SonicChicken blog

I haven’t ridden a century (100 mile bicycle ride) in quite a few years, but tomorrow morning I’ll try to complete Bike Around the Buttes on my recently-upgraded Takara Tribute. Since I haven’t done a ride like this in years (decades?), I thought I would make a pre-ride checklist. Then, after the ride (when I’ve figured out all the things I forgot), I’ll add comments to this post so that I’ll be better prepared next time. And perhaps some other intrepid rider will get some benefit out of this as well.

1. Bike (duh!)
2. Computer
3. HRM
4. Gatorade bottles, 2
5. “Morning Rush” coffee cup
6. Bento box: fig- and apple newtons
7. Camelbak (w/ stuff I don’t want to leave unattended at rest stops)
   • Bladder!
   • Wallet, cash
   • Cell phone
   • Truck keys
   • Swiss army knife
   • Ipod, remote, ear buds
   • Camera?
8. Rack pack
   • Spare tube
   • Pump
   • Patch kit
   • Tire levers
   • Hex wrenches
   • Phillips screwdriver
   • PB&J sandwiches, 2 (quartered)
   • Food bars, 4
   • Gatorade mix, 4 (scant ¼c for 24 oz bottle)
   • Bananas, 2
   • Extra zip-lock bags, 4
   • Chamois Butt’r
   • Lip balm
   • Rain jacket (weather looks questionable tomorrow)
   • Rain gloves (”)
   • Ear/head warmer (”)
9. Riding shorts, shirt
10. Gloves
11. Sunglasses
12. Mirror
13. Cleats
14. Cleat covers
15. Socks
16. Sandals (for easier walking pre- and post-ride)
17. Helmet
18. Bandana/sweat band
19. Floor pump
20. Coffee
21. Directions to ride location

Don’t forget to charge the cell phone and Ipod the night before! Also, wash out the Camelbak bladder and water bottles.

I’ve been having trouble with my knees ever since I started commuting by bicycle. I tried adjusting my bike fit on my own, but some of the measurements really require a trained eye. (Said eye being in the skull of somebody other than the cyclist sitting on the bike.) So I took a ride to City Bikes after work a few weeks ago to see if they could help me adjust my touring bike for less painful riding.

The guys at the shop did their best not to laugh when I wheeled in my 20-year-old bike. They decried the overly large frame, fixed-length stem, and old-school drop bars. But keep in mind–The conventional wisdom back in the mid-80’s was to buy the biggest frame you could just barely stand over. The only adjustment one could make to the stem was to raise or lower it. If you wanted more “reach” you had to buy a longer stem, which is precisely what I did when I first bought the bike. And drop bars only came in one style back in the day. They went ahead and fitted me, but I guess I had already done a pretty good job myself–they weren’t able to find anything that could be adjusted that needed it. Thus, no charge for the fitting, but they did strongly suggest that I buy a new, modern bike with a smaller frame. They showed me a bunch of bikes, but the only one that caught my eye was a Specialized Sequoia Elite for about $1100.

So now I’m in a quandary–do I put money in my old bike or buy a new one? $1100 sounds like a fair bit of money for a bicycle, but it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than a car! Instead I decided to see what I could do with my existing bike first. I spent about $300 at Peak Adventures and replaced nearly the entire drive train with pretty nice components: Xpedo RF-L3 clipless pedals, FSA Gossamer triple chainring (53/39/30T) with 172.5 mm cranks and megaexo bottom bracket, Shimano Tiagra rear derailleur, and a new chain. The only original drive train components now are my 6-speed casette (28, 24, 21, 18, 16, 14T) and the wheels. I wouldn’t mind replacing the casette sometime, especially since I now have a 9-speed derailleur, but if I have to replace the wheels I’m going to be thinking very hard about just buying a new bike. (Decent wheels can be pretty expensive!)

If I do spring for a new bike, I’m not fixated on the Specialized Sequoia. I’d be looking for a touring bike–something with a rugged frame, drop bars, fittings for panniers (preferably front and rear), triple chainring or possibly a compact double, clipless pedals, and those very cool integrated shifters/brake levers (my favorite feature of the Sequoia)!

But before I drop that much cash I’m going to see how I do on some long-distance rides with my old Tribute. I’ve got a nice flat 100-mile ride this Saturday: Bike Around the Buttes. I haven’t done a ride this long for many years, so it’ll be interesting to see how it goes.

The first Sacramento ConQuest game convention was held this weekend, April 7-9. There were quite a few things going on–CCG tournaments, miniature gaming (e.g. Warhammer), an anime film festival, miniature painting contest, costume contest, RPG’s, a bunch of science fiction movies (to go along with the convention theme, “Questing through time”), and…

Boardgaming! In spite of the fact that I only attended the con “part time”, (I was at home with my family at least a few hours every day), I managed to get in 14 games. At about two hours per game, that’s a lot of gaming! Half of the games were ones I’ve already played and/or own. Of the half that I had never played before, three stood out as likely purchases — Caylus, Reef Encounter, and Winds of Plunder. Caylus and Reef Encounter are both a bit complex and may not appeal to my family, but Winds of Plunder would probably get a lot of play at our house.

One of the best things about con’s is the people they attract. I already know quite a few local gamers through the Sacramento Boardgames Meetup, but I met dozens of interesting new gamers at the con. Many of them are locals that are involved in other game groups, and I look forward to getting together with them in the future. I also talked to some well-informed folks and got some news about a few games I’m interested in: Zendo, which is currently out of print, is supposed to be re-published in the near future; Winds of Plunder has received almost enough pre-orders to enter GMT’s production queue; and Take Stock, a game designed by my friend Simon Hunt, probably will be published in May or June. Take Stock was already a great game when I playtested it several months ago, but Simon and the publisher have tightened it up considerably since then and bumped it up to “excellent”. I’m really looking forward to this game’s publication!

I spoke with several of the convention organizers before I left on Sunday evening, and they were very happy with the attendance numbers. They were hoping for 400 attendees, and they managed to pull in over 500, which is quite a good turnout for a first-run con. We can look forward to an annual gaming convention in Sacramento every year in early April. Easter was very late this year and caused a bit of scheduling hassle, on top of the fact that this was organized on relatively short notice. But I understand that ConQuest Sac 2007 is already being planned, so next year should be even better!

I just applied the Mac OSX 10.4.6 update, hoping that it would solve my problems viz a viz committing changes to an SMB-based subversion repository. Alas, I still have the same trouble with svn commit. In addition, the new update undid scplugin’s changes to Finder which indicate a file’s svn status (e.g. current, newer working copy, etc). I guess that’s not such a big deal, since the svn status is useless without the ability to commit my changes.

Version 1.3.1 of svn came out a day or two ago, so let’s see if that does the trick.
Downloading Mac binary svn client v1.3.1…
Installing…
Testing…


515$ svn –version
svn, version 1.3.1 (r19032)
compiled Apr 4 2006, 00:30:54

Copyright (C) 2000-2006 CollabNet.
Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.tigris.org/
This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/).

The following repository access (RA) modules are available:

* ra_dav : Module for accessing a repository via WebDAV (DeltaV) protocol.
- handles ‘http’ scheme
- handles ‘https’ scheme
* ra_svn : Module for accessing a repository using the svn network protocol.
- handles ’svn’ scheme
* ra_local : Module for accessing a repository on local disk.
- handles ‘file’ scheme

516$ svn commit -m ‘Changed script to be user-independent’ my_script
subversion/libsvn_client/commit.c:873: (apr_err=5)
svn: Commit failed (details follow):
subversion/libsvn_subr/io.c:2199: (apr_err=5)
svn: Can’t write to file ‘/Volumes/svn/grading_system/db/transactions/4-7.txn/rev’: Input/output error


ARRRRRGH!

Oh well, I guess it’s time to try the (old) patch for SMB access, which means building Subversion from source. Darwin ports collection, here I come!