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.