spare cycles

That's a good reason, right?

My review is up on RoadbikeReview, please check it out and let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your critiques as one of the things I struggled on was how to find the right voice with the review -- i.e. the right balance between marketing info, personal anecdotes, attempted humor, and critique.

And yes, as the review reveals, I did crash the bike (lack of attention), though as you can tell from the video at the end that the damage wasn't too bad. I didn't really want to do a video, but I liked the video for the Campy Super Record so much that I thought it would be a bit hypocritical to not do one myself. I also became enamored with the idea of using my Park stand to rotate the bike around during the video -- I know it sounds silly, but it's like the stand was made so you could easily spin the bike around for shooting a video :).

I'm sad to see the bike go, even if my garage is a bit crowded. We're going up OLH today for our work lunch ride and I could really use all the assistance I can get.

Storck Absolutist 0.9 Review on RoadbikeReview.com

The scheduling demons have caught a hold of me and I have to cancel my US Pro trip. It's being trumped by an event that will fulfill a childhood dream -- vomiting in zero gravity -- so my sadness is short-lived. I was looking forward to shooting the race for the first time, meeting up with James again (and the other bloggy crew), etc... but there's always Interbike.

I counted 20+ bikes at work today. We have less than 40 people in our company, though quite a few of them are car-less interns. Nevertheless, that seems like a pretty good ratio -- you can also throw in 4 carpoolers, one electric vehicle, one biodiesel, and one pedestrian.

We finally reached a critical point that we've had a bike rack installed outside to handle the overflow. There are 4 bikes that our company provides as communal bikes for riding into downtown Palo Alto or elsewhere during the day and they are also being co-opted for commuting to and from work.

There's also now enough roadies at work that we're starting to do weekly rides up Old la Honda and back for lunch.

I'm reviewing a Storck Absolutist 0.9 for RoadbikeReview. The bike isn't up and running yet, but I hope to start getting some miles on it this weekend.

What's caught my attention so far is how huge the head tube, forks, and chain stays are. The bike may be 14.8 lbs, but it didn't skimp on girth. Storkc wanted a super stiff bike, so he took this frame to the max. Also of note are the rear-entry dropouts, which are making me relearn the art of taking off the rear wheel.

Thien's tire got slashed by a piece of glass on our post-work ride today. This gave me a chance to spy his $20 patch kit, which is one of the easiest to use that I've seen. I thought I'd share.

Step 1: Prepare the patch kit by folding it twice over

Step 2: Locate the gash in the tire

Step 3: Insert patch kit between tube and tire

I plan on undercutting him by offering a $1 kit -- $2 for double strength.

You can learn plenty more expert tips like this by participating in the RoadbikeReview.com Peninsula group rides.

I was shooting some bikes for Look, so we took the opportunity to play dress up with my bike as well. As you might have guessed, the Zipp 808s aren't mine, but whenever I want to make someone jealous, I can break out this photo and pretend that I left them at home. I could have shot them with Lightweights instead, but I happen to think that Zipps look far cooler.

I'm still learning the whole studio lighting thing. We used two Pro Foto Acute 2Rs with softboxes, black bed sheets, a garage door, and some custom hangers I made out of fishing line and rope. I should have used a backlight to better define things, but I didn't have an extra remote to trigger another light. Also, a note when you're using fishing line to hold the bike because you think it will be easy to Photoshop out: it's not, so try your best to keep it from crossing any part of the bike.

My Look 585 is built, with all credit to Francois/Francis and Thien of MTBR/RoadBikeReview, who soldiered through a long Friday night to make sure I looked pretty on Sunday's group ride. I've posted a photo below that makes it look like I actually did a lot of the wrenching, but, truth be told, I probably spent more time cleaning up my spilled beer. Thanks also goes to Sports Basement, which is rescued us from having to abort when we discovered that the threads on the bottom bracket needed to be chased.

My contributions: I attached the rear brake, right shifter, put ceramic bearings in the wheels, ran and cut some cabling, and did half of the bar tape. A pretty sorry total given the amount of effort that goes into a bike. I got to learn a lot from watching Francis handle a lot of the difficult wrenching, and Thien showed me the proper bike nerd details that one is supposed to pay attention to, such as cutting the rear brake housing so that the Dura Ace logo shows and lining up the tire logo with the valve stem. With ownership of an awesome bike comes great responsibility.

Build list:

• Frame: Look 585 Origin
• Group: Dura Ace shifters and derailleurs, Ultegra SL crank/brakes/cassette
• Seatpost: something heavy scavenged from my old bike
• Seat: Specialized Gel Toupe, also scavenged from my other bike
• Wheels: Neuvation M28 Aero2 with Enduro ceramic bearings
• Cockpit: Ritchey Pro stem and handlebar
• Tires: Michelin Pro Race 3

This build is not 'final': based on the Ritchey booth at Sea Otter, I'm now eyeing their new Wet White finish for the WCS 4-Axis steam and WCS Logic II road bars. It currently has a Ritchey Pro cockpit and I scavenged a seatpost and saddle are from my old bike. The seatpost is especially heavy and is one of the reasons that the build topped out at 17.15 lbs instead of the planned 16.5 lbs. The frame also came in 0.33 lbs over, possibly due to the white paint. It should be in the 16 lbs range when I'm finally done.

All the parts on this build were selected by doing research in the RoadBikeReview forums and the wrenching was done by Francois and Thien, so I can truly say, "This bike build powered by the good folks of:"

James of Bicycle Design sent me the above photo of me chalking Brasstown Bald. I got to meet a lot of great people in Georgia, including James, and as always is the case with these larger events, I had a lot of talented people to learn from. There are many thanks to give out, and I know I'll miss a few, but here goes:

• Paul and Mario, for the company, food, beer, tips, and 300mm loaner -- many, many thanks
• Casey and Jono, for endless useful advice
• Mitch, for looking out for me
• Katrina, for twice putting up with me handing her a camera and getting me the photos I wanted
• Mark, who saved me on Stage 7 with batteries for my flash
• Lyne, who helped me with my pre-race preparation enough to get me confident enough to go solo
• Thien, for being crazy enough to host my midnight ramblings on RoadBikeReview
• James, Fritz and Steve, for the traffic love

I'm still planning out the next big race to go to. The USA Cycling Pro Championships is a high likelihood; the Tour of Missouri looks very unlikely this year, mainly due to the timing of it all.

All the parts for my Look 585 should be on the way:

• Frame: Look 585 Origin
• Group: Dura Ace shifters and derailleurs, Ultegra SL crank/brakes/cassette
• Seatpost: Thomson Masterpiece
• Wheels: Neuvation M28 Aero2 with Enduro ceramic bearings (I've personally confirmed that John at Neuvation does respond promptly to e-mails; customer service + price + local Cali was a big plus for me)
• Cockpit: Ritchey WCS Logic Road Bar and WCS 4Axis Road Stem
• Tires: Michelin Pro Race 3

The online tools I've found estimate the final build weight to be about 16.5 lbs. It's about thousand dollars per pound to shave more off of that, so I'm quite happy.

I was originally going to buy the parts from local bike shops, but was a bit shocked by my survey. Two bike shops didn't even having pricing for groupsets, which lead to me getting price quotes that were astronomically high (above MSRP!). One of the two actually told me to buy the parts on the UK site probikekit, which I did after I saw their ridiculously low prices. Another Web site is Excel Sports, which has a closeout on 2007 Look 585 frames.

There were bike shops that were quite good: the folks at Silicon Valley Cycling Center and Palo Alto Bikes were solid, giving me real quotes for parts and labor that were very reasonable. They both also happen to be Look dealers. I will be sending money their way one way or another, so I don't feel too guilty. In the end, the Tour de Georgia forced my hand: there was no way I was going to get riding in before that, and I'll need the extra $$$ to pay for the trip.

My friend and fellow photographer Carl Burchfiel was injured at Boggs. Yuri's posted information on the efforts to organize help for him and Gail as he goes through his recovery. There's probably not too much of the Sonoma County crowd hanging out on this blog, but just in case, checkout the link. Thanks!

link

I'm hoping to get to ride this before I take off for the Tour de Georgia...

More photos

Photo by francois

The RoadBikeReview group ride has the right balance of laid back + occasional opportunity for competition that I enjoy. This morning's ride was the first time for me flying the RoadBikeReview kit on a ride. It's possibly also the farewell ride for my Specialized Allez -- I'm hoping to get a Look 585 this week, which will force old Yellow into permanent commuter bike status.

Today was my first day at the track, both behind the camera and on the fixie. I definitely forgot to keep pedaling several times, but luckily -- for me and the rider behind me -- I stayed upright. Pounding around in the drops lap after lap is kinda hard on the body, I have to say, but fun for the speed.

As for the photos, I tried all sorts of stupid camera tricks (pans, zoom pans, slow sync flash) to see what sort of variation I could bring. About 90% of it ended up as blurry junk. Track is even easier than short track MTB in terms of shooting difficulty, but you have to push a lot harder to make it interesting. Hellyer Velodrome is outdoors so I couldn't get that quintessential night blur effect that you see in shot after shot coming out of the World's right now. I could imagine taking some fun shots during the night sessions.

Hellyer Velodrome Practice Gallery

I face the same basic decision almost every weekend: I could either go out and shoot some photos, or I've been kicking around the idea of doing something with my photos, like making a Tour of California poster (4-8 image montage) or a softcover book. They book or poster would probably be in the $15-25 price range based on what I've seen with online printing sites.

So, feel free to e-mail/comment to answer to: Should I take more photos, or should I make a poster, or should I make a book?

A vote for a poster/book isn't a commitment to buy, but it would help if it were ;)

Regretfully I'm going to be skipping Sea Otter. There seems to be little chance I'll be able to make it down to the very fun event that had been an annual occasion for me. Sea Otter is April 17-20. The Tour de Georgia is April 21-27. The chance to shoot a team time trial and Brasstown Bald is too much to pass up. It's shame that they are scheduled so tight: a lot of big women stars will be showing up to the NRC road event and all my MTB favorites will probably doing their best to avoid the poison oak.

• The folks of Bike Monkey, especially Carl. Check out their magazine if you can.
• Thien of Road Bike Review
• Nicky of Chechu Rubiera
• Fritz of Cyclelicio.us
• Steve of Steephill.tv
• David of The Fredcast (Get Well Soon!)
• My fellow photographers

Let's do it all again in Georgia (I hope)

I did an interview for The FredCast after Stage 1, which some of you may have already heard. I talk near the end, almost half an hour in. Thanks to David for inviting me to be on and get well wishes to both his thumb and his computer.

Road Bike Action issue 5 came as a pleasant surprise to me. After the Tour of Missouri I thought they were only going to pick up one image: the two-page rear spread up top. They ended up picking up three more, one for a Slipstream article and two for a Johan Bruyneel article. To round out the images above, I included a photo of mine from RBA #3 that I never posted about before.

I was stupid enough to bike home last night at 9pm with 4 bottles of wine in my backpack and no front light. I should have learned my lesson by now as my last night-riding attempt cost me a new set of rims.

I paid for it this time around when I hit a bump and my rear tube burst. I struggled for control of my bike had enough time to think, "oh please, not the wine!" I took most of the crash with my left side, but I could feel a wet drip from my backpack as I struggled to get back up. Amazingly, three of the four wine bottles survived intact. I had a chance to survey the rest of the damage when I got home -- my shorts were covered in a mixture of red wine and blood and my backpack was full of broken glass. I'm not quite sure which red stain I was more upset about, but it was probably the wine -- it was a nice Unti Barbera.

About Spare Cycles

Eventually I'll provide a more permanent link.

Zinio has a three-page preview of Road Bike Action issue 2. Luckily for me, the preview has two of my three photos. The Giant bikes in the spread above is one of my Tour of Cailfornia shots, as is the shot to the right with Levi sprinting to victory in Solvang. As you can tell from the cover, there is a long article from Bob Roll that talks about the Tour of California from start to finish, where you'll also find my shot of Levi's crash in Santa Rosa.

Al told me that he got his subscription in the mail, so I guess the issue should be on newsstands now, if its the sort of newsstand that carries road cycling magazines.

Zinio preview of Road Bike Action

I just got my copy of the next issue of and I'm happy to say that I have three photos in the issue: cover, table of contents (T-Mobile bikes), and a small photo (Levi Crash) in the Bob Roll Tour of California summary. The memory is fuzzy, but I probably did a little jig when I opened the envelope with the magazine.

FYI: I'm also credited with a photo I didn't take, but that's another story.

Oh yeah, make sure you buy a copy ;)

I'm leave for Hawaii on Sunday for a week so coverage will be especially spare. I've been meaning to write something about the Beat the Clock TT, where I shot some photos for SportVelo's 'Contre la Montre' TT camp, but things have been a bit too hectic.

The photos are not my best. For starters, most aren't processed, but I was also trying to see how well the middle AF sensor on my 30D performs. I almost never use the middle sensor as it leads to bad framings, but I wanted to test its double accuracy. Perhaps it performed better, but all the photos of cyclists sans feet are enough to make me go back to my preferred AF sensors.

Earlier in the day I also tried to take some shots of the riders with the sunrise in their face. Some kits took this well, the whiter ones did not.

Just thought I'd share this tale of woe from a friend of mine:

My friend was riding this past weekend in a local mountain bike race. On the second or third lap he started to cramp and bonk real bad. He had to get off his bike and sit on the side of the road, unable to move. His wife went looking for him on foot but ended up taking a wrong turn on the trail. It took three hours before anyone stopped to give him some food so he could get back on the bike.

The worst part? He was sitting in poison oak.

This past weekend I participated in the SportVelo training camp, though my actual riding time was only about 1-2 hours (in comparison to the 16-20 hours everyone else did). My actual role was camp photographer, which gave me some good practice for the Tour of California next week.

The camp provided a couple of firsts for me as a cycling photographer: shooting in rain and shooting from a car. For all its challenges, rain produces some wonderfully dramatic shots. It was much easier to shoot people riding through rain than it was to deal with splash from rear wheels flying in my face when I rode on Sunday.

Shooting from a car wasn't quite the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel experience I thought it would be. Unlike standing alongside the road, lighting conditions on the road can vary second-by-second. If you driving along any of the climbs around here (e.g. Highway 9), this means that you can start framing your subject under direct sun, but by the time you get the shot, you can be in the shade again. It also takes some practice to frame your subjects and keep them in focus as you're trying not to fall out the window of the car. I didn't quite get the results I wanted from this, but I learned a lot for next time.

More photos

SportVelo and LATS are offering an indoor peloton class for those like me whose legs fail to function in inclement weather. Bring your own trainer and bike and setup a spot -- its a lot more entertaining than cycling to Tour de France tapes by yourself. I took some photos of the inaugural class several weeks ago -- it was really just an excuse to hide how out of shape I am by taking photos instead of pedaling.

• Cost: $10 for a prepaid set of 5 sessions, $20 for drop ins
• When: Every Tue night through February
• Time: 6:30–7:30pm
• Where: Los Altos Training Studio, 955 Fremont Ave in Los Altos. LATS is directly across the street from the Bicycle Outfitter

One of the more embarassing things as a bicyclist is the trip to the bike shop to fix a crash-broken part. Wounds heal, but the $200 you spent on new parts ain't ever coming back. There's the additional shame of explaining to the bike tech how your broken part came to be. Note: if your crash was doing something cool, this is your chance for a glorious retelling; if your crash was stupid, as mine generally are, this is where you try to change the subject. However, one can always cover for your shame by buying even more parts for your bike to upgrade the parts that aren't broken. Instead of spending $200 to fix a stupid mistake, you're spending $300 to make your bike more awesome.

I went to the Offramp in Mountain View to seek out a new set of rims as my front wheel was pronounced DOA from my minor bicycle somersault. As I was paying for a new set of Mavic Aksium Race rims ($200), I noticed some Speedplay Zero pedals sitting in the display counter, where I imagine they are placed for people like me to notice them. I've wanted Speedplay pedals ever since I demoed them at the SF Grand Prix. They felt oh-so-smooth on my knees to get in and out of, and I felt much more connected to the pedal than with SPD cleats. The need to buy back my biker self-esteem and an upcoming birthday presented an easy choice of action: buy! The Offramp helped as well, offering the chro-moly model to me for $99, which is cheaper than a lot of sites online.

I haven't had the chance to give them a full spin, but I eagerly await. I have noticed that they aren't nearly as easy to ride in street shoes as SPD pedals -- I once rode a criterium in street shoes with SPD pedals -- but that is just an observation, not a criticism. Some good, knee-friendly riding awaits!

I used my broken front wheel as an excuse to get out of an Old La Honda time trial climb (my real excuse is that I am out of shape). It's a good thing I didn't go, as I would have the shame of being beat by someone on a unicycle.

From the post-TT news:

"...Highlight of the day, however, was Steve Nash on his unicycle, who scored a 27:52, leading the day's time-wheel product ranking." [ed: my efforts are usually 27-28-ish]

I dropped a couple hundred dollars today on a new set of rims, but perhaps I have this whole road cycling thing wrong. I should have just taken my front wheel off and wheelied up Old La Honda instead. Think of all the weight you save.

I had my first bike accident in about seven years this week -- a solo accident, as many are, but also very minor. I have a bruised elbow and my front tire won't spin until it is trued, but I feel more stupid than hurt. I described this incident to my boss' boss:

I will strongly recommend that it is not wise to practice your cornering skills in the parking lot at night in order to keep yourself warm while waiting for a ride. As you pass through one of the dark corners and feel your pedal hitting curb, you realize that a smarter person would have just waited inside.

I wasn't going to post about this, but then I saw the great image above in Fritz' post on a Bicycle crash photo contest, and I decided that posting was inevitable.

I'm going to the San Diego Comic-Con, which I enjoy very much but always falls directly during the Tour de France. I'll still get to see tomorrow's morning stage, but I'll miss the final time trial and crowning in Paris. Usually I impose a media blackout on myself and my friends try to assist with blocking out views of newspapers and such. One friend even helped with a Firefox/Greasemonkey script to block any Web pages with Tour content. Then, when I get back home, I rush through four days' of stages in a 24-hour TiVo binge.

This year is a bit different. The house I'm staying at should have the Tour on TV, though I may have to miss the ends of certain stages or other snafus may occur. So, just in case, I've upgraded my TiVo:

• 120 hour TiVo: 5 hour mountain stages at high quality fills up a TiVo pretty quick. I had a 40-hour TiVo before, which would work, but I had to record the stages at lower quality, which sucks on my brand new HDTV. TiVo doesn't make the 120-hour version anymore, but you can get a 180-hour version instead.
• TiVo wireless G adapter: the TiVo-brand adapter is the only 802.11g adapter you can use with TiVo. It's about five times as fast as the 802.11b adapter that I previously used, and it supposedly saves your TiVo some processing overhead. I find that TiVo Desktop gets more unreliable the longer it takes to transfer a file, so there's the added bonus that the transfers don't fail as much.
• TiVo Desktop 2.3 Plus ($25 upgrade): the Plus version of the TiVo Desktop includes the most important feature for all of this to work: it can automatically convert the videos for display on an iPod or PSP. I'm not planning on watching the video on either, but there are two important reasons to do this conversion: the file is four times smaller and it will play on any computer, not just ones with your specially configured TiVo Desktop software.

Here's how the process works. First, the preparation:

1. Setup a season pass on TiVo for 'cycling' (this is the name OLN uses for all cycling broadcasts, including the Tour)
2. Setup an autotransfer on TiVo Desktop 2.3 for 'cycling'.
3. Configure the TiVo Desktop 2.3 preferences to automatically convert transfers to PSP and also to automatically delete files after transfer (otherwise they fill up your hard drive).

If all goes to plan, here's what happens: 1. TiVo records the Tour de France stage in the morning, which finishes at about 9am 2. At about 9am, TiVo Desktop starts transferring the program. This can take five or more hours. 3. Somewhere between 2-5pm, TiVo Desktop has hopefully started converting the file into PSP format 4. Connect to my home computer from San Diego in the evening, hopefully the file has finished converting. 5. Start downloading the file 6. Go eat dinner 7. Watch the stage

This may or may not work. TiVo Desktop is a bit buggy and there are many things that can go wrong, from failed transfers from the TiVo to failed downloads to San Diego. This is the backup plan, so hopefully I won't need it.

I should probably just get a Slingbox, which allows you to stream video directly from your TV/PVR/etc..., but I went with the devil I knew -- I like my TiVo for other purposes, and this is the best I could squeeze out of it for watching the Tour while on travel. Maybe if I started travelling more, but this only happens once a year.

I've been picking up some of the Tour Mania scratch and win cards from my local bike shop and today I won a Livestrong laptop! I am excited as this being my first-ever big prize win. Of course, I'm the last person that needs another computer and I'm not-so-excited about paying the taxes, but I'll figure that out later.

You can also be a winner -- you can even play online at trekbikes.com. If you win a Madone 5.2 I'll trade you ;).

According to the posted results, we came in 28th out of the 35 finishing riders. We were the only mens' 2-man team to enter, which makes the comparison rather unfair to the 26 riders that beat us without the use of a teammate, but it also means that we finished first in the mens' 2-man TT competition. From now on, whenever someone asks how that race went, I'll reply, "first place."

Christine Thorburn, who started just before us, finished six-and-a-half minutes faster in second place with a time of 22:55. The winning time was 22:22. As comical as it was to start behind an olympian, I now realize it's better than starting a minute in front and getting passed within the first mile.

Al and I competed in our first two-man time trial today -- also our first time trial. It wasn't a race as much as a fundraiser called Beat the Clock & Help Beat Cancer, which raises funds for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

There were many things that were amusing about our entry into the event. Al had four-five hours of sleep; I had one. My legs were shot from moving my stuff and cleaning all week. Neither of us had ever done a time trial before nor practiced a two-man TT. We only had 15 minutes to warmup because we were late getting to the course. Nevertheless, despite all of our inexperience and deficiencies, the start order somehow had Al and I starting immediately after National Champion and Olympian Christine Thorburn. Thorburn started only a minute ahead of us, so part of me hoped that we could keep her in sight for the earlier part of the course, but of course not. We didn't see her again until she passed us going back on the return route, easily many, many minutes ahead of us by that point.

We weren't terrible: we were only passed twice and managed to beat our goal of 30 minutes with a time of 29:22 (~20.5 mph). I got a bit fooled by a Team in Training event also being held on Cañada Road and sprinted for what turned out to be the wrong finish line -- my legs popped after that and I wasn't much use for the remainder. I think with a bit more sleep and experience we might actually be respectably bad.

My final observation is one I failed to properly understand during the race: when you are doing a out-and-back course and the first half of the course is downhill, that means the second half of the course is uphill.

I made it Old La Honda for the second time on Wednesday. To put it in perspective, I think most of the riders I meet on the road seem to have done the cilmb two times this week, but I digress. This time I had Dan Smith of Sportvelo briefly by my side to offer some tips. As I watched Dan and Al climb further and further away, I tried to remember this advice:

• tense the abs (just a bit, not too tight). It will help out your back.
• squeeze your butt cheeks. It will make sure you get some of your other leg muscles involved.

He also recommended doing the climb in intervals of sittings/standing: 1:30 sitting followed by 0:30 standing. When you stand, shift one gear up into a harder gear and back down again when you sit. With the way Old La Honda is sloped, you won't be able to follow it perfectly, but it will make the climb go by faster mentally and it will make sure that you are using different muscle groups along the way.

I believe Dan's best time from bottom to top is around 16 minutes. I'm still at 27:30, with a brief break in the middle.

I'm going to try and do a two-man time trial in July but I've been pretty out-of-shape with my recent two-and-a-half-week trip to Japan. I've decided to punish myself by doing all the climbs that previously I've been too lazy or wimpy to do in the past. In the past week or so I've managed to add Woodside-Skyline, Old La Holda, Alpine, and Altamont to my list of now-conquered climbs. The nice thing about most of these climbs is that I can descend right down into Menlo Park where I work. One of these days I'm going to finally all of Page Mill to my list. One of these days.

I've also got a new camera that I'm hoping will make the cycling photography easier. It's a Canon 30D, which is a pretty good upgrade from my old Rebel 300D. It can take shots much more rapidly than the Rebel and has a much better focusing system, so I'm looking forward to testing it out at the Pescadero Road Race and Burlingame Criterium coming up at the end of this month.

As I slowly still work my way through my Sea Otter Classic photos, I've managed to choose two to submit to the VeloNews Sea Otter Photo Contest:

Levi is, of course, Levi, and Matty Rice showed he was the Most Tasmanian by winning the race.

This photo of Leipheimer and Menzies nearly made the pick, but I had to drop it due to focus issues:

Having to choose two and only two photos from the Sea Otter Classic is a bit unfair. With such a variety of events going on, do you submit two roa