Vegetables of the Mind Weblog

The mid-life crisis is progressing quite nicely, thank-you-very-much. I really wouldn’t be so down if my job was evolving in a direction that was compatible with my skill set. I remember days where the majority of time was spent coding, and I actually really enjoy doing that. I need to get back to that, and so the last few days I’ve spider-holed myself in the family computer room, rewriting an accounting application that I originally wrote some years ago.

It’s good to have an activity where you can see real results. Like gardening. Or bicycling.

I had to get out of the office this morning or go crazy, so I took the road bike* out for a spin. The Torrey Pines hill is sort-of-close to my office and I decided to add Mount Soledad in there as well. All in all, some good hills packed into a sub-30 mile ride:

• Pacific Heights, a short connector road up to Mira Mesa Blvd.
• Portofino to Mango, which connect Carmel Valley Rd to Del Mar Heights
• Torrey Pines
• Mount Soledad
• La Jolla Shores

According to MapMyRide, almost 2000 feet of climbing.

As I slogged up Mount Soledad, I thought of the metaphor that might apply: working hard; not quitting; achieving a goal. And when I peaked the summit I lamented that if only everything else coud be so simple.

Someone forwarded me one of those inspirational things, maybe you’ve seen it: 212 The Extra Degree. It’s fine if you’re into that Tony Robbins crap but all I could think is that the statistics are all taken out of context and therefore totally meaningless. I know I need to adopt some of that philosophy but I just can’t buy into it. It’s all a big scam to me.

I want the metaphor. I really do. But like I said, it’s just not that simple.

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* commuter bike is still waiting on a new spoke. grrr….

Comparatively speaking, I have no right to complain. Blind luck saw me born in one of the most affluent nations of the world, to a family that by any standard was fairly well-off. By that token, I belong to an elite group of probably 1% of the most affluent people of the world.

But this apparent wealth is tenuous, and its price is soul-crushing. My parents, while providing a stable home, lived paycheck to paycheck. My father sacrificed his happiness to provide for his family, perhaps waiting for retirement to pursue his passions, but was ultimately robbed of his golden years by that awful disease. I’m heading down the same path, and the longer I continue, the farther I fall into debt and the more bitter I become.

I feel both physically and psychologically trapped. In the physical world, I spend the bulk of my time confined in small spaces: car, cubicle, rooms in a house. Bicycling is the one activity that allows me to breathe air and see the horizon, but even that is stifled by traffic. Economically, I can’t sustain this lifestyle. I’ve pretty much topped out my career’s earning potential, yet the cost of living in my region is so high that it’s impossible to support a family with what should be regarded as a very generous income. I am fortunate to have a decent benefits package that includes health insurance, but this insurance is yet one more thing that traps me in my job. I simply can’t afford health insurance on my own, and all of this makes me feel like I’m an indentured servant.

I’ve been thinking a lot about one of my last posts in which I said I feel like Charlie Brown. Every time I think of it I hear the type-A Anthony Robbins people yammering on about how I need to stop waiting for good things to happen and make them happen myself.

Here’s the problem: I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.

It’s clear that I’m unhappy with things as they are right now. The other night I had a dream about nuclear annihilation, and you know what I did in my dream? I left my family so I could find shelter for myself. Way to go, Mr. Honorable McHonor-Turd. Now I’m waiting for the Armageddon dream trifecta: I’ve had dreams of drowning and nuclear bombs, next up is a full-on War of the Wolds alien invasion.

You know why I liked War of the Worlds so much? It’s because no one had any control over anything. Humans were at the mercy of a vastly superior and deadly alien technology, and the story was simply about human nature when there is no hope or possibility of survival. Now that’s a trope I can get behind. But I digress.

The bottom line is that I’m not cut out for the daily grind. I commute in a tiny motorized box to a building where I spend the better part of the day cooped up in a cubicle (read: tiny box), then back into the tiny motorized box to another tiny building where the hell of autism awaits me.

You know what I want more than anything? I want my childhood back.

When I was a kid we lived next to a giant piece of open space where a creek was fed by a nearby mountain. I miss catching pollywogs and frogs, floating boats down the water, and exploring the huge expanse of open, natural land. I don’t have that anymore, and I feel profoundly sad that my son has nothing close to it.

So what can I do to “make it happen”? I have no clue. There’s no money in grieving for one’s youth.

Changing out a spoke on a rear wheel can be a hassle, depending on the side of the wheel the spoke meets the hub. If it’s on the drive side (the side with the cassette & chain), then the cassette needs to be removed to gain access to the hub. Removing the cassette requires a special tool that most folks don’t carry with them, so a broken spoke on the drive side usually means you’re stranded.

If the broken spoke is on the non-drive side, changing it out is pretty simple: just thread the spoke through the hub, look at the other spokes to see how to orient it, and screw the nipple onto it.

Unless, of course, you have a disc brake, in which case the rotor needs to be removed. In my experience, removing the rotor is way harder than removing the cassette, since the rotor is affixed by 6 Torx screws which in addition to requiring a special wrench, are usually also held in place by LocTite.*

But not in my case. I have a Mavic Crossride Disc wheel that has special straight-pull spokes that don’t need to be threaded through the hub like j-spokes do. They just sort of sit in a slot on the hub and are held in place by a flange at the end. Which means that I don’t have to remove anything to replace a spoke, regardless of what side the spoke is on. Which would be awfully convenient if it were not for the fact that Mavic makes a bazillion different types of spokes and no one has mine in stock.

At least the power of modern commerce allows my spoke to be ordered. Which means that the bike is out of commission for an estimated 1-2 weeks. I forecast a sharp increase in my Surly Index over the next couple of weeks.

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* Side note: newer rotors are affixed by some crazy new technology called center-lock, which doesn’t have the 6 pesky Torx screws to deal with.

Yesterday I read this article about a front wheel disintegrating during a race. I must have jinxed myself because this morning, about a mile into my commute, as I accelerated from a stop I light I heard the familiar PWONNNGGGG of a spoke tearing free of my rear hub.

Fortunately my mechanical failure did not have the same disastrous result, though I had to turn around and limp back to my car since I had no replacement spoke on hand. Even if I did, I don’t think I would have been mentally up for the hassle of replacing a spoke in the field.

My mood is pretty low right now. Last year, a broken rear spoke was the beginning of a swarm of mechanical problems that culminated with a new rear wheel. I’ve never had problems with spokes before and it seems that the combination of a rear rack and disk brakes puts too much stress on the spokes. It doesn’t help that I don’t check spoke tension. I feel like even if I get a new spoke, the other spokes are stressed to the point of failure at any point and I can’t trust my equipment.

I’ve been having dreams of drowning lately. They make sense, as my job is going in a direction that is increasingly incompatible with my skill set. I know I could be way worse off, but I can’t help but feel like Charlie Brown. How come everything that happens to me is bad?

Bike shimmy. Something I thought only happens to noobies. I guess my bike handling skills aren’t paying the bills.

One of my wife’s friends has taken up cycling (woo hoo!) and recently rode her bike on a toll freeway near our house. It’s officially a bike route with a wide bike lane, and since it’s a toll road, there’s hardly any traffic. So I thought I’d check it out.

Have I ever told you about my fear of heights?

There’s this bridge. It spans one of the many gorges that are ubiquitous in this region. I don’t know how tall it is, but as I approached my heart started pounding. Going south, the bridge ascends, and though the bike lane is wide the guard rail is not very high and I was not at all happy about riding right next to it. I put my head down and just looked at the road ahead of me. Soon enough, I was over the span. I even looked over the side a couple times. I’m such a wuss.

Heading back north, I descended the span into a nasty headwind. Really gusting at times, pushing me all over the bike lane. I got into the drops for stability and tried to get as aero as possible, but my nerves were getting to me and my knees were wobbly. Why does my fear create such an intense and debilitating physiological reaction?

Suddenly, the bike started to shake. First the front wheel, then along the entire frame and the back wheel. I felt like I was going to crash at any moment and fly over the guard rail into the gorge below. It felt like both tires had punctured and I feathered the brakes, trying to bleed some speed, but the descent made it difficult to slow down.

As I slowly came to a stop, the shimmying worsened, and it felt like an eternity before I had finally stopped. I checked the tires. Both ok. I noticed that the road surface had those rain grooves and I realized that I was in a perfect storm for bike shimmy. The headwind was being channeled up the bridge, gusting at almost perfect intervals. I thought of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge; my nerves, the road surface, and the headwind had all conspired to give my bike a bad case of the shakes.

I pushed off and the shimmying immediately resumed. I limped over the last few hundred yards of the span, and finally made it over. Once past the bridge, the bike was fine and I continued on for another 30 or so miles without incident. From now on I’ll leave the freeways to the cars.

This week I read a comment on a thread that challenged the use of the phrases “gay marriage” and “same-sex marriage,” arguing that instead the debate should be framed around the concept of marriage equality. I couldn’t agree more, and from now on that is how I will approach the subject.

Qualifying a marriage as same-sex or opposite-sex implies that there is a difference between the two. The ideologies that make cultural hegemony possible are described with the three P’s: persistent, pervasive, and pernicious. It is therefore difficult to maintain the objective distance that’s required to properly criticize the social mores that obtain in cultural hegemony. Allowing marriage to be differentiated by gender propagates the notion that same-sex couples are to be viewed and treated differently than opposite-sex couples.

I absolutely detest Proposition 8. However, its passage has both challenged and focused my view on the subject of marriage equality. I won’t go so far as to praise Prop 8, but at the very least it has brought better understanding of the ideologies that allow heterosexual cultural hegemony to persist. As the GI Joe cartoons used to say, “knowing is half the battle.”

In my university studies, I learned the concept of cultural hegemony. You can read the wiki in the link, but for the purposes of this post I’ll sum up two major points:

• Cultural hegemony is the dominance of one class or culture over another within a diverse society
• Dominance is sustained through the uncritical belief in a set of moral values or ideologies that serve the dominant group’s interests

I’ve been thinking about my previous post regarding Keith Olbermann’s response to Michael Steele, and what I failed to realize is that the whole debate is flawed by the acceptance of social moores that sustain heterosexual hegemony.

The question that no one, including me, bothered to ask, is “What allows us to morally justify the denial of benefits to a minority group?”

The answer is not pretty. There is no moral justification unless we view people in same-sex relationships as somehow less than human, and therefore less deserving of the benefits enjoyed by the heterosexual ruling class.

Michael Steele was closer to asking that question than was Keith Olbermann, albeit very obtusely. Mr. Steele’s economic justification not only reveals his bigotry, it reveals the social doctrine that allows sexual hegemony to persist. At least he gives us a starting point to challenge the doctrine.

Keith Olbermann’s flowery portrait of the overall positive effects of same-sex marriage on the economy, on the other hand, reveals absolutely no insight into why we’re having this debate. In that sense, his argument is even more morally reprehensible than Michael Steele’s. The fact that Keith Olbermann engages the economic argument belies his basic acceptance of the doctrines that sustain heterosexual cultural dominance.

In this video, Keith Olbermann attempts to rebuke Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele’s argument that gay marriage will cost small business owners by driving up the cost of health care coverage for employees who are gay and want to include their spouse in their coverage:

Keith Olbermann makes some great points about the overall positive effects that gay marriage can have on the economy, including increased spending and tax revenue from businesses that cater to the wedding industry. But he fails to counter Michael Steele’s original point, and worse yet, he fails to address the real underlying issue of discrimination.

While the wedding industry will gain, it is still true that business owners will spend more money on health care to cover spouses of gay employees.

What is troubling with the health care argument is that as long as gay marriage is not recognized, business is exploiting its workers based on sexuality. Do business owners actively seek to hire gay employees because they know that their health care benefits will cost less? If so, then they are discriminating against me because of my status as a heterosexual married man. And worse, they are actively exploiting their workforce by forcing homosexual employees to bear the cost of healthcare while their heterosexual colleagues receive coverage through their benefits package.

Let’s look at this another way. One exercise I’ve heard others use to expose bigotry is to replace the term same-sex marriage with biracial marriage, which as we all know was outlawed in many places until only fairly recently (and is still the subject of ire for many backwards-thinking people). What if Michael Steele said that allowing biracial marriage would cost business owners more money because of increased health care costs? It’s a ridiculous argument, and is no less ridiculous when applied to same-sex marriage.

Bottom line: employers should not care to whom their employees are married. The quality of benefits packages are already at the discretion of employers, and if they offer health care benefits then they can’t be allowed to discriminate against employees based on whom they’re married to.

Over the last few months I’ve been melting into a sort of crisis of conviction. When I first got back into cycling a few summers ago, I wanted to reconnect with an activity that I had always enjoyed and in the process jump start my aging metabolism. As a teenager I used to cruise around a large network of fire trails up near my house but I had no interest in the sport.

It wasn’t until mid-life began to loom ahead of me and the sports media caught on to a young whipper-snapper named Lance Armstrong that I began to take an interest in the sport of road racing. Floyd Landis’ heroic effort in the 2006 Tour de France inspired me to take up training for real, but at this point I didn’t know what I was training for.

Then, while climbing up the Torrey Pines hill, I saw “San Diego Century Riders” scribbled in chalk in the bike lane. I had no idea what a century was, but knew I had to find out.

The idea of 100 miles in a single day was surely daunting but I knew that I had it in me. And then one day, I did it. Since then, I’ve participated in several organized rides and I’ve really enjoyed them, especially the SAG support. But while organized century rides are inherently challenging, they have almost become routine.

Last weekend’s event made me face a part of my personality that isn’t compatible with organized events: I ride alone. I didn’t much care for peloton riding during the Bulldog bike race or the Alpine Challenge, and while riding in a paceline is preferable to a peloton, I don’t have much heart for that either. I don’t want to worry about crossing wheels or etiquette; I prefer solitude.

Besides, any paceline is only as strong as its weakest link. I don’t want to weigh anyone down and conversely I don’t want to be weighed down by anyone else.

During all this training, I was driven to prove to myself that I’m competitive, and I think I’ve done that. I bet I can compete with the top 10% of cyclists out there. But I’m not getting any younger and I don’t have the conviction, discipline, or incentive to truly compete at that level. In other words, I have no heart for organized road racing.

But I do have heart for something else, and I feel it runs much deeper than the testosterone-charged thrill of dropping other cyclists on the hills. I was in a pretty messed up mental state on last weekend’s ride and I think that deep down I use the physical exertion of endurance cycling in an attempt to exorcise the negative energy of my life.

Those who know me know that I’m not what you’d typically call a happy person, nor am I particularly religious in the traditional sense. I periodically cycle through some pretty intensely negative emotion: anger, fear, hate… you know, all that stuff that leads to the dark side. I don’t know if I’m running away from or running toward something but I feel that pushing my physical limits is a sort of crucible for me: I don’t feel that spiritual growth can occur without breaking down the physical body. This is a pretty gross analogy but this is much the same as the mythology surrounding Christ’s crucifixion.

So I find myself wondering what to do. I think I’m done with organized events, but I need to set some goals or I will continue to feel lost. Maybe I need to take up randonneuring. Maybe I need to start planning my own self-supported long-distance rides. My first century was completely unsupported, and maybe it’s time to return to those roots. There are a lot of mountains to be climbed.

After a little deliberation about yesterday’s post, I have come to the conclusion that I owe Stan Bush an apology.

The original version of “The Touch” was a very cheesy arena rock song that my 13-year-old self gobbled up like a big ol’ plate of arena rock cheese.

The remake into Sam’s Theme is a very cheesy emo/rap/rock song that I’m sure, if I were 13 years old, I would gobble up like a big ol’ plate of emo/rap/rock cheese.

So actually, what Stan Bush has done is quite brilliant. He has demonstrated an ability to write catchy songs that are current with popular culture.

Mr. Bush, I am sorry. And thank you very much for creating such wonderful memories of my teen years.

Michael Bay must be stopped.

While Transformers: The Movie had its flaws, it had a rockin’ 80s soundtrack, and I played the hell out of it when I was a kid. Witness this gem:

Now look what they’ve gone and done: The Touch: Sam’s Theme

This Youtube comment pretty much sums everything:

KogashiwaKai (11 hours ago)

No…..just no

The original makes you go “FUCK YEAH GO OPTIMUS KICK SOME DECPTACON ASS”

this makes me want to cut myself, hang myself off a brige and blow up said bridge with explosives so I plummet to the water below

Yesterday I rode the San Diego Century. Another well-organized event, with well-equipped SAG stops at good intervals, staffed by very friendly folks.

The packet pickup was slated to begin at 6:00 and the official start time was at the riders’ discretion between 6:00 and 8:00, and as I arrived at around 5:40 I saw that people were already heading out. Volunteers were already manning the packet pickup tables (thanks guys!) so I quickly got my packet and fumbled around with the bib #, trying to find a place on my bike where it wouldn’t get in the way of my knees. I finally decided I was happy with everything and queued up in a small group of about 10 riders at the light. My cycle computer read 6:09.

The light turned green and I was immediately annoyed by everyone around me. I was behind maybe two others and they were all bumbling around trying to get their feet clipped into their pedals; meanwhile I was clipped in and rearing to go. I bolted past them all and began a two-hour long tear through the hills of Encinitas and Rancho Santa Fe.

I have to admit to being in a completely psychotic state of mind. In the morning I had woken up an hour before my alarm went off. I had just dreamed that I had completed the century in under 4 hours and my son was asking me why I was so arrogant. I was unsettled by that dream and couldn’t get back to sleep, and when I went outside to pack my car I saw that the cold night air had caused a 1-inch crack in the windshield to expand to 6 inches. Apparently my car doesn’t like bike events, because the initial crack was caused by a rock hitting the windshield not a quarter mile away home from this year’s Alpine Challenge. This, combined with a general feeling of annoyance at other cyclists, traffic signals, and motorists, gave me a sort of tunnel vision toward a singular goal: to get the hell away from everyone.

I passed people like crazy going up all the hills. I passed two guys going downhill only to be stopped at a light where I needed to make a right turn, but a car was going left in front of me. I could either sustain my speed, blow the stop light, and hope the car wouldn’t go wide, or slow and wait for the car to go. My commuting experience told me to defer to the car, but the two guys I had just passed were now barreling behind me, yelling “RIGHT, RIGHT!” I turned and yelled back, “I KNOW” as I started my right turn, and they replied “I just don’t want a pileup.”

That just pissed me off. I know I broke whatever messed up unspoken cyclist code that says you’ve got to blow through stoplights, but frankly I’ve seen and escaped a lot of crap on the road and I’d like to think I’ve learned a thing or two. And one thing I’ve learned is that safety is far more valuable than convenience.

This exchange, and my embarrassment over it, put more fire into my legs. I dropped those two guys and went to work on a few others in front of me. As I reeled in two more, I looked behind me to see if any cars were coming before I overtook them only to find a barnacle stuck on my wheel. Well, as long as he didn’t try anything stupid I’d let him draft, but I was sure not going to let him pull. This was my century.

I waited for a safe opportunity to overtake the two guys but they took back their position during the next flat section. I got on their wheel, plotting my revenge, and I saw that they were both fighting each other, not so much trading pulls as trading positions. I drafted for a couple of minutes to recover, then at the next hill I took off and didn’t see them again.

I began to wonder if I wasn’t killing myself too hard, but I didn’t care. If I bonked going into Ramona, so be it. I wanted to come home knowing that I hadn’t given up any opportunity to push as hard as I could.

There’s a SAG stop just before the hill into Ramona, and I made sure to top off my water bottles since the memory of running out of water in last year’s brutal heat was in my mind. The folks at the SAG stop said I was the first one there, though I saw one cyclist that I had recently passed blow by while I was refilling. I hastily made my way out and I was soon headed up the “purple monster” to Ramona. The hill up Scripps Poway Parkway to highway 67 is fairly challenging, but today the heat wasn’t much of an issue and there were two cyclists farther ahead who spurred my legs to pass them before the 67.

Left on highway 67, and more climbing before the descent into Ramona. I didn’t see any other cyclists at this point, and most importantly I did not see any in the opposite direction. I began to think that I was first into Ramona.

I stopped at the Ramona SAG stop and the workers confirmed that I was the first cyclist through. They were antsy to get more customers. I quickly ate a little, topped off my water, and hopped onto my bike for the last leg back to Encinitas. As I pulled out, the cyclist who I had seen go through the last SAG stop pulled in.

I hightailed it out of Ramona, back over the 67, and back over Scripps Poway Parkway. I saw huge groups of cyclists in the opposite direction and thought that the Ramona SAG station would soon be overwhelmed. The heat was beginning to settle in as the marine layer had by now burned off, but as soon as I began the descent into Poway, I could feel cool air and almost smell the salt in the air. This was nothing like last year, when there was no marine layer at all and the temperature was in the high 90s all the way through Poway and hotter in Ramona.

By this time, my energy was beginning to ebb and flow. But the miles were ticking away quickly, and as I watched them click through 70, 80 miles I still felt pretty good. There are a couple of nasty little vindictive hills toward the end of the course in Rancho Penasquitos but I made short work of them and was soon at the coast.

No century would be complete without my going a little off course, and I did so by making a premature right turn off highway 101 onto Lomas Santa Fe. The intersection looked familiar from last year, but as soon as I made the right turn, I knew something was off. I made an immediate right turn, then turned back around, then got back on Lomas Santa Fe again and went all the way up the hill before realizing that Lomas Santa Fe was way too early. I headed back down and looked at my cycle computer, which now registered 100 miles in 5 hours, 15 minutes.

I got back to highway 101 and back on track. I sailed into Mira Costa college to finish in 5:30:49 (excluding stops). My cycle computer’s clock read 11:55, so about 5 hours, 46 minutes total. They have commemorative mugs at the stop for the three different courses, and as I picked mine up the guy at the table said I was the first one.

So… first place? Oh yeah, it’s a ride, not a race!

Last night the boy was up to his usual tricks to postpone bedtime. He motioned toward the laptop computer (the “little computer”) and we told him no. He then proceeded to do something quite remarkable: he wrote on his wipe board.

Witl
Cop

I looked at my wife in astonishment and we corrected his spelling: Little Computer.
Then he began to write again:

Pliy

And we corrected again: Please.

We won’t make a habit of this, but we had to cave in this time because he had asked so nicely.

On my commute home yesterday, a couple of punks drove next to me and announced through a bullhorn, “Streets are for cars. Sidewalks are for bikes.”

I resisted the urge to give them the one-fingered salute, a public statement of my opinion of their collective IQ.

At the next stop light, I rode up next to them. Two boys, maybe early 20s at most. The passenger stared stony-eyed ahead, doubtless embarrassed or just plain stupid. I said “You know, it’s illegal for me to ride on the sidewalk.”

The driver looked over and said, “It’s okay man, we’re just messin’ with you.”

“Sweet,” I said, and gave them a thumbs-up, a slightly more subtle indication of my opinion of their collective IQ. The light turned green, and that was that. Hooray for motorists messing with cyclists. As if we don’t have enough crap to deal with in traffic. At least they could have tried to be original. Maybe something like “Faster! The clowns are coming!” You know, something we can all laugh about.

I get that they’re young and stupid, that their empathy chips are not yet fully wired. I was once that age and found myself in cars where my doofus friends made similar comments at the lowly riff-raff on the streets.

But if you decide to mess with me, I’m going to mess right back. And I’m going to advocate like hell for my right to use the road.

In my younger days I would always let my rage do the talking and I’m embarrassed to admit how many times I’ve flipped people off. But nowadays I’m learning that the best tack is to introduce myself, to let people know I’m a person just like them. And then, as politely as possible, inform the offender of my legal right to the road. At least, in a perfect world, that’s how it should work.

I can’t help but feel saddened by the attitude that bikes don’t belong on the street. And I don’t see this attitude improving; in fact, I perceive the opposite.

Look at our elementary schools today. When I went to school, the bicycle was heavily in use. Hell, we didn’t even wear helmets back then. Nowadays, parents are so frightened for their children’s safety that the majority of children are bused or driven to school. And so we enforce the lesson that bikes don’t belong on the road.

Take a look at this article: Bicyclists need to stay on sidewalk. I believe it is written somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the underlying sentiment is that bikes don’t belong on the road:

…considering you are where you should not be, I might hit you.

The fact is that legally, bicycles do have a right to use the road, and that in general it is illegal to ride on the sidewalk, and for good reason. Unfortunately, the legality of the issue does not coincide with many motorists’ attitudes about bicycles.

I know I shouldn’t take the actions of a couple of kids too seriously. But their messin’ indicates a deeper problem with motorists’ attitudes toward cyclists. And it drives home more than ever how important it is for cyclists to assert their rights to the road as well as bear responsibility to follow traffic laws.

This weekend I will participate in the San Diego Century. I’m excited to see how well I’ll improve over last year with my road bike. After the Alpine Challenge, I feel really confident about this ride (not a race, despite what the URL leads you to believe). However, there were a lot of things working for me at the Alpine Challenge: cool weather, very little wind, and good health. Let’s hope I can keep my hubris in check; while I’ve survived a fair number of centuries, as Captain Solo said, “Great, kid. Don’t get cocky.”

Yesterday during my commute I rode past the scene of what appeared to be a pretty gnarly collision. Emergency vehicles had blocked off the bike lane and one lane of traffic, leaving a single lane open on a stretch of road whose speed limit is 65. As I approached, I looked behind me and saw a car coming up on my rear, so I slowed to get behind it.

As we proceeded through the scene, an officer to our right shouted something completely inaudible at the car, and the car’s driver put up his/her hands in the universal sign of “WTF?” All I heard from the officer was “HUHNEAYA HONNE!!!”

I thought for a very long time what transgression had occurred to make the officer so riled up, and whether I was guilty as well. Was there someone directing traffic that we didn’t see? Did we go through too fast? I racked my brain and couldn’t think where anyone was directing traffic and we went through slowly enough that I easily matched the car’s speed; less than 20 mph.

Finally it dawned on me: “HANG UP THE PHONE!!!”

Your personal data is like Pandora’s box. I had hoped that our case was just a matter of someone getting a couple of card numbers through nefarious channels, but I fear that our personal data is now being passed around the criminal underworld like currency.

The other night we got a phone call from these jerks fishing for our data.

I fear this is just the opening salvo in a long frustrating war for our credit, and unfortunately the bad guys have the high ground.

Thieves suck ass.

Last week, someone on teh intarwebz found both the wife’s and my debit/credit card numbers and started racking up charges. Fortunately, I had been looking at our checking account daily to see whether Bender Ball would credit our account for their own little scam. We called our bank immediately and out of over $700 in total charges, only one for a little over $200 actually posted, which should be reversed some time this week. While I’d like to blame Bender Ball, the fact that the thief found both our debit/credit card numbers (which are different) at the same time leads me to believe that the thief found them elsewhere, possibly at Amazon.com where we both have made purchases in the past.

This could have been far worse.

I may be in the minority with this lesson, but for anyone else still that minority, here’s some advice: don’t ever, EVER use a debit/credit card that’s linked to your checking account on the internet. While it may have the same fraud protection as a credit card, any fraudulent charges are still going to post to your checking account until you are aware of what’s happening, and by then your account may be cleaned out. And it’s not a question of whether it will happen to you, it’s a matter of when.

The wife and I have discussed what to do, and while it scares the crap out of us, we’re going to use a credit card for all transactions from now on, including gas and groceries, and pay off the balance each month. I’m really apprehensive about this, since it opens the door to racking up more charges than we can pay off, but I think it’s the “best worst” solution.

And if you’re not paranoid enough, here are some articles about credit card skimming:

• Gas Station “Skimmers” Steal Your Credit Card Info When You Pay At The Pump
• Reader Finds Card Skimmer On Bank ATM

I queued up at the start line, somewhere near the front and middle. I knew Arlyn would be there, and sure enough I saw his shiny red Trek at the very front with members of the Descenders. I made a mental note to try and catch them and match their pace.

Catching them turned out to be a little bit difficult, and I’m learning how quickly the starting group of riders pulls away from the rest. Once I had bridged up to them, we were well on our way up the first hill (the first little bump in the elevation profile). I kept pace, sometimes riding next to Arlyn, not sure if I should introduce myself but figured it would be way too awkward; it could wait until the event was done. I rode up to the front of the group and enjoyed being in “first place” for a little while, just like I did at the beginning of the Bulldog bike race.

The first elevation bump gives way to a fairly long descent, which was fun, but I’m still not comfortable in a group of riders. I have a hard time staying on others’ wheels; it just feels dangerous, and I hate having to constantly be on the brakes. I’m pretty sure I annoy others behind me because I let gaps form in front of me and I’m not as smooth as I should be on the brakes. There was an interesting moment when an SUV made a U-turn in front of us, spitting dirt at the front of the pack. Sure enough, a little later, the SUV stopped to make a left turn and we almost turned into pancakes as the smell of burning brake pads filled the air.

The meat of the ride is the 20-odd mile climb up Dehesa Road and Japatul Valley Road. The pack thinned out, with a group of riders immediately breaking off the front. I stayed with Arlyn’s group of Descenders, knowing that they were well experienced and that trying to keep up with the lead group would probably kill me later on. I don’t completely remember how things panned out, but I think I picked up my pace at one point and dropped Arlyn’s group. I was climbing solo for awhile, passing a couple of guys, then got passed by a guy with what appeared to be Shimano’s new electronic derailleur. I glued myself to his wheel and sneakily passed him after drafting on one of the short downhills that break up the climb. Electronic derailleur guy helped me push the pace so that I eventually caught up with a group that included a pair of Descenders. I didn’t see electronic derailleur guy again, which surprised me, since he had sustained a strong tempo up the hill.

I seem to recall that the two Descenders had two other guys with them, whom we dropped. I pushed the pace a little going up the hill, which thinned the group to just me and the Descenders. I think I heard one of the Descenders say something like “I think we dropped the little guy… or should I say Shadow Tour* guy dropped him.” I made a dumb joke about catching a bus after passing a bus sign, then made a mental note about not making stupid jokes.

I kept waiting for “the wall” to come, which I remember from last year. It’s a portion of the climb that seems to go straight up for a hundred yards or so, but I think we made it over without realizing it was there. Have I told you how much I love my new bike?

I rode with the two Descenders for a bit, and we picked up two more guys, forming a somewhat disorganized group of five that finished the climb through Japatul. I found the Descenders to be tough nuts to crack. I’m not much of an attacker, but I can increase my tempo and sustain it pretty well. They always stuck to my wheel when I took the lead and I knew there was no dropping them. Soon we were on our way to Pine Valley.

I got dropped during the long downhill to Pine Valley. One of the 2 guys that we had picked up turned out to be an insanely fast downhiller, and two of our group were keen to stay on his wheel as I dropped back with the fifth guy in the group. I think the fifth guy was one of the Descenders but I don’t quite remember. As the road turned flat in Pine Valley, the fifth guy powered ahead, leaving me behind to struggle against a headwind to bridge back up to them. I finally made it, and there was a SAG stop where the Descenders wanted to get water. I would have stopped with them, but there was no Porta-Potty and I had to pee, so I decided to ride to the next SAG stop for water and facilities.

The ride through Pine Valley is a nice little break from all the hills, but it’s really just a fancy u-turn to head back up the hill that we had just descended. The two Descenders caught us right before the uphill, and I learned later that they had decided against getting water after watching us pull away. I hung at the back of our group for a little, then felt my legs coming back and decided to pick up the tempo, so I put on a bit of gas and took the lead. As always, the Descenders were keen to my move and didn’t let go of my wheel, though I did lead our pack up the hill. I’d like to think I handed out some suffering but I have a feeling these guys have persevered through far worse.

We arrived at the SAG stop and I refilled my water, ate some food, and availed myself of the facilities. By this time the group was long gone, so I set out on my own to cover the last 10 or 15 miles back to the start/finish line.

At the end I saw that Arlyn had finished before me and I saw him talking to the SDBC guy that I had met at this year’s winter Stagecoach. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself to Arlyn but talked to SDBC guy for a little bit (I still didn’t get his name).

I finally found a chance to introduce myself to Arlyn, who had by that time changed clothes so without his bike and kit I wasn’t completely sure it was him. Luckily my facial recognition software did not let me down and we chatted for a moment with one of his Descenders buddies. I’m such a nerd, but I was able to extricate myself before I made too much of an ass of myself.

Overall, a great ride. The weather was cool (to the point that my feet were cold in Pine Valley) and the wind was nominal. The ride is really well organized, with plentiful SAG stops and the course is very well-marked. I think this is one of my favorite events because the hills are such a challenge, but it won’t kill you the way a full century does. And you get a free** beer, massage, and meal at the end. And you get a nice little medal too, handed out by a pretty high school girl***. Did I mention the national anthem sung in 2-part harmony by 2 other pretty high school girls***?

Oh, and did I mention how much I love my new bike? Because I do. Check out the stats (and compare to last year’s):

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* I wore my Shadow Tour 2008 Stagecoach jersey today

** free with paid entry fee

*** I admit it, I’m a dirty old man