Monochromatic Outlook

I’m con­cerned about the set­up of my new bike, but I don’t know enough about frame geom­e­try to real­ly know what to do about it.

I’m notic­ing that my fore­arms are real­ly get­ting tired when I ride. Much more so than when I ride either on flat bars or on drops aimed a lit­tle far­ther down. I have to reach a bit more to get at my brakes, and that may have some­thing to do with it. On the oth­er hand, … Read the rest

I’m try­ing to get myself moti­vat­ed to ride my bike to work, but I haven’t even got­ten past the “stop star­ing at the com­put­er and make break­fast” stage. If I pro­cras­ti­nate much longer I’ll have to take BART or something.

C’mon Steve, get mov­ing. It’s only morn­ing: noth­ing to be afraid of.

No such thing as spare time
No such thing as free time
No such thing as down time
All you got is life­time GO!

Jus­ti­fied anger near­ly got me killed last night.

I was rid­ing my bicy­cle home from work, with all my lights and blink­ers oper­at­ing. I (usu­al­ly) obey traf­fic laws when I ride, so I stopped for a red light at Mar­ket and Van Ness. There was a cop direct­ing traf­fic as well as the light. I kept my eye on the cop when the light changed, expect­ing him to move one of his hands to indi­cate that we should go or not. … Read the rest

Aver­aged 14.75mph on the way to work this morn­ing. I should have left ear­li­er, so I end­ed up being a bit late to work. After arriv­ing, I locked up the bike and took a show­er at the gym. I need to get the cloth­ing part worked out, because I am not dis­ci­plined enough to take it easy rid­ing in and not get all sweaty. I need to show­er on this end of the commute.

Of course, I … Read the rest

Every­one knows what AA is, right? Well here’s an anec­dote about the ori­gins of AA: Bill Wil­son, one of the founders of AA, had tried to get a bunch of gut­ter-drunks sober for months before he met Dr. Bob Smith, the singer of the Cure oth­er founder. He had no suc­cess, and one day was despair­ing of the fact that none of the drunks he’d been work­ing with had stayed sober. And his wife Lois point­ed out, «but Bill, it’s … Read the rest

In pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence, some­one I used to trust wrote the following:

some­times it’s eas­i­er to just be bitter

This is sur­pris­ing­ly true. It is eas­i­er just being bit­ter. I don’t know where I’d be with­out my bit­ter­ness. It is the fuel that keeps me mov­ing and which makes me strong. Bit­ter, I can look my reflec­tion in the eye. Bit­ter, I show up at the gym. Bit­ter, I can keep oth­ers at bay. Bit­ter, I don’t have to hurt. Bit­ter … Read the rest

I’ve had the excite­ment of my first bouts of explo­ration, lat­er brought to new heights as I learned to do things I’d nev­er done before. Still lat­er I fell in mad­ly in love with lean, beau­ti­ful, fast, and expen­sive. Today my needs are for more prac­ti­cal­i­ty, I don’t need a tro­phy; I just need reli­able and maybe a lit­tle fun along the way.

I went out this morn­ing and rode for a cou­ple hours. End­ed up doing only about 14 miles; … Read the rest

The new bike has STI shifters. Every road bike made these days has those (or ErgoPow­er in the case of Cam­pag­no­lo-equipped bikes) but this is the first time I’ve got­ten to ride with brake-lever shifters. My first reac­tion, not hav­ing rid­den this bike more than a mile (I took it home on the bus since it was after dark and I had­n’t put any lights on it) is to run right into retro-grouch mode and bad­mouth them. the brake levers … Read the rest

Set­ting up the new bike, and I’m real curi­ous to see how it rides.

It’s a big­ger frame than I’m used to—a 55cm frame, where my rac­ing bike is a 53cm frame. Hope­ful­ly I won’t have to make any rapid dis­mounts (!!!!). The fel­low who set up the bike rec­om­mend­ed the 55cm, as he said “most peo­ple ride frames that are too small.” Interesting.

Well, very very inter­est­ing, actu­al­ly. the frame geom­e­try of this bike is so very … Read the rest