Donut report: 2/8/20
February 8, 2020 Comments Off on Donut report: 2/8/20
I missed the start this morning due to an emergency room detour, but rode the course in reverse and met up at the college. It looked like a smaller group than normal. Many were doing the Rock Cobber in Bakersfield, and others were “saving” their legs for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre tomorrow.
According to wire reports, Cole Lewis made mincemeat of all comers on the first climb to the Domes.
I hopped in with Stathis and Fred Mackey on Western. It wasn’t really a fair fight since the group behind stopped at all the lights. Fred and Stathis were on the gas, with Fred hauling us in his dazzling Origin Seizure Suit all the way to 9th Street, after which Stathis took off.
I sat on his wheel all the way to the top of the Domes, where he collected a point.
Then on to the Glass Church, where a small group of Ivan Fernandez, Cole Lewis, Nigel DeSota, Julien, and Wes Morgan pinched off from the group in Portuguese Bend and hung out the “We Are Gone” sign.
Over the final bump in PB, Fred grilled and drilled all the way to the church, where the escapees had a big gap. I got across, catching just as they crested the final bump. There was a mad dash for the #fakesprunt, with Nigel leading everyone out and Cole getting the #fakewin and the #realsocks, as today’s point winners each got a lovely pair of South Bay Cycling socks.
Fred and Leo Bugtai raced all the way to Via Zumaya; I took a couple of weak pulls but after being off my bike for 11 days and stuffing my guts with Turkish delicacies, all I can say is, “That’s poor preparation for the Donut and thank Dog I had the brains to bail on the Rock Cobbler.”
Julien crushed everyone on the climb, but Stathis, Cole, Rich Mull, and Rodrigo (?) made a go of it to no avail. It was good to see Colin the Canadian getting back into form after a lot of hamstring/leg issues. I went home and had a real, old-fashioned Donut coma.
DONUT STANDINGS
Stathis Sakellariadis 6
Seth Davidson 3
Cole Lewis 2
Andy Engel 2
Leo Bugtai 2
Arturo Anaya 2
Julien Bourdevaire 1
Rich Mull 1
Nigel DeSota 1
Jon Petrucci 1
Charon Smith 1
Kevin Phillips 1
END
The fake cave
October 16, 2019 § 17 Comments
For some reason cyclists have a variety of descriptors that purport to show how badass they are. “Pain cave” and “in the box” are two of the most common, along with “beast mode,” one of my faves.
However, I’ve noticed an inverse correlation between the use of such terms and the actual badassedness of the rider using them. In fact, the riders who truly do dwell in the “pain cave” never talk about it. They simply post up their ride and let the stats do the talking for them. Or, they don’t post anything at all … you just go with them on a ride and find out that what they’re doing is different from what you are doing.
To go along with truth in advertising laws, I’m recommending that cyclists start using the following phrases to indicate what their ride was really like so that co-workers, family members, and people standing in line at the convenience store won’t mistake them for anything more than what they are: Ordinary middle-aged men riding overpriced plastic toys in expensive underwear.
- Cupcake Mode. This is the mode you are always in. You crumble easily, you are prettily decorated, and you contain zero hard minerals.
- Candyass: Whenever you get the urge to say “badass,” say this in its place.
- In the Gentleness Cave. This is what happens the moment you feel any discomfort: You begin to pedal gently, or better yet, stop and have a Gu, check your text messages, snap a selfie.
- To smurf (v.): Use instead of the verb “suffer” to describe the slowing, cutesy pace you default to whenever the speed picks up, the road tilts up, it starts to sprinkle, or one of your gadgets begins beeping because you might eventually leave Zone 6.
- Quarter gas: Replaces “full gas,” a term you normally use to describe those efforts when you are being pummeled trying to keep up with some grandpa in floppy dickhiders and tennis shoes on the bike path.
- On the sofa: Cyclists who have never ridden a saddle with rivets love to say “on the rivet” to indicate how hard they were going, when instead their data shows they did a 22-mile pancake ride, took selfies, fiddled with their water bottles, and got a flat.
- Slob: Ersatz for “Clydesdale,” a word that obese and unfit riders use to describe their bad condition by making it sound like they are mighty draught animals doing heroic labor.
- With the wankers: You’ll often hear someone who got shelled hard and early from the group ride drag ass up to the regroup and say they were “in the grupetto,” as if the gaggle of quitters he was riding with are somehow analogous to the Tour riders who, after getting dropped on Mont Ventoux, band together to make the time cut.
- Tweezle: “We hammered” always means “we rode weakly in little gears.” Tweezle is the word.
- Slug season: Use this instead of “off season” because either a) You don’t race so the whole year is “off season,” b) You are “peaking” for a masters race in June and pretending that the remaining 11.5 months are part of a training plan, or c) Bacon.
- NSS: Tell people about your “Narcissist Strava Score” instead of your “Training Stress Score” because all that time on #socmed is, well, you know exactly what it is.
I’m sure there are lots more, feel free to add!
END
This is gonna hurt
October 9, 2019 § 10 Comments
A reader sent a link to this editorial in the NY Times. Basically, cars are bad and drivers use them to kill people. The only way we can fix that is by regulations, smaller car sizes, slower speeds, and etc.
The big problem with this is that it identifies an obvious problem, drivers killing bicycle pedalers, and then it leaps to a bunch of solutions that are never going to happen. As a side note, the editorial blames all this on cars rather than on people. This is because if you blame motorists for killing people with their cars, it suddenly applies to most everyone, including the writers at the NY Times.
It’s a lot more convenient to blame the cars than the people who drive them.
So how do you get people to stop using their cars to kill people?
My Answer: You have to get people to stop using cars.
And that is really hard, but it’s not hard for the reasons that you think, i.e. the car lobby, the transportation lobby, Mr. Oil and Ms. Gas, governmental inertia, discrimination against cyclists, and all the fun punching bags.
The reason it is really hard is that in order to get people to stop using cars, YOU have to stop using a car. It’s that simple. Until there is a critical mass of people who ditch their cars and start using the public streets, it’s all just talk, email chatter, and angry exchanges on the Internet.
Do you have a car? Do you use it? You are the problem.
Do you want there to be fewer cars? Do you want motorists to quit hitting bicycles? You have to ditch the $400,000 orange Lamborghini and start riding and walking. Trust me, it’s going to involve a big lifestyle change, not limited to acquiring smaller clothing sizes.
The fact is that once the streets get clotted with people, the cars slow down and diminish in number. Santa Monica is Exhibit A. They ruined it for cars when they striped it and dumped scooters on every corner. Now when you drive in SaMo you are the paranoid one because there is a ped/bike/scooter every ten feet. You slow the fuck down and, if you’re in SaMo all that much, you get there using something other than a car or you accept the third-class citizenship that you, a motorist, so richly deserve.
One single person on a bike has an outsized impact on the car community simply because most motorists, when confronted with a bike, take defensive action. They slow down.
But in order to make them do that, especially in areas where bike traffic is light, or in places like Texas and Florida where bikes as transport aren’t even acknowledged, you have to suck it up and get out in the streets. The right to use the street is like any other. The minute you stop using it, it’s gone.
It doesn’t do any good to draw a distinction between “good” drivers of the NY Times and “bad” drivers of the state of Texas. The only thing that does any “good” is to step off the crazy train of the passenger car transportation network and plug into networks that don’t use cars, whether it’s your SUV or your Tesla.
Ouch, huh?
END
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