Weekend wrapup

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Good weekend, overall. Nothing too exciting happened Friday night, except I went to happy hour with some coworkers at "Kaya":http://www.bigburrito.com/kayawebs/. Some belgian white was drunk, and probably some inappropriate comments were made. All in all, a fun night. Saturday was an "alleycat race":http://www.pabstville.20m.com/ around Pittsburgh. An alleycat, for those of you who don't know, is an underground bike race, organized and mostly run by "messengers":http://messengers.org/.[1] "Everyone":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/?r=565079 "met":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/?r=565089 at The Point downtown around 2, we each paid $5 ($6 if you didn't have a helmet), and we were off at 2:30. The format of this race was a little different than the one I did "last time":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/?r=448441; the previous one laid out your route along with your checkpoints, but this race you were just told what your 15-odd checkpoints were, and your final destination, and you had to figure out the most efficient route yourself.

"Brian":http://ankle-biter.net/log/ "was there":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/?r=565095, which was good, because I had someone that knew parts of the city that I didn't, like the North Side. Also, he was riding his "fixie":http://www.fixedgeargallery.com/2004/janaszek.htm, which meant that me riding my bike with all the gears had at least a chance of keeping up. There were checkpoints in all of the neighborhoods near downtown, so we hit them in this order: South Side, back Downtown, Strip District, North Side, Bloomfield, Squirrel Hill, and then ending in Oakland.

We got a little lost on the South Side, and ran into a messenger from Columbus named Randy. He had gotten separated from his buddies somehow, and was totally lost in an unfamiliar city, so he came along with us. Actually, it was Brian and Randy leading, and me gamely puffing along behind. Randy also provided me with the heart-stopper moment of the day. While going over the 16th St. bridge he was riding no-hands and hit a pothole and veered right into the bridge guardrail. Somehow he managed to straight-arm the guardrail and snap himself back upright, but I had visions of him getting splattered all over the road.

The rest of the checkpoints were uneventful, and it was a nice tour of the city, going from the "historic" adult Garden Theater on the North Side up to the beautiful campus of CMU, and everywhere in between. I guess our route wasn't the most efficient, because there wasn't anyone there to give us paper slips at the last two checkpoints, so we just headed to the finish, which was in "South Oakland":http://www.soufoaklin.com/.

The finish was at someone's "house". I use quotes around "house" because it was a "house" only in the sense that it had a door, walls and a roof. Inside it was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. "Utilitarian" would be way, way too kind. There was a half-assembled bike on the living room floor. That was the only furniture. The back porch had about 5 trashbags full of empty "PBR":http://www.pabstville.20m.com/ cans. The stove was beyond description, which is why I took "a picture":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/?r=565503. I braved a trip inside to get us some "victory" "beer":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/?r=565499. The "victory" was in that we didn't come in last in any of our particular categories: fixie, regular, or out-of-towner. (BTW, pounding a beer as a water substitute is a Bad Thing(tm))

Yesterday Brian, Jen, "Seb":http://ankle-biter.net/anklebiter/ and I went bouldering at Pioneer. It's not my favorite place to climb, but the weather was so beautiful for a change that it didn't matter at all. Didn't do anything exceptional, save for a cool V5 cave problem that involves doing a _long_ throw to a small crimp edge and pulling off of that, pretty much one-handed. I was feeling the effects of the race still, so a pretty low-energy day. Stopped at Sheetz on the way home (MTO, baby!), and then settled in to watch Sopranos and Deadwood. I'm still not convinced about Deadwood... the characters are really starting to develop, but I don't know if the underlying story is going to be enough to hold my interest.

And finally, I slept like utter poo last night. I think the "stress":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/000978/ of last week finally caught up with me, and I had fun sinus issues Saturday night and all day Sunday that finally turned into a cold last night that kept me up most of the night. Argh. I can't wait for spring to be here for good. Every year I have sniffles pretty much from October through April, but I'm hoping that the clear Boulder air will do me good. Oh, I have news on that, too... but that's for another update.

fn1. If you want to see some alleycat footage, check out "this guy's site":http://www.digave.com/videos/. Of particular interest are the "drinking and riding" and "NYC" videos. The NYC one especially is some of the scariest footage you'd ever want to see.

The first one is the hardest

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Dusted off the bike this morning and rode in. I had been a little leery of the ride in, since so much of my ride is on 2-lane blacktop with little or no shoulder as it is, and the tremendous amount of snowfall and cold temperatures we've had here this winter have reduced the shoulders to piles of dirty ice. However, there's been enough thaw the last few days, and the weather is so lovely today (as Brian "already noted":http://www.ankle-biter.net/log/archives/2004_02.html#000376), that I decided to give it a go. It was hard. All those months of not biking came back to bite me, but I guess I'm still alive, right? I only stopped briefly to take off a layer or two, so I'm pretty happy that I didn't need to take a "real" rest break. Everything took longer that I thought, tho; got up a little late to begin with, then putting air in the tires, finding my colder weather clothes, and the ride itself took a little longer than I remembered, even with my "new shorter ride":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/000562/ (and this is only the 2nd time I've done it!), so I rolled in around 9. Oops.

Woo Hoo -- Guest Blogger!

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Thanks to Matt, I am officially FeralBlog's first guestblogger. But why me, you ask? Aren't I behind this contribution to the internet? Well, yes I am, but thanks to an increasingly poor hosting provider, my site is down, and this little nugget I'm going to share is just too good to wait.... Shock Jocks Urge Motorists to Hit Cyclists

Awesome. I got wind of this through the Fixed Gear mailing list yesterday. You expect this sort of behavior from shock jocks, but to hear that people are actually taking them up on it? Words fail me. Best part of article:

In the course of the program, listeners flooded their telephone lines to vent about cyclists, including one woman who boasted that her father intentionally hit one while they were on the way to church. One of the DJs promoted the joys of hitting cyclists with Yoohoo bottles.

Nothing like sharing a little Christian love on your way to church.

Anyway...thanks Matt!

New Office

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"The move":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/000553/ all went fine on Friday, so yesterday was the first day in the new offices. I was excited to try out the new shorter bike commute, so I met up with my coworker "Tom":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=108235, otherwise known as TK Stack Money, at the end of the "62nd st. bridge":http://www.pittsburghcycling.org/pghrides/62nd.html and showed him the ride in. TKSM(TK Stack Money) has been cycling for around 6 years at least, and has a really sweet "Cannondale road bike":http://www.cannondale.com/bikes/02/cusa/model-2RR9D.html, so he completely kicked my ass on the way in. I was pretty sure I was gonna die, but didn't, so if we ride in together more often, I will probably get a pretty good workout out of it. The new offices look really good, and I think the space turned out pretty well. There's still some glare issues to be worked out, and right outside the window is a radio station transmitter tower that's kicking out so many watts that it forces itself as our on-hold muzak, as well as filling up cell phone dead air. Kinda makes me wonder if I'm going to have a brain tumor in a year. But, my new desk is comfy and ergonomic, so everything else is a pretty minor quibble.

Ick

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100% humidity on the ride in this morning = suck.I feel like I bathed in sweat. And not like supermodel-sweat, either... this is the sweat of a big fat guy named Vito who had a big plate of pasta for dinner with his momma's special gravy with the extra-garlicky sausage, and maybe brushed his teeth with some _gabbagoul_.

Morning Commute™, Now With 33% Less Swamp-Ass®

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Can I tell you how much I like bike shorts? Even though it was humid enough this morning to feel like I was riding through a lake the whole way here, thanks to the patented Hot Chamois Action(TM) in the shorts my crotch was quite pleasant when I got to work. This was on top of the fact that I shaved a good 5-10 minutes off my normal time, probably due in part to my smooth new chain/tires. (But mostly I think it was the shorts)

Harder than it looks

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It's time for me to face up to the fact that I'm completely mechanically un-inclined. Sure, if it involves software, or drivers, or anything involving pecking away at little keys, I'm super. But once actual real-world objects start to get in the picture, I have problems. I was changing my bike tires last night. Changing the front one was very straighforward... got that one back on in record time. The back tire requires you to take off the chain, since the cassette is attached to the wheel. So, I break out my chain tool, pop the link, and like a dumbass I push the pin all the way out. Apparently I don't have anything in my toolkit to help you get a pin back in once you've pushed it all the way out, but I sat for awhile and tried in vain to just "line it up" and make it work. This obviously did not work, so then I thought I'd just shorten my chain by one link. That was going alright, until the new link I put back together wouldn't really bend right. Then I don't even know if I had it going through my derailleurs right, because it was making all these awful sounds and jumping around.

So, I'm going to do what I always do in these situations, and just throw money at the problem. I don't want to ask my friend who totally helped me set it up last time, because I feel like I wasn't a good student, and didn't learn all the stuff he was showing me while he was doing it.

It just frustrates me and makes me feel like an idiot to not know how to do basic operations on my bike, especially because it's become a more prominent part of my life in the last year. (sigh) And it would have been a beautiful day to ride today, too. Instead, I'm sitting at my desk, feeling fat and unsatisfied, and I still have grease all over my hands, repeated scrubbings and all.

*Update:* If you check the comments you'll see that I have the <ComicBookGuy>Greatest. Friends. Ever.</ComicBookGuy>

Down 'n' dirty

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With the weather report sucking some serious monkey wang this past weekend, I met up with a few of the guys from the gym at Boyce Park to do some mountain biking. A few caveats:

# The mountain bike I have is old, and fairly crappy. Heavy, no disc brakes, and pretty slick road tires (when I bought it, I really only planned to ride it on the road). # In case you haven't paid attention to my bitching, the last few weeks in Pittsburgh have seen a lot of rain. *A lot*. # I haven't really done any off-road mountain biking before. (I think you see where this is going...)

My bike and I engaged in some Hot Mud Wrestling Action(TM), to be sure. It wasn't really all that bad, once I figured out how to get around with very little traction. I didn't break anything, and I had a good time, although I think I slowed the pack up considerably. A few things to fix for next time:

# Knobbier tires. # I need to learn how to bunny hop.

After the riding was done, one of the guys and I went to the Squirrel Cage to grab a beer. I found parking on Forbes, but my friend didn't, so he went around the corner and turned into the parking garage. The parking garage with the low roof. While his bike was still in the roof rack. I didn't see it happen, but apparently it just ripped the bike clean off the roof (putting some nice gouges in the trunk on the way down) and maybe bent the locking mechanism... no other apparent damage.

Critical Matt

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After the arrests at last month's Critical Mass ride, I decided that I should take part in the next one, which took place on Friday. Everyone started gathering at the dinosaur in Oakland around 5, 5:15. I went in to work early that day so I could get home, get changed and get to Oakland before the ride started. It was an eclectic bunch, to be sure. Actually, since "eclectic" implies "diverse", it really wasn't. It was a bunch of new bohemian quasi-gutterpunks and bike messengers. Nothing but dreadlocks, wallet chains, and ironic t-shirts as far as the eye could see. Everyone saddled up, and we were off, heading down 5th Avenue. I'm guessing there were at least 100 people, and it was a pretty amazing sight to see.

As we went down through the SouthSide and downtown, we hit some red lights that turned midway through the pack, and it was interesting to watch some of the more experienced rides (messengers, mostly) pull to either side and block the oncoming traffic; hands raised, sheparding safe passage for the flock of stragglers as they went through the intersection.

That's not to say that all drivers were as accomodating. One of the main problems with the ride where people got arrested is that they weren't keeping to one lane on multi-lane roads, and this time was no exception. Of course, being the fuck-all hipsters that they were, the messengers took great glee in having cars honk at them, and would slow to a crawl just to piss off Joe SUV behind them. One woman became *very* agitated, and started screaming at all of us "white muthafuckas", which I didn't think was very fair since there were some black muthafuckas in the group as well.

It was certainly a fun ride, although I tend to cringe at anything that feels too granola-y and activist-y (which this certainly was), and I think I'll probably do the next one, too.

"Puff, puff" *gasp*

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Maybe it wasn't _that_ bad, but I did ride in today. It winds up being about a 14-mile hike up Mt. Royal Blvd, which is a bit of a roller coaster, but I only had to stop once or twice to recover along the way. I'm not sure which way will suck worse, coming or going, but I'm sure I'll find out this afternoon. Oh, one other thing: Mapquest sucks my butt, because they don't allow you to easily add intermediate destinations. Maps On Us rules. My Route

My so-called life.

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Man, so much stuff going on I don't even know where to begin. * First off, as Brian alluded to, I have indeed found new gainful employment, and I'll be finishing up here this week. Tons of stuff left to do, lots of little projects to clean up, documentation to write, knowledge to transfer, paradigms to shift, etc. I'm pretty stoked about the new position. It's a pure .Nizzle development job, although they work mainly with VB.Nizzle (ick.) Pehaps I will convince them of the beauty and love that is C#. * One of the cooler things about the new job is that it'll be a longer bike ride, up to about 14-15 miles from my current 8. That will be a nice healthy run... I'll probably do it just once or twice a week and feel great about it. I was worried that the roads I thought I'd have to go on were too dangerous, but various people have told me that there's ways I can go to get there without getting my brains splattered all over the road, so sometime soon Dave and I will probably do a dry run in the car. In order to get ready for the longer ride, I'll be picking up a mini-pump ("This sort of thing ain't my bag, baby"), a spare tube, and a patch kit. * I've gotten it in my head recently that I'd like to have a new digital camera that actually takes half-decent pictures. I've settled on the Olympus C-4000, partly because it gets really good reviews, and partly because my current camera is an Olympus, which means my SmartMedia cards will work in that one, too. I really don't want to spend the money on a new one, so I'll just sort of troll eBay and see if I can find one for around $200-250, or a little more if it comes with a case/SmartMedia card/NiMh batteries/etc. * One of the features of MT(Movable Type) that's turned out to be the most interesting has been the Activity Log. One of the things it shows me is what people are searching on, in a more real-time way than my weekly stats. It's neat to see what people are looking for, whether they're trying to find out info about my best friend, or just doing some straight narcissurfing (Hi Paul Fontana! :-P).

Cold much?

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I removed the panties from my mouth, and rode in this morning. All that cold weather gear I bought seemed to do the job, but by the time I got in my hands were numb from not having windproof gloves on, a problem that is two shipping days away from being fixed. All in all, it wasn't a bad ride. I did turn down one side street that was pure ice and wound up flat on my ass, but I was going slow at the time and I don't think anyone even saw me. In any case, I feel very good that I'm getting some exercise today, so of course I'm going to balance that out by getting some lovely greasy lunch.

bike stuff

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it's gonna be spring next week no matter if the weather wants to cooperate or not. i ordered a bunch of cold-weather clothing yesterday from nashbar, a balaclava (so tasty!), tights (faggy!) and some weatherproof socks. my nizzle paul was over last night helping me put all my new components on the bike. should be finished up tomorrow, so when the clothes get here and the weather is downright balmy in the mid 30s middle of next week, i'll be riding in. i really want to start binge eating again.

in other news, i see that brian has updated his weblog to Movable Type. gotta change my sidebar link. i also see that he's trying out proper cApiTalZaTioN. i think i might go that route myself soon, because i've heard from more than one person that my weblog kinda looks like one big (and hard to read) lump o' shite.

bidding on my very first

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bidding on my very first ebay item, a slightly-used set o' brakes (thanks to brian for the heads-up). i've actually consciously stayed away from ebay for a long, long time, because all of my friends who shop on ebay are like addicts, and i already have enough addictions in my life right now. but, the idea that i could get a set for around half of what it would cost me new was too good to pass up. i'll have to keep checking back periodically for some of the items i'm looking for.

on the ride out of town

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on the ride out of town today, i was at a light when i looked back and saw another person on a bike behind me... it was a messenger, a girl. she said "hi", and then the light turned green and we were off. as we rode, i asked her about her job, and how she learned to ride in traffic. she was greasy and cute; with a nosering and a little engineer's cap instead of a helmet. she had been a messenger for about 7 months, and obviously loved her job. she told me that "it sounds silly, but you just feel, like, one with your bike, you know? you just learn to sort of move and groove." i asked her about the travis culley book, which apparently is like a bible to her and her ilk. as we got near the end of the strip, she told me that she had to turn off there because, (as she lowered her voice) "i drive to work. don't tell anyone." she turned off and i continued on my way... struggling up the hillclimb on liberty. as i was coming down the other side and getting into bloomfield, she pulled up even with me in her car. her passenger-side window was down, and she smiled and said "hey." i felt so cool; validated.