fellowshipofthechainring.org

Prologue

Before I begin my official post, I must explain my true motivation for this post. My brother, Kurt of Fast and Far, has to post about why he “hasn’t posted since last Sunday,” and went on for half a page about all the running he did, so now I have to post, but I have nothing exciting to write, except maybe the 22 mph I did on my two and a half mile commute to work (ooh wow!). So, in an effort to not be outdone by my talented brother, I have decided to post to keep up with the Joneses as it were.

Internet Explorer 7 is Officially Out There:

The big news is not cycling related but web related. Internet Exploder — uh, I mean Explorer came out with version 7. I haven’t made the switch yet, but I saw the site on IE7 at my inlaws the other day, and everything looked tiny. I’m hoping it was some modification my father-in-law made to the settings of IE7, but I fear that I’ll need to overhaul the style sheets. I took a look under the hood, so to speak, and I tried to see what was causing all the ruckus. I tried all my diagnostic checks, but alas, I came up with a confused expression.

Here are the checks I looked for:

• Smaller than 1em sizing for fonts: The W3C recommends not using a smaller than 1em sizing unless it’s for “fine print”. I checked and made a few adjustments, but I can’t see much of a difference.
• The old dreaded “multiplied reduced font size trick”: This is where when you apply a 90% relative font size to the body, to get all the content just a little smaller, and then in a child font to the body, where you set another tag (say p tag) to a size of 90% or .9em, and it mutiplies and makes the paragraph 90% of 90% or 81% of the body.
• Some kind of CSS hack: Thanks to Microsoft’s earlier quirky attempts at CSS compliance (eg. IE5 for Win, IE5 for Macs, IE6 quirks mode, etc.), all kinds of workarounds, filters, or hacks have been created to get the browsers in line. I know of many, but I can’t keep up with them. Even so, I checked for those crazy looking comment lines and escapes and @ signs and # signs and html>body tricks. I came up with nothing (credit goes to the original designers of the style sheets).

Well, How do I look?

If that’s not a dangerous question for most people, I don’t know what is. Please believe me, I’m not trying to set a trap for you; I really want to know. If you have internet explorer 7, just how bad does this blog look? Please logon and comment.

A Disclaimer

By the way, when I create web page style sheets, I don’t try to create some of the problems in sizing I mentioned above, but since this is a blog, I took the general style sheet handed to me and only made a few modifications. That’s why I looked under the hood to see what the original creator of the style sheet did.

PostScript

It looks like the answer is out there, thanks to Owen Briggs interesting experiment with font sizing, I think I’ll be able to get a nice style sheet to work. It may be awhile in coming, as I’ll test it out on a website of mine with a smaller style sheet.

El Cap, Triguy, and I found a great, local spot to get some off-road mileage and introduce new mountainbikers to the joys of off-road riding. It’s the Leif Erikson Dr. at Forest Park. It’s not technical at all, but it’s beautiful, and you can ride up to about 24 miles if you do the whole route and back.

Triguy was only able to join us for about 20 minutes of riding before he had to turn back, but El Cap and I rode for an hour and logged 12 miles. Our top speed was 21.3 mph (we both got the exact same read on our computers). (more…)

In case you didn’t know, I’m quite the Lostnik, and I’m giddy with excitement that season three of Lost has finally begun. However, after talking to some of my coworkers about the great shows that are out there, a fellow teacher had the nerve to tell me that Lost has “jumped the shark.” Don’t worry, I stood up and defended the honor of Lost, the best show out there, but he got me thinking: how will I know if Lost has indeed jumped the shark?

Before I answer, you may be asking what “jump the shark” means. The definition of the phrase is events in a television show that mark the show is going downhill and the writers and producers will stoop at anything to try to pull up ratings. The metaphor comes from Happy Days, one of my favorite shows as a child. The term comes from the season cliff-hanger when the Fonz was challenged to jump a live shark on waterskis (no the shark wasn’t on waterskis; the Fonz was).

So, without further ado:

The Top Ten Signs that Lost has “Jumped the Shark”

10. Once Walt reaches puberty and is no longer that cute kid, his long lost albino cousin, Oliver, joins the losties.

9. Jamie Farr makes a guest appearance . . . for the third time (as a different character each time, mind you).

8. Sawyer challenges “the Fonz” to a waterski jump over a Hanso Foundation logo’d shark.

7. After having lost his arm after “the incident” at the Swan station, Dr. Marvin Candle dies in a freak accident when a helicopter crashes on top of him.

6. The losties take a boat to another island where there’s a mad scientist who switches all their brains, so Claire’s voice comes out of Bernard’s body, the polar bear ends up with Sawyer’s voice, and madcapped hilarity ensues.

5. In season 4, it turns out that Ana Lucia never did die, and all of season 3 was a dream.

4. The losties get help from that zany yet lovable Great Gazoo.

3. One word: Charo

2. At the beginning of season 4, Jack is mysteriously no longer played by Matthew Fox, but by Matthew Perry, and none of the characters seem to notice the change.

and, the number one sign that Lost has “jumped the shark,”

1. In a flashback episode, right after we see Oceanic flight 815 crash land on the island, Ricardo Montalban, comes out to the others, and says, “Smiles everybody. Smiles.”

And now we come to our last installment from Lessons from the Deschutes River Trail. These are all the tips I received and put into practice. It’s sort of a primer for new mountainbikers.

Shift your body back on the downhills

I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly care to do an endo. As a kid, I did an endo on two separate occasions: one was on my way to school when I discovered it’s not a good idea to slam on your front brake, and the other time was my first and only road racing crash. I decided on both of those occasions that I would try to avoid flipping over my handlebars. The best way to do that while mountain biking, other than riding headlong into a boulder, is to shift your weight back. On mild downhills, you might want to simply extend your arms and curve your back a little. On the more hairy downhills, it’s best to get off your saddle and stick your butt behind your seat. On some occasions I have basically moved my stomach directly over my saddle, so I wouldn’t get tossed. This combined with not slamming on your front brakes should be all you need. I hope this helps on your next ride.

Before I sign off, I’d like to make the comment that these suggestions work best after you have begun to get a little tired, but you haven’t lost your edge. On my last ride, I found that the most rewarding part of the ride was after I got tired enough to stop worrying about everything. I found that I relaxed more and stopped staring at rocks and roots as objects to be avoided and started having fun jumping and bumping around the trail.