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I have biked with Critical Mass the last two months here in San Diego. As is typical, the San Diego event takes place the last Friday of every month. At 7 PM cyclists rally in front of the Rueben H. Fleet Science Center. Or if you like, the more commonly recognized location is at “the big fountain in Balboa Park”. The cyclists depart at 8 PM. At which time they spill out onto the streets of San Diego. The last two months that I have attended Critical Mass there were around 500 cyclists present.

What is Critical Mass? It is a somewhat controversial, sometimes hated and mostly wonderfully entertaining gathering of bicyclists that assemble once a month for a night ride. Wikipedia does a good job of explaining it in detail.

From Wikipedia

Critical Mass is a bicycling event typically held on the last Friday of every month in over 300 cities around the world.^[1] While the ride was originally founded in 1992 in San Francisco with the idea of drawing attention to how unfriendly the city was to cyclists,^[2] the leaderless structure of Critical Mass makes it impossible to assign it any one specific goal. In fact, the purpose of Critical Mass is not formalized beyond the direct action of meeting at a set location and time and traveling as a group through city or town streets on bikes.

Critical Mass participants represent a wide cross section of society. There are 70 year old cycling enthusiasts, 16 year old punks, 30 something professionals, occasionally parents with their children and even some who look as though they might be homeless. The bicycles present are equally varied. There are hybrids, racing bikes, mountain bikes, beach cruisers, gearless stunt bikes, recumbent bikes, and even a fellow with a stainless steel kitchen sink and LED banner welded to the back bicycle.

The diversity is remarkable, but I am most amazed by the people with gearless bikes that participate. The ride is generally over 20 miles and runs up and down San Diego’s canyons and hills. I can not imagine braving the ride without gears. Talk about a work out! There are a surprising number of kids on tiny stunt bikes. Even with no gears these kids somehow manage to maintain speed at the front of the pack even when going up hills.

Critical Mass has a tendency to piss off motorists. Bicyclists commonly block intersections and clog traffic. At first I thought this was unnecessary and mean spirited until I witnessed what happens when the cyclists do not take control at intersections and block lanes of traffic. Drivers, when afforded the opportunity, consistently behave erratically and dangerously. The safest course of action is the cyclists to “cork” intersections to allow riders safe passage.

Do not get me wrong, there are a few assholes who ride with Critical Mass. This handful seem to mostly be interested in getting drunk or high and causing a little harmless mayhem. However, the preponderance of participants are like me, which is to say solely interested in having a safe and fun bike ride through the gorgeous city of San Diego. Indeed, I can report from my experience that the largest percentage of assholes are irate motorists. Being briefly inconvenienced by having to wait for as much as ten minutes for the cyclists to pass some motorists become enraged. I have personally witnessed several incidents of motorists being drunk, and occasionally physically violent or dangerously aggressive with their vehicles. These are the real assholes and are very much interested in causing a little not-so-harmless mayhem.

In San Diego Critical Mass receives a police escort. The San Diego Police Department is remarkably friendly and helpful. They tend to attempt to guide the riders through the city’s least trafficked areas; however this often realizes little success. The will police commonly “cork” intersections for riders. If cyclists are blocking an intersection (or circling as it is commonly referred to in San Diego) the police, when they arrive, move into the center to ensure safety.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed both my Critical Mass rides. I tune into the deadpod and cycle (mostly) safely for an invigorating 20+ miles. My first ride I met an interesting environmental attorney in his late 50s. The ride yesterday I showed up with Damien, my co-worker, about 10 minutes before take off and he and I had a blast. If you have a bike, regardless the quality or style, show up for Critical Mass. Not everyone bikes the entire 20 miles as many drop off in the Gas Lamp or Ocean Beach to imbibe. Biking with Critical Mass has to be the safest way to bike San Diego at night and guarantees a fresh view of San Diego even for the seasoned downtown cyclist.

Other Posts: July Critical Mass Ride

This is a cross post from the MindTouch corp blog.

MindTouch has been honored with a nomination in the Sourceforge Community Choice Awards (CCA). Sarah wrote previously on this topic, but Steve and I have since produced a video for Sourceforge.

Please VOTE NOW for MindTouch. Voting is fast and very easy.

1. Visit the SourceForge CCA Page
2. MindTouch has been pre-selected in Best Commercial Open Source Project
3. Provide your email address at the bottom of page
4. Click the red button labeled: “Send My Vote Now!”
5. Finally, you must confirm your vote by clicking the link sent to your email

Should MindTouch win a CCA I have promised to tattoo a robot on my leg at OSCON to commemorate the victory. Thank you for all of your support and I hope to see you at OSCON and at the MindTouch – Kaltura party (it will have an open bar 🙂 .

According to the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) May is National Bike Month. Moreover, Bike to work week (#B2WW) is May 11-15 with National Bike to Work Day (#B2WD) being Friday May 15. Never heard of any of this? Neither had I. Nor had I heard LAB, but you can follow them on Twitter at @BikeLeague. I first learned of B2WD when I was driving to REI yesterday and spotted a highway traffic sign that announced the event. I was going to REI to return a shirt. I left with a brand new bike for Ashby.

A little context first. Ashby has been asking for her first big girl bike for a couple weeks now. She brought it up yesterday morning and the day before. I was putting off making the purchase because Tara and I have so many damn medical bills from Roe being born, plus property taxes and I need to fix my bike from my recent accident because I rely on it for transportation to work ; so, I’ve been trying not to spend any money. At REI Ashby immediately spied a purple and pink bicycle and ran to it. She was smitten. She had been asking for a purple and pink bike. “Daddy, it’s a purple and pink big girl bike!!” Wow, what now? Like I said, I did not want to spend any money. I tried to talk my way out of it, but she was so damn excited! I relented. Thankfully all bikes at REI are 15% until May 10 and I have an outstanding 20% off any one item for being an REI co-op member that I hadn’t used, which would expire May 10 anyway. $107 later I was leaving with Ashby’s big girl bike and new bike helmet. Not bad! I thought it was going to cost much more.

As for B2WW, what a great idea! On May 15 San Diego RideLink is actively involved in making the event a success. They are asking participants to register now. Already a record number of participants with 5,200 riders have registered.  RideLink is providing many resources including: a getting started guide, bicycle route maps, pit stops with free water and snacks (see map ), and you can ride FREE on MTS and NCTD services, which can accommodate bicycles.

Enjoy Bike to Work Week and hopefully I’ll see some of you on the road on, at least, May 15. I’ll be the guy with road rash. 😉

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• R U Ready 2 Bike 2 Work? (run-a-bout.blogspot.com)
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photo by jenzwick via flickrI can’t seem to find a task list that works for me. I’m probably not alone, but I have a running task list of thirty to fifty items. These are work and pe rsonal things I’ve got to get done. I also write down at least a few ideas a week that inspire me orare things I want to write about, blog about, business thoughts, things to do for the family, etc…. I’ve tried Remember The Milk, Moleskines, paper, iPhone apps, MindTouch pages and more. The problem with digital solutions is I don’t have them with me wherever I go. Even when I do it’s tedious to capture tasks digitally. On the other hand I always lose paper based solutions. Most recently I had a paper “pocketmod” that was working really well for me. I kept it in my wallet. Surely I couldn’t lose this! I did. 😦

I wonder what people think of of my task lists and Moleskines. I suspect some of those I’ve lost have been found. I’ve written down some things that surely would appear crazy to someone reading them without context. Or perhaps even with context. I recall one such item I captured was a series of ideas Steve and I tossed back and forth to pass the time when we were talking to a lot of venture capitalists. We would come up with fictional scenarios that we found hysterical. I wrote them down because I had a dream of writing them into a story or even living out the scenarios in real life at a time that it wouldn’t be damning to my career. I’ll share a sample scenario to give you the flavor. Whenever you meet with a VC you’re always lead into the conference room in advance of the partners you’re meeting. The conference room always has a white board in it. Most often these are hidden in a cabinet. One of our fictional scenarios consisted of a giant phallus drawing on the white board. There were several variations of this. In one it would be revealed during the presentation. There are a couple ways you could play this out. You could act shocked, feign anger and disgust. Or, you could just ignore it and work around it on the white board. Perhaps you could treat it as an unveiling and have it as a primary signpost of the presentation. A modified version of this had the drawing on the white board, cabinet open with your back to it. In this one you could act as though you never saw it. Another variation, and this is really my favorite because I’ve unintentionally done this before, included a phallus emerging from a diagram as part of the presentation. I think I had seen the movie Superbad around the time we had dreamt this series up. These ideas were decidedly off color, but they weren’t all related to phalli. It just so happens the few I remember are. Alas, the others are likely lost forever as I lost the Moleskine and so too did I lose the more than a dozen or so silly scenarios like this.

I always write my name and email in my Moleskines and notebooks, but I’ve never had anyone return one to me. Maybe it has something to do with the content. Well, if you have a no fail way of managing tasks please feel free to share.

A web development and design firm has asked to purchase the right to use one of my photographs commercially. This is the photo in question:

I took it at the Stephen Birch Aquarium in La Jolla. This is flattering. I’ve never had anyone want to buy one of my photos. Although, I have had my photos used in several online publications including, most notably, The Wall Street Journal. I license all my images under Creative Commons, Attribution-Share-alike.

I suppose I should donate the money to the aquarium. I have no idea how much to charge. Thoughts? I do not know how they’ll be using the image. I’ve asked for clarification.

I traveled to San Francisco today for a few meetings. Primarily I was going to visit Larry Augustin. Larry is a professional adviser and is someone I have the highest respect for in business and technology. He’s also just a wonderful down to earth guy who is very generous with his time. I  have not written about Larry previously, but he has had a significant impact on the success of my business. I could go on and on about how great Larry is, but I’ll save that for another post on another day. Anyway, Larry had to back out of our meeting last minute due to some pressing business of his own. This meant my day was far less productive than I desired, but I did have a valuable meeting with a gentleman named Lars. Lars is a seasoned open source VP of Sales that recently left a prominent open source CRM vendor for an open source BI software company. In this meeting I benefited from having our new MT VP of Sales, Mark, pick Lars’ brain. Mark and me left with some valuable insights and I was gladdened to have made the acquaintance of such an accomplished and intelligent person. Thanks Lars, you single-handedly made the trip worthwhile. 🙂

On the flight home to San Diego the Captain roused me from my power nap with an announcement over the loud speaker about the Santa Barbara fires. I snapped a couple photos:

In the event the photos don’t convey it, the fires looked really bad. The smoke plume traveled out to sea and seemed to go on forever over the Pacific. The smoke was visible for the remainder of the flight to San Diego.

After seeing how wonderful the Community Choice Awards (CCA) are when I visited the SourceForge office recently I’ve become obsessed. These are cute little robots with working LEDs, switches, sensors that make music…errr…noise. I must have one to go next to the 2009 Jolt Award for Best Enterprise App (watch the video) MindTouch won. My precious….These trophies are really really cool and very cute. Please nominate and vote for MindTouch rabidly. This year we’re going to pull out all the stops. We will remind you in the newsletter. On MindTouch.com, the blogs, the dev community. If it encourages voting I’ll even be willing to do something inane if the community wins a CCA for MindTouch. The community can feel free to select whatever inane act they deem appropriate. Please, bring the votes!

The finalists are determined by the number of nominations each project receives. You can vote as many times as you like. To hedge our bets please nominate for each of the following categories:

1. Best project for the Enterprise
2. Best commercial open source project
3. Best project
4. Most likely to change the way you do everything

PLEASE VOTE like rabid rabbits. Time is limited. Thanks. 🙂

Turns out I have a brain tumor. Don’t worry it’s benign. More specifically it’s a colloid cyst in the anterior aspect of the third ventricle. It was discovered in a cat-scan this week that I had done due to a bicycle accident.

Colloid cysts account for approximately 1% of all intracranial tumors and are the most common type of the neuroepithelial cysts, as well as the most common tumor in the third ventricle. Typically, patients are asymptomatic

So, you know, that’s good. In a sense I hit the brain tumor lottery because this type is only 1% of all tumors and is benign. YAY! However:

although colloid cysts may cause symptoms by obstructing the foramen of Monro, which results in sudden death in rare cases.

Euh…what? That’s less good. But I’ve learned:

Symptomatic cysts vary from 6 mm to 9 cm in diameter, but usually range from 1 to 3 cm.

Well, my particular cyst is only 3-4 mm. So, I’m in good shape. Although, initially I thought I was 3-4 CM (EEEK), which would make me far less comfortable.

You know how engineers like to name things? Well, I’m no different. I’m going to name this cyst. I’ll name it Craig for the most active guy in our developer community. Congratulations CRB!! I leave you with this:

This is, without a doubt, the best headline of any blog post I’ve ever written. On to the story.

I bike to work and generally put in a significant number of miles in a given week. My office is only 2.6 miles from my house, but I make a point of biking 6-10 miles one way for exercise. Yesterday I was 5.34 miles into a 10 mile bike to work. I was between E and F street on 12th ave downtown and at full speed on my bike, which is about 30 mph. I cut into the trolley path behind a train to cross the street and caught the draft from the train, which propelled me even faster down the road. To understand the configuration of the road you have to realize I was on the road, but between the two southbound tracks of the trolley. It’s very smooth pavement. Also for context, I recently put street tires on my bike for more speed and these are much narrower than what I used previously on my bike and are designed with no tread at all. They’re just slicks. It struck me as soon as I caught the draft on the trolley that my tires could fit quite nicely in the groove of the trolley tracks. This would be bad. Upon realizing this hazard I thought to myself: I better be careful crossing those tracks. No sooner than I finished this thought than a track transition appeared from underneath the trolley. This is where the track crosses diagonally for trolleys to change tracks. “Oh shit” is what I thought; alas, I should have thought “bunny hop” instead. Had I, I would have surely been ok. Sure enough my tire caught the groove of the track and I flew face first into the pavement. I think I caught my right hand first, then my forehead, then somewhere along the way I hit my chin hard. The right side of my face is fairly damaged, but I’m confident there is no permanent damage to my boyish good looks 😉 . In addition to my face the rest of my body is nicely bloodied and bruised: knees, legs, arms, hands….

After smashing my face into the pavement I immediately pulled myself up and drug my bike to the curb. Even through the pain and shock I knew laying in the trolley path was a bad idea and I was motivated to move quickly.  A nice French gentleman who was on his way to his first day of class at San Diego City College watched the entire event transpire. He was on the opposite side of the street and asked me: “Are you ok.” I wasn’t sure, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t. I called back: “I’m not sure, can you come take a look at my face.” Having witnessed the severity of the accident he was very surprised to see my face damaged as little as it was. I was fighting to maintain consciousness and tried to dial my co-workers for help. I didn’t want to call Tara, my wife, because I knew she would be very upset, likely bordering on hysteria, and she had the kids, who I did not want to see me for fear I would scare the crap out of them too. As I struggled to keep conscious I had a very difficult time operating my iPhone. I finally managed to dial Mark Fidelman, who happened to be at the top of my recent calls list, but it went straight to his voicemail. Mark is the new VP of Sales and I barely know the guy. I made a couple more unsuccessful attempts to dial co-workers and the office operator before giving up. I could barely see anything, I was literally seeing stars. I handed the French good Samaritan my iPhone, told him I was likely going to lose consciousness and asked him to call anyone on the current screen. He got Rion on the phone.

I did not want the expense of an ambulance ride. Even with my very high quality and very expensive health insurance with Aetna, which I have through work, I knew it was going to cost me hundreds of dollars just for the ambulance. Oh, the joys of health coverage in California. Rion, who was on the phone with the French Samaritan, asked if I needed an ambulance. Realizing I could lose consciousness at any moment and I had sustained a significant head trauma I said yes, but asked that someone from the office also come in their car. I was hoping that I would be well enough to catch a ride to the doctor from the co-worker by the time  they got to me and moreover, I wanted to make sure my bike wasn’t left behind. It took me about 10-15 minutes to return to a normal state of consciousness and for the stars in my vision to dissipate. I tentatively stood and within 5 minutes I was able to do so without the aid of a garbage can. A man from an adjacent second floor apartment brought me a glass of water and a bag of ice. He informed me that he had heard the accident from his apartment. His windows were closed. I asked him: “so, you heard my facing hitting the pavement through your second floor apartment walls over the sound of the passing trolley?” He replied with a chuckle and said yes.

The ambulance arrived as well as a police squad car. The paramedics took my vitals. I told them I was declining a ride to the hospital. They reluctantly agreed and had me sign a refusal of service form of some sort on their Palm Treo. I thought it was interesting that they’re patient management application was built on the Palm OS. At this point I was feeling pretty stupid for having such a nasty and yet entirely avoidable bicycle accident. I was bemoaning my stupidity to the police officers when they emphatically informed me accidents of this sort happen all the time. As it turns out, the trolley tracks have claimed countless bicyclists. The officer went on to inform me that every bicycle cop, himself included, had at some point had a similar accident caused by the trolley tracks. I felt a little less clumsy and dumb.

Dominic, a co-worker, picked me up and transported me to my regular doctor in Hillcrest, Dr. Ozy Batista (Dr. Ozzy), who graciously fit me in. His nurse cleaned me up and he confirmed I wasn’t hemorrhaging. Good news. He and I shared skateboarding accident and injury stories and we had a good laugh as we often do when I’m in for a visit.  He scheduled a cat-scan for my head for later that day. The cat-scan showed no serious damage from the accident itself, but it did turn up a 5 mm cyst in my brain. I’ll provide more details of this cyst when I get them by fax later today from his office. The short story is: he has no idea what it is and suggested I shouldn’t worry about it. Ok. I’m hoping it will give me super powers. I think I’ll do a little more research though and have the image sent to a neurologist for review.

I’m pretty sure this is the worst I’ve ever been injured. It’s peculiar to have the zenith of personal injury at 33 years old. Well, let’s hope it’s the zenith. It seems to me more likely I would have reached this milestone in my recklessly stupid teens or crazy twenties. Maybe I’m not invulnerable? Naahhh…this clearly is evidence of my invulnerability! 😉 Jokes aside, I’m in surprisingly good shape considering the nature of the accident.