PolarLava::Blog

Pretty much since I bought my Trek 2120 in 1996, the back wheel had a small "hump" in it.  Nothing too serious, but something that has always annoyed me.  Apparently not enough to do anything about it though.  Near the end of last season while truing this back wheel I notice a couple of small crack beginning to form around one of the spokes holes.  This is a sure sign that rim failure is a near certainty in your future.  I was concerned, but simply couldn't afford to replace my wheels at that time.  Nor was I at the beginning of this season so I've continued to ride on it and hope for the best.  Fortunately the wheel hasn't completely failed yet, and it might not; although I do expect that cracked spoke hole to "pop" eventually if I keep riding on it.  But in the past couple of weeks the integrity of the wheel has become suspect as keeping it true has become a constant battle.  To the point that I've had to true it twice in the past week.  I believe I may be close to living on borrowed time.

So with some financial reluctance, a bit of research, a big sale at Bike Nashbar and 17111.14 miles on my 2120, I ordered new wheels this past Saturday.  And suprisingly when I arrived home yesterday I was treated to the sight of a box filled with a pair of Cane Creek Stratos wheels!  These should prove to be a major upgrade over my current wheels by a long shot.  They are certainly lighter than my current wheels —although I don't know what the old ones weigh, their moderate aero profile, and their design (spoke nipples at the hubs instead of the rims) should make them spin up faster.  And hopefully they will stand up to the pitiful roads that I often ride on.

Unfortunately some of the other smaller items I ordered —most notably the new tubes with longer valve stems I need, did not arrive yesterday.  Plus I forgot to order rim tape.  Fortunately I should be able to pick that up locally for a couple of bucks.  I also don't have the time to set them up right now and will probably do that some time during next weekend.  In any case, I'm looking forward to the upgrade.  :)

An afternoon of hacking at it and the CycleLog now has a quick Weather Check page.  This little project simply looks up the weather in the database for a given date —generally today or something in the past couple of weeks.  Anything older than that won't exist as it gets purged except for weather data associated with a ride.  Way too much data to keep around otherwise.  To access a particular date you pass it as a "YYYY-MM-DD", "d" or "date" GET parameter, so for example "?d=2006-06-11" (2006-06-11).

Sometimes on days I take longer rides and the weather is variable, I will look up the most appropriate (prevalent) conditions during the ride.  This differs from my standard practice of using the closest hourly weather to when I finish the ride.  And now you can forget about this because I'd guess I'm the only one who really cares.  :)

In a rare night out —the last being my company Christmas party in mid-December, Mary Lou and I went to dinner and the Falletta Competition last night.  First up was an early dinner at Tsunami.  This is a well spoken of local Asian restaurant.  We started with a bottle of Francis Coppola Bianco Pinot Grigio, a Japanese Ginger Salad from ML and a Spicy Tuna Roll for me.  For our main course, ML had the Fresh Island Fish (with an avacado salsa instead of tomato bacon sauce) and I had the Hawaiian Butterfish.  A truly outstanding dinner accompanied by a first class waiter.

After dinner we were off to Kleinhan's Music Hall for the finals of the second biennial JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition.  This concert/competition featured Isaac Bustos (USA), Pablo Garibay (Mexico) and Masao Tanibe (Japan).  All three proved to be truly amazing performers and we had a wonderful evening.  Bustos finished third, although I had him ranked second; Tanibe, who clearly won the Audience Choice Award finished second —he was my pick to win; and Garibay whom I ranked third won both the Buffalo Philharmonic Musicians' Award and the overall competition.  Apparently I missed something!  ;)  But I obviously wasn't alone as Tanibe's passion and performance certainly wowed the crowd.  All in all it was a nice relaxing evening out with my beautiful and loving wife.  And it the end, that's all that really mattered to me.

The Artist

I'm looking over to see what's on your mind
Glance down your paper, it's written in the lines
Wish I had a moment to look out through your eyes
Just a single moment to share a single mind

You're the artist, born in this time
Sketch the wholeness, pictures never lie
With a story, it fits just right

One look at life, through an open mind
Reaching for a door, he shows another's life
Drawing to a conclusion, a place where it begins

You're the artist, giving what you think
There's nothing bogus, just life's dreams
Feel it floating, drifting in the air
Capturing moments, making it all so clear

You're the artist, your mind is clear
Paying notice to the things we wear
You never focus on your last despair
You've always known that there would be something more —somewhere

5/30/1982

Several months ago I raved about ig: The Google Drug, and as much as I liked that, I think I'm about to abandon it.  For I'm being lured away by a new net drug Netvibes.  It has a lot of what I liked about ig, but offers multiple tabs and some other things that I've grown to like.  Enough so that after playing with it for a couple of days I may make it my homepage (instead of ig) and see if it has the staying power to keep my interest.  Well worth checking out if you're a portal page person.