Mellow Mushroom Racing – Group Ride
Mellow Mushroom Racing – Group Ride, a set on Flickr.
So we had a big group/team ride. As usual it turns into a race…. It was fun though I’ve missed those surge-y efforts this summer so far and its going to to take some more to get my legs back to the form I wan them.
Ikea and Radiohead
So we got an Ikea Knappa hung
( look at me- I can use wire nuts!)
and we got the deluxe edition of Radiohead’s King of Limbs.
What a weekend
A new toy
It’s ridiculous how much joy I can wring from a $15 flat piece of wood. I am of course speaking of my pizza peel. I’ve been working on perfecting my pizza technique for a while. I’ve tried several dough formulations (and I’ve taken a detour with the Gluten Free curst for C.) I’ve figured out what I like in a sauce.
I’ve figured out my preferred method for par baking the crust. I’ve turned up my oven as high as it will go. I’ve experimented with baking surfaces and sticking prevention. I’ve even stuck solidly with the high moisture mozzarella and fresh basil- even go so far as to basically eschew homemade pizza if the last two items are unavailable. The last step (for now at least) was finding a more elegant way of transferring the dough/crust to my now searingly hot baking stone.
My implement is that obvious one that seemingly all pizzerias, from the temporary and multipurpose (our kitchens) to those of authentic verifiable Neapolitan temples to the Margherita pie: the lowly pizza peel.
This weekend I finally got a chance to use my newly acquired peel. It took a little learning and just the right dusting of cornmeal, but it’s a thing of beauty to slide in and scoop up the whole pizza- it takes a special shake- one might call it putting some ‘English,” but it’s clearly Mediterranean. It’s a shimmy of the peel, a tip and a slide and in an instant – “Che bello” you’ve got your pie on the peel.
It’s a beautiful thing. Once the pizza’s on the peel, you might lift it even closer to put that final bubble on the cheese, to give the pepperoni that special crisp and in a flash, it’s out of the oven sitting on it’s peel that will double as a cutting board.
It’s funny how little it takes to live La Dolce Vita
Bike to Work week Day 5
Ride to Work week: Day 5 from Eric Wright on Vimeo.
Interrupted by battery shenanigans but semi cool nonetheless. This is part of my bike commute.
Red eye
Red eye, originally uploaded by erictwright.
I love my local coffee shop.
A little humor on an early morning goes a long way.
Bike to Work week: Day 4
It’s beeen a crazy day, so no time for a real post, so here’s a snack size one.
My commute is 1.97 MIles away and according to my bike computer it took me 7 minutes and 38 second. ( The Computer doesn’t count stopped time) According to my calculations ( thanks Wolfram Alpha) I averaged 20.64 feet per second. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.79+miles+in+7+minutes+38+seconds
Bike to Work Week: Day 3
Hump day! (Actually I try to avoid the speed bumps on my route in)
OK to catch you up
Day 1
Day 2
I started this post yesterday but got sidetracked on gear. (Raise your hand if you are surprised that gear sidetracked me) The process is the part that took the most refining for me. When I first started riding in to work I went through all of these gyrations to drive in the things I thought I needed each day. I’ve progressively reduced the amount of stuff I schlep and managed to make the process much easier and reduce the number of excuses I have to drive the car.
Ok so my process
Part 1: At the house.
I typically leave my messenger bag by the door with my helmet still attached and my cycling shoes nearby. While still in the house I take off the shoes I’m going to wear for the day and I place all of my ‘pocket stuff’ (except keys) in one of the shoes. This includes my phone, wallet, id badge, pocketknife, lip balm, usb drive. I then make sure everything I need for the day is in the bag. My shoes go in the very top so they don’t get ground schmutz on anything. I nestle the shoes together and cinch up the bag.
Next I sit down and snag my cycling shoes. Inside are my two Velcro ankle bands. I tighten the pants around my left leg and put both bands on my left ankle and calf. I then roll up my right pants leg up to my knee. I could likely use one of the ankle bands on my right side, but I don’t trust them to keep my pants out of the chain. The risk is just too great- plus I usually don’t wear REALLY nice pants that couldn’t handle the roll.
Once my pants are secure I put on the cycling shoes. I do one final check then I put on the messenger bag.
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Part 2: On the porch.
I grab my bike and walkout the door onto the front porch. I lean my bike up against a column and do one last check to make sure I have everything I need. Then I lock up the house. Next I place my keys in one of the zipper pockets of my bag. (This is actually important, once I rode with my keys poking me in leg all the way to work only to have the keys drop out of my pocket into the road during a standing climb.)
Next I unclip the helmet from its clip put it on and roll down the sidewalk and into the street.
Part 3: The Ride
Ride the bike the roughly 2 miles or 8 minutes to work.
(I’ll try and detail another day)
Part 4: On the loading dock
When I get to work I try to take care of most of the transition from bike to presentable employee outside. I walk the bike up the ramp and lean it against some pylons. I usually sit down at a little bench outside for the rest of the process. It’s basically the preparation process in reverse. I takeoff the helmet, clip it to my bag, sit my bag on the ground, pull out my shoes, load up my pockets with the content of the shoes, take off my cycling shoes, put the straps in the cycling shoes, roll down my pants leg, put on street shoes, put my cycling shoes in the bag, seal up the bag and I’m done.
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Part 5: Parking
Now comes the delicate part of the commute.
I have to pass through three keycard doors pretty quickly with bike in tow to get to my parking spot. The goal is to not break any of the glass doors with an errant pedal strike nor break the bike in heavy door. Added difficulty, don’t get any chain grease on coworkers or me. I tend to drive the bike by the seat with a lean hear or there to make turns on my way to the server room/parking area. It’s actually a pretty good parking area. It is out of the way and not many folks have access to it. An added bonus is that it is normally super cool in there so in the summer it gives me a quick chill out of the Alabama heat.
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Once I’m parked I head on upstairs to my office like a normal person. (Except I have a helmet on my bag.)
More tommorow.
Bike to Work Week: Day 2
I’m back for day two of Bike to Work week, see Day 1 here.
Today I wanted to run through some of the logistics or how I get my stuff and me to my office without a car. It took a little refining of process and a few small purchases of gear but I have a pretty lightweight way of commuting. Luckily, my ride is short enough that I can wear the same clothes (except shoes) to ride in and work in.
The Gear
The bag is key. I have a Timbuk2 Commuter from about 2002. I also have a
WaterField Designs laptop sleeve and cord organizer ( Cable Guy) that help me keep everything safe and secure in the bag. The bag is pretty good is snugs up nice and tight on my bag and it can eat up a surprisingly large amount of stuff. The cord organizer and laptop sleeve are the best I’ve found and keep me less paranoid about my lappy and the cord organize keeps the bag tidy.
My shoes are my regular old cycling Specialized Carbon something or other road shoes that are now 4 years old. If I get a real commuter bike someday I’ll be able to ride platforms and won’t need special shoes, but for now I’m clipless with Speedplay pedals on the commute.
Helmet- I ride whatever helmet is handy, but I try not to use the Giro Prolight, because commuting in a $200 helmet seems crazy. This week I’ve been riding my Rudy Project Sterling, but it’s not terribly important which helmet you wear as long as you are wearing one.
Ankle straps are a bit of gear I knew I would need to pick up when I started riding in. I think I picked up these cheapies at Academy Sports when I first started riding in to work. They serve two purposes, they keep my non-drive side pants leg out of the drive train and they add a little bit of reflectivity that can’t hurt.
A tiny thing that makes s huge difference is my Niteize S-Biner. I think I have the smallest one that they make. It hangs on my bag and I use it to hang my helmet to my bag, it’s really bad for a helmet to get dropped around and banged on things, so I just hook my helmet on to my bag with the s-biner as soon as I take it off and I don’t drop it. The other thing that it helps with is reducing the number of things I have to carry. I have to open, and walk my bike through three doors to get it to my parking area and it helps to have one last thing to schlep.
The last thing I have for bike commuting is an interesting paradox. It is probably the most important thing (and most expensive) that I have, but it is the least used. Lights… I have Blackburn Flea front and rear lights that I picked up at Wigs Wheels in Anniston. They are incredibly small but surprisingly bright little lights that I can throw on my bike in less than five minutes. The lights attach with a strap that is grippy on one side and Velcro on the other. They aren’t the fanciest lights, but for my short commute they give me the piece of mind that someone should see me if I get caught out after work. The handiest part is that they are USB rechargabke with integrated battery, and they even come with a solar charger.
Ok this post got a lot longer than I intended, so I’ll try to catch up with my process in a bit.
Bike to Work Week: Day 1
So someone decided that this week ( May 16-20) is ‘Bike to Work Week.’
I bike commute a fiar bit, but usually about 4 days a week. My goal is to ride in each day and document the process.
I am pretty lucky as far as bike commuters go, I have a short, relatively flat ride in on pretty low key downtown roads. I now have a gig where I don’t have to make a lot of trips during the day and I have a secure place to lock my bike.
I realize that I am pretty lucky to have those conveinces, but I think many folks overestimate the difficulty of pulling it off. I’m going to try and document how I commute by bike and how you can do it too!
Now for the pictures
The Blinders – IM @ the GPL
I worked with Amanda, Brandy and Carol at the Gadsden Public Library to come up with a theme for a series of PSA billboards and a website as a public literacy project. The idea is a nutshell is to make reading ‘cool’ and to show how unstuffy reading and the library can be. We took some ‘cool’ or ‘edgy’ professions/ people and put them in their natural situation but placed books throughout the scene and gave books to the subjects to read as if they were caught up reading.
This is the photo we went with for the Gadsden Public Library’s campaign ‘IM @ the GPL’
www.gadsdenlibrary.org/im.html
It was as lot of fun to work with these guys and to shoot at the Blackstone and it’s even cooler to know the photo is going straight to a billboard.
I think it’s a really fun way to help promote literacy and it was a nice creative outlet. I got some direction about what kind of image they were looking for the campaign, but most of the artistic freedom was left to me.
(I will say that I was a little bit concerned about shooting to the proportions of a billboard 3:1 but a little gaffer tape mask on the LCD screen helped me visualize the shape.)
My Photo Stream
