The Wampus Cat

I shook Fred Newman’s hand this evening!

Oh no. I find out a lot of bad news from my Gmail web clips, who reported to me via the NYT moments ago that Christian Vande Velde (who just the other day I discussed rooting for in the Tour) crashed out in the third stage of the Giro d’Italia. He broke two ribs and hurt his back. Not good news. Here’s to Vande Velde healing up soon, but racing the Tour only if he’s up to it. Best to get better now and win next year. (Also covered in that NYT article, Lance and the rest of Astana haven’t been getting paid.)

[Photo via NYT, taken by Alessandro Trovati of the Associated Press. “Christian Vande Velde, right, fell at the 87th mile on a downhill run.”]

So you’re going to dinner and you call to ask what to bring. “A bottle of wine.” For someone who doesn’t drink, doesn’t know much about drinking, or drinks beer, that’s a pretty daunting request. Like beer, there’s a lot to learn about wine. I personally don’t know much of anything about grapes, so Mike Steinberger’s new article on Slate was a good find. He suggests for the non-expert to choose wines based on who imports them. I like this approach. There’s a handy wallet card to help you remember who’s who, as well. (Pictured above) This will come in handy.

Note to self: in the future, before sending posters to be printed, please make sure that you’re not announcing events that happened last year.

[Image is from the 2009 Monsters of the Midway poster that I made. Luckily, little harm and little foul came of this.]

A few times a year I need to make a big poster that conveys simple information to people far away and doesn’t need to be printed on a large format printer for $75. I used to use Block Posters. You don’t have to download anything and it’s free. It’s not very customizable though, and it only takes JPG and GIF (I like PNG). A simple Google search away the whole time was Alessandro Portale’s PosteRazor, a free open source little app available for Mac, Windows, and Linux (Ubuntu out of the box, anyway). PosteRazor takes my PNGs and gives me a PDF, letting me customize paper size, orientation, overlap areas, and image placement along the way. It works very well and I recommend it for the next time you’re trying to avoid Kinko’s.

[The image is part of a poster generated by PosteRazor for the feed station, sponsored by Hyde Park Produce, for the UCVC’s upcoming Monsters of the Midway criterium on Saturday May 16th in Hyde Park. Bring a picnic, it’s a lot of fun to watch, before, after, and instead of racing.]

I am catching up on watching the Spring Classics and getting ready for what is, for most American cycling fans, the biggest event of the year: the Tour. I keep coming back, even though in past years I’ve had so many of the guys I’ve rooted for test positive and get booted (Vino, whose got me to buy this movie, and Saunier Duval, whose stage 10 victory last year was amazing, come to mind). This year, we’ve got Lance’s return (who is also racing the Giro d’Italia). We’ve also got Illinois’s own Christian Vande Velde to root for, who will be captaining Garmin/Slipstream. The New York Times has an article today about him. Slipstream’s rigorous testing means that Vande Velde could a good guy to root for, and his fight may be on the pavement rather than in a French police station.

[Image from Felt Racing]

I am doing important work right now but when I am done CJR is going to buy me this and let me play it on her iPod Touch! I feel like a kid again. What’s next? The Journeyman Project? The Dig?

[Picture of the Clock Tower from here.]

Here’s a neat article from Good Magazine about up and coming bicycle cities in North America.

[via CRS, photo of Miami cyclists from the article]

Surprising news from Arlen Specter today, who announced his intention to run as a Democrat in 2010. The NYT Caucus blog has some commentary, and here you can recollect Vermont’s own Senator Jeffords’ switch of parties in 2001. The details are different but the comparison is obvious. (Good news in a sea of bad news. Joseph Stiglitz’s perspective on the Obama bailout is worrying.)

[Pictures via Specter’s and Jeffords’ Wikipedia pages]