Monthly Archives: June 2010

For better or worse, my friends and I spend a significant amount of time in a bar — the perfect bar, to be exact. This bar has an ample beer selection, a friendly staff, good food, and a relaxed atmosphere (read: few Mission hipsters or Marina douchebags). This bar is roughly half of the reason I’m not better at bike racing, but it’s also about 90% of the reason I’m still doing it; much like a vampire, it seems that The Crow cannot cross the threshold uninvited.

Anyway, though we’ve been distinguished patrons of this establishment for over a year, I only recently noticed this meaningful scrollwork on the wall:

That says, “We are all in the gutter, but some are looking at the stars,” and it is a perfect description of bike racing –  more specifically, local bike racing in Snelling or Dunnigan Hills — and it inadvertantly casts the pain and suffering associated with our sport in a positive light. Perhaps I’m overly philosophical about this kind of thing, but when I’m spun out in my 11t, lined out against the right-hand gutter dodging feces-filled puddles and potholes on a cool February afternoon, I often remind myself that we’re all suffering in the gutter, and I must look beyond the pain in order to become successful.

Speaking of suffering, there’s  a game that my friends and I play at this bar; until today, it had no name, but I referred to it as “The Fire Game” this afternoon and it seemed fitting. What is “The Fire Game,” you ask? I’d wager that you’ve played yourself, assuming you’re not a huge pansy and that you are predisposed to play with fire when unsupervised by a responsible adult. [Note: If you are a pansy, and are not a pyromaniac, we're probably not going to be friends; in fact, just stop reading my blog, you're sucking the manliness away.]

Let me continue. There are candle holders on every table of The Perfect Bar, and they have a conveniently palm-sized opening at the top.

By placing one’s hand directly over this opening tightly enough to seal the inner void, one can asphyxiate the flame — in theory. However, not unlike an Irish Car Bomb, this game has a time limit that is directly related to the player’s awesomeness (or drunkenness, which are tightly correlated inside The Perfect Bar) because it’s very difficult to extinguish the flame without burning one’s hand. As far as I know, four of us have bested The Fire Game and gained notoriety at our table for the evening. Given that my group of bar friends consists of scientists, engineers, and generally dorky individuals, we each have our own “strategy” by which we abide. Some swear by the “hold a wet, cold glass of water before playing” method, some wander the bar selecting candles of a specific height, and yet others athletically contort their palms in order to maximize the flame – skin distance. Never in the history of The Fire Game has a fatality or injury occurred.

That is, there were no injuries until Elis showed up and boldly proclaimed that a candle with the smallest internal void volume would asphyxiate the fastest. I will also mention that Elis is f*&king stubborn and would have out-Napoleoned Napoleon and I simultaneously if history had allowed it.

Now, I’m gonna go ahead and danconnelly y’all for a moment by graphing flame depth z versus time t for two different scenarios: hand incineration and flame asphyxiation.

As you can see, Elis was correct about the linear z dependence of candle extinction (ignoring the curvature of the holder profile), but the z^2 hand incineration dependence was omitted from her calculations. Unfortunately, she selected a candle with a left-lying value of z, where t(burn hand) < t(extinguish). Though Elis put the candle out with a rather disturbing lack of facial expression, she paid a hefty price for her valor.

Don’t worry, if that bad boy becomes gangrenous and requires amputation, I’ll update the blogopshere. I wish Elis a speedy recovery from her injury, and an even more speedy recovery from her need to prove to a bunch of dudes that she’s more hardcore. We already know she is…and I pity the poor W/1/2/3 racers who have to beat a girl who can burn a hole in her flesh without flinching.

That’s all I’ve got to talk about at the moment — sad, I know –  so I’ll wrap this post up.  I mentioned The Crow earlier; if that means nothing to you, I recommend you read my explanatory post.

Well, as it turns out, The Crow has moved into the digital age. Not only has he been commenting on my blog periodically, but he also created a Facebook page for himself.

If you care about bike racing, your job, or other people, it is inevitable that The Crow will find you; when he does, you should friend The Crow and write on his wall. He appreciates it.

As most of you know, Steve Reaney won the Elite National Criterium Championship on Friday. Being a primarily selfish jerk, I’m rarely happy to see someone else win a race, yet I found myself overwhelmed with excitement when I heard of Steve’s success. Earlier in the season, Steve said to me, “I’ve changed the way I look at cycling this year. I’ve scaled back my goals to a more realistic level; for example, I’m no longer stressing out about trying to win a National title.” It seems that he was lying, or that his subconscious was less content to be “realistic.” Either way, congratulations to Steve and his team for yet another fantastic result on top of Talansky’s u23 TT victory and Moore’s Elite RR bronze!

I’m not sure if it’s the confidence that comes with wearing a ridiculous berry-infused American flag on your chest or if Velonews is really good at Photoshop, but Steve doesn’t look anything like a disgruntled naked mole rat in that photograph. I was slightly disappointed that he didn’t live up to his namesake on such a momentous occasion, so I took the liberty of retouching the picture a bit.

That’s more like it.

Speaking of Cal Giant — and believe me, I never thought I would say this — I miss the good old days when that team deigned to dominate our district’s races. Even though Cal Giant was a frustratingly powerful team for many years, the team’s riders controlled races in a classy and professional manner; I find such behavior much less common now that Cal Giant has taken to racing extradistrictally.

This brings me tangentially to my next topic, which I’d like to refer to as “The Allegory of the Pain Cave.” This is a completely novel and non-derivative philosophical story about yesterday’s Burlingame Criterium.

Imagine that there are two riders — for the sake of the story, let’s call them Rand Miller and Scott Zwizanski (Kelly Benefits) — who have been held captive deep within the Pain Cave for their whole lives (or at least since the halfway point of the Burlingame Crit). These hapless souls know nothing besides the suffering, the darkness, and the restricted vision engendered by the lack of oxygen available in the Pain Cave; they are therefore incapable of clearly seeing the world around them. Rand and Scott can vaguely make out the blurry shapes of other riders in the distance behind them but, having eschewed the Real World of Packfodder for so long, these Pain Cave-dwellers cannot comprehend what they see. Only after these two riders are forcefully extracted from the Pain Cave does the reality set in: those blurry figures in the distance were not just ethereal shapes, but instead were riders with dubious finishing speed intent on ruining the existence of the Pain Cave-dwellers. Once removed from the Pain Cave, Rand and Scott become acutely aware that their existence to this point has been a mere reflection of the harsh truth: riders in the Real World of Packfodder are ignoble and are willing to chase breakaways even if they or their teammates have no apparent desire to contest the finish. Naturally, a return to the blissful world of the Pain Cave is impossible for these enlightened individuals, and they are destined to be poor, miserable outcasts for eternity (or at least until the end of the race).

Uh.

What the hell was that? I don’t know; here’s one interpretation, though great literature often has many.

Halfway into the Burlingame Criterium, I found myself in a two-man breakaway with Scott Zwizanski (Kelly Benefits), a rider that I presume needs no introduction. When Zwizanski goes, you can be assured that he intends to stay away for the remainder of the event, so I was in a good position.

Photo courtesy of Jessica Layman

I’m guessing that Scott has no idea who I am, but he is a rider I have come to fear and revere over the years; I have been dropped from breakaways by Scott several times, but I was determined to stay with him this time.

Now, I was rummaging through the Suitcase of Courage for the the first two laps of our break and was therefore not much use to my breakmate; however, after we settled into a rhythm I was able to make significant contributions to our forward motion.

Photo courtesy of Jessica Layman

Our gap hovered at twenty seconds for most of the race, then fell to ten seconds as we hit five laps to go. At this point, Scott was like “F this S” and pulled the plug, leaving me alone with the wind and a vanishingly small gap over the field. Figuring I’d attention-whore myself to the crowd for a bit longer, I kept pedaling like an idiot. I was caught with three laps to go.

Why were we caught? Is it because we’re slow? Yeah, it’s probably that.

It also may have had something to do with guys like this chasing with all their might. As you can see, the Disgruntled Naked Mole Rat is unenthused, as he tends to be when people race without thinking clearly. Even Socrites looks down upon the chasers and shakes his head derisively.

Photographs adapted from Jessica Layman’s collection

Take note of the fact that not one team seen vigorously chasing in the images above found it’s way into the top five at the finish, which begs the question: what was the point of all that?

Perhaps they were all working for Yahoo?, McGuire or that random, crazy-fast Midwestern guy, in which case their actions make total sense. Otherwise, can you guys please try and make it into the breakaway next time so you don’t feel obligated to pointlessly chase everything down? (Note: if this sounds familiar, it’s because the great Paul Mach wrongly accused me of chasing all of his uphill attacks last week. If he can complain, I can complain.)

Having said that, I’m a reasonable guy with an open mind. If I’ve totally misunderstood your team’s grand strategy, I’d love to hear from you so that I might better understand bike racing at the P/1/2 level. Enlighten me.

I suppose I should be done complaining; after all, things aren’t so bad. My team did manage to pull off a 1 – 2 – 3 finish this weekend in Santa Rosa, which I’ll discuss tomorrow. For now, I’m going to cut-and-paste some more ugly animal heads onto peoples’ podium photos, since that’s considerably less strange than anything else I can think of to occupy my time.

Before the fun-making commences, I’d like to genuinely congratulate a couple of friends on amazing rides at today’s Elite Road Nationals ITT. I spent the entire day checking Twitters like a confused American President, calculating approximate finishing times based on the published start list and texting people the instant I thought they might be done, and stalking Facebook like a…um…creepy graduate student. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for the rockstars:

Maura Kinsella (Webcor), 3rd in the U23 Women
Phil Mooney (Webcrawler Cycling), 4th in the Elite Men
Ryan Parnes (AltaVista), 8th in the Elite Men

Parnes was beaten by Jesse Moore (Cal Giant), but I refuse to call Jesse a friend because I find his ridiculous ability to climb and time trial insulting to my way of life.

I’ll continue stalking the internets over the next few days of Nationals racing, so if you get an eerily well-timed text message from me, it only means I care about you. Not that I’m watching you from afar.

As I may have mentioned previously, I traveled to the Tour de Nez with photographer extraordinaire Ronnie Lenzi, which means several things: 1. I was allowed to play with camera equipment worth more than Max Jenkins’ professional contract (OK, that was a terrible example, since it probably doesn’t exclude those disposable Kodak cameras you can buy in line at the grocery store), and 2. I was given access to pre-production proofs of her photographs, most of which never make it past her meticulous quality control department.

Incidentally, the stuff that Ronnie doesn’t post on her site makes for excellent blogging, and the long-lensed camera that she lent me revealed that I have a voyeuristic streak. I invite you to join me at the intersection of the two.

Here we have some footage of Steve Reaney and his harem of largely underaged young men. You have to wonder about a guy who surrounds himself with a bunch of better-looking, younger guys and dresses them up in matching outfits.

I managed to snap a few candid photographs (the facial expressions are priceless) before the shutter noise aroused suspicion, at which point I was brutally attacked by the Naked Mole Rat (his identity revealed at last!).

Typically, Reaney’s eunuchs conduct themselves stylishly. However, the newest addition to Reaney’s entourage has a lot of learning to do. John Bennett, who I’ve mentioned previously, was spotted wearing his kit more than three hours prior to the start of the P/1/2 race at Northstar and remained in his fruity, sweaty chamois through the entire dinner/after-party. I estimate a total festering time of about seven hours, and the race was only 90 minutes long.

If he doesn’t succumb to a heinous bacterial disaster, I bet John will be beaten for his fashion gaffe.

Earlier in the weekend, I found this house in Sparks, NV. I thought nothing of the whole getup until I saw the internally-lit, pinwheel wielding, inflatable Uncle Sam. He wants you.

If I was a terrorist, I’d decorate my house just like that. No one would ever guess.

Finally, here’s the scene at the most recent Alto Velo Club BBQ, held on Monday.

That’s a lot of beer, more Clean Bottles than you can shake a stick at, and one very confused Frenchman. The DARE shirt is there for irony.

That reminds me…for reasons that are not particularly relevant to this post, I recently found myself with an urgent need to conceal adult beverages. I saw this as an opportunity to test the limits of the Clean Bottle’s cleanliness. In two independent experiments, I clearly demonstrated that neither vodka nor beer could withstand the Bottle’s double-ended design.

Clean Bottle gets my stamp of approval, for whatever that’s worth. I doubt that the company will approve of such off-label use.

The Tour de Nez/Nevada City combo provided me with more blogfodder than I could have possibly dreamed, but an impending research presentation is severely limiting my ability to write everything down. I’ll try to do some more shit talking later in the week, but for now, I just want to throw out a few highlights from the weekend.

Highlight #1: Let’s Not Be Ridiculous

The number one highlight of the weekend is so highly ranked only because it’s personally gratifying in all of it’s absurdity. Following Saturday’s Northstar Circuit race, in which I managed not to get dropped by the skeleton people, I made a feeble attempt at casual banter with Bissell Professional Paul Mach. Rather than smiling and offering an autograph like I expected, Paul just sneered and said, “I saw you chasing down all my moves out there.” He even went so far as to blog about it, though he fails to mention me by name. Again during the neutral lap at yesterday’s Nevada City Classic, Paul looked at me and chided, “Just don’t chase down all my attacks this time.”

Um. I’m flattered, really…but let’s be rational about these allegations.

This is a rough approximation of the course profile for the Northstar Circuit Race (and it works as a pretty good surrogate for the Nevada City course, as well).

This is Paul Mach in his natural habitat (he’s on the left, in case you aren’t familiar with his 2010 ToC facial hair or the colors of the ToC KOM jersey):

It is truly laughable to think that I could chase down Mr. Mach once on a hilly course, much less do so repeatedly. The most likely explanation is that he saw me getting gapped off as he was attacking, and mistook it for a chase; regardless, he’s got the wrong guy.

It’s also possible that he’s still bitter about this, three years later:

You know what? Forget about all of my “I’m not a climber,” self-deprecating comments; if you subscribe to the Transitive Property of Cycling Talent (which you should, ’cause it’s true), then the podium photograph above indicates that I’m talented enough to race off the front of the Tour of California, but not quite good enough to place 11th at USPro Nationals. Are there any Pro teams out there looking for a mid-season addition? (No, Adam Carr, I won’t join Adageo; I mean real Pro teams.)

Highlight #2: Megan Guarnier in General

In particular, it was awesome to watch Guarnier — who I would not have labeled “a climber” until recently — going blow for blow with mountain bike phenom Katerina Nash on the hilly Nevada City Course.

(From Dale Tapley’s Flickr Page)

Nash may have crossed the line first, but Guarnier was riding an 80mm deep rear wheel during the race, so she actually won the event by virtue of style points.

Highlight #3: What Are They Feeding Those Juniors Nowadays?

I love heckling at bike races, but I only feel comfortable heckling Juniors and women (because they’re less likely to kick my ass than, say, grouchy Masters racers). On Sunday, I parked myself near the top of the Nevada City climb during the Juniors race and readied myself for some heckling of the rapidly-reproducing Specialized Junior team. It takes me a while to get my heckling voice warmed up, and before I managed to scream more than five demeaning comments at kids nearly half my age, David Benkoski (Specialized) rolled off the course and dropped his bike right in front of me.

I couldn’t believe my luck: my favorite sixteen-year-old punching bag had just dropped out of the race before my very eyes! It was a gift from the heckling gods! However, David must have sensed my intentions, because he pointed immediately at his crank arm.

Yeah, that’s right, he broke his crank arm on the Nevada City climb, a feat deserving of praise, not heckling. In fact, the breaking of a crank arm during a race is far better than winning. David had better post the power data on the internet somewhere, because I’d love to see the spike that caused such massive equipment failure. On the bright side, this failure is physical proof that not every Specialized rider has a motor in his bottom bracket, but it does raise the question: what is Larry Nolan feeding these kids?

If I may be serious for one moment, I’d like to say that the Specialized team rode a great race. David was sitting pretty in the lead group with two of his teamates prior to his crank arm fiasco, and Eamon Lucas soloed to victory in grand style.

Highlight #4: This Kind of Thing Happened.

The technical prologue made all kinds of weird things happen…like sprinters wearing aero helmets and riding in an aero tuck. Exhibit A: Randy Bramblett, shown above, looking like a grumpy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

Highlight #5: This Also Happened.

Yahoo? has the best team colors ever, highlighted here by this rider’s team-issue plaid shorts (and ballerina pose).

Can you guess who the rider is? I’ll give you a hint: he’s a lot like Max Jenkins, but hasn’t made a fan page for himself on Facebook. Yet.

OK. That’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll get around to more blogging later, so check back. If you don’t hear from me in a few days, you should assume that all this smack talk has gotten me killed..

I’ve been phenomenally lucky with host housing.

At the Mount Hood Stage Race a few years ago, my team was housed in a recently renovated, completely vacant home with sweeping views of the Columbia River Gorge and the town of Hood River (incidentally, the house was some kind of “swinger pad,” so the see-through frosted glass wall in the hallway provided sweeping views of the bathroom shower).

Last year at the Tour de Nez, my Webcor teammates and I were fortunate enough to be housed with Scott, a former T-Mobile physical therapist and generally awesome dude who owns a beautiful house outside Truckee. Scott was a fantastic host, with endless stories about his life on the road with T-Mobile and a surfer-like laid back attitude. I have a good story about Scott and his house that I’d like to share with you because I think it paints a perfect picture of our host.

I was lying on the floor in the living room, looking up at the massive wooden beam supporting the roof, and I noticed that it appeared to be coming loose from the bolts affixing it to another support beam. “Hey…uh…Scott. It looks like your house is falling down,” I said, pointing to the roof. “Huh, that’s weird, I’ve never noticed that,” Scott replied nonchalantly, “but look…I’ve hosted some epic dance parties here. Trust me, the house is structurally sound!”

He was totally serious, and ever since that day, I’ve used the Dance Party Quotient (DPQ) as my metric of structural stability.

This year, my host housing luck continues.

That’s the view out of the front of the house — nay, mansion — that I’m calling my home for the next few days. This place is spectacular. It may be the most perfect specimen of a house I’ve ever seen; every tile, wood panel and leather-covered barstool is perfectly matched. It’s a shame we can’t explicitly test the structural stability, but I bet the DPQ is above average.

On to bike racing.

As I mentioned previously, the Tour de Nez is renowned for technical courses bordering on insanity; this year, they outdid themselves. The prologue course I posted last time turned out to be more dangerous than a newly-upgraded Cat 2 in the Merco Criterium. The corners were narrower than Max Jenkins’ calves and slicker than a freshly chamois-creamed taint. Couple the technical aspects of the course with the bustling Sparks nightlife, and you have a good, old-fashioned cluster*&^%.

This corner in particular claimed many thousands of dollars of time trial equipment.

As I was warming up, I was “fortunate” enough to watch several riders enter that corner at about 42 miles per hour, lock up their front brake, and tackle the curb on the outside of the turn; proper entry speed was more like 25 miles per hour. I came to the conclusion that the race would be won by judicious cornering and ballistic application of power on the straightaways rather than risk-taking. In addition, I was fortunate enough to talk with Megan Guarnier, the women’s prologue winner, just before I started my race.

“Dude, it’s all about sprinting out of every corner. You won’t even start to hurt until you’re halfway through, so take advantage of that. When you hit the second to last straightaway, you have to be sprinting in your 11-tooth all the way to the line. Don’t hesitate. Just go!”

I copied Megan’s tactic exactly, going painfully slowly through the corners and painfully fast down the straightaways. In the end, it was good enough for sixth place, right behind Ryan Parnes. Sterling Magnell, the first rider off the line and the fastest rider for most of the event, ended up taking third place with some spectacular cornering. He put on a clinic called “How to Scare the Shit Out of Every Bystander,” including me. Sterling only lost the lead in the closing minutes, as Jon Baker (local Reno guy who finished very well last year) and Sergio Hernandez (Now/MS Society) came in a few tenths of a second faster. Full Results can be found on the Tour de Nez website.

It’s slightly depressing that one of the best results of my career happens to be a 1.5 mile prologue, but I’ll take it. I’m just going have to break Parnes’ kneecaps so I can get a top five. Alternatively, I can just wait until he dies of coronary heart disease.

Now, I’m guessing Ryan’s lawyers are going to contact me and request that I take the preceding photograph down; after all, I am almost certain that eating dessert merits a $60 fine from the Yahoo? team management. However, keeping Parnes away from dessert is like keeping Ronnie Lenzi away from good-looking U23 male cyclists — even fines (or restraining orders) can’t break old habits.

OK, it’s time to head down the hill to Reno for the redesigned downtown criterium. I’m sitting in for a bunch sprint, as you might imagine.

The Tour de Nez is the Anti-Stage Race. It’s an omnium, so you don’t have to finish all events and time plays no role. The races are all less than 90 minutes long. It’s relatively flat, and all of the courses are technical. What do I mean by technical?

That’s the 1.5 mile prologue course. Yep.

I’m busy trying to get things together for the weekend, but I’ll have plenty of time to write about it while I’m up in Reno, so stay tuned. See you later!

Here’s an excerpt from my Golden State Circuit Race report that I wrote on Thursday, June 10, 2010:

With two laps remaining, le break du jour was caught, and Phil Mooney went solo immediately. All the people who were so eager to chase breakaways not two laps prior seemed more than happy to let the district’s second-best time trialist win uncontested.

I just saw this post on the Cal Giant Cycling Team website:

When I wrote that bolded line above, I didn’t consider that the District TT Championships were imminent; even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have bet against Mooney for the win. Nevertheless, the fact that I totally called him as the second-best time trialist three days in advance is downright oracular. Jesse Moore, I’ll send you a private message with my address so you can get the check in the mail ASAP. (Also, that must have been a blistering ride to set the course record. Well done, Jesse.)

Next, I just wanted to reiterate the fact that I raced a HCTT last weekend, because I’m having a hard time believing it myself. I vaguely remember cresting a steep pitch about half way up the Mt. Diablo course and seeing a guy crouched on the curb with a camera. “That might be a pretty cool shot,” I thought to myself — a great indication that I wasn’t going fast enough. Anyway, I found the photographer’s blog yesterday and managed to procure photographic evidence that I did, in fact, Mount the Devil.

I love the long-distance photograph above, but you might not believe it’s me given that I’m obscured by the weeds. Here’s a closeup of my less-than-pained face. I should go harder, huh?

It’s funny, I expected myself to look more…uh, more Crit Racer-y…but it almost looks like I know what I’m doing. Maybe I should climb more often. Thanks to Diablo Scott for taking the time to document this momentous occasion, as well as for sending me the photographs.

Finally, it seems that my fellow blogger Elis has finagled herself some kind of bike sales position solely because she used to write things about panda ears on the internet.

I guess I need a cool gimmick for my blog. Any ideas? I could go around spilling beer on people’s laps and posting their images on milf-thing websites. That might be kind of cool, but I don’t want to know what kind of sales jobs it would net me.

Before I begin, I’ve got another race report from the Golden State Circuit Race up on the Race Reports page in case you’re interested in that kind of thing.

Now, on to more pressing topics: the Mount Diablo Hillclimb Time Trial.

HCTTs bring out the worst in people, and by “people,” I mean Dan Connelly (visit his website at your own peril; if you’ve any predilection for graphs, you’ll never escape). Here is a photograph of Dan and his 10.97 pound bicycle, which I assume he uses primarily for technical criteriums, the Leesville Gap RR, and as a Burning Man bike.

How does one go about building a 10.97 pound bicycle? Well, here’s a closeup of the Michael Rasmussen of stems that Dan has selected for that purpose.

I’m pretty sure those are 2.5 mm allen bolts on the most critical component for overall bicycle control. Seriously, they’re not a whole hell of a lot bigger than the tiny bolts used to secure brake pads into their calipers. Yikes. Still…you can pick that bike up with your pinky finger, so maybe it’s worth the risk.

Lest you think that Dan is the only dorktastic cyclist in that photograph, check out these custom, superlight strap-ons mounted to Ariel Herrmann’s bars. Clip-ons, excuse me. What did I say the first time?

Anyway, Ariel made those bars himself, and I wish I had a close-up photograph so that you could see the cool drilling pattern on the forearm rests. Making your own bike parts, if done well, is badass.

Registering for this race was one of the dumbest decisions I’ve made in a long time. OK, it was the dumbest decision since I registered for last week’s Dunlap ITT. (You know how monkeys will quickly learn not to push certain paddles if they receive a mild shock upon doing so? I’d be a terrible monkey.)

Typically, I’m pretty crotchety when I wake up before 6am for a bike race. However, this morning was different. As I wandered around my kitchen looking for various cereal components, I came to the groggy realization that it was 70 degrees outside and that the sun was rising rather spectacularly. It’s pretty cool to watch the shadow of Potrero Hill slink eastward across the Mission while the sun reflects blindingly off houses on Twin Peaks.

Given how infrequently San Francisco weather permits summery, outdoor behavior, I felt compelled to saunter out onto my balcony in my boxers and enjoy a little semi-nude breakfast. It was awesome, and made me surprisingly happy to be awake.

My only goal for this time trial was to avoid being caught by Nate English, who was slated to start three minutes behind me. If you think that sounds unambitious, you’ve obviously never heard of Nate English and his freakish climbing abilities.

Here’s a nice picture of me during the race.

In spite of all that fierceness, this is how I felt about my performance as I was rolling back to the car.

That’s my best “Meh.” face, in case you’re wondering. I should mention that I did not get caught by Nate as he stormed his way up the hill, so technically I achieved my goal for the day. I’m happy about that.

When the results were posted, I was shown in fifth place behind Nate English (Z-team), Ned Overend (Specialized), Eric Kimbles (Thirsty Bear/CVC) and Jonathan Teeter (DBC).

I’ll be honest, I’m kind of freaked out by this “Teeter” character. First of all, he’s on the Davis Bicycle Club, so I assume he’s from the city of Davis. If that’s the case, there’s no explanation for the fact that I beat him by six seconds in last weekend’s Dunlap ITT; in fact, being beaten in a flat time trial is grounds for castration according to the bylaws of the Davis Time Trial Cult. In addition, our respective times for both the Dunlap ITT and Mt. Diablo HCTT are very close to one another, and I worry that Mr. Teeter is attempting to oust me from my position as “Pretty Good but Not Great at Lots of Different Kinds of Races Guy.” I’m keeping my eye on you, dude.

OK, I have to spend the rest of my evening drilling out my chainrings for next year’s HCTT. Thankfully, with all this hot weather we’re having, I’ve lost about twelve pounds in water weight since 2pm; I’ll get you next time, Teeter*.

*For the record, I’ve never met Jonathan Teeter, nor do I actually have anything against him. Maybe I should follow him on Twitter.

As evidenced by…well…this very website, people tend to put random shit on the internet. Not surprisingly, it seems that people search for a lot of random shit on the internet as well.

Here are some highlights of the search terms used to find my blog a few days ago:

“cyclist fail”
“slutty scientist”
“what sunglasses do female cyclists where” (sic)
“how to become a stronger breakaway rider”

Seriously? What the hell? If we assume that Google is good enough to capture the essence of this blog, I find that collection of search terms unsettling. At least the last one is flattering…I think.

Anyway, that was merely a quick, semi-humorous warm-up for this next bit regarding internet searches and the fringe fetishes they unearth. Allow me to digress for a bit; fear not, I’ll come back to the fetish part in a moment.

Because of the peculiarities of eligibility allowed by USACycling, collegiate cycling teams are composed of a motley crowd of individuals. According to the rules, any registered student is allowed to race collegiate events, which means that eighteen-year-old newbies often race side by side with creepy, aging graduate students. OK, perhaps “creepy” is a bit harsh — and rather redundant, given that it’s implicit in the word “graduate student” — but that’s mostly because I don’t like to think of myself in those terms now that I’m entering my fourth year of post-graduate education.

My experience at Stanford Cycling was no different. In fact, two of the cycling team members with whom I’ve stayed in frequent contact since I left college were graduate students at the time. Today, I’d like to share a rather interesting story about one of them.

Leon Bucky — the internet pen-name of said friend — was a hard-partying graduate student when he wanted to be. One of his finest performances at a cycling team party began with a truly “epic” vodka pour (diluted with an insignificant volume of cranberry juice for coloration more than anything else), rose to a crescendo as he rode a teammate’s carbon fiber racing bike on the roof of the dorm, and ended with him haggardly awakening the following morning, huddled under a towel on my dorm-room floor looking like a hazed fraternity pledge.

Anyway, at one such cycling team party, Leon tussled with a now-famous, serious female cyclist; the end result was a beer-soaked crotch. It was nothing out of the ordinary, really, but it had far-reaching consequences.

The photographs from this party were uploaded to an obscure and infrequently-visited team website, where they were forgotten for many years.

A few months ago, Leon and I engaged in a nostalgic G-Chat session. For about an hour, we pored over photographs from that lost era of Stanford Cycling, sending links back and forth, retelling the stories behind each image, and giggling about our former lives as collegiate cyclists. It was all very uneventful until the strange fetish stuff came out.

Wait…what?

Yep. It turns out that the “long-forgotten” photograph above had been making the rounds of the wet-pants fetish world.

Leon has written about the whole ordeal on his own blog — a site typically dominated by fatherly, PG-rated posts about his wonderful family — and I recommend you head there to read about the details.

Here are some highlights from our G-Chat session, right as we began to realize how far along his “celebrity status” had progressed, unbeknownst to anyone including him. (This next bit is nearly identical to a comment I left on his post. Plagiarism is more fun than creativity.):

Me:     but seriously
ANYONE that has a wet pants fetish
has looked at your wet crotch
Leon:  LOLOLOLOL
Me:     because that’s the FIRST thing you would google
Leon:  LLOLO

Seriously, if you Google image search for “wet pants,” it returns a bunch of non-employer-friendly images and Leon’s crotch shot. It’s ridiculous. Note that, in spite of his usual well-written style, Leon LOLs on G-Chat like a high school girl. Anyway, here’s the best part of our 550-line exchange:

Leon: Or look, here I am TOO!
http://www.milf-thing.or******** [URL censored]
I’m right next to FERGIE.
Me:    does someone sit there and just earch the internet
waiting for photographs of wet pants
that they get turned on by?
ok
im f*&king laughing my ass off here
Leon: Me, too.
Me:    milf-thing
Leon: I think I just woke the baby. [Yep, he has two kids]
Me:    you’re on milf-thing.com
Leon: I KNOW. HOLY SHIT.
HOLY SHIT.
HOLY SHIT.
Me:   im losing it over here

I haven’t laughed that hard in years; as I said, I was losing it. I think it had something to do with the fact that I was internet-chatting with a grown man while searching for strange porn fetishes involving said grown man. Fancy that.

There are a few lessons to be learned here: First and foremost, be careful what you allow to be put on the internet. You never know when you’ll become famous for something you never intended. Also, don’t go to parties with collegiate cyclists. That’s a good general rule to live by.

In other news, I made an…interesting decision this morning.

On a scale from “One” to “That Was Hella Stupid,” where does that decision lie? I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m going to be cursing myself at about 6am on Saturday morning.

Here is an action shot from Sunday’s Butterfly Criterium, randomly selected from Jessica Layman’s fine photograph collection (which she doesn’t frequently post on a public site like Flickr, though she ought).

By “randomly selected,” I mean that I specifically chose that image because it exemplifies my teammate Justin Fraga and his typically on-the-edge, I’m-about-to-crash-in-your-face style. This photo has nothing to do with the remainder of this post, I just wanted to show you what the limit of adhesion looks like.

A few days ago, Chris Stasny (a Cal Giant rider who does not look like a naked mole-rat) left a comment on this blog that reminded me how badly I have failed to cultivate a presence on social networking sites. I think it’s due to the fact that I’m not particularly “clicky” when I play on the internet — I don’t randomly click on “Friend Suggestions,” for example — because I’m a very focused internet stalker/searcher. I know what I’m looking for, and don’t have time for arbitrary suggestions.

In addition, contrary to what my often loud, over-the-top behavior suggests, I’m actually cripplingly shy. Just the thought of clicking “Add So-and-so as a Friend” or “Follow So-and-so” makes me fear rejection, so I often don’t bother. If I’ve ever “friended” you, it probably means that I really like you (or that I really, really want to stalk you).

However, as this blog has grown and I’ve become more comfortable with my internet personality (I’m pretty sure it’s better than my real one), I’ve decided to become a better social networker. If you want to find me, I’m on Twitter (randmmiller) and Facebook (look for the Rand Miller with the cycling profile photo). I’m also on that awesome new social networking site — http://www.GettheF*&kOffYourComputerandMeetMeinRealLife.com — so you can find me there as well.

Anyway, I’m still waiting for Beth Newell to respond to my response to her request. All this blog-bantering feels like a Jane Austen novel: we each write a heartfelt note, then wait with bated breath for the equally heartfelt response several weeks later. It’s dramatic and intriguing, certainly, but at a snail’s pace. In the meantime, we go to balls, partake of tea, ride in badass carriages, and frolic about mansions in the countryside (at least, that’s what I do).

Jane Austen (Adapted from Jessica Layman’s Facebook Album)

Speaking of drama, anonymous guest-blogger Hellyer has thrown his full-fingered gauntlet into the mix. Not content to insult my manhood like most people, Hellyer has threatened to revoke the beer-drinking privileges of the greater bike racing community unless I concede to his demands. Isn’t that terrorism? It certainly sounds un-American to me. Anyway, this is yet another example of why I hate anonymous bloggers. I bet “Hellyer” is an overweight Masters racer who can’t keep his white bartape clean, so I don’t have to answer to him.

Until I hear from Beth, I’m going to continue with my plans to race the District ITT Championships on Sunday morning.