a view from behind (and below)

On Thursday, Marian and I went for a ride. The trailer doesn't get to ride behind the Tarmac, so I put my road wheels on the cross rig and hitched her up. We were out for about an hour and twenty minutes, easily Marian's longest ride (it's been a source of frustration to me that Marian hasn't taken to the trailer as I hoped she would).

Marian brought her camera, and these are some of her in-ride photos.


I'm pretty surprised at how good these pictures actually are. Every time I turned around to see how she was doing I saw her hand bouncing up and down as she tried to focus in on something. Plus, I ride like lightening so you have to expect the blur.

These next two pictures I didn't see her take, and I didn't prompt them at all. I guess she wanted to document the vehicle(s) she rode in.


Below, the last three pictures she took before we went inside.

The first may be my favorite shot of the trip. It's her most artsy. The second is a picture of bird's nest that the girls found somewhere and brought home and that will likely be sitting on our back porch until spring. The final shot Valerie's back-door bumper sticker.



On the ride, Marian let me know with her excited little voice every time she saw an Obama sign in a yard--and since this is south-central PA, that isn't often. But the excitement speaks to how malleable these little minds are, which is all the more reason not to vote Republican. Ever. ;-)

(In case you're wondering, her political excitement comes 100 percent from her mama, who is crazy stressed/distressed about this election. I rarely talk about anything political at home--I just can't get that worked up about it anymore--and when I do I think it's usually issue-oriented, not candidate or figure-oriented. Though I certainly could talk about candidates, if prodded.)

fall has fallen

I saw my breath when I left the house this morning--the weight of autumn descending like a dark cloud of impending doom.

Well, maybe not doom, but I wasn't too thrilled about it. I'm told by people who predict these sorts of things that PA is in for a hard winter with larger than average snowfalls. Let's hope that's true. Winter's redemption is snow. But if it's another blah winter with occasional snow skiffs and ice storms and continual gray skies...then crap.

...

A shot from the bike games last Saturday:

I'm amused by my expression in that photo. I suppose it captures the frustrated urgency of the moment--riding on a flat tire, too far behind the leaders...that sort of thing. Next time I'm going to stick out my tongue or something. One shouldn't take one's self so seriously.

08 PA BAR & nittany cross

You show up to the right races and those BAR results can look respectable. I only did two PA BAR races racing masters this year--the road and tt championships. (Double points for championships, right?) And races, incidentally, that no one else seemed to want to go to (though it may be worth pointing out that while there were few folks, I was at least the fastest cat 3 both days). So, pick the right races...

...

Well, the first cross race of my season has come and gone...and was a major disappointment. I had to stop four times for mechanicals. (1) A break that got lodged up under my rim after a sandpit crash. (2) A pit stop for a flat tire...though after screwing around in the pit for probably 30-40 seconds I didn't actually get a wheel. (3) A pit stop for the same flat tire on the next lap...this time I changed wheels. (4) A dropped chain in the sandpit. With all my stopping I passed some guys two or three times. Oh yeah, and the string on my shoes broke no more than five minutes before the start. I left my bike in the starting area amid the other cyclists and ran off to the parking lot to find someone with tape. A person in the third car I came to had tape...and while I'm super thankful for his generosity and my good luck in the face of exceedingly bad luck, I proceeded to wrap the tape so tight that halfway into the first lap I began to wonder if it's possible to lose my toes to a foot tourniquet within 45 minutes of bike racing. At the finish I ripped the tape off first thing and my foot kept hurting for a good hour afterward.

But even a crappy day at the races is better than a good day doing just about anything else.

The sad thing is that I think I felt pretty good fitness-wise. But I rode on a flat tire half the race. And had to stop a bunch of times. And missed my call-up while I was dinking around with some electrical tape and a broken shoe. So it's hard to know how I would have stacked up against the crowd had things gone a little better mechanically.

Next week... And on tubulars for the first time. With my luck, I'll roll a front tire within 400 yards of the start.

the tuesday night races

Yesterday I thought I was going to be in Bethesda having dinner with a friend...until at about 2pm I realized that is happening next weekend (someday I may condescend to using some kind of day planner--several years ago I showed up a week early to a conference...I booked my airfare, rented a car, flew from Nashville to Denver, and it wasn't until I showed up at the Marriot, then went to the other Marriot, then back to the original Marriot, that I finally realized I had arrived a week early--so someday I may condescend to using a day planner, but not yet). The evening being freed up allowed me time for some bike play.

My first racing experience (in 1988) came from a little mid-week event outside of Boise that we called the Tuesday Night Race. It was a 18-mile out-and-back affair on a dusty desert road where the wind always blew and always in the same direction and always HARD. One might say the wind blew with a vengence, and if one were to say that, I would excuse the absurdity of the metaphor (because why would the wind have a vendetta against anyone?) because the wind really did blow that hard.

Riders self-selected into A, B, and C groups and began the race at one to two minute intervals with the slower riders leaving first. Because of the handicap, the groups would come together at about the turnaround, then everyone was together for the race back. The way out, with the wind at our backs, was fast, fun, and comfortable for 14 year-old beginners like me. The way back was murder. The fast group would catch up, and with it the intensity, and by the time we'd made our way back to the two or three ball-breaking rollers near the finish I'd be toast. The weekly goal was to stay with the pack until the first of those hills. A MAJOR accomplishment was to stay with the pack until the finish. I'm not sure I ever did, though Mark may have. A couple years later the course was moved, the hills weren't as bad, I got stronger, and the whole dynamic changed.

So yesterday (Tuesday) I relived all that as I tagged along with the end-of-season Pine Grove duke-out between South Mountain Velo (those guys on the other side of the mountain) and Yellow Breeches Racing. A 22-mile out-and-back over the undulating Pine Grove Furnace Road.

Now, this isn't Wednesday Worlds or the DC Goon Ride, but a race is a race. Don't get me wrong, some of these guys can throw down, but some of these guys are nearly twice my age too. I mean, my being there probably dropped the average rider age three or four years.

Anyway...I flatted about five miles in. Fixed it. Rode on, then turned around when the main group came back past. On both kickers right there by the park I dropped the hammer and openned a decent gap between myself and the field both times. But both times within about a kilometer I was caught. A final attack in the last mile proved fruitless and I coasted over the line at the back of the field.

Good fun. I love the bike games...even when it's all unofficial and there's nothing really at stake.

Recently, reporters ask Floyd Landis why he wants to continue racing after having been disgraced and out of the sport for two years. The answer--obvious to me--is that he just loves racing his bicycle. So do I.

of nomads and reindeer

In terms of labels, being a professor of management can be tricky. The dilemma, simply put, is this: is my responsibility to teach (profess) how to manage or to teach how managers manage?

The question is weighty, not in small part because, though seemingly a philosophical point, it's one that directs very practical questions such as what I should talk about in class, what sort of assignments I should give, how I should grade those assignments, and, more generally, what does the curriculum of a business school actually look like.

Consider this piece in the Sept/Oct '08 issue of Orion, where Rebecca Solnit asks us to reflect on our servitude of the automobile, and our government's servidtude of the oil industry.


While Solnit's questions are profound in the context she defines, the article gives me pause as I (re)consider my role in the service of management (italicized to highlight its institutional status--the institution being whatever this thing is that I study and teach). Is my role as a professor of management to serve the institution--providing students with the knowledge and skills necessary to play the game on the terms the institution has set--or is it to serve the interest of enlightenment--to explain, critique, and deconstruct the institution; to help students diagnose the unreality of the shadows on the wall?

On the one hand, I might reason that whether students know what they're getting into or not, they've made the choice to align themselves with the instutition, so my responsibility is to help them best survive in it.

On the other hand, there's this from Wendell Berry:

Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry subsidized research. its proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible.

Nuts...

________________


In other news, time trials are boring.

Rode the masters state championship time trial on Saturday. Finished 4th in the 30+ with the 12th best time of the day (out of 63). That's not much to brag about, but I'm pleased that despite the Lyme Disease, despite not racing much this summer, despite a bazillion other excuses that riders both love to give (about themselves) and hate to hear (from others), I finished 45 seconds faster than I did on the same course two years ago (at the end of a very successful season).

But time trials are still boring...and I'm so excited for cyclocross. In cyclocross you can finish dead last and still have a lot of fun. In a time trial, no one has fun.

________________


Finally (let's see how many I can offend here...), people who drive fancy trucks suck. (No, I couldn't be more absurdly general.) The whole truck-as-luxury-car thing I don't get. I don't want to get. And I don't want to be around people who do get.

Trucks are utility vehicles. If you're afraid to load the back of your pickup with a pile of cow manure then you shouldn't own a truck. And a corralary to this rule, if you don't regularly need to load the back of your pickup with a pile of cow manure (think of "cow manure" metaphorically), then you shouldn't buy a truck.

You also shouldn't care when a kid (not me, but I witnessed it) overcooks a turn on his bike and puts a ding in the side of your pickup. A real truck owner wouldn't notice the dent because the side of his truck is already littered with dents, or soon will be. A pansy truck owner gets out and, ignoring the bloody mass of kid on the assphalt, throws a fit over the damage to his "baby" and belows out such profundities as "who's going to pay for the damage?" in accusational tones.

Damage. Whatever. A real truck owner would appreciate the makeover for what it is: value-added.

So lame...

Pansy truck owners, I frown in your general direction.

the time trial drill

Again, thanks to singlespeeder, some photos from a recent jaunt on the time trial rig.

beginning...

finishing...
Since I know you're dying to know, no chic aero helmet and disc wheel because... (1) I wanted power numbers and (2) I rode there and back.

Frankly, I don't think my tt position is too bad, even without the fast forward post that I've been meaning to buy but haven't yet bought. I do, however, absolutely need one of those cushy-nosed tt saddles.

climbing king's gap, 08/20/08

That's a pretty bike, no?

Photo courtesy of singlespeader.

King's Gap TT courtesy of Mark Laser.

Whupping courtesy of Fesler, Beck, Adams, Kuhl, Hankins, & Rider Big E.

thousand mile review

The Tarmac. My Tarmac. My Specialized Tarmac SL2. After 1200 miles.

I really, really like it.

...

Since I don't get to ride a lot of high-end bikes (only mine), it's impossible to compare this one to others. It's also impossible for me to compare the S-Works 11r carbon on my SL2 to the 10r carbon on the SL, the 8r carbon on the Pro and Expert models, or the 6r carbon on the Comp and Elite models. But what I can say is that I've been wholly satisfied with what I have. It is easily the most responsive, snappy bike I've ever ridden. (It's comfortable too, but I've never really been uncomfortable on any of my bikes--in terms of shock dampening and that sort of thing--and have largely been ambivalent to discussion of comfort in bike reviews, etc. so I don't have much to say on that.)

I still haven't weighed my complete bike so I don't have a number. It's light, but not as light as it could be. My Rival component group is satisfactory (everything but the crank/BB is Rival), but not featherweight (I'm wholly satisfied with the quality-for-price of Rival, so have no intentions of upgrading). I have a stem that's 1/4 lb heavier than a Ritchey 4-axis (an alloy monstrosity that I pulled out of the used bin at Merv's). But the biggest weight issue is my wheelset. A Bontrager X Lite Aero w/ PowerTap that is neither light nor particularly aero. But what I want to say about weight is that it definitely does not feel heavy under me (which some of my bikes have), and that's great.

What I like most about my new bike, however, are two things. First, I have never noticed the least bit of bottom bracket sway riding my Tarmac. On my past three road bikes, at slower cadences and beginning at about 350-400 watts, bottom bracket sway was obvious (particularly pronounced on my '90 Specialized Allez Epic, but that frame is of a completely different generation). I don't know how much is crank (integrated, oversize S-Works crank/BB) and how much is frame, but this bike feels really good when throwing down. Second, the bike instills complete confidence at speed. I'm not at all a ballsy descender, but I now take hills much faster than I ever have. No brake checks on corners where I'm used doing just that. I'm still a wuss, but a slightly faster one.

When I first got the frame, I compared its measurements with all my old frames and wondered if I wouldn't have been better off, given it's radically compact design, with a 56cm frame rather than the 58cm frame I ordered. However, one difference between sizes is 1.7 cm of wheelbase, more of a difference than between any of the other size gaps. I'm not sure how much of a difference 1.7 cm actually makes, but given that a longer wheelbase generally equates to a steadier ride, I think I'm glad I have the larger size, if for that alone.

So, after over 1200 miles on my new rig I have to say I'm totally satisfied and it was totally worth it. I don't love this bike so much that it keeps me off my others, but I do love it.

Somebody (he was seven) asked me other other day what my dream bike was. I thought for a second, then happily remembered that it was sitting in the hall. Awesome.

more elevation stuff

This elevation business got me curious about other rides. Here's the elevation profile for a favorite training ride (if you follow the link, notice that the mapping program doesn't allow you to retrace your path--as in out-and-back--very well...the sections on Bendersville Rd and the Kings Gap climb are all screwed up):
Perhaps because it's so long and not so steep, or perhaps because I ride it all the time, it surprises me just how much bigger (higher) the climb to Big Flat is compared to anything else around. Of what's relatively close by, the only climb I can think of that's bigger is the full climb up Cowan's Gap (not just to the state park, but all the way up). I should climb that more often...

gps for those w/o a gps

After my last post I spent some time dinking around on bikely.com and playing with the gps visualizer (thanks to Atlanta Intown). The result? An elevation profile of Saturday's ride.

That's pretty cool. I have no idea how accurate it is, but it passes a test of interocular observation (it looks right).

GPS visualizer doesn't calculate total elevation gain (from what I can figure out), which is a major drawback, but I still think it's pretty cool.

feeling so much better

Thanks for all the well-wishing. About 24 hours after taking my first dose of Doxycycline I was feeling tremendously better. Though the treatment is hardly simple--I think it's a 21 day antibiotic cycle, which is at least twice as long as anything I've ever had before.

...

Stories I've heard from others about Lyme disease:

(1) Lyme disease is the consequence of some kind of biological weaponry experiment gone bad.

(2) An acquaintance (of the person telling me the story) failed to complete his antibiotic cycle, the stuff came back, and now he's pretty bad off. (Though it's not clear what was meant by "pretty bad off.")

...

I piddled around a couple of times last week on the mountain bike, then got out for a 68-mile road ride on Saturday (down to Chambersburg, Apple Way west to Fort Loudon then up to Cowan's Gap...north on 75 to Fannetsville, over the mountain (two mountains) to Upper Strasburg and back home). I felt better than I had in, well, a month. Even with so little riding of late. Remarkable.

Old Lyme, Connecticut

So I've been sick for pretty much most of the month. Fever, chills, aches, pains, and monster headaches. But no coughing, no sneezing, no congestion. It came on strong the night before Longsjo (July 2nd)...and that pretty much ruined it for me--with alternating doses of ibuprofen and acetaminophen every three hours I was able to ride (but hardly race) the TT on Thursday and RR on Friday...Johann crashing out of the RR gave us the green light to come home on Saturday. During that first wave I was out for about eight days. Then I started feeling better, rode a bit, but the punch in my legs just wasn't coming back.

Then I got sick again. The fever, the chills, the aches and pains. Same as last time. After ten days of this (yesterday) I decided to see a doctor. She right way noticed several tell-tale circular rashes on my legs, back, and stomach that I hadn't. Lyme disease. Awesome.

So it sucks to have been sick all month, but it's a relief to have a diagnosis and a treatment.

...

In other news, there's this. Nuts. Two seconds of bad decision on that cop's part is going to cause him and the NYC police department a world of hurt.

I wonder, was it a sympathy tackle for Novak's encounter with the vigilante bicycle commuter? (Watch the clip--the Novak one--sucks to be famous, eh?)

crazy conservatives

Novak plows through pedestrian.

My favorite bits:

As he traveled east on K Street, crossing 18th, Bono said "a black Corvette convertible with top closed plows into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed into the windshield.”

Novak's reaction?

“I didn’t know I hit him. ... I feel terrible."

Didn't know you hit someone when he was splayed across your windshield?

Novak:

"He's not dead, that's the main thing."

Really? That he's not dead, that's the main thing? Wow.

Anyway, I love that a bicycle commuter chases him down and hangs out in front of his car (because he "keeps trying to get away. He keeps trying to go.") until the cops show up.

ho hum

Rest days are boring.

...

I'm pretty excited about Tuesday and Wednesday, though. My fantasy tour team is in second place overall and second in the polka dot competition...and I'm pretty confident that after Wednesday I'll have a comfortable lead. However, the time trial could be my undoing.

Really, I'm probably more excited for my fantasy results than I am the real thing.

I'm not sure what that means...

work

Michael just posted something about stacking wood for the winter.

Reading, I was reminded of childhood.

Sometime in the late 70s my dad decided we'd save money with a wood-burning stove. So we got the stove. And we got a lot of wood.

Except we didn't have the wood delivered. That would have been too easy (though it should be said that in the later years my father relented and had the wood delivered...however, I recall this change in protocol being blamed on the forest service not opening enough land for personal use wood-cutting). We had to go up in the mountains and play with chainsaws until we'd loaded up a pickup truck and trailer full. Once home, we split the wood with a rented wood splitter. Then we piled it beside the house. And piled. And piled. The next weekend more of the same. I'm not sure how many trips we had to make each year, but collectively it amounted to a lot of work. (Fortunately, I was young enough to get a pass on the trips spent actually cutting down trees. My work began once the truck pulled into the driveway. I was not too young to procure similar truck and trailer loads of manure, however. But that's another story.)

We also had a stack of wood in the basement by the wood-burning stove. This stack had to be replenished weekly. We used a 50-gallon barrel strapped to a hand truck to haul the wood downstairs.

Crushed fingers. Sap-covered clothes and hands. Dinged-up sheet rock. Dirty carpets. Ten year-olds aren't particularly handy with hand trucks loaded with 100+ lbs of split wood.

...

For the past several days Val's been dipping beeswax candles. This keeps half the house smelling like burnt beeswax. Which for her is a delight. For me it has prompted a surprisingly confused emotional reaction.

At home, we had a pretty decent sized orchard--or a pretty decent sized orchard for people who lived in the suburbs and didn't farm for a living. Half my parents' acre lot was garden. About a forth of that half acre was a raspberry patch. Another forth was fruit trees. Close to 20 fruit trees in all. We also had a nice long row of grape vines.

All of that fruit needs pollinating, so my dad became a beekeeper. For two long hot days at the end of each summer I'd find myself in the garage (as closed off from the bees as possible) with a centrifuge machine and an electrically heated knife...up to my ankles in honey and honey-like substances. The smell of Val's hot beeswax takes me back to the smell of cutting honeycomb off trays with that hot knife. I can hear (I can feel) the sizzle and crack of bees and bee parts under that knife. And it was like 130 degrees in that garage. And the stifling smell of burnt beeswax...

...

It was my understanding that a powerful motivator behind my parents engaging in these projects was to teach their children "the value of work." Upon reflection, I'm not sure what that means. The value of my work was exactly $0. At least, that was its value to me. I only knew dreading to wake up in the morning because it meant at least an hour of weeding the garden. Value to me? Frustration, resentment, guilt. From my perspective, I didn't see any money saved...nor did I ascribe any aesthetic pleasure to having to scrape off slivers of a rock-hard honey-like substance from the inside of a wide-mouth quart jar that, try as you might, never spread evenly on your toast (the wheat for which I had the honor of grinding in the basement), making one bite too sweet and the next too bland. I would have much preferred to squeeze my honey from a plastic bear-shaped bottle purchased at the supermarket like everyone else.

But what I'm sure I did learn from all of that is how to avoid work. And thus the emotional confusion at the smell of burned beeswax in my house the past couple of days. I'm aware, shifty-eyed, guilt-ridden... I feel myself expecting at any minute to be enlisted (through stomping of feet and waving of hands and mild verbal abuse) to engage in some sort of hot, tiresome, unpleasant task for which I will garner no benefit.

I think it's time to go for a bike ride.