The Final Countdown
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under Cycling, Work
Three weeks to go to my greatest physical challenge ever. The AIDS/Lifecycle ride (not too late to donate, btw). I’m cycling 545 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money for AIDS-related charities and services. It’s gonna be difficult but lots of fun. I’m still trying to finalize my travel arrangements. I’ve already booked an Amtrak ticket up to the ride start. I have to take a bus then a train then another bus but it’s only $54 so it beats a one-way plane fare. I have to be there two days early for registration and orientation so I have a hotel arranged. I wish I could find somebody to split that part but no luck so far. I still need to call a company to get my bike shipped up to the start at the Cow Palace. I’m going to be out $300 before I even get rolling. I haven’t ridden nearly as much as I needed to but I’ll be fine as long as I pace myself and stay hydrated.
There’s a ton of sh*t I have to pack and I still need to buy a sleeping bag since we sleep two to a tent each night. Next week I’m switching cell phones because we have another with extra batteries. I won’t have access to electricity on the route and I’m sure work will have at least one disaster they can’t handle themselves. I’m still up in the air about whether I want to get a Garmin Edge 305. It’s a bike computer that tracks mileage, speed, hear rate, calories burned and has a GPS built in. The problem is it only holds a charge for 12 hours so I’ll need some sort of battery operated charger to go with it.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks at work getting things done before I take off. I’m hoping they won’t have to call me for anything but not counting on it. I have to finish up some disaster recovery documents at work in case anything goes wrong with the website or email. I’ve also got to finish upgrading all the clients to Windows XP since the next version of our CRM software requires that.
On a positive note my sweetheart Belle is now officially an award-winning journalist. She brought home some several pieces of hardware from the East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists awards banquet. I am very proud of her. 
I’m a cowboy….on a steel horse I ride
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under Cycling, General
okay, it’s really carbon fiber but you get the picture. Here she is. This is the new bike I will be riding on the AIDS/Lifecycle event coming up in June. A lot of the parts are carbon fiber so its much more comfortable than the steel and aluminum bikes I’ve ridden prior. It weighs 15.6 lbs even though I didn’t really build it to be light. I could easily knock another pound off but I’d rather have the extra durability at my size.
Choosing the correct size was difficult as always because I don’t have normal dimensions. For my height I have short legs and a long’ish torso. Because of that I went up a size to get an extra centimeter of top tube length, which is why I don’t seem to have much seatpost showing. If I could have gotten a custom frame I’d have spec’ed a 51cm seat tube and a 54.5cm top tube. I have a custom-made steel alloy frame in my closet but I retired that. Carbon fiber is too expensive to get customized. As it stands this frame has a 53cm seat tube and a 53.5 top tube. That means the reach from the saddle to the handlebars is less so I had to get a longer stem to compensate. Yes, 1 cm is definitely noticeable when you’re on a bike 2-4 hours a day.
100 of my closest friends and I negotiated a group buy rate of $500 for the frame. It is normally produced and sold under various brands. The previous revision of this frame marketed as the Litespeed Pavia sold for $1,200 so we got a great deal. I cherry picked all the parts and looked for deals wherever I could. The final cost was around $2,700 and thats with getting the frame well below retail cost. If I had walked into a shop and said “build me this bike” it would have run near $4,000.
I got in a few rides this weekend and it feels really good. The comfort of well-made carbon fiber will really be advantage when I’m on the bike for 4-5 hours a day. Aluminum tends to be very stiff and transfer all the rode vibration right up your arms and ass. You feel like you’ve been on a jackhammer after a while.
So, here it is. I’ll put more in the gallery later in the week. I’m pretty tired right now.
Another unnecessary cyclist death :(
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under Amore & Vita, Cycling, General, Newsworthy
The News-Gazette.com: Woman is sentenced for bicyclist’s death
Things like this make me so angry I can’t see straight. I want to grab this lil bitch and shake some reality into her. A young man with a long life in front of him is dead. His life has been snuffed out because this punk bitch just had to download a fucking ringtone while she was driving a car.
State’s Attorney Julia Rietz doesn’t fair much better in my eyes. I just cannot believe they couldn’t make a case for a stronger charge than “improper lane usage”. Improper lane change? WTF is that? WTF happened to involuntary manslaughter? WTF happened to vehicular manslaughter? There are still too many people out there that just don’t believe cyclists have a right to share the road.
People – listen to me. Put the fucking phone down while you’re driving the car. If the call is that important pull the f*ck over and talk! Personally, I think talking using cellphones without a headset should be illegal in the U.S. I hate when people call me when i’m in the car and this is why.
This girl seems to have no remorse whatsoever for her actions. She doesn’t seem to get it or want to get it. She has a Myspace blog. I’m going to send her a message and give her a piece of my mind and if you’re a friend of mine you will do the same.
I suppose I should really upset with the DA for not coming up with more appropriate charges. I am quite sure had the victim been a young mother pushing a baby carriage she would have found a way to make more serious charges stick. Shame on you, Julia Rietz….shame on the system.
It’s on like Donkey Kong!
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under Cycling, General
I have been considering doing something for the past two years and I’ve finally decided to make the step. I have decided to do the AIDS/Lifecycle event next year. It’s a 7-day 545-mile bike ride June 3-9, 2007, from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
It involves a major commitment on two levels. First, the distance. The farthest I’ve ever ridden in a week is 225 miles and this is more than double that amount. Second, in order to do the event I have to raise at least $2,500 in donations for AIDS related charities.
I’ve been leery to make a commitment that large since I don’t know that many people in California and I work for a very small company so there won’t be easy pickings there. However, this week I put out some feelers amongst my Internet friends, the majority of whom don’t even know my first name, and it looks like a good many of them have agreed to help me out.
I won’t start officially raising money until January 1, even though some are already asking where to send the money. I don’t want to pinch people too hard over the holidays.
Once I start asking for money I can’t back out and not do the ride. That should be sufficient to keep me on the bike all winter and off the couch…like biking thru a Southern California winter is a traumatic experience to begin with. I need to get some lights for my bike so I can ride after work even during the week.
The people on BikeForums.net are fun to ride and socialize with, plus they’re keeping me motivated to get in shape. I set up an online calendar for everyone to keep track of upcoming group rides. This should be a fun experience.
Bike porn!
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under Cycling, General
I have about 5 posts that I’m too lazy to write up. Anyway, I finally built up a new bike. Actually the only things new are the frame, fork, stem and handlebars. Everything else came over from my old bike. It’s an aluminum frame that I got a great deal on at Ebay. Ebay rocks for bike stuff. More pics in the gallery. The yellow thing under the saddle is a Lance Armstrong bracelet.
- Frame: Flyte SRS-3
- Frame size: 50 cm (I actually measure out to a 51cm so I could go up or down)
- Frame weight: 3.06 lbs
- Fork: Flyte CR3 all carbon 1-1/8″
- Fork weight: 360gm uncut
- Headset: FSA Orbit-Z
- Headset spacer height: 10 mm carbon spacer
- Seatpost: Ritchey Comp 250mm x 27.2 mm
- Seatpost length: 250 mm
- Seatpost setback: 25 mm
- Saddle: Selle Italia Turbomatic 3 Blue/Black
- Saddle height: 69cm
- Groupset: Shimano Dura-Ace 8-speed
- Crankset: FSA Gossamer Compact w/ MegaExo BB
- Chainrings: 34-50T
- Crank length: 170mm
- Pedals: Shimano Ultegra R600 SPD-SL
- Cassette: 12-13-14-15-16-17-19-21-23-25T
- Handlebar: Flyte HALO alloy 31.8mm Bar
- Handlebar width: 42 cm
- Handlebar Tape: Forte Cork Black
- Stem: Flyte HALO alloy 31.8mm w/Carbon faceplate
- Stem length: 120 mm
- Stem rise: – 5° Rise
- Wheelset: Mavic Ksyrium Elite Wheels
- Tires: Vredestein Fortezza SE, 700CX23
- Cassette: Shimano Ultegra 8 Speed Cassette
- Cassette combination: 12-13-15-17-19-21-23-25T
- Current weight: 19.00 lbs as configured; 18.25 lbs w/tubular tires
Well that sucked…
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under Cycling
Saturday morning I found out my grandma died the night before so I went for a long bike ride to clear my head. It was way too hot to be out that long, but I chatted with a pretty nice guy for the last part of the ride.
Saturday morning the power went out in the apt for an hour or so. Sunday it was out all day. We checked all the circuit breakers and that wasn’t it. Roomie is having a conniption because no power means no cable internet. She’s addicted to the Big Brother reality show. She has subscribed to the live internet feed so she watches it about 16 hours a day; and she used to bag on me for watching webcams…irony. Just to shut her up I remind her that her laptop has wireless and she could probably steal a signal from the neighbors. This worked like a charm.
I determined there were 3-4 outlets in the whole place that work and some of the lights worked also. I had one working jack in one outlet in my bedroom so I daisy-chained all my computer stuff to that but it still left me with no television. Normally I couldn’t care less about television but FSU was set to whup some Miami ass at 5PM so this was unacceptable.
We had to run an extension cord to plug the frig in somewhere else so our stash of Mountain Dew and Ben & Jerry’s didn’t go bad. Of course the office was closed for the holiday. We paged the emergency maintainance number and true to form Skippy the maintenance dipshit, who is very hard of hearing, responds.
Skippy the maintenance dipshit: allo? you call?
us: yes, the power is out in our apt
Skippy the maintenance dipshit: hot water?
us: no, electricity
Skippy the maintenance dipshit: no hot water? you call back. I fix
us: wha? call back for what? and it’s electricity, you border crossing numbnut.
Of course we call back again but does he return the call? Noooo so it was all day with spotty electricity. In the south coming between a man and his football is a capital offense, one that is punishable by death. We did manage to find a working jack for the bigscreen tv so Skippy should consider himself lucky.
Monday was also roommate’s birthday and she spent the majority of it bemoaning the fact that nobody (literally nobody) has called to wish her a happy birthday. I gave her a card the day before and her dad sent one early. Nevermind the fact that she has no friends because she chooses not to make any. She tells me I am her only friend. Trust me when I say that if I am your only friend you are in a world of hurt. Hell, her sister is 45 minutes away and didn’t call. Of course this could have been because roomie is always ripping Sis a new one for spoiling her two kids and trying to impose her ideals on how Sis should teach ‘em some respect.
I’m flying to Philly for the funeral on friday then back to Los Angeles Monday. I was initially going to fly to Atlanta Monday and stay there til Saturday. After already getting approval from work to take all of the following week off I’ve decided I can’t afford to detour to Atlanta because a multi-city flight is double the cost. I’ve got a few other large expenses coming up so something had to give. I think I’ll still take it off and just stay home. I was going to take a few days off before I found out about the funeral anyway.
Exercise minutiae
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under Cycling, The Gym
A friend hooked me up with a really cool site that lets you enter your workouts, diet, track your progress and chat with others. It’s probably similiar to Fitday, but I like it better. I also started using an appetite suppressant called hoodia today. We’ll see how it goes…shooting for another 15 by Christmas.
Traineo
I’ve started plotting out all the long distance bike rides I’m considering for 2007. The Mack daddy of them all is the AIDS ride. It’s not enough that you have to ride nearly 600 miles in a week’s time; they require you to raise $2,500 before they even let you ride. That wouldn’t be too much of a problem in Atlanta but I don’t know enough people out here well enough to ask them for $100-250 each. It look like what I’ll have to do is hit up all my Internet homies for $10-50 each. I’m sure at least five of them will come thru. This could be a deal breaker though.
