Some thoughts on my Cat

Wink256:

eats obsessively

will harangue us repeatedly when we try to put him on a diet

eats too fast and vomits immediately, often on something we like

is too lazy to walk around to the door that is open and will paw at the door that is closed

is developing a habit of pooping NEAR the litterbox, but not in it.

Is still the only cat that will go on a ride with me.




Thanks little buddy.
previous wink256 bicycle adventures here

Snakes in the House

We had a bumper crop of snakes in the yard this year.



Apparently snakes don't have ears, as the well belled cats have been picking them off easily. As many as three or four a day. For the most part they are playing catch and release, they catchem and play with them. I yell at the cats and I release em.





I assume these are Garter Snakes of the New Mexican variety, sounds like a single female can have up to 50 live offspring, so maybe we had one particularly fertile couple in the yard.



For the most part, the snakes have been released with minor damage, but two have been killed. This big one early in the season:



and this one that got smashed in the door when it was hiding under the flashing:



I think I have rescued snakes 12 times so far this year, I think there were some repeat customers, but for the most part they are unique.



I assume that these snakes have been keeping down the grasshoppers in the yard and may grow to eat gophers, so I would love to keep them around. Anyone need some guaranteed proven snake catching cats?

More Minneapolis Stuff

In addition to working and visiting the LFOAB I had some other fun

Twinkies lose a close one to the A's at the Metrodome

Man is the metrodome terrible. Even half full it is deafening and the astroturf has mange. But it was still fun to go to a game and spend $6.50 on a watery beer.

Got to see A's wunderkid Brad Zeigler pitch. I had no idea he was a submariner, almost as fun as a knuckler:




I also visited Hurl at CarsRCoffins a few times. Hurl and I go way back to the old days of racing sting rays over top of fallen drunkards at bike events. His bike/coffee shop is really nice and filled with old bikes and good coffees and cookies.

Schwinn and Bianchi Goodness

and yes, I bought a carsrcoffins onesie.


Me and Hurl


Good stuff Hurl. Next time maybe we ride.

Also, lost in the last post was that I met Bob Brown finally. I think I have been in Email contact with him for about 10 years. It was great to meet him and ride with him. Too keep with the pointy photo theme:


image stolen from LFOAB, click for source

In addition to having geeky engineering discussions with Bob, I got a chance to check out his excellent handiwork on Scott and Amy's bikes as well as one of his sns coupled bike at One-on-one. He also told me the secret to the copper coated bike that he made for Amy. Its people! Its coated with People!

Copper and People coated BB frame:


It is hard to tell from the photo above, but Bob looks like freakily like my buddy Mark Bishop. I think they are related. Which one of you is the orphink?

Finally, I got a chance to swing by the One On One bike studio coffee bar on my way out of town. It is excellent. The bike shop/coffee shop is a hard trick to pull off, but they seem to have two gooduns in minneapolis.

One-on-one shop front with custom racks

Next to Sex World a block from the Mississippi.

Big Dummy-Bison-Elk

I think I saw at least 6 big dummys in MN. They are everywhere. You cannot escape them. One on one had perhaps the best taxidermied head collection I have ever seen in a bike shop. The studio was clean and displayed bikes with plenty of room to browse and drool. But then. There was the basement.

The basement starts organized

Used bikes galore stacked up and well labeled.

Then descends into bicycle madness


The further you go in the basement the more chaos reigns. I think I saw a CHUD lurking in a corner behind a rusted out Shelby Flyer. There was so much good stuff down there that I was unable to process, cooler heads would have grabbed the huge box of internally geared hubs and ran for the Canadian border, but my circuits fried pretty quick when I got in the basement.

All in all, Good show minneapolis, I hope I will be back.

A Visit with the Large Feller!

I was up there in Minneapolis for some work and got a chance to do some riding and visiting with the LFOAB©™® and his family. Good stuff!

Bob Brown, Scott aka LFOAB, Amy/Chloe, me over the missisippi


Scott and I are clearly operating on more or less the same wavelength. I blame too much time spent in New Jersey. After knowing him through the e-net for a couple of years and speaking to him once or twice a few years ago, it was great to actually meet him face to face. He is a good fucker. He also has a great story about the redemptive power of bicycling and vegetable based eating, if you are not, for some reason, aware of his dealy-o check out this article in the Star Tribune. Not to belabor things, but he looks great, is at something like 1 Tarik in weight and it is difficult to tell that he has not been a hard core urban cyclist for his whole life. Also he is a huge local bike celebrity and has at least one, possibly more creepy people who sort of stalk him! Much respect.


After my work duties were done, I rolled from bloomington strip mall hell uptown to the minnihaha greenway through some fine urban singletrack and past the hordes of post work cyclepath olympians to a nice bench where Scott met me on his El Dumbino met me and rode with me back up to his house.

I live for urban singletrack



There I met his wife Amy and daughter Chloe and The Most Productive Man Alive©™®: Bob Brown. We had some beers and delicious algae water from the fine minneapolis tap and then went for a ride about town. Hitting key sites such as the mighty river, the new stadium construction site and the Gehry Museum at the UM thingy.

Scott and Chloe on el Dumbino, BBBB patrolling the rear of the peleton


After riding, it was time for eating. We had some sort of delicious chickpea derived dinner that Scott and Amy whipped consisting of two courses, pickled chick peas and the hummus wrap of the gods. It was good. I got covered in glowing yellow mustard was well sated. Following was good conversation ranging from corrosion science to blogging to evil to frame building to bees, catheters and spiders. At some point I was fading fast and it was well after eleven and then Scott let me in on a little secret: He and his family are pretty much vampires, due to Amy's shifts they don't sleep at night to maximize family time, and the meal we just had was lunch for them. Wooooo! With this knowledge Bob and I had to beg off and head for home. Before I left I was generously gifted some new tires for my friday, some I Piss Excellence©™®stickers and a few BBKenwood waterbottles. Thanks Pals!

Bob graciously rode with me to back to where I could find my way home and I headed off on the Minnihaha Parkway home. After nearly getting killed by a few stealth cyclists and at least 6 different bunnies with murderous intent and getting nearly abducted by UFO's, I got back to the hotel and slept like the dead. Something like 35 miles on the day.

After working the next day, I rode uptown to say hi to old buddy Hurl at his CarsRCoffins Coffee Bar Cycle garage. He was busy working and getting ready for single speed worlds so we caught up a bit and he pointed me out front where the whole Cutshall family was sitting having some how stalked me in advanced. Well played. So I got me a spinach wrap and sat down for more conversions. While we talked, we watched Chloe, just recently riding without training wheels derby this guy into the ground. A short while later we rolled out for a stately family ride out to one of the lakes for some beach sitting conversing and rock hucking.


Derby Queen Chloe and a custom Snap Deck on a Big Dummy



Alas all good thing must end and I had to get some sleep before working the next day so I headed off into the sunset leaving the famiglia LFOAB behind. It was great meeting all you minnehapasotanhahas.



It was a pretty quick business trip,monday-thursday, but I did manage to get in three rides on the fixie friday, see the Cuttshall clan twice, meet up with Hurl again after many years, visit the CRC cyclegarage coffee shop, meet Bob Brown and sneak in a trip to One on One Bike studio on the long long way to the airport. Also: twins game in possibly one of the worst places to watch a baseball game ever. Minneapolis, good place in the summer at least. Did not see Prince. Perhaps more later. I am still pooped.
All the minneapolis pics
LFOAB's take on the evening

PS to Scott, check the new masthead tag line , thats "blog gold" with a "©™®"

Minnihaha Midnight Ride

with tires on the neck

SmartBike DC launches?

Spotted this randomly on flickr:

click image for source

I think that means smart bike has launched in DC. Any confirmation? Dad? Anyone?

I love the superchopper look on these. Looks like they have the exact same racks and interface as Dijons velodi program. Also the handlebars/rack/light combination is pretty styling...

Update 8/22/08
Commenters say they have launched. Go DC! I hope there are a million return places!
Also a commenter pointed out that these are the same bikes that stockholm has (possibly one of the spanish cities too). It turns out I already blogged these bikes:
here with this photo that I stole from my pal LauritaLaurita:


click for source

Best cyclist ever

Jason McCartney, Team CSC Saxobank pro, two time olympian, all around bike lover, is featured in todays NYT on a nice short piece on cycling in Beijing. Check the slide show, this is exactly what I did when I was in China. Ride around on a city bike gawking at other cyclists and taking pictures. There is also a fabulously geeky pic of him and canadian olympian michael barry riding around together on their rented city bikes in beijing. The audio slide show is great. Note the ropey calves, note the low seats, great stuff.


click for source.

New York Times Article on Jason McCartney riding in Beijing

Previous blog post on Pro cyclist grocery bikes featuring McCartney, Michael Barry and Dede Demet Barry.

Moscaline Legui Photo Call

From my pal Marc Pfister on 3/2/2007:

(click for source)

From me, 7/17/2008:


Anyone else? Please email me a photo or a link and I will post it. That goes for future trips too. Lots of the coolest bikes in Paris seemed to live on the street, some might be abandoned, some might be daily riders. So lets study this one. It has been on the same tree for at least 16 months, probably since time began.

The bike, a nice legui, the place, somewhere pretty damn obvious in Les Halles near the metro. You all are a worldly bunch, go forth and photo!

I am a wheel building master

Lose the rim and you can save some serious weight.

Velodi, Dijon's free public bike system

When I was off in france a couple of weeks ago, I utterly and completely failed to ride Paris' vaunted Velib system. It is not particularly user friendly for americans. The short story is that you need a eurostyle credit card with a chip or an American Express Card (AMEX not verified by me, but a trustworthy source deems it possible) to use the system in Paris. However, Dijon has a similar system and all you need is a access to the internet and a credit card and you can get a access number and a pin for 1 euro. So I did it and I rode it. Here are the details:



The bikes were not quite as space age as the Velib bike, but they were well appointed. Shimano three speed nexus hub with roller brake on the rear, shimano roller braked generator hub up front. Shaft drive. Fenders. Skirt guard. Front basket. Front LED light with standlight. Rear red LED generator driven light with standlight. Upright bars. QR seatpost for quick adjustment, but with a positive stop so you could not steal the seatpost. Special locked hubnuts. cable lock integral to the basket, with a key. Most uncomfortable seats known to man. Stations pretty much EVERYWHERE you would ever want to go in dijon, 33 stations in a city of less than 200,000.

They have a good website in french at Velodi.net that has all the info you need. If you are french impared you need to get to the main page and click "Formule Liberté" to sign up for a pass with your credit card. It costs you 1 euro (about $1.60 when I was there) for a year of access ( I think, I thought I was signing up for a week, but it was unclear as I am moderately french impared). Using a bike is free for the first half hour, 0.30 euro for each additional half hour, up to 4 hours or so and then 4 euro an hour afterwards. If you do not return a bike, they can charge you 150 euros to the card you used.

Skirt guard is riveted to the SKS type fenders, shaft drive


They were pretty fun to ride. The shaft drive was reasonable for town riding, there was a bit of odd slop, but the three speed hubs were somewhat dodgily adjusted so it was hard to tell what was a hub effect and what was from the shaft drive. The bars seemed to be reasonable for people in the 5' to 6' range, the seat certainly went higher, many taller people were riding them, but the bars might be a bit low. The fenders were pretty much sks type and often were in poor alignment. The lights were stock shimano dynohub type wiring and frequently the lights were not functioning.

Velodi Kiosk. With map of surrounding stations. Both English and French supported.


The kiosks were pretty easy to use. They operated in both english and french. You type in your access code and pin and the kiosk tells you what bike to use. The bike is unlocked for a period of time and you go and remove it from the rack.

If you had a cell phone, you could send a text message and, with your credit card, get a code in a few minutes after some texting. It is not obvious from the kiosk that you can get a code on the web, but the nice lady at the visitors center clued me in.

Riveted skirt guard, the logo is an owl, the a symbol of Dijon, note the excellent theft proof hub nuts, note the nice "coaster brake tab", note the out the back dropouts, note all the braze ons on the dropouts. Nice aero rims plus fat Schwalbe Marathon 26" (559) tires.


It was not entirely clear what would happen if the kiosk directed you to a bike that was disabled. There were hints of procedures to follow and numbers to call, but I could not quite figure it out. That said, the Velodi bikes, ignoring the frequently disabled lights, were in pretty good repair. the Velib bikes in Paris seemed to have a lot of bikes with flats, not obviously a problem in Dijon.

excellent baskets with protected lights. The knobs hanging down slot into the velodi racks and lock in when you return the bike. The lock is the cable under the light, you can make out the key, there is an integral bungee cord to hold down things in the basket.


However there were a couple of rules that were not obvious. When you return a bike, you can not pick up another one for 10 minutes. This is to prevent you from "hogging" bikes for free by returning and then picking them up in the half hour time limit. The downside is that you can not trade a bike with a mechanical with one that works in a timely manner. Not a big problem if you are near a cafe, but once this caused me and a pal to walk to the next station to find bikes with functioning lights at night. Along these lines, I once returned a bike to a station that was out of service. It accepted the bike but I was unable to rent one from that station again so I had to walk to another station. Not a big deal as the stations are pretty dense.

Super low step through frames with burly welded junctions


Dijon was a pleasure to ride around. There was a fair amount of traffic on fairly narrow streets, but there were bike lanes everywhere, although not particularly well thought out ones. The cars in the center of Dijon were pretty cognizant of huge numbers of cyclists riding poorly on the velodi bikes. It was pretty fun. Lots of cobblestone streets and signs that permitted riding the wrong way on one way streets and up streets that cars were normally prohibited from:




That said, not all streets allowed this. Specifically outside the touristy center of the town. My pal Shannon and I had a run in with the local constabulary over just this issue. I will write about this more later, but I learned that small town bored cops are pretty much the same everywhere. If you are riding in Dijon, it probably would behoove you to become familiar with the extremely subtle traffic lights and street markings in town. There is no double yellow line on streets and there are some streets that to me, even after a week in Dijon, were not obviously one or two way based on street signs and lines.

pal Shannon demonstrating skirt ridability and extreme reflecty sidewalls on the bikes


All in all the velodi bikes were pretty cool. I meant to go on an extended ride out along a canal townpath outside of town, but the combination of very uncomfortable seats and numerous thunderstorms blowing through led me to just sit around and drink espressos. They were ideal for cruising around town. I never had problems finding one when I needed it, and in a week of riding, all but one rack I encountered had return spaces available. When I was in Paris there was clear evidence of people jockying around looking for open places to return their bikes. A few racks near transit centers were either completely empty, or nearly so, in the morning and near full after work, indicative of locals from outside of town using the bikes to connect from the bus or train in, to their jobs in the morning.

The Velodi bikes, and systems like this, are a great boon to a city. It is important that the bikes are bombproof, available and easy to obtain. The key to success seems to be enough bikes and stations to support short jaunts and easy returns. Come hell or high water, I will be holding a credit card that allows me to use the Velib bikes in paris next time I return. Near as I can tell at least three or four cities in the US (Albuquerque, DC, Chicago and possibly San Francisco) are on the verge of launching a system like this. I sez, bring it on, make sure there are twice as many bikes and stations as you think you need. Yeaaaaaaaah Bicycles!

Tag, stop it, crap, sorry, here goes

I have steadfastly ignored about 10 people blog tagging me in the last couple of years. I am sorry. I am so overwhelmed with internal ideas for my blog that I don't have the blogenergy to respond to most of these requests, I barely have the time to do justice to the shitstorm of blog gold that occurs in my mind on a daily basis. Infact, I occasionally drink heavily so that the words "blog gold" stop appearing in my mind. Most of the people who tag me I like alot and I enjoy their blogs thoroughly and even enjoy their answers to their "tagged" stuff. But I never play along. But this time I will. kent tagged me for some sort of bike related questionnaire.

I will respond this time only as:
1. it is Kent who was at one point personally responsible for 20% of my blog traffic
2. Kent should wear rock star sunglasses as he is bicycle flavored rock star and one must respect that.
3. Kent actually tagged me with something that is related to my mission statement (bikes and cats in the high desert)
4. This finally gets me to address the whole tagging phenomena and say, please. stop. tagging. me. Tag someone who never updates their blog. Watch me how I do it at the end.

Ok, here goes:
If you could have any one — and only one — bike in the world, what would it be?
Easy. Single speed cyclocross bike with flip flop 36-18 on freewheel and a 36-16 on fixie and clearance for 700x45mm tires. Infact I have had this bike since august 1996 and other than some youthful steertube cutting exuberance, it is still perfect. It has done time as my messenger bike, mountain bike, cross bike, commuter bike, race mountain bike, loaner bike, broken bike, fixed bike, etc:


Do you already have that coveted dream bike? If so, is it everything you hoped it would be? If not, are you working toward getting it? If you’re not working toward getting it, why not?
I already have it and ride it 100 miles a year or less, mostly in cross races. It needs a longer fork. I am not 24 any more. With a longer fork and some luck it will make it another 10 years. It probably will break as soon as I start riding it more though, so it is dicey.

What kind of sick person would force another person to ride one and only one bike ride to to do for the rest of her / his life?
The logistics of getting rid of enough bikes so that I would only have one to ride are so improbable that no evil sickness or villany is capable.

Do you ride both road and mountain bikes? If both, which do you prefer and why? If only one or the other, why are you so narrowminded?
Yes. this is a dumb question. I prefer the bike I am riding.

Have you ever ridden a recumbent? If so, why? If not, describe the circumstances under which you would ride a recumbent.
I have ridden, raced and built high speed faired recumbents. I have no problem with recumbents but find them exceptionally poor solutions for my current cycling needs.
Me and three others built this thing as a prototype:


Have you ever raced a triathlon? If so, have you also ever tried strangling yourself with dental floss?
Yep, lots of triathlons. The second part of this question makes me vow never to participate in a tagging exercise again.

Suppose you were forced to either give up ice cream or bicycles for the rest of your life. Which would you give up, and why?
Plain old mean. I would give up ice cream and seek vengeance on those who made me choose.

If you had to choose one — and only one — bike route to do every day for the rest of your life, what would it be, and why?M
Oakland, Royal coffee to claremont to tunnel to skyline, long cut on the fire road in Redwood park, back to skyline, hang a left at the intersection with Joaquin miller hook up with Redwood to pinehurst, twist about and then climb back up to skyline and then, hmm, probably back on skyline over grizzily peaks down the back side on that lomas encantadas road through the closed to cars (still?) bridge up wildcat and then down to berkeley for dinner at the pizza collective.


You’re riding your bike in the wilderness (if you’re a roadie, you’re on a road, but otherwise the surroundings are quite wilderness-like) and you see a bear. The bear sees you. What do you do?
Somehow this has not happened to me yet. This happens to everyone else around here though. I am pretty sure I would try to document it for the blog. "hot damn, Blog gold" I would think.

Now, tag three biking bloggers. List them below.
Ok, I tag anyone reading this who has not updated their blog in more than two weeks. Everyone else, ignore this. Finally:
Please. Stop. Tagging. Me.

Thanks

Beautiful

In prelude I will avow that I certainly hope that the dope testers have their act together, but this really makes me smile:
from ap feed on yahoo sports

...Roche Pharmaceuticals placed a molecule in its product CERA— Continuous Erythropietin Receptor Activator—when developing the drug to help anti-doping authorities detect illegal use.


Yeah science! While a small tiny victory in keeping cycling clean, this is the kind of thing that should be expected if you are going after doping the right way. Go to the producers and get their help in making a test for their drug. Do it before it is easily available. Use scientists.

kudos to all involved. I would like to think that the tight top 10 in the tour this year after some truly outrageous mountain stage is due to some excellent doping controls leading to a pretty level playing field among the freakishly gifted.

But I am psyched for the science. Really, scientists are good at what they do and it probably helps to ask the right questions. And perhaps, the involvement of the science types got ricco kicked out on stage 12 wearing the polkadots instead of on stage 21 wearing yellow...

Please please please let whoever the hell is doing the doping controls this year have their ducks in a row.

Also, are you watching? It is a good good tour. Again. Oh the Drama, the suffering, the nearly naked people falling asunder at 70 kph. Must sleep so I can awake mighty early and then play some flex time enhanced hooky to watch the tiny little men go over two huge passes and only then tackle l'alpe. I told my boss that tomorrow is a national holiday for my people. He looked so confused that I had to explain that it was not some sort of crypto-jersey religious ritual, but was in fact the queen stage.

All the france photos

OK, I finally got all the photos from the france trip up online, some 250 photos mostly of bikes and the like. So if you want to see the hordes surf on over to:
Paris Bikes
Dijon Bikes
and then, if you are hungry or thirsty, you might like:
French Eats
all the photos under the umbrella:
France trip

Anyhoo, here are some appetizers of my somewhat obsessive streetside bike photography:







Lots of good 650b stuff seen all over.

Hey Ricco

Hey Ricardo Ricco,

What the fuck?

Love,
Everyone

Back

I went and returned and utterly failed to rent the Velib bikes.



but I figured out the similar system in Dijon. woo. Much more to follow