The Standards Have Been Set Low

Racing! Finally! And probably overdue. After a third week of a build and final week of weightlifting of the season, I went into it tired. And it showed.

Sequim

I have at times struggled logistically getting to races, but I nailed it for this race. I did all bike maintenance stuff the night before and packed everything before going to bed. And even before this, I had made breakfast for the weekend before leaving Portland. Then I got up and was driving by the time I had wanted to start driving. I got to the race 1 hour and 25 minutes early! I set up the bike and kitted up and even tried some relaxation and visualization exercise before the race with time to spare.

Then we started racing. I had had a plan to just watch things basically the first few laps and then try something lap 3. This strategy was going all fine and well until I tried a break on lap 3 and realized that I did not have enough sustained power output available. I was able to get clear fine, but staying away was a big problem. I got caught quickly. I also had a bit of a problem during the race in that my race food was clif bars which were way too clumpy to be effectively eaten and digested at the pace we were going.

On the final lap I found myself at the back of the pack after fumbling around trying to eat my 3rd clif bar. Not good. I was trying to move up a little bit and was really going to get up there after that final riser. Unfortunately, some people decided to crash themselves in front of me which I could not avoid getting caught up in based on my current position. I was able to slow down enough to slow-motion crash-speed, hit a few bodies with the front wheel, began a brief launch up in the air and then landed on who knows who with my neck. I got up, had to take off my helmet because it was now covering my face and then proceeded to assesses the damage. All body parts still intact and not even scraped up, nice. Spin the rear carbon wheel.. it's true! Spin the front carbon wheel, it's also true!!! YESS!!!! Best crash ever!

Although I didn't get a chance to contest the sprint I was relieved that there wasn't any pressure at this point so I happily pedaled my way in z2 and even did my own sprint from 200m. Then it was another logistical whirlwind - chugging chocolate almond milk, getting packed, driving to Oak Table, chugging some more chocolate almond milk, eating an entire apple pancake at Oak Table in about 15 minutes, speeding my way all the way to Winslow with 10 minutes to spare before the 2:55 ferry! This view never gets old:

Ate dinner with my good friend Randy over at Wild Ginger, drove back to Tacoma, watched "No Stings Attached" with my sister and her quirky housemate and getting to bed later than I should at about 11:15.

Mason Lake

If you were told that there was this 60 mile bike race around this lake called Mason Lake where you get about 3 seconds of a nice view of it per lap, where 98% of the time it is cold, rainy, hailing, there are about 6 total spectators cheering you on, no prizes for anybody, no beer at the end, no food, it costs $30, and the sprint is notorious for being a crashfest, what kind of moron would want to do that? Well bike racers, that's who! This classic event is where the Cat 5s come to prove that they are the next Lance Armstrong - shitty conditions be damned - and the rest of us to get our racing on. And this year the race did not disappoint.

It started out cold and somewhat windy. Only about 50 people from all afternoon fields showed up, so we all got jumbled into one large group, cat 12s, 3s, masters and a few women too. It started out with attack after attack until finally 7 people got away for good on the 2nd lap of 5. I was feeling cooked and tried at one point to bridge up to the 7 and ended up getting about 30 meters closer before I became so tired that I drifted to the back. At this point, I was just trying to get my workout on. I missed a chase break on lap 4 and by then there was snow on the ground. When the final sprint for 15th place came around, I was done, stuck behind a wheel that was drifting back hard and ended up thank-God-we're-done pedaling through the finish.

Above is a picture summarizing Mason Lake. There is some snow on the windshield wipers, yet it is sunny at the moment. Got my spare wheels, got out of my cold and wet clothes, sped my way back to Tacoma, got 2 hot-n-ready pizzas, ate 2 slices, showered, ate another slice, got driven to the train station, barely finished assembling my bike for the train as it rolled up, and then ate 7 more slices of pizza on the train.

Post-weekend thoughts

I am tired. So tired. I did not have the resources available to get into the breaks this weekend. However, I view this weekend as quite positive, perhaps also due to the fact that I'm beginning to read this book Karly gave me for Christmas:

And after reading this book, I'm already putting some of the strategies to use. An interesting passage was that it said that ultra-competitive people expect success so much that they'll rate there successful achievements with lower rates of satisfaction than otherwise happy people rate some of their failures. So you could say I've had some good opportunities to reframe things this week for the good. And honestly a lot of good did happen. I was quite happy to have raced finally.

Racing is different in so many ways from just riding around. To put things in perspective, I have spent more time in HR Z4 this week than the prevous 4 weeks combined and more time in z5 these past two days than my entire training season-to-date. Ok, so in Lehman terms this week my heart was beating at a rate between 160 beats per minute and 174 beats per minute (Z4) for 3 hours and 6 minutes - 2:10 in just these past two races. Even though I didn't get a shot at winning, I realized that just by racing I was pushing myself harder than I ever had on all these solo rides. This was a huge eye-opener to me in that competition seems to drive people to achieve better results than just people working without such conflict. Just look at the HR Zone profile from Mason Lake (z1 - z5 left to right), I just can't get this kind of a workout by myself:

Ok, rest week coming up, need to sleep.

The Success Equation

The problem with bike racing and every other competition for a scarce resource in this world is that not everybody can get that scarce resource. However, sometimes it seems like some people have a seemingly natural and unexplainable ability to excel in the area where they can easily obtain something where others struggle desperately to no avail. However, it is no coincidence that some people are just better at some things than others are.

This entire world is discrete. There are a certain number of people in this world, there is even a certain number of matter in this world, the point is that nothing is infinite in this natural world. And furthermore, rules hold together this world: gravity keeps matter close together, thermodynamics cause weather. And even furthermore there are patterns to everything: certain ways to race a bicycle race that gives you a good chance of winning and certain things to say to women to make them attracted to you.

On a spiritual note, however, my Lord Jesus Christ is infinite and has the power to accomplish anything despite the laws and general patterns of the world since He created all that. But on the other hand, His way of doing things can dramatically differ from what any one person can judge to be good, bad, preferred or even desired. So even though it can be possible for a paralyzed man to desire to win the Tour de France, this man is subject to the conditions placed on him by God.

No matter how strong of a bike rider you are, since you probably don't have such a superior amount of fitness that you can ride away from everyone since you are constrained to the general abilities of the human body, there has to be some management of the exertion of the potential energy you have. Similarly, with women (the other obnoxious area of my life where it seems like it's impossible to achieve success) since I am constrained by the amount of base attractiveness I have relative to every other douchebag competing for the same woman, there has to be some difference in my methodology for achieving my goal. So, I have come up with an equation to describe this problem:

Success

This is the end result that you want. In a bike race, usually the result you want is to be the first across the line. With women, I want to have consistent companionship with a woman that loves me how I like to be loved and enjoys receiving my love as well. So, how to get these things?

Situational Awareness

Do you really understand what is going on around you? In a bike race, do you know how many miles are left in the race? How to tell who is feeling strong? Or how good you are feeling? The world around us feeds us data about the current state of everything. But how good are you at determining exactly what the world is telling you? When this bonehead Evan from Guinness makes an attack 5 miles into a 70 mile race, how likely is it that he will ride faster than the other 50 riders for the next 65 miles? In the sprint, who is the sprinter that knows what wheel to take and where should you position yourself prior to those last 3 turns?

With women it is just as complex, but my awareness is so bad that I can barely guess what is happening. And at times I have let my feelings rage out of control to the point where I'm so excited about a woman that I can't see that she's actually not as good as I think she is. The point is that each situation has particles of information located all over the place and the more of this information that the brain can process and catalog, the more informed one will be when the time comes to make a decision about what action to take.

Strategy Formulation

So, how to achieve your goal? To win a bike race you have to ride hard and fast, right? To get a girl you have to "be yourself", right? Unfortunately for things that are hard to get, it is usually not simple. In fact it is annoying and painful and at times compelling to make one try harder.

If you ever fail in succeeding, you probably did something wrong. Perhaps that breakaway attempt at mile 5 of a 70 mile race was not a good idea. Maybe I shouldn't have been so nice to that woman that wasn't all that interesting. To achieve your goal there are patterns that can be more effective for certain kinds of situations. To win from a bike race, your timing must be just right to be first across the line. To get into a loving relationship, both parties must be interested in and working towards the benefit of each other.

The challenge is in the details of how to achieve your goal. And typically and even statistically if you really want to study it, there are patterns that generally can be followed to obtain a certain result. There are patterns that rarely work such as breaking away 5 miles into a 70 mile race or being the most boring person on earth to a woman, but then others patterns that are usually more successful like being behind a good wheel up until the last point of a field sprint or with women... actually I don't have much advice to offer with that. But the more ways one can identify to achieve their goal the more arsenal one will have in trying to achieve their goal.

Execution

With whatever strategy you use, there is the slight matter of actually carrying it out. You can be in exactly the right spot at the right time and still execute poorly and thus not achieve the level of success you wanted. For example, at last year's Franz Bakery Crit I had planned on sprinting for the win, but pedaled through the final corner crashing myself and then the field passed me, however at the Salem Crit I sprinted for the win on a 500m straightaway.

Luck

Luck can be anywhere in the spectrum between good and bad. If you had no idea what was going on around you and you didn't really have a plan, but the result of whatever you executed was success, than you had good luck. If you did not achieve your desired result despite thinking you were aware of your situation and came up with and executed what you thought was the best possible strategy, then you had bad luck. Luck is an interesting factor because it basically represents a situation you were not aware of or some strategy you weren't realizing that you were doing. If everything about the world is known and all possible strategies and their outcomes are already known then luck is a passive variable in the equation.

Bad luck for example can range from being struck by lightning to getting a flat tire. Yet since the world is discrete these items are not random. There are patterns to lightning and you're much more likely to be struck by it if you bike around holding a 40 foot metal pole sticking into the air in a thunderstorm in Florida. But even with the flat tire, the chances are far less likely that you'll get a flat tire if you slap on a brand new tire in substitute for the tire you've been riding since last season. Luck is an opportunity to learn more about the world and various situations and what strategies you can design to combat such a problem in the future or if whatever caused the good luck is replicable, perhaps this can be used again to achieve success again.

Resources

No matter how well you sense things, pick good plans and execute them well, you are bound by the physical resources at your disposal that you will need to accomplish the goal. If you want to win a bike race, you will need to have a bike. If you want to win a time trial against Fabian Cancellara you better have an immense amount of fitness available to use. In the case of the paralyzed man who wants to win the Tour de France, while he himself may not be physically capable of doing it himself, there would be nothing stopping him from giving other resources of his own to another person who has a body functioning well enough that he could accomplish that success.

Putting it all together

Success is tough because it requires a keen situational awareness combined with an effective strategy and then decent enough execution of that strategy or strategies all assuming you have enough resources available to achieve your goal. I've personally got a lot to work on in both the situational awareness and strategy formulation departments. With biking I need to be aware of the course and competitors and how much effort I am able to exert over the remaining distance. With women, I've got to be able to sense what they are feeling like and if I'm being treated well enough by them. And then I've got to have a whole range of tactics to employ in my bike racing from attacking at certain times or even having teammates do work for me. With women, it's really weird how they react to certain strategies and it can often times be surprising what strategies are effective.

Anyways, Racing...

I didn't do Hagg Lake because I got really sick the night before due to what I believe to have been a rotten tomato. So, this weekend it's up to Washington for Sequim and Mason Lake.

Quiet Before the Storm

I've been kinda quiet on this blog lately. However, I've been focusing on my training. I've had a big January and February of training and will still be hitting it hard this March.

Weightlifting:

I've been in the weightroom every week at least twice a week. I made quite a bit of progress over last year's peak lifts. This year I peaked in the squat at 325 pounds and leg pressed 777.5. I even maxed out the leg curl machine!

325 pounds in the squat.

777.5 pounds leg pressed.

Maxed out the leg curl machine at 265 pounds.

So was I the strongest guy in the weightroom? Heck No! Maybe 2nd strongest...

I believe this is over 1,000 pounds.

Riding:

I've been riding a lot as well. Actually it depends on who you compare me to when I say I ride a lot. Compared to the normal person, yes I ride a ton. However, I regularly see my racing buddies post these 90, 100 mile rides on Strava. I've only done two 80+ mile rides this year. I have been doing intervals though. We'll see what happens in the race.

Another factor with biking a lot is keeping good care of the bike. I haven't done a direct financial comparison to last year's riding. I have had two rear derailuer hanger failures where one caused the rear derailuer to snap in half. And I recently broke a spoke which led Veloshop to conclude that the wheel's rim was shot anyways, but at least that's not my carbon fiber wheel breaking.

I have definitely been better about cleaning my bike this year. Getting the shaft from Portland Plaza and being forced to use the bike locker across the street may have been a good thing after all. The locker is in a covered parking garage, so it is dry and it is always lit up and snobby rich people probably wouldn't be yelling at me as much when I lube my chain without a cardboard mat or something. I've got a solid routine for taking all my biking clothes and some post-ride food which I then consume while cleaning my bike afterwards.

Eating:

And it's that time of year again where I'm focused on what I'm eating. You won't find me consuming beer, but you will find me eating tons of Dave's Killer Bread. I discovered that I can buy 4 (imperfect) loaves for about $10 over at the Dave's Killer Breadquarters out in Milwaukie which makes for a nice bike ride about once every two weeks.

However, I think last year I was doing a little better about eating enough greens and veggies. I feel like I ate more mega-salads back then. But on the plus side, this year I'm doing better about eating enough during and after my rides. I'm taking Emergen-C and Zinc a few times a week and so far it seems to be holding off any illnesses. People have also always been asking me "are you vegan, are you vegan? huh? huh?" Well, not quite. I have eliminated dairy from my diet and am trying hard to also kick my lunchmeat habit, but the salmon most definitely is going to stay in my sandwiches and elsewhere.

This is actually just one serving of spinach.

Sleeping:

I have really realized that this is actually a super-important aspect of training. Not getting enough sleep seriously affects me. However, it seems to affect me mentally the most. I can really notice it at work because I'll be agitated and working slower than normal and then with people I'll become antisocial or just not have anything useful to say. It's a little more subtle when racing because your blood is already gushing through your system keeping you awake, but not enough sleep can mess with my head so that I don't have a good game plan going in and then it may do other weird things such as complicating my assessment of available energy to expel for a certain duration. Anyways, 8 hours is the absolute minimum on weekdays and 9 is the minimum on weekends, but I frequently miss both. Room for improvement and reason to rush writing this blog post so I can get to bed.

Life:

Another thing I ought to write about is Life. And this is Life as defined by Daniel Harm in his equation about training progress as follows:

(Training + Recovery + Nutrition) / Life = Progress.

As a bike racer, I don't have a "life" as most normal people may think of. I don't go out to bars, I don't watch tv or many movies and if I'm hanging out with friends its to serve a purpose in addition to just hanging out. As opposed to last year where I was pretty much a complete loner since moving to Portland and then throughout the racing season, this year I've added some Life to the equation but in ways that'll not only benefit me, but my new friends as well.

Ugly Christmas Sweater Party

The most important of these Life items I've done is joining a home community through my church. Every Thursday we get together to discuss the Sunday sermon and eat dinner. It's so awesome to be sharing the journey of walking with Christ with other people and the fact that there is food there makes it logistically easier as well. There are some times when I want to hangout too late though, like at this Ugly Christmas Sweater party I stayed until after 11pm cutting into my sleep. Sometimes even just 20 minutes of hanging out with good friends in person is all that is needed to have more than 0 Life but not conflict with recovery.

First Race (for me) Next Sunday

And so racing is about to begin. I decided not to go do the FHR or Eatonville but instead do the first Banana Belt as my first race. And the way I'm feeling is a bit tired, slightly nervous and well I was feeling excited, but I need to get over a little sleep debt I have to get back to that point of being excited. Come this Sunday it's the first time I get to see how well I perform against others and doing good at that is worthy of a whole 'nother blog post in itself. Now off to bed to sleep.

How to Read Rain Forecasts

Image from the Recycled Cycles blog

As promised, here is a weather post about the rain. To any potential meteorologists who read this, please take note that I am a n00b and don't understand all the terminology or know the names of every single type of cloud. However, I am fascinated by how the weather works, love free data and need to know on a daily basis how wet my bike ride will be.

This post is broken into 4 sections:

1. Basic Forecast Reading
2. Satellite Imagery
3. Timing your ride with the radar
4. Model Output - It will change your life!

Basic Rain Forecasts

Here is a typical picture where I am disappointed in overall design. This happens all the time, an entire week of rain forecasted with the exact same picture icon of rain. The reason I'm disappointed is partly because it will rain a lot. However, the rain will be significantly different between each of these days and even within each day. Yet if you were to just look at the picture in the forecast you would think it'll be the exact same each day. Hardly! However, there are very subtle elements that actually show what kind of rain is forecasted.

%Chance of rain

This is actually quite useful and usually tells a lot of the story. 100% chance means you are going to get drenched - a massive storm is coming where it will probably rain rain most of the day. 70-90% means it will almost certainly rain but at times it may not rain that intensely. 40-60% usually means a sprinkle. 20-30% could mean a mist. 0-10% means mostly sunny!

Rainfall amounts

Here is the game-changer. As noted before we Pacific Northwesterners could probably have as many names for rain as Eskimos have for snow. There is pouring rain, windy rain, hailing rain, freezing rain, steady rain, bipolar rain, drizzle, sprinkle, mist and I'm probably missing some. Anyways, the distinguishing factor between most of these guys is the volume of rain that gets dumped out of the heavens. And the forecast actually reports these things.

Check out the Wednesday and Wednesday Night forecast. Exact same picture - exact same rain? Absolutely not! Wednesday says "Rainfall amounts around a half of an inch." Wednesday Night: "Rainfall amounts less than a tenth of an inch." Huh? How much is that? Admittedly it's a bit hard to convert a picture of falling rain into inches or fractions of inches of rain standing on the ground. So here is my nifty rainfall amount conversion scale:

< 0.1 inch: some rain, but not much. Safe for bicycling without fenders or rain gear.
0.5 inch: Pouring rain at times. Rain gear is a must even for short rides.
1 inch: TORRENTIAL RAIN
1-2 inches: FLOODING RAIN. Places without good drainage will flood. Landslides will happen on unstable slopes.
2 inches+: MONSOON RAIN. Ok, this entry is mainly to poke fun at Randy who claims that any rain storm he biked in had "MONSOON RAIN" quantities of rain. I did a little research and well again it's a little variable on what a monsoon is. It can range from the weakest Arizona Monsoon of 0.35 inches to the worst Bangladesh Monsoon in recorded history which had 13.4 inches of rain in 24 hours!

Timing Your Ride With the Radar

So, the next most advanced tool at your disposal is the weather radar. It shows a real-time picture of rain. Generally speaking, yellow stuff is pouring rain and anything more intense than that is rain you can go tell a story about. If you prefer not to ride in the rain, watch the weather radar and wait until the rain cloud moves away from your location. For example say you were at the red marker on the following maps:

Wait for it...

Almost...

Game on!

Unfortunately, it isn't always that easy and sometimes the raincloud will just stretch forever that you'll get rained on unless you wait for hours. However, the radar can even be helpful because sometimes there will be very short burst of rainclouds lasting only maybe 10 minutes with a gap of 30 minutes to the next raincloud which is often enough for a commute.

Satellite Images

I used to look at Satellite images, but have really started losing faith in them as an overall predictor of how much it will rain. There are kind of 3 types of rain cloud systems that come in and I've made screenshots of two of them.

Here is the "bipolar" type system:

All those little clouds probably mean something really fancy to meteorologists, but in general it usually means weather can be bipolar, ie raining hard for 20 minutes and then sunny for 20 minutes and then raining hard again. The radar is key for these kinds of clouds if you have a short ride.

Next is the "steady" system

This type of cloud usually will have a well defined start and end to the rain system. If you're lucky it will be a north-south type of cloud which passes quickly, if you're unlucky it will be an east-west type of cloud and if you're really unlucky it will be an east-west type of cloud that stretches all the way to Japan! Usually the rain is "steady" meaning it will rain consistently for the duration of the system. However, sometimes weird stuff can happen with these clouds where there is no rain at all. Here is a picture of the radar for the above satellite image:

Massive rain shadow over Portland! Why? I have no idea, but it was a dry bike ride.

The final system is the Cyclone the one that sorta looks like a hurricane. These are actually quite similar to the steady systems in how they dump rain.

Model Output - it will change your life!

Now the real game-changer I recently discovered is model output. I have found it to be very accurate. However, to me, to be very accurate is to predict whether it will be dry or have rain >0.1 inches, so ballparks work well for me. Once the rain is above 0.2 inches I could care less how much more because it will be a rainy ride regardless and the rainy clothing I have works in all levels of rain.

So, to take a look at this, go into the Wundermap and then check only the model output box, unless you like to clutter things. The default option is the precipitation view, "MSL". In the settings, it shows the start time of the latest model data in GMT or England time. So you have to do a little math, ugh. Then you have the option to increment the forecast in 3 hour increments. Or hit the play button, that is pretty cool too.

Update 2012-12-19!!

Recent articles including this detailed post from Cliff Mass have been confirming that the European model is way better than the North American model, so use the ECMWF as the model.

Example: Tomorrow I need to do a 2 hour ride. Should I commute to work in 2 hours or ride 2 hours after work? Let's check what the model says.

Here is the precipitation at 9am:

And here it is for 6pm:

Looks like 6pm will be the less rainy one!

The model data does go out to a maximum of 384 hours (16 days), but I start losing faith in it quickly until I don't even bother at the 6 day mark. The model data also has some cool stuff like temperature (map type "2mAG"), wind and precipitation type for each time period as well.

In Conclusion

So there you have my internalization of weather forecasts regurgitated to this blog as it relates to how I use data to determine whether I may or may not get rained on in my bike ride.

Let me set the stage for perhaps another post that I may come up with that is non-weather related. With that obvious radar image shot above I was waiting for the cloud to pass and then I would bike to Dave's Killer Breadquarters. However, I waited too long after the raincloud passed (partly in order to get the final screenshot) so although I bike to the Breadquarters in 27 minutes (even though Google said it would take 54 minutes), I was 7 minutes late after it closed.

Ah crap, it's after 11! Must sleep now.

Racing 2012 Schedule: Keep it fun

So, the schedules are up on WSBA and OBRA for next year, so it's time to plan. Going with the hindsight in my post-season reflection I will try to race less and/or not get as mentally drained. So as I make this schedule I'm going to try hard to also abide to the following rules:

1. No more than 5 weekends of racing in a row.
2. I must do the bolded races, unless injured or sick.
3. I am only allowed to get upset about poor performance in bold races.
4. Maximum of 2 stage races allowed during June.

February:

26: FHR or Eatonville

March:

4: Banana Belt
10: Sequim
11: Mason Lake
18: Banana Belt
24: IVRR
31-01: Rest Weekend

April:

3: First Tuesday PIR
7: Piece of Cake
8: PIR TT?
14: KVRR
20-22: Walla Walla
28: Eugene Roubaix or 28: OVRR & 29: Volunteer Park Crit

May:

5: VCRR or Rest Weekend
12: OBRA RR Champs or Ravensdale or Rest Weekend
13: Forest Grove Omnium RR
19-20: Tabor Circuit & Forest Grove Omnium or Mutual of Enumclaw
21-27: Week Long Rest

June:

2: Hammer Velo Crit or Ballard Crit
8-10: Mt Hood or Wenatchee
15-17: Capitol Stage Race or OBRA RR Champs?
23: Ironclad Crit
24: Albany Crit
29-01: Elkhorn or Tacoma Twilight or Rest Weekend

July:

7-8: HDO or 8: Lake Oswego Crit or Rest Weekend
14: Gresham or Redmond Crit
20-22: Cascade Cycling Classic
28: Swan Island Crit
29: Vancouver Crit

August:

4: Franz
11: OBRA Crit Champs
18: Giro di Portland
25: Rest Weekend
31-02: Eugene

Winter of Code

Well, look what happens. I write a blog post about how I'm going to tell you all how to read the rain forecast, and then it goes along and doesn't rain for weeks!

However, being a true Northwesterner this doesn't stop me from staying inside looking at computer screens working on some nerdy awesome new web developing stuff.

Weightlifting

I have been disgruntled with all weightlifting data management schemes I have used before. Paper got old and crumply, this online site that tracks my biking has a poor interface for weightlifting and this app doesn't have a way to output the data. So, I made my own weightlifting website. It is honestly just a simple site, but the cool thing I like about it is that I made some reports sections that analyze metrics about how much you increase (or decrease) your lifts over time. Check it out here:

http://www.evansiroky.com/weightlifting/pumpiron.php

Scooter Lyrics via XSS



Who is Scooter you ask??

ONLY THE MOST SUCCESSFUL GERMAN BAND EVER^[citation]!!

Yes, the band comprising of HP Baxxter, Rick Jordan and even formerly Ferris Beuller has been producing hits in Germany since 1994 with incredibly energetic tunes that have inspired new dances and hate from elitist producers. And the icing on the cake is of course the completely confusing transcendent lyrics in most songs.

This was the source of inspiration for implementation of a very brief, but far reaching idea in web programming. For everyone who doesn't have any interest in web developing, you can skip the following lines of reading. A while back, I came across this brilliant article written by a wiseman from ancient times. My mind was blown! Just think of the possibilities for this! Entire javascript libraries returning any kind of content can be built for use on any site without cross-domain drama. Wow! So, the first idea that came up was making a widget for accessing some random Scooter lyrics. Thus I present it to you below:

click the button...

I am making it a point to include listening to some Scooter as a part of my pre-race routine this coming year.

TrafficBug

And of course, there is work coding. I'm pretty much working as a software engineer now at my job and we are getting super close to releasing an app to the iStore. This app will allow people to save trips (any trip in the lower 48!) and receive alerts on whether there is an accident or if a faster route is available. We've got our own routing engine and ultimately we're going to hook up these real-time traffic models we're developing to the app, so it will be super killer. For more info check out my company's website at http://mygistics.com/. Angel investments encouraged!

Weather Forecasts: An Intro

OK, just a warning, I'm going to be starting a non-bicycle-racing series on the weather. I'm doing this for a few reasons:

1. There isn't really anything else exciting to blog about right now.
2. It's the time of year when weather matters
3. A lot of people are utter n00bs uneducated on how to read weather forecasts.

Weather does matter a lot in terms of bicycling because sometimes it can absolutely miserable and other times it is amazing. But if you're a bike racer or determined bike commuter, you have to be able to train and ride in any type of weather.

Now there seems to be plenty of articles out there on how to ride in any kind of weather, but I haven't seen much in terms of understanding the root cause of all your weather-related bicycling problems - the actual weather. Well, there is my favorite weather blog: Cliff Mass Weather Blog, but that's really only for the true weather nerds.

In daily life I frequently hear people saying stuff that clearly indicates they haven't taken a detailed enough look at the weather forecast. Here are some examples:

• "what the heck, it was like sunny this morning and now at 1pm it's all rainy! arrgghh!"
• "there aren't even seasons anymore!"
• "It was a frickin' MONSOON STORM out there today!"
• "where the heck is summer??!?!!?" <- when said before July 5th any year.

I'm going to share some of my slightly-more-educated-than-the-normal person knowledge I have about weather which has mainly come from anecdotal observations, my internal reasoning and plenty of hours surfing weather forecast websites. I aim to divulge some information that is almost always true, but of course when predicting the future there is no guarantee of truth.  I am drawn to forecasting in general because my day job is associated with the transportation forecasting business so I really appreciate how well they have got down their forecasts.  The short term results from their forecasts are actually quite accurate nowadays and it really inspires me to try to do as well in the transportation forecasting area.

I'm obviously going to focus on Pacific Northwest weather since that's all I know. I hope to cover all seasons of the year ultimately in this series. The next post will focus on the most exciting, favorite, happy and joyous weather type of the Pacific Northwest that has earned it a national reputation that draws people from around the world:

The RAIN!!

But as a precursor to all this, I present you with the weather forecasting website I use. Please go visit it and become familiar with it, because I'll be referencing it a lot in this series of posts.

http://www.wunderground.com/