Basketball Jones[1]

Uh-oh

About five or six years ago I hung up my sneakers for good.

Or so I thought.

I had "retired" once before, after a crushing elbow to the face in the late 90's. It was the wise choice I thought. My left ankle was, and continues to be, a non-flexible mass of bone chips, scar tissue, duct tape, and gravel. My fingers had been jammed and hyper-extended more times than I could remember. It was time to be an adult, time to pursue adult sports like tennis and golf.

During that first hiatus I already considered myself primarily a mountain biker, runner, and skier. Individual, outdoor sports. They were better suited to my stengths. Hoops? I had long arms. That was the complete list of my roundball assets. I lacked explosive speed, my hands are on the left side of the dwarf->Rondo continuum, and the days of getting up to the rim were gone by the time I was 25.

My jumper sucked; I was a 6' 175 lb. guy who played in the post and never met a drive he didn't like. But after getting hammered for too long in the paint I decided it was time to quit.

Retirement #1 didn't stick of course. Once I moved to NH and was in grad school I started up again. It was basically free entertainment, an important consideration for a grad student. I hadn't quit mountain biking, but was only a casual participant, my first real racing was a couple of years off. The trail running bug hadn't bit. It was good exercise.

But the teens and 20-somethings at the playground were getting so much faster and stronger (though I realize now, of course, that I was getting slower and weaker). The injuries took even longer to heal.

Why go on with a young man's game?

So I hung em up once again. Stopped checking the weather to see if it was raining at the playground, stopped working on that spin and lefty scoop shot move, stopped nursing a laundry list of nagging injuries. It was hard to let go, but I didn't t want to be that creepy old guy at the gym with googles and white socks.

So when the Bride recently brought me news of an old-guy's game in a nearby town, I should have said, "Interesting, but those days are behind me." Instead the UPS man brought me a new ankle brace and some shiny new kicks today. It might be a bad idea, but time to see if anything is left in the tank.

[1] For you youngsters, but be warned it's from 1974 and isn't very PC.

365 Songs: №. 22

365 Songs lives!

Barely.

It's more undead than actually alive. I'm changing the tagline from "Day X" to "№ X" because obviously I've failed miserably at providing a daily entry.

Anyhow, I do have enough time for song 22. After a less-then-stellar day at work I was wallowing in a bit of self-pity. I came upstairs in a foul mood. Then I remembered what time of year it is and broke out Capitol Record's 2004 compilation "Christmas Classics". I went right for track 2, Dean Martin's perfect 1959 version of Frank Loesser's "Baby It's Cold Outside":



Now that improved my mood considerably! Time to listen to the rest of it.

Thanks

The KRA auction was a great success last night. There are a lot of people to thank, but this note is to our friends who are not part of the organization:

First a very special thanks to two who went above and beyond: Bruce Cobb, our auctioneer and Paul Vaillancourt, our DJ and MC for the raffle. Without these pros at the microphone this event doesn't get pulled off, plain and simple.

Josée Dupont, who not only donated to the auction but bid up a storm. She showed how it's done at a charity auction -- it's not about finding a deal, it's about supporting a cause, and it's about making bids, not sitting on your hands.

Who are you going to call when you want a reliable and enthusiastic attendee to your event? Kelly Giard, that's who. She's the kind of person a bystander on the street sees going into an event and thinks, "Hey, where is she going? It looks like it might be fun".

What do you call a person who secured passage from Spain this week, without a passport or any money, after getting robbed, while on vacation, just so she could attend this event? You call that person a friend of the highest quality or Francesca LaSala Cobb.

Kevin and Stephanie Hirnak, where to start with these two? Whether paying the optional $50 donor ticket price or throwing around some of the biggest bids of the night, they just plain got it done.

Pat Terry for securing a Crotched Mountain season pass for the live auction. That's the kind of item that generates bids.

Matt Waitkins and Tracey Bowman, whose schedule didn't permit them to attend, but made sure the check really was in the mail.

To paraphrase Harry Bailey, we feel like the richest folks in town.

Moving Pictures

While I've owned a high definition camcorder for a long time I've never used it much. Too fragile for first person use while skiing or mountain biking. I recently acquired a GoPro HD Hero helmet camera. Now this is more like it. Tiny and robust. Cheap enough that in the unlikely event I completely destroy it, I'll only cry for 20 minutes.

Still getting my feet wet with the camera's features and taking the tiniest of baby steps with editing, but I'm having fun.

FOMBA Hemlock Loop Trail from pburba on Vimeo.

This was my first video, it's too long and consists of only one scene. Only singletrack junkies are likely to find it enjoyable. Critical lessons learned:

• The seatpost is the place to mount the camera for smooth video, especially if you stay seated.

• The strap-on helmet mount produced nothing by jiggly footage that will have you reaching for the Dramamine.

Bear Brook from pburba on Vimeo.

This is my second video. Actually have several different scenes and it is slightly less boring. Switched from Adobe Premier Elements to TrakAxPC Pro, which is half the cost and twice as good.

Project 29er: Latest Tweaks

Latest refinements before taking a Friday afternoon ride at FOMBA.

As with any new bike, it's not long before the upgrades start. Now I know what you are thinking, "Uh, but wasn't your latest bike a no expense spared money pit?" Well, yes and no. It was a money pit, but "no expense spared?" To borrow a phrase from Han Solo, I can imagine quite a bit*, but I didn't spend that much.

First on the agenda were new pedals. I cursed myself a few months back when I said my old Shimano 959s would last forever. On my second ride the left one started spinning like it was full of rocks (a rebuild not helping) and the other wouldn't release in anything approaching a predictable manner. I decided to take a chance on a set of XPedo's Ti-spindled M-Force pedals. They work with standard Shimano cleats, are feathery light at 230g, and even at my heaviest I easily clear the 185 lb. rider weight limit.

I'm still getting familiar with the slightly different entry, though this probably has as much to do with a recent cleat position change. As far as release goes they are great. I am using them with Shimano's SM-SH56 mutli-release cleat and when I want out I'm out. Can't ask for much more.


The second tweak was a a straight seatpost. The old Thomson layback model I had shimmed in and the old RaceFace XY that replaced it both had too much setback. I went with a Thomson Masterpiece, which rivals carbon posts for weight and is unmatched for beauty. I've slowly been moving the seat forward 1mm every couple of rides, trying to find the optimal position; I'm still coming to grips with the fact that this bike actually fits me and I don't need to have the seat slammed back to have enough room.


The last changes were wrought by a branch at Massabesic last Monday which snapped by rear XTR derailleur in half. The stout Niner replaceable hanger didn't budge...Not sure if this is a good thing or not.

I've also had some problems with the chain getting bounced off the middle ring, getting hooked by the big ring and then getting pulled between the gap between the big ring and the chain stay. This is a one-way trip, there is no pulling the chain back by hand, you need to break the chain. Possibly during suspension compression the gap opens enough to let the chain slip by?

At any rate this is my biggest complaint about the RIP9. At first I thought I was engaging in ill-advised shifts, but then it happened while I was JRA in the rough.

The solution for now is a 2x9 setup. I replaced the 44 tooth big ring with a Truvativ Noir carbon rock ring, which fit/looked perfect with the RaceFace cranks. With less chain wrap I went with a medium cage XTR Shadow derailleur. These shadow variants have a much lower profile to trail debris than Shimano's traditional derailleurs. The shorter cage obviously helps too. The obvious problem with all this is the loss of the high gears. Right now I have a 22/32 x 12-24. This is fine for riding Massabesic and anything else technical, but for fireroads, rail trails, and the inevitable tarmac, it is woefully undergeared. Still, single speeders get by without it, so maybe I can too.

If not, then I'm hoping somebody will eventually make a 11-36 9-speed cassette that is friendly to aluminum drive shells (so no thanks SLX HG61). Then I can switch to a 24/36 in front and probably be ok.

Inside Joke

GENERAL MADINE: "We have stolen a small Imperial shuttle. Disguised as a cargo ship, and using a secret Imperial code, a strike team will land on the moon and reimplement merge tracking from scratch."

The assembly begins to mumble among themselves.

THREEPIO: "Sounds dangerous."

LEIA (to Han): "I wonder who they found to pull that off."

GENERAL MADINE: "General Solo, is your merge team assembled?"

Leia, startled, looks up at Han, surprise changing to admiration.

HAN: "Uh, my team's ready. I don't have a command crew for the shuttle."

Chewbacca raises his hairy paw and volunteers. Han looks up at him.

HAN: "Well, it's gonna be rough, pal. I didn't want to speak for you."

Chewie waves that off with a huge GROWL.

365 Songs: Day 21

Disclaimer: I'm lame and not posting every day, so this is going to take more than a year. You get what you pay for.

The Lovely Hope Sandoval.
I don't think she had much trouble getting dates.

I've never been sure what to call Mazzy Star. Wikipedia lists no fewer than 9 genres for them. My favorite is "shoegaze". Why don't we just call them "good"?

Artist: Mazzy Star
Song: Five String Serenade
Album: So Tonight That I Might See (1993)

I could have picked almost any song off this album, I love the whole thing and always listen to it in its entirety. I did resist picking the much better known Fade Into You, which is what passes for a hit for this band, but really you can't go wrong with any of it. It's all just so damn trippy, dreamy, peaceful, etc..

365 Songs: Day 20

Artist: The J. Geils Band
Song: Musta Got Lost
Album: Blow Your Face Out [Live] (1975)

This song is among my earliest memories of my "own" music, rather than whatever my parents had playing in the house or on the car radio.

The studio version was found on 1974's Nightmares...and Other Tales from the Jungle, but for me this recording, from a November 15, 1975 concert in the old Boston Garden, is the definitive version of this song.

365 Songs: Day 17-19

I've been a bit lax with the blog the last few days, so I owe three songs. Fortunately inspiration hit after attending last night's horrific Celtic's game. To say the C's didn't get it done would be an insult to epic underachievers the world over.

After the Green stunk the joint up, I got thinking back to those Boston teams from the 80's who, more often than not, did get it done, or at least gave nothing away easily. This line of thought (logically?) led to thinking about 80's Boston bands who got it done. And any short list of the Hub's best 80's bands would have to include the Cars.

Like many non-hip boys of the era, I both marveled and bemoaned the fact that lead singer Ric Ocasek (35) somehow managed to land supermodel Paulina Porzikova (19) in 1984 and actually marry her in 1989. Marveled, because it gave hope for us all, I mean look at this guy, if he could do it then we all had a chance. Bemoaned because, by the perverse logic of a 16 year old, we felt that, "Hey, here is a supermodel that likes odd looking guys, she's probably the only one on the planet, and this bozo has taken her off the market! It's unfair! He's rich and famous, he could find another one!" It's as if we somehow thought that we were part of Paulina's backup plan if things didn't work out with Ric. And apparently things did work out, since according to Wikipedia they are still married.

Well to get back at "lead singer" Ric, two of the songs I've chosen are actually sung by the band's late bassist Benjamin Orr.

Artist: The Cars
Song: Drive
Album: Heartbeaty City Album (1984)
Performance: Official Video






Artist: The Cars
Song: Just What I Needed
Album: The Cars (1978)
Performance: Live Aid (1985)

Artist: The Cars
Song: Since You're Gone
Album: Shake It Up (1981)
Performance: Appearance on Friday's (1981)

365 Songs: Day 17

Artist: A Flock of Seagulls
Song: I Ran (So Far Away)
Album: A Flock of Seagulls (1982)
Performance: Official Video

The hair.

The bad videos.

The synthesizers.

It must be time for an 80's New Wave classic.