Now I get it.

After living in Japan for almost 3 years now, both on base and out in town, and getting annoyed at the fact that none of the side roads have names, this one little video that I got through the podcast Best of YouTube explains it all. Now it seems so simple!

Helmets

I don't care who you are or what you think you're capable of, you should always wear your helmet, I know mine has saved my life before.

Maintenance Love

You know something that I love? To remove my old HeadShok fork from my mountain bike frame you have to use a hammer. (Yes I did research this before I did it... just a little.)

Lesson Learned

Today's lesson: Trying to do 'home brew' tubeless tires on your mountain bike is not worth the time, trouble, and labor. HOWEVER, it was a great learning experience and many of the things could (oddly enough) be applied to other things. How did I learn this lesson? Well, I read an article about tubeless tires, there are manufacturers out there with wheels and tires designed to work this way, there are also companies that sell conversion kits. And then there's the ways that people were doing it before all these products came around.

Rights of Passage

So I got signed up for the Tour de Okinawa some time ago, we all drove up to Nago together and it was really easy. Now I just have to wait for the info package to come in the mail, they told me it would come sometime in October. The thing is, it's now the 17th and I have yet to get it. Now I understand that it's going to take a little while because of the whole FPO mailing address and it's quirks (the package will have to go from here to California and then back to here). I'm just hoping that I don't have to go to the Nago office come early November to tell them that I have yet to get my info.

Anyway, on a different note, Bicycling Magazine posted this Rites of Passage blog like thing, and I thought it would be interesting to use it as one of this quiz like things that you always see on MySpace/Facebook and just to sort of catalog my own experiences. So here goes:

01. Realizing that the hill isn’t in the way; it is the way.

• I commute by (race) bike to work everyday, of course the hill is the way, it's almost a mile long and at a 6% grade for some of it. But I wouldn't go any other way (except maybe the way with the bigger, longer hill).