7/31/2007

ubikequitous 1

I read a bunch. I read lots of magazines, books, technical papers, etc. etc. I am always incommensurately delighted when there is a mention of bicycles in an setting where you would not expect it. So my idea is that I will relay to you, occasional readers, when I see something on bicycles that pleases me. Sound good? Well then, onward...

"Further to the east, Takayoshi Kano, of Kyoto University, in Japan, made a survey of bonobo habits on foot and on bicycle..."
from Ian Parker, "Swingers", the New Yorker, July 30, 2007

7/27/2007

Hipster Fixie!

Conversation in a local los alamos coffee shop last month:

Student (noticing my spd shoes): what kind of bike do
you ride?
Me (quickly sizing up the skinny hipster student): Uh, I am on my fixie today
Student: Cool! I just got a fixie!
Me: Does it have neon green deepV rims?
Student: No, orange!


All of this is an excuse to link over to bike snob nyc who dissects the most egregious examples of hipster fixies. I think more bikes is good bikes, but top tube pads? Come on...

Anyhow, good stuff over there.
I will attempt to redesign the blog soonish, but there are a few blogs I have been enjoying lately, so as a way of book marking them for later, check out the following if you have not before:
Rick Hunter framebuilder/tall/fast guy in norcal.
Belgian knee warmers pro cycling commentary
Curt Goodrich frame builder up there in minesota
Ira Ryan frame builder up there in portland.
Flahute has had some nice doping coverage of late.
Stay out of Trees or bike iowa, biking in iowa but not in the trees.

7/25/2007

the Rasmussen post

Uh, so they done kicked Michael Rasmussen out. I can't think of too much to say that I did not say yesterday in the Vinokourov post. To reiterate, he was warned 4 times for not letting the authorities know his whereabouts, I am surprised they could not get this straight and prevented him from starting. He got kicked out for lying to his team about where he was. Good for Rabobank.

Well maybe let me try to say some more, the UCI/WADA should spend less time going after armstrong, stripping tour titles from Riis and green jerseys from Zabel, and more time closing loopholes and getting their collective heads out of their asses. Do not go after retired riders or change results from 10 years ago. No one cares anymore. Just get your act together. Make the doping testing system transparent and free of the sloppy crap that plagued the Floyd case.

On rasmussen, most interesting to me is the following (from this velonews article):

Bergsma said the team officials learned that when Rasmussen had said he was in Mexico - where his wife lives - he had actually been in Italy, working with an as-of-yet-unnamed doctor.


Oh please please please please let it be the Notorious Cecchini! I am tired of Ferrari getting all the negative press lately. Sheesh.

What else? I am glad they kicked him out before he was standing on the podium in Paris. I wish they did not let him or Vino start. The boulder report had a nice Vino article yesterday, I think he is way too cynical, but he did say the following of rasmussen during todays live stage blog:
...does his stage win podium ceremony and shakes hands and chucks the bouquet into the crowd. I'd spit in my hand before shaking his.
Word.

More random thoughts. i think kicking the teams of doping offenders out is a pretty reasonable way to increse anti-doping peer pressure amongst riders. I am pretty sad that Cofidis left though. Of the vocal anti-doping brits, I much prefer Bradley Wiggins than Millar. I really do think it is a good thing for riders to be vocally anti doping. But Millar was so vocal and whiny pre doping positive, his zeal of the recently converted leaves me sour. But, really, keep on shouting down the dopers, fellers. Even a few short years ago no one in the peleton would dare say anything, lest they become shunned.

Stopping the tour would be a mistake. We don't have to watch, but it would be nice if there was a strong antidoping statement as the tour ends leading to the mostly drug free Vuelta/world championship/2008 grand tours...

Finally, the best page on velonews is the reasonably quickly updated roster of riders in the tour, with strikethroughs on the abandons, here If all the riders get struck, I will declare myself victor in the 2007 tour.

From the comments, comebacks =doping?

Welp, quite a firestorm of comments on the Vino post below. But I have to hand it to my brother who had the following to say:

I am completely cynical: any 'miraculous comeback' must mean doping. Think Armstrong, Landis, Vino. The next big doping scandal? Two words: Harry Potter. Man, he came back from death itself! Impossible without 'assistance'. And I hear Skeeter's book has a section about Dumbledore's youthful friendship with Ferrari.


I Knew it: Harry freekin Potter, boy doper!

7/24/2007

the Vinokourov post

If you are a new reader, you might not know that I wrote about doping extensively last year in the wake of the Hamilton decision and up to and through the tour last year. See all the posts under the label doping Keep on scrolling down to the bottom. Then what happened? I got tired of writing about it, thats what.

The thing that fired me up in the first place has been the incredible degree of ignorance in the press about doping practices. Especially the non-cycling press. I still think most of the baseball and football press think that dopers are people juicing with "roids" in the weight room with Cansenco and the pro wrestlers. Ignorant. Some day we will learn the extent of doping in baseball and football, and trust me, it is not journeyman relief pitchers getting steroids from the internet. I am betting there are tens of eufemiano fuentes type servicing the doping needs of the big three american sports.

Golf still does not test. Also ignorant. Of course they are doping. I wrote about it here last year. Just this month Gary Player claimed he knows people on the mens pro tour are doping. The reaction has been mostly disbelief and denial. I can't wait until they start testing positive.

Anyhow. I was tired of doping writing. I also sensed goodness in cycling. Slipstream and T-mobile had instituted comprehensive anti-doping programs within the team. Lots of retired guys were admitting doping and attempting to move on. Basso claimed he was coming clean. It was a new day in cycling. I don't think it was all better. But it certainly made it over the hump and was heading for a new generation of cleaner cyclists being mentored by older cyclists that may have doped but don't anymore.

The cycling press was much more realistic about it as well. There are people who get paid to write that were covering the issues far better than me. My doping posts were getting repetitive and eerily predictive (see this post pre 2006 tour) I just wanted to watch my classics and tour and get on with it.

As for Vinokourov, I recommend some perspective. Go get the spectacular book Lance Armstrong's War. Read it. Tell me if you have any other conclusions other than the following:
1. Ferrari and Checcini understand human performance so well, they do not need to dope their charges.
2. Ferrari and Checcini understand human performance so well, that it is inescapable that they would use doping to get to the next level.

Now go ahead and factor in that Ferrari was a convicted sporting fraudster in 2004, and was coaching Vino THIS YEAR, and that Checcini (the notorious Checcini) was coaching Ulrich and Hamilton immediately prior to their suspensions. Now which conclusion is likely? Hmm?

Clearly there is a disconnect between the new guard and the old guard. It is hard to believe they let Astana race after Vino admitted he was working with Ferrari a week before the race began. It is hard for me to believe that David Millar or anyone else is so surprised that he was doping. It is hard to believe they could not figure out that Rasmussen was warned for missing controls 4 times total, twice by the UCI and twice by the Danish cycling federation, yet they were unable to suspend him...

Did I know Vino was doping? No. But I was not rooting for him this year after his ferrari link was exposed. Levi is much too boring to dope (probably). Go Levi!

And what of the poultry jesus?. Go ahead and read this illuminating post at Flahute, still rooting for Chicken?

The only thing that surprises me was that he tested positive for homologous blood doping (excellent article on blood doping here). Did he run out of his own blood and hope that they did not test him (after he won the stage?). Did they screw up and give him the wrong blood? Has he been doping consistently for years this way and had never gotten caught? I am baffled here. He just blew a 10 year Astana sponsorship commitment and a probable Director Sportif position for the length of the sponsorship.


Anyhow, I really think the Vino and Sinkewitz positives are emblematic of the positive direction things are taking. The doping tests worked. I think it is better for Vino to get kicked out mid race than to get arrested with a bag of blood in his hand mid-August after he won 4 stages and clawed his way back up to the podium, no?

I am still up at 5 or something tomorrow to see if our flawed heros crack badly in the last of the Pyrenees. It is still a good race.

The real tragedy is that this scandal might end the T-mobile sponsorship and screw up the long term Slipstream sponsorship. I will be very very angry if the two teams most committed to racing clean disappear.

P.S. David "Gimp" Millar please shut up already, you doped and lied and lied and lied about it, see his slanderous response to being implicated by a teammate here. Then he got caught a few months later. Now he is a doping avenger? Just shut up and do your job.

7/23/2007

Boring same old folding bike santa fe post

Hit the Lamy trail last week, took the same pics as always, enjoy

thought it was DRY mud:

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not so dry:

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open car with train wheels

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with housings!

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While the zia caboose slowly decays

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In the arroyo there are not roadrunner footprints:

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Mutant chicken? Raven? Pheasant? Velociraptor? Nagini?

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Thanks to a recent article in Naturwissenschaften 94, 657–665 (2007)I learned that they found nice roadrunner like fossil footprints in China. How did they know they were roadrunner like? They had zygodactyl toes. Which means one of the front three toes is rotated clockwise so there are two forward and two back, giving footprints like a nice X look when they hit the ground. Unlike the mystery snake footprints I found above. Hopefully the article link is available to all, as they have some nice pictures of bird footyprints.

7/18/2007

Gosh I hope they find each other...

Los Alamos Monitor, 7/16/07


Our far flung correspondents

Moscaline's Knoxville correspondent BruceC sent these nice electro assist trike photos a few weeks back:





The photos are taken in Market square, Knoxville, the bike owner apparently uses the bike as her primary transportation.

Neat I thought. I have never seen such an electro assist. But then not one week later, here in the LBS in Los Alamos I spot the knoxville electric trikes sun bleached doppleganger. Well then:


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There I go.

7/16/2007

4 years, 18 pounds


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Wink256 displays his one superpower, filling a sink over the course of four years!


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Form of, a giant freaking kitty.

Congrats to Wink 256 for hitting the coveted 23 pound mark.

We shall return to your regularly scheduled bikie content shortly...

7/11/2007

The French do everything more stylie than you part 2

Yeah, the fishmongertrix rocking the strappy tank top, waders and rubber apron.


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Anyone else craving a swordfish head?

7/07/2007

Road find of the day, flat wrench


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Some sort of run over sheet metal wrench. Maybe for airtanks?

I love these flat stamped crappy tools that come included with things.

Found over there on that mesa yonder while cruising home from work.

7/06/2007

Great horned beetle!

More mutant insects crawling up from the depths of the Los Alamos canyons.


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Not one of them novelty pennies either.

7/05/2007

June Motion Update

Here is the June motion update.

I done biked 269 miles and I runded 11 miles. Not too bad considering I was out of the country without a bike for the first 10 days of june. I will be back on it for July, really.
I did ride to work every day I was at home. I carpooled once to work this year, the rest has been by bike.

I also swam twice, once in the ocean and once in the pool.

Total yearly milage is at 1454, running at a measily 64. I am a bit behind my goal of 3650 miles for the year and 365 miles running. I think I will probably get there on the bike but no chance in hell on the run. I will post a more in depth mid year summary if I am suitably motivated.

This months milage was 100 on the road bike, 90 on the trackie, 50 in the single speed mtb and 20 and 10 on the schwinn breeze and the raleigh twenty respecively.

Wink256 getting aquainted with my new running shoes:

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7/04/2007

One step beyond!, er um I mean...

twist and crawl!

So it turns out the touring version of the English Beat were in santa fe last night at a July 4th kickoff party . I think they only contained lead singer Dave Wakeling from the original version, but with a tight backing band of ska veterans and Wakeling's vocals dominating the harmonies they were spot on.



It was a hilarious santa fe crowd of old hippies, drunk trustafarians and old dudes (like me and older) getting their ska on. No plaid suits. Some goth kids wearing checkerboard sneakers. It took place at the Santa Fe brewing company compound just south of town. Their beer is a bit hit or miss, but they have a nice outdoor concert venue enhanced a cool breeze and distant lightning storms in all directions.



Anyhow, they went through all their hits (minus twist and crawl) and may have thrown in a General Public song or two in. At this point, without new material, I think they should have played some Madness or Specials or other 2nd wave songs as well to just go over into a 2nd wave coverband. Then they could release an album called "Dave Wakeling plays Madness" or something.



Elena was thrilled, and really excited to meet Wakeling and get his autograph on an English Beat poster as the grainy cell phone images show. Good stuff, pretty entertaining show.

7/02/2007

The French do everything more stylish than you part 1


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Louis Vuitton double bicycle case. Circa 1960. Scanned from the June 2007 Air France magazine.
Stylicious!