Astro!

I have long coveted a way of not only finding out where the cats are, but where they have been. I looked into coming up with a home made system, but I wanted live tracking, not putting a GPS watch on their collar and downloading it afterwards, but more of a Lojack for the cats, it was way beyond my technical skill.

But today at the pet store I saw this:


Ok, so it is $600 bucks, and it has a dorky antenna on the collar, but at least it exists. I need a maruders map of the cats so I can figure out not only where they are hiding, but where they have been after looking for them for 3 hours. And where the hell they go during the day. So this needs to be $200 for the system and less than $10 for each collar mounted system so it does not hurt too much when they loose the collar in the sewer. It needs to track at least 4 cats simultaneously. Good naming of the product as well... So we are getting there.

Clearly the TDF uses something similar for the rider tracking, but they fit under the seats. I am pretty sure that Garmin probably developed this for David "gimp" Millar" but then decided it was more marketable for a dog tracking system. I would like to see him win a stage wearing an antennaed collar. Maybe with some sort of remote shocking capability as well? Anyways...

A visit to Thomas Cara Ltd

When I was in San Francisco last week, I took a lunch to walk over to North Beach to visit Thomas Cara Ltd, purveyors of extremely fine italian espresso machines. My La Pavoni (steam driven productivity engine), was bought refurbished from this shop.
Outside the shop



Christopher Cara, son of the original owner, runs the shop now. He was very generous with his time and patiently explained how to change the seals in my machine. He also remembered talking to me on the phone 3 years ago and the circumstances in which I got my Pavoni, (ah! YOU are the famous cat sitter).

Custom mosaic on the threshold, thats 517 pacific near columbus


He also told me undoubtedly well worn tales of the history of the shop and the provenance of the two big machines in the center of the store.

Big machines, argentinian copper and the original chrome giant pavoni that was brought back from italy circa WW2


I already was drooling over some of the newer "professional" models.

New machines lined up for sale


Christopher buys old machines and refurbishes them for resale. The wall in back are almost all Pavonis in various states of repair...

Repairs, refurbished and salvaged machines


Anyhow, if you have a hankering for an expensive but very worth it espresso machine, the shop is a great place to visit. 517 Pacific near Columbus in San Francisco, semi regular hours wed-friday, call before you visit (415) 781-0383.


Not a cat, Sage(?) the sleepy coffee spotted dog

Rest of the photos from Iowa

Are over at Target Salad on Flikr



I took lots, go check em out.



Chinese bike resources in the works, pesky real life gets in the way...

Studeb

Went up to Chama for my very first xc ski race. A race report and lots of good train stuff from chama and Santa fe will follow shortly.

In the mean time, the race photographer had a nice crapped out studebaker.


click for big


On closer glance it was chock full of no less than four basset hounds:

Santa Fe's Dog on bike

This is the Santa Fe see him everywhere guy on a trike, always with his big dog on the back of his Atlas trike. Alas, he rode off before I got to say hi.


click for big

I also saw a guy riding in Los Alamos today solo on a triplet. I was riding out of the canyon and caught up to him and had a little chat. He dropped off his kids at a day camp inthe bottom of the canyon and was riding up to the ski hill. Pretty cool. Like a nice in line bike taxi.

Other pals blog roundup

Mark is kicking my ass in the roadfind department in our informal blog roadfind competition. Crap, I gots to get on the stick. $43 dollar whole foods gift card was his latest. Once I found a starbucks card with about half a latte left on it, but it is not really the same at all. Must ride more...

Wenmei is riding with one of those Walky dog things and her large looking pup Cowboy. Sorry for upstaging her with the dog on top tube phots, it looks neat, but always seems super sketchy to me, Cowboy must be a gooddog. Maybe I will invite her guest blog a product report in the future:

click for source, stolded from her blog

Dog on the top tube

Seen in Goleta, north of santa barbara outside the trader joes:


click for big

It appears that the dog rides the top tube in this very position as dad (presumably) rides the bike, kid rides the trailabike and mom rides the otherbike. A family outing!


click for big

The dog was chilling calmly, mostly asleep, on the top tube. Good stuff.

A few more fun bike pics from the trip to Santa Barbara in coming days.

Thanks to my cousin Gwyneth, the horror continues:
http://beedogs.com

The irony here is outstanding as I received the cats in costume link from my friend Jerry under the title, "Why I am a dog person".

Still a dog person now Jerry?