Monthly Archives: August 2010

Hotter ‘n Hell Hundred – Before the ride

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The Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred endurance ride was held this past weekend in Wichita Falls, TX. It’s billed as the largest one-day bicycling event in the world. I don’t know if that’s true, but it was more than twice the size of any other ride I’ve participated in. The Web site says that there were 13,067 riders, and I have no reason to doubt it. I’d never seen that many cyclists in one place before.

The HH100 is a huge event that spans at least three days. There are trail races and a criterium on Friday, the endurance ride on Saturday, and another criterium on Sunday. There’s the bike expo for at least two days, with vendors selling all manner of bicycling gear at booths inside and outside the convention center. This event is large enough that there were even some vendors selling non-cycling stuff like you’d see at summer festivals all over: jewelry, trinkets, hand-made gewgaws, etc. But mostly it’s about bicycling.

It’s not all about bicycling, though. Outside the convention center there were vendors selling funnel cakes, sausage on a stick, and other stuff that I’d categorize as county fair food. Although I didn’t see any cotton candy, now that I think of it. And, of course, there was plenty of beer. I found it odd to see Lance Armstrong endorsing Michelob Ultra. I thought the guy had better taste in beer.

I didn’t even try to get a hotel room for the event. Friends told me that the hotels were booked well in advance, and the rates were outrageous. One guy I talked to on Friday said that he paid $200 for Friday night. Rather than stay in a hotel, I elected to take advantage of the free on-site tent camping. The camping area was maybe a half mile walk from the start line, right next to a building that has bathroom and shower facilities. I figured that’d be a great deal, so I borrowed a tent, packed my gear, and headed out to Wichita Falls on Friday morning.

I timed my arrival perfectly, getting there about 2:00 PM, when packet pickup opened. I located a suitable camping spot, set up the tent, got the lay of the land, and headed over to the convention center to pick up my ride packet. I purposely waited a while in order to avoid the rush of eager beavers who just had to pick up their packets as early as possible. Unlike those people, who stood in line for over 30 minutes, I found no line at all. I just surrendered my waiver form, got my race number, and then presented my race number to get my goodie bag.

The goodie bag didn’t have a whole lot of “goodies” in it. Of course I got about a dozen flyers for upcoming rides, pamphlets about bicycle safety, and pleas for support from various organizations. A couple of course maps. A coupon for a free Whataburger (goodie #1). A water bottle with the HH100 logo on it (goodie #2, considering that I forgot to bring bottles with me). A small Cliff bar. A bottle of something called Athletes Honey Milk, which tasted okay after the ride, although I should have shaken it better. Oh, and a “Go Army” wristband similar to those “Livestrong” wristbands that everybody’s wearing. Anybody want it? Yeah, the goodie bag was a bit of a letdown.

The spaghetti dinner that I paid eight dollars for was held from five until nine inside the coliseum. We sat at tables out on the floor that is, from what I understand, usually covered with ice for the local hockey team. To tell the truth, I’m not sure why I paid for the spaghetti dinner in advance, because those mass feeding things are typically pretty bad. I was half expecting that I’d need to find some real food, but I was pleasantly surprised. How they managed to cook those mountains of pasta and sauce and get them right–not just edible, but actually good–is beyond me. But it was. Good, I mean. I ate a huge mound of spaghetti along with salad and a couple of bread sticks, and even went back for seconds. I did cheat in one respect, though: I brought my own drink into the place. The meal included tea and water, but I wanted a cola. I will have no qualms about eating their spaghettin dinner if I do the ride again. Definitely recommended.

To pass the time after dinner, I sat outside on a bench for an hour or so and carved a couple of my little dogs. It was nice there in the shade, listening to the music and chatting with people who’d stop from time to time to see what I was working on. The primary reason I was sitting around was to wait for my friend Frank Colunga and his buddies to finish their dinner before I went visiting. They drove up in two motor homes and were having a home-cooked meal rather than the spaghetti, and I didn’t want to interrupt their dinner. A great bunch of folks, and I enjoyed visiting with them for an hour or so before it got dark. They were headed off to sleep and I wandered back to my tent to do the same.

I think I mentioned that the tent camping area is right by the event center. Actually, it’s in the parking lot of the event center. There are grassy medians between paved parking rows, little grassy islands scattered throughout the unpaved parking lot, and grass on two sides of the parking lot along the road and along the river. I was surprised at how few tents there were. But that wasn’t the only surprise I’d get tonight.

Pizza Hut was there at the parking lot with a car and a sign that said, “Call <number> to order. Pick up here!” Apparently in years past they’d get calls for pizza, and instructions that said, for example, “I’m in the big blue and white dome tent over by the river,” or some such. They had so much trouble delivering that this year they decided to have a single place for pickup. They did a surprisingly brisk business.

I had planned to be in my tent and asleep by about 9:00–10:00 at the latest. I didn’t realize that there is a bar across the street from the parking lot. A bar that has live music. LOUD live music. I can sleep through anything if I’m tired enough, but I wasn’t tired enough to tune out that music. It was loud enough in the parking lot that conversation was difficult. I can’t imagine what it was like inside the bar. Fortunately, they stopped the music around 11:00. Somebody said that the city paid the bar to close early this year, due to the complaints they got last year.

With the music gone, I just had normal night noises to deal with: trains, traffic on the highway, and people arriving, setting up tents, and getting settled in. The last went on until at least 2:00 AM.  They kept waking me up when they’d drive by a little too close to the tent.

The parking lot has lights. Bright lights that stayed on all night. That didn’t really bother me, and it was kind of nice not having to fumble for a flashlight in the middle of the night when I needed to go visit the bathroom.

I did manage to get a good night’s sleep, even with the interruptions. I had set my alarm for 5:15 so that I’d have enough time to get dressed, have breakfast, get my gear together, stretch, warm up, and in general get prepared for the event. As it turned out, I didn’t need the alarm. Somebody, either by design or by accident, set off his car alarm at 5:00 AM on the dot. A car horn honking 50 feet away is an effective wake-up device.

It wasn’t all bad. Waking up at 5:00 gave me a little extra time to prepare for the ride, including checking the bike over one more time and triple-checking that I had everything I needed. There was one amusing incident.  Remember those lights that stayed on all night?  They went off at 5:30 while it was still dark.  I and everybody else around me got a good laugh out of that.  Fortunately, I had a flashlight (one of those LED lights on a headband), so the lack of the parking lot lights didn’t affect me a bit.  At 6:30 I got on the bike and headed for the starting line.

Bicycling Update

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In early April I said that I was going to ride the Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred this month.  I started training, got distracted, and then started again seriously training in June.  Today is August 26 and the ride is this Saturday.  Tomorrow (Friday) I’m driving up to Wichita Falls where I’ll be camping overnight in a tent.  The ride starts at 7:30 Saturday morning.

I’m not as well prepared for the ride as I would have liked, but I don’t think I’ll have any trouble finishing the 100 miles.  The course is relatively flat and, despite the ride’s name, the weather forecast is for temperatures in the low 90s on Saturday.  My long rides (60 to 65 miles) the last four weekends have been in 100+ degree temperatures and except for one in which I forgot to drink enough water, I’ve finished the rides with no soreness and energy to spare.  As long as I remember to drink and keep myself fed, 100 miles won’t be a problem.

My bike computer read 16,788 miles in early April.  Today it sits at 18,145. I didn’t do as much training as I had planned, but it should be sufficient.  And I’ve been training on larger hills and in stronger winds than (if I’m to believe what others have told me) anything I’ll encounter in Wichita Falls.

It’ll likely be Sunday before I can post an update to say how I did in the ride.  I just hope I keep my wits about me and don’t go out too fast like I did in Waco back in 2002.

Testing an iPad

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Writing a blog entry on an iPad is rather painful, but possible. I wouldn’t want to write more than a few lines this way, but it’s nice to have in a pinch.

Editing is possible using gestures to zoom. Still, it’s tedious. There seems to be some predictive text input, but I type faster than it prompts–even one-fingered.

So far, I see the iPad as a great consumption device. I don’t yet see it replacing a notebook for creating content.

What they don’t tell you

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I’ve read a lot over the years about long distance cycling.  The book is Bicycling Magazine’s The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling.  That book covers a whole lot of ground, not only information about training and equipment, but also a whole lot about aches and pains and things to consider.  For example, there are sections on skin care (use sunscreen), eye wear (sunglasses), feet, knees, problems with your hands and arms, saddle sores, gastrointestinal problems, and even women’s issues such as interruptions to their menstrual cycles, vaginitis, and bladder infections.

You can find similar discussions on sites all over the Web. For all that, there’s one particularly painful issue that for some reason nobody discusses and yet most men I’ve talked to encounter at some point in their riding: sore nipples.

I’m not joking.  After a couple of hours riding the bike on a hot day, the constant rubbing of your shirt on your nipples will make them sore.  I’ve seen guys bleeding from their nipples.  And what do they do about it?  Most do nothing.  At most, they’ll unzip their jerseys so that the shirt doesn’t fit so tightly and therefore doesn’t rub as much.  It’s crazy.

Over the years, I’ve tried lots of different solutions.  The one everybody thinks of first is band-aids, but they won’t stick to sweaty skin and my experience is that they’ll just sweat right off after an hour or two if I put them on before a ride.  One guy told me to put them on the night before–swore by it.  Said it gives the adhesive time to set up or somesuch.  Didn’t work for me.  Two hours into the ride, my nips are burning and there are two band-aids floating around in my jersey.

The only thing I found that works is lip balm.  The wax-based stuff.  Get a tube of ChapStick or something similar and grease your nipples up real good before a ride.  And be sure to stuff that thing in your jersey pocket, because a few hours into the ride you’re going to want it again.  As far as I’ve been able to tell, the brand doesn’t matter.  I’ve used the expensive “Burt’s Bees” stuff, the cheapest generic stick stuff I picked up in a discount store, and everything in between.

A side benefit, beyond preventing chafed nipples, is that anybody who asks if he can use your ChapStick will immediately retract his request when you say, “Hold on,” pull up your shirt, and start rubbing it on your nipples.

The Royal Nonesuch – almost

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In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn, Huck and Jim hook up with a traveling group of actors who are, to be kind, less than honest. To me, the most memorable stunt they pulled is in a little Arkansas town where they advertised a show:

AT THE COURTHOUSE!
for 3 nights only
The World-Renowned Tragedaians
DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER!
and
ENDMUND KEAN THE ELDER!
Of the London and Continental Theatres
In their Thrilling Tragedy of
THE KING’S CAMELOPARD
or
THE ROYAL NONESUCH!!!
Admission 50 cents

LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED

The performance, as it turns out, is in two parts. First, one of the “actors” gets up and makes a little speech praising the tragedy. Then the curtain goes up and another actor, wildly painted but otherwise naked, cavorts around on the stage for a while. The crowd, which makes up about half of the men in the town, is quite amused by the performance until the curtain comes down and they realize that they’ve been had.

Rather than admit that they’ve been had, the audience agrees to talk up the show and convince the other half of the people in the town to see the show the next night. On the third night, now that everybody in town has been had, a large number of people show up with rotten eggs and other nasty things to throw at the actors. The actors, knowing full well how these things go, light out from town without putting on the show the third night, taking with them over four hundred dollars they got for the three showings.

In the 30 years since I read that book (thank you again, Mr. C.), I have come to realize that the behavior of the first night’s crowd in this story describes very well the behavior of people in many situations. Rather than admit that they’ve been had or don’t understand something that others say is insightful, funny, profound, or whatever, people will try to convince others of the thing’s value. Even if they know that the thing is worthless. To most people, it seems, it’s much better to agree with the crowd than to point out that the Emperor has no clothes.

This behavior explains a lot of things, like the idea that books like Moby Dick and The Catcher in the Rye, or movies like The Thin Red Line, In The Bedroom, Titanic, or The Last Emperor have any redeeming value. It also explains most of what passes for political thought in this country. Rather than actively think about important issues and how to best solve them, all too many people glom onto whichever politician stirs their emotions, and then try to convince others that the object of their adoration has all the answers–usually by doing a poor job of parroting sound bites and without understanding the issues or the motives behind the politician’s point of view.

In Huck’s story, the foolish people in that little Arkansas town figured it out. Nobody actually believed that the “tragedy” was good or worth the 50 cents they paid to watch it, and on the third night they were going to run the rats out of town–most likely in a very unpleasant way. The American people, on the other hand, have not figured it out. Oh, sure, we’ll run the rats out of Congress periodically, but we do so by electing another set of rats who are as bad as if not worse than the ones we’re getting rid of. We don’t know what we want. All we “know” is that we don’t want what’s currently there. What we get is no better than what we had–just different on the surface.

Don’t believe me? In 1976, there was no possible way that a Republican could have been elected President. With the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigning, Agnew forced to resign in disgrace, the economy in a long period of stagflation, and our withdrawl from (one might say defeat in) Vietnam, there was no way that the American people were going to elect a Republican. And four years later, with fuel shortages, interest rates at record highs, the economy no better in the eyes of most people, and the embarrassment of the Iran hostage crises, there was no way Carter could be re-elected, or any Democrat elected President. The same thing happened to George H.W. Bush in 1992 (although he really was an ineffective President), and to Al Gore in 2000 because he had to contend with the beginnings of the dot com bubble bursting. 2008 was in many respects a repeat of 1976: there was no possible way any Republican could have been elected.

In most cases, the President was little more than the fall guy. One could make the argument that G. W. Bush instituted policies that made Republicans anathema to many Americans, and America anathema to much of the world, but those policies were in large part ratified by a bipartisan Congress. Carter inherited his economic troubles, and history shows that his decision to take the bitter pill of high interest rates was the proper solution to the problem.

The same sort of thing happens with Congressional elections, most notably the 1994 election when Republicans gained majorities in both houses, and in 2006 when Democrats did the same thing.

The tribalists who make up the majority of the voting public probably don’t cross party lines very often. The number of people who will vote “Democrat” or “Republican” regardless of the person behind the label is astonishing. Some sources say that elections are decided by as few as 10 percent of the voters–those who have no strong party affiliation. Whether those people vote based on their beliefs in the candidate’s fitness for the job or for an entirely different reason like a desire to throw the bums out is an open question.

The point is that the voting public, as a group, is fickle. When election time comes, we too often blindly throw out the old in favor of the new, either not realizing or not caring that the “new” is really just the same old thing in a brand new box.

Mid-term elections are this November, and the media are making some noises about Republican gains. Or, more to the point, Democratic losses. It’s unlikely that Democrats will lose their majorities, although I suspect that their days of nearly total control are numbered. That’s all to the good, by the way: we should never allow a single party to control the Executive and both houses of the Legislative branch of government. Not that it’s mattered much in recent years. Between 2006 and 2008, President Bush and the Democrat-controlled Congress were like mutual rubber stamps. Whatever one wanted, the other granted.

My biggest fear is that Republicans, if they make significant gains in the upcoming election, will take the wrong lesson from the experience. They will call it a “mandate for change.” (How often have you heard that before?)  How quickly they forget. In 2006 and 2008, voters overwhelmingly threw out Republicans. And now we’re poised to unseat many of those we placed in those positions so recently. We aren’t voting for anybody, but rather against the current situation. The electorate is behaving like a blind man trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle in which all the pieces are shaped the same. No matter how you put it together it “fits.” But the picture is wrong–it doesn’t work. And two years from now we’ll scramble up the pieces and blindly try again.

I’m not entirely convinced that people want meaningful change. I think the voting public, as a whole, is still too comfortable with the way things are and is unwilling to put forth candidates who are fundamentally different from the slick, polished, cookie-cutter phonies we’re presented with every election season. When I see wide support for candidates who are a little rough around the edges, who supply real answers to tough questions, and who are serious about addressing real issues rather than the silly superficial crap that Congress is always focused on…then I’ll begin to have faith in our political system.

Until then, I’ll do what I can to select the best from the poor crop of candidates I’m presented with.