obfuscated.org

Hola, Amigos.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve rapped at y’all, but it’s been a busy year for the old cp. Well, I guess not much busier than normal, but busy enough that finding time for the old blog hasn’t really bubbled up to the top of the stack of things to do. So hey, let’s do a meme! Everybody loves memes. I saw 4×9 over at the Bicycle Touring Pro blog. Here goes:

Four jobs I’ve had in my life

• Software Developer
• Cable Monkey
• “Events staff” (fancy way of saying that I set up tables and occasionally ran light/sound boards at a church)
• Computer lab tech

(Wow, I didn’t think I’d be able to come up with 4 there.)

Four movies I can watch over and over

• Dr. Strangelove
• The Big Lebowski
• High Society
• Shaun of the Dead

Four places I have lived

• In/around Los Angeles, CA
• Kansas City, MO (or just outside of it. Whatever.)
• Houston, TX (very briefly)
• San Rafael, CA

Four TV programs I love to watch

• Inside the NBA (with Earnie, Kenny “The Jet” Smith and Chuckles)
• Tour de France coverage on Versus (I’ll watch the same stage twice in a day, just to hear both commentary teams yap on about it)
• 30 Rock
• M*A*S*H

Four places I have been on holiday

• The Mojave Desert
• Ghent
• Hawaii
• Las Vegas

Four websites I visit daily

• Google (iGoogle, Gmail, Reader)
• Facebook
• Velonews
• Jalopnik

Four of my favorite foods

• Panang Curry
• Sushi (pretty well any)
• Santa Maria-style Tri-tip
• Cheesesteak

Four places I would rather be right now

• Riding my bike
• Camping
• Anyplace that doesn’t get hot in the summer. (But then back here in the winter)
• I’ll go with Pau, France. (But by “right now” I mean right now. I’d love to be able to ride over and see the TdF stage finish at the Col du Tourmalet this year.)

December Miles: 85
Percentage of Monthly Goal: 51%
2009 Miles: 2,642 (Slightly cleaned up from November’s total)
Percentage of 2009 Goal: 132%

Well, the year ended with a bit of a cycling whimper. Between a cold and rain and travel I barely hit half of plan for December, but no matter: I beat my annual goal pretty handily, so I’m happy.

Here are some nerdy charts that nobody other than me will be interested in:

First, mileage per month:

What this says to me is that in most months, I more or less hit what I was targeting. More more than less, and May and December are certainly outliers, but in general the amount of riding I did was about what I set out to do. So clearly for 2010 I need to set out to do more.

Here are the mileages for each individual ride I did:

Not too surprisingly, 19.8 mile rides — my commute along the most usual route I take — dominate. One 65, one 50, a few 40′s and 35′s. I’ve found that ~30 is a nice comfortable ride at this point, so I really need to start doing more 40-60 mile rides if I want to get any sort of exercise benefit out of cycling. Also, I really do enjoy the longer rides. They’re a fun way to spend the day.

So, on to goals for 2010. Here’s what I’m targeting:

• 3,000 overall miles. Following the same “add 1,000″ rule as last year, that seemed to work well enough. Although maybe I should be adding 1,000 miles to what I did this year. Hmm…
• Ride at least one century. Looking at calendars and schedules and just being realistitc, I think doing one of the various supported centuries (~100 mile rides) with Stephanie and maybe the Stan’s group is a more attainable goal than doing a 200km unsupported brevet.
• Ride at least one of the area’s well-known climbs. All the cool kids climb. I ride mostly on level ground. I’m really curious to see if I could handle GMR or Palomar or Crystal Lake or whatever. I certainly couldn’t today. This, I think, more than the other two is something I’ll have to work up to this year.

I’m pretty excited about cycling in 2010. There’s nothing quite like arbitrary goals to give you a good excuse to get out and ride ;)

November Miles: 276
Percentage of Monthly Goal: 166%
2009 Miles: 2,494
Percentage of 2009 Goal: 125%

Wow, a bit late on this one. Not a lot to say about November. The weather was great for commuting for most of the month. No horrible travesties at work that kept me off the bike. I got to do the Thanksgiving ride with the Stan’s crew (as well as Brad and Erich), and that was a ton of fun. Also, Fletcher was very excited to go out on a longer (a little over 40 miles) ride with me on a day off I had towards the end of the month, which was really pleasing. It wasn’t the longest ride he’s ever been on — he did a 50 mile ride during the summer — but it was probably the most challenging, as it wasn’t nearly as flat has the 50 mile ride. He did great and I had a wonderful time riding with him.

The year is winding down, and I’m already pretty well over goal. It was very, very helpful to have something concrete to work towards that didn’t necessarily involve riding to and from the office. I’ve also found that I really enjoy getting out for longer rides every now and again. Next year, I think I’d like to aim a little higher in terms of longer individual rides along with the annual mileage goal. (I’ll probably aim for 3,000 next year.)

To that end, I’ve been reading up on Randonneuring, which I think is pretty well described on the Randonneurs USA web site:

Randonneuring: Randonneuring is long-distance unsupported endurance cycling. This style of riding is non-competitive in nature, and self-sufficiency is paramount. When riders participate in randonneuring events, they are part of a long tradition that goes back to the beginning of the sport of cycling in France and Italy. Friendly camaraderie, not competition, is the hallmark of randonneuring.

From everything I’ve read, this fits in almost perfectly with my style of cycling. A bunch of folks on sport touring bikes set up more for comfort and reliability than for speed, carrying more tools than they’ll likely need, wearing more wool than spandex and riding more or less independently over long distances at a sustainable pace. Heck, to register with the US randonneuring authority, you have to fill out a paper form and mail it in go a guy who turns around and mails it to Paris. How cool is that? (In its own oddly anachronistic way.)

The local randonneuring group has a couple of 200k — which is pretty well the shortest these rides every are — “brevets” next year. That’s twice as far as I’ve ever ridden at one go, but it doesn’t sound entirely unattainable. And I have to train up for the Palm Springs ride with Stephanie and the Stan’s folk in Feburary, and that’s 80% of the distance anyway, so… who knows. Maybe I’ve figured out what my 2010 goals are ;)

October Miles: 202
Percentage of Monthly Goal: 121%
2009 Miles: 2,218
Percentage of 2009 Goal: 110%

October is the riding month that Stephanie and I had been planning for all year. We had signed up for the Livestrong challenge in Austin, planning to do the 90 mile route through Texas hill country. While we didn’t do the 90 — for various reasons that I’ll get in to soon enough — we made it to the ride, really enjoyed the event and had a great time in Texas. We’re almost certainly going to do it again next year, maybe in San Jose instead of Austin. Fletch wants to do the ride as well, which I think is pretty cool.

First things first about the trip: a bunch of people helped us out with the event. Stan loaned us bike boxes for the trip, Erich and CLV loaned us their truck so we could get to and from the airport with our bikes, Randy and Karen put us up in their beautiful loft and loaned us a truck while we were in town, Jeni hung out with Fletch while Stephanie and I did the ride, she met us at the finish, drove us around all the day before the ride and put us up for the last night of our stay, and she, Jason, B., Jesse, Julie, Boris and Tanya schlepped out to the Salt Lick for lunch on Thursday. Add to that the big bunch of folks who donated their hard earned greenbacks to the LAF. We are truly overwhelmed by the generosity of our friends and family. You’re all the best. We’re lucky to know you.

Out trip started out way too early on a Friday morning. Throw everything in Erich and CLV’s truck, turn up the Elvis station on the XM, get almost to the freeway before we remember that we forgot Fletcher’s phone, drive home to discover that no, it’s in his pocket, hit the road again to LAX, check the bags have breakfast get on the plane fly to Denver have lunch and a beer fly to Austin and see this at the airport:

Which is pretty strong, greeting wise. Randy and Karen picked us up from there, showed us around town, helped us drop off our stuff and then took us out for dinner and beers. Stephanie and Fletch have met them just once before, and I think I’ve seen them maybe two or three times in the last ten years, but family really is family and we had a grand time hanging out with them. From there we went back to their place, they took off for their ranch, and we turned in for the evening.

The next day we had a nice walk around Austin. We went on the obligatory pilgrimage to Mellow Johnny’s bike shop, where Fletch got to see some of that Lance guy’s TDF jerseys.

We had a leisurely breakfast in town, walked around some more and then met up with Jeni for the drive out to lunch. Since her research trip in 2008, Stephanie has been telling us about the Salt Lick and its many wonders. It did not disappoint. Great food, great company, we got to see people we haven’t seen in years. Hard to ask for more than that.

From there, Jeni took us on a quick spin over to Dripping Springs where the ride would start the next day. Always handy to get the lay of the land, especially with a 7:45 start time. (We aren’t morning people.) After that we went back to Austin, had the obligatory pasta dinner, and turned in early. (Although we were serenaded by the good people of Austin re-enacting “Thriller” right outside of Randy and Karen’t window.)

We woke up obscenely early the next morning to make the start time. Dropped Fletch off with Jeni, raced over to Dripping Springs, parked the car, rode to the start line and holy crap this place is a zoo!

We were part of the Fat Cyclist team that won the fund raising competition — Fatty raised over $780,000 for the LAF this year — and were entitled to start at the very front of the ride, but since we were late, we just hung out at the back of the 90 mile group and rolled out with them.

Now, a ride like this isn’t something to take lightly, as clearly indicated by me doing the serious face before the start:

Stephanie also was taking things very, very ser… no, actually she was just having a good time.

And the obligatory couple shot:

We were really excited to do this ride together. It was a bit of an early anniversary celebration for us. (Our 3rd wedding anniversary was just three days away.) We don’t get a ton of time to go on long rides together, and whenever we do it’s a really good time.

The start of the ride was along highway 290, which the good people of Dripping Springs had kindly closed down a lane of for us. It was a bit of gridlock along that part, but it opened up soon enough.

When I originally looked at the ride — in particular the elevation profile — I thought that wow, it looks almost exactly like the rides we do out here. In terms of distance and elevation, it would be like riding from home to Rancho and back. Not a huge deal. What I failed to consider is that the Texas hill country has that name for a reason. While there are hills here, there are also flat stretches. Not so much in Texas. The other thing I failed to consider is that Stephanie has been training really hard for the last few months, so while we rode at about the same speed in the summer, she’s cruise along at about 5mph faster than I do now, especially on hills. (And as you’ll recall, there are only hills in that part of Texas.) So the ride was more… challenging than I expected it to be.

That said, we reached the first “power stop” together and one of the other riders was kind enough to take our picture.

The race organizers handed out “in honor of” and “in memory of” bibs for people to write dedications on. Stephanie’s, for example:

There were also “I am a Survivor” bibs worn by cancer survivors. They were pretty inspiring. Strong, in a “I’m not taking any shit off this disease” sort of a way. This was my favorite:

Ten miles or so down the road was the second “power stop,” which was kind of crazy because it happened right there on the road. This was the only poor logistical decision I saw the entire day, so that was cool.

A few miles after the second stop, things took a turn for the worse. Towards the top of a climb, my rear wheel stopped. Completely. Brakes were fine. Tire was fine. Stephanie touched the hub and it was burning hot. Not good. Funny thing is that, relative to the normal road rider, I was carrying every tool under the sun. I had spare tubes for both my and Stephanie’s bike. Spare spokes. I could tighten pretty much any part of either of our bikes that might come loose. (Including crank arms, which have come off on us during rides before.) I had more or less everything I needed to completely service a bike. But I wasn’t prepared for a wheel failing.

After fiddling with it for a bit, the hub cooled down and we decided to give it another go. That lasted maybe a quarter of a mile before the wheel made a horrible high-pitched noise and stopped spinning for good. One of the ride’s on-course bike mechanics stopped by and chatted with us for a bit. Eventually one of the SAG wagons picked me up and took me to the next power stop where there was a mechanic with a full set of tools.

Note the morbid onlookers. (The guy in the Mellow Johnny’s jersey had three spokes go out on a cattle grate, which ended his day.) After a few minutes he was able to get the cassette off the wheel, gave the never welcome pronouncement of “you’re screwed” and offered his condolences to my ride. “Shit happens” was the best that we could collectively come up with to explain why a wheel with less than 2,000 miles on it would just stop working.

The other two riders with day-ending mechanicals were anxious to get back to the start, so Stephanie and I had a brief talk, decided that she’d finish the ride and I’d get the bike to the car and meet her at the finish. I took the camera with me, so she doesn’t have any pictures of her ride, but she had a great time. At the next rest stop she met Philly Jen, the Team Fat Cyclist co-captain for the Philadelphia Livestrong Challenge. They rode the last 30 miles of the 65 mile course — because she spent so much time with me and my mechanically-challenged bike, Stephanie missed the cutoff for the 90 mile course — together and had a grand old time.

Here’s Stephanie coming down the home stretch to the finish:

One very cool thing at the finish is that Eldon Nelson, aka the Fat Cyclist, was waiting there to try to meet as many of the Team Fatty riders as he could. We’ve been following his blog for a while, and it was really cool to get to meet him in person. He runs a mean cycling team and does great work getting people motivated. We were proud to be even a small part of his great efforts.

We hung out at the finish for a while after that, then headed to Jeni’s place for dinner and to catch up. It rained that night, thunder and everything, which was a fun change of pace for us. We had one last Salt Lick meal in the Austin airport before we left, and the flight home the next day was wonderfully uneventful.

Oh, and Stan told me yesterday that the Surly is ready to roll again. I’ll probably pick it up this afternoon.

• An aerie of hawks
• A boil of hawks
• A brace of hawks
• A brood of hawks
• A cast of hawks
• A couple of hawks
• An eyass of hawks
• An eyrie of hawks
• An eyry of hawks
• A flight of hawks
• A kettle of hawks
• A knot of hawks
• A lease of hawks
• A leash of hawks
• A mews of hawks
• A moulting of hawks
• A nest of hawks
• A pair of hawks
• A schizophrenia of hawks
• A screw of hawks
• A soar of hawks
• A souse of hawks
• A spiraling of hawks
• A stooping of hawks
• A stream of hawks
• A swarm of hawks
• A swooping of hawks
• A tower of hawks

Inspired by Henry’s Facebook comment.

import urllib2, hashlib

TWITTER = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/public_timeline.json'

def hashed(seq):
    sha1 = hashlib.sha1()
    for x in seq:
        sha1.update(x)
        yield sha1.digest()

def words(wordsize, seq):
    for x in seq:
        for i in xrange(0, len(x), wordsize):
            yield int(x[i:(wordsize + i)].encode('hex'), 16)

def twitrandoms(wordsize = 4, chunksize = 37):
    def infinite_twitrandom():
        while True:
            data = urllib2.urlopen(TWITTER).read()
            for i in range(0, len(data), chunksize):
                yield data[i:(chunksize + i)]
    return words(wordsize, hashed(infinite_twitrandom()))

September Miles: 196
Percentage of Monthly Goal: 117%
2009 Miles: 2,016
Percentage of 2009 Goal: just over 100%

Well, an exciting month for certain. I made my goal for the year this month. Just this morning, in fact. I left the house with 1,995 and 3/4 miles, which put me just past The Arboretum when I crossed 2,000. Here’s odometer for the day at the first safe place to stop after then:

Also the intersection in question:

And proof that I was there:

So, yeah. Mission accomplished, I guess. I like counting by miles a lot more than counting by trips to and from the office. Longer weekend rides with Stephanie and Fletcher are so much more fun. Although I have to say that I don’t at all miss the alternative to bike commuting:

View California Hike and Bike Parks in a larger map

I have no idea what the state budget issues will do to this list, but as of September 19, 2009, this is what the California State Parks web site has to say about Hike & Bike camps.

Looks like there’s a pretty glaring hole in all but the most recent version of WordPress. A brief inspection of this site reveals that I’m way behind current and was broken in to. A fresh install was in order, and here we are.

Not quite sure why I’m managing my own install in this day and age when I can have somebody else do it for free. Oh well. At least this is just a stupid personal site and not anything I depend on.

August Miles: 161
Percentage of Monthly Goal: 96%
2009 Miles: 1,820
Percentage of 2009 Goal: 91%

It had to happen some month, and I would have bet at the beginning of the year that it would have been August. I missed goal this month. By less than six miles, too. Which is pretty dissapointing. Thing is, I was at 161 a week ago today. That pesky Station fire made riding somewhere between hazardous and stupid. So I didn’t.

That said, I’m still over 1,800 miles on the year. That’s a ride from my garage to the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. I’m pretty pleased by that. I’m definitely going to make it to Chicago (which is 2,000 miles from Monrovia) by the end of September.

I think I may revise my goal for the year. The Empire State Building is 2,775 miles from my house….