...This time with 4 part harmony and feeling.

I’m putting together another all-abilities, all-ages, slow as molasses, stop & smell the roses bicycle ride over the Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday, June 22.

When:

Sunday, June 22th (next Sunday, not the day after tomorrow). My plan is to start at my house at noon or 1pm. If I’m riding alone, I can probably be at the bridge in 30 minutes, but connecting with people will modify that, and the schedule for this ride is necessarily a bit flexible. I’m also open to other ideas (see below)

Who:

Anyone who has a bike, can manage to stay (mostly) upright on it, and wants to ride across the Golden Gate (C’mon! It’s fun! You should do it at least once!)

What:

Riding a bicycle across the Golden Gate Bridge. Also, you might want to consult your doctor about ADHD, and/or cut down on the fine herb clouding your short-term memory.

Where:

At a minimum, the Bridge, but see below

(holy crap, where did today go?)

I did not do my civic duty this week and remind everyone that today is Bike To Work Day (which, as an acquaintence pointed out, has a better ring to it that "Drive 364 Days Day")

Last year, I said "next time, in Jerusalem Skyline (Blvd)." And I did that (in October, when we returned to Daylight Sanity^WStandard Time).

This time, I rode up to the Panhandle, met some folks, rode through Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach, down The Great Highway, and out to Skyline. From there we rode to Junipero Serra Park, Back to Skyline, down to Cañada Rd, down into Woodside, up Whiskey Hill Rd, over Sand Hill Rd. I turned off at Page Mill, because we were late, when I should have continued to Arrastradero (I forgot where it crossed). From there I joined my normal ride down from Menlo Park (where I get off early for extra milage) at Oregon Expwy & 101 (there's a ped-brige over that leads to the Baylands trails. I basically leave traffic behind right there.

All told: 60 miles. 4 hours. We averaged 15mph, which isn't bad considering all the climbing. I'm not sure how much I did, but since Skyline was involved, it has to be at least a few thousand feet of vertical.

So, 60 is the new 50, and I may ride to Palo Alto this evening (for a total of 70).

Oh, and I forgot sunblock, so I'm a bit pink.

Two thoughts on taxes. (That I meant to post two and a half weeks ago when I actually did them):

1. The first thing that TurboTax told me was that starting this year (so next years taxes) same-sex partners who are registered domestic partners in the state of California must file using one of the "Married . . ." options. This information elicited the following reactions (roughly in this order, as close as my random-access train of thought gets):

   1. Yay! Recognition! A step forward! That's great!
   2. So, wait. The general idea is "Pay as though you're married, without getting the benefit of actually being so." That kind of fiscal hypocrisy fits the conservative (if not the religious) agenda perfectly.
   3. And it also means that our tax code is more progressive than our civil code. What the fuck does that say?

   So, I guess it sucks in the short-term, but it gives me hope for the long term. Anything we can do to erode the "defense of marriage" bullshit is a good thing in my book. On the other hand, it's not something that affects me directly, so I'm sure there's a whopper of a consequence I'm not considering.

2. The alternative energy credits apply to HYBRIDS? What kind of half-baked crock of shit is that? A lip-service, incremental (at best), stop-gap, Band-Aid solution that ignores the environmental impact of the production and destruction of all those batteries?

   Where the hell is the tax credit for my alternative fuel vehicle?!? You know, food.

   No. Seriously. I'm not saying I should be able to write off a decadent evening at Millennium, but maybe on a pure caloric intake level vs. the distance commuting I spend on the bike. Ok, so it sounds like the paperwork would be a hassle, but I'm keeping track of it all for weight reasons anyway.

I remember that feeling.

That's frostbite.

Edit: Also from yesterday's ride. Today I rode longer, but I got up an hour later and brought gloves.

. . . I'm a bad conservationist. And a terrible ambassador.

I broke a spoke on my touring (& commuter) bike last the previous Thursday. Since I'm lazy, I haven't fixed it yet. Since I'm lazy and incredibly busy, I tried to take it to someone to do it for me (they were closed), but that's not what makes me a bad person.[*]. It just means that I spent some time this weekend (finally!) getting my Stumpjumper into a ridable state, and I've been commuting on that.

Yesterday (Thursday) morning I contemplated making up for slothish behavior earlier in the week by getting off the train in Menlo Park and riding in from there, but I wimped out, since I was going to be riding back to Palo Alto for games at Matt's house.

. . . Then fate handed me a second chance. There was a fatality in Mountain View, we were held at Menlo Park with no idication how long it would be.

I set out with the intent of riding through the Baylands & Shoreline.

It's a bit short on the notice, but I was wondering if anyone would be interested in trying this again? (this time, with a much more amenable start time!)

Edit: I was just reminded that the Speakeasy anniversary is Saturday. I plan to be incapable of staying upright on a bicycle, thus disqualifying me from doing this on Saturday.

When?

Saturday, August 19 or Sunday, August 20th (this coming Sunday). Sometime in the late morning to early afteroon, this time the start time is negotiable. I know better than to give folks a choice, but I'm open both days, if we have a majority one day, we'll try that day. If not, I may just have to ride both days.

Who?

Anyone who has a bike, can manage to stay (mostly) upright on it, and wants to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge (C'mon! It's fun! You should do it at least once!)

What?

Riding a bicycle across the Golden Gate Bridge. Also, you might want to consult your doctor about ADHD, and/or cut down on the fine herb that appears to be clouding your short-term memory.

Where?

At a minimum, the bridge itself, but see below.

Note: This was actually written last week, but there were issues posting it. I should also compose a wrap-up of this weekend (and perhaps I will on the train)

[...It would appear that this has devolved into a recap of the weekend. C'est la vie. At least it's something.]

I've gone and done it again. I've withdrawn from the outside world. I've had a few entries rolling around in my head for a while now. They fall into major and minor categories. The major ones I'll continue procrastinating for a while longer, as they'll take much longer to get out (though I may hammer on one or two of them some more after I finish here).

That leaves the minor (minutæ) entries of no import. I've collected them all into one entry to make them easier to ignore. They themselves fall into a few broad subcategories.

My mountain bike was hanging in the garage last night (ok, maybe it was yesterday morning).

This morning, it was gone. The garage was LOCKED for the intervening time. Nobody who I know in possession of keys has any knowledge of where it went. (Well, ok, I didn't ask Diana, but she's in NYC for a month caring for a failing mother, I figured she's got enough going on)

Everyone's first reaction (including mine) has been, "are you sure you didn't take it somewhere and forget?" (it's also been my 3rd, 5th, 17th, and 642nd reaction)

It was in our garage with 3 other bikes, two of which would have been much easier to take, as they were not hanging. There were other things in there that would also have been easy to take, computers, etc. Only my bike is missing. I feel targeted (I can't help thinking I've misplaced it, but I KNOW I saw it there yesterday.)

My favorite bike in the whole freaking world is gone. Not the one I have been (playfully) thinking about replacing. FUCK!

I'm in shock.

More later.

Cantilever brakes are still the bane of my %$#!&ing (bike maintenance) existence. Only an engineer could have thought that a single nut to adjust 4 degrees of freedom simultaneously was a good thing. I marvel at the simplicity, but it means that the slightest adjustment becomes "time to start over." I'm also out of practice, though regular practice never really helped all that much.

I hope they're toed properly, because I'm not taking it for a test ride tonight. I don't think I could take starting over again.

EDIT: (7:30am) Test ride complete. They appear to be toed & adjusted correctly. I'm not THAT far out of practice.

Last chance!

If any of you were thinking about riding with us over the Golden Gate Bridge tomorrow and hadn't spoken up yet, please get ahold of me. You're more than welcome to come, but arrangements are being made.

Currently I'm meeting folks at 17th & Valencia at about 9:20 and making our way up to Golden Gate Park. The current plan is to try the Marin Headlands ride. Stork says it's gorgeous, and I've never actually done it. I'm still more than happy to go with folks to Sausalito, though.

I'm putting together an all-abilities, all-ages, slow as molasses, stop & smell the roses bicycle ride over the Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday 6/10.

I keep putting this announcement off, and if I do that much longer, I'll be riding alone, since nobody will have been alerted. I first mentioned this in a LiveJournal comment buried in a thread several levels deep. The electronic equivalent of the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard."

When:

Saturday, June 10th (next Saturday, not tomorrow). My plan is to start at my house at 9am. If I'm riding alone, I can probably be at the bridge in 30 minutes, but connecting with people will modify that, and the schedule for this ride is necessarily a bit flexible. I'm open to other ideas (see below)

Who:

Anyone who has a bike, can manage to stay (mostly) upright on it, and wants to ride across the Golden Gate (C'mon! It's fun! You should do it at least once!)

What:

Riding a bicycle across the Golden Gate Bridge. Also, you might want to consult your doctor about ADHD, and/or cut down on the fine herb clouding your short-term memory.

Where:

At a minimum, the Bridge, but see below

There must be something about Thursdays & 50. This week's fifty is even more exciting (to me, at least) than the last.

I've lost 50 lbs., officially.

Last week I had exactly 3 lbs. to go to reach that goal. I figured the best course of action would be to set myself up this week to make it an easy thing to reach next week. Especially with the 3 day weekend coming up. Instead, somehow I crashed through it losing 3.8! Normally, I'd reserve this kind of thing for my [M]otivation filter, but I'm too excited.

Right about this time last year, I was 50 lbs heavier. I'm also officially off my 5-ish month slump. I am tracking my food again, and holding myself accountable. In the last month, I've lost 10 lbs.

Actually, that last bit has me just a tad concerned. If this pace keeps up (I don't think it will), it'll mean that my body is almost certainly cannibalizing muscle mass to keep up. This is not what I want.

More than likely, though, my sudden jump to 60 miles of cycling/week (105 last week, thanks to my "Bike to Work Day" whim) is the real culprit. It may also be my 5 month hiatus has reset my glycogen stores, so what I'm really losing is mostly water weight. The argument against that is that I recently discovered that I didn't "hold steady" for the last 5 months, as I originally believed. I lost. But the trend was impossible to discern from the sawtooth pattern from which it came until I sat down & looked at the long view. Really, I'll only get alarmed if this pace continues unabated.

And, in the grand scheme, this is a good problem to have.

(as they played out in my head)

"I rode my bike to work this morning."

"Umm, don't you always do that?"

"No, let me restate: I rode. my bike. to work. this morning."

(further hints for the still clueless): "No train was involved. 50 miles door-to-door")

WOO!

Now, if I could just get Homer Simpson singing Black Sabbath out of my head. "I. Am. Ironman. NANA-NANA-NANA-NA-NA-NUH-NA!" It was only 50 miles. At a group pace.

Edit: Hahahahahahahahahahaha! I earned half-again my Points™®© allowance in Activity Points™®©. Southwestern Eggrolls, anyone? ;-`)

The commute hasn't been as nice to me this week. In general the bike cars have been full when they arrive at 22nd St. I also realized this week that the new style (which I thought were great) bike cars HALVE the space for bikes. When the weather was crappy they were running two bike cars on the baby bullets I was taking. Now that it's gotten nice and everybody & their brother is riding their bike (and the gas prices continue to to climb above $3/gal.) there is only one. I know this is a coincidence, but it's rather aggavating.

The culmination of this state of affairs was yesterday when I missed TWO back-to-back baby bullets! (8:04 & 8:16). The next train didn't stop at 22nd St., and the train following (which I got on) that didn't stop at either Mountain View or Sunnyvale! (I briefly contemplated riding in from Santa Clara, but I was already over an HOUR behind where I started)

After that fiasco, I have very begrudgingly decided to give up my ~3 minute, barrel-down-the-hill morning commute, and ride to 4th & King. (I'll still get off @ 22nd St. in the evening). That commute was one of the reasons I looked at living on Potrero Hill. But our house is still awesome, and the view is still crazy. I'm glad we didn't compromise. It's just annoying to get up earlier to ride longer for a train that leaves earlier. But it's much more likely to guarantee me a spot.

This morning I left at 7:30 to give me plenty of time to test ride my newly configured touring bike (another post coming later) and make the 7:59 departure early enough that wouldn't be blocked. I arrived at 7:40, and the doors weren't open yet for the 7:59. No other bikes around. Perfect. As they were closing the doors on the 7:43 (a limited local), I noticed it arrived at Mountain View a just few minutes earlier than the 7:59. I snuck on, and am now arriving California Avenue. I've debated getting off at San Antonio, to ride on the Baylands trails. (My old commute to work!)

A few days ago I noticed that my rear tire was flat as I left to catch the train home. As it turned out, it wasn't the kind of thing that a new tube or a patch would fix. I've had these tires for many years, I've repaired more minor issues, and I've probably put at least few hundred miles on them. It's time to retire them. I don't have spare tires, and for some reason I've put off ordering more since this happened.

So for the past few days I've been riding my mountain bike to work. There are definite advantages to doing that: my trip down to the train in the morning is even more of a joy, since I don't have to dodge the various cracks & small holes in the pavement, and can just bomb down the hill. AND I finally rode home to my door the day before yesterday. Lower gearing ratio was key there. Yes, I have a triple on my road (touring) bike. It's not low enough. I'm lame. This should not be news.

But on the far end, the ride to work is much more annoying. I'm constantly upshifting, or trying to. "What, that can't be it?!?" My cruising speed feels anemic and pushing to my top speed feels like a joke!

On the plus side, in the last day or so I think I finally broke through the next fitness plateau. It might be the mountain bike vs. the road bike, but I think the first day of riding the mountain bike was just as much of a struggle as the previous days on the road bike. Today and yesterday, it was much, MUCH easier.

Another bonus: with my new schedule, I just got home. But that's a post for another time.

Not so good this morning. I missed not one, but two trains looking for my %$#@%$ing shoes. This is why I hate cleaning up. The next train didn't stop at 22nd St, so I booked it to 4th & King. I made it with plenty of time, so at least that was good.

A bunch of bikes got on with me, carried by too-cool-for-it-all hipsters (Including one who could very well be Jen Besemer's doppelgänger except that she's, you know, outside). I asked them all where they were going. Need I say? Palo Alto. So it also goes without saying that they took up 4 different racks (half of the total), in spite of going less than half the distance this train is travelling. And the doppelgänger gave me the "oh, puhleeze" look when I suggested she double up with one of the other two.

Sure enough, the crowd that arrives just before the train leaves just got here, and they're forced to move bikes around in the back because the 4 up front are for Palo Alto. GRN. Situational awareness, people! It's NOT THAT HARD! (yes, yes, kettle, meet pot. So if I'm complaining about it, it has to be bad.)

And yes, for those who were about to ask, I HAVE had breakfast already.

Update: Doppelgänger is now having a very loud cellphone conversation. The voice is wrong. But maybe it'd get closer if I shoved that phone up her ASS!

I'm really enjoying my commute. Having a monthly pass makes things that much easier. But it's not without peril. A (two or more zone) monthly Caltrain pass is good for free VTA rides. This caused a moment of hesitation this morning when I looked out the train window and it was POURING! In the end, I made the right decision. I had my rain-gear on already, and it's faster for me to ride than take the light rail (!!)

I had a great ride in. Some of it was the pushing through the "inclement" weather, some of it was the exercise. I felt great when I got to work. Too bad I left my wallet & badge at home. :-/

A few weeks ago I broke down and downloaded an RSS reader. After poking around a bit, I settled on BlogBridge. It's OSS, cross-platform, and it seems to have most of the features I care about. One of the other readers I saw had the ability to use XSLT to transform it's look & feel, but I don't think it was OSS.

I played with it a bit. The UI is a bit odd. The keyboard controls aren't what I expected. But still, it was a novelty. I don't think it would have progressed beyond that if I hadn't had a flash of inspiration: since it caches the RSS feeds, It basically makes a a great offline news/blog/website reader!

I'm really enjoying using the time on the train to peruse the blogs (etc.) on which I used to waste my time at work. I've even found a few new blogs along the way. The one I've most enjoyed: The Traveler's Lunchbox. I'm really loving the way she writes, and the food porn & recipes are just icing. Go, check it out, see if she doesn't suck you in!

Update: Next step: hacking something so that I can get my $#%#@ing LJ Friends Page as an RSS feed!

Also written started on the train!

It would appear that I didn't take the 9:04 Baby Bullet yesterday. While they have started staggering the stops at which the 3xx trains stop, none of the southbound trains in morning (nor the northbound in the evening) have been staggered to stop at Sunnyvale. (The opposite configurations both have, *grumble*)

I guess the local express was running late, because I arrived after it should have left. The trouble was that there was a train pulling in just as I came down the stairs, and I still needed a ticket, so I didn't have too much time to scrutinize the situation too much.

Today, I definitely got on the right train. It was even better than yesterday. I hadn't been in the new bike cars yet. Facing seats with two power outlets for each set of 4 seats! It was wonderful!

Fortunately, the conductor called out the two next stops, which made me realize that this train wasn't stopping at Sunnyvale. That made me check the schedule, and realize the mistake yesterday. I rode in from Mountain View, rather than taking VTA. I'm pretty sure I beat the light rail to my office. Yay!

[Oops, forgot to post this last night... ed.]

I'm actually writing this on the train. Today was my first day back commuting on Caltrain.

This morning was fantastic! The trip to 22nd St. was all downhill, so it was a breeze. This was good because I got (at most) 4 hours sleep last night, and woke up with just enough time to make the last Baby Bullet at 9:04.

I've ridden the Baby Bullet before, and most of you have heard my "WTF, we're here already?!?" story. It was a very nice ride, but I realized I'd left the power brick for my laptop at home. It was time to get a spare, anyway.

I rode to Sunnyvale instead of Mountain View, to force me to ride in, and it was nice, fun, exciting near misses with stupid drivers yakking on phones while failing to aim their sublimated sexual inadequacies^W^W^Wurban assault vehicles. It was too short, I'm actually thinking I'd more enjoy riding from Mountain View.

Actually, I just realized that once the days get longer, I should consider getting off at San Antonio, and riding through the Baylands to the Stevens Creek Trail! I could have my (very) old commute back! I loved that ride! I still miss that ride.

On the way into work this morning I realized that I had left my light at home. Based on that, I decided to take VTA home rather than ride in the dark.I looked up this evening and realized it was nearly 6pm. I checked the schedules and realized that I had a slim chance (if VTA wasn't in any way delayed) of making the last Baby Bullet if I raced to catch the next light rail train.

The Caltrain wasn't pulling out as we pulled up, as I expected, but I needed to buy a ticket, and the machine didn't work, and it pulled out as I was running to the other one.

The next train didn't stop at 22nd St, so I waited 40 mins (total) for the next one.

Even with all of that, I'm very happy with my commute so far. I know it's still a honeymoon, and I may feel differently in a few months. But right now, I'm REALLY looking forward to working on my own projects (like blogging more regularly) and relaxing.

I may feel differently once I've scaled the hills back to my house.

Update: Holy crap, that hill kicked my ass! The cyclist in me is ashamed at how badly such a "short" hill got to me.

But it hasn't affected my enjoyment of the commute. If anything, I look forward to making that hill my bitch.

(I should pre-date this by a week, but nobody on LJ would see it if I did that)

Ok, let me start by saying I am fine. Keep that in mind as I tell you about my (Friday) morning.