My archnemesis passed me right as I was making my turn from Portola Rd. Fine, I gave it a couple of minutes lead time. I figured I’d rather wait and catch up once the turns start sharpening. I attacked fairly early and pass it without problems. It did not counter, although I was worried of the upcoming stretch with no visible cans to be picked up, thus no stops to slow it down. I pressed on. Once it was out of sight, I kept hearing the cracking of metal and blasting of the air compression brakes. No doubt it was coming from down below but I seem to be hearing it from above as well. Weird. Sometime the trees and rugged terrain can play tricks on you.

I kept pumping. My breathing became very labored. I was on track to beat my personal best time. Two third into the climb, the engine noise started to get louder ahead of me. I turned left, I turned right and there it was, the recycling truck. It hesitated for a second. I seized the opportunity and sequeezed myslef between its flank and the small ditch on the left side of the road. Barely made it, but the driver was courteous enough to let me pass.

With no contender left, I finished the climb with relative ease. I did not break my record today but still was happy to know I had put in a good fight.

The problem is that right now, the only way to buy a phone is to signup for a 2 year contract and choose from a very limited range of pricey plans.

So let’s do the math. Under the new contract, for an equivalent plan in terms of minutes, data and sms, I would have to pay $105/month. The 16GB model is selling for $299. So the total cost of ownership over 24 months would be 24 x $105 = $2520 + $299 = $2819.

For the same level of voice and data service (actually more minutes) that I use with a Nokia 3G phone, AT&T charges $70/month. They mentioned that they will make the iPhone available for retail purchase soon for $699. So total cost of ownership in this case would be 24 x $70 = $1680 + $699 = $2379.

So Apple and AT&T wants me to pay a $440 premium to buy a phone that’s “subsidized” and lock me in an expensive monthly plan forever. What’s the tag line, twice as fast, half the price? I’m a big Apple fan but I get angry when companies are pushing bad deals with a sleek marketing campaign. I’m going to forgo the “sucker” tax and wait a little while longer.

Joe, Jay and I setup for an early start. We figured we wanted to leave plenty of time to make the check points and finish the ride. We had a great carbo load dinner at Passaratti’s the night before and set the alarm for 4 am. We arrived at the Turtle Rock park shortly after 5 am. There was already a lot of people there as everyone was trying to get a headstart. The temperature was warmer than expected and after much debate about what to wear, we were ready to roll at 5:30, heading south towards Monitor Pass.

The day was off to a good start. The sky cleared up from smoke the day before and we were all happy to finally see some blue sky and clouds. Lake Tahoe had seen some pretty bad air quality recently, so bad that several events got cancelled, including the Donner Lake Triathlon the day before.

Monitor Pass

The climb up Monitor Pass (el. 8,314 ft. / 2,534 m) was relatively easy. The pavement is in excellent condition as the road is closed most of winter. We reached the summit quickly and got our first sticker.

The first long descent on the other side of Monitor Pass was awesome. One of the great thing about the ride is to be able to experience riding on closed mountain roads. Once we reached the rest stop down by Topaz Lake, time to get our 2nd sticker, turn around and go back up. This is when it dawns on you that the exhilaration you’ve experienced during the downhill will now become sheer pain, ridding the same road back up. When it comes to climbing I’d say ignorance is bliss.

Ebbetts Pass

With Monitor out of the way, we headed towards Ebbetts Pass (el. 8,730 ft./2,661 m.). While Monitor landscape is more reminiscent of high altitude desert, Ebbetts is more of your typical high mountain pass, with lots of trees and stunning views. The road is fairly narrow and is one of the most scenic, least travelled in the Sierra. It even has its own web site.

The first several miles seemed like a gradual climb, with what felt like many flat reprieve. Needless to say it did not last for long. Before reaching the top of the summit, I was welcomed with a steady 12% grade that lasted forever.
Mentally, this was certainly the most difficult part of the course for me. I knew I was not even half way thru the whole ride and started to doubt my ability to finish it. Then when you’re ready to give up, the summit shows up right around the corner. Cycling is as much a mental as a physical exercise. 3rd sticker down.

The back side of Ebbetts is relatively short compared to all the other climbs. Going back up, we passed some crazy guys from the Rolling Bones team (08/04/08 UPDATE: See picture below). One of the guy was towing a trailer in the form of a coffin with a skeleton having a drink inside. I don’t know whether he finished the whole ride, but at that point he was on his 4th pass. I can’t imagine what it must be like to do this towing an extra 20 lb or so. Once we reached Ebbetts summit again, all that was left was to go down, have lunch and power thru to Carson Pass, a 45 miles or so journey away. Time to go get that last sticker.

Carson Pass

The road back to Carson has a slight incline and can be long and discouraging, partly because of the frequent head winds. We got lucky to hook up with an impromptu pace line, which we drafted all the way past Markleeville. At Markleeville, the whole town (population 200) was out cheering the riders, with claps and bells. There were many spectators supporting the riders along the course, which was really neat.

To get to Carson, you have to go back to Turtle Rock Park, which means passing your car. I thought this would be more difficult because at this point you’re 88 miles into the ride with over 11,000 feet of climbing and need a very good reason to stop you from calling it quit. I was determine to finish and the prospect of an ice cream at the top of Carson Pass was good reason enough for me.

The climb up Carson Pass is comparatively the easiest because the grade does not go much above 8%. A little garden hose shower at Woodfords made it easy to reach the rest stop at Picketts Junction, sitting half way thru the climb. With 10 miles left to climb to reach the summit, the finish was within our grasp. However, at that point, a storm was moving in quickly in our direction. It started raining and as we were heading up again, we got caught in a nasty hail storm. It was so bad that cars were stopping, waiting for it to get better. Our handy bike helmets were fending off the giant piece of ice hurling down from the sky and bouncing everywhere. The cacophony of hail hitting the carbon bikes and the metal railing on the side of the road almost made the climb humorous. We kept riding while the hail storm turned into plain rain storm. There was little reprieve until we reached the summit.

Once we reached the summit of Carson Pass, we got our pin and started huddling with other rider in a futile attempt to get warm. We were so wet and cold that the porta-potties became the most, ahem, inviting place to keep dry. Despite being on the verge of hypothermia, we were determined to enjoy our you-made-it-to-the-last-summit ice cream. I went for a Choco Taco which had the sweet taste of victory. We waited for a while for the weather to calm down and our body heat to raise while trying to scrounge any plastic bag that could be used as wind breaker. We knew we had a long, cold descent ahead of us.

On the way down, we got hit with hail again. At some point, I had to stop because my bike was wobbling. I feared a mechanical problem. I soon came to the realization that it was my body shaking uncontrollably that caused it. After several miles of this, we finally reached some sunny spot and started to dry off. This is the amazing part about mountain storm they go as quickly as they come in. We then rode all the way back to Joe’s truck by Turtle Park without any problem.

After a quick change of cloth, we hit the post ride BBQ at Turtle Park. There was a band there and the mood was cheery. We were looking forward to celebrate our accomplishment with some cold beer. Our dream got quickly shattered when the guy in front of me finished the last of the keg. They ran out of beer. How can you f***ing run out of beer? They’ve only been organizing this ride for over 25 years! Completing the ride was grueling enough, but depriving us of a finish beer now that’s simply cruel. How well, we quickly recovered from this last blow. We were not going to letting anything spoil the joy of knowing we accomplished a hell of a great ride that day.

You can view more pictures from the ride.

Stats

Unfortunately, my Garmin Edge bike computer ran out of battery before the end of the ride. Here is a compilation of my data and some from Joe’s computer.

• Distance: 128 miles (206 km)
• Elevation gain: 15,287 feet (4′660 m)
• Time in the saddle: 10 hours
• Average grade: 5.2 %
• Steepest grade: 18 %
• Average Speed: 12.9 mph (20.7 km/h)
• Top speed: 46.4 mph (75 km/h)
• Calories burned: ~ 8,000
• Gears: 52/39/30, 12-25

You can view a complete profile for the ride.

Elevation Profile

The complete official elevation map.

Resources

Surprisingly, there isn’t much information about the Death Ride online. One useful resource is this “just made it in time” sheet that basically let you know the bare minimum cut off time in order to finish the ride.

08/04/08 UPDATE: Picture of the crazy Rolling Bones guy and their contraption.

Photo (c) Copyright West World Images

Today was a perfect day to take L’Azzura out for a spin to the local market. Inevitably, riding a scooter attracts a lot of attention these days since America discovered that gas can costs real money. Since you always get asked the same question, I compiled a list with answers for those of you with Vespa envy.

Can you go on the freeway?

Yes you can. The LX150 is a 150 cc engine that can go up to 65 mph. The question is why would you? The whole point is to have fun and discover local roads, not get stuck on 4 lanes of bumper to bumper traffic.

How many miles do you get?

About 60-65 miles per gallon. The tank capacity is 2 gallons.

How much does it cost?

The MSRP for a Vespa LX150 is $4,299

Where can you get it?

North America Vespa Dealers

Oh and by the way, you need a motorcycle license to ride it.

I’ve recently published the first installment of a series of posts about Songbird’s path to Agility. Check it out and get out of your own waterfall.

Recently my Edge 305 started to power itself down while riding. I thought maybe that was a software problem. I reset the unit, re-flashed the latest software, etc. This did not help. I would be riding along and then all of the sudden the device shuts off. When that occurs, I can turn it back on right away. This is obviously not an acceptable solution and can even be dangerous to do while zipping down the hill. The last thing I want to do is worry about my device shutting off and messing up my ride details.

I finally Googled the problem and found that I was not alone. Many Garmin owners have been experiencing the same problem.

This clearly points to a design flaw in the device. It looks like after some time, the contact between the main PCB and the battery can be subject to fatigue and cause micro interruption due to vibration, sufficient for the device to shut off. The problem is that you get a lot of vibration on a bicycle.

I was able to confirm that by simply dropping my unit flat on its back from 1-2 inches on a paper pad. 1 out of 10 times it would shut itself down. Since my device is out of warranty, I cracked it open and following the advice of other users, bent the contact back up. After glueing it back together, the problem seems to have gone away.

Is Garmin aware of this problem? I’ve contacted their support and I’m awaiting for some sort of acknowledgement. There are several ways this problem can be solved. A better mechanical connector, adding a capacitor on the power line, etc.

I’m considering buying an Edge 705 but since it looks of similar design than the 305, I don’t want to risk spending $600+ on a device that will reset after only a year of use. My Edge is 15 month old and has about 3,500 miles on the road. I certainly expect it to last longer than that. I’m sure a lot of other cyclists feel the same.

UPDATE 6/25: Not much of a response from Garmin

Thank you for contacting Garmin International.

I will send your e-mail onto the appropriate department as a suggestion. If you should have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.

I’ve asked them to clarify whether or not the Edge 705 followed the same design and hence would be subject to the same problem. Waiting on an answer.

Also, my first attempt to use rubber glue to put my Edge back together as recommended by others failed miserably. I never had luck using this type of glue anyways, I’m more of an epoxy kind of guy. After drowning the back side with it and keeping the two halves together with clamps I’m happing to report that the unit is now performing like new.

Going downhill can be treacherous on a bike and I was overly cautious. Today, cyclist Frank Schleck from team CSC was not as lucky. He took a turn a little wide and went over a guard rail and down a ravine today during the Tour of Switzerland. Apparently he escaped with only minor injuries and hoped back on his bike to finish the race. Amazing.

Today, I was back to my best time up OLH since last year, just about 24 minutes. I know, still far from the popular belief that you ought to climb it in half-your-age, but decent enough according to this post. What’s puzzling is that only a couple of days ago, it took me 30 minutes to complete the climb. I certainly had intended to take it easy that day, but still. On that day, I also noticed that my read wheel was wobbly to the point of rubbing my brake. I thought that it was simply grossly out of alignment, but it turned out that one of the spoke was ripping thru the rim and about to bust out. Scary stuff. Fortunately, the good folks at Chain Reaction fixed it in no time and gave my bike a good tune up to boot.

During that rest day, I took the opportunity to catch up on some great cycling dvd’s a friend lent me. Road To Paris, a documentary that covers Lance Armstrong and the 2001 U.S. Postal Team over the course of 27 days as they prepared for the Tour de France. Somewhat old stuff, but great insight and inspiration. One of my favorite moment is when after climbing for 4 hours Lance is being told that he can’t continue further because there is 3 feet meters of snow on the road. His response:

“Why can’t I continue?”

and when told again,

“Who says that?”

In that moment you can see his determination to not let anything stand in his way and challenge everything. You can see this in the video montage below 40 seconds into it. Great stuff.

Anyhow, the moral is that I don’t know if it was a properly tuned bike or the inspiration from watching those videos but I was pretty pleased with myself this morning :)

Songbird 0.6 Final Released: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger!

The perspective of riding 129 miles and climbing 15,000 feet sounded out of this world. It still does sound kinda nutty today. However, it’s amazing what difference a year can make. Since then I’ve completed 5 centuries and gotten to love more challenging rides. I was not planning to sign up for the ride this year, but the opportunity presented itself and I figure I might as well give it a try now.

I’ve been training as much as I can so far and I periodically have bout of panic about the whole ordeal. While I fully intend to finish the ride, I realize that there is a good possibility that I won’t. To help me cope, I’ve been following Rob Mackey’s blog, a 41-year-old Web journalist and novice cyclist, who signed up to ride L’Etape du Tour, a single mountain stage of the Tour de France open to amateurs. I find his account comforting. As they say misery loves company :)

For now, you can follow my training rides at MotionBased