Ahoy, Mexico!

Hopefully I'll have something to say about it. Back in 2009.

Better CX racing through technology

1. The front cantilever brake noodle. Changing the brake cables and housing probably helped too.

2. Ankle protection. I've been scraping the skin off the side of my ankle in CX races for near three months now. Hm, maybe time to do something about it? Bought cheap shinguards, cut off the shin part, kept the ankle protector, and wore it for the race. Bingo, no more scraping.

3. Doping. I don't usually drink coffee or tea, let alone espresso like the pros, so giving me a beverage that recommends limiting intake to no more than three a day is pretty much putting me on the juice. Why this brand? 'Cuz they sponsor CCCX and I can swipe a can or two at the finish line to save for the next weekend; plus, I'm a sucker for any non-alky foodstuff flavored like Irish cream (er, sort-of flavored like Irish cream in this case).

Raced Livermore B and SSA on Saturday and it was fun, fun, fun (the best Bay Area race that no one does!). Raced CCCX B and SSA today and it was fun, fun, fun. Both bikes were working with no stupid mechanicals. I didn't have any major cases of stupid while passing or being passed. I had people to heckle me and cheer me on. My worst injury for the weekend is a set of puncture wounds from the neighbor's tomcat. Okay, the results were modest, I could go faster if I trained and did fewer races, but the weekend is not the time to worry about that.

I think the caffeine had me pretty well perked before and after the races, too, so thank you to all who put up with my inanity. Time to return to regularly scheduled programming...

CX futility index

A measure of achievement for those not fighting for podium spots in cyclocross races:

1. For each given race in a weekend, find your finishing position (number A).

2. For each given race in a weekend, determine how many finishers there were in your category, not counting DNS/DNF (number B).

3. For each given race in a weekend, determine A/B, your race finish ratio (maximum value 1).

4. Total your race finish ratios from the weekend to determine your futility index.

Whoever has the highest total "wins". What they win, I don't know. It's not just a competition about being mediocre, it's about being mediocre over and over again. (A DNF doesn't count because it implies some recognition of futility.)

Needless to say, I don't have any wonderful race results to report from this weekend, though I feel happy to have not destroyed any equipment or suffered any injuries beyond scratches and bruises. I couldn't pull off the "double double", not having enough left to finish a singlespeed race at CCCX after racing twice at Saturday's night race, and so lost a possible full point in my futility index--I'm okay with that. Once the results are up from Pilarcitos, I'll report my numbers...

In Canada only, I guess

CX Santa Rosa #2 - Thick friggin' mud

By the end of my racing, I was sweating mud.

The forecast was for heavy rain on Saturday, not so heavy on Sunday--so we'll see whether Candlestick gets sloppy for tomorrow's race, but today's race in Santa Rosa seemed a lock for wet, soupy mud, and it was delivered. In the car on the way there, a little voice in my head was anticipating the conditions, as my best-ever results, a couple C wins, were at super-slop races. There wasn't much time for daydreaming, though, as Hwy 101 had little floods and heavy spray--definitely high-speed windshield wiper conditions.

I arrived a little after 11 and watched the women's race: dirty, dirty women...seemed sort of ominous. The spectators beside me were C racers who had finished and cleaned up, and reports were of inches-thick mud on the backside of the course.

With that little bit of intelligence, I went back to sit in the car, pin numbers and gear up for the 12.30ish start of the 35+B/B/45+B race. When time got close, I did a single lap to scout the course...and soon was filthier than I've been in a long time. Some of it soupy, some of it goopy, some of it spreadable like peanut butter, all mud. The bike was OK with it, except for one little catch of the chain that would come back to haunt me.

My B wave started at a gap behind the 35+B's (logic? don't know) with a short sidewalk stretch before hitting the good stuff. A makeshift plank bridge crossing a waist-deep creek led into the really tricky bit of mud, and the wiser little voice in my head told me to get off and run...so I did, and started passing all the riders trying bravely and "honorably" to pedal through the stuff. A more rideable stretch followed, then more thick muck that I ran--and it seemed as though, just maybe, I was leading the B's and tickling the back of the 35+B field!

All for nought, though. When it came back to the rideable sections, that little skip of the chain came back. I can't tell if it was a sticky link or a front derailleur issue, but if I tried to power down (which happens a lot in the mud), the chain would jam between the cage and the rings and forward motion stopped. After much swearing and a couple forced dismounts, I figured out that backpedaling could get the chain to reseat itself, so better; but there's a reason they don't teach you the cha-cha (two steps forward, half a step back) on a bike: it doesn't move you very fast. Soon, I was losing positions, and more positions, and more forced dismounts...

I would've liked to ride more. It felt good to be pushing under those conditions, and being able to run the ugly bits was really helpful in the B's, but if the bike don't roll, y'ain't gonna do so good. We'll see where I ended up in the results.

Once the B's were through, I suited up for the singlespeed race right afterward. Dave C. pointed out to me that the SS bike was perfect for the conditions, and he was right--who needs gears in all that goo? Things didn't start well in this race, as I almost immediately took a great glob of mud straight into my left eye, which took some furious blinking to clear out (I'm still scraping mud out of my eyesockets now). Three laps in, Josh S. lapped me, my back and a knee were whining, and I was too tired to be able to solve those sections of the course that perhaps I could've ridden earlier with a working drivetrain, so I pulled myself and was done.

Cleanup was a bitch. I would hose myself off, turn to cleaning the bikes, look back at myself and I was dirty again. So: sweating mud. Even after a shower, I'm sure I'll be picking grit out of crevices for a while. And there's yet more 'cross racing tomorrow!

Sorry, no pictures: it was pouring rain and after just a little bit of riding I was filthy enough to dirty anything I touched. Several photogs were prowling the course, though, so I hope some of those shots (though not those of me) end up circulating. Alternatively, I am totally empathizing with the top-flight riders in Belgium today: there are some glorious mud shots in this gallery at cyclingnews.com.

Surf City film

Putting together a cyclocross video was sorta fun the first time, so when I felt no inclination to actually race this past Sunday, it was pretty easy to fall back on Plan B and wander around, camera in-hand, to see what I could film. Did I miss stuff? Heck yeah, like the hecklers on the runup and the entire elite men's race, but one man can only do so much.



Love it? Hate it? It may not be "hardcore"; instead, it seems sorta like a promo video. Probably someone else would make different edits given the footage I have.

I did learn:
--Do not mess with your iPhoto folders when using iMovie--my first draft was all for nought when I tried importing some pictures and messed up the file structure.
--No matter how cool a song seems at first, after listening to dozens of bits and pieces of it for a few hours, it gets old.
--The dismount at the front of the cluster at about 1.42 is nifty, and smoothly executed. Had he been practicing foot-over-top-tube?
--Youtube compression plays hell with video resolution. I don't know if uploading a more detailed (and larger) file would help. The audio seems all right, at least.
--Without me publicizing a darn thing, in the 30 minutes since uploading the video to the time I'm now typing this, it has 5 views. Ah, the randomness of the internet...

Pink

I tried to get some clips and photos at the Surf City race today, and we'll see if I can cobble together some of the footage; but the only photo that I can tell turned out in full, unretouched, uncropped glory is the following, which perhaps does capture some of the spirit of the event. (Click on it for full-size...)

Training plan of champions

Took a week off to sit in a car, drive to Vegas and back, and hike around the mountaintops.

Did one 'cross race (CXSR #1), more than adequate to blow my engine and render me hopelessly incapable of following up in the singlespeed race (didn't stop me from trying for a while--it was free, after all--and hurtin' some of the soft tissue...).

Flew to Ottawa for a long weekend and Canadian Thanksgiving--including massive amounts of dessert (why have just one?):



So, my last three weeks or so have not been a paragon of cyclocross preparation. With Pilarcitos #1 at McLaren Park looming this Sunday, the holy c#$@ instinct to actually do some prep kicked in this morning. 20 minutes of hill intervals were enough to make my legs rubbery and leave me feeling vaguely nauseous once off the bike--those are good signs, right?

One week's vacation

All the kiddies should be stuck in school and their parents should be making sure that the kiddies go to school, leaving the roads and parks open for me to go see some Things I Have Not Yet Seen.


A far from comprehensive list but one that's relevant to the week ahead:
Hwy 120 through Yosemite NP
Death Valley NP
Las Vegas
Interbike (Actually, I probably won't get in, but I can be in its presence)
Cross Vegas
Hoover Dam (maybe)
Sequoia and King's Canyon NPs

Would've left already except that glass class starts up again tonight. Hopefully I can wake myself up early tomorrow and get on the road.

That's not supposed to happen

It's a bad thing when your chainring bolts get loose at any time, let alone in the middle of a cyclocross race. It made for some good spectating and a pseudo-heroic finish, I hope.

CCCX #1 was held at the Fort Ord DOD building, a roughly counter-clockwise loop of the roads and sandy singletrack. My B race at 10am went OK, but the field was clearly much stronger than the LAPRD field. The CCCX course was also hillier than LAPRD's, so I got to say hello to my back muscles for the first time this year...Got 11th out of 18-19, and frustrated that I couldn't figure out how to ride up the sandy climb.

After two hours, lunch, and some advice from Josh Snead on how to ride the sandy climb, I lined up for the singlespeed A race. I had a reasonable start, but spun out/slowed down before the first corner and that was the last I saw of most everyone else in the field. It gave me time to think more about lines through the loose stuff (having my speed governed by the fixed gear ratio probably helped too).

Last corner, just after getting lapped by J.S., I hopped back on after the last barriers, pushed on the pedal, and rather than moving forward, I bent the bejeezus out of my chainring (see pic above). Since it was the last corner, I picked up the bike to jog over the finish line, no effect on final results. I had heard suspicious pinging noises from my drivetrain somewhere and thought I might've broken a spoke, but it seems to have been a chainring bolt or bolts coming loose. I lost two of five in the end. Yes, I feel a fool, but let my story be the cautionary tale: when's the last time you checked if your chainring bolts were tight?

Thanks to Gannon M. for advice on tire inflation, J.S. on the riding advice (worked a charm), the SS field for the commiserations/mocking, and Rod for not making me do another lap post-Chainring Incident. We'll see if I "man up" to a 42t or replace my girly-man 38t...

Big X

I moved to California ten years ago today.

I was supposed to have moved to California ten years ago as of yesterday, but a little confusion while coming through the immigration desk the first time meant that I got to watch my flight leave the gate and take off while I was standing in line to come through immigration the second time.

Two suitcases and a bike box...and now all this crap around me is mine!

larp'd #2

Livermore was blessedly cool compared to last week--the forecasted high was only 92F/33C. Heck, I may have even felt a chill before the races started.

Men's B: bigger field than last week. Similar pattern: 8-9 guys in a group at the front after the first lap, then hanging on to see who could last. After a couple more laps, I saw the group split in front of me...never good to see that gap. I wasn't rolling as well as last week, both in my own head and compared to how the others were rolling, but just how so will remain unknown: I flatted just before the bell. Thanks to the spectator with "cool hands" who helped me after I flubbed switching out my rear tire. Still picked up 7/12.

Sarah Maile came out and raced against the B's (and beat me!). Josie JM and Sarah Kerlin showed up for the women's race just beforehand, and so it could have been a three-way battle--but oddly, JJM and SK finished at the front of the women's race hand-in-hand without a sprint, and SM held off until the B race. Maybe it's just too early for racing for those with the real goods, so a little detente for the time being.

I lined up on-time for the singlespeed race--I know at least Gianni was swiveling and looking for me at the start line this time! Cesar "Big Dog" Chavez showed up for the SS race, though, so G and I both knew we were done for. AJM lined up in stars-and-bars trimmed kit and that's the last I saw of him for a while...

At lap 3 or so I was running second-to-last when my rear tube blew. Never good on a singlespeed bike, especially since I had no spare wheel. But there was a spare tube in the car...

Picked up the bike.
Walked back to the car.
Got a tube, pump, tire levers, wrench.
For some reason, walked over to the pit tent to fix things.
Realized I had dropped the tire levers somewhere.
Watched the leaders go by...again...
Was somewhat pleased to find that a forgiving rim-bead combination allowed me to get the clincher tire off with my bare hands (whatcha gonna do...?).
Tube out, tube in, bead back in, pump it up, off we go!
Oops, chain fell off--what a fool. Back to the pits to adjust to loosen the axle bolts and try again...
Watched the leaders go by...again...

So it wasn't much of a race, even less so than last week's. I got back on the course, though, and rode 'til the end, good enough for third! Yes, out of three.

Double dippin' in the hot, hot sun

A cyclocross race in Livermore when the forecasted high was 38 C/101 F was a dubious proposition, and doubling up under the conditions was really just not wise...

But you know me.

First race of the 2008 'cross season (at least a month before it could really be considered 'cross season) was hosted by Shane & Co. of the parks and rec dept. in, yes, Livermore. My start time #1 was 10.30am, and it was already hot enough that basic motions like walking led to sweating.
The course was wide and flat, leaving lots of room to pick different lines and pass people--nice.

After my lousy start and a lap, the B field was a bunch of 10 at the front, with me hanging on to the back.

A lap or two later, I had passed and moved up, and there were maybe five. Fitness and heat were taking a toll.

And then I was chasing two.

Halfway through the penultimate lap, #2 pulled up--flat!--and I took his spot. Unfortunately, #1 had decided to stop toying with us and had shot out of sight. One more heat-blasted lap, and the second step on the podium was mine!


Um, except that I had the single speed race to prep for in 15 minutes, and missed the podium. Instead, I was slapping a bag of ice on the back of my neck, drowning myself in Gatorade, etc. I hadn't mentioned anything to CaseyK about doubling up, though, so in the middle of repinning my number the race was started and away without me.

A minute later I was off playing "catch-up", but there wasn't too much response from my legs. Given the gap, the fatigue, the heat, and the $5 entry fee, I was pretty content to do practice laps for an hour. On the bright side, 1) Josh Snead lapped me a second time about 100m from the finish line, so I didn't have to do that last lap, and 2) with only 5 single-speeders starting, everybody was on the podium!


End of race: more water, more Gatorade, more ice, shade, shade, shade. Some folks had the strength left to hop the fence and stand under the sprinklers in the neighboring field. There were some blasted-looking bodies strewn about the finish line. Some familiar faces, too, and it was nice to catch up.

Make it stop

Labor Day weekend--

Friday night: Athletics game from behind home plate, thanks to a friend getting "Diamond Level" tickets. Upside, free ballpark food. Downside, probably showed up stuffing my face on TV. And what do I do with this bobblehead?


Saturday: laps of Redwood Park on the 'cross bike. New tires to test. Clockwise on the ridge trails, it's all good except for the hill climbing up West Ridge--mmm, trudging uphill in bike shoes...It was good to get offroad but starting in a pack of riders will probably still freak me out come race time.

Sunday: morning swim followed by afternoon culture, Chihuly at the de Young. Showed up and there was a huge line just to buy tickets, but not 10 seconds after getting into the line a guy walked up to us and scalped us some tix for face value--sweet! Popular exhibit, crowded, lots of gaudy glass baubles on display, incredibly hyperbolic curation. Eating dinner afterwards, the miso soup was brilliant--umami!

Monday: back into SF for the Giro di San Francisco. A crit course giving spectators lots to watch. Checked out the cat 4/5's thinking I might be able to keep up in some crits and road races next spring. Watched and wandered al fresco au velo from 10am 'til 5pm, listening to the occasional meaty thuds of cyclist hitting asphalt. Happy to see pab and xbunny, 'cuz it sounds like I won't see them at the 'cross races this fall.

It's not even 10 and I want to/need to/will go to bed now.

Swimming doesn't make me a bad cyclist

...does it?

I've been in a bit of a running funk after finishing the half marathon in San Francisco three weeks ago, leaving me with lots of time to contemplate going for a swim. The Temescal pool in Oakland is just a short walk away and is open for lap swimming at all the right times (i.e. mornings until 8.30am, weekends at noon). It's oddly a 100 ft pool, but it's been so long since I've swam regularly that intervals and splits are pretty meaningless.

Swimming, even doing laps in a small pool, even while sharing a lane with 5-6 people with other agendas, is fun. It's engaging to focus on all the little motions and positioning that make a difference between my pace and world record pace, much more so than simple strength and conditioning (though some of that wouldn't hurt either).

From a bike-centric point of view, I can claim that I'm improving my core strength before 'cross season. Also, if I have a little bit of upper body strength, maybe it'll help prevent me breaking a collarbone--how many cyclists have bone strength in their upper limbs comparable to osteoperotic chickens?

Bike meets world

New baby:


Getting my hands on this one took longer than I would've thought: Cervelo is still a small company with limited production runs. When I put a deposit down in the spring, the hope was to get one from the immediately upcoming shipment, but someone underestimated how many long, lanky folks like myself would want this model in this size and I lost out. A few months have since passed, but it's finally here, built up, and I took it out for a maiden voyage this morning.

It's so quiet. The Easton wheelset doesn't make a whisper--heck, the freehub on the back wheel doesn't even tick when you pick it up and spin it. No creaks or pings or squeaks, nothing to indicate that the bike is holding me back in any way. (In other words, no excuses.)

Is it any faster than my beloved, venerable, deep red, steel-framed Cramerotti? On paper, it better be. I rode a hilly 39-mile loop over to Moraga and Orinda that I've done a couple times on the red bike before, and finished about 8 minutes faster (stopwatch auto-pausing at traffic lights, etc.), about a 5% improvement. Was it the bike itself? New bike enthusiasm? A better bike fit? No exercise for two weeks leaving me well-rested? All of the above? ...My general feeling was that it hasn't and won't transform me into a brilliant climber--that takes training and weight loss--but it has something special on the flats and descents. Slow is still slow, but the fasts are faster.

For the record, the bike count is now back up to five.

Bicycle Film Festival 2008

I came, I saw, I...was sometimes entertained, sometimes puzzled. Maybe there aren't that many cycling films out there, maybe there isn't that much separating film from Youtube these days.

I went to two screenings on Saturday, the 5pm and 9pm. 5pm session first: three films, two shorts and a long. The two shorts sounded promising as they were intended to be tributes to Pantani and Coppi, but...well, the filmmakers may have considered themselves seriously, but the Pantani film was little more than messed-up footage from the 1994 Tour de France, while the audience could only laugh--out loud--at the pretentious abstraction of the Coppi film (corpa...nervo...ossa...corpa...nervo...ossa...corpa!...nervo!...ossa!...)(sigh...) and hope for it to end quickly (not quickly enough).

The long film was "Les ninjas de Japon", which cuts between following five road racers from Japan and following the 2006 Tour de Burkina Faso in West Africa. It's an interesting juxtaposition of scenes in a highly developed country and in a badly underdeveloped country, neither of which resembles the USA or Canada at all. Well worth seeing if you have a chance, in my opinion, even if you're not a cyclist.

Then, the 9pm screening, whose program was clearly aimed at the urban fixed gear scene. Thorough reviewing was already done by Beth, so I'll stick with a few observations:

(a) While film of fixie riders pedaling at high cadence may be impressive to the cognosceti, to most of us it just looks like a guy pedaling fast--which is NOT THRILLING in itself, regardless of your choice of music.

(b) Lucas Brunelle is to messenger biking what Warren Miller is to skiing, but it's a lot harder for Average Joe to go heli-skiing. Heaven knows how many idiots will be encouraged to skid through red lights by LB's work. At the same time, I admit to the visceral thrill of watching a rider make an awful decision and almost get smeared (literally) by a bus.

(c) The obvious crowd favorite was a 10-12 minute film featuring fixed gear riders on the streets of San Francisco, "Macaframa". There was much of the above-mentioned guys pedaling fast, ho-hum. Regardless of how not-interesting the cycling was inherently, the cinematography--great panning, tracking, deep focus, a little slo-mo--was really, really good. Darn good. Those kind of shots could make riding Muni seem sorta cool, while in this case some guys on bikes were sorta there.

In terms of things that I think you, my faithful reader, could spare some change to go see, stick with "Les ninjas de Japon", though it's unlikely to visit a nearby theater anytime soon. The rest was ignorable. If the filmmakers are reading (ha!), two words, even for a 3-minute film: character development. Make me give a damn, please. "Belle Epoche" managed it in 3, why can't you?

Festival Life

Last weekend I went to the Fire Arts Festival in West Oakland. It's put on by the Crucible, the place where I had my glassworking class a few weeks ago, as one of their major fundraisers. I wish I had pictures, if I could take pictures that could do the display justice, but picture-taking is discouraged, I imagine since (a) a lot of the displays are from artists actually trying to make a living off this stuff and (b) flashbulbs just would not be cool.

Without pictures, it's a bit hard to describe the first five minutes of the show. The doors opened at 8pm, letting everyone file in and take a look in the remaining daylight at the inventions and contraptions filling the lot below the BART tracks.

At 9pm, on schedule, the Opening Flare fired, and I could feel the heat on my face from 100+ ft away. Within 5 minutes, I was experiencing the vertigo of all hell breaking loose around me: a keyboard-fired menorah, a 25-ft wide candelabra beating flames in time with someone's pulse, hyrogen bubbles popping and pounding my eardrums, a Tesla coil giving off clouds of ozone as the Tin Man danced around it, a Baba Yaga treehouse belching steam high in the air, as a troupe of (I kid not) black vinyl-clad, flame-wielding go-go girls aboard their vehicles, the results of crossbreeding Amish wagons with Mad Max, shot roaring flames 30 ft into the air while the blackened iron sculptures scattered about them were fired to a roaring, glowing red...

First five minutes was pretty intense, and I was actually wondering if I was feeling okay, but a little time and a little fresh air later, glowing iron sculpture and go-go girls were pretty cool.

We had great fun watching the Flame Vortex folks send a swirling tornado of fire curling and lapping at the BART cars (an unexpected bonus with your fare!). The Flamethrower Shooting Gallery was sadly not available to members of the general public. Firebots: remote controlled conflagration! The stage show had some music, lots of fire dancing, and the highlight of an acrobatic pas de deux aboard a hula hoop craned 40 ft into the air...noticeably without any safety equipment (say, a net?) that we could see. Or fire, for that matter, but still spectacular. Grand finale: a turbojet powered flame cannon generating 150 dB and continuous plumes of 100 ft flames.

Good fun, highly recommended to anyone not completely pyrophobic. If you've ever been Burning Man-curious but are put off by various aspects such as the dust, the FAF has all the spectacle, takes much less time, and involves far less inconvenience.

-----

This Week: the Bicycle Film Festival is coming to San Francisco, Wednesday-Saturday. Uh, there aren't any films to speak of in the program on Wednesday or Thursday, but they do show up Friday and Saturday. They're showing at the Victoria Theatre right atop the 16th St BART station making it super easy to get there. I may have to get tickets for a couple film sessions on Saturday (probably the 5pm and 9pm) with a break for dinner in between. Anybody else? C'mon, my festival-picking mojo is working pretty hard right now.

TdF coverage quibbles

For the first time in my life, I have unfettered access to live Tour de France coverage on television--even better, I can tape delay and fast forward through commercials, which are even more boring than watching a 4-man breakaway get slowly, inevitably gobbled up over 100 km or so. It's not like suddenly having indoor plumbing after a lifetime without, but still, it's a nice addition to life, though it (TdF coverage) doesn't help me get to work any earlier. (Indoor plumbing just gets me to work smelling better.)

Phil "The Voice" Liggett and Paul "The Vet" Sherwen obviously are still the commentators; Al Trautwig has been shipped off somewhere else. Robbie Ventura is possibly competent but I can (and do) fast-forward through anything he has to say. Bob Roll is around but I haven't watched any of the repackaged evening shows, so I have no idea if his French is as bad as ever (I expect it is).

Quibbles:

--Why list the nationalities of riders? It's been decades since teams were organized by country. Is Kim Kirchen riding for Team Luxembourg? No! (Side note: it was a curious and dirty little trick of the press to start talking about the Luxembourg "rivalry".) It would be far more useful to list riders by their team names, which would go a long ways towards matching name (e.g. Jegou) with team kit (Francaise des Jeux) while watching. Nationality is a bit of trivia Phil and Paul should banter about during nature breaks.

--Team Columbia = America's team, rah, rah, rah. Yes, Team Columbia is registered in San Luis Obispo, CA, but I also know that the company I work for in Berkeley, CA, is registered in Delaware. The only American on the start list for Team Columbia is George Hincapie, and there are only 3 Americans on the entire men's roster (plus one Canuck). And since the idea of Columbia's sponsorship is to increase its exposure in Europe, I don't expect to see an American grassroots program anytime soon.

--Not a quibble, just an observation: T-Mobile should be rolling on the floor in agony at the lost marketing after withdrawing their sponsorship (just imagine Kirchen on the podium every day, Cavendish winning sprints, in pink shorts).

--Hincapie is experienced, yes, but Phil and Paul spend a lot of time describing him as a "road captain" without ever mentioning that Team Columbia in fact has a DS who may be pretty sharp himself: Rolf Aldag, of (!) ex-T-Mobile fame. Oh, oops, are people allowed to say that name at the Tour after his doping confession last year? Perhaps Phil and Paul don't want to be blacklisted by ASO.

Hello, uh, Mr. Nobel-Prize-winner, uh, sir...

Had lunch across the table from a Nobel Prize winner today. I will claim to have not been star-struck, but it was a bit hard to keep up with the intensity of his agenda--frankly, he's been doing a lot more research on it than I have--so perhaps just staying quiet at all times would've been for the best. Gotta give the man credit, he has done well to get into an excellent position to actually address climate change and energy use in scientifically and practically relevant way.

--

After spending the day in my concrete box of a lab and reading the lead news stories online of the heat wave passing through the Bay Area, I was expecting to come outside and get the hair-dryer feeling while biking home. Instead, it was a bit cool for shirtsleeves to start. Hm, there are advantages to living in Berkeley/Oakland...I'm still going to hang out in the frozen foods section tonight, but that's 'cuz the cupboards are stripped bare.

But don't quit the day job

Glass class was fun.

Old bike: fixer-upper or moneypit?

Three months of bike commuting and my legs are loosening up for the daily ride--okay, okay, I blamed my initial slowness on the vintage of my commuter bike and its parts, but most of it was me. But, there was that bit that was the 10-year-old bike.

A 10-year-old mountain bike: hardtail steel frame, no disc brakes, a suspension fork with a whole 2.5" of travel (they don't make those anymore, I checked), cheap wheels that I'd bought when my net worth was below zero.

And yet...

If the bike fits, ride it, right?

Well, there's not much to be done about the fork and brakes, but it's a commuter bike. New brake pads at least; a new, less-slumpy saddle bag; new tires (slicks), new wheels (and those make a world of difference), and someday soon even a new bottom bracket (square taper!).

The set of decent wheels alone probably cost more than the bike is worth as a whole, so the sceptic would say I'm throwing good money away that I could be spending on, oh, I don't know, braces? Or a new toy with actual easy-riding capability like Option A or Option B. But those would look pretty silly with a pannier rack on the back...

You're shitting me

Went to a new dentist this morning for regular checkup and cleaning, and I have come away feeling like I was being scammed. I mean, sure, you have to poke around and see if there's decay, but this guy was ramming into teeth as if he was trying to make holes--not a gentle touch. Younger guy, with way too much gel in his hair. One cavity found, so that'll have to get fixed, but then:

"So, your top front teeth are slightly intruded."

"They're slowly wearing the lower front teeth."

"You should consider orthodontics."

"It would cost about $6,000 to $8,000."

"We could do it right here."

What the fuck? I'm 32 years old and not one of my previous dentists--who I trust far more than this guy--have ever mentioned anything about getting friggin' braces. Gee, isn't it convenient that Mr. Dentist would recommend a few thousand dollars' worth of work that he could do--not covered by insurance, of course, it being a cosmetic procedure?

Now, I do think of teeth as being a worthy investment; hey, here I am scheduling appointments without my mother telling me. And I've donated generously by having rotten teeth, then having mercury amalgam fillings to be replaced, which will someday degenerate into crowns and the whole deal. But I'm sorry, you cannot sit in front of me after seeing me once for a matter of minutes and get $8,000 from me.

Learnin' the roads

I'm finally coaxing myself out for decent road rides on the weekends, with the first step being to figure out how to get up Tunnel Road to reach the other side of the hills to the east. It turns out that Tunnel falls into a black hole of sorts on most maps: Google Maps is car-centric; the "West of the Hills" map by East Bay Bike Coalition is out of print; Tunnel falls at the 4-corner intersection of the varying-scale pages of the scanned-in online version of the EBBC WotH map; and my Berkeley bikeways and walkways map doesn't reach far enough east to make things clear. Finally, the text directions from Missing Link for a loop ride out to Pinehurst Road made things relatively clear (points for the bike co-op).

It's a little funny to get back on the road bike after riding the commuter bike pretty regularly for three months. I think I should get out a measuring tape and see what the BB-to-seat and seat-to-handlebar distances are; my legs didn't seem to be extending and my arms didn't seem to be reaching as far (caveat on the BB-seat of different pedals/shoes/cleat stack height). Huh.

So let's see:

Tunnel Road. What a pussycat of a climb. The road must've been laid out with horse-drawn carts in mind, as it doesn't seem to get much over 5% grade--similar to the San Jose approach to Mt. Hamilton, though only up to what, 1200 ft?, instead of 4000 ft. Which is nice, because climbing Tunnel seems to be necessary to do any other East Bay rides if you want to ride from home in Berkeley or Oakland. Plus, it has great views.

Pinehurst Road. Um...is Pinehurst an up road or a down road? I was going down, and everyone else coming up seemed a bit surprised to see someone descending such a narrow road. It seems to have been repaved recently, but it is rather narrow. Pinehurst does carry you past Canyon, CA, which seems to consist of the post office, a school, and not much else. And riding under the trees is good for the soul.

Moraga Way. This 5-mile, two-lane highway connects Moraga (quaint, hoity-toity community to the south) to Orinda (quaint, hoity-toity community to the north), with plenty of room on the sides for shoulder/bike lane--nice! Um, except no one told me that the pavement is currently grooved. Not knowing any alternative routes, I plowed over the grooves for what, 3 of the 5 miles? Not fun, though it was good practice for relaxing my grip on the handlebars. I hope that the repaving is imminent.

Wildcat Canyon. Another pussycat climb--more of a traverse, really. No shoulders, so it's narrow and things have to be negotiated with all the cars driving up to visit Inspiration Point and Tilden Park, but the road is twisty enough to keep those cars from doing 50, which seems to give everyone time to figure things out.

Euclid Road. Having climbed back over to the west side of the hills, Euclid is a traverse to match Wildcat Canyon on the east side. Going down, it seemed to be an efficient through-way for a bicycle with a minimum of stops and not much traffic to deal with.

Past that, there was the messiness of finding my way back to Oakland. Some of Berkeley's bikeways work, and others are just complete nonsense. I think I forgot to wipe a bike commute (~4.5 miles) from my computer before starting, as it's telling me almost 35 miles while Missing Link claims a 29.5 mile distance from the shop. Anyway, if I know a 30 mile, a 50 mile, and a 70 mile route to ride, that oughta keep me occupied.

Another note to self: cut toenails. Road shoes fit tighter than commute shoes.

Where the hell is the autowash

After driving around on errands yesterday morning, I came home to discover that I had one more: the clicker to open the gate on my building's car park wasn't working, dead battery. To deal with it later, I parked on the street...under a tree. Oops.

So Car is now covered with little specks of Tree Gunk, the windows are a mess, it's probably overdue for a little TLC, and I can't expect rain to wash any of it off. After going in to work for while this afternoon, I drove past a few of the gas stations I know, and none of them have an automatic car wash: y'know, the kind with the spray and the big rollers and brushes that as a child was a terrifying thrill, that takes 5 minutes. It's all I need: I don't want a hand wash or wax or anything like that.

I've now searched online--Google and Yelp--for car washes in Oakland/Berkeley. The only listings are for hand car washes which almost universally get panned in their reviews, even for $20+ it seems. There are detailing outfits with good reviews, but for $100+ I'd expect even my car to be frickin' sparkling inside and out.

There may be a couple things going on here. First, Alameda County may have different ideas about water use, which may discourage the installation of automatic car washes. Second, the balance of the high capital cost of the equipment versus the availability of dirt-cheap unskilled labor may favor hand washes. This area does not seem to like investing in itself.

Crap. Well, Car doesn't get used during the week anyway.

Watching the corks pop

In general, I'd say buildings in Berkeley are unprepared for genuinely hot weather. Realistically, it doesn't happen very often: the winds just blow off the ocean and keep things cool. However, on days like today, that wind stops--and things get noticeably less comfortable.


The thermostat in the lab at work is usually set to 72F, moderate. As the outside temps climbed to 98F today, though, the indoor temperatures (in our one-story, thin-walled building) also started to rise. 74, 76, 78...I work in a chemistry lab. Ether boils at, oh, 87F. 80, 81, 82...OK, so we topped out at 83F or so, so nothing started overpressurizing or boiling over when we didn't expect it to, but try putting on neoprene gloves and standing over a bath of rubbing alcohol for any length of time when it's 83F. Arms sweating until it runs and fumes, fumes, fumes...

I wonder how many batches of ginger beer in Berkeley garages blew up today?

The other aspect of this hot, dry weather (18% humidity, woo-hoo!) is that it released a hellish cloud of god-knows-what dust and pollen this morning. It was Bike to Work Day, so I rode past a couple of the "energizer stations" checking for schwag (at 9am, good luck). Every 10 seconds it felt like a piece of broken glass had blown into my eye. I didn't see my face until I got to work (25? minutes of riding), by which point my eyes looked like ripe tomatoes.

(not actually my eye)

I can only wonder what the volunteers at the BTWD stations thought of my Hellboy look, yeesh. (I'm a normal...er, relatively normal person! Really!)

High and tight

Having not had blog inspiration for a while, time to get back in the saddle with a bit of petty complaining...

If you know how to fix a flat, chances are you ride a bike equipped with a saddle bag. Heck, some people even race crits with them. Most saddle bags have a velcro'd strap to go around the seatpost and another that loops through the saddle rails to hold them in place, and the manufacturer's photos show them snug and secure:

Typically, though, saddle bags fall victim to the combined effects of vibrations and gravity: the bag contents shift aft, the saddle rail loop shifts forward, and truth is many bags look like a bad case of...hmm, this is a family show...so let's call it "half-mast":

I had to move my blinky light down to keep it from getting masked by Limpy the Saddle Bag...Now, I realize Limpy serves perfectly well and I can't even see behind/under my seat while riding, but out of sight does not always mean out of mind. Yes, in those quiet moments when I can't be bothered to do or think about something useful, it sometimes occurs to me to think about why I can't get my saddle bag to stay up.

Whether or not their bikes are actually any good or simply represent another version of technical parity compared to the umpteen other manufacturers out there, Trek has made saddle bags with a "quick cleat" attachment that indeed provides unfailing support to its saddle bags. The tradeoff is that you can't switch the saddle bag from bike to bike quickly unless you buy another "quick cleat" for the other bicycle...but how often do you use the same saddle bag on more than one bike?

Anyway, I had a Trek bag for years until some yutz decided to steal it, gathering for him-or herself a patched tube, a set of levers, a patch kit, maybe a crescent wrench, and the bag itself--but they failed to take the "cleat" attachment, so it was gone from my life and useless to them, thanks for that. But the memory of that saddle bag faithfully tucked up high and tight when compared to the vision of Limpy above will probably send me to a Trek dealer sometime soon for an upgrade.

...what the hell am I writing about? Good lord, just push the "publish" button and be done with it...

Rules of news-browsing

1. When reading an American newspaper or magazine, always read any article that mentions Canada, if only for the novelty of reading about Canada in an American newspaper or magazine.

2. When reading any mainstream newspaper or magazine, always read any article that mentions bicycles, if only for the novelty of reading about bicycles in a mainstream newspaper or magazine.

...and following from rule #2, while reading a Canadian news site (thus making rule #1 inapplicable), I came across this bizarre way of riding across America. It looks like he's spinning pretty well, but...what muscles is he using?

Odd how the BBC can put things in perspective

I guess it's been a long time since I've seen or done something that seemed completely improbable or unlikely or oddly profound.

Oddly enough, then, coming across this clip from Top Gear, the BBC show putatively concerned with cars, set me back a little.



Not to mention that it made my inner engineer a bit giddy.

Oh, hell, if the BBC is going to post it up, might as well put this good bit of editing and trivia in, too:

I loves me some data

This is where I live.

Try searching your own zip code. It always seems that some numbers are obvious while others can be a surprise. Around here, too, it can be interesting to look at the differences between neighboring zip codes (like 94611 vs. 94609).

9 min diversion: Canadian cyclists on the loose in China

Canadian trackies starting in Sydney and arriving in Beijing for the World Cup track events in December, 2007.

Run Russell Run

It's been a long, lazy winter. And now the folks at work have signed us up to do the Big Sur Marathon as a relay. Gotta represent...


Then a week later, I get invited to rejoin last year's Wildflower triathlon relay team as the runner. OK, we won last year, but that was mostly due to the monster swimmer and ringer cyclist; I hung on enough to not lose the lead.


I've tried Tilden and Redwood parks in the East Bay hills for runs so far, and Redwood so far is hands down the winner--the Stream Trail is the closest thing to Huddart Park (a little slice of heaven in Woodside) I've been through in a long time. Tilden is a bit strange: it's back-to-nature vibe is definitely spoiled by the view of people's houses on the ridgelines, which gave me the feeling that I was running through their backyard.

Still, that's two runs in the past week, and I felt the first one in my legs for the following four days. Bike commuting will help to flush out a little lactate, but I've gotta be doing those little bread-'n'-butter runs during the week as well. Lift those heels!

High praise for my hack photo

Hi Russ,

I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo
has been selected for inclusion in the newly released
second edition of our Schmap Canada Guide:...

Well, that was a fluke occurence. They had actually written a few weeks ago to ask for "permission". Do these people ask for everyone's photos? Or maybe they just have room to include a bazillion thumbnails for any given landmark.

If Cyclingnews.com took a look at my commuter bike

That is, if they could ever stop laughing:

Full specification

Frame: 1998 Specialized Rockhopper Comp, "Nitanium" steel alloy*
Rear shock: uh, no
Fork: Rock Shox Jett T2, never serviced, 2 inches travel if I hit a real big hole*

Critical measurements
Rider's height: 1.9m (6'3"); Weight: 84kg (185lb)
Seat tube length, c-c: 495mm
Seat tube length, c-t: 508mm
Top tube length: 597mm (horizontal)

Bottom bracket: Unknown*
Cranks: Specialized, 180 mm, 22-32-44*
Chain: SRAM PC-951 (new!)
Front derailleur: Shimano STX RC*
Rear derailleur: Shimano Deore LX*
Shift levers: Shimano Deore
Front brake: Dia-Compe VC733*
Rear brake: Dia-Compe VC733*
Brake levers: Dia-Compe DP7 *
Rear sprockets: Shimano HG70, 11-32T

Wheelset: No logo
Tyres: Specialized Nimbus EX 26x1.50

Bars: Specialized aluminum*
Stem: Specialized aluminum*
Headset: Aheadset*
Tape/grip: Fox rubber

Pedals: Performance Bike Campus pedals
Seat post: aluminum*
Saddle: WTB Rocket V
Computer: yeah, right

Rack: Mountain Equipment Co-op

Total bike weight: 32 lb with pump, saddlebag and lights; 40 lb with typically loaded panniers

*original componentry

I believe they call it "training effect". A few weeks/months of riding this thing to work again and my legs are going to be like cannons.

78.75" x 31.5" x 3.825" x 80#

...or 200cm x 80cm x 10cm x 36.5kg, for those of you who may be more metrically inclined.

Anyone reading this who owns a pickup is laughing at me, I know, but I love it when the little car overperforms. And now I'll have a couch.

Loft life

New job, new apartment. Isn't it trendy? Really, it was the first place I saw that I thought I could actually live in. Most places I saw in my price range were, uh, small and old ("cozy with character").


The concrete playground of the downstairs was big enough for riding a bike in circles--until I filled it with my boxes and boxes of crap.


Bedroom space upstairs, and the windows now have curtains so I can sleep.


Look way, way up and there's a third floor, though I don't yet have a way of getting up there to see how many dust bunnies have collected or put stuff away.

I need curtains

Creatures of the night

I walked through downtown Los Gatos after dinner, 'round 8.45pm or so, to burn a little energy after pretty much sitting in front of a computer all day (...which I'm still doing, hmmm...). Yup, LG on a Monday evening in February.

The streets are pretty empty, no need to wait for a crosswalk signal. A bit of a chill wind to make me appreciate that wearing a jacket was a good idea. The Victorian and Craftsman houses on University are dark, their porch lights off, dim light showing in the front windows from families tucked away in the back rooms and bedrooms. The occasional car swishes by, Audis and BMWs and SUVs and one customized rice rocket for variety.

Walking past Carry Nations, there's a fellow out front with a buzz cut talking on a cell phone about coming home and finding the house trashed. It's only when I'm a couple steps past him--downwind--that I smell the alcohol from his breath.

Passing the row of restaurants, a look in the window reveals the repeated scenes of counting out the till, setting chairs on tables, wiping down one last time before going home.

The bike store's window display is disappointing: a Bianchi 928, nothing to write home about.

Last stop before heading home is Safeway. It takes no time at all to get what I need, but I can't help raising an eyebrow at the pair of fellows shopping in their pyjama bottoms--flannel, oversized, plaid. They're in front of me at the only checkout open, putting a few dozen cans on the belt while I stand there with a single, simple bag of frozen veg.

The time it takes the checker to start scanning the canned goods gives the young woman time to pipe up and mention her list of athletic accomplishments that should make it no surprise that she can lift a flat of water bottles onto her shoulder. Within a minute I'm being instructed that she was on the Jessie Owens track team in LA and won several medals. Frankly, I'm relieved when another checkstand opens and I can conveniently gallantly let her go first in the next line over.

It occurs to me that it's been a long time since I'd run into the Hill People, those who inhabit the little-known and less-visited corners of the Santa Cruz Mountains. I could understand the attraction of coming into town late on a weekday evening: little traffic, both in terms of cars and people in the aisles. Leaving the store, my athletic friend and her companion seem to be wrangling a teamster-worthy ratcheting tie-down in the bed of a pickup, presumably to make sure that their 24 bottles of water don't fly out the back.

And there I am, proud new owner of a bag of frozen veg, walking around Los Gatos at 9.45pm on a Monday night in black pants and white running shoes.

Keeping it together

Last week was my introduction to the wonders of commuting on 880 from Los Gatos to Berkeley. It's less than ideal. Somehow, regardless of whether I left at 8am or 8.45am, I seemed to arrive at 9.45am.

On the things-are-looking-brighter side, I did find a loft apartment to rent near Broadway and 51st on the northern edge of Oakland. I can't tell if it's in "Rockridge", "Piedmont", or "Temescal", but those are all good places to be, apparently. Hopefully I haven't fallen through the cracks in between them all. Safeway is a block away for quick grocery trips, it's a short walk to BART, by total fluke there's a 50m pool only 4 blocks away, and there's a bike shop 4-5 blocks away in the other direction. It's 4-5 miles from work, and it'll be interesting to figure out what a good bike commute route is, if it exists. I'm thinking of totally converting my old MTB to a full-time commuter: anyone got a rigid fork with fender braze-ons?

For now, though, I haven't moved anywhere, and the 2+ hours a day of driving combined with essentially learning a completely new field to the point of being conversant at a PhD level has left my brain feeling mushy. I bought "Great Expectations" as an audiobook to listen to in the car, but my attention span is noticeably diminished in the evenings, so it may take a while to get through. The slimy weather this weekend hasn't helped me to feel energized, either. Yesterday I was pretty much a shut-in slug. Today I focused on the domestic things--cleaning, groceries, laundry--as well as getting a run in, which left my mind a bit more at ease.

Legs are burning

It's been a long, lazy winter, and doubling up vacations (Christmas in December plus passport renewal layover in February) has left my legs a little wobbly. Even keeping to the flats on a flat, aerobic ride up to the Stanford campus today, there's a little something-something in the thighs afterwards...not to mention hunger!

Checked out the setup for the Tour of California prologue on the way through. For now it's mostly chaos of tents and trailers without any actual team identification visible, though the fencing around the Oval was being put in place. My friends at Front of the Pack will be in the expo tomorrow and won't be bringing in the gear 'til early tomorrow morning. Only saw a few jerseys from the Kelly Benefit Stategies/Medifast team, cruising around the Oval on their TT bikes, though rumor has it there were pros aplenty on Old La Honda and Kings Mountain today.

Brief observations/recommendations for ToC tomorrow:
--If you're coming to watch the prologue, carpool or take the train. Stanford has parking to accomodate 30,000 football fans, but it gets a bit ugly come time to go home.
--Even better, park farther away and ride in to watch. There is bike valet service at Lasuen St and Museum Way, Stanford, CA . Don't know the cost, and there may be other locations, but it's probably nicer than hauling your bike beside you all the time while watching.

There and back again - once

I gritted my teeth this morning and set off for the first of what be a few dozen commutes up I-880 this morning.

Departure time: 8.22 am.
Distance: 55 miles
Time to destination: 1h15m

Hm. Not bad. After a few hours at work figuring out things like health insurance and where the washroom is, I set out in the evening to fight my way back home through traffic.

Departure time: 6.52 pm
Distance: 55 miles
Time to destination: 1h00m

Odd how a person can feel elated that their commute was only 1 hour long.

A trip to the city

Took a break from warming the cat today to go into Vancouver, with the ultimate goal being a dinner gathering for cheap, good Chinese noodles. I wandered down Broadway through gently falling rain during the afternoon, including a visit to Campione Cycles, center of all things Italian cycling in western Canada. My road bike has a steel Cramerotti frame, which I purchased with a bike fit from Giuseppe Cramerotti himself. I've checked the website over the past few years and noticed that there didn't seem to be anything newer than 2005, but happily that reflects the state of the website (a low priority), not the state of the business. Campione and Cramerotti continue on today with a range of steel, aluminum, titanium, and carbon frames for road, track, and time trial.

What I especially like about Campione is that when you walk in, you don't see bikes: you see frames. Behind the frames are glass cases holding Campagnolo gruppos like they were museum pieces. On the wall are rims of all kinds in all colors--not wheels, just the rims. When you buy a bicycle from these folks, everything is built up from scratch.

Monday is a slow retail day, so the fellow manning the front desk had a lot of time to talk (Giuseppe was in the back talking animatedly in Italian with a rep from Deddiaicai). Turns out Tio has been living in Canada for 25 years since moving here from the Netherlands in his mid-20s following an early career as a top Dutch time trialist. He's a bit disappointed with the cycling culture locally and doesn't believe that it can produce any top riders, but he also has been volunteering to build a new indoor velodrome in nearby Burnaby (only 200m--that's a lot of corners). Tio may not race anymore, but he certainly hasn't lost his passion for the sport.

I'm not sure the conversation would have ended if a fellow riding a fixie hadn't walked in asking for help with his flat tire (?--dude, if you're gonna ride a fixie, learn how to fix it). Tio was helpful--once the fellow walked his straight-from-the-wet-road bike off of the Berber carpet surrounding the Campagnolo clothing racks and around on the lino work surface. A wink from Tio, and I was back on my wander.

Campione: snooty? At some level, yes. A reminder that cycling is a beautiful sport and that bicycles are beatiful machines? That too.

Nothin' but a pillow

Still in Canada, now being hosted by DP and DT in a lovely (if rainy) rural bit of the Fraser Valley after a few days at the parents'. The local menagerie consists of three dogs, two cats, and one horse. The cats have figured out that I am (a) attentive and (b) warm, and I may be able to knit a sweater with their collected sheddings by the time I leave. Thankfully the horse has shown no signs of wanting to sit in my lap...yet.

There's a lot of interest in Canada in the American presidential race, particularly in Barack Obama, despite Canadians' inability to vote, or make campaign contributions, or otherwise participate. While partially explicable by Canadians' frustration with the GWB presidency, it probably owes something to Canada's terribly uninspiring politics: nobody much seems to like the current prime minister, but nobody has sprung up as an appealing alternative. And so, the minority government limps on...

Foreign foods

I'm sitting in my friend's attic apartment here in Vancouver and it's beautiful and sunny outside. I'd show you, but this computer running XP seems incapable of communicating with my digital camera (in contrast with my Mac, which in such predictable constrast really has its shit together--thank you, Steve Jobs). So, some purely verbal bitching about why can't I get these foods in California?

Cereals: Shreddies and Just Right. Shreddies are an absolute Canadian classic. Most people of a certain vintage will even remember Freddie and Eddie, the Shreddies mascots. I even appreciate the billboard at the end of the street advertising new "Diamond Shreddies". And Just Right is just about the best bowl of flakes that money can buy.

Cookies: Dare Digestive Biscuits. Yes, there is a market in the world for a not-so-sickly-sweet cookie, with only 7g of sugar per 36g serving. Those of us with sugar-hyper issues appreciate something we can eat for dessert after dinner without it making us sleepless. Not to mention that the taste is just downright wholesome goodness.

Juice: Five Alive. Of any kind. OK, it's a lot like Sunny Delight as a citrus blend, but it's better. Way better.

OK, I'd best get some sunshine now--who knows how long it will last!

Last day at work

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.

-T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

Very strange to try to clean out the office today. Not everything is finished and tied off; little ends are sticking out everywhere. But it's time to go.

And lordy, T.S. Eliot rocks.

W-w-w-wimped out

I could have gotten out of bed this morning and gone a-racin' cyclocross.

I was tired and the weather really, really sucked--though it could have improved.

I slept in, rose refreshed, and the weather never got better.

I am happy with my decision. Cyclocross season is now over.

--

Went up to SF to see a friend yesterday, spent a few hours trotting around from Market to the Marina. 'Twas a beautiful day for it, all the more so since Friday and today have ended up being downpourful. The rain had washed all the dust and haze and fog out of the sky, so you could see all the distant edges of the Bay.



--

Four more days of work, then back to Canada on Friday for paperwork reasons.

Another New York whack job

Saw I Am Legend a couple weeks ago.


Saw Cloverfield this past weekend.


What is it with filmmakers needing to (virtually) beat the #$%& out of Manhattan these days?

Hm, though I guess it's simply a continuing tradition. There was The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, Independence Day, Escape from New York...and the godfather of the monster movies, King Kong. Probably the only city to have taken as much cinematic abuse is Tokyo courtesy of Godzilla & Co.

London and Paris have just as many icons but they don't seem to get crushed nearly as often. San Francisco got a bit of a thrashing in X-Men 3.

I guess a film about Los Gatos, or Santa Cruz, or even San Jose getting whacked would have fairly narrow appeal.

Yup, change is a-comin'

So: I accepted a darn good job offer from a start-up in Berkeley, which will be a big change from working for GlobeCo in south San Jose in so many ways. Not quite as many as if I were moving to the Maldives, OK, but still, change. Change. CHANGE!

I don't know Berkeley terribly well: e.g. plunked down at Shattuck and University, I'd have no idea where to go to get groceries. But I won't be moving up there until after I start working, which won't happen until after I get a work visa, which won't happen until I get my passport renewed, which won't happen until I go back to Canada Feb. 1 or so...assuming ticket prices have not radically changed (!) since I last checked. For the interim working-but-not-yet-moved period, I'm really looking forward to those Los Gatos-Berkeley commutes on Hwy 880 (a.k.a. where hours and day of your life go to die).

Oddly enough, I'm still motivated to get something done at Old Job, but the time constraint has me thinking and experimenting a bit frantically. It'd probably be best to trim the to-do list down considerably at this stage to make sure a few things get done, as opposed to getting a lot of things not done.

Oh yeah: bike race this morning. Gooey, play-doh-like mud (Carr index #3) in places.* And I have no fitness. Didn't sleep in quite enough to sabotage any chance of racing, but it was enough to guarantee that there was no chance for me to warm up or pre-ride the course.** The small B field took off in front of me and I plugged along behind, which worked out well enough for me to pass a few mechanicals and outgassed riders--5.5 long laps later it was done, and I was 7/11 (+2 DNFs).

*I can plow through mud, oddly enough. Is it my size? Bike position? Big glutes? You tell me. Oh, and the pedals with their advertised "open body [that] sheds mud easily and yields easy cleat entry and exit in all types of riding conditions"? Not in mud #3. I don't know if any pedals were working well today, mind you.

**Cyclocross is a completely different beast when you do not have a chance to pre-ride a course and have no idea what's at the bottom of the hill, around the corner, under the mud, etc. It would be interesting (though impractical and unlikely) for a promoter to somehow enforce a "no pre-ride" event simply to see who can learn the fastest on the fly...or is that like MTB?

Maybe I should write something

Lacking rantable or ravable material:

1) Raced 'cross this morning after not riding a bike for three weeks. My body did not respond well to the shock therapy of reactivating, so no spectacular result (though I was v. pleased to not crash). The 1.5 hour après-ride through the trails of Fort Ord w/ the Fantastic Four was probably closer to what I should be doing.

2) My Xmas break was pretty inert: good to see the fam, but I should've coaxed myself out into winter wonderland (see the Flickr pics in the sidebar) a bit more. And the hassle of travelling over the holidays really makes me wonder if it's worth it. I should pick another tropical destination for next year and visit the parents on Jan. 25.

3) My most recent man-on-the-street-discovers-pop-culture find: muffintop, when the pants are too tight and the Christmas belly fat rolls over the edge. It's just so spot-on.

4) In a strictly financial sense, I got a shiny new radiator for Christmas. Not a stupendous present, but reassuring.

5) A better present: a job offer! Change may be a-comin'.