New Years Extravaganza!

I can't tell you how many flights I've been on that have offered up flight vouchers if people were willing to take a later one. In every case I always want to do it but am unable because I need to be back wherever it is I'm going. This morning I was scheduled to fly out of San Antonio at 8am to get back to SF around 10am. I put myself on the volunteer list just in case they started auctioning off cash and prizes.

So, here I am. Complimentary accommodations at the very swanky LaQuinta Inn. I am booked for the same flight tomorrow, only I was upgraded to first class for being so patient. I also put myself on that volunteer list as well so maybe I can get bumped off that flight and get another free flight voucher.

My goal is to try and get as many free flights as I can for the next year. I don't think I will have enough vacation or money to take advantage of more than a couple if I can amass them, but, the options will be there.

With no plans for any sort of New Years celebration it seems sort of fitting that I'll likely be in this room, by myself, asleep by the time the ball or whatever it is they drop in San Antonio. Maybe a spur?



Let's make some official public New Year's resolutions:
(I have given this absolutely no thought so who knows where this is going!)

- Lose weight. I figure this one is a pretty universal one. Getting myself down to a solid fighting weight in the 148-153 range will make me ride my bike about 1 mph faster.
- Be less of a jerk. I don't really mean that one. It just seems nice to say.


Ok, I decided that was lame and no longer want to write those out. Drink a lot. Maybe till you vomit!

I gotta go find the cheapest way to the river walk so I can entertain myself while I'm here.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Literally. My folks live in Cotulla, TX which is closer to Mexico than San Antonio with not much in between in any direction. It's warm and sunny and in some cases the streets in town are fully paved. It is not however, a place people under the age of 40 could live. There is simply nothing to do.

We took a trip to Austin, and I'll do my best to post some pictures soon. I'd never been to Austin so I paid my respects to my beloved Longhorns taking a moment of silence outside of DKR Stadium. Austin, is a great city. It's unlike any other place in Texas I'd ever been. It's still country but it's progressive. You see as many hipsters on fixies as you do cowboys climbing out of giant trucks.

Everyone always makes fun of me for my Texas pride since we moved when I was so young. There's just something about Texas cowboy culture that is appealing to me. However, I've always made fun of people that dress up and play cowboy so I wouldn't jump into boots and a hat just because it's Texas. It's a city that mixes the best parts of two cultures I'm drawn to and on some level identify with.

Keep Austin Weird, the official unofficial town logo. I don't think this statement means the same thing to two people that live there. And I think that makes it a pretty rad city!

One more for Bowl Season

One more argument from the Texas contingent that we got screwed by the BCS.

Texas' weakest out of conference win, Floria Atlantic. Florida Atlantic is playing in the Motor City Bowl.

Oklahoma's weakest out of conference win, Washington. Washington went winless and is currently looking for a head coach.

Clearly Oklahoma had more "quality wins."

Cross Race in Livermore

Saturday I went and raced in Livermore. I raced in the B's because I didn't feel like getting up early enough to get there for the C race. at least 50% of the course took place inside of a small town rodeo arena. We had to ride through the chutes and through some pretty technical muddy sections out in the middle. They took us up the back side of the stairs for the bleachers which was pretty cool. There was a barrier in front of the stairs which I thought was stupid because you were going to have to get off for the stairs anyway. I didn't understand why they forced the dismount 10 feet in front of the stairs.

The field size was a lot smaller than the other races as I discovered the Super Prestige series is really well attended. They races all of the B's together. that included the 18-34 Bs, 35+ Bs and 45+Bs. It seemed like we had about 40-50 guys at the start line. Come to find out this also included all of the 35+ and 45+ As also. The field size really only matters at the start since it's important to sprint as fast you can to the first corner so that you don't have to try and pass people later. After the first lap it inevitably strings itself out with myself somewhere in the middle. This field was deceiving though because I could never tell who I was racing against in the Bs. I knew I wasn't in contact with the leaders anymore but I thought I was at least in the top 15 or so from where we started. And, I may have been, it's really hard to tell. On the results sheet I discovered there was actually only 11 Bs and I finished 9th out of those. I'm not really sure how to "race" when you don't know who you're racing against on the course. What I discovered was that everybody I passed were all in the 35+ or 45+ category so it didn't matter that I passed them.

I had a decent race. A few times my brain decided not to function properly and I did a few stupid things. There was a set of double barriers close to the start finish line that I convinced myself were lower than usual and that I could bunny hop them. On the third lap a guy cut me off in the corner before the barriers and since I was already trying to decide whether I should bunny hop them or not all the momentum I lost from getting on the brakes made me decide not to try but I also seemed to forget I was still going to have to get off the bike anyway. I literally just came to a stop at the barrier and shook my head in frustration. The very next lap I came around by myself and decided I was going to bunny hop them. I tried to carry as much speed through the corner as I could. It was all wood chips so it was sort of hard but I thought I did it. As I approached the barrier I committed, bunny hopped, heard the crash of my front tire on the barrier and felt my junk land on the top tube as the bike and me went down in a giant blaze of glory. Since these barriers were so close to the finish line people were gathered. The crash must have been pretty ugly because instead of cheering, which normally happens when crash at cross races, everybody just stared at me. I was pretty tangled up in the bike so I gave the crowd a thumbs up and then untied myself. One of the ladies thanked me for being ok. And I said, "you're welcome."

I'm still convinced I could bunny hop those barriers. I didn't try it on the next lap because I passed a guy going into the section that I had been using as a rabbit the entire lap. I wanted to make sure I actually beat him instead of letting him walk past me as I lay on the ground.

But, no injuries. Just a slightly sore neck which didn't set in until yesterday afternoon so I'm not totally convinced it's from crashing.

Cross racing is still fun. And I'm still not very good at it!

Abbreviated Words and Substitutions

Typing was invented so people could write faster. Why then do people insist upon abbreviating words when they type them? Especially in ways that can't possibly save any time. Writing the word "government" as "gov't" certainly saves time. Writing the word "come" as "cum" does not save time. In fact it's an entirely different word with a definition that has nothing to do with it's intention in sentences when it's used.

What I've noticed lately that drives me even more insane than abbreviations that don't abbreviate much are "bad" words where people use characters to replace vowels. You aren't fooling anyone or changing what you intend the word to mean if you write "f*ck" instead of "fuck." It doesn't change anything. Just write the word you intended and move on.

Motivational Quotes

My high school baseball coach loved quotes. On almost a daily basis, just after everyone had gotten loose, the whole team would gather in the dugout and wait for instruction. Just before instruction was given some random quote would be read a loud to the team and I suppose the idea was to give us something to think about to keep us from simply going through the motions. I practiced with the varsity my freshman year so I had four solid years of daily quotes during baseball season. I remember one:

"Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining." - Coach Mike Greene.

This quote is clearly not motivational unless you need to be motivated not to lie to people. Maybe it's my personality and natural cynicism but hearing the words that someone else said in a completely unrelated context has never done anything for me.

My father is also a lover of quotes and over the course of my lifetime I can't think of how many times he's said one or tried to use one to make a point. Again, I remember one:

"Excuses are like assholes. Everybody's got one and they generally stink." - Dad.

Now I'm sure my father isn't the original author of such insightful words but his voice saying them rings out in my head almost anytime I hear someone explain why they failed at just about anything. But again, it's not really motivational.

What I have always found to be a great motivator is challenging myself to overcome whatever barrier might be in front of me. Going into my senior season of high school baseball our team thought we had a shot to win the district title. We were returning almost all of our starters from the year before and we only lost 3-4 games. The local papers that covered our district saw it otherwise. I cut out every single article I could find that predicted we'd finish 3rd, 4th or even middle of the pack in some cases and hung those articles up in the locker room directly above my locker. We ended up having one of the best seasons our high school ever had and lost in the regional tournament because of home town officials on a series of plays that sometimes still wake me up from nightmares.

When I was younger I used the motivation of someone telling me I couldn't throw to work on that aspect of my game. I didn't remember his exact words but when I got home I wrote, "Your arm is your weakness" on a piece of paper and hung it above my bed on the ceiling. I woke up every morning and read those words. It'd piss me off on a daily basis but motivate me to work on it. At some point the motivation changed from gaining arm strength to simply trying to make Mr. Thompson (One of the best baseball minds I've ever met.) eat his words.

My Senior year of college I decided I wanted to do an Ironman triathlon. My friend Chris Durlak told me I couldn't do it. I'm not sure he really doubted me, but I used that as motivation to get myself out of bed to train. Later when I started planning my bike trip around the US he openly said he wasn't going to be my doubter on this one.

Recently I read an article in a cycling magazine that discussed just how easy it is for people to talk about winning, or even say they want to win races, but very few of those people are willing to actually do what it takes to win. Put in the proper training hours or even make themselves hurt to the point that is often necessary during the race itself. The idea of winning is nice. The suffering and sacrifice it often takes to make it happen just isn't worth it for most.

So I guess different people are motivated by different things. Still, I can't fathom how reading the great words of Einstein can possible get people excited to do something better than they would otherwise. I need doubters. I need there to be someone that I can prove wrong. Oddly enough, sometimes I find that person is myself.

So, I'll leave you with this. It's the best I can remember of what I used as my favorite quote in an athlete bio I had to fill out for a triathlon team I used to be on.

"If you need motivational words to get up, turn to google." -Landall.

From when I was famous

As I was putting stuff away in my new apartment I found a bunch of cds. One of them had all of the old stuff from my ridearoundamerica.com website which tracked that little bike ride I did. Included were the three various pieces that were done on me. I've decided to share them with you in case you haven't seen them.



This video is from one of the local Richmond, VA news stations that did this story before I left.



The dude that did this interview in Lubbock, TX was really cool. He miked me and we literally just talked for about a half hour or so. I totally forgot I was being filmed.



This was from Tyler, TX. Probably the worst of the three. I was really sick of the trip and ready to be home at this point. Plus, the lady doing the interview is an Oklahoma Alum and the whole time I was holding back mentioning that the Longhorns crushed the Sooners that year.



This is the day that I rode a 5 hour century on the rollers. There's about 10 seconds of dead air before anything starts to play. I don't know how to edit this shit.

Do they mean anything?

Has anyone else noticed that college football seems to give out about a billion awards to individual players? They're all named after people that nobody except someone looking to work on an ESPN research desk has ever heard of and in reality this seems pretty appropriate because with so many awards they can't really mean anything right?

There's the John Doe something or another best all around player award. Which, generally goes to a quarterback. There's the some old dude from the 1930s best offensive player award. Which also seems to go to quarterbacks. There's the [insert person of your choice] award for most service award. Which, went to Tebow, who is a quarterback but this award had more to do with his going to prisons and telling people about God and how much God helps him on the field and blah blah blah.

(A quick aside. If God helps Tim Tebow on the field but not the other players then shouldn't the other players find someone else to ask for help? Just a thought. Why's god like Tebow so much? It can' be his good looks becuase let's face it, that kid's face looks like he took on an All American Linebacker during one of his designed run plays without a helmet. But anyway, those points don't matter.)

It just seems to me that awards are really only given their value when they are rare. In the sport of triathlon, which I have since retired, I used to get insanely annoyed at awards ceremonies because in the larger categories they're recognize dudes that came in like 12th place. What does that mean? 12th place? It means that they're old and a lot of other old people are signing up for that race and so percentage wise 12th place was like top 5% or something. But that shouldn't matter. 12th place means you got your butt kicked by 11 other dudes and maybe next time you should run faster. But for the organizers it made sense to give out that many places because it made people feel valued and they were more likely to return for subsequent years since they got a crappy medal or coffee mug or something else to put in their office at work and show to friends.

Just like in triathlon, recognizing the 12th best dude doesn't mean anything if every person in college football seems to be getting an award for something. Or, every quarterback rather. The Heisman is really no exception. For someone other than a quarterback to win the Heisman there needs to be a lot of factors working in that persons favor other than what they do on the field. You won't hear me argue that the quarterback isn't the most vital part to any team. They are. But if you put the best quarterback ever concieved (maybe my immaculate conception like Allen Iverson) on a field with totally useless receivers, a line that is afraid to get touched and running backs who fumble every time they touch the ball, you're going to lose every game. You have to go all the way back to Charles Woodson in 1997 for the last defensive player that won and 1936 to some white dude who played End at Yale before that.

If the Heisman is just an award for the most "exciting" offensive player in the country then call it that. But it strikes me as odd that the Heisman is revered as the highest honor in all of college sports but only a handful of offensive players, mostly quarterbacks are ever really eligible.

In 2007 Michael Crabtree broke every receiving record for the last decade as a true Freshman. He plays for Texas Tech who weren't in the hunt for the Big 12 title much less the National Championship so he wasn't even mentioned until the last week of the season and then only as a footnote. Texas Tech still plays Oklahoma and Texas and all the other Big 12 schools that Sam Bradford plays. Why are Crabtree's numbers less meaningful simply because he plays at Texas Tech? But still, had he won, it'd still be another offensive player winning the award where NO defensive players were even footnotes.

What if a kicker played for Iowa. Iowa is a Big 10 school so they play a conference schedule that if they went undefeated would rank them in the top 5 whether they went on to play for a national title or not. Let's say in this made up season Iowa wins every game in either overtime or on a completed field goal with 1 second left on the play clock. Let's also assume that all of these field goals were 40+ yards. In this scenario, this kicker is clearly the most valuable person on this team. Should he win the Heisman?

What if a defensive end records a sack in ever key 3rd and short or anything and goal for an entire season thus always forcing the other team to punt or settle for a field goal? Should this guy win the Heisman?

I think in the long rambling mess of logic I'd tried to present my key point is simply that there are too many awards and the awards they do give out hardly means what the description of each one says. Just call them what they are. Just give out three or four quarterback of the year awards if that's what you want to do. But don't forget about free safety. Without them you'd have a tough time putting together your highlight reel at the end of the season.

Living in an ipod world

When I was in college I used to constantly make fun of the kids who couldn't make it across campus to class without popping in their ear buds and listening to half of their favorite song on their way to class. Granted, I'm not a "music" person and really only listen to it while on my bike working out, in my car or at work to help the time go by. It just never made sense to me that these people couldn't make it from even the furthest most points on campus, maybe a 15 minute walk, without the aid of music.

This morning while I was getting gas I was treated to beautiful sight, young love. Two middle school aged kids were walking down the sidewalk headed to what I can only assume was school. They were holding hands and doing all the other awkward middle school puppy love things as they walked. Just as I was admiring their love and taking a small trip down memory lane I noticed these kids both had something that did not exist when I was young and in love, ipods. Both sets of ears were plugged with ear buds and while I wasn't remotely close enough to hear whether they were rocking their favorite jams, one must assume there was music.

Why? Why bother doing anything that could otherwise be seen as even remotely social if you're going to insist on using your ipod at the same time? The more I think about it the more I realize that I am constantly in social settings where individuals are using ipods.

I'm not one of those doom and gloom, the world is going to shit and all that other terrible stuff type of person. But isn't the awkward days of middle school where you should start to learn the social skills that will be probably the most important thing you have later in life? If you can't even walk the 10-15 minutes it takes you to get to school without music you've got issues. If you can't do it with your girlfriend by your side then you've got a long future of World of Warcraft ahead of you.

Good luck with that!

On a sort of related note. If anybody has an old blackberry that doesn't work I'd gladly take that off your hands so I can walk down sidewalks pretending to type emails and thus avoiding giving directions to tourists. This activity would also allow me to pretend like I'm too focused to give a response to the homeless guy asking me for change.

Best Video Ever!

I'm pretty sure that everyone, especially everyone that lives in California and has a facebook account has seen this video by now. But, if you haven't, it's probably the funniest video ever.

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... by Jack Black

If you aren't crashing you aren't trying...

Probably one of the funniest videos I've seen in a very long time. I was crying from laughing. Of course I showed it to a co-worker and they only thought the clothes were funny. I guess it's a cyclist thing?

Yo me gusto cyclocross!

I think I might be addicted to cross. Or maybe it’s just racing my bike that I like so much, but either way, Sunday was awesome! I made another small component upgrade to the Fondriest (switched out the stupid commuter pedals for SPDs. This made a huge difference in remounting) bringing my total bill for bike rebuild to about $120. Not bad!

The races that I’ve been in are part of a larger five race series. Because my buddy Kevin (who finished 7th on the day and ended up 8th in the overall series) didn’t convince me to race cross until the 3rd race in the series, race number 5 for everyone else was race number 3 for me. That’s a lot of confusing number placement so go ahead and take the time to read that previous sentence one more time if needed.

Outside of track racing it’s a safe bet to say that no two courses are the same. Even on the road race organizers can get creative with chicanes in downtown sections or take up really steep short hills in some races and longer climbs in others. I really liked the course at Coyote Point. It had a few elements that we hadn’t had in the last few races. Some of these aspects were:

- A long climb with some steep sections thrown in for good measure. I am not a power guy so I really like climbing. This climb was long enough to hurt the power guys and steep enough to hurt what seemed like everyone else. On the first lap when it was still bunched up I was able to pass a lot of people on this climb. On the laps that followed after it had strung out a bit I was still going by at least one or two each time up.

- A very technical section of four consecutive 180 degree switchbacks over woodchips. I can’t imagine a cluster of woodchips like that was natural so I can only assume they were brought in by the race organizer. This section was insanely hard and I thought it’d give me a lot of trouble. I am going to chalk up my riding this section clean and actually passing people through here as pure dumb luck. There is no way I should have gotten through there clean, but I did. One guy following me actually praised me on my cornering skills as we exited the 4th one. This made me laugh because I really had no idea what I was doing.

- A long descent (what goes up must come down) on not very smooth single track. There was one good line so if you were in front you could pick it. Outside of that you just had to follow the wheel in front of you and hope he picked it. The exceptions were the guys on mountain bikes on the first lap who basically decided they didn’t care about the line and just bombed the thing.

- A beach. There was a section of about 50 yards on a loose sandy beach. As people ran this section the sand got packed and later races eventually started riding the whole thing. For the C’s at 8:30am I don’t think anybody was riding it. I never even attempted it and it’s the one time that all those years of triathlon came in handy. I passed about 10 guys on the first lap running this section. On the subsequent laps I would maybe pass one guy or run at the same pace. Today I have a bruise on my right shoulder from carrying the tank more lovingly known at the Fondriest over this sandy section. Later I asked people how they managed to keep their saddle from constantly banging them in the back of the head as they ran and nobody had an answer. I guess that’s just the way it works.

- There was a set of barriers that were totally bunny hop-able. And while I was going to try it on the last lap I didn’t because I was trying to hold my place and didn’t want to lose it because I did something stupid.
- There were also two pretty significant sections of pavement where the power guys would really throw the hammer down. Since I am by no means one of these guys with huge amounts of power I would simply try to hold wheels and get as much of a draft as I could. I usually ended up passing them on either the climb or some other technical section of the course.

Now, if you got through all of that rambling I’m sure you’re thinking I won the race since I did nothing but mention all of the people I was constantly passing. Unfortunately this was not the case because I started about three rows from the back of the pack due to being a complete idiot. On my warm up lap I lost track of time and suddenly realized I was on the only person riding through this one section. I glanced at my watch and realized I had about 2 minute before the race started. I had to sprint through the middle of the course to get myself to the staging area and the only place I could squeeze in was at the back. So, most of those people I passed on the first climb and beach section were people I should have been way in front of to begin with.

In the end I finished 23rd out of 68 with is another big improvement over my 38th from Golden Gate Park and 2nd to last at Sierra Point (this result really shouldn’t count due to 17 chain drops). In the overall classification for the series I moved up to the top 30 (I think. They don’t have this posted and I’m trying to remember what they had posted at the race) despite having skipped the first two races.

Basically using very complex mathematical formulas on this degree of progression will bring you to see that as long as I stay on this trajectory I should be World Champion in about a year.

I would like to race a few more CX races, if for nothing else to use as threshold/power workouts. But, with the road season quickly approaching Northern California I feel like I should save any travel money for those races. And since I know this ending is keeping you glued to the edge of your seat waiting to see if I race anymore, you’ll just have to come back to find out.

Please define the word Dominate.

Gators, Sooners to meet in BCS national title game

I found this article staring back at me this morning as I checked my email. After reading the first couple paragraphs I realized it was just one more article that down played a head to head loss and glamorized winning the last half of the season by big margins.

You don't really need to read the whole article. Just the fist sentence couple sentences to show just how ridiculous the end of this college football season turned out.

"Dominated the last two months" is basically what seems to determine who gets to play for championship games.

Except there's one problem with that statement. On 10/25/08 Oklahoma lost to Texas 45-35. That's inside of two months. So maybe they weren't so "dominating" after all. Unless of course you ignore head to head match ups as an important aspect of college football. Which, clearly seems to be the case!

So now, after Oklahoma embarrassed Missouri (who really didn't deserve to be in that game either except the Big 12 North must play the South) they will go on to play Florida for the national title. I am no Florida fan but you better believe I will be cheering for the Gators as if I were born in the swamp. I realize this win would probably make a case for the argument that the SEC is always the strongest conference in college football and right now I just don't care about that.

As a consolation prize Texas plays Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl. I have NO idea how an overrated Ohio State still got themselves into a BCS game when Texas Tech is clearly getting snubbed. But, Texas always plays great in big bowl games and Ohio State always falls apart so if it shapes up the right way it should be a good day for the Longhorns.

Hook 'em!

Fat Kid!

I have this habit of referring to myself as "fat kid" when I'm talking to some of my cyclist buddies. I don't really mean fat kid in the way you made fun of the chunky kid in 4th grade. For me, it's really a term I use to describe my state of fitness. Once I'm fit and in race shape, I'll probably stop, but while its the off season and base miles are being gathered by the plenty, using the term "fat kid" is just another small motivating tool to get myself where I need to be.

In reality, I'm grossly anorexic. The body mass index charts say so. I challenge to google one, find the box between 6'2" and 6'3" and then find the corresponding weight of about 157lbs. It doesn't exist. According to that chart, I need to seek attention fr an eating disorder. But, since I think that chart is stupid, I could always stand to lose a few pounds because nothing makes you ride your bike faster than being lighter.



Last night, riding home from the port, all my fat kid jokes seemed to come back to me as I broke my saddle. I should point out that I ride on a Tiogo Spyder which is all plastic, but still, it's rated to people up to 185. So, fat kid really might be a fat kid. Hopefully they'll warranty it. If they don't, I'll be riding a pink saddle I borrowed from Jennifer in the mean time. It's super cute yo!



Maybe last night was telling me I need to be at 150 by race season?