Sort of doing a do-over of last weekend. Saturday the Springfling Criterium in Lawrence and then the final race of the Perry Road Races. I was really happy with the way the races and riding went last weekend. It was near perfect training. I sort of looked around for a bigger race this weekend, but decided to stay home. The weather was supposed to be great, but today they really downgraded the forecast. It was going to be in the 70’s both days and now it is going to be 70 on Saturday, but maybe some rain in the afternoon. The criterium is at 4 pm.
Then Sunday the high is supposed to be 40 with rain/sleet in the afternoon. That kind of puts a bad spin on getting big miles riding to and from the races both days. I had counted on getting at least 80 miles each day, but now am a little worried about that.
I am going to look for something better next weekend. I was sort of planning on doing the 2nd race of the US Cup, in LA, the MTB series, but didn’t get my shit together and the temperatures were supposed to be in the 90’s. I’m not racing another MTB race that hot at this time of the season. I don’t know what the deal is, but I don’t do well with that as of now. I think I was maybe lucky a couple weeks ago with all the flats. It might of destroyed me if I’d done the whole race at pace.
Catherine called yesterday and said she was coming back to Topeka for the weekend. She was supposed to come back next weekend, but I guess something came up at work, so she moved it up a week. That will be nice. I had to mess with her cross bike to make it road raceable. I put a 53 ring on it, a front derailleur, rebuilt her bottom bracket and rear hub and checked it over. It weights just a bit over 16 lbs. with Reynolds 46 carbon wheels. Pretty nice. I’m not sure what she is planning on doing, racewise, but her bike is ready to race.
I only rode 30 miles yesterday. I’d hoped to ride twice that far, but got caught up with bike work and then ran out of time. Hopefully, the weather will hold, at least for today, and I’ll get in a big mileage day today.
I’m more interested in tomorrow’s race. I won last week, so if I ride well, I’ll win the series overall, which would be nice. Today is another points race criterium. I think I’ll just try to do some sprints. I need to work on that some. My shoulder I had surgery on is still weak, so I’m a little slower than normal. That isn’t something I’m comfortable with. I hate to race bikes and know if it came down to a field sprint I’d not be in contention. Too many races end that way nowadays.
Okay, news from Europe, Trudi smashed her computer somehow. She was driving from Venice to Belgium, stopped at a hotel in France, and when she opened her computer, the screen was destroyed. She is super bummed. I’m trying to figure out a way to get her a computer. Maybe someone from another US team is flying over there soon and could take her a new one. I meant to look as if there is an Apple Store, that could do repairs, in Brussels. She is there another month, so that would be a long time to be “out of touch”. If anyone out there has any ideas, feel free to let me know.
The pasture burning has truly started.
Catherine’s Reynold’s hub parts.
The garden is coming up. I’m not sure if this is lettuce or spinach.
Shadows in the ditch on the club ride.
Trudi works for BMC doesn’t she? I think Mr. Rihs can afford to get her a new computer.
Trying to replace just the display is a huge PITA.
Trudi has a couple of choices that depend on the kind of laptop she has. Get a new macbook and move all her personal stuff over with a firewire (??) cable. Apple has a utility in their OS for just this purpose, but I’ve never used it. I use some command line mumbo jumbo and an ethernet cable.
Plan B is the geekier option of swapping the hard drive into a new laptop. That entails taking the back cover off both laptops with an optical drive. Not a big deal, but some fiddly screws and fiddly covers.
I’ve never been impressed with Apple’s technical store staff, so the transition may not go quite so smoothly. Yeah, the VAT will be a killer, but what else are you going to do?
If you need more technical advice, just post comments.
For the broken laptop. Maybe she can pick up chromebook. Samsung and HP make them. I use an HP 14 chromebook for 90% of my home/travel computing needs. It is small, great battery 6-9 hours, instant on and because it is cloud based if it is broken/stolen the loss is limited. Then bring the Mac back to the states to repair it and sell the chromebook or keep it for travel. They are $200-$300. The only downside it does not run Mac or Windows applications. For me not a big deal most of my computing is via web.
I’ve already seen bad things happen to chromebook owners because they store/cache username and passwords. Bad people snatch the Chromebook and have instant access to everything because the owners can’t be bothered to tighten up their security by not storing passwords.
Chromebooks like most personal computers are perfectly fine products. But, people can’t be bothered until something terrible happens because username and passwords are stored for convenience. And it DOES happen.
as far as display screen replacement goes, i had a great experience with iresQ (business out of lenexa KS). shipped them iPad and very quickly it was repaired for significantly less than apple’s price and fed ex’d back to me. simple and i’m sure they could ship worldwide. mike
i’m just a dumb farm hand, but if her computers broke, why not buy a new one??