This is a Transportation Alternatives sponsored mural in the Gowanus area, on Butler Street and 3rd Ave. The painting depicts 3 children who have been killed by cars and trucks along 3rd Avenue. According to the Gowanus Lounge, "[t]he project was inspired by the tragic death of James Rice--who was struck and killed by a Hummer at Third Avenue and Baltic Street on his way home from pre-school in February--and many other children that have been injured and killed by cars."

More information about the mural is available at the Groundswell Mural Project.

I had a little down time this evening, so I decided to make a pair of musettes (cycling feed bags). The left one is made from an pair of cotton cargo pants. It's a little heavy, so I won't be using that one on the bike. Should make a decent bag for walking around on foot. The one on the right is made from some very light denim. I can see carrying that on the bike. Both straps are made from webbed belts.

The winners of Specialized's Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine competition have been selected. The Aquaduct Mobile Filtration Vehicle was invented by five students from California: Adam Mac, Brian Mason, John Lai, Paul Silberschatz, and Eleanor Morgan.

The Aquaduct transports, filters, and stores water for the developing world. A peristaltic pump attached to the pedal crank draws water from a large tank, through a carbon filter, to a smaller clean tank. The clean tank is removable and closed for contamination-free home storage and use. A clutch engages and disengages the drive belt from the pedal crank, enabling the rider to filter the water while traveling or while stationary.

This movie gave me the chills, thinking about how design can be used to improve living conditions, and in this case, truly revolutionize how peoples basic needs are met. Simply brilliant and inspiring.

You know how they say you should tell someone that you're planning to do something so that it becomes real like a contract? Like, if I say aloud to my friends and family, I'm going to run the NYC Marathon this year, then it makes it easier to stay committed to doing it and not backing out of the commitment. Well, I've been sitting on this design for my bike blog for a while, so I'm putting it up here to remind me to get it out.

And since Drupal 5 is out, I've got no reason to procrastinate anymore. Coming very soon.

I rode my last cycling event of the year yesterday. The Pumpkin Patch Pedal is a nice flat century that is ridden in the Jamesburg/Monroe areas of New Jersey. On the route you pass lots of farms, horse stables, pretty residential areas, and of course, pumpkin patches. To add to the experience, some rest areas feature pumpkin and apple pie!

Unfortunately the day was rainy, so I elected to take the 1/2 century route. The first 2 1/2 hours were ridden in rain and my feet, once again, were soaked as they were in the North Fork Century. I have to invest in some waterproof booties. The Twin Lights ride was offered on the same weekend, but I took this one because a sinus infection kept me from it last year. I'd like to ride it in nice weather one year. Maybe next year. If that one rains on me or I get sick again, I'll take it as a sign to stay away, :)

I rode in 4 century rides this year, only completing 100 miles for 2 of them because of rain. On the Northfork I did 80 and the Pumpkin Patch was 50. I'm hoping for a better, drier season in 2007.

It was a beautiful day for the 2006 NYC Century. This year I got there on time and finished in 7 hours 22 minutes moving time. I captured this year's ride on my Garmin Forerunner 301. Below is the data from the MotionBased record which you can view for a while before it gets archived. The GPS data seemed to be a bit off because it recorded under 100 miles when the route is apparently more than 100.

I also exported the route's map data so you can view the route in Google Maps.

It's a bit of a slow century, because of all of the city traffic lights. One nice thing about knowing how to trackstand is that you don't have to clip in and out at all of them. This year I had fun, didn't bonk and felt great at the end! We even got to ride a lap or two at the Kissena Velodrome. I got one flat, from a rear wheel slice on that awful bike path on the East Side. But, it was a great day otherwise. I started at 6:20AM and finished at 3PM. I didn't take any photos, but you can see other people's on flickr.

Got email today about The Amazon Affiliates aStore Beta, which will let affiliates create quick and dirty stores using Amazon's inventory. Their design tool lets you select featured products and then use keywords to add categories of products. Then you can modify the colors and point people to the store or serve in an iframe.

Here's the nice design interface. Looks a bit like a wireframe.

I'd been thinking about separating my cycling blog and events calendar from urlgreyhot, so I quickly threw together a cycling aStore to see how it works. Check it out at LOVE+SPROCKETS.

Pretty quick. Took me about an hour to throw that together.

Yesterday was the big day for the Team In Training Montauk century for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. It was a beautiful, sunny day on Long Island.

I completed the 102 miles in 6 hours, 2 minutes. The only bump in the day was about 45 minutes lost to a blown tire which I had to replace at a local bike store in the lovely little town of Bellport. Otherwise, from there on out it was a smooth ride with my amazing TNT teammates to Montauk. In all, our small group from the New York City chapter raised over $104,000 at last count thanks to the extremely generous support of friends, family and colleagues and will be used to help accelerate cures for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma and bringing increased hope to the patients and families who are battling these diseases. My donors and I ended up bringing in $3,060!

If you'd like to join Team In Training, you can learn more by visiting http://www.teamintraining.org.

Just posted my Cannondale R900 for sale on Craigslist.

I've been using Crank Brothers Eggbeater pedals on my fixed gear bike since the Fall and decided at the beginning of the year to use them on my newly built up road bike. If you aren't familiar with them, the diminutive Eggbeater pedals are typically used on Mountain Bikes and have a single spring interface allowing 4-sided entry. They are elegant, simply designed pedals and because of the open design of the clips, they allow mud to easily be cleared, a bonus for off road riders. You can read a good review of the pedals here.

So I 've been using these pedals for the past 6 months. They are working fine for the short, flat city riding I do around town on my fixie and even performed well on the training rides I've been doing on my road bike in Central and Prospect Parks. But in the last few weeks, I've been doing hillier training rides on Route 9W and River Road and have started to feel hot spots on my feet.

If you don't know what they are, hot spots refer to the the sore and hot feeling you get on your feet at the point where your shoe cleats make contact with the pedal. As you can see from the image of the Eggbeaters above, the pedal only makes contact with your shoes on the two horizontal points that engage the cleat. This is fine most of the time for me, but when I do longer rides or when I mash down on the pedals a little more on climbs, I've started to feel the hot spots. So, of course, I've been reading around on the forums to see if other people are having this experience.

Turns out that some other roadies do get hot spots with Eggbeaters. Some of these folks really like the simplicity of the Eggbeater design, as I do, and are reluctant to go with other pedals. So what a few people have suggested is to look at the Crank Brothers Quattro SL Road Pedals, a shoe made for roadies that features the same single spring clip interface, but also includes a platform to make contact with your shoe. Sounded like a decent idea, so I got interested in buying a set. Problem is, I ride with Sidi Dominator 5 Mega shoes, a cleated mountain bike shoe, and I was worried that the rubber cleats on the side of the shoe would interfere with the pedal platforms. I contacted Crank Brothers to see if that was the case, and sure enough it is. The photo below shows where the cleats make contact with the pedal.

I'm not about to keep switching cleats on my pedals and definitely won't drop more money on a second pair of shoes. Luckily, the folks at Crank Brothers told me that it is possible to use the Sidi Dominators with the Quattro if I modify the shoe so that the rubber cleat on the inside of each shoe near the pedal contact is shaved down a little.

This cleat bumps into the pedal's inboard bearing cover, making it nearly impossible to clip out. The modification is really quite simple though. I took an exacto knife and shaved away the cleat at an angle that would allow the bearing cover to clear. See the photo below for cutting area. As noted in the comments by nicobot, how much and wear you shave the rubber cleats depends on the cleat position and shoe size. As you can see from the photo, my cleat is situated to the furthest back position, which happens to put it closer to the ball of my foot.

Simple modification. And now I can use my favorite shoes with a Crank Brothers pedal and be happy. So far the feel has been great. The shoe's side cleats are making contact with the pedal platform, so I'm assuming that I'll be rid of the hot spots. If that's not the case, you can be sure that I'll be bitching about it here later.