A good week for science

Ok, UC and partners won the lab contract. Given the constraints, this was the best possible outcome. This is not an overwhelming victory for science, but it is much better than the alternative. The lab will change for sure, for science in america's sake, I hope it is a good change.

Also the Monkeys won in the second monkey trial in Pennsylvania. Yeah monkeys. Almost as good as cows, really, maybe better, as monkeys can help the disabled, and cows, to my knowledge, can not, at least not until someone elects me as god.

Unfortunately this issue will not die anytime soon as Americans as a whole have no concept of the dangers of creeping fundamentalism. Hopefully this will keep religion out of science classes, but I am not confident non-monkey derived people will stop until they have neutered the curiousity of american children.

A sad note, this ruling also kills the case for introducing the the flying spaghetti monster into classrooms. If the non-monkey derived people won, I was really hoping that the FSM would also win and be forced to be taught alongside whatever the hell non-monkey derived people think science is.

Ok, enough of that lest I become a drooling reactionary, more bike and cat minutia promised in the months ahead, including new cats, with more than 5 fingers per paw even!

Changes
Check your National news, or the santa fe papers, at noon today (12/21) I find out come mid 2006, if I work for the MAN or the dirty hippies...

The fact that the UC regents could be considered the hippies is emblematic of larger problems in this country. Still, here is hoping for Hate man to ocassionally yell in the ear of my future bosses.

Una Pregunta


Why, when buying 6 dollar bottles of Austrailian Shirazy wine, do they come with real corks, when I have bought two 15+ dollar shirazes (which were worth it) with screw tops...

Bike Bike Cat

Here is a pic of the nice snowcapped mtns yesterday. My bike is leaning against a dead pinon tree which makes up about a quarter of the trees. The rest are junipers.



The velodrome is not all that funded yet, but the BMX track is. See here. Still on target for my bike plan of leaving work at noon, hitting the bmx track for a few laps as warm up, then hitting the velodrome for the evening races and then scurrying over to the minor league ball park for post race baseball, hotdogs and beers.


And lastly here is mosca drinking away happily:

Done Bike Rid

I did a real bike ride today. Not a commute to lunch, but the kind where you get on your bike and ride off road and crash because the trail is loose because you are running 28mm tires and your brake levers point down afterwards and then your wrist hurts a bit, but you keep riding and explore 1 new trail and 1 new road and you are sore as crap as you have not ridden in 2 weeks (even counting the lunch commutes), but otherwise you are still feeling endorphins 10 hours later. It was 35 degrees and windy at noon, but it may have been 40 plus when I left a few hours later. So it was a great ride, especially when the cold wind died. Woooooo!

After you pass the peacock flock and the goats and the first wash, yet before you get to the apple ranch and the second wash, the road looks about as good as it can get:




But then it gets better as you get to the single track. Last I rode it, it was buffed and hard and smooth as can be due to it being the end of the rainy season. This time it was a quite a bit loose as it has been really dry and the trail sees a fair bit of bike, run, walk and pooping equestrian use. Say what you want about MTB being winged locust etc., at least we do not SHIT in the middle of the trail. How is this OK trail etiquette wise? Huh? Get your act together horsey people. No one likes seing big heaping turds in the MIDDLE of the trail. Also, stop riding your horses on steep loose stuff, you WRECK the trail far more than any cyclist could ever do. Sheesh. Even the cows are not that bad and they shit on the side of the trails, and do not voluntarily go up or down insanely steep stuff. Cows, yes! horses, no! Plus your horses are stupider than cows. I don't care how pretty you think they are. I hope that the next horse person I see on the trail is a huge rancher with a big black cowboy hat who speaks spanish better than english, cause if I see a 12 year girl with curly blond hair and braces riding her show pony, shitting on the trail, and riding down the steep pitches turning the twisty single track into a landslide, I may loose it.

Uh, anyway, what was I getting at? Oh yes. The trail. I think this is nice beat in cow track on BLM land, so it is square profile singletrack on sandstone, a bit sketchy on the fixie when you get close to the edge, but pretty damn good:



Click on the above for big pics, they are quite nice I think.

Somehow I missed getting the snowcapped mountains with a hard snow line at 10K feet or so. Pretty nice backdrop to some riding.

That is a barbie head on the handlebars. She was rescued from the Truck Route in Los Alamos last summer. She used to have a road find flowered barrette keeping her hair managable, but, alas, it fell off during a time trial in august, so now I am hoping she grows dreads:



i think that is it.
Remember, up with cows!

Cold continues

I think the final tally on yesterday was high of 22 low of 5 or some such nastiness. Sure it is no Colorado, but the rio grande was frozen this AM. This is a pretty good sized rio grande, not the wimpy over-extended-by-irrigation rio grande that trickles through albuquerque. Pretty cool. I will try to get some pics tomorrow if it is still froze.

Here is the nice roof insulation, like snow, but not:


compare to the old looking roof here:

Cold as a Cold Thing

No entries for a while. The family descended for thanksgiving, it was cold and it actually snowed briefly. Just enough to make everything looklike it had been powdered with sugar. Thanksgiving was great and went smoothly. Then, it got a bit colder, and then this week it got very cold. High of 30 or so, low of 10 or 7 or 12, or something cold. Mosca and I are curled up on a warm spot on the floor trying to avoid freezing to death.

The roof is covered with a thick layer of insulation now, which is great. The house seems noticably warmer, except that it is 10 degrees out in the AM and everything is cold and ice is falling from the sky. Rather than letting cold air in, all the windows suck heat from you when you pass by, much like you get a chill when you pass the physical embodiment of pure evil. Best solution is lying in the middle of the floor where the warm spots are and not moving. Cats are very useful for showing you where these spots are, as that is where they lie. I feel a bit guilty pushing mosca to the cold part of the room so i can lie on the warm bricks, but she is covered in fur and I am not, or at least mostly not. The very fact that I am the people and she is the cat should be justification enough, as the cat should be used to such injustices, what with their insulting lack of opposable thumbs and inability to open the fridge and the like.

Must get back to the floor again.

In bike news, I have not touched mine, any of em, in over a week and they may actually for real build a velodrome in Albuquerque, this time with some vague promises of the Philly USPRO Championship abandoning Wachovia Bank pouring enough money in to create a world cup worthy indoor velodrome. I will believe it when I see it, but this would be an amazing boon for track racing in the US. As ABQ is at 5500 feet or so, there might actually be a flood of hour record seeking tiny skinny men descending on NM.

Pics soon.