I'm gassed right now. Wiped out. But not so bad I can't find you some good music.
Ahh. Nice. How to wrap it up?
How about Lemmy knockin' out some Metallica? Yeah, I thought that'd do it.
Have a nice weekend. There's a lot of racing coming up... so let's get to work!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
GamJams Review: Gloves
A couple years ago I rode the Bakers Dozen solo. It's a 13 hour mountain bike race and I rode for about 8 hours of that, which was roughly 4 hours than my previous longest mountain bike ride.
In addition to finding out all sorts of new things - pickles taste great on a hot day, for instance; or yes, you can poop 18 times in a single night following a mountain bike race - I found out that the choice of gloves is really important on a long ride.
I'd struggled off and on with hand pains on the road, particularly in a few 200km randonees. But a quick shift of hand position, and the pain would be alleviated. It was rough, but not horrible, it's the kind of routine suffering everybody deals with.
On the mountain bike - because I rode like an unskilled mooo-ron back then - there was no way to relieve the hand pain. I was giving it the death grip, riding around with painful hands, and soon the pins and needles arrived. Then the serious numbness set in. I tried to relieve it with different sets of gloves: I started with Descentes, that left my hands raw; switched to some Pearl Izumis that did nothing to help the problem; then switched to some Performance Elites, which were the best of the bunch but which still didn't stop the problem, they just slowed down the degeneration of the skin on my hands and the numbness. in my deathgrip.
By the time I was 50 miles into the day, my hand was incredibly numb, and the numbness in my left pinky and ring finger wound up taking 8 or 10 months to go away. My palms looked like fresh ground hamburger.
I vowed to find some better gloves.
After a lot of searching around, I happened on Spenco gloves. A bunch of guys in one of the mountain bike forums were swearing up and down that these gloves solved major hand pain problems for them. So I decided to give them a shot.
They worked. They are anatomically designed with three pads to provide relief to the nerves and the blood vein that run down the middle of your hand. The pads are really stout and thick on the higher end models; they offer quite a bit of padding. Some of them are minimally padded but even those work very well compared to other gloves I've tried. The quality is good; they're durable, and comfortable. They are also crash tough, and do a good job of holding together and protecting my hands in crashes.
You'd think that the big pads - 1.5 inches wide by maybe a quarter inch thick - would be so prominent as to be painful. You'd be wrong. They've proven superb on all sorts of long rides, including a couple 4 hour mountain bike rides, where even the usual amount of pain, the sort I'm willing to put up with, did not set in. Hand pain is a bit of an issue in mountain biking, more than on the road. You need to keep closer track of what the front end is doing because it bounces around all the time. For many of us - many = the unskilled jackasses who death grip the bars - this leads to a death grip that in turn makes the hands very sore. It helps a lot to have gloves that are resistant to our own stupid habits. Spencos are those gloves.
So Baker's Dozen is coming up next week. I'm going to get started packing for it next Monday or so. I have maybe 20 sets of gloves. The only ones I'm bringing are 4 sets of Spencos. That should tell you something.
TOT 26: 55 Minute Lap at Rosaryville
#
In addition to finding out all sorts of new things - pickles taste great on a hot day, for instance; or yes, you can poop 18 times in a single night following a mountain bike race - I found out that the choice of gloves is really important on a long ride.
I'd struggled off and on with hand pains on the road, particularly in a few 200km randonees. But a quick shift of hand position, and the pain would be alleviated. It was rough, but not horrible, it's the kind of routine suffering everybody deals with.
On the mountain bike - because I rode like an unskilled mooo-ron back then - there was no way to relieve the hand pain. I was giving it the death grip, riding around with painful hands, and soon the pins and needles arrived. Then the serious numbness set in. I tried to relieve it with different sets of gloves: I started with Descentes, that left my hands raw; switched to some Pearl Izumis that did nothing to help the problem; then switched to some Performance Elites, which were the best of the bunch but which still didn't stop the problem, they just slowed down the degeneration of the skin on my hands and the numbness. in my deathgrip.
By the time I was 50 miles into the day, my hand was incredibly numb, and the numbness in my left pinky and ring finger wound up taking 8 or 10 months to go away. My palms looked like fresh ground hamburger.
I vowed to find some better gloves.
After a lot of searching around, I happened on Spenco gloves. A bunch of guys in one of the mountain bike forums were swearing up and down that these gloves solved major hand pain problems for them. So I decided to give them a shot.
They worked. They are anatomically designed with three pads to provide relief to the nerves and the blood vein that run down the middle of your hand. The pads are really stout and thick on the higher end models; they offer quite a bit of padding. Some of them are minimally padded but even those work very well compared to other gloves I've tried. The quality is good; they're durable, and comfortable. They are also crash tough, and do a good job of holding together and protecting my hands in crashes.
You'd think that the big pads - 1.5 inches wide by maybe a quarter inch thick - would be so prominent as to be painful. You'd be wrong. They've proven superb on all sorts of long rides, including a couple 4 hour mountain bike rides, where even the usual amount of pain, the sort I'm willing to put up with, did not set in. Hand pain is a bit of an issue in mountain biking, more than on the road. You need to keep closer track of what the front end is doing because it bounces around all the time. For many of us - many = the unskilled jackasses who death grip the bars - this leads to a death grip that in turn makes the hands very sore. It helps a lot to have gloves that are resistant to our own stupid habits. Spencos are those gloves.
So Baker's Dozen is coming up next week. I'm going to get started packing for it next Monday or so. I have maybe 20 sets of gloves. The only ones I'm bringing are 4 sets of Spencos. That should tell you something.
TOT 26: 55 Minute Lap at Rosaryville
I climbed pretty badly with sore legs but frequently found myself spun out, riding on flats and downhill between the trees at a pace that kept me about halfway between "somewhat scared" and "thoroughly terrorized" for most of the ride. Boys and girls, meet my old friend, Flow.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Meeting the Dawn
Today was an early ride day for me at Rosaryville. Doesn't mean that I missed out on my Daily Injection of Teh Stoopid though.
I was lazy last night and noticed that the Frankenbike was set up to run Ultra Rigid, that is with the fixed gear on it. "No big deal," I thought. "I'll just flip flop that wheel in the morning if I don't feel like riding fixed."
Well... I got to Rosaryville, it was still a little dark, and I damn sure didn't feel like riding fixed. So I got the wheel off, flipped it around, and realized... the cog is bolted into the disc mounts so there's no disc brake on the damn thing!
Like a moron, I'd been thinking about the bike as if it had rim brakes, the way my single speed / fixed cross bike does.
Jackass!
So I put the wheel back on fixed and rode it that way, which was fine. Good things happened. I'm finally starting to relax a bit on the fixie, so I can actually ride at something approaching normal speed. My back has loosened up, and I'm developing some weird little knots of muscle in my upper quads, so the hundred little half-standing efforts per hour (necessary to get the butt off the seat to smooth out roots and rocks) don't cause cramping any more. What's more, is I actually caught flow a couple times for a minute or two. It didn't last much longer than that, however, because I still have to spend too much time thinking about how to approach various little features, so that state where the riding is fast and my mind is at ease, peaceful and somewhere else, is still a little hard to reach. Even so, it was pretty amazing, hitting that state on a fixie. Maybe it was just because it was the first time I got going like that, but it seemed more exciting, a little more manic and high speed, than reaching the same mental & bike handling state on a freewheeled bike.
I got around in about 65-70 minutes, even with a photo stop. It was a great way to kick off the day.
Tomorrow: Same thing, only with a freewheel. And a brake! [Yeah, I know, I'm totally pussing out... but this time I'll hit the extra credit inner loop and maybe a bunch of the logs.] It sure is nice to start racking up the rides, finally. Maybe I'll manage to Ride 180 this year after all.
I was lazy last night and noticed that the Frankenbike was set up to run Ultra Rigid, that is with the fixed gear on it. "No big deal," I thought. "I'll just flip flop that wheel in the morning if I don't feel like riding fixed."
Well... I got to Rosaryville, it was still a little dark, and I damn sure didn't feel like riding fixed. So I got the wheel off, flipped it around, and realized... the cog is bolted into the disc mounts so there's no disc brake on the damn thing!
Like a moron, I'd been thinking about the bike as if it had rim brakes, the way my single speed / fixed cross bike does.
Jackass!
So I put the wheel back on fixed and rode it that way, which was fine. Good things happened. I'm finally starting to relax a bit on the fixie, so I can actually ride at something approaching normal speed. My back has loosened up, and I'm developing some weird little knots of muscle in my upper quads, so the hundred little half-standing efforts per hour (necessary to get the butt off the seat to smooth out roots and rocks) don't cause cramping any more. What's more, is I actually caught flow a couple times for a minute or two. It didn't last much longer than that, however, because I still have to spend too much time thinking about how to approach various little features, so that state where the riding is fast and my mind is at ease, peaceful and somewhere else, is still a little hard to reach. Even so, it was pretty amazing, hitting that state on a fixie. Maybe it was just because it was the first time I got going like that, but it seemed more exciting, a little more manic and high speed, than reaching the same mental & bike handling state on a freewheeled bike.
I got around in about 65-70 minutes, even with a photo stop. It was a great way to kick off the day.
Tomorrow: Same thing, only with a freewheel. And a brake! [Yeah, I know, I'm totally pussing out... but this time I'll hit the extra credit inner loop and maybe a bunch of the logs.] It sure is nice to start racking up the rides, finally. Maybe I'll manage to Ride 180 this year after all.
TOT 25: Riding With Giants, at Dawn
TOT 22, From Friday Two Weeks Ago:
Toaster McBabyhead, Esq., Has Concerns About My Chainline
Toaster McBabyhead, Esq., Has Concerns About My Chainline
Monday, March 28, 2011
Back At It
I apologize for the week's absence. During a cub scout trip [trap] with Son [Sun] of Rouleur, 9 other assorted [assrotted] daddies, I contracted the Catoctin Catarrh. Very nice crew of folks, and I've got nothing but admiration for what the Scouts do for the kids, but let's be real - a primitive open bay scout cabin filled with 10 kids and 10 adults is essentially a giant festering petri dish that promises to do it's duty to God and country and to always be prepared.
Arriving back early Sunday morning, I took to bed, and slept until Tuesday, pausing from my repose only long enough to get up, stagger around the house racked with severe body aches, thence to return to bed. Tuesday morning I got up, ate some food, then got hit with the worst [wurst] case of the shiznits that I've had in several years. I spent most of the rest of the week either at work, or sleeping. No bikey-bikey for me until Saturday, and I was not a happy camper then and I am still not quite right now. The flu is mostly gone but I'm managing to make some amusing typos (in [brackets]), and I'm dead tired, plus I also got to check Facebook several times from the bathroom at work today. Life proceeds apace, unfortunately it's a 4 minute mile pace and at my best in much younger days now long, long gone I was only about a 4:45 guy.
There is some riding going down. Saturday I knocked out close to 3 hours at a modest (at best) pace at Rosaryville, much of it with the excellent Schiavo posse. To paraphrase BB King, the Flow is gone... the Flow is gone away from me.
I did manage to remount the horse today and make the commute with Fast as Schidt Sean, and I'm hoping to get in 90 minutes of mountain biking tomorrow AM. So it's not all grim news on The World's Most Haphazzard Training Plan In The World.
Today's ride was very cold indeed; it was the coldest 34 degrees I can ever recall feeling, probably some combination of the wind and humidity made it that way. This was compounded by my stupid choice to wear a great pair of Castelli shorts - let me clarify that: a great pair of Castelli hot weather shorts. My thighs and ass cheeks got so cold this morning that they went past the point of pins and needles. I also stupidly wore a pair of light duty knee warmers, that really only cover my knees and which slipped down repeatedly, thanks to their short length, and the short leg length on the excellent Castelli hot weather shorts. I only thawed out after taking a super hot shower at work. I did feel like the Pasha after that, sitting at my desk and tossing down espresso shots, but I noticed on one of my many visits to the rest room - a room of no rest at all for me today - that my face was all chapped from the ride. The ride home tonight was alright, with a lot of wind, only sometimes from helpful directions. It was also 10-15 degrees colder than the forecasted 50 degree high, so that was a little disappointed, and can I tell you, 37 degrees is one of the hardest temperatures to dress appropriately for. The body also reacts weirdly; one's junk neither ascends into the upper protect-us-from-all-cold position (where it is safe from the depredations of the saddle's nose), nor does it drop down into the oh-just-sling-us-around-anywhere posture where it is fine no matter how badly the saddle beats on the Boys. So basically it was like a stiff boxer's speed bag for the entire trip home, getting punched around a lot but not exactly oscillating with the required flexibility. It was rather uncomfortable, like everything else about the riding today.
Upon arrival at home, I again took a hot shower, put on the flannel pajama bottoms and an old triple weight sweatshirt that belonged to my father. I sat there after dinner tonight, snugged up in my reading chair in that sweatshirt, reading Don Simmons' Fall of Hyperion and feeling like I was 7 or 8 years old and curled up in my dad's embrace on a sick day. I haven't figured out whether the ghosts of people reside in particular old sentimental things, or if our memories burnish the old things with our gold-tinged sentiments. It doesn't matter in the end; what matters is that sometimes the things of loved, departed ones can give us great comfort. That old sweatshirt is like the echo of a hug from my old man. I miss him still, miss his wisdom and his dry sense of humor and his patience. I'd thank him for the sweatshirt if I saw him tonight and give him a hug like one of the long hugs Son of Rouleur likes to give me. For now I'll have to settle for being right here in this impossibly thick, warm hoodie, and with the warm feeling his memories give my heart.
The short term planning is in place to get ready for Leesburg, the Baker's Dozen. I'm patently not in shape for it - fat, not enough miles in my legs, blah blah blah. The plan is to ride my ass off for the next two weeks, take the Thursday before the race off, ride easy on the Friday, perhaps knocking out a tour lap at Leesburg; then ride my balls off, or at least ride them into a stretched and attenuated position on race day.
This plan guarantees nothing but pain, but it's all I got. It'll be a good kind of pain... if I can find my flow before then.
Arriving back early Sunday morning, I took to bed, and slept until Tuesday, pausing from my repose only long enough to get up, stagger around the house racked with severe body aches, thence to return to bed. Tuesday morning I got up, ate some food, then got hit with the worst [wurst] case of the shiznits that I've had in several years. I spent most of the rest of the week either at work, or sleeping. No bikey-bikey for me until Saturday, and I was not a happy camper then and I am still not quite right now. The flu is mostly gone but I'm managing to make some amusing typos (in [brackets]), and I'm dead tired, plus I also got to check Facebook several times from the bathroom at work today. Life proceeds apace, unfortunately it's a 4 minute mile pace and at my best in much younger days now long, long gone I was only about a 4:45 guy.
There is some riding going down. Saturday I knocked out close to 3 hours at a modest (at best) pace at Rosaryville, much of it with the excellent Schiavo posse. To paraphrase BB King, the Flow is gone... the Flow is gone away from me.
I did manage to remount the horse today and make the commute with Fast as Schidt Sean, and I'm hoping to get in 90 minutes of mountain biking tomorrow AM. So it's not all grim news on The World's Most Haphazzard Training Plan In The World.
Today's ride was very cold indeed; it was the coldest 34 degrees I can ever recall feeling, probably some combination of the wind and humidity made it that way. This was compounded by my stupid choice to wear a great pair of Castelli shorts - let me clarify that: a great pair of Castelli hot weather shorts. My thighs and ass cheeks got so cold this morning that they went past the point of pins and needles. I also stupidly wore a pair of light duty knee warmers, that really only cover my knees and which slipped down repeatedly, thanks to their short length, and the short leg length on the excellent Castelli hot weather shorts. I only thawed out after taking a super hot shower at work. I did feel like the Pasha after that, sitting at my desk and tossing down espresso shots, but I noticed on one of my many visits to the rest room - a room of no rest at all for me today - that my face was all chapped from the ride. The ride home tonight was alright, with a lot of wind, only sometimes from helpful directions. It was also 10-15 degrees colder than the forecasted 50 degree high, so that was a little disappointed, and can I tell you, 37 degrees is one of the hardest temperatures to dress appropriately for. The body also reacts weirdly; one's junk neither ascends into the upper protect-us-from-all-cold position (where it is safe from the depredations of the saddle's nose), nor does it drop down into the oh-just-sling-us-around-anywhere posture where it is fine no matter how badly the saddle beats on the Boys. So basically it was like a stiff boxer's speed bag for the entire trip home, getting punched around a lot but not exactly oscillating with the required flexibility. It was rather uncomfortable, like everything else about the riding today.
Upon arrival at home, I again took a hot shower, put on the flannel pajama bottoms and an old triple weight sweatshirt that belonged to my father. I sat there after dinner tonight, snugged up in my reading chair in that sweatshirt, reading Don Simmons' Fall of Hyperion and feeling like I was 7 or 8 years old and curled up in my dad's embrace on a sick day. I haven't figured out whether the ghosts of people reside in particular old sentimental things, or if our memories burnish the old things with our gold-tinged sentiments. It doesn't matter in the end; what matters is that sometimes the things of loved, departed ones can give us great comfort. That old sweatshirt is like the echo of a hug from my old man. I miss him still, miss his wisdom and his dry sense of humor and his patience. I'd thank him for the sweatshirt if I saw him tonight and give him a hug like one of the long hugs Son of Rouleur likes to give me. For now I'll have to settle for being right here in this impossibly thick, warm hoodie, and with the warm feeling his memories give my heart.
The short term planning is in place to get ready for Leesburg, the Baker's Dozen. I'm patently not in shape for it - fat, not enough miles in my legs, blah blah blah. The plan is to ride my ass off for the next two weeks, take the Thursday before the race off, ride easy on the Friday, perhaps knocking out a tour lap at Leesburg; then ride my balls off, or at least ride them into a stretched and attenuated position on race day.
This plan guarantees nothing but pain, but it's all I got. It'll be a good kind of pain... if I can find my flow before then.
TOT 23: Field of Dreams
Rosaryville State Park Perimeter Trail
Rosaryville State Park Perimeter Trail
TOT 24: View Down M St., NE,
From Met Branch Trail Bridge
From Met Branch Trail Bridge
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Friday Fun
It's been a great week, got a couple rides in, looking like a third tomorrow, and I'd ride over the weekend too but for a camping excursion that's in the works. Nice!
Before we get to the tunes, a few short thoughts.
First, I don’t know what is a sadder statement about American culture… that I texted a friend today, a college graduate I was to ride with “Where U at?” and that we both understood; or that my smart phone, so-called, didn’t autocorrect that the way it constantly autocorrects all the grammatically correct phrases I type in.
Second, it was nice getting in the third ride of the week today, just an hour and ten or so with Seibold and Todd B., who I hadn't seen since 'cross. Took the fixie out, and man, was that painful to try to keep up on the wheel. Painful but good, it's the quickest way to get fit, providing you don't hurt yourself. Spun out if it's even slightly downhill, standing climb if it's even slightly uphill, panting the whole way to keep up with a couple fast guys who were just cruising on geared bikes. *Good*.
Third... spring just broke today. It felt damned good, didn't it?
Fourth, you need a really good, stylish wool jersey to ride in next winter, right? Well get yourself over to Stevil Kinevil's place and put an order in for one. No, it's not cheap. Uh huh, it's a Smokey and the Bandit jersey. Yes, it's going to be really well made by Earth, Wind and Rider, who make some beautiful premium merino wool gear. Plus it'll make Farrah Fawcett crazy about you, and if you go camping with Ned Beatty, it'll ensure that Ned's the one the hillbillies take an unnatural shine to. You can't go wrong! Stevil is closing the order in a couple weeks so get your order in now. And as if you needed any extra motivation, he sponsored the *$&% out of the Tacchino last year, so 15% of you are wearing or riding on stuff he *gave* you. Support those who support the sport, right?
Finally, let's have some music. I think we're going to do some mashups this week.
First off is some mountain biking with a great musical mashup of Black Sabbath's War Pigs, and Ludacris' Move, Bitch. Yeah, I know, it's garbage. I don't care. I love it. NSFW and an unlikely couple of songs but it works just fine. It also features some shred-o-matic MTB riding.
That was good. But this one is so old school that there's ivy growing up the sides of it.
Now this next one is nice. Mixing Queen, Weezer and Joan Jett is kind of like having a cupcake that's equal parts cake, frosting, and candied cherries. It's not exactly nutritious - not a lick of fiber in it - but man, it's tasty, and amazingly no one part overshadows the others.
Now this one... well, the songs aren't equal. But it will make old hippies cry. And it's damned good. I don't know why. It just is.
Hey, what's the difference between the Beatles and Metallica? One's an overrated, self-important sellout band fronted by a pompous ass, that plays simplistic music with trite lyrics that millions of T-shirt wearing stoners inexplicably love. And the other one plays heavy metal.
I actually like Metallica a lot. But what if Metallica and Lady Gaga had a love child? Well... this:
Yeah, that adds a new dimension to head banging. I was banging mine on the desk just now. It's compelling in a really disturbing way. Or maybe it was disturbing in a really compelling way. I don't know.
The best mashups work because they put some things together that you'd never imagine working, but somehow they work pretty well. I hate to say it but Lady Gaga and Metallica are like that.
So are Jay Z and Verve.
Wow. It's a bitter sweet smack my bitch up, if ever I saw one.
Sometimes a mashup works fine and makes you smile - like when Run DMC meets the White Stripes. If you're a person of a certain age - about 38 to about 50 - this one has to make you smile.
And sometimes a mashup just works beautifully as a piece of music. This one is complex, and beautiful at the same time. Wow, good call to put them together.
Have fun this weekend. Ride hard. Drink deep. And do whatever other Verb/Adjective combination makes you happy.
Before we get to the tunes, a few short thoughts.
First, I don’t know what is a sadder statement about American culture… that I texted a friend today, a college graduate I was to ride with “Where U at?” and that we both understood; or that my smart phone, so-called, didn’t autocorrect that the way it constantly autocorrects all the grammatically correct phrases I type in.
Second, it was nice getting in the third ride of the week today, just an hour and ten or so with Seibold and Todd B., who I hadn't seen since 'cross. Took the fixie out, and man, was that painful to try to keep up on the wheel. Painful but good, it's the quickest way to get fit, providing you don't hurt yourself. Spun out if it's even slightly downhill, standing climb if it's even slightly uphill, panting the whole way to keep up with a couple fast guys who were just cruising on geared bikes. *Good*.
TOT 21: The Elusive Seiboldus Hirsuticus Trackstanding Behind a Tree
Third... spring just broke today. It felt damned good, didn't it?
Fourth, you need a really good, stylish wool jersey to ride in next winter, right? Well get yourself over to Stevil Kinevil's place and put an order in for one. No, it's not cheap. Uh huh, it's a Smokey and the Bandit jersey. Yes, it's going to be really well made by Earth, Wind and Rider, who make some beautiful premium merino wool gear. Plus it'll make Farrah Fawcett crazy about you, and if you go camping with Ned Beatty, it'll ensure that Ned's the one the hillbillies take an unnatural shine to. You can't go wrong! Stevil is closing the order in a couple weeks so get your order in now. And as if you needed any extra motivation, he sponsored the *$&% out of the Tacchino last year, so 15% of you are wearing or riding on stuff he *gave* you. Support those who support the sport, right?
Finally, let's have some music. I think we're going to do some mashups this week.First off is some mountain biking with a great musical mashup of Black Sabbath's War Pigs, and Ludacris' Move, Bitch. Yeah, I know, it's garbage. I don't care. I love it. NSFW and an unlikely couple of songs but it works just fine. It also features some shred-o-matic MTB riding.
That was good. But this one is so old school that there's ivy growing up the sides of it.
Now this next one is nice. Mixing Queen, Weezer and Joan Jett is kind of like having a cupcake that's equal parts cake, frosting, and candied cherries. It's not exactly nutritious - not a lick of fiber in it - but man, it's tasty, and amazingly no one part overshadows the others.
Now this one... well, the songs aren't equal. But it will make old hippies cry. And it's damned good. I don't know why. It just is.
Hey, what's the difference between the Beatles and Metallica? One's an overrated, self-important sellout band fronted by a pompous ass, that plays simplistic music with trite lyrics that millions of T-shirt wearing stoners inexplicably love. And the other one plays heavy metal.
I actually like Metallica a lot. But what if Metallica and Lady Gaga had a love child? Well... this:
Yeah, that adds a new dimension to head banging. I was banging mine on the desk just now. It's compelling in a really disturbing way. Or maybe it was disturbing in a really compelling way. I don't know.
The best mashups work because they put some things together that you'd never imagine working, but somehow they work pretty well. I hate to say it but Lady Gaga and Metallica are like that.
So are Jay Z and Verve.
Wow. It's a bitter sweet smack my bitch up, if ever I saw one.
Sometimes a mashup works fine and makes you smile - like when Run DMC meets the White Stripes. If you're a person of a certain age - about 38 to about 50 - this one has to make you smile.
And sometimes a mashup just works beautifully as a piece of music. This one is complex, and beautiful at the same time. Wow, good call to put them together.
Have fun this weekend. Ride hard. Drink deep. And do whatever other Verb/Adjective combination makes you happy.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
More Stuff & ToT 19 & 20
So I'm listening to ABC News on the radio on the way home tonight, post-ride, and they tell me that "Japanese officials are desperately trying to stave off nuclear winter."
Really?
I'm old enough to remember what the concept of nuclear winter actually is. The theory went that a full scale exchange of nuclear warheads between the U.S. and the Warsaw Pact would result in enough dust being kicked into the stratosphere, that significant global cooling would result, freezing crops in the summer, and devastating life around the globe. Y'know, if the blasts of several hundred to several thousand warheads and ensuing radiation didn't do it.
Worst case scenario for the Japanese nuclear disaster right now? The area immediately around the plant is thoroughly contaminated and a no-go area for a year or two, and a 20 to 30 square mile area is contaminated for quite a while, and in need of remediation.
That's not a nuclear winter. Not even close.
What it is, is a good example of the media absolutely shafting us by not giving out accurate facts, reporting advocacy group hyperbole (or maybe just makin' shit up) as fact, and trying to scare us and sell more better spots to advertisers.
It's not limited to one side or the other. The ubiquitous Drudge Report is sensationalizing the living shite out of this disaster too, and from the looks of it is specializing in scaring the bejeezus out of Californians. Sure, it's fish-in-a-barrel, and something most of the rest of the country has fantasized about doing from time to time... but that doesn't make it right.
Our media is failing us badly, and failing the Japanese too. They aren't even close to telling us the truth and they're ignoring the real story, which is the brutal, massive humanitarian disaster, and the Japanese people's desperate need of charitable donations.
I'll repeat again. Despite the best efforts of Japanese engineers to foul things up, and despite the most horrendous natural disaster we're likely to see in our lifetimes, or our kids' lifetimes, and despite a 40-50 year-old plant design, this is no Chernobyl. [Worst case scenario discussed rationally here.] It's not nothing; the damage is significant and we will need to clean up, and learn lessons, and yes a number of people will be hurt. But it's not Chernobyl, or nuclear freaking winter for that matter. Keep hope, give generously, and say a prayer for the Japanese.
Really?
I'm old enough to remember what the concept of nuclear winter actually is. The theory went that a full scale exchange of nuclear warheads between the U.S. and the Warsaw Pact would result in enough dust being kicked into the stratosphere, that significant global cooling would result, freezing crops in the summer, and devastating life around the globe. Y'know, if the blasts of several hundred to several thousand warheads and ensuing radiation didn't do it.
Worst case scenario for the Japanese nuclear disaster right now? The area immediately around the plant is thoroughly contaminated and a no-go area for a year or two, and a 20 to 30 square mile area is contaminated for quite a while, and in need of remediation.
That's not a nuclear winter. Not even close.
What it is, is a good example of the media absolutely shafting us by not giving out accurate facts, reporting advocacy group hyperbole (or maybe just makin' shit up) as fact, and trying to scare us and sell more better spots to advertisers.
It's not limited to one side or the other. The ubiquitous Drudge Report is sensationalizing the living shite out of this disaster too, and from the looks of it is specializing in scaring the bejeezus out of Californians. Sure, it's fish-in-a-barrel, and something most of the rest of the country has fantasized about doing from time to time... but that doesn't make it right.
Our media is failing us badly, and failing the Japanese too. They aren't even close to telling us the truth and they're ignoring the real story, which is the brutal, massive humanitarian disaster, and the Japanese people's desperate need of charitable donations.
I'll repeat again. Despite the best efforts of Japanese engineers to foul things up, and despite the most horrendous natural disaster we're likely to see in our lifetimes, or our kids' lifetimes, and despite a 40-50 year-old plant design, this is no Chernobyl. [Worst case scenario discussed rationally here.] It's not nothing; the damage is significant and we will need to clean up, and learn lessons, and yes a number of people will be hurt. But it's not Chernobyl, or nuclear freaking winter for that matter. Keep hope, give generously, and say a prayer for the Japanese.
---------------------------------------------
TOT 20: Delonghi EC 155:
a $75 Slice of +1 Post-Ride Espresso for the Office
a $75 Slice of +1 Post-Ride Espresso for the Office
ToT 19: On My Fixie,
Out W/t Fast as Schidt Sean
Out W/t Fast as Schidt Sean
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Off Topic Stuff
There's a lot of pretty mind blowing stuff going on the world right now. I have a sense that I'm doing okay, and my friends are doing okay, but the world's physical and political arrangement seems to be unraveling. The middle east looks like Europe in 1848. Japan looks like something at the end of the world. The U.S. looks like a nation that is afraid to move forward and afraid to move back. It's the end of the world as we know it...
But I feel fine.
It's important to remind ourselves not to take counsel of our fears, to not let our fears overwhelm us in tough times. My mode in tough times is to hyperventilate for about 10 seconds, remind myself that it's time to pull the big girl panties up, and then buckle down and get going. This is hard because as more information about the Japanese earthquakes, the tsunami and the suffering becomes known, the only plausible reaction from a sentient, caring human being is along the lines of "fuckity fuckity fuckity fuck fuck fuck."
Seriously. I think I may have actually said that the other day when the news broke.
But as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reminds us:
The two most sensible things I've heard about what's going on in Japan are:
I'll repeat: DON'T PANIC!
So what should we do?
The real answer to "what should I do?," besides "pray for the Japanese people," is "give generously." The Japanese people are fast friends of the United States - they happen to be strategically important too, BTW - and they need our help.
CNN.com has a very useful page that lists some of the charities that are helping in Japan. Please feel free to give a money if you're so inclined. Water, basic shelter, food, and soon medical care will be essential needs that the charities can help with - if they can get enough lift to the affected areas. The scope of the humanitarian disaster is simply soul crushing; it looks to me like Katrina, if you packed the full destruction of three states into an area the size of Rhode Island. Charity Navigator offers a searchable database of charities that rates them for effectiveness and efficiency; I like to give to charities that have a low overhead cost and a high program cost - in other words the money goes more to helping people, and less to paying the admin staff and fundraising.
Anyhow, that's been your moment of halfway clear thinking.
Now go ride your damn bike, say a prayer, appreciate what you have, hug somebody you love, and chill the hell out for a while.
This too shall pass. It always does.
But I feel fine.
It's important to remind ourselves not to take counsel of our fears, to not let our fears overwhelm us in tough times. My mode in tough times is to hyperventilate for about 10 seconds, remind myself that it's time to pull the big girl panties up, and then buckle down and get going. This is hard because as more information about the Japanese earthquakes, the tsunami and the suffering becomes known, the only plausible reaction from a sentient, caring human being is along the lines of "fuckity fuckity fuckity fuck fuck fuck."
Seriously. I think I may have actually said that the other day when the news broke.
But as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reminds us:
DON'T PANIC!Infantile reactions to any disaster are usually pretty counterproductive in the long run, but they're the first reaction most of us have. So let's get our heads on straight together, a'ight? And if anybody is trying to politically capitalize on this Act of God, kick them in the nuts, for the sake of our collective sanity. Mother Earth is not angry at us for poking her with oil derricks and mining implements. 500 year earthquakes have nothing to do with global warming. And it's not God's revenge on gay people either because believe me, there's precedent for God kicking our asses about various things, and he usually makes a point of telling us that's exactly why he's doing it, at least if any of the religious texts can be believed.
The two most sensible things I've heard about what's going on in Japan are:
- Don't freak out about the destruction; it's terrible but this is a 500 year earthquake, the kind that hits the Earth only once every 500 years or so at the most. We should be mindful of earthquake and tsunami risks but remember this one is a black swan hitting the Pacific Rim of Fire and probably not a good justification for rebuilding our society to with stand a 9.7 earthquake (an X thousand year earthquake); and,
- The reactor fire / meltdown Japan is undergoing is not nothing, but it's not going to be Chernobyl, either. The latter comes from this article that I would strongly encourage you to read. It appears to be a pretty sensible and knowledgeable discussion of that part of the disaster, and based on my limited technical knowledge of reactor design - I won't bore you with the details of how I came to have any knowledge about them - sounds about right. The short version is that bad things can happen and some significant amount of radiation will likely leak, but US and Japanese reactor design is radically different from the Soviet design that blew at Chernobyl, starting with the triple containment vessels we use, versus the uncontained reactors the Soviets used. Nobody really knows what's going on or how bad it will get, but what we do know is the folks who are in full fledged panic have no grasp of the facts whatsoever. The only real flaw is that the author ignores the fact that people on his side of the political aisle are using the cynical reaction of the professional no-nukes lobby as a fundraising gambit just as the no-nukes people are using the disaster - but that's a fairly small flaw in what appears to be a sober assessment of the problem. So read that article, and go read some more actual facts about nuclear reactors, it will make you smarter *and* less worried at the same time. Oh, you'll still be concerned and damned worried for the Japanese in the region around that powerplant. But your concern will be appropriate and measured.
I'll repeat: DON'T PANIC!
So what should we do?
The real answer to "what should I do?," besides "pray for the Japanese people," is "give generously." The Japanese people are fast friends of the United States - they happen to be strategically important too, BTW - and they need our help.
CNN.com has a very useful page that lists some of the charities that are helping in Japan. Please feel free to give a money if you're so inclined. Water, basic shelter, food, and soon medical care will be essential needs that the charities can help with - if they can get enough lift to the affected areas. The scope of the humanitarian disaster is simply soul crushing; it looks to me like Katrina, if you packed the full destruction of three states into an area the size of Rhode Island. Charity Navigator offers a searchable database of charities that rates them for effectiveness and efficiency; I like to give to charities that have a low overhead cost and a high program cost - in other words the money goes more to helping people, and less to paying the admin staff and fundraising.
Anyhow, that's been your moment of halfway clear thinking.
Now go ride your damn bike, say a prayer, appreciate what you have, hug somebody you love, and chill the hell out for a while.
This too shall pass. It always does.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
The CX Mothership Connection
Word to the wise, people.
Those who have ears, hear. And those who don't, are gonna get funked up.
Listen up. Mark your calendars now. The Tacchino has moved to September 25th. That's right. It's going to be the MABRA Super 8 opener, falling on the Sunday after Charm City. And yeah, we'll be bringing the funk again this year.
In fact, we're in negotiations to bring at least 20% more funk than last year, and if my star-shaped sunglasses hold up through the negotiations, we'll be delivering a king sized trunk of funk to wiggle your hips and shake your junk.
Sure road season has just started, and mountain bike racing season is barely off the ground. But *those* disciplines have repeatedly failed to bring the funk.
Not us.
This race is The One. Like Bootsy says, don't forget The One.
We're bringing it this 'cross season. I don't know how we're going to improve the Tacchino, but I've started mainlining espresso and cheap bourbon in the hopes of having some hallucinations that bring me some inspiration. That, and I'm listening to a *lot* of early 70's George Clinton, staying up all night dancing around in my basement, deranged sweat lodge style, and the ideas are bustin' loose.
We're gonna tear the roof off this sucka, people.
You hear?
Yep. I thought so.
Now scuttle off and mark your calendar now. You don't want to miss the CX Mothership Connection.
And would somebody drop me an email offline tell me how to get this Jeri Curl out of my hair? I gotta go to work tomorrow.
Those who have ears, hear. And those who don't, are gonna get funked up.
Listen up. Mark your calendars now. The Tacchino has moved to September 25th. That's right. It's going to be the MABRA Super 8 opener, falling on the Sunday after Charm City. And yeah, we'll be bringing the funk again this year.
In fact, we're in negotiations to bring at least 20% more funk than last year, and if my star-shaped sunglasses hold up through the negotiations, we'll be delivering a king sized trunk of funk to wiggle your hips and shake your junk.
Sure road season has just started, and mountain bike racing season is barely off the ground. But *those* disciplines have repeatedly failed to bring the funk.
Not us.
This race is The One. Like Bootsy says, don't forget The One.
We're bringing it this 'cross season. I don't know how we're going to improve the Tacchino, but I've started mainlining espresso and cheap bourbon in the hopes of having some hallucinations that bring me some inspiration. That, and I'm listening to a *lot* of early 70's George Clinton, staying up all night dancing around in my basement, deranged sweat lodge style, and the ideas are bustin' loose.
We're gonna tear the roof off this sucka, people.
You hear?
Yep. I thought so.
Now scuttle off and mark your calendar now. You don't want to miss the CX Mothership Connection.
And would somebody drop me an email offline tell me how to get this Jeri Curl out of my hair? I gotta go to work tomorrow.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Hard Rain is Gonna Fall
I was driving home tonight in a pretty heavy rain on Rt. 50 and heard the emergency signal on the radio. "Oh, it's a good idea to test that right about now. Smart." Only it wasn't a test.
Some heavy rain passed through the area today. It put me in mind of some rain songs.
I like this version of Dylan's classic.
They used to play this around 2:00 AM in this German bar where I used to get just obliterated. I liked it the first time I heard it. Then I hated it for a very long time. Then I liked it because it put me in mind of all the friends I used to get hammered with in that bar. I figured out there that Germans are incredibly sentimental. It tends to be hidden under about 10 cubic yards of granite, and a thick loden coat. But it's in there. Germans seem to love this song. On the merits. Which is weird.
And this is one I kind of liked before I figured out John Cougar Mellencamp was insufferably smug.
And this is just nice.
Yeah man. Everybody in music has to do a Rain song. It's the Rules.
Everybody.
Everybody.
And I guess some bands are just rain-themed.
Have fun this weekend. Ride strong.
Some heavy rain passed through the area today. It put me in mind of some rain songs.
I like this version of Dylan's classic.
They used to play this around 2:00 AM in this German bar where I used to get just obliterated. I liked it the first time I heard it. Then I hated it for a very long time. Then I liked it because it put me in mind of all the friends I used to get hammered with in that bar. I figured out there that Germans are incredibly sentimental. It tends to be hidden under about 10 cubic yards of granite, and a thick loden coat. But it's in there. Germans seem to love this song. On the merits. Which is weird.
And this is one I kind of liked before I figured out John Cougar Mellencamp was insufferably smug.
And this is just nice.
Yeah man. Everybody in music has to do a Rain song. It's the Rules.
Everybody.
Everybody.
And I guess some bands are just rain-themed.
Have fun this weekend. Ride strong.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Mice, Men & Plans
I went to the soiree at Twenty-20 cycling in Baltimore last night to greet Richard Fries and Tim Johnson and a crew of bikey people who had ridden down from Boston for the National Bike Summit in D.C. Hell of a ride, from the sounds of it - cold, snow, rain, and the boss man from Pedros crashed out and destroyed his shoulder doing a townline sprint. Nice. My main mission was to try to steer them onto a safe route. They planned to ride down Route 1 into D.C., leaving Balmer at 8:00 AM.
Yeah, I had the same reaction my D.C. / NoVa readers just did. Anyhow, I linked up with them, got them the route, agreed to join up along the way, drank two beers (Resurrection, very nice), missed out on the pizza, tried to joke with Tim Johnson but only insulted him, chatted with lots of nice people, and peed in the corner.
I only made one of those things up.
This morning I rolled out early to get to the designated Rendyzvous point. Did I mention that they made the youngest guy on the trip, a good young framebuilder from Boston, the navigator, and that he apparently was good at getting them lost, based on the jokes? Well anyhow, he was supposed to bring them along the route into D.C. and I'd meet up with them... so anyhow, after waiting near the northern terminus of Powder Mill Road for an hour and 10 minutes and hearing no radio response, I decided it was time to take my hypothermic ass into D.C. So I probably scored more points with those guys, which is great, because you never can have enough people mildly disliking you.
I had to hustle to work. This was interesting because there was a small but steady and significant headwind the whole way in. I was a little spent when I got to work, 40 miles is a little more than my usual weekday riding dose.
I learned something at work though. That is, Sportsbalm Hot embrocation doesn't come off under the pulsating blast of a 1.2 gal/min high efficiency shower, and the dregs of a two year old Suave Body Wash (Motto: Fine, we're not as good as Axe. But we only cost half as much) only serve to help spread the remaining embro to the genitals and eye sockets.
Interestingly - and by interestingly I mean painfully - I sat in a couple meetings with my legs basically on fire. This would have been bad, but after being all hypothermic and shivery, it actually felt kinda good. And it smelled like the start line of a cross race. Which was *awesome*. For me anyhow. I'm sure it smelt like burnt underwear to my co-workers, but I'm there to make me money, not there to make them happy.
The ride home was just as significant. I was sure that it was Wife of Rouleur's Garden Club night. That's right, it's a G. thang. Some last minute emails generated one of those situations that wasn't life threatening, but which required attention lest the big boss start asking obvious questions, and, God forbid, hard-to-answer non-obvious ones. So it took a solid hour after my scheduled leaving time to answer the obvious ones, and I trotted out of work sorta late, convinced it was my butt if I didn't get home fast. You don't mess with a G. thang, shorty.
I didn't go super hard. But what I did do was a steady L3/L4 tempo the whole way, and on every little rise where I started to slow, I stood up and tapped out an effort until I crested it.
By the time I was rolling down the far end of Good Luck Road, I was about 80% on the rivet, and I had that tight-all-over feeling that you get when the bike is holding you in the harness. Muscles that aren't related to pedaling are locked into position, in place. You feel every pedal stroke, and can tell if your circles are starting to get squared...
It felt pretty damn good. I wasn't on top of the pedals, that'll take a month more of work. But I felt about 3/4ths on top of them and it'll be interesting to see what the power numbers look like.
Do you know, it's March 8th? Last year at this time, I had just finished my first real training ride after being totally laid out with the blown lower back. It was about 23 or 25 miles, easy. It crushed me. Here's what I said:
Be happy. Find progress where you can. Make the most of what you got. Be good to your family and friends, and for God's sake, try not to pick on Tim Johnson after he's just had the Day From Hell. You only get one chance to live each day, then it's gone. And be grateful for what you get.
Yeah, I had the same reaction my D.C. / NoVa readers just did. Anyhow, I linked up with them, got them the route, agreed to join up along the way, drank two beers (Resurrection, very nice), missed out on the pizza, tried to joke with Tim Johnson but only insulted him, chatted with lots of nice people, and peed in the corner.
I only made one of those things up.
This morning I rolled out early to get to the designated Rendyzvous point. Did I mention that they made the youngest guy on the trip, a good young framebuilder from Boston, the navigator, and that he apparently was good at getting them lost, based on the jokes? Well anyhow, he was supposed to bring them along the route into D.C. and I'd meet up with them... so anyhow, after waiting near the northern terminus of Powder Mill Road for an hour and 10 minutes and hearing no radio response, I decided it was time to take my hypothermic ass into D.C. So I probably scored more points with those guys, which is great, because you never can have enough people mildly disliking you.
I had to hustle to work. This was interesting because there was a small but steady and significant headwind the whole way in. I was a little spent when I got to work, 40 miles is a little more than my usual weekday riding dose.
I learned something at work though. That is, Sportsbalm Hot embrocation doesn't come off under the pulsating blast of a 1.2 gal/min high efficiency shower, and the dregs of a two year old Suave Body Wash (Motto: Fine, we're not as good as Axe. But we only cost half as much) only serve to help spread the remaining embro to the genitals and eye sockets.
Interestingly - and by interestingly I mean painfully - I sat in a couple meetings with my legs basically on fire. This would have been bad, but after being all hypothermic and shivery, it actually felt kinda good. And it smelled like the start line of a cross race. Which was *awesome*. For me anyhow. I'm sure it smelt like burnt underwear to my co-workers, but I'm there to make me money, not there to make them happy.
The ride home was just as significant. I was sure that it was Wife of Rouleur's Garden Club night. That's right, it's a G. thang. Some last minute emails generated one of those situations that wasn't life threatening, but which required attention lest the big boss start asking obvious questions, and, God forbid, hard-to-answer non-obvious ones. So it took a solid hour after my scheduled leaving time to answer the obvious ones, and I trotted out of work sorta late, convinced it was my butt if I didn't get home fast. You don't mess with a G. thang, shorty.
I didn't go super hard. But what I did do was a steady L3/L4 tempo the whole way, and on every little rise where I started to slow, I stood up and tapped out an effort until I crested it.
By the time I was rolling down the far end of Good Luck Road, I was about 80% on the rivet, and I had that tight-all-over feeling that you get when the bike is holding you in the harness. Muscles that aren't related to pedaling are locked into position, in place. You feel every pedal stroke, and can tell if your circles are starting to get squared...
It felt pretty damn good. I wasn't on top of the pedals, that'll take a month more of work. But I felt about 3/4ths on top of them and it'll be interesting to see what the power numbers look like.
Do you know, it's March 8th? Last year at this time, I had just finished my first real training ride after being totally laid out with the blown lower back. It was about 23 or 25 miles, easy. It crushed me. Here's what I said:
It wasn't a good kind of hurt that I felt at that point; it was a bad, ill-used sort of feeling. The first thing my wife said to me was, "you look really haggard." But I was looking haggard at the end of the ride and I had earned the right to look bad. The nagging fear that my back wouldn't hold up proved irrational, and I proved to myself that I can get through a ride of decent length despite the layoff, and despite the discomfort of the ride itself. It was the first hammer blow on the block of metal I hope to build back up into a decent cyclist.Well, here we are. I may have done a bunch of things lately to seemingly try to make people cars, my friends and Tim Johnson hate me, and I'm fat as a monk right now, and my attitude frankly sucks and it's going into my permanent record... but as a cyclist I feel okay and I'm way ahead of last year, and looking forward to a good MTB racing season, and then to cross.
Be happy. Find progress where you can. Make the most of what you got. Be good to your family and friends, and for God's sake, try not to pick on Tim Johnson after he's just had the Day From Hell. You only get one chance to live each day, then it's gone. And be grateful for what you get.
TOT 18: My Headlamp Rig
AKA Wall-E
AKA Wall-E
Sunday, March 06, 2011
My Weekend
Saturday I linked up with a substantial chunk of The Morning Ride, DirtDevilDivision, for 2.5 hours of mountain biking fun. It was the first MTB ride for me since meeting D'Brickashaw, and I was a little rusty. Ordinarily I would take the boinger for any ride longer than 90 minutes, but I seem to have gotten some solvent on the brakes that makes 'em slippery, and they need bleeding anyhow and there's not a Tektro bleed kit anywhere to be found in the house... So it was onto Frankenbike.
It was a lot of fun despite being in crap shape. There were maybe 5 or 6 potholes on the trail but we did the regular Tour De Patapsco lap of the park, and we only needed to walk in that handful of places. Everywhere else the ground was as tacky as gum rubber, dream conditions. Would have been a perfect day to ride the boinger since I can flat out bomb down hills with that... but the rigid single acquitted itself nicely. The highlight of the ride for me was cruising up a couple little kickers that normally brutalize me... the momentum lesson I've learned riding w/t the TMR crew is staying with me. The threshold power... not so much, I was off the bike on Vineyard which is unusual. Maybe it was being conservative; I didn't want to blow up at the 50% ride and then have to totally struggle back in. Most of the people on the ride seemed a bit cracked for that matter; it's been a long winter and nothing really prepares a body for that.
It was a bit of a fitness wakeup call too. I'm doing better than I usually am at this point but theres a hell of a lot of fat to be lost and a lot of fitness to be gained. Time to get after it. Despite being near the bottom of that hill, I felt good because the joy of just riding the MTB again and hanging out with friends carried me. I capped it off with lunch w/t the Rouleur Family at The Honey Pig, a very good Korean diner on Rt. 40 in Ellicott City / Catonsville. They have the best tasting kimchi I've had in a long time and the kimchi jigae (sold there as pork & kimchi soup) was remarkable. Wife of Rouleur's bibim bap was also pretty remarkable, no fried egg on top but otherwise quite normal, only better.
This all left me amped up enough to consider taking the fixie on the commute to work tomorrow.
And if you're havin' trouble with demonic thoughts about women, or a dirty above ground pool this week... well, you know who to call.
It was a lot of fun despite being in crap shape. There were maybe 5 or 6 potholes on the trail but we did the regular Tour De Patapsco lap of the park, and we only needed to walk in that handful of places. Everywhere else the ground was as tacky as gum rubber, dream conditions. Would have been a perfect day to ride the boinger since I can flat out bomb down hills with that... but the rigid single acquitted itself nicely. The highlight of the ride for me was cruising up a couple little kickers that normally brutalize me... the momentum lesson I've learned riding w/t the TMR crew is staying with me. The threshold power... not so much, I was off the bike on Vineyard which is unusual. Maybe it was being conservative; I didn't want to blow up at the 50% ride and then have to totally struggle back in. Most of the people on the ride seemed a bit cracked for that matter; it's been a long winter and nothing really prepares a body for that.
It was a bit of a fitness wakeup call too. I'm doing better than I usually am at this point but theres a hell of a lot of fat to be lost and a lot of fitness to be gained. Time to get after it. Despite being near the bottom of that hill, I felt good because the joy of just riding the MTB again and hanging out with friends carried me. I capped it off with lunch w/t the Rouleur Family at The Honey Pig, a very good Korean diner on Rt. 40 in Ellicott City / Catonsville. They have the best tasting kimchi I've had in a long time and the kimchi jigae (sold there as pork & kimchi soup) was remarkable. Wife of Rouleur's bibim bap was also pretty remarkable, no fried egg on top but otherwise quite normal, only better.
This all left me amped up enough to consider taking the fixie on the commute to work tomorrow.
Release the Hounds!
A Small Cross-Section of TMR at Ride Start
A Small Cross-Section of TMR at Ride Start
What I Did Sunday Afternoon
1 Wheat, 1 White
1 Wheat, 1 White
And if you're havin' trouble with demonic thoughts about women, or a dirty above ground pool this week... well, you know who to call.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
A Substantial Delta
I feel a little raw this week. A little at loose ends after a couple (but not enough) rides. Too much work. Not enough sleep. Time for some music. I'll start with perhaps the greatest Blues threat this side of R.L. Burnsides' famous "I got a ass pocket a whiskey, an' a front pocket a gin...& etc."
Let's talk about the blues this week.
Yeah, The Taildragger, T Model Ford, killed a man once. For real. You got a problem with that? He'll put his foot in yo ass, you understand? He ain't done rememberin' you yet, neither.
That's beautiful music right there, but it's not pretty. It's beautiful the way a mean ass good looking drunk redneck farmgirl is. Do not mistake the beautiful bones in that music for softness; there is a very hard edge that lurks in the lyrics and what he sings about and what a lot of the old bluesmen sing about. It is authentic.
That said, you shouldn't make a fetish of authenticity. If you're going to make a fetish of anything, make a fetish of the truths that authentic artists try to tell. Authenticity is nice but it's not the only thing. A lot of new, synthesized stuff - music and consumer goods - is just great.
But authentic stuff carries in it a grain of something enduring. You're looking at a piece of history here, an older style of music that is passing away, and life stories that are just damn hard. Appreciate the authenticity in it but don't yearn for that kind of authenticity - authentic hard, a lifestyle I've lived now and again for a couple months at a time and thankfully I don't have to do it any more. Because it sucks. You shouldn't don the rose colored glasses and yearn for the hard old days to come back. Life is easy now because a lot of people dragged themselves up out of hard times, and we're living on the social capital. Civilizations rise and fall, if not us then our kids or their kids will have it damn hard, and if you could zip forward in time, they'd put a foot in your ass for not doing more to prevent the hard times from coming.
For now, you and I can crow about the authenticity of this music and how cool it is, but what we should really think about is the truths in it. T Model is an interesting curiosity to us, a leftover from an age that was a little less artificial, a little less cushioned from reality. There's a heartfelt genuine-ness to it that appeals. It contains an honesty that is striking today because most of life today is so many people blowing so much bullshit at each other. I see a lot of people who are mildly famous, look at what they're doing, and realize their main talent is self-promotion of their mediocre selves. They'd be selling snake oil - and starving - in an earlier age. If I wanted to self promote like that I could, it's not terribly difficult once you see it. But it's hollow. The self promoters are narcissistic. They've mastered smoke and mirrors and there's money in that particular end of show business, in politics and media, but there's no substance. The blues are not like that. They are not like Justin Bieber moaning about his heartbreak or wanting some girl. What the fuck does Justin Bieber know about anything? Nothing. T Model maybe isn't a brain surgeon, but he knows some stuff that he picked up at the University of Hard Knocks. He isn't telling you how great he is, he's never going to fail, and blowing cubic yards of smoke up your ass. Instead, he's going to tell you some hard truths about how it is, about what he's like and about what life is like. When he sings in another song that he's a good hard working wood cuttin' gravel road living man, that means something. It is freighted with significance and he's telling you about his identity, who he is at the core, a man who comes from a rough, rural place and does what he has to do, damn hard labor, to keep food on the table. What he's saying is *attractive* to a woman who lives just up the road, who is hanging out in the same juke joint. She's not going to throw her panties at him and scream, but she's going to find him interesting, and in the world he comes from - where that bluesman is doing hard physical labor during the day to put food on the table, that kind of thing is worth something. Your I-Pad is not.
Never assume that people who speak softly and soothingly to you and tell you nice things, are conveying anything meaningful to you. They may be doing so, but often, meaning, significance in life, usually comes in rough packages rather than wrapped in shiny paper and ribbons. I would bet that the true-est, rawest moments you've experienced in your life have mostly involved bitter disappointments. *That* is what traditional blues are conveying information about.
Skip James recorded this one when he was dying of cancer.
Damn. That is some honesty that cuts to the bone, served up on a plate by a waiter who has one foot in the grave. He was doing that performance to raise money for an operation to try to cure his cancer, to no avail. So tell me, what are the problems that are troubling you in your life today?
Robert Johnson was singing this next one about segregated, gangster-ridden, corrupt Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler, Stormy, husky, brawling Chicago.
Sweet home, Chicago, eh? Loving a city as rough as that was when Robert Johnson sang about it, must have been as rough as being in a marriage with a fun, physically abusive drunk. Robert Johnson may not even have gotten there by the time he sang about it... how tough does your life have to be, to view 1920's Chicago as the land of milk and honey? Rough jobs, tenements, crime, corrupt ward heelers - is heaven to a 1920s bluesman. What is that telling you about life in Tunicaville, Mississippi in 1921?
You've heard about a suitcase full of blues, right? Well, Sonny Boy Williamson appears to have traveled with an attache case full of blues. He sang a lot of songs about people doing him wrong, and if you get a good look at his face when he's singing, you can see he's thinking about some particular people, or a person. There is an intensity in his lyrics that one doesn't get from Lady Gaga.
And when Son House sang, "Here Come the Blues," well, you get a sense he's a guy who can see 'em coming from a long ways off. His music will help us deal with them when they get here, be a midwife to our sorrow over a woman leaving, a spell in jail, or things just plain being tough. Yep, here come the blues.
Rough people get comfortable around elemental truths, I think, because life is a little more honest around the edges with you when you're living hard. There's no cushion if you're living rough. No use lying about your predicament; you can't spin doctor it if you're poor, crime ridden, a down-on-your-luck blue collar drunk, or in the case of these old blues artists frankly oppressed black men living in grinding poverty in a segregated nation that doesn't give a fuck if you live or die. So Blind Willie Johnson asks what Justin Bieber can't even conceive of, "What is the Soul of a Man?"
It's not for nothing that Ulysses had a rough trip home. The damn story wouldn't be worth telling if his biggest hassle was the cruise line losing his luggage. Wouldn't have had any meaning, and we'd have gotten tired of hearing about his pissing match with Achilles during the war, this hot chick he cheated with who wouldn't stop emailing him and bugging out his friends, and the morons running the cruise line. That his friends get killed, his mistress turns his men into pigs and every time he gets near the ocean he gets shipwrecked because he pissed off Poseidon, makes it worthwhile. We look at Ulysses, and we learn what not to do, and we are reminded that life is a hurt locker, at its core. A vale of tears. A tough challenge when we leave the friendly confines.
I just wanted to remember all you sorry fuckers about that.
Have a nice weekend y'all. Ride some, have fun, hug somebody you love. That's my plan.
T-Model Ford is going to remember you sorry fuckers how it's done.Word.
Let's talk about the blues this week.
Yeah, The Taildragger, T Model Ford, killed a man once. For real. You got a problem with that? He'll put his foot in yo ass, you understand? He ain't done rememberin' you yet, neither.
That's beautiful music right there, but it's not pretty. It's beautiful the way a mean ass good looking drunk redneck farmgirl is. Do not mistake the beautiful bones in that music for softness; there is a very hard edge that lurks in the lyrics and what he sings about and what a lot of the old bluesmen sing about. It is authentic.
That said, you shouldn't make a fetish of authenticity. If you're going to make a fetish of anything, make a fetish of the truths that authentic artists try to tell. Authenticity is nice but it's not the only thing. A lot of new, synthesized stuff - music and consumer goods - is just great.
But authentic stuff carries in it a grain of something enduring. You're looking at a piece of history here, an older style of music that is passing away, and life stories that are just damn hard. Appreciate the authenticity in it but don't yearn for that kind of authenticity - authentic hard, a lifestyle I've lived now and again for a couple months at a time and thankfully I don't have to do it any more. Because it sucks. You shouldn't don the rose colored glasses and yearn for the hard old days to come back. Life is easy now because a lot of people dragged themselves up out of hard times, and we're living on the social capital. Civilizations rise and fall, if not us then our kids or their kids will have it damn hard, and if you could zip forward in time, they'd put a foot in your ass for not doing more to prevent the hard times from coming.
For now, you and I can crow about the authenticity of this music and how cool it is, but what we should really think about is the truths in it. T Model is an interesting curiosity to us, a leftover from an age that was a little less artificial, a little less cushioned from reality. There's a heartfelt genuine-ness to it that appeals. It contains an honesty that is striking today because most of life today is so many people blowing so much bullshit at each other. I see a lot of people who are mildly famous, look at what they're doing, and realize their main talent is self-promotion of their mediocre selves. They'd be selling snake oil - and starving - in an earlier age. If I wanted to self promote like that I could, it's not terribly difficult once you see it. But it's hollow. The self promoters are narcissistic. They've mastered smoke and mirrors and there's money in that particular end of show business, in politics and media, but there's no substance. The blues are not like that. They are not like Justin Bieber moaning about his heartbreak or wanting some girl. What the fuck does Justin Bieber know about anything? Nothing. T Model maybe isn't a brain surgeon, but he knows some stuff that he picked up at the University of Hard Knocks. He isn't telling you how great he is, he's never going to fail, and blowing cubic yards of smoke up your ass. Instead, he's going to tell you some hard truths about how it is, about what he's like and about what life is like. When he sings in another song that he's a good hard working wood cuttin' gravel road living man, that means something. It is freighted with significance and he's telling you about his identity, who he is at the core, a man who comes from a rough, rural place and does what he has to do, damn hard labor, to keep food on the table. What he's saying is *attractive* to a woman who lives just up the road, who is hanging out in the same juke joint. She's not going to throw her panties at him and scream, but she's going to find him interesting, and in the world he comes from - where that bluesman is doing hard physical labor during the day to put food on the table, that kind of thing is worth something. Your I-Pad is not.
Never assume that people who speak softly and soothingly to you and tell you nice things, are conveying anything meaningful to you. They may be doing so, but often, meaning, significance in life, usually comes in rough packages rather than wrapped in shiny paper and ribbons. I would bet that the true-est, rawest moments you've experienced in your life have mostly involved bitter disappointments. *That* is what traditional blues are conveying information about.
Skip James recorded this one when he was dying of cancer.
Damn. That is some honesty that cuts to the bone, served up on a plate by a waiter who has one foot in the grave. He was doing that performance to raise money for an operation to try to cure his cancer, to no avail. So tell me, what are the problems that are troubling you in your life today?
Robert Johnson was singing this next one about segregated, gangster-ridden, corrupt Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler, Stormy, husky, brawling Chicago.
Sweet home, Chicago, eh? Loving a city as rough as that was when Robert Johnson sang about it, must have been as rough as being in a marriage with a fun, physically abusive drunk. Robert Johnson may not even have gotten there by the time he sang about it... how tough does your life have to be, to view 1920's Chicago as the land of milk and honey? Rough jobs, tenements, crime, corrupt ward heelers - is heaven to a 1920s bluesman. What is that telling you about life in Tunicaville, Mississippi in 1921?
You've heard about a suitcase full of blues, right? Well, Sonny Boy Williamson appears to have traveled with an attache case full of blues. He sang a lot of songs about people doing him wrong, and if you get a good look at his face when he's singing, you can see he's thinking about some particular people, or a person. There is an intensity in his lyrics that one doesn't get from Lady Gaga.
And when Son House sang, "Here Come the Blues," well, you get a sense he's a guy who can see 'em coming from a long ways off. His music will help us deal with them when they get here, be a midwife to our sorrow over a woman leaving, a spell in jail, or things just plain being tough. Yep, here come the blues.
Rough people get comfortable around elemental truths, I think, because life is a little more honest around the edges with you when you're living hard. There's no cushion if you're living rough. No use lying about your predicament; you can't spin doctor it if you're poor, crime ridden, a down-on-your-luck blue collar drunk, or in the case of these old blues artists frankly oppressed black men living in grinding poverty in a segregated nation that doesn't give a fuck if you live or die. So Blind Willie Johnson asks what Justin Bieber can't even conceive of, "What is the Soul of a Man?"
I saw a crowd stand talking, I came up right on timeWe like the blues because most of the time, for most artists who sing them, the form works to express some elemental - and what I think will ultimately be proved permanent - truths about life. Much of the time, we spend our lives avoiding the truth, because the truth tends to hurt soft people like us. Maybe it takes people who've lived in a world of hurt, to introduce elemental truths back into our lives. Yeah, life and the truth and everything hurts. SO WHAT. Talk about it. Sing about it. Get off your chest and dance about it. We can deal with it and move on, and R.L. is comin' up to the juke joint next Thursday. Get a cooler of Pabst and we'll dance our asses off and get our drank on. Alright?
Were hearing the doctor and the lawyer, say a man ain't nothing but his mind
I read the bible often, I tries to read it right
As far as I can understand, a man is more than his mind
When Christ stood in the temple, the people stood amazed
Was showing the doctors and the lawyers, how to raise a body from the grave
It's not for nothing that Ulysses had a rough trip home. The damn story wouldn't be worth telling if his biggest hassle was the cruise line losing his luggage. Wouldn't have had any meaning, and we'd have gotten tired of hearing about his pissing match with Achilles during the war, this hot chick he cheated with who wouldn't stop emailing him and bugging out his friends, and the morons running the cruise line. That his friends get killed, his mistress turns his men into pigs and every time he gets near the ocean he gets shipwrecked because he pissed off Poseidon, makes it worthwhile. We look at Ulysses, and we learn what not to do, and we are reminded that life is a hurt locker, at its core. A vale of tears. A tough challenge when we leave the friendly confines.
I just wanted to remember all you sorry fuckers about that.
Have a nice weekend y'all. Ride some, have fun, hug somebody you love. That's my plan.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Commuting: Lessons Re-Learned.
I rolled into and out of D.C. today on the Great Northern Scared Bike Commuter Route, the one that transits Bowie, Goodluck Road, the Northeast Branch, Rhode Island and Montana Ave, thence to L Street.
Holy crap was it a hairball ride today. Along the way in, I had plenty of time to ponder bike commuting. The ride only took 1:20 or so, but when your whole life flashes before your eyes in a second 6-8 times on a single ride, the time between near death experiences seems like whole millenia. So there was plenty of time to figure out the secret to life, death, bike commuting, and how Item 3 is liable to lead to Item 2. Here is what I figured out:
Holy crap was it a hairball ride today. Along the way in, I had plenty of time to ponder bike commuting. The ride only took 1:20 or so, but when your whole life flashes before your eyes in a second 6-8 times on a single ride, the time between near death experiences seems like whole millenia. So there was plenty of time to figure out the secret to life, death, bike commuting, and how Item 3 is liable to lead to Item 2. Here is what I figured out:
- The odds are pretty good everybody who hasn't ridden a road bike in 4 months has completely forgotten how to ride around traffic and stick to a straight line. How I got to work this morning without getting snared in a DWI stop is beyond my comprehension.
- The probably-unlicensed-uninsured day laborers everybody is worried about colliding with? Don't sweat it. They're your friends. I had a collision with a van today, driven by some guys who appeared to fit that description. It was my fault, I clipped the mirror pretty hard with my shoulder trying to lane split. As I unclipped and waited to hear something from the driver, he peeled out and took off like a scalded cat. Wanted nothing to do with me. See? They're my friends.
- There is no safe way to handle shoulderless roads in P.G. County. Sick drivers who like to buzz and swerve in to make a point, lanes that appear then disappear for no rhyme or reason. I rolled up a lane of maybe 10 cars at the junction of 201 and Goodluck, and passed, in order, texting, texting, phone, checking email, phone phone texting, dark windows, angry muttering to self, texting. You could ride with flashing red lights, an air raid siren, a pair of Barrett .50 Cal rifles in a handlebar mount and vivid magenta flames shooting out your ass, and it still wouldn't get anybody's attention. Not in P.G.
- Changing a flat tire in the dark in the woods on the edge of a road is harder than doing it in the light. It is especially hard when your tire 'iron' breaks the moment it touches the tire's sidewall.
- Maryland has nicer roads than Virginia as a rule, but when Maryland decides to let a road go to hell, it doesn't screw around. The potholes are big enough to eat other states' potholes two at a time.
- At this time of year, leaving the office in summer jersey + knee warmers at 5:05 PM and 63 degrees, means it will be 47 by 6:10, and you will only be able to avoid hypothermia by telling yourself you're a hard as shit Belgian flahute. The realization that you're actually a complete pussy will then cause you to double over in laughter, and the combination of warmth from the muscle contractions and the heat-conserving doubling over will help you avoid freezing to death.
- When I stopped to fasten on my headlight, a guy in blue club kit stopped to ask me if I needed anything. I gave the "Nah, I'm fine thanks" response and as he rode away I thought about how that was really classy; I'd have been in the doo doo at that particular spot if I was having a serious problem. I wasn't but hearing another cyclist basically saying he had my six, was really cool. You should always stop to help people who look like they might need it... well, unless you're going for that unprecedented fourth straight Giant Asshole of the Year Award, in which case, you should just keep on riding...
- My ride was made safer by Fast as Schidt Sean, who gave me a CatEye Orbit Spoke Light the other week. You should consider getting one if you ride in the dark at all. This is what it looks like in the dark.
TOT 16: It's Brighter Than Me, For Certain
Thanks Sean! I'm never going to ride at night without one.
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