One Month No-Car Challenge

So, a couple of times a week I stop by the bike shop to buy stuff, hang out, catch up on local gossip, whatever. I was at the shop returning a pump and I got to talking to one of the guys that was on the 18 hour race team about commuting to work. Long story short, we were wondering if it would be possible to commute to work every day. Could a person do it for a month? Then he was wondering if you could just live the no-car lifestyle...basically extending the use of the bike for all trips within the city limits...not just getting to work. There would be exceptions for travelling outside of Charlottesville for races or other things, but the idea would be to never use your car for errands in the city limits.

We haven't really worked out all of the details yet. For example, is it okay to get a ride from someone else? -or- What do you do when you have to go to Lowes?

I think we are going to start the challenge on September 1 and see if we can go the entire month. I am going to have to think about bike and equipment selection for this one...

Singlespeed School Starts at 6:30 AM

I don't usually get out of bed before 7:30 but had I was having all kinds of trouble with skipping on my single speed mountain bike last night and it was still on my brain. So, at about 6:30 I rolled out of bed and finished some of the research I started last night.

After I got my Full Suspension, I converted my older mountain bike into a single speed. Everything was running well until I loaned out the rear wheel. After I got it back, I put everything back together and when I test rode it, I had all kinds of skipping problems. You would think it would be easy to diagnose since there is only one gear to deal with. No such luck. I changed all kinds of stuff but the bike would still jump around under pressure. I thought about it for a while and decided to try one more switch. I changed to a bigger gear in the back which gave me two advantages over the previous setup.

Advantage 1: More teeth are engaged.

if you can imagine stretching a rubber band around a softball and a golf ball, there isn't much of the rubber band touching the golf ball. If you swap out the golf ball for a baseball, there will be more rubber touching the golf ball. Basically that's what I did, I used a slightly larger gear in the rear to get more chain contact.

Advantage 2: More teeth are engaged.

I can't just wrap a chain around the cogs and expect everything to work. I have to use a tensioner. You can see it in the pictures below.

Just because of the size of the cogs and length of the chain, I can make the tensioner push up on the chain, giving a little more wrap around the cog. When I used the smaller cog, there was too much slack to take up with the tensioner so I had to set it up in the pull down mode. This probably makes 2-3 less teeth engage the cog. (Just imagine the chain on the bottom of the silver wheel, where the arrow is)I think once I put some heavy tension on the pedals, the bike (or cranks) flex just enough to throw the alignment off enough so that is skips, but doesn't completely fall off. It's really annoying...but with the cog swap and using push up mode, I think I am ready to roll!

I was able to intuit most of the solution on my own, but there were two articles that I found that helped put it together. The second one has a nice simple way to measure chain line. A bad chainline can be the downfall of the singlespeeder.

http://www.surlybikes.com/spew3.html
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/chainline.html

18 Hour Race Just for Fun??? No Such Thing...

From Dictionary.com

Race

1. An extended competition in which participants struggle like runners to be the winner: the presidential race.

When we decided to go to the 18 Hour Scout's Honor Race we really didn't know how we would do. One guy (bike shop mechanic) hadn't raced in 3 years, another guy had been on travel for a week, and yours truly spent 3 weeks in Japan with almost no riding to speak of. So, when we started the race yesterday afternoon, we all agreed it would be "just for fun". I figured that it would...until midnight when we realize that we are really close to another team and we would have to put the hammer down to increase the gap or move up a place. Sure enough, after 6 hours we were in first place by about 4 minutes and the competitive spirit kicked in. Long story short, the lead swapped back and forth a couple of times until we started to open up a consistent lead, 2 minutes, 6 minutes, 8 minutes 15 minutes then the other team had a crash and we were almost 45 minutes up on them. I guess it would have been more heroic to beat them at their best...but after 18 hours of riding and eating processed sugar jelly, I'll take the "W" any way I can get it.

So...I have only done about a half dozen endurance races but I do have some pointers...

Food

If you are going to bring anything that you have to prepare, make sure you eat (or prepare) it before you start riding. As the night gets later and you get further into your laps, noone even wants to peel an orange. Prep all of your stuff while you have some dead time

Lights

Don't assume anything. The manual may say 2.5 hours of run time but if you have never run your lights for that long, don't assume they will last that long. Even if you are meticulous, you are bound to have problems. My fancy pants High Intensity light blew out on me 30 minutes into a 2 hour ride. Fortunately I had a (crappy) backup light and made it through.

Competition

Don't ever think that an endurance race will be anything other than a race. If you are doing a 12, 18 or 24 hour race, you have been mountain biking for a while (most likely). If that's the case, you are probably a competitive rider. It will be a competition! I will say it again...it will be a competition.

There was too much going on (and one of those things wasn't sleep) for me to get the motivation to take pictures...but I do have pictures of the prizes that we won.

Prep Between laps

If you are not fortunate enough to have support person that will lay out your clothes, fill your camelbak, lube your chain, check your tire pressure, clean your bike and mount your lights, do it all before you try to get some sleep. You may not be able to actually get to sleep but it will be easier if you aren't thinking about your preparations and there is no way you will remember everything at 4 am after an hour nap.

Anyway, enough yapping from me. I'll post some pictures soon of the cool prizes we won. We got some energy gel (not bad) and four useless tires to split between all of us. My teammates were so generous that they just gave their tires to me...like I don't have enough crap filling up my basement!

$10 to spend at Sheetz...maybe I can get a chili dog next time I head North.


Some plain Hammer Gel. I may actually be able to use this.


and the tires...heavy...not tubeless...and just not the ones that I like to ride. I may keep pass them on to others that need tires or try to sell them on Ebay....or maybe they will just sit in my basement forever.

Getting Ready for an 18 Hour Race

Well, as you know, I have been in Japan for the past couple of weeks, almost 3 actually. During that time I rode several commuter bikes that were way too small for me and Johanna graciously loaned me her MTB for a huge mountain climb. Other than that I have done basically no riding. I got home 7 days ago and I have attempted to ride 5 of those days. I say attempted becuase two of those rides were foiled by bike problems...messed up rear deraileur cable and broken saddle. This is the first time I have ever snapped clean through a saddle rail!

Well, in three days I will be taking part in an 18 hour race and I have to say...I am a little bit concerned. Suer I am riding with 3 other people, but it's never easy to ride hard for a couple of hours, sleep for a few, then ride hard again. I may try to squeeze in one more ride in the two days I have left. I can't really build any fitness but I can hopefully remind my body what it's like to ride and try to keep my legs fresh.

So, 3 weeks off, then 3 real rides...wish me luck, I'll let you know how it goes.

Blogger has Labels

Well, not quite yet...Blogger in Beta has labels and a select few are being given the offer to switch over. I have been waiting for labels for a long time. It's the one feature that had me considering a full switch to another system.

To get them sooner I could just sign up with a new account but I'll wait...For now, I have some more Japan posts to work on.

Testify

Okay, taking a break from the Japan posts for a minute. I just found the video for Common's song Testify. I don't have cable so I have to cathc videos online now, I know...it's sad.

Anyway, the song is one of the most powerful tracks I have heard on any of his albums. I have to say that after seeing the video I am extremely disappointed. The song is fairly short and there is a lot of backstory revealed in the lyrics so I guess the only way that the video producers could go was to make it like a short movie, to fill in some story and stretch the actual lyrics.

If you can, listen to the song first (without the video) then watch the video. I hope you will understand what I am saying. It's a decent video but it's a great song, and too much is lost with the visual created. You should be able to use the links below to experience what I am talking about.

This player will let you listen to at least part of the song.

Here is the video. It's in the second post from the top.

Let me know what you think...

While you are at it, check out the video for BE. You can actually just turn off your monitor and listen to the lyrics. Make sure it's loud enough to hear the baseline come in and the synth trumpets (or maybe violins I think) that follow. Just the beat alone is enough to put me in a good mood. Tie in some poignant lyrics and this song makes it onto almost all of my iPod playlists.

I already miss Japan

I know that I have only recapped the first two days of my trip to Japan but I have to say that I already miss it. I just got back about 24 hours ago and there are elements of Nippon that I wish I could hold on to...

First, the courtesy. No matter where you go in Japan everyone in any type of service position is very friendly. Maybe that's because I am gaijin but I hope not. Every time we walked by a vendor or entered a retail store there were numerous welcomes. Everytime we paid for something we were being thanked right up until we walked out the door. You just don't get that in the states. It also wasn't just the people that wanted to sell us stuff either, we heard "Konichiwa" at least a hundred times as we hiked in Hokkaido. I will even admit, while I was in the Detroit airport I bumped into someone accidentally and instinctively said "sumimasen" the Japanese equivalent of "Excuse me". Of course I realized that the person had no idea what I was saying, but that's okay.

There are plenty of other cool things about Japan that I miss. Without going into too much detail and in no particular order I am a big fan of Onsen, onigiri, hashi, Nissan Skylines, "car bows", among the things that I am fine without...Sea Urchen, fish flakes, eel, bean candy and really expensive fruit.

Day One in Japan: Part II, Kabuki, Window Shopping and Electronics Town

After our Sushi breakfast we took the subway to the Kabuki theater. It was a pretty neat experience. I was a little ornery because the seats were just a bit small and my left leg kept falling asleep. A full Kabuki play can last anywhere from 3-5 hours with 2-4 acts. Fortunately, you can just view one act at a time. It's a lot cheaper and the acts are only 1-2 hours long. They also have headsets that you can rent that have an english explination of what's going on. It was a pretty cool experience but we weren't allowed to take pictures inside of the theater.





After Kabuki we did some window shopping around Ginza. We wanted to stop for a hot beverage, but we couldn't decide between some Darjeering and the Mild Brend. Never mind the fact that the prices were rediculous. (The exchange rate is about 110 Yen to 1.00 USD, making it just under $7 for the Mild Brend)




After Johanna was done trying on the new M Coupe Roadster (located inside of the Sony gallery/store) we continued to look around at the products and tried to figure out how to open this camera-thing without breaking it.



We figured it out after a couple of minutes and realized that it really wasn't anythign special. Sure it flips and it's a digital camera, but that's about it!



Here's a really small computer/really big PDA though. It's about the size of a large index card...maybe 5" x 7" The screen slides down to cover teh uselessly small keyboard. We tried to play with it but Kanji is pretty hard to read.

Here's a view of Akihabara, Tokyo's "Electronics Town". Things are supposed to be a little cheaper here than in other parts of Tokyo but I was only concerned with one thing...trying to find R/C Car parts. I found three hobby shops and managed to buy as much stuff as I thought I could fit in my luggage.


I won't go into details here on what I found. I actually have another blog that I am using to describe my trip from a Mini-Z Racer's perspective. I found some pretty good deals and some hard to find parts for myself and a couple of the guys that I race with. From a Mini-Z perspective, I was also able to get to a couple of stores and a couple of tracks all of which will be detailed on my other site.

If you are looking for more Japan posts, J has also got a blog that she's been using to document her stay and our travels. I'll post a permanent link in the sidebar one of these days.

One More Fish Market Video

I tried to capture the bustle of the fisk market with some rolling footage. It's pretty choppy and it's only 50% of the traffic that we saw in other parts of the market but it's still worth sharing.

You can see the small pallet trucks that people are driving and the carts that are pulled around by old and young alike. We had to cross one street that was just a stream of the pallet trucks from both directions. Add that to the fact that you are trying to dodge the splashing water/fish juice off of the ground and it can be a little overwhelming at 8 in the morning.

Arm Wrestling???

So, this is 100% true, and it just happened a couple of minutes ago. J and I are back in Kofu after travelling to Tokyo then Hokkaido and I am just sitting in her office checking email etc while she is off processing some samples or something.

So I am just sitting here minding my own business when 3 Japanese guys come in the door. I didn't think much of it because it's a 2 person office with a lot going on. But they were trying to get my attention. One of them was saying something about arm-wrestling. Johanna is standing in the hallway behind them and she tells me that they were talking about arm-wrestling and they wanted to know if I was strong. I didn't know what to tell them...I am not much of an arm-wrestler but I figured I would play along. What was the worst that would happen...I would lose. In the bustle of Japanese and broken english I think I hear that this kid is some sort of champion. Maybe they were kidding, but it's pretty hard to pick up on sarcastic subtleties when you don't even understand the language. So we clear a desk and I square off with this kid and soemone holds our hands and calls "ready, set, go". He was a tenacious little bugger. You should have seen the way he ducked his head towards the table to try and muster all of his strength. I think that one problem is that I probably outweight most full-grown Japanese men by about 40 pounds. We were at a stalemate for several seconds and then he started to fade. I just leaned my huge American hulk into my arm and put him down. After that his friend wanted to wrestle me. Similar story, strong start but no endurance.

I am not posting this to brag...I just think this is rediculously surreal. C'mon, you can't make this stuff up. I never would have guessed that I would travel half way around the world to be challenged to an amateur arm-wrestling match. Oh well.

Fish Market Videos

I uploaded a couple of videos to google from the Tsukiji Fish Market.

The first one is a short clip of a guy cutting some freshly purchased Tuna. It looks a little scary to me!

The second video is just a quick clip of how they get ice at the market. A guy stands on this platform with huge blocks of ice and then loads one onto the conveyor belt when someone needs ice. Then you roll your cooler(s) to the side and you get your ice. Pretty cool.

I have one more video that is pending verification so check back soon!