turkey hill 2010

I've ran this race three times, which is as much as I've run any single weekend course in my odd little cycling career (I'm thinking the only other course I've raced that many times is the one I did in Ontario, Oregon every spring when I was in high school), and every time it's kicked my butt.

Turkey Hill: my Pennsylvania cycling bugaboo.

In 2007, Carney (a teammate) was off the front alone for about half the race. We caught him on the rollers leading into the finish and I remember (1) how mad he was at all of us (teammates) for not attacking immediately after he was caught and (2) how completely toasted I was at that point and how completely impossible it would have been to attack.

In 2009, I felt great all the way through, and was poised to have a nice finish, but rather than choose the smart tactic and take my good feelings on the attack in the last couple of miles, I tried to find a good position for the sprint and ended up getting pushed off the road and crashing at 30+ mph with about 1K to go.

And in 2010... The big mistake was hydration. Or lack of it. I'm usually peeing clear and with great volume right before a race. Saturday, nothing. It was already over 80 degrees an hour before start time, and I was harried with registration, getting the kids settled, putting up their sun shelter and folding chairs, making sure Audrey had backup coverage in watching Reuben, and then trying to get in a hurried warm-up. What a ridiculous way to get prepped for a race.

But a few laps in and I was feeling fine. I initiated a nice little attack just before the finish line for props from the announcer and to show off for Mrs. Goatesauce (who was officiating--awesome). And I felt good enough to attack again in the same place with two laps to go, an effort which resulted in a half-lap solo bridge effort (there were a couple up the road at this point). When I was caught the second time, I was just 1/4 the way into my second bottle of the day. At that point we'd been riding for about two hours. I had drank, up until then, just one and one quarter bottles. Such foolishness...

So I chilled at the back of the field for the next bit. Picked up a fresh bottle in the feedzone to start the final lap, and then, after that last turn, trying to bring Jon up to the front on those finishing rollers, it all just sort of fell apart. I got out of the saddle and my thighs cramped like I've never felt them cramp before. I sat down, downshifted, tried to pedal hard, but I was just completely out of gas. Such a shame...

Such an embarrassment, really. The results show I finished 45th of 48 (finishers). What they don't show is that 52 people were either pulled or dropped out. It was a tough, hot day. And given the weather we've had lately I think that caught a lot of people off guard. But it's still embarrassing.

And the thing is, while Turkey Hill is a well-run event with fun start/finish area stuff going on during the race, the course is really quite dull. It's just a dumb little circuit with a bunch of unremarkable rollers, and yet it beats me up every year. So silly...

So, I'll see you next year, Turkey Hill... I'll see you next year...

facebook is weird

Or, I suppose, Facebook makes me weird.

I spent too long today Facebook-stalking. Mostly high school classmates.

I'm really weirded out thinking about folks from high school. Though this isn't quite true, it seems now that there wasn't much difference between us then. Less still for those kids I knew from elementary school on. And now, as I peer into their family rooms through the window they left open on Facebook, they just seem so, so different from me. In a way I find excruciatingly painful. (And the fact that it bothers me so, well, that bothers me even more.)

The part that troubles me most, oddly, is that I don't think I would very much care for most of them. They strike me as exceptionally boring people. Formulaic. Caricatures of one sort of middle-aged, middle-class life or another. Suburbanites. People who drive mini-vans, shuttle their kids to dance, watch TV in the evenings, and pour over the pages of IKEA catalogs. And yet, I do all those same things. That is my life, but somehow my life seems worlds away from theirs. Is it? And so I'm left wondering if I'm just as boring. (Though at least I'm not the sort of knee-jerk political conservative an alarming number of these people appear to have become. I mean, in ninth or tenth grade I though the Rush Limbaugh crowd and their politics--if you can call them that--were just terrific. I really did. Then I grew up. What happened to everyone else?)

Even while so many strike me as mind-numbingly uninteresting, you look at these pictures, especially those with families, and they usually look so happy. Their kids look great. Beautiful. Bright. Eager. And so I can't help being happy for them. The kids... Those stinking smiling kids never fail to melt my heart. And if those beautiful, bright, eager children think their parents are the greatest ever, who am I to opine otherwise?

But of course it would be naive to believe they're all happy. Tragedy comes in its various guises. Its experience is ubiquitous, as I often say. "All happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," a passage which I've always taken to be Tolstoy's way of debunking of the myth of happiness (the rest of the novel seems to support that conclusion).

Tolstoy was an interesting person. I think I would have liked to pass some time with that dude.

So I want to talk to these people. People who I don't really know; I only knew the person these people were 18 years ago, and then not well. I want to talk to them either to confirm my hunch (I think) or, joyfully, discover that I'm quite wrong. And why them? Something to do with common experience, I think. They're family, in a sense. So they should understand without explanation. If not really.

On the other hand, I'm too shy, awkward, and judgmental to do it. And of course it just feels ridiculous.

So, because I choose not to act, I'm left only with my thoughts. My fears. And wondering when I'll next get to sit down to the chocolate mousse of a stimulating conversation with engaging people that understand me. Like years ago. When Val and I would sit on the floor, way too late at night, with friends, engrossed in the art of...talking. With no thought of "What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" The world was beautiful in those moments. Even in its tragedy it was breathtakingly beautiful. God was in it. In the words. In the connection between us. In the being overwhelmed with the frightening grandness of it all.

All this, from stupid Facebook. Ai ai ai...

(thought continued...sort of)

Wow.

And now, six and a half hours later, I'm reassessing the value of taking risks in the classroom. Try to do cool stuff and you're guaranteed to piss a few people off. A lot. One has to ask: Would it be wiser (I know it would be easier) to be boring? Lecture. Test. Lecture. Test. It's not less than students expect. You'll get called boring. You won't get great reviews. But you're not going to get yelled at either. And you're probably a lot less likely to get shot.

Arrgh. In this business I'm not sure fortune favors the bold...

rules for radicals

I was just rereading the first chapter of "Rules for Radicals," which I assigned on Monday in conjunction with an exercise we did in class. Today, we'll debrief the exercise and discuss the reading.

I've read this chapter probably a dozen times over the past decade, but today it seems particularly profound.

Presently I'm struck by the fuzzy truthfulness (fuzzy, because all good truth is fuzzy) of Alinsky's disdain for dogma. (You can almost here him muttering--ok, it's me muttering an imaginary, utterly fabricated Alinsky--an imitation of the Prince of Cats: "Dogma? Dogma. I hate the word. As I hate hell, all Montagues.") From page four:

"Dogma is the enemy of human freedom. Dogma must be watched for and apprehended at every turn and twist of the revolutionary movement. The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice."

Alinsky follows this up with a quote (context unknown) from Justice Learned Hand.

"[T]he mark of a free man is that ever-gnawing inner uncertainty as to whether or not he is right."

I feel good about that sentiment, whether the context is political ideology, religious conviction, or an opinion about program planning in an university academic department. It sits right with me perhaps because I have learned to be suspicious of certainty. Deep professions of "I know" immediately turn me off. Why not I believe, I feel, or I think?

(I think) we would be a healthier and more civil society if we were quicker to acknowledge our doubts. But to be uncertain is so uncomfortable...

I'm also struck by Alinksy's observation that our collective reverence for revolutions of the past contradicts our enacted passion for the status quo. (An apt description of the uninspiring rhetoric that seems to guide the modern Republican party. Full disclosure: I'm no Democrat, but it's hard to imagine ever voting for a Republican.) That contradiction is perhaps nowhere more powerfully exemplified than a university campus. Universities are full of young, energetic, potentially interesting people with potentially interesting ideas. So much passion and optimism. At the same time universities are bastions of traditionalism. They are the archetype of institutionalism.

And now it's time to go to class. So, mid-thought, it's over...

shell shock

Click on the photo to get a closer look at that eye...and the expression, which telegraphs...what? Resignation? Yes, I think something like that.

And how about that number plate, eh?

my weekend's trophy (the michaux mash)

I've written about it elsewhere (and other elsewheres), but in order to archive the (now over-told) story I'm posting it here as well.

If you read all three blogs...well, I guess you're just that awesome.

...

A snapshot view of the trophy I took home this weekend:


This picture was taken after I got all cleaned up, obviously. Immediately after the injury it was much more exciting. My eye socket was completely filled with blood, I had sweet blood streaks down my cheek, and I've still dark red splatter spots sprinkled on my top and down tubes. My DNA is everywhere.

The story: Went to play on Saturday in Zach's Michaux Mash--a four-hour mountain bike race on a nine-mile loop of Michaux's worst (that's not true--there is much, much worse). For those that don't know, endurance mountain bike events are often timed. Riders try to run as many laps as possible within the time limit. The rider with the most laps wins. Or the rider that finishes the most laps in the least amount of time wins.

My accident occurred after I went over the bars in a particularly rough section of trail just 30 minutes in. Scraped up helmet, broken sunglasses, slightly dented top tube, and a cut on the forehead. I immediately began bleeding everywhere. I had to take a few minutes to stop the bleeding and assess how bad I was hurt. After five or six minutes the cut stopped bleeding, I felt ok--if maybe just a little deflated--so I figured I'd soldier on. I rode another 3 1/2 hours and finished (I think) 10th in the under 40.

The gash above my eye was cool and all, but through the course of the ride I also rubbed the tip off my left nipple. (Sorry, no photo.) Frankly, that hurt a lot more. Couldn't hardly shower afterward, the pain of water spraying on my chest just a little more than I could bear.

I love bike racing.

what a day...

...in terms of the weather. Wow.

If I were a student, I'd spend the entire day outside playing volleyball, guzzling ice-cold Cokes, and napping under trees. Repeat. Repeat again.

One of the biggest disappointments about growing up is that my peers just don't like to play as much as they used to. When you're ten, the kid who doesn't want to come over for a game of backyard football is the odd ball. When you're 35, the guy who does want to is the odd ball.

Growing old sucks...if only because you have to spend so much time with other old people. Stay young, my friends. There's devilry in maturity.

from an interview with neo-pro Peter Stetina

VN: Everything is ahead of your now – what’s been the biggest surprise so far?

PS: The descents. The other day in training, I was just surfing this descent, leaning into the curves, just cruising along. Christian (Vande Velde) just comes blowing by me like a cannonball. I hopped on his wheel and I was half-chattering my wheel around some corners and was gritting my teeth to get down it.

At the bottom, I said, “dude, you flew down that thing!”

He said, “no man, I am not a good descender. I am one of the bad ones in the Tour.”

I said, whoa, I am screwed! It’s the downhills. I just have to get so good in the climbing that I don’t have to worry about the downhills (laughs). I thought I was pretty good on the descents. I hear stories, that Cancellara is unbelievable. Hopefully, I will get to witness that. You have to put that fear out of your mind, get on their wheel and maybe you will learn something.

From VeloNews. Read the whole interview here.

For me, I let my mind wander to the what-ifs. What if I break a spoke? What if I puncture? What if my tire comes unglued? What if a car, coming up, is passing around a corner?

"You have to put that fear out of your mind..." Yup.

a comment or two on health care (I can't resist)

Perhaps you, like me, have been hearing for the past several weeks (months?) the loudest Republican talking-point--American's don't want Obamacare; how can Democrats pass a law that the majority of Americans don't want--and wondering what data there is to support that claim.

There are a lot of polls--a lot of polls--but I came across some data from certainly one of the most respected polling outlets, and thought I'd share.

Here's the numbers. First, prior to last weekend's vote:

Ok, certainly more would advise their congressman to vote against the bill. However, one notices two things, (1) it's not a majority and (2) amongst those that would advise against there are no doubt a good many that didn't think what was on the table (something like what was signed into law a few days ago) didn't go far enough, they want something more comprehensive, perhaps something more like universal health care, or a system that doesn't rely on the private sector to control the means of providing health insurance to all but those who qualify for Medicare or Medicaid. Those folks would also advise their congressman to vote against the bill. Without that teased out, it's impossible to know how many actually oppose a progressive health care reform bill, but it's safe to say, based on this poll, that it's something below 48 percent of Americans. Probably way below.

So, it would seem, the Republican claim that most Americans don't want Obamacare seems to have been just plain wrong, at least prior to the vote.

But how do Americans feel about change now that a bill has been passed?

Perhaps a more telling story.

Split by party affiliation, for sure, but among the totality of adults, the 49 percent thinking it's a good thing is an awful lot more than the 40 percent thinking its a bad thing.

And then there's this...

...which is, I think, a little more difficult to interpret. Forty percent of adults are "enthusiastic" or "pleased" with the bill. Forty-two percent "disappointed" or "angry."

At first blush it would appear that American's aren't overwhelmingly excited about the bill. And that's a reasonable conclusion. However, it's harder to conclude why they aren't excited.

For instance, I'm pleased that something finally made it through, and I think where we will be once everything shakes out is better than where we are right now, but I can't help but be disappointed too. Disappointed that a large majority of Americans don't think universal health care, or something close to it, a just and obvious good. That's exceptionally disappointing. I'm also disappointed it took so long. And I'm disappointed that it's caused such anger and partisan division. Frankly, I can hardly believe it's such a hot-button issue. I'm also disappointed with the limitations of the bill. As with Dennis Kucinich and others, I don't think the current bill goes near far enough. It may be that the current bill will serve as a stepping stone to more sweeping, more paradigmatic change in the American health care system sometime in the future, but it may also be that the initiative is lost, inertia towards change evaporated. Time will tell, of course, but I fear the later. So, in that sense I'm also disappointed.

...

Broke a chain today. On the mtb. Riding up the steep stuff. Snap! I wasn't even shifting.

It actually broke in two places, which is weird. Oh well...

tomorrow's ride

The ride tomorrow:

Looks like a group of four committed so far. Everyone is welcome.

Around 70 miles. Four significant climbs. Meet at the goat farm at 9:00 am, Saturday. (Email me if you need directions.)

rain

I rode in the rain yesterday. I hadn't done that for a while.

When I woke up, and noticed the soggy weather, I wasn't going to. But later, thinking things had cleared up, I headed out on the TT bike for a quick hour's workout. It started raining. Hard.

But there's a special pleasure to riding in the rain that I'm only reminded of when I'm actually doing it. Like most cyclists, I think, I'll go well out of my way to avoid it. But why? You put on an extra layer, just deal with being wet, and it's really not that big a thing. (So long as it's not too cold...and you're not out too long.)

I think it worthwhile to re-post this passage from The Rider*:


In 1919, Brussels-Amiens was won by a rider who rode the last forty kilometers with a flat tire. Talk about suffering! He arrived at 11:30 at night, with a ninety-minute lead on the only other two riders who finished the race. That day had been like night, trees had whipped back and forth, farmers were blown back into their barns, there were hailstones, bomb craters from the war, crossroads where the gendarmes had run away and riders had to climb onto one another's shoulders to wipe clean the muddied road signs.

Oh, to have been a rider then. Because after the finish all the suffering turns to memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is Nature's payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses: people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. 'Good for you.' Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lady with few suitors these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms she rewards passionately.

That's why there are riders.

Suffering you need: literature is baloney.


Woolly mice indeed!

Speaking of suffering, there hasn't been near enough in my riding lately. Probably Iron Cross is the last of something approaching anything worthy of that moniker. I've been considering the six-hour at French Creek, though. Saturday, May 8. If it turns out anything like the last six-hour I did, that should cure me of the want for suffering for a while. Plus Audrey turns 12 the day before. I'll need a good long hard ride to come to terms with that reality. Hopefully it rains.


* I read this a little over a year ago and still think about it all the time. A short book. Brilliantly written. I can't believe it took me so long to discover it. I can't believe no one told me about. Every cyclist should read it. It should come with your first bicycle, or when you buy your first racing license. It's prose should be quoted naturally and without effort on every weekend group ride the world over. It's that important. And besides The Yellow Jersey, the only meaningful cycling-related fiction of which I'm aware.

...

I listed two items on eBay last week. I think of myself as a veteran eBayer, but this is the first time I've listed anything for sale. The first auction ended last night. I got more than I hoped (for a lightly used SRAM Force front derailleur). The second ends tomorrow (for a lightly used SRAM Red PowerDome cassette, 11-23). Let's hope I get the same result.

I've lots of other stuff to list:

-- A pair of SRAM Force brake calipers.
-- A set of SRAM TT bar-end shifters.
-- A set of TT brake levers. (Though I can't decide if I want to keep the old, scared, perfectly functional aluminum numbers I'm currently using, or the fancy-pants SRAM carbon numbers I picked up together with a bundle of other stuff I bought a while ago. I clearly don't need both.)
-- A new, completely unused Specialized S-Works crankset, 170mm crankarms, compact gearing (50-34T) with BB30 bearing cups. (I don't even want to explain how I came to own this.)
-- A one year-old, red, 3T Funda fork (this is the fork that comes on all the Cervelos) with its steerer tube cut short--it would fit a 48 or 51 cm Cervelo, or any other smaller frame that takes a 1 1/8" steerer. (This is a nice fork. Strong, light, super aero. They retail for almost $400.)
-- And then I have a really nice frame to sell too. But I don't want to advertise that just yet.

Wow. Written out like that it seems like a lot of shmiz. I've become a regular broker. How did that happen?

...

Raced on Saturday. The Philly Phlyer. As I wrote last year, I love that course. Well suited for my strengths. Great weather (70s) and a really large field (maybe 70-80 riders).

This year, at the end of the third lap, there was a small group (2-3?) off the front and a small, three-rider chase group ten seconds or so in front of the pack. On the lap-finishing hill I bridged to the chase group, tried to motivate them, but by the time we made it back to River Drive we were altogether again, except for the two or three riders still off the front.

Fast forward to the end of the fourth and final lap. I dumped out all that I had on the incline prior to the round-a-bout and finishing straight, but four riders pulled around me just before the turn, and another few made it around me in the sprint. I finished ninth.

I knew my chances at a top five finish were dependent on making it to the round-a-bout first. I just didn't have quite enough.

1983

A TV commercial. I can't even remember the product. A phone, maybe? Anyway...there's a TV anchorman sitting at his table, with an open phone. He says something like this...

This just in on Twitter and Facebook. A local bachelor, aged forty-one, has just enrolled in karate.

...or something like that.

So funny. Because, one, Twitter is lame. Two, knowing that Twitter is lame I still have an account. (Don't we all?) Three, the sort of narcissistic self-focused non-messages that dominate Twitter are no different than the narcissistic self-focused non-updates on Facebook and, for that matter, this and a bazillion other personal blogs.

So it's making fun of the thing it's advertising--the means of publishing and reading inane, unimportant, personal goings-on. It's sort of how I feel about professional football. Can't find anything worthy, moral, uplifting, or otherwise praiseworthy in it. At all. Yet I can't stop watching it.

And so in that spirit I offer the following:

I was just at my favorite Shippensburg eatery enjoying a Belgian waffle and homefries. On the radio, an 80s set which included Styx's "Mr. Robato" and Bananarama's "Cruel Summer."

I'll admit, I did a little swaying in my seat to "Cruel Summer."

It was a delightful meal.

nyc

Back from a long conference weekend in NYC. A few thoughts from my fourth trip trekking around the city.

(1) Why are all the advertisements with stock art on the subways of white men and women of northern European descent when only a small percentage of the folks riding the subway are white men and women of northern European descent?

(2) To walk around in south Central Park you need either (a) a baby in a stroller, (b) a dog, on or off a leash, preferably with some cutesy collar or something or other (you can tell the schleps are just waiting for you to stop and complement their canine--dumb), or (c) to be holding someone's hand. To hang out in north Central Park you have to be running. And if you're running around the reservoir, watch out--it's like a stock car track for folks with runners on.

(3) Midtown smells bad and I don't like it there. Times Square is just creepy. The Upper East Side, however, is a place I could live.

(4) Finally, I'm struck by the contrast of the mega-diversity of the city with the utter lack of diversity just an hour west on I-78. Why don't all the folks melting in the pot of Gotham ooze out into the surrounding...wherever?

...

Having to spend the weekend in NYC allowed for another shot at the Central Park early morning race. I love it. The city is just barely coming to life and we're throwing punches on the six-mile loop round the park. And the view is just fabulous. I love looking up over the trees and seeing the varied and excellent architecture of all the (I'm sure) high rent residences surrounding the park. Fun, fun.

The last time I raced the park (which was also the first time) was three years ago. On that day I pulled off a lap-long solo-break (chase) to finish fourth, a couple of minutes behind a three-man break and just seconds in front of the closing horde.

This time I wasn't so fortunate. Us non-sprinters have the race-long burden of trying to get something going. It takes a lot of energy. So the day was full of initiating and bridging to ill-fated breakaways. The best shot came with about two miles to go. A lone wolf blasted off the front. I bridged. He gave up. I stayed off the front until about 0.75 miles to go. But then I got swarmed. And then it was over.

But it was a good time.

I love racing bicycles.

ok go

So, am I the last to encounter this bit of awesomeness?



(Facebookers, yer gonna have to visit the blog to see the vid.)

And then there's this too (embedding disabled, for reasons that are not clear).

Wow.

Ok Go is cool.

...

This might sound all elitist or hateful, but I promise that's not my intention. It's just that when your belly sags to your top tube, all your bragging about the "hard-core ripping" you do on your mountain bike just doesn't really work. I mean, I love that you love to ride. Nothing makes my heart sing like seeing people who most need a little exercise doing it, but come on, who do you think you're fooling? You're not beating my 11 year-old daughter to the end of the block, much less "ripping" the singletrack around here. Except down. (I'll give the benefit of the doubt when you're traveling the same direction as gravity's pulling.)

...

Spring break training camp next week. Shippensburg style. I've four days of 3-5 hour rides planned. Who's in?

dissonance

Quite unexpectedly, I've found I have mixed feelings about the warming weather. On the one hand, warmer weather means a beginning of oh-so-much-goodness. On the other hand, warmer weather means that the sodas I put on my office window sill just don't get quite as cool as I'd like them.

Oh yeah, and we ran out of heating oil yesterday. I suppose that's an on-the-one-hand reason to rejoice in the changing weather.

...

As a side note, no heating oil (the truck won't come for a couple of days) means heating the house with solar (unshaded windows), fireplace (that keeps one room warm, at least), and space heater. And I'm wearing a sweater today. I think it's kind of fun, frankly. (For a little while.)