Want it Wednesdays: Magic Eraser

This week’s Want it Wednesday lowers the bar a bit; however, I am in aw how well Magic Erasers work. "Aw" might be overselling it a smidgen. One of the problems with, and advantages of, living in an apartment is my bikes are stored on my bedroom walls. No matter how careful I am when navigating the bicycles through the halls in my apartment, the tires brush against the walls leaving black witness marks.

There is nothing that can remove tire marks off walls like a Magic Eraser.

You get it damp, brush it across the mark and, walla,

just like that, no marks.

It delights me every time I use it. No seriously, I get giddy when I see tire marks on the walls. And for bonus points, Magic Eraser has fought back the urge to market themselves on infomercials. People buy them because Magic Erasers work the way they say they do. A greater compliment cannot be given.

Spring Forward

I have been spending a lot of time in natural light lately. Most of the country will get an extra hour starting on Sunday. I think Daylight Savings started during World War I in an effort to save coal. Energy savings is usually the justification given for continuing this odd plan.

There is an Indian saying about how only the U.S. Government believes you can cut a foot off a blanket, sew it to the other end, and have a longer blanket. It seems to me that the energy we save by keeping the lights off an extra hour in the evening is lost by turning them on an hour earlier in the morning but the fuzzy logic behind Daylight Savings doesn’t bother me in the least. In the same way Easter has transcended from a pagan celebration of fertility into a religious holiday, Daylight Savings has morphed into the greatest of all holidays; starting next week I can, in theory, ride outdoors after work. It ends on November 4th, the day after Iceman. This is no coincidence. Actually it probably is but still, there seems something spiritual about it. I find it's difficult to ride outside and be agnostic.

2012 Iceman Registration

I have a link to my blog that shows me what brings people here. As it turns out, almost all my views are accidental hits from people googling "biker girl tattoos." Still, I feel obligated to post a reminder that registration for Iceman opens on March 1st. Depending on how many times the Iceman site crashes, it will likely fill up quickly. This year you must create an account with USA Cycling first.

It really is a cool race and worth all the hassle, even if you have to drive all the way from Bloomington, Cincinnati, or Medina. Just say'n.

2012 Race Schedule

Fat Tuesday came and went and I didn't touch one paczki; partially because I am neither Polish nor Catholic, and partially because I got fat this winter somehow. I know how, I rode less and ate more. Just good math really. Well technically I did “touch” a paczki; when no one was looking I picked one up. They weigh like 6 pounds. I had to fight the urge to shot-put it across the garage.

My weight is the only thing in my life I have control over so I'm just going to move forward with a sensible plan to get back down to my racing weight before May. I had a quinoa salad for lunch; not quite good but totally eatable. That will be the extent of my complaining about my weight.

I just pre-registered for a race. This always helps move me from thinking about racing hypothetically to actually considering what I need to do this season.

My schedule will likely be:

4/29 Pontiac
5/5 Mud, Sweat, and Beers
6/10 Ft Custer
7/3 Hanson Hills
7/14 (or whenever) Log splitter
7/28 Tree Farm
8/5 Brighton
8/18 Maybury
10/6 Grambian Challenge
11/3 Iceman

I don’t have unrealistic expectations this season; in fact, I am only racing because I’m afraid as soon as I stop, I will start getting old. Yep, that’s realistic.

Spinning

2/26/12 has been highlighted on my calendar for a while. That’s 10 weeks before my fist race; the point where I need to get serious about training. Clearly I am in trouble so I just signed up for a spinning class membership at H.E.A.T 4 Athletes. I did a 2 hour class there a few weeks ago; it’s fine for a spinning class. They use the Real Ryder bikes that can lean side to side, similar to a real bicycle. The building is stark, nestled between other small buildings in an industrial park, no mistaking it for a pretty fitness center. The bikes are lined up in front of a huge screen where videos of group rides are projected. The music is good, by spinning standards. The spin instructor races. Tri, but still, that’s something.

Last week I rode a stationary bike in Traverse City, a very clever set up. They use stationary bikes made by Cyclopes where you can program target wattage and the computer adjusts resistance based on your cadence. The coach uses the classic method where the intensity of training progresses for a few weeks, then rest, then another progression that ends higher than the previous cycle. Each rider has different wattage and heart rate targets based on their individual power test. The coach downloads the data from each bike and later that day emails the riders advice or praise based on the data. This is clearly the way to go if you take racing seriously. I don’t but I left impressed.

The class is held in a room of a decommissioned mental institution surrounded by other rooms that have been turned into doctor offices, coffee shops, and even a single speed store. The architecture of the mental institution is striking. It is a very old building, stunning but spooky. I thought about the patients that would have been in that room 50 years ago. I believe most mental institutions have been decommissioned. I imagine institutionalizing mental illness wasn’t a good solution. Most people that suffer mental illness can be helped to some degree and integrated into society; the ones that can’t apparently move to San Francisco. I have been trying to introduce Em to classic 80’s movies; we recently watched Fatal Attraction. I thought about Glenn Close’s character. She seems more believable to me now than she did in 1987.

Want it Wednesdays: Kestrel RT1000

Three of my last four posts were Want it Wednesdays, where I post about something I want, or have, that is much nicer than it needs to be. Some people, obviously narcissistic and void of any real character, start to think their wants are needs and that right there is the problem with American consumerism. Silly, that’s all.

I need a Kestrel RT1000 with full Ultegra. Ultegra components rock. Sure, all the hip kids these days seem to be going over to SRAM Red. Whatever. The RT1000 modular monocoque frame set uses Kestrel's component integration design where each size is custom tuned. Kestrel frames are ultra stiff in the head tube and bottom bracket area but still offer a comfortable ride. More importantly, the RT1000 is Kawasaki Green and I have wanted a Kawasaki Green bike for a long time. I bought a carbon fiber Kestrel back in 1995 when carbon fiber was heavy, and Kawasaki Green bicycles weren’t invented yet.

I started thinking about a road bike with gears towards the end of a hard ride last summer. I spent most of that ride above 172 BPM. My legs started feeling like cement and, just as I was about to sit up, the person I was riding with looked at their watch and said, very relaxed-like, it was getting late so we better push it a little. This fall she got a coach. I will be screwed in spring. I told her I was looking at a new road bike. She said she would just ride slower.

I have been eyeing a Kestrel RT1000 all winter but a $4,149 bicycle is a bit much. Colorado Cyclist just dropped the price down to $2,099. I saw this as a sign from god I should buy it. God’s will is ambiguous at best. The only way I could pull off buying this high-end road bike was if I sold my Kona and Inglis. The thing is, I really like those bikes too. I was torn, like a spoiled child crying in the cereal isle of Kroger’s because he can’t choose between sugar frosted coco puffs or chocolate covered sugar puffs. I was agonizing over my dilemma last week when the transmission failed in my truck, 839 miles out of warranty.

It just so happens that a remanufactured transmission costs about the same as a Kestrel RT1000 with Ultegra components, another example of how life sometimes hands us fate wrapped in less than ridiculous packaging. I’m not bitter; dollar per pound, a transmission is a better value, I suppose.

Want It Wednesdays: Sweet Wings

This is my second attempt to link a post to Want it Wednesdays. And sorry if I get a little weepy eyed as I cast my mind back to the late ‘90s, it was a sweet spot in my life: I was a strapping young lad, a new father, and my career seemed to have potential. The only thing missing from my life was a 520 gram pair of Sweet Wing cranks; so beautiful that they could actually make the hair on my neck stand up. There were a lot of companies making pretty anodized cranks CNC’d out of aluminum; Sweet Wings were completely different (actually I think Bullseye and Coda had similar cranks but I will simply ignore them to make my story more dramatic, and I’m not motivated enough to research my hunch).

Unlike all the other cranks, Sweet Wings were steel, hollow, and had an integrated bottom bracket. They were the lightest cranks available back then and are light even by today’s carbon fiber standards. The Sweet Stem was a steel quill stem made by the same company which only weighed 180 grams, lighter than quill stems made out of titanium, but that’s for another post. Sweet Wings are so similar to the current Shimano cranks that I have to imagine Sweet Wings, either directly or indirectly, influenced Shimano. That is a nice way of saying Shimano, that juggernaut of a company, stole the design. Sweet Wings remain a coveted retro mountain bike part and I still want a set. A savvy entrepreneur should re-introduce Sweet Wings in the same way BeBop re-introduced their pedals right after I gave up trying to find NOS BeBop pedals and switched everything over to Shimano.

Now that I think about it, I wasn’t really a strapping young lad, I mean, "strapping" and "young" are both relative. Emilie was brand new and charming but changing dippers wasn’t all that much fun, plus a meaningful conversation with her was still 10 years away. A potential career was stressful. My employee’s problems became my problems that I had to deal with in between working on my post graduate degree and taking terrible plant assignments to make myself look good on paper. Hum...the 90's kind of sucked.

I suppose one could make an argument that the Shimano XTR cranks currently on my Tomac are better than Sweet Wings. XTR cranks weigh only 33 grams more and Sweet Wings had significant issues: they rusted, creaked, wore out bearings quickly, the inner race wouldn’t stay tight, and the spider occasionally broke. I’m not aware of any issues with XTR cranks. And you can buy ceramic bearings for Shimano cranks if you are neurotic.

Maybe I tend to glorify the past in my head. On second thought, I don’t want Sweet Wings; I’m pretty happy with the way things are.