Feb

22

Fixie learning

February 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment

I’m a wuss. I admit it. I’m happy to try new things (like cross-country skiing on skate skis last weekend, wow are my calves sore!), but for some reason I have always been hesitant about trying to ride a fixed gear bike.
I tried it first, curiously, at the cement velodrome in San Jose. Not too [...]

Feb

22

Intervals on the beach

February 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Heaven.
No cars. No potholes (okay, some little streams to spash through). Stuff to look at. The horizon to aim for.
Way better than intervals on the trainer.

Feb

21

A traveling haiku

February 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Trav’ling with track wheels.
What to do with the spindly
thing? No quick release!
By Jason Sears.
He adapted it from an email I sent to the MIT cycling team mailing list, asking for advice about how to make my track wheels lower profile for packing. No good answer, really.
I’m off to Hilton Head, SC to visit my parents [...]

Feb

20

Tour of California remarks

February 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment

1) Ivan Basso. He looked way cuter in his CSC kit.
2) Race officials deciding what’s what. How can they justify the the decision that everyone gets the same finishing time despite delays from a crash in the final circuit – more than the allotted three km to the finish? They just wanted to keep local [...]

Feb

17

EPO Tour of California indeed

February 17, 2007 | Leave a Comment

So, according to this article in the New York Times (the second major story this week about cycling and, oh, doping), no testing for EPO was done during last year’s Tour of California. Which was sponsored by Amgen, the company that produces EPO. Amgen claims they’re upset about that, as they had been assured that [...]

Feb

13

Uh huh, Vaughters

February 13, 2007 | Leave a Comment

From an article in today’s New York Times:
“I don’t have a halo over my head; I made some mistakes when I was a rider,” said [Slipstream team director Jonathan] Vaughters, who would not directly say whether he had used performance-enhancing drugs. “I don’t want to have any of the riders under my direction to have [...]

Feb

12

From the article in the NYTimes…

February 12, 2007 | Leave a Comment

… about Drew Gilpin Faust’s career prior to becoming queen of Ye Olde Harvard:
“Dr. Faust left home at an early age, to be educated at Concord Academy, then a girls’ prep school in Massachusetts, and at Bryn Mawr College, a women’s college known for creating future leaders…”
Leaders of what? Leading number of prescriptions for antidepressants [...]

Feb

11

My alma mater in the news

February 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Not that I usually care about this stuff, but I’m kind of delighted that Harvard University’s pick for the next president, to follow in the wake of probable Aspurger’s sufferer and unintentional headline-maker Larry Summers, will not only be a woman, but one who went to my undergraduate institution, Bryn Mawr College.
Okay, I also spent [...]

Feb

9

This must be quoted

February 9, 2007 | Leave a Comment

“In the first 24 hours after her death, [Anna Nicole] Smith has gotten the kind of publicity she seemed to thrive on.
… Later in the day, the husband of the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor came forward to say he was the father of Ms. Smith’s baby, Dannielynn.
Prince Frederick von Anhalt, Ms. Gabor’s eighth husband, told [...]

Feb

8

This weather blows

February 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Quite literally.
I know I shouldn’t complain since the weather up till now has been quite mild, but a whole week of 25-feels-like-8 is getting to me. I’m still riding my bike outside, not every day, and not much more than two hours at a time (except for one idiotic 3 1/2 hour day), but it’s [...]