Ubikequitous 10, Fat Bike Yoga Pants Shootout!!!

Everyone favorite battling purveyors of yoga and sporty gear for women both featured Pugsleys in their latest catalogs.

From Top, cover of Title 9 catalog, back page of Athleta catalog

From Top, innards of Athleta catalog, innards of Title 9 catalog

Clearly Title 9 is the victor as they have a cooler schwinn and the cover model actually riding the bike (the catalog also has a lemond city bike and a generic stepthrough in other photos). But well done to both catalogs in capturing the fat bike zeitgeist.

I do have to admit being very nostalgic for the Title 9 catalogs of 10 years ago or so which used to feature what I called the "Title 9 Barbies" (ironically, see below) who usually were shown surfing or skateboarding or gardening their organic farms or building a school for impoverished children with descriptions such as "working on her third PhD, raising her 4 adopted children on her organic turkey farm, still finds time to shred the morning break" or "built her own wooden yacht and sailed around the world in between her career as pro kiteboarder and her current job as CTO of a biotech startup". There was one page of the catalog I used to carry around in my lab book for inspiration when I was working on my dissertation, I can't find that page anymore, but I figured if she could look great in yoga pants and get her PhD while she was skateboarding/surfing/alpacafarming, well then, I could finish my dissertation while living by myself and riding my bikes a whole bunch, with little pressure to look great in yoga pants (even though I could totally rock those if I wanted to). I used to call them the barbies as those were the type of barbies I would like my future daughter to play with, alas, now that I actually have a daughter, the current Title 9 catalogs have dispensed with the awe inspiring overachievers for less impressive and breezy descriptions of the models.

Holy F&$%, Doping!

It is like christmas for doping nerds like me, I keep wanting to write about it, but I can't get my head around the magnitude. Well done to Floyd Landis for really kicking this off and the USADA for seeing it through. Twice a day I check velonews and twice a day I am rewarded with even more information. Anyhow, go read for yourself, I really have nothing to add, the Reasoned Decision and even better the spectacularly entertaining/grim/depressing affidavits. If you search around a bit are some entertaining bike racing forum investigation to the names of the redacted people in the Reasoned Decision, pretty much implicates the few obvious american cyclists who did not give direct evidence in the USADA case.

I will say it again. The UCI needs to declare some sort of amnesty program so that we can get more of the scoop from more people without any fear of serious repercussions... It may have been the UCI's fault that doping was so widespread in the first place, but if I am writing about doping scandals in cycling in 10 years featuring riders who are now in their 20's, it is absolutely on the UCI. USPS had a great doping system, but it was built on the bones of the ONCE team's system and it is clear from the affadavits that many other teams were all in as well, there is much to learn from more honesty and openness.

Lots of things from last week

Scored yet another arrow (number 4 or 5?) and whole pile of marking flags.

Arrow found right at the intestine and diamond on the lab side. I imagine someone realized they were heading to work with some weapons and jettisoned them out the window. Alas it had been run over, it now is carbon trash. Flags found in bike lane on canyon. Picked em up mostly so they did not become pokey wires in the bike lane.

Aida and Wink256 took a chariot ride around the block. Wink did not freak. Aida might be a bit happy

Got even more wood. Mostly Cherry and Apple. Will need to season the living crap out of it before it goes in the fire, but it will burn for a long time. Spent about half an hour cutting it down out of a massive brush pile on the other side of the neighborhood. Pretty easy 1/2 mile ride back to the house afterwards.

Went to the opera in bandelier last saturday night. It was fun. Aida was entranced for 10 minutes and then happily played in the dirt for the rest of the hour and a half. We got to take the bus 4 times on Saturday, Aida was thrilled about this too. Click the panaroma to see on flickr.

Found this feller on my road bike. I thought is was a big wasp, but I think it is a black and yellow party beetle:

After studiously avoiding a smartphone for a while, I have to say, I am digging the iphone and all the photo options. I also like having the pocket GPS, I have been using Run Keeper to log walks with Aida and neighborhood cruises and I jumped on the Strava moronwagon to help log the local punishing climbs for both running and riding, helps me be a bit more rigorous in my self monitoring. I don't really care to share em, nor will I facebook spam out all my rides, but I will be making up dumb new segments for myself, as I am pretty sure there are a couple road bike rides and runs that that no one else does. The greater quality pocket cam will help on the blogging documentation probably, see gratuitous coffee picture:

2012 pajarito trail fest 10k race report 9/22/12

Oooooof, it hurt. Race was run counter clockwise instead of the traditional clockwise. Typical start and end at the ski lodge (~9000 feet), with a 10,400 foot summit betwixt. I will give you the super abbreviated race report.
1. Go out too fast on the downhill with fast people
2. Go lactic on the first climb straight up a ski slope.
3. hold off the rampaging hordes on the single track climb
4. suffer on the going straight up the ski hill parts again and again
5. Crack badly just before the summit
6. Hit the summit of the ski hill
7. Take a picture and get passed by a bunch of people

8. Suffer on the initial technical descent
9. Pass a few people back on a bit of rollyness
10. Suffer the second part of the initial technical decent
11. Hammer hard on the less technical descent
12. Hold off more rampaging hordes of descenders
13. Wait, whats this? A mile of climbing to the finish? Crap.
14. Let 4 people pass you as you have lost the will to live
15. They are kinda passing me slow
16. Crap, they are not pulling away.
17. Double crap, they are right there in front of me.
18. I resign myself to sprinting past all of them
19. Accomplish number 18.
20. Spend the next 20 minutes trying not to vomit.
21. Eat breakfast burrito.
22. Help daughter run kids race.
23. Go home, take nap.
24. Deal with intense quad soreness for 5 days.
Other thoughts. It was hot. It was challenging. I hated it when I was doing it, but in retrospect it was pretty fun. Even with all the super steep fire road sections. Good job on the trail fixing post fire. I might be in shape for this one day. I finished 10th overall in the 10k race, 9th among mens, and 3.875th in the 30-39 age group. Time was just under 1 hour and 11 minutes. I can do better. I need to remember not to take 3 weeks off running right before a race. results here

last year it was not hot and covered in snow:

I did this race in 2009 too:

So thanks to the organizers for putting on the excellent race and all the volunteers that got the trails ready for the suffering. And great job to all the 15 mile racers and all the people that came out and did the duathlon the next day. Due to ridiculous quad soreness, some knee swolage and intense desire to do nothing I skipped it. Maybe next year.

Antlered Triumvirate

Lurking about they are.

the youngling

snagglehorn

brickshithouse

They better drop an antler again in the yard or I am taking up mule deer noodling/wrassling/shooting.

Raleigh Twenty Lamp

Why? Because someone on the internet had them a question.

Front with Child claw

PiFCO, the marque of quality

Lamp received via el Speare many a moon ago.

Moscaline goes HD

Got a new camera,it takes really good photos and videos. Blow that pizza up full screen and click the heck out of the HD button. Oooooooooo.
Should be a mild to great uptick in the photo and video quality. We also are ditching the 4 year old beat to crap extraordinarily dependable casio boulder dumbphone and going full on iphone5, so even the cell cam snap shots should improve. No go-pro helmet cam yet, but I will get there...

Pizza by Aida and Elena. Burbly cooking by me trying to get a better crust. It was pretty damn good...

Alive and Former Trees

As promised, in the continuing wood gathering series:

Scored a ponderosa pine youth from the landscaper across the neighborhood. Ferried it home in the pouring rain and muddy trails. Planted it on the outskirts of the .18 acre homestead.

A big burl that dropped off a ponderosa and blocked a neighborhood path. Aida and I cleared the path and fastened the rest to the chariot for the burning.

Previously
Aspen
MOAR WOOD
More Wood Hauling
Wood Hauling

The Secret Race -Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle, a review

Long time Moscaline readers will know I used to write about doping often, but I stopped cold after Tyler Hamilton came clean, see thank you tyler. I considered that, short of Lance coming out and admitting doping, the epilogue on a long ugly period in pro cycling. When I heard that Tyler Hamilton was writing a tell all book with Daniel Coyle, I was extremely eager to read it and boy was I not disappointed. Not a super long read, not spectacular prose, but a really solid gripping rise and fall tale. With lots of the really gritty details thrown in. It shows how unbelievably messed up every aspect of the Lance era was. Even better you can see how messed up high level pro cycling is even without the drugs. Pro tip: Get hella skinny. Nope skinnier than that. Lycra flapping on the arms skinny. Can you see your organs through your pale emaciated skin? Ok good, now you can be fast.

One of my previous favorite books of the Lance Era was Daniel Coyles book Lance Armstrong's War (LAW):

LAW is incredibly well written and a great read. As I have said in the past, there are two possible inescapable conclusions from that book:

1. They are so rigorous and scientific in their training, recovery and medical plans that there is no need to resort to doping.

2. They are so rigorous and scientific in their training, recovery and medical plans that systematic doping is the next logical step in improving performance.

With this new book by Tyler Hamilton and the same Daniel Coyle, you can pretty much any possibility of #1 being the truth. The account of doping is detailed and credible. It follows beautifully as an addendum to the training techniques laid out in LAW. It is not an especially kind portrait of Lance, but it is not especially malicious either, it just includes him in Tyler Hamilton's personal journey through deciding to and completely succumbing to doping as a means to become a top pro cyclist. No doubt it is unflattering to Lance, but he kind of has set himself up for this eventuality. Details of doping methods, evasion of testing, evasion of authorities are presented. Fascinating as a train wreck. Filled with skinny tiny cycling men riding high in the mountains.

I realize that some people are incapable of accepting that Lance doped and think Tyler Hamilton and all the other pro cyclists who have admitted to doping are liars out to get Lance. If you fall in this category you should read this book and enjoy it as a work of exposing the gritty underbelly of Hamilton's personal journey through cycling. It is an entertaining read. As Bike magazine editor Joe Parkin (and former Hamilton teammate) wrote in his review: "But erase every single sentence alleging a connection between Lance Armstrong and doping, and this book is still a must-read for aspiring bike racers and every fan of the sport." After you read it though, I would like you to come by and explain to me how Lance is innocent and/or "level playing field".

However, if you are anything like me and were once a big Lance fan, and then were only slightly happier than nonplussed when he came back after he retired, and now are 100% sick of his megalomaniac innocence claims, his weird martyr syndrome, and his triathlon career, you probably will really enjoy the parts of the book dealing with Lance. Fascinating guy, not really likable at all, but again it is an interesting extension of the portrait of Lance that was developed in LAW.

Anyhow, there was nothing that really surprised me in this book. Go back and read the list of things that moscaline doping hero Jesus Manzano said he took or was given for some background. But "The Secret Race" is comprehensive with regard to Tyler Hamilton's riding and doping history, showing how a rider viewed as the clean cut, honest, nice guy type gets into the heavy heavy shit. It also shows the ludicrous levels that cyclists went to get their dope on. This book does sweep up many cyclists in its wake, already eliciting some recent preemptive doping admissions from Jonathon Vaughters (here, and a by proxy admission of past doping for Christian Vande Velde, David Zabriskei and Tom Danielson, and a call for cyclists to come clean like Tyler by great champion and admited doper Johan Museeuw. Cycling has often been an extremely dirty business. It is great sport and spectacle, but the human costs are high at the three week grand tour level. I expect we will see many more confessions coming in the wake of this book. Especially if the UCI gets off its ass and figures out an amnesty program (that they should have instituted a decade ago).

Finally, I will leave you with the most exciting thing I learned reading this book:

I knew that Christian Vande Velde's father John was a former olympian and great track racer.

I knew that he invented the Vandedrome, a portable wooden veledrome.

I learned from this book that he played one of the Cinzano bad guys in the film Breaking Away.

Boom.

Mind blown.

I bought myself the kindle version of this book last Thursday night and had it read by Saturday.

Update 9/11/12 8pm:

Hey y'alls, check out the Boulder Report's interview with coauthor Daniel Coyle. Just posted today. The boulder report is pretty much the other reason I stopped writing about doping. Joe Lindsey has been consistently excellent on doping (and pretty much everything else). I can't compete with that anymore. Big Dummy Log hauling photos from moscaline from now on. Guaranteed...

Road Finds of the Week

Good week for road finds:

That is, from top, a kids hunting arrow, some chrome-vanadium pnuematic sockets and a Stanley slashy knife. The arrow was found last weekend up in crested butte just off a trailhead. The sockets were found Saturday morning on the way out (3) and the way back(2 more) from a mountain bike ride here in town. The knife was found at a roadside nature break somewhere between crested butte and gunnison.

This is probably road find utility knife number 7 or 8 in my life. They were all craftsmans initially, but now with the decline of sears and the ascendance of big box stores they are all stanleys. The sockets were a nice treat. They are black coated, so they were sort of hard to recognize initially, but I realized what they were and found three next to each other quickly. I did not see any others, but thought, where there are three, there is bound to be more. I found the two big ones on the way back scattered across a bit of road. I am sure there were more, but they may have fell in the gutter, or been found by others. I will check again on my way to work.

I found the arrow just off a trailhead in Crested Butte. Appeared to have been shot there, been sitting for a while, buried except for the yellow feathers at the end. ICS hunter junior edition, limit 40lbs. Can't say I am a big fan of finding arrows on or near trails.

I must be in the front row, Salem Red Sox 8/29/12

Must be in that front row

If I told you the Boston Red Sox high A affiliate was in Salem, would you guess that that would be in Salem Virginia? Not Salem Mass? Not me, but with an evening to kill in Roanoke last week ater a meeting, I figured I could do worse than spend the night watching some baseball.

Virginia, no witches burned here

I have been watching a fair amount of Albuquerque Isotopes games since I moved to New Mexico and really enjoying the quality and price and environment at the games. I had some low expectations for a single A game, as last time I went to one (Greensboro Bats, 2004, I was treated to atrocious fielding and bad beer.

I got to the stadium a bit early, scored an $11 ticket in the front row behind home plate. Bought me a cap $26, a good beer (new Belgium Somersault, suprisingly good, on tap) $6.25, and a pulled pork sammich with fries $7.25. Ate all that, then got some peanuts $3.50, and another beer (Local Roanoke brewpub something also good) $6.25, and then spending cash depleted to zero, I settled in for some baseball.

The national anthem was sung well by a young woman, no one as far as I could tell threw out the ceremonial first pitch, and the game was on.

First Pitch

Front row seating with the net is weird. I think I probably would not have died if the net was not there. It is a bit distracting to have the net in your field of view. I probably lost out on 3 or 4 foul balls. But I could relax and not have to be hyper aware all the time. The stadium was pretty empty, maybe 1/4 full. No one was sitting near me at all. The field was nice, with an odd 20 foot high wall around the entire outfield. They also had a mini fenway wiffleball field tucked around one of the corners of the stadium, there were a few kids in there tossing footballs.

Full moon baseball action

Anyhow, it was an extremely pleasant night, warm, but not hot, full moon rising off the third base line. Reasonably well played game. No excessive errors, although slightly sloppy play in the field. Salem's starting pitcher, Keith Couch, was really good for 5 innings before he lost his stuff and gave up 5 runs in the 5th and 6th inning. The only other player of note was Salem's third basemen Michael Almanzar, seemed to be pretty slick fielding third (although he is listed as a first basemen) and hit pretty well, especially if he is a third basemen.

Requisite odd Minor League Mascot, Muggsy the gopher dog, or something

Amusements included bad umpire angles at fielded plays throughout the game as there were only two hard working umpires to call the game. One behind the plate, one in the infield. Players who complained about calls got tattled on by the umpire to the coach. New and unfortunate park traditions such as "cotton eyed joe" and "sweet carolina" were played out between innings. No condiment or ballpark treat race in the field. Lots of on the field contests between innings. Occasional t-shirt shooting. Game ended in a tie in the 9th, at least it did for me, as I was pooped and had an early flight the next morning. There was some walk off home run action in the 10th that I missed, but alas, I am human. Anyhow, minor league baseball gets the moscaline seal of approval.

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline, a mini review

After seeing a bunch of online hype about this book, I bought a paperback copy of Ready Player One to keep me company on an international flight. It started off on the wrong foot, a gratuitous eighties trivia wankfest with no end in sight. Then the narrative started and it was pretty damn good and I read the whole thing in one sitting. I was an easy mark, stuck on a plane, but it was still pretty good and I am reading it again. The plot is almost irrelevant, (rich guy dies, creator of massive virtual world, creates virtual world competition to inherit his fortune, all based on his childhood in the eighties, story ensues), I was very comfortable with the all the cultural references having lived it. I was born the same year as the author (and the character who set up the eighties virtual universe) so I am right there in the sweetspot where all the D&D, movies and arcade and console games mentioned are very real to me. I am guessing if you were born between 1970 and 1975 you might feel the same way. I am not sure how much older or younger you would have to be for the cultural references to be enough lost on you that you might not enjoy the book. Its a good read, but it really relies on your familiarity with the eighties. You probably should have played some role playing games and spent some time in arcades and on atari consoles as well. So, uh, if you are about 37-42 and like easy reading Sci-fi and played some D&D and arcade games back in the day, you will probably love this. Otherwise, I have no guarantees. Ideally, you should buy this in ebook form. Even more ideally the ebook would have built in emulators so you could play all the games mentioned in the book, but I bet it does not. It should be a movie soon, so maybe you can just watch that, because at this level of meta entertainment, it should not matter all, there is no real literature being achieved here. Or just watch tron. Yeah! - new recommendation, just watch Tron or better yet, Tron Legacy, cause its pretty much the same thing as this book. But with more Jeff Bridges. Tron Legacy baby! Woo!

Gardening the mighty 1/5 acre

It has been a reasonable to great garden year. We had a reasonable winter, very dry late spring/early summer, and then a really good monsoon season starting in July and continuing through the present. The fire season up here was mercifully brief, especially compared to last years disaster. Fruit trees are doing great. The mule deer continue to be a problem and we put in some raised beds.

We had a sandy gopher and ant ridden patch in the middle of the front yard that we were able to grow some corn and pumpkins in last year. This year the ants were out of control and became extremely swarmy. After a couple of years of slowly escalating ant control methods we finally called an exterminator. I feel bad about that, but it allowed us to go in the front yard without getting swarmed and bitten by the ants. The ant/aphid combo was also killing all the aspen trees in the yard and many of the flowers. Anyhow, with that done, I blitz in the raised beds in a week and planted some rootbound pumpkin and squash that I had delayed planting. I also put in some beans to see if I could get something out of this summer.

The mule deer mowed down all of our tomatoes repeatedly (even though they were in pots on the porch), until we wrapped them in chicken wire. We have a few corn coming up. We got lots of apricots, one peach and are in the process of harvesting apples and plums.

Anyhow onto the photo dump:
Apricot gathering in early July:

It was a good, not great apricot year. We at many fresh, froze the rest for smoothies and ice cream. more apricot phots here

The raised bed.
Helper spawn helps clear and flatten

Scoping exercises

More betterer

Gopher guard, 1/4 hardware cloth

Second layer

Inspector Spawn making sure I did a good job

Fill with sand, dirt, compost etc...

Mule deer help trim everything

Rain and boots and family and cats help grow the squashes

Solitary peach of goodness

Apples are about ready

Plums are finally coming in

delicious yet a touch sour still

Aspen

Nice big lump of aspen grabbed on the way home from work. May go back tomorrow with a saw and cut down some of the bigger stuff to decent size to haul home. I will post it if I do.

Pretty much going to change the blog subtitle to "pictures of curb score wood on the big dummy"

Previously
MOAR WOOD
Wood Hauling
More Wood Hauling

Snaquestrians

Yield to snaquestrians. Alas, 20 odd miles of riding and running on this trail, no sightings of any snakes or creatures other than some angry Ospreys who did not like us anywhere in the neighborhood of their nests.

I did score this slashy slashy gutty gutty knife on one of the fishing put-in access road. Sitting there open on a dirt road. I first almost ran it over on my bike, then I needed to through my body over it to protect it from an aggro pickup truck driver in a big hurry to get to the road.

Satisfyingly heavy, made in china, Winchester brand, "executive" wood and brass finish.

Spent a nice weekend taking the baby on her first real tent camping trip. She loved it. I am not sure I can hack ground sleeping anymore. But it was nice to go up north for a bit to beat the heat.