Again, thanks to singlespeeder, some photos from a recent jaunt on the time trial rig.
beginning...
finishing...
Since I know you're dying to know, no chic aero helmet and disc wheel because... (1) I wanted power numbers and (2) I rode there and back.
Frankly, I don't think my tt position is too bad, even without the fast forward post that I've been meaning to buy but haven't yet bought. I do, however, absolutely need one of those cushy-nosed tt saddles.
The Tarmac. My Tarmac. My Specialized Tarmac SL2. After 1200 miles.
I really, really like it.
...
Since I don't get to ride a lot of high-end bikes (only mine), it's impossible to compare this one to others. It's also impossible for me to compare the S-Works 11r carbon on my SL2 to the 10r carbon on the SL, the 8r carbon on the Pro and Expert models, or the 6r carbon on the Comp and Elite models. But what I can say is that I've been wholly satisfied with what I have. It is easily the most responsive, snappy bike I've ever ridden. (It's comfortable too, but I've never really been uncomfortable on any of my bikes--in terms of shock dampening and that sort of thing--and have largely been ambivalent to discussion of comfort in bike reviews, etc. so I don't have much to say on that.)
I still haven't weighed my complete bike so I don't have a number. It's light, but not as light as it could be. My Rival component group is satisfactory (everything but the crank/BB is Rival), but not featherweight (I'm wholly satisfied with the quality-for-price of Rival, so have no intentions of upgrading). I have a stem that's 1/4 lb heavier than a Ritchey 4-axis (an alloy monstrosity that I pulled out of the used bin at Merv's). But the biggest weight issue is my wheelset. A Bontrager X Lite Aero w/ PowerTap that is neither light nor particularly aero. But what I want to say about weight is that it definitely does not feel heavy under me (which some of my bikes have), and that's great.
What I like most about my new bike, however, are two things. First, I have never noticed the least bit of bottom bracket sway riding my Tarmac. On my past three road bikes, at slower cadences and beginning at about 350-400 watts, bottom bracket sway was obvious (particularly pronounced on my '90 Specialized Allez Epic, but that frame is of a completely different generation). I don't know how much is crank (integrated, oversize S-Works crank/BB) and how much is frame, but this bike feels really good when throwing down. Second, the bike instills complete confidence at speed. I'm not at all a ballsy descender, but I now take hills much faster than I ever have. No brake checks on corners where I'm used doing just that. I'm still a wuss, but a slightly faster one.
When I first got the frame, I compared its measurements with all my old frames and wondered if I wouldn't have been better off, given it's radically compact design, with a 56cm frame rather than the 58cm frame I ordered. However, one difference between sizes is 1.7 cm of wheelbase, more of a difference than between any of the other size gaps. I'm not sure how much of a difference 1.7 cm actually makes, but given that a longer wheelbase generally equates to a steadier ride, I think I'm glad I have the larger size, if for that alone.
So, after over 1200 miles on my new rig I have to say I'm totally satisfied and it was totally worth it. I don't love this bike so much that it keeps me off my others, but I do love it.
Somebody (he was seven) asked me other other day what my dream bike was. I thought for a second, then happily remembered that it was sitting in the hall. Awesome.
This elevation business got me curious about other rides. Here's the elevation profile for a favorite training ride (if you follow the link, notice that the mapping program doesn't allow you to retrace your path--as in out-and-back--very well...the sections on Bendersville Rd and the Kings Gap climb are all screwed up):
Perhaps because it's so long and not so steep, or perhaps because I ride it all the time, it surprises me just how much bigger (higher) the climb to Big Flat is compared to anything else around. Of what's relatively close by, the only climb I can think of that's bigger is the full climb up Cowan's Gap (not just to the state park, but all the way up). I should climb that more often...
After my last post I spent some time dinking around on bikely.com and playing with the gps visualizer (thanks to Atlanta Intown). The result? An elevation profile of Saturday's ride.
That's pretty cool. I have no idea how accurate it is, but it passes a test of interocular observation (it looks right).
GPS visualizer doesn't calculate total elevation gain (from what I can figure out), which is a major drawback, but I still think it's pretty cool.
Thanks for all the well-wishing. About 24 hours after taking my first dose of Doxycycline I was feeling tremendously better. Though the treatment is hardly simple--I think it's a 21 day antibiotic cycle, which is at least twice as long as anything I've ever had before.
...
Stories I've heard from others about Lyme disease:
(1) Lyme disease is the consequence of some kind of biological weaponry experiment gone bad.
(2) An acquaintance (of the person telling me the story) failed to complete his antibiotic cycle, the stuff came back, and now he's pretty bad off. (Though it's not clear what was meant by "pretty bad off.")
...
I piddled around a couple of times last week on the mountain bike, then got out for a 68-mile road ride on Saturday (down to Chambersburg, Apple Way west to Fort Loudon then up to Cowan's Gap...north on 75 to Fannetsville, over the mountain (two mountains) to Upper Strasburg and back home). I felt better than I had in, well, a month. Even with so little riding of late. Remarkable.
So I've been sick for pretty much most of the month. Fever, chills, aches, pains, and monster headaches. But no coughing, no sneezing, no congestion. It came on strong the night before Longsjo (July 2nd)...and that pretty much ruined it for me--with alternating doses of ibuprofen and acetaminophen every three hours I was able to ride (but hardly race) the TT on Thursday and RR on Friday...Johann crashing out of the RR gave us the green light to come home on Saturday. During that first wave I was out for about eight days. Then I started feeling better, rode a bit, but the punch in my legs just wasn't coming back.
Then I got sick again. The fever, the chills, the aches and pains. Same as last time. After ten days of this (yesterday) I decided to see a doctor. She right way noticed several tell-tale circular rashes on my legs, back, and stomach that I hadn't. Lyme disease. Awesome.
So it sucks to have been sick all month, but it's a relief to have a diagnosis and a treatment.
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In other news, there's this. Nuts. Two seconds of bad decision on that cop's part is going to cause him and the NYC police department a world of hurt.
I wonder, was it a sympathy tackle for Novak's encounter with the vigilante bicycle commuter? (Watch the clip--the Novak one--sucks to be famous, eh?)
Novak plows through pedestrian.
My favorite bits:
As he traveled east on K Street, crossing 18th, Bono said "a black Corvette convertible with top closed plows into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed into the windshield.”
Novak's reaction?
“I didn’t know I hit him. ... I feel terrible."
Didn't know you hit someone when he was splayed across your windshield?
Novak:
"He's not dead, that's the main thing."
Really? That he's not dead, that's the main thing? Wow.
Anyway, I love that a bicycle commuter chases him down and hangs out in front of his car (because he "keeps trying to get away. He keeps trying to go.") until the cops show up.
Rest days are boring.
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I'm pretty excited about Tuesday and Wednesday, though. My fantasy tour team is in second place overall and second in the polka dot competition...and I'm pretty confident that after Wednesday I'll have a comfortable lead. However, the time trial could be my undoing.
Really, I'm probably more excited for my fantasy results than I am the real thing.
I'm not sure what that means...
Michael just posted something about stacking wood for the winter.
Reading, I was reminded of childhood.
Sometime in the late 70s my dad decided we'd save money with a wood-burning stove. So we got the stove. And we got a lot of wood.
Except we didn't have the wood delivered. That would have been too easy (though it should be said that in the later years my father relented and had the wood delivered...however, I recall this change in protocol being blamed on the forest service not opening enough land for personal use wood-cutting). We had to go up in the mountains and play with chainsaws until we'd loaded up a pickup truck and trailer full. Once home, we split the wood with a rented wood splitter. Then we piled it beside the house. And piled. And piled. The next weekend more of the same. I'm not sure how many trips we had to make each year, but collectively it amounted to a lot of work. (Fortunately, I was young enough to get a pass on the trips spent actually cutting down trees. My work began once the truck pulled into the driveway. I was not too young to procure similar truck and trailer loads of manure, however. But that's another story.)
We also had a stack of wood in the basement by the wood-burning stove. This stack had to be replenished weekly. We used a 50-gallon barrel strapped to a hand truck to haul the wood downstairs.
Crushed fingers. Sap-covered clothes and hands. Dinged-up sheet rock. Dirty carpets. Ten year-olds aren't particularly handy with hand trucks loaded with 100+ lbs of split wood.
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For the past several days Val's been dipping beeswax candles. This keeps half the house smelling like burnt beeswax. Which for her is a delight. For me it has prompted a surprisingly confused emotional reaction.
At home, we had a pretty decent sized orchard--or a pretty decent sized orchard for people who lived in the suburbs and didn't farm for a living. Half my parents' acre lot was garden. About a forth of that half acre was a raspberry patch. Another forth was fruit trees. Close to 20 fruit trees in all. We also had a nice long row of grape vines.
All of that fruit needs pollinating, so my dad became a beekeeper. For two long hot days at the end of each summer I'd find myself in the garage (as closed off from the bees as possible) with a centrifuge machine and an electrically heated knife...up to my ankles in honey and honey-like substances. The smell of Val's hot beeswax takes me back to the smell of cutting honeycomb off trays with that hot knife. I can hear (I can feel) the sizzle and crack of bees and bee parts under that knife. And it was like 130 degrees in that garage. And the stifling smell of burnt beeswax...
...
It was my understanding that a powerful motivator behind my parents engaging in these projects was to teach their children "the value of work." Upon reflection, I'm not sure what that means. The value of my work was exactly $0. At least, that was its value to me. I only knew dreading to wake up in the morning because it meant at least an hour of weeding the garden. Value to me? Frustration, resentment, guilt. From my perspective, I didn't see any money saved...nor did I ascribe any aesthetic pleasure to having to scrape off slivers of a rock-hard honey-like substance from the inside of a wide-mouth quart jar that, try as you might, never spread evenly on your toast (the wheat for which I had the honor of grinding in the basement), making one bite too sweet and the next too bland. I would have much preferred to squeeze my honey from a plastic bear-shaped bottle purchased at the supermarket like everyone else.
But what I'm sure I did learn from all of that is how to avoid work. And thus the emotional confusion at the smell of burned beeswax in my house the past couple of days. I'm aware, shifty-eyed, guilt-ridden... I feel myself expecting at any minute to be enlisted (through stomping of feet and waving of hands and mild verbal abuse) to engage in some sort of hot, tiresome, unpleasant task for which I will garner no benefit.
I think it's time to go for a bike ride.
Yesterday, July 16th at 8:35pm, I sent an email containing the following text:
Predictions for the remainder of the tour:
Look for Frank Shleck to clean house in the mountains next week.... Look for Ricco to test positive...for something...[and] get booted.... And look for Valverde to take out another big stage win, even if he remains a non-factor in the GC.
Not twelve hours later and I'm one for three.
I really love this.
The captions from cyclingnews:
Leave no man behind: Chris Horner (Astana) didn’t do enough work out on the road so he carries in a fallen rider.
Chris Horner (Astana) gets some support from the fans as he carries another competitor to the finish line.
More.
What a stud.
A mildly poignant opinion piece from the Times retreads old waters.
My own feelings could probably best be summed up as such: Safety is boring.
The trip you didn't take because of the accidents you might have had is nothing worthy of a story. And it's not the stuff that makes a life meaningful, for you or your family.
I invited the neighborhood kids over and armed them with noise-makers in preparation for stage three of the Tour of Pennsylvania, which came down from Camp Hill on US11 right past our house.
We made noise.
Then I piled my girls and two friends into the car and we headed for the second KOM, just off the turnpike about 25 miles this side of Bedford.
We made more noise.
We also tried to get noticed. But no one seemed to care much that we were there (two thumbs down to the douchebags in the Slipstream car), though late in the caravan someone tossed the girls a couple of water bottles. Which was cool.
Anyway, we tried to get noticed. But not as hard as this guy.
I thought of dressing up, but I have to tell you I would have never thought of dressing like that... Nice. Really nice.
