GLOBADOM

Never mind that those wonderful, misunderstood animals don’t know any better. Never mind that I enjoy owning both of them, after a fashion. Why does my cat like to wake us up by biting our heads, and why does my dog think that if it just growls and looks scary enough, 15 pounds of it will be able to intimidate 150 pounds [you wish!] of me?

While I’m on the topic of pets, why won’t the dog just bloody well give up already? Its snout is hatched with cat-cuts. The other day I picked a claw sheath out of the side of its face. Stubborn, stubborn terrier.

If I end up going insane today, I’m blaming Twink and their nine freely downloadable tracks of mid-grade weirdness.

(Þ: Lileks)

The following is a rant, which, in an evolving form, I seem to post about once every four months in rec.bicycles.racing, after I read one too many “they’re going to dope anyways, so let’s let them!” posts. I always envision the husband character in the Drew Barrymore movie Home Fries Riding in Cars with Boys (really people, how could you let me make that mistake?), pathetically begging for permission to do just a little bit of heroin. -RjC

If you are going to allow some “therapeutic” level of doping, why do you think the
problem of a level playing field gets easier?

In any imaginable scenario, there will be some sort of limit placed on
the amount of each goody that the rider can use. Maybe they’ll have
dosage limits for steroids and HGH, and Hct limits for EPO and other
forms of blood doping.

But, excepting maybe Hct percentages, how do you keep the riders within
the specified limits? Don’t you just create a peloton that is much more
drugged-up than today, but still with some cheaters (or if you prefer,
super-dopers) in the middle?

For any line you care to draw, there will surely be riders quite happy
to cross it. Of course, they’ll be even harder to detect in some ways.
Did the rider go 10 mcg/kg/d over the approved dosage? Who knows? Sounds
like some pretty tricky testing is in order.

Do you think that the same peloton which you assert has embraced a
culture of cheating will suddenly embrace a culture of self-restraint,
as long as they are allowed some of their goodies?

We may not be able to prevent 100% of drug abuse, but at least we can
try to prevent 100% drug abuse.

This argument makes me despair about whether there is any future
whatsoever for pro cycling. I’d be sad if it collapsed, for sure. But
what would really sadden me is if it took amateur cycling with it. I’ve
gone back and forth over this, and I’ve decided that if I could only
have one (and the doping debate may make this non-academic) I choose
amateurs.

You know why? Some amateurs might dope, because they’re idiots, just
like some guys will violate the yellow-line rule, or be poor sports in
myriad ways. But at the amateur level, it’s about roughly competitive
groupings, competing against your personal benchmarks, and having fun. I
can live with those as essential antidotes to the problem of doping, at
least in the amateur levels.

Of course, Dick Pound seems to be acting like the worst friend a foe of
doping could have. I like his ideas, really I do: keeping current
samples securely for 10 years, so that if we come up with a test for
present dope in the future (as happened with EPO) we can use it? Good
idea! Accusing Lance of being a doper based on a test that can’t
possibly meet WADA standards? Bad idea! Asserting a firm belief that
sport should create a culture of clean competition? Good idea! Wildly
asserting that sport X is insincere about doping control, because they
catch so many dopers? Bad idea.

I’m serious about throwing out pro competition. I think the ProTour is a
good idea, I think that the doping controls are getting pretty serious
(they’ve nailed, rightly or wrongly, several of the top riders in the
sport in the last few years, including Hamilton, Heras, Museeuw, Millar,
and lots more; if they’re insincere about doping control, they have a
funny way of showing it).

The real trick, of course, is to force the economics of doping to
fail. If you start fining riders major, income-proportionate dollars for
positive tests, you might get results. If you start requiring mandatory
retroactive nullification clauses for doping violations in ProTour rider
contracts, and then fine back the salary plus more from the team, too,
you’ll have some teams keeping a pretty keen eye on their riders’ drug
habits. If you start keeping those samples for 10 years, regressively
testing them with neat new tests, and then suing riders for prize money
when they come up positive, you’ll get dopers to sit up and take notice.

Scary? You bet. In practice, you’ll probably want to err on the side of
letting marginal (but likely dopey) cases through the net in the
interests of mercy and sensible caution. But these and other measures
could remove the economic advantages of doping which likely drive a lot
of doping. And creative testing regimens can increase both the certainty
of being caught and the uncertainty of being caught, if you know what I
mean.

So, what’s it to be?

Strangely, nothing about bicycles tonight.

Like last year, I found myself doing one last, late batch of jelly. This time it was grape jelly, courtesy my parents’ vines. I love found fruit.

This jelly was quite a surprise. I made it with mostly green grapes, and you’ll have to take my word for it when I tell you the juice didn’t look all that impressive. But something about the jelly-making process magically clarifies it, and the jelly is the colour of golden raisins. Thanks, Mom and Dad! First life, now jelly.

In response to feedback, I am going to open Wired Cola to comments. Don’t make me regret it.

And now the dog story. No, not the one where the dog bites my hand so hard it gouged three holes in my hand, though that did happen.

I’m puttering in the laundry room, door to the back yard open. The dog trots in from the back yard, its head entirely inside a 2 kg plastic peanut butter jar, last seen in the recycle bin. The dog seems completely unconcerned by its unusual state. Fearing oxygen deprivation, I pull the jar off astro-dog’s head right away. Next time it tries that, I’m taking photos.

Considering that the main problems we have with the dog, aside from the occasional lapse in waste product positioning, are all mouth-oriented (snapping, biting the cat, stealing food, going through the garbage, biting me…), I’m thinking we should have left the peanut butter jar on the dog a little longer.

I suppose, if I followed my own philosophy to write here about things that other sites do not write about, I’d tell the story about what happened today when I went to the library to drop off some books, an errand that commenced with my mother-in-law pulling my hair and forcing me to promise not to take any books out. But instead, I’m going to tell you what I have been reading lately, mainly because Gord recently did the same thing.

Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde.
This is a novel roughly in Pratchett/Douglas Adams territory, but with a decidedly literary bent. It’s set in an alternate-history near-past (late 1980s) where bioengineering is really advanced, computers are not, and literature is so culturally important that forging original manuscripts is a common crime. And it gets silly from there. Fforde has written a series of “Friday Next” novels (that’s the main character’s name), and the collection of websites the author has created are worth checking out on their own. It was Erick’s fault I started reading these books, as he loaned me The Eyre Affair earlier this year, and then I burned through the other three books as fast as I could borrow them from the library.

Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss.
Sorta funny, sorta boring. I’m a bit of a spelling-and-grammar geek, so this is a subject that naturally should appeal to me. The authorial approach is for a sort of funnier Strunk and White, and I guess I can say this is the funniest grammar book I have ever read. And it is quite funny in parts. But I didn’t finish it, which can’t be a good sign.

Lance Armstrong’s War by Daniel Coyle, and Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins.
I read these two back-to-back, and they were interesting companions. Armstrong’s second autobiography mostly covers the time surrounding his 2003 Tour de France, the one he described in a post-race interview as “the pain in the ass.” That was also the year that he broke up with his wife, though the book covers that detail only in an epilogue. Armstrong’s book offers certain insights, but it is not nearly as much fun as Coyle’s book.

Coyle covers 2004, and does so in glorious, hilarious detail. He has an eye for this writing, and digs into the strange elements of pro cycling (his “ass-check” anecdote is hilarious), including secretive Belgians, the relationship between Dr. Michele Ferrari and Armstrong, and a profile of Floyd Landis and his concerned-but-supportive Mennonite family. He also talks about Sheryl Crow, and lots of other fun, gossipy stories.

Somehow he manages to sneak in a close analysis of the 2004 Tour, too.

That’s all I can remember for now. I’m reading Holding Juno: Canada’s Heroic Defence of the D-Day Beaches: June 7-12, 1944 by Mark Zuehlke. The title says it all, and Zuehlke tells the story very well.

The latest movie is up, and it’s a good one. More unsteadicam footage, better editing, higher quality, actual sound from the event, and a fairly spectacular crash by Matt Chater, 2004 national Keirin champion, are all in there.

Total download is less than 13 MB, and the film is less than 6 minutes long. The link above will change shortly to the clip’s permanent home.

Music this time is the “Buckaroo Holiday” movement from Aaron Copland’s Rodeo ballet score.

Share & Enjoy

So, the Jericho video is coming along nicely, and I’m sure you’re all glad to hear that.

Other than that? I have nothing to tell you. I feel like this has been a few weeks of either learning really stupid things, or not learning anything at all. Here’s what Ryan has learned:

• Don’t buy Halloween candy three weeks before Halloween.
• Racing cyclocross on a road bike is fun, and even funny, but a cyclocross bike and proper tires are going to be faster, and less painful.
• Gord is faster than me.
• On the right day, Kenny is faster than me.
• Let’s not even talk about Jeff, Brian, and Johnny, who are consistently faster than me.
• Small dogs love rice cakes, and will steal them out of the cupboard and eat an entire package almost as big as the dog itself. Twice.
• If you’re the guy holding the video camera, everything you say gets recorded on the sound track.
• Other things small dogs like: cookies, rolls of masking tape, cat food, and shedding. I can’t say for sure the small dog likes shedding, but it sure does it a lot.
• Ikea’s Antonius racks with wire baskets are good shoe storage units. We know this because we suffered for several years with terrible shoe racks. Hey, shoe racks matter.
• Sleep is good.

It is done. Share & Enjoy. You are cautioned that this is a 30 MB movie, and it is well over 7 minutes long.I am inordinately proude of this, especially since all the source material was shot with my same old Coolpix 2500 that Eric sold me about a year ago. That means no shots longer than 15 seconds, which imposes a very useful discipline on the auteur. Deflecting the first likely question, the music is two Björk songs from Selmasongs: “Cvalda” and most of “In the Musicals.” Selmasongs is the soundtrack album for the movie Dancer in the Dark, a film which I regard as the best movie which depends on an Idiot Plot.Thanks the people (Pinner, Duncan, Gord) who mentioned they liked the first video, and to Krebs for such a good event. Results are up.PS: let me know if there’s any interest in a shorter version of this video (say, 4 MB with just a bit of dismounting and no Björk) or if anyone wants either the raw footage or the uncompressed version of this film.Update: Andrew “Pinner” Pinfold, winner of the event, has a nice diary entry that describes the battle between him and Rick Federau for the lead.    

Update: I have adjusted the link to the video. It now points at a more permanent home at Escape Velocity. Thanks, Gord!

Looking good at the weekend ‘cross race. Well, the truth is my photographers make me look good.

16th. out of 30. Exactly halfway down the field again. At least I’m consistent. Gord, sigh, was faster than me.

The video of the A men is coming. Patience!

My enemy Gord has posted an excellent precis on the degenerate art of cyclocross.

I will also be at the Saturday race, and would further note that the organizers are doing a “learn to cyclocross” clinic starting at 8 am. Cross-curious types are encouraged to attend, and reminded that mountain bikes are permitted in all races except the A category men.

But I’m really posting this as a pointer to a very short video (4 megs of Quicktime) I shot at last weekend’s race: it shows you how several riders in the A race handled the delicate art of the dismount.

Of interest is the fact that many of these riders do not use the classic cyclocross dismount (though the eventual winner, Andrew “Pinner” Pinfold, does. Please, no letters about my atrocious typo in the movie titling. Argh).

It’s really easy: leave your left foot locked in. Unlock your right foot and swing the right leg back: this is a natural dismount move, something most riders already do. The trick is to then bring your right leg between the left leg and the frame. This is surprisingly easy. Practice it five times and you’ll get it. The reason you do this is so you can put your right foot down first and ahead of your left leg, which is unclipped from the pedal only at the last minute. Do it properly, and you can hit the ground running at full stride.

Putting your right foot down behind the left pedal is the lazy way out, but forces you to slow down more. You can’t hit the ground in full stride.

Enjoy!