You don't see this every day...

Yes, Smoke.

My wife called me while she was out this evening and told me to look outside. Sure enough, the atmosphere was filled with the hazy look and murky scent of smoke. I tried to get good photos of it, but I couldn't get them to turn out.

According to the news, the smoke was from a controlled burn several hundred miles away.

Ice, snow, smoke... Maybe tomorrow will be NORMAL?!

Safe Passing Bill At Risk

EVERYONE NEEDS TO GET ON THE HORN TO THEIR SENATORS AGAIN, BEFORE 11 AM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 2009 !!!


From BikeTexas:

Safe Passing Bill At Risk
Contact Your Senator NOW!

Today, Senator Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) introduced the 2009 Safe Passing Bill (CSSB 488 / CSHB 827) on the floor of the Texas State Senate.

In a dialogue with Senator Ellis, Senator Dan Patrick (R-Houston) raised concerns about several aspects of the bill. Senator Ellis chose to withdraw the bill, pending additional discussion this evening with Senator Patrick to address these concerns.

BikeTexas had provided bill language and other information to all Senators' offices since the start of the session and had not been made aware of any concerns by Senator Patrick. BikeTexas staff are now preparing additional documents to submit to the offices of Senators Patrick and Ellis in preparation for tomorrow's session.

What you can do:

Please contact your State Senator no later that 11:00 a.m. tomorrow, Wednesday, April 8th!

Click here to find your senator, then:

* If you live in the district of an "Unconfirmed" Senator, including Senator Patrick: Call or email his office immediately to ask him to support Safe Passing. The list of senators is below.

* If you live in the district of a "Supporting" senator: Call or email his or her office immediately to express your thanks for his or her support for Safe Passing. The list of senators is below.

As always, please be sure to be polite and professional in your communications, whether your legislator supports or opposes CSSB 488.

Unconfirmed
Kip Averitt (R-Waco), Dist. 22
Craig Estes (R-Wichita Falls), Dist. 30
Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay), Dist. 24
Chris Harris (R-Arlington), Dist. 9
Glenn Hegar (R-Katy), Dist. 18
Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa (D-Mission), Dist. 20
Robert Nichols (R-Jacksonville), Dist. 3
Steve Ogden (R-Bryan), Dist. 5
Dan Patrick (R-Houston), Dist. 7

Support Safe Passing
John Carona (R-Dallas), Dist. 16
Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth), Dist. 10
Robert Deuell (R-Greenville), Dist. 2
Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock), Dist. 28
Rodney Ellis (D-Houston), Dist. 13
Kevin Eltife (R-Tyler), Dist. 1
Mario Gallegos (D-Houston), Dist. 5
Joan Huffman (R-Houston), Dist. 17
Mike Jackson (R-La Porte), Dist. 11
Eddie Lucio, Jr. (D-Brownsville), Dist. 27
Jane Nelson (R-Lewisville), Dist. 12
Kel Seliger (R-Amarillo), Dist. 31
Florence Shapiro (R-Plano), Dist. 8
Eliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso), Dist. 29
Carlos Uresti (D-San Antonio), Dist. 19
Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio), Dist. 26
Kirk Watson (D-Austin), Dist. 14
Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio), Dist. 25
Royce West (D-Dallas), Dist. 23
John Whitmire (D-Houston), Dist. 15
Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands), Dist. 3
Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo), Dist. 21

Evil Geniuses

I'm paraphrasing here, but one of the guys on a local geek/tech mailing list said Kansas City will continue to have snow every weekend until our demands are met...

At first, I chortled merrily. I'm a bit of a mad scientist myself (although I'm not terribly evil and I'm certainly not a genius)

And then, I groaned. I really don't much care for this weather. It's been intermittently sleeting, raining, snowing and flurrying very lightly all day and it looks like I'm in for some abysmal elements in the morning. I'm probably going to need to take The Goat out of hiding for this one. Try to stay shiny side up out there tomorrow, fellow midwesterners.

Random Tunage:
Ferry Corsten - Shelter Me
Britney Spears - Everytime

Not that I really give two farts what anyone thinks of my (lack of?) musical taste, but check it out before you flame me for the Britney track. This ethereal gem was hiding in her 2003 album In The Zone. This was an otherwise barely-tolerable album toward the beginning of an era where the line between pop and hip-hop was fading fast. Its only chart-impacting single was "Toxic" - in more than one way. All that aside, "Everytime" managed to pull off a vibe that's distinctly out of its element, and I like it. You might, too.

Breaker of things

No, I didn't break a bike. Sally's bike is all geared up now, with fresh handlebar grips and brake pads. Almost all the way adjusted.

This evening, I helped some friends break into a phone card vending machine at CCCKC. My friend Jon bought it from a local surplus shop. One of the guys at the surplus place accidentally locked it without having the key.

After a trying to occasionally pick the lock and failing... (This is my friend Trent using a special tubular-lock picking tool)


We just went ahead and drilled it out this evening. A few years back, I found some drill bits in the dumpster that were designed for drilling hardened steel locks. They came in handy tonight.


I'm having a bad hair day.


Inside? No money or free phone calls to Mexico. But now we can actually set this thing up to do something useful. Jon (the middle guy above), who owns it, is thinking of turning it into a machine that can burn copies of free software, like Ubuntu Linux, for example. It may or may not charge money for the service. I look forward to seeing what happens with this little project.

Fixer of things

Last week, I took delivery of Sally's Specialized Crossroads Cruz. I knew it needed some things. I immediately mail-ordered some tires. Those came in yesterday.


This box was huge but light. The spring clip on my rack held it in place nicely. I just had to ride across the apartment complex with it, as the package was left at the clubhouse.


As I started tearing into the bike for the first time, I caught a few things that weren't readily apparent when I took it in. For instance, the bottom bracket cup was way out of adjustment. It was binding. Fortunately, no permanent damage was done. I cleaned it all up while I had it apart and packed the bearings with my favorite grease, made for boat trailer axles. It's thicker than most bottom bracket grease, but the cranks spin smoothly. This waterproof grease is what I used on Hybridzilla's bottom bracket, and it saved me tons of hassle on wet days. Unlike Hybridzilla (Marketed by Diamondback), this bike has some dust seals on the BB cups, so water getting in won't be as much of a concern. Better safe than sorry, though.


Sally wanted narrowish, higher-pressure tires, but not slick road tires. I opted for the Forte Gotham city tires. At 700x35, they're a good touring and city tire with a nice, efficient tread pattern. They're rated for 75 PSI, so they're plenty firm but the width helps absorb some of the harshness from the road.


For giggles, I threw a battery in the computer that was on the bike. It works just fine, so I calibrated it for the tire size.


Right before I got The Twelve fixed up with a new rear wheel, my backpack broke. One of the straps just ripped clean off from the bottom. The stitches came out. This bag's construction is too thick and beefy for most stitching needles to go through, so I shelved the bag. The thing is almost two and a half years old; I probably should have thrown it out, but I didn't.

Last night, I had an idea. There's a hard plastic backing inside the backpack, and both the strap and outer layers are nylon. I heated up an old soldering iron of mine and rammed it through the layers of plastic and vinyl, creating a perfect (and sealed-from-fraying) hole for which to pass some zip ties through. It's so ghetto, but it worked so well. I have a backpack again!


I used that backpack this morning and threw my lights on the Crossroads for my commute to the bus. I wasn't expecting rain, so I got wet (damn I miss my fenders!) but it rode like a dream. It totally needs new brakes, though.


Some xkcd humor on the Starbucks blackboard this morning.

Where have all the April Fools gone?

April Fools' Day used to be a day for pranksters and practical jokers to get their jollies.

Now it's just a day for everyone to tell lies on the Internet.

This makes me very, very sad.

March Recap: Wind

This was the month of March according to Weather Underground's log of wind speed and gusts. This pretty much sums up the whole month. I really don't have anything else to say that this graph won't convey to you.


Karen and I took the A bus out of town. We fought 30+ MPH headwinds for the last leg of the trip (about 3 miles for me).

In Kansas, spring is either very cold or very windy. Sometimes both. Never neither.

Exercise-Induced Asthma

It happens so infrequently, maybe eight times per year.

It happens when I push too hard. But I push too hard a few times per week. Usually, pushing too hard just makes me huff and puff. Sometimes, if I push too hard for a long time, I get dizzy, too. This is different.

It happened again last night.

After some of the usual huffing and puffing, my chest tightens. Something isn't right.

Seconds later, I feel a tickle in my throat. It's followed by audible wheezing.

Within minutes, I'm coughing, and there's a lot of phlegm building up.

From there, my lungs feel like they're rubbed raw or on fire. If you've ever had a coughing fit that's lasted several days, you know what this kind of bronchitis feels like. You can't breathe all the way in, nor can you breathe all the way out. You have to take short, metered breaths or the consequences of more coughing await. More coughing leads to more irritation.

Within an hour or so, the wheezing goes away, so does the bronchitis feeling. It leaves behind a cough that lasts a day or two.

I've heard that Exercise-Induced Asthma affects a good portion of the world's top athletes, so it stands to reason that it also affects lots of people like me, who are still out of shape but are doing something to get some exercise.

Now, I just need to figure out what in the world is triggering it. There's no specific season where it happens more than others. It doesn't seem to be related only to air temperature or humidity, but I can "force" it to happen if I don't keep my mouth covered in sub-freezing weather and do some high-effort stuff that forces me to breathe through my mouth.

I suppose I should probably go see a sports-medicine doctor or someone who can help me pinpoint the cause so I know how to stop it before it starts. I'll be honest. This would be a lot less frustrating if it happened every time I pushed really hard. I don't like being taken by surprise like this.

Earth Hour, Transient Snow

Saturday, my wife and I "kind of" participated in Earth Hour. When I say "kind of", I mean that we turned off almost everything in the place, even the clothes dryer that was running. We didn't unplug anything and the server farm stayed up. All the computer monitors and our laptops were already shut down, though.


My wife and I decided to read Bible passages aloud by candle-light for an hour. To that measure, we had a lot of candles going. This shows most of them, which provided enough light in our living room to read by. I'm not sure how much carbon we really saved. Those servers probably slurped up a good chunk, and I know all these candles weren't helping too much. Thank goodness I'm not a totally crazed eco-zealot. That's not to say I don't believe in respect and stewardship for what we've all been given to share with one another -- past, present and future.


Saturday also brought with it quite a few inches of freezing rain and snow. This was a bizarre, transient storm that dumped on us all day. Sunday and into today, warm, strong south winds and clear skies cooked almost all of the precipitation away. It was very strange to go out yesterday afternoon to see the pavement steaming with dry patches, wet spots, water rushing to the storm drains, and huge piles of plowed snow all at the same time, just 12 hours after the storm came to an end. The pavement was dry except for a few spots this morning. All that was left of the plowed roadside mess was a thin trail of slushy road grime. All but the biggest parking-lot piles will probably be gone by the time I leave work.


I did have to fight a head/crosswind with gusts up to 25 MPH on the way to the bus this morning. I personally find the combination of head and crosswinds to be the most loathsome of all kinds of wind. When you've got the opportunity to take the lane like I do on Quivira in the morning, it's not too big of a problem. If you find yourself having to share a lane (including the use of a bike lane), this kind of wind will either try to curb you or throw you in front of a vehicle. That's not my idea of a good time, and it's a good reason to keep your bike out in the middle of the road, where hopefully you'll make the point that motorists should change lanes to go around. If they don't, at least you've got a whole bunch of room to your right.

Random Tunage:
Crystal Method - Blowout
Prodigy - Firestarter

March 30

Morning Temp: 53 degrees

Head: Headsweat skull cap & Helmet
Torso: Old style (Thick polyester) performance jersey and warm up jacket
Gloves: Fingerless (no liners)
Legs: Sugoi polyester shorts (heavier than normal lycra), leg warmers.
Feet: cotton socks

Overall comfort: warm to warm enough to unzip the warm up near the end of the run.

Ride was routine

Small Miracles

Say what you will about Christian Faith, about hope, about prayer.

Some believe it's the power of the mind at work, a way to trick ourselves into a positive outlook.

Some say "Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness." (video link from The Matrix Reloaded)

Well, I've seen what it can do before, and in small ways, I saw what it can do this week with four small miracles including good news on my job and good news in finding our 13-year-old cat, Boots.

It turns out that Boots spent at least the last two days hiding in this hole, according the neighbors. This is a small, shingled awning over some garage doors on the apartment building adjacent to ours. He was gone a total of 9 days. When we found him, he was too scared to come out for us. We had to wait until after dark to rescue him. Our apartment staff was very friendly, as was the resident of the apartment with a balcony next to this hole. Hopefully, the apartment maintenance folks patch this hole soon. I can only imagine all kinds of creatures could find their way into this chasm.



He was stinky and dirty like one would expect after more than a week of gallivanting the neighborhood and cowering in an enclosed, musty dead space over garages. Rain had already set in last night, so he was wet as well. I took the opportunity to give him a bath. Normally, he won't have anything to do with bathing, but since he was already soaked, he didn't seem to mind too much.



Now our other cat just needs to get used to having him around again. She's still not quite sure what to make of all of this.

Bomb!

A doodle inspired roughly by a Mac SE/30 and MacOS Classic error messages with the infamous bomb icon. I worked on this a little bit at a time.


JR's Bike Dungeon. He was getting ready to fix up the wheel for me. This is only a small amount of the bikes he has in storage. I think he needed to get these out of there just to open his tool box :)


My... mobile office? I had to swing by the bank and get money out of my PayPal account for JR. Couldn't remember my ATM pin for that card. I must've looked pretty strange standing there in business casual clothes using my bike as a computer desk to reset my pin while standing right in front of the bank.


Dora misses Boots, but we might have another friend for her soon. Someone's desperate to find a home for an adolescent kitty and we might just see how she gets along with Dora. If Boots comes back, my wife can practice being a crazy cat lady.



Ironic Tunage:
Orbital - P.E.T.R.O.L.
Geggy Tah - Whoever You Are

Seriously, I heard both of those at work today...

Storms

Our first real storm system of the season rolled through last night. It didn't do a whole lot in my neck of the woods, except cause some pretty good straight-line gusts. Further north and off to the southwest (Lincoln/Omaha Nebraska and near Wichita, Kansas), there were some tornadoes. Fast clouds looked ominous as the sun set. The below animation (once it's loaded) plays at about 3x the speed that it was photographed, but the low clouds were still moving at a really good clip.


A reader-turned friend of mine, Sally (a.k.a. Sallymander) scored an older Specialized Crossroads Cruz that was being thrown out. I'll use her picture of the bike since I haven't taken one yet:


I offered to fix it up for her, and it needs quite a bit of work. The previous owner was apparently riding it when the rear tire blew out. The inner tube caught the rear brake pad, which then pulled the inner-tube and stretched it as it wrapped around the gear cluster, grinding the rim against the pavement and to a halt. From what we can tell (a destroyed handlebar grip, pavement-ground rim and badly scuffed pedal), the resulting wipeout must have been quite spectacular. The frame, front wheel and all the drivetrain components are still in great shape. Although barely worn down, the brakes might be hardened and brittle, though. I need to check.

Given the sprocket, chain, and brake wear I'm seeing, it looks like this bike maybe had 100-200 miles put on it and otherwise spent most of its time hanging upside-down in a garage. It reminds me a lot of Hybridzilla: a lightly used bike with a ton of potential. Scoping around, it appears to be from the 1995 model year.

I ordered the new tires for it last night (Forte Gotham city tires) and swung by JR's shop to see what we can do about replacing the damaged rear wheel. It's a bit of an odd beast: 6-speed freewheel, 700c. Once upon a time, this was a popular setup. I believe Karen's yellow bike is configured the same way. These days, you don't see many 700c wheels threaded for a freewheel cluster. While a modern freehub wheel would fit in the dropouts nicely, you can't find 6-speed cassettes and the spacing is wrong for the indexed grip-shifters on this bike. JR has a bunch of good, used wheels, so we'll find a solid one to fit the bill for this repair. I brought the old wheel with me to work this morning so JR can wrench on it, since I don't have (or need) freewheel tools. We'll keep the OEM freewheel cluster since it's still in good shape.



Work's all fine. I just got the Ward Cleaver speech. "Okay, Beav. What did we learn from this?"

Boots is still missing, though. If he's still okay, I hope he had somewhere warm and dry to stay during the storms last night.

Traffic Skills 101 coming up soon!

The Traffic Skills 101 course is only taught a few times per year. This is the course that teaches you how to mix it up safely with cars on everyday roads, not on the law-enforcement-controlled pay-ride routes.This is the one that you really need to have if you want to be a bicycle commuter, for example. Even if you are an experienced cyclist, you are guaranteed to learn something in this class which will make your investment worthwhile... and maybe save you from getting hurt! $60 is pretty cheap as opposed to hitting the pavement, or a car.



Peter


-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Traffic Skills 101 (formerly Road I) / Willowbrook area

Date: Sat May 16 10 am and Sun May 17 8 am
Instructor: Peter Wang
Location: REI Willowbrook, 17717A Tomball Parkway, Houston, TX 77064
Fee: $60 class fee (waived if hardship; family discount)

Description: Do you want to learn to cycle confidently and safely in the Houston area? Then this class is a must! Learn to communicate effectively with motorists and enjoy the ride. We'll discuss proper lane positioning, basic rules of the road, how to avoid obstacles, scanning, changing a tire, emergency turns, emergency stops, basic maintenance, and much, much more! Saturday will be all lecture (no bicycle needed) and Sunday will include parking lot drills and a group ride.

To register for this course, contact:

David Sims
Phone: (832) 237-8833 x206
Contact Email: dsims@rei.com
Signup required in advance? Yes
Special signup instructions: Please call the REI store to sign up for this class. $60 class fee

Equipment required: SAT: paper, pen, lunch or $ SUN: pen, bike, helmet, water, lunch or $

A bad week.

I've been mum for the past few days, so here's a run-down of real life:

Our older cat, Boots, escaped Wednesday night. It's closing in on 4 days and we haven't found him yet. We're both kind of worried, but I think we've done all we can do to ensure his safe return. This includes a geeky "live trap" by keeping some of his favorite food by the front door, along with a motion detector to alert us when something or someone is at the door. We've also checked with various shelters, postered the neighborhood, and tried online registries.

I couldn't sleep at all Wednesday night. I had to take Thursday off because I was sick and tired.

Friday, I caught some heat at work for a technical glitch that was partially caused by me. It's not likely a career-ender, but it's also my first real mistake in almost 3 years of working for this company. I figure out my fate on Monday, after I hand in a post-mortem report to management.

Nothing ruins a weekend quite like waiting to be punished on Monday... unless that something is being worried sick about your cat and your job at the exact same time.

Stranger than strange.

I was waiting for Chris to get his bike from River Market Cyclery when I saw this Cannondale Scalpel. It only has one side on its fork. That, my friends, is even stranger than strange.


Billy, the shop owner, says it rides just like a normal cross country mountain bike. He did an almost-century ride on a 29er with a similar fork (and hybrid tires)


And now for some other random pics from the past few days of awesome-weather commuting, in no particular order. It doesn't feel like mid-March to me. I've been eating it up!

Riding with Karen.


Following Chris


Stopped behind/under some crazy truck. GRAAAAAAWWWRRR!


Pre-dawn


Off-roading my road bike.

Strange

Fenders.

Pannier.

Rack.

Aero Spokes.

I'm still not quite used to the look. I am ecstatic about the durability of the wheel itself, though.


I found out that this wheelset is somewhat popular for cyclocross (and even comes on at least one decent 'cross bike from the factory) so I suppose I should finally quit cringing with every single seam in the pavement.

Faux Toes. March 12, 2009

Someone needs to tow this thing. Parked right next to the BUS STAND NO PARKING sign, and parked facing against traffic. He must be VERY important. Didn't you know important people drive 1999 Firebirds?


Bus reflectivity.


I love helicopters.


It's a shame this one was transporting a baby that'd fallen down a flight of stairs. No, it wasn't anyone I know, but as far as I can tell, it survived after they got it stabilized.


I'd really love to ride in a helicopter and a hot air balloon some day. Both seem like fun. I do hope I never have to ride LifeStar, though.

Winter: 3 Spring: 1

Photo: Moonlit Demolition Scene from this morning at the bus stop.


Spring gave it a real go of things, but Winter continues to persevere and knock it down. We got a surprise snow-storm a few weekends ago. Yesterday, a relatively warm morning fell to its knees over the workday, greeting me with temperatures back in the 30s and a wind strong enough to work its way through my balaclava and give me a really nasty ear-ache. Not to mention the fact that it was constantly pushing me sideways toward traffic.

This morning? 15 degrees or so. Some forecasters are saying it could get even colder tomorrow morning.

/me shakes fist at winter.

Things I love

I love fenders, rain covers for my panniers, and a camera that doesn't mind a little bit of rain:


I love dumpster diving and I love music. I found this Washburn D-100M (just the guitar) in the trash at my apartment complex over the weekend. I had to at least give it a closer look. Here it sits with my Washburn XB-100 Bass guitar (in its case) and my practice amp. Actually those are both on long-term loan from my dad since I'm the occasional bassist for our praise team. The body is in great condition but the strings it had on it were ragged out badly. The high E string was broken. The bridge appeared to be broken, too.



I love my dad. He is one of my best friends, a patient teacher, a loving father that's stern when he needs to be, and he's also a musical guru. His favorite instruments? Guitars, by far. I knew he could do minor repairs, but I learned a lot from him today while watching him fix it up. He knows seemingly all the intricate minutiae of these instruments, as he told me some of the myriad tricks he knew that could get this guitar working 100%.


He didn't really need any fancy tricks, though. He re-seated the bridge (it wasn't broken, just messed up by the previous owner), threw a whole new set of strings on it, tuned it up and it was ready to go. The action is good and the sound is very lively when dad plays it. It's actually a pretty nice guitar. It sounds like crap when I try. My wife and I just need to learn how to play it, and dad gave us both a quick guitar lesson. I can do basic stuff on the bass. This thing is a completely different beast, no matter how similar and easy Dad says it is.

I swear, if you hand him an instrument he's never played before, he'd probably be able to learn it in a few days. He has lots of musical instruments. If he's not shooting at something, he's probably writing music or playing it...