Attention Deficit David

Relocating

Is it too late in life to move to Seattle? This killer bike trail alone might be enough to make me come west.

Mishkite

Mishkite, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

Well, I didn't think it would happen but it did. I walked into NYC Velo today (2nd Ave and 4th street) to buy a t-shirt and I spotted this beauty on the rack. Well, actually I spotted her sister, who was a 54cm. I fell in love.

I told the guy there "good thing you don't have this in my size, I'd have to buy it." That's when he brought it out in my size.

My first ride on it was the six blocks from the store to my car (which luckily had my rack on it). The next ride as around the neighborhood.

It's already been modified a bit. I flopped it to the fixed gear side and removed the back brake (having to take the brake lever off with a Dremel cutting tool, so I wouldn't have to take off the grips). I'll pull off the useless reflectors at some point soon.

So my LeMond is going to leave me, I don't need for two fixed gear bikes and this one is more fun. And pretty. And Felt never had shitty things to say about Lance, and it never sued Trek.

Oh, and it seems that Danielle likes this bike too.

Helmets and the peleton

When the UCI (Union Cycliste International—the governing body of the sport of cycling) began to mandate helmet use in the pro races, cyclists were up in arms. Many of the pros argued that as professionals they should be able to choose if they wanted to risk their lives for the sport. The organizers argued that having a cyclist die during an event is bad for the sport, and it's bad in general.

The organizers also argued that having pros wear helmets would make it more likely that non-pros would wear them as well. The racers cried bullshit, saying that nothing they did could influence the populace to wear helmets.

Well, that's just wrong.

Today on a nice 20-mile long bike ride in Amsterdam, Abby and I passed several thousand cyclists, and the majority of them, as is the custom here, were not wearing helmets. In fact I think it's fair to say that nearly 100-percent of the casual cyclists were sans casque. If you're wearing denim or a skirt (or a denim skirt) and riding a bike, no helmet.

But, and this is what I think is interesting, of the few dozen of cyclists on high-end road bikes who went by wearing lycra and sporting team garb, a full 80-percent were wearing helmets. This is in sharp contrast to my visit here five years ago when there were no helmets in pro cycling—there were no helmets on the people riding high-end bikes.

Clearly, the peleton's wearing of helmets has translated to that category of rider who wants to look like a pro. They're buying the gear, down to the helmet. It's certainly not a speed issue-many of these riders were going no faster than the grandmother on her trike, but they were mostly helmed.

Not sure if that will ever trickle down to any other parts of the population here, but it's an interesting observation none-the-less.

As an aside, I think it's safe to say that the average Dutch teen has more cycling acumen and skills than the more advanced rider in the U.S., and is also riding in an environment of slower speeds, vastly superior and more alert drivers and lower risk than the states, and as a result helmet use among the general population is likely less necessary—from a statistical accident point of view—than in the U.S.

In other words, people who ride bikes here do so slower, with slower traffic that obeys the laws and gives cyclists the right of way. There's a lot less to go wrong.

The sort-of great Mojo bar taste test

Jenni is fucking nuts. No really, I know she's nuts, because she and I have been in a friend-induced Mojo Bar taste test, and she likes things I don't like. Clearly since I'm much better than her in all regards, her tastes are broken.

Well truth be told she and I had similar reactions, but I know she reads this blog so I thought it would be good to rile her up first. Also for fair disclosure, Abby threw out some of the wrappers, figuring that a pile of ripped paper wrapper in the kitchen were junk, not science. So I'm not 100% sure of what I ate.

Due to voluminous amounts of travel and reduced amounts of bike riding, I tested just a sub set of these bars, provided by Daniel, based on this thread: http://turnings.phrasewise.com/2008/02/18/the-great-mojo-bar-taste-test/

So here's the deal— I got both dipped and non-dipped bars. I've been eating Clif Mojo bars for a while, all the non-dipped bars taste just about the same, so I started with the dipped.

The Peanut Butter and Jelly bar started off being awesome, what with the dipping in chocolate and all, but I soon found it cloying. Something about the "jelly" stuck to the roof of my mouth. It's not jelly. Its a jelly-ish paste of fruit. It's like fruit cement. And after a bit, it became too much for me.

I also had a chocolate dipped flavor that was not peanut butter and jelly, but was some other fruit, and that I liked. In fact I liked it so much I, as Jenni did, went right to the Vanilla dipped ones, figuring "hey, Vanilla is good." Vanilla, in this context is NOT good. It's bad. Very bad. It's like eating mucus, hard thick mucus, with a slight vanilla tang. It's like a sinus infection of confection.

I then went for the non-dipped bar with pretzels. I LOVE pretzels in things, I mix them with peanuts, chocolate, lamb, asparagus, rice, ice cream, coffee, and orange juice. (I am lying about some of the mix items.) I do NOT it seems like them in this bar. Or perhaps I don't like the bar that surrounded the pretzel. I can't tell because it was a mouthful that went right in the trash. This bar has called my mother a whore, and I shall never speak of it again.

I also liked the honey nut ones, they're fine. The rest are still in my kitchen waiting for a nice long ride.

Oh yeah, unlike Jenni I'm also not really impressed the product are 70% organic. If your label reads "70% non-carcinogenic" it's not such a bonus. 30% is a lot of volume in a bar. E for nice effort, T for nice try.

Winter riding?

Seventy degrees? In New York? In January?

I'm not sure what's up with this global warming thing, but until my house above the river becomes a house below the river, I'm sort of digging it. I got to go for a bike ride yesterday with the warmest temperatures I can ever remember this time of month. Which is nice, because my Calfee carbon frame came back from getting recoated and it's now decked out with SRAM Red, and Mavic R-Sys wheels, and now weighs a mind-blowing fourteen pounds.

So, in order to celebrate being able to ride my bike in January without needing any of the bundles of clothing I have, I've decided to run my car in the driveway continually, with the AC on.

Around the world in 80 days

I know I've had a busy schedule recently, but this modern jet travel thing, it's really blowing my mind.

A few days ago I was in the desert of Las Vegas for YAFTS (Yet Another Fucking Trade Show) marking something like my 10th or 12th year of going to shows in Sinister Disney. It was unreal-hot out, 102 on the coolest days, and we spent a lot of time inside the air conditioning of the hotels. (Although our room, at the top of an all-black pyramid facing the sun at the Luxor was annoyingly hot despite the full-blast AC 24/7. Dear Luxor, put in better AC when you update your crappy hotel.)

Saturday I flew to NJ, met up with Abby and we flew to Ft. Lauderdale for one of the stops on the Aperture Road Tour where Abby helped by proctoring. After we packed the class up Sunday evening, we hopped into the ocean for a half-an-hour or so, a strange and warm baptism after the hell-fire of the Vegas desert.

Today we flew from Florida to Oregon where we're enjoying the (global-warmingly hot) Pacific Northwest, and will start bike riding tomorrow for a few days of R&R. I am looking forward to that.

Then next weekend I'll be a bit lower down the coast in San Fran, and then finally back home.

So desert, Atlantic Ocean, Columbia Valley, Pacific Ocean, Bay, Hudson in two weeks.

No wonder I'm so damn tired.

Climbing the Hill

Climbing the hill, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

I'm in California working on something for the new project I'm rolling out in March (I still can't talk about it officially until all the papers are signed) and I'm having an interestingly great time.

Years ago I launched a dot com, an online publishing company that was centered around a mountain biking website that was launched very early in the dawn of the 'Net. For a long time I spent my warm-weather weeks driving or flying to mountain bike races all over the continent and reporting on them in real-time. The site was called GearHead.com, (later sold to a bunch of asses) and we were one of the first sites to ever to live race reporting, and we pioneered things like getting digital photographs up to servers from dial-up lines in West Virginia.

Yesterday I landed in San Francisco with Wil, my friend/coworker and we set out to the city to prepare to do some race coverage and media support and suddenly I was transported back a decade to the days when I'd travel with the media caravan from town to town, taking over an area for a few days and moving on.

This trip so far has been strangely emotional for me. It's great to be launching a new part of my life with cycling as the backdrop (and indeed I chose this race because it fits both into my new job and into my favorite activity) and I've fallen right back into the fold. There have also been some nice perks.

Yesterday, for example, I had the privilege of having dinner with the famous photographer Graham Watson and Darach McQuaid (brother of UCI president Pat) at a great restaurant where we downed a good bit of wine. This morning I got up to head over to get credentials and hit the course, shooting from the starting block and then catching a ride in one of the team cars up the hill to Coit Tower to walk up the remaining 800 meters to the finish. Some great vantage points, although the misfiring shutter on my camera is really causing me some issues. (I can't shoot above 1/500th of a second).

Not everything is cycling though. On the way back from Coit Tower, I passed by a woman sitting at the Fog City Diner having a meal who was applying makeup from a gigantic compact with the words "Lauren Hutton" on it. It was a truly large compact, the largest I'd ever seen and in fact I'd say it was pushing the boundary of the very term. Then I glanced up to see what sort of woman would be applying makeup from such a large object, and realized it was actually Lauren Hutton.

Yesterday, Wil and I were out walking to dinner when we stumbled upon several dozen of the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill, out for a jaunt, I suppose, away from their famous perch. A few dozen people were hanging out around the trees, many with food for the birds, including apples on long sticks, nuts, and more. The parrots, hung from trees, landed on shoulders, dropped onto people's heads, etc. It was really a surreal and beautiful experience. Dozens of people astounded by the colorful birds that just happened to be in a park in the middle of a city.

It's a terrific trip so far and bodes well for the rest of what I've got planned for the next years of my life. More on that in March.

Some Notes On Life

I was admonished by my friend Jon for not keeping my blogging more up to date, if I was going to be so rude as to not fly across the country more often and visit.

A random smattering from the panoply of events that makes up my day

• I have decided to withdraw my class-action lawsuit against Apple, as I have found my iPod nano. This proves that it is in fact NOT so small so as to lose permanently. I expect I shall have to pay court costs.

• Bike riding has occupied almost all of my free time this year, and as a result I'm up to about 2700 miles for the year, as compared to last year's 2003 miles by the end of December. The <a href="rocklandbike.org">Rockland Bicycling Club</a> is doing well this year and we've got lots and lots of new members.

• For the bike-geeks who read this, I've ridden the new SRAM Force group recently, and can't wait to get it on my bike.

• I'll be the photographer for my brother-in-law's wedding next weekend. I'm looking forward to it, and hope Fedex doesn't lose the 3 million pounds of camera gear I shipped out to the hotel. Aside from this, I haven't been taking many pictures of things that aren't insects. Slightly less motivation than usual, I suppose.

• At the end of the month I'll be riding RAGBRI, a bicycle ride across Iowa that's going to run 444 miles and, it turns out, will include the participation of Lance Armstrong. Neato.

• As Continental Airlines fucked me on Elite Qualification Miles this year, I've decided to drop about 20,000 revenue miles from my travel plans. Staying home has been very nice, though it's gotten me bitched at by aforementioned friend.

• I made a yummy pasta yesterday with the remnants of cheese brought to us by Abby's cousin and his girlfriend. This is less a note about cooking pasta though then a "hello" to them, as I know they're some of the few people on earth who read this blog.

Oh, and in Sept. I'll be in Cologne, Germany for a week. I'm thinking of bringing my bike to ride in the free time around the trade show. Anyone know any good bike routes there?

I am so addicted to gadgets my bike is wired

Garmin's new Edge GPS based cycle computer has me in a frenzy of delight. Actually, it's not just the Edge 305 that's doing it, it's the computer combined with a website called MotionBased (recently acquired by Garmin) that's got me whipped into a froth greater than that of a mochafrappalattachino.

The edge is a cycle computer with a GPS heart, which means that it's capable of telling things like speed and distance, but also holds the power to calculate so many picayune little things about a ride that, that, well that I almost spend more time checking out my rides then riding.

(And to prove that's not exactly true, here is a link to the fifty-mile ride I did Saturday.

Click on the Weather link, for example, and see the average, high and low temperatures for today. No, my GPS doesn't measure that, it used my starting point to figure out the nearest NOAA weather station, and took the readings for the times I was out exercising.

Or check out the heart rate data, where you can see what zone I was exercising in at any time.

Really, I could obsessively look at these numbers, click boxes and see charts in both PIE and standard graph form.

It almost is enough to make me want to go ride my bike so that I can look at numbers some more.

Through the fields of wild Clementines

To describe how much I hate tradeshows would probably be a waste of expletives. I hate trade shows with the sort of hate reserved for colonoscopies and kidney stones. (Only with some of those, you get nice pills to take home and make you feel happy.)

I wish I'd kept track of how many shows I'd been to in my life, since I started dropping in on them with Foster in college. We used to fake our credentials, and go a representatives of Communications Magazine, which did not exist. We got into every show without problem (thanks to early versions of Photoshop and the lack of proper vetting by show staff.) I saw many a Macworld Expo keynote from the front rows of a center that I had no right to be in. Good times, Good times.

Now when I go to a show, I try to take my travel bike with me, and head out for a ride, either fitting it in after days on a show floor (as in Austin) or by tacking on extra days.

I got a ride in this afternoon after my show, a beautiful (mostly) ride in the hinterlands of Central Florida. To put this into perspective, one of the roads I travelled on was named "Bible Camp Road". I bet you can't guess why.

I picked up a rental car early this morning and drove it back to the hotel, fueling up along the way on IHOP (struck with a sudden craving, it's Free Panckage Day btw). Mucked about with my bike for far far too long (must...fix...saddle...points...up...my...ass) and then off to a route start that I found thanks to the website of the Central Florida Wheelmen and Google maps.

It amazes me that one can find a bicycling route thanks to one website's PDF postings of maps, and another website's directions and mapping. It's utterly unreal to think that I did a beautiful 30 mile route thanks to nothing more than a few clicks of a mouse and some research.

The ride was on mostly secluded roads past "lakes" (I might have gone with "swamps") and included a long stretch down through a forest full of Clementine trees. At least, I think that's the type of citrus it was, it's hard for me to tell, but I did pack about 15 of these little tart suckers in my jersey pockets, and ate them slowly over the course of the ride. It's the first time in my life I've had citrus directly from a tree, and I learned a very important lesson: the big wild oranges, the ones that grow to be the size of softballs, are so tart as to make one's lips fall off. Better to stick with the Clementines.

I would have done 45 miles today, but the route I selected was closed at the 12 mile mark, something that's better to encounter at 12 miles than say 35. According to a sign, $637,000 of Florida's hard earned tax revenue was being spent to pave a road that was already paved. Good job Florida.

I was clearly the oddest looking thing in the town of Groveland today (now do you see why there were so many trees?) as I pulled up to a mini grocery store and got out in cycling gear. The owners were nice enough to let my car stay in their parking lot while I rode, and I thanked them for it with purchases of beverages and snacks.

Before I started pedaling today I was gripped by the terrible realization that I had no Co2 cartridges for flats, and only the porn-star-sized hand pump, but no way to attach it to my bike. I frantically searched the town for somewhere selling zip ties (feed store, no. pharmacy, no. dollar store, no.) and settled on electrical tape, wrapping the thing to my top tube.

Clear, perfect weather, followed up by SMS evidence that my coworkers are still in town, and I'm not alone tonight!! A shower is in order (after the quick bar pizza I had paid for by PDN, thank you PDN) and then I'm off to let Popular Photography buy me a drink vis: Lori, my former coworker.