Save The Erf!

It turns out that according to two of the three leading U.S. environmental groups, the National Resources Defense Counsel and Greenpeace, if you use soft toilet paper, you are harming the environment worse than just about any other thing you could possibly do. Evidently, if you use the John Wayne toilet paper, the stuff that's rough and tough and don't take no shit off any a-holes, you are being much nicer to the Erf. They say that 98% of the wood pulp used in making soft toilet paper is from virgin forests - which is a funny economic choice to make, when you consider that big redwood or oak board sells for an enormous amount of money per board foot. Matter of fact, I think that 98% figure sounds a little facty, if you know what I mean; too good of a figure to check the veracity of. Y'know, like the guy on the radio who said that 90% of people agree with his viewpoints...

Sure, I could joke about it. For instance:

Q: What's the difference between single ply recycled toilet paper and sandpaper?

A: Sandpaper is smooth on one side.

But I won't. The Toilet Paper Crisis is far, far too serious for joking. That 98% figure, and the estimation that this is one of the biggest problems, um, facing us, makes me realize I can't argue with facties like that or even joke about them. So if you truly care about saving the Erf, you need to use the roughest, nastiest recycled toilet paper you can find, because that's the stuff that used the least resources in the manufacturing process. Hell, maybe you should use sawdust chips, the ones you don't blend into your organic oatmeal for breakfast, anyhow. Sure, it won't be comfortable wiping yourself with what was a cardboard box just yesterday, but the constant achy, itchy feeling and periodic cuts and bruises on the most delicate part of your fundament will be a testament to your love of the Erf. I'm pretty certain you'll be able to brag about this at local Neighborhood Association meetings and at cocktail parties; I bet it gives you the permanent moral high ground in nearly any conversation.



For those who would like to enjoy the same amount of redemptive suffering but who cannot bear the thought you can buy a hair shirt and join a rigorous Catholic monastic order. Sorry I don't have a product link; Amazon does what they call "customer satisfaction" but they don't usually consider self-torture to be related to satisfaction. Maybe you could use one of these in the mean time:

In Good Humor...

What is funny? What is funny about edgy stuff?

First, let's celebrate National Brotherhood Week with Tom Lehrer and think about it.



Pretty edgy stuff without even having to drop the F-bomb, eh?

Richard Pryor, on the other hand, was on the opposite end of the spectrum. Here he is joking about being bombed, doing some domestic violence, and shooting his car to keep his estranged wife from leaving him. That's a little edgy, no?



Andy Kaufman, on the gripping hand, was just wayyy out there. Who is he making fun of here? Himself and Hollywood people? The people he mocks out? People who make fun of Southerners? Hard to say. I think maybe "all of the above." Regardless of what he was trying to do, it's pretty funny.



Man, that is just the edgiest stuff I've ever seen. It's funny, but damn, you just don't know what to make of it; and it's not funny at all if you aren't aware of the fact that Kaufman is joking. You're just a prop and he's making laughs off your cluelessness, and that's just cruel. But maybe even funnier because of it. I was laughing at it and I don't know what that says about me.

About 10 years after Kaufman's death, Jerry Lawler let on that the whole wrestling / insulting the South thing that Kaufman did, with Lawler as his opponent, was a big put-on. That routine I embedded was part of Kaufman's feud with Jerry Lawler's fans and a lot of the core Southern wrestling fans. It's a hell of a joke, when you can make it last a year and when people legitimately want to murder you because your humor is so oblique.

News of the Bizarre

Headline: Hamsters in Jackets Harnessed for Energy. Rebuttal: So what. Men in jackets have been harnessed for profits for years. They call it "Law," "Accounting," and "Management."

Religion I can get behind: Buddhists build temple out of 1 million beer bottles. Man, I would have killed to be the materials subcontractor on that job.

Truly odd news: Kyle is not overtrained, and he's considering racing smarter. In other news, hell froze over yesterday, and cats & dogs signed a historic truce...

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Serious talk. Avert your eyes if you don't want to hear it. Here's an update on the Christoper Hitchens incident I mentioned last week; it is published here by the author and pro-democracy activist Michael Totten, who witnessed the event and was mildly assaulted himself. Hitchens, it seems, was fairly seriously beaten. Totten told Hitchens, post-beating, that he should have warned Hitchens ahead of time of the Syrian National Socialist Party's violent proclivities and quasi-Syrian governmental role:

“I would have done it anyway. One must take a stand. One simply must.”

It seems to me that it's no longer in fashion to oppose tyranny and evil; rather we in the west are looking for some allies abroad who can keep good order in the streets and make the trains run more or less on time, though we're very open to negotiation on the railway timetables, and probably willing to compromise on the order thing to a certain extent as well, if pressed. Domestically, we're happy to take minor issues, describe them in apocalyptic terms, then flatter ourselves that we've done a brave thing by stating an opinion about it among friends. You hear the term often enough in public debate, or variations of it, but the "moral equivalent of war" generally isn't morally equivalent to war in any way. I'm sure if we could get VA benefits for it, most of us would sign up for a War on Bad Investment Banking Practices, and you can even foresee something like that being rolled out. But the reason we don't get VA benefits for that is because accountants and guys who badly misjudged how securitized mortgages could reverse leverage don't shoot back, or kick your ass in the streets of Beirut.

Political fads, the sentiment of a moment, come and go, but the failure to allow one's self to recognize and oppose the really big evils, the ones that carry negative, tangible consequences if you take them on, is always regretted bitterly later on, albeit not always to the same extent by all people. Sure, it's easy to preen with opposition to a particular politician or some policy, but is the thing you're opposing freighted with the moral baggage you credit to it? If the reward for your opposition was a really stiff beating, would you still oppose it? Moral distinctions matter, both in gauging the nature of the problems you face, and in making the decision to oppose them. I disagree with Hitchens often, particularly on two of his major points, but you could do worse than to have Hitch's moral compass.

The Seat of Repose

So Mike May and the Gam Jams network want to know what seat I rock.

Truth is, like the Highlander, There Can Be Butt One!

The bottom line is that I'm a FiZik Arione guy and I am not looking back.

Specialized has this theory that the size of a seat needs to match one's sitbone width. My sitbones are about as far apart as Chicago and Millwaukee. Specialized, not surprisingly, makes a seat that would just about fit, being about as wide as Pittsburgh is distant from Cincinatti. I'm not a big fan of that.

No, I'm much more comfortable on the Arione, which is crafted for skinny little bastards. It wedges in between my sitbones, but believe it or not, it's comfortable for me. Like a Lazy Boy. Now saddle fit is a totally individual thing. Expensive doesn't necessarily mean comfortable (though it improves your odds) and cheap doesn't mean uncomfortable. Various design features (like relief slots) don't necessarily make it comfortable and things you think would be awful - like say a prominent leather strip down the middle of a saddle, and two seams - may be unnoticeable. Try before you buy, or at least don't take the tags off and get it dirty if you're going mail order. You just never know how a saddle will fit you. FiZik saddles generally are something I can get behind. (Their peaked or pan-shaped saddles, like the Aliante, not so much).

The Arione fits me perfectly. It's a long saddle, which allows me to slide way forward if I'm grinding hard or way back on long hills. It has "wing flex," which means that pre-cut serrated bits on the edges of the plastic base crack in such a way as to provide a slightly flexible platform under your sitbones. So in spite of being narrower than the gap between rock bottom in my checking account and my mortgage payment each month, the saddle is comfy. It's got thin padding, which, if you've ever ridden in a really nice car, you know if more comfortable in the long run than deep Lincoln Town Car-esque pillows. Plus it comes in a variety of colors and styles, ranging from plain old' black calve's leather (I rock a couple of these) plus a pimptastic white cover (I have one on my crabon fibre bike). It's a great saddle, retailing from around $110 for a basic version up to around $300 for the maxed out carbon / carbon versions. I usually ride the basic stripped down rump version, which has all the comfort features along with durable K'ium rails, whatever the K'ium is. (I think it's made from orphans. Very strong stuff).

The B saddle is the FiZik Rondine. It's FiZik's version of a comfort saddle - wide, wing flexed, and it has a couple little bits of enhanced padding right under the sitbones. I've run it on my mountain bikes and on my Surly Cross Check, and it's superbly comfortable. Right now it's on my cross bike but may migrate back to the fixed Cross Check, because spinning the fixie for two or three hours at a time is tough on the fundament. I'd say the durability is a little low because the leather is starting to separate from the plastic base, but that wouldn't be fair; I've ridden so much on this thing and abused it so badly, that I think it's actually held up really well in the nearly three years I've been riding it so maybe I'm being an ass to complain about it. No tears in the leather, which is remarkable considering how it's been abused The one downer is it came with an integrated bag that clipped nicely into a little bracket underneath the seat; this was really handy to take off for cleaning, but I busted the zipper pretty early on in the thing's life. You can fit a normal tail bag, no problem, but it was a bummer losing that very sano solution to the bag question. It's a good saddle with or without the bag; I just hope they've improved their zippers since they first started including them with the saddle.

In addition to selling comfortable wing flex saddles, I like FiZik because they stand behind their products. A few years back I had one of the original run of Ariones. The plastic base broke right across the middle. Now that was a saddle with flexibility... I was bummed about the prospect of maybe having to buy a new one, and my LBS guy Jon said not to fret, he'd try a warranty claim. He contacted FiZik and they provided a new saddle, no questions asked. They explained that the first run of saddles had a problem with breakage like that, so it was a free (new and improved) saddle for me. That impressed me and I haven't really bothered looking for a new road saddle since that time. (Giant and Redline are two companies that have similarly made good on products I've busted. Being good plus standing behind your product when I blow it apart in the normal (absusive) course of my riding is how to win brand loyalty from me).

The C saddle is a WTB Speed V Pro Gel. It's keeping my ass from hitting the rear wheel on my 29'er. I broke a cheaper version of this inexpensive (~$50) saddle in a big crash on the MTB last summer; this inexpensive replacement has held up much better. Over a couple hours of riding it would probably be pretty uncomfortable, I do not like "love channels" at all because "love channel" in Rouleur speak translates to "taint pincher," but on a single speed mountain bike, you go from seated to standing more than you would at a typical Catholic church service, so comfort is never really an issue. WTBs do have one thing that I find to be a fatal flaw, and that is they always have stitched seams on the sides of the saddle. This is no big deal if you have skinny thighs. If you're the type of person who needs, to put it charitably, Keirin Cut Jeans, these seams will tear out the inside edges of your shorts and wear holes on you inner thighs / hamstrings. They are bad news for me on a road bike, especially on longer rides. On a mountain bike, where I'm constantly shifting position? Not such a bad deal.

For seat posts I rock a generic QBP seatpost on the Surly - it's stout like me - with no complaints. The seat tube on the Giant TCR is a standard, stock Giant carbon fiber tube. Half the carbon seat tubes in the world are probably made in Giant's factory, so call it whatever name brand you like, it's effective and the wide Giant two bolt clamp keeps it safe. I have a stock WTB seatpost on the 29'er. It's durable but has scuffed up pretty easily. When that breaks, I'll replace it with a Thomson Elite like I have on my cross bike. Really, if you need a durable tube that will hold up under any sort of abuse, Thomson is the way to go. It's light, like everything else made by Thomson it costs around $90 (+/- 10%), and it's friggin' bulletproof. Seriously - if a seatpost holds up under my large hindquarters in cross, the most abusive type of riding this side of progressive jumping - then you know it is stout beyond measure. Any bikes I build in the future are getting a Thomson post. The one on my cross bike is the Elite, which is their entry level model (being nothing like anybody else's entry level products, except maybe Ferrari's) and it is a setback post, which is just the ticket for ensuring both efficient power transfer and a low seat height.




Full disclosure: I make a little bit of bank if you click through on those links and buy through Amazon. Not a lot, but occasionally enough for a few sixers of sweet, sweet malt beverages. Now check it out, if you are planning on buying from your LBS, I encourage that, it's the best way to go. But if you're going to buy from some mail order joint anyhow, what the hell, why not buy from Amazon and help keep me fat and buzzed? I would certainly appreciate that and the people who live with me would appreciate your efforts to keep me relatively jolly and sedated.

News from ATOC... Mostly (Blogpost #666!)

The title of this blogpost is for my buddy Stevil. Yep, it's blog entry #666. I have a feeling I should just shut down the blog and call it quits right there. It doesn't get any better (worse?) than that.

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Think you're a hardman? A regular tough guy? More rugged than the average bear?

Well, after you read this, you'll probably be shamed into taking a sip of your Shirley Temple, sitting down and shutting yer piehole, Alice.

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Giant has a funny rep. In a world where the latest & greatest bike is always Eye-Tie or Swiss, covered in gold leaf, fronting a twisty fork or sporting an ostentatious German engineering team taking time off from designing the Euro Joint Fighter, Giant just plugs along. They quietly make very good bikes that sell at one to two price points below the "domestic" U.S. competition, and roughly 5 or 6 price points below the Euro competition. A basic Giant TCR is comparable to a C-Dale System 6 or the Specialized Tarmac, and costs roughly $1000 and $500 less than comparably equipped models, respectively. Comparable mid-range Italian bikes often sell for around $5500. Meanwhile, the little factory that could in Taiwan actually makes tubing and frames for a lot of other carbon bike manufacturers, including making some mid range Colnagos. It actually isn't a little bike company, it's ubiquitous. Yep, the decals and the cosmetic layer of carbon on the top are Italian, but the rest of it? Straight up Giant. But can a brother get some recognition? Not really. Where's the love? Not here.

Apparently, Giant is aware of its reputation and looking to elbow its way into the front ranks of cycling's image elite. They are doing it in typical Giant fashion though, not with improved, bold new graphics and hype-y-er marketing but trying to offer a better bike than anybody else. Here's their new radical design (and apparently UCI-legal) TT bike that Rabobank and Team High Road are riding:

All Your TT Bike Are Belong to Us

I'm not sure how I feel about the bike's aesthetics. Obviously, performance (the noun, not the bike shop) is king, and everything on this bike is subordinated to it, with some horrid looking (but apparently very functional) design aspects on the front end.

VeloStar Galactica

There's a gap between the wheel and the fork crown because that proved more aero in testing (Kewl!), the brakes are behind the fork crown because that too is more aero (Wicked Kewl!!) and the stem... uh... somebody's Heathkit computer ate the stem.

I'm not too keen on the look, other than the slick brake setup, but it's good to see Giant dabbling in this kind of thing. Like Honda, another solid and quiet but unspectacular Asian manufacturing titan, Giant doesn't get a whole lot of props for just doing its job very well and very quietly. Like Honda, its high tech racing ventures may win it some love. Maybe this goofy looking (and apparently very fast) TT bike will get them a little bit of nice-feeling glamour.

Dude! Where's my Stem?

Then again, maybe it will just get them banned from UCI competitions or give Pat McQuaid a heart attack. Hard to say.

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Check out the new Mavic R-Sys wheel. New and improved - with 50% less random mid-ride disintegration!


In fairness to Mavic, they recalled the earlier versions and are replacing them.

In fairness to the rest of us, they really, really shouldn't have sold the public a wheel that is subject to sudden catastrophic failure. You put out a new flagship product and the pictures start coming back from the ProTour of all these blown apart wheels... It's not like a 150 pound rider is the toughest use your flagship wheelset is going to get. Didn't they test these things before they went on the market? I mean, damn. The failure of the original version of the R-Sys is going to stick with Mavic for a long time. You can't unring a bell.

H/t to Velo News for the photos.

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Update:

It's THUMBMAN!

His superpowers are hitchhiking, photo bombing, and picking extra large boogers out of extra large noses.

Separated at Birth?

I knew that guy on Versus looked familiar. Now I know.

Here's the rest of the story.


Speaking of which...



Ps. It's called "Fair Use," assholes. 17 U.S.C. sec. 107. You should check it out sometime.

A Slight Hitch

This is semi-political and philosophical and has nothing to do with bikes, so if that stuff turns you off I'd encourage you to stop back tomorrow when I'm in a better mood for bike babble.

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Chris Hitchens, the controversial journalist, just got beaten up by some Syrian Nazi Party goons for defacing one of their public posters.

I believe that this is what "speaking truth to power" and opposing Nazis actually looks like. (Sorry if you don't like the link to the blogger reporting on that; it's the only report that appears to have confirmed the facts with Hitchens, the other stuff is third hand). Some people throw those words around a lot, but most of the time doesn't mean anything at all when people in the West say it. The only thing that whole "truth to power" routine normally signals is that the speaker's narcissism has overmatched his ability to provide an accurate assessment of the events occurring outside of his interior life.

I only mention Hitch because I've been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between ourselves, and the state. It's kind of a line-of-work thing for me in my law practice, but it's also a personal concern for me at all times. Yeah, I'm pretty weird like that. How do we view the government, what's our relationship to it? What about other people's relationship to their governments?

I like Hitchens' take on things because he's critical of everybody's positions, and when he doesn't agree with me (frequently) he makes me think really hard about my own beliefs. Regardless of how you feel about Chris Hitchens personally, he's made a good attempt in the last decade or so to imitate the later life stages of his hero, George Orwell, a gravely flawed man who grew up out of revolutionary leftism, to oppose the "smelly little orthodoxies" of the political parties of his day. Orwell made a case that the organizing principle of public life should be common decency based in moral order - an odd "small c conservative" position for a man of the left to take, but one that he came to honestly as the result of his personal experiences. When Orwell realized the enormity of the Communist cause he had linked up with in Spain, and saw a couple varieties of communist totalitarians on his left and a couple varieties of fascist totalitarians on his right, he revolted against it, discussing it with honesty. Homage to Catalonia is a horrifying tale because it's a simple, disinterested telling of the truth that doesn't make any real ideological argument; it just says what happeed. Orwell lost many friends because he wrote that book; his life was threatened because of it.

Honesty, of course, is the cruelest virtue, at least if you are the flawed person who is being discussed in an honest manner, or a big fan of the person being skewered by it. As a result of his honesty about a wide rage of topics, Orwell was hated by many on both sides of the political spectrum and libeled in the vilest terms. Some criticisms of Orwell are very valid; like many who have read Orwell, I find his ability to diagnose a problem unmatched, but his prescriptions for fixing it are somewhat wanting at times, often quite simplistic and naive. Yet at all times, you find decency and honesty in his discussions of the issues of the day. This, apparently, is unforgiveable. You want to know where Orwell's decency and honesty led him? To praising that most non-superfluous man of the libertarian right, Friedrich Hayek, in a review of Hayek's seminal Road to Serfdom. Orwell said:

In the negative part of Professor Hayek’s thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often - at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough - that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of.

For a man of the left to praise what was obviously a revolutionary document of the libertarian right (a book that was reviled by the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic but particularly in Orwell's England) took an act of honesty and courage that few were capable of at the time. It shows a largeness of character that most people don't seem capable of.

Chris Hitchens made a similar evolution from reliable journalist footsoldier of the leftist movement, a reliable party man of the sort all political parties are staffed by, into a man with a leftist ideology and independent conscience but who has rejected party orthodoxy, preferring to speak his mind at all times, frequently with great penetration. This often irritates the parties of the left and right. I disagree with him often but greatly respect him for his willingness to seek, understand and convey the truth.

I also honor Hitch's impish desire to puncture any smelly little orthodoxies that he sees somebody trying to impose, whether it is his former party-mates, the people in the opposition party, or the Syrian Nazi Party. Don't kid yourself that Hitchens was just vandalizing a poster. Mockery and defiance are two of the most effective political tactics one can deploy; our political scene is as toxic as it is today because many people believe the best way to advance partisan interests is to cut down the character of the other party. He knew what he was doing, and it was good.

As noted anti-Nazi Jake Blues said, in a similar vein, "I hate Illinois Nazis..." Making the Illinois Nazis into a laughing stock - with the ridiculous uniforms, the latent homosexuality, the jumping-into-the-water scene, the comedy of errors at Wrigley Field - was one of the most effective ways to undercut them. That mockery, that bit of free speech, did more to hold the Nazis up to ridicule and to marginalize their odious viewpoints than the Skokie Village Counsel could ever have hoped to achieve with their Supreme Court-overturned opposition to the Skokie Nazi marches. Looking at The Blues Brothers in retrospect, it was very decent of Belushi and Akroyd to pay homage to many of the pioneers of American music, and very decent of them to use cutting humor to undercut the Nazis. It was also honest about their loser nature.

Hitch's simple scrawling of "No, f*** you!" on the Nazis' poster is of a piece with earlier, decent-minded skewerings of totalitarianism. I admire him for doing it.

I'm not telling you what to think about domestic politics here, or advocating that you become a Hitchens devotee, alright? I'm just saying is that it was very decent of Hitchens to do the same thing he always does but to do it in a foreign land, speaking up for a people who are afraid to speak out publicly for fear of getting their asses kicked. He spoke truth to power, and got his ass kicked by Nazis as a consequence. A fairly small but oppressive exile Nazi party isn't exactly the Third Reich, and fascism doesn't always wear a brown shirt and a swastika armband. We're not talking about running a resistance movement. But what Hitchens did is exactly what speaking truth to power and opposing fascism really looks like. On some days, he's a guy well worth imitating. Chapeaux to Hitch, at least today.




Update: Why it's important to regularly question what you think you know:

Understand that the Coens are capable of churning out very peculiar but altogether sane pop cultural artifacts. That they're more and more taking the lazy-ass David Lynch route by simply throwing "weirdness" at the screen -- one of the oldest and least difficult tricks in the book -- is a real shame.

I laughed out loud a few times during "The Big Lebowski," and Jeff Bridges, as always, is very good, but after I write this review, I'll probably never think about the movie again. And I spend way too much time thinking about movies.

Got that? The Big Lebowski, characterized as forgettable by CNN reviewer Paul Tatara. Challenging your beliefs, and valuing people who challenge your beliefs, is how you get a "do-over" in the intellectual sweepstakes. I'm not saying you ought to chuck out everything you believe at the merest challenge. But you should be both open to change, and willing to defend what you believe (at least on important points).

Taint Armor

This week's subject for the GamJams Blogging Network review is chamois cream. Call it what you will - Taint Armor, Lyndon B. Johnson Defender, Ass Grease, or Bollock Balm - it's a key part of being a healthy serious cyclist.

Some people get along fine without it. They tend to be skinny people who are as bony as a pickerel, and they tend to smell bad and dress funny and to be quite obnoxious about their ability to ride without Bag Balm. Most normal people who ride need a little bit of Lubricious Lube from time to time to keep the undercarriage in good working order, and bigger, stronger riders almost always need to lube up due to increased pressure on comparably-sized patches of skin.

You don't appreciate what kind of a load your sitbones carry until you start riding a fixie for training. I did that last year and a whole lot of things became clear - among them the literal (and painful) meaning of the term "on the rivet," and the fluid that runs out of painful saddle sores, at least when they aren't bleeding.

One day I forgot to lube up on the way into work, and had on some bibs that were a bit worn. I only rode an hour, but it was sufficient to wear a couple minor abrasions on the insides of my sitbones. On the way home, I lubed up with the only lubricant I had at the office, BodyGlide, a waxy stick lube that is reminiscent of deodorant and which probably doubles as an energy food for triathletes. By the time I got home I had a massively blocked sweat gland or something ugly and nasty protruding prominently twixt Taint and Sitbone. This ultimately lead to a series of really depressing daily episodes in the bathroom, where I would have to attack my butt's version of Mt. Vesuvius. It would blow with an audible pop, spewing blood along with I-don't-want-to-know-what-that-is. Riding hurt like hell, at least until the pain got to be so bad that the affected side of my butt region would sort of fall asleep after 90 minutes of riding. It was awful, and it was like this for pretty much two months. I dubbed the saddle sore Kate MOASS (Mother Of All Saddle Sores).

After that I took stock of my ride prep habits, and determined that chamois cream was something I couldn't afford to skip. I've been clear of problems since then. So what do I use?

My go-to chamois cream is Chamois Butt'r. It's relatively inexpensive, widely available, applies fairly smoothly because it's thin, and comes in a variety of sizes ranging from small single use packs the size of a gel packet, up to "Hey, Let's Have a Swinger Convention" size. It washes out of the chamois pretty well, and works decently as a post-ride moisturizer. The downside is that after about three hours of steady riding, it is pretty much evaporated. It has probably done its job by then and has moisturized and protected your skin, but if I was doing 300km+ randonees, I'd have to pack extra. It's a good day-to-day cream.

My hot weather pick is Greyhound Juice Chamois Cream. It appears to be made of slightly dehydrated Nivea, so it goes on a bit clumpy. But it has a lot of nice menthol stuff in it - it gives you a slightly cool feeling that lasts for a long time. It gums up the chamois a bit, but it washes out reasonably well, and thanks to its being gummy, it seems to last longer than the Chamois Butt'r. The price is okay, competitive with Chamois Butt'r (because you don't need to use as much of it, I think), but it only appears to come in a tub.

My luxury pick is Assos Chamois Cream. With a name like Assos, it has to be good, right? The Assos is a little smoother than the Greyhound Juice, and a little minty-er too. It protects as well as Chamois Butt'r. It's damn expensive though, and really not worth the higher cost.

I have used some other alternatives in a pinch. Vaseline works really, really well, except that when it gets warm it melts and drips through the shorts. This makes the saddle very, very slippery. Vaseline is also hard to get out of the chamois. I've also used zinc cream, the kind you use for baby rashes. This is also inexpensive, and it lubricates alright. It's primary use is once you already have a really bad abrasion on your ass; the zinc helps it heal up faster and definitely sooths the chronic pain post-ride. I tried the Brave Soldier chamois cream and that stuff was excellent, though very expensive.

What I don't recommend is Body Glide. It used to work okay for me but for some reason the waxy stuff seems to clog up my pores now.

Though I've named a bunch of brands, just about any good quality hand cream seems to work. For preserving a spectacular taint, having good hygeine habits is as important as having just the right chamois cream. Here's the routine:

1. Give yourself a few weeks to adjust to radical changes in position and saddle
2. Make sure your undercarriage is clean pre-ride
3. Make sure your kit is clean - never wear it two days in a row
4. Lube up for all longer rides
5. As soon as you finish riding get out of the bib shorts
6. Wear dry, loose pants, shorts and/or underpants post-ride. Let the boys air out.
7. Clean the undercarriage post-ride as soon as possible - a good anti-bacterial soap is nice if your skin can handle it. Don't scrub hard; this will damage already damaged skin.
   
8. If you've abraded the skin lightly or have troubles getting it clean enough, dab with rubbing alcohol. This hurts and you may dance for a minute but it seems to really help prevent infection.
   
9. Moisturize the taint and sitbones after cleanup, especially if you used anti-bacterial soap or alcohol
   
10. I've had mixed results with post-ride talc / Gold Bond - they can sooth minor abrasions and keep the area dry, but can also clog pores. Your call.

Four Winners

Daily Go-To ....... Nice in Heat.....One For The Road...'Spensive!

Water Bottles: 50:1 Water to Vick's Ratio

I did the bike commute today, step 5 or something on my path back to semi-fitness after the Long Dark Month of my Bicycling Soul. Okay, January to mid-February wasn't that bad, but I literally didn't do anything physical other than gimp around on crutches for two weeks, then nothing other than a slow shuffle for the two weeks after that. The legs and lungs are non-functioning right now. It was fine this morning despite the constant mild discomfiture - 24 degrees on the way into work (Sweet Mother of Pearl was it cold) and 40 on the way home. The route home was actually worse; there was a steady headwind, and between that and the dry conditions, it created a bit of an asthma attack.

If you don't have asthma, you probably wonder what it's like. It is a complete PITA., for one thing. Imagine having a chest cold, and a lot of green mud in your throat. Now imagine snorting some black pepper, so that you start coughing a lot. Now imagine laying on your back and having somebody roughly half your bodyweight stand on your chest. Now try to cough and breathe. I don't want to over dramatize it. But that's what it likes, and it sucks, and among other side effects it makes it hard to pedal a bike. I wasn't really sure if it was asthma bugging me on the way home today, to tell the truth; I'm so bloody unfit I expected some coughing and wheezing and general discomfort. But when I started to get an upset stomach from it, it seemed wise to stop. Two hits on the rescue inhaler (albuterol), two minutes rest, and the cough stopped and I had a pleasant ride home, and it was a lot easier to pedal and breathe. Not easy and fun like it is when I'm half fit and in decent form, but a lot better than it was. It was a needless extra reminder that my fitness level right now is in the valley, and I'm looking at a long slog uphill.

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If you want to know what a good domestique is supposed to look like, check out this fascinating article about Shane Battier, who is clearly the most under-rated player in the NBA, if the article is even half-truthful. It's the very picture of a team player. It also makes me wonder if the "moneyball" approach is going to change how the NBA does business.

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You know what I hate? People who run red lights in traffic on bikes at rush hour.

I don't mind people doing the courier thing when they are alone. When there are two riders at a red light, and one guy burns the light and almost gets hit, the poor dumb bastard who waited for the light to turn always gets crowded into the curb by pissed off motorists.

The guy running the light inevitably is riding without a helmet.

Doing this, is like picking a fight with the biggest guy in the bar, but doing so by saying "my buddy over there says he's going to kick your ass!" It's a bit of a dick move.

Great News in the War On Terror

Apparently, two rogue terrorist MILF commanders in the Phillipines have called it quits over a pay dispute. According to the article:

Terrorists Quit Over Pay Dispute
February 14, 2009: In the south, the Moslem fighters of two rogue MILF commanders, are beginning to desert or surrender to the army. The MILF commanders made big promises to their followers, to encourage them to take part in the attacks on Christian villages. This began last August, and initially, hundreds of thousands of civilians were chased out of their villages, which the MILF men looted. But since the army quickly intervened, there's been less loot, and more getting shot at by soldiers. This is not what a lot of MILF guys signed up for and they are not happy about it. Even some of the lower ranking MILF commanders are quitting, disgusted with the lack of progress in peace negotiations, and the poverty brought on by the ceasefire (which has halted the plundering and looting the MILF typically used to maintain themselves).

Isn't that great, for a lot of reasons?

First of all, how does one get to be a MILF commander? It sounds like a pretty good job. Apparently, the pay is pretty bad, but you get to command MILFs. What's not to like about that?

Second, who knew we were at war with the MILFs? It sure adds a whole new dimension to that "Got MILF?" T-shirt, doesn't it? I'd rather stay on their good side, if I could help it.

Third, as the article notes, getting shot at "is not what a lot of MILF guys signed up for." I've got some suspicions about what a MILF guy signs up for, but what exactly is held out as an enlistment bonus, and can we talk about it on a family-oriented website like this one?

Fourth, because misery loves company, isn't it great to hear everybody else is having pay disputes? Maybe it's time for Congress to step in and cap terrorist leader pay.

What's that? You mean MILF means. . . Moro Islamic Liberation Front? Oh. Bummer. Major bummer. I thought it meant... Oh, nevermind.

Hmmm. This is my worst news analysis since I said I loved to see the Army of the Republic of Southern Eritrea engaged in maneuvers.

Yeah, That Sums it Up

Louis CK pretty much sums up how I feel about people in general. Business, politics, religion, interpersonal relationships, and going to the bathroom would all seem a hell of a lot better and a lot less grim if we could remember what he's saying. Just a little even.

I've got a good mind to leave the link to this video at the top of my blog. FOR*EVER*.

Seriously - go see that video.

Evolution

Some nice vids for you.

First some Reverend Gary Davis. He played a really clean style of pickin' blues, some almost jazzy ragtime blues, in the 1920s, and later on into the 1970s. It's simple; it's clean like cold water. He's on a guitar here, but he played jazz banjo too.



Next, Django Reinhardt, Beyond the Sea. I think it's his most beautiful work, and that's saying something. He is the most groundbreaking guitarist / banjo player most of you have probably never heard of. His life was an utter tragedy, but damn, could he play. The reason he survived WWII - he was a Gypsy in Paris and most of the Gypsies were murdered by the Nazis - is that he and some fellow musicians were under the protection of a Luftwaffe officer who loved jazz. Whatever happened to the Nazi who saved the gypsy jazz virtuosos? This is what happened to him. I feel like Paul Harvey now. Good day. Reinhardt's style was more highly developed than Reverend Gary Davis' style, and clearly influenced by the celtic music touch of the Romani, the Gypsies, just as blues and bluegrass were influenced by the celtic music touch of our Scots-Irish rural white fiddlers. But you can almost see the interplay between different genres of music. The chords and notes are almost layered together, and there's more than a touch of swing in his bluesy jazz. Reinhardt was a tremendous admirer of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. Did they influence him? Did he influence them? Probably.



That's not the only way jazzy blues went. Some of it co-opted traditional blues songs, and traditional bluesmen. Check out this version of the Mojo Workin' Blues, with Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williams. Yes, that's Matt "Guitar" Murphy on the guitar, playing a traditional blues lick the way it might have been played in 1925 - clean, straight, right on the notes and right with the beat. It's an unusual take on the song. A good one. It works.



At the same time, some jazzy blues went very, very jazzy. Check this out with Willie Dixon, T-Bone Walker, and Memphis Slim.



Are you seeing how raw old blues morphed into kinda jazzy blues? It wasn't a clean break, and I've only picked a small selection of players who were there at the revolution, or the evolution anyhow. Django Reinhardt was a pivot point in that; if he wasn't the pivot, then he was at least standing on it, along with Charlie Parker and Miles Davis ("Birth of the Cool"). If you listen to Memphis Slim's jump blues piano playing below, you can see the skeleton of what later became cool jazz, or at least the piano part of it. Slow Memphis Slim down a little bit, and you get George Russell's jazz piano.

You want to hear blues morph into jazz in ten seconds? Check out Matt "Guitar" Murphy here. Mid-song, he plays something Django might have played. Then he goes right back into jump blues. You hear it evolve; it's like watching a primeval salamander turn into a lizard. Pretty cool. BTW, Murphy is the guy who played Aretha Franklin's husband, the diner cook, in The Blues Brothers. Y'know, just in case you were wondering whether you should know who he is.



So that was history, and a pastiche part of how the American born blues and jazz music got from juke joints to Carnegie Hall, and super-sophisticated jazz musicians in suits and black turtlenecks. But what ever happened to swingy, virtuoso-style, roots bluesy banjo jazz? Why don't you ask Bela Fleck.



It didn't die off. It's still with us. Does that Bela Fleck piece sound derivative, in a very good way? I think it does. Culture doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Water Bottles: I Got Sunshine, on a Cloudy Day

I rode into and out of work today. It was nice. The legs are absent, the lungs not used to processing air, the foot still sore, the Achilles tendons a bit tender... but it was still amazing to get back on the bike and just spin the pedals.

Contrary to my usual habits I'm going to break out the "A" road bike and start riding it this week. Just a taste of that swift, graceful feeling on my cross bike on the road reminded me of why I ride, and I'm looking for another hit of that, a big hit.

I think I may put the tubulars on too. Training tubulars, but still a smooth, smooth ride. It's liek taking an extra large dose of whatever that good stuff is in roadriding that makes it so addictive.

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Hot Chicks With Douchebags: You've seen the blog, you've seen the book. Now, Get the Lawsuit! Basically, some women sued the author on the grounds that having their pictures included in a book about hot chicks with douchebags was defamatory. The women lost, I'd guess on the grounds that truth is an absolute defense to libel and defamation claims. As the proprietor of that blog put it, quite aptly IMAO, "striking blow for Free Speech and the validity of mocking choadscrotes and the women that love them."

And if that ain't enough for you, here's the German version, Maedchen mit Vollpfosten.

You gotta love that.

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While we're on the topic of scatalogical humor, do you care to check out the best non-pr*n movie name ever? Seriously, it's safe for work. Just be careful if you're there in your cubicle saying it out loud over and over again trying to figure out why I think it's so damned funny.

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For my fat roadie friends who are positively delirious with hunger pangs these days, as am I, here's a website that will help you with your diet: This is Why You're Fat. This little sample is for my pal, Fat Marc van der Bacon.


Yeah, that's right, beotches. It's a Sloppy Joe on a Krispy Kreme bun. Mmmmmmm...

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Now this is actually important to you and your riding future. Check it out.



If you have an opinion, then go here for more information.

Notes

Friend of the Rouleur Peter made a really insightful comment tonight, as is his wont. He said, "You race and stuff, then get injured, and then what you do next is what you do as an athlete. I think what he meant is, how you come back from adversity is as important as how you do when everything is going just fine and you were crapping in the tall grass. I think that's what he meant.

That, or it was the coded signal that he's given up racing and taken up peyote. He's kind of mystical that way.

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So A-Rod and 103 other Major League assholes Baseball players were caught using performance enhancing drugs in 2003.

But it's cycling that's got the doping problem, right? Riiiiiiight.

And NFL players get that big and fast just because of good genetics and how hard they train.

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Peter Schiff, the guy who predicted our current economic woes a few years ago, says you can't spend your way out of a collapsing economic bubble; that you gotta let the sucker pop, and then you can work your way out of the crater. He thinks what we're doing right now is a bad idea. I don't know whether he's right or not. I've studied economics a little bit. Economics, of course, is an alleged science, an empirical study frequently called "the dismal science," based on the major premise, "assume you had a million widgets." If you aren't familiar with them, widgets are just like unicorns; the only difference is that if you stand up at a cocktail party full of wonky people and say, "assume you operate a unicorn factory," it won't earn you instant respect approaching reverence from everybody in the room.

First Ride...

- I managed to get out for a ride yesterday for 90 minutes or so. I took it real easy, since the foot - we need a good nickname for it - still hurts, and no case of tendinitis is ever so healed that you can't toss it right back into full blown pain by over-exerting yourself. The ride went fine. The decent legs I'd maintained through December were gone, replaced by a couple square-pedaling, heavy pegs, and even little hills left me winded. That's what a one month layoff will do for you. It will take three weeks to get comfortable on the bike again, six weeks to gain some fitness. I'm pretty fat too, even by my standards. So there's a lot of work to be done. But I got through it alright and feel a whole lot better and a whole lot less depressed, both about riding and about life in general. Road biking is my drug of choice and I suffer withdrawal when I can't get it.

- Don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. Racing is about getting your ass kicked, not about winning. Very few people win. Everybody, on the other hand, gets their ass kicked. Even people who pull off multiple wins each season get their asses kicked a lot. So all of us suck at it, just some of us have streaks where we are a lot less sucky than others. Few of us are losers though. The only loser is somebody who sits on the sideline without giving it a go, jeering at the man in the arena.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Teddy Roosevelt said that in a speech at the Sorbonne in 1910. I think he pretty much nailed it. Weird dude, old Teddy. Half insane, half genius. He was right there though.

Racing Excuses For All Uses

I just realized the other day, in my Motrin haze, that we're coming up on another roadracing season mighty fast.

You are probably stocking up on the essentials, just like me - a box of inner tubes, a couple sets of training and race tires, some new team kit, a new tube of Brave Soldier and some bandages, some Accellerade, vintage 2002, marked down to firesale prices in the LBS' liquidation of stuff they don't think they can give away at the bike swap...

But have you stocked up on excuses yet?

This is really important, because as anybody in MABRA who doesn't race for Battley Harley could tell you, you are going to lose a lot of races this year. Like most years, there will be a small handful of repeat winners in every class, and a couple outliers stepping to the top of the podium a couple times. The other 150 or 200 of us that race in that class will be stuck with an unending string of losses. That's racing, and it sucks like that because most of us pack fodder, we suck.

It's okay. Admit it, live with it, try to get better. But sucking is a fact of racing. Even the greatest racers ever won a half dozen races per season. That means they sucked in 80 other races every year, sometimes for 20 years running. That's a lot of suckitude. But at least they had the solace of winning the Giro, the Ronde van Vlaanderen, or La Primavera. Get blown out of the pack at Worlds, or crash out of the Vuelta, they can always say, "Yeah, but I did the Paris-Roubaix and Ghent-Wevelgem double. What did you do in March?" We rank amateurs, particularly the rankest among us, don't have that solace. We don't suck a little. We suck pretty much constantly. Yet still we race. This requires a coping mechanism or two.

Admitting the reasons for why you suck can be really hard, and you probably don't want to try it. Hell, I don't like even thinking about it. Perhaps you suck because you're fat, that you're slow, that your weaknesses are climbing, rolling on the flats, sprinting, time trialing and handling, your racing tactics and strategy, or that you didn't train hard enough. Maybe you aren't a terminal loser, maybe you're actually about to be really good and just in some transitory period of bad riding. Maybe you just haven't gotten it together yet, because in the words of the immortal Warren Zevon, your sh1t's f*&%ed up. That's hard to admit too. The flesh is weak, and our weak character is loathe to admit that the flesh - the nicely suntanned bit of leg muscle attached to the character - is weak too. We just can't bring ourselves to say these things.

We can't admit this because it's a reason for failing, and like other reasons, it implies responsibility; reasons lay the responsibility for failure right back at our feet. That hurts. So we trip over the reasons.

Instead, we give excuses. Excuses are the lies we tell to each other, but most of all to ourselves, to keep from hurting ourselves too badly when we've blown it. "I suck" is hard to say, and what's more, if it's true, it's a bleak thing to say when you just trained for a year for your A race only to vomit and pull off four miles into it.

Excuses are a big huge wash bucket full of that lubricant of the social contract, hypocrisy. An excuse is a deal - "if you humor me and pretend to believe my modest lie about why I sucked out there today, I'll humor you and pretend to believe your modest lie about why you sucked out there, today or at a date TBD. That way, we'll all go home relatively happy."

Hypocrisy in reasonable doses is a good thing because, contrary to what every 19 year-old kid talking about politics believes, the truth is very often painful, unnecessary, and the last thing anybody wants or needs to hear on a daily basis.

No, we didn't co-sign the social contract in order to get slapped down twice a week and to feel miserable. For racers, the social contract is about doing something we love, or at least love to hate, and hanging out with friends a lot, so that we can know the truth about ourselves deep down within and so that once in a while we can have an id-gratifying top 10 or 20 finish. But we're not there to hear, or tell the truth, to have it thrown in our face all the time. The race results are truth enough for any one day, and in fact, they are often too much truth, much more than we really want to hear unless we finished in the points and in the money. A little hypocrisy is a wonderful thing, friends. It keeps the wheels turning.

So for those days when you feel like all those big and little truths about you are about to gang up on you and kick your ass really badly, I offer you some highly effective excuses, tailored to the center mass of my readers, MABRA racers.

But first, you need to know some rules about using excuses.

First, you need to pre-load a lot of your excuses, just the way you'd carbo load prior to a 200 mile ride. You can drop a minor excuse in an offhand manner, but you will need more time if you're getting ready to tell a whopper - "Man, I was going alright but my cancer / appendicitis / fetus-in-fetu really flared up out there today." If you're going to say something like your cancer is kicking your ass, and it's not true, then you'd better pre-load by shaving your head for a couple months beforehand, losing a sh1tload of weight, and causing awkward conversations every time you see your friends. Remember, a big 'un like that is the A Priority Excuse of your race season, and you don't just whip that out and make it work without a lot of preparation. You really only use something like this for blowing a career goal, like RAAM or if you ride Lance Armstrong off the road with an impromptu bump drill on an MS 150. For what it's worth, it helps if you say you have cancer of some part of your body - there's no generalized cancer except when your appointment with the Eternal Footman is nigh. Non-Hodgkins lymphoma is a good one if you have to make something up; it's pretty survivable. Of course if people catch you lying about this you'll be thought of as tasteless and ghoulish and hateful and no decent person will ever talk to you again; but if you've ever made an excuse, then you're a liar to begin with, so right now we're just quibbling over matters of taste, technique and degree.*

Second, you may need a recovery period after giving a particularly strong excuse, just like you may need to recover after a strong (for you) race performance. For example, if you say you blew it at 12 Hours of Lodi thanks to appendicitis, you'd probably better skip the club rides for a week or two, and not show back up unless you have a scar on your stomach. As any goth kid can tell you, cutting yourself is fun and easy, so make sure you follow through. For this reason I don't recommend using hard-to-fake conditions like a broken back, compound fracture of the tibia, or fetus-in-fetu as your excuse, unless you really, really need a big excuse. There are people who can make all that stuff come true for a price, if you really need it, but I'd recommend stopping in a quiet moment and faking a mechanical if you're that bad off.

Third, you need to be gifted to pre-excuse effortlessly, otherwise you'll have to work hard at it. Not all of you are clever enough to blow out some foot tendons, gain 15 pounds, and spend the most productive month of the off-season on your ass, eating popcorn and watching your sofa cushions compress like I have. If you aren't similarly gifted, if you don't suffer from some chronic and occasionally semi-debilitating conditions, you can do something with a similarly pervasive or mildly horrifying vibe like getting run over by a truck. Teammate of the Rouleur "A." decided to pre-excuse load with that this year. If she has a bad time in any Ironman events this year, she could whip out "Jeez, I kept thinking about that stupid truck running over me, for like 112 miles" and nobody would think anything of it. She probably didn't even realize she was pre-loading an excuse when she was getting run over, but in her case, when you literally drip athletic talent, it carries over into every area of your riding, including your excuse-loading. Other teammates have multiple kids or have scheduled a baby to be born early in the season, some have "jobs" so you don't get to see them for weeks on training rides and when they do show up to race they stink... they work ad very cleverly to build these excuses.

The fourth rule is you need to plan ahead. As long as you Plan For Inadequacy, you will be able to pull it off. Like Joe Friel will tell you about other kinds of training, it can take years to build up an effective array of excuses to complement your racing inadequacy. That's where I come in, with the equivalent of Coggin & Allen's Training With Power for racing excuses - I can help you get there faster.

Toward that end, and because I love you all, I've taken a look at the MABRA road race calendar, and picked out some selected dates, some key races that you probably look at as priority races in you training goals, great whinges to match all of MABRA's classic throwdowns. Yes, with the help of my crack research staff, I've developed some excuses that will carry you through even the most humiliating of post-race conversations, and help you keep a straight face following your inevitable race failures. Just remember to believe the other guy's excuses in return, or these won't work, okay?

Let's start with Tradezone. This venerable training series is run in predictable conditions on five Sundays in February and early March. Each year, at least two of the races are canceled due to ice in the industrial park or sub-zero temps, so you don't need help there. It is also super windy and usually deadly cold during the two or three races that are actually held. If you show up on one of the weekends when the race is actually held, when you get dropped on the second lap you should argue that you haven't been riding enough in the cold to develop the brown fat cells you need to metabolize oxygen in cold weather. Sure, you have plenty of fat; that too-tight jersey doing a bag-of-grapes imitation wouldn't lie, you just don't have the right kind of fat. You can also argue that the wind on the edges of the pack was too much for you - you just aren't used to it and if only you'd been on the leeward side of the pack instead of the windward side, you'd have had a much better race. Wow, what a bummer that those Freds trapped you on the wrong side of the pack, causing you to get dropped. The "I blame it on Fred" excuse is a classic, one-size-fits-all excuse. Don't overuse it though, otherwise you may find yourself on the receiving end of Excuse Kryptonite™ wielded by your impatient friends, tired of hearing your excuses. The Kryptonite consists of the simple rejoinder, "Well, it's racing, you're expected to deal with it."

The ultimate pre-excuse for Tradezone, of course, is to skip the race entirely and tell your buddies on Monday you thought it was canceled due to weather. Everybody will buy it. If they don't, tell them you were having your own personal mini-camp in the mountains north of Charlottesville and it snowed like hell there, so of course you thought that it must be snowing in Bowie, elevation 12 feet above sea level, 8 miles from the Chesapeake. They'll buy that for sure - it may sound a little crazy but it's well within the Lattus of Plausibility that signatories to the Social Contract agree to give, to allow hypocrisy sufficient operating space.

The Jefferson Cup is on March 29. I haven't raced Jeff Cup, but I understand the two salient features of the course - there are some pack-shattering hills on it, and the course is short enough that dropped riders from earlier races often mingle with the front runners in later races, with hilariously zany results. I suggest using a variation of the classic overtraining excuse on this course. "I've been riding a lot in Thurmont lately, and I'm not accustomed to hills this short, shallow and fast; if they'd been steeper and a lot longer I'd have done much better." If you feel the need for something more plausible, you can talk about how you were on the wheel of a rider who picked a most inopportune time to fall out of the back of the pack, only to find out later it was a shattered rider from the 40+ race. You had no idea that the number series for the 40+ started with 901, and your Cat IV race started with 401. Damn your bad luck, right?

The Tysons Corner Crit is in early April this year. There is only one excuse available on that course - "I got curbed pretty badly and had to brake hard at the bottom of the hill when this guy cut me off. Bastard!" The best excuses are excuses that sound plausible. Handling errors by riders on the inside of the the left hand turn at the bottom of the hill at Tysons are common, and the inside rider who goes wide inevitably ends a good race for the rider on the outside line. It's not unusual for a rider sitting in 5th going into the sprint to get curbed, crashed or darn near to it on that turn, and to finish behind the bunch. That turn has killed more good races than any other prominent feature in MABRA, with the possible exception of unintelligent defensive riding by the Cat IV pack.

The Carl Dolan Memorial is on April 19th. It's a great race, named for a rider who seems to have failed to hydrate properly during a time trial, resulting in death. In keeping with the race theme, you didn't hydrate properly before the race. Your legs just didn't have any pop to them and you felt awful. You realized several laps in - when you'd drunk both your bottles - what the problem was. Better safe than sorry, you thought, so you pulled off. Nobody will question this excuse, not at this race when everybody is mindful of the race's namesake. It's also a useful excuse for the 17 turn RFK Criterium, run on the dead flat, skillet-hot tarmac of the RFK stadium parking lot in mid-summer. I wouldn't use this excuse too often though - maybe only 20% of riders in MABRA are slow enough learners to show up to every single race dehydrated and short of water, and after a while people will think that you're dumber than you are letting on. Just because it may be true is no reason to let people think it; after all, excuses are about avoiding the truth, not making it plainly evident.

Artemis' excellent Bunny Hop is going to be on May 3rd this year. As I recall, there can be only one excuse at Bunny Hop - "the pavement was lousy and I was deathly afraid I was going to wreck my Zipps / Carbones / R-Sys (Now, With New ExplodoMatic™Spokes!) wheels. " Please note, this excuse only works with expensive, low spoke count and / or carbon wheelsets. If you are rocking 36 spoke Velocity Deep Vees with straight gauge spokes and bulletproof Ultegra hubs (the Wheel of Choice™ of the Rouleur) this excuse will not be plausible. If you haven't upgraded your wheelset yet, your impending poor performance at Bunny Hop is a good reason to do so now. If they've fixed the pavement - they may have done this last year - then I advise you to skip this race unless you're confident you'll win it. Otherwise, I have no excuses that could possibly help you out here. Well, unless you're rocking the R-Sys wheels in which case "I thought they were going to explode" is always plausible.

Bike Jam falls - probably literally - on May 17 this year. The Kelly Cup course is another course that gives you a ready made excuse: "the course was *soooo* dangerous. The guys in my race were squirelly and I was knocking guys over just by holding my line. I didn't want to hurt anybody so I pulled off in the interest of safety." Again, the best excuses are ones that everybody will buy. Given the charnel house of human (and carbon) material sacrificed to the bike gods just about every year at BikeJam, nobody will blame you. Hell, they'll wish they had thought of it first.

Murad is on May 23rd. Your audience needs to know the recent past history of the race, but you should say, "some jerk was threatening to kick my ass in the middle of the race. That's a 1 year suspension no matter who starts it, so I got the hell out of there." It sounds a little far fetched, but in keeping with recent past history. The officials and the promoters will buy your story, and probably think better of you for it. They may figure out that you're lying, but they'll at least respect you for knowing that USA Cycling prohibits fighting in its races. It's no mean feat to know this fact; apparently, even some professional racers are unaware of it.

The CSC Invitational - probably to be called some other name this year - is easy to pre-excuse out of. It's an NRC event with amateur support classes. If you are registered in a class any normal humans can get into - 40+, or amateur 1-2-3 - you will have an atrocious start time. The only good excuse for this is, "I'm not going to take that kind of crap from these promoters, man! What do they think I am? A Cat 5?" Hopefully the promoter doesn't choose to run a Cat 5 race this year, because if they do, then yes, you Cat 5s will be expected to show up at 5:40 AM for the rollout. But even if you do show up and start, you can discretely slip away, and go get hammered all morning until your friends catch up to you. It's what I'll be doing that morning and if you don't say anything about my bed head and my blood alcohol content, I won't say anything about your horrific race performance. Of course if you finagle an invitation to the main event, that has an easy excuse too. "When I saw the two guys in Garmin-Chipotle kit pull away from the field, I knew it was over and decided it was better to save my energy for Philly Week." It doesn't matter if you are going to Philly Week; nobody is going to check up on you, and the race coverage is usually sketchy at best so they'd have trouble checking up even if they wanted to. This excuse also has the ring of credibility, as it is what numerous Pro Tour riders have used after getting their asses seriously kicked in their first blazing fast American crit. Alternately, like Friend of the Rouleur, B., you can pull the ripcord and stage an epic crash in front of your friends to accomplish your your graceful exit from the race. It's all good.

The Spring Church Creek TT #1 is on June 13. Since the course is on the Chesapeake, there's always a wind, frequently a headwind on all three legs of the triangular course. I don't know how ABRT manages to get you coming, going and in between, but I suspect that the higher level math theory underlying the headwind out there probably originated in the federal tax code. I don't know anybody in MABRA who has raced for more than a year, who hasn't had some type of horrorshow experience at Church Creek. I don't know if it even is making an excuse to talk about why you did badly there - it may be more in the nature of an explanation than an excuse, but use it anyhow. If you simply say, "the wind kicked my butt," nobody will question you. Or at least it will as long as nobody points out that Josh Frick didn't have any trouble knocking out a 53:00, and rode across the line doing a wheelie.

The Poolesville Roadrace, of course, has the best ready-made excuses in all of MABRA. With a mile long gravel road in the middle of it, you can flat (or fake a flat); choke on the dust; crash into the bushes; or get caught in the 6" gravel on the shoulder of the uphill kicker going back onto the paved surface. Seriously - that 6" deep uphill gravel pit will stop you dead. This is not surprising because 6" deep uphill gravel pits is what they use to stop runaway semi-trucks and spinning F-1 cars, so stopping a gassed roadracer is nothing for gravel. Any of these excuses should be sufficient for you to drop off the back, and lose a little-less-than-gracefully. The fact that it will be held on June 27th this year, during the peak of heat and humidity season, means you can also whip out your dehydration excuse, if your audience doesn't buy that getting stopped dead, crashing and flatting on the gravel - frankly the Flahute of excuses - isn't good enough.

The Giro di Coppi will be on July 18th this year. For that one... there's only one excuse. "That course kicked my ass!" Sure, you can flirt with other excuses. I've known racers to go through 6 water bottles in three laps in that race - the heat, slow grinding hills and brutal humidity all take their toll and you might have suffered from unseasonal (e.g. typical) weather, a clueless soigneur in the feed zone, or not enough hill training. Furthermore, because it's a hard race and the mid-Atlantic RR championship, it draws a tough out-of-town contingent and the locals all bring their A game. But the best excuses are plausible, and maybe even true, so attributing your wilting to the toughness of the course is the way to go. Plus it doesn't hurt to be making the same excuse that 80% of the people in your race are making, including some of the people on the podium.

You should feel free to use these excuses freely, as needed. The actual truth - "I'm not talented or fit enough or smart enough (or all three) to ride well here" is painful, and most of us can't be bothered to say that, nor do we want to watch our friends go through the painful process of admitting that. It's like admitting that there's no hope, and if there's one thing I know about how hope is so important to us, it's... well, what I know is that you should probably never admit there's no hope. Anyhow, don't worry, I won't tell anybody you got these excuses here, and I don't think anybody else will say anything about it either.

You see, we need excuses exactly like a fish needs a bicycle. The purpose of excuses is to use them like Band Aids. Put 'em on the spot that hurts, and don't worry about it if they seem a little tacky. They work because nobody wants to see you lying there bleeding, and maybe sometimes the excuses, like the right-sized Band Aid, do a little bit to help stop the bleeding itself.

But also just like with Band Aids, use excuses only as needed. People are cool with them, so long as you don't go crazy and stick 'em all over the place where they're not needed.


* Yes, I realize I just made a long joke about cancer up there, really a meta joke about cancer. Just between you and I, I hate f*&$ing cancer and think we should make fun of it and belittle it and make it seem smaller than it really is. And if cancer can't take being the brunt of a joke, then screw him, the humorless, murderous little sod.

Other People's Problems

Between snow and a bummer foot, I've been off the bike for just over three weeks. This is maddening. I think I'm okay for gentle riding - which doesn't include scrambling on icy roads to get to work. Hopefully the snow lets up some time soon. I appreciate people dropping notes asking how I'm doing. I'm doing just fine, really; a sore foot and not being able to ride right now isn't the end of the world. It does suck a lot of the energy out of me though, and a lot of the inner fire. Riding is my passion, and my muse. Without the riding, I turn to serious thoughts. This is a shame because I'm taken up with serious thoughts at work, so without riding I turn into a fairly grim bastard.

Being laid up does have some benefits. It gives me a chance to look around and try to see what things other people are dealing with.

Angela Brown, for instance, is getting geared up to ride some Southern MTB ride, Snake Creek Gap or something. Now, I like the South, a lot. But if that name wasn't ginned up by Ol' Zeke from the holler to scare the pants off Yankee Ivy League grads, I don't know what is. Seriously - that place name would be more effective at scaring off urban northerners than an ad for a Southern Baptist revival meeting featuring Sarah Palin and free chitlins.

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Speaking of politicos - I read a really interesting thing today that Edmund Burke wrote. He explained the relationship between liberty, and personal morals:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites,—in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity,—in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,—in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

I find that most of the smarter things ever said about the human condition and human behavior ever said, were said by Himself, Friedrich Hayek, and Samuel Johnson. I'm reading a collection of Johnson's writings right now and struck by the agility and acuity of his mind. And his sense of humor. My word, was Mr. Johnson a funny man.

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If you're looking for something lighter, I read through O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series between Christmas and January 15th. (Seriously, I was just sitting around with ice packs on my foot). Those books are an amazingly good read about the main character's adventures at sea (and more treacherous land), and they are erudite enough that they grow richer on the second and third read. The reason the books work so well is that O'Brian leaves a lot out. These are remarkably understated stories. The reader is forced to think about what the main characters are thinking, and to some extent, how those characters aren't thinking. A lot of things occur outside of the four corners of the book that the reader has to puzzle out. Meanwhile, there's a lot of interesting word play and humor that dances at the edge of the reader's vision, coming into the reader's grasp only occasionally, to great effect. The first book in the 20 book series is Master and Commander. I highly recommend giving it a shot.

Water Bottles XLIII Edition

My foot is just about mended so I’m in good spirits – looking forward to getting on the bike this week for sure, and stretching out the morning commute into 90 minute easy rides to try to ease my bad self back into riding after 24 days off the bike (counting tomorrow). I can’t wait.

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Random thought about the upcoming pro roadracing season: comparisons between Boonen and Mark Cavendish are stupid. Boonen is a great all-around rider who has a great, great sprint. Cavendish is a very good sprinter – if he keeps it up for another couple years I’ll call him great. He has top end like nobody else does right now. But Boonen can fight in the breakaway of a long race, and if it’s flat enough – truly flat to moderately hilly – he can break away on his own or in a high work ratio group (like two other riders), stay away for a long time and win, with a sonic boom of a sprint at the end. Boonen can also launch a sprint off the wheels of one other teammate or a rival sprinter. Cavendish is a superb sprinter, but thus far he has only demonstrated the ability to sprint once he’s been carried to within 300-400 meters of the line by his teammates, or by a rival riding fairly benevolently and not making great effort to drop or squeeze him off the wheel. Granted, there are a lot of other skills to sprinting than going fast for 200 meters, like knowing how to keep it together for the first 200km of a race, and knowing how to hold wheels and fight through the bunch in the last 5k of a race. But Cavendish is a sprinter like Petacchi is a sprinter, a guy who (at least right now) seems to need a train to get him in position to win, than he is a guy like Boonen, who sometimes is his own train; and Cavendish hasn’t yet show a McEwen-like flair for stealing other teams’ leadout trains. Boonen, of course, isn’t the only great rider being subjected to silly fanboy comparisons right now. I regret the velo press is doing this to us; I like Cavendish from what I’ve seen of him but could be driven to dislike him, if I hear enough of these facile “Cavendish is the next ______ comparisons.” He isn’t the next _____, he’s the first Cavendish. Leave it at that and appreciate him for what he is, without trying to blow him up or shrink him with inapt comparisons to other racers.

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It’s Superbowl Sunday. As a Giants fan and a fellow who has grown up in the Church of Football, I like the Steelers today and in general, but I like them while still being mindful of the First Commandment of the Church of Football: Thou Shalt Not Have Other Teams Before Thine Own. The Stillers are a good team, but my admiration is limited to the way a guy might (permissibly) admire his wife’s hot sister. Acknowledge the goodness, but do not, whatever you do, go there or let yourself prefer it to the home team. It would be immoral, possibly illegal, open you to civil liability, and would be comprehensively wrong in a hundred different ways.

You can’t prefer another team over your own, right? That’s the whole point about having a team. Other teams are worse or better. But your team is special because it is unique, and it's yours. You can acknowledge and discuss the comparative merits of another good team. But you do not jump onto the other team’s bandwagon. Ever.

Those preliminaries out of the way, the Steelers are a good organization that builds through the draft, and with the patience to see that coaches and players have a chance to develop fully. They seem to put a lot of emphasis on character; old school Heinz Ward has been a mainstay of the franchise, but more spectacularly dominant and goofy Plaxico “Everybody Down!” Burress was traded away to the Giants (and you know how that story ended). That's right - they keep a big hitting, quiet, unspectacular #1 receiver, and trade away a game breaker #1 receiver because they don't like the game breaker's character.

So yeah, I like the Steelers for a lot of reasons and think they should win today. The big one is that Arizona probably isn’t going to be able to run on them. With a relatively porous defense, Arizona has to be able to keep the ball out of the Steelers' hands, limit their time of possession. Otherwise, the already porous defense gets utterly worn down, and in the fourth quarter or overtime make the adequate Steelers' offense look like a scoring machine. As a guy whose bit on the side is the Buffalo Bills, I can tell you that fast scoring offenses are spectacular and rack up huge point totals, but have a lot of trouble playing against ball control offenses like the Steelers' "We'd rather take a sack than risk an interception" two receiver set.

The one thing Arizona has going for them is that in Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin, they have two legit superstar #1 wide receivers, and #3 Steve Breasten is no slouch. There are about 7 or 8 diva-level receivers in the league. You know the type - dangerous wide receivers who can be relied upon to break open games. Ordinarily, having a marquis wide receiver doesn’t help against the Steelers. They held the aforementioned Burress, Randy Moss and Terrell Owens to around 90 yards *total* in games against the Jints, Pats and Cowboys. But each of those teams has just one alpha dog receiver, along three or four other guys who are good role players who are coverable with decent quality single coverage. To contain Fitzgerald or Boldin would normally require double coverage, and if the Steelers did this then Breaston or some other lower profile Cardinal receiver could have a real big day. But the Steelers have very good cornerbacks who can probably handle Boldin in single coverage, and what the cornerbacks don’t get, multi-talented strong safety Troy Polomalu will probably snap up. Unlike most strong safeties, Polomalu is great in pass coverage, in addition to being as devastating against the run as anybody playing the game right now.

Final prediction? Steelers by 7.

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The other highlight of the game will be the ads. As usual, I’m lovin’ on Wendell Middlebrooks, the slightly rotund Miller High Life delivery guy. I can’t help myself; I do like High Life. It’s not the same caliber, taste-wise, as a lot of the beer I drink. But if it’s a hot day, or you’re washing down a bushel of crabs steamed in Old Bay, or if you are drinking beer by the pitcher and eating hot wings by the bucket, you need something icy, refreshing, and not too potent but still beer-y. High Life is the stuff. Wendell, of course, is funny as hell. “A 13 dollar hamburger? Are you kiddin’ me?” He’s getting his own news coverage, of course, and he even shows up on YouTube. It appears to me that some of his stuff isn’t scripted; that he’s just riffing about consumerism.