Perplexed Orange Independent Biker

Me & the BoSS went to Theo Wirth yesterday. Same old story, except

• Hadn’t been there since last July or August,


• New platform pedals no clip/cage, and


• I’m out of shape for off-road singlespeed heart rate intervals.

But wow, riding that bike off-road is so fun! I’ve been miserably jetlagged and stressed out about work for 3 days. And after the ride I felt just plain happy.

The platform pedals worked out ok. I need a move for curb/log obstacles. With clipless I wheelie over then hop the rear wheel up/over by pulling up with my legs. On the platforms I was terrified of pinch-flatting the rear every time.

The BoSS was “rode hard & put away wet” when I visited in Feb. The chain is damn near rusted, whole bike is dirty as hell & signs of the road salt I didn’t wash off. The brake setup is almost dangerous… She’ll spend time at One-On-One when I go back to London next week.

Eiffel tower
Originally uploaded by dansteeves68.

Elliot and I took a whirlwind one-day tour of Paris yesterday. Here are the highlights.

• 7:15am Eurostar train to Paris.


• Glimpse of Sacre Coeur from the train.


• Taxi to Eiffel tower held up by a parade of children dressed up as flowers.


• Elliot’s smile as he posed below the tower.


• Delight when we found the grumpy old men in Musee d’Orsay, after touring half the museum looking for them and calling Mom for help.


• Elliot devouring quiche for lunch and flirting with our table-neighbors. Quiche’ll probably never happen again and was only due to incredible hunger after eating nothing all morning but some cereal at home and a large pink milk on the train.


• Elliot took a great picture of me on Pont Neuf overlooking the Seine.


• The toy department, dome ceiling, and chilling out in the bar at Galleries Lafayette. (Elliot was fascinated that a store would have a bar in it.)


• Dinner. No, dinner! Chartier made me so happy, and Elliot is such a restaurant champ. No kids menu but he happily ate grown-up salad, trout muniere almandine, and dame blanche. The restaurant was oozing traditional Parisian style, the food was cheap, yummy and French. And we had a great time.


• Elliot falling asleep on the Eurostar home, despite every intention not to.


• Talking with Mom about the day for 30 minutes before going to bed even though it was 11pm.


• Sleeping until 9am, which Elliot and I never do, and waking up to find Mom and Quinton already awake, which never happens.

It was difficult a couple times. Exhausting as the day went on and we realized we’d walked too much. But wonderful.

Sometimes I put things here just to increase their Google page rank in the hopes that lots of others will start to take notice.

A simple cure is to draw all districts with the shortest splitline algorithm involving approximately-bisecting a state’s population with the shortest eligible splitting line, and then continuing recursively on the resulting hemi-states.

Link

Read about it at Jon Taplin

Elite race leaders
Originally uploaded by dansteeves68.

I saw some good bike racing tonight, and enjoyed the London cycling scene. Not supposed to “poormouth” but sure do wish I could afford more Rapha gear.

Elounda, Crete (stolen)

See you next Wednesday. Off to Crete with my lovely wife of 8 years and our boys, both of whom are anticipating the trip more than Christmas.

Saturday I attended and really enjoyed the conference Fixing the Broken World, found via Ben Hammersley’s blog, which I have been reading since 2001 and always contains an interesting (to me) mix of information & observation & personal story. Had a good time hanging out with and learning from people who agree the world is foobar, but unlike me are doing something about it.

• Christian Nold makes emotional mpas of places to inform planning decisions. This is far more interesting than it sounds.
• I would hire Alex Haw to speak at almost anything. He’s an architect turned artist with a brilliantly unorthodox presenting style. He’s not too linkable that I could find, but this installation featured in his talk.
• Richard Sanford from futurelab spoke about his work at Beyond Current Horizons
• People are trying to use the web to solve problems; e.g. AMEE, Bryony Worthington, James Smith
• Wish I’d had a chance to chat with Ed Scotcher, as it looks like he’s got a similar background to me.
• Adrian Hon & Naomi Alderman gave a so-so presentation on the personal and environmental impact of observing a sabbath. Later in the park Naomi answered my questions about how the sabbath rules influence the way Jewish communities develop. And in one of the afternoon sessions I sat next to Adrian and couldn’t get over his multi-tasking productivity.
  
• Enjoyed a long chat at the pub with Pix from Foam

Jon Taplin’s got me worked up this morning with his latest post.

I guess what has depressed me so much in the last few weeks is that from a global perspective, America is slipping behind, and yet we are contesting an election over American flag pins, egotistical preachers and assorted nonsense that has nothing to do with our massive failures both in Iraq and in every town in our great country. While the rest of the world is moving ahead we are cutting back. At USC, the National Science Foundation grants are harder to come by. Corporate chieftains like Jeff Immelt of GE get criticized for making long term bets on Green Tech. And everywhere we look our bridges, schools, pipelines and digital infrastructure are second class. If the American people are so short-sighted as to fall for the Clinton-McCain “Gas tax Holiday” to encourage consumption, when in fact we should be doing everything we can to reduce consumption–then they will get the panderer they deserve for a President.

Back in the saddle
Originally uploaded by dansteeves68.

The franken-claw got an “all-clear” from the specialist yesterday. He was as surprised as all of us that nothing worse came of being run over by a bus. To celebrate, I rode the IRO fixie to the office today. It was painful to grip hard, but for the most part no worse than how it felt first thing in the morning before a cocktail of Advil and Tylenol.

Daily update
Originally uploaded by dansteeves68.

Yes the rumors are true. I got my hand run over by a red London bus, Thursday morning on my way from home to the office.

The good news is that I’m absolutely fine except for my left hand, I didn’t lose any range of motion, and the x-ray showed no broken bones. There is some risk of nerve damage or wrist problems that didn’t show up yet. I see a specialist this week to check that out.

Today I rode half a mile to Odd Bins for a bottle of Chardonnay and things weren’t too bad. I hope to start commuting the middle of this week. I can also type reasonably, tie shoes, and drink tea already.

I got a very interesting gash where the skin between my thumb and index finger popped open like a chicken breast when you pound it thin to make chicken scallopini. 5 stitches, the scar will be pretty cool.

I passed the bus on his right (outside) as we were moving through an intersection in a right turn. I was trying to move around a truck to move through stalled traffic. That truck braked, I brushed its back left corner with my right arm, which knocked me off balance. I fell left, arm sprawled out, felt fine but scared in traffic, then I felt the bus tire move onto my hand… Thankfully it was entirely below the wrist, and kept moving instead of stopping on my hand.

Don’t know about you but I can’t stand to think about it much more for tonight. Darcie is starting a pool for guessing how many different colors my franken-claw will turn, and bonus for how many fingernails I lose.