Bob's blog
The blog of Bob
Summertime, not so much in the city
I've been trying to follow Fausto Coppi's advice: "Ride a bike, ride a bike, ride a bike", which isn't all that different than Eddy Merckx's advide: "Ride lots". It's sometimes tough to follow their advice, but I've had some good motivation watching Le Tour de France this month. I think I actually had withdrawal issues afterwards, not having a new stage to watch when I got home. I didn't have high expections for the Tour this year, but it was pretty exciting - lots of changes in the yellow jersey, excitement in the mountains and a winner that could have changed until the very last stage.
After the Tour was over, I needed to focus on my big ride for the summer. This was my fifth time riding in the Princeton Event . I've chosen the century route every time and finished most of time, except when we got lost and when it was nearly 100 degrees and 100 percent humidity. It's a good, mostly flat course and goes through some beautiful farm and horse country. We had a little rain at the start but was a gorgeous summer day.
Now that the big event is done, I can get back to mountain biking and enjoy myself for the rest of the summer but not so much in the city!
Posted at 01:24AM Aug 13, 2008 by bs in Cycling |
RESTful Drafting
I had a great bicycle ride today, even better since I thought it was going to rain all day. It fixed a bad case of spring fever that started a few months ago, when I wanted to take this ride but just haven't had the time or weather to take a 40 mile ride. If you've only seen the New Jersey Turnpke, you've missed a lot of beautiful areas in the state. One of my favorite routes is through the Watchung Circle because there's little traffic and nice rolling hills, mostly rolling until you have to climb over the ridge of the Second Watchung Mountain to head back home. I was driving through with a friend from Colorado and told him about riding over the crest, but he was having a hard time considering that a mountain. Nevertheless, the Watchung Mountains did serve their purposes and shielding General Washington during the Revolutionary War. That's the other part of New Jersey, Washington slept everywhere around here.
Somewhere in the middle of the ride, I found a nice headwind and thought it was awfully early in the season to be battling the wind without friends. I wasn't with my usual group today where we would've formed a paceline to help draft against the wind. It's a loosely coupled group with some structure and functions for moving in the paceline. For some reason, that got me thinking about web sites and RESTful applications. Which in turn, got me thinking web architectures and loosely coupled designs. I've been having more discussions lately about modular, flexible architecture choices.
The beauty of Web infrastructure today is that there are lots of choices. There are choices in development languages, choices in deployment platforms, even choices in open source databases and filesystems. I've had a lot of discussions lately about choosing the right development language and how to build an interesting web site (by the way, the interesting part is up to you). The good systems engineering answer is always a resounding "It depends", but we can have a good conversation along the way. What's different now is that there doesn't have to be a singular choice, you can pick the best of all worlds. If you want to use Ruby for flexibility on the front-end servers - great. If you want to use Java for scalability in the mid-tier - terrific. A flexible platform for user interactions can be driven by flexible choices for building it.
This may not seem like the best thinking for a good bike ride, but it worked for me today. Tomorrow I'm going for a mountain bike ride. Let's see what the mud makes me think about.
Posted at 10:53PM May 17, 2008 by bs in Cycling |
CEC - Day 3
End of the conference for another year. CEC was a great time again this year, lots of good sessions and time to meet new people and see old friends. The final day was a quick session and then it was off to the airport. Can't wait until next year in Vegas!
Posted at 09:04PM Oct 12, 2007 by bs in Cycling |
Scenes from New York City
Sun's office is on the same street as the steam pipe explosion - that's our building on the right side
(photo from Damon Winter/The New York Times website)
Posted at 11:45AM Jul 20, 2007 by bs in Cycling | Comments[1]
Back from vacation!
A week off from work can be a very good thing. Sun's offices in the United States have been closed over the July 4th holiday for the last few years. Although we weren't officially closed this year, it's usually a slow week after the hectic end of our fiscal year.
I had a nice week at home with some time to catch up on things around the house, ride my bike and sit by the pool. The 4th of July was a beautiful day in New Jersey and I had a great ride through towns like Far Hills, Gladstone and Pottersville. This was actually a five county ride, from Essex through Hunterdon counties. If you've never been west of the NJ Turnpike, you'd be surprised at the rural areas that are very close. Gladstone is the last stop on one route of NJ Transit's Midtown Direct train service into New York City. It's a picturesque town with some beautiful surrounding areas.
You can see a great view of Lake Street in Far Hills from Google Maps. It's a narrow country road that follows the (very narrow) lake. At one point, the road narrows so much that it has to split - north bound traffic goes up the hill and south bound traffic is down the hill by the lake. NJ DOT must not have a lot of choice in signs, because they put a "Divided Highway Ends" sign on this quiet street.
I had a great experience with IMBA and the Subaru/IMBA Trail Care crew to end my vacation this weekend. Subaru of America sponsors two crews to travel around the US and help build sustainable multi-use trails. I spent Saturday morning in class learning about the background and principals of trail building, including the rules of how to build trails that will last. Jason and Anna (Happy Birthday, Anna!) did a great job explaining trail planning and building for all of us newbies. The local trails have been hit hard by rain this winter and these methods will help ensure that the new trails will endure the weather. It was very interesting and we got to put our instructions to use in the local park. It was great to see the community in action - hikers and bikers from all over New Jersey came to our area to help build some tremendous new singletrack. There were over 40 people who spent their weekend planning and building trails. We built over a kilometer of new trail that will replace a completely washed out section which can now be reclaimed. I learned how to use a clinometer to measure grade changes and plot an appropriate trail. It was a lot of hard work, but definitely time well spent.
Update: Picture of the trail crew:
Posted at 10:34PM Jul 08, 2007 by bs in Cycling |
Springtime in New Jersey
a new friend...
an old friend...
a beautiful spring day
50 degrees. Dogs, bikes and friends. We all agreed that's a good way to start the day!
"The secret to mountain biking is pretty simple. The slower you go the more likely it is you'll crash." -- Julie Furtado
Posted at 08:45AM May 22, 2007 by bs in Cycling |
It's about the community
I went for a mountain bike ride the other morning. There's nothing unusual about that (just ask my wife), but it was a spectacular fall morning here in NJ. This is a great time of year to be on the trails. I live in one of the most densely populated areas of the country, but you'd be surprised how much open space there is. It was great to get out in the cool fall air for a quick ride in the morning.
There's a collection of awesome trails near me in South Mountain Reservation that are closed to mountain bikes. It wasn't always that way and there was a terrific article in the most recent issue of Dirt Rag Magazine that talks about the history and why the trails were closed ten years ago. To simplify, what we had was a failure to communicate. Hikers wanted one thing, county officials wanted something else and there was an old law that they invoked to close the trail. Mountain bikers were locked out.
Fast forward to today: we're participating together. Building the community. Working to open true multi-use trails. My friend Don starting talking to the conservancy that guides the reservation. He and Tim from the local bike shop invited others to work with the hikers and help clean the reservation. It turns out that we have something to offer and so do they. Everyone participating, everyone wins.
I think I'm starting to understand The Participation Age a little bit better.
Posted at 10:08AM Oct 01, 2005 by bs in Cycling | Comments[0]
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