The Gallon Race

Our Youth

2011-08-11T09:27:00.003-04:00

From a commenter named Number 47 on tfmetalsreport.com. Republished without permission.

Been here since day 1 of the old blog but I don't post much. First of all I'd like to say thank you to the people on here who have reassured me on a daily basis that my decision to go all in on pms in 2007 was the correct one. The knowledge and wisdom on this site is remarkable, even with the loss of some of the older heads.

I hate to say it but I detest my gold, I detest my silver. I hate being in this position that in this point in time I find myself clutching onto the hope that a few pieces of metal are going to save my family from the coming storm. I hate every rise, every margin hike that wasn't effective, I hate every intervention in the currency markets that seem to have a shorter and shorter effect.

I live in Ireland, times are pretty dire here but I am a Scotsman through and through. What I learned today was something I was witnessing over the last 10 years that didn't really hit home until the last week.

I used to watch the developers flying around in helicopters and think this was the richest group of people I ever saw. I dreamed of my own business and I saved like a demented idiot for years, my wife and I worked many jobs to build the cash we needed to open a small coffee shop. We were told we were crazy, everyone told us not to risk our money and just borrow the cash. We persevered. I honestly didn't appreciate that the people I looked up to were in debt to their craniums.

I get it now.

We bailed on our business, we were right about to sign the lease on a premises in 2007, instead we put the cash into land and PMs. This was solely down to the rise in the LIBOR rate in the UK and a deep belief I had that something was not right in the world, this was mostly farmed by the view I had of the world around me. I traveled to the UK from Ireland and I remember clearly driving my rental car that everyone seemed to have a new car. I couldn't understand it. All the cars in Britain appeared to be under 1 year old. It set alarm bells ringing as 5 years before this was not the case. this got me reading and led me to the economics pages. I grew up fast.

I am watching the riots in the UK now. I have been predicting this for years, (since 2007) It saddens me and I'm not afraid to say it brings a tear to my eye now. What I realised today is epic. (to me)

We have destroyed a generation, we have indoctrinated them to NEED the latest trainers, the latest fashion, the newest technology, all in the name of growth. They have been the targets of media advertising since they were born, it was transformers and hot wheels, soon to progress to mobile phones and Nike. We have made our children into consumers, but worse than that we have forced them to believe that OUR lifestyle is something they should abhor. Progress, have we really made any?

I put forward the idea that the youth of our countries are addicted to fashion, told by the media on a daily basis what is cool, the new must have, how they must worship a brand. They are addicted and the proof is here in the UK, cuts to their income cause them to loot, not riot, LOOT, stores mainly targeted, JJB sports, (new trainers), mobile phone stores, (new technology), TV outlets, (new plasma), designer clothes outlets, (diesel, ralph lauren etc) have been the preferred targets. They are looting fashion, not value.

We have been trained to believe we are not successful if we don't have the latest phone, tv or fashion. I look at these kids smashing up the town to get what they are ADDICTED to and I fear for the future. The next generation is here and they are not the hippies we saw in the 60s/70s. These guys are used to getting it now. As it comes out. Whether it is good or not. They are indoctrinated to a 'must have' mentality.

Scary times ahead, they are looking for progress and all we have to offer is history and strife. They are not ready for this, it is not going to be a nice transition to watch.

I worry for the 3 kids I deemed safe to bring to this world.

I can't protect them from the future that awaits them. I despair.

Some hard times are indeed upon us.

May all here fare well in the coming storm.

2011-07-01T16:10:00.002-04:00

Scientists are increasingly beginning to think of fat as an organ!

Crazy article on fatness...I'm a TOFI!

This program was supposed to improve my security

2011-06-29T14:29:00.000-04:00

Sriracha changed color

2011-06-29T13:07:00.001-04:00

My coworker Evan wrote Sriracha and asked why our latest bottles have been orange rather than red.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Customer Service <customerservice@huyfong.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:08 AM
Subject: Re: Sriracha has changed color
To: Evan <evan@>

Dear Evan,

Thank you for your interest in our products! We strive to produce the best sauces using quality ingredients in every bottle.

We value the opinions of our customers, and appreciate your comments. We would like to note that because we use fresh chili peppers in all of our sauces, there will occasionally be variations on our final products. Because of the unusually cool weather last harvest season, not all the fields of the chili pepper crop completely ripened or turned red. As you have seen, some of our products this year contain chili that was in the process of maturing into red chili. The color of the chili progresses from green, to dark purple or chocolate, then to red upon maturity. Therefore, these 'dark' specks that are seen in the Sambal Oelek and Chili Garlic are actually green chili pepper that has not ripen and are not 'spoiled' chili. With the Sriracha, this mixture of these colors has resulted in a brown/orange colored sauce. To avoid a shortage of product, as experienced in the past, we had to accept the bi-color chili last year. Therefore, it has been a challenge this year to produce a uniform product.
The taste of the products should still remain unchanged. Unfortunately, because our products are natural, there can be many variables that can change the product’s color, as well as the heat or spiciness of the sauces.

Again, thank you for your comments. If you have any further questions or comments please do not hesitate to e-mail us.

Sincerely,

Customer Service

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 6:02 PM, Evan <evan@> wrote:

Hi,

Why has my favorite sauce chained color? Sriracha used to be bright red and now it's orange. Why?

Can't find a red bottle anywhere in NYC...

Thanks
-Evan

Vespanomics is wrong...

2011-05-11T10:52:00.003-04:00

Vespa has a graphic on their Vespanomics page. Unfortunately, lots of the math is wrong so the graphic is totally misleading.

Here's the same graphic, but with the math corrected. If you want to combine two vehicles to increase gas mileage, you can't just average the mileage of the two vehicles...

My Online Privacy Concerns

2011-03-14T21:09:00.010-04:00

I'm finally worried about privacy on the internet--normally, I go on and on about products that are made in China, the poor performance of traffic lights or the silliness of speed limits. I've spent the last two hours trying to carve out a little privacy online and I am now almost sure that I am going to fail. Today I learned of a project called Panopticlick (check it out. It is one click and inspired this entire post), which can probably tell who you are, even though you might not have cookies enabled, and even though you might have your browser set to "Private Browsing Mode, and even if you're using a proxy (If you want to see some other things about you, and you use Google, log in, click here, and have a look around).

A little over 200 years ago, an English philosopher named Jeremy Bentham came up with an idea for a prison called a Panopticon (Wikipedia) It is a bank of prison cells wrapped around in a circle with a slit-windowed guard tower in the center. The guard(s) in the tower can watch any of the prisoners, and so each prisoner does not know whether or not he is being monitored. After a while, the guards don't even need to be in the tower all the time--the prisoners police themselves.

Anyway, Panopticlick is a project by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to show how much information you give up when you visit a website--perhaps enough that the internet can identify your specific browser, based on the version of your browser, the fonts it has, your screen resolution, etc. It's pretty spooky stuff, and it means you don't know when you're being watched (does that remind you of CCTV's you see in grocery stores, street corners... How about the cameras that nearly everyone carries now just waiting to capture embarrassing or tragic moments).

Here's what I've changed...

Firefox extensions:

Ad-Block Plus- blocks nearly all ads online, which is nicer visually, and better for anonymity. Highly recommended even for non-privacy nuts.

Tor - a traffic-anonymizing plug-in for Firefox that trades security for anonymity

Better Privacy - Deletes Flash Cookies (Local Shared Objects), which are cookies that aren't deleted when you delete cookies

NoScript - Prohibits javascript from running unless you want it to. I don't know how well this is going to work but I'm going to give it a try.

Browsing habits:

Using duckduckgo.com rather than Google. Duckduck go doesn't store or leak (cool visual guide) your information (at least that's what they say)

I also don't like that Google Instant knows exactly what you're typing, even before you click submit (and could save your unsubmitted searches). That's a huge invasion of privacy.

Someone out there is gathering this colossal database of information about me, and it's valuable. At the very least, companies are going to dig deeper into my pockets by giving me really targeted advertising (at worst something will come back down the line to bite me for insurance, or legal reasons). If they're good enough at it, it could be bad. Here are some great products:

Cars - so cheap and appealing that people boat around in them until they are way overweight
Sriracha - tasty enough that you try it on non-asian cuisine and wind up ruining the flavors of whatever is being eaten
smart phones - so good people don't need to know how to use maps, and don't need to remember phone numbers or facts...
SecondLife/World of Warcraft - these games appeal to human instincts so heavily that people prefer the online world to real life

What if advertisers really start digging into my pockets and change my behavior as drastically as the products above change behavior? What if they figure out exactly how to target me by appealing to my basest desires? I won't be seeing Victoria's Secret and Noxema ads online, but my wallet will be rent asunder by ads for used 2-stroke KTMs and used Miata swaybar endlinks. For me, the ultimate advertising would be if a fourth column of Drudge report had a craigslist feed with sub-2k motorcycles/bikes/scooters for sale nearby. What would the ultimate advertising be for you?

Some great writing on the Panopticon (same link as the one way above)--this is exactly how internet usage seems to me after today.

Mercedes SLS Superbowl Ad - flashing headlights

2011-02-05T17:49:00.007-05:00

I watched Mercedes' new Superbowl advertisement that features Puff Daddy and there's a shot where the 2011 Mercedes cars all turn on their headlights. The SLS lights flash one by one, and it's a pretty cool effect. I wonder if they are trying to ape the behavior of the SLS F1 Safety car and its flashing lights (On the production SLS, it looks like the parking lights come on before the headlights, then the left parking light turns, then the right light turns off).

Blast from the past-

2011-01-31T16:54:00.004-05:00

I saw this a long time ago and just thought of it. Try looking at your keyboard when you're done.

Weird cars in New York

2011-01-30T19:59:00.004-05:00

Can you spot what's weird about these cars I saw in NYC this week? Hint: the VW has no snow on it--also, apologies for the shoddy camera-phone picture quality.

More snowy motorcycles

2011-01-29T15:28:00.002-05:00

I've been having a ball riding around in the snow this week--an article I wrote about it appeared on Hell For Leather (subscription) and Jalopnik. Thanks to Wes for publishing it.

Riding a motorcycle in the snow

2011-01-26T20:36:00.008-05:00

I was elated to see snow on the ground this morning and rode to work in the snowiest conditions yet. Michelin's Gazelle is not a good for snow; the carcass is far too stiff to take advantage of low pressures and its tread pattern is hopelessly conservative for the winter. I reckon some trials tires would be much better, but can't bear the thought of taking the Gazelles off; I popped 2 tubes getting the rear one on.

Jalopnik stole my electricity!

2011-01-26T20:25:00.005-05:00

The case of the missing electrons has been cracked. Mike Spinelli and Ray Wert (both of Jalopnik fame) had rented the very same Volt that's in the previous post, drained it's battery, and dropped it off back at Hertz just before my dad and I picked it up.

Here's a picture Jalopnik took of the navigation screen displaying trip info:

Photo from Jalopnik.com

And here's a picture I took, hours later:

Note the 29.9 miles travelled by battery in each, and the decrease in miles per gallon as the batteries ran out and the engine came into play.

The Jalopnik article was called "New York Isn't Ready for Electric Cars," but since Hertz didn't bother to charge the Volt before renting it again, I'm not sure they are either!

Hertz Chevy Volt Rental: Potential for Disaster

2011-01-23T19:32:00.008-05:00

Is the Chevy Volt a hybrid? Nope--but it is the exact powertrain configuration I dreamed of during my previous all-electric Hertz rentals. The Volt is an electric car with a small gas generator that keeps the car moving if the battery runs out. A car like this can get away with a light-weight battery pack because its range of 40 miles covers, say, 80% of trips, and on longer trips the gas motor kicks in (a Nissan Leaf has to have a huge heavy battery for a 100 mile range). You also aren't married to the idea of charging a dead battery if you have to head out. Awesome, right?

We rented a Volt from Hertz today, and found out that the gas engine doesn't charge the battery. When the battery is at 0% the car goes almost feels broken--you find yourself staring at a full tank of gas and an empty battery, and wondering why the battery won't charge--and wishing it would so you can glide along in electric-only stealth mode. You have to remind yourself that it is an electric car with gas backup.

The Volt looked swish, but was not plugged-in when we arrived at the Hertz Location, and as I feared, the battery was at 0% charge. The gas engine had to run for the duration of our rental (except at stoplights and when coasting), and the battery gauge didn't move from 0% (the car has less power when it has 0% batteries--the gas engine only makes 84bhp). This was a pity, since the whole point of renting the car was to let my dad drive an electric vehicle, and my personal car sat parked at the Hertz location during our rental.

The fact that you have to plug the Volt in seemed like news to the Hertz reps, and they didn't rush to plug it in for the next renter, who was slated to arrive at 17:00. A pity, since that person--like me--is probably renting it solely because it has an all-electric mode.

The Volt needs to be treated as an electric vehicle when deciding on how many charging stations are needed at a Hertz location, and Hertz employees need to look at the battery gauge when the vehicle returns, in order to determine whether or not it needs to be charged--it's a lot slower when it is out of batteries!

People who are used to hybrids will evaluate Volts by renting them through Hertz, but there is a financial disincentive for Hertz to charge the cars before renting them (since electricity costs money, but renters pay for gas). The renters could be severely disappointed if the battery starts and stays at 0%, and that's a big problem for GM.

Parallel Parking Tips

2011-01-08T14:44:00.009-05:00

So, you don't have any cavities? Good! Then it's time to learn how to parallel park the British way.

Studies by Transportation Alternatives have shown that 15%-45% of drivers in Manhattan are trolling for parking, and observation suggests that a lot of those drivers pass up spots that they could fit in—just because they lack parallel parking skills.

Manhattan has miles of unmetered street-parking, which provides an incentive to drive a small car—larger cars can only fit in the largest spots that appear. When I owned a smart fortwo, it was a doddle to park quickly—I never had to look for more than three blocks to find a spot. Drivers of longer cars can spend more than an hour looking for on-street parking.

Driver skill is the other, more easily improvable factor that determines what spots a car can squeeze into. Sadly, New York’s New Driver Study Guide provides precious little instruction on the science behind parallel parking, offering little more than “plenty of practice is the only way to improve,” and a lengthy version of the old “crank it all the way to the right, then all the way to the left” method. In contrast, England’s driver training programs explain the process as a straightforward, formulaic routine, and in minutes had me consistently parallel parking in tight spaces. Just what was I taught about parallel parking during my several £50/hour driving lessons in the UK? The first thing was to look all around the car. Eye the space as you drive up to it. Before reversing, look over both shoulders, in both mirrors, and through the windshield of your car. And remember that the front of your car swings out into the road when you’re parking. If everything looks good, then it’s on to the magic formula. We’ll leave the reader with the trivial task of figuring out which way to turn the wheel.

1. Drive alongside the car in front of the space—and leave two feet of space between the cars—until your rear bumpers are even.

Step 1.

2. Turn the steering wheel one complete revolution toward the space. Reverse until your nearside mirror is level with the rear bumper of the other car.

Step 2.

3. Straighten the wheel and reverse until your front bumper is level with the rear bumper of the other car.

Step 3.

4. Turn the wheel one turn away from the space and reverse until your car is parallel in the spot.

Step 4.

That technique will work for many of the spots that give people pause in Manhattan. When confronted with a tighter spot with less than 2-3’ of extra space, parking becomes less formulaic and a bit more strategic.

Parallel parking depends primarily on getting the rear wheels where you want them—there is no way to move the back of the car left or right without pulling out and back in again. But in very tight spaces, you can’t place both the front and the rear of the car in a single S-shaped maneuver. Pull up alongside the car in-front, look through the rear windscreen and begin reversing, turning the wheel to aim your license plate just curbside of the center of the front bumper of the car that’s behind you (your car wont hit the curb because it’s trajectory will change as the car swings in), and begin thinking about the nose of your car even before it clears the rear bumper of the car in front. Ideally, you’ll have your car on full-lock before you clear the rear bumper, and just barely miss the car in front with your nose. You’ll run out of space before the front wheels are next to the curb—and so it is necessary to “walk” the front of your car into place (steer toward the curb and creep forward, then steer away and inch backward). This is the only time (ever) that it can be necessary to turn the front wheels when the car is stationary. To summarize:

1. Pull up just alongside the car in front, leaving 2 feet of space, until your rear bumper is about a foot ahead of the other car’s rear bumper.

2. Turn the steering wheel one complete revolution and reverse, then adjust the steering to aim your rear bumper just curbside of squarely at the front bumper of the car behind yours.

3. Straighten the wheel and reverse, adjusting the wheel until your front bumper is nearly touching—and level with—the rear bumper of the other car.

4. Turn the wheel hard (even all the way) and reverse until your car is as close as possible to the car behind you. Then “walk” the front of your car into the spot by steering toward the curb and inching toward the car in front, turning the other way and creeping toward the car behind you, etc…

There are a few other secrets to impressive parallel parking. If you can find your reflection in a glass storefront it will help you with the last few inches. Concentrate, turn off the radio, crack the window, and undo your seatbelt. Don’t be afraid to hop out to eyeball the spot. If there is a puddle by the curb and you have a passenger, park as close as you can to the curb by turning the wheel a little extra in the first and last steps. If you’re parking a huge vehicle with zero rear visibility, perform an ocular patdown as you drive past the spot to judge the excess room, then make sure not to get too far from the car in front at any point during the parking process. Mechanically sympathetic drivers avoid turning the steering wheel when the car is stopped. Master hill-starts in forward and reverse if you are going to be parking a manual. Finally, remember that the nose of your car swings out into traffic when you parallel park. Neglecting to account for this crucial factor netted me one “Major” error during my English driving test and prevented me from getting a full UK license. Dash!

Driving the Nissan Leaf

2011-01-08T14:16:00.011-05:00

I was invited to drive one of the Nissan Leafs that Connect by Hertz is planning to start renting from 60th street sometime in February. After being charmed but a little underwhelmed by their slow Smart ED on Tuesday, I was excited to have a go in a car that had been designed from the ground up as an electric vehicle.

The Leaf looks a like a fat Yaris with bubbly headlights-it doesn't make you ache like a Corvette, it doesn't mimic the appealing techno look of the new Prius, and it isn't adorable like the smart.

There isn't much about the car that hints that it is a special vehicle. In fact, when you factor in the tire roar and motor whine (and noise from nearby cars in our Manhattan test drive), it doesn't feel shockingly quiet compared to a 7-Series or even a Mazda 3.

What it does do is an excellent job of "playing car." You could toss someone the key fob and they might not realize that the car was electric for a long time. The Leaf accelerates briskly and goes on to 95mph (although the FDR was clogged and I'd be surprised if we touched 45), and it looks like the fat cars everyone already drives anyway. That it needs no excuses is a huge feat.

Still, there are a few puzzling things. During our test drive in 35 degree weather, turning on the heater made the range gauge instantly drops by a third, from 100 to 69 miles. Sureley some part of the motor gets too hot to touch and could supply some heat. Maybe not. In any case, a third of the range being lost through heat seems unlikely. Maybe a heated steering wheel and heated seats would be a better use of heating elements. The car does use HID lights and LED's everywhere though, so maybe the heater is really the major drain. Is my regular car losing so much energy to heat? If so, I want years of my money back.

Apologies for the static pictures, I was with a Connect rep and didn't want to go overboard taking pictures

The car also has a pointlessly weird shift knob that slides right for park and then wobbles around in the left position for RND and "eco", which dulls the car's performance using throttle-by-wire trickery. There is also a reverse camera that shows lines on the road that bend as you turn the wheel to indicate where the car is going to go since it isn't easy to see over the high trunk panel.

Hertz' Leaf comes with a "electricity card" that you can scan at charging stations for a free charge, and as the Leaf's final trick, the navigation has a list of local charging stations.

The car I drove had controls for the headlight angle, suggesting that it is a foreign market car. I am surprised that Hertz is renting non-DOT approved cars but apparently they can bring them in and rent them for 3 years.

After putting nearly 100 miles on two electric cars during the past week, I've realized that there is nothing to be afraid of, that electric cars drive just like normal cars (the smart's lazy pace notwithstanding), can be charged slowly anywhere and rapidly at an increasing number of locations, and the range seems to be the tradeoff you give for almost no maintenance until the battery eventually dies, and the ability to charge anywhere for cheap.

The wierdest thing is that these cars are more "normal" than normal cars. They don't run on a highly flammable liquid and there isn't thousands of explosions worth of pandemonium under the hood each minute. Electric cars just whirr along in relative peace. I was expecting to be blown away by... something, but wound up missing the character of the raspy engines I deal with on a regular basis.

And I'm not sure the cars help save the world just yet, since the elements in the batteries come predominantly from China, and the electricity is probably coming from coal-fired powerplants. Electric cars still keep kids from playing hockey in the street, won't reduce the 33k deaths a year on our roads, still make for loud highways, and their drivers can still lay on the horn.

Still, well done Hertz for renting V8 mustangs, Corvettes, and now, electric cars. I just wish they would rent Miatas with manual transmissions and some twist-and-go scooters that I could take on one-way trips around Manhattan.

Maybe someone will invent a video bumper sticker that just plays on loop and says

I'd rather be in one of these:

I'd slap it on the back of my Leaf.

Connect by Hertz' Smart ED

2011-01-08T13:56:00.011-05:00

Last Tuesday, I rented a Smart ED from Connect's 50th street location in Manhattan. I drove the car Westchester County Airport for a Civil Air Patrol meeting. The total distance of the journey was 63 miles, and I started with the battery gauge on 100% but returned it with what you can see in the picture--maybe 1% on the gauge (a representative called me in a panic when it got below about 3%, but everything was okay since I was so close to home). I used the heater on the return journey, because it was freezing, and I there were a few times when I used the full 30kW power to keep up with traffic.

Using the full 30kW

My overwhelming impression of the car is that it is really slow at highway speeds, not unusably slow, but probably the slowest car in the entire Hertz fleet. It struggles to go 58 up hills, and is harshly limited at 65mph. When the car runs into the red zone, it becomes even slower.

Because the car is "throttle by wire", there is no direct connection between the pedal and the motor. The computer decides what is best for you, and accelerates in a very soft way even if you floor it, using a maximum of 20kW. But if you push past a final "click" in the accelerator pedal, it realizes you want to go quickly, and gives you the full 30kW on the gauge, and you make a little more progress. When you are in the red zone, the car goes into limp mode and will use only 15kW even if you push past the "click" in the pedal.

Returned it with 1% charge

It wasn't so quiet as I expected at highway speeds; there is a fair amount of whine from the electric motor, and of course wind noise and tire roar. When crawling around, however, it is ghostly.

When I picked the car up, the lot attendant ran after me and said I needed to come in the little room to get my ticket, and then sheepishly realized that it was a Connect car. Someone else then ran after me to get a copy of my driving license. The car was dirty (understandable considering the recent snowstorm) and had a broken center armrest on one of the two seatbacks, but otherwise the experience was excellent. I really enjoyed driving such a great distance on battery power.

As for range anxiety, I get a thrill from it. I enjoy running my cars right down to empty. If you think of the smart EV as a car with a 3 gallon gas tank, then I think that might really bother some people. But you do have options--in a traffic jam, no energy is used. You can use the parking brake when you're stopped so the rear brake lights don't spill energy, and of course, you can charge it at your destination. Had I charged the car for the 2 hours I was at my Civil Air Patrol meeting, I would easily have been able to make it back with a 25% charge. I guess the best thing to tell people is that the battery gauge is pretty linear, it doesn't suddenly fall quickly once it gets past 20%. Also, I imagine they calibrated the gauge so there is some reserve below zero, although I didn't get to find out.

I am excited that Hertz is renting these electric cars. I find electric cars and their quirks fascinating, and this is my only opportunity to experience them.

Dream bike of the day:

2010-07-22T10:13:00.000-04:00

What keeps a train on the track?

2010-04-20T18:42:00.003-04:00

Last night was old-bike night. Today it's time to look back at Richard Feynman's enthusiasm for science. I like to watch this series of videos, where he explains these really complicated concepts using everyday thoughts. I'll let him do the talking.

Daydreaming about old bikes

2010-04-19T22:59:00.003-04:00

New York's streets overflow with track bikes, and while there is some tasty stuff out there none of it is complex enough to be really interesting--no freewheels, no suspension, and no wild brakes. This Nuke Proof Reactor is a bike I've never seen in person, but it has those awesome steel Sweet Wings cranks, and a Rock Shox rear shock... in the head tube! Ironically, this is probably one of the more serviceable old forks--I'd rather try to get parts for it than a Manitou I or a Headshok--surely there are tons of rear shocks you could stuff into it.

FromRetrobike

2010-04-16T22:46:00.002-04:00

Sometimes, I wonder if the cars that magazines have me dreaming about have nothing to do with the cars I'd dream about on my own.

The richest man in the world

2010-03-22T19:07:00.006-04:00

Bill Gates is still the richest man in the world, per pound.

How to get Zero Cavities!

2010-02-04T17:31:00.006-05:00

Today, for the first time in a year-and-a-half, I went to the dentist. He took a full set of x-rays before congratulating me on having no cavities at all. It wasn't a shock; I've been fastidious about my oral hygeine since I learned two importing things. These are they:

1. Flossing stinks - Years ago, my friend Alexis and I happened to be talking about flossing. "Of course I floss," she said, "if you haven't flossed for a while and then you do, it stinks!" I was disgusted and intrigued; I ventured a whiff the next time I flossed. If whatever is in between your teeth actually stinks, then you're probably better off without it. From then on, I was a little sicked out about kissing people who don't floss.

2. Bacteria, not sugar, rots your teeth - I'm not Nick D.D.S., but I do know that it isn't sugar that rots your teeth. It's the acidic byproduct the bacteria in your mouth produce as they feed on sugar--sugar meaning any carbohydrate, including otherwise non-sugary foods like bread or even Grape-Nuts. When you're trying to clean your teeth, don't imagine scrubbing sugar off of them, imagine scrubbing all the food away so bacteria have nothing to eat. You want them to be spotless, bacteria are microscopic and can live on tiny amounts of food.

Then rinse with mouthwash. It starves the bacteria by rinsing out all the minute food particles you dislodged with floss and your toothbrush. Mouthwash also makes your mouth inhospitable to bacteria like S. mutans, which is one of the first bacteria to attack your teeth, and actually has special receptors to bond to them.

Tooth decay is a chronic infectious disease - it isn't just sugar rotting your teeth. Treat it as such, and use your toothbrush, floss, and mouthwash--every morning and night, at least--to make your mouth as inhospitable as possible to bacteria. These procedures are nothing new, I just wanted to shed some light on the mechanics of tooth decay--visualizing it this way (the actual way) helped me be more careful about my oral hygiene.

360 in a Car!

2010-02-04T11:28:00.003-05:00

I finally did it. After years of watching stunt drivers do 360's, and even asking Autocar how to do it (they didn't know how), I've done a 360.

For the record--handbrake turn in neutral at above 40mph (75+ if its dry pavement), release the handbrake brake and turn the wheel the other way when you're nearing 180--- car should do a reverse flick (dab the footbrake here if you're having trouble) and you're on your way again...

Cold Air Balloons - 3M Window Film

2010-02-03T22:26:00.007-05:00

It may be a little late in the season to begin thinking about insulation, but when I learned about window films I couldn't resist trying them. The windows in our apartment are double-hung, double-pane, and metal-framed--and they look absolutely top-notch. Even so, it is possible to feel a draft around the top of the bottom pane and the bottom of the top pane. Cue 3M's Window Insulator Kit.

The "kit" is just a giant piece of plastic film and a few rolls of tape. After all, its only objectives are to seal any of the window's leaks and to capture a layer of insulating air. That little piece of film can more than double a window's insulating ability. Of course, if windows aren't the main source of drafts, then doubling their effectiveness might not make a difference. But they are and it does (other possible sources are the hole around a ceiling fan, a dryer vent, or even wall sockets facing exterior walls).

Have a look at 3M's Calculator to see what you might save with a bit of film...

But the best bit is seeing the film puff up after you've installed it (I'll try to get a picture). I reckon its the dense, cold air pushing in past the window frame. It's like a cold air balloon. My window films are bulging 3" at the center of the pane (see top picture)... I can't wait to see the difference it makes to the bill.

The Cub made it to the BBC!

2009-04-23T10:24:00.006-04:00

The BBC called me up a week or so ago and asked me to chat about unemployed people in New York reinventing themselves. Perfect, right? So we wound up doing a short film about the Honda Cub, a 100mpg step-through motorcycle which is the most-produced vehicle in the entire history of the world.

Here's a link to a Wired article about the 60 millionth cub being sold, and here's a little video about what makes it so great. Don't know why they tried to wreck it though-- seems to me to be in poor taste.

The Unemployment Olympics were a great success!

2009-04-04T00:00:00.009-04:00

I lost my job in February after nearly three years at a computer firm in downtown Manhattan- It was liberating-- I walked out and into a chilly day holding a big bag off stuff, but the day felt fresher, and I knew that many adventures were ahead. That night, or the next day, I wondered aloud to a friend about how great it would be to be able to compete in athletic events to win prizes--"The Unemployment Olympics", I would call it.

A few weeks later I decided to create and host the Olympics. I applied for a permit at New York's Parks and Recreation office, and submitted an event listing to Time Out. I put out a press release, and FOX NEWS called and asked if I'd come on their show. It was a huge thrill-- you can check out the bit here-

A whirlwind of making stuff, getting more donations, planning events, responding to the RSVP'ers, and just generally freaking out later...

And check out how it turned out! Everyone had a ball, and it got news coverage from LA to Montreal, Australia and Shanghai--

New York Times
Gothamist

Cup of Jo

Here is some video from the New York Post and The Associated Press...

Fiesta movement winners being picked-

2009-04-03T23:50:00.001-04:00

Ford has been contacting the agents of the Fiesta Movement for the past few days-- If you want to see a list of those chosen so far, check out this thread at focaljet.

I spoke with Leslie today from Ogilvy PR in Manhattan, and she confirmed that there are still a few agents who have not yet been contacted/selected. Check out this video below (and my Fiesta Movement video posted 3/25) and keep your fingers crossed that I am one of the remaining few to be contacted...

BBC motorcycle ad-

2009-03-26T11:05:00.002-04:00

I've gotta say, this ad Think Bike made in England is pretty spooky. Watch it, and look out for us motorcyclists when you're looping around in your car.

Ford's Fiesta is storming the internet

2009-03-25T10:17:00.002-04:00

Ford is holding a contest where people can win an unreleased car (in this case a 2011 Fiesta) and roll around in it for six months. I made a video two days ago for the contest--

I hope you liked it.

So good it Hertz

2007-08-28T23:12:00.001-04:00

Ford used to own Hertz, and they did a special deal in the 60's where Shelby tuned some Mustangs and created the Hertz Rent-a-Racer program. Well, they've done it again. This is old news, apparently, as the deal has been going on for over a year.

Anyway, there was a AMA supermoto race in Stafford Springs, CT, and we needed to rent a car to get there. After a quick look through the various rental car sites, it seemed that a $69/day Ford Fusion was going to be the day's chariot. There's nothing wrong with a Fusion, but renting it would ensure highlight of the day was the time spent spectating at the racetrack.

Then something halfway down the Hertz list caught my eye. A black and gold Shelby Mustang convertible.

Sadly, the Mustang was all sold out in Manhattan for Sunday. I called Hertz in New Jersey, and they only had V6 Mustangs. I booked an inexpensive Fusion from Avis and went to bed, after reading a series of glowing reviews of the Hertz, both from magazines and from lucky bloggers who found one to rent--there are only 500 of them, and they are only available in a handful of locations, mainly on the coast.

The next day, I looked again, and BAM, there it was, fairly jumping off the page at me. Some fool had cancelled his reservation for my Mustang--even if I weren't obsessed with the idea, I'd defy anyone from resisting the opportunity to rent the top car- I mean, come on, it only costs $70 more! (actually, mine was a bit more than that, plus .26/mile over 100 miles).

It was difficult to concentrate Saturday night, and I a bit aloof at the party I attended--the whole time I was looking forward to squeezing the throttle and hearing the hollow warble of the big V8 with the wind in my hair. Thankfully, I turned 25 last month, so someone thinks I'm responsible enough to bring the beast back in one piece.

This was all still unknown to Sarah Wilson, who wouldn't share my enthusiasm about "what an awesome day this is going to be" as we ate bagels. Little did she know I had a fire-breathing Mustang lined up just minutes into the future. On second thought, that probably wouldn't get her as riled up as it would me.

We walked into the Hertz, just 2 blocks from Sarah Wilson's apartment, and to my great surprise there were Hertz Mustangs in every corner of the garage. I fired ours up and coaxed the beast onto the street, picked up Sarah Wilson, and roared onto the FDR.

Even before we got there, however, a Jeep wanted to race. Once on the FDR, a tinted Explorer window rolled down, and an approving face looked out. This was the first sign that the Hertz Mustang is dear to the American heart. But man, would it continue throughout the day. People LOVED it.

I had expected it to make a great noise, spin the tires, and put a big smile on my face. And did it ever, on all three counts. I'd drive through tunnels at full throttle, the nose would lift and the tail would squat down.

There was the 10 year-old kid smiling as I did a huge smoky burnout right in front of his house, who gleefully exclaimed "it's coming back" as I looped around to pick up Sarah Wilson before we fled the scene.

There was the guy at Starbucks, who demanded I pop the hood so he could check out the motor, and it looked pretty clear that he was going to head to Hertz and try one out for himself.

And the lady whose just-past-infancy pointed and said "momma, what's that?" "that's a Shelby darlin'.

When I arrived at the motorcycle race, I had a few long conversations about the car that ended with the guys saying "well God bless you man, have fun in that thing."

On the way out, some kids yelled "light 'em up Mustang!" and I obliged, and soon did it again when I heard "do it again!" from someone else.

I stopped to pee on the high way at night, and just for fun brake-torqued it and slithered off in a cloud of smoke. I passed a car a minute or two later who gave me a big thumbs up.

But the best bit was when we were on the way back into Manhattan, we took a wrong turn in Harlem and wound up pulling up to a stoplight next to another Mustang convertible with 3 fairly aggressive looking characters in it. "Oooh, a Shelby, go easy on me!" At the next light the driver said "how many cylinders does that thing have? 68?" and the passenger offered me some hennessy.

There hasn't been a day since when I haven't thought about excuses to rent one again.

Slow Bikes – A Tour de France Special on Slipstreaming

2007-08-02T23:42:00.000-04:00

Every July, skinny men on colourful bicycles pedal up mountains in the Tour de France. The riders average over a hundred miles per day for three weeks. How do they do it? Fitness and technology are only part of the story; no rider could be competitive without the invisible boost of the slipstream – the same effect used in NASCAR and by dicing GP racers like Gibernau and Rossi.

At 25mph, roughly 90% of a cyclist’s effort goes into moving air out of his way. Slipstreaming cuts that figure dramatically. In a pack, all but the front row of riders feel the benefit of the draft (there's very slightly more to it than that, and it involves vacuum--the first riders get a tiny benefit from the people behind them), so they take turns slipstreaming to conserve energy. This energy-saving teamwork is the reason a group of riders can catch a solo breakaway with relative ease.

Want to feel the spooky calm of the draft? Get hold of a racing bike and find a bus route along a 30mph street – you’re going to draft a bus. Ride along the route until you pass a stationary bus, then shift into a big gear and accelerate hard as the bus pulls away. Once it passes you, check there are no cars and then duck in behind it, maintaining a distance of 5-10 feet. You should hardly have to pedal, and the wind will disappear. Cover the brakes in case the bus begins to slow.

It is much easier to ride a hundred miles a day if you barely have to pedal. Indeed, a pro rider generates less than 1bhp. So if you cannot arrange the suggested thrills, fear not. Hop on a Fireblade and you’ll be sitting on more power than is in the entire Tour de France peloton.

Runup to Torque

2007-06-20T23:26:00.001-04:00

Here is an article I recently submitted to The Truth About Cars. It's about the second-coming of diesel cars in America, and how manufacturers could better their diesel lineups and grab a larger slice of the market from hybrids and gasoline-powered cars.
(That GTO isn't a diesel)

Runup to Torque – the New Diesels

23 May 2007

This is going to be a bad year for US diesel passenger-car sales. Few diesel models have been on sale for the past few years, and they are now scarcer still. Besides trucks, today’s 45-state shopper can choose among only a Grand Cherokee, Volkswagen’s Touareg, and a couple of Benzes. But manufacturers are readying models with new exhaust filtration systems that bring many more oil-burners into compliance with the strict new Tier 2 Bin 5 emissions standards all 2007-and-beyond passenger cars must meet. High-sulfur diesel can damage the exhaust technology, but the nation’s 76,000 diesel stations will soon complete the switch to ultra-low sulfur. By ’08, a host of manufacturers—Mercedes, Jeep, Subaru, Audi, VW, and BMW—will be ready to unleash a bevy of 50-state diesels.

This should be great news for driving enthusiasts. People in the know have long championed the performance and economy of diesels. Though they generally don’t cope well with the way people think they drive (blasting from 0-60 and redlining through the gears), they do a terrific job with how people actually drive (squirting from 30-70 mph, shortshifting at wide-throttle openings). Unfortunately, all the exciting diesels are staying in Europe.

That’s going to hamper US diesel sales; the low gas (and diesel) prices we enjoy here mean it will take longer for a buyer to recoup the higher initial cost of a diesel, so the motivation for choosing one will be less financial and more emotional. For diesels to make it in the land of Mustangs and Magnums, they will need to be cool.

Regrettably, manufacturers’ proposed diesel lineups are bland. They’re not bringing us much more than an Audi Q7 TDi, a Mercedes R320 Bluetec, and a BMW 530d. Buyers who wait until 2010 can also opt for diesel Maximas and Accords—and will remain bored. People who buy any of these probably haven’t floored a car in 30 years, and the cars themselves aren’t going to win any outright mileage competitions (read: headlines) against a Prius. Significantly, this demographic is also old enough to remember the last time diesels were big in the US—the slow, smelly, truck-like diesels of 20 years ago.

Surely the younger generation would be better suited to starting a diesel bandwagon. Fun-loving, image-conscious youngsters would get jazzed about a sporty option, such as BMW’s 155mph 335d, and would relish eco-hooning around in a runabout like Smart’s 60mpg fortwo diesel (both on sale in Europe). Fighting at those performance extremes is critical; the US market is unique in having had hybrid powertrains become mainstream before diesels, and so diesels will have to take the fight to both gas and hybrid. They can do it—a sporty diesel will trounce its petrol equivalent on torque and economy; a frugal one can school hybrids on weight and brake feel, and have proven longevity. Now back to the coolness factor.

Audi could have made progress on this. In 2006, their badass V12 diesel R10 won Le Mans outright on its maiden outing, a decidedly awesome maneuver. Then, they released the R8 supercar AND devised a 500bhp, V12 diesel cauldron that could serve up a Newton-kilometer of torque. And then wedged the motor into a lumbering concept SUV, the Q7 V12 TDI. Whoops—a diesel R8 concept would have made a good many knees weak over an oil-burner for the first time.

Audi are not going to bring athletic diesels to the showroom either. We’ll get a 3-liter Q7, but not the new A5 3.0 TDi that competes against BMW’s 335d in Europe. Those are two cars people would talk about. Autocar said of the 335d (which has 428lb-ft):

It’ll rev in a very undiesel-like way – a pleasant attribute, but not particularly relevant. The engine’s real weapon is the sledgehammer effect of all that torque through the mid-range and the hushed manner in which it is delivered. The turbo petrol 335i would ultimately be faster, but in a real-world test the diesel is easier to drive quickly, whether intentionally or by accident.

Sounds awesome. So why will the manufacturers bring us only reserved, upmarket cars? It’s partially because the higher production cost of a diesel engine, when combined with the expensive systems needed for a diesel to comply with the new emissions standards, will raise the price of a car by a fairly fixed amount, and it’s easier to slap a fixed premium onto a $35k+ car than one costing $15k. They may also be basing their sales predictions on data from Europe, which, as stated above, employs dissimilar purchase metrics.
JD Power predicts—and manufacturers hope—that diesel’s US market penetration will quadruple to 15% by 2015. Consumers are interested and the technology is nearly here. But to hit that goal, America needs the most interesting diesels from Europe, and soon.

Masculin products

2007-04-30T20:12:00.000-04:00

Taking a cue from my sister, there is going to be a theme this week: Masculin products. This doesn't mean they're masculin in themselves, like an older Bentley, it means that they are products for a man. They stand-out with subtlety and boast frillless performance. They are products marketers hope you forget, in hope that you might buy the latest.

Tonight, we’re going to take a look at Gillette Foamy Regular. Later on we’ll touch pickup trucks, raincoats, bikes, and magazines. Sports cars as well. Maybe sports car drivers.

Gillette Foamy Regular. Gillette’s most generic shaving cream—it doesn’t have Vitamin E, or Advanced Gel, and it isn’t for Sensitive Skin. It’s just fluffy and white—pure shaving cream. And we don’t have Barbasol in the US, so men have to use Foamy Regular.

Contrast that to Gillette’s Edge Advanced Shaving Gel, Extra Skin Protection. Just read:

From drugstore.com:

Sometimes you're cool and contained. But other times it feels good to get into a real lather. Edge Pro Gel is dispensed as a gel, but oh, baby, look what happens when you rub it onto your face. It lathers right up for a sinfully luxurious shave. Extra lubricants allow your razor to simply glide across your face, making it especially nice for guys with sensitive skin.

But if you aren’t quite ready to leap to Regular from Jack Black’s Face Buff, or your girlfriend isn’t ready to switch from her Satin Care, Gillette’s Foamy Lemon / Lime can ease the transition.

New York City is the "greenest" place in the US

2007-04-11T21:22:00.000-04:00

I used to think that cities were filthy, dirty places that consumed vast quantities of resources. The thing is though, they house vaster quantities of people--and consume less resources per capita than rural areas (apologies for the goofy font choices).

The Herald Tribune agrees:

"The old paradigm of the pollution-filled city as a blight on the landscape and the leafy-green suburbs as the ideal is outdated and does not lead us to a future of energy independence, clean air and a stable climate. Cities are the best hope to realize our need for a bright, sustainable, and promising future.

New York City, for example, is the most energy efficient place in America. Yes, it houses 8.2 million citizens and uses an enormous amount of energy to do so. Its electrical load, more than 12,000 megawatts, is as large as all of Massachusetts. Yet because the buildings are dense and thus more efficiently heated and cooled, and because 85 percent of all trips in Manhattan are on foot, bike or transit, New York City uses dramatically less energy to serve each of its citizens than does a state like Massachusetts. Indeed, it uses less energy, on a per capita basis, than any state in America."

There's some pretty heavy red-taping going on when you compare a 20-some square mile island to spread-out states, but the article is still worth a read..

Ferrari and Shell

2007-03-27T07:41:00.000-04:00

Okay, I must admit that I am absolutely speechless at how cool this Shell ad is. I'll let it speak for itself.

Edit: The above link is down. see it on youtube (albeit in lower quality).

Passenger-miles per gallon

2007-03-26T22:23:00.000-04:00

This is what's been on my mind lately: Passenger miles per gallon.

A cyclist gets 600mpg, and a person driving a car gets 40mpg. Well, what about with 2 people? Lets say a car gets 40mpg. With one person in the car, that's 40 passenger-miles per gallon. With two people in the car, it would achieve 80 passenger-miles per gallon (move two people 40 miles with one gallon). Four-up, it would get 160 passenger-miles per gallon (4*40mpg). More on the bike later.

This concept is especially important when calculating the environmental impact per person of mass transit. A bus, which gets an abysimmal 4mpg, gets 160 passenger miles per gallon with 40 passengers on board (40*4mpg). The trouble is, if a bus holds 40 people, and you want to move 41 people, you need two buses. you double the amount of fuel consumed to move that extra more person, and the passenger-miles per gallon of the convoy comes down to 81. (from: 41 passengers*(4mpg)2 vehicles)

A 75% full 747 might get 30 passenger-miles per gallon, and a cruise ship gets about 10-passenger miles per gallon.

So what about a bike. I got 633 miles per gallon, but what if two people go on a bike ride. It takes twice as much energy for two people to ride bikes, but they get twice as many "passenger-miles." So the efficiency stays the same. So whether one person rides to work, or everyone rides to work, each person is getting 600 passenger-miles per gallon [ 2*(600 mpg / 2 vehicles) ]. And you don't have to go in the same direction as anyone else!

I saw a guy with a kid in a child seat on the back of his bike on my way to work this morning and thought, holy crap, (approx.) 1200 passenger miles per gallon!

633 mpg ride on Scientific American podcast

2007-03-16T20:31:00.001-04:00

PODCAST!
my bit starts halfway through

Admittedly, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this bike ride, but none has made me quite so proud as the recent podcast I did for Scientific American. I used to read SciAm growing up and always had real difficulty wrapping my head around the topics they covered with ease. What an honor to be on their website.

Last November, when an article about the ride appeared in Bicycling, I got an email from SciAm's own Steve Mirsky, who invited me to their offices to record a podcast. Well, it wound up happening in early March, and finally appeared on their website on the 14th.

Here is a link to the actual podcast (my bit starts about halfway through).

Here is a link to the website, the podcast in question is from March 14th.

Ode to going for it.

2006-12-04T19:57:00.000-05:00

I've just seen two acts that make me question the typical "courageous" things I normally hear about people doing. These two gentlemen rolled the dice in the grandest style- There is nothing PC or watered-down about either of these two things. Don't sit back and relax- figure out what adventure you've been dancing around, and go take a chance.

The first is an article about the co-founder of DC-Shoes somehow working up the guts to FLOOR a souped-up scooby at a jump Evil Kneivel himself might have some reservations about. He's got a vapor-trail!

The second bit of news is slightly more somber- It is a clip of a young German gentleman who went balls-to-the-wall on the back of a German TGV. Nothing screams GAMETIME like suction-cupping yourself to the back of one of these demons. Sadly, our hero died a year later of leukemia. Happily, he lived the dream, if only until his 22nd year.

I found it on Jalopnik, where commenter Spence captured the feel quite well-

Seriously, this made me cry. No kidding. I'm sitting at my desk at the t-shirt factory wiping tears from my eyes.

What I don't think you get Kracer is that most human beings don't ever deal with the reality of their limited humanity. We trudge to work and put in our time and refuse to think about the fact that death comes in the blink of an eye. Sometimes people under a death sentence are able to face up to their fears in a way most of us don't ever. They can't pretend that the elephant is in the room any longer, so they say "fuck it" to the calculated risk that passes as wisdom in this life. They do the things that they want to do with the tiny piece of time they have. This is how we should all live our lives. Yeah, it's a tragedy when time is cut short, but it's a far greater tragedy when time is wasted on the pettiness of life. This video made me want to quit my job and walk away from my lease and do all the crazy things I want to do with my life. I may not be courageous enough to do it, but damn, don't blame this fool for doing it.

Indeed, being a fool may be the only sane reaction to the meaningless random momentary spark of existence we call life.

The smart competition

2006-11-16T23:25:00.000-05:00

If the November 11th release of the 2007 smart fortwo didn't have you totally lusting after one of the little runabouts, perhaps seeing such a small car at least piqued your curiousity: less than nine feet long, the fortwo gets a green 50 mpg (plus or minus) without any hybrid or diesel trickery, and must be the most parkable car on the road (perfect for anybody who visits cities). Though even the brawneist fortwo spits out a decidedly lowercase 84 horsepower (although it does weight less than half as much as a VW Golf), small is definitely cool, and it doesn't have to be city-shaped.

Even sportscar manufacturers have learned from the minute smart- let's take a look at what they are testing behind closed doors:

Ferrari has cooked up a short-wheelebase enzo: ideal for their tight Fiorano test track:

Gordon Murray's long-awaited city car shares nearly everything except its wheelbase with his famed 90's F1:

The european market C6 Corvette has a smaller footprint than the stateside version, and has been received with much more enthusiasm as a result.

Quite remarkably, even classic-car enthusiasts have jumped on the microcar bandwagon. This gentleman skillfully chopped a ridiculous amount of metal out of his El Camino, and made it much more parkable (and economical) as a result. On second thought, maybe he should have saved up for a 2007 smart instead.

Microcars: Megafun!

2006-10-26T16:42:00.000-04:00

Sure, you might look at these cars and think "that looks like an escape-pod for a Hummer," but in big cities, microcars are the most engaging and enjoyable cars around. Computer-aided engineering means they are safer than you'd think, too!

To the right is the Brabus Smart Roadster Coupe I drove for a weekend while working for Autocar in 2004. I covered 500 miles in three days, on an epic adventure from London to Sherborne and back. I had already thought the regular roadster was a gem, and the full-Brabus treatment only made it more appealing--the wastegate whooshed and banged during shifts, and I couldn't stop looking at the chunky bodykit. It wasn't just me either, girls and guys of all ages loved the thing! I can't wait until they bring cars like this to the US.

Take a look at the videos and you'll agree - good things comes in small packages.

1. Top Gear pits the original Mini Cooper against a modern competitor from Fiat to find out who is better at making a racecourse out of the city.

2. A Smartzuki goes insane! Flop a motorcycle engine into the trunk and stand back! I shudder to think how fast the original motorcycle was. For comparision, this Smart has significantly less than 200 bhp. That is probably less than your car.

Bicycling covered the ride

2006-10-26T13:51:00.000-04:00

Check this out- The 633 MPG ride was covered by Bicycling magazine (Nov. 2006), and it wound up on their website as well. Click here to be taken to the article--they did a great job capturing the spirit of the ride.

In other news, I've just seen Contested Streets, an absolutely fascinating documentary about street usage. It was so compelling that I decided to review it for a local newspaper to spread the word, but then I learned that they will let you do it yourself! On the website, there is a place where you can sign up to host a public or private screening at your own house or workplace. Get a free DVD and have a party with your friends? Sounds like a deal to me.

Shop smart, shop S-Mart. YA GOT THAT?!

2006-10-07T22:21:00.001-04:00

Here's a pic I took a few weeks ago of a Smart car in a parade. They (well, the rest of them) are coming to the US in 2008.

as my dad said, "The old lady standing by the smart is holding on to her stuff for dear life, in case it gets dithered out of her arms...!"

tRSSsssssst in meeeeee

2006-10-05T13:02:00.000-04:00

If you get your news online, you've gotta check out RSS feeds (wikipedia). They allow you to gather news from all over the internet and read it in one place. I've made a feed for this site, so if you use Yahoo! News, Google Homepage, or any of the other RSS-enabled readers in the graphic, you can now pour The Gallon straight into your regular news page.

Click the to add this page to your RSS reader, or to learn more about what RSS can do for you. I don't know how I lived without it.

Me? I use Google Homepage (click on the "Personalize Home" link in the upper right corner of google.com while you are logged into GMail). I clicked on "add more to this page" , then searched for "The Gallon Race" and clicked "Add it Now."

Now my Google Homepage looks like this:

Swift

Fixing things

2006-09-20T19:04:00.000-04:00

You know, when I am trying to eat something disgusting, I just think of the Mayflower, and how on that boat, at a certain time, anything made out of food was a delicacy. Then the bbq ribs I dropped on the hair-covered mat at the foot of the refridgerator in the garage taste delicious.

Same type of deal goes for fixing things. When something breaks, I imagine I'm a kid in India and that thing is all I've got. If you gave an impovershed kid a perfect cell phone with a broken charger and a bike with broken gears, he'd already be pedalling his way up a dusty path on his new bike sad that nobody he knows has got a phone to call.

The other day, that Indian kid (me) got a water-damaged and 8-year-old watch that even Dicken would agree had no life about it. It was dead. I immediately took it apart and looked inside. There were indeed traces of water in there--it was dirty and kind of greasy, no condition for the inside of a watch.

I pried the movement away from the case and took a look. As I looked closer, I saw that there were actually individual parts to the movement, and that the battery cage had fingers which held the 3 main parts (the display / microchip, the microchip housing, and the plastic battery house *note, in the pics the display / microchip is never removed from the microchip housing*) together. I pried the cage off and the movevment fell apart. Oh, and a teeny tiny spring sprang. Oops.

I looked very closely at the microchip, and saw that there was greenish foamy corrosion between some of the contacts. I took the display off the microchip and saw the same thing at the corner of one of the connections. I held the movement with my left hand and gingerly removed the corrions with a knife in my right.

After putting the movement back together, (sans itty bitty spring) and popping in a new battery, it came to life.

Good news, except the backlight didn't work, and the water sealing issue hadn't been solved. I looked at a "change your Baby-G battery" tutorial online, and saw that the watch was missing a rubber O-ring. I called Casio and ordered the part (For $0.50 + $1.13 shipping!). It took two weeks to come.

I opened the package and got back to work.

There was still the problem of the escaped spring, and so I took the movement completely apart and started looking as closely as I could at all the contacts to see if they looked worn in anyway (aka they used to have a spring against them).

Finally I saw it! What a relief. The spring went through a seriously small hole and provided an electrical connection between the metal battery cage and the back of the microchip. This, I thought, must provide power to the backlight. I put the spring in the tiny hole and snapped the movement back together.

It worked!!!

Now I was getting really excited. I gave the inside of the case a thorough cleaning with Q-tips, which put tiny cotton fibers everywhere, so I had to spend a couple of minutes using tweezers to extricate them. I finally used a layer of lightly-Windexed paper towel over the edge of a knife to get rid of all the gunk.

Then I put the new o-ring in its place, cranked down on the caseback, and gave it a water test (in this picture you can see the other spring *from two pictures above* poking through the rubber movement backing).

And... The finished product:

I can't decide whether or not I'm surprised that it works, but I do know that I'm the proudest kid in India.

RIDER Project 2006: cell2Cell2CELL

2006-09-20T18:38:00.001-04:00

Michele Gambetta knows that Ryder trucks bring back memories of Timothy McVeigh and the 1993 WTC bombings, but this guerilla puts a new spin on the old white box—she uses her truck to do culture and positive idea drive-bys in ‘hoods like Harlem and Bedstuy (you can see "Ryder" through the tapestry attached to the truck). After noticing that conventional museums fail to reach those who aren’t actively seeking exposure to art, she devised the RIDER Project—a rolling gallery that showcases 40 pieces of art and is housed in a truck. The circular artworks are inspired by Dada, and are a response to the recent world-turmoil of genocides and war.

The result is startlingly effective: a giant plastic garden on top of the truck grabs your attention, warm light draws you off the dark street, and after exploring a few of the pieces, Kafresssss!, you’ve been culture-fied.

Here's a walkup of the exhibit That's a severed arm attached to the spinning wheel at the end. it was inspired by a breakup.

Great Googley-moogely

2006-09-20T18:23:00.000-04:00

Calling everyone who has ever been jealous of computer drawing software, but always thought it was too difficult--there's a new kid in town:

Just got done spending my day's downtime playing around in Google Sketchup. What an AMAZING program. Amazing in that it is so unlike any drawing program I've ever used--creating a rough sketch of what you want has never been so easy. In AutoCAD, ProE, or Solidworks, creating what I drew today would take hours and be incredibly frustrating. Google sketchup is barely frustrating at all (computers will always be a little bit of a pain.

The coolest bit? The tutorial--it's a monkey-see monkey-do setup, where you are "sharing" the workspace with the tutor. Take a look (keep in mind that when you click the tabs or do an exercise, the whole view shifts smoothly from one vantage point to the next. SO COOL and
useful. All tutorials will be like this in the future).

I get the feeling that it is difficult to draw something perfectly accurately (read: CAD/CAM type stuff) but if you're just screwing around, and want to see what your apartment would look like with a humongous dining room table, this is your program!

This is what I sketched up while at work (couldn't figure out how to move that wheel).

I also learned that if you double click in Google maps, it zooms in. Double right click and it zooms out. Neat-o

Interested? Go to sKETCHUP.google.com today! You'll be amazed at how quickly you pick it up.

Huge news! NYC's master bike plan

2006-09-12T23:40:00.000-04:00

Today is very exciting for NYC cyclists. New York City today announced a new three-year plan to "complete the backbone of the City's planned bicycle network," promising to introduce bicycle safety programs and to install 200 miles of new on-street striped bike lanes, car-free bike paths, and signed routes.

The DOT also released the results of a study (see link above) that examined citywide cycling deaths and injuries in the past ten years. Ninety-seven percent of the 225 riders killed weren't wearing crash-helmets, so the City plans to supply bikers with free lids as well.

There is even more good news- the Parks & Recreation department announced plans to create mountain bike trails in Staten Island and Queens.
Of course, you might say it is too late- Similar plans have been in the works for years and hundreds of cyclists have since died. But big cities can take a long time to get moving, but I'm certainly glad NYC finally is.

One potentially important note is that the plan calls for cyclists to follow traffic laws (see below). I'm ashamed to say I'd rather have the right to run traffic lights than a ton of bike lanes.

Increase enforcement of laws against motorists who park or drive in a bicycle lane, and enforce traffic control obedience among motorists and bicyclists.

Lucy and Paul got married!

2006-09-07T01:32:00.000-04:00

My sister got married this weekend--her husband is perfect for her! Here are some stereo pairs of the wedding weekend. Relax your eyes so they are pointing parallel (pretend you are drunk), and "push" the left and right sets of images together. Once they align, (so there are "3" images) the "middle" image will look 3D. Click on the thumbnail for full size.

A couple of great, great days

2006-08-30T00:02:00.000-04:00

The bike ride was just covered in Duke's newspaper, The Chronicle. That's exciting, because it is a newspaper I used to read all the time. The story has also appeared in The Rochester Post.

Last Friday, I hosted my first-ever dinner party, at my lovely apartment in Fort Greene. 8 people were hand-selected to provide the best possible company, and delivered in spades. There was classic country music playing in the background, chips and salsa in the foreground, and a general excitement in the air. Merritt and Josh helped me with the cooking, which wound up as a first course of salad with homemade dressing, a main of arroy con poulet, and a finish of coffee and a bowl of honey, strawberries, and yoghurt. Delic! The next morning I woke up and remembered SW had done all the dishes.

Saturday night was Lucy's bachelorette party, which had a lot of the same people as my dinner, but more as well! We started at Jo's new Bleeker St. HQ, then rallied on to Karioke in chinatown. Click here to see all the pics. Lucy looked totally beautiful and Josh's love of karioke (combined with possible high cholesterol) finally showed up in his side-splitting thalidomide shuffle.

I finally got a ticket on Sunday, when I swerved across 4 lanes of traffic in half a block to get on the southbound FDR (after dropping off Lucy, Manel, and Marta at GCT). It was raining, and my windows were totally foggy. But all was not lost, I had to break my jammed glove compartment open (for proof of insurance), which ended up fixing it.

Just after that, I went to blockbuster to get a movie, and when I came out, a foreign guy was standing there pointing at his car. Apparently, when I had parallel parked (wedging the back of my car into a construction zone) I had mistakenly bumped his car and put a huge dent in the rear bumper. FURY! I had just gotten a ticket, and now this? He said over and over "I need your paper, I need your papers." And after playing dumb for a minute, I thought "F-this", tore off my shirt, crawled under his car (into grimy grit--it was still raining) and pushed as hard as I could on the dent, which reluctantly popped out. Then that guy was shaking my hand, seriously.

RAAAMS!

2006-08-22T19:57:00.000-04:00

On my way home to my apartment in Brooklyn today, I came across this rimless Infinity (on 6th and Atlantic). For the last week, a big sticky parking ticket had been on the drivers window. Today, the drivers window and sunroof were shattered, and all four enormous AMG-style aftermarket chrome wheels were gone.

A passerby said she thought the car had been stolen, used to run drugs, and abandoned. She said she was glad it wasn't her car--but I'd be absolutely thrilled to have this beat G35.

Traffic Soln.

2006-08-22T19:51:00.000-04:00

I have come up with a way to solve my problems with NYC traffic-- Forget horns, get a lift kit!

Make something better

2006-08-22T02:12:00.000-04:00

The chorus of this fantastic Honda ad has been going through my head as I campaign for safer NY streets through Transportation Alternatives. I first saw the ad last year in England, and just found it again online.

I cannot wait for widespread diesel market penetration in the US passenger car market.

Poor following rich

2006-08-14T23:59:00.000-04:00

It sometimes happens that rich people start a trend, then the poor people catch up, then the rich move on.

Long ago, rich people used to be pale (to show that they didn't have to work in the fields). Then, after the industrial revolution, poor people had to work in factories, and rich people got tan, to show that they didn't have to stay inside and work.

Rich people used to be fat, because they could afford a lot of food and be lazy. Poor people couldn't afford much food and had to do physical labor. Now fast food companies sell inexpensive, high-fat foods, while rich people eat very healthily and have personal trainers.

"Ain't" is a contraction for "am not" and used to be proper English, but then the lower classes intergrated it into their speech and the upper class moved on.

Cellular phones, which used to be extremely expensive and for only the richest businessmen, are now in the hands of everyman. And businessmen are wishing that they could put the phones down, so their bosses can't reach them over the weekends or in the evening. Only the bosses can put the phones away, since they don't answer to anyone.

But what's next?

I think it will be wireless internet- There is a push to put wireless internet everywhere, but it can be annoying when cafes fill up with computers during the day. There is very little turnover in wireless cafes, and there is often the eerie quiet of a press room. I bet in the near future cafes will have "no wireless" days, for the old customers who like milk and background chitchat with their coffee.

After wireless? It's going to be cars. There is a growing backlash against cars, and while they might not do noticeable damage to air quality, they are certainly noisy and dangerous. Taking a walk down the middle of a closed road is a rare pleasure these days, but a real pleasure nonetheless.

Proof? Look at these carfree places (hint-they are all places people LOVE to be):

Venice
Whistler
Siena
Zermatt
Parts of London
Makinac Island
Hiltonhead
Williamsburg
Isla Vista (in Santa Barbara)

The list goes on, and they are all great places! Riding and walking are forgotton joys, but they will soon be remembered. Carfree needn't mean impractical.

Be a Mattress King!

2006-08-10T12:12:00.000-04:00

Dear readers, I know it has been a long time since I last wrote. Yesterday, while moving a bed for 1871 House in NYC, I came upon a little pamphlet about mattress care. It read:

Do turn your mattress occasionally to prolong the comfort and support life. Body indentations are a normal occurence in your new mattress and indicate that the uphostery layers are conforming to your body's individual contours. You'll be pleasantly surprised with that "New Mattress Feeling" every time you turn your mattress.

How cool! I never knew this, and am going to try it tonight- results tomorrow.

A riddle

2006-08-01T11:26:00.000-04:00

Here's an old riddle which just popped into my head (I made it up last year)

Since 1950, the world population has more than doubled, yet the average population per country has decreased. Why?

(put your answer in the comments)

When hearts attack, or “E(xplianing thanol)”

2006-07-30T19:51:00.000-04:00

Tofurkey tastes like crap, but high cholesterol can mean a plate of veggie burgers. On a macro scale, mother earth has spiraling cholesterol, will almost certainly have a heart attack, and must start munching tofu dogs and veggie burgers today. They may not taste great, but who wants England to have another ice age? Read on.

While fluctuating gas costs make drivers think about the relationship of money to gasoline and the “cost” of driving, there are some interesting fixed relationships (read: environmental costs) which stay true no matter if the gas costs 12 cents per gallon (as it does in Caracas) or $6.50, like in the Netherlands (CNN). When a gallon (varies from 5.8 – 6.5 lbs, compared to 8.33 lbs for water) of gas is burned, the composition of the air used in combustion is drastically changed. Gasoline’s chemical structure varies slightly from gallon to gallon (and there are winter and summer blends), but it is basically thousands of carbon chains which have hydrogen atoms all down their sides (C8H18). Burn it with air, and you get carbon dioxide (and water). Well, it is easy to see where the carbon comes from, but the “dioxide” and “O” in H2O comes out of the air—it takes 21 pounds of oxygen to burn one gallon of gas. Goodbye oxygen. Here’s what’s going on (terrapass).

Ingredients:
6.25 pounds of gasoline
21 pounds of oxygen

Catalyst:
fire

Products:
Energy
19.3 pounds of carbon dioxide
roughly 8 pounds of water vapor.

Lets say you put 15 gallons of gas in your car when you fill it up. That’s 94 pounds of gasoline. When all the gas is burned, 315 pounds of oxygen has been combined with the gasoline to form 289 pounds of CO2 and 120 pounds of water vapor (which is also a greenhouse gas). Over the course of the year, if a car goes 10,000 miles and gets 25 mpg… it will emit 7720 lbs of CO2, almost certainly more than twice the weight of the car itself. Furthermore, it takes over than 8000 lbs of oxygen gas from our atmosphere.

Is that a lot? I don’t know. Haven’t yet figured out how much oxygen a human turns into carbon dioxide per year through breathing, but I know I’d rather do it than have a car do it for me.

Now it gets weird--everybody knows there are vegetable substitutes for delicious high-cholesterol foods? They can make diesel and gasoline out of vegetables too!

Biodiesel is tofu-diesel and ethanol is tofu-gas. Lets focus on ethanol. Just like tofu-everything, there are tradeoffs, but they are reasonable. Yes, cars must be modified a tiny bit to run on ethanol, but the main issue is that there are only 80 % as many Calories per gallon in ethanol as in gasoline, which leads to a similar reduction in fuel economy.

People get all excited about ethanol because it means we don’t have to be dependent on foreign oil, but the chemically exciting part of ethanol is the history of the carbon inside it. Like gasoline, when ethanol burns a whole bunch of oxygen gets converted into a whole bunch of CO2--the very same CO2 which is formed by burning fossil fuels. What gets interesting is the history of the carbon—in gasoline, the carbon is from fossils and has been stored as oil for millions of years. In ethanol, the carbon is from the atmosphere, removed by the corn as it grew and is then stored in the ethanol. So it’s the same carbon, except that cars running on ethanol become part of the continuing carbon cycle, rather than just releasing hundreds of tons of "new" carbon into the air.

GP2!

2006-07-30T18:03:00.000-04:00

I've started watching TV again. My beautiful apartment in Brooklyn has HDTV and an HD-DVR. When bored, I look through the program listings and record every show which looks interesting, and the next day I scan through them all and watch whichever ones turn out to be good (side not: DVR lets you FF through the commercials, and then rewinds a few seconds when you hit play, to account for your reaction time).

Anyway, I've recorded (sorted from high to low in order of eventual interest) some great motorcycle races (with dudes pouring smoke off their rear tires as they back it in and overtake for position), the New York Triathlon, and Formula 1. But then I found a GP2 race--and it was the most exciting circuit race I've ever seen. GP2 is F1's little brother—a series packed with fearless young guns vying for spots in F1. Lewis Hamilton (19 years old) and Nelson Piquet Jr. are the stars. Piquet Jr. is like a little Gilles Villeneuve, stepping on the gas at every opportunity and generally being a huge badass. (Here is a race from earlier in the year, with Hamilton raging through the pack-check it out).

The cool thing is they race on Saturday, then the top 8 finishers are inverted for Sunday, so the best drivers must claw their way back to the front. At the beginning of the race, tons of cars flew off the track--then the real fun began. I watched Piquet Jr. attacking corner after corner until he overtook the cars in front of him. His car setup was brilliant and he could carry a tiny bit more speed than the other drivers. The cars don't have so much aerodynamic dependence as F1, and are a bit heavier, so there is much more scope for overtaking, and indeed, there were many, many more passes than in an F1 race. Furthermore, the person who gets the fastest lap gets a championship point, so when drivers are out of the points, they can put on a fresh set of tires, find some clear track, and put in a couple of scorchers. The best bit? A couple of times, I saw drivers take a whole corner on full opposite lock under power, laying two thick darkies. When's the last time you saw that in F1?

One more thing, the GP2 cars all run the same tires, as F1 is planning to do next year. Will we see such close, exciting racing from equi-tired F1 cars? It would be great.

Thoughts on cars

2006-07-25T18:16:00.000-04:00

I looked at a website today, which talked about why cars are bad. Of course, it was a little over the top, but it made some interesting points. Here are my favorites:

Average speed of a horse cart, London 1909: 7mph. Average speed of an automobile, London 1999: 6mph. -- A goto B

"Widening roads to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity." -- Walter Kulash, a traffic engineer, Orlando, Fla.

Crowded Is Good -- just as long as you are not in an automobile! [There is a] deep difference in travel philosophy. To the motorist, "cars are in the way, except mine." Thus the fewer other motorists encountered on the road, the better. But to pedestrians or bicyclists, a vibrant street or sidewalk filled with other people cycling or walking is much better than deserted block or creepily empty bus. We share a sense of community hard to convey to the isolated individual in his or her metal box. ... The thought of twice as many fellow car drivers on the road fills [car drivers] with horror.

Transit costs drop if transit ridership goes up. In the case of every form of transit, if ridership increases, costs per passenger mile drop sharply: by as much as 43 percent. Driving costs increase if roadway traffic grows at a high rate. If growth in roadway traffic picks up, the cost for each mile a person drives will go up, in some cases quite sharply

Three and a half states paved over!!!! (By 1991, 20,627 square miles of the U.S.A. had already been paved over for roads alone (no parking areas included!); That is larger than the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined with half of Vermont thrown in too!) --Alt-Trans index

Much has been written (ie Dune) about the damage to all facets of society when an economy is utterly dependent on one product. (Oil) It is foolishness.

Youth and the Elderly are excluded from the transportation system, and therefore from most of society.

To shelter us from automobiles, our living spaces focus away from the streets, thus severing us further from the people around us.

Moving people a step away from face to face contact, generating a false sense of superiority which causes people to reach a level of aggressive, angry, selfishness that they would NEVER ever reach if they had to take direct responsibility for their actions.

Some office developers now budget 200 square feet of space for each cubicle and 400 square feet for each car.

The death rate per 100 million passenger miles for cars is 1.05. The death rate per 100 million passenger miles for transit buses is 0.01.

Organ Donor Cards. Automobiles are the only machine we are asked to sign away our organs before we can operate it. No one asks you to sign an organ donor card before you operate a blender. --AltTrans

Turning a benign drowsiness into one of the most dangerous events in our life.

--

I'm not being a negative natalie- I'm saying public transport is great! I love cars, but am trying to become enamoured with public transit as well. Right now I'm mostly a fan of the bike. But it has become a bit of a hassle with NYC's high threat of theft and many cars! Maybe I'll like public transit now that I have a long commute to Manhattan (to see my friends), and will have more time to get into a book on the subbie.

Blocking the Merge

2006-07-18T08:56:00.000-04:00

Driving is often relaxing--it is even possible to find amusement in traffic jams. But the fun vase is shattered when somebody blocks the merge.

The feeling of being stuck behind a "righteous" bozo who has caused a rolling bottleneck is one of frustration and rising anger, with a helping of claustrophobia mixed in.

Until recently, my anger just focused on the driver loping alongside the lane of merged traffic (which merged long before it was necessary), but then I realized that he's not the only one who is causing the problem

EVERYONE IS!

Think about this: the merge blocker can only pin himself to one car, blocking the traffic behind him. The 2-car unit becomes a cancerous "ready to merge" mass in a sea of what could be freeflowing traffic. To fight back, the line of cars in front of him needs merely to "unmerge" from one into two lanes (an unlikely prospect, since they sheepishly decided to merge so early anyway), drive up to the brick-and-mortar merge and re-merge there. Then the "ready to merge" mass of our aggressive driver would be following "ready to merge" traffic and thus it would become nearly invisible.

Well, the agressive driver should become invisible then, but he doesn't.

Why are there often only one or two cars driving in the lane behind the "merge blocker" while everyone else is struggling to get into single file (when there is a ton of room before the merge-blocker and even more before the real merge)? It's because the merge-blocker is treated as a merge itself, and drivers try to merge before they get to him (or already have), thus allowing the cancerous mass to have an even greater effect on traffic flow. driving directly behind the merge-blocker is seen as aggressive driving, and impolite when everybody knows there is a merge coming.

The best way to merge is still to have everyone slow down some, then alternate left and right. But this is only for the real (read: stationary) merge. Behind a mobile merge-blocker it makes no sense to merge, for there is no reason to-he's just creating a traffic jam.

If the people behind the merge-blocker would treat the 2-car lump like a traffic jam, and the people ahead of it would treat the real-merge properly, the entire concept of "blocking a merge" would disappear.

But I fear it may be too late. This release from Tennessee recommends early-merging, which will confuse people from out of state, almost certainly slow traffic flow, and cause incidents of road rage.

The "righteous" driver is the one waiting until the last safe moment before merging.

Thoughts on NYC transport

2006-07-13T09:49:00.000-04:00

Read this fragment of an email I got this morning from Dave R., a onegallon reader:

"With gas as high as it is, I read once that even Detroiters are using public transit. Quite a feat since our 2-system "public transit" is so woefully inadequate."

It gets worse in the suburbs of Detroit, where a car is really the only option for getting around. Walking is for exercize; bicycles are for kids who are too young to drive. There are a couple of bus stops, but nobody has ever had the courage to deal with all the OAPs on the bus.

In NYC, there are so many different options. So far, I walked to get groceries, took a taxi to SoHo and a subway back, rode my bike 10 blocks to Kinko's to print out resumes for SW, and hopped on a crosstown bus to get across central park at night before running the rest of the way home in pouring rain.

The trips are all short as well--it is laid out on a very human scale. The hardware store is 2 doors away, the Food Emporium, Best Buy, and Barnes and Noble are 2-4 blocks away, and there are 5 Chase ATM's within .25 miles.

A welcome side effect of public transport is that you needn't drag a bike or car around. If you take a subway because it is raining, then the weather clears up, you aren't stuck in a car. If you meet up with people, you don't have to continue the night in a caravan, and the concepts of getting "dropped off" and "DUI's" vanish.

The apt. I'm in is on a human scale too- I can reach the oven, stove, sink, refrigerator, and every cupboard without having to take a step, everything is half a spin away when I'm standing on the lazy susan mounted in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Driving Miss Daisy

2006-07-10T12:16:00.000-04:00

A simple concept - To save gas, just take your foot off the gas pedal.

On my way to NYC from Detroit yesterday (I moved to NYC), I got bored and decided to see if I could get 400 miles on a tank of gas (15.8 gallons). Normally it goes about 335, but that's at 85 mph, driving sideways, and generally being a hoon. So I went 55 mph for the entire tank. It was murder, all these trucks on I-80 were blazing by me, and I had to keep my lazy eye on the rear view mirror at all times.

The car has never returned better than 24 mpg, but, wait for it...

13.2 gallons, 405.6 miles --> 30.73 mpg

30.7 mpg!!! Can you believe it? Of course, mine is a car with particular aerodynamic issues, but what a huge difference.

Hey Maytag repairman, you any good at knots?

2006-07-06T23:34:00.000-04:00

A way to save energy (a.k.a. $$): It's laundry day, and the drier heats up the clothes and blows some air around. It's a lot like summertime, really. A clothes line can help your beloved shirts last longer--the elastic won't degrade from the drier's heat, they fabric won't get worn out from agitation, and everything will have a fresh scent. Make sure to turn T-shirts inside out so the sun won't fade them prematurely (wash T-shirts inside out too).

I especially like the very slightly stiffer way clothes feel after they've been hung on lines.

They had me tricked!

2006-07-06T23:00:00.000-04:00

This evening I went mountain biking with my dad on the singlespeed (no gears) mountain bike I just built. We went to Addison Oaks, which is mostly technical singletrack through heavily forested rolling hills, with some logs and the occasional rockgarden, much more heavily wooded than most of the trails I ride.

I had complete confidence in the drive for the first time ever. I could get out of the saddle on the climbs and hammer so hard, with no chance of gear slip, and no bobbing from suspension--the bike would just take off and go. The frame is terribly stiff, and my fingers got numb during the ride. Toward the end I got on my dad's geared full suspension bike. The drivetrain seemed so indirect and fussy--I lost speed with every shift. I was high up in the air (the bike has a high bottom bracket to allow suspension travel) and out of phase with the trail. There would be a compression, but the bike would continue going down for a fraction of a second after the bottom of the dip, and when I would brake, the bike would dive and transfer weight to the front wheel. When I got out of the saddle, the suspension would compress on each stroke before I would go forward. But it was a very soft, compliant ride.

I do miss the big-ring downhill rush of having gears, but can certainly get along without the uncertainty of drive during shifts, the noise and drag of the gears, and the cost of all the bits. Singlespeeds are meant to be pretty much silent, but my handlebar was creaking (unnerving) and my rear brake cable is routed along the top of the top tube and goes "ding" to alert me of any trail imperfection..

About that big gear bit- With only one ratio (36 x 16, and the bike can still freewheel, it's not a fixed gear) you can't really pedal on the downhills, and have to pedal every time else, especially right before and during uphills. This means that you are slow on downhills, normal on the flats, and fast uphill. Which means you are always going about the same speed, but with wildly inconsistent effort. On a geared bike, you go all different speeds, but with consistent exertion. Singlespeed is definitely faster for these sorts of trails, since you aren't hunting around for all the gears and are led away from laziness on the short rises.

The bike manufacturers had me tricked for years. Never did I need a bike with all those gears.

It's a single speed

2006-07-01T13:05:00.000-04:00

I made the choice to go singlespeed after an experiment at Addison Oaks trails. I rode the trails using all the gears and averaged 11.7 mph, then rode the trails using only one gear (34 x 16) and averaged 12.6 mph. Singlespeed is a totally different ride - you maintain speed and power over small hills, but can't pedal on downhills, so you end up with a more consistent speed, but an inconsistent effort.

The bike was a bare frame 4 days ago. A quick hunt around the garage turned up a bunch of spare parts, which became the bike you see here. Looks so clean.

Rule 1: Do no harm

2006-07-01T12:38:00.000-04:00

The end of this week was an adventure in repairing and modifying my bike and car. The Volvo's master cylinder had been getting progressively worse (read: no brakes!) over the past few months, so I purchased a new one ($114) and installed it. Just had to deal with a few bolts, then bleed the brakes. Not too tough at all.

The car also needed a driver's side tie rod end. I was dismayed when I found out I needed special tools, but learned that AutoZone lets you rent tools for free! All you have to do is give them a deposit, and you get a full refund when you give them back. The tools worked, but I stripped the new tie rod end with an impact wrench when installing it.

The alignment of the drivers door needed attention too--a 14 mm wrench on the door hinges fixed the problem. Before and afters:

The car is driving much better now (although I can't hear any difference in the driver's door).

**UPDATE 6 July** Today I fixed the overdrive in my car. It was easy--the fuse was blown.

Doctor thoughts

2006-06-27T16:40:00.000-04:00

In the past 24 hours, I have had a deep tissue massage, a teeth cleaning, and an eye exam.

You know the inquisitive yet knowing touch of a doctor which feels so good? The massage was an hour of that. It was painful around my neck and throat, but was otherwise very relaxing and probably loosened up a lot of my muscles. My body had a glowing evenness after the massage, but that faded fairly rapidly afterward and I'm back to feeling like I did beforehand, though the actual hour was amazing. The dude who did it said that he could shift the plates of a person's skull around, which is hard to believe, and after having some difficulty describing an article he was talking about, said "comprehension isn't the best part of my reading" (but you've got a great accent?). Hokey witch-doctorness can be hugely appealing.

Even electric-toothbrushing and twice-daily-flossing won't always quell the buildup of tartar. No matter how well teeth are cleaned, going 9 months without seeing a dentist will lead to a painful cleaning. The hygenist said that the longer you wait to get a check-up, the more the tartar builds up, and the more it will hurt to get removed (just cause there is more). I'll be back in December for sure.

My all time favorite doctor, optometrist Dr. Scott Youn of EyePlace, seems to know everything about vision correction. Today, my eyes were treated to a series of tests during my routine contact fitment exam-

While waiting to see Dr. Youn,

Air puff to check corneal flexibility
100 point test for blindspots
Corneal topography--a topographical map of their curvature (which we compared to a 2 year old map)
Prescription estimation by a handheld eye scanner
I had to look in another machine which I did not understand.

Then the actual eye exam

Prescription was determined and compared to the old one.
Alternate prescription for computer usage also determined
Yellow Floures drops used to check for damage or dryness from wearing contacts
Opticaine (not quite the real name) numbed my eyes for another test
Pupil dilation drops allowed a picture of my retina to be taken (which we compared to a 2-year old picture)

That's a seriously thorough exam. Dr. Youn knew the answer to every question as well (about astigmatism, macular pressure and wearing a suit and tie, and why you can't see very well underwater...). Never have I been so thoroughly pleased by another doctor's exams.

My first triathlon!

2006-06-25T22:25:00.000-04:00

CLIFFS: Were the Torn Shirt Triathlon a meal, the appetizer would be fritos and spam washed down with ipecac, a steak and mashed potatoes with wine for the main course, followed by freezer burnt edy's icecream and rootbeer.

Woke up at five, packed the car, and took off (the race started at 8:00 AM!). Listened to Jimi Hendrix the whole way, and the day felt good as I navigated an hour of empty roads to Brighton.

I arrived at 7:15, checked in and got the little electric chip they strap to your leg to record split times as you go through each checkpoint. Then I set up my bike and running shoes in the transition area, put on my cap and goggles, and headed to the swim area, which was full of hundreds of wetsuited supermen, and me.

The race started at exactly 8, and the hundred of us began swimming. They all knew freestyle-Poof! went my hopes for an outright victory. I did backstroke for the entire half-mile (my swim training had consisted of a couple bubble baths and 10 minutes in a pool). I felt like I had been shipwrecked, and just stared into the sun and clouds through my tinted goggles, at one point churning through hundreds of feet of thick seaweed, while my legs sank and water rushed into my nose. Ten minutes after the men left, the women set off. A ton of them caught me. The mens winner in my age division took 10 minutes less than me in the swim--I was the last dude to drag my body onto the beach, but I had a bigger smile at this point than anybody else, the smile of a father who has just had a child. (0.5 miles, 27 mins)

Then it was to T1- I traded my cap for a helmet, covered my hoofs and zipped up my jersey. The bike felt great, but from the waist up my I was (tasty) jelly. The first 2 miles were on dirt roads, and I railed around loose downhill corners eating up lots of slow guys and some of the fast girl swimmers. When it came time to turn into the trail, I came in way too hot and remembered that I had switched the brake levers last night as well (right was now rear). The bike skittered sideways and I disappeared in a cloud of dust--I looked an absolute hoon. After a couple of corners on the trail I got the brakes straight in my head, and got to work on passing more of the dudes, of which there were many. My arms had recovered, my legs were golden, but there were just so many people.

When I really got some rhythm, I came upon a caravan of 5 riders in tight singletrack, and something popped into my head--I imagined that there was a legendary mountain biker who would pass people on the sides of the trail so effortlessly that they didn't even know he went by. Legendary mountain biker would pass these 5 without problem, I thought, and I decided to have a go as well. Rather than saying "passing on your left," I just swerved off the trail and dodged left of a tree and through the foot-high undergrowth, came out of the saddle and alongside the lady. FUKWOP! My face was on the ground before I could get my hands off the handlebars. My helmet cracked in two places (since its a helmet, I guess everything went according to plan!), my lips had been smashed, and my right eye was bruised and cut. What had I hit? an invisible stump.

Then it was an hour of fury though the tight but predictable, heavily wooded rolling singletrack as I overtook 40+ people with the polite "could I please rock by when you get a moment, sir?" It also dawned on me that everyone had their ages written on the back of their calves, so I could be extra happy when I passed other 21-24 year olds. (15 miles, 1:12 min)

T2 - just get rid of the bike and helmet and put on running shoes. Wash down a powerbar with gatorade.

Running will always be running. I held the ground I had made up on the bike, wasn't passed by anyone my age. Probably passed 10 people and got passed by 4. My heart rate was between 170 and 180 the entire time. Lots of loose hills and suffering. By now I was beginning to wear out, had only the water at the helper stations, and choked down little tiny pieces of powerbar every five minutes. I took pride in my downhills, sailing over roots and rocks while flailing my limbs to balance. (5 miles, 50 minutes)

I wound up second out of five in my age group. The dude had beaten me by 6 minutes.

Adventure time

2006-06-24T23:24:00.002-04:00

As soon as I woke up I knew it was going to be a good day. Hung over on the wine coolers Ashley and I snuck into the velodrome last night, I coaxed myself out of bed only to find a bear in the mirror.

With the triathlon just a day away, something had to be done or the creatures of the deep would mistake my face for an injured porcupine and attack. I would emerge from the swim portion with an intimidating but slow squid and lobsters wreath face. My tools:

I chose the Mach 1 (thanks Josh) and the shave cream (thanks SW). The shave was about the same speed as with a normal razor, due to the combination of having to use more care and the razor cleaning huge areas of the face per stroke. A great way to reupholster your face with a baby's bottom.

Nobody likes to help when they are in a hurry (fact) but I had all day to scope out the triathlon course for tomorrow, and had so much time that there was no choice but to help everyone in need. The first lucky winner was a tan wife whose car had broken down in the middle of I-75 construction. I looped around and had her put her car in neutral, then pushed it to safety with my bare hands. She wouldn't let me give her a ride, because her husband had been notified and was on his way.

Then it was a guy in an MG on Square Lake, who had run out of gas. I tried to help him too, but his wife was on the way. Then a guy on a Goldwing on Telegraph, whose bike wouldn't start, but who didn't want any help. On the way home, it was a guy in a Dodge who didn't actually need any help at all.

When I was in Pontiac on the way home (from signing up for the triathlon), I saw a pretty (from behind) girl walking under a bridge. She was the only person on foot for miles, so I hollered if she wanted a ride. She gave a real "who, me?" expression, and then was like "you're gonna give me a ride!?!?!" She was so excited (although on a cell phone), and after I told her I was going to Rochester said "that's like halfway home! I'm going to Oxford"

She was on her way home from WHAM! which is a fun sounding alternative to jail (she got picked up for driving on a suspended license - license plate "SMASHED"). Actually, she was on the way home from visiting her boyfriend who was actually in jail. I took her all the way to Oxford, and then we fed the chickens and goats at her house (I actually caught a chicken!).

Here is a creepy telephoto shot I took of her by the goats and chickens right before I left. Told you. On the way home from her Nicole's house, I took a Drainer Rd. (dirt) for about 10 miles. It was the twistiest, most awesome road I have ever been on in Michigan. I plan on crashing my car there in the near future.

Then it was food time (3 eggs cooked in spaghetti, with garlic, cheese, oil and pepper) , and much too much last-minute mods to my dad's bike (tightened pedal tension, lowered handlebars, changed the front tire and grips). I have confidence that every decision was correct.

Fun day, no? Well, what I learned is that cell phones are great for keeping communication lines open, at the expense of potential new connections. Which can be great if you need help, not so great if you want to help. Though I should have known that: "Do you have a 'phone, case something happens?" - Everyone to everyone

Edit: What I realized was that when you see people walking in public, its easy to think they are enjoying the day, or on a jaunt to the store--do not be fooled! they are alcoholics and criminals without licenses who would give anything to be in a car like the rest of the world.

Car Trip Speeds. Can you beat 64 mph avg for any trip?

2006-06-21T13:25:00.000-04:00

Trip details - 10:10 minutes, 647 miles

AVG SPEED - 63.64 mph

I rented a car from AVIS JFK yesterday (cost 112.23 with 10% disc. and no young driver fee, thanks USAA). The price was almost the Fibonacci sequence, but the trip got me thinking about average speeds. It took me 10:10 to complete this trip from Manhattan to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

It was a little Chevy Aveo (with only an AM/FM radio), with an even littler gas tank, so though it was getting right on 30 mpg, It only got 300 miles out of a tank-- two fuel stops hurt average speed.

Other Time wasters:

A traffic jam out of Manhattan across the GW bridge

I carried no cash and had to wait 5 minutes for a toll booth attendant to attend to me.

Food stops - 10 minutes at a sub place, 5 minutes at a Burger King, and 5 minutes waiting to have my order taken in a diner before I left indignantly (careful as I am about trip times).

The hitchhiker fiasco - On I-80, a hundred miles into PA, I scooped up a Native American alcoholic who had gotten out of jail (DUI) yesterday morning (I saw the release papers). The guards dropped him off at a hospital 50 miles from his house so he could get a belly operation, but he hitchhiked home instead. He could talk about nothing but how much he wanted to get drunk, and how I had a long way to go until Michigan (through the rest of Penn, Ohio, and Boston...). I had to play off his jail time like it was normal and cool, and planned what to do if he assaulted me. He had no seatbelt on and the passenger airbag was off, so I was going to crash the car into a solid barrier at exactly 30 mph. I'd be fine and he'd be wrecked. Any slower and he'd would be unhurt and furious. I drove him 40 miles, gave him a bottle of water (the sun was blazing) and let him out at the Rte 220 exit to Lock Haven, where he was headed.

And the good...

I covered the 147 mile stretch of the 65 mph Ohio Turnpike in 2:00 exactly, including a stop for gas and a trip to the bathroom. The little Aveo went fast well, carrying on at a fair clip whenever the road was clear.

I know the trip could be done sub-10 hours without much difficulty (if the Aveo had a CD player), but I was fairly hustling and am curious to hear about average speeds of other travellers.

Look at it all!

2006-06-18T00:11:00.000-04:00

Once I got to New Haven, I decided to take a picture of every single thing I had taken on the bike with me (except the camera). I even had to wear someone else's trousers when I took this-

On my next trip there will definitely be a compass and some sunglasses as well

Day 8 - Durham to Chapel Hill cont'd

2006-06-17T22:18:00.000-04:00

TRIP: 31,000 Calories, 633 miles =

The bike got 633 miles per gallon!

Day 8 - 522 Calories, 10.4 miles = 618 miles per gallon

This was a rather tame day in terms of riding, but I felt incredible excitement at reaching the magic number, and the trip back to New Haven was an adventure as well. I woke up at nine thirty, swam through a heap of Cheerio's, and headed over to Duke to speak with some old friends. Pam Hanson and Connie Simmons work in the Engineering department and we chatted about the trip and marriage. I must have looked crazy to them, dressed as I was and huffing a bit from the ride in, but we quickly settled into our old routine. Could I be more vague?

Then it was off for the final ride, a jaunt west along Old Erwin, which took me all the way to Franklin St. and into Chapel Hill. To my dismay, the 31,000th Calorie was spent right as I got to the corner of the UNC campus. Here's a picture of me after using the whole gallon.

I stopped by Barnes and Noble on the way home, and picked up a Fast Bikes and a copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter in anticipation of the long Greyhound ride back to New Haven. Still misty-eyed with Blue Devil pride after the UNC scandal, I commisioned a cameo in Cameron, asked the answer person how many miles per gallon a bike gets, and began preparing for the journey back up North. It was 7 PM, and the bus left at 9:25. In the time between, I bought contact solution, 2 burritos from Cosmic, dragged a huge bike box from The Bicycle Chain to the Greyhound station, and completely dismantled my bike (fenders, rack, seat, handlebars...) and put in in that box. The second-to-last person to get on the bus did so just as I finished taping it all up.

Here is a video from 8:40 PM, blazing to the station while carrying the mammoth box:

After 600+ miles by bike, the Greyhound ride home was unfathomably rapid- There was no wind, just still, dry air, and the idle chitchat of the other passengers. It didn't matter if my eyes were open or closed-even if I slept, the scenery still rushed by. I was free to look at my radio when I changed the station, and I could even go to the bathroom while on the move . The layovers afforded me a nice chance to stretch out, but I just couldn't get a feel for any of the country we covered.

Day 8 - Durham to Chapel Hill

2006-06-16T19:34:00.000-04:00

I'm finished! The gallon, which I had hoped would end at Duke, wound up carrying me all the way to Franklin St. in downtown Chapel Hill. This time, and for this Duke patriot, the bicycle was a tad too efficient.

More in 24...

Day 7 - Keysville, VA to Durham, NC

2006-06-16T12:12:00.000-04:00

TRIP: 30578 Calories, 623 miles = 632 miles per gallon

Day 7 - 3359 Calories, 99.5 miles = 760 miles per gallon

This was another great day of riding, with bright sun, smooth, empty roads, a slight tailwind and few mechanical problems (though I did have to pump up my tire every two hours). Those factors allowed me to maintain a 15.5 mph average for the day while I was on the bike, while at the same time returning an incredible 760 miles per gallon. Life is good.

I decided to make a stack of sandwiches from the groceries of last night. I put five together, and decided that it would be enough, but by the end of the day I wanted more! See for yourself, it looked ridiculous.

My right knee has been getting more and more painful over the course of the trip, and today I decided to do something about it. I think that the pain was a result of the bike's high Q-factor (left-right distance between the pedals) and the fact that my right foot points outward when I ride. I adjusted the cleats for this, moving my shoes closer to the center of the bike and giving my right foot a better angle. The setup felt much better.

I blasted down fast, smooth roads in the blazing, 80 degree heat, which just 24 hours earlier had been a hurricaney mess. There was one bridge crossing where there wasn't enough room for both cars and bikes, but other than that, and the occasional buzz from a semi-truck, the ride went smoothly.

Then it was just piling up the miles to get into Durham. I got a bit lost on the way, and added 10 miles to the planned distance, but I finally got to Durham, I even passed the place where I got hit by a car two years ago while riding the wrong way down a street at night with no brakes, gears, or reflectors. She swerved right at the last second-like this blue van-and BLAMMO! I somehow left the bike and landed on my feet. The bike clattered off but luckily its no brakes, gears, or reflectors weren't damaged.

I got to Duke and took a shower in the gym, then went to the bike shop where I used to work, and weighed the rig. It only weighed 39 pounds-very light to take on a week long trip!

Then I hung out with Jesse, blasted around in his new 1978 Porsche 911, and ate some cosmic cantina.

I must note, that today it still felt like I was the only bike on the road. Here is a typical scene during the day-I blast past cars, but it is sketchy.

Only 422 Calories to go!

Day 6 - Charlottesville to Keysville, VA

2006-06-14T20:10:00.000-04:00

TRIP: 26,508 Calories, 524 miles - 613 miles per gallon

Day 5 - 3620 Calories, 83 miles - 712 miles per gallon

Thanks to favorable wind conditions, this was a fairly economical day. Over 700 mpg,--bringing the trip mileage to nearly 10 times the EPA rating of Honda's Insight.

After waking up and driving to Performance bike in C'ville (this one was open) to purchase 2 spare tires, then leaving my phone in Wendy's car and having her to return from work to deliver it to me, I was sent off with good wishes by Wendy and her pup Dusty.

It was pouring with rain--cue garbage bag booties. It was really coming down for the first 40 miles of the day, and the rain jacket I thought I had was actually a wind breaker. I got soaked to the bone immediately, but it was 70 degrees and bearable-even enjoyable. The fenders worked really well and although there was some spray on the drivetrain from the front wheel, no water got on me.

The ride was pretty tame, although there were some very pretty roads along the way. A herd of cows caught my interest, and I snapped off a few pictures. I had to yell and moo in order to get their attention. Here is the best one-

It got sunny and I got hungry. At Tom's General Store at the intersection of Rte. 15 and some other road (483?), I enjoyed a delicious Tom's Super Sub, but when I got back on the bike the speedo wasn't working. No speedo means no odometer. Normally this would hardly matter, but on a ride for fuel economy the speedo is paramount, so my heart sank. I got off the bike and scraped the contacts which connect the speedo and sending unit. No luck. I then realized that water must have gotten into the sending unit (the speedo extrapolates wheel speed from the amount of time between each pass of the spoke magnet). The entire thing is one piece of plastic, so I didn't know how I was going to fix it-thoughts of getting another one fed ex'd to me, or putting the malfunctioning one in an oven to burn off the water raced through my head. But then I realized that I could blow the water out. I looped back to the gas station and blew a shot of compressed air into the sending unit. Voila, a speedo.

I carried on and passed this, which looked unlikely to push the penguins sign off my rack

Then I got to the hotel, and there was a wonderful fog over a field full of cows overlooked by a farmhouse. It was quite beautiful in the dusk, and I stood at the fence looking at it for quite some time.

Soon it was time to go to Food Lion, where I got a whole bunch of food- way too much for me to eat or carry with me. Only used the beer, apple, tomatoes, 10 pieces of bread, half the gatorade, 5 pieces of cheese, a spoonful of mayonaisse, and one of the meat packets. And all the chocolates!

On the way back from the store I passed a forest full of sleepy pirates of varying heights, who had luminous eyelids. They turned out to be lighting bugs. I made it through 7 postcards before falling asleep.

Day 5 - College Park to Charlottesville, VA

2006-06-13T22:21:00.000-04:00

TRIP: 22,888 Calories, 441 miles = 597 miles per gallon
Day 5 - 6193 Calories, 128 miles = 641 miles per gallon

Finally a day without a headwind, which is reflected in the great MPG. Maybe the trip will end up over 600!

The longest ride I've ever done began with a relaxing intro to Northwest DC, which is a great place to commute. I left at 6:30 am, and found bike lanes on empty roads - very nice. Once out of DC, there was a bit more interaction with traffic. I youtube'd a wobbly video of the bridge to VA. I was loving it.

In Virgina, a sign for the CIA Center for Intelligence caught my eye. I rode past the signs saying "authorized vehicles only" but looped around at the "we heart to confiscate cameras". Well, an agent had seen me taking pictures of the sign outside, and motioned me over to a little guardhouse at the entrance to the compound. He didn't have a sense of humor about anything at first--he ran my ID and generally milled about. He gave me a stern talk, then loosened up and started asking about my trip.

I must have gotten a flat tire two days ago, because I woke up yesterday to find the rear was flat. I changed it (a huge hassle, since it is a tubular). I planned to stop at Performance Bike in Monassas today and pick up another tire. When I got there I found that the store has been shut down. No spare tire for me.

I started "hanging out" on the bike today--trying to find Aaron Schust's pedalling-rhythmed My Savior My God on the armband radio Sarah Wilson so generously loaned me, screwing around with the cyclocomputer and HRM, and of course, drinking tons of Fierce Melon. After 80 miles of these activities, I ran over a tire-popper. To change the tire, I had to scrub the rim with acetone for half an hour and then tape on the new (old and leaking) tire. Back on the road at 4:50. 45 miles to go.

I decided early in the day to eat trash, in order to see how it made me feel. I feel great!

Breakfast:

Bowl of granola cereal with strawberry yogurt mixed in - no milk.

Ride (Check out the Tastee Freeze Pic):

3 Taco Bell Chicken Quesadillas
2 Taco Bell Double Decker Tacos

2 Gatorade Fierce Melon drinks

Tastee Freeze Milkshake with Butterfinger chunks
Mush/Sws Burger

Evening

2 helpings of home made mac and cheese
2 oranges

I arrived at my cousins' house in Charlottesville 12.5 hours after I started from College Park.

I'm a Champion

2006-06-12T10:42:00.000-04:00

This heart rate monitor is sweet. It has worked well so far, and this morning it beeped and rewarded me for this weeks efforts with the same trophy you get for winning motorcycle races on Nintendo. The graphic was a boring swirl before, but I guess if you meet the number of Calories it asks you to burn for the week there's surprise and delight.

A heart rate monitor is a great thing to have even if you aren't doing research about efficiency. It appeals right out of the box, when it asks you to customize it for yourself- After that, you feel as though it knows who you are. You input your:

Weight - 166 lbs
Height - 6' 3"
Birthday - July 23 1982 (I wonder what it will get me)
Sex - male
Activity level - Top (5 days per week)
Sign - Leo
Max HR - 197
Resting HR - 50
V02 Max - 74 (As predicted by Polar's OwnIndex technology)

The cool thing is, it can turn any activity into an effective workout. You say how much you want to exercise, and it calculates a workout routine for you, with, say 4 days a week of exercise. It would then prescribe one short, strenuous workout, two normal workouts, and one long, relaxed workout (and you just keep your heartrate in the correct zone for the right amount of time). Its so cool to ride with, since you can watch your heartrate in real time--rising as you pour on the effort or ride up a hill, and falling when you coast or ease up. It might sound obvious, but its a joy to know what your heart is doing when you ride (especially after being used to tachometers on motorcycles).

I learned that I had been training at much too high a heartrate on "resting" days. This thing is a great training tool.

At the beginning of each day, I reset the trip meter on the cyclocomputer, and put the heart rate monitor on. It measures the calories I burn during the ride. Whenever I stop to eat or ask directions, I pause the heart rate monitor.

Polar vouches for its fitness test here, while cyclists at roadbikereview think the OwnIndex and Calorie counters are pretty accurate in my case.

Day 4 - Baltimore to College Park, MD

2006-06-11T20:10:00.000-04:00

Here are the results from the trip after arriving in College Park:

579 Miles Per Gallon!
Calculations: ( 31,000 Calories per gallon of gas / 16695 Calories ) * 312 miles = 579 mpg
never flyfish in a ketchup river:

But there is more news than that from today. I woke up in Baltimore at this morning (ask me for what really woke me up) to 3 dunkin' donuts and a cup of hot coffee. The folks at this hostel really know how to treat a guest. Mary Jane (seen here) took me around and showed me all the renovations they had done, and they let me use their computers to find a route through to College Park. Then they sent me on my way. It was a really nice stay there. The people who worked there were all "old souls" What a find. It was in a great location too, walking distance from the inner harbour, and surrounded by historical monuments and little shops. When they get it done, they will have a great thing on their hands.

Today I found the first useful thing of the trip--a pair of broken sunglasses on the side of the road, which would keep one of my eyes from having to look at much of anything.

However, soon after that I found another piece of art, which I have taken to calling "the appropriately decorated 'Penguins' sign" and, due to the limited storage capacity of my rear rack, was forced to abandon the broken glasses and rescue the sign instead. I wonder what I might find that's good enough to make me abandon the appropriately decorated 'Penguins' sign--The mind boggles!

Dear reader, as you have gathered, today's ride was a rather uneventful one, however, its destination was fantastic. I arrived at an old high school friend's (Kirsten) house, to be greeted by a fine bunch. I convinced Kirsten and her gorge boyf to take the train into DC with me, and we wandered around looking at monuments and generally having a good laugh.

Might as well throw a video in here-

Inside the Air and Space we saw the Gossamer Condor, an enormous and (presumably) record-setting pedaled powered bike. Lemme have a go on that!

Then we came home and ate dinner, basically, while I worked on the computer like a "professional" from "DC"

(Yes, this is quite a picture post. I have been working on this blog for ages tonight, on a mac no less, and am looking forward to getting into new discussions about energy on this blog tomorrow, and maybe a technological discussion as well)

Day 3 - Philadelphia to Baltimore

2006-06-11T20:09:00.000-04:00

TRIP: 15158 Calories, 281.1 miles --> 574 miles per gallon

Day 3 - 5283 Calories, 100.1 miles -> 587 miles per gallon

Woke up in the hostel, after a long night with the snorer, and knowing I would have to slip into a dried-sweat-y outfit for another 100 mile day. I put on my civilian outfit (goonies T-shirt from Sarah Wilson, sandals and trousers), drank a bottle of emergen-C (also from SW) and walked around the corner to a coffee shop called Doubleshot where I enjoyed a blueberry muffin and a coffee, wrote some emails at the terminals for patrons, and went back to the Hostel where Pete (seen here--might not be his real name) helped me find a route to Baltimore. He just used mapquest, avoided highways and looking for the shortest route. It worked out such a wonderful route. Great for pounding pavement, not great for understanding where you are (I can lead you along all the routes from the previous days, but have no idea how I got to Baltimore!).

After suiting up and packing everything onto the bike, I headed to the nearest bakery, where I purchased a huge, calorie-rich and day old loaf of wheat bread for just $2. I planned to munch on it all day. I figured that something which wasn't too flavorful would taste better later in the day, but for now I was running just fine on my blueberry burps.

About 5 miles into my ride, I got to this HUGE bridge over the Schuylkill river, the beginning of which, to my delight, was right next to a car crushery. Here is the video of the lanky monsters lazily tossing car parts onto an enormous mess of twisted metal. Watching them was quite relaxing, unlike the actual bridge crossing. there was a lot of glass on the pedestrian path, so I took donned sandals and walked until I got to the metal part of the bridge, where I was just riding on a see-thru grating, down over a hundred feet to concrete or water. It was really scary, but quite beautiful, so I found my self staring down as I rode along. I realized with a heart stopping horror that I hadn't been looking ahead where I was going, and that if a section of the grating had been missing, I would have just ridden off the bridge and into the water. Unlikely, yes, but an awful thought? Well, also yes.

The end of that bridge meant finding Pulaski Highway (25 miles away) and riding it 60 miles into Baltimore. It was like any other 4 lane highway in the US, with strip malls and car dealerships. The ride on Pulaski was notable for its length, the headwind (I was riding "against the flags" all day. they were blowing straight out) and this AMAZING submarine sandwich I got from Roma Pizza at 883 Pulaski Hwy in Bear, DE. An amazing Italian sub, all oily and with a ton of mayonnaise, and meat, well, just take a look! All for $4.99. Okay, looking at the picture, it doesn't look that good. It was GREAT. It tasted like heaven. Unbelievably fulfilling.

And I rode on, and on, and on. It was a boring, endless road. I had half the sandwich in my jersey pocket, so life was good, but the scenery was like anywhere else, I ended up having to take a picture of an busted up truck.

Then, finally, another rider passed me. What luck! It was the first time on the trip I have ridden with anyone else. His name was Jude, and he was in college, doing work at the nearby military proving grounds (I forget which ones) anyway, we talked for a bit and then I drafted him for a couple of miles. We rode together for between 5 and ten miles. I know drafting might be considered cheating, but there was such a headwind I have no choice but to consider it fair game.

When I was finally just 10 miles outside of Baltimore, I decided to call the hostel in Baltimore at which I planned to stay. They said two things.

A) They are closed for renovations
B) There is a 20 mile bike ride starting in 3 hours (9 pm)

So I call and they say: "You say you've ridden over 100 miles to get here? Well, we don't have anywhere you can stay, but can we interest you in a bike ride?"

I rode into Baltimore's inner harbor. It was a crowded, trendy little part of town, and I was sunburned, hungry, tired, dirty, and unsure of where I was going to spend the night. I had an hour left before the bike ride, and washed up in the food court bathroom and had a cup of crab soup (and 3 glasses of water) at a restaurant on the dock.

Then I rode back up to the hostel, and to my mild surprise, there was in fact a bike ride going on. A crowd of appropriately attired people had gathered inside the hostel and were discussing the historic sites which were to be visited along the ride. The atmosphere was terrific--everybody was calm yet enthusiastic, and very warm--offering me water, vegetables, and eventually, a shower, detergent with which to wash my clothes, a bike map of Maryland, some Guinness, and a sandwich including no less than ham, mustard, mayo, lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes. I had chips too.

Chris (in black) is a volunteer who lives at the hostel and is helping to renovate it, was nice enough to let me stay there. He and a girl named Vatu chilled out in the hostel while everyone else went on the bike ride, and we had some good conversation. Chris and Vatu were very mature, with well thought out opinions on whatever we talked about. I felt a little young around them, to be honest.

I slept on a couch in the main hostel hang out room / office, and drifted into a deep sleep until the next morning.

Day 2 - NYC to Philadelphia

2006-06-10T09:57:00.000-04:00

TRIP: 9875 Calories, 181 miles --> 568 miles per gallon

Day 2 - 5417 Calories, 106 miles --> 606 miles per gallon

This was a very sketchy day. I started out going through Central Park, which is a beautiful place to ride, with full sized roads but no cars. I left the park at its northern border and took St. Nicholas Ave to the George Washington Bridge, where I saw the tiny red lighthouse Sarah Wilson had spoken so fondly of.

The bridge crossing was great, but once I got into New Jersey everything fell apart. I went south down JFK Blvd, a nice road where I saw this (presumably) energy efficient little thing, then tried out Rte. 1, which was a freaking 2 lane highway enclosed by curbs with no shoulder. I got back on JFK and finally took the Lincoln Highway bridge into Newark, which looked like a navigable enough thin orange line on the map, but was a hellish, mind-hammeringly loud mile of broken glass. At this point, I felt very alone and wanted to be back at home.

It sucked. I rode along a 25 mph trucking route for a while, and saw about two hundred hummers at a GM plant marked "for export." I continued riding, rode on the side of Highway 58 past Newark Airport. I got shockingly scared and got off at the first exit I came to, the first step of getting severely lost in south Newark (Hillside and Rosedale), riding through really poor neighborhoods and feeling out of place looking well European.

So finally I found some people who knew how to get me out, and they put me on Rte. 27 (with a full waterbottle and the juiciest orange ever), the PERFECT route to take me down to Penna. It was kind of a parkway, much nicer to ride on than the terrifying highways and glassy ghetto streets of the early afternoon. From then on, I just hammered down 27 through Princeton New Jersey, refueling at a gas station with a fish filet sandwich I bought from a rolling sandwich shop on that trucking route I mentioned earlier. Then I hopped on 583, which was often the deserted two-laner through forests about which roadies dream. 583 took me all the way to Trenton, where I crossed a river into PA. After that, there were a few high tension moments on the narrow shoulders of Route 1 but I took 213 to 532, where I got in the zone for the first time on the trip, and felt like I could ride forever. I rode about 20 miles that way, with my heart rate up around 140, just hammering through the dark. Maybe it was because there was no longer any hope of making it to the hostel before dark, and it had turned into an enjoyable night ride.

I rallied past traffic, cruising at what seemed to be 22 mph the whole way. It was so fast and great. I could have ridden forever, past a ton of sucky traffic and stuff. I blazed past a million cars, and it seemed empty. But then the road was churned up for miles for repaving, and i had to ride on sidewalks. Whatever. After that, I rode into a dairy queen, where two cops and two people informed me that I was in the sketchiest neighborhood ever and the people gave me a ride 8 miles to the hostel. It was 10:40 PM. the hostel was really nice, and I took a shower, and got some falafel and a milkshake in town before going to bed. There were pretty girls and Bentleys all over the streets. (I think it was in Upper Darby)

The Hostel was in a great location, with an Internet cafes, bakeries, nightclubs, and little shops all around. (this picture was taken the next morning.

There was a severe snoring issue with one of the guys in the hostel, and I woke him up to tell him how bad it was. He got right back on task 90 seconds later, and I just suffered through it.

Tomorrow I will wear an unwashed version of the jersey, shorts and socks I wore today.

Day 1 - New Haven to NYC

2006-06-10T09:47:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the lack of pictures in this post. They will come soon.

TRIP: 4,458 Calories, 75.2 miles --> 522 miles per gallon
Day 1 - 4,458 Calories, 75.2 miles --> 522 miles per gallon

The real inaugural day of the ride! Lucy sent me off from New Haven at noon, and I began the journey down to Manhattan. After some adjustments to the baggage net at the first few stoplights, I was sailing down Route 1.

Here is a typical view of what I saw all day. Its taken in Connecticut (Photos to be added later)

Stamford was the most ghetto city ever, and at one point I rode alongside a golden focus which had a fully smashed windshield, no side windows, and four flat tires. They had the hazard lights on and were bumping down the road at 10mph.

I also saw a dealership in Connecticut selling the least fuel efficient cars they could think up- Phantoms, Flying Spurs, and this quad turbo, 16-cylinder Bugatti Veyron.

A tenth of a gallon! A picture of the moment when I had burned 0.1 gallons, or 3,100 calories. While fumbling to put the camera back in my pocket, a lady turned across my path, and I crashed into her Lexus. I needed to re-aim my front wheel afterwards.

This Bronx White Castle on Boston Park road is where I stopped to figure out the route into NYC. I ended up taking Fordham all the way west, then going south on the Major Deegan Expressway, (I thought there was going to be a bike route alongside it) The road surface was perfect and sloped gently downhill. The stop and go traffic was not at all intimidating, and it turned out to be the most relaxing section of the whole ride (it would count as HWY miles per gallon!). I was finally waved off by a sheriff who demanded to see ID and told me to exit the highway immediately and take the Washington Bridge.

After that, it was just a shot down the bike route on St. Nicholas avenue (it's a sign!) to the top of Central Park and on to Sarah Wilson's apt.

At night, I went to a comedy club with Merritt.

My legs felt great right after the ride, although they are beginning to feel a little achy the morning after. The bike has performed well, although a corncob freewheel means that I'm out of the saddle on anything more than a gentle climb. My heart rate soars to 160, and my legs wear out. Also, there is a weird speed wobble in the bike. I meant to check for a crack in the frame or a damaged lug. I think the wobble is from a slight oscillation of the bag strapped onto the rack.

Honestly, gas mileage was a bit of a disappointment. A slight headwind for most of the ride, as well as a ton of stoplights scuppured any chance of a 700+ mpg day. I will have to do some research on more flowing routes for upcoming days, but I fear that the cities though which I have chosen to ride will keep me from country roads. However, I don't think anybody is going to complain about 500+ miles per gallon while toting 20 lbs of gear. I have heard that heart rates drift up during the course of a workout, which would suggest that I'm burning more calories per mile at a given speed later in the day than I am early in the day. Does anybody know?

I have heard that heart rates drift up during the course of a workout, which would suggest that I'm burning more calories per mile at a given speed later in the day than I am early in the day. Does anybody know?

The bike fiasco

2006-06-08T00:31:00.000-04:00

The chosen iron horse is a 70's Austro-Daimler rich with patina--deep burgundy with golden accented lugs.

The rains came today, and though I had wanted to be in NYC by tonight, the bike needed so much setup this morning. It started the day as an unadorned road bike (no picture, but you may use your imagination), but I went to a bike shop and bought a spare tubular tire and tape, a pump, chain oil, a rack, fenders, 3 spokes, a front light, and a net to strap on all the stuff I will carry.

Actually, the enthusiastic and helpful Matt Feiner of The Devil's Gear bike shop in New Haven kindly threw in the spokes and the light after I told him about my trip, and gave me a discount on the rest of the stuff. Finally, a sponsor!

I got it all back to Lucy's (my sister) apartment and started putting everything together. The fenders were very difficult to install, but it turned out that I didn't have half the mounting hardware. Until then I had been very excited to test out the fenders in the rain, but this setback meant that I would have to return to the bike shop, and ultimately delayed any possible departure from New Haven until 3:45, which would have me arriving in Manhattan in the dark.

So I cooked a loaf of bread for my ride tomorrow, and will set off in the morning.

Thirty-Onedurful Thousand Calories

2006-06-07T20:42:00.000-04:00

An idea, long in the making, will finally begin tomorrow. After researching alternative fuels at Winding Road magazine, a way to compare the energy consumption between cars and bicycles burst into my head. Read on for the story behind my ride.

There are 31,000 Calories in a gallon of gasoline, which is a heck of a lot of energy. It is enough to push a car between 10 and 60 miles, but while the most efficient cars sip gas, they still guzzle energy.

Calories are not just for food--they are a unit of energy. One Calorie is enough energy to heat up one liter of water by 1 degree Celsius. I'm not going to drink a gallon of gasoline, but I will show just how far that much energy can take me.

My ride, from New Haven, Connecticut to Augusta, Georgia, will burn up 31,000 calories in a quest to find out exactly what real-world "miles per gallon" a bicycle can achieve. I think it should get between 700 and 900 mpg, which is pretty good, don't you think?

The ride will cover around 80 miles each day--the exact distance will be measured by the cyclocomputer shown on the left. The energy consumption will be measured by the Polar heart rate monitor on the right, which is calculates energy consumption with an acccuracy better than 97%.

The bike is set up, just needs to be pedaled.

Treasure is what you value

2006-05-18T16:53:00.000-04:00

I was at the 2006 FSAE race car competition up at the Ford Proving Grounds in Romeo this afternoon, and on the way home I hit several stretches of dirt road which were so bumpy one of my hubcaps flew off the wheel. I didn't realize this until I got home.

I looked all around in the woods by the stretch I remembered to be the worst, and found the hubcap. Then I looked around in the road and found the centerpiece. A good, lucky feeling.

Where, oh where, did my gas cap go...

2006-05-15T23:36:00.001-04:00

I've just read a bit by lifehacker which I found through jalopnik praising the little arrows which point toward your gas cap. Users offered several theories to help the arrowless motorist tell which side his tank is on:

"the tank if often on the same side of the car as the gage is of the instrument cluster"

and my favorite-

"The gas tank filler cap is almost always on the opposite side of the car of where the exhaust muffler is."

BUT- this is the real reason for gas cap locations:

Foreign gas stations don't have much room to drive around in, and gas stations in the US do.

So in the US, drivers can leave room between the car and the pump, open the door, and pump the gas. American cars typically have the gas cap on the left.

In cramped foreign gas stations, drivers sometimes have to park really close to the pump, get out on the other side, walk around, and pump the gas. So foreign cars have the gas cap on the HOME MARKET'S passenger side. Nobody switches their gas caps when they export cars.

So German, Italian, and French (all left-hand drive countries) cars have gas caps on the right side, passenger in the home market.

English, Australian, and Japanese (right drive countries), have caps on the left side, passenger side in the home market.

If a car has been badge-engineered, you must think where it originally came from.

Fee Fi Fo Fum, Give me back my glasses!

2006-05-14T20:00:00.002-04:00

You're not going to believe this. I wouldn't. I have read that news story too, about the lady who just figured out who attacked her in the woods 20 years ago. People who solve crimes years after they were committed seem like they are lazy, lucky, or lying.

I have solved a crime which puzzled me for two years. First, a scoop of backstory. In 2002, while spending time and money in CT, I wound up buying a pair of Oliver Peoples sunglasses. After seeing them in the store, none of the other brands would ever again seem so desirable. They were called "Nitro," and had brown polarized lenses made of glass, which, every time I looked through them, made the world look exactly as I'd always hoped it would.

In 2004, I worked at Autocar magazine in England, and toward the end of my time there I heard the road test editor's thoughts on sunglasses, and explained to him what I so liked about mine. He thought they were "sensational" and I suggested he try them for a few days. He must have liked them as much as I did, since I saw neither him, nor my beloved sunglasses, ever again.

I've been looking carefully at every picture of him I see, and finally, two months ago, what caught my eye but a 2-page spread of the thief wearing my glasses. Here are the pictures for your perusal. Between 2004 and now, I have pleaded with him for their return to no avail (he hasn't responded, and I assumed that he still had them, and hadn't sent them to me, as we had agreed when I left Autocar) , but now I have proof he's hung on to them.

Exhibit A)
A picture of me in the 6 July 2004 issue, wearing my glasses:

Exhibit B)
And here is a picture of him wearing them, in the 15 March 2006 issue:

I am confident the glasses in the picture are mine because of the brown tint to the lenses, and the gently curved brown earpiece. A letter containing a detailed report on the matter is on its way to Oliver Peoples, in the earnest hope that they will help me get ahold of another pair.

Do you think they are my glasses?

Farewell, my lovely!

2006-05-14T11:34:00.001-04:00

I normally yawn when it comes to SUV's, so I don't know why I'm sad that General Motors announced that they are going to stop producing the Hummer H1. Maybe it's because I liked that it spearheaded the brand which symbolizes excess (and America), that it was put together in the mid-80's, or that it looks 'engineered' the same way that the newer trucks look 'designed.'

Whenever I drove alongside one, I liked to look at the lopey wheels with their central tire inflation arms, and I marvelled at how ridiculous they looked in any configuration. My favorite was the ragtop, though wagon, slantback, and 2-door pickup versions were also available.

I liked the drop down wheel holders too, which gave the H1 unequalled ground clearance.

I even like the blurry smiley face steve-o got tatooed on his arm while being driven over a long set of whoops in one.

In 2005, I sat next to a Yugoslavian jounalist in an H1's shiplike interior at the Detroit Auto Show. He mused "look at this thing, seriously, if you only want one car for the rest of your life, this is it." You'd get tired of the cramped interior, and wind up dating the gas station attendant, but the thing is designed to go a million miles.

I always wondered who was behind the wheel of these beasts. Over the 12 years they were for sale, more than 14,000 people walked into Hummer dealerships with enough money and desire to walk out with one.

When cars feel more and more generic (Dodge Magnum, Chrysler 300C, and Dodge Charger come to mind), it was nice to have a bully on the block who didn't feel like sharing any of his parts.

It seems like everyone uses nameplates to sell mass market bits on expensive cars, (Ford's Vantage and S-type, VW's Continental, Audi's Gallardo), it is rare to see someone taking a small name (AM General) and pasting a big name over it, smearing it with a touch of civility, and offering it to the public.