Ski Bike Junkie

We're going to need a bigger boat

2012-02-14T11:58:00.000-07:00

The chatter amongst skiers and non-skiers alike this winter has been all about the lack of snowfall. Well, it finally snowed. And as Dug said, there was much rejoicing. For the most part at least.

For the past three and a half winters, every time it has snowed more than half a foot, I have cursed my snowblower for not being up to the task. Sunday night as it bogged down in the wet snowplow debris was no different.

Until it died, that is. Then I wanted it back at least long enough to finish the job. Turns out, I blew up the gearbox. Cost of repair was more than the machine was worth, so it went to the place consumer-grade snowblowers go to die. I just got a new, commercial-grade snowblower delivered today. Bring on the snow.

Observations

2012-02-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

Super Bowl: I thought for sure Gronkowski was going to scoop up the tipped Hail Mary pass to give the Pats the win. Six inches out of position. How many cases of a couple inches this way or that led to this result? The Ravens missed field goal in the AFC championship game, the 49er's punt returner brushing the ball with his knee, Mario Manningham's catch on what turned out to be the game winning drive. The list goes on. A game of inches.

Here's what I know from watching Eli Manning: the dude is cool under pressure. I guess he's used to it. Archie's son, Peyton's kid brother. If he didn't get used to pressure early on, he never would have made it. As good as Peyton, Aaron Rodgers, and Tom Brady are, I don't think there's anyone I'd rather have throwing the ball with the game on the line than Eli*.

*Unless Jesus is helping Tim Tebow, then Tim gets the rock.

Lance: Investigation dropped. Meh. Couldn't make anything stick because the statute of limitations had expired. I think that's why we have the statute of limitations. Do I think he cheated? Of course. At this point does it really matter? Not much.

Contador: Two year ban handed down two years after the fact. Perhaps this would have been appropriate two years ago. But a full sanction at this point is a little absurd, especially given the minimal amount of clenbuterol in his system. His results from 2010 and 2011 are relegated, but at least he's eligible to compete in August of this year. Had CAS started the clock ticking on the ban now, it would have been more of a kangaroo court than it has been already.

I'm glad to see that cycling is at least acting like it takes doping seriously. I was going to say I would hate to live in a society that had a police force as draconian as the WADA, but then I thought about the Patriot act, border fences, billions of dollars and thousands of lives lost in retaliation for one tragedy, full body imaging at the airport, and the fact that I can't even carry a bottle of water onto a plane. Killing flies with cannons.

Injury vs. illness

2012-02-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

Injury sucks because one can't do what one wants to do usually because one injured one's self doing what one wanted to do and therefore the injury prevents one from doing said wanted thing. Injury tends to last a long time, but utter misery can be avoided by avoiding use of the injured part.

Illness sucks because one can't do what one wants to do because one's whole body feels like it was taped to the inside of one of those gigantic industrial rolling doors and then the door was opened. Turns out, such general malaise not only affects one's physical ability to engage in an otherwise enjoyable activity, but the will to actually raise one's self from whatever horizontal surface one finds one's self on is also crushed like the figurative body in the industrial door analogy.

The title of this blog contains "junkie," because I and my cohorts are addicts. On Friday the question is never "are you going to do something this weekend," but rather "what are your plans this weekend?" Putting a planned outing on the shelf due to injury or illness is like taking the cigarettes from a smoker who has no interest in quitting.

The demands of my profession have lately become such that I plan everything I do a year in advance. Professionally, my product plans always include some management reserve to account for time consumed by unanticipated demands. Similarly, my training plan for this season also included a week of reserve for injury or illness. My training plan* began this week. My reserve is already nearly exhausted.

*For the upcoming cycling season. Skiing has officially been written off.

UTCX Finale

2011-12-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

Saturday wrapped up cyclocross season. After a decent result in UTCX #1, my results were pretty lackluster, and "success," as it were, was limited to occasionally finishing ahead of my friends. In the last race of the season, I managed my best result of the year. In fact, my fifth place finish was my best result in a UTCX race ever.

That result was a by-product of a certain amount of luck. I was fifth into the first turn. Trying to hang with the four fast guys in front of me seemed a surefire way to guarantee an implosion, so I let them go. Peter, Seth, and I were bunched up together and took turns on the front for the first several laps until Peter decided to attack and split us up.

Finishing order probably would have been Peter, Seth, then me, except that Peter had a flat, so I passed him in the pits. Then when he caught up, I sat on his wheel and got a free ride back to Seth. On the last lap, Peter stumbled in the barriers, so I got a gap that I managed to hold to the end.

Fifth place was good enough to move me up a couple spots in the season standings from 11th to 9th (thanks in large part to a couple guys not showing up for the last race, which was double points). And I should be happy with 9th, except that 8th would have meant a callup at the first race next year. Seth got 8th, by a two point margin. The number of points I dropped when Rick beat me to the line two weeks ago? Three. Which makes Seth's comment about that race all the more poignant: "sometimes you're the hammer, sometimes you're the nail."

I am already making plans for next year.

The Timberline Middle School Choir Christmas Concert

2011-12-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

Last night was my daughter's Christmas concert. A few observations since then have stuck with me.

Middle school can be a tough age when kids with any reason at all to feel awkward are made to feel more so, and it was a highlight of the evening to see an autistic student in the girls choir clearly welcomed into the group. It was a credit to the students and to the choir director to see her up there performing.

A neighbor of mine recently lost his wife to cancer. He was there, alone, watching his daughter sing. When I got home from the concert, I learned that another friend just lost his dad to cancer. That insidious disease is no respecter of persons or season. I am grateful to have seen Jen and Matt make it through treatment and begin racing again. My heart breaks for the families of those whose treatment wasn't successful.

While learning the songs for the concert, my daughter said they were learning a Christmas song in Hebrew. I laughed and told her there was no such thing as a Hebrew Christmas song, which prompted a discussion about various belief systems and cultural traditions. Further dialogue revealed that it was a song for the "festival of lights"--a Chanukah song. And while the selection of this number may very well have been prompted by the almost entirely one-sided feeling of kinship the local majority has towards Judaism, multiculturalism on any level is a good thing.

Perhaps this is a by product of growing multiculturalism, but as I have read various reactions today to the death (also to cancer) of Christopher Hitchens, I've been pleased by how positive the comments have been. I'm a Hitchens admirer, but I suspect the list of people who agree with everything he has said or written is quite short. Perhaps his polarizing dialogue was a tool to get people to think. Perhaps he was that adamant about his viewpoints. Regardless, he was a great thinker, a great writer, and yes, a great human being. Humankind would have been better off had Hitch been afforded more time to contribute to our intellectual traditions.

I'll wrap up this post with what is my favorite Christmas song at the moment. Regardless of the significance you ascribe to this season, I suspect you'll agree with the message.

The one true burrito

2011-12-13T15:37:00.000-07:00

Saturday's Clammy Cross #4 was my last chance to win anything on the bike this season, and I came up short. I didn't win the race, and I didn't beat Ben Brutsch, which I needed to do to take the season points competition. Congrats, Ben.

I won't whine and complain about going through a season without winning anything. That's just the nature of bike racing. For most racers, victories are elusive and rare. Perhaps that's part of the draw. And unlike running, a PR isn't really a relevant yardstick in most cases, not that I set any of those, either.

Instead, I'd like to turn your attention to helping me win something that's not nearly as fleeting as success in a bike race. Specifically, I'd like to win free burritos for a year. Of course, I'd share the spoils with my collaborators*, Aaron and Chris. Please take a moment to click on through to the Mountain West Burrito page on Facebook and show this photo some love. Or rather some "like." I think it's deserving.

*Honestly, I'm not sure what my contribution was. Aaron came up with the idea; Chris executed it. I just posted it to Facebook. But if they're cool with that...

And if you live or work in the UC and haven't been to Mountain West Burrito, you should correct that forthwith.

On the righteousness of winning football games

2011-12-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

Tim Tebow prays before each game that Jesus will help him win. He apparently believes this is a righteous request because Tim, after all, believes in Jesus, and because Tim is a high-profile believer, his own belief will presumably lead others also to believe. Tim goes on to win football games because he is a feakishly good athlete and a uniquely determined competitor. But because Tim prayed to win, he attributes the victory to Jesus rather than his own remarkable result in the DNA lottery. Because Tim believes Jesus helped him win the last time, he prays again that Jesus will help him win the next game. When he wins again, his belief that it's Jesus helping him and that his request that Jesus will help him is indeed a righteous request is reinforced.

This pattern of belief is an example of the logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc.

To be clear, I am not claiming, nor is it even necessary to prove, that Jesus is not helping Tim Tebow win football games. This is a logical fallacy even in the absence of contrary evidence. (As an aside, in no way do I believe Jesus helps anyone win football games.) The logical fallacy exists when a claim is made that because one event occurred after another, it's because of the preceding event that the subsequent event occurred. If there is no control, there is no way to prove causality one way or another, therefore a logical conclusion cannot be reached.

Tangent: When Tim Tebow is interviewed after the game and gushes about his lord and savior before answering a question, there's nothing a journalist can do about it. When journalists take non-stories that are examples of the same thing and put them on the front page, however, especially when there's no alternative plausible explanation offered, that's simply irresponsible. The irony here is that most people in the United States don't trust the media, but I somehow doubt it's these sorts of supernatural stories that sow the seeds of mistrust.

Of course you can't ignore the placebo effect. If believing that Jesus is helping him causes Tim Tebow to perform better, it doesn't matter whether Jesus (however you like to imagine him) is actually helping or not. And that's good enough for me. Because when the division standings are calculated at playoff time, Jesus-assisted wins count the same as non-Jesus-assisted wins. Go Broncos!

Failure

2011-12-05T11:33:00.000-07:00

Saturday was state CX championship. Fort Buenaventura with hero dirt, so I figured we all may as well skip the race, give T$ the medal, and drink a beer to celebrate. But that's not really how racing works. Besides, Seth, Adam, Rick, and I had to sort out who was the state champion amongst us.

Turns out it was Seth. He dropped the rest of us on lap one. Adam made it clear he wasn't going to let it come down to the end about halfway through and opened a gap I thought I could close but couldn't. I managed to stay away from Rick until he caught me on the last lap. I figured if we were together at the end, I could outsprint him.

I figured wrong. Rick made a move going into the last turn, and there wasn't enough room between the last turn and the line to do anything about it. Not sure I had the legs to do anything about it anyway. Well played. I would have done the exact same thing.

So the race was an utter failure. I didn't beat any of the guys I can reasonably expect to beat. I didn't do anything remarkable. I don't particularly enjoy that course. And yet, I still had a blast. Racing cyclocross is perhaps the most sisyphean thing I have ever done. Week after week I train, I compete, I do no better, and I somehow still come away anxious to do it again. Go figure.

Congratulations to cross-obsessed friends Daren, Rico, and Sara for winning their respective categories. Nicely done.

Sign the petition

2011-12-02T08:48:00.000-07:00

Talisker Corporation, parent company of The Canyons ski area, is trying to make an end run around the public approval process for ski area expansion with the support of Utah's congressional delegation. Please click the link and sign the petition to tell Congress to stop.

If you want a little more in-depth about what's going on, Andrew McLean has a thoughtful description. Save our Canyons have also offered their perspective.

Muscle Works

2011-11-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

I should have known something was up when the receptionist asked me if I needed any gym shorts. For a massage? I'm comfortable enough with my own bare ass that a towel is just fine.

Then I walked into the room. There were no candles, no mood music, just a softball on the bookshelf and some posters from Bob's company showing what the various muscles in the human body are named. The blinds were open, the lights were on. I began second guessing my decision not to accept the gym shorts.

A couple minutes later, Stacy came in with a clipboard in her hand and asked me about problem areas. I explained that I had crashed in a bike race and landed on my head and now my neck hurt. I also told her I have chronic back spasms from an auto accident but that those had disappeared for some reason after my crash.

She explained that they don't mess around with full body stuff, they just go to work on the problem areas. And then she proceeded to beat the shit out of me for 45 minutes. She didn't tell me to relax or to stop crying or to hold still. When she saw that it hurt, she just made it hurt more. Which kind of sucked at the time, but now I feel much better.

Enough better that when she said I needed to come back on Friday, I didn't even hesitate. I've been led to believe I'll be ready to race on Saturday.

36 out of 37

2011-11-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday was Clammy Cross #3. Josh, the promoter, indicated that there would be prizes for hopping the barriers. I am not typically a barrier hopping kind of guy, so I figured I'd skip that competition. Until I got to the venue, that is.

Josh had set up five barriers--two short barriers in sequence with a brief gap before two more short barriers, and then a slightly longer gap before a 40 cm, UCI regulation height barrier. The gap between the first two sets wasn't enough to be worth remounting. Remounting between the fourth and the fifth made sense, but hopping the first four and dismounting for the fifth seemed like it would be the fastest way to go. In practice I attempted the shorter barriers with enough success that I decided I'd give them a go during the race if I was feeling good.

I got my typical fast start on the first lap, second into the hole shot, then got around the leader on the first technical move only to have Rick and one other racer pass me on the climb. I held their wheels on the climb and descent and into the grassy turns, then came around before heading into more technical goodness in the woods.

I had a decent gap on the field without digging too deep. This was uncharted territory for me. Usually if I'm on the front after a lap, it's because I've been pinning it and am well into oxygen debt and ripe for an implosion. The barriers were situated at the end of the lap near the start/finish, and I decided to try hopping. I cleared the first four cleanly and with little effort. I made the mistake of thinking about the glory of hopping the fifth.

In the brief seconds I had to dismount before the 40cm, repurposed steel scaffolding barrier, I thought of nothing other than the glory of hopping the big one as well. I stayed on my bike.

Momentarily, at least. I got my front wheel up and over only to be catapulted into the air when my rear wheel struck the barrier. I saw my bike fly over the top of me before I landed squarely on my head and heard a crunching sound in my neck.

I was surprised at how long it took for the field to catch and pass me while I picked myself up, put my chain back on, and remounted. In hindsight I could have put that gap to good use on the ensuing laps. Instead, I was playing catch up and dug a pretty deep hole in that process.

Nominally, I had my best result ever in a cross race - 5th place (likely would have been one place lower had Rick not ripped a sidewall). I was hoping for a top five going in, so I should be pleased with that. I cleared all four short barriers on each of the subsequent eight laps. 36 barriers is 36 more barriers than I've ever hopped in a cross race. I should be pleased with that. Instead, all I can think of is how good I felt on lap one and what might have been. I'm also left with a nasty case of whiplash, bruised hands, scabs on my forehead, and a broken helmet. At least the X-rays were negative.

Two races left

2011-11-21T15:31:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the season, I bought the eight race pass for the 12 event UTCX series. I didn't buy the 12 pass because I figured there would be some weekends when I wanted a break. So far I have missed one race, day two of the Halloween double cross weekend, and that was only because I had an all-day class on Sunday. I would have preferred to skip the class and race.

We have two races left, and the only question is whether I will limit myself to just one race per day at each of the last two. The decision is a matter of affecting my result in the 35A race in order to double up and race single speed. I probably won't do it. Perhaps I'm taking things too seriously. I'm sure nobody but me thinks of eighth place as being much different than tenth place, but it feels like progress. And progress is a big part of what makes racing fun.

Speaking of progress, Saturday's eighth place was one short of my best placing of the season. I felt like I raced well and felt especially good the last two laps. It was muddy for the third week in a row, and I was in the top 10 for the third week in a row. I love racing in the mud. I also benefited from two guys having mechanicals that otherwise would have finished ahead of me. But that's 'cross--crashes and mechanicals will get you for a couple positions one week, so you take the positions back when you can.

There's been a fair bit of discussion about sandbagging, much of that driven by a very tight three-way race in the team competition. Some of the people that are consistently winning or placing in the lower categories feel as though they can't move up because their team needs their points. When I was a junior in high school, I really enjoyed winning JV football games.

I really don't care who races where, as we're all doing this for fun. All I know is that I have a lot of fun racing with the group of guys I race with, and it's only become more fun since Grizzly Adam joined us. Thomas and Tim lay waste to the rest of the field every week. They are a class apart, to the point that there have been suggestions that they try racing A rather than 35A. One of them will likely win the state championships next weekend. And the overall for the season will probably come down to double points in the finale. If either changes categories, it takes something away from the other and from the rest of us who have been chasing them all year.

PRO

2011-11-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

One of my pet peeves in the popular cycling media is the misappropriation of the word "PRO" (in all caps, no less), especially when one uses that term to describe one's self for having accomplished the singular task of donning expensive Italian-made clothing for the Sunday morning group ride. Perhaps my annoyance derives from the implication, intentional or not, that the career cat. 3s using this term are just one degree removed from actual professionals just because they've managed to minimize the unsightly bulges in their snappy red, black, and white kit.

While I will be the first to admit that a nice looking kit and a fast looking bike provide motivation to get out and ride, let's not fool ourselves into thinking that top shelf stuff puts us anywhere near the status of a true professional. In the first USGP event of 2011, Ryan Trebon averaged 472 watts over 60 minutes en route to victory. No kit in the world will even put you in the same area code as that kind of an effort.

"Pro" should be used to describe actual professionals, whether that's the journeyman domestic pro who doesn't know if his team will even exist next year, the rookie that blazed through the amateur ranks en route to his first contract (congratulations, Nate!), or the reigning world champion.

But "PRO" should be reserved for the type of athlete who, while holding both yellow jersey and rainbow stripes of world champion, provides the leadout for a teammate. Or who, while marked by every team in the race, manages to solo to victory anyway in two consecutive monuments. PRO athletes are the guys and gals that transcend their discipline, the people who are admired by pros within their sport and others, the athletes like Kelly Slater.

UTCX #8

2011-11-09T17:08:00.000-07:00

Saturday we raced at Wasatch County Fairgrounds. It snowed a couple times during the week, so I was excited for a race that wouldn't be on a fast, dry course. When I arrived at the venue and pre-rode the course, I was even more excited--lots of turns and very punchy with no long straights of more than 200 meters or so.

I got a decent start, fourth place into the first turn and the muddiest section of the course. I gave up a couple more spots as the lap went on but never went too deep and was feeling good. Over the next couple of laps, I lost a few more spots until I finally settled into a back and forth with Seth.

For the last half of the race, Seth would pass me on a paved section, and I would pass him back on a 180 in the grass. Neither of us managed to gap the other until the last lap when, in his usual passing spot, Seth got a gap of about five seconds. I tried to bring it back, but the best I could do was hold it steady into the final turn.

In the final straight, I went as hard as I could hoping I could catch Seth. With about 50 meters to go, Seth looked back again and realized I was getting close. He got up on the pedals, but I had the momentum. I got around him with about 10 to go.

Sprinting it out at the end of a race is always fun--regardless of outcome, it's one of my favorite things about racing. But the outcome in this case had no bearing on how much fun I had racing. Between the course setup and the conditions, I don't think I could have possibly enjoyed myself more. And while 10th place may not be anything to write home about, it was my best result since UTCX #1, so I'll take it. It came after my first week of quality training since the beginning of the season. Wonder if there's any correlation?

96 minutes

2011-11-02T10:51:00.000-06:00

Spent 96 minutes riding the trainer last night. That equals two episodes of Breaking Bad. During that 96 minutes, I had two flat tires. On the trainer. I know.

Lemme 'splain. My road tubulars are shot. Like almost down to the casing shot. So I have been riding them on the trainer. Last night the rear finally gave up the ghost. So I grabbed my clinchers from the garage, which are currently acting as my spares for cyclocross, which meant either riding a 'cross tire on the trainer or swapping to a road tire. I swapped. And in my haste didn't check for a pinched tube. Which worked its way flat in about 20 minutes.

I had about 15 minutes left and ordinarily would have just called it a night. But here's the thing about Breaking Bad--it's so good that I had to finish the episode. And if I was going to finish, I may as well get more ride time. So I put in a new tube and kept pedaling. The only question is whether this is my secret to maintaining fitness over the winter, or if I will just get lazy and watch Breaking Bad without riding once cyclocross season ends. Place your bets.

Nerves

2011-10-21T18:09:00.000-06:00

My first race of the weekend is a little less than four hours away. My stomach has a pit in it that feels like it contains a significant portion of the universe's dark matter. Doesn't matter the race or the venue, I feel this way every time I pin on a number.

You'd think the nerves would go away after a while, but they don't. I mentioned said nerves a couple weeks ago to Peter, whom I've raced against since we were Cat. 4s. He said "the fact that you get nervous every time is probably one of the reasons you race your bike."

And I suppose he's right. I realize that nobody else cares how I finish. But I care. So I will be nervous until that feeling is replaced by adrenaline and fatigue.

Cross racers and child molesters

2011-10-13T11:46:00.000-06:00

UTCX #4 this weekend takes us to Weber County fairgrounds. Weber is one of my favorite courses, with one exception: the log barriers. In addition to the artificial barriers, the Weber course takes in part of the equestrian course where there are some logs that aren't big enough to give horses any trouble but that can be problematic for a cyclocross bike, especially a bike ridden by someone with no bunny hopping skills.

Only guys with exceptional skill, such as Bart and Rico, can successfully hop the big log (1:09 in the video). But pretty much everyone else can nail the smaller log (1:24). Everyone, that is, except me. My routine was to manual my front wheel up and over and then smash it with my rear. Which is not particularly smooth. And in cyclocross, you have to be smooth to be fast.

To remedy this lack of skill, one of my training objectives this week was bunny hop practice. So I grabbed an obstacle and my CX bike and headed to a park. I laid the obstacle down in the grass and just rode back and forth, practicing hopping over it until I felt like I had it nailed. Then I propped it up a little taller and tried the higher setting. After a few rounds, I got this pretty well too.

Good thing I wasn't flailing, because this park is near a high school, and I happened to be there right as school let out. Turns out the high schoolers like to hang out at the park after school, so I had a small audience. I'm sure they thought I was pretty weird for riding in the grass on what from a distance appears to be a road bike, jumping over a camp propped up with a pair of shoes.

If I didn't seem weird enough at that point, I'm sure I sealed it when I changed back into my street clothes, an act I performed as I have so many times in my car. And of course during the critical few seconds when my bibs were off but my boxers were not yet on, a car pulled up two spots down and a 16ish year old girl got out. I just hope nobody called the police.

Horses for courses

2011-10-12T12:46:00.000-06:00

"It's one to one. I'm keeping track."

That's what Rick said to me after UTCX #1, which, incidentally, was my best ever finish in a 35A race. I'm wondering now whether I'll equal that result all season (my best result last year and highest finish ever was 6th in the 35B race at UTCX #1). I'm now 1-2 against Rick, after he and nearly everyone else in the field put the wood to me in UTCX #3. The photo below (thanks, JDub) was taken on either lap one or two. I was never that close to Rick again the entire race.

Ever the optimist (can you race a bike and be otherwise, considering how rare it is to win a race?), I think I'm figuring some things out. Last Saturday's course at Ft. Buenaventura is a favorite for some. Not for me. The long power stretches where you're on the gas for 60+ seconds at a time are popular, but for whatever reason, I am good at efforts of 10 seconds or less or 6 hours or more. Anything in between, I struggle. I did fine in the turns and in the technical sections, but as soon as we hit the straights, I was attacking off the back.

I think part of my problem is with my starts. Cyclocross leaves you no opportunity to recover. So if you go anaerobic in the first 30 seconds, you may never get out of that hole. Winning the hole shot at UTCX #2 and trying for it at UTCX #3 were my undoing in both races. But it's a catch 22. If I'm not in the lead group on lap 1, I'm not going to catch up later. My best results have come when I've started strong and limited my losses from there.

But I guess that's what I love about cyclocross--there's so much more to it than just pedaling your bike. And of course there's the race within the race--even if none of us ever see the podium, throwing down with my friends for seven days worth of bragging rights is what really matters.

I don't know how he sits down

2011-10-01T21:26:00.000-06:00

By now you've probably seen the video of Danny Hart's world championship-winning DH run. Just in case you haven't:

The riding is in a league all its own. To corner like that in those conditions is remarkable. The commentary, though, is at least as entertaining. The last statement of the video certainly describes Danny, but it also describes someone else I know.

The other day, I ran into Matt B. at the bike shop. We were both picking up some odds and ends for our 'cross bikes and chatted a bit about the upcoming season. It somehow came up that when we race 35A, neither of us races to win simply because that's not a realistic expectation. Instead, we race not to be last. In Matt's case, however, that was his objective before he lost his leg to cancer.

At UTCX #1 today, Matt lined up in the 35A field. If you're thinking of pinning on a C flight number for a cross race, take a good, long look in the mirror and think about if that's where you really belong.

In Matt's case, to quote the World Championship announcer, "I don't know how he sits down with balls that big."

The rest of the day should go smoother

2011-09-29T12:57:00.000-06:00

My very first day at my current job began much as you would expect it to begin when working for a Fortune 500 company: I walked into the main lobby and spoke to the guy sitting at the front desk. Or at least I tried to talk to him, but I was shushed. He was listening to General Conference on his computer, and apparently, I had walked in during a really riveting part*.

*Having listened to more than a few General Conferences over the years, I'm not sure what could have been so captivating four months after it was originally broadcast. I mean, it's not like when in 1978 God changed his mind about black people.

So I patiently waited until he had heard the part he needed to hear and was free to give me his full and undivided attention. In the intervening months, I have seen him maybe once or twice and interacted with him not at all, since my office is in a different building, and if I go in his building, I go in through the back door.

This morning, however, I had just finished a meeting (OK, fine, I was just chatting with Aaron about things not work related) and stopped in the restroom on my way back to my building. As I'm washing my hands, who should walk out of the stall but the front desk guy, whom we'll call "Jamie."

I'm not typically chatty in the restroom--it's a get in, do your business, get out kind of environment as far as I'm concerned. But since General Conference wasn't on, Jamie seemed to want to talk. He tried kicking off the conversation with some small talk:

"Well that makes things a little better."

By "that," I could only infer he meant what he had just "accomplished" in the stall. I steadfastly focused on washing my hands.

Undeterred, he continued:

"The rest of the day should go smoother now."

Uninterested in how this act would lubricate the remaining hours in the day, I remained focused on rinsing my hands and began drying them so I could make an exit.

"Is your day going OK?"

If by "going OK," he was asking whether or not I had already "made things a little better," I wasn't in the mood to satisfy his curiosity or to clarify his intent with the question.

"So far, so good," I said with my back turned, heading for the exit.

I was relieved that he didn't cut the hand washing short in order to continue the conversation.

Clammy Cross #1

2011-09-28T13:20:00.002-06:00

I remember reading last year, before I had ever done a cyclocross race, T-money's description of the first race of the season:

The thing I have learned over the years is the first cross race of the season is a shock to your system. It’s not like any criterium, time trial, road race, or mountain bike race you have done in the last 9 months leading up to cyclocross season. It hurts way more, and no matter what sort of form you thought you had, after the gun goes off, you feel like the biggest pussy until you settle in and claw your way into the midway point of the race. Then it just plain sucks, because you are only half way done.

I lined up for Clammy Cross #1 on Saturday with the intent of getting that shock to the system out of the way. I lined up with another motivation as well. Specifically, my good friends Adam, Rick, and Daren would all be racing in the same flight. We all typically race in different categories in UTCX, so I was looking forward to the throwdown.

The first lap went about as well as could be expected. I lined up early enough to be on the front row (no callups in first race) and was able to get the hole shot. I stayed on the front through the first few turns and into the technical features in the trees. Then on the first anaerobic climb, Peter, Keegan, Cody, and Joe got past me. Going into the second climb, Joe spun out in the loose dirt, so we were all forced to dismount and run the hill.

I wasn't concerned about Peter, Cody, or Keegan getting away. I wasn't going to beat those guys anyway. Towards the end of lap one, Daren came around me, and I was content to follow his wheel for as long as I could hold it.

That plan lasted about 500 meters. While approaching the first climb of lap two, my chain somehow dropped between my ring and my chain catcher. It was stuck. I had no choice but to dismount and wrestle with it until I got it out. Which meant watching the entire field ride away from me while I sat there helpless.

After what seemed an eternity (but was in reality probably a couple of minutes), I managed to get my chain back on and took up the chase. At this point, I was just racing to catch someone, anyone, to avoid being last.

I felt like I was riding pretty well, but then I hit a bump and dropped my chain again. In the process of getting it out from behind my chain catcher, my chain catcher had moved enough that it was no longer doing its job. Over the next couple of laps, my chain dropped several more times before I finally stopped in the pits for a screwdriver so I could adjust it to get it working once again.

With a working machine, I managed to reel in one racer. I could see Adam and Seth hitting the bottom of the descent as I was starting the climb and knew I wasn't catching anyone else unless that person had some really bad luck.

And that's how things finished. Daren raced great, finishing fifth. Rick was sixth. My result wasn't what I wanted, but it was the shock to the system that I needed. The great thing about cyclocross, though, is that as seriously as you take the racing while you're racing, it's not about results. You suffer so you can feel like you've earned the good time. Every week, it's as if someone threw a party and a cyclocross race broke out.

Looking forward to UTCX season kickoff with a double cross weekend at the State Fairgrounds. And you can bet I'll be back for the upcoming Clammy Cross events. Those guys put together a fantastic course.

Green tea for weight loss

2011-09-20T15:29:00.001-06:00

I was at the mall last night with my kids. One of the kiosks was selling "green tea for weight loss." I noticed, while stopped looking at the directory (for I am a hunter, not a gatherer at the mall), that the girl staffing the kiosk was offering free samples.

On our way from our first destination to our second, we walked past this kiosk, directly in the line of fire of the sample offerings. My lack of racing has resulted in a lack of discipline, which has resulted in a September weight that I am more accustomed to seeing in January. In other words, I'm feeling a bit plump. And yet, as I walked past the kiosk, I received no offer of a free sample, even though I would have gladly accepted it. The couple behind me was offered and declined.

I decided to pause for a bit to verify that there was a pattern. There was. Apparently I didn't meet the criteria. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Not racing, racing

2011-09-19T14:48:00.000-06:00

I've been doing a lot of not racing lately.

Which means I have no idea where my fitness is. We'll find out on Saturday at Clammy Cross #1 in American Fork. Only three categories, which means I get to throw down against friends that usually race a different category at UTCX. 'Cross is in the air--can you smell the tubular cement?

Alternatives

2011-09-09T13:27:00.000-06:00

Rick has warned us about this:

Makes me think twice about the night rides, especially when road racing, according to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, offers such a compelling alternative.

The Book of Mormon

2011-09-02T12:49:00.000-06:00

I can assume since you're reading this that you also have Internet access, which means I can probably also assume that you have heard that one of the most popular plays on Broadway right now is The Book of Mormon. Rachel and I recently returned from a trip to New York, where we had the good fortune of seeing the show.

I find it interesting that a great number of people have opinions about this show without having actually seen it. The irony here is that many of these critical opinions are along the lines of "the show ridicules Mormons without knowing what Mormons are really like."

Since my opinions of Mormons, Mormonism, and The Book of Mormon (both the book and the play) are all based on first-hand experience, I thought I would share my reaction. And while my opinion may not be yours, I don't think you can argue that I don't know whereof I speak.

The writers of the show know quite a bit about Mormons and what Mormons are really like. Consider the song "I believe," which was performed at the Tony Awards.

Mocking? Yes. Inaccurate? No. I don't see anything that's contrary to what I learned and later taught at the Missionary Training Center or have read or heard in General Conference. So is the problem that it's not presenting those beliefs in a flattering light? I'll concede that point, but let's consider the claims for a minute.

"The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur" is not all that different from "I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me....When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air."

If you believe in the latter, you have to admit that, to an outsider, it doesn't sound too different from the former, especially when you throw in the part about digging up gold plates in your back yard but not being able to show the plates to anyone except with their "spiritual eyes."

And certainly, the Book of Mormon musical doesn't shy away from accentuating how ridiculous some of these claims might sound to an outsider. But that's not all the show has to offer. The play is set primarily in Uganda, a country where for the majority of residents, life is pretty terrible. Warlords, AIDS, and female circumcision are everyday hazards. And if someone from a whitebread, comfortable, first-world existence shows up and tells a bunch of fantastic stories and tells people how much better life will be if they only believe those stories, it rings a little hollow.

Believing a story will not cure AIDS. The stories about AIDS being cured by having sex with a virgin are proof enough of that. The real message of the Book of Mormon musical is that whether you are a literal, metaphorical, or non believer in a given belief system, it doesn't really matter. What matters with any belief system or philosophy is that you use that belief to be a better person and to improve the lives of the people around you. In many cases, religion is as much about community as it is about belief, and what the community believes is less important than what the community does.

Racing to win

2011-08-17T16:08:00.001-06:00

In 2007, I rode Lotoja for the first time. The guys who raced it were on another level, or so I thought. After conquering the distance, I wanted to go faster. To go faster, I needed faster people to ride with. So my brother and I signed up as Cat. 5 annual license holders. We went faster. We wanted to go faster still, so we signed up as Cat. 4 annual license holders. Problem was, we weren't Cat. 4s yet, so we needed to race enough to get the upgrade. Steve finished on the podium but before that happened, we discovered there were a lot more worthwhile races out there than just Lotoja. Last year he convinced me we should race to win not just our category but the whole thing. I finished on the podium. Had a few things played out just a little differently, either one of us could have won. And having tasted that, if I race again, I want to race to win.

Problem is, Steve won't be racing this year. This was going to be our fifth year. We'd get out Lotoja 1000 and I'd be done with the race (not sure about Steve). Without Steve, I'm having a hard time mustering the motivation to race. My fitness is good. I think I could be competitive, if I could just get my head in a place where I want to compete. It's not, nor am I sure it will be.

An update

2011-08-12T11:11:00.000-06:00

Busy week between work, chasing down insurance companies*, working on some professional development, family, and trying to follow a bit of the Tour of Utah, but given that many of the people asking about Steve are people that read this blog, taking a few minutes for a post now may save a few minutes more down the road.

*Remember in The Incredibles how Mr. Incredible, before he returned to super hero life, got fired from his day job for actually paying out insurance claims? Well I have been dealing with a real-life person who would probably be the ideal employee at Mr. Incredible's fictional company. I don't think she realizes that the more resistance she puts up to making a claim, the more committed I become to ensuring that they pay the claims. Even if it turns out that her company is only on the hook for $1.00, I'll see that it's paid.

Steve went home from the hospital on Monday. He's still in pain and needs a lot of rest, but he's improving day by day. Not sure when he'll get back to work, and even though he's shaved his legs, I suspect he'll be a while getting back on the bike. Which is good, because I still need to get his bike put back together so he has something to ride.

Family

2011-08-04T10:24:00.000-06:00

The blog has been a little quiet, or rather a little more quiet than normal, lately. My apologies. Last week I was on vacation, which was awesome, and which is what I really want to be writing about today.

My second day back from vacation, Tuesday, I met up with Alex for an after-work dirt session in Millcreek Canyon. I had thought about racing RMR to help get my legs ready for the Bikes4Kids stage race this weekend. But Millcreek with Alex sounded a lot more fun than riding circles at RMR, so that's where I went. Unbeknownst to me, my brother, who doesn't really like the RMR course and usually skips it in favor of DMV, was out there racing.

The ride was pleasant enough. Humid from the recent rain, but lots of flowers blooming and nice tacky trails. At the top of the saddle above Park City, the one place in the entire canyon where you get a phone signal, my phone started ringing.

It was my teammate Adam. Steve had been in a bad crash at RMR, and they were trying to reach his wife. Details were scarce, but I called her, gave her the number of the other teammate who was with Steve and would know what hospital he had been taken to, and then I made a B-line down the canyon* to the hospital.

*Sidebar rant: Millcreek Canyon has the highest asshole quotient of any trail network anywhere I have ever been. Not once but twice on my descent, after I had either slowed and pulled to the side or come to a complete stop and moved to the side to yield to uphill traffic, I had riders change course to move in my direction, the one when I had stopped actually making contact, both of them clearly overdoing it on making their point that downhill riders are supposed to yield to uphill traffic. It was enough to make me wonder how they intended to get down if not by the trails. Even though I was in a hurry to get to the hospital, I delayed my descent to give them the right of way. And yet, somehow I didn't delay quite enough for their satisfaction. I wonder if they realize that such behavior makes me less inclined, not more, to be as courteous as possible to other trail users. The experience still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I got to the hospital to learn that Steve had collided head on with the Tuff Shed that is on the course at RMR at about 50kmh. His ribs and sternum were fractured, but the internal injuries to his organs and brain were the real concern. After quite some time in the waiting room, we were allowed into the ICU to see him.

During these few hours, I watched a community spring into action. Aaron and Chantel went back to RMR, sans car keys, but assuming they'd figure something out, and got Steve's car and brought it to the hospital. Cam and Jake sat patiently waiting well into the night, not to see Steve, but just to be ready in case anyone needed anything. Alex sent me tidbits providing additional context for Steve's injuries. Daren and Dave H. called to see how Steve was doing and what we needed, and I remained busy in the waiting area fielding phone calls, text messages, and emails.

Steve made progress through the night, and at about 2:00 a.m., the nurse told us to go home and get some sleep. I brought Marco back in the morning, and although Steve was still asleep, they had removed the breathing tube. His neurologist updated us on his condition: the brain injury was not as bad as originally feared, and he was optimistic Steve would make a full recovery. Big sigh of relief. He's got a long and painful recovery ahead of him, but he's steadily improving and will get there with time.

I cannot count the various offers of help and expressions of concern we have received from other cyclists. It seems the guys we work the hardest against in the races have also been the most anxious to help. I'm happy to report that Steve's immediate needs are being met--he is receiving excellent care at the hospital, and his wife and kids are taken care of and in good spirits.

Rachel and I often joke that going to a bike race is like going to a family reunion because we see so many people that we love and care about. The outpouring we have received since Steve's crash has prompted us to drop "like" from that comparison. Thank you so much for your care and concern.

Centerfold

2011-07-22T13:41:00.001-06:00

I'm not exactly the kind of guy that strikes fear into his competitors when I throw a leg over my cross bike. Yet something about racing on that bike seems to lead to an inordinate amount of attention in the media.

It started after Cyclocross Nationals when this picture was featured in issue 02 of Peloton Magazine. You have to be pretty familiar with the back of my helmet to know that it's me, but it's on the same page as Katie Compton, so I'll take it.

Shortly thereafter, Cyclocross Magazine published this shot of my lower half (as their centerfold, no less) in issue 12.

Then just this week, Velo News ran an article on The Crusher in the Tushar, including a full results page.

The first two were just dumb, random luck. The last perhaps the best and only perk of racing with the big boys rather than racing for placing in my age group. Regardless, I'm sure that the stories behind each one and the descriptions of my performances will become infinitely better by the time I have grandchildren.

Whiners and winners

2011-07-20T17:06:00.000-06:00

This year's edition of Le Tour has been a good one. Instead of Contador running away with it the way he did the Giro, he's been trailing since the outset and has demonstrated both his mortality and his dominance while opening the door for some other contenders to showcase their mettle. Can't wait to see how it wraps up.

Although to date, we haven't had a chaingate, certain riders have found no shortage of controversy--contrived or otherwise--to complain about. Others have chosen to STFU, HTFU*, and show what it means to be a bike racer. Some examples:

*Hoogerland The F*ck Up, for those not familiar with the term. The replacement of the first word in this acronym needs no commentary.

Tyler Farrar
Tyler finally lived up to his promise by winning a stage and paying tribute to his late friend, Wouter Weylendt. You'd think beating Cavendish would get that monkey off his back, but it hasn't. I don't know why it isn't obvious to the sprint teams, but the way to beat Cavendish is not to sit his wheel and try to come around him after he accelerates. That approach just doesn't work--his acceleration is too fast, leaving you with too much ground to make up.

Instead, teams need to get their train lined up behind HTC, force them to work during the chase, then in the final K, come to the front and let your guy make the first move. Force Cav to make up ground. He's the fastest guy over 25 meters, not 250. Go at 250, force him to use his 25 meter kick catching up, and then keep driving it from there. Farrar went first when he won, Greipel went first when he won. Why then would you not go first every time?

Most importantly, though, Tyler, no matter how suspicious you are about what Cav did to make the time cut in a mountain stage, don't whine about it the next day after he beats you. Implying that Cav shouldn't have made the time cut and therefore shouldn't have been in the race to beat you tells us exactly where your head is: even though you've beat him, you still don't believe you can.

Thor Hushovd
Hard to believe that for all the sniveling Farrar had done, he's on the same team as Thor. Farrar whines about Cav making the time cut, but Thor didn't utter a word of complaint when he lost his spot as his team's marquis sprinter when his team merged with Farrar.

Instead of whining, Thor led his team across the line in the TTT, wore yellow for several days longer than anyone expected, and then once they finally tore it from his back, he went on to win two mountain stages. Thor doesn't seem to care that his own team isn't giving him a crack at the sprint stages because he knows he's hard enough to get over the mountains with the breakaway specialists and then just ride away from them in the final kilometers. Farrar need not even leave the team bus to learn what it means to be a hard man.

Andy Schleck
Le Tour is not an uphill time trial, it's a grand tour. And that means going down the hills that you go up. The thing Andy seems to forget in the midst of all his bellyaching over the treacherous descents is that he had already lost time before they started descending.

As if not being able to ride down the hills in the team bus were not enough of an inconvenience, Andy also bemoaned the fact that he had to do two doping controls on one day, the second in a restaurant while he was eating dinner. I am somewhat hopeful that his naivete around the second control's purpose--ensuring he didn't microdose following the first control--is an indication that he's clean. Either way, his reaction is a clear indication that he's a crybaby. Not surprisingly, his sponsors have silenced his twitter account, so now he only gets to whine in interviews.

Thomas Voeckler
If Hinault was The Badger, then Voeckler is The Honey Badger. Not supposed to be a GC contender? Honey Badger doesn't give a shit. Watching this tenacious Frenchman race his bike has only been rivaled by watching his no-name, low-budget team ride at the front of the field as if their presence there is the most natural thing in the world. As brilliant as Cadel has been, I hope Tommy V. holds onto yellow all the way to Paris. Even if he doesn't, it's going to take a lot more than a cobra bite (or a pistol shot) to wrestle it away from him.

The Crusher

2011-07-18T17:47:00.001-06:00

If you're wondering what I was alluding to in my Up to Something post last week, I was gluing tubulars for the inaugural Crusher in the Tushar. Actually, I was not gluing tubulars specifically for this race, rather, I was gluing tubulars on which I intend to race cross this season, but on which I also chose to race the Crusher. I just now have my tires glued two months early. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

There was much contemplation and consternation over various and sundry equipment choices for this race. So much so that Ryan at Revolution told me he was starting to feel guilty about the amount of money people were spending prepping their bikes for this one event.

My approach was a little different. I looked at the course profile and figured that fire roads and pavement would probably go faster on my cross bike, so that's what I decided to ride. I became a little apprehensive after hearing the course recon stories about the super sketchy descent. The descent turned out to be a graded dirt road as wide and nearly as smooth as my driveway. It was steep, but nothing technical and nothing dangerous. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

My super-secret stealth training program consisted of riding my bike most days for as far and as hard as I felt like riding it. Some days that was pretty hard and pretty far, like hundred miles of nowhere. But most of the time I either commuted to work on my road bike or did a lunch ride in the Orem foothills or a lap or two in Corner Canyon on the MTB. If I didn't feel like riding, I went to the pool with my kids and worked on my suntan.

When we got to Beaver for packet pickup on Friday night I got the idea that I should change categories, and rather than race the 30-39 age group, I would race with the pro men. The genesis of this idea was the guidance given regarding categories that Pro/1/2 or A flight road racers should race pro. But I had ignored this guidance because amongst those signed up in the pro category were six-time national cyclocross champion Tim Johnson, MTB legend Tinker Juarez, Giro d'Italia veteran Jeff Louder, as well as Tyler Wren, Zack Vestal, Evan Hyde, and Paul Mach, amongst others. Throw me into that mix and one of these things is clearly not like the others.

Nevertheless, when else would I have the chance to race against* (not just on the same course as) the aforementioned pros? So I changed categories.

*In this case, "race against" means "have my ass handed to me by."

Saturday morning, Bruce, the race announcer, made us all feel confident about what was ahead when he told us "no matter what bike you chose, at some point you are guaranteed to have been absolutely wrong." That was comforting. And then we were off.

Caught up as I was in the celebrity of the field, I quickly pulled to the front, telling Tim Johnson as I went by "I have to at least be able to say I took a pull." Peter Archambault and I traded work on the front for a few miles until the road kicked up. The big guns attacked, and I went from first to last just like that. I rode in a small gruppetto for quite a bit of the first climb, but when that broke up, I figured I was on my own for the rest of the day.

I also figured the age group riders would catch and pass me, and sure enough they did. Start order was men 20-29, 30-39, and then 40-49. The first rider to pass me was T$, who would go on to win the 40-49 group. That means he rode past the 20-29 fields and 30-39 fields in their entirety. Wow.

When I reached the aid station at the top of the first big climb, I heard my teammate Pete McMullin call my name. He said he'd been following me for quite a while. He was near the top 5 for the 30-39 age group, so I wanted to try to help him on the flats at the bottom of the hill.

Problem was, he went down the hill quite a bit faster than I did. I got caught and passed by two more riders on the dirt descent, but once we hit pavement, I really opened it up and brought one back. I caught the other two--Pete and Zach Terry--on the flats, and the three of us rode together for a while.

When we hit the dirt again, Pete punctured a tire and was delayed, so it was Zach and me. Zach was complaining about the heat, and I started telling him how I like racing in the heat because it seems to have more effect on other people than it does me. As if on cue, Zach fell behind, and I was on my own again.

The second big climb was the same road we had descended. It seemed steep but not that steep going down. Oh how steep it felt going up. My low gear was 39:27, and I think I was turning it around as slowly as I possibly could without falling over. Nevertheless, I caught and passed quite a few racers on the climb, and as I neared the KOM, I saw Evan Hyde up ahead. I'm sure Evan found this annoying as hell, but I was gaining on him, so I kept pushing it and crossed the KOM just ahead of him. He returned the favor by riding away from me, never to be seen again, moments later.

With about 15k to go, my legs started cramping. I thought I just needed some water and was close to the last aid station. Water helped me feel better for a while, but then the cramps came back. Peter A., whom I had passed on the climb, caught and passed me. I tried to stay with him, but the cramps flared again, to the point that I had to stop twice and get off the bike to stretch them out.

Shortly thereafter, Slyfox pulled up to me on his scooter and said that the women's leader was getting close. Six time Olympic medalist Clara Hughes was the next to pass me, but this time I managed to keep her in sight. As we approached the final climb, I figured if the road ever leveled out, I would pass her. It never did.

I crossed the line right behind Clara (nevermind that she had started eight minutes behind me) and promptly laid down on the pavement. Tyler Wren had finished over an hour ahead of me, with Zach Vestal, Benjamin Blaugrund, Jeff Louder, and Paul Mach rounding out the top five. Local hard man Reed Wycoff finished sixth, just eight minutes behind Tyler. I was 19th in Pro Men, and I'll be honest, I feel pretty damned good about that result.

A few minutes after I finished, Bruce announced Pete M. After four minutes of effort, he got the puncture to seal and ended up fourth in 30-39. Right after Pete was Grizzly Adam. I never saw Adam on course, but we must have been close all along. Adam was easily the best-prepared racer, and it paid off.

Racers continued trickling in, including the Suncrest crew, Jonnie J, JW, Sam, Evil, Bright, and GRust. My teammate Alex Kim, who refers to himself as a fat crit racer, and to whom I had insisted that 'cross bike gearing would be plenty low, came across 11th in the 40-49 category.

Amazingly, everyone had a look of agony at the moment they crossed the line, but within minutes, it was all smiles. The reason for the smiles was that Burke did a fantastic job organizing the race. Burke is a racer, and this was a racer's race. You could tell he's done a lot of events over the years and knows the characteristics of a quality race. Enough cannot be said for the volunteers. The aid stations were staffed by some of the friendliest people I've ever met, and the public safety officials who were dispersed throughout the well-marked course were full of smiles and encouragement. As Adam said, this race is an instant classic--be ready at registration next year, because it will fill and fill quickly.

Up to something

2011-07-13T10:23:00.000-06:00

Any guesses?

Coincidence?

2011-07-12T12:46:00.000-06:00

Could this:

Be related to this?

Wasatch Omnium

2011-07-07T15:07:00.000-06:00

Last weekend the Four for the Fourth Terry McGinnis Memorial Crit Series ran as an omnium to reward the most consistent riders throughout the four races. I got a late start* to the competition so decided to create a weekend omnium of my own.

*Because mentally I wasn't ready to race crits. Last Wednesday there was a crash at the DMV crit that resulted in a fatality. Then, on Friday night in the Midvale crit, Sleevie crashed after winning, fracturing his elbow. I wasn't sure I'd race at all until Saturday when I watched the Lehi race, which was conducted on a safe, wide-open course where there were no incidents.

Stage 1: Alpine Loop lunch ride
Met up with Elden for a road ride around the Alpine Loop from the Sundance side, which I rarely ride. So, so nice, as it always is.

Stage 2a: Mountain Biking in American Fork Canyon
Aaron, Adam, Chad, and I met up Saturday to ride mountain bikes on the trails near where I'd ridden my road bike the day before. The inevitable question is if you had to choose between riding mountain bikes and riding road bikes in American Fork canyon, which would you choose? Thankfully, no such choice has to be made, and we can do both.

Stage 2b: Lehi Criterium Spectating
Great race on a great course. Steve took third behind Dave Harward and Evan Hyde. He rode strong all night. Fun to watch, enough so to remind me how much I love racing crits.

Stage 3: Bountiful Criterium
Sunday was ridiculously hot. Which is great for me--I ride well in the heat. Given my lack of confidence, I opted to race Masters. Still feeling a bit skittish about being in the midst of a group and wanting the race to be as hard as possible in hopes that a few contenders would expire in the heat, I hit it hard from the gun and went off the front for three laps.

Once I got caught, there were several counterattacks. Of course the one that I wasn't able to cover was the one that stuck. The chase was pretty much just Dirk Cowley (FFKR) and me. We rode hard--hard enough that the break was whittled down from five to four to two, but not hard enough to catch the two.

With two to go, Jess (RMCC) went to the front, then on the last lap, Norm Frye (Ski Utah) took a flyer. I held Norm's wheel, which provided the perfect leadout, and was able to come around him to win the bunch sprint and third overall. First podium of the year, and I won a prime lap besides, so I was pretty happy with the race.

Stage 4a: Baldy Main Chute
If you can ski on the 4th of July, you should. There's still a lot of snow up there, so we did.

Looking down on our objective.

But before skiing, we had some donuts to eat.

And some other festivities.

And then some skiing.

Stage 4b: Holladay Criterium
With as good as I felt Sunday and as much as I like this course, I had high hopes for the Holladay Criterium. The Ski Utah team, however, also noticed that I was feeling good. Every time a break went up the road, I chased onto it. Every time I got on, they chased me down, even though they had a guy up each time.

Coming into the last lap, Jess had taken a flyer off the front. Even though we're not teammates, Jess is my friend, so I wasn't willing to chase. I sat in while Ski Utah chased, and that little recovery meant my legs felt great. I got on Rich Vroom's wheel, because I knew he'd go on the hill and try to get a gap. I figured I could follow him and come around at the end.

The problem is that we were racing in the rain. And when crosswalk paint gets wet, it gets slick. And even though we'd been racing on the slick surface for nearly an hour, a certain racer somehow forgot it was slick, was too light on his rear wheel, and went down in the first corner of the last lap, taking Rich with him. I was behind the two with nowhere to go and went down, along with Cam from Ski Utah.

I have never been more confident I could win a race, and instead I came home with a scraped elbow and knee and some chewed up bar tape. Winning two primes took out some of the sting, but I'm still bummed about the result. Justin and Steve took third and fourth in the P/1/2/3 race, so that was some redemption. And my result notwithstanding, the city of Holladay deserves a huge shout out for putting on a fantastic event.

The biggest race of the year

2011-06-29T13:22:00.000-06:00

The biggest race of the year* is coming up this weekend. Have you made plans to attend? Even if you're not racing, you should still get out and watch.

*Biggest race of the year applies to the communities of Midvale, Lehi, Bountiful, and Holladay.

Of course I'm not talking about that race in France where some 60 kilogram Spanish guy will have his way with all comers, and the only drama will be the race for second place or the number of times Paul Sherwin wrongly picks Juan Antonio Flecha to win a stage. I'm talking about good old American crit racing. Laps around a city block. Fast, spectator friendly, cheer for people you actually know kind of racing.

The organizers have done a great job selecting courses, so racers and spectators alike should be in for a treat. If you've never raced or watched a crit, it may just look like a bunch of guys riding in circles., which is essentially what it is, but it's a little more nuanced than that.

Chances are that someone who doesn't like his chances in a big bunch sprint will try to establish a break. Teams that do like their chances in a bunch sprint may put someone in the break, either because their guy is a better sprinter or just so they don't have to chase. If one or more teams don't like the composition of the break (they don't have a guy in it or they do have a guy in it but don't like their chances against someone else in the break), they may chase it down and force the cycle to start over again. It's difficult for a small break to stay away if the main bunch is working together to chase it down, but it's rare for the main bunch to work together. Many riders will either let it go because they have a teammate up or because they know if they work to chase it, they'll burn what matches they have and get an even worse result than if they just sit in and save something for the end.

If it is all together at the end, the last few laps will be the fastest of the race. It's rare for a break to get away at the end, but that doesn't mean people won't try. The field will be strung out single file, and the sprinters will be looking to get to the front, ideally with some help from teammates to provide a leadout. Well-organized leadout trains like you see in the pros are almost nonexistent in amateur racing. The more likely scenario will be sprinters following the guys they know will try to make an early move and trying to get on their wheels for a leadout.

Whether spectating or racing, you should have plenty of chances this weekend, with racing from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. in Midvale and Lehi on Friday and Saturday nights, respectively, and racing from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. in Bountiful and Holladay on Sunday and Monday, respectively. Will you be there?

Please excuse any typos

2011-06-23T16:56:00.000-06:00

I've noticed a trend amongst mobile device users to add automatic footers to their email messages along the lines of "please excuse any typos, sent from my mobile device.*"

*The only one of such messages that I will exempt from the forthcoming diatribe belongs to the Zeph, because his, "if this message looks like I typed with my elbows..." is at least humorous.

Now I get that typing on a tiny little touch screen is more difficult and perhaps makes one more prone to typing errors (though with the autocomplete feature, such an assertion is debatable--more likely than spelling errors are autocompleting an unintended word errors). That's fine.

But does reading from a little screen prevent you from reading what you wrote? I mean you just read the message you're responding to and seemed to not have any problems. So why can't you read what you wrote to make sure you spelled everything right. Don't you do that anyway? And especially don't you read what you wrote if you're sending a "reply all" to something like 2,000 employees* of a major corporation?

*Another topic from which I'll spare you my rare but fun rants is the tendency at my current employer to send "reply all" messages to release announcements redundantly reiterating the congratulatory message of the original. It seems that there is a direct correlation between one's perceived relative importance and one's propensity to send such a response. But I'm guessing that nobody is keeping track of whether all the VPs and the most self-important of the directors have sent such a response. OK, I guess I didn't spare you the rant and you got a tangential rant instead. Moving on.

I think I'm going to make a new footer that says "Please excuse any typos. Though I may or may not have sent this from my mobile device, I was too lazy to proofread my massage."

An open letter to the Fat Cyclist

2011-06-21T17:24:00.000-06:00

Dear Fat Cyclist:

Since you're my friend, and I care about you, I thought that the best way I could talk to you about something very important was to put it in a public place where tens of people, but quite possibly not you, will likely read it.

Like me, you tend to obsess about certain things. In particular, you tend to obsess about upcoming bike races. In general, when one puts pressure on one's self to have a good result (however one chooses to define that) at a bike race, a bit of obsession is a good thing. But too much obsession is not, as you may lose track of the real objective while pursuing the intermediate details. Not to mention that too much pressure and obsession and chatter will inevitably lead to disappointment.

Since I know you are just under two months from your main objective of the ~~year~~ ~~decade~~ better part of your adulthood, I thought the timing was right to offer up a bit of advice, however unqualified I may be to offer it. [For those not in the know, the objective is the big belt buckle at Leadville.]

My advice is quite simple: stop obsessing about weight. You are light enough, and if you do the right things in training and put the right kind of fuel in your system as you get ready for the race, you will come into the event at the "right" weight, whatever that is. You are not Chris Horner, and this is not the Tour de France.

In the Tour, Chris has a team that will ride in front of him for five hours, leaving him on his own only at the very end of the stage for a blistering climb of all of about 20 minutes or so. At Leadville, you will be on your own for [hopefully under] the entire nine hours. Whereas Chris needs to be as light as possible for that crucial effort, your objective is a matter of survival over pure speed.

Yes Leadville has a lot of climbing, but these are not Clark's TT sorts of efforts. They are survival climbs. Many of them require walking your bike. And no matter how well you climb, climbing is not your cycling superpower. Your greatest advantage as a cyclist is the same as my greatest advantage as a cyclist: you are able to keep pedaling at a relatively high intensity for pretty much as long as you can keep fuel in your system. Play to that strength.

By now you probably know the course well enough to know what your splits need to be to make nine hours. But just in case, print the splits on a piece of paper and tape it to your top tube (but do not tape gel packs to your top tube, as such is an abomination). If you are ahead of pace, relax a little on the climbs to conserve some energy. Use that energy to go fast on the flats and descending. Going hard on the flats won't take the same toll as going hard on the climbs will.

The best way to train for racing is racing. Do the midweek races as well as the PC50 or the Crusher or the Tour of Park City (or all three).

You've got all the right tools--your new Superfly 100 (with XTR!) is the perfect bike: light, efficient, built to take the edge off the rough stuff to avoid fatigue and help you make up time on the descents. Of course your other Superfly would have been fine too, and it's proven to be up to the task, but I would ride the Superfly 100 if I were you, too. Physically, you're lean and training to peak at just the right time. Mentally, you have wanted this far too long not to get it. This is your year to put it all together. Now go and get it. You can't get fast and get skinny simultaneously.

Good luck!

Holladay Holiday Criterium

2011-06-15T16:25:00.000-06:00

July fourth is a great time to be on the bike. Last year, the city of Holladay put on a great race to honor the late Terry McGinnis. From my post last year:

Independence day may be about barbecues and fireworks, but you gotta earn your cheeseburger. Which means as much time on the bike as possible over the holiday weekend. Saturday, I signed up for the Terry McGinnis Memorial Criterium in Holladay. Terry was a fixture of Utah bicycle racing for many years who passed away of cancer last year. I never knew him, but his friends and family should be proud of the event the race organizers and city of Holladay put together in his honor. The course was excellent, as was the community and sponsor support.

This year should be better still. In addition to the July 4th event in Holladay, three other cities, Lehi, Midvale, and Bountiful, will be hosting races. Holladay has pulled out all the stops to make this a signature event to showcase their city. Racers will appreciate that the city is inspecting the race route to make any necessary road repairs. And while they're not going as far as the Italians do for the Giro and laying down fresh tarmac, repairing potholes will be an improvement from the orange spray paint treatment we are used to.

In addition to being racer-friendly, it's also a spectator-friendly course, making laps around the park. Perhaps the best part is that if you stick around until dark, you can watch the city's fireworks display from the same venue.

For more information, you can check out the event's Facebook page. You can register here.

Full disclosure: obviously I'm trying to get the word out about this race. So what's in it for me? Free entry. Which for a lot of events wouldn't be enough, but this really is a well-organized race on a great course.

Running versus Cycling

2011-06-13T17:12:00.000-06:00

My wife is training for a half marathon and has spent the last few weekends doing long runs to prepare. I decided to keep her company on yesterday's run, which led to the inevitable comparison of running versus cycling. Here it is by the numbers:

Clothing
Running: shorts, socks, underwear, shirt. Total cost=$200. $250 if you're a woman and need a quality bra.

Cycling: shoes, bibs, socks, jersey, helmet, gloves, glasses. Total cost=$775. A little foam padding in the bibs makes them cost five times as much as a pair of running shorts and underwear even though they're made out of essentially the same materials.

+1 running

Equipment
Running: shoes. Total cost=$125. $250 if you also want a pair of trail running shoes.

Cycling: bicycle. Total cost=$4000. That much again if you also want a mountain bike. That much again if you also want a TT bike. Half that much again for a cross bike.

+1 running

Accessories
Running: watch. Total cost=$35-$400 depending on whether you want a Timex or a top-of-the-line Garmin.

Cycling: computer. Total cost=$50-$3000 depending on whether you want a wired Cateye or a top-of-the-line SRM. Multiply by number of bikes you own.

+1 running

Convenience
Running: you can run pretty much anywhere you can wear shoes. Want to run on a business trip? Pack some shoes and a pair of shorts in your carry-on.

Cycling: you need to find a suitable road/trail and a way to get there. Want to ride on a business trip? Either arrange for an expensive rental that will require an extensive dick dance to get it to almost fit or else purchase a very expensive travel box for your bike and be prepared to pay the equivalent of a second fare when you inevitably fail to convince the airline agent that it's a "trade show display."

+1 running

Inconvenience
Likelihood of desperately having to poop at some inopportune moment during any event of 90 minutes duration or greater:

Running: >80%
Cycling: <0.1%

+5,000 cycling

Final tally
Running: 4
Cycling: 5,000

Credit where credit is due to The Oatmeal for his similar comparison of the pros and cons of a man sitting down to pee.

A life of its own

2011-06-10T13:25:00.000-06:00

Andrew McLean talks about the importance of saying "yes" when invited on trips, because when you accept an invitation, you're more likely to be invited a second time. Kris and Alex are both great about saying "yes," so when I got the idea to go to Price* for some trail riding, I figured they'd be up to it.

*I was interested not only in trail riding, but also stopping at Fuzzy's Bicycleworks to get a sticker for my crappy hippie Subaru that says "Crappy bikes make Baby Jesus cry." Unfortunately, when we got to the shop, they were sold out.

Alex and Kris are currently unencumbered with the drudgery of a 9 to 5, so when talked of going to Price, the conversation soon evolved into "if we're going that far, we may as well do an overnighter and..." Which led to the trip taking on a life of its own that included taking the day off Thursday to ride trails, hike a slot canyon, then ride mountain bikes back to the trailhead, with a little more slickrock riding thrown in for desert. It was the best possible outcome.

It was a jam-packed 36 hours. I got home thoroughly exhausted, saddle sore, and with a grin I can't seem to wipe off my face. Here are some photos of the canyon.

Review of the Giant Trance X2

2011-06-01T14:54:00.001-06:00

A few weeks ago, I began toying with the idea of a new mountain bike. This was initially prompted by a trip to Gooseberry Mesa where I got the crap beat out of me riding a hardtail. I decided it was time to go back to a full suspension bike. The desire for a new bike was confirmed a week or so later trying to keep up with the Cottles on some twisty descents in Corner Canyon. My experience with the Cottles, combined with the challenge of getting saddle-bar drop correct on a size small 29er frame led me to suspect that I not only wanted a full suspension bike, but that I also probably wanted one with 26" wheels.

Since my team shop, Revolution, sells Giant and Cannondale, those were the brands on my short list. I've been riding a Giant TCR road bike for three seasons, and it's never given me cause to consider buying a new bike, so I figured I'd start there. I called the shop and reserved a Trance X for demo.

The good parts version of my review is this: it is the most fun I have had on a bike in years. If you're looking for a do-everything mountain bike, look no further.

If you want nitty-gritty detail, here goes: Giant manufactures many of the bikes labeled with other brand names. They know what they are doing when it comes to making bikes. The Maestro suspension is remarkably efficient when climbing, even with five inches of travel. I used to have a five inch travel Specialized Enduro that I got rid of after getting my first hardtail 29er, primarily because the hardtail climbed so much better that I never wanted to ride the Enduro. I didn't feel like I was making that kind of a tradeoff with the Giant.

Downhill and technical terrain were where the bike really came into its own, though. My first ride was Thursday afternoon in the Orem foothills. I was riding with Kris, who lives in the area and knows the trails well. I had him lead on the descents because I figured he'd have home field advantage. I had no trouble keeping up and could have gone faster.

Rides two and three were on some technical terrain near Zion National Park. Aaron was riding with me and commented that I was seated and pedaling through sections where he was out of the saddle and coasting (on his hardtail 29er), a feeling I knew all too well from my Gooseberry trip a month earlier. I was riding up rocky features I may not have even attempted on my hardtail, and as my confidence grew, I stopped seeking the cleanest line off of a move in favor of a little jump, drop, or other form of excitement.

Just to make sure this wouldn't be a bike I would enjoy everywhere but my own backyard, I rode Corner Canyon Tuesday morning before returning it to the shop. Let's just say I would like to ride this bike down Ghost and Rush with the Cottles--I think I'd do a much better job keeping up.

When I returned it to the shop, Ryan asked me how I liked it, and all I could do was gush. There was a guy standing at the counter while I was talking to Ryan who let me go on and on for a few minutes before finally interjecting some comments about the Maestro suspension and the component spec. Turns out I had walked in when the Giant rep happened to be in the shop. Needless to say, he was pleased to hear that they'd be selling another one.

Giant was thinking real world when they spec'd the Trance X2 that I rode. If you're a non-racer, one-mountain-bike, trail rider who wants a nice bike without breaking the bank, I think this is the sweet spot. It's got a tapered head tube like all the Trance models as well as the quick release 15mm through axle fork. These two features made for incredible front end stiffness and control. Beyond that, it's a mix of Shimano XT and SLX that makes for a sensible, reliable, and still reasonably lightweight group. The complete bike, with pedals, tipped the scales at 12.75 kilos (28.1 pounds). Not XC racer light, but light enough, especially for the price. One other feature that highlights the attention to detail is the Kenda Nevegal tires--the front was the Stick-E rubber compound for better grip, while the rear was the dual tread compound for longer tread life, a minor but noticeable touch.

In order to sound objective, I should probably find something about the bike to niggle with, but really all I can think of is that the Fizik Gobi XM saddle wasn't the most comfortable perch. I could live with it, but when I buy my own, I will probably get a different saddle.

The only problem I have now is that I was thinking I'd buy a new bike next spring. I'm not sure I can wait that long for the Trance.

More guilty pleasures

2011-05-23T20:38:00.000-06:00

I started on a post today that either needs a lot more work or to be thrown away. It's bound to draw out some opinions; I'm tempted to keep working on it for that reason alone. I just want to make sure I get it right, so instead I'm going to talk about more guilty pleasures:

Lady Gaga - just downloaded the new album today (thanks to Amazon - 99 cents!). Love it. Never thought I'd be this into a pop diva, but I am.
PBR - when I mentioned this one to a friend, he responded "Swiss chocolate is nice, but so is a Twix bar." Pretty much sums it up.
Training on tubulars - I had a flat tire in the masters race at Sugarhouse on Saturday, so I borrowed my brother's spare (clincher) for the P/1/2 race. I apologized when I saw him Sunday afternoon for not getting it back sooner. "That's OK," he said, "gave me a good excuse to ride on my tubulars today." I feel the same way. The ride is so, so nice. I don't even care if it's placebo effect. I like it.
Cup-o-Noodles - the vending machines at work have spicy Cup-o-Noodles for $1.00. I've indulged only a couple times because it's got like three days worth of sodium in it. Not worth getting fat over, but kind of tasty once in a great while.
Olive oil - alright, I won't even pretend to feel guilty about this one, but it's still worth mentioning. Some friends just returned from Italy and brought some olive oil and 18 year old balsamic vinegar with them. Unlike the previous item, this is worth getting fat over.

These are some of mine. What are yours?

Rat in Mi Kitchen

2011-05-18T12:01:00.000-06:00

I should be writing about the knee deep powder I skied this morning. It was nice, especially in May, and more especially because this spring has been cold and wet such that a chance to do anything outside in good conditions is something to relish. I should also note that it was day 59 this ski season. That's an amazing season no matter how you slice it.

But instead of writing (or writing more) about that, I'm going to write about what happened between 4:50 and 5:10 a.m. as I got ready to go skiing.

The rat, or rather mouse (or possibly vole--I'm no good at small rodent taxonomy), never set more than a couple steps into my kitchen. I discovered it when I opened the dryer and it scurried out from underneath and into the bathroom, where it disappeared.

"Great," I thought, there's a mousehole in my bathroom and this thing can come and go at will. Thing is, I couldn't find any kind of a gap in the wall or baseboards that it could have conceivably fit through, even though it only needed a 5mm gap.

I sat down and ate breakfast, figuring I'd deal with it later. Being a curious type, it came out of the bathroom and a few steps into the kitchen while I was eating. Then it ran into the bathroom and disappeared again.

At this point I was freaking out, because I am a full-on ninny when it comes to rodents in my house (yet somehow squirrels in my campsite are cute? go figure...). So I called Rachel, who was asleep, because I needed moral support. She came down and I told her about the problem. She insisted I go in and check the bathroom again.

No sign of it. Wasn't behind the wastebasket or under the stool or behind the toilet brush. But the plunger. We have one of those plungers with corrugated sides that's pretty deep. It could be in there. Which meant I was obligated to do something about it.

The plunger was leaning against the wall at an angle, so I pushed it so the business end was flat on the floor. Then I dragged it across the floor and onto a piece of paper. I lifted plunger and paper into a bucket and shook the plunger. Something was clearly in there. Which presented a new problem--what to do with the live rodent?

Any PETA members should stop reading now, because there was no way I was risking that little sucker coming into my house again. So I did what any red-blooded American who happily eats meat but wants as far away from the killing process as possible would do: I overturned the bucket and shook the plunger over the toilet and watched as the rodent plopped into the water and immediately started to tread.

And then I flushed.

And then I watched anxiously wondering if it would go down.

Thankfully it went down.

Rachel said she flushed about nine more times after I left just to be sure.

Doing it wrong

2011-05-17T15:50:00.000-06:00

Last summer I went to the dentist more often than I rode my mountain bike in Corner Canyon. Which is not to say I didn't ride. I was just too busy riding my road bike to get on my mountain bike. Clearly I was doing it wrong.

Sunday afternoon, I rolled out of my driveway about noon and was on dirt within five minutes. I dropped down the freeride trail (for which a 29er hardtail is particularly ill-suited), over to the Shoreline, up to the tunnel under the highway (that will open up miles of new trail later this summer), back down to the Shoreline, up Clarks, down Rush, up Ghost, down Ghost, up Canyon Hollow then Brocks then Jeep road back to the neighborhood, with the last five minutes to my house on pavement.

Ride time was 2:05 door-to-door with zero driving to the trailhead or time spent loading bikes onto racks. I was reminded why I bought a house in my neighborhood in the first place. Just because I race on the road doesn't mean I have to train on the road, right?

Even if I'm wrong, don't tell me.

110%

2011-05-16T13:54:00.000-06:00

One of my (many) pet peeves is when people talk about giving 110% effort or putting any effort in excess of 100% into something. It's a pet peeve simply because it's not possible.

Let's say you're a sales person, and you have an annual quota. It's possible to get 110% or 150% or even 200% of your quota. Because your quota is a fixed amount with, theoretically at least, no upper limit.

But let's say that you're the most spectacular sales person in the world and so good that everyone buys only from you, so your sales are equal to 100% of the company's revenue. It would be impossible for you to have more than 100% of company revenue, because each additional dollar in sales (the numerator in this equation) increases total company revenue (the denominator) by one dollar. Effort is the same way--no matter how hard you work, you can't put in an effort greater than 100% of what you are capable of. A 100% effort is, by definition, everything you have to give.

So it is in life, with family, work, bike racing, skiing, even blogging. I have 24 hours in each day, and no matter how hard I work, I can't use more than 100% of that time. You may have noticed last week that I didn't post. I think that's the first time that's happened that I wasn't on vacation in the three years or so that I've been at this. Life got in the way.

I didn't blog about White Rim three weeks ago or Gooseberry two weeks ago or state criterium championships one week ago. Part of that is because I've blogged about all those things in the past, and I couldn't think of an innovative spin to put on White Rim being hard or Gooseberry being fun or state crits being disappointing (disappointing for me--Junkie Boy won the 10 and under race, and even though that wasn't an official race category, we're still claiming the win). I imagine I could have thought of something interesting to say about each, but I just never found the time to think about what that thing was, let alone to write it down.

This lack of time seems to be a microcosm of my life this year. Since starting my new job in February, I've had to put at least 20% more effort into work than before. Since upgrading to Cat. 2, the races have been at least 20% harder, which means I need more time and focus in training. Unfortunately, all I had was about 10% to give either way and to give more than that to either one would require a compromise of the other. I love bike racing, but it's not my life.

Which is not to say I'm giving up or making excuses. My performance has sucked, I know why it's sucked, and I own my suckiness. All I'm saying is that my hat is off to the guys in the Pro/1/2 field, Sleevie in particular, who's got two wins on the trot against some pretty vicious competition. I, on the other hand, will be lining up with the Masters field at Sugarhouse on Saturday and will put 100% of what I'm capable of into trying to at least finish a race for the first time this month.

Cinco de Mayo

2011-05-05T10:55:00.001-06:00

Me (to Dug): I'm riding at lunch. Mellow pace. You should come.

Dug: Unfortunately (or fortunately I guess) I have a team Cinco de Mayo celebration today.

Me: I've now heard it all. The company that imports Corona makes up a holiday to sell more beer. And you can't come so you can celebrate said made up holiday with a bunch of people who don't even drink beer. Wow.

Dug: They're watching The Three Amigos. I love Three Amigos.

Me: Oh well why didn't you say so. Sure for Three Amigos. I mean, had you said "Can't. Watching Three Amigos," I would've understood.

Dug: Glad I said it then.

Convergence

2011-05-03T10:02:00.000-06:00

When I was attending business school early in the last decade, all the talk in the technology sector was about convergence. Cameras were just starting to find their way into phones, and the guys from Blackberry, who made email-only devices at the time, wowed everybody at a tech symposium when they placed and received phone calls on their prototype devices. Convergence was such a big deal that when I interviewed with Microsoft, they wanted to know what I thought the three big trends were in the tech sector, not including convergence.

Fast forward to today. I was running a few minutes late for work, so I dialed in to the conference line for the day's first meeting. My iPhone paused the podcast I was listening to automatically when I placed the call. I was on the phone for a few minutes before arriving at the office and walking into the conference room.

I ended the phone call when I got in the room. And my podcast resumed playing. On the external speakers that were loud enough for everyone to hear. And because I work for a security company, I have to type in a five digit code to get back to a screen where I can actually control the iPod, which takes some time. The podcast I happened to be listening to was Mormon Stories, and it happened to resume playing an interview with a sex therapist talking about some of the "issues" she has treated.

If you don't have an iPhone, you don't have to worry about broadcasting the words "his desire not being too dominant..." as you walk into a conference room. I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.

Creamer Man

2011-04-28T13:18:00.001-06:00

With the new job has come a new set of employees to get to know. And while generally these are smart, capable, friendly people, I work in the software industry. Which means there are some shockingly weird people. And I'm not talking butterflies on their titties* weird like you get if you're a barista. I'm talking live alone with their cats and pose a real risk of creating need for what Alex describes as the one useful HR skill: the ability to fire people without inciting a shooting spree.

*Actually, there is one woman with a tattoo, possibly a butterfly (it's completely obscured except when she wears lower-cut shirts, and even then only partly visible), in that general region. And she is way cool. Like how-did-you-end-up-in-Utah-County kind of cool.

Anyway, I've been suppressing the urge to blog about one weird person in particular for some time, until, as Tim Minchin describes in the superb beat poem linked to above, my diplomacy dike burst for a reason I will get to shortly.

We'll call this person "Creamer Man," so named because of what I've observed when he's in the break room making "coffee." Coffee is in quotes because as you can guess from the moniker, there is more creamer than coffee involved. Seriously, he may be Coffee Mate's best customer. The concoction involves a fascinating blend of liquid and dry creamer, with various ingredients heated in the microwave before being added to his mug in a prescribed order. I'm not a non-dairy creamer fan myself and don't dig sweet at all, so I can only imagine how bad it would taste to me. But you can't account for taste.

Really, though, I have no quarrel with the "coffee" making. Not something I'd ever want to drink, but unlike so many others, he cleans up after himself and doesn't leave kernels of slightly-parched-by-the-microwave corn on the counter after he's left the room.

Being somewhat environmentally conscious, I reuse the same water cup over and over day after day. As is my wont, I left said cup* on the table in the break room while I walked into the restroom across the hall. When I returned to the break room to fill my cup, there was Creamer Man, treating an open wound by applying antibiotic ointment and a knuckle bandage, with the wounded hand not more than a span and a half away (we're doing away with metric and going with Biblical units today for effect). I'm pretty sure the septic impact radius of a flesh wound is at least three times that. At least.

*A cheap plastic cup that my coke came in at Invesco field when I attended the AFC championship game--the only NFL game I've ever been to--back when the Broncos didn't suck. Seems like a lifetime ago.

I swallowed hard to keep from vomiting, grabbed the cup, and headed for the sink and began sanitizing. It never occurred to me to throw it away. Until now. The only thing holding me back is that Creamer Man looks so much like a reincarnated Barrel Man that I worry if I throw the cup away, it may turn into the Broncos' equivalent of the curse of the billy goat. But I can keep it without ever drinking from it again, right?

Good intentions

2011-04-26T14:50:00.000-06:00

We got another spring storm, which meant ski season got extended. After one lap, Dug, Steve, Rick, and Rob decided to be responsible and head to work. The rest of us went for another lap, which made sense because the canyon was closed for avalanche control and wasn't supposed to open until 8:30.

After enjoying another round of high-speed turns through knee-deep powder, we returned to the parking lot to find that Dug, Steve, Rick, and Rob were still there.

And an hour later, so were we. Due to some problems with the heavy artillery used to knock down avalanches, the road opening was delayed. Small price to pay to avoid having a debris pile the size of house come down on top of you. Wonder if Dug, Steve, Rick, and Rob will get credit for their good intentions in their performance reviews this year.

Monday greetings

2011-04-25T13:01:00.000-06:00

Haven't stopped thinking of this all day for some reason.

Machine pitch

2011-04-21T15:54:00.000-06:00

I'm of the opinion that baseball is the hardest sport to master. To wit, how many teenagers play in the major leagues versus how many teenagers play in the elite divisions of say football (soccer) or basketball? It's exceptionally rare for a teenager to make the majors, while Lionel Messi at age 23 is widely regarded as the best footballer in the world and made his first team debut for Barcelona at age 16.

Why do I bring this up? Because Junkie Boy played in his first ever baseball game last night. He's six. It's his first season--he never played T-ball. Neither did most of the other kids. Which made for some fine entertainment. For instance:

In his first at-bat, he made contact, the ball rolled a few inches in front of home plate, and he stood there and watched it before finally realizing that all the people yelling "run" were talking to him. He carried his bat to first base with him.
In his second at-bat, he made contact again, this time remembering to run with much less encouragement. He advanced to second where he proceeded to look at the ground while another teammate got a hit. He again realized the people yelling "run" were talking to him just before his teammate reached second base. He still made it safely to third. TheZeph asked if I needed oxygen from yelling.
From third base, his next teammate up also got a hit*, and JunkieBoy ran, but he ran to the opponents' dugout instead of to home plate. I yelled to him to "touch the plate." He began looking around for something with food on it and for some reason thought that if he started climbing the chain link fence forming the backstop, he might find it. With only a moderate amount of encouragement and pointing, he realized what we meant and still managed to step on home plate before being tagged out.

*"Hit" in this sense is a term we'll define loosely as any situation in which the batter puts the ball in play and reaches base, whether he reached base on what should be scored as a hit or as a result of a fielding error. Considering maybe 10% of the balls that were struck left the infield, you be the judge regarding the portion of these instances that were errors rather than hits. Thankfully, we don't track errors in machine pitch.

Clearly some of the kids on the team have had more exposure to baseball than others. Thankfully for the egos of kids and dads alike, it doesn't seem to make a difference. Just because one kid can throw doesn't mean the teammate he's throwing it to can catch. Likewise, even if the kid can catch, it's tough to catch a ball that lands in the dirt well out of reach.

Machine pitch plus five strikes makes strikeouts surprisingly rare, so even though the kids all suck, the degree to which the competition sucks somehow makes each of them walk away feeling like Henry Freakin' Aaron. And since the failure to advance bases or run home still resulted in a 2 for 2 night with a run scored, how can you dispute the kid leaving the game thinking he would be the envy of anyone's fantasy team?

West Mountain Road Race

2011-04-19T14:09:00.000-06:00

Saturday, UVU Cycling team put on an omnium*, with a team time trial in the morning, followed by a road race in the afternoon. Certainly nobody gets into the race promotion business except out of love for the sport, but the UVU guys seem to be more motivated by the love part than the money part.

*An omnium is a race with multiple stages, but unlike a stage race, you can pick and choose the stages you want to do and skip the others. Can you imagine how many guys would stop at the bottom of the Tourmalet (if they made it that far) if Le Tour were like this?

Registration consisted of filling out a release form, handing the guy a twenty, and grabbing a number. And instead of yet another T-shirt or water bottle, they fed us lunch after the race. I wish they were putting on races every weekend.

The 1-2-3 field raced three laps around West Mountain, a distance of 123km. Or about twice as far as I've ridden all season. Considering this was my first road race as a cat. 2, and my winter training consisted of skiing, eating, and a firm commitment to avoid the trainer, my goals were simple: 1) stay with the main bunch; and 2) try to sprint it out with whoever is left at the end, with the first being much more important than the second.

First lap saw some early attacks, with my team (Revolution-Cafe Rio), Ski Utah-Marketstar, and Bike Shoppe having sufficient numbers to ensure that nothing got away unless we were represented. Eventually a group of seven or so, with two of ours, got free.

We didn't quite get into Sunday group ride mode, as Ski Utah wanted to narrow the gap to try and get Sleevie into the break. That idea fell apart when we rounded a tight right-hander and noticed Stormin' and Manny on the pavement. With those guys crashed, the impetus for the break fell apart, and we were all back together.

Early in lap two, the same three teams got one guy each away. Nobody who was left was willing to chase, so we were assured someone on the podium.

Early in lap three, Sleevie and my teammate Curt got into a second break, but this time others made some efforts to try and either catch them or get away themselves. It was on again off again for most of lap three, with Eric from UVU getting away solo and the rest of us just making a lot of accelerations that ultimately didn't do much. A couple times I thought I was going to get popped, but I managed to keep it together.

At 1K, Cam from Ski Utah launched an early move. Steve got right on it, and I was about six riders back waiting until I saw the 200 to go sign. Before I knew it, I heard my wife screaming my name, I wondered briefly why she was so far out on the course, and then I noticed the line painted across the road that we had just gone over. I never even got out of the saddle. I had the legs to at least try and sprint. Unfortunately, I lacked the brains to pay attention to where we were on the course and notice how close we were to the line. Dum-de-dum-dum-dumb.

Steve held off Todd and Turbo to take the best of the rest sprint for seventh. Spence and Curt finished third and fifth, respectively, with Garrett from Ski Utah taking the W. Our guys won the TTT in the morning, so nothing to complain about with the results. In fact, there was nothing to complain about at all, because in addition to the sandwiches, UVU also arranged for complimentary massages after the race. Did I mention that I wish these guys were putting on races every weekend?

Why the face?

2011-04-13T15:30:00.000-06:00

Having missed out on the first season of Modern Family due to ignorance, my wife and I are joyfully doing our penance thanks to the miracle of Netflix. In the pilot, "cool dad" Phil attempts to validate his coolness by claiming that he "texts" and "knows the lingo." He then proceeds to rattle off the various acronyms and what they stand for: "LOL - laugh out loud; OMG - oh my god (or gosh, if you live in Utah*); WTF - why the face?"

*My little brother came up with what I think is a great idea for a Utah t-shirt: "heck is the place for people who don't believe in gosh."

I had my own "why the face?" moment earlier today when Dug sent me the following via email:

National Forest Service accepts Snowbird expansion proposal

Effectively this expansion will take one of the best early morning ski zones and make the slackcountry lift access from Snowbird even easier than it is already. And already if you're not there early, it gets bumped out thanks to people accessing it from Snowbird backcountry gates.

I was disgusted, making a face indeed. So I responded, via chat, to Dug. And I expressed my disgust. And I used a word for Snowbird management that starts with "f" but isn't "face."

To which, I got the following response:

hi mark. it's kim.
don't know why dug is logged in here.

Oops. Sorry, Kim. Please don't tell Dug he isn't allowed to come over to my house anymore.

Your versus you're and terns versus turns

2011-04-07T12:07:00.004-06:00

I finally decided to make myself a permanent resident of the 801 and get an 801 phone number. Which has been entertaining, because in the recent past, that number belonged to someone else. And occasionally I get calls and messages intended for him. For instance, someone recently sent me this via picture message:

Except the version that was sent to me was animated, so I had to make it PG-13 for the blog.

This morning, I got an intriguing message. Which led to an engaging exchange. Rather than describe it, I'll just publish the dialogue that I had with someone whom we'll call "Leah." Spelling, grammar, and punctuation will be left as written.

Leah: I cant believe you did this to her George..... She loved you so much! Why, after everything you've been thru why?

Leah: YOU BASTARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Leah: And i thought you 'Loved her".... you dont know the first meaning of the word love!

Leah: i hope your happy

me: What did I do?

Leah: You know exactly what you did!

me: No, I don't. And I don't know who George is or who you are for that matter. But now I'm curious.

Leah: Your a Liar.

me: After all, it isn't every day I get text messages calling me a bastard.

Leah: You need it more often....

me: Seriously? Do you even know who I am? Because my name isn't George. And as far as I know, you and I have never met.

Leah: Oh you are so full of shit! ok if your name isnt George what is it!

me: Mark. But let's keep this conversation going because my coworkers and I are getting a real kick out of all your accusations.

Leah: yeah thats what i thought!! George your such a freak...

Leah: Whatever.

me: And by the way, it's "you're" and not "your" in this context. Which should be a clue that I'm not really George because based on the conversation so far, I don't think your friends would be smart enough to know that.

Leah: F*** off! Dont ever talk to me or anyone of my family memebrs again!

me: You're the one that started this and now won't leave me alone. Seriously, I'm not George. I've only had this phone number for a month. My guess is all your rage is intended for someone else. Call this number if you want to find out for sure. I'm happy to talk to you.

Leah: I dont believe you!

me: Call me and find out.

Leah: i'll pass, thanx

me: This is awesome. Can't wait to post this conversation on my blog. I've only told you five times my name isn't George, and you don't believe me. OK if I use your real name on the blog post? [Withheld], right?

Leah: Yeah. so what

me: I'll send you a link when it's done. You can figure out from there whether I'm George or not. He sounds like a real winner.

Leah: A real LOSER

[snip]

Leah: I don't know if you are george or not! if your not then im sorry, if you are then George you need to go to hell!

me: Remember, your is the possessive, while you're is a contraction for "you are." Commit that to memory. It will pay off, I promise. If George would know that and has a masters degree, then I may be George. If he wouldn't know that, then apology accepted.

me: This is still going on my blog, though.

me: Thanks for the entertainment.

me: It's been fun.

Leah: Why would you do that?

me: Do what?

Leah: he messed up my sisters life and i was just really mad!

Leah: i thought this was his number

Leah: She told me not to talk to him or anything, and i did it anyway. i was os mad at him.

me: Sure, I get that. But I told you half a dozen times you had the wrong number, and you called me various names and accused me of lying. I should get something for that, don't you think?

Leah: i really did think this was his number

me: Obviously.

Leah: i know, but thats just the way george i, hes a liar, i didnt know if it was him or not! it sounds like something he would do

me: Tell you what, I won't use your name on the blog if you promise to learn the differences between your and you're; there, they're, and their; and to, too, and two. Deal?

Leah: ummmm, ok

me: Oh and I'll even make sure everyone knows that George is a jerk. I'll even use his last name if you want.

me: You'll have to tell me what it is, though.

Leah: thats a wierd deal, are you obsessed with that kinda stuff or something?

me: No, not obsessed. I just like helping people learn to write intelligently. Most of my success has been predicated on my ability to communicate.

Leah: Oh thats cool

me: Anyway, good luck. Some years ago a guy like George messed up my sister's life. It's worked out just fine over time. Just be there for her when she needs help.

Leah: I will..... no matter what happens :)

Leah: Who Exactly are you??

me: If I help you...it will be "turns" with us too. Quid pro quo.

68 minutes

2011-04-06T15:43:00.000-06:00

I think Gary Bywater needs a new watch. He announced at the beginning of last night's RMR crit that the A flight would be racing for 55 minutes. I had arrived later than I wanted to due to traffic congestion. My warmup consisted of riding one lap.

The first twenty minutes were a special kind of punishment only slightly less miserable than the countless winter hours spent on a trainer by those administering it. After that, it was clear that the gap to the leaders was open, and I wasn't going to close it.

I contemplated bailing out, but with the wind blowing and the rain starting to fall and my objective being to train rather than to get a result, I persisted. My small chase group caught another group, dropped some of our riders, got caught by another group, such that the faces surrounding me were completely different by the time I crossed the line.

About that--crossing the line. After 58 minutes, we started wondering when, exactly, Gary would start counting down the laps since we were supposed to be done by now. We were over an hour when I rode by with outstretched arms, as if to ask "how much longer?"

"Three laps to go."

If where they have me in the results relative to the people I know I was ahead of is any indication, it should have been two. But at that point it really didn't matter. Gary, if you need my watch in the future, just ask.

The commute

2011-03-31T12:45:00.000-06:00

One hour, 47 minutes. That's how long Google maps said my route to work would take by bike. Perhaps by tricycle. It was actually closer to 47 minutes door-to-door (once I finally got all my crap together and got out the door).

The new job has a little less flexibility during the day, which will make lunch ride and midweek race participation unpredictable. The distance is just right for two-a-days, though. Easy spin in the morning, hammer on the way home, finishing with the hill. We'll see where that leaves my fitness now that we seem to have rounded the corner for the bike to take primacy over the skis.

Oingo Boingo - Hallway - Lawnmower

2011-03-28T09:41:00.000-06:00

A good rule of thumb if you're into backcountry skiing: if a friend offers to drop a car in one canyon and meet you in another, accept the offer. The likely result is a good day of skiing. Daren, Tanner, Aaron, Tim, and I started in Little Cottonwood by skiing Oingo Boingo chute into Days Fork. The wind was blowing, so some good sized cornices had formed.

After cutting one of them to check stability, Tanner dropped in.

We left some evidence that we had been there.

I heard that Superior was also pretty good.

From the top of Days, we entered the Hallway couloir, the first time I'd skied it. Aaron missed the entrance and ended up snaking through a narrow band of rocks I dubbed the crawlspace. The nice thing about having touring gear is if you start one direction and there's no way down, you can always go back up. Fortunately, he made it through.

From there we skied down Cardiff Fork (a.k.a. Mill D South) to the base of Kessler. Up Kessler and down God's Lawnmower. We were not the first to have that idea, so there were a few tracks, but I didn't hear any complaints.

Hero of the day was Tim. After we got done with the lawnmower, he decided to skin back up Cardiff and over the ridge to Little Cottonwood where his truck was parked. The rest of us gladly called it a day and drove home.

All the photos are courtesy of Daren, who often jokes that he has friends who blog so he doesn't have to. Since he got his new camera, though, he takes pictures so I don't have to.

God bless the Mormons

2011-03-27T20:09:00.000-06:00

In case my recent post on belief left you with questions about my attitude towards Mormonism, I thought I'd share a couple of experiences that have happened since, both of which were good reminders that my current status notwithstanding, my participation in the LDS church has fundamentally shaped who I am and in balance has doubtless been a net positive.

The first experience was a comment on the post that wasn't posted to the blog but emailed to me directly. The commenter mentioned how it was interesting that he and I went through periods of examining our belief at more or less the same time, came to different conclusions, and somehow ended up strengthening our friendship and enhancing our mutual respect.

This friend went on to say that my post prompted some discussions regarding belief with one of his adult children and another who's preparing to serve a full-time LDS mission. His comments only serve to strengthen my opinion that the conclusion one reaches after examining one's belief system is much less important than the examination process itself.

Belief is a personal thing, and all I can decide is what works for me. If another concludes that participating in a certain faith tradition leads to personal fulfillment, happiness, betterment, or any other positive outcome, I don't see how anyone could argue against that (which is not to say that dogma or fanaticism that lead to violence or infringing upon others' rights are beneficial to an individual or society in any way). I'll admit that at times I've been tempted to be bitter towards certain aspects of the LDS church as an organization, but never towards the people.

The second experience relates to our friends in Boise. I have nothing but positive things to say about the LDS community we were a part of in Boise. There have been good people other places we have lived, but Boise was unique in terms of the sheer quantity of truly outstanding people (which makes Troy's experience that much more horrifying considering he lives just a couple of miles from where we did).

We own a rental house in Boise, and one of the spigots outside was leaking. I sent out a few text messages looking for a plumber. Within minutes, I had three recommendations for plumbers and the contact information for the plumber I'd used before but whose name and contact information I had forgotten. One friend who develops commercial real estate in his spare time (when not working as an ER doc and serving as a bishop) responded and said he was in Moab for the weekend but offered to send one of his property managers out to look at it. I had three phone calls within an hour, two from the plumber, and one from another friend just making sure I had things taken care of. It was fixed that day, even though it was Sunday.

Mormonism is a demanding religion--it expects a lot of its adherents. I don't know if those expectations lead people to be more committed and responsible in what they do or if the people who aren't committed and responsible just don't make it as Mormons (if so, what does this say about me?). Either way, if I were to decide that I wanted nothing more to do with Mormons ever again, not only would I be pretty lonely, but I would miss out on associating with some of the finest people I know. Besides, the truly crazy ones like Chris Buttars and Gayle Ruzicka thankfully keep Utah just weird enough that it doesn't become Boulder.

Cocaine

2011-03-22T13:35:00.000-06:00

There is a certain craft, elegance even, to putting in a good skin track. It should be steep enough to make uphill progress, but not so steep that you can’t keep a steady pace. Kick turns should be as infrequent as possible while still keeping you on the ideal path up the mountain and should use the natural contours so the turn itself is almost effortless. Tree wells should be given a wide berth, and wind-scoured or wind-exposed terrain should be avoided.

Similarly, there is a certain grace in a well-executed turn. All the crap I’ve given Dustin notwithstanding, even tele turns can be beautiful (though calling them “soulful” is still pushing it). Good turns are not derived from shoulders twisted across bodies in hopes that the skis will follow. Shoulders should be square to the fall line, center of gravity balanced, and knees and hips should all work together to follow the lead of the big toe on your outside foot.

When it all comes together, especially when you’re skiing 5% density, light, white powder, the result is an exquisite high. Fitting, then, that this morning the song that shuffled on my iPod as I exited was “Cocaine.”

Indignity

2011-03-18T11:17:00.001-06:00

The nice thing about daylight savings time is it stays light enough that you can ski after work. The downside to skiing after work rather than before is that you might actually have to cross over someone else's tracks.

The indignities we suffer.

Wax

2011-03-14T11:12:00.001-06:00

It takes me about 10 minutes to shave my legs, and I do it once a week. My little sister offered to wax them on the grounds that I wouldn't have to shave for three or four weeks. I think she offered mostly because she wanted to see me in pain. Last night I took her up on the offer.

It wasn't that painful.

But it took about two hours. I think I'll stick to shaving. Except for maybe the backs of my knees.

At capacity

2011-03-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

When the biggest problem is fitting both bike and ski gear in the car because on any given day you could do either, I'd say that's a good problem to have. Which is why I will never drive a car that's not a wagon. Wednesday I skied thigh-deep powder. Thursday it was 71 when I finished my ride. What will today bring?

Scheduled programming

2011-03-09T10:34:00.001-07:00

Thanks for the response to my last post. It set high water marks in terms of traffic to this blog, and the dialogue in the comments was of course interesting. I was particularly moved by Troy & Gina's comment. Troy is a good friend of mine from Boise who went through the same thing about the same time I did. Unfortunately, many of his loved ones have reacted poorly.

We'll now get back to our regularly scheduled programming, which this time of year means skiing.

Jon finished the feature film from the yurt trip. He does fine work, don't you think?

On a more sober note, I (intentionally) triggered a slide in Scotties this morning. And while it's nice to know that you can recognize the circumstances in which a slide is likely and take appropriate measures to trigger it safely (ski cut to island of safety), it's still unnerving to watch the slope you just skied across collapse and run down the mountain.

It was about 20 meters wide, just over 100 cm deep at the deepest part of the crown (see photo with ski pole below for perspective) and ran maybe 60 meters down slope. Interestingly, the stauchwall was our skin track. Hmm.

March is a great time of year because when it snows, it really snows, and when it doesn't, it's usually warm enough to ride a bike outside. Just remember to be safe.

Apologia pro vita sua

2011-03-06T21:47:00.001-07:00

Today's post is about skepticism. Or rather how I extended my inherent skepticism to all aspects of my life rather than exempting the one aspect of my life perhaps most deserving of it. It's lengthy. And I don't recommend it to anyone who is comfortable with their worldview and prefers not to rock the boat. Which is not to say I'm irrefutably right or that anyone else is wrong. Much of what I discuss is verifiable (most of my links are to Wikipedia, precisely because it's crowd-sourced and by definition has to be the consensus view of those familiar with the facts), but much more of the bigger, cosmological questions are not. All you really need to know about today's post can be summed up in the following two minute song. So if you'd prefer not to buckle in for a long read, just watch this and call it good.

In ancient Rome, where few sweeteners beyond honey were available, grape juice, or must, was boiled in lead pots to produce a reduced sugar syrup called defrutum, which was concentrated again into sapa. Most lead salts are sweet to the taste, and this syrup, likewise, was used to sweeten wine and to sweeten and preserve fruit. Unfortunately, it's likely that lead compounds leached into the syrup, causing lead poisoning in anyone who consumed it.

In 1878, Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist working on coal tar derivatives at Johns Hopkins University, noticed a sweet taste on his hand and connected it to the substance he had been working on that day. Fahlberg was awarded a patent for the substance, named it saccharin, and became wealthy from this sweetener with almost zero calories. In the 1970's, saccharin was linked to bladder cancer in rodents, leading to the United States government requiring a warning label be placed on all products containing it. However, as of 14 December 2010, the EPA stated that Saccharin is no longer considered a potential hazard to human health.

Aspartame was first synthesized in 1965 and is now commonplace as a non-nutritive sweetener. Though it has been the subject of various internet hoaxes and is dangerous to people with phenylketinouria, it is approved for sale by the FDA and the European Food Safety Authority. Nevertheless recent research suggests that people who drink diet soda sweetened with Aspartame are at greater risk of heart attack and stroke than people who don't drink soda.

Coffee was first discovered in Ethiopia, and from there its cultivation and use spread to the Arab world, to Italy, to the rest of Europe, and eventually to the rest of the world. Coffee is rich in antioxidants and has been shown to reduce the risk of being affected by Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, heart disease, diabetes mellitus type 2, cirrhosis of the liver, and gout. Researchers involved in an ongoing 22-year study by the Harvard School of Public Health state that "the overall balance of risks and benefits [of coffee consumption] are on the side of benefits."

So why, then, according to what I had been taught was God's law of health, would coffee be forbidden while consuming by the bucket full drinks sweetened with Aspartame, such as Diet Coke, was not? I don't have the healthiest diet in the world, but I am conscious of what I put in my body, and, as an athlete, try to put the best fuel I can into my system while avoiding those things that are most harmful. In the fall of 2009 this incongruity between what I had been taught was a divinely-inspired code of health and the best available medical research resulted in significant intellectual conflict.

Before I go further, let me state that I am well aware that one solution would be to not consume Diet Coke or any other artificially-sweetened foodstuff and to forgo coffee as well and that indeed, the LDS scriptures as well as modern teachings offer nothing in the way of exhortations to consume Diet Coke and that many of the members choose not to consume it or similar because it's not in the spirit of the canon. I commend anyone whose convictions lead to the espousal of this approach. Nevertheless, the conflict for me extended from the culturally-accepted attitudes towards consumption of these various substances. In practice, faithful church members, myself included, consume huge quantities of Diet Coke or similar, to say nothing of the rampant disregard for maintaining a healthy weight for which church leadership's only response was installing double-wide seats at the temple. Regardless of what an individual determines is in his or her own best interest, I found it odd that men who claim a conduit to the divine remained more or less silent rather than offering clarification, especially when the health of their adherents was at stake.

Let me go on a further tangent and state that the only reason I bring this up is so that anyone who cares to know can hear my story from the only appropriate source. Indeed, I would see no point in bringing this up except that it has come to my attention that certain individuals have been misinformed regarding my motivation to stop attending the LDS church. Worse, in some situations, those with no first-hand knowledge of the situation have spoken as if they had such and have offered explanations to others that were patently false. Therefore, in order that anyone interested might have a true account of events, I am offering an explanation here. If you are a believer in the LDS faith and happy as such, allow me to offer forewarning that the things I am about to describe were enough to completely destroy the faith of previously orthodox believers, and as Daryl said to Dwight when Dwight suggested going to a strip club at noon on a Monday, "you can't un-see that."

When my internal conflict about the incongruity of the Word of Wisdom came to a head, I was already aware that in Joseph Smith's time, it was counsel rather than commandment and that moderation was emphasized over abstinence. I knew that Joseph Smith, his brother Hyrum, along with Willard Richards and future church president John Taylor consumed a bottle of wine in Carthage Jail on the day the Smiths were assassinated. And it was not sacramental wine but intended to improve their spirits. I also knew that when Brigham Young led the pioneers across the plains, he encouraged them to bring coffee and tea to help keep their energy up for the long journey.

Somewhere between then and now, however, the emphasis of the Word of Wisdom changed from moderation of potentially harmful substances and eating healthful substances to a more black and white approach wherein coffee, tea, alcohol, and tobacco were forbidden, but everything else was more or less fair game. This, even when the text states that "barley [is] for all useful animals, and for mild drinks," which certainly suggests that beer is encouraged rather than forbidden. Through a complicated series of political and organizational events, this somehow led to where we are today, where amongst so many church members, Diet Coke consumption begins first thing in the morning, overweight men with type 2 diabetes who require supplemental oxygen just to make it through church feel as if they are living God's law of health, yet someone who sips a cup of coffee or a bottle of beer is excluded from full participation and fellowship.

Alcohol is considered evil but the most Mormon state in the country also leads the nation in anti-depressant use. One of my friends told me about a particularly stressful situation when her mother suggested she "just take a Xanax" when a glass of wine would have been adequate. Is this really what the Almighty intended, especially considering Jesus's first miracle was to turn water into wine? I didn't think so, so I began to research church history to find out who clarified the revelation found in Section 89 and when this clarification occurred.

What I found was this:

"There is, however, no known contemporary evidence...that a separate new revelation changed the Word of Wisdom from a 'principle with promise' to a 'commandment' necessary for full participation in all the blessings of church membership. One author on the subject has argued that the vote in 1880 sustaining the Doctrine and Covenants as binding on church membership was equivalent to a vote making the Word of Wisdom a commandment. If, however, the members were voting on the words contained in the book, what they did was to agree that the Word of Wisdom was a 'principle with promise' and not a 'commandment.'"

Unfortunately--for my faith at least--finding this information, which would have led me to the simple conclusion that the interpretation of the Word of Wisdom was flawed even if other doctrinal claims may have remained sound, was not a direct course of action, and along the way I encountered other facts that Boyd K. Packer described as "true" but "not very useful." I guess that depends on how you define useful.

Not very useful truth #1: the "official" account of the first vision is just one of many somewhat inconsistent tellings of the most important foundational story in Mormonism. As former church president Gordon B. Hinckley stated, "All that we have, all that we do hinges on the truth of that account of the boy Joseph Smith. If it is true, then everything that we have in this Church is true and is more precious and worth more than anything else on earth. If it is false, we are engaged in the greatest fraud that was ever perpetrated on earth."

The question, though, is on which version of the story does "all that we do" hinge? The one where it was a single angel, a light, or both God and Jesus? Was it the version where Joseph was told not to join any churches (even though he subsequently attempted to join the Methodists), or the one in which he was simply told his sins were forgiven? It seemed to me that if someone experienced something so miraculous and profound that the telling of it would be significant (it wasn't emphasized for the first half century of the church's existence) and consistent and wouldn't become more spectacular with each subsequent credibility crisis.

Not very useful truth #2: polygamy in the early church was not a means of providing single frontier women who otherwise wouldn't have one with a husband. Were it so, Joseph Smith would have had no need to tell married women that God had commanded they become Smith's polygamous wives. I have read a great deal about polygamy/polyandry, and the only conclusion I can reach is that its purpose was to gratify the lustful desires of a leader with sufficient charisma to pull off the ruse.

Not very useful truth #3: the Book of Abraham is a "translation" of Egyptian papyri that were acquired by the church after Joseph Smith claimed that the scrolls in a traveling antiquities display were the Book of Abraham, "written by his own hand." The scrolls were donated after Joseph's death to a museum in Chicago and were believed to have been destroyed in the Chicago fire. In 1966, however, several fragments of the papyri were found in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Their discovery was a source of excitement for church members anxious to see their scripture validated with verifiable evidence. The scrolls turned out to be nothing more than common funerary texts known as the Book of Breathings, a guide for the deceased in the afterlife, and had nothing whatever to do with the contents of the Book of Abraham. Apologists are quick to claim that Joseph may have been inspired by the scrolls to receive a revelation that became the Book of Abraham rather than making a direct translation, but if that were the case, why make the claim "written by his own hand"?

At this point, I was done. Nevermind the Kinderhook Plates, Book of Mormon anachronisms, or the Kirtland Safety Society. For me, if these three issues gave the church's foundational claims such a credibility problem, I simply could no longer bring myself to believe many of the other claims, either. The spiritual experiences I had had in church had heretofore been enough to sustain me through the inconsistencies, but I also realized that many people outside the LDS church have had spiritual experiences, I had had them in a non-church context, and just because one has a spiritual experience at church, that doesn't have any bearing on the truthfulness of an organization--it simply means they felt good because they were doing good. Its claims to the contrary notwithstanding, the LDS church does not have a monopoly on spiritual feelings (which may, physiologically, be nothing more than an emotionally-driven release of endorphins).

I was left wondering what to do with what I had learned. Let me pause here and state that my wife and I were orthodox, believing members of the LDS church. Ours was not a particularly complex testimony--for better or for worse, we took the church leaders at their word, we trusted them, and were diligent in trying to follow their counsel. We were not cultural participants who didn't really believe but participated due to social expectations or family pressure. I was unsure how my wife would respond to my loss of belief and chose, initially at least, to keep it to myself.

This caused tremendous internal conflict, to the point that I had difficulty sleeping and was visibly stressed. Finally, one night in December 2009, my wife asked me what was eating at me. I unloaded on her. She was shocked, but the next day she began researching, hoping to prove me wrong, but ultimately concluded that I wasn't.

For the next several weeks, we persisted, attempting to find a "middle way" wherein we could participate in the church as active members even if we didn't believe the doctrine. (Incidentally, we have been shocked since to find out just how many people in the church don't believe some or even any of the doctrine but participate nonetheless.) Perhaps had this process been more gradual, we could have eased into this approach to church participation, but for us there were just too many situations where we didn't feel like we could do what was asked of us while keeping our integrity intact.

About the same time, certain experiences led us to the point where we were less convinced that exposure to the church's teachings was in our family's best interest. We asked to be released from our callings, a process that was effected after a meeting with our bishop one Sunday a year ago February. We did not return, a decision each of us reached on our own but agreed upon at essentially the same time.

Since leaving the church, I have not been struck by lightning, lost my job, nor afflicted with a horrible disease. My children have not been ostracized, and our friends who were our friends before are still our friends. Indeed, it's been among the best things that have ever happened to our social lives. We've found other families who have gone through the same thing (we are legion), felt isolated, wondered what life would be like on the other side, and discovered that especially after finding other like-minded people that life is pretty damned good.

Hand soap

2011-03-04T10:20:00.001-07:00

So the new job is good, but it keeps me busy. Which, until I come up to speed at least, means the blog isn't getting much attention.

One thing about the new job is worth mentioning: the hand soap in the restrooms. Now in general, I'm not complaining about the restrooms. The light isn't on a timer, so if your business takes longer than anticipated, you won't get caught in the dark. Or at least if the light is on a timer, there is enough traffic that the risk of it going out isn't high. There is also a locker room with a shower, so I don't have to ride dirty the rest of the day if I ski or ride my bike. But the hand soap is another matter.

Liquid hand soap is of just the right viscosity and opacity that coloring it white should be an obviously bad decision to anyone who has ever been a teenage boy that has ever taken a shower. But really, is yellow an improvement? Every time I wash my hands, I struggle to believe that it is.

Rick's project

2011-02-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

Rick told me that he was going to make me his project, that he was going to reconvert me. I'm inclined to let him because his intent is to reconvert me to mountain biking. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that the number of times I rode my mountain bike last year was probably about a dozen.

Not so long ago, I didn't even own a road bike. Until last year, I didn't own a cross bike. Last year I think I raced my cross bike as many times as I rode my mountain bike. Clearly the mountain bike needs more attention.

To remedy the situation, I have taken drastic measures: I have quit my job* so I can spend my days in Utah County where MTB lunch rides are a way of life.

*Unfortunately, I am not independently wealthy, so I had to get another one, it just happens to be in Utah County, not too far from the lunch ride epicenter.

Forecast for tomorrow is 46 and sunny. See you at noon?

Pioneer Yurt Teaser

2011-02-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

I've been away most of this week. Here's a sneak peak at what I was up to, courtesy of Jon S.

Go ahead, make my day

2011-02-18T14:01:00.004-07:00

Cyclists, like ballerinas, tend to have body image issues. It’s easy to forget when you’re stressing about being three kilos above race weight that you’re probably still pretty fit.

This morning while I was changing my clothes after skiing, a task I performed (as usual) in the parking lot at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, as soon as I peeled my shirt off, I heard a car honking behind me. I turned to look, and a man and a woman were seated in the car. The man opened the door and yelled at me “come over here.”

I was naked to the waist, so of course such a request seemed odd, but he repeated himself--speaking with a European-sounding accent--multiple times. As I walked towards them, now in plain view from the front, he said to me “Thank you—you just made her day,” referring to the woman in the driver’s seat. “She’ll be smiling all day long because of this.”

As they drove off, they honked, waved, smiled, and gave me the thumbs up. I was flattered. In the process of making her day, they made mine. At least, that is, until I realized that by walking towards them, I was merely no longer obstructing their view of the ground squirrel frolicking on the hillside behind me.

Out of sync

2011-02-17T14:11:00.001-07:00

I was about four paragraphs into a really terrible blog post when I realized that not only was it not going to be worth reading, it wasn’t even worth finishing.

Instead, may I direct your attention to what Matt B. has to say. Whether you live in a state governed by a backward legislature or not, his insights into the immigration “problem” are spot on. For a government that seems unafraid to invoke morality or even divine authority as a justification for certain policies, how they interpret the second great commandment and treat their fellow man seems a bit, shall we say, out of sync.

Coalpit

2011-02-15T11:25:00.002-07:00

Saturday I met Daren, Aaron, Tim, and Tanner with the objective of skiing the Coalpit Headwall. It’s a line clearly visible from the highway. It is much easier, however, to see it than to get to it. The difficulty in getting to it turned out to be the best thing about the tour, as what we saw in our 14 miles of touring was among the most spectacular scenery in the Wasatch. Hogum Fork in particular is, well, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Detroit

2011-02-09T12:52:00.003-07:00

How awesome was Sunday’s game? I looked forward to the Super Bowl for the full two weeks after the conference championships, but I did not expect a great game. It usually isn’t. That it was was a bonus.

The greatness I did expect was from the advertisers. I worked for an ad agency when I was in college and thought about making a career out of it (but was dissuaded by the volatility and high burnout rate*), and I still enjoy effective, creative advertising. My pick for best ad of the game? Imported from Detroit by Chrysler.

*So I went to work in the tech industry instead. Go figure. I think about going back to advertising every time I watch an episode of Mad Men**.

**Whether you’re a fan of Mad Men or not, you are probably a fan of sex. If you are, you should give this article from Mad Men star Christina Hendricks a read. In fact, if you are a man, commit her advice to memory.

Perhaps this is a sentimental decision since I spent two years of grad school living just outside of Detroit and the two preceding years living well within its rustbelt influence. While in grad school, I even did a consulting project for Chrysler*.

*Where I was forced to park my Japanese-made car in a distant, “competitive cars” parking lot and came away wondering whether anything could save such a screwed up company. What I did know was that it was going to take way more than whatever little bit six MBA students could contribute.

Living in Michigan, I saw first hand just how bad things are in Detroit. Things were so bad, in fact, that at the time, people actually thought Kwame Kilpatrick could improve them. And it’s only got worse since then. This is a city that needs a break. It relies on an industry that needs a break. But the only way they’re going to get a break is if they earn it. Which is why I love this ad: it tells a great story, and the story is, they’re up to the task.

So are they up to it? Time will tell. But it was enough to make me think about buying a type of car I’ve never considered from a manufacturer I’d never have previously considered. I can’t help but think some consumers will be convinced enough to actually buy one. I hope for the sake of the city that they are enough.

Ski photo dump

2011-02-08T12:34:00.001-07:00

I’ve got lots of ski photos from the last couple weeks that I haven’t had time to post for whatever reason. The outings were as follows:

An absolutely splendid family ski day at Park City Mountain Resort with the Rabid family. About as much fun as I’ve had on skis ever. Mostly because JunkieBoy was chasing the Rabid Yahoos down the mountain all day, and I think his skiing improved 100% in one day. I have never seen him ski like that, and it was great fun to watch. PCMR just vaulted to the top of my list for favorite places to ski with the family. Terrain is perfect for kids without being boring for adults spoiled by the backcountry.
An absolutely frigid day skiing Holy Toledo and Pole Line Pass with Dug, Alex, Steve W., Nate, and Mike L. In addition to Dug getting frostbite on his nose, the last push to the top of Pole Line was unskinnable, so we had to boot. Oh, and the snow was boilerplate intermittently punctuated by pools of graupel. Somehow it was still fun.
An absolutely amazing day this morning skiing Short Swing with Mike H., Daren, and Kendall. The forecast didn’t call for much snow, and the winds were howling all night, so my expectations were low. Turned out to be a bluebird day with boot top-deep cold smoke. Of course we went back for seconds.

Enjoy.

Yahoo #1

Yahoo #2

JunkieBoy

JunkieGirl

Spouse of Rabid

Mike L. on Holy Toledo

Dug and Steve W.

Kendall prepares to drop into Short Swing.

Dropping.

Kendall took the camera while I kicked up some cold smoke.

Chinese New Year

2011-02-07T15:20:00.001-07:00

We celebrated Chinese New Year the most obvious way possible: by going to a Chinese restaurant. It was awesome. This guy was right next to our table when I took this photo.

OK, just kidding. This photo was shamelessly ripped off from The Big Picture. And instead of having that guy performing right next to our table, we waited 45 minutes in a very crowded lobby for any table. And that was after we had called ahead to get our names on the list 15 minutes before we arrived. Really, if that’s the case, you’d think the restaurant would consider allowing reservations for parties smaller than eight.

Happy year of the rabbit and all that.

A weighty decision

2011-01-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

Long-time readers know that my motto is “if you can’t be fast, you should at least look good™.” Which is why even though it’s the dead of winter, right now is the most wonderful time of the year to be a cyclist.

Why? Because right now is when clubs are placing their orders for team kits. And once again we get to imagine how each bit of form-fitting lycra will look stretched around our bronzed and shaven thighs (which, incidentally, should provide whatever motivation is needed to lose that winter weight and get out the garden shears for some manscaping).

My brother Steve and I have been exchanging text messages to coordinate our kit purchases. Since we’re not twins and therefore never wore matching outfits* as children, we never grew tired of it.

*Which is not to say we never wore the same outfits. We did. But since I’m older, he wore them after I outgrew them. Just never shoes. I never outgrew shoes as a kid—they always wore out first.

We’re both ordering skinsuits because skinsuits are dead sexy. I am contemplating shoe covers as well. As Steve put it, “dude, you show up to a crit in a skinsuit and shoe covers, and everyone will know you came to kick ass.”

I responded “I’ve seen that look before, just never on the winner.”

He validly countered, “but they looked good, right?”

The only problem is that looking good isn’t just about what you wear, it’s also about what you do. And if you wear shoe covers in a crit, you can’t reach down and tighten your shoes before the last lap. A weighty decision, indeed.

25 years ago

2011-01-28T15:59:00.001-07:00

I woke up this morning with a bit of chest congestion and a slightly sore throat. It was not enough to stay home from work over, but 25 years ago today, I skipped school over similar symptoms. I remember this, because I remember staying home from school and turning on the TV and watching the space shuttle launch. And then watching it explode. Odd how you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing at these moments.

On my way to work this morning, I heard a touching memorial to one of the Challenger crew, Ron McNair, offered by his brother Carl. I recommend reading or listening to the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:

As youngsters, a show came on TV called Star Trek. Now, Star Trek showed the future — where there were black folk and white folk working together. I just looked at it as science fiction, 'cause that wasn't going to happen, really.

But Ronald saw it as science possibility. So how was a colored boy from South Carolina — wearing glasses, never flew a plane — how was he gonna become an astronaut? But Ron was one who didn't accept societal norms as being his norm, you know? That was for other people. And he got to be aboard his own Starship Enterprise.

This photo from The Big Picture of teacher Christa McAuliffe shows her excitement over traveling to space. She was wearing that grin in pretty much every photo.

Teachers are real-life superheroes, in my opinion. McAuliffe was just hero enough to be chosen to teach an important lesson from an enormous classroom.

Thank you, Ron, Christa, and crew, for your courage and for your legacy.

More affordable

2011-01-20T11:33:00.001-07:00

Am I the only one who finds it a bit odd for framesets (not complete bikes) priced at $3,500 and $2,849 to be described as “more affordable?”

Euro style

2011-01-19T13:55:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was my first bike ride of 2011, and the first ride on my road bike (other than on the trainer) since October. I remembered everything for my ride except a helmet, so I went Euro style, sans casque with just a cap on my head. Here are some observations:

Riding without a helmet made me hyper-aware of traffic. I did not want to crash and die or get injured so that the commenters on KSL.com* could flay me for being stupid and go on and on about how I had it coming and they wish all cyclists would get off the road, and that any child dumb enough to be born to a parent who rides a bike deserves to grow up without a father**. Two blocks from my office, when I was finally starting to feel like I’d made it through the ride safely, I discovered that just because a car signals a turn doesn’t mean they will actually turn. Glad I waited.

*Yes, I realize KSL has put their comment boards on hiatus, but that doesn’t mean the commenters who would have said those things aren’t still thinking them.

**Actually, my real fear was not that I would get hit by a car and die. I don’t particularly fear death and have enough life insurance that I’m more concerned about a serious injury that would leave me severely disabled or in a vegetative state. Time to draft that living will—wonder if I can put a clause in there that even if I could remain alive without life support but had little or no quality of life due to my injuries that my caretakers would just leave me alone in an apartment with no food and just a big bottle of vodka and lots of razor blades.

My wool cycling cap with ear flaps, a Christmas gift from my kids (that I helped them pick out), has intensified my love for wool clothing.
MTB and cross both have their appeal, but there is nothing that compares with the feeling of speed one gets on a road bike.
This was my first ride on a Fizik Antares demo saddle. After ~25,000 kilometers, my Specialized Toupe Gel finally got a crack in the shell at the end of last season and needs to be replaced. To their credit, Rico said Specialized would warranty it if I took the saddle and a receipt to a Specialized dealer, but since I bought it in 2007, I can’t find the receipt. So how do the saddles compare? The Toupe took some getting used to. The Fizik did not. Which is not to say I like the way the Fizik feels better than the Specialized—jury is still out on that one—there just wasn’t a 10 ride break-in period. My big concern with the Fizik is that without the cutout, I will get sleepy-peepie. I had no numbness yesterday, but I was only riding for an hour. I can get better pricing on the Fizik since they are a team sponsor, but after so much time, I am used to the Specialized and may stick with it, even if it means paying retail.
The nice thing about riding in cool weather is that it requires tights, which meant I didn’t have to shave my legs. If I’m still wearing tights in June, you will know why.
Is it that unshaven legs look less toned than shaven legs, or is it that my legs really are less toned in the off season? (If this is not an admission that cyclists shaving their legs is driven by vanity, I don’t know what is.)
Taking four weeks off the bike after Nationals was probably the minimum amount of time needed to ensure recovery and restored motivation. It felt good to be on the bike again, but not so good that I’m ready to start racing again in six weeks.

Review of Smartwool NTS, one year hence

2011-01-18T13:04:00.001-07:00

Dressing for a ski tour isn’t a simple matter of just putting on the same clothes every day, regardless of conditions. At least it isn’t for me. I guess you could put on the same clothes, but they’d get rather stinky, and you’d likely not be super comfortable.

Warm days can be the most challenging because you’re likely to sweat on the hike, but “warm” is a relative term, and as soon as you stop moving, it won’t feel warm for very long.

Really cold days can also be challenging, as there’s not a lot you can do to mix up what’s on your feet, and aside from growing a beard, there’s no good option for keeping your face warm. And since you can’t grow a beard on your nose, and at least 50% of the population can’t grow one at all (or is forbidden from doing so by their better half), a beard is at best a half solution.

One year ago, I wrote a review (at the time quite preliminary) of the Smartwool NTS (Next to Skin) midweight baselayer. And regardless of what the weather is going to be like, I find this setup is my preferred first layer, especially on the long tours when staying comfortable for several hours is the most challenging.

The wool is great for minimizing the “swampy” feeling most clothing gets when it’s sweaty. It seems to do a better job of insulating when wet than synthetics, and it just feels warmer on the really cold days. If it’s warm, I hike with just the baselayer on top, no jacket until it’s time to ski. Cold days, I’ll put on a softshell for the hike and then add another layer for the descent. Even if it’s snowing lightly and I don’t have a jacket on, getting wet doesn’t seem to be a problem.

In fairness, Enel pointed out in the comments of my post a year ago that there are other companies making great stuff out of wool. But after a year of heavy use, I have no complaints about the construction or performance of my Smartwool.

First time

2011-01-14T15:46:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, the stars finally aligned to take this little girl alpine skiing for the first time.

So we went to the store (three of them actually) to get a hula hoop. Hula hoops are hard to find these days, but they are a great aid for teaching little ones how to ski.

We take things slow with the kids. Get them used to how it feels to glide on snow first. Then we’ll work on pizzas and french fries and making turns. We’re in it for the long haul, so if a kid is cold after one run, we call it a day (free after three is nice for this). Kids who ski are liberally rewarded with hot chocolate and goodies. Make it fun and keep them coming back.

We took this approach with the older two, and they think skiing is fun. They even like skiing together. And, believe it or not, with their parents.

JunkieBoy is tearing things up in the new boots and helmet he got courtesy of RabidRunner. She may not be a good mormon, but she’s got the love thy neighbor thing pretty dialed. That’s all that matters if you ask me.

The trashiest, most awesome thing I have ever done

2011-01-11T11:38:00.001-07:00

Friday night I took JunkieBoy to the monster truck show at the Maverik Center. Admission cost about the same as going to the movies (though we did have to pay for parking). Concessions were about the same as going to the movies. Entertainment value was head and shoulders above going to the movies, especially movies that are age-appropriate for JunkieBoy.

Of course there were lulls in the action. Thankfully those were filled by people watching that was the best I’ve experienced since the Rush concert. A representative sample was the woman with a topless mermaid tattooed on her upper arm. The mermaid may have been her own likeness. Awesome.

We brought our own earplugs, because Dug warned us it would be loud. They sold earplugs and aspirin (spelled asprin) at the concession stands for those who forgot.

The monster trucks did three competitions: wheelies; drag race over crushed cars; and freestyle. Between each round some locals drove old Chevys and Fords through a mud bog. Bigfoot won all three rounds. Here’s a clip of the freestyle performance.

Good morning

2011-01-07T13:27:00.001-07:00

How do you say good morning?

Full circle

2011-01-06T16:21:00.001-07:00

Back in the 1980’s, my sisters referred to me as a “modem monster,” because I would be up late at night on my Commodore 64, connecting to bulletin boards via a 300 baud* modem. This would be no cause for concern today, because they could just use their mobile phones. But back then, it was a major hassle, because we had a single landline for the entire household of nine people. Which is why I did it late at night.

*If you understood what I just said, you dated yourself. And you are a nerd.

Bulletin boards were this way geeky thing computer nerds used to talk to each other without really having to talk to each other. I think the one I liked was run by someone who called himself “Bill the cat.” They allowed multiple nerds to congregate in one place and share inane facts about their lives via computer. (This may sound familiar.)

Then along came the worldwide web and killed all the bulletin boards.

Then along came Mark Zuckerberg, who stole an idea from his college friends that those college friends stole from old computer nerds: a bulletin board. Except they called it Facebook. And Facebook promptly killed the worldwide web.

Advertisers like Facebook because Facebook knows everything about its users, so whenever you look at an ad, they know who looked and lots of demographic details about the looker. They pay a premium for that shit. Goldman Sachs just paid a premium for a piece of the Facebook action because advertisers are willing to pay a premium to get in on it. And Goldman will still make money on the deal.

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is great for keeping tabs on friends you couldn’t otherwise be bothered to spend time with. It’s a stalker’s dream come true. It would be easier to navigate if the posts were organized by topic. But then again, the only two real topics are: “feel sorry for me because my life sucks;" or "be jealous of me because my life is better than yours."

Game on?

2011-01-04T14:08:00.001-07:00

I gained two kilos* within a week after Lotoja. I raced all of cyclocross season overweight and then promptly gained another couple kilos after cross season ended. I am, at the moment, comfortably plump**.

*Yes, I’m still committed to using the metric system on this blog. I don’t use it all the time in everyday life, because that would be annoying and in some cases, impossible. For instance, I can’t go to the grocery store and insist that they repackage my gallon of milk into metric containers or ask the gas station to re-price my fuel on a per liter basis.

I do, however, think that making a hard and fast nationwide conversion to the metric system would be a great use of stimulus dollars. Anyone who works as an engineer, mechanic, scientist, or in the medical field is already accustomed to using metric. It would take us a year to make the switch, and by the end everyone who wasn’t using it already would be used to it. Then all we’d need to do is start dipping our French fries in gravy, and the Canadians would have nothing left to laugh at us about. Well, except for our screwed up healthcare system. But that’s another tangential rant for another post.

**But not so plump as to adversely affect my Wii fit age. My three year old’s Wii fit age is 28, and everyone I know who has tested has a Wii fit age greater than their actual age. So last night when I did the assessment, I was pleasantly surprised to have a Wii fit age of 34. Wii fit age is based mostly on a balance test. I guess skiing and riding bikes are good for your balance. Who knew?

Rachel and one of her friends decided that they were going to kick off the new year with a fitness challenge (novel idea, I know). In a misguided show of solidarity, I agreed to participate. The list of rules is quite lengthy, but part of the point is austerity, including additional penalties if you fail to live up to the rules.

I won’t bore you with the details, but the bottom line is that we had cake at work yesterday to celebrate a high-volume day, and I ate the fruit off of mine and threw the rest away. For dinner last night, we had an assortment of vegetables, most of them raw. Halfway through dinner, I was ready to swear off bike racing and dieting forever. Except that there wasn’t anything in the fridge that wasn’t part of the program, so it wouldn’t have done any good.

The only upside is that one of the rules is a minimum of seven hours of sleep each night. So last night I went to bed at 9:30 to ensure I got the minimum before getting up at 4:30 to ski with Jon. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before, and I don’t think I’ve ever had such an easy time getting out of bed to ski before work.

Unfortunately, the good feeling was short lived. I never really got into a rhythm hiking, and within an hour, I was running on fumes. When we got to the top of Argenta after just under two hours of hiking, I was cooked. And today, skiing down wasn’t a breeze, as the wind, sun, and other skiers had conspired to make for a somewhat challenging descent. By the time we exited, I was glad to be done. I don’t think most diets are designed with highly active, reasonably competitive, endurance athletes in mind.

The views at the top were nice, though.

On Saturday, we brought in the new year right, with good skiing and good scenery in Days Fork.

What’s the saying? My life is better than your vacation? With as many times as the Powderbirds dropped people on top of the slope we had already skied, I’d say that’s the case for at least a few people.

Help a brother out

2010-12-30T12:28:00.001-07:00

For all the things I love about living in Draper, today isn't the happiest day of my residency. For starters, I need to go get some new shear pins for the auger on my snowblower. Which reminds me that the first one I broke was because I sucked the steel cap over my water main into my snowblower because the city had (has) failed to bolt it down. I thought I was going to die and my snowblower was going to be destroyed.

But the thing that really has my goat is that it's my responsibility to keep the road clear between the edge of where the road is plowed and my mailbox. Which wouldn't be so bad except the guy in the giant snowthrower that they bring in for occasions like today's snowmageddon when just pushing the snow around isn't going to cut it has been down my street three times now, the last time just driving through without even running the auger. This is as close as he got to my mailbox.

Could you maybe give me something more to work with?

Happy Holidays…is what terrorists say

2010-12-22T11:27:00.001-07:00

Happy Holidays…
…is what terrorists say.
Merry Christmas from Jack and Avery

So reads the Christmas card being sent by Jack Donaghy and Avery Jessop on 30 Rock. And in a season dominated by “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings,” it’s an unusual sentiment. The fictional Jack and Avery celebrate Christmas, and they don’t care who knows.

I celebrate Christmas. My view of it is somewhat nuanced and complex, though. I don’t believe the 25th is the calendar date on which an eight pound, six-ounce, newborn infant Jesus, with his golden fleece diapers, don’t even know a word yet, just a little infant and so cuddly, but still omnipotent, came into this world.

But I do celebrate the message of peace, tolerance, and compassion attributed to Jesus, even if I view the account in Luke 2 as more mythology and allegory than history. Nevertheless, if someone sends me a Christmas card depicting an infant in a manger on a winter night with shepherds and wise men standing watch, I don’t consider it cause to start an argument.

Moreover, if someone doesn’t celebrate Christmas at all but wishes me a happy Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Winter solstice, or anything else, I’m happy to embrace the good in whatever message is associated with that celebration and wish the same upon them in return.

A free and open discussion of one another’s beliefs increases understanding and mutual respect and decreases the narrow-mindedness that leads to hate, bigotry, and violence. The irony is that we may publicly demur from using specific words for the sake of political corectness, while in private (or not) take actions that are in reality far more harmful.

A Christmas or other holiday card for many is the most public statement they make all year. It’s the vehicle for reaching out to distant friends and family to wish them well and to remind them that they are cared for. Such a gesture, regardless of whether the sentiment expressed is consistent with the recipient’s belief system, is no cause for offense. Instead, it’s an opportunity to share the good of whatever belief system we espouse, whether it’s divine or humanistic at its core. And as the recipient of such a message, it may prompt us to learn about others, what they believe, and what motivates them to be better people.

As we read, write, speak, and listen, may we use our words to open minds, to enhance understanding, and to foster mutual respect. And through our actions may we be merciful, comfort those who mourn, and be peacemakers. Merry Christmas.

What Ricky Bobby can teach us about skiing

2010-12-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

For those named Rachel or otherwise averse to coarse, chauvinistic, or misogynistic language, I suggest reading something else.

You're probably wondering what this video has to do with skiing. Not much actually. I just think it's hilarious and was looking for a good reason to post it. There is one line, however, that's applicable. After the prayer is over, Walker says, "Dad, you made that grace your bitch."

And if you want to ski well, you need to do the same thing with your skis that Ricky Bobby does with the grace: you need to make them your bitches. Or at least show them who's in charge.

JunkieBoy and I were skiing at Solitude, his first day of the year, and his first day on new equipment. The skis are 110s, whereas last year he was on 87s. He was struggling to make turns and keep them under control. His confidence wasn't there.

So the next time up the lift, I asked him "do you want to know the secret to skiing well?" He of course answered in the affirmative. So I told him. Except I didn't actually tell him to make his skis his bitches because a) he wouldn't have understood what that meant, and b) anything you tell a first-grader is bound to be repeated at school. (He'll eventually learn the phrase and what it means, but I can wait. And I'm even OK if he doesn't learn it from me.)

Next run, he showed them who was the boss. He skied great, probably as well as he was skiing last year. So on the lift I asked him, "what happens when you show the skis who's in charge?"

"They do what you tell them to."

"And what happens if you don't show them who's boss?"

"They run away from you."

It's as simple as that.

Cyclocross Nationals 2010

2010-12-16T22:17:00.002-07:00

Not sure what to really talk about in this post, because it’s a race report, but the point of going to nationals, for me at least, wasn’t really to race. I just wanted the experience. I pretty much suck at cross, so I was never going to win.

So why go? Good question. First, it was in Bend, and I had friends going, which meant lodging and travel costs could be shared, so it would be a cheap trip. Second, next two years it’s in Madison, WI. In January. Average low in Madison in January is 5 degrees F. And Madison is three times farther away than Bend. Not happening. The two years after that, it will probably be on the East Coast. Farther to travel, more challenging logistics getting bikes there. This was my chance, so I took it.

I raced, twice in fact. On Wednesday I did the non-championship race. Which is basically a B flight race, as the big dogs don’t bother with it. It was a chance for a decent result. Except that callups were in random order. I started on the last row, 31st called up of 39 racers.

I raced OK, picking off quite a few riders in front of me and was in or near the top ten when I burped a tire. Ordinarily I’d keep riding and hope it didn’t go flat because I had no other choice. But Daren brought one of Tanner’s bikes as a B bike for me. It was a 56, I ride a 52, but it was faster than running with my bike on my shoulder. I came in for a bike change and lost a few places. Steve told me a while back that if I ever considered racing on a tubeless setup again, he would just kick me in the nuts and save me the disappointment. Next year I’m gluing up tubulars for sure. Only brought one racer back after the bike change and ended up 16th. Not embarrassing.

Thursday, Daren’s brother Doug raced in the 60-64 age group. Doug was on the podium last year, so he got a first row callup, and finished eighth.

I had chatted with Doug at the races before the trip but hadn’t spent a great deal of time with him. I will admit to a bit of apprehension about spending a week with a guy who’s my dad’s age and has had some pretty important jobs in the LDS church* (stake president, among other things, for those that are curious). Shouldn’t have worried. Don’t know if he was faking or not, but Doug followed the surefire approach to make me think highly of you: he laughed at my jokes.

*Maybe this wouldn’t have been cause for a potentially awkward situation in the past, but not quite a year ago, we stopped attending the LDS church. The short version of the story is that Noah’s Ark and Jonah and the whale weren’t the only miracle stories my rational mind could no longer accept as fact.

Next we watched Kris Walker win. Again. She is fast. It was also one of the closer races of the week, with Kris getting out to an early lead, being brought almost all the way back by Marilyn Ruseckas (who won this group last year—Kris won 45-49 last year), then accelerating on the last lap for a gap she held to the line. Great stuff.

Following Kris’s race, Daren had his qualifying time trial*, and then we watched Ned “the Lung” Overend put on a clinic en route to another title.

*For age group races, the front row callups were based on last year’s top eight. The rest of the start order was based on a short, one-lap time trial held on a separate course the day before the championship race.

Then we watched the single speed race. Adam Craig lit it up, wearing cutoffs and a BMX lid, no less.

Bo Pitkin made the locals proud with an impressive 11th place finish. I was wishing Rick and Brad could have been there—they would have had a blast.

Friday was my TT, wherein I proved that my time trialing ineptitude knows no bounds. I was 67th out of 87, which meant starting on the tenth row in my championship race. After my TT, we watched Daren race, where he had a season’s worth of bad luck in an hour. I don’t have any pictures because I was in the pits and busy trying to get a pedal fixed after he rolled in on lap two with a spindle and no body attached to his crankarm.

The Rev was also in Daren’s race, but his luck was the good kind, and his fitness was even better. He finished seventh. He had to hurt himself pretty bad to do it, and it was an amazing performance to watch. Locals Tim and Steve Briley and Shane Dunleavy were also in that race. I yelled so much that as of today, a week later, I still have no voice.

Saturday was my main event in the afternoon. 50 meters in, there was a crash in front of me. About 20 guys were piled up in the road, so I hit the brakes and stopped just short. Just in time for the 20 guys behind me to cove over the top of me like a wave. I was in the middle of the pile, literally the last guy to get my bike untangled. I straightened out my bars and passed about five guys running to the pits. Then I got on Tanner’s bike and passed ten more on lap one. Laps two and three, I passed another five or so each time around, but that was all the time I was going to get. The leader was gaining on me, so I got pulled.

Not the way I wanted things to go, but that’s racing. I would have liked to have had a fair shot of at least racing to not get pulled, and I think maybe I could have done it without the crash, but by no means did it ruin my week. I was racing for fun, and the three laps I was out there driving through 10cm of mud were a riot.
Rico was up right after me, and he was racing to win, with a legitimate shot of doing it. He led lap one, and we got very excited. But he just didn’t have enough to hold it longer than that. With all the mud on the course, there was no place to recover.

With the racing out of the way, Sunday was for fun. We got to check out the pros’ bikes, watch them warm up, and generally act like little kids. We bumped into Chris Horner sitting on the side of the road, playing with his kids. I won’t go into the race detail, because you can read about it elsewhere. I had one of the best seats in the house, though, as I was in the pits for Eric during the elite race—right next to the Cannondale guys—and got up close and personal with the contenders as they came through. Way cool.

To paraphrase Alex, the only thing any of us really has is time. The secret of life is figuring out what to do with it. Regardless of how the racing turned out, taking a week to go to cyclocross nationals was time well spent. Even if it did mean doing some pretty nasty laundry when I got home.

Vote for justice

2010-12-14T14:59:00.001-07:00

Just got back from Cyclocross Nationals yesterday. Raced lousy but had a great time. I’ll pull together a report shortly. Until then, here’s a thought-provoking video appropriate for this season when we celebrate compassion, mercy, and peace.

On personal morality and the existentialism of cyclocross racing

2010-12-05T21:16:00.006-07:00

A couple weeks ago, I got a new issue of VeloNews in the mail. Being the cycling nerd that I am, I usually read every issue cover-to-cover, including the reader letters. One reader letter that stood out was written in response to an article about giving Floyd Landis a feed bag at Tour of Battenkill earlier this year. The writer felt some angst about feeding an admitted doper. The reader letter read as follows:

Concerning Andrew J. Bernstein and his conflicted feelings surrounding the feeding of Floyd Landis--I had the privilege of standing roadside during this year's Cascade Cycling Classic, where I cheered for a post-confessional Floyd Landis. I have never been a doper. I have never tried marijuana, nor do I wear high waters and ride a fixed gear. I don't drink coffee like so many road buddies who don't consider caffeine a performance-enhancing drug. I have never tried beer and don't understand why so many cyclocross riders think it helps their performance. I try not to judge those people. There are so many things we could get hung up on regarding others, so lighten up and hand a guy his lunch.

-James Ford >>Eugene, OR

I respect the sentiment of the letter. Floyd served his suspension. And while I don't like that he chose to dope and then chose to deny it for so long after testing positive, I do like that he's come clean and has finally broken the omerta in an effort to bring more accountability to the sport. I would feel honored to hand Floyd a musette.

The thing that struck me about the letter was the phrase (emphasis mine) "I try not to judge those people." Perhaps I'm reading more into it than the author intended, but the self-righteousness of the assertions "I don't drink coffee," and "I have never tried beer," coupled with the statement "I try not to judge" left me wondering what exactly there was to judge about these actions.

Yes, caffeine is a performance enhancer. It happens to be a legal one. Getting plenty of sleep, eating apples, and doing intervals are also performance enhancers. They are also legal. The thing that separates these activities from using EPO or HGH is that EPO and HGH are against the rules and therefore against the spirit of fair play. Some may deem the use of EPO or other blood boosters necessary to complete a three-week stage race and for that reason suggest they should be legalized. While I don't think they are necessary to complete the race, they may be necessary to compete at the level we as fans are accustomed to enjoying. But until the day comes that such methods are legalized, they are cheating. And until the day comes that coffee (or Rock Star) or getting plenty of sleep or eating apples are banned, they are legal and consistent with fair play. There is nothing to judge if an athlete chooses to employ these legal methods. So I'm not sure what Mr. Ford is "trying not to judge" in this situation.

As for 'crossers drinking beer, it's part of the culture of the sport. Nobody would tell you with a straight face that it improves performance, it's just something that a subset of the racers enjoy. (There's a good case to be made that beer diminishes performance, since beer is basically empty calories with little nutritional value, and it's taboo enough amongst pro roadies that a certain team manager threw a fit when his athletes were drinking it.) Some may say beer helps them race better, but their tongues will be firmly embedded in cheeks when doing so. However, provided the person drinking the beer is of legal drinking age, again, there's nothing to judge. If one person chooses not to drink beer, that's his choice made according to his values and judgment. But those values are his alone and are not a benchmark against which to judge another.

Actually, the one case that can be made for beer as a performance-enhancer in cyclocross is that it numbs the inevitable post-race pain, perhaps enough that one might forget the anguish sufficiently to keep lining up race after race, suffering beat-down after beat-down, until he has finally done it enough to actually have some degree of skill at this cursed and sadomasochistic sport. If beer is the only thing that allows someone to persist as a cyclocross racer, then yes, it's a performance enhancer. But it's still legal.

Which brings me to my present existential crisis with regard to cyclocross racing. The existential dilemma we all face is that no matter how much we do to improve ourselves and others, eventually we will deteriorate and die. So the question becomes, why not shorten the suffering and commit suicide? According to some schools of existential thought, the greatest victory is accepting the absurdity of life and persisting, choosing not to take the suicide shortcut.

As bike racers, our lives are even more absurd than normal. The inherent suffering that's part and parcel of the human condition is not enough for us, so we inflict more. Either we have not only accepted the absurdity of life but embraced it to the point of trying to one up humanity in the suffering department, or we're just so stupid we haven't yet realized just how absurd it is to deprive ourselves of food, free time, and disposable income so that we can race our bikes, in many cases racing with no hope whatever of actually winning. And just as in life, no matter how much we improve, not only will we eventually deteriorate and die, but there will always be someone faster. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

I got into cyclocross for fun. I got into it because of the laid-back atmosphere. I enjoy competing, I enjoy pushing myself as hard as I can go. I enjoy a challenge. I prefer to be the slow guy in a fast group so I can watch myself improve, and cyclocross certainly affords that.

But Saturday's race was not fun. The mud was challenging, the race was challenging. I pushed myself. It had all the makings of a good day on the bike, but it wasn't. On the first lap while we were riding a stretch of pavement, I accelerated to go to the front of the group I was with. It was the type of pass I've made 100 times without incident in road races. But as I came upon the lead rider, we made contact. I thought I was riding straight, I'm sure he thought the same, but we somehow got tied up at the elbows, and he went down.

I felt bad about it. It certainly wasn't intentional, but whose fault it was is immaterial because there's no way for him to uncrash. Let's just say that his reaction was a far cry from Jeremy C. saying "rubbing is racing" when he and I bumped shoulders in a crit a while back. It sucks he went down, but he got back on, bike and body both still in racing condition. Not too bad as crashes go, but you'd never guess that from his response--it was everything cyclocross racing is not supposed to be. At least I avoided Adam Myerson's fate, and he didn't punch me. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

Only a flesh wound

2010-12-03T14:33:00.001-07:00

If you live in SLC, go check out the Elliott’s Angels’ Holiday Boutique fundraiser for cystic fibrosis at 2066 Hubbard. It will be running today until 6:00 and tomorrow from 10:00 to 5:00. Lots of cool stuff for a great cause, including some delectable comestibles from my lovely wife. I stopped by earlier and saw only women in attendance, but seriously, guys, head over there if you’re looking for stocking stuffers for the women on your list.

This Dawn Patrol movie is generating a lot of buzz. So much that the producers have seen fit to make a second trailer for it. Check it out.

I got out again this morning, but conditions weren’t quite so good. On the descent I hit a buried stump and thought I had broken my ankle. It hurt. Substantially. The week before cxnats, no less. I thought my trip was over. I managed to ski out, but turning left was a problem since I couldn’t weight my right ski. My apologies to any groups that came after us for the 181cm wide sideslip down the lower 1/3 of Scotties.

After some ice and vitamin I, it seems OK. Just another sprain. How you can sprain an ankle with a ski boot on, I have no idea, but I managed to do it. Still not the best way to start the day. Then Rachel hit a piece of debris on the freeway and smashed her bumper and flatted a tire. Oh well. We’ve had worse.

Juan Grande Productions

2010-12-01T12:39:00.001-07:00

Jon put together a highlight reel from yesterday morning. As the city sleeps, indeed.

Breakfast with Ingrid

2010-11-30T12:00:00.001-07:00

Skiing this morning sucked. I wish I’d stayed in bed. Mike M., Jon S., and Aaron were lamenting their choice as well, wishing they, like Adam, had had headaches and chosen not to come.

Rick isn’t in any of the photos. He climbed up with us but just did one lap. Said something about having breakfast with Ingrid. Which was unfortunate, because he missed seeing Mike skid his Megawatts halfway across highway 210.

Unless you really were having breakfast with Ingrid, you should have been skiing. But you already knew that. Sorry about the headache, Adam.

Who knew?

2010-11-29T17:41:00.001-07:00

All these years I’ve thought that skiing was about the only way to have fun in the snow. To that end, on Wednesday I ducked out of work just early enough to take in a couple backcountry laps with Daren. It was cold. Like minus 11 F (minus 33 with windchill!) kind of cold. My fingers, face, and toes felt every bit of it. Still, the snow was nice. Really nice for November.

Thursday I enjoyed a nice recovery meal. I was sure to eat my five a day of fruits and veggies. Although I’m not sure that fruit stuffed between pie crust counts towards the five a day. I don’t particularly care.

Friday was more backcountry skiing. What a difference a couple of days make. The sun was out, the snow was still nice, but it was warm. Like hike in your base layer with no jacket kind of warm. I’m already up to eight days of skiing this season, and I’ve skipped most of the Saturdays to race cyclocross. We’re off to a good start—hope it keeps up.

I’ll admit, though, that I was a little reluctant on Saturday to give up the chance at more skiing to race cross in the snow. I was apprehensive about cold, I was apprehensive about traction and crashing. I just didn’t think it would be very fun.

How wrong I was.

I lined up in the 35A group. There were about a dozen of us. The five contenders—Art, Bo, Tom, Tim, Gary—got an early gap. I was right behind Mike K. through lap one, but eventually lost him and had Seth, Jay, and Mark P. on my wheel. I slipped in the off-camber section and went from the front of this group to the back, but took the front again when we got to a straightaway on lap two.

Legs felt good and three of us opened a small gap on the fourth. But with the snow and ice on the ground, staying with the group and shedding anyone else would require some skill just to stay upright.

There was one section with a patch of ice right at the bottom of a dip. It was straight and high speed, but as I rolled through it, I had to turn my wheel slightly to keep balanced, and when my wheel hit dirt again, it grabbed and burped. I was tentative with the low tire, but it had enough pressure to keep riding. Traction was actually better, I just had to be careful with it to keep from going flat.

Then I burped again in the same place, but this time it didn’t hold. Tire went completely flat. I had a CO2 cartridge in my pocket, so I aired it back up, but by that time the three I had been with all passed me, and I wasn’t bringing them back unless they suffered their own misfortune.

Keeping the bike upright is part of racing and one of the more engaging aspects of cyclocross. Sure I’m disappointed about my tire, but it was my fault. Had I ridden cleaner, I wouldn’t have burped it. After I burped it once, I should have found another line. Maybe tubulars wouldn’t burp, but they may have rolled off the rim. After every race there will be “if only” moments. It’s up to me whether I use these moments as learning experiences or just another lame excuse.

The last two laps, I found a line through the snow that avoided the ice altogether, but it was too little, too late. Inexplicably, I was still having a ridiculous amount of fun. I was on the edge of crashing pretty much all the time and even went down once on the last lap. I didn’t care.

I went into the race dreading the snow but raced nonetheless out of a sense of duty. It’s quite likely nationals will be snowy, so I figured I better practice. I came away hoping that there’s snow on the ground at nationals and that there’s snow on the ground for the remaining UTCX races.

Brad has been having an ongoing debate with himself about racing with gears or on his single speed. He concluded that he didn’t care whether he could get better results racing with gears, he was having more fun on the single speed. I feel the same way about racing in snow. I’m not the best bike handler and won’t likely get better results in the snow (unless it keeps faster people from even showing up), but I had a helluva lot of fun and can’t wait to do it again.

Decisions

2010-11-23T12:32:00.001-07:00

Daren and I went backcountry skiing Saturday morning. Winds were nuking—at one point I had to hunch over to avoid being blown over.

Wind is not conducive to avalanche safety. Wind can redistribute snow into wind slabs many times thicker than a layer of new snow from even the largest storms. So we made the decision not to ski the north-facing slope on the lee side of the ridge we had just climbed. The south-facing aspect was surprisingly good.

Sunday morning, Daren sent me a text asking if I had seen Bart’s observation from Saturday. Same aspect and elevation, less than 200 meters from the slope we were considering skiing.

As you can see from the picture of the Samurai holding his pole up, that wind slab was pretty deep.

This morning, Mike H., Tanner, and I were back to the same spot. The wind was still blowing.

Dug et al opted not to even poke around Days and skied the south aspect out. But we figured we were there, so we may as well check the snow out.

Mike kicked half a dozen cornices and didn’t get anything to move. He kicked one particularly large cornice directly above the lower angle slope we were considering skiing, and nothing moved. “That cornice was definitely heavier than a skier,” he observed.

Still, we decided to dig a pit. We did an extended column test that failed and propagated about 60cm deep with a Q1 shear at four taps with just the weight of my hand. Below the slab that failed was a layer of sugary, faceted, weak snow.

Anything that fails with the weight of your hand is a red flag. Anything that shears at Q1 (a clean break between two layers) is a red flag. Put the two together, and it may not matter that the slope is less than 30 degrees.

The south aspect skied great. Snow was soft, and even though visibility was poor, it was still fun. Incredibly fun when you consider it’s still November. Tanner headed to Alta for more first tracks. Mike and I went to work. When I got to work, I read the following in today’s avalanche forecast:

Dropping a cornice on a slope, seeing no results, and diving in is asking for trouble.

Um, yeah.

Jonah and the whale

2010-11-19T12:11:00.002-07:00

I don’t have a lot of time to sit down and read books. I’m too busy watching TV. But watching TV is difficult when I’m commuting, what with the need to keep it at 80 while I’m glued to the bumper in front of me and updating my Twitter status and all (though I would never text while driving). So I listen to audiobooks.

Audiobooks are awesome. It’s like story time when I was in elementary school but even better because there aren’t little girls doing each other’s hair or boys picking their noses or trying to give each other buttercups. I’ve read, or rather had read to me, various novels, memoirs*, and even some non-fiction that I would never have made it through otherwise.

*I’m particularly fond of the memoirs of men who are gay or grew up the sons of alcoholics in Depression-era Ireland and highly recommend Dry, Running with Scissors, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and Angela’s Ashes. Angela’s Ashes I haven’t finished yet, but it’s way awesome so far. I started it after a succession of Hemingway books following which I didn’t think I could bear any more Hemingway because it was too depressing. Turns out Hemingway’s stories are like the Brady Bunch meets Leave it to Beaver by comparison. But it’s still worth reading, as is For Whom the Bell Tolls.

But the “had read to me” part is important. Because the reader* matters. A lot. Some books are fantastic on their own but made even better with a good reader. The Book Thief is one of those. Other books I can tell would have been more enjoyable with a better reader.

*I have a hard time saying “the reader” after that creepy (but good) movie of the same name where Kate Winslet plays the illiterate Nazi cougar. I even considered titling this post “the reader” but couldn’t bring myself to do it because of the association.

One book that it never even occurred to me to listen to as an audiobook is the Bible. Because quite frankly I don’t think there’s a reader alive who could keep the passages with all the begats or the various and sundry rules about how to treat unclean women or how to properly slaughter sheep from becoming terminally boring. Or at least I thought that until I saw this video.

The story of Jonah from Corinth Baptist Church on Vimeo.

I would totally listen to the Bible as an audiobook if she were telling the stories. Hallelujah.

My face hurts

2010-11-17T21:02:00.004-07:00

I have a hard time getting out of bed before 6:00 a.m. to ride my bike. The thought of riding after dark, in the cold, is only appealing when there's no viable alternative. So why is it that getting up at 4:30 to start hiking in the dark in the winter with the cold and wind is not a problem at all?

Maybe watching the sunrise over the Wasatch is part of it. Maybe first tracks is another part of it. Oddly enough, conditions in which I would be miserable on the bike, I love on skis. I don't mind foul weather. In fact, I kind of get a high from being out in it.

And evidently I have no shortage of friends who think likewise. This morning we split into two groups, Ben and his crew heading to Grizzly Gulch, the rest of us to Days. In the photo above, Mike is dropping into Days. The Grizzly crew didn't have it quite so good.

Mike disappeared into a cloud of cold smoke. The north-facing descent into Days was great, but the south-facing descent off of Flagstaff had us nervous. Coverage was thin and a bit wind scoured. We were just hoping to avoid rocks. Instead, we enjoyed some of the best turns in shallow snow I have ever experienced. Jamie summed it up best when he said "I thought my legs were going to be sore, but it's my face that hurts from smiling so much."

UTCX #8 – State Championships

2010-11-15T18:09:00.001-07:00

Saturday was the state championship race, held at Mount Ogden Golf Course. Hands-down my favorite venue of the year, even if Seth described it as “deciding the cyclocross champ and hill climb champ in the same race.” There was a decent-sized climb that changed the dynamics substantially. There was also an absence of technical elements, with two barriers being the only time you’d consider getting off the bike*. Intentionally, at least.

*Bunny hoppers like Rico and Bart never got off the bike.

My tirade against sandbaggers notwithstanding, I decided to race the B flight. My motivation was primarily that Adam and my brother Steve race B, and I had never raced against them with fresh legs. I wanted to see how I measured up. Nate Drozd deserves props for racing in the A flight, where he got a respectable result on a course I don’t think suits his strengths—I expect he’ll move further up the results sheet next week at Wheeler Farm.

We had 37 starters in our race, most of whom showed up early to stake out a spot. Just before callups, three guys from The Church of the Big Ring made the little ring* move of the day when they rolled in and entered the pen from the front, not the back, placing themselves on the first row. Brian Cadman would have been called up anyway, but I don’t see why the other two thought they were entitled to start from where they did. I wish I would have said something at the time (but I have a blog, so I can say what I want when I want and anyone who doesn’t like it can leave a comment, because comment moderation is also totally little ring).

*In other little ring news, Tim Az won both cat. 4 races at the USGP this weekend. Which is cool. Except Tim has been racing cross for three years, and has won a number of races and been on the podium in even more in that time. But since UTCX isn’t USAC sanctioned, none of that counts towards an upgrade, so when he races out of state, he’s a four. And since he doesn’t do much road racing, he can’t get an upgrade based on his road category.

I love UTCX. I love Matt’s commitment to it. I love having a dozen chances to race in that series plus nearly a dozen more in other races throughout the season. It contributes to Utah having one of the best racing scenes in the country. But would it kill us to get the races sanctioned? Sure, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference for Utah racers who just race the UTCX series, but you have to be a three to race at Nationals. Tim can’t race at Nationals. Tim beats the crap out of the fours at a USGP. Sanctioning and upgrades keep the competition competitive.

The little ring move didn’t make much difference for me. I was second row, had a good start and was fifth starting up the hill. Passed one on the hill and was fourth.

Next time up the hill, Joseph Moffett (Mad Dog Cycles) gapped us all. I knew I couldn’t climb with him, so I didn’t even try. I had second and third in sight when we entered a series of tight, 180 degree turns. I had good momentum through the turns when my tire washed out, and I was suddenly laying on my side, still clipped in.

I lost a few spots getting up and was in seventh. I chased hard the rest of the lap, probably a little too hard. My asthma kicked in as we passed the start/finish line. It felt like someone was standing on my chest, keeping me from filling my lungs more than half way with air.

I’ve had this happen before in road races, and I’ve sometimes been able to sit in until I recover. But I have to back way off or it just gets worse. There was nowhere to sit in, so I dialed it back and watched as seven guys rode past me on the climb. On the dirt road at the top of the climb, I got to where I could breathe again, so I started the work of bringing back the guys ahead of me.

Over the final two laps, I slowly clawed back all but two of the guys that passed me. Eric Martin (Skull Candy) and Mike Pratt (Canyon) were the last two that I caught and passed. I’ve raced with those guys enough on the road that there’s a bit of a friendly rivalry there. I led Eric from the top of the climb. My breathing still wasn’t normal, and he told me I sounded like his dog right before it died.

Just before the barriers, I hit it hard and got a little gap on Eric. I wasn’t going to catch Drew Free, my Revolution teammate who was the next guy up, so I focused on riding clean and just keeping it upright through the finish.

There was a 180 degree turn 50 meters from the end. I didn’t want to fall in that corner, so I took a foot out just in case. As I rounded the corner, I heard the click of a gear shifting. Mike Pratt had caught and passed Eric, had caught me, and was now starting to sprint, and I only had one foot clipped in.

I turned the cranks a couple times before I clipped in, managed to clip in, then sprinted as hard as I could. I beat Mike by maybe a wheel. As Daren put it after the race, encouragingly, I beat all the guys that mattered. Now I just need to figure out how to ride faster than the eight guys who were in front of me.

While I could have done without the crash, I’m happy with the race. The course wasn’t particularly technical, which was helpful to me. Technical would have been better for Daren, who finished third in the 45+ race. His brother Doug got his second win of the year, making him the 55+ state champion. Congratulations, Doug. Tanner had a great race and finished ninth in the Elites, despite a crash with two to go. Rick finished sixth in a stacked Singlespeed field, and Annie was one step off the podium in Women’s B.

I’m finally starting to figure out how to race cyclocross. I still suck, but each week I feel better. More importantly, though, I’m having a lot of fun. And getting my fix of self-inflicted suffering, which is perhaps the part of racing I’m most addicted to. Who knew skinny tires on dirt were such a riot?

Also known as Mark’s brother

2010-11-12T12:38:00.001-07:00

Anyone who has been to a cyclocross race or a criterium in Utah has probably been entertained by the commentary of Bruce Bilodeau. At the first UTCX race of the season, he saw my wife standing near the booth where he was doing commentary, so as I came through, he just went on and on about me, telling all sorts of lies about how tough I am and how much he likes racing with me.

Afterward, Rachel said “you should have heard what the commentator said about you!*”

*Since he wasn’t wearing his helmet and sunglasses, and was therefore wholly unrecognizable**, Rachel had no idea that “the commentator” was one of my racing friends.

**Cyclists have two ways of recognizing one another: based on the team kit, helmet, and sunglasses; and from behind. Bruce joked last night that he had to ask a couple of people to bend over so he could tell who they were. Which was somewhat ironic, because from behind Bruce is perhaps the most easily-recognizable racer in the state.

Afterward, Bruce said “I saw your wife standing right there, so I thought I’d give her a show.”

Bruce is no slouch on the bike, either. He won stage one and got second on GC at the Capitol Reef Classic. He toiled in the break at Tour DAY Park City, only to be derailed by a puncture. He’s a guy you want to be in a break with, because he takes his turns and has a smile on his face while doing so. Becoming friends with Bruce is one of the highlights of my 2010 racing season.

He was the obvious choice to MC last night’s Utah Cycling Association awards banquet. As he presented the award for the Cat. 3 series points leader, he said “this racer had 11 top tens, two wins, and five podiums in the UCA series….From Revolution-Cafe Rio, also know as Mark’s brother...”

Congrats, Steve, on a well-earned victory in the season series. Bruce’s “Mark’s brother” comment was funny, but it was all you out there on the road. You fought hard every race, and your individual results don’t reflect half of the contribution you made to the team.

And thanks to Bruce, Ferg and the UCA board, Marek, and everyone else that contributes to Utah having arguably the best race scene anywhere in the country.

Suspension of disbelief

2010-11-10T11:34:00.001-07:00

How many men do you know with gray eyes? I can’t think of any. Yet I don’t even know how many novels I’ve read where the action-hero-type protagonist has gray eyes.

And who does this gray-eyed hero fall in love with? A violet-eyed woman. Do you know any women with purple eyes? Didn’t think so.

Gray-eyed men and violet-eyed women are the unicorns of adult literature.

Wanna know what else would require a suspension of disbelief if I hadn’t experienced it myself? It’s November 10th, and I’ve skied three days this season already. Not just getting out on snow for the sake of getting out, either, but real, legitimate powder turns.

Yesterday after work, the Flyin’ Ute and I did a quick run up East Greeley just before the sun set. His first tour ever.

I think he’s hooked.

The Brazilian

2010-11-09T10:43:00.002-07:00

In road racing, and especially in time trials, racers get all geeked out over making their position, bike, etc. more aero. The arms race to shave every last gram and make every last part slice through the air as efficiently as possible is perhaps best embodied by the Reynolds RZR wheelset that has a retail price of $6000.

Turbo is the only person I know that races on these wheels. He works for Reynolds. The wheels are splendidly light and magnificently aero. But I’d need to make a lot more money than I do now for the marginal advantage they give me to be worthwhile. They have a 82kg rider weight limit. I wonder if that’s because riders over 82kg would break them, or because if you weigh more than 82kg you’ve got problems as a racer that these wheels can’t solve?

Other disciplines of racing, notably mountain biking and cross, are a little less obsessive about weight and aerodynamics. Having tires that adequately grip the course and being in a position on the bike to handle technical terrain will yield more speed than shaving a few grams or reducing a little drag.

Nevertheless, racers in these disciplines will still seek every perceived advantage, whether it has any real benefit or not, including one that can be had for free provided the racer owns a pair of scissors and can cut straight enough to remove all non-number material from the number plate. I’m not sure if the intent is to reduce weight or to improve aerodynamics. Maybe both. Either way, I’m a big fan of the number plate trimming style I fondly refer to as “The Brazilian.”

Photo brazenly misappropriated from Cycling Utah. Go give their fall/winter issue a look and patronize their sponsors so I don’t feel guilty about it.