Another Black Friday has come and gone and, fortunately, with fewer fatalities than usual. If reading that last sentence made you feel patriotic, then you are not my intended audience, please stop reading. If it made you think " we are the legion of the damned," then congratulations, you can stay. No, really, it is good news. I don't want to see anyone maimed or worse over a really unbelievable deal on a flat screen television. But you can't go putting yourself in harms way without fear of consequences. If you haven't figured it out yet, finding yourself in a Walmart store during the predawn hours is an indication that you are not doing something right. It's just fortunate that enough people are unemployed right now, and thus unable to get really excited about any doorbuster special, that the crowds were less unruly than usual. To Walmart's credit, they did take some measures this year to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy that took place in their Valley Stream NY store a year ago when a shopper was trampled to death. For instance, they stayed open through the night on Thanksgiving day, thus diluting the concentration of people who would normally be storming the doors 4:00 am. Smart. They also beefed up security so that altercations could be handled quickly and without loss of life. According to the New York Times, the worst Black Friday hooliganism of 2009 occurred at a Walmart store in Upland CA, forcing authorities to close the store for a few hours when fights broke out over merchandise. Let's think about this for a minute. The main reason for shopping on Black Friday is to buy Christmas gifts, right? So, presumably, these folks setting the alarm clock for 3:00 am and heading out to Walmart are Christians, right? Does it not seem kind of un-Christian to assault someone over cheap merchandise?
The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday because it was traditionally the day that retail establishments moved into "the black," or became profitable for the year. This doesn't really happen anymore, but that's beside the point. There are other reasons to call it Black Friday. Retail sales people call it Black Friday because it is the worst day of the year. Having to get up at an inhuman hour to go to work and deal with crazed consumers and then stay late to put a ransacked store back together, all for a wage that comes in somewhere under the poverty level, can be discouraging. And of course, there is the danger. Black Friday is most likely the deadliest day of shopping all year. I'd like to see some traffic statistics. Not only are you likely to come to fisticuffs with your fellow shoppers, anytime you have a convergence of giant sport utility vehicles such as you have in the typical Walmart parking lot, you are bound to have accidents and examples of road rage. Murderous Friday, maybe, would be more accurate.
It's nice to have Black Friday as an add on special day for the Thanksgiving weekend. Spend some time with your family, have a nice meal and contemplate the things you have to be thankful for. Maybe watch some football. better take a nap too, because tomorrow is going to be grueling. Get up early on Friday and put your game face on. It's time to consume. Thankful my ass. Repeat your mantra "must own Blu Ray, must own Blu Ray." You are not taking no for an answer. You have HD TVs in your house that do not have Blu Ray players and you are not going out like that. "Listen lady, I did not get up at 3:00 am to come home empty handed. Now give me that Blu Ray player or I'll slash the tires on your Amigo!"
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
eLiterature or iLiterature?
As you all know, I am a devotee of haiku. Maybe you didn't know that, actually, but you do now. I am attracted to haiku mainly for it's economy; it's ability to convey a sentiment or idea or universal truth in a very concise way. But, like most westerners who are not tenured staff members of Asian Literature departments at major universities, I don't really understand the intricacies of true Japanese haiku. I do know that there is a lot more to the form than the three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables each rule that is routinely taught to elementary school children in this country. I know that traditional haiku are nature inspired and have a seasonal component, that the 5-7-5 thing is product of spoken and written Japanese that doesn't translate to English very directly, that there are conventions in the traditional form that probably make the scratchings of typical American haiku laughable to Japanese poets. I suspect that cultural differences between the Japanese and myself make the likelihood of my actually being able to write real haiku in English pretty small. Still, as I said, I'm intrigued by the form.
Another form of writing I've been interested in for a while is called flash fiction. There are no clear cut rules for flash fiction other than it has to be short. Perhaps the best known example of the form is Ernest Hemingway's famous six word story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." A complete work of fiction in six words, how is that for efficiency? Still, Hemingway is reputed to have considered it his best work. But again, there don't seem to be any clear cut rules for the length of flash fiction. Six words is nice, but we can't all be Hemingway. Personally, I'd probably need more. Fortunately, social networking (or social notworking as most employers call it) has given us the answer. The twitterpoem (prose and verse) twitterstory, and twitternovel. The rules, or rule actually, are simple: 140 characters or less. Now anyone can publish, right from their cell phone, even if they are hobbled by archaic non 4G service (like myself.) It's very democratic, don't you think? And who doesn't have time to string together 140 characters? Judging by the constant onslaught of inane tweets fired across my bow, everyone in the world has time to string together that many words. Now get busy writing and send your resulting works to me for publication right here on NFOT. You can even tweet them to me @youngdavevt. Just do me a favor and try not to write your twitternovel while driving. I don't want any cyclists or pedestrians maimed in pursuit of literary greatness.
Another form of writing I've been interested in for a while is called flash fiction. There are no clear cut rules for flash fiction other than it has to be short. Perhaps the best known example of the form is Ernest Hemingway's famous six word story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." A complete work of fiction in six words, how is that for efficiency? Still, Hemingway is reputed to have considered it his best work. But again, there don't seem to be any clear cut rules for the length of flash fiction. Six words is nice, but we can't all be Hemingway. Personally, I'd probably need more. Fortunately, social networking (or social notworking as most employers call it) has given us the answer. The twitterpoem (prose and verse) twitterstory, and twitternovel. The rules, or rule actually, are simple: 140 characters or less. Now anyone can publish, right from their cell phone, even if they are hobbled by archaic non 4G service (like myself.) It's very democratic, don't you think? And who doesn't have time to string together 140 characters? Judging by the constant onslaught of inane tweets fired across my bow, everyone in the world has time to string together that many words. Now get busy writing and send your resulting works to me for publication right here on NFOT. You can even tweet them to me @youngdavevt. Just do me a favor and try not to write your twitternovel while driving. I don't want any cyclists or pedestrians maimed in pursuit of literary greatness.
Whassup
I haven't posted in a long time. I've been warned not to apologize for such things so I won't. My temptation is to say I've been so busy that I haven't had time to write but that would be an outright lie, unless you equate napping with being busy. No, I have not been particularly busy. I've been facing a bit of a creative block and a bit of apathy. And yes, I have been napping. I have not been standing still though. I have been reading a lot, purging my life of unnecessary material goods, procuring as well as preparing more of my own food, and thinking deep thoughts that would make Jack Handy crap his pants.
Most of my exercise is coming from walking these days, often to the supermarket to buy food. I've been trying to shop every couple of days so I can eat fresher food and food that I'm craving. I also take long walks in the woods of my lovely local park, about a mile from my house. Walking is just the speed that I feel like traveling these days.
I joined a CSA which, for those readers not immersed in a culture liberal do-goodery like we have here in Vermont, is Community Supported Agriculture. It allows me to know the farmers who grow my food on a personal level and contribute to the farm's viability. I give them a specific sum up front and each week of the harvest I go to the farm and pick up a box of just picked produce. It's very inspiring. I like that they hand me a selection of the freshest possible food and I then have to figure out creative ways to prepare it. It forces me to branch out. I had no idea that Brussels sprouts grew on a stalk. I had never seen kale before. I can't recommend CSA enough.
I am trying to rekindle my yoga practice. I went to a class last Tuesday and by Saturday I could walk without a limp again. Not that I was ever a really avid yoga practitioner, but I wish I was. It always makes me feel so good. Tuesday night I slept soundly through the night without waking once and I can't remember the last time I managed that. On a side note, I have mentioned before that when I was riding my bike to Michigan, cycling 65 miles a day and sleeping on the ground every night, my body felt fantastic. I think I figured out why. I wasn't sitting slouched in a chair or on a couch. I had very little access to furniture so my bad posture wasn't sabotaging my ability to be athletic. That's something to think about. I think we Westerners rely a little too heavily on furniture.
I am counting down the days until I go back to the ski shop. Carpentry takes on a whole new aspect this time of year. And by aspect I mean level of discomfort. Because Working in cold rain, standing in the sucking mud, going through five pairs of gloves a day in a futile attempt to preserve some kind of dexterity, all of these things discourage me. Does that make me a wuss? I know people who work outside all Winter, and I do like being outside in the winter, but I kind of like maintaining a level of physical activity that prevents frostbite on toes and fingers. I think it has to do with the kinds of tasks carpenters are charged with. Ever try picking up a stainless steel siding nail with ski gloves on? It's not gonna happen. Which means taking your left glove off and working feverishly to nail up a couple of boards before your hand goes numb, then quickly putting your glove back on and, hopefully, suffering through the burning sensation/nausea of thawing extremities. Believe me, I've had my share of frozen extremities and sometimes it's worth it, like when there's three feet of blower powder and it's ten below but you keep convincing yourself that one more run won't result in amputation, then when you finally get your ski boot off, you're not so sure anymore. That's worth the risk. But for putting siding, or worse yet, roof trim, on a house on the top of a mountain somewhere, well, unless it's your house, not so much worth it. Now, the well organized carpenter, and by well organized I mean lucky, will have planned it so he is working inside for the winter. Which presents it's own set of problems. Like alternately freezing and sweating bullets. No I proffer that it's better to hang up the tool belt for the winter and take a job, oh like, maybe, writing a daily ski report or something, for the Winter. Here's a tip: unless you want to pay 30% more for your construction project, don't have it done between November and April. Unless the work is almost entirely inside. Working outside in the winter around here is just plain inefficient. Do you really want to pay carpenters to spend half the day shoveling snow, chipping ice, and trying to nurse blood back into a frozen left hand?
Most of my exercise is coming from walking these days, often to the supermarket to buy food. I've been trying to shop every couple of days so I can eat fresher food and food that I'm craving. I also take long walks in the woods of my lovely local park, about a mile from my house. Walking is just the speed that I feel like traveling these days.
I joined a CSA which, for those readers not immersed in a culture liberal do-goodery like we have here in Vermont, is Community Supported Agriculture. It allows me to know the farmers who grow my food on a personal level and contribute to the farm's viability. I give them a specific sum up front and each week of the harvest I go to the farm and pick up a box of just picked produce. It's very inspiring. I like that they hand me a selection of the freshest possible food and I then have to figure out creative ways to prepare it. It forces me to branch out. I had no idea that Brussels sprouts grew on a stalk. I had never seen kale before. I can't recommend CSA enough.
I am trying to rekindle my yoga practice. I went to a class last Tuesday and by Saturday I could walk without a limp again. Not that I was ever a really avid yoga practitioner, but I wish I was. It always makes me feel so good. Tuesday night I slept soundly through the night without waking once and I can't remember the last time I managed that. On a side note, I have mentioned before that when I was riding my bike to Michigan, cycling 65 miles a day and sleeping on the ground every night, my body felt fantastic. I think I figured out why. I wasn't sitting slouched in a chair or on a couch. I had very little access to furniture so my bad posture wasn't sabotaging my ability to be athletic. That's something to think about. I think we Westerners rely a little too heavily on furniture.
I am counting down the days until I go back to the ski shop. Carpentry takes on a whole new aspect this time of year. And by aspect I mean level of discomfort. Because Working in cold rain, standing in the sucking mud, going through five pairs of gloves a day in a futile attempt to preserve some kind of dexterity, all of these things discourage me. Does that make me a wuss? I know people who work outside all Winter, and I do like being outside in the winter, but I kind of like maintaining a level of physical activity that prevents frostbite on toes and fingers. I think it has to do with the kinds of tasks carpenters are charged with. Ever try picking up a stainless steel siding nail with ski gloves on? It's not gonna happen. Which means taking your left glove off and working feverishly to nail up a couple of boards before your hand goes numb, then quickly putting your glove back on and, hopefully, suffering through the burning sensation/nausea of thawing extremities. Believe me, I've had my share of frozen extremities and sometimes it's worth it, like when there's three feet of blower powder and it's ten below but you keep convincing yourself that one more run won't result in amputation, then when you finally get your ski boot off, you're not so sure anymore. That's worth the risk. But for putting siding, or worse yet, roof trim, on a house on the top of a mountain somewhere, well, unless it's your house, not so much worth it. Now, the well organized carpenter, and by well organized I mean lucky, will have planned it so he is working inside for the winter. Which presents it's own set of problems. Like alternately freezing and sweating bullets. No I proffer that it's better to hang up the tool belt for the winter and take a job, oh like, maybe, writing a daily ski report or something, for the Winter. Here's a tip: unless you want to pay 30% more for your construction project, don't have it done between November and April. Unless the work is almost entirely inside. Working outside in the winter around here is just plain inefficient. Do you really want to pay carpenters to spend half the day shoveling snow, chipping ice, and trying to nurse blood back into a frozen left hand?
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Thinking about food
The Sunday NY Times Magazine was all about food this week. Good stuff. An interesting article about calorie restriction and the apparent slowing of aging that it causes. If we all ate 25% less than we do, well some of us would have to eat a higher percentage less, we could slow down aging, and drastically reduce heart disease and cancer. Without drugs or even exercise. Problem is, most people would rather die, or at least just take the drugs, than cut 25% of their calories. It is pretty extreme, I guess. Most people that are at a healthy weight to begin with lose 15% of their body weight in the first year of 25% reduction and then plateau. That means that I would weigh about 136 pounds. I would not look well at 136 pounds. I know this because I've been as low as 139 pounds, when I was training really hard and profoundly anemic, and I didn't look well. But I was fast riding my bike and, evidently would have been healthier if I had stayed that weight. If I didn't die from one of my semi-weekly sinus infections or bronchitis. Interesting study nonetheless.
Michael Pollan did a piece where he asked people to send him any rules that they follow concerning what to eat or not eat. There were some good ones. A woman by the name of Michelle Poirot invoked a Zen teaching that says "when you drink tea, just drink tea." In other words, be mindful of your eating, don't eat while you are doing something else. I'm bad about this. I almost always read or watch TV while I'm eating. I need to work on that. Another one that I really thought was good was from Laura Kelley and she said that she uses a rule of economics to avoid overeating. "The law of diminishing marginal utility reminds me that each additional bite is generally less satisfying than the previous bite," she says, so she remembers to slow down and really enjoy the first bites and then stop eating sooner. That's good, I'm going to use that one. There were other good ones, like don't eat anything you are not prepared to kill yourself, and I've thought of that one but I don't really want give up meat all together. One guy said that he doesn't eat anything that is pretending to be something else, which is actually one of my own guidelines. I don't like turkey presented as anything other than turkey. I don't like turkey sausage or turkey burger or turkey ham. If I want to eat turkey, I will and if I must have those other things, then I'll suffer the consequences and enjoy the real thing. This is why I like sausage, bacon, and hot dogs; because they are honest foods. They are not good for you but they taste good so you eat them in moderation and get on with it. Hmm, now I'm hungry.
Michael Pollan did a piece where he asked people to send him any rules that they follow concerning what to eat or not eat. There were some good ones. A woman by the name of Michelle Poirot invoked a Zen teaching that says "when you drink tea, just drink tea." In other words, be mindful of your eating, don't eat while you are doing something else. I'm bad about this. I almost always read or watch TV while I'm eating. I need to work on that. Another one that I really thought was good was from Laura Kelley and she said that she uses a rule of economics to avoid overeating. "The law of diminishing marginal utility reminds me that each additional bite is generally less satisfying than the previous bite," she says, so she remembers to slow down and really enjoy the first bites and then stop eating sooner. That's good, I'm going to use that one. There were other good ones, like don't eat anything you are not prepared to kill yourself, and I've thought of that one but I don't really want give up meat all together. One guy said that he doesn't eat anything that is pretending to be something else, which is actually one of my own guidelines. I don't like turkey presented as anything other than turkey. I don't like turkey sausage or turkey burger or turkey ham. If I want to eat turkey, I will and if I must have those other things, then I'll suffer the consequences and enjoy the real thing. This is why I like sausage, bacon, and hot dogs; because they are honest foods. They are not good for you but they taste good so you eat them in moderation and get on with it. Hmm, now I'm hungry.
How to get rear-ended by a local
Well, the foliage season is winding down here in Central Vermont. As beautiful as it is around here this time of year, and as happy as we all are to have some people here for a change to bolster our economy, this time of year presents a few challenges. For reasons that none of us can quite comprehend, people in the throes of a foliage binge will routinely stop their cars in the middle of the road and get out to take photos of nothing in particular. This can be somewhat of a surprise to those of us that end up taking the scenery for granted in the midst of our day to day travels. This year we had an additional challenge presented to us in the form of... hay sculptures. The Killington Chamber of Commerce or Economic Devlopement and Tourism Council, or some such organization sponsored this hay sculpture contest where local businesses built sculptures out of those giant round hay bales. There were bears and beavers and turkeys and owls and sushi rolls and all kinds of random stuff. When I first heard the idea, I have to admit that I thought it was kind of stupid. But it turns out that it was a pretty good idea because people really loved the things and it gave them another reason to stop unexpectedly in the middle of the road for a photo op. I guess this proves conclusively that if you build it, they will come. Even if "it" is something of totally dubious value. The event was such a success that next year they are planning some sort of festival to go along with the sculptures and Cabot Cheese (yum!) wants to sponsor it. People love stuff they can look at without getting too far away from their cars, that's for sure.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
0% financing, no money down. For weapons
The automobile is mechanized violence. Seriously. Sure, they feel all soft and friendly from the inside, what with the artificially conditioned air and multi-channel, surround sound audio pumping the soothing sounds of NPR or, better yet, delivering the second season of CSI Miami from the DVD player (you're never safer than when Horatio Caine has your back.) And those heated leather seats... But think about what it's like on the other side of that thin, protective metal skin. The noise, not just of the engine but of rubber on pavement, various hums and whistles, the huge displacement of air as the thing whooshes by. Not to mention the smells and noxious fumes left in the wake. Violence. Think about what's actually going on in the guts of the thing - internal combustion. Four, six, eight, even ten explosions for each cycle of the crank shaft. Explosions, the detonating of petroleum distillates, right there in front of your feet. Does that sound safe? And you know what happens when they collide with one another, with immovable objects, with innocent onlookers and their pets. Like Kurt Vonnegut said, "thanks to Henry Ford (nasty anti-Semite that he was) anyone could afford to run over his neighbor's dog at 100 miles per hour." You may have heard that automobiles are not good for the environment, and if you have not heard that, I would recommend that you stop listening to talk radio and fox news (deliberately lower case, by the way.) Have you ever seen a deer, or other mammal, standing at the side of the road, watching the terrible spectacle with a mixture of terror and confusion? That is the only sane response to the unnatural violence being perpetrated against the poor creature's habitat. And that is precisely how I imagine I look as I ride my bicycle along the shoulder of mighty Route 4 on my way home from work, trying to drown out the roar with earphones stuffed in my ears, hoping to spare myself the knowledge of my likely doom. I wonder sometimes if, when he is being hit from behind, a cyclist knows that it's about to happen. If the awful clatter of an automobile actually running over you is somehow different from the awful clatter of one missing you by mere inches. Mostly though, I hope not to find out.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Trendy facial hair for bicycles
I have got to get one of these mustache head badges for my bike. You can too from tangerinetreehouse's Etsy store.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
General update
I suppose I should jot down a general news update while I'm sitting here, since I haven't posted much lately. First off, Christine and I went to Bar Harbor Maine for our anniversary last weekend. Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park are beautiful and we had a great time. We over-ate at every meal and spent a whole bunch of money. We did some really great hikes in the park and saw some really beautiful vistas. A couple of tips for Bar Harbor: Don't go there in the summer if you can help it. The place is jammed with people like you can only imagine. We were there at the slow period between summer vacation and Fall foliage and the place was still incredibly busy. We had to get reservations for every dinner and there was one breakfast spot that we couldn't get into for three days. I fear that you might starve if you were there in August and hadn't made all of your arrangements months before. Also, I was a little disappointed in the amount of vehicular traffic in Acadia. The paved roads are about as busy as highways in Vermont. It was anticlimactic, to say the least, when we spent three hours hiking up to the summit of Cadillac Mountain (the first place to see the sunrise in North America) only to find hundreds of cars and all kinds of people in Eddie Bauer v-neck sweaters with iphones strapped to their waist bands milling around. It was so absurd I could only laugh. You might want to stay away from there. The neighboring peak, Dorr Mountain, was much quieter and a better hike. I also has no road to the summit. Acadia is touted as a great place to see from a bicycle, and while there are miles of carriage roads to ride on, you definitely want to stay off the paved roads. Which is sort of depressing to me. It's great, I guess, that you can see so much of the park without ever getting out of your air conditioned Escalade, but what about those of us who don't have an Escalade to protect us. Believe me, if you are incapable of locomotion, I want you to still be able to see the grandeur of our National Parks. I do. However, if you are not incapable of locomotion, I do not want you to run over me while I'm trying to experience the grandeur of our National Parks. Where is the egalitarianism in that? I have not seen any of the big parks out west, although that is one of the things I really want to do in the next couple of years. I'm hoping that they are big enough that you can get away from the masses in their vehicles. Acadia is not that big.
What else? Well, one of my ongoing projects is decluttering. Or uncluttering. Or getting rid of the clutter. There are a number of reasons for this that I might get into at another time but I don't want to get sidetracked right now (imagine that) so just know that this is one of my projects. In that vein, I have been working my way through a giant pile of mostly bicycle racing detritus all summer. Selling what I can on ebay or craigslist and throwing or giving away the rest. One of my chief complaints about bike racing is that in order to compete at a high level these days, you need a ton of stuff. And now, five years after I stopped racing I'm still surrounded by the stuff. But I'm making progress. I've gotten rid of two bicycles this week that were not really that practical and I'm replacing only one, with a truly practical bike that will also help matters by using some of the spare parts that are laying around in my basement. I sold my beloved Orbea cyclocross bike to a gentleman in Austin Texas. When I put that bike together it was one of the finest bikes that money could buy. But a race bike like that is absolutely useless to someone who doesn't race, or someone who isn't an elite racer. So, reluctantly, I let her go. I also got rid of my K2 cyclocross bike that has been my trusty commuter and grocery getter the last few years. That bike was somewhat more practical, but still not really ideal for my purposes. I handed it down the line to a friend who has a minor interest in cyclocross and it will allow him an inexpensive way to try it out. It also, again, gets a bunch of old cyclocross stuff out of my basement. Now, I admit that I still have a soft spot in my heart for cyclocross, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility of jumping into a local race or two at some point, because cyclocross is the people's bike racing, so to speak. I cannot, however, justify having a dedicated cyclocross race bike (or two) that sit(s) in my basement 362 days a year. So I've found what I like to think of as a "gentleman's cyclocross bike" from these folks that I can put fenders and racks on for most of the year and dress up for cross when the time is right. And best of all, I'm still at a net gain, cash-wise, after selling the other two bikes and using leftover parts. Smart right? That's not all though, I've been decluttering my office and bed room as well. Christine was away for the weekend a couple of weeks ago and when she came home and saw the progress I'd made she asked "you're not moving out, are you?" I'm ruthlessly simplifying, finally letting go of a lot of junk that I tend to hold onto forever. I took a tip from the Sweetpea Cycles blog and took digital photos of a bunch of memorabilia and stuff, which I then filed in a folder called "stuff I used to own," and threw the crap away. I also started a huge pile of clothing that I never wear and books that I have either read and have no intention of reading again or didn't read and can no longer kid myself that I'm ever going to read. That hard cover volume of Edgar Rice Burroughs collected work that I got for Christmas in the fifth grade? Gone. Ditto The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes. The Ticket stub from when I saw Snoop Dogg at the Pickle Barrel? digitized. I've also been making strides toward going paperless. I'm getting most of my bills and bank statements electronically now and I bought a new shredder to get rid of a lot of old records. Paper clutter is one of the biggest problems in my office, so if no paper comes in, no clutter, right? Now if I could just get Fidelity Investments to stop sending me about a telephone book worth of unintelligible financial bullshit every week, I'd be all set. I'm sure that information is important to someone, but not anyone that lives at my house. I've been inspired by a number of different blogs whose authors have undertaken "the 100 thing challenge." I don't actually dream of getting down to 100 personal belongings, but it is a thought provoking concept. Although I was born and bred to consume, I have always had an interest in minimalism.
I just finished, as in this morning, a 5k trail running race. And no, I haven't been running. The local recreation department puts on this duathlon, running and mountain biking, and a friend of mine asked me to do the run leg for her because her runner backed out. Of course I said yes and it turned out to be a pretty fun race, at least after the fact. 5k is not really my distance but, interestingly, I ran about as fast a 5k as I ever have, despite the fact that I really don't run anymore. It makes me think that training is for suckers. Tomorrow I probably won't be able to walk, but today I'm a runner.
Finally, I mentioned in a previous post that I had just finished a Kurt Vonnegut Jr. book and one of the things that I took away from that book was a story about Mr. Vonnegut's uncle, a Harvard educated insurance salesman who was somewhat unlucky in his life, who had a habit of saying, whenever some everyday occurrence struck him as particularly nice, "well if this isn't nice, I don't know what is." It could be anything, sitting under a shade tree on a hot day drinking lemonade, for instance, but it struck me as a super way to acknowledge the everyday things that make life worth living, things that we sometimes take for granted. So I've been trying to do that myself. If you hear me say "well if this isn't nice, I don't know what is," you'll know what I'm up to. That's about it for today, thanks for reading.
What else? Well, one of my ongoing projects is decluttering. Or uncluttering. Or getting rid of the clutter. There are a number of reasons for this that I might get into at another time but I don't want to get sidetracked right now (imagine that) so just know that this is one of my projects. In that vein, I have been working my way through a giant pile of mostly bicycle racing detritus all summer. Selling what I can on ebay or craigslist and throwing or giving away the rest. One of my chief complaints about bike racing is that in order to compete at a high level these days, you need a ton of stuff. And now, five years after I stopped racing I'm still surrounded by the stuff. But I'm making progress. I've gotten rid of two bicycles this week that were not really that practical and I'm replacing only one, with a truly practical bike that will also help matters by using some of the spare parts that are laying around in my basement. I sold my beloved Orbea cyclocross bike to a gentleman in Austin Texas. When I put that bike together it was one of the finest bikes that money could buy. But a race bike like that is absolutely useless to someone who doesn't race, or someone who isn't an elite racer. So, reluctantly, I let her go. I also got rid of my K2 cyclocross bike that has been my trusty commuter and grocery getter the last few years. That bike was somewhat more practical, but still not really ideal for my purposes. I handed it down the line to a friend who has a minor interest in cyclocross and it will allow him an inexpensive way to try it out. It also, again, gets a bunch of old cyclocross stuff out of my basement. Now, I admit that I still have a soft spot in my heart for cyclocross, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility of jumping into a local race or two at some point, because cyclocross is the people's bike racing, so to speak. I cannot, however, justify having a dedicated cyclocross race bike (or two) that sit(s) in my basement 362 days a year. So I've found what I like to think of as a "gentleman's cyclocross bike" from these folks that I can put fenders and racks on for most of the year and dress up for cross when the time is right. And best of all, I'm still at a net gain, cash-wise, after selling the other two bikes and using leftover parts. Smart right? That's not all though, I've been decluttering my office and bed room as well. Christine was away for the weekend a couple of weeks ago and when she came home and saw the progress I'd made she asked "you're not moving out, are you?" I'm ruthlessly simplifying, finally letting go of a lot of junk that I tend to hold onto forever. I took a tip from the Sweetpea Cycles blog and took digital photos of a bunch of memorabilia and stuff, which I then filed in a folder called "stuff I used to own," and threw the crap away. I also started a huge pile of clothing that I never wear and books that I have either read and have no intention of reading again or didn't read and can no longer kid myself that I'm ever going to read. That hard cover volume of Edgar Rice Burroughs collected work that I got for Christmas in the fifth grade? Gone. Ditto The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes. The Ticket stub from when I saw Snoop Dogg at the Pickle Barrel? digitized. I've also been making strides toward going paperless. I'm getting most of my bills and bank statements electronically now and I bought a new shredder to get rid of a lot of old records. Paper clutter is one of the biggest problems in my office, so if no paper comes in, no clutter, right? Now if I could just get Fidelity Investments to stop sending me about a telephone book worth of unintelligible financial bullshit every week, I'd be all set. I'm sure that information is important to someone, but not anyone that lives at my house. I've been inspired by a number of different blogs whose authors have undertaken "the 100 thing challenge." I don't actually dream of getting down to 100 personal belongings, but it is a thought provoking concept. Although I was born and bred to consume, I have always had an interest in minimalism.
I just finished, as in this morning, a 5k trail running race. And no, I haven't been running. The local recreation department puts on this duathlon, running and mountain biking, and a friend of mine asked me to do the run leg for her because her runner backed out. Of course I said yes and it turned out to be a pretty fun race, at least after the fact. 5k is not really my distance but, interestingly, I ran about as fast a 5k as I ever have, despite the fact that I really don't run anymore. It makes me think that training is for suckers. Tomorrow I probably won't be able to walk, but today I'm a runner.
Finally, I mentioned in a previous post that I had just finished a Kurt Vonnegut Jr. book and one of the things that I took away from that book was a story about Mr. Vonnegut's uncle, a Harvard educated insurance salesman who was somewhat unlucky in his life, who had a habit of saying, whenever some everyday occurrence struck him as particularly nice, "well if this isn't nice, I don't know what is." It could be anything, sitting under a shade tree on a hot day drinking lemonade, for instance, but it struck me as a super way to acknowledge the everyday things that make life worth living, things that we sometimes take for granted. So I've been trying to do that myself. If you hear me say "well if this isn't nice, I don't know what is," you'll know what I'm up to. That's about it for today, thanks for reading.
Writing, writing, writing
Geez, I've been so busy that I've totally neglected newsfromoutthere, sorry. The thing is, it's going to be harder for me to keep up with this blog as the Winter season progresses. Not that it's winter yet, but the preparations are nearly in full swing. I've also got thewildslide to think about as people start getting excited about skiing around here and the project that has really been demanding a lot of my attention is trying to launch a Basin Sports blog which is here, tentatively. With the departure of Intern Steve from the Basin, most of our marketing and social media stuff has fallen on my plate. I'm kind of glad to have it, honestly, but the problem is that Intern Steve was educated as a web marketing guy and I'm a... carpenter. So that's sort of interesting. The good part is that one of the most important things you can do to increase your business' presence on the web is develop interesting content (that's a marketing term) and if there's one thing I like to do, it's write content. Whether it's interesting or not remains to be seen. I'm trying to put all of the pieces together right now and I'm reading The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott. Turns out I've been doing everything wrong, but what else is new. Anyway, I've got a lot of stuff to write now. In addition to my own facebook, twitter, and two blogs (actually more, but two active ones,) I've now got Basin Sport's twitter, facebook, blog, weekly newsletter, and soon daily snow report. I am also the chief photographer and videographer for Basin Sports, which are two things for which I have no natural aptitude at all. What this means is that I won't have time to do a lot of the fun exciting office work I did last year at the Basin. Shucks! Let me just remind you that I'm a carpenter and that precludes having access to a computer and even a phone most of each day at this time of the year. So many challenges. Another consideration that I'm becoming aware of is that you have to tread carefully in the digital world because once your mistakes become entrenched, they are very difficult to fix. As an example, Basin Sports has had a daily ski report at basinski.com for probably 12 or 13 years and that site gets an unbelievable number of hits every day in the winter. However, the site itself is a dinosaur turd and absolutely useless for e-commerce, so we now have basinshopping.com. But, now we need to migrate all of those people who have had basinski bookmarked forever over to basinshopping in order to boost our search ratings. And although this seems straightforward to me (as a carpenter) several web professionals have told us that they don't exactly know what will happen if we try to do that. Evidently there are mysteries of the interwebs that even professionals don't understand. So I don't want to mess anything up. Then, there is the matter of the ski report. Lots of people read it, as I've said, but the format doesn't work all that great from a marketing perspective. Because the content is replaced everyday, rather than just moved down the line and eventually archived, it doesn't lend itself to being linked to. And that precludes any chance of viral activity (more marketing speak.) So something has to be done about that. And all of this stuff costs money because we do not have anyone on staff that has even a remote idea of how to actually create a web page. Money that I don't really have any access to. I could tell you stories of the colorful characters we have enlisted locally to do our web work, but it would only reflect badly on us for associating with such people. All of this begs the question: is it worth it? Probably not to me. You see, I know it's in my best interest to sell a lot of ski stuff but, strangely, I don't really care. The only thing I hope to get out of it is a job for six or seven months of the year. I like the scale of my life right about where it is. I don't want to be any busier and I don't really want to make any more money either. So as long as my marketing efforts don't cause a decrease in business, I win. But some of these other people that I work with want more and I don't really want to let them down. I guess we'll see how it goes.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Sometimes reality is unpleasant
I'm so glad to see that the President's health care program is finally gaining some traction. There are some problems with the plan, of course, as many of the President's detractors have pointed out, but with something as big as universal health care there are bound to be some issues that need ironing out. We all know, deep down, that something must be done about this awful health care system we've got here. And of course no one wants to think about topics like "death panels" and "forced euthanasia" because these topics are, well, unpleasant. But sometimes we just have to accept that there is unpleasantness in this world that we live in and move on. I mean, sure, even I was disappointed to learn that the President is a left wing fascist, particularly because this fact only recently came to light but, let's not forget, we did elect him and now we owe him some respect. He's our left wing fascist illegitimate illegal immigrant Muslim president and that's what we do in this country, we respect the president even if we don't agree with some of his ideology. If you think about it, killing off our elderly citizens (at the discretion of the fascist government, of course) just makes good economic sense. Socializing health care is going to be expensive - how could we possibly manage to finance the socialized health care of all kinds of medically unsound hangers-on and all of the president's beloved illegal immigrants? We should be happy to bring those illegals under our socialist umbrella anyway. After all, illegals are more economically viable than old folks. Do you go down to the assisted living center looking for help when you need some holes dug in your yard? Hell no, you pick up a couple of Dominican day laborers on the street corner. Again, it all makes perfect economic sense once you get past the squeamishness. You can't fault the President for having a soft spot in his heart for illegals - evidently, he is one. Do we really want a man in the oval office who's unwilling to lend a hand to his own people? That's not what this country is about. And that's why I think it's important that we all band together and help this President pass his health care plan. We've all got to do our part and do what's right for this country, even, unfortunately, if that means being euthanized.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
If I get on the roof am I closer to Buddha?
I love roofing because I hate roofing. Does that make sense? It does to me. Anyone in their proper mind would hate the task of putting an asphalt shingle roof on a building. It's dangerous, brutish, dirty, and painfully tiring. Add in the reality that my knees and lower back aren't what they used to be and that I'm afraid of heights, and you can see why it's not my favorite thing to do. And yet, in a way, I love it because it demands that I pay attention. Roofing demands that I immerse myself in the task at hand. People pay money for that you know. It's truly a zen endeavor because it is at once mindless and mindful. The act of putting shingles on a roof is, for the most part, numbingly mindless. Once the pattern is set, any moron can run wild putting up the courses. Seriously, any moron. Stop by a roofing job and talk to the boys sometime if you don't believe me. And yet, if that moron isn't mindful of the fact that he or she is, somewhat precariously, perched on an elevated, slanted, and sometimes slippery surface, said moron will be collecting workman's compensation in no time. Or worse. It's not like that for everyone though. The people that make it a career tend to be people that can run around on a roof with no regard for the consequences of a slip. And they probably aren't as clumsy as I am either. Go ahead, get up on your roof right now and become one with the universe. Ohhhmmm.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Why do I do it?
There's no denying that penning these pointless posts is therapeutic for me. The question is why writing nothing for no one to read would be therapeutic. I don't exactly have the answer. I might guess that it has something to do with the physical sensation of typing, or banging away at the keyboard, as the case may be. I certainly don't get anything out of writing with pen or pencil on paper, although, of the two, I much prefer the pencil. The lack of friction the ball point pen presents leaves me feeling disconnected and adrift. At any rate, I like to type. It might have to do with my continual amazement that I can type, albeit with many, many errors. In high school I barely passed typing class and the fact that I did pass had nothing to do with my actually having learned to type. I could not, in fact, type a single word at the conclusion of that class. I passed, with a solid D, only because I took pity on poor, frail Mrs. Darwin, my teacher. My classmates harassed her mercilessly for being, I fear, in the early stages of dementia or Alzheimer's. I did not, and so she returned the favor by giving me an undeserved passing grade. Or maybe she didn't have the slightest idea who I was or whether I could type or not, who knows. I didn't attend enough of my classes when I was briefly enrolled in community college to need to type anything, so it wasn't until much later that I gave typing any further thought. When I did eventually decide to learn to type I did it with a computer program called Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. I got it for $9.95 in the bargain bin at Staples and it may well have been the best $9.95 I've ever spent. It wasn't even my $9.95, I submitted it as an office expense to my employer. Mavis Beacon accomplished what poor Mrs. Darwin could not, she taught me to type. And so I do.
Maybe the therapeutic effect has nothing to do with typing. Maybe it's simply that the act of writing anything requires one to be fully engaged in the task at hand. You cannot write, even something as inane as one of my blog posts, and do anything else at the same time. I can't anyway. I'm trying to do it right now and it certainly seems impossible. I just finished reading a book by Kurt Vonnegut, one of my all time favorite authors. In this book he says that the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout (actually Trout is Vonnegut's alter ego and a vehicle for Vonnegut to present some of his wackier ideas) enjoyed writing because "he could tune out the crock of shit being alive was as long as he was scribbling, head down, with a ballpoint pen on a yellow legal pad." Trout tends to be a little succinct. Anyway, writing is a bit like yoga done correctly or meditation in that way. It pulls you into the moment. Most people, myself included, have nothing to write these days other than perhaps a blog post. In the old days I used to occasionally write letters to friends when the mood struck me. You can't do that anymore though, Al Gore put a stop to letter writing when he invented the internet. I don't think the Postal Service delivers letters anymore. They've shifted their business to delivering the glossy catalogs that we use to fill up our recycling bin and also to delivering all of the small items that we purchase on the interweb that we never knew we even needed before we had the interweb. I suppose some people write in a journal, and I wish I could, believe me, but it doesn't work for me. For one thing, no one, not even yours truly, can read my handwriting. So that leaves me here, tapping away at this machine. Sometimes I swear the machine tells lies. But that's okay because I don't really care what I write, it's the writing that I like. And if you think the stuff that you're reading is a little, you know, incoherent, you should see the stuff that's too far out there for me to even post. Wheeee!
Maybe the therapeutic effect has nothing to do with typing. Maybe it's simply that the act of writing anything requires one to be fully engaged in the task at hand. You cannot write, even something as inane as one of my blog posts, and do anything else at the same time. I can't anyway. I'm trying to do it right now and it certainly seems impossible. I just finished reading a book by Kurt Vonnegut, one of my all time favorite authors. In this book he says that the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout (actually Trout is Vonnegut's alter ego and a vehicle for Vonnegut to present some of his wackier ideas) enjoyed writing because "he could tune out the crock of shit being alive was as long as he was scribbling, head down, with a ballpoint pen on a yellow legal pad." Trout tends to be a little succinct. Anyway, writing is a bit like yoga done correctly or meditation in that way. It pulls you into the moment. Most people, myself included, have nothing to write these days other than perhaps a blog post. In the old days I used to occasionally write letters to friends when the mood struck me. You can't do that anymore though, Al Gore put a stop to letter writing when he invented the internet. I don't think the Postal Service delivers letters anymore. They've shifted their business to delivering the glossy catalogs that we use to fill up our recycling bin and also to delivering all of the small items that we purchase on the interweb that we never knew we even needed before we had the interweb. I suppose some people write in a journal, and I wish I could, believe me, but it doesn't work for me. For one thing, no one, not even yours truly, can read my handwriting. So that leaves me here, tapping away at this machine. Sometimes I swear the machine tells lies. But that's okay because I don't really care what I write, it's the writing that I like. And if you think the stuff that you're reading is a little, you know, incoherent, you should see the stuff that's too far out there for me to even post. Wheeee!
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Another way that technology makes life better
Say there was a girl I barely knew in high school (despite the fact that my class had less than 100 students) and I wanted to know A) if there was a test that could determine which character from the movie Grease this girl's personality most resembled and B) which character that might be, where would I look? Or, what if there was another girl from high school I barely knew (I never was very socially able) and I really had to know what kind of weird online games involving farm animals she played all day, every day. Or, what if I wanted to know how an acquaintance of mine handled the walking of his dogs this morning, or the poor service he got at his local coffee shop, or how unhappy he was about recent weather trends, or what he was planning on having for dinner, or some other mundane and totally trivial bit of information about him? What if what I really wanted was to start a virtual food fight with someone I know, or maybe don't really even know, and, you know, hit this person with a cyber hot dog? What if there was one place I could look to for all of these pressing needs? Oh wait, there is, it's called facebook. Wheee!
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Buying A Vest From Someone With A Vested Interest
I've been thinking a lot lately about the hidden, and not so hidden, agendas of organizations that people, consumers like myself, think are looking out for them. I think that it's fairly safe to say that no corporation has your best interest in mind. Unless, possibly, you are a shareholder in said corporation. The government may or may not have your best interest in mind, that one is a little circuitous and depends mainly on whether you get your news from the New York Times or Fox News. But if you think about it, most of the "authorities" that we rely on for guidance are either governmental or corporate. I think that it's also safe to say that you should take any advice given by someone trying to sell you something with a grain of salt. And that goes for magazines or any other media really because they are beholden to their advertisers; mainly large corporations. Don't worry though, News From Out There is completely privately capitalized and accepts no advertising revenue whatsoever. Well that's not quite true, I do get free stuff sometimes, but I won't try to sell you anything here that I don't personally believe in, even if I did get it for free. In fact, anyone who knows me knows that I can't sell anything with a straight face and dry underarms. I'm straying off topic though. What I mean to say is that it's very difficult to get good information anywhere. You really can't even trust scientists anymore, as we've seen with the previous administration. Scientists are sometimes obliged to make conclusions for money as well.
I've been thinking about this topic for a while now but it was just refreshed by a book that I'm reading. The book is Born To Run by Christopher Macdougal. It's about a lot of different things; running in general, ultra distance running, the Tarahumara Indians of Northern Mexico, a white runner named Caballo Blanco (white horse) who wants to be a Tarhumara, and running injuries, to name a few. But one of the big things I'm taking away from the book is that the running shoe industry is probably largely responsible for a whole host of running injuries that plague nearly every runner who ever laces up a shoe. Here's an example: There is this pervasive idea floating around that you absolutely must replace your running shoes every 300 miles or so. Failure to heed this warning will result in running injuries. That means that a typical elite marathoner is going have to replace a $130 pair of shoes every three weeks or so. It seems plausible though, and you literally hear this advice from so many different directions that you don't really know where it comes from and you just heed it as running gospel. But if you stop and think about it, where could it come from, other than running shoe manufacturers or running media, which for all intents and purposes are the same thing. Well, it turns out that worn out running shoes are actually less likely to injure you than new expensive ones. In fact, one study found that the only factor that had any correlation to the likelihood of a runner being injured (for the record, during any given year somewhere between 65% and 80% of all people who consider themselves runners suffer an injury, so the likelihood is high anyway) was dollar amount spent on shoes. That means that the cost of one's shoes was more important than stretching, weight, prior history of injury, talent, distance run, years running, etc. Now, you're probably thinking "of course, buying more expensive and technologically advanced shoes will offer a level of protection." Wrong. The correlation was that runners who spent more than $95 dollars on a pair of shoes were two times more likely to be injured than runners who spent less than $40 dollars on a pair of shoes. Guess how many column inches that study got in Runners World Magazine? I feel like a real dipshit for buying all of those $130 dollar pairs of Asics shoes and throwing them away after two or three months.
It turns out that running shoes probably have too much cushioning for humans to run in them anyway. That's a topic for another time though. What I'm getting at is that for a long time now I've been putting my trust these big athletic shoe companies, assuming that all of the research and fancy acronyms that they are putting into my shoes have been geared toward making a better and safer product for me. Instead, they've been making a better product to liberate my money from me. As for Runners World, well I figured out that they were trying to sell me something in every article a while ago and I stopped listening. Almost all magazines are trying to sell you something and I've stopped buying most of them for that reason. Ever notice how at least 75% of all magazines on the news stand at any given time have a cover story about "flattening your stomach and developing six-pack abs"? Mmm hmmm. I don't know about you but my stomach has not gotten any flatter from any of those god-awful cover stories. Now if somebody could write an article so intense that my abs would get ripped just from reading it, I might buy the magazine. Consider that a challenge fitness writers!
I guess the thing that kind of shocked me into paying attention is that we are all so culturally conditioned to consume that we don't even stop to think where our information is coming from and how that source might taint it's validity. I mean why wouldn't Nike want to give me the best shoe possible that would last a long time and protect me from injury? Umm, because then I wouldn't be susceptible to their future claims that now they really do have if figured out and if I just replace my worn out (in two months) supermachindestructa trainers with this new model, that nagging pain in my illio-tibial band will finally go away. Finally. And in case you were wondering, the Tarahumara Indians have been running great distances, sometimes over 100 miles a day, for centuries. And they don't even have shoes. Screw you Nike.
I've been thinking about this topic for a while now but it was just refreshed by a book that I'm reading. The book is Born To Run by Christopher Macdougal. It's about a lot of different things; running in general, ultra distance running, the Tarahumara Indians of Northern Mexico, a white runner named Caballo Blanco (white horse) who wants to be a Tarhumara, and running injuries, to name a few. But one of the big things I'm taking away from the book is that the running shoe industry is probably largely responsible for a whole host of running injuries that plague nearly every runner who ever laces up a shoe. Here's an example: There is this pervasive idea floating around that you absolutely must replace your running shoes every 300 miles or so. Failure to heed this warning will result in running injuries. That means that a typical elite marathoner is going have to replace a $130 pair of shoes every three weeks or so. It seems plausible though, and you literally hear this advice from so many different directions that you don't really know where it comes from and you just heed it as running gospel. But if you stop and think about it, where could it come from, other than running shoe manufacturers or running media, which for all intents and purposes are the same thing. Well, it turns out that worn out running shoes are actually less likely to injure you than new expensive ones. In fact, one study found that the only factor that had any correlation to the likelihood of a runner being injured (for the record, during any given year somewhere between 65% and 80% of all people who consider themselves runners suffer an injury, so the likelihood is high anyway) was dollar amount spent on shoes. That means that the cost of one's shoes was more important than stretching, weight, prior history of injury, talent, distance run, years running, etc. Now, you're probably thinking "of course, buying more expensive and technologically advanced shoes will offer a level of protection." Wrong. The correlation was that runners who spent more than $95 dollars on a pair of shoes were two times more likely to be injured than runners who spent less than $40 dollars on a pair of shoes. Guess how many column inches that study got in Runners World Magazine? I feel like a real dipshit for buying all of those $130 dollar pairs of Asics shoes and throwing them away after two or three months.
It turns out that running shoes probably have too much cushioning for humans to run in them anyway. That's a topic for another time though. What I'm getting at is that for a long time now I've been putting my trust these big athletic shoe companies, assuming that all of the research and fancy acronyms that they are putting into my shoes have been geared toward making a better and safer product for me. Instead, they've been making a better product to liberate my money from me. As for Runners World, well I figured out that they were trying to sell me something in every article a while ago and I stopped listening. Almost all magazines are trying to sell you something and I've stopped buying most of them for that reason. Ever notice how at least 75% of all magazines on the news stand at any given time have a cover story about "flattening your stomach and developing six-pack abs"? Mmm hmmm. I don't know about you but my stomach has not gotten any flatter from any of those god-awful cover stories. Now if somebody could write an article so intense that my abs would get ripped just from reading it, I might buy the magazine. Consider that a challenge fitness writers!
I guess the thing that kind of shocked me into paying attention is that we are all so culturally conditioned to consume that we don't even stop to think where our information is coming from and how that source might taint it's validity. I mean why wouldn't Nike want to give me the best shoe possible that would last a long time and protect me from injury? Umm, because then I wouldn't be susceptible to their future claims that now they really do have if figured out and if I just replace my worn out (in two months) supermachindestructa trainers with this new model, that nagging pain in my illio-tibial band will finally go away. Finally. And in case you were wondering, the Tarahumara Indians have been running great distances, sometimes over 100 miles a day, for centuries. And they don't even have shoes. Screw you Nike.
Don't Shoot, I Give Up
I think I'm about to run up the white flag. I'm not sure whether I'm surrendering because I'm tired, lazy or scared, but for whatever reason, I think I'm done bike commuting. Maybe it's a combination of all three. I guess I'll probably still ride in once in a while but not every day. I'm sick of the road. I'm fed up with the derision, the ignorance, and the downright malicious intent. I'm tired of the noise and violence of internal combustion as experienced from the shoulder of the road (ironically, my only other option is to embrace internal combustion as a means of transportation.) I'm exhausted from constantly feeling like a target, wondering whether the thunderous roar approaching from behind will be the last sound I ever hear. I'm tired of shuddering with every mention of drivers text messaging behind the wheel. I can't even tell you how tired I am of the fucking brilliant and creative comic geniuses who think it's hilarious to get right alongside a cyclist hurtling downhill on Route 4 and lay on the horn for a good three or four seconds. Good one fellas, that's always a real knee slapper. I'll be honest, I'm a little bit tired of getting up at 4:30 in the morning.I suppose that makes me lazy.
I'm pretty bummed to be relaying all of this. There are so many positives to bike commuting, and if it wasn't for the necessity of riding on Route 4 to get from my home to where I work, I wouldn't be throwing in the towel. I've just felt like I'm playing Russian Roulette every time I've gotten on my bike to ride home lately. It's like jumping out of airplanes. Do it enough times and it will probably kill you. Or, as a wise man once told me, "if you keep going to the barber shop, sooner or later, you're going to get a haircut." The mornings are not quite as bad, probably because there are not as many people driving at 6:00 in the morning as there are at 4:00 in the afternoon. There is, however, a greater likelihood that people driving at 6:00 in the morning are either still drunk from the night before or under-caffeinated, both situations that can lead to bad driving. Luckily, most people, it seems, do not hate cyclists until later in the day. Anyway, it doesn't do me much good to ride to work and then have to find a ride home, although I suppose it's a possibility. If I could move to Killington or work in Rutland, then fine, no problem. It's just that stretch of Route 4 between the two that is totally discouraging me. Heavy traffic, lots of tractor-trailers, varying width of shoulder, dangerous dips, holes, and cracks in the pavement, and stupid people. A recipe for disaster.
Here's what I'm going to miss: filling up my gas tank every two weeks, sometimes three. Commuting to work and getting all the exercise I need all at once. Having a legitimate excuse to buy bike parts, clothing, and other cool stuff. People thinking I'm some kind of superman for riding my bike 12 miles up hill at 6:00 in the morning. Feeling pretty righteous for being part of the solution.
I'm pretty bummed to be relaying all of this. There are so many positives to bike commuting, and if it wasn't for the necessity of riding on Route 4 to get from my home to where I work, I wouldn't be throwing in the towel. I've just felt like I'm playing Russian Roulette every time I've gotten on my bike to ride home lately. It's like jumping out of airplanes. Do it enough times and it will probably kill you. Or, as a wise man once told me, "if you keep going to the barber shop, sooner or later, you're going to get a haircut." The mornings are not quite as bad, probably because there are not as many people driving at 6:00 in the morning as there are at 4:00 in the afternoon. There is, however, a greater likelihood that people driving at 6:00 in the morning are either still drunk from the night before or under-caffeinated, both situations that can lead to bad driving. Luckily, most people, it seems, do not hate cyclists until later in the day. Anyway, it doesn't do me much good to ride to work and then have to find a ride home, although I suppose it's a possibility. If I could move to Killington or work in Rutland, then fine, no problem. It's just that stretch of Route 4 between the two that is totally discouraging me. Heavy traffic, lots of tractor-trailers, varying width of shoulder, dangerous dips, holes, and cracks in the pavement, and stupid people. A recipe for disaster.
Here's what I'm going to miss: filling up my gas tank every two weeks, sometimes three. Commuting to work and getting all the exercise I need all at once. Having a legitimate excuse to buy bike parts, clothing, and other cool stuff. People thinking I'm some kind of superman for riding my bike 12 miles up hill at 6:00 in the morning. Feeling pretty righteous for being part of the solution.
Need Drywall Work? Don't Call Green Mountain
I had a run in with particular drywall company the other day on my bike ride home from work. Green Mountain Drywall, was what the truck said. I didn't get a license plate number because I was fighting for survival, but it was a white pickup truck with green lettering. The driver got right next to me and scared the hell out of me by blasting his horn. I jumped and swerved and almost crashed into him. I was going about 40 mph downhill at the time. I should call the company and complain but I probably won't. I'm more the passive aggressive type. I'll just do everything I can to ruin their business. For years to come. See, I once drove a vehicle with lots of logos on it for a living and I was always conscious of the fact that everything I did in that vehicle reflected on my employer. From a practical standpoint, what this meant, was that I could be fired for driving like an asshole. This bit of information was apparently lost on Mr. drywall taper/hanger guy. The other thing that this genius probably didn't take into account is that the homo in the tight shorts riding his bike on a road clearly meant for motor vehicles only might be a contractor in the building trades. And therein lies the beauty of passive aggression.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Wet Weekend Weather
I had big plans for last weekend. Friday was to be a gift, the best kind of gift, an extra day off. I planned to have Christine drop me off in Middlebury at the Long Trail trailhead on Friday morning and then spend the next three days hiking back to Killington, from where I would either get a ride to Rutland or walk there, depending on the time frame. Christine was away for the weekend on a girls only Saratoga Springs trip anyway. Unfortunately, I pulled the plug on Thursday night because the forecast looked like poop. Probably best that I did because it did rain a lot. In fact Rutland flooded on Friday afternoon. We got 1.2 inches of rain in about 30 minutes. I happened to be driving to the post office at the end of the deluge and had to turn around at the end of my street and backtrack because there was a two foot deep river flowing over the road and water was shooting out of the storm drains like a geyser. Turn around, don't drown is what they always say on the weather channel, so I did. The problem with downtown Rutland is that it sits at the bottom of a hill. When we get a downpour like that it overwhelms the storm sewers, which empty into the actual sewer, and the whole mess ends up crashing through the basements of most of the businesses and restaurants downtown. Which is a problem because the health department gets touch about raw sewage in eateries. This happened last year in June and caused millions of dollars in damage and people said it was a "hundred year storm." My how time flies. If I owned a restaurant on Center street or or Merchants Row, I'd be looking for another line of work right now. Water and mold abatement might be a good line of work to go into, for instance. Anyway, after that took the wind out of my sails, I ended up doing basically nothing for the rest of the weekend. I'm just sort of tired of being outside in the rain at this point. I drove to West Lebanon, NH to buy a book on Saturday. It seems kind of crazy to have to drive 100 miles round trip to buy a book, but short of buying it online, that was my only option. I'm all for supporting the local independent bookseller, it's just that my local independent bookseller doesn't have any damn books. It's really out of character for me to drive so far for so little, I know, but I really had my heart set on a particular book for the rainy weekend. A book who's author was featured on the Daily Show last week by the way. Maybe I'll do a little book review for my next post.
The only other exciting thing that happened all weekend was that my good friend Susie D. hosted a ladies downhill mountain biking clinic at Killington. She planned the whole thing and promoted it herself, as Killington isn't much use for those sorts of things, and she had a very respectable turnout of a dozen girls, despite the questionable weather. Sue is a pro downhill racer herself and a bikie from way back, so she is eminently qualified and of course she has massive enthusiasm, which doesn't hurt. I equate riding a ski lift to bomb down the mountain on a bike with a broken collarbone, myself, but it does look kind of fun, with all of the pads and a long travel bike. I met the ladies for a beer at the Lookout after they were done riding. There was an interesting cross section of ability levels and Sue said that it was a very successful intro for some of the girls. Of course there were a couple of dirt loving rugged girls, the type that might brag about broken bones and such. One girl told me that she had dislocated her elbow on a big drop with a flat landing. I've not heard of that particular injury, but trying to picture it is making me uncomfortable. It's not often that you get to have a conversation at a table of ladies that makes you squeamish. At any rate, Sue is a really effective teacher of mountain bike skills, as Christine can attest, and she is going to host another one of these clinics in September, so if you're an aspiring female downhiller, you'll want to check it out. I'll post the date as soon as I hear, and I'll put it up on the Basin Sports site too. Just do it, what are you afraid of, dislocating an elbow or something?
The only other exciting thing that happened all weekend was that my good friend Susie D. hosted a ladies downhill mountain biking clinic at Killington. She planned the whole thing and promoted it herself, as Killington isn't much use for those sorts of things, and she had a very respectable turnout of a dozen girls, despite the questionable weather. Sue is a pro downhill racer herself and a bikie from way back, so she is eminently qualified and of course she has massive enthusiasm, which doesn't hurt. I equate riding a ski lift to bomb down the mountain on a bike with a broken collarbone, myself, but it does look kind of fun, with all of the pads and a long travel bike. I met the ladies for a beer at the Lookout after they were done riding. There was an interesting cross section of ability levels and Sue said that it was a very successful intro for some of the girls. Of course there were a couple of dirt loving rugged girls, the type that might brag about broken bones and such. One girl told me that she had dislocated her elbow on a big drop with a flat landing. I've not heard of that particular injury, but trying to picture it is making me uncomfortable. It's not often that you get to have a conversation at a table of ladies that makes you squeamish. At any rate, Sue is a really effective teacher of mountain bike skills, as Christine can attest, and she is going to host another one of these clinics in September, so if you're an aspiring female downhiller, you'll want to check it out. I'll post the date as soon as I hear, and I'll put it up on the Basin Sports site too. Just do it, what are you afraid of, dislocating an elbow or something?
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Marketing blahh blahh blahh
I just spent a couple of hours writing descriptions for skis for the Basin Sports Webstore. Some of the text that the vendors come up with is really funny. I try to put a less techy spin on their stuff so it doesn't sound so science-fiction-like. The mad scientists at Atomic, evidently, have engineered TFC Sectors into their new skis for 2010. Some of the skis have six TFC Sectors in the front and only four in the back. It sounds like something you should watch out for when you're making the jump to hyper-space. I think maybe their product managers had a little too much THC technology, if you know what I mean. They also have Nano Technology, which is a valid technology, if you're talking about medical products or space travel, but it sounds funny when you're talking about a ski. I have no idea what nano technology is, other than it relies on very small particles. The good news is that my lack of nano technology knowledge has not affected my skiing at all, so far.
When I was a new hire at Salomon and nobody really knew who I was, I sent a memo to everyone in the office praising the SFP Technology in the new line of skis. At the sales meeting we had been given a huge binder (the French called it an argumentaire)full of product specs and info and it was entirely written by the French product team so the English was pretty funny to begin with. They were always coming up with these acronyms and meaningless words to describe new technologies. Nobody ever read those things, but I was new, so I did. I seized on one particular description where a new race ski was described as having it's mounting point moved forward to create a "shorter front part." This is still hilarious to me. Anyway, I let the US product managers know that, despite certain other shortcomings, SFP technology would elevate Salomon's race skis high above the competition. I wish I still had that email because I remember thinking it was really funny, but I do remember that one line was “thank you Salomon for ushering in an era where all front parts are free to be, well, shorter.” Immediately after I sent it, I was thinking, maybe it wasn't such a smart idea. I had no idea if it was acceptable to make fun of the Franglais in the marketing materials or not. I actually composed the email out of frustration, because at the time our logistics company was just terrible and I had spent the whole morning getting reamed out by dealers for poor product delivery and shipping mistakes. Everyone in the office was on edge too, and I had no idea if anyone had a sense of humor about it or not. About ten minutes after I sent it, though, my phone rang and it was the ski and binding product manager, Ted Wardlaw, and, from what I could decipher through his hysterical laughter, everyone thought it was funny. It really broke the tension for a while, I guess. Unfortunately, everyone knew who I was after that so I had to figure out what my job was and start doing it.
When I was a new hire at Salomon and nobody really knew who I was, I sent a memo to everyone in the office praising the SFP Technology in the new line of skis. At the sales meeting we had been given a huge binder (the French called it an argumentaire)full of product specs and info and it was entirely written by the French product team so the English was pretty funny to begin with. They were always coming up with these acronyms and meaningless words to describe new technologies. Nobody ever read those things, but I was new, so I did. I seized on one particular description where a new race ski was described as having it's mounting point moved forward to create a "shorter front part." This is still hilarious to me. Anyway, I let the US product managers know that, despite certain other shortcomings, SFP technology would elevate Salomon's race skis high above the competition. I wish I still had that email because I remember thinking it was really funny, but I do remember that one line was “thank you Salomon for ushering in an era where all front parts are free to be, well, shorter.” Immediately after I sent it, I was thinking, maybe it wasn't such a smart idea. I had no idea if it was acceptable to make fun of the Franglais in the marketing materials or not. I actually composed the email out of frustration, because at the time our logistics company was just terrible and I had spent the whole morning getting reamed out by dealers for poor product delivery and shipping mistakes. Everyone in the office was on edge too, and I had no idea if anyone had a sense of humor about it or not. About ten minutes after I sent it, though, my phone rang and it was the ski and binding product manager, Ted Wardlaw, and, from what I could decipher through his hysterical laughter, everyone thought it was funny. It really broke the tension for a while, I guess. Unfortunately, everyone knew who I was after that so I had to figure out what my job was and start doing it.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Home sweet... Astro Van
I can't believe how many people live in vans and other types of automobile. Who knew? I'm intrigued by this culture, I want to try it. They call themselves vandwellers and there are organizations of them and this whole sort of fraternal organization. They all link to each others blogs and they all seem to know one another. They all seem to be single though. My question is, if you're a married vandweller, do you share a van, or do each of you get your own van? I haven't figured out how to breach this with Christine yet. I've been trying to convince her of the benefits of living in a yurt for a couple of years now, and this goes a bit beyond that. I've got to proceed with caution. There is one girl who lives in Toyota Prius, so if a van isn't your thing, you know, you can still play along. The girl who lives in the Prius even has a job (in public radio, I believe) in Los Angeles. She just doesn't believe in the traditional housing model that most people unquestioningly buy into. You can't blame her for that can you? One of the more famous vandwellers is a girl who calls herself hobostripper. And yes, she is a stripper, although as I understand it, she mostly does phone sex now. Think of the advantages. No mortgage or rent or at least very minimal mortgage or rent. Want to move? Go ahead. Have a few too many at happy hour, no problem, you're already home. Pain in the ass neighbor? Drive away. It's almost all upside. I could park near wherever I'm working and ride my bike from there. I wouldn't even have to drive the van most of the time. I have slept, quite comfortably, in my Honda Element. It wouldn't be a bad vehicle to live in. Not a ton of storage space, but you could make do. If you only owned as much stuff as you can carry on your bike at one time.
Change is constant
I made some changes to the old blog today. I swapped out the photo, as you can probably see. I loved that no crampons on the porch photo, but not everyone got it. So this one is more universal, you might say. I don't have any decent photo editing software so I've been using an online editor called fotoflexer to resize and add text to my blog photos. It works pretty well. I'm actually trying to use free and alternative software as much as possible as kind of an experiment. I don't even have microsoft office on my computer currently. I'm a rebel like that. But that's a topic for another time. The other change I made is that I added twitter updates. So now when I'm bored, riding around in the truck with Ed, I can send updates from my phone. That should be exciting for both of the people that read this thing. And, oh yeah, this is kind of embarrassing, but I made a setting change that should make it much easier to leave comments. I didn't realize that I had that power. It would have been nice to have comments when I was on my trip and people were actually reading and wanting to comment. Oh well, live and learn. So leave a comment.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Is It Considered Adultery If The Other Woman Is A Bicycle?
I got reacquainted with an old flame today. No, not a woman, I'm talking about a bike. A bike that I was once really in love with, a bike that I took for granted, a bike that ended up hanging in the rafters of my attic for a few years, totally ignored. I never forgot about that bike though, I would think of it (her?) from time to time, think about how she was languishing up there, not doing me or anyone else any good. It was shameful, I know, but I was busy and I had other bikes vying for my attention. Newer, lighter, dare I say, faster bikes. I was into that kind of thing back then. Always looking for an edge over my competition. But lately I've felt different. I don't want newer or faster bikes anymore. I want more substance in my bike these days. And that old Marinoni fits the bill. I built the frame up a week or so ago with stuff that was on the last race bike I had. That last race bike was on borrowed time for sure. I'm not knocking it, it was once the finest racing bicycle that the Czech Republic could produce. But that was five years ago and I was starting to hear strange sounds emanating from the joints of the thing. Sometimes my mind would wander on a fast descent and I would imagine I felt the rear triangle separating from the rest of the bike. Those of you who are unfamiliar with bicycles might not know it, but if that were to happen, it would be, at the very least, painful. Think of sticking to your sheets for weeks with oozing road rash on 75% of your body. I'm really hoping that I've turned the corner and the oozing road rash days are behind me. Anyway, I found myself not wanting to ride that Czech bike and not having another road bike (as opposed to a mountain, touring, singlespeed, or commuting bike) to ride. Except for that old Marinoni.
When I first started riding and racing road bikes, everyone who was anyone rode a steel frame. Preferably a custom sized and built steel frame. And that is exactly what my trusty Marinoni is. Custom built to my specifications. A 55cm top tube and an extra long head tube to help iron out the differences between my long legs and short torso without looking goofy. The bike I mean, I look goofy anyway. Painted British racing green with a fade to silver. A wacky internal headset that I let the rep talk me into and have kind of regretted ever since. But it was a custom, mine all mine. I raced that Marinoni for only about one season. Steel fell out of fashion with racers. First it was aluminum, then aluminum and carbon composite, now all carbon fiber. Oh, and titanium, which was what initially took the wind from the Marinoni's sails. “Steel is real,” claimed the die hard retro-grouches. “Steel is real... heavy,” replied the techno-dweebs. I took the bait.
Things are different now. I don't care about weight so much anymore. I want to ride a bike that was built by someone who loves bicycles, not by a wage slave in a factory. I want a bike that I can ride for years and not worry about whether or not the glue will fail (seriously, my last bike was glued together.) That's the problem with mass produced bikes these days: most of them are disposable. Not steel though. Steel has legendar fatigue resistance. Steel frames rarely fail and when they do, they do so in a predictable manner, slowly and not all at once on a fast descent. They may not be the lightest bikes on the market but, in my opinion, they are the prettiest. So I restored the old Marinoni to it's original splendor and took it out for a nice long hilly ride. It just felt so right. These fancy carbon fiber blaahh blaahh blaaah bikes that everyone rides today, they're all the same. Even the old Italian builders are turning out cookie cutter carbon frames now because that's what the cycling magazines and product managers are telling people to buy. I'm not buying it. Not again. I want a genuine human being to build my bike, and build it the way I want it. And build it out of good old long lasting steel. Oh wait, I already have a bike like that. I guess I'm all set.
When I first started riding and racing road bikes, everyone who was anyone rode a steel frame. Preferably a custom sized and built steel frame. And that is exactly what my trusty Marinoni is. Custom built to my specifications. A 55cm top tube and an extra long head tube to help iron out the differences between my long legs and short torso without looking goofy. The bike I mean, I look goofy anyway. Painted British racing green with a fade to silver. A wacky internal headset that I let the rep talk me into and have kind of regretted ever since. But it was a custom, mine all mine. I raced that Marinoni for only about one season. Steel fell out of fashion with racers. First it was aluminum, then aluminum and carbon composite, now all carbon fiber. Oh, and titanium, which was what initially took the wind from the Marinoni's sails. “Steel is real,” claimed the die hard retro-grouches. “Steel is real... heavy,” replied the techno-dweebs. I took the bait.
Things are different now. I don't care about weight so much anymore. I want to ride a bike that was built by someone who loves bicycles, not by a wage slave in a factory. I want a bike that I can ride for years and not worry about whether or not the glue will fail (seriously, my last bike was glued together.) That's the problem with mass produced bikes these days: most of them are disposable. Not steel though. Steel has legendar fatigue resistance. Steel frames rarely fail and when they do, they do so in a predictable manner, slowly and not all at once on a fast descent. They may not be the lightest bikes on the market but, in my opinion, they are the prettiest. So I restored the old Marinoni to it's original splendor and took it out for a nice long hilly ride. It just felt so right. These fancy carbon fiber blaahh blaahh blaaah bikes that everyone rides today, they're all the same. Even the old Italian builders are turning out cookie cutter carbon frames now because that's what the cycling magazines and product managers are telling people to buy. I'm not buying it. Not again. I want a genuine human being to build my bike, and build it the way I want it. And build it out of good old long lasting steel. Oh wait, I already have a bike like that. I guess I'm all set.
Relaxing On The Water
I took my kayak out yesterday for the first time all summer. Not that I'm a really prolific paddler or anything, but this summer has featured such bad weather that it never occurred to me to take the thing out until yesterday. Unfortunately, every other person in Rutland county decided yesterday would be a great day to go to Chittenden reservoir also, but I knew that would be the case. The remarkable thing though, was that as I was paddling around for a few hours, soaking up the sun and just generally enjoying the whole experience, I realized how relaxed I was. A deep relaxation of the sort that I rarely experience unless I'm locked away at a yoga retreat or something. And it occurred to me that the biggest reason for the relaxation was that no automobiles were whizzing by me, inches away. It seems that I spend a great deal of my leisure time riding my bicycle on roads that are also inhabited by cars, and I don't realize how stressful that is until I get away from them. I may have to re-evaluate how I spend my free time.
living like you're not going to get another chance
I've been reading a lot of blogs lately about voluntary simplicity. Incidentally, I came to these blogs initially through my research of bicycle touring in the US, mainly through adventuresinvoluntary simplicity.blogspot.com. You should check it out and follow some of the links, but only if you have a bunch of time to kill because I can't seem to get much else done now that I have all of these blogs to follow. Anyway, voluntary simplicity, in a nutshell is about downsizing your lifestyle, your footprint, if you will, not because you lost fifty percent of your net worth in the housing bubble implosion, but because, for one reason or another, you think it's the right thing to do. In case you are wondering, I think it is the right thing to do. I may go into my reasoning for that at a later time but that is not what I have on my mind today. What I have on my mind today is a recurring thread in all of these blogs. The catastrophic reminder of how short and fragile life is.
One thing I've noticed about all of these writers writing these blogs, other than the fact that a lot of them live in vans (not all of them live “down by the river,” though) is that some awful occurrence caused them to simplify their lives. Often it was the death of a loved one, sometimes a significant other, other times a parent, occasionally just an acquaintance. This usually lead to a revelation of, “what if today was my last day, would I be happy with where I am?” Evidently the answer was mostly “no.” Not all of them came to this realization through death, though. Jack from Adventures in Voluntary Simplicity, for instance, woke up one morning and realized that he was an asshole. It could be anything, failure of a business, dissolution of a marriage, loss of a job. Anything that causes one to take stock of one's situation. Which is an interesting phenomena in itself, the fact that most of us are so busy going through the daily motions that we never have time to wonder why we go through those motions until some calamity give us pause for long enough to think about it. It makes me think that maybe we should periodically review these things, even if nothing awful has happened to us, and make sure that the path that we are on is a good one.
Steve Jobs said it pretty well when he said that he likes to look in the mirror every morning and ask himself “if I only had a short time to live, would I spend time doing what I'm about to do today?” If the answer is no for enough days in a row, then he knows he has to change something. Sometimes the change he makes involves cheating the organ transplant system, but that's beside the point. The point is, he asks that question. Everyday. I'm joking about the organ transplant thing, I have no idea what went down with that and I certainly don't begrudge anyone a working liver. There are the shareholders to think about too. I mean, really, the guy was obligated to keep himself alive for the sake of the shareholders, right? Oh-oh, I feel myself being pulled into a rant here... must resist... whew! I'm okay now, sorry about that. Anyway, I gotta go look in the mirror and ask myself some heady questions.
One thing I've noticed about all of these writers writing these blogs, other than the fact that a lot of them live in vans (not all of them live “down by the river,” though) is that some awful occurrence caused them to simplify their lives. Often it was the death of a loved one, sometimes a significant other, other times a parent, occasionally just an acquaintance. This usually lead to a revelation of, “what if today was my last day, would I be happy with where I am?” Evidently the answer was mostly “no.” Not all of them came to this realization through death, though. Jack from Adventures in Voluntary Simplicity, for instance, woke up one morning and realized that he was an asshole. It could be anything, failure of a business, dissolution of a marriage, loss of a job. Anything that causes one to take stock of one's situation. Which is an interesting phenomena in itself, the fact that most of us are so busy going through the daily motions that we never have time to wonder why we go through those motions until some calamity give us pause for long enough to think about it. It makes me think that maybe we should periodically review these things, even if nothing awful has happened to us, and make sure that the path that we are on is a good one.
Steve Jobs said it pretty well when he said that he likes to look in the mirror every morning and ask himself “if I only had a short time to live, would I spend time doing what I'm about to do today?” If the answer is no for enough days in a row, then he knows he has to change something. Sometimes the change he makes involves cheating the organ transplant system, but that's beside the point. The point is, he asks that question. Everyday. I'm joking about the organ transplant thing, I have no idea what went down with that and I certainly don't begrudge anyone a working liver. There are the shareholders to think about too. I mean, really, the guy was obligated to keep himself alive for the sake of the shareholders, right? Oh-oh, I feel myself being pulled into a rant here... must resist... whew! I'm okay now, sorry about that. Anyway, I gotta go look in the mirror and ask myself some heady questions.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Here Comes The Bride
Ben got married this past weekend. It came as a bit of a surprise to a lot of people. Not his Mom, though, she said she always expected it. It caught me a bit off balance, I have to say. Anyway, it was a beautiful wedding, as weddings in the rolling farm country of Connecticut are wont to be, and the day was one of the few warm sunny days of this cold and wet New England summer. There were the usual wedding things: a touch of drama, a touch of drunkenness, really good looking groomsmen, flamingos, people dancing with no regard for the fact that they might be caught on film, and catching up with people that you never seem to have enough time to catch up with. We finally finished off that awful half gallon of Old Smuggler Scotch that was opened at my wedding and ceremoniously consumed, swig by nauseating swig, at every subsequent wedding. Good riddance to that vile stuff. I got to know Ben's wife, Shannon, a little bit better. You done good Ben. I just wish that Ben and Shannon didn't live so far away. It would take me at least 60 days to ride my bike for a visit.
Speaking of Efficiency
I read today, in an article about heat illness in runners, that human muscles are actually shockingly inefficient. Evidently, 75% of the energy used by your muscles goes to producing heat, leaving only 25% for accomplishing whatever task you are supposed to be working on (mixing concrete by hand for deck footings, say, or riding your bike to a foreign land like Michigan.) Maybe I am stupid after all, advocating for human powered transport. Oh well, I've done lots of things more stupid than that.
Title and Registration
I got the title for my car in the mail today. I think this is the first time I've ever had that pleasure, the pleasure of paying off a car loan. I had a loan for a car once before, when I was about 18, I think, but that was a personal loan and I don't think the title was held. Anyway, it feels good to have finally paid the thing off. I feel kind of, well, validated. Five years ago I walked into a car dealership, drove away in a new car with no trade-in and no money down, became a slave to the American Honda Finance Corporation for five years, and survived to come out the other side. That makes me a good American, right? Isn't that what productive members of our little society do? The crazy thing is that, at the time, I didn't even have any demonstrable income, but they gave me the keys anyway. I feel good about it, I really do. The trouble is, I never want to do it again. People keep saying, “cool, now that your car's paid off, what are you going to get next?” Nothing. I'm going to drive this car, which I own now, until I have to pay somebody to come take it out of my driveway or pick it up on the side of the road (just like every other car I've ever owned.) As much as I like my car, and as much as I enjoy having reliable transportation, I just haven't ever felt that great about paying $25,000 for something that's only worth $10,000 dollars by the time I finally own it. Or less. This is one of the main reasons I had to leave Michigan at a young age. I didn't get the whole car thing and it made me an outsider. I tried, for a while, to really care about cars (pickup trucks, actually) so I could fit in and, you know, get a girlfriend. It just never worked out though. My heart wasn't in it. So I packed up that alarmingly unreliable Chevy S10 that I had purchased with a personal loan of, I believe, $2000 dollars and headed for VT. All in all, I've done fairly well. I don't think I've ever paid more than $2500 dollars for any vehicle other than the one I have now. One of the best cars I ever had was a Toyota Tercel that I got for $400. I had a stretch where I didn't have a car at all and, though it was kind of inconvenient, I managed to survive. I also had a five year stint where I had the use of a vehicle provided by my employer and did not personally own a car. That was probably the best arrangement possible. I've owned easily twice as many bicycles as I have cars and most of my adult life I've owned at least one bicycle that was worth more than my car. I guess it all depends on the metrics you choose to measure with. In my mind, I've done far better than most of my peers. Hell, I even got a sane and rational woman to marry me, despite the fact that I didn't own a car at the time.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
I'm Simply Remembering My Favorite Things
When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad... I know, I know, that's terrible. These are some of my favorite things, especially when I'm riding great distances on my bicycle.
Cycling cap: A very underrated piece of equipment. Riding in the rain without a cycling cap is just awful. You see, what happens is the rain and spray move through your helmet vents and rinse the salt and whatever else you have on your head (not nice things, usually) down into your eyes and mouth. Now if you have one of these dapper little caps on, the visor directs the water elsewhere and saves you having to taste your own sweat all day. It also keeps the spray coming off of your partners wheel out of your eyes. Best of all, you can wear it off the bike for that jaunty European look. Or maybe you look like a long lost member of the Village People but, whatever, if you're bike touring you are obviously not too concerned about appearances.
Nuun: I've mentioned this hydration product before, but I'm really loving this stuff right now. Simple and easy to work with, no mess, no sugar or, gasp, corn syrup. Just some electrolytes and a subtle flavor to keep you reaching for the water bottle. I'm honestly not sure that it has any performance advantage over plain water for most people but just the fact that I tend to drink more fluid if the fluid has some flavor, especially when the water is from a dubious source, clinches the deal for me. If only my local bike shop carried it...
Brooks B17 saddle: Not only does this saddle look really cool and give your touring bike instant street cred, the thing is also super comfy. One problem with any all-leather saddle, however, is that if it gets soaked, it feels like you're riding on a slab of bacon. It also tends to get all stretched out and saggy if you ride it wet. In the future I'll get a Brooks waterproof cover for it to prevent the saggy bacon feeling. I didn't really know how comfortable the thing was until I got home and rode on some of my other saddles. Ouch.
Ortlieb Panniers: Easy to put on and take off, secure and worry free while riding, and utterly waterproof. That's all you need to know.
Thermarest sleeping pads: These self inflating pads are the only way to get a restful night of sleep when you're sleeping on the ground. I'll never attempt to sleep on a foam pad again. Marc had an REI branded one that was essentially identical to my Thermarest, and it worked just as well. Whatever you call it, a 1.5 inch self inflating pad is required gear for sleeping outside. You might want to throw in a repair kit too, though, because if the thing sprung a leak, you would be bumming. Neither of ours did, however.
Lithium batteries: I used lithium AA/AAA batteries in my camera and headlamp and anything else that used batteries. They cost about twice as much as regular alkaline batteries but they last forever (up to three times as long as alkaline) so you don't have to mess around with spares. I started using them in my camera for backcountry skiing because they have much better cold weather performance than alkalines and I couldn't believe how long they lasted. As an added bonus, they are much lighter than alkaline or rechargeable batteries. I'm not sure what the environmental consequences are though.
Defeet socks: These socks are indestructible. Get yourself two pairs of them and you're set for about ten years or so. Smartwool socks are good too, but not as cycling specific. Make sure you like the color of your defeet socks a lot though because you'll have them longer than any color trend will last. I have some with purple cuffs from about fifteen years ago that I don't really want to wear anymore, though they're still in fine shape.
Keen Commuter sandals: This is a cycling specific sandal from footwear innovator Keen. They have a relatively stiff midsole that can accept an SPD style pedal cleat. Although they are strappy and airy like sandals, they actually have a closed toe area, which I really like. Something about cycling with open toe shoes scares me a little. One nice thing about the Keens is that the metal cleat is well recessed in the sole so that when you are walking into a store or cafe on a hard floor you don't sound like you're wearing tap shoes. You don't scratch up the floor either, which will allow you to make new friends a lot easier. They are perfect for touring because they function very nicely as a comfortable off the bike shoe. A lot of people seemed concerned that they would not keep water out while riding in the rain. Well, duh, of course they won't, they're sandals. The thing is, any shoe will get filled with water when you ride in the rain. At least with a sandal, the water will run out and they'll dry fast if it ever stops raining. You will get weird tan lines though if you don't wear socks. Another thing people kept asking me was if they were stiff enough for efficient cycling. Stiffness in cycling shoes is highly coveted by racers and a marketing professionals. Unless you are either of those things, don't worry about it, it isn't that important.
Surly Long Haul Trucker: I do not think a better value exists in the bicycle industry. This thing is a bomb-proof and legitimate touring bike that retails for around $1200 complete. And the build on the complete bike is good enough that all you have to do to ride the thing across the country is put some pedals on it, add some racks, and maybe change the saddle to your favorite model. It's sturdy, handles superbly loaded or unloaded, has immense tire and fender clearance, has thoughtful details including all necessary braze-ons (even a spare spoke braze-on - so trick,) and sports a thick and protective powder coat finish. What more can you ask for? Well, I'll admit, it isn't my dream bike. I think if I could have any touring bike in the world, it would probably be the Rivendell Atlantis. Or possibly the CoMotion Americano, but those are both hand built bikes that would set you back a good three or four times as much as my trusty Surly. Surly is a good company too, and I'm happy to support them. They make a lot of truly useful bikes that aren't economically feasible to produce and they manage to make a go of it. Buy a Surly, it'll treat you right.
REI Qurterdome tent: Marc bought this tent specifically for this trip and I have to give it two thumbs up. For a tent that weighs under four pounds, you can't do better (or less expensive at $269) than this tent. We slept dry and comfy through some seriously hard rain in this thing, and considering the size and weight, it seemed to provide enough room for the two of us. One really nice feature that not many, or maybe any, tents in this weight range have is two vestibule covered entry doors. When you're sleeping in a two man tent with a person that you are not married to, you want your own door, trust me on this. There were only two things that could be improved on this tent and, honestly, they probably could not be improved at this weight, which is a primary consideration when touring. One, the all mesh canopy, while great for the extreme ventilation it provided, made the tent impossible to set up in the rain without getting a bunch of water inside the tent. Two, there was very little gear storage area, even considering the two vestibules. This isn't that big of a problem though because if you're gear isn't pretty waterproof on the bike anyway, you've got bigger problems. So, all things considered, I highly recommend this tent.
Clothesline: Simple but so nice to have. We got so that one of the first things we would do when setting up camp was find a spot for the clothesline. That way we could utilize whatever dry sunny air we had left to start drying and de-funking our riding gear. And also dry anything that hadn't fully dried from the night before. When you are traveling with limited clothing you have to do a little laundry almost every day, so you are always drying something. And then there are the times that all of your stuff gets covered in egg because your eggs broke all over the inside of your panniers. And the times when you've been riding for six hours in the rain and most of your stuff is a little wet. And the smell that comes from inside your sleeping bag when you've been sleeping in it for days and days and stuffing it slightly damp every morning. You get the idea. Here's another tip, Marc had some of those little spring binder paperclips with him and they are handy for lots of things, but they make great clothes pins for when the wind comes up and starts blowing all of your laundry all over campsite. Over and over and over again until you start swearing. Yeah, I bought some of those paper clips as soon as I got home.
That's all I can think of right now. I'm sure I'm forgetting something but I can always post the addendum later. Now, grow our economy by going out and buying all of these things, even if you have no intention of bike touring. Seriously, how are we going to get out of this economic downturn unless we all buy more stuff we don't need?
Cycling cap: A very underrated piece of equipment. Riding in the rain without a cycling cap is just awful. You see, what happens is the rain and spray move through your helmet vents and rinse the salt and whatever else you have on your head (not nice things, usually) down into your eyes and mouth. Now if you have one of these dapper little caps on, the visor directs the water elsewhere and saves you having to taste your own sweat all day. It also keeps the spray coming off of your partners wheel out of your eyes. Best of all, you can wear it off the bike for that jaunty European look. Or maybe you look like a long lost member of the Village People but, whatever, if you're bike touring you are obviously not too concerned about appearances.
Nuun: I've mentioned this hydration product before, but I'm really loving this stuff right now. Simple and easy to work with, no mess, no sugar or, gasp, corn syrup. Just some electrolytes and a subtle flavor to keep you reaching for the water bottle. I'm honestly not sure that it has any performance advantage over plain water for most people but just the fact that I tend to drink more fluid if the fluid has some flavor, especially when the water is from a dubious source, clinches the deal for me. If only my local bike shop carried it...
Brooks B17 saddle: Not only does this saddle look really cool and give your touring bike instant street cred, the thing is also super comfy. One problem with any all-leather saddle, however, is that if it gets soaked, it feels like you're riding on a slab of bacon. It also tends to get all stretched out and saggy if you ride it wet. In the future I'll get a Brooks waterproof cover for it to prevent the saggy bacon feeling. I didn't really know how comfortable the thing was until I got home and rode on some of my other saddles. Ouch.
Ortlieb Panniers: Easy to put on and take off, secure and worry free while riding, and utterly waterproof. That's all you need to know.
Thermarest sleeping pads: These self inflating pads are the only way to get a restful night of sleep when you're sleeping on the ground. I'll never attempt to sleep on a foam pad again. Marc had an REI branded one that was essentially identical to my Thermarest, and it worked just as well. Whatever you call it, a 1.5 inch self inflating pad is required gear for sleeping outside. You might want to throw in a repair kit too, though, because if the thing sprung a leak, you would be bumming. Neither of ours did, however.
Lithium batteries: I used lithium AA/AAA batteries in my camera and headlamp and anything else that used batteries. They cost about twice as much as regular alkaline batteries but they last forever (up to three times as long as alkaline) so you don't have to mess around with spares. I started using them in my camera for backcountry skiing because they have much better cold weather performance than alkalines and I couldn't believe how long they lasted. As an added bonus, they are much lighter than alkaline or rechargeable batteries. I'm not sure what the environmental consequences are though.
Defeet socks: These socks are indestructible. Get yourself two pairs of them and you're set for about ten years or so. Smartwool socks are good too, but not as cycling specific. Make sure you like the color of your defeet socks a lot though because you'll have them longer than any color trend will last. I have some with purple cuffs from about fifteen years ago that I don't really want to wear anymore, though they're still in fine shape.
Keen Commuter sandals: This is a cycling specific sandal from footwear innovator Keen. They have a relatively stiff midsole that can accept an SPD style pedal cleat. Although they are strappy and airy like sandals, they actually have a closed toe area, which I really like. Something about cycling with open toe shoes scares me a little. One nice thing about the Keens is that the metal cleat is well recessed in the sole so that when you are walking into a store or cafe on a hard floor you don't sound like you're wearing tap shoes. You don't scratch up the floor either, which will allow you to make new friends a lot easier. They are perfect for touring because they function very nicely as a comfortable off the bike shoe. A lot of people seemed concerned that they would not keep water out while riding in the rain. Well, duh, of course they won't, they're sandals. The thing is, any shoe will get filled with water when you ride in the rain. At least with a sandal, the water will run out and they'll dry fast if it ever stops raining. You will get weird tan lines though if you don't wear socks. Another thing people kept asking me was if they were stiff enough for efficient cycling. Stiffness in cycling shoes is highly coveted by racers and a marketing professionals. Unless you are either of those things, don't worry about it, it isn't that important.
Surly Long Haul Trucker: I do not think a better value exists in the bicycle industry. This thing is a bomb-proof and legitimate touring bike that retails for around $1200 complete. And the build on the complete bike is good enough that all you have to do to ride the thing across the country is put some pedals on it, add some racks, and maybe change the saddle to your favorite model. It's sturdy, handles superbly loaded or unloaded, has immense tire and fender clearance, has thoughtful details including all necessary braze-ons (even a spare spoke braze-on - so trick,) and sports a thick and protective powder coat finish. What more can you ask for? Well, I'll admit, it isn't my dream bike. I think if I could have any touring bike in the world, it would probably be the Rivendell Atlantis. Or possibly the CoMotion Americano, but those are both hand built bikes that would set you back a good three or four times as much as my trusty Surly. Surly is a good company too, and I'm happy to support them. They make a lot of truly useful bikes that aren't economically feasible to produce and they manage to make a go of it. Buy a Surly, it'll treat you right.
REI Qurterdome tent: Marc bought this tent specifically for this trip and I have to give it two thumbs up. For a tent that weighs under four pounds, you can't do better (or less expensive at $269) than this tent. We slept dry and comfy through some seriously hard rain in this thing, and considering the size and weight, it seemed to provide enough room for the two of us. One really nice feature that not many, or maybe any, tents in this weight range have is two vestibule covered entry doors. When you're sleeping in a two man tent with a person that you are not married to, you want your own door, trust me on this. There were only two things that could be improved on this tent and, honestly, they probably could not be improved at this weight, which is a primary consideration when touring. One, the all mesh canopy, while great for the extreme ventilation it provided, made the tent impossible to set up in the rain without getting a bunch of water inside the tent. Two, there was very little gear storage area, even considering the two vestibules. This isn't that big of a problem though because if you're gear isn't pretty waterproof on the bike anyway, you've got bigger problems. So, all things considered, I highly recommend this tent.
Clothesline: Simple but so nice to have. We got so that one of the first things we would do when setting up camp was find a spot for the clothesline. That way we could utilize whatever dry sunny air we had left to start drying and de-funking our riding gear. And also dry anything that hadn't fully dried from the night before. When you are traveling with limited clothing you have to do a little laundry almost every day, so you are always drying something. And then there are the times that all of your stuff gets covered in egg because your eggs broke all over the inside of your panniers. And the times when you've been riding for six hours in the rain and most of your stuff is a little wet. And the smell that comes from inside your sleeping bag when you've been sleeping in it for days and days and stuffing it slightly damp every morning. You get the idea. Here's another tip, Marc had some of those little spring binder paperclips with him and they are handy for lots of things, but they make great clothes pins for when the wind comes up and starts blowing all of your laundry all over campsite. Over and over and over again until you start swearing. Yeah, I bought some of those paper clips as soon as I got home.
That's all I can think of right now. I'm sure I'm forgetting something but I can always post the addendum later. Now, grow our economy by going out and buying all of these things, even if you have no intention of bike touring. Seriously, how are we going to get out of this economic downturn unless we all buy more stuff we don't need?
True Dat
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction."
E.F. Schumacher
I don't know who this Schumacher is but I think I'm going to find out. Evidently he's an economist and I can't recall anything like that coming from any other economist. Go Schumacher!
E.F. Schumacher
I don't know who this Schumacher is but I think I'm going to find out. Evidently he's an economist and I can't recall anything like that coming from any other economist. Go Schumacher!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
5% Seems Like a Pretty Good Deal
I just found another really cool statistic about cars. 95% of the energy an automobile uses goes toward moving the vehicle itself. Only 5% goes toward moving the passengers or other cargo. That doesn't seem very efficient to me. Again, I'm no economist or mathematician or anything but, you know, it seems like we could do better.
Time and Space
I mentioned in my last post that I learned some things about time and space on my trip. I wasn't referring to physics there, exactly, I was referring to the space that exists outside my front door (as noted in the title of my blog) and the time it could take one to see or traverse that space. I really got to thinking about it the day that Cleveland fireman told us that he and his wife had driven nearly 300 miles north to Frankenmuth Michigan (inexplicably, to visit a Christmas decoration store and a family style roast chicken restaurant, but that's beside the point) in about five hours. As I was digesting this piece of information it occurred to me that it was going to take Marc and I five days to travel that distance. And neither of us had even a remote interest in Christmas decorations or that particular roast chicken restaurant, although at the time we could have eaten a pile of roast chicken, no doubt. Time and Space. I thought about it again the first time I rode in an automobile after the trip. I was in the passenger seat of my Dad's car, headed to a grocery store, and the whole time I was thinking, "dear God, why are we going so fast? We'll surely be killed!" Of course, we weren't really going that fast, just a lot faster than the 18 miles per hour, or so, top speed that Marc and I had been traveling for the previous two weeks. Marc relayed a similar story, saying that the first time he had driven a car after the trip he had been surprised at how quickly a following car had come up behind him and annoyed that the car was impatiently tailgating him, until he realized that he was driving 25 miles per hour. And he didn't want to go any faster. All of this made me think about how unnatural it is to always be traveling at 60 or 70 miles per hour; inhuman almost. Even the bike is unnatural, considering that without some kind of machine beneath us we humans can't really hope to go much faster than 15 miles per hour and then only for a short distance. Maybe we should slow down a little. I gave the issue even further contemplation on the car ride home to Vermont. Granted, the drive was along a much more direct route, but the fact remains that we traversed the same space, from Freeland Michigan to Rutland Vermont. In the car it took just about exactly 12 hours. On a bike it took 14 days and caused a lot of people to ask, with varying degrees of seriousness, "are you crazy?" Well, not really, when you consider that for most of human history, traveling 1000 miles in fourteen days would be considered awfully fast. Maybe even dangerously fast. If you ask me, covering 700 miles in 12 hours is a lot crazier. Think about it from an animal perspective (we are animals, after all, despite our affinity for fancy flatware and high thread count sheets.) What would your dog or cat be more comfortable with; being sealed in a steel capsule rocketing through the air for 12 hours, or loping along on the ground, nosing out new curiosities and sleeping under the stars? Actually, domesticated animals might not be the best examples, some of them are almost as used to being in motor vehicles as we are. But you get the point. Traveling at human speed is less crazy than internal combustion. Time and Space. You know what else is different about traveling by bicycle? It's a lot harder to do more than one thing at a time. Which is a positive thing. I think we all need to re-learn how to nothing. When was the last time you sat still and did nothing (other than the last ten minutes of a yoga class, although that's a good start.) It's quite a stretch to think about doing nothing if you're always doing at least two things at a time. Think about it, you're driving and talking on the phone; you're eating breakfast and reading the paper and listening to the Weather Channel; you're checking your voice mail and email simultaneously. Wouldn't it be nice to find the time (and space) to do nothing?
Saturday, August 1, 2009
If Not Now, When?
I learned a bunch of things by riding my bike a quarter of the way across this gigantic continent of ours (actually, it was further than a quarter but only because of the circuitous route we took, so I'm still calling it a quarter.) I learned a few things about the people that inhabit the spaces between here and there, I learned some things about the infrastructure that we have for traveling from here to there, I learned some things about time and space, and I learned a whole bunch of things about one particular citizen of these United States. That would be myself of course. I'll get to all of that eventually but today I want to focus on that infrastructure bit. As you probably know, we have an incredible array of roads and highways in this country, most of them in fantastic condition. I have done only a tiny little bit of traveling abroad myself but Marc has traveled widely and deeply, often in parts of the world that are still in juvenile phases of development. This caused him to comment on the state of our roads, how beautifully maintained they are, how numerous they are, how many options we have for getting from, say, Rutland VT to Freeland MI. The little bit of traveling I've done in the developing parts of the world, like Maine and Costa Rica, has taught me to be mindful, even thankful, for roads that go in a relatively direct fashion from point A to point B, especially if they do so on smooth surfaces. I'm thankful, I really am. But all of these great roads have come to us at a cost, and we've not yet begun to pay that cost down. I'm pretty sure we will, if not in my lifetime, at least in the lifetimes of people that I know. This all sort of bums me out.
This country was shaped by the automobile. There are a handful of exceptions, places where one could live a rich and satisfying life without owning an automobile but, for the most part, if you don't have a car in this country you are some kind of a kook. How are you going to get to work, get to the grocery store, get anywhere? Not on a bike or on foot, that's for sure, unless you happen to be a suicidal kook. Great tracts of our cities and, even more so, our suburbs are all but inaccessible to bicycle or foot traffic. One place that really stands out in my mind is Bowling green Ohio. This is a college town, a State University town and, from what I've seen, a town that is pretty much off limits unless you are driving an automobile. If you happen to be in Bowling Green on your bike, and you want to get a room for the night and some dinner, well, there's good news and bad. The good news is that there are a multitude of options including all manner of chain motels and restaurants, all conveniently located along the same strip. The bad news is that the road going through that strip is an awful place to have to ride a bicycle, a place that requires one to suspend all self preservation instinct for a time and hope for the best. The people using that road for it's intended purpose -- occupying it in a motor vehicle -- are seemingly very happy to be stuck in their metal boxes. They've got the air conditioning cranked up, they're making lots and lots of phone calls, and they certainly don't want to slow down or move laterally to avoid killing the kooks on the side of the road walking or riding a bicycle. In case you're wondering, Bowling Green isn't the only place like that. In fact there are places just like that here in my hometown of Rutland VT. If I was determined to go to the Hannaford Supermarket, the best supermarket in this fair town (my opinion, others tend to disagree) I would be taking my life in my hands trying to get there by bicycle. I would stand a better chance on foot, but since it's probably a four mile round trip from my city home, I'd need quite a bit of time to accomplish the task. So like, what should I do? Buy a car? Fortunately, I do own a car, so I'm not, you know, a totally irrational and dangerous subversive. But you know what? Owning a car is such a bad deal that I just wish I didn't have to own one.
I did some digging around and found some good statistics. According to AAA of Minnesota, the average annual cost of ownership for a vehicle driven 15,000 miles a year is $7,754 (that statistic is from 2003.) Since the average American earns somewhere in the neighborhood of $17 an hour, that means that the average person has to work over three full months each year just for the privilege (?) of owning that bad investment. That's a quarter of my time, man. Or in a year like this, when no one wants to build or renovate anything, all of my working time. I'm not down with that. If I had been saving that money all these years, instead of using it to pay for my car, I could probably be retired right now. Or, consider that you can park between 7 and 12 bicycles in the space that one car takes up. Think of all the nice green spaces we could have if we didn't need so many parking spots. Or you could build two Bed Bath and Beyond stores, instead of just one, with all that left over space. It costs about $50 to build and maintain a bicycle parking space in a bike rack. It costs about $8500 to build and maintain an automobile parking space in a parking structure. I'm not great with numbers but that seems like a really good savings. I know this is all massively simplified, and also I didn't bother to do any fact checking because I'm a blogger and I don't have to (that is the rule, bloggers can print anything they want) but it just seems to me like we could clear up a couple of our societal problems by taking some of this stuff into account. And I think we should maybe start doing some of these things sooner than later because, you know, our current model of living all spread out and relying almost totally on automobile transport is just not sustainable. Judging by the level of impatience I see in motorists who have to wait behind me for 10 seconds at a stoplight, I'd really hate to see the reaction elicited by a complete and total collapse of our petroleum economy. I think there might be physical violence.
This country was shaped by the automobile. There are a handful of exceptions, places where one could live a rich and satisfying life without owning an automobile but, for the most part, if you don't have a car in this country you are some kind of a kook. How are you going to get to work, get to the grocery store, get anywhere? Not on a bike or on foot, that's for sure, unless you happen to be a suicidal kook. Great tracts of our cities and, even more so, our suburbs are all but inaccessible to bicycle or foot traffic. One place that really stands out in my mind is Bowling green Ohio. This is a college town, a State University town and, from what I've seen, a town that is pretty much off limits unless you are driving an automobile. If you happen to be in Bowling Green on your bike, and you want to get a room for the night and some dinner, well, there's good news and bad. The good news is that there are a multitude of options including all manner of chain motels and restaurants, all conveniently located along the same strip. The bad news is that the road going through that strip is an awful place to have to ride a bicycle, a place that requires one to suspend all self preservation instinct for a time and hope for the best. The people using that road for it's intended purpose -- occupying it in a motor vehicle -- are seemingly very happy to be stuck in their metal boxes. They've got the air conditioning cranked up, they're making lots and lots of phone calls, and they certainly don't want to slow down or move laterally to avoid killing the kooks on the side of the road walking or riding a bicycle. In case you're wondering, Bowling Green isn't the only place like that. In fact there are places just like that here in my hometown of Rutland VT. If I was determined to go to the Hannaford Supermarket, the best supermarket in this fair town (my opinion, others tend to disagree) I would be taking my life in my hands trying to get there by bicycle. I would stand a better chance on foot, but since it's probably a four mile round trip from my city home, I'd need quite a bit of time to accomplish the task. So like, what should I do? Buy a car? Fortunately, I do own a car, so I'm not, you know, a totally irrational and dangerous subversive. But you know what? Owning a car is such a bad deal that I just wish I didn't have to own one.
I did some digging around and found some good statistics. According to AAA of Minnesota, the average annual cost of ownership for a vehicle driven 15,000 miles a year is $7,754 (that statistic is from 2003.) Since the average American earns somewhere in the neighborhood of $17 an hour, that means that the average person has to work over three full months each year just for the privilege (?) of owning that bad investment. That's a quarter of my time, man. Or in a year like this, when no one wants to build or renovate anything, all of my working time. I'm not down with that. If I had been saving that money all these years, instead of using it to pay for my car, I could probably be retired right now. Or, consider that you can park between 7 and 12 bicycles in the space that one car takes up. Think of all the nice green spaces we could have if we didn't need so many parking spots. Or you could build two Bed Bath and Beyond stores, instead of just one, with all that left over space. It costs about $50 to build and maintain a bicycle parking space in a bike rack. It costs about $8500 to build and maintain an automobile parking space in a parking structure. I'm not great with numbers but that seems like a really good savings. I know this is all massively simplified, and also I didn't bother to do any fact checking because I'm a blogger and I don't have to (that is the rule, bloggers can print anything they want) but it just seems to me like we could clear up a couple of our societal problems by taking some of this stuff into account. And I think we should maybe start doing some of these things sooner than later because, you know, our current model of living all spread out and relying almost totally on automobile transport is just not sustainable. Judging by the level of impatience I see in motorists who have to wait behind me for 10 seconds at a stoplight, I'd really hate to see the reaction elicited by a complete and total collapse of our petroleum economy. I think there might be physical violence.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Updates
I just cleaned up some things on the blog. It was brought to my attention that my email address was not on my profile page, which was an oversight, so I put that up. I also corrected a typo on the profile page. I added a link to my galleries, and that brings up an interesting problem. Firefox, my browser of choice, does not work well with picassa photo galleries. If you are having trouble viewing the photos in firefox, you may want to try Safari or, gasp, internet explorer. What's up Mozilla? And then I added subscription services in case anyone wants that. I know that the exciting trip is over, but I plan to continue updating this blog regularly with whatever nonsense would otherwise spill from my brain directly onto the floor. So keep coming back and reading it, if that's your thing. And if anyone has a blog of their own, send me a link and I'll not only read it, but I'll post it for others to read. Personally, I like reading blogs. Especially if I'm supposed to be doing something like work, which sucks in comparison to reading blogs. Or if it's raining and cold outside, which is the default weather condition this summer.
Thoughts On Bicycle Design
Now that I'm back home in Vermont and trying to resume a “normal life” again, I have all of these revelations that I want to pass along. This one is kind of earth shattering. Seriously. I'm probably going to be drowned in derision from the people I usually associate with, but hey, I'm a cyclist and as such, comfortable with derision. Racing bicycles, as in the kind of bicycles that road racers ride, are not your friend. They provide a huge disincentive to the growth of cycling as a leisure activity and as a mode of transportation. Earth shattering, I told you. Now that I've identified myself as a heretic, I've got to move quickly. If this blog suddenly goes blank, or I disappear, suspect The Man. By that I mean Specialized, or Trek, or Cannondale, or one of the other peddlers of bicycle hype. Here's the deal: 99.9% of the human population cannot assume the bodily position dictated by the design of modern racing bicycles. What about the 0.1% that can, you ask? Well, if you were one of them you would know because you would currently be recovering from having just completed the Tour de France. The modern racing bicycle, as pretty as it is, is just not suited for use by human beings. Except for human beings who employ a full time staff of sports physiologists and massage therapists. The bikes are too stiff, the tires are too small and hard, the handlebars are too low in relation to the saddle, and, believe it or not, the bikes are just too light. If you want to buy a comfortable bike that will last the rest of your life and never cause you to say to yourself “I'm not riding today because I just can't face that torturous machine,” then you should talk to Grant Peterson at Rivendell Bicycles. He's a visionary and, while I can't say that I follow his formula completely, he speaks the truth.
What qualifies me to make all of these blasphemous claims? I've tried it both ways. I worked diligently to adapt my ordinary body to one of those svelte racing bicycles for over ten years. With some success, I might add. More recently, I rode a different kind of bicycle about 1000 miles over the course of 14 days. I rode an average of around 65 miles every day for two weeks. Between those 65 mile rides I slept, mostly, on the ground. My body has never felt better. Seriously, I would wake up in the morning with fewer aches and pains than I've ever had. My lower back felt great. I had better than usual flexibility and my banged up left knee was stiff only one day - most likely from a weather system moving in. The only discomfort I had was some stiffness in between my shoulder blades for a couple of days early on, and a little pressure from saddle contact that I attribute to breaking in a new Brooks saddle. That was it for the whole trip. My touring bike doesn't look as cool as the racing bike I've got hanging in my basement. I probably can't get as aerodynamic on my touring bike either. But now when I look at that racing bike, I say to myself “I'm not riding today because I just can't face that torturous machine.”
What qualifies me to make all of these blasphemous claims? I've tried it both ways. I worked diligently to adapt my ordinary body to one of those svelte racing bicycles for over ten years. With some success, I might add. More recently, I rode a different kind of bicycle about 1000 miles over the course of 14 days. I rode an average of around 65 miles every day for two weeks. Between those 65 mile rides I slept, mostly, on the ground. My body has never felt better. Seriously, I would wake up in the morning with fewer aches and pains than I've ever had. My lower back felt great. I had better than usual flexibility and my banged up left knee was stiff only one day - most likely from a weather system moving in. The only discomfort I had was some stiffness in between my shoulder blades for a couple of days early on, and a little pressure from saddle contact that I attribute to breaking in a new Brooks saddle. That was it for the whole trip. My touring bike doesn't look as cool as the racing bike I've got hanging in my basement. I probably can't get as aerodynamic on my touring bike either. But now when I look at that racing bike, I say to myself “I'm not riding today because I just can't face that torturous machine.”
Friday, July 24, 2009
Things To Do In Michigan When You're Tired
Smell that? That smell is the absence of hot greasy road kill baking on the asphalt. That is my goal for today, the seemingly simple goal of not smelling any well-dead raccoon carcasses. I plan to accomplish it by not riding my bicycle today, for the first time in 14 days. Another goal for today is to begin moderating my food intake. Now that I won’t be riding an average of 65-70 miles everyday, presumably, I won’t need to consume 5000 calories a day. Preliminary estimates indicate that I lost four or five pounds over the course of the trip. I wouldn’t mind keeping those pounds off. It looks like the total distance was closer to 1000 miles than the 900 I initially reported. What’s an extra hundred miles in the grand scheme of things? Now that I’m in Michigan for a few days I plan to take it a little bit easy and rest up. Tomorrow we have plans.
As some of you know, the main reason for Christine and myself to travel to Michigan (Christine drove here and arrived last night and her willingness to drive 12 hours by herself was instrumental in Marc and I being able to make our trip. Thanks Christine) this July is to attend a memorial, a celebration of the life of my Grandfather, Robert O. Young, who passed away 30 years ago. And while I can’t claim that it was the prime motivator in my decision to ride my bike to Freeland, I realized early on that there would be no more appropriate way for me to honor the life of my Grandfather than to ride my bike to Freeland; He taught me to ride on two wheels. My most vivid memory of the man, in fact, is of a particular early Sunday morning, perhaps 7:00, that found the two of us on River road in front of his house. I was astride my brand new Huffy, a gift for my sixth birthday. He was holding onto the seat of the bike. “You just have to pedal” he said, “I’ll hold the bike up.” We picked up speed, the two of us, and he was yelling “pump! pump! Pump!” as he ran along behind me. In fact he was still yelling “pump” moments later when I turned around to see that he was no longer there, no longer holding my saddle. Easy as that I was riding that great big scary Huffy. And I’ve logged quite a few more miles on two wheels since.
Marc and I also have an appointment on Monday at 11:00 am for a phone interview with Dennis Jenson of the Rutland Herald. He called me the other night to check on our progress and set up a time when we could all talk. I’m excited about this because I’ve never been interviewed by a daily newspaper before and now I can check it off my list before all of the daily newspapers go out of business. The story should run on the following Sunday, which I believe is August 2nd.
As some of you know, the main reason for Christine and myself to travel to Michigan (Christine drove here and arrived last night and her willingness to drive 12 hours by herself was instrumental in Marc and I being able to make our trip. Thanks Christine) this July is to attend a memorial, a celebration of the life of my Grandfather, Robert O. Young, who passed away 30 years ago. And while I can’t claim that it was the prime motivator in my decision to ride my bike to Freeland, I realized early on that there would be no more appropriate way for me to honor the life of my Grandfather than to ride my bike to Freeland; He taught me to ride on two wheels. My most vivid memory of the man, in fact, is of a particular early Sunday morning, perhaps 7:00, that found the two of us on River road in front of his house. I was astride my brand new Huffy, a gift for my sixth birthday. He was holding onto the seat of the bike. “You just have to pedal” he said, “I’ll hold the bike up.” We picked up speed, the two of us, and he was yelling “pump! pump! Pump!” as he ran along behind me. In fact he was still yelling “pump” moments later when I turned around to see that he was no longer there, no longer holding my saddle. Easy as that I was riding that great big scary Huffy. And I’ve logged quite a few more miles on two wheels since.
Marc and I also have an appointment on Monday at 11:00 am for a phone interview with Dennis Jenson of the Rutland Herald. He called me the other night to check on our progress and set up a time when we could all talk. I’m excited about this because I’ve never been interviewed by a daily newspaper before and now I can check it off my list before all of the daily newspapers go out of business. The story should run on the following Sunday, which I believe is August 2nd.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
