din din din
No sidebar today. Peter wants to go get dinner.

Peter took me out to lunch at Alice's today. It was his first time there -- practically unforgiveable for a rider in the Bay Area! I had my usual garlic fries and BLT...yum. Garlic fries. We took Highway 280 north from his place in Cupertino, and then took 84 west to Alice's. I like riding on 84; this was only my second time on westbound 84, and it's pretty nice. We got stuck behind a pickup truck carrying an Ikea's worth of furniture, which was a bit frustrating -- I don't know why I always end up behind the people unclear on the concept of turnouts. Grrrr.

From Alice's, we went south on Highway 35 (aka Skyline Blvd) to my old nemesis, Page Mill Road. I'd warned Peter as we left Alice's that I usually take Page Mill pretty slowly while going downhill; it was therefore a bit of a surprise to me when I kept up a constant speed of around 30mph all the way down. The last time I paid attention to my speed going down Page Mill, it was hovering around 20-25mph, so I feel pretty good about the 5mph increase. I'm especially happy because it's proving that my experiments with "slow down to go faster" are working. The last few times I've been on twisty roads, I've been focusing on keeping good lines instead of worrying about my speed -- the cool thing about this philosophy is that the better your line, the faster you'll be able to go. Therefore, I've been able to kill two birds with one stone: by concentrating on my line, my cornering is better and I get the extra added bonus of going faster! Woo!

I'm very encouraged by this. This isn't to say that Nicky is really going to have anything to worry about with wrapping up the AMA Championship this weekend, but it's really cool to see these little thought experiments paying off. Wow, I'm turning into a dork. I just seriously used "thought experiments" in a sentence. shudder.

other quick little randoms.
I sent off another magazine submission packet this week, this time to Road Bike magazine. Put on your aluminum foil hats, y'all, and channel some "you want to pay carolyn money to write for you" vibes their way.

The air filter for the SVS has finally come in, but I'm too lazy to go to Redwood City Honda/Suzuki/Kawasaki/KTM (/blah/blah/blah) to pick it up. The longer I procrastinate, the longer I'm guaranteed to have some sort of bike project ready for me, despite the fact that replacing the air filter will take, at the very longest, about 2 minutes.

I've decided that I want to get a mid-60s beater bike to start restoring. Unfortunately, I have neither the money nor the garage space for another bike, much less all the crap ready for restoration.

OK, must run off to dinner with Peter now, as he is sitting in my office spinning around on my coworker's office chair.