Wired Cola

Strange medicine in the fridge, needles everywhere, and twice-daily injections. It's the tawdry tale of all too many endurance athletes, right?

Maybe the best baroque orchestra in the world, Tafelmusik, is coming to the Champagne Concert series this weekend, in Port Coquitlam. I'm touting this one because I sit on the board of this excellent organization.

If you have any love for baroque or classical music, this is the live-concert deal of the year. Tickets are $25, but only $12 for students.

It's a book by Matt Seaton. It's a brief, but superb book. I think it's the best look inside the mind of an amateur cyclist I'm ever likely to read. Insights like the author's description of the failure of his will to win are dead-on. His discussion of how his bike racing meshes (rather badly) with his domestic life is exactly right. I shall not say more. Read the review. Go get the book.

In news closer to home, the Tri-Cites (the one consisting of Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Anmore, and Belcarra) are to be subjected to a light rail system. I think this is the wrong choice, a sentiment reinforced by a conversation with my dad, who works for SkyTrain. This makes him both something of an expert on transit issues and a bit biased in favour of a particular transit solution.

Despite Global's overenthusiastic headline, Vancouver gave a tepid no (link permanence not guaranteed) to wards in a vote on Saturday. Turnout was 22.6%, less than half the Olympic plebiscite voting rate, and much less than the last civic election.

Final score was 54-46 for No.

I couldn't do the club ride today due to a scheduling conflict, but I did manage to run a few other errands, and kept pretty busy. I spent a few hours doing a major reconstruction of the fixed gear, one of my less-ridden bikes.

Today is one of those days I use to mark the seasons: the first day I absolutely, positively had to have lights on for my commute.

I depart from the house, ideally, at 0715, with and expected arrival at 0745. Official sunrise was at 0734 today. Sunset is not until 1823 local time, and I finish work at 1700, so I should make it home without needing the lights, though I often run a red blinkie at the rear just for extra conspicuity.

Hey, what can I say? You'll never think about Middle Earth the same way again. (Þ: Darren Barefoot.)

Obviously, I'm not reading Joe Kissel's Interesting Thing of the Day often enough. He recently did an article on

The Evolution of Scrolling which I appreciate for a few reasons.

So lots of projects right now. I need, for obscure reasons, some high-performance 50-pin SCSI drives.