after I was enjoying my bike for one week and still did'nt received my repair kit from the shop. ( never order online when you can go to the shop itself in 30 minutes...) I decided lets try to make a bike tour and if something happens, you have a phone and lindsay was ok to pick me up.

After I got 6km my water was empty and I was damn down from the temperature here. We had 113 Fahrenheit ( 45C) in the shade.

It was maybe not the smartest to drive down the road to woodland. Where no shade is at all.

I give it another try tommorrow. Cause the road was nice and I could maintan an average speed of 27 km/h over 10km.

The goal is to be in berryessa at end of september with the bike.

after I went the last time to lake berryessa and looked at all these guys riding there bikes down the mountains and up again I decided maybe its time that I finally doing something for me and my body and start biking again. Problem you need a bike.

I was thinking how to afford this, cause like always I have many dreams and can't afford to buy everything like:

• nice stereo system
• a surfboard with 140 liters
• a bike
• a new car
• vacation

as we can see thats its quite a nice list. So I was thinking what makes the most sense, I would love to buy a surfboard, but for a matter of fact I can't afford to go more then 2/3 times a month surfing and my board what I just bought (115 liters) is nice, but its barley windy enough, So I delayed this another year.

• A stereo system, is not really neccessaery and I already spend way to much time in the flat...
• vacation, yeah nice, but on the other hand I'm in california and there is much left where I can go, specially arround davis/tahoe/yosemite
• A new car, very nice but my car works and drives me everywhere and gas gets more and more expensive. So for the next 6 Month it should be fine, once I fix the left bearing and my airconditioner (fan broken)
• A bike, its actually the only thing where I can save money, can do something with my girlfriend arround davis (once I fixed here bike, or we get her a new one). And if I ride it everyday to work, I would save arround 150$ a month.

Finally I decided a nice bike ( should last over 5 years, so no walmarkt stuff) would be great. Problem what kind and how do I get one in my size.

There a basicly 5 kindes of bikes out there

• road bike
• mountain bike
• city bike/cruiser
• bmx
• hybrid (mix between road bike and city bike)

Because I want a daily driver I can't get a

• bmx (way to small and I'm not into this making crazy tricks)
  
• mountin bike (when do I get into the mountains offroading and way to heavy)
• hybrid (I don't like 50/50 things and they look ugly)

So we are left with cruisers (cheap,slow,heavy arround 500$) and roadbikes (expensive,fast,light to medium weight, starts at 700$)

Cause I like it fast and my dad always talked me into getting light things (like shoes and so) I decided to get a roadbike and my banking account hates me for this.

After I reasearched in the web for a couple of days and came to this list:

• minimum shimano 105 shifiting system, better ultegra
• click pedall system instead of strapes
• shoes
• helmet
• computer
• lights
  
• combination of carbon and aluminium frame
• the softes saddle possible
• under 10 kg
• changeable cranks
• at least 60 cm frame size ( I'm between 60 and 63)

During the shopping I talked to another salesperson, and he offered me a membership in a bike club, what means I get on everything I buy in this shob 10% of for 20$ a year. A second later I accepted and have now a club card with enough money on it to reach my magic goal to afford this bike...

what I got ( got an end of summer deal after long fighting with the salesperson) :

• combination of ultegra and 105 shifting system
• forte clicks, looks pedals where to expensive, forte a based on the look design
  
• shimano shoes
• carbon fork
• Aluminum Frame with Carbon Seat Stays
• 8.53 kg heavy
• simple computer, not wounderfull does the job
• a bottle and a holders
  

after I was able to setup the clicks and figured out how to get out them again ( I'm glad I practiced where somebody could hold me) I went 5 miles and stopped at the next shop and got:

• a lock, cause kinda sucks if you need to go somewhere like a store to grab some foot
  
• some shorts, my butt hurts and I was way to warm in the pants I had one

whats still missing are:

• a trikot, cause you sweat terrible in the shirt I use right now
• a helmet, top priority, will buy it in the next week or as soon as I go into the mountains. I wanted to buy one at the shop, but could'nt get a fitting one.
  
• a larger crank once I get used to this bike, cause the front crank is a little bit to small for me. I will by it in a couple of month, once I reach the maximum and are in good enough condition to actually use it
• lights, I'm not going to buy some, cause the tires are so thin, if you miss one hole in the street you need a new tire. So no biking in the dark
• i need a permit to ride this bike on campus, what I refuse to buy, cause I'm not putting an ugly sticker on my bike
• a small wais bag, cause this stupid pants have no pockets for keys and so
• a second bottle holder with a bottle for obvious reason
• an ipod nano with wrist holder so I can enjoy music during the ride
• a stand to put the bike into the flat
• a couple of spare tubes in case of a flat tire
• contacts, cause with my glasses its kinda anoying to bike in this racing position
  

I think I will get this over the next couple of month and finally try to save some money. For vacations next year.

...now my girlfriend only needs a bike so we can make tours...

after nearly 2 years in the usa there are two things which are just wounderfull for gadget fans.

1. netflix

a service which sends you as many dvd's as you want for 14.99 a month.

2. gamefly

a service which sends you as many games as you want for 14.99 a month.

now people tend to argue with me, but I prefer to own the game, so I always can play it over and over again. Sure if you this kind of player it makes sense, but in my case I play a game once and than grab another one.
The average game has 10 - 20 hours of playtime, means I need 2 - 3 weeks to play this game and than get a new one. The other thing with console games is, they are series and every year cames the next part and the older parts dust in the shelf... 

a small story about what can happen to you in the us during sitting at venice beach.

Oldtimer to the left was swinging his flag with the indian on top and was also selling some stuff.
As we can see he looks not very wealthy so now we try to figure out what could have happen.


After he was sitting there a while, a cop come by with his bicyle. And talked to oldtimer. After a short while he called for backup. So oldtimer stepped to the left and start swinging his flag like hes mad and shouted something nobody could understand. The cop was just next to him and did nothing. 15 minutes later backup arrived.
Now we had 1 oldtimer, 1 bicycle cop, 2 suvs with 3 other cops. I guess they tried to much his age to make it fair for him.

The 4 cops now cuffed him and searched him. They discovered a pipe and called for reinforcements... 10 Minutes later 2 other cops arrived. And moved him into the suv and moved his stuff into it too.





Finally the local band tried to support oldtimer and started singing a song.

Jonny Cash - Folsom Prison.

what we still can't figure out, what did oldtimer wrong in the first place, but we needed 6 officers to arrest him. Truely a scarry oldtimer.

After I went the last weekend to venice beach california I had the possibilty to take some nice shots of a couple of bikes.

I think everybody heard about the famous muscle beach and the street performance at venice. Its kinda overrated, the muscle beach is really disappointing and the performance, is not really so impressive. I was only impressed by 6 breakdancers, who put a damn nice show up.

I also have to admit that its not true that there are many rich, famous, good looking people at venice beach. Honestly, the most should change into clothes thats hides there body, and not show so much. Its like always, fat american laying on the beach. But they are defnitly rich...

what else to say about venice, you can buy stuff, you can spend a lot of money for food. Parking is expensive, arround 25$ for a day. And it's crouded.