Two wonderful posts all smashed up together

Hip and VERY NOT HIP
Alright, so none of us are actually cool hipsters, and not one of us rides a fixie.  We have a couple single-speeds in the group but they are wimpy with conversion kits, front and rear brakes, etc.  But hip we are not.  Though Mohsen is very cool and has some nifty stuff, not sure that he qualifies as hip.

But since this place is run by a friend of a friend, I think it is worth posting because these are some of the coolest things I've seen.  I have mountain bike pedals on my lame single speed so I couldn't even use these but man, I sure would be much cooler if I could...

They have loads of other awesome stuff at REload and if you have the bones to drop on custom bags or even not totally custom stuff, they look like a great company to support.

A good person not to support and perhaps even a good company not to support would be Tony Kornheiser and ESPN.  The former for expressing the appropriateness of hitting cyclists while in your car because they don't really deserve to be on the road and are infuriating because they aren't going fast enough.  The latter for paying the former for doing so.

Wait, don't believe that a public figure could actually publicly support assault on other human beings?  I know that is a dumb question but just listen in:



So send a note to espn and tell them that they are not being very good human beings by paying this man money, click here and give them a piece of your mind.


100 Miles to Nowhere
This is a very intriguing event, at least to me.  Check out the details here and then consider whether you are in fact a sane, rational person.  If you are, this likely isn't for you.  May is the time nice weather rolls around and you want to be outside.  I can't imagine anyplace around here where we could do this outside, unless we set up trainers outside.  In fact, to me, it appears that doing it inside is really the strongest thing to do.  If I were to do it outside, I would feel like I cheated.  Of course, I am not sure I could even do it.

If you did it around your cul-de-sac, the GPS map of the ride might look something like this:

But it is intriguing is it not?  There is a rather wonderful video of someone who documented doing the event themselves in their own apartment available here.  I don't know if we would actually be able to pull this together, but if we don't this year, I think I am going to have to make this happen at some point.  (Of course this is me, Haglund, not the all-agreeing voice of the Velo Aces.  The rest of this bunch may have more sense than me.)

Anybody with me?

Commuting = Death

Ok, so this one is a long shot, but I was considering it while I was on a walk this morning.  I'd arrived at work only to find the stores in my filing cabinet had run out and a trip to the general store to replenish them was necessary.  My general store is most often shaped like a

but on occasion has resembled a Whole (budget) Foods or a Super Fresh, home of the broccoli bag that contains only broccoli stems.  As I walked to and from the general store, I had another opportunity to contemplate many folks during their commute to work.

Particularly since I started riding my bike, I have begun to hate commuting with a rather irrational and intense hatred, particularly since my commute is only 1.28 miles.  I've never even had a real commute, so everything I say must be taken with a grain of salt, perhaps one about the size of Lot's wife after she looked back, which brings up the too oft forgotten bit of racing wisdom: don't ever look back!  Also, don't celebrate until after you cross the line or else TOMMY WILL GET YOU!!!

Poor Dan!

But moving on, commuting really does equal death.  Here is why:

Sitting in a car driving the same route each day is not healthy.  It encourages the consumption of bad for you foods, it encourages familiarity which breeds contempt (or so I've heard) and that can prompt you to think so little of your commute that you will get out your cell phone, text, perhaps even surf the web while you are driving.  This can quickly equal death not only for you but for unsuspecting motorists and cyclists alike.

Sitting in a car and driving the same route each day is not good for your brain or your soul.  Have you ever noticed yourself racing?  Racing to a place you don't necessarily even want to be?  I don't really care for folks that are racing home either, but at least there I can assign it some kind of value like racing home to see your kids, racing home to eat a tasty snack, etc.  Of course many people might very well be racing home to see the latest episode of some horrific TV show that involves someone named "the situation."   Racing to work can sometimes be understandable, but let's break it down a little bit:


 When you decide that you need to slam on the gas to race around the slow guy to get to the stop light first when a four-lane highway with loads of room to pass beckons not 100m away, you have lost your mind.  When you decide that you need to honk at the guy in front of you waiting for an old lady to cross the road, you have lost your mind.  When you find yourself angry because the school bus is putting out its stop sign so that little children can cross a deadly street safely to get on the bus, you have lost your mind and your soul.  When you decide that you are so angry that you need to try to punish someone on a bike for breaking a rule you are less able to break (I can only guess that was why) you are, in a friend of mine's words "your own worst punishment."  Congratulations, you get to be a terrible person all day, hopefully you can get over it with a good night's sleep.

But commuting really does bring out the worst in people and with the help of my irrefutable and indefatigable logic, you now see that commuting does in fact equal death.  It may not always be sudden death, it may be slow death like waiting for Godot or waiting for the shuttle to the long term parking lot at the Philadelphia airport which never comes when you need it.  Ever.

Broccoli

There are a number of things I am itching to write about when I get a little bit more time, the President's blueprint to improve education and revise NCLB, a sweet ride yesterday in the pouring cold rain, and the fact that I've accomplished the impossible and started a completely sustainable cold-fusion reaction in my attic.

But right now I am stuck on broccoli.

That's right.  Broccoli.

Last night, while enjoying a wonderful dinner, I scooped a random helping of broccoli out of the dish in which it was resting, then looked at my plate.  I noticed that there were very few of the florets that we normally think of when we think of broccoli, and a rather large number of stem pieces.  I had no idea that dinner would lead to this amazing discovery but it has.

Apparently all the pieces of stem that get lopped off the bottom of your broccoli when you buy it fresh in the store get chopped up and put into American's Choice broccoli.  In our very unscientific count, the pieces of stem outnumbered florets (think actual broccoli) by a ratio of 18:1.  This is pretty impressive, considering the picture on the front of the bag of frozen broccoli (which I searched for online but will now have to upload when I go home and can take a picture of it myself) represents an entirely different picture.

I just felt a little sad for the floret, all by itself amidst the crowd of stem pieces.  It must feel left out, like an outlier, like a loner searching for a little acceptance but unable to find it since it looks a little different and tastes a little different.  I wonder if it was tricked a little bit by the image on the front of the bag as well, depicting a mix consisting mainly of broccoli florets, it hopped in for the ride and only noticed as it was flash frozen that everywhere it looked it saw only stem.  STEMS AGGHHHHH!!!  and then it was frozen.

I will say that I happily ate my broccoli stems, and I don't even have very strong objections to them as vegetable matter.  I am under the impression that the florets have a few more vitamins and minerals in them, but I will happily eat the stems.  I just wish I had purchased a bag of stems and known what to get.  I fear I will go about my day slightly depressed now thinking of the lonely broccoli floret longing for a friend to die with as I dined.

edit:  if you'd like to know all the standards for quick frozen broccoli, peruse this document here.  Interesting stuff:

Sharing the Road

This morning I had a very fun ride to work.  I did one of my usual loops and then rode towards the city to see if I could catch up with Moe and ride in with him to work.  I dropped down to the bottom of Bryn Mawr Avenue and noticed a really pretty silver Audi S4 shoot by me on the left.  Audi S4s are pretty sweet automobiles.

This guy's auto was not tricked out like this one with the extra fancy rims and whatnot, but it was still nice. I looked over it again as I passed him on the right at the intersection at the bottom of the hill where it crosses Hagys Ford road.

As I went through the intersection, the driver of said automobile honked at me and made some rather pointed pointing motions at me.  As I started up the hill, he managed to pass me, which is understandable given that his car engine is capable of producing nearly 400 times the horsepower I have in my little baby-baby legs.  He pulled alongside me and screamed at me that I have to obey the signals.  I said "yes sir, have a nice morning" because I certainly didn't need to argue with him at that point.  He then decided that it would be a good idea to use his automobile to threaten me.

This is where everything changes for me.  Lets just say that I didn't obey the signal.  Fine.  I am an irrsponsible person, etc. and took my own life into my hands by rolling through an empty intersection at 6:30 in the morning on a road with a 25 mph speed limit.  Ok, I am perfectly happy to accept responsibility for that decision, maybe it is the libertarian in me deciding that I can be responsible for my own safety.

But Mr. I want to be a Vigilante at 6:30 a.m. on my way to work has a different problem entirely.  You've made your feelings clear with the honking and the pointed pointing gestures, and then you made it even more clearly with your yelling through your window at me.

Then you went way, way over the line.  You are driving a huge deadly weapon and you decided that you would point it at me and wave it around a little bit.  As you squeezed towards the shoulder and the curb as I struggled up the hill in the only gear I had, I moved to the outer portion of the lane to give myself some room and not be squeezed into the tree there.  You decided that you would move back to the outside there, making sure that I could not pass you on this pretty steep hill while I am struggling to turn over my 42x16 and you are going ten miles an hour in your super hot shot car.

And you are weaving back and forth trying to show me who is boss.

Ok, not the fun and exciting TV show, but really, in real life, who is the boss.

Guess what, I know who the boss is.  You clearly make more money than me, since you drive a car I know I can never afford.  You are clearly the bigger, stronger man, not just because you are driving a huge car while I am on a cheap little aluminum bike.  You just must be since you are the one that gets to decide the consequences for breaking the rules.

So I hope I see you again and can actually tell the cops your license plate number.  Since they are the authorities and get to decide the penalties for obeying the signals as well as the penalties for waiving a deadly weapon in someone's face.

I also hope that you somehow find a way to feel better.  If you are angry enough at 6:30 in the morning to threaten a cyclist with your really fancy car that has to be enjoyable to drive, you are obviously in possession of some pretty serious problems.  I would not want to be you for a whole lot of money and as many S4s as I could handle.

So here's to you Mr. Boss man:

I didn't get the chance to respond to your ranking of me as #1 this morning so I wanted to make sure you knew that no, you are number one.  You are the man.  Even this little kid knows it.  So congratulations on being a horrible person and leading a terrible life.  I can only hope that someday you manage to sneak your way out from under the terribleness.

I'll give you one suggestion:  Ride your bike to work.  You'd be surprised at how liberating it is.  Even with people like you on the road.

"Building a Better Teacher"

Another of my students sent me this article from the NYT (and I have to point out here the wonderful thing about having a bunch of students every year.  I have, generally, at least one hundred new people to learn from every single year and sometimes they keep teaching me things after they've left my classroom.  Reason number 37 that it is great to be a teacher) and I found it intriguing for a variety of reasons.

The first is a common theme, at least for me, and that is the enormous disappointment I feel that no one is looking beyond test scores to measure teacher performance.  Ms. Green writes at length about the other things, but it always comes back to the test scores.  She concludes with the wisdom of Thomas Kane, an economist who studies education (clearly he won't have a very particular outlook on what education should look like or how it should be measured) who says that if we could just improve the teachers we have "we could close the gap between the United States and Japan on those international tests within two years."

Forgive me if you've heard this one before, but why do we want to close those test score gaps again?  Are Japanese citizens happier by and large than Americans?  Are they healthier?  Are these the results of them scoring higher on standardized tests?  What are some of the consequences of the drive to score better on those tests?

While I lived in Korea, one of the things that struck me was the amazing pressure that student are under to perform on the final test they take as high schoolers.  Kids go to school year round every day, often spending at least 16-20 hours away from home either at school, at after-school study facilities, and then at late-night study rooms which they rent for the year.  If they don't perform as well as they'd hoped, they will often take another year just to study for the exam.

According to my relatively limited understanding, the tests in Japan are even more insane, and the response among students is similar.  They use incredible amounts of time and energy spent to study for them and are often crushed when they don't rank as highly as they hope. 

In an article written in 2007, Leila Madge describes some of the incredible focus placed on these tests by parents and students alike:

In the last year of middle school and high school Japanese
students go through what they call “examination hell.”
In February and March they take highly competitive
exams. How well they do determines not only the next
school they will attend but also what kind of job, spouse,
social status and lifestyle they will enjoy in the future.
The importance of the exam in the current Japanese
educational system started in the Meiji period (1868-
1912). Before that time, government positions had been
filled by samurai. With the end of that system, and the
end of the caste system, education began to be used to
decide who would have what kind of jobs. Since the end
of World War II, education has been a means for upward
mobility, especially for the middle-class who have no
business or land to will to their sons.

Economic growth, the democratization of Japanese
society and new job opportunities in the post-war years
meant competition for higher education increased along
with the pressures of exams. This period of  “examination
hell” is not unique to Japan but characterizes much of
East Asia (Korea and China) which share a heritage of
Confucian respect for scholarly endeavors and family
obligation. China and Korea also currently understand
exams as a way to get ahead in society.

What is school and home life like for students and
parents during examinations? As the time for exams
draws near all non-academic activities such as music and
sports clubs are put on hold. All classroom learning is
geared towards memorizing factual information. After
school, children attend cram schools (juku in Japanese
and hakwon in Korean) or study with tutors, and
vacations are spent attending special study camps.

Many students of more ambitious families have been
participating in these activities since kindergarten. Some
students barely eat, sleep or even bathe. A common
expression in both Japan and Korea is “Pass with four
(hours of sleep), fail with five.” Parents have felt the stress
of this time since their children started school. Fathers
feel they must earn enough to provide the money for
tutors and tuition at cram schools. Mothers strive from
the time their kids start kindergarten to provide them
with a home life to reinforce school lessons, fulfill the
child’s physical needs and work with teachers to make
sure their kids get lots of attention at school. Mothers 
are often praised or criticized by family members, and 
in newspaper or television shows, for their children’s
school successes.

Parents, students, business leaders and government
officials like the exam system, even if it is hellish.
Ironically, just as American corporate leaders, politicians
and educators are looking to imitate the Japanese
exam system with standardized exams, the Japanese
are thinking of changing their own system. During
“examination hell,” suicide, violence at school and home,
and dropout rates increase. Since the 1990s, with an
economic downturn in Japan, the rewards of the system
aren’t so great any more. In addition, many business
leaders and government officials are blaming Japan’s
economic woes on workers’ inability to creatively compete
in a 21st century global economy. For this, they blame the
education system. Many wonder if the pressure of exams
is worth it and educational reform is now a hot topic in
Japan. Reformers often look to the United States and call
for more flexible curricula, fewer school days, abolishing
uniforms — all to encourage more student creativity and
engagement with the real world.


So, if educational leaders in Japan are trying to make their system more like ours, and we are trying to make ours more like theirs, couldn't we try to communicate with them to learn the pitfalls of the increased emphasis on testing?  Shouldn't we spend some time looking at the developments in their society over the last 100 years with this incredible emphasis on these tests and on the standardization of students' experience?  If they are thinking seriously about less time in school, more flexible curricula, abolishing uniforms, etc., perhaps there are values to those things within our current system?  Perhaps more time in school, more tests, more nationally mandated curricula are not the answer?

So back to the problem at hand and the one addressed by the article.  Despite a stated focus on things other than tests when it comes to "good teachers," it turns out to be the single determining factor in this article as well as so many other recent publications about "good" teachers including the recent article in the Atlantic about "What Makes a Great Teacher."  (On a personal note, I have to admit that I don't really think great teachers would fill one ear on their head (of only two that they have) with a bluetooth headset, but that is just a personal opinion.)

I will do my best to point out some of the very good things about the article, but I have to finish this post with just one more glaring omission.  The article assumes, as most do, that teachers are actually able to decide what they want to do in their classroom and how they want to go about doing it.  The fact of the matter is that even in most of the "best" schools in the country, teachers are completely and totally bound by the decisions of the administration.  They are told what to teach, what to test for, when to teach it, and often how to teach it.  So if you want to hold people accountable, a great place to start is with administrators since they are the only real "principals" making decisions in most school situations.  Teachers are agents only of the school, the district, and the state and as such cannot be held accountable because they don't get to decide for themselves what their students really need, etc.

While I am happy that so many intelligent people are thinking hard about how to fix education, it is disheartening to find so many of the basic assumptions avoiding real questioning.  I do not claim to have the solution, so perhaps I cannot be the one pointing out all the faults, but I do know that perhaps a better place to start would be asking questions like "What are students learning from preparing for and taking so many high-stakes tests?"  "Has education improved since we made it compulsory in the United States?"  "What things have improved since education was made compulsory and have they improved at a faster rate since we started focusing on standardization?"  "Is it possible to standardize human experience in any healthy way?"

In fact, I will end with my personal favorite.  Can someone define for me in a meaningful way what the term "student achievement" means?  We spend lots of time and money focusing on it, and Ms. Green's article focuses on finding teachers that are good at or helping teachers improve their students ability to "achieve" on these standardized tests.  What are they achieving exactly?

Mad props

Go again to Keith Williams of Williams Cycling who rejected our inquiry about sponsorship for the Velo Aces but actually found my email in his spam folder and still responded.  Perhaps this is ridiculous, but I am becoming more and more confident that this guy and his company do fantastic work.  I can't wait until the 85mm wheels come out.  It looks like I might be able to borrow a front wheel from a pal of mine and if I can throw one of those on the back...  Should be super.  And then when I am rich and famous I will have a disc wheel just for the incredibly cool thunking sound it makes when you shift.  I definitely am more enamored of the noise than I am of potential performance gains.

Also, in case anyone else is reading this and actually curious about the Velo Aces, jerseys should actually be available at Main Line Cycles within 8 weeks.  They are only going to stock a limited number so you will have to get there to make sure you get them.  They also put up a video from the group ride this weekend, Laubach is making it big!

Kohlberg and the University of Chicago

A former student sent me an email containing a link to W.C. Crain's 7th chapter of Theories of Development in which he discusses Kohlberg's stages of development.  In the opening paragraphs, Crain discusses the life of Lawrence Kohlberg and at one point he mentions that "in 1948, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he scored so high on admissions tests that he had to take only a few courses to earn his bachelor’s degree."  It struck me that his entrance to college along with the experience he had as a working man (apparently he was the second Engineer on a freighter helping transport Jews from Europe to Israel for several year after high school) would certainly give him the impetus to try to get his bachelor's degree so he could move on.  But I wonder if someone would have a similar option today.  (I emailed the dean of students at UofC to find out, hopefully I will have a definitive answer soon)

We have come to expect nearly everyone to go to college and obtain some type of degree, but I think at the same time it has become next to impossible to be granted that degree without taking a certain number of courses, regardless of the level of personal expertise or understanding of the field in which the degree is to be granted.  Perhaps I have grown too cynical of late, but I tend to think a great deal of that is tied to the economics of the issue.  If you were just granting degrees without forcing students to take a large amount of coursework first, your degree might not be seen as worth the fifty thousand dollars a year you are charging students to go there.  This would be a disaster for any school that is chasing rankings and the prestige and money that go with them.  It would also be the nail in the coffin for US News and World Report whose only profitable issue is the one in which they rank schools so everyone will know where to go, or try and go, in the fall.

Follow this backward to the instutionalization of the Carnegie Unit, the so called standard that was called for when someone decided that student experience in any one place had to be somehow comparable to student experience in another.  (An interesting discussion of the history of the Carnegie Unit can be found here)  Apparently it wasn't enough to have examinations designed by professors and other leaders in various fields, a seat-time component had to be introduced so that US News and World Report could make a profit on their magazine.

In watching a few students here and there, it is apparent that the seat-time system of comparison is at least as flawed as was the original one based on various examinations.  The fact of the matter is that students learning varies according to so many variables that pretending that they are going to have, or need, the same experience to master a certain subject or concept is rather absurd.  To me anyway.

So if we are going to continue to require degrees for various jobs, despite the fact that it is acknowledged on a wider and wider scale that degrees are not significant indicators of ability or sometimes even a similar background knowledge of skills, why shouldn't we go back to a system that would allow someone with a great deal of experience or knowledge in a certain subject to be granted a degree in their field if they pass certain examinations or demonstrate their mastery in some way?  If an accomplished writer decides after skipping college to return later in life to take some courses, will you force them to take Freshman Composition?

Please don't get me wrong, I am all for Freshman Composition, but only for the folks that need it.  (In point of fact, I am really only for it for the folks that want it, if a brilliant scientist finds out later in life that writing is more necessary than they imagined, and they likely will, they will either learn to write effectively enough or pay someone else to do it.  This creates jobs for English majors, something I am always in favor of and eliminates more extremely unwilling and miserable Freshman Comp. students thereby making the class more fun and perhaps even more valuable for us English majors.  If I were John Hodgman I would ask you to say thank you since I just solved that one nicely!)

Some school systems have created exams that allow students to test out of certain classes.  There is even some talk that the soon to be released Keystone Exams will allow that in Pennsylvania, but right now information is extremely hard to come by and relatively contradictory.  But if we must continue to place value in standardized tests and will continue to force children everywhere to take them, we ought to seriously consider using them to allow students to test out of some of the seat-time requirements which would create a real reward for doing well on standardized tests if they could then take more electives or perhaps have half the school day off to go and get a job and buy more ipods or iphones or isecondlives or whatever they want.

George Will's article in the Washington Post

Yesterday, Mr. Will wrote an interesting article about the way to ruin a child.  He brings up some things that some of us who see high school kids every day think are common sense, but it is great to see him bringing them up as people tend to believe commentators with political clout more than your average high school teacher!

Go ahead and read the article here but pay particularly close attention to the part about why we start high school when we do and the various physical and psychological effects.  As a teacher, I find ways to deal with the fact that my students are still generally asleep at 7:30 and just starting to come around an hour or sometimes two hours later.  Obviously I can't change the starting time of my school or anybody else's school, but I could add reams of anecdotal evidence to support what Will points out, namely that putting kids in high school is good for some people, but certainly not for the kids!

I have a friend who attended the same high school I teach in many years ago, a few friends actually.  Back then, they went from 9 or 9:30 to 3:00.  These friends have widely varying careers, from welding to engineering nuclear power plants.  They don't appear to be any less intelligent or have dealt with any less complicated issues or questions than the students I have today.  So why must we have them in school at hours that are unhealthy for them?

And please don't think that I would mind being at school from 7:30 to 3:00, generally I am there from 6:30 until at least 4:30 already, but that includes coaching and some time for me to exercise.  If I had the 90 minutes from 7:00 until 9:30 to plan or grade or do whatever I needed to do, I can guarantee that every lesson would be better, feedback would get back sooner, and if my students got out at 3:00, I would be happy to bet that their test scores or many other measures of "student achievement" would certainly not go down and likely would climb.  An extra hour of sleep would change the entire landscape of most of my students' lives.  There is absolutely nothing I or any other teacher could do that would have anything like that positive effect.

But if we were really trying to do what is best for our students and our kids, starting later would be one in a flurry of changes that would quickly revolutionize the way we approach education in this country.  So I don't want to pretend that it is the only thing to fix either, but it is one that seems obvious enough even for the educational establishment not to be able to ignore much longer.  I hope.

Get out of his bike lane!

Sweet pictures of all kinds of fun bike lane violations.  I thought of it this morning when I saw that the maximum fine for driving in a bike lane was 50 bucks, at least for the bike lane on Bryn Mawr Ave heading away from the city.

Bike Lane Violations
(there are some other great ones at the related blog, I just liked this one the most)

The other great part of the morning was when a woman dropping her high school age daugther off at the bus stop almost killed me so she could swing into the road just ahead of the bus, block both lanes and just about crush me in the process.  Good times, good times.

Like a lot of folks I am reading lately, riding a bike more just makes you hate cars more.  It makes you happier, healthier, wiser (at least in my own mind) and fills you frequently with a bitter, bitter kind of rage for the way that cars not only make people incredibly stupid and reckless, but also incredibly dangerous at the same time.  Hoooray for cars!

(disclaimer:  I own a car and I really like driving it.  Zoom Zoom and all that.  So I am a hypocrite.  Just wanted to put that out there)

Wheel Conundrum

So its true, wheels are one of the biggest things that determine how fast you can go on your bike.  Once you've actually gotten yourself in shape, you can give yourself a big advantage with a fancy set of wheels, particularly when it comes to a time trial.  I've lusted after a pair for a while, but never really thought it was possible, mostly since they cost so darn much.

After a few forays into the world of online money-making, I still don't have the cash.  But there is hope that this summer I can find a way to pull it together.

So I started to really think that I might have a pair of Zipp 808s before too much longer as I'd settled on those as the best option for me.  Almost all the racing I do is TTs or TTTs so I don't really need something like the 404s since they are fantastically versatile but I am looking for something really aero and I am not concerned as much about weight.  Plus there's always the chance that my friend will let me borrow his 303s if I am in a real good climbing race, my only mass start love.

But something caught my eye this morning as I was perusing cyclingnews.com.  They mentioned an upcoming review of the Williams 58 carbon tubulars.  So I went to Williams' website to check things out.  The 58mm carbon clincher really caught my eye.  First of all, the obvious.  A quality aero wheelset for 1000 bucks that includes swiss stop pads and skewers.  This is not a common thing.

Then claims of serious durability without excessive weight...  So I figured I would watch the testrider.com review of them available at the Williams site here:

Williams 58mm Carbon Clincher

Ok, so it is more of a competitor of the 404 than I thought, but does that make it a bad thing?  That would suggest that I could race with them just about whenever, and I wonder what the real performance gains are going to be for me running 808s in a TT, since I am not going to be averaging 33mph for a 40K anytime soon.  I can't say I understand the science better than the next average guy, but the toroidal shape of the 404s or 808s and the more expensive highly nuanced dimple system etc. are certainly going to make me faster, but are they a grand faster for an average guy who wants to win races but can't claim any real palmares on two wheels?

Especially when you add in the durability that is such a big part of it (though I have only heard really good things about Zipps in that regard as well) and the braking performance and the fact that they include everything you need in the package...

Right now I am leaning heavily towards the 58s though I had to pause when I got a note from Keith Williams, the president and founder of Williams Cycling, where he noted that they are going to come out with an 85mm deep wheel within a few months.  I was also impressed and heartened since a guy running the show was willing to get back to me about a question within hours and I haven't even spent any money on them yet!  That can only bode well for customer service and certainly the idea that they really stand behind their products.

Obviously I will keep you posted as the process continues.  Hopefully I will have some pictures of my Argon18 Mercury with a beautiful set of aero wheels to share come later this Spring!  The Williams wheels will look at least as good as these Zipps, and they will match my Helium as well!

My Leader

A few years ago I decided I would build a single-speed bike because single speed bikes make you cooler.  I bought a frame from Performance before I decided against it months later (though they were nice enough to take the frame back and give me a full refund).  A while after that I was going to buy a Leader Track Frame, the 735 I believe, but it was sold out forever and ever.  So, once they finally did get some in stock, I bought a different frame instead!  The Leader 720TR (and this picture may or may not work, perhaps I should take a photo of my own and throw it up here, but this will be good to see what it looks like before it gets thrashed)

 

So I picked up the frame and a sweet T-shirt from Leader, threw on a cheap fork from Performance and mostly gathered parts left over from building my wife's bike, a pair of wheels a buddy gave me years ago, and the spacers from a Nashbar single speed conversion kit.  I threw the bike together with a little help from the guys at Cycle Fit in Wallingford and started riding it to work.  I have changed a few things around but generally its had the same bits since then and its been absolutely fantastic.

I built the bike from inexpensive parts (though I am sure lots of people could do it better, this was my first attempt after all) because I didn't want to worry about it, not in the rain, not sitting on my porch, not worry at all.  But it has been really fun to ride, especially with a few modifications:

The bike in it's natural habitat, the closet locker room:

I double wrapped the top of the bars with some fancy Bontrager "double gel" tape since the rather cheap aluminum does send some road chatter through the frame and into my hands.  Really easy to do and makes a noticeable difference.  I switched the brake pads that came with my FSA brakes to a pair of shimano pads and it made a HUGE difference.  The really cheap pads sprayed black nastiness all over my bike and didn't really stop all that well.  Just switching the pads brought them close in performance to my Shimano Ultegras.  

I also grabbed an SKS Xtra-dry fender a year or so ago and that has been a nice addition, particularly because you can throw it on and off in a few seconds.  Really helps bring down the incidence of soggy butt.

Last fall I put a pair of Nashbar mountain bike pedals on there and the flashy red paint was an upgrade and they are a lot easier since the other ones I had on there were for SPD-SL cleats but only had an entry on one side.  

I've pulled the bottom bracket out once and re-greased it (though I think I just re-greased the threads because I don't know how to pack bearings and whatnot so it was probably just a waste of time) because it felt a little bit like I was cranking in sand.  I think I felt a difference because I wanted to feel a difference after the time I put in, but generally it has held up great.  That is despite all kinds of really gross stuff I ride through and don't clean it up afterwards.  Here's a photo of the rear of the bike after this morning's ride:

So if you are looking for a great frame to start with, I'd recommend the Leader.  Cool enough that you don't feel bad about the fact that it is really inexpensive.  The other parts have also held up well.  Someday I look forward to putting a real single-speed wheel on the back so I don't have to jam this one in anytime I take it out.  Outside of that, I think this thing is going to keep doing a great job of getting me to work with some extra riding here and there.

36 degrees, feels like 27. Light Wintry mix = perfect riding weather?

With all the snow we've been getting, I've gotten a bit tired of driving to work.  I had to do it for nearly two weeks straight.  Hard life I know!  So this week I said to heck with it and got my trusty Leader back off the porch and into the road.  Monday and Tuesday were a little squirrely with all the black ice, but luckily I didn't come to any grief, even on my hour long ride on Tuesday with the messenger bag full of things I shouldn't have bothered bringing home anyway.

This morning I was a bit nervous since I looked out the door and it was raining.  I was even more nervous since our puppy decided the weather wasn't enough fun to stay out and play in for a bit and just did her business and came back inside straightaway.  Wait a minute, straightaway?  Oh I know! Did I mention I like feeling somewhat British after watching too much MI-5?  Moving on...

But I figured it couldn't be much worse than yesterday's slippery patches, at least the rain actually lessened the amount of black ice outside.  So I got all gussied up in my Cannondale wind-proof (really, they are almost totally wind proof) pants a couple long sleeve shirts, one of them the weird Nike spehere thermal thing with a hood that I got years ago at the Nike Employee Store in Beaverton

put the big Adidas neoprene overshoes over my shoes and then one of my latest and best finds, the Adistar Clima Proof jacket that Nashbar dropped for 35 bucks instead of about 180 last year:

 I also wore my cute Milram cap.

And for an hour I motored (well more likely it was only motoring in my mind and more like creeping to everyone else) around town, Haveford Road down to Lancaster, then back into Gladwyn and up and down a few hills, then up and down some more hills (always a pleasure at 6:15 in the morning on a single speed with 42x16 gearing) and then down a hill I didn't mean to go down and eventually right into work.  Ended up riding for just about 55 minutes and was completely comfortable.  My toes were a bit chilly but they always get a bit chilly.  I actually had to open up the jacket as I was getting pretty toasty and my hands were sweating quite a bit in the outer layer of those Specialized gloves I got at the swap meet in Trexlertown this fall.

It was nice to get to work with the legs feeling pretty crapped out, my face not too freezing despite the loss of the face-sweater this weekend, and feeling like I had very little to fear from the weather anymore.  Blizzard conditions still frighten me and obviously roads with snow and ice are a no go (although I'd love to try those crazy tires with the metal spikes in them someday, apparently they don't just make them for motorcycles chasing James Bond anymore), but if I can be pretty comfortable on a ride like this morning, it bodes well for future training in the dark of early morning!

Everything He Wants To Do IS Illegal!

Would you believe that the USDA is actually making it more difficult to sell safe food?  Of course you would because everyone loves conspiracy theories.  Or at least to be somewhat angry at large, faceless organizations that we actually control through our votes but we don't really control them because even after we vote for someone there are those big faceless and sometimes nameless organizations that are so good at co-opting everyone...  well, that's another story.

But a lot of folks watched "Food Inc." the movie version of Michael Pollan's book and some of Fast Food Nation thrown in there for good measure. 

For those that haven't, I'd recommend it but, if you are one of those folks that can lose your appetite just by hearing about gross things even though you've been eating them blissfully for years without any serious trouble, you might not want to eat hamburgers again so I will just give that little spoiler alert.

If you watch the movie, you get to meet a guy named Joel Salatin, the proprietor of Polyface Farms in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.  This guy is opinionated, well spoken, conservative yet liberal, really fantastically fun to listen to.  And he is clearly putting his money where his mouth is.  I just wish I could get my mouth around some of his eggs and chickens and the other stuff that the local chefs apparently can't get enough of.

Do you know there's a difference between "free-range" chickens and chickens that actually go outside during their lifetimes?  Amazing isn't it!  Apparently they taste completely different as well.

The point of all this is this:  If you think he's great in the movie, pick up a copy of his book "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal."  It reads like he talks and is thought provoking, hilarious, insightful, challenging and a whole host of other things while still being completely accessible and down to earth.

Time Trial Bikes and Tough Guys

So the thought just occurred to me: Much of cycling makes men into sissies that shave their legs, lust after trinkets like Zero Grav brakes or other carbon bits and titanium bits and wheels that cost thousands of dollars. Men have often mocked women or claimed not to understand them due to their inherent desire for diamonds and other such things.

So is cycling really a feminizing influence? Does sitting on a little saddle for that long really do something besides just damage your perineum physically? Is it something about the whole nature of the sport that celebrates a guy with only one testicle over more fully equipped men? Is it the constant leg shaving that lots of casual cyclists can tell you is really just a safety issue while in the back of their minds they are wondering if they will ever be comfortable admitting to you they like having smooth legs.

So I like having smooth legs. Fine.

But back to the womanizing, oops, I mean feminizing influence of cycling. What struck me this evening as I pondered what will always be a hypothetical for a guy like myself, namely what it would feel like to ride one of the new Storck Time Trial bikes:

(this space is an experiment of sorts.  I thought I would try "contacting" Storck through their website to ask for permission to post an image of the bike here.  If I don't hear back from them, I might take the huge risk and do it anyway.  In the meantime, just google "Storck TT bike" and look at the images.

and whether or not you would ruin the whole aesthetic smash you in the face of this bicycle by putting 808s on it that weren't painted in the appropriate white and blue, (take a breath this is a long sentence...) was that the toughest thing in cycling (besides maybe cobbled classics) is the time trial. It is always billed as the race that is won by those who can really suffer, etc. Yet it is also the discipline most closely associated with incredibly specialized and expensive bikes and their accompanying bits and pieces.

So does this mean that even the toughest cyclist, the champion of the time trial, the Lance Armstrong who can suffer more than any mere mortal if you believe half of what folks have said, is really a sissy when it all comes down to it? Are there no tough-guys of cycling? Is Stuart O'Grady not a complete beast? Deep down does he like shaving his legs too?

Maybe we should ask his wife?

A couple random things

So, I am looking forward to actually racing this spring. No more racing the wall of my basement on the trainer, no more racing to work in the freezing darkness, and best of all, no more racing on those horrid spin bikes. Glad to get a workout in but those things are terrible.

Also this:
Why does the neighborhood buck?

I actually really like my neighborhood. Two days ago someone came over and asked for some butter. I loved it, good thing we had some to give away!