Randomness

This weekend seemed impossibly short. Saturday I hit Rise and Shine for some morning fueling, before bouncing over to Brighton for some crit racing. The pro race was bound to be ridiculous, with a shit-ton of money on the line, and lots of heavies in town. Since I wasn't planning on racing Sunday, I figured I might as well double up and do the 35+ race as well. It the first official time I lined up for a 35+ race on the road, and I got carded for it as well.

The course was flat, pretty open, and you could see the entire thing, even from the course, so getting away was going to be tough. Even more so with the steadily increasing wind. I tried though... about 196 times to no avail. Once I got away solid, though unfortunately took no one with me, so it was short-lived. Then I pulled a Boonen, and was in the wrong spot when Paulie finally went, and we were left with an unorganized chase. Swallowed up in the sprint, by all the guys that didn't do anything for most of the race, and that was that. Oh well, it was fun to attack and cover and counter for 55 minutes. The pro race was about as ridiculous as expected, and after getting hung out by people coming off, and closing 5 gaps, it was finally too much and the wind won. Oh well. The team had a good showing, getting Lance up to the break, even though we initially missed it, and we took 5th and 11th, in a stacked field.

Sunday...

Holy shit... is that my motorcycle... OUTSIDE!?!? It is! And I managed to (finally) get a ride in. A decent one too, sucking in 125miles of mostly twisty roads. I took my lunch break and hit Jessica's play down at the Denver Vic, and on the way home took in more twisties. Though it was a tough day... spring means "squid season" and there was plenty of nonsense going on.

Gross... (it's been said to not be true since this story, but...) wouldn't this be so perfectly ridiculous!? I'd still remember how awesome it was to hear that Nirvana had a second album coming out, and staying up late to see the premier of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on 120 minutes, and then beginning to loathe them and the endless replays on pop radio a few months later...
...while all the sparkly, emotional Twilight fans would run out to buy albums from this "classic band called Nirvana". I hear the dude from the Foo Fighters really digs Nirvana - I think he and Curt might have both dated Courtney Love or something...

Speaking of ridiculous, how about if you spent $5k on a frame... and it was half a pound, a whopping 25% heavier than the manufacturer tells you it will be?
http://www.cyclingtechblog.com/2010/04/11/manufacturers-claimed-weight-versus-reality/

The world of bike wheels can be a funny place. I noticed yesterday, in this picture of Pozzato (looking awesome in that black kit), that he was running what appears to be Campagnolo Hyperon carbon wheels at Roubaix.

All the more shocking that he managed to take a solid 7th place, without 3 or 4 years of endless print and online articles and stories about designing a carbon rim that could survive Roubaix, like some other companies.

And speaking of wheels, did you happen to read this? Specifically the part about a particular wheel-building company at the bottom of the story? The article goes on about how the guy measures and records the tension of every single spoke, in the wheels he builds, and contains a picture from one of the builds. I've gotta say, while I haven't ridden or seen his wheels, I'm quite shocked at the variance of spoke tensions in his wheels. I mean the front one pictured, has a difference of 18kgf from one side to the other. That's no small number, we're talking a difference of 19%! And the tension between individual spokes is even worse; take the rear for example, there's a 23kgf difference between the highest and lowest spoke tension on the drive side... a full 21% difference!

I'm not convinced truing a wheel to a lateral run-out of .25mm is worth having a 21% difference in individual spoke tension. And yes, I of course measure the tension of each and every spoke in my wheels. It takes a bit longer and sometimes you have to compromise a bit to find that happy median between trueness, roundness and equal tension, but that invested time means a more consistent wheel.

I don't want to sound like I'm beating the guy up though, just throwing out an opinion. I mean, if you want to trash someone, then pick on this annoying little fuck, who just seems to get more and more annoying. I don't think it will be too long before he just starts to fade away and no one will care.