April 2012 – Page 2 – CanooterValve

Arriving in Portland

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Apr 132012

I made it here. After 2500 miles, slipping into Oregon from Idaho was pretty uneventful. In fact, a semi blocked the “Welcome to Oregon” sign, so I shot this instead.

I’m proud of myself for staying calmly seated at the first gas station in Oregon. Still weird. Going to take some time to get used to people pumping my gas, along with the whole “entire new life” thing, but at least the scenery made it tough to be concerned about anything.

Some fifty miles into Oregon, I remembered why I’m here. The hills and mountains started and just kept spreading out and becoming more amazing. Thanks to a fire alarm at the Sleep Inn in Boise, I hadn’t slept much the night before, and of course I’m a little jangled to begin with this trip, but the majesty of these was downright breathtaking. And it just kept on like that until I started up into the bigger mountains, and the trees started to appear.

After a long stretch of flat and dry land I picked up the river and followed it into the Hood River area, home of the Multnoham Falls shown at the top.

Now comes a long process of getting my bearings and figuring out how to live in Portland. Having brought a whole bunch of bikes and parts, but somehow no little, blinky tail light, I’m not off to a good start, but there’s enough coffee here to help me figure everything out.

Roadbrain

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Apr 122012

It was brought to my attention that yesterday’s post was riddled with errors–both silly typos and more troubling, massive slabs of drooling stupidity. I’ve since edited the post, because the only thing worse that doing a lousy job is being content with it, but the sheer extent of what I screwed up made me wonder what the hell was wrong with me. After a little research, here’s what I think it was.

The Pittsburgh to Portland drive has been roughing me up, but Tuesday’s drive from Annawan, Illinois to Laramie, Wyoming knocked the living shit out of me. At just under 900-miles and something like fifteen hours, I’m pretty sure that’s the longest one-day drive I’ve done, and I’m only now realizing how much it cooked me. Definitely looking forward to finally seeing Portland.

Wednesday’s drive was 668-miles, definitely easier than the Tuesday slog, though deserts are no fun on long drives. Some of the credit goes to taking my time before getting on the road this morning, including the safest shower I’ve ever taken. When it comes to shower safety, I have to hand it to the Comfort Inn in Laramie. Anyone capable of falling in this shower really had to work at it.

I’ve finally gotten my morning bike installation ritual down pretty well. This shot also showcases my custom dry-erase board panel, which replaced the rear passenger window.

Everything was going pretty well until the weather started turning ugly and I hit this stretch of road descending toward Ogden.

The wind on this road–which is a genuine long-ass, steep and winding mountain descent–was so weirdly violent that I had to keep pressure on the accelerator just to keep he car moving down the mountain. Even at very steep sections, the drag was so extreme that I could’t put the car in neutral and coast (I know because I tried). It was one of the most bizarre driving experiences of my life.

Anyway, about 2200 miles in since I left home on Monday. Tomorrow should be a beautiful drive, and the shortest one so far.

The State I’m In

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Apr 112012

At some point yesterday, I became convinced Nebraska wasn’t a place so much as a mental condition I was experiencing. Like most of my mental problems, I was determined to ignore this one until it went away.

It didn’t, really. In fact, I think it got worse. I’m pretty sure I was seeing signs for Godfather’s Pizza, the chain founded by once-presidential candidate and always-disturbing, Herman Cain. We don’t have Godfather’s Pizza in Pittsburgh, and I’d never encountered any signs of the chain in any of my travels anywhere before. Yesterday I realized that the only logical place for me to finally find evidence of it was Nebraska. The last few hundred miles of the state were pretty much the driving equivalent of watching that creepy Herman Cain slow-smile commercial. In even slower slow-motion.

I told myself I would not try to make it into Wyoming.

Once in Wyoming, I received something I’d not had the entire trip: a tailwind. It was suddenly quiet and a little eerie. After 1500 miles, the winds had finally quit leaning on my windshield and decided to help. At first I figured Herman Cain Nebraska hallucinations had broken me, and I was headed in the wrong direction, but clearly I was still headed west.

Wyoming should really have a “welcome” sign that reads: “Wyoming: Now Harden the Fuck Up.” Literally, the minute you cross the line, the road goes to total shit–some sort of undulating slabs of pavement thing that, in a full-loaded Subaru with five bikes just on the outside, is extremely unpleasant to hit at 80-miles an hour. If Nebraska had toyed with my mind, Wyoming was more interested in wrecking my car.

Trip Advisor showed me a ton of places to stay in Cheyenne, so I figured I’d tough it out the sixty or so miles there, after deciding on a nice looking virtual hotel with great rates and safe-looking parking. Apps are so great. The hotel never showed up on any road signs, though, and you realize you’re past Cheyenne when you’re climbing a mountain in total darkness with absolutely no signs of life, save for the random headlights that seem to be headed toward you. Apparently there are roads that run along the highway at odd angles. I may never know what the mountain just west of Cheyenne looks like, but it was a unique experience to encounter very late at night after something like eight hundred miles of driving.

I ended up in Laramie, which I like a lot. There aren’t many Old West towns with multiple sushi and vegan places, but the guest directory at the Comfort Inn here suggests Laramie is one. Applebee’s was still open and semi-raucous, even, with hip-hop pumping through the whole building.

I wrapped up the day eating a burger and catching up on some work, while the Applebee’s speakers were a bumpin’. Eyes on Idaho. Looking forward to some forests again. Time to load up.

My Clown Car

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Apr 102012

At some point the really nice guy checking me into the hotel did ask how many there were, and if I did something with bicycles for a living.

On the Road

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Apr 092012

Going to miss this little mountain. And not off to a very good start.

That’s the hole a Jones bike leaves when it comes through your side window 30 miles from home on the 2700 mile trip. My once valiant Subaru factory rack is now past tense.

Pin It

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Apr 062012

I still haven’t decided if posts next week will be brief and inscrutable, or just nonexistent. Either way I’ll be driving across the country, probably recklessly snapping photos of anything even remotely interesting that I pass on the highway. (Actually, I think my mom reads this, so what I’ll actually be doing is signalling, pulling off to the side of the road, making sure my doors are locked, then snapping photos.)

But I’ll probably end up with more photos than text or time in which to wax faux-poetic. Fortunately, my invitation to Pinterest has just been accepted!

I like this new trend of “invite” exclusivity when it comes to new social networks. Google+ and Spotify both worked this well. Sometimes, as in the case with Google+, one finally gains access to the ultra-exclusive party only to find a few guys playing Parcheesi and eating cheese puffs behind all that mysterious inaccessibility. Other times, as is my current situation with Pinterest, one walks into a scene that’s a little scary, and tricky to nail down–like gaining entrance to one of those wealthy-people parties where everyone’s wearing those creepy Venetian beaked bird masks, or visiting Florida.

Today was only my second visit as an actual member, and I’ve begun to actually acclimate and process the experience. As a kind of less-then-helpful guide to those of you still standing outside the club scrunching your cleavage together and throwing come-hithers at the digital bouncer, here’s my unpractical advice for maximizing your first minutes up in the club.

You’d better like stuff wrapped in bacon. Seriously, even if your initial configuration includes no foodies or food-related stuff, you will see things wrapped in bacon.
There are a lot of pants. Pinterest is all about fashion, and if you initially went toward more of a “Chuck Norris” and monster truck flavor with your interests, Pinterest will default to showing you a lot of pants.
These pants are apparently nice.
Only hipster bicycles exist in Pinterest. The bikes you do see are beautiful and artisanal and all, but so far, you don’t see a lot of jack drive DH bikes. Still, it is sort of interesting to see what people who mostly like to look at pants look for in a bicycle.
Anything you can photograph is art. A friend of mine once took one of those little label maker guns–the kind that spit out the little embossed letters–to completely label the gun itself with various descriptions like “sticky labeler,” and “label-o-matic” and that seemed like maybe the contextual heir-apparent to Warhol’s Pop Art, but these days anything photographed is automatically considered pretty profound. Dress on a scarecrow. Linoleum. Discarded doll at a junk yard. Pinterest is the context you need to make photos of your dog dressed as Darth Vader seem profound.
Guys are supposed to like cars. Somewhere in the bowels of Pinterest is an algorithm that parses content into “make-up/hair” and “sports cars.” I’m normally a motorhead, but the most commonly displayed vanity shots of cars on Pinterest all seem to be taken by someone who isn’t sure what a car is. I’m sure this will get way better as I add more people I know, and I’m desperately grateful to my friend Michael for peppering the pins I’m seeing so far with some unique vehicles, but I think I’d rather see more make-up and hairstyles than the default stuff floating around Pinterest in the “cars” category.
Even after dedicating more than half your life to bicycles, searching “bike” on Pinterest will make you wonder if you even like them.

Yes, a personalized concept “Matilda” bike with an “l” seatpost that doesn’t attach to any other part of the frame, but rather floats in photoshopped space is, indeed, an “amazing idea” because, “No one could steal your bike.”

So far, one really positive thing I have found about Pinterest is that it will help you organize the things that matter to you, and, in doing so, teach you a lot about yourself. What I learned about myself so far is that I’m not really that into pictures of things.

Won’t stop me from inflicting as many as possible on you, though. Monday’s first road trip photos should feature photo locales as exotic as Ohio. Time to pack up the car.

Build Your Own Overlord

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Apr 052012

Within three years, any five year-old will be able to design and make a robot like this, designed specifically to rip the heads off Barbie dolls.

I have a confession to make: I am the Google+ user. You knew it had to be somebody, and thought it might even be someone you knew, and turns out, I’m that guy.

In my defense, I don’t use it in anything like a “social” way (that’d be like talking to yourself on the subway). When I see something of interest on the internets, I send it to my own private stream at Google+, like taking a note. It makes me feel hip because I’m using The Cloud.

But it’s mostly just me on there, along with some snake oil salesmen blathering about how to use Google+ for your business, and Google employees like former CEO and current Chief-“Why the Fuck are You Suing/Investigating Us Now, Too?”-Ambassador of Non-evil, Eric Schmidt.

As I do anyone whose posts I can follow, I consider Eric a close personal friend, and today he let me know about something really interesting.

The end of humanity.

More specifically, the really cool capitalistic side of it. Here’s what Eric sent to me:

An amazing project from MIT, Harvard and Penn aims to make print-on-demand robots a reality for the average person by the end of the decade. This is what the future will look like.”

And then this link to MIT’s site. To summarize, MIT is spearheading a project to develop “a desktop technology that would make it possible for the average person to design, customize and print a specialized robot in a matter of hours.” Project leader and principal investigator MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Professor Daniela Rus, is quoted as saying, “We believe that it has the potential to transform manufacturing and to democratize access to robots.” According to the MIT article:

Researchers hope to create a platform that would allow an individual to identify a household problem that needs assistance; then head to a local printing store to select a blueprint, from a library of robotic designs; and then customize an easy-to-use robotic device that could solve the problem. Within 24 hours, the robot would be printed, assembled, fully programmed and ready for action.”

Yes, we’ll be able to “print” our own robots, designed to do what we want them to do.

Of course this means we’re all going to die, but, admit it, this is so much cooler than the Matrix movie bullshit way you thought robots would end up killing us all.

Thomson Titanium Handlebar

In less grim manufacturing news, I hope I get to see more of Thomson’s suddenly expanding line of products. Bikerumor.com mentioned these again today, and what appears to be the reality of some new Thomson components is pretty exciting stuff. Like a lot of people searching for bolt on and forget bike parts, I’ve been a fan of Thomson stuff for a whole bunch of years. It’s sort of wonderful beyond words to see them potentially expanding not only their level of technology (dropper seatposts!), but materials (carbon road bar!). And they’re going to try to keep production in house as completely as possible? This might be the first shots in a revolution of genuine high-quality bike parts that don’t look like they came out of the same factory making Gummi Bears and wall clocks for Wal-Mart.

I just hope the insta-bots let me live long enough to see it.

Junk Police Now Targeting Women

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Apr 042012

Normally, I find myself on the side of science when it comes to most debates. I not only believe global warming is real and the result of human activity, for instance, but I even know the names and corporate titles of a few of the humans directly involved. Sure, there are downsides. I always have to take people’s word for it that Jesus is appearing to them on their toast or their dog’s asses, and maybe watching “Finding Bigfoot” would be more fulfilling if I thought it was a show about something other than lonely men spending time between Comic-Cons outdoors.

http://youtu.be/4aHvk00sJ2s

When it comes to the delicate subject of bicycles and genitalia, though, I can’t help but find myself at odds with the pocket protector crowd. First, there was the widespread panic among every supersized, red-blooded American male with an old Huffy hanging unused in his garage that any means of conveyance that didn’t involve fossil fuel was going to render his penis slightly more useless than it was already, and now it’s the ladies’ turn. The New York Times is citing a study of 48 frequent cyclists conducted at Yale in 2006 that found the female cyclists have “less genital sensation” than a control group of female runners.

In the latest study, the Yale researchers tried to determine whether there are specific factors that influence soreness and numbness among female riders. Forty-eight women took part in the study, each a consistent rider who cycled a minimum of 10 miles a week, but typically much more.

The women took their personal bikes and saddles into the lab. The researchers mounted the bikes on a stationary machine, and had the riders position their seats and handlebars according to their preference. As the women pedaled, they reported whether they felt soreness, numbness or tingling as a result of sitting on the bike seat, and a device was used to measure sensation in the pelvic floor.”

I trust scientists and all, but I do think a follow-up study that measures the effect of “a device used to measure sensation in the pelvic floor” on a woman’s overall well-being might be in order.

While I don’t doubt there’s a correlation between sitting on a bike for hours and “environmental changes,” what concerns me is that an uneducated public traditionally uses this as yet another excuse not to ride a bike more often. And that’s infuriating. Of the many things affecting women’s sexual health and overall well-being right now (Rick Santorum, men who watched “Jersey Shore,” etc.), riding a bike can’t even be seriously included in the same list. Seems I’m not alone in questioning the overall usefulness of the article, though at least the world of science has given saddle manufacturers their next marketing campaign.

I’m the textbook definition of “biased” here, but given the overall physical, mental, and emotional health of women who ride bicycles versus women who, say, immediately eat a Big Mac any time the genital-despoiling urge to ride a bike pops into their heads, I’m betting the bicycle riders are healthier and more satisfied overall people.

You know what is dangerous about bicycles, though? Evading the police on them. I have no idea if this is possible or real, but, seriously, is there any way European cyclists don’t embarrass home-grown American attempts at cycling stupidity?

http://youtu.be/ze9IOtK1-RU

Maybe cycling sometimes impedes blood flow to the head.

Fence Painting 101

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Apr 032012

Bike shops all around America are sitting on a potentially huge money making opportunity, and it’s something they’re actually paying for right now. Following news that the U.S. government’s GSA agency spent over $820,000 in tax-payer funds on a lavish conference in Las Vegas that included a mind-reader, a clown and a $75,000 team building exercise assembling bicycles, I was left wondering two things.

First, what the hell is the GSA? From what I can gather, the General Services Administration is the division of the U.S. government that helps other agencies make smart purchases–particularly when it comes to things like conferences. Well, that makes sense then. Apparently the GSA clips coupons on office chairs and teaches less frugal agencies money saving tips, like hiring outside contractors to help plan your party in Vegas, even though your agency has people who do that sort of thing for a living. As a quick reminder, this is what it looks like when Ron Paul laughs:

Gruesome. Thanks a lot, GSA.

Second, and more relevant to my point, who sold these tools unassembled bicycles for $75,000? Some further research suggested 24 bicycles were involved (which were later donated to the Boys and Girls Club). My calculator says that’s $3125 per bike for bikes that were apparently suitable to then donate to children. This would either suggest there are kids at one or two Boys and Girls Club locations currently doing some playground derby on a carbon frame with Ultegra components, or that the clowns at the GSA spent over $3k on bikes with a street value of less than $500 (probably less than $300) and they had to do the assembly.

Bike shops of America: why the hell haven’t we thought of this sooner? Instead of paying for bike techs to properly build the bikes you sell to customers, in today’s DIY culture, why not charge ten times more for the customer to have the honor of actually assembling his or her own bike?

Imagine what else we could do with this! The money making opportunities you’d been sitting on all along could make you a fortune–with the right marketing. Some possible window signs.

For only $500–today only–we’ll let you clean our bathroom! (Please don’t touch the magazines. Seriously.)

All this week, buy one bike and we’ll let you pay for a second bike for one of the shop guys!

Get one free baseball bat test shot to the head by each member of our staff with the purchase of any helmet over $80 and $1 off full price on your next helmet!

Free lifetime service of our bikes in our shop by you, with the purchase of any bike valued at over $750, and half off the cost of maintenance supplies you use while building our bikes!

Endless possibilities, really.

The Asshat Effect

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Apr 022012

I’m about to put an idea in your head. Seriously. Like all ideas, it’s a little scary, and it does suggest you start paying attention to the world around you and stuff, but it’s not a bad idea. In fact, it’s probably a very good idea. Still, I know ideas really upset some people, so I figured a heads up was in order in case you want to just skip the next few paragraph. OK, here’s the idea:

People have become things. I meant this literally. Pay attention to nearly everything you read, and I promise you’ll notice. The word “who” has been almost entirely replaced by the word “that.”

I don’t know what this means, or who’s to blame–though I suspect it’s a side-effect of reality television and “Me First!” culture on the skids. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, though, that this new grammatical quirk is happening at the same time mixed martial arts is more popular than ever and at least some part of America thinks hospitals should let some people die. Check out the “fuck you” face on Alpha Male Model up top there. He and his swooning girl can be found on the Kohl’s site, where once famous cycling industry maverick Michael Ball’s bankrupt company crash landed. Do you think that man regards you as a person? Be serious. He doesn’t even regard “his girl” as a person, let alone your sorry Levis-wearing ass. While it’s not the model’s fault his photographer kept yelling, “Look like a nasty asshole, yeah! Like a mean thoughtless prick! Nice!” the fact remains that dickishness is in, and it’s hip to regard others with a mix of disgust, contempt, and obliviousness–as “those people that we don’t know.” We’ve stopped seeing people as people, and it’s showing up in our speech and our writing. Grammatically, we’re walking around in a near permanent state of asshattery when it comes to our fellow man.

If you skipped those last few paragraphs, skip this one, too, because I’m not done yet–or read it with no context, which might make it almost fun. Offering examples is ridiculous because they’re everywhere, but I’ve noticed the problem is particularly rampant in business web articles, suggesting that as corporations became people, people became things. Here’s an article, for instance, that offers productivity tips for “People That Hate GTD (Getting Things Done)”. Well sure, you’re thinking, cold hard business tracts about ruthless shit sometimes read even better when humans are debased, but that’s just business. But explain “Those That Believe,” a sweet little web article that argues salvation will be granted to everybody, not just some of us, while grammatically disposing of each and every one of our souls.

Maybe we have the word “whom” to blame, a simple word that’s as mysteriously unknowable as Ahab’s white whale and as terrifyingly unfriendly as Ridley Scott’s aliens, all at once. Did the fear of “who vs. whom” lead us to stop regarding each other as human beings? Who knows?

One thing I know, however, is that the new Santa Cruz Tallboy LTc is one badass looking bicycle.

See, and you didn’t think I was going to mention bicycles at all today.

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