Ultimate Pits

I had a great time playing Ultimate this summer, and as the season wound down, I learned some people mentioned they were putting together a fall league team.

After talking with Sox, I signed up with one of the teams, and will once again be playing Ulti up at UVic. They have some new turf fields that the Ulti players get to use, so that will be a big change from the crappy mud pits I used to play in.

Funny thing: our team name was originally Cockblockers. The intramural guy didn’t like that, so it was changed to KockBlockers (so much better), then it got changed again by intramurals to Knock Blockers.

Motorcycles Woken

As gas prices rise, I’ve been noticing more and more people riding scooters and motorcycles. Normally I don’t think this is too bad unless it is at 6:30 in the morning.

There is some guy that works on the base that rides past our house every morning around 6:30 and his bike is extremely loud. It is quite annoying. It hasn’t woken the kids up yet, but it has woken me up and I am always afraid that it might wake them up.

This bike is loud, but I know not all of them are. One of our neighbours rides a bike early in the morning, and it is quiet. He short shifts, doesn’t accelerate hard, and is quite considerate. The other guys accelerates hard, has loud pipes, and doesn’t care since he doesn’t live here.

I wish he would take a different route.

LOTD – Technologies Special

I’ve come across some pretty cool looking bicycle technologies recently. Almost all of these I would love to try out for a while to see if they are actually worthy or not.


Derailleurs have been around for a long time, and the technology hasn’t really changed in a long time. This one is interesting in that it is electronic. No more cables that stretch over time, you just need to worry about battery life. Read more about them here.

via BoingBoing


It almost looks normal, but this bike frame is actually made from polypropolene and is designed to be recyclable.  A good option for a town bike.

via Gizmodo


A minimalist design to say the least. Using hubless and spokeless wheels, and a special drive system, this bike would certainly turn some heads while you were riding down the street.

via Gizmodo


Belt drives aren’t that new, but they seem like a great idea for a town bike. This wouldn’t work on a dual suspension bike like my Bullit, but it would definitely work on a hardtail.

via Gizmodo


Some people don’t want to wear helmets since they aren’t necessarily a fashion statement.  But what if they could be? Add a slip-on cover to your helmet and away you go.

via BoingBoing

Clinic Faces

It’s like riding a bike. Except I was laying down, and I got to read. What I mean to say is that I still haven’t forgotten how to give blood. I put myself on hold for donations since before Beet was born, and today was my first one in over five months. My how times flies.

Not much has changed at that clinic. A lot of the same friendly faces, a lot of the same cookies and juice.

The donation took a little under five minutes. In fact the nurse doing the labelling of the various bags and collection tubes didn’t get to finish before I did.

I had eaten dinner just before going so I didn’t really feel like eating a bunch of cookies, but the volunteers get a little cranky if you don’t follow the rules. I managed to choke back a couple cookies 😉

Decent Morons

It’s amazing how quickly a pretty decent day can go downhill.

I had a great day at work, accomplishing more than I had intended. I was in a great mood when I left, the sun was out, and it was warm out. Perfect.

Driving home I approached Douglas and Pandora, and my light was green. I was doing about 40 KM/H through the intersection when some druggy looking idiot and his two pals, walk right out in front of me. They were wanting to cross Pandora and didn’t feel like waiting for the light.

I slammed on the brakes and layed on the horn (out of instinct). Dipshit looks at me and continues walking. As he walks through the next lane I notice he is holding up a bottle of some sort of pills and sort of waving it at the cars in the lane beside me.

The three of them continue on like nothing happened, seemingly stoned out of their minds. Morons.

This put me in a foul mood, and I am still feeling it now.

Sunshine Drivers

I rode my bike into work today. I got dressed expecting it to be as chilly as previous mornings, but I got less than a block from home and realized I was over dressed. I unzipped as much as possible, and enjoyed the sunshine on the ride.

Until the morons emerged.

The first dipshit passed me while we were approaching the train underpass right before the blue bridge. It is a 30 km/h zone, and I was actually doing 40km/h. Dipshit passes me, barely gets in front of me, then slowed down. Grrr.

Across the bridge I made my way over to Fort street, went up there and turned right onto Blanshard. I was going to turn left onto Broughton, but there was some traffic so I opted to keep going to the next street. Until dipshit lady came into the picture. She wanted to turn right onto Broughton, so she passed me, slowed down with her right turn signal on, then stopped and looked at me. She was still in the right hand lane of Blanshard.

I hate, hate, hate it when people do this so I stopped, unclipped, and looked back at her, waiting for her to leave the scene. Aargh, why do people do this weird shit?

A perfect day for a ride ruined by dumb drivers.

Camera Improvement

I’ve been saving for a new lens for my 20D for quite a while now. I recently changed my mind and decided to buy a new camera body to replace the 20D, sell the 20D, then use that money and start saving for another lens.

I had settled on Canon’s 40D, and as I was getting ready to make my purchase I started to hear rumors of a 50D.

Sure enough the 50D was released and now I don’t know what to do. Do I still buy a 40D expecting that it’s price will drop? The 40D was a definite improvement over my 20D, but the 50 is even better than the 40.

Right now I am leaning towards the 50D. I might even go for the 50D plus a kit lens that I can sell that lens with the 20D to increase it’s value. I know someone who might be interested in my 20D body but I have no idea how much I should sell it for.

What is a photographer to do?