Where Ever I Am, there's my bike

I am NOT a carrott!

2010-10-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

I spent a lot of time riding with Carmen over the summer. Carmen's done a lot of touring, and visited a lot of cool places. The first time she mentioned this, I said that bike touring sounded like the perfect holiday.
I've always preferred staying at home to going places. I've never liked travelling. I've never seen the point. But maybe that was just before I started riding my bike. I've never seen the point of sitting in a car for four hours, driving around to find somewhere to park, to eat, to sleep. Then getting out and walking around shops (I hate shopping), getting bumped into by hurried, busy, angry people. This is how the holidays I've been on always seemed to go. What's the point of travelling all that way to do that. Honestly, I'd much rather be at work, in a familiar place, with my friends, hunting out coffin shaped shipping boxes to jump out of and scare my manager to bits.
I think the bike is the perfect method of transport. I don't like cars. (Not as transport anyway, but as recreation/sport I can see the appeal, in the same way as competitive cycling). Not because of "the environment" or anything like that, just because car journeys are boring, and nothing ever seems to be gained from them. In a car, you sit in a suspended, air conditioned, climate controlled box with the surroundings whooshing by at 100 km/h, in anatomically shaped and cushioned seats, with no passenger input (let alone effort) required. You might as well be teleported to your destination. Except teleportation is instant. Often more time is spent in the car travelling to and from the destination than is spent at the destination itself.
I also don't like cities. I don't like how people are in cities. People in cities don't see other people as individuals, just as a crowd, or as cashiers, bus drivers, or whatever, and this seems allow people to be rude and dismissive to others. I always seem to come back from the city angry.
The problem with bikes (and the major advantage of cars) is distance. For a day trip, I'm limited to about a 60 km radius. I could ride more than 120 km in a day, but any more would leave no time at the destination. Camping had never occurred to me. So I planned to ride to a hostel and stay overnight, then ride back. Or for longer "tours", to ride between hostels. I figured I could probably get everything I needed into a bag that I could strap under the saddle of my road bike. So I started research possible places and routes for a holiday, and it soon became apparent that there would be a lot I was missing out on if I had to find a hostel every night, especially in Canada, and hostels are usually in populated areas. I've never been camping before, unless you count sleeping Nigel's caravan awning on couch cushions, but the more thinking and reading I did, the more my plans moved towards full-on touring. So I needed a bike that could carry stuff, so I bought a Surly Cross Check frameset and put a mountain bike drivetrain on it and the wheels from the Lemond. I bought a tent and sleeping mat, and a Trangia stove, but the sleeping bag was going to be an issue.
When I was little my sleeping bag was rectangular, the same thickness as the quilt I had at home, and packed to the size of a straw bale. When I looked around (online, of course) to see what sort of sleeping bag I should get, I found that sleeping bags are now all carrot-shaped, bag of duck hair, and pack to the size of "large cantaloupes". This was a little perplexing to begin with, and not just because I still get cantaloupes confused with antelopes, but because I'm not shaped like a carrot. I certainly don't sleep in the shape of a carrot. I sleep like an egg, but they don't seem to make egg shaped sleeping bags, so what should I do? Does no one else sleep like an egg? How do you fit an egg inside a carrot? Although I could find no information on egg-shaped sleepers, I was able to find recommendations from starfish-shaped sleepers, and I now own a "MontBell Super Stretch Spiral Burrow Bag". Because of the elastic in it, it makes me look more like a fetal termite than an egg, it's make of synthetic duck hair, and although smaller than a bale (and an antelope), it's much bigger than a cantaloupe.
So, with termite-shaped bag in hand (well, on rack), I headed out for my first trip last weekend.
I rode to Croften, took the ferry to Saltspring, and rode down to Ruckle Park to camp for the night. After running errands in town, figuring how to get all the stuff strapped to the bike, and fixing a flat (air was leaking out from around the valve stem, but the tube must be several years old, as I've had that tire on that wheel for nearly two years and never had a flat (Michelin Krylions are great!), but the tube had six patches on), having to come back because I'd forgotten water bottles, missing the hourly ferry by 5 minutes, and stopping at the bakery for a muffin, I got to Ruckle Park at about 3:30 pm.
Saturday was a really warm day. It was as warm and sunny as summer, but the air was damp and it is definitely autumn. It rained all night, but had stopped by 5 am when I woke up (I start work at 7 am now, so get up early by habit). There was thick fog, that cleared up soon after it got light. I made a cup of tea and some breakfast, packed up, and headed back along a different road that was very twisty and up-and-downy, but nice and quiet.
Where to go next?

sex with melons

2010-07-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

Well, it's July now. And nothing's different. Same old, same old, same old.
Work, sleep, work, sleep, ride, work, sleep, work...
Except all the tiny things that pop up and make you think, "Crap, is it time for that already?"
Jeff was looking through the pile for my pay cheque yesterday, and I told him I'd already got it. But when he found it, I realized that that was two weeks ago, and it was time for the next.

The weather's been nice, except for rainy and windy Sundays and Mondays, and Canada Day of course. I went down to Victoria to watch the fireworks with Caitrin and Ian. There weren't as many people down there as I'd expected, and not as much red and white either.
Summer solstice is gone. I've been meaning to do a long ride on that day for the last three years now, but keep missing it.
The tour started today. I'm sure I won't follow along. Cameron thinks Lance'll win. I've got $5 saying he won't. I'm not a Lance fan. I'd love Team Sky to do well, but I can't see Bradley Wiggins getting himself sorted out, which is a shame. My fav is Thor Hushovd.
The new season of Top Gear has started.
Photos of 2011 bikes are popping up online already. Rocky Mountain, Cannondale, Specialized, Trek. The same old bike as last year, but with tapered head tubes. I told Ted that the future was tapered - he didn't believe me.
I've quit my job as Tech Consultant (but not quit from Staples). But I'll carry on no doubt, as I have done before. It's my fault, because they know if they ignore me, or ask me to stay on until they get someone else, I will, and they won't get anyone else.
I went on a mountain biking skills camp thingy with Katie and Rita (in May?) on the North Shore which was a lot of fun. I managed to brek my bike on the first morning, but luckily the Trek deo trailer was there, so I was able to borrow. I had a great time riding great trails with lots of great people. I don't think I really learnt much though. Most of the stuff I want to ride I know I CAN ride, I just don't. I'm not sure why. I'm not overly bothered about falling off or anything. I haven't ridden anything since the camp that I wouldn't have before.
It did convince me that I should make the effort to plan some mountain biking trips though. Maybe pack my bike up and take the bus to Cumberland, or the Sunshine Coast, Pemberton, Whistler.
But I won't.
Maybe I could do a bike tour across BC, or down the west coast, or across Belgium, or from Land's End to John O'Groats.
But I won't.
Caitrin and I are quitting Staples and buying backpacks and leaving for Southern Africa next month, then we'll head on to Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Croatia, and maybe the Isle of Mann.

But we're not.

But I have done something - I've started a band at work. We're calling ourselves "Sex with Melons". Anyone is welcome to audition, but we prefer instruments of the imaginary type.
I bet you didn't know that I was a world-class air-flautist. Sharon's on (the rather unimaginative) air-guitar, Tyler's going to learn the air-xylophone (if you know of anyone that gives lessons, please let me know and I'll pass on the info), Jessica on air-tenor sax, Dean plays a mean air-harp, Kayla's going to be an air-pole dancer, Cam will be playing air-bagpipes, Dorelle's lead lip-sinker, Meghan on air-keyboards, we're going to get James an air-triangle, and because we're planning on some Bob Dylan covers, Caitrin's dug out her old air-harmonica.
I know what you're thinking here - Bob Dylan covers?! Well, I'm not a Bob Dylan fan either, but it won't matter, because you're not going to be able to hear it anyways.

2 turn into 7

2010-04-08T23:09:00.000-07:00

So, it's Thurday (well, nearly Friday), and I'm getting around to writing about the ride on Sunday - must be a record!
I got an email from Ted. He was in town and wanted to go riding. Thunderstorms were for casted, and Friday had been nothing but hard rain, but surprisingly the trails weren't bad at all, and it barely rained all day.
I climbed up the Providence Farm trail and met Ted in the parking lot.
We were a little way along Middle T when Willi came up behind us. We followed him up Skywalker and to the beginning of Field of Dreams, where Ted convinced Willi to ride with us to the top, a decision that I think he soon started to regret.
Willi does a massive chunk of the trail maintenance and trail building up on the mountain. He rides a 45 lb downhill bike faster than most trail riders go on their 25 lb XC bikes, carries a saw, and wheelie-drops off everything. And he's at least 60.
Willi puts everyone to shame.
While we were stopped at the top, four people that Willi knew came along, and we all ended up riding down together.
I got on a bit better with the bike today though. I was able to keep up with Willi on most of Field of Dreams, and I "felt" faster on all the singletrack. The shorter (40mm) stem and short, flat bars helped. I went to flick the ProPedal lever on when I got back on the road, and realized it had been on for the whole ride. Either it needs a lot more air in (though it's only sagged to 20%, and Trek recommends 25%), or I need a hardtail.

What I realized on this ride was how much fun it is to chase someone. Trying to keep up with Willi really pushed me to go faster, and I just rode a lot of stuff without thinking about it. I don't seem to be able to push myself when I ride alone.
Is this why people love racing?

Anyway, thanks for getting me to come out riding Ted. I would have probably sat at home all day waiting for it to rain. It was a really good ride.

2010-03-29T16:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago was the first XC race of the Island Cup. Since it was in Victoria, I decide to ride down. I rode to Mill Bay and too the ferry to Brentwood Bay, which is less than 10 km from The Dump. The problem with rides brken up by ferries is standing on the deck and freezing your toes off.
I arrived toward the end of the beginner race, and hung around all day. I took my camera and a flash, and set up by a little stream. Despite taking photos of every rider that passed, I only got a handfull of half-decent photos.
It started to rain as I rode down Mt. Work, and continued to do so until I got home. The ferry ride was colder, and the ride home was terrible.

Last weekend was the second race, this time in Port Alberni. I was going to get a ride up with Kurt and Kevin, but felt horrible the night before, sneezing and clogged sinuses, so didn't.
In the morning though, I felt quite a bit better, and thought it would help to go outside, so rode up Touzhalem along the trail from Providence farm. I come down this trail every time, but only twice have I ridden up it before , and that was over a year ago. I ride up that way to get out of the sun on a very hot day, but that was before I'd realized there was a bus that goes up through The Properties.
Mount Tzouhalem is my favourite place to ride, but I don't go regularly because I hate getting there. It's either a slow (on a mountain bike) 40 minute climb on the roads, or a 30 minute bus ride, preceded by 10 mins spent waiting for the bus (that only goes up there twice a day).
But realizing that I can comfortably climb the Providence Farm trail (I walked 2 bits, which I could probably ride when dry, or when more determined) makes Tzouhalem much more appealing. It takes me 10 mins on the road to get to the white church, and 45 from there to get the fireroad that goes from the main road to the cross. It takes me 15 to get down, and ten to get home from there. This means that mountain biking before work is possible! I could probably squeeze in Chicken Runs 2 & 3 and Three Musketeers while I'm up there.
It's rained almost every day since though.

Last Monday (my weekend is now Sunday and Monday), was reasonably clear but windy, with puffy clouds, so I thought I'd get going with my time-lapse project. The plan was to ride up Prevost to the very top, and shoot a time-lapse sequence of the valley with the clouds going by, but I got distracted by some hang gliders floating down from the top (and it started to rain, and my backpack isn't waterproof).
I followed them to their landing field and watched one land. I've often watched the paragliders, but never seen the hang gliders up close. The hang gliders are definitely faster in the air and much more maneuverable and "sporty", but they only seem to stay in the air for 20 mins at a time. The paragliders are often up there for 2 hours or more on good days. Also, the paragliders just fold up their wing and shove it in a bag, and thow it on the backseat of their car, whereas the hang gliders spend quite some time disassembling them, and then need a truck with special racks on the top to transport them.
I asked them if they were planning on doing another run, in hopes that I could get a timlapse of them winding their way down, but they said the wind was too rough.
I rode down the highway a bit and ended up setting up in a ditch at the side of the gold course. I took a few test shots, and when exposed for the sky, the bottom of the frame looked way over exposed, so I cut out the golf course and re-composed for just the sky, which was un-interesting. I should have trusted the histogram though, because the ground, while a little dark, was still usable.
I set up for one frame every five seconds, and sat and waited for about half an hour, and this is what I got (played back at 30 fps, at 15 was too slow):

Why is it all flickery? When I compare the frames, some are darker than others. Why? Everything on the camera was set to manual; aperature, shutter speed, iso, white balance, focus, etc.
What happened?

Evil Toddler Bike

2010-03-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

I'm sat here at the computer, and can see the two little boys playing outside my window. They are probably about 5 and 2. The younger one's on a trike-of-sorts, with four wheels. A bit like this,
but the front wheels are further apart, and the back wheels very close together (and his is made of metal and painted red). Who designed this? I can't thing of one advantage to having the front wheels spread apart. As soon as he gets up any speed he falls off sideways. Forget cornering. It's clearly made for a child his size, but the bars are so wide that his arms are stretched right out to reach them, meaning any slight movement of his body or either arm causes a crash.
I saw one of them three-wheeled motorbikes in town the other day. I don't understand why having the two wheels at the front is better than having the two wheels at the back. Just to be different?
Do they even have a differential? Are they front wheel drive for that matter?

NEW BIKE

2010-03-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

...in a temporary flat-bar configuration (waiting on brifters).
Will also switch the tires, saddle and pedals.
The red bottle cage will have to come off too, but the bike shop only have these horrible red ones or the cheap plastic ones that brake when you're 50 km from home and have nowhere to put your bottle but in the garbage.
I'm not keen on the Campy, mainly because of (lack of) compatibility.
The wheels look really cool, but it'll be interesting to see how long it takes me to brake them.
Kurt gave me an awesome deal on a great bike though! Thanks Kurt.
I'm very excited. I wish it would stop raining. I want to go riding.
It needs a name...

Some Photos (sort of)

2010-03-05T09:57:00.001-08:00

I keep meaning to write a post. Whenever I go riding I ride along writing it in my head, but I never get around to it, or when I do I've forgotten what I was going to write.
(Do all my posts start like this?)

I haven't taken any photos in ages. I went out to take photos along the Trans Canada Trail a couple of weeks ago to take photos. I was out for about five hours, but only got around to processing these two:

I was still itching to try the time-lapse thing, but after breaking the first and having the second one stolen, I decided not to go with the cheap Canon point-and-shoot, asnd instead get an intervalometer for my D90. It arrived two days ago (this was written over a week before it got finished and posted, we've had nothing but flat cloud cover and rain since), and I've been messing around with it at home, and once I've got it down I'll go and find some more interesting scenes (top of Prevost, Tzouhalem, Mill Bay, etc. Any more ideas?).

There are so many thing to get right though. With stills, I take a picture, look at it on the LCD, and fix whatever's wrong. With a time lapse sequence though, everything has to be planned for several hours (or, if I can figure out an external power source, days). Predicting what exposure settings you'll need in two hours means predicting the weather. In the crocus one, the clouds shifted and the resulting video is over exposed. Although I remembered to set the white balance to manual, it isn't quite right. With a still, this would take two seconds to fix in Adobe Camera Raw, but quite a bit longer with thousands of stills to process, even with batch processing (does anyone have any recommendations for batch processing software? Lightroom?).
And then there's the problem of how often to take a shot, which is just guess work really.

I think I'm going to have to make a checklist.
exposure
white balance
manual focus
jpeg (not RAW)
jpeg size and quality
turn LCD off
lens flare?
will lens steam up?
shadows (tripod/camera in shot?)
rain?

Hasn't been that long

2010-02-15T12:21:00.000-08:00

... has it?
It can't have.
I'm certain that I wrote a post in January sometime, but it's not there.

It's been all much the same over the last few months though. Occasionally riding before work, sometimes riding on the weekend. Working.
Plenty of time, and plenty of things to be doing, but I don't ever seem to do anything.
I blame it on the internet. An in-exhaustible source of information, reading material and photos. And I blame Google, because information is useless without being able to find it.
Google is incredible. How does it work. Google store all there data on parallel 80 GB standard hard drives with ten times redundancy.
If I type "bike" into the Google search bar, I get:
Results 1 - 10 of about 125,000,000 for bike [definition]. (0.35 seconds)
How do they do that?
I don't understand.
We've got a good idea about how ranking is calculated (or at least what factors contribute, as the algorithm is secret, like Flickr's interesting algorithm), but how do they search so much information, and rank it and send us the results in such a short period of time? And with so many people searching at the same time?
I'm sure I saw a book once (or maybe I dreamt it) called something like "How Google Works", but even if the book was real I'm sure it wouldn't be about what I'm thinking of.
It's crazy how big Google (as a company) have gotten though.
Can you imagine how much money they must be pulling in to make Street View, Google Video and Gmail profitable?
Everything they come up with seems to take off.
Why?
A lot of people worried that when Google went IPO the company would change and loose the anti-corporate and network neutrality culture, but they didn't. Well at least they haven't yet, or it's not become apparent.
Will it happen? It's inevitable, isn't it? I think so.
A lot of people think that industrialization ruined the world, but I think it was agriculture, which caused settlement. Industrialization was an inevitable advancement. But I'm getting off topic - ha - this post was going to be about photography!

Which brings be back to the point (completely accidentally though, I admit).
This is why I don't blog as often as I would like - because it takes forever. Literally - because I'm never finished. I can't just write something about something. I have to open more browser tabs to check facts, add stats, research. I always wrote excellent essays in high school, often getting perfect marks. And one thought always leads to another, which also needs to be fully explored and researched, and I never get on to what I was going to write about, and if I do I change chunks every time I go back and re-read it, until it's perfect, which it never is.
So I end up getting bored, and not finishing a post, and if the writing doesn't have a point and isn't finished it I won't post it. I know it's bad, because it's not finished. It doesn't have and introduction, a hook, an argument, or a conclusion. It's missing evidence, and it's not to the point. It's just a string of thoughts, not a piece of writing, an article, an essay.
Why isn't this coming out like an essay? Maybe I'll have to start writing down a planning sheet - which was the only useful thing Mrs Taylor ever taught me, and it seemed that I was the only one that thought that, (that the planning was useful, not that Mrs Taylor taught us very little - everyone knew that).
But this is just a string of thoughts again. It's bad. Shall I post it anyway? Or should I scrap it and write an essay about why I haven't posted in so long?
Nah, I'm bored of writing now.

Valentine's

2010-02-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

I don't like Valentine's day.
Insert "Created by Hallmark", and all that "bar, humbug" stuff here.
But I've finally finished the present* for Mum's birthday (which was in November), and after taking pictures and messing around with my home-made extension tube, the thumbnail of this one popped out at me in Bridge.
I would never make anything in pink or purple, or anything with hearts on. These are just purple with multi-coloured "blips", honest. I didn't mean them to look girly.
I can't put up any other pics until Mum gets them.

* I've noticed that here (North America) everyone uses the word "gift", whereas I've always called it a "present". It seems strange, when it doesn't have anything to do with the time between the past and future. But don't you love the internet:
–noun pres⋅ent

16.	a thing presented as a gift; gift: Christmas presents.

That makes more sense.

The Most Economically Stimulating Time of the Year

2009-12-27T22:07:00.000-08:00

How did that happen? Where did Christmas come from? Christmas is miles away isn't it?
What do you mean only four hours?

On Christmas eve, I avoided the sales floor for most of the day, and tried to stay tucked away in the tech room as much as possible. We close at 5pm, and the two closers decided to walk out the door at 5, leaving a cashier and me to do all the computer signage and attempt some boxing day prep.
It was incredibly quiet walking home. Not quiet because there was no one around - quite the opposite. There were cars everywhere, and people rushing into shops even though the clerks closing the doors were telling them that they'd closed at six. But walking down the street, the cars were making a "flowing" sound, sort of like a river. I couldn't hear any taking, any loud car radios, even the police car that came through an intersection with lights flashing didn't have the siren on. No horns, or enlarged exhaust sounds, I didn't even make eye contact with any other pedestrians on the way home.

I had Christmas day off, and the weather was really nice, so went for a ride up Tzouhalem. I didn't get on well with the bike, and I haven't been for the last couple on months. I can't ride stuff I could on my old bike. On flat-ish, straight-ish single track it's great - it floats over roots and rocks and pedals very well (in the middle or big ring, but feels weird in the granny). I just can't get up or down anything remotely technical - I just keep toppling over. I sometimes manage to fall off before I've got on (literally - getting off or on the bike is like getting in or out of a Range Rover). It was quite a frustrating ride in all. On the way up, I had a terrible time climbing the single track, on the chicken runs, I has a terrible time bouncing down the rocks and roots, and when I got to Fluid and Resurrection, I just felt clumsy. Even with the fork dropped and with the bars lower and a shorter stem (which have all helped to a degree), I can't make it go where I want. I can't make use of the new berms up there.

Boxing day was crap. A million demanding customers all looking to get 75% off everything, and expecting me to talk to each of them for an hour about what to buy.

Today I went for a ride with Ted. We ran into Gail and Linda on Why Be a Roadie, and rode with them up to Little Dipper, then down Cake Walk, the bottom of Middle T, Show Time, Three Musketeers, and Toxic Tea Cup and Resurrection. I would like to point out at this time that I was waiting at the bottom of Resurrection for several minutes for Ted to catch me up. Though he's apparently suffering from the Man Flu again.

Something Strange

2009-12-15T23:10:00.000-08:00

...happened this morning.
I woke up at 8:74.
Not only had I slept in, but I'd woken up at a time that didn't exist.
Even more strangely, I didn't realize this until I'd showered, dressed and was making my breakfast/lunch.
Strange.

After this I went to Thrifty's to get some groceries.
Three strange things happened here. Firstly, I bought cheese, which I haven't done in a long time. I'm not sure what to do with it now.
Secondly, I bought some Hobnobs. That isn't strange, but near the Hobnobs I saw some "reduced fat" Oreos. This is also quite normal, of course, as every food now also comes in a low fat version. But on the front they said "30% less fat per two cookies". I realize that a large portion of the population are mathematically illiterate, but where did this come from? Surely, one cookie has 50% of the fat that the two have in total, therefore if two cookies have 30% less fat than two regular Oreos, then each will have 30% less fat than each regular one. Or does it mean that two "reduced fat" Oreos have 30% less fat than one full-fat Oreo, and each diet Oreo has 65% less fat than the regular one. But that sounds more impressive, so why wouldn't they just say that? Am I missing something?
Thirdly, I thought I'd get some Chrismassy tea. I picked up the herbal one, because I only get the caffeine-free stuff. It tastes (and smells) of mint. I never associated mint with Christmas. I associate mint with lamb and toothpaste (not together).

I just wrote a sentence about how nothing strange happened at work today, but had to backspace, because this in itself is stange. Not a day goes by that we don't have a crazy customer that has a go at us because we only stock two types of video cassettes or that we won't knock 50% off the price of their laptop. Today was very uneventful. I'm caught up to within 48 hours for the first time in 10 months. No one tried to argue that virus removal should be covered under warranty, or that they woke up in the morning and their screen was cracked. None of my customer's cats knocked apple juice into the CD drive of their owner's laptops. No one managed to spill an entire bottle of tabasco sauce on the keyboard of their laptop while using it as a recipe book. I found no rotten flesh in desktops. No hard drives spontaniously combusted.
Strange.

New Post

2009-12-06T17:14:00.000-08:00

Yes, well, I guess it's been nearly three months since I made a post.

Since the last post:
Went to Mount Washington for a day with Roland, Katie, and Roland's brother and sister-in-law. Fell off a bit onto the camera in my pocket.

Roland's Bighit:

Katie's new Slayer:
There were some more cross races.
I rode to the one in Bowen Park, but didn't race.
It was raining for the ones ones in Victoria, and I didn't feel like riding down there in the rain and standing around freezing all day, so didn't go. Apparently though, the second one was dry (!).
I helped put up the course at Providence farm, and helped out with the barbecue on race day.
I completely forgot about the one in Shawnigan Lake and was out riding and saw the sign, so stopped by to watch the racing for a bit. This was the only dry day in November.

I got a lot of riding in in October. I managed to talk the bosses into changing my hours from 12-8:30pm, so I now have the mornings to go riding in. This was working well for me in October, and I was riding most days, clocking 300+ km a week.
But then it rained non-stop through November. Even when it wasn't raining full-on, just drizzling, I'd take my cross bike out and all the trails were flooded. Some houses down the road were flooded, and there were sandbags around my building for a week, but the water didn't really get close.
At the end of November the rain just stopped.
Last weekend I rode to the top of Maple Mountain on Saturday. I've never been to the top before. I didn't take into account that it starts getting dark at 4pm though, so didn't have time for any trails on the way down. (UPDATE - I think this was the week before, because Hilary's pottery sale was that day)
On Sunday I put the cross tires on the Lemon and rode the old railway bed to Lake Cowichan. I rode there on the south-most trail, and back on the one on the north of the river. It took me about 4 hours and ended up being 63km.
Yesterday (Saturday) I went on a road ride. It was bloody freezing! The frost on the ground that usually disappears when the sun come out stayed around all day. I started riding anti-clockwise around Shawnigan Lake, but decided to carry on and see where the road went. It's a great riding road, a bit like May's road, very momentum-y, with perfect corners and little hills, and smooth paving - that soon gave way to a gravel-less gravel road, if you know what I mean (used to be a gravel road, but not much gravel left on it, just hard ground). I carried on to Koksilah Park. I climbed around on the frosty rocks for a bit, with tread-less shoes. I tried riding around on some of the trails, but there were some pretty pointy rocks and frosty roots, and if I broke my bike there was no cell coverage and the only people around for miles were pot smokers on quad bikes. There's a yellow gate there, blocking a bridge over the river, that doesn't appear to have been opened in a very long time. I'm wondering if this is where the "Burnt Bridge" trials begin. (Apparently, Burnt Bridge was "thee" place to ride, but then it got logged, and trails were built on Tzouhalem. Another chunk of Tzouhalem just got sold off, and the houses keep getting further up the mountain, even since I've moved here. Apparently, ten years ago the trails began where the school now is, and there were no houses above there. So where do we go when Tzouhalem's gone? Maple? There seems to be a lot of potential for trail building there, but it's all a bit gnarly. And they're still logging it. Every time I group there there are fresh branches on the roads. Prevost is too steep for general trail riding. Cobble Hill is being looked after well, but it's quite a small area, and very "multi-use". There seem to be a lot of "regional" and provincial parks around, but they're usually quite remote, so no one goes there except the adore-mentioned potheads. And the odd cyclist that enjoys wandering around on backroads and getting lost. There are mountains everywhere, and I'm continually surprised by where I can get to on my cross bike without braking any rules. But the reason all these mountain are accessible is because of logging roads... I'm getting off topic again.) I headed back towards civilization, taking a detour along Glen Eagles Road, which looks to be another of them roads where rich people buy a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, spend millions building a house on it, and then complain that they had to pay for the gas to come "all the way" from the other side of Shawnigan Lake in to to town. They think their computer should be jumped to the front of the queue and be fixed while they wait so they don't have to come "all the way" into town another day. I'm sure they have to come into town every two or three days anyway for something-or-other. Don't these people work? Probably not. But my point is that they chose to live where they do, so shouldn't be complaining about it, and especially not expecting for special treatment because they paid more to live further away. They're like the Saltspring-ers that we get in work all the time. "Do you know how much it costs to take the ferry?" "I don't have a choice. There isn't a computer shop on Saltspring, y' know." Sounds like an excellent business opportunity to me - why don't one of these whiny Saltspringers start up a computer repair business? I had a guy in on Friday that wanted his computer fixing - while he waited. I told him that the queue was about three days long, and I don't work on weekends, but he called a manager over, and he won of course, because the managers are soft. So I put everything else aside to try and fix this guy's computer. He thought his CD drive wasn't working because of the upper/lower filters issue and tried to fix it in the registry, but deleted a whole load of stuff, and his mouse and keyboard stopped working. He was complaining it was taking so long, but the mouse and keyboard weren't working, CD drive wouldn't work, I didn't have an IDE CD drive I could use instead, and the BIOS was so old that it didn't support booting from USB! I had to take a DVD drive out of another customer's computer to use temporarily. I hate customer's like that - it wasn't even something that was our fault, or an issue with a defective computer he'd bought from us or anything, he screwed it up himself. Woooooow - check out the complete and utter off-topicness!
So I continued my ride around the lake. It was a very nice day - no clouds and very sunny, but by this time the sun was starting to set. I was plenty warm enough while riding, but once I got back to the highway the wind hit me and my skin was freezing. It's weird how you can be warn on the inside, but it feels like your outside has frozen solid (like an armadillo - soft on the inside, crunchy on the outside).
I did a total of 86 km (I also took a detour around Cobble Hill, and started off along Tzouhalem Road and came up onto the highway along Bench).

I'm sure much more has gone on since September, but I'll wrte about that in March.

Beban Cross

2009-09-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

The first cross race of the season was on Sunday.
I was going to ride up to Nanaimo and just hang around and take photos and stuff, and Hilary wanted to come too.
On Saturday I was planning on going mountain biking - I haven't been in about a month - but really wasn't motivated (still angry about missing the Whistler/North Shore trip?), so I dug to the bottom of the tire pile for the cross tires that Dale had given me, and a dented palm and broken nail later I was at the bike shop for a bigger cassette - but they didn't have one. The bike felt completely different with the big tires on. It felt like a mountain bike. I rode around town a bit, and had a scary moment when making a sharp right. The tires have side-to-side ridges down the center, but lengthwise knobs on the edges. When I rolled onto the knobs, I felt the bike squirm as the knobs moved, which is a bit scary when you're not expecting it. I rode with Hilary home from the market, then we went on a ride along the trail that goes to Lake Cowichan. We got as far as Tansor, then came back. After I left Hilary's I did the same trail but a bit faster. The faster you ride, the less you feel the bumps, and you realize that a cross bike will take a lot of stick.
The plan for Sunday changed and Hilary and I were going to drive up in her car, then she decided not to go. Katie and Roland had very kindly offered me a ride, so I rode up with them.
I got to the race to find that I couldn't shift through my gears - which Kurt fixed (temporarily?) with some lube on the shifter cables - thanks Kurt!I entered the "Open Women's" rather than the beginner class. There was 11 of us on the start line, and we were on the track with the Masters. The course was a good one for the start of the season: very flat - which I was glad about as I'd been in the bike shop to get a 12-27 cassette, but they didn't have a 9-speed, and I'd thought I had a 11-25, but it's a 11-23, and I've got a road double in the front. My lowest is 39-23, where most others seemed to have 36-27. The race organizers had taken out the run-up by the tennis courts, and replaced it with a sandpit followed by a log, which was the first dismount of the course (the other two being a set of stairs, and the barriers). The only place I would have liked a lower gear is the ramp up at the beginning of the BMX track, but I made it up each time.
I noticed at the start that my rear tire was very squishy - but it was too late to fix. I felt the rim hit the ground on every bump on the entire course. I've no idea how I didn't actually pinch flat. My back wheel was stepping out on the tight corners (were there any corners that weren't tight?), and it felt like the tire was rolling off on the off-camber bit before the bleachers.
And if there was an award for the slowest barriers, I'd be the champion.
My time was 59:11 according to the time sheet emailed out, but it didn't feel like an hour.
I spent the rest of the taking photos and videos of the other races. I'm really getting the hang of the video thing - and cyclocross races are great practise, because you can set up a shot and film one ride flying through the frame, play it back, and make changes, then film the next rider. I got some really good clips: I set the camera up on the ground on the outside of the corner where the gravel turns to grass on the intermediate first lap, where all the riders were bunched up, and got a clip of them all taking the corner, including Louis taking out half the cones and nearly the camera. I wrapped my GorillaPod around the railing on the bleachers and filmed the off-camber swoopy bit. I set the camera up in the flower bed by the little bridge, and got riders riding through the frame over the humped-back bridge, including reflection in the pond. I got the big banked corner on the BMX track. I got riders re-mounting after the barriers one after the other. I got the stairs. I got lots of good wheel shots. And loads of good photos too.
By the middle of the whirly-whirl time trial my first memory card was full, so I stuck the second one in.
Got home. Nothing's coming off the first card.
I'm a little miffed.
It wasn't even one of them cheap no name cards.

ranting and work and rain and knitting and a bit of riding

2009-09-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

Summer is over. It's raining and it's going to rain until June and I'm not happy about it because Summer only just started and I wanted to do lots of things but had to work.

DISCLAIMER: Don't read this post. It's angry.

This post will be updates with pics when I can get them uploaded. Firefox (yes - tried Opera and IE too) crash when try to upload.

It was really raining when I woke up on Saturday, but cleared up around 11 am. I had to go into work for a couple of hours, then went to see Hilary at the market. Amy and Sean stopped by with 18-day-old Isaac. I walked (roads were wet, so decided against riding since all my bikes are (were) fenderless) home, stopping in at Thrifty's to get groceries on the way. I tried putting the fenders I bought two months ago on my bike, bbut the back one clams around the seatstays. My seatstays must be unusually skinny, because I needed all the foam padding in the packet (leaving non for the front one). Also, my shifter cable runs along the seatstay rather than the chainstay, so the clanp closes around it, meaning I can't shift. I've got the choice between fenders or gears! The front one does fit, but seems to have been only made for straight forks, because it clamps to the fork blades below the bend, so doesn't cover any of the top of the wheel, so I'd have dry legs but get a face full of car juice.
I considered going riding, but was too tired, so decided to be lazy instead.
The insomnia continues. I'm not sure if I've blogged about this before, but I don't seem to be able to sleep properly. I have no trouble getting to sleep, but wake up every couple of hours, and can't get back to sleep for a hour. Then I'll sleep for another hour or two, and wake up again. This has been going on for about four months now. I'm sure it's work that's causing it. I sleep properly on Saturday and Sunday nights usually. It's been driving me crazy.
I'm still working long hours. I can't seem to get anything done at work. I spend all my time fixing other people's screw ups, doing things that other people should be doing, on the phone dealing with people that bought "pre-setup" routers, writing emails to the warranty depot, shipping stuff to the warranty depot, boxing up printers that will get damaged in shipping that I'm not allowed to put insurance on, getting shouted at by customers for everything that's not my fault, doing paperwork, more paperwork, fixing other people's paperwork, and the hours between 6pm and 10 pm are spent doing tech work (that the customer will end up either not paying for at all because on of the boys told the customer it would be covered under warranty, or pay half of what they should because one of the boys didn't have the balls to quote full price). I spend 10-12 hours at work every day, work through my breaks, take the crap for everybody else's screw-ups, don't get any time off, and get paid $11/hr.
Why? Because I'm an idiot? Yes.

On Thursday evening, an angry lady came in to pick up her laptop. It wasn't ready. It was dropped off at 6:30 the evening before to be setup. Apparently it was supposed to be setup when she first bought it, but Tony (who sold it to her) sent it home with her as it was, so she brought it back Wednesday evening to be setup, and sppke with Robin, who told her it "would be ready in a couple of hours". Firstly, if I were to sit in front of the computer and do nothing else, it would still take 6 hours to get done, not "a couple". Secondly, I'm supposed to finish work at six, 30 minutes before it was brought in. Thirdly, Robin put it on the in shelf, and put the ticket in the incoming folder, and didn't say a thing to me - the ticket just said "in-store setup".
So I didn't know it was supposed to be ready, so it wasn't, but she came in a tore a chunk out of me. After she had been shouting at me for ten minutes insisting that her money be returned and the laptop delivered to her house that evening (because she's had enough of driving "all the way" from Chemainus), Sharon (a manager) came over. Angry Lady changed her tone immediately and went through it all with Sharon, ending with "Tony was great. Robin was great, and you've been great too Sharon, and I feel bad about getting angry at you because one of your employees let you down", and she looked directly at me.
So, I ended up staying til 10:30 to get as much done as I could, then I rode to Chemainus to drop it off. Sharon was going to go, but her kids were with a sitter and she lives in Shawnigan Lake (the opposite direction). I needed to go for a ride anyway.
It was a nice night - not much wind, dry, and warm. It turns out Cheamainus is further away than I realized: 42.2 km to her house from work and back to mine. Didn't get home until after midnight.
I thing I get an average of four customers angry at me a day. On friday I had a lady that didn't want to pay for virus removal because she had an extended warranty, a man who's HP mininote died after six weeks and didn't have a warranty from us expected me to give him a new one, a couple that expected us to honor their Future Shop warranty, an old lady that wanted me to go round to her hose to install the ink cartridges in her printer for free, and a man angry because I couldn't special order a battery for his laptop from just the serial number, plus two people that couldn't get their routers to work. A bad day.
But it's not the angry customers that make me angry, it's all the other stuff (see the second paragraph). And I've just figured out why.
I've got a conscience.
There are other people that get frustrated at work and do more work than anyone else - namely Priyanka (who handed in her notice this week) and James (who would quit, but needs the benefits), and everyone else seems quite happy - they don't care if the stuff that needs to be done isn't done, they'll still leave at 5 pm on the dot, while James, Priyanka and me stay late to do all the stuff done that they should have done while they were texting their girlfriends. These people must have no, or very weak, consciences - they don't care if things aren't done proplerly, as long as they're not around when the angry customer phones or comes in. They don't get tasks done, or don't do them properly, so all their tasks get given to the ones that get things done properly, on time.
I've heard both Priyanka and James saying that they're giving up - that they don't care anymore, and they're not going to worry about it. It never even lasts five minutes. I've said the same to myself, but I can't help it. I have responsibilities. I know that I'm the stupid one, but I can't help it. I've been cursed with a strong conscience, and I don't know what to do about it. Get a job when my co-workers take their responsibilities seriously? Does such a job exist?
I'm of the opinion that the grass is always browner on the other side (though I don't dislike brown grass - I prefer it over people leaving sprinklers on 24-7). I'm not a pessimist, just a realist. All jobs are crap.

Anyway, I didn't go riding on Sunday, becasuse it rained ALL day.
I went out for a lap around the lake after work on Tuesday. I left my place at 7, and it was getting dark when I got back. It must get dark before 8 now.
Last night I left work at 7 and went to Coffee on the Moon to knit with Hilary, Dana and Amy (and Isaac). I rode back to Hilary's with her and then we took the dogs for a run. We had no lights, and I was riding along roads I'd never even seen in the daylight. It's always fun when you hit a pothole at night. It reminds me of driving over cattle grids in Wales.

I had been working on the summer scavanger hunt for the camera club, but hadn't got time to finish it before the deadline. I'd take all the photos, but didn't get around to processing or uploading them. I missed the first meeting on Tuesday as well.

Last time I went mountain biking I forgot to post a picture of my burn:

I was stood on the wrong side of my bike, and my leg touched my front rotor. It only took a fraction of a second to burn me just below my right knee.

I knitted a teal coloured diamond cable ("Koolhaas") hat last winter.
It turned out perfectly, until I wore it a few times and then it strewtched and lots its elasticity and shape. I started knitting it's replacement when I bought some brown wool when Erica took us to a wool shop in Victoria. I'd left it at work to work on in my lunch breaks, but haven't been taking many/any breaksx, so it's still not done! I brought it home last weekend, and have now started on the crown decreases.
I've also started Mum's birthday or Christmas present. I phoned her on Sunday, and apparently she wants some bed socks - damn.

Riding Updates

2009-08-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to update for over two weeks now.
I can't even remember what about. I always have loads of blog posts being written in my head, but don't find the time (ie. am too lazy) to type them up.

On Saturday 15th Aug I went for a ride on Tzouhalem. The weather was grey and cloudy, but warmer than expected. Since I hadn't yet got around to taking any decent bike photos I took my camera and spent several hours climbing into the bush and propping by bike up with sticks.

I also managed to attach my SD770 onto my helmet for some of the ride down:
The first is the bridge on M-One, then a bridge on Skywalker, and the last clip is then end of Fluid, end of Emma's Express, and the beginnning of Resurection:

This camera seems to do really well as a helmet cam. (Quality directly from the camera is a lot better - bighter, higher frame rate, less jaggy), except for the mounting issue (I used elastic bands and my helmet light mount).
This one picks up at the end of Resurection, and the there's a bit of the Providence Farm trail:

You can hear my brake catching at 0:56. I'm fell off on T-Bone and smacked it against a rock. It was VERY bent. The wheel wouldn't spin freely with the backend off the ground at all. It was catching on the pads for 180º.

I went to Cobble Hill the next day. I was going to take the bus, but missed it, so rode there. I messed about on the dirt jump park for a while, then headed up the mountain. The trails up (and even the fireroads) are quite steep. The dragging brake didn't exactly help me get up.
I don't know the trails on Cobble Hill very well, and ended up in someone's front garden, and then had to ride on the road along the bottom of the mountain. Has anyone got a map or suggested route down? I can always find my way up, but can never find a way down that takes me to the bottom.
(that's the wet tip of Shawnigan lake you can see in the photo - I think)

On Saturday 22nd, I went around to Carole's house to install her new printer. She made me a tuna melt and we watched some tennis, then I went riding on Tzouhalem (big suprise there...). Having had Adam at the bike shop straighten my rotor ("wow - that really is bent!"), I rode to the top on singletrack and fireroad, and then sat at the top and ate my sandwiches with my legs dangling over Cow Bay.
I rode along the ridge, and I usually turn right immediately before Arbutus Drop, because it used to look really scary, but I haven't even looked at it in the last year, and today it looked completely do-able (not the drop to the right of the tree, but the rock to the left). I didn't ride it (I'm going to have to get some armor, because there's rock everywhere), but I did ride the ride-around, which is a steep rooty drop, and if you don't make the 90º corner immediately after it you'll end up in Cow Bay. I carried on along Boogie Man, which I hadn't been along since my second time on the mountain, when Willy showed me some trails. It all seems ridable - nothing I couldn't do. I walked a lot of things, but I'm confident that after seeing them, that I'd be able to ride them next time (and when I find some leg armor that fits - damn my short, fat legs!). The problem with Boogie Man is that it doesn't fit into a ride very well. It takes you to the trail that goes to the cross. Your options from there are to the cross and then down some steep slick rock that goes straight to the Providence Farm trail (meaning you miss out on a whole load on singletrack), along the the fireroad to Chicken Run 2 which leaves you on the wrong side of the mountain for the nice trails, or along thge fireroad a tiny bit to the top of Danilizer, which I don't really like. I rode it that day. It's very rooty and rocky, steep climbs, up and down, bumpy, NO flow what so ever. Annoying, in a way. It was so much easier on the new bike though - rather than trying to climb over every root and trying to control the deflection, this bike just rolls over them without my momentum being damaged at all.

On Sunday I went for a road ride around Shawnigan Lake. For some reason I thought it was going to be a 100 km ride, so I was a little suprised when I got back two and a half hours after I left! Turns out it's only 60 km. It's a really nice loop around the lake though - smooth(ish) roads, nice rolling hills, well sheltered, lots of trees and green stuff, not a lot of traffic, and because you're riding around a lake there's no temptation to change the route while riding (which I do a lot).

This last weekend I did the same loop again on Saturday (except took the road from Cobble Hill to Rona back to the highway.
It was Cobble Hill Fall Fair. I've been avoiding the thought for the last few weeks - it feels like Autumn already. Summer is ending. I don't want it too. It's gone by so fast. Last year, summer seemed to last forever - probably because I had a lot of time off work. There were loads of things I wanted to do over the summer. I haven't done any of them - not even the island-hopping trip, or a single mountain bike ride somewhere other than the Cowichan Valley. After spending the whole week angry at work (and working 2 12 hour days, and 3 10 hours), I spent the whole ride on Saturday pissed off. Mainly because I'd been invited to ride the North Shore and Whistler with Ted and his friend Ian, and I couldn't go. I had to be on the last ferry on Friday (10:45 pm) to go, and I knew I wouldn't be done work early enought. In fact, I was at work until 10 pm that day.
I really hate my job. It gets in the way of everything. My hours are horrible - 9:30 to 6, but I never leave on time, so no time in the morning to do anything, but no time after wrk to do anything. And no one gets a shouting at. It's all backwards - the more you do, the more work gets dumped on you, whereas the less work the lazy ones do, the less work they get given, because the don't do it properly or don't get it done at all. So I've got three people waiting to talk to me after the one I'm dealing with, and one of the guys passes his customer onto me while he stands around doing nothing, and I've got a whole load of tech work to do and issue that need resolving. I could be employed full time just doing paperwork and shipping and dealing with warranty issues and phone calls and speaking to customers. I don't have time to actually fix computers. I've still got stuff on the bench from seven days ago. We took in three times more money in tech last week than average, which means my work load was three times as much, and I haven't been able to get caught up or get to the non-essential work since March, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do.
Quit, I guess. Anyone looking for a cheap techie?
Anyway, I was talking about the riding. I didn't go mountain biking at all all weekend. I phoned Hilary to see if she wanted to go riding, but she was doing a craft fair in Ladysmith, so I rode up to see her, then rode back.

Look, it is autumn!:

Last Saturday

2009-08-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

... I went to visit Hilary at the market and then rode to Mill Bay to take some pictures.

That's not your bike!Hilary insisted I take a photo of a lady's giant cabbage:This first video is a time lapse I made at the market on Ingram Street:

This is a "tour" of part of the market. I attached the camera to the top tube of my bike with a GorillaPod.

At Mill Bay I tried some long exposures. I can't find a ten stop ND filter (77 mm) that can be had for under $150 (!), so these were improvised with ND8 and 720 nm IR filters stacked, but best I could get (and this is on a cloudy day) was one minute. I really want at least four to get the clouds blurry, probably more.
This was the first setup:
It was inevitable:
A steel frame full of salt water. It had needed a good clean for months. I guess that was the final nudge.

More pics coming...

Prevost on Monday

2009-08-09T11:14:00.000-07:00

...with Ted.
(You can see the outline of Mt. Tzouhalem in the background)
After each watching seasons multiple times and studying Stevie Smith's section, Ted and I wanted to go and find some of the trails in the movie. So, with some directions from Doug in mind, and some muffins from Tim Horton's in backpacks, we headed up Prevost.
After several complaints from Ted ("This is definitely a shuttling mountain."), we decided not to ride to the top, but took the fire road across the mountain. We stopped to peer down Patchworks, and continued on until we came to what must be the DH race course.
As it hadn't rained in a long time, the trail was very dust and loose. There were a couple of steep sketchy bits that I didn't ride that I'm sure I could ride now I've seen them. There was one place where we had the choice of three trails, and we took the right (almost a u-turn) as it looked the least steep. We ended up on the same trail that we usually do if we take Graceland.
The whole trail was pretty ridable. I think there was only one bit Ted didn't ride, and pretty sure we could both ride it next time, especially after a bit of rain.

(skip forward to 5:04)

Total Distance: 24.6 km (from my place back to my place)
Total Time: 4:23

Riding at the Tzou (again) last Sunday

2009-08-09T10:37:00.000-07:00

Katie,
Roland,Jen,
Dave,
Jamie,
Ted
and I went for a ride on Tzouhalem last Sunday.
Up some fireroad and singletrack to Field of Dreams, up the fireroad to the top where we took a break, then down Rocky Ridge, Santa Cruz Way, Blueberry Pancakes, along the fireroad to Middle T, Showtime, Luc's Skywalker,Fluid, and Resurection.
Ted fell off the first bridge on Field of Dreams/Little Dipper, but rode it the second time.
Jen fell off the long flat bridge on Skywalker, but rode it on the second try.
Katie got a pinch flat on Middle T.
Roland fell off multiple times while not moving.
Jamie rode all of Zig Zag.
Roland rode some.
Ted rode some.
Thanks for coming everyone. Great ride!

Tzouhalem on Saturday

2009-08-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

Long weekend! Yay!
I'm just really dreading work on Tuesday.
Ted was over from Vancouver for the weekend, and wanted to go riding.
I went up the Tzou at about 3 pm, and he came up at about 6.
After admiring each other's new bikes (he bought a Hustler frame to replace the Stiffee), we rode up some singletrack, came down Little Dipper, Luc's Skywalker, Fluid, and Resurrection.
We rode a bit of woodwork. I fell off the same bridge three times, once onto Ted. It's just the up ramps that I can't do. I'm fine once on the ladders. I rode along the top and down, I just couldn't get up.
Here's Ted demonstrating the difficulty of the up ramp:
We ran into Crazy Doug at the top of Showtime/bottom of Cakewalk. I'd met him previously shuttling friends on Prevost. He gave us advise on routes down Prevost - cheers Doug.

I made Ted miss his mum's steak dinner. I don't think he was happy about that.

I took my GPS receiver, but I don't know what's wrong with it - it seems to only work when I turn it on!

Do you think I'm over doing it with the monochrome?
I'm kind of of the opinion that if colour isn't adding anything, then it's detracting.
I find contrast much more interesting. (click to enlarge)

Group Ride

2009-07-31T07:36:00.000-07:00

Slow ("casual pace") group ride on Mt Tzouhalem on Sunday (August 2nd) at 10 am for anyone that wants to come along. We're meeting at the parking lot at the top of the properties.
The more the merrier.
Please invite to anyone and everyone.
Hope to see some of you there.

Remedy 2010

2009-07-28T22:07:00.000-07:00

I think the first pictures of the 2010 Remedy hit the forums while I was in Victoria picking up mine.
I'm glad I got mine when I did. I thought the Remedy was a great bike because it aws versatile - a great bike for easy trail riding, but could easily handle my clumsiness trying out freeride stuff and maybe taking it to Mount Washington or Whistler.
A lot of magazine/website reviews said the Remedy had an "identity crisis" (is it a long-travel trail bike or is it a light freeride bike?) thing going on because of this versatiliy, and it seems this year Trek has "addressed" this.
They've made the Remedy into a trail bike. They're making a carbon version. They've reduced travel to 150 at the front (no word on rear travel yet). No more Lyric - 32's instead with 15mm QR. Lighter kit. More expensive.
So what to fill the gap between the Remedy and the Session FR? The "Scratch":
I've no idea what they were thinking calling it "Scratch", but anyway, a coil shock, beefier frame, probably freeride wheels.
I think the Remedy is to compete with the Enduro, and the "Scratch" the SX.
I think it's a bad move by Trek. I think the Remedy sold well (sold out!) because it was neither a trail or freeride bike, but yet both a trail and freeride bike. I read this comment made by LarryFhan on mtbr.com forums:
"I've seen people come into the shop and look at Specialzed and leave with a Trek. I've seen people look at Trek and leave with a GT. I've never seen anyone come in to look at a Remedy and leave with anything else. Though, I have seen people look at a Specialized Pitch and leave with a Remedy!"
As I was walking to the shop to pick up my Remedy, a man wheelied past me test riding an R7, and bought it 10 mins later.

I do like the brown paint scheme though.
The white on mine is way too flashy. I;m going to put a black stem on, but don't know how to tone down the white.

Oh, and Norco are doing some belt drive bikes for 2010...

UPDATE:
The "Scratch Air" seems to have filled the void:
No idea what the geometry will be like though. Probably the same as the coil version, so more freeride-ish.
It does seem like Trek have a lot of overlap in their model line this year.

Prevost

2009-07-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

There was a thunder storm Saturday night. Funny, the forecast didn't mention it when I checked on Saturday (I don't usually look at the forecast at all, only to see what the current temperature is).
I woke up Sunday morning and mirror fell off the wall. I wasn't even anywhere near it! Seven years bad luck? Bugger.
I decided to ride Prevost, but thought it best to wait until later in the day when there would be more shade. So I left at about 4pm, and rode to the top. I got the time right - the fireroad up must have been 70% SHADE.
I didn't go right up to the cairn, as I was worried about it getting dark, so headed into the trees on a trail I hadn't ridden before. I didn't expect to be able to ride it all, as I'd been told it was steep. Hilary said it would come out at the top of Graceland. After about 20 meters of being hit in the head by large branches, the trail disappeared completely, so I pushed back, only to realize that there was an alternate trail that veered right, so I took that one. I was able to ride the first chunk. It was quite technical with lots of BIG roots. Then I came to the steep stuff - basically a long steep rut full of dusty, gravelly, loose soil. I walked (slid down) this chunk. Then the trail became ridable again, and forked. I went right, which led to a big double (the left fork went round it), followed by a massive wall ride (could ride around).
The rest of the trail was very flowy and steep and loose in sections, but I rode all of it from there on. At the bottom was a sign that pointed across the road that said "Lower Patchwork", so I'm guessing I rode Upper Patchwork then.
It didn't come out at the top of Graceland, but much further down the road, so I raised my saddle and rode along the fireroad.
I was happily spinning along, and slowed down as I approached the beginning of the trail. I was about to get off to lower my saddle when I heard a noise from the tree ahead and to my left. I looked up to see a black mass in the leafless tree, which I assumed was an eagle, but it turned to look at me. Definitely a black bear cub. I can't have been 5 meters from the tree it was in, and to ride down the trail I would have to do almost a full circle around it. Knowing all bear cubs have mothers close by, I legged it down the fire road, and didn't hang around to take a photo.
I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't get to ride the singletrack down - I might as well have gone with Hilary (hehe!).

Second Ride

2009-07-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

... well, third in total, but first proper.
I went up "The Zoo" yesterday, for over 5 hours.
The bike is awesome. I love it.
The bike pedals great, no bob or anything. I didn't even move the Propedal lever or crank up the compression on the fork for the ride to the trailhead. Riding up the hill through the properties was no trouble in the middle ring.
From the parking lot I took the single track all the way to the top, which I probably won't do again, as it left little time for riding down.
One steep climb I cleared first time, and it was easy. I clear this about 10% of the time on my other bike. It's a tricky climb because there are so many little tricky bits along it, and it's quite steep too. If you clear the first root, corner, double root, small log and steep climb, you're still only half way up. My fork's too stiff on my other bike, as I loose all momentum when I get to the root, and any I manage to recreate gets killed when my back wheel hits it.
I only took my little camera with me. If I thought I would be in the picture-taking mood, I would have taken the D90.
It was a hot day. I love being in the trees though. I can stand the heat in the shade - I just don't like the sun on me.
I took T-Bone down, then all three Chicken Runs, and onto Fluid. I rode a long bridge I'd not ridden before. I then tok Teacup and Blue Balls, then got lost somewhere, but made it on to De-Analyzer (I think), and down the Providence Farm trail.
I can't believe how easily this bike holds speed, because it floats over the bumps. On my other bike I'd really have to pay attention, pick the smoothest line, unweight over roots. It was a handfull to keep planted. Going down the Providence Farm trail (which is mainly an old stream bed, whith lots of loose rocks, off cambre banks, and quite steep in places) at 30 km/hr was scary on the hardtail, as it would be all over the place. According to my GPS track log, I hit 53 km/h, and didn't have one scary moment. Safe as houses.

Total time: 5:42
Total distance: 32.1 km

First Ride

2009-07-21T20:26:00.001-07:00

Well, actually the second I guess, since it's already done over 60 km.
I took the new Remedy on it's first real ride on Sunday. I rode up to Mount Tzouhalem. It was hot and sunny, and I don't know if I'm a vampire or something, but direct sunlight kills me. I couldn't wait to get in the shade of the trees. I headed up the singletrack at the far end of the parking lot, and expected to come out on Blue Balls, cross the fire road and climb Tea Cup, but I took a right somewhere that I should have gone left, and ended up on the Providence Farm trail.
Hating the bike. I couldn't steer properly, and also kept chickening out when climbing over roots and steep bits. I wasn't happy. The bike wouldn't go where I wanted. I couldn't move it around, and felt like I had no control. I wasn't riding things that I normally think nothing of. On the fire roads it was great though - better than my hard tail - no loss of "power transfer" or "pedalling efficiency" and didn't feel heavier when climbing like those weight weenies would have us believe.
Great. Just Great. (insert sarcasm smiley here) Just what I wanted - a bike that was much better on fire roads. Great.
I carried on up the usual singletrack. I went over the bars trying to get over a log pile - in a good way though. With my old bike, riding up a log pile would kill all my speed, and I'd have to kick the pedals to get my back wheel over, and lunge forward to get my bashguard over, but this time I rolled straight up the pile before I realized it, lunged forward and my back wheel came up, and the bars went sideways and I followed them. I was quite happy about that though - getting over stuff would be easier, and it was obvious I had more clearance for logs and rocks.
But I still couldn't steer. Maybe it would just take time? I'd have to learn how to ride this bike? Maybe I just needed to make some adjustments?
I rode up the fire road to the steepish hill before the entrance to Field of dreams, and I fell off sideways on the hill, as I seemed so far away from the ground and couldn't get my foot down and landed on my knee and slid down the hill a bit. That hurt.
So I lowered my seat about 3 cm and rode Field of Dreams. I could steer, and move around. The seat was lower than I'd ride with on my old bike, and not best for pedalling, but the bike felt completely different. Field of Dreams was great. The rocky bit that, although I clear it 80% of the time, I have to fight with and be in exactly the right gear and pick a line precisely, I floated over with no problems. I headed up the fire road towards the top in a much better mood. I dropped the travel on the fork to 115mm, and the bike felt like my hard tail, and I climbed the steep rocky bits. I was climbing the second-to-last hill before the top, pondering whether to take Chicken Run down, or maybe Little Dipper, or even Danelizer, when I heard a cling. The chain had snapped. No matter - I have two multi tools - on I keep in the pouch on my road bike, and the other in my mountain bike pack with a QuickLink. But I'd taken my big backpack down to Victoria the day before, and left the multi tool in there. I tried to mess around with it for a bit, but it was clear I wasn't going to be able to fix it without a tool, so I shoved it in my bag and hopped back on to ride home. It was pretty much all down hill, right. Firstly, clipping into my pedal was not easy, because it just spun away from my foot whenever I touched it.
There was a lot more uphill than I realized - a lot of walking.
I took showtime, as it as mostly floopy downhill, and hooked into CR3 and came out on the old ML, which I though was all downhill, but apparently not, and made a sharp left onto the Providence Farm trail.
At least three times I found myself shinning my legs and shifting up before I realized it wasn't going to get me anywhere. I fell of once when I stood on the pedals and leaned over the bars for a hill, but there was no resistance on the pedals, and I lost my balance. Once I fell off and I wasn't even pedalling - I stood on the left pedal to go round a right corner.
Although I took it easy down the mountain because the lack of chain obviously made more difference than I'd thought, the bike just floated over all the loose and rocky stuff. On my other bike I'd have to concentrate, and pick a line, but this bike felt great right down the middle. I found myself "cruising" along a sketchy bit with only one hand on the bar, and came up to a corner realizing I was going way faster than I thought and had to grab the brakes pretty sharpish. I though the 8 inch front rotor would be overkill, but the XT brakes seem great. Way more modulation and great lever feel - not squishy or spongy, very smooth. I'm going to have to do some re-arranging on the bars though. With the SRAM on my other bike I could mount the shifters closest to the grips, and the brake levers further towards the stem so my index finger can hook the ends of the levers, but I'm not sure if that's going to work with the Shimano kit.
I want the bars lower too, and I'll either trim the bars narrower or switch the bars for the Race Face ones on my other bike (narrower and less rise).
The very last part of the trail is up hill, as is the first third of the road home. There was only one slight downhill. I'd thought from 7eleven to my place was downhill, but it seems it's exactly level, so I'd get on my bike, and just sit there like a lemon (but less likely to roll away than a lemon). It was a long walk home. I got in about 6:30 (I'd left the house at 2), which is probably the same time as I would have if I rode singletrack down, rode back up and rode some more single track, like I usually do.
Quite disappointing, but at with the seat dropped an inch the bike felt great.
I'm probably not going to get to ride again until Saturday - a whole week!

i bought a REMEDY!!!

2009-07-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

My boss made me work last Sunday. He said that he had me come in to tidy the tech room and make an "action plan", etc.
I was a bit cross about this, as I'd been invited to ride Hartland with Julia and Michele and the rest of the SIMBS women's ride group. Instead I spend the day cleaning up dusty stuff that other people had dumped in there when told to tidy somewhere else. That went on from 12 to 6 pm, and then there was a computer department meeting, where we went over "solution selling" and did some roll play (no, I'm not kidding). The meeting went on until 9:45.
Because I'd worked Sunday and they didn't want to pay me overtime, I got Thursday off. I decided to ride down to Victoria and take a look around bike shops as I've been considering a new mountain bike for some time now.
The first place I went to when I got down there was the Trek Store. As you walk in, the counter is on the left and two bikes on the left, and all the rest of the bikes are at the back of the store. The two bikes at the front of the store were a Trek Soho (the belt driven bike I was talking about in a previous post), and a 2009 Trek Remedy 8 (size small) on sale. I rode it around outside a bit, and then went and had some lunch.
I checked out Russ Hayes and Ryders. Ryders had an R9 and R7, but neither in my size, and both marked at full retail. I messed around in town for a while, then rode to Oak Bay Bikes, where I rode a Norco Fluid and a Specialized Enduro. The Enduro felt more like a cross country bike than I wanted, but had heaps of standover clearance (something I wasn't too bothered about), and looked a lot nicer (something else I wasn't too bothered about). I'm not keen on Specialized's own brand shocks - apparently they've had a lot of trouble with them, and I'd rather get something tried, tested and refined (most likely a Fox Float RP23). It's seems contradictory to me that they market their ASF suspension designs as eliminating pedal bob, and then they make shocks with automatic lockout to eliminate pedal bob. The Fluid felt like a downhill bike (not that I've ever ridden one), and although it had 5" of travel (while the other two had 6), it was way over built and heavy. It seemed as if I was going where the bike wanted, and the bike wouldn't go where I wanted. It really was ugly though. Weird shape (especially in the small size) and terrible periwinkle blue paint that looked cheap.
I rode back (after getting lost - when I came out of the store I thought I was on a different road to what I actually was, and ended up going quite far north), and walked around Beacon Hill Park for a while and took some photos. Then I went back the the Trek shop and put down a deposit on the Remedy.
I wasn't sure how I was going to get it home. Bikes aren't allowed on the Greyhound. There is a city bus (with a bike rack) that goes from Duncan to Victoria (and back, obviously), but that's only on weekdays. The only option was to take the Greyhound down there and ride it back.
So I hung out with Hilary at the market for a while and then took the 11:30 bus to the bus station in Victoria. I walked from there to the shop, payed the rest, went to Booster juice, and started the long ride home.
I'd forgotten to take some slicks with me like I'd planned, and forgotten to take anything to eat, so stopped at the last gas station on the way out of town. It seems all gas stations sell is chocolate bars - racks and racks. I ended up with a Power Bar (I'm not keen on these), a Rice Krispie square, and a packet of Maynards Juicy Squirts (more to come on these).
Riding west from the store was horrible. I thought I as never going to make it home. How could this bike be so slow? But it was just the wind. The wind was terrible, and once I'd got out of the wind (around Goldstream), it occurred to me that I've felt terrible up until that point every time I've ridden back from Victoria. Damn wind.
The rest of the ride was slow and uneventful. Very slow and long.
I'd filled up with water in Victoria, and the water tasted horrible, so I got quite dehydrated, and had a headache before I got to Mill Bay. I was planning to catch a bus from Mill Bay, but there are only three buses on that route throughout the day, so I'd either missed the last, or the next wouldn't be along for ages.
I've no idea how long the ride took, but several people looked at me funny. I often people riding Kona Stinkys around tow and think "why?".

the weekends

2009-07-11T20:28:00.000-07:00

Work's really been wearing me down lately. I didn't mind going to work in the winter, since there isn't a lot else to do in the snow, but it's nice and sunny and I'm stuck in a tech room full of dust, being verbally assulted by customers and having to fix other people's screw ups and make up for their laziness. I can't help but think I'm one of the stupid ones though - why get stuff done and do it properly when it would be so much easier to pass it all on to someone else, or just not do it at all, and spend the time sucking up to the boss by coming up with "action plans" that will be given to someone else to implement (or texting of course)? The manager knows who the lazy ones are, and just gives their share of the work to the three people that actually get stuff done.
I was behind this week with work (I'm always behind), so the manager suggested I give some simple tasks (ridiculously simple - repacking new products for sale) to someone. I had to open one of the boxes he's repaccked for some reason, and everything had been thrown in the box without being wiped down or put bacxk in the plastic or anything. No customer would be happy buying a product and it looking like that when they opened the box. I pointed this out to my manager, and she agreed that that couldn't happen, and "suggested" that I should re-pack them all properly. So I repacked them all, because if I didn't, it would be me that would have to deal with the return and get yelled at by an angry customer.
Sorry about the rant - I'll end it there (though there is more).

I went riding yesterday on Mt Tzouhalem. I was out for about 6 hours overall, so was quite short on water. They should have a water tap in the parking lot up there.
I rode up singletrack from the far side of the parking lot, and despite making two right turns and expecting to end up somewhere down by the Providence Farm trail, I came out on the main fire road opposit the bottom of Toxic Tea Cup, so must have ridden Blue Balls backwards. I rode up Tea Cup, then crossed over and came out at the top of School's Out, as I wanted to see if Finality was climbable. That steep down at the end of the trail is definately ridable - I've just got to find the balls (and preferably a bike with a slacker head angle!). As is customary for me on Finality, I took the wrong trail up. Every time I've ridden that I've gone the wrong was at some point, despite there being very few (3?) intersecting trails. The trail I took disappeared into the bottom of a stream bed, so I turned around and found the right trail (with a big sign that read "FINALITY - to Field of Dreams"). Riding up Finality apparently requires more skill and lung capacity than I possess, as it took me quite some time, mostly pushing. From the top of Finality I rode Field of Dreams, Upper Tea, Little Dipper, Y Connector, up the fire road to Showtime, Luc's Skywalker, Fluid, Toxic Tea Cup, Blue Balls, and somehow ended up on De-analyzer, and rode down to Providence Farm.

I really had a great ride today, and want to ride more often and I want to visit the North Shore, and maybe make it to Mt. Washington or even Whistler, which means I'm in the market for a squishy bike. They make some great 6" travel full suspension "all mountain" bikes that can handle stuff like that, but can be pedalled to the top without much trouble, and would be awesome on trails like we've got at the Tzou. I really seem to be pushing my bike at the moment - I guess I should learn to pick smooth lines rather than riding straight through the middle, buut that's always seemed a bit backwards to me. If I'm going to take the smoothest way, I might as well just go for a road ride. I think bigger tires would help. My bike currently has more noises coming from it than it has components, and when I push it in the corners it feels like the front wheel is going to snap in half (or maybe it's the fork, but more likely the wheel).
The Trek Remedy seems like the perfect price, but you'd think big brands would be cheaper, but $4550 for a Remedy 8? I could get an Intense Tracer VP for that!
I'm not sure what to do here though:
1) Buy the dream bike (Intense Tracer) fully built, and live on packet noodles for the following two years
2) Buy a cheap used bike that will last me a year (hopefully)
3) Buy a cheaper new bike
4) Buy a Tracer frame, fork and front wheel, and use parts from my Rockhopper to build it up, and replace as I can afford (or as they wear out)
Number two was the obvious way to go, but looking around, the cheapest bike is probably going to come in at about $2600 for a Pitch Comp, which has an almost identical build kit as my current bike (meaning the same slow-to-enguage rear hub, bendy front wheel, not great shifting, crap brakes, coil fork (though it's a better fork), etc), and it's more "trail oriented", and not so "freeride-ish". I thought "boutique" bikes were expensive, but it seems as Trek, Specialized and big brands keep raising their prices, the small builders have kept prices the same, so there isn't a lot in it really, especially when you look at the well-specced stuff, though big brands obviously have the lead on "entry level".
Comments welcome (as long as they justify 1 or 4).

I'm really fed up with work, and thought that if I want some time off (maybe a week, or even just a four day weekend), that I should do it now, as work will be busy for back to school soon (and will stay busy into autumn). I was told that I don't get paid vacation, since I'm regisered as part time employee! WTF? Part time? I work 40 hours a week, plus 2-8 hours un-paid overtime. I'm angry.
And to top it off, someone pointed out to me at work on Friday that I'm scheduled to work today. I asked a manager, and he said that I'v got to tidy the tech room, as the dust and untidiness is unacceptable. That ticked me off. I can't keep it tidy when everyone else uses it as a dumping ground. And not only do I have to do this on a Sunday when I should be out riding, but he didn't even bother to mention it to me. Oh, and the tidying shift will be followed by a three hour, entirely un-productive computer department "meeting" (read as "lecture").

Total distance: 27 km
Toral time: 4 hrs

Tzou

2009-07-04T22:29:00.000-07:00

I went riding on Mt Tzouhalem on Saturday. I really enjoyed the ride. I haven't been up there for quite a while now (except a couple of times with Hilary before work on Wednesdays). It was just too uncomfortable to ride properly, as it's a very bumpy place. I rode really well today though. I cleared everything that I usually only clear sometimes. I took the singletrack up all the way (except the bottom hill), and definately prefer doing it that way. The climbing disappears when it's singletrack.
I was reading a blog the other day (can't remember which, or I'd link), that had a rant about people that remove obstacles from trails. This came to mind as I was riding Why Be A Roadie (in the upwards direction). There's a big (about 30 cm diameter) log in the trail. It's easily ridable in the upwards direction, but a challenge when going the other way. I always try it, and have made it over on several occasions, but not consistantly (and have ended up hugging the tree on the other side of it a couple of times). Somebody had taken a chainsaw to it. The rest of the trunk was still there on either side of the trail, and the meter-wide cutout had been shoved to the side of the trail. I was a bit angry. This mountain isn't one of them "trail centers" where "hazards" are clearly marked with big yellow signs (with foam padding around the signpost). I like riding up there because it's so challenging, and I ride something I hadn't ridden every time I'm up there. And so does Willy (Willy is the Dad of Mt. Tzouhalem. He lives up in The Properties and rides his Devinci Ollie up there several days a week to build new trails and "stunts" and maintain the trails. Willy takes the craziest lines and biggest drops. He's also the nicest guy, and will always offer to show new-comers the trails. He thinks I nees a fully suspended bike. I think he's right). The mountain (well... the whole island) is made of rock, so the trails aren't going to be smooth. There are a couple of floopy trails, but even they have logs and drops and rocks to act as natural "speed bumps". Although I really love the fast flowy stuff, the higher trails become more and more appealing with their rock gardens. The logs on the lower trails continue to disintergrate and disappear (and get easier to clear) with frequent riding, and new ones fall (the log pile on School's Out changes every week), but the rocks on Field of Dreams and Chicken Run never loose their hard jaggy edges, just get marked by bashguards. The trails at the top of the mountain also get less traffic, maybe because it's more challenging, or maybe because it's further to ride(/push) up, or maybe because people only ride for an hour or so, and never get very far up the mountain.
Anyway, the point is that I missed the log. Why did it get taken out? Who would have taken it out, anyway? Willy and a handful of his friends do most of the building/maintainance up there, and I'm sure it wasn't any of them. They'd need more than a chainsaw to get rid of the rocks, thankfully.

PS - I've made a nifty device out of an egg carton that goes over the button on my GPS receiver, as it works flawlessly, unless the button gets pressed, which tends to happen a lot when stuffed into my pack.

Riding Updates

2009-07-02T16:29:00.000-07:00

I haven't got around to posting ride reports lately. Where to start?
I didn't do the 12 Hours of Cumberland, because of the rib issue.
June 20th was Summer Solstice, which I wanted to celebrate. Hilary had suggested doing a loop on the ferry to Saltspring, ride to the ferry to Sidney, ride to the ferry to Mill Bay, and ride home sometime. I was going to do it by myself if she didn't want to come, but I ended up riding down to Esquimalt, where they were having the market for the last day of the "Fiber Fest", and rode home with Hilary and Dave in their car.
(or in black & white here)

The ride over the Malahat was a lot easier than I'd expected. I'll have to stop listening to other people when they warn me against things. The Malahat isn't a big, steep, or long hill, nor is the traffic that bad. I had no trouble making it over with the double on my bike.
Only ended up doing about 60 km.

Last Saturday I rode to Nanaimo to get a new backpack. The weather when I left (at about 8am) was nice and sunny, no wind. I stopped at Tim Horton's when I got there, and made my way through town, stopping here and there, and then to the Woodgrove Mall (my favourite shop in Nanaimo is the House of Knives). I walked around in there for a bit, and decided to make my way home. It was absolutely pissing it down. I couldn't see to the edge of the parking lot. So I went back inside to kill time, hoping it would pass. It did slow a bit, and was not raining full-on when I got tired of waiting and left at 7pm. I had a tiny fold up jacket, but appart from that just shorts and a t-shirt. I got very wet, but it was quite warm, except for when it got windy. I got home at about 9, covered in road grit.
Total distance: 138km

Wednesday was Canada Day, so I had the day off. I didn't do much all day, but went for a ride to Lake Cowichan. I rode on the new highway both there and back. A couple of people have told me how that road is horrible for cyclists and that I should ride the Old Highway instead, but I liked the long smooth highway much better than all the potholes, rough roads and momentum-robbing short ups and downs of the other road. I rode straight through the town, and turn around and came back somewhere between Mesachie Lake and Honeymoon Bay, when I realized that enen though I had a spare battery for my lights, I had taken the light off my bike the day before. I got back at about 9:15, just as it was starting to get dark.
Total Distance: 77km

I'm going to have to do something saddle-wise soon. After 50 km it becomes increasingly uncomfortable, and causes my back to ache aswell. I've tried a whole load of saddles (7 now I think), and none of them have solved the issue.

I haven't been doing a lot of mountain biking lately. I'd really like to do more. I've been invited on the SIMS women's ride on Sunday mornings at Hartland, which I'm looking forward to.
Mount Washington opened last weekend. Anyone want to go and rent big bikes with me?

2010

2009-07-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's June, and the 2010 bikes are already starting to show up on bike sites, blogs, forums and the like.
Apparently lower end Trek and Specialized bikes are already for sale in the UK.
Specialized bikes continue to get uglier. Last year they gave the Hardrock a curved top tube, and a paint scheme with matching fork. This year, they've done the same with the Rockhopper.
Strangely, the Enduro seems to be a completely new design, despite redesigning it last year. I have no idea who came up with that paint scheme, but he should be fired immediately. Maybe he gt the idea from this? Let's hope the rest of the Enduros have a different one, as it seems like an interesting bike.
The travel on the Stumpjumper has been bumped up to 140 from 120, and been given the same shock arrangement as the Epic.
It's nice to see that Fox are now doing their suspension, rather than Specialized/X-Fusion/Triad.

Although their mountain bikes seem less and less appealing to me, their road bikes get sexier every year. Is this not the coolest looking bike ever? (Look closely at the chain!)
I don't bother too much with the road bike specs though, the bikes just get a few grams lighter and more expensive each year.
I have mixed feelings about this Di2 (Shimano's electronic shifting system). I was talking to a mechanic at OBB in Nanaimo on Saturday, and he says he's ridden it, and that it was absolutely perfect, but he thinks there's too much to go wrong, and that it will be unreliable. I agree too a degree - I can see how shifting would be greatly improved with a derailleur that knows where the chain is and can adjust itself accordingly, and I agree that they would likely be unreliable to start with, but I'm sure the electronics in cars were unreliable to begin with, and the first mountain bike disk brakes were probably terribly unreliable, along with suspension forks, but they improved and now everyone uses them (except for weight weenies). I think they'll iron out any issues, and we'll all be using electronic shifting systems soon. And so what if it is unreliable? Cannondale "forks", Alfa Romeos, Toshiba laptops, and plastic kitchen utensils are unreliable and people still buy them.
Specialized are also doing a load of power-coated get-around bikes. As is obvious from the website, these bikes are all about looks. A few of them have internal gearing, which is starting to show up more and more. I want a belt driven bike with a rear coaster brake, a disk on the front, and either one gear or internal hub gearing (sort of like the Trek Soho... but it seems over-priced).
Transition have re-designed their Covert this year, which is definitely interesting. The travel has been bumped up to 6", and they do it in a cool green colour:

And while we're at the Transition website, this is worth a look.
White definitely is the new black. The finishing kit on bikes used to be all chrome, then they went to black. A few years ago riders started putting white aftermarket stems, rims, bars, saddles, and bits on their bikes, but lots of bikes have come with white kit stock in 2009. I don't like it. I think a white frame is cool with all stealth black finishing kit, but a white stem and saddle look weird to me on a bike with everything else black.

I'm hoping for more belt-driven bikes in 2010, and want to see the new Trek Remedy.

UPDATE: I've just come across this from Nicolai (known for their gear-boxed downhill bikes), of all bike manufacturers.
(I still can't understand why some commuter bikes get suspension at the front!)

Day Trip to Victoria

2009-06-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I went to Victoria with Hilary and Erika. We took our bikes and rode around a bit.Did a coffee shop,(the window we were sat at in the coffee shop was like a giant softbox!)
Hilary bought sunglasses at MEC,the market,and Hilary and Erika picked out tramp wedding outfits at Value Village.Yam fries at the place with the colourful chairs,more shops, and then back to Hilary's to watch a couple of movies while knitting.

The Log

2009-06-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

My ribs are bruised or broken or something. They hurt. When I stand. When I stretch. When I bend. When I reach. When I lye in any position other than flat on my back. When I lift (which I do a lot more of at work than I realized).

When I ride my bike.

I was riding by myself on the Tzou last Saturday. The ride was going well. I did the little jumps on Emma's Express, I rode a bridge I hadn't ridden before, did some different trails. It was on Luc's Skywalker - The Log. The one that looks harmless, easy, so ridable that no-one gives it a second thought. The first time I came upon this log I was with Julia, Hilary and someone else (Michele? Amy?). Julia was in front, rode straight over it and endo'ed. The rest of us walked.
While on a club ride a few months ago we arrived at The Log. Kurt rode it okay, then I watched from the back as one-by-one each rider took a look at it, thought "what's the fuss about?", and landed flat on his face. I walked.
So on Saturday I approached The Log, stopped, and walked my bike over it. The bike rolled over smoothly, without the back wheel loosing contact with the ground. I pushed the bike back over, and squatted down to examine the steepest angle it made. I pushed the bike back a second time and examined the position of each wheel at every point of the motion. "What's the big deal?" "Easy peasy, lemon squeeezy!"
I approached from a distance, dragging the brakes. The front wheel rolled over effortlessly, and then I stopped. I'm not sure if I stopped the forward motion, or if The Log killed all forwards momentum, but I locked the brakes and balanced there with my front wheel over, and my back wheel on the top of The Log for hours. (I should note that balancing is like holding one's breath - time stands still. One second can become a whole hour. In reality it may have been just short of a whole second.) I had no way of getting off. The only way was forward. I had my bum behind the seat. I'd just roll forward like any other log, right? I have no trouble going down steep stuff or rolling down rocks. The bike wants to go forward.

So I released the brakes, some unknown force pulled my back wheel into the air, and there was a thud as I hit the ground, followed by the clatter of my bike landing on me.

Carried on along the trail, and rode home thinking nothing more of it.

While riding, it's fine if I can stay in the saddle, but if I stand it hurts, whether climbing or descending.
It'll go.

. . . catching up with the blogging . . .

2009-06-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

Looks like I haven't posted since late April. Wow.
I've been busy, and have had better things to do.
(Like unpaid overtime. sigh.)

It officially became summer in May. By "officially" I mean that the hairs on my arms went from being darker than my skin, to being lighter.

It was the Cobble Hill XC Race that was organized by the club on May 10th. I was marshalling, and thought I might as well take along my camera and some strobes, and set them up on the trail. The picture taking went well generally. Lots of riders were out of focus - maybe next time I'll have to manually focus, and hope I hit the shutter when the rider's in the right place.
All pics are here.

I went to a Killers concert in Victoria with Lauren and Ilene from work. I'd never been to a concert before, so that was fun.

Hilary, Erica and I went on an "outing" to Vancouver. Erica drove us to the ferry that took us to Horseshoe Bay. We took the bus into the city and walked around for a bit, then went to the Art Gallery. We spent the rest of the day at Granville Island, and got the last ferry home.

I joined the camera club. The first meeting was Thursday before last, and was the second-to-last meeting off the year. There was a field trip the following Saturday to Ganges (on Saltspring Island). I rode to Crofton, and then we took the ferry to Versuvius Bay, and the bus to Ganges. I spent the first couple of hours walking around with Diane (apparently a friend of Patricia's and Brad's), taking pictures at the dock. We met up with the others and walked around the market a bit. We went on the 8:30 ferry (leaving Crofton), and the others came back on the 1 pm ferry, but Vanessa, Teresa and I came on the 3 pm ferry. I would have liked to stay longer, so went back again yesterday and took my bike. It was a bit cooler, as it was cloudy until about 2 pm, but warm enough so I didn't get uncomfortably cold on the ferry.
I'm not sure if I'll bother with camera club next year though - it seems to be mainly old people that take pictures of birds. At the meeting they were showing the photos from the previous competition - and the pictures were all very "traditional". They seemed to be lacking creativity and originality. I'll go to the next meeting, anyway, and see.

I've been taking loads of pictures, but can't seem to find the time to process them. It took me three weeks to get all the XC race pics done. I get some up on my photostream.
...including taking some of Hilary's stuff:

This is the setup shot:

I'm doing the Twelve Hours of Cumberland the weekend after next. Roland was trying to get together a team, and asked me to come. I'm excited, and a little nervous at the same time.

I've been riding a lot. I've only been able to sleep for about 4 hours a night lately for some reason, so I've been riding before work. Mill Bay, Lake Cowichan, Ladysmith, Shawnigan, etc.
I'm going to go and find Meschatchie (spelling?) Mountain tomorrow.

These were from a ride on Tzouhalem with Jackie, who was (is) brand new to mountain biking. I'm not sure what's going on with Hilary's shorts in this one:

Hilary and I rode "Hell Mountain" (Hilary named it): before work on Wednesdays with her friends Colleen and Rachel, except they haven't come at all, so we rode Prevost this week. The heat is a little more manageable at that time of day. We left her house at 7 (well... that was the plan) and took Daisy and Ben. It was a steady ride up, but the trail down was excellent (once we found it - "oh wait, we've gone past it", "oh yeah". After several minutes of looking we realized we hadn't got to it yet!). It's so dry up there, so the trails are very dusty, but very fast. My wheel started making a clangging noise after an unintended shortcut through a bush. After investigations today, I found that I have onve again broken the little spring thingy that holds the pads back. It's the third time I've broken it, but the last two times I was left without a front brake halfway down a mountain - at least this time the pads held on.
I was late for work.
Again.

I really want to join the rowing club in Maple Bay, too.

Populaire

2009-03-29T20:19:00.000-07:00

Sunday was the 100 km populaire ride in Victoria.
I left at 7am, to get to Mill Bay to meet Dave, who gave me a ride to Victoria. The ride to Mill Bay was quite cold - the sun had only just risen when I left but the sky was perfectly clear. I was quite surprised by the amount of traffic on the roads at 7 am on a Sunday. There were several cars going the opposite way to me with squishy bikes on them. I think there was a downhill race in Cumberland or somewhere. I got to the Tim Horton's in Mill Bay at about 7:55, and had some milk and an apple fritter.
The ride started in Beacon Hill Park. I've only ridden down to Victoria twice, and it was almost raining both times, and I spent most of my time lost. I hadn't noticed that Victoria is so much nicer than Duncan. I have, however, noticed that there isn't really a park in Duncan - yes there are little bits of grass with gravel paths through them and stuff - but I really like big green parks in the middle of towns. Mum often used to take us to the Arboritum in Nottingham (pics 1, 2, 3). There were bird cages (pic), and duck ponds and the whole place was surrounded by thick brick walls with iron railings on top (pic), which made me think of the Secret Garden. It was quite a big park (or maybe it wasn't - I was small) with loads of trees, so there could have been a lot of people there and you wouldn't really notice. When I went to London I remember thinking Hyde Park was great - loads of trees in the middle of the city. There were loads of parks we used to go to: Wollaton Park with the deer (and crocodiles, according to Paula - why else would they fense of the water?), Evaston Castle (my favourite), Rutland Waters, Holme Pierpont, Sherwood Forest, Hickling Basin (does that count?). I look at Google Maps of the Cowichan Valley and there are loads of little trees (representing parks), and I go and find them and they turn out to be 10m square patches of grass with a totem pole in the middle. I only saw a bit of Becon Hill Park, so I'm going to have to go down again soon.

We set off at 10 am, and followed the water to the East through Oak Bay and up towards Sidney. The park seemed to continue along the shoreline with beaches and grassy bits. The trees were in blossom and the weather ride was great; sunny and warm enough not to get cold, but cool enough not to get hot. It was the perfect day for riding. I should have kept count of how many non-populaire cyclists were out - we passed so many riding in the other direction.
About 80 riders showed up for the populaire overall, 17 of which were doing an alternate 50 km route.
It's weird how quickly that many riders get spread apart and form groups. People pass and get passed until people find themselves with a group travelling at their pace (or cling to a group in fear of getting lost - and no, I wasn't the only one, lots of people said that!).
I found myself riding with in a group of five: husband and wife in matching yelow rain jackets, a fit-looking guy on a Lynsky, and another guy on a Surly Cross Check. We were keeping a decent pace of about 27 km/hr. I rode with them for the first 30 or so kilometers, and the I dropped my chain at the beginning of a hill and they were gone.
Then Ken Bonner (who I'd been introduced to by Dave - apparently the king of randonneuring) came up behind me and I rode with him for a bit. We had a conversation about how technically mided people tend to be drawn to cycling - I hadn't really noticed, but have begun generating informal statistics in my head - so far inconclusive. He wasn't actually doing the route, but was just out for a Sunday ride, so went a different direction. I rode by myself for a while, then came up behind a couple - one on a Madone, the other a Marinoni. I rode with them to the first control which was in Sidney, where I stayed fr about 20 mins, which seemed much longer than most. Some people just got their card stamped and rode off again.
I rode off from the first control with a gentleman on a Surly LHT called Scott (the man, not the Surly). The route headed back down the west side of the peninsula along the coast. He was used to a slower pace than me, so after about 20 kms I went on ahead. I soon met up with two guys: Phil on a vintage Marinoni with downtube shifters, and Tom on a Tricross. I rode with them for the rest of the ride.
The whole second half of the ride went slower than I usually ride, and I stayed quite a while at the first control, and I finished in 5:31. My legs felt fine, and I wasn't really tired either, so I'm thinking about doing the 200km "Tour de Cowichan" in two weeks.
Dave gave me a ride back to Mill Bay once he got back from his station at the secret control, and I rode home from Mill Bay, and still got back before dark.

I didn't take my camera, but there are some photos here.

Populaire distance: 105.2 km
Time: 5:31

Home to Mill Bay: 20 km
Total distance: 20+105+20 = 145km

a decent weekend

2009-03-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

It rained all week, but was dry on the weekend.
I went for a short mountain bike ride with Hilary on Saturday, and on Sunday I rode to Duke Point in Nanaimo. I stopped at Transfer Beach on the way. It was dull all day, but not cold. It was only windy on the Duke Point peninsular. Almost all the photos I took that day were panoramas, so I'm still stitching...
The photos I took at the Saturday market are here.

Distance: 112 km

Not there...

2009-03-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

My mum's gone back to England for 10 days.
I thought I'd search Flickr for some pics of Nottingham.
I don't remember this in the Old Market Square...
Click if you dare.

more light

2009-03-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

I was really excited about the daylight savings time coming into effect last Sunday. I was looking forward to some light after work, for going riding and taking pictures and stuff.
We got more light, but we also got more snow.
But that's gone now, so I went riding after work on Wednesday. I rode along the highway and turned off towards Cobble Hill. I turned my front light on just before I got to Cobble Hill, and it died less than five minutes later. I turned around and started back, a bit disappointed. It ended up being a pretty short ride.
On the way back, there was a cop car parked on a corner with a speed gun. As I got closer, he stuck his head out the window. I thought he was going to stop me for riding in the dark without lights, but he shouted "34", and pulled his head back inside.

The Mocha Conundrum

2009-03-10T21:04:00.000-07:00

So I hate Starbucks. They were starting to grow on me after several enjoyable knitting sessions, but that was all undone when I took a break from work today.
I was cold at work, which is unusual as the tech room it a tiny, dust filled triangle lopped off the corner of the store, with a closed door and no ventilation, and 3-10 computers running constantly. It's always hot. In the summer it was the hottest place in the store.
But today I was cold. As I walked past the receiving bay to clock out, I saw the receiving dock was wide open, even though there was no truck at the door.
"It's you causing this cold Ben!"
"It's not me! There's a man here who was apparently sent to remove dead animals from under the dock."
Anyway, I wanted a warm drink (and I don't drink coffee), and the only food places within a minute walk from work are Starbucks, Superstore, a hotdog stand outside Superstore, Safeway, and the Starbucks inside Safeway. So it really had to be Starbucks.
"Can I have a medium hot chocolate, please?"
"Pre-made, or our Signature Series?"
"What's the difference?"
(There was some talking about syrups and brewing processes and organic milk or something)
"Pre-made"
"What size?"
"Medium"
"Tall?"
(reluctantly) "Sure"
She punched "Tall Signature Series" into the till, and charged me $4.25
What I got was a cup of something that didn't taste much like hot chocolate at all and had a load of white foamy stuff on top that ended up on my nose, and no lid (which makes me nervous about putting it down on the bench at work).

At Tim Horton's, if I ask for a medium hot chocolate, the lady says, "That'll be $1.12 please", and hands me a cup of hot chocolate that tastes exactly like hot chocolate tastes, it doesn't end up on my nose, and has a lid, and cost one quarter as much.

Tim Horton's was directly opposite us when I worked at Sneakers. When I'd got to get the guys coffee, Jeff would have a mocha. You know how I feel about all this coffee lingo. I'd watch the lady fill the cup half with coffee and half with hot chocolate. Why don't they just call it what it is rather than coming up with a fancy name?

But then I came to the Mocha Conundrum.
Mocha is an unnecessary word - common words can be used to say the same thing.
"Mocha" is one word; "half coffee and half hot chocolate" is lots.
It's easier to say "mocha", but it's easier to understand "half hot chocolate and half coffee".
I like simple names for things, but I don't like long names, so which should it be?
I think the beverage should be eradicated all together. Who'd ruin hot chocolate by putting coffee in it anyway?

Common Misconceptions

2009-03-06T22:36:00.000-08:00

I was told by someone once again today that "It is a common misconception that...".
What is a common misconception?
When most people think one thing, and the person stating the "common misconception" (and possibly a handful of others) thinks the opposite, and despite the fact that the majority thinks the opposite, they think they are right, and that everyone else has been mislead.
Everyone that I have heard stating "common misconceptions" knows no better than everyone else. The wise people don't give advise in the form "They're all wrong, and I'm right".
I recently read on a web page "It's a common misconception that carrots are good for you, but...". By no means am I any kind of nutritionist, but that seems a bit weird to me. (You know what also seems a bit weird? The spelling of "weird" - it should be "wierd", shouldn't it?)
I'm not saying that I think that the majority is always right. We used to think that the sun orbited Earth, and that the earth was flat, (but then again, maybe we're all wrong - we thought Pluto was a planet until recently - ha). If I thought everyone around me was wrong and I was right, and I cared about what the others thought, I'd work on proving my theory, not telling them their beliefs were wrong.
While writing this, I ended up on Wikipedia's list of common misconceptions. A few stood out:
It is a common misconception that the human body can not survive the vaccuum of space.
It is a common misconception that a disproportionate amount of heat is lost through the head.
It is a common misconception that there are successful non-surgical techniques for penis enlargement.
It is a common misconception that security lighting deters crime.
It is a common misconception that lemmings engage in suicidal dives off cliffs.
It is a common misconception that Henry Ford invented the car.
It is a common misconception that french fries originated in France.
It is a common misconception that mirrors reverse left and right.
It is a common misconception that Wikipedia is a reliable source of information (okay, I added that one)

I'm not saying that I think these misconceptions are...ummm...misconceptions. I just picked them because I think they're... interesting. I doubt there is a successful non-surgical method for penis enlargement. I doubt that lemmings are suicidal.

(I think I'm about to wander off into a nearly unrelated thread...)
This kind of reminds me of the "Philosophy - Critical Thinking" class I had to take in my first year of university. The students were made up of the usual Arts/Philosophy/Theology types you'd expect, along with a handful of Engineers that you wouldn't. The prof put a mathematical "proof" up on the overhead projector one day. It was the classic "1=2" proof. The artsy ones found great joy in this, as it clearly "proved" that all that math stuff they didn't understand, and had caused their marks to drop in high school, was infact (one word or two?) flawed. Meanwhile, all the math dorks saw that dividing by a+b when a=b is dividing by zero, which falsifies the "proof".
What is the purpose of this "proof"? To show how gullible people can be? To show how easily people can be led to believe things?
People can be very naive. I'm always surprised by how easily some people's beliefs will completely change after reading an article or watching a TV documentary, or even a mini documentaries on YouTube. They're presented with one side of the story, and take every fact they're given to be accurate. It would be interesting to observe one of these people's opinions after watching a documentary presenting one side of the story, and immediately afterwards show him or her a documentary from the opposing view.

It's very difficult not to believe something everyone else believes, and is presented over and over as the truth (see comment above about the world being flat).
Which leads me to something I believe to be a common misconception (add contradiction to the list of reasons why this is a poorly written blog post, along with lack of cohesion).
I don't think recycling "helps the planet". I think it uses way too much energy to recycle stuff; transport it to a recycling plant, sort it, clean it, melt it down, and reform it. I think too much emphasis is put on recycling, when the emphasis should be on reducing and reusing.
But I don't really care about any of this to be brutally honest (which I usually am), because I think we're fucked. We over consume. And it's getting worse. The planet is over populated and can't support our (growing) population at current (growing) consumption levels. We're told to consume, and we use our time working so we can get more money so we can get more stuff. This has been this way since the invention of agriculture, and isn't going to change. I don't thing recycling is going to help, nor using re-usable shopping bags, or using electric cars or traveling by bicycle, because we over consume.
People think I'm green, and that I care about the environment, because I ride a bike rather than driving, I don't use plastic bags for my shopping, I re-use bags computers come packaging in as garbage bags, and generally have a low "carbon footprint" compared to others. But honestly - I'm not green, I'm just cheap. As it turns out, being cheap is quite green, and one can easily be mistaken for the other. I don't think nuclear power is a good idea, not because it's giving us all cancer (which it probably is), but because it's bloody expensive. Yes, once the plant is up and running, it's cheap. But how long does a plant last before it has to be "decommissioned", (or an uneducated night worker is left in charge and the whole thing explodes). Then you're left with a pile of reactive material that has to be disassembled by robots, and is ridiculously expensive to dispose of and contain.
I don't care about "the planet", not only because we're screwed anyway, but because I think we're going to kill our selves or something is going to kill us long before we "kill the planet". Biological war (or accident), nuclear war (or accident), a "big bang" or whatever killed the dinosaurs; I don't know - but I bet it'll happen.
We are very conceited (see comment about the sun revolving about Earth - we are the center of the universe). We think we have complete control. We build "earthquake proof" buildings and think we can control forest fires. We can't, which is fine - we just get proved wrong once in a while. Thinking we're smarter than nature is one thing, but we keep messing with it. Ever seen "Jurassic Park"? Or "The Core"?

I've definately gotten a bit off track.
Thinking too much does my head in. Best not to too often.

New Sticker!

2009-03-05T20:17:00.000-08:00

I went mountain biking on Sunday. It was wet and rainy for most of the day, with sixty second patches of sun thrown in here and there. I rode to the top of the mountain up single track and fire roads, and then wound my way back down again.
Just as I rode out the bottom of the trails, Ted and his mum were walking Jasper The Dog back towards their house. Ted and I went for a short ride and did some nice floopy (that's flowy and swoopy) trails. Fluid was a bit slidey in (all) places which slowed us down a bit. It's funny how a trail can seem like a completely different one in different conditions.
Apparently, Ted had won tickets to a mountain biking movie show thingy. He gave me a sticker he'd picked up.I like stickers. I got home and looked at my bike, and wondered where to put it.
While considering the sticker, I grew to really like it. In a previous post I think I wrote about how I sometimes read a sentance that says in a few words what would take me the same number of paragraphs, well this sticker does this. No words, monochrome, two shapes, and it says more than my other stickers, and can also say many different things, depending on how you interpret it.
So it went on the headtube.

(though that could have just been me being lazy - there was the least mud to wipe off there).

I was going to put up a map, but it looks like my GPS turned itself off before I even mafe it to the trailhead. I think it keeps doing that because I shove it i a pocket and if I lean on it or something else squishes against it, it presses on the power button.

(Pics of the stunts for Aaron:)

Riding LAST Weekend

2009-02-28T17:16:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to write this post since last Sunday, but got a new camera this week, and have been messing around with it all week.
Last Saturday was a nice sunny day, so I obviously had non-outside stuff to do. I can't remember what - I guess I should have written this earlier. I went for a ride to Mill Bay in the late afternoon. I was going to ride down to the ferry terminal, and continue until the road meets the highway, but saw a "Beech Access" sign I haadn't seen before and spent a while taking photos. It soon started to get dark, so I came back the way I went.

Sunday was dull and rainy, the day of the first Experience Cycling Club ride.
It was a good fun though. We met at the parking lot at 10:30 and split into two groups:
Mike, Trevor, Kevin, and Dave and Alyssa from Victoria headed off on the south side of the mountain, while Tara, Kurt, Jamie, Roland and Jen (from Victoria), and me rode up the fire road. We rode up some Emma's Express and rode Why be a Roadie, and up the road to Field of Dreams, and straight to the top. Kurt led us down Rocky Ridge and Blueberry Pancakes to Chicken Run 1 and 2, then Fluid and Resurrection. At the very end of Resurrection there's a little jump with a bit of an upward-sloping landing. I landed a bit front-wheel-first, and rode home with a broken spoke and wobbly front wheel.
I really should have written this earlier - it would have been more interesting!

Pics here.

a good weekend of riding

2009-02-15T20:47:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning I rode on the road in the morning, and then went riding with Ted in the afternoon.
We went up Tzouhalem for a couple of hours. We rode up the fire road and came down Showtime, the end of Chicken Run 3 (I guess we should have gone right instead of left...), Fluid, and Resurrection.We had a good ride, and decided that we could both ride the end of the "Zig-Zag" woodwork, but it was a bit wet today, so we'll have to do it in the summer.
By then Ted will have his Cove STD, and me my Trek Remedy of course.

I went riding with Hilary today. We took Ben for a bit of a run and ended up at a decked area on the "golf course". We rode up a bit higher from that and came out just above Toxic Tea Cup, and rode down Tea Cup and Resurrection.
Back at the parking lot we ran into Bill, Bruce, and another man (whose name I've forgotten), and then Gail and Linda rolled up. I guess it's been the first nice sunny riding dat since all the snow. The parking lot was full, and most cars had bike racks on.
We headed back up and look the lower old M/L and came accross two lost hikers, and rode with them three-quarters of the way to the cross, then came back a bit and did the beginning of Chicken Run 2, and then attempted Chicken Run 1 backwards, which meant we ended up walking half of it. Riding it backwards meant that one of the bridges that is usually uphill was downhill, so we both rode it.
We then rode up the usual fire road (I told you it was!) to the top, and then along a bit to the top with a better view. While we were there, a guy on a downhill bike with dual-crowns road up without a helmet, and then sat on a stump and started meditating/praying.
We left and rode back down to Field of Dreams, which we rode backwards, and then onto Finality. I must have gone left when I should have stayed right, because I think we were trying to ride backwards along Twist and Shout. We ended up at the bottom of Little Dipper somewhere, and rode the Y Connector, and Why Be A Roadie, School's Out, Tea Cup and Resurrection.
Hilary drove home, while I rode along the Viewpoint Trail and down the Providence Farm Trail.

Two things to be learnt from this weekend:
Don't let me lead - I always go the wrong way.
Riding trails backwards isn't reccommended.

I've noticed my riding is definitely getting better. I did a few things this weekend that I haven't done before. I'm getting more confident on bridges, and the woodwork doesn't look as scary as it used to. I spend more time in the air, and have started jumping over roots rather than smashing into them. I'm getting much faster on singletrack too.
(Ted took that one)

Ta-Da!!

2009-02-06T08:41:00.000-08:00

My new bike is ready to roll.
It's been on the rack in my apartment for about a month now, but has had bits missing (wheels, brakes). Dale and Brian got it all sorted yesterday.
It's not new. It says Lemond on it, but apparently the frame was custom built for a cyclocross racer, whose name I've forgotten. I bought the bike without wheels, and had some wheels built up - Open Pro rims on 105 back, XT front hubs. It's got a double, which I'm a bit worried about. It'll be fine on shorter rides, but over the 100 km mark I think I'm going to be wanting lower gears for long hills.
Brian brought it round to work last night, so as soon as I got home I went riding. As soon as I got on it, it started to rain.
I was going to ride along Lakes, Herd, Bell McKinnon to Crofton, and back along Osbourne, but by the time I'd gotten to Bell McKinnon (stopping twice to lower my saddle) I'd had two "close calls" with drivers that didn't dim their lights for me. One opened his window to yell "Fucking watch where you're going!" after I'd wandered towards the middle of the road while blinded by his headlights. Not my fault - all I can do is brake and hope I'm going straight.
Anyway, I rode the other way along Bell McKinnon and decided to cross the road and rode Drinkwater to Somenos, and went straight accross at the roundabout (not sure what that road's called).
Loved the bike. Sooo fast and easy compared to Jake and the mountain bike. I had no trouble making it up the hills with the bigger gears, but can't see liking them after riding for six hours. So smooth! The gear shifts are very slow though - delayed about 17 seconds sometimes (I counted). It seems to fit well, except the brifters must be in the wrong place, as my hands start to hurt instantly. It's got even less standover than Jake, and (a lot) more toe overlap, but it's smaller, so that's to be expected.
And it's got no fenders yet, so ...

Project 365

2009-02-02T08:27:00.000-08:00

It's not long after one starts browsing Flickr that "Project 365" pops up.
Let me explain - take (and post) a picture everyday, for 365 days.
From there, everything is flexible, and everyone creates their own rules. Lots of people do 365 days of self portraits. Others will give themselves other restrictions, such as using only their fisheye lens, or taking their photo for the day before they do anything else in the morning.

I thought this was an excellent idea, but didn't think I could follow through - but I've changed my mind. If I have said (online) that I will do this, I can't say to myself that I won't bother today.

This project serves several purposes. Hopefully, having to take at lease one good, postable picture a day will help to make me better at taking pictures. You get better from doing, and this forces me to do. It will also act as a semi-blog in pictures. Each day's picture will give a clue as to what went on on that day. This will also push me to take photos when it seems like there is nothing to take photos of.

My rules:
The pictures don't all have to be different. I'm a bit of a perfectionist about my photos, and have never taken one I'm happy with. I intend to re-visit photos I'm not happy with to see if I can do a better job the second (or third, or fourth) time around.
Each day's picture will be posted the morning after, before I go to work.
They don't all have to be good, because let's face it - they aren't all going to be.
I will post at least one picture of me every month.
If I do miss a day for some reason - it doesn't matter. I'll carry on.
It will actually be Project 334, as I'm starting on February 1st and it seems to make sense I should end (and start again) at the new year, as a journal book would.
The rules must change - as I think all rules should.
The pictures will not all be posted here - they will be on my Flickr photostream:
HERE - and all viewable in the PROJECT 365 set.

So here we go...
February 1st
1/334 - Knitting in Starbucks (because nowhere else is open late on a Sunday, except Timmy's - but their seats are too hard) with Hilary.

That's Hilary in the picture, knitting her "traffic cone" skirt.
I hate the (lack of) low light performance of this camera - grainy starting at ISO 400, and very mushy at wide apertures.

Interior Anti-Design

2009-01-24T20:34:00.000-08:00

I was going to make a new year's resolution, not because I think making resolutions is a good idea - I don't see the point really - but because I though it would be a good way to make a blog post. I was going to write about how my resolution should be to stop procrastinating, but it's already the 24th of January and this should have been written on the first, so ... maybe not then.

Instead, I am going to make a resolution to make my apartment look less like I moved in an hour ago. Anyone that has been to my place will understand this. I've been living here over a year (I moved in on January 1st, 2008) and things are in piles around the edge of the room, as I've got no furniture apart from a desk and chair (neither of which I actually bought), and a glass table and two wicker chairs kindly given to me by Julia and Brian.
But this resolution isn't about buying some furniture, because I don't want any more. I don't want to be one of those people - you know the ones - them that own couches. What would I do with a couch? Probably just use it as a shelf and put stuff on it. I've got as many chairs as I've got mugs, which means I have got as many chairs as people I can have round at once.
I want to cover the walls with random stuff and get a load of shelves to put the stuff I've got on. I have been buying a cactus plant here and there, and have built up a little collection to put on my planned shelving unit(s). Mum said it would be okay to leave them outside on the planting table over winter, but I guess she wasn't expecting it to get this cold. Damn snow.
I was quite disappointed when the first one defrosted and went floppy. I haven't really got any good pictures of them pre-freeze, but I was planning on taking some good photos of them, just hadn't gotten around to it...
I like cactuses (yes I know, but "cacti" sounds too "I'm trying to sound clever") because they're unusual, architectural (mathematical?), widely varied, individual, ... weird.
I like weird stuff. I don't like everything matching and Martha-Stewarty. Why can't you get a load of things you like individually and put them in the same room? Because they're not from the same country/vintage/style/colour group? Bollocks.
I've been reading James May's Telegraph column online on and off. He's a motoring journalist and presenter of one of Britain's most popular programs, Top Gear. I like his writing style, and how he manages to be very entertaining while discussing a valid concept, and somehow managing to vaguely relate it to cars. He's honest and realistic and can't be bothered with the big things. Why, when he can write an entire article about putting cheese in a juicer? Anyway, his column from a couple of weeks ago (that I just read) discussed this matter (which I will call Interior Anti-Design). He describes his house as looking like "an upturned box of Lego". He's even got an orange and yellow stair carpet (alternating yellow and orange for each stair).
My sister was visiting my parents a few weeks ago (when this post was started), and they came down to see me one day. Emma has just moved into a new apartment and bought a load of furniture for it. She's doing it all in black and tan - throw cushions and everything. She even bought some matching "art" from Walmart.
I'd hate a place like that. My apartment will be anti-designed in an "eclectic" style, and will look like a clown threw up on it.
I've already gotten started on this project. When I built my computer, I spray painted the case orange. I've got a tissue paper pineapple, and a poster of a random downhiller. I bought a calendar of Escher prints and shoved them in dollar store frames, which I have hung randomly with pushpins on the wall to the left of my desk.
In high school I made mountains of origami - everything from 1000 unit modulars to Jun Meakawa's devil, but that all got thrown out when moving, and all I've got is a box of the half finished stuff, and stuff that I couldn't finish or came out rubbishly.
Emma brought me a kite back from Bali, so I've hung that in the corner. It's royal blue with a red dragon on - I like dragons.

I will keep you updated on this project.

Broken Waffles?

2009-01-24T19:30:00.000-08:00

I need a screen name.

I've been trying to come up with one for about 10 years now, and have never got anywhere.
Everything is already taken. I like the same use name for everything, as I'd never be able to remember them all, and I don't want something I'd have to be adding numbers to because someone else already used that name.

I think I've come up with the solution. Two (or more) random, unrelated words.
So, off I go to Google to find a random word generator, and end up with stuff like this:
CauliflowerBridges
CompelledSpoon
ButteryClone
ChargingNail
ImportantFluff
NumbHumans
RabidEngineering
BrokenWaffle
BlueInduction
FlatResolve

This wasn't working. I really liked "brokenwaffle", but (according to Google), so did quite a few other people.
So I went the "Word of the day" route:
abrogate, sui generis, exculpate, xeric, bifurcate, hebetude, undulant, frigorific, candor, lollygag, confabulation

FlatUndulant
ImportantLollygag
FluffyAbrogate
XericClone
BifurcatedCharge
ExculpatedWaffles?

Any suggestions?

Mr. Blue Sky

2009-01-18T20:01:00.000-08:00

Sun is shining in the sky, there ain't a cloud in sight
It's stopped raining, everybody's in a play
And don't you know, it's a beautiful new day.

Running down the avenue, see how the sun shines brightly
In the city on the streets, where once was pity,
Mr. Blue Sky is living here today.
(it's an ELO song)

It has been foggy and rainy all week, but yesterday it was sunny, with a bright blue sky. There was frost everywhere, and it was a bit cold, but since there wasa no wind and plenty of sun it didn't really feel cold.
I went out for a ride. I went the long way to Cow Bay and through to the Cobble Hill road. I rode along the highway to Wippletree and stopped in at "The Loom" to get some wool to make some fingerless mittens for taking photos. I then rode along the highway and turned off at the bottom of the hill along the road that goes to the tennis club, went back the way I came, and then rode around the lake to Maple Bay and back along Herd Road. I was going to ride along Richard's Trail and back along Bell McKinnon, but accidentally turned off along Osbourne, and by the time I came back and got to Richards it was starting to get dark (well... that was an excuse. I was actually getting tired - not riding for two months really takes it's toll!), so I headed home.
Although this was quite a short ride, it took me all afternoon, not because my legs are slow or I was on a mountain bike with knobby tires and no big ring, but because I had to stop every few minutes to take pictures.
I have been finding that I can take tens of pictures of the same scene, and not be happy with one of them. As in most things (arty things, anyway) there are two sides: the arty side, and the technical side. For example: pottery. When Hilary makes mugs, she has to know more than what shapes and colours are aesthetically pleasing and what shaped handles are ergonomic, she also has to understand the chemistry behind the glaze composition and how the clay and glaze will react during firing (I could be getting this horribly wrong - I don't know much about pottery). I understand the technical side of photography. I know how to use my camera, I understand the science behind photography (thanks to Mr. Stone!), and (probably most importantly) I can apply my knowledge. But I have trouble with the arty stuff - composition and the like.
I have come across the photostreams of several photographers on Flickr recently that are the opposite - the content, composition and design of there photos is very good, they clearly leave the camera on auto all the time, and I read in the photo descriptions and on there blogs that the auto settings on the camera take work away from the photographer to leave him to concentrate on the subject matter. I disagree with this - although leaving the camera on auto exposure, auto ISO, auto focus, auto etc, will give you a "correct" picture - it's boring. The camera will probably do a very good job of choosing the "best" exposure, focus point, but wouldn't it be cool to have the motion blurry, the tree silhouetted, the lights out of focus? The camera just does what's "best", and best is never cool.
I know the basics of composition: the rule of thirds, leading lines, direction of motion, focal points, framing, et.c (sort of literary devices of the photography world). I thought I would try and find some information on this sort of stuff. All the tutorials and information on "how to be a better photographer" was about learning about f-stops and ISO. I know all that, and couldn't find anything that went beyond the technical stuff. So I started browsing Amazon.com to see if I could find an old-fashioned book (not an e-book - one actually printed on paper). All the recommended books covered less than I already knew. I checked Listmania, and found nothing but more of the same. I didn't see any point in buying a book with one chapter at the back called "Composition", which would, no doubt, be very basic. And then I came across The Photographer's Eye - Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos (Michael Freeman) - there were only two customer reviews, and it wasn't a big seller, but the reviews and blurb sounded promising, so I bought it.
It arrived a few days ago, and I leafed through it yesterday. The chapter headings look interesting: The Image Frame (Dynamics, Shape, Stitching, Placement, etc), Design Basics (Contract, Balance, Pattern, Perspective, Weight, etc), Graphic and Photographic Elements (Points, Vectors, Triangles, etc), Composing with Light and Colour (Chiaroscuro (what?), Colour in Composition, Colour Relationships, Back and White, etc), Intent (Conventional or Challenging, Reactive or Planned, Documentary or Expressive, Simple or Complex, Clear or Ambiguous, etc), Process (The Search for Order, Reaction, Anticipation, Exploration, Construction, Photographs Together, etc). Reading the Table of Contents, I wanted to jump to the chapter on "Intent", which seems very interesting, but I didn't.
Before I'd even finished the first paragraph I found myself rummaging through my desk draw in search of a highlighter. I can't read without one. I think it was Mrs Fletcher (Year 6 teacher) that pushed the highlighter thing. Mrs Fletcher pushed a lot of things though, such as putting the date on the top line in the left margin, and the title in the middle of the second line, but everything else she encouraged was dropped as soon as it was someone else marking my work that didn't care which line the date went on. I think the Level 2 SAT was the first "proper" test I took, and that was in Mrs Fletcher's class. We spent quite some time preparing for the tests, and our little village school always got very good marks. I think I got all 5's with a 4 in English (let down by my story writing). Highlighting key words might not have been a huge importance when the questions were one sentence, and I'd highlight 80% of the words, but in university physics it would often take several minutes just to read the question, and three reads before you start to understand what you're being asked, only to realize that you don't know how to do this one and will come back to it later. When you're doing research for a paper, you might only need a couple of sentences to quote out of the whole book, so good luck finding them again if you didn't highlight.
I always need a highlighter with me whenever I'm reading - bike magazines, mail, books, instructions, work orders at work - I find it saves me a lot of time if I can read one or two words instead of the whole think. When reading books and magazines I often come across a sentence or phrase that summarizes what would take me a long, drawn-out blog post (such as this one) to get across.
The first thing I highlighted in this book was "Facility at using this frame depends on two things: knowing the principles of design, and the experience that comes from taking photos regularly." (Freeman, p9). I'd actually been thinking about that recently. Nothing can substitute for experience, including education - in everything. Watching "Bike Skills" videos doesn't make you a good rider - riding your bike makes you a good rider. Passing the A+ with good grades doesn't make you a good tech, working as a tech makes you a good tech. Reading about using your camera doesn't make you a god photographer - taking pictures makes you a good photographer - which reminds me of something I said higher up as well about applying knowledge. A lot of people in my photography class at school got good marks on the tests - they had studied and learned what depth of field and chromatic aberration were, but when it came to the assignments they didn't know where to start. What's the point of having knowledge if you don't know how to use it? This was even more evident in computer science class. Some people thought that if the studied the syntax and structures they would pass the test - but computer science exams were always biased heavily towards application - usually 75% programming and 25% theory. A lot of people dropped out of computer science - the remainders got good marks and never bothered to study. If you can do the labs without the TA having to hold your hand you can pass the exam no problem.

And once again I have gone way off track. Wasn't this supposed to be about my ride yesterday?
I was going to go riding again today, but felt knackered - I need to start going to bed earlier.

Distance: 47.9 km
Time (total): 4:09
Time (moving): 2:33

Rode to Cowichan Lake

2009-01-12T23:11:00.000-08:00

... and back with Hilary on Sunday.

Hilary showed me some mini waterfalls that have appeared now the snow has finally decided to melt, and we stopped to take some pictures.

I wished I'd taken the tripod, but Hilary was pretty creative with chunks of wood she arranged as camera stands.

Cowichan Lake's a pretty small town and we thought we'd look like idiots going into the restaurant, with Hilary's wet crotch (from the waterfall, of course), and my hat with frozen water droplets in the pattern of my helmet vents, and both sweaty and covered in road grit, so we went to A&W.

I started on my onion rings and strawberry milkshake while Hilary undressed and used the surrounding furniture as clothes horses.

The ride back seemed to go quickly, but my legs were hurting on the first climb. We'd stopped for over an hour and my legs had gotten stiff, added to the fact I've not ridden in over a month (except to work and grocery getting, etc), and I was riding a mountain bike with big knobby tires, or at least they're the excuses.

A bit of riding, a chai tea, ginger yam soup, some pottery and wool

2009-01-04T18:24:00.000-08:00

Since the ice had melted and the roads seemed in reasonable condition, Hilary and I went for a ride. We left my place at about 11am, and headed for Cow Bay along Tzouhalem Road. When we got there the bakery/cafe was closed, so we stopped in at the pottery place where Hilary introduced me to Colleen. We then headed through the village towards the highway to "Whipple Tree Junction" where we stopped at the coffee shop. Hilary had ginger carrott yam soup, and I played it safe with granola and yogurt. "The Loom" is next door to the coffee shop. I'd never been in there before. It's a tiny little shop with barely enough room to walk around in - it's a good job nothing's breakable. Every shelf is covered in balls of wool, books, and knitted samples and the floor is covered in baskets of wool. We spent quite a while wandering around and learning about "thrumming".
When we came out there was a blizzard going on outside, so we headed home along Bench Road, and back the way we came. We were soaking wet and quite cold by the time we got back to my place. I didn't think the snow was going to settle, but it looks like there's about 2-3 inches on the ground now, and it's still coming down - big flakes, fast and thick.
Distance: 23 km
Time: urmm... 4 hours, 11 minutes

my bedroom curtain

2009-01-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning with my head dangling off the top of the bed. It's a good job my hair isn't a couple of inches longer - if it were it would be touching the heater.
I looked up and noticed that the curtain above the head of my bed made a nice curly pattern, a bit like lasagna. I took a photo of it while my packet noodles were cooking.
I'm definitely finding the limitations of this camera, and have been since I bought it.
The photo would have been much better and easier to take with a wide angle lens, and with a camera with decent high ISO performance, but more on that in a post to come.

Blueberry Hill

2009-01-01T15:37:00.000-08:00

Was a long and dark December
From the rooftops I remember
There was snow
White snow

After "Knitting Club" at Tim Horton's (the only place open on New Year's Eve), Hilary, Amy and I picked up (slightly drunken) Dave and Sean from a hockey game ("We got free beer!"), and went round to Kurt's and Nina's for a party. I walked home at 1:20, and got home at about 2:10, quite cold, with wet circles on my upper arms, as I was wearing Hilary's vest and had managed to get both arms inside, so I just got wet head, legs, and where the armholes were.
It was raining all the time I was walking, and has rained several times over the last few days, so one would expect that the snow would be melting, but I don't think it is. The roads just keep getting we and then freezing. The rain just melts the top crust of the un-cleared paths and then freezes.But at least it's not snowing, right?

I woke up this morning to see all the bits that were black last night were once again white.
How long has it been now?
Looking back through blog posts (a blog is handy for looking up when stuff happened!) tells me it first snowed the night of December 12th, which was three weeks ago almost. It seems like so much longer, but I can't wait for spring when the days get longer again.
While at Kurt's and Nina's last night, a song came on the radio that Sean said he really liked, but Amy didn't. I never listen to the radio, so had never heard it. I liked the lyrics, "Are we humans, or are we dancers?" (it reminds me of the Safety Dance), but not anything else about it. Nobody could remember who sings it.
When I got home I found my torrent of The Killers' new album had finished downloading. I was quite excited to find they had a new album out (I stumbled across it on Amazon's homepage), as I really like their music. I didn't expect their second album to be good, but it was. I don't like "Day and Age" though (and I think that's a really unimaginative title) - it just doesn't have the atmosphere that their first two had. It's not indie anymore, it's dance. That compressed keyboard sound has been replaced with a drum loop. "Humans" sounds like the stuff Trent FM used to play at 1 am on Saturday night - club music.
Well, at least we've still got Arcade Fire, and they've still got atmosphere (please don't tell me if they've released a new album and it sounds like country).
Coldplay will always be good though - they just will. They've changed - Parachutes was very acousticy and, if I was a critic I'd probably say raw. Rush still had little electronic interferance, X&Y got less acousticy and is probably my least favourite (but I still like it), and Viva has a completely different sound to it. It is one of them albums that is an album, and not a collection of songs in a random order - the songs flow together, with instrumental bits here and there (almost an opus?) and, unlike earlier albums, the music seems to have more prominence than the lyrics. I read in a Mike Oldfield interview once that when he was trying to sell Tubular Bells, the first record company that wanted it told him they'd only take it if he put lyrics to it - I imagine it would be a bit like Viva, with the vocals complimenting the music, almost like another instrument.
But I don't what I'm talking about - I don't know music, so It's about time I shut up now.

While talking about the damn snow the other day, Hilary asked if anyone had heard "the new song called Blueberry Hill". That would be Violet Hill that was released in June - but it is a very snowy song.

The Mac are Back!

2008-12-29T19:48:00.000-08:00

The music we get in Staples is a playlist of what seems like 10 songs from 1998 or someyear, played over and over all day, that gets streamed from Staples HQ. As you can imagine, we get pretty sick of this.

In a lot of places (eg. Walmart) the Christmas music started November 1 st, as Hallowe'en was over.
Staples' HQ is in Boston, and therefore we didn't get any at all until December, when Thanksgiving was over in the states. For the first few days about one song in five was christmassy, and I remember saying, "It's not so bad. One song now and then is manageable." As per Murphy's Law, the "normal" music was eradicated the next day, and every song became a different version of about three Christmas carols, just done slower, or in country or rap, or with a saxophone.
Macy Grey singing "Last Christmas" gets old quickly.

Imagine my delight as I pushed open the swingy doors to the sales floor this Monday morning to hear

Something in you brought out something in me, that I've never been since
That part of me that was only for you,
That kind of romance
Comes only once, that kind of love
That kind of fever dance
That you love because you become someone else in an instant

Say you will, say you will give me one more chance
At least give me time to change your mind
That always seems to heal the wounds, if I can
Get you to dance

I've missed Fleetwood Mac. Monday mornings just weren't Monday mornings without them.

I thought about it for a while while cleaning up the tech room and getting on at the boys for not labeling things. Fleetwood are the perfect Monday morning music - very neutral. When Evanescence is too depressing, Queen are too flamboyant, Matthew Good is too political, Genesis can't decide what they are, Linkin Park are too angry, The Killers are too popular, Meatloaf goes on too long, Arcade Fire are overwhelming, The Beatles don't make any sense, you can't figure out how Billy Joel made his way into your playlist, Def Leppard do too many love songs, Deep Purple are too loud, Mike Oldfield can;t decide what mood he's in, Rammstein are too German, and you realize that Chris Martin can't really sing, Fleetwood Mac are always there to be neutral.

Okay, enough is enough

2008-12-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

... of the bloody snow.

It started to thaw yesterday, but I woke up to see more coming down this morning. Big flakes, and lots of them.
I rode to work this morning on the road because I was late. I wouldn't have been able to make it on the paths. I fell off for the first time in this snow this evening in the Staples car park. I've lost traction and had to put a foot down many times, but I actually went over sideways and landed in the slush today. I've had enough of the snow. One or two days was fine, but this has gone too far. Too much like Manitoba (shudder).
I'm not one of them fair weather cyclists. I'll glady ride in rain, cold, dark, a bit of hail, heat, or whatever, but bikes just aren't made for snow. It might be do-able if you lived somewhere that gets enough snow to justify (do bikes need to be justified?) a purpose-built bike for the snowy conditions, but even then there are so many snowy conditions. The bike has to deal with icy roads, bumpy hardened snow, fresh soft snow, slush, puddles, bumpy ice from frozen slush, snow that started to melt but then froze again and got crust on top. It would have to be single speed as shifters just freeze up when they get wet, flat pedals so your cleats don't get frozen in, disk brakes, because your rims are continually wet when riding in snow, and skinny tires with screws (or studs) in with chains on (or zip ties might work).

Anyway, I'm getting cabin fever. I'm not sleeping as much either (and I don't really sleep much anyway). I did my laundry yesterday and there wasn't one pair of bike shorts in there. I want to ride my bike.

I'm also getting a lot of bike shaped bruises. It's difficult to walk a bike along the sidewalk when the trodden snow is one boot's width. Fire Mountain's got a lot of sharp edges. It's as if every part of the bike was engineered to cause the most pain possible when being jabbed against the body. The brake levers are pointed like a spear, the pedals have a million (each pedal, on each side, approximately) thorns to shred open your leg as you wrestle the bike along the snow banks. There are no bar end cap on the side closest to me, just a rough ended steel handlebar to take an apple core-sized cylinder out of my torso, a rusty chain to eat up my new black cords, a pointy saddle to catch in my coat pocket every three steps, and shifter levers that make there way into by gloves and coat cuffs and get caught in my watch strap.

I started this post last night and can't remember how it was going to end now. Bollocks.

The Tiny Tea Cozy

2008-12-23T00:07:00.000-08:00

While I've been stuck inside, I've been knitting (well, just Sunday afternoon really). I used to knit a bit (mainly (well, only) hats - I'm not sure why I like hats. I look stupid in them). Prompted by Hilary's idea of a little knitting club (Amy and Hilary both knit too), I found the wool shop (it's next to the Brew Pub) and spent my half hour break (though most of it was taken up by walking there - damn snow) choosing this chunky acrylic with 20% mohair. It's called Narvin, which isn't really very inspiring.
I decided I was going to stick to a pattern (something I've always been unable to do previously), and came upon the Unoriginal Hat. I did a swatch in the cable pattern as stated, and realized that because I am a (very) tight knitter, I was going to need bigger needles.
Well, I didn't have bigger needles, so I did some maths, and cast on 84 stitches, rather than the 56 the pattern called for, for 6 repeats rather than 4. I knitted 8 rounds, pulled out the needles, and put it on my head. It was too big. So I ripped it out and went down to 70 stitches.
I finished the hat at about 1 am Monday morning. It looked so cool. It was my first time at cables and they looked perfect. (The following picture is closer to the actual colour - the other photos are slightly over exposed. I suppose I should re-do them, but it's late and I can't be bothered.)
There was one time where I missed a cable and didn't realize until 2 rounds later, but was able to undo just 7 stitches on the row below and 5 on the row before that, and managed to put the cable in - I couldn't even find the mistake in the finished hat - not even a twisted stitch.

Then I tried it on. I guess I should have stuck with 84.

Don't laugh! It's a good job Mum doesn't read this, as you would be able to hear her cackling right now if she did.
And Dad would say, "Why is she wearing a tea cozy on her head?"

It's quite frustrating when you finish something and it's crap though. I don't want to knit the same thing again - I want to do something different, but if I do, I won't get it right, because I won't do what the pattern says. I just won't. And I'll have to redo it to get it right.

Let it Snow...

2008-12-22T23:29:00.000-08:00

So, as you will know, I've only been able to ride on my days off recently (because it's dark after and before work, and I've got no lights), and my days off have now been changed to weekends, which I hate.
Anyway, I got my new lights (the AyUp kit) so I could ride in the dark again, but it snowed two Sundays ago, and I expected it to last a day or two, then turn to mud, but it's been here since, and we just got a big top up over the weekend.
So no riding for me, not even at weekends. In fact, for the first time in a year I did a load of laundry without a single pair of bike shorts in. I find that depressing. There have even been two days (last Monday and today) when I haven't ridden to work - I've walked. I rode to work for the rest of the week however, and it is quite fun when the snow gets well packed. I've been riding on the sidewalks though, as there's even less room for me on the road. The packed snow on the paths is extremely bumpy and skiddy. The skids can be kept under control by shifting your weight back, and after a while they become fun. Fire Mountain has been handling the snow very well, but I took the HockRopper on a bit of a ride to Walmart and back along Somenos/Sherman as it was snowing quite heavily, and it definitely did better than Fire Mountain, not because of the knobbies or suspension or anything like that, but because of the riding position and it seems more maneuverable (if this were a magazine review, that would be "chuckable"). Fire Mountain does straight lines very well, and is "stable as houses". In fact I once rode 97% of the way to Crofton without hands (cue the Flobots: "I can ride my bike with no handlebars, no handle bars"), but it's difficult to move around, which is really noticeable after riding the Hopper. I think it's got a lot to do with the bars. I really like the wide bars.

Long time, no blog.

2008-12-17T22:16:00.000-08:00

I haven't written a blog post in 12 days.
Why?

Have I nothing to write about?
Certainly not. I'm always writing blog posts in my head that never get written.
I haven't been busy with other stuff or anything.
I keep saying to myself that I should write about stuff, but it hasn't happened.
No idea why.

Anyway.
On the Tuesday before yesterday, I overheard James tell a customer that the technician would be in Monday through Friday. I found this strange as Wednesdays and Sundays are my days off. When I corrected him he said, "Well, you're on the schedule to work Wednesday." and what do you know, I was. Manager Sharon, when questioned, said that she and Manager Jeff had decided it would be better if I worked Wednesdays as it was getting busy (for Christmas). So they give me Saturdays off? Because no one does any shopping on Saturdays, right?
They could have at least told me, even if they weren 't going to ask if it was okay.
I'm a little bit bitter. It doesn't make any sense for me to have two days off in a row. Everyone else in the store works shifts except Ben the shipper/receiver, Nancy who does paperwork, and me. That means that if someone doesn't get everything done, someone else will do it - people that do shifts never get behind, and can take time off when they want. I'm the only person that does my job, so if I'm off for two days, stuff just piles up, and it takes me three days to get caught up. And if I get behind, I've got customers shouting at me.
If you work shifts, if you get bad days off, you get different days off the nest week. I never get a weekday off, so have no opportunity to run errand between 9 and 5 on weekdays.
It's not good for the biking either. Because it's winter, and it's cold and dark before and after work, and my lightset got stolen, I could only ride on my days off. Since I only got to ride twice a week, I liked to try and do long rides, and stay out for 4, 6, 8 or more hours. I can' really do that two days in a row. My new lightset arrived this week, so I could go out riding again after work, but we also got a load of snow last Saturday, and a load more today, which makes riding difficult and dangerous.

The Sunday before last (7th) I went on a ride by myself. I went off with the intention of riding around the fireroads in and around the Chemainus river park (Hillcrest?), but I got lost, and I took my camera too, so I didn't really get that far, but had a nice ride and got very muddy.

Last Saturday I went on a ride up Tzouhalem with Hilary and Michele. It had snowed the night before, so there was no snow in town but several inches on the mountain.

We went up some singletrack, which was fine, as the trees kept the smow off the trails, but the fireroad was almost unridable, especially for climbing.
So, we wound our way down Showtime, the end of Chicken Run 3, and then (accidentally) did Three Muskateers. After Tea Cup and Resurection we took Ben on a little run along the trail at the other end of the parking lot to the viewpoint, (where I broke a shifter cable), and came back again.
More pics here.

It started snowing heavily, and I went round to Hilary's afterwards, then went to the Brew Pub for dinner with Hilary, Dave, Amy, Sean, Trevor and Amy's friend Cassy. Then we went to The Moon where Hilary introduced me to London Fogs. Saturday was a good day.

We were planning on doing a long cross ride all together on Sunday, but we got about five inches of snow overnight, so that didn't happen.

Starbucks

2008-12-05T00:02:00.000-08:00

I've been spending a lot of time browsing Flickr's Explore page recently, and dreaming that one day I will be able to take good pictures. The Explore page is a random sample of a collection of the 500 most interesting photos on Flickr each day. The photos are widely varied and cover every style and subject, but I've noticed one particular subject popping up in Explore over and over, and the composition and style is always the same. It's a macro shot, with a "bokeh" background, (which, yes, is very fashionable anyway).
A cardboard Starbucks coffee cup.
Sometime in the summer, after the Cobble Hill cross country race, Amy Luck (one of Hilary's pottery students) invited some of us over to her house for a "girls night". Erica (another student of Hilary's) used to work at Starbucks, and we ended talking about the "coffee culture" in North America. This proves (well, strongly supports) Amy's theory.
Interestingness is calculated based on a secret formula, but basically, the more people view a photo, comment on it, and mark it as one of their favourites, the more "interesting" it is. Now, Flickr's a big place. As I write this at 12:30 am (of course, I'm going to bed at 11 today to catch up on some sleep) Flickr says that 7084 photos were uploaded in the last minute, and it's the middle of the night. To be one of the 500 most interesting is quite an achievement. Americans must like their coffee.
I say "their" as I am obviously not one of them. The smell of coffee makes me nauseous. I don't go to Starbucks unless with someone else (ie. not very often), because of this (and that I'm a cheapskate). But if I did want a cup of tea and didn't want to go home for one (ie. never, unless I'm with someone else), then I'd go to Tim Horton's (but their tea is horrible, so I'd have hot chocolate instead). I find Starbucks intimidating. The few times I have been, I've just gone with "chai tea late", because it's all I know. You can't even just have a hot chocolate - dark, milk, white? Cream, milk or water? Flavouring? (What flavours have you got?) Gingerbread, mint, caramel, ...? I'm culinarily ignorant, so you might as well just give me a Sushi menu. I know fish and chips, toad in the hole, cheese and beetroot sandwiches, roast beef, trifle, and Custard Creams. You could be talking Latin to me when you start ordering Hollondais sauce, mussake, foccaccia, chop suey, temaki, profiterole, tortillas, ... (but I know what Prairie Oysters are, thankyouverymuch). I don't know if I want a shinny or grande. I don't care what country the nutmeg came from. I thought "mocha" was a colour. Macchiato sounds like a martial art. I'm not even sure what makes the tea "chai".
Why is it this way? It's snobbery, surely. It's wanting to sound clever, be fashionable, cool (though I think I'm showing my age here - didn't people stop saying cool in the 90's?). It's like wine tasting - red with fish, white with red meat, "this fruity full bodied blend would compliment the aroma of the orange and mint blossom duck pate beautifully!".
But then what about shampoo? (shampoo?) My shampoo isn't "lemon" scented, it's "kiwi lime squeeze with lemon grass extract" (damn - I'm sure I'd gotten one with Ulang Ulang!). Who says "Oh, I'll get this one, because the kiwis and limes have been squeezed, and it's not got whole lemon grass, just extracts." My laundry detergent is Orange Mango Tango. My tooth paste is cool mint, as opposed to fresh mint, spearmint or cool ice (whoever heard of warm ice?). When I bought deodorant I had the choice of baby powder, spring fresh, shower fresh or summer breeze (but I wanted fresh breeze!). My dish soap is crisp cucumber melon spring sensations.
Why?
Soup is going the same way. I challenge you to find a can of soup that says "chicken soup" on the label!
So what's this all about? Marketing of course. (Isn't that what everything's about?) I suppose we (the consumers) are supposed to think that the more healthy/fresh/organic/clever adjectives they use, the more engineered we will think the product is - obviously, more research, product testing, and engineering has gone into "Bumbleberry and South African lentil, with crushed wheat grass and acai berry seed essence" scented dish soap, than "fruit". Then there's the "comfort and enjoyment" factor. The C&E factor was taught to me in a business course taught by Mr. Potter in high school. For an assignment in the advertising unit we had to watch a load of advertisements on TV and write down which of a list of advertising techniques were used. Comfort and Enjoyment is the only one I remember, probably because one of the boys shouted it out when the Preparation H commercial came on. C&E was when irrelevant things are used to summon thoughts and memories of comfort and enjoyment. Like the box for the tea I'm drinking. It's called "sleepy time", and has a picture on the box of a teddy bear in a night gown, slippers and stocking hat (with a pompom), sitting in a rocking chair in front of a fire. For some reason, I only usually drink this kind before I go to bed.
"Fruit" isn't a good blurb for dish soap. I wasn't at all surprised to read that there are people that write book blurbs for a living. Naming paint colours continues to hold the "dream job" title for me. I think I'd be good at it. I think my bedroom is "Glowing Pompleberry Espresso White" (what colour is my bedroom, anyway? I can't tell - I still haven't changed the light bulb, and won't likely do so, as it is a good excuse for not wearing matching colours). Am I getting off topic yet?

I didn't take the photos on this page. They're in the Starbucks group on Flickr. Yes, a group of photos just of Starbucks cups and chairs and stuff. My next sentence was going to be that there's no group for Tim Horton's, but there is. But it's crap.
So I'm going to have to either steal a Tim Horton's cup, or buy a cup of Hot Chocolate after work tomorrow and take some photos. Anyone coming with me? On me. Two word maximum.

I finally went riding

2008-12-03T23:23:00.000-08:00

... with Hilary up Prevost.

The last time I went on a "proper" ride was ... (hold on while I check my blog) November 23rd when Hilary and I rode on Tzouhalem. As my lights were on Jake when he went walkabout, I can't ride after work, or even before (and I've even lost both blinkies). So that leaves Sundays and Wednesdays for riding. Last Wednesday I didn't go out because Mum and Dad said I had to go to Victoria with them as they wanted to buy a car and put it in my name, but they didn't show up. They wanted to go on Sunday instead.
I spoke to Hilary yesterday (when she brought me a birthday cake and egg cup (pics to come)), and she said she wanted to come this afternoon. I had my lunch and planned to leave at 12:30, but with there were tires to be changed, missing cleat screws, flat tires, forgotten water bottles, I didn't get to Hilary's until 2:30.
We rode to the very top of Prevost, met a man called Doug, and rode back down the fire road. There was still light left when we got to the bottom, but only just. It got very dark as I was riding home. It was a very mild day though - no wind and about 50% cloud. We got pretty cold on the way down though. Hilary had trouble finding a warm enough body crevice to re-heat her hands.

Up: time - 1:18, distance - 7.3 km
Down: time - 22 mins, distance - 7.3 km (duh!)

Surfer on a Wave

2008-12-03T12:58:00.001-08:00

Surfer on a Wave
Originally uploaded by theresmybike

I've not done any origami in a while, so I folded this last night.

Folded from a ten inch square of blue "American Foil", painted yellow on the paper side. Diagrams from Origami to Astonish and Amuse (Jeremy Shaffer).

Fish Sandwich Capital of the World

2008-11-30T21:20:00.000-08:00

Pic found here.
In Manitoba, we used to make fun of neighboring town, Neepawa, for their Lily Festival, and all the "Lily Capital of the World" signs - but I think Bay Port tops Neepawa!
Bay Port Fish Sandwich Festival

Beban Park Cross Race

2008-11-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm only one week late...

The pics are at Flickr.
(For the people that keep saying "I read your blog, but didn't couldn't find any pictures (translated as: "I scrolled down the post and didn't see any pics, and can't be bothered with reading), you have to click on the link to see them)

Last Saturday's race was a great day. The weather was very nice, and we had no rain all day. We rode in jerseys (jersies?), but needed more layers while standing around.
Amy and I arrived a little late, both needing to pee, but having little time to pre-ride the course, so we thought we'd multi-task and ride the course, and stop at the bathroom when we got there. We got lost as the course hadn't been completely marked out. A gentleman pointed us in the right direction, and we went the wrong way around the BMX track, and again got lost, so only did about half the course.
The course was great. It started on a rough road, then did a bit of weaving about on a field, through some trees, around the BMX track, grass, steep "run-up", steep "downhill", off camber grassy bit, up some steps, grass, rough road, spiral "sand pit" (horse ring), grass/puddles/mud, hurdles and grass.
Amy and I rode in the beginner race. I was second, until the second corner where I didn't know which way to go, so braked and followed the others. There was an "interesting" moment on the first lap at the ramp at the beginning of the BMX track:
Me (behind Amy): "Are you going to ride this, Amy?"
Amy: "I don't know."
Me: "We're right behind you."
Amy starts to ride up the slope (with no room to pass) - and stops. I hit her back tire. Someone runs into the back of me. The person behind her stops and gets off. The person behind him shouts "Isn't this ridable?"

Unfortunately, Amy got a flat on the second lap. I didn't realize this, and was stood at the finish line for quite a while waiting for her to finish.
Dave and Derek rode the intermediate race, and were joined by Sean on his first cross race. Dave did really well (though I'm not sure where he placed), Derek broke his chain, and Sean rode the whole race with a smile.

Trevor rode the expert class, and also flatted, and ran the course from the BMX track to the sandpit. Dave rode a second race in the expert class, this time in Everti kit. He looked knackered, but finished.

I can't really remember much else. I should've written this earlier.
However, everyone had heaps of fun throughout the series, and I think Norm and Wendy did an excellent job with organizing the whole thing.
As Amy would say, "GOOD WORK!"

Three of my favourite pictures were ones I took of the reflections in Derek's and Trevor's glasses. It occurred to me afterwards while going through the photos that it would have been soooo cool to have a group of riders reflected in Derek's mud-splattered glasses (in the photo at the top).

Christmas Cactus

2008-11-27T09:04:00.000-08:00

In the summer Ed took a cutting from his Christmas Cactus for me.
It started to flower this week.

My Day Off

2008-11-26T23:49:00.000-08:00

It was my day off today.
First I went to the police station to report Walkabout Jake.
Then I went to pay my rent.
Then I went to Superstore to get something to put in the kitchen.
Then I went to the bike shop.
Then I went to see Hilary (she wasn't home).
Then I went to see Amy at work.

This one is called the "Siemens Vibe" (seriously, click to enlarge):And it comes in leopard print or blue:Pretending to be busy:
Then I was bored for the rest of the day because I'd (stupidly) left my mountain bike at the bike shop to get a new cassette.
I was going to go to Nanaimo to take Mum her birthday present today on my mountain bike, but the brakes were squealing, and the (new) chain was skipping on the (old) cassette. Dale said the cones in the rear hub were loose and the rear derailleur was bent. A couple of weeks ago I had new brake pads, new chain, and the bottom bracket fixed, which came to $90. Today came to $100. The new bike is getting further away, when it's supposed to be getting closer.
About the new bike - the fun of getting a new bike is going through web reviews, forms, spec sheets and the like, until you decide ona bike. My choices are, as Brian informs me:
2008 Specialized Dolce demo bike with a triple and Sora components (Daisy)
2008 Specialized Dolce with a triple and Sora components, in black with pink flowers and swirls
2008 Specialized Dolce Elite with a triple and Tiagra components, in blue with light blue flowers and swirly writing.

This happened when I bougt Jake. My bike had been stolen and I needed a replacement. The only bikes the shop could get were a Norco CCX and a Kona Jake. And I never liked Jake.
They are the only bikes they've got that will fit me, and Brian says they won't be getting the 09's in for at least two months. Other shops have had them for a month now. I think they've got too many Dolces that they won't be able to get rid of. I'm not buying one.

Warning: Getting Bicycle Tire Stuck in Tracks May Cause Loss Of Hands And Feet

2008-11-26T09:43:00.001-08:00

Warning: Getting Bicycle Tire Stuck in Tracks May Cause Loss Of Hands And Feet
Originally uploaded by sea turtle

I love funny road signs.

Jake went for a ride

2008-11-25T23:19:00.000-08:00

... on his own while I was at work, and hasn't come back yet. Maybe he was angry about all this talk of replacing him. Maybe now that he's been in the dirt, he's angry about being back on errand running and road duty.

Maybe he got stolen. NAH! Who'd do a thing like that?

Anyway, I need a new bike, but can't really afford one, so I'm probably going to get some cheap wheels for my mountain bike and stick some slicks on. Either 26" wheels, or 700c rims on disc hubs. With cassette and rotors I'd end up at $300 if I did it as cheaply as possible. Is it worth it? If I got 700c wheels I could use them when I get a cross bike (ie. never), but I'd have to have Dale build them up, so they'd be more expensive.
Should I just get a new bike? There is probably a decent bike in my size on clearance still hanging around somewhere. But on top of the cost of the bike is ALL THE LITTLE THING THAT YOU THINK ARE CHEAP - pedals, saddle, tires, saddle bag, tube, multitool, pump, blinky lights, bottle cages, and I've probably forgotten something. Oh yeah, my lightset was on there. That's $300 whether I go new bike or not.

So, minimum costs (approx):
New bike:
Bike: $1200, saddle: $50, tires: $80, pedals: $60, bag: $20, tube and patch kit: $10, multitool: $30, pump: $30, blinkies: $40, cages: $20
That's $1540 (before tax), and I'd probably want a shorter stem and narrower, short reach bars too. I'm looking at $2k with light set.

New wheelset:
XT disc hubs: $120, CXP22 rims: $80, spokes and labour: ?, tires: $80, tube: $10, cassette (x2 since the one on the bike is toast): $80
$370 + spokes and labour + lights = $700

All of this will probably cost more from the bike shop too.
Rent's due by the end of the month, and the only food in my kitchen is packet noodles, 3 crust slices of bread (not quite sure how I got three), milk, broccoli, a packet of Hobnobs, and a strangely shaped potato that I can't eat until I've taken a photo of.

Not really!
Well, that is all I've got in my kitchen (though I forgot about the freezer - there's some frozen vegetables in there, and something that looks like either chicken strips or breaded fish), but only because I end up walking around Superstore and getting to the till with a basket containing a bunch of bananas, raspberry herbal tea and my helmet, and not 'cause I haven't got any money. I've got the money for a new bike, but that would drop my balance below the "magic number", that I like to keep it above.

But I'm too young to have a balance above $1k.
CAAD9 or Allez?

PS - I forgot fenders. The bike shop charged me $60 last time.

Riding with Hilary and Daisy

2008-11-23T23:38:00.000-08:00

More pictures at Flickr.

Hilary and I went for a ride to the top of Mount Tzouhalem this afternoon. The weather was perfect, and we had a really good ride.
I really like riding with Hilary, as we ride at the same pace, so neither of us feels like she's holding the other up or anything. And we're as crazy as each other, so it's always a good laugh (have you got it out of your head yet? "Give peace a chance!").
There we loads of cars in the parking lot, and we met several riders and hikers on the trails. We met Bill and Dave (not Hilary's Dave, a different one) at the top of Tea Cup as we were riding up (and they were heading down), and I met Gail in the parking lot, who I haven't seen in ages.
We rode up the usual way, to the leaning log and carried on, but took a wrong turn and tried to ride up Willy's new trail. Then up the fire road to do Field of Dreams, and all the way to the top, where I discovered Hilary is an undercover bird watcher (when she spotted a very rare, speckled, purple breasted, triple winged, green horned eagle) . We looped around back to the fire road, and rode Field of Dreams in the other direction, then the usual Little Dipper, Why, School's Out, Tea Cup, Resurrection, and back up to do Resurrection for some kids.

Distance: 13 km (exactly)
Time: 3 hr (exactly)

More Night Photos

2008-11-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

While I was walking (yes, you heard right - more to come on that one) home from work yesterday in the pouring rain, I kept noticing things that looked cool in the night rain, so I put my camera in a Ziploc bag with holes poked for the lens and viewfinder, and went for a walk (it pains me to write that word).
Some more here.

Wednesday's Ride

2008-11-21T00:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (Wednesday) was a lovely day, weather wise, which is peculiar, as Wednesday is my day off. Except of course, that it wasn't, as I've got Saturday off this week instead (for the cross race at Beban Park, silly!)
I went for a ride at about 7:30pm. I haven't been out on my own much at all in the last few weeks. For a couple of weeks I didn't have a light, but I've had no excuse since then. I thought I'd been discouraged by the cold and rain, but have I? I don't go riding in the rain at night in the winter, as once you get wet it's just too cold, but I don't mind the cold when it's dry (though I could have done with another layer last night!). I think it's Jake. Since I rode the frickin' daisy demo bike, I've realized just how bad Jake is. No matter how well lubed the chain is, there's always a squeak coming from it. Amy's cross bike was so much smoother and faster, and I rode it with knobby tires, and it's way too big. And it's not just that Jake is critically ill and too big, but I have a feeling that, even when new, the ride was terrible. It's a good job I've not got any fillings, as I'm sure they'd be gone by now. I expected the daisy to have a rougher ride because of the skinny tires, but it was so much smoother. It's the frame too, I guess, and Jake has a cheap aluminium frame, built for durability, and it's got a ridiculously heavy and unforgiving steal fork. I swear it must have been designed as a dirt jump fork. It even looks like a BMX fork. And no amount of fiddling has allowed me shift into the big ring since it came back from the bike shop.
So I need a new bike. Not news, I know. I've been complaining about Jake for about 4 months now. I can't afford a new bike yet, probably not until the new year, but I know that once I've got the money I won't be able to decide on a bike. Trawling manufacturer websites, magazine reviews and forums is the fun bit. But it doesn't really help. I'm pretty much limited to Specialized and Cannondale. The bike shop sells Kona, Norco, Specialized and Cannondale.
I don't want a Norco. Their bikes appear heavy and cheaply made. I'm sure their freeride and dirt jump bikes are fine, but Norco road bikes? No thanks. They don't make anything that fits the bill anyway. The CRD 2 is the only Alu road bike they make, and it's got a Shimano 4500 group set.

Kona? Again, a mountain bike company that is trying to "branch out". I've never been keen on Kona. They do seem well specced for the price though. The "Zing" is $1300 CAD, and has a 105 group set, and Mavic Askiums. All the "bits" are cheap and unbranded (or branded "Kona"), but so what. It's probably on the big side, and I don't care for the paint scheme, but the same goes for the Norco.

I wouldn't buy a Cannondale mountain bike. I don't see anything wrong with their road bikes though. I read a comment on a forum about Cannondale's being famous for their poor ride quality, but only the one - he/she is probably a brand snob. So, a Synapse 5 is $1200 US, with a 105 group set, with Shimano RS-10 wheels, which are, apparently, a bit noodley. The CAAD9 5 is $1700 with a similar spec.
The Specialized stuff seems more pricey, but not by much. The Allez Sport is $1300 US, with 105 and CPX22 rims on specialized hubs, which should be very durable, but very heavy. Strangely though, the equivalent "women's" bikes are more expensive, with the Dolce Comp having the same spec, but costing $1650 US. That's a lot of money for a smaller bike with an uglier paint scheme.

Yes, I did notice the Dolce has carbon stays, but for me that's a disadvantage. Cannondale's "feminine" bikes cost the same as their male equivalents. But why buy a girl's bike when I'm going to end up changing the bars and stem anyway? The daisy was probably a touch too small, so a 515-520 mm top tube with the same size bars and stem would be fine, right? And no "floral patterns" (to quote Brian).
I feel obliged to buy from the shop (rather than pick one up from, say, Oak Bay Bikes in Victoria, where everything's cheaper and they have a much bigger selection). I'm always in there picking Brian's brain (that's an anagram!), and Dale's does loads of stuff for me. I wouldn't mind at all paying for labour for stuff I need doing on a bike bought somewhere else, but I'd feel ... disloyal. But it's Will's bike shop, not Brian's or Dale's or Derek's or Matt's, and I've no loyalty towards Will.
When I mentioned a new bike last Sunday, Glenda immediately said I should get an Everti. If I had the budget for a $1600 frame, that would be the only frame worth considering (I even checked Kurt's website, and they do the Odyssey cross frame stock in my size!). Titanium would be perfect: durable, excellent ride quality, long life, light weight, sexy ...

Anyway, back to my Wednesday ride. I rode along Richard's trail, Westholm Road (I think), back towards Crofton. The main intention of this ride was to take photos of the Crofton Mill, so I pulled over and got my tripod and camera out, only to realize i couldn't put the two together as I'd forgotten the quick release bracket. While I was stood there an alarm started to go off. A couple of trucks pulled up to a hopper with the flashing red light on top. They just stood around, so I rode on, only having been able to get crap, grainy, underexposed pictures at a high ISO. I passed a fire engine coming in the opposite direction. A guy in a soft-topped muscle car (it was dark - I couldn't tel which one) with licence plate "LOVE BG" sped past me, only to brake in font of me and pull over 5m in front of me. Why couldn't he pull over behind me? It's not like he didn't see the fire engine coming? (That's the one thing that bothers me most about the whole drivers verses riders thing - drivers passing on the left and turning right immediately in front. Honestly, it can't be more that a 3 second wait at most. It's dangerous too, especially in the rain when I can't stop.) When I rode past the fire station in Crofton, I saw about 5 men in their fire-fighting kit, ready to go out if they got called.
I did get a bit cold with two layers on my body. It's very chilly at night now, and it's a challenge to keep my fingers from freezing. Jake felt heavy up the hills, and I was still spinning going down them. I never put my light on full beam - I didn't go fast enough to warrant it.

Distance: 34.3 km
Time: 1:44 (slow poke!)

Haha

2008-11-20T10:15:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by Wallula Junction

I wonder if the person who put the sign on there intended it to be funny?

Riding Sunday

2008-11-16T22:55:00.000-08:00

Sundays are the best riding days. Everybody's off work, and I usually get invited on at least one ride.
Today there was a cyclocross ride in the morning, which was arranged by Kurt. When I got to Coffee on the Moon, Kevin, Mike, Derek and Glenda were there. We waited, but noone else showed up. Kevin phoned Kurt - he was sick and not coming. Davee and Trevor were supposed to be coming, but nothing. No Amy either. I wasn't going to go, being the only slow person, but Glenda assured me that she was slow.
We headed off - then decided we should go the other way. We rode up Jubilee Street and along Cowichan Lake Road. We set off behind Prevost on some fire roads, with a bit of wide single track, heading towards the Chemainus River. We headed east for a while, then Glenda and I headed back and took a north fork to Chemainus River Provincial Park (I think), then retraced our steps (erm... pedals?) back.

I got home at about 12:30, and switched bikes, had a cup of tea, and then rode to Brian and Julia's as I'd been invited to ride on Maple Mountain that afternoon. Michel and Julia stayed with Eric, Ellie and Mallory, while Brad, Patricia, Bill, Brian and I went for a ride. The trails start in Brad's and Patricia's back yard (literally). We rode some singletrack around the bottom of the mountain, and had a really good ride. I broke my chain, which Brian fixed exceptionally fast (thanks, Brian!). Maple mountain doesn't get much traffic, so the trails are pretty rough, and very rocky and have some pretty steep climbs, so we ended up doing quite a bit of hiking, which really made my legs ache. I'm not used to walking! My legs would get tired while walking/pushing, and feel fine as soon as I got back on the bike. It was really nice to ride some of the trails there though.
Pics at Flickr

Good Rides!

Distance: 32.3 km
Time: 2:11

Distance: 8.7 km
Time: 2:30

Sunny Day

2008-11-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

Today the sun is nice and bright and the sky is blue, not one cloud. That ticks me off.
Sunday was miserable, when I was off work. Monday was like today - perfect weather, but I didn't realize because I was at work in a triangle of dust and old air, without a window. I was off work Tuesday, which was horribe, but I put on my waterproof pants and went out to take some photos, but they seem to be "corrupted" and unreadable. Wednesday was horrible, and I was off work. I wanted to ride to Victoria, but it was pouring down on and off all day, and I ended up getting nothing done all day. I'm working today, and it's lovely.
I'm not impressed.

I'm sure it's somebody else's day off.
I'm sure he/she will be spending the day inside watching TV.

Electronic Banking Conspiracy Theory

2008-11-11T22:02:00.000-08:00

I love Wikipedia. I don't take everything on there as truth, because it's editable (and written) by the public. I love the links though.
Sometime about two days ago I read something online that I wasn't familiar with, so opened up a new tab in my browser and copied and pasted it into my Wikipedia search bar. I don't remember what it was, but in any Wikipedia article are links to every other name, place, event, or whatever, that's mentioned. When I come across anything I want to read about, I right click on it, and click "Open in new tab". Of course, this is recursive - for each page opened, I will open several more pages while reading it.
I never close my browser (and if I do have to close it I save the tab list, so I can pick up where I left off when re-opening it), so here I am several days later with 32 tabs open (not at all uncommon), 18 of which are Wikipedia pages. I've got everything here from "Ku Klux Klan", "Exploding Whales", "Harold Shipman", "Pixar", and "List of Conspiracy Theories".

I love conspiracy theories. (I loved The Matrix, but that's another post). In high school I wrote a paper about the "Paul is Dead" theory. A friend and I came up with some crazy ones, including one about Princess Diana not being dead at all, but living on an hidden island in the middle of a lake in Manchester. There are some lesser known ones like Watchtower XVII, Tril, cheating by Deep Blue, AIDS being artificial, and the common ones, such as the JFK assassination, Global Warming, September 11th Attacks, Peak Oil, Area 51, faked moon landings and the New World Order.

The Electronic Banking Conspiracy theory is an extension of the New World Order, in which a group of people are planning to "take over the world", and control all world affairs by controlling banking. They plan to make money entirely virtual (all just numbers stored electronically, and assumingly volatiley), and then shut the electricity off. Apparently this process began with the Renaissance.
There are several criticisms of this theory. I mean you'd think they could come up with a quicker way. Seven hundred years is a lot of waiting. Seriously though, what's to stop a bank "loosing" our numbers. I've read Google has eight-times redundancy. Do banks keep good backups? Where (geographically) is the data stored? What if someone found out the server locations and destroyed them? What now?

Has anyone made a movie about this?

More Mountain Biking

2008-11-11T17:40:00.000-08:00

... with Julia after work on Thursday 6th (and 13th) and with JuliaBrianMicheleColin and Christine on Sunday afternoon (the pics are blue because I forgot to reset the white balance on the camera).

On Thursday (6th) it had been raining and was very foggy. I had left my light at Amy's, so Brian ws v ery kind and leant me one. We rode up the fire road, and came down Little Dipper, Why Be a Roadie and School's Out, by which time my battery was running low, so thought it best we come down the road. Thanks for coming (and lending me a light, and for giving me a ride) Julia!

On Sunday afternoon we rode up M1 (I think) and Why Be a Roadie, then down Show Time, Fluid and Resurection, then Brian and I rode up Lower De-Analyzer, M1, the Old M/L, then did Cake Walk, Why Be a Roadie, School's Out, Toxic Tea Cup and Resurection.

On Thursday (13th) I borrowed a light again, and Julia and I rode up the fire road to the middle of Show Time, then wound our way down the singletrack.

This post is late because I must have hit "Save Draft" instead of "Publish Post", so it didn't get posted.

First Impressions

2008-11-07T00:52:00.000-08:00

I went on a ride with Julia on Monday. We rode along Bell McKinnon and back along Richard's trail. Julia was saying that she thinks I'm a creative person, and that she didn't expect me to be, since my job really isn't.

"What do you do?" is one of them questions that follows "Is that an Australian accent?" and the conversation that proceeds. I suppose people ask that question (I ask it too) to make polite conversation. It's not personal, and it tells you a lot about a person.
Or does it? A job is something you do to make money. Knowing what a person does tells you approximately how much money they make. Whether they like their job or not probably has more to do with the people they work with/for.
When people hear the word "computer" or "tech" they think of geeks with greasy hair and thick glasses sat in front of desks in their parents' basements. Or do they just think boring? Compututers are boring - to people that aren't into them, just like listening to anyone jabber on about something you're not into is boring. But computer stuff seems to be different. I suppose one reason is that computers are ONLY about the technical details. I suppose if you're into computers, you are a person with technical aptitudes. Highschool computer science class was probably where "technical aptitude" (or more evidently, the lack of it) became aparent. Anyone can pass any course at the highschool level in the Canadian school system. If you're less inteligent or your brain isn't geared towards the subject, you will have to put in more time, but it's comletely doable. The line between intelligent and less intelligent was wiggly, and blurred by lazy ones and those who wanted to be clever. Effort and intelligence made up the marks, but not in computer science.
It became evident at the introduction of loop structures. With enough help, studying and practise, everyone made it through the IF statement, but people either got loops or they didn't. Computer science isn't something you can learn, no matter how much you practice and study. It isn't about the syntax, it was all about logic. Those with the logic will tell you computer science classes are the fly courses, guarenteed A's. Those without will tell you they were the hardest courses they ever took, and no doubt never got recurssion. The concept of calling a routine from within itself was baffling, and no amount of diagrams scribbled on the overhead projector or analogies would help. Of those that got it, half wondered why they'd never though of doing that before, the other half already had and not realized it. I was one of these - I'd used recurssion a year before to traverse a file structure without thinking about it.
But I don't get the artsy stuff. I can't see what makes something a work of art, while something else that I like just as much is just "good", or maybe not even that. In photography class I understood the ryule of thirds and can successfully put it in to practiise, and focal points, and silver rectangles, but they're just the technicalities. The reason the Mona Lisa is a work of art cannot be a compostition rule, or technical ability. Is it philosophy? Psycology? Isn't everything psycology?
I don't get it. I can't learn it. I don't get art - I'm technical (is it possible to be both?). So, does that mean I'm not creative?
Creative [adj.] - marked by the ability to create
As first year engineers we were required to get a C or above in Engineering Design. This course was a favourite. We worked in "teams" (as the word group implied several indivividuals making a unit, which was somehow not as good as a team) to complete various design tasks. The first was to design on paper a fense post remover, and then move around the room commenting on other teams' design. Each week's 3 hour class had a different open-ended problem to solve, from reducing the risk/effect of forest fires to designing an elevator controller on a bread board. The last project of the term was the "egg mover" project. A raw egg was placed on the floor by the prof, and without touching the egg, we had to get it over a "hurdle" (about like the ones in cyclocross), and we got more points for the closer it came to rest on the circle on the ground 2 meters the other side on the plank. There were catapults, fabric slings attached to the ceiling, robotic vehicles, leaky water counterweights, mouse trap cars that hit bumpers that moved scissors that cut strings that released pendullums, and in the briefing someone asked about the use of corrosive acid. It was like a giant game of Mouse Trap. During this last class, a group of art students passed through (no idea what they were doing on that side of campus), and gave us sideways looks in their Calvin Klein jeans and low cut shirts. They were cool - we had acne.
Coolness impedes creativity.
Why is creativity associated with art?

Distance: 21.9 km
Time: 1:08

They're all good rides

2008-11-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

... aren't they? Well, nearly all - I've had one or two bad ones, but none I regret going on (note to self: write post about this).

I was going to title this post "Good Ride".
I went mountain biking with Julia and Patricia yesterday on "The Tzou". It was raining on and off all morning, and windy, but was really nice up on the mountain. Them trees really do provide shelter.
It started raining as soon as we got back to the "water tower" (which isn't there any more, Patricia). I rode along the trail that goes off from the far end of the parking lot (where Dead Balls ends up) to the Providence Farm trail. It's really cool riding along on a carpet of massive yellow leaves, but they cover up all the roots and rocks, so you've got no idea what you're riding on. The roots are getting slippery with this rain, as Julia demonstrated, and I got splattered up with mud. I started the ride with a jacket over my jersey, but soon took it off, and didn't get cold.

It was "Double Cross" this weekend. Trevor, Dave, Derek and Amy went, but I had to work Saturday, and had no way of getting up there on Sunday, so I'm a bit jelous of them, but I got a cool mountain ridfe instead, so there (is there a smiley for sticking out a tongue?)!

With Patricia and Julia:
Distance: 6.8 km, Time: 1:28

Down to Providence Farm:
Distance: 3.7 km, Time: 31 mins (took a wrong turn and had to walk down some steep slick rock covered in slimey leaves!)

Hallowe'en

2008-11-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

More pics at Flikr.
I got my tripod on Thursday. Couldn't be better timing, so I went out straight after work to take photos. My batteries ran out 10 minutes later. I went home for fresh ones, and picked up where I left off. I saw loads of policemen - one stopped to ask me what I was up to.
I ended up at Hilary's, and consequently didn't get home until about 11:30. After taking photos of Ben, I followed her around with my camera while she was working. Because it was dark, I had the camera on the tripod, and was doing exposures between 1/20 and 6 second exposures using the two second timer to eliminate movement from pressing the "shutter" (what are we supposed to call it?) button. You'd think this would be fine for taking pictures of mugs, but it's "interesting" when they're being packed up for the next day's market. Spot the difference:
Hilary and I had an interesting conversation about Hallowe'en. She hates it. I do in principle. Just another excuse for retailers to sell us stuff. Decorations, costumes, candy, orange clothing, pencils with pumpkins on the end, cakes with orange food colouring in and plastic spiders on top. Bah, Humbug? I get the dressing up. I think that's fun. Although Hallowe'en wasn't a big deal in England (but kind of got merged into Guy Faulk's Night) we got dressed up for the village fete and gala in the summer and rode on floats in the parade. The way I remember it though, was that your mum always came up with the costume. There were no store-bought pumpkin outfits. You decided what you wanted to be: "the tin man from the Wizard of Oz", "a sea anemone", "Noddy", "a Viking", "a starfish", or in my case: "an alien", and your mum had to fabricate a costume from card board, old tights, tin foil, and net curtains. For my alien I had a green sweatsuit, tinsel wig, and suspended from each arm were three stockings, stuffed, with bands of fake fur left over from a lion costume or something, to imitate multiple sets of arms. I'm not sure what the wig was for. The other time of year for dressing up was the Christmas nativity, which saw everyone in bed sheet tunics and tea towels on their heads because, apparently, that is what people from Nazareth wore. There were variations on this costume: shepherds would get canes if they were considered well enough behaved, Mary would wear a blue bed sheet with a white tea towel, wise men would get a curtain (usually 70's style) for a robe, a self-made cardboard crown with sequins and glitter on, and a tea bag tin covered in foil. Sometimes bed sheet tunics would be replaced with dressing gowns (house coats for you Canadians) if the main hall was a bit drafty. The angels would have silver tinsel halos and white frocks, some with wings. The costume my mum made that got used as an all purpose angel/fairy/snowflake costume has lace curtain wings that were attached to the underside of the arms and the body, which was fine until I had to put my arms vertically above my head for the snowflake dance in Babushka on year.
The only reason (that I can see) for buying a costume off the shelf is for "cuteness", and laziness. Where's the fun and creativity in that?
Why can't everyone make costumes, get dressed up, mess around and have a party without the consumerism?

I Met Ben

2008-11-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

... last night at Hilary's.
Hilary and Dave picked up Ben from a family in Cobble Hill about a week ago. Amy and Sean have Ben's sister, Zoe, who I haven't yet met. There are eight weeks old.

More pics on Flikr. The pictures look funny because he's got his eyes closed. It was dark though, so the only way I could get a non-blurry photo is of him asleep.