New Carbon Clinchers - Token C58's

I currently own two sets of Token Wheels!


Token T50's which are 50mm carbon tubulars that I have on my cyclocross bike


Token C50's which are 50mm carbon clinchers I use as my everyday wheels on my road bike



I've owned and used these wheels for two years now. The T50's have seen limited use, but the C50's I've used as my everyday wheels on my road bike. The only problem I've ever had is I've broken 2 spokes on the clincher wheels - no biggie, it's gonna happen to every wheelset eventually. There was one thing that did annoy me a bit, it was that mounting and removing tires on the clincher set was a bit difficult at times - enough so that I contacted Token to discuss it with them and they were nice enough to send me out a brand new wheelset that they are still just testing and not yet released for sale - Token C58's.

The Token C58's are 58mm carbon clinchers with a redesigned rim. The old C50's had a lowered braking surface that required the use of a special brake pad holder - not a big deal at all, unless you are changing wheelsets quite often.



The new C58 rim design has the brake surface in the standard position so standard pad holders can be used and wheel swaps no longer are an issue.



Right now I have around 1000 miles on the new C58's and gotta tell you I'm really enjoying the C58's. I've tried flexing the wheels to see if I can get any brake rub when riding - none. I have no "scientific" proof (no power meters here, sorry), but I think the C58's are overall faster than the C50's, even on a hilly ride and even with the weight disadvantage over my 50mm wheels (+250 grams). I even used these wheels during the 2nd Annual Mike Clark Memorial Conquer the Hills Ride. Granted on a few hills toward the end I was really wishing I had a compact crankset, but I think that was more the motor than the extra weight in the wheels I was rolling with.

Pennsylvania pot holes, daily tar and chip roads, general road disintegration conditions - wheels are still perfect.

So if your looking for a set of carbon wheels (frame, components, etc) that won't break the bank - you may want to consider some Token - send me a note and I can put you in touch with my Token Contact.

Tour of Lancaster Intercourse Time Trial

another slow update.....early August I stopped buy the Tour of Lancaster Intercourse Time Trial that turned out to be a day of turrential down pouring rain. I just love shooting time trials, seeing cyclist in all their beauty and pain! Add to that rain and a photographer couldn't ask for a more dramatic day of shooting. Bad thing was the rain ened up being so terrible that it was blowling sideways and bouncing hard enough off the ground to blow into my Nikon 300 f/2.8 lens. These are the days I'm glad I keep full rain gear in the car and a Think Tank Hydro cover for my camera equipment. The Nikon D700 performed excellent even in these trying conditions. I started out the day with a 1.4x converter on the lens, but due to the conditions being so dark, I needed to shoot pretty much wide open - most of these images are at or close to ISO 6400.

Intercourse Time Trial Photos can be viewed here!

The severe rain caused all of the roads and fields to flood making the course late in the game pretty difficult to navigate - in fact when I decided to call it a day, I drove by the last racer I saw for the day picking out corn stalks from his rear wheel - apparently no brakes and a ride thru the corn field.

June already!

It's been a while since I done a blog update - I really should try to keep on top of it a bit more. So what's new? I'll start with the most recent - Oxford Road Race. Photographed this race Saturday 6/13. It was nice since the race was held only 20 minutes from my house and I knew the course layout since I actually grew up in Oxford. Rich from www.AllThatIsGood.org always puts on a great race and I really enjoy shooting his events. Weather for the day started out pretty nice, sunny with some clouds and calling for a chance of storms. I've waited all year to shoot a bad weather race (bad weather makes photos looks just so dramatic). Around 1/2 way into the Pro 1/2/3 the skies opened up dropping a serious downpour of rain. I loved it!! Sadly it only lasted for around 20 minutes of serious rain and another 10-15 minutes of light rain.

Oxford Road Race Galleries can be viewed here!

Maeve who just turned 11 in April and Ella who turned 9 in April are both done Travel soccer for the spring. Maeve has decided that she is finished with soccer and will try and find something else to do. Ella is still involved and will be playing for the Hockessin Girls U10 A travel team this fall (I'm Asst Coaching again). William who turned 5 in April (yea, April is a busy month) just started T-Ball this week.....so far so good, but he is just so easy to please. Ask him if he would like to try something and his usual answer is "sure".

I am finally 95% finished painting pretty much ever single room in the house, new faucets, light fixtures, and all the other 1/2 finished jobs I had going on in the house as we have put our house up for sale.....19 showings in almost 4 weeks is a royal pain in the a$*. This means the house has to be spotless clean every time someone wants to take a look. Finding a new house in the same school district as been nothing but frustrating as well. There is nothing available in our price range. Lots of houses above and below our price range, but nothing in our range - Murphy’s Law I guess.

Taking some time to myself lately and started riding again. I have a few road rides in of 55 miles - nothing earth shattering, but I've haven't done a road ride in over 1 1/2 hours in almost a year so baby steps. I'm thinking of doing a metric century this Saturday leaving out of Chesapeake City. I've also done a few Mountain Bike Rides. It's been so long that I actually got a little lost in Middle Run last week as well as Fair Hill....was lost for around 1/2 hour.

I have my first scheduled appointment with a Chiro Thursday this week. This guy is to suppose to have trained under the Chiro from the Discovery Chanel cycling team so I am hoping to get some back relief from this.




Michael

Canon G10

I picked up the new Canon G10 for my wife this Christmas.....



she decided she hated the quality of the images our of her current P&S and wanted something a little better....without moving up to something the size of even a small DSLR. I wanted to try this camera out since I've heard a lot of good things about it...especially that I can shoot RAW with it. So today I decided to take it with me on another Solo bike ride. I still need to figure a few things out with the camera settings, but overall it looks like it will be a fun little camera - build quality is excellent and image quality looks very decent as well. I guess my biggest complaint will be file size when shooting RAW. RAW (converted to DNG) file sizes are 15-17MB and converted to jpeg at 100% are 23MB...that's just crazy BIG for a P&S camera. This is a big difference from my Nikon D700 10MB RAW files. Yea, I can export jpegs at lower quality, but still having such large RAW files is not worth it for a P&S. So just do to the RAW file sizes I'll just shoot jpegs with this camera. What was Canon thinking??? This camera and all P&S should be no more than 8MP....14.7 = stupid!

So here are some images from today's ride - unfortunately my hands started getting way too cold to shoot toward the end.

Full size images can be Viewed Here!

...a Sunday Ride

trying to get back into a bit of riding before I give Ole' Saint Nick a run for his money in the weight department. Yea, I'm getting, or should I just fess up and say I'm out of shape! Haven't been to the gym all that much....same with riding my bikes - Nada! Longest ride has been maybe just over an hour in the last several months. I've set up the trainier with my Cross bike on it - yup! not a single cross race this year - probably should have justr sold the bike, but I'm hanging onto it for that slim chance I'll race cross next year.
Sunday was the day I was plannning my first "real" group ride. The Deep Blue Cycling team has a ride going out of Wilmington DE that will go 40 or 70 miles - I wanted to try and see if I could even finish the 40 mile ride. Woke up (it was my birthday) and feeling lazy as usual I bagged the ride and slept in (shocker!!).
Decided later in the morning that I would just head out on my own for a short ride. Shortly into my ride I came across some of the
Iron Hill Club and they did not seem to mind that I hang with them for a portion of their ride......I was riding pretty much the exact same route as they were anyway. It was nice to actually get out a ride with a few people instead of riding all by myself. In the end I actually road for just over 2 hour and 40 miles - nothing earth shattering, but it's a start.

Hopeing NEXT WEEK to make a group ride with someone somewhere just to try and start getting some miles on my legs and fit back into some of my pants.

Photography related - I had sent in pretty much all my main equipment into Nikon for service or repair (always comes in 3's). D300 body was having some issues with the preview button, D700 had a grain of sand stuck in the playback button that caused the entore back panel to not work....and my main concern was my 300vr f/2.8 was still not tracking focus correctly. This is a $4500 lens that was heading back to Nikon for the 3rd time for the same problem. Nikon is a GREAT company and after a very easy discussion with the Service Department, they agreed to replace the lens with a BRAND NEW 300vr f/2.8! Just got the new lens last week so will have to get it out for a test run.

Michael

Beacon Cyclocross and New D700

Saturday was the Beacon Cyclocross race being held in Bridgeton NJ. Even though I was not racing, Beacon is one of my favorite courses and was where I got my start into cyclocross racing a few years ago. The weather was mixed for the day - overcast with on and off rain showers causing difficult shooting conditions especially since a lot of the course is covered in trees. I just picked up a Nikon D700 body which is a Full Frame camera. I thought this would be an excellent day to put it to its "High ISO" test not using any flash. All I can say is I was greatly impressed with the camera. I ended up shooting quite a bit at ISO levels up to 6400 and was amazed at the low noise levels. The slide show I am running below is showing examples of some high ISO images (3400-6400) with the D700. Since the Slide Show only shows small, low resolution captures of the larger image - if your interested you can view larger versions of the images here:
High ISO Images


Unfortunately one of the buttons on the back of the D700 body ended up getting stuck causing none of the buttons on the camera to work :( so I only got to shoot with the body for about 1/2 of the race, the rest I had to shoot with my D300 and needed to use flash.

Complete gallerys of the Beacon Race can be found here:
Beacon Cyclocross Race

My Kids Soccer

With all my involvement in my daughters soccer, I thought I would show some images I've taken from a few recent games.

Both my daughters have been playing on travel soccer teams this year. Ella with the Hockessin U9 Girls A team (which I have been an Asst Coach) and Maeve with the SCCSC U12 Girls B team. Both really love playing the game and are developing into solid players. I really hope they stick with it as I really think each has some solid potential to become top players. My son, William started playing as well this.....so it ends up we have soccer practice/games going on every day of the week now except Fridays.



On a side note, check out the new Voler Custom Cycling Clothing, they picked up some of my images for their web site catalog.


Michael