Weekend Update

I made it through another week full of experiences, some usual some new, but all I'm thankful for. Saturday I did nothing which is normal, I usually reserve my Saturdays purely for relaxation. However, at about 10:30 there was a knock on my door and I was met by two nicely dressed individuals; Jehovah’s Witnesses! We had a nice debate for a little while and rather than talking about theology which can be like sword fighting with wet spaghetti noodles, I centered the discussion on philosophy, and philosophical implications of science. Maybe I'll post a transcript of the talk later.
Sunday, today, I went to Galbraith. It was raining, but warm enough to remain comfortable; so I rode a couple trails I hadn't visited for a while, pictures in the links below.

My new bike will be here Wednesday, 10 days after ordering it. If you can indulge me for a moment and turn off your rational minds I would like to propose a new physical law about the universe:

"The amount of time it takes an item to ship is inversely proportional to how bad you want it." In other words, the more you want something the longer it will take to ship to you. Argh! But, once the bike comes I'll post a full account with pictures explaining each detail.

I read finished reading Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" recently and I almost do not want to say anything about it for fear of utterly diminishing the values held therein. Essentially the book is a call for humanity to recognize our exploratory heritage and head for the stars. The book is eloquent, moving, and should be read by everyone. Sagan's warnings about the fragility of our planet's ecosystems are absolutely moving, and even more so when I think about humanity is doing to our ability to live on earth. I'm now reading his book "Cosmos" and will report on it later.
Sabrina and I have been watching Dr. Sagan's 15 part series "Cosmos" on DVD. I cannot reccomend any of Sagan's work enough. It is such a shame that a mind so valuable as his is no longer with us.
As is becoming somewhat of a tradition, I present the weekend in pictures: 2-25-2007

A few car related statistics to think about:

-Cars produce one quarter of the world's man-made greenhouse gas emissions [1].
-Globally road accidents cost 1.2 million lives and 50 million serious injuries per year [2], and massive indirect cost to our lives and health systems from lack of exercise and air pollution.
-The world motor vehicle population of is predicted to rise from 640 million in 1996 to 1.1 billion in 2020 [3].
[1] World Resources Institute, (2004). In many western countries the proportion is higher.
[2] "World report on road traffic injury prevention", World Health Organisation, Geneva, (2004)
[3] "Climate Change 2001: Mitigation" UN IPCC, working group III, Norway (2001).

Commute Update

I continue to search for ways to refine my commute; not so much make it shorter in fact I don't mind if its a bit longer, but to find safer routes. Most of my close calls occur in ugly town, the stretch of 5 lane road lined with auto shops and no bike lanes. On my ride home I take a detour through some suburbs to avoid most of ugly town, but the suburbs aren't completely safe either. In Bellingham everyone parks on the road. I mean everyone. This time of year, when people stop using headlights it becomes real difficult to tell which cars are moving and which are parked, I've really got to be cautious about it.
It just continues to surprise me how the automotive culture just drains one's quality of life. When I'm locking up my bike at work I often watch the people driving in, estimating the thousands of dollars they have paid for their vehicles, observing their expanding wastelines and I wonder wheres the benefit? Surely these people are aware of our global climate situation, so that aside where do they get off on the lifestyle? The car drivers whine about traffic even more than I do, but don't they see the solution is slapping them in the face?

Why do people feel ashamed to walk? To bike? To take the bus? Has the auto culture so permeated our society that it now controls the way people think, and if so who serves to benefit from this thought control?

If I were to have my wish fulfilled it would be this: Dense walkable cities built primarily around cycling and walking in which the main role of the automobile would be for transporting goods, not people. Extensive rail and bus systems could take people anywhere they didn't want to bike such as far off cities and sights. Since parking lots occupy 30% of city space (nevermind the roads themselves), and you can fit 12 bikes in one car parking spot, my dense cities would actually be largely made of vegitation. Imagine, a quiet, clean community in which people could easily walk down to the grocery store, bike to work or school, and have clean air to breath and green forests to enjoy. Its not hard to stay healthy when exercise is just a part of your life. Yet, to car obsessed America this is unreasonable. Well, if my wish is extreme then label me a freakin extremist!
I keep thinking of the last scene in the move "The Matrix" where Neo tells the machines something to the tune of, "I'm going to show them a world without restraints, without controls. I'm going to show them a world without you." While I'm no Neo, it sure would be nice if someone could fill that roll and bring in a little reason to the problem.

Well its late, and I'm hopping on the bike in about 6 hours so I'd better get some ZZZZs.

Snow Ride

Here are the pictures from our snow day ride last week. Nothing happening lately though.

Weekend Update

It seems another week has passed with my only update being the one I usually do on Sunday, I'll have to remedy that and start doing a mid-week update maybe.

This week was highlighted by Wednesday which had Sabrina and I heading down to the courthouse to sign our marriage license, we now have 60 days to attain our marriage certificate by having two witnesses and a judge sign our paperwork. After that we begin the rather large prospect of the green card process. We thought it was fitting to start everything on Valentines day which was why we chose Wednesday. After the courthouse we walked down to a local pub/restaurant and got some grub; I had a big burger (see the pictures) and a pint of their finest while Sabrina ate a portion of my burger and some fried squid appetizer.

On Saturday we had a couple nice long walks around the area; I'm still trying to get a good feel for all the surrounding neighborhoods so this helped. On one of our walks we found a small grocery store that has been open since 1895, how cool! It still had the old fridges and advertising posters on the wall, it is a real charming place.

On Sunday I hit the mountain. I spent a portion of the ride up chatting with a guy I met named Rob; he was riding a sweet Santa Cruz VP-Free with a white Marz. 66 on the front, sooo nice. We talked bikes for a while, mused about the mountain and the nature of the riding Galbraith offers and then went it separate ways. Its always nice to talk with riders on Galbraith since there is a natural kinship and dialogue that flows from a shared love of the sport. I then proceeded to get lost on a brand new trail called "Goldilocks", its a good 5-6 mile loop of single-track winding around on the side of the mountain. A lot of the trail is still soft but quite fun. Since I was mid-way up the mountain the ride down was pretty long; nothing new, but today I really came down with a bad case of hand-pump which results from long periods of grabbing the brake levers. Basically the tendons in your hands and wrists get so sore you can hardly make a fist. Hand-pump has never been a problem for me before Bellingham since I've never rode anywhere that had the technical, steep and long descents of Galbraith. Hydraulic brakes sounded kinda nice today, but even though, I'm still happy with the current mechanical disks on my prophet; I'm just glad I got that big 8 inch rotor on the front, it really helps.

Once again, check the highlights of the week in photos: 2-18-2007 Week in Pictures

Snow Day

Snow day today, no school throughout most of New Hampshire and Maine. We are supposed to only get about a foot over here by the coast, but Northern NH and Western NH are supposed to get upwards of two to three feet. We are going for a ride soon, so I will post some pics of that later tonight.I got some silky boxers for valentines and some other yummy stuff, I got Sades a long sleeve base layer shirt that supposedly is super good at evaporating sweat.

I realized today that I dont need my Half-Life 2 cd to play it. I can redownload it off of steam because I have already registered it.

I am creating another story for my writing fiction class Here is the first two pages that I have so far. River Styx

Weekend Update

As always, the weekend came none to soon, and left before expected. I managed to ride Galbraith on Saturday and spent time cruising around with Sabrina on Sunday to some spots she had visited but I hadn't seen yet. Nate and I got in some good web time building our Memories map which I have to say is coming along very nicely. I'm quite happy with how this site is coming along in general; and having additional updates coming in from across the country makes it all the more better.

I've still got plenty of writings to upload to the rants section of the site, so stay tuned. My documents folder is a mixed conglomeration of half written short stories, essays, and all manner of other musings. Slowly but surely they'll make the transition to HTML for posterity on the web.

For the time being, I present the weekend in pictures: 2-11-2007 Weekend

Sades Short Story

Sades wrote a cute story about the different bikes she's had through the past couple of years. Its short enough to post here and because I have nothing else to say, it will work great for and update.

Well I guess I will say something. Sadie and I have decided to run the Hilo marathon when we get over there. Sadie is starting training this week, and I will put it off as long as possible. I have been biking to school so much that I really don't want to run on the weekends or after school for that matter. Sadie's goal is to get first for the womens, as she got fourth without training the last time she did a marathon. My goal will simply be to finish and get my free massage at the end.

Here's her story anyway:

For me, the UH trail was the ultimate challenge. On that first ride I nervously struggled to keep up with my new boyfriend on a junky purple Schwinn Wal-Mart bike. A purchase I will never live down. Three months and numerous endos later, I reluctantly maneuvered over the seemingly endless roots and rocks on my new Trek 4300. A year later I found myself following that same boy, my new fiance, eagerly up the slippery root scattered hills on my Kona Blast. Six more months and I confidently clocked in three consecutive six-minute laps, a nearly impossible feat for me; while dreaming of my future purchase, a Cannondale Prophet, and five-minute laps in the pouring rain and mud!

The Weeks Keep Rolling By

What a week. It seemed to go by relatively fast, they all do recently. At first this seems to be a relief, but when I think about it at a deeper level it is kind of shocking. Do I really want my life to go by so fast? Its been almost a year since I left Hilo a reality which I find complex; a mixture of surprise and melancholy. I still sometimes wake up to the alarm and think its time to go to work at the bike shop, or on a weekend when I wake up at 11:00 and slowly open my eyes I feel, if only for a brief moment, that its time to quickly eat and go ride to Kulani forest with Nate and Sadie. But when my mind catches up with the reality around me, the realization that I am here and not there is always a little disappointing.

Ok folks, on a different note I would like to talk about by Manitou Sherman fork and my problems with it, so get a cup of coffee, curl up on the couch or toilet and get ready for an exciting read.

The last few weeks my fork has been acting poorly, so I took it apart to try an understand why. Well, 2 hours later I found out why. Lately the fork has been experiencing extreme stiction, and sometimes it wouldn't even compress at all. Needless to say, the off-road performance was suffering. Well what I found was that the rebound damper assemly inside the right leg which usually rolls up and down the inside of the leg regulating oil flow (and thus rebound speed) was wedged at an angle and was causing the binding and stiction I was experiencing. Interesting I thought, but unfortunate. In the Manitou Forks, at the bottom of the right leg you have the rebound dial and if you take that dial off you have a very, very flimsly bolt which screws up into the rebound damper assembly holding it steady inside the stantion leg. That flimsy bolt was broken leaving my rebound knob attached to a loose rebound assembly, thus when the fork is compressed there is nothing to hold the assembly stable and the result is that it wedges itself at an angle and the fork binds up. Ok I thought, I'll just track down a new assembly online and it'll be good as new. No such luck. In order to remove the fork stantions (legs) from their lowers (what the legs push into) I needed that broken bolt. You see, by screwing in that broken bolt it would release the damper from its connection with the stantion, and since its broken, I can't get the legs out of the lowers. So long story short, I drained all the oil, took out the compression rod and part of the rebound assembly and out the spring back in the other leg. I now have no compression or rebound asjustments, just a very pogo-stick like fork. Oh well. I was bummed out at first but then I realized that hey, I can still ride the bike and the fork half works, and I'd love this sport no matter what kind of bike I had, so I didn't stay upset for too long. I'll just get a new fork sometime down the line when I win the lottery.

Ride Update

Breaking a two week spell of sun, this weekend was a rainy one. Saturday I was so tired from the previous week I didn't do anything. But today, Sunday, I went to Galbraith. It was rainy and misty which gave the mountain a surreal quality, like something from a fantasy story. The myst made the green ferns almost glow, and if I was to gaze up at the trees their tops would disappear in the myst above me. I live for these moments, for these rides. The only thing better than this type of ride is this type of ride with friends. Well, no friends here in Bellingham, so I'll have to make do.

I took some pics from the ride

I love Nate's idea of a "Map of Memories" and have written down some stories from different points along the UH Trail. For all the diversity that there is here on Galbraith Mountain in Bellingham, UH-Trail will forever be my favorite, and until I can go back I'll miss it daily