5 miles sounds amazing. haha.

sure am.

Today I watched TejanoTrackie win a Regional Championship.

Then I got schooled in a match sprint by a 56 year old.

Congrats to TT!

I love that I've gotten speedy enough that on a 1.2 mile sprint near my house (Broadway north from Foster to Granville if any Chicagoans were wondering), my third best time is good enough for third place on Strava, and I've held KOM against 16 roadies for over a month. I mean, I know for a fact that my friend Brent would destroy me in a race, but he's a Cat 2 or 3 racer (Kaz, which is he? I've forgotten) and I'm just a commuter. I need to hit the track sometime...

Dunno man, my friend's Kilo has a pretty good case

maybe he should get a non sloping stem so he can put his saddle in a normal position

today I cleaned a pound of dirt off my chain, loosened and retightened my crank arms in the hopes a clicking noise would go away and replaced my thomson 100mm stem with a 3T Arx Pro 120mm stem

rode around on my friend's P15 Paramount



It made me realize I want a Brooks Professional

Eh, he as a fork on me. If one pops up on CL, your buddy's done!

Today I am marveling at the influx of n00bs each starting like 16 different threads. WTF, dudes?

Which has caused me to noticed, that in the locked thread symbol, the guy is asking for his bike to get stolen.

Just had a good chuckle about that myself.

Left work at 2am last night, and now. I'm back again. The worst part is that my commute took me through the area where the Pride Parade starts. What a cluster**** that was.

You get them digits? =]

Today I began the process of fixing up my abandoned hybrid so I can sell it. Difficulty: I last rode it 1.5 years ago in the winter through Chicago snow and road salt and slush, did not clean it in any way, and haven't touched it since. Current state:


Untitled by kazbo, on Flickr

Untitled by kazbo, on Flickr

Untitled by kazbo, on Flickr

Just removed the chain, which is obviously toast

Untitled by kazbo, on Flickr

Now to figure out what to do next...

New chain, some WD-40, and an ad on CL. I don't think that thing is worth your time.

I see it as a good opportunity to learn some stuff. It's a decent quality Trek that's only 3 years old. I paid $450 for it new, and bet I could get $150-$200 for it fixed up. To me that's totally worth my time. I also feel somewhat of a moral obligation to not let what could be a perfectly usable bike get thrown out or scrapped.

With the prices on CL lately, you could probably get $150 for it with a new chain, some lube, air in the tires, and a good wipe-down. The only reason I say it probably isn't worth the time is because of how busy you always are. If it were me, I'd do the absolute minimum and spend the day relaxing.

Should be a pretty easy fixer-upper. Chain for $12. Maybe some cables for $5 if needed.

Hopefully you don't encounter something like this:


Nice bottom bracket by Lester Of Puppets, on Flickr

Oh yeah, forgot it's geared. Cables would be good too.

Yesterday I took the GRE, I think my scores are good enough to not drag down my application, nobody knows what they mean exactly because this exam is less than a year old.

Today I narrowed down the schools I'm going to apply to, I think 6 schools is a good amount.

Made Sunday brunch with my daughter... she is in charge of making pancakes while I handle the bacon end of things.



Am enjoying one excellent cup of coffee now...

Today I raced my first mountain bike race.
About 25km to get to the race start in a nearby town, 34km race, another 25 back home + plus some extra riding around that totaled in 90km.
The race was 2 laps, with 2 hard climbs per lap, one very fast downhill section and most of it was rather flat. I was doing decent on the first lap, got behind on the flatter sections, but managed to pass everyone from my class on the first big uphill section. But I started cramping bad on the second lap, had to stop 4 times to stretch and decided that just finishing the race would be enough.
It was a great experience, now I know that with a little more effort a less cramping I can do well on my singlespeed racing against geared riders.

This is the courses elevation.

cleaned my CX commuter (chain/cassette now all shiny) and stripped down the Leader 725 to the frameset. finally admitted it was too small and that my first love is steel.

Today I track marshaled at the Burlingame Crit. Witnessed a huge wreck during one of the Cat 4 races. Probably 10~15 riders down, one had to get taken off on a stretcher.

After my shift, I snapped some pictures of the races that were going on.

Today I overhauled that 7700 bottom bracket. Easy Peasy. Races looked great.


edit: off topic, anyone here know anything about cameras? I'm trying to buy one, and know nothing about them.

I dabble