with tomorrow being bike to work day (which is still mandatory, so no questions at this point please) all good citizens collectively let their minds drift towards alternative transportation.  i decided to get in some early practice last night, as you can never be too prepared.  i had corresponded with robb hampton about hooking up with him to ride out to the greenbelt race from dc.  when i had not heard from him at 17:00h, i went ahead and made my own arrangements.  the rough plan was to ride to greenbelt, race and then rode to the metro and take the metro home.  i apologize in advance for the lack of pictures for this post.  I had the camera but the threat fo rain made me lock it away in several ziploc bags.

i left the office and headed out through capitol hill and north-east washington.  interestingly, i ran into dana from coppis who yelled my name.  i stopped and we chatted for a few moments.  he pointed out some pretty ominous looking clouds on the horizon, and said he was bagging his plans to head to hains point.  i asked if he wanted to accompany me to greenbelt and he declined graciously, but suggested to me that i might get caught in the downpour.  being pigheaded, i decided to prove him, the empirical evidence produced by nexrad, radar and satellite, and all the idiot weathermen wrong.

the ride out rhode island avenue to riverdale is actually pretty nice.  without working too hard, i was clearly moving faster than traffic.  josh and i lived in riverdale so i was tempted along the way to ride past some of our old haunts but was pressed for time and passed.  for those who are interested, travel time is about 45 minutes.  and speaking of alternative transportation, i was very happy ot see the traffic circle between mt.ranier and hyattsville.  a little taste of europe.  just lookout for the monster pothole on the north-east side.  it's a wheel eater and invisible to you if there are cars in front.

instead of going up kenilworth to university, i elected to enter the park on the south side and follow the road that goes by the campground.  it was a nice ride but just began to sprinkle lightly as i entered the park.  the friendly road guards said the race was still on so i rolled up to registration.  it was working smoothly.  they still had bagels and peanut butter and nutella.  right on.

it's important to note that your powers of observation are what will help you improve as a cyclist.  we can all only train to a certain point, and after that it's making good choices and psychological toughness.  i have to hand it to the rockville harley guys; they had their game going early.  sean barrie tried to distract me with talk about our recent crashes while mark johnson swooped in and took the other half of the bagel i was planning on fueling up with.  at least he opted for peanut butter and didn't take the last of the nutella.  incidentally, nutella is the fuel.  we dont' really do sponsorship, but i do believe i am allowed to sing the praises of products i like.  so here goes: noooooo....teeeellll.....aaaahhhh......is the bomb.

i'm sure it won't be nearly as good as what servio will deliver tomorrow at freedom plaza, but we do what we can.  the greenbelt race was uneventful up until a bad crash in the b race took down two of dc velo's finest.  the latest updates on their condition can be found here.  i think i speak for all of us when we wish both of them and marjan a quick recovery.  while it was hard to see them all in obvious states of significant discomfort, it was heartening to see the racers generally just stop racing and a lot of people stop to see if there was anything they could do to help.

it's been a while since i habitated in that area so i want to also send out a very quick thanks to the whole route 1 velo team for providing a volunteer to lead me to the metro station since i was clearly dis-combob-ulated and incorrectly thought i knew the route.  thats a nice series, and they are nice peoples.  as if the nutella was not enough.  i remember pete lindeman saying to me a year or two ago that he'd be satisfied doing nothing but racing greenbelt all summer.  i agree, if only i could find a way to move to greenbelt from where i am now and drop the interminable post race commute.

on a totally separate note, i want pictures tomorrow from bike to work day.  email them to me and i'll be sure they get up.  that means you.  yeah, the picture part, that's mandatory as well.

- - - posted by scott

you mention to people that you're planning a little bar-b-q and the flying monkeys start screeching about class warfare.  what the hell is going on out there??!!  from the comments:

5/16/2006 7:42:21 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  Chicken and chorizo?? That seems awfully bourgeois to me. Seems like a steady diet of potatoes and cabbage is just fine for the masses.

we cannot allow this sort of accusation to stand.  if we become complacent, these ideas appear unchallenged, and possibly even earn merit in the eyes of those who are less critical in evaluating information.  throwing hurtful words like that around cannot provide us with any traction on the real problem. 

i will freely admit the revolution took a bit of a pause last night.  those who were lucky enough to receive a solid, state-provided education will undoubtedly recognize it as a caesura.  the union forces took a well-earned break to consolidate their gains in the gardens just outside of the plaza de la revolucion.  food was enjoyed in moderation, but people were truly indulgent in giving thanks to our brothers and sisters who work the land to provide the bulghar wheat for our tabouli, the root vegetables for our plates, and the teamsters who work tirelessly to bring this bounty to our state-provided housing.

but what to make of the implication that the vanguard of the party receives perks or has a higher standard of living than others?  this is the divisive rhetoric that we have become accustomed to from the self-important western media enterprises that this "pete" works for.  this claim was intended to tar us with the accusation of hypocrisy; asking others to sacrifice while we indulge ourselves in the best of everything.  rubbish!  true patriots would not need proof of our modest celebration, but for those who are more cynical, I present the following.  as one can clearly see, the grill offers a modest feast.  but look more closely...

yes, the true feast is to be found in the wisdom of the manifesto.  I asked my son, a young pioneer, and anxious to become a party member in his own right, to run into our house and get the essential stuff we needed for a bar-b-q.  and this is what he returned with:

salvadorean chorizo, bar-b-q sauce and a book of the sayings of the racing union elders.  though i am generally not sentimental, i will admit i became a bit misty; so proud that my son has internalized the valuable lessons we teach.  and though he appears to be eyeing the snausages, i can assure you we spent many fine moments discussing the manifesto. 

- - - posted by scott

I've got to get home so my wife can get out and do the tuesday reston ride so no post today.  my son (second from the right in the picture below) and i will be making little copies of the manifesto to hand out in our neighborhood on bike to work day and helping our neighbors to better understand the philosophy of collectivism.  oh yeah, and we'll be bar-b-q-ing some chicken and chorizo.  right on. 

feel free to post thoughts in the comments.

- - posted by scott

that's right campers, free swim at the pool! the baker park cat 5 felt like a good race, for all the shennanigans. someone can correct me, but i believe it was 20 laps, or thereabouts, with a whopping 7 primes to keep all of us neophytes pedalling hard. there was rain, but it held off for most of the race. i dont need to add to mike's course description, and i'd just note that up at the front, at least, things stayed fairly civilized going through the turns. there was a crash on the back side with 2-3 laps to go which took out 2 riders, one of whom is rumored to have suffered a broken ankle. if so, the union sends its sympathies. my performance was somewhat restrained-i am now on vacation in boston and didn't want to miss my flight due to hospitalization. however, i hung out in the front group, chased a break or two, and jumped for 2 primes when it looked like everyone else was taking it easy. I did not contest the final sprint, but came in right behind it, in 9th place. baker is a really sweet course. ride on, brothers!

-joe

Bunny Hop, 30+

This was a fun and educational race for me. First of all, it was fast. Fast and smooth. There was really only one corner of any significance in this race and my goal on each lap was to just keep my speed, stay in my line and be cool.  It was a 60 minute race. I thought coming in that I would see how it would go in the regular 30+ field and try to stay in for 30 minutes (mistake #1). Well, we got to 30 minutes and I started looking at the laps-to-go instead of just concentrating on efficient riding (mistake #2). So after one particularly hard lap, I just kinda sat up and stopped (super mistake #3).

Baker Park, 30+ Cat 4/5

This crit was 20 laps of a long skinny rectangle with three 90 degree turns and one gentle curve coming into a slight uphill finish. The pace seemed to be faster and more race-like than Carl Dolan and I could see good attempts to break away and good team efforts to catch various riders.  PoWER put four or five in the race and seemed to dominate from the gun. I started out perhaps a bit too cautiously and ended up towards the back of the 75 starters. There were a number of primes, so that kept the pace pretty high throughout. The best place to move up was on the uphill straight, so after about five laps I made a good effort to get up to about half way back. At about six laps to go I went hard on the inside of the uphill and popped right up to the front of the group--somewhere in the top three or four. I settled in and held a good position in the top ten for another three or so laps. Half way through three to go, I either picked a bad line coming into turn two, or someone attempted to "Gibbons" me and I had to break hard to avoid this, skidded a bit, and lost all my speed. I found myself instantly dangling off the back of the group at just the wrong time. I had to give it a strong effort to regain my speed and tried to move up again, but the pace at the front didn't abate and I was just a too gassed to pick up any spots. I rolled in at the back of the group for 32nd. Overall, not a bad outing.

-michael

- - - begin communciation

petition number:  5342-ru-75hs7654-uth0003
received 05112006 :: 17:48:20
approved 05112006 :: 19:08:26

petition: "I work at home. So should I simply sit on my bike for a little while, then commence my daily labor?"

resulting determiniation by the people's committee for the monitoring and assessment of proposed transportation efficiency measures.

determination number: det-ru-05122006-038-5342-ru-75hs7654-uth0003

case details: petitioner notes that location of work and location of domicile are identical.  petitioner tacitly expresses support for the goals of the revolution and accedes to the mandatory nature of the event by proposing to mount bicycle within structure which functions as both domicile and place of work.  petitioner is credited with patriotism towards the cause and creativity in coming up with solution to previously unanticpated situation. 

determination: petition is denied.  the people's committee for the monitoring and assessment of proposed transportation efficiency measures draws attention to the lack of visibility that the proposed solution would receive, being contained with domicile/workplace building.  further, the committee notes that the central thesis advanced in it's previous communcations was the benefit of outreach: introducing non-cycling citizens to the joys and benefits of this necessary mode of alternative transportation.  petition is denied on the grounds that the principle anticipated benefits to the cycling proletariat will not be realized to a sufficient degree.  the committee proposes that the petitioner follow the suggested guidance, find a fellow citizen and escort them to their place of work via bicycle.

concurrence with comment from the central ministry for planning;
received 05112006 :: 19:15:51
approved 05112006 :: 20:23:16

comment: central ministry for planning accedes to the wise recommendations offered by the people's committee for the monitoring and assessment of proposed transportation efficiency measures.  however, we take issue with their failure to note the egregious use of capitalization in their submitted petition.  the use of arbitrary distinctions, whereby some letters are made larger or more important than others is a clear sign of a mind that has a proclivity towards class distinctions.  our customary recommendation is such a situation would be the opportunity for this citizen to attend a 10-12 day re-education camp where the true benefits of sharing the wealth generated by all citizens could be made ever-more apparent to this individual.  however, we acknowledge the patriotism and bravery embodied in the initial petition and recommend instead that they be offered the opportunity to demonstrate good will towards the cause by distributing copies of the manifesto to friends and neighbors.  this corrective action is proposed as an addition to the determination made by the people's committee for the monitoring and assessment of proposed transportation efficiency measures.

authorized and approved for general release to the collective of cyclists by the supreme revolutionary directorate for movement.
received 05122006 :: 03:35:07
approved 05122006 :: 08:11:26

- - - end communication

i've gotten a number of letters about my last post concerning bike to work day.  i believe that i can answer them all in a quick and easy manner: your attendance is now mandatory.  we all, collectively, hear so much griping about how dismal the conditions for bikers can be in some jurisdictions around the washington area.  you may feel like the situation is hopelessly out of balance, or the problems are of a magnitude that is difficult to appreciate.  i would probably agree with both those sentiments.  but as people who log a lot of hours on road bikes, you should have more than a passing interest in the safety, convenience and suitablity of roads for biking.  so i re-iterate: if you have a road bike, and if you work in the dc metro area, your attendance at bike to work day is now compulsory.

by order of the central ministry for planning under the supreme revolutionary directorate for movement, we have deployed one of the racing union's secret weapons, the radeln sie grundsätzedurchsetzungstruppen.  they have infiltrated most mabra clubs with remarkable ease.   die grundsätzedurchsetzungstruppen have been tasked with reporting compliance for individual cyclists back to the people's committee for the monitoring and assessment of proposed transportation efficiency measures within the central ministry for planning under the supreme revolutionary directorate for movement. 

non-compliance will not be tolerated.  and comrades, while we cannot absolutely confirm or deny those rumors regarding cyclists who have been officially recognized as unhelpful to the revolution, do you really want to risk it?  the ministry of domestic support is currently in the process of re-evaluating rations and allotments for bread, potatoes and cloth.  just something to keep in mind.

looked at a different way, there may possibly be a handful of cyclists in the mid-atlantic whose training, goals and aspirations cannot be met were they to take a day off and spend it on bicycle advocacy and showing by example that people could conduct their lives in completely different ways.  but if you're sitting at a computer reading this instead of training or sleeping, you're probably not one of those.  i'm not asking.  i'm telling.  go to the web site.  register now.  find someone new who has does not commute regularly.  mentor them and help them learn the ropes in the process.  make a friend, make a difference.

- - posted by scott

bike to work day is coming.  and i can just feel the eye-rolling, foot-tapping, subject-changing apathy from many of the cyclists i hang around with in d20.  i have always found this cryptic.  people intuitively accept that they have to offer a complete mentoring program for junior cyclists.  they jump at the chance to help them understand the basics and build confidence.  people do a great job of helping new racers appreciate what they need to carry on their frozen winter training rides; those rides that call out for reliable equipment and over-preparedness rather than stupid-light racing stuff that will need to be field repaired multiple times with numb fingers.  people embrace training rides, training races and racing clinics as a way to acquire experience, learn the necessaries and build their fundamentals.

so here's the point.  why should we treat recreational riding and/or commuting any other way.  we're happy to take prospective cyclists out for 3 hour hammer-fests but we cringe at the idea of crawling down the custis trail with 2-3 people who are new to commuting.  why is that?  you think i'm blowing smoke or making this up.  show up at your next training ride in a t-shirt and tell them you're from potomac peddlers and just feel the scorn settle in.  this is a generalization, but i will bet you that most everyone reading this has had some experience along these lines, on either side of the insults.

the union is all about bringing the change.  we don't just call people out, we're here to help, to propose solutions.  and i've tried to be nice about this but i've about had my fill.  i hereby announce that bike to work day is mandatory for all racing cyclists.  you will not do your regularly scheduled workout.  you will not do 2x10' sprints in a 96 inch gear.  you will not do hill repeats followed by a soy and algae protein shake.  you may ride at hains point at noon as long as your other obligaitons have been fulfilled (see below).  instead, you will support the washington metro areas largest bicycle-centered, alternative transportation rally of the year.

you will go to the waba web site and you will register.  after that...and you listen up good now 'cause this is the important part...you will go and find someone who lives close to you who has never commuted or who rarely commutes.  you will convince them to come and ride to work with you.  you will help them check their bike and volunteer any parts they need to fix up their ride from the volumnious stash you keep in your basement.  you will escort them to their place of work on bike to work day.  you will carry extra gear for them if then need it.  you will buy them coffee and maybe even a doughnut.  and in the afternoon, you will repeat the process, but in the opposite direction.  in doing so, you will hopefully make a new friend and possibly impact someone's life for the better.

- - - posted by scott

so I'm finally getting back up on my feet again.  i had a very hard crash at bunny hop this past weekend on the last lap.  i do not have the clearest memory of what actually happened.   i received several emails which all basically said the same thing: you're really, really, really lucky to have walked away from that crash.  it was a doozy.  i remember a rider in front, and slightly to the left of me, unclipping his right foot and doing two big wobbles with his handlebars.  and the next thing i know, i am maintaining a low earth orbit and thinking: "houston, we have a negative on that trajectory..."

I spotted the curb i hit on the way down and impacted it pretty hard.  since i figured my number was up anyway, i tried to be gracious by positioning myself between andrew hong and the tree so he would come through it all unscathed.  we do what we can to help others.  it is the union way. 

and speaking of help, i needed it.  that's the bad part.  the good part is that i got it, almost immediately, and in amounts which I still find gratifying.  lots of people tried to help and that was nice.  again, i don't have the clearest recollection of what was going on but i felt people trying to move me and trying to help.  my clearest recollection is of michael rp, lew strader an arch mckown trying to get me settled and encouraging me to get into the ambulance.  i was recalcitrant.  I stood up, but turned pale and thought i was going to vomit, so I went with what lew and arch were lobbying for.  below is a dramatic re-enactment of the scene:

oh, except that they insisted on putting me on a backboard with a neck collar and using huge webbing restraint straps which ran right over my road rash.  yeah, that's the ticket.  it felt as though they had taken me straight to the dirt road section at poolesville.  the ambulance was jumping around through potholes and all sorts of other stuff.  we arrive and they check me right in.  i won't belabor the experience.  i was unfortunate in that there were several large scale trauma cases and a helicopter trauma case flown in while i was there.  so service was at a premium.  honestly, that i was ready for.  the thing i was not ready for was the surreal problems that particular emergency room was having.  wacked out people wandering around the nurses station, being yelled at to go back to their rooms.  police officers patrolling the emergency room and what not.  tere was an absence of the healing vibe i was seeking. 

I was released late.  the doctor came in to have a pow wow with me.  the blood and urine work showed no signs of internal bleeding, but he was very concerned about the fact that I appeared clinically dehydrated and had exceedingly low blood sugar and that this might be complicating the blood work.  my wife tried to calmly explain that I had been racing, that i had been denied food and had been provided virtually no fluids until they knew my situation.  she continued to elaborate on that theme, stating that it if you really stopped to think about it, it wasn't at all surprising that i'd be in that sort of state.  she was just getting warmed up, but i had to sort of intervene at this point.  i just wanted to go home and i got what i wanted.

so it's all over now.  i'm healing up and i'll be back in a few weeks.  this event has been regrettable, but it happens.  i will mostly remember the kind words and thoughts people passed along.  you guys always show up to races and training rides with your game face on but you're a bunch of hallmark-card-writing softies.  i've still got all the emails to prove it. 

a few random notes:

• my knees: several people told me that they thought i had broken or shattered one or both tibia.  that's not the case.  I have bone spurs in both knees surrounded by all the normal hardware and software.  lucky me. 
• small world: josh was my ambulance/emt attendant.  turns out he worked at the bike doctor store as a mechanic for two years.  he's a mountain biker and seemed really interested in road cycling.  angel, my emergency room charge nurse, is some sort of spinning junkie and is looking to get out on bike trails with her three year old son.  she asked me about local trails and roads and we talked about waba and other clubs.  and while i rarely get tired of talking about the revolution, i was pretty tired of talking about cycling by midnight.  the point, however, is that we often see the world as us (very small group of competitive cyclists) and them (everybody else in the whole &$#@ world).  it's not like that and I'll have some posts up about bike to work day soon that i think will help back this up and hopefully present a more inclusive vision.
• and lastly, you people make me sick.  it was simply unbelievable the number of emails i got asking for pictures of the carnage.  it's like bike porn for you jackals.  even the ever cordial and mild-mannered luecke was circling like a vulture and asking for pics.  i was going to say no on principle, but i have no shame, so here you go.

this is pretty representative of my right side.  only the huge gouge out from under my knee's bone spur requires coverage.  the rest has dried out reasonably well and stopped weeping.  i used to pack these things with talc to try to force them to dry.  some people favor keeping them wet.  some people try to get them to dry out and up.  everyone has a different approach to dealing with this and their way works for them.  special thanks go out to joe baremore for an anecdote that cheered me up considerably on this front.

below is the real damage.  you can see the front where i hit the curb, but rest assured, it reaches around my back.  the rash itself is not impressive but the swelling is positively amazing.  my right hip flexor, with insertion point a full three inches below the impact site, has been numb since the accident from the pressure of the hematoma.  just this morning, it started to feel back to normal.  the swelling is still prominent.

- - - posted by scott

I'm sort of up and around.  I'll try to post something later today about this weekend.  in the meantime, consider this an open thread.  go to the comments.  introduce a topic.  discuss amongst yourselves.  

a few odds and ends, and a short post as time is somewhat limited.  those who regularly imbibe from the font of knowledge and wisdom that is the racing union blog are undoubtedly aware that greenbelt has begun.  an old tradition and a really fun race.  i was reminded by both promoter and officials of my earliest attendance at this race in a t-shirt and hair net helmet.  fun times.  the racing is always a challenge, and no matter what the signage implies, it's never a picnic

officials for week 1 were janet and stefan.  friendly as always.  thye kept things roughly on schedule and resist the tendency to read us the entire rule book on the start line before letting us go.  for that alone, all racers should take a moment to say thank you.

in spite of what was said here, the situation was not all that bad.  here we several happy cyclists in line. 

races rolled out, with union boots ont he ground, and all seemed happy.

also of interest is a brand-spanking new electronic registraiton system. 

having done some reporting on this in the past, i figured it would be worth a few moments of time to check in and see how this new thing works.  the users were singularly occupied with the system and did not have time to give me a full tour, but it has the basics: run from a laptop, scanning is done with a usb bar code scanner and a network hub links a printer to the laptop. 

scanning is quick.  unlike eric's system, it was not printing standard releases.  it probably could.  i am going to go out on a limb and make a guess about how this system is set up.  i suspect that the system is bound tightly to a database, and the datbase is built from previous years of greenbelt attendance, as opposed to be being built off of the usac registration database.  i think this probably has some advantages from the developer's point of view.  route 1 has one of the better web sites i have seen, and i'm not just talking about cycling web sites.  i suspect they have designed their system around an easy dump of the data and an easy update of the web site.  i have no information here, i am only speculating. 

the main point though is that we now have multiple promoters who have, on their own initiaitive, ginned up electronic reg systems with bar code scanning and reporting capacity.  i offer congratulations to both of them, and i think people should begin actively considering the merits and pitfalls of adopting some sort of system throughout the region.  there are arguments against it, and some of them are exceedingly well reasoned.  i have heard officials worry about additional materiel in the race kit (e.g. generators, laptops, printers, scanners), handling the materials under adverse weather conditions, and backup protocols under the worst case scenario.  i have seen the systems fail, and the inevitable reversion by the promoters back to traditional paper processing.  but as the systems were tested in the field, they seemed to do better.  my guess is the landscape will look much different at the end of the season than it did before the season began.

shifting gears slightly, the velo club of baltimore is holding the inaugural hampstead cycling classic.  this race is being hosted by a community that is behind the event.  we have already seen some high profile races evaporate this year.  the environment is not one of great expansion.  i am hopeful that people will turn out to support a new event on the calendar and a community that is embracing you.  don't just go to the race.  bring the family, buy some lunch, spend sometime, show some love.  if you're low on rubles, spend the $0.39 to send a letter to the mayor thanking him for allowing you to come and race.  the flyer for this race on their website has only been posted in a proprietary format.  while supporting the event, the union formally expresses it's displeasure with the digital hegemon that vcb has embraced to communciate it's critical event data.  we offer a translation of the data into a publicly accessible format courtesy of an anonymous contributor.  though not truly open source, this should be easier for those whose interests tend more towards open source:

hampstead_flier.pdf (494.34 KB)

critical note which should be obvious but won't be unless i say it explicitly: this is not meant in any way to supercede their information.  for definitive information on the hampstead event, we suggest you visit the vcb web page and the electronic registration page for the event.

- - - posted by scott

there's a common school of thought that people are not willing to share.

For those that aren't part of the Wattage-Geek community, most power-trained athletes would rather lend you their own mothers for a few nights then let you see their WKO files, particularly those from a race with sustained and max efforts.

the union acknowledges the uphill struggle that awaits it.  if people hoard data, how likely is it that they'll share anything more substantial with others.  the lessons of collectivism applies to all things.  in that spirit, i offer the following: 

sggreenbelt_5_3_2006.csv (79.02 KB)

for what it's worth, i got smoked in this race mostly because i did not ride it very intelligently.  there were one or two solid attacks in the first few laps.  i got caught out several times behind groups of cyclists who were racing passively and could not get around them to follow attacks; ended up spending a lot of gas trying to get across.  i might very well have done better by marking several specific cyclists but i don't find that sort of racing fun so i tend not to do it.  but that would have been better than what evolved: i ended up spending a lot of the race doing what i like least which is chasing.  the lead to the break was steady for a while 15sec, 20sec, 23 sec, and then doubled over a single lap and it was all over.  with about three to go, the people in the pack were just watching each other.  that was sort of ridiculous since the race pays nothing and the top five positions were all up the road. 

the chasing and bridging was hopefully good training for poolesville.  we'll find out shortly.

- - - posted by scott