Cannondale Slice and My TT Race

Pre-Race Week and the Slice

I have some mileage in the saddle and I am entering the final week before my second time trial race at the Healthy Newton Omnium. 

I didn't follow my own advise (living in ignorance) and I checked out the results from last year's race. I was in last place. SO, my goals for this year are pretty simple and I list these in order.

1. Improve my time (average speed) from last year.

2. Climb out of the cellar and not finish in last place

3. If I am having a good day average 21mph or better 

If I have a decent race, I plan on entering a couple of more TT events. I have every inclination of entering some road races in the future but I am still not fast enough to be competitive with even the cat 5 guys. If you haven't seen or deduced from my pictures, I am not your average cyclist. I am 6'4" tall and currently tip the scale at a sleek 255 pounds. I think that I raced at last years event at 270 pounds. I have the watts to be competitive but not the physique....YET. I am on a mission to get down to 210 pounds, but it is going to take some time to get there all the while building my cycling base. 

I am having a blast training and preparing for this race which means absolutely nothing to anyone but me. I am definitely trying to buy some speed in addition to losing weight and training. According to Strava I ride an average of 83 miles per week. If you are at all interested you can do an athlete search on Strava for Lee Hanson. I am the one in Temple, GA. Also, yesterday, I drove 1 1/2 hours to the race site and pre rode the course. I completely rode the course once then went back and did some specific work on hills and tried to determine proper wattage at specific places. Will this help? Probably not. I am sure once the race starts I will let adrenaline do the work and completely blow up half way through the race.

As far as the bike goes, I am still loving the Cannondale Slice. I have made a couple of changes to help me out. The first of which was to change my aero bars. The ones that came with the bike were basically straight and I found that felt funny and put a little strain on my wrists. I guess I pull when I ride. I switched to some bars that bend up and put my hands at a more natural angle. This made a HUGE difference to my comfort level in aero. Also, I had to move my cycle computer (Garmin edge 800) out in front of the handlebars. When the computer was mounted back on the stem there was no way for me to see the display when I was down on the bars. I purchased the K-Edge and it is awesome. In fact, it was so rock solid that I purchased another one for my road bike. A little pricey but you will not ever think about your computer mount after you install this. Garmin should include a mount like this for their higher end computers. Who wants to trust their expensive gps gadget to a couple of rubber straps that will eventually break. 

After a little riding time the rear derailleur needed a small tweak which was probably due to cable stretch, but this was a minor thing. It seems that every time I ride this bike I get faster on it. I will say that it does not seem like a climbing bike. The bike is heavier than my Synapse, and I am still not great at changing the gears when not down on the bars. As a result, I find myself mashing up the hills in the wrong gear and wasting my legs in the process. I am still getting used to the neck fatigue and the Adamo seat but I am slowly improving and getting more comfortable.

Cannondale Slice Ultegra

I am going to try to give a review of the Cannondale Slice, and let you guys know the good and bad of the bike. Please bear in mind that I have ridden quite a lot on my Cannondale Synapse, but I have NEVER ridden aero before.

Last year I rode in the Healthy Newton Omnium. Well, actually I rode in the time trial on day one and the road race on day two. I did not do the crit. In retrospect I should not have ridden in the road race because I was not ready. The distance was fine but those guys were a lot faster than me. I entered the cat 5 race but I need some more training to even compete at this level. However, I did not do so bad in the time trial. I have not actually seen the results because I THINK that I did fairly well (not last place) but I could be completely wrong. I choose to live in ignorance. 

The thing that I noticed was that, in addition, to being less fit than my fellow competitors, I had the wrong equipment for the time trial (TT). I was excited to go there and race and I knew that I had good equipment. Was I ever wrong. I had the wrong bike, helmet, wheels, stationary trainer etc... 

This year I want to alleviate some of those problems. I have been reading several reviews online and doing a fair amount of research to determine the best bike for my TT endeavors. As it turns out, all of my research was in vain because it seems that Cannondale was the only company that made a bike to fit me properly. Most of the companies show models in their catalog that would work, but no one had stock and even the factories had a 6 month lead time. Good thing that I was favoring the Cannondale before hand. I went in to my local bike shop and they ordered my bike. It only took one week for it to come in. I went today and had my fitting session. 

First impression during the fit was that the aero position was as uncomfortable as I had feared. I finished up at the shop and headed to the Silver Comet trail for a "quick" 30 miles. The ride was great. The aero position was a little shaky at first but I got used to it within a couple of miles. It is going to take some time to get my neck used to looking up from that position. That is the only negative thing that I have to say after my first ride and that is not the fault of the bike at all. The bike performed flawlessly. I purchased the slice with the Ultegra group set and it is awesome. My Synapse has 105 components with an Ultegra rear derailleur and it shifts ok but nothing like the crispness of the indexing shifters on this bike. I am not sure if it is the Ultegra group or the fact that these shifters are not incorporated into the brake levers like my road bike.

 As you can see, I added on the Adamo seat and that is going to take some getting used to as well.

 The Ultegra brakes work great. I included these photos so that you can see what the wind sees. This is the front profile of the bike and it is very slender unlike the rider.

 The bike handles a lot differently than my road bike. The steering is more quirky. It is not anything that  is insurmountable just different responsiveness.
I plan on adding some different components and accessories and I will update you here with some pictures. The main thing to do for now is to get some saddle time.

Stay Tuned!!

The Juror

Approximately 3 years ago I served on a jury in a child pornography case. It was my first jury summons and I didn't have a lot going on, so I slapped on some fancy clothes and proceeded to perform my civic duty.
After the voyardier phase I was selected as the foreman. This proved to be somewhat of a challenge. I had a lot of diversity in the jury room. There were some very logical people that would listen to reason and the facts and weigh them accordingly. Then there were others that were more concerned with the amount of inconvenience that this process was to their lives and just wanted a fast verdict so they could get home and watch Oprah, regardless of the outcome. Within 15 minutes of deliberation one of the jurors wanted me to tell the judge that we could not reach a verdict so that she could go home. Of course I didn't do that, but I did examine all of the facts and try my best to "do the right thing". It took us 2 days but we finally reached a verdict and we found the defendant guilty on most of the counts charged against him. Let me explain in a little greater detail.
The GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) released several videos on the internet with "tracer" programs imbedded in them. These videos were related to child pornography and revealed to the GBI who downloaded them and who watched them. The defendant in our case had downloaded (in our estimation) 8  of these videos. Please bear in mind that I do believe he was guilty of possessing these videos, but he did not film them, distribute them, sell them, share them or do anything at all except watch them. Now that in and of itself is BAD. I agree!! But????? We found him guilty on 7 of the 8 counts and he got 140 years!!! Thats right 140 years! Please don't get me wrong, I think the guy was guilty as sin, but I do not think that he deserved 140 years! He has a wife and 2 kids and he deserves a chance at rehabilitation, Right?? If he was filming or selling or meeting with some minors this would be a different story, but to just have a perverted mind and then die in prison? Surely, we have failed this guy and his family.
I feel horrible about this event in my life. I know that I did the "right" thing. I did my civic duty! I know that justice was served. However, I do not feel that the sentence fit the crime! I feel that I have eaten into the fabric of our society. I did what was expected of me, but I am not sure that was/is enough. I believe that there is a time when men of good conscience can not blindly follow the convention of present day thought, nor can he follow the normalcy of the un-silent majority. Right and wrong should not have a grey area. There should only be black and white and this one I would consider grey.

The lightbulb's getting dim

Please tell me that this sign is wrong.

Toni and I were driving back home from Midtown Atlanta and we saw a billboard on I-20 that said that 32% of students in Georgia don't graduate high school. What? Are there that many dropouts?

I have subsequently looked at some of the statistics and here is what I found. Apparently, there is some new formula for calculating the graduation rate and it puts Georgia and some others at the low end of the totem pole. Look at the map above. The states in yellow have a lower than 70% graduation rate. Basically, this is calculated as the number of kids who get diplomas in 4 years vs the number who enrolled.
This led me on a statistical scavenger hunt.

This is a map of our current unemployment. Do you see a correlation? The darker areas are the highest unemployment areas. Could this possibly be suggesting that our employment is based (at least in part) on our level of education? If this is true, There might even be a relationship between our education and our income. Please insert all of the sarcastic tone that you can muster here.

How about that. The lighter colored states have the lower per capita income.

I could go on with this analysis, but I think I will let this sink in. Do you ever wonder why the checkout girl seems stupid? That is because she is. Does it shock you that some of my neighbors think Montreal is in North Carolina? They do. Do you wonder why we have so many people living off of our hard earned taxes. That is because just over 33% (in Georgia) do not even have a high school diploma. As a result, no one will hire them. I sure didn't. Would you?

Veni Vidi Vici

Wow, Do you guys get bored on Christmas day? After all of the hoopla has died down and absolutely nothing is open. What does everybody do? I took a nap, and watched some old stuff on TV. It sounds to me like a good time to go downtown and spend some time away from our farm.

My beautiful wife Toni

Way back when times were great and nobody was even thinking about this recession, people were buying real estate and flipping it and making tons of money. I hopped on that train as well. I bought a high rise condo in midtown Atlanta. I paid a premium for it and within two weeks the equity had shot through the roof. Trump announced that he was building one of his famous high rises right next to our building. The plans had been laid out to revitalize the street that our condo was on. It was going to rival the magnificent mile in Chicago. I was ecstatic and we were rolling in it. THEN.....the bubble popped, Trump pulled out and before long we were upside down just like most everybody else. Who would have ever guessed that real estate was a bad investment? Well, I am telling you that it wasn't my best decision. Flash forward to 2013 and we still have the condo. The market still smells like a giant waste pit and we would be absolutely foolish to sell it at these prices. So, we come down here every so often and enjoy our "investment" and all of the culture of midtown.

Actually, the area is coming back and there is a lot of things to do. There are plenty of nice restaurants and shopping, and the High Museum, and Piedmont Park etc... There are a lot of cool people and the atmosphere around here is great. It is almost like we all have this special bond, you know like we all rode out a storm together or something. I am not sure that the storm is entirely over, but I hope we have all proved that we can weather these rough times.

Headed to Midtown

Today, we decided to come down and leave West Georgia behind. We needed to get away and get some more restaurant choices other than the local mexican eateries and fast food. We decided to eat at Veni Vidi Vici.    This is a great Italian restaurant that is part of the Buckhead Life group of restaurants, and rest assured that Buckhead Life does it right. I know this is not a 5 star, but it is close enough for me!!  Check out some of the pictures and pray that I can exercise some of these calories off tomorrow.

Super Tuscan and a cheese plate

Everything is Delicious

Veal cutlet and Ossobucco

Rosco and Lolli

This is a story about the two most unlikely of friends. Please bear with me as a little background and character development is needed. As some of you know, We live out in the country and we have a lot of animals. Specifically, 2 horses, 22 cows, 2 guinea, 7 cats, and 4 dogs. Three of the dogs live inside with us and lately we have added one of the cats to our indoor pets. This is about one of our dogs and our indoor cat. Rosco and Lolli. Rosco is a chocolate lab and lolli is a black and white 3 legged house cat.
We have always had several pets, but after our retired police dog "Shana" passed we were slowly getting out of the pet business. We only had the 2 horses and one dog "Sassy". There is a back story to how we got all of our pets and someday I will bore you with how we got back full time into our pets. I was very sad about Shana and I did not want any more pets. However, God had some different plans for me.
One day I was out doing hill repeats on my trusty cannondale (not a fun thing to do at all), and I noticed a funny squeaking noise coming from my bike on the descents. After about the third repeat I figured out that the noise wasn't my bike at all it was some type of animal that was very close to the road. Apparently, as I was huffing and puffing up the hill I was drawing attention to myself by some sort of critter! The more hill repeats I did I become more intrigued with what and where this noise was coming from.
When I finished my last repeat I had determined that someone had trapped a coyote and it was suffering badly. I had nothing to deal with this situation on my bike so I rode home. I told my son Jason about it and instructed him to take a gun and if it was a trapped coyote deal with the situation appropriately. I do not like such endeavors, but we have a lot of coyotes where we live and they can be a problem. I generally do not care for taking something else's life, but if it was a suffering wild animal it was the only thing to do. Jason and I have had to face several of these situations before. I took my shower and waited on Jason to return with a description of the events. When I saw his face I know something was wrong. He told me and Toni to look on the porch. There was a small chocolate labrador puppy. I was not a happy camper. I did not want another pet, but Toni had been bitten by the puppy bug, and a labrador puppy at that.
Cutest damn bug to be bitten by in my estimation. Jason said that the reason the puppy was making so much noise was that someone had wrapped him in barbed wire and put him on a fire ant hill. Yup, you read that right, there are some seriously messed up individuals in this world, and in this seventh circle of hell that we live in called West Georgia there are some real winners! This is how Rosco came into our lives. Rosco is the happiest dog in the world he brightens every day. He is now a part of our family.

He was this small for about 2 weeks

The story of Lolli is equally sad and happy. You know how cats love to get under the hoods of cars. Yep, thats right. One of our cats had a litter of kittens and she chose to keep them very close to where we park our cars. I suspected that a kitten would eventually find it's way under a tire or on a motor one day, so I was especially careful because I knew that would be hard to explain to Toni or a big vet bill or both. I had a ritual of tapping all of the tires with a stick and honking the horn etc.. All to no avail. One bright and sunny day, after the ritual, I hop into my Cadillac and proceed to back out ever so slowly. One inch at a time until I hear that unmistakable shriek from a kitten stuck where it was not supposed to be. Toni happened to be outside at the time, and she heard it too. I stopped immediately, but the shrieking did not. I inched forward for fear that that kitten was under a tire. It wasn't. The kitten was sitting inside the wheel and it got caught up in the brakes somehow. Toni saw the kitten run out, so we assumed all was well. We were wrong. We found him with his brothers and sisters and everything looked fine.

UNTIL .... the next morning when Toni went to feed the cats. She noticed one with a really screwed up paw. Somehow this kitten had managed to get his paw stuck in the brake caliper and it was mangled beyond all repair. I proceeded to chop off his leg with an axe...... Just kidding. We took him to the vet and they said we had two choices, put him down or amputate his leg. That was not even a choice to be made. Since a three legged cat wouldn't stand much of a chance out here, we knew that he was about to become an inside cat for somebody. That somebody was us.
If you have seen the YouTube video of Rosco and Lolli (part 1) you know how he got his name Lolli. If not you should check it out. You see, for some reason, Rosco had a very strange association with Lolli. They are the best of friends. From day one of bringing Lolli back home from the vet, Rosco has had nothing for him but love. He licks him and cleans him as if he were his mother. He licks him so much we said that he was Rosco's lollipop. Thus the very un-masculine name of Lolli stuck with this cat.

Out of the Closet Finally

The car business is always slow this time of year, and I am not one to sit around and watch talk shows all day, although I do enjoy "The Ellen Degeneres Show". So, I decided to turn our seldom used Florida room into a cedar closet for my wife Toni (mindoverbatter.us).
The first decision was the overall look of the closet. We chose cedar paneling with some cedar planks as trim and accents. For the shelving, we wanted to go with something white to brighten up the space and maybe put in a couple of windows for natural light.

We framed up the space on 16" centers and installed our paneling. The ceilings are 9 feet so the 8 foot panels left some unsightly joints at the top near the ceiling. We installed some 8" planks topped off with 4" for some aesthetic appeal.

The second decision was what type of flooring to go with. We decided on a laminate floor system so we could allocate more funds towards the cedar and the actual shelving. Although we are not really on a budget, Toni and I try to be as frugal as possible (my Amex bill says otherwise). We should have gone with an actual wood floor. This floating system is just not good at all. The joints don't lock in and depending on the relative humidity you can see small to large separations of the panels. The installation was fairly straightforward. First,  Jason (my son) and I taped down a 6 mil plastic moisture barrier then we installed the underlayment which was plastic with small styrofoam like balls. This acts as another moisture barrier and helps deaden the sound when walking. I can not stress this enough, but make sure the floor is CLEAN. Remember the princess and the pea? same effect here. Trash under you flooring will cause you big problems later. Once the underlayment was installed, it was time for the flooring itself. The flooring panels are simulated wood but reminded me a lot of a jigsaw puzzle, both in fit and composition. These production pieces simply did not fit together well at all. For every two or three pieces that were perfect there were one or two that were twisted or contorted and were a nightmare to fit. Unless you wanted your material cost to be quadruple as you discard the odd pieces, you are forced to live with a substandard floor.


Once the flooring was in it was time for the cabinets and shelving. We went with some sturdy mounted melamine and some crown moulding themed shoe racks. We will probably put in some more shelves and possibly a table depending on what Toni wants against the wall with the windows. As you can see, it needs something.

My Wife may have a shoe problem

All in all, I think the trim and paneling turned out nicely. I regret the flooring choice. Time will tell if I have to rip out the cabinets and reinstall some real wood flooring?????