sbdc

The inevitable result of lots of travel and upcoming moves has the minimalist in me jumping for joy at the thought of paring down the clutter as much as possible. I got rid of far more than half my stuff at the beginning of 2007 but almost two years later, getting rid of a storage space and moving into a larger apartment has brought the stuff quotient back up a bit. I’ll probably be posting pics and listing crap on craigslist in the near future before giving them away to friends and then eventually bringing things over to people’s houses and accidentally forgetting them there. I’m really trying to stick to the hard and fast rule that if it’s not something I regularly use I don’t need to have it. “What if” takes up way too much space.

One area where I need to change course a bit is back to the clothing world. For years I had a pretty straight forward simple uniform of sorts that served me extremely well. Packing was easy, getting dressed was easy, and replacing things when they wore out was not something I even thought twice about. Last year I talked a lot about reexamining paths and how just because I did something yesterday doesn’t mean it’s something I should be doing tomorrow. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t painted myself into a corner that I didn’t even know about so I consciously started buying things that didn’t fit the uniform.

The uniform, while not a super strict get up had a few simple guidelines that I tried to stick to. Black whenever possible, as it matches everything and is rarely inappropriate. Classic in design, meaning it’s not something that 6 months down the line will be out of style. Multiple copies, in that I could buy several of the same item (now, or in the future) to ensure I had it when I wanted it. Utility, they need to do the job they are designed for. No major branding. Breaking out from that mostly resulting in buying non-black items.

On a piece by piece basis, there’s nothing wrong with that and having the occasional variation has been kind of fun. That said, the stress of getting dressed and more so of packing has gone through the roof. It’s something I hadn’t been able to put my finger on until just the last day or so. It used to be I’d pack for a trip and bring exactly what I needed, but recently I’ve not been able to figure out what that might be. Do I want the brown sweater or the black on? The blue pants or the grey ones? Will the brown sweater go with the grey ones if I decide to go that route? But what about jackets? Ack! Oddly enough, it was standing in Nike’s new high end super designed NSW store in Harajuku when it hit me. There are somethings I like to have choices about, and want many options, clothing isn’t one of those and I don’t want to think about it.

It’s funny that being in a Nike store is what brought that to my attention but in a way it kind of makes sense. At this store, a giant custom built building with 3 floors of show rooms, they maybe sell 10 items. The items they do have are about as spot on as it gets. Solid colors (including black), almost no branding, and every detail designed and attended to. I was looking at a jacket thinking about how perfect it was, and then started thinking how I used to have one jacket that I thought was perfect and worked with everything. Now I have 3-4 that are all kind of different, just slightly, and I regularly beat myself up trying to decide which one to wear, but find myself unable to choose because the differences are so subtle.

So I realized it’s time to cut a lot of the excess in the closet and go back to the things I know I like and I’m comfortable with. Lots of stuff will be going. If you think you are my size, let me know as I might have some stuff for you in the near future.

Given that Tokyo is a mecca for Keirin racing and having lusted after my fair share of NJS frames you know I’m keeping an eye out for cool bikes while I’m walking around. I was hoping Tokyo Fixed Gear would be helpful but either the connection from this hotel is spotty or something is up as it just won’t seem to load for me at the moment. I found a blog post listing a bunch of shops that specialize in fixed gear bikes and if possible I’m going to try to hit up one or two of ‘em. At least one is right down the street from my hotel anyway:

CARNIVAL (map)
J-SIX BLDGS 2F. 6-23-11 Jinguu-mae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo.
TEL 03-5485-8581
Open 13:00-21:00

I’ve also been skimming the past few posts on Jitensha-jin hoping for some other details. This is exactly why I set up Fixedr.com and I’m going to try and put some of these links and resources there. Hopefully more people will continue to use it and that’ll will make future hunts like this much easier for me and others.

Matt Alt also pointed me in the direction of Alin and Jean.

A few other addresses after the jump [Read more]

If you are like me, sometimes you want to sync your iPhone to get a new album on it or just some quick thing which happens really quickly and then you are stuck for an hour while your iPhone backs up every damn thing. Whats worse, is there’s a chance if your iPhone software goes bad you don’t want to restore from a backup because that could be messed up too. Better to reinstall from scratch. So the whole backing up thing is kind of pointless. Its bad, and I can’t take it anymore. So I opened the Terminal, and put in this:

defaults write com.apple.itunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool YES

Now, when I plug in my iPhone is syncs but doesn’t back up. Which is what I want, and I just saved myself several hours a week. Try it, it’s fun!

Assuming all goes well, tomorrow I’ll be filling out the paperwork and making this mine. It’s a Husqvarna sm610 and I’m completely in love with it. I was first introduced to this particular bike about a year ago and have been lusting after it ever since. Michael, who showed me that, ran out and bought one but since the dude has like 19 Ducati’s he realized it was dumb for him to have yet another one and knew I was in love and one thing lead to another. I’m pretty excited about this because I haven’t ridden a motorcycle regularly in a while, but there was a time when I thought that was all I’d ever ride. I had a Kawasaki Ninja when I lived in Florida and then a Vespa P200 when I lived in Chicago. Both of those were my daily rides for a while and I was looking forward to getting something when I moved to California but the jerks at the DMV wouldn’t accept my Motorcycle license from Illinois. I finally signed up for a CA one and am finally on my way.

Of course this doesn’t mean I won’t be biking, that’s still my love and main transport, but I wanted something that would allow me to get to the westside quickly if needed, or would allow me to not show up sweaty in bike stuff from time to time. So that will be this. Can not wait.

As you can see the Benotto, which was nothing more than a frame a fork last month is starting to take on a more bike like form. This is my first road bike build up so I’m playing a lot of it by ear and expect to screw tons of things up. We’ll see. Here’s what I’ve done at this point:

1. I cannibalized the Italian threaded bottom bracket that came with the Masi. The guys at the bike shop had told me it felt a little janky, but several other bike building type friends said it seemed OK. I rode with it for a few days on the Masi before I swapped in the new one which was noticably bette for sure, but the old one wasn’t really “bad.” I may replace it later, but for now it works.
2. I picked up a Shimano 105 Wheelset and Crankset on craigslist for quite a steal actually and put those on. I had a brand new tire that I put on the front wheel but still need one for the back. The rear wheel has an 8spd cassette so looks like I’m building this up to be a 16 speed.
3. Interesting note, the Chainrings on the Crankset are those weird oval “Biopace” shape rather than a perfect circle. I don’t know how those will be to ride with. Guess I’ll find out.
4. First roadblock: I have a rear brake that I bought when I got my Swobo and quickly removed. It’s Shimano and brand spanking new. I also have a vintage Campy front brake that I was hoping to put n this. In both cases the bolt fits into the drilled hole fine but doesn’t reach out of the back to allow something to be locked onto it. Both of these came with those flush nuts that actually are supposed to sink into the frame, but they are too wide to fit in the existing holes. This may be problematic.
5. Second roadblock: The no name brand Japanese stem I had laying around fit great in the headset but I can’t fit the Cinelli bars I have into it. They get too wide at the center point so I guess they aren’t compatable so one of those will have to be replaced with something else. I’d say it’ll be the stem, but I’m a n00b on this stuff so who knows.
6. Just realized I have a seat as well, just forgot to drag it out for the photo.

So that’s the bulk of it at the moment. Major missing parts are now derailers, shifters, brake levers, seat post, chain, inner tubes. It’s getting there. My inital plan for this was to build it for under $100, I messed that up by paying $100 for the frame, but so far I’m still under $200 for everything.