Day Two, Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 Challenge

Today we got up early, did Christmas, I got a nap in, sledded with Aida a bit and then we lazed about watching the flurries for a while. Most of the day was spent watching Aida swing on her new tree swing, which I installed in the living room:

See this set for more info... I stoked the woodfire up so it was nearly 85F in the living room and we sort of lost the will to do anything. Finally it sort of cleared up and I busted out a quick(ish) 8 mile ride on the Pugs on the perimeter to roundabout to walnut canyon to bridges loop.

I took the road route (about a mile and a half) through Quemazon neighborhood to the pipeline-perimeter intersection so I could get the loop done quicker. It was a nasty climb, but I was treated with some nice views of the area from the high point of the ride. It was around freezing when I left the house, but the temp was dropping pretty quickly and I was not quite dressed properly. So I pretty much rode as hard as I could to keep warm. The rest of the ride was on snow packed singletrack, choppily packed down by peds. It was pretty much ideal snow biking conditions. 12" wide singletrack that the pugs ate up. I got up to the top at about sunset, descended and rolled to the roundabout in somewhat sketchy flat light conditions. I did the walnut canyon rim trail in increasing darkness, but the moon and other ambient light and the snow cover got me through bridges trail back to home without me needing to turn on the lights until I hit the last couple blocks on the road to home. I will add that this was a really good ride. Despite lingering sickness of indeterminate cause, I pushed it and it felt good and I returned home after and hour and a half to find the ladies napping...

So that puts me at a massive 11.5 miles total thus far. I am totally going to cheat by going to Santa Barbara for the rest of the challenge, but I will pay for it by having to travel twice between now and New Years. I will have to be a bit sneaky to get my rides in on the travel days, but I am nothing if not resourceful.

I am pleased that Big Dummy Daddy and Cyclotourist have taken up the challenge. Remember all you need to do is:
1. Just ride your bike 100 miles from 12/24-12/31/12 and you have achieved the challenge.
2. Or just ride your bike every day from 12/24-12/31 and you also have achieved the challenge.
3. Or just try to ride your bike just a bit more than you might have otherwise and you have achieved it.
You can prorate the challenge if you did not see it until after it started, or you can just go for number 3, or whatever. Just let me know how you did and I will send you a TSBC pin.

The Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 Challenge

Welcome to the Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 mile bike challenge. There are three ways to meet the challenge.
1. Just ride your bike 100 miles from 12/24-12/31/12 and you have achieved the challenge.
2. Or just ride your bike every day from 12/24-12/31 and you also have achieved the challenge.
3. Or just try to ride your bike just a bit more than you might have otherwise and you have achieved it.
This may appear like another groups holiday challenge, but the TSBC is better and cheaper and infinitely more inclusive than anything they do. I have no roundel prize but I have pins.

I am going to try for all the three prongs of the challenge and will document it here! You can document it in the comments or wherever you want. If you want an achievement prize, I will send you a TSBC pin gratis, email me with what you did to do achieve the challenge and a valid mailing address and I will send a TSBC pin out to you. Remember, club rules are 1. Ride bikes, 2. Try not to be an ass. And in this case, at least ride a bit between Christmas eve and New Years and then tell me about it.

It has been kind of cold and snowy here and we have been slightly waylaid by stomach issues and holiday stuff, so I did not ride during daylight hours, but then just around dark this started happening.

And then Elena and Aida and I went for a walk and then ate dinner, put Aida to bed, then did christmas prep, and then I snuck out for a ride.

Today, a mighty 3.5 miles at night on the pugsley in a combination of fresh snow, plowed slop, trails, sidewalks and interstitial neighborhood pathways. I felt like crap, but the trails were fun. It was around 30 degrees F and really humid for here, some sort of post storm inversion layer. It was good.

Belgian Working Cyclists

Grumpy ones at that.

Cops and post cyclists:

I was in Ghent a couple weeks back and happened upon some excellent working cyclists.

This postcyclist graciously let me take her picture, but refused to even crack the hint of a smile. Check out those paniers.

These two cops barely nodded in assent when I asked to take their photo, then they refused to actually look at me. This quashed my plan to see if I could trade them something for their awesome jackets. Cop on the left was busy lighting a cigarette, cop on the right was avoiding me.

If you like huge photo dumps (well labeled though), click over to my belgium flickr set. Lots of bikes on the street, cobbled climbs, bicycle bars and cyclocross to be found.

Not really a working cyclist, but I enjoyed watching the variety of child carrying bakfiets in use. The only thing that keeps you from getting run over by street cars is your own self preservation.

Ocean Air Rambler Kickstarter

Rob Perks and his shop, Ocean Air Cycles, is making a pretty sweet low trail sport touring bike called the Ocean Air Rambler. How sweet is it? I am not sure yet, based on specs alone it is awesome, but I did order one in May and should get it pretty soonish. His first run only had a half dozen or so bikes in it. He is gearing up for a bigger batch now with a kickstarter

Here is why I like it:

It fits 42mm tires and fenders in all sizes. It has 650B in the small sizes, 700c in the bigger sizes. I got a 59 which is a 700c bike. I like 700c for on and off road. I have a million cross tires in this size and bigger tires for my 29er and smaller for my road. It makes sense for me. I think if you are shorter the 650b might make sense. But for me 700c works fine. I would not have minded 650b, but I like 700c fine and I think it is the geometry that is much more important that tire size.

Geometry: Low trail sport touring bike. You can load up your basket/front rack and forward weight the bike and not effect the handling adversely. I am hoping for a nice mix of uber-commuter/all-day bike/ campeur/porteur out of it. I will swap all the parts off the complete failure Kogswell 700c P/R over including probably the specialized live rack initially and start playing with it from there.

Tubes: Not super light, but in the sweet spot for my weight and power and loading habits (I think). Go to the website and read a bit more. Tubes are 8-5-8 in the 650b sizes 9-6-9 in the bigger sizes. 28.6 tt and dt. I think this should be pretty much perfect for me. The 59 pleases me in its dimensions and angles, should not fit me small, should be just right...

Fork: Sweet crowned fork with cast in low profile rack bosses. Threadless fork. I will go on record again as saying speccing a threaded fork on a new bike is just silly, especially on a tig welded bike, especially on a front loader. Threadless is better in every way.

Brakes: Comes set up for and WITH brazed on pivot paul racer centerpull. I have wanted to try these for a while, but never had the right bike for it. This is that right bike. Should be sweet. I will report back.

Made in the USA. I think this is important for a number of reasons, but the most important is I am pretty confident that the design-manufacure loop between Rob and the Fabricator is small and easy and the bike will come out as planned.

This all said, there are other options out there, just before I ordered my Rambler, I actually came about a hairsbreadth away from buying a Box DOg Pelican in 650B with similar specs, but the threaded fork bummed me out. However, more choices are always better. I already voted with my wallet in May on supporting Rob and Ocean Air, but even if you don't order a bike, think about supporting his kickstarter to get a nice production run of sweet made in the USA low trail paul racered bikes.

Ubikequitous 10, Fat Bike Yoga Pants Shootout!!!

Everyone favorite battling purveyors of yoga and sporty gear for women both featured Pugsleys in their latest catalogs.

From Top, cover of Title 9 catalog, back page of Athleta catalog

From Top, innards of Athleta catalog, innards of Title 9 catalog

Clearly Title 9 is the victor as they have a cooler schwinn and the cover model actually riding the bike (the catalog also has a lemond city bike and a generic stepthrough in other photos). But well done to both catalogs in capturing the fat bike zeitgeist.

I do have to admit being very nostalgic for the Title 9 catalogs of 10 years ago or so which used to feature what I called the "Title 9 Barbies" (ironically, see below) who usually were shown surfing or skateboarding or gardening their organic farms or building a school for impoverished children with descriptions such as "working on her third PhD, raising her 4 adopted children on her organic turkey farm, still finds time to shred the morning break" or "built her own wooden yacht and sailed around the world in between her career as pro kiteboarder and her current job as CTO of a biotech startup". There was one page of the catalog I used to carry around in my lab book for inspiration when I was working on my dissertation, I can't find that page anymore, but I figured if she could look great in yoga pants and get her PhD while she was skateboarding/surfing/alpacafarming, well then, I could finish my dissertation while living by myself and riding my bikes a whole bunch, with little pressure to look great in yoga pants (even though I could totally rock those if I wanted to). I used to call them the barbies as those were the type of barbies I would like my future daughter to play with, alas, now that I actually have a daughter, the current Title 9 catalogs have dispensed with the awe inspiring overachievers for less impressive and breezy descriptions of the models.

Holy F&$%, Doping!

It is like christmas for doping nerds like me, I keep wanting to write about it, but I can't get my head around the magnitude. Well done to Floyd Landis for really kicking this off and the USADA for seeing it through. Twice a day I check velonews and twice a day I am rewarded with even more information. Anyhow, go read for yourself, I really have nothing to add, the Reasoned Decision and even better the spectacularly entertaining/grim/depressing affidavits. If you search around a bit are some entertaining bike racing forum investigation to the names of the redacted people in the Reasoned Decision, pretty much implicates the few obvious american cyclists who did not give direct evidence in the USADA case.

I will say it again. The UCI needs to declare some sort of amnesty program so that we can get more of the scoop from more people without any fear of serious repercussions... It may have been the UCI's fault that doping was so widespread in the first place, but if I am writing about doping scandals in cycling in 10 years featuring riders who are now in their 20's, it is absolutely on the UCI. USPS had a great doping system, but it was built on the bones of the ONCE team's system and it is clear from the affadavits that many other teams were all in as well, there is much to learn from more honesty and openness.

Lots of things from last week

Scored yet another arrow (number 4 or 5?) and whole pile of marking flags.

Arrow found right at the intestine and diamond on the lab side. I imagine someone realized they were heading to work with some weapons and jettisoned them out the window. Alas it had been run over, it now is carbon trash. Flags found in bike lane on canyon. Picked em up mostly so they did not become pokey wires in the bike lane.

Aida and Wink256 took a chariot ride around the block. Wink did not freak. Aida might be a bit happy

Got even more wood. Mostly Cherry and Apple. Will need to season the living crap out of it before it goes in the fire, but it will burn for a long time. Spent about half an hour cutting it down out of a massive brush pile on the other side of the neighborhood. Pretty easy 1/2 mile ride back to the house afterwards.

Went to the opera in bandelier last saturday night. It was fun. Aida was entranced for 10 minutes and then happily played in the dirt for the rest of the hour and a half. We got to take the bus 4 times on Saturday, Aida was thrilled about this too. Click the panaroma to see on flickr.

Found this feller on my road bike. I thought is was a big wasp, but I think it is a black and yellow party beetle:

After studiously avoiding a smartphone for a while, I have to say, I am digging the iphone and all the photo options. I also like having the pocket GPS, I have been using Run Keeper to log walks with Aida and neighborhood cruises and I jumped on the Strava moronwagon to help log the local punishing climbs for both running and riding, helps me be a bit more rigorous in my self monitoring. I don't really care to share em, nor will I facebook spam out all my rides, but I will be making up dumb new segments for myself, as I am pretty sure there are a couple road bike rides and runs that that no one else does. The greater quality pocket cam will help on the blogging documentation probably, see gratuitous coffee picture:

2012 pajarito trail fest 10k race report 9/22/12

Oooooof, it hurt. Race was run counter clockwise instead of the traditional clockwise. Typical start and end at the ski lodge (~9000 feet), with a 10,400 foot summit betwixt. I will give you the super abbreviated race report.
1. Go out too fast on the downhill with fast people
2. Go lactic on the first climb straight up a ski slope.
3. hold off the rampaging hordes on the single track climb
4. suffer on the going straight up the ski hill parts again and again
5. Crack badly just before the summit
6. Hit the summit of the ski hill
7. Take a picture and get passed by a bunch of people

8. Suffer on the initial technical descent
9. Pass a few people back on a bit of rollyness
10. Suffer the second part of the initial technical decent
11. Hammer hard on the less technical descent
12. Hold off more rampaging hordes of descenders
13. Wait, whats this? A mile of climbing to the finish? Crap.
14. Let 4 people pass you as you have lost the will to live
15. They are kinda passing me slow
16. Crap, they are not pulling away.
17. Double crap, they are right there in front of me.
18. I resign myself to sprinting past all of them
19. Accomplish number 18.
20. Spend the next 20 minutes trying not to vomit.
21. Eat breakfast burrito.
22. Help daughter run kids race.
23. Go home, take nap.
24. Deal with intense quad soreness for 5 days.
Other thoughts. It was hot. It was challenging. I hated it when I was doing it, but in retrospect it was pretty fun. Even with all the super steep fire road sections. Good job on the trail fixing post fire. I might be in shape for this one day. I finished 10th overall in the 10k race, 9th among mens, and 3.875th in the 30-39 age group. Time was just under 1 hour and 11 minutes. I can do better. I need to remember not to take 3 weeks off running right before a race. results here

last year it was not hot and covered in snow:

I did this race in 2009 too:

So thanks to the organizers for putting on the excellent race and all the volunteers that got the trails ready for the suffering. And great job to all the 15 mile racers and all the people that came out and did the duathlon the next day. Due to ridiculous quad soreness, some knee swolage and intense desire to do nothing I skipped it. Maybe next year.

Antlered Triumvirate

Lurking about they are.

the youngling

snagglehorn

brickshithouse

They better drop an antler again in the yard or I am taking up mule deer noodling/wrassling/shooting.

Raleigh Twenty Lamp

Why? Because someone on the internet had them a question.

Front with Child claw

PiFCO, the marque of quality

Lamp received via el Speare many a moon ago.

Moscaline goes HD

Got a new camera,it takes really good photos and videos. Blow that pizza up full screen and click the heck out of the HD button. Oooooooooo.
Should be a mild to great uptick in the photo and video quality. We also are ditching the 4 year old beat to crap extraordinarily dependable casio boulder dumbphone and going full on iphone5, so even the cell cam snap shots should improve. No go-pro helmet cam yet, but I will get there...

Pizza by Aida and Elena. Burbly cooking by me trying to get a better crust. It was pretty damn good...

Alive and Former Trees

As promised, in the continuing wood gathering series:

Scored a ponderosa pine youth from the landscaper across the neighborhood. Ferried it home in the pouring rain and muddy trails. Planted it on the outskirts of the .18 acre homestead.

A big burl that dropped off a ponderosa and blocked a neighborhood path. Aida and I cleared the path and fastened the rest to the chariot for the burning.

Previously
Aspen
MOAR WOOD
More Wood Hauling
Wood Hauling

The Secret Race -Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle, a review

Long time Moscaline readers will know I used to write about doping often, but I stopped cold after Tyler Hamilton came clean, see thank you tyler. I considered that, short of Lance coming out and admitting doping, the epilogue on a long ugly period in pro cycling. When I heard that Tyler Hamilton was writing a tell all book with Daniel Coyle, I was extremely eager to read it and boy was I not disappointed. Not a super long read, not spectacular prose, but a really solid gripping rise and fall tale. With lots of the really gritty details thrown in. It shows how unbelievably messed up every aspect of the Lance era was. Even better you can see how messed up high level pro cycling is even without the drugs. Pro tip: Get hella skinny. Nope skinnier than that. Lycra flapping on the arms skinny. Can you see your organs through your pale emaciated skin? Ok good, now you can be fast.

One of my previous favorite books of the Lance Era was Daniel Coyles book Lance Armstrong's War (LAW):

LAW is incredibly well written and a great read. As I have said in the past, there are two possible inescapable conclusions from that book:

1. They are so rigorous and scientific in their training, recovery and medical plans that there is no need to resort to doping.

2. They are so rigorous and scientific in their training, recovery and medical plans that systematic doping is the next logical step in improving performance.

With this new book by Tyler Hamilton and the same Daniel Coyle, you can pretty much any possibility of #1 being the truth. The account of doping is detailed and credible. It follows beautifully as an addendum to the training techniques laid out in LAW. It is not an especially kind portrait of Lance, but it is not especially malicious either, it just includes him in Tyler Hamilton's personal journey through deciding to and completely succumbing to doping as a means to become a top pro cyclist. No doubt it is unflattering to Lance, but he kind of has set himself up for this eventuality. Details of doping methods, evasion of testing, evasion of authorities are presented. Fascinating as a train wreck. Filled with skinny tiny cycling men riding high in the mountains.

I realize that some people are incapable of accepting that Lance doped and think Tyler Hamilton and all the other pro cyclists who have admitted to doping are liars out to get Lance. If you fall in this category you should read this book and enjoy it as a work of exposing the gritty underbelly of Hamilton's personal journey through cycling. It is an entertaining read. As Bike magazine editor Joe Parkin (and former Hamilton teammate) wrote in his review: "But erase every single sentence alleging a connection between Lance Armstrong and doping, and this book is still a must-read for aspiring bike racers and every fan of the sport." After you read it though, I would like you to come by and explain to me how Lance is innocent and/or "level playing field".

However, if you are anything like me and were once a big Lance fan, and then were only slightly happier than nonplussed when he came back after he retired, and now are 100% sick of his megalomaniac innocence claims, his weird martyr syndrome, and his triathlon career, you probably will really enjoy the parts of the book dealing with Lance. Fascinating guy, not really likable at all, but again it is an interesting extension of the portrait of Lance that was developed in LAW.

Anyhow, there was nothing that really surprised me in this book. Go back and read the list of things that moscaline doping hero Jesus Manzano said he took or was given for some background. But "The Secret Race" is comprehensive with regard to Tyler Hamilton's riding and doping history, showing how a rider viewed as the clean cut, honest, nice guy type gets into the heavy heavy shit. It also shows the ludicrous levels that cyclists went to get their dope on. This book does sweep up many cyclists in its wake, already eliciting some recent preemptive doping admissions from Jonathon Vaughters (here, and a by proxy admission of past doping for Christian Vande Velde, David Zabriskei and Tom Danielson, and a call for cyclists to come clean like Tyler by great champion and admited doper Johan Museeuw. Cycling has often been an extremely dirty business. It is great sport and spectacle, but the human costs are high at the three week grand tour level. I expect we will see many more confessions coming in the wake of this book. Especially if the UCI gets off its ass and figures out an amnesty program (that they should have instituted a decade ago).

Finally, I will leave you with the most exciting thing I learned reading this book:

I knew that Christian Vande Velde's father John was a former olympian and great track racer.

I knew that he invented the Vandedrome, a portable wooden veledrome.

I learned from this book that he played one of the Cinzano bad guys in the film Breaking Away.

Boom.

Mind blown.

I bought myself the kindle version of this book last Thursday night and had it read by Saturday.

Update 9/11/12 8pm:

Hey y'alls, check out the Boulder Report's interview with coauthor Daniel Coyle. Just posted today. The boulder report is pretty much the other reason I stopped writing about doping. Joe Lindsey has been consistently excellent on doping (and pretty much everything else). I can't compete with that anymore. Big Dummy Log hauling photos from moscaline from now on. Guaranteed...

Road Finds of the Week

Good week for road finds:

That is, from top, a kids hunting arrow, some chrome-vanadium pnuematic sockets and a Stanley slashy knife. The arrow was found last weekend up in crested butte just off a trailhead. The sockets were found Saturday morning on the way out (3) and the way back(2 more) from a mountain bike ride here in town. The knife was found at a roadside nature break somewhere between crested butte and gunnison.

This is probably road find utility knife number 7 or 8 in my life. They were all craftsmans initially, but now with the decline of sears and the ascendance of big box stores they are all stanleys. The sockets were a nice treat. They are black coated, so they were sort of hard to recognize initially, but I realized what they were and found three next to each other quickly. I did not see any others, but thought, where there are three, there is bound to be more. I found the two big ones on the way back scattered across a bit of road. I am sure there were more, but they may have fell in the gutter, or been found by others. I will check again on my way to work.

I found the arrow just off a trailhead in Crested Butte. Appeared to have been shot there, been sitting for a while, buried except for the yellow feathers at the end. ICS hunter junior edition, limit 40lbs. Can't say I am a big fan of finding arrows on or near trails.

I must be in the front row, Salem Red Sox 8/29/12

Must be in that front row

If I told you the Boston Red Sox high A affiliate was in Salem, would you guess that that would be in Salem Virginia? Not Salem Mass? Not me, but with an evening to kill in Roanoke last week ater a meeting, I figured I could do worse than spend the night watching some baseball.

Virginia, no witches burned here

I have been watching a fair amount of Albuquerque Isotopes games since I moved to New Mexico and really enjoying the quality and price and environment at the games. I had some low expectations for a single A game, as last time I went to one (Greensboro Bats, 2004, I was treated to atrocious fielding and bad beer.

I got to the stadium a bit early, scored an $11 ticket in the front row behind home plate. Bought me a cap $26, a good beer (new Belgium Somersault, suprisingly good, on tap) $6.25, and a pulled pork sammich with fries $7.25. Ate all that, then got some peanuts $3.50, and another beer (Local Roanoke brewpub something also good) $6.25, and then spending cash depleted to zero, I settled in for some baseball.

The national anthem was sung well by a young woman, no one as far as I could tell threw out the ceremonial first pitch, and the game was on.

First Pitch

Front row seating with the net is weird. I think I probably would not have died if the net was not there. It is a bit distracting to have the net in your field of view. I probably lost out on 3 or 4 foul balls. But I could relax and not have to be hyper aware all the time. The stadium was pretty empty, maybe 1/4 full. No one was sitting near me at all. The field was nice, with an odd 20 foot high wall around the entire outfield. They also had a mini fenway wiffleball field tucked around one of the corners of the stadium, there were a few kids in there tossing footballs.

Full moon baseball action

Anyhow, it was an extremely pleasant night, warm, but not hot, full moon rising off the third base line. Reasonably well played game. No excessive errors, although slightly sloppy play in the field. Salem's starting pitcher, Keith Couch, was really good for 5 innings before he lost his stuff and gave up 5 runs in the 5th and 6th inning. The only other player of note was Salem's third basemen Michael Almanzar, seemed to be pretty slick fielding third (although he is listed as a first basemen) and hit pretty well, especially if he is a third basemen.

Requisite odd Minor League Mascot, Muggsy the gopher dog, or something

Amusements included bad umpire angles at fielded plays throughout the game as there were only two hard working umpires to call the game. One behind the plate, one in the infield. Players who complained about calls got tattled on by the umpire to the coach. New and unfortunate park traditions such as "cotton eyed joe" and "sweet carolina" were played out between innings. No condiment or ballpark treat race in the field. Lots of on the field contests between innings. Occasional t-shirt shooting. Game ended in a tie in the 9th, at least it did for me, as I was pooped and had an early flight the next morning. There was some walk off home run action in the 10th that I missed, but alas, I am human. Anyhow, minor league baseball gets the moscaline seal of approval.