On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

The 2011 Low-Key Hillclimbs are over the hump, with 5 of the 9 scheduled events in the bag. Each one has had near-perfect weather, with warm sunshine without being hot. It's been supernatural, almost. Week 1 is always stressful: after a long "off-seson", Low-Key returns to Montebello Road. I traditionally coordinate this one, more to take responsibility for the outcome rather than due to being qualified. Honestly, organization is not my strong point, and every year something gets overlooked. But I've had excellent assistance from Howard Kveck these past few years, and he helps keep things in shape when I stumble. Sometimes there's a bit of next-day revision needed on the results based on email feedback, but in the end we typically get them fairly good. This year things went even smoother than normal. Week 2 : a late swap with Barry Burr for week 6 (more on that) had me coordinating Sierra Road, as well. Biggest trick on Sierra Road is the start, which ...

The 8 November election in San Francisco will have 16 candidates contesting the mayor's position. The city will, for the first time, use instant runoff voting for the city-wide mayor's election, avoiding the need for people to cast multiple ballots in the likely scenario that no candidate would get at least 50% of the votes. Instant runoff works by creating virtual "rounds" of voting. Voters get a number of votes on their ballot. They list their first choice, then their second, then their third for the mayor's position. In principle there could be enough votes to rank all candidates (one less than the number of candidates), or more if you want room for write-in candidates. First, all candidates receiving at least one first-place vote are ranked, and the one (or multiple) candidates receiving the least number of votes are eliminated (assuming there's at least one candidate left). Ballots which had an eliminated candidate as a first choice have lower-rank...

I've been following the mayor's campaign as I've been able, and these look to be the candidates who will get my three votes: First is David Chiu. I wrote about him yesterday, about his ride on SF2G. David's been on my virtual ballot all along, either first or second. I don't think we agree on much on the proposition ballot, to be honest. I take a fairly hard line on bonds, while he was a principal supporter behind Prop B (street maintenance bond). So I asked him about this directly at the Potrero Hill street festival, noting that my "undergraduate-level economics" tells me funding ongoing maintenance with debt is a bad idea. He agreed, but claimed our present situation is an exceptional emergency, and the bond is needed to avoid much higher costs down-stream. I still question the city's discipline to remedy the revenue imbalance when bonds are provided as a cop-out, but I respect his response. We clearly disagree on Prop D, public employees fu...

One or maybe two times per week I ride the 42 miles from home to work with SF2G , a group of long-distance bike commuters which began with Google employees but has branched out to employees of other high-tech companies on the San Francisco Bay peninsula. Really there's no way I would be able to tolerate my commute if I had to take the train back and forth five days per week (or drive even one day per week). And the nice thing about riding is after a good ride in I feel fantastic: full of energy and alert all day. It's great; if it wasn't that riding got me into work on the latish side, around 9:30 am, I'd do it more. John Murphy's been an SF2G regular for longer than I have. This year he's had the audacity to ask three candidates for San Francisco mayor to join us at the start of the ride, typically 6:30 am in Ritual Roasters on Valencia Street. San Francisco is a city of around 800 thousand people ; surely mayoral candidates have better things to do wit...

Here's how I plan to vote on the San Francisco ballot propositions: Proposition A This is a bond to repair schools. Sorry, school repairs should not be paid for out of bond debt. They're an ongoing maintenance cost, and for those you need to raise revenue. I'm against any bond measure which isn't an obvious short-term expense for a long-term benefit. Repairs don't meet that standard. A bond would just rob the school system of future funding as more of the budget goes to paying the costs of this bond. Proposition B This proposition would borrow $260M to pave the streets, among other things. Sure: road maintenance is an important investment, but this is absolutely the wrong way to fund it. The city simply needs to find funds to pave streets from its annual $6.6B budget. If you fund maintenance this year with debt, you just make it that much harder to balance the books in future years as you pay the cost of that debt, and I don't foresee it getting any ...

In the 2011 San Francisco Mayor's Election (election day is this November, but early voting has already begun), there are 12 "major" candidates... from the LOWV debate: Adachi Alioto-Pier Avalos Baum Chiu Dufty Hall Herrera Lee Rees Ting Yee There are four others running: Ascarrunz, Currier, Lawrence, and Pang, but I think it's safe to say none of these four candidates is in the running, given their lack of representation in the debates so far. San Francisco switched this mayor's election to Instant Runoff Voting . The way this works is each virtual "round" the candidate receiving the least non-zero number of first-place votes is eliminated, along implicitly with those receiving no first-place votes. Votes lower than first place on the ballots of those who voted for this eliminated candidate are then promoted until either there are no votes left on the ballot (the ballot is "exhausted") or the new first place vote on the ballot is still...

When Cara said she wanted to go on a vacation I asked her where she wanted to go. Hawaii, she suggested. Hawaii. I'd only been there once: to Oahu for a conference in Waikiki. Nice riding on Oahu, but I knew we'd not be going to Oahu this time. There was only one island which could be on this agenda. Maui. Why? One word: Haleakala. Ever since reading the description in John Summerson's book, I knew I had to go. In the rankings, only three climbs in the United States have a rating exceeding 6: Mount Washington Auto Road in New Hampshire (6.45), Mauna Kea on the epinonymous island of Hawaii (6.33), and Haleakala (6.13). Of these, two have bike races. Of these two, only Haleakala is open to general bike traffic. Mauna Kea (and nearby Mauna Loa, rated 5.26) aren't paved to their summits. So of the four, the clear choice is Haleakala. There are several ways to approach Haleakala. After all, the entire eastern half of Maui sits on the mountain, which rises fr...