May 2008 Archives

Today's ride was technically list as "BART" ride. You could take BART from Oakland down to the last southern stop at Dublin/Pleasanton. It would cost almost 8 bucks round trip, would take more than hour each way and would only get you to within 7 miles of the starting point in Livermore. So I drove. So did almost everyone else. Should have carpooled, but what the hell.

It was ugly morning. Cold, overcast and windy, but not raining. Despite this, there were about 100 riders assembled at the Safeway parking lot at 8am. Lots of fretting about the weather, so we didn't get rolling til about 8:20 or so. Lucky for me because I needed that time to gear up, take a leak, and put some air in my tires. I also helped another club member get the PSI up in her tubes. She came over and told me she was having problems getting ait into her tires. I introduced myself. She introduced her herself as Angela, but I already knew that. It wasn't any Angela. It was Angela Davis. Yes.That Angela Davis. Radical feminist turned cyclist. And, no, the irony was not lost on me, but I was happy to help.

Just this past Monday, I had driven up in the Oakland Hills coming up Sheppard Canyon and down along Syline and Tunnel Road. We got stuck behind a few cyclists, decidedly nervous on the perilous descent down to flats. There were dozens of riders heading up as we headed down and they just looked miserable. It was a cold day and the winding hills seemed steep enough to destroy the strongest legs.

But it was all an optical illusion. Today after work, I decided to tackle Tunnel Rd. myself to see what the big deal was. The big deal the view and the descent. The climb was a piece of cake. I'm not saying that because I'm getting in great shape or anything. It was just a cruise.

Happens all too infrequently these days.

If it's Memorial Day weekend, it must be the Belly Dancer of the Year in Danville. I couldn't go last year because I was in Asia, but I did design the poster. This afternoon I dragged my weary body over to Contra Costa for the event after a 40 mile ride to Pinhole this morning. My arms were so tired from riding that it was tough for me to hold up the camera, but I managed and got some decent shots.

I've been watching belly dancing rather closely for the last 7 years or so. I'm no expert, but I have a good feeling about what makes a good dancer: choreography, stage presence, costuming, etc., but I'm almost always confused by the results of this contest. Of course, judging is very subjective and the judges are experts, so what the fuck do I know? This year, the best dancer, Ahava (above) took the title, but the runners up placement was just mind boggling. Anyway, congratulations to Ahava for her well deserved victory.

Photos of the finals are up on Flickr.

By the time I joined th OYJ, they had already had a few club rides, so on Sundays, I'm trying to make up the rides that I missed by working my way through the ride calendar. Today I headed out to Pioint Pinole, a place I didn't event know existed.

The ride out there was really nice, mostly flat, skirting north through Berkely, Albany and El Ceritto under Arlington Avenue. Then it heads out on San Pablo Dam Rd through El Sobrante, but instead of continuing on like the Arlington Ave Loop through Orinda and Moraga and eventually up Pinehurst, It heads north through the suburb of Pinole to the Point Pinole Regional Shoreline.

When I woke on Saturday, I said say when Mak woke me on Saturday morning, it was miserable outside. The sky was steel grey and a mist like rain was falling steadily. No chance I was going to ride today. Right.

But I had to go Lake Merritt to pick up one of my gloves that I left in the back of someone's car after last weekend's ride in Sonoma. My bike and gear was already in my car and I threw a couple of water bottles and a rain jacket in just in case and took off for the lake.

It was still nasty as fuck when I got to the lake. On a typically saturday morning at 8am, there are more than a 100 Yellowjackets getting ready to ride. Today there was less than 25. Not hard to understand why. The sky was pissing rain. It was about 60 degrees and the prospect of a long ride in those conditions was not promising.

It's always terrible to lose a loved pet, but to lose two in a week is almost unthinkable. But that's exactly my friend's Jon and Betty have had to undergo this week. I can't even being to express how I horrible I feel for them. While both Merlin and Smokey have walked the earth for a long time, and J & B were mentally prepared for their departure, it's a whole other thing to be psychologically prepared and then have to deal with losing them both in the same week is hard to swallow. I can only imagine how I would feel if something like this happened to me and my cats. I'd be comatose for a month.

Merlin, pictured above, was probably the most beautiful cat I've ever seen. Massive deep blue eyes, cream colored coat like no other, complemented by chocolate patches on his face and forelegs, punctuated with perfect white mittens. You just wanted to reach out and pet him, but he wasn't so much interested in you. He was as ornery as he was gorgeous. If you tried to pick him up, you'd be in for a rough ride as Mer threw all his strength at you in his effort to get away. Mer was nothing if not powerful. Jon lovingly referred to him as "The Beast" and loved to tell stories about how an angry Merlin would sink his fangs into his flesh and fantasized about harnessing Mer up and having him pull a chariot or plow the back 40. I look forward to Jon's beastly stories of Mer's exploits grow like fish tales over the years.

Smokey, the Zen Master, was the ying to Mer's yang. "Smokes" was an old soul of a cat who loved nothing more than to get in your lap, purr and shed like muthafucka. Super sweet. You couldn't ask for a nicer cat.

You can see more pics of Merlin and Smokey on Jon's Flickr site.

I've taken off the Type Key Authentication just see if the spammers are still hammering my blog. I fucking hope not. Still not sure what it gets them other than a lot of angry bloggers. Anyway, in the meantime, you're able to comment without logging in. I hope this will increase the level comments back to the golden age before the spammers started to rule my world and I could actually get interesting feedback on my posts. Andrew

I was feeling pretty damn good on Sunday morning, so instead of doing my usual, sitting around doing nothing, I saddled and rode out to see if I could take on next week's advanced club ride, The Dublin Grade. The ride itself is 62 miles, but it's more than 5 miles from my place to the start finish line at the lake, so I was looking at 73 miles or so. I thought I could do it, no problem. Oops. 5 hours in the saddle later, I didn't feel so smug about it.

This week's ride with the Yellowjackets was up in Sonoma, one of the infrequent, "Away" rides. I wasn't feeling great on Friday night. It was a long week at work. I stayed up way to late and the cats kept getting me up at 6am. By Friday, i was exhausted. I just wanted to sleep and sleep long. But I wanted to do this ride, so I sucked it up.

The event was a potluck, so I not only would I have to get up early, I had to find the time to put together my side dish, feta and cherry tomato salad with basil and parsley. Very simple dish, seasoned only with salt and pepper and a very light dressing of olive oil and champagne vinegar. It's simple, but time consuming. I got it done before I hit the sack and it's damn good thing, because like usual, I was running late and barely made the meet up place in time to get a lift to Lake Sonoma.

Resource Furniture has a line of space saving furniture that folds into various sleeping arrangements. Think Murphy bed and you're in the ball park.

My personal fav is the couch that contorts into a double bed with a railing and a latter and everything. I mean, how fucking cool and useful is that? Stick it in your home office (as if I have one) and when unexpected guests come over and need a place to crash, voila, the couch sleeps two. I can't speak for how comfortable it is, but it sleep two. What you want? Sleep Comfort?

You can see how the couch works here.

I couldn't really join the Bike to Work fun this year because it would have been ridiculous. For one thing, can't ride to work. There's no bike path over the Bay Bridge. The new bridge project is going to include a bike path (to at least Treasure Island) which is cool, but it won't be ready for a while now. I could ride to the bus stop, which takes about 4 minutes to walk now, put my bike on the bus, thus depriving someone who actually needs one of the two spots in the bike rack, and the ride my bike from the terminal to my office, a walk of about 3 minutes. It would have been a complete and total waste of time.

But I wanted to have a solidarity ride with my fellow bikers, so I got out on my mountain bike (road bike had a flat) and went for a short ride around the neighborhood. Felt good getting outside so early. So good, that I'm going to start making early morning rides a regular part of my week.

This is from an ad for a Mexican newspaper. More uses of the image of Bush from around the world here.

These have got to be the coolest stamps ever. (Picture below the fold)

My first ride with the Yellowjackets was the 40+ mile Arlington Avenue loop.

There were about 100 riders ready to go at Lake Merritt around 8am. I handed in my membership application and check (30 dollar annual fee) and saddled up. Riders went out in three waves, Advanced, Intermediate and Beginner (roughly). I went with the middle group and it was a good choice. We didn't see the advanced guys again. They must have been hauling ass.

It's official. I'm now a Yellowjacket I've been wanting to the join the Oakland cycling club for a while, ever since I bought my road bike, but have put it off for many reasons, mostly lethargy and, well, the ski season. The ski season is over, the sun is shinning and I need people to ride with to get me out on the road consistently, so I plunked down my 30 bikes and I'm now a member of the club.

The group is much different than I thought. In my warped mind, cycling is a very homogenous sport, but not with the Yellowjackets. It's a very diverse group. Young and old, although mostly older than me. Men and women, although mostly men. Black and white. Straight and gay. Skilled and novice.

The group rides at 8am every Saturday with courses designed for all levels. Most of the rides leave from Lake Merritt in Oakland (about 2 miles from my place), but there are also routes that start from BART stations around the Bay Area and some that require a little drive, like next weekend's roll around Sonoma. Here's the ride calendar on the club's impressively up to date website.

The Giro kicked off today with the always Interesting Team Time Trial (TTT). It works like this. All the riders from the team (in the Giro, there are 8 per) leave the starting gate at the same time. The ride together in a long line for 26 kilometers. The clock is stopped when the 5th rider from the team crosses the finish line. The fastest team wins the TTT and each individual member gets the same time as the team. Interesting, no?

So while it's hard to win with the Giro with the Team Time Trial, one could easily lose it. Say, for example, you're a strong rider on poor team, you could find yourself minutes behind the other contenders on stronger teams. It's hard to make up that kind of time, even over 3 weeks of racing.

There are two American teams in the Giro this (up from the normal 0), High Road and Slipstream/Chipotle. Both are solid teams. High Road has been racking up victories all over the world and Slipsteam has the national time trial champs of USA, Canada and England, David Zabriskie, David Millar and Ryder Hesjedal respectively. They had just come off a TTT win at Road Atlanta in the Tour of Georgia.

Slipsteam went off early and posted a fast time. Favored teams like CSC and Astana finished behond and the end the of the day, Slipsteam's time held up and they won the stage. Better yet, because American rider Christian Vande Velde actually crossed the finish line first, he was leading the race and would don the Maglia Rosa, a first for an American in 20 years!

I'm not going to write about every stage in the Giro, since I know not too many people are interested, but it's great to see American cycling on the rise.

On a side note, Team Slipsteam/Chipotle uses Flickr to host their image and here's a link to the Giro d'Italia Set.

I looked into the Giro coverage on Versus and decided their "weekend only" coverage wasn't going to be enough for me, so I called Comcast and ordered the Italian RAI TV channel which is covering the race every day. It's live coverage, but it hardly matters since I have to DVR it anyway. And the announcers, well, they all speak Italian. While very passionate and interesting to listen to, they are less than instructive. Again, no matter, I'm watching for the racing. Though I will miss the insightful commentary of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin, I'm happy to have some Giro to come home to every night for the next three weeks.

I've been watching the Tour de France for years, first on ESPN and now on OLN/Versus, but I've never seen the Giro d'Italia, the first of the season's 3 grand tours (Giro, TdF, Veulta d'Espana) that take place over 3 weeks. That will end this weekend, when Versus will start broadcasting the Giro's first stage this coming Saturday.

Love this. Since we know, sadly, that this election will not be decided on anything resembling issues, but instead on personality and themedia "Freak Show", McCain will have to be marginalized as too old and out of touch to be president. Unlike the smears propogated against Democratic candidates over the last 2 decades, these traits happen to true. Just ask Bill Maher.

Now that daylight savings time is here and there's a few hours of sunlight after I return home form work, I want to started getting some rides in before sunset. Yesterday was my first ride. I wasn't exactly sure where I was going, I just knew I wanted to get 15 miles in. That's a short ride, but long enough to get a good sweat going and the blood flowing. It would probably take an hour or so.

So the Tour de Cure went off without a hitch, I'm happy to say. I had a great time. Made the 50 miles (or so - the route was actually only 47 miles and change) without any trouble. Hard to beat cycling through Napa with friends, meeting new people all while raising money for the American Diabetes Association.

It was an early start. I was up at 530 to get everything ready and left at 645 for the hour drive up to Yountville in Napa. It was foggy and cold, which didn't make me too happy, but it would burn of eventually, so no big deal, right?

It's about time to hit the sack. I need all the rest I can muster before my big ride tomorrow. I have to get up around 5:30am. That will give me about an hour to get my shit together and another hour for the ride up to Yountville in Napa. Check in is at 745 and there's a rolling start. I'll hitting the road with Team Schwab around 8am. I expect to get the 50 miles done in about 4 hours at roughly 12.5 MPH, but I really don't know since I have no clue what the route is like or what my fellow riders are going to want to do. I'll be in no rush. The weather is supposed to be great and we'll be riding through the heart of California wine country. Should be spectacular. I'm going to take a camera and try take some pics.

It's not late to donate. I've already reached my fundraising goal, but if you want to support and the American Diabetes Association, you can do it here.

I finally picked up a computer for my bike. After much searching, I settled on the Blackburn Delphi 4.0. It's a pretty slick piece of machinery. The thing weighs about an ounce. It's singularly unique, sculptured in design, hand-crafted in Switzerland and water-resistant to three atmospheres. It tells time simultaneously in Monte Carlo, Beverly Hills, London, Paris, Rome and Gstaad. More importantly, I get speed, cadence, time, average speed and even altitude if I can figure out how to set the altimeter.

It was a monumental nightmare to get my bike wired up. The instructions were for shit, which is problematic, because it's amazingly complicated. First I had to get the battery in and that was no easy chore. Then I had to mount the magnet on the front spoke and the wireless transmitter on the front fork. The cadence magnet has to be mounted on the left crank with the cadence sensor on the left chain stay. Then I had to run a wire under the bottom bracket and along the down tube and mount the actual computer on the handle bars, which, of course, I did backwards the first time because I'm an idiot.

The first ride out, I wasn't getting any readings and after 30 minutes of wrestling with the thing, I was almost ready to give up. The problem was that the magnets were too far apart from the sensors. Both sets of magnets and sensor have to be between 1 and 3mm apart, which is a little tricky with fat fingers like mine. I moved everything closer together, and bingo, I started to get data. Very cool.

The sun was setting, but I needed to get out on the bike to test it out. Here's the deal on my first recorded ride. I rode from my place up Adeline & Shattuck towards the Berkeley campus, up to Elmwood and back down Alcatraz to my house. The total mileage was 5.54 which I managed in 25 minutes and 30 seconds at an average speed of 12.9 MPH. My cadence was 54 and I hit a top speed of 28 MPH cranking down Alcatraz. Short ride, but it was fun and I needed to stretch my legs before my first 50 miler tomorrow.

I just bought this picture from a talented artist I found while surfing on the web. I'm not really one for buying original art, but this one just speaks to me in volumes.

I think Mak and Fil would love one of these and, more importanly, it would look great in my apartment. More information here:

• James Owen Design
• Dexigner

I can't seem to find any place online to buy them. I just emailed the designer, James Owen. I'm curious if he'll get back to me.