Will Bicycling to Work Get You Killed? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog
I HOPE NOT!!!!
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Don't worry, I definitely won't be in to Christmas as much as these guys are!
I had a great run in this morning. It was a cool 38 degrees but oddly I was never cold and even got pretty hot towards the end. This got me to thinking. With all of the running I will be doing this winter, why don't I do another marathon?
The only real reason is the money. But, it would definitely give me so e motivation and I would love to run one in late February so I could carry my "yet to be born" daughter across the finish line. Although, her mother, who has never seen me finish a marathon, may be a little sceptical about letting me hold her after 4 hours of running.
I'm browsing my favorite marathon site for some cool events this winter, but if any of you have any suggestions please leave a comment or send me an email.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
I need to step-up my cycling in a major way for these targets.
I have been biking only around 100 miles a week and running around 20 miles a week.
From endurancecoach.com
http://trifuel.com/training/bike/winter-bike-training-target-specific-areas-to-improve
I have been biking only around 100 miles a week and running around 20 miles a week.
From endurancecoach.com
General Guide to winter Mileage Targets for Different events
| Junior | Elite Junior | Age Group | Elite | |
| Sprint | 20 | n/a | 40 | n/a |
| Triathlon | 40 | 70 | 60 | 80 |
| 1/2 Ironman | n/a | n/a | 90 | 120 |
| Ironman | n/a | n/a | 180 | 200 |
http://trifuel.com/training/bike/winter-bike-training-target-specific-areas-to-improve
Monday, November 19, 2007
Very weird...
I ran in this morning and it was the very frigid temperature of 58 degrees
My google page rank has gone from 5 to 2 in the past week...
Are there any small business owners out there familiar with free CRM software?
I ran in this morning and it was the very frigid temperature of 58 degrees
My google page rank has gone from 5 to 2 in the past week...
Are there any small business owners out there familiar with free CRM software?
Friday, November 16, 2007
Chattanooga is an awesome town.
Every year I like it more and more. However, Portland's bike scene seems pretty nice too. I'm sure in a couple of years Chattanooga will have the same type of scene.
One thing that is particularly interesting is that we don't have any hand-made bike manufacturer's in Chattanooga. I guess that is because we are in the land of Litespeed.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
I'm currently on a quest to find a great headline banner for my blog so if there are any suggestions please leave a comment.
In my research, I think trigeekdreams.com has the best banner.
As for training, I keep biking more than running, but I think that is about to change with the recent weather changes.
Hope all is well out there i tri-land!
In my research, I think trigeekdreams.com has the best banner.
As for training, I keep biking more than running, but I think that is about to change with the recent weather changes.
Hope all is well out there i tri-land!
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Since my wife became pregnant we are emphatic on eliminating High Fructose Corn Syrup from our diet.
Here is a great link to a list of foods that are free of this evil juice!
Another tattoo for me!
When I first saw this tattoo I thought it was the coolest thing ever from PaceTat. However, about half of my time in a marathon is spent figuring out what pace I'm running at so now I don't know if this is such a cool thing after all.
Gym Jones - Power, Speed, Endurance, Suffering and Salvation
Freak Gym
A co-worker recomended I go to gymjones.com
This place is awesome! Check out the videos and quotes from these freaks! It takes a while to go through the site but is well worth it for the motivation.
Freak Gym
A co-worker recomended I go to gymjones.com
This place is awesome! Check out the videos and quotes from these freaks! It takes a while to go through the site but is well worth it for the motivation.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
In Portland, Cultivating a Culture of Two Wheels
Hopefully, this will be Chattanooga, in a couple of years.
Check out the article here
Hopefully, this will be Chattanooga, in a couple of years.
Check out the article here
Friday, November 02, 2007
Doing what Detroit says is impossible
Doing what Detroit says is impossible
by kos
Tue Oct 30, 2007 at 11:50:06 AM PDT
This story is so incredible, I had to do additional research to confirm that it was indeed true. It centers on Kansas City auto mechanic and inventor Johnathan Goodwin.
Two years ago, Goodwin got a rare chance to show off his tricks to some of the car industry's most prominent engineers. He tells me the story: He was driving a converted H2 to the SEMA show, the nation's biggest annual specialty automotive confab, and stopped en route at a Denver hotel. When he woke up in the morning, there were 20 people standing around his Hummer. Did I run over somebody? he wondered. As it turned out, they were engineers for GM, the Hummer's manufacturer. They noticed that Goodwin's H2 looked modified. "Does it have a diesel engine in it?"
"Yeah," he said.
"No way," they replied.
He opened the hood, "and they're just all in and out and around the valves and checking it out," he says. They asked to hear it run, sending a stab of fear through Goodwin. He'd filled it up with grease from a Chinese restaurant the day before and was worried that the cold morning might have solidified the fuel. But it started up on the first try and ran so quietly that at first they didn't believe it was really on. "When you start a diesel engine up on vegetable oil," Goodwin says, "you turn the key, and you hear nothing. Because of the lubricating power of the oil, it's just so smooth. Whisper quiet. And they're like, 'Is it running? Yeah, you can hear the fan going.'"
One engineer turned and said, "GM said this wouldn't work."
"Well," Goodwin replied, "here it is."
And what's the bottom line for Goodwin's modified vehicles? Stuff like this:
Goodwin's feats of engineering have become gradually more visible over the past year. Last summer, Imperium Renewables contacted MTV's show Pimp My Ride about creating an Earth Day special in which Goodwin would convert a muscle car to run on biodiesel. The show chose a '65 Chevy Impala, and when the conversion was done, he'd doubled its mileage to 25 mpg and increased its pull from 250 to 800 horsepower. As a stunt, MTV drag-raced the Impala against a Lamborghini on California's Pomona Raceway. "The Impala blew the Lamborghini away," says Kevin Kluemper, the lead calibration engineer for GM's Allison transmission unit, who'd flown down to help with the conversion.
Remember -- Detroit tells us it's impossible to increase gas mileage without taking a hit on horsepower. Yet here's Goodwin -- with an eight-grade education -- able to design motors that blow the doors off the conventional (and obviously bullshit) wisdom.
His latest project?
Goodwin leads me over to a red 2005 H3 Hummer that's up on jacks, its mechanicals removed. He aims to use the turbine to turn the Hummer into a tricked-out electric hybrid. Like most hybrids, it'll have two engines, including an electric motor. But in this case, the second will be the [jet] turbine, Goodwin's secret ingredient. Whenever the truck's juice runs low, the turbine will roar into action for a few seconds, powering a generator with such gusto that it'll recharge a set of "supercapacitor" batteries in seconds. This means the H3's electric motor will be able to perform awesome feats of acceleration and power over and over again, like a Prius on steroids. What's more, the turbine will burn biodiesel, a renewable fuel with much lower emissions than normal diesel; a hydrogen-injection system will then cut those low emissions in half. And when it's time to fill the tank, he'll be able to just pull up to the back of a diner and dump in its excess french-fry grease--as he does with his many other Hummers. Oh, yeah, he adds, the horsepower will double--from 300 to 600.
"Conservatively," Goodwin muses, scratching his chin, "it'll get 60 miles to the gallon. With 2,000 foot-pounds of torque. You'll be able to smoke the tires. And it's going to be superefficient."
He laughs. "Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!"
And here's the punchline:
Goodwin's work proves that a counterattack is possible, and maybe easier than many of us imagined. If the dream is a big, badass ride that's also clean, well, he's there already. As he points out, his conversions consist almost entirely of taking stock GM parts and snapping them together in clever new ways. "They could do all this stuff if they wanted to," he tells me, slapping on a visor and hunching over an arc welder. "The technology has been there forever. They make 90% of the components I use."
The problem with Detroit isn't the laws of physics, it's the fact that a guy who never even went to high school can do things -- with stock parts -- that Detroit's auto executives and their armies of engineers claim is impossible. Good ol' American know-how and ingenuity is alive and well, just not where we need it.
Update: From the comments, video of that Impala smoking the Lamborghini on MTV:
Link: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/30/14161/066
Doing what Detroit says is impossible
by kos
Tue Oct 30, 2007 at 11:50:06 AM PDT
This story is so incredible, I had to do additional research to confirm that it was indeed true. It centers on Kansas City auto mechanic and inventor Johnathan Goodwin.
Two years ago, Goodwin got a rare chance to show off his tricks to some of the car industry's most prominent engineers. He tells me the story: He was driving a converted H2 to the SEMA show, the nation's biggest annual specialty automotive confab, and stopped en route at a Denver hotel. When he woke up in the morning, there were 20 people standing around his Hummer. Did I run over somebody? he wondered. As it turned out, they were engineers for GM, the Hummer's manufacturer. They noticed that Goodwin's H2 looked modified. "Does it have a diesel engine in it?"
"Yeah," he said.
"No way," they replied.
He opened the hood, "and they're just all in and out and around the valves and checking it out," he says. They asked to hear it run, sending a stab of fear through Goodwin. He'd filled it up with grease from a Chinese restaurant the day before and was worried that the cold morning might have solidified the fuel. But it started up on the first try and ran so quietly that at first they didn't believe it was really on. "When you start a diesel engine up on vegetable oil," Goodwin says, "you turn the key, and you hear nothing. Because of the lubricating power of the oil, it's just so smooth. Whisper quiet. And they're like, 'Is it running? Yeah, you can hear the fan going.'"
One engineer turned and said, "GM said this wouldn't work."
"Well," Goodwin replied, "here it is."
And what's the bottom line for Goodwin's modified vehicles? Stuff like this:
Goodwin's feats of engineering have become gradually more visible over the past year. Last summer, Imperium Renewables contacted MTV's show Pimp My Ride about creating an Earth Day special in which Goodwin would convert a muscle car to run on biodiesel. The show chose a '65 Chevy Impala, and when the conversion was done, he'd doubled its mileage to 25 mpg and increased its pull from 250 to 800 horsepower. As a stunt, MTV drag-raced the Impala against a Lamborghini on California's Pomona Raceway. "The Impala blew the Lamborghini away," says Kevin Kluemper, the lead calibration engineer for GM's Allison transmission unit, who'd flown down to help with the conversion.
Remember -- Detroit tells us it's impossible to increase gas mileage without taking a hit on horsepower. Yet here's Goodwin -- with an eight-grade education -- able to design motors that blow the doors off the conventional (and obviously bullshit) wisdom.
His latest project?
Goodwin leads me over to a red 2005 H3 Hummer that's up on jacks, its mechanicals removed. He aims to use the turbine to turn the Hummer into a tricked-out electric hybrid. Like most hybrids, it'll have two engines, including an electric motor. But in this case, the second will be the [jet] turbine, Goodwin's secret ingredient. Whenever the truck's juice runs low, the turbine will roar into action for a few seconds, powering a generator with such gusto that it'll recharge a set of "supercapacitor" batteries in seconds. This means the H3's electric motor will be able to perform awesome feats of acceleration and power over and over again, like a Prius on steroids. What's more, the turbine will burn biodiesel, a renewable fuel with much lower emissions than normal diesel; a hydrogen-injection system will then cut those low emissions in half. And when it's time to fill the tank, he'll be able to just pull up to the back of a diner and dump in its excess french-fry grease--as he does with his many other Hummers. Oh, yeah, he adds, the horsepower will double--from 300 to 600.
"Conservatively," Goodwin muses, scratching his chin, "it'll get 60 miles to the gallon. With 2,000 foot-pounds of torque. You'll be able to smoke the tires. And it's going to be superefficient."
He laughs. "Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!"
And here's the punchline:
Goodwin's work proves that a counterattack is possible, and maybe easier than many of us imagined. If the dream is a big, badass ride that's also clean, well, he's there already. As he points out, his conversions consist almost entirely of taking stock GM parts and snapping them together in clever new ways. "They could do all this stuff if they wanted to," he tells me, slapping on a visor and hunching over an arc welder. "The technology has been there forever. They make 90% of the components I use."
The problem with Detroit isn't the laws of physics, it's the fact that a guy who never even went to high school can do things -- with stock parts -- that Detroit's auto executives and their armies of engineers claim is impossible. Good ol' American know-how and ingenuity is alive and well, just not where we need it.
Update: From the comments, video of that Impala smoking the Lamborghini on MTV:
Link: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/30/14161/066
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