cat /dev/random > blog.html

May is Bike to Work month, with May 14th being Bike to Work Day. The local Bay Area Bicycle Coalition ran a bike to work challenge. Whereby local companies signed up teams of bike commuters, who accumulated points for every day they bike commute in May. I signed up Blekko and drafted 4 other coworkers to complete the team roster. Blekko did alright in the standings , despite most of the team having a 24+ mile one-way commute! Where we really did well was total miles bike, over 1240, of which 498 were mine. Sadly miles have no impact on final score, or else we would have been 3rd in San Mateo County. Here are some observations from a month of bike commuting: Fewer trips by car means fewer visits to the gas station. I keep leaving the house withoug my car keys, several "doh!" moments this month. Eating more and sill losing weight is very cool. Great training for the Death Ride in July. Redwood Shores has the worst stop light sensors. Almost none detect bikes. I am super im...

In a fit of madness, I've signed up for the 2009 Tour of the California Alpes , AKA the Death Ride. I've also enlisted biking partners Keith and Bob to join me on this mad quest. The Death Ride is a 129 mile, 15k feet of climbing, monster of a ride. This is as hard, if not harder, than any single Tour de France mountain stage. Total madness. Registration was a disaster. They opened registration at 10am on Dec 11. At 9:45 the registration site Active.com was already returning Java server errors and "too busy" pages. It took 30 minutes of the three of us clicking reload to get though. No Linux browser support apparently. Today I spent some time doing research on the route. The 2009 route has about 56 miles of climbing, 52 miles of descents, and 19 miles of "flats." I figure if we can average 8mph on the climbs, 18mph on the flats, and 25mph on the descents, and with about 50 minutes of stops that is 11 hours total. Ouch. Those averages are aggressive, but ...

On July 5th I hit a deer, a baby deer to be precise, while out riding in the Los Altos Hills. It would as my (un)luck would have it, happen at the fasted point of my ride. I was traveling at 36mph at the time as the ride data from my Garmin 305 can attest. Below is the Google street view of the accident scene: View Larger Map The deer ran out from behind the tree on the left. I had little time to react, I only managed to swerve left and clip it in the rear. the impact from the handlebars broke my scaphoid bone in my wrist and the subsequent impact with the pavement cracked the radius head in my elbow. I rolled over my left side, over my head, destroying my helmet, and then managed to land on my feet facing up the hill. I managed to run backwards and avoid falling down again. Really wish I have video. The cast stays on for another 3 weeks, then a removable splint.

Just ordered my new bike, it should arrive just in time for my birthday. The bike will look similar to the one pictured above, full Campy Record, with Campy Neutron wheels, and speedplay X-1 pedals (nach). I test road a BMC Pro Machine SLC 01 on a whim, and didn't really expect to find a bike better than my current custom steel Cherry. I was just looking from something lighter that rode as well. I was supprised at just how well the BMC rode. The BMC felt alive and eager, very eager. I was riding a couple gears higher than I usually do on every part of my test ride. On the decent down Page Mill, I thought I was stuck in the small chainring, but I had in fact spun out my highest gear. Duuuuude!