Desert? I think not.

Of all the things occupying my mind today, it is the weather. It all began the moment I looked out my bedroom window after rolling out of bed late this morning. Snow. On the ground. At my house. It wasn't much snow, but the damage was done.

To be fair and honest, it didn't really start today. It really started when the weather started to get bad last week. Only, I kept expecting it to get better. Today, I realized it wouldn't.

Essentially, my beautiful desert mountain biking world has been snatched from me, and replaced by a nasty, cold, rainy bog.

Call me when Utah gets back from visiting the Northwest.

Mother Nature, you won this one...

After riding home from work the other day in the pouring rain... in street clothes, I decided that I ought to be more prepared. So, I dug out an old pair of clear vinyl rain pants and have been packing them in my bag for emergencies.

Yesterday, as I was planning to leave work, it wasn't raining, but it looked like it would so I put on these dorky pants just in case. I was soaked by the time I got home, but it didn't rain at all. I can't believe how hot those suckers are.

This morning, just as I was getting ready to leave, a few snow flurries started trickling down fromt the sky. "No bother," I thought, "that little snow won't really get me wet, but I know those vinyl rain pants will." Unfortunately, by the time I was about half-way there, I was riding into an 18 mph head-wind with snow coming down so fast I had very little visibility. By the time I got to work, my face was numb and I had about 1/2" of snow packed on the front of my jeans. I'm soaked.

One of these days, I'll get it right. For now, I'll have to keep my legs under my desk until my jeans dry.... which isn't going very quickly. Stupid jeans.

Trendy me.

Some may call it suicidal, others might classify it as overly ambitious. We're committed, though. Committed to a 2.5 week vacation on the road. A vacation with our three small children. A vacation that will lead us (in a car) over most of the United States. Needless to say, I'm scared. Well, that's not quite right. I was scared. I've accepted it now and I'm just stupidly optimistic about having the best family vacation ever.

"If I'm going to be on the road, behind the wheel that long," I reasoned with my wife, "I'm going to need a lot of music and audiobooks. Do you have any idea how much room all those CDs will take up in the car?" Thus began my light-hearted appeal for an iPod. It wouldn't be my first appeal--certainly, after so many, I had to laugh even as I presented the argument to my wife--but it ended up being my last.

I always told myself that I wouldn't get an iPod. "Surely their over-priced and just a bit trendy for me." Well, after shopping around a bit, here I am, listening to mp3s off my iPod. Initially, I was going to go for a new 6gb Mini, but my wife--yes, my frugal wife--that suggested $50 more for 14gb more capacity would be the better choice. Trendy I may be, but happy I am with my new 20gb iPod.

Surely, with my iPod packed with songs and books, the trip can't go wrong, can it?

Finally, Commuter Pics

Here's the commuter with fenders. I had to swap out the front tire, as it didn't fit with the fender and that puny fork. 

Finally, here are pictures of the commuter. Here it is without fenders. 

More FireFox Tips...

Thanks, Ben, for letting me know about these.

1) Here's a shortcut for opening a new tab and entering a new url in said tab. Type the url in the current tab and hit Alt-Enter. That will take your url and open it in a new tab, leaving your current tab intact.

2) Alt-D puts the focus in the address bar so you can go to a new url or what-not. Hitting F6 works sometimes for this, also, and actually toggles between the main window and the address bar. This is nice if you want the focus on the web page itself for scrolling with the arrow keys.

Commuter (part II)

(if you haven't already, please read this post first)

...

After a bit of looking around, I found all the parts, plus an excellent (especially for the price) no-name toolkit for around 150 USD. The finished product is a not-too heavy bike with all that is necessary to commute--rain or shine. I only have one chainring in front (a 32) and an 8-speed in back with a SunTour thumbshifter doing all the work. After a little debate, I went ahead and put on both front and rear linear-pull brakes. Coincidentally, I was able to get all my parts in matte black. Because the frame also has a matte finish (and no branding whatsoever), it lends something to the overall bike. (I will attach photos later.)

I've only really had one problem: My chain will sometimes come off my single chainring when I am at the extreme cogs in the back. I am thinking I need some sort of guide, but I don't want to spend any more money. Any suggestions?

Now, the main problem I have with my commuter is I'm a big wimp. Lately, the highs have been around 28 degrees and more like 14 degrees when I ride in to work. Consequently, I haven't riden all that much. That's turning out to be a much larger hurdle than getting all the parts.

Speaking of parts, I'll try and get a list posted later for those who might be interested (at least, in the non-generic parts).

Turbo = True

In Firefox, there are numerous settings that aren't available in the options dialog. All of them, however, can be changes by typing about:config in the address bar of the browser.

Here's something that I found recently in the about:config (actually, a few things). The first is reminiscent of the old turbo buttons on PCs back in the day.

browser.turbo.enabled

this defaults to false, so I set mine to true. I have no idea what this does because I also changed these values to true:

network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining

I read somewhere that it makes a speed difference, but I was actually amazed. I mean, everyone says that Firefox is faster than IE, but sometimes it is hard to tell. With these set to true, I've done tests giving IE a head start and Firefox wins every time. So, go turn your turbo on.