Mt. Tam Summit – Eldridge – Hoo-Koo-E-Koo Mountain Bike Loop

30 kilometers, 1200 meters difference in altitude on legendary trails! This is where Mountain Biking was born in the ’70s.

Did the ride today. Going from the City of Ross up to the East Peak of Mt. Tam and followed the Hoo-koo-E-Koo trail which brought me back to Eldrige Grade and back to Ross. Wow, this was cold! Sunny California, yes. But warm?? Not on Mt.Tam. It was freezing cold up there with very strong winds. But hey, who cares. This is legendary! The name of the trails alone rule…Eldridge Grade, Indian Fire Road, Hoo-Koo-E-Koo…

This is where Mountain Biking was born 40 years ago. Technically, the ride was not difficult. But it has some very steep parts and the last 2 miles up to the top are though: “Death cookies” – fist-size rocks that pull your bike in every direction combined with little rivers coming down the mountain (it was raining the day before). But it’s worth it. The views are amazing! You can see San Francisco, the North part of the bay and the Ocean…really spectacular on a clear day like today.

If you want to do the ride here are the directions:

http://www.marinfattire.com/MtTamSummit_EldridgeHooKooEKooLoop.html

Singeltrail Paradise California: Coastal Trail

A short video of a bike trip I did yesterday on the Coastal Trail, Golden Gate National Recreation Area:

Sunset at St. Regis Kaua’i, Hawaii

Another video which I shot a couple of days ago. The St. Regis has a fantastic view on Hanalei Beach and the Sunset is really gorgeous!

Kaua’i by plane

Kaua’i, one of the Hawaiian islands, is a gorgeous place! I took the chance to take a flight over the island this week. Here is a short video which I’ve cutted today:

Just launched: Goodsales – The Social Selling Application!

I am happy to announce that we have officially launched Goodsales.com!

Goodsales is an easy to use sales and marketing application which will revolutionize the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) industry. Another CRM you will ask? So, what’s different with Goodsales? For example:

• The place where the best sales people meet: A platform for sales professionals
• Including the first CRM that’s all yours – forever
• Share your data and  collaborate with others without losing control over your data: Your account and your data are yours
• Connected to all major social networks
• Super easy to use
• Always free personal account

If you are curious and you want to check it out…here is an invitation code:

Sign up link with invitation code: https://www.goodsales.com/a/register?b=cT7zCQ

You can also add the invitation code manually by registering here and using this code: cT7zCQ

Web applications I like privately…and use daily

Vimeo.com and flickr.com … those 2 are essential for sharing my private live with my family around the world. Our family is on three differnt continents…the only option to share what’s going on in our lives is sharing pictures and videos on those 2 platforms.

You may ask why I don’t mention Facebook, right? Well, I think they are going to far when it comes to privacy. And besides that Facebook is still not there when it comes to present high quality pics and videos. I may explain this is in more details in another post. For now, great work from vimeo and flickr!

Another Daily Ride to Work: Munich by bike

Thanks for all the nice comments for my first ‘Ride-to-Work‘ video which is about going from Marin City to San Francisco Downtown. This time I filmed my daily ride from my home in Munich to our Propertybase office in Munich Center. Nothing more to say, just watch the video:

My daily way to work: Marin City to San Francisco – 21km in 2:20min

Since we have our office in San Francisco I try to go to work by bike almost every day. It’s an 21km ride one way with great views of Downtown San Francisco and fantastic ocean views on the Golden Gate bridge (if there is no fog. Watch the video and you understand what I mean).

I have filmed the daily ride and reduced the 1h ride to 2:20 minutes (time lapsed) in this video. And yes, the trail starts directly behind my appartment

Propertybase on Google+

If you haven’t heard, Google released Google+ Pages yesterday…as if we needed another place to post information  But, since Google rules the world of search and I’m sure that +1 ranks will factor into organic results to some degree, we must bow down to the Masters of Mountain View.

Our company page can be found at https://plus.google.com/116889609826526427124/ - click it and like it! Thanks.

Ultimate Guide: How To Stop Disc Brake Squeal

I have Shimano XT disc brakes on my Salsa and slowly after riding it for a couple of weeks the disc brakes started squealing. Have you ever ridden a bike which squeals when you brake? This is really annoying and the killer for any downhill!

I was really close to rip off the whole brake system and get Magura MT’s. But I thought I give the XTs a last chance and apply all the tips which I could find in the web plus some which I got from a local bike shop (thanks to Chris from http://www.roaringmousecycles.com/ in San Francisco). Long story short. After doing all the stuff below the brakes were deadly silent! Absolutely no noise, nothing!

If you are having problems with your disc brakes I really suggest to read what I did. Disclaimer: Be careful when you work on your bike! Always go to your local bike shop if you are uncertain about what you do or don’t have experience. Please understand that you are solely responsible for the work you do on your bike and that I will not take over any liabilities.

Tools

Besides the usual tools like allen keys, torx wrench (most likely your rotors are bolted down with torx screws) and grease you need

• Alcohol
• Sandpaper

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Night biking

Just got a new LED lamp. 600 lumen make you think it’s day time not extra battery pack. All built in the lamp. Great! Looking forward to night rides in the next time.

Vote the best European VCs

Vote the best VCs in Europe! Guess who I voted for

My Backyard – Marincello Trail

Fantastic views and speedy fire-roads: That’s the Marincello Trail, a short and easy ride in the Marin Headlands. Most people go uphill as the grade of this climb is on the milder side: 9.5%. But why go uphill if you can do downhill, too !

Here is the video from today. Enjoy!

And here is map with the tour:

Singletrail Downhill @Golden Gate NRA

Took this video on Sunday trying out my new ContourHD camera. Nice little toy! I know the storyline of this video is not, well, not there but I think for a first shot it’s okay. Enjoy!

First ride: Salsa El Mariachi – Golden Gate NRA

Finally, it’s done: I completed my Salsa El Marichia over the weekend and had my first ride on Sunday. What an amazing bike! I never tried 29er’s before but all the positive things I have read before are true. It’s truely a race bike but has the old spirit of a steel frame – it lives! And it rides so easy! The big wheels don’t care about stones and roots in the way, the bike easily goes over it like none of my other mountain bikes before. Here are some pics from my tour today. I started in Sausalito (Marin County) all the way to the coast and then up to the Golden Gate Brigde and back. A 2 hours ride with some nice single trails and fast fire roads.

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MacBook Air high fan noise after upgrading to OS X Lion

After upgrading to Lion the fan of my MacBook Air (2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) went crazy most of the times: It kicked in almost immediately after start up. The wierd thing was that none of the processes were consuming high CPU power.

After trying out a couple of things (disabled flash, deactivated all apps in the start up folder, deactivated spotlight etc.) I thought about the kernel: Snow Leopard booted the 32bit kernel by default but Lion now boots the 64bit one. Could this be the reason which made the CPU so hot and kicked in the fan so fast?

I reverted it back to the 32bit mode and …voila! Quite life is back! Now let’s see if the 32bit mode has any disadvantages over the 64bit one. Time will show…

Here is how to change the mode:

To select the 64-bit kernel for the current startup disk, use the following command in Terminal:

sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture x86_64

To select the 32-bit kernel for the current startup disk, use the following command in Terminal:

sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture i386

More in Apple’s Knowledgebase: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3773

UPDATE: I highly recommend using SMCFanControl in addition. This little widget controls the minimum speed of the fan. I have set it to 3000rpm which is higher than Apple’s default. Consequence is that the MBA stays longer cool and the fan noise is still reduced to a minimum.

From Santa Monica: Toes in the sand…

The good old days: When Racks were real racks!

Found this pic on my harddrive: This was my rack in 2003. Build by myself, heavy as hell! Miss the light show though

For Sale: InTheCloud.com

We’re selling our top domain: InTheCloud.com
Let me know if you are interested.

Yosemite Impressions

Some pictures which I have taken last weekend at Yosemite National Park when I was camping in the High Sierra (Tuolomne Meadows):

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