Wired Cola

Somebody at work asked me about a joke I made: that I was going to turn a profit on my cycling to work by selling the carbon offsets.

That led to a long digression about the nature of emissions trading and carbon offsetting (Al Gore was discussed), and I promised to write a little post about it.

As it happens, Wikipedia (surprise) has already got a very good article which would say most of what I was going to say as a primer on the subject.

Today's vital new skill for you to learn is frame respacing. You do this to bike frames because, for one reason or another, frames come with a lot of different widths between the rear dropouts, and rear wheels come a lot of different widths too. Go read Sheldon's article on this; indeed, much of what you see here is a mere restatement of his superb primer.

For several reasons:

Remember kids, these are trained lunatics: real humans should not ride in traffic without a front brake, et cetera.

But oh wow.

Music and Lyrics is the worst dumb romantic comedy I have ever really really liked. It distinguishes itself by not introducing the Intractable Relationship Problem until late in the second act, long after a rather entertaining series of sequences between the romantic leads. Also, the creators of this movie got the tropes of 80s music videos and pop bands so bang-on that almost any other lameness in the movie was forgiveable.

Best. Autographed baseball. Ever.

Random Reviewer reviews automatic light switches in Public Restrooms.

As bad as you think. Maybe worse. A wonderful misuse of technology.

More pictures on flickr, of course.

Take one Nashbar "X" frame, add their fork, and then go to town on black parts. Thus the black bike, my purest cyclocross bicycle yet.