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I’m on my way to lunch today with an old CNET colleague — it’s a gorgeous, sunny day out, so I don my bike gear for the short 10 minute bike ride downtown.. And, I find this:

Some farking icehole has stolen my front bike wheel off my fixie. From inside my garage. It’s purposely not a fancy bike so that people don’t try and steal stuff off of it. I had one of those “anti-theft” skewers on there (not the quick-release ones). FECK, I’m pissed.

I mean, seriously, that’s really, really annoying… I was nearly late for lunch, so I run upstairs to grab the front wheel off my other bike, and then I realize that it’s at the shop for a tune-up. Double Feck. And of course, I can’t ride my mountain bike either. So yah, I drive downtown instead, incur like $18 in parking expenses, and am like half an hour late to lunch. ARGH.

Coincidentally, the Guardian has a story this week about my friend Max’s recovery of his stolen bike. Apparently, bike theft is a thriving industry here in San Francisco. There’s TONS of bikes around, and lots of rich people that buy super expensive bikes. And, the police doesn’t seem to care about bike thefts when there are like shootings going on (uh.. yah, that shooting was at Grove & Laguna, like 3 blocks from my house, hooray. (Aside: interesting that when you talk about a shooting, my hood is “Western Addition,” but when you talk about shopping, it’s “Hayes Valley”)

So yah.. what’s up with the recent rise in crime in the City? That’s not cool, yo. Car 54, Where are You?

Riding sans bike helmet is safer than with a helmet? Hmmm..

Walker decided to find out — putting his own neck on the line. He rigged his bicycle with an ultrasonic sensor that could detect how close each car was that passed him. Then he hit the roads, alternately riding with a helmet and without for two months, until he had been passed by 2,500 cars. Examining the data, he found that when he wore his helmet, motorists passed by 8.5 centimeters (3.35 inches) closer than when his head was bare. He had increased his risk of an accident by donning safety gear.

Statistics are fun.

[thanks james]

So, I decided not to go to Tahoe for the Thanksgiving weekend, on account of there not being enough snow to warrant an early snowboard trip.. After gorging myself on bbq’d turkey at Yangsgiving 3 (pictures forthcoming), I decided to go on a bike ride with my friend Chad, who suggested we ride up to Point Reyes Station..

So yah.. I didn’t really think much about the ride beforehand — he did mention that it would be a 80 mile ride, roundtrip, and after some quick (faulty) math in my head, I figured that I’d done in about three hours or so.. Uh.. oops. That would be wrong math. Like doubly wrong.

The ride turned out to take a little over six hours, and yah, 80 miles is a long way on a bicycle. I was exhausted afterwards, but happy that my ankle held up through the whole thing (it started getting sore somewhere around the first 10 minutes of the ride.. uh oh… but then the soreness went away after I got warmed up.. I guess that’s good, right?).. According to my cyclocomputer, I rode 84.41 miles, which is my longest ride to date. my previous best was the Pigeon Point ride, where I rode 47 miles. Wahoo! Biking is so fun. My goal of biking a century shan’t be far away, methinks..

Woo.. what a weekend… I opened the weekend with the Superstars first victory of the season. (ok, it was a forfeit, cuz the other team didn’t have enough guys, but a win’s a win.) But, we still scrimmaged, and I got my first hit of the season, an RBI single. Woo. I was 0/5 before the broken ankle, and now I’m 1/5 after the broken ankle, so statiscally speaking, the broken ankle improved my batting average.. not that I recommend it.

Anyway, Jablow, Kai and Pius share the same birthday (the 13th) and Michelle’s is this week too, so they (minus Pius, cuz his moochie-ass is back in Jersey) had a fabulous birthday celebration at Hog Island Oyster Company, which is like 50 miles north of San Francisco in Marshall, CA… Up there, you can buy sacks of oysters for like $36 bucks or something, and sit there, shuck them, drink beer, bbq and in general have a frolicking, oystery good time. Good stuff. Happy birthday Jablow, Kai, and Michelle (oh, and Pius too).

Dana organized a fabulous trip to Pigeon Point this weekend, which is about 50 miles south of San Francisco right on the California.. The Pigeon Point lighthouse has a hostel there, that we all stayed at (for which Dana has been trying for years to get reservations) — it’s $30 a night, and arguably one of the best locations for a hostel in the world… Perched right on the cliffs of the California coast, right underneath a gorgeous working lighthouse.

It was a fantastically warm, clear, fog-free night… and we even spent a few hours in the hot tub, which was perched right on the cliff’s edge. Sooo nice… True to hostelling style, we cooked a tasty dinner in the communal kitchen (although since we had a big group, we basically filled one of the houses).

Most of the folks had biked down the 1 that morning from San Francisco (about a 50 mile ride), and I decided to ride with them back up to the city on Sunday.. We took a different route back than they had taken on Saturday, so we ended up going past the San Gregorio General Store (super cool market with a bar and bluegrass music).. then up La Honda (um.. it was like a 15 miles of UPHILL riding.. ouch) to Alice’s Restaurant for lunch… Then, up Skyline to Crystal Springs (with some awesome downhill.. I hit a max speed of 39.7 mph.. woohoo).. When we reached Crystal Springs, my legs were dead tired, so instead of continuing the 25 miles back up to SF, I chickened out and dropped off the ride at my parents’ house, who convienently live like a few miles from Crystal Springs. Considering that I only just got back on my feet from my broken ankle a few weeks ago, I was happy with the 47 miles that I did.. That said, congrats to Dana, Davin, Dan, Chris, John and Mike who all did 125 miles this weekend.. that’s awesome…

I made a little wayfaring map of the part of the bike ride that I did this weekend.. granted, it doesn’t show elevation change, but I promise that there’s a HUGE hill in between the coast and the inland bits, so that’s why I’m so tired today…

Woo! It’s good to be in California.

Update: Dana posted her pics from the weekend here.