Authors
Kim is a an accountant (soon to be CPA), and triathlete, currently training for no race in particular. Steve is a software engineer, photographer, and cyclist on the Platinum Performance Cycling Team. We live in paradise a.k.a. Santa Barbara. Read More
Categories
Accidents | Accounting | Art | Cars | Cycling | Data | Entertainment | Family | Food | Gadgets | Gear | Health | Honeymoon | Miscellanea | Photography | Pictures | Camera Phone | Week in Pictures | Poetry | Politics | Programming | Race Report | Racing | Reviews | Ride Report | Running | School | Site | Training | Travel | Triathlon | Vacation | Video | Wedding | Work
Blogosphere
Marco off the Mark. A guy who likes to hang out with family and friends, pedal his bike, dig in the dirt, and live life healthily and happily.
The Young and Restless. 22 year old kid who loves to ride his bike.
Happenings in SoCal. Ass-kicker extraordinaire...
Through Z's Eyes. Bikes, rants, ideas, and more!!
Of Dogs and Bike Racing. Aka. Dr. Kim. Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara.
On The B Team. The Chicken Ranch aka B Team's site for local cycling information and trash talk.
Lint Trap. Nothing to see here, move along now.
A New Hope. Sean
Pedal More. Overweight Underpowered Nor-Cal Pack Fodder.
George's Epic Adventures. Ultra Cyclist and father who recently completed 2- Person Race Across America (RAAM) and Furnace Creek 508 Fixed Gear.
Suffer-O-Rama. Eric’s blog about cycling and bike racing
Riders Ready. Jamie Smith's blog devoted to roadies, road cycling, and his book, Roadie: The Misunderstood World of a Bike Racer. Go buy it NOW at VeloPress.com!
Think Fast. Quarq
Old Guy Racer. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll write bad cheques.
Wheels Rolling. Brandy
Sprinter della Casa. Carpe Diem Racing
Ryanf. It comes down to doing the above, or being a chump. your choice
Cat3 Phenom. "I'm kinda a big deal"
My Shaved Legs. The fine art of failure. Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies.
To Be Honest With You. Thirty something and searching for my next obsession.
The Brenda Report. The journeys and thoughts of an adventurous woman
The Tour de Chris. This blog is all about Chris. Fueled by espresso and metal.
The Incidental Cyclist. Cycling in and around Union County, NC
Everest Challenge x2. My wife and I have committed to enter the [Everest Challenge] Tandem division this year. This blog will chronicle our preperation, and ultimately our race experience.
Cycling in Seattle. The ride is the destination
As the Crank Turns. I attmept to ride bicycles...often
Cycling
Platinum. The Platinum Performance Cycling Team is a Santa Barbara based team with a diverse group of talented riders. The teams main focus is acquiring cross country results and new for 2008 is the addition of a road race team.
Echelon. Echelon Santa Barbara is a road bicycling club based in Santa Barbara, California. Echelon welcomes dedicated new riders and experienced racers, men and women, old or young, and all those who want to expand their cycling horizons. With a history our History in Santa Barbara bike racing since 1984, we are a USCF registered club.
Bikeforums Road Cycling. Road cycling internet message board. Discuss equipment, rides, races, and all cycling-related discussions.
SCNCA. Southern California Nevada Cycling Association
NCNCA. Northern California Nevada Cycling Association
BiciCORSA. An online group for cyclists of all levels--from recreational riders to weekend warriors to aspiring and professional racers.
Yehuda Moon. Yehuda Moon works at the Kickstand Cyclery, lives on his bicycle, and dreams of a day when everyone does likewise.
Everest Challenge. The hardest two-day USCF race. With the spirit of the "Death Rides" and the dramatic scenery of the Eastern Sierra, this bicycle race and ride will test your perseverance going uphill. We have three climbs each day with gains of 2,600 feet to 6,200 feet.
Local
The Restaurant Guy. John Dickson's Food News
Santa Barbara Independent. Delivers fresh news, arts, and entertainment news and information online all day, every day. The weekly newspaper is published every Thursday morning, with Santa Barbara county's largest circulation of 40,000.
Edhat. One subscriber suggested that the name came from "Every Day Happenings Around Town".
Vita Bella Photography. Local journalistic-style wedding photography
Miscellanea
Adam Szary. Freelance illustrator who is strongly interested in fantasy and comic art.
Virtual Dub. Proof that Avery had too much free time in college...
Liō. Daily comic strip created by Mark Tatulli that focuses on the adventures of a strange little boy named Liō. Most of the story is told visually, with little or no dialogue.
whilshire|one. this site covers topics including web standards-based development, web application development, Textpattern and other miscellany
Recent Comments
You should try El Bajio on lower Milpas. Local family owned. Nothing compares (they are closed on Mondays).
Peter Stahl (Fixing Corrupted Garmin TCX Files)
I am having a slightly different problem. I have lap .dat files that come up as a blank gray line in editpad. Before …
A US citizen (Minimum Wage Morons)
What do you expect from minimum wage, ILLEGAL ALIEN workers! Of course you should respect someone who commits a felony, comes here, and demands you …
MMMMMMMMMM……a factory made cake with red #40, trans fats and aspartame. Here’s an idea…throw it in the trash and enjoy a home-cooked one!!
Eat it! Eat the whole thing! Oh, you’re not a CAT 4 anymore…never mind :}
Mmmm. Fuel for the next Nite Moves!
Weiland (Fixing Corrupted Garmin TCX Files)
I’ve had corruption once so far. In my case the TCX file wouldn’t write. The writing history would briefly pop on the device screen and …
Sorry, didn’t mean to sound critical in my question, just jealous I can’t get out that much!! Keep it up and maybe Cat 2 is …
I don’t usually ride that many hours, but I had Monday off, and I rode extra with my wife Kim on Sunday afternoon after riding …
How are you able to ride almost as many hours as a pro? Do you work?!!!:)
Jun 26, 09:30 PM by Steve | Minimum Wage Morons
Posted in Miscellanea | Comments [2]
Kim and I had an interesting experience at Chipotle today… we usually each get a burrito and share the guacamole because they put way to much on (and is so expensive). We’ve done this many times and never had a problem. It is not a difficult concept to put some of the guacamole on mine and the rest of the guacamole on hers. One 4oz serving of guacamole shared between two burritos on the same order. Today the workers could not figure this out, they simply would not do it. We convinced them to put the guacamole in a side container and not wrap them (although even that was a fight) so that we could distribute it ourselves. I let them know I was displeased with their incompetence and they insisted that we had to “respect” them. I may have used not-so-nice language because I was upset and on the way out I pushed the door open and ended up ripping the return hydraulics out of the door frame. Oops, I swear I didn’t push that hard.
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Jun 19, 09:47 PM by Kimberly | A Cake Walk
Posted in Food | Comments [3]
I was shopping at Vons today, and heard an announcement over the loudspeaker: “It’s almost that time again. We’ve placed numbers around the store at eye level. Find one, and when we call out the number, the person by it wins a free bakery item.” I couldn’t find any number, as I was looking at the shelves in the frozen section while shopping. They call out number seven. Then a bakery worker comes down the aisle towards me with a cake. I still didn’t see the number, while frantically looking around for it. Then another shopper walks up. The bakery worker asked if I was waiting for the cake. I said “yes, but…” The other shopper was disappointed. I then finally spotted the number, on the door, not on the shelves! I said the other shopper could have it, but then he said I could have it. We got into a reverse fight over it. I then said we could split it. The bakery worker took it over to cut it, but decided to give each of us a whole cake instead! Now Steve and I have this whole big chocolate cake and only us to eat it!
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Jun 2, 10:59 PM by Steve | Fixing Corrupted Garmin TCX Files
Posted in Cycling & Data | Comments [2]
I guess I’ve been getting a bit of reputation as a magical fixer of corrupted TCX files. If this doesn’t mean anything to you, then don’t worry. This is all because the new firmware for the Garmin Edge 705 is not writing it’s data files correctly in some circumstances. Fortunately the nature of the TCX file format makes the bad files easy to fix if you understand XML. Unfortunately although it is possible to make the files readable again, there is usually some (or a lot) of data lost.
I can’t really explain XML here but the basic idea is that it consists of nodes enclosed in pairs of opening and closing tags. Every opening tag must have a matching closing tag. Every data sample in the file is a node called a trackpoint. For example:
<Trackpoint>
<Time>2009-05-31T14:57:58Z</Time>
<Position><LatitudeDegrees>42.290926</LatitudeDegrees><LongitudeDegrees>-71.389760</LongitudeDegrees></Position>
<AltitudeMeters>61.804</AltitudeMeters>
<DistanceMeters>92.244</DistanceMeters>
<HeartRateBpm><Value>94</Value></HeartRateBpm>
<Cadence>4</Cadence>
<SensorState>Present</SensorState>
<Extensions><TPX xmlns="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/ActivityExtension/v2"><Watts>26</Watts></TPX></Extensions>
</Trackpoint>
So the basic building block of the TCX file is the Trackpoint, but there is a hierarchy to the file. One or more Trackpoint nodes are enclosed in a Track node and, one or more Track nodes make up a Lap node. A new track is created whenever the unit auto-pauses. Finally, at the top level, an Activity node contains one or more Lap nodes. There is only one Activity per file.
When the corruption happens, there is typically a trackpoint that has failed to write correctly and then the rest of the track is missing until the next track or lap starts. Because there is no matching closing trackpoint, track,...
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Jun 1, 08:18 PM by Steve | Training 5/25-5/31
Posted in Cycling & Training | Comments [3]
Mon: 3.75 hr Memorial Day climbing
Tue: Hammerfest; 1.75 hr easy with Bill
Wed: 40’ Tempo; Threshold OSM climb; Tempo to Nite Moves
Thu: 3.25 hr Solo Solvang loop solo; 2.25 hr Evening ride
Fri: 60’ Active Recovery
Sat: 4.25 hr Lake loop
Sun: 5 hr “Chicken Ranch” ride; 3 hrs super-easy with Kim
Total: 27 hrs, 482 miles, 1,350 TSS, 15,915kJ
First note I had a mistake in my tabulation of last week’s hours, which I have corrected. Continuing through last weekend I put in a hard climbing ride on Memorial day, through my regular weekly Tuesday and Wednesday rides.
I brought back one of my favorite solo training rides, the Solvang Loop up the 154 to Solvang and back through the backroads by Nojoqui Falls and the 101 through Gaviota. I made great time, just over an hour and a half to Solvang and then flew back averaging over 24mph on the 101. Fun. Capped it off with the usual Thursday evening ride for a total of just over 100 very hilly miles in about 5.5 hours of riding.
Saturday was the old standby, the lake ride. I was in a break for a while, put in a lot of good efforts and did a lot of pulls despite the amount of riding I had done over the past 7 days. I felt surprisingly good, actually. Sunday I was an honorary Chicken-Rancher as I crashed their ride to Solvang, making my third loop up there in 8 days...
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Jun 1, 08:02 PM by Steve | Barry Wolfe P/1/2/3 More Pictures
Posted in Cycling & Pictures
I shot these pictures after I was dropped half an hour into the race…
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Jun 1, 08:00 PM by Kimberly | Barry Wolfe P/1/2/3 Pictures
Posted in Cycling & Pictures
Tony Cruz at the front and Steve at the back
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May 30, 09:59 PM by Kimberly | Barry Wolfe Cat 3 Pictures
Posted in Cycling & Pictures
Photo by Thomas Kubler
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May 30, 04:30 PM by Steve | Barry Wolfe Women 3/4 Pictures
Posted in Cycling & Pictures
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May 29, 11:00 PM by Steve | Barry Wolfe Cat 4 Pictures
Posted in Cycling & Pictures
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May 28, 03:51 PM by Steve | Training 5/18-5/24
Posted in Cycling & Training
Mon: Sick
Tue: Hammerfest, still a little sick
Wed: 5’ “Prologue” to work; 1’ on/off up OSM; Tempo to Nite Moves
Thu: Low threshold OSM climb; 2hr Evening ride
Fri: 45’ Tempo
Sat: 7hr To Solvang + Echelon Valley Ride + home
Sun: 75’ Barry Wolfe Criterium Cat 3 and P/1/2/3
Total: 15.5 hrs, 286 miles, 951 TSS, 9,986kJ
I started to feel really crappy, aching, and had a lump in my throat Sunday evening after the Ventura race and felt worse Monday when I woke up. Tuesday I initially felt better but was starting to feel a little sick again so I took it easy but still went out for the hammerfest. Wednesday I felt much better and poached Bill’s workout by doing 1’ on/1’ off up OSM with him (to the switchbacks anyway), and ended up with 17:30, one of my better times in a while.
Thursday I was feeling great, and together Bill and I worked Chris over and finished the loop with a course record just shy of 1:27… not that we time it or anything…
Friday I didn’t really have time for much but with 2 (!) parties at work I wanted to get some exercise in so I did some tempo in the morning… it seems though all it ends up doing is making my appetite stronger when presented with food. Oh well.
Saturday I did a casual ride with Echelon up in the valley, so to make it more challenging I rode 30...
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