Milestones

It was a bad idea even if it did turn out well, and I won't be doing anything like it in 2009. At the beginning of 2008 I decided it would make for a good goal to bicycle 5,200 miles for the year -- 100 miles per week, which, at the time, constituted a fairly full week of riding. And miles on my around-town bike wouldn't count -- couldn't count -- because it doesn't -- mustn't -- have an odometer. Only miles on the then-red bike would count.

The goal lasted all of a few minutes in its original form. I checked the odometer's initial mileage to determine the target number and discovered that it amounted to a few hundred miles shy of 10,000 miles, so I changed the goal to do those extra few and break 10,000. In case you're wondering, the odometer is the bike's second; the first broke a few years ago with far fewer miles on it.

The reason why I say a year-long mileage goal is a bad idea is because a lot can and will happen in a year. Here are some of the highlights.

• In mid-spring I came down with valley fever. It's said that everyone who stays in Phoenix long enough eventually gets valley fever, but usually it makes the person sick for only a few days or weeks. I was sick and often in substantial pain for most of May and June and was kept off the bike most of that time.


• In July the red bike became the green bike. I had it powder coated and overhauled, and the process took three weeks. I continued to do mileage, but it was on my around-towner and wasn't counting towards my goal. By the end of July I had all but given up on the goal because I was so far behind after not riding much for three months.


• In August I went metric. This had no effect on the goal except to change it from breaking 10,000 miles to breaking 16,094 kilometers, which sounds less cool.


• Also, at various times through the year, I sustained various injuries that could have kept me off the bike. I pulled a hamstring and twisted an ankle in two separate occasions while playing ultimate frisbee. I broke a bone in my foot playing soccer. I clumsily fell through a set of bleachers at a dodgeball tournament and badly bruised my knee. A bruise may not sound too bad, but my knee was grotesquely swollen to the size of a softball. But I rode through each of these injuries. One thing I learned is that it takes quite a lot to keep a willing cyclist off his bicycle.
  

The valley fever proved helpful in the end. I recovered from it and was more motivated than ever to embrace cycling and work hard at doing it well. Also, I felt really strong when my blood oxygen level returned to normal after two months of being chronically low. At the beginning of the year I considered 150 km to be about par. By late summer par was about 250 km. By late fall it was 300 km. Some weeks I did 500 km. And with this rapid increase in distance it soon became apparent that my year's mileage goal was easily attainable. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, on my commute to work, during the year's first winter rain, my odometer silently clicked past 16,094 km. Success.

* * *

The term milestone comes from the physical markers the Romans constructed alongside their roads to denote distance from the capital city. A mile -- a thousand paces -- was two thousand years ago a more significant distance than it is now with our cars and our trains and our airplanes, and so passing a major milestone then marked something of an important event on a journey.

Beyond the cycling, beyond my acquiring immunity to the coccidioidomycosis fungus, here are some other milestones I passed during the year.

• Just Enough Craig. At some point it became weird not to have an Web presence, and for once I'm going with the trend. I see blogging as serving two purposes. The first is as providing an outlet for improving my writing. The second is as an opportunity for documenting my life -- the quirks, the insights, the blah blah blahs of it all.
  
  When I write source code I usually begin by writing all code and no comments and wait until I have a good idea how the code really is going to work before laying out the commentary. I see blogging as fitting a similar pattern. I think I would have enjoyed blogging years ago, but I doubt any readers would have. It would have made for a depressing site. Lately I've acquired a good idea how my life is and should be, and like a typical software engineer I'm scrambling to catch up with the documentation.
  


• Carlessness. I've blogged about this previously, yet it's a major theme here at Just Enough Craig and is worth repeating.
  
  For many years I owned a car and used it little but feared giving it up because of those last few miles -- those miles in bad weather, those miles through sickness and injury, those miles in which I must haul something too big or too heavy for a bike. It's not strange that I've discovered those fears to be unfounded. What's strange is how much my life has improved after going carless. One thing I never would have expected is how other people have taken an interest in my carlessness -- even if it is a sideshow, rubbernecking kind. And by having people take an interest in something that I'm doing, I'm discovering a reciprocity in which I'm taking more of an interest in what they're doing.



• Book Club / soccer. Is it a book club that plays soccer or is it a soccer team whose teammates all read one same book every month? Jill started Book Club almost two years ago, yet this year it became something more than a get-together once a month to discuss a good book. This year we got together to discuss bad books. And we -- well, most of us -- play together on an indoor soccer team once a week. I haven't played organized soccer since I was about five years old. Some league players may claim I still don't play organized soccer. Soccer is for me one of many sports that I enjoy because it presents an opportunity to run about wildly while exhibiting few of the specific skills expected of the players. I always look forward to Wednesday nights -- even the ones when our game is the late, late game and Thursday morning arrives too soon.



• Baptism in the Methow. Rachel and Jason were married in the Methow at Jason's parents' place in what was, I assure everyone, the most beautiful wedding of all time. Less significant is that I was baptized a few miles down the river the day before, although some readers who were present may point out that I looked like a surprised and drowning rat scrambling to climb back aboard the raft. But, dammit, this silly little incident was the symbolic turning point of the year for me. What I remember from the months prior was the valley fever, the indecisiveness, and the restless idleness that signified a general lack of fulfillment going on; what I will remember in the subsequent months are the productivity, the utility, the health and vigor and the happiness. It really is as if I was washed clean and made anew.

* * *

These are my milestones. What are yours? I'm asking you -- yes you, dear reader! -- to post a comment and share one or a few or your accomplishments for the year. It will take only a few minutes of your time.

Reading log

Books have been been a hugely important part of my life during my twenties. If obligated to do so then I would rank them higher even than bicycles and flaxseed meal. That's how big. And yet I've written about bicycles a lot and flaxseed meal some and reading not at all, so Just Enough Craig has had its priorities inverted. Starting today I am remedying this with my first of a monthly series of entries in which I will inform the world, or about two dozen of its constituents, of what I've read that month. Enjoy.

* * *

The noted Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti has taken this idea one step further and pointed out that through history, well before the car, humans have sought to keep their commute at about one hour. This "cave instinct," as he calls it, reflects a balance between our desires for mobility (the more territory, the more resources one can acquire, the more mates one can meet, etc.) and domesticity (we tend to feel safer and more comfortable at home than on the road).

Tom Vanderbilt
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)

One may wonder why I would read a book about automotive transport. I say I'm getting to know my enemy better. Really I'm simply interested in driving even if I don't care much for doing it myself. There's something about its perceived anonymity and its resulting effect on people's behavior that makes driving like a window into the soul of an individual. I'm also fascinated by traffic engineering and novelties to us Americans such as roundabouts and shared space. This book covers both areas well, and I enjoyed it a lot. And furthermore I'm now equipped with statistics that correlate the use of traffic-speed cameras with a reduction in fatal automobile accidents.

* * *

He liked Bernard; he was grateful to him for being the only man of his acquaintance with whom he could talk about the subjects he felt to be important. Nevertheless, there were things in Bernard which he hated. This boasting, for example. And the outbursts of an abject self-pity with which it alternated. And his deplorable habit of being bold after the event, and full, in absence, of the most extraordinary presence of mind. He hated these things--just because he liked Bernard. The seconds passed. Helmholtz continued to stare at the floor. And suddenly Bernard blushed and turned away.

Aldous Huxley
Brave New World

I regret reading as little as I did growing up, but there is a benefit in having missed out on so many of the classics: I'm allowed to read them for the first time as an adult.

I have a soft spot for books about utopia, dystopia, and end-of-days scenarios, so of course I liked Brave New World -- as if by default. But I really, really liked it. It's now an old book, and its story has been retold with variation countless times, but I found it fresh and every bit relevant. I also really liked the writing style and am once again reminded that my favorites generally come from the first half of the 20th century. This one gets a big thumbs up.

* * *

Twenty minutes later I walked out the doors of Los Angeles County Women's Prison, otherwise known as Sybil Brand Correctional Facility, into the bright sunlight. I wondered who exactly Sybil Brand was and who she had pissed off in order to have an entire women's prison named after her. I made a mental note to google her later.

Chelsea Handler
Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

I don't believe speed-reading exists. I think the comprehension analysis tests miss the point and that reading is a very active cognitive process, not a passive information dump from page to brain. Yet Are You There Vodka? challenges this opinion of mine. It certainly challenges my assumption that getting through a book as fast as possible shouldn't ever be the goal.

Are You There Vodka? was this month's Book Club selection. The good thing we got out of this month's selection was a unified desire to avoid ever again making a similar mistake. Sometimes you must hit rock bottom before making improvements.

The highlight of the book for me was the above quote and spotting its little factual error. The quote was written about an event that supposedly happened in 1996, which was when the word google was merely a misspelling for a very large number. Google the company wouldn't be started until two years later.

* * *

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. ... You take that book Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham, though. I read it last summer. It's a pretty good book and all, but I wouldn't want to call Somerset Maugham up. I don't know. He just isn't the kind of a guy I'd want to call up, that's all.

J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye

I'm for blasphemy and all, but for Chrissake what a phony.

I felt obligated to read The Catcher in the Rye before fellow Book Club members caught on that I hadn't read it and gave me the boot. Jamie shows up to Wednesday soccer wearing his crumby Catcher in the Rye T-shirt -- he's a real prince, I tell ya -- which served as a weekly reminder of my precarious position. But no more. It's checked off the list.

What I didn't expect from reading this one was further confirmation that my stratospheric opinion of W. Somerset Maugham is not shared by the rest of the world. But I don't have any desire to call up J.D., so we'll call it even. And all.

* * *

Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

René Descartes
A Discourse on Method

I remember disliking Descartes's writing when I read him in college. Excessively dry and hopelessly obsolete, I thought. Yet I own a copy of some of his writing. This is significant considering that I own no more than six books in all, and one I keep forgetting to donate to the library and another I'm keeping for use as a doorstop. So when Laura sent me a list of books she recommended I read and one of them was A Discourse on Method, I decided it was finally time to read it. Now I have two books to donate to the library.

Descartes is much more enjoyable outside the classroom. I read A Discourse on Method in a sardonic tone as if its author were a closet atheist who was poking fun at the church. This works. Go back and reread the above quote, which happens to be the opening of the first part. Tell me Descartes wasn't ribbing.

Why do college philosophy classes take these works so seriously? How much real philosophy is the writing of some punk who was trying to get a rise out of people but who became to be revered? Philosophy in the classroom is a necessity for getting one's existential bearings but is otherwise a hopeless pursuit. I wouldn't say I enjoyed A Discourse on Method, but at least I got something out of it.

With vicissitudes like these, who needs sloppy weather?

I signed up for this five months ago, and I never expected it to entail a one-mile jaunt down Central Ave on a dandy horse.

I've thought quite a lot about expanding my fleet. The reason I don't acquire another two bicycles is that I don't have the space in my apartment to store the both of them comfortably. And the reason I don't compromise and acquire just a one is that I can't decide on what kind: touring, high-end road, cyclo-cross, or even one of those highly practical bikes like a Xtracycle. Never once did I think about going with the dandy horse option.

Let's start over.

You can love the bike, but the bike won't always love you in return. The very day after posting about my around-towner, while riding it home from work, I was thrown from the bike. It bucked wildly and never gave me a chance to regain control before slamming me onto sidewalk and turf before itself landing on top of me. This all happened in a sequence of events I still don't fully understand. But I do understand that fixed-gear bikes have a tendency to do this sort of thing when, even for only a moment, you forget to pedal. I wish I had a video of it to share. Alas, the laughs were reserved for the passers-by who happened to be watching. I'm still sporting some ugly scabs on my knee and shin.

Yesterday morning my front tube's valve stem broke as I disconnected the pump. This event follows from a physical law of the universe, the conservation of bicycle inner tubes. I gained a tube the previous weekend by digging through some trash -- yes, post comments below -- and taking the tube home and applying a patch. Then the valve stem thing happened on an existing tube. Gain a tube, lose a tube. Broken valve stems are like brain death for a tube. Nearly any flat can be patched to some degree of success, but a broken valve stem is the sad and final end, the one that signals that it's time to stop all further resuscitation attempts.

I'm past taking flats personally. Of all the junk, all the annoyances and inconveniences that one faces, getting over flat tires is the biggest step one can make in becoming an everyday cyclist. Flats are like income taxes to Republicans. They happen to everyone yet it seems that given the right trick or hack that they are somehow escapable. But they aren't. They're part of life. I recommend three general guidelines for dealing with flats, which is three more than I have for dealing with Republicans.

1. Always ride on good tires. Don't squeeze those last few miles out of an old one.
2. Become reliable at patching and replacing tubes. Being fast at it is a bonus.
3. Accept that flats happen. Forgive the tube; forgive the bike; even, if you can, forgive the negligent homeowners who have puncture vine growing in their yards.
   

So the flat wasn't it. I think what it was was that I was still harboring resentment for the body slam the other week. Because what happened yesterday on my way home from work, what happened following my smooth and skillful track stand at a red light before it changed to green, what happened in a display of sheer herculean lower body strength, what happened was that I snapped my chainring into two pieces. Yes, take that, bike.

Admittedly it wasn't a high-quality chainring. It was a rather thin strip of aluminum, and it had been making some disturbing creaking sounds for a few weeks. But snap it I did. Some cyclists say you should carry all the tools with you on a ride: a spare tire, spare spokes and a spoke wrench, a chain tool. I can understand this advice for when touring and you're more than a hundred miles away from civilization, by which I mean any town with a bike shop, but I figure the mentality to be the result of reading too many bike-parts-pushing magazines and from a general manly obsession with tool ownership. Regardless, a broken chainring ends any ride.

So I unclipped and slid off the saddle and prepared to walk the remaining one and a half miles to the bike shop, which ironically was my planned destination. My original intention was to exchange a rear light I purchased a few days prior. I began walking and acted like this sort of thing happened all the time as another cyclist still at the intersection pointed out that I had left behind some broken pieces of bicycle at the crosswalk line.

Cycling shoes are terrible for walking. Really terrible. They're like those gimmicky shoes with the platforms underneath the balls of the feet that are suppose to work the calf muscle. I don't understand cyclists who walk their bikes up hills rather than pedal up them. You know who you are. Half a mile later my calves were indeed burning with fatigue and I decided a different plan was needed. So I ditched the walking and rode it in with no chainring, like it was the 1820s and the pedal had yet to be invented. I sat atop the saddle and kicked the ground with my feet to propel me and the bike forward. At first I tried the both-legs-at-a-time method and soon after found the alternating-leg method to work much better. I even got going kind of fast, too, and this undoubtedly made me look all the sillier. Once again I hope the passers-by were watching and getting some entertainment.

I arrived safely at the bike shop and had installed a new chainring but not after determining that they didn't have one to match my right crank and that I needed a new crank, too. And a bike like mine has so many kind-of, not-really problems that I had to spend some extra time weighing the mechanics' advice and deciding what was needing replacement and what was serving as a valuable theft-deterrence feature. I finally left in time to be late for Book Club, which was a pot luck get together. In the last two months I've been, in order, too sick, too busy, and too freakishly strong to be on time enough to a bring-your-own-food event to bring my own food. At this point it's quite an impressive streak of mooching.

My new chainring is a 46-tooth, not a 42, so I've moved up a few gears, from 42-16 to 46-16. I'm still unsure about this. The new ratio makes the bike much faster. Whereas the old ratio was geared for a slight incline, it's now geared for the flats and my fast-spin cadence has me doing low to mid 20s, which is really pushing it on an around-towner. And stopping is harder in a high gear. But most of all that someday fixed-gear trip up South Mountain is nixed. Unless I again muster that herculean strength.

Gray

This is what I signed up for five months ago. I sit in my apartment and see the wet and feel the cold and ponder my hindered mobility. Then I blow my nose to clear my sinus and gargle salt water to lessen the scratchy pain in my throat and am glad I have nowhere to go. I wonder whether the pain in my right ear signifies an infection, or maybe I simply aggravated my jaw during my nap.

To those of you with whom I spent time this previous weekend: my apologies. I hope your immune system is made of sterner stuff than mine.

\<[a-zA-Z]

Deserted, he finds a lamp crammed under xenoliths -- rubs.

"Your wish, kiddo?"

"Just one?"

"Be easy."

"Verily! Quick, send me to New Zealand."

Poof.

Got it?

Net Worthless

Imagine two baseball players who are both batting .300 for the season. Further imagine that I assert that both hitters are equally good because they have the same batting average. You would think me quite the simpleton for thinking this; batting average alone does not determine a hitter's value. Maybe one of the two guys has more RBIs and a higher slugging percentage. Maybe one guy bats comparatively higher with runners in scoring position. Maybe one guy has 500 at-bats and the other has 10. Clearly batting average alone can be an incomplete and misleading metric.

There's a research paper in the financial world called the Trinity Study. The paper seeks to answer the question how much one may annually withdraw from one's retirement portfolio, as a percentage of net worth, and probabilistically avoid the misfortune of outliving one's savings.^[1] The withdrawal-rate question quantifies how much one must save to afford one's expected standard of living through retirement. Clearly this is an important question for anyone contemplating their financial goals.

I'm unconvinced that the safe-withdrawal question is framed correctly, though, because I'm unconvinced that the net worth metric is an accurate or particularly useful indicator for evaluating a portfolio's retirement potential. Net worth has mostly a qualitative usefulness: holding all other factors to be equal, a greater net worth is better than a lesser net worth. But of course all other factors are rarely if ever held to be equal. The market fluctuates. $1 million invested before a market crash does not seem to be worth the same as $1 million invested after that crash. Market volatility is exactly why papers like the Trinity Study seek a mere probabilistic determination of retirement safety. The safe-withdrawal question may never graduate from the probabilistic to the deterministic because of the inherent vicissitudes of financial planning and execution, yet perhaps these types of studies seeking such heuristics are misguided.

What I wonder is: why does the financial world so stubbornly cling to the idea that net worth is the one true metric of financial worth?

Figure 1: S&P 500 Index historical P/E values.^[2] Click to enlarge.

If one had $1 million invested in the stocks composing the S&P 500 Index at the turn of this century, when the S&P 500 had a three-year trailing price-to-earnings ratio of about 30, then that $1 million was invested in a collection of stock assets that represented about $33k in annual corporate earnings. Whereas if one has $1 million invested similarly today, now that the three-year trailing P/E ratio is about 20, then the collection of stock assets earns about $50k annually. In both cases $1 million is invested. In both cases net worth is the same. However, in the first case the assets are earning substantially less than in the second case, and therefore the first case's $1 million net worth statistic is arguably inflated compared to the second case's $1 million. Net worth alone is a misleading metric.

P/E ratios are not new, and neither are the slew of various metrics used in value investing. These metrics are used for making investment decisions like picking stocks and choosing a portfolio diversification strategy. The problem is that these metrics are used for making investment decisions but no such diverse wealth of metrics exists for assessing the fundamental value of that portfolio. Yet such an assessment must be made to determine the retirement potential of that portfolio. Portfolio value assessment remains married to the idea of net worth.

The primary problem with assigning so much importance to one's net worth is that net worth is forever doomed to follow volatile fluctuations based on the fragile psychology of the market. Instead consider a net earnings metric, as used in the previous example of investing in the S&P 500 Index. Whereas net worth measures the price other people are willing to pay for all of one's assets (the $1 million), net earnings measures the summation of those assets' underlying earnings ($33k and $50k per year in the two cases) and is based on corporate accountants' spreadsheets rather than investor's judgments. This better anchors assets' valuation to their fundamentals.

Net earnings shouldn't be a replacement for net worth, just how on-base percentage isn't a replacement for batting average. The metrics should supplement each other to balance their weaknesses. Any net earnings number has the Enron consideration: earnings too have the potential to depend on false data driven by market psychology and to fluctuate wildly. One problem with this scenario is that in such a case it is likely that the net worth metric is also overinflated. A third metric is needed, or perhaps it is wise to consider longer, multiple-year trailing earnings numbers, as is shown in the graph above with the three-, and five-year trailing P/E ratios. Predictably, the one-year data line in the chart denotes significant volatility while the three- and five-year lines are smoother.^[3]

I think 401k and other retirement account statements should display net earnings next to the portfolio's balance. The balance states what the portfolio is worth to others, and the net earnings states what the portfolio is generating by way of new underlying wealth. One immediate benefit to showing the net earnings is that it would cast portfolios in a more favorable way. This year has been a terrible year for stocks, yet even while corporate earnings statements have been down from the previous year, the multi-year trailing P/E ratios continue to trend downwards, thus signifying that portfolios are continuing to gain value at least by one metric.^[4].

^[1 The Charybdis to old-age destitution's Scylla is working too hard for too long and saving more money than can be spent in the remainder of one's lifetime. This is a problem because it signifies that one has wasted the most precious resource of all: time. The Trinity Study and similar papers seek to find the maximal safe-withdrawal rate to avoid spending more time than is necessary to accrue wealth to afford one's desired standard of living.

^[2] Source: standardandpoors.com. The data is available as a spreadsheet readable in Microsoft Excel or Open Office Calc, and the site has a substantial number of other interesting data sets. You too can create your own nifty charts.

^[3] Here's a side note. The average P/E ratio for the S&P 500 Index for the period 1936-2008 is 15.9, which is in line with conventional wisdom. The last time the one-year trailing P/E ratio was below 15.9 was in 1995. The last time the three- or five-year trailing P/E ratios were below 15.9 was in 1991. It appears we have been in an extended period of historically inflated asset values. In fact, the above P/E chart reminds me of this chart, which presents a particular qualitative take on market bubbles.

^[4] This year has been terrible for nearly all types of investments and not just stocks. Real estate has also done poorly, especially in metropolitan areas such as Phoenix. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to apply the net earnings metric to real estate holdings.

Meet the fleet, pt. 2

My other bike is a Schwinn Tempo road bike. We're nearly the same age.

The Schwinn is my around-town bike. I use it for running errands, on bike dates with Pat, and for those days in which the point is not to go fast but to relax and rediscover the childhood joy of being on a bike.

One of the keys to any around-town bike is not washing it. This turns off the thieves. It's all about getting the best ride with the worst looks. The headlight on the handlebar and battery pack mounted to the frame easily double the value of this bike.

You may notice that the bike is a single-speed. Actually the bike is a fixed-gear / free-spin flip-flop^[*]. I had the bike converted to the flip-flop this summer from its original 12-speed, down-tube-shifters condition. If I redid the conversion I would go with a basic fixed gear and forgo the free-spin. At the time I wasn't so sure about not being able to coast. I enjoy not being able to coast. Track stand!

I love the simplicity of this bike. There's only one cable, which is for the brake on the front wheel. No rear brake, no gears, no shifters. And the front brake is for emergencies only. I mash to a stop.

Here's the flip-flop hub up closely. I've used the free-spin side only twice; it's geared way too low. The fixed gear is 42-16; the free-spin is 42-18. I don't see the point of 42-18 for an around-Phoenix bike. I once found myself skirting around the Mummy Mountain hills on the PV Loop while in the fixed-gear side and with the clip pedals and in my hiking shoes. No problem. I don't see myself ever climbing a mountain on this bike, although the thought of taking it up and down South Mountain has crossed my mind. I'll be sure to leave a farewell note if I do.

I've fitted the bike with a leather saddle because I'm not always in my bike shorts when riding it. Leather saddles are super comfortable once broken in, although they are a bit heavy -- no concern for a bike such as this. This saddle's leather is broken in and has conformed to the shape of my rear. Don't look too closely, though; it's kind of lopsided. The saddle, that is. Okay, and the rear.



Notice how the left handlebar plug is missing but not the right one. And there's no handlebar tape. This bike is not worth stealing, thieves!

I love both of my bicycles each in their own special way. I bought the Schwinn a few months before leaving Houston for $100 from a Craigslist ad. I wanted a bike with which to run basic errands like grocery shopping and going to the library, and I had no idea that such a small sum of money would buy me car freedom.





Special thanks to Coworker Lee for the photography.

Link: Meet the fleet, pt. 1

^[*] A fixed-gear bike is a special type of single speed in which the pedals are locked in gear with the rear wheel. So if (and only if) the rear wheel turns then the pedals turn. There is no coasting on a fixed-gear bike.

A flip-flop hub has a cog on each side, so you can flip the wheel around to change gears. In this case, one side is a fixed gear, and the other is a regular free-spin. The free-spin is intended for hilly terrain where the downhill gradients are too steep and can cause spin-out in a fixed gear.

The Dark Side

I became a runner a few months after turning fifteen if you exclude those dreaded mile runs in junior high gym class. And I remember the exact occasion it happened. It happened one summer night while playing hide-and-seek with my friend Josh and his younger brother and their dad. The game was neither planned nor ever repeated. That one night we found ourselves behind their house happily stomping all over the #16 fairway, hiding in the darkness behind stout pecan trees and wildly chasing each other over smooth bermuda and the occasional strip of cart path.

The Wilsons were not stellar athletes, yet they were decidedly faster than me. And I wasn't much good for stamina either. Rather, I possessed a basic all-around slowness that had no benefit in the game. And I wasn't particularly stealthy; the game ended after I blindly ran into a low-hanging branch and ate a mouthful of bark. Yet something clicked that night. I felt a noted dissatisfaction in myself, and I decided to make a change. I decided to become a runner.

I knew nothing about being a runner. I had never run more than a mile in one go -- at least, not intentionally -- and at first I found it impossible to go much farther than one. I was good for a trip or two around the block, and then I was done. My lungs were shallow, my legs weak, and my mind-body connection nonexistent. My feet slapped against the concrete with a definite lack of ease, and my breathing was forced and lacked rhythm. But soon things began to synchronize, my body began to adapt, and distance became not such a big deal.

I ran throughout high school -- always on my own around the neighborhood, never as part of anything official -- until my senior year when I began my nine year journey through back problems. After the first surgery I returned to running but somewhat sporadically and never as enthusiastically. By the second surgery I was calling myself a cyclist and didn't care so much anymore for running. My happiest years running were those few years as a teenager; it never came back.

***

In just under seven weeks I'll be running a half marathon. This is pretty big for me, not so much as an achievement but that I have it as a life goal not to run a full marathon and this is about as long a distance as I'll run. I signed up for the half because these days I've been hanging around some bad influences who sign up for these sorts of things. Peer pressure at work.

I signed up not knowing whether I'd train. Of course I'd cross-train on the bike; I have no choice. I didn't know whether I'd do any actual running other than the one or two obligatory jogs to break in the shoes and to lessen the shock on the big day. I know I can endure through a half marathon relying solely on core cycling fitness. What I don't know is how well I can do it.

Now I've made up my mind; I'm training for this thing. My first day was today; after arriving home from work I took from out of the box the shoes I bought the week before. They're the first pair of shoes purely for running that I've owned since moving to Phoenix. And then I ran a few miles around my neighborhood.

Wednesday Morning Trial Time

Phoenix weather progresses like clockwork. Mid-summer monsoon leads to late-summer dry heat leads to early fall blue skies leads to late-fall rain. During my first fall I found myself caught in the rain on my bicycle for the first time here while going home from work the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It was the start of the rainy season and was a very light drizzle, the kind we get where it's difficult to determine whether water is in fact falling from the sky unless one happens to see the descending droplets amidst the hazy glow of the streetlights. The ground was still dry, and I was comfortable and relaxed and thinking not of the weather but of flying to Houston and family the next day.

Like clockwork. This year the rainy season again started the day before Thanksgiving. But unlike my pleasant experience two years ago, today's rain was a sloppy, cold drizzle that had the pavement spotted with puddles and layered with oily grime even before I awoke. Months of morning time-trial commutes to work come to an end, and before me await the get-through-it experiences.

***

I was a fair-weather cyclist for all my time in Texas. If there was one puddle anywhere in the city then I stayed off the bike. If it got just a tad nippy then I stayed off the bike. I have no regrets for not trying to make carlessness work while living in Houston; both the motorists and the weather there can be especially brutal. I was especially soft.

I'm now much better prepared to deal with uncooperative weather. I have to be. The worst experience I've had was two years ago when I cycled to work the morning it froze. I wore shorts and a short-sleeve T-shirt. My light attire was further exaggerated by gripping a rather efficient heat sink of a steel-everything bike for the half hour. I arrived at work shivering and with a splotchy red, frost-nipped face only to discover that the office building's heater wasn't functioning that day. It was a miserable, miserable experience, the kind I laugh about now.

***

Since going carless I've been caught in the rain only twice. The second time was today. The first was on my way to a dodgeball game on the south side of town. I rode through a monsoon thunderstorm that started shortly after I left my apartment. I got off the bike and donned my neoprene booties and covered my backpack with a rain cover while under the protection of a store-front awning. I then proceeded ahead and spent the next half hour completely soaked. It was tough, though I did think ahead enough to laugh about the situation while in it. The booties did nothing, but my backpack remained dry, and I was able to suit up for the game as if nothing unusual happened. I considered the ride a success even if it was boneheaded to ride under a thundering sky while sharing a road with motorists who don't experience rain very often.

And so I got wet again this morning. I put on the same booties and learned from my monsoon experience to cinch them tight over some wool socks. I covered my backpack with the same reliable rain cover. I wrapped myself in a jacket I bought long ago explicitly for these situations but haven't yet found much use for. And I reminded myself that today is one of those days that will be good for me. I hopped on the bike with enthusiasm only to discover within two minutes that I made a few mistakes. I didn't think to pack an extra pair of shorts for the return ride, and I should have taken the time to install the rear rack on my bicycle to act as a fender. These mistakes compound each other; my rear wheel was slinging a steady stream of very cold street water at my bottom the entire way to work. I arrived wet and sloppy but was okay after giving myself and my bike a quick wipe-down. I saw no need to laugh at my situation.

The Critic

Craig is at home. He sits at his laptop and begins a new blog entry -- some sort of drivel on the duality of adaptation versus customization -- when he is startled by a knock at the door. He gets up and opens it. Standing before him is a nondescript man who introduces himself as The Critic and asks to come inside.

Craig: No, why? What do you want?

The Critic: I want to talk to you about that drivel you're about to write on adaptation versus customization.

Craig: What? How do you know what I'm writing?

The Critic: May I come in?

Craig pauses to consider before moving to unblock entry into his apartment, and The Critic enters.

Craig: Have a seat.

The Critic looks around the empty apartment, and, seeing nothing conventional on which to sit, sits atop the Schwinn resting against the wall.

The Critic: I don't recall you writing about this bike on your blog, although I do recall you hinting at it.

Craig: I will, I will. I just got the photos.

Craig returns to the floor near where his laptop lies, beckoning with the blinking cursor of its open editor session.

The Critic: Why do you insist on using a Unix text editor to write these blog entries? And why do you continue to use that silly keyboard layout?

Craig: Dvorak? It's superior to Qwerty. I intend to blog about it someday. And Vim too.

The Critic: Good grief. Are you that detached from your audience?

Craig: What? No. What are you saying? I get plenty of positive feedback.

The Critic: Perhaps your friends and family are just polite people.

Craig: I thought you said you wanted to talk about adaptation versus customization?

The Critic: No, I want to talk about your blog entry about adaptation versus customization.

Craig: What about it?

The Critic: Don't write it.

Craig: Why not?

The Critic: It's garbage.

Craig: How do you know? You can't know what's in it. It's not written yet.

The Critic: Right, I don't know what's in it. I know only that these philosophical, uh, treatises of yours are awful. They're dry and humorless, and they're not particularly insightful.

Craig: What about inciteful?

The Critic groans.

The Critic: By the way, please stop trying to be clever.

Craig: But it's my blog!

The Critic: And you ought to be more mindful of your audience. Let's see, for example, quote, I'm not so sure I like this one all that much, end quote. This is a direct quote from your latest entry, and you're referring to your own writing. Maybe you shouldn't have published it in that case, hmm? How terrible, publishing such self-deprecation. Your mother reads this, you know. If you want to rid yourself of your readership like you've ridded yourself of so many other things in order to have, quote, less stuff to worry about, end quote, then you could simply start a new blog under a new name and not tell anyone about it.

Craig: No, no, I like having a readership.

The Critic: That last entry, which, by the way, I must say was far too much rambling, was tripe, through and through. None of your readers are cyclists, and they don't care what the Tour de Camel is, not that you gave any real meaningful description.

Craig: But it wasn't my main point.

The Critic: And what was your main point? The whole thing was terribly vague and uninspired.

Craig: What! Do you read my email?

The Critic: What?

Craig: Never mind.

The Critic: You used so many words to say nothing. You could have just written: I went for a bike ride. My head is still in a jumble despite whatever I may say to the contrary. That would have been just enough rambling.

Craig: That's a little mean to say that, I think.

The Critic: Look, I agree that it's a noble goal to write about topics that raise existential questions among your readers. But the question you're actually raising among your readers is whether they'd be better off spending their time not reading your blog.

Craig: That hurts.

The Critic: You're establishing a history of this stuff. I still don't understand the point of your essay on stoicism and epicureanism. It reads like a cross between op-ed and a bs-ed college essay.

Craig: Okay, I admit that one wasn't very good. I figured I would push it out and return to the topic later if needed.

The Critic: Please don't. And no more code dumps. That one on the Rubik's cube simulator was totally irrelevant.

Craig: I just wanted to share. No one has to read it.

The Critic: Don't worry; no one did. Uncool thoughts? These titles of yours are rather more annoying than clever.

Craig: You already criticized me for cleverness.

The Critic: Hmm... the one about introducing yourself as like the list was pretty good.

Craig: Really?

The Critic: Yeah, because it was short. What's with the pictures taken using your cheap phone camera? They're hideous even if they're of a cute dog and a green blob that I take to be a frog. No more phone camera photos.

Craig: Okay, okay.

The Critic: Let's not forget writing about the caveman test when you already wrote about it only last month if not by name. At least have the common decency to use consistent terminology. Are you already forgetting the stuff you've published?

Craig: Yeah, my mistake.

The Critic: I want to tell you to stop copping out by merely posting a link to others' blogs rather than writing your own observations, but maybe that isn't such a bad thing.

Craig: Now that's unfair.

The Critic: The jury summons one was good.

Craig: And?

The Critic: It was good.

An uncomfortable silence ensues. The Critic then stands, stretches, and excuses himself and exits the apartment. Craig sets about returning to writing when there is another knock on the door. Craig answers it expecting The Critic, perhaps for one last quip or maybe because The Critic accidentally left behind his nondescript wallet, and is surprised by the appearance of an unknown man standing before him.

Craig: Who are you?

The Censor: I'm The Censor. I'd like to talk to you about your blog and its display of excessive narcissism and delusional self-importance. May I come in?

Just enough rambling

Last night I stayed up too late to have any chance of doing a group ride this morning, so I slept in and lazed about and tried to get done some writing. Despite having performed several brain dumps to this blog this week I awoke this morning with a head full of ideas fighting to get out. I hoped this would be another morning of keenness and spontaneous productivity; instead I felt scattered. Those ideas were fighting their way out in no particular order or coherency, and I soon realized that I was fighting against my own words and wasn't sketching out anything blogworthy. So I donned shorts and a jersey, pumped the tires and went for a solo ride to clear my head.

I headed east against an unusual headwind to do the Paradise Valley loop. One pleasure of weekend rec riding is that I'm not encumbered with my usual, bulky backpack and can comfortably get flat-backed and aero. But my thoughts continued to jump around, and I was fighting against the bike. By the time I pedaled through the streets through the golf course my lower back was beginning to complain, which these days is an unusual occurrence. It was clear the ride was going to take some effort to salvage.

I finished the loop strong skirting around Mummy Mountain and detoured to Cholla Ln east of Camelback for its steep dead-end climb. It's a private road, and I really should stop using it. I've found a good way to make something of a bad ride is to pedal up something exceptionally steep, and Cholla is granny-gear steep. Afterwards I decided to finish with a full lap of butt-off-saddle climbing of the Tour de Camel around the south face. On the way home I realized I felt good; my back had loosened and my head was calm and clear.

***

Simplicitism has been on my mind a lot lately, largely because it seems to have stirred some curiosity in others and I've felt unprepared for explaining it in sound bites. This blog serves as the vehicle for my apology of the philosophy, but I don't feel good about my previous posts on the subject -- published and unpublished -- and I'm not so sure I like this one all that much. But I'm not going to wait for perfection in explaining it.

***

Simplicitism has been defined. It's about bringing into one's life the people and activities and things that enable fulfillment and happiness and about eliminating all else. It's a straightforward and practical philosophy, and I suspect that most people understand it and appreciate it when stated as so. But stated as so it doesn't explain minimalism and my rejection of so many common things. Why not own a car? Why not own a microwave? Or furniture? Or have Internet access? Are these not tools that make life easier, simpler?

Each thing can be explained only in its own case. I don't own a car because even though it got me places faster and no doubt smelling better, driving it made me feel unappreciative and wasteful. I don't own a microwave because they fail the caveman test^[*] and nullify foods' flavors. I don't own furniture because I sold it all before moving to Phoenix and since discovered it was all unnecessary. I don't have Internet access in my home because not having it is a good way to free up time by faking having self-control.

Ridding myself of things -- dropping off a box of stuff at Goodwill, hawking junk on Craigslist, or simply chucking stuff into the dumpster -- makes for a great one-time feeling; it's less stuff to worry about. But having fewer things is different. Having fewer things means having fewer distractions, and having fewer distractions means having to confront myself and having to reconcile with the world our incongruities.

I expect not ever to drop simplicitism, and yet it seems inevitable that someday I will drop the minimalistic aspect of it. My lifestyle makes a lot of sense for an ambling twenty-nine-year-old who remains in a sort of extended phase of post-adolescent self-discovery. At some point it will make less sense. When that time comes I will then rid myself of the minimalism to pursue the better thing.

^* The caveman test is roughly explained as follows. If something you put on or into your body was not at least somewhat regularly done so by cavemen, then the onus is to prove that the thing you're putting on or into your body is a good thing. This is a tough test to pass because cavemen didn't have many things.

judge not lest thee be something something

Wednesday I fulfilled my first-ever jury summons. I was excited about the prospect, which shows within me a certain naivety about civic responsibility. I also harbored a desire to take a free day off from work. I had been diligent and productive the previous few weeks had gotten myself a bit ahead, so I could easily afford the day off.

I also would benefit from a quiet, pleasurable ride down 3rd Ave -- part of the Phoenix Sonoran Bikeway -- to downtown Phoenix and the county courthouse. I don't make many opportunities to have a reason to take 3rd Ave. It's been an indirect route for me ever since I moved from the Avenues to the Streets. Usually when I cycle to downtown it's because I'm cycling through downtown, and there's no reason for me to go through the middle of it.

I love downtowns -- even Phoenix's, which is tiny. I love skyscrapers and public art sculptures and concrete everywhere. I figure if you're going to plaster the ground with concrete, you may as well do a thorough job. I love downtowns and their masses of pedestrians -- people walking to and fro in their business suits and in conversation with in-step coworkers. I love those small shops and restaurants on the street level of buildings that push right up to an expansive sidewalk. Infrastructure is good in downtowns, and I love cycling there because the bicycle has such superior transportative dominance in the setting.

I entered the courthouse and was greeted at the door by the personnel of the security checkpoint. I put my backpack on the conveyor to pass through the X-ray machine. I didn't think much of my bag full of bike tools and accessories until the guard asked to search it. He confiscated my 14mm wrench and my mini-set of Allen wrenches and gave me a white ticket stub so that I could retrieve my tools at the end of the day. There was a question whether my mini-pump qualified as a bludgeon weapon, and I was ensured that, no, it was indeed harmless.

I arrived at the juror assembly room right on time. The room was nearly full to capacity. I signed in, found an empty seat and proceeded to tune out the drone of names called on the speaker system. The seating was uncomfortable, and the air was stale with the noxious mixture of too many strangers' perfumes and body odors and with everyone's continual inhaling and exhaling that taxed the room's ventilation capacity. I had flashbacks to sitting in mass as a kid.

Then my name was called. Forty-something of us queued and then filed into a courtroom impossibly far away. We sat, the judge entered, we stood, the judge sat, we sat. Another flashback of mass. Then we proceeded with the selection process. Surely anyone who has been summoned for jury duty knows this part through and through. It's a spectator sport of social weaseling. People want out of jury duty, and the judge knows this. And the people know the judge knows this, and this makes them squirm with guilt. The ones with legitimate excuses, such as medical problems and starving kids at home, leave early and with their humility intact. Then the real whiners plead their case.

"I'm too important to be here."

"I take advantage of civil society's benefits, such as living my life by and by free of crime, but I don't want to do my part of perpetuating such benefits by serving on a jury."

"I'm an idiot and can't make impartial decisions based on the presented evidence."

And my favorite: "I'm racist."

That last one, I assure you, is my accurate paraphrasing of two women's nervous rambling on their speculation of the immigration status of the defendant -- it was a criminal trial -- and how that status affected their ability to render an impartial decision. I think my paraphrasing captures all the important points they each made.

Nearly half of the original jurors were dismissed in the first round. Then we recessed for lunch. I ate my homemade peanut butter oatmeal bars on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse while observing more urban life, which largely comprised pigeons and homeless people searching for food scraps and everyone else on the move with important things to do. Then I explored a bit before returning and entering the courthouse through a entrance different than the one I entered through in the morning. This was a mistake because the security squad at that door thought that a mini-pump was indeed an effective bludgeon weapon. They confiscated the pump, and I got another ticket stub. This one was blue.

Enter round two of jury selection. Round two was short. We were asked more specific questions about being or knowing victims of crime. My favorite bit of juror-judge dialog occurred at this time.

Judge: Have you or any or your immediate family members ever been the victim of a crime?
Juror: Yes, who hasn't?
Judge: You were a victim?
Juror: Yes.
Judge: What was the crime?
Juror: Well, when I was three someone stole my toy truck...

The juror was well prepared to earn an honest dismissal by pontificating on the meanings of the words crime and victim, but the ever experienced judge cut the joker off. Can you be impartial? -- Yes. No dismissal for you.

After the last of the group-targeted questions we each individually answered a short series of questions that, as far as I can tell, allowed the prosecution and defense to determine how much money we make and whether we were ever in the past a member of a hang jury. Then court took a half-hour recess while the counsels decided on the final twelve jurors.

I left the courthouse to take a quick nap in the plaza across the street. Never learning my lesson, I returned through yet another security checkpoint. The very junior guard in charge of X-ray was quite puzzled by my remaining bike gear -- the inner tubes, the patch kits, the lights with external battery pack, my suspicious strap of velcro -- and prudently confiscated all of it. I received my third ticket stub. Red, white and blue.

Back in the courtroom we jurors awaited our sentence. In hindsight I know I had little chance of being selected. The two main qualifications for being selected appear to have been firstly not being white and secondly appearing to have the least money. We hang-em-judge, affluent white types were dismissed cordially and thanked for our willingness to serve. I made my way to three security checkpoints.

***

I'm a bit disappointed I wasn't selected. The trial was a criminal trial. It was expected to last one, maybe two more days. I had the time. And as much as I am fulfilled by the vicissitudes of my day-to-day life, there's nothing so great about any of them that supersedes what would have been a learning experience -- with corporate sponsorship, no less.

I wanted to witness a real-life court case to restore balance to my head full of Hollywood legal dramas. I wanted to see the interplay between the two counsels. I wanted to see real-world evidence and hear real-world witness testimony. I wanted to see how the jury would react to each counsel's presentation of the case. I wanted to be a part of a deliberation.

And, joking aside, I did want to do my civic duty beyond merely showing up.

Simplicitism: a Bias-ed view

Bias of Priene lived in the sixth century BCE and came to be considered one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. Little is known of him and much less with any certainty. It seems though that opposite to the English meaning of his name he espoused a life of moderation and virtue.

When asked how men should live, Bias responded with the aphorism that men should live as if they are fated to live both a short time and a long time. He also said that "wisdom should be cherished as a means of traveling from youth to old age, for it is more lasting than any other possession."^[1] Bias may have been one of the world's first simplicitists.

I'm fascinated by the idea of living one's life as if one will die either a short time from now or in a very long time but that one doesn't know which. This takes the advice of those who say "live for today" and of those who say "plan for the future" and blends them into something sensible and sustainable. Yes, live for today, but do so only in a way that can be adapted and maintained for a full lifetime. This requires a diligence for clearing away life's clutter -- the cruft and stuff that doesn't matter but that drains one's time and resources and prevents them from being spent on the things that do matter. This is the core of simplicitism.

^[1] Will Durant, The Life of Greece, p. 141

Signs of a weakening economy

This morning I ran some errands on foot. One of the attractive qualities about where I live, other than being neighbors with John McCain^[*], is that I can get most of my day-to-day shopping done as a pedestrian. Today I dumped off a load of waste paper at the recycling drop-off and then headed to drop off my comforter for dry cleaning. Along the way on each of three of the four corners of the intersection of Camelback Rd. and 20th St. was a sign guy.

First I need to explain sign guys because I'm unsure what their official job title is. Sign guys are guys that hold advertisement signs on high-traffic street corners. Sign guys come in two main varieties: professional sign guys and bum-on-a-corner sign guys. The pros do sign holding tricks like spinning and tossing the sign high into the air and catching it behind their back. They're young and zestful and their signs promise of deals similar: full of flash and slight of substance. Whereas bum-on-a-corner sign guys stand dejectedly and do little more than hold the sign as if to say, "Our deal is so great that I will let you read the sign I'm holding instead of me twirling it on my finger like a Harlem Globetrotter."

The professional sign guys were popular not too long ago. They would work for hours spinning those signs at their corner, doing their fancy footwork moves, occasionally playing a little sign guitar, rocking out to a great deal on overpriced condominiums or whatever back when people were interested in buying overpriced condominiums and whatever. But this morning the sign guys I saw were of the bum-on-a-corner variety. They fully had the dejected, turtle enthusiasm thing going, which fit because each of them was holding a going-out-of-business, everything-must-go type of sign -- a sign of a weakening economy.

^[*] I learned this fact last Tuesday while waiting in line to vote. Not only does Mr. McCain too live in District 3, but his official residence is one of the condos across the street from my apartment. I learned this from the swarm of television reporters lurking about, waiting for that cliché shot of a presidential candidate casting a ballot for himself.

Simplicitism: defined

I struggled for many years with the question of what to call my lifestyle of owning few things. The mainstream calls it minimalism, yet I find the term lacking. The first problem is that the term historically applies to a style of art and architecture, not a way of life. Another problem is that the term is literally untrue except in the case of the most miserable of people. Minimalists own a great many things that are not strictly necessary. A more fitting term would be optimism -- the act of optimizing one's relationship to the external world -- if the term were not already defined to mean insanity.

The greatest problem with the term minimalism is that the term misses the point of the lifestyle; a minimalist is as such as a means to achieving some Good. Some minimalists are devoted to minimizing their negative impact on the environment. Some minimalists seek to attain greater spirituality or purity. And there are other reasons. Grouping these philosophies together as a one leaves much to be desired.

I once was intrigued with the term asceticism, but the problem with that term is that it implies a voluntary withdrawal from food and sex, and I certainly don't withdraw from food and my withdrawal from sex is decidedly involuntary.

The most fitting term I've yet encountered is simplicitism. The term captures the destination and the way. I seek to live simply.

A dog, a frog, a blog

This is Tango. She's ten pounds of terror, yet for one and a half weeks her fragile life is in my irresponsible care. She's in my care because her owners, Shafik and Macy, are off in Florida acquiring legitimacy for her -- or what some people refer to as family values.

Tango is a miniature dachshund. She's bossy and very clever -- even considering that she's oblivious to her small size. Here she is in her playful pose while she anticipates a toss of the squeaky toy.

This is Kyle. I don't know much about Kyle except that he's green, he likes to sit unmoving for hours at a time and he eats crickets, although I've yet to observe firsthand him eating one. But I know he eats them because every day there are fewer crickets in the aquarium, and I'm sure they're not escaping.

Kyle is also in my care, although I suspect he'd do just fine without me.

And I am Craig -- photo not included -- and I am in my own care. These days I'm outside my natural habitat of the studio apartment and in suburbia enjoying the benefits of two large speakers, wireless Internet access, and complete isolation from any living thing except Tango and Kyle. I sit unmoving for hours at a time on the couch tinkering with my laptop. I eat whatever is in the pantry or fridge.

Here, read this.

I don't do anecdotes because Jill does them for me, complete with photography. All I have to do is hang out with her crew. Here's her post about going to the State Fair last weekend. She also did a post about a day trip to Slide Rock a few months ago.

My favorite is her spin-off blog, 27 Things You Can Do in a Speedo.

Meet the fleet, pt. 1

In 2000 I knew next to nothing about about bicycles, but that didn't stop me from buying my first road bike, a 1990s steel LeMond Tourmalet that remains my primary bicycle today.

I imagine I seemed easy prey to the salesman. I didn't ask about frame materials because I didn't know or care what bikes were made of; I had never before used clip or clipless pedals; I showed up to test ride wearing a T-shirt, gym shorts and sneakers. My only concerns about a bike were that it was within my college-student price range and that it was comfortable. It turns out this was a brilliant strategy, although in its execution I was rather lucky.

***

Eight years at the receiving end of an abusive relationship will take its toll on anyone, and my bicycle was no exception as it suffered under my ignorant and neglectful ownership. It took me a few years to learn that chains require lubrication applied on a regular basis. It took me a few more years to learn that WD-40 is an inappropriate chain lube. And it took me yet another year to learn that removing lube is more important than adding it. The first time I degreased my drive chain I was surprised to find that the chain and cassette were chrome colored and not the grimy black they had been for as long as I could remember. This is no exaggeration.

This summer I became much more active in group riding, and it became quite clear my bike was in need of an overhaul. The shifters were gunky and some days would not downshift^[*]. The eight-year-old brake pads gripped the rims as if they had arthritis. The frame was pocked with rust spots where the paint had chipped. The handlebar tape was eaten through in several places. Another rider once told me that if Greg LeMond ever saw my bike he would cry. I took my bike in for an overhaul.

A bicycle overhaul is where everything is removed from the frame and components needing replacement are replaced and then everything is put back on. Usually the bar tape, shifter and brake cables, and brake pads are replaced. In my case I also had the shifters replaced along with the entire drive chain -- chain, cassette, derailleurs, chainrings and cranks. I also had the frame and fork powder coated to protect against rust. My bike was reborn^[**], and I as an owner was reborn. It would be different now; I was a changed man. I would love and cherish my bike and never again do anything to hurt it.

Here's a photo taken just after the overhaul. It's unfortunate that I don't have a photo from before the overhaul for comparison, when the bicycle was red and plastered with logos and chain grease.

***

The overhaul did indeed change things. My bike rode like new. Shifting was so smooth with the upgrade to Shimano 105 shifters, and the new double chain ring with ten speed cassette was much better suited for my style of riding than the original triple and nine speed. And I changed. I kept my bike clean and in good working order like I promised. We were again a happy couple.

Photo on the left: The front crankset is a compact 36-50. The rear cassette is a 12-13-14-15-16-17-19-21-23-25. I like the compact and it suits my fast cadence, but I'm not as happy with the cassette. I'd prefer more range and less granularity. Specifically I'd like to have an 11 tooth.

But after my initial joy following the overhaul I began questioning if this really was the right bike for me. While my pre-overhaul dissatisfaction with the bike lay in its mechanical problems and embarrassing looks, I now began to focus my attention on its ergonomics. Is the bike really a good fit? Or did the salesman push me out the door with a quick sale and a happy commission? I had to find out, and that's when I decided to do a bike fitting.

A bike fitting is a process in which one pays a lot of money to have an expert determine the optimal placement of the seat, handlebars and cleats. For the pros it involves spending time with the power meter wringing out each last watt trying subtle changes in position. For us enthusiasts it involves taking body measurements and making the changes according to some magic formula.

I did the fitting and with surprising results. The immediate surprise was just how incorrectly by bike was set up; my seat was several cm both too low and too far forward, and even my cleats were incorrectly positioned. I didn't expect such radical changes from the fitting because I haven't ridden in any pain or discomfort in two years, but any suspicion of mine about the fitting and the changes was relieved when riding home. My position on the bike felt even better; it felt neutral. I felt powerful both in a full crouch and in an upright posture, which is something I've never experienced.

The main surprise from the fitting was that my bike is indeed the right size. I fit a 58cm frame. The only problem with my bike is that the handlebar stem -- size 120mm -- is a tad too long, and I've ordered a 110mm replacement. I don't credit the bike's salesman with the fit, though; proper credit goes to my parents for giving me a body of typical dimensions. I'm that guy for whom the sizing charts were written. Six-foot-one with a thirty-four inch inseam? Here, ride this.

***

So this is the right bike for me. I love this bike. I think it's one the most beautiful road bikes here in Valley: a lovely duality of old-fashioned looks with pragmatic speed. I receive a lot of compliments for it from other cyclists, especially because without the logos most aren't really sure what they're looking at. It's steel. Yes, I just rocketed up that hill faster than you, and I'm riding a bike that has a soul.^[***]

***

Here are two more photographs taken by Coworker Lee just after the overhaul.

Here's the from-the-behind shot. Notice that the right side of the handlebar is bent inwards. I don't remember exactly when or how this happened; it may have been that one time I tried to cut a fast turn into my apartment complex's driveway riding two flats. I won't try that again.






And here's me standing in happy appreciation of my beautiful machine.






***

[*] This once happened on a group ride to South Mountain. I would have had to mash my way up the mountain in high gear but the rear shifter began working just before entering the park -- not that downshifting helped me much that day.

[**] This raises the question as to how much can be replaced on a bike before the bike becomes a different bike. The only original parts on my bike are the frame, seat post, wheels, brakes, handlebars, handlebar stem, and bottle cages. I just ordered a new handlebar stem and will probably be replacing the wheels sometime in the next year or so. Is my bike still a LeMond Tourmalet? Or is it just a green bicycle?

[***] Or, sometimes: yes, you climbed faster than me, but hey, I'm riding steel.

Yesterday I didn't jump out of a plane

I was supposed to go skydiving yesterday morning with some friends, but the event was canceled due to high winds. Perhaps it is too windy in the city of Eloy, where the skydiving was supposed to take place, but here in the Valley it was a calm, sunny Saturday morning just like any other morning this time of year. I won't complain much about the cancellation because I wasn't too keen on the idea of jumping out of an airplane.

It's not that I worry about the results; I figure skydiving is safe enough. Indeed, many people happily sky dive but would never ride a bicycle in rush hour traffic. Who's the bigger fool?

I know how I feel sometimes when I stare down a long ways below, and I don't like that feeling. In fact, my principal fear with the prospect of skydiving was that someone would have to push me out of the plane to get me to do it. Sometime between my teens and my late twenties I have developed a fear of heights. In my teens I would have been excited about skydiving. Now I am on my way to being that guy -- you know, Prudent Old Guy.

I'm also on my way to being that guy standing next to him -- Stingy Old Guy -- because I wasn't too keen on spending two hundred dollars for a few minutes of free fall and a brush with death. Why not rocket down South Mountain and its winding turns and steep drop-offs with nothing but cacti and rocks to break my fall and my bones? That costs nothing and gives me a good workout to boot.

But indeed I am a tad disappointed about not skydiving if for no other reason than that it would have proved that I'm still Says Yes Guy.

Octane

My fuel costs savings may be marginal, but I do get to eat a lot of food and stay thin. As I've increased my activity level these last two years my views on nutrition have changed substantially.

As a child I ate cold cereal for breakfast nearly every morning. My mom stocked the pantry solely with so-called adult cereals, and so I grew up eating cheerios, raisin bran, and the like. I liked grape nuts even when I was very young, thus showing flashes of what would develop into a lifelong obsession with fiber intake. I ate prodigious quantities of cereal from a young age, refilling the bowl with more flakes, nuts, or ohs after finishing the first and sometimes even adding more milk to keep the cycle going. I kept the cereal box on hand next to the newspaper page I was reading so that I could pour on demand with minimal interruption. And this is how I discovered the standard nutrition label.

One of my earliest memories of the nutrition label is that at an early age -- about ten or so -- I discovered for myself the caloric density of fat, carbohydrates, and protein based on comparing the stats from different cereals' nutrition labels. I still think this was a clever trick of algebra -- solving for three unknowns, no less! -- being as how I didn't then know what algebra was. So what that I miscalculated fat to have eight kcal per gram instead of the actual nine. I learned it was nine instead of eight when they started printing the densities in fine print shortly thereafter.

To me, those nutrition labels were law. Each food was broken down into its constituent components along with recommended allowances, and one could then construct a healthy diet by selecting foods that added up to meet those recommendations. Those labels remained law for me until recently when a certain weight-lifting, food-optimizing reductionist began revealing to me the terrible inadequacies of the nutrition label. It started with the glycemic index.

The glycemic index shows quite clearly that carbohydrates are most certainly not equal. Of course, I had long known that sugar is generally bad, but then an orange is two-thirds sugar by calorie yet is low on the index and is healthier than, say, raisins, which are high on the index. It turns out that fiber sometimes can be healthy more than sugar can be unhealthy. Except that some sugars are healthier than others. And not all fiber is the same. And so it goes, each food having its own special cases and subtleties. Why doesn't the standard nutrition label address these issues? Why not at least put the glycemic index on the label? It turns out that even the glycemic index is not a perfect indicator and there are exceptions to it as well. The body absorbs barley much slower than wheat even though both have roughly the same glycemic index value, and milk is insulin-tropic despite being mostly fat and protein.

It's an interesting question to ponder what information the standard nutrition label should include to maximize the conveyance of health information without increasing the label's size. Here's one thought: each food item should list the year that that food was first known to be eaten by a sizable number of humans. For example, oatmeal was first consumed a few thousand years ago, and store-bought cookies made with sugar substitutes are a modern invention; I consider this a big clue that our evolved genotypes aren't well suited for eating low-fat store-bought cookies.

Yes, my principal heuristic for nutrition is this: if humans weren't commonly eating it a thousand years ago or earlier, then it probably isn't healthy. This is a good rule in that it disqualifies most foods in the grocery store and thus makes one's choices much simpler. Anything with trans fats, corn syrup, or polysyllabic-named preservatives is thrown out. What remains are foods that are shipped in boring packages that you must cook in your own home. These also happen to be many of the cheapest foods in the store and the ones with the most potential to satisfy one's appetite.

The heuristic's inverse is not true, however. There are indeed some foods that have been around for thousands of years and are not particularly nutritious. The three big ones in the United States, I think, are: corn, wheat, and rice. These are not bad foods, but they have substitutes that are much better. Enter quinoa, the super grain.

Quinoa may be the most remarkable of grains. It has moderate fiber content; it's low on the glycemic index (low 50s); it has high protein for a grain (about 12-15% by calorie); and most extraordinarily it's a complete protein source by itself. Its texture and taste makes it a great substitute for rice in any context, and it also works well as a hot cereal by itself. Empirically I've observed that quinoa delivers a steady, slow burn and is thus ideal before long bicycle rides. It would probably make a great on-the-bike food, but I have yet to figure out a way to work it into a solid bar that wouldn't make a mess.

I'd rather not prattle about all my favorite foods, but I must make mention about one more super food: flaxseed meal. Flaxseed meal is potent stuff, and I put it in everything I cook that warrants a bit of a nutty flavor. Flaxseed's primary claim in nutrition is that it contains omega-3 fatty acids, which are only found in sufficient quantity in a small number of other foods such as fish, organic dairy and meats, and walnuts. Flaxseed also is rich in fiber and protein and has a good amino acid profile. It's a food that I feel a person can't go wrong with, although Wikipedia claims that overconsumption can lead to diarrhea. Empirically I have no cause to disagree with this claim, and that is Too Much Craig.

Bicycle operation cost versus car operation cost: fuel costs

It's said that bicycling is the new golf. I'm unsure whether this means that it's the new Saturday morning bonding thing-to-do or rather that it's expensive and the people who do it wear flamboyant clothes and cleated shoes. Both are applicable.

The cost of bicycling can be surprising. Of course the Saturday morning enthusiasts who listen to the salesmen in the bike shops and buy those soulless carbon-fiber-everything bikes are laying out a fat wad, but what about the commuter who wants only a good, dependable ride? The cost of operating a bicycle is an interesting topic to me for obvious reasons, and I will occasionally examine some of its many facets in future posts.

It's regularly assumed that a bicycle is cheaper to operate than a car, but is this true? and if so by how much? In this post I will explore one specific part: fuel costs. Fuel prices have increased in recent years both for cars and bicycles. We notice these increases whenever we pass those bright gas station signs boldly proclaiming their incessant faith in the one-tenth penny, and we notice these increases in the grocery store when that one pound brick of cheap cheddar costs more than five dollars.

***

Case study

Subject: Craig
Description: Doesn't own car, wears a lot of Lycra, bikes everywhere around Phoenix.
Guess: Must be saving enough money not buying gas to buy an Italian racer.

I average about 126 miles of utilitarian bicycling each week. The amount sounds very specific, but it's a guess; I'm confident it's close to the actual amount, and I'm using it to simply calculations later. Most of the miles -- about 85 -- are for commuting to and from work. The remainder are for errands, social things, sports leagues, etc.

The first step is to calculate my fuel costs if I drove these miles rather than biked them.

My Mazda averaged a fuel efficiency of about 35 miles per gallon, so:

126 miles / 35 miles per gallon = 3.6 gallons
3.6 gallons * $3.50 per gallon = $12.60

Thus, my average fuel costs in a car would be about $12.60 per week.

Step two is to calculate bicycle fuel cost. How exactly does one go about calculating bicycle fuel cost? The key is determining one's energy expenditure when bicycling. This website provides a simple way of estimating one's power output to the bicycle. Only a subset of the input fields matter for calculating the power output field. These input fields are: speed, mechanical loss, air resistance coefficient, and rolling resistance. If one calculates for gradients, then the weight (both of the rider and of the bicycle) and grade fields are important, too. Gradient percentages can be tricky to calculate, and my utility bicycling is mostly flattish with the uphill generally canceling out the downhill, so in this exercise I ignore gradients. These are my inputs, as recommended by the website:

Speed: 18 mph
Mechanical loss: 3%
Air resistance coefficient: 0.0036
Rolling resistance coefficient: 0.004

These are conservative estimates. 18 Mph is a casual pace for me on the flats, and the three friction fields are on the low end according to the website.

The calculated power output with these inputs is 120W (watts), or one-sixth of a horsepower^[1]. This 120W figure is my power output to the bike. Of course, some of my effort is lost as waste, just as some energy in a tank of gasoline is wasted as heat when powering a car. I estimate my efficiency rating at 20%, meaning that for every one unit of energy I output to my bicycle, I must consume an additional five units of energy. This 20% figure is a guess; the experts say that riders' efficiency rates range from the high teens to the mid-twenties, and I'm pegging myself in the middle of that range.

So how much total energy do I use for utility bicycling?

126 miles / 18 mph = 7.0 hours

(Here is the reason for the 126 miles guess: it assumes that at my average speed of 18 mph I spend a simple, round 7 hours on the bike.)

To continue:

120W output / 0.20 efficiency = 600W input
600W input * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 7.0 hours = 15,120,000Ws (watt-seconds)
15,120,000Ws = 15,120,000J (joules)
15,120,000J * 0.0002390kcal (kilocalories) per J = 3614kcal

Thus, I must consume about an extra 3600 kilocalories each week to meet the demand of utilitarian bicycling. For simplicity I will assume that I obtain all of these extra kcal by eating quinoa, which is a cheap, complete-protein grain. One ounce of quinoa contains about 105kcal, so:

3600kcal / 105kcal per ounce of quinoa = 34 ounces of quinoa
34 ounces of quinoa / 16 ounces per pound = 2.1 pounds of quinoa

One pound of quinoa goes for about $2.50 these days, so:

2.1 pounds of quinoa * $2.50 per pound of quinoa = $5.25

Thus, my average utilitarian bicycling fuel cost is about $5.25 per week. Remember that this figure is low due to conservative estimates. Even so, my total savings on the bike are:

$12.60 car fuel cost per week - $5.25 bicycle fuel cost per week = $7.35 savings per week.

So I save about one dollar per day on fuel costs. This is if I ride at a moderate pace. And if I get my extra calories by eating only quinoa as opposed to eating something pricier, and at about 675kcal (1 meal) per dollar, quinoa is a far from average cost.

Conclusion: I'll have saved enough for that Italian racer at about the same time I'll need it just to keep up my pace.

Questions? Comments?

¹ The most powerful cyclists in the world are track sprinters, some of whom can reach peak output levels of more than three horsepower!

Seventy-three days and not counting

Coworker Steve somehow ended up with two cars at work this Friday, so I helped him by putting my bicycle in the back of his 4 Runner and driving it to his house before bicycling home. This broke my no-driving streak of seventy-three days.

I can't be sure when the last time I went as long without driving. I know my longest streak while owning a functioning car is thirty days, which happened mostly during October of last year. I may have gone seventy-four days or more without driving sometime during my first two years in college. I didn't own a car then, but my sister did and I sometimes borrowed hers^[*], so I can't be sure of any streak. And if I didn't have a longer streak during those two years then the only other streak longer than seventy-three days is my 5,479-day streak ending with me turning fifteen and obtaining a learner's permit. Or did I get my permit after my birthday? I can't remember. I do remember Mom driving me home from the DMV after I got my permit: she pulled to the curb and stopped the car upon getting to the safe streets of our subdivision, and she had me drive the remaining way home. It was the first time I drove an automobile -- a 1986 Oldsmobile. I wore an ear-to-ear grin those five minutes as I hugged the curb and maintained erratic Grandma-speeds the entire way. If I had taken my eyes off the road for one second, I could have seen Mom's white-knuckle grip on the door, dash, or anything she could put her hands on. I don't think I've ever driven her once without that reflexive grip of hers showing at least once.

Cars were and continue to be a way of life in the Houston suburbs, and driving was the biggest of the coming-of-age rites for a teenage boy. The idea of an adult not regularly driving a car was a fiction to me then. I don't recommend carlessness to normal people, but I do recommend the car-lite lifestyle. A major benefit to driving less is that driving becomes enjoyable, like how it was when a teenager. There's no daily routine of seconds-saving stresses and worries, red lights are not the Big Evil when you don't deal with them everyday, and being cut-off and honked at somehow doesn't matter.

^[*] My sister drove a Ford Taurus during college, which is funny to think about if you know my sister's taste in cars.