Sunday, December 31, 2006

Dan Doan 100!


What a lovely day for a century ride! Too bad only 5 of us did it.

The climax of the ride, besides visiting Dan's house and raiding his Gatorade, cookies and fruits, was the 10-km bike trail around Bethel Park, starting from 95.45 km to 104.24 km on the map. The bike trail ran parallel to the major roads, so we could bypass heavy traffic and enjoy the scenery.

You may wonder why it's short of 100 miles on Bikely. But believe me, Bill and Katty's computers both showed more than 100 miles at the end. I saw two explanation to that: first, the milage showing on Bikely is not accurate; second, I skipped the part going to Dan's house.

Whoever feels like doing the century ride, please look it up at Bikely under the name of "DanDoan 100".

Monday, December 25, 2006

HAPPY FESTIVUS

!!!HAPPY FESTIVUS EVERYONE!!!!

"Festivus, for the rest of us!"

Monday, December 18, 2006

Happy Holidays

"The nutcracker Suite"
(Performed entirely on bicycle parts)

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

50 bucks to turn your fluid trainer into a power meter!



Remeber this power-speed curve that I showed during my presentation at the beginning of this semester? If you can find out the equation of the power-speed curve of your fluid trainer, you can determine your power output from a rear-mounted speedometer! And this is what exactly the Kurt Kinetic did - the employed an engineer to solve for the equation for the power-speed curve of the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine fluid trainer and hardwired it to a bicycle computer. So the speed sensor mounted on the rear chainstay will feed the speed data to the computer, and through the calculation within the computer, it will turn out the power output data for you to see. And the best of all, you can still use the computer as just speedometer after taking the bike off the trainer! All for just - $50! (If you already have the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine trainer)
KurtKinetic
P.S. Of course you can use it on Cycleops or Blackburn fluid trainers, but since every trainer has different power-speed curve, the power output reading may be a bit off. Also, some good comparison of power meter equipped trainers provided by Cyclingnews.com

Monday, December 11, 2006

Alley Cat Saturday

In case anyone is interested:

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Orange Belt

Now I'm a big fan of the color belts (blue, green, yelloy, turqoise, purple, pinkish....) and especially the entire length of the red belt. But I learned today that the orange belt SUCKS. Especially the first 20 miles between Saxonburg Blvd and Sewickly. Constant hills (yea, I'm biased, I don't like hills), and worse, traffic. Made me feel like I'm a smoker. Given, the last 6 miles of it are quite nice, trough Sewickly Heights or whatever....
Stick to the red belt, it's not that much further and a lot nicer a ride. It remains my favorite ride out there.

it's cold out

Here's something I didn't think I'd experience, but we had a case of onset hypothermia on a ride. That's not a good thing, so here's some quick info about it.

Hypothermia symptoms include:

  • Uncontrollable shivering (although, at extremely low body temperatures, shivering may stop)
  • Weakness and loss of coordination
  • Confusion
  • Pale and cold skin
  • Drowsiness – especially in more severe stages
  • Slowed breathing or heart rate
Hypothermia signs that can be observed by others:
  • Slowing of pace, drowsiness, fatigue
  • Stumbling
  • Thickness of Speech
  • Amnesia
  • Irrationality, poor judgment
  • Hallucinations
  • Loss of perceptual contact with environment
  • Blueness of skin
  • Dilation of pupils
  • Decreased heart and respiration
  • Stupor


Now it's not really cold out right now, but it's enough (I saw online that you can get hypothermia in 70 degree weather. I'd say that's unlikely though for cycling)

If it's in the 20's or colder, and we will go out in those conditions, DRESS WARM!
Layers, Layers, Layers.
Wool, fleece, under armor, windbreaker, you name it (actually, I wear ALL that when it gets below 20)
We don't want to get seriously messed up out there.
Keep riding!!

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Website updates

So in this craaaazy scheme to avoid studying, I decided to post lots of pictures that I have had on my computer to the website, www.pittcycling.com.

Friday, December 08, 2006

A note to AJ Smith...

My rant for the day after reading this article:

AJ Smith you are an ungrateful, cocky, overrated bastard. Discovery Channel gave you all this free stuff (Bike, money, gear, chance to ride and train with them, and tons of publicity) and you attack them? If all the teams are so dirty then how are you going to join a "clean team" and win the yellow jersey, which by the way you can't because you are nothing more than an overweight under-trained chump. You make me sick. Good thing you are decent at cycling because apparently you didn't have what it takes to finish your studies at the local Community college. If you are so great and clean why did you dope when you you went to Europe to compete as a junior you hypocrite!

You also have no basis to say that bicycling is the dirtiest sport. I would be willing to bet that football and baseball players have atleast the same percentage of doping athletes. But no one outside of the sport knows for sure.

What? Was nobody talking about you recently so you needed a publicity stunt? Decide to make some crazy statement to get in the news and hope something comes of it? Most of the time when you here the phrase in sports, "He/she is the next [insert top athlete here]" They disappoint, they can't live up to it. And you will fail as well.

I'm sure being some kid racing in the juniors you learned all the insides and outs of the pro-tours including all the dirt on doping. Your knowledge and strive to make the world a better place impresses me NOT.

How about instead of wasting time complaining about people the have done more for the sport then you will ever do, you get on your bike, loose some weight, and prove me wrong. If you can win clean well then here is a cookie. Thousands of people in the history of cycling have won races and pro-tours clean. You are not some crazy visionary and idealist, most people agree with you that doping is bad.

Sorry for the long brutal rant but I needed to vent. That is all.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Safety first

"Don't be a clown or a show off on your bike you are inviting injury or death"

"never ride your bike on the school grounds"

Check out this awesome video on bike saftey
You won't regret it

Loose Cannon, you might want to take notes

Here is another good one...

Website updated

I posted the 2007 race season on the website and put up the Punk Enduro pics. Also look out for the calendar soon.

www.pittcycling.com

Monday, December 04, 2006

Punk Bike Enduro

Hey guys,

Kyle and I went to the Punk Bike Enduro yesterday. It was a fantabulous ride. Check out an article and some pictures here.

Free beer, free race, free food, TONS of mud. Made for a spectacular day. We all should be there next year! Look out for pictures on the pittcycling website as soon as I, you know, get around to it. *cough*

VOOOODEN BYYKE (German voice)

DIS BYKE IZ LYKE A FORREST

Giro d'Italia 2007

The Giro has been announced!
Check it out Here

Here are some highlights:
22 stages
3422 km
30 mountains (4 mountain top finishes)
2 ITT's (one uphill)
1 TTT (unlike the tour...)
Oh, and little hill I like to call Zoncolan ("Europes toughest climb" with a rise of over 1200m in 10km, an entire km of 20% and a max of 23.6%)

more wood

This one is even cooler! I want it

Friday, December 01, 2006

AHA!

It works. Wow, not just responding!
Here's the other cool bike I found.

And if you get cold you can burn it and warm up ;-)

HOW TO POST

Ok I am going to try to clear up any confusion about posting here:

The easiest way to post is to click the link at the top of the page that reads "BlogThis!"
Then enter your username and password and hit enter
The next window will allow you to make a title and write a blog.

If you want to post pictures it is a little more complicated, You have to first sign in at http://www.blogger.com (you can get there by clicking on "blogger" in the upper right corner of the page too.) and then click on the link that says "panther cycling club." you can then create a blog and use the picture button on the tool bar to enter pictures.

To leave a comment on someones blog simply click the comment button at the end of the blog.

If you have any other questions let me know, or try:
http://help.blogger.com/
I guess I could always run through this on the screen at the meetings that should help.

Happy blogging

Motorcycle Rack

The blog is busy today!
anyway I have found a new project...splendid


Sorry I got excited..had to share it with someone.

That last picture is even the same model as my motorcycle

Silly Hats

Read the product description of this hat and tell me you dont want one!!

Silly hats!

what shit!

I just thought I'd post the insane injustice that Astana, team of Vuelta winner Alexander Vinokourov, DID NOT receive a ProTour liscence!!!!!!