Becky (Chain Reaction Redwood City)

Of the three classes that I’m taking, one of the most interesting is titled “the making of environmental policy”. It’s quite an interesting class taught by one of california’s top anti nuclear advocates. The class goes over everything, from how to get information that the government doesn’t want you to have to how to make and change policy. Recently, we’ve been talking about our “big project” which is to create a bill and submit it either to the state or congress. In order to help with the process, our professor brought in former speaker pro tem of the state assembly, Fred Keeley. He went over how he drafted and passed the Marine Life Managment Act of 1996. It was really cool to see how our state system works from the inside out. After class, I walked down with mr. Keeley and spoke to him about bicycle legislation and how we can reverse the damage done in the transportation bill in the house of representatives last week. His ideas: try to get to it from the state side first. Pretty good idea if you ask me. I’m planning on going to Sacramento with my dad this year to do just that. I can’t wait!

My family doesn’t really watch the super bowl to watch the super bowl. Sure we can recognize a good play froma  bad one in football, but really the super bowl is about the commericals for us. So here’s a list of a couple of the ones that stood out for me:

• Audi Vampires: I really dislike the Twilight saga so I was glad to see all of those vampires burst into smoke. Also, a pretty good way to advertise those headlights, I want some!
• Naked M&Ms: The voice of Vanessa Williams as the never-before-seen-on-TV upper class brown M&M was perfect, as was the part where the red one tore off his candy coating and got down. Who doesn’t like little sexually amorphus chocolate creactures dancing naked at their party? No on, that’s who.
• Sketcher’s Quigley: This one was the great “under-dog” commercial of the game. The fat little English Bull Dog out running the grey houds was great, as was the appearence of Marc Cuban at the end. So much better than their super lame ads in the past.
• Doritos: They do a good job with all of their commercials for the super bowl every year but I particularly enjoyed the one where the dog burried the cat and bribed his owner with doritos not to tell any one. Simple, and that Great Dane probably could have eaten the guy, so I think it was a good choice. The other one that stuck with me was the one where there is a bratty little kid with a bag of doritos who is bragging about the fact he has them and his (presumably) grandmother and baby brother do not. The grandma slingshots the baby who grabs the doritos from the brat. Who hasn’t been in their shoes and wanted to do exactly the same thing?
• Pepsi Max for life: I love Regis, so that was the icing on the cake to a hilarious ad where a Coke delivery man wins Pepsi Max for life. My question is: how did the supermarket fit all that Pepsi Max in their ceiling?
• Chevy apocalypse: Last but not least, I would say the best ad of the night. The 2012 Mayan prophecy has come true and the only people alive are 4 guys who drive Chevy trucks. When asked why “Dave” isn’t there, they answer that he drove a Ford and didn’t make it. Super funny. I just bought a Ford and now am thinking “Should I have gotten a Chevy Sonic?” Just kidding, I love my car, but this ad was marvelous. And the twinkies at the end were great too.

Two things I was disappointed about though: 1. The amount of movie trailers was crazy! Come on, I don’t watch the Super Bowl commercials to see an ad for G.I. Joe 2. And 2. There was only one Budweiser ad with the clydesdales! Aren’t they their signature animal? A little disappointing Bud…

I started back at UC Santa Cruz on January 10th and if any of you have been there, you know that the campus is HUGE! I was having to take the bus to and from class to class in order to be only a minute late rather than the 15 minutes late I would be if I walked. After about a week of this frustration, I thought to myself, hey, why don’t I bring my bike and ride from class to class? So that’s what I did. I live at home and drive down there twice a week and I bring my Trek 7.5FX WSD with me. It’s great! I’m able to ride around the most beautiful campus in the world and I get to classes on time or earlier! My 7.5FX is a great ride, super comfortable, fast, and stable, even with a back pack or pannier bag on the back. I get out of class, hop on my bike and take in the redwoods while I ride, and it smells much better than the bus!

That’s right, we have a fleet of Ultegra Di2 demo bikes coming in. Right now, I have a 50cm WSD Di2 Ultegra Madone 6.2 coming in on Thursday! This bike is super cool, it has the brand-new Ultegra version of the Di2 electric shifing, Bontrager Race wheels, and the full made-in-the-USA 6 series Madone frame.

The 6.2 Ultegra Di2 bike we have coming in

Why Ultegra Di2? Because Ultegra Di2 gives you the advantages of Dura Ace Di2 without the price tag. Ultegra Di2 costs about as much as traditional Dura Ace but it shifts electronically. We spec’d these women’s specific design bikes with this because it doesn’t have shift levers but rather shift “buttons”. This means that it doesn’t take as much effort to shift as it did before. Great for people with small hands or weak wrists!

We will be getting in a fleet of these (size 44-54cm) within the next month for people to demo. We are very excited to be getting these in!

Well, at the shop we hear these questions a lot. 1. ”Should I get a triple or does a compact give me the same lower gearing?” 2. “How many gears will I lose if I go to a compact from the current bike that I am riding?” 3. “I’m a woman, do I need a different gear for me compared to my male friends?” and the all too important: “Will my friends make fun of me if I ride a triple?” I can’t really answer the last question but I can certainly take a stab at the first three!

1. With most bikes now coming with either compacts or triples, you have a choice of low gearing with either option. A compact crank comes with a front crank with a 50 tooth large ring and a 34 tooth small ring and a cassette with a range anywhere from an 11 tooth small ring to a 28 tooth large ring (You can also get a cassette with higher gears in the back, like a 12-25 but I’m going to stick with the low gear options for comparrison). A traditional triple will come with a 52 tooth large ring, a 39 tooth middle ring, and a 30 tooth small ring on the front and the same gearing options on the back as a compact. The lower the number of teeth on the front the lower the gearing and the higher the number of teeth on the rear, the lower the gearing (I know this is counter intuitive but it just works out that way.  So, if you got a compact, your lowest gear would be a 34/28 (Small gear in the front divided by the big gear in the back) which comes out to  1.21 gear inches (the lower this nunber, the lower the gear and the easier to pedal) and if you got a triple, your lowest gear would be 30/28 which comes out to 1.07 gear inches. So yes, you do get a slightly lower gear on the triple than you do on the compact. Think of it as one gear lower on the triple than on the compact.

2. Well, whether you will lose gears or not going to a compact depends on what you are riding now. I have a lot of customers who have an older bike with a triple who think that they still need a triple because they use it now. Sometimes this is true. If they have an older bike with a wide range cassette on the rear (with a 27 or 28 tooth large ring) then yes, in general, they should stay with a triple. But what if someone is riding a triple with 12-25 in the back (this gearing was very common on bikes prior to 2008)? The lowest gear this bike would have would be a 30/25, or 1.2 gear inches, with a compact, the lowest gear would be a 34/28 which is 1.21 gear inches which is virtually identical. So they could go with a compact and have virtually the same gearing as they had before. However, the gearing that a person goes with is a very personal matter. It depends on a lot of things: climbing style, overall fitness, knee issues, and muscle differences between men and women.

3. Which brings me to my 3rd point. We sell a lot of triples to women. It’s not that there is an issue with compacts and women but in our 32 years of buisness, we have found that most women like the absolute lowest gearing possible. Yes, there are super women who power up the hills in high gears but in general women prefer to sit in the saddle and spin a high cadence while climbing. This is not just because we like to look around us while we climb and keep up a conversation (but those 2 things are nice!) but also because we develope muscle differently than our male counterparts. Women tend to have more issues climbing in higher gears because we do not generate the leg muscles as fast as men do. I have sold a lot of women a lot of triples at the shop and I have had only one come back to me and say that she wishes she got a compact. I have had many more come back to me and thank me for selling them a triple because they could actually do the death ride this year, they could make it up that nasty hill and even one time, that she finished the climb, and her friend on a compact had to get off and walk.

Overall, it all depends on what you want to do and where you want to climb. We all have differing opinions at the shop, but we all have one thing in common: making sure that you get the best ride out of your bike possible!

Yes, I know that I haven’t posted to my blog in a REALLY long time. Sorry about that. I’ve been so incredibly busy with school and family stuff lately that, to be completely honest, I kind of forgot about my blog. Well, let me catch you up on what I have been up to.

1. I’m going back to Santa Cruz! I attended UCSC in 2006-2008 and then decided to come home for a while (When I say that, what I really mean is that I got terribly homesick and ended up coming home every weekend so it wasn’t a far cry from being at home full time anyway).  After being at Canada college for the last 3 years, I have finally realized what I want to major in (This is a BIG step for me, I went from being pre-med, to environmental studies, to literature, to nursing and finally to my actual major). I plan on getting an anthropology degree, which is very exciting. I took a lot of classes with the anthropology professor at Canada and I found that I truly loved the subject. It’s like combining the best things about history and science all into one discipline! I have no clue what I’m going to do with an anthro degree, but I am very excited about my future! As for going back to UCSC, I am really excited. I will be going back in the winter as a full time student and I fully intend on staying there this time! 2013 graduation here I come!

2. I’ve been working a LOT! Even though this weather has been less than desirable for biking lately (it’s raining right now), we have been selling a lot of great bikes to some really nice people. Just recently I sold 2 Madone 5.2 WSDs to 2 women who I’m sure are going to ride them a ton and have lots o’ fun! Also, I’ve seen that a fair amount of women (and even guys in some cases) come into the shop feeling like it’s not possible to look and feel good in cycling clothes. Yes, I know all of the guys at the shop feel more comfortable in spandex than cotton but cycling clothes can really be unattractive sometimes! I love it when I can pick out clothes for people to ride in that they come out of the fitting room smiling because they do look awesome! I spend a lot of time picking out the apparel that we sell and it makes me really glad to see people happy with the way they look in it.

3. In my digital imaging class our final project has been to create a webpage or redesign an already existing one. Can you guess which one I chose to redesign? Here is the almost finished product. My dad probably won’t be going over to my new design, but I’d love to here what you think!

The new CR website?

Yes, I admit it, I haven’t been posting as much as I should. I started school at the end of January and things have been pretty crazy. I’m only taking 2 classes, Digital imaging and History of Western Civilization 2, but they are taking up a lot of my time. I have discovered that I really really like working in photoshop, it just clicks for me. I see something that I want to take a picture of but there is something undesirable in it and I think, I can fix that in photoshop! It’s great! Whenever I sit down to my computer, I find myself fiddling with my photos and I lose track of time. Even my dad, who has been working with photoshop a lot longer than me, is impressed with what I can already do. It’s so cool.  We have been working on retouching old photos and I chose this picture of my dad’s old dog, Happy. I’m really proud of how it came out!

Happy before on the right and after on the left. The tear in the upper corner is gone along with the dustpots and yellow on her chest

No, I’m not talking about some professional cyclist or anything like that. I’m talking about the newest addition to our family (don’t worry, no one is pregnant). We have a brand new baby chameleon coming from Virginia tomorrow! My family has been known sometimes as the “Jacoubowsky Zoo”, much to my dad’s chagrin. At one point, we had 5 chickens, 7 rabbits, and 2 dogs. They all lived long and happy lives and our last chicken passed in December (she was 10 years old!) and our house began to feel just a bit empty with just one crazy dog. My dad has always had a fascination with lizards and I can remember going to pet stores as a kid and drooling over iguanas. But we always walked out empty handed because of the cost, care, space and time that an iguana required.

-

Then, for my 23rd birthday I knew what I wanted. We have a huge 55 gallon tank in our living room that would be perfect for any reptile. All we needed was the stuff to go inside. So we went down to the pet store and got all the things we needed for a healthy happy home for a chameleon. I ordered him online from a reputable breeder and after waiting for the weather to calm down on the east coast, he is finally on his way! He should be here tomorrow morning, and we are anxiously waiting his arrival. I’ll post pictures of him when I have them!

Yep, you can get the bike you’ve always wanted for less money! Right now, we have ALL of our 6 Series Madones for $300 off, even the sale bikes! You can also get $300 off any Project One that’s ordered between now and January 17th. You can get the bike you wanted for the holidays but never got till now. If you are looking for a nice carbon road bike, check out Trek’s Project One site where you can customize everything on your dream bike, also check out my blog post, where I show you how to go through ordering the bike of your dreams. We have all the no charge Project One colors in stock here so you can see what paint job matches you. Come on down and we will set you up on your most amazing bike yet!

Nahoko's bike

"Pink Lady" personalization

It’s really true! Check out this incredible custom Project One bike that just arrived.  This is Nahoko’s (The “pink lady”) bike, and it is amazing! More than just a “Custom Flames” paint job, this is intricately woven colors and shadows that truly pop out of the frame. When I saw the picture of the bike she wanted I knew this was going to be something special. I was even more thrilled when she saw her bike in real life and said ”I can’t believe it’s so perfect.”

Want to create your own personal Project One bike? It’s simple!  Just go to www.trekbikes.com/projectone and create your dream bike. The site is very easy to navigate and has lots of options to choose from, whether you want a bike with “look at me” green flames or classy solid white. You can also choose all of your components so that you get exactly the bike you want and nothing you don’t. On many you can even personalize it with your name or slogan on the top tube.

Trek's Project One Site can help you create the bike of your dreams

After you have everything set up the way that you want it, click “Ready to Roll” and you can either save the bike to check it out later, print up the details, email it to yourself or a friend, or send it to us so we can help you finish things up and get your new bike on its way.

Choose to save, print, email or order your bike

In the store we

When you send it to us it will show up on our custom Project One spec & order site. We’ll send you an email to set up your Project One Fitting and confirm all of your options; then we’ll then order the bike and keep you informed on its progress. When your bike comes in, we will build it up to your specifications and you will be ready to ride your awesome custom bike. It’s that easy!

And of course, we’d love for you to stop by our Redwood City or Los Altos store, where we can show you various options we have on display, and allow you to test-ride bikes for fit and figuring out if you want, say, a compact double or a triple crankset. 

If you have any questions or want help on designing your own Project One bike, I’d love to hear from you!   Please leave comments here and I’ll get back to you very quickly. While I’m in the Redwood City store, I’ll be happy to assist you with any questions and forward your information to Steve or Amy in Los Altos if that’s closer to you. Thanks-  –Becky