Oh Upstairs Neighbor

Finally all your ruckus and late night shenanigans are being paid for in the form of me stealing your internet. Oh, what goes around comes around my friend and with this soiled Berber carpet as my witness I pledge I will milk this cow for as long is it keeps letting me touch its tits.

Although this last week has been full of stuff its just a taste compared to these next two. Finals approach and I won't go as far to say that I want this term to be done, rather that I've learned quite a bit and would like to offset that with a week of shenanigans; namely spring break.

Also I say shenanigans but half of that time is probably just going to be dedicated to working at the factory.

Collegiate cycling starts in two weeks. Different life perspective this year round but I'm still excited.

Writing and Writing

If I ever get this screen play sounding coherent I'll be incredibly thankful. I've started actively writing again and its a lot harder than it looks. Fortunately I've already got a big picture idea already in my head, I just have to get to place where when I explain that picture to people, they'll be in a place to understand it. I got the idea from this book called Einstein's Dreams. Really well done, and I enjoy the concept of time it tries to explain. We all sort of take for granted that time is linear, but what if that wasn't the case. What if things were non-sequential, and surreal, but still exuded a powerful feeling.

I suppose that's what I'm trying to create.

Ideas:

- A series of stories moving toward one moment
- A road story but not identical to Garden State.
- A feeling as if it were written by Charlie Kaufman.

I wish I had an identical twin to bounce ideas off of.

Handsome

This last week has been a firestorm of events. Punches coming at me left and right, but the good news is they were all good punches, similar, if not equal to the Hawaiian variety.

I could list out each day and make some Venn diagrams describing my week but instead here's the abbreviated list in no particular order:

- Finished school for this term, and already got pretty good grades. Hopefully with another "A" coming my way if my teacher finds it in her amazing, forgiving soul to not punish me for turning in part of my final in late

- Created an acting resume which I subsequently turned in to a production agency and ACTUALLY got a call back for an audition. I have no idea what is going to happen but I would wager that I'm probably going to prepare exactly the same way that I did to create the resume; by putting "how to prepare for an audition" into Google. Praise the internet.

- Got to hang out with my good buddy Boone who just got back from touring with Portugal. The Man. Some very interesting music from that neck of the woods and I'm always curious what kind of crazy John Gourley is going to shoot out, probably in the form of a cherub like falsetto. (TWSS)

- I finally got to print a version of my "WHY?" poster, something I've been meaning to do for months now. You can thank Kayleigh, my roommate, for that one. If there's something I don't feel shame for, its using PNCA's screen printing ink for my own personal gain.

- #3. Maybe two people might get this reference. Lucky for me none of them read this.

Crazy week with guaranteed more crazy to come. ( I think )


Danny

Pissing Rain

I just thought I'd get that out of the way considering it would inevitably come up in the posting. For the record it rained from approximately "all morning" to "most of the afternoon", so yeah.

My return to 'cross occurs tomorrow, and when I say return I mean I took a week off last week and I may/may not be able to keep up. I strive for a lack of ambiguity in my race predictions and from what I've calculated, the previous sentence seems to be a mostly accurate summary of how I could perform.

Mostly


Danny?

Culture going wireless

If I've learned anything over the past year its that people obsessively cling to things, whether it be people, pass times, what have you, and in conjuncture cyclists are no exception to this rule, and in many cases the outliers we all hear about. Case in point; my own personal flow chart on some of the various divisions of the sport.

Fixed Geared Culture:
njs culture , track culture, city fixed gear culture , riser handle bar culture, 144bcd culture

Road Culture:
Campy/Shimano/Sram culture/obsession, century culture, STP culture
Cross Culture:
Embrocation Culture, Pain/Nihilistic Culture, Winter Culture

Touring Culture:
Riding long distances and watching pretty sunset culture... the list continues.


It seems for whatever discipline people settle on there's the corresponding culture, and subculture that go along with said culture and while I have no real problem against any of this I'm curious to see where this particular innovation lands...

http://www.competitivecyclist.com/road-bikes/product-road-bike-root-category/2009-shimano-dura-ace-di2-st-7970-sti-levers-5957.2333.0.NONAV.html

Yes, Shimano has apparently perfected that which can sometimes be the most annoying thing on a bicycle, and subsequently the reason why many ride fixed to begin with, besides the culture side of it anyway...

NO MORE CABLES! Shifting cables that is but don't trust my word, competitive cyclist has already beat me to it...



For all the chatter about electronic shifting replacing mechanical, the place where people will love it or hate it is at the shift lever. Shimano rightly lavished plenty of attention when they designed the Dura Ace Di2 Dual Control levers.

In order for the Di2 levers to work at shifting your bike, they must be used in conjunction with the Di2 front derailleur, rear derailleur, battery pack, and wiring kit.

The most obvious advantage to going electronic is the fact that the cable routing doesn't add friction to the system. No cables = no friction. Add to that the system is fast. Really fast. Faster than downtube shifting. 30% faster than shifting on mechanical Shimano Dura Ace 7900. Better still, the shifting feel is much lighter. You can do it when you're tired. You can do it with "weak" fingers. You don't have to move your wrists or forearm.

Unlike mechanical Dura Ace, the Di2 shift lever blade doesn't move inward. Instead there are two paddles behind the unidirectional carbon-fiber lever blade. The one closer to the handlebar still does the traditional shifting with the spring (aka onto smaller cogs in the rear, onto bigger in the front), and the one further does the traditional shifting against the spring (aka onto taller cogs in back onto smaller in front). They each have 2mm of travel. Each push results in one shift. Though if you're coasting, you can "pre-shift" any number of gears, and the system will take up the shifting when you start pedaling.

I'll be keeping my eyes open for any following "cable culture" to emerge from the dust that is Dura Ace Di2 but I'm not sure where exactly it will go in my little flow chart, or if it should be there in the first place.

Cody

There's a fragility in opinion that I think I no longer can say that I am immune to.


It was a feeling a haven't truly encountered for some time; true objective sadness. Yesterday when I was talking to my father I learned that one of my families three dogs was diagnosed with liver cancer and that it had already spread to his lungs terminally. At first I didn't really know what to say, and truthfully there wasn't much to be said.

He received the shot today sometime in the afternoon not a day after my knowledge

He had done nothing to anyone, at times he could be yappy like any other small dog, and of course sometimes that yappiness transcended into a full scale hate factor where I was the one wishing death, but given the opportunity to strap him down to a table and give him the lethal injection would I? Absolutely not; and here, all of a sudden, something completely beyond my power does, in such a short span of time that it throws me into shock, almost like a joke. A fatal infallible truth; and now he's gone.

It was the first time I've heard my father cry in a long time. As a kid I was very lucky, both of parents despite their eccentricities had a firm grasp on reality and were seldom brought to tears; brought to vulnerability, and despite this I hear the sniffling of my mother over the phone, and the hushed crying of my father in the background.

No one is an island. I thought I was beyond emotion, and yet all it took was the unmitigated pattern of truth and fate. I'm not a religious person but I do wish a peace upon my family, and a peacefulness in the dog that I now recognize to be good.


Danny

Craigslist is...

I came up with plenty of adjectives to try to finish that previous statement, really though, the only thing I've learned about Craigslist, is that when you give people a foot, they generally want a mile.

The housing search soon comes to close. Its very possible that I might find myself either living way out by interstate or relatively close in near Belmont. My biggest concern at this point is finding tubs to put all my shit in, so overall things are not that bad.

While I can't quite put my finger on it, I do think the days are getting slightly longer
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/aa_pap.pl

Which is always encouraging

Danny

I've got back into the swing!

Winter break is know weeks behind me and I think I can say that despite all the sidetracking that I do participate in, there is now some sort of strange pattern to my daily living.

Good things that have happened:
- I'm taking twenty credits this terms at PSU, so I never can say "I'm not busy", or "I don't have homework, ", or something to that extent. And yes, this is indeed a good thing despite what some may say.
- PSU cycling has been interesting to say the least. I'm going on weekend rides, in addition to training every day in some form or another. Again, sometimes difficult but a good thing.
- Its not raining, point made.
- I'm eating more, or, I'm not going into muscle depletion because I'm riding more than I'm eating.

Not as good things that have happened:
- My landlord is evicting me and my three roommates on the grounds that " he needed to live there to fix everything that was broken ". To his credit many things were broken, ( i.e the fuses, outlets, dishwasher, heating system, etc ), and because of his own lack of responsibility, ( not fixing these things one at time months ago when we asked him ), we are now mostly homeless. SO if anyone has a room/closet ( 8*8 will work,) that they are not using, I'd love to rent it!
- Its cold. No surprise but its to be expected.


Belated New Years Resolutions that I forgot about:
- Go on a ride with every single Portland Based Cycling Team
- Eat more
- Successfully write a song with a vocoder. (Maybe)
- Be more successful than I was last year

The last is the same resolution Akon has, although I'm sure his is much more linked with rap music production.


Danny

This year in racing

Christmas is fast approaching and now with the Portland Cyclocross season truly at an end I thought it might be a good idea to recap on my accomplishments, where I could improve; one of those compliment sandwiches that I've heard so much about.

Overall racing was good and considering this was my first year I think I did an alright job.

Track:

Starting out on the track is a nice way to get into biking. Theoretically track racing is probably the last type of bicycle racing one would try, after stints with road and maybe cross, but it is Portland and with all the fixed gears everywhere already, one can't help but think what they are actually designed for. I got 3rd as a cat 5 over all in the track bar, so I can't complain too much. Goals for next year: less emphasis on the track with better quality than quantity. I tired myself out so bad over the summer doing races every week, I need to eat alot more next time and make sure I don't destroy myself. Goal: try to be a cat 4

Road/Criterium:

Didn't really get to do any road, but raced a couple of the popular crit races. Crits are mostly fun with a fair amount of pain. I only hope I can maybe me a cat 4 so my field can be bigger. We'll just have to wait and see.

Cross:

I really enjoyed cyclocross. The cross crusade was a great compilation of races and I can see why its so popular in Oregon, not to mention it just hurt less to race it. Great way to stay fit in the winter, and if I had an emphasis this would be it.

I guess thats it?

Cross thus far

After getting back from Astoria, it dawned on me that the Crusade is now more than halfway over. I have seen some good improvement and I was really happy that I was able to scrape a good finish on Sunday considering the circumstance, what with falling and knocking the wind out of me. The weather indicates a change to the wetter side of things soon which means Barton could be muddy, so far only Alpenrose was rainy but that could change soon enough.

SO, a goal... hoping to reach the top of the C's maybe, possibly, maybe not possibly? I'll be out there doing my damnedist to try, its sure worth a shot.

PSU has treated me well thus far, they all seem like a great bunch of people from a bunch of different backgrounds. There's something humbling about seeing awesome racers from teams like Ironclad, Veloshop, and even The Gentle Lovers, all converging on one plane of racing. I always stress out about training but but I hope I can have some fun on some road rides later this week.

Just have to let go of the past sometimes and keep moving forward.