside your tiny little universe an impossible time burden. The unique intensity and incestuous isolation of the expat lifestyle is easy to become consumed by -- a world of problems that all need fixed and an intimate social circle that does nothing but think about fixing them. If you imagine a world where all of those people were highly competent an capable, expat life would be an engineer's wet dream. An even with metza-metza on the HR quality scale, it's still not so bad. <br />
<br />
If it weren't for this silly school detail, I'd probably still be in Nairobi and not sitting in PRET at Heathrow blogging the time away until a flight home (History suggests the only place I can consistently blog is in airports -- a truism so immutable that I now own three laptop batteries), but alas all things have their beginnings and their end; and this trip, along with the contents of its budget, has been diagnosed terminal (though I won't know which one till around 18:00 hours). Coming up to today I put a number of advanced life (and budget) saving measures in place to prolong the inevitable. After starting off at a reasonable hotel with wifi and breakfast, I spent about a week of the trip effectively homeless in an effort to save money, alternately travelling to the Flying Kites orphanage for hard (geek) labor and free room/board. As it turns out, meeting new people and sleeping in new places every couple of nights is a great way to expand your window to a city. You know you can get decent sushi (that won't kill you) in Nairobi? <br />
<br />
In the process of lengthening and liberalising my stay, I began to realise exactly how small the world actually is. My first roommate was a Tufts grad working on "Digital Democracy". I didn't pay enough attention in my policy classes to know what that is, but SMS seems to be a major component. I met this roommate through some other MIT students who were also working in Nairobi. (much like you could get just about anything in the '90s by smoking enough Marlboros and saving the "miles", every problem in development can now be solved by sending a certain number of SMSes. I believe curing endemic poverty costs something like 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 SMS per country, but you get 25% off if you plot the origins of the SMSes on a map)*. <br />
<br />
Not long afterward, an old MIT friend who's now a googler came through Nairobi and we went to show the locals the meaning of the word Mizungu, at Hell's gate National Park. Faced with a tourism traffic jam in one of Hell's gate's slot canyons, Christiaan decided we could bypass the crowd of locals climbing up a 12' rock face on a makeshift ladder by executing a body-jam style boulder problem on the other side (with an audience of 50). <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAu31fxYrDl86Il8B0GVOLzYoBlZ50G6VhE7fhO9HCYVQeU5exrydtpYRrwp-fDnuB1Nxkkfc_YFLgA6QmNa34MGJA2Ui5_f6UyhNXONFtZLkU02bwa-UrSH4cAP6tadWHTXrACOy6q_37/s1600/2011-02-26_csa2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAu31fxYrDl86Il8B0GVOLzYoBlZ50G6VhE7fhO9HCYVQeU5exrydtpYRrwp-fDnuB1Nxkkfc_YFLgA6QmNa34MGJA2Ui5_f6UyhNXONFtZLkU02bwa-UrSH4cAP6tadWHTXrACOy6q_37/s400/2011-02-26_csa2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
This was done without too much difficulty, after which Christiaan was nearly pushed off the precipice by awed locals trying to congratulate him. Then I had to follow...<br />
<br />
To complete the incestuous circle, I brought Christiaan up to the <a href="http://www.flyingkitesglobal.org/">Flying Kites</a> orphanage where an <a href="http://fkadventurechallenges.org/">Adventure Challenge</a> trip was coming through that included the former Bassist of The Ben Folds Five and two contestants from the bachelor, all of whom were being shuffled around by a team that included BC grad and a ROTC cadet that trains at MIT<br />
<br />
I finally also met the bandwidth provider for my project, who's also an MIT grad. It's starting to look more and more probable that MIT is the center of the earth, though I'm suspect the Harvardians would disagree. <br />
<br />
To end, ever wonder where those old clothes go when you give them to charity? Now I do... (would insert photo here but my small camera disappeared before I could download it) The not-pictured t-shirt, being worn by a local in Nairobi, is from from my local fire department.<br />
<br />
At any rate, I'm a little sad to be on the way back, simply because I can see the value that another month would add to <a href="http://www.joinafrica.org/kenya">Fabfi Nairobi</a>, but I think Team TJN has come far enough that they might just be able to pull off the endgame with only remote support. At least I hope so.<br />
<br />
Now anybody know how to turn all this into research? <br />
<br />
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-40804062028322662912011-02-26T03:49:00.001-05:002011-02-26T10:20:28.166-05:00The Two Faces of Egypt Air<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I don't care how many miles you give me. I'm never flying Egypt Air Again. <br />
<br />
It's usually to be expected that when you're trying to get on a flight at 4am in a developing country when there's only one airline desk open and the people from that airline are running the whole show that you're gonna need to push around a little graft, but the systematic and coordinated screw job operating at Jomo Kenyatta this evening was nothing short of appalling. With the currency desk closed, all other airlines absent and no oversight to be found these two characters had the run of the departures hall, and were taking no prisoners:<br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDmCFdGDD3tos2SzyRd_xw7i_blK1_sRZyyaWzz7ysSo0uphMgvK2-zWuNMDgSWYMtqM_Y8dxfkZK8UYkC3mmkoAoV7ViR-J1IFDJZH3ZF-CzCo-jRBhnebxB1lPgEaSHPJNLhJ09zW09Y/s1600/2011-02-25-ea1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDmCFdGDD3tos2SzyRd_xw7i_blK1_sRZyyaWzz7ysSo0uphMgvK2-zWuNMDgSWYMtqM_Y8dxfkZK8UYkC3mmkoAoV7ViR-J1IFDJZH3ZF-CzCo-jRBhnebxB1lPgEaSHPJNLhJ09zW09Y/s400/2011-02-25-ea1.jpg" width="346" /> </a></div><br />
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<br />
Literally EVERY person getting on my flight was compelled to pay some sort of cash fee. In my case, an airline container that has been taken on literally hundreds of flights, and is in fact designed to be airline-legal, was deemed oversize by 3cm, and therefore counted as two pieces of luggage (a decision that I successfully waited my way out of {crosses arms and blocks progress of the scheme to the next passenger}). When it was clear that I wasn't gonna go quietly, I was made to sit in Egypt Air's dishevelled, smoke-filled office while the two decided whether to let me off with the correct fee or to continue to anger the white giant (I think I was supposed to pay for one bag). <br />
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<br />
After a bit, they seem to have decided that they weren't gonna get anywhere pushing me too far, but the game was not over. With the cashier and currency exhange closed and the ATM in another terminal, it was insisted that fees be paid in british pounds, even after being shown an official email with fees for different destinations listed in different currencies that did little more than prove that they could take any currency (presumably for the convenience of the customer?). <br />
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From the rest of the email, I suspect that the recent trouble in the homeland has pushed EA to crack down on fee collection to make ends meet, but the sheer number of people getting hassled was unreal. There was, at times (and yes I was there for a while), a line out the door of the office full of riled travellers with cash in hand. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNoGyj5GLehlEEWObl-Mikgh70_I4diOmQ4gL6n1jFm3IMa6tJ3rZBAVrGMrMlgoina5aMxfcyprx6R-ntuPLMB1N1TSRaS-xDORkTlCJimd_TRV3tV49zYN7j-XdlZ1_WtQKK6O5aHPgB/s1600/2011-02-25_ea3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNoGyj5GLehlEEWObl-Mikgh70_I4diOmQ4gL6n1jFm3IMa6tJ3rZBAVrGMrMlgoina5aMxfcyprx6R-ntuPLMB1N1TSRaS-xDORkTlCJimd_TRV3tV49zYN7j-XdlZ1_WtQKK6O5aHPgB/s400/2011-02-25_ea3.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><br />
While the bag check was nothing less than draconian, security was another matter. The simple act of declaring "I win! I win!" when going through the metal detector was enough to absolve me of any excess ferrous-ness and right onto the plane, where I was treated to a nearly unpalatable breakfast on an old plane with ceiling-mounted LCD screens that folded up and down randomly for the first 30min of the flight. <br />
<br />
<br />
The part that's most remarkable about the Egypt Air experience is the about-face the company takes when you pass from the African to the European side of the route. The food doesn't get much better or the staff much more patient, but all of a sudden you're on a nice new plane with mostly-professional acting staff that all of a sudden can take credit cards. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbwZ3OwcmOAgc6bq_p93Nr0mWHDdo62qVXjmqDHIiXubUgYnri7o5m8unXh3FAwGe3qqK8nXNH7djXdOr3IF7Qvm-XBhOSv4wItdAEk3qbZO3SJ5vAh1ncybG2XxUNxepmcG-oktzWRC_m/s1600/2011-02-25_ea4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbwZ3OwcmOAgc6bq_p93Nr0mWHDdo62qVXjmqDHIiXubUgYnri7o5m8unXh3FAwGe3qqK8nXNH7djXdOr3IF7Qvm-XBhOSv4wItdAEk3qbZO3SJ5vAh1ncybG2XxUNxepmcG-oktzWRC_m/s400/2011-02-25_ea4.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
...And the entertainment system runs (RedHat) Linux:<br />
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</div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-64351886749114895172011-01-10T13:58:00.001-05:002011-01-10T14:00:02.599-05:00Feel-Good Media?If there's one thing Kenyan papers don't do, it's mince words. These guys stake out positions like the US gov't does for oil fields in the Middle East. Saw the following in the Daily Nation this morning:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlcUKbj5WWwwUXe20hw9ioXkeJ3Ggjc_Ra97fR0AlcG0FnhsMCy9JQa-vqKDXyo4svIU673cTsvHmS8Gh5v4QuLym7ZmQRdeyPmWf3nj3JVZFROsty1cMRs0yNvM0b3MGwZ0FaTFAPI-EK/s1600/bald.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlcUKbj5WWwwUXe20hw9ioXkeJ3Ggjc_Ra97fR0AlcG0FnhsMCy9JQa-vqKDXyo4svIU673cTsvHmS8Gh5v4QuLym7ZmQRdeyPmWf3nj3JVZFROsty1cMRs0yNvM0b3MGwZ0FaTFAPI-EK/s400/bald.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
I mean, if you don't have hair, who needs a prostate anyway? Not like you'll be using it (or the nerves that usually get damaged when it's removed).<br />
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Yeah, and Southern Sudan is totally re- er, se-ceding...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-22226683305139234502011-01-08T14:37:00.002-05:002011-01-08T14:40:59.856-05:00Meatbike<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU-_xbSfOZPKGAkuJjdF9g3tQR7xgEoiVh4yZCPWx8C91xljIgl4kngLXKZjeHhV3I7ZQ2nqcf1SgY26e7Q256EzC-JKV6BhPH4Ua4oTnKJtB0ai-YAM3P96mfNzk1GI_mdnCHWkmcjrQg/s1600/meat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU-_xbSfOZPKGAkuJjdF9g3tQR7xgEoiVh4yZCPWx8C91xljIgl4kngLXKZjeHhV3I7ZQ2nqcf1SgY26e7Q256EzC-JKV6BhPH4Ua4oTnKJtB0ai-YAM3P96mfNzk1GI_mdnCHWkmcjrQg/s320/meat.jpg" width="239" /></a>Here's something in Nairobi that's not bolted down but not being actively stolen. Why? It is often covered in meat and then left in the sun. That's right, want a theft-proof solution for your laptop? Hot, raw steak sandwich. <br />
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Nairobi, overall is a pretty nice place, but graft and grift are nothing short of rampant. The gov't is currently undergoing a comical process of trying to root out the independent body they created to root out corruption, and on the streets the scammers, while unsophisticated, are alive and well. Today, I had a tasty sample of the local stylings (don't worry I didn't get scammed) that was rather elaborate.<br />
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So I'm walking down a busy main street in the middle of the day minding my own business when some a middle-aged guy with some pretty serious hepatitis eyes walks up to me and asks if he can ask me some questions about universities in America. Not having any particular agenda, I figured I'd humor him and see where it went (given that we were in a public place in the middle of the day). He walks with me very deliberately to a particular open-fronted coffee shop where he proceeds to suggest we have a cup of coffee. Not wanting to get too deep into whatever he had planned I declined having anything to drink, but seated myself diagonally across from him such that I could watch him and the street at the same time. As he proceeds to tell me how he's a refugee from Zimbabwe and how he needs money to get on this boat to America (What, that's <i>not</i> where you thought this was going?) he is clearly paying as much attention over my shoulder as he is to me, and after not too long I resolved I'd rather not stick around to find out what he was waiting for and politely bid him adieu (making sure to take careful stock of where he went on the way out).<br />
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So here's where I'm impressed: As I come around the block I am met by another guy who flags me down and starts asking me what I was doing with the other guy, telling me "he's not a good man" and "migrants like that cause all sorts of trouble". This second man then shows me a rather pathetic looking ID and claims to be from the government. He suggests that I come with him so he can tell me more about "these people". Really, are you kidding? The government? You might try a uniform, or fixing your teeth, or realising that the last thing a government official is going to be doing is paying attention to this sort of BS. Needless to say I told this one I had somewhere to be and hoofed it quickly away, but I did look back enough to immediately see him get on his phone (presumably to the bad-cop half of this little routine) as he walked off in the other direction. I'd rather not guess what might have been in store had I accompanied helpful local number two where he wanted to lead. Makes one feel a bit like a the slab of beef on the back of the Chinese bike. <br />
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Just another day in the neighborhood...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-72751491083089659142011-01-07T16:04:00.000-05:002011-01-07T16:04:35.888-05:00Heathrow Airport can . . .<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi96i6srTxKxImZgdieYnHNGjEoOyadjZHWUC7svSOUINqsnSUKFFiUYXk-JgT1fgFQ7CYDuXwhAqxChX_4Bu48w1W9_oweuTtjMG3BRdVNYImFaZPZOH3BRHYRA-riIf11R3ORDDxub_Lp/s1600/heathrowqueue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi96i6srTxKxImZgdieYnHNGjEoOyadjZHWUC7svSOUINqsnSUKFFiUYXk-JgT1fgFQ7CYDuXwhAqxChX_4Bu48w1W9_oweuTtjMG3BRdVNYImFaZPZOH3BRHYRA-riIf11R3ORDDxub_Lp/s320/heathrowqueue.jpg" width="313" /></a></div>So it's been some time since the last post. Such is the way when you're trying to get a degree or whatever. At any rate, it's in-between time in the land of academia, and I'm on the road again to Nairobi. Sadly not with bikes, but with any luck the blogging will be OK even with the pedestrian lifestyle (pun intended). <br />
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Since I'm flying solo on this trip, I'm going to try to be a little freer with the posting than usual to keep the world up to date (you'd be amazed how long it takes to write a good blog post). In that spirit. Let me talk about Heathrow Airport...<br />
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To start, I really do enjoy travelling. It's exciting: new places, fun jobs, crazy food, war-torn countries with effectively no rule of law -- these are all things that make me a little warm in the nether, but not all travel is fun and games. <br />
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There's something about London-Heathrow that makes me feel like a sheep being herded to the shear. The similarities are striking,really. First, it's gonna be a mile of walking. Period. In the same terminal? Mile of walking. Staying on the same plane? Mile of walking. Wanna change terminals? Two buses, a boat, a train, mile of walking. <br />
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The walking wouldn't be so bad however if you didn't feel you were in a corral the whole time: Queue, narrow hallway, guy barking at you, bigger queue. Have you ever seen the PETA videos where the animals are in the narrow corral and moving slow like congealing bacon grease, but every once in a while one freaks out and tries to jump over all the rest to get ahead? Yeah, the people do that here. <br />
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Who wouldn't be a little spooked while being herded through a maze of camera-studded hallways punctuated by a boarding pass checks so ubiquitous you can see one from the next? Not to mention the angry GB-TSA (Yes, I made that up) types yelling at people to dump their liquids AFTER they just got off their planes. (what, is someone gonna make a bio-bomb by peeing in a cup between planes?)<br />
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Unsurprisingly, nobody wants to talk to anybody or at least not to a scrubby American hack like myself, and you can't even get a drink of water in the airport without paying almost 2 pounds (that's like a million dollars) to buy it in a bottle. Are water fountains illegal here? I HATE buying bottled water <expletive> waste of money and energy.<br />
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To sum up: Like a sheep to the shear you'll leave Heathrow dehydrated, a little humiliated, and never with your shirt. Nairobi, here I come... </expletive><br />
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P. S. In Nairobi now, giggity. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-62942984122757524372010-08-23T00:59:00.004-04:002010-08-23T01:04:44.902-04:00Leave it to the Spaniards......You catch them for massive organized doping campaigns and not long after they're making scientific proof that boozing is good for you. The result, a little recovery tip sent from a reader (yes, I have those...), that will tickle all you barfly MTBers:<br /><a href="http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/3467"><br />http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/3467</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-25225916754684902892010-08-22T01:13:00.003-04:002010-08-22T01:15:55.415-04:00the fray...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisURahW5mr91RFaiEAW6y7J9qdqE_tscAQrKDFHXhPxpGo8rq9Eik0SbtEsHxEzRBUY4szwg23bMKo4WGYEKYoSup6GU0NTsWMNUEVkLpvPcFHXwpNonf2CdR3jOoQRRXPTMiDPa-g7XVm/s1600/IMG_6947.jpeg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 452px; height: 301px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisURahW5mr91RFaiEAW6y7J9qdqE_tscAQrKDFHXhPxpGo8rq9Eik0SbtEsHxEzRBUY4szwg23bMKo4WGYEKYoSup6GU0NTsWMNUEVkLpvPcFHXwpNonf2CdR3jOoQRRXPTMiDPa-g7XVm/s400/IMG_6947.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508098234090741762" border="0" /></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-59295863425308509002010-08-21T16:21:00.005-04:002010-08-21T16:54:02.638-04:00I'm goin' to Africa and I ain't got no pantsSome people might call it foolish to go wandering about foreign continents for a month with only two pairs of pants and a pair of shoes so worn out that they're alternately held together with duct tape and plastic bags (until time was made for permanent repairs). I, however, don't know those people. Nor, do I any longer have pants. Now, I know what you're thinking, 20-something guy goes to the city with "XXX" on the flag and it's no surprise that he can't keep his pants on. Well, it's totally not like that. The first pair was abducted by the hotel laundry. Then there's the other pair...<br /><br />This weekend was the beginning of the Tall Ships event in Amsterdam. In keeping with the theme, the fab conference concluded with a boat building competition where a bunch of us concocted some contraptions and launched them in the canal. This was all well and good until the first person fell in and turned pirate, swamping every boat they could reach. Long story short, it's a wonder we didn't all contract the plague. We did however draw a huge crowd with our antics (easily 200 people):<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHOcjg5h9bth7hLq_M7EjtVBmkue9jDLAAR1Wv8mRLzduXx0YV-aCsX1luMzWQiZ-FuDGzMjCB8Td5jOFUpiGBDxNmHRnuB0eUzISnmNjMPM47t5XwotHDNa2lMvGJgi9LMl9iwusCX6G8/s1600/canal.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 450px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHOcjg5h9bth7hLq_M7EjtVBmkue9jDLAAR1Wv8mRLzduXx0YV-aCsX1luMzWQiZ-FuDGzMjCB8Td5jOFUpiGBDxNmHRnuB0eUzISnmNjMPM47t5XwotHDNa2lMvGJgi9LMl9iwusCX6G8/s400/canal.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5507968577419869458" border="0" /></a><br />Guess we're more fun than a bunch of stodgy old sailboats:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj268qDfVfFJUfUPzz2Dezn7McO1PPnVXpAakInZ79P24uA9fLP_KuoejrwHP_cv4yRT5HOHVRyue377WTrPxkjpcImqf4vizLKO1rXqai9-8VaRMwJBZUnDHgWZsDvW4joyErnCiMEQbp1/s1600/ship.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj268qDfVfFJUfUPzz2Dezn7McO1PPnVXpAakInZ79P24uA9fLP_KuoejrwHP_cv4yRT5HOHVRyue377WTrPxkjpcImqf4vizLKO1rXqai9-8VaRMwJBZUnDHgWZsDvW4joyErnCiMEQbp1/s400/ship.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5507968591789514738" border="0" /></a><br />Back to Kenya a little bit freer...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-83677898326939587622010-08-19T04:12:00.003-04:002010-08-19T04:46:58.872-04:00The Birth of the Cool<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizuIu7QoiPuVGgXfUMGON62Ni2isnCbMA9_bJq29cPdUV8stLMN2sWxxbVGU0ysPXz_6Cw3sEQN7C5YVq9YUcYmvZKvw4ttyfPANwWG3L_mzxDXhu1jrB7rdji8p4oR5E6pBS-fDq_y78p/s1600/10_08_19+boat.jpeg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 450px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizuIu7QoiPuVGgXfUMGON62Ni2isnCbMA9_bJq29cPdUV8stLMN2sWxxbVGU0ysPXz_6Cw3sEQN7C5YVq9YUcYmvZKvw4ttyfPANwWG3L_mzxDXhu1jrB7rdji8p4oR5E6pBS-fDq_y78p/s400/10_08_19+boat.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5507039611423095490" border="0" /></a><br />Continuing on the theme of how Amsterdam is a magical place, a little anecdote from last evening... Everyone knows that Amsterdam is something of a party city, what with its lax drug, alcohol and prostitution laws, vibrant night life and compact geography, but unlike most of the "cool" places I've been, the funk goes all the way to the top. Last night I wandered into my foofy conference hotel (the Lloyd Hotel, for those interested) at about 2am, and stepped into the elevator only to hear and elevator music version of Dr. Dre's "Bang Bang". That's right, these <expletive> never forgot about Dre.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyiD4TIGVtoRd_EdKmsfiu59u3TEpwE8uES0uKGWkb5BtG79KKfRZtHbP5uYwjkNR9K2YNf-reYAsAwW4rdYXw1H5UBjKxExMQb2UligQOpuJtBkd-JJ9GqTlyzhq4tdYA11gLpcF7GeNe/s1600/10_08_20+boatonT.jpeg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyiD4TIGVtoRd_EdKmsfiu59u3TEpwE8uES0uKGWkb5BtG79KKfRZtHbP5uYwjkNR9K2YNf-reYAsAwW4rdYXw1H5UBjKxExMQb2UligQOpuJtBkd-JJ9GqTlyzhq4tdYA11gLpcF7GeNe/s400/10_08_20+boatonT.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5507039618151997906" border="0" /></a>Another example of cool had to do with today's adventure, involving a homemade composite boat, a public dock and public transit. After drawing an amused crowd on the shoreline as we paddled around in the ocean with our cotton-fiber contraption, we proceeded to bring it onto the the train, whereupon the conductor started giving us a hard time (while trying hard not to laugh). We called his bluff and pushed back, asserting that it was lighter than a bike and not any bigger than the largest person that might get on, resulting not only in our admittance, but also his insistence that we didn't pay. Conclusion: Amsterdam rocks.<br /><br />Possible mission for today: homemade hovercraft...<br /><br /><br /><br /></expletive>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-65314233164443644232010-08-08T07:43:00.001-04:002010-08-08T07:43:30.678-04:00Only in the Netherlands<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVBtTTsa-pOvgeAXBh2xAlETSvEvMGZ4MWvFxvbeYXWfSs06TTRkHPotT90I8ymUMYeAXrwZ34nMG5Bp2y5eMKt5V9AgRav_Gg0kmokTqw01DRvzhZQZ485I9Izk-OdFUUUqBLf2_M7GJj/s1600/photo-710679.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVBtTTsa-pOvgeAXBh2xAlETSvEvMGZ4MWvFxvbeYXWfSs06TTRkHPotT90I8ymUMYeAXrwZ34nMG5Bp2y5eMKt5V9AgRav_Gg0kmokTqw01DRvzhZQZ485I9Izk-OdFUUUqBLf2_M7GJj/s320/photo-710679.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5503003343337660706" /></a></p>Can't find free Internet to save your life (I'm totally in an alley grafting off someone's wifi), but you can find stairs with a trough to roll your bike up and down. Dunno if that was deliberately engineered as such, but seems to be a popular feature nonetheless. <p>Oh and sorry about never finishing the New Mexico pics. Been busy :)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-27674513660235898602010-05-26T06:01:00.007-04:002010-05-29T13:18:04.632-04:00Hello from the ChamaContrary to popular belief Pedal and Wrench are not dead. I rode with the Pedal, in fact, not two weeks ago (visual evidence is on my desktop, so you'll have to take my word for it). It's been a rough winter for the two of us though, with new "jobs" and life changes and all that, but short of packing on a few pounds we're still alive and kicking. Courtesy of some friend's nuptials, I happen to be kicking [it] at the moment in New Mexico and doing a little exploring. Here's a taste of updates to come:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKBncX7uZrlEs4dWOGqTSEfKdG-oiQ5vxsG4QAgcf-X3ASadqVi2trd2D-WKQ2tlzCVYW4kPYsONkADBqyRWgtMUCFwtmUcJ1yfEornQJkIok0FGjI8o30cTbatmF7KQv9gHm4iNM2l10u/s1600/CIMG1022_2sm.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKBncX7uZrlEs4dWOGqTSEfKdG-oiQ5vxsG4QAgcf-X3ASadqVi2trd2D-WKQ2tlzCVYW4kPYsONkADBqyRWgtMUCFwtmUcJ1yfEornQJkIok0FGjI8o30cTbatmF7KQv9gHm4iNM2l10u/s400/CIMG1022_2sm.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5476741606718514082" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu-pV0EhP9ZD_-xyc6D_oC8ylkJDZ9Dab2lRARCKYoUSpIexfUs8CtsSzE7rRTdahW-dQycqfwG_vHUrky-F6e5DyWa7OcSbfCGk_yUv1lh9Q1t0RW-Sg6ySYSFQLL3p_x5_zj_VPgLa6w/s512/3F698D3F-1B8C-439B-ADE1-59CA50E7A92D-304-000001E22E430E85.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 384px; height: 512px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu-pV0EhP9ZD_-xyc6D_oC8ylkJDZ9Dab2lRARCKYoUSpIexfUs8CtsSzE7rRTdahW-dQycqfwG_vHUrky-F6e5DyWa7OcSbfCGk_yUv1lh9Q1t0RW-Sg6ySYSFQLL3p_x5_zj_VPgLa6w/s512/3F698D3F-1B8C-439B-ADE1-59CA50E7A92D-304-000001E22E430E85.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij-i-QRUOimUlE15vNyobNKeJS2LH7ZXjXFwHHQvbaRIqBaMs1t_DgmhAWZXs0f5lxYsAsZclQg8c1T4khUvt9_UGMewxiaMq0jArVqYYouOCaUgYXNoBc4BTrfSPg2Zoo7BamQCM4l6j_/"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 450px; height: 337px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij-i-QRUOimUlE15vNyobNKeJS2LH7ZXjXFwHHQvbaRIqBaMs1t_DgmhAWZXs0f5lxYsAsZclQg8c1T4khUvt9_UGMewxiaMq0jArVqYYouOCaUgYXNoBc4BTrfSPg2Zoo7BamQCM4l6j_/" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvyb0fXN63ELxZHxqfC0N1vMdP7Wuf_jZy6ir4ilLhup3a7L208-HCMOZ-OW4bI-3Dq3OT99LcSLCV2A3YUMWvhmDH6uftx8xVlJE9BGhaCB-5apViTN5ll3fCAMyX4PbqA-XCki_SeSZ0/s1600/CIMG1039_sm.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 294px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvyb0fXN63ELxZHxqfC0N1vMdP7Wuf_jZy6ir4ilLhup3a7L208-HCMOZ-OW4bI-3Dq3OT99LcSLCV2A3YUMWvhmDH6uftx8xVlJE9BGhaCB-5apViTN5ll3fCAMyX4PbqA-XCki_SeSZ0/s400/CIMG1039_sm.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5476741599431343330" border="0" /></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-74951771040365697542010-02-03T20:29:00.014-05:002010-02-04T20:15:43.322-05:00From pedal to ped<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJZLiVTsX5J7ik6U-4nm-1NEE3uqGJeoqIfQIECGNeSfZTSj82jR4y-iCfTw7EFbr-C0XbmbInqffbxztw5h8TRnfZcQBqN-t4y1s_ssa0VsX3oeKz-SIaZ8NuWfP05i6tzE8NnsMGgYQ/s1600-h/tuolumne.JPG"></a><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJZLiVTsX5J7ik6U-4nm-1NEE3uqGJeoqIfQIECGNeSfZTSj82jR4y-iCfTw7EFbr-C0XbmbInqffbxztw5h8TRnfZcQBqN-t4y1s_ssa0VsX3oeKz-SIaZ8NuWfP05i6tzE8NnsMGgYQ/s320/tuolumne.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434223061781843698" style="float: right; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 238px; height: 320px; " /></span><div>If there is a place the wild things are, it certainly isn't New Jersey.</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><div><br /></div><div>I'm missing the Zen of the holy shit moments, the rhythm of man and machine flowing through the curves and over a mountain, the hair raising descent down a stony gulch on two inch tires and a saddle slapping my chest. I even, honestly, truly miss that wretched day in BCBR where I hated the earth the sun and myself. And what I wouldn't give now for a ride with Keith and Seth in the Fells, on snow and ice, new trail ahead and uncertainty below?</div><div><br /></div><div>Life is hard, and harder when you're at your desk looking out the window at fresh snow, thinking back on grand adventures where each moment held a lifetime. I try not to do much of it, looking out the window that is - better to focus on the work before me. If there is a way, it is for heart and mind and body to be one. As athletes, we trained our bodies to do a task and to do it well. Beautifully perhaps. We transformed ourselves to a purpose - our muscles, our dreams, our minds merged into one, a single goal, a reason for being. That reason escapes me now. </div><div><br /></div><div>As much as I would like to try to convince Keith to take another go at the BCBR, I don't have it in me, the time or the strength. What I need is a return to a simpler way of being, with time and space for thinking and not thinking, for doing and not doing. I'm taking a hiatus from the pedal, turning to hiking - a meditation of steps through the Sierras. I don't know how far I'll go or how long I'll be. I need something simple, tangible - a hike ending at a hot springs, counting off time with a song sung a hundred times over, fighting sleep to catch one more glimpse of the vastness of the stars overhead.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have a guide book to the Tuolumne Meadows area to think on, and a new stove, an MSR Dragonfly (you have to respect a stove that burns white gas, kerosene, gasoline, diesel and chicken fat). The seeds are sown. Here's to focus, honest work, and a dream of the wild.</div>The Pedalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11548544991983892637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-65330922199844762682010-01-14T23:32:00.005-05:002010-01-17T22:35:09.133-05:00Kids these daysOnce every year I am reminded that I am slowly but surely getting old (this year, I even get to share my day of remembrance with a deceased civil rights leader...). Though I've managed to skip the balding, the beer gut, and the wife and kids so far, year in the last few, without fail, there has been something to remind me that things aren't the way they used to be:<br /><br />Everyone here remembers the early-mid 90's right? You know, when your bike wasn't cool unless every piece of aluminum on it was anodized in a different color? When bar-ends were all the rage, and michelin still made tires in iridescent green? In fact, everyone made tires in iridescent green. it was the ONLY color for a MTB tire. Yes, of course you do. Your non-cyclist friends are still questioning your sexual orientation as a result of that time period. Looking back at it, YOU might be questioning it too, but I digress...<br /><br />I recently put together a bicycle with these most-decidedly vintage tires:<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX2qH9TFrDWhqmOs95vym_gCgNpLXsPt3He21yCxqHy47SJDNEcVDFSZBZrwGrTT4oyMyMPLlITRNvtyZo6yH_Hb6s7Owskw5PormavI5nPueC656ficLCryz6Adx2w3UahrFl2Y8EwVk0/s1600-h/10_01_17_tigre.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 180px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX2qH9TFrDWhqmOs95vym_gCgNpLXsPt3He21yCxqHy47SJDNEcVDFSZBZrwGrTT4oyMyMPLlITRNvtyZo6yH_Hb6s7Owskw5PormavI5nPueC656ficLCryz6Adx2w3UahrFl2Y8EwVk0/s400/10_01_17_tigre.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427900162778899634" border="0" /></a><br />As I was carrying it down the stairs earlier this weekend in an undergraduate MIT dorm where my friend is resident advisor, some brazen young whipper snappers pipe up and ask, "so those tires are green, does that mean they're ECO-friendly?"<br /><br />"No," I said. "It means they're from 1994"<br /><br />[blank stare]<br /><br />That's it, these kids were still crapping their pants as a matter of course during the <span style="font-style: italic;">real</span> green revolution. Now, they're just pains in the ass. [opens can of sodi-pop with one remaining tooth]<br /><br />(if you're in Boston on Monday and reading this, come help me celebrate not having gray hair just yet!)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Wrench<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/balf/3743426690/</span><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-56996777725016479332010-01-14T12:07:00.007-05:002010-01-14T15:05:43.504-05:00The Triple is DeadWith all this being studious BS lately, I realize I haven't been posing any real "content" (read: I'm about six months behind on my cyclingnews reading). For this I apologize, and will quickly try to make amends below:<br /><br />Last year <a href="http://blog.pedalandwrench.com/2009/05/hey-thats-my-idea.html">I talked a bit about how much I liked the Sram XX development</a> (though I'm not entirely sold on 10sp drivetrains given that I already blow through two chains and a cassette a year), and when Shimano dropped the triple from their DA lineup in leiu of a compact double in '09, there was <a href="http://bikehugger.com/2008/05/the-rise-of-the-compact-crank.html">considerable hubub about how the world was changing</a> (<---read this one, it's really good), but with Shimano now offering an off-the-shelf mountain double in the new SLX line (incidentally, with the gearing I run) and the XX taking "Best New Product" honors in the <a href="http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/2009-reader-poll-srams-off-road-range-a-favourite">annual cyclingnews poll</a> I think it is fair to say <span style="font-style: italic;">the triple crank is officially dead</span>. If the XX sells as well next year as everyone thinks it will, it's likely Shimano will follow suit with a double offering as well. IMO, they're waiting to see how the non-standard SRAM BCD and 10 speed shifting sorts out in the market (the first, at least, is rubbish) before throwing their hat in the ring. They've already got plenty of pros out there hacking the current XTR to run double.<br /><br />What does this mean for you? If you're<span style="font-style: italic;"> cool,</span> then you might as well start throwing out chainrings now. I, for one, will no longer go on a group ride where any bike has more than two of them unless one of the three is so damaged from rolling over logs that it only functions as a bashguard. Those of you who are artistically inclined might even be able to defray the cost of switching to a new, $470, standards-ignoring dedicated double setup by making some home appliances with your newly freed hardware.<br /><br />This guy, for instance has realized that both triples AND CDs are dead, combining them artfully into one ironic timepiece:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSVXryJ4Yte1_HvuQfstZ8MmgrwOcWvrwO2j-e-MtAQDM4wvoa1VyTnpaF6kw-kCzQvxXzlP5_04LxW4O2FG97Y5_a09E80DVvphIlptXSAoez1VwrT0Ov3_WboNir4EUeQiBgpkKXQRbs/s1600-h/10_01_14_clock2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 273px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSVXryJ4Yte1_HvuQfstZ8MmgrwOcWvrwO2j-e-MtAQDM4wvoa1VyTnpaF6kw-kCzQvxXzlP5_04LxW4O2FG97Y5_a09E80DVvphIlptXSAoez1VwrT0Ov3_WboNir4EUeQiBgpkKXQRbs/s400/10_01_14_clock2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426654493900716434" border="0" /></a><br />While this guy has doubled his coolness by also ditching the small ring:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ33u8ryHPxfQwCegDqgzW9yGMqgSa4UsLppgUj8u7MmvY58svLY42DjSMryifx2aIBeGDAu-xMX3XpxI0PnpJEgZTW-c1EiarhToQDRzLxsKPiKZPTTW0_IqiIy7uorIAHrpvlJVcqhCh/s1600-h/10_01_14_clock3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ33u8ryHPxfQwCegDqgzW9yGMqgSa4UsLppgUj8u7MmvY58svLY42DjSMryifx2aIBeGDAu-xMX3XpxI0PnpJEgZTW-c1EiarhToQDRzLxsKPiKZPTTW0_IqiIy7uorIAHrpvlJVcqhCh/s400/10_01_14_clock3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426654497706014754" border="0" /></a><br />Don't be a loser. Lose a ring. <span style="font-style: italic;">Everybody's</span> doin' it.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Image credis:<br />http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2049/2200530970_b23641cd67.jpg<br />http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2528/3814517449_fe9775f41f.jpg</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-77044366199655148322010-01-10T01:55:00.010-05:002010-01-10T12:42:47.978-05:00TTD Part 2: Stubborn Refusal to YieldThe first thing you get taught in therapy is that the best way to make yourself do something difficult is to tell a whole bunch of people you're going to do it so you'll be motivated by not failing and looking like an asshole in front of all your friends (read: my Masters' Thesis...). Well, last week I promised biking within the week, no matter what the conditions, and today I bring you my journey of stubborn refusal to yield.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9GMBxv0XELytaaFdVuWsVYiZWy_NFq5Be9KOUeg3cNw41z94uSlp2jdD5HlyvCxd3Zs7Es2ovgUwoVEKCQDnKlrHnNDnCPFZqmgVtpqUTmZJL1wtKNUKT_cTblklmGLySA4IIxZIiEMa4/s1600-h/10_01_09_bsw.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 275px; height: 271px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9GMBxv0XELytaaFdVuWsVYiZWy_NFq5Be9KOUeg3cNw41z94uSlp2jdD5HlyvCxd3Zs7Es2ovgUwoVEKCQDnKlrHnNDnCPFZqmgVtpqUTmZJL1wtKNUKT_cTblklmGLySA4IIxZIiEMa4/s400/10_01_09_bsw.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425019511343765250" border="0" /></a>In case you haven't noticed, winter is in full force out here in New-England town--there hasn't been a day above freezing in at least ten--and today's temperature was, well, I don't really know. It's too cold in my kitchen for the batteries in the little weather gadget to work--><br /><br />...but if the weather is tame enough for the mailman to take to the sidewalks, we must to the woods! Besides, the dog was going to be a pain in the ass all day if I didn't tire him out a little. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vue5WUuX0go">And so, my morning...</a><br /><br />(Thanks to the joy of copyright, the original soundtrack was not allowed by youtube, but you can do the old volume switcharoo with the intended track <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3PB-2YouAI">HERE</a> <span style="font-style:italic;">Edit: though the replacement track ain't so bad either...</span>)<br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Vue5WUuX0go&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Vue5WUuX0go&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-85885320106311261262010-01-05T19:52:00.008-05:002010-01-06T23:00:24.017-05:00It's official. I give up.Yeah so it snowed. A lot. Two inches was cool. Four was nbd. Six got everyone else and I felt real tough being the only guy still on a bike, but after four stoms in a row and drifts up to two feet, the hiking boots have made their way out of the basement (I even bought some AT gear, but that's another story entirely...). By no means do I endorse cross-training. On the contrary, any form of travel or exercise that involves impact or weight bearing should be avoided at all cost, even if it means withdrawal from non-cyclist social groups or rolling around your office in your chair all day to stay off your feet. But these are special circumstances, and you KNOW how I feel about trainers...<br /><br />Hold your breath, here is the first ever photo proof of a pedal and wrench character NOT on a bike. His face is hidden to protect his identity and corresponding reputation, but it is nonetheless abundantly clear that this guy is in the woods and not on a bike. What you can't tell from the photo is that he's crying softly to himself and asking every five minutes (between sobs) when the trails will be rideable again.<br /><br />This poor soul is not alone. It's a safe bet that you're reading this from some sort of heinous stationary exercise torture device in between motivational reruns of the biggest loser (you already finished lost, survivor, and 24). Have no fear, however, I promise that you'll be riding bikes vicariously through the wrench again within the week, whether it be well advised or no... Until then, enjoy this tasty photo of some hiker's rear end:<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpPHQO44s5bP9Jrx17dhOEps-L50Mw0RNJiYqEM1dIELbByhqgPZDpUB0ygQ6wYRZTJNENLVANH8qNohCI6UWfjeRRB0UqlI-wHJQCDQ5j9haDnA3b1Bb68wT8mPe4VGC6mhuZpvrEDwYk/s1600-h/10_01_05_sb.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 450px; height: 433px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpPHQO44s5bP9Jrx17dhOEps-L50Mw0RNJiYqEM1dIELbByhqgPZDpUB0ygQ6wYRZTJNENLVANH8qNohCI6UWfjeRRB0UqlI-wHJQCDQ5j9haDnA3b1Bb68wT8mPe4VGC6mhuZpvrEDwYk/s400/10_01_05_sb.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423841772238420034" border="0" /></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-66159769736197119162010-01-02T02:28:00.003-05:002010-01-02T02:31:31.110-05:00A Place for Everything and Everything in it's Place<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRlDj6Z_riUZzqVxAF0UjcLj5q8AEt0325Cl2NP17HIxyjad0IK6Wk1_9VY8wWsWnk63jvLDlPb-F_mO_qrh7p0hpIbNDLpeP7kwmIXee6UxDGXxR8HG2OzRq4e1HqpTzMyoegu4AOt5t2/s1600-h/10_01_01_tools2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRlDj6Z_riUZzqVxAF0UjcLj5q8AEt0325Cl2NP17HIxyjad0IK6Wk1_9VY8wWsWnk63jvLDlPb-F_mO_qrh7p0hpIbNDLpeP7kwmIXee6UxDGXxR8HG2OzRq4e1HqpTzMyoegu4AOt5t2/s400/10_01_01_tools2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5422041485020128082" border="0" /></a><br />Pegboard 1. Disorder 0.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigMf87lQxN-hS8a6m-ixIbn4aExUhFTvAA9j3IVmDdlql5dlaAVfRI_rbl-J4SVP6GvlCYhsD0NdOfIoqw_vEVWccPhmL9wyuGOnp9Ikk3mD4P3eZKuNUFtfH0eC2TPxak3tBc0lW0CMPt/s1600-h/10_01_01_tools1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigMf87lQxN-hS8a6m-ixIbn4aExUhFTvAA9j3IVmDdlql5dlaAVfRI_rbl-J4SVP6GvlCYhsD0NdOfIoqw_vEVWccPhmL9wyuGOnp9Ikk3mD4P3eZKuNUFtfH0eC2TPxak3tBc0lW0CMPt/s400/10_01_01_tools1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5422041479898986066" border="0" /></a><br />Where the magic happens...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8922603303635470029.post-16477974777906077022009-12-31T19:18:00.003-05:002009-12-31T19:28:44.095-05:00What you missed when you started drinking at noon<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgknjm_WCqRLnUStociDoOrlFLD1dOZn-jXGuidkDPHt5GPd7gmUzhHoLzHYLyEgIhbn-gqt-6f42eQQwnh0pCBZZF3eFgNGImICnhg4tw35URyu2GucIgTVQRZqx_-_gQ2Iz2Wk5g4RTcQ/s1600-h/09_12_31_snow.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 460px; height: 343px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgknjm_WCqRLnUStociDoOrlFLD1dOZn-jXGuidkDPHt5GPd7gmUzhHoLzHYLyEgIhbn-gqt-6f42eQQwnh0pCBZZF3eFgNGImICnhg4tw35URyu2GucIgTVQRZqx_-_gQ2Iz2Wk5g4RTcQ/s400/09_12_31_snow.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421561176822786434" border="0" /></a>Sure it maybe wasn't "prudent" to ride one of the most technical routes in the fells in the middle of a snowstorm, but it sure was fun...<br /><br />Happy New Year!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02365851588737326710noreply@blogger.com0