Elegy to the Coen Brothers

I cribbed a little bit of The Big Lebowski in the post immediately below this one, and had a few positive comments - driven of course by Walter Sobchack's hilarious destruction of the eulogy for Donny Kerabatsos. It occurred to me that some people may not be aware of the full scope of genius exhibited by Joel and Ethan Coen, who wrote and produced The Big Lebowski, along with a spate of other hilarious, off-beat films. So I went and looked up their profiles on IMDB, and made a list of the films they produced or wrote. Since it's a slow time for most people during the holidays, I thought you might renting a DVD of some of these films and checking them out. Some of them are in post-production or maybe really limited release or overseas-only release. But the one's I've seen, I've taken the liberty of rating for you.

The scheme is simple - if the film has the distinct Coen Brothers vibe - offbeat, quirky, funny and smart - I rate it with a color. Green is the best, orange is okay, red is sketchy. The ones in black, I haven't seen. These are my estimations about how good the films are; even a bad Coen brothers flick will be interesting however, and I'm no Roger freaking Ebert, so it may be worth watching one that I give a red rating to. Check 'em out.

Hail Caesar (2009) (pre-production)

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Paris, je t'aime (2006) (segment "Tuileries")

The Ladykillers (2004)

Bad Santa (2003)

Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Fargo (1996)

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

Barton Fink (1991)

Miller's Crossing (1990)

Raising Arizona (1987)

Blood Simple (1984)

I'll note that Blood Simple isn't really quirky or funny in the usual Coen Brothers way, nor is Intolerable Cruelty. I'll also note that Bad Santa is filthy, but hilarious. I haven't seen the first three on the list.

One other thing - if you like the Coen Brothers, you may also like Spike Jonze. A music video producer by profession, he produced Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and the puerile but witty and hilarious (right up my alley…) Jackass 1 & 2 and Jackass the MTV series (not quite as good as the movie). Among his more noteworthy music videos are Beastie Boys “Sabotage” (loved the Starsky & Hutch vibe); REM Parallel (“Crush”); and Weezer's “Buddy Holly”. "Where the Wild Things Are,” is in post-production. I sincerely hope it is an adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s excellent children’s book, and not a teen-sploitation flick with lots of nekkid Neve Campbell. Though I’d settle for lots of nekkid Neve Campbell, I’m hoping for a smart and engaging kid’s movie I can watch with my son, who loves the book.

Anyhow, enjoy.

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Please indulge me one other off-topic comment. I don't know whether you watched the Patriots/Giants game last night, but it was one for the ages. The heavily favored Patriots (14 point spread) were going for a perfect regular season record, 16-0. They could rest their starters - the tactically smart move - because win or lose, they have a bye the first week of the playoffs, and home field advantage throughout. The underdog Giants have already secured a wildcard playoff berth, and they know who they will play next week in the wildcard round. Winning simply didn't matter much. Neither team had any logical reason to play starters for more than a few plays, just to see if they could get a rhythm.

Yet both teams played their starters, their best players, for the entire game, rest weeks and possible injuries be damned. The Giants came out running and throwing hard, like an enraged heavyweight boxer. The Patriots, knocked on their heels at first, eventually matched them blow-for-blow, and had a huge comeback in the third and fourth quarters. The Giants, down 10 with four minutes left, scored a touchdown and tried for the onside kick, hoping for a quick score in the last minute. The game was in doubt until 57 seconds remained on the clock.

What was impressive was that neither team had anything to play for last night, except for pride, and the sheer joy of competition. Nothing at all was at stake except their pride. Had the Giants rested Manning, Burris, Short and Strahan, nobody would have complained. But they didn't. Had the Patriots done the smart thing and rested, win or lose, everybody would have said, "Bellicheck, coaching genius... not a popular decision to lose #16, but he *always* makes the smart move."

This wasn't the smart move, but it was the brave move.

The result was a game I'll remember for years and years, partly because of the significance of a perfect regular season, but mainly because it showed what The League is about. There's a reason that the NFL is top dog in American sports, and it's because almost all the time, the game and the teams embody the best parts of our culture - competitive, enterprising, hard working, courageous to a fault, and most of all, proud. There are times when The League and its players fall short - they suffer from the same doping scandals, the same off-the-pitch DWI's and domestic abuse problems every other sport suffers from. They have the same group of fixers, sharps, and gaming men surrounding them that all other sports have, and that indeed crop up in everyday life. But when you get down to it, when you let the boys play, and you get some of the good ones on the same field at the same time, The League is capable of handing you a masterpiece resembling the epic battles on the Stelvio and Alpe d'Huez, triple overtime at the old Forum in Montreal, extra innings between the Yanks and Sox, or Magic-Bird. The difference with The League is that all but the very worst teams deliver up a couple masterpieces each year, and the best teams, upon meeting each other, deliver up a nice work of art, if not a masterpiece two out of every three times; and two or three times per year you can count on seeing a game you will remember 20 years from now. I still look back on a regular season Sunday Night Football game between Miami and Denver, perhaps it was in 2002 when both teams were playing well, that was an absolute gladiatorial tilt. It was the hardest, most physical football game I can recall watching since Stabler's Raiders took on Bradshaw's Steelers.

The League simply brings out the best in its players and teams more often than almost any other sport, and even if you aren't a big fan you should appreciate it; true excellence is a rare thing in a world increasingly willing to settle for mass-marketed-very-good. Very good is nice; but a virtuouso performance is always both far better qualitatively, the leap from good to excellent being the hardest improvement to achieve.

So here's to The League. Long may it prosper, and long may it remind us Why We Compete.

Murther!

The shop ride sort of fizzled this AM - that's what apocalyptic Weather Channel forecasts will do for you. Basically everybody crapped out because of the supposedly bad weather and only Jon and I rode. Which was cool, but it would have been cool-er to see my other friends.

Listen, my logocentric brothas... If you want to know whether it's safe to go outside, don't read the text of the forecast, and don't look at the still photo of the radar map. Check out the "Doppler in Motion" or "Map in Motion" feature. It's much more accurate. Weather.com told me it was pissing rain in Crofton at 6:30. The Doppler map-in-motion showed me that the rain had moved on a bit earlier and Crofton was only menaced by clear skies. My Empirical Interpersonal Observational Method (i.e. going outside and looking) indicated it was dry. Simply put, in hermeneutic terms, don't privilege the text over representational images while engaging in the interpretive act. Okay, that wasn't simply put at all and once you start talking hermeneutics, nothing can be explained simply. I'm just saying, if your eyes tell you one thing and the text says something else, go with your eyes. Just because somebody writes something, doesn't mean it's true. Readers of this blog, especially, should be aware of this principle.

So anyhoo Jon and I just tooled around for 20 miles which was fine, since I was spitting out loogies and coughing maybe 25% of the time and Jon is always good company. On the way back into Crofton, spinning down the parkway, this squirrel crossed in front of us. It got halfway across the road, stopped, and as we passed, jetted in front of Jon's bike and toward mine. We were riding abreast, about wheel-to-wheel, so by the time the squirrel got to me, he was under my bottom bracket. He lept for freedom, and like so many of his kind, did not make it.

In a switch from the usual biker-hits-squirrel-biker-hits-pavement routine, I rolled over him like a... fat guy on a bike rolling over a squirrel.

Not Sleeping... Only Dead

I had mixed feelings about rolling my back wheel over the squirrel, who scrambled off the road, no doubt to climb into the attic or heating system of one of the neighboring homes, there to die and give one last smelly gift to mankind.

On one hand, I'm rather fond of squirrels. They are cute, they are very soft to pet, and if they aren't attacking you and biting the shit out of you, or screwing up the deer hunting (ask me about it some time) they are kind of fun to watch. On the other hand, just about everybody I know who rides has been taken out by a squirrel, or nearly taken out. So the squirrels owe a vast karmic debt to cyclists, one which I may have been sent by Yama to unwittingly collect on behalf of Celestial Karma Bank, LLC. ("Low interest rates on deposits... but you'll find you're cool about it, for some reason.")

Still, I felt a bit out of sorts about it. So I feel it's only proper to eulogize my little furry, swaybacked, deceased buddy. But how do you eulogize a beast? I can only draw on the work of a more talented writer.

Donny The Squirrel was a good bowler, and a good man rodent. He was one of us. He was a man squirrel who loved the outdoors... and bowling, and as a tree surfer he explored the beaches beeches of Southern California Crofton, from La Jolla Eton Lane to Leo Carrillo Harwick and... up to... Pismo Exeter. He died, like so many young men of his generation, he died before his time. In your wisdom, Lord, you took him, as you took so many bright flowering young men at Khe Sanh, at Langdok, at Hill 364. These young men gave their lives. And so would Donny The Squirrel. Donny The Squirrel, who loved bowling. And so, Donald Theodore Kerabatsos The Squirrel, in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, the attic of some guy’s house just off Mayflower Court, which you loved so well where you loved to hide your nuts. Good night, sweet prince.

[Ed. What the f*** does this have to do with VietNam? I don't see any connection to VietNam.]

Well, there isn't a literal connection, Dude...

[Ed. Face it. There isn't any connection.]

Anyhow, may our friend The Squirrel rest in peace. Requiescat in pacem.

And for my riding friends, just remember: Cave sciurida!

Shop Ride Tomorrow AM

Family Bikes Shop Ride tomorrow AM, leaving at 7:30. A little bit more about it here. Couple hours, fixie friendly (e.g. rolling terrain), coffee in the middle or at the end or both.

See you there.

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Meanwhile, I went to the doctor's office this morning and found out that I have an upper respiratory infection, coupled with really bad asthma. (And for this, I need a doctor? Oy, vey.) So I got some antibiotics and some lung drugs, including a new asthma inhaler for $40. They tell me that the old one that costs $7 is still available, but it's crueler to Mother Earth. Same drugs, different propellant. None of that dread freon, but it's powered with the farts of vegan voles that only eat soy products or something.

No offense to Mother Earth, but I ain't payin' $33 a month to save her butt while I save mine. You really think an inhaler with a couple grams of stuff in it is pushing Ma Earth off the cliff? Yeah, I know, if a million of us save three micrograms of pollution then together we'll have put $33 million more in Big Pharma's pocket and will have saved Mother Earth the pain of absorbing 3 grams of CO2 or something... Please. Gimme the $7 inhaler, thanks very much. How 'bout Mother Earth quits jumping up and trying to knock me off the mountain bike every time I ride, and in return, I'll get some compact flourescent lights for the washroom, and we call it even?

I take a back seat to no man in efforts to conserve resources, but it would be easier to take the environmental 'movement' more seriously and view it in a less partisan light if "Green" wasn't so often aligned with things and people I find odious - gouging big businesses (e.g. my asthma inhaler), government regulators and advocacy groups who seem to be itching to control every sphere of life, and a lot of people who have comfortable homes, nice jobs and sweet cars but who swear they want to replace our wicking lycra shirts with vests made of hair and sackcloth - all for our own good of course. Yes, I'm saying a lot of scoundrels paint themselves green. I mean come on, outlawing non-flourescent lights? Who in the flourescent light industry was responsible for that sickly-hued legislation? C'mon, even a lot of the most expensive compacts have an awful tone and give me a headache.

If people spent more time trying to figure out how to make environmentally sound products and lifestyles attractive, and less time trying to sell us on doing some "green" penance to make up for Mother Earth's suffering, this stuff would be a much easier sell. I'm not saying saving the Earth is a bad thing, just that many of the people allegedly doing the saving (and I've been one of them, BTW) seem to equate suffering with doing good. $33? How 'bout I pay $33 a month more for a hybrid, that gets better gas mileage? Mother Earth wins and I win. But the inhaler? Please. It's suffering for the sake of suffering. It doesn't have to be that way. Do you honestly think a tiny incremental saving on pollution in an asthma inhaler is worth $33 a month? Not unless you own stock in Phizer, you don't.

On the Road Again...

I had a couple nice road rides Monday and today. Monday was just tooling around for 90 minutes or so with the shop ride crew, and today I went into work.

Nothing’s ever simple with me though.

As usual for this time of year, a chest cold is beating me down pretty good. We’re talking about a “Down goes Jim… Down goes Jim” caliber whupping. So I dosed up with the usual anti-asthma medicines and went riding anyhow. Wheeeze wheeze, splutter. There is a moment where asthma and a chest cold suddenly morph into bronchitis or pneumonia with foaming rabid lung fluid, and I’m not there yet. I don’t know whether to look forward to that moment. On one hand, the moment when the cough matures into something deadly means I can put down the ineffective cold mixtures, having earned some honest-to-God antibiotics from the doc, mixtures that will probably heal me. On the other hand, that maybe I should dread the moment the nagging cough turns into the dread disease, because it means a metamorphosis from a highly irritating but basically mild sickness that is essentially incurable, it will go away when and how it chooses, into something that while more readily treated, could kill me. Tough question. I think for now I won’t try to answer it, but will just sit here thinking about it and coughing. Damn my accursed lungs!

I had the Powertap on during this morning’s ride and tried to keep it mostly in zones 2 and 3 – you don’t want to go too hard when the upper respiratory tract is all gummed up, it can lead to pneumonia, I’ve found, and I haven’t determined yet whether I’m ready for that, even though the prospect of committing mass murder against the germs plaguing me does make me giddy. Despite it being a routine desperation ride – a ride in that desparate period that lies between fall’s mid-cross season fitness, and the start of the long climb back into race shape that starts in January - some interesting things happened. Interesting in a nothing-is-going-on-in-the-world-so-very-mildly-interesting-bike-talk-is-better-than-nothing interesting.

First, I saw a few BikeTrailGuys out riding. That is really unusual for this time of year – the cold usually drives them underground, like snakes and beetles. I wonder if they were getting a head start on their New Year’s Resolution to get fitter, in which case they’ll likely be burnt out and off the bike by January 14 and the trails will be clear again. One BTG was on a mountain bike coming down the Cap Crescent. He was coming out of the little gravel oxbow, where MDOT is doing some trail repairs. It was about 20 minutes before sunup, he had no lights on, was dressed in all black, and he was doing a standing effort downhill going around the turn and back up onto the tarmac. Hmmm… that was certainly dangerous… Black-on-black, and no lights? I think they used to call people who did stuff like that ‘mental defectives’ in the old days.

Then further up the trail, near Bethesda, some guy pulled onto my wheel. I think he thought I’d be going fast, since I was in club kit. Sucker! Welcome to the off-season. In the off-season, I’m basically The Man when it comes to speed – I spend all my time keepin’ speed down. So it was a 16-17 MPH uphill cruise at the most, there will be plenty of time to ride hard soon enough… Within a minute or two he got tired of me hucking lungers onto him – did I mention I was heaving up bushel baskets of lung oysters like a mucous-y version of a Chesapeake Waterman – so he pulls around to pass. He does this right before the big bridge, stands up, and goes like hell up the bridge. You’d have thought it was for the Green Jersey, the way he was stomping the pedals and throwing the poor bike around. So I just keep spinning and ease off a bit near the top of the bridge, hoping in all sincerity to let the guy open a bit of a gap, ‘cuz I really don’t want to get suckered into trying to race the guy. Eventually he pulls away and I keep spinning along.

I have to confess that although they do odious things and violate basic bike etiquette at will, I love the BTGs… they keep it interesting and give me something to complain about. Where would I be without them?

Sleeping on the bike, that’s where. I didn’t encounter any BTGs on my way back down the trail and as I pedaled around DC to get some additional miles in, I was asleep. I was totally zoned out and sort of ignored the fact that there are a lot of obstacles in different places around town, and when nothing is happening to keep a rider awake, it’s easy to drift off, which I did. Unfortunately, when I regained my concentration, I suddenly found myself cruising at around 20 MPH horizontal, and accelerating around 32 meters per second per second vertical, with a downward vector.

Yes, I was several feet in the air, with a set of four or five steps disappearing behind and under my nice carbon fiber road bike.

In mid-air, I thought briefly, “Don’t panic. Just land it.”

Which I did.

Bloody hard.

I got a sharp stabbing pain in both wrists when I planted the landing, and it rotated the bars downward a bit. As I hit, I had to swerve hard to avoid hitting a jogger, who bombed me with a couple choice words as I passed. What was the big deal? It’s not like I hit him or anything… I guess he has some frickin’ irrational fear of being approached by 250 lb roadies, who are airborne with wheels at chest-height.

This, unfortunately, is not the first time I’ve done something stupid like that. It is, however, the first time I’ve done it on a nice road bike, the other occasions involving a beater mountain bike commuter I used to ride, and a sturdy Surly Cross Check.

As I pedaled away, waving my burning arms in the air to try to shake off the pain, I marveled that the carbon frame and fork hadn’t snapped, that the wheels (Velocity Deep Vee rear, Fusion front) had stayed true, and that I hadn’t slung the bike into the nearby fence, or the nearby water feature. Bottom line, nothing was broken, though both wrists are swollen and probably sprained, and my hands are bruised.

Hey, I stuck the landing. I didn’t say it was pretty. I guess all that mountain biking and cross is really paying off.

Typing with sore wrists is really painful right now. But you know what?

I stuck the landing.

MTB Ride Tomorrow AM

7:00 AM at Rosaryville State Park. It's a couple of the usual Family Bikes LBS ride regulars, plus a dog or two and whoever else wants to show up. Jon will be on his new fixed gear Soma 29'er, so come on out and be prepared to be awed. Or to laugh at Jon, depending on how it goes. I'm a bit in awe for him even trying fixed gear MTB, no matter how riding it turns out.

[Update: it was great. LBS regular and local roadracer Sue E. - who protested pre-ride that she's not strong and really tentative on an MTB - made a couple of the boys cry on the handful of long uphills at Rosaryville, and then cleared the see-saw that Lee and John had bought down to play with. Just as on roadrides, there's a clear moral in this story: Never, ever, ever, believe Sue when she starts giving you the pre-loaded excuses before a ride. Jon also blew us away by riding his scorcher, a Soma 29'er that he converted to roll fixed gear. He did really well on it and only seemed hindered on a couple of the trick sections - the U-shaped skinny log section being one. Lee and John, for their part, impressed me by riding their blood alcohol levels down to legal limits by ride's end. Some day I hope to be able to party like Lee - you can't stop him, you can only hope to contain the damage to your liquor cabinet. Tim made his first MTB ride since breaking his back and having an agonizing 6 hour ordeal to get off the mountain at the SM-100. Sean rolled strong, taking another step on the way from fat overworked guy back towards Sean the huge fit cyclist. And Tom crashed while chasing a deer, landing God-knows-where, while his bike landed upside down in a tree. A fun ride, like Rosaryville usually is, with as many interesting stories as there were riders. My story? Nothing major, just I'm finding I can roll over most log barriers and more or less keep up with the group. Not terrible for a fool on his 5th or 6th MTB ride, after a 12 year non-MTBing background. Not good, per se, either; but in the grand scheme of things good enough to make me happy.]

Water Bottles: Johnny Carson Edition

Man, I had a funny day today.

First, I snapped a brake off my CrossCheck when I grabbed a handful of front stopper. The cantilever stud just snapped in half. Glad that didn't happen in a race at the end of a high speed downhill going into a sharp corner with walls and trees on the outside of it... Guess I'd better hit up the Problem Solvers line for a Canti Stud Repair Kit.

Then we're doing a little ~2 hour ride up and down the W&OD and I piled into Joe M., and knocked his brakes out of whack, and put Joe on his butt. It was a communication breakdown, more my fault than Joes, nobody was hurt, but it was bad and silly.

Then I got into work and found out I got all quoted in some legal trade papers for stuff I said at this conference where I was helping to emcee a panel. They misquoted me pretty badly, and some people I work with drew my attention to it and I was really, really worried; but my chief client was pretty thrilled about how the misquote came out, so I'm going to treat it like a hundred dollar bill found on the sidewalk. I'm keepin' my mouth shut until I get out of town.

Arriving at home tonight I found a brand new set of cheapo Tektro Oryx brakes. They're "good enough" cantis to go on my B bike... the Surly Cross Check that now needs new Canti studs along with the bottom bracket to replace the one I've shredded over the last year. I wasn't real thrilled with the performance of the old Shimano mini-canti brakes I had on there and was planning on doing some brake work anyhow, but the timing is pretty weird.

Okay, so that's the oddball day I had. Breaking a part I'd thought unbreakable, in a way I didn't think was possible; having a minor crash and nearly running over my buddy; my name shows up in the papers (rarely a good thing) and the replacement stuff I needed shows up in a strangely timely fashion. Weird day.

Enough about that. Here's some even more random crap.

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Sheldon Brown - the bike guru - has multiple sclerosis. It's put a crimp in his lifestyle, but it hasn't slowed his big bike brain, or his love of life, near as I can tell. A lifetime of suffering on the bike may just possibly teach you how to bear real suffering in life. I know it must be tough and my heart goes out to him, but I also have to express admiration about the way he's tackling it - in a forthright way, honestly, and in some respects seemingly viewing it like a tough technical question. You can dig around his website and find the whole story - I'm not going to link to it because I don't think he'd want that, in fact my mere mentioning of it is probably more than he'd want but I think it's actually important to draw attention to a guy who provides one really good answer to the question, "how then shall we live?" At BikeSnob, the Snob and commenters, me included, joke about some of the guys who are giants in the bike world who have big personalities, like Jobst Brandt and Lennard Zinn and Sheldon Brown. It would serve us well to remember why some of them are giants - because they tackle tough problems in an exceptional way and do admirable things, even if we don't agree with the directions they take their companies. My hat's off to Sheldon - and I must note he's somebody who has a matter-of-fact approach to bikes that I can't really argue with - not always my approach ut a damned good one that I admire.

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Enough serious. It's now time for the big fat girl music shootout. In this corner, we have Spinal Tap, with:

Big Bottoms... Not Just For Trek Cranksets...



Ande in this corner, we have the Rainmakers, with Big Fat Blonde.



Who's got a better tribute to big girls? You make the call in comments.

Meanwhile... sorry to inflict that crypto-Rainmakers vid on you. They weren't really even the Rainmakers then. Would a decent showing of "Downstream" make it up to you? Okay, good, I thought it would.



The Rainmakers were a local band when I lived out in Kansas. I used to catch them all the time in bars in Manhattan (or maybe Lawrence? I drank a lot then) and KC MO. Pardon the big hair - I have to say they were one of the best ever libertarian-themed bar bands.

Oh yeah, and here's one for Burt Friggin' Hoovis, who by the way has a great video of a Penny-Farthing crashing, hard. This last Rainmakers piece is audio only, but Burt will like it. Government Cheeeeze, baby.



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Final thing that's good for a laugh - check out the POTUS, rocking a mountain bike with a PowerTap. I can see the Domestic Policy Counsel meetings now. "Dammit, Karl. I git the supply an' demanding curves. But can anybody in this town explain my power curve? Whah do Tabater intuvals build the base? I thought we put Dick Cheney on buildin' the base. Get me Hunter on the phone. No, dammit. No, not that Duncan Hunter feller. Hunter Allen, Karl. Hunter Allen."

Okay, fine, total D.C. Velo guy / powergeek / politics inside baseball there. Laugh if you want, but there's probably 400 people in the D.C. area who understood exactly what I was talking about, and I'm not sure if that's a sad commentary on us, or on the rest of you. I suspect the former.

But love the POTUS or hate him, you have to admit one thing: he adds an entirely new dimension to the Coggins' theme, Training with Power.

Wasser Flaschen #356

Yep, another episode of Water Bottles, in which we see how high I can stack random thoughts before they collapse under the weight of my ego.

Scott T. wrote on email this afternoon that he'd meet us on an early morning LSD ride tomorrow. His words: I'll meet you at the crossroads, but if I'm not there then don't wait up for me.

It struck me then that he has the makings of a great bluesman, in spite of being a diminutive, white, 40-something attorney. Check it out:

I'll meet you at the crossroads,
but if I'm not there then don't wait up for me.

Yeah, I'll meet you at the crossroads,
but if I'm not there then don't wait up for me.

'Cuz I'll be on the Tarmac,
Pounding out some zone L-3.

Okay, so I added the stuff about the Powertap L-3 training. But I think you get the drift. The only problem is he needs a nickname, and a guy who is 5'4" can't pass for "T-bone." Hmmm... maybe my readers have some suggestions.

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In the spirit of the United Way, I'd like to ask you to give to a charity this holiday. I call it the Jimbo Fund, not to be confused with the Jimmy Fund. Anyhow, the Jimbo Fund will be responsible for rescuing lonely, orphaned bottles of high quality bourbon from liquor store shelves. Too often during the holiday season, customers will buy 11 bottles out of a case of hard liquor, only to leave a poor, seven year-old orphan behind, all by himself on the shelf. The orphan often just sits there, languishing, for the entire holiday season. He has no way to see his friends Jim and Jack down on the bottom shelf, nor can he travel to see his Old Grandad, who is usually behind the counter of the liquor store over Christmas.

In short these orphans are living a sad life, and I propose to do something about it. I hope to adopt them.

If you want to help me adopt some orphan top shelf bourbons over the holidays, please send me a check for any amount, from $34.95, to $68.75 if you are a really caring person and not a worthless bastard. If worst comes to worst you can even adopt one yourself, but I have to warn you not to try unless you have some experience with these poor waifs. And I have to warn you, the 17 year-olds may look attractive but they are nothing but trouble if you don't know how to handle them. You'd better leave *them* to me.

If the Jimbo Fund is successful, I will have a drive to rescue orphan hams from Safeway around Easter Time. I know it's ambitious, but we have to do what we can to help find these worthy little ones a good home for the holidays.

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It's 4:56 AM. I'm sitting here, bleary-eyed, in tights, quickly finishing up a blog post I started last night before driving 45 minutes to meet friends, to go on a 3 hour ride in freezing weather before going to work, and wondering why my nose is crammed up with snot, why I feel bloated and edgy (not enough sleep, natch), and whether I'm going to have an enormous asthma attack mid-ride, and most of all why the hell I am doing this.

God, I love this sport.

Equal Pay for Equal Work

Georgia Gould, a fine racer and decent person, has a petition up on line asking the UCI to require that women's field payouts be equal to men's field payouts. She doesn't require that the $35 and $25 payouts be equalized - y'know, the pittance payouts for those not finishing on the podium. Just the top 5 position payouts.

Equal pay for equal work is how it's characterized.

In my professional life I actually work on issues of this sort. Just to play devil's advocate here, assuming Elite Race = Elite Race, if you are proceeding on an equal pay for equal work principle, how can winning in a field that is at best half the size of a comparable men's field (in well attended events) to one ninth of the size of a comparable men's field, be characterized as equal work? Sure, it's 45 or 60 minutes or two hours of riding, but if you only beat 9 riders, or 55, it's not the same as beating 35 or 125, respectively.

Moreover, there is a trickle down effect that is somewhat jarring. In races where there is a men's 5, 4, 3-4, 3, Masters 40/50+ along with a Pro-1-2, common in roadracing, promoters have grave problems breaking even hosting 3-4 and 1-2-3 women's fields. You have to cover the cost of cops for the rolling enclosures plus all the other amenities, and the big costs don't pro-rate per rider, they pro-rate per race. To some extent women's can free ride on some of the services subsidized by packed men's 5, 4, and 3 races - ambulance coverage, potty rental, number purchases, etc. Buy do you really think the top 5 prize list in the women's 3-4, with 18 riders, ought to be equal to the men's 3-4 with 100 or 125 riders? I've often felt a little shabby, used, knowing my entry fees went to subsidize tiny elite fields with 45 or 50 riders at best. Taking another chunk out of my hide to subsidize women's elite fields with half that many or fewer riders, and taking another chunk out to similarly subsidize tiny women's 3-4 fields with a prize list equal to the 100+ rider 3-4 fields, would make me feel even more used.

This sport is subsidized on the backs of the participants at all but the very highest levels. You want higher prize lists for women? Drag more women out and get them into racing. I'm dying to see more women out there racing. It's good for the sport, good for the women who participate, and it will relieve a lot of the financial pressures on promoters, for whom every single rider is a financial burden until the costs are covered, and for whom every rider past that point represents profit, as well as a chance to improve prize lists.

I help promote a couple races. We make the women's prize list as high as we can make it in good conscience in light of the field sizes. Any primarily amateur race, even with a strong elite event (short of NRC pro attached) is perilous close to a break-even deal. At current levels of event support in road & cross, if we make *any* prize list in any field substantially higher, we have to rely on getting exceptional turnout, or we have to raise prices to subsidize it. By "we" I mean most promoters in these parts - while the biggest races break even or a touch better, most promoters - amateur clubs with tiny budgets - simply look to break even or not lose too much. We could finance higher prize lists by taking money out of the men's 4, 3-4 and 3, three of the four fields that subsidize the others. (Men's 5 get no cash, just medals and the like). Seems to me like you're screwing somebody there as it is, without taking another $500 out of their hides.

Nevertheless, here's my promise on this issue - in the events that I'm involved in, if I see really good women's turnout, I'll fight like hell to try to get the prizes improved. But the money has to come from some place and it's hard to justify when, most races, we don't know if we can break even until we get a couple dozen race day registrations. Got that? You want more prize money? Bring out your female friends and flood the zone. I'll do everything in my power to support getting more women into roadracing and cross. But I can't justify arguing in favor of shafting the vast majority of racers, who pay to play, in order to subsidize fields that are consistent money-losers. In cross, you can free ride. In roadracing, not so much; in fact if I were to run the costs, I'd submit that women's fields in roadraces are big money losers, with small fields, rolling police enclosures, motor refs, even with donated broom and commissaire wagons and free Mavic wheel support.

If it were actual work and we were making a product, you could plausibly argue that the same 'product' deserves equal pay. Even there, there is an argument that women's events even at the elite level, are less popular with spectators and thus don't merit the same pay because part of the work is drawing fans, and since fewer fans are drawn the market has passed judgment on the quality of the product. (It can go the other way - women's tennis supports men's tennis, and I'd submit men's tennis is an inferior spectator sport to women's). I'd entertain the argument in the interest of growing the sport, at least until the financial burden became onerous.

But for the vast majority of racers, including the vast majority of elits, it isn't actual work we do. In application, we lower level male racers bear the lion's share (good one there, eh?) of the financial burden of racing - not just paying for their own gear but paying for the prize lists and support services for all the other classes - women, juniors, elite men, and the other small classes that don't get bundled into a larger race. You play, we pay. And it's patently unfair to try to guilt us into taking up yet more burden to better compensate a class that doesn't even come close to paying for itself. As it is we stand to lose several hundred bucks on a men's elite roadrace, and that's assuming a strong turnout of 50 riders - optimistically.

After all, we pay a lot to race as it is. You don't think those carbon cranks and white bike shoes pay for themselves, do ya?

Flame away...

Fire in the hole...

Who among us has not been tempted to do something just like this?




The local squirrels torture my cats. There is even one squirrel that comes up to our front door's glass panels, stands on his hind legs, spread eagled, with forepaws on the glass ("assume the position, Rocky") and then steps back when the cats come charging headlong into the glass.

Yeah, maybe it's animal cruelty. But so is torturing cats. These squirrels... they've gotten away with it for too long. They have it coming.

I'm just upset I didn't think of it first.


Ps. And if you don't think bushy-tailed, cute, buck-toothed rodents are evil, get a load of this:

Rollers for Tough Guys

Screw those smooth, easy-to-ride E-Motion Rollers. I need to get me a set of these:



Hey, I wonder if you get going fast enough, if the things catch fire?

Shamelessly ripped off from Burt Friggin' Hoovis.

Family Bikes Shop Ride

Hey everybody. Family Bikes shop ride tomorrow AM, kicking off at 7:00 or a couple minutes after that from Jon's shop in Crofton MD. It's a donut ride - 30 miles, intermission in the middle at the Hard Bean in Annapolis for your choice of Coffee or whatever. Some of us will be riding fixed, just an off-season easy spin, tellin' lies and grinning. You can go a little longer afterwards, there's always an option to head back through Crownsville and make it 40 rather than 30, or longer.

I hope to see some of you there.

World Class...

Wow. You think I can be a world class, uptight jerk sometimes?

Check out this VeloNews interview with Rock Racing team owner Michael Ball. Holy crap, he's a piece of work. I'm sorry, but this guy is a total prick.

I understand that he wants to make a marketing splash and that's part of his deal, but you don't have to crap all over the sport you're involved in to make a splash. A whiff of slippery just sort of emanates off everything the guy says. If you read what he is saying closely, he isn't really saying anything. He's just sort of shoveling crap. He isn't cogent, his arguments boil down to "blah blah blah blah blah because I say so." The arguments include making some wild-ass accusations that WADA and USADA are targeting Rock Racing for political [Update: and personal hygiene] reasons. Lame.

[Update: after sleeping on it, I know why the Ball interview bothered me so much. It's because just about all of what he said took the form of ipse dixit arguments about why bicycle racing sucks. Ipse dixit, for those not schooled in lawyer's phony latin, is an argument which a person asserts to be true simply because they, themselves, said it. "It's true because I say it is." I can be an argumentative jackass, but I try to back up my statements with some factual authority, and if I am using an ipse dixit, I try to tip you off by saying "I think" or "I believe". Ball doesn't extend that courtesy and just makes a series of accusations, with little-to-no factual support. Does that mean he's completely wrong? Not necessarily. He may just be bad at rhetoric. But more likely than not, he's pulling stuff out of his butt. And that's why he pissed me off. You don't allege vast conspiracies targeting your organization and your employees unless you have factual support for the allegations. Otherwise, you're either lying, or just plain crazy.]

And apparently I'm not the only guy who thinks he's a little squirelly.

After reading that interview, I almost feel bad about being a Kayle Leogrande fan.

The Sub Nazi

Remember that Seinfeld episode, The Soup Nazi, where there’s this guy that makes awesome soup, and if you don’t stand in line in formation, ask for it just the right way and accept whatever the chef (“the Soup Nazi”) dishes out, you don’t get soup. “NO SOUP FORYOU!”

Yeah, I got a guy like that I have to deal with.

So it’s the off season now, I’m able to ride a lot, do tons of ‘junk volume,’ zone 2 endurance and fat burning riding. This is a good time for me to lose weight. Part of the plan is to bring good lunches from home but on bad days where I leave the house in a hurry, I can hit up a local Greek bistro for a nice salad ($13) or Subway for a veggie sub ($7 with apples or baked chips and a drink). Both are pretty low cal, reasonably convenient to the office, and Subway is a bit awful but much cheaper. So Subway it is, at least when I think I can handle the Sub Nazi. This has a lot to do with my commitment to becoming a better racer, because there are dozens of higher calorie places with better tasting stuff, but the veggie sub is a known portion with a set calorie value and it's filling enough to fool me into thinking I ate a real meal.

What I won't do for my racing...

But there’s this guy in there, a short, moustachioed latino fellow who doesn’t much like me or anybody. I don’t know what life did to piss him off – probably if I was in a promising career being a pain in the ass at Subway, I’d be pissed too – and he takes it out on everybody else.

He’s not a mean kind of Sub Nazi. Oh no, he’s a “just following orders” kind of Sub Nazi. A passive aggressive sort of microfascist.

His crime?

He doesn’t put enough vegetables on the subs.

Sounds like no big deal right? You get a foot long turkey double stuff Subway sub, you’re paying for a pound of steroid-infested turkey breast and turkey by-product, not some wilted lettuce. You want the Italian BMT, it’s all about ham, capiccolo and provolone, not some pasty, potato-ey tomato slices.

But you go in there for a veggie sub, you want veggies, right? And worse than thwarting the ravening desire for rabbit food, he's willfully defiant of customer requests, and he is apparently leading a small mutiny within the local Subway staff. You think I'm exaggerating?

About three weeks ago I pop in for a veggie sub, foot long. It’s like 500 calories, so I can indulge. The bread lady slices it, passes it to the Sub Nazi, and he starts filling it. In goes the three tomato slices (two short from what appears in the photos to be the regulation number of slices, but who’s counting, right?) and about two tablespoons of lettuce. He starts slinging in a couple cucumber slices, asks what I want, and I say some of everything. So I get some of everything – about a teaspoon of carrot and two pickle slices and a jalapeno slice. I don’t want to make a stink so I just take it, and by the time he’s done compressing the sub, slicing it and wrapping it up, it’s about an inch thick and pretty much devoid of filling. Like a good little boy I take my medicine and go back to the office, not quite fuming but sort of bugged. I was starving by 3:00 PM.

A couple weeks ago I go in and order the same sub. I’m resolved that I’m going to get the works – a frickin’ salad on bread, like the picture on the menu shows. The routine starts, the guy starts ladling out the vegetable portions as if he were sprinkling gold dust onto the wheat sub roll, and I go “hey, how ‘bout a little more salad there, buddy?” The Sub Nazi shouts, “you don’t have to yell!” The bread lady, a recent immigrant from Korea shouts at him, “what you doing wrong! Veggie sub! You supposed to put veggies on it.!” The recent immigrant Chinese dressing/cutting/bagging guy just smirked, and the Sub Nazi sullenly packed on a bunch of lettuce – so much so that when I unwrapped it later I had to take some of the lettuce out of it, lest my office be doused with lettuce like the bottom of a rabbit’s cage.

Still, I’m chuffed because I think we’ve solved the little problem at the local Subway, which in case you wondered resembles the UN, and that’s without taking into account the World Bank staff, who work just around the corner. It's got all the features of the UN - squabbling between the citizens of various nations, nothing gets done right, and the people paying the bills have a sense that maybe they aren't getting their money's worth out of the damn thing.

So last week I go in. It’s the same lineup behind the counter. I order the same damn veggie sub. The Sub Nazi looks at me with this evil gleam in his eyes. He immediately reverts to form and puts about a tablespoon of lettuce on the damn sub. I complain, kinda quietly but loud enough that he hears me. He looks me right in the eye and passes it to the Chinese dressing/cutting/bagging man, smirking, and then goes "next!" I decide not to fight it but to make sure that I at least get some flavoring on the sub, so I ask “and crushed red pepper paste and jalapenos please." So this guy spoons like a cup of crushed red peppers and about 30 jalapeno slices on it, and gives me the evil eye. Oh shit, it’s getting worse - the Sub Nazi has brought the Chinese guy into his little vendetta. [Dude, Chinese Guy is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please...] So after I eat the sub, which was impossibly hot but which I’d vowed to eat, I wondered what to do. The only thing I could do, was to confront the problem. I had to go back there.

Tuesday, I’m in the Subway. We go through the usual routine. I give the guy the staredown when I come in. It's like High Noon, and I'm Gary freakin' Cooper. I *can’t* back off. I can’t let him win. Yet he’s going to screw me if I get the veggie sub.

What am I going to do here? I can’t lose in a mano-a-mano with the Sub Nazi.

So I do the only thing I can do. Change the rules of the game. I order the foot long Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sub. Hah, I’ll beat that bastard at his own game. It's not perfect on calories, but come on, four pieces of bacon, and I'm riding 40 miles today on the fixed gear... nothing to it.

So we do the usual routine. The Korean bread lady cuts up the wheat bread. She passes it down to the Sub Nazi and tells him “BLT, Footlong.” He eyeballs me, gives me the “you killed my father, prepare to die” look, and pulls out a half portion of bacon. But it’s a footlong! He’s only giving me one piece of friggin’ bacon! I know I need to lose some weight but this is ridiculous! That’s a half portion for a 6” sub. It's nowhere near what I'm paying for! This is insane. I’m in a sub feud, and this guy is kicking my ass. I stand there fuming while he nukes it for 15 seconds, then pulls it out. “You want thee lettuce and thee bacone?” “Yes, please,” I said rather meekly. “It’s a bacon, *lettuce and tomato* sandwich, right?”

*BAD* mistake.

He piles on about two pounds of lettuce, ten or 15 slices of tomato, gives me an evil-ass grin and passes it along to the dressing/wrapping/cutting Chinese guy. He asks me if I want any topping. I tell him a little mayo. So he puts like two cups on, ladles a half cup of crushed hot red pepper paste on it, wraps it and cuts it, and hands it over, also grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

So I’m eating this BLT in the office on Tuesday, with my mouth burning and mayo dripping out of the sandwich onto my shoes, wondering what to do. Fasting? Salads from the local McDonalds? Maybe something more serious?

I think arson is probably out of the question, but if I ever meet that Jared dude, I’m going to kick his freakin' veggie sub-eating ass. Mark my words, compadres. Mark my words.

Back to the Frickin' Grind

It's actually not back to the grind. It's back to riding the way I like to ride, for fun. I broke out the fixie a couple weeks ago, actually converted the Surly back to flip-flop when I bought Ken's Fetish Ankhs off of him. After resting yesterday, I rode into work today and tacked on a couple extra miles, getting to work at a nice even 21. It's partly to help suck some weight between now and the start of Base 1, but also partly to just do what I like to do, which is to ride my bike and not be hassled by the man, aka Coach Bill Gros. Bill's a good coach. I still have a lot of limiters as a rider to overcome, but the ones I've overcome so far, I can attribute in part to Coach Bill. But after 9 months of structure in my riding - where the hardest damn part is taking it easy and getting off the bike when what I really need is two hours of stress relief spinning - I have a month of taking it easy, riding my ass off for fun on the fixie and MTB and winter bike. This is what I do to rest mentally, it's where I recover. Ride the bike long and pretty slow, charge up the hills for a little intensity and just to feel that pleasant sensation of work in the legs, stop for hot coffee mid-ride, eat lots, get cold, go home, drink hot tea and eat hot black bean soup to warm up, then take a nap. Or ride a long way going into work and get to my desk refreshed, with a smile on my face.

I'm remembering now what it's like to be a racer. Riding in the dark and wet during the winter - fendering up the bike to keep the mud and road grit off the nice white & blue kit. Nodding and waving as I pass oncoming commuters and other racers I know. The winter knocks the fair weather riders off their bikes. There's no Fakengers parking Pistas in the rack at work - it's hard core commuters on beat-to-sheeit Trek MTBs with commuter accessories on them, old Schwinns with a million miles, and this Irish trackie who is soft spoken but pretty obviously harder than a burlap bag full of ball peen hammers.

The commuters you pass are heavily dressed - they go slow and warm. Some of them look like firemen, they have so much glowing yellow and green on them it looks like a turnout coat and pants. They're alright, the hardcore commuters - mostly grizzled, bearded men, peaceful looking but taciturn as well. No matter what they look like, they're always good for a chat, and usually interesting to speak with as well if you take your time to slow down and ride with them for a bit on the way home.

The velo boys are all dressed in tighter kit, layers of lycra and Thermafleece and SuperRoubaixWhatTheHell, polypro and rubber booties, form fitting wool and thinner gloves than you'd expect. Most of the smart ones are tooling along, there's still a few hammering. Not too many of them wear team kit - it takes a lot of time to build up a good wardrobe of team kit, and the winter gear is the last stuff a lot of guys buy. So you see the NCVC shorts worn with a blue Pearl Izumi windbreaker, Route 1 arm warmers over a Woolistic training jersey.

The immigrants are out there too, just as they always are, pedaling along slowly, purposefully, on their Magnas and old Univegas. Typically they don't have any lights at all, or maybe just a red blinking light, often installed confusingly on the front of the bike. They bike because they have to, they don't have the money for a car. They don't dream of biking the way we do, they dream of driving a car. It's okay though, I respect their toughness and their industry.

The Biketrail Guys, the bane of Spring and Summer riding, are nowhere to be found. I suppose most of them are making asses of themselves at various Christmas parties, or checking themselves out in the mirrors at Gold's Gym, even as they are eyeballing the other guys, "the competition," and stealing furtive glances at the women. Surely they've morphed into the dating world's version of Biketrail Guys - irritating, not-to-be-taken-seriously, except as a serious irritation.

The wildlife has changed too. Gone are the little chirping birds. In their place are solid ducks and geese, probably from the far north and vacationing in and around the Chesapeake. Our own native ducks and geese, no dummies, are in South Carolina, enjoying the warmth. The young male deer I often see on the Capital Crescent is growing older too. No longer spike horned, he has a tiny 4 (or is it a 6) point rack. He's on the side of the trail tonight, and I say, "Hi, Buck!" as I pedal past. I always say the same thing and the deer looks at me quizzically. If he said, "Hi, fat guy on a bike" one time, I probably wouldn't be shocked.

Pedaling up the Crescent tonight I felt the bottom bracket clunking. It's probably shot after fixed gear training last winter, then serving as a 'cross crank all fall. It has served me well; it's two years old and survived the initial Assault on the C&O Canal, as well as the second attack, some cross bike cross-country, major commuting and road salt. I dropped it off in the shop tonight, it will be nice to get back a completely silent bottom bracket.

As usual, I pondered taking off the fat 700x32 Continental Contact tires and slipping on some 700x25 Maxxis training tires I have. Like usual, I'll think about it on every ride, and forget about it when I get home. Sure, it would be faster and easier. But I think I'll live like a commuter for now and wear the rest of the tread off the Contacts, before throwing them away (recycling them at Contes, actually).

I'll keep the fat tires for now because sometimes, suffering is good for you. It teaches you to suffer better, which is as important in life as it is on the bike. My knees hurt a bit right now since I'm running something like 71 inches. That's not a big deal until you think about the 90 RPM cruising speed (19 MPH) and the effects of wind and cold, and how this is supposed to be the off season. But the knees will adjust and I will get used to going everywhere at 19 MPH, uphill, downhill, flats, headwinds, tailwinds. The suffering will pass and pretty soon I'll be comfortable on the fixie and spinning out pretty often, wondering if I should drop a tooth on the rear cog.

Yep, it's the off-season. It's mundane, it's routine, it's unfocused, and the weather conditions are atrocious. There will be discomfort, wet, cold, sore legs, long, quiet rides even when riding with others, heavy suffering. In other words, some of the best rides of the year. It's nice to be riding in the off season.


Administrative Note: A while back, I said some nice things about Carmax where I recently had a good car buying experience, the best car buying experience I've ever had. One of their marketing managers, who apparently has a blogsearch set up, contacted me and said thanks for the good word, and then sent me a nice road atlas. That was pretty sweet. Can I say something else nice about them? There was a slight leak on the edge of the windshield, noticeable only in driving rainstorms. I contacted them, said I thought it should be covered under their warranty, and they fixed it, no questions asked. That's pretty good service, peeps. Studies show you pay about 7-10% more with Carmax, due in part to their 'no haggling' policy. If you can spare the money - and if you want to avoid 3-4 visits to a dealer, tons of product research, price matching research and all the other crap you have to do to haggle effectively - then Carmax may be an option worth exploring. I like how I was treated by them, and how I've continued to be treated by them. As with any corporation it's all about the money, but many corporations don't understand that treating the customers decently, as fellow human beings, can improve the bottom line.

Dammmnn... That's Gonna Leave a Mark...

So I rode the 29'er in the C race on Sunday. As local sports radio talk guy Steve Czaban would say, sarcastically, "so how's that workin' out for you?" The course was beautiful, almost Granogue-esque in its diversity of surfaces and gradients. After last week's snowstorm it rained, so the ground was soft, the sand pit turned hard pretty quick, and a substantial chunk of the course turned into Belgian-style slop atop sticky muck. The race went well enough, I was tragically undergeared for it, and the fat 700x2.1" tires were totally the wrong choice for the mud. While the MTB was stable, sticking well until it finally broke traction (then going into lurid, 2-3 foot power slides) it was also basically glued to the ground, so that each revolution of the wheel made a sucking noise. Yep, it hooked up too well and it was actually harder pedaling in the dirt flats than uphill. Besides slowing me down on uphills and making the considerable climbing comfortable and tedious, the undergearing also eliminated the two real advantages I have - plummeting down hills and powering across grass flats and false flats. Oh well, my fault, I'm the one who decided to not take things too seriously. So I rode along near the back, got beat by a bunch of people who only see my ass at the start and when I'm drinking beer at the finish, got outsprinted by James from Proteus Bikes, and then tried to strap up into the geared bike for the Masters 2-3-4 race, which started 6-7 minutes later. I got off the startline alright but definitely lacked pop. On the powerline prologue, I was sagging backwards pretty quick, which was a desperately bad thing because it was a false flat (the kind of place I usually crush) and it was clear my legs had *nothing* left. I hung in there, not DFL but back with a pod of 6-7 guys challenging for DFL, and tried to get a rhythm. No firkin' way, Kemo Sabe. My left cankle started getting a crampy feeling, along with my left wrist, as soon as we got off the prologue. Meanwhile, an asthma attack that had started in the first race pretty much continued. Knowing that it was only going downhill from there - not downhill as in an easy ride, but downhill as in that skier from the opening credits of Wide World of Sports - I packed it in after a lap. Maybe next year I'll try the C-B combo, which would give me an hour of recovery between races. But C-B master? No way, not this year, not in my condition. Much to his credit, some big guy from LSV did just that. Much to his credit, it appeared he would be marginally faster than me - i.e. ten yards ahead of me - in both races. Final verdict of the cross season? I suck. I need to lose 40 pounds and learn how to ride better. I'm okay with that though.

Meanwhile, the Bobbsey Twins knocked out another podium. Here's a shot of them finishing 1-2:


Whoops. I'm sorry. That's a photo of a couple enormous sandbags. I wonder how that got in there? Anyhow, here's a shot of Nystrom and Fatticus finishing 1-2 after leading wire to wire, by a long, long way:
Hell of a performance guys, your whole season was impressive as shit. Now could you get off the short bus please? Us kids in the hockey helmets are tired of getting picked on.

Just kidding. I'm not competitive in 3-4 yet, so the Higher Echelon Alleged Sandbaggery doesn't bug me that much. A stout handful of guys in the C's, who seem to have hit the mandatory upgrade point sometime in October between MABRA, MAC, and non-series races do sort of bug me. Not really for my own sake right now. Next year that shit will really bug me, I hope to be in points contention, but for now I'm bugged on behalf of all the guys who finished 5-6 places out of points contention between October and this week. I have a teammate in that bin and why he's not fuming about it is beyond me. Given the difficulty of picking up upgrade points for those guys "just out of the points," a rider's failure to responsibly vacate the really short bus (the C/4 race) after hitting the mandatory upgrade point sticks it to people who, under the rules, should be earning points toward their upgrades. No, not me, but my teammate and some other friends who deserve to be going into next year with some points in the pocket. Yep, there's some fault to be borne by various sanctioning bodies who don't pay attention to 'cross and consider it subsidiary to roadracing (thus failing to tally upgrade points from week to week), but have some humility folks and understand that there's honor to be had in fighting for 30th, sometimes maybe there's more honor in that than in putting 5 minutes on the rest of the Cat 4 field and competing with two buddies - especially when you'd be competitive in the B's. Sorry to be a dick about it ad keep banging the drum but the truth hurts and somebody needs to say it. And if the fields grow again next year like they did this year, we may see 100+ rider fields in the Cs, a small handful of guys taking all the points all year, and 90 riders interested in progressing just sort of screwed. It's a different situation for really strong riders who need upgrade points, but if you aren't contending for upgrade points, or a jersey, move on up with the Jeffersons people.

So that's it for the 'Cross season. Now that I've pissed everybody off, thanks for racing, thanks for cheering and giving me something to cheer about, thanks for sharing a Duvel afterward and for being good sports on and off the course. See y'all on the road, at Patapsco, or wherever. Y'all made it a great season for me, and I hope for yourselves. Thanks for that, I'll keep the memories of my first real racing campaign forever and treasure them - even the arguments over what constitutes sandbagging, whether it's proper to pull riders in various states of DFL, and so forth. Doesn't mean I'm not going to try to kick your ass next fall, I'm just saying thanks, it's been a great ride, I can only hope I've helped make it fun for you too.

See ya at Charm City.

Here's Your Other Chance...

Everybody talks a pretty good game. Time comes to strap up, shut up and go play, it gets real quiet all of a sudden.

Here's your chance to back up your talk and your ambitions. Tomorrow is the Rockburn Cross, up in Elkridge, MD, not too far from Columbia. It's the last day of the cross season locally. It's not part of any series. I was mountain biking in 5-6 inches of snow up there Wednesday, which has mostly melted by now, it rained a lot yesterday and today, and tomorrow's forecast is for 34 degrees, and rain. It will be technical, muddy, cold, wet, and tough.

The only thing that is on the line, is your honor.

See you there.


Ps. Yep, I'll try to double up. I'll do the C's on the single speed MTB, then whip out the geared bike - New and Improved, With Brakes! - for the Masters B as long as I'm physically capable of it.

Pps. Good news on the health front. The health benefits of espresso drinking have been studied - by Italian cardiologists, of course - and it turns out it's a veritable elixir. Good news, Art - we'll live forever! Or 12% longer anyhow. Doppio espresso, per favore!

Improving your fitness...

Leave me alone for 10 minutes, willya?

I'm busy cross-training.

Maybe the best beer ever...

Right here folks. Klosterbrauerei Kreuzberg. Sure, Kloster Andechs has its partisans. So too the various Belgian trappist monasteries and small corporate brewers. But those who have been to the Elysian fields of Bischofsheim an der Rhoen know the full truth.


It is in beautiful riding country, in the Bayerische Spessart, that is the mountainous and hilly country north of Nuernberg/Wuerzburg, an hour east of Frankfurt and 10 minutes East of Fulda.


It is a gorgeous old monastery where you can rent a room for $30 per night, after you've enjoyed the brew.



It isn't always open. They don't make all that much beer. It isn't bottled and shipped all around the world, though they will let you rent a keg, which you can bring back and have refilled from time to time. You kind of have to go there to enjoy it, sort of like drinking from a fresh mountain spring it just wouldn't be the same packaged in bottles and shipped everywhere by truck.

Gonna have a little talk with Google...

Here's the text of one of the rotating G-Ads that popped up on the sidebar a minute ago:

GOOGLE ADS
Legal steroids buy now

See Results in 7 days or money back dekka, winstrall, dianobol, buy now

No, I don't have anything to do with the content of the ads, but that is pretty appalling.

Criminy.

Tuesday Bluesday

Hey, here's some great poop from Ken W, lifted from Dave Harris' blog, 'splainin' why it is that riding single speed (and by corrolary, fixed gear) makes you a stronger, fitter rider.

Here's the Uplift Mofo SS Party (Training) Plan.

And here's Dave Harris' adaptation as a result of riding SS.

How does it work? In a nutshell, he thinks most people spend too much time doing too much aerobic stuff, and not working enough on neuromuscular power - just plain ol' ass, as in "put some more ass inna it, boy!" Some studies that Andy Coggan has discussed on the Google Wattage Group get into exactly this point. It's been found that you can maintain good neuromuscular power, VO2 Max, and functional threshold power (the lasting being very much a function of slow twitch aerobic base) by doing two short, extremely sharp workouts each week, along with a couple recovery rides. Got that? You do some work using all your muscular systems, including engaging that neuromuscular fast twitch muscle, and all of your systems get stronger. The other way to get strong like that is to periodize and specialize your training, with 5 hour, closely focused zone 2 rides and stuff like that - but for many of us, the "mixed" workokuts hitting all combinations of muscle employment can be the most efficient way to get stronger. I suspect that when I hear about good Cat 3 racers getting by on 8 hours training per week, this type of training figures into their routine.

Oh yeah, and one other thing - could be the time of year, could be that I'm tired from too much work, could be I am getting sick. When that happens, there's only one thing to do. [Turn up the speakers before you click]. Trust me... this is more stimulating than 4 shots of espresso and an almond biscotti, and a quicker picker upper than Bounty Paper Towels.



Speaking of partying hard, let's rock the house at Rockburn 'Cross. It's a non-table race, so placing high doesn't matter. Season's over for most of us folks - let's do some soul racing, racing for the joy of it. Who's up for a little stretching past our limits here? I was toying with maybe riding the Cross Check fixed in the C race, and doubling up and riding the geared bike in the Masters B, or maybe even the SS MTB. I'll get my ass kicked in both races and get ridden into the ground... and it'll be glorious if I manage to pull it off. Oh yeah, and I'll be bringing a cooler of my little Belgian friends. If there's mud... so much the better.

Who's down?

Capital Cross Classic, Reston

The Capital Cross Classic in Reston went pretty much as could be expected. Like I’ve said, the last three or four weeks have been a training black hole for me – Thanksgiving week completely off, and the other weeks I’ve been lucky to get two or three rides on per week. This last week I rode pretty much every day, just broke out the fixie and commuted, rode some hills on it and so forth. Yesterday, I took delivery of my noo bay-bee, a Redline Monocog Flight 29’er and rode with LBS guys Jon & Tom, Trevor, and a couple other fellows who are bull strong MTB’ers. For my maiden voyage, we went and rode some gently rolling trails at Patapsco. [Snickering about ‘gently rolling’ anything at Patapsco ensues…] So my legs were pretty dead – not an excuse a fact – on the start line today. I knew it would be bad, and true to form it was, despite a good warmup the legs didn’t loosen up for two laps. There was also some residual sore back and hands – single speed MTB’ing appears to be all about pulling up on the bars while you climb at 50 rpm – but that was irrelevant next to the leg burn which was brutal but cleared up after the second lap.

The New Baby

More serious was the loss of brakes on the Fetish. I violated Racing Rule #966, Thou Shalt Not Change the Bike on Race Day. I had mounted a wheelset with Michelin Muds, expecting and hoping to ride in the vile freezing sleet and mud predicted on Weather.com, with the idea that I may not be faster than most people but I’m probably tougher, so a real sufferfest would be to my benefit.

Problem is, between work and a ton of personal obligations I’ve been busier than the one legged man at the County Ass Kicking Contest, and I was too tired (aka too much of a lazy, pussed-out moron) to tune the brakes last night. I reasoned that brake carrier cable adjustments are a pretty minor job with the TRP Euro-X brakes (and they are) so I could do it at Reston if need be.

Let me know if your “HEY, LOOK AT THE STUPID GUY” red flashing dashboard light just started blinking. Apparently, the bulb in mine is burnt out or just not too bright.

Anyhow, on the day, the brakes were wayyy too loose, so I loosened the straddle cable end and shortened the cable. The cable end has two hex bolts pinching the cable so it’s adjustable. This fixed the brakes. Unfortunately, I only had one hex wrench, and had to tighten up the cable end using my patented Thumb/Forefinger/Irritation Signalling Finger Vise Grip tool. It wasn’t clear how tight I got it. Not very, it seems.

This defect went unnoticed until the steep downhill into an off-camber most of the way through the first lap, when a guy stacked in front of me. I made a panicked grab at the brakes, and pulled the STI levers up against the handlebar. After that, I had no way to brake effectively to moderate speed, which made the corners interesting, but this was really a good thing.

A good thing? Yes.

I tried to keep braking for a quarter lap, but after I rode off the course down by Steve’s Swimming Pool I decided to just stop braking, except on the downhill off camber. On that the only way to navigate it was to just about stop at the top of the hill, keep the brakes clamped to the bar, and keep them locked on all the way down to the off-camber, which I would hit at just about full speed, after picking up speed all the way down that hill in spite of the levers being pulled in to the bar. I’m not skillful enough to carry speed all the way around so I had to sort of calculate how much speed I could carry through the tight spots, and try to just ride in at that pace. It worked out okay and the last two or three laps went pretty smoothly, a hard effort at a slightly lower, but much more constant intensity than I am used to. It wasn't fast - I lost probably 10 spots on the downhill off camber during the race - but it wasn't terribly slow either.

It turned out there were a few places on the course I could just hammer, and I was pleased to look left going through one fast sweeper, and see my wheels throwing up chunks of dirt and roostertails as I drifted to the left through the turn, barely under control. That kind of stuff is good for building confidence in your bike handling. The downhill into the off-camber posed a concern each lap, as the brake cable slipped a little further each time, and there was an uphill/downhill off-camber section traversing a hill face over the latrines that was also a little sketchy, but I felt I had a lot of flow and I'm going to keep working on not braking in races.

In the end I finished 43d out of maybe 70 or 75 riders. Not a great placing, but I wasn’t unhappy. With sore legs & back, fading fitness and mostly non-existent brakes, it’s not like I could have expected more. You have to go into a race being honest with yourself if you hope to ride smart and up to your potential on the day. The one really good takeway from this was feeling desparately bad right from the start but sticking with it through the second lap thinking “well, now I have more than enough excuses to quit – bad legs, no brakes…" and then concluding that it would be more honorable not to quit - time to HTFU and just ride. So it wasn't a great performance placing-wise, but a good ride in terms of earning some self-respect.

Highlights –

Having friends cheering for me. Deep in the pain cave, I heard Fat Marc, some women calling my name (who was that I wonder? Most of the girls I know who do cross were racing at the same time) and I think Ken Getchell said good things about me, plus tons of random folks. Sometimes I don’t hear but when I do it’s nice. Hey, I'm not going to invite y'all over to date my sister, but if you race cross too we're friends of a sort.

Being thanked by a guy for letting him pass at the top of the downhill into the off-camber – I shouted “go, no brakes, gotta go slow.” I only did it out of necessity – if I didn’t slow way down, I’d have stacked it and he would have run over me or crashed with me. That’s an aside, the nice thing is knowing I remembered to not be a jerk on the race course, and that one of my peers appreciated the decision. It’s hard competition out there, I don’t mind sticking it to people in a test of legs or lungs, but the competitive spirit ends at the point where continuing to compete would cause needless injury or just be flat out stupid. Trying to ride that hill without brakes, at my skill level, would have caused needless mayhem for others, so I didn't do it and waved people through if they were on my wheel at that hill. As a general principle I try to hang on to the sportsmanship that should undergird all our competition in life. I don’t always manage to do this, but I like doing it, and like it more when it’s appreciated and the favor is returned. It makes me feel like I’m not alone in this, and that makes it easier to sometimes bite my tongue and keep cool when somebody else does something unsportsmanlike or really stupid on the bike.

Chatting with like minded friends. Cross season is funny – every weekend, you get together with 500 buddies to go out in some field and suffer. You meet a lot of good people racing, and it’s always pleasant.

Chatting with Jeremiah Bishop about the Tacchino course. I didn’t speak to him on the day at the Tacchino but thought I should ask for his opinion on our course – he’d told some of the guys it was very much a roadie’s course. So I just introduced myself as one of the club officers, thanked him for attending (and winning), and asked for his opinions on the course. He gave some thoughts that squared with what Ken and I and some other folks on the club think about what a cross course ought to be, and we have some ideas for some nice mods that will help us to build next year on this year’s success. Now here’s the cool thing about that chat with Jeremiah – he’s definitely the Alpha Cyclist (or one of three or four) at any given MAC or MABRA event, a pro who makes a living at this. He could be a real dick, super arrogant, and not hang out and chat with people – nobody would think anything of it. “Hey, what do you expect? He’s a pro.” But he’s not like that at all, he’s super gracious and spent a lot of time near the barriers, watching the races and hanging out chatting with random folks, a real normal guy pro. As I was leaving, Jeremiah was doing his warmup near the Trek VW, which was parked adjacent to my truck. It was getting close to his race time so I didn't bother him, but a guy and a girl walked up to him. The guy introduced himself and his wife, said they were huge fans, and Jeremiah smiled and started pouring on the charm, chatting with them. He didn’t have to do that either, and would have been within his rights to say, “hey, great, I’m glad to hear it, but I’m trying to get ready for my race right now.” The nicest guy in the world could say that and nobody would find it unreasonable. But Jeremiah didn’t say that and as I pulled out was having a nice warm discussion with a couple of his fans. That was really impressive.

And here’s the kicker. As far as I’m concerned, anybody who races is just some other guy who rides a bike. I don’t really think of anybody as being above anybody else – we’ve all got talents, no matter what we do with ourselves for a living and for hobbies. So I didn’t think anything of walking up to Jeremiah Bishop and asking him what he thought of the course and how to improve it - he's just some guy on a bike, albeit one who has world class talent and (I'm presuming) world class ability to judge a race course. So he's still just some guy, in my book. But after seeing him in action, if he is gracious enough to attend the Tacchino… well, I’ll probably feel compelled to re-introduce myself by saying, “I’m a big fan of yours and on the event organizing team, and wanted to know what you think about the course this year…” Seeing how he treats people made me a fan – maybe not as much of Jeremiah Bishop as a racer, but of him as a person. That was excellence in the one dimension that really counts, decency; and it was impressive. Yeah, I'd ride with him any day, if he was able to go that slowly.

A New Friend

Meet Bandit, the Official Dog of the Unholy Rouleur since 2007.



He's an 18 month-old Smooth Collie - Lassie without the hippie haircut.



Bandit is a good name for him. He loves to thieve little things - like my son's toys - and chew on them. Or paintbrushes. Or the cats' toys. Or my t-shirts.

It's nice sharing our lives with a dog again. It's been 4 years since we had one. Yep, it's a bit of extra work and commitment, but building the love and working relationship between a dog and yourself makes it worth it. It helps that he's a fine looking dog, mischievous and smart - it's fun just watching him try to get into trouble. That'll probably get old fast, but for ow, we're enjoying it.