Abstinence only

The Utah legislature passed, among other (whacky) things, a bill defining sex education as abstinence-only. Clearly, abstinence only sex education works, because abstinence only states have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy. This is because teens who have been taught that abstinence is the best method of birth control would never consider having sex outside of marriage.

Abstinence only states have the highest rates of teen pregnancy. Because guess what: people have sex. Not just adult married people, but adolescent people who, although perhaps not mature enough to successfully care for a child, are physically mature enough to bear one.

The irony here is that those of us who will teach our kids the realities of sex and how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy and disease, including the fact that the only certain protection is abstinence, aren't the ones who are concerned about having our children receive this instruction in schools. We already talk to our kids about the realities of sex and make sure they understand the risks and consequences of sexual activity.

The kids I'm more concerned about are those that receive no sex education at all other than abstinence (and perhaps the occasional Sunday school lesson in which someone licks the frosting off a cupcake). Because when these kids find themselves in a situation where their partner says something ridiculous such as that floating is OK, they won't know better. And I'd rather see these kids stop by Planned Parenthood before than after.

We're going to need a bigger boat

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.

36 out of 37

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.

Horses for courses

"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.

Convergence

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.

Why the face?

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.

Help a brother out

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?

Cyclocross Nationals 2010

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.

Cyclocross racing is like sex

Another two race weekend, one didn’t go so well, one did. Or at least it went well enough.

This little bit that Bart wrote about spinning a small gear in cross, well the part where he says “racer after racer was attempting to come out of a corner way over geared. By the time they got on top of the gear it was time to set up for another turn. You get little acceleration when over geared and lots of muscular damage/back pain.” You could substitute my name for “racer after racer,” and sure enough, I got little acceleration and lots of muscular damage/back pain. By the time my race was over, my back was cooked.

Bart pulled me aside after and explained what I had done wrong. But I’d have to wait to apply what he told me, because I left my B number plate at home, so I wouldn’t be tempted to use it in the afternoon. I did, however, pass along these words of wisdom to Steve, who used them to great effect. He finished seventh in the B race, his best result to date. Dial in the pacing a little more and practice some dismounts, and he’ll be on the podium.

Greyson Tipping (Revolution) was also privvy to Bart’s words of wisdom and applied what he learned to take the win. Even more impressive, though, is that the guy who finished right behind Greyson was Ryan Ashbridge (Revolution) on his single speed. Ryan and the other single speed competitors started three minutes after the B race. Ryan, with a three minute handicap, passed every rider in the B race save one, and was maybe 40 seconds behind him. Another impressive single speeder was Steve Wasmund (Cutthroat), who commuted to the race with no insignificant amount of gear.

Daren kept his streak alive with another dominating performance in the Masters 45 race. We were pre-riding the course, which was one loose 90 or 180 degree turn after another. I was behind Daren, and I told him “I can’t see your face, but I can tell you’re smiling about this course.” He turned to me and revealed the smile.

Daren’s brother, Doug (Canyon), traded wins yet again with Bob Walker: Texas Ranger (Contender). That means it’s Doug’s turn next week. Tanner raced well in the elites, spending a good chunk of it in the top 5 before finally being passed by Alex Grant (Cannondale) and Reed Wycoff (Contender), then losing one more place when he crashed. Bart, of course, took the win. It was a bike handler’s course, and nobody (locally at least) can touch Bart in that regard.

The Walker: Texas Ranger family doubled up, with Kris taking the women’s A win. AnneMarie White moved up to B after two wins in the C and finished sixth. Not too bad, Annie. Jason scored a top 10 in the Men’s C, so a good day for couples whose last names start with W. The Men’s C race saw a couple of blowouts that, as Jared Eborn (Porcupine) described them, “would have made Rose Park gangsters recoil with fear.” He should know, one was his. Kudos to Jared for running half a lap to the pit, getting a wheel, and continuing to race.

My race followed the usual script: I started fast and gradually faded, losing places each lap. Since I didn’t get the hole shot this week, I think I lost about the same number of places as last week, I was just starting from further down. I was still holding onto a top ten position when I crashed and lost a few more spots. As Bart pointed out, I raced the course all wrong and paid for it. I was pretty peeved at myself for the poor performance. At least I got paid.

Sunday was a chance for redemption. Cody (Ski Utah) convinced me to sign up for the A race. The fields are small enough in the Sabbath series that they race A and B together anyway, so I figured I’d give it a go and set a lofty goal of not finishing last. I figured it was a good chance to get a feel for how fast the fast guys really are.

Turns out they’re really, really, really, ridiculously fast. I used my sprinting skills to good effect on the start, fourth coming into the first corner behind Eric Rasmussen (Kuhl-Specialized), Brandon Cross, and Keegan Swenson (Cole Sport). They started gapping me right away, then in the first barriers, several guys went by me like I was standing still, including Matt Ohran (Cannondale) and Cody. In the turn coming out of the barriers, Brandon crashed, and my first thought was “ouch, I hope he’s OK.” Followed in rapid succession by “sweet, I might reach my goal of not finishing last*.”

*Terrible, I know. But cross racing is not road racing where it’s a major international scandal if a rider doesn’t wait for a competitor who’s had a mechanical. Part of that is because being skilled as a cross racer means having finesse, which helps one to avoid crashes and rolled tires and the like. Part of it is that cross racing is like a street fight on wheels.

After a lap or two, I had pretty much settled into my equilibrium point, and my race within the race was on. Dave Sorenson was just in front of me, and Troy Gorman (RMCC), who was at the front of only three racers in the B flight, was right behind, chasing hard.

The course was funky, featuring a short run-up that took you behind the backstop of the softball diamond, out onto the infield, off the field onto the sidewalk along the third base line, with a hard right hander beyond the outfield wall. Then you crossed the sand volleyball courts before winding back and forth up and down a short, steep hill.

A few laps in, I remembered Bart’s advice and dropped it into my small ring on the hills. This allowed me to conserve energy through this section and hit it hard on the fast straight that followed. It was enough that I was able to get around Dave on the flats and start building up a gap on him and Troy.

With about five to go (these were short laps—about five minutes each for me, about four and a half for Eric), I was feeling good about the gap I had built up when I washed out on the hard right hander exiting the ball field and crashed. I got back on, got my chain back on, and smacked my levers until they were nearly straight. I didn’t lose position, but Dave was now right on my wheel, and Troy was closer than ever.

I didn’t panic and tried to ride steady and not blow up. Dave was right there the whole time, then with two to go and Eric, Keegan, and Patrick having already lapped me, I could see Ohran and Cody right behind me as well. I was racing to keep four guys from passing me. I figured even if Dave passed me, if I could hold his wheel, I could outsprint him at the line. Thankfully it didn’t come to that, and when I hit it hard on the final straight after the hill, I had a little cushion before the end.

Officially I was 11th out of 13. Nothing to write home about, but I’ll take it. I’m happy enough with the result because I felt like I learned something the hard way on Saturday then put it into practice on Sunday. Little by little I will get there. As Cody’s girlfriend Candace put it, “cyclocross racing is like sex—it takes years of practice to become good at it.” To which I added “but also like sex, even if you perform poorly, it’s still a helluva lot of fun.”

Who are these people and where did they come from?

Saturday was my first ever cyclocross race. Ordinarily, I would spend this time of year riding my mountain bike for fun, not racing. But Daren has been pretty adamant that I race cross this year. When we were watching the Tour of Utah prologue, we bumped into Mike K. from Church of the Big Ring. Mike asked me if I was racing cross this year. Daren answered yes before I could say a word. So that’s what I’m doing. And Daren has come through in a huge way to make sure I’m as prepared as possible.

Saturday I somewhat self-consciously lined up with the 35B field. I was self-conscious about racing B because a lot of the guys I race with on the road race A. But considering I’ve never done this before, and it’s better to learn how to race from the front of the pack than the back, I figured I was OK to throw down in B initially. And 35B is even OK, because, well, I’m over 35. If I had any doubts about whether this was acceptable, they were assuaged when I saw Andre from Canyon also lining up in our group.

Since I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t even know how to pace myself, and didn’t get a good position on the start line (I counted 35 starters, about 30 of whom got there and staked out the good spots before I did), I lined up right behind Andre and figured I’d follow his wheel and see how things went from there.

Andre was the first guy to the top of the paved hill we started on. I did such a good job following him that you can just make out the white and blue of my helmet and my left foot behind him (440) in the picture above.

In hindsight, I followed him too well. Once we got onto the dirt, I could have gone faster, potentially off the front, potentially getting a gap on some of the chasers. But I didn’t. And there were guys that stuck my wheel for the whole of the first lap.

Turns out, two of these guys could climb well, because as soon as we got to the pavement to start lap 2, they came around. I passed Andre and started the dirt of lap 2 in third. I kept them in sight for most of that lap, but the separation between one and two and between two and me increased as we rode through the singletrack.

Then on the climb starting lap 3, I got passed by two other guys. I was now in 5th, off the podium. And there was no particular problem spot on the course where I was losing time, either. I lost time on the climb, I lost time in the dirt. The only place I managed to gain any ground was in the sand in the arena.

On the runup of lap 4, Mark F. from RMCC was right on my wheel. My only cross knowledge comes from two clinics and watching videos online, but I remember Art and Ali talking about using your bike to make yourself wide on the runups to avoid being passed. So that’s what I did. It sort of worked, as he had a hard time getting around me. But then I botched the remount and he went right on by. I was now in sixth.

I spent the fifth and final lap with guys in Contender and RMCC kits tantalizingly close, and since these were the teams of people who had passed me, I worked to bring them back. As I got around them, I realized these were Masters 45 racers that I was catching, and their 35B teammates—the people I was actually racing against—were still up ahead.

As we got to the road, Tim W. caught me and asked if this was the finish. I said it was, and he accelerated away from me. Tim’s a better climber than me, but I knew I could outkick him at the end. Which is why he accelerated early, and why I did my best to match the acceleration and keep him in sight. As we got closer to the line, he looked back, saw I was still there, and said “I went too early, didn’t I.”

I said “yep.” And sprinted for the line.

Daren crushed it in the 45 race, getting off to an early lead…

…and holding it for the duration. Nice to have a coach that knows what he’s doing out there.

Annie smoked the Women’s C field and got her first win.

Steve and Mike endured crashes and flat tires in the B race. I thought Steve might come away frustrated, but he loved it and is looking forward to going back. He’s also looking forward to the more roadie-friendly courses on the calendar.

Rick suffered a crash on the first lap that made his bike all but unrideable. Adam, in his second ever cross race, started towards the back and gradually picked guys off as he went, finishing 11th. Alex K. also finished 11th in his race, with JDub right behind him. Eber battled back from a mechanical to finish in the thick part of the pack. But I didn’t get to watch much of it because I was warming up for my race. Alex stuck around and gave me water handups and encouragement while JDub snapped photos.

Tanner, who has struggled to find training time in his first year of college, finished 9th in the A race and had held steady in the top 5 for most of it, only to fade a little at the end. He’ll be riding into form, not out of it, so that’s a good sign. Bart blew everyone away, winning the A race decisively. He’ll be scary this season, considering he’s also riding into form after not much MTB this summer.

And I have to mention Sunday’s Raleigh Cross race, which Cody from Ski Utah won in dramatic fashion. Steve and I have raced with Cody on the road a lot, having come up through the 4s together, and he’s always right there in the mix. But this was the first time he’s won a bike race, ever, so I’m super stoked, and so is he.

Speaking of riding into and out of form, I decided after the race to take a week off the bike. I’ll pay for it in the next couple races, but I’ve been racing on the road since March with only one week off. I felt some fatigue on Saturday, and it’s going to get worse rather than better if I don’t do something about it. Hopefully some recovery time will have me ready to peak at the late season races. We’ll see.

The real question I had after the race, though, is who are these people, and where did they come from? I know a lot of the road racers in Utah. I’m close enough to the MTB scene to know a lot of the players there as well. I didn’t know any of the five guys who beat me Saturday, and I probably only knew five of the guys in my field total. Same for the B race and pretty much every other field. I’m not so much surprised that there are people who just show up to race cross. It’s fun. I can see why it’s more appealing to some than other racing. But that they just show up for cross and then proceed to open a can of whoop ass on everyone else—everyone else who’s been training and racing all summer—is the surprising part. It’s a whole new set of racers I’ve got to try and figure out how to beat.

10 things I would rather do than play golf

Friday is our annual (except for last year, when we thankfully didn’t have it) company golf outing. And seeing as how I’ve been with the company for just under two years, it’s my first. In fact, thanks to last year’s hiatus, I didn’t even know it was a tradition until a few days ago.

It’s a four-man scramble, so I can completely suck, and as long as my team has at least one ringer, we’ll still do fairly well. Even if my team doesn’t have a ringer, I can blend into the mediocrity that is everyone else’s golf game.

You see, my company has about 25 people, all of four of whom play golf on a regular basis. We have eight people who ride bikes on a regular basis and about 25 people who like to go to the movies on a regular basis. So I can think of at least two other activities that would have been more popular than a golf outing.

But we’re having a golf outing, for better or for worse. I have therefore established two goals for myself for the upcoming round, a baseline goal and a reach goal. Baseline goal=hit the ball without missing. Reach goal=hit the ball productively enough that at least one of my shots is used.

In order to give myself even a reasonable chance of hitting my baseline goal, today at lunch I went to the driving range with Daren. In addition to opening up his garage as if it were my own personal service course and acting as my mentor for the upcoming ‘cross season, Daren, who is the equivalent of a Cat. 1 golfer, also agreed to accompany me to the driving range. Which basically meant do his best to coach me into some semblance of a decent swing only for me to ignore all of his coaching. I’m not sure which of us was more frustrated  with my pathetic skills and failure to implement his constructive feedback. At least I was consistently making contact (albeit not productively) by the time we were done.

I can’t say I had fun, though. I simply do not enjoy golf. Here are ten things I would rather do than play golf:

1. Chop onions.
2. Watch any of the Twilight movies.
3. Get tattoos on my eyelids.
4. Watch all of the Twilight movies back-to-back.
5. Shave another man’s back.
6. Invite the Jehova’s Witnesses in for a discussion.
7. Listen to Glenn Beck.
8. Perform my own vasectomy.
9. Campaign for Sarah Palin’s presidential election.
10. Work.

I’m trying to figure out if there’s a pressing deadline that I can invoke so I can stay at work instead of attending the golf outing on Friday. I’m sure I can come up with something between now and then.

Meth moms and shameless self-promotion

I’m guessing you’re more interested in the “meth moms” part of the post than the shameless self-promotion, so I’m going to get the self-promotion part out of the way first. That way I’m sure you read it.

Shameless self-promotion item #1: If you haven’t already, please donate to the Huntsman Cancer Foundation. 100% of what you donate goes to fight cancer, as the overhead and staff salaries of the foundation are paid by Mr. Huntsman. I was sort of ambivalent on fundraising and even doing Lotoja this year until I went for a ride with Matt Bradley the day before he went in for a pretty nasty surgery to treat his cancer. During the ride, Matt’s brother, Seth, asked if I was racing Lotoja. I gave him my ambivalent answer. Seth asked where he could go to donate to Huntsman. How could I not be 100% committed after that? Thanks, Seth. And thanks to everyone who has contributed.

Shameless self-promotion item #2: My lovely wife, Rachel, has opened a bakery. No retail operation, she’s just supplying coffee shops, or rather a coffee shop (for the time being), with an eye to supplying others, as well as catering business meetings. So, if you want to sample the delicious pastries, head over to Bad Ass Coffee Co. (3530 S. State in SLC) and ask for a Kona muffin or a caramel brownie or some Irish cream cheesecake. Or better yet, all three. If you’ve got a meeting or event that would be enhanced by some delicious pastries, drop her a note to see about placing an order.

Now, on to the meth moms.

I mentioned last year that down the hill from us on the Alpine/Highland side, one is likely to encounter stripper moms. Which would leave one to wonder whether down the hill from us on the Draper side such a phenomenon would also occur. Turns out the geographic separation has resulted in the evolution of a similar but not identical species (this is believed to be an example of divergence, as the two are believed to derive from a common ancestor).

Draper has a variety of mom (certainly not all of them) far more frightening* than the stripper moms: the meth moms.

*Not that the stripper moms are frightening. Indeed, as dug mentioned, there are worse things.

What, you may wonder, is a meth mom, and how did I become acquainted with them? As it happens, I like to ride my bike. And not just for leisure. Occasionally, I actually use my bike for transportation, riding it all the way from my house to my office or from my office to my house. And when I ride from my office to my house, I ride through Draper at approximately the same time a vast fleet of Escalades and Navigators is busy ferrying adolescents from one round of overprogramming to another.

These moms in Escalades seem to think that the gutter offers all the space I could possibly need to ride my bike safely. And that indeed, this allotment of the gutter is a gross allotment, and that the side view mirrors of luxury SUVs are exempt from any need to stay clear of the gutter and the vertical space directly above it.

The burning question, though, is whether this negligence is based on apathy or ignorance. Do these moms really not care about me, and would they just as soon see me wrapped around their axle as able to go to work and provide for three young children? I want to doubt this is the case (though I can’t rule it out completely).

Which leaves ignorance. How can they not notice a man dressed in brightly colored spandex? How can they not realize that he might need just a little bit of road space in order to be safe? One look in their eyes reveals the answer: stimulants are the only reason they’re able to maintain anything even resembling a wakeful state. And awake is a relative term that’s less distinct than you may realize from the comatose state they will undoubtedly enter when the chemicals leave their systems.

Hence the name meth moms. I’d wager that at least one of the three women who forced me into the gutter and in one instance the curb in a single two-block stretch of 123rd South was only awake because the meth was keeping her that way. And when you consider the pressure she’s under, you begin to see why she turned to such drastic measures rather than just lying down and taking a nap.

Draper moms’ reasons for meth use:

• When she got married at age 19, she was a size 2. And though it didn’t take much work to maintain at that age, at 39 and after having had four kids, it requires getting up at 4:30 a.m. to spend 60 minutes with a personal trainer in addition to the 60 minutes of cardio she’ll do on her own.
• Meth not only helps you stay awake (per the above), it also makes you less interested in food. So when two of the four kids are starving because they went straight from school to violin to volleyball practice, and the only place to eat en route is McDonald’s, meth helps you avoid the McNugget McTemptation.
• Increased libido. The downside of the fitness regimen is that the husband is not just interested in his summer intern, he’s still interested in his wife. And even though she’s sleep-deprived and starving all the time to stay fit while he, um, isn’t, the meth helps her feel somewhat interested in him.
• Meth makes you feel invincible. And while this can be a bad thing if you’re standing at the top of a 100 meter cliff, when you have four kids, all of whom have an overblown sense of entitlement, starting the day feeling invincible may be the only way to make it through to the end.

The big problem with all this, aside from how bad meth is (OK, so it’s probably not meth, maybe just lots and lots of diet coke), is that as invincible as a meth mom might feel in her 3,000 kilo Escalade, that’s how not invincible I am riding around in little more than my underwear at a speed almost as fast as you’re going in your car with no protection whatever offered by my 7 kilo bike. So do me a favor and give me some space as you come by, even if it means slowing down and getting your kid to swim team 30 seconds later.

Large, extra large, and 2XL

OK, so before I get into today’s post, I just had to repeat this line, which Andrew Hood must have been smiling when he wrote, about the upcoming Clasica San Sebastian:

…but the most combative rider at the Tour de France, Sylvain Chavanel, is sidelined with a toenail infection.

As you may or may not be aware, I have a couple of sites wherein people can post their times riding up some popular climbs. These sites are really more about dick waving than anything else because, due to self-selection, most of the times submitted are from people who are reasonably fast. If you’re just surviving the climb, after all, why would you want to announce to the world how long it took you? Especially if you had to stop and lean against the guard rail on your way up.

Anyway, not too long ago, I had someone submit a time for the north side of Suncrest. It was a fast time, too. He sent me his name, his time, and the date he did it, just like everyone else. And then he also pointed out that he did it on a Trek Madone.

Why the hell do I care what bike you did it on? One of my friends did it on a mountain bike, and I posted his time just like everyone else’s. Am I supposed to be impressed that you ride a Madone? I was impressed by your time, but I can’t see how it’s even relevant what bike you did it on. I mean, Madones are fine bicycles, but so are Super Sixes, Team Machines, C50s, TCRs, and F1s. Determining which is better really comes down to the individual, what fits best, and what you want it to do.

That you’re on a model ridden by a famous professional and bragging about it suggests that you probably don’t know much about bikes and just bought one because you-know-who rides it. If you know bikes and chose that one because it was best-suited for the job, you probably wouldn’t feel the need to point it out.

Bike shops exist and manufacturers sell through them for two reasons. First, because shops can save us from ourselves. And second, because when they can’t save us from ourselves, they can make money for themselves and their suppliers as a result of our poor judgment.

They save us from ourselves because bicycles are specialty products. And except for the bike nerds of the world, most people are ill-equipped to choose a bicycle or bicycle equipment without assistance from someone with specific product knowledge. Bicycle manufacturers want their products to be used correctly because it reinforces the value of their brand. They sell through specialty channels to help ensure consumers are getting the right product for their needs and will therefore be happy with it.

In some instances, however, a consumer knows what he wants, and what he needs is immaterial. These customers are easy to spot when they walk into the shop. They’re always wearing yellow bracelets, and they inevitably come in looking for Madones to ride while wearing US Postal Discovery Astana Radio Shack, Mellow Johnnies, or Livestrong team kit. Bike shops are happy to indulge these consumers’ desire to look like their favorite professional (and the only one they know by name). Even if these customers actually look nothing like their hero.

They look nothing like him because professional bike racers don’t wear kits that come in sizes large, extra large, and 2XL*. And I have it on good authority that a local shop that happens to sell Radio Shack team kits only stocks them in large, extra large, and 2XL (mostly the latter two sizes). In these instances, the shop is happy to take said customer’s money, send him happily out the door with his Mr. Incredible suit, and will no doubt be getting a good chuckle from their knowledge that said customer, for all his fancy equipment, would get absolutely destroyed by the 18 year old shop employee in the T-shirt and trucker hat who bit his lip to keep from laughing as he watched the transaction go down.

*Even amongst amateur racers, small and medium kits are the norm, with the handful of larges** ending up on the sprinters, rouleurs, and guys well over six feet tall for whom the mediums are just too short.

**I don’t mean to imply that there’s anything wrong with wearing a large. XL or bigger, and you might want to diet if you’re really into riding bikes. Unless you race MTB, where, thankfully, they offer a clydesdale category. But nothing wrong with a large. I mean, If I were proportioned as I am and of even average height, I’d wear a large. If I were over six feet tall, I'd be looking at XL or bigger. I’m just sayin’ don’t go rolling around in Radio Shack kit. Or any pro team kit for that matter. (Actually, if you don’t want to look like a Fred, don’t wear Radio Shack or Mellow Johnnies or Livestrong kit ever, no matter what size.) Unless the team is defunct and it’s a retro look. (Which is why Rock Racing kits are on the verge of going from only being cool to the hot chicks with douchebags crowd to being unequivocally cool.) Or unless you’re really fast. If you’re fast, you can wear whatever you want.

Taken to the extreme, these transactions can be both a huge windfall and a huge pain in the derriere for the shop. For instance, at the above-mentioned shop, a well-healed customer recently pulled into the parking lot in his Maserati. Apparently some of the people that work for him ride bikes and encouraged him to take up the sport. And to do so, he needed the best-of-the-best bicycle, which of course meant a Tarmac like those ridden by both the winner* and runner-up of Le Tour.

*The real winner of this year’s tour was Specialized and their CEO, Mike Sinyard. Specialized’s sponsorship of Contador when they already had the Schlecks and Saxo Bank under contract assured them of having some very high-profile product endorsements to complement their already-effective campaign highlighting Cancellara’s domination of the spring classics. Fit, function, and need aside, brand recognition leads to brand preference, and a brand recognized for having been used by race winners can certainly tip the scales in your favor.

The loser of the endorsement battle is Shimano, but it’s only for their own ineffectiveness. Mark Cavendish is more exciting and noticeable than about anyone else in the peloton—Shimano should be blasting all over the place that his 15 stage wins in three years all came on Dura Ace and PRO components, yet all I’ve seen so far is a little inset photo of him on the back cover of Velo News as a stage winner at the Tour of California. SRAM has gotten more mileage out of Mara Abbott winning the Women’s division in Tour of the Gila than Shimano has gotten out of Mark Cavendish dominating pretty much every field sprint he contests.

Of course the shop was happy to sell this high-end Tarmac to this well-heeled customer. Even if he’s a novice and probably doesn’t know not to wear underwear beneath his bibs. The problem arose when he said “and I’ll need ten more so each of the guys who works with me can also have one.” It’s mid summer, and not even the Specialized warehouse has that much inventory.

Nobody’s fault but mine

Saturday was the Chalk Creek Road race. I’ve never done this race before, so I decided earlier in the week that I’d take a quick drive to Coalville and familiarize myself with the course. Especially since it has an uphill finish, and I’m more of a survive the climbs than win on them kind of racer. The one thing I couldn’t check out before hand was finish line location, because race promoters aren’t usually keen on setting up their finish line stuff and leaving it there for days at a time.

Turns out they’re not so keen on leaving it there for a couple hours, because when I drove by on Saturday at 7:30 before the 9:00 a.m. race start, it wasn’t set up yet. What I should have done is go back and check it out after I got my race number and was all dressed and waiting to stage. But I didn’t. Because I’m absent-minded, and it didn’t occur to me.

We started at the slowest of slow parade paces. Even with my computer set to kilometers per hour, the nominal speed still looked slow. Like 13 or something. Which was fine by me. I don’t really like to start racing until the end anyway, so the fresher I am, the better.

I suspected, however, that this race would be won in a breakaway. And against my wishes, I’d have to race well before the end. So my strategy was to try to be in any breaks that looked like they would stick.

Chris M. from Cole Sport is not afraid of solo breaks. He soloed for three of five laps at Little Mountain but got caught at the end. When he made a move, alone, we kept him in sight but didn’t chase him down. This cooperation lasted a little while, then Mike P. from Canyon decided to attack. I bridged. Then the two of us got chased down. So it went a few times, with the moves either being chased down, or the people in the moves sitting up because they didn’t like who else was there or didn’t think it would stick.

Once we got onto Chalk Creek Rd, though, and the hills started, Will got a gap with Eric and Roger from Bikefix*. I didn’t like the looks of two on one for Will, so when a few more guys tried to bridge, I followed. Ended up being nine of us in the break, with Bikefix and Revolution the only teams with more than one. I liked that mix.

*My loyalty to Revolution notwithstanding, Bikefix is a great shop in Bountiful. If you’re in Davis County and looking for a quality bike, capable service, or a highly-precise fitting, check them out.

The pace over the rollers was pretty relentless*, as we were trying to establish our gap and catch Chris, who was still up the road alone. My asthma kicked in, and it was all I could do to keep breathing, let alone rotate through and take a pull. But I didn’t want to be “that guy,” so I did my duty on the front and tried to hide that I was suffering so they wouldn’t try to drop me.

*For me, at least. I imagine for some, it was an easy stroll.

After the turnaround, we had both the wind and gradient in our favor. By this time I was breathing normally, and I also knew it would be harder for anyone who attacked the group to get away. We eventually caught Chris, and though we tried to go as fast as possible to catch and drop him all at once, he got on. And immediately started attacking each time we went up a hill. I don’t know where he found the legs for that.

The group was still 10 strong with about 2k to go when Cam from Ski Utah attacked. We were quickly on his wheel, and it seemed evident it would come down to a bunch sprint.

Coming around the final corner, I had no idea how far we had to the finish line. Jonny from Biker’s Edge attacked right away. My quads had been cramping, and I didn’t think I could sustain that pace for any amount of time so let him go, but tried to follow James from Simply Mac with the intent of coming around him at the line. I was looking for the 200 to go sign and figured I’d make the move then. I didn’t see it (went back, and it was there—some people were just standing in front of it as we rode past).

I figured one of the two tents I saw ahead was the finish line. I should have known it was the first one on the right since we had numbers on the right side, but I wasn’t thinking that clearly. I passed James between the tents and kept going but realized I had in fact passed the finish line based on all the other racers milling about. Can’t be too disappointed about getting third, but I think I had legs for better. Then again, maybe not, because I was never catching Jonny, and James is a fast racer who’s put the wood to me before. Will came in seventh, so it was a good day for Revolution - Cafe Rio.

I quite enjoyed the course and appreciated the volunteers, especially those who provided neutral support at the turnaround. The prizes weren’t the greatest, but I don’t race for monetary rewards anyway*—if I get anything at all, it’s a bonus. The city of Coalville was pretty specific about what was and was not allowed in terms of marking the course (no paint whatsoever), and Mike from Porcupine (the promoter) did as well as he could have within those constraints.

*Seriously, racing for money is absurd even if someone is paying your race fees and transportation costs. My team doesn’t, so I’ve dropped several hundred dollars on race fees this season**. My results haven’t been bad—top ten most of the time and top five about a third of the time. For those results, I’ve made all of $45 in cash, a little over $100 worth of gift certificates, and probably that much again more in merchandise. I didn’t need to go to business school to tell you that’s an exceedingly bad rate of return except when you consider that it’s still cheaper than a shrink.

**No, I don’t make enough money that several hundred bucks is no big deal. My bike has Ultegra on it and I brown bag pretty much every day because I like racing and sacrifice where I can to make it work. When I come home from a race with anything of value, it’s a bonus that did not factor into my motivation for a good result.

After the race, however, some riders—who apparently couldn’t take five minutes to read the race flyer and look at the maps that were posted online—complained pretty vocally via the UCA email list about the job the promoters did. Apparently reading the one-page flyer was too much to ask, and these racers, who got off course, expected someone would lead them by the hand.

Guess what, guys, even in the Tour de frickin’ France, the racers ride around with course maps in their pockets. You know, so they know where they’re going. Even though the roads are closed and lined with fans. If you make a wrong turn, that sucks. You might get DQ’d. But don’t go acting all mamby pamby because you turned where you weren’t supposed to, and then complain because there wasn’t a course marshal to tell you not to turn there. Knowing the course is your responsibility.

I realize there are some races that are better organized than others. That’s fantastic. It creates a free market for racing. If you don’t like a particular race or promoter, you don’t have to do the race. I also realize that in some locales, the prize lists are better than they are here. That’s great too. If the prizes are good enough to be worth the travel, by all means, go enter those races.

But the reality is that here in Utah, we have between three and five opportunities to race midweek from April to September and another race almost every weekend. In Boise, which is a cycling-mad town, they have five weekend races in the spring, a six-week midweek crit series, and a couple of mid-summer crits and road races. That’s it for the year until ‘cross season. So I’d say we’ve got it pretty good by comparison.

None of these promoters is getting rich organizing events. They do it because they want to create chances for people to race. It’s hard work. Some are better than others. But at least they’re doing it.

The volunteers are giving their time so you can have a race. They’re called VOLUNTEERS for a reason. Did you thank them? Probably not. One of you yelled at my wife for not doing it right when she was offering neutral handups at Little Mountain. Did you realize nobody asked her to do that and she was just grabbing empties and refilling them because it was a hot day, and she thought people might appreciate it? Did you realize she had three kids with her that she needed to keep safe and out of traffic while she was giving you handups? Unless you or your wife/girlfriend/mom/dad/brother spent Saturday morning sitting in the sun handing up water, driving a wheel car, or waving an orange flag to try and keep riders on course and vehicle traffic moving through, then shut your pie hole about the volunteers and just be glad they were there at all.

I’ve been guilty of complaining to promoters in the past—usually it’s because what they described in the race flyer/bible wasn’t what happened on course, not because of a mistake I made because I failed to read the race flyer/bible. Next time, if I have constructive criticism, I’ll be sure to whisper it to the promoter quietly, and publicly thank him for giving me a chance to race at all.

As for last Saturday, thanks Mike and Porcupine Cycling for a great event. Well done.

Captcha or gotcha?

Captcha verifications are not that hard, just type the characters you see in the box in the field provided, right? Well I can’t do it. My success rate is seriously less than 50%. And it’s not that I’m a bad typist (actually, I’m a good typist—ask recently avid reader and commenter Ralph, who astutely pointed out that what I do on this blog is called typing). It’s just that for some reason what I see and type is not what the captcha supposedly displayed.

Which begs all sorts of unanswerable science/philosophy-type questions, such as is what I see as blue the same as what you see as blue, or is it more like your red?*

*Actually this whole notion of whether what I perceive as blue could be your red doesn’t make much sense. Which is not to say that the perception of colors is fixed—there’s certainly enough variation within the structures of the eyes and brains of various humans that the way colors are perceived may not be and is likely not perfectly consistent from one individual to the next. But any variances seem most likely to be a shift rather than a transposition. Colors are the perception of wavelengths of light. The wavelengths don’t vary, but how we perceive them likely does to a certain degree, so while a yellow to me may be closer to what I see as orange to you, it’s highly unlikely that my orange will be your purple and vice-versa. Or at least that’s my half-baked theory from having given this very question a certain but not very thorough or verifiable degree of thought.

Except in this case, it’s a question of whether what I perceive to be certain letters are actually the letters displayed, and if not, how on earth I can successfully do things like read books or write highly-engaging and entertaining (sure to be bestsellers were they not proprietary and confidential) software functional specifications and user documentation.

I recently posted an ad on Craigslist for a wheelset I’d like to sell, and it seriously took me four attempts to get the Captcha phrase correct. From now on I’m going to start clicking on the accessibility link and have the digital voice read to me rather than making another one of my consistently inaccurate guesses as to what combination of characters is supposed to have been displayed.

41

When I lived in Boise, unless we were out of town, there were two events every summer that we made it a point to attend as spectators: the Wells Fargo Twilight Criterium and the Eagle Criterium. Both are four-corner downtown crits, with lots of excitement. And by excitement, I mean crashes.

The crashes in the Eagle criterium were so frequent that it was the exception rather than the rule for any field to finish without at least one crash. Often there was more than one crash. Some of the crashes were really bad, and featured Zipp 404s getting folded in half and racers getting hauled off in ambulances. It was enough to make me swear off of crit racing.

Then I moved to Utah and decided to race crits just to get starts for my 5 to 4 upgrade. Then I discovered that they’re fun and that I’m reasonably good at them. And crashes happen, but not even every race. Just last Friday, UTRider mentioned what good luck I’ve had with road racing, having had crashes happen around me on several occasions but in more than 50 races never actually going down. (You see where this is going, right? I’m being super subtle with the foreshadowing.)

Saturday, teammate Alex K. and I went to Boise to race in the Twilight Criterium. Alex raced in the Cat. 4-5 race, where there were only two crashes, which he avoided, and finished 9th out of 50+. Then I watched as my friend Rob got taken down in the Masters B race. Then I lined up--at this point perhaps a tad nervous--with the combined Cat. 3/Masters A/Pro Women field.

There were a couple crashes, but I managed to avoid them. What I couldn’t avoid was the heat (it was over 100F/38C*). It didn’t help that my bottle of Carbo Rocket bounced out of my cage on the third lap when I hit a manhole cover, so all I had left was the less-than-half full bottle of hot water that was in my other cage.

*I know, I know, I’m supposed to be all metric all the time around here, but I have absolutely no frame of reference for temperatures in Celsius. That whole subtract 32, multiply by 5, divide by 9 thing is just too complicated to do in my head, so I can never get a sense for how a certain nominal temperature feels. On the other hand, I’m going to switch my bike computer to metric, just because I have a much better feel for distance to a finish line and what I can hold in meters than I do in miles. I just need to find the stupid instruction manual so I can learn how to do it…

Heat, crashes, and lack of water notwithstanding, I felt reasonably good, even when I was being elbowed off of a wheel or pushed into a curb just so someone else could move up one position. (Seriously, a lot of those guys seemed to have no fear of crashing and to be quite willing to risk wrecking someone else to get on a wheel I would have let them have without the contact.) TJ from FFKR had gotten into an early break with a guy named Bubba who’s a Cat. 2 masters racer from Nevada and two-time national crit champ. The pace stayed high as we tried to chase them down, but I had no trouble staying in the bunch and towards the front.

On the bell lap, I decided to take the outside line, as I could carry more speed and thought I’d have a cleaner path to the finish. I was probably about 10 or so back, so not ideal placing, but we were three wide, so I thought I could make up ground if I started my kick early. My plan was to go from the last corner and try and hold it to the end.

I never made it to the last corner. One of the Bobs Bicycles guys tried to pedal through turn three, clipped his pedal hard enough to tripod and put his rear wheel into the pro woman next to me. She went down and into Carl from RMCC, who was right in front of me. Carl went down, and I was boxed in with wrecks and had no place to go but into the curb and up on the sidewalk.

I managed to get my front wheel onto the curb, but my rear wheel skidded. I got a foot out, but it slipped, so I went down hard on my gloved hand. Somehow skin never touched pavement. I got back on and rode across the finish to sympathy cheers from a crowd that undoubtedly thought I had been popped off the back. I was 41 of 41 finishers, with the two people who crashed around me among the five DNFs. Bubba got the win. TJ got swallowed up in the bunch sprint.

My hand was a bit sore, but other than that I wasn’t injured. My shifters got dinged up and my downtube got scraped where it hit the curb, but my bike also made it through OK. I was unlucky to be caught in the crash, but lucky to come out of it as well as I did.

I drove for five hours to do this race, so not exactly the result I had in mind. Fortunately, the Idaho State Championship criterium was scheduled for Sunday, so we stuck around to race that as well. Come back tomorrow for a report on the rest of the weekend.

Poetry

Last week I got comments from three new commenters in one day. And while Amy’s comment was flattering, the other two, I have to think, were self-serving.

One of the self-serving comments was left by none other than “Somebody.” This is what he (she?) had to say:

酒店經紀人,菲梵酒店經紀,酒店經紀,禮服酒店上班,酒店小姐,便服酒店經紀,酒店打工,酒店寒假打工,酒店經紀,酒店經紀,專業酒店經紀,合法酒店經紀,酒店暑假打工,酒店兼職,便服酒店工作,酒店打工經紀,制服酒店經紀,專業酒店經紀,合法酒店經紀,酒店暑假打工,酒店兼職,便服酒店工作,酒店打工,酒店經紀,制服酒店經紀,酒店經紀

Got that? Yeah, me neither. I’m guessing it’s an ad for a Korean porn site, or maybe a malware farm. But fearing the latter, I haven’t dared click over. Perhaps Kirk can help me out with this one.

The second comment that I suspect of self-servingness came from Grant-Grey Gouda, who fancies himself a poet. His comment struck me as self-serving, because he sought to flatter me without being specific about what he liked from my blog. Makes me wonder who else has seen him leave the same comment and how many times he’s been back.

As a “poet,” his style reminds me of Emily Dickinson in tone, William Carlos Williams in style, and Fezzik the Giant in execution. He could also use some help with apostrophes. Though he makes no claims to being a visual artist, really is there anything more tired as a would-be poet than ripping off a photo of Rodin’s the Thinker for your masthead? And the made-up name “The Humanicana” sounds more like a Banana Republic knock-off store than writing of any literary consequence.

Lest anyone think I’m not constructive, however, I won’t just leave Grant-Grey out in the rain without some coaching. Because after all, if you’re going to make your living as a poet or even share your poetry with other people without soliciting unintended laughter, you better be damn good. But since I’m not a poet myself, the best I can do is provide an example of something that is good.

From Buck Ramsey, I present an excerpt of Anthem:

The grass was growing scarce for grazing,
Would soon turn sod or soon turn bare.
The money men set to replacing
The good and true in spirit there.
We could not say, there was no knowing,
How ill the future winds were blowing.
Some cowboys even shunned the ways
Of cowboys in the trail herd days
(But where's the gift not turned for plunder?),
Forgot that we are what we do
And not the stuff we lay claim to.
I dream the spell that we were under;
I throw in with a cowboy band
And go out horseback through the land.

So mornings now I'll go out riding
Through pastures of my solemn plain,
And leather creaking in the quieting
Will sound with trot and trot again.
I'll live in time with horse hoof falling;
I'll listen well and hear the calling
The earth, my mother, bids to me,
Though I will still ride wild and free.
And as I ride out on the morning
Before the bird, before the dawn,
I'll be this poem, I'll be this song.
My heart will beat the world a warning—
Those horsemen will ride all with me,
And we'll be good, and we'll be free.

Good luck, Grant-Grey. Maybe you should hire “Somebody” as your publisher—he’s really good at mass distribution.

Broadcasting fail

This post contains a tiny wee bit of language. I’m in a bad mood. When I’m in a bad mood, I do that. If you’re bothered by that, don’t read. Hi, Dad.

So last night I’m watching with baited breath as Mick Rogers, Dave Z, and Levi are descending Bonny Doon and rolling into Santa Cruz. They pass the 2K to go sign. The peloton is 20 seconds back. It looks as if they’ll get caught. I’m on the edge of my seat, waiting to see who wins. Will they get caught? If not, which of the three will win? My pulse is racing. Beads of sweat accumulate on the back of my neck. Anticipation, excitement, everything great about bike racing is about to climax.

And then one of the kids knocks on the door, awakened by a bad dream. The moment is lost. We’re not getting it back. Instead we get to make warm milk and sing songs and try to find words of comfort.

Or at least that’s what it felt like, if you know what I mean. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

There’s less than two minutes of racing left, and Versus cut away from the race so we could listen to a couple of mulletted, overweight Canadians introduce some dudes with missing teeth, ice skates, and unpronounceable-can-I-buy-a-fkng-vowel last names (or, not to be outdone, there's also the guy whose last name is, in actual fact, Satan). The hockey game wouldn’t actually start for another 25 minutes, and the winner wouldn’t be determined for two hours, but no, we can’t possibly cut over just a wee bit late so people can see the outcome of the bike race. Talk about blue balls.

At least they warned us that the cutover was coming and said to go to teamradioshack’sepomakerofchoicetourofcalifornia.com to watch the rest. Except those of us with jobs who were watching the recording went to the website only to have the outcome smack us in the face in the form of a 32 point font headline. And no video of the conclusion.

Combine this with the inability to show more than 20 seconds of action from yesterday’s stage because of a little rain, and in all of three days of racing when they were actually doing it themselves rather than just commentating on the French television video feed, Versus has achieved a complete and total broadcasting fail. WTF, Versus?

It’s not like they’re alone in their ineptitude, either. I’ve pretty much gotten used to skipping the first hour of the Giro d’Italia broadcast on Universal Sports because for some reason the bike race has been superseded by an infomercial for some cooking contraption endorsed by—I shit you not—Mr. T.

Because forget Mario Batali, Rick Bayless, or Thomas Keller. When I want culinary expertise, the first person I think of is the guy who played B.A. Baracus.

I realize that all of us leg-shaving, lycra wearing, anorexic, cyclists who are obsessed with other men’s bottoms (not that there’s anything wrong with that) are a tiny minority of the population at large, and that we should be grateful to even have any cycling coverage on TV at all beyond a three minute summary of the entire Tour de France on Wide World of Sports.

But still, getting bumped by hockey and a Mr. T infomercial is almost worse than no coverage at all.

Nerves

Tomorrow is my first stage race* of the season. My second stage race ever. I am a bundle of nerves. I usually spend the day before a race visualizing key points out on the course, how the tactics might play out, and how I might respond. I get so worked up that my heart rate gets all the way up into the 60’s or 70’s, and it feels like it’s going to pound out of my chest.

*The Bikes for Kids race I did a couple weeks ago was an omnium, not a stage race. What’s the difference since both have stages? In an omnium, you’re not required to finish all the events to figure in the overall, and the overall winner is based on points awarded in the various stages rather than cumulative time for all stages. In a stage race, the overall winner is the racer with the lowest cumulative time across all the stages**. Thus, I skipped the TT portion of the Bikes for Kids omnium since I’m not well-suited to that discipline. Tomorrow I have to do the TT in order to participate in the other events even though I don’t really want to. Anyone who gets a mechanical in the TT will hate me, since those not finishing due to mechanicals are given the worst time plus 30 seconds, and I fully expect to continue my DFL tradition by having the worst time in the TT tomorrow.

**The Tour de France is the best-known stage race in the world. The Giro d’Italia is probably the second best-known, and was originally (1909-1913) scored like an omnium with the winner determined based on points from the various stages rather than cumulative time. Le Tour was also scored this way from 1905 to 1912. Both races continue to have a points competition today, which is dominated by the sprinters, but unlike an omnium, a racer has to complete all stages to figure into the points competition.

It’s hard to relax, but humor helps. Especially when it’s particularly ridiculous and not necessarily intended to be funny but is anyway. Thankfully, Rick and Jes posted two of the funniest youtube videos I’ve seen in ages. In case you missed them, I’m passing them along. Happy Friday.

Accounting emergency

In Alex’s most recent post, he mentioned that although he doesn’t want to be a doctor, he would, just once, like to experience the thrill of standing up and walking down the aisle when the flight attendant calls out “is there a doctor on board?” But since they never call out “is there a salesman on board?*” he’s heretofore gone without this great honor.

*If they did call out “is there a salesman on board?” half the plane would stand up, so I’m not sure it would be quite so exciting being one of 187 salespeople versus being the one doctor among 374 non-physician passengers.

And while being the passenger of honor on airplanes would be cool, there’s a lot about being a doctor that would suck. Like being on call. Seriously, how annoying to be out on a date with your wife only to get a phone call in the middle to listen to a patient complain about an ingrown toenail?

Actually, I can tell you just how much that would suck. But not because I’m a doctor. A couple years ago, back when I still worked for the huge company, I was on a date with my wife when my cell phone rang. It was my finance manager. I’d spent the entire days in conference calls trying to wrap up the quarter end close, and I thought we had it all taken care of. Evidently we did not. And they just needed me to answer a question at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday.

Our date was interrupted for an accounting emergency. Guess what—there’s no such thing as an accounting emergency. There are medical emergencies. There are environmental emergencies. I’ll even grant that there are property emergencies. In rare cases, there may even be sales emergencies. But if it has anything to do with accounting, it’s not an emergency.

The quarter end close is telling you what already happened. It’s not going to change anything from happening. There’s no way to mitigate a bad thing that’s happened through accounting, at least not legally. So how can it be an emergency?

Not only that, but why call me about it? I’m not even the accountant! My finance manager calling me for an accounting emergency is like an obstetrician running from the delivery room to the lobby and saying “is there a product manager present? Because this baby’s breach, and I could really use your expertise with the delivery.”