Yesterday was the first time I've driven the Subie in any significant snow. It was a scary experience. The tires on the car are Yokohama all seasons and they're less than a year old. They're way fun on the twisties when it's dry but I might as well have been on ice skates. I think at one point I slid for 50 yards. The Subie also has anti-lock brakes and I'm not a fan of them. I do think the problem was compounded by the fact that the tires weren't gripping and it was causing the anti-lock to kick in when it wasn't really needed. I almost put it in several ditches on the mile trip home. I called around for snow tires as soon as I got home.

You can spend a lot of dough on snow tires. Continental has some really nice stuff but they're about 120 a pop. The Blizzack is a really nice tire as well. However, a few years ago, I found a super nice snow tire that sells for anywhere from 70-85 a piece for a 16". It's made by Firestone and it's called the Winterforce. I put these same tires on the Vanagon last year. They're great in the snow. They look good and you can get studs for them as well (although I think you really only need that if you're way up in the frozen tundra).

I was supposed to go down tonight and have 4 of them installed but a co-worker was having issues with her vehicle and I suspected it was a bad alternator. So I drove it home and told her I'd look it over. The battery was showing 11.3 volts when I got it home. I decided to install a new alternator and then the reading jumped to 14.6 so I was happy. I'll go down tomorrow and get my new tires. I really do not like people I don't know/trust getting behind the wheel of any of my cars. Even if it's just to drive it into the bay to install tires. It's a whole process for me. I'll spend all day tomorrow cringing until it's done. I am the EXACT same way with my computer at work. If I take a day off, I take the mouse and hide it and also unplug a few chords.

I got in another good ride on the SS yesterday. This time the 32x22 was perfect. I was able to climb up Rampart Range Road with no issues and ride the singletrack just above town. I'm still fighting a little bit with the BB7's though. The back is quiet but the front just whails. I worked on them today and found this:

Looks like the pads aren't hitting the rotor very square. I installed some new rotors I had laying around and roughed up the pads quite a bit and then went to work on re-setting both the front and the back calipers. The nice thing about Shimano brakes is you can just throw them on and they work with very little adjustment. I just couldn't ever get them to stay working. The Avids are a bit more finicky to set up (at least for me). I think I finally got it though. Initially they both squealed but after riding them around for a while and heating the pads up, they finally shut up. They feel even better now that all of the pad is contacting the rotor too. They should get even better after they get some dirt and water on them and really get seated.

I like the Alma even more now that it's SS. I'm not sure it's a good idea yet but....I like it.

Reminiscing

All this talk about Big Shark has me thinking. The shop was originally this tiny little place in the U City "Loop". For those that don't know, the Loop used to be a dirty little place with no shortage of crime and pan handlers. I haven't walked up and down it in years so I can't speak to it's current state. We sure used to get some strange characters wandering into the shop. Some of them were pretty damn funny. One of them that comes to mind was a guy that I know TK will recall. In fact, I think that the brash TK actually had a soft spot for this guy. His name.......was Sherman. Sherman was an African American gentleman. He was a pretty big guy from what I remember and he always wore jeans, some type of work boot, a t-shirt, and camouflage jacket. This was Sherman's standard attire even on the hottest of St. Louis days and Sherman was always ripe. Sherman graced us with his presence quite often. His visits were bittersweet. We all enjoyed his company and I don't think that any of us minded working on his bike (always on the house b/c Sherman was poor). What we all cursed at was having to put the bike in the stand. The thing weighed a ton. It was an old cruiser bike with a coaster brake. It had the biggest and heaviest basket possible on the front. In said basket were Sherman's tools of the trade. He was a general handyman that would probably do anything that anyone asked of him if it meant he could get a buck or two. I remember there being a boombox strapped to the basket that was always tuned to Magic 108, bolt cutters, tree pruning tools, and no less than 20' of heavy chain. Hands down...out of all of the bike shop boys, Sherman liked TK the best. He very much cared what TK thought. Another thing that Sherman generally had down in the depths of the basket was......a bottle. Generally it was Ripple. For those that don't know....Ripple is an inexpensive wine with a fairly high alcohol content. Ripple is also known as Blockparty Breakup, Bumwine, Hobo Juice, and Poverty Punch. according to the Urban Dictionary, Ripple was made famous by Fred G. Sanford of Sanford and Son. He had a drink called Champipple (Champagne and Ripple). Anyway...I never took a pull off Sherman's bottle but I'm sure it had to be Mad Dog, Cisco, Night Train or Thunderbird and possibly a mixture of them all. Sherman was never shy about getting his bottle out of the basket while we tried to piece his bike back together but he did try to hide it from TK. He'd stand over in the corner of the store takin' pulls when TK turned his back or left the store for a minute. Sherman would always put his finger up to his lips when he was done and say, "Shhhhhhhhhhh........now don't tell Tim."

I hope Sherman is ok. I don't know that the man had a bad bone in his body.

I did a 40 mile ride on the SS today. It was fun but I rode the Santa Fe Trail and, ideally, I need a taller gear than 32x22 but oh well. I was going to jump onto the Air Force Academy and ride their singletrack but I didn't have my ID and was a bit nervous about getting caught. I've grown fond of my fingernails and I'm not sure how I'd hold up in a high stress interrogation. No pictures to speak of as I was too busy bouncing around on the saddle while spinning a huge cadence. I didn't look silly at all but, then again, I didn't care. I was too busy looking at things and listening to Uncle Tupelo's first album (No Depression).

There are so many cool skate parks around here and there's even a nice dirt jump park down along the trail. If I could guarantee a time where none of my students were going to be at the skate park in our town, I would love to go there with my board (yes...I can skate a bit) and play. A few years before I came out here I would routinely skate downtown and in the parking garages really late at night while shooting film. Anyway...I happened to see one lone campsite right by the dirt jumps. Reminded me of back home. In the mid-90's there was a restaurant (I think it was called Orlando Gardens). Behind this place was a creek. I don't know the real name of the creek but we all knew it as Shit Creek. There was a series of dirt jumps down there and there was one guy named Russ that I guess lived there. The kids thought he was cool and so they'd bring him food and stuff. Anyway...on special occassions at the original Big Shark location we would break out a VHS cassette that would have us all in tears. It was a very short clip and the name scribbled on the masking tape was, "Russ jumping Shit Creek". It was a huge gap. The poor footage showed Russ way back on a trail. He came racing down and sprinting for all he was worth. He hit the dirt ramp and right at the lip he launched. Even though the outcome was always the same I think secretly we all held our breath thinking that, this time, it would be different. Russ was airborne for what seemed like 5 seconds. He failed to make the the other ramp and cased it HARD onto the far bank with a "thud" that would send all of us cackling like little girls. If I recall, he got hurt pretty bad on that jump. Wonder whatever happened to that guy?

Let's talk about....

Blowing noses. There's a lot of that goin on around here the last few days. I could probably write a book about this subject but I'm gonna try and pare it down for your benefit. Here's something that I don't see a whole lot of anymore.......men using handkerchiefs. A more grotesque practice I can't think of. I was recently meeting with a parent and a student of mine and the parent pulled out his white handkerchief, blew his nose in it and then tucked that baby back in his pocket. What the hell is that? We expel mucus from the body for a reason. When I am forced to blow my nose (which I hate doing by the way) I want that mucus and the tissue it is now contained in as far away from me as possible. In fact, if I could burn it I would. I don't understand why anyone would want it in their pocket and then why they would utilize the same cloth to blow their nose in later on that same day. Let's not even go into the fact that someone is laundering said cloth.

This morning Heather and I were talking about this very topic. My father-in-law uses a handkerchief. Heather says that not all men who use handkerchief's are using them to blow their noses in. She says that her dad used to use his while working on the ranch to wipe the sweat of his brow. That I understand. However, are you telling me that there was never a day when a brow wiper suddenly had the urge to sneeze? The next time he wipes his brow he's got mucus on his forehead.

Perhaps it's a geographical issue? The midwest is very humid and, in my experience, does not wreack nearly the havoc on the nose as warmer and drier climates. Out here it's different. I'm not going to sit in here in front of this keyboard and tell you that I never have to go in and clean house. Sometimes blowing your nose out here can be a dangerous proposition. You can get a piston booger or a boulder booger to come loose and that thing can shoot out of a nostril with propulsion that NASA would gladly harness. The difference is.....I don't keep it in my pocket all day.

The other day I busted the push up spring on the Singleator. I got my new one today and installed it. I also got a new 18mm cone wrench for setting the spring tension on said spring. I'm going to cut it down really small cuz I won't need to put any leverage into it and that way it'll fit into my tool pack.

I also got some new grips today. I've tried the Ergon's before but they had the incorporated barends. I rode them for a bit and then gave them to Scott as I just wasn't ga ga over them. I decided to give the ones without the barends a try. There's absolutely no difference in the grip itself but, for some reason, I kinda like these better (at least while riding very tight circles in the garage). I think they look smashing. I did have a minor snafu during the installation process though. The grips bolt on to the bar with a cute little bolt (It's an M4). I snapped the bolt because I've been working out a lot. So I had to go to the hardware store to find a new bolt and then I had to drill out the old one with a 5/64" bit. It was like playing Operation. I was able to get the job done without boogering up the threads. Upon closer inspection I found that my bars were crushed on the ends from those pesky barends that I sometimes run. So...a quick trip over to the neglected green bike and I had a brand new set of Salsa Pro Motos in the wideload variety. That bike is beginning to look like it's been pecked over by rabid vultures.

Funny thing about the Ergon grips. You're supposed to tighten that one little bolt to 5Nm (that's Newton meters). I felt like I was back to working on one of the many Audi's I've had through the years with one of there factory technical manuals. They tell you how tight to go on every minute bolt and screw and it's always in Newton meters. Who the hell knows what a Nm is? Just so you learn something today....5 Newton meters is equal to 44.3 inch lbs. I went with my own measuring system and got them Gootentite.

I also got to fondle the new Niner Air 9 Carbon frame. I asked for a moment alone but the guys weren't having it. If I would have had a cigarette I would have smoked it. I might be in love. They had one white one built up with XX and then a bare Tang frame. This could very well be my next frame. If anyone from the shop is reading this...I licked the Tang frame fairly aggressively while having nasty thoughts.

Clockin' in

I been gettin' done in the weight room this year. I love lifting weights. Don't let the fact that this room is void of people fool you. All I hear is the crowd cheering for "One more set!!!!"