Something's gonna be forgotten

My room has exploded with junk.

I'm leaving for a 3000+ mile road trip across the Pacific Northwest/Canadian Southwest tomorrow morning.

But darn it, I'm gonna find time to go to Hellyer.

A different kind of crit-ter

I came out for the San Jose BC twilight crit yesterday evening.

So far, that's my first and only crit.

I think I managed to not embarass myself.

Though p'r'aps I should ride with B's next time rather than C's.

I hope the fellow who crunched on lap one is okay--too bad, he was a friendly type who really seemed to be looking forward to riding.

Little training pleasures

I'm not a very goal-oriented person. Biking and running are most often things I enjoy while doing them, more than in anticipation of beating the pants off of someone weeks later. And so, it's the little things along the way:

--Running past Westcliff in Santa Cruz to the UCSC marine station, with a whale skeleton on display you can see from space and a view of the ocean from the chiptrail you get all to yourself.

--The friendly cat beside the running path that purrs away at a good ear-scritching.

--The monarch butterfly boardwalk in Natural Bridges State Park. Even without the butterflies, it's like walking into a cathedral whose floor happens to be occupied by a bed of blooming blackberries full of lumbering bumblebees.

--Public parking in downtown Santa Cruz (okay, not a training thing). 100 minutes for 25 cents, which is mindblowing compared to the highway robbery committed in San Francisco.

--Riding Skyline Rd between Black Rd and Bear Creek Rd above Los Gatos. One-lane, twisty as heck, dipping and rising, surrounded by trees and greenery. (bypassing the poison oak--look but don't touch)

--Earning a turkey + avocado + cranberry sandwich from Togo's. It's sorta Christmas-y, and it works for me.

Dear me, it appears to be a race report

The folks at PCTR have a good thing going.

Got down to Santa Cruz on Saturday to participate in PCTR's Santa Cruz Mtns trail run--21 km with only a hint of ashphalt when crossing Hwy 9. A lot of people (most of my coworkers) think it's sorta crazy to run 13 miles all in one go, but my run was started 10 minutes after the 29 km and 50 km runners left, putting my piddly 21 km in perspective.


Great day for running, in that it never rained and never got hot. On the way home I was wondering why all these people were going to the beach--too cold!

Anyway, thankfully I had gone through the course description the night before, so I was aware of two special features for the day. First, the water crossing halfway through the out-and-back course (i.e. two crossings required); second, the big-ass hill just past it on the way out and on the way back. Other than that, the trails were wonderful soft loamy redwood forest humus (not hummus) with trees and shade and space.


I confess to being dainty for the water crossing: I even brought a little towel to wipe my feet off on the other side. More seasoned folks just plowed through the thigh-deep waters and kept going in waterlogged shoes, but they probably have soles on their feet like elephant hide. I figured I didn't want to learn about running in wet feet by running 10 miles in wet feet.

The big-ass hill? Well, 'nuff said, but it wasn't actually so bad. Between my long legs and my overdeveloped-by-cycling glutes, I can climb. At least while running. At least better than people with waterlogged shoes. Who have been running for 1 1/2 hrs already. OK, maybe not a good reference point.


After crossing back over the creek and reaching the home stretch, my left knee started hurting, making me think "ohno, I'm undertrained, it's going to explode, will somebody carry me or do I have to drag myself with my lips"...Happily nothing so dramatic happened. The knee stopped hurting. I finished. Only a few seconds before the first 29 km runner came through en route to finishing the 50 km--a 2 min/mile faster pace than mine, ouch...but I was too busy munching away at the race-food smorgasbord the organizers bring out every time to really notice. Yum. I may have to get me some of their favorite drink mix too ("Conquest").

Two days later, my ankles have yet to forgive me, but I'm still biking to work tomorrow.

Photos ruthlessly ripped from the PCTR website.

The Rice

I wrote not so long ago about sleeping and not knowing how to fall asleep and the danger of having too much sugar before bed (causing me to be hyperactive 'til 4am or so--and not sleeping). Now, I love my carbs. Atkins can go spank himself far as I'm concerned. But...

I had noticed that I tended to be restless on nights when I had had a rice dish for dinner. After spending a year in Thailand as an exchange student, I love me some genuine Thai jasmine rice. It's genuinely aromatic, and it's fluffy, and it's tasty...good stuff. If you haven't had it (and it's not just that nasty long-grain rice from Texas, it's specifically "jasmine rice"--Trader Joe's has it), treat yourself.


I looked online to see if there was any info about rice and glycemic index, which is more usually important to diabetics, but I'm probably on my way to Type II anyway and it seemed like a relatively small thing to check for possibly improved sleep. This page soon appeared and I started scrolling down...For reference, the glycemic index roughly measures how hard food is going to hit your blood sugar level relative to glucose, the most common naturally occuring sugar and energy source, which is given a rating of 100. Cashew nuts? 22. A Mars Bar? 68. Skim milk 32, ice cream 61, Coca-cola 63,...

There are many kinds of rice and many ways to eat it (on the webpage given, it starts at food #272), and I'm reading through, and most kinds of rice are in the GI 40-70 range, so yeah, they're gonna cause a spike. But I keep scrolling until I see item #288:

Jasmine rice, white long grain, cooked in rice cooker

GI: 109

Ouch. That's worse than table sugar (#589, GI 60-65) or a doughnut (#12, GI 76).


Ah well, there's always basmati (#297, GI 58)...

Yes, dear, there is a cycling comfort zone

...aka Thoughts While Returning Home By Bike, June 6, 2007:

...I'll have to purify that tomorrow morning, and set up those two reactions so I can couple them onto monomers to include in the paper (editor's note: workspeak)...

hm, car just pulled into left-hand turn lane of the slow traffic light

if I hurry I can follow it and not have to blow through the red arrow/solid green like I usually do

it's a little far

maybe this is a chance to practice "sprinting", I could stand on the pedals and fly, yeah, I should hurry, don't want to miss the light

here goes

I said, here goes

ohmygod that's it how pathetic

I guess I'm going faster

oh, the light still hasn't changed

slowing down

dawdle, dawdle, dawdle

that's right, spin through the intersection behind the minivan like it's slow and I'm fast

minivan found the gas pedal, bye-bye

what the hell's up with the headwind? ouch...and don't tell me my legs are unhappy because of that measly little effort to get to the light

runty runner legs

oh great, oncoming traffic is already getting its advance left turn at the super-super slow traffic light

oh great, I'd better "sprint" again to reach the light

here goes

well I'm turning over faster

geez, I'm weaving like a drunk

oh look and I'm in my small chain ring

light's changed to green

and I probably should be in the drops and not hanging out on the hoods, negative style points

almost reached last bumper

I'll get through

bastard SUV trying to turn right on red had better watch it

cross traffic is getting to watch the most melodramatic awkward "sprint" ever, this is embarassing
that was ugly and yes my legs are hurting from their "efforts"

stupid runty runner legs

f$%* it, I'll spin at 10mph 'til 'cross season, then it's muddy and I'll have more excuses for being slow

And a photo for those who read this far:

Planning on traveling

On July 8th, I need to be in Calgary, Alberta. (Canada.)

At least, that's where the planning started. But if I'm going all that way, it'd make sense to visit the parents in Vernon, BC. And the friends in Vancouver. Heck, some folks in Seattle. It's a list of destinations that does not lend itself to a bunch of airline flights.

And so: a road trip.


Los Gatos to Calgary is estimated at 1600 miles by online directions: 32 hrs driving, 64 gallons of gas, that's about $250 at California prices, each way. (Great timing Russell: why not a road trip when gas was $1.10/gal? Oh right, I didn't have a car.) It's still cheaper than flying. Hm, maybe not if I include food and lodging...Aw, screw it, I'm going.

C'mon, it's the Great American West: California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, a jaunt northwards into the Great White North, then Washington and Oregon on the way back. Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, Banff and Jasper, Crater Lake, the NorNorCal coastline...I will be meandering as much as possible. I may even drive up Hwy 4 (officially one of National Geographic's Scenic American Highways and Byways). If anyone has any ideas on an interesting way to drive across northern Nevada, in early July, I'm all ears.

There will be a bike in the car.

Minor technical difficulties: I should still be in the Bay Area on June 30th. Up to Calgary by the 8th, and back...and technically I now belong to that portion of the population with 12 days' holiday per year, though I have yet to figure out if those days ever actually get recorder/reported. Hmmm. Guess I'll find out...when I get back.

Lend me your travel tips! Navigating Yellowstone could be particularly challenging due to summer rush. Prep will include: taking car to garage, possibly getting AAA, buying a tent. Have maps. Need CD wallet (a big one).

The Road

*warning: amateurish literary criticism ahead*

It's written by Cormac McCarthy. Simply based on the events that McCarthy describes in his books, even though he is just an author, I would be very nervous talking to him.

A couple years ago I read Blood Meridian, also by McCarthy, and that book has stuck with me like a scar. After recently reading Lonesome Dove, I thought those two books make for interesting comparisons. Both are somewhat epic westerns; in both, life is brutal and short. But in Lonesome Dove, that's the kind of life it is in the unsettled west. In Blood Meridian, McCarthy uses the setting to delve deeply and darkly into man's base nature, into what happens when there are no laws and no foreseeable consequences, and he ponders just whom this new world would attract, who would thrive. It's not pretty, or terrible hopeful, and nowhere near redeeming.

So when I heard that The Road was not only this year's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel but also Oprah's-Book-Club novel #48 or so, I was curious. Had McCarthy toned down the brutality? Had he found hope? I mean, if it's Oprah, it's gotta be redeeming, right?

Apparently not. It's dark. Really, really dark. Mel Gibson's Mad Max movies, as a comparison, portrayed a post-apocalyptic world with cartoonish violence in the bright sunshine, which was sort of fun. McCarthy's apocalypse has no end, no escape, no hope, and it's hard for me to feel the "they tried to survive nobly, that makes it worthwhile" vibe from this one. It's over in this one folks, let's make that clear, and the Donner Party couldn't be more desperate.

I don't know how OBC works, but I wonder if a number of its followers were lead down paths that they would not willingly tread. Which is not necessarily bad, but I wouldn't try to convince someone to come on the horror show ride with me.

While I was mostly horrified while reading the book, in hindsight, I guess in the end that The Road is a study of irrational hope. Most people are inherently hopeful, they get up when they've been struck down, they wake up the day after, they keep going. For a typical plot, the characters have goals and we see if and how they achieve them by the end. It is quite clear in The Road that the world is irrevocably turning into a great ball of lifeless dust--there are no scenes of flowers poking through the ashes--yet people keep on living, they manufacture goals, they ignore the voices that tell them there's no point.

What am I taking away from The Road? It may seem odd, but as a resident of a major-earthquake-prone state, it's got me thinking that it's finally time to at least have a serious and well-stocked emergency preparedness kit. Or to get a good fallout shelter built in the back (ah, but I'm renting...). This is after a reading a few hundred pages or so where one of the protagonists' greatest achievements is finding some canned peaches.

PS. Not a bicycle to be found in the book--obviously the bikes saw the writing on the wall and left the planet before things went to hell.