Wirehead's blog

Leaving Vox

I haven't posted here in a while.  I haven't been keeping up with the Vox page.

I think that means it's time to leave Vox.

I've been thinking of outright leaving ever since I realized how many of my contacts had either deleted their account or had chosen to not post anymore. And the thing is, there really aren't very many good private thoughts that I have. If I'm sick of the world, I'd rather talk about it with somebody in the real world over tea and cinnamon buns and maybe get a hug afterwards. So there's only so much to be gained from posting here vs. on wirewd.com.  I feel like Vox is dying.

But I'm not enough of a drama queen to actually obliterate my content or delete my account or something silly like that. I've already added the last remaining voxers who I have as contacts who seem to still be posting to my RSS reader.  I'm probably going to migrate either the best-of or just everything over to wirewd.com and then intermingle it back with my personal posts before I joined vox so that you can start the story in about 2002 and continue in bursts and spurts up to now.

New art site

I just rolled out a new version of my site:

New version of Wirehead Arts

You will notice that I stole some Vox thinking in the blog section.  Especially the way that pictures are embedded. :)

More Weird Dreams

So last night's weird dream seems to have centered around me setting up a bitchin' artist's studio in the top floor of an office building called the "Crow's Nest"

(which is about 10 times cooler of a name if you understand a few words of Polish)

It was a cool studio, too.  There were some questions about getting a fairly large lathe up using an elevator.

Best news broadcast ever

Also, I've got a tribute to the great but crazy folks in LA who decided to demonstrate the superiority of bike over car by riding on the freeways. 

Oh, and a happy bike-to-work day

(crossposted from another blog)

I've been busy so I forgot to post over here my Bike To Work day picture... :)

Happy bike to work day!

It was very hot and the VTA train was having problems, so I ended up biking all the way to work, then around a bit at lunch time (free lunch + ride for us cyclists) and then home.

Moving bike stuff over...

So I'm moving my cycling related content over from here to my own site.  I like the tagging engine more and I'll be able to support some mysterious new cool functionality as soon as it's finished up...

Latest blog entry:

I came to a sad realization.

If I want to get cycling shoes that actually fit, I'm going to spend an assload of money. I look at the online bike catalogs and figure that I'll end up paying about what I'd pay for a normal pair of sneakers for a set of riding shoes.

My wife was training for a half-marathon and Nike was sponsoring the training sessions and so they had a booth where you could try on Nike shoes for the session. I went with her one time and the folks at the Nike booth could not find a single pair of shoes that would fit me. I have oddball sized feet. They are about a half size apart from each other but generally fit in size 12 US EEEE shoes.

more...

Also, I donated to Victor's AIDS/LifeCycle campaign... did you?

Today's ride

(Crossposted from another blog)
So I have biked all of the bikeable areas of Rancho San Antonio now.  Sadly, there aren't very many.  I blame asshole mountain bikers for wrecking too many trails trying to look like the mountain bike advertisements.  Many of the trails I know that I could bike without running people down or causing any more wear than a jogger, but I'm just not allowed.

I biked up the Mora Trail for a stretch..... it's uphill most of the way, so I ended up running out of steam and not wanting to risk my need-to-be-adjusted-after-150-miles-of-fun deraleurs uphill to downshift to the smallest chainring and thus portaging it up the hill.  Got my heartrate pumping.  Mora trail is hard to find...  the Meadow Trail is bike-friendly until it hits Deer Hollow Farm and then it's not bike friendly, so I kept looking to the right trying to figure out where the Mora trail forks off and it turns out that there are three trails that fork off the Meadow Trail and two of them have no-bike signs and one of them doesn't.  And once you get uphill, on top of the Mora Trail there's a water tank and a beautiful vista.

I finally figured out, after a bunch of combinations and permutations, how to properly pack my tripod.  I just use the cargo netting atop my trunk bag to hold it.  I was trying to have it hang down like a pannier bag on the side and that just wasn't working.  But I took my tripod and my 35mm camera loaded with ISO 20 microfilm and the 28mm and 70-210mm zoom lens, plus the G7.  Do I get enough crazy photographer points?  It was 20 speed film that is more like 12 or so in Rodinal and so even in situations where a more normal selection of films would be handholdable, I needed to use the tripod.

So, I biked a mere 8.47 miles and reached a maximum speed of 27.2mph downhill (I used the brakes a lot).  I was getting 20mph on some of the level sections, which isn't half bad for a mountain bike and an out-of-shape nerd but probably not nearly as impressive for a road bike.

I'll post the pictures in a bit.  Still have to finish the roll and develop them and/or download the digital shots.

I think the correct route would have been to do the ride in reverse.  The uphill segment would then be on much less steep streets and then I'd be able to coast the whole way down the Mora trail.  And I think the next thing to explore is to ride to Deer Hollow Farm, lock the bike, and then go hiking.

Still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my day....

Today's ride

(Cross posted from another blog)

So, first decently long ride on the new bike.  I'm not sure exactly how long because the cyclecomputer got confuzzled after a bit about things (needed to be moved down the fork, I think) and thought I'd reached 75mph.  Somewhere in the 15-20 mile range.

I biked to REI, which involved me biking across several towns, then went to Lee's Comics for Free Comic Book Day, and then found my way to the endpoint of the Stevens Creek Trail, where I biked the entire length of that trail on the way home.

REI was having a sale and I needed basic safety gear and wanted a trunk bag.  I got the Cannondale trunk bag, largely because the Topeak bags are all designed to latch into the Topeak rack and my rack's not a Topeak rack.  The Performance Bicycle store-brand bags were kinda crappy by comparison.  Plus I got inner tube + tire irons + multitool.  See, I've never actually had a flat tire, but I also know that it's astonishingly rare for a cyclist to never have a flat, so it's only a matter of time before I get one.

Way I figure it, the trunk bag's going to come in handy in situations like when I want to bring some photo gear along for the ride or when I want to bring a picnic or other such things.

I used to have a Topeak Mountain Morph pump with a built-in gage but that seems to be off the market now, so I had to get a separate pump and gauge.  The pump I've got is designed to share a set of braze-in eyelets with the water bottle holder, which is actually pretty slick.

Back in the saddle

(crossposted from another blog)

Okay, the ride isn't so bad now. I have a nice cargo net for the bike so I can strap down a piece of tupperware with my lunch in it and not worry about it leaking over my backpack.

I think I finally have my saddle in the right position. I was having some pain in my left knee that was going away as I inched the post up and finally today it felt just about right.

More weird dreams

So last night's dream was weird. I dreamed that I had a really weird dream, which I presently don't know the contents of. But I then dreamed that I woke up and said "Gee, that's a weird dream. I should write it down so I can blog it."

And then I woke up and realized that I had dreamed the whole thing.

Which makes me wonder about what the dream on the inside of the nesting doll of dreams really was.