Bicycle Racing

So, a couple of months ago I did my first road race. I have been MTB racing for a couple of years and I am no superstar, but I have had my moments. I made an agreement with a couple of roadies that if they did my Brownie Crit, I would do this road race in Richmond. I figured it couldn't be that bad. I heard the course was pretty flat and fairly short with two 14-mile laps. I estimated about 1.5 hours of hard riding, not too bad.

Well...it was interesting. First thing I'll say is that in the end I am glad that I did it. It was a fun little road trip with Mark and Heather but it was really really hard. The course was dead flat. There was a little bit of relief but nothing to speak of. Not enough that anyone could get away. Unfortunately, that made it really really sketchy. We were in a pack of 50 for the entire first lap. There were also a couple of sharp turns but we had a rolling enclosure so that made them a little safer.

After the first lap (of two) I was starting to get a little pooped. The pace started off a LOT faster that Mark or I thought it would. I asked Mark on Saturday if he was bringing a trainer and he laughed. When he did the Commonwealth games he said the race was really slow until the end. But, this race was HOT from the beginning. It felt just like a MTB race, I was pegged for the first 5 miles or so. Then it sort of settled in and I rode next to Mark and said "It's a little hot huh?" He agreed.

Anyway, we are racing along on this fast flat course after one lap and I started to get a little pooped. I was hanging off the back of the bus contemplating how hard I wanted to work when I saw the worst crash I have ever seen in real life. It was like a friggin tour crash. It turns out someone cut off one of our racers and took him down. Then like six more guys must have gone down right away. There were bikes in the air, riders on the ground, blah blah blah. One guy actaully ended up with his wheel about ten feet away from his bike.

So, I slowed down, made sure that the CRC jersey that I saw wasn't Mark and made sure he was okay and then I decided that I couldn't (and didn't want to) get back on the pack so I just rode the rest of the loop with a couple of guys. About 5-10 mimutes after the first crash, we roll up on some carnage from the second crash. Mark saw it and said there were bikes everywhere. Everyone looked okay but there was one guy that was having trouble getting in the wheel truck. There were actually people in the truck from the first crash that got out because they weren't hurt as bad as people from the second crash.

Mark ended up finishing with the pack, he rode off of the front for a little while just to avoid the sketch. Then he came back into the pack and stayed away from the finish so he wouldn't get hurt.

In the end, we both came out without crashing so we were content. That day I decided two things.

1) I will ride my road bike recreationally and the MTB will be the competitive one.

2) I would be perfectly fine hanging the Lemond up until November.

That was back July sometime. It is now the last day in September and I have ridden my road bike once since that day. It wasn't a real ride, I rode to work. I should probably get back on my road bike, but it's just not as much fun as the MTB.

Now, 7 Springs! That was a good time! That'll be next.

Blogger Question

I am wondering if there is any way to label my posts into general categories. It seems that I usually default into movie reviews, Internet and other geeky things, bikes, stupid links and probably some other miscellaneous things.

I would like a way to categorize my posts but it doesn't seem possible in Blogger.

Can anyone help me out?

External HD Update

I hope I am not geeking out on this external Hard Drive but I feel obligated to post an update.

Here's the stats:

External Enclosure: $23
160 Gig Hard Drive: $84 - $50 rebate

Has it saved me money? Yes. Has it saved me time? No. To get this thing to be recognized on my machine, I had to update my OS to Windows XP Service Pack 2. To get there from my original installation took about 2-3 hours of downloading and installing.

Once I got the ting to show up on my machine, I had to format it. That went fine. Mostly.

I also had to assemble the whole thing. That part wasn't too bad. I was able to get it put together while watching TV. But, here's the rub...

The fan in this thing is unbearable! There is a little internal fan that was screaming like a banshee. I say WAS because I decided to grab me Dremel tool and make my own modifications. Basically I mounted the fan externally so it wouldn't rub on anything.

Here's a shot of the fan mounted externally on the back plate.




Note I also had to make a little slot for the fan wires to go back into the enclosure. I also cut out the fins in the plastic to make a clear slot for the air to pull through.




Here's what the whole thing looks like put back together.


It's still kind of loud, but it's better than it was.

Computer Cleanup

This isn't even really a worthwhile post, but here it goes...

I have been thinking about getting an external HD for my computer for a little while. Maybe just something to backup my music and pictures, or even save them there permanently. Externals are about $1/gig at retail and sometimes you can find some really good deals for about $.50/gig. But there is also another option.

It turns out that an external hard drive is really just an internal drive stuck into a USB case. So I started to scour slickdeals for some deals on internal HD's and enclosures. I found some things and after I submit my rebate, it will come out to 37.58 for the HD and 23 for the enclosure for a total of about $60. It's a 160 Gig drive so it's about .37/gig. You could probably find a better deal on the drive and get a bigger one so you have a better ratio, but this works for me.

This also inspired some cleanup of my 4+ year old computer. It still works pretty well for my purposes (email, word processing, some Java coding, editing pictures, etc) but I had a lot of junk on there. Mostly programs that I didn't use anymore and duplicates of pictures and songs. Anyway, I managed to clear out about 15 Gigs of space without too much trouble. I think it runs a little faster now but it could be the clean car phenomenon.

Give your car a good wash and wax, inside and out, and I swear it will run faster, smoother and quieter. At least that's how it feels. It works with bikes too.

MATH is HARD, Let's not teach it anymore...

If only there were a sarcasm font, I would use it for the title of my latest post.

Has anyone else heard that there are rumblings in the American academic scene about eliminating fractions from the grade-school curriculum? To be fair, I don't think it's a complete removal, it would be more of a down-sizing.

Here's the deal...

There are estimates that if we moved to the metric system (meters, cc's, etc) we would drastically reduce our need for fractions. But here's the kicker, if we reduced the amount of energy spent teaching fractions, [the estimates say] we could gain 1-2 years in grade school math.

Think about it, when do you need fractions? How about adding 1/4" to 3 7/8". or when you want to triple that chocolate cookie recipe that you are making. If we went metric, you could just convert everything to a decimal and add the numbers with your graphing calculator.

So, all we have to do is go metric and POOF! We gain TONS of time.

Personally, I think this is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. We don't want to teach something because it's hard?!! I managed to make it through. How about we decrease the student to teacher ratio (or fraction, or whatever) get the parents to pay attention to what the students are doing in school, and we get some kids that actually learn something.

Just recently I was watching the news and I saw something about one of the local schools complaining because in order to get a certain accreditation, they had to graduate 70% of the students. They wanted the number bumped down to 65%. This is unbelievable.

If you didn't know

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