Trip Report: Hawaii

I just got back from a family trip to Hawaii (see photos).

I've always thought of Hawaii as the kind of place to visit after I'm too old and decrepit to do tough cycling, sailing, or hiking. In some ways I was right: having a kid is a lot like being old and decrepit, since you have to cater to its needs and can't do massively tough things. On the other hand, we had 6 adults to 1 kid, which meant that he didn't always have us outnumbered.

Family trips aren't as exciting as bike tours or other trips, so I'll abandon my usual day by day posts format and just summarize it all in one long blog post. PicasaWeb recently took away my ability to embed photos inside my blog, so unfortunately, that means I can't embed photos. Thank you for screwing me again, Google+!

Day 1: Arrived in Maui and settled in our beach apartment.
Day 2: Hana Drive. This was a really pretty drive, but the unfortunate part is that tropical islands grow back their trees really quickly, so a lot of the views are obstructed. There's a shortage of even hikes to get to good vantage points, and one of them quickly caused us to get bitten by mosquitoes. Kevin claims that Hana Drive isn't kid friendly. Well, we lucked out and have a pretty good kid who put up with being in a car for long periods of time. Bring food and water though, as places are expensive and the food not very good. The day was honestly a bit too rainy for us to enjoy the 7 sacred pools as a place to swim. Personally, if I had to do this again, I would drive the loop counter-clockwise rather than doing it clockwise. And yes, doing so would violate your rental contract, but seriously? The road is probably better than many streets in San Francisco, despite being unpaved. Recommended.
Day 3: Snorkeling. We tried 3 different snorkel sites, the best one being near the big resort in Kaanapali/Lahaina. One unfortunate thing about being a veteran traveler is that stuff that blows away other people leave you comparing with other experiences. Compared to my lifetime of admittedly very good snorkeling, Hawaii rates a 5 out of 10. The water is murky compared to the Caribbean, and the wildlife is great, but the water is also cool. Nevertheless, even mediocre snorkeling is nice compared to driving.
Day 4: Diving to Moralaki. It was originally going to be a two tank trip to Moralaki and then Turtle Town, but the incoming swells meant that we did both dives at Moralaki. I went with Maui Dive Shop, which is a competent and friendly operation, but ultimately, they could only salvage that much from the conditions, which was murky and relatively low visibility (30-40'). Recommended only if the conditions are clear. My family went to the Coral Gardens instead for snorkeling on a snorkeling-specific boat, and had a great time but didn't take any pictures worth posting.
Day 5: My dad and I took surfing lessons. Surfing is surprisingly fun, but lasts all of 10s each time on the board, so the work to fun ratio is incredibly high. After 2 hours I was exhausted. Then XiaoQin picked us up and we visited a few beaches, including Big Beach for the morning. In the afternoon, we went snorkeling near the Sheraton, which was the best so far, with green sea turtles.
Day 6: Flew to Kauai, and went to our beach house there.
Day 7: I had a scheduled dive trip, but it got canceled because of swells, cancelled all trips. So we rented snorkel gear and drove north to the North coast, which was supposed to get the swells instead, but was very calm (but still murky water). At Anini Beach, XiaoQin spotted a sea turtle and chased it and even got to touch his shell. (I think the turtle allowed her to do so) We then visited the famous lighthouse. On the way home, we spotted a sign for "Ahi", and I pulled over the side of the road to find a man selling Ahi Tuna out of a pickup truck. XiaoQin picked out an 8 pound fish, paid $20 for it, and we had amazingly fresh sashimi for the next two days. Life is full of little opportunities like this, which you have to spot and take action on. We kept looking for the guy the next few times we drove by the spot (he's apparently famous on the island) but never saw him again.
Day 8: Rain day. Didn't get to do much.
Day 9: We tried to go up the Waimea canyon, but got there only to find the fog so thick that nothing could be seen. Went back to Poipu and did some beach surfing. XiaoQin's dad found that one of the neighbors had a coconut tree with ripe coconuts that nobody was picking. So we picked a couple and ate them and found them to be good. Over the next few days, we'd grab 20+ coconuts off that tree.

We visited spouting horn and took a few pictures of the blowhole. It's very exciting if you've never seen one before, but also very touristy. A look around the garden across the street was also fine.
Day 10: We drove over to Haena at the end of the road to swim in the bay there. The snorkeling here was better than in Anini, about 6 out of 10. It was cool and we saw multiple turtles and had fun. The parking situation was hell, since it was the only nice part of the island today. On the way back we got some nice pictures over some farms. We also booked Napali Coast tours. Since the tour wouldn't take the baby, we split the group in to 6, and each group would take turns.
Day 11: We went up the Weimea Canyon and this time finally got to see stuff. It's a wild and beautiful tropical Canyon, worth a look, but is also one of the rainiest places on the planet, which means the trails are muddy as heck. A fog rolled in as we tried to walk it, so we had to call it a day as it was just not much fun. Nevertheless, worth a drive to visit, just start early in the day. Recommended.
Day 12: Napali Coast Tour. I should have brought my DSLR on this trip, as it was gorgeous. Wild rugged mountains, and you can see why the Napali coast trek is rugged. There's no less than 5-6 valleys in a short span of a few miles, no way to build roads without expensive tunneling, and just pretty. On the other hand, tropical hiking is not my idea of fun, and I could find no charter company willing to drop me off at the far end of the trail so it would only be a one way 11 mile hike, so I bagged it. The diving/snorkeling was pretty crappy, 3 out of 10. Heavy swells, and 10-20' visibility at best. But in these conditions, diving is better than snorkeling because once you're under water: no swells. And I did get to see several turtles sleeping. Recommended.
Day 13: My dad and I took surfing lessons again, to learn that the guy over at Maui taught us wrong so we had to unlearn our previous learnings and learn to do it right. What a pain. My dad got exhausted from all the swimming, coconut tree climbing, and snorkeling that he did, so after an hour and a half we bagged it.

XiaoQin and I went over to the east coast and checked out two beach cruisers and rode them on the bike path. The bike path is pretty, and there's only one bike shop worth renting from Kauai Cycle. Their beach cruisers sucked less than any other beach cruisers I'd ever tried, and so are well worth the premium. They also rent road bikes, mtbs, etc.
Day 14: I went with Seasports Divers and did my first Nitrox dives with them. Everybody else was doing Nitrox, so I did it so I wouldn't abandon early. One highlight was when Sabin the dive master looked at me and said, "You don't have enough insulation. 2 wetsuits for you!" I'm the fattest I've ever been in my life, so I took her words with a grain of salt, but sure enough, I felt a little chilly in the water, so it's a good thing I wore 2 suits. My first breath of Nitrox (32% O2) felt like a drink of coffee: you wake up right away. It feels really good. I'll consider getting Nitrox certification one of these daays. These last two dives were the best of the trip, at least a 7 out of 10 if not 8 out of 10. The water was relatively clear (since we dove away from the runoff), and we got to do a drift dive as our first dive. We saw sharks, turtles, octopus (my first!), and many endemic creatures. The rental gear was also first rate. I highly recommend going with Seasports divers if you find yourself in Kauai. They deserve all the kudos and while they're more expensive than everyone else, I think they're well worth the money, and I'm not the kind of person to use those words lightly.
Day 15: We packed, moved out of the house, and had a local Hawaiian place (Lua Lua), and then went to the airport and flew home.

Conclusions: Hawaii is OK. However, if you're a typical American with very little vacation, you typically have two choices if you want to go somewhere warm over winter: the Caribbean, or Hawaii. There's no question in my mind that the Caribbean, especially the Virgin Islands, wins. The water's clearer, warmer, and it's a lot less humid in the Caribbean. Now, the choices of activities vary very widely between the two places. Sailing is horrible in Hawaii: the distances between islands are great, and there's no real charter business to speak of. Surfing, on the other hand, is better on Hawaii than anywhere else in the world. The BVIs are pretty crappy for cycling, whereas Maui has the famous volcano. The reality, though, is that any cycling in the tropics pales to what you can get in California or in the Alps, so I can't imagine blowing good money on a cycling vacation in Hawaii. In retrospect, I was right to put off Hawaii in favor of other places (the BVI, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and even Cancun have way better diving). Even more impressively, all those places are cheaper than Hawaii! I very much doubt that I will return to Hawaii. For me, it's just not worth the time and money. Obviously, I couldn't have said this with authority without having visited Hawaii, so I don't regret this visit. I am, however, planning a trip to the BVIs in short order.

Review: Lady Lady I Did It

Lady Lady I Did It is one of Ed McBain's (Evan Hunter) 87th Precinct novels. I remember them fondly from my youth, so when Amazon recently ran a $0.99 cent deal on the Kindle editions I picked one up to see how they fare for me, 20 years later.

Police procedurals are great at documenting a moment in time. You read about a time when police departments depended mostly on cops walking the beat, questioning witnesses, and using type-writers instead of computers. You get exposed to the methods used and the serious amount of work required to follow up on a homicide. You get reminded of a time in the country when abortion was illegal, and doctors got put away for performing them. (The slight anachronism here was that the doctor was a woman, and I seem to recall female doctors being rare in that era)

The police are all men, and their family lives reflect the traditional 1950s families: single breadwinner household, and care-taker women. The large number of stereotypes in this novel would put you off if it was a modern novel, but set as it is in the 1950s, it paints the picture of an era gone by.

The mystery itself is not much of one, as the reveals happen very close to the exposure of the criminals in question. It wasn't hard for me to guess what the one big clue was, but overall the plot didn't make sense, as a personal vendetta wouldn't usually lead to a massive killing spree. Unlike later novels in this genre, there's no psychological profiling, and you never get a glimpse of the villain's thought processes.

All in all, a quick easy read, and something useful to remind us of how quickly technology and society has changed over the last 60 years. Mildly recommended.

Review: The Price of Civilization

I will admit that I approached The Price of Civilization with a lot of skepticism. As an economist, Sachs was famous for being extremely optimistic books such as The End of Poverty---years later, there's still plenty of poverty to go around, thank you very much, Profesor Sachs.

The book itself does admit the large number of problems America faces: corporate corruption of the political system, mass media devoted to selling, a lack of social cohesion leading to inability to agree on even basic life-and-death matters such as healthcare reform, and of course, a failing educational system. All this is covered very well in books such as Republic, Lost, or even Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal. All the evidence point in Sachs favor here, and if you're not a Fox-News conservative, there's enough data that might cause you to rethink your politics.

However, when it comes to prescription, Sachs is overly optimistic. I certainly don't think that the measures he proposes (such as trying to get poor children an education equal in quality to the kids of the rich) could possibly get passed in today's political climate. Not a chance. Zero. Sachs says he's optimistic mostly because of the Millenial generation, but I'm privy to mailing lists dominated by Millenial wealthy (or soon-to-be-wealthy), and I'm sorry, those guys are just as blinkered, over-privileged, and narrowly self-interested as the older wealthy types I've met in my life: the prevailing culture is very much IGMFU.

Ultimately, my thought is that while it's all nice and good that billionaires like Bill Gates are doing their best to eliminate malaria and all that, maybe the best thing they could actually do would be to counter-weight the Koch brothers. Otherwise, those saved from malaria could easily still find themselves stuck in a poor, unhappy world run by Fox News Conservatives.

My biggest problem with this book is that anyone who picks it up probably doesn't already need the persuasion. Unfortunately, there's zero chance that a Fox News Conservative will read the book, or even if he did, agree with any of the "liberal bias evidence." Check it out from the library if you're already evidence-minded, but I can't recommend paying more than $1 for it.

Review: Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

It didn't take very long to realize Boomerang is a reprint of various Michael Lewis articles for Vanity Fair. This in itself is not unfortunate, as the articles are well written and a lot of fun to read.

The book starts with coverage of Greece's financial crisis, and the (by now) well-documented fact that the Greek have a revenue problem in that everyone cheats on taxes. Then he moves on to Iceland, which had turned itself into a financial center by effectively trading equity to each other at insanely high prices. Then he moves on to Ireland, where the housing bubble took off in a big way, but the government came in and guaranteed all the private sector loan, in a major case of major-bone-headedness, damning the Irish public to pay for the sins of the crazy people.

The book rounds off with an examination of the Germans and the Californians, each of whom have yet to dealt with their own crisis. At the end of reading all of these short articles in short order (this is a very short book, and easily read in one day), it's tough not to come to the conclusion that every country treats finances and financial responsibility very differently. Culture explains almost all of it, though it doesn't explain the bone-headed behavior of certain officials (and I don't mean the Californians exclusively) very well.

Unfortunately, the treatment of the financial topics is very shallow. For instance, there's no contrasting of the very different ways Iceland and Ireland chose to handle their crisis. In hind-sight, the very big differences have led to vastly different outcomes. Because Lewis doesn't actually have a framework or theory to hang it all together, the reader is left thinking that there's not a lot that can be done. He doesn't even interview people who think that the problem is soluble.

This is very easy vacation reading, but unfortunately, not very good for people who want a deeper understanding of the current arguments about what to do about the economy. For that, you might want to read The Big Short instead.

Review: The Kingdom of Gods

Last year, I reviewed The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and praised it as some of the most innovative fiction written. Then I reviewed the sequel, The Broken Kingdoms with faint praise, and opened up the Kingdom of Gods with trepidation: the trendline indicated that it was going to completely suck.

I was pleasantly surprised. The Kingdom of Gods shows us the Jemisin can innovate even when writing sequels. In the past, the story focused on the human or partly human characters. This time, we see the world from the point of view of one of the Godlings, in particular, one of my favorite characters from the first novel, Sieh, the oldest godling, whose domain is that of children and is the pantheon's Trickster's god. If you think that's difficult to pull off, you'd be right, but Jemisin pulls it off. Part of it is she cheats: very early on, Sieh loses his powers and effectively becomes a mortal for a large part of a novel, regaining his powers only on occasion.

Nevertheless, the plot is satisfying as we are presented with one mystery after another. Even better, even though my initial ideas were correct, Jemisin succeeded in making me question whether she was going to take things in that direction. The side plots and exposition of how being a god works in her world is exciting and fun, and we get to see the consequences of events in earlier novels in great detail. Nearly everything gets resolved in the end, though my copy of the book has a short story that also serves to tie up loose ends in the previous novel.

As with previous novels, this one is entirely self-contained and doesn't suffer from sequel-itis. You see references to prior novels and previous novels, but there's no need to read them at all if you don't want to, and this is a good enough novel that it'll have you on the edge of your seat once you start. It's a great novel and I have no hesitation about recommending it to anyone.

Review: Knocking on Heaven's Door

I didn't read the reviews of the book carefully before checking it out of the library, so I had my expectations completely mismanaged when I discovered that Knocking on Heaven's Door, unlike Warped Passages, isn't about string theory, but rather a introduction to science book, mixed in with a discussion of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). I had previously reviewed The Magic of Reality, and this science book is very different. While The Magic of Reality aims to give you beautiful illustrations along with the text, this is very much a non-fiction for adults book.

The introduction to science is interesting and non-technical, focusing mostly on the discovery process, as well as how Quantum Mechanics, for instance, doesn't obviate Relativity or Newtonian Mechanics, and how science doesn't work that way. She describes a fascinating conversation with the producer/director of "What the Bleep do We Know" and extracts a satisfying admission from him that the "science" in that movie was nothing but utter BS. She provides a good layman's description of the traditional conflicts between science and religion, and shows how it's hard to be a scientist and deeply devout if you're going to do any science.

The LHC portion of the book is fascinating, and includes a description of the history and how it got built. There's an indictment of the American government for being extremely short-sighted about science and cancelling the SSC, which would have probed even higher energy physics, resulting in all the scientists going to Europe to do their experiments. Given how gorgeous that area of Geneva/Switzerland is, I'm not sure people are all that disappointed.

Finally, there's a description of what experiments the LHC is expected to run and what results it's expected to produce in the short and long run.

I described Warped Passages as a tough read, but this book's much simpler, and can easily be understood by anyone with a decent high school education (which I'm given to understand is difficult to come by in the USA). I recommend the book for anyone who wants to understand why we spend so much money for "toys for physicists", and those who want to understand how the scientific process works.

Chariot CTS Cougar Followup: Palanquin Mode

I mentioned in my earlier review of the Chariot Cougar that it had 5 modes: stroller, bike trailer, jogger, skier, and hiking mode. Well, today we discovered a 6th mode: Palanquin Mode. The nicest thing about this mode is that you don't actually need to buy anything if you already have a jogger.

From Hawaii

All you need is to remove the front wheel on the jogger, station two people on the fork mount, another person on the rear handlebars, and now the Chariot Cougar doubles as a palanquin. Palanquin mode is very useful, enabling you to negotiate stairs, tree roots, steep climbs, and other obstacles normally considered impossible even for off-road capable trailers. In fact, if you retain the front wheel, you can convert back to a jogger right after the tough section, enabling you to remain on your way.

Bowen seemed to enjoy palanquin just fine, only complaining at the end after he got removed from the Cougar's safe mosquito mesh netting only to be immediately bitten by a mosquito.

If you're not an outdoors person, you'll probably be unlikely to be swayed by the existence of palanquin mode. However, if you've considered abandoning a hike because of tree roots and have a fair number of people with you, you might discover it to be a nice bonus "Easter egg" you didn't plan for.

Ride your road bike on unpaved roads

One of the sections in Independent Cycle Touring covers riding on unpaved surfaces with a road bike. Why would you do this when you can just buy a mountain bike? It turns out that there are several reasons.

1. I don't own a mountain bike.
   
2. Many dirt trails are on top of a mountain, and it's easier to climb the mountain on the road bike. The amount of dirt usually is so little that it's more efficient to go faster on pavement and then a little slower off road. For instance, the top of Montebello road is this way, with a short cut to Page Mill road which avoids taking Skyline Blvd, which is a pain on weekends and full of high speed traffic. (This video illustrates how to trigger the gate at the end of the section from Black Mountain summit by leaning your bike over the looped metal detectors as you approach the gate)
   
   
3. Riding dirt gives you bike handling skills that just riding on the road won't give you. For instance, here's Lance Armstrong during the 2003 Tour de France. The rider in front of him crashed but Armstrong who was behind him escaped crashing by riding off pavement into the field.
   
   
4. It's useful to be able to ride little dirt roads on top of passes, since they make what used to be "one way" roads into "through roads."
   
5. Unexpected hazards such as slippery leaves, sand, soil, and cow patties can get spilled onto paved roads. Eric House and I once rode down Page Mill road during a frosty spring day, and as we rounded a hairpin turn, we felt our bikes slide a bit as both tires on our bikes slipped on the frosty surface. Neither of us crashed, partly because we were going slower than usual, but also because both of us regularly rode our road bikes off road.
   

Review: Children of the Sky

Children of the Sky is the direct sequel to Vernor Vinge's Hugo Award winning A Fire Upon The Deep, which was easily the best novel that year. There was a prequel, A Deepness in the Sky which was also very well written, though not as deeply original as A Fire Upon The Deep.

It is not necessary to read A Fire Upon The Deep before picking up Children of the Sky, but given how good A Fire Upon The Deep was, I would strongly encourage reading that book first no matter what. It provides interesting background about the universe and the world, which might mystify or confuse readers who choose to start with Children of the Sky.

Children of the Sky picks up 10 years after the events of A Fire Upon The Deep, on the world where the protagonists and the survivors of the preceding catastrophe were stranded. What's great about starting here is that the world seems much more fleshed out than before. The big alien species that Vinge introduced in A Fire Upon The Deep was the Tines, dog-like creatures that are only intelligent when clustered close together in a pack, with neural connections being made via sound rather than electrically. What's great is that Vinge extrapolates from this alien biology to the rest of the world, and posits what happens when masses of that species lives too close together, as would happen in the warmer tropical regions of the world. This extrapolation and world building is extremely high quality, and every time you run across something that was newly introduced, you'll say to yourself, "of course! That's how it would work."

The big plot point here is that the cryogenically revived children of the Straumli disaster would not believe that the events of the previous books were real, and then start acting as though the protagonists were lying and making things up. Given the existence of Holocaust deniers in our world, history, and timeline, this is very believable, and drives tension and events throughout the book. We also see a recurring villain from the previous book revive and begin to pose a threat.

The story alternates between action/reaction (along with a great introduction to politics) and world building. Events are told from multiple points of view, but it's clear that Ravna from A Fire Upon The Deep is to main protagonist in this story. The characters are strongly developed, and everything is believable.

The weakest part of the novel comes at the climax and ending. We've seen the characters go through hell, and established that certain other characters were truly villains on a grand scale (kidnapping and murder is just the tip of the ice-berg). Yet our protagonists seem happy with the finishing status quo, not agitating for villains who obviously cannot be trusted to be dealt with, and even in some ways helping them undermine the future of their community. This seems unlikely, especially since one of the protagonists has been clearly labeled as a hothead. The ending is also clearly a setup for another sequel. While I would be glad to read more in this universe, this leaves the book hanging in many ways and leaves the reader with a bit of dissatisfaction.

Despite all this, this is an excellent novel, and I would not be surprised to see it win the Hugo award this year, and I would be happy to see it win one. Recommended

Review: Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment

I love books that apply science to daily affairs, and Attached promised to take scientific research and apply it to romantic relationships. If it pans out, you can use this to predict how you would act with someone else with respect to romance, as well as whether you're built for loving relationships, so it's a real promising book.

The book essentially divides people into three attachment types: Anxious, Avoidant, and Secure. Apparently, this categorization came out of child attachment studies, where babies essentially display the same type of behavior. Anxious types are your typical "needy" daters. They fight to keep themselves from calling their dates or romantic partners too often, and are wont to interpret every bit of thoughtless behavior as loss of the partner. Avoidants are the non-committers: you know, the type who won't bring you to see their friends and family, or who won't commit. Secure types (whom the authors say compose of 50% of people) are the buffers who've learned not to over-react to bad behavior and place their partners first in a relationship.

One of the interesting things the authors say is that the most common relationship problem is between the Anxious and the Avoidants. Basically, the two feed each other and push buttons in each other in ways that leaves Anxious people addicted to the drama of the relationship and thereby prolonging the pain. Another thing they say is that when you're out dating, you're actually more likely to meet Anxious or Avoidants despite them being only 50% of the population, because the Secure types typically don't stay on the market very long.

A lot of the book then spends time visiting case study after case study of the relationship types, breaking down arguments, and explaining what the Secure response to each potentially explosive situation is, and how the insecure response typically backfires. This is good stuff and I wish I had it when I was a teenager. It also tells you what you already know: "That being direct and honest is always the best policy, if you want to find a partner that suits you, but to stay in a relationship, what you need to do is to trust your partner and always assume the best outcome." They also explore potential dysfunction even for secures in a relationship, and explains why many such people would stay in relationships far too long for their own good.

Where this book fails for me is that there's no explanation at all as to how people become Anxious, Secure, or Avoidant. There's a discussion of dead-ends in the research. For instance, they explored whether Secure babies became Secure adults, and there's apparently no correlation whatsoever. This is bad news, because it means we don't know how to turn someone who's Avoidant into being someone secure. In fact, the authors come right out and just say, "If you're Anxious, avoid that Avoidant types and go for someone Secure. Here's how to recognize one, and for heavens sake, that excitement you feel for the Avoidant types is an addiction you need to get over." There's also no studies as to whether a Secure can become an Avoidant, or whether transmutation between types is common.

The book's a very quick read (it looks thick, but half the pages are essentially references to the scientific literature), and easily picked up at the library, so I'd say you should just read it because the case studies are entertaining, even if you don't normally read romance novels. I'm not sure it isn't an over-simplification, and clearly the science isn't anywhere near what we see in Thinking Fast and Slow, but I can definitely recommend it.

Review: Chariot Cougar 1 Stroller/Bike Trailer/Jogger

My brothers insisted on buying a bike trailer for Bowen. When I responded that they should get me the Chariot Cougar, one of them wrote in disbelief, "This thing costs as much as the space shuttle!" To which my response was, "You insisted!"

Well, my brothers didn't just get me the trailer with the cycling kit, they also got me the jogging kit, and I then went and bought the stroller wheels and the infant sling, all of which is necessary if you're going to use the device as a stroller right away, as opposed to waiting the requisite 10 months or so before the baby gets to wear a helmet and get towed along.

If you're used to regular stollers with plastic wheels, pushing one of the high end big wheel strollers will be a different experience. The wheels are pretty much the same as bicycle wheels, sized down and with fat tires. This does two things: first of all, bigger wheels bridge bumps and holes in the surface better, giving you a smoother ride. Secondly, bigger wheels have a narrower contact patch for the same weight, which reduces rolling resistance. High precision bicycle bearings reduce the rolling resistance even further.

The stroller is huge, since it comes with a roll cage. I installed the infant sling almost immediately, and luckily in the newer models it requires almost no tools and is easy to work. The difference between the stroller wheels and the jogger wheel is that while the jogger wheel is effectively a small bicycle wheel featuring pneumatic tires, the stroller wheels are solid rubber, and there's two of them mount inboard of the frame, as opposed to being an outboard wheel. The result is a dramatically smaller turning radius, with an increased rolling resistance. I practiced folding the stroller and unfolding it, and indeed everything does fold away very nicely, but it's definitely not something you can do without reading the manual. I was pleased with the side wheels' quick release mechanism, and how well everything snapped together. For instance, when using the jogger wheel, you can mount the stroller wheels inverted in the frame, so you don't lose them or outsmart yourself and hide them somewhere where you can't find them again.

From BayArea

Given that the stroller wheels are also very low in rolling resistance, why would you want the jogger wheels? The answer: so you can push the entire device off pavement on trails. Once you go off road, the pavement isn't as smooth, and the reduced rolling resistance of having only one larger wheel versus two small wheels is noticeable. Plus, you don't really want to be jiggling your kid in there. The stroller weighs 20 pounds by itself, but because of all the effects described above, feels much lighter: on level ground, I can push it along with just one finger, just as you would expect if you were pushing a lightweight bicycle.

The cockpit of the stroller/trailer is large, and has a canopy with a mesh window (to keep out the bugs in the summer), a sunscreen which can be deployed to keep harmful UV from baby's face, and a waterproof plastic sheet to keep the rain off, in case you decide to jog with baby in the rain. I'd probably get screamed at for doing that, so I didn't test to see how waterproof it really is, but apparently there's a separate water-proofing cover for people who are hardcore enough to take their babies out in pouring rain.

Obviously, it's illegal for me to take the kid out in it as a bike trailer, so I haven't tested it that way yet, but I don't expect it to be any different than other trailers I've tested in the past.

So, is it worth the price? Well, all in, the entire set up probably cost around $600, but we're using it twice a day for most likely the next 3 years or so. It truly is versatile, fits well, and so far, is the most consistent way for me to get Bowen to sleep. In fact, if he starts crying in the trailer, what I've learned is that it means he's asking me to speed up. Running with the trailer almost immediately puts him right back to sleep!

I looked on Amazon and used items are not available, and the lone ebay seller selling one used was asking $370 and $95 shipping, which indicates that the resale value on these devices would be comparable to that of a high end bicycle: unless you abuse the hell out of it, you should be able to get half of what you paid for it after 3 years. If you factor that in, the cost is comparable to that of buying a good trailer, a good stroller, and a jogger. In case you're interested, there's also a ski kit as well as a hiking kit. I consider the hiking kit ridiculous, and am not an enthusiastic skiier, so I can't imagine using the ski kit.

For now, my rating on this would be recommended. It's a quality product, albeit at a premium price.

6 reasons to make cycling your New Year's Resolution

Yes, I'm talking to you there, sitting behind the screen. Here's why you should take up cycling:

1. It's fun. Cycling on a lightweight road bike is like flying without leaving the ground. So much so that in Pat Murphy's novel, The City, Not Long After, one of the characters exclaimed this after learning to ride, and said to her friend, "Why didn't you tell me it was like flying?!" That's how you'll feel if you've not ridden a nice road bike before and try one for the first time. Mountain biking is like hiking, but at 10 miles per hour. Long mega-hikes that are only for the masochistic are now easy for you to do in 4 hours.
   
2. Cycling makes you smarter. There's strong evidence (see Brain Rules or this New York Times article) that aerobic exercises increases cognitive capability. While this goes for all aerobic exercise, aerobic exercise is cycling's forte. Note that cycling at 10mph on a bike path will not grant this benefit. You actually have to go hard enough that you feel a little bit out of breath.
   
3. Cycling makes you feel better. Professor Csikszentmihaly wrote a book called Flow, the psychology of optimal experience. In it he describes happiness as being completely absorbed in a task. Cycling, where you're climbing, descending, or picking your way through traffic, demands that you completely absorb yourself in it. My friend Phil Sung says it's an extremely meditative experience for him.
   
4. Cycling improves your balance, since by its very nature, you have to stay on two wheels. If you regularly challenge yourself on dirt roads or by riding a mountain bike off road, you will increase your sense of balance dramatically.
   
5. You can cycle until you're very very old. Aerobic activities like running have many of the same physical and mental benefits, but cycling is unique in that it's a low impact activity, so it won't wear out your joints prematurely. My bike club's full of runners and former tennis players who took up cycling because their doctors told them that they cannot pursue their former sport any more, usually due to joint damage. These folks weren't casual tennis players. They were competitive, and they used to say sentences like, "Winning a match isn't a matter of life and death, it's much more important than that!" I sat down with some of them over lunch and asked them if they had any regrets about having to take up cycling. One of them said, "Yes. My regret is not taking it up sooner." One of the middle aged members of the club once observed, "You know, the old guys in the bike club are different. They learn things quickly, they're flexible, and they're optimistic and not crotchety."
   
6. Cycling is far more time efficient than almost any other sport because you can commute to work by bicycle. Tennis players can't play tennis and magically arrive at work after a tennis game. Cyclists, however, regularly get in some cycling just going to the local grocery store, or getting to work. If you're enthusiastic, you can even travel the world by bicycle and find places most non-cyclists don't know about. For instance, I recently rode a section of road today that was closed to all but cyclists and pedestrians:
   

   From BayArea

   
   

First Impressions: Belkin Bluetooth Music Receiver

My two year old Roku Soundbridge's wifi card failed, and it's impractical to run an ethernet cable out to where the entertainment center is, so I disconnected it (some day, I might find a practical way to run it), figuring that I would use the PS3 to stream music.

The reality, though, is that it never happened. There's something silly about having to turn on the huge ass screen just to listen to music, so when one of Amazon's lightning sales gave me the Belkin Bluetooth Music Receiver at $20, I jumped on it despite the mediocre reviews about the range, sound quality, and the need to mod the product to get decent range. I figured I'd return it if it turned out to be no good, or mod it if the range was inadequate for my tiny home.

The product arrived and to my surprise, the power connection on the unit was the same as the very first version of the kindle, which meant that my gomadic system would work with it in the car, for instance. I plugged it into my system, paired it with my Nexus One, and away I went. To my surprise, the music sounded decent. Not "blow the doors off great", but on the other hand, no one had stuck a CD into the PS3 for ages, which is what it would take to get great sound. Furthermore, the Google Music UI on the phone gave me access to all the music in the cloud, with only a minimal delay for streaming.

I then tried pairing the device with XiaoQin's LG Optimus V. That device paired but did not connect. After a bit of frustration, I long-pressed the device selection on the Android screen and turned off the "Phone Audio" for the Belkin, at which point the connection went off without a hitch.

I was expecting to have to modify the device (read the Amazon Reviews for the details), but it turns out that in my tiny home, the range is just fine. What's sweet is that a bluetooth laptop, for instance, could just as easily stream to the device.

All in all, this is an incredibly cheap replacement for my Roku Soundbridge, and for $20, a more than good enough replacement for it. I still will eventually want to find a way to plug the Roku in, but for now, this works just great. Recommended.

Review: The Alchemist

The Alchemist is a magical realism fable. While not as irritating as One Hundred Years of Solitude, it has its own rhythm and sound, and practically no plot. That last bit is not a bad thing, once you realize that it's a fable, where the entire point of the book is to tell you something you already know.

In many ways, the book is elegant. The story revolves around a Shepard who is told that he has a Personal Legend and who should pursue it. While pursuing it, he has good fortune, ill fortune, shows himself to be enterprising, meets his true love the way only characters in novels can, and pursues and discovers his dream, which somehow brings him back to where he started, but from a different place. This motif recurs in all sorts of novels, including A Wizard of Earthsea or even The Lord of the Rings. Unlike those stories, however, this one is told simply, with a light language and guilelessly, as though such stories have never been told.

I can see why this book is popular amongst people who almost never read books. It gives you the impression of depth, but without having to actually work at it. It's a quick read, so even if you end up disliking it (as I did), it's not a thorough waste of time. Nevertheless, there are many far better books that are well worth the added time. If you find yourself impressed by this book, then I submit that you are not sufficiently widely read enough, as this answer on Quora explains. For my money, the similarly length'd Very Far Away From Anywhere Else will teach you far more about the human condition than this novel, and is better written to boot. If you want something whimsy and easy to read, try Neil Gaiman's Stardust instead.

Not recommended. I'm glad I checked this ebook from the library instead of spending hard-earned money on it.

First Impressions: GoPro Helmet Hero HD

One of the daily deals site offered the GoPro Helmet Hero HD for $135, and at that price I jumped on it in the hopes that I might be able to replicate the results of my touring videos locally, without having to carry a stoker up mountains (or deal with a stoker's sway as she manhandles the camera at speed!).

At that price, the camera can double as a HD camera as well, for general use as well as if my brothers or friends want to borrow it for skiing.

The device comes with the camera, a waterproof case (with both a waterproof backing and a non-waterproof backing), several adhesive mounts for attaching it to a motor-vehicle, as well as a helmet mount. Sadly enough, the device as is does not come with a scuba unit, though a scuba case can be bought separately through eye of mine for about $100.

The camera comes with a few modes, 720p, 960p, and 1080p. The default is the 960p, which is a weird mode which produces a square picture. The reason for this is that on a bike you might look up and down often and it could be useful to get more picture of road. Having tried it once (see sample video), I'm likely to stick with 1080p.

On the helmet, the camera does weigh your head down more. I'm not sure I would want to carry it up a major mountain pass on my head, though sticking it into your saddlebag (or jersey pocket) and mounting it for the descents seems like something eminently doable. (Uphill, I have no issues with manipulating a Canon S100.

The output of the video is huge. For 1.5 hours, it'll use up 8GB, so at least a 16GB card would be recommended for any kind of extended use. The battery will run out in 2.5 hours, so getting more than 16GB would be pretty pointless unless you have a spare battery. As for the lens quality, you can see it generates a lot of flare when pointed into the sun, so I would make a note of that. This is pretty bad, because cyclists don't usually have control over the flare or not. Note that the camera is designed for what I call "point and pray". Since there's no display for the image you're getting, and the camera's mounted on your helmet, you just can't possibly know what you're shooting until you get home.

On an unsupported tour, I'm not sure I would want to have this on my head or in my saddlebag. It weighs only 213 grams (without the charger), but since it uses up video pretty quickly, you'd either have to carry a stack of SD cards, or you'd have to carry some sort of additional storage, which would be even more weight. On a supported tour, however, such as the first half of our tour of the alps, I would consider it eminently usable. I am now extremely curious to see if I can get Pardo or some other fast descender to stick it on his helmet and take it down Page Mill Road or Highway 9.

For editing the video, unlike indoor videos, where lighting frequently demands color correction (meaning you pretty much need Adobe Premiere Elements or some other such software), outdoor videos don't need much color correction, and all the editing can be done with say, Windows Live Movie Maker, which is what I used for the above sample. The output will likely be huge, but with storage essentially free on YouTube, there's no reason not to store your video there and delete it from your hard drive afterwards.

Would I recommend this? I hesitate. First of all, video editing is much tougher than photo editing. It's not clear that I want to do it, or for that matter anyone else. Secondly, I've been very happy with my compact camera photos, and I'm not sure if video would help. On the other hand, I want to attach it to some of my friends' helmets so I can see how they descend, or get their comments on my descents as well, so in that sense it's a useful tool.

Ironically, the one place that the HD Hero would be most useful is actually for Scuba. The 2.5 hour battery life is just right for a 2-tank dive, and the fact that the Scuba case comes with a wrist attachment means that it won't get in the way, unlike the Canon underwater housing I've been using. Neutral buoyancy would also be a non-issue since it would be attached to you, and the case has essentially no air, unlike the Canon cases. I'll probably give it a shot and see. In the mean time, I see no reason to regret the decision at the price I got it for.

A Publishing Milestone

Most people are comfortable with buying physical gifts for friends, such as books, DVDs, or phones. Most people, however, would not be comfortable digital goods for friends or family. These things seem very ephemeral, and of course, there's always the possibility of buying the wrong format, or buying them something that they can't possibly read on their latest gizmo.

Well, it seems like ebook readers have finally gotten to the point where people are buying electronic books as gifts. Today, someone bought a copy of Independent Cycle Touring as a gift for a friend. And yes, the PDF was designed to be compatible with an iPad. How did I do this without actually owning one? It turns out that iPads have a bug in their PDF readers that require me to turn on compatibility with Acrobat 4.0. I have no idea why that is, but the book is now about 400KB bigger as a result.

It's not obvious from any of my books' web-sites how to do purchase a book as a gift, but it is actually straightforward. Just attach a note to your order when you buy one for a friend noting that it's a gift and is meant to be sent to a specific e-mail address instead of to you. Since a human being handles every order at books.piaw.net, your wishes will be followed. This is one of the advantages of an indie store---it doesn't take any coding to make a special case.

Happy Holidays!

Review: The Magic of Reality

I do most of my reading from the library, but The Magic of Reality is one of those few books that makes me want to buy a copy. And not an electronic copy, but a hardbound paper copy. To top it off, it's a science book!

Written by Richard Dawkins and illustrated by Dave McKean, this book is gorgeous. (McKean, in case you don't know, illustrated most of the covers for The Sandman) This is a great introduction to science for liberal arts majors: there are no equations anywhere in the book, and Dawkins is a superb writer.

Every chapter starts with a few myths about how certain things came to be (like rainbows, the universe, or diseases), and then proceeds to explain how the science behind it works, how scientists came to the current understanding, and in some cases, what areas are still currently being explored. McKean's illustrations are gorgeous: I love how they are integrated completely into the layout and the text, and some times you'd be reading an explanation and the illustration would float directly behind the explanation. All the illustrations are in full color, as is every page of the text.

The topics range from atoms (unfortunately, Dawkins doesn't get into quantum mechanics) to continental drift to rainbows to evolution. This is probably an ideal book to get for a budding young scientist who can already read at a high level. Or perhaps for the science geek who loves illustrations and the deluxe treatment that the publisher has given this. Highly Recommended. I knew most of the material and still felt compelled to read through it once more just to enjoy Dawkin's writing and McKean's illustrations.

Review: Fables #16 SuperTeam

Fables is one of the comic books I have on automatic pre-order on Amazon. Rose Red in particular gave me very high hopes for quality story-telling.

Fables #16 sets us up for another story, but then turns ridiculous as we watch Fabletown, now exiled at Haven, trying to protect itself from the near certain attack by The Dark Man. This sounds great, except that the plan that got concocted up was to dress up like superheroes and form a Fables analog to "The X-Men." I'm a super-hero fan, but this was just silly.

Nonetheless, the long story arc got resolved, at least, and the resolution was a natural consequence of several other long-running plotlines, which I found to be quite neat. All in all, it wasn't as much fun as the rest of the series, but at least the plots got tied up nicely, and Willingham clearly understands how to do long range plotting and not just keep writing himself into a corner. Recommended for long-running fans of the series, and if you're not one, you should be.

Review: GoGroove Bluetooth Stereo Headphones

My beloved Samsung SBH 500 died earlier this year (from mechanical breakage --- the band connecting the two ear pieces split in half from fatigue and abuse), and I tried to make do using my trusty Sennheiser PX100, but while those headphones work well for walking, they are a disaster in the gym. The cords get caught in gym equipment, and the plug gets pulled out of my Nexus One in my rare vigorous moments and are very annoying.

Samsung no longer makes the SBH500, so I had to find something else. The GoGroove Airband looked study enough to stand up to abuse.

Unfortunately, the device is crap. It stutters, and only works when the phone is held 5 inches or closer to the headphone. That means if the phone is in your pocket it doesn't work. If the phone is in your hand, it will stutter as you swing your hand in normal walking (unless you have short arms).

This is going right back to Amazon.

Review: Harmony 600 Universal Remote

My previous remote was a Sony VL-610, now unavailable but most similar to the VLZ-620. It worked fine, integrating with every component in my setup, even the PS3 via the Nyko Bluwave. Even though I could program it to do a lot, I anticipated having non-English speakers living with me, so when the Harmony 600 came on-sale for $32 at one of the daily deals sites, I jumped on it.

The selling point of the Harmony 600 is that instead of programming individual devices and turning individual devices on and off and switching between them, you program activities (similar to macros) and then use those. This has several features. First of all, you can indicate that the volume control always goes to the receiver/amplifier, for instance, instead of the volume control on the TV or what-have-you. While the VL-610 had this capability, I frequently found it hard to set it up that way (you have to deliberately not program the volume button on the individual devices and then tell it to use the amp instead, and I always forgot not to program the volume button). Secondly, the hours spent "teaching" the VL-610 are replaced by a simple, easy-to-use web-app that downloads the IR codes into the Harmony 600, which is a snap.

This approach is really nice when it works. For instance, I can now program the Roku Soundbridge to play music with one click. One button turns off everything, eliminating the need for your guests to remember anything about what mode it's gotten into. It even knows how to switch the inputs for your TV smartly, which is more than the remote that came with the TV itself!

When does it fail? It fails when your guests get the system into some weird state. It fails on the PS3 because it doesn't really know how to turn the PS3 off, so it'll turn the TV and the amp off and leave the PS3 on. That's really unfortunate, but for the PS3 which is really blue-tooth only, I can understand that.

The big annoyance for me is that there's no UI that I can see where I can over-ride the default settings. For instance, when watching a movie, I want the menu button to bring up the options button, but whoever programmed the blue wave control didn't know about that, and I have no way to reassign keys. The same would apply to nearly every other activity --- the existence of the softkey screen seems to have prevented logitech from thinking very hard about doing proper button assignment to activities.

All in all, at the current prices of $40 for a Harmony 600 versus $20 for the VLZ-620, I'd recommend the Harmony. Your time is probably worth way more than $20, and time spent programming the VLZ-620 is no fun at all. On the other hand, at the original retail price of $120 for the 600, buy the VLZ-620. The advantages just don't justify that price.