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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.