karma's a bitch though..right? karma please start acting in good ways for me i believe though it doesn't really work that way right? I can't ask for it to happen.....

                                     anyways i'm going to leave you with a link to this song..

                 Explode-Uh Huh Her

The reason I mention the 'zone of danger' is because it is a legal principle that allows a family member to recover money when their loved one suffers a horrific accident, provided you are within a 'zone of danger' to observe the terror and horror of the accident and the injuries that flow from that trauma. 

If you get hurt while bike riding, the driver of the car, bus or truck that hit you might be totally at fault for causing your accident. While it may also be true that you were in a dangerous area of roadway, that legal principle of being in a 'zone of danger' would not apply to you. Instead, you may seek compensation for your injuries for the negligence of the driver who hit you. 

However, the 'zone of danger' rule applies to someone who is with you, within sight of you; within touching distance of you who witnessed the tragedy. This legal concept allows that family member to recover money for the emotional horror and psychological injuries they may endure as a result of watching their loved one become terribly mangled and permanently injured.

WHAT IS 'FEAR OF IMPENDING DOOM'?

That is another legal concept that lawyers use to show that someone who was in an accident was able to know, in minutes, seconds or moments before the impending accident that the impact was inevitable. It is that moment in time when your life flashes before you and you want to say everything you never had a chance to say to your loved ones; when you know you may not survive; when you realize that your time has come and you may not be going home. 

Another name for 'Fear of impending doom' is known as 'pre-impact terror'. These concepts are firmly entrenched in the personal injury area of law in New York. When there has been a serious accident or even a death from an accident, the facts may support a claim for 'pre-impact terror'. What do I mean?

When an ambulance attendant arrives on the accident scene and talks with your loved one, the bicyclist who now is crushed under the wheels of a truck, and they are crying, in pain, or gasping for breath with terror-stricken eyes, those factual observations allow a personal injury lawyer in New York to fairly claim that the victim had conscious pain and suffering, and knew that their life was about to end. The victim who blurts out in gasps to the ambulance attendant "He blew through that red light...I couldn't stop..." will allow an attorney to claim the victim had a fear of impending doom prior to the accident. 

Both of these legal concepts allow a victim and their family to properly claim compensation for pain and the suffering they suffered at the hands of a negligent driver.

>took them to Trek HQ and set them up on some brand spankin new Madones.

>Flew them over to Europe to do a few training rides with Zabriskie, Hincapie, and some other dude.

>Back to the states for a full 3d bike fit and V02 max analysis at Carmichael Training.

>flight back to the stage 16 start, with full sag package the day before and during the ride, just in case

Pretty freakin sweet. They didn't really go into too much detail about how the guys trained the few weeks leading up to the ride, other than that they trained at altitude. The day of the ride, they were pretty excited.

The bigger of the two guys had lost a very visible 22 lbs during training. I was totally rooting for him becasue I know what its like to lug a spare tire up a hill. The other guy was pretty fit from the get go and the training honed him to a razors edge.

The ride profile featured 3 peaks, with varying grades, and the middle grade got progessively steeper towards the top. The bigger of the two guys ended up capping his ride at the top of peak 2. Not bad for a big dude. The other guy stomped on and actually finished only like 54 mins or something off the pace of the stage winner. That kind of rules.

The show comes on again on the 15th and the 25th. It's worth catching if you want to catch a glimpse of the Trek inner sanctum, and want to check out how they do a bike fit at Carmichael.

MEANWHILE, the climb up the gravel road from the creek as you finish Outer Loop at Chicopee still intimidates me.

I biked to work today. In the rain and the cold. I had a complete change of clothes along so I'd be dry during the day, but as 5pm drew ever closer the dread of my wet clammy biking clothes filled me. Dread for those first few minutes before you get into the ride and the exertion is building up some heat of its own, when all you can feel is cold wet cloth clinging to your skin. When I got home I went straight into the shower for about 20 minutes to pump up the temp in my extremities again.

Saw this little gem also (black bike, middle of pic):

A single speed, probably fixed gear, pursuit bars, suspension forks, parallelogram/spring suspension seatpost. Interesting stuff.

ROLL BIKES OF COLUMBUS

B1 BIKES OF COLUMBUS

Peace,

Patrick - SSD Crew

Completely cleaning a bicycle is either expensive and time consuming or knowledge intensive. Here is a cheap and fast method for cleaning your bike. This method allows you to clean the frame, gears, derailleurs, chain and wheels without taking parts off the bike.

step 1: collect tools

You will need a degreaser (I use shout the laundry cleaner), a power washer, oil (do not use wd40) and a wet dry vac.

step 2: Really dirty bike

If the bike is really dirty power wash it first. Please, be careful that you don't use a very tight/powerful setting. You want to avoid ripping the paint off of the bike.

step 3: Fairly ditry bike

Spray the degreaser on the parts of the bike that are dirity. I like to use Shout! becuase it is fairly viscous and will not easily drip off the bike.

step 4: Pressure wash bike

After waiting about ten minutes user the presure washer on the bike. You should be able to get into the parts that you can't with your fingers.

step 5: Check for cleanleness

If the bike is not clean enough for you go back to step two. If it is go to next step.

step 6: Vacume bike

Use a wet dry vac to dry off the bike.

Image Notes

1. Wet Dry vac in use during the flood of '06

step 7: Oil chain and derailleurs

Oil the chain and both deraillerus. After you have oiled the chain take a rag and wipe off chain.

Image Notes

1. Oil pivot point

2. Oil pivot point

Image Notes

1. Oil pivot point

2. Oil pivot point

3. Oil pivot point

Image Notes

1. Oil and clean off excess

step 8: Ride bike

Take your bike for a nice ride.

www.instructables.com/id/Bicycle-Cleaning

So, my blog got a new comment, which suddenly made me aware that I really had been putting off writing a new entry for a long time. I have several excuses, the primary one being school, the gigantic waste of time it is this year. Before that, I had a much better (well, more interesting anyway) excuse. I'll tell you by showing you some DO's and DON'T's of bicycle riding in a very hilly area.

Don't go close to thirty MPH downhill on a bicycle when the downhill street you're riding down empties out into a street going the other direction.

Why?

Because once you get going that fast, you cannot make a sufficient gradual turn to go along with the sudden sharp turn change. That's okay if going off the road means you'll just hit some nice flat dirt or somewhere on which you can slow to a stop on. That's defnitely NOT okay if going off the road means going into a sudden excessively steep hill covered with slippery pine needles and trees.

What should you do in that case?

Don't lightly squeeze the brakes in an attempt to slow down, even if the bike starts to slow. Especially don't brake the front tire

Why?

Because that generates A LOT of friction and heat between the brakes and the tires. Not letting off the brakes once or twice means they don't get a chance to cool off, and eventually, once they get hot enough, they stick to the tires. This means a full, sudden stop.

What happens when you hit a full sudden stop of both wheels after going almost thirty MPH?

The bike stops. You don't. Rather, you go flying forward off the bike and into somebody's gravelly driveway. In my case, judging by some injuries, I flipped off the bike, hit the ground with part of my head and my back, tumbled forward and slid on the gravelly driveway arms outstretched.

Sounds awesome! What's the problem?

Right palm skinned and injured. That's a problem. Left shoulder and back scraped. That's bad. Left elbow severely wounded, leg and hip scraped up. That's a pain. Entire left arm, including hand, losing motion and experiencing excrutiating pain. That's a bad, painful problem.

Here are some DO's I took from the experience:

DO wear a helmet while riding a bike. Helmets cost money, you may have trouble fitting one, and they look dorky. WEAR ONE ANYWAY. My head and neck took absolutely no damage, but the helmet had a bad break and needed to be replaced. I tested the helmet in the backyard, and it turns out that the force it took to break the helmet like that could be equated to a good smack with a crowbar. WEAR A HELMET.

DO make sure you have plenty of neosporin (or something like it), bandages, bandaids, anti-bacterial fluid (hydrogen peroxide is what we use), and light anti-pain pills (we used ibuprofen).

That was several weeks ago. I've gotten some nifty scars from it, and my left arm is still not working quite right.

There. That's a blog entry. I hope you enjoy it (all three of you), because you won't be seeing them as frequently as I put them up before. I created this blog to combat summer boredom. Summer's over. Now I'll try to do a monthly-at-least update like I intended in the first place. Looks like this is OCTOBER'S. I may update more than once a month, but I'm not dedicating myself to anything here.

View Full Image: Click Here
Flickr User: sibad

Back when the tour used to come through Flagstaff, crushing the city into a squirming pile of bikes and drunkards, I used to plan my year around it. This one-of-a-kind festival holds fond memories.

But aside from the cheer, beer and sparsely clad femmes, there's a larger point to the festival. New Belgium pledged itself a long time ago to promotion of biking culture as a viable alternative to our more mainstream car-culture. I commend this effort.

Here's something worth noting: There is a bicycle commuter provision written into the recently passed $700 billion bailout.

I adjusted the levels, exposure, contrast, saturation, and temperature.

Exposure information:

Shutter: 1/240

Aperture: f/3.2

Focal Length: 63mm

ISO Speed: 400

I thought I would also include the runner-up for today as well:

Come January 2009, as part of the $700 billion bail-out, those who bike to work will get a morsel of relief for their carbon neutral transportation method. Bicycle commuters will be eligible for a $20/month "tax-free reimbursement from their employers for bicycle-related expenses" which will also then be tax deductible at the end of the year. Called the Transportation Fringe Benefit to Bicycle Commuters, will this program get more commuters out of their cars and onto their bikes?

Find out more about it here.

I'm never going to be accused of cycle chic...bicycle fogeyism, perhaps! However, to keep the red flag flying, here's my contribution...a gorgeous, new, bright red Kronan that someone has decided to use as a litter bin for their pizza box...damn them! Come the revolution...

R:B

Ostensibly taken to go grocery shopping at the coop, but really just to take it out for a spin, I think... it doesn't look very full.

If you read the popular press these days, you will learn that cyclists are a menace in pedestrianised areas, that they don't use their bells, that they cycle too close to people, that they cycle too fast, that they appear out of nowhere. If you unquestioningly take the opinion pages of the papers as gospel truth, you may well believe that it's a wonder that there aren't horrific casualties every single day that pedestrians and cyclists go near each other, I guess it's a miracle that there are only a handful of cyclist on pedestrian deaths/serious injuries every year. We must have been VERY LUCKY to get away with it!

What's curious about Center Parcs is that cyclists and pedestrians mix completely and thoroughly, yet I heard not one bad word exchanged betwixt the two camps. Even though cyclists were weaving through pedestrians strung out over the routes. Even though there were queues to get through gates. Even though at various times cyclists and pedestrians would have to give way to one another in an environment that was not heavily regulated. The difference is in the expectation, you come to Center Parcs knowing full well that there will be shared-use paths with bikes. There are few clear definitions like 'pavement' and 'road', so somehow cyclists are prepared to meet with pedestrians and vise-versa.

It rained a lot on the first day, which I actually found quite pleasant in the forest. I was reminded of my favourite sequence in the film My Neighbor Totoro, where the Totoro is delighted by the sound of the rain dripping from the trees onto his borrowed umbrella. To live amongst trees is a special thing indeed.

Some pics:

[gallery]

Lucy took her Diamondback MTB and I took my Brompton, but when it comes to being on the water, you need a specialist machine:

It was a surprisingly smooth ride - moving downwind anyway.

Just make sure ya ride safe. Two of my housemates were in bike accidents last month. One of them (@SuperBR on twitter) broke his shoulder and the other hurt his knee. Now admittedly, SuperBR was fucking blackout whasted when he fell off his bike. But the other guy only had a couple beers in him. So yeah. Biking drunk. Not such a good idea. But better than a car!

superBR poses with his newly broken shoulder
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The only time I've fallen off a bike since about 18 years ago, by the way, was a few months ago when I was shithouse, Holy-Fuck-Batman wasted and on my way home. : > But I'm good at falling and managed to get away unharmed after directing a few swears at the empty night.

We walked to the nearest street light and got to work. The piece of glass was still sticking out of my tire, so the first time around I didn't even pul the tire all the way of the rim. I just removed it far enough to access the cut. We used a Park Tool glueless patch. We could still catch up with the peleton, we don't need no stupid support car! Popped the wheel back on, repacked the bag, and as soon as there was no traffic we could HEAR the tube still leaking.

So, off comes the wheel AGAIN. This time I dug deeper into the regions of my bookbag, and retrieved a patch kit that uses glue. Took the tube all the way out this time. Since I had dug into the deep regions, I had found my C02 pump that doubles as a shorty hand pump, so we were able to give the tube some air and make sure we found all the holes. There were about 4 little punctures all within a quarter inch of one another. So we picked the biggest patch and did the install. Got it all pumped up and re-installed, and once again, when traffic died down, we could hear the air escaping.

UGH. Oh well, we were halfway there so we decided to walk the rest of the way and bank on one of the bikey people having a spare tube.

about a mile of 2 later we finally reached the Doo Gallery. The 10pm showing had already started so we made our way in and soaked up some of the free beer. It was a pretty good turnout, the main gallery space filled up  with folks to check out the film. As is par for the course when you get drinking bikey people and fixed gear footage together, the crowd was very vocal. Macaframa was pretty good. Of course there was lots of awesome tricks footage, but there was also a ton of folks just riding long straight and fast. If you are a non-fixed rider, you would probably find these portions very boring...but to me there was something kind of neat about those guys having such long extended runs at HIGH speed thru city traffic. I think the film makers were trying to capture something about the whole -zen of fixed gear- or something with those long portions of folks just pedaling..I dnno. Maybe they just wanted to build suspense so when someone did a trick it had much more impact. Overall it was worth going, 50% for the movie and 50% to kick it with the bikey people.

Sure enough, Graham asked someone for a tube, who asked someone for a tube, and a good samaritan hooked me up. May your rides be all downhill with no cars in your way good sir.

We actually milled about and stuck it through with like 5 other people for the second showing. I was hoping since the crowd was so thin that I would be a lock for winning the No-Brakes shirt raffle, but since so many people had left they didn't do a second drawing. I only missed winning by one number the first time.

Made it home without flatting

Morning wise was a cyclo-dash into downtown Machida to frustrate my Nihongo Sensei with my inability to remember even the most simple tenents of the Japanese language. A fine way to start the day. The sun reflecting serenely off of my basket wasnt enough to stop me screeching to a stop to record more birdlife.

Im a fan of ducks & that big chap is a boon to photograph, but those bloody white things... Turn around you b&$*%<d! Yeah... nah.

Machida has no shortage of natty little sculptures about the streets (can you imagine that? A city with a shortage of natty little sculptures? Sure - you could live there, but would that really be living?) and thisn' is outside the library. Im pretty sure that it relates to readin' n' thinkin' n' stuff.

Chekkit Holmes! You can see my foot in the window reflection! Sweeet.

I think Stretch here was created to draw attention to the plight of those who cannot sit down because a book has been carelessly left on their chair. The many. The forgotten. Not in Machida!

Nice work Stretch! No Books On Chairs By 2010!

My Nihongo school is further down the the street. The pink building, if you must know. Dont laugh. No - youre a manus.

Urban grittiness. It was that time of the morning.

Try to duck as she might, she couldnt avoid being blogged. Enjoy the small victories, they said. See the world, they said. Hmm... black bike, black clothing... Could she be the Cyclist of Darkness?

Man - that damn book is still on the chair. There will be no sitting today folks. Keep the faith Stretch!

Handy bicycle park. Free for the first hour dont you know. Personally, my basket jitensha is parked under cover with two elderley attendants. 100y all day. Flash as.

I thought Id chop off the rest of this shops' name, so you could guess what it is. Interactive!

I could have turned up early for my Nihongo class and done some extra study, but this snazzy mural led me down this alley, as so many have done before...

That'd be Rick's then.

No time for an haircut. Besides, no hair...

If they ride home, won't their new perm get messed up? Bikes and 80's hair fashion - at odds again...

9.30am and the amusement arcade is already popular with people who dont own cars.

Homey dont need no damn car - he's winning the Wangan Expressway superuuu baaateruuu! Im just jealous, because I havent played thisn' yet. I did win a touge battle on Initial-D's Mt Akina (in a MR2 - choosing cars is difficult when the screen is full of crazytalk), where I took the lead in the Consecutive Hairpins, but the machine wanted another 100 yen to take on Kenji in his S13. So that's the secret to the Japanese boom economy of the 1980s. And if youre not a car geek you probably have no idea what Im on about. Mwwaa ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!

It's not Fujiwara Tofu, but almost. Fujiwara Tofu ja arimasen deshita kedo daijobu. Who needs classes?! Ok - that Nihongo sentence doesnt quite make sense, but it looks flash. To me.

Ive just noticed that the dude on the cycle is posing! Glad I thanked him - just wasnt sure what for at the time.

If this isnt going to encourage you to walk in and partake of their crumbed chicken products, then nothing is.

This shot was next on my memory card, so I'd successfully (!) finished my Nihongo lesson, jitensha'd home, eaten lunch & finished my latest Zombie Panda. Of Doom!

Leaving the basketbike at the homestead me'n th'missus set off on a sampo. When I saw this sizeable individual, I exclaimed "Oh golly heck, look at this large arachnid!", or something boringly similar.

Our feathered buddy seems unconcerned about the approaching Koy of Doom. But then he aint no wuss pidgeon.

The local retailers started going Halloween crazy in mid September. Including that nutty pet store. Usually I think that pet clothing is as crap as the Japanese football teams' performance against a woeful UAE side earlier this week, but this was funnier than the Japanese football teams crapness at the Olympics. The smaller chap belongs to the coffee vendor & is madder than I was after the Japanese football team fell on the ground and started crying against  a rubbish Uruguay a month or so ago. They did beat Australia recently however, which in hindsight is quite amusing.

Crackups bro.

These two are watching a little floormop of a dog barking like a mad thing at the barista. Which is probably a bit unfair as his coffee is much better than the other local options. And you can get a whiskey at 9am. If youre into that sort of thing...

Barky the noise beast.

Cant seem to stay away from this pet store. Must be the catnip.

The bung focus is my fault, but check out old crazyeye. If I had a spare 3 grand, I'd take 'er home to scare the old woman across the way who sweeps the road at 5.30am.

Heh. Soft porn for car geeks.

Wo ho ho! Easy there missy!

There are actually even more photos on my flickr site. Here's the link if you have nothing better to do. Especially if the boss is paying. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pigsofdarkness/sets/72157607872899836/