Jul 23rd, 05
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Well if you don’t happen to be Sheryl Crow or John Kerry, where do you watch the Tour de France finish, not lots of advice on the web, but basically, they cruise in via the Rue di Rivoli past the Jardin de Tuileries and then hit the Place de la Concorde then up and down the to the Arc de Triomphe 8 times. “Fodor’s Forum”:http://www.fodors.com/forums/threadselect.jsp?fid=2&tid=34632876 has the best advice and of course there is a dedicated website “tdfamericans.us”:http://tdfamericans.us that is all about seeing the TDF and the “TDFBlog”:http://www.tdfblog.com/ is always good.
Here is some advice:
* I’ve watched the Tour de France beside The Place de la Concorde and for the 2 hours I waited and the 5 seconds of seeing the cyclists, I wouldn’t bother doing it again. _Hey I would!_
* I’ve seen it a couple times, including last year on the Champs-Elysees. Five [people] deep is good, it’s usually more. I couldn’t see much of anything, although you could see the final announcements and prize awarding because they do that on a stage, so it is higher up. That was basically on the grassy park just to the west of the actual place de la Concorde. Well, I can tell you a great place, I was jealous, but it is limited — the McDonalds on the Champs-Elysees has several tables/seats on the second floor right in front of the window overlooking the street
* I was in Paris for the last day of the tour 2 years ago. We were along the rue de Rivoli almost across from the the carrousel du Louvre. We could see plenty. My then 12 year old daughter was with us and she also could see. It was so exciting to watch the cyclist zoom by. When we thought the race was almost over we made our way to the finish. I can’t remember our route but it wasn’t easy to get there, but well worth it. We only saw Lance from the waist up but that was ok.
* We did however get to see the Peleton arrive up at the Place de Bastille where they only do 2 circuits but is less busy (even go to see the yellow jersey M. Armstrong).
* It starts getting really crowded in about the last hour before they are due to do the finishing laps up and down near the Arc. I think you could see pretty well if you were willing to wait 2-3 hours for it.
“About”:http://studenttravel.about.com/od/tourdefrance2005/f/tourwatching.htm also mentions that they have a big screen TV at the Hotel de Paris (City Hall), so you can watch it there and turn around and see the folks at the rue de Rivoli if you like.
“TDF Americans”:http://tdfamericans.us/tips_viewing.htm has some great tips on the final day of viewing:
* Starting at about 10:30 the crowds will start to thicken and by early afternoon there is no possible way to leave your spot on the barricades without it being quickly filled. Get started early as the barricades will fill up. It will be a long day, so plan accordingly. If you can get your hands on items like small folding chairs or seats your feet will love you. The barricades will start to fill by 10-10:30 and if you want to inhabit a large amount of space for a group I suggest getting there earlier. (Like 7 A.M.)
* A grand parade follows the end of the race and the riders? victory lap. It starts about 7 pm and includes balloons holding up acrobats, explosions of yellow confetti, dancers, drummers, people rolling along inside big wheels, gaggles of young kids in yellow outfits on yellow bikes, celebrities and just plain folks having a good time.
Jul 16th, 05
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On TV, undoubtedly, those of you in Comcast territory should kiss the earth. They now have Video on Demand and if you are smart, you can find 20 minute Tour de France highlights in their VOD section. Of course, good luck finding it. Here’s how:
* “Comcast On Demand”:http://comcast.m0.net/m/p/com/mic/Sports.asp?email=&cmp=&custom=. Hit Menu and select Video on Demand. Then select Sports and Entertainment, select Outdoor Life Network and Tour de France is there.
* “OLN”:http://www.olntv.com/tdf/article/view/758/?ss=tv&tf=Body.tpl. Otherwise you diehards you get up early in America or who have a Tivo, pray you get OLN on Satellite or on your Cable system.
* “Eurosport”:http://www.eurosport.com/tourdefrance2005/. Eurosport carries the whole thing if you are in Europe. Their site like OLNs does have video clips that sometimes work depending on network traffic. Also their web commentary isn’t bad with regular refreshes and they have an audio feed as well.
Unlike last year, OLN isn’t broadcasting the audio on the internet. How sad. Instead, here are the top feeds I use in order:
* “Cyclingnews”:http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2005/tour05/05index.php. My first read. They are actually quite good. The “live”:http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2005/tour05/?id=live/tour0514 feeds work well on a Blackberry. Main issue is that URLs keep churning every stage. They should really just have Live be the latest stage up. Quite hillarious ex
pressions as this is a non-US site. Kind of like Phil Ligget on the web.
* “Velonews”:http://www.velonews.com/tour2005/live.html. The second best coverage I’ve found. The site is busier so doesn’t work as well on a mobile phone.
* “Outdoor Life”:http://www.olntv.com/tdf/article/view/741/?ss=reports&tf=Body.tpl. I actually don’t like their most recent information as much, but their reports are terrific as it has Phil Liggett, Bob Roll and Chris Carmichael doing commentary.
* “Official Site”:http://www.letour.fr/2005/TDF/LIVE/us/1500/index.html. Not much commentary here, but a nice graphic for who is in front. ESPN has a similar thing, but it completely blows up Firefox so I don’t use that.
After the day, I like to read the various news reports:
* “Cyclingnews”:http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2005//tour05/?id=news. They have the best organized. Google-like news reports all in one place.
* “Velonews”:http://www.velonews.com/tour2005/news/. Also a nice site with the news reports all in one place and most important “Jan Ullrich”:http://www.velonews.com/tour2005/diaries/ has his diary there.
* “OLN”:http://www.olntv.com/tdf/article/view/741/?ss=reports&tf=Body.tpl. The Liggett and other guys are a good short read. Chris Carmichael is a reliable Pro-Lance view. Most of the rest of the coverage is about how he is losing, so its nice to see both sides.
Finally, I like to look at the photos and videos:
* “OLN”:http://www.olntv.com/tdf/article/category/87/?tf=articlecat_video.tpl&sm=5&CatLimit=1&cc=1&ArtLimit=100&ac=1&cat=&mt=&CatUserDef=true&ss=video. They have the best list of videos and the most reliable media servers.
* “Cyclingnews”:http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2005//tour05/?id=photos. Again the winner for easiest to find photos suitable for wallpapering your PC.
Jul 16th, 05
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_What an exciting stage. Of course I had to follow it all over my Blackberry’s mobile web access to cyclingnews.com. Pretty cool to do remote though._
The big news of course is that T-mobile blew out the Discovery Team. Boy are those guys strong. With three world class contender, Ullrich, Kloden and Vinokourov. The main question is what does tomorrow hold. Stage 15 is decisive. If T-Mobile can do it again, they isolate Lance with three of their team members vs. just him. It blow out the tactics of Discovery, that is to run at a medium-high pace and take the peloton from 50 to 30 to 15 riders. Instead, T-mobile blew everyone out at the start. If they do it again tomorrow and Lance has an issue, wow that could be bad.
Of course “Chris Carmichael”:http://www.olntv.com/tdf/article/view/1037/?ss=report&tf=DailyReports_read.tpl has the counter view:
bq. For long-time fans of bike racing, today was a mountain stage like the ones we used to see all the time. The team leaders were all isolated from their supporting riders and it was man against man, a battle of legs and wits to see who could reach the mountain top first. If you?re relatively new to the sport, what you saw today was actually normal. The anomaly you?ve seen over the past few years has been Lance Armstrong and the long line of his teammates on major climbs. Today was a classic mountain stage of the Tour de France, and tomorrow is likely to be even more exciting.
bq. The big question on many minds is whether the Discovery Channel team is as strong as it was last year. This question, of course, is coming up because Lance?s teammates were all left behind when T-Mobile attacked en masse at the bottom of the Port de Pailheres. The Discovery Channel team is very strong, but the tactical move by T-Mobile was specifically designed to prevent Lance?s team from setting a strong pace all the way up the penultimate climb. It worked because only the top riders in the peloton, the men aiming to stand on the podium in Paris, were able to follow the acceleration. T-Mobile didn?t just disarm Discovery?s strategy, they isolated all the team leaders, including their own.
bq. It remains to be seen whether T-Mobile?s tactics today will eventually backfire on them. Granted, they didn?t beat Lance Armstrong today, but if part of their strategy is to use their aggression to wear down their opponents, there are several men who had to dig deep today.
Jul 15th, 05
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!http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2005/tour05/tech/saunier-scott/cntdf05-scott1tn.jpg! www.cyclingnews.com presents the 92nd Tour de France. _Another incredibly light bike._ Saunier Duval-Prodir’s American rider Chris Horner told Cyclingnews that he thinks his Scott CR1 team bike is “the best road bike on the market today” and he’s already won a Tour de Suisse stage this year to prove it. Scott’s CR1 frame weighs in at just 880g without fork, which makes it easy to build into a bike that hits the UCI weight limit of 6.8kg.
!
The S-Works Tarmac SL, this sub-1.2 kilo superlight newbie (both frame and fork) is not only to be lighter, but considerably stiffer and more road compliant than the original Tarmac.
The general public can expect to see the Tarmac SL hit the shelves later this year, with the estimated price a cool eight g’s for the frame and fork – which translates to roughly a 40 percent increase over the original Tarmac. Around the same time, a Tarmac SL ‘dream bike’ will also make its debut, complete with: a S-Works FACT carbon crank that’s said to be 165 grams lighter and 11 percent stiffer than its Dura-Ace equivalent; the Barmac FACT one-piece bar and stem, no brick either at 349 grams and to be available in 11 different sizes; the 155 gram Toup? saddle (for your bum, not your dome!); and Roval Rapide carbon wheels, tipping the scales at 1,550 grams per pair, with Campagnolo’s Record group gracing the rest of the dream machine.
Jul 15th, 05
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Quick highlights and must sees of Iceland:
Here is the Sigfus tour:
* Nesjavellir. Cool beyond words. This is a place where steam literally rises from everywhere in the ground. Its a big geothermal plant that products 90MW of power and incredible amounts of warm water. There is a 50km pipe back to Rejkavik that loses just 1.8C of temperature from 86C water.
Jul 13th, 05
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Most calling cards don’t work in Iceland. But, the local company called “Atlas Simi”:http://atlassimi.is is just $0.12/minute back to the US. It cost is 1,000Ikr for 450 minutes, so pretty amazing net, net. The card also works in the UK and Denmark. Kind of cool that you can buy it online too from the sitel.
The rates are pretty good particularly if you call from a landline in Iceland where the cost is low. If you use mobile then of course it is more.
For prepaid GSM cards, there are two choices according to “PrepaidGSM.com”:http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/islanda.html. From celand Telecom Ltd (Landssiminn), you get a card that is 34 IKr (US$0.50) per minute to the US and 9 IKR for SMS sending. This is via “Siminn”:http://simi.is (“English”:http://simi.is/control/index?pid=6736). You can buy the prepaid SIM card at the airport, Shell stations or Siminn’s retail locations.
Jul 11th, 05
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If you are traveling overseas, its never been easier to make it cheap and easy to handle calls. Here’s a quick list of what we do:
# “T-mobile”:http://t-mobile.com. Make sure you have a phone that is a GSM world phone (technically speaking that means it works at 900 and 1800MHz). T-mobile is the only US carrier that unlocks their phones if you call them and ask, so they are a good choice. Cingular doesn’t although for many phones there are unlock services that do this. Ideally you want two phones. One is your US phone number and the other you’ll use for local calls.
# Make sure the T-mobile international roaming is turned on. You should check their customer service group to make sure. Also make sure to ask that it is turned on in both the billing and the network system. It is supposed to happen automatically but oftentimes, the billing turns on but the network doesn’t. If that happens, you will get the system SEARCHING… forever then you have to call t-mobile customer service from overseas. The number is +18009378997
# Sim card, cell phone rental. These folks have a great guide we’ve used for a while in terms of what to get. Good overall reading.
# “Prepaid SIM Card”:http://www.telestial.com/intl_calling_card.php. If you are organized, you can have them ship you a prepaid SIM card. We did this for Connie when she went to Africa and it worked well. Most European countries have easy pre-paid SIM programs. You can just buy a SIM from Virgin Mobile in the UK, TIM in Italy or Mobicarte in Italy for instance when you get there if you are staying a long time. This lets you make local calls essentially for local rates.
# “Calling Card”:http://telestial.com/intl_calling_card.php When you get a call from the US, then you can return it with your local phone with a local access number. Telestila uses “Global Phone”:https://www.gphone.com/service/ to do this with their GlobalPostPaid service. This doesn’t require any setup fee and they are pretty cheap. $0.44 for a call from Italy to the US for example.
Also they have a Callback service. You ring a magic number in the US or the Netherlands, they use automatic number identification to call back and then you use the lower US to Europe rate as an example.
# “Onesuite”:http://www.onesuite.com. If you are calling someone in the US, the other trick is to get them a Onesuite account, these rates are incredibly low calling from the US. So then you ring them once, they see your number and then can call you back from the US. 2.2 cents for instance from the US to China! The big drawback is that require in effect $2/month worth of usage or they die ($10 last six months). So it is best is you talk alot. Otherwise Cognicall (see below is a better deal).
There are some other services that are more traditional that I use as a backup:
* “IDT”:http://idt.net. This is a $25 prepaid card. It works just about everywhere. The prepayment is a drawback for sure. Also it takes 24 hours to activate.
* “Net2Phone”:http://net2phone.com. This is a subsidiary of IDT. The same $25 prepayment scheme. The rates are about the same as Global Phone, so I’m only using this until I exhauste the $45 I have stuck there. That will take quite some time at these low rates. Also about $0.44/minute from Italy to the US.
* “Cognicall”:http://cognicall.com. I used these folks for a long time, but their rates in the US are much higher than Onesuite. Good thing is that they have no prepayment nor monthly fee.
As another aside, if you want to make calls from a US mobile internatinally, there are a few dial around solutions:
* Cognicall lets you set a mobile phone up so that if you dial a magic access code, then it lets you in and you can just dial an international number. A hassle in that you dial two numbers, but it is way, way cheaper. $1/minute for instance to China on T-mobile vs $0.12/minute.
* Globalphone lets you do the same thing with GlobalMobile service. Their rates are even lower at $0.08/minute US to China. That’s cheaper than calling from Seattle to Tacoma!
Jul 5th, 05
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!www.cyclingnews.com presents the 92nd Tour de France. Drool, drool, this is an incredible frame called the Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL. $8K for just the frame and fork. It is supposed to be amazing. Mark Wong thinks they are very cool.
It is supposed to be the stiffest bike out there and incredibly light too. The full bike will be amazing as well with…
_a Tarmac SL ‘dream bike’ will also make its debut, complete with: a S-Works FACT carbon crank that’s said to be 165 grams lighter and 11 percent stiffer than its Dura-Ace equivalent; the Barmac FACT one-piece bar and stem, no brick either at 349 grams and to be available in 11 different sizes; the 155 gram Toup? saddle (for your bum, not your dome!); and Roval Rapide carbon wheels, tipping the scales at 1,550 grams per pair, with Campagnolo’s Record group gracing the rest of the dream machine._
Jul 5th, 05
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New Page 0. Nothing like finding your own website via a Google search. This link is to an old page on my iste from 3 years ago. It is one of the top hits if you Google for google:”Campagnolo Ergobrain Manual”. Of course none of the links work anymore, but it is still pretty useful. Here’s the update data on torques
Here are the summaries for maintaining these bikes. First, the relevant torques. I use Zinn’s Art of Road Bike Maintenance, but their torques are very approximate, so here’s a list across manuals. A good tip is that hand tight with a hex key is about 45 Nm.
| Component | Torque |
| Campagnolo | |
| Bottom Bracket | 70 Nm (51.6 lb-ft) or if too tight, thread lock the right side and torque to 30 Nm |
| Crank bolt | 32-38 Nm (236-281 lb-ft) |
| Chain ring fixing bolt | 8 Nm (5.9 lb-ft) |
| Sprocket Lock ring | 50 Nm (36.9 lb-ft) |
| Brake cable clamping screw | 5 Nm (3.7 lb-ft) |
| Brake nut | 10 Nm (7.4 lb-ft) |
| Ergopower securing screw | 10 Nm (7.4 lb-ft) |
| Rear derailleur frame securing screw | 15 Nm (11.1 lb-ft) |
| Rear derailleur cable clamping screw | 6 Nm (4.4 lb-ft)|
| Front derailleur cable clamping screw | 5 Nm (3.7 lb-ft) |
| Crank Brothers Eggbeater Cleat Bolts | 4-5 Nm (40-50 lb-inch) |
| Speedplay X-1 Layer 1 Cleat Bolts | 35 lb-inch |
| Layer 2 Cleat Bolts | 25 lb-inch |
Here are some of the short cuts to the manuals online for these parts. When I get enough disk space on my hoster site I’ll actually copy these so you don’t have to depend on these manufacture sites being up.
* Speedplay X-Series at “http://www.speedplay.com/pubs/xseries.pdf”:http://www.speedplay.com/pubs/xseries.pdf
* Campagnolo Manuals at “http://campagnolo.com/techinfo.php?did=f”:http://campagnolo.com/techinfo.php?did=f
* Mavic Ksyrium Manual
Jul 5th, 05
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Six Apart – ProNet – CPanel Updates Breaking Movable Type Installations. _Just started getting these errors, Cpanel updated a database access routine that Movable Type uses._
We are still gathering information on the various configurations which
have been affected at this point. Once we’ve determined all of the
incompatibilities and created a patch, we’ll post additional
information here on the Professional Network blog as well as on Movable
Type news.
