Rumor has it that Alberto Contador has no idea how that clenbuterol got in there. The testosterone, the dianabol, the EPO, the CERA, the artificially elevated red blood cell count, the horse aphrodisiacs and the stuff for various runny pustules from the DMSO shots, he can understand. But clenbuterol? Never touched the stuff. Must be a mistake. Who are you going to believe - me, or your lying eyes?
Anyhow, I have to wonder if there's another sport in the world that hates itself as much as cycling does. No other sport takes anti-doping as seriously, and no sport flagellates itself as badly when its policies work and dopers get caught. Steve Czaban summed it up nicely on drivetime sports radio this morning - "Phew. Good thing they don't test everybody right after the Superbowl." Yeah, no shit.
The interesting thing about this is the amount of the stuff Contador had in his system was about two orders of magnitude less than the amount considered cognizable by WADA. We're talking a trace of a trace here.
So did he dope? Maybe. Not that you could conclusively say so from the test.
Doesn't matter though. We're going to get years of recriminations, excuses, bogus sounding explanations, bombast from Dick Pound (who has now moved on but who still has a big mouth), Gallic shrugs from UCI, and whatever usual stuff the main players and organizations tee up.
The bottom line is that I like watching pro racing, but the only racers I have faith in are my fellow grass roots racers. I have faith in my local officials. I have faith in our scene, even though I know there's probably a few pig fucking cheaters among us. You guys I like, and have faith in, and respect. The pros? I like watching them do their thing but can no more impute good character to them, than I can to my dog. My dog is a good dog but he's just a dog; it's not in him to have good character. He just does what he does, so too do pro racers and all the corrupt personages in the pro cycling scene. The clean guys, I'm sure, are very clean. The dirty guys I'm very sure are dirty to the core. And me, I'm just tired of hearing it. I've heard all the excuses and justifications, and I've heard all the lies that can be told about doping.
Same old sterile debate, same old going nowhere cheating and seemingly half assed enforcement effort.
Doping in cycling is worse than a scandal these days: it's boring. Fuck these people. The lot of them. I'll watch them race, but damned if I'll care about them.
But you're only here for the tunes, right?
I think that's pretty self-explanatory, isn't it?
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Dawn of the Living Fred
I've decided I hate wearing my team kit when I'm trying to train.
Sean and I were cruising home last week on the "commute" which is really a near-crit level effort that just happens to start near where we live and end near where we work downtown. We're at the corner of the ironically named Good Luck Road, and Greenbelt Road, waiting for the light to change at this crazy hazardous intersection. It's crazy hazardous because it's one of the epicenters of PG County Driver Lunatic Behavior - burning red lights, doing 75 down the shoulder - and because it's six lanes moving at twice the legal speed limit on the North/South lanes, and four lanes doing the same thing at a right angle to the big road.
So we're stopped at the light and this older guy pulls up to us. I try not to pass judgment on people until I see how they act and this guy pulled up in front of us, so we were facing the big road and he was 90 degrees to our angle of travel. I gave the benefit of a doubt and figured he'd straighten himself out before the light turned. Meanwhile, I looked.
He had an older nondescript frame with friction shifters, a ten year old (or more) jersey, shorts worn shiney, and a saddlebag that was kind of big but looked to have a million miles on it. Hairy legs, didn't bother talking to us... I was torn as to whether he was a tough old roadie coot with a million hard miles in his legs, or a Fred. Since it was National Benefit of a Doubt Day, I presumed tough old guy.
So the light turns green, and we sit there. "Light's green," I said. "Huh?" "Light. The light. It's green." Then he notices it and starts pulling across the intersection, having angered a long line of car traffic and two cyclists. We started going up this little hill, and he did a big standing effort - to drop us hard I guess. About halfway up the rise I had to give Sean the waveoff since I was going to ride up the Fred's ass. If you're doing a standing effort on a hill and can't drop me you have a problem, Houston. Still being cool, I didn't try anything and just followed him for a ways. Eventually he turned down Good Luck at Soil Conservation, and then proceeded to get his ass in the way of irritable drivers heading home in their cars.
After he swung in front of a couple cars and back I had to make my move, so I pulled past him and said, "you're welcome to grab the wheel." I then proceeded to get after it hard for a mile or three, Jens'ing the dude as hard as possible. When Sean and I slowed down he was nowhere to be seen, and we chatted about the guy and I told him, basically, that I didn't want to be around a guy who was acting that way. We tried to figure out why he was acting squirelly and concluded it must have been the team jerseys that set him off.
That's consistent with my experiences around town. Pathletes, Freds, you name it, want to "race" with a guy who is wearing team kit in order to prove something. What it proves (besides their inherent lameness) is beyond me. But it is irritating.
I don't get this reaction wearing non-descript clothes. In fact, quite the opposite. When I wear one of my old shitty Performance jerseys and some shorts with crash damage, I get ignored at best, but more often than not sneered at by people in nicer gear.
I noticed this at Hains yesterday. Guys in team jerseys would talk, waiting to accumulate enough numbers to get the lunch ride going strong. Me? I got ignored for the most part. So maybe club riders do the same sort of thing to perceived Freds. Hmmm... interesting.
Doesn't really matter why, however. What matters is I got some peace and quiet, got avoided completely in fact, which allowed me to complete some longer threshold intervals. That was just what the doctor ordered.
I think from now on when I need to be left alone to get some training done, I'm going to try to wear my shitty old jerseys, nasty shorts, maybe my old road shoes and beat old helmet. If it keeps people from bugging me mid-workout - Freds, or racing associates who don't really know me - so much the better.
It's an imperfect Fred remedy and there's nothing you can do to avoid guys who pull up to you at a light, but maybe it will discourage some of the more irritating interventions.
Meanwhile... I bought a new highly ergonomic keyboard today, and check it out, the "H" and "G" function, as well as the comma. Sweet!
I spent about 3 hours tonight switching disc brakes around (new levers on mine, Avid BB 7s to the Frankenbike, Frankenbrakes to the Wife's 29'er. I also threw a cassette, and SRAM X7 derailer and shifter on her bike, since she's not much of a single speeder, not at 32:16 anyhow. Sooooo tired... time for sleep. Schlafzeit.
Sean and I were cruising home last week on the "commute" which is really a near-crit level effort that just happens to start near where we live and end near where we work downtown. We're at the corner of the ironically named Good Luck Road, and Greenbelt Road, waiting for the light to change at this crazy hazardous intersection. It's crazy hazardous because it's one of the epicenters of PG County Driver Lunatic Behavior - burning red lights, doing 75 down the shoulder - and because it's six lanes moving at twice the legal speed limit on the North/South lanes, and four lanes doing the same thing at a right angle to the big road.
So we're stopped at the light and this older guy pulls up to us. I try not to pass judgment on people until I see how they act and this guy pulled up in front of us, so we were facing the big road and he was 90 degrees to our angle of travel. I gave the benefit of a doubt and figured he'd straighten himself out before the light turned. Meanwhile, I looked.
He had an older nondescript frame with friction shifters, a ten year old (or more) jersey, shorts worn shiney, and a saddlebag that was kind of big but looked to have a million miles on it. Hairy legs, didn't bother talking to us... I was torn as to whether he was a tough old roadie coot with a million hard miles in his legs, or a Fred. Since it was National Benefit of a Doubt Day, I presumed tough old guy.
So the light turns green, and we sit there. "Light's green," I said. "Huh?" "Light. The light. It's green." Then he notices it and starts pulling across the intersection, having angered a long line of car traffic and two cyclists. We started going up this little hill, and he did a big standing effort - to drop us hard I guess. About halfway up the rise I had to give Sean the waveoff since I was going to ride up the Fred's ass. If you're doing a standing effort on a hill and can't drop me you have a problem, Houston. Still being cool, I didn't try anything and just followed him for a ways. Eventually he turned down Good Luck at Soil Conservation, and then proceeded to get his ass in the way of irritable drivers heading home in their cars.
After he swung in front of a couple cars and back I had to make my move, so I pulled past him and said, "you're welcome to grab the wheel." I then proceeded to get after it hard for a mile or three, Jens'ing the dude as hard as possible. When Sean and I slowed down he was nowhere to be seen, and we chatted about the guy and I told him, basically, that I didn't want to be around a guy who was acting that way. We tried to figure out why he was acting squirelly and concluded it must have been the team jerseys that set him off.
That's consistent with my experiences around town. Pathletes, Freds, you name it, want to "race" with a guy who is wearing team kit in order to prove something. What it proves (besides their inherent lameness) is beyond me. But it is irritating.
I don't get this reaction wearing non-descript clothes. In fact, quite the opposite. When I wear one of my old shitty Performance jerseys and some shorts with crash damage, I get ignored at best, but more often than not sneered at by people in nicer gear.
I noticed this at Hains yesterday. Guys in team jerseys would talk, waiting to accumulate enough numbers to get the lunch ride going strong. Me? I got ignored for the most part. So maybe club riders do the same sort of thing to perceived Freds. Hmmm... interesting.
Doesn't really matter why, however. What matters is I got some peace and quiet, got avoided completely in fact, which allowed me to complete some longer threshold intervals. That was just what the doctor ordered.
I think from now on when I need to be left alone to get some training done, I'm going to try to wear my shitty old jerseys, nasty shorts, maybe my old road shoes and beat old helmet. If it keeps people from bugging me mid-workout - Freds, or racing associates who don't really know me - so much the better.
It's an imperfect Fred remedy and there's nothing you can do to avoid guys who pull up to you at a light, but maybe it will discourage some of the more irritating interventions.
Meanwhile... I bought a new highly ergonomic keyboard today, and check it out, the "H" and "G" function, as well as the comma. Sweet!
I spent about 3 hours tonight switching disc brakes around (new levers on mine, Avid BB 7s to the Frankenbike, Frankenbrakes to the Wife's 29'er. I also threw a cassette, and SRAM X7 derailer and shifter on her bike, since she's not much of a single speeder, not at 32:16 anyhow. Sooooo tired... time for sleep. Schlafzeit.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
oly ell, my keyboard is dyin
It started wit t e letter after f, t en t e letter two spaces after f stopped workin . Now t e punctuation is dyin as are some of t e numbers. It is arder t an ell to write like t is. For todays post te 4 will substitute for t4e letter t4at is two spaces after F, and t4e 9 will substitute for t4e letter t4at is one space after F.
Any 4ow, I knocked out some t4res4old intervals today at 4ains Point. It was 2x20, but I s4ortened it to 2x18 because, not 4avin done any steady state work t4is year, I was losin9 power after 15 minutes or so. Next week, we will do t4e full 2x20. After t4at it will be nap time.
I saw C4ristina at 4ains too w4ic4 was nice, since 4er ankle is all messed up and I am just pleased s4e is not totally knocked off t4e bike. I 4ope s4e 4as a speedy recovery.
4ave a nice day, and I 4ope to 4ell your keyboard does not need replacin9 like mine does. It is a pain in t4e ass, I assure you.
Any 4ow, I knocked out some t4res4old intervals today at 4ains Point. It was 2x20, but I s4ortened it to 2x18 because, not 4avin done any steady state work t4is year, I was losin9 power after 15 minutes or so. Next week, we will do t4e full 2x20. After t4at it will be nap time.
I saw C4ristina at 4ains too w4ic4 was nice, since 4er ankle is all messed up and I am just pleased s4e is not totally knocked off t4e bike. I 4ope s4e 4as a speedy recovery.
4ave a nice day, and I 4ope to 4ell your keyboard does not need replacin9 like mine does. It is a pain in t4e ass, I assure you.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Unrequited CX Love
You can love cyclocross all you want. By no means should you expect it to love you back, not now, not ever.
It started pretty early today. Rolled out around 6:15, last thing I did was check my email on the 'Droid phone. Scott emailed the team late and said the course was bone dry, don't bother bringing rain tires. Naturally, by the time I hit Route 70 north of Columbia, it was raining hard enough that the windshield wipers didn't make much difference.
The rain kept up right until the races started at 9:00, then it mercifully cut off. The Lillypons well, lilly ponds, were dried out, as well as the paths. The course was bumpy as hell, though somebody recently ran a bulldozer over them in what appears to have been a humorous attempt to make fast moving bicycle tires make a motorcycle noise as they zip over the corrugation. There were some pretty epic holes in what used to be merely mud puddles. Maybe the drought conditions are causing sinkholes?
After I got registered at 8:00 I took off in my stylin' Hefty Bag Raincoat (Dior Fall Homeless Guy Collection) and motored around with Ken and a (hopefully) new teammate. Motoring up the gravel road toward the Back 9, my tubular flatted. Well... there goes $79. So I carried / walked the bike back to the pits. Somebody offered to go get my spare but I demurred, noting that the nature of 'cross is that it is the only racing discipline that is pretty much straight "F*** You!" from end to end, and not walking back to the pits when you flat at the most distant point on the course sort of defeats the purpose. It's not cross if it doesn't have the hardships.
From there I had a crummy warmup. Biggs had some Stan's and Slime that he generously agreed to let me use, but the goofy valve stem on the Fangos doesn't extend long enough to fasten the valves to install it, so unless you have the needle sort of attachment for the Stans you're out of luck. So I was down to the spare rear clincher wheel and did a sort of desultory warmup, enough to loosen up for tempo intervals but nothing like what is necessary for a cross race.
I was gridded about 75th. When the whistle blew, I hung in okay until we hit the grass, then started slipping back. The legs were just plain closed. I did okay through the ponds, out onto the gravel road, and then they started to open up a bit. I hammered past a few guys, slid around a turn or two, bounced through a few holes... and flatted at the exact same spot on the furthest spot from the pits.
@$%&#$!!!!!!!
That's what I thought anyhow. So I started walking back to the pits again. As I got down to the second turn on the gravel I noticed a BBC rider laying with his feet down toward the pond, a couple other riders with him. "What happened?" One guy then says, "He says he just broke his neck."
Hearing that took the starch out of my anger. Along with a couple other guys, we quickly started flagging riders into the left lane, to keep them away from the downed guy. He may have failed to scout the course well, and it appears he tried to clip the apex of the corner to make a pass. Unfortunately, there was a pumpkin-sized hole there, and if a rider got off the course and stuck his front wheel into it, he'd have a helmet crushing endo, exactly like this poor fellow. I figured I didn't have anything else to do at that point - no spare wheels, right - so I might as well stick around and help, so I did that to the end of the M 3/4 35+ race. After that I walked back with another guy who flatted. Tough luck all around.
And that's it for the 4 minutes of racing I did. Good things happened in the spectating though. NCVC had a great party laid on for us in the back 9. I hung out with a good chunk of the Morning Ride crew from Columbia / Ellicot City, had a couple beers, cheered and heckled like a lunatic. Svenstrom's wife decided after three or four beers that it would make perfect sense to hop into the women's Cat 4 race, which she did, and rode at least mid-pack in though I noticed JB putting some time into her. We got to cheer on an NCVC girl who was really nervous about the drop-in, and it was cool to see that our cheering appeared to have a positive effect as she gained confidence and got past it quicker each lap. We were rowdy and loud enough that I've been getting comments on Facebook and email that it was really appreciated, and that we gave off the appearance of having a great time. I would love to give shout outs to all the people who stopped to chat, who I cheered, who made me laugh and smile, but there were just too damn many of them to count. This is what "community" feels like, isn't it? I'd also love to give the rundown of Coppis who had great races like Peter and Jeff and Jon and everybody... but I can't, there's too many. It was that kind of day.
So there we are. I had a 4 minute race today, and stuck around to help out in a little bit of a grim situation. I burned half a tank of gas. I lost $23 in entry fees, destroyed a $79 tubular and a $3 tube, and spent about 7 hours of my life in an utterly futile endeavor.
Cyclocross, in short, kicked my ass today.
More than in a long time, however, I really loved it.
Because loving cyclocross is one a them weird kinds of relationship. You love it, but even though it doesn't love you back you don't worry about it because you're in it for some other reason. Maybe you're a masochist. Maybe you're co-dependent and it's abusive to you. Maybe you grew up in a sport that abused you and you don't know anything different.
I know. I know. There are therapists who specialize in this kind of thing. I'm aware of that. I'm aware that I can get some help for my problem for around $150 an hour. I happen to have about that amount laying around right now, looking for a good cause.
Fortunately, that also just happens to be what it's going to cost me for a new set of tubulars. Man, they'll be sweeeeet.
I love cyclocross.
It started pretty early today. Rolled out around 6:15, last thing I did was check my email on the 'Droid phone. Scott emailed the team late and said the course was bone dry, don't bother bringing rain tires. Naturally, by the time I hit Route 70 north of Columbia, it was raining hard enough that the windshield wipers didn't make much difference.
The rain kept up right until the races started at 9:00, then it mercifully cut off. The Lillypons well, lilly ponds, were dried out, as well as the paths. The course was bumpy as hell, though somebody recently ran a bulldozer over them in what appears to have been a humorous attempt to make fast moving bicycle tires make a motorcycle noise as they zip over the corrugation. There were some pretty epic holes in what used to be merely mud puddles. Maybe the drought conditions are causing sinkholes?
After I got registered at 8:00 I took off in my stylin' Hefty Bag Raincoat (Dior Fall Homeless Guy Collection) and motored around with Ken and a (hopefully) new teammate. Motoring up the gravel road toward the Back 9, my tubular flatted. Well... there goes $79. So I carried / walked the bike back to the pits. Somebody offered to go get my spare but I demurred, noting that the nature of 'cross is that it is the only racing discipline that is pretty much straight "F*** You!" from end to end, and not walking back to the pits when you flat at the most distant point on the course sort of defeats the purpose. It's not cross if it doesn't have the hardships.
From there I had a crummy warmup. Biggs had some Stan's and Slime that he generously agreed to let me use, but the goofy valve stem on the Fangos doesn't extend long enough to fasten the valves to install it, so unless you have the needle sort of attachment for the Stans you're out of luck. So I was down to the spare rear clincher wheel and did a sort of desultory warmup, enough to loosen up for tempo intervals but nothing like what is necessary for a cross race.
I was gridded about 75th. When the whistle blew, I hung in okay until we hit the grass, then started slipping back. The legs were just plain closed. I did okay through the ponds, out onto the gravel road, and then they started to open up a bit. I hammered past a few guys, slid around a turn or two, bounced through a few holes... and flatted at the exact same spot on the furthest spot from the pits.
@$%&#$!!!!!!!
That's what I thought anyhow. So I started walking back to the pits again. As I got down to the second turn on the gravel I noticed a BBC rider laying with his feet down toward the pond, a couple other riders with him. "What happened?" One guy then says, "He says he just broke his neck."
Hearing that took the starch out of my anger. Along with a couple other guys, we quickly started flagging riders into the left lane, to keep them away from the downed guy. He may have failed to scout the course well, and it appears he tried to clip the apex of the corner to make a pass. Unfortunately, there was a pumpkin-sized hole there, and if a rider got off the course and stuck his front wheel into it, he'd have a helmet crushing endo, exactly like this poor fellow. I figured I didn't have anything else to do at that point - no spare wheels, right - so I might as well stick around and help, so I did that to the end of the M 3/4 35+ race. After that I walked back with another guy who flatted. Tough luck all around.
And that's it for the 4 minutes of racing I did. Good things happened in the spectating though. NCVC had a great party laid on for us in the back 9. I hung out with a good chunk of the Morning Ride crew from Columbia / Ellicot City, had a couple beers, cheered and heckled like a lunatic. Svenstrom's wife decided after three or four beers that it would make perfect sense to hop into the women's Cat 4 race, which she did, and rode at least mid-pack in though I noticed JB putting some time into her. We got to cheer on an NCVC girl who was really nervous about the drop-in, and it was cool to see that our cheering appeared to have a positive effect as she gained confidence and got past it quicker each lap. We were rowdy and loud enough that I've been getting comments on Facebook and email that it was really appreciated, and that we gave off the appearance of having a great time. I would love to give shout outs to all the people who stopped to chat, who I cheered, who made me laugh and smile, but there were just too damn many of them to count. This is what "community" feels like, isn't it? I'd also love to give the rundown of Coppis who had great races like Peter and Jeff and Jon and everybody... but I can't, there's too many. It was that kind of day.
So there we are. I had a 4 minute race today, and stuck around to help out in a little bit of a grim situation. I burned half a tank of gas. I lost $23 in entry fees, destroyed a $79 tubular and a $3 tube, and spent about 7 hours of my life in an utterly futile endeavor.
Cyclocross, in short, kicked my ass today.
More than in a long time, however, I really loved it.
Because loving cyclocross is one a them weird kinds of relationship. You love it, but even though it doesn't love you back you don't worry about it because you're in it for some other reason. Maybe you're a masochist. Maybe you're co-dependent and it's abusive to you. Maybe you grew up in a sport that abused you and you don't know anything different.
I know. I know. There are therapists who specialize in this kind of thing. I'm aware of that. I'm aware that I can get some help for my problem for around $150 an hour. I happen to have about that amount laying around right now, looking for a good cause.
Fortunately, that also just happens to be what it's going to cost me for a new set of tubulars. Man, they'll be sweeeeet.
I love cyclocross.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Funny Days
OMFG are my legs shot right now. The commute has been a bit too much this week. My IFs for the 1 hour (each way) ride are .92, .89, .89, .87. Phew. Tomorrow it'll be the Genghis Khan ride, kinda like a muffin ride but with dirt, then Saturday we rest and maybe do a 45 minute v. light spin. Sunday, we race.
This week's theme is Surf Music and its cousins. I've got quite a bit of music for you this week, all on the theme. Let's start out with Los Straightjackets. This video is nothing, really, but it's cool as hell for some reason. I think it's because the music and this band knock the song right out of the fuckin' park. Pardon the language, but I get excited about Los Straightjackets.
Wouldn't hurt to hear some Southern Culture on the Skids here. What? Alt.country.rockabilly has surf music roots? Sure. Check it out.
Sorry it's not a proper video, but the live vids had crummy sound quality and I figured you'd rather listen than watch Mary Huff strut around and play a tribute to Link Wray. Right? Heh. Sure.
Link Wray, of course, was the father of the power chord, and his most famous song, by far, was Rumble.
Pretty cool. That's about halfway between Powerstation and the Beach Boys, right? Should I make it clearer? Right here is where surf rock meets metal. Link Wray delivers the baby.
They named the baby Lemmy. You hear that riff after each verse? It's played metal style, but that's a surf rock lick.
You don't believe me? Check this out with Dick Dale.
What the hell was that - speed surf metal? It's like Frankie and Annette are surfing off the coast of post-apocalyptic Australia in the wreckage of oil rigs and being chased by surf nazis or something. Dale was one of the original surf rock pioneers though. Here's a pleasantly dated song that really doesn't sound dated at all. It's a timeless sound.
Now let's take traditional surf guitar, mix in some pulled pork and hush puppies, and what do you get? Southern Culture on the Skids again. That's straight up surf music posing as ironic alt.country.
Sweeter than sweet tea, huh?
Of course I've been beating around the bush. If you want to talk seminal surf rock, you gotta mention The Ventures, and Wipeout.
Again, that sound is old, but it isn't dated. The Ventures are, as far as I know, still the top selling instrumental band in the world. Here's one reason why:
And one more. What the hell.
Awesome.
You all have a nice weekend. I'll see many of you at Ed Sander. Woooot!
This week's theme is Surf Music and its cousins. I've got quite a bit of music for you this week, all on the theme. Let's start out with Los Straightjackets. This video is nothing, really, but it's cool as hell for some reason. I think it's because the music and this band knock the song right out of the fuckin' park. Pardon the language, but I get excited about Los Straightjackets.
Wouldn't hurt to hear some Southern Culture on the Skids here. What? Alt.country.rockabilly has surf music roots? Sure. Check it out.
Sorry it's not a proper video, but the live vids had crummy sound quality and I figured you'd rather listen than watch Mary Huff strut around and play a tribute to Link Wray. Right? Heh. Sure.
Link Wray, of course, was the father of the power chord, and his most famous song, by far, was Rumble.
Pretty cool. That's about halfway between Powerstation and the Beach Boys, right? Should I make it clearer? Right here is where surf rock meets metal. Link Wray delivers the baby.
They named the baby Lemmy. You hear that riff after each verse? It's played metal style, but that's a surf rock lick.
You don't believe me? Check this out with Dick Dale.
What the hell was that - speed surf metal? It's like Frankie and Annette are surfing off the coast of post-apocalyptic Australia in the wreckage of oil rigs and being chased by surf nazis or something. Dale was one of the original surf rock pioneers though. Here's a pleasantly dated song that really doesn't sound dated at all. It's a timeless sound.
Now let's take traditional surf guitar, mix in some pulled pork and hush puppies, and what do you get? Southern Culture on the Skids again. That's straight up surf music posing as ironic alt.country.
Sweeter than sweet tea, huh?
Of course I've been beating around the bush. If you want to talk seminal surf rock, you gotta mention The Ventures, and Wipeout.
Again, that sound is old, but it isn't dated. The Ventures are, as far as I know, still the top selling instrumental band in the world. Here's one reason why:
And one more. What the hell.
Awesome.
You all have a nice weekend. I'll see many of you at Ed Sander. Woooot!
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Punching Above Their Weight: Tektro CR 720 Cantilevers
I didn't have it at cross practice tonight. Between work stress, a herniated disc that was a little surprised by a steep runup, and some very sore legs from Tuesday's two times one hour .90 IF average commute rides, I just didn't have it at all. It was still fun and great to see my friends.
Unlike me, my brakes had it.
A question I hear a lot, is what kind of cantilever brakes are good for a cross bike. People want strong, cheap, and effective. I've got news for you - that combination is pretty rare.
Mini-cantilevers, the little thumb-like brakes, are alright if you don't ask to much of them. The bottom line with them is that they are not strong, and no matter how much you gussy them up - I'm lookin' at you, Avid Shorty - you can't make them strong. The geometry is just wrong and doesn't provide enough leverage.
So you need to look at true cantilevers and figure out how to set them up. The alloy TRP (Tektro Racing Products, BTW) Euro-X comes closest to fitting the bill, with a pair coming in around $75 if you shop carefully. But what if that is still too much?
Your choices are between the low end Kore Cantilever Brake, and the Tektro CR 720. I was looking at some Kores a while back and, as a hirsute bike shop owning friend of mine put it, one of his canti-smart employees tried the brakes on his bike, "rode into the parking lot, walked back into the shop, and took them off. Not good."
I decided to try the CR 720's as an upgrade to the Kona Major One. I've had an old set of Tektro Oryx mini-cantis on it, but needed more stopping power for racing. The 720's worked out to around $34 for the pair, through a team shop deal.
Installation was really simple. The brakes mounted easily, and the included cable straddle carrier had two cable stop nuts to help center the brakes. Centering was also made easy by a spring tension adjustment nut at the bottom of each brake; tighten a screw to up spring pressure, and the brake pad moved farther from the rim. For it's part, the straddle carrier came free with the brakeset, and it was identical to the one that Cyclocross World charges $10 for and the same as the one that comes with the alloy EuroX.
Getting the brakes dialed in was simple. The pads have fittings comparable to Avid's excellent cup & cone washers, allowing the post style brake pads to be toed in properly when the pad retaining screw is tightened into place. The spring tension adjust works in concert with the cable straddle carrier to center the brakes, and you're off.
Those familiar with Canti Fu will wonder what adjustments are available. One of the ancient Chinese secrets is that cantis are very adjustable, and you can make them very bad or very good with some tweaks. Unfortunately you give up a little of that with the 720's, though some of that is offset by ease of installation and a basically good setup. They are not as adjustable as, for instance, TRP EuroX brakes or Pauls, because cantilever can only be installed at roughly 90 degrees to the rim. Angles more than a pinch below 90 degrees are simply not possible, so the super powerful, 10-15 degrees below 90 installation isn't an option. This isn't that much of a setback as it sounds like, however, because 90 degrees offers good power and a short lever throw, and the straddle carrier can be adjusted up and down to change stopping power (and grass/mud clearance). Moreover, because the pads can be toed in really well, you get better pad/rim contact than with a lot of brakes so raw power doesn't matter so much.
So how do they work? Really well, particularly in light of the price. I haven't braked hard enough to really test the 720's effectiveness at the edge, and that a good panic stop will help me figure out just how strong this brake is. It's plenty strong for right now and has led to quick stops in practice and at the one race I've done this year. They are a little weaker than TRP EuroX brakes, and I suspect that Avid's Ultimate Canti dusts them too, at least when it is down in the horizontal position.
But mega stopping power really isn't that important in cross. You need good brakes, but they don't have to be great. These things are way stronger than mini cantis, including more expensive minis, and just a touch weaker than full cantis costing from twice to 20 times the price. Aftermarket Kool Stop or Dura Ace pads would put their stopping power in the same league as the EuroX.
The bottom line is that if you need an inexpensive but reasonably effective canti for your B bike, or if you roll econo and are scraping to put together a high functioning cross bike, you should consider the Tektro CR 720. It will get the job done, and leave you with an extra $40 in your pocket (or more) to upgrade your cowbell and your post race recovery beverages.
Unlike me, my brakes had it.
A question I hear a lot, is what kind of cantilever brakes are good for a cross bike. People want strong, cheap, and effective. I've got news for you - that combination is pretty rare.
Mini-cantilevers, the little thumb-like brakes, are alright if you don't ask to much of them. The bottom line with them is that they are not strong, and no matter how much you gussy them up - I'm lookin' at you, Avid Shorty - you can't make them strong. The geometry is just wrong and doesn't provide enough leverage.
So you need to look at true cantilevers and figure out how to set them up. The alloy TRP (Tektro Racing Products, BTW) Euro-X comes closest to fitting the bill, with a pair coming in around $75 if you shop carefully. But what if that is still too much?
Your choices are between the low end Kore Cantilever Brake, and the Tektro CR 720. I was looking at some Kores a while back and, as a hirsute bike shop owning friend of mine put it, one of his canti-smart employees tried the brakes on his bike, "rode into the parking lot, walked back into the shop, and took them off. Not good."
I decided to try the CR 720's as an upgrade to the Kona Major One. I've had an old set of Tektro Oryx mini-cantis on it, but needed more stopping power for racing. The 720's worked out to around $34 for the pair, through a team shop deal.
Tektro CR 720
Installation was really simple. The brakes mounted easily, and the included cable straddle carrier had two cable stop nuts to help center the brakes. Centering was also made easy by a spring tension adjustment nut at the bottom of each brake; tighten a screw to up spring pressure, and the brake pad moved farther from the rim. For it's part, the straddle carrier came free with the brakeset, and it was identical to the one that Cyclocross World charges $10 for and the same as the one that comes with the alloy EuroX.
Straddle - Tektro, TRP, Cyclocross World: Same/Same
Those familiar with Canti Fu will wonder what adjustments are available. One of the ancient Chinese secrets is that cantis are very adjustable, and you can make them very bad or very good with some tweaks. Unfortunately you give up a little of that with the 720's, though some of that is offset by ease of installation and a basically good setup. They are not as adjustable as, for instance, TRP EuroX brakes or Pauls, because cantilever can only be installed at roughly 90 degrees to the rim. Angles more than a pinch below 90 degrees are simply not possible, so the super powerful, 10-15 degrees below 90 installation isn't an option. This isn't that much of a setback as it sounds like, however, because 90 degrees offers good power and a short lever throw, and the straddle carrier can be adjusted up and down to change stopping power (and grass/mud clearance). Moreover, because the pads can be toed in really well, you get better pad/rim contact than with a lot of brakes so raw power doesn't matter so much.
So how do they work? Really well, particularly in light of the price. I haven't braked hard enough to really test the 720's effectiveness at the edge, and that a good panic stop will help me figure out just how strong this brake is. It's plenty strong for right now and has led to quick stops in practice and at the one race I've done this year. They are a little weaker than TRP EuroX brakes, and I suspect that Avid's Ultimate Canti dusts them too, at least when it is down in the horizontal position.
But mega stopping power really isn't that important in cross. You need good brakes, but they don't have to be great. These things are way stronger than mini cantis, including more expensive minis, and just a touch weaker than full cantis costing from twice to 20 times the price. Aftermarket Kool Stop or Dura Ace pads would put their stopping power in the same league as the EuroX.
The bottom line is that if you need an inexpensive but reasonably effective canti for your B bike, or if you roll econo and are scraping to put together a high functioning cross bike, you should consider the Tektro CR 720. It will get the job done, and leave you with an extra $40 in your pocket (or more) to upgrade your cowbell and your post race recovery beverages.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Weirdness, Hotness, and Bikeness
Cyclocross is about the inexplicable. It's hard to explain why we do it, how we come to love something so hard, or to relate to others all the unbelievable and weird things that happen during a race. For example... I was in the shower today removing four days worth of stubble from my legs. Being a large man, and a rouleur by trade, removing the undergrowth from my Texas-sized expanse of quadriceps is a major enterprise akin to clearcutting the Amazon. Somewhere south of my gut, and north of my knee, I noticed a strange racquetball-sized black spot on my right thigh. It seems that somebody hit me, hard, on Saturday. From the looks of it, somebody on my right ate shit and their handlebar plugged me square in the thigh. I recall seeing a pretty major tire cut on my left calf after the race and thinking somebody ran into me fairly hard. Is it possible that I rode through the scene of a major crash like a Hollywood hero running through the flames of a big explosion, and that I did not remember it? I remember being near crashes, and I vaguely remember having to do this enormous bunny hop on the first lap for some reason and feeling extremely pleased about having pulled it off, but I don't remember why I was forced to do that. Could I have forgotten about somebody plowing into me on the right, and somebody else going down hard on the left and mashing into my calf?
Yes. It's entirely possible. In fact it would be typical.
------------------------------------------------
Does anybody out there have some recipes for fresh Cayenne pepper? My son got me a nice gift of cayenne pepper seeds which we saw through germination and replanting. I'm now harvesting a dozen or twenty every couple days. Along with my flourishing jalepeno bush, it's starting to cause trouble. It's not just the ass-searing farts, the bleeding gums, and the desire to put "El" in front of every remotely masculine sounding noun I speak ("have you seen el Dog? where is el Shotgun? I want another el Beer!"), it's the sheer fright of looking at a growing pile of these peppers and not knowing what the hell I'm going do with them. So somebody, either volunteer to take a healthy bowl of them off my hands, or float me some good recipes for them. Please!
I'm also accepting recommendations for medicines to cool what appears to be a permanent state of inflammation of El Culo.
-------------------------------------------------
I took the Wife of Rouleur out for a mountain bike ride on her new 29'er on Sunday, along with Son of Rouleur. She has been riding my slick old Kona Cinder Cone, but this was a transformative experience for her. The bike isn't particularly special; it's a Taiwan (or Chinese mainland) Special, an SE Stout singlespeed. It's got an unremarkable spec, though it was extremely inexpensive, as is normally the case with mass produced 29'er singlespeeds.
If you're thinking about taking up mountain biking, you could do a lot worse. A 29'er will generally ride more stable than a 26" wheeled bike, and it often has a fit that works well for larger riders, or newer riders used to sitting up on a hybrid or flat bar road bike.
The SE is also pretty adaptable. It comes with a derailer hanger, which I will be appending pretty soon along with some SRAM X7 components, to make this into an inexpensive 9 speed. I think she will eventually inherit one of my disc brake sets and I have a line on an inexpensive used Rock Shox Reba suspension fork. And because there was some closeout involved, and maybe some shopping from a catalog that I wouldn't ordinarily support, we're looking at maybe $700 to build a pretty damn good hardtail 29'er.
All that is cool, but it's also bike geek shit. The good thing about this bike, the real good thing, is that when we wrapped up the ride on Sunday, she said, "usually I'm tired when I finish a ride. On this bike, I feel like I could ride all day."
So we're making some dates to take some weekdays off and do a couple rides, Rosaryville first then some other beginner-to-intermediate level area, maybe Schaeffer if we can get to it before it shuts for winter. The effect of big, bump-absorbing wheels was to turn an occasional, sometime mountain biker into somebody who is looking to expand her off-road horizons. This is good for her, but I'm also glad for me because I can now share something with her that I really love doing, but which was mine alone to do in the past. If you ride an MTB, you know that sharing your ride with friends is fun; how much better is it when you can share with your wife and best friend?
The double bonus nice thing about giving somebody a bike is that it has the potential to make you as happy, as the person who receives it.
Yes. It's entirely possible. In fact it would be typical.
------------------------------------------------
Does anybody out there have some recipes for fresh Cayenne pepper? My son got me a nice gift of cayenne pepper seeds which we saw through germination and replanting. I'm now harvesting a dozen or twenty every couple days. Along with my flourishing jalepeno bush, it's starting to cause trouble. It's not just the ass-searing farts, the bleeding gums, and the desire to put "El" in front of every remotely masculine sounding noun I speak ("have you seen el Dog? where is el Shotgun? I want another el Beer!"), it's the sheer fright of looking at a growing pile of these peppers and not knowing what the hell I'm going do with them. So somebody, either volunteer to take a healthy bowl of them off my hands, or float me some good recipes for them. Please!
I'm also accepting recommendations for medicines to cool what appears to be a permanent state of inflammation of El Culo.
-------------------------------------------------
I took the Wife of Rouleur out for a mountain bike ride on her new 29'er on Sunday, along with Son of Rouleur. She has been riding my slick old Kona Cinder Cone, but this was a transformative experience for her. The bike isn't particularly special; it's a Taiwan (or Chinese mainland) Special, an SE Stout singlespeed. It's got an unremarkable spec, though it was extremely inexpensive, as is normally the case with mass produced 29'er singlespeeds.
Wife Of's All Terrain Thrill Machine
If you're thinking about taking up mountain biking, you could do a lot worse. A 29'er will generally ride more stable than a 26" wheeled bike, and it often has a fit that works well for larger riders, or newer riders used to sitting up on a hybrid or flat bar road bike.
The SE is also pretty adaptable. It comes with a derailer hanger, which I will be appending pretty soon along with some SRAM X7 components, to make this into an inexpensive 9 speed. I think she will eventually inherit one of my disc brake sets and I have a line on an inexpensive used Rock Shox Reba suspension fork. And because there was some closeout involved, and maybe some shopping from a catalog that I wouldn't ordinarily support, we're looking at maybe $700 to build a pretty damn good hardtail 29'er.
All that is cool, but it's also bike geek shit. The good thing about this bike, the real good thing, is that when we wrapped up the ride on Sunday, she said, "usually I'm tired when I finish a ride. On this bike, I feel like I could ride all day."
So we're making some dates to take some weekdays off and do a couple rides, Rosaryville first then some other beginner-to-intermediate level area, maybe Schaeffer if we can get to it before it shuts for winter. The effect of big, bump-absorbing wheels was to turn an occasional, sometime mountain biker into somebody who is looking to expand her off-road horizons. This is good for her, but I'm also glad for me because I can now share something with her that I really love doing, but which was mine alone to do in the past. If you ride an MTB, you know that sharing your ride with friends is fun; how much better is it when you can share with your wife and best friend?
The double bonus nice thing about giving somebody a bike is that it has the potential to make you as happy, as the person who receives it.
Charmed, I'm Sure
Charm City was good. The new course on Saturday was one of the finest courses I've ever ridden. It had wonderful flow. There was just something to it, and the scene was excellent, with a Burrito Truck and Biscuitheads delivering excellent food. It was great seeing friends I haven't seen since last cross season, and the racing was great, very hard.
My race went okay. I got the DFL bib number and gridded at the very end of the grid - except for a row of guys who missed their callups and gridding. They were behind me, briefly. Dave Tambeaux estimated 100-110 starters.
We went off fine at the start, I avoided the usual first turn pileup, and rode pretty steady for about 1.5 laps. I hung onto the string for that time. At that point, the string started breaking into groups and I was stuck in a group of 7-8 for the rest of the race. For about two laps I worked my way up through that group, picking off one at a time. Finally I was up to the front clump of four. I passed one guy, an NCVC'er I think, and pushed the group by edging forward into the turns, and we sped up decisively and dropped him. Coming into the big tree barrier on lap 4, I had a cunning plan to get the next three. I passed one guy going up the hill, passed another guy at the big tree barrier, then got the third guy at the next yellow barriers. As this was happening, my chest cold and asthma were fighting back against the redline effort, and I was coughing hard. Coming out of the turns past the barriers I lost the front end briefly (for the third time in the race) and nearly stopped. The three passed riders caught me, and they held my wheel to the pavement but I kept coughing. Thirty seconds or a minute of coughing stole my wind, and I was blown up. As we came up the tarmac hill I was fine - it's okay singlespeed territory - but as we crested then began the tarmac downhill to the dirt I was utterly blown and the three passed me. They were blown from the effort too and the little group was shattered, but I was done. I winged it in from there on the fifth lap as hard as I could and recovered around the time I hit the big tree barrier on lap 5. Coming down toward the tarmac the race winner lapped me, then I think Cernich lapped me too. I was pulled, and happily made the throat slitting gesture as I came past the line.
Result: Identical to last year with the winner and #2 lapping me within 400 yards of the finish. Identical despite being in crapola condition, and being on the single. This bodes well for the season if I can keep up training conditioning and diet. Diet is going to be key to a nice November and I have to make 20 pounds do a frickin' Houdini act before then. I think I finished 82d, not great but not a terrible finish in light of everything. Rohr said I rode really steady and that was my feeling on the bike - I didn't blow apart nor did I have any dead spots other than the asthma attack and coughing fit. That's the first time I can ever remember riding a cross race with really good pacing, able to say at the end I couldn't have gone any harder, but also knowing I didn't take any rests.
The single - the Kona Major One stripped down into race kit - worked really well. I need a longer stem to get more weight on the front wheel in dusty turns, but otherwise it is a sweet, sweet ride that is more capable than I am. I briefly tried my tubulars with a single speed adaptor on the rear freehub before the race - that produced what felt like a 16 pound bike - but I couldn't get the brakes to work right so I went back to the Phil Wood / CXP 33 combo with the shoddy Kenda Kwick clinchers. They worked okay. The downhills were awful - I realized how much I like big ringing it down grassy hills and just hammering it. That took away a big gun in my arsenal, and it also took away my road speed, two things I could have used to maneuver myself wayyyy up in the standings, like from 82nd to 77th or something. (Seriously, I'd have been a bit faster with gears). On the other hand, Riskus said later "nothing's harder but nothing gets you in shape faster than the single." So I'm going to ride it some. Not sure I will at Ed Sander, that race is flat and I would hate to be spinning down that long gravel road, at 120 RPM, getting passed. But it will work for other races.
Did anything funny happen? Yeah. I ran across FatMarc and he relayed the contents of a conversation that he had with somebody - maybe Auer - during the race. It was hard to tell what Marc was saying between the croaking voice and obvious Nyquil haze - somebody needs to tell that boy you take Nyquil at the *beginning* of the night, not the end of it. But it boiled down to something like "the Rouleur is out there and he ain't doing bad... what the hell is he doing on the single?" Though that may not be an accurate depiction of FatMarc's comments because I was pretty much incoherent and incapable of stringing two thoughts together for about 7 hours after the race.
Many thanks and mad props go out to Twenty 20 Bikes and Nystrom, Auer & crew. That was a great race (as usual) and a great way to kick off my season. I think 500 or so other folks seemed to harbor similar thoughts.
My race went okay. I got the DFL bib number and gridded at the very end of the grid - except for a row of guys who missed their callups and gridding. They were behind me, briefly. Dave Tambeaux estimated 100-110 starters.
We went off fine at the start, I avoided the usual first turn pileup, and rode pretty steady for about 1.5 laps. I hung onto the string for that time. At that point, the string started breaking into groups and I was stuck in a group of 7-8 for the rest of the race. For about two laps I worked my way up through that group, picking off one at a time. Finally I was up to the front clump of four. I passed one guy, an NCVC'er I think, and pushed the group by edging forward into the turns, and we sped up decisively and dropped him. Coming into the big tree barrier on lap 4, I had a cunning plan to get the next three. I passed one guy going up the hill, passed another guy at the big tree barrier, then got the third guy at the next yellow barriers. As this was happening, my chest cold and asthma were fighting back against the redline effort, and I was coughing hard. Coming out of the turns past the barriers I lost the front end briefly (for the third time in the race) and nearly stopped. The three passed riders caught me, and they held my wheel to the pavement but I kept coughing. Thirty seconds or a minute of coughing stole my wind, and I was blown up. As we came up the tarmac hill I was fine - it's okay singlespeed territory - but as we crested then began the tarmac downhill to the dirt I was utterly blown and the three passed me. They were blown from the effort too and the little group was shattered, but I was done. I winged it in from there on the fifth lap as hard as I could and recovered around the time I hit the big tree barrier on lap 5. Coming down toward the tarmac the race winner lapped me, then I think Cernich lapped me too. I was pulled, and happily made the throat slitting gesture as I came past the line.
Result: Identical to last year with the winner and #2 lapping me within 400 yards of the finish. Identical despite being in crapola condition, and being on the single. This bodes well for the season if I can keep up training conditioning and diet. Diet is going to be key to a nice November and I have to make 20 pounds do a frickin' Houdini act before then. I think I finished 82d, not great but not a terrible finish in light of everything. Rohr said I rode really steady and that was my feeling on the bike - I didn't blow apart nor did I have any dead spots other than the asthma attack and coughing fit. That's the first time I can ever remember riding a cross race with really good pacing, able to say at the end I couldn't have gone any harder, but also knowing I didn't take any rests.
The single - the Kona Major One stripped down into race kit - worked really well. I need a longer stem to get more weight on the front wheel in dusty turns, but otherwise it is a sweet, sweet ride that is more capable than I am. I briefly tried my tubulars with a single speed adaptor on the rear freehub before the race - that produced what felt like a 16 pound bike - but I couldn't get the brakes to work right so I went back to the Phil Wood / CXP 33 combo with the shoddy Kenda Kwick clinchers. They worked okay. The downhills were awful - I realized how much I like big ringing it down grassy hills and just hammering it. That took away a big gun in my arsenal, and it also took away my road speed, two things I could have used to maneuver myself wayyyy up in the standings, like from 82nd to 77th or something. (Seriously, I'd have been a bit faster with gears). On the other hand, Riskus said later "nothing's harder but nothing gets you in shape faster than the single." So I'm going to ride it some. Not sure I will at Ed Sander, that race is flat and I would hate to be spinning down that long gravel road, at 120 RPM, getting passed. But it will work for other races.
Did anything funny happen? Yeah. I ran across FatMarc and he relayed the contents of a conversation that he had with somebody - maybe Auer - during the race. It was hard to tell what Marc was saying between the croaking voice and obvious Nyquil haze - somebody needs to tell that boy you take Nyquil at the *beginning* of the night, not the end of it. But it boiled down to something like "the Rouleur is out there and he ain't doing bad... what the hell is he doing on the single?" Though that may not be an accurate depiction of FatMarc's comments because I was pretty much incoherent and incapable of stringing two thoughts together for about 7 hours after the race.
Many thanks and mad props go out to Twenty 20 Bikes and Nystrom, Auer & crew. That was a great race (as usual) and a great way to kick off my season. I think 500 or so other folks seemed to harbor similar thoughts.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Enjoy Every Sandwich
Nice week so far. Only got in a couple rides since I was laid out with a hella cold between Friday afternoon and Monday afternoon. One of the rides was a solid cross practice on Wednesday night, and although I'm not very fit, I'm not totally unfit. Now if the frog would just leave the back of my throat so I could stop coughing up bits of something unidentifiable, life would be perfect.
The lack of perfection won't hinder my fun at Charm City, however. The lower tiers of the race are pretty much sold out (though it pays to show up and waitlist yourself) and it should be an awesome event both days. Even if you aren't racing, come on out and enjoy the beautiful weather. Have some fun, it's time.
Speaking of races - things are really coming together for the Tacchino. I did about three hours of race coordination work today. We're going to have good food, good band, good beer (Duvel/Ommegang), and we're getting some good sponsors lined up so that we have good swag for good racers. And the Suitcase of Sausage... according to a source who did not want to be quoted, the Suitcase will be joining us with meaty mid-pack primes as soon as it is released from the custody of an Official Representative of the United States Government.
The Meatcase:
Official Spokesluggage for the Suitcase of Sausage
Official Spokesluggage for the Suitcase of Sausage
Now the big news... I'm going to load up the Truckster and hit Ommegang Cross again this year. Time has once again come for a pilgrimage to the Little Bit O' Belgium in Leatherstocking Territory. I'd been entertaining a couple enticements to head on up to race, but when I mentioned it to Wife of Rouleur - a big NY Yankees fan and a lover of the Baseball HOF - the idea of a weekend family trip suddenly became reality for us. Crazy race, awesome venue, good hard competition, and very much worth the trip. So, like Natty Bumpo, I'm going to strap on the crazy pants, and ride my steed in the hills south of Lake Otsego. Bonus - they even have a Singlespeed class. Sweeeeeet. I'm up against the Elite Women, which means I'm going to get an unholy ass kicking from the front half of that field, at least. But I do not care. Except for a few high profile exceptions, racing a single means you are going to get your ass kicked by everybody else. And that you are a dangerous social deviant. But I'm kinda getting a thing for my single again this year, particularly now that I have an actual racing single (Kona Major One) rather than the 27 pound pig of a Surly Crosscheck. Oh yeah, and a single speed conversion kit means I'll be able to rock the cog on my tubulars, which will make for a sick light bike, the likes of which a man my size and power does not often get to ride without voiding warranties and breaking parts.
Ah. But what the hell. You're here for the music. Let's have some stuff to kick off our cross season.
Take it away, Warren:
You guys got that? Enjoy every sandwich. That's what we're going to do this year friends. Enjoy every last sandwich.
Yep. I want to see you in the morning. Nice song you mighta heard in the recent Mustang commercial; I thought it was Jack White or Black Keys at first. Anyhow, I want to see you in the morning at 9:00, 10:00, or 11:00. That's the M4, M 3/4 (or 2/3/4) 35+, and the M 3/4. Let's scrum a little, and mind the elbows when we hit that first turn bottleneck.
Consider this a shoutout to the packed classes whose entry fees underwrite the scene. The competition is hammer and tongs from first, back to about 110th or so, and the last 15 guys are giving it all they got even if they've lost the thread. The Elite classes and the sparsely attended (but thankfully growing) women's races are awesome, but I love seeing a swarm of 125 people going at it like it was their day job. Anybody unfamiliar with the sport would never guess that (1) you are mostly racing for the honor of winning; there's little if any money; and, (2) damn near all of you pay cash money and train hard to do this unforgiving, no-payback sport. You magnificent bastards!
Hail Hail, You Won, You're One! This is for all my friends rockin' a single speed on the mountain, on the street, and in the cross races. Seibold moved on to Elite 35+, but there's still a core of guys rocking just one in the support classes, and promoters in MABRA are taking action to encourage the growth of this challenging, different way of racing. I'm going single a bit this year, not sure how much but some, and we worked to find a way to do a singlespeed prize list within the M 3/4 race - if you're a Cat 4 or 3 and race single, it's like a class within the class. I'm committed to this because it's a serious athletic endeavor, not a sideshow (despite the SSCXWC nuttiness) and, as I told Seibold after practice last night, "I rode a single my first or second year of cross and didn't know what I was doing. Now that I know what I'm doing... holy ****in' sh1t, this is bloody hard." It's true; turning hot laps with the group on the single, now that I know how to move along okay, is a whole other universe of pain, a new depth of suffering. So for those of you who persevere, for whom One is Enough, I raise my glass.
That's for the Women of Cross. I grouse about trying to build women's fields, not getting enough pre-regs, and so forth. But I *love* the fact that women are coming out in greater numbers, getting their noses stuck in, and racing hard. I am incredibly appreciative that we have a growing women's contingent, and I respect that fact that girls are doin' it for themselves. It's easy to know why guys race: testosterone. We will race, fight, argue with, or just generally compete with anybody. It is not clear to me why women choose to do so since most women do not have this particular insane sort of male drive. Women do it for some other reason, I think - Tammy Thomas excepted - and I am immensely grateful for those who do. My only real beef is that we don't have to have an enormous fight within MABRA about what to do with two 125 rider women's fields and our limited schedule space. A boy can dream, right?
It goes without saying that this song goes out in particular to my friends in the M 3/4 35+ class - the Army of Ancients.
And that one, finally, is for my friends in the 1-2-3's. Methods of Mayhem, Crash. You suckers are going too fast for sure, and when I watch you guys ride, it looks to me like the stunts that dude is pulling while barefoot skiing. You is some sick, sick puppies. I like what you do, but I do not understand how you do it.
NSFW:
And that little Richard Cheese remix of a great Disturbed song is for pretty much everybody on the scene. Yeah, CX is a sickness. I didn't realize this fully until I was reading Greg Keller a few weeks ago talking about his first hard cross riding efforts this year. He was going on about how it had been since January that he had tasted his own blood in his throat and it was a good feeling. And I don't think he was joking or exaggerating. So let's all get down with the sickness. Don't worry about not fitting in, friends. It's cool... you're among the diseased here.
Now if you stuck around this far I have to make a confession. I got nothin' this year. The fitness is okay, but I'm not burning with a fire to train, to hammer. The only thing driving me is a drive to wring as much fun out of cross as I can, to balance it out as well as I can with my life. Ride lots, watch the diet, race hard, and pack as much fun in as I can. Oh, I'm going to go as hard as possible on race day. But I ain't sweatin' in this year. The back explosion I had last winter put the fear of God in me and I realized I have to value every single day I can get on the bike, with my friends, doing what makes us happy. So that's the plan for this year. We're all going to enjoy every sandwich, right?
Seeya at Charm City.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
A Canticle for Cantilevers
Yea, verily, I sayeth unto thee:
He that installeth not true cantilevers,
Shall suffer mud and grass buildup,
And excess friction unto the end of his days.
Happy is the wise man who, upon hearing this news,
Forsaketh Vee brakes and mini-cantis.
Thou shalt have no other brakes before cantis;
Many are their joys, rich are their rewards.
Yet a fool wanders warily,
Questioning the wisdom of my words.
"How, then, shall I install them?" he asks,
"They sloweth me not strongly,"
Knowing not what he says.
Question thee not, the wisdom of ages!
For so I admonish thee,
Thy legs shall burn and thy back ache,
If ye choose not to heed my words.
So it is written by the prophets.
So let it be done.
Thy forefathers, the elders of Mafac,
Knew not to question this wisdom.
Study thou then the setup rules,
And thou shalt stop, when it is time to stop.
And thy brakes shall not sucketh.
So verily, I say unto you:
Installeth thee thy cantilever rightly.
A righteous cantilever departs from the rim straightly,
It sits flat, at ninety degrees at rest,
Or hangs slightly lower like the ripe grapes
in my lover's vineyard;
Righteous canti brakes departeth not from this line.
If ye be hot or ye be cold, cover ye then in embrocation.
But if ye be afraid, against my wisdom, of the straddle,
Or smeareth embrocation or emolients on the pads,
Ye shall not see heaven,
But shall braketh poorly, overshoot thy line,
And DNFs shall follow thee unto thy old age.
For it is decreed that the straddle of the righteous man shall sit
three fingers height from the wheel;
Higher and thy straddle shall clear the mud,
But power shall thy cantilever lack,
And surely shall thy turns end amidst tape, and suffering,
Amid lamentations of the women, and the elders.
Should ye go lower than thy three fingers,
then shall thy straddle not clear grass.
Yet great power shalt thou have.
Lower thou not thy straddle to two or one fingers height,
Unless thou be of mighty loin and weighty girth,
or riding in dry weather,
But bewarest thou the temptations of the endo.
Of it I have warned.
Still, some have come unto me and asked,
Lord of the Cantilevers, should I get bartop levers?
Questioneth not the Lord of Cantilevers!
But seek out the answer for thyself.
For wisdom comes from seeking,
Not from abasing thyself before one on his own true path.
Art thou scared for thy immortal soul on steep downhills?
Then yes, thou needeth bartop levers as the summer needs the rain,
For bartop levers bringeth stoppage in abundance,
And halt the wheels mightily.
But if thou hast not lost faith in thy handling skills,
And if thou art true believers in the gospel of the cantilever,
Then thou needeth only feather the main levers,
That hang from the bar like ripe manna from the burning bush,
And shalt though slide the rear wheel as a serpent in the grass,
Cunningly, and with great effect.
Forsaketh thou the disc brakes of the pagans;
For they worship false gods, made of silver metal.
Remember too, when Abraham visited Sarah,
He laid not in his own poor bed but upon her superior set of pads.
Thou shouldst consider laying in the pads of the righteous,
Such as Dura Ace, or Cool Stop.
And as the angel St. Gunnar of Shogren had once remindeth us,
Thou should striveth to stay clean of rim and pad,
Lest misfortune rise up to greet thee.
Do not associate with those who are unclean.
Be thee not covered in filth, for they abhor filth.
Keepeth thy rim and pads clean always,
free of unguents, oils, incense and myrrh.
Woe betide him who touches his chain, then handles the brakes,
For he shall not slow before the treacherous cliff,
But shall live briefly to see perilous quickening.
Lastly, I say unto you,
Fear not the mark of the cantilever upon thy knee.
For verily, you shall only scrape it once,
And then forever shall you bear the mark of cantilevers.
Never will the cantilever ask you again to bear its mark,
For eternal is its covenant.
Respecteth thee the cantilever, my son,
And much will be your satisfaction.
Many are the ways of setup of the cantilever,
and subtle are its angles.
Study thou then the cantilever day and night,
And surely wisdom and happiness and reasonably
well modulated stopping power
free of mud and grass shall follow thee,
Until the end of thy days.
Amen.
He that installeth not true cantilevers,
Shall suffer mud and grass buildup,
And excess friction unto the end of his days.
Happy is the wise man who, upon hearing this news,
Forsaketh Vee brakes and mini-cantis.
Thou shalt have no other brakes before cantis;
Many are their joys, rich are their rewards.
Yet a fool wanders warily,
Questioning the wisdom of my words.
"How, then, shall I install them?" he asks,
"They sloweth me not strongly,"
Knowing not what he says.
Question thee not, the wisdom of ages!
For so I admonish thee,
Thy legs shall burn and thy back ache,
If ye choose not to heed my words.
So it is written by the prophets.
So let it be done.
Thy forefathers, the elders of Mafac,
Knew not to question this wisdom.
Study thou then the setup rules,
And thou shalt stop, when it is time to stop.
And thy brakes shall not sucketh.
So verily, I say unto you:
Installeth thee thy cantilever rightly.
A righteous cantilever departs from the rim straightly,
It sits flat, at ninety degrees at rest,
Or hangs slightly lower like the ripe grapes
in my lover's vineyard;
Righteous canti brakes departeth not from this line.
If ye be hot or ye be cold, cover ye then in embrocation.
But if ye be afraid, against my wisdom, of the straddle,
Or smeareth embrocation or emolients on the pads,
Ye shall not see heaven,
But shall braketh poorly, overshoot thy line,
And DNFs shall follow thee unto thy old age.
For it is decreed that the straddle of the righteous man shall sit
three fingers height from the wheel;
Higher and thy straddle shall clear the mud,
But power shall thy cantilever lack,
And surely shall thy turns end amidst tape, and suffering,
Amid lamentations of the women, and the elders.
Should ye go lower than thy three fingers,
then shall thy straddle not clear grass.
Yet great power shalt thou have.
Lower thou not thy straddle to two or one fingers height,
Unless thou be of mighty loin and weighty girth,
or riding in dry weather,
But bewarest thou the temptations of the endo.
Of it I have warned.
Still, some have come unto me and asked,
Lord of the Cantilevers, should I get bartop levers?
Questioneth not the Lord of Cantilevers!
But seek out the answer for thyself.
For wisdom comes from seeking,
Not from abasing thyself before one on his own true path.
Art thou scared for thy immortal soul on steep downhills?
Then yes, thou needeth bartop levers as the summer needs the rain,
For bartop levers bringeth stoppage in abundance,
And halt the wheels mightily.
But if thou hast not lost faith in thy handling skills,
And if thou art true believers in the gospel of the cantilever,
Then thou needeth only feather the main levers,
That hang from the bar like ripe manna from the burning bush,
And shalt though slide the rear wheel as a serpent in the grass,
Cunningly, and with great effect.
Forsaketh thou the disc brakes of the pagans;
For they worship false gods, made of silver metal.
Remember too, when Abraham visited Sarah,
He laid not in his own poor bed but upon her superior set of pads.
Thou shouldst consider laying in the pads of the righteous,
Such as Dura Ace, or Cool Stop.
And as the angel St. Gunnar of Shogren had once remindeth us,
Thou should striveth to stay clean of rim and pad,
Lest misfortune rise up to greet thee.
Do not associate with those who are unclean.
Be thee not covered in filth, for they abhor filth.
Keepeth thy rim and pads clean always,
free of unguents, oils, incense and myrrh.
Woe betide him who touches his chain, then handles the brakes,
For he shall not slow before the treacherous cliff,
But shall live briefly to see perilous quickening.
Lastly, I say unto you,
Fear not the mark of the cantilever upon thy knee.
For verily, you shall only scrape it once,
And then forever shall you bear the mark of cantilevers.
Never will the cantilever ask you again to bear its mark,
For eternal is its covenant.
Respecteth thee the cantilever, my son,
And much will be your satisfaction.
Many are the ways of setup of the cantilever,
and subtle are its angles.
Study thou then the cantilever day and night,
And surely wisdom and happiness and reasonably
well modulated stopping power
free of mud and grass shall follow thee,
Until the end of thy days.
Amen.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Anatomy of a @#$%&!!!!!!!
Oh God, I'm such a sucker.
I wasn't going to race on Saturday at Charm City. I'm signed up for Sunday. One's enough, right?
Then Nystrom sends out this email to the MABRA listserve, saying there's one more spot open on Saturday in the M 35+ 2/3/4.
I'm here to report that the last spot is now taken.
How does such a stupid choice occur?
I was sitting there thinking, well, I'm registered for Sunday... that'll be enough. Right? Right?
Then I thought, "but all my friends will be there Saturday, and I'll be out doing... what... leg openers or some stupid crap?"
Then I remembered, "but I've been sick with the World's Worst Cold since last Friday. I did my commute this morning, easy, and it felt like somebody was shaving the inside of my lungs - with a rusty straight razor."
Then it hit me... "but it's somewhat better now... I'm barely coughing up chunks at my desk at work. So it's cool."
And then I thought, "the wife isn't going to be at all happy about this."
Then, "but she's never happy about this racing crap. So what difference does one more race make?"
And then I saw the hypertext link. I hit it. I stared at it for a minute.
"Ahhhhhh.... screw it. I'm going in."
Then I was joyful for a minute as I realized I grabbed the last spot. Denied! Suckaz!!!!
Then I realized that I'm very much in early season form, on a doubtful back, with so-so motivation, and I probably just signed up for the most epic beatdown since "I assure you, the American tanks are not in Baghdad."
I am *so* going to regret this by about 10:15 on Saturday.
Nevermind how I feel at 7:05 on Sunday when I roll out of the house for the second beatdown in two days.
Evidently, my subconscious mind has developed a training plan for me, and this is going to be the year of Racing & Commuting Myself Into Shape.
Not since "this is a slam dunk" has a major policy decision been made with such little regard for likely consequences.
#@&%!!!!
Stupid cross.
I wasn't going to race on Saturday at Charm City. I'm signed up for Sunday. One's enough, right?
Then Nystrom sends out this email to the MABRA listserve, saying there's one more spot open on Saturday in the M 35+ 2/3/4.
I'm here to report that the last spot is now taken.
How does such a stupid choice occur?
I was sitting there thinking, well, I'm registered for Sunday... that'll be enough. Right? Right?
Then I thought, "but all my friends will be there Saturday, and I'll be out doing... what... leg openers or some stupid crap?"
Then I remembered, "but I've been sick with the World's Worst Cold since last Friday. I did my commute this morning, easy, and it felt like somebody was shaving the inside of my lungs - with a rusty straight razor."
Then it hit me... "but it's somewhat better now... I'm barely coughing up chunks at my desk at work. So it's cool."
And then I thought, "the wife isn't going to be at all happy about this."
Then, "but she's never happy about this racing crap. So what difference does one more race make?"
And then I saw the hypertext link. I hit it. I stared at it for a minute.
"Ahhhhhh.... screw it. I'm going in."
Then I was joyful for a minute as I realized I grabbed the last spot. Denied! Suckaz!!!!
Then I realized that I'm very much in early season form, on a doubtful back, with so-so motivation, and I probably just signed up for the most epic beatdown since "I assure you, the American tanks are not in Baghdad."
I am *so* going to regret this by about 10:15 on Saturday.
Nevermind how I feel at 7:05 on Sunday when I roll out of the house for the second beatdown in two days.
Evidently, my subconscious mind has developed a training plan for me, and this is going to be the year of Racing & Commuting Myself Into Shape.
Not since "this is a slam dunk" has a major policy decision been made with such little regard for likely consequences.
#@&%!!!!
Stupid cross.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Three Cheers for the US Defense Industry...
Want to know why the U.S. has been able to maintain dominance on the battlefield for a long time? It's because of the dreaded Military-Industrial Complex that Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about. Not only do our corporations develop some kick-ass stuff, but they fuse it with consumer hype appeal, which makes it durned near impossible for any defense acquisitions officer, SOCOM logistics type, or earmarking Congressman to ignore.
Oakleys took off when they became issue gear for Special Forces units and some lucky duckies in mechanized infantry units - can't have horsemen sticking out the top of tanks looking like recycled mannequins with gas station shades now, can we? And nobody can deny the fusion of hipster with gangsta, with the Hummer serving dual duty carrying light machine guns for the .mil set, plus a probably heavier concentration of firepower for the rap music set.
The latest step in this trend is the DTV Shredder, a militarized, all-terrain fusion of a Segway, a skateboard, and a tank. Best of all, you can operate it wirelessly, so if your Gen Y lardass recruit is too soft to actually do any skating, all he needs to do is yank on the joystick, y'know, when he's not throwing down Doritos.
No word yet on whether the DTV Shredder has made any inroads into the rap community, though some of the more foreward-leaning tourist outfits around D.C. are rumored to be considering it as a good option for taking out-of-town geeks through the rougher sections of D.C. For now, the Shredder is available only in black options, though with all the carbon fiber hanging off the thing, it's only a matter of time before we get some nice bright color options, dimpling to reduce air resistance, and an upgraded model featuring improved vertical compliance with reduced lateral flex.
Oakleys took off when they became issue gear for Special Forces units and some lucky duckies in mechanized infantry units - can't have horsemen sticking out the top of tanks looking like recycled mannequins with gas station shades now, can we? And nobody can deny the fusion of hipster with gangsta, with the Hummer serving dual duty carrying light machine guns for the .mil set, plus a probably heavier concentration of firepower for the rap music set.
The latest step in this trend is the DTV Shredder, a militarized, all-terrain fusion of a Segway, a skateboard, and a tank. Best of all, you can operate it wirelessly, so if your Gen Y lardass recruit is too soft to actually do any skating, all he needs to do is yank on the joystick, y'know, when he's not throwing down Doritos.
No word yet on whether the DTV Shredder has made any inroads into the rap community, though some of the more foreward-leaning tourist outfits around D.C. are rumored to be considering it as a good option for taking out-of-town geeks through the rougher sections of D.C. For now, the Shredder is available only in black options, though with all the carbon fiber hanging off the thing, it's only a matter of time before we get some nice bright color options, dimpling to reduce air resistance, and an upgraded model featuring improved vertical compliance with reduced lateral flex.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
What's For Dinner
I grew a bunch of cayenne and jalapeno pepper plants over the summer. They're easy to grow in flower pots. They thrive on being watered once every few days, then ignored. What's the result?
This.
Which led me almost immediately to think of doing this:
And how could I not take that and change it into this:
This.
Which led me almost immediately to think of doing this:
And how could I not take that and change it into this:
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Fry-Day
The legs, they are good. The beer gut, he is medium. The back, we don't know... *that fucker* is unreliable.
So we're going to register for some races, and get after it, and see what happens.
It's cross time, kiddies. Time to ride, run, ride some more, then drink shout and ring a cowbell.
Here are some of my favorite races that I'll be trying to hit. Nittany is this weekend, and it's UCI, but I won't be there because, gosh darnit, Penn State is way off. Charm City isn't though, and I'll ease into the race season by hitting Sunday's race. Then it's off to Ed Sander Memorial at the seemingly always lovely Lillypons - which seemingly always has a mud pit that basically destroys what should be a frickin' romp of a flat course for me.
I don't know nothin' about Winchester Apple Harvest Cross, but I've heard it's a really nice race that coincides with their crazy Apple Harvest Festival, and I may make the effort to get out there. It's a loooowwwwnnngg drive for me, so I'm not sure - but all my NoVa friends are going there and if the siren song of CX Brewery Ommegang doesn't rip me out of MABRA and toss me into Cooperstown, I'll probably do Winchester. Ommegang is a long drive too, but damn... Cooperstown, Ommegang, cross, and the leaves will be changing color... that's a tough one to skip.
Then it's Hyattsville CX on October 10th. This second year race rocketed onto the calendar last year. It's flat, it has a couple tricky turns, and it's hard as shit because it's a 45 minute grass TT effort. It also has a great neighborhood / beer / food scene, and the excellent Hyattsville brewpub Franklin's, with its great Belgian ales, will be supporting the race.
The week after that, it's two days of Grandaddy Granogue.
And frankly, I'm not planning anything past that because the calendar isn't complete, and other than promoting the Tacchino on November 7, I don't know what the hell I'll be doing at that point.
As usual, I doubt you're here on a Friday to hear about that stuff, so I'll play some music for you.
I was watching The A Team with my six year old boy tonight. I introduced him to the show a couple weeks ago, and he *loves* it. Shocker. Tonight, they had a special guest star: Rick James. It's easy to forget how good some of those guys who made the transition from soul to funk to disco to urban contemporary were. I'm not a huge fan of urban contemporary, but hey, a brother's got to make a living, right?
Rick James' bassist on his first single was a guy named Bruce Palmer. Bruce Palmer later played with Buffalo Springfield. This is their best known song, For What It's Worth.
Y'know who else played in Buffalo Springfield? Neil Young.
And Steven Stills (Crosby Stills, Nash & Young)
Along with Jim Messina (Loggins & Messina).
Like Rick James, Loggins & Messina didn't think much about music if you couldn't dance to it.
BTW, you know who Neil Young jammed with a few times, epically? Pearl Jam.
Yeah, that's a great frickin' version of Rockin' in the Free World, isn't it? When I was a GI in Germany in the 80's we loved that stupid song. I think it was actually anti-Reagan and anti-military at some level but in the shaky (and somewhat scary) last years of the teetering Cold War, we liked the chorus. We were keepin' on rockin' in the free world, even if we had no idea what the crazy Soviets were going to do next. Speaking of Pearl Jam, they rocked really hard too.
You know who was their drummer for a while? A guy named Matt Chamberlain. You know who he played and got famous(ish) with? Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians.
Yeah, you can't get farther away from Rick James than that, can you?
It's funny how in music everybody who is any good is tied together to everybody else who is any good, in one way or another. Makes it interesting.
Of course the guy that has more to do with the stuff that most of you people seem to like, is a fellow named Rick Rubin, who was the original DJ of the Beastie Boys. He's produced just about all the popular pop music that's worth a damn over the last 20 years. Including this guy:
Yeah, there's a lot of good music out there. And much of it seems to be tied together by an obese, wild haired Jewish hip-hop guy named Rick Rubin. It's not possible to list all the acts he's produced, fixed, raised to new heights, revived, and made stars out of. It's also not the first time that a funny looking Jewish guy with wild hair influenced everybody else's music over a 20 year period.
So we're going to register for some races, and get after it, and see what happens.
It's cross time, kiddies. Time to ride, run, ride some more, then drink shout and ring a cowbell.
Here are some of my favorite races that I'll be trying to hit. Nittany is this weekend, and it's UCI, but I won't be there because, gosh darnit, Penn State is way off. Charm City isn't though, and I'll ease into the race season by hitting Sunday's race. Then it's off to Ed Sander Memorial at the seemingly always lovely Lillypons - which seemingly always has a mud pit that basically destroys what should be a frickin' romp of a flat course for me.
I don't know nothin' about Winchester Apple Harvest Cross, but I've heard it's a really nice race that coincides with their crazy Apple Harvest Festival, and I may make the effort to get out there. It's a loooowwwwnnngg drive for me, so I'm not sure - but all my NoVa friends are going there and if the siren song of CX Brewery Ommegang doesn't rip me out of MABRA and toss me into Cooperstown, I'll probably do Winchester. Ommegang is a long drive too, but damn... Cooperstown, Ommegang, cross, and the leaves will be changing color... that's a tough one to skip.
Then it's Hyattsville CX on October 10th. This second year race rocketed onto the calendar last year. It's flat, it has a couple tricky turns, and it's hard as shit because it's a 45 minute grass TT effort. It also has a great neighborhood / beer / food scene, and the excellent Hyattsville brewpub Franklin's, with its great Belgian ales, will be supporting the race.
The week after that, it's two days of Grandaddy Granogue.
And frankly, I'm not planning anything past that because the calendar isn't complete, and other than promoting the Tacchino on November 7, I don't know what the hell I'll be doing at that point.
As usual, I doubt you're here on a Friday to hear about that stuff, so I'll play some music for you.
I was watching The A Team with my six year old boy tonight. I introduced him to the show a couple weeks ago, and he *loves* it. Shocker. Tonight, they had a special guest star: Rick James. It's easy to forget how good some of those guys who made the transition from soul to funk to disco to urban contemporary were. I'm not a huge fan of urban contemporary, but hey, a brother's got to make a living, right?
Rick James' bassist on his first single was a guy named Bruce Palmer. Bruce Palmer later played with Buffalo Springfield. This is their best known song, For What It's Worth.
Y'know who else played in Buffalo Springfield? Neil Young.
And Steven Stills (Crosby Stills, Nash & Young)
Along with Jim Messina (Loggins & Messina).
Like Rick James, Loggins & Messina didn't think much about music if you couldn't dance to it.
BTW, you know who Neil Young jammed with a few times, epically? Pearl Jam.
Yeah, that's a great frickin' version of Rockin' in the Free World, isn't it? When I was a GI in Germany in the 80's we loved that stupid song. I think it was actually anti-Reagan and anti-military at some level but in the shaky (and somewhat scary) last years of the teetering Cold War, we liked the chorus. We were keepin' on rockin' in the free world, even if we had no idea what the crazy Soviets were going to do next. Speaking of Pearl Jam, they rocked really hard too.
You know who was their drummer for a while? A guy named Matt Chamberlain. You know who he played and got famous(ish) with? Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians.
Yeah, you can't get farther away from Rick James than that, can you?
It's funny how in music everybody who is any good is tied together to everybody else who is any good, in one way or another. Makes it interesting.
Of course the guy that has more to do with the stuff that most of you people seem to like, is a fellow named Rick Rubin, who was the original DJ of the Beastie Boys. He's produced just about all the popular pop music that's worth a damn over the last 20 years. Including this guy:
Yeah, there's a lot of good music out there. And much of it seems to be tied together by an obese, wild haired Jewish hip-hop guy named Rick Rubin. It's not possible to list all the acts he's produced, fixed, raised to new heights, revived, and made stars out of. It's also not the first time that a funny looking Jewish guy with wild hair influenced everybody else's music over a 20 year period.
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light...
Okay, I'm not raging against the dying of the light. I'm raging at not having ridden for two days in a row, for work having overtaken my plans to get to Super Secret Svenny Night Cross Practice, and for having blown out my eating plan over the last 36 hours like the Germans blew out the French.
I got out of work about 45 minutes late, and that is the key 45 minutes. Make it out by 4:00 (after a 10-11 hour day) and it's up to the near-Baltimore environs of the Secret Practice Grounds by 5:00, 45 minutes early. Make it out by 4:30, and there's no way to make it by 7:15. So I'm sitting in traffic in College Park trying to get to Cherry Hill Road, screaming profanities at every little indignity in traffic. It took two hours to get home thanks to my failed attempt to get to cross practice. It was getting dark when I got home. I was seething. Still am.
I am *so* over working in D.C.
In truth the extra rest day was just what my legs needed, being probably around -40 CTL after Monday's little Patapsco excursion. But I still needed an effing ride just for stress relief and to keep from hitting the fridge as if it had insulted my mother.
There was some pretty major extreme work stress involved. I had to go to a meeting at which, through no fault of my own, some professional relationship bridges were probably burnt. I wanted to vomit, which is not the ideal way to spend 120 minutes of your afternoon. Nothing I could do about it though. That fact didn't make me want to vomit less, however.
Today just sucked, and not being able to ride made it suck even worse. I've said before that riding & racing is my stress relief valve; that is never more clear than on a day like today where stress was as near maximum levels and no ride was available.
--------------------------------
In the good news, Dave provided me with a bit of laughter tonight. Turns out he went to Hains to do intervals, and a bee stung him right in the nipple or thereabouts.
And in other laughable news, I got around to watching the finale of Whale Wars. Turns out they launched one of their guys, the sociopathic Pete Bethune, onto one of the whaling ships, the crew of which promptly locked him in a cabin and hauled him to Japan for trial. He spent some months in a Japanese prison, and was eventually given a suspended sentence. The most amazing thing was that the head of Sea Shepherds stated that they publicly expelled Bethune, to allow the Japanese judges to save face and give Bethune a light sentence. Bethune for his part says that hearing he had been expelled from Sea Shepherd was the lowest experience of his life, as it came whilst he was sitting in a supermax between Yakuza thugs, rapists and murderers.
I don't buy the saving face argument; it seems pretty clear to me that Sea Shepherd cut him loose to avoid compromising the Sea Shepherd organization. After watching their amateurish shenanigans during the 2010 whaling season - including compromising their tactical method for boarding boats by videotaping it and letting it be broadcast - this one capped it. The lack of military or even maritime discipline in their operations has always galled me; I have found their undisciplined ship handling and shipboard behavior (down to a near-mutiny this year) disgusting and foolhardy. What captain so cedes control of the ship so as to let his undisciplined crew endanger themselves like this? But this little stab in the back capped it for me. I don't often use the term but Paul Watson came across as the lowest form of life in this last episode, as a buddy fucker. Even if it means somebody takes a hit, you don't sell a buddy out like that. It was disgusting.
It was also interesting that the Japanese protesting the Sea Shepherd activities called them racists. I think that this is a reference to the fact that certain predominantly white countries allow whaling (Norway, USA) by indigenous peoples and by some non-indigenous people, yet here it is Japan getting picked upon. The possibility that the fundraising and media efforts are focused on exploiting dislike of an ethnic Asian group the U.S. has had a history of demonizing (sometimes justified, generally not) has bothered me all along. The Japanese have been pretty sketchy in justifying their whaling, citing "research" purposes, and they do indeed survey the catch but then they sell it and serve it to school children in keeping with Japanese tradition. It is an indigenous activity with them as well, no less than the Inuits. So why pick on the Japanese and not the Inuit or whichever Norwegians catch a quota? Like Watson's justification for cutting Bethune loose, something smells a little fishy about the tactical choice to go after the Japanese.
And I still don't know why they think sending some hirsute swampies in broken down boats is going to do the trick. In the real world, actual war doesn't work so hot but if you really want to declare war on somebody, you send a battalion of lawyers after them, and that usually smothers whoever you are targeting pretty darn well. Damn these Sea Shepherd people. They are so half-assed irresponsible and unsympathetic, that they're driving me to cheer for a bunch of bastard illegal whalers. Jerks.
Oh well. That series ended just in time. The NFL is starting up and I can now transfer my hippie loathing straight to the Cowboys and Iggles. I guess in that respect Whale Wars is good training for me, and now I'll hate those two football teams with a loathing previously reserved for the dippy whale worshippers.
I got out of work about 45 minutes late, and that is the key 45 minutes. Make it out by 4:00 (after a 10-11 hour day) and it's up to the near-Baltimore environs of the Secret Practice Grounds by 5:00, 45 minutes early. Make it out by 4:30, and there's no way to make it by 7:15. So I'm sitting in traffic in College Park trying to get to Cherry Hill Road, screaming profanities at every little indignity in traffic. It took two hours to get home thanks to my failed attempt to get to cross practice. It was getting dark when I got home. I was seething. Still am.
I am *so* over working in D.C.
In truth the extra rest day was just what my legs needed, being probably around -40 CTL after Monday's little Patapsco excursion. But I still needed an effing ride just for stress relief and to keep from hitting the fridge as if it had insulted my mother.
There was some pretty major extreme work stress involved. I had to go to a meeting at which, through no fault of my own, some professional relationship bridges were probably burnt. I wanted to vomit, which is not the ideal way to spend 120 minutes of your afternoon. Nothing I could do about it though. That fact didn't make me want to vomit less, however.
Today just sucked, and not being able to ride made it suck even worse. I've said before that riding & racing is my stress relief valve; that is never more clear than on a day like today where stress was as near maximum levels and no ride was available.
--------------------------------
In the good news, Dave provided me with a bit of laughter tonight. Turns out he went to Hains to do intervals, and a bee stung him right in the nipple or thereabouts.
And in other laughable news, I got around to watching the finale of Whale Wars. Turns out they launched one of their guys, the sociopathic Pete Bethune, onto one of the whaling ships, the crew of which promptly locked him in a cabin and hauled him to Japan for trial. He spent some months in a Japanese prison, and was eventually given a suspended sentence. The most amazing thing was that the head of Sea Shepherds stated that they publicly expelled Bethune, to allow the Japanese judges to save face and give Bethune a light sentence. Bethune for his part says that hearing he had been expelled from Sea Shepherd was the lowest experience of his life, as it came whilst he was sitting in a supermax between Yakuza thugs, rapists and murderers.
I don't buy the saving face argument; it seems pretty clear to me that Sea Shepherd cut him loose to avoid compromising the Sea Shepherd organization. After watching their amateurish shenanigans during the 2010 whaling season - including compromising their tactical method for boarding boats by videotaping it and letting it be broadcast - this one capped it. The lack of military or even maritime discipline in their operations has always galled me; I have found their undisciplined ship handling and shipboard behavior (down to a near-mutiny this year) disgusting and foolhardy. What captain so cedes control of the ship so as to let his undisciplined crew endanger themselves like this? But this little stab in the back capped it for me. I don't often use the term but Paul Watson came across as the lowest form of life in this last episode, as a buddy fucker. Even if it means somebody takes a hit, you don't sell a buddy out like that. It was disgusting.
It was also interesting that the Japanese protesting the Sea Shepherd activities called them racists. I think that this is a reference to the fact that certain predominantly white countries allow whaling (Norway, USA) by indigenous peoples and by some non-indigenous people, yet here it is Japan getting picked upon. The possibility that the fundraising and media efforts are focused on exploiting dislike of an ethnic Asian group the U.S. has had a history of demonizing (sometimes justified, generally not) has bothered me all along. The Japanese have been pretty sketchy in justifying their whaling, citing "research" purposes, and they do indeed survey the catch but then they sell it and serve it to school children in keeping with Japanese tradition. It is an indigenous activity with them as well, no less than the Inuits. So why pick on the Japanese and not the Inuit or whichever Norwegians catch a quota? Like Watson's justification for cutting Bethune loose, something smells a little fishy about the tactical choice to go after the Japanese.
And I still don't know why they think sending some hirsute swampies in broken down boats is going to do the trick. In the real world, actual war doesn't work so hot but if you really want to declare war on somebody, you send a battalion of lawyers after them, and that usually smothers whoever you are targeting pretty darn well. Damn these Sea Shepherd people. They are so half-assed irresponsible and unsympathetic, that they're driving me to cheer for a bunch of bastard illegal whalers. Jerks.
Oh well. That series ended just in time. The NFL is starting up and I can now transfer my hippie loathing straight to the Cowboys and Iggles. I guess in that respect Whale Wars is good training for me, and now I'll hate those two football teams with a loathing previously reserved for the dippy whale worshippers.
Monday, September 06, 2010
Don't Worry: Bee Happy!
I think it was Keith or maybe Jim that circled back and said, "here, let's get the bike off you first then you can sit up."
I was laying on the ground on my back under the bike, pinching my lip to get out what felt like a thorn, and I was digging around between my cheek and gum to ensure that the wasp was not burrowing into my mouth to sting me again. After I sat up I drooled for a bit; my lower lip was swollen up to the size of my little finger, which is no big deal if you're Agelina Jolie but I have rather thin Irish lips and it was a sort of big deal.
It was a weird way to bring the best part of the ride - probably the best mountain bike ride I've ever had - to an end. I hit Patapsco for the better part of three hours with a big chunk of the Morning Ride crew. It was advertised as an easy ride - which it was until we hit the first few uphills. It was in fact moderately paced, but we were still zipping along pretty well. Keeping up on downhills and flats was no trouble, though I was digging pretty deep on the uphills to keep in contact with the rest of the group. Three flats among the group, a little brake problem for somebody, and I busted a Crank Brothers Candy SL pedal *on the first friggin' ride* with an untimely rock strike.
But it was still a great ride. The best part of it is I went through several five minute periods riding fast flats and descending in the middle to the front of the group, keeping up with a couple legit fast guys.
It wasn't the going relatively fast that was great about it, however.
I've discovered this summer that there is a place you can go mentally in mountain biking where you aren't consciously doing anything. You don't notice particular rocks or trees, you don't think about what's ahead and what you just passed, there's no fear in you nor any conscious thought. You're just riding along, zipping along the trail close to the limits of what the bike & tires are capable of.
The only other thing I've ever done that compares to this is hitting a mogul field at speed while skiing, and zipping through it without missing a move. There was one long downhill stretch on Charcoal or the trail just East of it where I spent two minutes bouncing left/right/left/left/right and so forth. The tires seemed to just find grooves, the suspension loaded up a tiny bit as I leaned quickly into each turn then decompressed as I swung the bike up to vertical then leaned again to make the next little move.
In fact, it's wrong to describe them as turns. It was more like picking the right line using quick little hip & foot swerves on the bike, not riding so much as just flowing quickly right to left, as if I were water passing through rapids quickly by negotiating closely and quickly around rocks, with no wasted motion.
The bee sting came at the end of a three or four minute stretch like that. I was bombing down from Kidd's Hey Watch This Hump near the end of Lewis & Clarke trail, down toward the stream crossing and the log trail. Not for the first time today I grabbed Bill B's wheel and just hung in there, concentrating but not thinking, just zipping along. As we came out of the grass depression, across the wood bridge, I saw a tiny yellow and black flash fly into the corner of my mouth, and when it stung it felt like the World's Cruelest Dentist had just jabbed the World's Gnarliest Needle of Novacaine into the inside of my lower lip. I braked a little for just a second but the pain was so severe that both hands shot into my mouth and I just tipped over at speed, leaving a little blood offering to the Gods of Patapsco.
Pretty soon, the rear guys caught up and the front guys circled back, and they removed my bike as I tried to remove the remnants of the wasp. A couple quick hits of the asthma inhaler to make sure that nothing went seriously wrong, a bit of drooling, and then I was on the way back to the car with nothing more than a serious headache, a still-painful lip and a scuffed leg. It was nervous though, and the mojo was gone.
That was a major bummer, dude, but even the bummer wasn't enough to destroy the buzz I had from flowing on those trails.
The buzz that you get is the cool thing that mountain biking (aggressive, skillful mountain biking, as distinct from tooling around and trail riding) offers over road riding.
Some times the mountain bike is a lot tougher to deal with; you can't get faster just by working harder. To get faster, you have to "get it," to pick better lines, to learn to pick better lines without thinking about it, and to commit to blasting through, around, or over obstacles that would give you pause were you riding slower. When you have flow, you can hammer along through technical sections. When you aren't able to flow, it wouldn't matter if you had Julien Absalon's legs for the day, you just aren't going to ride well. If you flow, you'll get to the top of a technical hill and when your stronger companions ask each other where they think you are on the hill, you can startle them with an "Ahem..." You need some fitness, but in mountain biking, flow is everything.
Today, for a total of maybe 15-20 minutes out of a 3 hour ride, it felt like I really got it; the feeling was like what Luke Skywalker had when Obi Wan Kenobi blindfolded him and told him to trust the force. I committed, kept an eye on the trail, semi-focused on swaying right to left in rhythmic and smooth lines, and I rolled. It was beautiful.
That little success, the tiny triumph over the stubborn and hard-to-pick up mountain biking skillset, made up for a couple really tough hills, the exhaustion at the end of the ride, and yes, the wasp sting.
It boils down to a pretty simple distinction. Like road cycling, mountain biking offers a sense of accomplishment and overcoming suffering. Mountain biking differs, however, in that there is a lot of room to ride artistically. On the days it works, it feels like what dancing must feel like to a good dancer. It feels... joyful. It's taken me three years to be able to hit this high note once in a while. I suspect that many if not most of the trail riders we pass out there in the woods will never ride enough, hard enough, or with skillful enough companions to get that feeling. I hope that those who are able to ride consistently at that skill level appreciate what they have.
The other thing about mountain biking is many of us are reflections of the riders who show us the way. We pick up their skills and habits and maybe their line-picking and perhaps their bad habits too, and to some extent our successes are attributable to their teaching, even if all they're doing is hammering along showing us by example how to pick lines. I'm grateful that my friends have been patient enough with me to let it happen, and skillful enough to teach me some good ways to git 'r done.
I was laying on the ground on my back under the bike, pinching my lip to get out what felt like a thorn, and I was digging around between my cheek and gum to ensure that the wasp was not burrowing into my mouth to sting me again. After I sat up I drooled for a bit; my lower lip was swollen up to the size of my little finger, which is no big deal if you're Agelina Jolie but I have rather thin Irish lips and it was a sort of big deal.
It was a weird way to bring the best part of the ride - probably the best mountain bike ride I've ever had - to an end. I hit Patapsco for the better part of three hours with a big chunk of the Morning Ride crew. It was advertised as an easy ride - which it was until we hit the first few uphills. It was in fact moderately paced, but we were still zipping along pretty well. Keeping up on downhills and flats was no trouble, though I was digging pretty deep on the uphills to keep in contact with the rest of the group. Three flats among the group, a little brake problem for somebody, and I busted a Crank Brothers Candy SL pedal *on the first friggin' ride* with an untimely rock strike.
But it was still a great ride. The best part of it is I went through several five minute periods riding fast flats and descending in the middle to the front of the group, keeping up with a couple legit fast guys.
It wasn't the going relatively fast that was great about it, however.
I've discovered this summer that there is a place you can go mentally in mountain biking where you aren't consciously doing anything. You don't notice particular rocks or trees, you don't think about what's ahead and what you just passed, there's no fear in you nor any conscious thought. You're just riding along, zipping along the trail close to the limits of what the bike & tires are capable of.
The only other thing I've ever done that compares to this is hitting a mogul field at speed while skiing, and zipping through it without missing a move. There was one long downhill stretch on Charcoal or the trail just East of it where I spent two minutes bouncing left/right/left/left/right and so forth. The tires seemed to just find grooves, the suspension loaded up a tiny bit as I leaned quickly into each turn then decompressed as I swung the bike up to vertical then leaned again to make the next little move.
In fact, it's wrong to describe them as turns. It was more like picking the right line using quick little hip & foot swerves on the bike, not riding so much as just flowing quickly right to left, as if I were water passing through rapids quickly by negotiating closely and quickly around rocks, with no wasted motion.
The bee sting came at the end of a three or four minute stretch like that. I was bombing down from Kidd's Hey Watch This Hump near the end of Lewis & Clarke trail, down toward the stream crossing and the log trail. Not for the first time today I grabbed Bill B's wheel and just hung in there, concentrating but not thinking, just zipping along. As we came out of the grass depression, across the wood bridge, I saw a tiny yellow and black flash fly into the corner of my mouth, and when it stung it felt like the World's Cruelest Dentist had just jabbed the World's Gnarliest Needle of Novacaine into the inside of my lower lip. I braked a little for just a second but the pain was so severe that both hands shot into my mouth and I just tipped over at speed, leaving a little blood offering to the Gods of Patapsco.
Pretty soon, the rear guys caught up and the front guys circled back, and they removed my bike as I tried to remove the remnants of the wasp. A couple quick hits of the asthma inhaler to make sure that nothing went seriously wrong, a bit of drooling, and then I was on the way back to the car with nothing more than a serious headache, a still-painful lip and a scuffed leg. It was nervous though, and the mojo was gone.
That was a major bummer, dude, but even the bummer wasn't enough to destroy the buzz I had from flowing on those trails.
The buzz that you get is the cool thing that mountain biking (aggressive, skillful mountain biking, as distinct from tooling around and trail riding) offers over road riding.
Some times the mountain bike is a lot tougher to deal with; you can't get faster just by working harder. To get faster, you have to "get it," to pick better lines, to learn to pick better lines without thinking about it, and to commit to blasting through, around, or over obstacles that would give you pause were you riding slower. When you have flow, you can hammer along through technical sections. When you aren't able to flow, it wouldn't matter if you had Julien Absalon's legs for the day, you just aren't going to ride well. If you flow, you'll get to the top of a technical hill and when your stronger companions ask each other where they think you are on the hill, you can startle them with an "Ahem..." You need some fitness, but in mountain biking, flow is everything.
Today, for a total of maybe 15-20 minutes out of a 3 hour ride, it felt like I really got it; the feeling was like what Luke Skywalker had when Obi Wan Kenobi blindfolded him and told him to trust the force. I committed, kept an eye on the trail, semi-focused on swaying right to left in rhythmic and smooth lines, and I rolled. It was beautiful.
That little success, the tiny triumph over the stubborn and hard-to-pick up mountain biking skillset, made up for a couple really tough hills, the exhaustion at the end of the ride, and yes, the wasp sting.
It boils down to a pretty simple distinction. Like road cycling, mountain biking offers a sense of accomplishment and overcoming suffering. Mountain biking differs, however, in that there is a lot of room to ride artistically. On the days it works, it feels like what dancing must feel like to a good dancer. It feels... joyful. It's taken me three years to be able to hit this high note once in a while. I suspect that many if not most of the trail riders we pass out there in the woods will never ride enough, hard enough, or with skillful enough companions to get that feeling. I hope that those who are able to ride consistently at that skill level appreciate what they have.
The other thing about mountain biking is many of us are reflections of the riders who show us the way. We pick up their skills and habits and maybe their line-picking and perhaps their bad habits too, and to some extent our successes are attributable to their teaching, even if all they're doing is hammering along showing us by example how to pick lines. I'm grateful that my friends have been patient enough with me to let it happen, and skillful enough to teach me some good ways to git 'r done.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Phew... Friday
It's been a nice week. First the good news that the legs didn't desert me, and all that base training and few hard group rides left my VO2 capacity in good condition. Then the first cross practice of the year was upon me, and I upon it. And today - how about that. I set a personal best for 2 minute power cruising up a hill, not all out but hard yet still within myself.
It feels good to be bouncing back from a serious injury and to start to perform at or above pre-injury levels. It's not dancing-in-the-streets good, it's just a warm fuzzy good that makes a person feel happy and that all has not been for nothing.
The other thing that always makes me feel happier is the blues. We're going to look at some Chicago blues today. That's basically Mississippi Delta blues, except electronic, maybe with some horns thrown in, or maybe driven by a harmonica rather than a guitar.
Elmore James was one of the seminal Chicago blues musicians, and this song was one of his trademark songs.
Everybody who is somebody in blues music, just about, has done a version of that song. Maybe he stole it from another blues musician and this was just a cover; but even if he stole it, he made it his own.
Willie Dixon was another giant of Chicago blues. He was pretty damn good - smooth as silk. He played slow blues for the most part. Slow blues is a bit tough technically, like improv jazz. If you listen to it played well, it's minimalist with not a lot of notes, and the notes there are, are played slow. But if a note is missed just a little bit, everybody in the room knows it. Willie Dixon didn't hit many bad notes. Check this out.
You know who thought that was a great song and made an innovative cover of it? These guys:
Nice, huh? Much of Led Zeppelin's repertoire was recast Delta and Chicago blues. Chicago blues wasn't always good time music about bad time men & women. Sometimes it was really socially significant. Syl Jones' "Is It Because I'm Black" asks a painful question that has to plague people of color when they hit tough times.
You know what modern group was moved by this song, and sampled it in their own work? The Wu Tang Clan.
Maybe not your cup of tea, but but I see what they're doing here, and it's a decent effort.
Charlie Musselwhite is a Chicago bluesman you've probably never heard of, but whom you've definitely heard. He's mainly known for being a great blues harmonica player, but he plays a pretty mean guitar too. Here he is playing, quite frankly, one of the best examples of Chicago blues I've ever heard. It's got John Lee Hooker-esque electric guitar chord progressions. It's driven by a harmonica, and has a beat you'd recognize from a number of brassier Chicago blues songs.
Here's a little more Charlie for you.
Of course you can't talk Chicago blues without John Lee Hooker. Here's one of his classics.
You've maybe heard another version of this, by George Thorogood.
One of the hallmarks of Chicago blues is that it's easily translated into rock or sometimes jazz. Delta blues is often acoustic, and also driven by deeply accented southern voices. It often isn't easily translated into other less primal forms of music - though God bless 'em, Led Zeppelin tried from time to time, with mixed success.
Of course the best Chicago blues isn't diluted to make it more palatable to the masses, nor is it remade into some other form of musics. It's straight up, like a boilermaker - a little raw maybe, a little strong, maybe not easily understood. But potent, and tasty if you've got the taste for that sort of thing.
"Boom boom boom boom... gonna shoot you right down." Damn. That's Donald "Duck" Dunn on the bass, and I'm thinking it's Steve Cropper on guitar - you'd know them from "The Band" in the Blues Brothers. Though the blues originated in the Black community, it's not a uniquely black form of music any longer. Rock, R&B, hip-hop, country, and jazz all carry the blues DNA in their bloodline. *Our* music owes its existence to the blues. It's the grandaddy of a lot of different types of American music, and the uncle of other types. I never get tired of the blues; there are so many variations and it takes on the big themes in life in an honest way. The blues are what you come home to after you've tried different kinds of music. It's a meat & three for your soul because it doesn't talk about something irrelevant to you - big pimpin' or teenagey angst - but it talks about stuff that you're familiar with in a grown up way. And sometimes, you don't eve need the lyrics to hear what it's saying. Cropper & Dunn let their axes do the talking with Booker T and the MG's Fried Green Onions.
Have a good weekend y'all. Good luck at Deep Blue or the aptly named SM 100.
It feels good to be bouncing back from a serious injury and to start to perform at or above pre-injury levels. It's not dancing-in-the-streets good, it's just a warm fuzzy good that makes a person feel happy and that all has not been for nothing.
The other thing that always makes me feel happier is the blues. We're going to look at some Chicago blues today. That's basically Mississippi Delta blues, except electronic, maybe with some horns thrown in, or maybe driven by a harmonica rather than a guitar.
Elmore James was one of the seminal Chicago blues musicians, and this song was one of his trademark songs.
Everybody who is somebody in blues music, just about, has done a version of that song. Maybe he stole it from another blues musician and this was just a cover; but even if he stole it, he made it his own.
Willie Dixon was another giant of Chicago blues. He was pretty damn good - smooth as silk. He played slow blues for the most part. Slow blues is a bit tough technically, like improv jazz. If you listen to it played well, it's minimalist with not a lot of notes, and the notes there are, are played slow. But if a note is missed just a little bit, everybody in the room knows it. Willie Dixon didn't hit many bad notes. Check this out.
You know who thought that was a great song and made an innovative cover of it? These guys:
Nice, huh? Much of Led Zeppelin's repertoire was recast Delta and Chicago blues. Chicago blues wasn't always good time music about bad time men & women. Sometimes it was really socially significant. Syl Jones' "Is It Because I'm Black" asks a painful question that has to plague people of color when they hit tough times.
You know what modern group was moved by this song, and sampled it in their own work? The Wu Tang Clan.
Maybe not your cup of tea, but but I see what they're doing here, and it's a decent effort.
Charlie Musselwhite is a Chicago bluesman you've probably never heard of, but whom you've definitely heard. He's mainly known for being a great blues harmonica player, but he plays a pretty mean guitar too. Here he is playing, quite frankly, one of the best examples of Chicago blues I've ever heard. It's got John Lee Hooker-esque electric guitar chord progressions. It's driven by a harmonica, and has a beat you'd recognize from a number of brassier Chicago blues songs.
Here's a little more Charlie for you.
Of course you can't talk Chicago blues without John Lee Hooker. Here's one of his classics.
You've maybe heard another version of this, by George Thorogood.
One of the hallmarks of Chicago blues is that it's easily translated into rock or sometimes jazz. Delta blues is often acoustic, and also driven by deeply accented southern voices. It often isn't easily translated into other less primal forms of music - though God bless 'em, Led Zeppelin tried from time to time, with mixed success.
Of course the best Chicago blues isn't diluted to make it more palatable to the masses, nor is it remade into some other form of musics. It's straight up, like a boilermaker - a little raw maybe, a little strong, maybe not easily understood. But potent, and tasty if you've got the taste for that sort of thing.
"Boom boom boom boom... gonna shoot you right down." Damn. That's Donald "Duck" Dunn on the bass, and I'm thinking it's Steve Cropper on guitar - you'd know them from "The Band" in the Blues Brothers. Though the blues originated in the Black community, it's not a uniquely black form of music any longer. Rock, R&B, hip-hop, country, and jazz all carry the blues DNA in their bloodline. *Our* music owes its existence to the blues. It's the grandaddy of a lot of different types of American music, and the uncle of other types. I never get tired of the blues; there are so many variations and it takes on the big themes in life in an honest way. The blues are what you come home to after you've tried different kinds of music. It's a meat & three for your soul because it doesn't talk about something irrelevant to you - big pimpin' or teenagey angst - but it talks about stuff that you're familiar with in a grown up way. And sometimes, you don't eve need the lyrics to hear what it's saying. Cropper & Dunn let their axes do the talking with Booker T and the MG's Fried Green Onions.
Have a good weekend y'all. Good luck at Deep Blue or the aptly named SM 100.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Baby Steps
When you dismount from the cyclocross bike prior to hurdling the barriers, there are two ways to do it.
You can unclip your right leg, swing it around the back of the bike, stand on the left pedal, and then twist your left foot outward as you land with a heavy thud on your right foot and start running. Or, in classic European form, you can repeat those steps to the point where you swing your leg around, then slide your right foot in front of the left foot between your left leg and the bike frame, twist your lower body ever so slightly, and land your right foot mid-stride, as you hit the ground running.
Me? I prefer the first method because even when I'm dead, bone tired in a race, I still have enough impetus to twist hard and get my left foot out of the pedal before I eat shit. The other way always gives me a slight twinge in my left knee, even when I execute it perfectly. It also gives me visions at night of Anterior Cruciate Ligament reconstructive surgery. Although it's the classic Euro pro way of dismounting, I don't even aspire to doing it.
Tonight was the first night of cross practice. It went pretty well. Given my general ricketyness in back and leg joints, I had some concerns. Lucky for me, Sven was leading things and half the crew were getting ready to head to the mountains for the SM 100. So tonight was about knocking the rust off, and man, was there ever some rust on me. Mainly we did a lot of reps of dismounts and remounts, and talked some about carrying. That was it - and that was enough.
Along the way a couple things became clear. One was that I can baby my tender left ankle by dismounting more aggressively. It's very simply - dismount slow, or with a half stride, and the ankle joint - belonging to the second foot to hit the ground - takes a huge hit. Dismount fast, extending the left leg fully and hitting the ground in stride so that the foot strikes in a rolling, running motion, and there's almost no shock to the joint at all. Go easier by going harder... hmmmm... that's definitely a Zen type of thing. Very crossy.
Furthermore, the back seems to loosen up with the run & jump cross activity. Who'da thunkit?
Finally, I have this interminable stutter step in my remount. It's embarassing. It will be the work of a season to get rid of it, I suspect. This would be a good thing. In a cross race, there are only two or three things I can do to get the drop on smaller racers - outhandle them in sketchy traction circumstances (because when you're born sliding due to your weight/traction issue, a little slide in a race isn't a big deal); overpower them on smooth flats and downhills (almost not worth the effort if there's an uphill at the end of it); and, run past them at the barriers. I manage to be fast at the barriers not because I'm good but because I run them hard, with conviction. It will take reps to add some smoothness to that and pick up some more speed.
The bottom line for this workout is that it was a confidence builder. I didn't go hard, didn't do much, but sort of tested the ankle, back and courage level. They are all there, in tact though the courage was a little low at first.
Next week, we go harder.
You can unclip your right leg, swing it around the back of the bike, stand on the left pedal, and then twist your left foot outward as you land with a heavy thud on your right foot and start running. Or, in classic European form, you can repeat those steps to the point where you swing your leg around, then slide your right foot in front of the left foot between your left leg and the bike frame, twist your lower body ever so slightly, and land your right foot mid-stride, as you hit the ground running.
Me? I prefer the first method because even when I'm dead, bone tired in a race, I still have enough impetus to twist hard and get my left foot out of the pedal before I eat shit. The other way always gives me a slight twinge in my left knee, even when I execute it perfectly. It also gives me visions at night of Anterior Cruciate Ligament reconstructive surgery. Although it's the classic Euro pro way of dismounting, I don't even aspire to doing it.
Tonight was the first night of cross practice. It went pretty well. Given my general ricketyness in back and leg joints, I had some concerns. Lucky for me, Sven was leading things and half the crew were getting ready to head to the mountains for the SM 100. So tonight was about knocking the rust off, and man, was there ever some rust on me. Mainly we did a lot of reps of dismounts and remounts, and talked some about carrying. That was it - and that was enough.
Along the way a couple things became clear. One was that I can baby my tender left ankle by dismounting more aggressively. It's very simply - dismount slow, or with a half stride, and the ankle joint - belonging to the second foot to hit the ground - takes a huge hit. Dismount fast, extending the left leg fully and hitting the ground in stride so that the foot strikes in a rolling, running motion, and there's almost no shock to the joint at all. Go easier by going harder... hmmmm... that's definitely a Zen type of thing. Very crossy.
Furthermore, the back seems to loosen up with the run & jump cross activity. Who'da thunkit?
Finally, I have this interminable stutter step in my remount. It's embarassing. It will be the work of a season to get rid of it, I suspect. This would be a good thing. In a cross race, there are only two or three things I can do to get the drop on smaller racers - outhandle them in sketchy traction circumstances (because when you're born sliding due to your weight/traction issue, a little slide in a race isn't a big deal); overpower them on smooth flats and downhills (almost not worth the effort if there's an uphill at the end of it); and, run past them at the barriers. I manage to be fast at the barriers not because I'm good but because I run them hard, with conviction. It will take reps to add some smoothness to that and pick up some more speed.
The bottom line for this workout is that it was a confidence builder. I didn't go hard, didn't do much, but sort of tested the ankle, back and courage level. They are all there, in tact though the courage was a little low at first.
Next week, we go harder.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)