What should I buy?

Size: A rough sizing chart to ballpark a purchase. Much fine-tuning will be necessary.

Frame Types:

Road Bike: skinny tires, many speeds, shifters, brakes,
Pro: fast, good for paved roads & commuting.
Con: price, maintenance. 
Price: Reasonable new road bikes start at $800.  

Track/single speed: 1 or 2 brakes, no shifters, skinny tires.
Pro: lighter/cheaper than road bikes, easier maintenance & upkeep.
Con: hills are tough when you can’t change gearing. 
Price: Reasonable new bikes start at $500. 

Cyclocross: Like road bikes, but with wider tires. 
Pro: handles paved roads and maintained dirt paths (but no suspension, so no real off-roading).
Con: price, maintenance. Generally slower / heavier than comparable road bike. 
Price. Reasonable new Cross bikes start at $800. 

Cyclocross bikes should not be confused with “hybrid” bikes, which are universally crap.

Frame Material: For a new bike, aluminum frame + carbon fiber fork is the best balance between price, speed, & comfort. If buying a used bike more than 5 years old, go with a steel frame. Here’s a quick breakdown of frame materials.

Aluminum:

Pro: fast + light + cheap. No rust. 
Con: less comfortable. destroyed in crash.

Steel:

Pro: Cheap + Comfortable. Survives Crash
Con: Heavy. Rusts.

Carbon Fiber:

Pro: fast + light + comfortable. No rust. 
Con: Expensive. Destroyed in crash.

Titanium:

Pro: light + comfortable. Survives crash. No rust. 
Con: Expensive. Slow. 

Frame Brand. All of the major companies make reasonably good new frames.

Buying new, I’d trust: Specialized, Trek, Cannondale, Jamis, Giant, Bianchi, Fuji

Buying Used, I’d trust:

Shifters/Brakes/Derailleurs:

There are 3 major companies – Shimano (Japan), Campagnolo (Italy), Sram (US).
Each has several product lines with confusing brand jargon:

Shimano:

Sora – crap
Tiagra – decent
105 – sweet spot
Ultegra – expensive
Dura Ace – more expensive

Campagnolo:

Veloce – crap
Centaur – decent
Chorus – expensive
Record – more expensive
Super Record – most expensive

Sram:

Apex – meh
Rival – decent
Force – expensive
Red – more expensive

Cheaper parts have much shorter life span. When buying used, nothing below 105, Centaur or Rival types.
Look for 18 or 20 speed parts. 27 or 30 speed parts have more frequent mechanical problems.

Vendors.
Bikesdirect.com is a good place to start shopping. The website is hideous, and the quoted “list prices” can be ignored. Fortunately, their actual prices are consistently low.
If you can’t find anything decent in your price range, that leaves craigslist & ebay.

A few complaints though.
(1) Its difficult to change text size.
(2) While it has an instapaper feature, I prefer use read it later for reading things later.
(3) It picks up the links included in twitters, but it doesn’t display the twitter user’s commentary on the link. This is often the most important information.

Anyway, overall it’s one of the best ipad apps I’ve used.

James Hanson is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute – the part of NASA that studies the earth, rather than the stars. Anyway, this dude became a science hero when he called out the Bush Administration for editing his global warming reports. The president has a lot of power, but not the power to control the scientific method.

Rad dude, but unfortunately, his lecture wasn’t that exciting. He was basically power pointing to the choir. Previous secret science club lectures had video’s of rats running around on various drugs. Hanson just gave us a bunch of graphs with watts per meter squared and parts per million all over the place.

This is halfway through the Huge Copenhagen Climate talks, and Hanson was talking to a bunch of kids in a Brooklyn bar. Essentially a “fuck you” to the worlds leaders.

On the plus side, I hung out with Justin Talent afterward and caught up on life.

Bell House is a nice spot, but the beers are expensive. I wouldn’t go there except for science.

My good friend Owen rolled into NYC late Friday. We met up at Penn Station, but had about 2 hours to waste before our train to Connecticut. We walked around the city a bit to pick up some refreshment’s, then it was back to Penn.

At Penn we met up with Ben. Ben was the third of four stalwart occupants of 12 Dearborn house, in the year of our lord 2001.
The three of us needed to mentally prepare ourselves to give up our fourth brother in arms, Will.

Fortunately, Ben came prepared with strong drink.

We knew Will’s high school friends would be at the wedding, and we knew these are kids well versed in the debaucherous arts. There would be serious competition between the college friends and the high school friends to set the weekend’s high water mark for immaturity.

On another note, one major issue was left unresolved: we didn’t know whether there would be any wildcards at the wedding. Wildcards are the most important part of any wedding ceremony. We knew there would be several dudes attending without dates, but would any ladies be there without partners (these being the wildcards, obv.)? the outcome didn’t look good.

Ben, Owen and I rolled off the train in high spirits. We started walked towards town, when Kimmy and her sister Katie drove by and picked us up. Now, I love Kimmy, but we knew she had standards of behavior for us. Not that she wanted a super formal wedding, but she didn’t want any of us to catch fire or hurl during the ceremony (before or after being ok). She didn’t need to say anything, but she dropped us off at our cottage with a look that said “stay out of jail.”

We spent the night drinking at a bar with the high school friends.

The next day, Ben and I woke up and rented bikes. The bikes were old 10 speeds, which couldn’t have sucked harder. but they were free to rent, with a $10 deposit. still a pretty good value. we named them.
In the afternoon, we had a quick rehearsal and a fantastic lobster dinner.

Sunday – Big Day

At the wedding, the dudes wore guayaberas. They were fantastic and much more comfortable than a suit. It made everything seem more genuine.

Karen and I were performing the actual ceremony. I think it went off really well. I introduced the couple:

Sometimes, there’s a couple, and well, they’re just the couple for their time and place. They just fit together. They’re lovers, they’re storytellers with the colorful details, they’re stir fry chefs with the secret ingredient. On a mountain hike, they’re sunshine and granola. On a troubled sea, they’re sympathy and compassion. They will greet you with a smile and they will give you a nickname.
And now, they are ready to take their lives in each other’s hands. I don’t know about you but I take comfort in that. It’s good knowing that they’re gonna be out there. Will and Kim. Their love abides.

Here’s an alternative intro, which didn’t make the final cut:

When Will Kim and I first met, we would go out the quad, sit on the grass with seventy-five pages of reading, five sheets of high-powered calculus problems, half-full cups of coffee, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored corn chips, salsa, pita and hummus. Also, a blanket, two pillows, a frisbee and a hackey sack. Not that we needed all that for our afternoons, but once you get locked into some serious procrastination, there is a tendency to push it as far as you can. The only thing that ever worried me was the hackey sack. There is nothing in the world more irresponsible and helplessly depraved than a man in the depths of a hackey sack circle, and we’d always get into that rotten game.

Wild Card: KCL was in high spirits thoughout the ceremony and afterparty.
Dark Horse: DC was not planning on coming to the wedding, but after his schedule cleared at the last minute, we convinced him to come down from Boston with Matty G. He wore the heart print boxers, played his hand right, having great success with the wild card.
Loose Cannon: KBW by far and away the loose cannon of the weekend. While generally reserved and even keeled, she knows when to go overboard. She spent most of the rehearsal dinner cottage afterparty dancing on the bed with bottle in hand. She bought the first round at the bar, and set the pace after that. When it came time to go back to the hotel, she was not one to wait for a taxi, and just started flagging down cars to hitch a ride. Since she didn’t returns calls, and we began to worry that she was caught in a bear trap. But the bear trap couldn’t hold her down. She was awake and ready to hold the Chupa like a pro.

Loose Cannon: Killer. most of us had never met killer. The college roommate of the father of the bride. This dude knew of how to party. He rallied us with the tufts fight song, he made sure people had sufficient drinks and knew where the dance floor was.

Loose Cannon: Bill Parent – Father of the Bridge. This is a man from a simpler time. this man scolded any boy who he caught not drinking or not on the dance floor dancing with a lady. He laid down the law, and no one could refuse, on this the day of his daughter’s wedding.

Maverick: without a doubt, O.Sidd lived up to his long and sordid reputation of maverickiness this weekend. he wrote the songs of the weekend 1. “nut rag” (to the tune of sole man) and, 2. “welcome to the grundle” (tune of welcome to the jungle). He invented the reverse spread eagle pile driver. He appropriated inappropriate items from local establishments.

Enabler: Ben Stone.

Voice of Reason: Karen? Will? Myself? I’m not sure if anyone really earned this award for the weekend.

Looking Sharp: Matty G.

I told him it was a very nice fork, but I was concerned it “might have structural issues.”

not only was she crazy, but she was pissed. she yelled at my for fifteen minutes while i waited for my laundry to finish drying. i didn’t hear a word of it thanks to my Shure earbuds.

nice one shure.

at around 5:30, I thought i smelled smoke somewhere in the building. My first thought was Michael’s room. his wiring had caught fire a few weeks ago, and i assumed it was happening again, so i checked through his room but couldn’t find any fire.

I called in to Zoe, and asked her if anything in her room was burning. She was startled and looked around, but couldn’t find the fire. The smoke was getting thicker, and now everyone was smelling it.

I called Michael in from outside. By the time he came in, there were visible clouds of smoke filling the apt. Michael was quick enough to realize the smoke was coming up from the basement, and then it all came together. Ralph’s basement is an incredible fire hazard. He is blind and crazy, and he spends his days filling our basement with all manner of combustible garbage and electronics.

As we walked down to investigate, Ralph was walking up the stairs to ask us to borrow a bucket.

“Is there a fire in the basement Ralph?”
“I just need to borrow a bucket.”

against my better judgment, zoe and i started filling buckets of water and handing them to ralph, but smoke was really billowing up from the stairs at this point, and michael and i agreed we needed to call the fire department.

I told zoe to get her hamsters and her computer, I grabbed my bikes, michael saved chicken wing, and we met up out front. smoke was now visible from outside, and was leaking out from the basement onto the sidewalk.

michael went back inside to save the pims and get more ice. chicken wing jumped back inside, because she is a afraid of being outdoors.

the fire dept showed up in less than a minute. really impressive, totally professional, put out the fire, cleared the smoke, no problems. they had to brake down a few doors upstairs, which will be expensive to replace.

Michael saves the Pims

I’ve always known 140 was a bit of a fire trap, so i had a mental plan of things i would save in case of a fire. I pulled serotta and long haul trucker off their hooks and stacked them outside. i wanted to get RB-1 out as well, but it was getting kinda smokey, so i wasn’t sure if that was smart.

things i saved from the apartment

ralph can usually pass a normal friendly guy, but in stressful situations, his crazy starts to show. he mentioned a few times how he owned the building, he blamed peter on the 6th floor for starting the fire (despite the fact that peter wasn’t home, and lives on the 6th floor, while ralph was home and in the basement at the time the fire started). he kept dancing around and saying how he saved the building, how he was hoping certain people got kicked out of the building, etc. I’m not very happy with him at this point.

Anyway, a hot water heater appeared in out living room. i can’t really say where it came from. we lean bikes against it now.

Also, during the fire, I met a lot of the upstairs neighbors. they all seem really cool. people can bond really well in stressful situations.

when we got to Nyack, we bought a sandwich and bunch of cliff related food products.

The ride home was fast and easy. Wind to our backs and mostly downhill. It was a little sad to cross the GWB back into city traffic, but Riverside Drive to Prospect Park Transverse to 59th st bridge is pretty tolerable. I think this will be my new route home.

When we got back to Brooklyn, we put away a pound of pasta and all kinds of veggies. a few hours later I went to grub to eat some more. They had made a pretty epic cupcake tower. It was the last first grub. Jeff Stark, Lauren No Rules and their crew were moving on to a new project, but thankfully In Our Hearts is taking over First Grub.

It was nice enough to have grub on the roof! this is the best part of spring in brooklyn.

First Saturday trips used to involve big group rides and hang out outside on the hill with a little picnic and some music. But today was the February First Saturday. There was no outside picnic dance party. By the time we arrived, the dance floor was too crowded to walk, let alone dance. We were pretty sober anyway.

We moved on to Plan B, drink vodka.
We wandered around upstairs while sipping vodka and checking out the feminist art exhibit. We bumped into Bill TimesUp and Margot, then found Leah, then Ethan and Adrianna. Everyone had seen the exhibits before, but it was fun to have a few friends around.

Jamie and Emily Dickenson

Afterward, we made an excursion out to queens for a Swimming Cities benefit party at silent barn. it was a crowded, hot sweaty show. Stachemaster and Dirty Finger were spinning and everyone was dancing and getting rid of clothing. It was a little too loud and smokey, but otherwise a great time.