Thursday, May 29, 2008
11 Speeds
So it looks like Campagnolo will be coming out with an 11 speed group set called Super Record. When I heard about this,
I started Google-ing about this more. Since I have never used Campy before, I had to find out what's so great about
it. Specifics and pictures are scarce at the moment. Looks like Campy used this Super Record name before.
Now its back and you know its going to be Super Expensive!
With this in mind, when will 12 speed come out?
People may laugh, but folks thought 10spd was overkill...now we're going to 11. (I'm still on 9spd!!!).
My guess is that 12 speed will eventually come around and essentially eliminate the need to have a double, triple or compact
chainring. There will only be 1 chain ring...maybe a 48, 50 or 53 only. With a 12 speed cassette, you just about
have the entire range of gears available. Not only that you will save weight by not having a 2nd or 3rd chain ring and
NO front derailleur. Seem far fetched? Not really. How else would these manufacturers upsell you something
'better'? Take SRAM Force...was the best in their line for about 1/2 year. Then Red comes out. Even
better example is Walter unloading his brand new Record groupset in anticipation for Super Record. New products = more
buying. Gotta love it!!! So if you have a fleet of Campy bikes and wheels, feel good to know that Super Record
will likely NOT be backward compatible. Mo' Money, Mo' Money, Mo' Money!!!
Since I'm still
a couple of years away from a new, dream bike, I can 'afford' to let this all play out. With a new Dura Ace
group set coming out (both electronic and mechanical), its probably a good time to actually hold out until you see what each
as to offer. Or you can just buy them all as it comes out...if you do, please write a review for us :)
I
know very complex business thinking here. You heard it here first on The Juice!
6:34 am pdt
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Nice weekend afterall...
Where to start? There was alot of Orange activity this past weekend despite all the threats of rain (which never came
down during any time of the ride). On Sat, the first ever ONE charity ride stayed dry and safe. We only lost TWO
riders, so not a bad day! Since both were MMCC riders, we left them (you know who you are!). haha. But from
start to finish, it was a great event that everyone should remember. Also feel good that according to event orgainizers, our
ride alone raised enough money to build ONE house for the under-privileged in the PI. Now that's
an accomplishment!! Plus, you can't beat the
Black Eyed Peas who performed at our event.
Who knows how to throw a party?
On behalf of MMCC, we'd like to thank:
1)
Red & the Lucky Chan riders - w/o
you and your crew, there would have been no way we could have pulled this off. Hats off (or is it helmets?) to you all!
2)
El Kap & Scott - For preserving the event in pictures and video. Scott, as always
providing in-ride coverage and El Kap for providing professional quality shots from seemingly everywhere. Awesome job.
3)
El Kap & Manny S. - You guys were great in the MMCC team car. Everytime I looked
up, one of you were on the side of the road directing the peloton. Nice job!
4)
Rudy - For setting up and manning our SAG booth. Your setup there looked like a mini
7-11 store. Great job and feel free to setup booths like that on ALL our rides!! :)
5)
Mango and the Oranges - Mike, what can I say? You rocked organizing this thing.
From meetings, planning, scouting the course, you are now ready to be a full on Tour orgainizer! Special mention goes
out to Paul N. for making sure the crowds at the booth were under control. And of course all the guys in Orange who
participated and donated to the ride. Job well done!
If I forgot anyone, I apologize, but know that your contribution was not forgotten by all.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Calm before the storm
So tomorrow's the big ONE ride. The inaugural ONE Festival event coincides withe MMCC's first ever hosted cycling
ride. Sounds great except all weather forecasts call for rain, showers, and thunderstorms! We don't mess around
at MMCC...we like to provide a full outdoor riding experience. Then again, this is San Diego where rain is as likely
to happen just as much as real-estate prices going back up. You can't expect either!!
I don't even
have rain gear. I probably should go out today and get a clear riding poncho. What's the odds that any local
shop will carry rain gear in late May here in SD? Oh, and I need it by tonight!! So all riders tomorrow, bring
an extra rain jacket....that way you can give me one should I fail to find one today!
7:00 am pdt
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Secret Training
So yesterday I decided to put the running shoes away for a day and figured I should 'train' for the ONE ride coming
up. Believe it or not, I still do have a bike contrary to the rumor mill. Anyway, as I'm getting ready, I noticed
that my collection of water bottles has been 'compromised' by the babies. So instead of washing them, I go to
the garage and use a brand new bottle that I got during last year's Palomar Challenge race. So off I go towards
Poway.
As I'm riding, I use the bottle for the first time. First of all this bottle is barely squeeze-able.
Also, the the top valve is nearly impossible to open AND close. Now I know why it was a freebie!! As I pass under
the 15 freeway, I'm completely frustrated with this thing. At that point I wanted to toss this bottle ala the Pros
when they are done with it. Since I didn't want to litter, I headed towards Beyond Bikes in Carmel Mountain (closest
shop on my route) and bought 2 Camelbak Podium bottles. I have been wanting these bottles for awhile, but couldn't
justify adding to my fleet of bottles at home. Well, now I can't live w/o these new bottles. I like them so
much that I had to write a review about it.....read it
HERE.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Safari web browsers
I just noticed that when I use Apple's Safari browser on our website, some of the text do not 'look' correct.
This is due to our site being optimized primarily for Internet Explorer. I have been using Safari alot lately and noticed
that other websites do not look optimized either. So if you are using a Mac and notice our site (among others) do not
look just right, you now know why. Luckily the site's functionality is not compromised by Safari. Just some
of the text formats.
Tech Reviews
It's time for me to bug everyone again about submitting reviews. I know all you guys have new, cool stuff on your
bike. Every week I hear about so and so has a carbon this, a Ti that. I also know that Agent Al has enough new
stuff to fill our entire site with reviews, but its not fair to keep using him (but I will). The Prez is working on
one so hopefully we should have something new for next week. After that, if nobody submits, I will force you all to
read my review on Chamois Creme. I really don't want to include any pictures of application and use so don't
force me too!!!
7:26 am pdt
Upcoming weekend
Long weekend coming up. Looks like it will be a bit cooler compared to last. Our big event is Sat @ Kimball park.
If you haven't registered, please do so by this Thursday so that Mango knows how much SAG supplies to prepare.
I read some chatter that Sat's ride will be too easy for some of you mountain goats and Boonen wannabes that you're
already planning another tougher ride on either Sunday or Monday. To accomodate all riders for Sat, maybe we can do
2 groups like we usually do on our club rides. Maybe stay together as ONE group for the first 10 miles or so, then we
can break up into TWO groups :) That way we have a scenic group and a speedy group! I'll check with the Prez
to see what he thinks...he should be easy to find on Sat as he may be manning the booth at the park!
7:21 am pdt
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Hot weekend!
Must have been a hot weekend to go cycling. I wouldn't know first hand as I didn't ride again. I did log
13.1 miles outside...just not on my bike, but in my Asics :) Looks like the Orange group had a blast on Sunday with
Adobo's own Rosalie. From what I heard, good times was had by all. Hey Rosalie, you sure you don't want
to defect and ride on the Orange side? I'm sure we can find an extra kit for you! Hope to meet you at one
of our next rides.
11:03 pm pdt
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Bike to Work week
As many of you know, this week is Bike to Work week. Since my commute is walking from my bedroom to my office down
the hall, I don't get the pleasure that some of you get of riding your bike to work. I know some of you guys commute
to work daily and have dedicated commuter bikes. I think that rocks! So on that subject, I found this gem of a
bike that I showed to Mango:
Orbea DiemThis has to be the best looking commuter bike ever. Notice the disc brake setup. Unfortunately its
only available in Europe where alot of people actually commute by bike. According to a recent issue of Bicycling
magazine, less that 1% of the US population commutes by bike. Whereas, in the Netherlands, a whopping 33% commute to
work by bike. Time to relocate? :)
If you look thru the rest of this
gallery, you'll see other bad ass commuter bikes. Makes you want to ride one of those rigs to work huh?
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
ONE Ride
Had a talk with Sammy about the ride coming up on the 24th. We will treat this as a Club ride and want all MMCC members
to show up in Orange. Since this is a local event for us, we'd like to have 100% member participation if possible.
Also, we might extend the route if everyone is up to it. I will get with Mike to review the current route
so that I can map it out.
And yes, I will actually participate in a Club event!! :)
6:55 am pdt
Monday, May 12, 2008
Need some Juice
Now that the website stuff is done, I can get back into dishing out Juice. I'll go into maintanence mode now for
the Prologue and actually start 'blogging'. Who the heck made up that term anyway? You hear everyone and
their mom (I think my mom actually used that word before) saying they read it somewhere in a 'blog'. I guess
the word Journal or Diary is so last decade. It's almost used too much like the word 'bling'. When
the Cash Money Millionaires first rapped out that song "Bling, Bling", it was cool. But now you have both
Hillary Clinton and Obama both saying and/or being mentioned for having Bling. I'm even embarrassed a bit to actually
type the word Bling as I feel as though I don't have enough 'cred to do so!!
But anyway, I heard
from Sammy that we will have a guest rider at next Sunday's ride from Adobo Velo. Nurse Rosalie herself will make
her MMCC debut. Ms. RN, if you are reading this, glad you can ride with Orange! Can you bring Tony Cruz with you
too? :)
6:47 am pdt
Friday, May 9, 2008
Site status
I got alot of good feedback from you guys...thanks! Scott caught a typo (shame on me!) early so hopefully nobody else
noticed. Also, a few of you had issues accessing the Shoutbox. I come to find out that I still had a security
setting tying it to our old website. What happened is that if you accessed via MMCC-SD.com, it would have worked.
However, those that went thru MMCYCLING.com, you were denied access to the Shoutbox. That is now fixed and should not
be an issue either way.
Another feature that is not 100% yet is the site's search functionality.
If you noticed at the top of each page, you can search the web or this site for anything (basically Google via our site).
When you select Web to search, it works great. However, searching the site is pretty random. I'm researching
this now but I think its due to us having dual domains. The code is set to default to MMCYCLING...but all our previous
history with search engines has been with MMCC-SD. I'll have to play around with this more....but the intent of
this feature was to provide a way to search the web from our site. For example, if you're in the Shoutbox and Walter
mentions he just bought a Tarmac SL....you can quickly type that in the search box to see what the heck that is w/o leaving
our site.
If you guys think of something that you'd like to see on our site, let me know. Unlike
our previous web package, the sky is the limit in terms of what we can do here. The limiting factor is just my ability
to implement it! What you see now is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of functionality available. I'm
still learning this whole web design thing...just imagine if I didn't have a day job!
7:26 am pdt
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Oh well...
So much for the planned release! Well, at least we are live now with the new site. Hope you all like it. Let me
know what you all think.
4:05 pm pdt
1 day left
I took the old site down today in preparation for tomorrow's launch. I'll be making final tweaks today and hope
for the best! The site won't auto redirect until this Sunday...so until then (or sooner), you'll have to click
thru the doorstep page to get here. Unless of course you use mmcycling.com directly. Both URLs will go to
the same page directly after they are merged.
10:36 am pdt
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Crunch time
Ok, now I'm stressing. I have to move up Go-Live to this Friday (May 9th) for technical reasons and due to
family time commitments on the weekend. I would estimate the site to be at 90% ready. I'm having a hard time
getting the site's 'showpiece' Flash intro working and formatted correctly. This is the piece that will
go on the homepage. If I can't get that to work, we'll have to go with the static image that is there right
now. Yea, I suck w/ Adobe Flash (for now!).
There's also so many little tweaks I want to do. I
can't seem to stop messing with things. Then there are broken links in the secondary Nav control that cannot be
fixed until I unlock the pages for production use. This part is irritating since it looks like its broken (when it really
isn't) during testing.
I also added an auto-updating RSS feed from Velonews.com. This is a cool
feature as it delivers new content via XML. So you can read Procycling news directly from MMCC-SD.com. Question
is, do I make this a featured page, or just a secondary page? Hmmm...
8:59 am pdt
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Review time
Since I'm anticipating that it will be hard to keep bugging folks to submit well written reviews like Agent Al's,
I decided to create a form to help the cause out. This will be a beta of sorts. Once you submit the essential
information in the form, I will take that info and put it in some kind of format for the Tech Corner. That way members
don't have to sweat composing Bicycling Magazine level reviews. Hopefully this will motivate people more!
I'm sure I'll have to modify the form as time goes by...but I'm hoping this will get us new content more easily.
10:29 am pdt
Monday, May 5, 2008
Update
I'm feeling the time crunch for Go-Live. I think the site is only about 70% production ready. Despite this,
I may push the date ahead to maybe this Friday to launch before the weekend (yea right!!!).
Site content
is pretty much what is remaining to do. I hate to go live with old stuff, but in some small places, it will have to
be that way. The Tech Corner will likely go with Al's review for now. I haven't had time to harass any
of you members for a new review. Some pages I have it perfect, some not so perfect. I keep going back and
forth on pages that I have already 'completed' but thought of something new. I have to stop doing that if I
have any hope of finishing this!
8:18 am pdt
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Profile added
I added my profile to this site. I'm just mentioning that since I want to test the blog format here. blah,
blah, blah.
8:51 am pdt
