Mumbled Rantings from the Evol God of Nollij

Found on lawn

2010-04-30T12:45:00.001-07:00

Found on lawn
Originally uploaded by Nollij.

I went outside to take a call & found this empty wasp nest on a magnolia leaf lying on the lawn: NEAT!

Big Brother Selle

2010-04-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't written on my blog in.. well, well over a year now. So, to kick things off again, I'm posting a video I shot recently of my older brother Selle skateboarding down Shoreline Highway. Selle had been visiting from Sweden and he brought his new handmade (by him)downhill board. He rode Shoreline a few days before this video and the conditions were much better: no eucalyptus nuts & bark all over the road, no wet spots. He made the most of it though and had a blast doing it. For the record, I'm driving and my brother Kevin is holding the camera. Enjoy!

Mist and Nuts at Shoreline from Ray Bogh on Vimeo.

Idaho Stop in California?

2009-04-20T14:05:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time since I've posted. I've been busy with school and life and it makes for somewhat infrequent blogging. I've been asking myself WHY I'm still doing this. While I doubt Sammy Hagar was talking about blogging when he said "to me it's all just mental masturbation", the boot fits. Is blogging intrinsically a narcissistic form of self gratification? It could be argued successfully that indeed it is, and do I really want that mantle? Cheese & Rice, I've been spending too much in self-analysis. Never-mind, here's a little piece on the Idaho Stop, which just got shot down in the Oregon Legislature. Idaho has had the law since 1982 and it works for them, so why not for California?

Bicycles, Rolling Stops, and the Idaho Stop from Spencer Boomhower on Vimeo.

Passionate about Bikes

2009-02-01T19:46:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted... been busing living my life. I read something today though that I just had to share. A friend of my mom's sent me a link to this comment because he knows I'm a nut about bicycles. He was dead on: I love it.

Give IT a read. I hope y'all enjoyed your Sunday! For the record, no, I did not watch the superbowl, I was hanging with my 4 year old and he could care less about football. Neither could I. My idea of a good sport to watch on TV is cycling, but I think that's a given.

My secret endurance bicycle racing obsession

2008-12-29T00:15:00.001-08:00

Last week, Jill Homer's blog linked to this little article posted in the New York Times, and it got me pondering my secret obsession with endurance bicycle racing. I suppose now I've posted it on the interwebs, it's not so secret...(insert forehead slapping sound). It started shortly after I got back into bicycling, specifically, transportation cycling. Funny that I would latch onto racing when what I was engaging in was about as similar to endurance racing as apples are to oranges: they're both fruits but they taste and look nothing alike. Despite this, I was hooked after I read Kent Peterson's account of the grueling Great Divide Race. I've been following the Iditarod Trail Invitational, the Arrowhead 135 and the Great Divide Race ever since. When those races are on, I'm checking the leader boards and trail updates several times a day, and I often find myself drifting off thinking about who is where, what they're seeing and experiencing and what it would be like to do it myself. These are self supported races: there's no "support team". There's no sport network covering these races, there's no multi-million dollar endorsements, no professional video crews, no screaming fans, no prize money, just dedicated people pitting themselves against the trail and nature with their wits and their velocipedes to get them across the finish line. It's compelling and inspiring and I encourage all my readership to check it out. Many of the riders write about their accounts, my favorites of course being the aforementioned Kent Peterson and the lovely and talented Jill Homer. I just purchased a copy of Jill's new book and I look forward to reading it. I'll post my review here.

"Dry land is not a myth"

2008-12-19T15:09:00.001-08:00

Yes, you can laugh (if you even got the joke) about the title of this blog entry, but all the global warming naysayers can eat a big fat slice of humble pie . Why? Keep reading:

The year 2008 was the ninth warmest year since instrumental temperature measurements began in 1880, NASA reported on Tuesday. (KRWB)

So, are all those scientists and engineers working at NASA wrong? Maybe you think the politicians know better than the scientists... Yeah, I thought not.

--Sent from my cell phone--

MS OBS

2008-12-12T15:05:00.000-08:00

My friend Tara just started her blog and she's off to an AMAZING start: her first two articles deserve a much wider audience so I'm hoping to give her a little boost.

Today's article is entitled Microsoft OBS, read it and have a good laugh: I did! Someday I hope I write as well as Tara does.

High Transparency

2008-12-01T09:43:00.000-08:00

While looking through my Twitter feed yesterday, I noticed an article posted by the Marin IJ about food safety. It's something I've talked about before HERE and HERE. According to the IJ, most of the counties surrounding mine have their food safety inspections posted on-line, but not Marin... not until now.

You can click HERE and be taken to the search site. If you want to do a general search (for instance, in just one town), you can fill in that field and click the search button. Interesting info: I looked up one of my favorite restaurants (Boca Steak in Novato) and was surprised to see it's had some minor critical violations. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised because I've had several friends who've worked in the restaurant business and I know all about things like the 5 second rule...

Plastic Free Bread: can it be?

2008-11-17T11:47:00.000-08:00

I've been in search of plastic free bread, and I've found one that I really like. They are called Della Fattoria, based out of Petaluma, CA. That's +1 for Della since that places it within a 15 mile range of my home: definitely local! The closest place I can buy it is at Whole Paycheck... I mean, Whole Foods, San Rafael. That's a lengthy 9.1 miles from my house. Hopefully when Whole Foods opens up in Novato they'll carry Della Fattoria because they are less than 4 miles from my house by bicycle, slightly more by car.

Okay, enough about distances & transportation, let's talk about Bread. I tried out a loaf of the LEVAIN. Listed ingredients on the brown paper wrapper are organic wheat flour, water, organic rye, sea salt. Pretty simple really, but as always, the devil is in the details. Case in point: when I looked on the Della Fattoria website, I noticed a discrepancy between the packaging and the website for the listed ingredients on the Levain. I short phone call later and I was speaking with Kathleen. Looks like I managed to find a typo in the packaging! For the complete list of ingredients, see the website. I was looking for something wheaty, soft and tasty so that my son would like it. When I picked it up off the shelf at approximately 6:15pm, it was still soft and smelled good: a good sign! Next to it were several other brands of Artisan Bread, all wrapped in either plastic or paper WITH plastic. Jeebus... why does almost everyone do that? There are some other great bakeries in the Bay Area and almost every single one uses plastic in their packaging, which generally precludes me from buying it despite the good flavors, smells and tastes!

I brought the bread home along with my bulk legumes and grains (unfortunately, I had no cloth sacks for these items so I had to *sigh* use plastic bags.) I spent about 15 minutes attempting to chase down cloth sacks for holding grains/legumes but Whole Foods is not carrying them right now. HERE'S A TIP WHOLE FOODS: PUT THEM NEXT TO THE THINGS THEY SHOULD BE USED FOR SO THAT PEOPLE KNOW THAT THEY HAVE AN OPTION, THEN YOU WON'T HAVE SUCH A HARD TIME MOVING THE PRODUCT! DUH!

So I got the groceries home and put away (which included taking the bread and putting it in a reused plastic bread bag to keep it from drying out), finished making red beans and rice and decided to have a bowl along with a slice of bread with butter. YUM! *special note: when I talked with Kathleen, I found out that Della Fattoria bread should NOT be stored in a plastic bag: they use a wet dough and bake in wood fired ovens and it means that plastic will make the bread go soggy: follow the directions on their website!*

Now, I understand some people don't like Rye or Pumpernickel, and I can respect that, but this is good bread. It's a slightly different taste when you put the different flours together with the wheat, but I dig it: it's very hearty. I had considered the Rosemary & Meyer Lemon bread (it smelled delicious), but I was trying for neutral ground with the boy & I wasn't sure how he'd react. I'll try that next time and let y'all know how it goes. In the meantime, keep your eyes open for plastic free bread in YOUR area. If you live in Marin, check out the store finder at Della Fattoria.

______UPDATE______
Some corrections from Kathleen:

date Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 4:37 PM
subject RE: Levain Review on my blog

Hi Ian! Well, not a typo really, just sort of a technical thing related to the way the state want(sic) ingredients listed. Pumpernickel is a coarse rye, like a whole grain rye, but the wording should correctly be rye. For your readers who would like to understand better, this bread is about 60% whole grain 10%rye 40% whole wheat, and 40% white flour. I find kids usually like this bread a lot. It makes great toast and the world’s best peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The “who carries our bread list” is unfortunately outdated. We stopped serving most of Marin and San Francisco with the exception of Whole Foods San Rafael.

Thank you for taking the time to write about us, word of mouth is the best!

Kathleen

Do the children in Guiyu cry dioxin tears?

2008-11-10T09:29:00.000-08:00

Just in case you haven't seen this elsewhere (or on TV), check out the 60 Minutes episode about E-waste in Guiyu... and then consider where your e-waste is going to go when you decide to "upgrade". Maybe that phone/tv/computer/gadget can last a little longer? Maybe you could try to *gasp*, FIX it? Now try and find someone to repair it... that's the first hurdle and trust me, it's a HUGE one! Probably the "greenest" job you could make for yourself would be repairing things that would otherwise end up in the trash.

Which reminds me, The Green Festival is coming to San Francisco this Fri, Sat and Sun and I plan to attend. I'll let you know how it goes and what I find out. I PRAY I don't see any single use water bottles there for sale.

Holy Brawling Monks Batman!

2008-11-09T14:35:00.000-08:00

One of my contacts on Twitter who bought a Flash Flag from me a while back posted this news item to his Twitter feed today and I just had to share:

Monks Brawl at Holy Christian Site in Jerusalem

Thanks Robert for the "Pythonesque" link... you gave me the big LOL for the day!

A little Python reference for those of you who don't get it... mix this:

with this:

and you get the monk brawl.

5 Second Plastebrity

2008-11-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

Hey howdy hey! Thanks to Beth, I'm a 5 Second Plastebrity (or Plastic Celebrity... now that I type it, it doesn't sound so appealing... DOH!).

HERE's the article on FakePlasticFish.com.

It started when I read that Dr. Markus Eriksen & Anna Cummins were making a stop at the Marin Humane Society to speak on behalf of the Algalita Research Foundation for the "Message in a Bottle" tour. I thought "that doesn't ANY more convenient for me!" and planned to attend. It was a great presentation and I managed to record the audio, though not the video. I've yet to find a way to host it properly: most of the audio hosting services require folks to register and give away their info in order to use the service, and many folks aren't into that. I don't have the online storage to host the audio files myself: anyone know of a solution?

At the end of the presentation I spoke with Anna about the upcoming leg of the tour, which will involve riding bicycles from Seattle down to San Diego, bringing the Message in a Bottle tour to schools, community centers and other public forums to raise awareness. "RIGHT UP MY ALLEY!" was my thought, and I hope to do at least part of the ride with them, hopefully lightening their load and helping to haul along "Plastic Soup" samples and other presentation media. Now I've just got to get all healed up and my leg/foot rehabbed so I can make the ride!

On a personal note, I brought my stainless steel Klean Kanteen with me and I noted that there was NO one there with a single use plastic bottle: YEAH!

I also wore my Trogdor shirt (thanks to my friend Chris Gleason) which Beth immediately spotted and that made my whole evening because people so rarely know who Trogdor is: Trogdor the Burninator hates plastic waste!

Mental Splatter

2008-11-07T13:53:00.000-08:00

So I'm actually editing a post I wrote several weeks ago. I had been writing about Obama v. McCain but it seems silly to publish it now, especially since it's FINALLY over! Instead I'll share my self scored "Voter Report Card" in the hopes that it will encourage others to post their own "score cards".

Offices:
President: Obama/Biden [ WIN, 59% In California, 53% Nationwide)
U.S Rep: Lynn Woolsey [ WIN, 72%]
State Senator 3rd District: Mark Leno (only choice for democrat) [ WIN, 80%!!!]
State Assembly: Jared Huffman (Democrat) [ WIN, 70%]

Measures:
Prop 1A: Safe Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act: YES [ YES, 52/48%]

Prop 2: Standards for Confining Farm Animals. Initiative Statute: YES [ YES, 63/47%]

Prop 3: Children's Hospital Bond Act. Grant Program. Initiative Statue: YES [ YES, 55/45%]

Prop 4: Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of Minor's Pregnancy. Initiative Constitutional Amendment: NO [ NO, 52/48%]

Prop 5: Nonviolent drug offenses. Sentencing, Parole and Rehabilitation. Initiative Statute: YES [ NO, 60/40%]

Prop 6: Police and Law Enforcement Funding. Criminal Penalties and Laws. Initiative Statute: NO [ NO, 69/31%]

Prop 7: Renewable Energy Generation. Initiative Statute: YES (but I meant to vote NO) [ NO, 65/35%]

Prop 8: Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment: NO [ YES, 52/48%]

Prop 9: Criminal Justice System. Victims Rights. Parole. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute: NO [ YES, 53/47%]

Prop 10: Alternative Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy. Bonds. Initiative Statute: NO [ NO, 60/40%]

Prop 11: Redistricting. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute. YES [ YES, 51/49%]

Prop 12: Veterans' Bond Act of 2008. YES [ YES, 63/37%]

County:
County of Marin Measure B: NO [ YES, 59%]

Distric:t
Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District Measure Q: YES [ YES, 63%]

13/18 = 72% OF THE THINGS I VOTED ON WENT THE WAY I WANTED THEM TO

Note that the text in italics is how I voted, italics inside the brackets was how the vote actually went and the percentage it won by.

Here's an inspirational music video I had to share: there's quite a few images of the plastic pollution in our oceans, a problem that HAS to be addressed in a comprehensive and thorough manner, but it's going to mean that single use plastics will have to go the way of the dinosaur, the dodo and pretty soon, the polar bear.

Alright, one last piece of politically unrelated news:
Are you a sailor? Kite surfer? Even if you're not, check out THIS post from mygreenhome.com and see how the U.S Navy is using a partially kite-powered cargo ship to reduce fuel... pretty damn cool!

LED Bulb Update

2008-11-06T11:23:00.000-08:00

I thought I should post this, as it's good info to spread around.

A while back I posted about the problem with CF Bulbs (Compact Fluorescent). To recap, they contain mercury (Hg on the periodic table) which is toxic. To read the entry, click HERE.

In an attempt to reduce my electrical needs, I've started slowly buying LED Bulbs to replace my incandescents and CF bulbs. They are quite expensive still so I'm not rushing out to do it all at once. Someone in a forum (don't ask me where, I can't remember now) mentioned that running LED's on standard dimmer circuits can significantly shorten their life. They didn't back this up with any info, so I FINALLY decided to contact the people who make the bulbs I own, C. Crane Company in Fortuna, C.A.

Here's the skinny, according to them:

Dear Ian,

Thank you for taking the time to contact our company. Yes, dimmer switches will destroy an LED bulb prematurely. Currently dimmer switches are designed and built with incandescent bulbs in mind. These products are not good for low wattage bulbs such as LED bulbs and fluorescent bulbs. Hopefully dimmer switch manufactures will start producing a new line of dimmer switches with these low wattage bulbs in mind.

If you have additional questions or we can be of further assistance please email or call our toll free number.

John Wilder
Customer Support Supervisor
C. Crane Company, Inc.

800-522-8863
Hours of Operations
Mon - Fri 6:30am - 5:30pm (PST)
Saturday 7:00am - 5:00pm (PST)
Sunday and Major Holidays (Closed)

Sign Up For New Products and Special Offer Notifications: http://www.ccrane.com/subscribe

----- Original Message -----

Customer Name: Ian Hopper
Subject: Product Question

Comments:
I purchased a couple of your Par 30 LED Bulbs from the Green Fusion center in San Anselmo C.A a few months ago. Recently I heard that running these bulbs on a dimmer circuit was bad for them and that they needed a dimmer circuit built for LED's. I was wondering if you had any further information: I don't want to prematurely burn out my bulbs!
Thank you!

So there's your answer: don't run your LED Bulbs on dimmer circuits! Now I need to get busy replacing the dimmer circuit in my son's room so I don't burn out the new bulbs. You've been warned!

My 5 minutes of fame

2008-10-23T23:06:00.000-07:00

My xtracycle got featured as #95 at the Xtracycle Gallery: whee! I haven't posted in over a month even though I have 3 posts in draft... DOH! Hope y'all can forgive me...

New Houbliette Fodder

2008-09-16T00:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Russ Roca (the Eco Friendly Bicycling Photographer) for the newest resident in the Houbliette. Some of you may have never scrolled to the bottom of my webpage, but at the bottom is the Houbliette (or The Hopper Oubliette). The Houbliette is a place for corporate assholes who abuse all that is good and right in the world and deserve to be shoved down a deep dark hole and forgotten about forever.

So, without further ado, I submit to you THIS video. If you don't "get it", try reading back a little in my blog and see if you can figure out why I put AutoZone on permanent time out.

Waste or wasted?

2008-09-15T13:40:00.001-07:00

This was eerily appropriate considering I'm having to use pain killers right now for my leg & shoulder damage. If I have left over painkillers I will be taking them back to the pharmacy for them to be properly disposed of!

V.ENVIRO The most tightly controlled drugs like painkilling narcotics are the ones that often elude environmental regulation when they become waste. (AP)

--Sent from my cell phone--

Just call me "Crash"

2008-09-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of changing my name to "Crash".

On August 29th (yes, I know that's 15 days ago) I talked to my brother in Sweden via Skype (god I love those free video calls!) for well over an hour. We talked about family stuff and skating. Mostly skating. He's been riding skateboards since he was about 6, and he's 46 now: you do the math. He's also been racing in slalom and Giant Slalom for many years and he's quite good. When he was here in July of 2007 with his family, he brought me a deck of his own design AND manufacture and I was so touched. It's a beautiful lightweight slalom race board, and I built it up with his coaching and advice. It's a blast to ride and very lightweight. It is also rather fragile, as it's made from foam and carbon fiber!

I started riding it around on my little cul-de-sac and enjoying it more and more. I started thinking about the giant steep hill I lived on and riding down it, but the concept was way too daunting at that point.

In January of 2008 I went to London with my mom to visit family there and attend a christening. I figured since I was already half way across the world, I might as well take the opportunity to go visit my brother in Stockholm. It was a short trip, but a total blast and we went skating with some of Sweden's premier skaters. It was just a routine practice day for them, but it was the first time I'd skated with anyone good and I was blown away by the talent there. I managed to pull a calf muscle, but not too badly and I was able to continue skating, using my other leg to push (I'm goofy footed and push mongo, and I had to learn to push regular that day: good practice!). We went to a skate shop the next day because I had started getting a speed bug, and my little slalom board was not really appropriate for bigger hills and the kind of cruising I was thinking about. Let me start by saying that the guys at the Kahalani skate shop are the most professional, knowledgeable and sincere skaters I've ever met. They make some of the worlds most sought-after trucks, seen HERE. They are ridden by many of the worlds top downhill riders, and some mere mortals as well (my brother Selle just joined the ranks of the elite with some Kahalani's on his new board). Back to the story: ~~Dan (or maybe it was~~ Mike) helped me pick out a beautiful board by Fibretech along with some Holey trucks and Retrotech Big Zigg wheels (the Lime 78a, 75mm ones), Khiro angled risers and and a couple different Khiro bushings for different conditions. I couldn't wait to ride it, but I didn't want to dirty everything up and then have to pack it into my bag with my clothes, AND I wasn't going to have time to ride it when I got back to London, so I left the board unbuilt.

Getting the board home was a bit of fiasco with the airlines, but we got it sorted out eventually. (Airlines do not seem to like anything that's unusual in the luggage dept. so I had to do a fair amount of jedi mind tricking).

When I put the board together and rode it, I realized I finally had a board that would go as fast as I wanted to and was durable enough to survive my totally greenhorn downhill status *cue ominous music*.

I've been riding the shorter, lower-pitch grade at the top of the big hill and getting comfortable with the speed and feeling a lot more confident on my longboard. On the 29th, I talked to my brother (yeah, I mentioned that in the 2nd paragraph.) I got all amped up on riding and going fast hearing about what he's been up to lately (he and I are inspiring each other to try some new things). He's been practicing his downhill and he's getting better as well, though he's crashed a bit too. What i keep forgetting is his 40 years of experience. Yeah, that's 40 years of experience, which is about 38 more years than I have. You can see where this is going right?

So that night (the 29th) after we'd put the munchkin to bed, I strapped on my pads (knee, elbow), my helmet and my new Loaded Slide Gloves. I told the wife I was going to go out for a little skate seshion. She didn't think much of it and wished me well.

Out in the street, I thought I'd try working on the lower section of my hill, as my goal is to eventually ride the whole thing top to bottom. After a short run at the top (just to test turning and my own comfort) I realized I was in over my head and I needed to start WAY lower on the hill. So I walked down to the park and started from the top. What I SHOULD have done was to start at the bottom and work my way SLOWLY upward, but sometimes my brain writes checks my body can't cash (to misquote James Tolkan "Stinger" from Top Gun). I got to the bottom of the park and realized I need to blow off some speed. My MISTAKE was not using the slide gloves at this point to assist me in performing a powerslide. Instead, I tried to take a toe side turn onto a side street that goes back uphill. My line was all wrong and I cut in towards the turn way too early. Near the northeast corner of Pacific and Highland I got a speed wobble, which I managed to correct, but I panicked and target fixated... and those of you who known what target fixation means can probably guess what happened next. CRASH. I hit the curb/drain near the southeast corner of Pacific & Highland and flew on to the lawn across the sidewalk. As I lay there with my left arm lying agonizingly underneath me and my ankles/feet screaming out in pain, I thought to myself "Fuck, that was NOT supposed to happen, what have I done?". I managed to sit up with no help from my left arm (something was VERY wrong with it) and I nearly passed out when I jarred my left shoulder and left foot. It was no easy feat getting my slide gloves off (the palm pucks had diverted the abrasion damage, and the wrist support saved my wrists) with one hand, but using my teeth, I managed it. After that the helmet, and then I managed to get my backpack off. I retrieved my cell phone (glad I put it in an armored case!) and called my wife.

Now, getting a call that your husband has just chowdered himself on a downhill run can't be fun, especially at 12:35am. Yes, this was the middle of the night. She jumped in her car and came and found me, but it was one of the longest 8 minutes of my life.. I was in a bit of shock. She was visibly and vocally displeased with me and I felt bad for making her resuce me, but I was in no shape to rescue myself. My head was WAY out of it, though I never hit my head (pain can do funny things to your mind). Just after I'd got in her car, I thought maybe I would try sleeping it off with some ibuprofen. Then I mentally slapped myself and made the decision to go the hospital.

Just an aside (because so many have asked), I was riding this late because there are no cars on my street at that time of night, which makes for safer riding for novice downhillers like me. As well, it had been nearly 100˚F all day: too hot to ride!

So.. we get back up to our house and we discussed how to deal with getting me to the hospital. It was decided a taxi was the cheapest easiest way because she'd had a few drinks, I was in NO shape to drive and an ambulance is EXPENSIVE.

I sat in the driveway waiting for the cab. It was another VERY long 10 minutes.

I managed to get in the cab (somehow) and off we went, the driver taking corners waaaaay too fast and slamming me all over the vehicle. I finally had to ask him to take it easy on the corners, as the G forces felt like hot ice picks in my shoulder and ankle. He went a little over the top and started driving like my grandma, which of course lengthened the trip. We got to the emergency room and I had to ask the driver to go in and have them bring me out a wheelchair. One of the guys in admitting came out with a wheelchair while I threw money down for the cabbie. I was rolled inside to the ever-unpleasant glare of overhead fluorescents. I honestly believe the fluorescents are half the reason that A) everyone looks bad in a hospital and B) most people abhor hospitals. The guy admitting me asked what happened and relayed his own motorcross shoulder dislocation stories (3 on each side: OUCH!) while assuring me that they'd get it all fixed. His positive energy did wonders for me and I worked on being as jokey and positive as I could.

After being checked in with no delay, I gratefully realized that it was friday MORNING, not Friday night. I've been to emergency rooms on Friday nights/saturday mornings, and you better be bleeding bad or they're not going to see you that fast because EVERYONE seems to get hurt on Friday or Saturday night.

Got into a bed, and they gave me 5mg of Dilaudid, which did wonders for bringing my pain levels down, but started to make me nauseous, so they gave me some Zofram to get rid of that. On to X-ray and then back to the trauma room. Xrays revealed a dislocated shoulder, but no breaks in the ankle. The doctor used a mild technique called the Hennepin Technique to put my shoulder back in place. It didn't hurt much more than the pain I was already in, and I appreciated that. The nurses were amazed at both the doctor skilal and my ability to breathe through the reset process.

My ankle on the other hand was another issue. They tried to put me in a moon boot and have me use a cane, but the pain was intense (probably an 9 on the 1-10 scale). I went back for more xrays, this time on the foot and to check that the dislocation was reseated properly. They conferred with some podiatrists while I was sleeping and when they woke me up I found out that I'd supremely crushed my left foot. They decided to do surgery that evening, so around 9:00am I was admitted to the hospital. Spent the day wacked out... several friends and family came by to see me, but I don't remember too much of our visits. I was told the operation would be at 4:30 but it didn't happen until 6:30. Man, operation rooms are weird places, especially when you're the patient. I woke up in my room around midnight, disoriented and ornery as a wounded grizzly bear. They had put a catheter in me (my first, and hopefully my last) and I was sweating buckets under all the blankets they'd put on top of me. While cursing and ripping blankets off (or attempting to) I discovered the catheter and almost ripped it out (good thing I didn't because it was stil balooned... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!)

Finally made it to sleep... woke up in the morning and insisted they remove the catheter so I could pee normally. Part of me just wanted to affirm that I wasn't dead and that I still had some locomotive power under my control. I have to tell you, I hate catheters with a passion now. HATE them. I don't HATE a lot of things, but I fucking HATE catheters.

The doctors came back in the morning to tell me that I had pulverized the navicular bone in my foot and they were only able to salvage a couple of small pieces which were screwed back together. 2 pins and a bunch of bonegraft and they stitched me back together. He said the navicular bone looked a bunch of sand in my foot... wow. I hit the curb hard enough to turn a bone in my foot to sand. They asked me again how fast I thought I'd been going. I refrained from pointing out that my skateboard doesn't have a speedo on it and told him between 18-25 mph, but honestly, I have no idea. I'm used to much higher speeds on my bicyles when coming down my hill, and it's much harder to tell speed in the dark.

The nursing staff at Kaiser varies greatly in their abilities. My favorite (and very best) nurse was Susie. Thank god for susie: she made me laugh a lot, and she's not just a nurse, she's a healer. Susie, if you ever read this, thank you thank you thank you so VERY VERY much for all that you do!

They kicked me out on Sunday around midday. Jessi came to bring me home but lo and behold, the wheelchair didn't fit in her car. My mom was nice enough to use her SUV to bring it to my house for me, so I'm now a wheeled menace again. It's been 15 days since I crashed, and yesterday was the first time I let the house in 12 days. Went to a doctors appointment with the orthopedist yesterday at which time the informed that me that I need to be careful with my shoulder, as if I screw it up, recurrent dislocations due to instability in the shoulder can develop. Lovely.

I'm off to see the foot surgeon shortly... they are going to pull the staples an sutures, put on a lighter fiberglass cast and xray my RIGHT foot and leg. Why? Because while we know I sprained my right ankle, I woke up this morning with my right foot in AGONY. Ran the ice machine on it and took some ibuprofen and that helped, but all of a sudden, it's getting worse.

Wish me luck folks... hopefully I'll have gross pictures to follow later on tonight.

Beth sez it better...

2008-09-12T12:15:00.001-07:00

... than I could. She's a plastic reduction pro. Please stop reading me and go read THIS

Green Reesus

2008-09-02T22:51:00.000-07:00

I was just watching TV (not something I normally do, but I've got a broken foot and a dislocated shoulder & things that keep my mind off the pain are appreciated right now: mindless TV is just the ticket.) So I was watching Spike TV, the king of "guy's TV". They were running an ad for Reesus Peanut Butter Cups, The ad copy went: "Stop Global warming now... Or all the reesus will melt." Now, I try to keep my refined sugar consumption to a minimum, but I love Reesus Peanut Butter Cups. L O V E them. It's got to be the best use of"green" marketing I've ever seen. Thanks a lot Reesus, now I'm jonesing for a Peanut Butter Cup. Good thing I can't drive quite yet...

--Sent from my cell phone--

What's the breaking point?

2008-08-20T20:48:00.000-07:00

While reading through the comments on today's edition of Yehuda Moon, I followed links first to the CNN video about an assault on 2 cyclists (a fear inducing article, a technique I'm never fond of) and then on to another one of my occasional reading spots, Copenhagenize.

Here's the video:

There is no excuse for assaulting cyclists in a car. Doctor Thompson deserves whatever punishment he gets: these cyclists could be DEAD instead of just badly injured. If he HAD killed them he might have gotten off easier because he would have claimed it was an "accident" and no one would have been there to refute the claim and testimony from Patrick Watson would likely have been deemed not admissible in court. Hard to say with "What If's?". Either way, watch out for those road ragers!

When I made it over to read the "More Expensive Gas Please" article at copenhagenize.com I realized that someone (once again), beat me to the punch. I've been wondering for some time: how high does the price of a gallon of gas have to get before people REALLY curtail their driving? I've already been doing it, and I know others have too, but when is it going to happen en masse? I predict 10 dollars/gallon. That sounds insane to most americans, but they're paying that right now in England. So tell me: what's YOUR breaking point? What's it gonna take to get YOU out of your car?

The Itch

2008-07-18T14:41:00.001-07:00

I read THIS ARTICLE this morning, and it's fascinating. I'm generally an itchy person... lots of things make me itch. I often have phantom itching, mostly due to the perception that I'm bitten by mosquitoes or fleas. I have pets who spend time outside, and mosquitoes are common in my area so occasionally, I HAVE been bitten by biting insects. If I'm actually bitten once it can set off a chain reaction of swatting and scratching that can last up to an hour. Now I think I begin to understand why... and while some folks may say I'm "crazy", the "swatting at insects that aren't there" may not be.

All the fools men

2008-07-18T09:53:00.001-07:00

Looks like Goebbels is at it again...

V.USGOV Karl Rove on Monday defended his defiance of a congressional subpoena over allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department.(AP)

--Sent from my cell phone--

200th Entry: Cruising

2008-07-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

Well, today is my 200th blog entry: Happy Anniversary to me! :)

Much of what I'm doing here is way of taking mental notes for myself... a way of remembering things that I find that I don't want to forget. It's also been a way to make note of the evolution of my thinking. The things I read, the things I see and the things I learn all shape who I become, how I behave and how I think. With that in mind I give you the subject of today's blog entry: Cruising.

I posted back in May about my phone call to Best Foods. I've been making a point to speak out against the things that bother me, and those few who've ever heard me rant about cruise ships know that I'm not a fan. Yes, I have been on a cruise ship. No, I wasn't paying to be there, I was being PAID to be there. Overall the experience wasn't terrible because of the lovely staff I met while I was there, but after seeing the crew quarters, I was rather appalled. "Jail Cell" comes to mind when I think about the room that I saw. Actually, "lurchingly nauseating, poorly ventilated, windowless, and badly lit" also come to mind. Two of our crew were being paid to work on the ship for a couple of shows (I was working for a rock band) so I got to see their quarters for the 5 days they were on the ship. They were being paid better than any of the regular crew so for them it was "tolerable", but ugh... the idea of PAYING to spend time in a jail cell is insane.

I don't see the appeal of the cruise ship: you're on this giant ship with not much to do other than eat and sit around in the sun. To some folks that might sound great, but the whole scene had me creeped out. You've got a bunch of underpaid folks, mostly under 25 from every country under the sun working for shit wages serving overprivileged, overfed, overweight, overly loud tourists with bad hair, bad skin, bad manners and bad attitudes (and their similarly shaped and mannered offspring). Sound fun yet? It gets better. They feed you about 6 giant all-you-can-eat meals a day, so you're constantly so full you just waddle around. I kept looking for the vomit buckets (like in that one Monty Python skit), but I couldn't spot them.

The crowd we played for was rather non-plussed (this was a corporate gig, and the crowds aren't usually "fans" per se, but this crowd was particularly unenthusiastic, no doubt due to the sickeningly large meal they had recently ingested). I wanted to scream at them "Get off your asses and dance/rock you fat f*cks!" but I wisely restrained myself. The band was more used to this kind of response during their corporate shows, but it continued to bother me the entire time I worked for them.

The highlight of the whole shipboard experience was in talking to the catering crew sent to service the backstage area. They were all from Turkey (a country I've never visited nor even met anyone from) and were convincing enough to make me pine for Turkish beach side towns I'd probably never see. They were friendly and funny and genuinely sincere guys: I don't know how they managed to keep from going insane in that job. They were all earning money and seeing the world (they little that they were able while working) and invited me to come visit them back in Turkey. No, not casual "Come to Turkey!" kind of comments, I mean names, phone numbers, names of relatives... real info. Somehow over the years I managed to lose that info and I regret that because I really would have liked to Turkey with a bro-deal.

So I suppose my own cruise line story has been a long winded intro to the ARTICLE that dredged all these memories up. Please read it and have anyone you know who's thinking about going on a cruise read it. The article brings up some safety issues that didn't even occur to me while I was on the ship. I'm not a single woman, but I would be a little concerned about going on cruise after reading the article. As well, the social and environmental impact that cruise ships have on the places they visit is largely unfelt by the tourists, but the denizens of the destinations must deal with the consequences.

The impact our vacation plans can have can be huge even though we might not see it. Perhaps consider a vacation closer to home? I know *I'm* not going on any cruises... at least not on a cruise ship.

...and the flames climbed higher

2008-07-09T13:46:00.001-07:00

Cheney is definitely going straight back to hell. Can you believe this sadistic shit?

V.ENVIRO Vice President Cheney's office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change. (AP)

--Sent from my cell phone--

Effluent of the Affluent

2008-06-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

My friend Jessica Mordo, an american living in Paris, posted THIS little news item to the posted items section of Facebook... I got a good laugh out of it, and if you're not a George W. Bush supporter, you probably will too. Hey, I'd sign the petition if I resided in San Francisco. I live just north in Marin County, and I think there are too many republicans in Marin to get the sewage treatment plant renamed "The Novato George W. Bush sewage treatment plant".

I warned y'all

2008-06-11T10:50:00.001-07:00

Back in July of 2006 I mentioned that congress had again weakened our safety and consumer rights with the National Uniformity for Food Act (see the blog entry HERE). It looks like it's getting worse because the following snippet was sent to my phone this morning:
--------
V.USGOV Tainted tomatoes highlight how Congress forfeited some food-safety opportunities in the new farm bill.(KRWB)
--------
The full text of the article can be seen HERE.

--Sent from my cell phone--

The future's so bright, you gotta wear shades

2008-06-10T19:31:00.000-07:00

Today's post is for those of you with a bit of science geek in ya.

NASA is going to the sun. HUH? Yeah, they're going to send a probe into the corona. It's considerably hotter there than than on the surface, and they're hopefully gonna figure out why (assuming the probe doesn't burn up in the process)

Of course, we have to wait another 6.5 years before they're ready to launch, but this looks like one of the cooler (uh... should I have said "hotter?") missions that's NASA's got up it's sleeve.

Hopefully they'll publish more about the materials and science they'll be using.. then my inner geek will be satisfied, because this is really just a teaser.

Phone Call to Best Foods

2008-05-20T21:12:00.000-07:00

In an ongoing effort to reduce the amount of plastic in my life, I've started contacting the manufacturers of the products I like and asking them to go back to glass/ceramic/paper, reduce packaging, go organic (yeah right!) and otherwise "go green". I'm all for small companies putting out great green products in green packaging, but the way to affect REAL change is to change the behavior of the people who are controlling the majority of the market share (Kraft, ConAgra, Cargill, Safeway, Albertsons... take your pick). Today we're going to use mayonnaise for our example.

I grew up eating mayo on just about every sandwich. I love sandwiches, and I've yet to find a replacement that tastes as good to me as Best Foods Mayonnaise. I know it's not particularly good for me, so I try to put as little on as I can get away with, but I love the stuff. For the sake of argument, we'll call it one of my guilty pleasures (because I'm bothered by the fact that I'm contributing to a multinational corporation with a rather spotty record.

Used to be that mayo always came in glass jars. They were useful for lots of things when you were done storing mayo in them... drinks and fluids of all sorts come to mind (my favorite was lightly used degreaser that I reused). So why the switch to plastic jars? Sure, they break less and weight less so they cost less to ship... but plastic almost NEVER gets recycled, and you can't take one mayonnaise jar and reuse it as another mayo jar or melt it down and make another one (a stupid idea anyway, but at least you can do it). Plastic mayo jars... well, it's hard to every get them really clean. I certainly wouldn't store other edible fluids in them (the washing process tends to scratch the inside of the jar and everyone knows (don't they?) about how plastics degrade when you scrub them... yuck.) The plastic (even after scrubbing) always seems to retain the smell of the mayo... the glass ones never did that.

So I called them to let them know what I think of their plastic packaging... the first thing they said was that they hadn't used glass in 2 years (and I don't think she meant it to sound as flippant as she sounded). I told her that I had only recently become aware of the "eastern garbage patch" and that I didn't want to contribute to that anymore with their mayo jars. She became a lot more polite after that, wrote down my comment and said that she would forward it to the marketing dept. We shall see. If you feel like I do, start calling the people who make the products you like and tell them what you want: the won't know any other way (focus groups are stupid and they know that when people actually volunteer their comments without any pay, that they're getting real data). They need to hear from a LOT of people in order to make changes. I implore you, dear reader, to ask for reduced packaging and packaging that allows for true re-use: if I haven't HAMMERED this point enough, read the article about plastic in the ocean, ok?

Tempted more than once...

2008-05-20T20:57:00.001-07:00

... to do THIS. Rick Smith of Yehuda Moon has got one of the best cycling based comics I've ever seen. It's funny, witty and spot on accurate. I've known and know people who are each and every character in the comic.. I feel right at home.

Those of you who aren't bikey people may not get all the humor, but those of you have seen my bicycles, will get a laugh out of THIS episode.

My sentiments exactly

2008-05-20T19:56:00.001-07:00

There's a special place in hell for bicycle thieves, but when you catch one in the act... hell hath no fury like a cyclist catching a bike thief, and we come equipped to maim. NOW SEE HERE!

Greatest Underwear... Ever.

2008-05-14T22:43:00.001-07:00

Ok ok ok.. I'm usually not one to rant and rave about things... wait, no, that's no right, I rant all the time. What I don't usually do is give my endorsement to clothing companies, THAT'S what I meant to say. But I have to gush about one particular piece of clothing I recently acquired that has become my favorite, so much so that several days ago I ordered 5 more so I could have one for almost every day of the week (I have 6 of them now). They arrived today and it occurred to me that I should share my discovery with others, so here we go!

Devold Multi Sport Boxer shorts. Hands down, they rule supreme over the nether regions. Women have their favorite panties, mostly favored for their sex appeal, or for how sexy they make the wearer feel. There's nothing particularly sexy about these underwear but they outperform and outshine every other boxer I've ever worn, hands down.

I originally read about them in the Rivendell Bicycle Works catalog, though I can't remember if it was the online version or the print catalog. Doesn't matter really. I pondered them several times, wondering what Grant Peterson was so excited about: underwear are underwear right? I'd tried "coolmax" underwear from REI and wasn't impressed: too hot, the "wicking" was a joke and they didn't fit right (too long in the crotch, seams in bad places), not to mention the fact that they chaffe on a bicycle seat, at least for me. Sorry if that's TMI, but we're talking about underwear here, so stop if you're squeamish.. whatever. I finally decided to pull the trigger, and I ordered some socks too. It turned out to be one of the better purchases I've ever made over the internet.

Now understand this: I am normally a cheap BASTARD when it comes to underwear. Shelling out $31 for a pair of underwear seemed an ASTRONOMICAL amount of money to pay for such a small piece of clothing, even if it IS made of Merino wool. I was skeptical, especially since you can never return underwear because it's against state law, or something like that. I figured if I got the wrong size I'd have to use them for a rag: thankfully I got the size right. It's not something you can generally find in your local store: Devold garments come from Norway, and very few people carry these. I'm not sure why this is, but it's a crying shame as far as I'm concerned.

So far I've done every sport I do in these underwear, and they wick better, dry faster, are cooler and more comfortable... and they don't smell. I've ridden for hours in these underwear, wore them the rest of the day, took them off at night and hung them up... and they didn't smell the next day. IMPOSSIBLE in any other pair of underwear (I've checked). I decided to torture test the underwear and wear them until they started to smell. 5 days folks. For me that's a miracle, akin to turning water into wine. If I was touring the country by bicycle, I'm fairly certain I could get by with just 2 pairs of these, at least until I wore one pair out.

Riding a bicycle in regular clothes is something the folks at Rivendell endorse heavily and about 8 months ago, I decided to try it. Kent Peterson pointed out at one point that for those who ride a lot, you soon weed out what works for riding and what doesn't and Grant pointed out the same thing but added that you soon realize that your "riding" wardrobe is about 3-4 times the size it was before you started riding in "regular" clothes. The interesting thing I've figure out lately is that even padded cycling shorts can cause chafing, but my Devolds NEVER chafe. They don't offer the padding that cycle specific shorts do, but unless you're going to ride over 20 miles (and you have a comfortable saddle: I prefer Brooks saddles), you don't really NEED cycling shorts. People who don't ride very often think that a big squishy gel seat is the way to go to keep you tender posterior from hurting. For rides under a couple of miles, you could probably get away with this. Anything more (especially in warm to hot weather) and you're gonna hate that seat. I do have an avenir saddle that I bought back in 2000 for my Burning Man bike that is sprung AND has a little gel in it: it's a VERY comfortable seat, but it's not "squishy"... just very supple. I've ridden all day around Burning Man for years and my butt is never sore. It's downside is that it doesn't breathe well at all (unlike my Brooks seats) so it does get sweaty, but as far as comfort, it's a champ. Saddle selection is one of the most crucial parts of riding a bike as it's one of the 3 spots where you body interacts directly with the bicycle. If it's uncomfortable, you're not gonna be happy. What you wear next to your skin is almost as important as the saddle, though this varies person to person. Anything with seams in the crotch is a no-no for me on anything further than about 11 miles. The Devold undies for me are good for all the distances I've biked since I've bought them (the longest being a little over 40 miles.)

Well, I'd better wrap this up: try out the Devold undies. They are great for cycling and everything else too. They are ACTUALLY worth the $31 dollars: I can think of several other things I've spent more money on that aren't anywhere near this comfortable!

Open letter to 3M

2008-05-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

I was doing dishes tonight and I needed a sponge. So I dug around in the kitchen and found a pack of 3M sponges I'd bought a few months back. Sponges are one of those things that's ubiquitous in every modern kitchen. Most people don't spend more than a few minutes a year thinking about sponges. Normally, I don't either, but I hadn't opened a new sponge since before my February 6 entry (and for those of you who are wondering, YES we've replaced our sponges since February, but my wife has done it the last few times) about reducing plastic. I was dismayed to see that each sponge was individually wrapped inside the larger package. For one, I was annoyed to have to open yet another layer with wet hands, and second: what the hell is the point? The outer packaging contains all the pertinent info but it's certainly not full and could take the additional info that the individual wrappers have.

I thought about where the wrapper would go once I threw it in the trash. In an ideal world, I could compost it and use it to feed my garden, but we are living in a far-from-ideal world. More than likely, it will go to the Marin Sanitary (who thought THAT would be a good word to add to a DUMP?) Landfill, but if I'm very unlucky, it'll end up in the "Eastern Garbage Patch" out in the north pacific gyre. At that point, it'll likely be ingested by a fish or other animal and cause death and mayhem for that creature. Lovely. Either way, plastic wrap that can't be reused / recycled is just plain stupid. SO.. I decided to start taking a stand, one product at a time. Many folks might argue against buying this kind of packaging in the first place, and that's ok too, but it's far more pro-active to ask for changes from companies that are going to continue on with the status quo unless the market demands that they change. I started by writing to 3M: here's the text of my email.

Several months ago I purchased a 15 pack of Scotch-Brite Multi Purpose NO SCRATCH Scrub Sponges (Item 15550). I believe I purchased them from Costco in Novato, CA. I am writing to implore the marketing and management branches of 3M to reconsider their packaging for this item, and other items like it. The amount of packaging in this product is excessive, as each sponge is individually wrapped INSIDE the larger wrapper. That extra plastic goes immediately into the trash and is a waste of precious global resources and landfill space. It is also NOT biodegradeable (there are NO petroleum based plastics that are) and it increases the cost of the product AND it's impact on the planet. Please consider reducing your packaging to minimalist levels and ALSO using a corn/soy based biodegradable plastic or better yet, recycled paper for your packaging needs. The global biosphere and your customers will thank you for being caring about their pocketbooks AND the future of the planet. Please let me know how and if 3M has any plans to implement greener packaging policies: it greatly affects the probability of me buying your products in the future. It's imperative for me to use sustainable products ,and companies that can't "get with the program" will lose my business to companies that can.

I look forward to your reply.

A copy of this email will be posted to my blog (http://nollij.blogspot.com) as well as any reply you choose to send.

I think it's a good thing to ask for a reply and some sort of accountability when you write a letter like this. I hope they follow through in replying and I REALLY hope they make some changes.

A couple of excerpts from the article I linked to in my Feb 6th entry:

This news is depressing enough to make a person reach for the bottle. Glass, at least, is easily recyclable. You can take one tequila bottle, melt it down, and make another tequila bottle. With plastic, recycling is more complicated. Unfortunately, that promising-looking triangle of arrows that appears on products doesn’t always signify endless reuse; it merely identifies which type of plastic the item is made from. And of the seven different plastics in common use, only two of them—PET (labeled with #1 inside the triangle and used in soda bottles) and HDPE (labeled with #2 inside the triangle and used in milk jugs)—have much of an aftermarket. So no matter how virtuously you toss your chip bags and shampoo bottles into your blue bin, few of them will escape the landfill—only 3 to 5 percent of plastics are recycled in any way.

“There’s no legal way to recycle a milk container into another milk container without adding a new virgin layer of plastic,” Moore says, pointing out that, because plastic melts at low temperatures, it retains pollutants and the tainted residue of its former contents. Turn up the heat to sear these off, and some plastics release deadly vapors. So the reclaimed stuff is mostly used to make entirely different products, things that don’t go anywhere near our mouths, such as fleece jackets and carpeting. Therefore, unlike recycling glass, metal, or paper, recycling plastic doesn’t always result in less use of virgin material. It also doesn’t help that fresh-made plastic is far cheaper.

and

Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated—and it’s a very small amount—every bit of plastic ever made still exists,” Moore says, describing how the material’s molecular structure resists biodegradation. Instead, plastic crumbles into ever-tinier fragments as it’s exposed to sunlight and the elements. And none of these untold gazillions of fragments is disappearing anytime soon: Even when plastic is broken down to a single molecule, it remains too tough for biodegradation.
Truth is, no one knows how long it will take for plastic to biodegrade, or return to its carbon and hydrogen elements. We only invented the stuff 144 years ago, and science’s best guess is that its natural disappearance will take several more centuries. Meanwhile, every year, we churn out about 60 billion tons of it, much of which becomes disposable products meant only for a single use. Set aside the question of why we’re creating ketchup bottles and six-pack rings that last for half a millennium, and consider the implications of it: Plastic never really goes away.

"Our Oceans are turning into plastic... are we?" by Susan Casey

----------UPDATE: 5.19.2008----------

So I got an email back from 3M. I was not surprised to see that is says NOTHING of significance and generally implies that it wasn't read by a human. I will continue to post any feedback I receive from 3M, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Here's the text of the email:

Dear Ian,

Thank you for taking the time to share your comments/concerns with 3M. Feedback from our customers is an integral part of our business and we encourage it. Please know that we have forwarded your message to our marketing and lab departments.

We appreciate your input!

Cordially,

3M Home Care Division
800-846-8887
www.ocelo.com
www.scotchbrite.com
www.scotchlint.com

Surly's Swervy is my hero

2008-05-13T03:15:00.000-07:00

If you've ever been honked at by a motorist (on your bicycle man, not while you were DRIVING stupid!) and wished you could have the last laugh, read THIS blog entry by Swervy. It made me laugh out loud and pump my fist in the air. I've got 2 words for obnoxious honking rude cagers... but I think you already know what I'm going to say. ;)

Security

2008-05-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

So, I've been thinking about security for my new bike, a Surly Big Dummy that I've named Yggdrasill, aka Big Ygg. I thought I'd share my thoughts on security for bicycles, since the theft of bicycles is perhaps the most onerous type of theft, mostly due to the fact that bicycles are almost never recovered. As it says on the sticker on my water bottle "There's a special place in hell for bicycle thieves".

So let's start with a little locking strategy from the late Sheldon Brown (Ride In Peace Sheldon!). If you just want to see a picture of the U-lock scheme, the direct link to Sheldon's picture of a U-lock on his 1916 Mead Ranger is HERE. Sheldon's tips on locking are right-on if you own a U-lock AND a cable lock (I own several locks, including a "mini" lock like the one Sheldon recommends). I've used many locking options in the past and am considering new ones for Big Ygg.

I don't know how long the Pitlock has been around in Germany, but they are only really being sold by Peter White Cycles. I haven't purchased anything from Peter yet, but if I buy a SON hub for the front of Big Ygg, I'm going to get it from Peter. He is the exclusvie importer for several items from Europe and by all accounts, his work is impeccable. The Pitlock looks very nice and since it's built by Germans and Peter White Cycles carries it, it's damn nice stuff. I have no experience with it, but I'm looking for feedback. Anyone?

I've used the PinHead locks that are repackaged by OnGuard on the front and rear skewers and seatpost binder bolt of SuperVato, my stokemonkeyed Xtracycle. It was pointed out to me that they could be defeated with a nail set and hammer (by putting the nail set into the "holes" and hitting it with a hammer to turn it), but that it was unlikely that an opportunistic bike thief would be carrying these tools: only someone who'd been casing my bike for a while would know to bring these tools. Of course, if you just bought up all the different sets of Pinhead locks, you'd have a key for everything. They claim to have "dozens" of different combos, but that's not an actual number. The Pitlocks evidently have 256 different combos, which to me sounds higher than "dozens", but I digress. The hackability of a system is it's vulnerability: someone who can afford to buy up every different set of lock combinations can probably afford the bicycle parts anyways. Sure, they could slowly STEAL the keys over time, but these are far fetched as well. There are 2 ways I can see of defeating the Pitlock. The first would be to use a set of locking needle nose plyers to lock onto the locking nut and then turn it. With certain locking nuts, this might not be possible, which is where the second method could enter. The second method would be to use a material that can be injected like a syrup but that hardens very quickly (like an epoxy) with a method of turning it (maybe deep reach pin spanners?): once the material hardened enough, you could use the handle to turn the lock. I don't know if this would work: would the dimple the pit slots into be too shallow to hold enough of the hardening stuff (let's just CALL it epoxy for brevity's sake) to create the necessary bond needed to open the skewer? I dunno... all these measures are really just to slow thieves down right? The reasoning goes that the harder the theft is, the more likely they'll go for easier bait...

Which brings me to another measure. Use the pitlocks/pinhead locks AND a cable lock on the wheels. How about a cable lock that erupts with noise if it's cut or the lock is tampered with? I found the LockAlarm originally when I was first exploring the Stokemonkey world. I found another user who lives in SF by the name of Bill Manewal and I asked him about the weird lock/alarm on the top tube of his Instigator. He travels around SF a lot for his job on his bike and last time I checked, his bike hasn't been stolen yet! The system locks onto the top tube (or probably in my case, the boom tube or the downtube: I don't know where I'm gonna mount it yet) and can't be removed without setting off the alarm. Picking the lock sets off the alarm and cutting the cable does as well. It's waterproof, so you can't short it out... beating it with a hammer/stick/blunt object is going to draw a lot of attention and it's going to take a lot of abuse before it shuts up, not to mention the fact that it'll still probably be locked. If you have

If you want to be totally overkill, in addition to the previous techniques, use a heavy duty OnGuard Beast 5016 to lock the frame to something that can't move. In the realm of ridiculous, also add a RFID Registry Tag AND a GPS tracking system OR... and I love this idea most of all: hook up a battery and a rheostat to all conductive metal parts of the bike and shock this SHIT out of anyone touching the bike... oh, and add a wireless remote "off" switch for the "electrified" part so you don't have to get close to the bike. I think that electrifying the bike could violate some ordinances, but then again, so does theft :)

Oh, and I found a very interesting article about RFID tags on bicycles: The University of Portsmouth tried out a system designed to reduce/eliminate bike theft. The article is an interesting summary of the system, and I think it's something that could work in urban areas like San Francisco and L.A.

Some simple solutions for improving security on a bicycle which I've seen posted here and there on the interwebs:

-used chain run in a loop through the seat rails and through around the seat stays, seen on Flickr
-hose clamps holding the QR Skewers on the wheels closed (comment from http://bikeportland.org/2005/09/09/bike-theft-what-should-we-do-about-it/#comment-294)or alternately removing the skewers when leaving the bike (cut the lock and you STILL have to carry the bike/wheels away: no rolling away!)
-stickers and detritus added to frames to uglify the bike and reduce theftability (all over the bikewebs...)
-derailing/removing the chain to make pedaling impossible until chain is fixed/replaced.

And the best one (which I attribute to a Harley riding friend of mine by the name of Bill Langhorne):

NEVER LET IT OUT OF YOUR SIGHT.

It's the hardest one to do for most people.

What happens when you stick a P-Nut in an electric sports car?

2008-05-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

While doing a little further research on EMB's (electromagnetic batteries), I found my way over to the Tesla Motors website. I heard about the guys from Tesla years ago and I've been checking in on them from time to time to see what's developing. I hadn't realized how long it had been since I'd done this until this evening. There's a lot of people (ok, a LOT of people is hyperbole) who've driven them at this point, and a few that even own them. I found my way to THIS BLOG ENTRY and read with some enthusiasm about one of my favorite bass players (P-nut of the band 311) trying out the Tesla Roadster. I posted a comment: we'll see if they publish it, as I mentioned riding my bicycle past the roadsters stuck in traffic and admiring them that way due to the VERY high cost of the vehicle. I won't deny the fun factor of pressing a little pedal and getting 0-60 in under 4 seconds (WOW!), but is that REALLY necessary outside a race track? For really rich guys it sounds like a guilt free way to have your cake and eat it too, but in reality, the Tesla doesn't get us any closer to reducing our need for oil. It's a cool idea, and no doubt a blast to drive, but it's completely outside the realm of reality for the average person. The "blast" of riding a regular bicycle around a corner fast can be just as exhilarating, it WON'T break the bank, and it doesn't require a power outlet. The argument that humans have to eat FOOD for fuel doesn't hold up either: we have to do that anyway. Unless you plan on riding more than about 20-30 miles per day, you probably (unless you're a world class athlete) don't need any additional calories either. Bicycles still kick the roadsters ass in terms of fuel efficiency, if not in the acceleration dept.

And for the record, if I got a chance to test drive one, YES I would. Would I buy one for $350,000 if I had the money? Not a chance: do you know how many amazing bicycles you could own and GIVE AWAY AS GIFTS for that much money? You can buy a mansion in most parts of the WORLD for that much money. I wonder what Nicolas Tesla would think?

Why we "Ride there"

2008-04-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

I would like to reiterate something that Kent Peterson said in his "Ready to Ride" blog entry. I'm also pointing it out because it so eloquently states why I'd rather "ride there" even if it takes longer.

"Or maybe, just maybe, the old adage has it wrong. Time is not money. Time is more valuable. You don't save time, you spend it at the same rate as everybody else on this planet. The rate is 24 hours each day. You can never save it, but some ways you spend it may work out as investments. Am I wasting three hours each day by cycling back and forth to work? If I drove a car my commute time would be half that, think of what I could do with that time I saved! But that hour and half each day that I drove, that hour and a half each day that I didn't enjoy, I know that would be wasted. And I know that I love my hours on the bike.

...It's all within biking distance. I learn this one pedal stroke at a time and it's a lesson I get to keep relearning every day. Like Joe, my own power is pretty ordinary. And my own time gets delivered to me at a rate of 24 hours each day. I guess I could waste it racing around in some attempt to save it but mostly I spend it slowly, close to home. But the funny thing is those trips add up. My legs get into the habit of turning and I learn how many sandwiches it takes to go from here to there, even if there is Tiger Mountain or Portland or Minnesota or Mexico. I still don't travel far from home, but home is a lot bigger than it used to be."

Kent Peterson, excerpts from "Ready to Ride"

I wish I could remember Kent's words when someone questions why I ride sometimes instead of driving, especially on what they perceive is a "long ride". My answers often sounds so lame to my ears "it's not so far..." "it only took me an hour"... that "only an hour" one is usually the part that people don't get. They can do it in a car in 20 minutes, maybe 30 and so I'm "wasting time" by riding. I LIKE to ride, and I very very rarely like to drive. Maybe if every road I drove on was a curvy winding swooping road with banked corners and there was no one to get in my way or tailgate me, sure. But it's rarely like that.

McCain says Suspend the Gas Tax

2008-04-17T12:42:00.001-07:00

Today's news:

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V.USGOV Sen. John McCain called yesterday for the federal government to suspend gasoline taxes from Memorial Day to Labor Day this year.(TPI)
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Hmm... As little as I like petro fuels, our government gets a lot of revenue by taxing it. Where will this money come from? How will the war pay for itself (since it's all about oil and money anyway)? Are they going to cut funding to schools again? How about roads and bridges and water supplies? These damn messages to my cell phone pose more questions than answers...

--Sent from my cell phone--

Barbourula Kalimantanensis: "Lungs are for sissies!"

2008-04-11T12:20:00.001-07:00

BORNEO, Indonesia
In a hushed press conference today a spokesfrog for the elusive Barbourula Kalimantanensis spoke out against illegal gold mining in Borneo. "Look, I'm a frog and it's all fine & good that you guys need to make a living, but see, I breathe through my damn skin and your mining operation is fucking up my river, see? Yeah yeah yeah, we've heard the whole "but I've got no other way of making money" talk before... Frankly I don't give a damn: you LUNG breathers are just a bunch of sissies! Why don't y'all try breathing with YOUR lungs full of silt and see how YOU like it!"

The spokesfrog promptly snatched a fly buzzing around it's head and hopped out of the room leaving the slew of reporters shaking their heads in amazement.

Seriously though, there's an interesting article about this at Reuters Mobile.
Anyone care to pontificate as to why this amphibian evolved backwards? Tripy ain't it?

--Sent from my cell phone--

Valor Theft

2008-04-01T13:39:00.001-07:00

I meant to post this the day after I forwarded on the "miss speak" entry. I was right: the opposition jumped all over miss speak a.k.a Hillary. Blunderpuss.... wait, did I misspeak myself? Muahahahah!

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V.USGOV Calling it "valor theft" Barack Obama's campaign highlighted Hillary Clinton's admission that she "mispoke" about being under fire in Bosnia(TMCAP)

--Sent from my cell phone--

I've got a better idea

2008-03-31T12:19:00.001-07:00

Today's enviro blurb:
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V.ENVIRO As style consumers we can demand that our beauty, grooming and fashion products be eco-friendly, organic, sustainable and recycled. (SJMNC)
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I've got a better idea; How about we just BUY LESS? It's a much simpler solution, and easier to figure out. Sure, if you HAVE to buy something, buying the "greener" option is better, but it's the consuming drive that's actually burying us.

--Sent from my cell phone--

Sheldon Brown Memorial Ride 3.30.08

2008-03-27T02:54:00.000-07:00

The ride will be this coming sunday March 30th (yeah, I know, I know, it's late notice. Hey, that's what the internet is good for right?) starting at 3:00pm. Meet in the parking lot in front of the Java Hut (across the street from the Iron Spring Brewery). There's a map of the route HERE.

I designed the route to be easy and fun and most of all pretty. You can do it on a tall bike, a road bike, a mountain bike, a unicycle, a recumbent, whatever. The ride will go past at least 3 LBS's, so mechanical issues shouldn't be a problem. Those who are fast are welcome to blaze ahead, but those of us riding 126lb Dutch City bikes (that includes the weight of my child) will be running a more sociable pace. When I started planning this ride, I stayed with the idea that this, while a memorial ride, should be festival and celebrate the quirky, prankster human and humane sides of SB. So the more goofy jerseys, one of a kind bikes, fun and funny accessories you bring to this ride the better. If you have a helmet, feel free to adorn it with an eagle, or whatever other totem road score you like (ala Sheldon). I appropriated one of my son's toys and turned it into a Sheldon Helmet memorial.. but come as you are. Don't feel obligated to don the Eagle on your helmet: show you own sense of flair! Also welcome are photos of you with Sheldon, photos of his life and best of all, stories and songs (some of you may not know, but Sheldon was quite fond of singing!)Children are welcome too, though they are the responsibility of their parents/legal guardians!

I will print some cue sheets for those who don't know the route. When I run out, follow those who have one, or print your own!

Some may ask "Why aren't you doing it on April 1st? That was Sheldon's day to make funny jokes about bikes!" Well... lots of folks have families and work and other things that get in the way of a evening ride, and weekends are usually better for a lot of people (me included), so we'll just PRETEND like it's the 1st, ok? If enough people come, we'll do it again on Sheldon's BIRTHDAY (July 14, Bastille Day).

One last thing: for those of you who enjoyed racing, local legend Jacquie Phelan told me she would come on the ride, so if you're feeling really saucy, ride up next to her and challenge her to race. It's been said she never turns one down.. but she rarely loses either.

What's your trash output?

2008-03-26T11:53:00.001-07:00

Today's enviro news blurb sent to my phone:
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V.ENVIRO Japan aims to reduce the total amount of garbage - produced by both industries and individuals - by 60 percent by 2015. (AP)

Hmm... That sounds pretty awesome. Think the U.S can do as well? I have my doubts...
--Sent from my cell phone--

So what did you "mean" to say?

2008-03-25T13:51:00.001-07:00

Today's news text message:
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V.USGOV Hillary Rodham Clinton "misspoke" when she asserted last week that as first lady she had landed in war-torn Bosnia under sniper fire.(NMN)
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So Hilary, what did you "mean" to say? How the hell could you make this kind of political no-no? This further proves my point that as long as their mouths are open, they're lying (politicians that is).

--Sent from my cell phone--

The Diablo Gets It's Due: Dead Mallard

2008-03-25T11:48:00.000-07:00

So I'm riding my son to his preschool this morning traveling down our normal route. Just before the intersection of Diablo and Novato Blvd (Northbound) in the left lane is the freshly strewn remains of a mallard duck. The vivid green/blue plumage of the neck and head contrasted rather starkly against the red and white of bone, flesh and entrails. It was pretty in an abstract kind of way, but it made me sad: Someone killed this little canard. Then I began to puzzle: ducks can fly: what happened that this guy didn't get out of the way? Did he decide to chill in the middle of the street during the night when there was little traffic? Did he not hear the car/truck?

Then I got to thinking further: why is is that we lament the loss of that that is beautiful over that of the mundane? Much of it seems to be in the eye of the beholder. My heart fell when I saw this ducky roadkill: most of the drivers were driving over it like it was a lump of dirt. Part of me wanted to scream at everyone of them "Hey assholes, don't you see the beautiful thing that died in front of your wheels?" Part of me wanted to stop traffic and carefully pull the remains off and bury them. Without a police car or ambulance running interference, this would have been a risky endeavor and I (and my son) might have ended up like the duck. So I rode on, hoping that the duck didn't leave behind a family of little ducks and a mate.

I got to thinking further: Bicyclists don't kill animals with their bikes right? Well, I know there have been some close calls: Kent Peterson and several other who've ridden the Great Divide Race have had some pretty close calls. One of the Fatcyclist's friends (I think it might be Kenny) almost hit a deer. So who would have won/lost these collisions (if there can ever be said to be a winner and loser when a collision happens) if they'd actually happened? Neither is the likely answer. The fact that these "near misses" were just "near misses" might have something to do with the fact that the vehicles being piloted were bicycles. It could be that the riders were particularly adroit. If could be that average bicycle speeds are usually slower than cars (except in urban areas where they are often the same or higher). Just as I was thinking about all this, I turned into Miwok Park for my usual shortcut. I had to slam on the brakes and swerve b/c there was a clueless squirrel who started to dart in front of my tires. He had to have heard me coming, but the squirrels in that park have seen and heard it all so I don't think he took particular note of me. Either way, I almost had to eat my own words. I don't find squirrels particularly BEAUTIFUL, but they are pretty cute. It would have been a shame to crush the little guy.

Stay alert out there... it's a beautiful world and there's lots to see. You'll see more on a bike, I guarantee it.

Oh... and watch out for ducks & squirrels.

Am I destroying my bulbs?

2008-03-19T14:37:00.000-07:00

An update to the CFL / LED Conversation. THIS comment at Treehugger made me realize that I may end up burning out my new LED bulbs that are currently on a dimming circuit in my son's room. I was under the impression that when you turned down the dimmer switch you were applying less current to the bulbs which is what I *thought* they need in order to "dim". I guess turning on fewer of the bulbs in the array is the better option, but I know these bulbs weren't wired that way (they would have cost a lot more than they did!). I've seen some DC flashlights that had circuits that were designed this way (Princeton Tech) and I know that LRI (the folks who make the Photon Micro lights) uses Pulse Width Modulation in their Photon Freedom line of lights to "dim" the LED's. In a household application, I'm not sure if this would be distracting (or even possible) to walk around under (I have recessed ceiling cans in most of the rooms in my house). Any electrical engineer types want to chime in here?

The "Magicians" at the EPA

2008-03-18T13:01:00.001-07:00

So I get this text message every weekday morning on my cell phone giving me interesting tidbits of "environmental news" This was today's entry:

V.ENVIRO Locomotives, cargo ships, tugboats and passenger ferries will become much cleaner under new air pollution requirements announced by the EPA. (AP)

So the EPA says "you will become cleaner" and it just happens? I'm all for the increased efficiency of large vehicles and municial transportation but what I'm curious about is how this gets paid for... But you can't get all that from 160 characters of text.

--Sent from my cell phone--

Taken in their prime

2008-03-15T15:53:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I'm slow. Slow on a bike, slow to post, slow to multi-task without losing my place... yeah, slow. Several folks have been talking about the deaths of Kristy Gough and Matt Peterson. Jacquie did it, and there's an AMAZING article HERE.

Last week Kristy Gough and Matt Peterson lost their lives to a car. They were riding their bicycles, Kristy was training for the Olympics. A sheriff's deputy fell asleep at the wheel (some are blaming bad scheduling plus the time change), went across the yellow and crushed both of them. Kristy's leg was severed. Matt was killed instantly. Another cyclist got hit as well, though he survived. Ugly ugly shite, and everyone's lives are ruined. I read the article in the SF Chronicle and was PISSED. Pissed that these folks lost their life and PISSED at the Chronicle for letting it create fear amongst the public. I quote "Riding a bicycle in the Bay Area is an increasingly deadly pastime". That's the first line of the "Safety" article that accompanied the photo of cyclists standing looking at the memorial on the front page. Great great... let's scare everyone into thinking that bicycling is inherently dangerous. Then call it a "pastime" and marginalize it as a valid transportation source. THEN go on to publish a study to show that bicycling crashes are down but deaths are up. Then DON'T publish a similar study that would show the number of car-car or car-stationary object crashes and deaths for the same period. NO.. let's just make cycling seem more scary. I'm NOT happy with the Chronicle, but then I rarely am. Listen, you are at least a HUNDRED times more likely to die or be seriously maimed in a car crash than you are in a bike crash. Sure, you could be the unlucky person who get's killed like Christy and Matt. More than likely, you'll live a lot longer. The more of us that are out there riding, the safer it gets, so don't submit to fear. As Paul Atreides recited when facing the Gom Jabbar:

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

RIP Kristy Gough & Matt Peterson. May you live on in the minds of those who love you and let your memory serve to inspire us to make the world a safer place for bicyclists.

As the SI article cited in it's own litany against bike accidents: START SEEING BICYCLES!

CFL: A Mercury Time Bomb?

2008-02-18T18:41:00.001-08:00

Many people are touting CFL's (Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs) as being a small but good way to start "going green". What they usually DON'T tell you is that CFL's usually have significant amounts (5 mg on average) of MERCURY in them. In case you've been living under a rock, Mercury (Hg) is toxic to the human body. So, how is this helping us "go green"? CFL's use less electricity than standard bulbs, and that's good. The average lightbulb buyer won't keep the ubiquitous non-recyclable blister-pac PLASTIC packaging after they install the bulb, and therefore they'll miss the TINY print on it that says "Do not throw this product in the trash, take it to a Hazardous Waste Recycling Facility for disposal". I REPEAT, THE HAZARDOUS WASTE RECYCLING CENTER. Plastic = petroleum by the way, which of course greatly diminishes the "greeness" of the bulb. When the consumer tosses the bulb in the trash instead of recycling it, the mercury often ends up in the groundwater or in the ocean, which in turn ends up in our bodies. SO, Every time you buy a CFL, you are bringing Mercury (Hg), a hazardous and potential lethal chemical into your home or business. You wouldn't bring a rabid snarling dog into your home would you? You wouldn't bring a pestilent dead rat into your home and rub it like a dishrag over the kitchen counters, would you? Though that might be fun, most of us are smart enough not to do it. Can you tell I'm not a fan of CFL's? I have one minor exception in my rant against the CFL manufacturers: The folks at EarthMate Lighting. They package in post consumer cardboard and their mini-CFL's(and only the mini-CFL's) have 75% less mercury than standard CFL's. Why couldn't ALL their bulbs be low Mercury? I'm guessing it has something to do with the dimming ability in some of the bulbs, and for the full spectrum bulbs, something to do with the extra phosphors needed to produce full spectrum light. Hey, they're far from perfect, but they're better than a lot of their competitors. EarthMate's biggest downside? They appear to only be distributing to the east coast of the U.S. DOH! Oh well...

"Ok smart guy, what's the alternative?" I'm glad you asked. There's NOT a lot of good alternatives. Currently, using lower wattage incandescents is an option, though they don't last as long as CFL's are "claimed" to last. Subjectively speaking, my CFL's seem to burn out (and I've been writing the date I install them on the bulb) at about the same frequency that the incandescents did. This could be because of faulty wiring or old fixtures, but I digress. CFL's cost more initially and they cost more to clean up (Mercury is expensive to deal with). They use less a lot less energy during their life, which should give them a slight overall environmental edge. Durability of CFL's may have a lot to do with how often they are cycled on & off. The inital "lighting" of a bulb (just like a car) is the part of the cycle that's the hardest on it. If you turn your lights on & off a lot (like I do: to save ENERGY!), then you cycle the light a lot. My impression is that if you turn a light on and leave it on for the duration of the time you would have used it, it will last longer. I have no evidence to back this up, though the data is surely out there. The ballast required for the CFL's is likely what wears out first, and since most (if not all) of the CFL bulbs being sold in the U.S today are made in China (who has notoriously poor environmental controls), there's no guarantee of bulb quality or diligence to environmentally cautious manufacturing.

One of the few good alternatives to incandescents are LED Bulbs. Many people still assume that LED's are at best used in weak penlight flashlights or more commonly for indicator lights on stereos, computers, and power supplies. In the past 10 years, household LED's have increased exponentially in output while experiencing only modest increases in electricity required to power them. I recently bought a couple of PAR 30 LED bulbs from The Green Fusion center in San Anselmo, CA. Green Fusion gets them from C.Crane company. About 4-5 years ago, I got an early version of C.Crane's LED bulb. It's not NEARLY as bright as the new ones, but it's still going strong, and I expect it will be when my son turns 25 (he's nearly 4 now). LED's contain no mercury and they are solid state, so they only break if you hit them hard and direct with a big hammer or other similar object. Drop one and you'll find it unscathed as long as it's potted in place correctly. The bulbs I've bought from C.Crane are high quality and it's one of the few companies I have a lot of confidence in. If it's not right, they make it right.

With the advent of Luxeon Star emitters and just recently, the new CREE bulbs, LED Bulbs have gotten SIGNIFICANTLY brighter than they used to be. I recently purchased a flashlight for my bicycle that features the new CREE Q5 XR-E bulb, and I'm damn impressed with the power of this bulb. I got my Fenix L2D Premium Q5 Cree XR-E LED Flashlight from the guys at EliteLED. I'm using it as a helmet mounted light and much of the time I run it in it's low mode. In darker areas, I'll run it in medium or for high speed descents in the dark, I'll use the Turbo mode. It's a little like wearing a search light on your head, though it weighs a fraction of the weight. EliteLED offers the CREE LED's in household bulbs as well. I haven't tried any yet b/c of budgetary restrictions, but I look forward to trying some of THESE for lighting my entire living room. With a 20,000 hour life, I'm guessing... that's about 8 hours a day, 365 days a year for 6.85 years, or 5 hours a day, 365 days a year for 10.96 years or 5 hours a day, 200 days a year for 20 years. It's a lot of light (300 lumens) for only using 7W! By the way, most LED manufacturers are rating their bulbs to their HALF-LIFE (when driven to spec), which means the bulbs dim to half their original brightness. LED's can last functionally forever, though their brightness does diminish at some point to negligible levels.

I figure if I replaced the 13 PAR 38 bulbs in the ceiling canisters (10 of which are on dimmer circuits and all are 60 watt bulbs) with THESE ones from C.Crane, I'd spend $662.48 up front. If I had every single LED PAR 38 running full tilt, I'd be using just slightly more (48.75W) than just ONE of the ones I'm using now (at full blast)(45W). So.. the energy savings would be $326.44 / bulb over the course of 60,000 hours (listed life of the bulb). For 13 bulbs (the number of PAR 38's in my house), that adds up to a savings of $4243.72. Wow. It also amounts to 32,175 kWh of energy saved. WHOA. According to the math done by C.Crane,

"If every U.S. household replaced just one standard 60 watt bulb with a CC Vivid LED bulb, we could save 24,184,400,000 watts or 24,184.4 mega (million) watts per day.

National savings information based on 103,000,000 households with an average use of 4 hrs per day per house. Based on gross watts.

One of the largest power plants in the U.S. could be eliminated as a result of each U.S. household replacing just one standard 60 watt bulb with a CC Vivid LED Light bulb."

C.Crane is just one company selling LED Bulbs: here are 4 more (with varying prices for similar products):
EliteLED
SuperBrightLEDs
The LED Light
EternaLEDS

I guess I know where that cash rebate the government is talking about giving every american is going...

Finally, the way to properly recycle your CFL's when they break is to take them to a proper recycler. You can FIND ONE HERE.

Calfee Bamboo UTILITY Bikes?

2008-02-18T17:59:00.000-08:00

While looking through the most recent entries at Fake Plastic Fish, I stumbled upon a link to AfriGadget. There's an article up there about Bamboo Bikes, and none other than Craig Calfee of NAHBS fame was behind it.

I saw Craig's creations last week at NAHBS, and as usual, he doesn't disspoint. I would put a link here to my pictures, but since the hard drive on my Mac G4 iBook is apparently roasted, my photo uploading abilities are somewhat... limited. Anyway, check out the article.

Thank You David Sylvester

2008-02-14T23:31:00.000-08:00

If you haven't read THIS article written by David Sylvester, you should. David "Just a man" Sylvester is an inspiration to me, and no doubt a lot of others. Though he'd likely eschew it, he gets the H.O.T.M (Hero of the Month) award from me. I hope I get to meet him someday, and maybe ride a few miles with him. His article put tears in my eyes and though that's not that hard to do (yeah, I'm a softie), those tears honor a beautiful life and a life lived beautifully.

Thanks Kent for the link.

Fallen Heros

2008-02-07T02:05:00.000-08:00

I found out this evening while looking through the iBOB Digest (Vol 62, Issue 43) that Sheldon Brown passed away from a heart attack on Feb 3rd. It's a heavy blow and it took the wind right out of my sails. I'm headed for the NAHMBS tomorrow afternoon, and I'm sure there will be those there who knew Sheldon, at least I hope there'll be. I'm hoping I get to hear some tales of Sheldon from those who knew him. I attribute much of my "bike knowhow" to Sheldon and his loss is a loss to everyone who rides a bike. Yeah, Sheldon's one of my bike hero's. My thoughts go out to his family.

Grant Peterson of Rivendell Bicycle Works wrote a very nice article about sheldon and summed it up better than I could. So did Todd at Clevercycles. I just wanted to acknowledge Sheldon and how much he contributed to my own love and involvement with that 2 wheeled conveyance we so loving call "the bicycle".

Sheldon Brown, RIP
1944-2008

New Years Resolutions... in February

2008-02-06T10:30:00.000-08:00

Well, I've decided (after a LONG look at the Fake Plastic Fish blog) that I have 2 goals for 2008.

1. Ride my first century, in one day. In all the years I've been bicycling, I've never ridden a century. I've never owned a "road" bike, though all my bicycles are of course capable of riding on the road. I'm told it's foolish to think I can ride a century on my Azor Oma, and the naysayers are probably right, though I may try it once I've done a century on a "go fast" bike. To this end, I've borrowed a "fast" bike from my uncle, a Kestrel 200SC. It's not set up TOO racy: a high rise stem brings the handlebars to within a reasonable facsimile of level with the seat. The bars slope more than I like, but I may be able to turn them up slightly without screwing up the cables.

2. Reduce the amount of plastic I throw away by 50% this year. After reading THIS article, I can no longer in good conscious blindly use plastic the way I have in the past. Recycling is NOT enough, reduce reduce reduce is the key. This morning when I first broached the goal with my wife she was amicable, but the realities of the loss of "convenience" may cause her and my son to balk. We (our family, and likely yours too!) have become completely blind to the "convenience" factor that plastic provides. Even at places like Whole Foods & Trader Joes, plastic is EVERYWHERE. Prepackaged foods are the worst culprits, and their lure is similar to crack cocaine to the addict. Cutting the cord won't be easy: it's harder to find things that AREN'T packaged in plastic than things that are because EVERYTHING gets packed in plastic now. Read the ARTICLE (mentioned once already) and you'll begin to understand my sense of urgency.

The Queen of Glean

2008-02-03T01:14:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, she's done it again. "What's that?" you say? IMPRESS THE HELL OUT OF ME.

I wrote about Jacquie the FIRST TIME way back in December of 2005, not long after I started writing this blog. She's been impressing the hell out of me for a long time.

In 2007 I met jacquie's husband Charlie for the first time when he came to my house with a mutual acquaintance to check out my human electric hybrid bicycle, SuperVato. To say I was honored to have Charlie in my garage would be a gross and unjust understatement. The fact that he rode my bike and declared it a "true cyclists electric bike" made all the waiting and sweating over the details worth the trouble. To quote my former sister in law Charity, I did the "yippy skippy" inside my head when he said that.

Fast forward to December 2007 when I discovered Jacquie's Weblog and started commenting. We started corresponding shortly thereafter. We still haven't met for "tea", though I intend to change that this month if possible. Shortly after our email conversation started, Jacquie told me she was under the gun trying to finish an article for the Pacific Sun. She tried to send me a draft to preview it, but due to some technical (formatting) issues, I wasn't able to read it. I went out of town shortly thereafter (watch the blog for a entry about my trip to London and Stockholm coming up) and this evening I was catching up on the blogs I usually read. Kent Peterson's Blog is usually where I start and one of the recent entries is about Jacquie and her article in the Pacific Sun. It caused me to once again reassess my lifestyle and the daily choices I make. Her article makes a fine companion piece to the Story of Stuff, but that's hardly a surprise: Jacquie's always been ahead of her time. Her lifestyle predates the Story of Stuff by years and years and like I said in 2005, she's a continuing source of inspiration. Thanks to Kent & Jacquie!

Ghost in the Machine

2007-12-29T02:43:00.001-08:00

Photo_080707_001.jpg
Originally uploaded by Nollij.

Well here it is, the Matchless. I've been meaning to write something for and about my dad for months now, but I guess I'll start with this and let the stream of consciousness flow from there.

As long as I can remember, my dad talked about the Matchless he owned before I was born. In all my years, I never saw one. Not on TV, not in a book, not on the Internet. I came to think they were like the Pegasus: a mythical creature. Add in a touch of wistful longing in his eyes and voice every time he talked about his bike, and you've got an instant legend. It probably explains my love of motorcycles to this day (well, DUH!).

The day after my dad died, I was coming out of Woodlands Market and crossing the parking lot when I spied this immaculate Matchless. I was… thunderstruck. I stopped dead in the middle of the lane when I realized what I was looking at. All the hairs on my body were standing at attention and my nerves started jangling so hard I had a dull roar in my ears. (No, it wasn't the Matchless; he hadn't started the engine yet.) My spine felt all… fuzzy. I somehow managed to get my feet moving towards the bike and stammer something to the rider. For the life of me, I can't remember exactly what I said. I know there was a compliment, a mention of my dad riding one, a question of year, and possible something about a unicorn or pegasus… it's all a bit muddled now, like the echo of a dream. I don't remember the riders name, but he had a huge and very bright white smile against his dark skin. I don't remember his face, but his smile I'll never forget. He let me take a picture (damn cheap shit cameraphone!) and he told me it was a '68 (or did he say '69? Ah yes… jangled nerves speaking…)

I watched him for a few minutes as he suited up, started the bike and rode it away. A profound sadness crept up behind me and ripped something out of my gut as he disappeared down the road. The taste of red wine drunk with a penny under the tongue was lingering in my throat and I had to swallow hard to push down the lump of grief that was threatening to choke me. Unbidden, tears stained my cheeks and for some reason, I let them stay there, as my face suddenly felt like I'd been standing in front of a blast furnace with the door open. It was one of the few times I've ever let the tears just chill there: it felt like a silent salute to Steve. I would never again talk to him about motorcycles, the adventures he'd had on his Lambretta while riding around Europe in the 60's, never more hear the stories of the Sunday Morning Ride, never hear the stories of his adventures with Crazy Mac. It HURT and that was new. It was real pain I felt in my chest… I was more raw and more alive than I'd ever remembered feeling before.

Just then a crow alighted on top of the Woodlands Market sign. Now, crows are not an uncommon sight in Marin. They are everywhere, but they are rarely alone, at least in my observations. This was a lone crow, It was just above my line of sight and it's timing was uncanny. Crows (and Ravens) are often associated with death. They are carrion eaters AND they're all black. That's enough for most people. Crows to me though are fascinating birds, and they are evidently connected spiritually with my family. Without going into a pedantic level of detail, suffice to say that my late uncle Jimmy had the crow as his spirit animal, and he's visited his children, myself and my brother in crow form since his death in 2006. The arrival of the crow was like the point below the exclamation. Unlikely as it seems, another layer of gooseflesh rose up under the first: I was starting to feel like a frightened porcupine. I got in my truck and wept for a few minutes and after that… after that I really don't remember much of the rest of that day. I made it home without further incident, and life went on.

I've yet to see another Matchless since that day, or even the same one. Was it a ghost? Are shitty low res cameraphones capable of picking up ghosts? Maybe…

Steven English Hopper, RIP
9.20.1942 - 8.06.2007 (64 yrs, 10 mo, 17 days)
Gone, but never forgotten.

Patagonian Paradise & the Dangers of Electronic Recycling

2007-12-28T10:05:00.000-08:00

After watching "The Story of Stuff", I've been thinking a lot about it. Some synaptic bridge suddenly connected in my brain the other day, and I remembered reading about the former owner of Esprit moving to Chile, buying up 700,000 acres of rainforest land and turning it into a sanctuary. While I was trying to find the article on-line (please do read it, it's well written and will make you want to go there!), I stumbled on THIS article about the hidden dangers of electronic-recycling. As the Story of Stuff mentions, consumerism is creating the problem. If manufacturers designed their products to be upgraded (think about computers, cell phones, ipods to start) instead of being tossed out or recycled, it would start to attack the problem. Then make them responsible for properly dealing with the e-waste on the back end, and you can be sure they'd be designing products that were far more robust and durable (not to mention a lot "greener"). The "hidden cost" of our consumerist behavior is not being transmitted to us in those insanely cheap prices we're used to a the register, and it fosters an environment where the impulse buy is king. In the meantime, writing to the companies themselves and asking for the change is a good idea. Apple, IBM, Intel, Dell, HP would be good places to start. I have been guilty of wanting the "new thing", which is currently the iPhone. I've managed to retain my 3rd Gen iPod and I've already changed out the battery on it myself. It would be great to have the same software that the newest generation iPods have, but that's not an option that Apple made possible: poor thinking IMO. I'm kind of disgusted by the fact that I'm always confronted by the "new thing" and that I somehow unconsciously developed a predication towards viewing the "old thing" as inferior; according to the Story of Stuff, that's exactly the mindset that the consumer chain wants me to have. I have to actively fight that mindset, and I'm getting better at it, but it's still a daily struggle.

Prototype Centerstand? Suhweet!

2007-12-25T19:55:00.001-08:00

IMG_1958.jpg
Originally uploaded by xtracycleinc.

Ho ho ho... do I detect a prototype Surly / Xtracycle centerstand here in Red? That's something to celebrate if it's true!

Electromechanical Batteries: Electric Bicycle Dreamin'

2007-12-18T22:30:00.000-08:00

Ok.. so this entry is slightly random, but I'm just freaking out, because it's something that's new to me, but not to the scientific community. Where the hell have I been?

Electroechanical Batteries have been in development at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories for over 20 years. According to THIS paper, they hold amazing potential for energy storage. The thing I think they're missing is the potential for vehicles that are much lighter than a car. Anyone who reads this blog knows what's coming next: electric bicycle power. If you could build a electromechanical battery using something like this Halbach array (or maybe something a little smaller) and keep the weight of the other components to a minimum, you could smash the weight/power problem that I have on my human electric hybrid SuperVato. Consider this: my current battery weighs about 26 lbs including the enclosure. The Gaussboys Halbach array weighs 32 oz. Two of em spinning in opposite directions would cancel the gyroscopic effect of the bike, and assuming they were mounted on limited excursion gimbals they could resist the braking and acceleration forces created by the bicycle. I'm guessing you could build a high capacity system for less than 10 pounds. I'm planning on going back to school in the fall for engineering, and now I think I know why: I want to build a Human/Electromechanical Battery Powered Bicycle. Maybe I've just figured out my dissertation thesis… wouldn't that be convenient?

Critics mock the electric bicycle because the products are often poorly made and poorly thought out. Electrical storage has been the Achilles heel of the electrical bicycle, but the Electromechanical Battery would have huge advantages over even the newest Lithium Ion and Lithium Polymer batteries because of the longevity and capacity. The weight differential between Electromechanical & Lithium Ion/Polymer appears to be fairly close. Electromechanical batteries would obviously cost more in the prototype phase, but because they appear to be pretty simple, I think the costs could come down significantly if production could be increased. I'd like to see a product like this made as "greenly" and equitably as possible, i.e living wages for the production crew, non toxic assembly techniques performed in energy efficient production facilities.

I can't be the first person to think of this…can I??? The designers and engineers want to make money from this by putting it in hybrid cars and in municipal systems. Most of the money for the project at Lawrence Livermore has come from corporate sponsors, so that's no surprise. That's nice for the car manufacturers, but cars still don't make a lot of sense a lot of the time, even if they DID use less fossil fuel. I'm all for putting this in municipal systems. It can't be any more dangerous than Nuclear power right?

CURRENT MUSIC: Revolting Cocks, Cocked and Loaded

-----UPDATE 7/6/08-----
I'm an idiot. Officially. Up until today I had the words "electromechanical" and "electromagnetic" used interchangeably in this article. Not ok, since they are completely different ideas! My apologies: publishing blog entries after you've been up late writing them isn't always a good idea. ESPECIALLY when you have proofread them at least twice. *Forehead Slap*

Prepare For The Playa: Holi-Daze

2007-12-15T02:48:00.000-08:00

My friends Nikki & Merritt are putting on another Prepare For the Playa event, this time in celebration of the holidays. I told them I'd flog their event on my blog, so take a minute to check it out. If you're a bay area resident and are so inclined, check out the event this Sunday (TOMORROW!) in SF. Here's the spiel…

Prepare for the Playa -
Holi-Daze Event!

Don't get distracted by the sugar plums dancing in your head - The holidays are upon us and the quest for creative and unusual gifts has begun!

Need a special gift for that friend, campmate or significant other? Is a watch, sweater or set of encyclopedias just too boring, normal and mundane for your Burner friends?

Looking for an unusual, creative and furry gifts for those folks on your holiday shopping list???

Then look no further! Prepare for the Playa returns for the Holi-Daze with an eclectic mix of vendors with unique gift items that are sure to please every character on your holiday shopping list!

Live Music, Free Entrance and Free Parking!
ALL AGES WELCOME!

Cafe Cocomo
(same location as BM Decompression 2007)
650 Indiana Street, San Francisco
Lots of FREE parking and we never charge an entrance fee!

Sunday - December 16th, 2007
11am-6pm

Buy Local this Holiday season!

Holy Sh*t… The Story of Stuff

2007-12-15T00:52:00.000-08:00

God dammit. I just watched The Story of Stuff and I started crying. I had to stifle my sobs actually, because my son is sleeping, and it would suck to have to put him back to sleep all the while trying to explain to a toddler that my generation and the several preceding it have done a horrendously bad job of taking care of our planet and our country. Do I weep for what is lost to everyone or just what *I* might never experience? Selfish or Selfless? Maybe a little of both. As a revelatory slap-in-the-face, The Story of Stuff made me feel pretty bad about the world my son has to inherit at the moment. I hope to be able say someday that I played some small part in making some changes for the better. Rationally, I know I didn't cause the problem by myself, but I know I've been a part of the problem more than once. This little 20 minute video is kind of like taking the red pill, if you'll excuse the pop-culture reference.

"What does that mean?" "It means fasten your seat belt Dorothy, 'cause Kansas is going bye-bye."

The Wachowski Brothers

Please please please, if you click on only ONE link from my site, let it be to the THE STORY OF STUFF. Wait, have I said that before? I think I might have. It gets hard to recall all your entries when you start approaching 200 blog entries.

I found another link that was moving to me as well this evening: The Road Witch project is very cool, and I think very effective. I believe some of their inspiration came from the folks at Creative Communities, and in particular, I was rather inspired by the 7 Principles upon which a Positive Social Virus is propagated. I hope to propagate some of the traffic calming techniques in my own neighborhood.

The Bicycle Manifesto: "The Uni-Biker"

2007-12-13T11:51:00.000-08:00

Today's post was written by a friend of a friend. His name is Alex Sebastian and he wrote this little gem a number of years ago when he was bicycle commuting every day. Alas, his job as a building contractor largely precludes riding a bicycle to work, but the bicycle is still in his heart. He graciously allowed me to post this: Thanks Alex! For many of us who commute to a fixed location for employment, riding a bicycle IS possible, so please consider it. You children (if you have them) will thank you someday for your forethought, and if you don't have any, I'll make sure mine thank you someday! :)

The Bicycle Manifesto
by the everyday cyclist

"The Uni-Biker"

When was the last time you…

…went a week without honking or swearing?
…greeted with a smile, wave or "hello" your fellow citizens on the sidewalk?
…felt freedom from gas stations and car garages?
…arrived to your destination refreshed, alert and with a clear head?
…were never concerned with parking?
…arrived to your destination by a trail, alley, sidewalk or path?
…found a cure for car sickness?
…remembered the first thing you learned to steer?
…opened your window at home and heard silence?
…felt like you were in shape?
…didn't experience the inconvenience of losing keys or locking yourself out of your mode of transportation?
…thought you were flying?
…had 15% more income because you didn't spend it on your mode of transportation?
…sat in a town square?
…by-passed grid-lock traffic like it didn't exist?
…felt the wind through your hair?
…you were never late because your mode of transportation never broke down?
…felt self-sufficient because you maintained your own mode of transportation?
…asked yourself what the real reasons - not the reasons the newspapers and television claim as truth - are that Critical Mass attracts so many riders?
…noticed which streets are lined with trees?
…took your family on a journey through the city?
…lived in a neighborhood that had everything you needed within a half mile?
…inhaled a deep breath of fresh, unpolluted air?
…remembered that which you've always been told you'd never forget how to ride?

If it has been a while since any of these things have happened to you,
then when was the last time you asked yourself…why?

Alex Sebastian

Here Come The Thought Police

2007-12-08T18:11:00.000-08:00

I couldn't resist: THIS one should stir a bunch of you up. Once again, get out there and rip this to shreds folks and by all means, if you know more than I do about the bill, speak up!

Walter Cronkite Lays It Out

2007-12-08T15:41:00.000-08:00

I couldn't have said it better, so I won't even try. READ IT, believe it, make it happen.

Write to your senators , representatives and the president as well. Tell them you want immediate and complete withdrawal from Iraq. No fucking excuses. This it OUR country, OUR money, and our elected officials are DUTY bound to uphold the will of the people. Let them know how you feel! Keep ratcheting up the pressure folks, that's the only way to get through.

You might include a sentence to the effect of "I will not be voting for you, no matter what other issues upon which we are in agreement if you vote to continue the occupation of Iraq & Afghanistan". Of course, there are those of you out there (though more likely than not, most of my readership is NOT in support of the current occupation) who may think we should continue occupying Iraq & Afghanistan. My answer to you? STICK A FORK IN ME, BECAUSE I'M PRETTY SURE I'M DONE PAYING FOR IT!

BTW, some of you may feel I've been a bit vehement in my protestations lately. I guess I'm just feeling a bit raw on these issues: I'm fed up with the bullshit and I'm tired of mincing words. I have a young son, and I see the world around us deteriorating and I can't stand still and watch it without a fight. Whether the rants on my blog make any difference is dubious, but I know I reach a wider audience here, and I know that while I'm just one of many voices calling for change, every voice counts. If you care, lend your voice. Regret sucks and feeling like you didn't make an effort to change something that you could have is one of the worst feelings of all.

A Plea For "CONSERVative" Thought

2007-12-05T18:51:00.000-08:00

This morning, I was listening to KQED's Forum and hearing a republican presidential candidate by the name of Alan Keyes talk about why he was a good guy for the job. I don't agree with him on most of the issues, but he is extremely articulate and seems to be highly knowledgeable about constitutional law. Many of the people calling up resorted to derisive epithets, while Keyes managed his usual logical cold composure. In addition, callers and e-mailers volunteered no direct rebuttals to Alan's points. Too much passion, not enough logic; not a good way to counterpoint someone like Alan Keyes. Score one for Alan. I won't be voting for him, (and neither will the Republican party as far as I can ascertain), but he's far more tolerable than the shrub; he's not a bumbling oaf. More importantly, he brings a degree of sophistication and tact to the table that the next Republican I shall discuss lacks almost entirely.

Tonight, I'm reading through some comments on Flickr of one of my contacts and I click through to a blog link for Bike Satan. I started reading his blog a little, and then I came to THIS article. Ugh. It proves to me once again that most republicans aren't conservative AT ALL in the "conserve" sense of the word. They're radical and ultra-non-conservative. Their argument on the energy bill is that riding a bicycle instead of driving a car was a naive way to reduce our need for oil; What's naive about it? Is it naive to think that American's are unwilling to sacrifice their ridiculous amount of personal car fuel consumption for any reason? Maybe it's naive because the neo-con agenda of dumbing down and underfunding education has created dumber and more apathetic children, children who will grow up to be undereducated adults who are incapable of recognizing self-defeating legislation when they see it? Naive in thinking that Americans aren't willing to sacrifice a damn thing for the good of their own country and the planet on which they reside? Are the Republicans being divisive? You bet. Check. After all, divide & conquer is one of the oldest tricks in the book and old tricks are one of the few things that politicians do well. .

If you look at Patrick McHenry's stance on Gas Prices & Energy Policy , you'll see that he thinks we should drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Ok, Strike 2. Then when you read through his site, you see that he makes NO mention of reducing usage by JUST USING LESS. No, he pursues mining the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, replacing oil with *sigh* "Clean Coal" or Nuclear Power plants. There's a telling formula here (though Congressman McHenry is hardly alone, so don't think I'm picking on him alone): each of the solutions that he's proposing benefit a small group of very rich people: mainly those who are heavily tied to the oil/coal industry or companies like Haliburton (who would likely get another no-bid contract awarded to them if the U.S approved building a Nuclear Power Plant). Here's a tip little sycophant; over 40% of all trips taken in the U.S are under 2 miles. If you encouraged your constituency to do what you so superciliously mock (Ride a Bike), then you could reduce the number of car trips, traffic congestion, childhood and adult obesity and insurance costs for your district by a significant amount… then perhaps you would actually be LEADING instead of DIVIDING! I think it's telling that this guy has been a lackey of the George W. Bush campaign juggernaut, well known to be old school puppets for the Oil Industry (both in the U.S and in the Middle East), The Industrial Military Complex (think Haliburton et al.) , and allegedly, even the Nazis.

Do you KNOW how little 1 million dollars is when it comes to the federal budget? These idiots are desperate if they're clutching at this kind of small peanuts as reason's not to participate in legislation that is supposed to help people become less dependent on foreign oil, and oil altogether. Why the nitpicking? Because most of them are in the pocket of Big Oil. How much money HAS Congressman McHenry received from Big Oil? Anyone? Bueller?
The fact of the matter is, Congress gives HUNDREDS of times more in tax-payer "subsidies" to the oil companies to pay for "oil exploration", at the same time they're turning in RECORD profits. So OUR TAX DOLLARS ARE LINING THE POCKETS OF THE ALREADY UBER RICH OIL COMPANIES; DOES THAT MAKE YOU MAD? IT MAKES ME FUCKING FURIOUS! AUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!! *head explodes briefly*

Riding a bicycle instead of driving your car is honestly one of the most "CONSERVative" things you can do. The only thing better is to move close to your work and recreation so you don't have to drive at all, but with Bay Area housing costs, this is impossible for a lot of people. There are other things you can do to reduce your dependence on foreign oil: buying local produce, using a locally owned grocery store, walking, riding a bike, using public transportation, carpooling, car-sharing… you know, things we USED to do all the time in this country before we "realized" that everything had to center around the INSTANT gratification of our ability to be able to drive and go anywhere at any time. The seemingly simple act of driving your car or SUV 3 miles to the grocery store to buy a bag of groceries illustrates the fact that we are completely disconnected from what a gallon of fuel represents. The amount of energy required to move a 1500 lb vehicle (and that's about the weight of an older Honda Civic) in order to obtain a 15lb bag of groceries is magnitudes of order higher when compared to a bicycle. With traffic and parking issues, the time argument is often a wash on short trips, but even if the bike is slower, you are getting exercise while doing your errands, and that cuts down on your insurance costs (increased health), stress levels (assuming you don't have to ride on the HIGHWAY to get to the grocery store) and the time you need to spend at the "gym" in order to stay in shape. In fact, the bike (if considered in the total time schedule) often times ends up being faster, but don't take my word for it, ask the Dutch! As far as energy expenditure, here's a basic computation of human vs. car, though there's a lot of variables that are assumed. As they say, YMMV.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I'm often frustrated at the frenetic pace we continue to live our lives at. It's EXPECTED that everything has to get done, right now, right away. Yesterday even. We're decreasingly patient with any delay what-so-ever. Bicycling to me is a good compromise between speed and efficiency, and it's far more pleasant, interactive and healthy than driving a car. Try it and you'll see what I mean. Even when the weather isn't that nice, every time I take the bike, I never regret it. Oh, and don't even TRY to play the safety card with me: bicycling is statistically one of the safest forms of transportation known to man, and evidently, it's even safer than walking!

Anyone notice that in the "war on terror", our elected officials have not asked Americans to sacrifice anything personal (like driving everywhere) but asked us to surrender our freedom, our civil rights and our constitutional rights? In WWI and WWII, Americans were asked to ration, to conserve, to sacrifice. Now the politicians have taken our freedom via the (Patriot Act I & II), our money (who the hell do you think is paying for this war anyway?) and our future (um, what's the world outlook right now? How do we fit in? We continue to make enemies and drive away our former allies…), they've given us "tax cuts" and told us everything is better… but anyone paying any attention at all knows that we're further in debt than we've ever been, our dependence on foreign oil has never been greater and the world situation is less stable than when we started... but that "million" dollars spent on increasing the number of American citizens riding bikes instead of cars is a waste of money. What a crock of shit. I think I'll go for a bicycle ride…

CURRENT MUSIC: Black Sabbath, The Mob Rules, Voodoo

18 Ways to Know That You Have Bicycle Culture

2007-12-02T22:27:00.000-08:00

This is a just a short entry to alert my scarce readership of a humorous (but illustrative) list.

18 Ways To Know That You Have Bicycle Culture is a little funny article (firmly tongue in cheek) over at Cycleliciousness that was linked to by Todd at Clever Cycles. Although he's joking, you'd likely experience many of the things on the list if you live lived in Amsterdam, Copenhagen or several other cities in Europe. Sadly, we're nowhere close to this anywhere in Cali, though SF and Davis are fairly bicycle friendly cities, by American standards at least. I look forward to the day when Novato and Marin County at large has been been given the "Copenhagen Treatment".

Until then, I'll wear my dorky reflectorized helmet, my reflective gear and my flash flags. I don't wear "cycle gear" anymore, and I have my Azor Oma to thank for that!

CURRENT MUSIC: Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell, Walk Away

Fishbone: Still Stuck in my head

2007-12-01T08:45:00.000-08:00

I had a absolutely wonderful evening last night, start to finish. It's not that I don't normally have nice evenings, this one was just a standout for the sequence of enjoyable experiences and moments.

My former sister-in-law, Charity (of Hollywood in Heels fame) was in town so I met her for preprandial aperitifs at her new inamorato's dwelling. A gorgeous place, very classy and with a great view of SF (how can you not when you're on top of Potrero Hill?). The conversation was lively and spirited, and the L.A folks held none of the characteristic snobbery that I've come to associate with "L.A People". All very genuine, nice people, people I'd be glad to hang with again. See, my wife is a fan of celebrity news, (though I am not) and I get a lot of the gossip by proxy, like it or not. If the gossip rags and websites are all you read, you get the impression that everyone in Hollywood is a prima donna or a self-important prick. Charity and her cadre of friends are slowly changing my mind, but I should have known they would: Charity doesn't waste her time with the other kind of ilk.

When the party was assembled, we headed off to Oakland to dine at À Côté. My brother and his lovely fiancee joined us there and we made a cozy party of ten. The food at À Côté IS all that it's cracked up to be. The clams in particular got a lot of attention from me, and they really are ALL THAT. If you like clams and you go to À Côté, be sure to get them. There were several notables in attendance from Charity's blog: The Man in Black and Strawberry Kisses. It was nice to finally put faces to a fictional names. While still in SF, we had been introduced with real names, and I didn't make the connection until dinner. Oh well, it's not the last time I'll call myself a simpleton. My only complaint (and it's a minor one) was that the large tables at À Côté are linear, meaning if you're sitting at one end (I was), having a conversation with anyone more than 2 seats away is near impossible. Round tables work better, not only for conversation but for sharing food as well. There was no lack of conversation at our end of the table, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. A shout out to my brother: thanks for keeping me laughing most of the night! You were at the top of your comedic game saturday night…

I had intended to leave dinner early to head to see Fishbone, but I stayed until it was over, as I was having so much fun and it seemed lame to leave such good food and good conversation/people. The DJ Smoke/Wisdom/Fishbone show was supposed to start at 9:00, so I figured that I'd skip the opening band and arrive at 10-10:15 and be there in time to see Fishbone. Our food at À Côté didn't even start arriving until ~9:45 so there was no way I was going to make the (imagined) 10:30 Fishbone start time. I'd let go of my expectation of punctilious arrival sometime around when the food arrived (I was starving at this point, as my last meal had been about 10 hours previous). When we finally rolled out (everyone else was headed to see The Lovemakers at the Uptown), I figured I'd catch what was left of the set. To my great surprise and ecstatic glee, my 11:40 arrival time had me 20 minutes ahead of Fishbone's start time. Jubilant glee ensued, and I NEARLY did the yippy skippy in honor of Charity. Somehow, I managed to contain that energy for the show.

Shattuck Down Low reminds me of the cousin who lives in his parents basement, only waaaaay bigger and with a bar on either side. There's tons of couches and seating, and the atmosphere is far more relaxed that it is at most Marin bars/clubs. I grabbed 2 drinks at the bar (almost no wait: bonus points!) and headed for the stage. When Fishbone came on, the cloud of uber pungent herb smoke that erupted from the crowd was enormous, and more than sufficient to put a permagrin on my face. The set was awesome! Angelo did at least 4 crowd surf sessions, but Dre Gripson kicked it off by doing the first one. In all the years I've been going to concerts (yes, I missed the legendary first Lolapalooza tour), I've never experienced the BAND crowd surfing, though I'd seen it done by fans. It's a different beast all together when the band does it, because though they may get close, they almost never crash to the ground. Angelo even managed to walk on the LOW ceiling several times. The energy in the crowd was electric and contagious and I rode the energy wave the whole night. I neglected to write down a set-list, but hopefully someone will put one up at fishbonelive.org. They played a lot of the hits (Bonin in the Boneyard, Party at Ground Zero, Ma & Pa, Everyday Sunshine, Lyin' Ass Bitch) and a bunch from the new album (Date Rape, Behind Closed Doors, Party With Saddam, Skank 'N Go Nuts, Let Dem Ho's Fight, Jack Ass Brigade). Bottom line: if you like Fishbone even a LITTLE bit from their albums, go see them live and you'll be sure to walk away with a permagrin: I know I did. One final note: bring your earplugs, it's loud (that's how Rock n Roll's supposed to be done!).

First Houbliette designee

2007-11-22T01:33:00.001-08:00

I feel sick, I might have to take a shower. One of england's greatest rock bands has had it's music defiled by a clothing retailer. While mowing my lawn & listening to marin county's trendiest radio station Alice 97.3 (one of the only ones that comes in clear on my radio earmuffs) , I heard an ad for a Mervin's after-thanksgiving sale and something was nagging at me (and no, it wasn't christmas shopping). Realization dawned on me in horror: they were using a dumbed down elevator version of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by Queen. Freddie is likely rolling over in his grave everytime this ad gets played. The very essence of this track is total anathema to the consumerist agenda being persued in the ad: it makes me ill. I'm not a regular customer of Mervins, but you can be SURE that I won't shop there now: no company with the desire to defile quality music into a cheap commodity deserves my ( or your) business. Fuck you Mervins, you now have an official place in the newly named Houbliette (the Hopper Oubliette). The idea for my own personal Oubliette started years ago, but it took this distasteful incident for me to finally create it. Go to your hole and stay there Mervins!

Agent Picolax is KRAKATOA'S BIG DRUNK ANGRY BROTHER

2007-11-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

OMG… this could possibly be the funniest butt related story I've ever read, and it makes it even better that it's on a bicycling forum. My cousin in England passed this on to me via FaceBook (thanks Magnus!) and I had to share it. You're looking for the entries by Blu-tone

This really makes me want to start eating lots and lots more fiber: Endoscopy sounds like tons-o-fun, but I'm hoping to delay it as long as possible. I'm 32... how long does that give me?

2 Mile Challenge

2007-10-24T07:57:00.000-07:00

Wow.. a plethora of new entries!

The Two Mile Challenge is something I found linked through Kent Peterson's Blog and I think it's just so damn cool to get people out of their cars for that 40% (40% of trips by automobile in the US are 2 miles or under from our homes). I realized most of my trips by bicycle are beyond this 2 mile range, but then again, the walkability factor of my neighborhood isn't rated all that high.

Get crackin! If you don't have a bike, check your local Craigslist to find lots of deals. Don't buy a BSO if you can avoid it! Reuse reuse reuse! If you live in Marin County, you can visit The Recyclery and your $$$'s will help Trips for Kids. It's all good!

Little Girls have SuperVision

2007-10-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

I hadn't checked in on one of my favorite bloggers in some time, but I've been a fan of his blog now for several years. His daughter had some choice observations that he shared with us in his Cars, Cocks & Hair Replacement… entry. It got me thinking: when was the last time YOU saw a bicycle ad on TV? I honestly can't remember when it was, and that frankly bothers me. I see bicycles all the time b/c I look at them on the internet, I ride one daily and I look for other cyclists on the street, but I know that I'm somewhat of an anomaly in terms of the general US population. Other than the occasional token comment by our elected officials about riding bikes, the push to get out of our cars as a solution to foreign oil dependence is non-existant. Most folks don't even consider the bicycle as a viable alternative to the car. It IS, but in order to make this realization, you have to take a cold hard look at the whole picture.

So... I invite your comments: when was the last time YOU saw a bicycle ad on TV? Have you EVER seen one?

The Kindness of Strangers

2007-10-09T22:43:00.000-07:00

So I will finally break the silence... it's been several months since I've posted, and I know it's likely I've lost my entire readership.. all 4 of you.

It's been a crazy few months, and though I haven't been writing, I've been doing a lot of thinking, analyzing and processing. A short recap: My father died on August 8th, and I have a pretty long blog entry coming up about that. I went to Burning Man, but not by bike, and that will take up another entry. Just this last week I went to Seattle & Portland and picked up a bicycle AND a vehicle. Today's entry will center around an experience I had while out riding my new bike... away we go.

I rode my son to school on the new Azor Oma this morning, a whole new bicycling experience. The Dutch make smart, comfortable and highly sociable bicycles. The sociable part will come in to play in just a minute. I noticed quite a few double takes from people driving in cars and from a from pedestrians as well. The Azor Oma is a beautiful bike and reminds most baby-boomers of bicycles they grew up riding. I bought one because I wanted a simple, durable, comfortable, LOW-maintenance bicycle that I could do nearly everything on. For the things it CAN'T do, I still have SuperVato, but I've spent a LOT of money trying to turn SuperVato into what the Oma does right out the gate. Ok.. back to the story. Upon leaving my son's preschool, I took a "shortcut", otherwise known as a multi-use pathway the bisects the neighborhood where my son goes to preschool. Unfortunately, the city of Novato has neglected to care for one particular section of this path. On either side of the concrete is a NASTY infestation of Goatheads, aka. PunctureVine or Tribulus terrestris L. However you refer to them, they are a tire killer. There is no direct shot at the path via an ADA curb drop, so when I hopped up the curb, I veered ever so slightly off the paved path and RIGHT through the oh-so-dry and thorny thorn drifts that cling to the edge of the path. My front and rear tires were immediately FILLED with goatheads. I got off almost immediately, but the damage was done almost immediately. I started pulling them out of the front tire, managing not to snap off many of the thorns in the rubber, but upon removal of the final goathead thorn in the front wheel, the familiar rush of air indicated that one had made it through. Just then 3 people on foot passed me, and the male of the group felt motivated to remark that I shouldn't pull the goatheads out as it would just flat the tire and that I was going to need a new tire likely. Great... thanks for the help buddy. I stood up and debated what to do. Obviously, riding home was out of the question: it was nearly 5 miles home and I had no pump, no patch kit, no spare tubes. Mind you, I normally travel with a full tool kit, but the downside to the Oma is that servicing the tubes/tires is a lengthy process and it usually requires tools (of which I had none on me, not yet having had time to put together a good tool kit for this bike). Normally one doesn't need to patch the tubes very often, as the stock tires are very nice Schwalbe Marathons and they have a decent amount of puncture resistance while being pretty low on the rolling resistance. They are NOT however the Marathon Plus tires and I will likely be putting one of those (along with some slime filled tubes) on the rear of the bike to ensure I never have this problem again.

While staring at the rear tire and musing over how I was going to get home, a woman and her dog came by. She stopped to talk to me as it appeared that my child payload had disappeared. It turns out she had seem me riding with my son on the back and had been charmed by the sight of a man on a "woman's" dutch city bike hauling his kid to school (daycare). We ended up talking about what had just happened, and she offered to give me a ride home. I was frankly stunned: in my experience, people are rarely that helpful to strangers. The only place I've experienced regular random kindness is at Burning Man.

She told me she'd be right back but it didn't occur to me to ask what kind of vehicle she had until she had been gone for nearly 2 minutes: DUH! So I waited around, and she came back in a Ford Expedition. She offered to put the bike in the back, but I declined, as I didn't want to mess up her seats, and the neighborhood is pretty safe. I locked the bike to a streetlight pole and hopped in her car. It turns our she's a dental assistant for a local dental surgeon who had been recommended to me when I had my wisdom teeth removed, but I had ended up using another surgeon. We chatted about being parents, bicycles vs. cars and climate change, as well as being Novato-ites. I had introduced myself right after she offered to give me a ride home, but I'm terrible at remembering names, so I promptly forgot. If I remembered her name, I would have mentioned it, but alas, I'll have to go by the dentists office and thank her again.

Mind you, I'm supposed to be picking up my cousin at the Oakland train station this particular morning, so I'm insanely late now.

After retrieving my pickup truck from my house, I headed back, picked up the bike and headed straight for Oakland. Finally found my cousin (she was sleeping in the train station), got her back to Mill Valley and headed home to pick up my son.

Before picking him up, the saga of tracking down the city department responsible for maintaining the right of way that caused me so much trouble began. I started at the fire dept, as one of the only ways of destroying puncturevine thorn pods is fire (well, you can remove them, but it's hard: you have to scrape up all the dirt with them too, or you'll miss a bunch). They pointed me to the public works building next door. Talked to a nice woman there who was sympathetic but she pointed me to the public works work yard. Then off to pick up my son and then back to the corp yard to talk to the clerk. She took down a report (she seemed rather harried) but suggested that I contact the supervisor by phone, as he wasn't available then. I left him a message when I got home, but I still haven't heard back from him. Hopefully Novato will clean up this easement: it's a minefield.

Later that night when I sat down to fix the tires/tubes it took several HOURS to get all the thorns out of the tires, patch the tubes (I simply replaced the rear one so there was no question as to whether there were any problems with it) and put the bike back together. The process of removing the rear wheel was very laborious: not something that I want to do on a regular basis. Remove brake bolts, partially remove chaincase, disconnect shifter cable, remove wheel, repair tire/tube, then put it all back. Putting it all back proved trickier than I had thought: PITA for sure.

Inspired

2007-07-24T09:21:00.000-07:00

I don't post a lot about Burning Man: there is a plethora of stuff out there on the web, not the least being the Burning Man site itself. I've posted a couple of times about my experiences in BRC and some of you who know me have received personal missives about my experiences there. Truth be told, Burning Man sunk it's hooks into me in 1999 and hasn't given an inch of ground since.

Today I was checking out the new city map and noticed THIS on the front page. It's very nicely written, and nearly inspired me to tears. Check it out.

No Mercy

2007-07-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

My brothers (both genetically and fictively) and I went to see the Giants get slaughtered by the Dodgers on Friday night. Several rows in front of us was a female dodgers fan that was holding a sign that said "Lose Seal" and had a Lou Seal stuffed seal toy in a Dodgers jersey. The REAL Lou Seal spotted it and retaliated. WATCH the video that my friend Merritt got. When Lou Seal came back for a second round, another very drunken and beligerent Dodgers fan tried to intervene and pushed Lou Seal over the seats, and got himself ejected from the park. The whole thing was pretty damn funny. Take a look!

CURSE you Honda!

2007-07-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

Now they've done it. I was writing an email in the kitchen and my son was in the other room watching Nick Jr. I heard the familiar strains of Parliament's "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)". Something registered in my brain weird: what the hell was Parliament doing on Nick Jr.? I ran into the room to see the end of a Honda ad… for their minivan the Odyssey. The horror! I guess everyone's got their price. I don't know who retained creative control of Parliament's library of tunes, but if it was the media savvy George Clinton, he no doubt sold the rights to use the song to Honda... but kee-rist, did they HAVE to use it for a Minivan? Couldn't they have used it for a slick fast little sportscar (not that it's much better really)? I'm cringing just thinking about it. They were trying to dress this cookie-cutter symbol of suburban sprawl and car culture with psychadelic colors surrounding the car and suggestive shrooms growing all around it, but the fact of the matter is that most people buying this car don't do shrooms, don't listen to psychadelica and don't pimp their minivans out as 70's style mobile love nests. What is Honda thinking? They ruined a perfectly awesome example of funk for a gas-guzzling shitbox. It's a crying shame and the world is a duller place for it. Sorry for the negativity, but this just made me die a little inside.

CURRENT MUSIC: Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle, Who Am I (What's My Name?)

Long Live the GDR Racers

2007-06-30T03:41:00.000-07:00

I know there's a few of you out there who read my blog because there's a little meter that tells me so. Some of you might even enjoy riding a bike. Unless this is the first entry you've ever read here, you know that I have a love affair with bicycles. Well, I don't handle a candle to the guys who are currently riding the Great Divide Race (known in Endurance Racing circles as the GDR). This group of guys (the field is all male this year) has been winnowed down throughout the race due to equipment failure, physical injury and pure fatigue. The goal for most of the racers is finishing, with winning being a far second. I was rooting very hard for Dave Nice, but his race is now over, mostly due to a painful foot injury that wouldn't heal. Jay Petervary. is the current leader and he's absolutely flying. Apparently, He's currently in 1st place though he's being chased by 3rd time GDR Rider Matthew Lee (who also won the last 2 GDR's). When you start looking the pictures, it becomes obvious that these guys are doing the ride of a lifetime. I'm green with envy and at the same time I wouldn't trade places with any of these guys for all the tea in china.

Here's a chart of who is where: TopoFusion GDR Coverage

Podcasts from MTBCast.com

And the discussion at MTBR...

I'm hoping this event doesn't blow up, despite the fact that I'm flogging it here; in spirit it's a small unorganized informal race. While tt IS a big deal to the people riding it and those who appreciate it for what it is, it's not for those who would turn it into a TDF (Tour De France). They can all ride off a cliff...

Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

2007-06-25T18:52:00.000-07:00

This is going to be brief, but it made me laugh and I haven't posted in weeks (DOH!).

According to the Dictionary over at Luciferous Logolepsy, a Rantallion is:

rantallion
n. - one whose scrotum is longer than his penis

Wow. The english language is truly colorful: there's a whole DICTIONARY of Vulgar Terms. It was compiled in 1811, and that was when "swearing like a sailor" actually meant something. I'm always glad to add another word to my arsenal, especially in the Veiled Insult category.

How did I find this word you ask? Well… I was looking for another word, one that means "out of touch", though the reverse dictionary at OneLook didn't help me this time. I think it starts with an "R", but I can't… quite… remember… what it is. I love having the perfect word, so I spend a lot of time looking at dictionaries, and the online ones are so much faster to use.

Breakdown

2007-06-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I had my first real equipment breakage on SuperVato on 6/7/07. It was partly user error, partly bad luck. I'm not going to be able to report some of the data I had hoped to report for a while until I get the problem fixed. Here's the skinny:

YT ("yours truly" for those of you who HAVEN'T read Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash) was wearing earphones and listening to my riding mix. Normally I only do this when climbing on a MTB, but I've started doing it on the road as well: I figure "Hey, I can listen to music in a car, why can't I do it on a bike?". Well, for the most part I can, but there's one teeny problem: you don't always catch on to those little ticking sounds that indicate a problem with the bike. [ominous foreshadowing: check]

I felt more than heard the thwacking sound coming from the front wheel... I look down...DOH! The spoke that was holding the magnet for the Protege 9 sensor had snapped and the magnet was banging on the other spokes, the disc brake caliper housing... you get the picture. I came to an immediate and abrupt stop, cursing aloud. Now mind you, I'm had just shortly before picked up about 20-30lbs of Cliff Bars from the Bay Area Bike Coalition to deliver to the Marin County Bike Coalition, so I've got a loaded bike. The route is here. I noticed the spoke around mile 8.8 and stopped in front of the school. I ended up having a nice conversation with a woman named Janet about her electric scooter: it turns out she got it from the folks at Thunderstruck Motors, who were featured in THIS article in the IJ. Careful observers will note that my name comes up in the same article... about SuperVato (although it's not named as such in the article). Serendipity strikes... twice in one conversation. It turns out that Janet is a budding interior designer and is always looking for woodworkers who can build custom pieces... so I give her my Zomadic card and tell her a little about what we do. Maybe we can help each other in the future: either way the whole thing tripped me out b/c, I mean really, what are the chances? The only reason I noticed her at all in my slightly panicked/bummed state was that her scooter made ZERO engine noise… that and she stopped to talk to a fellow parent (her daughter goes to school that I stopped in front of) right in front of me, but I could have stopped 50ft earlier and never have noticed her.

After making several bail-out phone calls and realizing that no one really could help me without a big hassle to themselves, I decided (after unthreading the broken spoke from the nipple and pulling the hub side free) that I could make it home if I rode slowly. I made it home without further mishap, and the wheel is out of true, but not hitting the forks (yet). My brother has been coaxing me to do it, but now that the original wheel is temporarily out of comission, It's a good excuse to perform a wheel swap with my Heckler. I'm considering a bottle dynamo for SuperVato so I don't have to worry about batteries anymore (especially for the Burning Man trip). THIS page shows the 12v sidewall generator I'm thinking of, but at $300, it's pretty damn steep. I could go with one a SON28SB but then I would have to build a whole new wheel and I wouldn't be able to use the wheel(s) from the Heckler... penny wise, pound foolish? Hard to say here.. I really like the SON, but the bottle generator seems like an easier less intrusive solution... any one wanna chime in with opinions?

Polar F6 Data:
Exe Time this week: 6:43:12
Exe Count: 9
Calories this week: 3701
Miles Ridden: not sure…

Current Weight: 188.5 lbs

Backroute to Burning Man

2007-06-09T01:57:00.000-07:00

I realized that there's a "share your route" feature at Bikely, and following is a map of my proposed back route in to Burning Man this year. I'd really really rather not ride on 447 between Fernley and Black Rock City (Burning Man) and after hearing that a fellow Burner who I mentioned in an earlier post (Mike) had ridden a back-route, I decided to post this and see what kind of comments I might get from the blogosphere. Anyone out there ridden or driven this route? It appears to be a train track access road, so I would assume (not always a good thing to do!) that it's somewhat maintained considering that the tracks are used regularly and have to be maintained from time to time. All comments and info are welcome and encouraged!

Bicycle Backroute to Burning Man

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

Jump on the bandwagon

2007-06-01T02:55:00.000-07:00

Well, some of my favorite bloggers feature stats on their riding, and I've started feeling left out, so I'm starting now with a daily stat update. Yeah, it's kind of boring, but I'll try and write interesting stuff too. Maybe it should be weekly... I dunno. I have an older etrek vista GPS on the handlebars of the Heckler but just a regular old Planet Bike 9.0 cyclometer on SuperVato (well, it's got the drainbrain unit on there too and I could share THAT data as well...). On the frankenbike I've created from a Merlin Ti MTB (which belongs to my wife), there's no computer at all, so I have to guestimate and use the Google Pedometer. I've been putting a fair amount of miles on the Merlin lately and it's fun to ride such a light, fast and comfortable bike.

My fatcyclist.com jersey came today in the mail: I immediately put it on and was very pleased with the fit: I'm not officially a Clydesdale, but I'm close, and I didn't feel like a sausage in the jersey: the black and orange also matches my bike nicely. Bonus! Now if Elden would just send along the Ergon's grips I won in the "Be Nice to Dave Nice" raffle, I'll be happier than a pig in $hî† . I wore the jersey on my ride and I have no complaints: it's comfotable AND stylish! Sweet...

Eventually it'll be cool to look back and see how far I've come (or not...)

Today's Mileage: 10.2
Month to Date: unknown
Year to Date: unknown
Moving Time: 1:22
Total Ascent: 2454
Average Moving Speed: 7.4mph
Max Speed: 42.3 mph

Polar F6 Data:
Calories Burned: 1251
% Fat: 35
Heart Rate Max: 177
Heart Rate Avg: 147
Exe Time in Zone (113-188): 1:27:20

Exe Time this week: 4:02:09
Exe Count: 5
Calories this week: 2839

Current Weight: 190lbs

Prepare for the Playa

2007-05-20T23:15:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, I've been going to Burning Man for a long time. Actually, this will be year 9 for me (9 in a row to be specific). This year I will be riding my bicycle to the event. Yes, you read that correctly. I'm riding my bicycle TO the event. From Novato. This has been in planning for several months now, but I realized that I hadn't disclosed it to the greater blogosphere… so now the seceret is out. Whoops... just realized I mentioned the ride at the bottom of the Pink Lemonade entry, but some probably didn't catch that little bombshell *smirk*

I'll be riding the Adventure Cycling Association's Western Express from Vallejo to Carson City, following Ridgetop's Route from Carson City to Pyramid Lake and then making my way from the north end of Pyramid Lake to Gerlach on the local dirt roads.

The final leg is still in question: I'm plotting maps on Bikely and will be posting them for review as I haven't had a chance to travel the back roads from Pyramid Lake northbound, and don't know much about them except what I can see on bikely/google. There are several likely routes, but I only know one person who's passed this way before, and I happened to meet him on my birthday outside Cafe Gratitude in San Rafael. It was trippy. My wife and I rolled up (in her car... *grimace*) and got out and started to go inside. Outside is an bike w/ an older Xtracycle FreeRadical on it and there's this dude putting something in his Freeloaders. I of course roll up to him and strike up a conversation, excitement clearly in my voice. We ended up mentioning that I'm riding mine to Burning Man this year and his face lights up: he did it 2 years ago from Auburn, CA. We ended up talking for another 30 minutes or so, we exchanged cards and I told him I'd be contacting him. Evidently he returned from the event on the local dirt roads and didn't see another vehicle the whole time: that sounds GREAT to me! His name is Mike, and man did he make my birthday a cool one. Some believe in Synchronicity, some think it's nothing other than Abductive Reasoning or simple coincidence (or merely magical thinking), but fü©-q people, I BELIEVE! >8P±

WARNING: Shameless plug for my friends/campmates to follow. *blush*
Several of my campmates have put together 3 part series of events called Prepare For The Playa to bring together Burners Who Have Businesses to sell to Burners. DOH... that's a mouthful. Basically, the playa selects what works and doesn't work. All the vendors at this event are playa vets and most of the things they sell are highly "playable". Some may offer a "Burner Discount" on the wares. There's going to be music, performance artists, a bar (sweet!), a raffle for a Burning Man ticket (BONUS!) and some How-To clinics and demonstrations. It promises to be pretty cool. I'll be there... I might be teaching a "How-To", but I'm not sure yet. If you're at all interested, check out the Prepare For The Playa site.

Bicycle Lifts & CFL Misdirection

2007-05-19T02:38:00.000-07:00

Bicycle Lift. It's a 9 MB file: for those of you on dialup, here's the smaller 1 MB version.

This is too damn cool... if America's so "innovative", why the hell did Europe come up with this first? Where the fü©k's all that American ingenuity? Hey, you could even run it off solar power in certain places (what a concept!)

If Marin county REALLY wanted to get more people out of their cars, they could install a few of these (since the Alto Tunnel and Cal Park Hill Tunnels may never get rebuilt). My vote? Going from Corte Madera to Mill Valley on Casa Buena Drive (the steepest parts) and headed up the steep sections of Merrydale road to where it meets Los Ranchitos Rd. These two hills are the sweatiest ones for me, but I think they're a big deterrent for a lot of people. I have a feeling that installing these isn't that cheap, but it's likely cheaper (and easier) than rebuilding the tunnels... just an idea.

BTW, I realized that Compact Fluorescent's aka CFL's are full of Hg aka Mercury.. which is super toxic and bad for the environment (and YOU!) in this form. Hmmm... LED's are a better option: they last longer, are solid state and don't have lead in them. I don't know about their manufacturing, so if someone knows if the manufacturing of LED's requires mercury, speak UP!

CCrane is a good source for Household LED Bulbs. Read the data at the bottom of the page: the numbers are a bit staggering. Savings of over $300 over the lifetime of the bulb... pretty impressive. Even more impressive is the power plant reduction stat. Wow. No more CFL's for us... Solar on the roof and now the upgrade to LED's... like they said in "What About Bob?"; "Baby steps bob, baby steps". Take some baby steps with me, will ya?

Car-head

2007-05-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

While over reading the latest entry at Todd's Blog, I found my way to this link about Car-Head. I've suffered from Car-head for many many many years, even when I was biking the most. It's funny; you take the way things ARE for granted: it's the "normal" way, the way it's always been done... but it's none of those things. My wife and I struggled this evening with her desire to trade in her current car for a newer one and my dogged taurean resistance to putting more money into car society. There's this war going on in my head, and it all started when I bought an Xtracycle FreeRadical Conversion Kit. My aversion to cars has been growing as my eyes have been further and further opened to the damage we've done and are continuing to inflict upon our little blue ball. While I try and remain hopeful, the recent car acquisition is causing me considerable angst. I guess you can call it growing pains, but man is it a bitch. What I can take from this experience is a stronger commitment to drive less. My hat's off to folks who are car-free: it's not easy given the pervasive and ubiquitous nature or Car-Head mentality.

No left turns

2007-05-08T01:26:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say I found THIS one myself, but I found it at Kent Peterson's Blog. It's about a life well lived, and the danger of turning left. Like Kent said, it's not about bikes specifically, but it makes a good point that any cyclist can take to heart.

Pink Lemonade

2007-05-08T01:15:00.000-07:00

This evening, for the second time in several days, I started crying. The first time was May 3rd. May 3rd was my uncle's birthday. He died in October 2006 from Pulmonary Fibrosis. He was not a man of many words, but he had a heart of gold and he was a wonderful listener. I spent about 4 days with him back in 2000 when my wife and I took a road trip through the southwest and for me, it was one of the highlights of the trip. I'm very thankful that I got to know him, even if it was just a little bit. My cousin's email is what set me off. She wrote a very beautiful thing about her dad on his birthday and sent it to me, and I was sobbing by the time I finished it. Somehow I wasn't surprised, because she and I simultaneously fell apart at the funeral and ended up sobbing in each others arms for several minutes. It didn't seem strange that we hadn't seen each other in at least 20 years.

Tonight I got caught up with Fatty's Blog, and the ordeal that he and his wife are going through is excruciating to read. In particular, the reaction of his 11 year old son put me in tears for the second time in 5 days; DAMN! I can only imagine the pain that Susan is going through, but to see your children in that kind of fear and pain is intolerable. The folks at Twin Six approached Fatty about making a limited edition pink version of his totally awesome jersey in a show of solidarity for his wife. If you can do it, please go to the Pink Lemonade entry and vote for the size that you would want. Most of the funds go to support breast cancer research and little goes to Susan. Twin Six won't be making a dime, and I think that's pretty damn cool of them. If they do indeed make the jersey and I can get one, I'll wear it with pride as I suffer over Carson Pass on my trip to Burning Man by bicycle. In fact, I'm dedicating my suffering first ascent of Carson Pass to Susan Nelson.

The Insanity of Vanity

2007-05-02T13:26:00.000-07:00

Charity is my... well, I don't know how we're really related anymore. Technically we're not, but it doesn't matter.

She lives in LaLa land (aka Los Angeles) and works in the entertainment industry. She's also writing a book. Her writing is very good.. I'm very impressed. My writing feels awkward when I read her blog… DOH!

Check out her article about the Insanity of Vanity.

CURRENT MUSIC: Rush, Exit... Stage Left, Tom Sawyer

Stupid monkeys...

2007-04-29T01:03:00.000-07:00

The Archdruid Report: Faustus and the Monkey Trap

I found the link over at Mauricio's Blog. Mauricio is a fellow Xtracyclist, and a regular poster over at Todd Fahrner's Blog. It's a great article and at the risk of repeating this point, for the third time, it points out that Biofuels are not the answer to our energy problems. Look, I'm all for using WVO (waste vegetable oil) to create biodiesel: this is giving it a second life. Cultivating crops for fuel only? Stupid stupid stupid. A line from Rush's "Territories" (released in 1987 on the Hold Your Fire album) song rings particularly true here;

The whole wide world
An endless universe
Yet we keep looking through
The eyeglass in reverse
Don't feed the people
But we feed the machines
Can't really feel
What international means
In different circles, we keep holding our ground
In different circles, we keep spinning round and round

Hard to believe that I used to quote Rush on a daily basis.. back in highschool. I can still do it once in a while. I'll be seeing them in Concord in August; already got my tickets.

Yeah, this post is all over the map... just like me.

Oh.. and a teaser: the Stokemonkey is completed. I fired it up for the first time today and it runs. There's some other details to finish (battery box placement to accomodate PeaPod, front derailer hookup, shellacing of the new cork grips, readjusting the handlebar accountrements, cable tying off loose ends), but after 8 long months of procrastination and excuses, the end is nigh. Just in time: I did my first ride to the shop in many months on my wife's bike and I was pining the whole time for SuperVato. It didn't help that the seat on her bike is NO substitue for my B17, the handlebar position on her bike (for me at least) is several inches below the seat and I was carrying a 30+ pound pack on my back. It all added up to a less than comfortable ride. None-the-less it was a beautiful day, perfect temperatures and the ride was glorius. I kept thinking to myself "why haven't I been doing this all then time?". It finally lit another fire under my ass and I finished the Stokemonkey install and started on the other finishing details. I'm waiting for the shellac to dry so I can sand and put on another coat tomorrow evening. Monday morning may find me riding to the citay.. though as Todd said, I should really take it easy on the battery the first few rides. Oh... and I weighed the entire rig (w/ battery). Sit down if you're standing (wait who stands to read this blog anyways?).. a whopping 95 lbs! I was thinking all along that somehow I was going to come out around 80 lbs, but ... no. Then add me (currently around 190), my son (I'm guessing, but probably around 35lbs) and a load of groceries (20-60 pounds) and I'm up between 320-380lbs. Does that exceed the rating of the FreeRadical? It's rather unclear. I'm guessing that I'm nearing capacity, but it's probably more about my wheels than anything else.

Just a matter of time

2007-04-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

One of the general axioms of riding a motorcycle is "it's not of matter of if, it's a matter of when you crash your bike". I've heard this for years and dutifully repeated it, though without much conviction. Until today.

I've been riding motorcycles for nearly 13 years and I've never crashed a bike. I've dropped 2 different bikes a combined total of 3 times, but I wasn't REALLY riding when it happened. The first time was on my 1990/1992 (don't ask) Suzuki GSXR 1100. I was out at Rodeo Beach (aka Fort Kronkite) and being as the bike was still fairly new (to me) and feeling paranoid of thieves, I decided to put my new disc lock on while I walked the beach. On returning to the bike, I mounted up, fired the engine and attempted to back out of my parking spot… only to come to a jarring halt when the lock hit the forks. I was not ready for this and the bike tilted to the left and my left foot slipped while I was trying to get it down.. needless to say, the next few minutes found me feeling rather stupid and abashedly struggling to set the rubber side down again. I had not learned yet THIS technique, so I picked the bike up using my arms and back muscles... the wrong way. I didn't notice right away because of the adrenaline, but later that afternoon my back was very sore. This little mistake cost me a sizeable chunk of pride and a set of bent rotors that a resurfacing job didn't fix. A constant pulse in the front brake whenever applied was a constant reminder to think about the bike lock. I ended up getting a coiled cable that ran from the lock to the handlebar as a reminder so that it wouldn't happen again, but not before...

... the second dropped bike. After I sold my GSXR, I purchased a used 1995 BMW R1100 GS. It was (and is) a tall bike; even with the seat in the lowest position, I could never get more than the balls of my feet on the ground. This made stopping on any crowned or sloping road a real challenge. I always had to slide my hips over when coming to stop so I could get more of my foot on the ground. I got used to it but it was dicey in the beginning. One day while in SF I stopped at my favorite Mission St. Taqueria, El Farolitos at 24th & Misson. Seeing as I was in the heart of SF's Mission Distrct, I put my disc lock on. I parked with the ass end of the bike in to the curb between 2 cars. I was in a hurry when I got back to the bike as I was running late (at this point I don't remember where I had to be) and I forgot to remove the disc lock. I was turning right out of my spot heading north on Mission when the lock hit the forks and I overbalanced on the right side. As the bike went down and I hopped off and managed to slow the bike's pavement bound topple, but I was unable to halt it. The physical damange was limited to minor scratching and a slightly scratched cylinder head guard, but there was massive damage to my ego as there were tons of people (nothing unusual for Mission St. in the middle of the day) walking down the sidewalk. Somehow adrenaline pumping through my veins managed to get the bike back up on it's wheels, but I lifted the bike the wrong way again and I was panting by the time I got the kickstand down and the lock off. I took off as fast as I could, with my proverbial tail between my legs. It was shortly after this incident that I got the "reminder" cable for the lock.

The third time I dropped the bike and the second time I dropped the beamer was in Mendocino on a gravel road. I had been visiting my brother-in-law; At the time he was living way up a mountainside on a gravel road with a deep gravel driveway. You can guess where this is going. A little too much throttle combined with some sloppy clutch work kicked the rear wheel out to the right as I was departing and the bike ended up on it's left side with me standing next to it saying "wow, that sucks". Actually what I said was a lot worse than that, but let's leave it at that. I was a much better rider by this point, but I had zero experience riding a motorcycle in gravel and I didn't realize how unforgiving it can be. Minor scratching to the cylinder guards and none to me and thankfully this time no one witnessed my ineptitude. I had learned another valuable lesson.

So that covers my previous experience with dropping motorcycles. Speed was always less than 3 mph and it was always from a stop that I dropped the bike... until today.

I was heading home from work after a rather frustrating day at work. My ride was going well with several nicely connected green lights that usually don't link up. Riding usually makes me feel better when other things aren't going well. The way I become one with the bike and the way my mind clears and I focus completely on the here and now is a wonderful way to put your troubles aside. This focus was the reason that today's wreck didn't badly damage my bike and I escaped physically unscathed.

I was headed westbound down Fulton Street. Somewhere between 11th & 12th St. I got into the right hand lane in anticipation for turning right on Park Presidio. There was a green Toyota Corolla or Camry in front of me with a bunch of bumper stickers on it. As we approached Park Presidio the traffic stacked up right to Funston in the right lane. The corolla/camry was braking in a straight line, no right hand signal, all indication were that they were going straight past Park Presidio and heading for points further west. I began to move right into the curb lane/right hand turn lane that directs you onto Park Presidio. Map HERE. At this point the corolla/camry driver is nearly past the northbound lane of Funston as I begin to enter the widening turn lane. I've slowed to maybe 15-20mph. Can you guess what happened next? Yeah.. this asshat decides he doesn't want to wait for the cars at the light and decides he wants to shortcut them by going down Funston, so without signal or any indication he turns right onto Funston right in front of me. I locked up the brakes and managed to turn the bars enough to miss creaming his passenger door... I rode it to the end pulling my leg free as the bike dumped over on the right side. I realized afterward that I was howling in anger the whole time the panic braking was happening and I was standing in the entrance to Funston in the northbound lane double arm flipping the bird and screaming obscenities before the driver was even halfway down the block. He never even slowed down. I don't know if he even saw or heard me. A nice irishman by the name of Carl helped me pick up the bike and chatted with me for a few minutes. He told me about how his brother rides a motorcycle over in Ireland and also about another bad motorcycle accident he'd seen a few weeks ago. Somehow I managed to get over the whole thing and regain my composure within a couple of minutes. This is HIGHLY unusual for me and in retrospect I've come to realize that it was Carl's smile, unflappable positivity and his helping hand that turned a potential week long funk into something I was able to basically brush off like a bothersome mosquito. Somehow I was just happy to be unhurt and my bike damage to be relatively minor. Thanks again Carl, wherever you are out there.

Damage Assesment: Slightly scratched mirror casing, slightly bent front brake lever, dislodged right front turn signal and some ugly scratching on my right givi hardbag. The front turn signal still works even and the plastic didn't even break. I was amazed. I tried picking up the bike the way described in the video above, but I'm sure I was doing it wrong as I tried it twice and couldn't get a good grip. I ended up picking it up the wrong way. I don't seem to have hurt my back, but then again I did have some help from Carl. The rest of the ride home was mostly uneventful with the exception of a marin soccer mom in a white Range Rover Defender veering into my lane heading down the waldo grade; I was far enough back that I slowed down AND gave her the horn which sent her cell-phone-to-the-ear ass swerving back into her own lane. I gunned it past after that and didn't see her again.

WHAT I LEARNED (again):

Always assume they don't see or hear you
When you really need the horn, you won't have time to use it
Watch out for last second non-signaling turners
Don't get into a place where you can get "Right Hooked"

I can now say "It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when" with conviction. Thankfully I don't have to do it from a hospital bed.

Keep your wits about you out there; watch out for asshats, and as always, keep the rubber side down.

BTW: Happy 420 folks! I didn't partake today but I did try to get drunk when I got home. Emphasis on the "try". The adrenaline left floating round my system must be supressing the alcohol.

CURRENT MUSIC: Jimi Hendrix, Band of Gypsies, Changes

Horsing Around

2007-04-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

THIS just cracked me up. I found it at FatCyclist and it gave me a good laugh. Can you imagine? I wonder what possessed this horse to do this? I don't ride (horses) but I've known a fair number and I've never seen behavior anything like this. Maybe it was a race horse?

Most thoroughbreds are freaked by bicycles/bicyclists, but this one seems to fit right in...

Bush Parody

2007-04-11T03:50:00.000-07:00

Gosh, THIS really tells it like it is. Funny, yet painful and scary.. because it's true. Man, I can't WAIT till his bungling neo fascist regime is through with their turn. Let's just hope the Dems don't mess it up worse.

Arrrrgghhh.... Avast ye scum ridden bug pluggers! Black Sam Rackham's gonna keel haul ye and stow ye in davey jones' locker if yer not savvy!!!

A kind soul

2007-03-24T23:48:00.000-07:00

Just read this. I've admired LFOAB since the day I started reading his blog, but my respect and admiration for him just got ratcheted up a few notches. Good on ya mate! (I'm not australian, but that phrase just fits).

Hybrid Car? No thanks

2007-03-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

THIS article that I found through Oil Is For Sissies summed up the fuel efficient car thing pretty well. In fact, it put down in writing the thoughts that had been running round my head when I vetoed buying a hybrid. See, Hybrids aren't cheap. There are cheaper cars whose milage isn't that much lower. Wait, I'll just shut up now, because I'm just going to confuse you; go read the article. You'll see what I mean.

Oh, and you can safely exclude the bicycle or human/electric hybrid from this equation. It's on a whole different level.

Yeah for raffle wins and YEAH for Dave Nice

2007-03-17T22:57:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard of Dave Nice and his misfortune on the Great Divide Race in 2006, then read Fatty's entry here.

I was incensed when I learned of Dave's misfortune in the 2006 GDR, so much so that I immediately went on the offensive and contacted everyone I knew in Montana and told them to be on the lookout for Dave's bike. It didn't help Dave get back in the race or get his bike back, but I felt like I'd done... something. Then after reading fatty's entry above, I really could do something to help Dave, so I dropped $100 on Fatty's raffle for Dave. I'm stoked that Dave will be able to race the GDR this year: losing one's whole rig like that has got to be bone-crushingly devastating. I know I would be tempted to enter a bad spiral of depression if I were him.

The selfish part of me was stoked to win a prize in the raffle, but I would have put in that money even if there wasn't a chance of winning anything. See, I used to enter every damn raffle that I came across, and I never won a thing. I'd enter to win raffles for things I could give a shit about. I never won. This was for something momentous. The GDR is an amazing race. Forget those asshats on "the amazing race". This is the real deal.

I dropped more than I should have, but I think Dave deserved another chance at the GDR, and I'm honored to help make it happen. The selfish part of me feverently hoped to win something cool and bike related. Fatty emailed me and informed me of my win.. WHEE. Ergon grips. I checked them out on his site (they're a sponser) and have been intrigued.

Travel by couch

2007-03-10T23:35:00.000-08:00

I found this travelogue tonight while reading a thread about touring/long distance bicycling on bikeforums.. A great great story and laugh-out-loud funny at several parts. If you've ever felt like getting some exercise, but didn't feel like getting off the couch, this is the way to do it for sure. You Burners out there will appreciate the applications of the vehicle design towards the 2007 "Green Man" theme... no polluting generators here!

NAHMBS

2007-03-05T21:00:00.000-08:00

So I ended up going to the North American Hand Made Bicycle Show after all. I didn't think I was going to be able to go, as the wife was out of town visiting her brother and I had the boy, and as much as I would like to hope that he would do fine at the show, I knew that it wouldn't be much fun for me, and I would have no chance of having any kind of conversations with any of the builders about custom longtails, nor would I get to drool over particularly beautiful lugged bikes, plus if there was anyone in need of custom CNC Woodwork, there was little chance I could peddle OUR services. Some close friends of ours came to the resuce & agreed to hold down the fort with the boy for a few hours so after dropping him off, I pulled a high speed burn down to San Jose (78 miles in 67 minutes... you do the math) to arrive at 2:05pm. It was just barely enough time; I could have spent 2-3 more hours there checking out bikes and talking to builders and staffers, but the show ended at 5:00, and it was enough.

I took some photos, but no doubt if you look around the web, you'll find better photos than mine. Really, mine were all snapshots; nothing was composed particularly well. I'll post them anyways for fun. Like an idiot, there were several builders and people I talked to extensively that I go no pictures of their stuff (Vanilla, Fraser and Old Man Mountain in particular). DOH!

I'm particularly torn between Vanilla & Fraser. They both make BEAUTIFUL longtails and are EXCEPTIONALLY nice people. At this point I can't justify another bicycle, so I'll have to sell a bunch of bikes before I can buy a custom longtail, but if you're ready for one now, I highly highly recommend Vanilla Cycles (Portland, OR), Fraser Cycles (So Cal), Sycip (Santa Rosa, CA) and Inglis Bikes (Napa, CA). Speaking of Inglis: I tried several times to talk to Curtis at the show, but he was always swamped so I never got the chance. He comes highly recommended by another Stokemonkey user Dave who has pictures of his Inglis made Xtrabike HERE. If the show is around here again next year, I'll definitely be going, as it's a blast and the bikes are just so heartbreakingly beautiful. One final note: A Rohloff hubbed mountain bike is being made by the guys @ Old Man Mountain, and if I had my drothers, I'd sell the Heckler and buy one in a heartbeat. Anyone want to buy a 2000 Santa Cruz Heckler (Medium) in Orange with a Polished Swingarm?

Holy Wow

2007-02-21T01:44:00.000-08:00

I started reading the Fat Cyclist Blog this evening, and there's a lot of great articles there. The one that pinged the tuning fork in me though is this one. Holy wow. Very sobering, and very heavy as the final thing I read before I go to sleep. I'd say "Enjoy", but that doesn't fit. Epic ordeal indeed, this one is heavy, but definitely worth the read.

An argument with my wife this evening over a money issue weighs heavily on my mind as I read this, and my over-reaction seems so very stupid now. Time is short folks; enjoy your small joys and triumphs. Crippling disability or illness can strike us at anytime and take away our ability to do the things that bring us joy. This article will make you want to hug the people you love, and if you're a bicyclist, it'll put the riding jones on you somethin' fierce. You've been warned.

Tooting my own horn

2007-02-19T23:38:00.000-08:00

A few months back a guy named Rick Polito got a hold of me (in a roundabout way). He's a reporter from the Marin IJ (Independant Journal), and he was doing an article about electric vehicles, and he had heard about my X/SM bike from either Todd at Cleverchimp or Bill Manewal, I'm still not quite sure... wait... yeah, it was Todd. ANYWAYS... where was I? Oh yes... so we play phone tag a couple of times, and then we finally have a long conversation, roughly an hour and he interviews me about bicycling, commuting, EV's, being a dad, etc. etc. He was going to try and get a pic of me riding with my son on the bike with the Stokemonkey in action, but I didn't get it done in time (there's this chain drag issue that I still haven't resolved.) Anyways, it's a nice article, and though I can't speak for the other people that he interviewed, he pretty much quoted me word for word, which I found to be refreshing and restored my faith in reporters a little bit. See, for the most part I know that many many things are taken out of context when they're reported in the news. I know that much is left out. I've known at least 3 people who've been interviewed for different newspapers, and in every instance they were either misquoted or there was information wrong.

Rick also happens to be a bicycle commuter (one of the only ones at the IJ by his own admission), so I applaud him for his commitment to health AND accuracy in reporting.

Kipchoge suggested months ago in his Pleasant Revolution Blog (Kipchoge is one of the two guys who started Xtracycle) that all the Xtracyclists call and/or write their newspapers to get them talking about our Xtracycle exploits and how we're contributing to the solution of obesity/global warming/traffic congestion relief/road rage, etc. So I guess this means I've had my 15 minutes...

Speaking of xtracycles... last week I saw another Xtracycle; YEAH! I was hauling some sheets of plywood to SF to my shop (sorry guys, hauling multiple sheets of 4 x 8 x 3/4" plywood and the finished products made from them over 70 miles is a job better done by a truck, one of the few things I think IS better done in a truck) and I was driving past San Quentin towards 101 south when I saw an Xtracyclist headed the other direction. My first reaction was one of joy at seeing another xtracyclist, and I had to forcibly resist the urge to slam on the brakes, swerve to the side of the road, get out, run across and hug the other biker. This no doubt would have freaked them out to no end as they would have had no idea why a strange person was running up to them trying to hug them. Thankfully, I resisted my first inclination.
My second reaction was that of guilt... why wasn't I riding mine? Well, there was the plywood thing... and the fact that the Stokemonkey conversion still isn't finished... DOH!

Flash Flags: Now you see them!

2007-02-14T00:52:00.000-08:00

IMGP0003web.jpg
Originally uploaded by Nollij.

Ok.. so as promised, Here are some photos of the Flash Flags. Come back to the Flickr set soon and I'll have some photos of them attached to bicycles (even better!). I have 15 of them to sell, and they're $9 plus a couple of bucks for shipping (inside the continental U.S). 2007-11-02 NOTE: Shipping is a flat $5 via USPS Priority Mail , unless you want more than 2 of them with the modification. My quantity on hand varies so check with me at the email address at the bottom of this entry.

I put one on the Bike E RX and went for a ride on Saturday. I did about 18 miles between Novato and Kentfield. It wags around in the breeze and generally draws lots of attention to itself, which is good. I bumped it on a few things (pylons, bushes and myself) and it sustained no damage (which is what it's supposed to do). I'm a little dissapointed with how small the stock clamp is, but an easy solution was at hand: I ran the closure screw through a metal hose clamp and attached that to one of the seat verticals on the RX. I tried the clamp out on 2 of my other bikes. It was too small to be able to close around the seat stays on the Marin Novato and of course it was too small for the big tubes on the RX. It did fit on my Burning Man Bike (Steel Univega circa mid 1980's) near the bottom of the seat stays, near the dropouts, but if I were to mount one on that bike, I would want it mounted closer to the brake bosses, in which case I might have to use a small hose clamp. It's not a big deal, but I'm a little dissapointed that the stock clamp won't accomodate anything other than super skinny tubes. Which I guess means that I should give folks the option of having me add one for them. So add $3 if you want me to add a hose clamp for you. if you have a steel touring frame you're probably set with the stock clamp.

Oh yeah, I have no idea what the black plastic hook is supposed to do. If you figure it out, let me know!

Yes, the American Flag comes with it, and yes, the white stripes in it are retroreflective too. Whether you like the flag or not is beyond my control: throw it away if you don't like it. 2007-11-02 NOTE: The American Flag stickers didn't come with my second batch, so don't be surprised when you don't see them!

UPDATE: 2007-03-17
Well, I figured out what the hook is for. Depending on placement of the flag, you can use the hook to keep the flag tucked in to the bike. It's useful for when you're walking the bike and don't want to get hit by the flag or when trying to maneuver through small spaces and not touch the items around you (like parking it in a bike rack next to a 7k Litespeed). Someone commented on it today, and I figured it out several hours before reading the comment. Figures.

UPDATE: 2007-05-15
Thanks to Steven Sharf of bicyclelighting.com for linking to me after I startled him by tracking down his phone number. His site is brilliant (pun intended) and my favorite point of reference when building home brew lighting systems. His site is awesome, and you should peruse it thoroughly. He's not trying to sell you anything, he's just sharing information and personal experience. Many bike shops don't want you to know that there's an alternative to their expensive rechargeable systems, but the best ones will admit it. >8P±

Those of you who are interested in a Flash Flag, send email to fecusreptilius at gmail dot com. You'll have to turn the words in that sentence into a proper email address: I'm just trying to defeat the damn spam bots. Put "Flash Flag" in the subject, so I can prioritize your email!

The Real Reason You're Broke!

2007-02-10T20:32:00.000-08:00

Kent Peterson posted THIS LINK on his blog, and I just can't say it any better, so I'll shut up. Well, one last thing... I have been known once in a while to get holier-than-thou about unlit cyclists at night, but only when they manage to almost kill me. Shutting up to commence... NOW.

The Flash Flags have landed...

2007-02-09T00:20:00.000-08:00

They are here! I will post good pictures soon (as well as in the bag, I'll have some mounted photos as well). If you want one, they're $9. Shipping to most places (standard, not express) should be about $1-@2, but I'll have to put on in a package and weigh it to know for sure.

They look a little different than they used to.. they now have reflective striping across the flags, and they should be equally visible at night as well as day. What's funny is, I recently bought a flag and mast for my Bike E RX, and I did the EXACT same thing to my flag with some reflective tape I bought at the hardware store. I had no idea that they'd changed the design on the Flash Flags to do this as well... but I guess bike minds think alike. If I can figure out some way to mount it, I'll put a flash flag on my 'bent (but the seatstays (as far as they can be called this) won't accomodate it, so I'll either mount it to the seat, or drill and tap a hole in the body near the tail. Pictures to come as projects get completed.

Speaking of which, NO the stokemonkey isn't done. I'm waiting on a part I need to fabricate (custom chain guide) in order to run the bike safely, otherwise the chain will rub on the frame AND new Val Kleiss centerstand. Fortunately, the design phase is nearly finished, preliminary .dxf files have been created and the bearings are the only things holding up the chain roller process now.

The rubbing issue is due in large to the swapout of the cranks and rings(previously a Truvativ 5D 48,38,28, Now a Sugino X3 44, 34, 22) and BB (went to a UNB-53 from the Truvativ Splined Power cartidge), all in all lowering my high gear ratio from 103 to 94.4 and my low end from 27.7 to 21.8. The next upgrade I do to this bike in the transmission (and only once this one wears out) will be to go to fewer gears, either 7 or 8 cog cassette (if I can find a new one!) or the Deore XT 9 speed CS-M760.

Flash Flags are almost here!

2007-02-03T14:56:00.000-08:00

The Flash Flags I ordered are almost here. I've been checking daily on their status via the UPS site and they are slowly making their way from Canada to my doorstep in Novato. These are a nifty little item that bolts on to your bike and increases your visibility to drivers of the vehicular variety. You can see them on here, but I'll have better pictures up as soon as I get them. They should be about $9 plus shipping. Drop me a comment if you're interested. I'll have 16 of them to sell and depending on how fast they go, I may get more.