ndanger.organism

Another year, another 164 miles.

Saturday was 100 miles in ~5.5 hours, Sunday was 64 miles in ~3.25 hours, which puts my times pretty close to last year’s despite being on a road bike. So the road bike didn’t add much speed, but I’ve got to say my joints sure felt a lot better this year. Also last year I did some last minute cramming by riding to Ohiopyle and back (150 miles). This year my cramming was riding the Pittsburgh-Roubaix course, all 40 miles of it. Combined with the mountain biking and step running, my training this year perfectly prepared me for short intense rides, not 100 miles of rolling terrain. Oh well.

Thanks to all those who donated. I raised $155 online, probably around $100 in cash & checks and $400 in matching team funds (which is new this year, normally team funds only go to current employees, not ex hanger-ons like me).

If you didn’t get a chance to donate, don’t worry! Donations can keep coming in until July sometime. Email me or donate online. Thanks!

Hey hey, it’s that time again…. TIME FOR ME TO BEG FOR MONEY! I’m riding the MS-150 in two weeks, and I have to raise $200, but I’m shooting for $300.

“Dave,” you say “why didn’t you start soliciting earlier?”. Well why don’t you just shut that yap of yours, hmm?

Anyway, all donations go to a good cause and are appreciated, both by the MS Society and by me. There’s more information at my MS-150 page.

Rob tried to comment got both a rejection by WP-IDS and a nice PHP error message about missing paths. Woo boy.

The error was probably caused by a configuration error that I think I fixed. But I’ve got no idea why the comment was rejected in the first place.

If the same thing happens to me let me know and I’ll try to fix things.

Hey-o,

My friend Jack is selling some bikes. They’re mountain bikes which are super ocol. Plus they’re cheap. Email me if you’re interested and I’ll pass it along to Jack (I don’t want to out his email address on the web).

He says:

The green Kona needs some love, but the steel frame is still in very good condition. I’ll let it go for $50.

Update: 18″ frame. Here are some specs

(click for full-size pics)

The white GT is in really good shape. Jess took good care of it. It’s got an aluminum frame that was the same frame that GT used on several of their higher-end bikes that year, so it would make a great bike to start with that can be upgraded as fit. It’s ready to go right now for someone looking to get started. We want $100 for it.

Update: 14.5″ frame. specs.
(click for full-size pics)

Kristen is shown in it’s natural habitat: weather-proofed windows and dying plants.

Despite the big stack of “oh shit” spacers above the stem, I think I’ve finally got Kristen dialed in. The only thing I might change is adding a set-back seatpost, but I’ll have to ride it more before I decide.

Quick take-aways? Mountain biking is fun, Avid makes great brakes & levers, and 2.14 WTB MotoRaptors are way lighter than 2.4″ Ritchey MotoVaders. Oh, and Thomson is solid stuff.

And now for a sexy portrait:

Gosh she sure is pretty.

Since Wordpress 2.3 added support for tags, I’ve moved my old categories to tags and created some new ones:

Cycling

Info about bikes

LOTD

Link of the day

Misc

Everything else

Music

Chunes

Programming

Computer related

Categories will be stable and let you filter down to the posts you care about. So if you find yourself saying “cygwho?”, maybe Programming isn’t for you.

The plan is to add some display of tags later. But man, tag clouds sure are ugly.

Implementation

Moving the categories around wasn’t too bad using the built-in cat2tag and Rob Miller’s Batch Categories plugin.

Due to continued space and power constraints in our primary data center,
we will be moving the “randy” cluster to one of our newer data centers.
This move will begin Friday, February 8, at 10PM PST, and is expected to
last up to 8 hours, until Saturday, February 9, 6AM PST. All web servers,
mail servers, file servers, and MySQL servers in the randy cluster will be
unreachable during this time.

Fear not, loyal readers! It is only 8 hours.

(Really) sad bike news

Sheldon Brown is dead. RIP

A lighter ending

Another reason I live alone: washing mountain bike in shower

I’ve spent a bunch of time over the past few weeks organizing a bike race. Well now it’s done. Maybe that’s why this is my fourth post today.

Looks like Justin has made the big-times… yes indeed, the MS-150 homepage. Also check out his pittsburgh alleycats myspace page.

it’s cold.

And I had to go scout out more routes for the aptly named Frozen Hell. You owe me, Pittsburgh alleycat scene, you owe me.

A Frozen Hell

What

A cold, muddy, frozen hell. It’s a fixed course, continuous (no checkpoints) race that will cover open roads, fireroads, and some singletrack. Mountain bike, cyclocross skills, and/or the willingness to walk certain sections recommended. Followed by post race potluck… sponsored by pabst!

When

Sunday, January 27th
Race: registration at noon, 1pm start
Potluck: 2p until 7pm

Where

Race: The Smiling Moose
Potluck: 542 celeron st #2–upstairs

How much

Race: $5 or free if you bring something for the potluck
Potluck: bring your favoritest food or drank

Prizes?

Nope. This one’s for the glory. Maybe I’ll make you a golden spoke card or something

Come out and race through the woods in January… I’m hoping for snow. Or just come to the potluck. Or do both! I’m trying to get an estimated attendance so pabst knows how much beer to give us. Please email me at dave@pghalleycat.com and let me know if you’re going to race or come to the potluck! I need to know so we can get free beer!

A flyer and the course will be up by Sunday, so you have a week to pre-ride the route. The course will also be marked on race day.

Thanks again to Pabst!

Casey’s bike & Iris II

Casey needed a beater winter commuter frame, so I ordered her an IRO group buy frame. For those that missed it, it was $150 + S&H for something like the Mark V Pro (though I think it had special tubing). At that price, I might as well order two, right? So I picked up the blue & green and let her pick the color she wanted.

She went with the blue. Put on some mountain flat bars, her old orange brake levers, cheapie Nashbar brakes, Concor saddle (now changed), cages & green straps, and my old wheels. The wheels will soon be orange Velocity mid-V’s. Oh, and I almost forgot her green bell that matches her straps. A nice accessory, though I have to say I’ve never seen her use it.

I took the green one and built up the 2nd version of Iris. The first Iris was an IRO Jamie Roy. She’s now hanging on my wall and destined to be stripped and re-painted. It’s basically all of my old components but with the change to the pimped Thomas Masterpiece seatpost that had been in fallow.

Go roadie, go!

Josh hooked me up with a Cannondale over the summer and I rode it… well, hardly at all. In fact the most use it got was when B. Funk borrowed it for the MS-150. Anyway, I finally decided to get it polished. Ultegra 9/10 speed rear derailleur & front double. Ultegra 12-25 rear cassette. Ted’s old right hand STI. The front shifter is still downtube, mostly because I didn’t have a left lever. Also swapped the bars & stem. So far I’ve just taken it for a test ride but it’s pretty fun. It tracks really well. I don’t feel comfortable on it yet, mostly becaues I’m stuck between the instinct that I’m on a fixed gear (so coasting weirds me out) or that I’m on my old road bike (so I forget how to shift the front). I guess I’ll learn.

See what’s been keeping me quiet for the last few weeks:

Pittsburgh’s 1st Annual Pirate Bike Triathlon

So I managed to win the Tour de Yinz Prologue!

I finished the 5.5 miles in 13:39 for an average pace of–holy crap–25.4 miles per hour. That’s way better than I thought I’d do (I was thinking 23 mph for a little less than 14:30). It was 13 seconds faster than Jon Lomax’s pace and another few seconds better than Jimmy. Though to be fair they were both running wack gears: Jon was too mash at 49×14 and Jimmy too spin at 46×16. Iris’s 49×15 was perfect.

The only prize is a time bonus in next Saturday’s full event, which makes me feel like I should come out of alleycat retirement. We’ll see.

Full results are on Justin’s blog.

Went for a ride yesterday for lunch:

Nice 15 miler. Started with a time trial on the trail then headed for some climbs:

But the big news is I climbed Sycamore again. Woo hoo! And this time I was in my road gear (49×18)–which means I looked like death the whole way up. Dead or no, my biking goal this summer was to climb Sycamore fixed…

Check!

A week or two ago I ordered a fork from Bikeman. Unfortunately they sent the wrong size(1″ instead of 1 1/8″). Kind of irritating. So I sat around for 2 weeks before finally emailing. They asked me to call, so I called in and talked to Joel. He was the most apologetic / helpful dude ever. They’re emailing me a pre-paid UPS return label and crediting me the cost of the fork & shipping.

I’ve always liked Bikeman because they ship fast, have a good selection & are cheap. Now I like them because they are awesome.

Crime and perception is an interesting article on Cyclelicious about bikes & breaking the law. The premise is that driver’s deride cyclists lane splitting and red-light running while conveniently ignoring their own red-light running, speeding, failure to yield, double parking, etc etc etc.

I agree. But it’s different than my personal justification for running lights: the effects of illegal biking are far less dangerous. I might scratch your hood and raise your car insurance, but I’d gladly swap for my ER trip. In short, car’s are more dangerous; their operation requires more responsibility. That’s probably why you need a license to drive one. By analogy, car + 18-wheeler = bad news for the car. Hence truckers need a commercial license.

Most driver’s acknowledge the discrepancy. How often have you heard “cyclists need to be careful because regardless of right or wrong it’s their life.” While this is completely true–which is why I approach every green light ready to stop–it places the responsibility of survival solely on the cyclist. Isn’t the responsibility of the large and deadly to protect the vulnerable?

To complete the analogy, are trucker’s running around saying “Those cars better get out of my way because if I’m not paying attention I’ll crush them like ants”?

Inspired by the link to 1985 Paris Roubaix video that Brian posted on the Bike Pittsburgh forum, I test rode the Pittsburgh-Roubaix course.

Whew! Riding that course at race speeds is fun/awesome/hard/. I started strong (20mph?) but after Stanton I rode a massive 6-7 mph to Murray Hill. Then I flew it up the hill at… I dunno, 3mph? Anyway, I picked it back up down Forbes and through Wilkinsburg.

In the end, I left at 12:30 and finished my three laps at 3pm; around 2.5 hours for a 15-16mph average. That was about my goal, so I guess the bonkage wasn’t too bad.

If you’re planning on riding:

Your friends:

• 2 water bottles
• gatorade
• pasta dinner on Saturday night

Your enemies:

• 90 degree weather
• headwind
• sweat in your eyes
• road construction

See you on Sunday!

It looks like Ken is trying to stay up for a long time in preparation for next year’s Crush the Commonwealth. Good luck!