van Marley

Greetings race fans,
It’s been quit a week, which is good, because I felt a serious lack of scandal in my life what with Ken Lay keeling over and Paris Hilton maintaining a low profile, despite proof that she has never changed her facial expression. Linsdey Lohan DID get publicly chastised for being a drunkard and ruining production of her latest pic this week, but allegedly retorted, “at least I’m 11-teen times more expressive than Paris is.”

In race news, Sergey Lagutin off team Navigators took the oveall victory in Altoona ahead of Chris Baldwin (Toyota-United), and Andre Bajadali who is proving his jump to Jelly Belly was a good one (wasn’t this guy on Vitamin Cottage last year?)

For the Girls, Kristin Armstrong (Lipton) proved too strong and topped the podium with Alex Wrubleski (Can) Team Biovail and Shannon Willock (Can) Webcor-Platinum rounding out the top 3.

Meanwhile, there was this scandal in Europe.

Enough about all that. Let’s talk about some of the gems on the net this week.

Randomness vol 1, episode 4

Randomness 4.1 - Cycling Anime
Category: Bike Stuff

If your anything like me, you’ve griped countless times about the lack of cycling comics available. Well, fret no more. In keeping with this month’s apparent Japanese theme, I stumbled across this great site run by Yoshida Kuniko. Kuniko-san takes the daily/weekly cycling news and turns it into an illustrated comic that is a mix of the real and her own imagination. At least thats how she explained it to me in her email via her husband who speaks pretty damn good English. I dunno, I can’t read any of the site, but I love the idea of it.

More at GamiGame

Randomness 4.2 - Bad Ass Rides For Bad Ass Guys
Category: Bad Ass

Seeing as my racing days are going to be numbered for awhile until I finish school, I’m looking at other aspects of cycling to enjoy. It’s no secret I’m a big fan of the chopper scene.

Someday I too will have the absolute dopest ride around, designed and manufactured by my buddy Brink up in Montana. I seriously encourage you to check out www.pedalhawg.com and order one today and become the coolest kid in your town.

Three Hawgs, Missoula, MT. (Brink not pictured)

Randomness 4.3 - Asphalt Shredder
Category: Bad Ass

More in the category of toys I don’t need but will buy anyway…
I was talking with two friends today about snowboarding and how expensive Mammoth is ($68 a day and a 6 hour drive make it a tough regular activity.) Then I remembered reading drooling over the freeboard and I think I’m going to have to order one after I move to SD.

Visit the company website and watch the video. It’s beyond rad, especially the part where the narrator explains, “and you can be going 50 mph and stop in about 2 seconds,” as the young man narrowly avoids becoming a Freeboard hood ornament on a SUV.

I think you’ll agree that this will become a part of the off season training program for a lot of riders.

Freeboard web site

The intro is a bit slow but it pics up after that.

Well kids, the Tour is over, Floyd is the new champion, and the doctors are getting ready to saw his hip off. That’s a bit morbid, but on a lighter side, check out Phil Zajicek’s post from back in the day when he and Floyd rode on Mercury together.

And now, without haste I present to you more…
Randomness - Vol 1, Episode 3 -

Randomness 3.1 - Cycling - It’s Just a Bunch of Propaganda! - Well, this wasn’t exactly on the internet, although, you can get them for free if you buy something from the Discovery web site right now.

I had dinner with a friend in downtown LA in Little Tokyo the other night and stumbled upon these propaganda style posters plastered on a wall. It was kind of cool to see cycling marketed along side concerts announcements, Gucci, and Toyota ads.

Randomness 3.2 - Make the Most of Your Air Miles
While preparing for my trip to Japan next month, I’ve come across some helpful travel related sites. Webflyer.com has some good info on making the most of your air miles.

Why Japan in August during the most god-awful humid and hottest time of the year? Well, because school starts soon and it’s really the only time I have. I’ve been studying it for the past 2 semesters at Santa Monica College and figure I better put it to good use or I’ll forget it all. I’m a big fan of Iron Chef and Most Extreme Challenge, which I highly recommend if you have Spike TV. It’s no longer on the air in Japan, but my friends tell me it was sort of like Survivor, but with more injuries and a lot less money.

Plus, any country where this is aired on TV is top on my list for travel destinations:

Greetings once again, and wow, two weeks in a row with updates! I’m really over doing myself. Very interesting stuff this week (OK, maybe only mildly interesting…)

Randomness - Vol 1, Episode 2

Randomness 2.1 - Autisitic describes inner workings of his brain. No really!

“I’m lucky,” he says, “because most others who have rare abilities are also seriously disabled.”

Two years ago, Tammet became famous for reciting pi to 22,514 decimal places with the same ease that the rest of us can reel off 3.142. Even more remarkably, he says he could still do it: his memory is not only extraordinarily capacious, it also retains everything.

In a documentary last year, he again demonstrated his numerical powers, this time by breaking the bank in Las Vegas, never having played blackjack before. And now he has done something that, for a man who describes words as “his second language”, is even more remarkable: he has written a book. Read more

Randomness 2.2 - You Sank My Battleship!

Outgrown your favorite Milton-Bradley naval warfare game? Are those pesky red and white pegs not cutting it for you anymore? Well why not play the old classic in the real world with high tech GPS systems and Google Earth? Some guy has used a little Python programming savvy to do just that. Is that a Destroyer on Santa Monica and 4th ave? Just use your GPS connected cell phone to call in a few bombs. If you hit, it will show up on the game board, er, Google map. Read more

Randomness 2.3 - Adam Carolla Hangs Up on Ann Coulter

Love line was a staple in my radio diet for many years - Carolla’s insight and analogies have served as beacons over the years, (and I’m excluding that lame, overly scripted stint where they were on MTV.) I haven’t had the chance to follow him on his new gig as Stern’s west coast replacement, but after hearing this, I might have to start! Listen to the “very first interview where that bi$(& didn’t actually say something offensive”

CYCLING
Big rides over the weekend for some of the Missing Saddle bloggers:

Props to, Burke Swindlehurst, for scoring a nice win at Cascade. Likewise for Trent Wilson, Austin King, and team for some solid rides and a first team victory for Jittery Joes by Neil Shirley. You can catch Trent’s audioblog updates from Cascade here.

Out in Wisconsin, Pete Lopinto of Kodakgallery.com/Sierra Nevada took the Bensenville stage with some help from teammate Dan Schmatz.

And of course, there’s the one and only Dave Z, reporting live from the Tour.

The first and only DVD I have ever purchased to date was Team America — Willard was right in calling it quite possibly the greatest movie of all time. After talking like Spottswoode for two weeks straight (he was the boss) — I thought I had gotten all that out of my system. Until now…

It seems Z’s audioblog updates are all the rage, and an eager fan emailed me this song they made. I thought it was some funny f#&@ sh!@, and I’m sure you will too.

iTunes Format:
WARNING! This song contains the F-word. If your tender ears can’t handle that, then avoid clicking on this link.

Well, here I am, once again getting around to updating my blog - it’s not for lack of desire. Working on missingsaddle.com results in enough time spent in front of the computer, doing homework pretty much kills whatever motivation may remain.

But enough whining! My mid-summer resolution is to update my blog at least once a week. In addition to my regular collection of poems, op-eds, literary works and essays you find posted here, I will be scouring the internet for the latest and greatest in tech news, cycling, and anything else that seems even mildly amusing.

And with that, I hereby launch my first article of what will be a regular weekly feature titled, “Randomness” - mildly entertaining, and typically quite useless discoveries scattered across the internet.

Here goes:
Randomness vol 1., episode 01, 07.10.06

Random Find #1 - Math Fun
School may be out for summer (especially if you dropped out of Pre-Calculus to work on a web site), but that doesn’t mean the fun has to end!
Check out the web based function grapher.
Nerd Score: 10/10 | G-Whiz Score:7/10

Randomn Find #2 - Craigslist + Google Maps
If you’re in the market for a new apartment like I am, then you’ll bookmark this link right away. It combines Craigslist listings with Google maps so you can see exactly where all the vacancies are. Switch to hybrid view to get a glimpse of the neighborhood. You can pretty much skip the Saturday a.m. drive by. Visit Housingmaps
Cool Factor: 10/10 | Usefulness: 10/10

Random Find #3 - PayPal Mobile
Buy shit with your phone! Got bills? Debts? Need to split prize money but nobody has change? Now you can simply text msg cash to anyone with a cell phone (they’ll need to set up a paypal account if they don’t have one already.) This isn’t exactly breaking news — it was announced in March of this year — but we we’re barely up and running back then. Log into your paypal account to set up, or Read more here
Cool Factor: 9/10 | Usefulness: 7/10

I had to deduct some Usefulness points until the day arrives when I’m able to use it for the bus, vending machines and grocery stores - basically all the places i get screwed after forgetting my wallet, or forgetting I don’t have cash in my wallet.

Update: It appears the mobile phone-as-bank is finally taking off. CNN posted a story today about it.