Localization?

One of the things I am feeling in general is this feeling of Localization....maybe this is due to living in Portland....I have heard so much about this as the Eat Local mentality, groups of people go to local farmers markets to buy groceries and produce because they believe that eating local actually reduces the CO2 footprint, where transportation cost/impacts are often hidden from consumers when you purchase from a big brand supermarket. With food I can buy into this mentality.

Take a look at this article on infographics to assist the localization.

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/infographic-day-what-foods-season-now?partner=rss

Also this graphic is really quite interesting.... adding the miles for produce.

Now this theory is great until you get beyond this notion of each product is very similar and some would say "generic" and add something into the mix that differentiates the product from a technology standpoint.  Then it seems it's impossible.

Christmas Eve

So I decided to take all next week off work. I have enough vacation since I didn't do too much in 2009. This means no work till Jan 4th! pretty good, feels like a real holiday.

Christmas Holiday pt.1.0

The middle of December starts to get strange for me, always an emotional time that makes me ask, why am I not with my family or why do I not have my own family. two totally separate questions, but Christmas is a time for family, the rest of the activities, day to day, who har really don't matter.
About the middle of the year, I always think that I should be planning for Christmas, yet the thought just turns my stomach inside out. I'm not quite sure why, but it does seem that thinking about Christmas is not my forte. I also feel that the American version of Christmas is a little bit different, it seems there is an amount of deceleration before the holidays, where in the UK it seemed to just slam into it and get it done. The US thing has more "dwell" time in the run up and preparation to the holidays. Could this have all ben brought on because I have been to a Chrmbo party this last weekend? maybe?

Los Angeles

Cars = lots
Buses = people filled with mentalists
Drivers = people who don't want to be on the bus with mentalists
Bicycle Commuters = None
Asshole drivers = lots
Use of turn signals in LA = None
Freeway traffic = Yes
Light  = effect of inside a diffuse glowing bubble
Warmth = Yes
Season = No
People = Laidback and false
Inspiration = getty museum.

LA Auto Show

Right, just back from the LA motor show, camera has got about 700 pics on it, sadly I have not looked at them yet.
A few big things from this year:

• Focus on Sub Compact cars.
- Ford Fiesta
- Mazda 2
- Chevy Cruze
- Chevy Volt

Ford have been slapping a ton of social media networking behind the new Fiesta, all sorts of twitter, blogs and peer to peer stuff. The fiesta comes in a ton of fruity colours which are supposed to be youth centric.
The Mazda 2  is also another smaller little number, little more agressivly styled than the partially bubbly Fiesta. 2010 looks like it will be the year for these econo, high mpg sub $15k motors. The Chevy Cruze also falls in this cat, but let's not talk about that for good reasons.

• Development of crossover category.
- Honda Cross Tour
- Acura  ZDX
- Bmw X6

On the crossover front there seems to be quite a development of vehicles with a unque style concerning the rear 3rd of the car, sportier looking CUV Crossover Utility Vehicle,  a large hatchback on a car with a higher back end, a little bit of a "fastback" and "touring style" with a  nose sloping bodyline. The hatch backs also seem to be developing a lot of glass which is spilling into the rear vertical panel of the trunk.

• Electric cars hit mainstream.
- Chevy Volt
- Audi Etron (nr concept.)
- Mitsubishi IMiEV

Good webpage to cover them here:
http://www.leftlanenews.com/2009-los-angeles-auto-show.html

Google Reader - Sharing Following.

LinkedIn - great for professionally networking.
Facebook - Great for socially networking, light information.
Twitter - Still trying to find other uses than following Celebrities.
Google reader - Great for gathering related information on a daily basis.

I have been using Google Reader for a while now as a mass information source, kinda like a big pile of your favourite magazines - it's  a one stop way to follow a lot of diffeent blogs and streams of content rich information. One of the main features of Google Reader is it can be very visual, it downloads images in the news streams with text where needed (Facebook and Twitter do not do this, and following streams on Flicker, is pretty much images only). Google Reader is also very flexible, it will Report on most websites and integrates with many seamlessly. Since I read a lot of design, fashion, architecture blogs which are image rich, Google reader works out great.

Then about a month ago, I found the "sharing feature"
This allows you to share your favourite articles with other Google Reader users. WICKED!. Also with this it allows you to Follow other users, kinda twitter style. So it starts to build a community, that way I can see what other subjects / articles my other Design friends note that are of interest. Having many eyes in the design world is great and I guess the Share and Follow aspects are building comunity just like Twitter does.

SO If this sounds appealing to you, I suggest you look it up here

Anyone can check out my stream of shared articles here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/jbucky1

Graeme Obree dumps hour record plans

Bummer

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/graeme-obree-dumps-hour-record-plans-23985

The IT Crowd

Just recently got addicted to this series called The IT Crowd, funny shit alright. A series that started a few years back in the UK, now available on Netflix.

Award-winning sitcom from Graham Linehan. Banished from the ivory towers of Reynholm Industries, the IT crowd lurk below ground, avoiding work and social contact in equal measure...

Are we not men? and Tramps like us are killer episodes.... well worth checking out.

wish I was in the UK so I can watch this new show: CHAOS LABORATORIES

New blog for bike info / cycle parts and so forth

www.circle-360.blogspot.com

bike parts
reviews
product info

shoulders, yup theres more

following on... yesterday I had an MRI on my shoulder, today my doctor called an told me I had separated my acromioclavicular or AC joint in the top of my shoulder with swelling & tissue damage to a fairly sever extent but with no complications,  apparently this is common in impact sports and takes time to heal.  It will take 5-6 weeks to fully heal, but after a few weeks I can ride my road bike, if I fall during this time, it will be very bad. 

This is a better situation than what was thought to be rotator cuff damage, which could have required surgery.

 AC joint is shown in the upper right

McOver the handle bars crashtastic fun.

Last Monday signified the start of a long time off the bike for me.
The last Short Track Mountain Bike race of the season, as last year; the last race is well wicked, at the end of the night a planned team relay, podium prices and general mayhem.
My night on the other hand got cut a tad short, in the warm up rides I managed to crash hard, land all my weight on my right shoulder and send myself to the Hospital Emergency Room for x-rays. Thanks to my friend Joel and his onhand trusty Subaru, I made it to the emergency room in one piece and very quickly. After the First Aiders at the race had looked at me, it was almost certain that I had broken a bone in my shoulder, x-rays showed no breaks. Intense pain and lack of motion in particular areas of my shoulder , lead to only one thing, rotator cuff damage.
With a good prescription for Vicodin and paracetamol I was sent home, arm in sling and an appointment for a doc visit in a few weeks to evaluate the damage after all the inflammation goes down. If all goes well, no surgery will be needed, if the lack of motion and tears are deemed bad enough, I may be under the knife in a few weeks.
At the end of the day it will be 4-6 weeks before I can ride my bike outside, if all goes good it will be 3 weeks till I can ride inside on a stationary trainer, where I do not have to put any force on my arm/ shoulder.

Needless to say, the bike is pretty buggered up, bent brake lever and two pretty much well destroyed wheels.

oh well...

high speed crash on dirt, could have been much worse, high speed crash on concrete for example !

STXC (Short track cross country) July 6th

A friend took this picture, but of course i'm only at the liftoff of my air journey- I think it's pretty good snap, this was taken over the finish line. This is a cross country mountain bike race for about 30mins. and for me it's one gear, no bloody shock absorbers. There is only one category for single gear which means you get a field of really fast people. For me finishing around 30th out of 60 is good. I'm working on getting better, mainly my bike handling, cornering, honing in on my gear ratio and so forth, my fitness is there, but my lines and familiarity of a single gear is not. It can only get better I hope!

STXC June 29th

do I look happy, do i fuk. this is the look of being over geared at the top of a hill.
Short Track Cross Country - STXC - Monday nights @ PIR
bloody sure that 16tooth cog's getting changed for a 17 bugger.

New kona SS Cross bike

Hot off the press, Kona Major One - same Scandium frame as the geared major for a sick ride. Available as a frameset. Color, yeah um, not so sure i'm down with it.

this worries me

Thankfully, it's not my wheel and I love Mavic, I have sold many sets of wheels in favor of my metal bladed Mavic's but this really worries me. Product testing mavic, it's called testing.

read about this here

mixed bag of worms

mixed bag of worms this past week.
a few friends hurt in bike race crashes (not me mum). They will be alright and strong soon. Still scary shit, that makes you wanna glue your helmet to ya melon. yeah.

mum you would be proud, I bought a new gas cooker, yeah your son all domesticated right, who would have thought. It's not wired up yet. It's pretty sat in the kitchen nonfunctional. Kinda like me pretty and disfunctional. This weekend will be to wire in the bugger. (my friend Clay at GE Appliances designed this one)



A clean turtle tank, is like a clean mind, no poo chunks floating around to ruin the flow of clean nothingness thoughts. Clean your tanks people!



my flatmate Jordan is still stinky and only eats plants. He is obsessed with going to the cinema, i think he goes 5 times a week.

On to Thursday, the day of point races at the track, pain and getting stuck at the back of the pack. Yeah I love velodrome. Some say i'm crap at it, others (like me) just say i have potential.

Cat 4 track

CAT4 Track upgrade, not a big deal, but I got it, so I don't have to ride with the "crash right in front of you gang"

Strange I got my upgrade, coz I won less and rode less than Erich, go figure, get some more sand in that bag Erich.

Fast Twitch Fridays and lack of real training!

Fast Twitch Friday rolled around again (Friday night track races), well what to say, I have high expectations about where I should be, but also it's early season and I have been naughty I have not been doing due diligence to the normal rules of race preparation and training (even though I would say that I don't train).

so as Joe Friel would say. I have broken 3 commandments out of 10.

# 1 Train Moderately.
yep I don't do that! I ride to work each day 34miles with 1500ft of climbing and hammer every bit of it. Combined with a couple of hard training sessions and an 80miler on the weekend.

#3 - Get Adequate Rest.
5 1/2 hrs of sleep a night aint gonna do anything.

#9 - Listen to your body.
if your body says don't ride, then don't. I break that all the time, just so I don't have to drive my car.

I also got some good advice from friends off Team Beer, they told me it looked like I was pushing too "hard" of a gear ratio and having a difficult time staying on top of it. At the moment I am running 88gear inches, I might drop down to 86" for future Omnium events.


This week I was trying really hard to help out Chip from team Grundlebruisers by doing a bit of pulling swapping out and blocking. Chip is a strong rider, has the lungs, motivation and the skill but quite often in our Cat5 Track field we are joined by CAT1/2 Roadies. Which basically means that with the fitness of a 1/2 roadie they can ride off the front of the pack, stay off gain all the points and win the events, thus the regular CAT5 guys get nothing and no points = no upgrades. Now in theory this is ok if a CAT 1/2 roadie comes along wins a race and upgrades to a higher level thus giving the rest of the 5's a chance but there is this terrible phenomenon called Sandbagging. here's an example

Let's just say the racer is called Erich (purely fictional link)

• A good experienced racer, Cyclocross A racer, cat1 roadie, Pro/Semi Pro dirt rider with top 3 wins consistently.
- Comes to the track as a newbie and joins the cat5 group to race 3 times per night (Omnium events)
-Said Eric wins all 3 races that night, overall #1, cool good job, nice work.
- next friday, Erich shows up again ,guess what
- yup Eric enters cat5 wins everything again.
- then next season, ye thats right next season
- Oh bless his heart Erich shows up again, enters cat5 again, wins all 3.
Now what does this say about Erich?
Erich is a good chap? - maybe, Erich is a strong rider - yes, Eric is scared of moving up? - Yes, Eric is not letting anyone have a chance at upgrading - Yes.
ok.
-So Erich shows up again Friday, cat5.
- no doubt as to what happened.

This to me defines Sandbagger, Slacker, Wuss, ScaredyCat, Lame arse, nob end or whatever you wish to label it.

Shame, and at one point (before I knew) I thought these individuals and Erich were ok peps. Now not only do I question you, I question your team.
No doubt I'll see you on Friday and ask you again if you really have to win 10 races to upgrade and you will have the puzzled douchebag look on your face like you have never rode competitively before.

Some people would say quit your hating, I say grow a pair and cat up.

bam - yours sincerely

Eric Kautzky Memorial track race

Why do I bother? maybe this is a common thought.... ok positivity on, check...so this last weekend was the first track race of the season, I went in thinking I would be stronger this season. I came out coughing like I smoked cigarettes. Maybe I shoulda had a bit more track time? a bit more intensity to blow all the crap outta my lungs, maybe, maybe just I should think before I ride.
I realized that my thought process is severely lacking but it goes like this.

1) Should I go off the front and try and try and stay off? Yes goto 3) No goto 2).
2) Ok sit midpack, get blocked in mid race. Achieve nothing.
3) Off the front, hammer the crap outta 2 laps, get points, do whatever, about lap 3 feel some pain, get passed from above, sit at the back. Achieve nothing.

maybe time to change my thinking? no shit.

After coughing a lung up and some rather shoddy performances, I managed to jangle up a 6th place position. Pretty lame but at least earned 3pts at least for my lameness.



This weekend is Reach the Beach which is a good cause ride to the beach from Portland, 100 miles and track racing Friday night.

Arse over tit again

so not only did I manage to crash on the velodrome last week, which lost me some skin on my legs and some blood soaked arm warmers, tonight I managed to pull the dumbest move ever. riding home from work on my fancy road bike in non rain clothes, sudden down pour - I spy a tree, dry patch yeah, ride up the curb, front wheel gets stuck in a grate under the water, instant flat, me =over the handlebars, hard on the ground, bent rear wheel. What a plonk.
This could turn out to be a right interesting bike season. oh F

buy more shit

as the americans would say "gee that sure is pretty neat"
then they would say "come on honeycakes lets get in the Lincoln XXL suv and go to wal mart"

mum, sorry

Mum, Happy birthday, yes I'm rubbish . I forgot a gift or a card, what a bad son.

the Fuzz
many things going on with me, just before Christmas I got a car racing ticket form the fuzz, which was total rubbish, yeah of course it was James, so I protested, said alright i'm not guilty and got a court date, which came up as April 14th. So yesterday I drove for an hour in rush hour traffic to get to the flippin court house to find out it was closed! The guard told me that due to cutbacks they had rescheduled everyone and sent letters to notify....hummm...me no letter. Today I call them an they told me my trial was on April the 3rd and since I did not show up I was found Guilty by default. Great system eh. now I owe them a ton of money or I can try appeal. Me thinks the appeal won't work.

black and blackness
so along with the new president, I decided to go black in the kitchen. since the dishwasher did not work and the fridge was 29yrs old, those were the first to go weren't they. They both required a little bit of plumbing, which I managed not to bugger up. Since the new fridge is taller than the old, the cabinets that were sat above the old fridge had to get knocked out, so a bit less storage space. After a few runs of the dishwasher, the Bosh is total money, cleans really well and is super quiet, admittedly it does no dry like an American energy hog, but run the cycle overnight and everything is fine.

before

after

As you can see in the fridge there is a lot of room, even for the fattest of Americans (59% am pop , fatties all of em)


crazy Hill ridden
Along with messing around with my house, the weather has been getting better and bike riding is still on fullcore. A few weekends back was the De Ronde van Oeste Portlandia, which is basically the tour of West Portland Hills. This ride is famous for being hard and in nasty weather. 700 riders started and I bet only 40% finished. one of which was me! Two of the climbs in particular are are so steep that cars have difficulty climbing them. Anyway, the weather was good and this was a ball buster ride - I finished without having to get off my bike once...well wicked.
if you have a few mins click the link to a youtube movie that shows the pain!

to quote"How tough were the climbs? One of them, on Brynwood Street, has a pitch of 24-28%, an incline that forced all but the toughest riders to get off and walk."
thus I am a toughest rider...oh yeah!



next up.
Track season! back to the velodrome in the next month. Got a new chainwheel and sum tyres for my bike and my friend Paul is riding track this year, he just bought a spiffy bike to show off on. little does he know he's gonna look a plonker when i'm beating him on my janky bike.

how you know when it's close to the end

it's taken them 34 years to find me and now this, fack! my ticket has been punched.



if you know me, you know my intense love for pottery barn coz it's so freaking fantastic, fan-faking-tastic.

Should have learned by now

The view from my bedroom window, you can just make out the tops of the west hills, this was the other night. I digress..... anyway

A Sunday cycling fiasco,
It's 8.45 Sunday morning, Headed out the door on my rain bike, right there indicates a problem don’t it.
4C / 39F, weather forecast couldn’t decide between showers and rain, so I chose to go dressed optimistically, thats the 1st bad move.

On today’s agenda, meet the boys at the coffee shop up the road and head out for a long 70 mile ride, long rolling hills, climbs and some fast decants. 5 hours later back soaked bone, my toes totally blue after being in waterlogged shoes, hands numb - I couldn’t feel my fingers. What happened? well drizzle lasted 5 mins then turned to solid rain. The route was good, somewhat hilly and rolling out to the east, Climbing hills is alright, keeps you warm. The problem is of 2 things, as you get higher the rain freezes and turns to snow. Then you have to freeze your arse off at 35mph on the decent.
Yeah woulda thought I’d have learned by now. Stood in warm shower for about 20mins wondering why hell I do this.

Other stuff going on.
I’m loving the new house - still a few things to sort out, but otherwise all good.
I went snowboarding on wed with my boss so technically it s working right? got home and the turtle tank was all cloudy , I thought to myself that water pump must have gone. no - the turtle had munched on the fish - yeah fish chunks floating around and nasty fish oils covering everything, had to clean the whole bloody tank.


Since summer is coming and I love grilling, I used to grill all the time in KY, good times. I bought a grill on Sat, I have been missing an outdoor grill for a while now, I like to grill most seasons out of the year because I love that grilled chicken goodness. Like everything else nowadays it came in the regular do it yourself pack which took me 192hrs to assemble due to ever so clear Chinese instructions.





It looks fancy, but it's really not, I think they did a good job on the appearance to make it look like it's worth a lot more than it actually is.



This is what happens when the turtle comes out of the tank, she finds the nearest warm dark place, in this instance a camera case.

Some good powder

rain at the bottom of the mountain = wicked snow at the top

landing a jump the wrong way

blue sky, fresh powder, what more could you ask for

You would think people who live in house with carpet would have a vacuum cleaner!

So I moved into my new place on Tuesday.

Why do my pants seem to match the door From Moving to 325

Took the day off work, enlisted the help of a few friends, hired a truck. Things went smooth, I really did not have a lot to move. Being a first time buyer new homeowner it feels great to have your own place, it's almost like being in a nice hotel for me! the place seems large, but the layout, style, location and everything else is perfect, so happy.

Things that are crossing my mind right now.

• I don't have enough furniture to fill this place, and when I say enough, I really don't have any! I'd really like to stay minimal and not buy stuff for the sake of acting like a regular homeowner.

From Moving to 325

• I have a wicked garage and really love it. My car is never going in it, it will be filled with bikes and bike related awesomeness. My garage is big enough that I can easily ride around in it. And I might host a few races! not.

• The bloke who I bought the house from obviously did not have a vacuum, or if he did, then he failed to use it. Pretty strange, 75% of this place is carpet, I can understand if you have wood floors, just need a swiffer sweeper yeah. It is also strange because the bloke who I bought the house from seemed very particular, detail orientated and picky not slobby. Anyway to vacing inches of built up dust n dirt from around the skirting boards is pretty disgusting. After doing one small room, it would fill the hoover bag, think i'm joking, well check out the pic. nasty.

From Moving to 325

• I love skylights, they are everywhere in my house and make a big difference.

Looking downstairs From Moving to 325

From Moving to 325

• I think i'm gonna get wood floor put in my living room, when I save some $ that is.

• I work for a rack company, yet I still tie mattresses to the top of the car.

IKEA From Moving to 325

• Where did the other half of the IKEA bathroom man go?

From Moving to 325

• I love this from IKEA... yeah it's cheap but the functional design aspects are nice, it slides to expand and it manages the runoff water from the crockery really well.

From Moving to 325

• The dishwasher doesn't work, the gas range works awesome, looks ugly. I really need to upgrade the refrigerator to something from after 1979!

From Moving to 325

• Neon Lilly pads always look good in any bathroom.

From Moving to 325

• I need to buy more plants for my cool mini greenhouse that is attached to my kitchen window.

From Moving to 325

Well, that's it for now. If you want to send me a house warming gift, that would be cool, bear in mind that i'm picky and I like designer/modern/contemporary things, not wood carvings, dried flowers, russian pottery or other ugly shite. Go here if you want to buy me some furniture or cool stuff ... DWR

Ziggy

here is Ziggy. Yoon seems to think Ziggy is hers, technically he is, but I like him more so really he is mine.

little walton

Our own little Walton with the nerdy gotta love em glasses pulling a major nob-end move alongside the ToC pro riders. Well god bless his little heart. Despite destroying a ton of people at the track last season in Portland, the guy is trail hooking the ToC with M.A.S.H. Will he be back in PDX for the summer? lets hope so.

Read more here

The first EPIC ride of the year

A lot of things have happened in my life recently, but I write about one thing because of it's epic-ness.

Yesterday, Sunday I set off on a ride, a ride which I thought was going to be normal. Team Beer, Ironclad and myself wearing Yakima kit, met up front of the PSU library, the destination : Multnomah Falls 75mile round trip. Sounds like a nice ride init ? - read on...

Multnomah Falls - on a nice day! 36miles east of Portland

While we were meeting at the library- we recruited some PSU riders, so the group was pretty big. We all rolled out on the beginning of a nice day. Temps were reasonable (42f /6 celcius), it looked dry, as we got further out of the city center the wind started picking up, by the time we were on the historic highway the winds were well over 20mph and I would say gusting to 40mph, this makes a 10mile gradual uphill climb up to Crown point pretty difficult with all the energy being sucked from you resulting in a slower net speed. In fairly minimal riding gear the high winds only served to reduce body temperature and energy. As we got to Crown Point, the highest point of the ride, the winds were so bad, I was actually scared of being blown off my bike, several times on the decent, you would enter a corner, hit a wall of wind that would slow you from 30 to about 15mph!

Crown Point, note this was taken on a nice day, not the thundermomma day that we were there.

After bombing the decent from Crown Point we got to the Falls, admittedly a bit cold. Stopping for a few mins, warming up and headed back towards Portland. A nice climb ahead of us, which George from Team Beer absolutely destroyed, we regrouped at the top of the climb, to the West all we could see was darkness - dark dark rain clouds.
By now the temps had dropped a tad and yes a sea of rain awaited us, sure enough in the next few minutes it started raining heavy, this combined with a low temp made the rain heavy and cold. Dressed for a dryish day, 30 miles to home.. no fenders very very wet and cold...

a nice view from Crown Point, i'm sure someone has a shitty view, like the one we saw.

.... 20 miles of riding still left to go, no talk in the group, we were all suffering in silence... violent upper body shivers kicked in which were transferred down my arms to the handlebars , my front wheel looked like it was wobbling! Keeping speed above 22 to try and stay warm, I couldn't feel my legs, feet or hands, soaked to the bone no warmth. We lost the PSU group 15 miles ago, hope they got home ok. Visions of hot showers and warm clothes kept us going.
At this point in the ride, I found my mind drifting off, maybe it was trying to lock out the numbness that my body was going through, it was sort of strange and scary, in the kind of "am I going to get pneumonia" scary.

75miles later Team Beer, Yakima and Ironclad rolled into Portland. Well done chaps. Epic.

I later got word from the PSU guys that they got back ok, they had a few flats and eventually got a car ride home from Troutdale.

To rattlecan or to spraypaint?

look closely - someone paints skulls on exit signs, wonder who that could be.

Do you know how much time is involved in spraypainting things? of recent I took it upon myself to get the paint system at work dialed in , it seemed that after many years of neglect there was not a system in place to get good paint results, after all, we have a nice paint booth, fan extraction etc, but basic things were not in place, clean air supply, decent paint guns, a set up of base colours and chemicals. So spending away with the company money gave me an excuse to learn about stuff along the way. I decided to go with the Automotive PPG paint system, I have seen this used in the past at other jobs and it has a ton of colour options from OEM vehicles. The location of a paint supplier was also critical and luckily there's a PPG place about 5 miles from my work and has some well sorted peps to help me out. So today i'm finally getting this dialed and should be producing some nice results in the next few weeks, oh and also bike frames seem to fit in our paint booth at work, who would have guessed!

modern toss . com

www.moderntoss.com