Tag Archives: bicycle

What I learned this week, September 21, 2012

Posted on by Bill Chance

Why James Bond Fans Are Better Than Sci-Fi Geeks

Bond fans are different. They (we) make an effort. When I was younger, I found that watching the Bond films and reading the books made me a more active and motivated person. I began to take an interest not just in playing video games but in learning new things. Online Bond forums are, by and large, not a bunch of nerds arguing over fantasy scenarios but guys talking about actual skills: effective martial arts to learn for self-defense, good clothing decisions, how to fix cars, elegant alcoholic drinks, card-playing tips, travel locations, etc. These are real skills that you can go out and learn and use. You can’t learn how to fly an X-wing, do flips with a lightsaber, or use the Vulcan neck thing to take out a mutant invader.

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http://vimeo.com/16154267
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There has been a lot of talk about Lincoln’s voice in the new Speilberg film – how Daniel Day Lewis interpreted him as having a higher voice than the usual booming baritone. This seems to be historically accurate.

It didn’t seem to be such a big deal, until I listened to this trailer:

Photographer and videographer Peter Sutherland followed six cyclists from different disciplines of cycling and personal backgrounds to produce short but moving documentaries on each one.

“When we spend our lives waiting until we’re perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our backs on …our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make. Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don’t exist in the human experience.”

— From TEDxHouston speaker Brené Brown’s new book, Daring Greatly, released this month.

I keep reading everybody writing and saying that, “Rush is an idiot!”

I don’t know… this might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s pretty good anyway:

Arbor Hills and Carrollton Blue and Orange

Posted on by Bill Chance

The overlook at Arbor Hills Nature Preserve in Plano, Texas.

Slowly, I am able to ride farther and farther on my bike. I’m still slow – I am riding an old, inefficient mountain bike (which does have the advantage of being able to go anywhere). I have my ancient road bike which I’m trying to get into rideable condition… but I am struggling with mystery flats. When it is fixed I should be able to up my speed and distance. Right now I am limited not so much by my fitness but by time and the amount of water I can carry. I drink an amazing amount of water in this heat.

What I like to do on weekends sometime is to load up my bike in the back of the Matrix, fill a cooler with bottles of iced water, and set out across the city. I use GoogleMaps on my phone, with the Bicycling option turned on – showing up the bike trails and dedicated lanes bright green. I look for long stretches or connected clusters and give a shot at riding somewhere I haven’t been before.

On Sunday, I headed northwest and the first place I came across was the Arbor Hills Nature Preserve. This is a large Plano park which I had seen a couple years ago when I made a wrong turn leaving the hospital where Candy was getting surgery. It had an odd parking lot, beige rock buildings, and a big ol’ mess of hilly woods. I looked it up online and had wanted to pay a visit ever since.

It was an interesting place to ride a bicycle. First – it does lack distance – only a couple miles of paved trails (I wasn’t in the mood for hitting the dirt). It isn’t a very good place for speed either – the trails are lousy with clots of people wandering around and others walking their dogs.

What is nice, though, is its hills. There are a lot of wooded nature trails in the Dallas area, but almost all of them are located in worthless river bottom floodplain and are as flat as a pancake. Arbor Hills has a good bit of ups and downs – not enough to make it too difficult or even unpleasant, but enough for a good workout.

The trails all wind around and rise up to a stone lookout, a nice destination, a pretty place looking out over the trees and scrub fields with only a hint of the millions of rooftops rising along the horizon – a reminder of the fact that you are not really in a wilderness, but merely a forgotten pocket of vegetation left over somehow when the world was paved over.

I looped around a couple of times, then packed my bike up and drove on. I wanted to go down to Carrollton and check out their trails. I had read about how they had been doing a lot of work on extending their hike/bike trail network. I did a circuit of their Orange and Blue trail routes, about ten miles total.

I applaud their work, and some of their trails are nice… running beside some swampy ponds and wild green creeks. They need to do more to access the network, though. It was fine for some exercise, but the pavement doesn’t really go anywhere – it would not work for commuting to work or shopping.

Sitting at a little shaded bench I gulped down my last bottle of cold water and knew it was time to head back to the car and go home. There is always tomorrow, and more stretches of pavement in a different direction.

Neighborhood Upgrade

Posted on by Bill Chance

One of my favorite bike trails in Dallas is the Santa Fe Trail, which runs from the south end of White Rock Lake (it connects with the trail around the lake) down an old railroad right of way, ending in Deep Ellum. I rode it the other day and turned the other way – going under Interstate 30 and riding around in Fair Park.

What I like about the trail is that it is a rare urban trail. The northern end starts in the woods around White Rock Creek but the trail soon emerges into a bustling lower-income city neighborhood. It makes for interesting riding.
I have noticed that a lot of the houses along the route, some little more than shotgun shacks, have been upgraded since the trail opened. There is a lot of fresh paint and large piles of trash along the streets waiting to be hauled away. I don’t know if it is because the residents feel that they are now more exposed and want to put a better foot forward, or, more likely, the trail raised property values a bit and the landlords are cleaning up to get higher rents.

At any rate, one property does have an unusual sculptural addition along the rear roofline. There is a four-person bicycle mounted along the edge of what used to be an awning – the roof long rotted away. A satellite dish sprouts out from next to the rear-most tire. It looks pretty odd, sitting there – sort of a shout-out to the cyclists on the trail – “hey, look at me… a quadruple… and you thought you were something!”

But it looks pretty cool, anyway.

I like the different patterns in the chainrings.

What I learned this week, August 31, 2012

Posted on by Bill Chance

A great idea for a bike – take a look and decide if this is a worth project on kickstarter.

The Viaje Bicycle: Engineered for Adventure

How to seperate an egg yolk

The days before photoshop.

I remember well the one with the pickle.

Early 1900s Postcards Show Off Primitive ‘Photoshopping’ Skills 

Why I Still Write With A Fountain Pen in This Age of Computers

Allways Carry A Camera & Trust The Force!

I remember Heathkits from my youth. Back then, electronics were not disposable items and you could build your own appliance or gadget after countless hours of painstaking work for only about twice what a new one would cost. They were very high quality, though, in a day when quality still existed and mattered.

The detailed instructions, the carefully labeled parts (especially the myriad resistors) and, especially, the smell of rosin-core solder heated and the sight of the wisp of burnt flux smoke rising from the pool of liquid lead.

A friend of mine across the street even made an entire color television. It burnt out one day while we were watching football (there was always the danger you would make a mistake – I view that as a feature, not a bug).

I still use a Heathkit audio amp I built in 1982. It sounds better than anything made today.

For Sale: Vintage Heathkits

30 Shocking and Unexpected Google Street View Photos

What I learned this week, August 24, 2011

Posted on by Bill Chance

The 21 Absolute Worst Things in the World

An Unexpected Ass Kicking

— read this story… it’s amazing – and here’s a sequel, sort of –

7 Things I Learned From My Encounter With Russell Kirsch

A Big Week for Bicycling in Fort Worth

This Texas city is leaving its big brother Dallas in the dust when it comes to bike-friendliness. Just this week, the feds awarded Fort Worth with $1 million for a 30-station bike-share system, which is slated to be up and running next April.

And just yesterday, Fort Worth installed the Dallas region’s first green bike lane

The most amazing quotes and graphics. I would buy all of these if I had the cash – they are so… perfect.

Blog – You Are What You Underline

Etsy Store – Buy them here

Nobody writes short stories like Alice Munro.

A new one… Amundsen, from The New Yorker.

Read it here

Then there was silence, the air like ice. Brittle-looking birch trees with black marks on their white bark, and some small, untidy evergreens, rolled up like sleepy bears. The frozen lake not level but mounded along the shore, as if the waves had turned to ice in the act of falling. And the building, with its deliberate rows of windows and its glassed-in porches at either end. Everything austere and northerly, black-and-white under the high dome of clouds. So still, so immense an enchantment.

E-Mails to My Past Self: 5 Facts I Wish I Could Send Back In Time

The 3 Most Poisonous Movie Clichés of the 60s and 70s

Nurse Ratched, My Hero: 4 Female Movie Villains I Love

Dart Sunset

Posted on by Bill Chance

The other day I drove down after work to the Forest Lane DART station, parked my car, and went for a bike ride on the White Rock Creek trail. I didn’t feel very good and wondered why – later I found out the temperature was 108 F (42 C). That was the problem – even though I had plenty of cold water – that sort of heat will suck the energy out of me.
As the sun set I stopped to catch my breath near where my car was. I watched the DART trains cross the old railroad bridge near the Urban Reserve development. Some of the cool people that live there were out walking their dogs and we chatted while I snapped some shots of the bridge and the sun. I thought of the hundreds of times I’ve ridden that train and looked out the window over the trail.

What I learned this week, August 10, 2012

Posted on by Bill Chance

The extended trailer for Cloud Atlas is out:

I am so excited and stoked for this film… I started to write a blog entry about it, but when I did a search, I realized I Already Did – almost a year ago. Go read my old entry. Then go find a copy of the book, Cloud Atlas and read it. Before October, when the film of this unfilmable book comes out.

134 Terrifying Closeups of Bugs

I wish I had a decent Macro lens.

Beutiful bikes and a cool video.

Hey, an album of bicycle music – Bicycle

Nora and One Left

Beautiful Bikes and a cool video – The Porteur bicycle

Reform Is Not Enough: The Federal Government Needs a Complete Makeover

American government is a deviant subculture

This behavior by high-ranking public servants should be considered scandalous. People in Washington consider it business as usual, and don’t even raise an eyebrow.

Right and wrong no longer matter in this deviant subculture. Sealed off from personal responsibility by accumulated bureaucracy and thick walls of special interest money, our government is covered by a putrid mold of cynical gamesmanship and everyday hypocrisy. People scurry around its baseboards seeking short-term advantage, but big change is so inconceivable as to be laughable.

Even reformers have given up. What is politically feasible, they ask? The answer is clear: nothing.

Change will nonetheless happen, political scientists tell us. How? Through a crisis….The main challenge then will be not merely to reform Medicare and other unsustainable programs. The challenge will be to change the culture of government.

Literature’s greatest serial killers
I have read all but one book on this list. My favorite – Anton Chigurh, of course.

I’m sort of suprised Dexter (or Voldemort) isn’t on here – but I’m not sure that a popular series is considered “Literature.” I dunno, it’s not Crime and Punishment (or Macbeth, or even Lolita), but that still feels a little snobbish to me.

  • Macbeth
  • Raskolnikov
  • Humbert Humbert
  • Tom Ripley
  • Patrick Bateman
  • Anton Chigurh
  • Bruce Robertson
  • Annie Wilkes
  • Frank Cauldhame
  • Hannibal Lecter

..

What I learned this week, August 3, 2012

Posted on by Bill Chance

I have been looking for this for a long time… and now, here it is, on Youtube. Alfred Hitchcock’s version of the Roald Dahl short story Man From the South with Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre.

It’s almost a half-hour long… but find a time when you can sit down and watch the thing.

I think this story is the best example of how to manipulate tension, excitement, and dread in a tight little story I have ever seen. This version is a bit droll for my taste – the original text is more horrific. It’s been done and riffed on many times (check out Quentin Tarantino’s version as the fourth and last story in the otherwise-horrible film, Four Rooms).

I try and study it.

This is what I want to write.

“The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.”

— Neil Gaiman

The 12 Best Spies in Film

An interesting list.

Of course….

Shaken, not stirred.

There is no controversy about who is number 1.

From Casino Royale (1953) Chapter 7

“A dry martini,” he said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?”

The Vesper

Why flavorful Southern hot sauces don’t pack much heat

I’m sorry, but this is about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. As a child, I lived in a few locations that had… well, let’s say they had a lot of flies – a lot. Swatting flies became a cheap amusement for when there was precious else to do. I would have given anything for this thing.

Now, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself.

Salt blasting shotgun eradicates insects with extreme prejudice

The Bug-A-Salt

I had to watch this… I didn’t think it could be done. Apparently, it can. It has to be real… it’s from the Internet.

MATCHBOOK. bikinis meet their match

Clever matches between bathing suits and books. Each match discovered by hand. We should have been doing this all along, am I right?

http://vimeo.com/45815314

Don Draper is Such a Card

Posted on by Bill Chance

I’ve been riding my bicycle for fitness – about ten miles a day, about five days a week. If I don’t commute home from work, I drive to a trail on the way home or at least go out in the evening in the neighborhood. I want to change myself into a morning person and get in a quick little ride at dawn, before work… but this old dog doesn’t learn new tricks without a lot of pain.

I need to increase my options for when I can’t ride outside. I am dealing with the heat with a lot of ice water and ibuprofen but soon the days will be getting shorter and I’m not sure I can ride in the dark without getting killed.

A while back, I did a project where I installed a computer screen on my recumbent bicycle… and that worked well for a while. I’m getting stronger now, and the recumbent is good for some easy work, but I need something more strenuous. I wondered if I was getting strong enough to ride my spin bike (an Ironman 112 I bought off of ebay a few years ago for a hundred bucks or so) which has been gathering dust out on the porch for a long time. I was surprised at how well it worked out.

So I cleaned the thing off and dragged it into Club Lee (he’s in New Orleans for the time being and doesn’t need his room). The last time he was home he carted his big television back to the Big Easy and left the crude wooden stand I had built for it. It was the perfect height for what I needed.  I dug out a monitor and a sound system I bought at a thrift shop – set it all up. I can bring in my laptop and hook it up to the monitor and sound system.

My Spinning Bike setup.

So now I try to ride the spin bike when I can – especially when I don’t get in an outside ride. I’m watching stuff on Netflix and on Hulu Plus (mostly the Criterion Collection) while I ride. I don’t have time to watch what I want to… so much entertainment and so little time.

Mostly though, I’m working my way through Mad Men on Netflix. Two episodes back to back is a good workout on the spin bike.

That Don Draper is such a card.

“The reason you haven’t felt it is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons. You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.”

Season I, Episode I

 ” Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.”

Season 1, Episode 13

“I hate to break it to you but there is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent.”

Season I, Episode 8

“If you listen, he’ll tell you about the time he thought he was an angel or dreamt of being perfect. And then he’ll smile with wisdom, content that he realized the world isn’t perfect. We’re flawed, because we want so much more. We’re ruined, because we get these things, and wish for what we had.”

Season 4, Episode 8

 “Every day I tried not to think about what would happen if this happened.”

Season 4, Episode 11

 “Every woman wants choices, but in the end, none wants to be one of a hundred in a box. She’s unique. She makes the choices and she’s chosen him. She wants to tell the world he’s MINE. He belongs to ME, not you. She marks her man with her lips. He’s her possession. You’ve given the gift of total ownership. “

Season I, Episode 8

 “I’m enjoying the story so far, but I have a feeling it’s not going to end well.”

Season 2, Episode 2