two million people

and no arrests.

remember this?

or this?

first photos of lance's new child!!

i wouldn't call this a problem-free pregnancy and childbirth. those old rumors of "animal drugs" seem likely to resurface. see for yourself.

play this tomorrow at 1100 am, central standard time

can you believe this shit? i am still stunned i survived reagan, but now, as i emerge from eight years of dubya, on the tails of that terribly conservative clinton, i am going to attempt to straighten up and assess the physical and emotional toll.

it can't be pretty.

speaking of pretty, i was at the cosmopolitan with a couple friends last friday night, listening to the roxi copeland band, and my friend's wife, who is maybe in her early thirties [sorry, dorth, if you're still 20s], and she said she was looking forward to feeling patriotic during the obama administration. it made me think: to commemorate election day, i got a new tatto, an old-school pinup wearing a brooklyn cycling team skinsuit, complete with its stars and stripes motif. that's about as openly patriotic as i've ever allowed myself. let's see: born in 1953, near the end of the second year of the first eisenhower term. still ahead of the mccarthy hearings. end of the korean war. i remember the nixon-kennedy debates, and everyone feeling euphoric and hopeful. i remember the marches in the south, and the pervasive racism. i remember the nasa optimism, john glenn, alan shepard, and then gus grissom, et alia...and april, 1968...kent state...and june, 1968...and the chicago democratic convention...and all the anti-war and race riots during the summer and fall of 68 and beyond...and nixon/agnew...and the war, and agent orange, and trying to end war in my own little ways, and fighting for a deferment [and losing], and mcgovern, and losing, and and watergate, and ford, and pardons, and on and on, and always being hopeful and always feeling disenfranchised. oh, in iowa, we had hughes, clark, culver, harkin, smith, and more, but it didn't happen. i felt that despite all my efforts, i could not really help affect the re-righting of the ship of state. could it get worse after reagan? the constitution i studied disappeared as quickly as a sand castle on the coralville reservoir during summer school [study at the beach? right], but still i stayed hopeful and involved: mondale, dukakis. is the country really this fucking stupid? clinton? well, it's not bush, nor dole, but wtf? but the last eight years, i think the masses discovered that, well, when they PERSONALLY are affected, THAT'S a tipping point. so fucking selfish we've become. and yet, still i'm optimistic, hopeful, and perhaps i'll feel patriotic.

graphic fitness

i was so frustrated after last night's radio show, which featured a dynamite interview with mountain biking legend charlie kelly, and which was, it seems, eaten by my computerized in-studio recorder software, and will have to be retrived from the clear channel's system, that i rode my bicycle directly from the station on grand avenue to one of those popular 24 hour fitness places just north of town. it seems that the 4+ hours of riding i had done just before the show would not get me through the stress of a temporarily lost episode. but the workout these professionals gave me DID. i don't remember the exact name of the type of exercise we were doing, but not only was it arduous and total body, it was FUN--and i have the chart to prove it. these women think of EVERYthing.
talk about a happy ending!

80

riding and training during the winter in iowa

i've been making a big deal lately about the effectiveness of roller riding versus riding outside, even when the weather turns north, as it has the past couple weeks. folks will come up to me and tell me about how killer their 45 minute spinerval workout was, or how "the team got together and rode trainers for a brutal hour."
what, are you nuts?
all winter long, i've been hitting the roads--once literally--and slogging out four-hour plus snowy gravel road rides. i've ridden alone, with one pal, or sometimes with four or more teammates. we have another group of maybe 8 or more lined up for later today, around noon or so. this is causing me to forego watching the nfc and afc playoffs. okay, i'll sacrifice, even though unlike some of my station mates, i DO enjoy some ballsports, and DON'T dis the sports in which i do not take part. plus, i can have the second game on at the station while i do my show.
i've been riding with a 2.4 powertap [thanks, folks!] since last spring, just accumulating data. i'm beginning to pay attention to it now, and starting to understand what the numbers mean. it's not dictating my workouts [yet], but DOES tell me how i'm doing.
and i think i'm doing okay.
take yesterday, for example. sadly, i haven't figured out how to post the graphs the software spits out for me, but here's what yesterday's ride shows:
basics: 4h32m; 96.31 km; 2318 kJ [don't know what THAT means, other than how much i worked, but it's good for comparison's sake to other rides]
power distribution:
recovery--124 minutes [46%]
endurance--114 minutes [42%]
threshold--19 minutes [7%]
race pace--10 minutes [4%]
max--2.5 minutes [1%]
supra max--1.5 minutes [<1%]
heartrate distribution:
recovery--15minutes [5%]
endurance--159 minutes [58%]
threshold--93 minutes [34%]
race pace--6 minutes [2%]
max--<1>
fun distribution [totals may exceed 100%]:
fun--272 minutes [100%]
lotta fun--272 minutes [100%]
whole hell of a lotta fun--272 minutes [100%]
now, what does THIS tell you? by the way, i continued to exceed previous peak power personal bests at several interval segments yesterday, including at the 5 seconds, 30 seconds, and 120 minutes intervals, meaning that i'm riding my ass off, having a hell of a GREAT time, and getting more and more fit all the time. nothing killer about it, not epic [oh, maybe if we'd have gone another 70 kilometres and had to deal with numerous dogs [we DID see lots of labrador fangs yesterday--uphills a few times] AND dealt with heavy snow or sleet or drunken hunters. but none of that.
but it WAS extremely fun. so you guys riding your rollers and patting yourselves on the back, good for you. i've gotta make some pb&j sandwiches for today's ride.
don't forget to listen to today's show--talking with mountain bike pioneer charlie kelly tonight, 600 to 700 pm, kxno.com.

saturday night music

during my sophomore year at the ui, i lived in the quadrangle: first floor single room; windows opened onto the quad. across the hall, a couple brothers lived, and each evening, when it was time to bust out the weed and get loaded, they fired up this song. man, they had such a killer stereo, and such killer weed. i still enjoy the song, too.

i think i'll listen again.

evolution of diva

a simple child, dreaming at the state fair, 2007 [age 3y]

a less-simple princess on her 4th birthday

doing her "britney thing" [age 4y, 3m]

planning her dream wedding, with tutu [age 4y, 4m]

relishing her one-hour flattening results [age 4y, 5m]
.....

thankfully, i'm just the grand-dad, responsible for keeping her interested in cycling, bicycle racing, sledding in blizzards, tree-hugging, getting dirty, flying kites, doing ragby on the cheap, and other such non-diva activities. maybe, someday, I'LL be the grand-dad moving into the whitehouse [or some other big. old house] with her.

otherwise, i'm totally screwed.

take a moment to thank a republican

for their amazing ability to vote--TWICE--for this idiot, and then, for eight years, tell the rest of us--their intellectually superior friends--how great a leader george dubya has been. unbelievable: they've defended him with a straight face. how tortured their souls must be.

at least they have a mayor who actually RIDES a cycle

an overseas listener to my radio show sent me a link to this story. i don't quite know what to make of it. now, hands-down, the mayor of london, boris johnson, is a bit of an eccentric gent. terribly rich and all that. but he CHOOSES to commute by bike. that is good.

this story is an expose showing him riding through SIX red lights and failing to stop at a zebra crossing [a pedestrian cross], and something about "mounting the pavement."

six red lights? this is GREAT!

and yet the paper is trying to make this out to be some sort of scandal. ENGLAND, for pity's sake.

i'm confused. what do you make of it?

gosh. i completely forgot

it was just over a year, january, 2008, and it wasn't NEARLY this cold!

oh, and i had a broken clavicle. i've made it a full year!!

yippee, right? yeah, whatever.

man, i don't know WHAT'S going on with picture sizes here lately. sorry.

and that radio guy thinks WE'RE nuts?

"waiting for a train" - the old jimmie rodgers tune never LOOKED so good.
i wonder why WE missed no pants day in iowa? i'm gonna mark my calendar for NEXT year right NOW! we don't even NEED a subway, although i suppose we could just meet and go to a subway shop, eh?

take 5 minutes to defend cycling

as you may know, i have a little radio show on kxno am-1460. it's a ball-sport station, a part of fox sports and clear channel. how i've managed to be on the air for nearly 9 months is beyond me. the show and its audience is growing, but i'm like the rodney dangerfield of hosts, and worse, cycling is the rodney dangerfield of sports and lifestyles.

example: tuesday, on the marty and miller show, a daily afternoon drivetime show [4 to 7 pm] with LOTS of listeners, they blasted the show and more importantly all folks who ride bikes in the winter.

listen here [click on "take 5 minutes to defend cycling"].

kinda pisses me off.

why don't YOU sned marty tirrell an email at martytirrell@kxno.com and tell him how YOU feel?

tell him kim sent ya.

there's strength in numbers, you know.

[note: marty and mike are fine folks; this isn't anything personal. but they just don't get it about cycling, and THAT'S what i'm upset about.]

donald kaul strikes again

i haven't re-published anything from the don in a while, but he smacked THIS one outof the ballpark. his target, one of his--and my--favorite targets: the rich. let's see what kaul has to say today:

YES, FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE RICH

– by Donald Kaul

.....
I hate to say I told you so but I told you so. You could look it up.
For years, decades even, I have been railing against the lifestyles of the rich and famous, questioning the utility of their outrageous salaries and bonuses. I mocked them for their multiple mansions, their submarine-included yachts, their private jetliners, their jewel-drenched parties. They were not worth the money they were making, I said. While some of them were accomplished corporate executives, too many were greedy clowns who got lucky.
I argued that justice demanded at the very least that they pay considerably higher income taxes and perhaps a significant estate tax too. (Give me the choice between being taxed when I’m alive or when I’m dead and I’ll take dead every time.) What I was asking for was merely a few crumbs off the tables of the rich so that poor people could afford operations for their crippled children. (Eat your heart out, Charles Dickens.)
And what did I get for my troubles? Scorn. Vilification. Vicious personal attacks. I was called a socialist, a communist even. I was accused of engaging in class warfare and told I was merely jealous of my betters, people smarter, more accomplished and more industrious than I.
Let me say this about that:
I am not jealous of the rich and their three or four or five mansions. That’s way too many roofs to worry about. I figure if you’re lucky, you have one nice home and when you go on vacation, you rent a room. That’s what hotels are for.
As for being jealous of their intellect, it is to snicker. Many of them owe their success to being born rich. When a truly original idea crosses their path, they recoil from it like a vampire before a cross. Many of the others are accomplished chiefly in their ability to fleece the public, bribe politicians, and plead for mercy when the bills come due. What’s to be jealous of?
As for class war, well, it’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it. The rich of this country have been waging class war against the unrich for the past 25 years without meaningful opposition, having sold the American public on the fantasy that we’re all going to be rich someday. It’s time we fought back.
(This just in: You’re not going to be rich any time soon. Get used to it.)
Another argument against encouraging people to make mountains of money while the multitudes make do with thimblefuls (and this is one that should appeal to the religious do-gooders among you) is that it is bad for their souls. Great wealth is a temptation to criminality.
Most people are honest. Neither you nor I would think of going into a department store and shoplift. If the clerk gives us too much change, we give it back.
But suppose you walked into a store in which there were bags of $100 bills on the shelves. And there were no clerks, no security guards. And everyone else seemed to be taking bags off the shelves and walking out with them. How honest would you be then? Wouldn’t you convince yourself that you deserved a bag of cash or two, that no one would miss it and that if you didn’t take it someone else would? More than likely.
Well, that’s pretty much the position of our corporate executives, poor things. We’ve given them a license to steal and they have used it, rationalizing all the while that they deserve the loot. In reality, they know they don’t. Some few of have given up their bonuses in response to the abysmal performance of their companies but for the most part, they’ve taken their bonuses, their golden parachutes, their golden handshakes and run like bandits.
Because they can. There are no security guards at the door. Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen was a Salvation Army worker compared to this bunch.
To the barricades!

.....

for the most post, kaul and i have agreed about almost everything since he began writing "over the coffee" way back when the register was actually worth the quarter it cost. when he moved to d.c, i continued to agree with him. even when he quit doing ragbrai because it had gotten too large and commercial, i agreed with him, except i continued to do it, because it's just too damned much fun.

but the 800-pound gorilla that even kaul ignores is bernie madoff, and what his ponzi scheme says about classism. it's greed that put people in touch with old bernie, and they got what [big generalization here] many of them had coming. they KNEW it was risky. they KNEW it sounded too good to be true. but they invested their fortunes, their life savings, their inheritances, their ill-gotten gains, with a man who was even greedier than THEY were.

it's EXACTLY like flashing a big roll of cash in a high-crime area. EVERYONE--mom, your friends, classroom teachers, the little voice in your head--tells you "don't do that."

but the lure of the big nut, the monster return, even more vast wealth, got the better of them. but it WASN'T the mugger, the stereotypical bad gang who stole their riches.

it was one of them--or who they wanted to be--who made off with the goods.

sure didn't see THAT one coming. hard to, when you're blinded by greed.

it may make for many sad stories of mom and dad, or big movie stars, or fill-in-the-blank, having to go out and tough it out in this terrible economy and start all over.

especially when there are so many others in line ahead of you.

cleaning out the closets of campaign '08

i came across this charming little background piece about everyone's favorite cindy, cindy mccain, from the new york times. spend a few minutes to read the entire piece; it's pretty fucking creepy. if she weren't such an evil person, one might feel a tad bit sympathetic for her. but she is just plain evil, manipulative, and obvious. be that as it may, it still merits a few minutes of your time:

.....

Behind McCain, Outsider in Capital Wanting Back In

october 18, 2008
Cindy McCain was new to Washington and not yet 30 when she arrived at a luncheon for Congressional spouses to discover a problem with her name tag.
It read “Carol McCain.” That was the well-liked wife John McCain had left to marry Cindy, to the disapproval of many in Washington.
Fearing that the slight was intentional, she slinked to a half-empty table that never filled. “No one wanted to sit at her table,“ said Barbara Ross, a friend who was not surprised when Mrs. McCain announced a few months later that she was moving back to Arizona. “It was like high school.”
Cindy McCain, the wife of the Republican presidential nominee, has spent the last year pursuing a return to Washington: “a harsh town” that does not suit her, she has said.
Nor does campaigning, friends say. She has done relatively few solo events, grants interviews reluctantly— she declined to speak for this article — and in introducing her husband at events, she offers few of the heartwarming anecdotes that are the stock in trade of the political spouse. When she finishes, she stands silently behind him, sometimes with an approving smile, sometimes looking strained.
From the start, Mrs. McCain’s marriage has been defined by her husband’s ambitions, and despite her sometimes punishing ride in political life, she does whatever she must to help fulfill them. As his poll numbers have slid recently, her devotion has seemed only to grow. When the McCain campaign recently stepped up attacks on Senator Barack Obama, Mrs. McCain joined in with startling intensity. The day after the second presidential debate, which did not turn around Mr. McCain’s standing in the polls, she interrupted a Fox News interview he was doing to testify to his virtues. At this late date, Mrs. McCain is starting to headline her own rallies, starting in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
“She would walk on broken glass barefoot if it required her to do so in this campaign,” said Matt Salmon, a former Arizona congressman who knows the couple.
Mrs. McCain, 54, describes herself as her husband’s best friend, though for the last two decades they have mostly lived apart, she in Arizona, he in Washington. She initially seemed like an ideal political partner, giving Mr. McCain a home state, money and contacts that jump-started his career. But as the years passed, she also became a liability at times. She played a role in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal, and just as her husband was rehabilitating his reputation, she was caught stealing drugs from her nonprofit organization to feed her addiction to painkillers. She has a fortune that sets the McCains apart from most other Americans, a problem in a presidential race that hinges on economic anxieties. She can be imprecise: she has repeatedly called herself an only child, for instance, even though she has two half-siblings, and has provided varying details about a 1994 mercy mission to Rwanda.
Those close to Mrs. McCain say she aspires to be like another blonde, glamorous figure married to an older man: Diana, the Princess of Wales. Mrs. McCain sought out the same mine-clearing organization that the princess supported, joining its board and traveling to minefields, just as her role model had. Mrs. McCain recently told British reporters that as first lady, she would take her cues from Diana, throwing herself into international philanthropy.
First, though, the McCains must win.

[read the entire piece here]

it's just a matter of time . . .

. . . until squirrel makes one with off-road capabilities.

studs that will NOT improve your winter cycling

such configurations DO tend to melt the ice, however.

it's breakin' my heart, i tell ya...

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cold-weather thoughts and observations

went out tuesday night with a pal, over 3 1/2 hours of gravel. no wind, dust hanging in the air, almost too much, fearing eventual death by gravel lung. went waay out west, south of town. lots of hills, lovely night skies. on the way in, my sharp-eyed pal spotted the next-best thing to road porn: the [empty] plastic clamshell container that once held a "silicone studs" dildo--a 14" model.

holy shit--THAT'S more frightening than an suv on the west side.

.....

i did loops around downtown last night, hoping for a reprieve from hills, and wanting to get a little up-tempo riding. i went east on the new mlk parkway to the river by sec taylor, then up to court avenue and east to the capitol, and back west via locust and grand to meredith and then south to mlk and over and over. it was discernably colding last night, and the buildings downtown provided relief from the headwinds while rolling back west. nice, not much traffic, although there was this one redhead who came screaming by me, hanging out the front passenger window. that long, curly hair looked familiar...

.....

on the way back home, up 28th street [i stopped for a cup of coffee at zanzibar's], i saw two other cyclists within a three-block span. a guy under the freeway bridge, and a single-speeder commuter heading west on kingman. nice to know i wasn't alone in the streets of capitol city.

.....

numbers for the week: over 15 hours, over 327 kilometres, all OUTSIDE, including two 4+ hour rides on the weekend. gotta get ready for those killer 2 mile races this summer.

happy new year?

where the hell have i been?

that's a fair question, i guess.

around, i suppose. chipping ice, sliding on the city streets, checking out the trail system, riding LOTS of gravel roads [warren county doesn't spend a lot of time plowing gravel, it would seem]. doing LOTS of riding, actually. been pretty nice, all things considered. more than anything, the wind has posed a greater challenge than the cold or ice. you can put on additional layers, or let a little more air out of your tires--no, i DON'T believe in studded tires; like a helmet, studded tires give you a false sense of security, when using one's head might work a little better, and make you a better, more cautious and skillful rider at the same time--but you CAN'T make yourself impervious to 35 mphs wind with sudden and unpredictable gusts up to 45 mph. on ice.

so the riding has been invigorating, the hills have been fun and plentiful, and the wildlife has been outstanding and abundant. hell, the stars have been amazing, and the sunsets breathtaking.

what is there NOT to love about this time of year?

what do you think? i'm thinking jumpsuits, stocking caps, and baseball caps. give me your thoughts in the comments section.