Product Test: Crank Brothers Candy Nubbins Pedals

I had a chance to test the new Crank Brothers Candy Nubbins pedals at Patapsco today. You may not have heard of these pedals, but they are out there, and they're more, and less than what you'd expect. They have the same durable build quality as all the other Crank Brothers pedals I've used, and have the renowned mud shedding properties common to all Crank Brothers pedals. What's different, is that they are a lot lighter, with a much narrower Q factor, and that's a good thing, right? It makes you more aerodynamic and helps you get up hills faster. And we all want that, right?

My first impression was that they didn't clip in well in the snow, and if you graze a rock or stump with them there's a good chance they'll be rendered utterly useless. That's kind of a bad feature in a mountain bike pedal, really. But if you are willing to run them in full Nubbins trim, you can save a lot of weight over conventional pedals, and when you're a weight weenie, nothing beats that. You can never be too rich, or too thin. And all that comes at a great, sub $75 price.

The New Crank Brothers Candy Nubbins Pedal

They've really taken pedal innovation to "11" with the new Candy Nubbins. They shaved a ton of weight - nearly the whole weight of the old Candy C pedal system - and they narrowed the Q factor by over two inches per side. They accomplished this by boldly removing the platform and clipless mechanism entirely.

Yep, they went where Shimano and Time are afraid to go: they just sheared off the business end of the old style pedals, resulting in a whole new paradigm for mountain bike pedaling.

Shaving Weight Off Your Pedals
The Crank Brothers Way

Sure, there are some drawbacks to this new pedal system. But what product doesn't have some drawbacks? In the case of the Candy Nubbins, it's a little hard to put down full power when you go for a max effort to get up a steep hill. It's also a bit difficult to clip in at times, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it after a while. The only other complaint that I have, is that it's nasty doing a one legged pedaling drill up Lewis & Clark Trail and then down the Log Trail to get back to the truck.

Crank Brothers should be applauded for the innovative method used to spontaneously upgrade pedals to the Candy Nubbins system. Mine spontaneously upgraded from a Candy C to a Candy Nubbins on the middle of the little kicker at the end of Lewis & Clark, when I stood up to crank the bike over that steep little hill with one of the brief, all-out efforts that are so common and necessary in single speed mountain biking. Imagine my surprise when I found myself with a whole new pedal system above my foot. It would have been under my foot but I was upside down at the time, trying not to cry. My friends were thrilled by the spontaneous upgrade, judging by their laughter and the smiles on their faces, and really, isn't laughing and having fun what mountain biking is supposed to be about?

Candy C-to-Candy Nubbins Conversion Kit:
Just Add a 1600 Watt Effort

Crank Brothers should be commended for producing a product that brings so much joy to my riding buddies. Personally, I could give a fuck what they think and will probably get a pair of pedals less likely to have two catastrophic failures in a three month period, and will likely go back to some old Shimano SPDs I have lying around until I can afford to upgrade the fleet to Time ATACs.

The bottom line is that the Crank Brothers Candy Nubbins, Candy Cs, or any pedal in the Candy line is just the ticket if you're into highly entertaining equipment failures. They make the perfect gift, really, for some buddy you like, but also like to play mean practical jokes on. My experiences have been consistent; at everything other than cyclocross use (where I do endorse eggbeaters and will use my Candy SLs), these pedals will let you down, and they won't let you down lightly. They are damned good at what they do, and if you're into that sort of thing, I higly recommend them.* † ‡ **





* Not recommended for use by clydesdales, on hills, for "all mountain" or "freeride" or "XC" or "epic" or "endurance" or "trail riding" or "commuting" applications, or for persons above recommended weight limit of 87 pounds.
† All warranties void if the above described mountain biking pedals are used for mountain biking purposes.
‡ Above bicycle pedals not intended for bicycling use.
** No warranties, express or implicit. Use of Crank Brothers Candy Nubbins Pedals™ constitutes waiver of all legal recourse against Crank Brothers Inc.


Ps. Happy New Years, people. I entered the year with a busted back, and am leaving it with a busted pedal. Let's have a little more fun on this next lap around the sun, m'kay?

Not In The Christmas Doldrums

Christmas is a tough time for me because underneath the bullshitting and somewhat crusty exterior I'm an idealist and a person with small but fairly solid Christian faith and frankly I grow tired of the filth and materialism that we throw at ourselves each year at Christmas. Easter is easy for me; Christmas is not. The holiday is celebrating a historical man (and God if you believe that way) whose primary message was "I sacrificed for you, you sacrifice for me, and for each other." Even if you don't buy the whole message of faith, the philosophical suggestion of subordinating ourselves to the service of others is a compelling one. It's a hard task, frankly, if you think about it. It challenges us to improve ourselves, to do a lot better by other folks.

That message isn't about stinking Lexus 305s. So the annual "Make this a December to Remember" ad campaign that Lexus rolled out again this year makes my nose turn upwards. The ads are pretty clear - if you don't live in a gazillion square foot house with a white marble livingroom that you can literally roll an SUV into, and if you don't give $57,000 sedans (base price... bet your bippy the one in the ad is more like $70,000) as gifts for Christmas, then you just don't love your wife/husband/self very much and you're probably a loser.

Lexus - aka Toyota if you're keeping score at home - can kiss my butt. Toyota is the same company that brags up their reputation for reliability, yet sells a range of cars with an inherently defective lubrication system that has portals too small to transport oil. If you do a lot of stop & go driving, they clog up with the moisture from condensation (hot engine / cold engine / repeat) and the mainshaft bearing blows, and you need a new engine that they are happy to sell you for only $4500 or so. If you ask how this happened, the standard dealer response is to accuse you of never having changed the oil. They do this knowing full well the company lost a class action suit relating to the motors they sold from '96 to '2002, and that the engine remained substantially unchanged thereafter, just the cutoff date for the suit was a large range of motors sold prior to 2002. I know several people who have had this exact same experience with Toyota; I happen to be one of them. By virtue of owning a 2003 Camry (rather than a 2002, covered by the lawsuit) I got the short end of the stick and got the runaround from the dealer, who said (falsely) that I must have not changed the oil, and have run the car around without oil for quite some time... this is the same accusations some of my friends have received.

At any rate, this is the company that's lecturing you on what Christmas means. According to their marketing whizzes - people who make $5 million per year to sell you shit you don't need - you aren't much of a husband/wife/person if you're not rolling a >$60k car into your garage / livingroom / semicircular driveway of your $2.2 million house. They are selling you a great big fat lie, and based on the people I see driving Lexuses - many of them anyhow - they are selling it to people who can't afford to buy the lie, who would be better off stopping at CarMax on the way home and seeing if they could finance $15,000 worth of truth.

I raise this not to single out Toyota in particular, but to single out our stupid urge to try to heal our inner aches with a balm made out of money. Ultimately, money is only a topical cream and it does not heal what ails us. The healing has to come from faith, or at least from discovering a higher virtue than the indulgence of our own whims. It comes from giving to others. It comes from putting ourselves in perspective, and reminding ourselves that we are part of a team, our part in life is to work hard, to give generously of ourselves to others, and when we do spoil ourselves, to do it by treating ourselves nicely, not by trying to make ourselves feel good through cheap and materialistic shortcuts.

You know what makes me feel good? Accomplishment. Making others smile and sharing in their happiness. Doing a little kindness for somebody who needs one. Making the right choices when faced with tough questions.

That's about it. Everything else just gives me a passing chuckle.

Now it may sound like I'm down on Christmas. I am not. I'm down on the bullshit that we tend to drown ourselves in, the way we choose the wrong, materialistic path, and then get all depressed when Christmas just doesn't measure up.

The only way it fails to measure up, is if we're applying the wrong measuring stick.

I get down every year at Christmas. Always happens that this stuff sneaks up on me and makes me a little depressed. So I treat it a couple ways.

First, I make sure to clear the decks and have plenty of quiet time just hanging out with the people I love. I do a lot of the cooking and some of the caretaking if needed, and just try to be there and supportive and engaged. I draw strength from others sometimes, but only when I slow down to do so. The great things about family and friends is that they can carry you through rough times, if you let them.

Second, I try to give other people nice gifts, and to not worry about what I get. I remind myself of how much I have - not just material things - to be thankful for. I truly don't need anything more - just being remembered and thought of really is enough to get on Christmas Day.

Third, I make a point of going to church to be reminded of the reason we celebrate the day. Faith is a weird thing for me because I can't square all the details logically with each other sometimes, so I try to take away the bigger messages, the ones that seem aimed at helping me square away my life, and I don't sweat the smaller stuff. I think the challenge of faith isn't to find proof of God or to believe everything that you're told, but to follow the rules in the main part (which usually have an intrinsic purpose to them that is helpful) and to not let the little things turn into obstacles to absorbing the larger lesson. See, that's the challenge to it: believe because it's hard to do so and it challenges you to do some hard things, not because it's easy.

Anyhow, that's what works for me through the holidays. When I stick to the recipe I come through happier and stronger than I was before the holidays.

Oh yeah, and this year I'm trying to ride the mountain bike a lot, even in bitter cold and snow. That helps beyond measure.

So do any of you sometimes have trouble dealing with the holidays? If so, how do you cope?

Good week so far for riding - caught The Morning Ride up at Patapsco on Weds, and I'm fix'n to catch it tomorrow AM, on the snow. Might not even need lights, the way the moon & stars light up the woods on the white snow. Can't begin to tell you how awesome that is... it's like a tall drink of cool water for a tired soul.

Hit the gym once too. Didn't do a lot, ol' boy knows that lifting heavy to start out with causes a wicked case of tendinitis. Did a bunch of mixed dumbell work, only thing remotely heavy was some flat bar bench with a couple 45 plates that was surprisingly easy. Gotta start slow, to go faster later. Surprisingly, it felt good to lift. I have hardly touched the weights for 5 years, and I've kind of missed it after 20 years of it being a constant companion to keep rugby fit. Oh no, I don't want to pack on the muscle. Shoot, I can put on 20 pounds of solid muscle in 6 weeks if I try. But I'd like to improve my mountain biking and getting back some wiry strength and converting just a little fat to muscle would help the riding and the weight loss.

Anyhow... some tunes.

Let's start with a little R.L. Burnside. Damned if a lot of the stuff I like now doesn't trace its roots back to North Mississipi garage / hill blues. I've only noticed that recently, I'm still exploring myself. *Now* I get why guys like Clapton and everybody else were making pilgrimages to go jam with Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. This is a distilled, high test form of the blues, re-mixed with its great-grandchildren, funk, rock, soul and techno.



Here's a little more, that's got a bit more traditional blues mixed in. And a bit more raw garage sound. And some NSFW. This is maybe the best Friday Quittin' Time song I've ever heard.



"I know goddam well it's party time." Yeah, that's how I'm feeling, and it's not even Friday yet. When I'm writing this anyhow. "I got a back pocket of whiskey, and a front pocket of gin. You gonna open up this door, or I'm gonna kick the mothafucka in." Okay, so it's pretty profane, not everybody's cup of tea. But I know where he's coming from. Keep in mind, the guy playing this killed a man in a gambling fight, and he's maybe about 75 when he's singing this and playing the guitar. A lot of folks get old. Some others just get better.

R.L. did some classic blues. One of his better traditional Delta Blues songs is Stack-O-Lee.



That isn't the "original" Stack-O-Lee. Nobody really knows what the original is, to tell the truth. Mississippi John Hurt sang a great version of it in a very early, primal, Delta country blues style.



Beautiful piece of music. Both this and Burnside's song were based on a story about a St. Louis pimp, "Stagger" Lee Shelton, getting drunk and shooting one of his friends for the grievous sin of taking his hat. According to contemporaneous news accounts, Stagger Lee shot his friend Billy Lyons in the stomach, then coolly retrieved his hat and departed the saloon. For some reason, the story just resonated with performers. Taj Mahal did a modern version of it, and even Jerry Reed (yeah, that Jerry Reed) did a gloss of it.

And apropos of nothing... a little Reverend to close it out for the week.



And this will end it on a high note for sure.



But things ain't so bad, 'cuz I got a Galaxy 500.

One is Enough. Too Much in Fact.

I find my rigid singlespeed totally superior to my geared full suspension bike. For one thing, it's much simpler because there's no suspension to break, and no gears, which is the key difference that probably nobody has explained to you since the last time somebody mentioned anything about singlespeed mountain bikes.

Without gears, I get a "duathlon workout," in which I run up a lot of hills, at least until I'm exhausted toward the end of a ride - the parts after the first five minutes or so - at which point I sort of shuffle and complain up the hills while dragging and carrying the bike, which is admittedly quite a bit lighter to drag up hills than the geared full suspension rig, which I normally ride up but I suspect would be quite hard to push.

And there's nothing to break, except for spokes and rims which I break a lot because I'm pretty fat and there's no suspension so something has to give when I plow into rocks.

Speaking of which, crashing is easier on a rigid singlespeed too. Rather than bouncing in the air and doing things like "endos" and "high sides" and "coming off," which are hard to describe and must be accompanied by appropriate body english and hand gestures, there's no bounce on the rigid and I simply "eat shit," usually face first and without catching big air, so it's much easier to describe and it usually happens a lot more suddenly, so there's none of that aching anticipation of a big crash on the way down. It also makes for shorter crash stories, so my singlespeed rigid is much less tiring, at least for my friends who have to listen to my stories about crashing.

In the final analysis, singlespeed rigid mountain bikes are superior, because they just are. If mountain biking was a Marshall amplifier, regular mountain bikes would be an "11" on the volume knob but rigid single speeds would be like a "953 to the 7th power" on the volume knob for an entire Marshall stack with AC DC playing live on it in your basement and you have a free keg of Natty Bo to drink while you're listening to them and Bonn Scott gives you his drumsticks and there's a couple groupies sitting on your lap. It's like this because rigid SS'es are just like regular mountain bikes with gears and suspension, only they totally and completely rage on a whole 'nother level. Plus they don't have all that extra shit that can break or freeze up in cold weather, in case nobody mentioned it to you.

Frankly I don't know what people did before rigid singlespeeds came along. I guess they rode geared full suspension bikes, and before that they rode rigid singlespeeds because they were badassss, like Gary Fisher, who basically invented the mountain bike. God knows why they invented geared full suspension bikes; I guess they just wanted the challenge of trying to stay hard as a Mothafucka inhe face of living the luxury life. Now *that* is a challenge to rival the gnarliest hill.

So if you are thinking about getting a singlespeed mountain bike, ask yourself this simple question to determine whether it's right for you: Do I want to be badasssss just like Gary Fisher?

If you want to be just like Gary Fisher, then you *definitely* need to get a rigid singlespeed mountain bike. For sure.

The Cold Weather No Riding My Bike Blues

This has been a tough week at work and with the personal stuff - out of the door at 6:00 AM, back at 8:oo or 7:30 most nights, the wife had stuff going on, last weekend was bombed...

That meant no bike rides.

Unlike some, I'm honest enough to admit that after 11-12 hours at work, a couple to four additional hours spent in a car, I'm just not man enough to grind out 90 minutes on the trainer (after seeing the kid off to bed and swilling down some dinner).

Unlike some, I probably put on 5 pounds of the just-haven't-exercised-any this week. (Rather than the hard earned, 5 x 3500 calories ain't-goin'-away-anytime-soon variety).

So I'm in a bad mood, but good times are ahead. Work's easing up a tiny bit, this weekend hopefully has some open time to permit some riding, and I'm going to get back after it, the off-season is over.

Meanwhile, man, do I ever have some good music for you.

Have you ever heard of Junior Kimbrough?

I'm guessing you haven't. He's a guy that everybody who is somebody in blues-rock made a pilgrimage to meet and jam with. Dude played with everybody, and I'm betting you never heard of him, never thought of him. But you've heard his tunes - guar-own-tee.

Here's one of his pieces.



I love how he's in this little cinderblock honky tonk, playing awesome music, and people are just walking in and out, leaving the door open in front of him, not giving a flying fuck. "Oh yeah, that's Junior. One of the greatest bluesmen of all time. Hey, wheredjou leave the Budweiser? It outside? I'm going outside to get the Budweiser."

You heard this song before today, because these guys remade it:



What? You didn't think the Black Keys invented that garage blues/rock sound, did you? Thing is, those old boys could rock. A lot of good music gets lost though because of the nature of the pop music biz. Sony isn't in it to make you happy. Your money goes to a house, to bikes, to a trip to Moab, and your student loans. They want people that have "disposable" income, where the term "disposable" apparently means "a limitless supply that can be thrown away." There's only one group of people like that in the world: thirteen year-old girls. They are happy to spend tons of money - because it's not their own - following the latest brain-dead trend. What mean, rotten parent is going to let their little princess get made fun of because she didn't have the right, most "now" music?

So pop music is aimed at 13 year-old girls, who can afford to buy it because their parents are pretty sure they can't afford to let them not buy it. You probably think I'm joking but I am not, and my theory nicely explains all sorts of popular dreck, from the Backstreet Boys to Justin Bieber to MTV.

Grownup old music is often pretty solid though, regardless of what Sony thinks. Here's another guy you never heard of, one of Junior Kimbrough's buddies and contemporaries, R.L. Burnside.



Great stuff, right? Awesome. If he was a young guy starting out today... well, he'd be popular with us anyhow. But he'd be good and we'd all know it. It's timeless music.

This begs the question, what kind of lost music is great stuff, but maybe is getting remade into a current format - y'know, not targeted at 13 year-old girls but at you and me?

Here's an old song by Sleepy John Estes, Milk Cow Blues, from the early 1930s. It's a traditional blues song, but it's got a pretty good pop music pedigree too.



One of Estes' contemporaries, Josh White, re-made it in 1935.



It was so good, Elvis re-made it.



Then the Kinks did.



So'd Ted & Aerosmith.



Even classic country star George Strait got in on the act.



That wasn't the only thing that happened to the old Milk Cow Blues though. Taj Mahal took the tune, revised the lyrics, and came up with this delectable little Jam - with the help of the amazing Ry Cooder.



This song built up around the old bones of the Milk Cow Blues works just fine in a blues/funk version.



And you know who else remade this song recently? Yeah, that's right. These guys.



Kinda makes me wonder where they got this one from.



Maybe they heard something that inspired them from old Mississippi Fred McDowell.



The old boys are damn good. All of this you've heard here, is one or another version of Mississippi blues, playing around and getting a lot of mileage out of one or two chords, often played as a dirge. That's great stuff, and those voices are gone, and there's no market for it now. But despite the center mass of the music industry being 13 year old-girls, some a them new guys rock it pretty good themselves and honor an old tradition of great music that speaks authentically about life's tough experiences. A 13 year old girl wouldn't - and hopefully never will - know about a lot of the stuff that inspired this music, and will hopefully stick to Justin Bieber, at least if she's your daughter. You and me, we can enjoy some bourbon, a dirty joke, and the Delta Blues. It's a grown up pleasure.

The Facts of Life

I don't often cry.

Son-of-Rouleur, who just turned 7, wanted to watch a show on Smithsonian Channel about pararescue jumpers, the Air Force Special Ops guys who rescue downed pilots. The documentary was about the mission to rescue Marcus Luttrell, a SEAL whose team got wiped out in a Taliban or Al Qaida ambush in Afghanistan. The focus was on prep for the mission, the 16 Special Ops troops killed in the initial effort to rescue Luttrell, and documenting the very serious difficulties the pilots had as a result of bad weather, high altitude, rough terrain, and dust on the landing zone that very nearly caused them to crash.

I don't mind exposing Son-of to this because I served quite a while in the military, all the men in my family have, and I can't hide my background what with pictures around the house of me in uniform and in strange places around the world. I could try to convince him not to serve as my Dad did with me and it will very likely only harden his determination; folks in my family are adventurous, love to do dangerous stuff and get into fights.

So with my son I think it's generally better to address my history - and some of the tough things in life like countries packed full of people just dying to hurt Americans - than it is to try to dodge those facts when the kid asks after seeing something packed with violence, blood and gore, like the evening news. Life's full of really hard stuff to cope with and it's best, I think, to take it as it comes and use difficult subjects as an opportunity to teach kids how to process them in a mature way.

So I explained what the soldiers are doing as sacrificing for us, so the bad guys can't hurt us - even if we don't agree with everything the soldiers are doing. He understood that and said "it's better to fight them [the bad guys]. We only fight them because we have to."

Toward the end of the documentary, the Air Force pilots are returning to the mountain side to retrieve the bodies of the other three SEALs, who were killed in the initial ambush. Son-of says to me, "why would they do that? It doesn't make sense to take that risk if they are dead."

Okay, that's a tough question. So I explained it like this: "You never leave a buddy behind - never ever. And if they are dead, you show you love them by bringing them back home, carefully, and seeing to it that they get a good burial like we do in the church. It's just the right thing to do."

So he chewed that over for a couple minutes, as we watched footage of the pararescue jumpers securing the bodies and hoisting them into the hovering bird.

Inside the bird, there was film of the recovery, and the jumper said "thankfully, somebody remembered to bring a couple American flags so we could cover the body bags and bring them back in an appropriate manner."

Son-of asked, "what's so special about putting the flag on them?"

I was pretty stumped about how you analogize that in a way that makes sense to a 7 year-old. Then it hit me.

"Well," I said. "You know that nice blanket that mommy knitted for you? The 'love blanket' that she knitted her love into?"

He nodded.

"That's what the flag is for soldiers who sacrificed for us. It's a love blanket from the whole country. To show them we love them."

He mulled that over for a second and said, "Daddy, are you going to make little tears? Because your eyes are glazed over."

I said, "yeah, a little bit. Those men gave their lives for us."

He said, "I'm going to make little tears too."

Sometimes, there isn't really anything you can say to your child, you just give them a hug and be thankful, for a lot of things.

Random Complaints

I watched MNF tonight until the Pats managed to eek out an insurmountable lead. That took about 7 minutes of play. Rex Ryan = mighty big talk for a two-eyed fat man.

As much as I enjoyed watching the Giants crush Washington yesterday, I really don't like seeing the Redskins this down. It's bad football to watch, and it doesn't do the NFC East any good to have two patsy teams to walk over; football teams lose their edge if they're not pushed hard real regularly.

So instead of MNF I watched High Plains Drifter. Hadn't watched that in a couple years. I'd forgotten what a great film it is. Also, what a bunch of complete, irredeemable worthless bastards the townspeople were, except for the little man, and the adulterous kind woman. They were somewhat redeemed.

You know what the difference between me, and the UCI is? If I screw somebody over at my job, there's a pretty damn good chance I'll be held accountable.

You know what another difference between me and the UCI is? If I have a conflict of interest in something I'm working on, particularly a clear and well-known-to-me financial conflict of interest, I recuse myself.

Final question, you know what the difference between me and the UCI is? I've run for club office, so that means as many as 20-30 American cyclists have had a chance to vote on whether I should be running things.

Adam Myerson is a cool guy who's done great stuff for cycling but I don't worship the dude. And the rules is the rules. Still, I think he (and a lot of promoters, and a lot of cyclists) are getting boned by the UCI's selective policy of enforcing some rules against some people without warning, yet giving warning to others who appear to have closer financial ties to UCI management. You'd think that the goal of international sports sanctioning bodies would be to grow the sport, but to the extent I have direct knowledge of what they do - in two different sports now - I am thinking their true purpose is to cartelize their sport and use the sanctioning bodies to protect their own personal financial interests, and to keep their power centralized as the gatekeepers who can enact barriers to entry into the sport. And don't think the national sanctioning bodies are immune from this habit.

I go back and forth pretty regularly in my mind as to whether this is the year amateur 'cross collapses under its own weight. I think it will do fine if we focus on keeping amateur racing fun, and make our events pleasant to attend. I think it will crash down if we let formality and roadie stick-up-the-hindquarters seriousness get piled on top of it. Too much aggro in cross right now; time for promoters to use the off season to figure out how to make it better. I suspect the sanctioning bodies aren't going to be much help here.

Monday, Bloody Monday

* 1 down. 59 to go.

* Hell of a weekend. Raked leaves yesterday morning w/t the Cub Scouts. Did a bunch of demo work on the house in the afternoon. Did 3.5 hours of workday at Rockburn with MORE this morning. Shepherded my kid's bowling/birthday party this afternoon. I'm gassed.

* Might commute tomorrow AM with Sean. Going to depend on the wind. I can handle 35 degrees. I can't handle 35 and 25 MPH winds to go with it, over two 20+ hilly commutes in heavy traffic. All stress is a training stress point, and riding in conditions like that takes more out of you, than it puts back into you. So whether we go will depend on what the weather is at 10:00 PM tonight.

* Didn't get to ride this weekend, which is depressing. I did do a lot of work for other people though, which burned off some excess energy, and made me feel a little better.

* That's it. I hope you have a good Monday. Buckle down and work hard but don't take yourself too seriously, aihgt?

Cutting Bait...

Time comes, to shit or get off the pot. Fish or cut bait. Choose one or t'other.

You're probably wondering what I've been doing, why the radio silence on the blog, and so on. Well... it's the brief off-season, and I've been thinking.

As usual, I'm pretty damn tired of bein' Fast for a Fat Man. Last year around this time I was all geared up to make the leap. I was moving in the right direction on diet and training, keeping going over the winter. Then things happened. I blew my back out, landing on my ass for 2.5 months, went through some enormous medical worries... by the time I was riding again it was mid-March and I had nothin' left in the cupboard. The goals were reduced. Ride as much as possible, race a bit if my back could hold up... see what happens.

What happened was pretty alright. My back mostly healed up. It's going to need long term maintenance work, but it's better now than it was, functional. I raced a bit, getting some okay results in some shorter mountain bike races, nothing great, just modest, decent finishes. Cross went okay but the season kind of went to shit for some reason - probably came into it without enough focus, but too much intense riding under my belt. I had a two week period in Sep/Oct where I could barely turn the pedals. Got through it okay though, and I still have quite a bit left in the mental tank. I like where I went last year but it's not enough.

Once again, as last year at this time, I gotta get after it. How much?

Here's the goals.

Top goal is getting my fat ass slimmed down to about 230. That's 40-45 pounds south of here. That happens, and I will be crushing. That's also going to be the hardest goal to hit. Going to suck and please bear with me if my attitude is ass for the next couple months.

Second goal is to do 2 12 hour solos, and 4 MASS Series endurance races, and at least two 12 hour team races. I like the 4 hour races and you can't beat the way a 4 hour MTB ride, fast as you can go, boosts your fitness, skills, and most importantly mental acuity on the MTB.

Third goal is to earn me an upgrade to the Sport Class in MTB. Sure, I can be a mediocre Sport class back marker right now, but I'd like to score some decent results - top 10s - in some beginner class races so I feel like I've earned it.

Fourth goal is to start learning how to ride rocks for real up at Gambrill, catch some beginner rides up there and start working on the biggest hole in my MTB skills package. I can ride babyheads okay, but riding over the rocks big enough to ride over? I ain't there yet.

Final goal is to start rebuilding my general sports fitness. I've worked on atritting a lot of muscle mass accumulated over 20 years of rugby and the accompanying powerlifting. Well, it's atritted, and I'm fat. Mission accomplished! Not sure how I'm going to do this but some light dumbell work is the start, and maybe I go to kettlebells or P90x or something similar. The goal is wiry strong, not the Stoopid huge squat weights I was throwing or ridiculous dumbbell bench presses I used to do. This is going to come with 5x core strength workouts per week.

Diet starts now. Nothing fancy - low cal, focus on proteins and whole grains, and starving my miserable self.

As for Cross... I'm going to race cross. We'll see how it goes.

Enough of the bathos. You're here for the music, right?

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First off, is the Hanukkah song for my friend Jason. I have a lot of Jewish friends, but Jason is one of the most Jewish friends I have, so he'll definitely appreciate this.



I can't figure out whether Adam Sandler is the funniest serious guy I've ever watched on screen, or the most serious funny guy. His movies are just excellent, and even at his most absurd you get a sense he's trying to make a point about something, and yeah, he does drama pretty well. He's in rare company there with folks like Steve Martin, George Carlin (RIP), and... well, there's nobody else.

Speaking of folks you can't get a handle on, the ever-changing studio cats of Gorillaz fit that category... such as it is.



Nice song, don't know what to make of it. Genre-bending, for sure. The Raconteurs on the other hand, fit within a very specific genre - Ridiculously Talented Detroit Garage Rock Revival. I salute their solution to the question, "What can we do with Jack White?"



Jack's wife knew what to do with him too. Briefly. And too briefly.



Johnny Cash was another one-off, for sure. He was best at singing about death, drunkeness, hatred and apocalyptic themes. Hard edged gospel. Not everybody's cup of tea, maybe not everybody gets what he's doing spiritually or musically, but if you get what he's saying, it moves you.



Speaking of one-offs, Cake certainly is one. And one of my favorite songs is their salute to eccentricity, Sheep Go to Heaven. You listen to this, you get the idea they prefer hanging out with the goats. I know I do. As Mark Twain said, "as for the climate, I prefer heaven; as for the company, I prefer hell."



"Take It All Away" is another favorite of mine by Cake. John McCrea writes brilliant lyrics, and in this song, he breaks up with his girlfriend, telling her to "take your economy car and your suitcase, take your psycho little dogs, and take it all away." The "economy car" and the "psycho little dogs" painted a word picture that made me guffaw the first time I heard it. I don't know the girl he's talking to, not literally anyhow, but holy shit, I know *exactly* who she is because I dated her and a bunch of my friends dated her and a couple dudes I know married her. *Brilliant* lyric.



Now this next one is a great song for bicyclists generally, and particularly for mountain bikers by Modest Mouse, Gravity Rides Everything. I think this was in "Riding Giants," but could be mistaken.



Maybe "This is the Sea" by The Waterboys is what I was thinking of.



That was definitely in the film. Speaking of Riding Giants, have you seen it? That clip was dubbed from Stacy Peralta's seminal surfing documentary. I can't say exactly why, but I find the film extremely compelling. There are a handful of films that I can flip onto with the remote, and if they are on, I simply can't walk away. The first time I saw Riding Giants, I was flipping around in the Hi Def movie channels. Holy cripes, is this film stunning in 1080p... You got any films you can't channel surf past?

Guess I ought to end with something upbeat. How 'bout "Peaches" by the Presidents of the United States? Yeah, that'll do.