Reverse Triathlon

A couple of days ago I put together a plan I called the Reverse Triathlon. I’ve been running triathlons for years, and a question I always get is what order the sports go in. The order, for those who don’t know, is always the same: swimming, followed by biking, followed by running. I’m often asked why that is, and the stock answer I’ve always given - which I read somewhere - is that organizers are worried about people drowning during the swim and so they want to make sure that folks do the swim while they are still fresh. But I decided to actually see how big of a deal that was by doing a little exercise. So I went out and biked, and then ran, and then swam. Admittedly, I didn’t quite do a full triathlon because of logistics. I biked about 16 miles, then ran about a mile and a half (I know, short, but I was short on time), then rode about 8 more miles, changed at home, got in my car and drove down to the lake where I swam about 800 yards.

And I can report that - at least at those distances - it really wasn’t a big deal.

Of course, I understand that for a full ironman, or a half, or even maybe an olympic, people might be extremely tired. I’m not saying swimming should come last. However, it would have two huge benefits: one, you wouldn’t have to do the rest of the race wet, and two - and more importantly - it might cut down on deaths. You see, the one thing that does actually get people killed occasionally during a triathlon is drowning from being kicked in the head. This comes about because of the group starts. With so many swimmers in a tight space, it’s more likely that someone will get kicked in the head, go unconcscious and drown. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Modern races try to deal with this by doing things like age groups and staggered starts, as well as beach starts. But if the swim happened, say, in the middle, that wouldnt’ be an issue because everyone would just start swimming when they showed up and it would naturally stagger folks.

Just a thought, at least for the sprint triathlons.

Fear is the Mind Killer

Today I had to go in to get some blood drawn. For those of you that don’t know, I have a pretty terrible phobia of needles. It rarely comes up, but usually it’s in a health context where I need to have blood drawn, maybe twice a year or so. Every time it happens, I have the same issues: sweaty palms, fear, anxiety. I am aware, intellectually, that this makes no sense. I know that every time I’ve had it done it went fine and was easy. And yet, I hyperventilate a little bit every time.

I find this fascinating because it goes against everything we’re taught in the American, protestant, scientific approach. Being aware of the reality of the situation has precisely zero effect on the part of my brain that wants to be anxious and fearful. Isn’t that fascinating?

I think the human mind is the most fascinating thing on the planet.

Anyway, the blood draw went fine. As always.

Oaktoberfest

Yesterday Nataly, myself and one of Nataly’s friends Meredith went to Oaktoberfest, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was a street festival in the Dimond district centered around beer. I saw Nataly drink more beer than I’ve ever seen her drink before (she’s not big on beer generally). The weather was perfect and it really reminded me of why I love Oakland; it was a great crowd. We ended up stopping to watch a street performance of some guys doing breakdancing and I got picked to be a volunteer and stand there while they jumped over us, so enjoy that video below. :) Anyway it was just a really pleasant day to be around.

Return to Monkey Island

Last night my brother and I got together to play some of a new game called Return to Monkey Island. It was a throwback evening in a lot of ways; hanging out with my brother, in my “gaming basement”, felt very 2015 or earlier. Not least of which because the game we were playing is a sequel to one of our favorite games from a long time ago, Secret of Monkey Island. I just looked it up, and that game came out in 1990, when I was 23. Crazy. Anyway it’s a throwback to the days of point and click adventures. While those were never my favorite genre, Monkey Island in particular has a soft spot in my heart for its hilarious aesthetic, slapstick comedy, and most importantly the “cartoon logic”.

For those not familiar, cartoon logic is the sort of thing that allows the Road Runner to paint a hole on a wall and then run through it. It uses puns, homophones, tricks of perspective and other techniques to convince you that something absurd is real. The added twist of doing this in a game is that you can make the player part of the experience by asking them to solve puzzles based on cartoon logic. So for example, at one point you have to make a mop, and all you have is a stuffed animal and a stick - et voila. It’s the sort of thing that you would do in Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid, and it makes me really nostalgic.

So this isn’t really a game review because we’re only about 10-15% done with the game, but I will say that it successfully reminded me of my youth and it’s well made.

Santa Cruz Triathlon

Yesterday I participated in the Santa Cruz triathlon. There were two options, sprint and olympic, and I did the olympic distance, which means that I swam 1500 meters, biked 40km and ran 10km. It’s not the longest triathlon I’ve ever done - I did a half ironman - but I haven’t done one in many years and so it was a great re-introduction to the sport. The weather was perfect for this sort of event - slightly overcast. I got up way too early because I was confused/concerned about the schedule, so I ended up standing around before the race but that was OK because I met some really nice folks, including a guy who had been to a wedding the night before.

The swim was interesting - the water was very choppy and the waves were high - the Santa Cruz boardwalk is known for having a community of surfers, so the waves are pretty intense and one of them took me and slammed me right into another person before the race even started. The bike and the ran were just simple out and backs along the coast and the up on Highway 1. It’s a great course, very flat, very beginner friendly. The only thing I wasn’t crazy about is that they broke us up into lots of different age brackets and started the sprint and olympic at different times and also ran the course a bit oddly with overlapping routes. The net effect was a bit of chaos especially near the transition and the two different finish lines (for the full tri and the aquabike). You had people coming and going every which way and - especially on the bike - I really had to pay attention to what was going on not to either go the wrong way or hit a runner (yes, the runners and cyclists were very close to each other).

I was very happy with my overall time - 2:59:41, so just under 3 hours. I had no time goals for the event, just to finish, but I think that’s a good time. I was expecting the bike to be my best event and the swim second and to really struggle with the run, but actually in the end, all 3 of my times were basically just average. I actually probably did best in the run with a time of 57 minutes, which is under a ten minute mile. Surprisingly I never really had to walk for any significant amount of time, which I definitely was expecting.

So all in all, a great event, a good result, and I’m ready for more!

Visual Concepts Launch Party

Yesterday was a big party for my company. I work for a company called Visual Concepts which is part of Take 2 Interactive, and we primarily make a game called NBA2K, which comes out every year. We released it recently and so yesterday was our launch party. I used to go to parties like this all the time, but it felt very odd to be back there after COVID and after all the changes in my industry. You don’t really see too many parties like this anymore, and even this one was relatively muted by th epast standards. It was in the middle of the day for one thing. But I had a good time; it was great to meet my entire team in person, since for most of them I’d only ever seen them on Zoom. It’s interesting to me how incredibly different people look over Zoom versus in person; it’s hard to put your finger on why, but some people are honestly barely recognizable.

Speaking of things that look nothing like you, I got a caricature made of myself, and I honestly don’t think it looks much like me, but you be the judge!

In one singular act of largesse reminiscent of the past, they gave away a Tesla Model 3. I didn’t win, sadly.

But yeah, it was great to see everybody and get dressed up.

The Zookeeper's Wife

Last night I watched a really interesting movie; as some of you may know, I don’t watch a lot of films, and when I do, I prefer documentaries, but this was based on a true story, so it checks out. It’s called The Zookeeper’s Wife, and it’s the story of the zookeepers at the Warsaw Zoo during the invasion of the Nazis, who are non-Jewish Poles that end up using their zoo as an underground sanctuary to help Jews escape the Warsaw ghetto. It would have been a powerful film regardless, but in the context of the current war it wasn’t hard to draw the parallels. The film actually, I believe, tried to pull its punches in terms of the depiction of war; it was fairly sanitized. But for all that, the atmosphere of claustrophobia and the culture of deceit came through strongly. One of the subplots involves the wife trying to fend off the advances of the German zookeeper that takes over their zoo, and you can feel her personal sense of despair as she is trapped between highly unpalatable options, just as the Jews in her basement are literally trapped. What comes through strongly is how desperate these people feel and the quantity of lying and deceit that otherwise honest and straightforward folk were forced into. At one point one of the characters explicitly calls this out, saying that they are part of a new world, and there are new ethics and morals. I thought of this in particular in the context of the liberation of some of the Ukrainian cities that happened recently, and the challenges of identifying collaborators. Of course some Ukrainians no doubt genuinely collaborated and took the Russian side, but I also imagine a huge gray area of those who just wanted to get on with their lives and felt compelled to do some unsavory things.

Of course, the only real takeaway from any of these movies is the terrible inhumanity of war. And when I say “inhumanity”, I literally mean that it causes people to act in a way that I see as un-human; the lying, the deceit, the misery. It is the most inhuman thing we do.

Keller Cove Swim For Kids - 1 Mile

Today I swam in the Keller Cove Swim for Kids, an organized Masters swim of 1 mile. It was awesome, I had a great time and I felt really fast. And I guess I was because I finished the mile in 35:06, which is by far the fastest I’ve ever swum a mile. Granted I was wearing a wetsuit, which helps a ton, but still; great result. Also I finished second in my age group, which sounds exciting until you hear that there were only 3 people in my age group (because only wetsuits were considered and most people didn’t wear one; I think for most folks the water was too warm). Nataly also got an award, for 3rd in her age group.

And then we ate snacks and hung out with dogs. So, yeah, a pretty awesome day all around.

On the Naming of Things

As I mentioned, I’ve been going down a rabbit hole with this lecture series by Timothy Snyder about Ukraine, and there was a new one last night that I’ve been listening to, part of which I found fascinating for reasons that have nothing to do with Ukraine. in his recent lecture he talks about the subject of what he calls Deep Geography, and he spends a lot of time on the naming of things. He talks, for example, about the linguistic change from “The Ukraine” to “Ukraine” and how it has to do with certain languages such as Polish which allowed the use of prepositions in referring to Ukraine that were the ones you used with uncertain or ambiguous locations. I think of a little like the difference between saying you are going to “Colorado” versus saying you are going to “the coast”.

Anyway, he also made reference to the fact that he was in Ukraine recently listening to their local news and noticed that the newscasters regularly referred to Russia as “Moscovia”. Now, “Moscovia” is a real thing (a fact which I did not know until recently). What exactly it refers to is, of course, dependent on who you ask, but essentially it refers to a region of what we now consider Russia which coalesced in the 9th century (maybe) and laid claim (maybe) to all of what we consider “Russia” around about the 14th century (again, maybe).

The point is, the use of this word Moscovia is very intentional by the Ukrainians, and it refers to at least two things: rejecting the automatic assumption that the borders of modern Russia should be what they are today, and rejecting the assimilation of the term Rus’ (which has historical connotations that include modern day Ukraine). This word is specifically chosen to reject claims Russia has to Ukraine and, furthermore, insinuate - at least gently - that Russia does not even have claim to, well, Russia.

More succinctly, this word is chosen to piss off Russia. Specifically, that aspect of Russia that believes in imperial Russia, or the “Russian World” idea. Of course, why they do this is self-evident. But what I find interesting is how well it works, both to boost Ukrainian morale and to irritate and enrage Russians. It really works. And what I find interesting about that - way beyond Ukraine - is what it says about who we are, as humans, and how much we enjoy clinging to our ideas and myths. Our personal stories are so important to us that few things will piss us off as much as having someone casually mention that they aren’t true. This is just as true for Imperialist Russians as it is for me, a suburban American. I would not enjoy, for example, having someone refer to America as “The Colonies”. I don’t particularly enjoy having someone point out that America is named for an idiot who got lost. People got pretty pissed when it was pointed out that we had a whole holiday named after an explorer who committed genocide and, uh, also got lost.

Point is, we like our sacred cows, and language is one of those core areas that can hide some of our deep-seated assumptions.

Fascinating Lecture Series on Ukraine - Timothy Snyder

Yesterday evening I ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole that I wanted to tell more folks about because I found it fascinating. I’m always so intrigued by people who actually know what they are talking about and can explain it well. I had run across Timothy Snyder before; recently there were pictures of him actually sitting down with both the President of Ukraine and the First Lady, so I knew he was a big deal. I didn’t realize he was actually a functioning, working professor at Yale. But not only is he that, he also decided to open up all his new class lectures to the world online; and his new class is all about Ukraine, and a historical context for the current war.

In a sense, nothing he says is particularly new, but the depth and clarity with which he explains the history of Ukraine - and, in doing so, the history of Europe, democracy and the existence of nation-states - makes everything such a joy to listen to. I’ll attach 3 videos that I particularly admire; the first two are the lectures from the class, which is ongoing; the third is a great interview he did for a UK news station. They are, admittedly, long, but they are worth every second if you truly want to understand why Putin and Russia did this, why the Ukrainians are fighting back, why they are doing it successfully, and what that means for the rest of us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LaEmaMAkpM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qdvjslwvIU

An extra special mention goes out to that third video because, despite being on a mainstream news channel, the interview is well-composed, the interviewer asks actually intelligent questions, and overall the quality of discourse is so high compared to what we’re used to.

WTRL Racing - Climber's Gambit, My First Race, 70/79

Today I participated in the first official race in the WTRL racing league as part of a team that I joined, Lightning Velo. WTRL stands for World Tactical Racing League and they help Zwift run online cycling races. It’s an official organization now that runs most of the racing on Zwift. So essentially we’re talking about me riding my bike indoors.

My team had some organizational issues - I won’t hold it against them, they’re all volunteers after all - but I didn’t really know that I was racing until about 10 minutes before the race started, and I had no idea what the race was actually going to be. Because I didn’t know I was riding, yesterday I jogged/walked 14+ miles, and so I was destroyed just to begin with. And then it turned out that the race was 28 kilometers and 670 meters of climbing. So I was in trouble right from the get go! But I decided to do it anyway. Better to have loved and lost, etc.

Adding to my anxiety was that I was hanging out with somebody today who was telling me about. their adventures with muscle rhabdomyolysis a few weeks back and ended up spending a couple of days in the ER, just because of over-exercise. So that activated the hypochondriac part of my brain for sure. :)

There’s an interesting aspect to Zwift races which is that they start out with this balls-to-the-wall pell-mell super intense effort right out of the gate, and if you get dropped from that, you’re basically stuck. And I got dropped from that. :). But other than that, I had a good race. (So other than having a bad race, I had a good race :). I came in 71st out of 79. :0. Anyway, exercise is always good for me, and now I will sleep well.

As an editorial note, I recently started listening to a particular meditation from my app, Ten Percent Happier, that is all about removing writer’s block by just practicing the art of writing without judging or self-editing. So that’s what I’m going to start doing, trying to blog every day for 15-20 minutes or until I run out of things to say. I won’t say too much about that here because I think I’m going to make it its own blog topic.

Alactraz Invitational - San Francisco Bay

Today I competed in the Alactraz Invitational, run by the South End Rowing Club. It was a roughly 1.27 mile swimming event where a ferry took us out to Alcatraz and we - after a fashion - emulated what it would be like to escape from the prison. I really want to thank Nataly for inviting me to do this event - it’s something that I have considered for many years but for some reason just never had the nerve to do it. It wasn’t so much the physicality that I was dreading. I’ve done, for example, a half ironman, which uses a very similar length swim but then follows it up with a 56 mile bike ride and a half marathon. So in a purely physical sense this was pretty straightforward. I was just concerned by the logistics of it; the wetsuit, the waves, the ferry, the expense of the thing. It helped a lot to have a “tour guide”. I enjoyed Nataly’s company as well as that of her swimming friends. One of them, Paul, even turned out to be a swimming celebrity and he finished in second place! Pretty incredible. I finished in 59 minutes and 23 seconds, which was interesting to me because it was almost exactly the same time that I ended up with for the 10k that I did two weeks ago. I definitely wasn’t going all out; I wanted to enjoy the event and make sure I finished, both of which were accomplished. Maybe next time I will go a bit harder, but honestly maybe not.

Other than sunburning my neck, there were no casualties; I don’t even feel that tired! That’s the great thing about swimming; it’s easy on the body. Lots of hot swimmers of both genders out there today, as well! If swimming these kinds of events gets me a body like theirs, I’m all for it. There’s another event coming up in two weeks at Keller Beach and I may sign up for that as well.

On a physical level, I definitely need to improve my stroke; I could tell I was inefficient. I need to master alternate side breathing and make sure I swim always with earplugs (which helps with that). Some of that is mental, some of it’s physical. But it’ll be a fun journey!

Ragbrai Day 8 - Lansing, IA

And so we come to the end of RAGBRAI! As I sit in the LaCrosse airport with my $5 coffee cake and reminisce on the terrible hotel that I stayed in last night, it seems appropriate to summarize my Iowa cycling adventure. But first, the details of yesterday.

Oftentimes, my anxiety doesn’t serve me, but once in a while, it’s very useful, and yesterday was one of those days. I was really worried about getting there on time and catching the Pork Belly Ventures shuttle from Lansing to La Crosse, and I woke up very early and got on the road by 6:04 AM and hammered the 65 miles to Lansing. I had done the math and was counting on the logistics in Lansing to be a nightmare; I had to get in, pick up my stuff from the trailer, load it all onto the bike, ride to the shuttle pickup point, find a box, box the bike, then get on the bus. And despite hammering hard, I just barely made it. But I made it! I rode next to a nice guy named John from Jersey who was doing the same thing. We were both ready to go home. The terrain in Iowa finally shifted for the last 30 miles or so, becoming hilly and more like the areas of the East that I’m used to riding through - which was fun, but also slowed us down.

Amazing fried pie at mile 51, though.

So, to summarize my RAGBRAI experience: fun, hot, people, corn, pie. A few observations, in no particular order:

• Cycling doesn’t make you skinny. There were a lot of slightly to very overweight middle aged men riding, so much so that there were teams making fun of it, like Guys Who Get Fat In Winter, etc. It’s a reminder that just doing some cardio won’t improve my physique.

• People are oddly blase about the physical accomplishment. In other events, a big part of the focus is the self pride in accomplishment, with folks cheering by the sidelines, lots of messaging about “you can do it”, etc. But not RAGBRAI. It’s just kind of assumed that you’ll ride 470 miles; it’s just your ticket to the party.

• Not all pies are made equal. I probably had 10-12 pieces in 7 days; some sublime, some merely ok, a couple actually pretty bad. And you can’t really tell by looking.

• The “Windows Desktop” experience is real. I may never have seen bluer skies, greener fields, and whiter clouds. It looked like a postcard. Pretty cool.

• You have to travel with folks that you are compatible travelling with. When you’re counting on people to carry your stuff and handle your logistics, you have to make sure that you’re compatible with their preferences and desires. There’s lots of ways of doing an event like this, and they’re all “correct”, but some will annoy the crap out of you.

• I don’t love camping in a tent. I knew this already, but BTUSFMS only makes you camp for a day or 2 at a time before you get a roof over your head. This was 7 straight nights of camping, and it was too much for me.

• If you get up and get rolling at 6, and are at mile 40 at 8:30, RAGBRAI feels very different. It really opens up and the lack of people means there are no lines. In some ways I preferred it, in other ways it was kind of dull.

• Not all church dinners are made equal. CF: pie, above.

• Always use the small vendors. Ignore the big shiny ones that you see everyday and buy your sirloin sandwich from the local fire department. You’ll be glad you did.

• It’s not as wacky as I thought it would be. I’d heard it was sort of a Burning Man on wheels, but it’s not. There were a few wacky moments and a couple of costumes; a slip and slide, a guy in a Bugs Bunny costume in Lawler; but by and large, it was just folks biking and eating and listening to music.

• I love my bike. I just love it. It’s reliable, predictable, comfortable, works in every setting, even got me through the full 48 mile gravel day. I love it.

• I have more fun when I feel safe. When I have to worry about logistics and arrangements, it really detracts from my personal ability to relax and have fun. All week I was a bit on edge. I think next time I would get professionals to help out, like the Pork Belly folks. That seems like a huge win for people with anxiety like me.

• It’s too bad that people of working age in this country have to work so hard. There certainly were people my age, but a lot of folks were retired or young. We work too hard in this country.

• There were so, so few mechanical problems. It really makes me wonder if there’s anything we can learn for BTUSFMS. I saw almost no people on the side of the road with flats or other issues. I put most of that down to the road quality, and the fact that we could ride in the road instead of on the shoulder.

And so, another adventure completes! I’ll remember the sunrises, and the flat open roads, and the slip and slide, and hanging out with Teri, and riding the gravel with Reid and Cheng. Good times, and I’m glad I came.

Ragbrai Day 7 - West union, iA

Time ticks along and we come dangerously close to the end of my little vacation in Iowa. There’s been some good, some bad, but overall it’s been a pleasant experience, though not one I’m likely to rush back to. It’s just a bit too hot and too busy. But the pie has been as advertised and i do love seeing the countryside as always. I’ll remember the stops for a daiquiri at the libertarian candidate for governor, and the different kinds of rhubarb pie, and all the kind folks selling or giving away water. The slip and slide, the friendly grocery stores, the beautiful sunsets and sunrises, and the endless straight and gently rolling road filled to the brim with cyclists of every shape and color. Oh, and the corn. Lots of corn. Today was 65 miles that flew by. Teri wanted to start early and ride fast so we could beat the lines to Beekman’s homemade ice cream; we kept seeing them out with their home-spun (forgive the pun) gas powered machines for churning the ice cream. You always knew they were there because of the occasional sound of gasoline exploding in the piston chamber. Anyway, the plan worked flawlessly, and we got ice cream, chocolate. I can report that it tastes a lot like a vastly superior Wendy’s Frosty.

There are many other stories; about the man who borrowed a book from the public library just for the night to read in his tent and offered to leave a cash deposit. About the fried chicken line that closed at 8 at the grocery store. About the music at the lake that kept us awake until 11. It’s been an interesting trip.

Tomorrow will be a bit of a mess, a real travel day. I’m taking a pork belly shuttle from Lansing to La Crosse and it leaves at 1pm so I have to really hustle to get in and get my stuff from the sag wagon and say goodbye. Until then, it’s time for one more church dinner.

ragbrai day 6 - CharleS City, IA

Today was reasonably uneventful (with one exception which i’lol get to later) so it might be time to just blog about Iowa. It’s always interesting to me when stereotypes turn out to be accurate and I have to say that Iowa is exactly what i imagined it would be. First the 900 pound elephant in the room; everyone is white. Everyone. Ans that dies make for an interesting 1950s dynamic where there is no ethnic tension because there is no ethnic. there also definitely is something to this idea of Iowa Nice and i found myself wondering, and i know this is cynical, if the two were related; that not having ethnic differences around makes it easier for people to be nicer. Never have i had more teenagers in a grocery store ask me if they could help me find anything. Today i was in a grocery store and when i came out there was a motorcycle in front just idling; the owner had gone inside. That would not work in Oakland, let’s say. It’s also just full of corn and fields. And its pleasant; it’s not poor, it actually seems pretty affluent. The public library stayed open until 8 and was well staffed with little old white ladies and very nice computers. But the internet didn’t work and they didn’t know why; they seemed confused on the whole nature of the internet.

So yeah, it’s nice here. Almost too nice. Pleasant.

On another note, because i always tell it like it is for posterity, i have to say that I’m really ready to go home. This morning one of the older women on my ‘team” completely lost her shit directly at me and started yelling at me this morning and I just really wanted in that moment to go home. I felt bad for her that she was so angry and sad but I did not want to deal with her insanity on my vacation. I need some vacations that are really vacations, with desert islands and beaches and no crazy old ladies yelling at me, and i can shave whenever i want to.

Ragbrai day 5 - mason City, Ia

It’s funny how riding 100 miles has become almost routine. This day was the memorial Century Day, named in honor of one of the founders of RAGBRAI who loved to ride 100 miles. Most years it’s optional but this year it was only optional in the sense of skipping it, which I of course did not. One of the other riders, Reid, had never done anywhere near that distance before and she was excited but also nervous. And she killed it! But, Because of that, we didn’t do much stopping or anything, we just busted down a flat road with a tailwind, and we got in super fast. The night time entertainment was the potluck dinner we invested in at the Lutheran church, which was the best pork chop I’ve ever had. I’m not even a big fan of pork chops. Then the pastor saw my Rice cap and came over to talk to us because he had just had his oldest son get into Rice and was going to attend. So Cheng and I got to reminiscence. All in all it was a very pleasant, if long, day.

Ragbrai day 4 - Emmettsburg, IA

Day 4 was the official Gravel Day and despite riding on Ross with his 28 inch slicks, I decided to give it a go and made it the whole way. My BTUSFMS experience taught me what I needed to know and gave me the confidence to pull it off. I rode with Reid and Cheng the whole way and we had a great time. One joyous thing was that the gravel route want very popular so we had the place to ourselves, relatively speaking, and we got to talk and ride side by side. I also feel like I got to see much more of the “real Iowa”, which included peeing in some corn. I got a patch and everything! We also stopped at the Grotto in West Bend. My phone hasn’t been working at all which gives me a throwback feeling to the early days of riding. Tomorrow is a challenge; 103.5 miles. For tonight, it’s a pizza buffet and an early night.

Ragbrai Day 3 - Pocahontas, IA

The absolute best thing about RAGBRAI so far was the slip and slide about 35 miles into the 73 miles yesterday. Off to the left, I probably would have stopped but Cheng made sure we stopped and I’m glad we did. 50 feet of downhill on my belly, 3 times into a puddle. Best thing ever. The riding was relatively dull but fine; the weather cooperates and was mild and threatened to rain all day but never did.

Ragbrai day 2 - Ida Grove, ia

53 miles today to the bustling metropolis of Ida Grove, home of a couple of very odd castle type commercial structures. One of which seems to house a very midwestern fancy skating rink. Today was good; I was exhausted but rode with Teri who got me through it and then treated me later to some compression treatment for my legs (seriously it’s a big balloon you stick your legs in and it costs $1200 and it rocks). I drank a couple of beers and ate some Doritos and Oreos and generally enjoyed myself. The ride was hilly but acceptable, with lots of cyclists the whole way. We repped our BTUSFMS jerseys and got a lot of questions which we happily answered. Sunny, hot, but a good ride.

RAGBRAI - Day 1 - Sargeant bluff, ia

Well, its time for another adventure! As some of you know, I.decided this summer, given the opportunity, to tackle RAGBRAI, the annual 7 day bike ride through Iowa. I’d never done this ride because i a m usually busy doing BTUSFMS stuff, and also because I wanted to go with a team and hadn’t been invited yet. But this is the year!

I try to keep it real on this blog, because it’s partly for me to remember experiences in the future, so I won’t sugarcoat things; today was tough. I left yesterday at about 2:30 Oakland time, and I just now at midnight on the following day am here complete with my bicycle. This is twice in a row that airlines have failed to deliver my bicycle and I’m done with them. It’s a nightmare because they never tell you anything. But I’m here, and I’m safe, and I”m going to try to turn things around. Iowa is incredibly hot, but everyone we meet has been very nice. The grocery store had a ton of high school kids working there and all of them were almost creepily nice. I got to catch up with my old friend Cheng, and got to eat at Culver’s so it wasn’t all bad. And Teri from my last ride is here so I’m looking forward to chatting with her. This whole environment is so different from BTUSFMS; there are tens of thousands of riders and the atmosphere is much more celebratory and remains me of a big music festival, but with bikes. I’m very tired but going to try to rally.