patagonia footprints

it's nice to see patagonia showing their entire supply chain and sourcing philosophy. Even when they outsource oversees, they ensure that their contractors are audited for build quality and builder quality of life.

vanilla frame

frame unpainted
Originally uploaded by tylernol

here is a photo of my brazed vanilla frame at the workshop. It looks darned nice even unpainted. Nice simple elegant lugs, lovely polished dropout detail. sweet!

bad refs

how much are the colts paying these dirty fucking refs to call against the patriots???

vanilla eta: December

Sacha has built my frame and fork, and it is now queued up for paint at #7, which means roughly 6 weeks. So hopefully I will get it on or around my birthday! I ended up having him build a rally-style road frame with clearance for cross tires , long read road caliper brakes, S & S couplings for travel, carbon fenders for crap weather.
The frame is a lugged frame, compact geometry, based on his measurements of me in may and the IF crown jewel measurements from last year. I am leaving the paint up to him,he likes painting his frames a certain way, and I am fine with that. I will leave my loud color schemes for my IF and Vicious stable.
My singlespeed is due for some dent repair and a repaint, I think I will paint it an old school "kandy wild cherry", which will be fun.

polycorpse

what's this? Polycom's margins are getting squeezed? "If sales will increase 37% this quarter, even as the more forgiving "pro forma" flavor of earnings increases only about 26%, I'd say that suggests some margin compression. Such a squeeze would seem to conflict Polycom's assertion that its strongest growth is coming in its most profitable business line"
 -- http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/10/08/paltry-prediction-pummels-polycom.aspx

huh.

gizmo in action

gizmo in action
Originally uploaded by tylernol

nice thing about my new camera is that it has a faster "shutter" speed/ integration time compared to my older cameras, so now it is easier to take action shots like this!

fox f29

speedgoat shipped my fox f29 yesterday, I am pretty excited about it. The Reba has been decent, but it never really matched up with the quality of the fox I had on my old racer-x. What I may do is keep the Reba at 100m and then run the f29 at 80mm and swap between them, since both require being opened up and rebuilt in order to modify the travel. 80 mm = race, WC, 100 mm = greenbelt, CP.

new family member member coming soon?

ETA 63 days..?

canon G9

first replacement in my burglery recovery is a new camera -- I went with the Canon G9. Not as portable as the SD650 I had before, but it has a lot more control in it and better sensors and processing capabilities, so it's one step closer to  a DSLR. I love the feel of it and the old-school buttons and looks. It has a nice weight to it. Do I need 12.1 Mpixels? No. But larger prints are a possibility, which will be nice, since my sister's wedding is 3 weeks away.

allergies ..

it has not been raining much recently, but now the ragweed is totally out of control because of the rainy spring and summer. Neti pot helps a bit, but I still have to take sudafed or clariten which makes me tired and grouchy. grr.

patriots spy scandal

i dont see the big deal.. dont all the teams in football and baseball examine the signaling on the sidelines and try to correlate it to the plays being run? I thought that was why wireless headsets were becomming prevalent?
whatever.

more RS6 Avant eye-candy

it is a crime it is not coming to the states. The sedan may, which is great, but I love the stealth factor of a high performance station wagon -- it is just far more subtle than a Porsche or Jaguar. Too bad AoA does not think American buyers "get it". So it looks like I am stuck with the S4 Avant, it would be nice to go a bit larger, but I'll survive.

RS6 Avant

I'll take one in Daytona Gray please!

so long racer-x!

it was a good ride, I am sure you will be happy in your new home. *sob*

rides so far this week

I tried the Progress Coffee 50 mile east Austin road ride on Sunday, very fast paced, no steep hills like the ATC ride, so my clydesdale status did not hurt me that much. Monday I started out towards a solo Mt. Bonnel ride but it started raining, so I did rollers for an hour. And last night James,Chris, and I did an urban ride on my cross bike around Town/LadyBird Lake in the rain, it was fun, but I was encased in mud by the end.

vanilla build starts this week

got an e-mail from Sacha today. He is starting work this week on my "swoopy 29r". It should be pretty sweet. In a weird way , I almost hope I dont love it, because if I do, it will be 4 years before I can get another from him. :(

DENMARK

Cycle Chic
Originally uploaded by [Zakkaliciousness]

what a country!

bye gonzo!

what a fuckhead. About time.

2 lessons from today's ATC ride

1- triathletes have no bike handling skills, give them a wide berth.
2- always bring a rider ID-card or cell phone with ICE contacts.

new new pornographers

I totally missed that this was coming out this week and had to be reminded by a co-worker, I grabbed the vinyl/mp3 download at Waterloo on Thursday night. Overall, it is very good, very catchy and well-written. Not very ambitious in terms of new artistic directions, however, they are still a great pop band.