Frostbike 2010 Review
So this past weekend, I hit up Frostbike, which has become a regular thing now, having been a February tradition for three years now. (You can read my 2008 and 2009 reviews.)
The Reynolds RZR wheels were the revelation of the show, really. I was absolutely stunned by these wheels.
A $6K all-carbon wheelset that weighs less than 900g -- FOR THE SET.
Dear god, these wheels were amazing. The lightness was unreal, and the design was fascinating. The three-flange rear hub was a novel solution to the problem of a radially-laced rear wheel -- a third flange on the body of the hub, just inside the drive spokes has four spokes at a 90-degree offset to resist the torsion on the rear wheel. It's a novel setup, and I'm curious about how you'd replace a broken spoke on that internal flange.
The triple-flanged rear hub on the Reynolds RZR.
They're a technological marvel. I can't speak to their ride quality however, because it's February in Minnesota and I only got to look at them on the sales floor. I don't foresee having an opportunity to ride them, either -- I simply don't have the $6000 lying around to buy a pair, and couldn't even swing it with the shop employee pricing program. They'll have to remain an object of lust.
In the first aisle you roll through, was Gu's booth, and eventually, I worked up the nerve to try the Gu Chomps. My trepidation is understandable when you consider the taste-testing that Kate and I did on the competing product, Clif Shot Bloks. That said, however, the Gu Chomps were very tasty. I'm still not entirely sold on the "blocks" format, but Gu has definitely surpassed Clif in this version of energy food.
I also did spend some time looking at Salsa's new titanium offerings and was suitably impressed. Clean welds, much the same styling as their steel brethren. Were I not starting my own framebuilding gig ("ride your own stuff"), I'd seriously consider a La Cruz Ti as my next cyclocross frame.
Ritchey had a small booth going, and were fun to visit. Chatted with the guys there briefly and discovered that they have a program for small framebuilders. Color me stoked! They even have a nifty solution if I was to start doing seat masts (not really).
Edge Composites didn't have anything stunning that they didn't have last year. Talked to them a bit about painting their stuff. Since most of it just has clearcoat, that could be sanded down and used as a base for more color. Good.
Shimano was showing off Di2 again. Nothing huge here, but I still want a Di2 kit. Like the Reynolds wheels, you can file it under "lottery purchase". I did ride it again and was just as impressed as last year.
Campagnolo didn't have anything revelatory, either. Did talk to them about their carbide frame facing kit, which I am going to need and will probably pay out of the ass for.
DZ Nutz and Chamois Butt'r had samples available. DZ Nutz had their chamois creams, which I am going to try, and Chamois Butt'r had a new formula, plus electrode gel for heart rate monitor straps. I'm going to give some of this stuff a try over the course of the coming week.
All in all, not a bad show this year. Looking forward to 2011.
Exhausting Weekend
So Friday, I got home from the office around 2:30 p.m. I immediately plopped down and ordered up Peggle for the PS3, which has been a total joy. One of my favorite features on this thing is that I can take a replay and automatically upload it to YouTube, as evidenced by the mother of all blind-luck shots that I took on Friday at the end of one board:
Kate arrived home around the time I was finishing with the last board in the "Adventure" mode. She played for a bit and then we headed over to the Red Dragon.
It is flat-out impossible to leave that place and not have a hangover the next morning. Our table of 15 people ran up a $500 tab in only a few hours. A good time was had, as always. And Josh, Jumi's boyfriend, offloaded some of his old welding supplies on me, which is awesome. Torch and a set of small oxy-acetylene tanks. Rawk!
We got home, we did stuff, and we went to sleep.
Saturday morning, I woke up with a IQ-dampening, but not suicide-inducing, hangover. I had some fluids, chatted with Johnny Surprise on GChat, and then I got my shit together and headed off to Frostbike. I had a pretty good time there, met a lot of cool industry people, and saw some really cool stuff. I've got a write-up forthcoming, and will probably post it tomorrow, after I've had a chance to test out some of the sample products I received.
Hit up Target briefly on the way home, and when I arrived, Kate was still asleep(!). She finally got up around 3 p.m. We lounged on the couch together for a bit. My new copy of the Paterek Manual arrived, and I wound up reading a large portion of that. I looked up, it was 11:30, and I decided that I had missed enough of the Cutters Ball where it would be better to go to bed and save the energy for Sunday's framebuilding session up at Paul's place.
Framebuilding went well, as it always does. Paul was making his final preparations for NAHBS, so I stayed out of the way as much as possible and accomplished the following:
- The 29'er received some finishing work in the HT/DT fillet. There's a low spot I need to drop some 56% silver into next time so that I can finish that.
- The commuter bike got blueprinted, and I finished the shaping of the BB lug. Then the seat tube was mitered and brazed into the BB shell, the steerer tube and fork crown brazed, and I raked the fork blades and started slotting them for the dropouts.
- The pursuit frame didn't get much attention -- all I did was silver braze the stainless dropout faces onto the rear dropouts.
After the hour-long drive back to the Cities, Kate dragged me out grocery shopping, after which I passed out on the couch.
This morning before work, I got some work done on the WP template I'm going to use to make the Pallas Athena Bicycles site, read some blogs, and found a possible new site template for this blog.
My weekends are more exhausting than my work weeks.
Weekly List of Hatreds #3
- People that live vicariously through their children to the point where they use their kids' images instead of their own on their Facebook profiles.
- Walking out of a meeting and thinking, "We really needed to spend 45 minutes on this? It's a 5-minute subject."
- Foot cramps while in the middle of my workout.
- The insane cost of CNC'ed materials in small batches. Economies of scale can be so annoying.
- Not having won the lottery yet. Not that I ever will, mind you. It'd just be helpful about now.
- The devil you know.
- The devil you don't.
- Having to wait 12 weeks until the start of racing season (the Durand Road Race).*
* On the other hand, this is a good thing. I need the training time.
Upcoming Weekend Plans
Friday:
- 60 minutes E2 ride, morning
- Work, morning and afternoon
- Red Dragon, drinking, evening
Saturday:
- Frostbike, morning and afternoon
- Weights, evening
- Cutters Ball @ the Angry Catfish, late evening
Sunday:
- Framebuilding class, morning, afternoon, evening
- Recovery day, no active training
To-Do List:
- Clean computer monitor
- Eagerly await arrival of the Paterek Manual
- Build new playlists for workout iPod and for iPhone
- Rip more music and movies
Not in My Lifetime
The now-cancelled Orion package in lunar orbit.
I was born mere days after Apollo 17, the last time that man would set footprints on the moon. I believe, firmly, that the U.S. will never go back. China? Maybe. India? There's an outside chance. But the U.S.? We're not going back. Not in my lifetime, and likely not ever.
This probably sounds weird, coming from a guy who has some faith in humanity and reads a lot of science fiction, but I really do believe my opening statement. And now comes the part where I explain myself:
1. I believe that with the current climate of political infighting, that nothing can be agreed-upon. It takes a political consensus to do really cool things like a space program. And here in the U.S., we simply do not have any sort of a consensus -- on anything. The real leverage for the space program comes from Florida, Alabama, and Texas -- sites where there are space centers and companies who build spacecraft.
2. I believe that Americans have become too practical and don't dream enough. Sad, but true. When was the last time a business did something because it was the right thing to do, regardless of the financial impact? When was the last time someone you knew chased their dreams instead of taking the practical route? We've become too focused on the bottom line. This leads me to the next item.
3. I believe that Americans are too short-sighted. This is partly because of the election cycles -- politicians want to keep their jobs, so their aim is to score political points in the short-term that they can use as ammunition in the next election. This means that no one will touch a long-term program like missions to the Moon and Mars. Additionally, there's the "we have problems to solve here at home" bullshit. If that logic carried any weight, we'd all be living in caves, debating whether or not this new "fire" thing was worthwhile.
4. I believe that NASA is an extremely flawed organization, and that they have become just another channel of corporate welfare. (The other being the military procurement process.) When NASA takes perfectly good, affordable plans like Mars Direct and expands them to the point of impracticality, their motivations for doing so must be called into question. Thus, any large scale program operated by NASA is going to go over budget, exceed its planned timeline, and ultimately not live up to the original design specifications.
Any one of these items taken individually might be able to be overcome. However, I don't believe that it is feasible to put aside all of these issues simultaneously.
Email Marketing: Useful Links
Here's a few useful email marketing links that I have found that would be useful for someone just getting started in business:
- How Crappy Landing Pages Kill Email Campaigns — a must-read for marketers.
- Email Newsletters: Guidelines and Examples — useful, particularly for designers and coders.
- A Guide to Creating Email Newsletters — this is from the sign-up and content perspectives.
- Smart Email Marketing — the next person that calls it a "blast", I'm going to slap. Hard.
Hey Hey It’s Training Day
Nice quiet day off yesterday. Spent a large volume of time on the couch with Kate, watching the Olympics. Did briefly venture forth to hit the grocery store for snacks, dinner ingredients and some of the stuff for lunches this week.
Training resumes tonight. I've got weights, and a 90-minute E2 ride. Easy, but then in the "Prep" and "Stabilization" phases, everything is. We move to Base 1 for the Joe Friel system, and Strength for the weight system, both on February 28th. Thank god. Because light weights and E2 rides are getting pretty goddamned monotonous.
It's weird, but since I've started working out again, a lot of my little aches and pains have gone away, my digestion problems have resolved themselves, and I'm sleeping a lot better. I guess that last item is not much of a surprise, but it's definitely a good thing.
Tonight, I also need to make time to read Chapters 12, and 14-18 of the Cyclist's Training Bible.
Valentine’s Day
Shit yeah, it's going to be a sexy Valentine's Day today. I'm going to change the litterboxes, clean the kitchen, and finish the wedding website today.
We actually spent the weekend in a schwanky hotel downtown. It was lovely. We ate dinner out, saw friends briefly on Saturday, and had a very relaxing time. Nothing beats alone-time with Kate.
Home now. Cats, especially Calvin, are all needy.
Things that have nothing to do with Valentine's Day, or otherwise, that I feel the need to point out:
- Everything from China is Full of Lead -- yes, I made this. Yes, it was very funny at the time.
- Probably going to post a couple of fonts to this site today. Word.
- Might also include a new WP theme that I've been tinkering with.
- Trying to decide what to do for a class after the framebuilding apprenticeship is done. I can do tae kwon do for free*, or I can take judo for inexpensive.
- Twelve-ish weeks until my first race of the year. It'll be a good gauge as to how things are coming along.
Weekly List of Hatreds #2
- Ingrown beard hair on my neck.
- Bad customer service at LensCrafters.
- Cleaning up cat puke.
Pretty short list. Turned out to be a pretty good week.
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.@nickhobart dude this one is SLAYING me. http://www.dontevenreply.com/view.php?post=84 [fontosaurus]
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Dude. Last hour VERY productive. Spent it trying to get a migrated contact lens out of my eye. Fuck. [fontosaurus]
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I'm at Wells Fargo (425 E Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis). http://4sq.com/6e3CnI [fontosaurus]
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Checked in at Wells Fargo
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I'm at Don Pablo's - Roseville (2700 Lincoln Dr, Roseville). [fontosaurus]
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Checked in at Don Pablo's - Roseville
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I favorited a YouTube video -- Cycles http://youtu.be/-0Xa4bHcJu8?a [fontosaurus]
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have my Friday off, so here's my Follow Thursday: @mightywombat, @veloveggies, @Scoutwell_Cat, @kilgette, @actualmiles, @DoWhatITellYou #ff [fontosaurus]
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Man, talk about enabling commerce. http://is.gd/aeKE9 [fontosaurus]
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