There’s a good comment on Felix’s site from another user of Air Free Tires:

George wrote:

OK, I put around 200mi on the HP tires. They are:

- much rougher riding than my normal tires @ 90psi (yes, that’s what I run as I only weigh 140lbs). You can feel every little road imperfection. Not so pleasant.

- considerably higher rolling resistance than my normal tires. Normally I can cruise at 17-18mph without so much effort. To go this fast on the airfree tires required a lot more effort. I’d say 3mph is taken off your speed, for an equivalent amount of effort.

After these 200mi, I didn’t want to ride my bike anymore with these tires. So I’m back to my flat-prone Avocet tires, and I’m taking my lumps with the flats. These airfree tires would probably be OK for short commutes to work, or a couple of miles on bike trails. But in my opinion, that’s about it.

I’ve logged over a hundred miles on these tires, and I have to agree with the rolling resistance point. I’ve remarked to Rae on several occasions that I’m much more tired during the ride with the Air Free Tires. I was estimating earlier to Felix that I’m losing 1-2 mph with the tires, but maybe George’s estimate of 2-3 mph is more accurate.

I do wonder, however, if the greater resistance of the Air Free Tires is somehow helping me to train better. When the Low-Key Hillclimbs start up again next month, I’ll probably switch back to clinchers. Hopefully, I’ll be flying up the hills instead of trudging up them.

Tomorrow morning, Rae and I are headed to Burning Man. We’re still sorting out our packing and gear selection; I’ll probably just bring two to three lenses with me and try to minimize lens changes out on the playa. See you all in a week!

Post this under things you shouldn’t say when you’re on camera. Our Mayor, Patricia Mahan, was caught on tape last month muttering under her breath, “You’re Wasting Your Time” in response to residents who were concerned about the use of public assets to build the new San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara. Mahan’s comment comes at the end of the YouTube clip below:

For the record, I voted for the other guy. He earned my trust.

Last week, we had the opportunity to watch an Oakland A’s game in a box suite, thanks to Ellen and Jerome. Watching a live baseball game in a suite is very different from being in the stands. In the latter, I often find myself trapped in my seat. On the other hand, in the suite, I felt free to move around, talk to everyone, and get lots of yummy food. I can definitely see why baseball and football owners want to replace their aging stadiums with new ones featuring tons of luxury box suites.

As for the actual game, I found the suite to be less involving. In the stands, you have the whole game right there in your face. In the suite, the same things that are positives can also be negatives. I found myself busying myself with food and conversation, so much so that I just missed the lone home run by Suzuki. The game was primarily a pitcher’s duel, with the A’s prevailing 3-2 in quick 2 hour game.

Although baseball is fun — especially when your hometown team is winning and in the pennant race (Go Padres!) — it’s not as exciting as football. And, it won’t be too long for that season to begin. Go Chargers!

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Next week, Rae and I are heading to Black Rock City for Burning Man. Though we’ve had numerous opportunities to go in the past, it’ll be our first time. I’m curious to hear what people’s experiences have been like bringin DSLRs to the event. I’ve read that the dust there is notorious for getting in everywhere. May and Salim were showing us some shoes they wore last year; despite several washings, the shoes still had dust on them.

I will be bringing my 1D, since it is weather sealed. As for lenses, definitely the 70-200. I’m leary of bringing the 28-70, since (1) it’s not weather-sealed and (2) it uses a push-pull method for zooming which will attract hordes of dust.

On a related note, here are the guidelines for photography and videography use at Burning Man.

Finally, if you’ve never heard of Burning Man before and want a glimpse of what to expect, check out Patrick Roddie’s excellent galleries.

For me, the most intriguing feature of the just-announced Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III is the increased megapixel count of the sRAW images. An sRAW image is just like a normal RAW file but smaller. The new camera takes enormous 21MP images at 5616 x 3744 pixels in size; for professional purposes, this is great, but for day-to-day life shots, it’s overkill. What’s great about the 1Ds Mark III’s sRAW images is that they are 5.2MP in size (2784 x 1856 pixels). I found the the sRAW images from the 1D Mark III (2.5MP, 1,936 x 1,288) to be a bit too small, but the 1Ds sRAW images seem to be just the right size.

Thus far, I’ve been on the fence with regards to upgrading to the 1D Mark III. It’s certainly a better camera than my Mark II from a features and ergnomic standpoint — my preference for the control layout of the older 1D-series notwithstanding — but it’s not that much better. The 1Ds Mark III, on the hand, features a big jump in total image quality, not to mention full-frame goodness. The large sRAW images might just be what drives me to upgrade to the 1Ds Mark III instead of a 1D Mark III.

Here’s the photo of the tree root that we cut the other day. Doesn’t it look like a Flood Infection Form from Halo? It took us over an hour to saw and rip that thing out of the ground. We had to saw off roots from at least six separate places! Fortunately, the root did not attack any of us and turn us into Flood Combat Forms or Flood Carrier Forms.

We’re in the midst of replacing one of our fences here at our house this week. Over the weekend, we cleared out a lot of vegetation a foot from the base of the fence. Gardening is hard work, especially since we don’t have green thumbs!

Today, Duran Fencing took out the old fence and set up the new posts. Tomorrow morning, they will come in an install the new fence and gate. The company is very fast and efficient. We hired them after admiring the job they did on a neighbor’s house down the street.

This evening, my neighbors and I struggled to cut this huge tree root underneath their rose bushes. We had a couple of hand saws and it took us several hours to get all the dirt moved out of the way and to saw off the root. The resulting hunk of wood looks a lot like a Flood Infection Form from Halo! I’ll get a photo of that in the morning. In the meantime, check out the photos from this morning, when the folks at Duran took down our old fence.

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From the AntiWar blog, an interview with Dick Cheney from 1994 talking about why Bush I government did not invade Iraq during Gulf War I. I’ve emphasized certain sections in bold below:

Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

I’ve expressed some doubts about the new Chargers’ uniforms, but I will say the blue home outfits do look nice in this Nike commercial featuring LaDainian Tomlinson.

I’m more worried about the away white uniforms. I still don’t like how the shoulder bolt looks skinny (being blue, powder blue, and yellow). But as long as we’re winning, who am I to gripe?