Please remove my email address from your PR lists.

Thanks,
Matt

totally stopped working. Turns out that a lot of these PR companies have a single database of random blogger emails they’ve snarfed up, but each employee seems to maintain their own personal list. When I ask Alice at example.com PR to remove me, I noticed a week later I got another PR blast from Bob at example.com PR. Then Steve at example.com PR hits me again a day later.

So for now, I’m moving to filters in Gmail. The entire PR agency domain goes into the From: and you set it to delete immediately. Instantly, no more PR spam from Alice, Bob, or Steve, forever, and I don’t have to ask to opt-out of something I never opted into.

And to people working in PR, some bloggers do seem to post the things you send, but in four years of daily PR email blasts that now number in the thousands, I recall one or two being something I was actually interested in. That’s about the same success ratio of general email spam over the past 10 years for me.

update: I was thinking of posting my own blacklist of annoying firms, but it looks like Gina from Lifehacker beat me to the punch.

And to PR folks reading this post, I left a comment describing my dream scenario for how PR people should interact with bloggers:

the perfect PR person would match me up with topics I write about and when they figure out a perfect product pitch I might be interested in, email me personally once to share it, and ask me for confirmation if I’d like to get future email from them. Unless I reply back with a “yes” don’t add me to a list or pitch me again — it’s a not a good match and is only going to build frustration on my end if you keep sending unsolicited pitches.

A few years back, the conference split into two days where day one is an experience or tour and day two are standard talks given in an auditorium. Last year I had a blast touring MoMA and learning to juggle pins, this year I had a great time doing a Central Park soundwalk (pb describes it here in his GEL recap). The walk was great, you basically blindfold yourself, grab a rope, and start shuffling around for about 20 minutes. If you’ve never tried anything like this before, I can’t recommend it enough. The first few minutes are pure anxiety bordering on panic but eventually you get used to the shuffling feet and with your eyes firmly shut for an extended period, your hearing takes over. I was blown away by the variety of birds in Central Park and sounds of people and music that accompanied our walk. The biggest surprise for me was finding that my brain tried to start “mapping” sound as we walked — I remember hearing strollers rolling towards me or birds growing near and in my mind I was placing them in a virtual canvas so I knew where they were headed and when I could expect to pass them.

After the blindfold walk, we sat and talked about what we heard and experienced, then we walked and stopped at various locations in the park to enjoy sound (with our eyes closed) from a single location. The mind-blowing moment during this section happened when I was sitting next to a walking path just outside of both a softball game and a merry-go-round. As people walked past and balls were hit, I heard some light foot padding and instantly recognized it as a dog going past. The first thought that sprang into my head was “that is the sound of a small, light dog” and surprised at the thought, I opened my eyes to see a little poodle trotting past. Now, I don’t know if I figured that out by chance or if my brain has a database of various dog sounds by weight I wasn’t aware of, but being in that place and state of mind was a wonderful exercise in getting reacquainted with my sense of hearing. The other highlight was walking to the center of the park and being in a spot in Manhattan where I could see no buildings of any kind, I was completely surrounded by natural things like trees and grass, and I could barely hear any sounds from the city. I didn’t know a place like that existed in NYC.

The day of talks went well and the subject matter and style is a lot like the TED conference. The best talks were both entertaining and enlightening and even if I had to classify a few talks as less than superb, I at least learned something about an industry I didn’t know anything about. In past years of GEL, I’ve remembered a few break out amazing talks that stuck with me for weeks and a few horrible stinkers that had me looking at my watch. This year’s talks had a few memorable points but no single talk stood out as truly amazing but on the positive side I don’t recall wanting any talk to end early.

If you attend a lot of technology conferences and you’re growing tired of hearing the same old thing, try out the GEL conference — sometimes it’s hit and miss and all over the map, but it’s always a good time in a wonderful city.

Here in Portland, Maine there are plenty of people still using derailleurs, but very few people wear helmets. The only consistently helmeted group are the road bikers/spandex pod people; when a man wearing skintight pants is behaving more sensibly than you perhaps it’s time for some self-reflection.

– selfnoise on “What’s up with all the fixies?”

Price of a barrel of crude oil at the beginning of 2001: about $23
Price of a barrel of crude oil at the end of April, 2008: nearly $120

$1 trillion profits to OPEC nations predicted for 2008

I did end up buying a new bike and I’m hoping to start putting down 100 miles a week and continue the weight loss as the weather finally starts getting warmer and dryer in April. In terms of total weight loss, I’m down about 10lbs since I started in mid-January and I’ve got another 25 to go, which I’m hoping to hit by the end of summer.

It took quite a bit of trial and error to find the perfect seat for my road bike. It’s no secret that for both men and women cyclists, sitting on your junk for hundreds of hours a year can cause a lot of problems (increased ED in male cyclists is a definite something I don’t look forward to). After getting saddle sore on the seats that came with the last three bikes I rode, I tried using different models with more padding (made problems even worse) and less padding (better, as you try to sit just on the bones of your butt) and I got a proper bike fitting on my last two bikes (this helped immensely). Eventually I found a Selle San Marco model with a cutaway mid-section. That seat worked pretty well until rides went beyond an hour long — eventually I’d move around on the saddle and settle too far forward or too much in the middle and end a ride sore as usual.

Recently I picked up a Selle SMP Strike Pro saddle for my newest bike. It’s a pretty weird looking saddle, with the entire middle cut away and oddly dropped nose. It also starts around $200 at most shops, which is a drag. After using the San Marco model (with the mid-section cut away) for a year, I had a feeling that going to a more extreme saddle like the Strike Pro would be a good next step. There’s some science on their site claiming that it’ll relieve pressure in all the right places.

I’ll admit that I’ve only ridden this saddle for about 100 miles in the week or two that I’ve had it but I have to say it’s miles ahead of anything I’ve used before. In the short time I’ve had this seat on my bike I’ve realized it forces you into good form and positioning because there’s really nowhere to sit besides the two rails. Unlike other saddles I’ve used, my entire weight rests on the bones of my pelvis (as it should) and never moves to other parts over time. Even on my longer rides, I felt perfectly fine at the end of the ride, with no numbness or soreness anywhere which is pretty much a first.

The only drawbacks I’ve found is the steep price (unless your local shop carries a ton of them and will let you test them out, you’ll have to pony up $200+ just to give it a try) and if you’re a weight weenie that cares about grams the seat is a little on the heavy side for a pro-level saddle (they make lighter models with varying levels of padding). But if you’re looking for a little piece of mind and bit more comfort on your long bike rides, I can’t recommend this saddle highly enough.

Chinese Hammer fucking rules, originally uploaded by mathowie.

I stumbled across Chinese Hammer tonight and fell in love with it for a thousand reasons. Just the thought of someone halfway around the world mimicking a video from 1989 in a move-for-move remake. Also, the mom on the couch crocheting, oblivious to the awesome dancing. Then I posted it to MetaFilter only to find there’s a such thing as YouTube Doubler to play them side by side.

I captured the best bits in a short movie here. About 30 seconds in, things start matching up and it just keeps staying awesome for another minute or so.

update: cool, the dude has a ton of other videos (Thriller, more MC Hammer, etc)

Do I Look Cool Like They Do in the Movies?
originally uploaded by Max Sparber.

You might have seen a hilarious / bizarre / historical set of found photos someone picked up at a swap meet of a 70s cocaine party. It’s really oddball stuff.

Even more odd, Astro Zombie (and friends) from MetaFilter started recreating the photos with their own mirrors and powdered sugar and a ridiculous new flickr pool was born.

update: amazingly enough, nothing broke, even a bunch of old plugins I still use.

ReCAPTCHA’s quality is going down, originally uploaded by mathowie.

Several months ago, we implemented ReCAPTCHA on MetaFilter contact forms, to thwart spammers. It’s a good cause and a great idea: the nonsensical text you decode ends up helping public domain book scanning projects.

But lately, we’ve been getting a steady stream of complaints that it is not working or is unsolvable. Last night I tried out the contact form and was surprised that in the first ten images presented to me (keep hitting the little refresh button, the top of the three buttons on the control), at least half were totally undecipherable.

Here’s an actual screenshot of one I saw this morning. The first word is impossible to decipher. My question is, has ReCAPTCHA had such success that all we’re left with is the really, really bad book scans?

I can’t think of a more fitting tribute than imagining Father Guido Sarducci/Lazlo Toth is spreading jam on a McMuffin, just for you, inventor guy.

In my early college years, I delivered pizza and drove around for hours a day in my car, listening to mostly talk radio (KFI in Southern California) to keep myself from being bored. When I had a long commute in college for a few years, I started listening to NPR. I would drift in and out of stories and reports as I dropped off a pizza or had to run to class from the parking lot and I never really got the hang of the broadcast schedules. I haven’t had to commute by car regularly for over five years so I don’t have 5-10 hours to kill every week in a car and I listen to NPR much less.

So the other day I was running errands around town like I usually do. This entails driving a couple miles to my bank, a couple more miles to a downtown shop, and a few more miles to the grocery store. It’s a series of stops and starts and I have to pick up my mail down the street from my house and sometimes I get hot chocolate or food in a drive-thru and I realized the user experience of radio sucks for this. There are nothing but interruptions as I go about my day. I know I’m spoiled by having the internet around for so long and having a TiVo for the past 8 years. Everything remotely entertaining and informative in my life is completely on-demand for me — I can watch, read, or listen to anything I want, whenever I want, wherever I want.

Except Radio. With radio, I can’t follow every episode and I can’t even remember when stuff is on. While I long wanted to have a “TiVo for radio” what I really wanted was a On Demand radio service with pause capability, and that’s pretty much what podcasting gives you.

I know it’s still a pain in the butt to download and run iTunes, then sync to a device like an iPod/iPhone, then it’s a whole can of worms to get it playing back in your car, but once you’ve done the legwork, it’s a pretty amazing thing. I find in my regular in-town driving for common errands I have about 2-4 hours a week to kill in the car listening to music or podcasts. Currently, this lets me dutifully follow every show that I’m a fan of, and I can hear every segment of every episode without missing a beat (thanks to the mighty pause button) and it doesn’t entail sitting in a parking lot for 15 minutes waiting for an amazing interview to conclude. Over the course of the past year, I’ve worked through almost the entire back catalog at MaximumFun.org and I follow a couple of NPR’s podcasted shows, listening a little each time when I’m out driving around.

My truck came with XM radio and I get several NPR stations where I live, but ever since I started listening to podcasts on my iPhone in the car, I noticed I really don’t turn on the radio anymore, and it’s not because of the program quality. It’s all about the user experience.

I immediately recognized the brilliance of a demo program like this — while magazines and website reviews can all sound the same (”vertically compliant while laterally stiff“), the proof is in the pavement. A week of riding roads I’m familiar with would be a lot more informative than the common 10 minute test ride around a bike shop. I wanted to know what a $5,000 road bike with “crisp, tight handling” and also with “forgiving ride characteristics” felt like on the same roads I ride several hundred miles every year (which I typically do on a $1700 “recreational” aluminum frame/carbon fork Lemond). And more to the point: for an average recreational cyclist like me (60-80 miles ridden on a good week, in the 16-17mph avg speed range), does a $5,000 bike really improve your speed all that much?

I decided to experiment with myself and pony up the $300 to rent a bike for one week (the $300 can be applied to a new purchase if I buy it in the next month). I specified the size I needed, put in my details and a week later, it showed up at my door. Assembly was very easy, just throwing the wheels on, airing up the tires, and putting the bars on the stem. A few adjustments and the addition of my own pedals and it was ready to ride. A quick jump on the bathroom scale holding my old bike showed it was 21.0 pounds with pedals (no water bottle or bag), while the Cervelo with my pedals attached was just 17.4 pounds for the 61cm bike (their largest frame). 3.6 pounds is a pretty significant weight savings for road bikes.

The hyperbole around this specific Cervelo model is that it’s really stiff, really light, but also forgiving on the roads, with a more comfortable ride than similar carbon race bikes. From the moment I got on it, I could feel that it was much more responsive. On the same road loops I’ve been riding for the past few years, I was surprised by how the bike seemed to lurch forward whenever I put a little extra effort on hill climbs. I never thought of my regular bike as inefficient, but you push down on the R3 and it really goes. The handling was great as well — my typical ride features a couple high-speed tight turns that make me nervous on my regular bike but the Cervelo tracked them tighter and easier than I’ve ever done them before.

Results

I spent a week on the bike, riding a little over 100 miles on five rides total. Since I wanted to compare rides on this bike versus my previous bike, I did the exact same distances I rode regularly: a 5 mile short fast loop (~13min), a 15 mile loop (~50min), a 27 mile loop (~90-100min), and a 35 mile loop (~2hrs). I have some data on each ride (1, 2, 3), all done in the last couple weeks and some with data going back two years. I’ve been on a steady schedule the last month or so, and I took the fastest ride time I ever did on my old bike, vs. one ride on the same distance on the Cervelo. Here are the results:

The results appear to be pretty consistent with one outlying sample, but since this isn’t a real experiment and I couldn’t eliminate all possible variables I should say that the variability in improvement is largely due to how much rest I got between rides. On the shortest 5 mile ride, I did it a day after a long ride, and I usually take a day of rest (with rest, it’d be another 30 seconds faster). Wind and weather affected the 15 and 27 mile rides each time I went out on the demo bike, further slowing me down. The longest ride on the demo bike was my strongest ride to date — I slept an amazing 10 hours the night before and the winds were surprisingly calm. The previous 35 mile slower ride I’m comparing it to was the first time I did it alone and I rode it very conservatively.

More importantly than the % improvement in my ride times, I did consistently ride faster, in the 17-18mph range on most rides, while the past few years of riding have always had me stuck in the 16-17mph average. My training goals have been to eventually work my way up to consistent rides in the 18-20mph average range. Moving up 0.5-1.5 mile an hour of average speed over an hour of riding on the demo bike was no small feat, taking me months of regular training in the past, and I’ve never been able to do a ride over an hour long in the 18mph range until that demo bike ride.

Bottom Line

The obvious question is whether or not going from a $1,500 average aluminum bike to a $5,000 handcrafted carbon bike is worth the added expense. For some people, shaving seconds off your time is a worthy goal while I would suspect most recreational athletes might want to see 10%-25% time/speed improvements on common workouts. I only found mild performance improvements on my own rides, on the order of single-digit percentage increases in speed and decreases in ride times. It’s definitely tough to justify spending 2-3x the amount of money without getting huge changes.

My hope with this test was to prove to myself that magazines and websites and all the bike geek talk was for naught. As much as I love reading about all the latest gadgets in the cycling world, I’ve long been skeptical about their actual utility and I wanted some data to back it up. In this test I expected to see negligible gains, I expected a rough ride on a stiff frame, and I expected to conclude that $5,000 bikes are generally a waste of money for all but the top athletes. I wanted to free myself from the feeling that I had to constantly upgrade every year to the latest, lightest parts available.

The one thing I can’t deny was the incredible feel of the Cervelo R3 when compared to any other bike I’ve ever ridden. After spending 25 years of my life on BMX and mountain bikes, the first time I took a spin on a road bike I fell in love with the feeling of raw power, blinding speed, and perfect efficiency. I bought my first road bike because it felt like there was nothing standing in between my legs pushing down in some effort and wheels spinning me forward at speeds I’d never attained on flat ground before. When I got up out of the saddle on my first climb with the R3, that same miraculous feeling again washed over me. Here was a new level of efficiency, a perfect melding of body and machine, with not an ounce of wasted effort going towards coasting down the road as fast as possible. The Cervelo R3 simply doesn’t hold you back, transmitting every ounce of your effort into progress on the road.

In the end, I’ll admit the $5,000 bike won me over on feel more than performance, though the gains weren’t too shabby. I attained speeds I’ve never ridden at before and I suspect if I owned a similar bike that I’d continue to improve and attain levels I couldn’t do with my old bike. But more importantly everything about riding felt better on the high end machine. Shifting was instant and precise, climbing hills was faster and easier, and I had more control and could take tight turns at faster speeds. After my 18+mph two hour long ride was over, I felt like I could turn around and ride another 35 miles at that pace and I decided then and there that I’d bite the bullet and purchase a high-end road bike. I eventually settled on a Cervelo RS, a slightly cheaper version of the R3 with a better fit for taller riders like me. At this moment, it’s on a UPS truck headed this way, showing up sometime next week.

But it does the magic in the background (even over EDGE, which I optionally allowed). You play songs as normal, and every so often a tiny ping goes out to last.fm, logging the music played. I imagine that won’t be possible with the official SDK but I haven’t seen anyone mention this app specifically.

So mac/iPhone nerds: will I have to keep a jailbroken out-of-date iPhone to keep using MobileScrobbler come June when the new iPhone stuff is released?

WWNPHD, originally uploaded by the sweetchuck.

I’m sorry, but that’s the greatest movie poster of all time

I listed my car at $3,000, about 10-20% below what bluebook was telling me, but I knew the car had a ton of miles on it (120k) and I just wanted the thing sold (I probably would have taken anything $2500 and over). The first person to respond to the ad went like this:

1. A guy called within an hour of posting the for sale notice.
2. He had a sob story about his sister that needed a car very badly to get to school, and how he’s ready to buy one for his sister asap.
3. He showed up with a friend who he said knew a lot about cars. They both rode along for the test drive.
4. We stopped at a supermarket parking lot after driving a bit, and the mechanic friend gave the car a once over, looking under the hood and looking around the entire car
5. Mechanic friend comes up from the tailpipe with oil all over his fingers, says the engine block must be cracked, sending oil through the system.
6. Guy sounds kind of bummed about the “cracked engine block” and we drive back to my place where I drop them off.
7. Before he leaves, guy offers $1,000 for the car, since his sister still really needs to get to school and his mechanic friend promises to fix the engine at a later date for a higher price.
8. I refuse, saying it’s a ridiculous price. He offers $1200. I say no thanks, and leave.
9. The guys hang out in front of my building, calling 15 minutes later with an offer of $1300, and waits another 15 minutes to call again with an offer of $1400. I say no both times.
10. Three days later I sell the car for the list price, from someone paying cash and looking to refurbish the car top to bottom.
11. Original guy calls after one week from the same number, using a different name, asking if the car is still for sale.

I remember feeling weird about this guy and with enough red flags going off I walked away from it as soon as I could, but looking back on it, it was pretty obvious this was a common con-man style approach. I bet you could run a pretty decent business lowballing people and reselling their cars immediately after for market prices.

• He called soon after listing, trying to nab underpriced cars before anyone else has a chance to consider them
• The sob story was supposed to prey on my emotions, to help out another person in need
• Even though I don’t work on cars, I now know that if there really was oil being sent through the exhaust, the car would spew blue smoke when driven, which it didn’t. The oil was smeared on his fingers from another part of the car, for this bit of theater. At the time I didn’t call them on this move but I did say it sounded highly unlikely to me.
• Friend said he could fix the engine himself for $1200 so the guy could offer less and say “well this car will do for now for my sister, but it’ll cost me so much more to fix, can you discount your price a bit more?” This is also a bit of theater.
• The lowball offer and slightly higher offers backfired on the guy, pissing me off. I knew the car was already discounted about $500 what it should have listed for, why on earth would I take 1/2 of that still?
• Calling me back a week later under a new name was hilarious. I don’t know if that was a mistake but it made me think he called a lot of people selling cars.

I rode about 280 miles in just under 20 hours of riding for the month (thanks to it being the cold winter, I also won my first monthly challenge over at the We Endure MetaFilter group). I didn’t watch what I ate too much, but I did pay attention to how much and when I ate. I am no longer eating anything after 6-7pm or so (I used to occasionally have a bowl of cereal, cheese and crackers, or dessert late at night) and I’m no longer eating heaping helpings of seconds and thirds at dinner until my stomach hurts (I used to do this several times a week).

So far, it feels like a pretty easy transition as it is minimal dieting but the biggest surprise is that the tons of riding I’m doing (on pace to do over 3,000 miles of riding this year if I keep it up) boils down to just five hours of riding a week. Last summer, I probably rode my bike an average of once or twice a week for an hour or so each time, and I didn’t ride much more because it always seemed too difficult to schedule into my day. In the last few months I realized I made excuses or put off riding until it was too late in the day to go out, so instead I came up with a new system: schedule your exercise.

My day starts around 8-9am and I process through my email to figure out what my day is looking like. I’ll check my calendar as well to see what’s on tap for that day and after 30 minutes or so of work I can figure out if I should take a bike ride before lunch or a couple hours after lunch. Anything that comes up after I make the plans is fit around that (”I can’t call you back as I’ll be out before lunch, I’ll call you later in the afternoon“). I try to ride every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and if I can squeak out a long ride on a weekend I’ll do that as well.

That’s my biggest surprise in taking on this new lifestyle endeavor — doing regular exercise is not nearly as invasive to my schedule as I previously thought. It’s just setting aside an hour or two 3 or 4 days a week and I’m seeing weight loss and increased endurance immediately. I also realized five hours a week isn’t that much to give as even though I consider myself a casual gamer, my playstation still probably sees more than 5 hours a week of use.

So far, so good, and I think I’ll be able to keep this up for a very long time.

I noticed the thing holding me back and hanging up my bike each fall was simply being too cold when riding. While I could handle cold temps on my legs, it was mostly my ears and hands freezing from lack of coverage. Also, I avoided riding in the rain, which in Oregon can be the majority of winter days. This winter I decided to spend a few weeks and a few hundred dollars testing out everything I could find to try and get some comfort when temps got cold and the weather turned wet.

Keep in mind that winters in the Pacific Northwest are mild by global standards and probably even by American standards, but they’re much colder than what I was used to after spending the first 30 years of my life in California. Average daily high temps in the Oregon winter are roughly in the 30F-50F range with lots of rain (and snow a handful of days). The stuff I list here has worked well for me when doing 15-20 mile rides (about 60-90 minutes of riding) in temps that are just above freezing and raining.

I’ve broken the following tips for gear down by area of the body. I sometimes tried 2 or 3 different products before finding one that worked and I’ll say upfront a lot of this stuff is expensive but I contend the comfort is definitely worth it. Also keep in mind all this gear does add to your exercise time — it literally takes me about 15 minutes to fully suit up for a cold ride and almost that long to take it all and hang it for drying. I bought almost all of this gear at REI but their online store changes often and I’ve linked to other places I could find the same item or something similar. Click any thumbnail to get to a store selling it.

Keeping your head warm

There are a few important things to consider here: you want to keep your ears warm and your head dry even in rain. Towards those goals I found the following products to work best.

A Skullcap is a liner you put on your head, under your helmet and they extend over your ears (this is key to keeping warm). I tried out a cheap one made by Trek and another cheap one made by REI but they didn’t cover my ears completely or block much wind. I found a model made by Gore (the gore-tex people) that has a windstopper layer inside of it to be quite warm and big enough to completely cover my ears.

Helmet covers are also important for sheding rain off your helmet and keeping wind from getting to your head through all the vents. Gore makes one that works fantastically. Water flows right off it and never soaks in.

Helmet type is important to keep water off your eyes and face. I’ve always ridden with a helmet like this one, which offers tons of vents to keep your head cool in summer. I quickly found that even with a helmet cover, lots of rain would pour onto my glasses so I ended up getting a mountain bike helmet with a bit of a visor like this one. That extra inch or so hanging over my temple is enough to keep rain completely off the top of my face while riding.

Don’t forget your eyes. I wear prescription sunglasses by Oakley, with their lightest lens available (it lets in 61% of the light while normal sunglasses only let in 10-20%). They still block sun but I can wear them and see fine on cloudy days, they block cold winds from making my eyes tear up, and my helmet’s visor (even with the helmet cover stretched over it) keeps water off them nicely.

Keeping your torso warm

There are loads of options for what to wear on top and most people go for layering. I tried jerseys with fleece over with a shell on top of everything and found it to be too bulky. I eventually found a really nice high-end jacket by Gore that I can wear with a simple first layer like a t-shirt. Even after months of rainy and muddy rides, it never lets water in and keeps me really warm even below freezing. It does get a bit warm when temps rise to up to 50F but it has underarm vents (with a mesh screen under to keep your shirt inside — a nice touch I’ve never seen in a jacket before). It also has a napoleon pocket for my iPhone and standard cycling jersey style pockets in the back (also has a tiny zippered back pocket I keep my house keys in). I love this jacket to death and it’s gotta be the most technologically advanced fabric I’ve owned. I have zero complaints with it.

Keeping your legs warm

If temps are in the 40F-50F range, I find that a simple pair of cycling tights works fine. It’s basically just a pair of normal cycling shorts but they go down to your ankles. And yes, you do kind of have to get over the weird feeling of wearing tights in public but embarrassment goes away after a ride or two. I love these Pearl Izumi tights because they have a great chamois pad:

When temps are in the 30F-40F range and it is raining, I use another set of tights, this time by Gore. They have windstopper fabric and they are unpadded, so you have to wear them over summer cycling shorts. I can’t find them at REI anymore but I think these are the same pair.

Keeping your hands warm

I normally wear a pretty light glove and I really like having the dexterity to work a cycling computer and adjust zippers while riding so it took me a long time to find a winter glove that didn’t feel like an oven mitt. When temps are in the 40F-50F range I wear a light leather glove by Pearl Izumi that is basically a summer cycling glove with full fingers. When the wind kicks up, it rains, or temps go into the 30F range, I switch to a slightly heavier glove, a thermalfleece padded version of the same glove. Lots of companies make lots of heavier gloves but I found them to be cumbersome to use and after 15min or so on my bike, my hands would start to sweat even if it was barely above freezing outside.

Keeping your feet warm

Lastly, if you’re using road shoes they’re probably thin leather that is tight fitting and require a short thin sock. That spells disaster for comfort in the winter rain and I decided to try out some heavy shoe covers/booties. They work amazingly well and it’s one of those things where you didn’t know you needed them until you had them. I was surprised the first time I wore them on a cold ride because I was just used to having ice cold extremities but these really help you stay warm, especially in rain. Without these booties, my feet used to cramp up on cold rides, but it hasn’t happened since I started using them.

Conclusions

This winter, I’ve ridden several hundred miles in weather a lot of people don’t like to drive a car in. I’m fitter, healthier, and happier and when I have a couple hours set aside for a ride, with all this gear the weather really doesn’t matter anymore. It is expensive stuff and I’d guess it’ll cost you $500 and up to get fully outfitted but the difference is dramatic and these gear choices are the only thing making comfort possible in the freezing rain.

Love for the Napoleon jacket, originally uploaded by mathowie.

In the past few months, I’ve become the proud owner of two jackets with a new-to-me feature called the Napoleon pocket. Obviously, it’s named after the dude and his famous pose of having one hand halfway obscured into his clothing and it’s becoming more common on hiking and cycling jackets.

In traveling around I’ve quickly come to love my Napoleon pocket jackets to death mostly because it’s the perfect place to stash an iPhone/iPod for the following reasons:

• If you stash one in the pocket and then wrap half of your headphone cord around your device, there’s a perfect amount of headphone cord sticking out, but not so much that it gets stuck in everything. You can put on and take off messenger bags, you can fall asleep in an airplane seat, and you can stand in a super crowded subway car without ever getting tangled up in a huge cord.
• Stashing in a normal pant pocket risks scratches from change and keys, but up high it’s usually alone
• The small chest pocket is a perfect size for an iPhone/iPod
• With the iPhone button on the cord, you can just stash the phone into your pocket and forget about it, pausing and advancing music with the cord control

I’ve also found the pocket handy when getting to an airport or grabbing a rental car because it’s a great temporary pocket you won’t forget about and that you can quickly find again without having to dig through other stuff. I don’t know what I’m going to do this summer when it’s too warm to wear a jacket as I’m getting daily use out of this feature.

A couple summers ago I got my first road bike and went on a few 15 mile rides with the local bike shop group. Last year I raced in a couple cyclocross races and got my ass thoroughly kicked, but had a blast. Thanks to the MetaFilter cycling challenges over at We Endure, this year I decided to stop hanging my bike up every winter and just power through it.

This year, I’m aiming to do quite a bit more. This fall I’ll do the whole cyclocross series. I’m also doing the 500 miles in one week of Cycle Oregon. I’ll do a century or two (or 3) during the summer as well as the Portland Short Track series on my new mountain bike. Today I had fun doing the Worst Day Ride as well as hitting the North American Handmade Bike Show. Though I’ve only ridden 600-800 miles a year for the past three years, I’m hoping to put down about 2,000 in 2008. My three favorite blogs right now are Bike Portland, Bike Design, and Bike Hacks.

I mention all this because you might see a few more bike-related posts here and I’m actively trying to lose another 25lbs this year by watching what I eat and exercising more. It also adds some motivation to meet my goals, so if you see me in six months on the street or at a conference, go ahead and ask me how many miles I’ve ridden and how much weight I’ve lost.

Domain related junk mail, originally uploaded by mathowie.

In the beginning, I listed my home phone number and apartment address on all my domains. By the late nineties, the marketers/spammers showed up and after the tenth early morning phone pitch and junkmail blast, I gave up and fabricated a generic-sounding address and slapped a movie-style 555 phone number on all my domains.

Last Fall I finally buckled down and got a PO Box and I decided to try putting a real business address and phone number (at least my SkypeIn number) back on my domains. Today I did my monthly PO Box check and it was full. For the first three months of my mailbox, I got almost no mail but today it was stuffed with special offers for the owner of metafilter.com. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since there’s almost no cost to blasting out ads to every domain owner but it was still unexpected.

My biggest worry when looking at this stack of mail? I hope the person living at 123 Fake St. in San Francisco knows how truly sorry I am for the past eight years of junk mail.