RBR is taking me to Interbike this year. Flying me out, putting me up, and letting me geek out at the nation’s biggest bike industry show.

Of course, I’ll be working while in Vegas. We’re planning to do daily show reports, photos, and possibly video interviews with various company reps. It should be a ton of fun.

So what can I do to fill my time between now and then? How about figure out which vendors I want to hit, document them here, and then forget to take the list come September? Okay, let’s do it!

Booth 4621 - Arkel Inc - Creator of the most rugged, expensive, expandable panniers I’ve ever seen.

4459 - Atoc Inc - Manufacturer of overly complex but insanely useful rack systems like the Draftmaster (which I have for Gare’s bike and for my trike).

L22 - Bikes Belong Coalition - These folks hand out money to non-profits. Want to stop here on BikeAble business.

1051 - Bionx - Electric assist for bikes. Interesting to see if they have anything new coming up.

1459 - Day 6 Bicycles - Crank forward comfort bikes with lumbar support. Basically, recumbents.

4613 - Do Wrap/SweatVac - I love my SweatVac, so visiting these guys is an attempt to get freebies.

4008 - Hase Bikes - Because I want to feel bad that we bought a Pino before they made the collapsible frame.

374 - HP Velotechnik Recumbents - Because Hase and HPV are my favorite recumbent manufacturers. My HPV Speedmachine and Street Machine Gte will attest to that. I’d have a tough time choosing between a Hase Kettwiesel and an HPV Grasshopper if the occasion arose.

1742 & 1735 - J & B Importers Inc - These are the guys behind Sun bikes/trikes. Might as well see what low end stuff is coming out for next year and discover whether or not the UAX still sorta sucks.

5231 - Keen Inc - Only reason for Keen to be here is for new cycling sandals. I’ve had my Keen Commuters for a year now and they’re still quite comfortable.

4363 - Kenda Tires/Tubes - Not personally interested, but RBR.info visitors might like some new info on Kenda gear.

1659 - Kidz Tandem - Interested from the BikeAble perspective.

6225 - KMX Karts Ltd - BMX Trike manufacturer.

2049/2053 - Magura USA - The only thing bent riders like more than disc brakes are hydraulic disc brakes.

709 - MapMyRide.com - Want to find out why they had to shit things up with all the ads. Okay, I know why, but it really makes me want to move to another service.

809 - Mirrycle Corp - Most famous mirrors in bentdom. The packaging now even states they’re for recumbents.

4575 - NuVinci - RBR sells a lot of their hubs.

4621 - Old Man Mountain - Maker of Catrike friendly hubs. Curious to see what else they have that would be bent suitable.

1425 - Planet Bike - Just want to see if they’re aware how much bent riders try to shoehorn their products onto recumbent frames and forks.

4381 - Power Grips - Hoping for something lightweight but strong.

1025 - Primal Wear - I just want to see the Stormtrooper Armor jersey up close.

5145 - Primo - Another popular bent tire manufacturer.

3425 - Schwalbe - More tires.

3929/4125/4133 - Shimano - Because we have to. How can you not want to see what Shimano has coming up?

3351 - Sigma Sport - RBR carries their computers.

4519 - SockGuy - Why not? I have a pair of SockGuy socks.

2923 - Speedplay - Manufacturers of Frog pedals, quite popular among relaxed recumbent riders.

1339 - SRAM - See Shimano.

3915 - Topeak - I’m a big fan of the Joe Blow Pro.

1339 - Truvativ - I’ll be cranky by the time we get to these guys. Ha ha.

2252 - Uvex Sports Inc - RBR carries their helmets.

I’m a little disappointed that neither Catrike nor Lazer Helmets are there this year, but I’ll survive. That’s more than enough booths to visit as it is.

Brandy and I sat down last night to watch a movie, something we do with decreasing frequency due to the demands of a two child household that is also inhabited by an adult dependent. It’s tough to find time to squeeze in two hours for passive entertainment.

But last night, we did it. We found the time. And we used it to watch Rachel Getting Married.  At 1:53 in length, it was going to run right up until Gareth’s nurse arrived, so time was precious if we hoped to finish the movie before having our evening interrupted by yet another outside influence. With that in mind, we loaded in the Blu-Ray disc.

And waited for the progress bar.

And saw it start to play BD promos.

And discovered we couldn’t stop the promos. Or open the menus. In fact, my attempts to do so inexplicably resulted in us being dumped out to the PS3 crossbar interface. We went through this process four times before I relented and decided we were just going to have to sit through the promo.

Once the promo ended, the trailers started. In the immortal words of Will Smith in all of his action films, “Oh HELL naw!”

Menu still wouldn’t work. Stop didn’t work. So I tried Next. That worked! It… skipped to the next trailer. I had to do this several more times to get through the trailers and finally get to the damn menu!

Once there, everything was fine, but I turned to Brandy and said, “You know who made us go through all that crap? Somebody in marketing.”

The lesson here, folks, is that you aren’t going to sell stuff by annoying your consumer. So stop annoying them.

Bonus tip for marketing folks: If your customer is already in the process of consuming your product, you don’t need to remind them how great it is. Putting an ad for Blu-Ray at the start of a Blu-Ray disc is relatively pointless. The viewer had a choice to watch a standard DVD, but chose not to - you have them, they don’t need to be beat over the head with it.

I was having some trouble with RokBox and RokNewsRotator. On the CRBC site, we use RokBox to display inset thumbnails for expansion directly from our Section and Category pages, but since we do the inset first in the content, RokNewsRotator was stripping out the tags and leaving the image path in plain text, including it in the RNR teaser.

The solution was to strip out RokBox and everything between the RB tags first by making the following change in helper.php:

Original

function prepareContent( $text, $length=300 ) {
        // strips tags won't remove the actual jscript
        $text = preg_replace( "'<script[^>]*>.*?</script>'si", "", $text );
        $text = preg_replace( '/{.+?}/', '', $text);

Modified

function prepareContent( $text, $length=300 ) {
        // remove rokbox references
        $regex = "#{rokbox\s(.*?){/rokbox}#s";
        $text = preg_replace( $regex, "", $text );
        // strips tags won't remove the actual jscript
        $text = preg_replace( "'<script[^>]*>.*?</script>'si", "", $text );
        $text = preg_replace( '/{.+?}/', '', $text);

Works great so far!

In the run-up to Mother’s Day, Gareth let me know that he wanted to bake chocolate chip cookies for Mom. This sounded like a perfectly wonderful idea to me as Gareth and I had never baked together before and because I knew there would be plenty of leftover cookies for me to eat.

We went with the dough-in-a-tube variety of baking since there would be less kitchen mess and, as a result, less stress for Brandy.  Even seeing a disaster in progress will throw her off kilter until such time as the disaster is resolved.  

I busted out the cookie sheets, the tube of dough, a spoon, and some parchment paper.  I wanted this to go as easily as possible.  While the oven was preheating, I put the parchment paper out on the sheets, sliced open the dough, and got Gareth in there to help me spoon the dough out onto the trays.

During this process, he started looking up at me and gesturing, which is usually his way of telling us he needs his letter board.  I grabbed the letter board, put his hand in mine, and let him go to town.

D - O - Y - O - U - N - O - W - W - U - T - Y - O - U - R - D - O - N - G

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

Come on, really?  All we have to do is scoop out dough and plunk it on a cookie sheet.  What’s there to know?  But I had a good laugh at his moxie and we kept on with the baking.

The oven was ready, so I popped our cookies in, setting the timer for 5 minutes so I could rotate the trays mid-bake.  When the 5 minute point hit, I opened the oven only to see a cloud of smoke rapidly exit from within, clouding the kitchen and making its way to the smoke detector.

Letting the oven door slam shut, I threw on the ceiling fan and grabbed something to wave smoke away from the now blaring detector as my family wondered what the heck was going on.

After things settled down a bit, Brandy came out to the kitchen to see exactly what happened.  I professed innocence, saying I did nothing wrong, but then she asked, “Did you put parchment paper on the trays?”  Yes, yes I did.  ”That’s not parchment paper.  That’s wax paper.”

Sure enough, it was.  Turns out that if you’re using wax paper, it’s best to have the entire surface of the paper covered by whatever you’re baking on it.  It’s also best to not exceed 350 degrees when using it.  I violated both rules of wax paper use and paid the price.

Amazingly, I did spare the cookies!  But now, when my son looks at me and asks if I know what I’m doing, I’m going to seriously consider his question and make sure that I can answer it with confidence.

To celebrate Bike To Work Week, I did just that - I biked to work from Pleasant Gap to Pine Hall Road on May 1st. It was my first bike commute in Centre County, and it will likely be my last.

Not because of the distance. No, that was a mere 11 miles. Not because of the time involved, as it required only an hour (the same time it would take using public transportation). It was all because of two words: College Avenue.

Pleasant Gap to the Nittany Mall wasn’t all that bad. The shoulder along that stretch is very wide and almost always kept clear of gravel and other obstacles, except for the occasional dead animal.

But after reaching the Nittany Mall, College Ave turns into Death Race 2000. There’s no taking the lane on this 45mph legal/60mph actual stretch of road, and the shoulders, while often generous, are so covered in gravel from the winter season that one has to stick to the line for most of the ride.

Sticking to the line doesn’t work too well, though, since there’s barely enough room in the lanes as it is. There are just some times when you’re pulled to a stop at a light only to have an 18 wheel truck slide in inches from your elbow that makes you think, “This was a bad idea.”

Whenever possible, I ditched College Ave, cutting through parking lots or taking back roads that weren’t going to add miles to my ride. Certainly, that helped, but the stretches where I had to be on College were enough to make my testicles ascend. Everything from Decibel Road to just past Elmwood made me feel like a very small bug being approached at high velocity by a very large wind shield.

It begs the question - why did I use that road at all? The alternatives weren’t all that attractive. I could have veered off onto Decibel Road and taken back roads to Lemont, which would have dumped me out on College Ave again anyway. Or, I could have taken Shiloh Road and followed back roads up to Park Ave, which itself is a fairly high traffic area as it is an entrance/exit point for 322.

In order to not constantly feel like I’m about to die, I would have to take College to Shiloh to Houserville, take Puddintown to Orchard to Park, ride through campus and across the IST walkway, and then take West Campus to Blue Course where I would, inevitably, have to ride College Ave to Science Park to Pine Hall Road. That would reduce my exposure to College Ave greatly, but also take me on back roads that have no shoulder at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to ride, but getting from point A to point B in this case is severely painful. It’s enough to convince me that driving isn’t so bad after all.

So what would make me feel better about making such a commute in the future?

1. Take my trike. Sure, it’s lower to the ground, but I have a far higher degree of confidence on the trike. I’m sure the lack of confidence on my Speedmachine played into my fears that day.

2. Form a multi-municipality committee to create a pathway from the outlying burbs to downtown State College. Of course, that’s what the Bellefonte Central Rail Trail was supposed to be before it was halted by property owners along the proposed route. Besides, doing this would take 20 years.

3. Choose a new, longer, less exposed route. I don’t really want to have more than an hour of travel time to get to and from work. It’s a shame I can’t use the most direct route, but I can’t.

4. Realize that I ride my bike for fun and not to make a point about saving the planet, so it’s okay to drive my bike to safe riding locations. This is the most likely solution.

Yes, I could make a public stand and decry congestion, the dangers of distracted drivers, and convince others that the more cyclists there are, the safer the streets become, but I have a very strong sense of self-preservation that makes me want to hide out until a bunch of other brave souls do the hard work and make things safer for me.

I never denied being a lazy opportunist. And yet, I feel some degree of guilt in the matter, as though taking on the label of “cyclist” brings with it a certain requisite sense of representing a population of people who pedal. But I don’t want to be a representative. I just want to be a guy out on his bike not worrying about death.

Thanks to his speech therapist, Gareth has been using a keyboard/touchpad system to type out his thoughts for the past couple weeks.  Usually, it’s pretty typical stuff.  “Play videogames” or “when is dad coming home” or “go bookstore”.

But not today.  Today, Gareth asked something I’m sure he’s wondered about for a very long time.  He asked why he doesn’t eat with his mouth.

Brandy sat down with him and explained why it is that he doesn’t eat like everybody else.  I don’t know whether or not he was satisfied with the answer or whether or not being different has caused him any heartache, but it’s so incredibly amazing that he can finally ask us these questions.

I’m sure we have many more topics to cover - why he can’t walk, why he needs suction, why he can’t talk like us.  And we’ll answer every one of them openly and honestly.

And while it won’t always be easy to talk about these things, we at least now have the opportunity to do so.  We have about 5 years of talking to catch up on.

Pressed for time yesterday, I acquired dinner via McDonald’s drive-thru and headed home.  Once there, I sat upon the couch, lounging too far back for civilized man, and consumed a double quarter pounder with cheese.

Inspecting the packaging, I noticed that this little sandwich packed 740 calories all on its own.

This got me to thinking about obesity in general, which led me to ruminate on why it is our bodies are so unable to properly handle the excess material we now consume.  And that led me to state: God does not exist.

Here’s how I got there!

It is quite clear that the human body is not able to recognize when there is no scarcity of food resources and is especially unable to trigger greater amounts of caloric evacuation when the body continues to ingest food while there is no exertion generally involved.

My thought is that this is because the body has not yet reprogrammed itself for our current fat, happy state.  It has been evolved over millennia with the idea that the consumption of food follows scarcity and exertion, that the body has to engage in physical work in order to acquire food.  It is also geared towards the idea that there might be a lengthy period of time between meals depending on whether or not food acquisition is successful.

So how does this negate the existence of God?  Pretty easily, actually.  If God had created us so perfectly, then wouldn’t our bodies have started off with the ability to adjust caloric retention in the face of increased consumption?  Adam & Eve were, after all, “born” in paradise where they wanted for nothing.  Adam didn’t have to lift a finger to get some grub.  Heck, the animals walked right up to him and, apparently, apples were plentiful.  But of course, he liked them apples and got kicked out at which point God made him horrifically mortal.

So for the time they were in paradise, Adam & Eve, supposedly, were not fatties even though hunting and gathering wasn’t really a concern shared in Genesis.  Besides, a perfect creator is perfectly capable of building a creature that doesn’t just suddenly get chubby every time he sits around too long.  Unless he’s looking to punish that creature for being a schlub.

Anyway, out of paradise, stuff changes.  Eve has to have labor pains and everybody goes mortal.  But only sort of mortal.  They still get to live hundreds of years, so God has essentially changed the DNA of his creations in order to rough them up a bit.  And then he does it again when he decides even that hundreds of years is way too much.

But, so far, no mention of letting them get fat.  If obesity isn’t a punishment from God, then why would he have created us in a way that would lend itself to our eventual fattening?  Does God get fat?  I mean, really, he just sits around all day listening to people, probably eating Kentucky Fried (mashed potatoes and gravy are as close to the Rapture as one can get).

And I just kept thinking about this.  The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being must have purposefully created us to get fat!  What a jerk!  Somewhere in his grand design, he said, “Man, if these cats ever get lazy, I’m gonna make it so they just balloon up and spawn a plus size clothing market.”  Otherwise, why not engineer us so that we always stay thin?

After the rush of sodium and grease worked its way through my system, I stopped thinking about this topic, but when faced with the choice between the idea that our bodies have not yet evolved to take into account an abundant food supply and a sedentary existence versus the idea that an invisible guy made us to get fat in order to punish our success in being lazy, I decided to go with the one that at least seemed plausible.

And since I ruled out the involvement of a deity, well, I just threw the baby out with the bathwater and concluded (as I always do) that it’s easier to believe he doesn’t exist at all than to believe he’s a putz.

About a week ago, Brandy and I took a look at a house for sale that had a very appealing location.  We’re passing on it because the house needs far too much work.

But during the showing, I was talking with the realtor and mentioned some of the challenges we would face in the house because we have a son in a wheelchair.

As soon as I said “our son is in a wheelchair”, he interrupted me to say, “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

This happens frequently, and I get it - people just don’t know how to react to that info.  So I’m here to help.  Here’s a quick guide towards an appropriate reaction:

- If “in a wheelchair” is said in the middle of a sentence and is said matter-of-factly, that means the speaker is cool with it and does not need your empathy. Don’t interrupt, and don’t evoke pity.

- If “in a wheelchair” is at the end of a sentence and is said with some emotion while being followed by a dramatic pause, go ahead with the sorry.  The speaker is looking for it.

- If “in a wheelchair” is yelled while the speaker is pounding on your car window, it means you parked too close to the van accessible space and the driver can’t get the wheelchair ramp down and get his son out of the car because you park like an idiot.  No sorry required, just move your ass.

That should cover most of the scenarios in which one would have to deal with a sudden revelation of disability.  If you encounter any others and find yourself at a loss for an appropriate response, please feel free to consult me for further guidance.

Come on.  It’s 2009. I can’t believe I actually found this on a web site.

Somebody recently asked me if I was insane because I’m doing too much webmaster stuff.  I’m co-webmaster of the site at work.  I’m webmaster for RBR.  I’ve got all my own sites (this, Prebble Family, BikeAble, A Bike For Gareth). And now I’m working on the CRBC web site.

Well, if you take a look around at all those things, you’ll find that most are suffering from inattention.

The RBR site, for which I am now being paid, gets regular updates. I try to post new blog entries there once a week if not more frequently, and there are usually product updates to post as the 2009 prices roll in.

The Prebble Family site is a ghost town. Nothing is getting posted there these days. Part of that, I’m sure, is that at the end of a day playing and fighting with the kids, the last thing on my mind is writing about the kids. This is a bit of a disservice to the family, since good things are happening all the time (like Gareth’s continued use of his IntelliKeys system), but I just never think to update the blog.

A Bike For Gareth is only as active as my rides with Gareth, so that blog essentially goes offline for entire seasons. Eventually, I will collapse that site altogether and roll the informational pieces into BikeAble.

And as for BikeAble, the site that has not seen a content update since last May, I have ideas for lots of stories that never get written. I even have a guy in California interested in coming on board. For right now, though, that site continues to suffer my unwillingness to sit down and write structured articles.

The CRBC site is a new project. Fortunately, I’m just the technologist for that one. I’m helping them get set up with a CMS, set down the rules and structure, but once it’s up and running, other folks will be responsible for content. So that’s an easy one.

Unfortunately, the site at work is the one that most discourages me while at the same time being the one I have to devote my entire day to managing. My day job drives me to work on sites for other people so I can work on sites that are intended to be engaging. What a shame.

Speaking of, got to get back to it. But at least I managed to update this site in the meantime.