7 2009 Weblog Awards - Nominate & Vote For The Bee!

Hey everyone. So a little about me again. I'm a mechanical engineer currently dabbling in electro-optics full-time after quitting my previous job in the petroleum industry. On the side, I survive through a rabid fascination for cycling and its many aspects, from tech and history to culture.

For the past 3-4 years, this blog has given you varied articles that many of you love and use as reference/research. Some are so controversial they are discussed on forums to the point where people trade barbs with each other. Popular posts such as Serious Cycling=Serious Legs, Power to Weight Ratio, Lore of The Victory Salute, Church Of Lance Armstrong, The Ideal Weightweenie and numerous others are staples of this blog.

Even though I'm not as HUGE as some of the other blogs people read, I will tell you one thing right away. No individual cycling blogger might come close to the variety of topics I write about in depth or the quality of links I pollinate. I say that pretty proudly unless you show me another.

In fact, the kind of readers I get stands testimony to the site's popularity and strength of content. I receive periodic attention from MIT Engineering and Design, U of Delft, Cornell, and various other American universities who use my blog to even engage students in the classroom.

Bikers who work with Lockheed Martin and the Boeing Company have conversed with me in the past. Two big cycling companies approached me soliciting employment offers after the blog, safe to say, impressed them. Not to exclude, authors of best-selling cycling books and inventors of cycling products are also in this company of readers. The average time spent by a reader is about 3 mins and 6 seconds. Now I consider that PLENTY for the fast paced, attention deficit disorderly world we live in today.

For the folks among you who aren't so technical minded, I write quite a number of general articles and share my perspectives, both on the serious and the funny side of things. I make great efforts to make articles readable by all, regardless of nationality. In fact, over the past one year, I have been attracting lots of readers from South America, India and China who share an equal love for cycling but may not be very talented at the English language. I'm pretty sensitive to that issue. I think English by far is the hardest language to master. Anyone disagree?

While content is free to all, I haven't always felt that I'm not doing a thankless job (I'm human afterall). Now you can get to show your annual appreciation by nominating and voting for Cozy Beehive towards the 2009 Weblog Awards. Turns out, there's no prize money or medals offered, but the recognition will go a long way. Last year, I was a finalist in the category of Best Sport Blog but didn't go any further as the competition was just too stiff out there.

All relevant details on how to nominate and vote can be found on the Weblog awards website. See Nominations FAQ and the list of nominations page where you may vote for my blog against what you feel I deserve! See you all there!

Meanwhile, any of you who are serious about blogging and pay attention to content must join the party too!! Ok ok, I'll cut out the sales pitch now.



ADDITIONAL RESOURCES :

CompetitiveCyclist.Com : Cozy Beehive Blog Review (Top 2)
2009 Weblog Awards Voting Page - Nominations Master List

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0 Winner Of AllModern 'Who..What...Why' Contest

Good morning. I checked in with the jury from AllModern.com who helped me run the competition and looks like we have a winner. They put the total number of comments in a random number generator and apparently, comment#28 has the prize!

The comment belonged to Michael from Seattle. He handles commercial aviation insurance for companies all over the world and enjoys riding bicycles of all kinds be in track, mountain or road. He discovered Cozy Beehive through a link on another site and likes to keep coming back for something different. As winner of the contest, he gets to pick anything in the 100.00 dollar price range from AllModern for his home or office.

Michael, please contact me as soon as possible to further discuss how you would go about this. Email me at cozy(dot)beehive(at)gmail(dot)com. The link to my contact is also on your left side under my handsome face.

A big thank you to everyone who came out and participated and especially to AllModern who provided this opportunity. Just before you go...take a look at the bummer news of the day. A Chinese cyclist on a world tour since 1997, just got deported out of Somalia because he didn't have his visa to enter the country. Make sure when you set off to do something like this, you carry your documents with you. Just because you're a cyclist with an agenda in mind doesn't mean you may enter the borders of another country for free. Just sayin'... :)

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31 AllModern 'Who..What...Why' Competition

Cozy Beehive is a unique cycling blog with its own niche. Although it is not as popular as some of the other ones on the web, I get readers from far and wide, all the way from Anchorage in Alaska to Porirua in New Zealand.

From small interactions on this blog, I have come to know that some of my readers are from reputed places such as MIT, U Cal, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and from a variety of cycling companies. Others are everyday people (like me) who love to bike and connect with like minded people across social media.

Thank you very much for reading. I'd still like to get to know you all, so I thought I'd ask you to chime in and tell a little about yourself while having a chance to win something special from AllModern. AllModern has a great selection of modern furniture and home accessories from many leading designers. Part of CSN Stores, All Modern is just one of over 260 retail sites that offer a diverse array of products from Herman Miller’s popular Aeron Chair to cookware by Rachael Ray. Now the following tells you how you can get involved and win :

All you have to do is tell me who you are, what you do and why you like to read my blog (if you'd like to tell me that I should try harder, that's absolutely welcome!). All the comments I receive below the post will be put in a sophisticated Bee gooey and a random winner will be selected by nature. The winner will have a chance to pick anything from AllModern in the $100.00 price range. This could include an office accessory, a lamp, some wall décor – anything that appeals to you. AllModern will collect your shipping information, email and phone number, place the order and pay to have it shipped to you.

While I come to know you folks through the exercise, one of you will have a chance to also win. So leave a comment! I'm taking a week or possibly more off from blogging so you have time until then to do this. To say the least, I'm looking forward to the interaction.

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6 Blogger's Dad Is A Flight Survivor

Fellow cycling blogger Don Jones' father Donald Jones Sr was one of the 155 survivors from the US Airways Flight 1549 that crashed into frigid Hudson Bay on Friday (see a video of the crash coverage). Its a miraculous story considering how the pilot landed that Airbus with such precision onto the water without any catastrophe. Don, who's an award winning TV news anchor for NBC 17 Today, remarks this is the best news he's ever covered.

Suggestion to Don : When the splurge (bloody goo) of the birds that went into the engines have been taken to the feather lab at the Smithsonian Institute and identified for its species, you should probably host a community cycling ride with the name of that bird to remember this miraculous occasion.

A small secret : On late Friday after the world knew of the flight accident and that everyone aboard was safe, I emailed the pilot Cpt. Chesley Sullenberger a thank you note for his professionalism, even though I had nothing personal to do with the incident. Now with Don's news, it turns out that the exercise was pretty worthwhile after all.

Don has been a faithful reader of this blog for a long time. On one occasion, he made headlines on Cozy Beehive after showing us his cool camera warped photo of his bicycle spokes. And I made an effort to explain the characteristic spoke warping effect. Well....kinda....

You can read Don's cycling blog here where his dad describes the ordeal.

6 Memorial Beam Message

Today was the 7th anniversary of September 11.

I joined hundreds of New Yorkers to sign one of two 37 foot steel beams from the collapsed WTC towers. This week, the beams will be finally put in place at Ground Zero as part of the new Freedom Tower Memorial in Lower Manhattan.



I saw many hundreds of heart warming messages and it was difficult to even find a spot to write on.

But I'll tell you this... there's just one bike on the beam.


I'll Remember You When I Ride - Ron

5 Tagged With Additional Questions

I was notified that The Fat Cyclist responded to my Six Random Things About Me post, in which I blatantly tagged him. I guess in the end he mercilessly tore apart the whole plague that is the tagging phenomena and chose to devise his own intelligent questions, which he answered himself first.

And then he sneezeth and James @ Bicycle Design, among many, caught-eth the cold. The epidemic has been passed on to me.

Anyway, the questions are very bike related and since these two gentleriders chose to put their effort into answering them, I might as well too.

Here goes. Music first right? Ready..?






Q. If you could have any one — and only one — bike in the world, what would it be?

A. I like my bike with a no nonsense traditional top tube. Sloping tubes feel like they've just broken their back to accommodate me. I'll get any bike with a proven geometry and lets me achieve my goals. Okay, I'm getting too philosophical here. Colnago has been something I've always wanted to try. I respect the name, their ISO Certification, their proven geometry...why else would they have the same specs for every bike? It feels good to be part of a long tradition, doesn't it?


Q. Do you already have that coveted dream bike? If so, is it everything you hoped it would be? If not, are you working toward getting it? If you’re not working toward getting it, why not?

A. I ride plenty of miles, and if I had a choice, I would have a "stable" of bikes...50...maybe 100 of them for each occasion, to ride on my whim on any day I like. Life is all about balance. I guess you could dream all you want, but you have other priorities as well.


Q. If you had to choose one — and only one — bike route to do every day for the rest of your life, what would it be, and why?


A. The Stelvio Pass in Italy. Gorgeous and painful, its like sex and death.


Q. What kind of sick person would force another person to ride one and only one bike ride to do for the rest of her / his life?

A. Elden The Fat Cyclist. No... but I'd ride my favorite bike all my life. You did provide tools, grease and lube for maintenance, right? Non problemo, chico!


Q. Do you ride both road and mountain bikes? If both, which do you prefer and why? If only one or the other, why are you so narrowminded?

A. Road for now and sparsely into mountain biking, whenever I can. I'm narrowminded now?


Q. Have you ever ridden a recumbent? If so, why? If not, describe the circumstances under which you would ride a recumbent.

A. I feel its for older folks. Maybe when I become 50, loose a couple of disks from my back, and my ass cant take a saddle this long and this wide, I'll think about it.


Q. Have you ever raced a triathlon? If so, have you also ever tried strangling yourself with dental floss?

A. I definitely don't want to tarnish my image, be it doing a triathlon or strangling myself with Fluoride and bleach, the last things I want sitting in my mouth before I die.


Q. Suppose you were forced to either give up ice cream or bicycles for the rest of your life. Which would you give up, and why?

A. Thats apples and oranges for me. Do you ride your ice cream? Yuck, don't even hint at your weird fetishes.

Ok here, suppose you gave up on ice cream and chose bicycles. Suppose I gave up on bicycles and stuck with ice cream. Then we can trade whenever we please. Fair enough?


Q. What is a question you think this questionnaire should have asked, but has not? Also, answer it.

A.. Sweet Mary, its asked all the questions, thank you very much!


Q. You’re riding your bike in the wilderness (if you’re a roadie, you’re on a road, but otherwise the surroundings are quite wilderness-like) and you see a bear. The bear sees you. What do you do?

A.

1. Dismount the bike, and give a speech to the bear on the health benefits and efficacy of cycling, rather than just crawling about on all fours, wasting energy.

2. Throw him my Cliff Bars. Don't tell me bears don't like the best bike food in the world. Who knows, maybe the bear would get into cycling after his experience...

3. Do a wheelie and pretend to be a horse.. a weird mutant horse to say the least.

If all fails.... ,

4. Take dog spray and apply it in my eyes so I wouldn't see my limbs being torn apart (thanks Blue).


Q. Now, tag three biking bloggers. List them below.

Ron, Ron, and Ron. These are 3 bloggers I know very intimately. Ooops, looks like all of them answered the above questions at once.

Now that was pretty darn neat wasn't it?

Tagging plague closed.

8 Tagged!! Six Random Things About Me..

Don over at Cycling Phun has tagged me in Six Random Things About Me, the game of talking about yourself until everyone in your audience has trickled down to nil.

Ok, I like to imagine it won't be as bad as that.

So here are the rules of the game :

Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post.
Let each person know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Okay, here's six random things about me.

First, here's a piece from Kraftwerk to get you moving.

Ok here goes :

1. I dont drive, and I'm damn proud of it. (until I get shipped out to Houston, Texas hee hee!)

2. I started writing short stories at age 10 and then specialized in macabre, influenced by the Doom series of computer games and Stephen King (still love him!).

3. My next passion to develop would be shooting. Lets hope it will be productive!

4. One of the things I regret most is being invited to the Global Young Leader's Conference and not having the money to fly to Washington D.C! That sucked..

5. I've been to 6 countries and lived for more than a decade in Dubai. See this and this and this if you didn't hear of Dubai yet.

6. The truth behind the age "16" shown against my profile on the right was a polite way to ward off relentless emails from bicycle companies for employment. :)

Tagging time! Zach, Cyclingfans, Elden (Fat Cyclist), James, Fritz and and...and... who else, yes..the great Dave Moulton.

Be a sport, and lets hear all your randomness....

7 Ay'll Be Bach

First off, RIP Tim Russert. We lost one of the best journalists in the nation.

And finally for me, its goodbye Buffalo. I'm starting my new job with D-R in Olean, NY this Monday. I'll be back in 3-4 days, so do check in then!

Take signs seriously...

Aaah, this should do the trick.

Wow, don't we all go through this? Courtesy : Yehuda Moon

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4 A New Header

A new header for this blog has gone online tonight. How do you like it? Does it represent this blog better? Does it suck? Can you view it? Is it too distracting?

What do I think?! I think its pretty stimulating but I'll leave it there.

I credit the overall design to Divya Daniel from Long Island, NY so give her a holler ya'll! We did it fairly quickly today, taking us about 2 hours. Its all done in good ol' MS Paint since I'll frankly admit that Photoshop simply escapes me. Someday, I'll master that rascal. The images were my idea, including that weird bee but we hope it's friendly enough.

14 A Pop Quiz

I'm confident that a wide spectrum of people from all walks of life and experiences read this blog. Thank you and keep reading. Take it a step further and contribute to comments. I'd like to be senstitive to your issues and problems as well. Cross talk and reaching out is great, especially with this web 2.0 phenomena. Furthermore, if any of you are experiencing problems such as color disparities, slow page load times, browser hangups etc, do get these things out to me by email if possible. I will optimize as much as I can with the resources that I currently have. It will be a loss on my part if none of you can read what I post.

I have 2 more things to add :

1. I need the experience and knowledge of you readers to help me fill out the 'Failed Bicycle Ideas' section on the left sidebar (scroll down, underneath 'Bicycle Industry'). I filled one out today called the Itera plastic bicycle, which was a total failure with customers. Other ideas that come to mind are the electronic shifting gizmos of the early periods, but let's have it from you. You can submit your input through the comments here, or pass me an email!

2. POP QUIZ : Look to your left. The Bee Bio shows the black and white image of a man who obviously isn't me, as some or most of you may have already figured out.

So who on earth is it? And what is his significance to the bicycling industry?

2 A Word to Readers

Ciao! Tutto bene?!!

I want to extend a word of gratefulness to all my cycling and non-cycling readers. I believe I spend more time reading other's blogs than attending to my own. I love to hear in on what others are doing in different parts of the world. The common thread (no pun intended) between us bloggers is the almost consuming passion to ride our bikes and talk about it, all the time. Yeah, all the time. No kidding. How many times have your wifes or husbands poked you in the nose with your mini frame pump telling you that you are crazy!!

I've been mentioned a few times around by some bloggers out there. One lately that comes to mind is John's Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog. I have been a reader for some months now. John picks up some interesting stuff, everything from science, engineering to management focus.

While I don't focus too much on my personal life, or advocacy, humor or snobs, I feel my technology and business prone interests have led me to create a blog thats growing by leaps and bounds, and I hope it can carve out a unique niche in the blogosphere. Too much marketing and colorful pictures and weighing scale records in bicycling websites and magazines leaves something to be desired. What is exactly going on behind the curtains?

One thing I'd like to mention is that I don't necessarily feel everyone should read my blog. People must be crazy or have a mindset like me when they pop in here, I wonder. What is my mindset? It is one geared towards having fun in college while learning something new everyday.

My dirty little secret is that cycling, while definitely opening up my mind and clearing my thoughts and breathing channels, has also exposed me to the incredible multidisciplinary nature of the fields of science and engineering itself. I don't know how many of you can relate with me on that note. Probably the one fact may be that most of you are not in college anymore! (I'm entering the turbo machinery industry myself in June) but hey, its never too late to discover!

Discovery, learning and adventure = Youth! Cycling should cover it all.

Anyhow, I'll keep posting from time to time and the people who want to read my posts will eventually find me. This is what I believe in.