albertnet

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language and coarse humor.

Introduction

In my last post I described my decades-long project of creating the best collection of rock & rap songs to listen to while riding my indoor bike trainer or rollers. Not all music is suitable for hammering away all winter, and music is a bare necessity for this activity. (Note the inconspicuous, but all-important, headphone cord in this photo.)

I’m aware that some people watch movies or cycling videos while riding indoors. I suppose this could be somewhat diverting—but that’s kind of the problem. You can’t be diverted from the suffering at hand, if you’re going to do this right. You need music with a driving beat, and it never hurts if it has some attitude, so you can find the proper frame of mind (which is somewhere between excitement and rage). Oh, and the music has to be sophisticated enough that you don’t get sick of it after repeated listening. There are pop songs I was already sick of before I’d finished hearing them the first time.

As I mentioned before, my Ultimate Workout Megamix has 165 tracks, which is about 11 hours of music, all in alphabetical order by track. In my last post I was able to cover A thru G. Tonight I provide the list—replete with liner notes on selected songs—for H thru M.

Liner notes – Dana’s Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix Part II

Happiness is a Warm Gun - The Breeders

Perhaps you’re familiar with the original Beatles version of this. That wouldn’t be lively enough for the trainer. The Breeders add a snarling guitar to it and it works great. A college roommate of mine expressed astonishment that this was an all-female band despite the low voice of one of the singers. Turns out my roommate was fooled by some photo where the guy was in drag. That’s about all I know about the Breeders other than it was started by Kim Deal, formerly of the Pixies.

Head Down – Soundgarden

This song helpfully reminds you to put your head down, which is useful while hammering, at least on the indoor trainer. As the grammar coach of the UC Berkeley road team, I explained to everybody that “head down” is a figure of speech; while racing you really need to watch the road. A former teammate of mine was once time trialing with his head down and rode right into the back of a parked car. DAAAAAAAAAMN!

Heart In a Cage - The Strokes

Good, fast tempo, the relentless driving beat so characteristic of the Strokes (it’s called a “triplet” according to my daughter, who knows something about music), and even some grumbling about how “I’m stuck in a city but I belong in a field” which captures that trapped feeling you get riding indoors for the third month in a row … this song has it all! This is from “First Impressions of Earth,” an underrated Strokes album (all their others are overrated).

Heart Shaped Box – Nirvana

Like “Black Hole Sun,” this song had quite the video. It creeped me out big time when I first saw it. At that time I was living in a literally flea-ridden apartment with a roommate who got baked like five times a day and had all the cable channels. Just now I checked the video out again and probably the creepiest part is Kurt Cobain’s artificially blue eyes. I once had an office job where the copier broke down constantly and I got to know the repairman, who had these dazzling blue contact lenses and a huge Swatch watch selection. Nobody photocopies anymore … I wonder what that guy’s up to. Maybe he’s in a band.

Heartbeat - Ice-T

One of the best workout songs ever, as it reminds you to keep your heart rate up. Plus it’s just a jammin’ song anyway. “Listen to my heartbeat, it’s beatin’ like a wild man/ But that’s natural, ‘cause you know that I am/ No punk, no chump, no fool, no toy/ Try to get ill and I’ll serve you, boy!” I sing along until I’m gasping for breath.

Hustlers - Nas
This guy started rapping when he was just a pup, and was basically brilliant right out of the gate. His quality control takes a bit of a hit because he produces albums almost constantly. He’s kind of the Woody Allen of rap in that regard: prolific but oddly willing to put out mediocre stuff now and then. (He released two albums in one year, 1999; one went double platinum and the other fizzled.) This track is from “Hip Hop Is Dead,” which is my favorite of his albums. An odd fact about Nas: though he’s gotta be pretty wealthy, having sold over 15 million records in the U.S. alone, he also owns a shoe store. I guess he just really likes shoes.

Hypnotize - The White Stripes

I Am A God - Kanye West

Again, I cannot quite describe how I feel about Kanye West. Actually, if I paraphrase the writer Adam Gopnik, maybe I can: I don’t like Kanye West, but I like to listen to him. (Gopnik was quoting his 6-year old talking about Barney, the purple dinosaur.) This song is the epitome of braggadocio, but it’s got a good, weird, dark atmosphere and some great lines: “I am a god/ So hurry up with my damn massage/ In a French-ass restaurant/ Hurry up with my damn croissants.”

I Am Not a Human Being - Lil Wayne

What a great segue, from “I Am a God” right into “I Am Not a Human Being.” This is one of my favorite Lil Wayne songs. It has more effective guitar than any other rap song I can think of except maybe “The Girl Tried to Kill Me” by Ice-T or “Sing For the Moment” by Eminem. I challenge you to listen to this on the trainer without starting to pedal harder. I’m playing it right now to help with this commentary, and damn it, where’s my bike?! LET’S ROLL, YOU AND ME, RIGHT NOW MUTHAFUCKA!

I Could Have Lied - Red Hot Chili Peppers

I Go To Work - Kool Moe Dee

This is the rare nap song you can sing to your kids. Did I really just type “nap song”? Elton John would be a nap song. I meant to say, this is the rare rap song you can sing to your kids. There’s no profanity at all. I was surprised the other day when my older daughter suddenly busted out with the whole first verse (which is a lot—237 words). I started rapping this at my mom’s house at Thanksgiving recently, pleasantly camouflaged against the chatter of a bunch of kids, nieces and nephews, but suddenly they all went silent so they could hear. It was a little scary, like suddenly being on stage.

I'm Back - Eminem

Good, solid stuff. I don’t know what this guy has against Christopher Reeves. Maybe he’s just reminding us listeners that he’s the most tasteless rapper alive. But good!

I'm Your Pusher - Ice-T

If I Had - Eminem

My favorite line? “If I had one wish, I would ask for a big enough ass for the whole world to kiss.” This is funny all by itself, but even funnier for people my age who remember that corny Coke ad he’s mocking, from 1971: “I’d like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love.”

It Takes a Muscle - M.I.A.

Jack My Dick - Obie Trice

This song might not work for your trainer ride the first few times you hear it because you’ll be laughing so hard your legs might turn to jelly. Here, Obie presents the only convincing case for abstinence I’ve ever heard. Not that this is the kind of song the Religious Right would ever embrace, and I can’t see it being put into service as a Public Service Announcement.

Jesus Christ Pose - Soundgarden

Just Lose It – Eminem

Another song from the least of Eminem’s albums, “Encore,” but good for the trainer. I think this is supposed to be a dance track. It’s got a good beat, I could dance to it (if I could dance, but I can’t, so I ride rollers instead) … I give it a 7!

Killing Lies - The Strokes

Knives Out – Radiohead

“If you’d been a dog they would have drowned you at birth.” Nuff said.

Know It Ain't Right - M.I.A.

Last Nite - The Strokes

Legacy - Eminem

Like Suicide – Soundgarden

Look, I know I have a lot of Soundgarden on this list. I can’t help it. I’m not saying they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread (and I’m not actually even that fond of sliced bread), but the drumming in this song, particularly toward the end, makes me want to ride to death.

Little Acorns - The White Stripes

Loco-Motive - Nas

Lollipop - Lil Wayne

Some critic got all hot and bothered because this or that masterpiece of songcraft lost out to “Lollipop” for the Grammy in 2009. The reader was expected to share this outrage, and I must say, “Lollipop” is just a bunch of gutter talk, very sophomoric, absolutely the kind of music you only listen to via headphones. But none of this matters. If you listen to this during exercise, you will get a better workout.

Longview - Green Day

Look In My Eyes - Obie Trice

Lose Yourself - Eminem

Love Me - 50 Cent

I guess this is technically an Eminem song, but for some reason I think of it as 50 Cent. I know nothing about 50 Cent. My favorite line on this song is actually by Obie Trice. It goes like this: “Show me love … bitch.” That just cracks me up every time. I mean, it’s pretty bad when you have to tell your woman to love you. I mean, you’re already on the wrong foot there, like people can just love on command. But to make matters worse (perhaps out of reflex?) the speaker shows emphasis by calling her “bitch.” Yeah, dude, that will win her over. It’s just funny. Perhaps a feminist wouldn’t find this funny at all. But think about it: the funny part is how lame the guy is. Feminists should use this as a case study for one of the many things wrong with men! Who knows, maybe they do.

Love Me or Hate Me - Lady Sovereign

Really, really great song, and I think this genre—grime—is generally a very good one for the trainer. It’s fast, lots of wacky sounds, plenty to hook your bored brain on. And the chorus here is good advice for the kind of person who tries so hard to be reasonable and likable, she just can’t cut herself any slack. (Or he/himself … whatever.) That advice is, “If you like me then thank you/ If you hate me, than fuck you.” I play this one out loud when I’m doing dishes too, and whenever the f-word comes around I cough really loud to drown it out, for the kids’ sake. Today I finally let Alexa (age 14) hear the whole thing. “I’d been wondering why this song always made you cough so much,” she said.

Love the Way You Lie - Eminem

Matangi - M.I.A.

Mockingbird - Eminem

Money Over Bullsh*t - Nas

Mother - Pink Floyd

Okay, this isn’t actually ideal trainer music, but it’s just such a great song. And actually, the guitar solo is pretty rousing. If you’re into the movie “Pink Floyd The Wall,” you should check out my exegesis, in which I put forth this song as the key to understanding the entire movie. Click here.

Mr. Carter - Lil Wayne

Mrs. Officer - Bobby Valentino/Lil Wayne

My Dad's Gone Crazy - Eminem

My England - Lady Sovereign

One of my favorites. If I understand this one right, it’s making fun of Anglophiles who think they know something about England because they read Bridget Jones’ Diary or saw the movie. Meanwhile, Lady Sovereign both celebrates and denigrates her homeland in a way that never fails to amuse me. Check it out!

My Mom - Eminem
This is the best workout song I know of concerning Munchausen syndrome by proxy. If you’re aware of other rousing rap or rock songs on this topic, please let me know. If I gather enough of these, perhaps I’ll create a Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy Workout Megamix. Actually, that might end up being kind of depressing, but it would still beat going to the gym.

My Name Is - Eminem

My Wave - Soundgarden

Stay tuned

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve focused on a relatively small number of bands/singers in this list. Well duh, that’s to help you! Not everybody consumes music by buying one MP3 at a time. You could actually buy a few CDs, perhaps used, to take a gamble on this music. Or just keep listening to that Sting album you bought back in college … see if I care.

Tune in next time for the penultimate installment (probably N thru S). Happy turbo-training!

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language and crude humor.

Introduction

My last couple of posts (here and here have provided “liner notes” for (i.e., comments on) my Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix. I got as far as M before you ran out of patience (which I sensed ahead of time). In this post I cover songs beginning with N thru S because you’re here, so you’re ready for more … right? It’s a long winter and you need more music recommendations for those boring indoor trainer rides!

(It just occurred to me to wonder if I’m using the term “megamix” correctly. After looking this word up on Wikipedia I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t care. I use this term to mean “mix tape that isn’t on tape.”)

Liner notes – Dana’s Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix Part III

No Love - Lil Wayne/Eminem

Okay, this song is just frickin’ epic, as my teenager would say. It starts off with a whole section by Lil Wayne (which threw my wife off at first—she was like, “What’s wrong with Eminem’s voice? He sounds so weird!”). This passage has some awesome lyrics, plus Lil Wayne just sounds great—he does a better “uh” than anybody, and that’s saying a lot, because rappers are, in general, really good at going “uh.” The “h” almost makes a consonant sound. But anyway, then Eminem cuts in with the chorus, which is good enough, and then the next verse is Eminem’s, and he’s so brilliant, and so fast, it just has me laughing every time, not just because it’s funny (it’s less comic than a lot of his stuff) but because it’s just so right and everything fits together like clockwork. It would be very hard to slack off on your pedaling while hearing something so good. Dang.

Not Going Back - Nas

Nothing Else Matters - Metallica

Offend In Every Way - The White Stripes

This is a good, hard-rocking track, with a nice buzzing guitar. Getting back to that other song, “No Love,” I forgot to mention something: when Lil Wayne says “I’m rollin’ Sweets,” he’s talking about putting weed into a Swisher Sweet (the epitome of the cheap cigar). My brothers and friends and I used to smoke Swisher Sweets occasionally (without anything added to them, I hasten to add, and without inhaling). Mainly this was to get the garlic off our breath because we used to go to Café Gondolier for their all-u-can-eat pasta and eat like 3 of our 6 plates (each) of the “oil & gar,” which was just pasta with olive oil and all this crushed garlic on top. Nothing would get that garlic taste and stench out of our mouths. We tried mint gum, clove gum, every kind of oral hygiene, whatever. We’d be sweating garlic the next day. The Swisher Sweet cigars didn’t really mask the stench, but did morph it into a gnarly hybrid cheap-cigar-and-garlic. One time we went over to our friend’s car, cracked a window, and (from outside the car) blew all the smoke from a whole Swisher Sweet (each) through the window, then quickly rolled the window back up. You couldn’t see across the car from one window through the next, for all the smoke. The car reeked for more than a week. Offend in every way, indeed.

On the Other Side - The Strokes

One of my favorite Strokes songs. It’s just so misanthropic, I love it: “I hate them all, I hate them all/ I hate myself for hating them/ So I'll drink some more, I'll love them all, I'll drink even more/ I'll hate them even more than I did before.” I’m not a misanthrope, myself—not exactly—but as I’ve said before, an angry mindset is perfect for pedaling hard indoors. (And I’m never angry when I climb off.)

One Mic - Nas

Listen for the background sound of a fiend dropping his Heineken. This is a cool song because it keeps building up, hitting the chorus, relaxing, and then building up again. I’ve used this song’s progression for doing intervals on the trainer.

One Time 4 Your Mind - Nas

Outshined - Soundgarden

My favorite lines: “I just looked in the mirror/ And things aren’t lookin’ so good/ I’m looking California/ And feeling Minnesota.” Don’t overthink it, because looking California is probably better than looking Minnesota (i.e., he feels worse than he looks) and yet he says “things aren’t looking so good.” Actually, overthinking things is good for the trainer, as long as you don’t forget to hammer.

In 2008 I was hit by a car while riding, and separated my shoulder. It was a long time before I could use my right arm well enough to shave, so I went ahead and grew a beard. While I was at it, I let my hair grow for a good while. Being thus unkempt, I relaxed my standards for attire as well. One day I went into work wearing a shirt that was pushing the edge of the envelope for business casual; it was just shy of a Hawaiian flower shirt. For some reason the LAN ports in my office weren’t working (this was before we had WiFi at the office) and I was leading a net conference, so I had to set up in one of the cubicles. This cubicle ended up having a broken chair. So after the call I took advantage of the broken chair back and fully reclined for a few minutes … you know, just maxin’ and relaxin’ and chillin’ my will. Well, at that very moment this sales manager from the Phoenix office came through, trailing his little entourage, all of them in suits and ties. I’d only ever encountered this guy at customer meetings where I was in a suit and tie myself (with a haircut and close shave to match), so he did a double take when he saw me all sprawled out in my flower shirt and beard and long hair. “Wow, Dana, you’re … lookin’ California!” he said. I figured there was no point trying to explain myself, and replied, “Feelin’ California, Paul!”

Overfloater - Soundgarden

Paint It Black - The Rolling Stones

An oldie but goodie. I used to enjoy singing this to my kids when they were babies and I was rocking them in my arms.

Paper Planes - M.I.A.

If you’re not familiar with M.I.A. and would like to hear her most charismatic, crowd-pleasing song, this is probably the one. There’s a cash register sound in the chorus, and if you’re sure you’re alone in the bat cave during your indoor workout, you can pantomime hitting the “Sale” key on the cash register, like Davis Phinney used to do after winning a prime in a criterium. It’s okay, I give you permission. (My daughter, reading over my shoulder, rescinds this permission, or tries to, lacking any authority.)

Personal - Ice-T

Another great trainer track. My favorite line: “Bury you deep, creep, no one’ll weep, ‘cause the next night with your bitch I sleep.” Here, Ice-T is obviously alluding to Shakespeare’s historical play Richard III, in which Richard of Gloucester famously wooed Lady Anne Neville despite having just murdered her husband. These rappers, despite their coarse utterances, are far more erudite than many listeners realize.

Pump Your Fist - Kool Moe Dee

R.A.K.I.M. - Rakim

I hope my recommending this song doesn’t get me in trouble with Homeland Security. The “A” in the R.A.K.I.M. acronym conceit fits into the chorus thus: “R: rugged & rough, that’s how I do it/ A: Allah who I praise to the fullest.” Let me just say this: I myself am not Muslim, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy this song. I’m glad to take this opportunity to clear things up, since the NSA has surely spotted this song on my hard drive already. So I’ma give a shout-out to our NSA friends: thanks for keeping us safe! And please understand, I have a little fun with this song, but at the end of the day I’m a patriotic American, born American, and these colors don’t run! USA #1 LET’S ROLL!

Rabbit Run - Eminem

Radio Suckers - Ice-T

Rap God - Eminem

So you know that song I mentioned earlier, “Outshined” by Soundgarden? It’s just over 5 minutes long and has 163 words. R.A.K.I.M. is just shy of 4½ minutes and has 543 words. “Rap God” is just over 6 minutes and has 1,551 words! Eminem goes so fricking fast on this one, it’s amazing, and the lyrics are laced with double-, triple-, probably quadruple-entendres, and they’re funny. If it bothers you that he calls himself a rap god, consider that a) let’s face it, he kind of is, and b) he tempers this boast with some perspective (calling himself “Dale Earnhardt of the trailer park, the White Trash God”) and also by being self-effacing (“Only Hall of Fame I'll be inducted in is the alcohol of fame/ On the wall of shame”). By the way, I should point out here that I firmly believe those who enjoy quality (in their booze) enjoy it responsibly. Don’t let this line from Rap God (or that line from “On the Other Side”) mislead you.

Rewind - Nas

Rhinosaur - Soundgarden

Richard - Obie Trice

Did you think only one rapper (Ice-T, as described above) paid tribute to Richard III? Well think again! I’m talking about the line, “A ho’! A ho’! My kingdom for a ho’!” (Okay, I’m kidding. That’s not an actual line from this song, and as far as I know, this song isn’t about that Richard. But then, I haven’t read the play in a long time. Maybe this whole track is some kind of extended Shakespearean allegory.)

Roughnecks - Obie Trice

Santeria - Sublime

Searching With My Good Eye Closed - Soundgarden

This is a good song for the trainer, but with one reservation: it gets off to a really slow start, as the narrator (yes, it seems to have a narrator) runs through a strange monologue involving animal sounds: “Do you hear a cow? [Moooo.] A rooster says… [Croooowwww.]. Here is a pig: [Oink oink oink.] The devil says….” All very amusing, but it’s like 80 seconds before you get any drums and guitars and whatnot. Is it worth it? Sure! Besides, you could use the downtime to wipe sweat off your face, or adjust your shoes or something.

Seduction - Eminem

Perhaps a rapper can’t really call himself a rapper if he doesn’t do at least one song that recalls Richard III. No, Eminem’s rival isn’t a king … just a fellow rapper. But, same diff, you know? And sure, this song isn’t about actually murdering anybody, but there are plenty of metaphors along these lines (“You think you killing them syllables … quit playing” and “it’s psychological warfare” and “your entire arsenal is not enough to fuck with one round.”) And the other center idea, of stealing your foe’s mate, is expounded upon at length: “There's a seven disc CD changer in her car, and I'm in every single slot, and you're not. Aww.” (Shakespeare, being fairly ribald himself, would have like the double-entendre of “slot” here.) And, “I am awesome and you are just awe struck. She's love stricken. She's got her jaw stuck, from…” Okay, maybe that’s enough.

Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes

Sexodus - M.I.A.

Shoot Me Down -Lil Wayne

I just love this song, and I can’t really say why. I don’t have any idea what the hell he’s singing about. I mean, there’s obviously some stuff about shooting, but all kinds of other wacky nonsensical stuff too, like “My picture should be in the dictionary next to the definition of definition” (could he be talking about well-defined muscles? I doubt it…) and “But your bullets don't reach Mars, haws, claws because I'm a beast I'm a dawg, I’ll get you.” There’s one line that’s oddly fitting for riding the bike trainer: “And I would die for ours, ride for hours, supply the flowers.”

Shooter - Lil Wayne

Sick Of You – Cake

This song, like many Cake has made, is humorously dark and darkly humorous. If John McCrea were a cyclist, he’d add a line or two about being sick of riding indoors. He gave some background on this song to Spin magazine: “It’s about how when you hate things, the circle of hate starts rather broadly. You hate the President or a big movie star, someone you’ll probably never meet. Gradually though, the circle tightens and the objects of hate get closer and closer to the hater. Now it’s your uncle or your mother, now it’s your close friend, and finally it’s you. Bummer.”

Sing For the Moment - Eminem

Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana

So Human - Lady Sovereign

This song is a good case study in basically stealing somebody else’s music and making it better (or at least more appropriate for dancing or working out to). Kind of like Robin Hood, really. This song samples pretty much the entirety of The Cure’s “Close To Me,” but turns it from a sad, frankly rather emo affair into something irreverent and saucy that you can hammer to. Go, SOV!

Spoonman - Soundgarden

Okay, I have absolutely zero idea what this song is going on about. “Feel the rhythm with your hands/ Steal the rhythm while you can, spoonman.” A man, a plan, a canal, panama! Maybe it’s about making spoonbread. That would jibe with the line “all my friends are Indians” since Native Americans made spoonbread. And I can imagine palpating spoonbread in my hands, perhaps rhythmically. But what grunge band sings about palpating spoonbread? I’ve also thought this song could be about spooning. I visited a little museum in LaCrosse, Kansas that had an old journal from a Civil War soldier in it, which visitors were free to thumb through, and I read a passage the soldier wrote about his battalion being crammed so tightly into a tent, they had to spoon. One guy would be up all night (standing guard, I guess) and would periodically tell everybody to roll over: “Spoon left!” or “Spoon right!” But I doubt Soundgarden ever read that journal. Anyway, it’s a great song. I’ve never been much preoccupied about lyrics.

Stan - Eminem

This song is depressing, according to my daughter. (What?! I let her listen to Eminem? Yeah, I guess so. But only certain tracks.) Anyway, as I just explained to Alexa, when something is creatively or artistically brilliant, it doesn’t matter how depressing its subject matter is, because we’re uplifted by knowing humans can be capable of such brilliance.

I won’t describe the song in great detail—there’s no time, no room, and anyway you can hear it for yourself—but there’s something particularly interesting I want to point out. The song tells its tale in the “epistolary” manner (which is a fancy English-major way of saying “letters back and forth”), but with a twist: we get all the letters, but not quite in the right sequence. We get Stan’s three letters, in chronological order, and then we get Eminem’s reply, but this fourth letter out of sequence. Eminem has only received the first two of Stan’s letters, and is responding to the second one, which was written when Stan was frustrated but not yet heartbroken. We know how this sad saga ends (having heard the third of his letters), but Eminem doesn’t—yet. The real climax of the song, arguably, isn’t when the car goes off the bridge, but when Eminem delivers the penultimate word of the song—that is, when he realizes he’s at the heart of the tragedy he was too late to prevent.

Suck My Kiss - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Sunshowers - M.I.A.

Superunknown - Soundgarden

Survival - Eminem

Sympathy For the Devil - The Rolling Stones

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language and vulgar humor.

Introduction

This is the last installment of my Workout Megamix liner notes: a list of, and commentary on, the music I play while riding indoors. Click here, here, and here for installments I, II, and III respectively.

Let me be clear on something: I do not condone riding outdoors with headphones. I was once coming home from a ride and was passing this other biker when he started drifting to the left. I yelled at him but he kept coming, until we were almost in the left gutter. Dude almost took me out, and I couldn’t figure out what his problem was until I saw he was wearing headphones. I strangled him with the cord and dumped his body in a well. (Mentally.) It’s one thing to lose yourself in music while riding indoors—in fact, that’s kind of the point—but on a public road, you need to be in the real world.

In other news, I realize my Megamix is pretty heavy on a relatively small number of singers/bands (in fact it comprises just 35). The thing is, there’s tons of good music out there but not all of it is good for riding the trainer. Nothing takes the wind out of your sails like a low-key song. I’ll bet a Coldplay song—even a good one—would lower my heart rate by 20 bpm. And then there are fast-paced songs that work for a while but start to get old. I’ve worked hard to pick only the best-suited tracks for this Megamix.

(No, I don’t actually think you’re going to go buy a bunch of CDs based on these recommendations. But you could get some from the library to try out. Remember libraries? I’m a card-carrying member!)

Liner Notes – Dana’s Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix Part IV – The Final Liner

Take It or Leave It – The Strokes

Takeover – Jay-Z

This song, which started a feud between Jay-Z and Nas, features Jay-Z bagging on Nas for not being more successful. Nas has had five number one albums and has sold over 25 million records, which is pretty amazing until you consider Jay-Z has had tennumber one albums, selling over 100 million. That said, Nas is a way better rapper. Sales aren’t everything; consider that Herman Melville sold only 3,200 copies of Moby Dick during his lifetime, while Danielle Steel has sold 650 million novels.

All this aside, “Takeover” is a pretty good track. In one extended motif, it makes fun of (or pays homage to?) the David Bowie song “Fame,” substituting “lame.” Good beat, easy to dance to … I give it a 7.

Take, Take, Take – The White Stripes

Tango – Lady Sovereign

Continuing the “hater” theme, this song is a very funny, if vicious, attack on … who? what? Someone orange, to be sure: “And you always know where she’s been,/ And you always know when she’s had a pee,/ Cause the toilet seat ain’t clean/ Cause the toilet seat has an orange sheen!” After years of being mystified by this song, I finally did some research. Tango, in this context, refers to an orange-flavored soft drink (surely as artificial as a fake tan) hawked in the UK by a spokesman in an orange bodysuit. The chorus of this song: “Slap, bang, goes on your fake tan/ Bitch, you look like the Tango man.”

Turns out Lady Sovereign is bagging on a one-time pop-star-wannabe named Jentina who, as near as I can figure, is the British equivalent of Vanilla Ice, but without the fifteen minutes of fame. Whether or not Jentina deserved such vitriol, this is a great song, perfect for the trainer.

(By the way, I know somebody who once tried on a spray-on tan. It made her almost as orange as a carrot! Yikes!)

Tarantula – Bob Schneider

I saw this singer live, at a small San Francisco venue called The Independent, in the early aughts. Some friends had come all the way from San Luis Obispo to see him, so my wife and I tagged along. It was a great show. This guy’s music is all over the place; at the concert he did a totally straight, non-ironic cover of “You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman)” along with a rockabilly version of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Give It Away.” Not much of Bob Schneider’s repertoire is suitable for indoor workouts, but this song is. You should check it out.

Tell Me Why – M.I.A.

That Was Just Your Life – Metallica

Years ago my family was house-swapping with a family in Glasgow, and I found this Metallica album there called “Death Magnetic.” The apartment belonged to a couple of professors and was full of great books, so I decided they must have good taste. I wasn’t wrong: this album totally rocks, and “That Was Just Your Life” is one of my favorite tracks on it. If you’re getting sick of the dark, cold days and indoor workouts, the lyrics can see almost eerily apropos: “Like a misery that keeps me focused though I’ve gone astray/ Like an endless nightmare I must awaken from each day.”

The Air Near My Fingers – The White Stripes

The Day I Tried To Live – Soundgarden

The Day That Never Comes – Metallica

The Girl Tried To Kill Me – Ice-T

This is one of the rare rap songs that has a whole lot of electric guitar. Very high-energy stuff, and also funny. It’s about a guy who meets the girl of his dreams (“Hype, super-dope body and face, her mini-skirt tight/ Talkin’ ‘bout legs and lips, mindblowin’ hips/ Had to cross my legs just to look at her tits”). Unfortunately, she turns out to be psychotic, which is bad enough news before her husband shows up. A rap classic.

The God That Failed – Metallica

The Hardest Button to Button – The White Stripes

The Man Who Sold the World – Nirvana

The Monster – Eminem with Rihanna

This is a great song. I suppose I could go on and try to say something interesting and original about it, but I just glanced at the Wikipedia entry and it’s just vast. There are 121 footnoted references on that page. It’s tempting to say that somebody (i.e., the amateur Wikipedia writer) needs to get a life, but then that’s a dangerous proposition for a blogger. Glass houses and all that.

Suffice to say, this is the Eminem song that everybody likes, even those who hate Eminem. Rihanna is another famous musician. I think she’s famous because she sells a lot of records, but for all I know, she’s famous because she has a tortured “private” life or something.

The Real Slim Shady – Eminem

The Righteous & The Wicked – Red Hot Chili Peppers

The Unforgiven – Metallica

The Unforgiven III – Metallica

This is another of my favorites. (I love the original “Unforgiven” as well, though it’s slightly marred by the silliness of a line in the chorus, “I dub thee unforgiven.”) Toward the end of this track there’s this minute-long guitar solo that will have yourself pedaling like a madman.

Case in point: I was pedaling along to this recently, on the rollers, and started going harder and harder. That often happens with great music, but then it dawned on me that my increased effort wasn’t entirely voluntary. The pedaling itself was getting harder, and my heart rate was climbing. What’s more, the bike was getting harder and harder to control. My back was starting to hurt. Finally I realized the problem: I had a damn flat tire! Who gets a flat tire on the rollers, for cryin’ out loud? Me, that’s who!

Through Being Cool – Devo

Time To Get Ill – Beastie Boys

Back in 1990 I was working at a bike shop with a couple of illegals from London. On a hunch I asked one of them if the Beastie Boys were big in England. “Absolutely huge,” he said. I can see why. Though they may seem as American as apple pie, these guys are quite the Anglophiles. This song is a case in point: it’s a tribute to “Binker,” a poem by A.A. Milne published in 1927 in the book Now We Are Six. Skeptical? Compare these passages:

Binker’s brave as lions when we’re running in the park;
Binker’s brave as tigers when we’re lying in the dark;
Binker’s brave as elephants. He never, never cries…
Except (like other people) when the soap gets in his eyes.

I’d have the pedal to the metal if I had a car
But I’m chiller with the Miller cold coolin’ at the bar
I can drink a quart of Monkey and still stand still
What’s the time? It’s time to get ill.

It’s easy to tell which is the Milne poem and which is the rap song, but the similarities are striking. Of course the rhyme scheme is identical, and the meter very nearly the same as well, but beyond that, there’s a thematic resemblance, almost as though MCA would like to see himself as a modern-day Binker.

By the way, I made all that up, except the bit about my bike shop pal and these guys being huge in England.

Truckdrivin’ Neighbors Downstairs – Beck

There’s some dialogue at the beginning of this song (“You lousy puke!”/ “Why don’t you call your mommy?!”) that will jar you to attention if you start to slouch during your workout. It’s an odd song, somewhere between a ballad and a dirge, but faster, that catalogs the squalid details of some horrible neighbors; for example, “Whiskey-stained buck-toothed back woods creep/ Grizzly bear motherfucker never goes to sleep.” Very funny, and dark … it should have you pedaling your ass off to get away from these people (though as usual, this being the trainer, you’re going nowhere fast).

Trunk – Kings of Leon

U Wanna Be Me – Nas

One nice side effect of all this trainer music is that you have a wider variety of songs that might pop into your head during a road (or trail) ride. Click here and search on “wanna” for an account of a total dork who tried to school me by blowing through a stop sign and keeping his momentum for an uphill. This song became the anthem of his comeuppance. “You suckers, you weak, you flunkies, you fake/ You couldn’t come close on my worst day.”

Ultraviolence – Lana Del Rey

This song is the title track from the album “Ultraviolence,” which is apparently very popular. I’d never heard of it, nor of Lana Del Ray, when I came across it in the “Lucky Day” section of the library. It looked pretty cool, and I figured maybe the title was a reference to Clockwork Orange, so I checked it out. Kind of a nifty sound, different, and there was a sticker the librarian put on the jewel case saying “TEEN,” which helps me pretend I’m not old and lame. I liked this album enough to buy it, though most of the songs aren’t quite right for the trainer. This one does the job.

Unorthadox Daughter – No Lay

That “Unorthadox” isn’t a misspelling. It’s really spelled that way. I don’t know much about this song or about No Lay, other than to say I got this from a grime compilation album called “Run the Road.” (Wikipedia is no help here; the entry is so sloppy it spells Marshall Mathers “Mashall Mathers.” Stylistic misspelling is one thing; typos are quite another.) This song is good and fast and I have no idea what No Lay is saying. But that’s good … you’ll have plenty of time to puzzle this out as you flail away at the pedals, week after week, until spring.

Untutored Youth – The Hives

I love this song. It’s very hard to make out the lyrics but I’m pretty sure part of it goes, “And when people tell me what is OK and what is not, it should not be unexpected when I extend my middle right hand digit and say ‘Hey, would you like lemon or lime with that piece of advice, mister?’” The Hives are great for the trainer because the songs are really short, so you can commit to absolutely hammering through them the whole way. A Hive Interval, you might say.

Use Somebody – Kings of Leon

W.T.P. – Eminem

A fair bit of this MegaMix is somewhat dark, so it’s nice to have some lighthearted, funny songs on there, and this is one of them. Throughout his oeuvre Eminem has turned his humble trailer-trash roots into an asset and this song is perhaps the pinnacle: “So let’s have us a little bash/ And if anyone asks, it ain’t no one but us trash.” And talk about a cheap date: “Now honey, don’t let them pricks trip, we should make a quick dip/ And go do some doughnuts in the hospital parking lot.”

When I was in high school, a friend had this old Volvo wagon with a bad muffler, so it sounded like a muscle car, and every time we drove anywhere, he’d swing by the high school to do doughnuts in the parking lot. It was a dirt lot, which is pretty amazing because this was Boulder, Colorado which has since been so gentrified the roads are mostly paved with teak or mahogany.

What I Got – Sublime

I’d never heard of this band until a friend said I should check them out. So I bought their eponymous album, tried it out, and immediately recognized several songs I’d heard a lot on the local alternative rock station (whose deejays can’t be bothered to give the name of a song or artist—we’re just supposed to know, duh!). Three of Sublime’s songs made the cut for this Megamix.

I’m actually not that curious about musicians, so I never looked these guys up on Wikipedia until just now. Dang, it’s actually a very sad story which I’ll spare you from … you can always go look it up if you want. The fact is, their subject matter is often pretty dark and trashy, but in a kind of jovial way, so it never used to bum me out. Now I’m not sure I’ll ever hear their music the same way again.

What’s Wrong With Them – Lil Wayne

This is another one of those rap songs where the chorus is sung by a woman with a great voice. In this case the chanteuse is somebody called Nicki Minaj. I won’t necessarily check out her music; sometimes these guest appearances are better than the contributing artist’s own work. For example, I liked Amy Winehouse’s contribution to the Nas song “Cherry Wine,” so I checked out one of her albums. Alas, I couldn’t get into it … I just didn’t like the style (though she had a great voice). Similarly, Dido is great on Eminem’s song “Stan,” but her own songs wouldn’t work for the trainer.

So many pop songs featuring women have such cloying lyrics. I asked my teenager who the hot female pop singer is and looked her up: “I go on too many dates [chuckle]/ But I can’t make them stay … My ex-man brought his new girlfriend/ She’s like “Oh, my god!” but I’m just gonna shake.” You know what? I really don’t care about the romantic foibles of some drippy fool-for-love.

Whatever Nicki Minaj typically sings about, I like her belting out, “This is times up/ Put your signs up/ They done picked my dude/ Out the lineup/ Baby what the fuck’s wrong with them/ What the fuck’s wrong with them?” Okay, maybe this lament is about her dude (i.e., Lil Wayne), but at least it’s not just the typical unrequited love … this seems to be a commentary on dubious incarceration and the questionable practice of having eyewitnesses look at police lineups. The way this critique is delivered, it’s got a nice kick to it.

When I Come Around – Green Day

Where Did You Sleep Last Night – Nirvana

Where Is My Mind? – The Pixies

I love this song. You may be tickled to learn how it came to be written. The lead singer, Black Francis, is credited with this explanation: “That came from me snorkeling in the Caribbean and having this very small fish trying to chase me. I don’t know why; I don’t know too much about fish behavior.” (Hey, Black has the same approach to research that I do!)

Incidentally, there’s a great M.I.A. song called “20 Dollar” that borrows heavily from this one.

Wherever I May Roam – Metallica

Whip It – Devo

Wrong Way – Sublime

XR2 – M.I.A.

You Ain’t Got Nuthin – Lil Wayne

The fact is, Lil Wayne’s lyrics, though good, aren’t nearly as clever as, say, Eminem’s. But somehow Lil Wayne makes his words sound so great. “Uhh, I get money like a muhfucker/ Shades darker than a bitch, but I can see/ I got everything, you got nothing/ But you ain’t got nothing on me.” On the page the words fall pretty flat … but when you’re hammering on the indoor bike, heart rate at like 160, all that adrenaline and everything, these simple words seem so profound!

Young Lust – Pink Floyd

Zero Chance – Soundgarden

The complete Megamix list

For your convenience, here's the complete list of tracks on my Workout Megamix:

'Till I Collapse - Eminem
20 Dollar - M.I.A.

8 Miles & Runnin' - Freeway/Jay-Z

911 Is a Joke - Public Enemy

A Punchup at a Wedding - Radiohead

A.K.A. I-D-I-O-T - The Hives

Adrenaline Rush - Obie Trice

Airbag - Radiohead

Ass Like That - Eminem

Average Man - Obie Trice

Bad Girls - M.I.A.

Bad Guy - Eminem

Be Somebody - Kings of Leon

Beautiful - Eminem

Beautiful Pain - Eminem w/ Sia

Best Rapper Alive - Lil Wayne

Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden

Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos - Public Enemy

Blow Up the Outside World - Soundgarden

Born Free - M.I.A.

Brain Stew - Green Day

Bucky Done Gun - M.I.A.

Burden in My Hand - Soundgarden

Cash Money Millionaires - Lil Wayne

Cha Ching (Cheq 1-2 Remix) - Lady Sovereign

Charmer - Kings of Leon

Cheers - Obie Trice

Closer - Kings of Leon

Come As You Are - Nirvana

Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

Cool Cats - Obie Trice

Creep - Radiohead

Cry Now - Obie Trice

Desperation - Eminem

Diamonds From Sierra Leone - Kanye West

Don't Shoot (I'm a Man) - Devo

Drive Slow - Kanye West

Deja Vu - Eminem

Easy to Crash - Cake

Enter Sandman - Metallica

Fell In Love With a Girl - The White Stripes

Fell On Black Days - Soundgarden

Fight the Power - Public Enemy

Follow My Life - Obie Trice

Fresh - Devo

Galang - M.I.A.

Girls LGBNAF - Ice-T

Give It Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Got Hungry - Obie Trice

Hands On You - Eminem/Obie Trice

Happiness is a Warm Gun - The Breeders

Heart In a Cage - The Strokes

Heart Shaped Box - Nirvana

Heartbeat - Ice-T

Hustlers - Nas

Hypnotize - The White Stripes

I Am A God - Kanye West

I Am Not a Human Being - Lil Wayne

I Could Have Lied - Red Hot Chili Peppers

I Go To Work - Kool Moe Dee

I'm Back - Eminem

I'm Your Pusher - Ice-T

If I Had - Eminem

It Takes a Muscle - M.I.A.

Jack My Dick - Obie Trice

Jesus Christ Pose - Soundgarden

Just Lose It - Eminem

Killing Lies - The Strokes

Knives Out - Radiohead

Know It Ain't Right - M.I.A.

Last Nite - The Strokes

Legacy - Eminem

Like Suicide - Soundgarden

Little Acorns - The White Stripes

Loco-Motive - Nas

Lollipop - Lil Wayne

Longview - Green Day

Look In My Eyes - Obie Trice

Lose Yourself - Eminem

Love Me - 50 Cent

Love Me or Hate Me - Lady Sovereign

Love the Way You Lie - Eminem

Matangi - M.I.A.

Mockingbird - Eminem

Money Over Bullsh*t - Nas

Mother - Pink Floyd

Mr. Carter - Lil Wayne

Mrs. Officer - Bobby Valentino/Lil Wayne

My Dad's Gone Crazy - Eminem

My England - Lady Sovereign

My Mom - Eminem

My Name Is - Eminem

My Wave - Soundgarden

No Love - Lil Wayne/Eminem

Not Going Back - Nas

Nothing Else Matters - Metallica

Offend In Every Way - The White Stripes

On the Other Side - The Strokes

One Mic - Nas

One Time 4 Your Mind - Nas

Outshined - Soundgarden

Overfloater - Soundgarden

Paint It Black - The Rolling Stones

Paper Planes - M.I.A.

Personal - Ice-T

Pump Your Fist - Kool Moe Dee

R.A.K.I.M. - Rakim

Rabbit Run - Eminem

Radio Suckers - Ice-T

Rap God - Eminem

Rewind - Nas

Rhinosaur - Soundgarden

Richard - Obie Trice

Roughnecks - Obie Trice

Santeria - Sublime

Searching With My Good Eye Closed - Soundgarden

Seduction - Eminem

Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes

Sexodus - M.I.A.

Shoot Me Down -Lil Wayne

Shooter - Lil Wayne

Sick Of You - Cake

Sing For the Moment - Eminem

Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana

So Human - Lady Sovereign

Spoonman - Soundgarden

Stan - Eminem

Suck My Kiss - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Sunshowers - M.I.A.

Superunknown - Soundgarden

Survival - Eminem

Sympathy For the Devil - The Rolling Stones

Take It or Leave It - The Strokes

Take, Take, Take - The White Stripes

Takeover - Jay-Z

Tango - Lady Sovereign

Tarantula - Bob Schneider

Tell Me Why - M.I.A.

That Was Just Your Life - Metallica

The Air Near My Fingers - The White Stripes

The Day I Tried To Live - Soundgarden

The Day That Never Comes - Metallica

The Girl Tried To Kill Me - Ice-T

The God That Failed - Metallica

The Hardest Button to Button - The White Stripes

The Man Who Sold the World - Nirvana

The Monster - Eminem with Rihanna

The Real Slim Shady - Eminem

The Righteous & The Wicked - Red Hot Chili Peppers

The Unforgiven - Metallica

The Unforgiven III - Metallica

Through Being Cool - Devo

Time To Get Ill - Beastie Boys

Truckdrivin' Neighbors Downstairs - Beck

Trunk - Kings of Leon

U Wanna Be Me - Nas

Ultraviolence - Lana Del Rey

Unorthadox Daughter - No Lay

Untutored Youth - The Hives

Use Somebody - Kings of Leon

W.T.P. - Eminem

What I Got - Sublime

What's Wrong With Them - Lil Wayne

When I Come Around

Where Did You Sleep Last Night - Nirvana

Where Is My Mind? - The Pixies

Wherever I May Roam - Metallica

Whip It - Devo

Wrong Way - Sublime

XR2 - M.I.A.

You Ain't Got Nuthin - Lil Wayne

Young Lust - Pink Floyd

Zero Chance - Soundgarden

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--
For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Introduction

The final page of this month’s Southwest Magazine is a column called “One Question.” The question—“What’s the best advice you’ve received?”—was directed toward Hilary Duff. Her reply ran 73 words, of which 62 had just one syllable. Including this sentence I’m already at 52 words, with only 29 one-syllable words. This is why Hilary Duff gets to be published in a magazine and I don’t. Perhaps it helps that she’s an attractive actress whose photo deserves to take up 3/4 of the page.

Since I can’t be an attractive actress or published writer, I’ve decided to comfort myself by answering the One Question myself, but better. “Better” in this context means “more words, bigger words, and no photo.” If that’s not enough to keep you reading, here’s another hook: I didn’t even follow the advice I’m about to cite.

The advice

The best advice I ever received was, “You don’t need to go to college.” I did go to college, and I would advise each and every high school kid to attend college if he possibly can. So why do I appreciate this advice?

Let’s back up and look at the mindset I had when I received this guidance. It was the 1980s and I was a teenager in Boulder, Colorado (where everybody was middle-class or higher, well-educated, and white). The conventional wisdom was that if you went to college you would get a white-collar job and be happy and successful. Oh, and we were generally encouraged to attend the best college we could.

Contrast this to the mindset of what appears to be the typical teenager today in my kids’ demographic (Albany, California; middle class or higher; well-educated; white or Asian). The conventional wisdom here is, “If you ever get a single B in high school you will never get into a decent college and you will have NO FUTURE, and by the way, grades aren’t enough so you should be taking at least four or five AP classes and also doing all kinds of extracurricular activities that will look good on your application, but no matter what you do you’re probably doomed and will never go to a top college and you’ll never achieve the standard of living your parents now provide for you, you miserable wretch.”

Okay, that’s not entirely fair. I don’t think our current crop of teens uses the word “wretch.”

The matter of perspective

As a teenager, I appreciated the odd “skip college” advice because it opened the door, just a crack, for an alternative point of view. Of course it helped that this point of view came from a successful person. Obviously if a homeless dude gave me that advice, it wouldn’t mean a thing. But by “successful” I don’t just mean “has a nice house in Boulder and some cool toys like an actual Model-T Ford that actually runs, an actual NASA space suit, a cool working jukebox, a working parking meter, and an immaculate 1950s Pontiac 8 car with fins and chrome and an in-line 8-cylinder engine so the hood goes on for days.” By “successful” I also mean “has a really wild career that he obviously loves.”

The person dispensing this advice was Michael Aisner, who at that time was the director of the Coors International Bicycle Classic, which was the biggest, most important cycling stage race ever held in this country (and which to date has never been surpassed). I’m going to throw in a caveat here: I won’t put words in Mike’s mouth and claim that he’d still give this advice today (though I suspect he would), and I’ll add that he wouldn’t necessarily have given this advice to just anybody (though I suspect I wasn’t a special case).

I got to know Mike because I worked as a volunteer for his race—not just when it was going on, but year-round at their headquarters in Boulder, Colorado—“the race office,” as we all called it. I wouldn’t say I worked as an intern, though I suppose that’s what I was, because at that time I’d never heard the word “intern,” and had no idea that volunteering your time at a company would “look good on your college application.” If you’d asked me at the time what this job would do for my college prospects, I’d probably have just shrugged, or said, “I guess it slightly damages my college prospects since I’m so distracted from my schoolwork.” I volunteered at the race office because it was a cool place to hang, and there were great people there, and I would get to use a computer, and figured I’d learn a lot.

My perspective going into that job was thus fairly compatible with Mike’s. He just took it up a notch by suggesting that if you like to work, and you are surrounded by great people, and you learn a lot, and you just keep that up, you’ll eventually start getting paid, and will go on to have a fulfilling career, and it would be pointless to halt this progress in its tracks to go sit in lecture halls for four years and incur a bunch of debt.

A couple of paradoxes

Here are a couple of paradoxes introduced by what I’ve written so far.

First, Mike himself did go to college. (Did he graduate? I’m not sure … when I asked him he laughed and said, “Do you know you’re the first person who’s ever asked me that?”) The point is, he’s had this great and diverse career history based on his ability to execute, not his formal education. Working in his office, which had no walls and no cubicles, I got to hear him in action, mostly on the phone, and probably learned more about business than if I’d studied it in college. (I’m tempted to apologize here to any business majors who might be reading this, but who am I kidding?)

The second paradox is that I didn’t follow Mike’s advice—I did go to college. I ignored his advice for two reasons. One, I didn’t have the balls to believe what he was telling me. I felt in my very bones that without a college degree, I’d never amount to anything, no matter how inspiring his example was. (I’m still glad I have that degree, even though my most important mentor, in my current career, dropped out of college because he couldn’t bear to leave a great internship at the end of the summer.)

The second reason I went to college is that even then, I loved literature and I loved writing. Studying English for four years under brilliant professors was something I wanted to do for its own sake. I recognized even at the time that this was a departure from the typical results-oriented mindset that would have me studying engineering or business. I was prepared to accept that my majorwouldn’t automatically lead to good career prospects.

Why Mike’s advice was so good

What made Mike’s advice so good is that it conveyed a simple but evasive message: there are many paths to success. This is true even with conventional notions of success (e.g., big money, big house, cool toys, respect and prestige). I’ll concede that college is probably more important to one’s prospects than it was a generation ago, but Mike’s basic idea still holds true: the path everybody assumes is mandatory—that is, Perfect grades à AP classes àextracurriculars à great college àgreat career à happy life—isn’t the only path, never was, and never will be. While I didn’t follow Mike’s specific advice, his overall message may have emboldened me to choose the major I wanted, and worry about my prospects later.

I try to pass along this wider perspective to my daughter Alexa, who’s in high school now, but she won’t listen. After all, my cred as an alternate-path happy person is ruined because I graduated summa cum laude from a great college. Nor does it seem to matter that I took an alternate path to get there: my high school grades weren’t good enough for Berkeley, so I went to UC Santa Barbara for a couple years and transferred in later. She counters that it’s harder to get into good colleges now, and you practically have to have perfect grades even to get into UCSB. (I have no idea if this is true.)

The problem, I think, is her peer group. These are high-achieving nerds (a lot like I was at that age, except higher-achieving and more socially comfortable, because nerds are cool now). But evidently somebody is feeding them doom-and-gloom scenarios involving the necessity of perfect grades, the importance of AP courses and extracurriculars, and the implication that any deviation leads to being a hopeless miserable wretch.

Why should this be? In general, the parents in my community don’t preach this perfection-or-else paradigm. A number of my fellow parents went to non-elite colleges and more than a few like to laugh about what screw-ups they were in high school. That said, the parents of some of Alexa’s friends came here from other countries, had to work really hard and make serious sacrifices to get here, and never had the luxury of growing up in Boulder and just assuming everything would work out fine. I can’t fault their perspective, but I also can’t compete with it, because it’s easier to apply pressure than to remove it.

The best advice I can give

One of the great things about Hilary Duff’s column is that, in just 73 words, she not only passed along her mother’s advice (“do as much as you can in one day”), but turned it on its head with contrapuntal advice of her own (“I’ve learned the importance of stillness”). So I’ll try my hand at dispensing advice, too.

The best advice I can give is “Take on a hobby that is fun but competitive.” The point of this hobby isn’t to “look good on a college application,” but to learn how to stare failure in the face instead of trying to avoid it all the time. As a recovering bike racer, I’ve had to accept failure hundreds of times, which has really sweetened the deal on those rare occasions I’ve managed to succeed. The pressure here comes from within, not from some rule of thumb like toeing the line and keeping your school transcript in order.

This isn’t to say I don’t accidentally put pressure on my kid. For example, I inadvertently added to her stress in the moments before her very first mountain bike race, by the very act of trying to help her relax. It was a cold and rainy morning, and the race course—highly technical to begin with—had turned to mud. Figuring this alone was a lot for any kid to take on by itself, not to mention the head-to-head competition, I casually said, “The important thing is just to hang in there and try to finish.”

Who know this simple statement was like lobbing a grenade into Alexa’s pre-race psyche? Here is her own eloquent description of this exchange, taken from her race report:

My dad looked about as nervous as I felt, and mentioned offhandedly that his goal was for me not to drop out. This was worrisome for a number of reasons: a) my dad clearly wasn’t super confident about my abilities, and b) it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that I could drop out. The fact that I was [now] aware it was a possibility made it seem likely, and I was suddenly convinced that I would be possessed by forces beyond my control, forces that are less stubbornly competitive and ambitious than I am, and these would cause me to quit.

Of course she did finish, and placed higher than I think either of us expected, and she even took it upon herself to write a self-deprecatingly funny essay about it all. I’m cheered to see that her embrace of the “perfect-transcript-or-NO-FUTURE!” ethos hasn’t turned her into a complete CV-building, book-pounding drone.

Again with the alternate perspective

I suspect that, whatever success my daughter ultimately has in cycling, it won’t end up on her college application, and I applaud that—it means she’s doing this for its own sake, as I had. Meanwhile, this pursuit will give my daughter something more important than bragging rights: the all-important opportunity to fail at something without the world ending. She will drop out of races, and will lose races, and she will get the kind of results that don’t earn an A—but none of this will besmirch any written transcript. Moreover, as Alexa races her bike over the next four years she will realize that the traditional path toward sporting excellence—which is something like The right parents à big talent àbig drive à small victories àbig victories à big glory—isn’t the only one, and that alternatives exist, such as Wrong parents à embarrassing mediocrity àfighting spirit à venom àbig drive à technical mastery àcunning à small victories àmoral victories à ability to eat a pile of tri-tip the size of a human head and still hear people say, “I wish I had your metabolism.”

And maybe, just maybe, that accumulation of experience will give her some peace and help establish the radical idea that there are many paths to take, and an alternative path can still lead you to the success you sought, or perhaps to an alternative success you hadn’t even thought of. This process may ultimately have the same effect as Mike Aisner’s radical, incendiary words—“You don’t have to go to college”—and their subtext, “Dive in, do something you love, do it for its own sake, do it well, and you’ll be fine.”

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--
For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Introduction

It’s another slow news day at albertnet. (More to the point, it’s a big everything-else day and none of the crap I’m busy with is worth writing about.) So I’m plunging into the depths of my hard copy archives for a little poem to present. Insofar as a central goal of this blog is to store copies of my work offsite, all is going according to plan.

As a bonus, I’m going to provide all-new footnotes on this poem. Pretend you found this in your Norton Anthology of American Teen Poetry.

The Big Screw-Up – ca. 1986

Oh no, did I just wreck this stupid crank?

The tool slipped and all the threads came out! 2

And really, if I want to be quite frank,

I gotta tell ya, J.B.’s gonna shout!

I can’t believe that I forgot the bolt

That holds the crank on under any load. 6

Oh lordy, did I ever feel a jolt,

When John looked at the crank and that bolt showed.

He’s gonna think I am a total jerk,

And that I don’t know anything about bikes. 10

And that at this bike shop I shouldn’t work,

And that I oughtta just go take a hike.

Thank god, John fixed the crank quite easily

But tools cannot save my dignity. 14

Footnotes & commentary

Line 2: the tool slipped and all the threads came out

If you think it’s a bit silly to write a sonnet about a mishap at a bike shop, consider that I originally envisioned this as a Broadway musical. I worked on it for nine years before suffering a nervous breakdown. That’s not true.

I’ll concede that I never gave much thought to the audience for this sonnet. I mean, who the hell would even know what, and whom, I was writing about? It’s actually entirely possible no living soul has ever read this sonnet. And since almost nobody reads this blog, you could well be the very first reader of the sonnet! You should win a prize, maybe a free take-apart eraser or homemade bookmark or something.

So, “crank” in this context is the crankset on a bicycle, which is what the pedals attach to. The crank, in bikes of this era, was bolted on to the spindle of the bottom bracket: that is, the axle-like thingy that spins around. It was a press fit: you stuck it on there, then cranked it down with this bolt, which pushed the crank farther onto the spindle until it was good and tight.

To remove it, you first removed the bolt, and then—because the thing was pressed on so tight there was no other way to remove it—you screwed this tool in there called a crank puller. It had a threaded part, male, that screwed into the female threads of the crank. Then there was this thingy that screwed inside of it and pushed on the spindle. It’s kind of like how, when someone in a cartoon wants to pull a door open, he has to push his foot against the doorjamb. Kind of.

You had to be careful with this type of square-shoulder spindle. If you didn’t tighten the bolt enough, the crank could fall off, but some cranks were made of such cheap aluminum, you could destroy them by tightening too much. If you just kept cranking on that bolt, the crank would move farther and farther up the spindle until the chainring mashed into the frame. I once saw a guy do that on a really cheap bike, a Miyata Valley Runner (or “Valley Girl” as we called them).

Line 4: J.B.’s gonna shout

J.B. was John Burnell, the head mechanic at the High Wheeler (or “Thigh Feeler” as we called it). He was a total bike guru and we were all in awe of him. He was also a very nice guy, unless you crossed him. We used to solder the ends of the brake and gear cables on all the bikes we built, and one time my brother Bryan accidentally let some molten solder dribble onto J.B.’s foot (he was wearing those Adidas race slippers, without socks). J.B. issued an impressive litany of profanity, with significant volume and perfect inflection. A cussing-out tour de force, and Bryan looked like he could have died of shame.

Line 6: holds the crank on

Bikes weren’t quite as well designed back in those days. If the crank was a tight fit on the spindle, you could probably get away with no bolt at all, at least for awhile. But if the fit wasn’t so good, the whole thing would eventually rock loose and the bolt would rattle off and the whole crank would fall off onto the road. This could happen in the first 30 days of a bike’s life, and is the #1 reason shops traditionally offered a free tune-up a month after purchase. Nothing looks worse than a crank that literally falls off an almost-new bicycle. (Except, perhaps, a morbidly obese cyclist wearing bright pink Lycra.)

Line 7: lordy

Nobody says “lordy” anymore and I certainly didn’t at the time I wrote this. This is a classic case of throwing in a worthless two-syllable word just because it happens to be iambic and pads out the line metrically. No poet worth his salt would resort to such a cheap trick. I could have so easily done better, though the most obvious expression that comes to mind would be blasphemy. I’m not sure blasphemy belongs in a sonnet, at least one penned by a teenager. In those days my brothers liked to avoid profanity by substituting “TANJ,” an acronym they made up for “there ain’t no justice.” I found this so goody-two-shoes as to be more offensive than blasphemy. Meanwhile, its double-entendre—there existed at that time a manufacturer of steel bike frame tubing called Tange—was erroneous because Tange was pronounced “Tan-GAY,” not “tanj.”

Line 8: that bolt showed

How stupid was I, that I could forget to remove the bolt? Well, oddly enough, this wasn’t a terribly uncommon mistake. You see, bikes tended to come with a dust cap installed in the crank, which served no real purpose so all us racer-types left them off. So removing the dust cap sometimes led the inattentive mechanic to think he’d removed the bolt. Meanwhile, some cranks (such as Shimano) had a “one-key release” whereby removing what looked like a dust cap was also removing the bolt. But all this is backpedaling (no pun intended). It was a dumbass move.

Line 9: I am a total jerk

As I came to realize years later, you have to be careful with one-syllable words when writing a Shakespearean sonnet. As explained here, a pair of one syllable words will often have a natural inflection: for example, saying “hot dog” or “pit bull” correctly requires the emphasis to be put on the first word. It’s “PIT bull,” not “pit BULL.” If the poet fails to understand this, he or she ends up with clunky lines like this one. I could so easily have written, “He’s gonna think that I’m a total jerk” instead of “He’s gonna think I am a total jerk,” but I was as bad a poet as I was a mechanic. Worse, probably.

Line 10: anything about bikes

Count the feet on this line. There are 5½. What part of “pentameter” did I not grasp? It’s not iambic penta-and-a-half-meter! I guess “anything ‘bout bikes” would work better but is kind of cheating. “And that I don’t know anything at all” would work fine, and then I could end line 12 with something about working at a mall, or cleaning bathroom stalls. Oh well. Too late now.

J.B. never accused me of knowing nothing about bikes, but once I was trying to file a new cotter pin for a cottered crank and getting nowhere, and he said, “You don’t know anything about cottered cranks!” Then he paused, reflected on the state of the industry, in which cottered cranks were on the very brink of obsolescence, and conceded, “I guess that’s actually no big deal.” Then he took the crank and the cotter pin away from me, expertly filed the pin to the right shape, and finished the repair. You know what’s weird? The industry has progressed so far from there that I don’t actually know much about the modern cranks on my own bike. All this technology has passed me by.

Line 11: at this bike shop I shouldn’t work

This line really makes me wince. I suppose there’s plenty of precedent for a poet to put a prepositional phrase before a predicate (e.g., “at this bike shop I shouldn’t work” instead of “I shouldn’t work at this bike shop”), but nobody talks or writes that way these days, so such a construction sounds a) contrived, b) like the writer is trying to sound all belles-lettres-y, c) like the writer is trying to skate by on a technicality, and d) like Yoda. Reading this over, I want to substitute “like I oughtta be fucking fired,” and meter be damned.

Line 12: just go take a hike

God, it just gets worse and worse. Nobody says “go take a hike” anymore, and nobody did in the mid-‘80s, and stupid expressions like this are so verbally weak as to be the opposite of poetry. A poem should use vivid details that affect the reader viscerally. This line should say something more bold, like “I should have molten solder dripped down the front of my shorts.”

Line 13: quite easily

It’s true that J.B. fixed the crank, and I don’t remember it taking him very long, but I cannot remember how he did it, so maybe it wasn’t actually that easy. It’s possible I only destroyed some of the threads. The crank puller would thread in pretty far normally, but perhaps the bolt kept it from going in far enough to do real damage. If there were good threads farther in, J.B. would have just had to tap out the wrecked ones to remove the damaged metal. I don’t think he inserted a helicoil. The fact that I’m still pondering this 30 years later tells you how gutted I still am about it. I hope J.B. reads this and can at least appreciate my contrition. He probably still remembers my jackass maneuver himself. Someday a journalist will ask him, “Did you ever work with Dana Albert, the Campanile clock tower shooter?” and he’ll say, “Oh, yeah, he was a moron. Once tried to pull a crank without removing the bolt. But I didn’t figure him for a complete psycho.”

Line 14: dignity

I have to admit, I feel pretty good about how well “easily” rhymes with “dignity.” The notion of a tool saving something seems a bit of a stretch at first, but that’s exactly what J.B. did with the tap or whatever tool he used—he saved that crank. Maybe it’s still going strong on some bike somewhere.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Introduction

What follows is a work of fiction. Any characters, places, or sentiments are purely the product of the blogger’s imagination and any resemblance to any actual character, place, or sentiment is purely coincidental. The sole exception is the staircase, which is based on an actual staircase of the Penthouse Apartments on Abrego Road in Isla Vista, California, which is used fictitiously.

Confirmation

Congratulations! You have booked a double-queen-bed double-occupancy doubleplusgood guest room at the spacious and elegant Howard Johnson’s motor hotel in the charming, semi-sunny mini-tropolis of Seaside, California! While lodging at the Howard Johnson’s (hint: call it “HoJo” and you’ll sound like a local!), you’ll enjoy fabulous amenities including Rise & Dine™, our copyrighted, patented, totally free heart-healthy GMO-optional organic-ish continental breakfast, just like what is served on The Continent to expatriates who want to feel like repatriates! Gluten and gluten-free choices available. Vegan, vegetarian, ovo-lacto, and meat-lovers’ selections also offered (where available). Child-friendly pastries? Check! Fair-, non-fair, and unfair trade coffee and tea products on tap? Yours to discover. Fresh milk, that pours out of an old-school pitcher? Got that. Weird simulation milk/creamer/kreamer based on corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, dipotassium phosphate, mono- and diglycerides? Got that too, in an array of stunning flavors! Plastic coffee stirring sticks that might mess up your hormones? Check, please! (But there’s no check—like we said, it’s totally free!)

In-room, you’ll also enjoy free wireless Internet access using the very latest 802.11ac standards, brought to you by Howard Johnson’s and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE (hint: say it “eye triple-E” and you’ll sound like a local!). This totally free connection will support data rates far in excess of what you ever believed possible, so you can surf like a modern-day Kahanamoku on your favorite websites, from Facebook to Gracebook to Disgracebook! All without dipping into your precious 4G LTE data plan!

And did somebody ask about carpet? This guest room has it—from wall to wall, in breathtaking reddish colors and with the kind of luxurious and yet versatile foot-feel you can only get from real simulated-wool nylon! Comfortable chair in-room? You betcha (where available). Hot running water? Got that too—with HoJo’s special MildChildSafeSelect™ water temperature regulator so your little ones—who stay free at HoJo, by the way—won’t blanch the flesh off their hands like at that last place! In-room coffee? Yes, in a snap, with that big funky teabag-cartridge type thing that James Bond would use if he weren’t an Englishman who drinks tea instead (and yes, you also can choose from in-room fresh brewed tea selections!).

As would-be valued members of Wyndham Rewards (would-be members, not would-be valued, since you’re already valued!), you could be earning up to 1,390 points, valid toward toilet and toilet paper upgrades, Real™ in-room dairy creamer upgrades, welcome mat monogram upgrades (allow six weeks for delivery), and priority ice machine access. But since you’re not Wyndham Rewards members, at least not that you know of since you may have lost track (hey, we understand, we’ve been there), you’ll instead be receiving daily e-mail updates providing detailed information about how to join the élite cadre of travelling professionals (and retirees!) who enjoy the full benefits, and prestige, of Rewards membership.

Terms, conditions, caveats, and qualifications

Wyndham Rewards void where prohibited (e.g., competing motels). Check-in is at 2p.m. sharp, but guests are invited to use the parking lot—complete with free wireless Internet access—from 1 p.m. onward except during holiday Blacktop Blackout™ periods, which are reserved for Family Fun Time™. Hopscotch and Four-Square encouraged. Blacktop-based ball games are BYOB (Bring Your Own Ball) and BYOC (Bring Your Own Chalk). Pets are allowed near all guest rooms (no pets in-room, please).

Howard Johnson’s is not responsible for Internet backbone congestion, WiFi radio interference, mobile device battery life, websites you wish you’d never visited featuring images you wish you could un-see, or poor quality television programming.

Howard Johnson’s makes every effort to provide a clean, comfortable room, but our housekeeping associates are only human. We cannot guarantee you won’t find a pair of a previous guest’s underwear briefs hanging from the inside doorknob of the bathroom, or an old earplug under the bed.

HoJo offers in-room ClimateControlSelect™ heating/cooling/ventilation systems (hint: call it “HVAC” and you’ll sound like a local!) which should assure your comfort regardless of weather conditions. In certain situations you may discover that the ClimateControlSelect™ unit cycles loudly on and off all night no matter what you do with the controls, and we recommend turning up the in-room refrigerator to mitigate HVAC-based sound pollution. HoJo is not responsible for lost sleep. Be careful driving or operating heavy machinery after any night disrupted by ClimateControlSelect™.

Urban myth has it that a HoJo guest once found mushrooms growing in the bathtub. That simply never happened, at least at a HoJo property. However, HoJo cannot guarantee that this will never happen at a HoJo Motel (hint: call it “HoJoMo” and you’ll sound like a local!). In the event you discover mushrooms in a HoJoMo bathtub, please note that they are almost certainly not mushrooms but toadstools, and consuming them could lead to illness or even death.

The HoJo Company (hint: call it “HoJoCo” and you’ll sound like a local!) acknowledges that, despite what we said earlier about James Bond drinking tea, he actually does not drink tea, and once said to his secretary, “I don’t drink tea. I hate it. It’s mud ... be a good girl and make me some coffee.” This does not mean you may address a HoJo guest services associate as “good girl” (hint: call her “HoJoHo” and you’ll sound like an asshole, so don’t do that either).

There may be a full-size posterboard picture of our strange bearded mascot in the lobby, which may scare small children, nearsighted seniors, or tripping teenagers. HoJoCo is not responsible for cardiac events, swooning, or freaking out associated with this corporate branding.

HoJoCo is also not responsible for explaining what has happened to society such that weird bearded dudes who scare children and seniors have replaced what by any measure would be reckoned a much more pleasant image.

HoJo has made significant progress in property design since the early days when an orange roof was considered clever and avant-garde. Our HoJoMos feature award-winning architectural features combining the best of scalable, repeatable designs that look great while keeping our properties affordable. Note that the following photo may or may not accurately depict a HoJoMo interior:

It is possible that the HoJoMo property you visit will have a lobby more closely resembling a structure your kids made out of Lego back when Lego was just simple bricks, before they got all fancy. HoJoCo reserves the right to substitute, for the backlit, indoor staircase shown above, an outdoor staircase with no risers, only treads, made of extruded concrete and studded with little smooth pebbles (like so many staircases in the ‘70s) that become incredibly slick when wet, so you might slip while descending and find your foot slipping beneath the railing, which may peel the skin off your shin like the curls of wood off a carpenter’s rasp, leaving a permanent scar. By reserving this room you agree to release HoJoCo from all liability stemming from this or any injury, real or imagined.

Maximum occupancy of each room is limited to four persons. In the event that you exceed this by packing 8 or 10 bike racers in the room, along with 8 or 10 bicycles, HoJoCo and Wyndam Worldwide Corporation are not responsible for your brother’s girlfriend claiming you were hitting on her during the night when all you were doing was trying to pull more of the blankets over to your side.

Review

Loved this place!

«««««Reviewed 2 days ago

I’m crazy about HoJoMo’s! Call me HoJoLoCo and you’ll sound like a local, LOL! The manager opened up the Rise & Dine™ continental breakfast half an hour early so my daughter could fuel up for her bike race and still get on the road on time. As a famous cyborg once said, I’ll be back!

Introduction

You don’t have time to watch Paris-Nice. Or, you can’t remember how to TiVo it. (Or maybe TiVo no longer exists, maybe you kids have moved on to something else—I don’t know.) It could be you don’t care enough about this middling race to get up early. Whatever the case, you’ve come to the right place for a somewhat brief, admittedly snarky blow-by-blow report of the queen stage.

2016 Paris-Nice Stage 6 – Nice-La Madone d’Uteile

As I join the action, Andrew Talansky has abandoned the race! This is really weird because a few minutes ago, when I hadn’t logged in yet but was following the cyclingnews coverage on my phone, he was in the breakaway. WTF?? Evidently he crashed on a descent and hurt his wrist while I was making tea. If I’d had my old teakettle, the good one, I wouldn’t have missed seeing that.

The video feeds are scarce today. The best I can do for commentary is some Aussie or Kiwi guy. He seems to be flying solo … nobody to chat with so I’m missing the repartee I normally enjoy. It’s usually some British guy matched with Sean Kelly, the Irish champ. So I’m disappointed.

There’s about 35 km to go and they’re on the Category 2 Côte de Levens. After this is the Côte Duranuus (literally “coast of your anus”), also Cat 2, even though it’s only a mile long. How can a mile-long climb be a Cat 2? Rating inflation, I tell you. Pretty sad. Then they hit the Cat 1 Madone d’Uteile (“useful Madaonna”), which is 9.5 miles long and averages 5.7% … so it’s about like Mount Diablo in the Bay Area.

“Mother Nature was at her moody worst on Stage 3 when snow canceled the stage,” the random announcer guy says. I guess I never realized how much I appreciate the banter of two commentators. Heck, at this point I’d take Howard Stern helping out. What would he say? “Yeah, Mother Nature is moody. I’d like to see her naked. I’ll bet she’s got a hot little body.” Maybe that wouldn’t be so good, actually.

So, to catch you up on what’s transpired in the first five stages of this race: Michael Matthews (Orice-GreenEdge) won the prologue and has been in yellow ever since; stage one was won by Arnaud Démare (FDJ) in a bunch sprint; stage two was awarded to Matthews when Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis) practically rode him into the fencing in the final sprint and was relegated to third (and it’s amazing they stayed upright); stage 3 was canceled because of snow; on Stage 4 Bouhanni managed not to get penalized and took the win; and yesterday Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) soloed to victory and now sits 2nd on the GC, just 6 seconds behind Matthews.

The announcer is talking about taxes. Whoah, Alberto Contador (Tinkoff) attacks! His team has been on the front hammering the whole time, and now with 28 km to go, he bolts ahead on the flat section between these two climbs. Ah, going for the time bonus. So he’s got it, and is now waiting for the peloton to come back and shelter him again. I wouldn’t call this an ingenious move, exactly, but the question is, why did Matthews’ team not see it coming? Or are they just too tired to react, having needlessly ridden at the front all week?

My original feed has died, possibly because my cat keeps walking on the keyboard. The French feed has ads too, and they are pretty corny. Now the sound is gone altogether. Cat again. She’s a kitten and is super bored by bike racing, even more so than my wife. At least Erin doesn’t jump up and bat at the screen. Now sound is back but I’m not following the commentator very well. I think he’s talking some pro-Socialist propaganda. “Blah blah blah c’est normal.” Now it’s something about somebody going to the hospital tomorrow.

The breakaway—whose members I never did report, sorry—is breaking up anyway. It’s a breakupaway. Antoine Duchesne (Direct Energie) is leading solo but with only 41 seconds on the field. Now it’s an ad for the Quesalupa, which is like a French hot-pocket. I guess that marks the end of Western Civilization. Oh, wait, that’s an American ad (the lack of sound threw me). It’s okay for the U.S. to have Mexican-themed hot pockets since we’re already ruined. But when France gets the hot pocket, the terrorists win.

Woah, Matthews is really struggling! Bobbing in the saddle and slipping off the back! And now Team Sky is on the front for the first time, banging away like a bunch of animals! And Matthews is dropped! Good. I’ve got nothing against the guy, but picking up some seconds in the prologue, a few more due to a contested finish, and then hanging on for the GC win would just be too boring.

Duchesne is climbing on the drops now. Now he’s out of the saddle like it’s the final sprint. Maybe he’s delusional and thinks he’s 200 meters from the line. Now his head goes down … he’s cooked. Poor guy. At least he got some screen time. Maybe his four-year-old daughter is watching on TV and when her dad gets home tomorrow she’ll burst out crying and say, “Daddy, you always lose!”

The peloton, all back together now except those who’ve been shed—including Matthews, who’s already lost over 40 seconds—is on the final descent before the Madone. It’s a mountaintop finish today, which is why I’m bothering to watch.

Sky still has five guys on the front, despite the six categorized climbs the stage has already gone over. That’s just how they roll. They’ll be working for Geraint Thomas, who sits in 6th place, starting the day only 23 seconds behind Matthews. Thomas is six feet tall and a team pursuit specialist, but the hilly terrain of this “queen stage” will suit him well, because all terrain suits Sky. They’d probably excel at the hammer throw and discus as well.

Speaking of Sky and favorites, Richie Porte has switched over to BMC Racing Team this season, and sits tenth, 31 seconds back. If he wins this race, I’m going to put my head in the oven. I won’t turn on the gas or anything; it’s just a bike race, after all … but I’ll hang out there for a while, maybe scrub the thing out while I’m at it.

Another favorite, if you ask me, has to be Rafal Majka (Tinkoff). He’s awfully good, and sits 9th, 31 seconds back. If Contador doesn’t go well, Majka will be the backup plan.

Whoah! I guess the Aussie announcer just bailed, maybe to go throw a coupla more shrimp on the barbee, because now it’s a British guy whose voice sounds familiar, and Sean Kelly! My heart rate just broke 50 for the first time all morning!

Sky’s Nicolas Roche, who is a giant guy, finally detonates. That’s good to see. Fate shouldn’t jam. When fate jams, I start to doubt what I’m seeing.

It’s 11 km to go, and the field is shrinking. I think Lutsenko has been dropped. After his effort yesterday I’ll bet he’s pretty fried.

Porte must be missing his old Sky team now … BMC has totally bailed off the back and he’s all alone. Serves him right, the prick.

Whoah, it’s still five Sky riders, even with Roche dropped. Either somebody else came flying up from the back of the peloton, or I miscounted earlier.

Contador and Majka are drilling it on the front! Majka is leading Contador and the field has pretty much evaporated, straight up vacated, surely deflated and enervated.

I guess I spoke too soon. Sky has dragged about ten guys back up. But the pace is still high and more guys are gonna get sawed off the back in the remaining 8.5 km. Man, Majka looks “seemingly infinitely powerful,” to quote an old cycling sage. Poker-faced and just sitting on the front setting a high tempo. Contador looks totally collected and comfortable. He never looks too strained, of course, but if you look carefully (for example, when he’s riding with a broken tibia) you can see his pre-orthodontia overbite returning a little. It’s not a good look. And when he’s really dying, his upper lip creeps up and he starts to look a bit like a donkey. None of that now.

Alexa Albert (Albany High School Cougars) chooses an odd time to take a feed, but she executes well, just like we practiced.

Porte is just sitting in this lead group, also looking as casual and unfazed as that chick at the gym on the Stairmaster who’s reading “Us” magazine, supporting all her weight on her hands, so her feet are just paddling along pointlessly.

It’s 7 km to go and Majka just stays on it. Contador will have to do something soon because he has 5 seconds to make up on Porte and is 14 seconds behind Thomas.

With 6 km to go they hit a really steep section, about a kilometer at 10%.

Majka takes advantage of the grade, out of the saddle attacking in earnest! Contador is right on him, with a couple Sky guys sitting on him. Contador counterattacks and the field is shattered! Majka detonates and is done for the day. Contador is macking a huge gear, and has a gap on the two Sky dopers! He’s going pretty well but it’s two against one and when the grade flattens out they’ll have a real edge. Ah, it’s already coming back together.

The Sky duo has caught Contador, and so has Porte. The rest of the field has dropped 13 seconds behind. A Katusha rider, Ilnur Zakarin (who sits 25th overall) has also joined this group. He’s a big Russian guy and looks oddly comfortable. The Sky riders are Thomas and Sergio Henao.

Contador attacks again! He’s going pretty well but keeps looking over his shoulder—“Are they dead yet?”—which somehow always strikes me as a bad sign. Now Zakarin is on the front, still looking really good. It’s 3 km to go. With the time bonuses, the GC could be tighter than ever by the end. Wow, Kelly just said the same thing! I feel honored.

Now Henao is on the front, knocking out a high tempo to set up Thomas. It’s 2 km to go. God, that Russian guy, Zakarin, he’s giant! Like a giraffe running with zebras.

And now Porte attacks! He’s instantly neutralized. He probably misses the really good dope they have over at Sky. Thomas is taunting him: “Where’s your ‘winter training’ now, Porte! Ha ha ha!”

Porte flicks his elbow, as if to say, “Your turn.” I guess he forgot Thomas isn’t his teammate anymore.

My feed has gone away! Dang it! With less than 1km to go I have to switch over and watch the French feed. Thomas totally launches himself! Only Zakarin can follow!

But Contador is putting up a good fight. It’s not enough! He’s well and truly gapped! Thomas looks solid but Zakarin comes by as they approach the line!

Zakarin takes the win! Whoah, I did not see that coming! Never even heard of the guy before.

That’ll shake up the GC quite a bit. Remember, Zakarin was 47 seconds back, so he won’t take the GC lead. I reckon it’ll go to Thomas, because he only needed 5 seconds on Tom Dumoulin (Team Giant-Alpecin), who is the only GC contender left who was anywhere near him, and, actually, he wasn’t. Here’s the final stage results:

Unfortunately, the coverage seems to have ended. Or is this just a commercial break? I’m having to watch a trailer for “Plus Belle la Vie,” some French TV show. It looks really boring: just some good looking French women and ugly French men waving guns around. Something about a French person waving a gun around just doesn’t seem convincing. Give a handgun to any American of any age, from toddler up to bluehair, and that’s some scary shit. You better believe the American will shoot. But you could wave off a gun-wielding Frenchman: “Don’t make me laugh.”

The top three on GC are Thomas in the lead, with Contador 15 seconds back, and Zakarin another 5 seconds behind. Tomorrow’s stage is a bit lumpy with a couple of so-called Category 1 climbs, but there’s a 15 km descent to the finish which so often rules out a significant breakaway. I think another Paris-Nice goes to Sky, thanks to the eerily strong performance, on this mountainous stage, of their ringer, a giant former track racer. Go Goliath!

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language and extremely coarse humor.

Introduction

Any cycling aficionado will tell you that Milan-San Remo is the most boring one-day race on the entire World Tour calendar. And you know what? That’s an unfair thing to say, because actually some cycling aficionados will say it’s quite exciting. This minority of fans is actually wrong, of course. The fact is, MSR is a boring-ass race. The course is too long, and too flat, and the only action that matters is on this tiny little climb toward the end that wouldn’t figure at all except that certain really fast sprinters almost couldn’t make it over a speed bump after almost 300 kilometers of racing.

Being boring, this is a perfect race to follow through my biased blow-by-blow report. If I think a rider is doping, or ugly, or both, or too dependent on his race radio, I’ll say so. And if I don’t even know for sure that they’re even using race radios, I’ll just guess. And if the action gets too boring, I’ll share other tidbits such as riders’ beauty tips to make sure you’re entertained.

Biased Blow-By-Blow - Milan-San Remo 2016

The big news this year is the defending champion John Degenkolb (Giant-Alpecin) will not be lining up in Milan to defend his title. Evidently he’d promised his wife he’d stain the deck this weekend, having totally forgotten about the race, and his wife put her foot down and wouldn’t let him weasel out of it. She’s having her family out to visit next week and by god this has to be done, etc. So the race is really up for grabs now.

As I join the action, there are 78 kilometers left to race. There’s a breakaway of nobodies 3:39 up the road, and some of them are pretty funny-looking. One of them has the goofy superhero sunglasses and the Euro-trash mullet. You can see him at the far left in this photo. Also note the leader’s ridiculous handlebars. These nobodies always look a little off to me.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how things pan out,” declares the anonymous Eurosport commentator uselessly. Has this ever not been true for any bike race, or any sporting event? I’m going to have to play the devil’s advocate here and tell you: it’s going to be really boring seeing how things pan out. Or, conversely, it will be really interesting to walk away from my PC at the end and not see how it pans out.

The peloton is in the feed zone, grabbing musette bags while riding by at like 30 mph. Pretty impressive. Little known fact: almost 40% of English-speaking World Tour riders still call musette bags “horsey bags.” Apparently that’s what Lance Armstrong called them, and riders either mimicked him out of respect, or because they were scared not to. Following Lance’s doping scandal, it’s believed that at least half of the riders still saying “horsey bag” are doing it ironically.

The commentator just used the phrase “uphill sections of the climb.” Where do they find these guys?

It’s 61.3 kilometers to go. To catch you up on what’s happened since the starting gun went off: everybody started pedaling, at a “ferocious tempo” according to the Eurosport guy. Eleven riders broke away. Their lead has fluctuated between zero and five minutes. Everybody has been pedaling most of the time. There is very little coasting. No rider has gotten lost. The weather is fair.

With 56.8 kilometers to go, some riders crash!

Nobody slid under barbed wire fence or anything dramatic. One guy looks like he may have scuffed his shoe. I’ve definitely seen more interesting crashes, such as this one.

Look at how that wheel collapsed! Pretty sad that I have to go back to the 2010 Tour de Suisse for an example of a fascinating crash. On the plus side, look at the damage to this wheel from the crash that just happened:

“It does suit a rider who can ride well,” the announcer says of the finishing stretch of this race. Is that what passes for insight these days? I sure hope this is just the B-team, and that we’ll get the good announcers for the last few dozen kilometers.

How come kilograms got to be shorted to kilos? Who decided that mass is more important that linear measure? I’d love to type “kilos” instead of “kilometers” but I’d confuse my readers. It’s so damned unfair.

With 48.5 kilometers to go, the lead is down to 1:38, so it’s like this breakaway never happened. Maybe one or two of these guys will tell his grandkids, “I was in a breakaway in Milan-San Remo once. We got caught.” To which the sniveling little grandkid will reply, “Dammit Grandpa, stop living in the past!”

I interviewed race favorite Peter Sagan (Tinkoff Team) earlier this morning. He said he didn’t care about the win—he just wants to make the podium so he can show the world how well-behaved he can be this time. He was referring, of course, to his infamous misstep when he squeezed a podium girl’s tush after the 2013 Tour of Flanders. I’d always wondered how he expected people to react. Did he figure the commentators would say something favorable? “Ah, and there’s Sagan, the perfect gentleman, giving the podium girl a little affection. A less refined racer would be grabbing handfuls of ass right now.” I asked Sagan what he was thinking, if anything, when he did that. “Well, actually, I meant the gesture as a social commentary,” he replied coolly. “I’ve always been bothered by the barbaric practice of having young models kiss sweaty racers after the race, and I thought by tweaking this retrograde tradition just slightly, I could highlight the absurdity of it and put the sexism issue into starker relief. And actually, I arranged the whole thing with the podium woman beforehand, so she wouldn’t be surprised. She’d totally agreed to it and then changed her mind later and acted hurt. I don’t know what her deal was … probably she was on the rag. Oh no … did I just say that out loud?”

Sagan is an interesting racer. On the one hand, he can do a no-handed wheelie while climbing a Huis-Categorie grade, and can ride right up onto the roof of his car. On the other hand, he looks like the guy on the cover of a romance novel, and has the intellect of a baitfish.

There’s another crash!

I thought by employing the exclamation point I could get you excited about the crash. But it wasn’t that exciting, actually. If these guys were required to ride with nitroglycerin or some other highly unstable substance in their jersey pockets, such that they actually exploded upon impact, I think you’d see a lot fewer crashes, but they’d be really exciting ones. The only significant news from this crash is that Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) was involved. That might cost him the race, if he’s hurt.

In looks like Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEdge) was also caught up in the crash, as he’s furiously chasing the peloton now. Matthews won two stages at Paris-Nice recently, so he must fancy his chances here today. Of course, he probably wouldn’t say “fancy” like I just did. That’s not a very common word, even though it can be used as an adjective (e.g., fancy pants), a verb (e.g., fancy his chances), or a noun (e.g., Cat Fancy magazine).

There are 26 kilometers left and the breakaway has just 15 seconds. I wonder which chaser will be the first to say, “Okay, guys, the fun and games are over!” Man, I’d like to be that rider.

I had a brief chat this morning with outside favorite Fernando Gaviria (Etixx-Quick-Step). Though only 21 years old, and riding in his first MSR, he’s being supported by teammate Tom Boonen, who has decided he no longer enjoys training and will use his huge talent to be an out-of-shape domestique from now on. Gaviria was nervous before the start. “My mom’s gonna kill me,” he said. “I put my retainer under my napkin at dinner last night and must have forgotten about it. That’s the third one I’ve lost!” Gaviria is the only rider in this race who is undergoing orthodontia, but a lot of these riders still live with their parents.

With 23 km to go, the peloton is all back together—but somebody attacks! It’s Giovanni Visconti (Movistar Team) and Ian Stannard (Team Sky) and they quickly open up a nice gap.

Pretty good move, actually, because there’s a pretty twisty descent and they’ve quickly increased their lead from 12 seconds to 23. Man, they’re just flying!

Stannard has accidentally dropped Visconti but I’m sure they’ll be back together soon. Could they hold off the field for 18 kilometers? Of course not, but they’re surely hoping other great riders will bridge up. Fabian Cancellara (Trek-Segafredo) would be just the rider to do that, because he’s plenty strong but of course couldn’t win a field sprint because he’s older than George Burns.

Three more riders have joined the lead duo. They’re about 7 km from the Poggio, which passes for a climb after so many hours in the saddle. The lead is down to 15 seconds with Katusha and BMC leading the chase, and Etixx-Quick-Step starting to get their guys in position. I have to predict an Etixx-Quick-Step victory because two of the widely touted favorites are on this team (Gaviria along with Zdeněk Štybar), and it can’t hurt having Boonen helping.

With 2 km until the Poggio, the group is suddenly caught. I never even got those other three guys’ names.

It’s under 10 km to go and Greg Avermaet (Team BMC) is on the front drilling it, as he is won’t to do. Michael Matthews has reconnected to the peloton but is dying on the back.

“It’s all about going as hard as you can,” says the practically brain-dead commentator.

Alexander Kristoff (Team Katusha) is well placed. Obviously he’s a favorite. His boys are collected at the front along with a bunch of BMC guys. The pace doesn’t actually look that high … the group is pretty much gutter-to-gutter whereas if the hammer had gone down, it’d be a narrow line.

Some dude is attacking! It’s Filippo Pozzato (Southeast-Venezuela) according to the graphics, but the announcer says, “No, it’s not, it’s number 180.” There is no number 180 in this race, according to the cyclingnews start list. So I have no idea who this guy is. Fortunately, he’s caught and dropped.

Kristoff attacks, followed by Michal Kwiatkoski (Team Sky)! This could be a really good move! He’s first over the Poggio! And now Vincenzo Nibali (Astana Team) is going after him! What, are you kidding?! We got us a bike race here!

With 5 km to go, Kwiatkoski has a handful of seconds, but Nibali and Cancellara are closing fast! But as the road goes up with about 4 km to go, the gap is going back up! Nibali goes for it up the left of the road, just flying! With 3.2 km, Kwiatkoski has 4 seconds and still looks great!

Right on schedule, my feed freezes! My wife is running the microwave and it’s jamming the WiFi! I’m doomed!

Whew, I got my wife to delay her breakfast and now my picture is back. With 1.8 km to go, Etixx-Quick-Step is drilling it on the front and 5 seconds isn’t much anymore. Cancellara is on the warpath now, and Edvald Boassan Hagen (Dimension Data) flies off up the right side, joined by Van Avermaet with 1 km to go! Boassan Hagen is killing it on the front with 500 meters to go! Cancellara isn’t far back! Now they’re looking at each other, and a dude stacks! But somehow, not a single rider is taken down with him! DAAAAAMN!

The road is slightly uphill and the sprint is well underway! Wow, it’s some random FDJ guy on the front!

And the race goes to Arnaud Démare, a Frenchman!

A Frenchman hasn’t won this in like twenty years! The dude is totally stoked and as he is mobbed by his teammates, he’s whooping like an American, like a cracker from the deep South no less! What a win! What a race!

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language and pervasive crude humor.

Introduction

If you care about the sport of cycling, then you must have seen my recent blog post covering the 2016 Milan-San Remo, a race which is one of the “monuments” of cycling. If you don’t care about the sport of cycling, you’ll certainly want to skip this post, in which I assess the scandal following the outcome of the race.

I was alerted to this scandal by one of my readers, who posted a comment below my Milan-San Remo post. The comment was from jianbino311 and read, “nike air max michael kors outlet air max 2016 rolex watches camisetas futbol baratas giuseppe zanotti outlet wallet sale kobi 9 tods outlet.”

Just kidding. I don’t know why I get so many comments like that, but the one I’m actually referring to was from Darwinian and read, “We’ll need a follow-up post of course, given the allegations of Démare having taken a tow from a team car, and the whole question of whether his Strava data helps or hurts his insistence that he did nothing wrong.” Darwinian, ask and ye shall receive!

The basic facts of the case

Milan-San Remo is quite long and features just two climbs, both very close to the finish, which sometimes keep the race from being decided in the last 500 meters. The climbs are rather short but never fail to eliminate several top sprinters. This year there was a crash less than 30 kilometers from the finish, before the first climb, the Cipressa. This crash eliminated some of the favorites, who either couldn’t catch up or wore themselves out doing so. After several breakaway attempts, the peloton came back together and the sprint was won by “some random FDJ guy” (as I put it in my coverage), who turned out to be a young upstart named Arnaud Démare.

Shortly after the race, two riders—Matteo Tosatto (Tinkoff) and Eros Capecchi (Astana)—came forward and said that they saw Démare taking a tow from his team car on the way up the Cipressa. The race judges decided not to sanction Démare because there was no video evidence of his being towed. Under questioning, Démare’s FDJ directeur sportif, Frederic Guesdon, who was driving the car that allegedly provided the tow, surprised everybody by saying, “How should I know if Démare took a tow? I was watching the road! But he probably did cheat because he’s actually kind of a dick.”

No, of course Guesdon didn’t really say that. He apparently saw the whole thing—that is, saw the tow not happen—and said so to the press. Then Démare himself denied the accusations, and it might have ended there, but people kept asking to see Démare’s power stats, which would presumably show any anomalies (i.e., setting a world-record pace up the Cipressa while putting out less than 100 watts). Guesdon said, “If there’s really a polemic about this, we’ll ask Arnaud to release his power files.” The files were never released, so everybody flocked to Démare’s Strava page, only to find that the file for this race had been removed.

But wait, there’s more! A Dutch journalist captured a snapshot of the Strava file before it was taken down, and discovered that Démare had achieved the Strava KOM for the Cipressa—that is, he went up it faster than any Strava member in history. Subsequently, Démare put the Strava file back up. Alas, the file does not include any power or heart rate data. It’s been over a week and nothing official has happened, so it appears Démare will keep the win, but with a huge asterisk in the eyes of many fans (which sounds painful, doesn’t it?)

Evidence in Démare’s favor

Is Démare an unfairly accused champion, or an asshole? I’ll attempt to get to the bottom of that question, starting with the evidence in Démare’s favor.

First of all, one of his accusers, Mateo Tossato, didn’t actually see Démare holding on to the car; he explained, “I didn’t see if he was on the car window or with a [sticky] bottle.” The implication is that it was one or the other, but in a sport where riders have blamed failed drug tests on a lost chimera or smuggled beef, it’s not that hard to slip between the horns of the dilemma and say Démare held neither a sticky bottle nor a car window. Tossato simply didn’t see him holding either one—he just saw how fast Démare was going, in close proximity to his team car.

Second, the other accuser, Eros Capecchi, has the first name “Eros,” which means “erotic love.” What kind of parents would name their child Eros? Who knows what twisted upbringing this guy had, or what emotional scars he’s accumulated from bullies teasing him over the years? Being named Eros undercuts his credibility even more than if he showed up to a courtroom wearing a bowtie.

The final problem with the case against Démare is that only two riders have come forward. If Démare’s tow was as blatant as they say, how come nobody else seems to have seen it? And how come no fans have come forward with smartphone video footage, when pretty much everything that ever happens anymore is filmed? If, in a moment of weakness, I were to pick my nose and eat it right now, it’s a fair bet you’d see that video on the Internet within minutes.

Evidence against Démare

One big problem I have with Démare’s professed innocence is that he hasn’t produced his power data. Guesdon did say, “If there’s really a polemic about this, we’ll ask Arnaud to release his power files,” and “If this continues, that’s something we could do.” Well, there have been four articles about this on cyclingnews alone, generating close to 200 comments so far … is that not a polemic? So where are the files?

There’s also the matter of Démare’s response. His language has been a bit wobbly; he’s said nothing so clear as “I did not hang on to my team car at any time” or “I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” He has said, “I have done nothing wrong” and, worse, “There are judges in cycling. If I had done something forbidden, I would have been disqualified.” His implicit premise here is that the enforcement of rules is perfect. This is a lot like the Lance Armstrong defense: “I’m the most tested athlete on the planet.” Démare is conveniently dismissing the possibility that he could have gotten away with cheating, as if not getting caught is proof of innocence. He’d sound a whole lot better saying, “I didn’t hold on to the car.”

He went on to say, “I sense a little jealousy from some of our rivals after our [i.e., FDJ’s] third place in the team time trial at Tirreno [Adriatico].” Huh? This is both a red herring (or “red lobster” as my daughter calls it) and an ad hominem fallacy. You’d have to be a really, really sore loser to fabricate a story about a rider cheating just because his team got third in a TTT. Capecchi’s Astana team was all the way down in 6th place, so by Démare’s logic Capecchi would have a vendetta against all 40 riders who beat his team in that race. Tossato, meanwhile, didn’t even race Tirreno-Adriatico! This is a pretty weak foundation for Démare to be building a revenge theory on. I wish I spoke Chinese because I’m told they have a very concise, pithy expression that literally translates “You talk dog farts.”

Then there’s the matter of the Strava KOM. I saw how fast the peloton went over the Cipressa, and how fast Giovanni Visconti (Movistar Team) was going when he attacked. I pointed out how quickly Visconti and Ian Stannard (Team Sky) opened up a gap on the peloton. So how is it that Démare not only went over the Cipressa faster than Visconti, but set a new Strava record in the process, after more than 250 kilometers of racing? The whole point of the Cipressa is to shed some of the sprinters, who are notoriously challenged by such climbs … and here a pure sprinter sets a new all-time record?

Even more damning, of course, is the mysterious disappearance, and reappearance, of Démare’s Strava file for this race. Let me guess … somebody hacked Démare’s Strava account because the password was something weak like “password123” or “TTTbronze”? Or maybe Démare tripped, fell, and landed on the delete key? Or did he remove the file because he didn’t want to rub people’s noses in the fact that he’d not only won Milan-San Remo but also got the Strava KOM on the Cipressa?

But to me, the most important bit of evidence is that, as acknowledged by his directeur sportif, Démare did take a bottle while climbing the Cipressa. Why on earth would he do this, if not to take a tow? Think about it. You’ve just crashed at the base of a critical climb toward the end of a huge race, you’ve lost over 30 seconds, you know the peloton is already lighting it up ahead of you, and your only chance in the race is to climb like a bat out of hell and try to latch on. Wouldn’t you be ditching your bottle, to save weight? You wouldn’t be thinking, “My, I’m in a bit of a pickle, but that shouldn’t mean having to go without some refreshment later on.”

The only reason to take a bottle is to get dragged along a bit. As far as I’m concerned, a tow is a tow, whether you’re holding onto the car window, a bottle, or your coach’s dick. (Well, actually, that sounds really dangerous for the coach … but I digress.)

I’ve about had it with all this nonsense I’ve been reading about “sticky bottle” and how it’s just a wink-wink nudge-nudge part of the sport. I’d never even seen the phrase “sticky bottle” before and now I see there’s even a website by that name, and all these fans saying that getting a tow via a bottle handoff is a widely tolerated part of the sport, to help out those poor unfortunate riders who took a spill and need to get back on. I don’t care who tolerates it—it’s bullshit, particularly for somebody with designs on winning a major classic. Asking for a bottle at that point in the race was premeditated cheating, and whether or not Démare deserves to be stripped of the victory, my verdict is that he’s douchebag.

My other verdict

My other verdict in the case is, who the hell cares? It’s not like this is the first time a pro bike racer has done something douche-y. It’s ridiculous how many fans have taken to the comments section on cyclingnews to debate Démare’s case back and forth, often attacking each other in the process.

Oh, and now you’re calling me a hypocrite! Look, I’ve investigated this scandal for one purpose only: to entertain. I really couldn’t care less who likes Démare and who doesn’t, and whether or not anybody was swayed by my argument. I wrote this to make you laugh, to make fun of Eros’s name, to put words in Guesdon’s mouth, and to speculate about how Démare’s Strava file got deleted. If I’ve failed to make you laugh, you can judge me on that basis, but please don’t assume I really care whether or not yet another bike racer cheated. There are far more pressing debates to have about this sport … and watch these pages, because my next post will tackle a topic truly worth pondering and debating!

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Introduction

In my last post, I analyzed the scandal following the Milan-San Remo road race, and determined that a) the winner, Arnaud Démare, is a douchebag, and b) there are better things to debate than whether or not yet another pro cyclist cheated. In this post, I take on a far more worthy question: is the following poster sexist?

The poster, advertising the Euskal Emakumeen bicycle race in Spain, was withdrawn from distribution by the race organizers after a women’s advocacy group, the Basque Women’s Institute (aka Anderebide de Iurreta), filed a complaint, calling the poster “sexist.” (Click here or here for more on this story.)

Well, is it sexist?

Is the poster sexist? Good question, and one worth posing, far more so than my last polemic. There is one right answer to the question “Did Démare cheat in the 2016 Milan-San Remo?” and Démare, at least, is certain of the answer. But sexism is a huge grey area.

I have to admit, when I first saw the article about the retracted poster, I thought, “They shouldn’t have retracted it, because I enjoy looking at it.” This was a basic brain stem reaction. But then, isn’t giving too much authority to the brain stem a big part of how sexism manages to persist in civilized society?

I looked some more at the poster. It’s certainly very strange, with the enlarged ponytail image in the background. But can it really be called sexist? I asked my teenage daughter if she thinks so. “It’s really weird,” she said. “But I don’t know about sexist.”

Would the poster be particularly sexist if the rider shown, rider Katarzyna Niewiadoma, weren’t last year’s winner, but had been chosen simply because she’s attractive? Or is it sexist because she’s blowing a kiss? Does it matter if she was asked to blow a kiss so they could put that on the poster, vs. the race organizers finding a random photo of her blowing a kiss to the camera and deciding to use it? After all, racers blow kisses to the crowd all the time during victory salutes.

Is it even a kiss?

But wait, is she even blowing a kiss to begin with? I’ve done a bit of research and learned that she may actually be making “duck lips.” I’m not on any social media platform, so I’m kind of new to this expression, but I’ve learned that making duck lips, a mainstay of social media selfies, is kind of like blowing a kiss and kind of like pouting. The question is, do duck lips automatically connote something sexual or flirtatious?

To delve into this question I consulted a Christian website called “Secret Keeper Girl” which is dedicated to raising morally upright girls. The columnist, Charmaine, took the position that duck lips are okay so long as the intention behind them is pure: “If ‘duck face’ is just a fun, silly thing [your daughter] likes to do, then by all means, LET HER PLAY!” On the other hand, Charmaine notes, “Many of the models and celebs who pose like this do have trashy sensual intentions.”

So what was Niewiadoma’s intention in making duck lips for the camera? Well, she’s not a model and I would argue that even the more famous bike racers aren’t really celebs. I think we should give Niewiadoma the benefit of the doubt as regards her motives, because five out of seven commenters on the “Secret Keeper Girl” article opined that duck lips are harmless—and remember that these are the kinds of earnest parents that consult websites to make sure they’re doing right by Jesus. And one comment in particular puts Niewiadoma’s expression in a whole new light: “20 years ago I use to smile that way. The message was this: I am in control, superior, above competition, it is impossible to compete with me.” Could that be what’s going on here?

Am I sexist?

If you read my Biased Blow-By-Blow race reports, you’ll know that I generally have no problem quickly making up my mind about people; I don’t hesitate to call a spade a spade, or even a “filthy doping spade.” So why am I being so careful and hesitant with this allegation of a poster being sexist?

Well, I freely acknowledge that when it comes to sexism, not just anybody can appoint himself or herself an arbitrator. And I’m feeling particularly vulnerable to assaults on my authority since, not long ago, I discredited a bike racer in these pages by calling him a “douchebag.” Do I undermine my own credibility by having so recently used a derogatory label that’s arguably associated with the female sex?

On this score I will defend my word choice on the grounds that “douchebag” is used, in common parlance, far more widely to describe a jerk, loser, dickhead, etc. than an actual douchebag, which I’ve never seen in my life and which, as far as I am aware, nobody I know has ever used.

(It’s kind of like the word “hysterical,” which got Johnnie Cochran in trouble during the O.J. Simpson trial when he used this adjective to describe Marcia Clark, the prosecutor. “Hysterical” was made out to be the epitome of sexist slur, based on its etymology—it derives from the Greek “hysteros” (ὕστερος), meaning “womb.” But who, among the dim-witted scores of gawkers glued to their TVs throughout the O.J. trial, actually know any Greek? I never bought it. Men and women alike are capable of hysterical behavior.)

In my entire life, I have only once used the word “douche” to mean an actual douche. This was back in the ‘80s, when there was this TV ad running where a teenaged girl asked her mom, “Mom, can a douche help you feel more confident?” Her mom gave her some really supportive feedback on the brand of douche being advertised, and it was clear the two had excellent rapport, far better than I had with my own mom at the time, and they were increasing it through this dialogue. Frankly, I was a bit envious. Why should daughters enjoy this special bond with their mothers, when sons and fathers don’t have anything analogous?

So one day, while watching TV with my mom, I turned to her and asked, “Mom, can a douche help you feel more confident?” She got really embarrassed, and didn’t know what to say, and the whole thing felt really awkward. Once again, I failed to achieve the close relationship I could have had with my mom if I were female. So don’t be getting up in my face about “douche” being sexist. I wish I had grounds to use the term “douchebag” beyond its ubiquitous meaning of “despicable person” and/or “typical pro cyclist.”

The ponytail conundrum

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Niewiadoma making duck lips in the poster isn’t itself sexist. But what of this strange ponytail image? I’m told that males on social media often make duck lips, but I’ve never seen a male bike racer with a ponytail. Even the long hair that Phil Anderson sported in the late ‘80s was always flowing free. What exactly is the point of showcasing this braided hair?

I’m not sure the sexiness has anything to do with it. When a woman’s sex appeal is being exploited—think of a hot model in a bikini sprawled out on the hood of a muscle car—she almost never has her hair in a braid. And beyond sex appeal, within other realms where an ideal of feminine beauty is held up—like all those female Disney characters—you almost never see braided hair. (Not even on Rapunzel, who would have had an obvious practical reason to put her hair in a braid.)

My further rumination on this poster’s braid imagery takes me further into the territory of self-doubt. Is it fair for me, as a male, to try to judge this poster when I cannot truly have the response to the poster that a female would? Where accusations of sexism are concerned, men are almost never the victims, so it’s easy enough for us to brush it off and say things like “Lighten up, it’s just a head of hair.” I was on the brink of asking my daughter about the ponytail in the poster, and about how she, as a female, feels about braided hair, when I realized I didn’t have to. I already had her answer, in writing! Check out this paragraph from her recent mountain bike race report:

All of the other girls [on the starting line] looked like badasses. They were all muscular and serious, their hair pulled back in tight braids that made me self-consciously pull at my untidy hair in a futile attempt to make it less gross. Their bikes were pre-muddied, their legs and arms scarred from crashes, and their gear perfectly color coordinated. They seemed to me to be the heroines of some dystopian action film, their eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses as they smirked at each other and tossed their perfectly braided hair dramatically.

Based on that evidence, it could be that the Euskal Emakumeen poster was designed to show that women, even pretty ones, aren’t just ornaments—that they’re actually totally badass. Perhaps this close-up of Niewiadoma’s ponytail is well within the reasonable use of imagery for a bike race poster. But before I can conclude that, I think we should consider what a bike race poster is supposed to do in the first place.

What are such posters for?

At the most basic level, a bike race poster does what all print media do: it promotes the product. And let’s face it, there are very few societal rules regarding product advertisements, the core ethos seeming to be “whatever works.” Consider this ad, for Reebok shoes:

This ad really makes no sense at all. Reebok shoes have nothing to do with the Tour de France; nothing to do with Mario Cipollini; and nothing to do with cycling. (Reebok did sponsor an American team during the late ‘80s, and intended to introduce a line of cycling shoes, but never actually did.) This is a blatant example of sex in advertising … but who would attack it? We just shrug. Hey, sex sells, right?

Should bike race promotional posters be held to a different standard? Well, perhaps … after all, a bike race is held on public roads that go through towns, and thus has a relationship with the community that a shoe company does not. And since I may never get another chance, I’ll take this opportunity to complain about a different bike race poster:

The above poster features your humble blogger. Why they decided to use this picture of me, I don’t really know … but it certainly is me. I remember the photo on which this photo was based (taken during the previous year’s Red Zinger Mini Classic). My issue is, nobody asked for my permission to use this image of me, and I wasn’t paid any royalties. Nor was the intent of my facial expression considered. (Oddly enough, I seem to have been way ahead of my time: in that picture I’m making “sparrow face,” which is reputedly the modern successor to duck lips.)

Getting back to the purpose of bike race posters, I suppose if we assume the point of the Euskal Emakumeen poster is to generate interest in the race, so as to attract spectators, the poster arguably is sexist, because it seems to be saying, “You should watch this race because women bike racers can be pretty, perhaps even flirty, and some of them have badass hairdos.” When I think of why I watch bike racing, it’s not because the men look good (they certainly don’t) or because they have cool hair (ditto), but because I like to watch people suffer, in a way I can relate to, and I like the speed and aggression and the tactical subtleties of the sport. A good poster should try to capture that, rather than showing a photo of a racer just standing there, making duck lips, and having a certain hairdo.

Should this poster have been yanked?

And yet, even if the Euskal Emakumeen bike race poster was borderline sexist, whether or not to publicly complain about it is a separate question. What if the poster did generate more interest in the race, and spectators flocked to it (albeit not necessarily for the right reasons), and they discovered that women’s racing is really exciting? What if the race promoters had yanked the original poster but didn’t have the budget to create and print new posters, and attendance at the race suffered? Is the Basque Women’s Institute doing anything to promote women’s bike racing, or are they content to site on the sidelines until it’s time to attack somebody? And is the benefit of this attack worth the backlash it has caused—an almost uniformly negative reaction to their protest? And above all, couldn’t the Basque Women’s Institute find a more worthwhile target for their attack on sexism?

In case you haven’t already guessed where I’m going with this, I’ll give you a little hint:

Look at all those sponsors, and the name of the community of Catalunya where the race takes place, juxtaposed with superfly “race ambassadors” clearly not chosen for their long-term association with the sport of bike racing. The racer being celebrated, Nairo Quintana, looks to be enjoying himself a little too much and probably got in trouble with his wife over this. I myself confess that, upon seeing this photo, I suddenly became peripherally interested in the Volta a Catalunya, but only in skimming the photos for each stage … and only certain of those photos. I’m sorry, I can’t help it!

Suffice to say, this spectacle of beautiful women kissing sweaty bike racers in front of a crowd is not bringing out the best in male sports fans. From the standpoint of cultural sensitivity and responsible promotion of sport, the podium girl tradition is about as sophisticated as that of bikini-clad babes strutting around the ring before a “professional” wrestling match in the U.S. Meanwhile, there’s a double standard here: women who win bike races are never attended to by hunky Chippendale types as a way to titillate sports fans.

But where is the Basque Women’s Institute on this podium girl issue? I did a quick Google search, on a hunch that their activism doesn’t extend here:

In terms of bang for the buck, the Basque Women’s Institute arguably did get a lot of reaction from their protest, with the race pulling the poster and issuing a new one. But if this organization is really looking to promote social change, perhaps they should have repurposed the poster, allowing its widespread distribution but slapping on a sticker that said, “If you find this poster sexist, or even if you don’t, come to our panel discussion on women’s representation in sport, held at such-and-such venue on such-and-such date.” They could have arranged this meeting to take place right after the race, near the winner’s podium, where they could have drummed up extra attention via hot-n-hunky podium dudes!

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NOTE: This post is rated R for pervasive mild strong language and disturbing themes.

Introduction

Since I started this blog seven years ago, I’ve posted 346 times (generally four posts per month). It’s not easy to write that often, so I sometimes don’t. That’s what these “from the archives” posts are for.

Lately I’ve been doing a hybrid version of this: I post an old poem, then provide all-new footnotes and commentary on it. (Pretend you found this in your Norton Anthology of American Teen Poetry.) Today I go back to a poem written under extreme duress: I’d just turned 18, moved away from home, and then hit the doldrums after entering my third month of unemployment.

Unemployment poetry – August, 1987

I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU

I sit here letting time roll slowly by

My [word redacted] has become a bore. 2

I cannot find a job, although I try;

And while I sit here, I’m becoming poor.

I buy the paper each and every day

And scan the ads for work I’d like to do. 6

But each employer seems to always say

My years of working are, fuck you, too few.

Unless somebody takes a chance on me,

And signs me up with hope that I will learn, 10

A dumbshit’s all I’ll ever get to be;

Experience I’ll never get to earn.

This vicious circle simply has to end

fuck hopes and dreams 14

Footnotes & commentary

Title: I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU

The title should not be construed as anything aimed at the reader. I assumed when writing this poem that nobody would ever read it. I knew back then (though I’ve evidently since forgotten) that nobody wants to read amateur poetry. I’d read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and surely took note of the Vogon captain’s threat that he’ll not only fling the heroes into space to die, but that “if you’re very lucky, I might read you some of my poetry first.”

Frankly, I’m posting this poem here largely for archival purposes: until now, it has existed only in the original hardcopy, on paper that’s gradually disintegrating. If you’re reading this on April 15, 2006, or in the days (or perhaps even weeks) following that date, you’re in a race against my mom and might very well be the first living human to lay eyes on this poem. (Dead humans, down in hell, may see it constantly; it may be posted in every corridor down there.) If you think you may be the lucky first reader, feel free to e-mail me and see!

So why “I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU”? Well, it was a dark time, and I was an angry youth, and had soured on soft rock around then. I distinctly remember turning against Simon and Garfunkel (more on this later), and railing at the Peter Gabriel song “Don’t Give Up,” mainly due to guest singer Kate Bush’s contribution to the song, which (in my angry youth mode) I might have described as “menstrual.” So I turned to punk rock, notably Fear, which I had on cassette. This album had a very memorable song titled “I don’t care about you.” (Sample lines: “I seen an old man have a heart attack in Manhattan/ Well he died while we sat there lookin’ at him/ Ain’t he cute?”) When I finished this poem (as you can see it was only very lightly edited) I realized it needed a title, and “I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU” seemed as good as any.

(A final note: my favorite song on the Fear album in those days, due to my depression and frustration, was called “Getting the Brush,” which I’ve explored at length in an exegesis in these pages … click here.)

Line 1: letting time roll slowly by

This may well be an unconscious tribute to the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Boxer,” which was probably on my mind, as it includes the lyrics “When I left my home and my family….” My line “letting time roll slowly by” possibly alludes to “Now the years are rolling by me/ They are rockin’ evenly” (which you’ll find in the concert version of this song).

Line 2: [word redacted]

The first version of this line read, “Relaxing has become a total bore.” This line wasn’t exactly honest. I mean, relaxing was a bore, but I later revised this bit to be more specific, and edgier, and more to the point. That was all well and good for a poem that just moldered away in a 3-ring binder, but not for the Internet. It’s a happy coincidence that “word redacted” fits nicely into a line of iambic pentameter.

Line 4: I’m becoming poor

This is probably my least favorite phrase of the whole poem (and/or any poem ever written by anybody). It seems somehow incorrect to say a person “becomes” poor. I’m not at all sure poverty works like that. Many people are born into poverty; some transcend it; some lose everything; but “becoming poor” … it just sounds wrong. Besides, a middle class kid who knows he’ll one day go to college may be penniless, but doesn’t actually have to face the prospect of real poverty. This is a sad example of the amateur poet picking words because they meet the rhythm and rhyme requirements of the sonnet. Pretty lazy on my part.

Line 6: scan the ads

Over time, fewer and fewer people will remember that, before the Internet, when you were looking for work you actually had to buy a newspaper and look through the classified ads. These printed ads were billed per word per day, so they tended to be very brief and thus often cryptic; e.g., “Admin asst type 70 wpm WordStar filing phones $1200/mo neg/ xlnt benefits 3 yrs exp req’d.” The name of the prospective employer was often not given. You’d just dial a phone number, tell whoever answered “I’m, um, calling about the help wanted ad?” and hope for the best. I wonder how many times I was rebuffed by some receptionist who didn’t even know her company was hiring. (Probably never: I’m just rewriting history to let myself off the hook for interviewing poorly.)

Line 8: years of working are, fuck you, too few

I was living in San Luis Obispo, a college town, and there were probably plenty of people trying to get the lucrative office jobs I sought. Likely there were even college graduates going after those jobs. I just didn’t know how the world worked. I also kept holding out hope that Spirit Cycle Works, the bike shop where my brother worked, at would eventually hire me, but I was deluding myself. It was plain to see that Spirit was slowly dying.

In revising this poem, I was totally right to replace the word “alas.” That might have conveyed how a prospective employer might have tried to let me down easy, except that almost nobody uses the word “alas.” I sure didn’t hear it from the manager at Sizzler Steakhouse where, in desperation, I applied as a dishwasher—and was denied! The guy said, “You didn’t get the job. But check back with me on Thursday because, this guy I hired? I don’t think he’s going to work out.” I think “fuck you” is a very accurate, concise summary of that message. And the internal rhyme of “fuck you, too few” is probably the strongest thing about this poem.

Line 10: signs me up

This revision makes no sense. The phrase “hires me” is better all around. Why did I change it? Who knows. I think I just wasn’t trying very hard—at this poem, or at getting a job. At the time I was scared shitless about my future and a kind of paralysis had set in. To be honest, I wasn’t rejected that many times … I just wasn’t applying to enough places.

Line 11: dumbshit

Changing “bum” to “dumbshit” was a fine edit. After all, nobody uses “bum” to mean “chronically unemployed person” anymore (nor back in 1987). A bum was somebody who spent too much time on the couch or borrowed money without paying it back. And of course “dumbshit” perfectly matched the overall mood of the poem.

That said, the idea presented here—that getting a job will keep you from becoming a dumbshit—is problematic. As it turned out, the first job I ended up getting—working in a factory canning underwear—would not have prevented me from declining into dumbshit-hood.

Canning underwear? It’s true. I worked at a factory that made Hot Chillys thermal underwear, which was packaged in cans. I still have one of them:

Full disclosure: I only worked the canning machine for about a day. The company made better use of me in the shipping department, which took more brains because the underwear wasn’t being made nearly fast enough to keep up with orders, so we had to ship partially-filled orders to every customer and keep track of how much product each customer was owed. That was a pretty good job. In fact, when Spirit Cycleworks let my brother go, I got him a job at the factory working right alongside me.

Line 13: vicious circle simply has to end

This line makes no sense. My situation was a bit like a Catch-22, in that I had to have work experience to get a job but couldn’t get that experience without a job—but that’s in no way a vicious circle. There was absolutely nothing cyclical going on, nor anything vicious. I certainly wasn’t going to get a job as a poet with clunky lines like that.

Line 14: fuck hopes and dreams

This was a bold, decisive way to get out of the corner that line 13 had painted me into. You can tell “fuck hopes and dreams” was added later, as it’s in the same blue ink as the revisions. I must have gotten to the end of line 13 and just given up on the poem, and then came back to it later and hastily finished it off without worrying about meter, rhyme, or even conveying anything meaningful.

This line, “fuck hopes and dreams,” is actually a cinematic reference, but to a movie whose title I cannot remember. It was a really awful movie. My brother and I rented a lot of movies in those days, most of them awful. This line came toward the end of the movie when the main character, totally stymied by everything in his life, melodramatically picked up a gun, put it to his head, and uttered this line. I can’t even remember if he pulled the trigger because at this point in the movie my brother and I started laughing so hard we couldn’t see straight. My god that was a stupid movie.

When researching this commentary I looked up “fuck hopes and dreams” on the Internet Movie Database but couldn’t find anything. Probably it was such a forgettable movie that nobody bothered to mine it for memorable quotes. My search did turn up a movie called “Young People F---ing,” which earned a Critics’ Metascore of 39 out of 100, which is remarkably low (but not the worst I’ve seen).

So, it’s been a long time since I wrote my unemployment poem, but I’m pretty sure the last line was a way to tell myself, “You’re being silly and melodramatic, lugubrious even, like that awful movie, and it’s time to stop writing indulgent, woe-is-me poetry and go get a damn job.” Which I did. After the underwear cannery gig ended, I held down two jobs concurrently—one at a bike shop and one at a radio station, as an evening receptionist—which not only paid the bills, but helped me save up some money for college. Looking back, I’m glad I had that unemployment experience, and the depression that went with it, just to get it out of my system—hopefully once and for all.

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Introduction

There has been a debate raging over whether or not to allow hydraulic disc brakes in professional road racing. (Yes, bike race fans can get all heated up over just about anything.) I never much cared about this issue, and neither should you, really. That said, current events—first the decision to allow these brakes, then a gnarly injury, and then a decision to ban them again—are making it hard to stay on the fence. You don’t want to be the cycling equivalent of an undecided voter, do you? Read on for new ways to argue about this, whether it’s because a) you care, or b) you like to provoke people.

What’s good about disc brakes

First of all, let’s not pretend there’s any clear need to replace the caliper brakes on road bikes. I weigh more than 90% of the riders in the World Tour peloton, and I can descend a 20-percent grade with one finger on each lever of my caliper brakes. But that doesn’t mean disc brakes don’t have advantages.

First of all, they let you ride wheels that aren’t very true. Now, this isn’t a huge deal, because we all like our wheels true anyway, and no rider worth his salt keeps his brakes super-tight. To my mind, having super-tight brakes is like wearing a belt and suspenders at the same time, perhaps over an elastic waistband. You can safely run your caliper brakes really loose. This is actually better because your grip is stronger when your fingers are less outstretched. Imagine a tennis ball the size of a softball: could you squeeze it as hard? Nope.

(When I was racing, my bike tended to flunk the pre-race tech inspection if I didn’t temporarily set my brakes tighter via the barrel adjusters. Once I got my inspection sticker I’d loosen them back up. And how many races did I crash in because I couldn’t brake hard enough? ZERO.)

Still, there are instances where it would be handy not to have to worry about a wobbly wheel rim rubbing on the brakes. Say you crash in a race, and you’re the so-called protected rider on Team Sky, but your teammates are nowhere to be found, and you’ve knocked your wheel out a fair bit: you’d be glad if there were no brake pads for the rim to hit. You can go pretty damn fast on a wobbly wheel if the brakes aren’t rubbing.

Then, there’s the practical matter of having to keep your wheels clean. I love having disc brakes on my mountain bike because I can have thick smear of mud all over my rim and it affects my braking not a whit. But does this benefit carry over to the road bike? Generally not. I will say that I once blew through two entire sets of brake pads in one rainy month. So disc brakes would be nice for wet climates—at least for us consumers. But racers? These guys have professional mechanics. They don’t have to worry about picking little metal flecks out of their pads and/or replacing them all the time.

Maintenance aside, do caliper brakes perform well enough in the rain? In a protracted e-mail debate among my bike club, one rider—whose road racing chops are well established—wrote, “There have only been a few times I wish I had road disc brakes. In the rain and while descending Trinity Rd, I honestly couldn’t grab enough brake. Trinity in the rain would be an absolute nightmare.” (Actually, I did once descend Trinity Grade in the rain, and though I don’t remember braking problems, that’s probably because I got so cold that day I probably did permanent damage to my brain.) Disc brakes do have the advantage in this realm … they’re really not affected by rain or mud.

Now, there’s one more significant benefit conferred by disc brakes: your rims won’t overheat. Overheating is a problem with carbon fiber rims, and is sufficiently prevalent that carbon rims are banned in Levi’s Granfondo, a local cyclosportif. (Here is one rider’s horror story.) Even if you’re a skilled enough rider to avoid this pitfall (i.e., you don’t need to brake that much), you do have to pay a lot of attention to what brake pads you use on carbon rims. I would guess that a fair number of World Tour mechanics are drunks, and that riders have crashed due to having the wrong pads installed. Is this a conspiracy theory? No, I’m suggesting haplessness, not evil intent. Is this a stretch? Yeah, I guess it is. But I’m just trying to give disc brakes a fair shake here.

What’s bad about disc brakes

Check out this photo:

This was Exhibit A in a debate among pro riders about the dangers of disc brakes, which have the reputation of being like blades in a crash situation. According to Cycling Weekly, the above photo was tweeted by a rider with the caption, “why we probs don’t need disc brakes.” The problem with this tweet, beyond the use of the silly non-word “probs,” is that the injury was caused by a good old fashioned chainring, not a disc brake.

The idea of discs being like blades resurfaced recently when pro racer Francisco Ventoso crashed in the Paris-Roubaix classic and cut his shin open very badly. “It was so bad you could see the tibia,” his directeur sportif said. Ventoso wrote an angry open letter calling for a ban on disc brakes, and shortly thereafter the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) did ban them, having decided there’s something to this “discs are blades” notion.

(Is the track record of disc brakes in road racing poor enough to warrant this ban? I don’t know, and I honestly can’t be bothered to research the matter. But disc brakes have been used in mountain biking for many years without causing enough injury to make the news. Mountain bikes have a long history of accepting innovations sooner than road bikes, often for no good reason. Consider the threadless fork steerer: this appeared on mountain bikes during the 1980s, but wasn’t widely adopted for road bikes until around 2000. This design is unequivocally superior to its predecessor in every way … why the delay?)

Another problem with disc brakes is that the rotors can get dangerously hot, as pointed out by no less a cycling authority than Eddy Merckx. (Can you burn yourself on a rim heated by caliper brakes? Yes, but probably not as easily.) On the plus side, getting cut by a red-hot brake disc, rather than a chainring, might have a silver lining: all that heat might just cauterize the wound. (Yes, I’m being facetious, to stave off boredom.)

Some contend that disc brakes are too powerful and cause riders to slow or stop too abruptly. This is nonsense. I have top-end Dura-Ace caliper brakes on my road bike, and their power is no easier to modulate than the lower-end Deore hydraulic disc brakes on my mountain bike. The big difference is that I ride the brakes a lot more on the mountain bike, and thanks to the hydraulics my hands don’t get as tired as they used to. That’s a real benefit, and I’d never go back to cantilevers (or “cantaloupe-squeezers” as we used to call them)—but I’m not yearning for disc brakes on my road bike. Road conditions are seldom so demanding as rocky, sometimes muddy single-track trails.

Do pro racers need better brakes?

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that disc brakes really do stop better, and really do solve real-world problems like braking in the rain and safely achieving minimum rim weight. Does that mean racers need them, or even ought to have them?

I’ve been following this sport for decades and it’s never seemed like a lot of crashes had to do with poor braking. Meanwhile, the bikes—and moreover the riders—are getting lighter all the time, which I think actually lessens the need for powerful brakes. (The physics is a bit complicated, but empirically speaking, heavy riders descend faster.)

My pet theory about the increase in crashes is that race radios are turning riders into mere drones, and directeur sportifs are always yelling at them to go to the front, so they’re all fighting to get up there without (apparently) deciding for themselves if it’s safe to do so. Also, I think doping helps racers get fast much more quickly—look at Chris Froome’s overnight transformation from a middling Continental rider to Tour de France champion—and their growth in skill can’t keep pace. (So far there’s no drug for improving bike handling.)

Meanwhile, there’s reason to believe that better brakes might lead to less careful riding. I’m thinking here of Malcolm Gladwell’s article “Blowup” in The New Yorker in which he describes an early trial of antilock brake systems (A.B.S.) in cars. A fleet of taxis in Munich was outfitted with A.B.S. and compared to a control group with regular brakes. Oddly, A.B.S. didn’t reduce the number of accidents, because many A.B.S.-equipped drivers became more reckless and took bigger risks. Gladwell explains, “As economists would say, [the cab drivers] ‘consumed’ the risk reduction, they didn’t save it.”

This effect could be more pronounced in bike races, because the racers have even more incentive than a taxi driver to “consume” risk reduction. After all, a few seconds on a descent could be the difference between winning and losing, whereas a cab driver shaving a few seconds here and there isn’t likely to make very much more money in a day.

Then there’s the matter of the riders’ opinion. Frankly, I have a reflexive aversion to riders being coddled by the UCI. Remember, in the early Tour de France, riders had to make all their own roadside repairs, which was pretty badass if you ask me. Reading Francisco Ventoso’s whiny letter, I didn’t come to admire the guy:

“All of this happens because the international riders’ association—the CPA—national riders’ associations, international and national feds, teams and, above all of them, OURSELVES, PROFESSIONAL RIDERS, are not doing anything.”

What is “all of this”? He hurt his leg on a disc. He contends that another rider was injured by a disc as well, but this hasn’t been corroborated. Disc brake injuries aren’t exactly an epidemic. So why is Ventoso sounding like a 1900s-era slaughterhouse worker who has seen half a dozen colleagues fall into the hopper and become sausage? Whatever happened to being stoic and shrugging it off? Whatever happened to riders using whatever equipment they were given and keeping their mouths shut? (Granted, most of them are, but the few exceptions rankle.)

Whom are bicycles for, anyway?

The worldwide bicycle industry is worth roughly $50 billion. It does not exist to serve pro bike racers. To some degree, these racers have jobs because they serve the bicycle industry. The pro peloton is like a giant laboratory for bicycle technology innovations, along with a way to market these innovative products (because after all, everybody wants what the pros ride). This isn’t a sport where the riders tell the industry what they need; it’s a sport where the industry figures out what it can probably sell, and uses the riders to help do it.

Electronic shifting is a perfect example. As a concept, it’s kind of nifty, but utterly needless—a solution looking for a problem. Actually, that’s not quite right. There is a problem: consumers need an excuse to replace their existing (perfectly good) stuff with new (perfectly good) stuff. This is what makes the economy go. The bicycle industry (like most industries) is constantly asking the question, “How can we improve this product sufficiently that people will buy it right away?”

From that perspective, it totally matters what ought to appeal to everyday cyclists. I would appreciate a braking system that allows me to use whatever fancy carbon rims I want, without needing to keep them clean or true. I don’t personally seek the pros’ seal of approval on what I buy—but so many riders do. And that, more than anything, is why electronic shifting is used in the pro peloton.

Speaking of which, Ventoso totally undermines his own argument when he (needlessly) writes about electronic shifting in his anti-disc manifesto:

“We could also talk about the revolution that has brought the electronic shifting. When it was first shown and used, we all were surprised and made early judgments: it’s not necessary, it might not work well, carrying batteries seems wrong, having to connect your bike to AC is bonkers… And now, we can’t imagine our bikes without it.”

Look at this whiner! If he’d had some safety-related excuse to get out of using electronic shifting systems, he’d have made it. And yet look what happened: the electronic shifting technology evolved, and/or he got used to it, and he now loves it and promotes it like a good little marketing foot soldier. With regard to disc brakes, I think he’d be a far more responsible professional if he provided feedback to the industry—“Uh, guys, these brakes are great but it’d be nice if they didn’t slice us up”—rather than trying to put the kibosh on the whole innovation.

Where do we go from here?

My final thought on this anti-disc issue is that there’s a widespread assumption being made that they’re intrinsically hazardous in a crash situation. Well, they don’t have to be. The current rotors are totally flat disks, so the edges are somewhat sharp compared to most bicycle parts (notable exceptions being chainring teeth, which are much sharper, and bladed spokes, which are copious and have a tendency to be part of a spinning wheel). A manufacturer could pretty easily curl the edge of the rotor around so that its profile, instead of resembling a lowercase L, would resemble a 9 (or more accurately the Hebrew letter ףּ). Perhaps this would be harder to do when the rotor isn’t perfectly round (frankly, I don’t know why so many of them have a wavy edge). In that instance, why not just run a nice bit of silicone rubber trim along that edge? Make it out of the same heat-resistant stuff “rubber” spatulas are made of. Secure it by making it wrap around the edge of the rotor on both sides, with some nice adhesive within.

(Yes, I realize neither of these proposed rotors would clear the brake pistons during wheel changes. The brake mechanism would need to be modified, too: put a quick-release mechanism in there that would move the pistons out of the way during wheel changes. This modification would be child’s play for the bicycle industry.)

Perhaps the inevitable resolution of this issue is best summed up by a stirring proclamation from René Takens, President of the Confederation of the European Bicycle Industry (CONEBI): “We will not allow technical innovation to be halted in its tracks by racers’ complaints. We will stand up to that handful of whiny little bitches in the peloton, and we will prevail.”

(No, of course he didn’t really say that. But maybe he should.)

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Dear Mr. Laundry,

I’m rather farsighted and without a microscope I can’t read the washing instructions on most of my clothing tags. I can make out the symbols, though. Problem is, I don’t understand them. Can you translate?

Walter Darnell, St. Louis, MO

Dear Wally,

Here’s a nice summary of the washing symbols, but be careful: these are the American ones and may not match the overseas symbols used in your clothing:

(Click above to zoom in.)

Fortunately, lots of clothing gives you the various versions of symbols you might encounter based on what country you’re in:

See? Some countries use black bleach, apparently. Others have really weird looking irons. Some keep their bleach in beakers. The circle with the P in it? P for Permitted, I assume. A for Allowed, perhaps? Or A-OK?

Dear Mr. Laundry,

Help! My wife is a very careless laundress. Wait, let me restate that. She’s not a laundress. Not by profession. What I mean is, she is very careless about the laundry. She’s always putting, like, cashmere sweaters through the washer and dryer, or washing my Lycra on hot and drying it on high. Is there anything to be done?

[Name and location withheld by request]

Dear Withheld,

All I can recommend is getting as involved in the laundry as you can. Develop a system for hiding those non-machine-washable garments. I wouldn’t nag your wife too much about it because this just won’t do any good and you need to pick your battles … marriage counselors and divorce lawyers are a lot more expensive than clothes, after all. (If your wife has a sense of humor, and has seen the film “Raise the Red Lantern,” you might yell—upon discovering another ruined garment—“Cover the lanterns!”)

Also, look for the silver lining. My sister-in-law inherited a nice wool sweater from a guy who shrunk it in the dryer. Then she shrunk it in the dryer and so it went to her daughter, and so on down to her toddler. As for me, my wife put my nice merino wool sweater through the wash and made it all ratty, which greatly increased its utility because I no longer had to “keep it nice.” In fact, it became my favorite sweater for this very reason. When’s the last time you got to work on your bike while wearing merino wool?

Dear Mr. Laundry,

I’m terrible about leaving things in my pockets when I put things through the wash. I’ve ruined three cell phones this way! Is there any cell phone you know of that can survive a trip through the wash?

Sarah Kitteredge, Providence, RI

Dear Sarah,

The Motorola FONE (aka Motofone) F3 is the only one I know of. My nephew put this through the wash twice, and the first time it survived completely intact.

If you’re looking for a smartphone that will handle this, I think you’re dreaming. That said, my Motorola Droid Turbo fell into the ocean recently and was almost swept out to sea, but miraculously survived. But a full wash cycle? I wouldn’t try it!

Dear Mr. Laundry,

Is it true that other developed countries are less profligate than the US when it comes to drying everything in the dryer?

Robin Baxter, Portland, OR

Dear Robin,

In much of Europe, line drying is very popular. In England, even in London, I’ve seen permanent clotheslines in backyards (or “gardens” as they’d call them). And check out this rig in an apartment in Glasgow:

My brother had an apartment in The Netherlands with no dryer … he line dried everything, including cloth diapers.

In the U.S., of course, you’re more likely to run into a homeowners’ association ban on clotheslines, even though these bylaws are currently illegal in 19 states! Fortunately, you’re protected by a 1979 Oregon Law that says any restrictions on “solar radiation as a source for heating, cooling or electrical energy” are “void and unenforceable.”

Dear Mr. Laundry,

You have a Ph.D. in Laundry Science from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Why don’t you call yourself “Dr. Laundry”? Just curious.

Bob Snelling, Phoenix, AZ

Dear Bob,

I am aware that The Clorox Company has an online Q&A called “Dr. Laundry” and I don’t want to get into legal trouble like Mr. Beerdid, that poor bastard. He tried to use “Dr. Beer” and was sternly warned to “cease and desist.” Those close to him say he never recovered from the ordeal.

Dear Mr. Laundry,

What’s the funniest laundry instruction tag you’ve seen?

Alex Hayle, New York City, NY

Dear Alex,

Are we talking intentionally funny, or unintentionally? Here’s a winner in both categories:

That’s from a pair of bike shorts. The manufacturer is clearly having a little fun with “Avoid crashes.” But it’s unintentionally funny, I think, that the size is given as both XXL and M; that there are two sets of washing instructions that contradict each other; and that we get this cryptic instruction, “Iron low, right side only.” What could possibly be the point of that restriction? And who in the history of mankind has ironed a pair of bike shorts?

I also like this tag, from a pair of bike gloves:

“Don’t allow to lay on itself or with other items when wet”? How do you keep something from laying [sic] on itself, anyway? Or even from lying on itself? What could possibly be the consequence of this happening? And what shape could you reshape the glove into that it wouldn’t be lying on itself? And can you really reshape a glove to begin with?

Dear Mr. Laundry,

Let’s get down to brass tacks: when laundering is taken into consideration, are cloth diapers actually better for the environment than disposable?

Juanita Perez, El Paso, TX

Dear Juanita,

This article suggests that cloth diapers are actually highly problematic because they’re made of cotton, and as she puts it, “the data on cotton is damning.” I don’t put a lot of stock in this article because the author works for a think tank that represents the interests of the waste management industry; because she thinks “data” is singular; because I’m not going to stop wearing cotton in favor of disposable clothing (which would be the natural extension of this article’s conclusion); because this article presents a pretty good rebuttal; and because babies are quicker to be potty-trained when they’re clad in cloth diapers, which isn’t even considered in the article.

I’m not saying everybody should necessarily switch to cloth diapers. After all, cloth diapers are a huge hassle. In fact, babies are a huge hassle. (On the flip side, vasectomies are arguably a pretty serious hassle, too.)

Dear Mr. Laundry,

What pre-washing, stain-removing product is better: Spray ‘n Wash, or Shout?

Charles Simon, Boston, MA

Dear Chuck,

They seem to work about the same, as far as I can tell. So the difference has more to do with what song you get in your head upon using them. If you watched TV during the ‘80s, you’ll likely get the “Spray ‘n Wash gets out what America gets into” jingle lodged in your brain, which can be annoying. On the other hand, if you listened to the radio during the ‘80s, you’ll probably fall prey to the Tears for Fears song “Shout.” This song is terribly catchy, and includes the line “in violent times you shouldn’t have to sell your soul,” which makes no sense. It implies that you should only have to sell your soul during peacetime. WTF??

Dear Mr. Laundry,

Do you have any answer to the widely acknowledged mystery of why so many socks get lost in the dryer?

Tom Mahoney, Littleton, CO

Dear Tom,

I researched this phenomenon for years, tirelessly, and got nowhere, and then I stumbled across this blog post, “Conundrum of the Lost Sock,” and realized all my work had been in vain because everything that could ever be said on this topic has already been said. Glad I could provide the link to you, anyway.

Dear Mr. Laundry,

What’s the most absurd washing instruction you’ve ever seen?

Wanda Bobat, Boseman, MT

Dear Wanda,

Definitely this one right here:

That’s a tough one to read (whose idea was it to print the washing instructions on a black tag, for crying out loud?) so here it is in plain text:

“WARNING! This garment has received a special dyeing treatment in order to achieve its unique appearance. Colour may vary from piece to piece. Please wash this garment separately, inside out and avoid exposure to sunlight which might alter the fabric’s appearance… Avoid making contact with light coloured surfaces. Be careful with light coloured clothes—body heat may cause bleeding.”

I don’t even know where to start here. I guess I’ll go sequentially. First, “WARNING!” I mean, is this a washing instruction, or a safety advisory? And then, “Colour may vary from piece to piece.” I mean, isn’t that true of everything? And why do we need a label telling us this? Can’t we tell, just by looking, that this pair of jeans is a different color than that one? If this “warning” is targeted toward blind people, why isn’t it in braille? Then we get to “avoid exposure to sunlight.” Is this a pair of jeans, or a vampire’s cape? Who doesn’t wear jeans outdoors? Are these jeans exclusively for nightclubbing? And in what way could sunlight “alter the fabric’s appearance” other than fading it? Has society gotten so far off-track that faded blue jeans are no longer acceptable? And then we get to the startling conclusion: “Body heat may cause bleeding.” So I guess even nightclubs are off-limits unless you’re determined to just sit there on a bar stool, as still as possible, perhaps shivering in a dark-colored t-shirt? Give me a break.

Dear Mr. Laundry,

What would happen—hypothetically speaking—if you didn’t separate your darks from your lights in the laundry?

Lisa Stone, San Francisco, CA

Dear Lisa,

Believe it or not, I’ve been doing just that—for decades! My recklessness has produced almost no negative consequences. My whites are plenty white. Nothing has bled, not even the jeans that are vulnerable to body heat. The single exception is a pair of unripe-plum-colored yoga pants my wife ran through that turned everything pink. They were pure garbage, those pants.

Have you ever noticed how laundromat dryers will tell you to dry all cotton garments on high—and yet you’ll never encounter a single tag that says “tumble dry high”? In decades of careful laundering I think I’ve only encountered one garment that even said “tumble dry medium.” I think it’s a giant liability shift on the part of the Clothing Industrial Complex. They create these stupid rules for laundering so that if anything ever goes wrong with a garment they can blame the consumer. Look at this tag: the manufacturer blames the clothing’s “pilling effect” on zippers, Velcro, and even embroidered saddles.

Dear Mr. Laundry,

Will you do my laundry?

Greg Crow, St. George, UT

Dear Greg,

No.

Mr. Laundry is a syndicated columnist whose advice column, “Ask Mr. Laundry,” appears in over 400 blogs worldwide.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Introduction

Last Sunday, for the second year in a row, I rode the Grizzly Peak [metric] Century with my daughter Alexa. (Why not the full century? Because I’m trying to promote the metric system in this country.) Read on for a description mainly of the food, but also the jinx—high, low, and otherwise—we got up to.

Short version

We met up with my EBVC teammate Craig and his wife Susanne. The weather was perfect. The food was plentiful and yummy. There were cool bandanas but no yellow socks this year. Alexa rode like a boss (especially when she Froomed us on Pinehurst) and covered the entire ~120 kilometers—including almost 2,000 meters of climbing—with her customary flair and panache.

(Wondering what the verb “Froome” means? You’ll have to read the full report.)

Full version

Note that I don’t say “long” version. “Long” in the context of anything written carries a distinctly negative connotation. This report is “full” like “full-figured.” But it’s certainly not long—I have just half an hour to write it so you’re practically done already.

Breakfast was the smear of jam Alexa left on a spoon. My breakfast usually consists of my younger daughter’s bread crusts, but she wasn’t home.

I hadn’t ridden with Craig for like six months, even though he’s normally one of my best training buds. That’s because this spring I decided, in lieu of my normal regimen, to ride less and get fat. But I e-mailed Craig the night before and sure enough, he and his wife Susanne were registered for GPC, so we made plans to meet up.

Teenagers take a really long time at everything (except sleeping). So Alexa and I were too late to meet Craig and Susanne. Fortunately, fate was on our side and Craig got a puncture like 20 meters into his ride, giving me the chance to a) sync up with him anyway, and b) further promote the metric system via this report.

Here are the Alberts at the start, along with Susanne’s shadow. Note my lack of arm warmers and leg warmers … that’s how nice the weather was. This marks the first time I have ever rocked fewer biking garments than Craig.

Alexa got a new bike last summer, with a double (albeit compact) crank instead of a triple, so she’s forced to climb a bit faster, regardless of how much energy she ought to be saving. But in fact she climbs much faster, beyond what her gearing demands. At the base of the steep, winding part of Pinehurst, she stunned us all by suddenly yelling, “I am awaited at the gates of Valhalla! Witness me!” and then launching a brutal attack.

Well, okay, I embellished that a bit. (She hasn’t yet seen Mad Max – Fury Road.) What actually happened is that she Froomed us. That is, she was riding so well she accidentally dropped us without even realizing it, like Chris Froome always does. I don’t think she noticed until she got to the top. I had to speed up a bit to keep her in sight so I could stop my lap timer … I’m pretty sure she got a new PR by a large margin. Her pace probably wasn’t very wise, so early in a long ride—particularly since this was only her second road ride of the year—but then, her prefrontal cortex is still under construction. At least she’s not doing truly dangerous stuff like so many teens do, like stealing cars, snorting Drain-O, playing mind-altering video games, and texting 24x7.

At the first rest stop we tucked in to the famous GPC home-baked snacks. In this photo Alexa does her best Vanna White impression, though her expression seems to be saying, “Did you really just give me a second plate of goodies for my very own?” (No, they were mine!)

So that’s poppy seed cake, peanut butter cookies, ginger snaps, pound cake, zucchini bread, oatmeal cookies, and coffee cake. There might have been some other stuff but I ate it too fast to notice. Could there have been a home-baked aspirin loaf? Possibly, if such a thing exists.

Next on the docket was a brisk descent of Wildcat Canyon, a trip through San Pablo, Pinole, etc. and on to the very heart of the ride, which is the oil refinery. Here’s the requisite glamour shot … note how Craig’s head appears to be steaming.

We threaded along the newly restored Planet of the Apes road near Crocket, with a new diversion along an isthmus (?) past the C&H sugar plant, which (according to my handy GPC bandanna) was built in 1906 and processes all the cane grown in Hawaii, which is about 700,000 tons per year. If my math is correct that’s 1.4 trillion pounds, which is particularly scary when you think of how rare sugar is compared to corn syrup these days. Should I talk a bit about beet sugar? Naw, let’s move on. Here’s Alexa rolling past the dueling bridges of the Carquinez Strait.

We hit the second rest stop, ate a bunch more stuff, and let our legs get all stiff so we could have maximum difficulty on the next section of the route: the famous, ruthless McEwen Road, named for pro sprinter Robbie McEwen, who compared this climb to having his spleen crushed in a giant mortar and pestle. (Okay, I made that up … I don’t know where it gets its name.)

Craig and Susanne like to play word games to distract themselves from the pain of this climb, and were gracious enough to include us. The standard game is naming world cities, going sequentially through the alphabet (e.g., Austin, Berlin, Copenhagen, Detroit…), but we decided to mix it up and try something new. Craig suggested profanities based on the alphabet (asshole, bastard, etc.) but I nixed that since I’m supposed to be a parent. We decided on non-profane derogatory statements by alphabet. I started: “Angry is how I feel toward you right now, Craig.” Susanne had B, and of course that’s not very difficult (“bad” being a perfectly obvious choice) but she just couldn’t bring herself to say anything mean to anybody. So this game didn’t last very long, though McEwen seemed to.

This year I didn’t forget to warn Alexa about the Pig Farm climb, though I’m sure she remembered it from last year anyway. It was nice and green. Here we are, having a good laugh, perhaps about how I talk too much and ought to be told to shut up.

Not surprisingly, Mama Bear was a mother. The weather was now officially too hot for Alexa. Plus, her neck was getting sore because she always rides on the hoods. It’s just how she rolls. Seems to work, anyway, and nobody could ever deny that she has better form on (and off) the bike than Chris Froome. Would she complain if she had a mechanical problem and I took that moment to attack? No. She might ask me to fix her bike later, but then that’s what dads are for, at least in traditional patriarchal households.

As we rolled down the hill toward the final fueling station, and I mentioned my intention to stop for water there, Susanne said, “Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!” I’m paraphrasing here. For some reason she doesn’t like to stop at that last rest stop, so she rides on ahead and Craig fills a couple bottles, then hammers to catch up. So here are the three of us, with Alexa clearly thinking, “OMG, are we really doing another stupid photo-op?”

We drank a couple ice-cold Juice Squeezes (70% real juice, with the other 30% being, well, whatever makes it the right color and flavor), had some more cookies, and hit out for the final stretch to the finish.

Along San Pablo Dam Road, Alexa seemed a bit frustrated and expressed the teen equivalent of “Are we there yet?” (I can’t remember the wording but the tone was unmistakable). She’s a fine athlete but with the mountain biking she’s been focusing on, her longest ride this year has been around three hours and this was over five hours in, so I can’t blame her. I decided she just needed a bit of encouragement, and I’d planned for this: I whipped out a can of silver spray paint, sprayed it all over her mouth, and declared, “You will ride eternal, shiny and chrome.” Alexa, delighted, cried out , “Am I awaited?”

(All of the above was communicated nonverbally, of course, and there wasn’t actually any paint, though I did remember to bring lip sunblock this year.)

At the finish, Craig and Susanne had saved us a spot at a shady table. Well, at least they didn’t put a jacket or backpack down and tell us those spots were reserved for somebody else. Fortunately that still mainly happens at the movies, though some dickwad did that on Bart during rush hour the other day, causing me to fantasize about holding his face against the electric third rail—but I digress.

The food was excellent, as usual. Barbecued chicken; nude red potatoes; grilled onions, squash, peppers, and eggplant; jeweled rice; plenty of Acme baguette slices. The guy working the bread station was so impressed with Alexa—that is, her rare combination of youth, lack of tattoos, lack of piercings, and willingness to be seen in public with her father—that he invited us to swing by after lunch for some free bread to take home. We got like six baguettes and a sweet batard, which were hard to carry back to the car but then that’s a great problem to have.

All in all, another glorious day of biking. (I wish I could tell you what we had for dinner, but the sad fact is, I just don’t remember. At this rate, next year’s report may be just a paragraph or two!)

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language and intimations of gnostical turpitude.

Introduction

Let’s have a little fun before burying ourselves in a lot of tedious text:

Daaaamn, is that a great crash, or what? I could watch that over and over again. In fact, I just did. So did you—don’t deny it. Really gets the pulse racing, doesn’t it?

Here’s another great clip:

Both of these fine films were shot at the Red Hook Criterium in Brooklyn, part of a series of races that require the use of fixies—you know, those track bikes hipsters ride that have no brakes and don’t allow coasting. Racing theses bikes on regular streets, instead of on a velodrome, has proven a great formula for generating lots of crowd-pleasing danger.

Is this kind of racing a good idea? Should it be promoted, or banned? That’s what I’m exploring with this post.

What’s great about the Red Hook series

Anybody who’s ever raced a rinky-dink criterium in some forlorn business park, with a tiny smattering of spectators (all of them related in some way to the racers) will appreciate the fact that the Red Hook series draws a massive crowd of spectators (17,000 in the case of London’s event). There’s no doubt that this kind of race is increasing the visibility of cycling.

You know what? I’m getting bored with all these words. Here’s a video compilation of Red Hook crashes from 2013:

The first crash is my favorite because the (amateur) cameraman gets involved. I just wish there was another camera angle so I could watch the third racer flip over the fence onto the guy.

What’s lame about the Red Hook series

The first lame thing about this series is that the whole premise is just so fucking stupid: hey, let’s make riders use the wrong equipment, and race in the dark, so that there’ll be lots of cool crashes!

The next lame thing is that this race thinks it’s cool because it attracts a lot of hipster types. According to this Velonews article, “[Director] David Trimble held an unsanctioned, late-night race in Red Hook as a challenge between bicycle messengers and local road racers” and “required everyone to compete on a brake-less fixie, the preferred tool of bike porters.” Of course once the race got big, the messengers were no longer much of a factor, because we all know bike racing is for the idle rich, who have time to follow special training plans involving “efforts.” And yet, having started out as this illegal underground thing, the race desperately clings to a self-professed rebel mystique. This “teaser” documentary by Trimble, with its self-satisfied air, almost made me throw up into my mouth. Of course it doesn’t mention the crashes, which are obviously the point. It’s a little like a commercial for Oreos that celebrates the wholesome wheat flour without mentioning the sugar and fat.

And why are fixies the “preferred tool” of tools? Because they’re stupid and unpractical, of course. Their unsuitability for urban riding makes them edgy and cool, kind of like cigarettes, so they naturally appeal to vainglorious image-obsessed douchebags. Now, I want to pause here and point out that not all bike messengers are like this. Go to New York City sometime and check out the full spectrum of messengers. A fair number of them are just a step above homelessness and ride really crappy department store bikes worth less than the lock they’re secured with. I saw one poor dude who had to make do with a girl’s model. Not all messengers are narcissistic curators of their self-important self-image.

I realize I’m getting into slippery territory here … if I don’t like fixie-riding hipsters and the lycra-kitted bike dorks on $5,000 carbon-wheeled track bikes who weirdly seek to emulate them, shouldn’t I want to watch videos of them crashing at high speed? Fair point. In fact, when I watch that first video, I can’t help but be annoyed that it’s not edited more tightly. Check out this video here and you really appreciate the impressive capabilities of modern video-editing software. Why does this albeit spectacular bike crash video run for a full 43 seconds, when all the worthwhile action is over after the first 11? Meanwhile, the auteur obviously isn’t a bike racer himself because he fails to pan correctly and we miss part of the crash. About 6 seconds in, you can hear the telltale sound of a riding going down, just out of the frame, but the cameraman doesn’t react. It’s a good thing more guys stacked into the first guy, or we’d have missed the whole thing!

So yeah, there’s a part of me that says we should promote, and indeed enhance, this version of the sport. What I’d really like to see is one corner without fencing, where they periodically allow spectators to blast racers with a fire hose. Wouldn’t that be spectacular? Or once in a while they splash oil across a corner. Of course, the spectators shouldn’t be off the hook here … they need to get involved in the carnage as well. Why not get a booze sponsor involved, and create a drinking game for the spectators? Every time there’s a crash, everybody has to do a shot. When some bozo gets sufficiently drunk, a course marshal opens the fencing and pushes him out into the street where he wobbles around a bit until a rider slams into him. Now we’re talking!

But that’s not actually where this Red Hook series is heading. Naturally, as it grows and attracts money, it becomes more mainstream, despite what the director would have you believe. According to this article, “Trimble, who first organized the race in 2008 as a celebration of his birthday, said he consciously tries to balance the race’s grassroots feel with its growing popularity. ‘As for people saying the atmosphere is getting more mainstream, it’s not like we have a bank sponsor,’ Trimble said. ‘It’s gotten bigger but believe me, it’s grassroots.’”

Okay, first of all, what kind of self-absorbed dickwad orchestrates his own birthday celebration? Second, his “bank sponsor” comment is obviously bullshit given the event’s current “six-figure sponsorship portfolio.” If Rabobank or Citibank offered shitstacks of money to grow the event, Trimble would accept it in a heartbeat. And “grassroots” generally refers to an idealistic campaign to change society in some useful way. How is a bike race designed for maximum crashes achieving that?

The biggest problem with Red Hook

Imagine if, after you watched that first crash video a dozen or so times, and forwarded it to all your pals, somebody told you, “Hey, you know that second guy who went over the fence? He ended up a quadriplegic!” Suddenly this wouldn’t seem like such fun, would it? And racers do get maimed. As described here, a 15-year-old Red Hook participant had a terrible crash, was unconscious in the hospital for two weeks, and had to have “his face rebuilt with 23 screws and numerous metal plates.”

Yeah, I know, crashes do happen in traditional bike races, but not nearly as often since racers are allowed to use proper (i.e., road) bikes. When you watch a normal criterium, the compelling spectacle isn’t how many riders crash, but how many don’t. Go watch the Nevada City Classic criteriumsometime, and watch how expertly the racers carve the sharp downhill corner. I wouldn’t take my family to watch this race if I thought it made cycling look dangerous ... I mean, why would I, when I’m trying to encourage my daughter to race, and my wife to let her? A real criterium, where riders can modulate their speed and keep that inside pedal up through the corners, demonstrates how safe cycling can be, even at high speed.

The Red Hook series, on the other hand, gives newcomers to the sport some cheap thrills while painting a picture of cyclists as total madmen. Comments on the Red Hook crash compilation video include innocent questions, e.g., “are these bikes designed for racing?” and “why do they race at night?” along with typical inane comments, e.g., “Brooklyn girls be super ugly!!!” and “Y you crash bitch you only doing 5mph on the stupid turn.” Clearly these are not cycling aficionados.

Is it just me, or is there a fundamental hypocrisy in play when an event that calls itself “grassroots” actually undermines the idea that cycling can be a safe, responsible activity? As a person who wishes lots more people rode bikes instead of ensconcing themselves in giant SUVs, I think watching a bike race should make people want to ride bikes, not shudder and say, “Those dudes are crazy!”

And speaking of those dudes, I think it’s pretty disgusting that they’re willing to be led around by their egos and seduced into riding a brakeless bike, at night, in thrall to big crowds. I’m reminded of Olympic women volleyball players who, for years, complied with the rule that they had to wear bikinis. According to this article, one top player candidly acknowledged the mentality behind this: “‘The people who own the sport [the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball] want it to be sexy,’ Johns told the Sunday Times. ‘I used to play in shorts and a T-shirt and was reluctant to change. But if it gets volleyball attention, so be it.’” I can imagine a very similar quote from a Red Hooker: “I used to ride a road bike so I could brake and coast through turns, but the race organizers want it to be dangerous. My road rash really hurts but if it gets cycling attention, so be it.”

Does cycling need this kind of attention?

Ultimately, to enjoy watching the true sport of bicycle racing requires some sophistication. The sport isn’t for everybody, and that’s totally fine. Other spectator sports are subtle, too. Think of baseball, with its bizarre tapestry of strange rules, secret signals between players, and so forth … would it benefit from a big dose of lowbrow, brute spectacle, like if after three balls the pitcher was allowed to throw the next ball right at the batter with full force? Or if the outfield were studded with landmines?

Celebrating the crowd-pleasing savagery of the Red Hook series seems pretty pointless. Does cycling really need to grow as a spectator sport? I’d argue no. What’s wrong with a sophisticated and elite—albeit somewhat rare—fan, who responds to drama, and suffering, and tactical savvy, rather than mere bloodshed? And even if you do want the sport to attract more spectators, I doubt the Red Hook freak show is going to win over any true fans—just a bunch of looky-loos who’ll eventually get bored and wander off to go find a cockfight, or dogfight, or political rally. I myself have a limited appetite for bike crash videos … sure, I had a little fun here, but I can’t picture myself engaging in this coarse activity for long.

I say we treat the Red Hook races the same way we treat the hipsters, with their ugly piercings, hackneyed tattoos, skinny jeans, and fixies: that is, ignore them, and hope they just go away.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language, gross imagery, and crude sensual themes.

Introduction

Sometimes I don’t have time to think up a blog topic. Taking a cue from the movie industry, and from the Book of Ecclesiastes, I’ve decided there’s nothing new under the sun and I’d better just rehash some old material this week. So I’m posting two of my old poems—one that’s 30 years old and another that’s almost 20—and providing all-new commentary in the form of footnotes. Pretend you found this in your Norton Anthology of American Teen and Sophomoric Adult Poetry.

The Blue Tube Club – spring 1986

Splat mud splut, Cow chud cud, Dog dung stunk.

Nose snot rots, Booger blood, Anal hair; 2

Armpit sludge, Dick Butkus, Damp crotch rot.

Happy love, Friendly peck, Snuggle up,

Happy-sap, Special friend, Hugga bunch; 5

Smurfy love, Special coo, I Love You.

Stupid jerk Fire Up Total butt

You all suck, You’re a prick, Gimme that; 9

Go to hell, God you suck, Just shut up!

Footnotes & commentary

Title: The Blue Tube Club

The Blue Tube Club was a club that my two oldest brothers and two of their friends formed in the mid ‘80s. If you think four people is barely enough for a club, you’re probably right. This club was either too elite to accept others, or (more likely) its members were too shy and self-conscious to do much outreach. What isn’t disputed is that they refused to offer me official membership, despite the fact that I hung out with them most of the time anyway. The idea, I think, was for me to be really bummed out about this and press my nose sadly against the window, wishing I’d be invited in to play their reindeer games.

In fact, I couldn’t have cared less. This was put to the test when my brother Bryan asked me to write a letter to the Casper, WY Chamber of Commerce thanking them for allowing the Casper Classic bike race to be held there. I refused. (My perspective: what did some local government functionary need with another piece of mail to process?) Bryan said, “Come on, think of the Club! What is the Blue Tube Club? It’s a bunch of guys helping each other. You know, like Bill drives us everywhere, and I fix the Volv’ [Bill’s car], and Geoff welded the roof rack, and I fixed the Volv’, and Dave … well, Dave makes us laugh. So you should write that letter. It’s time you started pulling your weight.”

To which I replied, “First off, I’m not even a member of the Blue Tube Club, as you’ve made abundantly clear. Second, I’m not interested in pulling my weight.” This last quote became my signature utterance. To this day, it’s occasionally trotted out as proof of … well, something fundamental about my character, I guess.

Byline: Maynard Steele

Maynard Steele was (and sometimes still is) my pen-name. I didn’t come up with it myself. In junior high French class we were passing around the sign-up sheet for the student directory, and (unbeknownst to me) my friend Phil erased my name and wrote in “Maynard Steele.” That’s how it came out in the directory, and I decided to run with it.

Line 1: Splat mud splut, etc.

It doesn’t take long for the astute reader to realize there isn’t much meaning in this poem; it’s arguably more nonsensical even than Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky. This was an assignment for my high school creative writing class. The teacher, Mr. Kroop (I hope I’ve spelled that right) assigned us a “Kroopian poem,” which had the requirement of being written in dactylic trimeter.

What is dactylic trimeter? It means each line had to consist of three dactyls in a row. A dactyl is a foot of poetry with the first syllable accentuated and the next two syllables not. An example of a dactyl would be the word “hangover.” You place the emphasis on the first syllable and then the next two are non-emphasized: HANG-over. Another example would be the word “jettison” (JETT-ison). In normal speech, you might occasionally stumble across three dactyls in a row, like “GO to the MAR-ket and STEE-al stuff,” but I wouldn’t say it happens a lot.

At the time, I was furious about the assignment. It seemed impossible to write a single line of dactylic trimeter, much less a whole poem. So I decided to be really sneaky and write the whole poem using nothing but single-syllable words. I erroneously thought that strings of one-syllable words couldn’t be proven to be non-dactylic. (This isn’t actually true, as I’ll get to later.) Figuring my poem would be nothing more than a blatant act of rebellion, I didn’t bother much with the meaning and basically wrote whatever words popped into my head.

Line 2: Booger blood, Anal hair

As you can see, I kind of faltered in my pugnacious resolve to use only one-syllable words. Perhaps the better part of my brain realized that two-syllable words could be employed here without too much difficulty, and to good effect. As you can see, both “booger blood” and “anal hair” are properly dactylic. They’re also pretty gross, which was my way of celebrating the freedom I had in Kroop’s class to write whatever I wanted. Mr. Kroop was famous for not only letting students write short stories that were brazenly, graphically sexual, but for reading these stories aloud in class. (This was probably a myth: when I was in Kroop’s class nobody wrote such stories, and no student work was read aloud.)

Line 3: Dick Butkus, Damp crotch rot

This line demonstrates my failure to grasp dactylic trimeter. First off, “Dick Butkus” isn’t dactylic. I was correct that “Dick” is accentuated in this phrase, but I failed to notice that “But” also is. It’s “DICK BUT-kus,” not “DICK butkus.” If you don’t believe me, just ask him. And while you’re at it, ask him why he never changed his name. What kind of nutjob would willingly go around with a name like Dick Buttkiss? Why didn’t he at least go by Richard?

The phrase “damp crotch rot” shows where my all-one-syllable strategy failed. It’s pretty much impossible not to accentuate a word like “crotch.” It’s a word that demands emphasis, even if you’re embarrassed to say it. And the phrase “crotch rot” naturally comes out as the trochaic “CROTCH rot,” perhaps because—specifying, as it does, the kind of rot we’re talking about—“crotch” gets the emphasis, as would any word it its situation. Consider this line of would-be iambic pentameter:

His house was fairly riddled with dry rot.

It sounds wrong, doesn’t it? The last syllable of a line of iambic pentameter is supposed to be accentuated, but you cannot accentuate “rot” in the phrase “dry rot.” It’s “DRY rot,” not “dry ROT.” Many two-word phrases are like that, as I’ve explained in my post about how to write a sonnet. “Dry rot” is trochaic, just like “HOT dog.” And so is “CROTCH rot.” Which makes it even worse, doesn’t it? “Oh man, I’ve got a bad case of crotch rot, and it’s become trochaic!”

Lines 4-6: Happy love, etc.

This stanza captures my frustration at teenagers in love. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with love, of course, but teenagers are annoying enough without deciding they’re in love. You know how teenagers seem to think they know everything? It’s particularly annoying when, at 16, they think they’ve found “the one,” and everybody around them knows they haven’t, and that this is just a stupid practice fling that will end in deep embarrassment for both parties, but they still go on like they’ve discovered what it means to love.

A teen would be arguably better off dabbling in the occult than messing around with romance. At the time I wrote this poem, my oldest brother was in love, which involved a lot of snuggling and even cooing. It wouldn’t have been enough to say “Get a room!”—I wished he and his girl would go jump in a volcano or something. Yes, some of this was sour grapes, but mostly it was the spectacle of all that James-Taylor-grade sappiness.

At the time, a buddy of mine did a long stint at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and had some long phone calls with his girlfriend back in Boulder. Now, my friend had the good taste to keep the mushy stuff to himself, and treat the affair lightly, around his friends. I suppose that many a teenager was labeled crass who was really just observing a delicate teen-specific form of decorum. This could be a group sport: at one point, another OTC athlete was waiting for the phone, and—perceiving from my friend’s tone and diction that he was talking to his girl—pantomimed doing her doggy-style and cried out, “Plow ‘er, dude!” This has become my friend’s signature utterance (even though he himself didn’t utter it). To this day, it’s occasionally trotted out as proof of … well, something fundamental about his character, I guess.

Perhaps it’s out of a residual distaste for sappy, smurfy love that to this day, my friend and I will occasionally cry out “Plow ‘er, dude!” whenever some guy starts using goofy language like “relationship.”

Line 7: fire-up

At age 16, when I wrote this, I was a pretty quiet fellow, as now, but with a very hot temper. This could come out without any obvious provocation; it could be triggered by male hormones, typical life frustrations, instinct, impulse, and/or the effect of being your basic social outcast. This volatility was exacerbated by those around me. My two oldest brothers were a study in contrasts: one was dreamy, quiet, largely disconnected, and (as described above) shamelessly in love; the other, meanwhile, was what you might call an angry young man. The angry brother, whom we sometimes referred to as “Mr. A,” once chewed my head off, without a trace of irony, for stinking up the bathroom, as though that was some decision I made that could have been avoided—as if I’d decided to crap in a wastebasket or something. The other members of the Blue Tube Club could also be a bit hard to take: one had an excessively drippy girlfriend and liked to blow his nose on his shirt, and the other—a giant guy—liked to wear a big trench coat, smoke cigars, and make wisecracks 24x7, and would sometimes spontaneously tackle me to the floor, pretend to hump me, and yell, “Open your sphincter, boy!”

So as a result of keeping this company, and also due to my essential nature, I would sometimes lose my shit completely. The label my brothers gave to these outbursts was “fire-up,” as in, “Uh oh, Dana’s on the brink of another fire-up!” My fire-ups were very loud, and this stanza captures some of that. Of course I made no effort, as a livid teenager, to yell in dactylic trimeter, so much verisimilitude has been lost here. For example, I’m quite sure I used the phrase “total asshole” a lot but never once said “total butt.” But of course “total” and “asshole” are trochees, so the phrase “total asshole” cannot be rendered in dactylic trimeter.

Teacher’s comment: Did Max help do this?

My brother Max had Mr. Kroop’s class a year before I did. To say Max was a mediocre student isn’t really fair. I think it’s more accurate to call him an F-student. But he got an A in Kroop’s class, and earned it. He was, and is, a great writer, and his style, particularly in those days, was blunt, wild, raucous, and utterly uninhibited. In contrast I was much more reserved, with poems like “The Paperboy.” So I wasn’t surprised at all that Kroop saw (or thought he saw) Max’s hand in this strange poem.

A Voice Will Sing – December 7, 1997

Once in a while a voice will sing praises,

Something to levitate everyone’s spirits. 2

Somehow the faithful will manage to fear it,

Calling it chanting from somebody crazed.

Must we all be a collection of skeptics,

Fearing the good we’ve been trying to summon, 6

Finding the evil in everything common,

Feeling that praise is not ours to accept?

Witness your neighbor and salvage his soul,

Count up his evils and call them the whole. 10

Footnotes & commentary

Line 1: Once in a while a voice will sing

After I’d turned in the Blue Tube poem, Mr. Kroop read the class his own Kroopian poem, and to my astonishment he did just fine with the tricky meter. The only line I remembered later was “Once in a lifetime a voice will sing.” It bothered me that I’d taken as impossible a task that was not. I vowed to try again at the Kroopian form, but of course never got around to it … well, almost never. For over a decade I kept thinking about tackling dactylic trimeter, and finally got ‘er done.

I decided, after much messing about with this meter, that I didn’t really care for it, and that a slight enhancement would make the lines gallop along better. I attached a trochee—that is, 2/3 of a dactyl—to the end of each line, and I think you can see it helps. Without that last trochee, the line kind of lurches to a halt, like it’s been clotheslined. Then I decided, having forgotten whatever rule Kroop made about rhyme scheme, to use an ABBA scheme (reminiscent of a Petrarchan sonnet), whereby the second line doesn’t rhyme with the first, but the third line does rhyme with the second, and the fourth line then rhymes with the first. I also determined, somehow, that each stanza would have a zippier finish if I lopped off the second half of the final trochee. To maintain the rhyme, this final syllable would have to rhyme with the penultimate syllable of the first line. Thus, “crazed” rhymes with “prais-,” not “praises,” and “accept” rhymes with “skept-” instead of “sceptic.”

Rather than paying a verbatim tribute to Kroop’s “Once in a lifetime a voice will sing,” I changed “a lifetime” to “a while,” because “once in a lifetime” didn’t makes sense in the context. Plus, I didn’t want anybody to think I was alluding to the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime,” since I was alluding to Kroop’s poem (which for all I know was alluding to the Talking Heads, but no matter). And based on my adjustment to the meter, I needed to tack on that trochee anyway. Could “sing” be a transitive verb, setting me up to slap on a direct object? Sure. What can you sing? A song, obviously, but that’s only one syllable. “Ballad” is trochaic, but the fact is it didn’t occur to me. I landed, rather arbitrarily, on “praises,” which really set up the content of the poem.

Line 2: levitate

This word choice is probably my favorite thing about the poem. I could have so easily put “elevate,” but “levitate” gives it a slightly creepy air—are the faithful right to call this voice a crazed chant?—but also points up the fact that the state of somebody’s spirits is kind of an illusion. Anything that improves your emotional health could be reasonably labeled a placebo, could it not? And your spirits, though raised up, are always so delicately perched … they could come down any minute, so isn’t the tenuousness of “levitate” better than the false solidity of “elevate”?

Line 8: praise is not ours to accept

It’s important to keep in mind that I was fundamentally unconcerned with the content of this poem. I was interested only in getting the meter and rhyme right, as this poem was a warm-up exercise for the real, serious poem that I intended to write next (and did, in fact, write—but you can’t see it as I wrote it for my wife). So I think it a minor triumph that I managed to convey any meaning at all with this poem.

Isn’t it odd that religion is supposed to be an emotional balm, but so many strains of it bring negativity to the table? For example, if somebody (even, or perhaps particularly, your inner voice) buoys up your spirits by praising you, you’re not supposed to accept—because that would be committing the sin of Pride! After all, all praise be to God!

Line 9: salvage his soul

At various points in my life, certain well-meaning types have decided my soul needed saving. I’ve always found that vaguely insulting … like my soul is so far gone that some chance acquaintance—armed with little more than faith and a bible—can just sweep in and rescue me. To me, such spiritual meddling is like a salvage operation. (Both “salvage” and “salvation” stem from the Latin salvare, to save.) As these do-gooders pick through the apparent disaster of my spiritual world, what bits and pieces are they looking to rescue before leaving the rest to slowly dissolve at the bottom of the sea? And how is this operation supposed to bring a message of hope?

Line 10: call them the whole

In all likelihood nobody has made it this far into my solipsistic morass of literary criticism, and even if somebody has, nobody is taking my quasi-religious rambling very seriously. But if you have, and you are, please remember how little attention I actually paid to the content of that poem. If changing a word made the meter or rhyme right, I did it, whether meaning was served or not. In that sense, you could change this final line to “Count up the syllables and call that the whole”—but then it wouldn’t be truncated dactylic quatrameter! It wouldn’t be neo-Kroopian! See how this works?

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--

For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Note: this post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language.

Introduction

Perhaps, like me, you forgot to watch the Giro this year. Well, good news: today’s penultimate stage is the hardest and most important one, and there’s still no clear favorite to win the general classification. So you’ve come at just the right time. You’ve come to the right place, too, because I’m not bound by any journalistic standards, so I’ll say what I really think instead of biting my tongue all the time. Professional journalists covering this sport must have lots of scar tissue on their tongues.

2016 Giro d’Italia Stage 20 – Guillestre (France) to Sant’ Anna di Vinadio

As I join the action, the racers have gone over the Col de la Bonette, the highest climb of the day (and second highest of the Giro, by a slim margin). Mikel Nieve (Team Sky) soloed on that climb and got enough points to take over the KOM jersey. He’s almost a minute ahead of a chase group of like 7 guys. The peloton is 10 minutes back.

They’re interviewing Steven Kruijswijk (Team Lotto NL-Jumbo). Well, actually, they couldn’t be, because he’s racing, whereas in the interview he’s in a t-shirt and not on a bicycle. I’m going to have to guess that the interview was filmed earlier. Poor Kruijswijk. First of all, he’s got these extra letter Js in his name, meaning the highway patrol is bound to give him a hard time when they read his driver license. “How do you pronounce that?” / “KRYSE-wick.” / “Doesn’t look like it to me. Have you been drinking?” And then there’s the gym teachers who loved to yell, “Christ, Kruijswijk!” Though the Dutch probably have a different word for “Christ.” Well, anyway, the other thing is that Kruijswijk was leading the Giro until yesterday, when he totally stacked into a snowbank and his bike went cartwheeling off like a pinwheel. (Do pinwheels cartwheel? No, but his bike did.) He had bike problems after that, and then leg problems, and lost like five minutes and now sits third on the GC, just over a minute back. Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge) is in pink, 44 seconds over yesterday’s stage winner, Vincenzo Nibali (Astana).

The racers have about 47 km (29 miles) left to go, and are on the long descent approaching the last major climb, the Category 1 Colle Della Lombarda.

There’s an ad at the bottom of my Internet feed that says, “Do you want to stop snoring?” I’m expecting it to go on, “Then stop watching bike race coverage!” Okay, that’s not fair. Bike race coverage is only boring to typical American sports fans, who can only get interested if their countrymen are in contention or if a bike race organizer has guaranteed lots of crashes. I gave up on expecting American bike race victories long ago. “We” have a guy in 39th place in the GC, Joe Dombrowski; and Nathan Brown is in 48th, then Ian Boswell in 75th, Chad Haga in 81st, and Joseph Rosskopf in 106th. I’ve never heard of any of these guys, except Ian Boswell, and maybe I’m confusing him with that guy on “Charlie’s Angels.”

After a fairly mellow descent the peloton threads its way through a pretty little town. I don’t think they much care about the breakaway up ahead, which still has about 10 minutes. Mostly they’re just dreading the inevitable drop of the hammer, for surely the GC will be decided on this climb. These dudes have got to be pretty tired after almost three weeks of racing. I wonder if they slept well, or if they’re too sore and/or stressed. For no good reason, I slept like crap last night and could really use a blood bag myself.

So, I’ve just realized that Dombrowski (Cannondale Pro Cycling) is in the breakaway (which has absorbed Nieve, by the way). So I guess I do have an American to root for today. Does that get me extra-excited? Not really. I don’t pretend that just because he’s American he’s a good guy. He could be a complete dick for all I know. Think of your worst enemy, and now imagine he’s in the breakaway. You’d be like, “Oh no, not that jerk! I hate him!” You wouldn’t care that he’s American, would you? I mean, unless you’re the typical rabid sports fan.

There are endless ads during this coverage so I’ll continue my Theory of Bike Race Spectating. The reason I enjoy watching this is that I can relate. I mean, no, I’ve never been that fast, obviously, and I surely haven’t suffered as much as these guys, but I have suffered and have a taste of the specific suffering they do. And sometimes I can relate very specifically. Like Kruijswijk’s crash into the snowbank: I’ve done that! It was in junior high. I was riding home from school on my 3-speed and saw a friend way off in the distance, walking. So I started sprinting toward him, all-out, and when I got close I yelled his name. He looked back. Suddenly I felt foolish: the only logical thing to do, having gotten his attention, would be to plow into him. But that would hurt. Feeling I had to do something, I steered toward this giant snowbank. I thought maybe it would just stop me gracefully, spraying snow everywhere, or maybe its surface would be glazed and it would be like a big gnarly jump, which would be cool. But instead it stopped my front wheel dead, and I flipped right over the bars, soared through the air, and hit the ground like a sack of rocks. My friend was aghast at my stupidity. And I lost the Giro that day.

They’re showing footage of the finish line, where nothing important is happening. Is this coverage sexist?

The breakaway has reached the base of the Colle Della Lombarda. The Estonian rider Rein Taaramäe (Team Katusha) is on the front, driving a nice tempo. His name, Rein, is an anagram of “rien,” French for “nothing.” My wife’s name is also an anagram of “rien,” and (as you just realized, beating me to the punch) my own name is an anagram of “nada,” Spanish for “nothing.” See how much I have in common with these guys?

Giovanni Visconti (Movistar Team) is on the front now, with Dombrowski on his wheel. Whoah, Dombrowski attacks!

He’s already got a huge gap! A bold move, with 29 km (18 miles) to go. But man, he’s solid. Darwin Atapuma (BMC Racing Team) bridges up to him, and if you think I’m going to make some lame joke about “survival of the fittest,” you’ve got the wrong blog.

The peloton still hasn’t made it to the base of this climb. It’s a huge peloton, meaning they’ve been loafing all day. Nibali is practically coated with Astana riders. They’re doing a super-slo-mo of his helmet strap—which is way too loose—flapping in the breeze. I don’t get that. I mean, if you have to wear a helmet, why not get some benefit from it by fitting it properly? Is this a small act of rebellion?

Dombrowski is looking incredibly strong. Atapuma, whom they call “the puma” in my daydreams, is just sitting on. I often have daydreams of these racers on the school playground, and it’s always a playground in America, so I guess I am nationalistic after all. Or just unimaginative.

There’s a guy in this race with the last name “Bongiorno.” I can’t believe that. Do you know anybody with the last name “Good Day”? It’s as corny as “Suzy Chapstick.”

The peloton is on the big climb now. The Eurosport announcer likes to say “danger men.” I don’t think anybody in this race is really a danger man. I hear “danger men” and I think of all those Texans who have gun racks in their pickup trucks, a gun rack in their living room, and a sidearm in every drawer.

Chaves is sitting behind the big clump of Astana riders, who are behind the Tinkoff guys. Tinkoff is driving the pace for Rafal Majka, who sits 5th on GC, 2:14 down. He’s a damn good climber and could win the whole thing today. Look at his teammate with the spotty beard and thick Euro-mullet.

Up at the front of the race, Visconti has bridged up to Dombrowski and Atapuma. Dombrowski is still leading. He’s been in the lead the entire climb. Why doesn’t he make these guys take any pulls? Perhaps they have prodigious flatulence. Okay, Atapuma’s ears must have started burning because he finally pulls through.

The chase group of four, with Nieve, is a right fur piece behind the leaders. I can’t be any more precise than that. Oh, finally, they show the split time: 40 seconds. This climb ends about 10 km (6 miles) from the finish, so they’ve still got about 13 km (8 miles) to the summit. Man, that’s a fricking long climb. It’s almost as impressive as the Tinkoff guy’s mullet. Tinkoff continues to lead the peloton. I can’t wait until Nibali and Majka start attacking each other.

Dombrowski is back on the front. You know, if this lead holds, he could move into like 34th place overall on GC, maybe even higher!

Atapuma has taken several pulls now, but Visconti is just sitting on the back of this trio, sucking wheel like a little bitch. Race announcer Sean Kelly is talking about that now (employing euphemism, of course, being a professional). Says Visconti is probably making the excuse that he’s working for his teammate Alejandro Valverde, the filthy doper ten minutes behind him on the road, who sits in 6th overall, tied on time with Majka and with Rigoberto Uran (Cannondale Pro Cycling).

The announcers were saying Nieve has the KOM jersey in the bag, but I’m not so sure. He’s not even wearing it—he didn’t move into the virtual lead until this stage—and there must be lost of points available for this climb. I don’t think he can afford to get dropped. I also don’t think you even care. I guess I can’t blame you.

If this Eurosport announcer says “at the minute” one more time, I’m going to reach through this Internet feed and strangle him.

Wow, the peloton has really thinned out. It’s down to like 14 guys.

The leaders have 20 km to go. Atapuma has just pulled off and is now yelling at Visconti, presumably in Spanish, which Visconti either doesn’t understand or is pretending not to. Atapuma’s vague hand gestures are getting the point across, though not as well as a more specific gesture. I guess he’s got his endorsement prospects to think about, and I get that. Have you ever noticed that Eminem, though the best rapper alive, doesn’t get any celebrity endorsements? Hmm, I guess I’m wrong about that … I just did a little Internet search and it turns out Eminem has a deal with Chrysler. So I think Atapuma should flip Visconti off right now, and then get on his radio and tell his directeur sportif, “Get my agent in touch with Chrysler!”

Michele Scarponi is pouring on the pace for Astana. And now he attacks! Nibali immediately grabs his wheel, and Chaves is right on him. Chaves has a pretty good poker face.

Valverde is sitting pretty comfortable in this group, which is down to 8 riders. I don’t see any Orica-GreenEdge riders there to support Chaves, and Nibali is down to just Scarponi for help. It’s refreshing to not see Sky massing at the front.

Wow, while the camera was focused on the GC battle, things changed in the breakaway. Tanel Kangert (Astana Pro Team) and Taaramäe have bridged up, so it’s now a group of five. I’m sure this is exactly what Dombrowski and Atapuma didn’t want. The breakaway’s lead is down to 9:14 with just under 6 km (3.5 miles) until the summit. Taaramäe takes a solid pull on the front.

So the chase group (i.e., what had been the peloton) is down to Scarponi, Majka, Kruijswijk, Valverde, Chaves, Nibali, Uran, and Bob Jungels (Etixx-Quick-Step). Not surprisingly, Chaves is right on Nibali’s wheel.

Taaramäe has attacked the breakaway! He looks really strong. His bike, however, is butt-ugly. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such an ugly bike. Look at the half-assed decal, dripping off the down tube. And what the hell are those handlebars? They look like a child made them out of a pipe cleaner. And the brake levers are mounted so high up … the mechanic should be stoned to death. Unless Taaramäe likes them like that, in which case he should be stoned to death, in front of his family.

And now Visconti attacks! I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. Just annoyed. I’ll admit it, I kind of have it in for anybody on Movistar. They just seem dopey. Not in the sense of stupid or checked-out, but in the sense of syringes and so forth.

And now Dombrowski attacks! Atapuma quickly responds but for now they’ve gapped Visconti.

Dammit. The announcer just said “at the minute” again. Will somebody tell him that he’s not allowed to make up his own expressions? Does he think he can popularize this expression, then copyright it (like “Threepeat”), and make some money on the side?

Taaramäe has a huge gap now. Visconti is back with Dombrowski and Atapuma.

Jungels looks like he’s having too much fun here. Ah, youth! (He leads the Young Rider classification and will almost certainly sew that up today.)

Nibali attacks! Chaves is right on him, with Valverde stuck to Chaves. They’ve got a bit of a gap. And now Nibali attacks again, and he’s got a pretty good gap! Chaves doesn’t appear to be panicking, but maybe he should. Perhaps his directeur sportif hasn’t given the order to panic yet. “Don’t panic … don’t panic … okay, panic! You’re losing the Giro!”

Chaves is trying to hang on Valverde’s wheel and is just barely getting the job done. It’s really looking like he’s going to end up second on GC by the end of the day. Nibali is just pulling away, looking incredibly strong. He’s got his necklace out. I wonder if he did that to intimidate the others. “You see that? I’m religious. I have faith. Therefore I cannot crack psychologically.”

Ah, and now we see some intelligent teamwork. Kangert has dropped back from the breakaway to pace Nibali. I really like Kangert, and I just figured out why: his name makes me think of Kanga, the marsupial mommy in “Winnie the Pooh.” She was always my favorite character. That’s right, I liked her even more than Tigger.

And just like that, Nibali takes off again. Either he doesn’t think he needs much pacing from Kangert, or Kangert wasn’t going fast enough. Needless to say it isn’t enough to drop Chaves on this climb; Nibali needs to take enough time to hold it over the last descent and still have 45 seconds on him by the finish.

I wish I knew the gap between Taaramäe and the chasing trio. They could pull back some time on that descent if they work together well.

Chaves has detonated! Poor guy. Look, his handlebars have even slipped down. Soon his tires will go flat. His helmet will melt. Pigeons will start shitting on him.

Atapuma dropped Visconti and Dombrowski somewhere along the line.

Finally, Visconti takes a pull. Maybe just to get some KOM points, as he and Dombrowski cross over the summit. It’s only 2 km to go for Taaramäe now, so I probably don’t even need to know the split … I think he’s got this in the bag.

Nibali is on the final descent now. He’s a great descender and it’s a pretty basic descent … I suspect he won’t take any chances now, because he’s more than 45 seconds ahead of Chaves and will extend his lead over the final Cat 3 climb to the finish.

Taaramäe looks totally solid as he heads for a solo stage victory.

They’re showing Astana’s directeur sportif, Alexandre Vinokourov, and he’s really wincing. Perhaps Nibali is descending a bit too fast for his taste. Truly, only a crash now could rob him of Giro victory.

I do not know how far Atapuma is behind Taaramäe, but he is definitely running out of road. This finishing section winds around all over the place, which may help Taaramäe … if Atapuma could see him ahead he might find some extra motivation.

I think I just missed Taaramäe’s finish because of an ad for cat treats. God I hate advertising. That does it, I’m never buying my cat a treat again.

Yep, the footage is back and I’m watching Dombrowski take third.

It’s a good thing I’m not a rabidly patriotic sports fan because I’d be really bummed right now. I wonder if Dombrowski could have won this if he hadn’t led the breakaway for so long.

Chaves has been caught by everybody and her mom. He may not even hold on to second. Nibali has 1 km to go. He still looks pretty solid, and has a gap of more than a minute. Actually, though, his cadence is slowing. And he’s really grimacing. Clearly this dude is suffering mightily.

And now Nibali finishes, really straining over the last really steep bit to the line.

The announcer says “And Visconti finishes.” What a dope. Visconti finished minutes ago. It’s Valverde who’s finishing at the minute, of course.

Okay, thanks to the instant replay, you get to see a photo of Taaramäe taking the stage.

It’s a great day for anagrams-of-“nothing”-name-bearers everywhere! You know what? I think I like this guy. I’m even going to forgive him for his ugly-ass bike and its grotesque handlebars.

Here are the final stage results:

Whoah, how about that! The announcer was right after all ... that was Visconti finishing well behind Nibali. I got confused because as you’ll recall, Visconti was up in the breakaway until very late in the race, not doing a lick of work. And he somehow lost 6½ minutes to Dombrowski in the last few kilometers! Here’s where the journalists have to bite their tongues ... the Eurosport announcer must have felt like saying, “Wow, after freeloading the whole race, Visconti must have fricking detonated! How do you like that. Justice is served, at the minute. That Visconti ... what a pussy!”

The GC has been calculated, and Nibali now leads by 52 seconds, meaning the Giro is essentially over, since tomorrow’s stage is actually very slightly downhill. Here’s what the final GC will probably be, with Valverde passing up Kruijswijk to take the final podium spot.

Nibali takes the podium, flanked by a couple of women who must be related to him or something. Sisters, perhaps? Because otherwise, what are they doing there? Oh, right, they’re ambassadors of sport, selected for their diplomatic acumen. Look at Nibali’s goofy shoes. Man those things are goofy. Isn’t Italy known for its shoes? I see a lost opportunity here. Bruno Magli is leaving money on the table.

Nibali looks wistful as he collects his kisses. Perhaps he’s thinking, “Gosh, I should have washed my face. I should have shaved. This can’t be every enjoyable for the ambassadors. Unless they really love me….”

You may have noticed that this report hasn’t been as snide, cynical, bitter, and seemingly biased as usual. Have I softened up? I doubt it. Frankly, I just didn’t see anything particularly egregious today; no clear signs of a standout doper. Who knows, maybe the sport is cleaning up!

Done laughing yet? Yeah, I know … winning a pro bike race makes any racer look pretty suspicious. My online correspondent has just written, “How many bags of blood do you think it took for Nibali to win it? Despite his obvious doping, I still kind of like his style. You could even say that he’s one of my favorite dopers!” I like Nibali, too, especially after his public spat with the legendary doper and whiny little bitch, Chris Froome.

Speaking of doping, watch these pages in July for my biased blow-by-blow report(s) on the Tour de France, where Team Sky will send their “good” riders, replete with a full arsenal of game-changing substances, taking “not normal” to new heights I’m sure!

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NOTE: This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language.

Introduction

Years ago, I posted here my Ode to South Park, about one of my favorite cycling climbs. Ever since, I’ve had this nagging feeling of something left undone: an ode to another climb, that’s my very favorite. So, here it is. (Photos included here are of my daughter, who first rode Lomas Cantadas a couple of years ago.)

The Poem

Ode to Lomas Cantadas

El Toyonal is a beast of an uphill;

Pedaling here is a bit self-defeating. 2

Lomas Cantadas will sweeten your beating:

Insult to injury, sweet overkill!

Most riders wisely take Wildcat Canyon.

Half the uphill, after all—and you’re tired! 6

Wisdom, alas, is a flaw when you’re mired

In glory, in notions of being a man.

Sometimes caprice is much better than ease:

Radical freedom is here to be seized! 10

Footnotes & Commentary

Title: Lomas Cantadas

What does “Lomas Cantadas” mean? That’s a bit tricky. Google translate says “sung hills.” Hills that have been celebrated in song? Perhaps. But the spelling of “Cantadas” isn’t consistent. Google Maps says “Cantadas,” but the street sign says “Contadas,” which would be “Counted Hills.” Aren’t all hills counted, or at least eligible to be counted, making this modifier pretty much meaningless?

Among my riding pals, I’m always the one pushing to do this climb. In fact, I tend to try to foist it on everybody I ever ride with. Occasionally, someone will ask me what the name means, and I tell them, “Lomas means hills, and Cantadas is actually an acronym for ‘Can’t A Dana Albert Suffer?’”

Line 1: El Toyonal

Okay, I admit this is a confusing start to the poem. Why do I mention this other road? Well, the only way to get to Lomas Cantadas is from El Toyonal. But it’s possible to ride up El Toyonal without continuing on to Lomas; you can bail out and cut over to Wildcat Canyon and save yourself a lot of suffering.

Line 2: self-defeating

Defeating yourself is really the point here. An East Bay Velo Club teammate of mine, Muzzy, who is kind of the Obi Wan Kenobi of our club, says that the course doesn’t make the race—the racers do. That is, any course can be hard if your competition is tough. But for those of us who don’t race anymore, and do a lot of riding alone, motivation can be a problem. That’s where it’s nice to have a gradient so severe that you couldn’t loaf if you wanted to. You yourself become the foe who must be defeated.

Line 3: sweeten the beating

A jolly good beating is one of the great joys of cycling (and similar athletic disciplines, I’d imagine). The long term rewards (e.g., stress release, fitness, the freedom to eat whatever you want whenever you want in whatever quantities you want without getting a big gut like E.T.) are well and good, as is the worthy knackered feeling you get in your legs after a ride. But on top of all that, the immediate, in-the-moment, muscle-searing, chest-heaving discomfort of extreme exertion can provide a strange kind of tactile pleasure, if you do this often enough to acquire a taste for it. There’s a purity to athletic struggle, a distillation and concentration of what it means to be alive in your body, and it can be habit-forming.

Line 4: insult to injury

The injury mentioned here is metaphorical; of course I’m not advocating going out and harming yourself. But the insult is literal: I find it impossible to tackle a climb like this—averaging over 10% with pitches of 15-20%—without feeling sheepishly insufficient to the task. On top of that, I doubt I’m alone among cyclists in instinctively comparing one’s current effort to one’s past best, which so often recedes ever further into history. For ageing bikers like me, this can be disheartening or even humiliating. So we disparage ourselves. We can’t help it.

Case in point: I haven’t trained hard in six months and am at least ten pounds heavier than usual. I’ve been afraid to ride Lomas this year, but yesterday I finally bit the bullet (despite being totally fried from four days of riding in a row). My time (including El Toyonal) was 22:27, whereas my personal best was 16:47, set about two years ago. So I’m almost 30% slower now, a difference which manifests as a grotesquely slow cadence and a lot of weaving back and forth like a paperboy. I didn’t just feel slightly off my game yesterday morning; I felt borderline incompetent. The insults I hurl at myself in such cases are nonverbal, but nonetheless vicious and cutting. And yet, even as I lament my poor form, I enjoy the satisfaction of doing something about it.

Line 4: sweet overkill

You could accuse me of being redundant, with “sweeten” in the third line and “sweet” in the fourth. But “sweet” as an adjective has taken on so many meanings in modern vernacular, I’d argue it has almost nothing to do with the verb “sweeten.” You might tell somebody he has a sweet bike, but if you asked a bike shop guy, “How can I sweeten my bike?” he’d find your usage highly nonstandard.

Line 5: Wildcat Canyon

East Bay cyclists do all kinds of short rides in the Berkeley hills, but our longer rides invariably take us across these hills to destinations east, such as Mount Diablo. Our last obstacle to getting home from these adventures is crossing back over this ridge of hills. Wildcat Canyon Road is the logical choice, as it’s a pretty mellow climb and usually you’ve done plenty of suffering by the time you reach it. Zoom in on the below map and you’ll see the three possible routes: Wildcat (farthest north); El Toyonal with the cut-through to Wildcat; and El Toyonal to Lomas. (Note the “Decision Point” callout in the lower right of the map.)

Line 6: half the uphill

Wildcat gains only 187 meters (614 feet) at an average gradient of 5%. Lomas, on the other hand, is essentially twice as hard, gaining 372 meters (1,221) feet over about the same distance. In other words, it’s twice as steep, and takes you to a much higher summit than you need to reach.

The problem is, on the way to Wildcat you go right by the turnoff to El Toyonal. To me, this is a gauntlet thrown down that cannot be ignored. To continue straight, toward the easier climb, is to acknowledge my own laziness and/or weakness. The turnoff taunts me, and I, in turn, taunt myself, along with anybody else who’s riding with me—unless my pals beat me to the punch. It’s like a dare. A double-dog-dare. You reach the intersection and—if you ignore the sober, serious, and completely reasonable voice in your head, and listen instead to the gonzo, irrational troublemaker in your skull, or on the bike next to you, you turn left. You know it’s a bad idea and that’s essentially why do you it. One moment of rash decision, when you make that turn, is followed by around 20 minutes of paying dearly for it.

Lines 7-8: mired in glory, in notions of being a man

We really are mired. Modern men, the sensitive and enlightened kind, can tell themselves—and others—that they’re over all that macho bullshit, but they aren’t. No, not really. They might deceive themselves, but we all have vainglorious impulses, chronic ones, rooted in testosterone and savagery and a lust for combat (whether it’s man-vs.-man, man-vs.-nature, or man-vs.-himself). If a male completely subjugates or denies this impulse, he will face the consequences. Maybe that’s the root of all this emo nonsense.

Myself, I see sport as a great way to get this stuff out of our systems in a healthy, consequence-free manner. I suspect that the truly sexist men among us, such as the ones who belittle their female colleagues, are reacting to feelings of unresolved inadequacy, which they senselessly blame on the women who (they fear) harshly judge them. So when I see a male cyclist taunting his pal, casting aspersions on his manhood based on whether to take the harder climb or the easier one, I call that good clean fun.

Usually, this climb isn’t one where I’ll encounter other bikers. But occasionally I do, and once or twice a battle has occurred. Here’s an entry from my training diary, from August 2013:

I had a smackdown with a d’bag on a really expensive bike, clad in really expensive clothing. He took a good while to overtake me, and then rode just ahead of me, and he fricking stunk! I don’t mean he reeked of sweat, which is normal and understandable, but he smelled like shit! If he’d just been faster everything would have been fine—he’d have gone on ahead and I’d be rid of him. But it was as though it took everything he had to pass me, and now we were in lockstep. I wasn’t going to slow down just to escape the stench, especially because my gearing is just barely low enough for this grade to begin with. So I sat on his wheel tolerating the odor.

I figured this guy would try to be in the lead at the place where the road splits [one route has a bit of a descent before eventually joining Lomas], so he could take the easy route and pretend he won something. I didn’t want to give him that satisfaction so I passed him and drilled it just before the junction, where it’s is super-steep, hoping to Cancellara him. I did get a pretty sweet gap and in the process made the halfway point in record time. Alas, the rich & stinky d’bag ended up doing the same route I was, so I had to keep hammering. At the really steep parts I dug extra deep and increased my lead, hoping to shatter his morale. I managed to extend my gap to ~30 seconds by the end. I hope he felt good and slapped-down. Anyway, the really great part is that I have a new lifetime PR for Lomas [17:05]!

It’s worth pointing out that solo, self-motivated trips up Lomas, after your pals have turned off, are just as common (and in my case more common) than getting shoehorned into the effort by your pals. (I’ve done this climb well over 500 times, but only a few dozen times with teammates. Huh, I guess this is a “counted climb.”) Choosing Lomas is a manner of personal pride, of knowing you didn’t slink away from a challenge. Beyond that, dudes sometimes do check up after the fact: “So did you do Lomas on the way back from Diablo?” The mere chance of this inquiry, and the glory of saying, “Of course” rather than, “Well, no, I kind of had to get home” is sufficient motivation, for many of us, to take on the extra suffering.

This was even the case after a brutal group ride up Mount Hamilton a few years back, when the day’s most stalwart rider, Kromer, diverged from the group to ride the Morgan Territory Road solo, and then—on a whim—climbed Mount Diablo. On the way home, after more than 150 miles in the saddle, he decided to take on one more challenge. In his e-mail to the club that night he wrote, “You know what’s next. I knew you’d ask, and I knew I had to say yes. So. Lomas.” Many of us, particularly the ones who’d cheated and took Bart home (under the Berkeley hills), had to bow down before him.

(All this male competitive stuff aside, of course I acknowledge and respect that other drives than machismo exist, and women also challenge themselves and each other. But I only see these behaviors; I cannot experience the motivations behind them. I’m telling my story here and cannot tell theirs. I thrill to the yarns my teenage daughter has been writing about her high school mountain bike races, and if she ever has her own blog you can bet I’ll link to it!)

Line 10: radical freedom

It isn’t the case that a cyclist is strictly compelled by male ego, peer pressure, or insecurity to take the harder climb. We are fully capable of saying “screw that” and riding up Wildcat, and we often do. But by the same token, we are not compelled by logic or fatigue to ride up Wildcat, either. Any rationale we could apply to either decision is flimsy, and to pretend otherwise takes us toward self-deception. We are not doomed to take one route or another in the way that a chair is doomed to be a chair.

Meanwhile, we are free to throw all rationale out the window and exercise our radical freedom by behaving perversely. (This freedom carries responsibility, but very little is at stake here other than lactic acid buildup and residual soreness.) Steering the bike toward El Toyonal, while thinking “This is a bad idea,” is a reckless act, and perhaps that’s the point. Humans behave recklessly all the time, but usually it’s eating that second bag of chips or giving in to the temptation to buy something we can’t afford. (Nike’s slogan “Just do it” is a brilliant strategy for helping make this happen.) An extra serving of pain and struggle is a pretty minor consequence for getting out your irrational, impulsive ya-yahs.

Appendix: Why did I write about South Park years before Lomas Cantadas?

It’s been more than four years since I wrote my Ode to South Park. Why did that one come first, and why has it taken me so long to honor my very favorite climb?

It comes down to laziness, frankly. As poems go, I’m most comfortable writing sonnets, as I’ve done a lot with this form and consider myself something of an authority. Knowing what I do about the iambic pentameter featured in a sonnet, I’m well aware that the phrase “Lomas Cantadas” is fundamentally incompatible with this meter. Consider:

I really want to ride up South Park Drive

Works great, right? The inflection naturally falls where it needs to. But check this out:

I want to ride up Lomas Cantadas

Everything is fine until the last word, and then the meter breaks down. Unless you force an emphasis (inflection) on the last syllable (i.e., CANT-ah-DAS), you break the rules (which the reader grasps intuitively) of iambic pentameter. When you pronounce this word properly, within a line of iambic pentameter, you experience the poetic equivalent of being clotheslined.

Having recently reviewed a couple of my old Kroopian poems—which are based on dactylic trimeter—I was emboldened to finally tackle this ode. In case you’re wondering, this was a lot harder than writing a sonnet.

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NOTE: This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and a lot of things I say that are really not nice.

Introduction

You know that in boxing there are specific rules, such as no hitting below the belt and no biting. So it is with mainstream journalism, where announcers have to hold a lot back, such as snarky opinions and off-the-cuff judgments. Well, my race reporting is the equivalent of a barroom brawl where pool sticks and broken bottles are fair game. I can say anything I want because who would fire me? And from what? Read on for my biased blow-by-blow coverage of the queen stage of this year’s Criterium du Dauphiné, a slightly prestigious warm-up for the Tour de France.

2016 Criterium du Dauphiné Stage 6 – La Rochette to Méribel

As I join the action, which is only available in French so far today, the riders have 34 km to go. They’re on the penultimate climb, which fact I did not glean from the announcer. I do not know the French word for “penultimate,” and neither does he.

I’ve joined the action late, thus missing the famous Col de la Madeleine, because the Dauphiné is one of those hind teat races that don’t get covered very thoroughly. I only get to see the last hour, though probably that’s for the best because I don’t want to wear you down with too much text.

This is the Category 1 Montée des Frasses and they have about 5 km (3.1 miles) until the summit. “Chris Froome est une merde-tête absolue,” the announcer says, and I have to agree. And I like how he tells it like it is due to that classic French disdain for authority. Now, if you don’t speak French, you surely know “tête,” from “tête de la course,” meaning head of the race. And please don’t tell me you’ve never heard the word “merde.” If you really haven’t, go look it up. (Did the announcer really call Froome “une merde-tête”? I’m pretty sure he did, but then those guys talk kind of fast. He might have actually said “connard.”)

“C’est difficile pour Aru” (“It’s difficult for [Fabio] Aru [of Astana]”) who appears to be in a breakaway with a teammate and one other guy. They’re chasing after the lead breakaway, which includes danger men Romain Bardet (AG2R Mondiale) and Thibaut Pinot (FDJ). (No, by “danger men” I don’t mean they’re bad bike handlers. I’ve adopted the parlance of modern bike race announcers, albeit ironically.) This breakaway has the French announcers pretty excited because Pinot and Bardet are French. That’s actually probably why their names are being shown onscreen but no others. The announcers are talking mainly about Pinot, because hey, he’s their boy! Not their son, it’s not a married couple announcing the race, though that would be kind of cool. I just mean Pinot is a favorite of the French because apparently he’s a pretty nice guy, if not a pretty nice wine.

The teammate with Aru is Luis Leon Sanchez Gil, who is struggling under the weight of all those names. So many ancestors to honor! The third rider in their group is … looks like Jens Keukeleire (Orica GreenEdge). No, I don’t really know Keukeleire on sight. I went by his number. Actually, it would be a huge help to me if everybody on the planet wore numbers, because I’m pretty sure I’m face-blind. That’s actually a thing. I am unable to remember a face. The features are just erased—nothing is shunted into long-term memory. That’s why I’m always having people bob up in front of me saying, “Hi Dana!” and I’m staring blankly thinking “I have never laid eyes on you in my life.” And then it turns out to be somebody I have talked to on the school playground twice a week for the last several years. Once a woman with a German accent confronted me about this. “You have no idea who I am, do you?” she snapped, and went on to say, “You know, I’ve been in your house!” At first I wondered if she were some kind of criminal mastermind type burglar, because I hadn’t yet realized (actually, I think it’s my wife’s theory) that I’m face-blind.

So, at the front of the chase group Bart de Clerq (Lotto Soudal) has attacked. He looks pretty strong, but whom am I kidding? The aforementioned merde-tête, who is all too recognizable without even a look at his face, is going to attack again, destroy everybody, and win the GC. Yes, I’m talking about Froomestrong, who has four Sky teammates doing tempo for him while he pretends to toil away. His heart rate is probably like 80 bpm right now. You know how Ecstasy is reputed to damage your spine? In the words of the venerable Eminem, “Let the X destroy your spinal cord/ So it’s not a straight line no more/ ‘Til we walk around looking like some wind-up dolls/ Shit’s sticking out of our backs like a dinosaur.” Well, maybe all the dope Froome is doing is having a similar effect. Em’s lyrics actually work really well for describing Froome. He really does ride like a wind-up doll and you can see his vertebrae fanned out because he’s got no body fat and his back is so bent.

If you’re wondering why I seem so bitter, it’s because I watched the recap of yesterday’s stage where Froome obliterated no less a doper than Alberto Contador (Tinkoff Team). The Froome-bot just danced away, and only his former teammate Richie Porte (BMC Racing Team) was able to join him. Just like so many times before, those two made the other racers, and all the fans, look like chumps.

And then Froome, who is supposedly a nice guy, told the press, “I didn’t expect to gain time on Alberto Contador on such a short climb.” The nerve of this guy, rubbing it in like that! He did not go on to say, “I thought he was lubed better than that,” because like all professional dopers, Froome knows to keep his mouth shut about his substances (except when he’s preemptively saying, “I don’t dope, you know,” even when nobody is formally accusing him). Anyhow, did you catch how he said, “Alberto Contador,” not just “Alberto” or “Contador”? As though he’s making sure we’ve heard of this guy, since he’s lately been so totally blotted out by Froome’s shadow. (No, it’s not that Froome is showing respect because in that case he would say “Alberto Contador Velasco.”)

I now have my choice of video feeds: this French one, or what sounds like a Dutch woman. I mean, I’m sure she’s a woman, I’m just not sure about the Dutch bit because she could be speaking Flemish or possibly even German. I really ought to be better at identifying such things, but it’s confusing because a) I have two feeds going at once so there’s cross-talk, and b) I’m still reeling at the sound of a female voice announcing a bike race. I haven’t heard that since Connie Carpenter in the early ‘80s. Okay, yeah, this announcer is definitely Dutch. Not much use to me, or you.

So the leaders are over the summit and have about 20 km (12 miles) to go. The French guy is saying, “C’est difficile, c’est une montagne” (“It’s difficult, it’s a mountain”), and I can tell from his voice that he’s shrugging, like “C’est normal.” Whoah, I’ve suddenly found an English-language video feed! Woohoo! Hang on, it’s on the wrong computer. You should see my setup here—it’s like NORAD or something. No it’s not. Just two computers. Both obsolete … if you’re that neighborhood woman with the German accent—the criminal mastermind—please remember how crummy my gear is, from when you saw it. When you were in my house.

So the Eurosport announcer has shared a tasty tidbit. Get this: many of these riders are using this race purely as preparation for the Tour de France. Damn, who knew? It seems that the Dauphiné isn’t the top priority of all the riders here. God, such blazing intelligence and insight. You know what? I kind of miss that French feed. And now we’re on to an ad for that stupid stove with the fancy vent to suck away the awful odor of your cooking.

So anyhow, the current GC going into this stage was Froome at the top, with Porte seven seconds back, and Contador another 20 seconds behind that. Daniel Martin (Etixx-Quick-Step), Julian Alaphillippe (Etixx-Quick-Step), and Adam Yates (Orica-GreenEdge) rounded out 4th,5th, and 6th respectively, and you don’t care about the time gaps because we both know they have no prayer.

Aru did something with his hair this year. I can’t put my finger on it. He now looks older and less like his romance novel namesake. And perhaps there’s a Samson & Delilah thing going on, because he’s just not that strong anymore. He fell out of his breakaway and some point and now he’s being masticated and regurgitated by the main group.

Contador is sitting toward the back of this group. Earlier, before the live coverage started, I was following the action on cyclingnews and they claimed he had put in a couple of attacks. They probably made that up. I mean, who’s gonna check? And how?

Walter Poels, one of Froomie’s henchman, detonates and slips off the back. Even going backwards, presumably completely blown, he has better form than Froome. Froome isn’t a bobblehead, but his neck seems to be a big hinge. His head will suddenly tip forward and he stares at the road for a bit, and then he snaps it back up again. He never actually turns his head to either side. In fact, he seems oddly incurious about anything going on around him. He’s just following directions from his radio, I suppose: “Look Froomie, I know you could solo right now without even getting out of the saddle or opening your mouth, but we need to make it look plausible, so just hang out a bit longer and let your lackies drive it.” I suspect if you pulled up Froome’s jersey you’d find a giant keyhole in his back when they stick in the big wind-up knob at the beginning of each stage.

Up at the front of the race, Bardet attacks! Man, it’s a savage attack too, none of this testing-the-waters stuff. Very, very impressive.

But Pinot is a scrapper and he’s working his way back toward Bardet’s wheel. It’s only 8 km (6.5 miles) to the summit finish so these guys have a pretty good shot at staying away. Their gap is just over two minutes over the GC group (never mind the flotsam and jetsam of the early breakaway).

My cat has a tendency to be jealous of my computer so she comes and blocks my view, just like all those damn pop-up ads I keep having to figure out how to close down.

Very little action in the GC group. It’s probably hard for Contador to find the resolve to attack because a) there are so many Sky riders swarming at the front, and b) they’re probably all stronger than he is because they’re so jacked up on whatever miracle drug Team Sky has developed. These dudes don’t even look like they’re suffering. They look about as stricken as if it were bowling night. Now this group is swallowing the stragglers from the break.

At the front, Pinot and Bardet are working pretty well together, sharing the work. These riders are so fast, drafting even matters on a Category 1 climb at the end of a brutal mountain stage.

I guess I’m rooting for Bardet because Pinot has white cycling shorts. I mean, I’m sure that’s not his fault, but I have to care about something. Maybe in his contract negotiations he should have said, “I always get the best hotel room, with a bidet in it, and I get to wear regular black shorts. Hell, I’ll even take navy blue, so long as I get that bidet.”

As for the GC, I’m not the biggest fan of Porte because he still carries with him the stench of having ridden for Sky for several years. But at least he looks pretty good on the bike, and he’s not on Sky anymore, and (most importantly of all) he’s not Froome. But over both of those guys I’d gladly take Contador as the winner, even though he’s a proven doper. Contador impressed me when he broke his tibia in a stage of the 2014 Tour de France and continued racing for a good while. Contrast that to Froome, who dropped out of that race himself due to a sprained nipple or something, I can’t remember other than it wasn’t a major injury, and then Porte took over the Sky leadership only to fold up psychologically like a small child. (Not that I have anything against small children; I just think they shouldn’t be given blood bags and made to race bikes.)

Pierre Roland (Cannondale Pro Team) is starting to fall off the back but he digs deep and starts to catch back on.

The break has 3 km (1.8 miles) to go and the gap is 1:40. Still no movement in the GC group.

Bardet attacks! It’s a great move, but Pinot is strong like bull and stitches it right up! Bardet attacks again! Nice!

Back in the GC group, Porte loses his last BMC teammate out the back. And look at this, Mikel Landa (Team Sky) is actually human, and finally blows after being part of that all-Sky-all-the-time pacesetting effort!

Contador is bouncing along out of the saddle as usual, keeping Froome in his sights. This group has been gradually whittled down so it’s only like 8 or 9 guys. Contador still has a teammate here but hasn’t needed him yet, with three Sky guys still taking up the front positions.

At the front Bardet and Pinot are really hauling ass. Both out of the saddle, now both seated, bobbing a bit, wobbling around on the road because they’re going so hard. They keep switching from sitting to standing, surely in the hope that one set of muscles or another will seem to have more zip left.

God, who is this Sky guy who is drilling it so hard at the front? Whoever he is, he now pops, and flies off the back like a strip of toilet paper thrown out of a car window at highway speed. (Did you also do that as a kid, during long, boring road trips? And did your parents yell at you, too? “I’ll turn this car around right now!”)

It’s 200 meters to go! Bardet leads it out!

But Pinot starts to come around! It’s a very close sprint!

Pinot pulls ahead for the win!

And back in the GC group, some guy in the blue of Etixx-Quick-Step takes off, Dan Martin I’m pretty sure, and takes Froome with him! Contador can’t respond! Yeah, it’s Martin, I’d know those giant teeth anywhere. (I’m not tooth-blind, apparently.)

Martin finishes just ahead of Froome, and will probably move up to third on the GC since he distanced Contador by like 8 seconds and (I think) picked up a time bonus. Anyhow, a fine result for Froome, as if that were ever in doubt. Hey Froome, could you tuck in your elbows for once? Where’d you learn to ride a bike … Barnum & Bailey?

Here are the final stage results:

In the GC, Froome took 14 seconds out of Porte, thus tripling his advantage over him.

“Bardet is looking pretty cheesed off,” the announcer says. God, I love the British. I doubt the French have an equivalent of “cheesed off,” and I know we Americans don’t. I’ll have to start using that one.

So, Pinot was 3:29 down on GC going into this—he must have had a really bad day at some point—but Bardet started the day only 1:34 down. So that kind of explains the dynamic in the GC group today: Sky wasn’t just setting tempo to keep Contador at bay; they were drilling it extra hard to bring down that gap to Bardet. I’m sure they timed it just right to keep things reasonably close, for appearances. If Bardet and Pinot had had four minutes, Sky would have just dialed it up a bit higher, probably with no more discomfort than adjusting the thermostat on your fridge (though to be honest, that particular dial has always confused me). So the pace was so high, Contador just couldn’t try anything … he was probably on his limit.

Career-wise, Contador rose to power at the wrong time, with Froome so dominant. If Froome weren’t such a prima donna, maybe Contador could ride for Sky too and get on some of that high-test shit they’re using. It is rumored that Contador is looking for a new team right now. He’s probably told Tinkoff, “Your drugs are all so old-school and Eastern Bloc! I need some damn technology here!”

So that’s pretty much it for the Dauphiné this year. Tomorrow’s stage has a couple Cat 1 climbs, and finishes at the summit of a Cat 3, but the way Sky is riding, let’s not kid ourselves that anybody can take 21 seconds out of Punky Froomester. He’s got this one in the (blood) bag.

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Introduction

Once again, I find myself with nothing to write. (Actually, plenty to write but no time.) And so, I offer you this glimpse into the embarrassing life of my younger self. This true story from my archives is from almost 28 years ago. Perhaps in another 28 years I’ll look back this sheepishly at my current self.

How Not To Go On A Date – November 19, 1988

Right off the bat, I don’t consider myself to be an expert at dating. In fact, if you know me well, you’re probably thinking that this story will chronicle another personal blunder, social faux-pas, and/or abject humiliation. But actually, there is one person on the UC Santa Barbara campus more inept than I. And naturally, she’s the one I ended up asking out.

I sort of met her by proxy a couple of weeks ago in the La Loma parking lot, of all places. See, my roommate T—, from Ethiopia, often recites little sayings from his knowledgeable uncle, and on this night, after a scrumptious meal, he quoted, “After lunch, rest awhile, after dinner, walk a mile.” So we went for a walk, and as soon as we reached the parking lot, these girls came stumbling down the stairs from the second level. One was holding up her friend, who was outrageously, pathetically, disgracefully drunk. It was a vexing sight, as neither my roommate nor I felt like assisting the girls, but feared a life-threatening accident otherwise and couldn’t just stand idly by.

It appeared that the sober girl of the duo was also helpless, not due to alcohol but to lack of common sense. She had taken her friends to a party, and locked herself out of her dorm room in the process. She knew she could get her dorm key from her roommate Cindy, and was supposed to meet her at The Graduate, a local dance club, but couldn’t leave her drunk friend behind and found her too unwieldy to bring over there. So she sent me there instead. This was certainly a novel mission—as you may know, I don’t dance—so I figured what the hell.

Somehow, I managed to find Cindy in the mobbed dance club. That’s really saying something, because most of these college girls look more or less alike. Okay, I guess that’s not fair, but it wasn’t like Cindy was seven feet tall, or bald, or had any particularly distinct characteristics. She turned out to be very attractive, but that’s not really distinctive around here. (God bless this place.)

I might have overstated to Cindy how drunk her roommate’s friend was, and how much danger she was in, or maybe Cindy was just a good friend ... whatever the case, after only 15 or 20 more minutes of dancing she agreed to head out with me. (It could be that my horrific attempts at dancing spoiled her appetite for it.) In fact, in the interests of time, she agreed to ride on the handlebars of my bike. Now, this kind of thing goes on all the time around here so it wasn’t like romantic or anything. Nevertheless, this kind of thing doesn’t go on with my bike and my handlebars very often, so I was actually pretty stoked. (Frankly, there are a whole lot of things going on around here I don’t personally get to enjoy. I guess it doesn’t help that I look like I’m about fifteen years old, and have no poise at all when it comes to females of the opposite sex.) Surfing the exhilaration of having ridden this cute girl on my bike, I was feeling bolder than usual, and got her phone number. At least, I hoped it was really her phone number.

(Did everything come out okay with the drunken friend? I never learned and honestly didn’t really care. I mean, here I’d met a good-looking chick, and I got her phone number! The roommate and drunken friend were no longer relevant. Their minor role in my life had run its course.)

I ended up needing to call that phone number the very next week. Not like I was suddenly really desperate for female companionship or anything; after all, I’d flown solo most of my life to that point and was resigned to it. But I really wanted to see a movie that was playing on campus, “A Fish Called Wanda” (two thumbs up from Siskel & Ebert), and I didn’t have anybody to see it with. The 7:00 showing wouldn’t end until like 9, which ran up too close to my roommate S—’s bedtime. Meanwhile, T— had seen the movie already and didn’t like it (but I disregarded his critical review after hearing that he liked “Coming to America,” which looked so bad I wouldn’t even rent it, especially since I don’t have a TV or VCR).

Now, I’ve never gone to a movie by myself in my life and wasn’t about to start, so I was determined to get somebody to join me. But the sad fact is, though I’ve lived here for three months, I haven’t made any real friends other than my roommates, and I can’t just ask some random guy to go to the movies with me because he’d get the wrong idea. But it’s never the wrong idea with a girl—there’s no such thing—so I figured there was no harm in asking one, other than getting turned down of course.

Over the last couple months I’d felt that I’d really hit it off with this fly Norwegian girl at La Loma, and two weeks ago I’d have asked her, but it turns out she has this boyfriend she’d never told me about, and he’s a former Marine. I learned this when I knocked on her door and he answered. I was just standing there like an idiot, like, “Hey, I just came to ask your girlfriend out. You wanna come too?” He looked pretty pissed. So I couldn’t call her!

There’s a girl in my French class, Leigh, but I can’t ask her right now. She’s kind of odd: if I pay much attention to her, she suddenly gets kind of cool toward me, and it’s only when I ignore her that she’s suddenly friendly again, and I’m in the wrong part of the cycle at the moment. A week or so ago I called this girl Monica but she never called me back, so she’s banned for life. So I was left with no other option than to find out once and for all if Cindy, the girl from the nightclub, had given me her actual phone number. One promising sign was that the number she gave wasn’t 867-5309. (As you can see, I have a rather lousy track record with girls. But I never false-start!)

I considered calling Cindy on the same day as the movie, to make it seem really casual, and to soften the blow of the inevitable rejection by giving her an easy excuse to beg off. But in my (albeit limited) experience these dorm freshmen don’t do anything spontaneously unless it’s being herded along in packs by whatever dorm pal has the most charisma or social status. (These dorm types mainly travel in packs.) But I figured if I called ahead and made an actual appointment I might just have a shot. So I called on a Thursday to propose the Monday show. (God, you’d think I was planning a transcontinental voyage given how much forethought I’d put into this stupid movie.)

Eureka! The phone number was legit, and Cindy answered, and even seemed to remember who I was, and believe it or not she seemed really excited about seeing the movie with me.

Well, on Monday, she called me up, and asked if it was okay if a couple of her friends came along. Oh, boy, that’s just swell. As if it’s not hard enough for a social retard like me to deal with a girl one-on-one. At least if we’re both strangers, she’s as nervous as I am, so we can relate on that level. But once she brings her friends along, they’re a society and I’m the outsider scratching on the door, hoping to be let in, while she and her friends are probably getting a little kick out of watching me squirm. Like roasting me alive on a rotisserie while making snide comments to each other about how bad my flesh stinks when it burns.

First-date rule #1: do not do anything to cause social trauma

Cindy’s question really put me on the spot. I couldn’t really say no, but was suddenly feeling too grumpy to feign enthusiasm. “Well, uh . . .” I said, waiting for her to fill in the blanks with, “Oh, it was just a suggestion. If you’d rather not, I’ll just forget them for tonight, for once in my life.” Instead, there was just dead air over the phone. Finally I said, “That’s really not what I had in mind.” Believe me, I’m wincing as much at recalling that as you are at reading it. In fact, I immediately wished I could rescind that comment. It sounded so stiff, and lame, and actually just a tiny bit creepy.

So I backpedaled a bit. And once the initial shock of her request had worn off, I decided it kind of made sense, since we were going to the 9:00 show, it would be dark, she hardly knew me, and the “date rape” scare is in full force on the UCSB campus. I also considered that if she brought along two girlfriends, that tripled my chances of hitting it off with at least one of them. Besides, with her two friends along, I wouldn’t even have to thinkabout paying for Cindy; even at $3 a ticket, economics are an important consideration.

We agreed to meet at the theater. When I got there, there were two incredibly long lines stretching from Campbell Hall almost all the way to Cheadle. The problem was, I couldn’t really remember what Cindy looked like, and I figured it would be awkward walking the length of the lines seeing if any face looked familiar. It would be a bit like going door-to-door asking, “Are you Cindy? Are you Cindy?” So I got in line, hoping I’d look familiar to her. Otherwise, the whole damn scenario would collapse under its own weight.

Eventually a familiar-looking girl showed up and seemed to recognize me, so I decided she was Cindy. She was with a friend whom she introduced as Annie. (I think a prerequisite to living in the girls’ dorms is having a name with an “ee” sound tacked on, so that when you’re close friends, you can leave it off, as in “Hey Barb.”)

Annie was a real doll, let me tell you.

First-date rule #2: do not show up with a better-looking friend

I was trying to decide if I should shift my attention to Annie (who, after all, I knew every bit as well as Cindy) and whether this would mean I was a bad person, when I noticed that Cindy was holding about forty bucks cash. “Let’s see, I’m paying for Cathy, Marcie, Tracy, Annie, Chip, and Aaron,” she said. Ooh, Chip and Aaron — instant problem here.

First-date rule #3: do not bring opposite-sex friends with you on your date

I really didn’t feel like locking horns or fluffing my plumage to compete with these guys. So I decided to do something really sly, which I’d first experimented with last week in French class. As I mentioned before, I’d been accidentally giving Leigh too much attention, so in response she was getting all flirty with David, this surfer dude who always wears a visor to pile his hair on. He also wears Lycra tights sometimes. To class. (Yes, I confess I’m feeling just a tiny bit competitive here.) If Leigh had been completely ignoring me, I’d assume she’d forgotten about me or was just really into Dave. But she’d give me a quick glance every now and then, maybe to see if I looked jealous (or was I just flattering myself?). So I walked up to the two of them, calculating that she’d think I was going to try to cut in on their conversation and chat her up, which was half true, but instead I whisked Dave away to ask him about the crew team. (He’s been trying to recruit me so I knew this would work.) He suddenly seemed to forget all about her, and I pretended to as well, and who knows, maybe I’ll actually go out for crew.

So, with this episode fresh in my mind (to be honest, in my measly little world I counted it as a major triumph), I decided to try the friendly guy thing again. I looked Chip in the eye, shook his hand vigorously, and said, “Well, Chip, damn glad to meet you.” Either he’s a nice guy or was working the same strategy because he didn’t laugh in my face. Hopefully, this planted a seed of fear in the girls that we would abandon them for some more meaningful male bonding later in the evening. If not, at least I didn’t let her see me sweat.

The movie had drawn a huge crowd, so we were waiting in line for about twenty minutes. While we waited, Cindy talked with her friend about her photography class, glancing towards me only every so often and making no effort to include me in the conversation.

First-date rule #5: do not make your date feel like an idiot

Cindy explained to Annie that she hated her photography teacher, who wanted her students to take pictures of “nature”, and exhorted them to create “art” through photography. “I hate nature! I hate art!” she said. What would you rather take pictures of, Cindy? Your BMW? Give me a break!

Suddenly one of the “scouts” returned with his report. “They aren’t sold out, but it’s pretty full — we might not all get to sittogether!” he cried. I wanted desperately to clap my hand to my forehead and shout, “Oh no! That’s terrible!” but I thought better of it and kept my mouth shut. The truth was, I didn’t care if I ever saw any of these people again; forget about watching a movie with them. “Maybe we should come back for the 11:00 show,” said Cindy. “Uh, I’ve got a French test tomorrow, so I don’t want to do that,” I said. At this point, she should’ve said, “Well, why don’t we just see it together then, and not worry about my friends.” But of course, she didn’t.

First-date rule #6: assume you’ll only get this one chance to behave yourself

Nothing was resolved until we got to the ticket counter. I asked the guy if they still had tickets to the 9:00, and he said yeah. Since I had spent all this time in line, I was going to see this movie come hell or high water. I bought a ticket, and then waited for Cindy to buy hers. She just stood there, paralyzed with indecision. She kept looking at me, and then her friends (who were babbling amongst themselves, seemingly unaware of her existence).

First-date rule #7: don’t compare humans as you would grocery shelf commodities

Finally she said, “I think I’d better wait and go with my friends.”

First-date rule #8: never, ever abandon your date

It’s bad enough to getting stood up for a date; getting stood up during a date is a fate undeserving of even the most boring or offensive companion. I said, “Well, maybe we can try this again sometime, like when a lousy movie is showing and they can seat your entire dorm.” I wanted to add, “or maybe when you grow up a little,” but I didn’t have quite enough nerve.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie by myself before. Actually, it was kind of nice because I didn’t have to pay attention to anything but the film. Nobody was saying, “Oh, I love this part. Check the expression on this guy’s face when....” I also didn’t have to worry about a companion being offended or bored by a movie that I picked out. Perhaps the best part was that nobody attempted to sum up the whole theme of the movie as we left the theatre. Nothing ruins the cinematic experience like some schmuck philosophizing about the inner meaning of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” or “The Terminator.” Before the movie even started, I was already enjoying myself, listening into various conservations so as to gain insight into the UCSB student’s mindset: “Gosh, your hair looks redder than usual,”/”Yeah, I know, I had it reddened. You should see it in the sun,” or “And then, like, Barbie’s boyfriend starts hitting on Christy, and I’m like, no way!”

Still, I was still a bit disappointed with my evening. I don’t get to go out on dates very often, and I’d looked forward to this one. (You’d think I’d learn never to get my hopes up, but I guess I have a stubborn, misguided hopeful streak.) I can’t imagine when I’ll get another chance to go on a date. Where do you ask a girl out if you don’t have a car? Walking limits you to Isla Vista, which is a great place to pass out drunk in the street, but not conducive to a romantic evening out.

I guess there’s always coffee. People are always recommending that for a first date: simple, cheap, low-stress ... heck, maybe a girl could find a coffee shop such a safe environment she wouldn’t even need reinforcements. The problem is, I don’t like coffee.

Even so, in an effort to salvage my self-esteem after the terrible aborted date with Cindy, I put my tastes behind me and the next day I asked Leigh out for coffee. It went okay, I guess, but it was so low-key it almost felt like it didn’t happen. I mean, we might as well have still been in French class or something, especially since neither of us actually bought a beverage of any kind. Even so, afterwards Leigh said, “Thanks for coffee.” I guess going for coffee refers to the coffee shop, not the beverage. Maybe I’ll figure all this out by the time I graduate.

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