Three Foot Law

This post is for all those who drive a car in Utah. Today as I was riding down Wasatch Drive near the University of Utah Campus, coming up to Foothill Drive a lady driving a car started creeping up on me on the left as I coasted down the hill. I noticed that she was pretty close to me, but I have gotten used to that. She continued to pass me and as she got about half way past me she pulled over even closer to me pushing me off into the gutter. I recovered and she had to stop for the line of cars that were also in the left-hand turn lane but I don't even think she saw me and she was the one that passed me!

So, for all those drivers out there, here's what Utah law says about passing someone on a bicycle.

An operator of a motor vehicle may not knowingly, intentionally, or recklessly operate a motor vehicle within three feet of a moving bicycle

And here's the link: Utah Three Foot Law

The Commute

So now that I am working full time down in Orem (an hour south of Salt Lake City where I live) I have to be to work by 7:00 am. There are a couple of problems with this, one is I don't like driving a car to commute, I think it's a waste of a great car. Two, I don't want to waste an hour of my day in the car when I could be riding my bike. Three, I go against the flow of rush hour traffic so the buses and mass transit are infrequent and slow. So, to make the most of a bad situation, I use a combination of my bike, the car, the bus, and the train. On Tuesday and Thursday I work in a cardiovascular physiology lab at the U of U campus (in SLC) at 7:30am. Then at 11:00am, I leave there and make a quick sprint down the hill to the train. I hop on the train and take it to the Sandy City at the South end of the valley where my car is parked. I then drive over the Point of the Mountain to Utah Valley. On Tues/Thur, I usually have to drive all the way to work to get there in time.

On Mon/Wed/Fri, I leave my house around 5:30 am and ride either all the way to Sandy where I get in my car to drive over the Point of the Mountain. Then I park in Utah Valley and ride the rest of the way into work by bike. Sometimes I catch the train about halfway to Sandy if I feel tired. Either way, it's a great way to travel and it cuts my gas mileage, car wear and tear, and commuting cost in half. I ride all public trasportation for free because I'm a student. On the way home, I just travel the route backwards. Here are some pics coming home yesterday afternoon. Welcome to the "City," what views, eh?

Intermountain Cycling

Just thought I would make a post about my website:

http://www.intermountaincycling.com

It's a site dedicated to the cycling community along the Wasatch Front in Utah. It hosts a database of road cycling routes along the Wasatch Front. It is slowly expanding as new ride routes are submitted by others in the community and also by me. My goal is to expand it to include most of Utah and some neighboring states also. I intend to make it a place of reference for anyone who is looking for ideas of where to ride in the area. I include elevation gain, distance, directions, road grades, as well as some history of each area when I can. If you check it out, be sure to submit a route if you have a favorite that is not listed or if you have a variation on one that is currently listed.

Freeheeler's day

Brad Tanner took me up Farmington Canyon to ski near Bountiful Peak. It was a beautiful day with amazingly deep powder on every run. Avalanche danger was a little high, but we treaded lightly and picked our runs well. We also went prepared with beacons, etc. We ended up making three runs on the ridges just below Bountiful peak. They were long hikes, but well worth it! Here are some shots of some runs during the day.


The ridge just below Bountiful peak (the peak
is out of the picture on the left). If you look,
you can see the cornices off the top of the ridge.

Me on the last run of the day, look at that powder!

Brad Tanner leading the way. You can see the
same ridge that's in the picture above.

We unexpectedly came upon a group of cabins,
here's one of them that was about half buried.

A couple more of me


Steep, but not exactly "deep."

NetDocuments and LexisNexis Alliance

Well, after years of planning and negotiation, the company that I work for (NetDocuments) finally partnered with Lexis Nexis for real!! NetDocuments is a web-based document management system that was started by Ken Duncan, Lee Duncan (my dad), and Alvin Tedjamulia along with other employees from Softsolutions. It's finally a public partnership now and here's the link to the Yahoo Finance article about it. NetDocuments and LexisNexis Partnership

I can't believe it finally happened, we finally got a break :D Below is a snippet of what is said in the article:

Designed and developed as an on-demand document service for the Web, the NetDocuments service is the first Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering for documents. The alliance between LexisNexis and NetDocuments will offer law firms of all sizes a fully-featured document and email management service with built-in extranet capability, disaster recovery, archival and records management services. The NetDocuments' patented and scalable technology provides a centralized repository for documents, emails and records where law firms can have a single-repository "one firm view" across geographically dispersed offices and access information from any Internet-connected device, including Blackberry® and Outlook®.

Orem High vs. Timpview Games (clickable thumbnails)

My little sister, Michelle, plays on the Orem High girls' basketball team and her boyfriend, Craig, plays for on the boys' team. I went to try my hand at basketball photography the other night at their games. Some of the pics turned out alright so I was pretty happy. The boys ended up winning in an intense game and the girls ended up barely losing after a good game. Here are some pictures of Craig and Michelle.





















Don't you love high school basketball?

Fixed Gear Bike (Click on thumbs for larger images)

Well, I haven't blogged in a long time, but since I just finished my fixed gear bike I thought I would put some details up here about it. It's a 1966 Bottecchia frame that is in great condition except for the paint. There is only a little bit of surface rust on it and it rides like a dream.

The story goes... We were at a family reunion at my Uncle's house when there was a little lull in the evening. I headed out to the garage to relive some of the memories that I had of that place when I was younger. As I was just rummaging around, I glanced up in the rafters and noticed the front fork of the bike. I found a ladder and my cousin and I climbed up and brought it down all nice and dusty. I personally don't know if it had been touched since 1966. It was the frame, fork, headset, and handlebars, just what I needed to make my fixie project as cheap as possible. After I got it home, I stripped it down and cleaned it really good. Then I rebuilt the headset with some nice new Phil Wood grease. I had already built up my rear wheel - a Sun rim mated to a 36 hole Suzue flip-flop hub. I put it all together with parts that I had laying in the garage and others that I swiped from my other bikes that I didn't ride very much and bada bing. There was the fixie in all its glory. I don't have a picture of it just yet, but I'll be sure to put one up here within the next few days.


Now that I know it fits me well, I need to repaint it. I still don't know what color I want to paint it, but I definately want to keep it classic. I'm even going to redo the stickers and have some new ones made to go in the original spots. I haven't put any brakes on it yet, so it's kind of sketchy riding it around these hills, haha. Anyway, there'll be pics up here real soon.

Audi R10 Diesel Le mans Racecar

Just thought I'd post another link I found about the Audi R10 Le Mans racecar. I just can't wait to see the trickle down effect from this old technology that could be revolutionized and brought into the mainstream if Audi does well. Exciting stuff!!

Audi R10 Le Mans Racecar

DIESEL!!!

Compression ignition engines - the best overlooked invention in the mass automobile industry.

In early 1892, Rudolph Diesel filed for a patent with the patent office in Germany for an idea that he had. It was an engine that would compress the air in the combustion chamber to such a degree that it would become hot enough to ignite fuel. The fuel of choice and the basis for his vision was peanut oil. He chose peanut oil because farmer's would be able to grow it themselves and be more self-sufficient. Unfortunately, in the 1900's, the internal combustion engine came into the mix. Running on petroleum based gasoline, it had the backing of the "oil tycoons." They pushed it and over the course of a few years and many political issues, gasoline became the fuel of choice in the USA. Dirty, inefficient, expensive, fossil-fuel gasoline is what everybody wanted because the oil companies pushed it. Europe continued to research and push combustion ignition engines, and in the oil crisis of the 70's, the USA finally started looking towards more efficient types of engines. Combustion ignition engine sales skyrocketed and even the American car manufacturers started offering these efficient engines in their passenger cars. Unfortunately, the oil crisis was short lived and America once again forgot how dependent it is on foreign oil. Thus, the efficient engines like diesel engines were not wanted any more. Nobody felt the need to be conservative and hence, the fuel conserving diesels all but went away in the USA. Only Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen still imported diesel engine passenger cars to the US.

Now with people finally starting to realize the need for a cleaner, more efficient engine, we are turning towards fuel saving vehicles once again. Many have come on the market, e.g. hybrids, electrics, smaller engined cars, turbocharged cars, and hydrogen fuel is becoming a possibility, etc. These have all helped to offer more choices to efficiency-minded consumers, however most of them require a change in the infrastructure that already exists for fueling our cars. Hydrogen needs aa completely different storage and dispensing system, hybrids have batteries that must be replaced every few years at rediculous costs, electrics are the same way, and many electrically driven cars (hybrid or full electric) pose problems for rescue crews who are not yet trained to handle high voltages in car accidents. All of these problems can be solved, but the solution will cost millions if not billions of dollars to our economy.

Diesel engines on the other hand would not require any changes to the infrastructure that we are used to. One would still be able to pull up to the pump and pump their fuel from the same tanks and pumps. One step better than using petroleum based diesel fuel would be a move back to what Rudolph Diesel himself had envisioned - crop based fuel. Today, biodiesel fuel is beginning to be mass produced; it is usually derived from soy bean oil here in the US and comes in different mixtures. B100 is 100% biodiesel (soy-based), B20 is a little more common (20% soy-based, 80% petroleum based), and it goes all the way down to B2.

Biodiesel is cleaner burning, doesn't produce polluting exhaust and is generally cheaper than regular petroleum diesel fuel. It also doesn't rely on anything foreign to produce it, it just helps to keep the US farmers in business!! In my opinion it is a complete joke that more car manufacturers don't start pushing this type of technology just to see how the government will react. On the other hand, the government needs to push it more because it would ultimately help to boost the agricultural economy.

Anyway, back to the actual diesel technology.... Audi, the german car manufacturer, has been winning Le Mans races with it's R8 racecar. They have won 5 out of 6 Le Mans series that they have been in. The Le Mans governing body continues to put restrictions on the cars so that Audi will stop winning, but Audi continues to lead and stay in front of the pack. This upcoming year Audi plans to race their new R10 racecar which will be fueled by a diesel engine. It is the first race car of it's type to run on diesel fuel ever!! It produces plenty of horsepower and torque so it can easily compete in speed and quickness. And, because it utilizes compression ignition technology, it gets better fuel economy than the competition. In Le Mans style racing, the fuel economy is almost as important as the car itself because it is such a long race that generally needs lots of time-consuming pit stops. With Audi needing even fewer pit stops, it will once again give them an edge over the competition. GO AUDI!!! I'll be watching next year for sure!!

Here's some eye candy of some amazing compression ignition engines that are on the high tech edge.

Here's the Audi R10 engine:


Here's the R10 itself:


And lastly, here's the International motors 3.0L powerstroke engine. It was designed completely in Brazil and features a high performance turbo-charger and it was one of the earlier engines to utilize common rail technology:

Sebastião Salgado - Exodus

First of all, this guy is my idol. I heard about him a few years back before I went to Brazil on my LDS mission and since then, he has earned my respect as one of the best and most talented photographers anywhere. His work is absolutely riveting, to say the least, and it will open anyone's eyes to what people go through in the world.

He has an exhibit going at the Salt Lake City Library at "The Leonardo" and it goes through December 17, 2005. It's called "Exodus."

IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY GONE TO IT, GO ASAP!!!

Humanity is on the move, urgently, chaotically…Today, almost everything that happens on earth is somehow connected.
-Sebastião Salgado

Here's one of Salgado's photos of a Rwandan refugee camp in Benako, Tanzania. 1995


The Kamaz camp for displaced Afghans. Mazar-e äarif, Afghanistan. 1996