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Top 5 Most Important Moments of the Bush Years

Here's my list of the Top Five Most Important Moments of the Bush Years (so far):

1. September 11.  Obvious.  Norman Mailer once said, "The horror of the Twentieth Century is the size of each event and the paucity of its reverberation."  That perfectly captures the way the media seizes on events and breathlessly narrates them as though they are thunderingly historic -- and then moves on and completely forgets about those events along with everyone else.  But we're not in the Twentieth Century any more; this sucker's reverberating.

2. Launch of Iraq war. Again, not much to say.  Dumb, dumb, dumb. Cruel. Ignorant. Tragic. What's more evil than an unnecessary war?  It's like this: if you had a chance to take out an evil dictator; would you do it?  What if your only chance were to shoot down his airplane -- but there are several thousand children riding with him?  That's what war is.  Bush chose yes (ever see the photos on the Internet of Iraqi children with their heads blown apart by U.S. missiles during the initial "victory" over Saddam?  Well everyone in the Mideast did). Only it's looking like there was a whole nation on board with him and they're all going down.  We'll be paying for Bush's folly for many years, in many ways.

3. The Katrina window incident.  Bush Administration starts downward spiral after he loses his illusion of manliness and is revealed (to those Americans who hadn't yet figured it out) as a bumbling martinet. 

4. Trent Lott's resignation.  Lott praises Strom Thurmond.  Media ignores it.  Blogosphere piles on.  Media forced to cover it.  Lott resigns.  This incident showed the emergence of an entirely new institution in American life, the blogosphere, and its role as a healthy new check and balance on another major institution, the media, which is itself supposed to be a check and balance but is too concentrated, corporate and homogeneous to be reliable in that role. (Washington reporters all go to cocktail parties with other Washington establishmentarians where they do what?  Talk. Talking is the act of comparing views and working on synching them up.  Then they all get on TV and spew the same conventional wisdom.) The high end of the blogs bumps up against the low end of the traditional media, so we are seeing the replacement of the finite media universe with a whole root system that graduates from tv taproots to the smallest most obscure capillary blogger (such as, well -- me!)

More broadly, bloggers are just one example of many flourishing new models of "peer production" that are flourishing with the Internet, whether it's open source programming, Wikipedia, Google map mashups, or what have you. Humanity's collective intelligence level just leapt forward, because the connections between the "synapses" (individuals) just got a lot more complex and a lot faster.

5. The unknown. Without a doubt, something momentous has happened in the past several years that no one noticed happening, and yet in time will be recognized as of enormous signficance.  Don't you wish you knew what that was?  Perhaps if you did, you could make a billion in the stock market, or save a million lives.  Come back in 20 years and I'll tell you what it was.  Meanwhile, like a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, this will be the Bullet of the Unknown Revolutionary Moment.

Neocons on a Cruise

Check out this excellent -- entertaining, hair-raising -- piece of reporting:

Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren't Listening

This may shed a lot of light about what was going on in the heads of the simpletons who started this Iraq war. A lot of the attitudes this guy reports I would have expected in 1910; it's amazing that, if what this fellow encountered is anything resembling a reliable sample (it may not be), a significant number of people still think this way.

Humiliated in Iraq so we don't have to be humiliated at home?

If you're going to read anything about the Iraq war, read the periodic pieces by Peter Galbraith.  He's been writing about Iraq for a while in the NY Review of Books and if you want what Bush and his people lack -- an accurate mental map of the world (or that part of it) -- he will provide it.  Now Salon appears to have wisely caught on to him and published an excellent piece by him about the coming U.S. loss in Iraq -- acually the loss that has already happened, as he points out.

One strand of thinking about western relations with the Arab world is that the Arab world (which once was far more advanced than Europe) is burning with resentment over its weak position from colonial times onward.  In some versions of this, it is an irrational hatred that has driven them to counterproductive and unreasonable positions vis a vis Israel and the United States. In other versions, it is a perfectly rational and understandable reaction to past & current Western exploitation, support for dictatorships, and the harming of innocent people through the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I don't speak Arabic, don't know the culture, and don't pretend to know what is true.  (In general, though, I am suspicious when foreigners are cast as implacably irrational.)

But if this view is correct in some measure, it raises the supremely ironic possibility that a United States "loss" in the Iraq war would do as much good as anything to lower the risk of terrorism. If the Arab world feels humiliated, then perhaps our own humiliation could paradoxically start a process of healing.

I do so wish we had succeeded in carrying out our professed democratizing mission in Iraq.  But I shudder to think about all the human carnage that is taking place in Iraq now and in the past 5 years and how much hatred is being inflamed against our once and future great nation (though it now be on a bender of bloody blundering stupidity), and how that hatred could come back to hurt us later.

Of course this kind of idea drives conservatives into frothy madness, humiliation being the worst thing that can happen to our country in their view (worse than 60,000 American or 3 million foreign deaths, if Vietnam is any measure).  But a stiff does of humility may begin to erode at least a bit of the mountain of ill-will the Bushiz have spread around the world this decade.

The point when we were most "humiliated" -- right after 9/11 -- was the point when the world was most sympathetic to us, including the peoples of countries like Iran.  But of course that could not stand.

If our national security establishment and terror-alarmist conservative politicians were truly interested in minimizing the chance of terrorism, they would embrace humility.  But of course they are more interested in cheap hate-driven revenge (masquerading as 'necessary toughness') than in truly fighting the problem.

The Bottom Falling Out

I learned recently that 3-5 million people starved to death in India in 1943.  Who knew?  No one today seems to remember a one of them.  At least, one never hears about this tragedy in this country.  Is there a god who cares more about me, or you, than he cared about any one of those Indians, and is protecting us?  Not sure why there would be. That reminds me that there is no net -- no bottom to how bad things can get. It makes me realize I (and probably WE - we modern westerners) have a deep-seated, implicit feeling of being somehow Chosen or Protected from harm.  I recognize intellectually that this feeling is foolish -- I worry about cataclysm as much as the next guy -- but it seems to be a characteristic of growing up wealthy and secure.  Or maybe not, maybe it is just characteristic of a certain breed of person.  I bet some people feel our universal vulnerability in their bones. Perhaps some holocaust survivors, for example, fully digested the horror-potential of life (the holocaust being a good example of the bottom falling out, if only one of many in the 20th century) in a way many others have not. Perhaps people from poor nations or poor neighborhoods may be immune to the illusion as well. Or war veterans who've seen terrible things. 

Perhaps such people are more clearsighted about things.  Perhaps more ruthless.  Perhaps more frightened and full of hate and eager to start wars.  Perhaps an existential illusion of fundamental safety is key to successful liberal society in some way. 

Or maybe it's not such an illusion, but just a rational assessment that such sweeping cataclysms are not likely to strike in contemporary America.

World's oldest endurance beverage

A while back, during my first half iron race, I found that (as many athletes have reported) after several hours of effort my sense of taste became exaggerated and I totally lost my stomach for food and sweet drink. At the same time, in an endurance event of that length, they say you have to take in 300-350 calories an hour or you'll bonk (on this one, I choose to believe them rather than test it out for myself).  It can be really hard to consume that much and a lot of athletes run out of energy because they can't.

So -- in contradistinction to virtually everyone else in the entire world -- I began looking for drinks that had tons of calories but little flavor. What could I drink that would supply me with a constant stream of carbs, maybe a little protein, but wouldn't taste sickly sweet after a few hours of biking, swimming and running?  Late last year I realized there's an obvious candidate that fulfills these requirements perfectly, and in fact it has been used as a performance beverage for many years.  Beer.

However, it would be less than ideal to become intoxicated during a 21 MPH, 56-mile bike ride, and everything I read indicated that alcohol is quite the opposite of a performance-enhancer, and besides alcohol is banned by triathlon rules, so it would have to be the alcohol-free kind.

A quick look at some labels indicated that 12 oz of original Gatorade has 75 calories, 14 grams of carbs, and 0 grams of protein.  O'Douls NA beer has 70 calories, 15 grams of carbs -- and 1 gram of protein to boot!  I found a brand of beer, Clausthaler, that had even more calories (90), and tasted better too.  Not a bad comparison, and if you actually drink more because it's not sickly sweet, you could actually take in more per hour in a long event!

I did a quick Google search to see if I could find anything on line about anyone trying this, and came up completely empty, which I figured meant it was either a really stupid idea or a stroke of genius.  The only flaws I could see in the idea were 1) the carbonation, or 2) the alcohol. It turns out that even alcohol-free beer contains a little alcohol, around 0.4%.  That would mean you would have to drink 8-10 12-ounce servings to get the alcohol from one can of your average beer.  But, I figured that might be just enough to take a little pain away without actually inhibiting performance.  On the carbonation, I figured that the solution to this was to either a) try it out on long training rides and see if it was a problem for me, or b) drink flat, alcohol-free beer (i know, it's sounding less attractive by the minute).  Just like they serve flat coke sometimes in aid stations.  I figured the other potential flaw might be just that when I actually tried this it would be heinous and nasty and horrid.

Well so I tried it, and on several rides found that the beer, even in somewhat flat, warm, non-alcoholic condition, tasted really good! The carbonation (there was still some when I drank it) was not a problem (on the other hand I have a quite strong stomach) and I didn't get even the slightest buzz. 

My experimentation with beer as a performance beverage caused quite a lot of merriment among my friends; for example when I led a 100-mile bike ride they dubbed it the "BYOB Century."

Eventually the charms of beer began to wear off; in practice rides I generally just never got to the point where watered-down Gatorade tasted that bad, plus I discovered a powdered drink, Carbo-Pro, which is a white powder of complex sugars that has 112 calories a scoop -- and is totally tasteless.

But, I found beer to be a viable option, and it is still in my bag of tricks.  I'm definitely planning to put some in my special needs bag if I ever do a full Ironman race.

Ride report: BYOB Century

After months of trying to organize my first-ever 100-mile bike ride, a few friends and I were finally able to pull it off on Sunday.  It was great!  We followed this route:

http://www.mapmytri.com/ride/united-states/va/arlington/washington/491183464

I plotted it out ahead of time on internet maps, but you just never know what it's going to be like until you're on the ground -- and in fact in almost all cases it lived up to its promise.  A few roads I was afraid might be a little too busy (ie Damascus Road) turned out to be quite deserted pavement through nice forests and farmland. The ride was hilly but not overly so, with rolling hills for much of it. After our usual ride up Rock Creek to Garrett Park Rd, we hit a very nice, winding, almost completely wooded trail for the next 5-6 miles up to Lake Needwood.  (The only flaw here was that, especially in the second half of the trail, we had to pass a number of packs of runners-in-training.  But we weren't trying to break any speed records anyhow.)  Then we burst out of the trees and after a beautiful downhill ride through Lake Needwood state park, we followed a busy road (115) for two miles or so, and then it was into the farmland of Northern Montgomery County.  One of our turns was unmarked and we missed it, so we stopped to munch snacks and regroup.  Then we hit a fairly big hill, and then a nice shady road at the northern peak of the loop. 

Then we started heading, broadly speaking, back south: a busy road, more shady roads, and then it was time to cut through Little Bennett Regional Park on what looked on the map to be beautiful secluded roads.  I was out of water, so when we saw a golf driving range a quarter-mile into the park, we stopped there for 10-15 minutes and all refilled our waters. Then we got back on the road.  It was, in fact scenic.  Very scenic. But when the road turned to gravel, that was a bit of a problem and several of those present began to think about certain famous past instances that I had led people astray.  But when the road was blocked by the gate to a mysterious house, surrounded by barbed wire fence, we knew it was time to really backtrack (debate continues: drug dealer or Cheney's undisclosed location?).  So we improvised a path around the park and quickly got back on track, crossed under Route 270 on the appropriately named "Old Hundred Road" and then proceed to roll through 16 of the nicest roads to be found anywhere, from 270 all the way down to River Road.  Then a few uphill miles along River/Seneca Road (this was kind of the low point for me physically -- I noticed at this point that we were at about the 80-mile mark, and I can tell you, the idea of conquering the huge second BRE hill at that point on our upcoming ride seemed pretty inconceivable to me).

Then saw Berrysville Road enter on our left, and then it was the same route home from there some of us have done before, with a nice long stop at a Deli (on Glen Rd & Travilah; I had a nice 32-ounce fountain coke -- something I would never ordinarily buy, but which really hit the spot, a much needed infusion of corn syrup with caffeine to boot, and an ice cream sandwhich. I was in or near virgin territory here in terms of length of endurance so whatever my body screamed for I let it have).  Then home via Persimmon Tree Road and MacArthur, with several stops on that home stretch for cramps, for drinks again at a gas station, and finally, for me to fix my rear tire which was flat from an ugly slash in it (fortunately my friend Bill Murray had brought a spare tire with him -- a very nice one actually -- which he graciously sold to me on the spot).

All in all, it was an excellent ride!  Good roads, good scenery, good company, good weather (more or less -- it did top out at 92 and humid, but I didn't really notice until the very end).  Here were the stats as reported by my friend and GPS owner Will Colston: 

We rolled almost 110 miles and 5,783 vertical feet of ascent... Our moving average speed was somewhere between 16.1 (cycling computer) to 16.4 (GPS) with a moving time of 6 hours and 51 minutes and a stopped time of 1 hour 29 minutes.

Why was it called the BYOB Century? That's a story for another day . . . [Addendum: the story]

Music of the week #4: Clowns

Another little (sub-one-minute) piece I made, just fooling around.

Download jay_stanley_clowns.mp3 (1.5 megs, 48 seconds, 256 kbits)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Race Report: Lake Montclair Olympic Triathlon

Lake Montclair Olympic Distance Triathlon
June 24, 2007

The Lake Montclair Olympic Triathlon was about 45 minutes south of DC.  Got up at 4:00 a.m. to meet Will Colston, Bill Murray and Dave Turvene (see Dave's race report) at Dave’s house to rack the bikes on Dave’s minivan and hit the road by 5:00 for the 7:00 gun time.  After an uneventful drive, we parked, took down the bikes, grabbed our gear bags and rode the mile or so to the transition area with plenty of time to spare.  We got word that the water was supposedly below 79 degrees, so wetsuits would be legal (to my disappointment as a strong swimmer, and nearly everyone else’s relief).  Dave, Bill and I were assigned to adjacent racks so it was fun chatting while we set up our transitions.  Will was a little further down.  Here we were in the "before" shot:

We went down to the water for a warmup swim but they were clearing the water and beach of people just as we got there so we lost out.  There were a few blessedly brief announcements from the race director and the designated-charity spokespeople, and the national anthem, and then it was time for the first wave to go, of which I was part (assignments were based on the estimated swim time you had given them at signup).  We waded in for the water start as the race director yelled “30 seconds” – she didn’t waste any time – and then we were off! 

I actually didn’t feel too great at the beginning of the swim.  My wetsuit is just a little too tight and maybe my breathing felt constricted, and my arms felt a little sore (I had done a hard swim on Thursday three days earlier, perhaps that was a mistake).  There was a little jostling at the start but it quickly settled down.  I actually drafted off some people for a bit, but soon lost them. 

The 1-mile swim course followed the thin pond, dogged left around a point, around a buoy there, and back.  On the way out, I drifted left of the main pack, and as a result cut the corner much closer than most, meaning I swam a shorter distance than most.  The pack seemed to hug the buoys as if they were staying on the right side of a road – instinct perhaps but not smart.  On the way home, I again found myself swimming kind of alone – but I didn’t worry about it, since as I learned on the way out, leaving the pack can be the smart move.  Except here it wasn’t.  At some point I realized I’d drifted quite a bit off course to the left, and was just circling wide and wasting time.  So much for my eschew-the-pack smugness. My lesson for future swims: spend less energy doing quick-glimpse, in-stroke sighting, and take the time a little more often to stop, do a few breast strokes, and really get a good read of the situation.  I was loathe to spend the time do to that, and to break up my swimming rhythm.  But a few seconds spent really looking around can save a whole lot of seconds on solo tours of the less-traveled corners of a lake. 

(What I’m really waiting for is the day when I can affix a little GPS receiver between my shoulder blades and get an LCD readout on the inside of my goggles telling me my location on the course in relation to all buoys, my current heading, my pace, heart rate, expected finish time.  Maybe I could check my e-mail too, in case I get bored on a long swim.)

Anyways, about 100 feet from shore, when I didn’t think there was anyone very close to me, someone suddenly grabbed my ankle.  That was a first for me.  I was so shocked, I stopped swimming and looked back momentarily.  Figuring they feared I was about to kick them in the face or something, I shrugged off my annoyance & swam on.  Still not sure what that was about, whether it was an aggressive move or what.

My swim time was 28:02.  I had swum it in 25:30 in the pool, and though my race times usually lag my pool times (despite the wetsuit which is supposed to speed you up), I was hoping for a 27-minute swim or even faster.  I blame it on going off course.  But, my swim time put me 33rd in the overall field of 393, and 5th out of 42 in my 40-44 age group. (I’m 39 but you’re categorized by your age at end of calendar year).

Ran up the beach; too winded at first, I just ran in my full wetsuit for a bit, then reached back and tugged off the top of my wetsuit to my waist.  Into transition, tried to take it off standing but got all tangled, so I sat down and pulled it off each leg.  On with helmet, bike off rack, and out onto the street to begin the bike leg.  Though I wasn’t especially gunning for glory on the T1 time (see T2, below), my T1 time was 1:25, the 10th fastest overall. I credit that to keeping my transitions as simple and clutter-free as possible: I clip my shoes into my pedals ahead of time, don’t fiddle with gloves or glasses or anything like that – and today, for the first time in a tri, I wore my shirt under my wetsuit so I didn’t have to fight into that.  It was just take off wetsuit, put on helmet, grab bike, run for the exit.

A bit of a steep climb to get out of the park, but no problem for my super-duper triple chain ring.  I took it easy, telling myself, “easy, easy, start slow, rest up a little, relax” as I’d planned to do for the beginning of the bike ride. 

The bike course once we left the park was 4 laps of a 6-mile loop – almost like a large criterium.  I was a little concerned because it was said to be hilly, though it didn’t look too bad on the elevation charts I saw online.  As I rode around on my first loop, I saw that in fact it was an excellent course for me – lots of long, slightly sloping uphills, straightaways, and downhills, all of which are my strength.  As opposed to real hills, which I just don’t seem to have the right kind of muscles for (or waistline perhaps).  In the pleasant first loop, I was pleased to pass more people than passed me (in fact I hardly remember anyone passing me on that first loop).  The course, which was one automobile lane wide, did get more and more crowded as all 568 participants crowded onto it, making it difficult at times, as when trying to pass someone who was themselves trying to pass someone.  It sucks to have to apply your brakes in a race, when not cornering, but that happened a few times.

The only negative on the bike was that my front derailleur was a little out of tune; I’d fiddled with it the day before but hadn’t quite gotten it fixed in the time I had.  If anything it seemed to get worse on this race.  When I tried to go from my outer chain ring to my middle one, it would go straight down to my small chain ring.  I was really afraid of losing the chain throughout the race – I almost did one time, preventing it only by putting my finger on the chain to press it against the gear until I could back up my pedals to get it fully back onto the gear.  The result was I spent more time in my large chain ring that I probably would have otherwise.

Each loop, I would pass people on the straightaway and especially on the down hills, and then on the one area where the grade became too much for my legs, a bunch of people would pass me.  Then I would re-pass them on the downhill more often than not, and the straightaway.  I went fairly hard on the bike, but did pace myself.  As I flowed into the fourth and final lap, my thoughts began to turn to the run.

Took my feet out of my bike shoes while coasting down the quarter-mile hill back into the transition area, and hopped off at the dismount line.  My bike time was 1:07:26, 41st overall and 7/42 in my age group.  I averaged 21.4 mph. 

I sped to my rack, took off my helmet, grabbed my hat, and ran out of transition.  Total time: 28 seconds. 

Since I didn’t need to put shoes on for the run, I was gunning for the top T2 time.  However some 19 year old young buck seems to have somehow gone through in 26 seconds, besting me by 2 seconds – and that included, I presume, putting on shoes.  This guy I noticed also did his 10k run in 39 minutes, so I reckon that's his secret – just sprint like hell through the transition at maximum speed. Coincidentally, in the overall rankings, this guy finished just one slot above me. He beat me by 3 seconds, so at least his T2 wasn't the margin :) 

The only problem with being a T-artist is that you have no time to switch gears in your head before you’re into the next event.  The first 50 feet of the run was along a serious gravel trail – we’re talking big, plum-sized rocks.  So I just walked it.  It was a good chance to rest for a minute, picking my way through the rocks, and switch gears in my mind.  Here I got my first of many comments on my bare feet, from the volunteers at the transition exit.  “Where are your shoes!?”  I answered with a smile, “don’t like ‘em, don’t need em.”  I paused and looked down.  “Well, except maybe along here” I laughed.  My little rocky stroll was over too quickly, leading into a nice comfortable leaf-strewn path through the woods, and it was time to get my brick legs moving and get this 10k done with.

The first two miles were unpleasant.  The course was a spaghetti tangle.  Usually I memorize my race courses, and know exactly where I am at all times during the race.  But after checking it out a few weeks earlier I’d forgotten to circle back and memorize it.  I quickly got totally disoriented.  The result was that I felt like I was in some kind of existentialist hell – running along quiet, mostly deserted curving suburban streets, following the random instructions of volunteers – “turn here,” “straight here,” “turn here” with no sense of how far I’d gone or how far I had to go.  Compounding the problem, there didn’t appear to be mile markers on the course, and I’d forgotten to mark a lap counter on my watch upon starting the run.  Finally I saw a marking for “two mile point” and set my watch to that.  Also my legs were stiff as usual and also my diaphragm was sore, my chest felt tight, my ribs just slightly crampy, as if I had stitches in my sides.  (I figured I was breathing harder for the previous 90 minutes than I’m used to breathing for that length of time.)  So I soldiered on.  Lot of people complained about the hills but I’d heard it was hilly and I just took it one step at a time and they didn’t seem too bad to me.  I guess I was sort of resigned to the unpleasantness.

Over the course of the race, I did start feeling better.  According to my watch, I did miles 3 & 4 in 7:18 each, mile 5 in 7:50, and mile 6 in 6:31.  The course was quite hilly but I also think the accuracy of the mile markers was suspect (the fastest mile I’ve ever done was a 6:00 at a track, and it almost killed me, and nothing I did on this course approached that level of intensity.)

Along the way, I got the usual comments about my bare feet.  “There’s the barefoot guy again!” “Go barefoot guy!” “Where are your shoes?” “Are you running the WHOLE race like that?”  A cop giving me a friendly “are you crazy” look.  I also got a few comments about my hat – I wore a broad-brimmed Australian-style hat I picked up at REI.  Everyone wears baseball-style hats, and anyways why shouldn’t I bring as much shade with me as I can?  The hat’s maybe a bit heavier but it’s pretty light and breathable and keeps the sun off my neck, ears and face, not just my forehead.  I don't love the look but give me functionality any day.

Finally, saw the 6-mile marker, and really began to speed up for the final 0.2 mile.  It always feels good when you have juice in the tank to finish strong.  As I crossed the dam back toward the finish, I eased up past a guy who was running along.  Then he pulled back even with me.  I turned to him with a smile and said, “you're not going to let me BEAT you are you?”  And we both sped up even more.  He pulled ahead of  me.  I pulled even with him.  By now we were in the chute, and it seemed like tons of people were screaming at us as we came in neck and neck.  And then I pulled ahead of him, and crossed the finish line with no one visible in front of me – yes! 

Then it was into the finishing area, got a medal, gave back my chip, had a friendly word with the guy I raced through the chute, and sat on a perfect grassy shady bank and watched my friends come in.  Will, who had started 6:00 after me two waves back, came in 5:30 after me by my watch, so it looked like he’d beaten me and I ruefully congratulated him.  But I realized I messed up my timing at the finish and it turned out that actually I beat him, by just 39 seconds.

My run time for the 10k was 48:59, or 7:54 per mile average pace.  123/393 overall, 26/42 in age group. As usual, the run was my worst leg.

Overall my time was 2:26:22.  I was 40th of 393 overall, and 6th of 42 in my age group.

Overall it was a really fun race that had a good spirit and atmosphere on a beautiful day (sunny & 69 at the start with little wind & low humidity) with good friends.  I also enjoyed the olympic distance – this was my first full olympic race.  It is not as painful as a sprint and not as draining as a half ironman.

 

Addendum: they posted a race "highlights video" that includes brief shots of me emerging from the wooded trail at the beginning of the run and at the finish line: http://www.beexpressive.com/montclair07.htm.