Pinning on numbers once more.

L. vs J., c. 2001, with both running downtube shifters to save the grams.

The sun shone without heat, the wind was calm by the lake and being some kind of glutton for punishment, I went out and spent $45 to race for less than an hour last Sunday, in criterium race a five minute ride away from my place. But I had my reasons.

The course was actually our lakeside bike path, meaning it was damned narrow, ie, three metres across if that, and featured not one but two hairpin turns. Naturally the second turned onto the final straightaway and meant that good position was crucial in the final lap, as there was no breakaway group to be in.

And so it went that I found myself a good thirteen or more wheels back going into that turn, and sprinted to an uninteresting 11th place out of twenty-five. It was a thoroughly unsatifying conclusion to $45 worth of nervously sitting in the wheels, trying not to get run off the path into a tree by some over-zealous junior.

And it makes me wonder.

Alley cat races are vastly more fun, creative, and dynamic. They seem to win on every front: cheaper to enter (ie $10), you get to see people you know and like, all sorts of creative curveballs can be thrown in (ie, store checkpoint where you have to buy a can of beans, or park where a particular plaque on a statue must be found), and the sponsors' prizes are vastly cooler as well. There is also this complete lack of equipment sport snobbery and attitude that road racing is notorious for, and which I continue to find nauseating.

So why do I even think about sanctioned races, all of which are hill-less around here and meant only for sprinters anyway? Just because.

Hincapie Enigma Revealed

So I had been wondering what made George Hincapie keep ticking what with all those broken wrists and heartbreaking losses, and now thanks to the power of the Internet I know: his line of sportswear.

The man is not so busy he can't give the cycling public a chance to get inside his very own shorts, for a mere $189 + tax and shipping. And just what lies inside these specials? Why ceramic panelling no less.

Whilst you absorb the cultural implications of the leap ceramic has made from wheel bearings to inside leg, let me say this - George, you must be racing too much, because your hand looks like it is made of carbon fibre. I know carbon is all the rage these days, but really? Carbon fibre hands? That's just going too far. I'm sure they're not cheap either, a pair of those, and that's perhaps why Hincapie is selling his shorts to the general public.

G.G. '08

It was time for Global Gutz 2008 this past Sunday aft. This time I was out for racing enjoyment and not winning, and to baptize the new track bike. And I was three for three!

It was really a blast to be back in the saddle again, careening around like a semi-madman, following a few others from Lakeshore Blvd to St Clair to Dufferin down to College over to Unie, down to the Roundhouse for the big finale. I decided to ride 'within myself' as they say, and finished 10th, which was good enough for me. The fact that Hofman made this one go uphill and then downhill did not favour the track bikes, but it was still a great time.

I wasn't going for it; once you've been off the road a good while, getting the timing right through intersections becomes a whole different thing, and it was all just too committed for the bike I was riding. There was also a big east wind to contend with on an otherwise lovely day, but that only made the battle feel like a proper battle. I beat Toby anyway, which isn't saying that much.

The cameraderie of those races and afterparties is the real joy of it - a big adrenalin blast and then the laughs later on (i.e., Pete Brewer falling on his ass crossing Lakeshore on foot - a classic ciertes).
Worldwide ranking aganst 220 riders in twenty-six cities:
105 (Pappy) Toronto 0:44:06.

And I'm fine with that.

Scottish city, Cuban playa.

Untruth: R. Remembers the Beef & Calixto Garcia (Rush Hour, Holguin)

Babies, Baby Sprocket, Scotland.

Winters of Canada.

Winter, T.O.

Purple Face

Afghanada

Another coffin is loaded up in Kandahar:

What are we doing in Afghanistan?

If you look at the domestic media, you'd think we are there for completely self-involved reasons: to strengthen our military (Stephen Harper), to honour those who have already died fighting there (Man in the Street), to keep Canadians safe from terrorist Islamikaze attack (General Hillier), and to finish what we started, that is, 'operational objectives' (Lewis Mackenzie, ex- general whoes expertise consists of having presided over one long screwup in Bosnia in the 1990's).
And what exactly is it we started? There is the securing civil society angle - can't leave until little girls can go to school without threat of violent retribution - that'll keep us there for a good 140 years or so, at least. Then there is the security of the periphery, or something, that is Kandahar Province. We can pronounce it, but we can't secure it. After six years in Kandahar city, people are still suicide-bombing the place, people recruited by the Students.

The Students are our lethal enemy. They weren't our enemy until we brought a war to them. Ah, that is, joined a war brought by our friendly neighbour to the south, USA. Which brings me to the central military objective, the eradication of the Students, who previously ran Afghanada when it was Afghanistan and nobody cared about it besides Pakistani military people and heroin dealers (that is, Pakistani military people). The fun thing about a counter-insurgency war of occupation is that your presence causes the problem - the longer you are there the greater the motivation of the resister (the Students) to kill people, any people, in order to sabotage all progress being claimed on the 'security' front. Sort of like bombing fish in a barrel, but not exactly.
After six years occupying Kandahar city, we've secured a limited perimeter that is commonly called "the Wire" by our boys (I mean, media) - that is that base they live in. The governor of the province is a warlord who has been personally involved in torturing his enemies, etc. - now how can he behave this way?
Perhaps it is because he is like all the other warlords who ended up in top jobs in the Kharzai (I think that's Pashtun for 'puppet') government, as USA did not want to struggle with these guys while fighting the Students, who are hard enough to find let alone fight. Yes, what we have here is a farce, and the central motif of this farce is political, not military: the idea that we can make Afghanada last longer that a week or two after we leave, if that long. This gender equality- loving, constitutionalist-government thing we like is just not what that country is about, let's face it. The Afghans do things differently. Very differently.
The only solution we can really offer those who want to live with our rights and freedoms is simple: immigration papers for the model country upon which Afghanada is based. You know the place - the home of the Timbit. Or the home of the giant pretzel.

(By the way, I must have been in Mexico or somewhere when it happened, but since when did the French join NATO? I have been mystified about this for months, as all this talk of France sending a thousand soldiers to Afghanada has been bouncing around, then finally I saw a TV5 show about the Champs Elysee and there was the acronym, stuck on the automatic doors at Navy headquarters: 'OTAN'. Perhaps they confused me by spelling it backwards.)

Track Bike Revolution.

Yes, the track bike is now sort of ubiquitous, seen on the streets of the developed world's great cities from ___n to ____k. So what? Naturally one grows to dislike the overweening nature of fixed gear style properly mocked in the above illustration.

Yet it all came from a good, solid place, that of the working class pride of the bicycle messenger. I'm thinking of all this because I've finally got my hot-ass new track bike set up and rolling. At first I felt exactly like one of these posing twenty year old hip-ster people, over-matched by an ill-setup machine meant purely for the velodrome. Now I've got my old school toeclips on, and a proper seat that doesn't keep tipping up and down, so I'm feeling good about my totally over-the-top Blue TR250, complete w. removable dropouts and gleaming Major Taylor handlebar, set up high on a flipped over stem Hayward gave me.

If only I had a) a normal stomach and b) proper form then I would be getting the proper kick out of my riding. And c) Global Gutz 2008 is ten days away...

My Weekend of Hideousness & Ikea.

Here are two micro-shots of Cuba that I nabbed off of Google in the absence of my own. I did hire a bici-taxi, and I did ride up to la Loma de le Casa, Holguin city, for the record.

In other news, I'm in my worst physical condition in approximately two years. I will not be racing bikes any time soon. Ever since the Jet Fuel Party of April 1, the stomach has been abnormal. Then there are the legs, both of which are devoid of strength at this point. Then there is the bike, of which the carbon seatpost is refusing its seat pin since I took it apart Saturday on the advice of my surly mechanic.

My second Donut Ride this year on Sunday was how shall we say, a mitigated disaster, that is, mitigated by no crashes or parts falling off but disastrous in terms of my horrible form, and the seatpost constantly sinking into the frame when it wasn't moving from left to right. It makes me want to hang my bikes in a closet and take up walking once and for all.

The only detour from all this self-induced crap was a forced trip to Ikea from my married friends, who'd got hold of someone's car. They bought four miniature wooden pinic tables for everyone else they know with kids. Properly over-exhausted from riding, I stumbled about in a daze, surrounded by cart-wielding Sunday shoppers and playing house with their two-year old, until they took me home from suburbia.

Holguin, mi Holguin

So I up and went to Cuba 22-29 March. Yes I took a bicycle with me, my road racer no less, which got very, very dirty. El camino socialista es muy dura y sucia tambien. Half my luggage never showed when I arrived yet I forged onward, riding with the bare essentials on my back in a stinky little canvas bag, getting sunburned despite my spf 50 block. That's cycling, companero.

I had hoped to throw some photos up on the blog, but two conditions prevent me from doing so - a near total lack of interesting pictures and this damned machine, which saved the first one I threw at it as a .tif, which Blogger won't accept. Normally my personal camera produces jpegs, even from work but this time, no dice. Instead you find a scaled drawing my colleague Ms C. made of a little park in the downtown core of... Toronto. I needed to save it for work and I liked it, so be happy there is something to look at. (In fact what you see here is a special advance rendering of part of a new bike racecourse coming to this town 30 May around St Lawrence Market, final approval pending. It's the staging area.)

If it were more thematically correct, it would be Parque Calixto Garcia in the city of Holguin, pop. 200 000 +. Imagine a big rectange with a statue in the middle of a man on a pedestal and a ring of benches facing inwards. Latinos always know how to make a city park: a place for people to be in, not move through, as they are here. In Mexico you see that to the max - you can't even walk from one end to the other of some, they play out like a sort of maze. They're just not meant for transportation, dogwalking, or athletics. They're meant for socializing.

There are so many unique things about Cuba, besides just the potholes that buses do huge swerves to get around in order to preserve their ball joints. I love the advanced state of decay of almost everything, the absence of commerical propaganda, the women in mini-skirt uniforms, the bici-taxies (tons of them, sometimes all lined up w. parasols), the casual thrown-together quality of things, the uniformed airport customs workers riding home at the end of the day on their bicycles, the dignity of paisanos who really have next to nothing but are too proud to try to rook you. And the piglets boxed up on homemade racks; I even saw a mostly full-grown live cochino tied to a homemade carrier. Marvelous.

In short, I love the sights in Cuba because I am a stinking rich scumbag-person. Why else would I have such an appetite for all that decay and poverty? Because I don't live in it, obviously. When I returned I was feeling spent from my travels and I took the streetcar on its lazy route across the city to see mis padres for the first time in a while. And I was struck by what I saw and was temporarily un-blind to: slick little clothing shops, intense variety of goods for sale all over the place, well-dressed people in sunglasses and cellulars riding the public transit-thingy. All the things you take for granted living in el fabuloso rico pais de Canada.

You can't hire a horse-and-cart to take you and your oversize luggage to the airport in this town, but I did it in Holguin, Cuba for four pesos and four Canadian.

Goodbye Little Friend.

In the fine tradition of internet mourning, I post this picture of Rasmussen tearing into a sandal I got at a market in Puerto Escondido a few years back when he wasn't even a gleam in my eye.

Now he is gone, and my wretched apartment is as empty as ever with only Rasmussen's useless litter box hanging around to remind me, and the occasional busted claw.

Cat-owner's lesson learned: do not remove cat from house unless totally necessary. He most certainly had no desire to leave, I foolishly insisted and Rasmussen escaped en route to his home away-from-home to be, running into the night after my over-loaded bike trailer popped open on a darkened Brock Street over a rough patch of asphalt. I searched in vain for an hour, peering into little alleyways between houses with a bike light, to no avail.

I think of him, in the chilling cold rains that have been coming down lately, and hope for the best.