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Another 200 Brevet - Polas terras Altas

Almost one year has passed since the first time I participate in a Brevet, and one week ago I did ride a 200 Brevet once more. Again the club organizing it was the CCRiazor from A Coruña (they do organize all the Brevets here in Galicia) but this time though things were a bit different for me.

For starters, last year I rode the 200 by the end of March (one month later than this time) and by then I had a lot more kms on my legs, including several rides over 100km and even one near 140km. This time the Brevet arrived after a couple of months of not much cycling (including 24 days of no cycling at all) the longer ride being a 75km ride and with the feeling that I was going to suffer way too much if I wanted to finish it.

But... I managed. I did finish it (in an acceptable amount of time) and I had lots and lots of good moments and fun. Oh, well, and a bit of suffering too of course! ;-D

New brevet ride: The 300

The moment I decided that I was going to attempt doing a 200 brevet I thought it was going to be something hard to accomplish, really hard. I even had serious doubts that I was going to make it.

But I did, and I felt so incredibly well, both during the brevet and afterwards, that when the 300 was announced I said to myself - "Why not?". Suddendly, the idea of attempting the 300 hundred got sticked to my mind and I wanted to do it. I checked the route several times, it was tough (look at the elevation gain) but it was a damned lovely one! I already knew some of those roads, and I was quite sure it was going to be an amazing ride.

So, I talked about the idea at home, with dolo, and she encouraged me to do it - "I think it is a good idea but, do you think you are ready for something like that?" - Her words just clicked me, I was going to do it - "Sure I am!" - I replied, and I was damn sure I was going to make it.

The next few weeks I did stick to my usual riding plans, I did nothing special in preparation for the 300. I did read a bit more about longer brevets though, and I got some stuff I would need for it (better front light, new frame bag, powerbank, tools bottle...).

Deciding how to pack everything I would need was one of the most challenging parts of it. I did a first test ride to test the front lights, riding at the same hour in the night that I expected to be back by the end of the brevet (and kept riding for some time in the dark, as I had zero experience there). Then I did a couple of different bikepacking setups on the Jake, trying to find a way to setup all the bags in a comfortable way, but both tests were a complete failure. Either I had problems with the bags rubbing my legs or I found the setup not comfortable in some other ways.

Finally, Álvaro (whom I met in the 200 brevet) shared some pics of his setup and I did spot there a nice-and-slim frame bag from decathlon, which I bought and fit just perfect with my setup, which was basically that frame bag, a medium-size saddlebag and a large tools bottle where I stuffed all the food and tools I'd need. I trusted the weather forecast, so I decided not to take any really warm clothes with me (which helped reducing the amount of bulky stuff). I also decided to bring only one water bottle, trusting it would be enough to refill that one during the stops at the control points.

The bike was ready, I had all the things I'd need for it and I was definetely ready for it

My first brevet

Last saturday I did ride my first Brevet, a 200km brevet organized by the CCRiazor from A Coruña. Doing something like that has been in my personal todo list since I started cycling (or, at least, since I started cycling a bit more seriously). I guess having Super Randonneur (George Tellalov) and the Randonneur of the cyclades (Sascha Welter) as friends helped a bit with that desire.

I've to say that I totally fell in love with the whole Brevet thing. The spirit, the people, the smooth ride (I was really really lucky about the weather)... everything was just perfect. For sure one of the best experiences I've had in my life.

Keep on reading if you want all the details!

Cyberpunk cycling

A couple of days ago I went on a ride in the morning. One of the usual routes I do around Lugo, first going southeast towards the mountains, then turning west, then northeast back to Lugo. Around 58 kms on both main/bigger roads and small and lovely secondary roads.

Something I do quite often this days, but this time something was different.

This time I had fun x 10. I felt so good, it was so much fun, I couldn't stop smiling. I even laughed out loud some times. It was like having an extra boost of adrenaline. It was real good fun there and, at one moment, I thought that I'd love Dolo to be there with me, having exactly that same sensation, feeling the joy and the fun.

"That won't happen any time soon" - I thought. I know, I know, not everybody likes the same things, same sports... but I thought it would be really nice to be able to share that with her.

And then an idea came to mind, like a lighting strike: SimStim!.

For those of you who hadn't read (yet) Neuromancer (seriously, go read it!), a SimStim allows one of the characters on the novel (Case) to be able to connect to another character (Molly) and live her experiences as his own, seeing what she sees, feeling what she feels (pain, joy, surprise, etc).

That'd be just perfect for sharing all the joy I had the other day while riding my bike. And, who knows, the future is just there, around the corner...

Sentry email notifications not arriving?

I've been using Sentry for quite some time now in some projects, mostly all of them running python based applications and systems, and recently I did a major upgrade of a Sentry server to the latest version (8.3.1). It was an update with lots of changes, both in the Sentry internals and the dependencies needed by it (like the addition of Redis) but everything went more or less smoothly.

Once I had the server ready, I did upgrade the Raven client accordingly and I modified something in our staging server so an exception (IOError actually) was raised and the proper notification was sent to the Sentry server.

It worked just fine, the error message was sent to the server and it appeared on the Sentry web interface. Just perfect... or not?

Not really. After the error arrived in the Sentry server, a notification should have been sent to a mailing list where developers/support would see it and act accordingly. But that email never arrived and there was no error on the Sentry server logs.

When I took a look at the SMTP server logs, I found this

12:53:12 sm-mta[1534]: NOQUEUE: connect from my.sentry.server [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]
12:53:12 sm-mta[1534]: AUTH: available mech=SCRAM-SHA-1 DIGEST-MD5 OTP CRAM-MD5 ANONYMOUS, allowed mech=LOGIN PLAIN
12:53:12 sm-mta[1534]: u4JArC4c001534: Milter (bogom): init success to negotiate
12:53:12 sm-mta[1534]: u4JArC4c001534: Milter (opendkim): init success to negotiate
12:53:12 sm-mta[1534]: u4JArC4c001534: Milter (opendmarc): init success to negotiate
12:53:12 sm-mta[1534]: u4JArC4c001534: Milter: connect to filters
12:53:12 sm-mta[1534]: u4JArC4c001534: milter=bogom, action=connect, continue
12:53:12 sm-mta[1534]: u4JArC4c001534: milter=opendkim, action=connect, continue
12:53:13 sm-mta[1534]: u4JArC4c001534: milter=opendmarc, action=connect, continue
12:53:17 sm-mta[1534]: u4JArC4c001534: my.sentry.server [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA

Which basically means there was an incoming connection which was suddently closed by the client.

Weird.

Store python PersistentMapping objects into an objects TreeSet

I've been working with ZODB for quite some time now. First when I was doing Zope based web development (oh, the ol' good^hard days), then in some courses I gave about persistence and data storage in python, nowadays working with pyramid and still using ZODB for some apps.

Some days ago, working on one of those pyramid based projects, I found something really weird, something that was not working as expected, and it took me some time to figure out what was it. I'd like to share it, just in case it happens to any of you.

The Flower Power Sprint

Exactly one month ago I had a long traveling day with r0sk. We left Lugo in the middle of the night and we got in a plane in A Coruña while it was still dark outside.

After a one-hour-and-something flight we arrived in Barcelona, where we got in another plane, this time the destination was Athens, Greece. We were on our way to one of our regular International Pizza sprints, when all the people working on the same project meet to work hand by hand for a few days (and then have lots of fun, of course).