Miscellarikneous

Went skydiving a few months ago, so a story today on the World got my attention.

It starts out, "statistically, you're more likely to die in an elevator accident than in a skydiving accident...", which isn't really that comforting, and also not really that clear. Do they mean per trip or on balance? I assume they mean on balance, meaning simply that more people die in elevators than they do skydiving. By that definition, crossing the street would probably be more deadly than jumping from a moving bus.

Which obviously isn't really saying much.

Anyway, here's a story of someone who didn't die skydiving.

After my Saturday ride, Naomi and I went with her dad to Pacific Bikes, where he tried out a few models. He bought a hybrid a few months ago and dove into it in a way that, being married to Naomi, I am very familiar with by now. So he was ready for a new one, and so we took him to see Chris. He tried the Bianchi Veloceand the Giant OCR 1 (one year model later than my first bike) before settling on the OCR. I can't argue with choosing a Giant!

Afterwards, we went up to Fremont to pick up Naomi's race packet for her Duathlon the next day, and to preview the bike course. That night we went for a run and watched some Olympics before going to bed early.

5AM came way too soon. We left in the dark for Fremont. Naomi got her bike set up in the transition zone, then went to warm up. I found out where the start was, and where the running loop goes, etc.

The Du was coincident with a Tri, so they all got the same marking of their calves and arms. When I last was at a Tri, in high school (working, not competing), the athletes were marked with grease pens. However, at this race, we found out later, they were using permanent markers. Weird.

Naomi ran a pretty fast opening 1.5mi leg, coming through in the top 12 or so. Her transition was a little slower than she'd have liked, but not bad since she was doing a full shoe change and she'd never done it before.

I was really impressed with the biking, because she caught people most of the way, and only lost a few minutes to the eventual winner. That without any bike upgrades, and no aero bars. In her last leg, she discovered that when you go from biking to running, your calves can cramp up severely! Still, she toughed it out to finish a strong 11th out of 46.

It was pretty cool to watch. Naomi was really impressive. And it got me excited to definitely do a du of my own at some point, and also to think a little more about triathlon. Watching the swimmers, it didn't seem like it would be *that* hard to survive a 400-800 meter swim.

As for the rest of the day, we didn't do much else, since we were so tired.

Brian recently detailed an encounter he had with a Kerry supporter. When Bri's friend asked the lad why he should vote for Kerry, the best he could come up with was that "Bush is going to institute the draft, and I don't want to go to Iraq!" Not only is this inaccurate, it's also very unliberal, and not very convincing. So, I'm going to put myself on the clock, and list all the reasons I can come up with in ten minutes as to why you should vote for Kerry rather than Bush.

Though there may be some overlap with the Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush, these are all coming from my head with no cheat sheets.

Ready? Go...

(in no particultar order)
1. Kerry had the courage to enlist and go to Vietnam, and to request to put his life in harm's way. Bush, like Clinton and Cheney, used family influence to get cushy non-combat gigs.
2. Kerry had the courage to come back from Vietnam and protest against it. Agree with it or not, how can you not respect someone's opinion about a war when they put their life on the line to fight it?
3. Kerry is intelligent. Bush is unintelligent. There are 250 million people in the United States. Do we need to be scraping the bottom of the barrel?
4. Bush can not speak clearly in his native language. Maybe this is a minor thing. But maybe the ability to communicate effectively is an important part of being the leader of the free world. I know it's a requirement for every job I've every applied for.
5. The King of Jordan speaks more eloquently than our president. This is embarassing. I don't mean to insult the King of Jordan by saying I wouldn't expect him to be able to speak English (If anything, it's damning him with faint praise.) But again, there is a big, big pool of people out there. Get one that doesn't embarass the nation when he speaks.
6. Kerry will have good advisors. I include this because you always hear how Bush is dumb, but that's okay, he's got good advisors. Well, I'll take smart with good advisors over dumb with good advisors.
7. Bush appointed Ashcroft. Ashcroft is the biggest threat to my individual liberty since McCarthy, maybe more so.
8. A Bill of Rights is easy to uphold when nothing is at stake. It's what you do when the stakes are high that define your true morality and character. The Bush Administration asks us to give up individual liberties for the sake of our security. Freedom isn't free, it's true. It's also not freedom if the government takes it away.
9. The Bush administration is beholden to many corporate interests, notably energy companies and pharmceutical companies. They have cut the enforcement of laws against false claims in drug advertising. They have not taken steps to ensure we have energy independence.
10. 3,000 people died on 9/11. About 1,000 more Americans have died in Iraq. Countless Afghans and Iraqis have died in those two wars. We are not any safer than we were before. It's great that the Iraqis can compete in the Olympics and wear mini skirts, but they probably weren't willing to trade the life of their brother, mother, father, sister, son, or daughter for the privelege.

These are 10 pretty verbose reasons, and I haven't even scratched the surface. Feel free to add yours.

Turns out Tina is in town for a Sociology conference, so she, Jason, Naomi and I all met up roughtly in the middle for drinks and grub. Ausiello's in Belmont was the pub of choice. It was good to catch up & discuss our high-falootin' ideas and the collective state of things. And it's a testament to the relationships and to the people when you can sit down after a few years and still have lots to talk about, and it's not really talk about 'old times' at all.

I've been thinking I should post a link to something, and since it came up last night, now's as good a time as anything. To hear Terry Gross really put someone in his place who needin' puttin', check out Club for Growth president Stephen Moore with Terry Gross last July 15. One of the most memorable Fresh Air shows since Gene Simmons was on (but for very different reasons).

OK, so the title of this entry: many years ago, we all met up in SF and ate at some random Mexican place, that had a bathroom you needed to be buzzed into. But not only that-- there was a hand-written sign on the door that declared "Urine Only". Well, maybe not 'declared', but certainly 'decreed'. No such funnin' this time, but Ausiello's is always good for a beer and a burger, and Tina and Jason are always great to hang out with. Even if Jason is Blog-averse.

Friday - Opening cermonies. That Katie Couric is one sharp cookie. I never would have noticed that the Aussie women all had matching purses, for example. And when all that's going on is music, why do the think that's a good time to talk? Maybe just having music means it's intended to be heard? Anyway, why do we need announcers for what amounts to a gigantic art installation, again?

Saturday. Early bike ride. Finished watching opening ceremonies. Went clothes shopping for the first time in about a year (not counting bike clothes shopping). Went to Special K and J's to see their new kitchen, which looks great! Watched some Olympics with the squirrels, discovered betting on the swimming is pretty fun if you don't know anything, but no one should be allowed to bet on lane 4 or 5. We couldn't bet on the rowing, though, because they always joined when someone was ahead already.

Sunday I had a triathlon: run in the morning, bike ride in the afternoon, and hockey game in the evening. In between we visited with Naomi's folks, went to REI with her dad to help him find some bike shoes, visited Chris at Pacific Bikes (found out my wheel has a broken spoke), and stayed caught up on the Olympics. Some days we can get through a good 20 hours of coverage in just 2 or 3, by skipping the sports we don't care about like, well, most of the men's team sports. But rest assured we watched every second of the women's beach volleyball.

As for the ride, it was the 22 mile Kennedy-Shannon loop, and as for the hockey game, Lynx played like crap and lost 5-2 to the last place team, who were skating with only one spare skater. Waste of an evening-- I'd rather have been home with my honey cuddled up in front of the Olympics (Sorry, Bri).

I had talked to Ed earlier about riding the District RR championships at Fort Ord... actually, more like I talked him into it, offering to work for him in the race. Fortunately, he didn't feel like riding them either, so he invited us along to ride the Marin Century instead. Since we had to be there early, he didn't trust us not to flake, so he offered to pick us up at 5:45am. That was probably for the best.

On the way there, I looked up through the moon roof to see which bike Ed had brought, and then made a realization... he had brought his track bike! "Hey, wait a minute!" I said. He didn't tell me he was riding the whole thing in a fixed gear. Oh well, not much I could do to match him anyway, since I don't have a track bike.

Ed's GPS took us on a circuitous route and we got to explore the city a bit at 7:30 am on a Saturday. Like a true city denizen, we even ran a red light. I'm sure that was the GPS' fault, too.

We arrived and met up with Ayden, got all set up and set out on our first ever organized ride. There were tons of people there, but the atmosphere was much more relaxed and social than it is at a race. There were a couple other people there that the others knew, but we didn't end up riding with them.

We did end up riding with a like-jereseyed group of riders that had just come back from touring France en bici. They all had green polka dot jerseys that listed the various cols they had (presumably) climbed while in France. The back of their jerseys said "Giddy Up", and so that's what we did. Naomi and I shamelessly latched onto their group, and even after the group blew up on the first climb, we just happened to integrate again. It might have had something to do with the fact that several of the riders were extremely attractive.

The weather was good. A little cool when we arrived, but the fog was very clearly burning off quickly, so we shunned the arm- and leg-warmers. Naomi brought her wind jacket, but didn't need it. We would get a little chilly during the extended descent on Lucas Valley Rd., but I didn't hear her complaining.

Naomi and I pulled into the first rest stop after about 22 miles, along with the points verts group, and just behind Ed and Ayden. We grabbed some snacks and refilled our water. It was starting to warm up a bit.

We had until this point toyed with the idea of making a last minute course detour and riding the full century instead of the metric century. We had only 3 miles or so to decide. So, when Ed and Ayden left the rest stop slightly before us, and we left it at "if we don't get in touch before the turning point we'll stick with the metric", that probably wasn't the smartest idea.

A few miles later, we realized that if we wanted to do the 100-miler, we needed to reach Ed right away, so I took off and tried to catch them. I reached the turnoff and hadn't caught them. The next part of the metric century course was a steep climb. I took off up the climb and finally caught Ayden near the top. He said Ed was just waiting up ahead. What I should have done was ride up and talk to Ed and mention that we were now interested in doing the full century, but instead, I just confirmed with Ayden that they were ok doing the metric. So, when I plummetted back down the hill to rendezvous with Naomi at the junction, I wasn't really sure what I had accomplished-- although I did impress some people when I was pounding up the steep hill in my 39x23 with one hand on the bar (cos I was trying to reach Ed via mobile with the other).

That excitement over, we went back to the task of riding 62.5 miles. The course was pretty rolling after that climb. We encountered a brief headwind section that lasted only a few miles, and other than that, it seemed that the wind was oddly with us the rest of the day. We rolled into the second rest stop around 40 miles in good shape. We didn't meet up with Ed and Ayden there, however. As I found out later, they had missed the stop (couldn't find it), which was easy to do if you weren't around many other riders.

We set off for the final leg, which contained a few small climbs and one big one. Naomi was a trooper, and didn't complain once even though she was burying herself going up the climbs. This big climb, it turned out, was the one she had run up two years ago during the Providian Relay.

Anyway, yeah she was working pretty hard on the hill. Harder than she had to as it turned out, because when I looked at her bike a few days later, it turned out that her back brake was rubbing, and probably had been since the previous weekend when we packed it in the car for the TdW. D'oh!

We see-sawed with a few riders the rest of the way, mainly catching back up on the flats to riders who had moved ahead on the hills. We skipped the last rest stop with about 4 miles to go (I guess it's for people who are seriously hating it), except we did accept some service from the nice old guy who took our water bottles, refilled them, and handed them back to us as we moved through. The rest of the ride was stop and go through city streets and residential areas back to the start.

It was a well organized and very enjoyable ride! We are definitely interested in doing another such ride, probably a traditional (i.e. 100-mile) century in the next month or two.

Afterwards, after Naomi got naked in someone's front yard just moments before they returned home, we headed to Berkeley to one of Ed's favorite eateries, Zachary's Pizza. I can certainly understand why he likes it so much... it is fantastic pizza. On the drive home we tried to keep Ed awake by talking about things like jury duty, but when that didn't work, we just talked about girls.

This was to be the weekend of the Tour de Wino-- the name our friends gave the event two years ago. The Event: Camping in Sugarloaf State Park, riding bikes down the 3-mile descent into the Kenwood area to go wine tasting. And then riding (bikes, or in a car with a bike,) back up to the campground. This year, I had a bike race on Saturday morning, so Naomi and I didn't get up there until after the wine-touring had been done already. Still, we took our bikes, for Sunday.

As we drove up to the campground, we passed a lot of our friends who were riding their bikes up the very steep hill. I was envious-- I really wanted to attack the hill again, after having to stop and walk many times two years prior. But... that will have to wait for the next TdW.

The evening was a typical Squirrelfriends affair, although there were quite a large number of bonus squirrels there this time. It was a little weird having a number of friends of friends there instead of the core group, but I guess it was okay. N.b., I don't mind having the SOs of friends there.

What can I say? It was camping. People drank. People cooked, and ate. People took other people's poker chips because other people weren't playing for money. Those people would have none of it. Drama. Intrigue. Hangovers. The customary 4am crow. Fun Bobby snored like a lumberjack, if that is a real metaphor.

On Sunday, Naomi and I parted ways with the rest of the gang and headed to Windsor, from which we launched what was to be a 45-mile ride through Alexander and Russian River Valleys. Once we started out, then adrenaline got pumping right away because we were obviously riding against the flow of a steady stream of triathletes. Since they were mostly women, mostly good-looking and fit, we both wanted to look good, so we kinda hammered a little bit. It turned out they were riding the 56-mile middle part of the Vineman Half-Ironman. Ouch!

As were were riding, we realized that we were touring past the places Karen & Nino had their wedding festivities a few months back. I remember thinking at that time how much I'd like to ride on those roads, and I was right!

After passing Madrona Manor and stopping to check the map, we spotted a paceline behind us, and when they caught us, I gave Naomi the nod to jump on. Despite the fact that she was a little bit back from the last rider's wheel, she drove ahead at a brisk 20+ mph and kept us on with the group until they split on a hill. We see-sawed with that group for the next 10-miles or so, passing them when they stopped, and getting caught again when they got going again.

We were riding through beautiful wine country. Not as nice as Italy, but close (except for the road conditions-- Italy has really nice roads, that is, when they are paved and not packed gravel). We hit some pretty bumpy stretches, but the scenery and the company made up for it.

When we reached our car, the "45-mile" loop turned out to be a little over 37, so we set out on another mini-loop which brought the total up to 44. And that was enough for the day! We were tired, and we fought triathlon traffic all the way back to the east bay before it lightened up. But at least we got to ogle the bikes on the way.