It's going to be HOT.... HOT HOT HOT. I just looked it up on Yahoo! Weather... this is what it says...
Saturday... 100 degrees as a high... I'm hoping it will be cooler...
Grab your helmet, check the air in your tires, and hop on your bike because in many U.S. cities, May 12 - 16 is Bike to Work Week! Six Apart has a lot of biking enthusiasts, so we're very excited to support this event by encouraging all of our employees to bike to work this week. San Francisco's Bike to Work Day is tomorrow, Thursday, May 15th, and New York's is Friday, May 16th.
Six Apart is helping out its employees by providing maps (shaded according to steepness - a must in SF!) to help everyone plan out his/her route, as well as finding first-time riders buddies to commute with. We're also supporting ALL SF riders who pass the front of our office by handing out coffee, juice and snacks from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. If you're in our neighborhood, look for the sign that says "Six Apart Supports Bike to Work Day" and stop by to say hi and get energized!
Improve your health, financial status, productivity, and happiness by joining thousands - maybe even millions - of commuters around the country who are hopping on their bikes to get to work. Visit the Bike to Work Week website to find out more about events in your area.
Support the two-wheeled way of life with the "Passing Left" theme found in "Photo-Based" in the Design Area. Planning on cycling to work this week? Let us know in the comments!
As we mentioned last week, we had to postpone the maintenance that was due to occur on Thursday, May 8th.
We have rescheduled the maintenance for tonight, Tuesday, May 13th, starting at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (that's 1:00 A.M. UTC/GMT). We'll be taking Vox offline for a bit in order to move the service to a brand new home in some bright, shiny new server racks. We don't expect to be offline for more than an hour or two, but we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
Again, thank you for your patience as we continue to invest in Vox's infrastructure!
So I'm moving my cycling related content over from here to my own site. I like the tagging engine more and I'll be able to support some mysterious new cool functionality as soon as it's finished up...
Latest blog entry:
I came to a sad realization.
If I want to get cycling shoes that actually fit, I'm going to spend an assload of money. I look at the online bike catalogs and figure that I'll end up paying about what I'd pay for a normal pair of sneakers for a set of riding shoes.
My wife was training for a half-marathon and Nike was sponsoring the training sessions and so they had a booth where you could try on Nike shoes for the session. I went with her one time and the folks at the Nike booth could not find a single pair of shoes that would fit me. I have oddball sized feet. They are about a half size apart from each other but generally fit in size 12 US EEEE shoes.
Also, I donated to Victor's AIDS/LifeCycle campaign... did you?
Yes... still training for AIDS/Lifecycle 7, which is less that 3 weeks away now! (Hint... hint... it's not too late to make a donation... http://www.aidslifecycle.org/1545)
I left too late on Saturday to make it down to Mission San Juan Bautista from my home in San Jose. I only made it to Gilroy because I needed to buy a Mother's Day present. I have to admit, that was a nice ride down Monterey Road. The most difficult part was getting to Monterey Road down Tully Road from the foothills east of San Jose. Went down Tully, dodged cars trying to get on and off 101, but had quite a few cyclist-sympathetic drivers (thanks!) who made it easy for me to cross.
After mapping things out, riding to San Juan Bautista would have been about 55 miles. I'll do that another day...
I went down Tully, to Old Tully by the SC Fairgrounds and on to Monterey Road. From there, it's a breeze, albeit a bit grimy of a ride with dust and particulates strewn by cars as they flew by. Interestingly enough, the "15 Mile Spot" is 15 miles from my house (according to my GPS and bike computer). Overall, I'd have to say Monterey Road is VERY bike friendly down to Gilroy! There are a few rough patches in South San Jose and through San Martin, but overall, not bad.
Once I got onto good road, I was able to sustain 21 mph for a couple of miles. It suprised the cr*p out of me. Low rolling resistance, 120psi in the tires and a little bit of a grade in my favor are possible factors contributing to this:) I'm not complaining.
Once down there, got a bling purse for my wife at Michael Korrs and hit Pearl Izumi where I got new cycling shorts (mtn bike style, not into the crotch revealing road shorts and some socks).
I think I found my regular weekend ride!
(Crossposted from another blog)
So I have biked all of the bikeable areas of Rancho San Antonio now.
Sadly, there aren't very many. I blame asshole mountain bikers for
wrecking too many trails trying to look like the mountain bike
advertisements. Many of the trails I know that I could bike without
running people down or causing any more wear than a jogger, but I'm
just not allowed.
I biked up the Mora Trail for a stretch..... it's uphill most of the way, so I ended up running out of steam and not wanting to risk my need-to-be-adjusted-after-150-miles-of-fun deraleurs uphill to downshift to the smallest chainring and thus portaging it up the hill. Got my heartrate pumping. Mora trail is hard to find... the Meadow Trail is bike-friendly until it hits Deer Hollow Farm and then it's not bike friendly, so I kept looking to the right trying to figure out where the Mora trail forks off and it turns out that there are three trails that fork off the Meadow Trail and two of them have no-bike signs and one of them doesn't. And once you get uphill, on top of the Mora Trail there's a water tank and a beautiful vista.
I finally figured out, after a bunch of combinations and permutations, how to properly pack my tripod. I just use the cargo netting atop my trunk bag to hold it. I was trying to have it hang down like a pannier bag on the side and that just wasn't working. But I took my tripod and my 35mm camera loaded with ISO 20 microfilm and the 28mm and 70-210mm zoom lens, plus the G7. Do I get enough crazy photographer points? It was 20 speed film that is more like 12 or so in Rodinal and so even in situations where a more normal selection of films would be handholdable, I needed to use the tripod.
So, I biked a mere 8.47 miles and reached a maximum speed of 27.2mph downhill (I used the brakes a lot). I was getting 20mph on some of the level sections, which isn't half bad for a mountain bike and an out-of-shape nerd but probably not nearly as impressive for a road bike.
I'll post the pictures in a bit. Still have to finish the roll and develop them and/or download the digital shots.
I think the correct route would have been to do the ride in reverse. The uphill segment would then be on much less steep streets and then I'd be able to coast the whole way down the Mora trail. And I think the next thing to explore is to ride to Deer Hollow Farm, lock the bike, and then go hiking.
Still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my day....
Tonight, starting at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (that's 1:00 A.M. UTC/GMT), we'll be taking Vox offline for a bit in order to move the service to a brand new home in some bright, shiny new server racks. We don't expect to be offline for more than an hour or two, but we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
Thank you for your patience as we continue to invest in Vox's infrastructure!
Update: we've postponed tonight's maintenance, and will let you know when we reschedule. Thanks for your patience!
Last week, we announced the winners of the HP "What Do You Have to Say? Theme Design Contest and promised you we'd make the winning themes available on Vox in the coming weeks. After a little more thought, we decided you shouldn't have to wait a second longer to use these creative and inspiring designs on your blogs, so we made them available for you today. Who says good things only come to those who wait?
(Cross posted from another blog)
So, first decently long ride on the new bike. I'm not sure exactly how long because the cyclecomputer got confuzzled after a bit about things (needed to be moved down the fork, I think) and thought I'd reached 75mph. Somewhere in the 15-20 mile range.
I biked to REI, which involved me biking across several towns, then went to Lee's Comics for Free Comic Book Day, and then found my way to the endpoint of the Stevens Creek Trail, where I biked the entire length of that trail on the way home.
REI was having a sale and I needed basic safety gear and wanted a trunk bag. I got the Cannondale trunk bag, largely because the Topeak bags are all designed to latch into the Topeak rack and my rack's not a Topeak rack. The Performance Bicycle store-brand bags were kinda crappy by comparison. Plus I got inner tube + tire irons + multitool. See, I've never actually had a flat tire, but I also know that it's astonishingly rare for a cyclist to never have a flat, so it's only a matter of time before I get one.
Way I figure it, the trunk bag's going to come in handy in situations like when I want to bring some photo gear along for the ride or when I want to bring a picnic or other such things.
I used to have a Topeak Mountain Morph pump with a built-in gage but that seems to be off the market now, so I had to get a separate pump and gauge. The pump I've got is designed to share a set of braze-in eyelets with the water bottle holder, which is actually pretty slick.
What are you most looking forward to this weekend?
It being over.
I mean, it's not that there's nothing to look forward to this weekend. I'll be watching the Milan derby at 6 AM tomorrow morning (it's tough being a fan of Italian soccer and living in the Pacific time zone). My son has a soccer and a baseball game on Saturday. On Sunday, we're going to go see Ironman.
But the thing I'm most looking forward to is the end of the weekend, so that it will be only 2 more days until I go to Denver and see my boyfriend.
It's been six weeks, and that's way too long.
