First Fixed Forest Foray

(That one was for you, Spearman)

With the untimely demise of my road fixie last week I had the brilliant idea to take fixing into the woods. Why not? I had just started my affair with fixed riding. If I shelved it now until a new road frame presented itself (side note: if anybody comes across a bigass (59+cm), cheapass (<$100) road frame capable of fixing, email me please!), who knows how long I'd have to wait. So I pulled the rear wheel off the roadie, pulled the tire off the wheel, slapped a dirt tire on and put the whole shebang on the Karate Monkey. At 32x15, she's not optimally geared, but I was hoping she was at leas survivable.

Having taken last Tuesday and Wednesday off of work, I was able to sneak in my first fixed dirt ride at Wakefield. Truthfully...it was a lot of fun. Way more than I expected. And not nearly as agonizing as I had envisioned. I guess the same could have been said at the dawn of my singlespeed riding years back. In each case, I fully expected the experience to be agonizing. Not understanding how or why so many friends chose to endure it in the name of "fun".

Anyway, for those familiar with Wakefield, I started on the flattest section I could find...the far end opposite where the races are run. I tooled around on the flats for a while until I felt comfortable pedaling every dirt inch. I then headed over to try my luck riding the race course (which is a bit more hilly). By the end of my hour ride, I think I had covered the whole race course, and even added in a few climbs just to see if I could manage them.

So I guess my shopping list is a bit longer now, and must include a new Tomi Cog in a more dirt friendly size. Spearman has generously offered the loan of his 19t Tomi cog. I hope to give that a spin and decide if 19t or 20t is the sweet spot I require.

As for riding fixed on dirt, it's amazing how quickly you stop thinking about the fact that you're constantly pedaling. That always seemed to be the most physically daunting aspect of fixed dirt riding (or road riding, for that matter). But after a short while, you don't even notice it...Until you try to coast when crossing a log. Twice. Aside from that, there were no mishaps. I made all but one of the climbs I attempted. I successfully crossed about 40% of the logs I attempted. I had to bail on a few attempts, but I never fully hit the ground. I did keep grabbing my rear brake lever. The fact that its cable lead to a caliper sans rotor never seemed to sink in.

Infringed-o-riffic?

Oh, snap! As my eagle-eyed buddy RickyD discovered and posted over on bikecentric, it appears that one of my photos...



...has been, um, borrowd...



...at least in concept. And by none other than Bicycling magazine, in both print (October 2008 edition, page 49) and on the web.

Just for fun, I thought we'd play that old Highlights Magazine game "Spot the similarities/difference between the two photos". Here's what I found:

Things that are the same
Singlespeed
Baby-blue frame
Skinny, black fork
Front disk brake
Rear rim brake
Bendy (Mary?) handlebars
Bike position over log
Rider's leg position
Race number plate
Zip-tie position holding front brake cable to fork
Black spandex shorts, light swoosh (and position of swoosh)
Black socks with light top
Black shoes with three light straps, yellowish sole and yellowish heel part
Black 3/4 finger gloves with small white stripe at the pinky
Backpack straps (number and position including the dangling end of a strap)
Thick stripe down the side of the rider's jersey

Things that are different
Jersey color
Number on race plate
Their rider doesn't have a head. Poor fella.

(Some of the similarities and differences are more easily seen looking at the larger copy of their illustration found in the print mag.)

Did I miss anything?

I wonder if I should be more pissed than I am. I mean, imitation *is* the greatest form of flattery. But flattery don't pay the rent. Maybe I'll send them an email.

EDIT TO ADD:

My buddy Ben (THANKS BEN!) put together a little animated GIF of the two images. It leaves no doubt that they're the exact same shot. In fact, I'd be surprised if the "artist" did little more than take my image, run a Photoshop "sketch" filter on it, and posted it. Make sure your image animation is turned on then check it out...



It's not as humorous to me this morning.

Fog-o-licious

So I blew off going to shoot the fourth, and final for 2007, Cranky Monkey race today. I've been running full-speed for a couple of weeks now and just needed a day to decompress. The idea of being up and out of the house by 7am just didn't sound like fun. And if it's not fun, it's work.

I just got back from a quick, busy trip out to San Francisco.



The wife is out there for a couple of months for job training. Her new employer was nice enough to fly me out for a (much overdo) visit.

I got out there Friday. On Saturday, the wife and I headed north, through Napa wine country and stopped in Calistoga, a cool little town with a post-WWII feel. It also has a bit of a tourist-trap vibe thrown in for good measure. We stopped off at the Calistoga Inn for a drink, where I had a tasty brewed-on-site Calistoga Amber Ale. We then went on to another place for dinner where I got to try a Lagunitas IPA. Tasty. Hoppy. I'll definitely keep my eye out for this again, tho I don't recall ever seeing it here on the east coast. Maybe I just never noticed it. Oh yeah. And I had a mud bath, too. Man, I'm still picking bits of mud outta nooks and crannies. Much like I see skydiving or alligator wrestling, that's one of them once-in-a-lifetime kinda events. Been there, done it. Cross it off the list and move on.

Sunday, we headed south down Highway 1.



A beautiful drive down the coast with stops in Santa Cruz and Carmel (the town formerly under the rule of Mayor Eastwood). Santa Cruz had a cool college-town feel. I could definitely see myself living here (all the hippies not withstanding). At least for a while. Besides...with a town named after a mountain bike company, there have got to be some good trails around there, too. Right?

Monday the wife had to put in a half-day's work, so we stuck around the apartment. She working, I reading the infinitely fascinating "Under the Banner of Heaven" (highly recommended, btw). After the relaxed morning, we decided to wander down and book one of the bay boat tours. Yeah, touristy. But eff it. I'm a tourist.



We left the marina, tooled around under the Golden Gate Bridge, came back around Alcatraz, somewhat close to Angle Island then back to port. The kite surfers took advantage of the high winds and boat wake to give us some acrobatic entertainment. Unfortunately they were too far off for my short camera lens to be of much use.

Tuesday the wife had to go into the office, so I had the day to explore solo. I rented a beater Fuji mountain bike and headed off around the Embarcadero towards the Golden Gate. I crossed the bridge and headed off into the Marin countryside, following the cartoon-quality-map intended for fat tourists on rented hybrids (or in my case, fat tourists on rented mountain bikes), in search of a brown and twisty dotted line bearing the vague description: "MTB Trail".

I make a switchback climb up a gravel road and survey the lay of the land, which looked pretty much like this, except more 3D in real life:



From the top of the hill, I can see the fire-road-width trails a bit further down the road. It takes a bit of searching to find the actual trail-head. Unfortunately, by the time I hit dirt, I'm already a significant number of miles into my ride (for my outta-shape ass). I'm pretty beat, and time is running out (gotta get back into the city to meet the wife when she gets off of work. The perils of a single set of apartment keys). I roam around the dirt for a mile or two (all a gradual climb, damnit). I reach a point, this point as a matter of fact:



and simply turn around. The nice thing about the mile-plus gradual climb is that it becomes a mile-plus moderately-high-speed descent on the return trip.

I make my way back to SF proper the same way I came out to the 'burbs. Google-mapping the whole ride after the fact, it looks like I managed to do about 24 miles of riding.

Mystery solved

(photo pulled from Wikipedia's article on 29ers)

So the mystery of why my last few rides have felt so strong has been solved.

Riding my "old faithful" 26" singlespeed the last few times out, I was making climbs I rarely (if ever) make. It turns out the reason is my gearing. It hadn't occurred to me that the 32x18 gearing on my 26er was an easier gear than the same 32x18 I run on my 29er.

Last summer/fall when I was riding more, I didn't really notice the difference. Probably because I was in somewhat better riding shape. After taking the winter off to get married and house shop and uhh...drink beer and um...watch TeeVee, I notice it now. Last summer/fall, I had been riding my 29er regularly and had gotten used to the tougher gearing. When I picked up my 26er for my recent rides, I was running an easier gear.

I took the 29er out on Tuesday and it felt like I was trying to climb those same seldom-conquered hills with tires mired in oatmeal. Granted, it was the first time I'd ridden on dirt two days in a row in a long time. So that didn't help. But I think the main performance hit(s) was(were) the gearing and the big 29er wheels. The bigger wheels and tires have more weight/mass which require more power to get turning. The added momentum of that weight once it was spinning was nice. But only spins for so long on the climbs.

As for the gearing...According to Sheldon Brown's high-tech gear calculator, it seems that a 32x18 on 29" wheels gives a gear-inch measurement of roughly 51.4 while the same 32x18 on a 26" wheel gives you a gear-inch measurement of roughly 46.1. So if my limited understanding of gear-inch measurements is correct, I should be running a 32x20 on my 29er, which will give me a gear-inch measurement of 46.3. Much closer to what I'm used to. Looks like I'm going shopping. I'm sure DT will be sad to get that fancy Boone TI cog that I've been borrowing back.

Special thanks to DT for pointing out the differences in gearing between the 26er and 29er.

Neglect

Sue Haywood just after crossing the finish line (coming in 2nd)

I've been focusing most of my energy on getting the TooFatToRace blog off the ground, so things around here have stagnated a bit. My apologies for that.

I just popped in to say that I posted my Greenbrier MTB race photos over on my pbase gallery. I figured I'd mention it here in case there were some interested folks reading only this blog and not TooFat.

This weekend is the American Red Cross gala, at which I get to play papparatzi (or however the hell you spell that). Also this weekend is the 12 Hours of Lodi race that I hope to shoot too. For both occasions I built a homebrew battery pack for one of my flashes. Cool stuff. And it hasn't blown up in my face yet or anything.


Edit: had to recrop photo to perform a giant-elbow-ectomy. Why didn't I notice that thing in the first place? Eesh.

Feel the love

I received an email from a buddy pointing out that Team Bike Works, organizers of the "12 Hours of Lodi Farm" race, have updated their web page for this year's event

http://www.teambikeworks.org/

...and have used one of my photos from the '06 race on the home page.



Pretty cool. I'm fairly sure I told them last year that they were free to use my shots on their page as long as they gave me a photo credit and a link back to the gallery. Both of which they did. I just kinda wished they'd have shot me an email mentioning the usage.

Anyway, this year's race is the same weekend as another event at which I'm volunteering my photography...err...skillz: The American Red Cross of the National Capital Area's Fire & Ice Ball (The National Capital Area Chapter's Annual Gala).



So a busy weekend is planned, but hopefully I'll come away with a bunch more MTB race photos, as well as a bunch of formal shots of Gala attendees. I've never shot an uber-formal event like this. Here's hoping it goes well. Oh, yeah. I'll be sporting a tux, too.

Almost famous



A couple of weeks back, I submitted my second photo (shown above in ultra-crap quality) to the "Rider's Eye" section of Dirt Rag Magazine. By the comments in this thread over on the MORE forum, it sounds like it was published. The rider with the mad skillz is Larry Camp who rides (used to ride?) for local VA bike shop The Bike Lane.

So it ain't National Geographic (or Sports Illustrated, for that matter). But I dig it.


(Edited to add link to the Bike Lane)

Owwwwmmmm. Owwwwmmmm. Owwwwmmmm.

OK, now that that's out of my system...

The whole reason for going out into the...erm..."blizzard" Sunday was to get in our annual "first snow ride" of the year. The '06-'07 snow season has gotten off to a late start, and who knows...maybe this will be the last snow-ride of the year (thank you fictional global warming). So as much as I was enjoying my Sunday-afternoon-with-ass-glued-to-the-couch-yet-again, when DT called, I knew I had to get out into the cold.

After an hour in the car to make a ~20 minute drive, I met DT at ye ole Reston Ice Rink. The plan was to do a quick Colt's Neck loop before dark. We had originally planned to meet at 3:30pm, but thanks to driver stupidness (as mentioned in my last post), I didn't get there till almost 4:30pm. We'd be lucky if we were out of the woods before complete darkness. But, we both had suffered...erm..."blizzard" traffic, so we decided to take our reward.

The loop was pretty uneventful. No mechanicals. No crashes. No broken bones. We walked most of the water crossings (at least, I did). The idea of riding back to the cars soaking wet in 20something degree temps wasn't appealing. I've seen a buddy have to do it, and it didn't look the least bit fun.

Snow has an interesting effect on mountain biking. It covers technical sections of the trail, actually making them easier to navigate. There's a rock garden on a downhill that I usually clear, but it ain't pretty. With the snow, I flowed over the whole thing. Without being able to see the rocks and psyche myself out the bike just did the work. The same thing happened in a baby-head-sized rock drainage ditch climb. I can usually make it to the top of the run, where you have to get over a concrete pipe. That's where I usually bungle it. In the snow, I just flowed up, crossing the pipe with ease.

Drive time to trailhead: ~1 hour
Temp at departure: 27
Inches of snow on the ground at departure: ~1
Total miles: ~9
Miles following in the tire tracks of riders gone before us: ~4.5
Miles of virgin snow covered trail-blazing: ~4.5
Inches of snow on the ground at completion: ~1.5
Total saddle time: dunno, but longer than a "normal" Colt's Neck loop due to both of us being off the mountain bikes for too long. Maybe 1.25 hours?
Total drive time home: >1 hour

The saga ends

For the last week or two, I've been fighting with my truck, trying to get it to pass an emissions test so I could re-register it (due today, naturally). (I won't even get into how much of a scam the emissions testing process is for modern vehicles. Let's just say that they no longer sniff your exhaust and get an actual check of the output of your truck, they just read your computer and get a theoretical check of what the output of your truck *may be*. So when my truck was throwing error codes that probably had nothing to do with it's actual output, they failed me. But anyway...I said I wasn't going to get into it). Last night, with DT's help, I finally got the last bits fixed and got the error codes cleared. Today, I took it back and had it re-tested. It passed. *Whew*.

So I went to the DMV website to re-register and decided to treat myself to some license plate fun. I registered a fancy plate with a personalized message...



Basically it says "Dead F*ckin' Last singlespeed" baby! Which is where I typically finish every ride. No sense setting your sights too high. You might let yourself down.

Baby steps are better than no steps

A couple of weeks back, I mentioned that my buddy Michael from Speedgoat Cycles in PA wanted to use one of my photos of him from Lodi in an ad for their shop. Well, the ad is out in the latest issue of Dirt Rag (Issue 123).

As thanks for the photo, Michael was kind enough to send me a copy of the mag, a Speedgoat shirt, and a couple of pair of bike socks. Actual payment (of sorts) for a photo. That almost makes me a professional, doesn't it? Time to update that resume!

In other, similar "Holy crap that's my photo in print" news, local racer, rider and writer Joel Gwadz had his story published in the free Mid-Atlantic cycling mag "Spokes". The story was about the recent Wednesdays at Wakefield race series and was accompanied by a couple of my shots of the racers (like this one of the author). Visit a local bike shop and grab your stack...er...copy today!

W@W #4 photos



My Wednesdays at Wakefield race #4 photos are up. Not my favorite set. I still have a lot to learn. I got a ton of images perfectly focused on the foliage 5' behind the riders. I think it was because I was trying to trust my camera's focus system to track the rider automatically. Never again.

Anyway, the photos are here. Tell your mother, tell your father, send a telegram. (5 bonus points to the first person to ID the song and artist of the preceeding lyric). If you want a full-sized image, let me know and I'll see what I can do. A lot of the images are OK web-sized, but may look nasty full sized.

A huge thanks to the racers who thanked me for taking photos. I found it pretty funny that they'd thank me for something I really enjoy doing. But it was nice to hear. Also another huge thanks to the folks who stopped to talk and thank me at length before and after their races. Definitely an ego booster.

Half Credit

In trying to get my mountain bike race photos into the hands of as many racers as possible, I spoke with Potomac Velo people (who organize the Wednesdas @ Wakefield race series). They asked that I send them links to my shots, and they'd post them on the official web site. Well, I did...and they did. Sorta...

http://www.potomacvelo.com/2006waw.htm

Unfortunately, the way they have it worded on their home page, it looks like Pete is a fantastically prolific photographer:

"See photos from races 1 & 2. Thanks to Pete Toscano.
More photos are available: June 22; July 19; July 26"

I've written them asking that they add my name. Hopefully they will.

I'll be back out there tonight to catch the final W@W for '06.

---UPDATE---
Man! Talk about service! Between the time I started this blog post this morning, and a few minutes ago when I actually hit "publish", the kind folks at PVC updated the web site to include the credit. Yay PVC! Thanks guys!

"See photos from races 1 & 2. Thanks to Pete Toscano.
More photos are available courtesy of Gary Ryan: June 22; July 19; July 26"

W@W v3.0



I posted my shots from last night's Wednesdays at Wakefield race (#3 in the series):

WAW III

As usual, in the interest of time, they're unprocessed , uncropped, and only quickie-resized so the quality isn't the greatest. If you see something you like shoot me an email (gmr2048 at yahoo dot com) and I can get you a full sized (possibly better quality) version.

Thanks to the couple of guys who came up and complimented me on the photos and the gallery. It's good to know people are enjoying my "work" (if you can call it that).

W@W #2


(I've titled this one "Log? What log?")

I spent the evening feeding the bugs at Wakefield last night, shooting the second "Wednesdays at Wakefield" race. The unprocessed, batch-resized shots are available here:

http://www.pbase.com/gmr2048/wednesdays-at-wakefield-7-19-06

As always, if you see something you like, let me know and I *may* be able to get you a larger/better copy.

This race was almost a month delayed due to rains, and the amount of daylight I had to work with showed it...especially in the woods. Keeping the shutter speed up, while not having a 1/4" depth of field, or image noise the size of my head was a chore. As a result, I think I had far fewer "keepers" than the first race. Also, my Sigma flash is (still!) causing me nothing but headache. It locks up. It stops firing. It goes into some infinite-loop zoom thing. In short, it's a piece of shit. I contacted Sigma and they were aware of problems like this; They said I should send it back. That's the plan, but it's difficult trying to plan out when I'll not need a flash for a few weeks. No matter when I send it, it's going to affect my ability to shoot...specifically, the next few W@W races, and the upcoming Cranky Monkey races. Hopefully the Monkey races will be less affected, since I think those run in the daytime, as opposed to W@W's evening start time.

2 fat 2 race




My shots from the first Wednesdays at Wakefield race are up.

http://www.pbase.com/gmr2048/wednesdays-at-wakefield-6-22-06&page=1

I managed to shoot 475 photos in about 2 hours (weeded down to 423 for your viewing pleasure). Take a look and let me know if you find any of yourself. I have larger/better quality copies of most images.

The quality of these thumbnails is a bit lacking. I batch-processed them; resized, and rotated (where necessary). The full sized images should look substantially better. Shoot me an email if you see something you want a copy of. gmr2048 at yahoo.com.

Please post the above link to all the usual locations (blogs, MTBR board, MORE board, etc). If you want to use the photos anywhere, please let me know first. If it's an online location, a link back to my gallery would be nice so other riders can find shots of themselves. Plus...I like to see my name in lights, as it were.

In retrospect, my timing could have been better

Monday, 6pm: Donate a double-shot of red blood cells at my local hospital.

Tuesday 7am: Bike the 8-9 miles into work. At the top of both of the "big" climbs, fight the desire to go fetal and take a nap on the gravel on the side of the trail. Once at work, fight the desire to go fetal and take a nap in the shower stall (private shower stall, that is. Don't go getting any funny ideas).

Unexpected bonus: I've now got this cool three-martini-lunch kinda light headed feeling going on.

Side note: I think my local Red Cross is going to start getting my blood donation business. A while back, Ben gave blood with the Red Cross and got this very cool olive green Red Cross t-shirt (the design may be slightly different, but it's close). Me? I donate this super cool double-red-cell donation (all the nurses made it out to be a big deal), and end up getting the lamest t-shirt ever. Some cutsey "blood buddy" thing with two blood drop creatures holding hands and dancing around. Frankly, I could never wear it out of the house. I'm not secure enough in my manhood for that. Furthermore, this "blood buddy" mascot straight-up scares the shit outta me.

I could have held out for the weekend when they are giving away a "Kiss the Donor" kitchen apron, but if I'm going to get free gear when donating blood, I'd like it to be usable gear. A apron doen't fit into that category. And, yes, I know it's not about donating to get free stuff. This isn't college. I'm not selling bodily fluids for beer money (anymore). But, if they want to give away free stuff, I'm not gonna say no.

Credit

It took a little while, but it's nice to see that Team Bike Works' official "12 Hours of Lodi Farm" page has finally put up my photo credit and link. Not sure if anybody will look at the page again until next year's race. Oh well. Next year, maybe I'll try to work something out with them in advance. Hopefully by then, I'll have better flash photography skillz.

I GIVE UP!

Uncle! I surrender! Whatever you want to call it, I'm done working on photos from the 2006 "12 Hours of Lodi Farm" race. Fin.

The first 130 images, I individually post-processed (resized, cropped, adjusted brightness (if necessary), adjusted sharpness (after the resize), cloned out unwanted spectators a couple of times). They can be seen here.

For the final 76 images, I simply batch-resized then posted them. No sharpening. No brightening. No cropping. Presented "As Is" for your viewing pleasure. They can be found by clicking this link, or by clicking on the red tricycle image on the last page of the Lodi gallery.

In addition to all that, I was contacted by a number of racers for whom I (gladly!) worked-up full sized images of themselves. (I love knowing that people enjoy my work). But had I spent the time to post those last 76 images, the race would have been long forgotten.

Anyway, pass the word. If any racers find shots of themselves and want larger/better copies, have them email me (gmr2048 at gmail dot com) and I'll see what I can do.

-g

Cool

I've been spending a lot of time processing the hundreds of shots I took at the 2006 "12 Hours of Lodi Farm" mountain bike race (still have more than 200 to go through, too!). After I had the first few batches done and posted, I sent an email to the race organizers. Guess they liked my photos (at least one of them) cuz it made it onto the official Lodi homepage. Only drag is that they didn't credit me or provide a link or anything.

So I sent them an email, explaining that I'd like a credit and a link back to my pbase gallery for the race, cuz I figured other racers might want photos of themselves. They were nice enough and said they'd provide both. I'm hoping it happens sooner rather than later. One of these days, I'm gonna have to start charging for my services. Gotta pay off these camera parts somehow!

So much for that

So I ran out of steam on the "Photo-a-Day" project. Who'd have guessed. It started to feel like a job (after only...what...8 days?). "Must...process...more...pictures...". So that was passively abandoned.

I did manage to get down to Fredricksburg, VA for a couple of hours near sunrise this past Sunday for the "12 Hours of Lodi Farm" mountain bike race.


(Click the picture to see the the gallery of shots I've processed so far).

I hit this race last year, and got a lot of cool shots out of it. Although I only had a bit over 2 hours of shooting time this year, I was hoping for similar results.

As far as the photos go, I started off badly. Super-stoopid rookie mistakes. I was keeping shutter speed vs. focal length in mind while shooting, but not shutter speed vs. high-speed mountain bikers tear-assing past. Consequently, my first bunch o' shots suffered from too slow shutter speed (even with the use of my crappy flash). The little LCD on the camera didn't allow me to notice my mistakes. Thankfully, as the sun rose, the light got better and my shutter speed was able to increase a bit (for those who care, I was shooting mostly AV mode), so my later pics were better in terms of blur (and lack thereof). I ended up shooting something over 300 shots in two hours. Many of those have been/will be tossed. So far I've processed and posted ~56 shots (at the link above) and have probably another 100 to do. I'm not doing much post processing on them. Just a quick resize and "save for web". If anybody reading this happens to see a shot of themselves that they want, email me (gmr2048 at yahoo dot com) and I'll be happy to send you the full size image (if it's not crap).

So the next time I get delusions of grandure and start thinking I want to become a pro photographer, I'll come back and re-read this entry and realize just how far I have to go.