Rolling along, singing a song

It's not called Singer-poor for nothing...

Out of Singapore's 20,000 taxis on the road, Jeffrey Tan's is arguably the most memorable.

Having put a hi-tech karaoke machine in his cab, customers are all together too happy to keep the metre running on their journeys with Tan.

Link (video)

Now that's what I'm talkin' about! We had some darned fine drivers during our cruise, but if this guy had been around instead of Moms Mabley the voodoo priestess, I'd have flagged him down quicker than you could say, "Hi... I'm Johnny Cash."

Which X-man are you?

As long as we're in quiz-taking mood, and in light of the fact that X-men: The Last Stand hits theaters today, I present yet another quiz:

Which X-Man Are You?

You are Cyclops! Strong-willed, disciplined, and an all-around good guy, you are probably the envy of most others around you. As Cyclops, you are committed to your family and lovers, even if you sometimes lose your patience. You will find best times with Colossus, with his sense of virtue, but will be at odds with Havok due to his insecurities.
Take this quiz!

This is most perturbatory, since Cyclops is probably my least favorite X-man of all time and because I've always considered myself to have a lot more in common with Nightcrawler.

The test must've been rigged. I demand a recount.

Daily tipple can bring health benefits

LONDON (Reuters) - Moderate drinking reduces the risk of heart disease but the beneficial effects of alcohol seem to work differently in men and women, Danish researchers said on Friday.

They found that for men drinking daily seems to have the biggest positive effect on health while in women the amount of alcohol consumed may have more of an impact.

"The risk of heart disease was lowest among men who drank every day," said Janne Tolstrup of the National Institute for Public Health in Copenhagen.

Link

It's okay, Sweetie; I have a prescription!

Now playing: Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, Burn To Shine

Bejeweled

By popular and unpopular demand, The Object That Shall Not Be Named (and its solitary companion):

(Photo by Turtle)

Big Red Button

First of all, let me just clear the air* and admit that I still find this thingummy to be outrageously funny.

Don't ask me why; I don't have an answer.

On a more practical note, I wish someone would install a saucer-sized red button just inside the doorway of the men's room where I work.

I don't mean to say that I work in the men's room, though far be it from me to deny inspiration wherever it strikes. I just know that there are times when I walk through that door and wish there were a big red button I could slam with the palm of my hand. An alarm would sound, and the interior lighting would switch to red. The toxic atmosphere would be vented out of doors to share airspace with the smell of boiled goat colon, and a battery of atomisers would fill the air with the scent of oranges or clove. A sultry but kind feminine voice would then report when untainted oxygen had once more reached breathable levels.

Big Red Button. Good Thing™.


* Foreshadowing.

My brain has a stem

Turtle's always telling me that I think like a woman, and it was starting to give me a complex. So I took the test.

Your Brain is 40% Female, 60% Male

You have a total boy brain Logical and detailed, you tend to look at the facts And while your emotions do sway you sometimes... You never like to get feelings too involved

What Gender Is Your Brain?

I'm only 60% reassured. 65%, if you count the fact that the brain in the picture above looks to me like a woman's shapely bottom (Paging Dr. Rorschach... Dr. Rorschach to the admitting desk...).

We be back, mon

After seven busy, wonderful days spent cruising around the Caribbean, Turtle and I are back to real life and the pile of work that accumulated in our absence.

Until I get my pile shoveled down to a reasonable height, I won't have much time to post, but here's the trip in a nutshell (click here for some pictures):

13 May

Flew down to Miami a day early so that we could spend an evening with my old college pal, The Buckethead. Got to know the desk clerks at the hotel and had an odd but not-unusual (for me) discussion about why many native Spanish speakers are reluctant to say the words "South Beach", instead tending to just say "South..." and then waving a hand as if to pantomime the ellipsis.

Coincidentally, it hadn't been more than half an hour since a conversation Turtle and I had over lunch, during which I related how my Cuban-born high school Spanish teacher wouldn't say "beach" in front of the class. I assume her reasons were similar to the desk clerk's.

14 May

Hit the continental breakfast and learned the truth of recent news articles about Chinese rudeness. Caught the airport shuttle back to the airport where we caught the cruise line shuttle to the ship. We arrived in plenty of time to embark, check out our spacious balcony stateroom, and find where the 24-hour pizza window was before our friends the M&Ms arrived. Later, the ship set sail and the reggae music began. After dinner, we and the M&Ms went to check out the karaoke show and were underwhelmed with the emcee.

15 May

Up bright and early (daily habits die hard) for breakfast and to pick up my rented tux (we have pictures; be patient). Began noticing that

1. My fears that I might not be classy enough or well-dressed enough for a cruise were entirely unfounded.
2. The bulk of Americans sure are fat. (No pun intended)
3. The ocean really is an incredible, deep shade of blue.

In the evening, we and the M&Ms took in the Vegas-style revue and, while I'm generally in favor of thongs, I completely failed in my attempts to understand their relationship to this particular performance.

16 May

First stop: San Juan, Puerto Rico. We didn't get into port until evening, so this was a quick one, but we did get to visit old San Juan and explore the old fort for a bit. With the M&Ms, we grabbed dinner in San Juan at the (infamous) Señor Frog's. Later, went for karaoke again and found the emcee drunk and unprofessional. She proudly proclaimed that she'd spent the last five hours at Señor Frog's, so no wonder. We didn't see her there, but she was probably on the floor giving body shots.

17 May

Up early for breakfast. Spent some time planning the next day's excursion and then debarked to Phillipsburg for our day on St. Maarten/St. Martin. Had a great tour guide—a shorter, slightly more Caribbean brother to Jamie Fox, named Dennis—and really enjoyed seeing the sights. Did a bit of shopping but only bought a couple small souvenirs.

18 May

Up early for breakfast because we had to clear immigration before debarking for our day on St. Thomas. I was disappointed that I didn't get a stamp for my shiny almost-new passport.

Compared with St. Maarten, St. Thomas looked very American, what with all the U.S. automobiles and fast food chains. Unlike St. Maarten, however, all those American cars were driving on the left side of the road, which felt really weird for the first 15 minutes or so. Was humbled by the thought of bicycling on the island, with its very hilly, curvy, narrow roads.

Did some serious jewelry shopping this time out and came away with a new diamond-encrusted wedding band for Turtle.

Found a wristwatch styled like the one I've been seeing in my mind's eye, but it had an 18k gold case and cost $4500. None for me, thanks; I just recently dropped a couple grand on a recumbent bike.

19 May

A day at sea. Turtle and the M&Ms wanted to bake in the sun, so I took the opportunity to find a shady spot on a deck along the side of the ship, where I plopped my butt down in a lounge chair to sip iced tea, read my novel, and nap while looking out over the ocean. Greatness.

20 May

Another day at sea. Up early for breakfast and to return my tux. Bummed around the ship all day, then at dinner said our goodbyes to Claudia and Carlos, our waiters for the week. They called us their family, and we tipped them.

Karaoke again, this time with a sparse crowd. Guess the word got around about the emcee (or perhaps the fact that I'd be singing). Sang three times because... well, hardly anyone else was signing up.

21 May

Up early to grab some breakfast and prepare for debarkation. Caught the shuttle to the airport, checked the bags, and then enjoyed some good hearty Miami airport TSA attitude and just short of a cavity search—which would have been fruitless, since I had bacon and eggs for breakfast.

Everyone knows that it's against the law to bring fruit into the U.S. from out of country.

Sat at the gate with the M&Ms until time for our flight. Got home and "endured" much rubbing and snuggling from our furry dependants.

It was a great trip, and we're already trying to figure out when we can afford to go again!

There's no "I" in team

...so I'm going this one solo.

I wasn't tagged with this meme, but I saw it over on Fire Ant Gazette and thought it looked like more fun than trying to come up with something original.

• I AM the firstborn among my siblings, and I have the neuroses to prove it.
• I WANT enough money to live comfortably but not so much that I have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to manage it.
• I WISH my coworkers were equipped with a mute button.
• I HATE waking up 10 minutes before the alarm is going to go off.
• I MISS the toilet bowl, sometimes.
• I HEAR the neighbor kids outside, screaming like they're being skinned alive and having a ball.
• I WONDER what it would be like to be over 6' tall and whether God really has a beard.
• I REGRET all of the harsh words I've ever spoken to my wife and my parents. And I regret my fear of taking risks.
• I AM NOT as pedantic in real life as I seem in text. In real life, I'm much worse.
  
• I DANCE only when the alternative is death by midget cannibals.
• I CRY only around my wife, and then I'm embarrassed about it.
• I AM NOT ALWAYS in a bad mood.
• I MAKE WITH MY HANDS strange, mystic sigils in the air to reinforce otherwise indecipherable monologue.
• I WRITE things pretty much the way they spill out of my brain.
• I CONFUSE Samuel L. Jackson with Lawrence Fishburn, sometimes, but not because I can't tell them apart.
  
• I NEED a vacation.
• I SHOULD learn to keep my mouth shut and listen, and not be That Guy.
  
• I START to fall asleep by around 10pm every night, regardless of whether I have to get up early in the morning or not.
• I FINISH about 70% of the sentences I
• I TAG Neil Gaiman, Turtle, Tink, and Leadfoot.
  

Eye opener

Ever since that whole cancer thing a few years ago, I've a tendency to be a bit anxious about the various small, unexplained pains and anatomical anomalies that we all experience from time to time. Lately, the focus of my hypochondria has been my eyes.

No pun intended.

I'm extremely nearsighted*, and the last time I went to an optometrist he informed me that, as a consequence of this, my eye pressure was quite high and should be closely watched. He said that if I ever felt any shooting pains in my eyes, I should immediately go to the nearest optometrist as this was a sign that my retinas were separating from my eyeballs. Further, he stressed the importance of coming in for a checkup at least once a year.

That was over three years ago, so when I started occasionally getting short, sharp pains in my eyes, I started thinking about finally getting around to finding a new eye doctor to go with our new town. And yet I kept putting if off, because the word "glaucoma" had got pretty firmly lodged in the back of my mind and I didn't want to risk having that confirmed before Turtle's and my big vacation.

Not knowing about any of this, Turtle scheduled me an appointment with an opthalmologist.

So I went, remembering that the last time I went to an actual eye doctor—as opposed to a vendor of prescriptive lenses with a license to prescribe them—I passed out. Something about the whole process of numbing and dilating the eyes and pressing some sort of sci-fi blue light against my eyeballs makes me squeamish. When I get squeamish, my blood pressure drops (and so do I).

When I arrived at the doctor's office, I warned them of my swoonish tendencies. They told me to warn the doctor when I was called in for my exam. I told the doctor. The doctor told me to try not to hit my head if I passed out.

What a stitch, this guy. [click-click. BOOM!]

A couple things happened, and one didn't. I learned that my previous eye "doctor" should have been selling shoes, because I do not have glaucoma or even high eye pressure. I also learned that because of the shape of my eyeball cup (or something), my risk of ever having those problems was minute.

And I didn't pass out from the pressure test.

But wait! Having got my pressure test out of the way, I still had to go through the whole dilation process, at which point I learned something else that's useful to know: it's the sensation of my pupils dilating that makes me queasy, not the blue light. Seated safely in the staging area, I put my head between my knees and fought through it without incident.

It would have been really embarrassing if I'd passed out in front of the elderly lady with the drool running down her chin.

Finally, I was finished and, much relieved about the results of my checkup, I ventured outside and gave thanks to my Maker that my appointment had been scheduled on a very cloudy day. Though I was squinting even with my sunglasses on, I decided it wouldn't hurt anything to stop by the bike shop to pick up a few tubes (since I'd given away my spare).

At the bike shop, I had great fun showing my freaky eyes to a couple of the staffers with whom I've become friends.

"Holy crap," one of them said. "They're all black! You look like that one guy from Carnivàle. Or... or..."

"One of the tar alien-infected characters from The X-files?"

"Yeah. Or like that."

Unfortunately, half an hour was plenty of time for my luck to run out. By the time I left, it was a beautiful, horrible sunny day out.

Oh yeah... and I need bifocals.


* There is a space of about two inches, about six inches from my eyes, within which I can see clearly without corrective lenses. We're talking somewhere north of 20/1200. Yet every time I go to an eye doctor, he or she confiscates my glasses and asks me to read the chart waaaaaayyy down at the far end of the room.

"Can you read any of that, Mr. Mafoo?"

"Gee, I don't know," I say, not at all sarcastically. "Can you give me a hint? Like, say, turning my head generally in the direction of whatever it is I'm supposed to be reading?"

$20

I'm not usually big on inspirational chain letters and the like, but I received this one from my sister today and felt it was worth sharing:

A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20.00 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?"

Hands started going up.

He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.

He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill.

He then asked, "Who still wants it?"

Still the hands were up in the air.

Well, he replied, "What if I do this?" And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe.

He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty.

"Now, who still wants it?" Still the hands went into the air. My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20.

"Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless.

"But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value.

"Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who do love you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but by who we are.

"You are special- Don't ever forget it."

Ride report: Wrong way, Feldman

At the urging of CliffyB and FlyingLaZBoy—both friends and fellow BikeJournal members—I made plans to do the Greater Dallas Bicyclists' Airport Ride. The previous weekend, I logged a 37-miler on my new bike, and the 50-mile Airport Ride would be a new landmark. It would also be the greatest distance I'd ridden at one swat since last year's Peach Pedal rally, when I rode 54 miles (and nearly caught a dose of heat exhaustion).

I showed up at the start point at 8:00am, watching the skies for signs that the ride might fall on the wrong side of the predicted 50% chance of thunderstorms. As I got out of the car, a young woman came over and introduced herself as Mary Beth. She seemed relieved that someone else had shown up but was concerned that there weren't more riders there yet. I explained that people didn't usually arrive in force until about 15 minutes before the ride.

Sure enough, by a few minutes before the 8:30 start, there were about 10 of us geared up (get it? geared? bikes? oh, never mind...) and ready to go. And that's when the trouble started. One of the guys I know from GDB came over and explained that our ride leader had changed the start time for the ride to an hour later. Knowing that the later we started, the greater the odds of getting caught in the storms that were predicted in the early afternoon, we eyed the skies.

Mistake 1: One of the riders—a gentle giant of a man, named Dave—said he knew the route and offered to lead anyone who wanted to go ahead and leave at 8:30. Five of us, including CliffyB and Mary Beth, took him up on it. No sign of FlyingLaZBoy.

Our ride went smoothly enough for about 18 miles, when we reached the 7-11 that's the customary first rest stop. One woman who had been lagging behind for most of the ride hadn't arrived yet, so we waited. And waited. And finally her husband's phone rang. She'd ridden across a bad expansion joint and pinch-flatted both her tires. She only had one spare tube, and being the only other person in the group with 650c tires, I surrendered my only spare. It seemed like a bad idea, because if I flatted, I'd be stranded. But I did it anyway.

Note to self: Toss a patch kit in the seat bag.

Dave the Gentle Giant rode back with my tube and to help with the tire change. After 15 minutes or so, there was another phone call. Something was wrong with the rim, and they'd punctured one of the spare tubes. The woman's husband was riding back to get the car, and Dave needed to turn around and head back because of other time commitments.

Mistake 2: Mary Beth and I allowed CliffyB to convince us that we'd have no problem finding our own way along the rest of the route. This turned out not to be the case, but after some false turns and backtracking, we did manage to get on the loop around the airport.

Between the time spent waiting for the flat tire situation to play out and the time spent trying to get unlost, we met up with the bulk of the club group, who had waited for the 9:30 start. They were headed in the opposite direction on the loop.

FlyingLaZBoy, riding at the head of the group, saw me and started digging for his camera. In his hurry to snap a picture (at right), he dropped something on the ground and didn't seem to notice.

I hope it wasn't his wallet.

Foo: "Hey Cliffy! C'mon, let's turn around and let them lead us out!"
CliffyB: "Nah... we'll just meet them coming around the loop."

Mistake 3: We never saw the group again.

By this time, Mary Beth was starting to run out of gas. As fit as she was and as game as she was, she'd only been cycling for a month, and all the extra miles we were logging had started to take her away from her happy place.

Finally, we got back to a point where we could retrace our route home and stopped at a filling station for necessary breaks and water.

CliffyB: "Man, we should have turned around and followed the group. I was waiting for you to talk me into it."
Foo: "What? I tried."
CliffyB: "You should have tried harder."
...
Foo: "Why you...! Dude. Just walk away."

As we got back under way, poor Mary Beth was obviously suffering. I could see that she was spinning smaller and smaller gears and still laboring, so I fell back to ride with her and tell her incredibly boring stories. I figured that if she was focused on how badly she wished I'd just shut up, maybe she wouldn't be thinking about her overworked legs.

Finally, within smelling distance of the barn (so to speak), we got turned around in some labyrinthine neighborhood and I'd had enough. While CliffyB blazed onward, I stopped and flagged down a homeowner on his riding lawnmower.

John Deere: "What can ah do for y'all?"
Foo: "This is a little embarrassing, but we seem to be trapped in your neighborhood."
John Deere: "Trapped, y'say."
Foo: "Yes. We're trying to get to the Preston-Forest shopping center. I know we're close but we seem to be going in circles."

Oh, he got a big kick out of that, but he got us out of the neighborood. Six hours after we'd started out, we rolled back into the shopping center parking lot. Mary Beth was so overjoyed to see her car that she hugged me, and I thought she might weep for joy.

Our 50-mile ride had stretched to 68.5 miles, and I logged my first metric century of the year. I've dubbed this one the Wrong Way Feldman Epic.

But lest my account give anyone the idea that I was miserable (aside from not caring for the feeling of being an Israelite lost in the wilderness), I wasn't. If it sounds like I'm P.O.'ed at Cliffy, I'm not.

This, my longest ride to date, could have gone more smoothly, but at the end of it I wasn't wiped out. At the risk of becoming repetitive, none of my body parts was screaming in agony, as had been the case on more than a few occasions when I rode my Trek 1500 in rallies over shorter distances. My quads and gluts were feeling a little wrung out, naturally, and my right knee was feeling a little tweaked. Minor complaints, considering I'd just ridden farther than my longest previous distance.

It's a disgusting world out there

Two stories have made me think that my encounter with dirty plasticware may be the least of my worries.

I'll have mine from the bottle, thanks

Hungarian builders who drank their way to the bottom of a huge barrel of rum while renovating a house got a nasty surprise when a pickled corpse tumbled out of the empty barrel, a police magazine website reported.

According to online magazine www.zsaru.hu, workers in Szeged in the south of Hungary tried to move the barrel after they had drained it, only to find it was surprisingly heavy and were shocked when the body of a naked man fell out.

Link

News-wise, we seem to be scraping the bottom of... the...

I'm sorry, but I can't say it. That would be cheap.

Even for me.

Note: Bret rightly points out that this article sounds suspiciously like an urban legend that has been documented over on Snopes.com. I'm not sure which I find funnier: the possibility that the Hungarian story is true, or the possibility that some fact checker at Reuters got snookered.

黏 液*

Beijing has launched a campaign to make its citizens more "civil" in the run-up to hosting the 2008 Olympics. Games organizers have repeatedly said the city needs to teach its people to stand in line, stop spitting and littering and generally be better mannered.

Past efforts to stamp out the spitting habit, like a 2003 campaign to help curb the spread of SARS, have not been very effective, partly because many people believe clearing the lungs and firing away is good for your health.

Link

This ties in to Bret's recent posting, over on Random Walk. Frankly, I think China's just positioning itself to sell a lot of rain ponchos during the Beijing Olympics.

* The Chinese characters for "mucus".

Now playing: The Hives, Veni Vidi Vicious

Open letter

To my esteemed coworkers,

If I ever find out which one of you returned your Spaghetti-Os stained spoon to the box of clean plastic spoons in the break room, I will throw you out the nearest window.

If you do this when the bird flu hits, I will throw you out a window, retrieve you, drag you by one ankle up the stairs, and throw you out again.

Kindest regards,
Grossed Out In Cubeville

Message for you, suh!

I don't like spam.

[ENTER vikings]

VIKINGS: (low, building) Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam...

That said, every once in a while something lands in my e-mail box that's so pathetic... so polite... so out there... that it's worth a moment, if for amusement purposes only.

Subject :_ ENQUIRY

DEAR SIR,

WE ARE GENERAL EXPORTER OF GLOVES AND HOSIERY WE ARE SPECIALIST IN GLOVES AND ALL TYPES OF GARMENTS we are in this field since last 10 years.

Sir we want to expand our business and sending you enquiry regarding our specializes. Kindly consider us in your new clients and try us once.

We also ensure that the orders are shipped on time and received by the customers on time. We believe in long term relationship with our customers and their satisfaction to the fullest. We also welcome small orders. Give us a chance and you will never approach any other manufacturer which is a guarantee, be it on the terms of quality or price. Awaiting your valuable reply.

Regards, Muhammad Amjad
Customer Service Team

For any assistance or further information on our portal, log on:

As if.

VIKINGS: (quite loud now, insistent) SPAM! SPAM! SPAM! SPAM! SPAM!
FOO: SHAAADDAAAP!!!

[vikings EXEUNT]

Madre, May 1?

So here we are. The first day of May... Uno de Mayo. The day when those who support illegal immigration to the United States say they're going to knock its citizens off our high horse. They claim they're going to shut the economy down and show us that we can't possibly live without them.

Maybe they will; maybe they won't. Maybe we can't... but maybe we can.

Stage set. Moving along.

Before going out for Saturday's bike ride, I was flipping around the morning news programs and came across some cabeza que habla delivering his dire warning about the crushing blow his group planned to deliver to the U.S. economy on May 1.

I have to tell you, it got me stirred up and feeling patriotic. It made me feel like waving around my flag, so I trotted out the Iron Eagle jersey.

After my bike ride, I stopped by Schlotsky's Deli to pick up some lunch. While I was standing at the pick-up window, waiting for my food, the young man who was slicing and wrapping the sandwiches on the other side of the counter eyed my attire.

I'm used to this, of course. A middle-aged guy in brightly-colored, form-fitting lycra should be considered a source of some amusement.

"Hey," he said, giving me the chin jerk. "That's a really cool shirt, man."

"Thanks," I said. "I was feeling patriotic this morning."

In response, one of the women working nearby turned to a couple of her co-workers with a smirk and fired off a machine gun burst of Spanish that may or may not have included the word "gringo".

"Yeah," I continued, "as a citizen of the United States, I have the right—no... the duty—to express my allegiance as I see fit."

And if that means strutting around a sandwich shop looking like a chubby, sawn-off Captain America knockoff, then so be it.

Laid back (redux)

I was talking to a friend about recumbents after church last night. He's been kicking around the idea of building his own lowracer (read "land luge"), which may explain his patience and the appearance of interest throughout my periodic recumbent conversion updates.

He seemed surprised when I mentioned that I was still working through some self-image issues stemming from my perception of recumbents as the final resort of fat, old, broken down, pocket-protector-wearing engineers and ham radio operators.

"I was shocked to see recumbents in the pages of your publication. Since when did it become the magazine for people who sit in chairs while riding with little stick-on mirrors on their helmets? I guess it's not the end of the world, but I'm sure Style Man is ashamed."

Tom Spehar; Dulith, MN. (Reader mail, Bicycling, June 2006)

"You're kidding!" he said. "I always thought recumbents were cool."

"Yeah, but you're an engineer, aren't you."

But here's the thing: after yesterday morning's ride, I'm on the cusp of not giving a flip whether my 'bent and I are or are not considered cool.

Ride report

For the first time this year, I joined a group of about two dozen cyclists for what has been dubbed the Plano East ride. For the first time ever, I took my new recumbent.

I've always enjoyed the Plano East ride and the core group of people who frequent it, but this time I was out to answer some questions for myself:

1. Could I still ride with a group?
2. Could I keep up?
3. How would I handle starting from the various up-grades and busy intersections?
4. Could I still climb Dump Hill without making the rest of the group wait while I finished my climb?

The short answer: No worries.

The blow-by-blow

Riding with the group. The drafting dynamic was a bit different, but I'm probably the only one who noticed. As we were riding single file down a two-lane road, it appeared to me that some of the riders were struggling against the wind. My recumbent sits pretty tall compared to some designs, but it's still tougher for an upright cyclist to draft off me than another upright cyclist. So, when there was room, I tried to ride alongside the draft line (it wasn't really a "paceline") instead of screwing up the draft for the riders following. This was enlightening, as well, because it told me that my recumbent really is that much more efficient than an upright bike, aerodynamically.

After about 30 miles of this, I saw one of my friends go off the back of the draft line. When I looked over at her, she was looking a bit grey, so I asked if she was okay.

"I'm whipped," she gasped.

I was surprised. She's a very strong rider who's usually at the front, doing long pulls. She was gassed; I'd been riding out in the wind all morning and felt like I was out for a cruise around the neighborhood.


Keeping up. This ride sometimes splits up with some of the fire eaters going off on their own to hammer, but it's essentially a social ride that usually in the high 13-14 mph range. Yesterday, we averaged 14.8 mph and I never had a problem keeping up. In fact, there were times when I was sitting on the back and wishing the folks in front of me would pick up the pace a bit.

Getting started. There were a couple times when I had a little trouble at intersections. I'm still not 100% comfortable with starting, and riders tend to crowd too close, eager to be at the front of the pack when the light turned green. I think this was mostly psychological, because as soon as I worried that I might wobble into another rider on take-off, I did. Every other start was smooth and straight.

Dump Hill. This is a great "climb" (as we in the Texas flatlands reckon such things) for hill intervals. Steep, maybe 150 yards, it's the one I always tried to hammer on my upright bike, so I was eager to find out how much slower I'd be on the recumbent. The answer, it seems, is "I won't".

I started the climb at the rear of the group, not wanting to get in the way of faster climbers. I hit the base running, spinning, downshifting as my cadence started to lag. As I bore down on a rider in front of me, I didn't want to give up any momentum, so I pulled off to the left and passed him. Then I passed another. And another. Puffing, breathing in time with my decreasing cadence, I kept downshifting until I hit my largest cog. I was nearly to the top and, rather than risk a blown shift to my granny ring under load, I powered on. Once on the flat, I eased back and continued on to the regroup point, where only half a dozen of the group were waiting.

I had passed 3/4 of the group on the climb, and it didn't feel much different from when I'd done it on my Trek. So I guess there's something to the Corsa's reputation as a "hill eater", after all. It's a Good Thing™.

Up the fashion. All I know is I rode 37.38 miles yesterday, and at the end of it my neck felt no worse than if I'd sat in a chair all day, watching TV. No groin numbness. No hand numbness. My legs are a bit sore this morning, but I think I'd have been a bit disappointed if they hadn't been.

I'm 'bent.

Darwin thwarted

With more than a little trepidation, I clicked on the button that would bring a fresh batch of e-mails into my inbox and watched as my filters sorted the new arrivals into the appropriate folders. Rats. Four of them had landed in the folder I'd set up for my volunteer webmaster activities.

I opened the first one.

"Mmfph ffmpph mmmph," it read.

Okay, not really, but that's roughly the equivalent of what it did say.

"You say you're having trouble breathing?" I asked, helpfully.

"Ymmmph."

"I see. Well, had you considered pulling your head out?"

You can see where this is going. For the past three days, I have been inundated by a digital parade of ignorance and laziness so vexing that I've had to wrap my head in duct tape to keep it from exploding.

Sometimes I just wish the doorway exiting Darwin's waiting room led to a 10-story drop into thin air.

Weekend update

Blogger seems to have got something caught sideways this morning, so we'll just have to see how we make out with the "blog by e-mail" feature. Maybe I've even remembered the address correctly.

Onward...

Another great weekend in north Texas. First thing Saturday morning, we loaded our assorted human-powered conveyances and headed down to White Rock Lake. There, we met up with the group that Turtle had organized to undergo some performance testing that would help the participants to fine tune their cadence and riding styles.

The process began with each rider having some very scientific looking electronics strapped on to his/her handcycle. Some of it was for analysis of the rider's exhaust gasses (exhalations, Susie; not what you're thinking); some of it was telemetry for transmitting the readings to the laptop of the guy doing the testing. The rider then got to strap on a breather mask with a 1" diameter tube connecting it to the test equipment.

I kept making lame Darth Vader jokes (which the perfessor had obviously heard far too many times before), but with the masks and their sunglasses, the riders looked more like jet fighter pilots.

I may have some pictures to post, but it will require a certain alignment of the planets for that to happen. First, I'll have to see if anyone thought to snap a few shots of Turtle with my camera while I was running around, helping some of the other test subjects. Then, I'll have to make sure that Turtle doesn't mind being plastered on my blog. Finally, Blogger will have to get with the program.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, I sloped off for a quick lap of the lake on my Corsa. It took me a mile or two to get settled in, but by then I was cranking along between 18 and 21 mph. Maybe everyone else was feeling like a leisurely ride, or maybe it was an indication of what sort of performance I can expect from the bike, but I was passing pretty nearly every other cyclist I came upon.

At least, until my route took me off the street and on to the bike path, at which point things got more crowded and forced me to focus more on safety than speed. Still even after I'd finished dodging wobblies, cloud gazers, and stroller zombies, I arrived back at VO² testing central with an overall average speed of a little over 16 mph.

Sunday...

...was another beautiful day, so Turtle and I were out riding again. We tooled around the neighborhood together until Turtle got tired of me hanging around and told me to go climb some hills. Which I did. I picked a few spots where I'm accustomed to going for hill intervals and attacked them. For the first time while riding the Corsa, my heart rate went through the roof, which tells me where I'm going to have to concentrate on developing more strength and endurance.

In case you hadn't thought about the physics of it, hills are the recumbent rider's Waterloo because the only things you have to work with are your gears, leg speed (cadence), and leg strength. Standing up and throwing your weight into the pedals to mash your way up a climb is simply not one of the available options.

People doing yardwork smiled and waved. Colorful lycra-clad roadies smiled and waved. I returned their greetings with enthusiasm and was really feeling pretty darned good about the whole thing until the homicidal inbreeder in the black S-10 pickup pulled out of the main lane on to the shoulder where I was riding and tried to run me down.

I wasn't scared at the time, because I saw him coming in my helmet mirror and was able to safely roll off the shoulder and through a broad ditch. I was (and am) pissed off. But the more I think about it, the more it sinks in that I came close to being one of those people whose pictures I'm in charge of posting on the Ride of Silence web site.

You can never be too alert. Especially when you're the only guy who knows how to keep the web site updated.

Later...

...we cooked chicken on the grill and settled in to watch The 40-year-old Virgin. It was a funny movie, but I probably would have enjoyed it a bit more if Turtle hadn't gotten so much entertainment from how close it came to reading like my biography.

When homesickness trumps self-preservation

"They took us away in buses and said we were leaving for three days. We came back eight years later. I cried every night. I wanted to go home. Thank God, we are here in the best place on earth."

If you didn't know Chernobyl's history, you might understand her delight.

Link (Reuters)

This article—one of a series that Reuters is doing this week to focus on the future of nuclear energy—reminded me how easily disasters are forgotten by those of us not directly affected.

I have a difficult time comprehending the scope of the evacuation, but for a photo essay posted a couple years ago by Elena (Lena) Filatova (Russian: Елена Филатова) at www.kiddofspeed.com. Despite allegations that Filatova staged some of her photographs, it's unlikely she could have staged everything, and the images are compelling.

Another photo essay, by Robert Knoth, focuses on the human toll.

Laid back

If you've been reading along, you know that I've spent the first few months of this year visiting doctors, getting x-rays and MRI tests, and going to physical therapy sessions in the attempt to get my neck sorted out and me back on my road bike. After all that, my situation was improved, but not enough to allow me to ride without pain.

2006 Bacchetta Corsa

And then it hit me. Why go through all this for a slight improvement, when I could switch to a recumbent bike and, after retraining some muscles, be able to do most of what I was doing before my neck crapped out on me? Sure, I'd have to part with my image of what's "cool", as well as a large-ish chunk of cash, but I could be riding a bike that's at least as fast (except on hills, where I was pretty slow already) and more comfortable than anything I've been riding since my '67 Schwinn Stingray.

That's how, after test riding throughout Easter weekend, I ended up with my new Bacchetta Corsa. My

obsidian steed

. My chase [sic] lounge.

Riding one of these things is very different from riding a DF bike. For one thing, you're pretty much one with the bike, whereas with a normal bike you're constantly moving the bike around under you. Another difference—a big one—is that starting out can be a challenge. You're lying on your back. The pedals are out in front of you at about the same level as your hips, so the usual technique of pushing off with one leg while throwing your weight on to the pedal with the other... just isn't happening. Starting out is a whole new level of commitment. You either succeed and pedal away, or you fall over. There's not much middle ground.

But ohhh mama, this thing's fast. (Even with me on it.) Because of the more aerodynamic positioning (i.e., the rider isn't acting as a drag chute), it takes about 20% less effort to attain the same speed as on a comparably geared, skinny-tire DF bike.

At least, that's what They tell me. I won't know for sure until I've had a chance to get the new bike set up with a computer (the digital watch equivalent of the clunky old bicycle speedometers we had back in the 1970s).

And my neck doesn't hurt.