Fort Lewis College Race

We had a great time in Durango even though the trip was super short. We left on Friday, got in late Friday night, hit the sack, got up and raced the team time trial, then the crit, then drove home. It was a lot of fun though, and although I didn't race super well, we had some big mile marks with the car... First off, we passed the 111,111 mile mark on the odometer.







Next up was that we broke 50 MPG average for the whole trip - 53.1 MPG to be exact, which works out to 803.3 miles on one tank! Aren't TDI's amazing. We went from SLC to Durango and back to SLC on one tank of diesel fuel.





Next up was that it was a really fun race, although the TTT was longer than normal at about 20 miles. Later that day was the crit, and lucky enough for me, it rained and even started snowing during my group's race! Needless to say, I got a bit dirty. I finished with the pack, but count that a good finish because there was a short little hill on the course that was an all out sprint up on every lap (every 0.5 miles) for 45 minutes straight. That kicked my butt, but I hung in there. The break away group of 3 got away about half way through and stayed away the rest of the time. They ended up nearly lapping the rest of us. It was a great time though, and we (the U of U team) will probably have a pretty good chance at going to the National Finals race in a couple of weeks. We'll see how we do at Conference Championships though, it's this coming weekend.

Late post from the CSU race

Well, it's been too long since I posted, so here goes.

For those of you that don't know, I race for the U of U road cycling team. Every weekend in the spring we go somewhere (usually Colorado) to race against other schools in the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Cycling Conference (RMCCC). Some of the schools include Colorado State University, Denver University, Mesa State College, University of New Mexico, Utah State University, BYU, Air Force Academy, etc. Anyway, one race that we went to was the race at CSU in Fort Collins, Colorado. The weather was pretty crazy for the events on Saturday, but then Sunday was beautiful for the oval criterium on the CSU campus.

Here's a shot of some of the U of U team bikes in our pit area for the team time trial (TTT) and road race (RR).


It was 40 degrees and rainy during the TTT and the RR so we were freezing when we were done! Of course, after we finished those two events, the clouds cleared and the sun came out and it turned to a nice evening. Between the TTT and the RR, we were all freezing and everything we had was soaked, so we had to remedy that somehow or the RR would have been quite uncomfortable to say the least! So what did we do? We headed into town to find the nearest laundromat to dry all of our stuff. We didn't care about washing it, but we wanted it dry.

Our team and a bunch of other teams stormed
the local laundromat to use the dryers.

After we finally got all the clothes dry, we headed back to our pit area to get ready for the road race. We have three groups that race, the A's, B's, and C's. A's are the fast guys, B's a little slower, and C's a little slower than the B's. I race with the B's and we ended up doing about 45 miles (they shortened it because of the weather which was a welcomed decision!).

Here is a pic of the start of the TTT. From left to right there's me, Brian, and Russell.

Here's a pic of the road race and I'm the one on the far right with the yellow sleeve wearing a red and gray helmet.



And one last pic of the RR, this is the B peloton coming up a short climb to turn around the corner and head up the next hill. Notice our support vehicles following us. It was a well organized race.





And of course, after the road race, it was time to hit the town of Fort Collins for some good, warm food and fun. We ate at Coopersmith's Pub and Brewery which had some darn good food! Here's Jin chowing down on a big buffalo burger. And another pic of Me, Gina, and Brian waiting for our food to get there.











The next day was Sunday and the crit was scheduled to start at 8:00 am for the C group. The B group went off later sometime around 9:30am. It was a beautiful day with temps in the 60's in the morning and rising to around 70 in the afternoon.... just perfect for a bike race. In the B group, I ended up placing 5th in the oval crit and was pretty pleased with that!

Here's the start of the B group at the oval crit, I'm in there somewhere in the middle just a few guys back.








There I am, with Russ, waiting for the starting whistle.









In the B crit, there were about 3 bad wrecks. Two were caused by a wheel touch and one was caused by a guy cutting a corner too sharp and the peloton not giving him enough room. All 3 were pretty bad, but a wheel touch on a prim lap right near the start/finish line was the worst. I saw the wheel touch a little in front and to the left of me a couple of guys over. I saw the guy start to go down and I veered right to try and avoid it. As he fell into the other guys, they fell towards me and I was pinched up near the curb. Luckily, as the guy next to me went down, I was able to move to the right far enough so that as he went down, his helmet just barely hit my left foot. It wobbled me a bit, but I kept the rubber side down luckily. Here's a picture of him after the race.



Another guy that went down got his finger caught in the spokes of a wheel and the spokes took the tip of his finger right off, ouch!



more pics can be found here

Finally, some diesel advertising!

Well, when I came across this site, I just had to post it. In my opinion, the only reason diesels have not taken off in the US is because we rely so heavily on what we're fed by the media in this country. The advertising (about diesels) that comes from manufacturers of diesel cars is nearly non-existent which does not help the situation. The US public is not informed about the cleanliness, power, longevity, and sheer fun of driving an economical diesel-engined car. When compared to gasoline engines, you can look at diesels in two different lights. The first is that because they get 30-50% better fuel economy, you will immediately use 30-50% less fuel while maintaining the same power and torque as a gasoline car. The second way to look at it is that you get 30-50% more power from a diesel engine that gets the same mileage as a gasoline engine. Either way you look at it, it's beneficial to drive a diesel car. Then throw BIODIESEL into the mix and you have a very powerful car that is also running off of a completely renewable, green energy source. There's a statistic that has been quoted stating that if only one in three light trucks (i.e. sport utilities and light-duty pickups) had a diesel engine, we could stop importing oil completely from Saudi Arabia!! Why doesn't the American public realize this? I don't know. In part I think it is because the car manufacturers don't advertise or push the technology enough. The other part is that other technologies (e.g. hybrid) have been put in the limelight and have been falsely praised. They do not get near the MPG that they're rated at (whereas diesels always do) and they're so complex that they're expensive to purchase and build.

It would be so simple for the US manufacturers to start putting more diesels in the cars offered here. In fact, most US manufacturers already offer diesel engines in the same cars in other countries, just not here! The rest of the world is driving around in SUV's that are getting 25 MPG and cars that get over 50 MPG thanks to diesel engines which are not offered here. Everybody says we're addicted to oil, but we are offered no alternatives in this country.

Finally, auto manufacturers are beginning to see the value of diesel technology (just as Europe has for decades) and we're getting some diesel technology offered to us. Many manufacturers are releasing diesel engines in certain models in 2008 that are as clean as gasoline engines! Thanks to brands like Mercedes Benz, VW, and Audi, this is becoming a reality in the US.

Another snowy ride at 9:30 am

Today the same snowstorm that has been wreaking havoc on the West coast hit us here in Utah. When I left for school, it had just started to snow (at 8:00 am) and when I was going home at 9:30am, it was snowing pretty good. It kept up all day and now we have a good solid 6" of snow. It's supposed to keep snowing through tomorrow and Saturday too. Should be a good time!

Snowy Bike Ride

Riding home from lab today was interesting. What more can I say, I wish I would have had the camera with me during the ride, but pictures right when I got home will suffice! There were plenty of witnesses though, haha. It was coming down fast and hard, I looked like a snowman when I got home!

Click on the thumbnails for more detail.

One Less Car

The short phrase above is a common phrase among cyclists the world over. It's our own (sometimes arrogant sounding) way of saying how much better bikes can be compared to cars. Well, I don't always agree with that notion, but in many cases, the bike will get you around faster and more efficiently than a car would. Those that live in large, dense cities know this much better than the rest of us!

For me at the particular time, "One Less Car" literally means one less car, i.e. we sold the Audi and now have "one less car" than we did before. We are now down to a grand total of 1 automobile in our household and even with winter storms and long distances traveled (I work 40 miles from home) we haven't had any major problems with only having one car. On top of that, the one car that we do have is a VW TDI so it gets near 50 MPG regularly and costs under $50/month for insurance. AND it's more fun to drive than the Audi was! Because of the longevity and reliability of the diesel engine, I don't plan on having to fix it near as much as a gasoline car either!

Winter Commuting

We finally had the first storm and really cold weather hit us this year. Temperatures haven't gotten above freezing for the past 3 or 4 days. The mornings have been roughly -11°C (12°F) but right now (10:00 am) it's a balmy -3°C (26°F) so the ride to school this morning should be nice, cough.

Due to the snow and cold, I decided it was time to put away the slick tires for the winter and switch over to the cyclocross knobbies.

They've been working great and the commute has been good on them so far. I also couldn't live without the fenders, they keep me dry and also keep the salt off me. Now for some pics of the dirty yet efficient rig.

UTA Frontrunner - Commuter Rail

After way too long, Salt Lake City and the adjoining areas of the Wasatch Front are finally getting a commuter rail line. When all is said and done, it will run from Davis County (up North) to Provo (and maybe even further South). After Salt Lake City killed the two amazing train stations that it had to it's name, it was time for another one to take the place of the other two (Rio Grande and Union Pacific).
The new inter-modal hub is just the ticket and is pretty cool although if somebody was thinking straight they would have converted one of the existing train stations in all their glory and turned it into the inter-modal hub. Oh well, I can always dream that someone might think in the long-term, right?

Anyway, I was riding out to eat lunch with Gina out at Franklin-Covey and as I was riding over the 400 railway overpass, I looked to my right towards the inter-modal hub and saw a gathering of people around a new Frontrunner train car! They weren't supposed to have those cars for another year! I quickly turned around (dodging traffic of course) and headed over to "investimagate" with the trusty point and shoot camera in tow.

Once I got there I saw that it was a small press conference for the Proposition #3 "Rails and Roads." It was exciting to see and I got to go inside and take a look around the two story rail car. It was quite comfortable and will even be equipped with Wi-Fi capability! It's planned that it will travel at about 85 MPH, so that will help lure people to it because it will be faster than driving. The section from Davis County should be done sometime next year from what I hear with the SLC to Provo section being completed by 2010 or so. Proposition #3 will help speed this along.











Finally, I gotta throw in a couple of pics of the bike and the ride.

Finally got a VW TDI!!

Gina and I finally got a Volkswagen TDI. To be more specific, we got a black Jetta GLS 1.9L TDI. We have been looking for one that we could afford for quite some time now. The problem is the TDI engined cars are hard to find around here, so I mostly looked on ebay, autotrader, and some automotive forums. Finally I decided to just look around on a few of the Craigslist sites for the larger cities. When I checked Dallas I found one that had just been posted only minutes earlier. We quickly called on it and the guy couldn't believe we were so fast! We took the necessary precautions and finally sent him the money, then we had to figure out how to get it home. Shipping it would have cost quite a bit, and after we looked into plane tickets, we found that they were about the same price as shipping it. Gina and I needed a good excuse for a getaway for our 3rd year anniversary too, so that's what we did. We flew to Dallas, picked up the car and drove it 1266 miles home to Salt Lake City. When we got there, I checked the car out with my VAG-COM and laptop and everything checked out. The seller split the cost on a timing belt change with me, so that saved us a bunch in repair costs because it hadn't been done until I told him to do it. I checked the timing with the computer and it was perfect and there were no fault codes. We got in the car and drove away after the final inspection. Filled up at the nearest station and we were on our way.

We drove immediately to the other side (West) of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and got a hotel. At 5am the next morning we were off to visit Polly (Gina's Aunt) who lives in Lubbock, TX. After the roughly 300 miles to Lubbock, we still had half a tank left, but I was just dying to see what kind of gas mileage we were getting. First half tank was 44MPG. After lunch and a visit with Polly and JoAnn, we were off to Santa Fe. We got to Santa Fe with just a little daylight left so we went into the old town and ate and window shopped a bit, then it was off to our B&B outside the city. It was called Hacienda las Barrancas and it was absolutely beautiful. The stars were amazing as it was a clear night so we sat outside for a bit, then built a fire in our room and went to bed. The next morning we weren't to eager to leave after the wonderful breakfast and great hospitality. We hung out on the property for a while which has amazing views at the end of some short walks. Then it was back in the car to go home. We didn't need to fill up again until Cortez, Colorado. Checking the MPG there, it turns out we averaged about 47 MPG for that tank (mostly 80-85mph).

We hit some crazy hailstorm in Moab but after that it was smooth sailing. The car drove great and feels really solid. It should cut our fuel bill in half, so we are pretty excited. Ahh, the beauty and engineering of a diesel engine! Oh yeah, and it's more fun to drive than the Audi!

Audi Stars and Cars Event

The other night was the Audi Stars and Cars event at Strong Audi here in Salt Lake. They had the new Audi R10 TDI Le Mans racecar there with two of the drivers that won the actual 24 Hours of Le Mans race this past month. My dad and I went to it and it was pretty amazing to see that car up close and personal. It sure is a technological marvel! I won a book signed by Emanuele Pirro and Frank Biela as well as got two free tickets to the practice sessions on Thursday night. It was awesome to hear that car in person. Here's a link to a video of the R10 at the Grand Prix of Utah

and here are some pictures.