For new years Penny (brother's girlfriend), Charlie (her white German Shepherd) and I (me) rented an economy car from Enterprise and drove up to Nashville to chill with the college crew.
I'll note that for cross-country trips it's cheaper to rent a car than drive your own; we paid the weekend rate at 20-something a day plus a few bucks per day for unlimited mileage outside of Texas and then we put 1600 miles on the car. The math works out to 6.8 cents per mile - not including gas - which is much less than the wear and tear you'd put on your car: assuming you paid $16,000 for the car and then got 200,000 miles out of it, with maintenance every 30,000 miles, oil changes every 5,000 miles, one 'oh shit' repair, and a new clutch/alternator/transmission along the way, plus insurance, registration, etc... you'd be spending around at minimum $25,000 - 12.5 cents per mile, not including gas - over the life of the vehicle... and that doesn't account for all that other shit cars need.
We stopped in Memphis and picked up Tom and his girlfriend and their dog... four people and two dogs traveling in an economy coupe loaded to the gills.
The photo is after a LONG walk at the largest dog park I've ever been to: easily 200 acres.
The metrologist is me wants you to know that the typical speedometer does not meet the industry standard 4:1 accuracy confidence band to verify 5 and one half miles per hour, which is why speed limits typically adhere to 5 mph resolution... we drove fast enough to guarantee we sped.
Ceiling cat is watching you... buy stuff at Toy Joy.
The Mohawk is easily the best outdoor venue in Austin. It's one of the only good things to come out of the 2006 sound ordinance... they built a wall and made a new stage with 4 different levels; it's like a tree fort with bands playing.
My favorite view from Mohawk lets you get right up over and to the side of the band... this isn't VIP... everything's open access. On this unknown night, Mother Falcon prepares for an epic performance. The line was out the door, and the house stayed packed even after it started raining.
The lucky few (hundred) that got in.
Which brings me to SXSW. Lee, Penny, the NI crew and I are all wristbanded up and ready to roll... just gotta finish figuring out which of the 1000+ shows we're biking to. March 16-20, here we come.
But until then, work.
Some crafty employees made our LabVIEW logo with food cans:
Shifting gears: A while back (over a year?) I took apart the Nexus 8 speed internal hub on Qimikom (commuter bike). I never could figure out how to get it back together because the repair manual stopped at a state where you had a dam with 10 holes to plug... removing one finger unleashed Pandora's box all over the garage...
That's not going back together :). So I found a complete wheelset on craigslist for $100, including a similar Nexus 8 speed internal hub ::yoink::.
Rode said hub for about a year, then noticed increased drag on the wheel. I figured it was due to the fact that in 5000+ miles I've never serviced the chain, but here's what I found after taking the chain off:
Needless to say, it was time to service this one, too. I figured I'd take this one down slowly and take pictures to document the rebuild process. Unfortunately, the two units were apples and oranges inside, sharing only a few common parts, so after a few hours I now have TWO ziplock bags full of Nexi hubs :).
I need to setup some RMAs to get the crafty hands that be to put them back together.
So like I mentioned previously, now I'm rolling single speed. To be honest, I prefer it over gears, but not while mountain biking; did that twice and it's not fun cause you can't bomb up OR down anything.
Of course, there's a few steep hills that are impossible to get up on the roads, too, but I'll manage.
Still rocking the Texas flag, but it's quickly falling apart. I imagine that, like Willie and his guitar, once it's gone I'll no longer bike. We've been through a lot.
And then Austin got enough snow to cause a lot of wrecks, but not cancel work until several frustrated employees called the powers that be out for a poor decision... Austin is not equipped to handle any snow.
I figured I'd ride in anyway to see how those crazy ice bikers do it. Turns out it isn't too hard:
Just gotta take it slow and pretend like you've got the pope riding the pegs on the back, plexiglass box and all. I didn't see any other bike tracks the entire way to work, which includes a majority of the Shoal Creek Bike Boulevard, which is a north-south expressway for bikes that has 8 foot bike lines that cut all the way down to 38th street. Ended up falling twice while I figured out the frictionless properties of snow.
Continuing the snow theme, went and rode the 12 hour Warda race, an 8 mile loop with a sweet downhill track. The organizers delayed the race an hour to try to clear snow off the course, but it was still pretty slick the first few laps. The same team member that didn't show up to the 24 hours out at Rocky Hill last fall bailed on us again, leaving our team of three to compete against teams of four; I know who I'll never 'race' with again (in quotes because he's bailed every time I've tried to put him on my team). We held 4th/5th place even after another rider left with 4 hours left to race... at which point we fell to a respectable 6th.
Chad's pretty much the enthusiastic lifeblood of NI cycling. His mom comes out to the longer races and cooks chicken, oatmeal, eggs, etc all night long. Seriously, you want eggs at 4AM, she's on it.
You rock, Chad!
Jumping a log and then a bridge shortly thereafter.
Austin's got this great billboard ordinance that prevents new billboards from springing up... basically only billboards that originally existed before 1983 exist. It really keeps the highways scenic and free from a bunch of ads. Anyway, this billboard now has a building in front of it. It's unreadable from the street, so I guess only the few tenants and pedestrians that strain their necks can read it? Still, there's an ad on it.
Keyboard art. I got nothing on this one, other than that Lee and I were bored.
Someone dropped a solo cup at a party and it landed with booze still in it.
I'm giving the guy out of frame the 'fuck you, I don't want to do another lap' look. Still, I did another lap.
This 29" mountain bike weighs less than 14 pounds:
For reference, the Yeti weighs 25 pounds (without the Brooks Saddle :)
Also, here's a tricked out pink Yeti:
And we got cats: Howie and Hugo:
They rock!
Here's the module I'm working on at work:
The back end is the digital control circuitry, which drives all the relays. The front end is a rapid-prototyped mechanical printout of a bunch of relays and other components (TBA) that make a really cool topology. I've got a lot of IP in this sucker, but it's too soon to spill the beans ;). Gotta keep our competitors guessing.
Hugo doing his thing:
In case you didn't read the license plate and/or the sunscreen, may I present to you The Moninator. Never have I seen someone embrace motherhood quite like this.
And I leave you with a sunset.
And the soft lull of vinyl humming sweetness into your ears.
