señor taco’s travels

This last Saturday Chris and I went and rode in the ALC Cat 1 ride from Orinda. He as a rider and me as a ride leader. There was a good turnout of about 30 people. Chris was kind enough to put together a map and elevation profile. Yup, it’s 4200 feet of climbing.

The ride was good, tiring, and needed. I know I felt great after it was over. I kind of wish Chris didn’t have to stay with me (we drove over together). As a ride leader I ended up hanging out at one of the stops a bit longer than I would have liked as a rider and I could tell it wasn’t ideal for Chris. I did get to concentrate on my pedal stroke and as a result my Achillies tendons didn’t get sore at all, I think I’ve fixed whatever it was I was doing wrong a couple of months ago when I strained them to the point that for a week walking had a pain to it.

At the end of the ride a wheel was found in the parking lot. I took it home and thankfully got it back to the owner on Sunday. I’m looking forward to more rides, especially durning the week in the mornings. Sadly tomorrow is supposed to be rainy. Wednesday it is then!

Chris and I went out for a ride this morning leaving the Rockridge BART at about 06.30. It was dark (thanks Daylight Saving Time) and a bit cooler than I had expected. There was some cloud cover and I knew we’d be riding up into it as we made our way up Tunnel Road.

Once we got towards the top we were chatting about how where we were was one of the worst parts of the ride up, especially if you’re trying to get up there as fast as you can because the road gets a little steeper and they’ve cut down all the trees on the right side. Wouldn’t you know it, we came around a corner and got treated to a spectacular view. There was the crescent moon hanging in the sky and fog as far as you could see, but we were near the top of the clouds so some trees further on were sticking up over the top of the cloud. The sun was just starting to rise and the sky lighten so the trees were in silhouette.

We rode on along Skyline to just past the Chabot Space & Science Center and then back. Once again I didn’t have a battery for my cyclometer so I don’t have any stats, but I’d guess it was about 22 miles or so.

It feels good to ride in the morning again, I’ve been missing it.

After a good Saturday ride Jason called me a we went and saw The Host. I didn’t know anything about the movie other than it was getting good reviews, a lot of people at work really wanted to see it, and the poster has a person in the grasp of a tentacle. What more do you need?

The film is from South Korea and features visual effects by San Francisco-based, The Orphanage.  I’m glad they released it as a subtitled movie rather than an english dub as the emotion in the voices was good to hear.  The movie is not a horror movie as some would think (like the couple that sat next to me and I had to tell to be quiet twice).  It’s a straight up monster movie with laughs.  They were purposefully trying to get laughs and it worked, because when you weren’t supposed to laugh you knew it.

The visual and special effects were great and really helped to sell the story.  In a horror movie they would have hidden the monster for a while, where as in The Host they brought it out as soon as they could and it worked great.  The actors playing the central family did a good job of coming across as somewhat disfunctional, but still loving.

The ending isn’t what you’d expect and I think that is a good thing.  The only knock I have against it is that there were a couple of points in the film where the pacing was a bit slow.  It seemed like maybe a little tighter editing would have fixed that, but this is a Korean film and I’m not familiar with what works in that culture.  I’ll probably buy this once it’s out on video because it’s going to be watchable again and again.

Rating: 4.75/5

Jason and I went to see 300 last Friday at the 12:01am screening. I actually loved the film. It was a great translation from the graphic novel by Frank Miller and it lent itself to story telling as if you were listening to a person recount it all.

It was definitely gorey but used it to tell the story. I was also happy that the movie was a svelte 117 minutes. There were many places where it could have slowed down more in exposition, but the director and editor just kept going and telling the story.

Overall I think I’d say I’d see this movie again, and I might when it comes to work on Tuesday.

Rating: 4.25/5

Today Chris and I decided we needed to get back on our bikes, what with the ALC coming up and all.  We did a simple ride up Tunnel Road and on Skyline, but not as far as we originally thought because I was sucking a bit.  I hadn’t ridden in two weeks and definately felt it.

As we were coming back along Skyline we ended up downhilling towards the Redwood Gate a little too fast for comfort.  We came around a corner and I was breaking.  There just happened to be a fresh asphalt patch on the road.  When I got to it my back tire slid out.  Amazingly I didn’t go down, I turned my wheel and my forward motion righted me.  At that point though my back tire felt funny so I yelled forward to Chris I was going to stop at the parking lot ahead.  As I rolled to a stop there was a loud pop from behind me, my tube exploding.

It turns out that when my back tire slid out the force of being that sideways caused the tire to come off of the wheel on one side.  The tube was exposed or pinched there and caused it to pop.  Luckily I was at 2 MPH rather than 20 MPH.  This also gave me a chance to try out my newly purchased Topeak Road Morph Pump.  I can’t recommend the pump enough.  It’s like a mini-floor pump and has a pressure gage and everything.  After a quick tube change it was smooth sailing back home.

I think it was about 20 miles or so.  Chris said we hit 41.2 MPH max.  I’d put some stats, but my cycleometer has a dead battery.

Now I need to spend this week getting back used to riding in the mornings.  As Chris and Thomas have said and I thought, it’s time to stop hitting snooze.

What happens when you want a new house but the local heritage council wants to protect the old run down look…you put a 1:1 scale picture of the old house on outside of the new one.  It’s very clever, but entirely silly that it had to be done.

Wired News: FBI misused PATRIOT Act

The snow levels in Tahoe this year haven’t been that great. Over President’s  weekend Keith, Cortney and I went up and had a pretty good time. We got to hang out with CB & Athena, Jason, Tom, and Bjorn. The best was going on that Monday to Kirkwood. We hiked out on the backside bowl and got some good snow and tree riding in.

This last weekend Keith and I went up to Kirkwood again and had a great time. There was more snow courtesy of a big storm and we ended up hiking three times out to get good stuff and tree riding.

I was really worn out and so tired by the last run that I ended up falling a few times, but such is life. Sunday we hit Squaw early and rode hard for a half day. The snow was good but like the end of the day on Saturday it started to get a little warm and snow was getting a little squishy.

I hope I can get a few more days in this year, but I’ve really got to start training for the AIDS/LifeCycle more.

Well, I’ve moved my blog over to WordPress. I could have waited and gotten everything perfect in terms of the look and content, but instead I just decided to push all the old entries into the new database and run with it. Yes it’s the default theme. Yes there are formatting errors with some of the older posts. Those things will be dealt with in due time. I’ll work a on theme and all that, but for now, I’ll have an easier time posting and updating. Enjoy.

For those of you that read via RSS, the new RSS url is http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/?feed=rss2.

And yes, this means the return of comments. Of course you need to register for an account, but them’s the breaks.