No Not Another One Down

I don’t know what is going on, but I just heard another good friend, Herb, went down.    Well, Herb took a bad crash, offroad, due to the fork.  Damn, heal up my friend.

Last week, another good friend of mine, Karen, was hit by a car.  She’s alright, but that’s just more downtime.  She’s a really strong rider, and a great climber.  What would climbfests be without Karen.

My friend Curtis, went down late last year (I think twice, but can’t quite recall).  That was on a bike trail too … but that was due to some thugs on an isolated bike path.

My friend Teresa (aka Tiger) went down last year, who has 50+ doubles under her credit … That was hard to fathom, being a fellow triple crown rider myself.

Then, of course, I went down a couple times last year.  One actually forced me to replace my bike … that was very sad.

So with all these mishaps, I keep wondering what is going on.  Is it that we are getting older?  Are we out there trying too hard to get those KOM (or in Karen’s case, QOM)?  Or is it just an eventuality that we can go down?  Well, whatever it is, I’m wishing the trend would not repeat.  Take time to enjoy your surroundings, keep your head up … you don’t need to keep your head down, trying to get that extra few mph on the Strava segment.  If needed, map your route so that it is not quite so dangerous, or busy.  I know this won’t help in some situations, but this is my plead.

Riding in Wind, Torrential Rain, and in the Dark Makes You Badass

Yes, I did see the weather reports that forecast is for rain on the commute home, but hey, I’ve  been through weather like this before.  I mean, I rode the last 50 miles of Camino Real Double Century in the same conditions.

Yes it was driving rain, with wind, which meant rain was going into my face, to the side, on back.  I was already wet, right?  It is interesting how without rain and wind, visibility is not bad.  Add wind, rain, and darkness, it becomes a HTFU rude.  If you ride in this weather, you are truly badass … Rule #9

Caution: Test Your Cleats After Installing It

My right cleat was starting to wear down … I know this, because it was just a little too easy to dismount.  So I bought a new pair of cleats.

I forgot to install it last night, so this morning, just before heading out, I realized, I just bought new cleats.  So I installed it, then went out for a ride.

I nearly couldn’t get out as I got to Starbucks.  I had to put unbelievable torque to get my shoe out of my pedal.  I typically pivot out, but I had to dismount 10 seconds before my actual stop … This is not normal.

Just out of a whim, I tried pivoting inward, and I was able to dismount a bit easier.  I gotta look into this a bit more, but I think I’ll take more time into replacing my cleat the next time.

Luckily, I didn’t fall awkwardly the wrong way, on a busy intersection (I’ve been known to do that in the past).

Update:

I inspected both cleats, and the right cleat seems to have some imperfection in the shape.  There seems to be some nick, that could be causing it not to dismount from the pedal.

Left cleat/shoe

Right cleat/shoe

Locals Surviving Super Bowl Week

I know a lot of people were really excited about the Super Bowl being local, and it may have brought in lots of money to the economy, but it sure felt like a disruption to our lives.

First, there was the teardown of a world class youth soccer facility, which we will still see the effects of, and if it will ever be the same.  Then, there’s the disruption in SF … Lots of people who wanted to participate in Super Bowl City couldn’t, was turned away due to too many people.  Really???

There were events in San Jose, and nothing in Santa Clara, where the game was being played.  There were things all over the place.  That also meant traffic impacted the entire Bay Area, and not just Santa Clara.

They also closed the bike path, which goes right past Levi’s Stadium, for a week.

They said it would re-open 2/9, but they were way off the mark.  It wasn’t open till the evening of 2/11.

These past two weeks, I basically avoided SF and SJ, and stayed away from Great America.  Disruption in local lifestyle?  You bet.  Now maybe we can get back to our lives again?

Oh and thanks NFL for giving us the Toilet Bowl.  That was a dud.

I Love My Mac But Damn That Spinning Beachball

I’ve been a Mac user for a long time.  My first one was a Mac Plus, that I bought way back in ’86, I think.  I eventually got a helpdesk job, supporting a network of 300 Mac users in ’94.  So I’ve been using these things for an extremely long time.

One thing that always annoyed me was the spinning beach ball.  For all you Windows users, that’s equivalent to the rotating hour glass.  However, on Windows, at least you can do a Ctrl-Alt-Delete, kill the offending process, and continue on your merry way.  On the Mac, if you’re lucky, you can command-Option-ESC, and it will give you the Activity Monitor, and you can choose the offending process, and kill it … I said if you are lucky.

If you are unlucky, hitting command-option-esc won’t do jack.  It just sits there, spins its silly little beachball, and gives you the virtual middle finger.  You’d figure after all this time, Apple would have come up with a way where you could kill a process, without having to power off the whole thing, and power it back on.

So when it came time to refresh my work laptop (I had a Lenovo laptop), I had the chance to switch back to Mac OS, which is what I prefer, and I am used to … or go with an upgrade on the same old Lenovo platform, on Windows.  Well, with all these spinning beachballs, hoops you have to go through to get the same functionality as on the Windows platform, sadly I went with the Lenovo route.

So Apple, you had your chance … I could have gone the Mac OS X route, but because of your spinning beachball hanging everything (including the ability to force quit), I had no choice but to continue on the Windows platform.  And no, I am not fluent enough on Linux to go that route (that would have been nice).

Splish Splash on the Bike

I was going to take an early morning ride into work, but then I heard a shower outside my door.  Oooh, rain … I guess I should take my commuter bike with fenders.  The rain wasn’t too hard, so off I go on the bike.

There is just something about splishing and splashing through the road. Yes, the raindrops on my glasses can get a little annoying, but as long as it’s not a downpour, it’s fine.

VIRB Picture

VIRB Picture

I wonder what all the drivers on the road are thinking of this crazy cyclist riding in the rain.  Well, at least I’m not polluting the air.  It helps my psyche, and when I get into the office, I feel refreshed, and coming in with a good attitude.  Plus, I get a kick out of when people ask if I rode in or not … Why not … it’s not … oh … well at least it’s not thunder and lightning.  No tornadoes to worry about.  So I get a little wet .. so what!