12/31/2010

Happy New Year

New Years Eve ride

May your year be filled with really freaking cold riding on ice and sketchy attempts at no hand riding portraits. Or whatever you want it to be. Your choice.

Happy New Years.

12/30/2010

Festive 500 final reports

The final two days as such:

December 29
Returned to New Mexico in the wee hours, slept, woke up to light snow getting heavy. Split a couple of barrowloads of wood, hopped on the stud shod Big Dummy to get tacos
Taco run
Headed out again a few hours later in worsening conditions to go to the bank and get groceries.
Mileage: 10.17 miles
IMG_5145

December 30
Snowing heavily in the morning. Shoveled almost a foot or snow off the driveway. Watched the snow fall and caulked the tub. Decided to bail on the ride to the golf course and xc ski plan and just headed out for a neighborhood cruise on the big dummy. It was probably 25 and blowing. The roads were either packed snow or ice or unplowed. The studded tires did no wrong on the ice and packed snow. The trails and park were under too much snow to ride so I stuck to the road. It was a good cold little ride.
12-30 ride
Mileage: 6.3 miles
IMG_5148

So these two days added 16.47 miles of studded tire big dummy riding to the previous 92.03 on the fixie friday for a massive 108.5 miles, aka 174.6 km. Not even halfway there to the 500km goal, but I did some good rides, lots of errands and rode everyday. I call it a win. Surf on over to the rapha blog to see how everyone else did.

12/29/2010

Festive 500 reports

OK, here are the first few days of the Rapha Festive 500 attempt.

December 23rd
Got up early, got to the airport, chased the baby through the infinite halls of Pheonix airport,
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got to Santa Barbara (see I cheat!) unpacked the fixie friday,
12/23Fixie Friday
headed to the markets to get some beers and sundries:
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Fiddled with the non-working cyclocomputer for a while and then gave up and rode back to a bike shop to get a new bike computer.
Mileage: 5 miles (low estimate for fairness sake...)

December 24th:
Rode to the butterfly grove in goleta, some muddy riding/running to find the family, tried to keep the wee ones from getting the butterflies,
headed to lunch, ate a burrito, rode back on the foot hill route, up to mountain and down.
Cacti in SB1224101015.jpg
Ran a bunch of errands. It were a good day.
Stem QR wireless computer mount hack with super pro bidon
12/24
Mileage, 35.66 miles.
12/24


December 25th,
Christmas with the family. Rode from the hotel to my brothers house. Tried to sneak in a ride while Aida napped. She did not nap, my ride was enshortened. Probably saved me from a very wet ride.
Mileage: 5.65 miles
12/25


December 26th,
Rode out with my bro toward mountain, he turned back after five miles, I headed for parts unknown. Great ride, found the bike butt mailbox, did a loop and lots of climbing.
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12/26
Mileage 20.28
12/26

December 27th.
Got out for a good afternoon ride. Completed the mountain to sanysidro loop, back through montecito and downtown. Absolutely beautiful day. Lots of wet on the roads.
12/27
Mileage 24.92
12/27

December 28th
Rode from the hotel to my brothers house. Put helmet on for ride, but baby would not nap, so I put helmet away and walked to get coffee and treats with the young lady.
Got back, packed up the bike and headed to the airport to return home.
Mileage 0.52 miles, but I did ride.
12/28

So the total for the warmish part of the festive 500 was 92.03 miles, aka 148.11 km. So still a bit short of the planned 500 but probably one of my best weeks in december since I have lived in NM, tune in tomorrow evening for how the final two days went...

12/16/2010

Winter style riding

Ah, winter, she is here.
The snowy way to work
A good day starting with snow encrusted riding, ending in really snow encrusted riding.
First real snow commute of the year

Got in a 14 miles of wintry goodness culminating in riding home with four inches on the trails sliding around on the big dummy.

In that vein, I announce my attempt to achieve epicness this holiday season.

I am a sucker for a good logo so I am in it to try it and fall far short. Go me.
Follow along with my meagre milage with the festive 500 tag.

12/11/2010

They killed Kenny

Usually I would be blogging winter stuff right now, but it is so dry and (relatively) warm, I actually had to water some trees. We have no snow to speak of in Los Alamos thus far, so here is some sad old news...

My favorite tree planting, posthumously anointed Kenny, is an aspen I planted in the front yard. It went yellow this year and was growing slowly, yet steadily, into a tree, potentially offering shade in the hot summer afternoons. Alas the morning we left for New Zealand, I found it smashed asunder:

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Neighbors saw sparring mule deer in the front the afternoon before. You bastards. You killed Kenny. I have since cut the remains down and added it to the kindling pile, hoping that some aspen suckers come up from the root.

I think I took this photo a mere handful of hours before the deer got the tree.
IMG_4326

Moscaline Advertising and Review Policy

Boring post, but I need to actually write this down as I keep getting emails from people asking these questions. I added this link and my contact info on the sidebar if you have questions.

Review Policy:
Most of the reviews on this blog are based on things I bought with my own money. Things that are provided to me for review are noted as such in the review. You can send me things and I will happily review them. In this case you pay for shipping to me and return shipping if you want said thing back. I will review many things, but not everything, so please contact me before you send me anything to see if it is a good fit. To see what I have previously reviewed see here. I will not review anything that I have not tried. I occasionally will solicit items for review, but not often. I will not post a review that you or your marketing department wrote. Not even if you pay me. I will show you my review after I post it, you can make comments/clarification/responses to the review if you wish and I may include edited versions as updates to the review.

Some frequently asked questions (really these were all asked more than once):
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A. No.
Q. What if I pay you 10 dollars for you to post the review?
A. No.
Q. Can you write a review of this new (thing)? here is the website: blahblop.com
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Q. You want to link trade?
A. Probably not if you are a business, I bet your website has nothing to do with mine. Ask me about my advertising rates, see below:

Advertising policy:
Moscaline will accept select advertising that meets our internal standards of what we like to see. Please contact me for rates and sizes. My readership is small yet fierce, my rates are higher than you think, so please be serious before you contact me.

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I have sponsors for racing. If you feel that you want to be part of the moscaline experience or Team Tarik Racing, please contact me. Race sponsors will get advertising space on the blog in most cases. Team Tarik Racing is currently a one man team that competes in many types of endurance racing, ranging from all types of bike racing, running, cross country skiing, snowshoeing and probably some other things that I have not tried yet. I occasionally win things, but if your sponsorship value is gathered solely in podium placing, look elsewhere.

Contact info is on the blog sidebar. All policies are mutable at my whim, but should be updated here. I reserve the right to change any policy at any time.

Thanks for your interest.