Racing on no sleep

Site Analysis

2010-12-05T04:11:00.009-05:00

Site Morphology, changes to surrounding context overtime

Time-line of events surrounding the site

Taking these first steps to organize the historical documentation, I then sought to use it for a single site history diagram. Then I explored different site forces that were influencing the selected site. I started with analyzing the large scale of the greenway and pulling it down from an urban level to a neighborhood level and a parcel level. Then I examined how views and sight-lines to significant features and open space could inform interior spatial qualities.

Historical MorphologyScales of the GreenwaySight-lines informing interior forces

Site Documentation

2010-12-05T02:53:00.025-05:00

Front Panorama

Rear Panorama

Context Aerial

Aerial

What I initially was looking for in choosing my site was a place that could incorporate both an open landscape condition and a more dense urban condition. However, the contrast shouldn’t be so strong, i.e. not Central Park in New York.

The site I chose is the Big Dig Parcel # 2, towards the North Station end of the Rose Kennedy Greenway. I saw potential in this site because of its strong connection to a landscape idea that is the greenway, as well as strong urban connections. It is directly connected to infrastructure being adjacent to both North Station and Haymarket. It also gives me the opportunity to link together two neighborhoods that were once torn apart by the central artery, Bulfinch Triangle and the North End. The site size is roughly 52,000s.f, and would be an opportune space to all of the program conditions stated above.Figure Ground
Zoning Map

Street and Wharfline Changes

Major ThoroughfaresElevated Railway Lines

The approach I decided to take as far as starting to develop some in-depth analysis of the site, I wanted to look at its evolution since it was apart of the first few landfills in Boston. I gather historical maps, aerials and photographs to get a better understanding of the site.

Boston Landfill Overtime17751808 - Master-plan for Bullfinch Triangle street grid after landfill1826 - Causeway Wharf and separation of Wards1852 - Expansion of Wharf and Bridges to Charlestown

1881 - Railway plans for North Station

1923 Aerial of Downtown - North End

1930 - North Station

1946 Aerial, showing Haymarket and Scollay Square1949 - North Station and the Bulfinch Triangle

1954 - Plan for elevated Central Artery1955 - Artery is ConstructedThe impact of the artery on Boston's neighborhoods

2003 - Artery still up and in use, construction on the "Big Dig" will put it undergroundToday - Now with the highway underground, the artery still exists as a greenway, dividing Government Center and Bulfinch Triangle from the North End.

Thesis Program

2010-11-01T02:25:00.007-04:00

Program concept diagram: Adaptable Space

Although program within a building has previously gone as "form follows function", the idea which leads to building longevity is that of adaptable space. If space can adapt to hold many different functions, it will see more use and diversity within its lifetime. Empty buildings become warehouses, then offices, then art galleries, then dance studios, and so on.

Adjacency of Spaces:

Looking into the breakdown of planned program spaces, I want there to be a blend between private spaces (such as offices and residences) and public spaces (exterior landscapes, markets, and retail).Activities and Circulation:

Associating the private urban spaces and the public landscape spaces led to me thinking about the situations in two different ways: the horizontal and the vertical natures of both. Coming up with potential circulation, there could be an interesting mix of both horizontal and vertical in the blended spaces, interior and exterior as well.

Idea Map and Visual Abstract Final

2010-10-15T15:12:00.003-04:00

In this idea map I wanted to explore the bridge between two topics that I have great interest in. I created a common path through words of subtopics and details that pertain to each topic. The words close to each topic can be translated between natural ideas and their man-made counterpart.The visual abstract takes images related to the two topics, and combines them into ideas of how they might integrate into an architectural idea.

more image collection

2010-10-15T14:16:00.007-04:00

These are from my initial look into what images I like. Note that I took most of these photos.

Small Alleyways

Light, Shadow, Texture
Rolling Landscapes
Light and Shadow
Bizarre
Playful Materials
Contrast
Reflectivity
Steep topography
Interior-Exterior relationships
Ramps
Monuments
Reflectivity
Brick streets without cars
Texture
Rem Koolhaas
Reflectivity
Curvilinear Forms
Sharp AnglesStrong Axis

Image Mapping, round 2

2010-09-29T12:58:00.003-04:00

Things I can't live without

2010-09-29T12:25:00.008-04:00

The home and the water: Having lived and grown on an island for a significant portion of my life, I am attached to the idea of living close to the water.Movement through outdoor space: As a competitive cyclist for the past five years of my life, many of the experiences I've had of the environment I live in have been on the move. I feel as if it gives me the general knowledge of the city on a large scale, the neighborhoods and open spaces become more distinct and you gain a better sense of direction. It makes it a much nicer experience when you slow down and begin to look at the city in a smaller scale.

(photo by my good friend Sam Rosenholtz)

Travel: Experiencing new places and cultures is something I have loved doing and hopefully will continue to do to broaden my view on the world and where I can fit into it.

Image Mapping, round 1

2010-09-27T08:16:00.004-04:00

So for this exercise, we're taking general thoughts about thesis topics we may be interested in and breaking them down into something more specific that can relate to an architectural idea.

Thesis prep II collages, final round

2010-09-27T07:29:00.011-04:00

So after the last round of collages, I felt like I was getting stuck trying to make an image that was quite literal relate to a more abstract notion of the term I was trying to define. I put together new images as collages to abstract a bit more.

Light and Shadow: So putting two and two together with what I was trying to show in my last round, I wanted to create a central beacon of light where everything representational of shadow radiated off of it. I tried to match the direction of shadow with their positioning on the collage.

(Section)

Boundaries: This time I wanted to focus on the natural boundary, or boundaries that were created by nature or the landscape. I tried to include a few of the elements that would made up a natural boundary: water, fields, trees, and mountains. Then I mixed in a few man made elements, like walls, agriculture, and cities.

(Section)

Thesis prep II collages, round 2

2010-09-27T06:59:00.004-04:00

Light and Shadow studies: After the first round, I wanted to explore how I could make this image reflect the essential qualities of light and shadow; a beacon of some sort illuminating a space that hits a physical object and casts something of a dark reflection of itself.
Boundaries: I decided to edit this one further, so I manipulated the image to represent three layers of a boundary condition. They would be temporary, man-made, and natural.

Work examples, Thesis Prep II

2010-09-21T16:19:00.009-04:00

Exploration of space through collage, round 1:
Passage of time:Passage of time:
Light and Shadow:Light and Shadow:Boundaries:Boundaries:

Blog Revival! Thesis year work!

2010-09-21T15:12:00.004-04:00

So, it's been a few months, but I've decided (and my professors too) to revive this blog to share rants relating to schoolwork, how much sleep I'm not getting, and why I don't have time to even be writing this! Just kidding, all aside I hope to keep this one going for awhile.

Quick recap of the last seven months:
Collegiate racing season: I pulled a full race schedule, made it to every weekend, and scored a few points worthy of making the trip out to Nationals in Madison, Wisconsin. I won my first race in a long while in the 3/4 field at the Yale Lux et Velocitas Criterium in April.

Summer: I moved up to mission hill, renting a room in my friend Joe Lonergan's place. I was able to land an internship with Symmes Maini & McKee Associates in Cambridge, and had a fun time working there all summer. In August I graduated with my Bachelor's degree from WIT, and am now in the midst of completing an additional year to attain my Master's degree.

Summer Racing: With the whole job thing not in place until about June, I had a slow start to the summer racing season, but slowly wound up and began to get the results in July/August/September. Our new teammate on Green Line Velo this year was Sam Rosenholtz, who can sprint faster than anything I've ever seen before. He quickly plowed his way through the 5's, 4's, and 3's thanks in part to his teammates who knew he was the sure chance for team victory.

As for my results, I tried to keep it consistent even when I was helping Sam out. Fourth place at Naugatuck with Sam winning was pretty sweet, as well as 5th at the Giro del Cielo Road Race in NJ. I capped it all off this past weekend with 2nd in the Portsmouth Criterium, which earned me my Cat.2 upgrade. Note the anger raging about letting that guy go too early:Future: This weekend I will end my road season at the Boston Mayor's Cup Professional Criterium. It's gonna be a blast to be able to do a professional race right in the heart of downtown Boston. I hope everyone gets the chance to come out and cheer, it's 50-70 laps of a loop around Government Center/City Hall. It's also apart of the Boston Bike Festival, which will have alot of events going on all day long. I'll be going from the gun at 4:00, so come on out and heckle/cheer me on!

Form is building for Rutgers

2010-02-27T15:23:00.008-05:00

Well, we're 6 weeks into the semester now, and I've laid down some pretty consistent improvement in my form since I started training on New Year's Day. Its also pretty sweet that within the last four of those weeks, I revived the Wentworth Cycling Team (again) and already have a bunch of new freshman recruits to hopefully take over when I graduate.

(What is wrong with this guy?)

I don't train with a SRM or powertap or anything cool like that, but its nice to get an idea of power output in numbers rather than going by feel. I have a Garmin, so at some point if I feel like investing in power at least I have a computer than can pick up the signal. Who knows, maybe this year when they come out with the Vector it will be the perfect fit.

I've had two tests so far this year, the Harpoon Indoor TT and the Landry's Indoor TT. Something about indoor time trials gets me excited, I don't know if its the atmosphere, the beer, or the thought of kicking the asses of triathletes with stupid-ridiculous bikes. They made a pretty cool video on this year's event:

Harpoon was about a month ago, and needless to say I was still in an early base period, building form off pretty much nothing. I went into it with an ambition of maybe winning the collegiate heat. They were running behind schedule, and the collegiate heat was the last of the day, so what our 9:45 start time was turned into about a midnight start. Problem? No, I just didn't anticipate bringing alot of food to keep my energy up. So after sitting, a beer, waiting, and warming up, I wasn't feeling that great, the course wasn't easy, and I posted an okay time of 21:44. I couldn't see any of the other teams (BC's and MIT's) times because they were on different screens, so I was really just gauging my effort off of Gregg Izzo, who threw it down right at the end to beat me by two seconds. I averaged 289 watts, okay, whatever, not the end of the world, I'm sure I'll get better.
Test#2 came about at the BTT ITT (too much TT) at Landry's six days ago. I just got the official results yesterday, so I could figure out hour much improvement I've had in three weeks since Harpoon. Not surprisingly, I got beat by Natan (BU) but not by too much. A lot of the collegiate and GLV guys signed up for the 1:40 heat, so we could throw it down together. Bruley was up front, Natan to my left and Izzo to his left. Bruley jumped out to an early lead but faded back to fifth half-way through, I tried to follow Natan as best as I could but never could bring 5-8 second gap down enough without blowing my legs up for the rest of the race. Natan finished second to some random guy next to Bruley, I followed in third about twenty seconds or so back of him, then Izzo, Lachance, and Rosenholtz weren't too far behind. Averaged 333 watts over 16:47, so the form is steadily improving, and I'm losing a little weight too so thats helping the watts/kg ratio of 4.0. I've lost 7 pounds in the last few weeks, hopefully I can keep that momentum going and lose my German beer gut.

Rutgers is now less than a week away, and I'm pretty pumped. The ITT is always classic, and I hope they keep the circuit race running in the direction as it was last year. That crit though, I'm not that fond of. The last turn is a bit extreme, so maybe expect crashes in the lower categories.

(picture of this last turn from a few years ago)

Hopefully the A field will run through it fairly safely, but I expect UVM to pull some crazy shit like they always do and take the crit win. I'd watch Derek, that kid got fast (not that he wasn't already from winning overall in B's last year).

New Season; New Motivation

2010-01-28T00:18:00.005-05:00

It has been awhile, to say the least. I can't say that I'll always find time to update the blog, being a senior architecture major and all. But, its a new year, a new season is upon us and I've got some serious catching up to do on training.

The semester abroad in Berlin was a life experience I'll never forget, in fact I hope to head back to Europe after I close out my stint at Wentworth. Although I would have loved to have had my bike there, the time and money restraints pretty much put me on a three-month vacation from serious riding (I did commute via P.O.S. to studio for the first two months at least).
Needless to say, beer is cheaper than anything else to drink over there, and we drank a lot of it. The food you eat when you're running around all these cities (ever had döner kebab?) isn't the healthiest either. The night I came back to the States, I stood on the scale and noticed I came back a whopping 15 pounds heavier than when I left.
Now, I spent a majority of my funds on that trip, so coming back to do nothing for two months, I went back to work on the Vineyard. It was great because Hutker needed the help, and I was happy going back to see and work on some cool new projects. It was my first time working full time during the winter (ever!), so I was a bit surprised to see all the goodies that clients and vendors were sending us. I would say, on average, every weekday some new box of chocolates or sweets went through office, and a lot of it ended up near my desk. That, plus the food-filled holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, was about all I could take for gaining weight. I never checked (for fear of what it might say) my weight since I came back, but I'm just going to not worry about it and focus on my training for the next few weeks.

My new years resolution was like that of any aspiring cyclist: train and focus more, accomplish your goals. This could be my last year of school (fingers crossed for the master's program!) so I decided I will put some more time in on the bike for collegiate season. I'm motivated to start and finish the season in A's (regardless if I get shelled by the UVM powerhouse) and qualify for nationals. No Wentworth rider (sorry Shane) has ever made it out to collegiate road nationals. My schoolwork is a big priority of course, but I feel as though my workload (other than studio of course) is a bit lighter this semester.

So I've been on the trainer all but three days since I got back to school, and each ride/trainer session has been at least two hours in length. Not seriously riding while abroad and most of my winter break has left me feeling really fresh, but its hard to tell if my form is any good. Anyway, I'm in base miles now, and will be for another few weeks before I start any serious interval workouts. My first target is a preseason favorite for all the Boston kids: the Landry's Indoor ITT. Last year I placed fourth in the collegiate field, just a few seconds off some cool prize. I hope to crack the top three or even win, but we'll see just how good the form is. I think my main competition will be Natan the beast (BU) and maybe Mark T. (NU) if his resistance is correctly calibrated this year.

All in all, I expect a good semester, and an even better racing season. GLV is getting pretty serious, our first year was awesome and now we're looking to get serious with our training rides, our proposed Purgatory Road Race and sponsors. Look for a new site coming your way soon.

My changing view on Berlin

2009-11-13T11:18:00.007-05:00

This is an essay I wrote for my humanities elective, Historical and Cultural Berlin, and I figured, it would save me a blog post of the same subject later down the road. Don't criticize my writing skills too much, I wrote this in an hour and a half on minimal sleep and listening to Dark Side of the Moon. One week left, just finished all my other deadlines minus studio, which is breathing down my neck for the next week. Enjoy.

When I first signed up for this program, I expected Berlin to be like any other European capital. During my years in high school, I had a travel program that took me to Europe for a week. I went from Paris to Nice, then from Montecatini to Rome, with several stops along the way. I got a first-hand look into what I thought most European capitals were like then, with Paris and Rome. Little did I know how Berlin was, my assumptions were the complete opposite of what my experience here turned out to be.

In high school I took an interest in history, however my class schedule focused on math, music, and design. My classes in history became limited to prehistoric times up until the first centuries A.D., and then United States history, so I never had a formal class that focused on recent European history. Because I was taking a college-level US history course, I studied deeply the events that happened in Europe only as they pertained to America. I knew some history of the Third Reich and the Nazi party; I was very interested in war films and novels at the time. I knew about the Berlin wall, but less about the division of Germany, and the coming and going of whole Cold War era was before my time, and I grew up in a world where communism had already faded away (albeit China).

My thoughts on Berlin prior to my trip over here were somewhat optimistic; I knew that the city had incurred much destruction in World War II and was divided for about four decades after that, so my assumption at the time was that there was heavy rebuilding of the city in that period, and that when the two halves became whole after the reunification, the gap was filled as the city became complete again. I knew it was one of the largest populated cities in Europe, and going after my logic with Paris and Rome, assumed that it was a bustling friendly city where a lot of commerce was going on, and four million people lived together fairly peacefully. A lot of history had happened there, and after I decided to take a semester abroad and try something new, I read ‘The Ghosts of Berlin’ by Brian Ladd, hoping it would give me some better insight about the city’s history prior to my trip. As I got an idea about the urban development and overall growth of the city, the dark times came about and I started to understand more the affect the industrial revolution had on the city, and the political struggles of Germany following the first World War. My thoughts still assumed that the city was still a very redeveloped world urban center, and that I would enjoy the time I spent there as an architecture student.

After our first 10-day travel elective, our group was exhausted and eager to arrive in Berlin to what would be our new home for the next three months. It wasn’t exactly what my initial thoughts had led to, however it helped that the weather was beautiful at the time, and our bus ride to the apartments along the U-1 overhead railway gave me a parallel to something I had seen before in New York. I think when I turned on the television set that night I was surprised to see how much of American programming had made its way over to Germany, and I thought it would feel familiar, but the lack of English speaking channels (other than CNN and occasionally MTV) quickly set me back into the reality that I was living in a different culture and I would have to get used to it. The next morning we went to the grocery store and it was probably the first bit of culture shock that I got. My first thoughts were: “Okay, nothing in English, and I don’t know much of any German; Hmm, beer is cheaper than soda; I had never seen so many types of sausage in my life; Wow, I can’t read any of this; They don’t keep milk refrigerated; Why isn’t there any Peanut Butter; I guess I’m eating pasta and oven pizzas for awhile.” Then of course, they don’t bag your groceries, which I was warned about ahead of time, and you pay for grocery bags, though stuffing my backpack worked the best. I figured, okay, I’ll get used to this pretty quick, I’ll try new food and maybe I’ll start being less wasteful with bags and recycling when I go back home.

The next part was getting on the subway, and the fact that there is no ticket check was the first really confusing part to me, but I guess an honor system is something that promotes less traffic jams going through checks and buying tickets, but I was planning on getting a bike to ride to studio and learn the city a little better anyway. The first week or so on the subway taught me that German people, Berliners in particular (I’m assuming) generally keep to themselves, and I’ve never had a quieter subway experience in my life. Generally, those of us who got on together were carrying the only conversation in the car. Later I found that by going to places to buy supplies or to get food, Germans in general seemed a bit cold. I think it has a lot to do with history and how they were brought up within division, especially in the communist East Germany, where you really had to watch what you said, so even now I can understand people not being so open to freely expressing themselves. Berliners are a true working-class group of people; they’re quick, to the point, very direct in what they say and it sometimes comes off as rude, but that’s just the way people are, I don’t blame them for it, but perhaps their society has made them that way.

Once I had gotten a bike and we were taking trips around the city with our classes, I noticed that Berlin wasn’t really the giant urban metropolis I had expected. The city is on a very human scale, different to something like New York where it’s super-human scale. The street walls were generally not higher than 5-6 stories, and in urban centers or major boulevards contained the more prominent buildings, but were generally not higher than 20 stories. There was also more green space than I thought, and after learning to the extent of how badly Berlin was damaged at the end of World War II, you could tell that once a long row of apartment buildings suddenly had holes here and there, pieces seemed to be missing, and it all made sense that they were left after destruction and still not rebuilt. After going to many museums and memorials, I started to take in how much history this city has seen in the last century. It started as the industrial capital of Europe, an ever-growing center to central Europe and the skies were the limits. However, involvement and defeat in World War I left the economy in pieces, and though it was able to rebound in that sense, political reform saw the ride of a power that was thought to be the answer to restore Germany to its former greatness, but it ended in darkness and destruction as that leader sought European domination and the destruction of a major religion and its people throughout it. I feel bad for the citizens of the city who watched the city’s destruction and had to live with picking up the pieces and moving on. But they couldn’t do that, as the world political powers led to the division of the city and of its people for nearly four decades. And when things fall apart there and everything comes back together again, how do you deal with the past, with everything the city and its people have dealt with in the last 80 years? You can put it behind you, but memories of hard times will always remain, and they can be used as example for future reference so that such a hardship on a country’s population won’t ever happen again. In this sense, I can see why Germans in general are sensitive about there past, and want to put it behind them and move forward as if nothing happened. So they come off as cold, not very social and in general just keep to themselves.

In general, now my view on Berlin is one that it is a major re-growing power in Europe, and soon again it will be what it once was before war and oppressive governments crushed the spirit of the people. I think it has a lot to do with the coming generations becoming educated and continually making the advancements in technology and society happen, keeping Berlin and Germany the leaders of innovation and engineering in the world. It was hard for me to find my way in this city for someone who doesn’t speak German, but in reality you can get by okay without it. I have enjoyed my time here and hope to visit again someday; this trip has broadened my view on the major cultural differences between Germany and the United States, and I will go back knowing (somewhat) how to live like a Berliner.

Italy, part two

2009-11-03T09:21:00.009-05:00

So, two weeks go by and then we head back to Italy with the whole group for six days. Originally it was six days of Rome, which would have been awesome, but they decided to include a day in Siena and a visit to another small mystery Tuscan town.

We flew out on a Thursday morning, though the day beforehand was our studio mid-crit, so Tuesday night pretty much no one slept. Under the power of caffeine and adrenaline we managed to get through Wednesday, however our good friend Brendan thought it would be a good idea to go out and party that night. I didn't think anything of it, I went back to apartments and passed out around 8:30 after I burned one oven-pizza by taking an extra 20-minute nap. The next morning, we all get up expecting about an hour to get to the airport via subway/bus. Wrong. We go two stops north on the subway, and hear over the speaker "Alexanderplatz - bus service to Tegel Airport." So the group of 8 that we had gets off and makes our way over to the bus, thinking it will be fast. Wrong. It stopped about every block, and we got to the airport fifteen minutes late to meet our professor. He looked really concerned, and I said that "we're sorry, we didn't know how long the bus would take." Then he said, "well, where is everyone else?" Go figure we were the first ones to get there. So everyone else trickles about 10 minutes later, but no Brendan. He ended up going out and staying with another one of friends in Berlin that night, had to run around in the morning and got to the airport about five minutes too late to check-in. He ended up paying about $750 out of his pocket for a later flight that day.

So we landed in Rome Fuimicino (I don't know why Florence...) and hopped on the bus to Siena. This trip really killed about three days just by travel, I wish it was planned alot better. By the time we got to Siena on Thursday night, it was getting dark and we just missed the supposedly beautiful Tuscan sunset. Checked into the hotel, and then went for a night-time city walk.We made our way through the city over to Piazza del Campo, the shell-shaped public square where they hold the horse races. Our Urban Studies talk commenced there for the night and we stayed there to finally eat dinner. The food was... okay, you would think a place with an amazing location would have something good. At least the wine was good.We wandered the Campo and then over to the Siena cathedral, which, like every other major cathedral in Europe when it's not summer, was undergoing renovations. So there was a big crane right next to the church, I don't know if that's as bad or better than having half the building covered in scaffolding. It was getting late by this time and Siena doesn't really scream 'party place' so we headed back to the hotel to watch Quantum of Solace and pass out.
The next day we checked out of the hotel and wandered back to the Campo to work on the Urban Studies assignment, sketching the way the space works and whatnot. We had a decent amount of time, so I decided that going up the Torre del Mangia was a worthwhile trip.
You may think, "wow that looks like the tower in Provincetown!" when really, this predates that tower by about 600 years. So its the Pilgrim Monument that looks like the Torre del Mangia, not the other way around. Needless to say, the climb up this one was a little tight, I'm 6'2" and parts of the stairway had maybe a 4'6" clearance height. Nevertheless, the view of Tuscany at the top was spectacular.We headed over to go inside the Siena Cathedral, which was of course very big and awe-inspiring as most old European cathedrals are to Americans. One thing I really liked was how it was decorated with the stripes of Siena, black and white. I thought about going up the bell tower there, but in the end it pretty much would have been the same view there as was on the Mangia, so I saved my 6 euro and got me some pizza for lunch and hopped on the bus for somewhere.
So the mystery Tuscan town turned out to be Pienza, which nobody knew anything about. Another small commune of medieval and renaissance buildings, a central square and an awesome view out over the hills, kind of typical, but still worth it for many reasons. While wandering the side streets, we came across a friendly cat, and it distracted us for a good 10 minutes at least. We only spent maybe two hours or so there, but it was a good stop. Amazing views are usually worth it. After that we hopped on the bus for another 3+ hours to Rome. Bus time is good time, you can catch up on some sleep, even if it is pretty uncomfortable. Rome is a marathon in itself, so I'll save that for part three.

Italy, part one

2009-10-26T03:51:00.019-04:00

So alot has happened since my last post. Sorry to my mother (and anyone else who reads this) for skimping on posting an entry for so long, but October has been one hell of a month, mostly crammed with a midcrit and travel. I'll start with the end of September.

(I'm somewhere in the first two rows of bodies)

I decided it would be cool to go to at least one concert while I was here. I saw one of my favorite bands (Dream Theater) headlining the Progressive Nation Europe Tour at the Berlin Arena. It was an awesome experience, I've never been up front for an entire show (over 5 hours...) but it really was worth the fatigue in my legs for standing up that long. The other bands were good, nothing great but it introduced me to Opeth, which I'd never paid much attention to but I was really impressed by their live performance, you have a new fan! DT played perfect like the insane musicians that they are, I'll see them the next time they come around Boston.

So on to my travels, we have two individual (optional) travels, so for the first one I wanted to experience Northern Italy. My roommate Greg and I decided to head to Milan for the four days.
However, it dawned upon me in my trip research (only two days before we left) that there really wasn't that much to see in Milan. We made a last-minute decision (with the suggestion from our professor) to take a day and a half and travel east and see Venice, with a stop in Bergamo along the way.
Bergamo is an awesome city with an old hill-top medieval town, really good for a four-hour stop if you're headed somewhere else. Its a really steep incline to get up there, you could take a ski-lift if you wanted to, but I'm the 'sportif' type, so walking was a good choice too. We missed the staircase though, and ended up walking along the road to the backside of the hill. Although a lot longer, it was definitely more scenic:
On the way down, since we had time, we took the actual staircase, which was stupidly long. It actually made us grateful for taking the long way up, since it would have been a bitch to go up these:So then we hopped back on the train for three hours and made it to Venice around 6. The light was really nice when we got there, and by the time we made it to Piazza San Marco, night was on setting so I got some good photos. We stayed the night at some tourist campground, which was interesting, and then left the next afternoon. Well worth the trip I think.
So after wards we headed back to Milan to see Internazionale take on Udinese at the famous Italian stadium, the San Siro:Our seats were pretty awesome for 36 euros each, plus I got to play with my ginormous zoom lens. Inter won the match 2-1, scoring the winning goal in injury time, and I've never seen a crowd erupt like they did. On Sunday, we just chilled in the park, getting some work done, saw a Frank Gehry exhibit, and flew back that afternoon. EasyJet is probably the best way to cruise around Europe if you're not carrying much, much recommended.

Wow I forgot how long these things take to write. I'll continue later.

MTV in Europe

2009-10-05T04:25:00.005-04:00

So, when I'm not in studio relentlessly wasting my life away with work that I'll end up changing ten times, I'll relax a bit back at the apartment. We don't have internet there, so I'll watch or play something on the computer, but most of the time I'll kick back and watch one of three channels that I'll understand. One is CNN International, so I can see what the hell is going on in this world (in english), the other is Eurosport. Eurosport isn't in english, but watching a race or soccer doesn't necessarily require it to get whats going on. And then there is MTV.

For those of you who don't know, MTV is a huge network which also owns Comedy Central and VH1, as well as other channels. So on MTV here in Europe, we get a vast array of entertaining shows from the good old USofA, including but not limited to Rock of Love (and spin-offs), Hogan Knows Best (and spin-offs), WildBoyz, Nitro Circus, Pimp My Ride, and of course, Chappelle's Show.

Now, I can't say that I'm a fan of the VH1 reality shows (Rock of Love, I Love Money, Charm School etc.) but to watch an episode here or there can be pretty entertaining. You can tell that alot of these people competing in these shows are absolutely fake, but to purposely act like complete bitches and assholes, while completely wasted most of time, is for some reason funny. I don't get it either.

(not my sketch, but funny still)

Next, all the shows with Hulk Hogan are awesome, well, because he's Hulk Hogan. I'll admit that I watched wrestling when I was younger, and as much I knew that it was all staged and fake to a point, something about the charisma of all the characters intrigued me. I've moved past this since middle school, but Hulk Hogan is still one cool jabroni in real life. I mean, the handlebar mustache is iconic.
Then there are the Jackass spinoffs. Nitro Circus is just crazy motorbike stunts, which gets old after a certain point, but Wildboyz is great. Take the two funniest guys from Jackass and throw them in the jungle with animals, and you get hilarious. Don't you want to watch someone get bit in the ass by a crocodile?
Its obvious that Germans and nice automobiles go hand in hand. But to put $40,000 worth of body work, paint and electronics into a car usually worth less than $500 just seems crazy. Maybe that's why they love it over here. Who wants to see an AMC Pacer with rims a sweet paint job, tv screens in the seats and a 2000-watt sound system? I do.
Last, but certainly nowhere near least, is Chappelle's Show. Oh how I miss Chappelle's show (we all do, right?). It really took sketch comedy and racial comedy to a new level, and there was never a dull episode. He took the basics of racial comedy and applied them in a way that didn't make anybody feel uncomfortable, and afterward I felt like there was a new openness that everyone could laugh about. Its unfortunate that Dave left the show, but I can understand how people took the sketches too literally and make all that is of Dave Chappelle's image associated with the characters he played on the show, rather than his normal stand-up comedy which was alot funnier than most of the sketches on the show to begin with. Keep it real, Dave.

This man is a god

2009-09-24T12:31:00.002-04:00

I mean, averaging 32mph over about an hour? Ridiculous...

http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/76th-uci-road-world-championships-cm/stages/stage-3/results
Its really nice to be able to watch the races at local times. Props to Zirbel for his performance, he was sitting with top time all day until the last group of riders came in, but still managed fourth. Definitely a ProTour level rider.

As for my biking while I'm over here, its sad to say that I won't get out to ride any of the Alps. Its just too expensive to get over there for four days, and coming back on Sunday is the most expensive flying day in Europe. Anyways, I'm going to Milan for my first travel and maybe we can work out a day riding some of the mountains north of there. However, for the second travel at the end of next month, I'm headed out to Belgium to see some real cyclocross. GVA Trofee - Koppenbergcross and Superprestige Hoogstraten, there should be some epic racing going on there.

I'll make my comeback to collegiate cycling when we get back to the States, hopefully I'll be in some form of shape. I'll look to maybe go to CX nationals this year! (joking) Road nationals are already planned on, but I'll need more than two weekends of cross to consider going out to Oregon. Maybe next year, assuming I get into the Master's program.

I'm alive

2009-09-22T12:44:00.007-04:00

Sorry I haven't kept up with posts the last two weeks, I'm working towards a studio deadline tomorrow so the free time hasn't been plentiful. Last weekend we traveled to Prague for our Urban Studies class, which was a pretty awesome place.
I got a bike, nothing specially really, it just works (barely) and gets me from the apartments to studio, shortening a 40-minute commute to 25 and saving me $6 or so a day. I'll post a pic of it later.

Alright, back to work.

Amsterdam, Part Two

2009-09-09T13:06:00.018-04:00

Well now I'm kind of settled in Berlin, in studio and kicking my self for deciding not to ship my cross bike. Bikes here aren't as cheap as I thought, I was looking for something like an old 80's road bike or something, with not so great components but decent enough to use for a long ride apart from commuting. I've been to five different shops so far and the best price I can get for something decent is 300 euros, or roughly $435-US. I know I'd be able to sell it before I leave for 75% of what I bought it for, but I don't want to drain my funds completely. Public transportation here is damn expensive, comparing it to the T in Boston, one ride is three times the price ($3.05 one-way).

So now here is the second part of my Amsterdam tale.

Day Three: Rotterdam

What a nice city. It got totally leveled in WWII, so since then its come along way. There are a lot of modern buildings, overall very clean, and a very lively marketplace. In the morning I had a presentation at the Kunsthal in the morning, it went pretty well. I still have to present the Dutch Embassy when we get to Berlin, and then the rest of the class is a 10-page paper comparing and contrasting the two projects.

I was surprised that I got to present my project in the auditorium, which was a special occasion. I’m still not sure what the smile and frown faces on the glass represent, but I’m sure I’ll find it out at some point in my research.

This is a typical OMA-Rem Koolhaas building, with main program spaces split by a main trajectory path that is blurred from interior to exterior. You can tell they were very happy with the result:

We spent some time wandering around Rotterdam, but there wasn’t much else to do so we took the train back to Amsterdam fairly early. I was hoping to get the Heineken Brewery tour in tonight, but they changed from their summer hours, so we got there after it closed. While we were out eating it started to rain, so the night was called early.

Day Four: Utrecht

Very interesting buildings were seen today. The Utrecht University seems like a really cool campus. It was Sunday morning there, so not a lot was going on, though at one point a pack of 200+ girls went out for a bike ride. I caught a photo of a few tailing off the back:

I think there were at least 15 girls for every guy we saw. Coming from Wentworth, that’s seems like a pretty amazing ratio. Sometimes it makes me think I should transfer, but I’m two semesters away from my bachelor’s so why bother. As for grad school, well, we’ll see. One more year at Wentworth makes financial sense.

We visited the library at the University, which had a very neat texture on every panel of the building, and even on the glass as a print for shading:

The inside was probably the most wide-open library I've ever seen. The idea is that everybody can see everybody, which encourages more social interaction. It also can serve as a motivator to someone like me where if I can see everyone else studying, I should probably be too.
After wards, we walked down to the one, the only, Schröder House! Holy crap was this place pretty beat up, but thinking about it, its more than 80 years old, and that type of house wasn't designed to last. It was a bummer we couldn't 'make pictures' inside (every European tour guide's favorite expression).
After that tour, we broke for lunch in the historic center of Utrecht. There was some were nice scenery, and its a city I wouldn't mind living in.
I made it back to Amsterdam, took the tram straight to the Heineken brewery to see if I could make the tour. We just missed the last tour, which was a shame being our last night in Amsterdam, but the shop was open so I got some souvenirs anyway. A good group of us went out and enjoyed our last night in Amsterdam, out hitting up the bars. The highlight of the night was three of my friends accidentally stumbling into a gay bar to go to the bathroom, getting lots of racy comments from all the guys in there. It was almost a bad idea with a group of about 10 or so drunk Americans parading the red light district and surrounding bars, but then again most of everyone around that area are tourists anyway. Its nice not having to worry about getting much sleep, because of the very long bus ride we had the next day. I think I might be back sometime in the near future.

Next stop: Paris!

Amsterdam, Part One

2009-09-05T15:54:00.020-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts on this first travel elective, I really haven’t had the time to go out and spend it on the internet. Not that it isn’t widely available or anything, we just don’t get it at the hostels, we’re on our feet from 7 in the morning until 5 traveling around, sketching, photographing, studying etc. all the awesome architecture that’s over here. So once we’re free for the day after that’s done, we’re going to do something a little more fun and lively for the night, rather than go find an internet café or something of that nature. Here’s a recap of our time in Amsterdam, feel free to read in parts because it will probably be long.

Day One: Arrival
Our flight landed around 7:40 AM at Schipbol Airport just outside of Amsterdam, I can say for the most part that none of us got more than 2 hours of sleep (I managed only one) and knew this would be a long day. We had no presentations that day, but Rolf Bachman and John Ellis (our professors) were eager to introduce us to the city. We took the tram to the hostel, to learn that we couldn’t check in until 2. So they let us drop our bigger bags in a closet to keep safe while we walked around until then. We walked all the way back towards Central Station, taking in the beautiful street scenery along the way:

We headed over to Amsterdam public library, where they were having a cool exhibit on Rietveld’s furniture, and a cafeteria with roof deck. We stopped and ate, took a look around the building (which was also very cool),

and eventually wandered back to the hotel. Greg and I got a sweet balcony on the second floor overlooking the canal next to us, and a view of the vibrant nightlife in the theater district. We took a nap for a few hours and went out to grab some food. We found a coffee shop with some good stuff (I won't say anymore), wandered over to the Red Light District to see what it was like, and called it a night early to help with the jet lag.

Day Two: Amsterdam
We woke up early to see quite a few buildings. I won’t go into details about everything, but the housing development here was really cool, each floor had a separate façade material which gave each apartment a unique feeling:
One of my favorites was the Muziekgebouw by 3xNielsen:
The parti of the building is very simple and works amazingly well; there is a large performance hall for modern classical music, and a smaller one for jazz music. Around is a glass box that encloses the space between to two for lobby, bar, and restaurant areas. Very cool theater effects indeed:
The best thing about Amsterdam (I thought) was the sheer number of bikes. Bikes outnumber cars by a long shot, although 99% of the bikes were cruisers:
In a city as old as Amsterdam, efficiency is a huge priority; fewer cars, less pollution, more tourists, then more people on bikes, walking and using public transportation. I wish more of them were road bikes, but most people are solely commuting, so a leisure bike does the trick, and you don’t have to worry about someone stealing your particular bike because they all look the same.
We saw two of Hertzbeger’s Montessori schools, which were somewhat interesting. Our tour guide was very enthusiastic when it came to demonstrating the importance of the learning environment, which included some great posters with important lessons:
Somehow, I think this sort of openness wouldn’t fly in America, I’m sure there is some stupid code for educational settings that prevents a six-story drop anywhere in the building. I mean, some kid in the US would probably jump this:
We retreated back to the room, checked out the Red Light district on a crazy Friday night, and got to bed not too late, I had a presentation the next day.

I’ll split this part into two, we’re gonna go out to watch the Swiss national team match at a bar somewhere downtown.

P.S. Found this on the side of a building, even though the numbers are technically wrong, it's still awesome:('05 Tour de France Prologue)

2009-08-27T06:11:00.003-04:00

I’m on the plane right now, trying to get some sleep but the 6-hour layover will kill me later (it’ll be like pulling an all-nighter, right?). So I figure now is a good time to document my thoughts on Fitchburg.

After spending about $350 to race CTSR (boat fees, gas, registration, food, supplies etc.) I convinced myself I could not drive off-island to race Fitchburg. Luckily, I have some great friends and teammates, notably Steven Hopengarten for coming down to Woods Hole to grab me, put me up at his place in Lincoln for the long weekend, drive out and provide race support for GLV, and lend me his car to drive back to Woods Hole with Keith. We would have liked to have him racing with us in the Cat.3 field, but he was logging a long season already and needed a break (which some of you might have read already). I would also like to extend a thanks to Steve’s parents, who were great hosts for the weekend providing the team plenty of sleeping room and breakfast/dinner after the long and hard days.

Day one: ITT – I forgot my aero equipment in CT, which only consisted of clip-on bars and helmet, but in general those were huge benefits I wish I had. The weather was misty and cool, the roads a little slick but I had hoped to perform better than I did in the CTSR TT. I of course (again) went out a little too hard, and noticed that the course would be mostly false flat/small rollers after the turnaround. I was passed right before the turnaround by a fellow who goes by the name Austin Moran (no relation) but its always cool to see someone with pretty close names be racing the same field at a NRC event (and he was also rocking a nice TT setup as well). I struggled on the way back, placing late-seventies, 20 seconds in back of Keith and 25 in back of Lachance. As a lot of us expected, the Soul Train blasted through the course to grab the TT win. We thought he maybe should have been a 2 beforehand, but why not sandbag a big stage race, win some money and upgrade after? Genius.

Day two: Circuit race – This race ended on a nasty little drag up to the line, rumored at about 15% for the last 400 meters of the circuit. I had no ambitions with that climb at the end; just hoping to not get gapped and finish with the pack would be fine by me. I found it hard to maintain position for this race (not that I can climb anyway, but I can hold my own powering up it if it only lasted a few hundred meters. On the backstretch you could make up some considerable position and move up on the left side of the divider, though there was a decent headwind and some sketchy riders making me nervous. In the end I stayed out of trouble, finished with the pack and conserved some energy for the next day.

Day Three: Road Race – After driving this course the day before, I knew this was not the road race for me. The major climb leading up to the finished kicked up three times without any real place to recover, but I was going to give it a good shot nonetheless. Keith nabbed some point in the Circuit race, and was only 5 points off the jersey lead, so I was going to try and help him get some more to see if he could be in contention for it going into the crit the next day. On the first of six laps, I got to the front with Keith and kept an eye on things, taking turns with the pace making. As the climb started, I felt good until the last kick before the finish turn. I started dropping back a bit, but I noticed Keith ahead of me, but dropping back fast than me. I went alongside him, saw if he was alright but he seemed to be in a lot of discomfort. I tried to pace him to keep up with the pack but we were gapped going into the feed zone, and after a downhill saw the field pulling away from us. We continued to go at it together, picking up and dropping stragglers, hoping to catch back on but we knew it was a bit too late. Even the field getting neutralized wasn’t enough for us to get back on. I was taking the long descent conservatively, with the speed wobbles becoming a nuisance I didn’t want to risk losing control like I did at CTSR. On the lap 4 climb coming into the finish line, Keith noticed my rear tire was losing air. I hadn’t felt it while climbing but he easily could see it. When we got to the top of the hill before the descent, I told Keith to go it alone because I was going to take absolutely no risk on the descent (with no neutral service behind you, you might as well keep going, right?). So I took the descent at like 25-28mph and by the bottom, the tire felt pretty low, and I was just praying for some neutral service to come and save my day. By the time I started climbing it was pretty much flat, and I had some nice words for the race officials at the finish line when they informed me I still had to complete the final lap despite my flat. Whatever I said must have garnered some reaction, because by the time I got to the end of the feed zone, the SRAM car came speeding up behind me, gave me a new 404 and I bolted down the descent and the rest of the final lap to finish only 25 minutes down. Great. Keith finished maybe 10 or 15 minutes ahead of me, and Lachance managed to stay in the pack the whole race (great showing for him in his first Cat.3 race). At least I was in the time cut, but I got thrown towards the back of the GC. Afterwards Steve took me to a post-race BBQ at Frances’ (Mt. Holyoke) place in Fitchburg. There were many collegiate racers on hand, most notably the UVM guys, so it was a good end to a good day, despite the poor finish.

Day four: Crit – This crit course was fast and furious, with a lot of jostling for position and a brutal headwind in the finishing straight. Keith had a very active race up from netting a few prime points here and there. I was up there at the beginning, but a crash in turn 3 coming out of a long downhill caused me to hit the guy in front of me while slowing down, and the guy behind me also hit me but we were back enough that we stayed upright, and rolled over to take our free lap. I took a rear pit wheel for safety, and once I said I had campy, the guy pulled out an 808 from the piled, what an awesome wheel to race on! I felt like I could accelerate a lot better (probably because my 404s are older), and I made my way back to towards the front again. I saw Lachance long enough to have him flat right in front of me, but I got around him just fine, at least it happened in a straight part off to the side. I got to the front with 4 to go and prime lap, and chased down an attack from a Westwood Velo guy on the downhill with Keith on my wheel. Keith proceeded to counter attack right before turn 3, but took it a little too hot, hit a bump, knocked his seat off the rails and went down. I was third wheel, so I slowed down as much as I could to hit the hay bails and keep moving , but by the time I regrouped, the pack was gone, people were pissed off with no free lap and I rolled in behind the pack after three cool-down laps to get awarded the same time as the finish. So at the end of the day, we weren’t in any position to hold our heads high, but it was fun for my first Fitchburg nonetheless and I hope to come back next year in better form and with a big Cat.3 GLV turnout.

I’m gonna try and get some sleep now, lots of buildings to see in a few hours.

Summer racing and the Vineyard

2009-08-24T22:59:00.003-04:00

Two more days and I'll be in Amsterdam. Great way to start off a study-abroad semester I think, four days based based there with day trips to Rotterdam and Utrecht, should lead to many fun times. I'll be sure to take up the Heineken Brewery Tour, I hear its a blast when big groups take it together so I hope everyone will come out for one of the nights there. From there we'll move on to a road trip day, stopping to see and sketch a few prominent buildings, making it to Paris that night. Three days in Paris, seeing alot of Corbu along the way, and then a travel day to Basel. One full day there, and then a half a day in Zurich, with our flight to Berlin that night. What a way to start eleven days in a three month abroad semester. We'll also have a three-day trip to Prague in September and a six-day trip to Rome in October, and numerous day-trips to other German cities. We have two optional travels as well, so I'm going to try and work in going to see a big Belgian cyclocross race.

My relocation to the Vineyard for this past summer (and all the previous summers) put a hinder on my intended big summer of racing. But, I had two races that I set my heart on for the year, the Connecticut Stage Race (being right next to my hometown of Torrington) and Fitchburg. I was able to get off island for CT, driving back home and hosting a couple of the GLV riders at my house, and getting amenities for those I couldn't fit at my place. I was hoping for a good GC result, but that also means you must have at least a top-10 in the time trial. I had a hard time transitioning from shorter 2-5 miles TT's to the 8-mile one, like the ones at CT and Fitchburg. It has alot to do with the courses, but I also felt like I wasn't warming up right and going out too hard, finding the last 2-3 miles hurt alot. I finished mid-field, got passed by two monsters in full TT-bike setups. As a key to stage race success, I hope to work alot on my time trialing ability over the winter and through collegiate season. At least I got a cool snapshot:

The circuit race was a bad experience, it reminded me of a certain circuit race at Rutgers where I had a mechanical the second lap. However here, I dropped my chain first lap before the drag up the finish, it took the neutral support guy almost a minute to pull my chain from between my crank and frame, left a nice chip in the paint, dropped me off the back for the rest of the race, and the guy gave me a nice hand print of grease on my new GLV bibs. I had to put some serious hurt down to finish within the time limit, so I could do the road race the next day. I saw nobody for the whole race, except the pack lapped me on their sprint up to the finish while I kept chugging away with one lap to go. I saw one guy ahead of me halfway through my last lap, somebody who must have gotten dropped awhile back, and managed to pass him on the last climb up to the finish to save DFL humiliation. I guess there were a few DNF's too, but it sucks to lose ten minutes on GC just like that. At least I got within the time limit and could race the next day.

The road race was a bit of an epic, 91 miles for all fields (even cat 4's!) but I expected it to be hard for me, being there some steep rolling hills in the second half, and hurting a bit from the circuit race effort. Five miles in, there was a really long desent, and I caught myself with my hands on the hoods, and kinda panicked when I got some violent speed wobbles. I thought I flatted, but I knew I was losing control, and didn't want to go down in the middle of the pack and on the pavement. There was some nice meadow grass on the side of the road, and I proceeded to hit the brakes and slow down as much as I could while gliding into the tall grass, eventually landed gently (about as gently as you can slowing from 55mph), recollected myself, surprised that I wasn't flat, and was paced back into the pack by neutral support. I only had a few scratches on my knee and a nice hole in a new jersey from the number ripping off in a corner. I continued on trying to relax at the back of the pack, and soon felt the need to make my presence at the front and stay near Keith and Mark. I got gapped in the feed zone looking for a feed, not noticing my teammates had grabbed everything for me, and Keith came back to pace me back in. As soon as the steep rollers started, I knew I was in trouble. I made it over the first few, but soon just accepted the pain I was in, from all factors, was too much, and I dropped off the back to solo the last 37 miles, coming in maybe a half an hour down. Not the result I wanted, but it was a good experience racing near home and hosting the team at our first big stage race weekend. We as a team were pretty well prepared, I thank all the GLV teammates and supporters for a great weekend all around, we had some awesome results for the Cat 4 field.

Wow that took awhile, I'll talk about Fitchburg tomorrow.

Blog Resurrection

2009-08-20T22:53:00.002-04:00

So, its been awhile...

I ended the collegiate racing season in less-than-good form, basically riding maybe once a week and just racing on the weekends. My final project kinda took over at school, and called it a season. Next year I am planning on going back to A's and staying there the whole season, whether or not I get shelled. Maybe I'll get lucky one weekend when nobody shows up because of some big USCF race and I'll score points for nationals, I heard it worked for this one kid at Union.

So came my summer, and having a required co-op led me to search all over, despite the rough economy. I ended up going back to Martha's Vineyard for the NINTH STRAIGHT SUMMER. Don't get me wrong, I love the vineyard, its a great vacation spot, but dealing with a disconnect from the mainland and dealing with the boatloads (literally) of tourists gets to you after nine years. However, it wasn't all that bad as I got to go back to the great job I had last summer interning at Hutker Architects. I got to work on a lot of cool projects this summer, and on top of all the work they have despite a turning economy, they're getting ready for an office renovation, a website update and a book coming out soon, so I forward to seeing great things from them in the coming months.

Now, the main reason why I have decided to pull up this blog again is for my coming semester abroad trip. I want to keep my friends and family updated on the cool stuff we're doing around Europe, with plenty of photos and talk on how much we're (not) focused on studio work. My flight for Amsterdam is this coming Wednesday, and from there we'll head to Paris, Basel, and eventually Berlin for the rest of the semester. I just got an awesome new camera to help in my travels, finally getting past a point + shoot and moving up to a sweet Canon Rebel XSi DSLR system.

I'll update tomorrow with some details of my racing season (and all other misfortunes) of this summer. Off to bed, last day of work tomorrow.

Gute nacht (I'll attempt to learn German at some point)

Fun in Delaware

2009-03-25T22:29:00.003-04:00

My teammates backed out of Columbia, so I didn't get to go. I love that crit too. This past weekend, I wasn't going to miss a weekend because my school is maybe incapable of sending my team long distance. Luckily, Natan and the guys at BU were able to bring me along for an awesome weekend. I left my studio class at 2 on Friday, headed over to the BU lot to wait for the vans, load them up and leave just before 4. I would say Natan had a good drive down, but we did get pulled over on the Garden State Parkway, and luckily garnered a warning to a van full of 11 collegiate cyclists. We hit Olive Garden in Cherry Hill around 9:30, eventually got to the hotel around 12, crammed 7 to a room, did a quick shave and got to bed before 1. Woke up to realize we had a 7-minute drive to the race, and decided to hit up Waffle House across the street.

The Road Race on saturday was awesome, the B field didn't let any break go more than 200 meters up the road before we eventually reeled them back in. I felt great the whole race, and was happy with 11th but I know had I not got cut-off in the last turn and almost taken out by a crazy crash, I would have been on the back of the UVM train and probably could have pulled a top-5. I give all the credit to Chebot for the win, I could see him jump at the right time as I was trying to get by as many people as I could. Nice victory salute, and I'm not going to say I advocate taking your hands off the bars in a sprint finish, but to those who do it in a non-dangerous, non-sprinting situation can benefit from how to Victory Salute Like A PRO:

Robby knows how to do it right.

Saturday after the races we hit up main street in Newark, grabbed dinner and headed back to the hotel to shower, watch Super Troopers on TV and pass out early. Sunday we woke up at 5:45 to get in some Waffle House before the ITT. The course was fun, I got to ride it beforehand, but wished I spent more time on the trainer getting loose. Nevertheless I got 11th with a decent time, felt like I should have pushed it in some parts and upped the cadence a bit, but what can you do. Anybody have ITT pictures? I'd like to see if there is a pic of me looking weird in an aero helmet but no TT bars.

Most of you that may or may not be reading this knows how things panned out for the crit on Sunday. Many people were going down in a blind S-turn which included a flat brick crosswalk interupting the slope, which sent 4 or 5 to the hospital including the motor pace bike driver! Needless to say, after seeing so many ambulances come and go on the course, I wasn't taking any risks on that turn in Alan Atwood's death crit. It was hard for me to find a line through it that I was comfortable with, and fell back quick, and 4 or 5 of us got gapped from the main group and just fell back. At this point I really didn't care anymore, my only ambition of the day was to not get injured so, taking it easy I eventually got pulled. Whatever, I'm finding that I prefer a road race to a crit anyday, but crits are essential to racing in this country, and I better start sustaining the constant hard effort and accelerations alot better, I think I'm sprinting well but I just need to get a little more comfortable taking turns at speed.

We didn't get back to Boston until about 1:45 AM, which prompted me to ride back to WIT, drop my stuff of and head to studio to stay up and get my work done. Lets just say, sleeping didn't happen. I was impressed with myself, I didn't resort to caffeine pills or anything like that to help me stay up, I was running on adrenaline (I guess?) which is hard to do regularly, let alone after a day of two races. The key is to stay on your feet, as soon as you sit down and lay back all it takes is ten seconds to fall asleep. So after a two-race Sunday, I didn't get to bed until 10PM Monday. Not bad, its just the nature of architecture. I got some work done to help saturday night and the car ride home, but we all know that for the most part not much can get done on race weekends.

My wallet is empty, and therefore I am not making it to Philly, I also would not like to fall behind on my studio project. I'll hit Wells Ave of course to get some action in my legs on sunday, and hopefully get out to Army and Yale in the coming ECCC weekends.

Rutgers/Princeton Awesomeness

2009-03-10T20:57:00.002-04:00

Well in the first race weekend of the year, I could say that I was pleasantly amused at the outcome. The weekend started off great, Greg and I won our studio competition project after sitting in on the jury session for over three hours on Friday. We had a bit of a rush getting all packed to head out, but were finally on the road at 6:30. Only making quick stops, and maintaining a fairly high speed throughout, we made it down to our hotel in Edison by 11. I couldn't figure out the Days Inn wireless password, so we were going to take the longest way to the ITT, but luckily some cool Kutztown guys gave me the quick route from the hotel.

The ITT was the start of some signs of a bad day for me. My thought was it was going to go well, especially with doing the Landry's ITT the week before. My hopes for winning my heat at the event were high, until some bloke from Princeton entered my heat, but I ended up getting third out of 16 in the heat, 25 seconds off of Bennette and ended the day sixth overall in collegiate, 335 watts over 19 minutes isn't bad (if only I could lose some weight!). So even though the previous ITT went well, it ended up not so much. Maybe it was the short length of the course that made me go too hard, maybe it was the bad stomach ache and subsequent bathroom rush right beforehand, but I wasn't going to be full strength. I shot out too fast, felt great though until after I came back past the start, began to feel a little fatigued, and right before the second turnaround I got passed by the Kutztown rider starting behind me. DAMN! After that I didn't have the same kick left to get a great acceleration out of the turnaround and ended at 6:24, 16 seconds better than last year but given better weather and general level of fitness I should have been alot faster.

Then, the crit. What a great course this was, and even more fun was coaching the Intro fields to get to preview the course a bit (as well as give out advice to the newbies). By the time the A race came along, I had ridden the course alot and thought I would be as ready as ever... nope. I lined up on the front row, which would have given me great starting position had I not slipped my pedal on the whistle. I still was mid-pack going up the climb, and everyone was flying off the bat, it was hard just to keep pace up the hill, and once you got to the top the acceleration downhill was brutally fast, and taking the corners at blazing speeds wasn't bad, it was just the intensity of the accelerations after the corners that my legs weren't feeling good for. I popped off the back on the third lap, saw Steve drop his chain on the hill, which was a shame because he's a good crit rider and just made a silly mistake that can cost you, which I had one the next day. Steve, myself (barely), Derek from UVM and Anna McLoon (the all powerful girl who can destroy the Women's A race and still sit in the Men's A race after for quite awhile) were kind of in a pack strung out because of my inability to accelerate, but all got pulled once we were lapped by the mighty Nick Frey and eventually the field.

Given a good meal and decent amount of sleep, Sunday should have went pretty well... nope. I avoided riding around too much before the race, periodically doing half laps of the circuit between races to stay fresh, got on the trainer awhile beforehand and was feeling really good. Here comes the big mistake: I put my computer magnet on my wheel upside-down. The race started and after two laps of the circuit I felt really good staying in the pack, but all of a sudden I hear a ticking noise. My wheel magnet rotated because of the wind pushing against it being upside down, and it started to hit the cadence/speed sensor mounted on the chain stay. It got annoying and I got worried, so I reached down just to push the sensor out of the way, and one of the two zip-ties that was holding it snapped, causing the sensor attached to the other zip tie to fling around the end of the chain stay and knock against my spokes. Obviously, I had to stop at this point and rip the sensor off the other zip tie and throw it in my pocket. In the ten seconds it took me to stop, get off, rip off the sensor, and get back on, I already los significant ground on the main field, and after a hard lap of pounding the pedals, I knew I would never catch back to them. So after 5 laps of soloing way off the back (pissed off enough to keep pushing it but wasn't going to just quit) I finally got pulled. I rode slowly around the course in disgust after feeling really good about the race, the field went by, but on the backside of the course was Graham from Brown, a UMass rider and Anna McLoon pacelining off the back of the field. They told me to hop on the back, to which I replied "I've already been pulled,..." at that second, I realized I was displeased with myself enough to just hammer it away on the bike, and I added "but I'll hop on anyway!" So I started pacelining with them for two or three laps at a pretty decent pace, even though I was already done I didn't care, I wanted to keep going. Our group got pulled after a few laps, before the field came around again, but afterwards I felt much better.

And thats my story of how I got pulled three times in two races. Beat that. My ambitions for next Columbia are pretty good seeing as how B suits me better for a category. For someone who barely gets in 8-12 hours a week on the bike, I couldn't train enough to keep up with the A's all season. Architecture studio work will pick up here and there, and there will be weeks where I can't get in 6 hours on the bike because of work, in the end I'd rather be competitive and give A my best shot for next year.

My favorite AToC pics (and others too)

2009-02-25T01:04:00.017-05:00

So after a week of a studio deadline while glancing at the Tour of California tracker now and then, I'd like to bring up some photos which describe what I enjoyed about the race this year. First off, the online tour tracker was great, because I don't get Versus on campus and was in studio most of the time anyway. Second, Frankie Andreau isn't the greatest commentator in the world, but he still makes Craig Hummer look like a retard (he is one). Bob Roll has started to grow on me, so I don't mind adding his thoughts to the mix (as long as they are somewhat understandable, he knows what he's talking about for the most part).
Also, Johan Bruyneel getting to shave Roll's head: priceless.
There were some fantastic looking kits to see for this year, I had to start off with DZ's awesome US TT champ skinsuit, and the equally matching bike (all he needs is the helmet to be red white and blue)
Rock Racing's kit is just awesome. I mean, they'll probably take a step back from last year supplying their own clothing and a different kit for every major race, but Louis Garneau was glad to pick up the slack. ANARCHY!!!
Columbia-Highroad's kit is interesting. Not a fan of the fake six-pack, but the white and yellow is starting to grow on me. Cavendish thinks anybody who dislikes the kit can suck deez nuts:
Now, on to the fans. Oh, these people do get their 15 seconds of fame very stylishly, and this year's race didn't keep any of them from coming out. Big hair superfan is a definite hit:
The pope gave the peloton his blessing:
Gigantic Sumo guys bounced around as their small legs moved really fast up Palomar:
The Montana classic becoming more common:
This year the Longhorns made an appearance, giving more proof that this should be done in the ECCC:
Just when you need motivation, and the pain is getting so bad that it becomes the focus, all you need is a reminder:
For if you don't pedal, you could grow weak, and maybe end up looking like this guy:
And my absolute favorite, probably because of the blatant shot at Lance, is Mr. LIVECLEAN:
Leave your EPO at home kids. Lets start some outrageous ECCC costume-chasing crowds, preferably on climbs or time trials.

Okay, don't feel bad if my training power makes you feel like a 5 year old

2009-02-14T12:21:00.004-05:00

You guys had to just go about posting your training data on your ECCC blogs, when no one wants to see how puny you are. I wasn't posting my data because I didn't want to make any of you feel bad, but you've left me no choice it seems.
Basically, yesterday I went for a 12-hour ride to home in CT and back, the first two hours or so I did 18-minute repeat intervals, but then whipped out some sprint paced intervals at roughly 4000 watts or so and jumped on the Mass Pike for awhile, getting alot of strange looks too. I called my mom on the way in, and she handed me the t-shirt I went to get via musette bag. On the way back I was just doing steady-state on the hills in western Mass averaging about 26. After I got back I recorded the data, but I was surprised to see it didn't graph my power output above 1800. Oh well, pretty much my average ride data not much changes as far as numbers.

I think I'm gonna return the SRM, I don't need it to school all you noobs for the collegiate season. In fact, you guys should really just quit now if you can't even post moderate power numbers. Take your bike, sell it on ebay, because you're all a bunch of tools, go ride your fixie around town without brakes and smash into cars because there is no place for you in the ECCC.

I'm going to hang out and play guitar with John Petrucci, who is pretty much the equivalent on guitar to me on a bike. Later

Wentworth's Top Secret New Team Kit

2009-02-12T15:25:00.005-05:00

So our design man Greg Foti spent a good nine months or so on this design (on and off of course). We went with Hincapie Sportswear this year for clothing, thanks to the deal that they offered ECCC teams (thanks to Columbia for coordinating that) and we didn't stop short of accessories. Much to my despair, we couldn't get skinsuits because of the minimums for the very small team that we have, but going full-out with jackets, ls/ss jerseys, bibs, arm warmers, caps, t-shirts, gloves and booties. A $6K order is alot for a small team, but just about everyone got more than the basic jersey and shorts.

Now for the design:

TO BE UNVEILED AT RUTGERS

Yes, this design is going to be a hands down favorite for the Best New Jersey on the ECCC Survey at the end of the season. But I will give some hints:
White is very Euro, the pureness of style. For those of you not familiar with the concept of Euro, you should read up on the Rules of the Euro Cyclist: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=2258201150&ref=ts

Now this is our mascot, the Leopard. One of our Architecture professors was asked to create a small face logo to be used for printed admissions material and so on, he was nice enough to let us incorporate it in our design. Don't assume that we just tiled them or copied a polka-dot pattern, this is unique and won't be seen anywhere else, you'll just have to wait for Rutgers to see.

Another ECCC Blog!

2009-02-12T02:17:00.005-05:00

So out of a spur of the moment decision, I now have a blog. I probably should be doing CAD drawings, but I've had enough of that this week. When I have more time this weekend hopefully I'll fix up this layout and wide picture above.

I'm pretty pumped for starting the collegiate road season, after a good winter break of logging many hours a week on the bike, I've decided to start the season racing the A field. This will probably be the biggest wake-up call of my life, but after discussing with NU's Mark Theeman, its better to start in A because the B riders still crash as much as the C's and D's, especially in the begining of the season. I intend on getting my ass kicked to a certain extent, I'm a Cat 3 so I'm kinda qualifyed for A's, but I'm not training with Powertaps or SRM's and the only hint I have of what my power levels are come from a Kurt Kinetic Computer that only is accurate when I'm on the trainer. I got a Garmin Edge 705 over the winter though for when the race bike comes back from Calfee (thats a story for another time) and maybe down the road I'll make some investment into a SRM or PT.

Crashing is lame, and made me get four stitches at the Beanpot Crit last year because a Tufts rider couldn't corner a course on his own damn campus:
Here's the guy going down, MIT is about to slide and I'll get the instantaneous reaction of sliding too.
There I go, and for some reason I don't put my hands in front of my face, and...
BAM! This lucky photographer happened to capture the exact point my face hit the ground. That resulted in an angry ambulance ride to get stiched up, there's still a slight mark in my skin from it but for the most part you can barely notice it.

Back to CAD, might get to sleep around 4ish tonight, hopefully I can get some outside riding in tomorrow before it pours on Boston and drops below freezing again.