weekend update, january version

one of things i wanted to do in the new year was post more often to the blog. little did i know that the mca gig was going to be so time consuming, its great, but it takes a lot of the spare time i have in a day to do things. here is a little catch-up from this past weekend.

i've decided to go with the changes to the 29er frame, that is, adding a new rear brake mount and a dropout for gears. of course making the bike gear friendly, means more bike parts and new rear wheel - my addiction is so hard to cure.

stripped the rear triangle with a little Permatex Gasket Remover, which actually worked quite well for removing powder coat.

mike truelove is going to mill a new brake dropout based on this drawing i provided. the new brake mount will allow me to use the full travel of the dropout (fewer chains to change out), as well as allowing me to remove the rear wheel by simply loosening two bolts (previously i had to loosen one bolt and take the other one out completely - not a lot of fun when you need to fix a flat in a race).

diagram of the dropout

saturday tinker tim, kevinb and i snowshoed the bur oak trail. we saw a couple of potential lines that will be helpful for next year's wednesday night series and found ourselves really wishing that spring would get here soon.

sunday night was reserved for the schubertiad. it was a really cool performance that combined excellent singing and playing, poetry reading, cool pictures projected on a screen to the left (out of picture), and really interesting sound scapes mixed into the more traditional schubert lieder.

i had a hell of time trying to take an inconspicuous picture of the performance (no flash etc.)

post concert tenacious v and mrs. dr. reflect on the choices of wine sitting on a table just out of the picture

i have had an ongoing battle with electronic devices this past year. so far i am down one camera, one ipod (suffering the same fate as the cell phone), and now my cell phone. at the moment i am trying to revive my cell phone which i sent through a wash cycle. as you can see it is sitting in a bag of rice which i am using to draw the moisture out, and it seems to be working. at first nothing happened when i turned on my phone after i pulled it out of the washing machine, but after a few days i am finally able to call and receive calls. the ring tone is pretty quiet and the there is no image on the screen to speak of, well there is, but it is both backwards and really weird colours. i am going to let it sit in the rice for a few more days.

friday distractions

t was my birthday over the holidays and for a gift i received a bottle of wine from my sister-in-law who works at kenaston wine market. it was a bottle of cono sur reserva syrah and it was lovely. the cono sur winery makes some very nice bottles of wine and they have an appealing philosophy with environmental considerations. also appealing is the use of the bicycle image on their bottles, but it does not stop there, they extend it their overall philosophy as well...

"Both in life and in wine we believe in returning to bicycle basics, to those simple things you never forget."

very nice. we often buy the organic wine for our "table" wine and quite enjoy it.

on another note, the other day something triggered my memory to an album that i used to own called "the secret policeman's ball" the album contained music from an amnesty international benefit concert which also featured british comedy acts from monty python and rowan atkinson. this was one of my favourite albums at the time because it contained killer tracks by pete townshend doing solo acoustic versions of drowned and won't get fooled again; youtube is truly a great thing...

(sorry, they don't allow embedding of the video below, if you want, use the link above to see the video)