Rubber Side Down

Things are always funnier in Japanese

Case in point, check out this dalmation.

Hope they burned that seat.

Once again, why drive?

I'm up on course all week in the northeast. I drove on Tuesday morning because I had no idea where it was and figured it'd be quicker that way. I was wrong. 55 minutes and three traffic jams later I arrived. Here's the route I had to take.

This morning, I rode, and lo and behold just a shade over 35 minutes later I arrived at the training site. Here's the riding route. Instead of being stuck with the rest of the cagers in construction traffic jams, I spent the commute riding along the Bow, through the zoo and up Nose Hill Creek. I wasn't even riding hard, I was listening to Wilco and cruising.

So this begs the question, if it costs more to drive, takes longer and provides you no other benefit other than allowing you to listen to some crappy morning show, why are all these people still driving to work every morning? The only thing I can figure is the cup holders, it must be the cup holders.

Track Racing Photos

Some photos from a track race at the Glenmore Velodrome:

Crash and Burn

Two weekends ago a raced a stage race up in Fort Saskatchewan. The race had three stages, a 12 km time trial, a 30 minute crit and a 90 km road race. Being in northeast of Edmonton, the stages were flat with a capital F.

I finished 18th in the time trial 1:30 down on the winner. This didn't bother me too much since 1) I'm not a great time trialler and 2) the top 3 guys showed up on full TT bikes with aero helmets and skin suits (I'm not kidding). I was only 15-20 seconds out of a top ten and only about 30 seconds out of a top five and I think I could have gone harder.

The crit is where things got really interesting for me. The course was real narrow in spots and had lots of turns. Basically, just begging for a crash. Miraculously, there was only one crash the entire race, unfortunately, I caused it. I always try to pedal through corners as long as I can to save from having to sprint out of them. Last year, I perfected stopping my pedal stroke for a nanosecond as I hit the apex of a turn. Apparently, I forgot everything I learned. Luckily for most of the other racers I was near the back when this happened. This still meant however, that two riders had to go over top of me, leaving me with some interestingly shaped bruises on my shoulder. The adrenalin was firing so I grabbed my bike, ran to the wheelpit, switched out a wheel and got back in with a free lap. I managed to finish the stage with the lead group but by that point no more adrenalin = lots o' pain where I removed all layers of skin.

The next day I wrapped a tensor bandage around my bandages and started the road race. The pace was slow in all races. We actually passed the cat 3's twice (they passed us once). I hung in there the entire stage and was actually in great position for the sprint about two km's from the finish. Unfortunately, 1 km from the finish, I found myself on the front. This wasn't necessarily a bad place to be since my teamate was first on the GC and by being up front and hammering I was discouraging any late attacks. Its just too bad I ran out of gas and couldn't sprint for a top ten.

After the race, my leg was throbbing and I ended up bruising a groin muscle with the tensor. Its taken about a week for my leg to heal and for me to get back to seriously riding. The problem is, after taking a week off, I've kinda enjoyed not worrying about getting enough miles in for the next race and am considering not racing anymore this year (cross racing notwithstanding). Who knows, in a couple of weeks I may get the itch again but at the current moment I couldn't care less.

Two Random Photos

Field near crowsnest pass:

Waiporous River:

Multi-Use Path Traffic Jams

Now that spring is here the Bow River pathway is becoming a bit of a nightmare. Its cool that there's so many people out there using it, but I'm starting to think the city needs to rethink its bicycle infrastructure a bit. Currently, Calgary's bike infrastructure consists of the Bow River pathway, some smaller, disconnected and inconsequential pathways, and a couple of bike markings on one road in the beltline and Home road in  Bowness.

The biggest problem with the pathways is there are only short sections that are pedestrian free and all have roller bladers. Throw in a lot of bikes (and there's a surprising amount out there) mixed with joggers, dog walkers and wobbley bladers and you have a recipe for trouble. In this last week, I've watched 3 head on collisions almost occur. All of these were due to cyclists swerving around groups of peds into the oncoming lane which also had cyclists swerving around slower moving people/bikes. There's just too many people using the path and they're all moving at vastly different speeeds.

Of course the Aldermans' solution to this will be to enforce the bell bylaw and the 20 km/hr speed limit. Both of which will do 4/5's of fack all. As a pedestrian on the path, after you've heard a gazillion bells in first 10 feet of your walk/jog, you tend to tune the rest out rendering the warning pretty useless. This is also really besides the point, as the danger is more of two cyclists colliding than with a cyclist and ped hitting. Enforcing the speed limit may help somewhat, but the problem is less with speed, but more with volume. A cyclist doing 20 km/hr is still going have to do a lot of manoevering in places to get around all the peds and bladers, and two cyclists running into each other doing 20 km/hr is still going to break some bones.

The solutions as I see them, are to either segregate more pathways to pedestrian only and bicycle only or two add bike lanes to some of the arterial roads like Bow Trail or 14th street to give us more options of getting into downtown and thus reducing the amount of bikes on the pathways. Of course, this is far too pragmatic for this city. These are of course the same aldermen who are refining the parking laws in downtown Calgary (i.e. making it more expensive and getting rid of space) while they get to keep their free underground heated parking. Thier excuses basically were that because they worked for the city, they needed parking, while everyone else doesn't. Good ol' fashioned government hypocrisy.

Bad Masseuse Bad

I set myself up for a regular Wednesday morning massage with our company's in house masseuse (yes we have an in house masseuse, he matches the foosball table). Wednesday morning being the day after Tuesday night crits, so I figured it would be a good fit. Well, yesterday's massage ranks up there with my wisdom teeth extraction as one of the more painful things I've endured. To be fair, he worked a lot of crap out of my back, especially around my problem vertebrae, that felt great later. But the massage he gave me seems like its set me back two months of hard riding. As I sit here, my hamstring is throbbing from the 1.5 hour moderate ride I did tonight. He worked down into muscles and ligaments so deep I swear his fingers were poking through the other side of my leg. After telling him of my on again off again patella (patellar?) tendonitis, he started to marinate a couple of my hip ligaments which seemed to cause muscles in my ears to spasm. I hobbled around the rest of the day since my left leg all of a sudden felt a couple of inches longer.

Maria's New Ride

I turned 30 yesterday and for my B-day Maria got a bike, wait how's that work? We picked her up a 2006 Cannondale Rush. Beautiful full-suspension MTB:

I'm actually really excited to have her back in the sport of MTBing, I was getting bored riding alone. Besides, one of these will actually be my B-day gift:

I can't decide between a lowrider, a krate, or a cruiser. One things for sure, I won't have to worry about slimy wheel suckers when I'm riding one of these to work. Its been real windy here the last few days, and I can't seem to ride very far without someone sitting on my wheel. It wouldn't bother me so much if they would try and take a turn and give me a rest, but that would possibly result in them getting tired.

Finally, would someone tell the freakin' flames its the third period of game seven and that they're losing?!

3 Hour Easy Float...

...yeah right! For my buddy Brad Molnar's stag we decided to paddle down the Columbia from Radium to Brisco, B.C..

"Oh yah, its just an easy float, no rapids, 3 to 4 hours tops" was the prognosis given us by the canoe rental dude.

What he hadn't factored in was the strong north wind that day, the extreme hangover we were all suffering after polishing off a Texas mickey of rye and the fact that this is our definition of an easy paddle:

i.e. NOT paddling and drinking beer. 6.5 very tiring hours later, we finally reached Brisco and were barely able to pull the canoes out of the water.