California Take 1

Last week I went out to California to visit UC Davis, and then hang out with my brother. Weather is awesome out there. Got a few pictures of the UC Davis campus:





The campus was really cool, and the school seemed like a nice place to be, but the research going on there didn't really mesh too well with what I'd like to do. Additionally, the one professor there working on fuel cells has 17 students already, and just had his 6th kid. Nuts. So I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to Davis. However, I still might hit up Cali, because Irvine accepted me and gave me a fellowship for the whole first year. Shi-bang!

But the real fun was the bike riding. 80 mile training ride on Saturday. First 2/3 of the ride was getting out to a big (70 person) group training ride. We went up along the coast, turned inland and did a few hills which ripped the ride apart. I finished in the second group, feeling a little gassed. Nick, Lisa and I then spun around for a bit.


Sunday we did a crit up in Compton (ya know, like the rap songs). I did the 3, and felt pretty good. Stayed in the top 15 the whole time, tried my hand in a few breaks. Coming into the bell lap there was a group of two that had about 5 seconds gap on the field. I figured I would jump across to them, and then jump again on the backstretch and try and win the sucker solo. Well, I couldn't quite get up to them, and we all got caught. Got washed into the field, but managed to recover enough to at least be present in the sprint, but way too far back... somewhere near 25th. Still, very pleased with the effort for my first race.

Lisa won a $20 prime, and took 2nd place in the Women's 1/2. She also did the 1/2/3 30+ Masters race for training. BEASTLY! Nick did the 1/2/3 30+ and the Pro 1/2-doing some work for his teammates at the beginning, and then finishing it off for the training miles, or kilos as it were. Great training crit all around. Sucks that the weather won't be like that out here until June.

Racing season about to kickoff...

Well this weekend marks the beginning of the collegiate season with the Rutgers race weekend. However, I won't be able to make the first weekend of racing, which at first I was sort of upset about (and still am to some extent) but I think I'll be doing some cooler things instead....

On Wednesday after work I will be driving to Philly and staying at my friend Jimmy Devlin's place in Valley Forge. Thursday morning I'll be flying out of Philly to Sacramento California. Thursday night and Friday I will be visiting UCDavis, and likely falling in love with the city and the west coast in general. I'm not sure if I'll be able to turn down such a sweet location, but I'll talk about grad school options later.

Instead of flying home redeye to come do the Rutgers weekend, I'll be flying down to SanDiego to visit my brother Nick, and do a TT and a long training ride on Saturday, then The Deluge Sport Crit on Sunday. Even though I'm disappointed to be missing Rutgers, I'm excited to visit my brother in SanDiego, and race in NICE weather.

My goal for the collegiate season is the Men's B Overall. I don't think missing Rutgers is really going to kill me there. Last year my roomate Spohn won it, and I don't think he scored anything at Rutgers. Though I will be missing the UNH weekend in April too, so other than those two weekends, I'm looking to be on my game....

CAAD9

Well this will be quick because I'm headed to bed so I can lift da Iron tomorrow, but here are some pics of the CAAD9. I think the only thing I have left to change is swapping the odd shaped carbon bar out for the aluminum "crank the bolts on down" bar instead.

Take that Osama.

The carbon Aerus bar has these odd bumps right before the levers, and a weird shape in the drops that I haven't been able to get used to. I'm going to switch it out for a new aluminum bar I have that has a more familiar shape, and then I won't have to torque the bolts on. I'm pretty lazy.

I'll be gluing up the tubies soon, and will post the final weight. I'm hoping for sub 18, but I doubt it. My guess is 18.2lb.

Two in one day!? at least I don't play World of Warcraft

Well I'm actually pretty busy at work, but unfortunately my desire to be lazy and put off work scales directly with the amount of work I have in front of me, hence the unprecedented second blog entry of the day. PSU payroll is for suckers.

I was at the gym this morning doing a pretty light lifting workout. I go to the new RecHall facility which is really nice, and relatively uncrowded at 6:30 in the morning (That's 0630). The only problem is that on the large TVs they have there, they constantly have FoxNews on. Even without hearing the idealogical physcobable bullshit the hosts are spewing out of their mouths, I can tell that they are evil incarnate. The one male host looks like the actor who played in Thank you for Smoking just looks like he is an asshole. I can tell these things over TV. Oprah is an asshole too, you can easily tell.

What I was really thinking about is this though: Do I think these people look like hate mongers because of their appearance somehow, or is it that I've seen the channel before, and I recognize the graphics and the whole message behind their "fair and balanced" newscasts. I guess it's more of the later- really shouldn't judge the book by the cover. But by all means, once you've read the book and it makes you want to gag, please don't display it in Rec Hall.

Training Camp

Well the CAAD9, after needing to fix a stiff link in the chain numerous times, is nearly complete. Just need to add a non-annonying barrel adjuster to the frame. I'll post some pictures tonight, and also get the weight with the box section tubie wheels on board at some point. Not sure what it will come in at, but I know it's a heck of a lot lighter than my old bike, and stiffer!

Anyway, this weekend was the training camp, to help get larger groups out training, and to break in some new racers to riding close together. We definitely didn't pick the weekend based upon the weather. Saturday was 22 degrees when we started what was supposed to be a 2.5 hour ride. Probably the one enjoying the weather the least was Rodney, a freshman from Lehigh Valley campus who hails from Puerto Rico! Shouldn't have come to ride your bike in Central Pa boss. We were pretty warm while we were moving, but a stubborn flat tire had us sitting along Route 192 for about 30 minutes. We couldn't get it fixed because the kid's tire was so beat, so we ended up putting the kid in some random person's car who was headed in the right direction. We were way too cold to continue on, though, so we just rode a few minutes back to Centre Hall and got a whole pizza and hot chocolate, thanks to Rodney who had the foresight to bring along a 20-spot. Respect.

So after warming up we rode back.... in a truck driven out to Centre Hall by Asa, an employee of The Bicycle Shop. Again, respect. We owe Asa a case of beer. We got back and hit up the trainer, which we ended up being stuck on for Sunday's training too.

Oh yeah, we also had a pretty bomb-ass party with live music on Saturday night, but I'll let my roomate Andy talk about that. But just a quick preview, evidently our party was so off the hook that two of our roomates are moving out. What the balls?

PSU CAAD9

Haven't written here in a while, been too busy recently. The J-O-B is taking up about 40 hours, and when I'm not working, I'm riding, eating or sleeping.

Anyway, I'll start writing here more often when race season fires up again...first weekend in March. If you don't like hearing race reports and stories about roadtrips with 5 dudes in a car, then I wouldn't bother coming back.

To the subject at hand though, I recently got my new frameset (CAAD9), and have it partially built up. I'll have complete pictures of both my bikes once they're 100% done, but there have been many requests to see what the CAAD9 looks like, so here it is:

Little overall shot. Pretty sweet paint scheme. I'll have the compact R700 cranks you see there, plus an Aerus carbon bar with some D/A 10sp shifters on board. Also switch to a Flite saddle... I had it working on the Zeppelin, so I'm hopeful I can get it working over here.



Top Tube graphics. Carbon steerer with carbon spacers... ummmm. Do not enter sign in the background.



CAAD9 on the seattube. Worst place ever for "The Bicycle Shop" logo. Seriously. Were you drunk Erik?



Better spot for some Bicycle Shop advertising. CAAD9 seatstays are the same as the CAAD8 I believe... just the shape of the toptube near the headtube is different. The vertical dimension increases as you get closer to the front...



And the headbadge.

I'll post some more pictures of the completed CAAD9, and the Zeppelin TT machine.

Zeppelin is now in TT mode

Well I've been busy as heck recently, so the blog is the first thing to get the hit. Putting in close to 40 hour weeks, trying to train as much as I can, and visiting folks on the weekend adds up to not much free time at all. I'm thinking about asking if I can do 30 hours per week, but I'll talk more about that later.

So I finally got the Zeppelin rocking out in TT mode. Finished putting the Nokon cables in last night, which are a bitch to install by the way. I didn't even do the whole thing with weatherproofing over the whole length. I just used the links to allow the housing to bend much more than normal stuff would. Looks pretty sweet I think. Worked on the position a bit last night, and will try it out for a short ride this afternoon in the bitter cold of Central, Pa. Hopefully it won't take me too long to get it all dialed in.

Hoping to get the CAAD9 in next week and have that built up ASAP as well.... can't wait for Rutgers...

PSFEI

Well after three days on the job, I feel like I'm starting to get a pretty good handle on things. Still need to set my alarm correctly, however. This morning I awoke from a relatively trippy dream to what seemed to me as a lot of light in my bedroom. Well I was right, because it was 8:15, which was late because I wanted to be at work at 8. Well... I got there before 8:30 after neglecting to comb my hair (nothing new) skipping breakfast (new) and the application of deodorant (so not new).

So I get to my desk, and pull up my stuff.... login, check my email... check cyclingnews (ya know, the important shit) and then my boss walks in. He's like, "Erik I'm sorry, I know you said you had some questions- I couldn't get down here earlier". I just sort of look at him and say, "yeah... because I've been here since 8 huh?", and he just says, "yeah sorry, so what questions do you have?" Rocking. I left at 4:30, ya know, as if I had been there at 8.

Work is pretty tedious, and what's worse, it seems pretty unnecessary. I'll elaborate later when you have recharged your desire to read my dribble.

The Bicycle Shop

Hey Bicycle Shop:

Thanks for letting this kid EP his heart's desires using a 6 month no interest credit card. Six months is looking like it's going to go realllll fast. Bicycling is an expensive habit.

Sincerely,
Indebted Engineering Student

Work.

Well I start my co-op rotation tomorrow with Penn State Facilities Engineering Institute. Not exactly sure what to expect. I know I'll be working with a group that maintains PennDOT buildings. Basically they create and update databases that calculate which buildings are in the most need of money to repair them... or better said how to spend the money and get the most out of it as far as useful improvments go. Evidently this all centers on calculating the exisiting value of the building, and summing up all the repairs needed. I know you sound jealous already.

Should find out more tomorrow, but I know the "core" hours I need to be there are 9-2. I'm really hoping that I can consistently do something along the 8-2 schedule, thus pulling about 30 hours, but still allowing plenty of time to ride after work. That way I won't be a slave to the weekends in order to finish off base miles and start adding intensity into the longer rides.

Polar Heart Rate Monitor Noise....

Anyone else notice that their polar HRM strap makes noise when it's picking up your pulse? Put it on in a quiet place. You don't even need the watch/computer part to be near you, or even on. Just put it on and listen. It produces a very quiet, high pitched beep, everytime your heart beats.

Anyone know how these things work? I guess it senses the electrical signal from your heart firing somehow, but anyone know the details of the sensors used? Why would it produce noise? My roomates have noticed similar sounds from computers when the wheel magnet goes by the sensor, so if those things are related its not HRM specific, but something in the electronics that both of those components would have. There's got to be some EE's out here... whats up??

Base Miles

The last few weeks have seen me pile on some base miles. The last few days have seen around 3-3:30 hours a day, a pretty decent load for me. I'd like to be able to be more consistent from week to week, but I'm feeling real strong already, so I think things are going real well. Started to mix in some hills while at home over break, and have been sprinkling them into rides here in Happy Valley... keeping it pretty easy until February, when I plan to start kicking my butt up them.

For the time being though, it's a great feeling to ride for 3 hours at a heartrate of right around 140. It feels like I'm juuuust about to be tired, allll the time. But when I get back I don't feel very fatigued- always ready to ride the next day. Sounds like good base mile pace to me... hopefully I'm not cooking too early. I keep picturing the start at the Rutgers Prologue.

Also made two purchases today:

Easton Tempest II Carbon Wheels. If you don't have an erection right now over these straight pull spoke, carbon rimmed, self adjusting hubbed wheels, it means you're either a girl (still not a great excuse) or you don't race bikes.




Polar CS200 w/ Cadence. Looking forward to throwing this bad boy on my new CAAD9 that will be equipped soon enough with DuraAce 10spd shifters. Yum

What's up with people?

So I was out riding yesterday, back in Happy Valley. Went through Bellefonte... and this car is going past me in the opposite direction. It slows down a bit, and this old woman, maybe in her 70s, flips me off! What the heck is up with that? It's not like I just blew a stop sign, or cut anyone off... I did those things eariler and she didn't see them. I can't flip her off back... she's old! You can't take my grandma's house... she too old! Hurry up I want to watch the hockey game later.

Other blogs don't have shit on my blog.

If you think my blog is rambling and ultimately a little unsatisfying in the humor column, check this blog out: We Have a Better Blog.

It'll be sure to make mine look funny.

Home for the holidays

Well I've been home for over a week, and I finally finished off everything from this past semester. Needed to turn in a homework and submit my portion of a group paper... all done now though.

This spring I'll still be in State College, working at the Facilities Institute, doing database type work in support of their maintenance of PennDot buildings across the state. They basically catalog absolutely every detail about a building, and come up with a ratio of what its worth to what it would cost to fix it. Basically rating what building needs funding first. Real fun right? Not really, but it'll keep me paid, in State College, and still a full time student... which is important because I'll have health insurance, and can race my bike for the blue and white one more time.

Speaking of the bike... I've been puttinig in some more hours in the saddle. anywhere from 10-15 hours a week the past few weeks. I'll be putting in a few monster days tomorrow, taking a little tour of the Hudson Valley region... if the weather holds.

Also been picking up some other things from home... playing the piano and reading more. Hopefully I'll be doing more of both this next semester. Once I figure out a cheap way to record stuff I'll throw some tunes up here too.

Happy Holidays.

Posted...Keep Out... No Problem!

I've noticed that while riding around Central Pa, a lot of shoddy run down homes in poor areas have lots of posted signs. KEEP OUT! Don't come knocking at my trailer park door, son! Most of these places resemble the picture above... who would want to go down there? It looks like the apocalypse might be down that private road- I'm not ready to be judged yet. Most of these signs are relatively unneeded.

Even better are the handmade signs along people's driveways that say "No Turning Around". Most of these you can't actually see until you've pulled into the driveway already. then what... I'm just supposed to pull out the same way!? "Shit, I didn't see that sign, I'll have to keep on going down the wrong way until I find a more friendly driveway owner". Lots of wear and tear on your driveway there buddy...

End of the semester

Well I'm busy as hell with tons of projects and homework and stuff at the end of the semester, but make sure you don't move to Cherry Tree, Pa. I mean... I might expect that from Wyoming or something, can you be serious?

Cellphone goodbyes...

I realized the other day that everyone seems to have their own style on the phone. I'm sure we've all done the interruption game... taking turns mistakenly interrupting the other person- ya know pretending like we're on Fox News or CNN or something.

Even more awkward than that, though, is trying to remember what kind of goodbye each person uses. Some people seem to be cool with just leaving it with "talk to ya later", and then hanging up. The odd thing is if you try and sneak a "bye" in after that, and they don't respond.... they were just in the act of hanging up right? It's not like they ignored my "bye". Or how about the:

Person 1: "goodnight"
Person 2: "talk to you later"
Person 1: "ok"
Person 2: "bye"
Person 1: thinking...what the hell, do I need to say goodbye AGAIN?

I mean... jeez how many times do you need to say, allright- this conversation is done. I'm almost to the point where I need something in my phonebook that reminds me that, hey the person I'm talking to is just a "talk to you later" person. I need not try and say goodbye after we say "talk to you later". But maybe it's just me.

PEACE.

Novel Searching.

I need some suggestions for some readin'. I don't want to read some sappy family saga drama though. Right now I'm reading about Krakatoa... volcano near Indonesia (west coast of Java) that blew to high hell in 1883. Sort of a cool read so far.
But seriously. send me some good books you've read. Fiction preferred... need some fictional stories in my life right now. Whitman, ShoJo... don't send shit about Playboy or anything with pop-up graphics.

Applications....

I finally submitted all my online applications... $400 worth. Applied to 7 schools.

1.UCI
2.UCD
3.RPI
4.VT
5.PSU
6.UDel
7.UConn

Still have to make sure all the recommendations make it there on time, and send out some transcripts and some essays which I have already written. So just a little more leg work, then I can sit back and wait for the rejection letters to pile up.

After living in State College for the last 5 years, I think I'd like to check out the urban scene for a while. Too bad I didn't factor that too much into my school choices. UCI is near LA. Sweet... LA rocks if you like smog. UCD is near SanFran. That'd probably be cooler. Other than that though... I'm looking at crappy 2nd tier cities or State College equivalents. Sucks... why can't there be any cool places in Boston, DC, San Diego? Ok there are good schools there, but MIT? Let's be serious. I don't think I could stand NYC- no place near enough to ride, and I also don't know if they have any good programs there.

On the way home for Thanksgiving I'll be stopping by Cornell, which I decided not to apply to afterall, and then RPI the next day. Can't wait for this semester to be over with.

Think I'm ready to ride outside again...

Hopefully I'm ready for an hour's ride outside.... this is the last ride I did... on the rollers. Avg power of 216W. I could easily do a ride outside and average far less than that.

Yea... the zero power in the midde was me falling off. Still can't ride with no hands on rollers. Oh well.

Sleep

The only reason I've been able to sleep this week.

Lance's new position

Lance's new position looks to be immitating Landis's TT position... all upright and shit.

PowerTap

I sort of used the PowerTap. Here is my first "ride"... 20 min jaut on the trainer which started out shitty but my knee felt better after I warmed up. Hopefully this trend will continue when I try and ride...gasp... outside tomorrow.

Serfas

usually suck, but these rock.
I'm going to buy some and then join a U2 fangroup.

Knee issues take 2

So my left knee has been bugging me since early September when I borrowed a friend's fixed gear to commute to campus a few times. I'm not sure what was going through my head, but I borrowed it because I had traded commuters with another friend so I could use his track bike to race the track. I might be the stupidest person I know. Cross season was the first victim of my stupidity, so I sold the Redline that never quite fit me right anyway. I'll get a Cannondale next year, if I'm healthy then. But my main concern is the fact that I'm supposed to start putting miles in on my road bike the 2nd week of November for the collegiate season. I'd also like to be hitting the gym now.

Well I've been doing PT for three weeks, and just had my 2nd appointment with the most incompetent sounding doctor I've ever hearrd. Got an MRI ordered this time though, hitting that tube of fun up tomorrow morning. Hopefully that will shed some light into what is going on, and I can get in to see one of the more knee specalists there and try and fix my second knee.

Seriously, if you have a fixed gear, I might break it when I see you next. No joking.

Naked Men...

I'm taking racquetball this semester. As I soon realized you get quite sweaty playing racquetball in those small stuffy courts. So after every class I hit up the locker room to change before heading out to my other two classes. First off you should not schedule normal classes right after Kines classes. Stupid mistake.

My beef starts in the locker room. Why do old men feel the need to prance around naked? Now if they didn't have a towel handy while changing, that's cool. But walking around the locker room naked with a towel hanging around your shoulders is just unacceptable. Even better are the old men who feel the need to weigh themselves while butt naked. All of these men are overweight. Is the quarter pound towel really going to break your goal for that day? I've done a little data collection and I've found that there is a one to one linear relationship between how overweight the dude is and how willing he is to walk around naked in the locker room:
I must share, though that my most traumatic naked man incident did not occur at the IM building this semester. And no it not feature Joe Whitman. A few summers ago my boss at my co-op also frequented the locker room where I showered after doing noon-time workouts on the bike. One time he happened to be there after doing a jog on his lunch break and he flagged me down and gave me some things to do that afternoon... all while butt naked in the middle of the locker room. I had a towel on. I sort of felt like I should have taken it off and just let her fly out there in the air. Am I alone on this? Towels are there for a reason.

New Commuter....

Well I decided to go the much easier route to get a new bike to kick around town with. Lady called into the shop the other day. She was cleaning out a shed in the back of a place she rents. Had a few bikes there she wanted to get rid of. One was a Schwinn Varsity. Some other junk with some duct taped stems. But there was also a 97-98 Trek VW Mtn bike. 19". 7 speeds. So I fixed her up a bit, and will have all the parts I need once I get some stuff off my old mountain bike that was junked together from freezethaw two years ago. I haven't ridden since I almost died riding it (wasn't my dumbass fault that time though) because it's an absolute piece of shit. But the cranks/BB are good, as is the front wheel, and that's all I need to get this thing running. Maybe a 7 speed cassette too. Those aren't too spendy though.

Yeah. so it's purple... can't really tell in the picture. But it'll take some fat tires and fenders, so this will work all winter long baby. Sahweet.

Also had another idea regarding switching bikes around. I think I'm going to use my old race bike, Ti Airborne Zepplin, as my new TT rig, and sell the Nova (current gay looking yellow TT frame) on eBay. I think the better fork and stiffness of the Zepplin outweigh (pun fully intended) the weight savings of the Nova (Al) over the Zepplin(Ti). So... look out ECCC, I'm going to have a Titanium time trial bike. That kid must be really fucking fast. He has flames anodized onto his Ti TT frame!


Going to put some more flames running down the downtube, and then something where the bike brand would normally go. Ideas are welcome. Stud has already been considered and is likely. Chrono is also up in the running. Maybe I'll figure out how to do those voting online things and we can have a slugfest, and maybe JUST MAYBE Steven Colbert will find out about this and ramsack my election and I'll have to write something like "Colbert" on my bike. That would make my day.

Forks aren't supposed to bend like this...

I finally sold the Redline cross frameset, but I was oh so very close to ruining the frame, and my body, before ever selling it...

I was riding down the sidewalk next to College Ave near Hout's on my Fuji commuter, holding the Redline in my left hand. A car looked like it was about to pull in front of me, so I went to hit the brake with my right hand. Now... I have my brakes crossed up, so this was my front brake. I looked down at the caliper to see it engage the wheel, and then move forward, because it was loosening up off the nut, and then give way. So I immediately loose all braking power and am just coasting. The car doesn't pull in front of me... it sees me coming and is waiting, but it doens't matter because I never made it as far as the car. My front caliper swings once or twice in front of my bike, and I'm thinking... shit I got to stop and catch that thing, so I take my right hand off the bar and try and reach for the other brake, which I can't get with my left hand becuase I'm holding the frame that I'm on my way to sell!! But before I reach that brake...

Boom. caliper runs inbetween some spokes, and completly jams up my front end. Bike flips over. Somehow I manage to jump off my moving bike (around 10-15mph) and land, running, in the middle of the traffic lane of College Ave. Now thankfuly there are no cars in College, just that one car looking to turn onto it. Well that car waits a second, sees that I'm still living, and takes off. I slowly collect the fact that I'm the luckiest piece of shit roadie ever. If I were some BMX or mountain biking fiend, then that would be a cool dismount, but hell, I shave my legs. I never run off my bike while it's doing flips underneath me, and not while I'm holding a frameset in the other hand!!

So... damage to the bike: The fork is absolutely fucked. As you can see in the pictures below both blades are bent back, and obviously not planar anymore. Riding the bike now is interesting... getting out of the saddle is out of the question. I ordered a new fork for it with cantilever brake mounts, and I got some braze-ons for the back that I'm going to weld on. I'll have to remove the bridge in the back that supports the seat stays and replace it with a bridge further up, or a plate up by the seatpost. So basically I'll have a single speed cross bike. Schweet. I'll post some more about the construction of this later on...

Check out the fork... and how close the front wheel comes to the downtube....




This picture is square on from the side of the bike. You can clearly see the bend in the fork, and the fact that the blades are no where near planar anymore. Sahweet. Maybe I can make a toilet paper roll holder out of this fork.

The paint came off the part of the fork that was put under tension. The front wheel here is very close to being in dish, so you can tell that the fork is really out of wack.... The metal stretched out causing the paint to flake off. The paint is fine on the front end of the frame, and nothing indicates that the frame was effected at all.




Another shot of the paint off the fork blades, and my extremly clean braking surface.

Good vibrations

I'm sitting in class the other day and someone's phone starts to vibrate. Ya know, that quiet reminder that everyone in the room can hear. Now I know full well that my phone is turned on silent. But as the vibrating noise is heard for the third time I reach down just to make sure. Open up my phone carrier thing on my Timbuk2 bag, and nope, not me. But right when I reach down the noise stops. The teacher looks at me. What!? seriously man it wasn't me!! So now I'm trying to find a pencil or pen or something I can pull from my bag to say, "see... here! that's what I was reaching for, not my phone!". But I got nothing, so I go up empty handed, taking the blame for the phone noise. That got me thinking.

We have custom ringtones. Why not custom vibrators? Now I know the ladies out there are saying, "hell yea!! I want some custom vibrating action." But seriously. If you could also program your phone to tap out some simple rhythm, then you'd know if its your phone right away. Now certainly this wouldn't matter if you had the phone in a pocket, as you'd feel it right away, but with everyone putting phones in bags and stuff, it's really hard to tell who is vibrating and who isn't. So here is my challenge to the cell phone companies out there: get me a phone with some customizable vibration action.

No more Ivan with CSC

Well the breakup with Ivan Basso and CSC finally officially occurred today. I figured this one had to be coming since reports were circulating ever since the Tour that Basso and Riis were not talking at all. Ivan has been in contact with Discovery Channel and Team Milram. I can't see how Discovery would ever sign him. Doping has been a problem that has not been much of an issue for Discovery, and I would hope they would want to keep it that way. I'd also feel really bad for Levi if they added Basso. Levi would still be a prominent rider for them, but I don't think he'd get the same 100% support at the Tour that he is likely to enjoy if he is the sole leader. I'm not even sure Basso is going to make much more noise at the Tour anyway...

Basso is going to have a quiet future. He'll join a team, and race without doping... which for him means getting dropped on the climbs that he had enjoyed success on before. I hope to see Ivan go to the Tour next year with Milram, be in the top 5 or so going into some mountain stage, and loose 10 minutes. Then of course NOT gain 9 back the next day by injecting testosterone directly into his testicles.

I'll be happy this Spring racing in the Men's B field in the ECCC, as I'll know that no one there is doping.

Energy Consumption... by States

I'm taking an online Energy course, EGEE 101. It's basically the easiest thing I've done here at PSU, and keeps me full time. Anyway, I came across this graph below (originally shown without the colors) that shows total energy use, and energy use normalized to population.

I realize you can't read anything in the image above, but if you click it it will come up full size, and should be readable. The first graph is the total energy per state. As you can see the red/blue (as defined by 2000 Election) is relatively well spread out. But the second graph is the energy use normalized to the population, basically how much energy is used by each individual person in those states (the black one is the US average). The first 16 states went to Bush. 16 states! These weren't the states that were close either, these were the blowout states of Texas and the midwest. Ya know, the ones they colored in about three weeks before the election. What does this tell us? Republicans use more power than Democrats? Not exactly, but it's interesting to see that the Republican dominated states are much less energy conscious. Now certainly places like Alaska have the fact that they are constantly heating their homes, which is a huge part of personal energy use. Other than that though, you have 15 states in the main body of the country that says, hey... the hell with you, i'm burning some oil in my front yard in a large barrel and you can't stop me, and I'm going to vote for child molesters.

Ohio and back

Took a little road trip out to Columbus, OH this weekend to visit Karin and my brother Todd, and my niece Cheyan. 18 months old, seriously coolest baby ever. She knows most of her colors... though most of them are usually "yeah-yo" until you tell her to guess again.

Here is a picture of me helping her pump up Dad's wheels before his cross race:


And a picture of us hanging out in the car



I drove back to Happy Valley Monday morning after the weekend and was pretty freeking tired. Stopped at a gas station that had a Starbucks attatched, and got a coffee and a lemon pound cake thing. When I went up to order, I asked for a "large coffee and a slab of the lemon pound cake". The recently employed hippy looking no good cashier looked at me and said, "You want a venti?" I just looked at her.... I wanted to say "I don't want a large Farva, I want a litre cola." But I felt like she wouldn't get that one. I just nodded.

A Venti? Are you freeking kidding me? Your company is from Seattle, shut the hell up venti. Is that italian? Starbucks? Quit it with your stupid sizes.

Bored in Engl202C

This is how much I care about Engl202C (Technical Communcation)

how about those geography skills. Don't be jealous. And yes I know I re-drew the Maine/Canada border a bit... but seriously... who cares, some moose?

Riding

Took an hour cruise around Centre County this afternoon. Knee felt pretty freeking allright for the first time in a few weeks. So hopefully the 6 advil a day and icebag of frozen corn is helping. Definetly going to keep a low profile until mid-November though, when I hope to start piling on the base miles and lifting. Maybe I'll have a powertap and a new CAAD9 frame by then... that'd be pretty sweet.

Also found out that my helium wheels I got at the swap are pretty f'ed up. I heard that some tubular helium rims had a problem with the nipples pulling through the rim, and upon close inspection the rim definelty has a lot of little micro-cracks (like the technical jargon?). So.... eBay! Fucking swap meets... good and bad. Just have to be careful... wrap it up.

Lehigh Valley Swap

Woke up at a brisk 4AM to head out to Lehigh Valley for the Fall Velodrome Swap. I packaged up a bunch of my junk to try and sell. Ended up parting with about 40 bucks worth of stuff I won't be needing. Spent most of the time working for the shop selling bikes and gloves and stuff. Big catch of the day.... 90 dollar pair of Mavic Heliums! Not bad! I'll probably use them as a low weight road race wheel set (ie when I don't want to use the front carbone/powertap) and then for cross next fall. Sahweet. Netted about 30 bucks, Mavic Heliums, and an Ultegra crankset which I realize I probably won't need when I buy this before cross next year:
I am looking forward to cross in the fall, but most of all I'm just hoping that I can put in all the training that time allows for this spring. Getting sick of injuries piling up. Therefore I will be wearing kneepads 24/7. And to answer your question Whitman, no.

Study Day

Well I took the GREs today, and I sucked it up. I don't think it'll kill me for most of my schools, but doesn't help my case for reaching for places like RPI or Cornell. I was especially pissed because I never really had trouble with the timing while practicing, but I pretty much screwed it up on the real thing. The problems were getting harder and harder, which is a good thing if you know how the GRE works, but I only had 6 seconds for the last question, and just guessed without even reading the whole question. Blows. I must have missed about 3-4 questions. I don't think I'll take it again though, time is pretty short and I'll still be able to get into a decent enough program I hope.

Also finally got a Dr. appointment for my left knee problems. Penn State Orthopedics..got in about three weeks sooner than at University Orthopedics. Freeking a man... I need to be better by mid-November to start putting some base miles in. Hopefully I can get some good tips to help get this taken care of as soon as possible.

Applied for a few spring internships too. One in State College, and one in Allentown with Air Products. I'm hoping to land something for Spring and Summer, and register the spring section as an offical internship with PennState...so I can race! I might have to register the whole thing as an internship and graduate at the end of the summer, but we'll see. Push comes to shove I'll just do an internship for the spring and work at the shop again this summer and race on my PSU CAAD9 as much as possible. I'm looking forward to that thing now... reallly looking forward to that.

GRE + Grad Schools

Well time off the bike has to be filled with something... and for the last few weeks it's been practice GRE tests and grad school hunting. After talking to professors and a bit of web searching my list is, in somewhat of a semblence of order:

1. RPI
2. Cornell
3. Virginia Tech
4. Penn State
5. UConn
6. Univ Central Florida
7. Case Western

I'm looking to get into a program where I can specalize in fuel cell technology. I really dig the elective I'm taking on the topic this semester, and I think it's a cool new wave of the future... as long as we can figure out how to get some hydrogen without raping the Earth.

I'm taking the GRE's on Friday... all the way down in Harrisburg, the closest testing center to State College. I'm not too worried about them, as I've done as much practice as possible. For those familar with the test I keep screwing up those damn quantitative questions dealing with the graphs or figures. I don't know why, I guess I'll just have to make sure to take enough time and not rush through those. Everything is pretty easy, you just have to figure out the easy way to think through the problems.

I'm getting pretty close to having the cash for the PowerTap. I have about 400 on hand, will be getting 130 from my security deposit (and another 130 once I keep threatening legal action) and whatever my Redline cross frame gets on eBay. I'm hoping to get at least 350. Hopefully I'll get the PowerTap and can put it to good use right away. Also trying to put some cash away for a CAAD9 PSU custom painted frameset for 375. That would rock... need to get some paychecks for that though...

And one more note, the party was off the hook. Thanks for those that showed up, and thanks to those who got girls to walk all the way from Burrowes. Clutch. Look for another 1105 bash when the weather is warm again... it's not an indoor party kind of place. This weekend we'll be crashing our neighbors party though, feel free to join us.

Cross delays...

Well cross hasn't started yet... at least for me. Went out on a 2 hour easy ride on the cross bike a few weeks back before a cross clinic I was really looking forward to. Unfortunately I tweeked my left knee pretty good. I think it was a combination of commuting a fixed gear for a few days, and the q-factor being off on the cross bike. Seriously people, check to make sure you're not an idiot like me and that you don't have a 113 BB in there... piece of junk. Been hitting the ice and advil like it's my job for the last few weeks... and finally today I went out for my first real easy road ride that didn't want to make my cry when I got home. Schwell.

Other goings on... finally got a list set for grad schools I'll be applying for. Somewhat in order of preference: RPI, Cornell, PennState, Virginia Tech, UConn, UCF, Case Western, UDelaware. That's a whole lot of application fees. I'm also saving up for a PowerTap SL. Also throwing down for an extra receiver for the TT bike, so no matter where I go, I'll be dishing out the power. In a months time or so expect to see an influx in the number of graphs that correspond to my base training on this site.

Other than that, normal last semester at school. Trying to land an internship of some sort that will keep me in State College and as a full time student. Trying to find a paid one, but one without money is cool too... keep me insured and racing my bike.

One final item: party at 1105 West Beaver Ave on Saturday. Come on down. Keg of yuenling, some imports, some domestics, and some high school chicks. Rockin'

My first MTB race... or was it a cross race?

I skipped out on the XC course this past Saturday, saving the demo bike from further damage. Instead of racing I slept in and iced my knee which was bugging the heck out of me. I was relieved to see a bunch of bruises surface on it though, confirming that it was likely just inflammation that was causing the pain and not anything more serious in the joint. I felt a lot better by Sunday and decided to do the Short Track Cross Country race (STXC).

Now I haven't even raced my cross bike in a cross race yet. I haven't even really taken many turns at speed or done much technical riding at all on it. So this was quite an intro to handling a bike at speed offroad. One turn was about 160 degrees, and thankfully somebody had worn out a New Jersey style jughandle to make the turn easier to take (not necessarily faster). The other dangerous turn was a pretty fast turn covered in gravel. I fell in both of those spots once on the course, and possibly twice at the sharp turn, I don't remember. I made up a lot of ground on the smoother sections of course on the parking lot and along the top of the course though. I felt bad about crashing in front of people, especially Matlin who I would pass a few times and get passed back due to my being on the ground. It all ended up well and dandy though, with Chris Ruhl taking off by himself and lapping almost the whole field, some UMass kid getting 2nd, and myself taking 3rd. Matlin was not far behind in 5th. Good start to my cross season. I think I'll consider this race a cross race without any barriers.

Looking forward to this weekend which should feature my first real cross training. Ry Leech and some other fast dudes are putting on a cross clinic, and I intend to soak up as much cross knowledge as possible.

Mountain Biking is hard.

I went out to Rothrock to test out the XC course today after class on the shop's Epic demo. Full suspension means I'll go fast right? Goddamn mountain biking is hard. First thing I noticed right off is that you need a lot more arm strength than road riding. Pushing and pulling that front end around is a lot more effort than even wacking my bars around in a sprint on the road. I progressively took better lines through obstacles while doing the technical loop on the course. I got to a point where I figured if I were lucky I'd probably be able to ride all the level rock gardens during the race. I handled the steep rocky downhill section a lot better than I thought I would. I just placed my nuts all the way behind the saddle and tried to touch the brakes only when I really needed to, which was most of the time. I did sucessfully hold a front wheelie for what seemed like 10 feet, but I'm sure was closer to 2 feet, over one of the steeper sections. Endoing on that descent would fucking hurt.

Speaking of endoing....I was riding the smooth back section of the course and being a bit lazy taking my lines through things when I pulled my front wheel up onto a large rock thinking I'd just ride over it. Well it was steep as shit on the other side and I quickly found myself flying over my bike. Fucking a. Bust up both of my knees and must have landed oddly on my left hand because it's sore as hell. I noticed later on that my right knee is swollen pretty bad, pretty near to my surgical site... not a good memory. I'm not sure if I'll race tomorrow at this point, I'm sure it'd be fun, but I don't want to push myself if I'm swollen for a race that ultimately doesn't mean much to me.... props to mountain bikers, that shit is hard. I had fun when I took good lines through the gardens, but I really don't see myself consistently going out to Rothrock with the desire to beat the shit out of myself.

Last Bikereg Transaction until March

Andy Munas (notice which way he is eating the bananna), Ben Smith, a WVU rider Geoff Moy and I descended on Waitsfield, VT for the Green Mountain Stage Race.

The first stage was a hillclimb up past our humble abode of a ski lodge, to the top of "App Gap". The 3 race featured such exciting features as a nasty wreck in the fast "neutral" section and yours truly getting dropped from the leaders relatively quickly to end up in 78th. Geoff notched the biggest gain by getting 6th, while Munas was up there in the points as well. Ben featured pretty well in the 4s, somewheres in the teens. The juniors were fast as fuck, and the triathlete chicks who were climbing up the climb were hot.

Second day was a rolling circuit race. I got dropped right off the back on the feedzone climb on the first lap. I worked up into the field after a few miles thanks to the help from my brother's buddy Kyle from ECV. Each sucessive lap I got dropped less than the previous, so I was able to catch back on after the climb on the last lap relatively easily. When I got up to the front, there was a group off the front who was looking to soak up the 100pt finish bouns from the field, and my bitch Andy. So I worked with the guys in the front as much as I could. Did a few turns and the group came back somewhat. On another little riser before the finish I had trouble staying in the group, and it was all I could do to finish with the group at that point. Andy snagged a 10th place for the ever important 1 bonus point to go with the 100 finish points that stemmed from that group getting caught riiiight on the line. Geoff got dropped, as the 70 or so miles seemed to take their toll, but Ben finished up in the points again to keep his spot on GC in his race.

Third day was a nightmarish road race, on a good day. On a bad day it was freeking fun, but painful. We started in 50 degrees and pouring rain. The course featured three climbs, with the last being an absolute beast with pitches up to 24%. I thought I flatted on the flat sections before the first climb, so I stopped and got a front 404. Really I just wanted to be like Munas though, as he had broken a spoke the day before and sported the Zipp then. Motorpacing back to the group is fun, and highly reccomended. So of course on the first climb I got dropped, but descended like a son-of-a-bitch and made it back to the albeit slow moving field before the real fireworks went off. I managed to get up to Munas and Geoff and made sure they didn't need anything. Once again I got dropped on the first hints of uphillness leading up to the final two climbs. I was impressed with my effort anyway though, as I paced myself up the whole last part of the course, slowing picking off everyone I got within sight, and was only passed on the climb by some 40+ finishers who were duking out the finish.

I think I picked up a bug from somewhere on that rainy day though, as I was in absolutely no condition to race the next morning. I literatlly was running to the bathroom every 10 minutes in the morning. So I packed up my stuff and went up to the big city to watch the boys crit race. Ben was feeling allright in his race, but got caught in a crash and possibly fucked up his carbon stays. Geoff had some trouble from the getgo with a bad start and apparent lack of motivation in crits, while Munas stuck it in the group to finish off the day.

Then we drove a quarter way down the eastern seaboard to go to classes. I'm looking forward to collegiate season again...

GRE

Eariler in the summer I scheduled the GRE Exam for Monday, 8/28. I heard from my parents that the GRE people called on Saturday to let me know that my test has been cancelled. I'll need to call and reschedule tomorrow, when I call in and bitch at them. I'm not sure when I'll be able to take it now, seeing as I'll be gone later this week racing in Vermont, and then classes start soonafter that. They don't have any tests during the weekend, so what sort of problem do you run into on a Saturday that you didn't know about on Friday? I'm also pretty worked up about it because this same thing has happened to other people as well, so this isn't an isolated case.

I really feel like checking into what it would take to start my own test center in State College. Set it up with the standarized testing companies, get a small buisness loan to cover the rent and computer crap, and hire up a few dorky computer kids. I think I'd make a killing doing the GREs, MCATs, LSATs..etc.. all of which I believe you need to travel a good distance to take. Maybe that'd be a good part-time gig if I were to do the teaching route. Freekin-a.

Christiana

Christiana didn't start out better than anything else this summer, but it ended with a bang.

Saturday:

Road Race:
I was feeling pretty good all day in the field. Much much more comfortable than last year when I got shelled out of the 3/4 field on the first climb of the first lap. This time I used the climb to move up in position, and kept my ground for most of the course, usually loosing a little bit in the beginnings of a windy section. On the 4th time up the climb we caught the remnants of the women's race, which made things really complicated. I was chugging along on the climb, surrounded by people as usual, when I realized that me and the few guys around me had gotten dropped, and were surrounded by girls. Now usually this wouldn't bother me, but right then I wasn't in the mood for that sort of thing. Not a huge deal, did a little bit more work than I would have liked, but made the gap up relatively easily. Had to chase back on at the same spot on the final lap as well, but that was due to my loosing contact with the first 10 over the climb. So it all regroups, and a pretty large group of about 40 guys is heading into the finishing uphill section, not even a climb. Well I heard a crash behind me, and was happy to be in front of it... but the next crash that took up the entire width of the road was in front of me, and I couldn't quite get around it in time. Had to unclip, cyclocross over some poor bastard with half a face, and finished out of the points. I was feeling good and ready to put the hammer down on the last 300m too... I was only like 6 or 7 guys back. Oh well. No points.

Sunday:

Time Trial:
I thought I would be the only disc wheel fully aeroed out geek in the 4 field, but oh was I wrong. There were some funky stuff out for the 4's, and some other strong TT'ers, which I didn't expect. I finished up 3rd, about 20 seconds off the pace. I think this is a good sign still though. Even though last year I would have won the 4s by a good minute and a quarter. I'm still working on my position, I can get a little lower, and I don't feel as comfortable spinning up hills in my position now as I did last year... I'll be ready to fly by collegiate TT time. So... got some points.

My arms look really high right? Don't worry, I already bought an adjustable stem.

Crit:
I was pretty happy to be sitting top 10 after only scoring in the TT, thanks to the fact that the people who scored in the road race couldn't TT very well. With a good finish, I'd be able to get some GC money. Got a great start, and was 3rd wheel the whole time around the first lap. The first two guys kept switching, and trying to get me to come through, but I just sat on... I'm not going to pull on the first lap numbnuts. Well they both crashed out... first and second guys through the last turn on the first lap.



suckers. I stayed at the front as much as I could during the whole race. I felt pretty crappy in parts, letting some gaps go, but was lucky enough to always have someone next to me that was willing to close it down, and I was able to recover. The junior Polish kid took off with a few laps to go- I didn't even see him go. I just noticed that the kid who looked like was getting lapped had the pace car in front of him for a whole lap... hmmm. I moved up on the technical part on the backside, and was in a pretty good spot for the last turn. I took it pretty far inside, and started my sprint from a ways back. My legs felt much better than I anticipated and I took about 10 or 15 guys in that last uphill straight to get 6th.

Those placings on Sunday were good enough for 4th overall. Look out GMSR! You best be careful for the kid with the big quads going backwards fast on the hills, don't get caught behind me.

Doylestown

This Sunday was a circuit race out in Doylestown that a bunch of PSU folk made it out to. I did the 3/4, and felt pretty comfortable in the rolling course for the first two laps. At some point a break of two riders had a relatively significant lead, so I decided to jump across. I did so a lot more easily than I thought I should have been able to, and the reason for that become apparent quite quickly. The first time I went to pull through they both yelled up to me to ease up. Are you serious? Jesus, I just bridged up to you dudes and you can't sit on? So you can guess how that break ended up... As we were being caught another group of two tookoff, and I decided to give it a shot again. This time the other two guys were much stronger, and were taking some long hard pulls. I did my best to match their pace, but found it a bit much after about half a lap. Once I dropped from their wheels I glanced back quickly and saw the field, and decided to not kill myself and just wait for them. I didn't realize how far back they really were, or maybe I would have turned myself inside out to stay with the leaders. Turns out that the two stayed away for the win. Johan from Faulkner Honda jumped with 2 to go, and I went up to him and tried to work up to the leaders, but that wasn't shaking. Didn't have much in the tank after all that work, as I just finished up with the field. Legs felt pretty good so I'm looking forward to Christiana next weekend.

Altoona Recap

Well this is a bit late, but I'll recount the Toona race weekend real quick.

The first day is the "race to the corner" circuit race. I felt pretty good the whole race, but should have known better than to try and take it solo down towards the end. But I felt like I was Jens Voight, so I took a good hard flyer off with about 200 or so meters to go before THE TURN. I took the turn with a gap, and held on for the uphill section after it, and after taking the next turn found myself being swarmed by the field already. I rode it in for 65th.

Second day went a bit better. I gunned it on the opening straight to get right to the front. I hung out up there for a few miles, and was being steadily shoved a little further back than I would have liked when I got pushed clear off the road by a kid trying to avoid a dude who dropped his chain. Not much harm done, chased right back to the front, and drilled it as hard as I dared on the first 1/2 of the climb to string out the group. I was hoping to form a small group right from the get go, but thinking about it now, riding tempo, however hard, is not really the way to make a selection even on this "road race" course. I slipped towards the steep KOM and come across behind, but reintegrated with the 2nd group over the top. I did a ton of work, but it was clear we weren't bringing anything more than people who had given up back. I sat in for last kilometer or so and easily took the field sprint to save some face. 19th.

Third day was the crit. I didn't finish this last year so I was hoping to at least do that. I got a second row start spot and took advantage of that to sprint out in the top 10 through the first lap. Certainly a lot easier than being in the back. I routinely moved up on the finishing straight by going real close to the barriers and wide around the uphill turn. About halfway through I got caught behind a crash on the last corner. I had to unclip, and sort of took my time getting back on my bike and snagged a free lap. By this time the field was relatively small so I didn't have any trouble getting back up to the front. I felt pretty good and stayed up there for the rest of the race, but just didn't have the punch to fight for the top spots for the whole last lap. Have to set yourself up first, and then hope you have something left for the sprint, not the other way around. 21st.

All in all a fun weekend. We had what seemed like 10 people staying at our new place, so it was a bit hectic. Again the highlight was Lisa taking 3rd the first two days, and despite a crash in the last corner of the crit, she managed to keep her 3rd place, even though we didn't realize that for a few days after.... oops

Training week + Giro di Coppi

My brother Nick was in town this past week to hang out and ride a lot. And ride a lot we did. It was certainly a big step up in hours from what I've been putting in. The week totalled about 20 hours. Big days were the Tuesday Blackhawk-->MagicMo-->BlackMo mountain spectacular, followed up by the Alexandria-->Speedride century of fun. I felt a lot better than I thought I would after such a week, and was excited to head out to do a rather up and down road race course down in Maryland put on by a team we have both previously ridden for.

The day of racing was started off by Lisa, Nick's wife, trouncing the competition once again to claim her 12th victory of the year. Sandbagger. Nick and I went off a few hours later. I had 50 hilly miles ahead of me whereas Nick had about 75 I believe. I did my best to stay near the front, as I knew splits would occur on the climbs that abound throughout the course. The first lap I worked pretty hard, and was about 10-15th wheel through the uphill finish. The next lap I hung out and saved my energy as much as I could. During the third lap a few breaks started getting small gaps, and I noticed the Coppi guys (who's jersey I was wearing) weren't getting into all of them. So I went up there and the next one that split off without one of us on there I waited for someone else to jump and just rode their wheel up to the break, sucker. I'm not sure why he did it either because he had a guy up there. Anyway we all pulled through once, and then I found myself first into a relatively hard corner into a narrow uphill road. I looked back and our gap was pretty small, so I decided to see if I could get just one or two of the guys to come with me and attacked pretty hard through the corner. Noone came up, and I was alone up there with a gap I couldn't hold for the 20 or so miles left in the race, so I just rode up the climb steadily and reintegrated into the group. After that I recovered as best I could and stayed in the top quarter of the now relatively small field. Two guys jumped where I had the previous lap, and they ended up staying away. I was right there, but I was like... oh oh! not doing that again. Oh well. Came time for the uphill sprint and I had jack, so I just rode it in for what is a respectable 23rd, considering how many miles I put in this week.

Nick also put in a great ride to pull out a 12th in the Pro 1,2 race. Nice way to break in the new carbon race hoops. Didn't see much of the race, but it was splintered to all hell on the last lap. Two places out of the money... d'oh.

So now it's time to eat pasta and take it easy this week... Toona coming up, gotta score a point.

Hummelstown + SRAM

I went out to do the former Harrisburg Honda Crit, now held in Hummelstown, Pa. I did the 3/4 field in hopes that I would really dig deep and stay in, which would be some great preparation for Toona's technical crit.

I got a horrible start, and was chasing from the get go. The very first straight on the course necks down into a tight left hander which was a clusterfuck. I came close to trackstanding (although it was nothing compared to Norristown). By the time I came around to top off lap number one I was at the end of the field which was strung out taking over the entire finishing straightaway. At some point my rear wheel, which was just built up recently, again succumbed to my unbelievable force and let a few spokes loosen halfway down the threads. I didn't really even notice it until I stopped, which happened rather suddenly as every other rotation of my wheel my brakes locked up. I didn't realize it until it was not really possible to grab a lap or anything. MOTHERFUCKER. Not that I had a result in my legs, but still. MOTHERFUCKER.

Anyway, there were cooler things to be seen. Across from where I sat down to watch the race sat a bike shop's tent displaying some high end bikes. I gazed over and realized one of them was a Cannondale System6 with SRAM Force shifters and ders. MOTHERFUCKER! So of course I went over and checked it out. I rode it up and down the street numerous times fooling around with the shifting. I really liked it... Certainly a learning curve, but it feels crisp. The angle that the shifter motion is swept back is natural, but it takes some getting used to... if that makes sense. Something didn't feel comfortable where the shifters met the bars, but that can usually be changed by how you mount them, or wrap the tape. I tried out the shifting position when you're in the drops holding the shifting lever back and flicking your wrist. It worked really well, and certainly very possible to do in a sprint. The one thing I didn't like right off was that there is no trim on the front der. What's with that? The dude from the shop said because of the Double Tap, they couldn't do it. Shutup. If the rear has ten "trim" positions, if you will, why can't the front have more than two positions?

Anyway, I got home and rode Penn's Caves because I was pissed. Almost bonked. Never good to ride when you're pissed, but I'm tired now so I'll sleep better. At least I didn't crash I guess, Kyle may have broken his collarbone, so hopefully he can get back on the bike soon. Certainly could have been worse for both of us.

Training

July 4th... spent a few hours out on the bike. Munas and I rode Upper Lime into Black Mo. We rode all the climbs very steady which was relatively easy on the early climbs, and became increasingly difficult, at least for me, as we progressed through the ride. I hadn't climbed over ridges here side by side with someone in a while and it really made me realize that I had let my climbing technique suffer quite a bit. (That assumes I had better technique back at some point). Realizing that I dropped back quickly whenever I let my upperbody bounce or if I didn't keep even pressure on the pedals throughout the full stroke. Basically I realized I just need to concentrate a whole lot more at keeping my upper body steady, and my pedaling action smooth. Earthbreaking right? Just didn't realize I had gotten so sloppy. Hopefully I can get used to riding a bit more fluently for Toona.

I got the Harrisburg (now Hummelstown) Honda crit, Mount Penn and Giro di Coppi on the schedule before Toona. The last two there should let me test out some more climbing in a racing situation.

On another vein, sucks for Valverde, Rodriguez and Erik Dekker. What is the record for collarbone fractures in one day at the Tour??

Some racing updates...

Well it's been a little while since I've updated this. You can certainly read into that, I haven't had anything encouraging or fun to share for a while.

Some catchup: Few weeks ago I did both the 4/5 and the 3/4 at Pfieffer Hill. The course was a few miles with one pretty good climb and a few other painful uphill pitches. One lap into the 4/5 I broke my spoke. Immediately my wheel was rubbing badly on the brakes, so I just had to stop and wait for the sag wagon. The guy who picked me up was the promoter, whom I had actually contacted before about the poor quality maps he has on his website. He was a pretty cool guy, and he eventually hooked me up with a spoke and lent me some tools to fix my wheel. So I got it all patched up for the 3/4. However I just didn't have the legs to hang with the 3/4 field on the climb. I later discovered that I had broken two more spokes. Often when you break one and just replace it without retensioning, the wheel is much weaker. On a better note Luke managed to get a top 15 in the 3/4, finishing up strong in the front group... rock on.

So now onto the reason I feel like writing here again. This past weekend Munas, Kyle, Matt S., Kristine "Jersey" J., Rachel and I did the Tour de Sales at De Sale University. It was a "collegiate" race in the middle of the summer. The first day was a crit, and despite only having about 12 starters, the action was hot from the beginning. Mike Chauner from Bucknell (A rider, strong dude) attacked through the first turn, and everyone groaned. The field chased him down, and about a lap later they rang the bell for a $10 prime. Some messing around on the backside left me a lane, so I took it on a slight uphill, and had enough of a gap to take the prime. Chauner quickly bridged up to me and the break was off. I didn't take consistent pulls the first two laps or so off the front. I wasn't sure how smart it was to ride with this kid to the finish, but I figured 2nd place as a worse case scenario isn't bad. So we worked pretty well together for the next 10-12 laps. Munas, Kyle and Spohn were all chasing down people trying to bridge up during this time. Chauner and I opened up about a 3/4 lap lead, and the messing around began. We attacked each other for about a lap and a half before he finally jumped and I just couldn't respond. I finished it up for 2nd place. Good day. Munas rounded out the podium by taking the field sprint.

Sunday was a circuit race, with a pretty good climb near the finish. I felt good in the first few laps, and was trying to help keep tabs on Chauner, and possibly make him feel it a bit on the climb. That backfired a bit when I couldn't hang on the climb, and got dropped with 2 to go. Munas again sprinted well to get 3rd while Kyle came up big to get 5th. Kevin, a JMU rider, made a great move in the finale to outsmart Chaunder and Munas for the win.

And the girls won everything. Noone else showed up... sucks.

Fun weekend all in all. Only thing that sucked is that now I have two checks made out to "Penn State Cycling". Greeeaaat. That'll be easy to get money. I'll post some pictures later.

Annodization take 2

Well the second round of annodization went much better. There are moments when my high school self would have hit my current self upside the head, and my first swing at annodization was one of those. I wired up the batteries in parallel in attempts to try and add up the voltage. Well, it doesn't quite work that way, and switching to series hookups made all the difference. It was much quicker, you could hear a little crackaling, and could definetly hear hydrogen gas bubbling out from under the paper towel. Sweet. The first picture of the headtube is a bit weird looking because of the flash. I did the whole headtube in the deep blue, and then tried to bring out the "A" headbadge by holding the electrode there longer, thus making it a brighter blue. Sort of worked, I'll have to touch it up in the daylight. The last two pictures show the flames on the toptube, which came out pretty well. A little leaking occured with the stencil, but I'm confident that once I get a good stencil made for the lettering I want to put on, then that problem will be eliminated.

Annodization...part 1

I was really excited to begin annodizing my bike, but so far the results haven't lived up to the hype. I think my biggest problem is lack of voltage. I'm just using 27 volts for now, and I want to do at least 45 next time to try and get a deeper blueish color instead of the yellowish/brown there now. I'm thinking I also need a voltmeter to track how quickly I'm killing the batteries. Anyway, here are some pictures of the first round with the annodization... probably try it again later in the week when I have some more time on my hands. There is some promise though, hopefully in a few weeks time my bike will look faster than me.

Carbon Wheels...

So I finally got my carbone glued up, and it's smooth, and sounds schweet. I've heard carbon wheels ridden around before, but the sound from a carbon wheel sounds like an airplane taking off, which is very different than what a normal aluminum rimmed wheel sounds like. Now it's not all about sound. Style counts too.

Memorial Hall

This past Saturday I was in Philly for the PA state criterium championships. The course was about a 0.6 mile 4 corner standard course. The interesting thing was the fact that you could see the entire course from the center, and the large puddles on the outside or inside of the turns. Right from the gun the rain was pouring down, and there was even a clap of thunder or two. For a moment I thought it might be called, but the weather cleared a bit, and we were able to do the 40 laps.

It was extremely easy to move around in the field, being that the roads were extremely wide and the field wasn't too large (no more than 75 I would say). I stayed up in the top 1/3 for the whole race. About 5 or so laps in I found myself right at the front when a lone dude who had been off the front was caught. I figured now is as good a time as ever, and took a little dig for myself. I was only out for about 3/4 of a lap, but it served as a decent warmup. I didn't let myself slide back more than 5 or 10 spots when I got caught. I've had the habit of letting myself get thrown right to the back of the field when getting caught back in, and I was happy with staying up front this time. The last lap proved a bit more difficult to move up than any of the others (who would have figured) and I ended up getting boxed out going into turn 3. Coming out of turn 3 the guy I was following through, a Cornell kid (who had been pretty sketchy all race) decided to go off into a large puddle and into the field next to the course. I had to ease up for a moment to get around his ass, and that little bit was enough to kick me out of contention. Still very happy with the effort though. Kyle C. was up there and got 15th while Jeff S. flatted with 5 corners to go and wasn't able to get up for the sprint.

I'm looking forward to a hard week of training. My next stint at a paid training ride , or racing as you may know it as, should be at Pieffer. Maybe here I can finally do the 4/5 ; 3/4 combo. Look out.

Worst Speed Ride Ever

Well I did the speed ride yesterday, and it pretty much sucked right from the get go. It was a lot bigger than when I did it two weeks ago, so I was looking forward to trying and sticking around longer. I figured less pulls would mean I could stay in the wheels longer. Well it was also a helluva lot faster I think, so I was off about halfway down 45. Rode by myself for much of it, then caught Frank from Wheelworks, and some other dude caught us, so we worked for a little bit. I took a good hard pull at the front, and then was not able to get onto their wheels again. So I rode the whole way home by myself. I took the shortcut through Merango, but I still didn't catch the group, they must have been flying. I saw the slower group that did the shortcut, and it was pretty big.

Well all of that wouldn't have made it the worst ride ever, just a bit frustrating. But on the way home I also completly broke my left STI lever which had been on the rocks for some time. For now it's stuck in the big ring, and I hope that it stays like that so I can "race" Memorial Hall this weekend.

Millport 4/5 Race Report

This is my imitation of an Andy Munas race report.

Myself, Jeff Schutt, Adam Snoke and Shawn Limbert were representing the blue and white (in and out of actual blue and white) at Millport this Saturday in the 4/5.

The race started off relatively easy, with a single rider establishing about a 15-20 second lead that lasted about the first 2 of 8 laps. It was a bit windy, and there were not enough technical sections to really get an advantage on a field today, unless you were really heads and shoulders above the rest. I managed to stay in the first 10 or so places for the first few laps and found it humorous that people were yelling to get riders to come through and work hard to bring the single rider back. I never pulled, and would have bitch smacked anyone who yelled at me. The wind did the trick, and the rider was back in the field relatively shortly. About halfway through I was suffering a bit more and the rest of the PSU contingent was moving to the front as I was sliding towards the back. Coming through to see 2 laps to go, the officials sprung a prime on us, for what I'm not exactly sure. Mr. Snoke, not being too mathematically inclined, thought it was the end of the race and worked hard to get a 4th place in the 1 deep prime. Not sure exactly what happened to him on the actual last lap, but he didn't quite have it to sprint again. Meanwhile Limbert and Schutt moved up very strongly. Jeff took a top 10 spot, while Shawn took the perfect leadout from I believe some Iron Hill riders to take the win. I got caught up behind a stupid crash on the only "uphill" on the last lap. I didn't go down but got slowed juuuust enough to not be able to fight back on. Generally though, I was happy with my efforts, and am looking forward to being able to mix it up in a finale shortly.

Melissa Wills also did I believe a 3/4 Woman's race, while Erica Allar, who got her cat 2 upgrade, was forced to do the Men's 1,2,3! I wasn't able to hang around, so I don't know how they fared. Hopefully Erica's "Sarah Uhl" type move didn't prove too short and she was able to hang in there.

Next Saturday: Rapho Road Race. Possibly a 4/5 3/4 double? We'll see how the legs feel this week...maybe a bit too soon to be thinking that, let's finish one first eh?

Time Trial Course

Well I went out and did the Tadpole TT course Friday morning, in the pouring rain none the less. I was dissapointed that I had forgotten about it the evening before, and I had to work instead. So I went out and put in what I felt like was a pretty decent effort. I have a new position on the TT bike, and it felt allright on the way out to the turnaround. I clocked 13 minutes on the dot at the turnaround, which was well behind my pace from last year of 12:20. I finished it off in about 27:15, a lot slower than my 24:25 from last year. I bumped my seat up about a centimeter for the ride home, and I think that'll feel better especially when pulling myself up gradients in the aerobars. So I'll have to keep on getting out on that bike and get more and more comfortable on it... My first real TT will likely be at Owasco the weekend before Toona, I hope to rip that one open.

Also the SRAM Force group looks pretty hot. I believe the retail is going to be $1,800.00, so I may be able to get it for a bit over a grand... have to start saving now. Donations are welcome.

Family Trip

I just got back from a trip out to Ohio, where my grandma, Aunt, and brother all live. I first visited Yellow Springs, OH where I saw my 1 year old neice and brother. Cheyan is walking around like crazy, and eats a signifigant portion of her body weight at every sitting. Pretty sweet if you ask me. I went for a ride with my oldest brother, and just relaxed before heading up to Lima the next day.

My grandma is in a nursing home there, and it was not a great visit. The decision was made to put her under hospice care, which is basically making you comfortable instead of actively treating your condition. She isn't all that aware of what is going on around her, and I'm not exactly sure if she knew who I was. She wants to just go, but just can't yet. I wish that she could just fall asleep and have a peaceful journey... Seems that we don't have a very good way to help our aging citizens. I can't imagine that she is very comfortable with things as they are... The nursing home itself is really nice though, they have birds to watch, activities to do... seems like one of the better ones.

Anyway, I'm back to the realities of State College for a while, riding my bike, working at the shop, studying for the GRE's (yea... have to start that).

Racin' again.

Well, I'll probably start posting some more thigns on here, but this will serve as a quick update. I started training a few weeks ago, and have been trying to get as much time in the saddle as possible, trying to make up for some down time. I raced Union Grove this past weekend. It was a 5 lap circuit race, and I hung on for the first 4, but just didn't have the punch to stay with the group on a little riser on the last lap. Still felt pretty good about my effort though. Check out the picture below of me pretending to be Cipo.

I am being a bum in State College this summer and just riding, working at the Bicycle Shop, and starting to study for the GRE at some point. If you're ever in the 814, drop me a line, I'll be around during the weeks.

Next race: Millport on 6/27

Nittany Classic + New Therapy + Roubaix

Well the Nittany Classic has come and gone, what a quality weekend. I was blown away at the effort our club put into this event. The planning was done well, but was made all the more solid by the people marshaling during races and making tons of food for the kickass dinner on Saturday night. The raffle got us some more cash and garnered excitement on Saturday, while Sunday's roadrace went off without a hitch despite a roadway sized tractor and a neutral rollout through a highway interchange 3 times over. I can't wait for next year. Myself and Andy have already been discussing possible tweeks to our weekend to maximize quality and minimize the chance that any other pretender school would get Easterns. As of now I'm the only person running for Road Race Director for next year, so... I guess I got that job. Schweet.

I also have started physical therapy at a new place. I'm now going to the place near the hospital, Penn State Orthapedics. I like the therapist, he took a good chunk of time to talk with me, and his points made a lot of sense. The biggest issue, which was never pointed out to me before, is that my right leg has NO hyperextension right now. So if you're sitting on a bed with your legs out in front of you, hyperextension is picking up your heel from the bed while keeping your knee on the bed. My left knee can do it for about an inch or two which is normal. My right leg doesn't budge. I also stand with my right knee noticably in front of my left (due to the lack of hyperextension). So I'm doing some stretches and exercises aimed at helping the knee to reach full range of motion (something I thought I had months ago). After a few days it's already feeling better, but I also haven't been really stressing it much. I'm hopeful that this new perspective will help, but I'll try and stay grounded for the time being.

I watched Paris-Roubaix this morning. What a kickass race! Cancellra (CSC) was looking strong all day and took out the win in impressive fashion, while three riders got DQ'ed (2nd,3rd and 4th on the road) for going around a train blocking. Crazy stuff! I figured the days of trains stopping races was long gone. Boonen's group was behind the group that went around the barricades and they stopped. Throw in some crashes (poor Hincappie and Steels) and some gutsy performances (Hammond! never mentioned but the brother had stitches in his knee!! I feel ya buddy). Great race. I'll try and record it. If I can't, I'm buying it. Great trainer viewing material right there.