Hit Again

Well, it's was only back in February when I was last rear-ended and it seems like I only got my car back recently. Sure enough, on my way to pay the registration at AAA, I was hit again.

It went like this. I was driving in the right lane of a road with two lanes going each way divided by a turning lane. So, five lanes two each way with a turn lane in the middle. The left lane in the set of lanes I was traveling in was bumper to bumper while the lane I was in was empty. I was traveling up the empty right lane doing the speed limit. Out of no where, a Nissan Altima hit the driver side of my car.

It seems that the lady was trying to get to the strip mall on my right and needed to cross both lanes of traffic to get there. She was clear through the left lane but didn't see me coming in the right lane until it was much too late.

Needless to say, the hood, the front light, drivers side, drivers side quarter panel, and rear driver's side panel are all pretty much smashed up. Oh, and the transmission is done. I had slam the shifter into Park to get the key out so I could get into the trunk for my camera. Now I can't get it into any gear, not that it makes much difference. When I turn it on, oil leaks all over the place. I'm assuming it's going to be totaled.

Oh yeah, sore neck and left arm. Did I mention I'm riding two centuries this weekend?

Anyway, you can see the pictures over in the Flickr badge to the right.

Specialized Angel @ Giro

Here's the picture, thanks PEZ!

Thanks Cycling.tv

For saying my name during today's stage of the Giro. I sent them a photo of the Specialized Angel you see in the previous post, which they enjoyed. The also mentioned how happy I seemed in the photo, very funny!

Angel Spotted at Giro

I saw the angel on Cycling.tv's presentation of today's stage of the Giro. I don't know if it's the Specialized Angel with whom I took a picture with at the Tour of California, but it could have been.

TdF Google Earth Map

I read about it over at the TdFblog, where you should also go to see it.

There you will find links to Google Earth and the entire route of this year's Tour. You'll need Google Earth to view the route, but it's worth the download.

Google and Dell Sign Deal

Google and Dell have entered into an agreement where as Dell will load Google's Desktop Search onto all newly purchased puters leaving the Dell factory.

The deal calls for Dell PCs to come with Google Desktop and Google Toolbar pre-installed. It also stipulates that Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 will be set to use a Google home page. Dell will, in turn, get sharing of Internet advertising revenue.

The multi-year, worldwide pact will involve tens of millions of computers, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, adding, "The real reason to do this is the end-user benefit."

How this benefits the user, I'm not sure. I wouldn't dare run Google Desktop on any of my machines. Quick access to all data on the machine isn't necessarily a good thing in a SOHO environment.

Liberty Seguros Cancels Contract

Ouch, that will put a damper on any teams season, when the title sponsor decides they've had enough of the bleeding check book and lies.

I guess when you put a ton of money up, you expect those you are paying to be an ethical bunch. I suppose we shouldn't count the chickens before the eggs, but with all that's come to light in the past couple days over this drug gaffe and the Liberty Seguros Pro Cycling team, things are going south at light speed.

Read CyclingNews article here.

It's just hard to deny when they find a thousand doses of anabolic steroids and hormones in your flat, along with two hundred packets of blood, products to manipulate it, machines to freeze it and material to perform transfusions.

The doctor involved claims, "It is blood for private analysis; dirty blood, to throw away, and the majority of the medicines, the growth hormones and everything else, are old and worthless".

The excitement of cycling never ends, even after the race is over!

Cycling Madness....

The finish at Plan de Corones has been changed due to snowy conditions. Manalo Saiz arrested for involvent in doping.


So, today's stage isn't finished as of this posting, but the stage has been changed due to the weather. One of the first mountains have been removed, they rode around that one. We'll see where they decide to end the race. I've heard it will end 7 or 8 k from the top of the Plan de Corones, which is too bad as road crews have been working on that upper section of road for weeks.

The real unfortunate part is they will have to move all the equipment and stages to the new finish. Given the weather, that won't be easy.


More dopers busted and this time it's the team boss. Liberty Seguros boss, Manalo Saiz was arrested yesterday for being suspect in a doping case. If true, it's quite a nice ring they have going; team manager, doctor and someone working at a testing lab in Madrid. This might explain Roberto Heras' situation a little better.

Pic From Ride

Here is a picture I took on a hillside before arriving in Butte Meadows on Saturday.



[Posted with hblogger 2.0 & Treo 650]

Cool Pic

See others here.

Cycling Commentary

Hoste jumped the Disco ship to head across the pond to that Belgium vitamin team. Milram leads out Bettini?! Savoldelli, can he? Tony rocks the trainer. Local race stuff.


Discovery said they wouldn't play the auction game with Leif Hoste to see who might be the highest bidder and surely enough, Hoste has left the building. He's had a super season so far and because of it has had many offers from the likes of Rabobank, Cofidis, Caisse d'Epargne and Quick Step-Innergetic, but ultimate went with a team he raced with before, Davitamon-Lotto. As well as moving home, Hoste will also be rewarded with a huge pay increase. It's reported he will be getting an additional 200,000 euros over his Disco contract and has signed for two years. Dang, must be nice to get a $20,000 dollars a month raise!


Milram seemed to be leading out Bettini in Sunday's stage of the Giro or were they working for their own guy Mirco Lorenzetto? Phil and Paul didn't seem too happy about this and suggested the Milram team be disqualified and removed from the race. Seems a little harsh, but I'm not up to speed on what the ruling would be in this case.

But, to Bettini's credit, this morning he won for himself. Well, he did follow Milram wheels up to 250 meters before following a Gerolsteiner rider to the line and holding off Pollack of T-mob.


Paolo, can you do it in the last week? Or are you taking it a bit easy to save for the Tour? Well, given this is the Giro we are talking about, there really isn't any taking it easy stuff going on, especially in this last week. But, there seems to have been opportunity for Savoldelli to do something to get a bit of time back over the past couple stages, but it never materialized. So, with that said, will Tommy D step up and ride like the mountain goat he is and get up on that podium. Damn that would be sweet! At this point in the race and the stages yet to come, I think Tommy D has a little bit better chance than Paolo. This is Basso's race to lose.


And my big news. Due to rain, waking up late, and lots of great television programming, I decided to stay in and ride the trainer for 3 hours. Usually I can't bare more than 1 or 2 hours on that dang thing but yesterday was a good TV day. Started off with the Detroit Cleveland b-ball game and at half time switched over to Cyclism Sunday on OLN to catch the race I couldn't watch online. Not too exciting of a stage, but hell, it was better than anything else that TV had to offer, so there. Looking out of the windows in my office, I might be pulling a similar session later today.

For local race info, please allow me to redirect you to much more well versed racer pages such as Olaf's and Bella's for the Kern County race report.

Happy Bike to everywhere month!

Shout Outs

Ok, so I added some code a week ago or so to track where my vast minion of readers reside. So, I'd like to take a minute here it give knuckles, high-fives, peace sign, and shout outs to the peeps.

Thanks to all those who have visited and I hope to see you all here again.

First, from accross the pond we had a visitor from Freiburg, Germany. Welcome and darn you for being so local to the World Cup. I hope you get out to a couple games!

Moving westward, hello to users in Arnold, MD; King, NC; and Stone Mountain, GA.

Now for the folks out in the west, howdy to Houston, TX; Allen, TX; Potwin, KS; Broomfield, CO (Vanacore, is that you? Finally into the new house eh?); and Gilbert, AZ (Big Jonny, dat you? If not what up AZ?).

Last but surely not least, what up to my Cali readers in Fresno (hey Yvette!); hello in Watsonville, CA, I'll be down your way at the end of July, camping at Half Moon Bay SP. More love out to San Jose, CA (I suspect this is my brother); Redwood City, CA; Dublin, CA; San Leandro, CA; Alameda, CA (Hey Jonathan and Angie, I hope the Fast Ride Across America went well); Oakland, CA (place of my birth); and Fairfield, CA (where I started windsurfing back in 1984, WOOT!).

And even more lastly but not leastly, if those are even words in the English language, Chico folks. OH, sorry, one reader out in Paradise, love it up there!

Thank you all for taking the time to read my drivel, I truely appriciate it!

Nice Ride Today

The weather couldn't have been better. It was supposed to rain or maybe have thunderstorms, but it never really happened.

I headed out the door about 9:30 heading for Humboldt Rd. Started out easy, just enjoying the cool weather and quiet morning. Before I knew it I was up in Forest Ranch hitting some of the side streets as I made my way up the hill. I really wasn't sure how far I was going to go or for how long so I just kept going.

Then I was up to the county fire station and kept going. Then the big down hill section heading further up HWY 32. Next thing I know, I've been riding for 2.5 hours and I'm at the turnoff for Butte Meadows. So I figure, what's another 6 or so miles over to the Bambi Inn?

Made it up to the Bambi in about 3 hours and took a 5 minute rest. Then it was 2 hours of blissful riding, mostly down hill back to Chico. What a great ride! Took about 5 hours and I covered about 75 miles and between 6 and 7 thousand feet elevation. I felt like I was out there for 2 hours, but was happy to be back home for a large bowl of noodles and sundried tomatoes.

I wish everyday could be like that.

Bonds Did it Today

He tied the Babe with 714 home runs. Is it tainted? Depends on how you feel about the situation I suppose. Bonds never tested positive but I'm not sure if that really matters. He was obviously really big at one point, especially the year he hit 74. But that said, I can think of other athletes who never tested positive and the media as well as many fans still think that persons accomplishments were tainted.

Ah, the drama. What would we do without it?

Exciting Giro Stage End

From CyclingNews.com commentary:

Oh dear, Sella and Mori crash into the barriers. Mori is worse off, but now he's back. They are passed by the chase group. Ouch, that hurt.


Jeez, Mori crashes again with Sella. This is just not their day.

Pretty hurtin' for Mori and Sella. Those poor guys were flying down the decent and didn't make the corner and both hit the barrier. Sella went over the barrier and down the hill behind it before jumping back onto the road. Mori got off a bit easier in the first crash.

The second crash was caused by Mori taking a corner too wide and hitting the barrier only to crash in the road and then be hit by the passing Sella who then also went down.

Even more amazing was after all these crashes, the two made it back to the 4 riders who passed during the chasing mayhem and nearly took the stage if it wasn't for an attack by Joan Horrach.

What a stage!

Busy Days...

WOW, I haven't posted in days. I've been a busy little boy filling my time with the Giro on cycling.tv, work, and riding.

The Giro has been pretty fun to watch and today kicks off the last half of the race. It's been said this is where the real race will take form. Lucky for Basso as that means he is starting with a nice advantage. But we'll see as today is the individual time trial and the general classification is bound to change. I doubt Paulo will be able to make up all the time on Basso, but I'm sure he'll be giving it his all.

The Jan's ride today is also important, but not for the GC, more just to prove he has some form. He's already finished and his time is the best so far, but that will fall for sure. I'm hoping Tom Danielson can do something special and save his top 10 on GC before sacraficing himself for Paulo later this week.

Work has been mellow and I'm done evaluating some full disk encryption apps and made my selection. We are going with PGP Desktop 9 as it can encrypt the entire hard disk as well as any USB drives we use as backups, all while being pretty much transparent to the user. Only down fall is the $149 price tag per user and we need about 20 copies, ouch.

Another fun assignment was giving my boss an update on our security assessment and my progress on fixing some vulnerabilities. I've got those workstations locked down pretty good now, like anyone is going to make it through the firewall anyway. Also had some fun scanning my network for shares and bruteforcing passwords in hopes of supplimenting our password policy. Ain't it cool when work is fun and interesting.

Now on to why I do that work I mention above; to ride. Well, I do the work to pay some bills too. So, I've been getting in some good hours on the cycle this week; nearly 10 hours over the past 4 days. 5 on Sunday, 2 on Monday, Tuesday I checked myself before I wrecked myself, and Wednesday got in 3 hours. I can't tell if I'm gaining any fitness though I'm sure I must, but I am loosing a few pounds off the midsection. It's nice to be almost the weight I was when I graduated high school. Yay for me.

Bike to work this month, yo!

Happy Mother's Day

To all the mothers out there! I got off easy since my parents are on a month long motorhome trip down in southern Utah.

So, perfect opportunity for bike riding! I've been kind of taking it easy because of a nagging leg issue. Dang thing cramps up at the weirdest times, probably a pull or strain. So, I've been doing some hours on the trainer inside trying to avoid the visual queues which make me want to ride too hard. This isn't difficult while riding inside.

So, Sunday morning I headed out for 3 mellow hours out in the orchards between Chico, Durham, and Dayton, with a quick run out to River Rd and back in on 32. I felt good afterward as I settled in for a huge bowl of pasta before taking a rest and catching a bit of the Giro on OLN. Then it was time for a fun little mountain bike ride. I had to clean the cobwebs off that sucker as I hadn't ridden it since last September.

We didn't really do much mtn biking and most my miles on the mtn bike came by way of riding to and from my friends house. The dirt riding consisted of being dropped off at Green Gate and riding back into town. Unfortunately, we took the South Rim Trail. Being I hadn't been in the park on my bike in a few years, I assumed my friend was aware of the trail conditions. Well, it was tougher than we expected, but now that I recall the times in the past I had been on that trail, it was always tough.

I had two flats, forgot my camelback at home (lucky for me a I had 1 bottle with me) and my friend went over the bars, but wasn't hurt.

All in all, it was a great biking day where I got in about 75 to 80 miles. It reminded me how fun mtn biking was and is. I might have to do a little more of that stuff.

Speed of Light, In Reverse...

Interesting, though I don't understand it at all. But this might explain why I get shot out the back of the cycling group at the speed of light. Read about it here.

Come to find out, light can travel in reverse at speeds faster than light, if that makes any sense at all. God must have done this work on the 9th day or maybe Al Gore invented it?!

More Gas Goat Getting...

When I read articles like the one which has prompted this post, I get more and more frustrated. I won't say with who.

The article I speak of can be found here, and I'll quote the portion that of the article that really gets my goat.

Commuter Bonnie Paterniti said she feels like she's been hijacked by the oil companies. Not only are they changing the price on the signs as she fills up, she's trapped in a gas-guzzling Tahoe.

"Is that infuriating?" reporter Michelle Meredith asked her.

"It is when you travel 750 to 800 miles a week," Paterniti said.

Poor Bonnie is being held captive by the big bad oil companies, not by her choice of vehicle or her commute.

It's either time for Bonnie to move closer to work, get a job closer to home, and or get a smaller more economical vehicle to commute in.

This is sickening to me. If you can't afford the gas, adjust your lifestyle. Same basic concept I use to determine I can't eat every meal at the 5th Steet Steakhouse; I can't afford it while maintaining my current lifestyle.

Nice Weekend

Headed out to the southern Humboldt coast this weekend to celebrate a friend's birthday. Gotta love Shelter Cove, 80 degrees all weekend with some light north winds. Thank's goes out to the birthday boy, Trent, for letting us party at Club Trent.

Take a look at the Flickr badge over to the right for some shots of the fun. Actually, the pics are just of the house and getting ready for the BBQ before the real party on Saturday night, where I took no pictures to protect the guilty parties.

The BBQ was off the hizzy. Trent and Pablo went diving the day before with one other guys and plucked 9 nice sized abalone. What a job it was slicing those suckers, thanks Will, and pounding them out, thanks Ben. It was a couple hour endevor for about 30 minutes of gourging. There is nothing more fine than fresh abalone deep fried for 2 minutes.

So, the party was fun too, we'll leave it at that.

Next day I was supposed to drive home but never made the trip because laying by the pool drinking was far preferable to driving 4.5 hours.

Anyway, it was great fun and I enjoyed meeting some new people and catching up with those I hadn't seen in a while. Probably won't see many of them until we all meet up for Reggae on the River in August and then maybe Burning Man after that.

Happy B-day Trent!

Cycling Reality TV?

The Race to Replace! OH OH, pick me! There'd be nothing like getting dropped in the first 400 meters of the USPRO. Put that in your palmares.

Why why why? Why not show real racing rather than reality TV? Is there so much cycling on TV that this kind of stunt is necessary? So many questions, so few answers. I suppose I'll have to play along.

Shouldn't be hard with 20 "webisodes", the first next Monday. The webisodes will give viewers a day-in-the-life glimpse into the lives of the current cyclists who are in the running to be named Team leader. Among the cyclists in the mix for Team leader (in alphabetical order) are José Azevedo, Tom Danielson, Viatcheslav Ekimov, George Hincapie, Yaroslav Popovych, Chechu Rubiera and Paolo Savoldelli.

Blah at marketing ploys.

Cycling Stars Take MySpace by Storm

As seen in, well, just about every cycling blog and webzine out there, Jan has a MySpace page, where he does the blogging and the ranting. Well, of course it's a fake, but it's pretty darned funny stuff. But, not to be out done by The Jan, Ivan also has a page.

If you visit Ivan's page and check out his friends list, you'll notice a couple of legends past, present, and maybe future, all have their pages. None as funny as Jan's, but not everyone can be as funny as Jan.

Hopefully, for his sake, we won't be laughing in July. May should be pretty funny, though. I'll be enjoying cycling.tv all month! Woot!

Kodak Posts $298 Million Quarterly Loss

Kodak Posts $298 Million Quarterly Loss; KGSN Pro cycling team slated to ride Huffy rather than Merckx for remainder of year to offset the loss.

Snowy Italian Climbs...

Hope it warms up or they clear the road before the race comes through or else everyone will be running across like Tom.

My Solution to Gas Prices...

Ride your bike!

Ok, that doesn't work for some folks who travel too far for work or live in the middle of no where.

But, in reading this article, http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12603847/, it's obvious that our government has no clue what to do. How is a $100 credit going to help anyone? If you drive 10,000 miles a year, that $100 covers you for 1 penny per mile. You call that a solution? Someone's been huffing to many gas fumes!

So, my solution is that we jack up gas prices to say $4 or $5 a gallon and the government saves the excess cash in a fund to offset the future price of gas so that when it gets higher than $4 or $5 a gallon there won't be total anarchy. Oh yeah, and invest the money from the fund in gas futures, if there is such a thing. Or invest in oil companies, they seem to have had a wonderful first quarter, 2006.

There I said it, now rail me for it!

We'll be using 34x28/29 gearing

that's not cycling; were the words coming out of Johan Bruyneel mouth as he explained the equipment Discovery would use during Stage 17 at the Giro d'Italia.

He went on to exclaim, "there's no road at the end: it's 5.5 km up a ski slope."

I can't wait to see the razor thin climbers attack that stage and as well, see how large a group will be hors delai. I'm not sure of the Italian translation of outside the time limit so French will have to do. Please let me know if you know what it is.

Yey for the Giro, three weeks of entertainment!

World Cup Steaming Video...

Alright folks. The World Cup is just weeeks away and being that it's in Germany, nearly all the games will be played during the typical American work day. Darn you people with untypical work days who can watch it on TV.

So, everyone knows it's not as much fun to record the games and then watch after the scores have been posted. Enter streaming internet video... the answer to your prayers, kind of.

After a little research, I find that Yahoo owns the rights to distributing the 64 games, just like 4 years ago. Check it out here, http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/.

Ok, it's not the entire game streamed, unfortunatly, but highlights are better than nothing. It's either that, or you can select to get updates to your cell phone via the same Yahoo website, just look for the mobile link or click here, http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/m/.

And what event would be complete without a toolbar to go along with it, like we didn't have enough toolbars already. Needless to say, Yahoo has one especially for the World Cup, install at your own risk! You'll see the link at the http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com link above.

If the above info doesn't help your viewing needs, well, try this link, http://planet.nana.co.il/livetv/. Over there, I see links to GoalTV, which I assume will show the games. With that said, I haven't investigated the site in detail, but watching there will require you to download video player software.

OK, and finally after reading all that stuff above, the meat of this post... Here is a link to satellite channels you can get on your PC for a small price of $30. Check them out here, http://www.satellitepcchannels.com/?hop=violeti.

They are advertising a $30 one time fee to watch 200 satellite channels. This is down from their regular price of $180 as a World Cup special.

So, go watch the World Cup on the internet! If you want to know who will win, you can drop me a comment and I'll let you know!

Chico Wildflower Ride Report

If you live in Chico, you can't miss the spectacle of 4000 + cyclist converging on this otherwise quiet town. Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the Chico Wildflower and it was as great if not better than all those preceding it.

My day started by heading over to sign in around 6:15 AM and I was surprised at the number of riders leaving the fair grounds so early. My ride couldn't start until I had fully loaded up on espresso back at home, but I was out on the road just before 8 AM.

All my out of town friends bagged the ride again this year, again, missing an epic time. So, I rode out by myself, though I was never alone. The first excitement occurred not more than a mile from the start when I was witness to a crash. A lady riding in front of me was looking down at her rear tire as it was going flat and her pedal clipped a parted truck, sending her down. She only had a couple of abrasions and was back on the road after a tire change.

Then a few hundred yards up the road, we missed the turn! Hello, I live here and know the course maybe too well, but still just followed the group right off course. Then while I tried to explain to people the correct route, my credibility was questioned as I was following them in the first place.

Nothing that exciting happened for sometime afterward. At the first rest stop, on my way back out on the course, I ran into Greg, a guy who rides for Chico Corsa. He mentioned that about 20 guys from the team were up the road and wanted to know if I wanted to go with him and catch up. After hauling ass for about an hour we caught up with them nearly in Oroville.

Meeting up with them really worked out great. There were bunches of people to chat with and the draft created by 20 or so riders made it easier on all of us.

After lunch, we headed out into what ended up being the most difficult part of the ride, the windy flat section. Yup, wind. What seemed like 20 to 30 MPH head winds coming back into Chico. Oh, did I mention it was nearly 90 degrees too. Ouch. Well, needless to say Chico Corsa has some strong guys and they were drilling it into the headwind at 20+ MPH. I was hangin' tough but finally was a victim of the pace. I sure I could have held on a little longer but couldn't see the need. One other guy, Dave, and myself quietly snuck off the back and headed for home.

So, I got in about 75 or 80 miles, burned two days worth of calories, ate two dinners and hit the sack.

For pictures, look to the Flickr badge over to your right hand side.

Another great Chico Wildflower is in the books!

Friend on a Long Ride...

You all may have heard me speak of Jonathan, a friend I met on a ride in Chico about a year and a half ago. Well, like myself, he too likes to ride his bike. I'm not just talking about a century or double metric ride, but for an entire month straight.

Jonathan's been on a few bike tours, the longest being 32 days from LA to Boston. Well, he's at it again. His wife, Angie, was kind enough to send him on the trip for his 40th birthday. This post is coming a little late as his trip kicked off April 23rd and runs through May 20th. Currently, the group is in Albuquerque, NM enjoying their first restday after 7 days in the saddle and covering about 840 miles.

The picture is of the group walking back from the cerimonial wheel dipping in the ocean before leaving the west coast. At the far left is Angie and Jonathan is to the right carrying his wheel.

From what I've read on the daily report, Jonathan has yet to get a flat, which by his standards is great. The last trip he took, he had 25 flats in 32 days and was crowned "Flat King."

So, if you are interested in following along, you can read the daily report from Mike, their fearless leader, here.

This is something that I'd like to do, see America by bicycle. Someday! If you might be interested in doing the same, you can check out the touring company's website at http://www.abbike.com.