The new frame has arrived and been built

First off, I need to officially say goodbye to the 2005 Madone 5.9SL frame. You've been good to me. You were an odd (expensive) choice for my first road bike. Thanks for the memories.

Hello 2008 Cervelo R3 frame. I was literally scared when I saw online at UPS.com that they had "delivered" the frame. I knew it was either sitting outside my door or was on the patio. Luckily it was on the patio. We've got great UPS delivery guys (quick story below). I left a note saying if no one was home at the time of delivery, but they were in the area after 5:30pm, please stop by again. Well, I guess they decided to just take that note in place of my signature!

One day the UPS driver left a note on the door saying that a delivery was attempted and to sign the note if we agreed to waive the signature. A few minutes later I saw the UPS driver and asked him if I could get my package now. He said that he wasn't the driver that left the note, but he called the driver who did and he agreed to swing back by! Good stuff.


The UPS driver knows that we have 2 dogs, so take a look in the middle of the photo below to look what he left. Good people.


I was so excited to get the new frame that I wore it around for a couple of days... More like 2 minutes so I could snap this photo. JW made Cezanne and I laugh pretty darn hard with this blog post: http://jwbender.blogspot.com/2008/05/chris-this-is-for-you.html


2.02 lbs, my bike rack had no problem holding it. I, however, had trouble doing curls with it.


From about 2 lbs to about 15 and a half. Like magic!


After the first ride. I can't get enough, it's lighter, it accelerates better (stiffer bottom bracket), it's more comfy (vertically compliant), I have more seatpost showing and less spacers. All good stuff.

Another Tour of California post...3 months after the fact

Another May 7th and another year older. 31 big ones...

I finally got the blog about the Prologue of the 2008 Tour of California out a few entries ago, but now I want to dump some images from Stage 1.

We started out the day with a scone and a coffee and a view down Lombard Street, the "curviest" street in the world! Speed limit is 5mph on this section of Lombard.

Cezanne and I worked our way across the Golden Gate Bridge. I kept accidentally referring to it as the "Bay" Bridge and I'm not sure why.



After admiring the view of the Golden Gate and the city of San Francisco, we headed to the start of Stage 1 in Sausalito. We just drove around to get a feel for it, but we stuck with our original plan to go to the only climb of the day, the Category 3 Coleman Valley Road climb. We took 101 then some back roads to get there. The roads were very windy and narrow and full of cyclists biking up the back side of Coleman Valley Road to watch the stage. It was really cool.

We parked off in the grass on the side of the road and then walked to our spot. This is the view of the valley, with the Pacific ocean in the background.

We set up camp about 400 meters below the KOM climb. People had written a bunch of stuff with chalk, including "GEORGE" below.

We had gotten word from some of the race officials that a solo break-away had stuck with about a 10 minute lead on the peleton. Everybody was eager to see the lone figure come around the bend. I think the guy in the blue cape with the big hair in the pic below is "Big Hair Superfan."

And Jacskon Stewart from BMC was the solo break-away. Apparently he made a move partly because he is a Santa Rosa, CA resident and that was the finishing city. The peleton scooped him up before that though. He seemed to be struggling a little bit. Sweet ride and sweet team kit. The BMC team is lucky to be kitted out in Assos clothing since BMC bought Assos. I don't know if BMC is sponsored by Nike, but Jackson is wearing the shoes Lance used to wear. Because I'm such an expert on bicycle fit (read a lot of sarcasm in this one), one thing I would suggest to Mr. Stewart is to bring his saddle down about 2cm.


After Jackson passed we all wondered when the peleton would be swooping around the corner...

The peleton is an interesting phenomenon. It's nice to see on a hill so you get a little more viewing time. It reminds me of a swarm of bees. You can barely see them below, just rounding the corner.


Here is the peleton getting closer. Levi is one of the riders on the front.


A couple of guys jumped towards the top to get some of the rest of the KOM points. Jens Voigt, Mr. Breakaway, went chasing one of the guys who jumped.


I think that is Robert Gesink for Rabobank on the left below. He was the one guy who hung with Levi on Sierra Road. On the right is Chris Horner (with his usual smile) and George Hincapie on the other side of him.


Oscar Freire and Fabian Cancellara. I don't know about those sunglasses Fabian, but you can do whatever you want. He's wearing the yellow leader's jersey since he won the Prologue.

I think that is Karsten Kroon for Team CSC below. He is one of the very few CSC riders who use a Cervelo R3 for all of the races (not just the slightly off road and bumpy ones). To the right of the picture is Tom Boonen.


Despite being a little chilly while we waited to see the riders, we really enjoyed watching the stage. Cezanne was a total trooper. She said she had fun and I believe her! We decided to have dinner back down in Sausalito. We flew out that night from San Francisco. Seeing the prologue and Stage 1 were awesome. I encourage anyone with a slight interest to go take a look. These cyclists are amazing athletes.

Saddle Testing...we have a winner

I'm always impressed by Competitive Cyclist. They consistently provide the most detailed reviews of products and have a great "zoom" feature so you can see the goods up close.

They have a demo program for bikes, wheels and saddles. Each one allows you to put some or all of the cost of the demo towards the purchase of the product.

I decided to order the saddle demo to see if there was something out there that I would prefer to my Cedesius. I don't have any issues with my saddle, it's really light and really comfy, but I was curious.

The saddles (11 of them) came in a hard plastic case, 5 on the top layer (1 missing below because it was on my bike)...


and 6 on the bottom.


Some of the saddles got a full test ride, others just got 5-10 minutes while on my trainer. That was the simpler way to get to the 2-3 that I thought fit me the best.

And the winner was...

The Selle Italia SLR Gel Flow.


It did the best job of keeping the pressure on my sit bones and off of my perineum. It is flatter than the standard, and lighter, SLR, which is why it worked well.

If for some reason I grew tired of my current saddle, the SLR Gel Flow would be the one I would pick, but my Cedesius is still the champ. It doesn't have a cut-out, but it does have a groove.

Now, if I could only decide on a Soloist Carbon or an R3...

THE JERSEY has arrived

I became a fan of Slipstream Chipotle last year when I saw them in the 2007 Tour of California. I'm even more of a fan now. They are doing great things for cycling's reputation and they have some very talented riders. You can see Steven Cozza (mustache man) sporting the kit below in the 2008 Tour of California.

I decided to wait on getting their unusual (orange and blue argyle) kit until the new version came out this year. It turned out to be a slightly painful and comical wait. I received an email notification from Teamcyclist.com in early March that said the Slipstream kits would be available to ship on March 11th.

I didn't place my order and I'm glad I didn't. Upon each successive trip back to the website the expected ship date had moved a couple of days to the right. March 11 became March 16 then 19, 23, 31, then April 4, 5....26! You've got to be kidding me! The expected ship date went from March 11 to April 26 in 2 and 3 day increments for about a month and a half. Isn't there a better way to do this? I thought this was insanity.

Pearl Izumi, the Slipstream clothing outfitter wasn't much better. I couldn't find one mention of their sponsorship of Slipstream anywhere on their website, not one word. You would think they would be proud to represent one of the top U.S. teams and a transparently clean team at that. Now the only thing Pearl Izumi has on their website is a little tab with the title "shop Slipstream." I'm not a web designer, but with today's technology, it seems their website needs some improvement.

Enough complaining...on to the good stuff. The bib shorts aren't available yet, but the jersey and socks are...

UPS came yesterday and it felt like Christmas! I thought it was fitting that the jersey came yesterday since at the end of yesterday's stage at the Tour of Georgia Slipstream was position 1, 2 and 3 in the GC overall. 1. Trent Lowe (there little 135 lb Australian climber), 2. Dave Zabriskie (TT specialist, U.S. TT champ and all arounder) and 3. Christian Van de Velde (all arounder as well as a great TT rider). Tom Danielson, their other pure climber is coming back in to form and is 17 seconds off the GC coming into today's decisive stage that finishes on Brasstown Bald! Levi will be really tough to beat and he's only 4 seconds off of GC.


This first glimpse of the orange and blue.


The jersey and socks.


The socks in the longer style that is popular now. I'm just looking forward to an awesome tan line. Cezanne loves quirky socks and she honestly wants a pair of these.


And the jersey is on! This is a medium and it's actually a good fit. Standing up it is a little tight, but in the bike position, it's actually not as form fitting and there is extra material in the chest and stomach area. It's tough to get something to be absolutely perfect. I don't own any Assos cycling clothing, but apparently they've mastered the "it doesn't fit correctly standing up" but "it perfectly melds to you when in the riding position."

So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Unfortunately I don't have my road bike, it is with Trek and they are working on my "crash replacement" issue since I've got a nice score in my top tube. I can guarantee I'm not wearing this jersey on my townie. I'll have to think about getting my mountain bike back operational. They only problem is that I'll need a new seat post, new rear tire and tube, new pedals, and new mountain biking shoes. That can easily be upwards of $500. We'll see.

Trip to Monterey

I have to try to "one up" JW with that pic he posted of the cute puppy. Puppy always trumps full grown dogs in cuteness, but I love these 2.

Cezanne and I made our way up to Monterey a couple of weeks ago. I had to go up there for a 5 day Human Resources Officer course at the Naval Postgraduate School. We went up early and spent Saturday and Sunday enjoying Monterey. It was a little warmer than usual, so it was absolutely beautiful. As usual, we had some great food and did a little bike riding and hiking.

We chose a little less extreme hike and walked around Point Lobos Park, just south of Carmel. It was beautiful.




We caught a glimpse of a lot of seals and a few sea otters. This guy was rolling up to shore.



There were a lot of "neat" little areas along the trail that I tried to capture with a photo, but it just doesn't seem to do it justice.



Another one of those neat areas...


Looks like spring in Pacific Grove! We had a really nice ride. We didn't go as far as we did when we were on our honeymoon, but it was fun. We got some great views of the coast, the pink coast. Cezanne won the King of the Mountains and the Sprinters jersey. She's a wizard on the bike! :)

Ahhh...the good stuff. We had a great little picnic on the grass overlooking the coast. We picked up some prepared foods from Whole Foods since it was easy and we brought a 1/2 bottle of one of our favorite wines. From left to right: Our reading materials, Oprah's Magazine for me and Velonews (cycling magazine) for Cezanne. Mango, ciabatta bread and cheese, mixed olives, mixed berries, water bottles (tried to keep our wine in the shade), and our wine in their perfect cup holders, my shoes.

It was a great trip as usual. Cezanne and I are working towards retiring in Carmel. I heard property is dirt cheap there.

An interesting week

My highschool buddy Mike came down from Los Angeles a few weekends ago to do some hiking. We decided to pick out something rigorous, so we decided on an 11-mile round trip hike to the peak of El Cajon (pronounced kahon for you non-Californians) Mountain. The weather was perfect, in the mid to high 60s. You can see the peak in the background to the left in the below pic.

There were big boulders all along the hike and the last 1/2 mile of the hike was on a pseudo trail that entailed a lot of bouldering.

A pic on the way down.

The hike was tough. I would have gladly done a 50-mile bike ride than do that hike. What made the hike extra special was what we found when we got back down to my 4Runner: a busted window and missing power tools!

What are you going to do? Note to self: Don't leave a "Ryobi" bag visible in your back seat. The jerks didn't take anything else, just the bag with my circular saw and drill in it. Now I can't do as much manly stuff, like sawing and drilling stuff just for the fun of it. They didn't even steal my REI gift card which was in plain sight. They also didn't take the pots and pans I had in there. Are you getting the picture that the 4Runner is (was) being used as a little storage unit? Well, all that stuff was "on it's way" to my real storage unit given the 450sq feet of condo space and the 2 adults and 2 > 60 lb. dogs that make it their home. Good thing is we didn't leave anything else (iPod, wallet, phone, etc.) in the car when we went on the hike.

The lot that we parked in was specifically for the Open Space Preserve and it was right near a busy road. The thieves probably know that people park there and then don't come back for 5-7 hours. The window was fixed 2 days later. The glass company comes out to your house! It took less than 20 minutes.

And the icing on the cake for the week was a little snafu I had with my bike. At my typical turn-around point in my "during the week" ride I was off using the public restroom when behind me I heard my bike come crashing down. Nice... Funny thing is that I've placed the bike in that exact position over 100 times before in the past 2 years. There's some missing paint and I nice scratch/gouge through the "M" in the "Madone. Thanks to JW for the suggestion on the crash replacement program through Trek. I'll probably get the chance to bring it in this Thursday.

Why I'll never be a professional cyclist

Besides the whole not blessed with top tier endurance sport genes, lack of tunnel-visioned drive and focus on being a professional cyclist, lack of time to dedicate 4-7 hours a day to riding...

These are the other, more important & pertinent reasons why I'll never be a professional cyclist:

1. 4cm of handlebar spacers. I'm working on getting it down because this is decidedly not pro.

Cancellara is slightly more "pro" in this respect: http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2007/tour07/tech/probike.php?id=/photos/2007/tech/probikes/tour_cancellara_csc_cervelo/Fabian_Cancellaras_Team_CSC_Cervelo_SLC-SL_anatomic_bar


2. Once you wear #594 in a charity ride, you're not allowed to go pro. A weird rule, but a rule nonetheless.


3. Who ever heard of a Greek professional cyclist?


4. These little bird legs can hardly walk me to my car let alone power me up a hill or a sprint to the town limit sign.


Yikes, this last shot is probably one of the most unflattering shots I've seen, but hey, that's what you get for being a recreational cyclist, and not a pro. Pay no attention to the 1.5 lb weights under the dresser, that's the limit of what I can press and curl.