GLOBADOM

No, really, they do. In the course of a month, they have annoyed Harlan Ellison, then they made Jack Johnson so mad he tried to have them arrested.

Not that that’s a bad thing! You know what the thing about aversaries is? You need to have worthy ones. Penny Arcade versus the EB clerk? Silly. Penny Arcade versus one of the most acclaimed sf writers ever? Better. Driving a misguided, video-game-hating, attention-seeking lawyer absolutely crazy? Using huge checks? Very nice.

A worthy adversary is also what makes my erm, ongoing relationship with Gord so much fun. He’s worthy! He’s got those lungs, and stuff! So chasing him down is worth the trouble. The idea is not original to me: I first read it in Guy Kawasaki’s How to Drive your Competition Crazy, an amusing book with some interesting ideas about marketing. From an interview with Guy:

[The enemy] you pick is like a mirror: It defines your image. If you pick a wimpy competitor, you’ll never know how great you can be–and God help you if you fail, because everyone expected you to win.

I encourage my readership (all 20 of you) to go out and get yourself a worthy opponent. You won’t regret it. This space will now solicit submissions on the subject “my best enemy.” The usual prize will be offered for submissions which our panel of judges deems praiseworthy.

you can run
Originally uploaded by gordonr.

Yeah yeah, he beat me at Bayside II: the revenge match (I’m pretending the Coastal race didn’t happen). And he made a taunting photo.

Next stop: Vanier Park. Less words, more ride. It is on, Ross!

It’s been rather too long without a post, eh? Savvy readers may believe this is because I don’t want to talk about my last bike race. (B race, scroll just about to the bottom).

But here’s the short update: it’s wet, the household is okay, excepting a dog with a newfound commitment to incontinence, and after I thought I was done with jelly for the year, it turns out I’m going to make some grape jelly, thanks to a harvest from my parents’ grape arbor.

I don’t have any great insights for this post, so I’ll leave you with Beedogs. Warning: humiliated dogs.

My birthday has just passed in the last few days, leaving me in my early thirties, same as last year. My blog-o-matic also tells me this is my 399th post, and that’s worth reflecting on, too.

I still don’t know why I do this. I recently installed a page counter here at Wired Cola, and it tells me there are about 10-20 of you visiting on an average day. Welcome! That level of interest has convinced me of two things: this site is worthless, but amusing enough to my friends and family to continue. Enjoy!

What have I learned in my 30-ish years? Nothing really special. I’m a pretty happy guy, and the key to my happiness has probably been irrepressible optimism and enthusiasm, something which may or may not be genetic. Some people think I’m a pretty decent human being, and that has been a result of using my religion as a basic guide, and probably specifically the essential decency and politeness towards others which my mother and father taught me. I think politeness is an underrated social lubricant, especially in mixed company. In unmixed company, I tend towards Hitler jokes, which certainly suggests I should hang around in mixed company more.

Failings? I’m hard to live with. I’m lazy. I have such a problem with telling people what they want to hear and white lies that I made it my personal motto as a reminder: “honest in small things, honest in great things.” It sounds better in the latin Luigi provided for me: verum de parvus, verum de magnus.

That’s it for personal assessment. I’ve written nearly 400 posts to this blog, minus a few provided by my coauthors. Reading those is probably as good an insight as you’re going to get, if you care.

Thank you for your indulgence. In the future, I hope Wired Cola will be less introspective and more devoted to finding interesting things to talk about.

But Sunday was special.

I went out and did a cyclocross race in White Rock. Gord and several other club-mates turned out, as did I.

If you recall last weekend’s bragging race recap, I was riding a mountain bike. This time I brought that bike, but rode my road bike: Kenny hooked me up with some tricky inverted-tread 28mm (extremely narrow for a cross bike) tires, and thus I went from having the ruffest tuffest bike in the last race to having the most road-oriented bike in this race.

But horses for courses: last week’s race had steep climbs and some rough terrain. This week’s race was hardpacked dirt and gravel trails, very gentle elevation changes, and only one technical bit, a rocky descent where success was a matter of picking the quick line around the rocks. In other words, a super-fast course.

If last week’s crushing victory was fun, this week’s mid-pack finish in the B race was even more fun. The course was thrilling, and I was racing with a bunch of riders the whole way. I even managed to stay with the lead group for most of a lap before I washed out in a corner, which taught me the limits of my tires (sort of: I had a few other minor off-course excursions, but nothing that put me on the ground).

In the last two laps or so, I caught about four riders, who can neatly be divided into guys who had more technical skills (or maybe better tires) than me, but who were generally slower, either because of bike choice (singlespeed MTB, full-suspension MTB) or due to conditioning. The exception was Gord, who is decisively stronger than me, but who couldn’t hang on in the technical sections. In fact, I actually passed him in one of the barrier sections, which was a shocker since this is my second ‘cross race ever, and it’s Gord’s second season. Chalk that up to the fact I’ve never blown a re-mount of my bike (which tends to hurt a lot) and thus have no fear.

Oh, and this may not mean much to most of you, but I finished ahead of Ron.

The best part was definitely the cake. Cyclocross is a much more casual sport than most other forms of competitive cycling, so it has pre- and post-race activities like eating cake, and cheering for the riders in the other races. I indulged with enthusiasm. Eating a chocolate brownie as your pre-race meal, and going home with a satisfying result. That’s a nice Sunday morning.

The Lovely One and I went to The Daiso in Richmond on the weekend. I took a few very low-res photos. Share & Enjoy.

So on a whim, I rolled out to Langley this morning for the cyclocross race.

They had an A, B, and Beginner race, and I decided, on an admittedly marginal call, to race the Beginner race. I justified this as follows:

1) I am a Cat 4

B) This was my first ‘cross race ever

iii) I would be doing it on a mountain bike

and finally) I have hardly any off-road technique.

In retrospect, iii) was probably an advantage (Kevin Noiles had bitter words for the course, and many called it out as a “mountain bike course”). B) was probably overblown, since I have raced MTBs before, and finally), I don’t think anyone else in the race had any more off-road technique than I, and I had learned the approved ‘cross dismount from Corky. 1) holds up fairly well, except that Ron Klopfer, WTNC Cat 4 champion, did the B race (and, I fear it must be said, beat Gord).

So the punchline is that there were 8 starters in the Beginner race, including Graham and Kenny from my club. Everyone else on the line had a cyclocross bicycle. I took off from the gun, looked back after the starting straight, and nobody had come with me. When you’ve started to gap the race on the opening gravel road, with a mountain bike, you may have chosen the wrong category.

I lapped two riders in a 40-odd minute race where my lap times ranged from 7’00” to 7’40″ish. I was minutes ahead of second place.

The course itself was hilarious good fun. Too mountain-bikey? It was technical. There was a water crossing, a steep climb, a log barrier, a couple of board obstacles, and various other bits of terrain that were fairly extreme by ‘cross standards. I also heard one guy point out that the usual spec for cyclocross calls for the course to be at least 3m wide at all points, which means that you can pass freely in almost all circumstances. Large chunks of this course were singletrack, and passing could only happen with considerable daring or the cooperation of the rider being overtaken.

Regardless of whether it was properly a mountain bike or a cyclocross course, the race itself was great. I will do more. Now, can I really fit narrow cross tires on The Whip? Maybe…

So, um, next race I do as a B.

The book may have left me cold, but the concept is working for me.

I did more in the last two days than most people do all day. But that’s an improvement for me! The experience is one of smooth competence. I like being competent. Highly recommend it.

Unfortunately, my We ♥ Katamari time has been suffering as a result, but that’s okay. This isn’t a reflection on the new game: it rocks, it’s weird, it is in every way an incremental improvement on the delightful original. At this point I would have bought it practically as a sort of gratuity to Namco and designer Keita Takahashi, but it is so much more. If you liked the original, the only reason to hesitate on the sequel is that the basic mechanics are nearly identical (hard to improve on perfection, methinks), and the higher price than last time: $40 vs. $30 in my homeland. Even so, The Lovely One declares it the best game ever. And you can roll that up.

A nothing title for a not-much post. I thought I would talk about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s books, which I have had for a month or so but not fully read. I posted about these books previously, and I think I have to offer at least a capsule review here.

What I have to say, sadly, is that I don’t think much of MC’s writing. It’s rather stiff in both books, and fairly tedious in large stretches. I have to say that I think that Gord’s post on MC’ writing is probably an excellent summation of the core of MC’s ideas. The quote and graph he hs in his review are prety much it.

That’s good, I guess, because it saves you reading a couple of books. Always the optimist!

Oh yeah, and Hell on Wheels, a first-rate new pro cycling documentary, is coming to the VIFF this year. Anyone interested in going? Let me know.

Argh. I can’t take it any more. The user interface, I mean. Yesterday is the last day I will log in Fitday, at least for now.

Why? Well, you can read my journal entry for the details, but it’s down to one basic problem: the user interface for entering foods is so tedious, it takes too long. Also, I’m a little scared to enter some of the things I ate recently.

I still think Fitday’s concept is great, though: while I kept it up, I enjoyed the idea of entering all the foods and tracking calorie intakes. It did give me a solid idea of what was happening to me, input-and-output wise, and I think I am better prepared for the Winter (a traditional weight-gaining season for me) thanks to the feedback of Fitday.

But it is so slow to enter food…