Whitening my ride

I've wanted to write about the small upgrades of my trail bike last year but I was too lazy. Last year I changed the seat of my mountain bike with a white second hand Selle Italia seat. The original seat got to my city bike so that bike got a little bit sportier and more comfortable (it had a big bulky city seat).

Also last year I changed my bottle cage because the aluminium one was making my bottle dirty so I got a white plastic bottle cage and change the yellow bottle with a white bottle :)

Last year I started to have bigger problems with my pedals, one of them was broken for a few years, but after falling too many time because I could get my shoes unclipped I decided that I should get new pedals. Given the options of silver, black and white I chose some nice white pedals. 

Last week I changed the pedals (I want to change the cleats also, but I need a lot of tome for that) so this Sunday I went for a ride with the new white pedals. 

The trail was nice and dry, the ground was a bit to hard but it was a nice Spring ride.

And a picture white my whitened bike:

And a close up with the new pedals from Rosebikes:

I wonder what is the next bit that is going to be whitened... Too bad they don't make white Nobby Nics with reinforced side walls...

Races in May

In May there will be a lot of races in town so I made a list with all of them:

1. Sunday May 3 – http://www.mureshalfmarathon.ro
   • in the center of the city
   • I've participated 2 years ago, it is a pretty good race
2. Saturday May 9 – http://crossduathlon.ro – Transilvania Cross Duathlon Balcan and Romanian National Championship
   • it's around the Zoo (First Run 5.5 km – 2 laps x 2.75 km, total elevation 162 meter, Bike 19.5 km – 3 laps x 6,5 km, total elevation 594 meter, Second Run 2.75 km – 1 laps x 2.75 km, total elevation 81 meter)
   • I want to race in a duathlon race for some time now so I would like to participate
3. Sunday May 10 – http://mszaszalbert.blog.hu
   • approximately 12 km of trail racing
   • I've participated last year and it was a lot of fun so I hope I will be there this year also
4. Sunday May 24 – http://trailrace.ascotid.ro
   • half marathon, trail running (21 km, total elevation 584), in the forest near the Zoo
   • I would like to participate because I like to run in that forest

If it will be possible I would like to race in all of these events, but I would be satisfied if I could race in at least the duathlon and the half marathon :)

Canon 600D

I finally bought a dslr, a Canon EOS 600D

It is a great camera, the best I had so far. I bought a refurbished camera because it was cheaper and it was almost new. When I received the package I started wondering if there is any way to find out how many picture were taken with it. After some searching on the internet I finally found a solution that worked, it is called Canon EOS Camera Info v1.2. I tried a bunch of other software but none of them worked. 

It supports a bunch of cameras: 1000D, 450D, 500D, 550D, 1100D, 600D, 650D, 700D, 100D, 60D, 6D, 7D, 5D and 1D. You can download it from here. It looks like this:

It says that 387 picture were taken with my camera (about 100 were taken by me) so it is almost brand new. It is important to know the shutter count of your camera because the average life of a 600D is about 150.000 pictures and then a costly repair follow :)

Specialized Sub Zero gloves

I've been riding with Specialized Sub Zero gloves for a few months now. I mainly use them for the commute to work but I used them for a few other rides also.

The description on the Specialized website goes like this:

The Sub Zero features a removable liner glove for essential warmth and a waterproof outer shell for temperatures plummeting below 25°F/-5°C. Plus, Wiretap technology makes this glove touch screen friendly so you can keep your hands covered while using mobile devices in cold weather.

And they are spot on with this, the gloves are perfect for temperatures around -5 Celsius and above freezing you can just remove the outer glove.

I wanted a glove that is perfect for the very cold weather from the winter mornings and I didn't quite get that. In the morning when there were bellow -5 my hands were cold. Part of the problem was that it is a short commute and it's mainly downhill so my muscles don't produce enough heat and I'm a bit sleepy in the morning. Yesterday morning there were -3 degrees and my hands were kind of feeling that it is cold outside :(

My solution, an upgrade for these gloves, just get a thicker glove and replace the inner glove:

On the other hand the inner glove is just perfect for when the temperature is below 10 Celsius and I go for a ride. I even used them in the snow and they were just perfect, perfect grip and they kept my hands warm (my muscles were generating enough auxiliary heat)

Ordering from Rosebikes

A few years ago I had a bad experience with an order from a German online store, bike24 (since then I bough a running shoe from them and had no problems) and now I tried ordering from another store from the same country. This order from rosebikes was interesting to :)

I had two packages on route to me, one had tracking, the other didn't. So one day I got an email that they couldn't deliver one of the packages and it got back to the store. I explained that the package was probably not sent because it had no tracking and asked them to send it again. I got the package after a few days.

They speak very poor English, I asked for a tracking number and couldn't get a link. Luckily they have a very good country manager, Alex Ciocan and if you have any problems you can contact him and he is very helpful.

For the next order I will be extra careful to chose UPS for the shipping because the package that was shipped with them had tracking and arrived in time.

Two good thing about this order:

• they have sent a super cool bag as a new customer gift

• the boxes are also super cool so I will be keeping them for storage

Rosebikes have very competitive prices so I'll be ordering from them in the future again :)

2014 retrospective

As always I'm late again with this post, I did't have the mood to write lately.

There were a lot of interesting things last year, but I didn't write about them. I hope this will change this year because I have big plans for this website/blog.

I made a total of all my Strava activities and it looks like this:

 - 1008.8 kilometers ridden on my bikes (probably I have twice as much on my city bike - I don't use Strava for that)

 - 162.7 kilometers running (16 hours and 9 minutes)

Iteresting things from last year:

 - I started running, participated in two races

 - I rode in a gentlemans race - 188 kilometers

 - I tested some very expensive bikes

 - fixed/upgraded all my bikes
 - and a lot of new things in my personal life :)

For this year I have big plans:
 - fix up this site/blog
 - ride more
 - run more
 - build at least one android app
 - build more website/tools

Running

It seems that I have a new hobby (again)

Yes, it's running. I participated in my first real trail race a few weeks ago and I kind of liked it. I almost got in the top ten, I was 11th in my age group. I was a lot faster then I was expecting, in the beginning it was very hard but as I noticed lately I need about 20-30 minutes to warm up.

Last week I was on a short vacation and I went for a run. I liked it so I'm planning to go running more often. I noticed that I've burnt more calories in hour and I got more tired so that is a plus against biking. But riding a bike is a lot more fun than running so it will always be my favorite ;)

Goodbye Xcover, welcome Xcover

I sold my old phone the Samsung Galaxy Xcover and I bought the second version the Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 :)

It's a rugged phone also, designed for active people. It is a big upgrade, the screen is much nicer and the hardware is better so it moves way faster than my old phone. The software improvement is huge also, the jump from the old 2.3.6(Gingerbread) android to 4.1(Jelly Bean) is like switching from Vista to Windows 7.

I like the new phone, it has a lot of nice new features and it's fast. The only thing I don't like is the camera button on the side, it doesn't feel as solid as the rest of the buttons and it makes a strange sound, all this because it has two positions (the first is for the focus) like on a usual photo camera.

Hopefully I will start writing an app soon for my home automation project.

It's Spring again!

Hooray, it's spring again!

Sunday I went for the first road ride with my road bike this year. It's so weird to go out on the road again after a long winter... These were my thought:

• this bike in so unstable (the same feeling every spring)
• help, I can't feel the bike
• this is too fast
• it't too cold
• it's too hot
• this bike is too big
• the bike is not comfortable
• the seat is bad
• my back is killing me
• my legs are on fire
• I need more training
• this is too hard
• need to pay more attention, I almost felt down
• I'm too tired, I want to go home

There were a lot of similar thought going threw my mind but overall it was a nice ride. Every Spring is hard to go out on the road again but I am looking forward to the next ride :)

Riding the bike to play some football

As I said some time ago I like to play football and I play football every week with my coworkers.

This was the first winter when we played indoors. The "problem" is that we don't play in the city and for me there is a 20 minutes bike ride before and after the one hour game. I use my city bike to go to play football and it is a heavy bike which needs a new transmission so that makes the ride even harder. I like to run a lot when I play football, that combined with the bike rides make a very good workout :)