Monday, April 30, 2007

Apostate

Riding a bike is fun and all, but...


...I gotta get me some running in. More specifically, I gotta get back out and do some running with these folks. They know what a beautiful trail is, they know how to organize, and (perhaps most importantly) they really know how to feed the participants.

May 20: Skyline Ridge, 14 km

June 16: Santa Cruz Mountains, 21 km (Harvey West-Henry Cowell loop)

June 30: Pacifica, 21 km

July 8: Calgary half-marathon, 13.1 miles

OK, I've stated it in public, I'd better do it now...

PS. Picture credit to here.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Back on the farm

Travelled up to BC last weekend to visit my parents and clean out the closets; they'll be moving to a smaller property across town at the end of May. The parents have been very accomodating for the past 15 years holding onto three kids' stuff, but it was time to go through at least my stuff with a "scorched earth" policy.

Of the items I sorted through, I thought at least that part of my readership that has witnessed my interaction with rodents would appreciate my first stuffed animal (yes, I once had quite a collection):


And I will let the same portion of the audience imagine how interesting it was for me to see that a pair of marmots (yellow-bellied marmots, to be precise; 30-pound rodents along the lines of groundhogs) have tunneled themselves an extensive den underneath the outbuildings while not sunning themselves on the roof.


Really, I'm so easily entertained.

In the trivia column, I found a birth record stating that I was born weighing 8 pounds, 14 ounces. I must have just eaten or something. Uh, thanks, Mom...

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

He didn't win, but what a sweetheart

' On Monday evening the Belgian was involved in a minor car accident caused by a wandering cat. "I was driving my car in the neighbourhood of Balen. Near a traffic light a cat crossed the road. I avoided the cat but the car finished in (off? -ed.) the road. I damaged the front part of my car but fortunately the cat is still alive." '
--CyclingNews on news from Tom Boonen

There are enough cycling cat fans around here for me to guess that Boonen might have just doubled the size of his local fan club.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Blow me down

Quick survey: if you were to go on an out-and-back ride, would you prefer:

(a) to have the headwind on the out leg and tailwind on the way home, or
(b) to have the tailwind on the way out and the headwind on the back leg?

Wind was no fun today: I felt like I was slaloming along Bailey Rd (dead flat with a crosswind) and ended up getting blown into the ditch on McKean (keeping the rubber down, but eventually having to dismount to get back on the tarmac). And I'm a big guy. That said, I'm sure the Sea Ottererers must be pretty beaten down by this weekend's weather, which included both biblical downpours and Sahara-like dry winds (at least that's what we had here). A hard way to spend three (four?) days outdoors.

---

And it's not my job to comment on pro cycling, but anyway: I sorta liked O'Grady's win at Paris-Roubaix today. He hasn't had the legs to burn past the other sprinters in bunch sprints for the past couple of years, always leaving him in top-five but not top spot it seems (compare to Freire at Milan-Sanremo, who apparently just blew past the other finishers). His biggest successes that I've known of have come from long breakaways (including getting into the TdF yellow jersey one year). And then there he was, really just riding away from everyone else on the cobbles for the last 25 km. It'll leave a few high-profile Belgians muttering into their Duvel, anyway...

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

It's not quite a race report

...but as a sat in the chair this morning, I did reflect on how a visit to the dentist is similar to a bike race: the end result cannot be improved by anything you do the day before (though it can be worsened). No, the end result in either case reflects weeks, if not months, of careful preparation. I brush, I floss, I ride bikes. Though I doubt there's a cross-training benefit.

I started fine, hung on during the ultrasonic water-picking and polishing, a bit uncomfortable with the flossing (tight contacts), came back strong with healthy gums, flew by not needing fluoride treatment, and was ready to come storming through in the end--but couldn't get a clean finish due to equipment failure--an iffy cusp on a back molar. Have to go back for a fix, darn it.

Friday, April 6, 2007

Good (eatings) Friday

When Easter is mentioned to most people, I'd guess that they imagine eggs and chicks and chocolate bunnies. And a few probably think of Easter Sunday and going to church, during which they'll be reminded of the whole deal with crucifixion and salvation. This year, when Easter popped up on my mental radar, it made me think of perogies.


I will attempt to connect the not-so-linear dots of my line of thinking. My grandmother (90+ years old and still going, bless her and I'm hoping I got her genes) was born in the Ukraine a little before World War I. Her family emigrated to western Canada when she was young, joining the latest wave of immigrants to be subjected to the usual racist abuse poured on the most recent arrivals. And so, little of her Ukrainian heritage was passed on in the family; instead, I mostly bear the imprint of my three other grandparents who were of English settler stock.


The one bit of her culture that my grandmother has held onto is the food. Ukrainian cuisine may not be of the same significance worldwide as French or Italian or Chinese, but there's something about a spread of perogies, cabbage rolls, and smoked sausages that is homey and comforting, even to me. Whenever Granny was up to visit, the family would go to the White Rose restaurant for dinner at least once for the Ukrainian buffet. When the White Rose closed, it was on to a little takeout place in a minimall called TJ's (no relation to Trader Joe's). To this day, Granny swears that the food at TJ's is the most genuine Ukrainian food she's had in Canada.

Growing up I took some interest in my Ukrainian roots, though not so much that I can bounce on my haunches like a true cossack dancer. Since the Ukraine falls under the umbrella of the Eastern Orthodox churches, it shares their emphasis placed on Easter relative to Christmas that is somewhat opposite to what is generally seen in the West. Commercialization has a lot to do with it...Thinking about it, Easter really is the important part, as few of us had a choice about being born but it's a pretty impressive thing if you can choose the manner and meaning of one's passing. I digress. Ukraine, Easter--Ukrainian Easter eggs! You've seen 'em, you know 'em, you love 'em.


OK, so somewhere in there, I think I was trying to draw out (at length) my brain's free association of Easter with the Ukraine with Granny with perogies, so now let's get back to the food. Frozen perogies are available in every supermarket I've been to in Canada, but there's a dearth of them in California, I guess to make more room for frozen burritos. It's a shame! Those plump little dumplings full of potato-ey, cheesy, oniony goodness...first boil, then fry, add a little chopped-up kolbassa, and before you know it you're tying a kerchief over your head and calling yourself "Babushka". (The women's style of the kerchief on the head is so strongly associated in Ukrainian that the one word, babushka, can refer to either the grandmother or the handkerchief--where one is, you'll have the other.)


The frozen perogies are just fine for 99% of the population, but I have this knee-jerk reaction to find the hard way of doing things, and in college I found a recipe for perogies. Very simple, just some boiled potatoes, flour, onion, cottage cheese...no problem, until time came to actually wrap the little guys up. A few hours later, I had made a few very messy perogies and was considering turning my back on my heritage. But my mom caught wind of my efforts and in that way that mothers have, pulled what I considered an ancient artifact out of a closet somewhere: "Hunky Bill's Perogy Maker".


The HBPM was eye-opening in a couple ways. For one, I discovered a new racist term for Ukrainian-Canadians ("hunky"), though Hunky Bill apparently referred to himself as a hunky, so I guess it's sorta like the n-word (OK to say if you're on the inside). More importantly, it could make dozens of perogies in literally seconds, and soon I was swimming in them--could even fill the freezer with them. My one-quarter Ukrainian soul was at ease. However, many years ago when I came down to California for school, my kitchen utensils didn't come with me, and I don't know what happened to my HBPM. I wouldn't have left it behind if I had known how few perogies there were down here.

I have no idea where the conversation came from this past fall, but while either setting up or tearing down a Surf City CX course, I discovered that Jeff C. also had a Ukrainian grandmother and also appreciated a fine perogy (or varenkii, or barahy; they aren't uniquely Ukrainian and can be found under many names in the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe). Jeff C. is a sensible guy so my guess is that he quickly cleared such an inane conversation from his memory banks, but it settled into some crevice of my mind and stuck around long enough to relaunch itself into my brain when Easter and all of its Ukrainian associations came along. And what does a modern person do the minute something drops into their brain? Google it, of course.


There's no online purchase option yet, and it wouldn't be likely to make it here by Easter even if it had one, but soon I will have perogies once again. And I should really close this off with a great big "Happy Easter" in Ukrainian, but I only ever took one year of Russian as an approximation and we didn't get to holiday formalisms. Ah well. Go ride a bike or somethin'.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Where did my mind go

Most of the time, life bumps along normally.


Every once in a while, it's necessary to focus a little bit.


Focus too much--


--and you start losing perspective.

Coming back from a conference only to find that the two-page justification required to speak at the next conference is due only 5 days later was a nasty way of causing focus. Now that the deadline has passed, my brain feels a bit cooked. Hopefully no one at work notices, or at least they just think I'm preoccupied when the reality is not much is going on up there.

On a more fun note, I finally had a chance to ride out on the roads aboard my new single-speed. Predictably, flats were fun, downhilling only went so fast (I guess it's good spinning practice), and uphills were surprisingly manageable--except for the 1.9 km rise averaging a 7% grade that goes up to my workplace. My legs are still sore. Maybe I won't be using the SS for commuting so much...