Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Now I know...

...why there was a helicopter flying around the whole time while Marcus, Chris and I were riding at Golden Gate yesterday.

Nice. I'm not a pot person, myself, but does it strike anyone else as a huge waste of time and money to go after these kinds of things? Just let the potheads smoke their dope. Heck, let them buy it in the smoke shop and pay taxes on it. Everyone wins!

Monday, September 28, 2009

Climbing competition!

Yes, on Saturday, Sarah and I did our first-ever bouldering competition at the Spot, our favorite wintertime hangout. It was a blast!

I entered the men's "advanced" division, which is roughly equivalent to expert in mountain bike racing (ie, the highest non-pro category) and Sarah did the women's intermediate (think sport). We were both pretty worried that we'd get shellacked, but that turned out not entirely to be the case.

I was *unbelieveably* nervous, despite the lack of any stakes (even if I'd won, I wouldn't have won any prizes) and despite the fact that I always claim not to take climbing seriously. So I didn't bother to eat lunch (which would cause some problems later when I started drinking the free beer - but I won't go into that) and was sweating like crazy before the competition actually started.

Once we got going, I settled down a little. I thought I was climbing like absolute crap, but I managed to do 6 of the 10 advanced problems and come pretty close on 2 of the open/elite ones. That was good enough for 12th place of 29 entrants. Sarah was 2nd of 9 intermediate women. Nice work!

Sorry about the picture quality. The air was so thick with chalk dust that it was actually causing problems with the camera!

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Congratulations!

To Eszter and Chris, that is - what a weekend!

-First they won the women's and singlespeed divisions, respectively, of the Crested Butte Classic. See the writeup here.

-Next Chris finally decided to make an honest woman of Eszter and proposed during their Sunday ride. Check out the ring!

Nice work, guys.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Weekend recipe - Gnocchis with Pesto

Gnocchis are a lot easier than I thought. Like, super easy. To whit:
2 medium potatoes
1 c flour
1 egg
1/4 tsp salt

Nuke the potatoes until they're cooked through. About 8 minutes in a normal microwave. Poke some holes in 'em first!

Get the skin off (with a paring knife or your fingers or whatever - try not to burn yourself too badly) and mash the potatoes in a bowl. Throw away the skin. Add the egg and the flour and the salt. Mix/knead until you have a smooth, non-sticky dough. Add a bit of flour if needed. Make long snakes out of the dough about 3/4" thick, and cut into whatever size pieces floats your boat. Now boil 'em until they float up from the bottom.

Boom! Gnocchis!

Now for the sauce. Put all of these in a food processor or blender:
-1/4c olive oil
-1/4c shredded romano cheese
-2 tsbp almonds
-4 or 5 Roma tomatoes
-8 basil leaves
-1/4 tsp ground red pepper
-1/4 tsp salt
-2 or 3 cloves of garlic

Blend the crap out of it until it's a smooth pesto-ish consistency. Put on top of gnocchis. Consume!

This is so good you might not even notice that it's semi-healthy. And it's so easy even Millertime could make it!

Enjoy the weekend, everyone.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Half a stem

I don't build stems for bikes, in general (too much work, not enough reason to bother when there are so many sizes/lengths/configurations available), but Smiley had a unique need - a 31.8 clamp "stem" for his Serotta fit cycle. Apparently these suckers haven't been updated and only have 26mm clamps for their handlbar entension/stem mechanism. It's pretty simple, just a piece of 1" 4130 welded to a 31.8 clamp. Easy solution to a problem we couldn't solve any other way.

If you're a Serotta fit cycle person, and you'd like one of these, drop me a line. I'm thinking they'll run about $75, or a bit more for a stainless extension (if you're concerned about rust - this can't be powdercoated, since it needs to be a slip fit).

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Lend me your ears! I mean, uh, lights! Also: Tison's bike


First, here's a shot of Tison's frame/fork (once again, stem used purely for posing purposes). Yes, he has clearance for a 4" tire in there. There's only clearance for a 2.5 in the rear, though, so it's not a true fatbike.

Notice that I tried to use a more attractive staging than the outside of my garage for this shot. Notice also that due to my sucky photo skills, it still looks terrible.

Next up, I have been hornswoggled into racing the 24 hours of Moab with my good friend (and perpetual Marathon nationals runner-up) Mike McCalla. His wisdom in choosing me to race with him (his words: "I think we can win a national championship!") is dubious, given that I've been on vacation or working all summer and haven't raced since July or so. Be that as it may, I find myself in need of a fancy-schmancy light system to ride at night with.

That's where you come in: I don't want to buy a whole light system, since I don't generally nightride (it's hard to get to any decent trails here without riding on fairly dangerous roads) and would probably use it for just this event (yes, Eszter, I'd probably use it for Vapor trail too, but that's just a glimmer in my eye at this point). I'd love to borrow one from someone, but most of my friends who have such equipment are also racing.

Here's the offer: if you lend me your light system (1000 lumens or brighter is probably mandatory) I'll give you 10% off a Waltworks frame. That could be some significant savings for you, if you're looking to get me to make you something. And of course, I promise to take good care of your lights and return them in the condition I got them in.

So if you're interested, drop me a line. This would probably work best for someone that lives in the Boulder/Denver area, but if you want to send me your lights (I'll send them back, or if you're in Moab, give them back at the end of the race) that could work too. Drop me a line.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Good times

First off, if you want to see what I was up to this weekend, read Eszter's post.

Back into the swing of things today. And best of all (I love it when this kind of thing happens) I found that some old disc tabs (which I purchased by mistake almost 5 years ago) which won't fit *anything*, DO fit on some forks I'm working on with an unusual-ish dropout (a 1" version of a 1 1/8" dropout I use pretty often). Bonus! It's like making an extra $8 per fork (well, if you discount what I originally paid for the damn things...)

Sorry about the _4_ parenthetical bits in there. Wow. That's some terrible writing.

Back to bikes...

I'm such a packrat that I always have to make a conscious effort to think about dropouts, or tubes, or random parts that I already have that will work for various projects. More often than not, thanks to my massive stockpile of tubes and other framebuilding supplies, I have something for even the weirdest need.

Here's a picture of the disc tab itself.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Finally!

Mike Curiak and I (mostly Mike) worked on making this happen for _4 freaking years_.

I'm ecstatic.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Safety First Followup

Jorah pointed out in the comments that the phenomenon (working to avoid unlikely but well-publicized risks) has in fact been studied. It's called the availability heuristic, which is probably something I should have remembered from psych 101 back in college. Click on the link if you want to geek out and read about it.

In any case, just to make it clear, I was in no way advocating intentionally putting your children at risk. What I was trying to point out is that if you spend all your time worrying about sensationalized but remote dangers (like stranger abduction) you're not only wasting your time, you're probably also ignoring many far more dangerous things that don't make the nightly news.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Monstercross!

Sorry about the crap lighting on the picture. I suck with the camera.

This is Paul's new fat-tire cyclocross (ie, "monstercross" or "drop bar 29er") bike. I rarely do these, because most folks are put off by the toe overlap issue (if you want drop bars, and you're not HUGE, running 29er tires generally results in a load of toe overlap). In this case, though, Paul just wants to do some dirt road exploring and maybe some light loaded offroad touring.

IMO, drop bars are great for that kind of stuff, and absolutely terrible for riding singletrack. I remember doing the old Sandia Crest series back in the late 90s and being really intimidated by Hawke Morgan, because he was riding drop bars on his mountain bike and looked all old-school and crazy (he was also on one of his brother Alex's ahead-of-their time but incredibly fragile custom carbon frames). Then after I dropped the living crap out of him on the first descent, I wasn't so impressed anymore.

But I digress.

There's a matching fork (not pictured).

I'll also note that I have fallen deeply in love with the new(ish) Paragon low-mount disc dropouts. So clean, so easy to build with, so nice looking, really not that expensive, and only 20g or so heavier for the whole shebang. Great stuff.

Now if Mark would only make a version with an integrated steel derailleur hanger, and post mounts, I'd be in heaven!

Monday, September 14, 2009

Congrats, Eszter and Chris! EDIT: Also Aaron and Ed!

Eszter was 5th overall (and first woman, natch) and Chris was 8th overall at the Vapor Trail 125 (shortened to 110, though). Chris was on a singlespeed, too!

Keep an eye on the Gooneyriders site, I'm sure there will be a writeup with some pictures soon.

I neglected to mention 2 other folks - Aaron rode his WW to 13th place (I think?) and Ed (and his super-short notice WW fork) was 16th or so. Nice job everyone!

I am tempted to make this "race" (sorry, "recreational ride") a goal of mine for next year. What an adventure!

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Humorous incident of the dog in the daytime

Some of the really geeky readers might know the book I'm clumsily referencing with that title, but this is really just something humorous that just happened...

-Guy came to the door while I was working in the shop, selling stuff. I hate door to door salesmen, unless they look like Willy Loman. This guy looked like a 22 year old punk.

-It transpires (as he shouts to make himself understood over my blasting opera music) that he is selling home security systems.

-I ask why he is standing so far away from the front door of the house.

-He answers "I am terrified of your dog" (Pele is growling and barking like a maniac, as usual).

-I laugh and walk back into the shop.

Safety first!

I think it's pretty clear at this point that we, as a society, are insane. But this article in today's Times made me even more sure.

The chances of your kid being abducted by some stranger are tiny. There were 115 such abductions last year, and given that the population of children under 18 is 74 million (at least according to the census bureau), the chances in any given year of your kid being abducted are...wait for it... 1 in 640,000. If that's your #1 concern, it might be time to throw your retirement savings into lottery tickets.

Actually, that was hyperbole. Playing lotto is even more idiotic, as the chances of winning are infinitesimally small.

To put it in better perspective, stranger abduction is just a tiny bit more likely than being struck by lightning (1 in 700,000).

What's next? Locking kids into lightning-proof boxes? Dressing them up in an Ursus Mark VIII? Hell, I see lots of kids out riding bikes with their parents without even wearing helmets - and those same kids probably aren't allowed to walk 2 blocks unescorted. Absolute insanity!

Of course, I haven't even mentioned the detrimental effects of not letting your kids get regular exercise, learn to navigate on their own, and feel independent. Because we all know that stuff is overrated. Who cares if you're fat and helpless at 25, as long as you've avoided the minute danger of being abducted!

Grumble. People are so stupid it makes me angry sometimes. Also, it's raining, so I'm grumpy this morning.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Save Apex!

Or more specifically, save Enchanted Forest.

For details, click here.

Long story short, someone decided it would be a good idea to make Enchanted forest one way - UPHILL. Uh, no. Nobody wants to ride up that. And I've never heard of there being a conflict. Ain't broke, don't fix. Pretty simple.

If I wanted to rant, I'd point out that *simply enforcing existing rules* would solve all the user conflicts on the trails. Put rangers out there, issue tickets for failing to yield, dogs off leash, whatever. Making more rules isn't helpful if everyone knows there's not going to be any enforcement. Boulder has this problem in spades - lots of money spent on signage and committees to develop recommendations, loads of rules, and absolutely no enforcement. Would it be that hard to hire a couple more rangers, put them on mountain bikes, and have them ride around at busy trails on the weekend?

Sigh. This is what happens when you live 30 minutes from a big city.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Bored!

...with our local trails, that is. Boulder has a real paucity of good riding within easy riding distance from town - most of our good trails require a motorized assist or a 2.5 hour pavement grunt/climb. Not fun.

Eric keeps taunting me with these pictures from Pisgah. Yes, I will have to go out there soon. The southeast is pretty much the only place I've never ridden.

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Some terrible pictures...


...of James' frame/fork (no, James, that's not your stem, it's one I made a long time ago and stuck on to hold the fork).

This bike is a bit unusual in that you can actually fit a 2.1" 29er tire in there with 425mm chainstays (16.75") and in fact you could even fit a front derailleur (a bottom pull M750 series would work best, though). Not relevant in this case, since it's a singlespeed, but it still shows a bit of what's possible if you tweak things a bit. In fact, you could go even shorter on this type of setup (about 10mm shorter) but you'd need to run the chainring on the outer position on the cranks, and we wanted to leave the option to use a bashguard here.

If you look closely at this second picture, you can figure out one of the things I did to get some extra tire clearance.

Friday, September 04, 2009

First!


Charlie is officially the first person to get the new solar decal. Check out the sweet Kawasaki green (with sparkles!) too.

In other news, SRAM Rival and Paul neo-retros are the bomb, and Charlie has a very sexy crotch.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Musings on Genetics

As some of you know, I dabble in rock climbing. I'm surpassingly mediocre at it, which is basically fine with me - long legs and short arms aren't great for climbing, so I enjoy the challenge of trying to improve and just gape in awe at the regulars at the Spot.

Some people are born good at stuff. For example, I'm freakin' great at riding bikes up hills. With the exception of a few close friends who may or may not be reading this and some probably-doped Europeans, I can pretty much beat 99% of people at riding a bike up a hill, without doing a ton of training. Of course, I *have* done a ton of training in my life, in order to try to get even better at it (ah, my wasted college years...)Here's an article about a guy who can climb 5.14, supposedly without making much of an effort. What an amazingly annoying bit of hagiography! I should be impressed by someone who apparently makes no effort at all to be excellent at what he does, and just coasts on the talent he was born with? Dude, lots of people climb 5.14 - if it's so easy for Mr. Litz, perhaps he should make a trip to the Frankenjura or something and try challenging himself.

Of course, it's likely that the story is mostly untrue - you can be born very, very good at something - but it still takes a lot of work to be truly world-class, no matter if it's rock climbing, playing the violin, or whatever. I'm willing to bet that James spends a lot of time "training" even if he doesn't call it by that name.

So here's what's interesting to me - I have a lot more fun trying to improve at climbing than I do racing bikes, despite the fact that I'm *WAY* better at bike racing. In fact, I think it's *because* I suck that I have fun - I know that I'm not ever going to be a great climber, so I don't put any pressure on myself to do anything but overcome personal challenges. Of course, I'm never going to be a famous bike racer either, but at one point I thought I was, so it's harder for me to not take it seriously.

I guess my point is this - we shouldn't be idolizing people for what they were born with, we should be praising people for what they accomplish with the gifts they're given. Why? Because I don't want my (future) kids to think that if you're not good at something the first time you try it, you should just quit and look for something else to do. And I also don't want them to think that being good at something means they should just coast along and be satisfied.

As an aside, the Malcolm Gladwell book Outliers is a fun discussion of this sort of subject. Well worth reading, even if you hate journalists posing as philosophers.

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

If you're out walking the dogs...


...and you stumble upon a tree with some really tasty sauce-making apples.
...and you didn't bring anything to carry said apples in.

What should you do?

Well, in my opinion, tying a knot in your shirt, picking the apples, and doing the rest of the walk looking like a hobo or Lil' Abner character while carrying them around in your shirt is the solution.

Guys, I'm sorry about the picture. So sorry. I hope someday you will all forgive me.

Ladies, I'm married. Sorry.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Email down, Sarah's teeth

First off, Gmail seems to have died. Hopefully it'll be back, but as of 2pm today, I have no email access. So don't expect a quick reply if you send me one.

Second, Sarah had to have her wisdom teeth taken out - she had an infection under one of them that was eating away her jawbone, and the oral surgeon decided they had better just get it done before the damage became irreversible. So $1700 later, I'm sitting at home keeping an eye on her as she recovers. Not going to get any shop work done, so I'm now a decent ways (a week, at least) behind where I want to be. My apologies to everyone who's waiting.

Cool Video of Chris

For those bored at work, here's a neat video of Chris riding Mountain Goat at WP on his 5" travel Waltworks freeride bike.