Ryder's Riding into History

Ryder Hesjedal is well placed to be the first Canadian to win a grand (three-week) cycling tour. With two days to go in the Giro d'Italia, he's in second place, 17 seconds behind the leader, Joaquim Rodríguez. Hesjedal actually finished 13 seconds ahead of Rodríguez in today's stage, which was a high mountain stage (they basically climbed Mt. Seymour, or worse, four times today over 196 kilometres). Tomorrow they have fewer climbs, but the finish is a 2,000 metre climb, double Mt. Seymour, and steeper.

Sunday's final stage is a time trial, and most observers say Hesjedal is a far better time trialler than the other leading contenders for victory. If today wasn't a fluke, and he has the legs to stay with Rodríguez tomorrow (Saturday) up the monster climb to the finish, all he has to do is stay on his bike on Sunday and he'll easily make up those 17 seconds, and make history in the process.

Go, Ryder, go. Even if you don't care about bicycle racing, now's a great chance to get on the bandwagon and cheer on a Canadian. And for those of us from Saskatchewan, how can we not cheer for a Ryder? (Groan.)

Fixing Bicycles, Breaking the Cycle of Poverty

Ed Luciano at Mighty Riders, my favourite bike shop, has co-founded an awesome program to help people get back on their feet by learning to fix bikes. The program is called Cycle Back. CBC Radio One did an excellent piece on them yesterday morning. You can contribute by buying a bike from the program, or donating old bikes for them to fix. Take the bike to Our Community Bikes or Pedal Depot. You can also give cash, of course.

Mighty Riders is not only the best bicycle shop in the Vancouver area, but they have a heart!

Whinging of an Old Man

Now that I'm "between contracts", I'm getting out for rides on some of my old routes. Today I did the ride to Granville and 71st via UBC, which is just under 60 kms round trip (see my old post for a map). I used to do a lot of 2 hour rides. I'm doing the same rides 5 to 15 minutes slower than I used to. I shouldn't really be surprised, I guess, that I can't ride as fast at 53 as I could at 40, but it still hurts.

Whinging aside, it was a beautiful, sunny day, and not cold by my standards.

The Triathlon 2011 Edition

I won the triathlon with the same strategy that worked for me last year: Be the only person to compete in all three events. :-)

ICBC to the Grouse Grind on bike: 25 m 20 s
The Grind: 47 m 12 s
A beer: Before anyone else finished theirs

PB on the first two.

Ride to Deas Island Park

I rode four hours on Sunday. Here are the stats: 4 h 05 m 00 s, Average Speed: 27.46 km/h, Distance: 112.59 km. That's a flat ride, so the average indicates that I'm not getting any younger. I used to be able to average 33 km/h on flat rides. There was a pretty strong wind, but I had it behind me as much as it was a headwind.

Another big shout out to Mighty Riders. Ed has been helping me with my position. After two recent adjustments, I was able to ride that much time without dying of pain in the feet and the shoulder. I'm not completely comfortable yet, but I'm a lot better than I was last year. And the chafing problem I've had for years has completely gone.

Netflix Blows It

So I gave in to pressures and went to sign up for Netflix. Actually, it appeared to be the model I think I'm looking for -- movies when I want them from the Internet (no cable). I had trepidation about the quality of the image streamed to the TV from my computer, but I was prepared to work on that.

So I sign up, hit play, and they tell me they won't play the movie because I don't use one of their supported operating systems. First bad thing: I know I'm using an off-the-mainstream operating system (Ubuntu), but that's my choice and my decision to deal with. Stream to me in a standard way and make it my problem to make it work.

So I cancel the account. Second bad thing: They force me to view a questionnaire with many complicated questions about why I'm canceling. Third bad thing: My reason isn't on the list, and they don't allow a free format comment.

So I hit "Contact Us". Fourth bad thing: They don't have an e-mail way to contact them.

Do I feel confident that Netflix will actually have a responsive phone system that lets me talk to a human, after the way they've demonstrated that they're not open to my way of doing things? No way.

Netflix, you ain't getting my money.

Jeopardy

A computer is playing Jeopardy. That's nothing. I want to see computers in reality TV: "Survivor: Data Centre Edition". Linux tribe versus Windows tribe. The question: will J2EE servers choose Linux or Windows? Or "Mobile Edition". Will Nokia and Windows be able to beat out the two tin cans with a string between them?