Pretty Stuff, Ugly Stuff

The leaves continue to change. And while they are, and before they all fall off and turn to mulch, the sites are pretty cool. I wonder if we would think Fall was as cool, if we had it all year?

There's some gold (in 'dem dar' hills) every direction you look; even behind you.

Even the backyard mountain bike trails are lit up a bit by the golden leaves. And it certainly dresses up the singletrack. Oddly, even though I don't really like fall, I do like crunching through the leaves on the singletrack. I can only figure that it's because when I was back east, the leaves on the trail actually smoothed out those insane rock gardens, at least a little bit.

Speaking of bikes (Jeebus, don't I always!?), I really do like when manufacturers see a slightly better way to do things. Much more so, when that new thinking leads to light weight bits that we can attach onto our bikes. Though, I fall short of being a full-on weight weenie... I've spent way too much time being a bike mechanic, and I'm pretty picky with the way my own bikes work. So a new part can't just be light. It has to balance the aspects of weight and performance before I'll slap it on my steed. Along those lines, there is a tipping point between lightness, and good looks as well. You can push that balance a little further... but when you do, things get ugly (quite literally) in a massive hurry. Case in point;

The new brakes from EE Cycle Works. Some interesting ideas, decent improvement on weight, reportedly good performance, questionable marketing, but looks that make you want to run the other direction for fear that looking just one more time, will really convince your brain that someone did indeed put them on their bike.

Last night I decided to go for a jog. I hit up a local trail I don't run too often, but I especially try to skip on certain days since it's a multi-use trail and it is pretty busy with mountain bikes most days. Often times when I'm mountain biking, or even hiking for that matter, it really annoys me when you exchange pleasantries with someone, only to be completely ignored. Now I know why runners are always so cranky though... I passed at least 20 mountain bikes on my jog, and literally 2 people made "some" effort to yield, when it was fully their responsibility. Sadly, another instance where I am far from surprised that people have a rather lowly view of cyclists.

And since we're on the topic of people that just don't get it, how about our new neighbors that decided they needed their own "gated-community"?

You know, the whole giant gateway thing was cool, I've always liked it. But these new people moved in, and started with the posting of "Private Property" signs everywhere. Then came the "ADT Security" sign. Now they have an electric gate, complete with access code, that is lit up 24 hours a day. So much for a nice home surrounded by nature. And nevermind the fact that we live on a private, dead-end road, so there is almost zero excess traffic. Let's see what these "city-folk" think of their gate when we loose power, or have 4 feet of snow on the ground.

The whole thing this morning, made me want to steal the Sierra Trading Post box that the UPS man had to leave leaning up against the gate since he couldn't get in.

Fall Leaves and Racing

I don't mind the first part of Fall, when the trees are all nice and colorful. I even kind of dig that great smell of the leaves that you get in the fall. The only problem is that in the back of my mind, I know that the next step is for all the leaves to fall off, the snow to come, the days to grow still shorter, and for the cold. Bleh. On Friday though, there was definitely some good color for my ride up Four-Mile;

Saturday was the Interlocken cyclocross race. Our one real course that includes a ton of grass. Fun to race on for the most part, except that it isn't so well suited for me. It kind of cracks me up that there is so much grass, and most of it is usually saturated with water (making the course even more of a leg-sapper!), and not because of the weather, but because of the crazy amount of water sprinklers they use.

I was on the single speed again, and this time they started us again, only a bit over 30 seconds behind the 72 Cat 3 starters. Which of course meant we were right into the crowd within a quarter of a lap. It was time for passing galore!

I over-cooked the first few laps a bit, and started to pay for it in the middle of the race. But I was pushing hard, trying to get around riders whenever I could. I wasn't helped by the fact that I kept getting run into by other riders, got tangled with a dude trying to ride the sand-trap when he veered into me, and just plain not having the smoothest race.

But Clay rode solid, and after race where we both passed 50+ riders, I just couldn't quite reel him back. So I had to settle for second. On the way to the race, and after last weeks race, I might have to throw myself, with or without The Hulk, into some more of the 35+ and Open races. I can be pretty competitive in those, and still have the fun of the single speed. Doing the Open race is nice, since you get an additional 15 minutes of torture for your entrance fee, but it takes more motivation to race later in the day.

Either way, as expected, this course took some serious energy output! I was wasted for the remainder of the day, but it was fun, the weather was great, and it's always good to be out with all the fellow bike goons.

iPwn

My poor friend Brad... he keeps asking for an update on the iPhone, and I keep ignoring him. Well, I'm not ignoring you man, I just keep getting distracted, or waiting for the latest updates so I can check them out before offering up the latest opinion...

It's been a little while now since I got the phone, Probably close to two months now, since I think it's time to pay my phone bill again. I searched around forever for a new phone, changing my opinion every week on what I wanted. I was in the enviable spot of being out of my contract, so thought about just buying an unlocked phone and running with it. Mostly since then I wouldn't have been limited to buying whatever silly phones were being offered in the American markets. But regardless of what I looked at, I kept coming back to the iPhone despite my quibbles. I previously had a Motorola SLVR, which I really liked. It's super small, has a decent music player using iTunes, and lots of functionality. Just a small screen, a horrible camera, and was starting to get old after two years of use.

There's been a million reviews on the phone, so I'll just give my personal impressions. Overall, it's pretty sweet. I worried about the ability to be connected to the interwebs, 24hrs a day, and I was correct. It is an issue. But I've been doing pretty well with just ignoring it when I'm on overload, or realize that I need to just step away from the phone. Pretty sweet that it will switch automatically to WiFi when you are in range of an available network. Using it on the Wireless-N network at home, it is relatively quick.

It's amazing how the new body of the phone is actually larger than the previous one, but the rounded shape makes a HUGE difference in the perceived size. It disappears in your pocket, and feels smaller in your hand. I really hate "phone condoms", though the finish seems to hold up fairly well. The back shows some scuffing, but the screen seems to be very durable. And I love the touch-screen... they are so much more intuitive, to me, than fumbling around with buttons and arrow keys. The touch screen on my camera has been one of my favorite features, and it's even more useful on a device like this.

Really, the best part of the phone is the App Store. It's so easy to fully customize your phone with just the applications that you want. There are thousands to choose from, and no shortage of free ones. You can ridiculously fun and useless applications like the light saber application, which turns your phone into a light saber, complete with matching sounds that work off the accelerometer of the phone... so sword fights with your friends take on a whole new level of authenticity.

A lot of the apps are pointless, they simply provide what amounts to a "shortcut" through your internet browser. Why crowd up your phone, when you can just go through the browser? I really like my Showtimes app though. I don't go to the movies that often, but you can find show times, from theaters near your current location, based off the GPS! You can even buy tickets now (though I'm not convinced of the security of making purchases and stuff through the phone) but even cooler, you can watch full-length previews of the movies, directly from the app.

There are only two apps that I've come across so far that I was willing to drop some coin on. First was StarMap;

The kid in the video is a total dork... but the video give you a good breakdown of the way the app works. Basically an interactive star map, on your phone. Plus, it uses your current GPS location, in it's calculations, to give you the most accurate view of the sky. Also uses the accelerometer, so that as you move it with your view, it updates to what you should see in the sky. I've used it while using my telescope, and it sure beats trying to spin around my paper star map.

The other app that I paid money for, is X-Plane 9.0. This one I think, really shows off some of what the iPhone is capable of. It's a basic, yet rather cool, flight simulator, on your iPhone! It even uses the accelerometer so you have tilty-control for your yoke.

It's really pretty impressive for a game that's running on your phone. There could be some graphics such as buildings and such, and the views could move around a bit easier, but overall, it's pretty solid. It didn't take too long to get the hang of either.

As for stupid stuff - it's really irritating that you can't use MP3s as ringtones. Which brings up all the issues I have with iTunes. It really is far from my favorite music player, and has an incredible number of complications and restrictions. Even to use a song as a ringtone, you (officially) first have to buy the song through iTunes, then you have to pay AGAIN to be able to only slightly customize it using their lame editing software, turning it into a ringtone. Thank jeebus for work-arounds... It also comes with a ridiculously lame camera. 2mp in this day and age is silly, and in two years when my contract is up, it will be downright prehistoric. Luckily I mostly just use the camera to capture images of goons that I see out in public. But still... no motion picture capture either!? As cool as the applications from the App Store can be, it's annoying that the firmware is designed so that none of the applications can run in the background. So anytime you use one of the primary phone functions, you need to drop out of the application you are using. Annoying. That means my high-score run at Pong, is eliminated if someone calls me in the middle of the game. And still, no copy/paste... that's just stupid.

But again, overall, it really is a pretty impressive device. I hate lots of things about Apple, but the phone is admittedly very nice. It has some issues, but then no device is perfect. It's not the best phone out there, but I think it's totally up to the individual to figure out what's "best" for them.

Sorry for the boring post, but I guess you can just blame Brad!

Bailout

I could rant on and on about the markets, the bailout, and just how stupid most of the people are. I mean, the soundbytes really do work; ask someone what they think or try to argue with them, and it's like reading a para-phrased and only half-understood article from faux-news. Instead, I'll just sum up some of my feelings with a picture from the protests on Wall Street in NYC.

I heart NYC for sure.

700 Billion Smackaroos

Can you really even wrap your mind around 700 billion dollars?

Well, here is a stack of 9 million, 1 dollar bills;

It's 5 feet tall, 10 feet long, and 6¼ feet wide. A single stack of dollar bills in this amount would be 3,000 feet high. This pile is comparable in size to a single compact car, of which you could buy 489 of them for the amount, with enough cash left over to fill up the gas tanks of 162 of them.

And here is a stack of 315 billion, 1 dollar bills;

This pile is 125 feet wide, 200 feet deep, and 450 feet tall. 450 feet is the height of a 38-story building. It’s the height of the Millenium Wheel in London and also the height of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. If you were to stack the money in a single stack, your stack would be 19,887 miles tall, enough to wrap the Moon at its equator almost 3 times.

So you know you, 700 billion? Roughly DOUBLE that stack. Or multiply this stack by seven hundred;


What will $700 billion dollars buy?
- 600 gallons of gasoline for every American
- the average annual salaries of 12.1 million Americans
- 3.4 million houses outright, according to the median price of existing U.S. homes today (Mortgages? What bad mortgages?)
- Free college educations at public institutions, for 23 million Americans
- A laptop for EVERY single child in the World

Or, perhaps most importantly, 700 billion dollars would buy 56,000 Victoria Secret diamond and ruby encrusted bras.

Cold, Racing, and New Stuff

Brrr... it makes it a lot less easy to ride to work, when it's only 34 degrees. Even less fun, when it's still dark when you wake up. At least there is time to make some espresso while the sky lightens up, and you try to find your leg warmers. And the views are good this time of year too;

This weekend serves up a great course for cross racin'. Probably our best front range course for cross racing, the Interlocken race is coming up Saturday. There's always a lot of grass on this course, some solid run-ups and twistys, and a good number of fans show up.

On the Formula 1 front, it's set to be an insanely exciting weekend as well! Hamilton's championship lead is down to a single point in front of Massa (I love both these guys, but prefer Hamilton ever so slightly). And this weekends race is not just a brand new course in Singapore, but the first-ever nighttime Formula 1 race! I think everyone has been both anxious and terrified of getting to this race all year. Reports all sound good for the lighting and track conditions (considering, like Monaco, it's not a full time race course), but there is also a strong chance for thundershowers! Racing at night, in the rain, on an unknown circuit, with the championship up for grabs and only 4 races left!

Meanwhile, here in the "New World", it's Interbike week. I miss going to Interbike, and miss working it. But this year, I haven't seen much of anything but crap coming out in the photos so far. And the marketing, well it seems to have been taken to a whole new level.

Exhibit A:

Here is the new Zipp Vuma Chrono TT crankset. There have been a few "aero" cranksets in the past, and it's always been one of those components where I've wondered why more people haven't made them. It really can't be that difficult to ADD material to a bike part. It's just gotta be a matter of the shear number they figure they can sell. So here are the Zipps... and if you read the literature on them, they claim "...our engineers were stunned by the results: 9 seconds faster over 40km compared to the next fastest TT crankset." 9-seconds on a 40k TT... How often can you replicate that result with consistent results? And 9-seconds? That's like managing to stay focused, and not let your mind wander for that minute, 35 minutes into your 40k, when things are starting to get tough. So I haven't seen a price on this crank yet... but I bet $1500 easy, and would be surprised if it wasn't more like $2200, especially since it says "Zipp" on it. So at $1500, it would cost you $166.67 per second saved in a 40k. Of course, if you do 100 40k races next season, well, then it's a virtual steal... Oh yeah, and don't forget the unique spider design which ensures that you can replace your chainrings with one brand, and one brand alone.

Exhibit B:

Have you ever ridden with a water bottle in your back pocket?

It sucks. 'Nuff said.

Exhibit C:

This one has me confused... I really like Chris King stuff. They make beautiful stuff, it's like bike jewelery. Their parts are durable, and often have some technological ideas. Sure, it's all very expensive, but if you've worked with any sort of machining, and see what it takes to make the parts that they do, you start to understand why it's so expensive. Especially still making the parts here in the States, to exacting standards.

Still, they've promised for the last 50 years to come out with a new bottom bracket design, when they found something that works better. No one (though many tried) could really make an ISIS bottom bracket with any real quality. Sure, the design had it's advantages, but making a bottom bracket light and smooth, while retaining durability, was not really possible with the design. Mass-produced, cartridge, bust-n-chuck bottom brackets was the standard for everyone. The new King design works with the "newer" external bearing design, which simplifies quite a lot. I mean, now, the BB is really just a set of threaded cups with a bearing pressed in. Very simple for manufacturing. So King made their own bottom bracket. That's cool. And it's cool that their bearings are most likely quite nice. It's also cool (and sadly, probably the primary reason I would buy them) that they come in plenty of colors, and have the usual beautiful King finish. Sadly though, they cost $130... pretty much the same as buying a new ceramic bottom bracket. Or nearly 4 times the cost of a standard SRAM BB set. I've had a set of DXP cranks for 4 years now, and just two weeks ago needed to install new bearings in them. That's it. Sure, the King BB is serviceable, but you also need THREE tools for your new BB, none of which are bound to be cheap, and again... 4 years, 2nd BB just recently = $70 total.

The breakthrough technology that allows the King BB to be serviceable and better than everything else? The ability to pump grease through your bearing, push out the old, push in the new. You know... the same breakthrough design they used on wooden wagon wheels 120 years ago. As far as the great marketing spin for this one? Direct from the King website, I shuddered as I read this one;

"Racers take note! With the Chris King bottom bracket and injection tool, you can train day-to-day with a durable high-viscosity grease and race with a light, fast-rolling low-viscosity grease or oil. Imagine your current Friday night leg-shaving ritual finishing with a few minutes in the garage to get your bike as smooth as you are."

Yep... that sure sounds fun. And ground-breaking. Me, I'm still just going to run super smooth, SuperRecord loose ball bottom brackets, lubed with diesel oil. And on a somewhat related note... regardless of what you read on cyclingnews... It's FAR from a secret; Put lighter grease (or oil) in your bearings, remove your seals or use lighter ones, both things will make your bearings roll better. Most likely nearly as well as ceramics - since that's where most of the benefits of your pricey ceramic bearings came from - using lighter lube and crappy seals.

Now what colors do those King bottom brackets come in, because I want one anyway...

Stupid Fall

I hate Fall... everything "dies". Ugh. Though if every day in Fall, had the weather that we had this weekend, I wouldn't mind it so much! The weather was (mostly) clear, and warm, with lots of sunshine. Friday I got in a nice cross ride, and I continue to be amazed at just how sweet "The Hulk Bike" feels! Smooth, and consistent, you always seem to know exactly what it wants to do. I love it.

Saturday was another really nice day with the weather. After being lazy in the morning, I finally got up and got out for a nice fall ride. Did some shorter climbs, on some of the quiet canyon roads. It was a bummer I couldn't just keep going. But JP had offered up a chance to practice some more with bike tubing. So I assembled another aluminum cross bike for him, this time a geared one, and no, not for me. I had a lot more freedom, doing more of this one on my own. And it "seems" to have come out well. Luckily JP was there to impart his wisdom when I had questions about doing the best way to do things, or solve issues. It all "looked" right anyway!

Friday Stephen Hawking unveiled this $1.83 million clock at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. Call me a nerd, but man, this thing is very, very cool! Watch the video to see it in action, and to get an explanation, but I'm just fascinated by how it works. And just as much by how visually captivating it is while it works. I could just sit and stare, literally wasting away time as it is eaten by the grasshopper. I can't wait until someone copies it and starts making realistically-sized (and priced!) ones for home use!

Sunday it was time to ride the bike in anger again. The cross race on schedule was down at the detention center for juveniles or something like that - it had a big fence that didn't look terribly easy to scale. I was excited that the race had been moved from it's venue at the FedCenter. Though leery since the the new course tends to have countless goatheads, and a retarded man-made mud pit that they always insisted on running us through. It's usually a fun course, that's a bit closer to a mountain bike course, with some sweepy fast sections and off-camber dusty turns.

Yesterday's course though went over the line into mountain bike territory. There was no pavement at all, it was by far the bounciest, roughest course I have ever ridden, and even after 8 full-on race laps, the course really never developed any sort of flow. You just seemed to be floundering about the whole time. At least it had a grassy hairpin, with a fast barrier section. That was good at least. The course definitely would have been more fun with mountain bike, and 1.5" Jet tires. Instead, I decided to race the single speed, in the Open race. I felt pretty good, and beat plenty of guys with way more gears than me. I would have been pretty happy with my result, had Travis and Matt not been further up the course than me, and on their own single speeds. No worries, it was a fun, yet very hard race. I just eased up a bit too much at the end, but should have snuck in right around top-20 still. D-Strong took some great pictures at the race, but I'll have to harass him to make sure he mails them to me.

After the race, I took a bath behind my car, and was off to the Boulder Dinner Theater to catch Mid-Life The Crisis Musical. It was a good show, but Sunday evening shows, especially straight after a bike race, are always a tough way to end the weekend. Now we're back to Monday, and all I can think of is the next weekend...