On Internal Cables

A couple weeks ago I went for a ride, what else is new, on my newest Roubaix. (Pictures to follow). She is very pretty but during my ride I had a lot of trouble upshifting to the 53 chain ring from the 39. I took the bike, hereafter I'll call her Abby, to Malcolm who tightened up the front deraileur for me. (The problem with this bike is, due to internal cabling and the way the original store set her up - they didn't bother to install the barrel adjusters - getting the front deraileur set correctly requires a very skilled hand, in other words, Malcolm.)

Anyway when I got Abby home I set to work on her, Malcolm noticed, with nothing but eyes that Abby needed a new chain. (According to my Park Took chain checker, the wear was at 0.50% or still good.) Trusting Malcolm over a $50 tool that never really did show wear correctly, and the fact that I do have over 3000km on the chain, I tossed my old chain and when I did I could see that the front deraileur cable was unwinding. I had a new task for myself, strip Abby, right to her BB30 bearings, lower the stem a little (the bars were high), replace the bars (I had just bought a pair of Easton EC90s). Swap out her dura-ace shifters and rear deraileur for SRAM Red (I like SRAM shifting more than Shimano) and naturally, replace the cables.

Okay all of the above is pretty standard stuff, except Abby's cables are, as I noted, internally routed. You want the definition of a pain in the rear end, try routing internal cables. Malcolm told me that on old steel frames one would sometimes see guys who had, over the course of their bike's life replaced pretty much every component except that rear brake cable because fishing that cable is so damn difficult. Thankfully, for me, Abby is carbon fibre, so I had a few dandy little tricks I can employ.

First to get the gear cables from the top of the down tube to the bottom bracket I used four items:

1. Fishing line
2. electrical tape
3. A twist tie like the kind that come with small electrical appliances to wrap the electrical cord (those ties are smoother, less friction, than the ties that come with garbage bags)
4. A very powerful magnet (I used one from an old server hard disk drive). SCSI and SAS hard drives seem to have the most powerful of all the hard drive magnets. (Luckily I'm in IT so I get access to lots of hard drives.)

Alright, if you haven't already figured out how I made things work, remember Abby is carbon fibre, not steel. Still not sure? Well first I taped the fishing line at one end to the bars, at the other end of the line I taped the fishing line to the twist tie. Then I inserted the tie into the hole at the top of Abby's down tube and used the magnet (on the outside) to guide the tie to the hole at the bottom of the downtube. Then tape the fishing line (at the end by the bars) to the gear cable and guide the gear cable by pulling the fishing line. (Although in retrospect I should have put off pulling the new gear cable until I had finished running all the fishing lines, also masking tape is cheaper and would probably work just as well, if not better, than electrical tape.)

Now the hardest line to run was for the rear deraileur and this line runs the length of the chainstay, that is from under the bottom bracket all the way to the rear drop out. Now using magnets here is quiet a bit harder. Sure Abby is carbon fibre, but the rear drop out as well as the area surrounding it, in fact the entire join from the chain stay to the seat stay, is metal, I think steel. Ultimately what I did was take an old gear shifting cable, some electrical tape, fishing line and my trusty tie wrap. I used the gear cable to shove the fishing line with tie wrap and electrical tape in from the wrong end - the drop out end - and drive the fishing line forward into the chain stay far enough to clear the steel drop out. Once I could feel the tie wrap with the magnet I used the magnet to draw the tie wrap forward to the hole at the bottom bracket (a very narrow hole at that!) A little bit of the tie wrap would expose from the hole and then using a plyer I was able to pull out the tie wrap and fishing line.

A confession, first I took Abby to my local bike shop and asked them, after several frustrating hours, to do that final run of the rear deraileur cable, but by the time I got Abby back on the stand at home the cable fell out. So I did have to learn the hard way how to route internal cables.

As for the rear brake cable, that was actually very easy, push the cable through the top tube from the hole near the stear tube, once the cable is near the hole near the brake, just use a magnet to bring the cable up and close to the hole. Use a folded tie wrap to loop around the cable at the brake end and push from the stearer tube end while pulling up on the tie wrap. (Sorry if I had a third hand I might have taken some pictures of this step.)

In Computing the most difficult programming task is writing an Operating System, probably the context switches, (hint: push all the registers, interrupt, return from interrupt, pop all the registers) are the trickiest bits of programming. I've heard the for a pianist Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto is probably the hardest piece of music to play. Having routed internal cables, well they aren't the Rack 3, and they sure aren't a context switch on an x86, but damn they were tricky. Maybe next time I'll just take Abby to a bike shop, yeah - as if!

On Driving

There was an interesting article in Velonews. I think Charles Pelkey (The Explainer) is great. But I really liked the image, Space Taken by 60 People. It turns out that image is all over the Interlink Net thing-a-ma-jigy.

I am still, shudder, driving to work. I cannot stand the drive. Recently at a dinner with my parents my father said that several employers have relocated from the 'burbs to the city because the young people live in the city and do not want to drive to work. I asked my dad if he could pass that memo on to my employer. (Actually I have a number of complaints about my current employer, not the least among which is the drive to work.)

Mind you the drive home, at least I go against traffic, the disaster that is Toronto highways at rush hour, ouch! By six in the morning the inbound roads are clogged, just bumper-to-bumper stop and go, with cars, hardly moving at all. And by three the outbound roads are just as bad.

There is a fix for two issues here, one is Toronto's structural budget deficit of about $350m~$400m the other issue is the traffic. Road tolls, passing the money collected directly to transit and road repair, thus relieving the city of two massive line items from the budget. Enough pussy footing around this issue I say, it's time Mister "end of the war on the car" Mayor Rob Ford did something that required courage and enacted road tolls, and not just on highways, arterial roads too.

Here is how I see a system working, first bring back the hated vehicle registration tax of $60/vehicle/year. (That's about $60m in the city's books.) Then every person that pays the tax gets an E-ZPass transponder that works in both Toronto and the North Eastern US (see so you can go drive to say, Boston and you get to by-pass the toll booths on I-90). Now, make the vehicle registration tax more palatable, when you get your transponder, and every year thereafter the city credits your E-ZPass account with $60.

Okay, so we've got about a million cars with E-ZPass transponders and then we open it up to everyone who lives in the 'Burbs, they can also obtain an E-ZPass from the city and register it and all that, or they can get one from the Niagara Bridge Authority, but the point is everyone has the option of getting an E-ZPass, so it's fair. Next if you drive into the City of Toronto and do not have a transponder you pay a flat say $12 per weekday or $10 on Saturdays and $8 on Sundays and Stat Holidays to drive in the city for the day. (Use automated Toll collection, perhaps photograph licence plates, like on Highway 407.)

Now for motorists who have a transponder their licence is not photographed (or if it is by accident, because the licence is registered the photo is dropped by the OCR system when the image is received for processing.) Instead, at every major intersection (and highway interchange) in the city the transponder is recorded. For every, say kilometer the motorist drives they get a bill for perhaps ten cents, to a daily maximum of say, $8 on weekdays, and $4 on weekends and holidays.

Other considerations, well there are rental cars, rental car agencies would have to collect the tolls on behalf of the city, but that is trivial. There would also be people from out of town who drive in and stay for several days, well they might have say, a New Jersey E-ZPass, in which case they'd get the same billing as a Toronto resident (if they kept their car parked in the hotel, the transponder would not pass any major intersection so there would be no bill for that period.) If the out-of-towner had no E-ZPass, and drove in on a Friday and did not leave until Sunday then they would get a bill for $12 on Friday, $10 on Saturday and $8 on Sunday summing to $20 for the weekend. (Clearly both entering and exiting the city would have to be tracked for non-transponder based systems.)

Obviously the whole thing would have to be very carefully controlled to ensure the privacy of the motorists is respected and the security of the IT infrastructure is maintained but there are millions of cars that drive in the city every day. If the city collected an average of say $5/day times perhaps a million cars, over a 365 day year the city would collect $1.8bn, use perhaps $100m for maintaining the system, spend perhaps $400m on road repair, that leaves $1.3bn for building new subway lines, every single year. Within just a few years the city won't be collecting much in the way of road tolls because we will have the most remarkably effective subway system ever.

Isn't that a better way to get around?

More On Peak Oil

I am planning, if the weather cooperates, on going for a nice bunch of bike rides. In the mean time, just some statistics that really make me wonder if urban sprawl was worse than just a really bad idea.

According to Jeff Rubin Peak Oil is not so much a supply issue, it's a problem of price. We cannot get oil cheap enough to use for energy. But according to one of the people who posted a response it is a lot worse than that. (I will have to validate this data, so take it with a huge grain of salt, but...)

To paraphrase:

In 1930 humanity was drawing from the ground about 2 billion barrels of oil per year with an average EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested) of about 100 to 1. Hence the amount of net energy available to humanity from oil was then of about 1.98 billion barrels energy units. (US Government figures indicate that one barrel of oil generates about 5.8 million BTUs).

In 1970 humanity was drawing from the ground about 17 billion barrels of oil per year; however, this oil came from more difficult wells to access with an average EROEI of about 30 to 1, thus total net energy was about 16.3 billion barrel units.

In 2005 humanity was drawing from the ground about 30 billion barrels of oil per year with an average EROEI of about 15 to 1. Hence the amount of net energy available to humanity was then of about 27.9 billion barrels energy units.

Looking forward now, Alberta tar sand oil has an EROEI of 1.5 to 1. Ultra deep water oil may not be much better, if it is even positive. The BP Macondo (Deep Water Horizon) well has shown how much technology was stretched and the newly found ultra deep water oil reservoirs off Brazil are much deeper and will be much more difficult to put into production. Furthermore, Arctic oil is at the moment only a dream because there is still a moving ice cap during the winter in that region). As for shale oil, like for shale gas, one will be lucky if its EROEI is even positive.

Many people who would know these things, for example, The Chairman of TOTAL, among others, have publicly stated that humanity will be lucky if it can reach an output volume of 100 million barrels per day i.e. 36.5 billion barrels of oil per year.Hence at some point in a not too distant future, humanity’s oil production will reach 36.5 billion barrels per year with an average EROEI of about 1.5 to 1. When that happens, the amount of net energy available to humanity from oil will only be of about 12.1 billion barrels energy units.

Thus we can see our total available energy in the not so distant future will be quiet a bit less than we had in 1970. Yet we still have to drive as far, and now India and China are on stream. Recall that in 1970 there was no outsourcing to India and China was in the middle of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution. As a society we really have to start diverting funds from highways and auto manufacturers bailouts. Time to build more rail, more bike lanes, and critically, more transit infrastructure. The fact is, we cannot continue down our present course, while the numbers I cited above may be way off the mark, I'm sure we can all accept that we cannot continue with business as usual for all that much longer. We can either keep running until we run headlong into an impenetrable wall, or we can begin the transition away from fossil fuels.

On Crazy Motorists

I have to drive to work these days. I do not much like it but probably until next spring (when I will try to ride at least a couple times a week) I will be driving every day. At the best of times, the drive is very stressful. I leave super early each morning just to avoid the worst of the traffic. The best part, I live in the city for many reasons, one being, so I don't have to drive! Only I am working in the 'burbs so I guess I kind of do have to use the car. This morning there was a lovely accident on the highway, of the four lanes, two were closed. One of the guys, a really over weight, long beard, looked like he belonged in the Hells Angles type, in the accident was leaning against his car, apparently uninjured watching the cars crawl by. I would guess that one fat man caused several hundred million dollars in lost productivity and wasted fuel. Good job fatso!

Anyway I was watching a new episode of Top Gear last night. Clarkson and May were reviewing electric cars. After they discussed the high cost, up front, the cars were about thirty thousand pounds, then there's the short life span of the batteries (three to ten years depending on how well the batteries are treated) the short driving distance, the long recharge time and so on. Ultimately Clarkson suggested that petrol power was much better for cars, at which point Hammond asked what happens when the oil runs out. Of course the guys started waxing on about the joys of hydrogen powered cars.

Okay, lets get something straight here, hydrogen as a power source of fuel cells, is really potential chemical energy, that gets is potential energy from some other source. Typically we get hydrogen from breaking down natural gas, except natural gas is a fossile fuel that is also going to run out. We can get hydrogen from water, by electro-chemical seperation but where does the electricity come from? The Fukushima Daiichi power plant?, Chernobyl?, Three Mile Island? Okay, I know, Wind Power, only where will we put all those wind mills?, there's a lot of NIMBYism when it comes to wind power, and what happens when the wind doesn't blow? Or what about Solar? What happens when the sun doesn't shine? Coal? There's lot of coal in the world... do I need to spell out the problems with coal?

The bottom line is the days of the single user automobile are numbered, ten years from now there won't be bad traffic going to work becuase I don't think there will be anyone driving to work on a daily basis. Fuel for automobiles is already expensive, just watch the price of oil, we are still in dream land when it comes to the real price of our wasteful ways. Only here's another thought? How will we eat when fossile fuel fertilizers are too expensive? And the act of trucking the food from the farms to the cities, how will we eat? How will we stay warm in winter? I don't know the answers to any of those questions, I suspect because there is no good answer.

On Rides and Work

Well work has been gobbling up all sorts of my time. I used to be I could pack in a good three quality rides a week as well as pile of shorter rides. Now I'm lucky if I get two rides in. Sigh, recessions suck. (And anyone who doubts we are now in a recession boy have I got bad news for you!)

So I've been thinking about the post I made back in August, about the SUV and the Vegan. Some people, who don't know the Vegan, disagree with me. A Vegan is allowed to own a monstrously unsafe machine that is vastly wasteful.

Then again, I'm not saying a person isn't allowed to own an SUV, this person made what, to them I am sure, was an adult decision. And as an adult I am entirely within my right to point out that I think it is extremely hypocritical. To give so much regard for every earth worm and toad, and to remind everyone around them of their fondest regard for the birds and the bees, then turn around an buy an SUV.

I'm sorry but if you want to tell everyone about the virtues of veganism, I should think that you should keep your choice in motor vehicles restricted to the very modest. Then again, I would think that anyone who cares about our dear planet should keep their choice of vehicle restricted to the most modest vehicle that will accommodate their needs. (That's why I drive a diesel four door car, the one and only family car, and it is small.)

Anyway I found some lovely new routes, I hope I get to ride more. I am really sick of the inside of my car.

On Trees

So the story goes, in February I moved. The new house has a tree in the back, it's a Ailanthus altissima or 'Tree of Heaven'. Now permit me a rather long quotation from Wikipedia about this 'Tree of Heaven'.

Ailanthus altissima, commonly known as tree of heaven, ailanthus,[...] is a deciduous tree in the Simaroubaceae family. It is native to both northeast and central China and Taiwan. [...] The tree grows rapidly and is capable of reaching heights of 15 metres (49 ft) in 25 years. However, the species is also short lived and rarely lives more than 50 years.
[...]
The tree was first brought from China to Europe in the 1740s and to the United States in 1784. [...The tree] was initially hailed as a beautiful garden specimen. However, enthusiasm soon waned after gardeners became familiar with its suckering habits and its foul smelling odour. Despite this, it was used extensively as a street tree during much of the 19th century. Outside of Europe and the United States, the plant has been spread to many other areas beyond its native range. In a number of these, it has become an invasive species due to its ability to quickly colonise disturbed areas and suppress competition with allelopathic chemicals. It is considered a noxious weed in Australia, the United States, New Zealand and several countries in southern and eastern Europe. The tree also resprouts vigorously when cut, making its eradication difficult and time consuming. In many urban areas, it has acquired the derisive nicknames of "ghetto palm" and "stink tree".

Yes sir, that's what I had growing in my backyard. Well in late May there was no evidence the tree was even alive, there were no leaves but lots of fungus growing on the tree. I sent in an application to remove the tree, on the grounds that it was dead. I transcribe below a copy of an arbourist report that I paid, frankly a lot of money to obtain.

MR. MICHAEL COLE IS THE OWNER OF [Address redacted] AVE TORONTO AND IS CONCERNED ABOUT A DEAD TREE LOCATED 8 METRES FROM THE BACK OF HIS HOME. THE THE TREE IS A 97 CM DBH ALIANTHUS TREE AND IS DEAD THERE ARE NO LEAVES OR VIABLE BUDS, TREE HAS GIRDLING ROOTS AND HAS SUFFERED FROM POOR PRUNING PRACTICES. TREE HAS CO-DOMINANT STEMS 2.6 METRES ABOVE GROUND WHERE SEVERE DECAY EXISTS. LACK OF BARK AND FRUITING BODIES CAN BE SEEN IN PHOTO. TREE IS DEAD AND HAZARDOUS AND IS THEREFORE EXEMPT FROM CITY OF TORONTO TREE BY-LAWS. TREE SHOULD BE REMOVED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Then there were some pictures, here they are.

So I sent a scanned copy of my arborist's report along with the images to the City of Toronto Forestry Services department. Here is my cover note.

Michael Cole 31/05/2011 9:12 am
Dear Sirs,

Sorry for the delay however the scanner at my office was broken for the past couple weeks.

Please see the attached arborist report as well as images of the tree in my back yard at [redacted]. It is my intention to remove the dead Alianthus tree and plant two saplings, likely one maple and one oak, further from any structure. If this request could be expedited so that I can plant the new saplings before the summer (give them extra time to take root) I would very much appreciate it.

Thank you

Michael

Never underestimate a tree's ability to start growing when you least want it to, at least if it's a Tree of Hell.

Dear Mr. Cole,

I have reviewed your request for an exemption including photos attached for the 97 cm diameter Tree of Heaven tree located at the above noted property.

Please be advised that the noted tree does not qualify for an exemption under the Private Tree Bylaw as it is neither dead (100%), terminally diseased or imminently hazardous. You may obtain a permit to remove the subject tree based on its condition.

Please submit the required application to injure or destroy trees on private property, application fee ($100), payable to the Treasurer, City of Toronto, in form of certified cheque or money order and replanting plan, in order that we may proceed with the permit issuance process. You may obtain a permit to remove the subject tree based on its poor structure condition.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,


Jetmir Balashi,

I had to reply, although it turned out Balashi had inspected the tree between when I last looked at it, and it grew it's first leaves. (Great timing.)

The attached, for the second time, arborist report explicity states “tree is dead”. Now I may not be a biologist but being dead is a binary state, the tree is either dead or it is not dead. How can it be something other than 100% dead? Please read the end of the second line of the arborist report, or if you do not have Adobe Acrobat I will transcribe the entire report here:

[See the arborist report above]

Why do I need a permit to remove this tree?? My neighbor reports that last summer parts, i.e. entire branches, of the tree blew into his yard and nearly damaged his property. If property damage occurs because I could not remove what a certified arborist tells us is a “hazardous” tree who is going to take the financial and legal responsibility???

Well either I can see the future, or the truth is, I was right and the city arborist doesn't know a hazzard when it flies eight meters across the backyard.

Bring out the disgust.

I wrote another email to the city,

Sirs,

I am attaching a copy of my correspondence (attachments.zip) with the city from late May and early June of this year. At that time I requested permission to remove what was thought to be a dead tree from my yard. I noted that branches of the tree had fallen in past years, as it would turn out this problem has become steadily worse.

I was told "...that the noted tree does not qualify for an exemption under the Private Tree Bylaw as it is neither dead (100%), terminally diseased or imminently hazardous." By:

Jetmir Balashi,
Urban Forestry Assistant Planner
Tree Protection & Plan Review
Toronto & East York District

I am attaching images taken in the immediate aftermath of the recent storm (20110822.zip). I do not yet have a quote on the cost of repairs; however, I suspect the amount to be in the range of many thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars. I should also note that what is left standing is very definitely a hazard. As this opinion is shared not only by an arborist, but an engineer (myself), I sincerely hope you will not present further impediments to my urgent request to get rid of what is left of the tree.

Frankly we are lucky, my wife was standing near the window when the tree became airborne. If she had been hurt I would not be sending this email, instead I would be calling for criminal charges of negligence against those responsible for what would have been an entirely preventable disaster.

Yours,
Michael Cole

And here is Balashi's reply:

Subject: 12 Coleman Avenue - Request to remove damaged tree before it causes more property damage

Hi Michael,

Please be advised that I visited your property earlier this morning and confirmed that due to the damage incurred during a recent windstorm, the Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) tree situated at the rear of your property, is imminently hazardous and therefore exempt from the City's Private Tree by-law. Attached is a copy of the Confirmation of Exemption form.

As you indicated in your email, Urban Forestry staff did previously inspect this tree based upon receipt of a request for exemption from the Private Tree by-law to remove a dead tree received from yourself. The tree was inspected and it was determined at that time that the tree was neither; dead, terminally diseased or imminently hazardous and therefore not exempt from the by-law. The results of this inspection were conveyed to you via e-mail on June 3, 2011. At that time you were advised that the tree was in poor condition and that Urban Forestry would issue permit authorizing its removal should you apply to do so.

It is import to understand that trees are living organisms and their condition is in a constant state of change. Also, we are unable to fully predict how trees, in any condition, will react when exposed to extreme weather conditions such as those we experienced this past weekend.

Please let me know if you need any further information or would like to discuss this matter further.

A question: Why do these guys get salary? I never would have imagined a job description of:

• Go uninvited onto other people's property.
• Examine the local fauna.
• Deny home owners the ability to protect their own property.

I wish I worked for the city sometimes!

On SUVs

The trouble with large organizations is that to get anything done requires a mountain of paperwork. My employer has contracted me out for an extended period to a very large company that requires reams of officialdom to get anything accomplished. I have done perhaps two hours of useful work over the past three days, the rest of the time I have spent waiting for the tools I need to do the useful work. It occurs to me, you want 100% employment? Just have one employer, they would be so dreadfully inefficient there would be a labour shortage.

In other news, someone I know (and that’s about as much hint as to who they might be that I am willing to give) is a vegan. Okay, so far no biggie. I mean I am a liberal progressive kind of guy, stands to reason I’d know a few vegans. Not that I am a vegan, or even a veggie, sorry, I like my chicken, hamburgers, and a good steak is always welcome! Anyway this person I know, the vegan, got themselves a new car. Well not great, but you know, North America, we kinda need motor vehicles, sucks but what can you do? It’s a large car, well alright, needs to transport the kids… no this vegan doesn’t have children… okay the bicycle? Sure why not – driving a bicycle is silly if you ask me but then I name my bikes so I cannot be an authority on things sane. Except, and here’s the kicker this person bought an SUV.

Okay, I concede if you have kids big cars make sense, I figure a station wagon, or as the English call them, an estate car is probably the most sensible thing, lots of passenger space, low centre of gravity means it can corner faster and safer, reasonable fuel economy. Or if you have lots of kids and (or) lots of cargo clearly a minivan or people carrier would be the right thing to buy. But when to buy an SUV? Well I will concede SUVs make sense if you drive on the dirt roads a lot, but other than that, lousy fuel economy, dangerous tendency to roll over, small passenger and cargo space (yes it’s true, you get more interior volume in a minivan than an SUV, and probably more space in the average estate car than in a mid-sized SUV as well). So why buy one of these things, particularly if you are a proud vegan? Doesn’t the damage done by burning the extra gasoline rather offset any good done by going vegan?

One lame excuse I hear from time-to-time, SUV drivers will talk about how efficient modern engines are. So lets look at VW/Audi, since I have a Jetta. True, the 2.0L engine that one finds on say the Audi Q5 or VW Tiguan, is the very same engine found on the 2.0L A4, 2.0L Passat and so on. Heck the chassis on the Tiguan is probably the A4 chassis. But funny thing, that aerodynamic drag of a big body way up in the air, just clobbers the fuel economy numbers. Don’t believe me, check out the EPA ratings. (http://www.fueleconomy.gov/) Just comparing a 2.0L standard Tiguan with a 2.5L Jetta SportWagen, the Tiguan gets 18mpg city to the Jetta’s 23mpg, the Tiguan gets 26mpg on the highway, the Jetta, 33. The EPA estimates the average Tiguan driver will burn 16.3 barrels of oil per year, the same amount of driving in a Jetta, 13.2 barrels per year. Of course the Jetta’s got the bigger engine and it weighs less so it will be more fun to drive. But what about interior volume, well it is true the Tiguan has 95.3 cubic feet of passenger space to the Jetta’s 91.7 cubic feet, but once we discuss cargo there’s a slightly bigger issue, the Tiguan has 28.3 cubic feet (or 56.1 cubic feet if you fold the back seats down) to the Jetta’s 32.8 cubic feet (or significantly 66.9 cubic feet with the back seats down). In other words, not only is the Jetta cheaper, faster, burns less fuel (and I haven’t even discussed the possibility of a diesel Jetta) but it’s got an extra ten cubic feet of cargo space yet looses only four cubic feet of passenger space to the Tiguan. So the numbers would suggest, get the Jetta. And I have yet to look at the NHTSA safety rating, let me see, well apparently both cars get four out of five stars. Okay SUV fans, same manufacturer, comparable vehicle, yet I can discern no good statistical reason why a person should favour the SUV over the estate car. Unless that four cubic feet of passenger space actually matters that much, in which case, why aren’t you looking at the Minivan?

I think I’m going to take up Veganism, then maybe I’ll understand the attraction of the Stupid Ugly Vehicle.

On A Long Ride

Apparently the BCC went for another ride up to Lake Simcoe on Sunday. Ironically I did not go with. Well the weather was supposed to, and apparently did rain, a lot, up north. Down in the city it did not rain much, if at all. I spent the day mostly resting actually, it was nice. Of course Saturday I rode about 110km (GPS hiccuped and reported almost 700km, so I will stick with 110km, since that is about what it measures to with Gmaps.) Then on Simcoe (holiday) Monday I rode 196.1km to the Forks of the Credit which is the prettiest six and a half kilometers of road in Ontario.

I said it was ironic that I did not go with the BCC to Lake Simcoe, it was ironic because I created the route they took. But then the new route, to the Forks is even better than the one to Simcoe. Sure there is more built up city riding, but my route makes up for that with the country riding that is in there too.

Anyway here is the route I took, and having done it once, I have already revised it to make it even better, here is my new route. I have to admit, I am really looking forward to my next ride out there.

I promise, I will write up a review, if I get a chance but work is keeping me very busy lately.

On Bad Driving

New rule, motorists are not allowed to critique cyclists who run stop signs.

Today I almost got hit by a car, I was on Cosburn between Woodbine and Coxwell heading west, there are no stop signs, lights, or cross-walks on that stretch; however, there are several side roads that intersect Cosburn. A motorist in a tan Sunfire who had a strong resemblance to the fat bald mayor who hates all things that aren't cars or the Toronto Maple Leafs ran a stop and made a right turn right in front of me and then continued west only marginally faster than me. (I caught up with him at the light at Coxwell, that's how I got a good look at today's dangerous driver.)

Oh, another rule, gunning engines, passing a cyclist, cutting him (or her) off that's another show stopper. Motorists don't seem to understand they are operating a very large vehicle, if they cut someone off there is a strong chance they will end up side swiping and not actually cutting off.

You know the thing that really bothers me about all this? I could drive to work, I've got a vehicle, I can afford the diesel, parking is not that expensive. I choose to take transit or ride, for one thing I am causing less traffic, less wear on city roads, etc. More importantly, I am not poisioning the air we all have to breath. Anyway I promise, I will get around to an analytical review of the Space Shuttle eventually, but here is a thought to tide us all over for the time being, it's the Earth as seen from space, actually from the International Space Station. That's about 100km of air, we've fucked it up pretty good already and if we continue with our car driving wasteful ways, that blue stuff won't be able to sustain us for all that much longer.

This is it, we don't have a life boat, we screw up Earth, we are homeless.

I assume we all recognize Earthrise, taken by William Anders on the Apollo VIII mission to the moon, Christmas 1968? I sure don't see any other habbital planets within a few light years of that blue and white marble.

On Random Items

First an update, if you have Googled Clarence Rose or Joachim Grams and come to this blog. Yes, it is a scam, sorry but do not sell your Craigslist item to this piece of work. For additional details, see this post.


I noticed someone Googled 'Aaron Arndt Gears Bike shop' and came to my blog. Yes I know Aaron, he's a great guy. Like me he started in skating, was way better than me. (Frankly comparing him to me... well massive insult to him, sorry Aaron.) I had thought Aaron planned to go into teaching, but I guess the lure of working in a bike shop, well if I didn't have a mortgage I'd likely work in a bike shop as well! But he was a great coach and I know he does fittings at Gears, so if you are thinking of getting a bike fit done by him I sure you will do well. (I plan to get him to fit me on Alex, the TT bike, just as soon as the weather gets ugly.)


The terror attacks in Norway, well since it's so recent I have to say something. I am horrified yet filled with sympathy, and disgusted at these xenophobic gun toting nuts. That's all I can say. My thoughts are with the families of the victims. (No prayers, religion caused this mess, it won't fix it!)


In other news Cadel Evens won the yellow jersey, well done Cadel, a first for the Aussies! And Mark Cavendish finally got his Green Jersey. It was a good tour for the English speaking world! (And at the risk of making a really corny riding pun, the Manx Missile fired and finally hit his target!)


I went for a ride yesterday, up to Lake Simcoe. It was my intent to ride alone but ran into a bunch of people from the BCC and rode with them for a while. It was a proper hammerfeast, though not of my desire, it had been my intent to ride a steady pace, not an unsustainable one. By the time I got back into the city I could hardly scratch out 24 or 25km/h I was in so much pain. In a way it was a great ride, but in other respects, I really need more self discipline. One thought that did occur to me as I rolled past a wind swept Lake Simcoe, this would be a great late season ride. Even if I taper to the point that I cannot ride the full 180km of a Lake Simcoe run, I can always drive out of the city and shorten the ride to 120km or so.


Anyway my appetite is returning and thoughts of that other woman are fading. Time to concentrate on the future again.

On Melancholy

I had an English professor in my undergrad days. His PhD thesis was on the book The Anatomy of Melancholy, Professor McCormack is pretty sure he is the only living person to have read the book in it's original Latin.

Now I am no expert in Melancholy but re-reading my previous post it occurs to me I did not properly summarize my emotional state yesterday. Then again it is rather difficult to put into words what is going on.

On the one hand it has been exceedingly hot lately so my loss of appetite could theoretically be explained by the heat, but I doubt that. Since I've submitted the papers and completed the divorce from Lesley I find myself recalling days of old. That is to say back when she loved me.

I cannot put a precise finger on the day that Lesley stopped caring about me, but one event I recall was when I was undergoing some professional hardship and I remember she went out of town with her girlfriends. I told her to, I did not want my own difficulties to make her life at all worse. But really, shouldn't a spouse always be around in the bad times as well as the good? Not that Lesley was around much in the good times either for the last year or so that we were 'married'.

When I was still married there was a television advert, it was for a soup cracker, the image of a tomato soup with the song 'Lonley, I am so Lonely, I have nobody... etc.' playing on the audio track. I remember cleaning my ride, probably Jordan at the time, and hearing that song and it hit me, I am all alone.

I am in a much better place, yet still I recall ten years of my life, that is almost a third of my time on this planet, poof the thing that mattered more than anything else gone. In a blink of an eye. Well no, it was more drawn out than that. She just stopped loving me, and I didn't see it coming, I suddenly had a lot more time to ride. (Little wonder 2010 will probably go down as my strongest year ever, yes I'm a year older, but I've met someone else who wants me to be around the house more and on the bike less.)

I guess the moral I can draw from this... is nothing. There is, near as I can tell, no moral tale whatsoever in the post. I suppose I should stop wallowing in the past, it is good to remember but one must still live. I must endevour not to lament Lesley and the expense of those who love me.

On Yet More Change

Well it's official kids, Lesley is no longer my estranged wife, 42 years to the day from Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's little walk on the moon, Lesley is now my ex-wife.

I am happier now that it is done. But there is still a knot in my stomach, I think it's the heat but the stress from going to court for the past couple days and everything at work. Well I lost my appetite, I have to force myself to eat breakfast, and then resist the urge to puke it all up on the short ride to the office. Dinner is almost as difficult to eat and while I toss and turn at night, at the office I have trouble keeping my eyes open.

Divorce sucks, if you find someone and marry them, well make damn sure they are right for you before you marry them. And if you are curious what else is out there, after tying the knot, well be honest with that other person, because being lied to sucks too.

On Change

Why do people change things? Change career paths or jobs is rather obvious. But what about activities? When I started this blog I was an inline skater. Go check out those posts from I think November, 2007. Then around May 2008 I discovered the bike. Here's the thing, from a usefulness standpoint the bike makes sense. I can ride from Toronto to Rochester, I can get to work 10 or 30km from home every day, on the other hand, I'll be completely honest, and maybe this is rose coloured glasses, but in general skaters are a friendlier bunch than riders. (Perhaps having the underdog sport makes them nicer? Or maybe it's just been so long that I don't remember the ugly, just the beautiful? - Who knows!)

I still much prefer to ride my bike to just about any recreation, but that said I think I've come to an important realisation. I don't like to ride in large groups. There are rules, accepted behavioral norms, attitudes, all sorts of reasons to stay home and sleep in. I'm told Mountain Bikers are a lot more flexible this way, which is a shame, for me, because I have so little interest in riding off road. (Nothing against the Mountain Biking set, I just prefer speed, distance and stable solid ground.) It's too bad there isn't some form of road biking where the rules are more or less tossed to the wind, except lets be honest here, a lot of the rules actually, annoyingly, are required and make sense. As long as I have to share the road with cars I'm bound by the Ontario Highway Traffic Act and if I ever find myself in a draft I'm bound by the rules of etiquette for the pelaton.

I guess I'm just tired of all the structure, lord knows I'm not having fun in the group any longer and if I'm not having fun doing what is a recreation, (well riding to work is not a recreation, but I'm talking here about group rides) maybe I should re-evaluate what I do for fun?

On Youtube video's, one funny, one very not funny.

Here are a couple video's I've been referred to on Youtube.

The first is funny, it makes fun of frankly a very rigid road riding "culture". I should point out the main character has a white saddle and black bar tape.

Now for something a lot more serious, more on peak oil.

On Long Rides

I know, I promised to explain why I think the Space Shuttle is the worst sort of engineering there is, but that will have to wait for another day. I've been riding.

Just over a week ago Ian Wilcox and I rode out to Klienburg, it was a nice short ride. Thanks to an exceedingly strong wind from the North West by the time we got out to the hills I was pretty tired and had some trouble with the hill climbing. Of course the trip home was blazing fast, but when I got home I was in quite a bit of pain.

Then instead of riding to Rochester this year I tried to ride to my Aunt and Uncle’s cottage. Dawn made me throw in the towel at Orillia (170km) she said I was looking really tired and I’d likely hurt myself if I pushed hard for too much longer. Probably this was a wise call, there was a lot of construction as I went further north.

Then Sunday I rode up to Lake Simcoe and back, I went with a few guys from the BCC who were prepping for the Louisville Ironman. I was the only guy on a road bike, everyone else was on a tri-bike. Frankly, drafting off a tri-bike is a good excuse to ride alone, there is no draft at all. As well, all those fancy Cervelo’s just kept breaking, flats, loose bottle cages, you name it. Unless a person really spends the time with their ride while she’s on the stand, she’s going to fail in all sorts of different ways on the road.

Then again, and this might be very un-Canadian of me, but I hate Cervelo, I think they are a very over-rated brand. People talk about how great the warrantee replacement at Cervelo is. Sure it’s great, everyone with a Cervelo has had to use it, sometimes two or three times. Now I’ll admit I have lots of Specialized bikes, but the only one that has every actually failed on me, was in a horrible crash and Specialized replaced that bike, which was a lot more, to be honest than I was expecting – and one, of several, reasons why a reader will never hear me bad mouth them, they make really nice machines.

I have to admit this year I’m really peeved, I cannot watch the Tour in real time, unless I get a TV cable at my desk at work or pay $30 I’m stuck using the PVR. Anyway its funny to hear the journalists talk about these early stages of the tour as if they matter. Everyone knows, winners, either Schleck or Contador will be found in the mountains in the south, not the wind swept north. Anyway my money is still on Contador, although I really want to know, where is the Manx Missile? I was expecting great things from Cav.

On Bad Engineering (Part II)

Previously I wrote that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was an example of, well frankly bad luck more than anything else. Lets face it, if Barney Elliott had not been around at the time, there would have been no footage of the failure of the bridge and then the failure of the bridge would not have won the notoriety it gained.

Today I would like to look at legitimately bad design in the form of the Bugatti Veyron. Here is a thing that is utterly, completely devoid of practical use for the improvement of human life. On the contrary, because it is such a fuel guzzling, traffic inducing hog, there is nothing about this machine that justifies its existence.

Consider the achievements of this machine, it has a 1001hp or (depending on the model) 1200hp engine. Is this engine some marvel of new and novel design? No, heavens of course not, it's simply a 8L W-16 (two side-by-side V8s) with four turbo charges. In other words it's four 2L 250hp turbo charged engines that have been glued together. A marvel of cam timing, except even there, only two overhead cams, so a total of four cam shafts are required. But when you think about it, a 250hp 2L four cyclinder turbo charged engine, nothing fancy there.

Well it is true the Vayron is fast, 240km/h, except consider this, the TGV has a top speed of 320km/h and unlike the Vayron can actually sustain such a speed for prolonged periods (without a traffic citation or a blown tyre - to say nothing of the fact that there is only one oval, I know of, big enough for the Vayron to reach full speed on.)

Ah yes, but a Vayron is more direct, you have to wait for the train if you take the TGV. Well yes, but then at least the TGV only stops for scheduled passenger loading and unloading. The Vayron, well pedal to the metal will exhaust the 100L tank in 12 minutes. So really highways of the world get fleeting glances of this ludicrous machine, the Vayron's natural home is a gas station. Heck even at "normal" highway driving, it managed to suck away 18L per 100km, or 13mpg (US gallons). That means that while the 100L tank might make it a full 556km on the highway the fact is this is a function of the swollen size of the tank. A normal small car typically has a 40 or 60L tank. If we go with those numbers the 60L tank would last just 330km, and heaven knows what city driving would get.

Yes but the point of the car is speed!

Okay, conceded as a recreation for small boys and rich men with a mid-life crisis, the Veyron fills a market niche nicely. But for an engineer wishing to push the envelope, the only significant achievement in the Vayron are the $10,000 tyres. As far as I can tell the rest of the vehicle is a complete waste and in a peak oil environment, the Veyron is a criminal waste.

Thus the Veyron, for being hailed as an achievement in engineering, that it is not, for being as wasteful, more so actually, than a Ford GT (a car that won infamy on the hit BBC car review TV show Top Gear for being a gas guzzler), gets the status of second worst engineering design that I can think of!

My next post, why I believe the Space Shuttle is an example of the various worst possible design.

On Bad Engineering

Recently on the bike club website someone got all excited about an auto review of the Bugatti Veyron and that got me thinking, movements in engineering that we, well us engineers, should hang our head in shame for. Where to begin? Well clearly Tacoma Narrows has to go down in any list of bad engineering moments, for failure to account for the then unheard phenomena of aeroelastic flutter, we cannot really go gang busters on the engineering of that bridge. Lets see, there is the Bugatti Veyron, at a staggering €1.9m and gobbling up it's entire 100L of gasoline in 12minutes at full power the Vayron's natural home, the gas station, has to go down as one of the silliest ideas in engineering. But truly the worst design ever has to be the Space Shuttle.

But lets rewind for a second and review the entrants.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was built in the 1930s in Washington State, it opened on July 1 (Dominion Day!) 1940 and was destroyed by 42 mph (67km/h) winds on November 7 1940. The bridge lasted an entire 129 days before it failed the result of aeroelastic flutter. An area business owner shot a film of the bridge's collapse, in the book Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke called that film the most expensive 11 minutes of movie making ever. (The book, Fountains of Paradise was written before the making of the James Cameron movie Titanic.)

Becuase there were no deaths in the failure of the bridge, and becuase the bridge failed for entirely new and novel reasons (in 1940 no one had heard of the concept of aeroelastic flutter, this bridge, Galloping Gertie as the locals called it, opened up a brand new field of study) the Tacoma Narrows Bridge does not actually represent bad engineering, just bad luck that someone happened to be around who owned a camera.

Next post, why the Bugatti Veyron is bad engineering, but not the worst.

On Club Rides and Other Details from the Lake Simcoe Ride

Yesterday's post was long. (I actually started writing it from my Blackberry at the Tim Hortons near lake Simoce, originally it was written in the present tense... yes I know, my grammar sucks, but hey this isn't the front page of the Globe and Mail, then again my grammar is better than theirs!)

Anyway I got tired of writing the previous post and just sort of stopped at 16'th Ave. and Ninth Line. Now I believe I noted, Ninth, below 16'th is a really crummy road, far too much traffic, at least on a Saturday, but that said, I have to wonder what a Sunday would be like.

But back to my story, the ride into the city was mostly fine. Right up until I got to Kingston and the Danforth split (just west of Midland). I was tired and rolling into a bit of a headwind, after 180km, almost all of them alone, I had decided to take things easy. I ultimately got to the traffic light by the Variety Village pool just east of Birchmount rolling along at only about 30km/h, this is a frequent sprint section where everyone in the club goes hells bells gang busters and burns whatever they have left, I basically had nothing left. Anyway I caught a red light and queued up in the traffic, just as the light changed and I started clipping in some guys from Hello Velo tore past me. I should have just ignored them.

Something about being passed, I saw red and cranked it up. Of course without a draft and 180km already done, I was in no condition to sprint, but then they caught a red light and I was far enough back that it turned green just as I arrived. I hammered and they did catch me, but not for a little bit. As they passed the second guy signalled to me to get on his wheel. So I figured, a free draft.

Just after I joined the paceline the guy in back started to pull forward, the guy in front started dropping back. Well we all know the rules, keep the gap small, so I did, I knew this would ultimately mean I'd likely have to pull soon but I recover fast. (And I was only about 2km from home now.)

Then the guy who had been in front starts dropping right behind his buddy's wheel nearly cutting me off and almost forcing me onto the sidewalk. I have to admit I was more shaken by the sheer bad handling of one of Paul Parker's guys than I was by all the bad motorists. After that fiaso I dropped back and stayed away from the two Helo Velo guys. If one is not riding among reasonably skilled riders, it is probably best to ride alone.

Sunday I could not ride long, had to be home early, but I did ride with the guys. (I'd love to rant here about one of the guys in the club, who shall remain nameless, but I'm a lot more mature than that. Don't worry, if you are reading this blog, you aren't that guy.)

Anyway here are some pictures from that ride.

On A Lake Simcoe Ride

I met QB at the Grinder at 6am Saturday (June 18) morning. The weather was supposed to be cool so after getting my cloths on I had to take it all off and put on knee warmers. I don't think QB was waiting too long he was adjusting his cadence sensor when I got to the Grinder.

QB is something powerful, I really had to push myself to keep up. (In my defence QB would only do one third of what I had planned for my own legs.) QB was also tapering, he'll be doing an Iron Man in Nice next Sunday. (Lucky #$@&!) Oh and QB if you do read this, good luck! Not that he'd need it.

QB and I went up Leslie, most of the pulling coming from th guy on the tri bike (QB). Just past 19th Ave there is a lovely little hill a tri group was climbing, we powered to the top, QB turned back and I kept going, clobbering the tri guys at a rate of six or seven a minute.

As I approached Stouffville road one of the tri guys pulled past me. I jumped on his wheel as he gradually slowed down to a painfully slow pace. I got out from behind him and powered away, after a time he surged past me and I grabbed his wheel again, yet again his strength failed him and I went out front. This silly surge and die was driving me crazy and I was loosing interest in the guy's worthless draft when we got to a technical decent with tight turns around a pond (Haynes Lake) just north of Bethesda Side Rd. I am not the most technically proficient rider out there but at least I can hold my line round a corner which was a hell of a lot more than this jerk could do. I would try to pass right, he'd suddenly weave right, no warning. I would try to pass left, he'd weave left. The hill levelled out I scrambled passed him and went gangbusters up a hill. I figured he'd surge (I'm not a particularly good hill climber) and drop me then I could ride comfortably for a while. Sadly he was a weaker climber than me!

Eventually on a rolling flat the tri guy did overtake me and I just watched him hammer past me.

Despite efforts to keep up a nice gap, I had nearly snapped all the distance between us when luckily the tri guy turned at St. John's side road. I continued to New Market and turned east on Mulock (Vivian).

I continued North on Warden, occasionally passing, cyclists. At Boyers Side I had planned to turn left (west), except Boyers was surfaced in loose gravel and looked completely unfit for road bike. Instead I went west on Base Line Road, a busier road to be sure but I only had to use it for 2km. Then I took Deer Park Drive to Varney (there's a short steep climb on Deer Park) and Varney to the south Shore of Lake Simcoe. I first saw the lake at 8:55 in the morning. I completed my run of Lake Drive not very long after and was queued up at the Tim Hortons at 9:20.

I learned a valuable lesson about myself. I need one supplemented bottle to get to Lake Simcoe and two bottles, one plain water and one supplemented to get to Stouffville. It is also important to take breaks. I stopped to rest at the Tim Hortons for about a half hour before continuing. The result was I was pretty strong for the journey south.

I set out down McCowan Road, which on a Sunday is devoid of cars, but not Saturday. Mind you, it's not like, say Kingston Road which is chalk full of cars, McCowan has some traffic, but I am talking about maybe two or three cars a minute as as one gets further south, especially below Ravenshoe Road the traffic on McCowan drops off almost completely.

I modified the route to Stoufville, instead of turning at Vivian I only took McCowan as far as Herald Rd (Green Lane to the west). Herald was almost empty, I think on my 4km trek of Herald Rd there were perhaps five encounters with cars (almost as many encounters with fellow cyclists.) The first bit of Herald, from McCowan to Highway 48 was a dense pack gravel that stuck to the pavement, it was not the most pleasant thing to ride on, but not all that bad. After highway 48 Herald was a delight, the one thing, I planed and did make my south (right) turn on Ninth Line, but one can easily overshoot Ninth Line, there is no stop sign for Herald Rd traffic (unlike Ninth Line) and the sign is very small.

Ninth Line is quiet possibly the nicest road in Ontario for a cyclist, there are no, and I really mean not a single car, except the ones going east/west on Davis and Vivian, all the way to Aurora Rd. There were a few lovely rollers, the last one before Vivian was positively brutal. Someone like Thi Ng (the mountain goat!) would have loved it, I was hurting, but it still felt pretty good.

As for the rest of the ride, I tore down Ninth below Bloomington a little above the posted Speed Limit (50km/h) and yet got passed -in more than a few cases dangerously close- by a good many cars. I was in Stoufville by about 11:30 and took Reesor Rd (or 10'th line) to 16'th Ave. There was a group of roadies there who looked lost. I asked if they needed help. They declined and I decided to try 16'th Ave. I took 16'th to Ninth Line again, unlike Ninth up near Vivian, here there was a ton of traffic, and I was happy to turn east again on 14'th Ave.

In all I rode 184.6km in about six hours 10 minutes, I averaged 29.9km/h and burned off over 7500 calories. In all I can think of few better ways to spend a Saturday morning.

On Recovery

Last week the weather was astoundingly good, up until Saturday, naturally! That said I did manage to punch in a few miles. Remarkably in the period since I started riding Abigail (just over a week ago) I've already logged nearly 350km, plus I rode to Lake Simcoe, on Sunday, I used Jordan, so in just over a week I've logged over 500km and I'm not even riding to work in Richmond Hill anymore. (Which in the nice weather is a bit of a shame, but then in the lousy weather I now have the option of transit or the beater bike.)

Of course I also rode to Simcoe with a few guys, we took, well I took the camera so there's only one picture of me, the one where the timer was used. Jason, Patrick, Ryan and I covered, well actually Jason had to go to his aunt in New Market so he only did about 150km but the rest of us did about 180km of beautiful rolling southern Ontario. I have to admit, and I'd like to think this is somewhat big of me, Jason, Pat and Ryan are all much stronger than me. Period. I've got the prettiest bikes, but at the end of the day their engines are way better than mine.

Well that was a surprisingly easy admission to make. Still upsets me when I get my rear end so seriously handed to me, I mean the guys were nice and all, they waited for me a bunch of times, but it's still upsetting to get clobbered so consistently. I want to be the nice guy who has to keep stopping to wait for someone, instead I'm the one panting and huffing and puffing to the top of the hill while everyone else is leaning on their bars watching me from the top of the aforesaid hill.

On the final part of the jouney home we rode over some railway tracks, they did horrible things to my back tyre. Ultimately I replaced both the front and back tyre. But I took some pictures when I got home, those cysts on my tyre are disturbing. From now on I will dismount to cross those tracks.



If I still worked in Richmond Hill at least I would be packing in more miles, but I guess part of the problem is this past winter my base really fell apart. I was so busy with the move and everything I just did not have time to work on my cardio strength.

Anyway Monday I rode to work. After spending 180km on Jordan Abigail just did not feel right, her saddle is too low (didn't stop me from clobbering the cars on Danforth Ave.) and the bars are too high. I raised the seatpost a little last night (Monday evening) but the weather was iffy. I woke up this morning to the sound of thunder, loud thunder.

I suppose I really ought to ride to work even in weather like this, but it's very easy in the rain to call it a recovery day. Still six bucks to get from Main and Danforth to Davisville and Mount Pleasent? Damn, I can ride that in under 15 minutes, mostly obeying traffic law, the subway took over 30 minutes and it was subway only.

This is the problem with transit, you have to stop a bajillion times and it is not direct. At least I do need some recovery time, so it's not all bad, but still, the six dollars is offensively expensive. I am litterally paying $0.33/km if someone paid me that kind of money to ride, I'd quit my job and take up residence in a very nice split level in Rosedale!

On New Rides and Burning Too Fast

Lets see, where to begin? Well I got a new ride, I've got her all road worthy and damn is she fast. Here are some pictures.

So a little about my new ride, first I'm calling her Abigail, which apparently means her father's joy in Hebrew - yes I did go to Hebrew school (and got yelled at by Israeli teachers) from grade four to seven but they never did teach me the meaning of the word Abigail, that job ultimately fell to Wikipedia.

Anyway some technical specifications. First she is a Specialized S-Works Roubaix, 2011 model year. But with some serious modifications, for one thing, a careful review of the above pictures one ought to be able to see I added a chain catcher. In addition, I remove the Specialized compact (50/34) crank - I'm sorry it is pretty, but Specialized, your cranks suck! (Had one on Alex - the TT bike on the right, but the crank is not rigid and it keeps dropping the chain back to 39 when I try to up-shift to 53.) Anyway I replace the crank, since it's a BB30 bottom bracket, with a SRAM Red 53/39 crank, which is nice, but actually for anyone who buy's SRAM Red, just so you know, their cranks are actually Truvative, of course SRAM owns Truvative - or is it the other way around?- but just so you know, it says SRAM on the side, it's really Truvative.

What else? Oh yes, the wheels, notice, they are Tubular (or sew-up) Fulcrum Racing Zeros. Very fast, actually I think noticeably faster than my Clincher Fulcrum Zeros.

I will say this, having had Jordan to ride for almost a year now, I don't much care for Shimano Shifting, Shimano makes a great drive train, but I think I am going to replace the Dura-Ace shifters and rear deraileur with a SRAM Red shifter system on Abigail.

Of course none of this means I am replacing or phasing out Jordan, it's just that well, as we all well know, the number of bikes we should have is n+1, where n is the number of bikes we currently have! (I haven't decided what the next bike will be, for now, I want more aero wheels for Alex and like I said a better shifting system... oh and new bars, those Specialized bars feel like tooth picks, I want something fat!, for Abby.)

So yes Abby is getting extensively modified from the basic Specialized high end (S-Works is their top of the line) bike, but I really have to tip my hat to the engineers at Specialized, that's a sweet frame they designed. The componentry they stuffed on it, really ruins it though, but at least that is easy to fix.

Anyway even though Abby still had to be properly sized for me, I really wanted to ride her on Saturday. Then it rained in the morning. So that evening, when it became apparent that the rain had stopped and things were dry enough I called up Ian Wilcox and the two of us went went on a hammerfeast. I sprinted like it was nobodies business and had to keep stopping and waiting for Ian, yeah, Abby is fast - or maybe I'm fast when I'm all scrunched up?

Sunday morning it rained so I adjusted Abby, put on a longer, S-Works (of course) stem, and raised the seat post. Then Ian and I went for another ride in the afternoon. It was hot, really hot, and muggy. Somewhere north of the city I flatted and had to do a road side tubular swap. Turns out it actually is not all that hard to swap a tubular tyre roadside, but if you are going to use tape, carry a knife to cut the tape with! (Ooops!) By the time Ian and I got to Stouffville I was dehydrated, riding home - after quite a bit of water and juice, was tough.

Monday and Tuesday I rode Abigail to work. Tuesday on the ride home the GPS went funny and said that on what I estimate to be a 19km route I did over 440km... not bad for half-an-hour of spinning. Tuesday night I went for a club ride, the Tuesday night insanity feast. Here are some pictures.

The guys were fast, damn fast, probably does not help that I have yet to fully recover from Saturday, leave alone Sunday. But they were also more than a little jealous!

Anyway we rode about 75km in about 2 hours 40 minutes, or about an average of 28.5km/h. The Lakeshore bike trail was packed and we just could not get any speed, until we started going up Royal York.

Of course Wednesday my ride to work was painful, probably did not help that there was a gusty head wind. But I managed to get myself riding reasonably quick. On Merton I was doing 35 - a 30 zone when a car recklessly overtook me so that I could catch up with him at the red light. The driver did not look to his right when he saw me. I was so tempted to ask if he enjoyed his reckless driving and that thanks to my GPS I'll only have the cops charge him with speeding. But I have better things to do with my time, like admire a very pretty little bicycle... or three!

On Rides, short and long

This past weekend was the Victoria Day long weekend. I had hoped to do club rides on Saturday and Sunday and a long ride Monday. Now my original plan for Monday was Forks of the Credit, but it turned out there was construction out there so instead my revised route called for a Lake Simcoe Monday. Then it turned out that it was going to rain on Monday and Sunday so I moved Lake Simcoe to Saturday.

I strongly suspect, well I know actually, because I kept moving the dates around a lot of the guys could not come out. In the end I did the full 180km by myself. Not that I minded, I took my iPod and listened to Trance for six and a half hours, turns out Trance is great music to train to.

Sometimes you get a really good song with a tail wind and suddenly you feel like the greatest thing on Earth. Such a thing happened as I was working my way east from Leslie Street to Warden at 19'th Ave. I had to climb the highway 404 overpass and the sun hit me head on with green fields all around and not a car in sight. I cannot describe what a wonderful feeling it was. It was a glorious ride, although I did push myself too hard, my stops were very short, just refills and quick washroom breaks, then back on the saddle. By the time I got home I was hurting. I did stop to take a few pictures.



On account of bad weather predictions, though the weather's been pretty good, I've been spending my time on the beater bike, which is actually a really good way to train. Holy smoke it hurts going anywhere at all! I do a couple one hour rides full out on the beater I'd clobber everyone at an ITT on Alex (my ITT bike). Anyway this morning I was just on my morning ride to work, on the beater, in the rain. And at a red light a group rolls past me (they were going North, I had to turn but there was no right turns on red), once the light changes I see red and hammer and catch up with them pretty quick. Turns out they were the Morning Glory group out for, a wet ride I guess. Then I discover why I hate group rides in the rain. I have fenders they have pretty Cervelo's, mostly Cervelo's (will not rant... will NOT say anything bad about Cervelo... must... resist urge!)

I tried to drop off their back, but despite the fact that I have office cloths and my lunch in my backpack, and am on a 25-30 year-old steel beater with a busted 6600 Ultegra groupset I still get to the front of their pelaton. (At least I did not give them rooster tails!) I guess they were out for a long ride and wanted to save their strength, mind you it is Thursday, don't they have to work? Maybe their rides don't work well in the rain, or maybe the machine needs a better engine? Sorry, I should not talk like that. :)

On Riding and Rain

I’ve done quite a bit of riding lately. Of course on account of the fact that my job is much closer to home, distance is shorter, but I am trying to make up for it by doing things faster and with more hills. Most days I now cover Cosburn from Donlands to Woodbine, or even further, faster than the cars do. (It helps that I have a bike lane and the cars have traffic – of course I have the same 40km/h speed limit they… disobey, and I often have a head wind – when I go east, go figure!)

Anyway I have done a bunch of hill climbing and a few club rides since my last post, one of the club rides involves a nice little climb on Brimely road. It turns out the hill (which we do repeats on), is about 890m (at least the loop I do). It starts at 88m above sea level and I turn and do it again at 160m above sea level, so it averages around 8%, but is in places as gentle as 4% and at other times is 13%.

Thursday evenings we have a little ride up and down the hill. I set a modest goal for myself, after all, it is only mid-May, I decided I would do four repeats of the hill, some guys did three, some did six. One person, a new guy, got to the bottom and from what I understand he basically just went up a little bit, turned around and went back down. Most of the guys were done and the new guy was still at the bottom. I still had plenty left in the tank and in my legs so I went back down the hill and rode up with the new guy. Mostly trying to encourage him as we rode. Towards the two thirds mark, the hill leveled off from 13% to 4 or 5%. I got back into the saddle (obviously at 13% I’m not going to be sitting all that much, I am no Alberto Contador). As the hill became more level I pushed the new guy, steadily, for about 150m (or about 500 feet). It is a nice feeling when you can, well frankly rescue someone, from the bottom of the hill.

The following week it rained almost continuously from, well Friday afternoon until Thursday morning. Although the grass and the trees are mostly green as a result of all this damned rain (more expected over the coming long weekend) the rain is getting to me. But at least I can now ride to work in the rain, I use the beater bike, something I could not do when I worked 25km from home. Tomorrow, Saturday, is supposed to be a nice day, so I am going to ride up to Lake Simcoe. I doubt anyone will come with, so I may need to charge up my iPod, oh well, at least I will get one good ride in before the rain that is predicted to ruin Sunday and Monday.

On Flats and Other Things

I know, I have not posted much lately, sorry. Things have been crazy.

Obviously the whole move nonsense is far from finished. It turns out the imbecile I bought the house from lied in the listing of the house, the driveway is not legal and I got a parking ticket for using it. (I've had to get an on street permit, thank goodness it's a quiet street that people don't generally park on.)

I got a new job, its not a problem with the old job but the new role, is, I think, a step in a better direction. I can take the subway to work, it's only 10km away - so I can ride even on the beater Coppi to work. And the role is itself a promotion, even if the pay is slightly lower. (I save so much on the commute, I'll suck up the slight loss of income.)

Of course all of this means that I have not had much time to write lately. Well actually, part of it is also a case of, hmmm, weather's starting to turn, I could stay home and write blog posts or...!

So I had a flat on a Wednesday evening joy ride. I was on Queens Quay on the way home, east bound, when not for the first time I noticed the ride quality was suddenly pretty lousy. Queens Quay as a westbound road is bad, but usable, for the eastbound cyclist, take another road! Maybe Bathurst to Front and across Front Street?

Thursday was hill climbing night with the club. It was very nice, I kept my pace down on the first climb and on the second climb I kept it steady, on the third climb a bunch of guys, not in the club came out and did their first climb, they passed me, but then just a few meters later, I passed them. On my fourth climb they managed to pass me again but I had to save up enough to do all the other 'tour of Scarbrough' stuff we had planned.

We rode over to Meadowcliffe Dr., there is a short hill, perhaps 30 or 40 meters long and maybe 18% at it's steepest. As the guys got to the hill, I was a little behind, having down-shifted to early, I yelled out, "anyone who climbs the hill in the saddle gets a cookie!" I did not part with any Fudgee-Ohs last night. Then again, I did not earn one either.

Still I did pretty well and had enough gas left in the tanks to really hammer it home.

On Weekday Rides

I have done an awful lot of rides since I last wrote. I have been busy, what can I say? Mind you busy riding, rather than writing about them, not such a bad thing. Anyway Sunday April 10, it was supposed to rain, then it was supposed to rain in the afternoon. So I went out for a morning ride with the BCC. One of the guys in the club flatted and a few of us stuck around while the rest of the club continued on. As it turned out, I was probably the weakest of the bunch who stayed to help with the tyre repair. It's not every mechanical I get to say, it was great, we screamed up Warden at about 40km/h. Then Jeff Norman, who must know roads in Toronto better than most people know the back of their hands, took us on a lovely little underpass to the Don Valley Parkway, we wound up meeting up with the main body of the group only a few kilometers from the site of the mechanical.

The club ride continued north and sure enough, when at about 40km from home it started raining. By the time I got home everything was soaking wet. Naturally in the afternoon it was warm, bright and sunny. So I spent much of the following week cleaning Jordan. That said, by Thursday night I had ridden over 500km since April 1. The season may just be starting, but things are ramping up pretty quickly now.

Here is a new rule, no looking at bicycling related websites, I drool, it is not healthy. And parking my ride at my desk at the office, not much better frankly! I keep turning and admiring. Sure she's pretty and all, but I don't see her enough on the uber long 300km rides? Well I only see her top tube bars and front wheel tyre and spokes. But apparently I don't see enough, because when at the office I keep turning and looking at my ride like she was a work of art. Then again, look at the bike or look out the window at a suburban wasteland, difficult decision.

On Weekend Rides

I do not have my GPS with me now, so no statistics. But I do recall that on Friday evening I rebuilt Jordan, well actually the rebuild was a week long affair culminating in Malcom from Biseagal tightening the cables up and adjusting the gearing. Now I should add here that when I rebuilt Jordan I put new levers, derailleurs and logically cables on her so that when the gears started misbehaving on the Saturday morning ride, I just assumed there was some seriously ugly cable stretch going on. So Saturday just before noon I rode back to Malcom, right after the ride, and asked him to have a look.

I should probably insert here the part where I confess to having taken apart my crankset about a dozen or so times in the past to clean it.

Returning to my story, Malcom has a quick look at my sweet little ride and I end up taking a Taxi home. Below are some pictures of my 39 chain ring. (It is a good thing I had a spare crankset at home. Yes I really do keep an emergency 53/39 crankset!)

The next day Ian Wilcox and I went for a little ride, well actually the whole Beaches Cycling Club went for a ride, but Ian and I went further. It was a beautiful route. We went up Leslie, but I did not feel like riding through New Market so at Vandorf we went east to Warden and along Vivian. Then to avoid yet more busy roads we took 9'th line south all the way from Vivian, it was wonderful, hardly a car, a bunch of joggers and an occasional walker. It was riding, the way riding a bike is supposed to be. By the time I got home I was in all kinds of pain and loving every bit of it. I should go on more rides like that. Anyway here is a route, very much worth doing again, or possibly (since Warden is a very quiet road early in the morning on weekends) just take Warden north right from the beginning.

Sunday_April_3_Stouffville http://www.bikely.com/

And here are some pictures of me on that ride.

On Slow Recovery

Over the weekend that just ended I rode 91km on Saturday and burned about 3950 calories in just under three and a half hours (yes a somewhat pathetic average of just over 26 km/h) and on Sunday I burned just over 4100 calories on a 105km just over three and a half hour ride (about 27km/h average.)

From this we can conclude a couple things. One is I have a lot of improvement to make, but the other conclusion I draw is that I am getting my strength back. The problem I had is over the winter I had all the grief of moving and staging of the home meant I could never use the trainer. (I shoveled lots of snow, but that does not do much for the ride.)

The summary of this past winter is as follows, since January 1 anyway, I rode once in early January and then nothing until March 13 (100km), including that March 13 ride I have done 383km in just over 168 hours. Not nearly what I would do in the summer, but it is starting up again. (Also since my current chain had - as of March 12 - 3589km and the tyres were at 1695km, I need to start really thinking about a new chain and tyres.)

Anyway enough of the mechanical and statistical details. The rides, well, Saturday Evan, Ian and I rode the Mississauga Loop, I need to figure out a better return path from Evans and Royal York to Christie at Dupont (have to do the hill on Christie, have to climb that hill!) We had what I am sure all would agree was a good ride, save the wind out of the North that nearly blew us over. On the other hand that north wind carried us down Tomken at a psycho speed. I was chasing Ian at one point on a flat and I was clocking in 50km/h. Ian and Evan are clearly in better shape right now than I am. I need to build my strength back.

I also had a sort of mini-bonk, I was getting dropped and just could not keep up, I realised my body was in glyco-synthesis mode and I could not figure out why, until it dawned on me, I am not drinking water (supplemented) - too cold, and not eating. I guzzled back half my bottle and got back into form pretty quick.

We were climbing a hill and I sort of growled as I neared the top, it's a psychological thing to growl at the hills. Well at the next red light another cyclist, on a commuter comes up beside me, kind of surprised me, she was running in stealth mode and reprimanded me for growling in hear ear - I was about one and a half meters away from her when I passed. But she was being all righteous, probably because she was on a bicycle... (yes I was too, but that's hardly relevant for the righteous set!) So I apologized, the light changed and I took off with the wind overpowering her rant on the importance of eating granola whilst wearing Birkenstocks. I think the problem the righteous cyclist has is that they think that the act of riding the bike is a sort of punishment that merits righteousness, that someone would ride for pleasure means that the someone is not worthy.

Sunday we rode up to Stouffville, well actually Musselman Lake. It was wonderful. At the start of the ride there was (in no particular order) Pat, Brook, Peter, Thi, Ian, Paul M - who clobbered me the previous Sunday - and myself. Pat and Brook took a slower pace once we got out of the city and we caught up with them in Stouffville where they had short looped. Peter kept with us to Stouffville where he broke off to get home earlier. Ian Paul and Thi then proceeded to clobber Michael several times on the way around the lake as I still need to get a lot stronger. But they were nice enough to wait for me. The ride south was brutal with a near steady head wind of about 10~15km/h. Still it was a lovely route, we used 14'th Ave and Middlefield to get back into the city. Ian and I agreed that this was the best way to re-enter from the North East.

Ian and I were talking about recovery, we both knew we would need a day or two (or about a dozen for me!) off to recover. Ian was a little bothered because the weather for Monday was supposed to be nice, turns out, it's raining.

It was a good weekend and I hope to have many more this spring, summer and fall just like the one I had. Thanks guys!