Holidays in California

On Tuesday afternoon I left Boulder, caught the bus to Denver, and then flew to San Francisco, California.

Here's my gear for a California trip: jacket, waterproof bag, backpack, helmet, glasses, and mittens.  By packing light, I can was able to go to the bus station by bike.

During the last couple weeks in Colorado, I had some more interesting adventures.   At work we built up a circuit board that I designed while I was on my last trip.  It is pictured below.

The green circuit board set a record for fast turn-on: less than 7 hours from the board being delivered by FedEx to having been populated, powered up, and programmed.

Guinness was pleased by progress in the lab.  He sometimes lies on his back in the middle of the floor and takes a nap.

The weekend before I left Colorado, I took a trip to Colorado Springs.  On the way back, I stopped off in Castle Rock and Denver.  While I was away from Boulder, the conditions outside my apartment turned from slightly annoying to outright hazardous.

Here is an ice-covered sidewalk where I lost my footing when leaving for work on Monday morning.  That was an unpleasant surprise.

Yesterday I went for a bike ride in the coastal hills here in the San Francisco bay area.  I climbed up Old La Honda Road from Portola Road to Skyline Blvd, then descended the west side of highway 84, and then climbed the west side of Old La Honda Road back up to Skyline.  Here are a couple pictures from the ride:

Looking west from Old La Honda Road over the coastal hills.

Here is a view looking south from the same point.  The road in this view is where I climbed up.

Here is the view looking east.

With snow falling in Boulder, it is really nice to enjoy some warm, sunny, California weather.

How I almost quit racing on Oct. 7, 2010 and goal setting for 2012

There is a story that I mentioned briefly on this blog back in October 2010, but at the time left out some of the excruciating details.  I felt it might be interesting to fill in a few of the details so that readers can see, for better or for worse, what goes on in the deep dark corners of my brain.

The story, in its original form, is fairly mundane.  The specific story that I am referencing here is detailed in the paragraph beginning with "I think it is safe to say..."  Employing some British understatement, my campaign in Manchester started with a rough first few hours.

At the time, I was rather insulted by being required to take an introductory-level track riding course.  I appreciate the need to follow rules, but rules should be applied with good judgement, not blindly.  After my personal experience and then going to the masters track world championships this fall and seeing riders (who did not go through the accreditation course) slide off the track and cause crashes made me wonder just how well those rules are applied.  Luckily, I have thick skin, and while the accreditation requirement felt like a stinging insult at the time, it's not a big deal anymore.

Further along in the story, I mention being caught up in a crash on the track.  When I composed my blog post on Oct 11th, I still had a large scrape on my hip.  The scrape and associated impact hurt quite a lot, but have both healed.  There is still a 2-inch diameter scar on my right hip, which is an interesting souvenir from that experience.

Where the episode back in 2010 became a real mental test was after I left the track surface.  The person in charge of bike storage space rentals was gone for the day.  I asked the remaining staff if I could leave my bike for the night and sort out the storage rental in the morning.  They said, "No."  I pleaded.  They were adamant.  So, as I went to disassemble my bike and put it back into the travel case, I had tears welling up in my eyes from a combination of pain from the crash and frustration with the bike storage and equipment damage situation.

Finally, after packing up my bike, I began the walk to the bus stop to return to the Manchester City Centre.  It was late in the evening, cold, and raining as I left the veldrome.  As I walked through the parking lot dragging the 70-lb bike case, I thought to myself, "I can leave the case here in the parking lot and come back for it in the morning.  Maybe it will still be here if I come back early.  But if it's not?  Maybe I wouldn't care.  I could forget about being an athlete and just be a tourist for the next two months."

Then, standing there alone in the dark, 7000 miles from home, feeling cold, wet, exhausted, battered physically, and shaken mentally, a smile crept across my face.  I said to myself, "Karl, this will make for an amusing story later.  You need to harden the #@$% up and get moving."

So, I continued.

Jumping back to the present, I am in the midst of formulating goals for the 2012 season.  They're still a work in progress, but at the moment I am planning to turn my focus back to the road and earn my cat-2 upgrade there.

After that, I will turn my attention toward some endurance events.  In the last six years, I've completed several hundred races on the road and track, without the question of whether I was capable of finishing ever crossing my mind.  This season, rather than just seeing how fast I can go, I want to test my physical and mental limits.

I'll write more about my 2012 goals as plans firm up, but I can say right now that the 2012 season will look very different from all my previous seasons.

Back to Colorado and off-season racing

On the way back to Colorado, I stopped in Rawlins, Wyoming for some fuel and a chance to get out of the car and stretch my legs.  Right there on the I-80 business route, I saw something that took my breath away, and had to take a picture.

If Motel 6 doesn't quite do it for you, Rawlins has a Motel 7.

At the end of my first week back on the Colorado front range, I was able to compete in two races.  One was a track racing event at Boulder Indoor Cycling and the other was a run/bike duathlon at Cherry Creek State Park in Denver.

First Friday track racing
Boulder Indoor Cycling, 2-Dec-2011

I jumped in for two races at the December edition of First Friday at Boulder Indoor Cycling.  The first event was a 20-lap tempo race.  He had a field of 6 or 7 riders and the race started off with a moderate pace but quickly became quite brisk and shattered the field.  After bridging over a split in the field, I picked up a few points in the 2nd half of the race, including the 5 points on the finishing lap.

Due to some confusion about which riders would be in which races, I wound up sitting out until the final event of the night, a 70-lap points race.  Colby Pearce and Alex Howes wound up dominating the race, although I felt pretty good about the attack I put in following the first sprint at 60-laps to go.  By the time the field caught me, several riders had dropped out and the field was splintered.  I'm satisfied with how it went for being my first ride back at elevation after two months at sea level.

Only tangentially related to the racing, I walked from my apartment to Boulder Indoor Cycling and then back to my apartment after the event was concluded, 1.8 miles each way, carrying my track bike.

The next First Friday event should be held on 6-Jan-2012.  I'm looking forward to it already!

Chilly Cheeks duathlon series, race #1
Cherry Creek State Park, 3-Dec-2011

There was snow overnight, and the morning was characterized by cold temperatures and more snow falling during the race.  The first race of the Chilly Cheeks duathlon series was a 4-mile run and a 10-mile bike ride.

I started the run at a comfortable pace, intending to increase my tempo at each mile marker.  Many racers started too fast, so I wound up passing people right away and continued to do so throughout the run.  The run course transitioned from road to trail to bike path and back to road at the end, so we had a variety of surfaces to keep things interesting.  Having snow all over the ground required being careful about where I placed my feet.

With the cold temperatures, I had to make a conscious effort to keep my hands from going numb.  In order to stay warm, I wore wool socks, cycling shorts, leg warmers, two base-layer undershirts, a short-sleeve jersey, a long-sleeve jersey, a vest, and a cycling hat. For the run, I wore lightweight windbreaker-style gloves.  They worked well, although midway through the run I pulled my fingers out of the gloves' fingers and wore them more like mittens with my hands clenched into fists.  By the end of the run, my hands were nice and toasty so I could manipulate shoelaces and Velcro to change from running to cycling shoes and operate the buckle on my helmet.  The last step in the transition area was to put on my heavy mittens to keep my hands warm with the windchill on the bike.

Heading out on the bike, my glasses immediately fogged up.  Arg!  I spent a couple minutes fooling around with the glasses trying to clear them of fog while riding slowly (I could barely make out the snow-covered road).  Once my glasses cleared up, I picked up the pace as conditions allowed.  I felt much more comfortable on the climbs than the flat or downhill sections (something about that just seems wrong).  The course wrapped around the lake at the park, with a turn-around on the east side and then headed back to the west side for the race finish.  On the way back, I managed to drop my chain twice. On a fixed gear, a dropped chain means I had no drive and no stopping power.  Needless to say, it was quite exciting as the first chain drop happened on a downhill.

Each time the chain dropped, I coasted to a stop, dismounted the bike, and lifted the chain back onto the chainring and cog by hand (despite being an engineer, I still do some things by hand!).  The first chain drop was on a downhill section.  Riding a fixed gear bike downhill on a snowy ride is an exercise in vaguely-controlled chaos.  In light of the low chain tension I was running, that first chain drop was largely unavoidable as I bounced, slid, and rolled down the hill.  The 2nd drop, however, was due to sloppy pedaling technique.  Following the second drop, I focused on a fluid pedal stroke with steady power for the remainder of the race and kept the chain properly seated through the finish line.  I even managed to catch the two riders who passed me while I was re-setting the chain the 2nd time.  One of them was the winning woman.

The next edition of the race will take place on 21-Jan-2012.  Between now and then I will have some more time to re-acclimate to high elevation exercise (it's been just 1 week since I returned to Boulder after 2 months at sea level) and do a bit of run training (a couple of interval workouts on the track would serve me well for an event like this).  I'll also be able to adjust the chain tension on the fixed gear road bike so it is less susceptible to jumping off when the course is bumpy and figure out a solution for foggy glasses when I am stopped in transition between segments of the race.

That's it for race reports.  I've also been back to the lab, and should have some interesting pictures of circuit boards and measurement systems in the next couple weeks.

Some travel catch-up and a birthday abroad

It's been a while since my last post, so there is some catching up to do.  Yesterday evening, my travels brought me back to Boulder for the first time in about two months, so it feels like a good time to put fingers to keyboard and crank out a new blog entry.

In October, I had my birthday in Edinburgh.  I'm sure some readers will be looking forward to tales of debauchery too scandalous to be uttered (or typed) in polite company.  It turns out, the reality was rather mundane as far as epic adventures go.

In 1776, Adam Smith invented economics.  In 2011, his statue was pooped on by birds.  Only one of the previous statements is true.

I walked around Edinburgh, saw Adam Smith's statue, and eventually wound up going to a pub with some other tourists.

Despite the text on the sign behind me, it turns out the real threat is not terrorists.  It is drinking with Australians.

I met some Australians who bought me one or more shots and promised that since it was my birthday, they would arrange for me to "hit the floor".  Evidently, their plans did not come to fruition, because they left the pub, I hung out with some German friends, and then I returned to the hostel and went to bed.  In the morning, the Aussies were in rough shape.  Perhaps they were planning to give me a terrific hangover for my birthday, but forgot it at the hostel and took it for themselves instead?

A few weeks later, after returning to the USA, I was out on a bike ride in the coastal hills on the San Francisco peninsula.  I saw a scene that reminded me of the cone-on-head art installation in Glasgow.

It's not Glasgow, but I appreciate it.

I noticed this afternoon that at some point in the past few weeks, while fiddling around with my privacy settings on Facebook, I entered a setting that caused a number of status updates to be visible only to me.  Talk about preaching to the choir...  If the above reference to the cone-on-head art installation in Glasgow does not sound familiar, it's probably because the links I shared on Facebook for the last two blog posts were visible only to me.  Feel free to check out the other November blog entries to see what else I've been up to.

At any rate, I think I have the Facebook-link-posting fixed, and will wrap up this post by sharing a couple quotes from a pair of books I read recently.

From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain:
To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

From Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck:
You can look back and say, "I could have been...," polishing your unused endowments like trophies. Or you can look back and say, "I gave my all for the things I valued." Think about what you want to look back and say. Then choose your mindset.

Visited Glasgow, was not stabbed

After my time in Edinburgh and the highlands, I took a train to Glasgow.  On last year's trip I had been told by somebody that most tourists' highlight when they visit Glasgow is not being stabbed.  When I mentioned plans to stay in Glasgow for a few days to some folks at the velodrome in Manchester, they warned me about being beaten up.

My Great Britain travel guide book, however, did not make any such predictions, so I went ahead with my plan to visit.  It turned out to be a fine place.  The city center, like many other cities in the UK, had a tough, gritty feel, but I never felt that I was in any danger of being stabbed or beaten up.

After exiting the train station, I had about a half mile walk to the hostel where I was staying.  The route I mapped out took me by an art gallery with a display of Glasgow humor on the statue in front of the building (pictured below).

I can appreciate performance/street art like this.

The hostel where I stayed was conveniently located, and affordable with respect to cost, and I'll leave it at that.  Not trusting the elevator, I got a little bit of exercise walking up to my room on the 6th floor.

In the city center, there was a large plaza/square in front of the city hall featuring statues of famous Glaswegians or otherwise noteworthy Scots.  As an engineer and a cyclist, it was great to see a statue of James Watt.

In engineering and science, the Watt is the derived SI unit for power.  I make measurements and calculations of power all the time, and the results are always in terms of watts or other units that relate back to watts.  Watt was a mechanical engineer who made important contributions to steam engine technology, helping to kick off the industrial revolution.

James Watt, looking at me like I owe him something.

As a cyclist, I am thankful for the watt as a unit of power measurement.  Throwing down a 450-watt pursuit sounds a whole lot more impressive than averaging 0.603-horsepower. 

The city of Glasgow experienced significant economic decline during the 2nd half of the 20th century.  In the 19th century, it was an important center of manufacturing and trade, and was very wealthy.  The square in the city center with the statues (including Mr. Watt) was constructed to show off the city's wealth.

The Glasgow city hall is a very Scottish-looking building.

The Glasgow city hall and war memorial (pictured above) sit on the east side of George Square (where the statue of James Watt is located).  When I took the above picture, there was an Occupy Glasgow protest, complete with tents and chilly protesters, sitting right behind me.

Near George Square, there was a part of town called Merchant City, essentially the city center shopping district.  For the most part, it was full of stores I was almost entirely uninterested in.  There was one store that caught my eye.  It had an American theme, and a huge display in the front window with a wall of Mug Root Beer and some sort of sugary breakfast cereal.  It made me cringe to contemplate the idea that those are the products Glaswegians think of when they think of America.  Blah!

Scotland: Edinburgh and the Highlands

I've gone a bit off the back in terms of blog updates, so it's time for a little catch-up.  After masters track world championships concluded, I hung around Manchester for a couple days, and then hopped onto the train to Scotland.

It wound up being a two-part journey, with a change of trains in York.  Last year, I visited York and spent a couple days there.  This time, I had about 20 minutes, but was able to make my way to the train station entrance and snap a quick picture.

The York train station felt familiar after my visit last year.  The station exit still welcomes visitors to the city.

The 2nd leg of the train journey took me into Edinburgh, where the station is still under construction.  This year, though, it was mid-afternoon when I arrived, so I was able to navigate to the hostel in the daylight.  Interestingly, the hostel where I was staying had a theme for each room and a theme-related name for each bed.  My assignment was the Riddler bed in the Gotham City room.  I astounded the front desk clerks when I opened my pack and withdrew my Batman logo towel.  I fit right in at that place.

The next day, I headed to the Scottish highlands to check out Loch Ness and hopefully encounter some interesting aquatic wildlife.  On the bus drive north, we saw lots of highland terrain, but only a little bit of weather (which is a good thing, wind and rain are not what I was looking for during my off-season vacation).

This almost looks like it could be in Colorado.

The tour bus stopped a couple times at scenic locations where we could get out, stretch our legs, buy snacks, visit the restrooms, and take pictures of the local terrain.  It's interesting to think that the top of the mountain in the above picture is at considerably lower elevation than where I live in Colorado.  However, they had already had snow in mid-October.  We were treated to some of the nicest weather of the year as Scotland goes.

Green and gold grass with a loch in the background.

The tour guide claimed that back in the Roman times, more than 95% of the land in what is now the Scottish highlands was covered in forest.  Since then, the logging industry has created lots of open range, but there are efforts underway to replant trees in large tracts of land.

This is the smallest lighthouse in the UK.

Around lunch time, we arrived at Loch Ness, home of the UK's most famous aquatic wildlife.  I saw some less-famous wildlife, in the form of a game of swans, being coaxed out of a canal lock by a worker armed with bread crusts.  While I missed out on seeing Nessie, the famous creature allegedly inhabiting the loch, I did not miss out on eating a Scotland delicacy: haggis!  Yummy.

On the way back to Edinburgh, we stopped at the commando memorial.  During World War II, the British commando soldiers trained in the Scottish highlands.  The memorial is dedicated to those original British commandos.  Since then, many tributes have been left at a nearby garden of remembrance for commandos killed in more recent conflicts such as the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The commando statues keep an eye on the Commando Training Depot.

On the way back to Edinburgh, we stopped in a small town for late-afternoon snacks.  I had a Chieftains Choice pie from The Wee Pie Company.  Who would've thought cold meat could be so tasty?

Masters Track Cycling World Championships

Yesterday marked the end of the 17th masters track cycling world championships here in Manchester.  Being several years shy of the minimum age required to compete, I accompanied the Hammer Racing Team to the event as mechanic and general-purpose infield helper.

Over the course of the week, I met many new people and every day heard old stories retold and new ones unfolding.  Here is a brief overview of how the week went.

A week ago Saturday, I linked up with the team and checked into the hotel.  We ate dinner in the hotel bar/restaurant area that evening.

Riding kilometer time trials very rapidly requires lots of energy.  The first night, we made sure to feed the sprinters.  Later in the week, Sky won medals in the kilo and team sprint.  Maybe there is something to be said for eating with two forks?

On Sunday, the riders had some training sessions at the velodrome, but there was nothing for me to do at the track, so I joined several spouses of riders and took the train to Liverpool.

The city still stands as the metal lookout birds on top of the Liver Building have not flown away.  Yet.

On Monday, racing started, so my duties at the track began.  The Hammer team made quite a respectable showing, with four of the five riders contesting sprint distance events in several different age groups and "Count" riding endurance events in his category.  I also looked after wheels for one of the local British riders who contested the mass start endurance events (scratch and points race) in his category.  He came away with a silver medal in the scratch race and making several crafty moves in the closing laps of the race.  It was very exciting to watch, and a very good result too.

The track surface was improved since I raced here last year, and the lobby/reception area was substantially renovated.  If these improvements continue, maybe in another year or two they will have consistently sunny days in Manchester?

After the racing concluded Saturday evening, the group went for dinner at Bella Italia, an Italian restaurant chain here in the UK.  We sat near the door, and in the middle of dinner, saw another group of American riders enter the restaurant.  Members of each group had long-running friendships and rivalries, so it was very interesting to hear some of their stories.

Count messed with Gibby.

After dinner, I parted ways with the Hammer group, but will certainly see them after my ongoing adventures in the UK and Europe.

Turing around Manchester

Yesterday around 8:00am (GMT), my flight from Atlanta touched down in Manchester.  I made my way through customs, picked up my backpack from the baggage claim, and took the train to the city centre.  There, I checked into the hostel, bought a SIM card to activate the quad-band GSM phone I picked up in California, and walked around for part of the afternoon in an attempt to hold off jet-lag.

In the late afternoon, I made my way to Crossfit Central Manchester for a WOD, my first visit to the gym since June.  After doing some toes-to-bar, handstands, and burpee broad-jumps, I'm feeling a little rough around the edges, but glad I went.  Post workout, it was straight back to the hostel for dinner.

In the evening, I joined a group of folks at the hostel for a tour of bars and clubs.  I went to one bar and then pulled the plug on the night, heading back to the hostel for some sleep.  After a long day of travel, I slept like a log.  On an interesting side note, the bar featured mostly British and European beers, but they had Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on tap.  It seems odd I could go 1/3 of the way around the world and find a beer from within 200 miles of where I grew up.

Today, I ventured out into Manchester to walk to a handful of nerdy destinations.  First, I headed to the Alan Turing Memorial in Sackville Park.  Mr. Turing was an engineering hero in World War II, but a tragic figure after the war ended.  A couple years ago, he was granted an official apology from the British government for the way he was treated.

Mr. Turing and his deadly apple sit, permanently, near the university in Manchester.  There is allegedly a computer buried under the memorial.  Today, I sat with them.

On the way back toward the hostel, I spotted the Manchester court house.  It has an impressive clock tower, shown below.

With narrow streets and a limited viewing angle from my camera, it was difficult to take an image that does this building justice.  Hopefully, there is plenty of justice going on inside.

Closer to the hostel, I spotted a pair of street names that tickled me in just the right way.  How could I resist taking and sharing pictures of streets named after famous scientists?

Faraday Street has a Cuban bar/nightclub at one of its corners.

Where does Nicholas Cage go for a haircut?  Con Hair.

In light of yesterday's news, I wonder if Steve Jobs will have any streets named after him.  Time will tell, I suppose.

Season wrap-up

I'm sitting in the San Francisco airport right now, waiting for a flight to Atlanta, GA and then a flight from there to Manchester, England for the 2011 masters track cycling world championships.  Today marks the start of another multinational off-season adventure.

I made the podium in the team sprint at Colorado state championships over Labor Day weekend.

This past weekend I wrapped up my 2011 racing season with some competition at the US elite track nationals in Los Angeles, CA.  All in all, this was a highly successful season, with three events in the past month that I want to go into a little more detail about.

The first weekend in September was the Colorado state championships at the track in Colorado Springs.  I rode every event (individual pursuit, sprints, points race, scratch race, kilo, team pursuit, keirin, Madison, and team sprint) this year, and while I missed out on claiming any state championships, I made the podium in 6 of the 9, an encouraging result for an omnium rider.

The second weekend in September, there was an event that I was not a direct participant in, but that I watched with keen interest.  It was the paralympic road racing world championships in Roskilde, Denmark.  A racer who I have been piloting on training rides this year was competing, took 5th in the time trial, and then went on to win the road race.  Having been part of this rider's training over the course of the year was a huge boost to my morale toward the end of a long season.

Finally, this past weekend was the elite track nationals at the Home Depot Center velodrome in Los Angeles, CA.  I had a fairly full schedule with the international omnium event on Wednesday and Thursday, scratch race on Thursday, team pursuit on Friday, and points race on Saturday.  The omnium was my real focus for the season.  Things went more or less according to plan on Wednesday, but then on Thursday I exceeded expectations by riding a 20-second PR in the 4km pursuit, placing me 3rd among the omnium riders and 4th (had I paid my $60 and signed up) for the stand-alone pursuit.  By the end of the night on Thursday, I was sitting in 8th place in the omnium, a very satisfying improvement from my 17th place finish last year.

Also, I qualified for the final in the scratch race, my first scratch race final at an elite nationals.  That was an exciting improvement over the previous years' efforts at nationals.  Then on Saturday we had the points race, where I qualified for the final fairly comfortably, and then threw down at the end of the 40-km evening ride and captured points at the 10-to-go and finishing lap points sprints.  That was one of the hardest efforts I've made in a track race, but it felt really good to go out there and leave everything I had on the track.

Here is a video showing some of the highlights from the points race.  In the closing laps, I'm the rider at the bottom of the track, being chased by a group of three riders.  Even knowing how that last lap turned out, it was kind of a nail-biter when I saw this video on Monday night.

Stay tuned for more updates from the UK and Europe.  I'm on my way!

It's that time of year...

Spring is in the air.  The grass is green.  The nights are cool and days are warm.  Wait a second, it's September!!

The other day, I was sitting at the dining table drawing up circuit board artwork for some RF filters when I looked out the window and saw a pair of squirrels hard at work, making new squirrels.

In the face of adversity, nature finds a way...  to hump on top of a fence.

Needless to say, squirrels making more squirrels on top of the fence outside the kitchen window was a bit distracting while I had serious engineering work to concentrate on.

Work and bike racing have conspired to make this a very busy summer, with blog posts being rather sparse.  I thought I would take a minute or two to share something I have been working on.

Pictured below is a test set-up for a baseband synthesizer I am developing for Holzworth Instrumentation.  The discerning viewer will notice a couple spots where I ripped parts off the demo boards and soldered in modifications.  I'm pretty sure that voids the warranty, but that is a significant part of what makes electrical engineering fun.

Electronic test equipment in the background makes for very sci-fi looking blog pictures.  However, there is no fiction going on in this picture.  It's all real!

For a bit of background; the instruments in the background are an oscilloscope (on the left with the big screen) and a spectrum analyzer (on the right with the small green CRT display).

The oscilloscope, built by Agilent Technologies (where I worked a couple years ago), measures electrical voltage as a function of time, providing the engineer with a graphical representation of how signals change over time.

The spectrum analyzer (built by HP, now Agilent Technologies) measures electrical/RF power as a function of frequency.  In other words, it analyzes the spectrum and tells the engineer where, in frequency, the power in a circuit is located.

The little red boxes attached to the circuit boards are Holzworth HX2410's, amplifiers that convert sine waves into square waves (with engineer-adjustable voltage levels!).  They are very handy bits of kit to have around the lab for clocking digital circuitry.

Happy birthday blog!

Yesterday, my blog turned one year old.  The blogger.com system keeps statistics about blog use and views, some of which I will share for this post.

First, though, I wanted to share an image I put together tonight.  It shows (approximately) where I have gone within the USA in the last year.  The last map I shared on this blog generated some heated debate on Facebook, far more discussion than all my previous posts combined had led to.  As a result, I'll likely do more with maps this next year, but for now, I'll stick to a bit of retrospective on the last 12 months.

In the above map, there is no line-type/color for November.  I was in the UK and Europe for the entire month of November 2010.  The lines coming and going from Atlanta, Georgia represent my outbound and return trips from the US to Manchester, England.

Here are a few statistics from the blogger.com dashboard and my own comments about them:

3665 page views - My first thought was about 3400 of those are me, but I set a browser cookie so visits from my computer are not counted.  Otherwise, Linux probably would not be sitting in 5th place in the operating system of viewers category.

Top 3 posts, by numbers of page views:
A bit of recap - 9-Feb-2011 - The title pretty much says it all.
First Post! - 29-Aug-2010 - Evidently, I create descriptive titles.
Germany and Monday racing - 9-Nov-2010 - This post covered my trip to Ilmenau, Germany and some Monday night track league racing at the Manchester velodrome.

Top referring site:
www.facebook.com - No other site even comes close.

Top search keywords:
"11 pack" of beer - This is interesting, but also makes me wonder, who are the people out there searching google for 11-packs of beer?  Then again, who wouldn't?

Other amusing search terms:
track karl - This one seems kind of obvious.
trackkarl - This one is pretty obvious too.
"how many engineers" chocolate - This one is less obvious.
"queue for the toilet" - The joke about a guy in Berlin catching his belt in the bathroom door evidently made its way somewhere.
4 runner crankshaft bolt - I guess I have helped someone, somewhere, (beyond my teammate) better understand how to deal with a 4-Runner crankshaft bolt.
 af on my ups tracking - I have no idea.
innovation beer pack - Sounds like somebody is up to something... good.
air compressor quick release hose - Maybe I am contributing something worthwhile here.

Top 10 countries by page views:
#10 - France - Interesting.  I'm not sure if I really know any French.
#9 - Singapore - Odd, maybe they lost their toilet?
#8 - Russia - I don't think I know any Russians, but evidently some of them like reading my blog.
#7 - South Korea - A friend from Boulder was in South Korea for some of this past year.
#6 - Canada - My aunt and uncle live in Canada, and I met some cool Canadians on my trip to the UK last year.
#5 - Iran - I'm quite sure I don't know anyone living in Iran.  Maybe they needed help fixing Toyota 4-Runners?
#4 - Netherlands - I think I'll visit the Netherlands on my next trip to Europe.
#3 - Germany - I met a handful of Germans last year, and had a wonderful time both in Ilmenau and Berlin.  If I can swing it, I'll try to make it back for a Christmas market again this year.
#2 - United Kingdom - I met lots of Brits during my fall track racing and travel adventure last year.  I'll visit again this fall for some wrenching and cheering at the masters world championships in Manchester, and then I'll be off to visit a few of the places I missed out on last year.
#1 - United States - Given my country of origin, this one makes sense...

That is all I have to say about the first year.  This morning I bought tickets for another trip to the UK and Europe, so I'm setting myself up for another round of adventures.  Until next time, keep your heads up and the rubber side down.

Where the money goes, geographically

In light of recent news about federal spending, revenue, deficits, debt, and various political candidates' ideas about how to best handle these issues, I thought it would be interesting to create another blog post.

The map shown below depicts the 50 states in the US, colored to indicate the relationship between federal taxes paid by the populations of those states and the federal spending in each state.

If one considers federal taxes an investment, each color represents, in essence, a different level of return on investment.

When television pundits or political candidates refer to "redistribution of wealth" like some Boogey-man, this map shows (for the 2005 fiscal year) where the wealth is coming from (states colored in blue and green) and where it is going (states colored in orange and red).

Hopefully this provides some food for thought for anybody contemplating or debating the US government's finances.

A bit of down time

I've been a bit slow posting updates this summer; lots of traveling, riding, racing, and a bit of work here and there has kept me plenty busy.  On the way home from work on Friday, I realized it had been a while since the last time I had a whole weekend in Boulder, with no specific plans.

How long ago was it?  I couldn't recall.  Upon returning home, I went digging through my training log and determined my last "free" weekend was March 19th and 20th.  Yikes!

This weekend I spent some time downloading pictures and video from my camera to my laptop.  Some of the media was from way back in June.  Here are a few of them:

Black Dog Road is an exit from I-35 in southern Minnesota.

Can you tell an engineer uses this table?

In July the local grocery store had a special on California-grown artichokes, so I picked up a few.  I was pleased with the arrangement of artichoke leaves in the discard bowl after eating, so took a few pictures.

This doggy looks tired.

On the way back to Colorado from a late-July and early-August trip to California, I stopped off for a night to visit my sister at UC Davis.  She was looking after a dog for the weekend.

I spent a few days in southern California, training at the Home Depot Center velodrome, preparing for US elite track cycling nationals (to be held there at the end of September).  The same weekend I was there, the 2011 CrossFit Games were held right across the street, so I checked that out too.

In the vendor area, Reebok set up some CrossFit challenges, one of which was a 250-meter rowing race.  I tried it out to see how I stack up against other CrossFit rowing enthusiasts.  I was a long way from posting the best time of the weekend, but was satisfied with a sub-41 second 250-meter effort.  The video documentation is below.

Until next time!

Winning

This week I had a chance to race twice on weeknights; a criterium here in Boulder on Wednesday evening and then track league in Colorado Springs last night (Thursday).

The criterium on Wednesday was a combined category Women/3/4/5 affair on an American football-shaped course in an industrial park a few miles north of Boulder.  I won a pair of primes during the race, and then attacked with a lap and a half to go with a buddy following my wheel.  A lap later, we were well clear of the field, and rolled through the finish taking 1st and 2nd easily.

Overall, the race was pretty slow, but it felt good to get out and race on my single road bike (this was only my 3rd single-bike road racing event of the year).  Next week, I think I'll step up and ride the Pro/1/2/3 race which promises to be longer and a lot faster than the 3/4/5 race.

Track league on Thursday was a slightly different format than usual.  Rather than the normal three races on the program, we had a sprint tournament and a points race.  I was running late, so did my warmup on the infield track, and then rode the flying 200m time trial in an 86" gear, nearly bouncing myself out of the saddle in turn three.  Before the first round, I changed into a 90" gear.

In the first round, I was matched up with a rider who was very closely matched to me in the flying 200.  He managed to jump me with a lap to go, but I was able to follow and then take a run on him going into turn three.  I took that ride by a slim margin, but enough to advance.

In the 2nd round, I was paired up with my friend and former teammate, Mike Giem.  The race played out similarly, but with Mike holding me off by about half a wheel diameter, moving him to the semi-finals and sending me to the 5th-8th final ride.

In the 5-8 final, I attacked in turn two on the first lap and opened a healthy gap into the stiff headwind on the back straight.  Danny Hiller lead the chase, but the other three riders' hesitation prevented them from receiving any draft benefit from riding behind me.  I stayed clear to take 5th place.

A 30-lap points race with sprints every five laps capped off the night.  The wind picked up, causing the tempo of the race to vary between blazing fast on the home straight and nearly stalled on the back straight.  After the first point sprint, I bridged up to the two lead riders and rode with them until the 2nd point sprint where I took maximum points.  With 20 laps remaining, the field caught us, and I sat in to recover from the solo bridging effort.  In doing so, I missed some key moves, and wound up not being in position to contest any more of the sprints.  The points from the 20-to-go sprint put me into 5th place; not the greatest result I could hope for, but ok after a hard week of racing and travel.

June adventures

As I promised last time, I've had a handful of adventures since the last blog update.

At the beginning of June, track racing season started here in Colorado.  The first Thursday night went well, with a pair of top-3 finishes.  The following Tuesday, I was back to the track for more racing, knowing I would miss out on the 2nd Thursday night.

On the morning of Wednesday, the 8th, Aaron Trent and I loaded up my car, and set off to drive from Boulder to Indianola, IA.  On Thursday, we visited with my grandparents and went for a road ride on some flooded bike paths between Indianola and Carlisle, IA.

Then on Friday morning, we packed up the car again and drove north in I-35 to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area for the 2011 Fixed Gear Classic at the National Sports Center Velodrome in Blaine, MN.  Racing began on Friday evening, with the keirin and scratch race for the men.  My legs did not respond well to the driving on Wednesday and Friday morning, so I was relieved to have a rain delay that pushed the remaining races from the session to Saturday morning.

It turned out my legs did not really begin to come around until Saturday afternoon, so the keirin, scratch, and sprint qualifier rides were a bust for me.  The sprinters who did not make the top-8 were given another ride, a 1-mile scratch race, to sort out 9th and lower places.  I went into the short scratch race with a solid plan, and was able to ride away from the other competitors.  My legs were back!

The endurance side of the program included a points race on Saturday afternoon.  I qualified comfortably in the heats, and then put myself on the scoreboard with an early attack in the final.

After the rain delay on Friday night, we were treated to nice weather and fast racing for the remainder of the weekend.

On Sunday, we raced two Madisons, a tempo race, and a handicap race.  The handicap did not go very well, and the Madisons were an exercise in torture, but the tempo race was arguably the highlight of my weekend with a powerful move to bridge to the lead group and then late attack where I broke away from the remaining field and finished clear of everyone, accumulating enough points for 7th place.

On Monday morning, Aaron and I packed up the car again and drove north-west on I-94 from Minneapolis to Fargo, ND.  My grandmother had a list of maintenance tasks around the house, which we were able to (mostly; a part for repairing my grandfather's grandfather clock is on order) complete by mid-day Tuesday.

We took in a taste of local color, going to the saloon in Abercrombie, ND for dinner on Monday night and then to the Sons of Norway lodge in Fargo for Tuesday lunch.

On Wednesday, we packed up the car again and in one long haul, drove from Fargo all the way to Boulder to conclude a week-long whirlwind racing tour of the mid-west.

On Thursday, the 16th, we drove back to Colorado Springs for more racing at the velodrome.  Aaron and I teamed up for Aaron's first official Madison race, marking a milestone in Aaron's development from paralympic time trial racer to all-around track racer.  Good stuff!

My aunt and uncle from Texas made it to the velodrome on Thursday night, so after the race we went for dinner, and then Friday morning we embarked on a weekend tour of the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  Friday saw us visit some of the Colorado Springs area tourist attractions that I had never visited, despite living in Colorado Springs for three years.  We drove to the top of Pikes Peak, visited the Miramont Castle museum in Manitou Springs, and took the official visitor tour at the US Olympic Training Center.

Then on Saturday, we headed south past Fort Carson and made our way to the Royal Gorge, where we rode the incline railroad, the gondola, the skycoaster, and walked over the highest suspension bridge.

After leaving the Royal Gorge, we drove through Salida and Buena Vista on the way to Leadville, the highest town in Colorado.  Then on Sunday morning we drove from Leadville over Independence Pass to Aspen, walked around there in the morning, ate lunch at a restaurant in Glenwood Springs, took in the sights while driving I-70 through Glenwood Canyon, stopped in Vail for a short walk-around, detoured through Breckenridge, and then made our way back to the front range and ended the day in Boulder.

After nearly two weeks away from home, I had a day to take care of logistics, and then turned around on Tuesday morning, the 21st, and made my way to Augusta, GA for paralympic road racing nationals.

Kevin, who I trained with in Wisconsin over Memorial Day weekend, and I teamed up to ride the tandem time trial and road race events at nationals.  We wound up finishing 2nd to the defending national champions, Dave and Clark, in both races.  This was a good learning experience about tandem racing, and boosted my motivation to build strength on the bike and refine my technique to become a better tandem pilot.

The road race podium at paralympic nationals; Dave and Clark (1st place) are marked men with a couple of up-and-coming rookies looking to raise the level of American tandem racing. 

For now, I'm back in Boulder, but already beginning to plot my next adventure.

The new season is upon us

It's Thursday.  It's June.  It's time for track bicycle racing season in Colorado!  The Colorado Velodrome Association summer track racing league starts tonight.  Therefore, it is time for tea to provide some pre-race caffeine.

Some PG Tips and a little light reading get me ready to race.

A month has passed since my last post.  What have I been up to?  Lots and lots.

During my trip to California at the end of April and beginning of May, I finished up the 6th and final week of CrossFit competition.  I performed the 6th workout at CrossFit Santa Clara.  It went well, with a small incremental improvement over what I did here in Boulder at the beginning of the week.

Near the end of the trip, I raced the Friday Night track event at Hellyer Velodrome in San Jose.  It was my first track racing since traveling from Manchester back to the USA, and my legs felt pretty good considering the months off the track bike.  In the 5-mile scratch race, I won Matador of the Night for being the most aggressive rider.  For being Matador, I took home a nice bottle of Chilean wine.

Upon returning to Colorado, there was a day to do laundry, pay bills, check the mail, and then turn around and head to Colorado Springs for two weeks at the Wounded Warrior Games.  I was brought in by Team Navy/Coast Guard to help out with the cycling team and pilot a tandem for a visually impaired rider, Dan Peters.

The first week we had a training camp with daily rides at the Air Force Academy and the 2nd week was the competition.  With the exception of tandem pilots who could be civilians, the athletes were all military veterans.  At the end of the week, Dan and I took gold in the tandem road race with Dan really stepping up his riding to a higher level after falling ill with bronchitis earlier in the week which took him out of a couple of the track and field events.

After the conclusion of the Wounded Warrior Games, I headed back to Boulder for some more engineering work.  Then on Friday last week, I caught the bus to DIA and flew to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for a long weekend training on the tandem with another visually impaired rider who I will race with at Paralympic road racing nationals later this month.

We put in about 145 miles on the tandem in three days and experienced all the weather that eastern Wisconsin could throw at us: sun and wind on Saturday, rain and hail on Sunday, and then breeze and heat on Monday to cap off the weekend.

Over the weekend, I finished reading Helmet for my Pillow (pictured at the top of the post next to my cup of tea), a memoir written by a US Marine who fought in the Pacific theater in World War II.  The timing for reading this book was oddly coincidental since I participated in the Wounded Warrior Games in the middle of May.  Reading a first-hand account of our country's most significant military engagement of the last century that carried a most gruesome cost in terms of lives was an interesting contrast to helping wounded veterans, many of whom have participated in a lower-intensity but already longer-running conflict that is reshaping the world for this century. 

On a lighter note, last night after work, I hopped on the bus to Denver and checked out an improv comedy show at the Bovine Metropolis.   A CrossFit friend was performing with a class of students who were capping off their studies and evolving into full-fledged improv practitioners.  Everyone beware the Great White Swordfish.  It is fast, amphibious, walks around on four legs like half a tarantula, and is being pursued by a harpoon-armed man with vocal-chameleon-like accents and mysterious organized crime connections.

With the Colorado track racing season starting up today, it's going to be a busy couple of months, so I can't make any promises about when the next blog post will come.  However, I can guarantee some interesting adventures between now and then.

2nd Criterium of the Year

On Sunday I rode my 2nd criterium event of the year in Livermore, California.  It was another combined Cat-3/Cat-4 race, so there were over 90 riders signed up and the announcer said 88 who started.

The course was roughly triangular, with 3 90-degree turns and a couple of gentle turns on the straights.  Each lap of the course was 1.2 miles, and the "back straight" had a bit of a headwind during my race.

Here is the start of the race, in perfect California springtime conditions.

 The race started off briskly, and with so many riders, I wanted to stay as far forward in the field as possible to avoid any trouble/crashes.  Early on, I created a solo move, and dangled off the front of the field for a short while.

My early move was short-lived, as one would expect with a field of nearly 90 riders.

After being caught by the pack, I maintained a position near the front of the field.

In order to protect a position near the front of the field, one must sometimes take a pull on the very front.  That takes some energy, but maintaining a position in the top 10 or so riders is worth it.

Unfortunately, there was a crash which required a rider take an ambulance ride, so the race was neutralized and the remaining riders were re-started.  Here I am, back at the start line.

Back at the start line, I joked with the motor ref (his wheel is visible on the right edge) if I would have time to call my insurance agent and change to a health insurance policy with a lower deductible before the race restarted.

Once the course was clear of emergency vehicles, we were started again, with either 5 or 6 laps to go.  There was much confusion about this, both before we were restarted, and after we rode through the start-finish area a lap after restarting.

At the re-start, I was near the back of the pack.

I moved back up to the front of the field after the restart to stay safe and keep a close eye on dangerous moves.

A lap or two after the restart, there was a prime lap, where the top rider on that lap would take home a bag of coffee or some such prize.  I wasn't terribly interested in the prime, until two riders from the same team took it and then started pulling away from the field.  At this point, I decided, it's go-time!

I bridged up to the two riders, let them know we had a sizable gap, and encouraged them to keep driving the pace.  I rotated through and all three of us worked well together.

At this point, the late breakaway was established.  Whether we could have continued to work together and held off the field is a question that will remain a mystery.  I'd give it about a 25% chance we would have stayed clear and battled it out among the three of us for the podium spots, and about a 75% chance that a few riders in the pack would bury themselves to bring us back.

This is where the probabilities in bike racing become interesting.  Assuming a flat probability distribution of winning among riders, in a race with 88 starters, each rider has about a 1.13% chance of winning.  Being in a 3-man breakaway with a 25% chance of staying away results in about an 8% chance of winning.  If the gap between the breakaway and the field becomes insurmountable, then the probability of winning goes to 33%.

While turning myself inside out to bridge up to the breakaway, I was not doing any statistical analysis of the odds of winning in a variety of different finishing scenarios.  I was simply reacting to a gut feeling that said this move was where I wanted to be.  I didn't know who the other riders in the break were, but my split-second assessment of the other two guys and my history finishing bike races in small groups told me this was a really good place for me to be.

At any rate, with a lap to go, the officials told us to neutralize because there had been another crash on the course.  Arg!!  This was a serious frustration for me, since by neutralizing, the field would catch us and then the finish would favor a rider who had been sitting in, following wheels, and saving energy rather than turning himself inside out trying to make a breakaway stick.

After neutralizing, I find it interesting to look at the elbow angles of the three of us in the breakaway compared to the riders in the field.  We have sat up while they are still in racing positions, making sure they catch us.

After the neutralization, we were re-started with two laps to go.  I had enough steam to make one move to the front, took a pull, and then was off the back for the last lap and a half.

As one of the Colorado race announcers often says, in order to win a race, you have to risk losing it.  I took my chance with the breakaway on Sunday, did most everything right, but it didn't work out like I hoped.  However, I am making progress in terms of my racing technique, so that win will be along before too long.