Really Bad Joke

Did anyone else see this article on Inside Triathlon's website today?

The first half of it, written by Jeff Henderson, is spot-on - the discussion of how we can reduce the waste and pollution that are produced in even the smallest of local triathlons.

What I don't understand is why the editors had to effectively downplay such an important issue by turning it into some ridiculous debate. Editor Timothy Carlson wrote the second half of the article, which I guess is supposed to forecast what triathlon could be like in the later half of the century on a fully polluted planet, but honestly his tone and jeering reference to locals-only aid station volunteers with Priuses, and his reference to Calfee's bamboo bikes and their hefty price tags, really just make it seem like he hates environmentalists and that he doesn't want the sport to be inconvenienced. Somewhat appropriately, in his closing statement he reflects exactly what Henderson identifies as a major problem in individuals, the interest in short-term gratification, the here-and-now over the future, as well as a hopelessness that any individual effort can make a difference.

I'd write them a letter but I am a. too angry and b. too baffled by their intention.

What's wrong with a simple healthy discussion of how triathlon can be greener? Why can't we talk about Chris Lieto's Green Athlete campaign, wherein he is driving to [almost] all of his races in a van that is powered by 100% biodiesel? Why can't we talk about how Wildflower had both recycling and trash bins everywhere? Why can't we talk about how 5430 Sports is pursuing full sustainability and zero waste in their events? Wouldn't it be WAY more positive and productive to address real ways in which we can all work to protect the sport and the planet that we all love, than it was to basically make a joke out of green initiatives? Inside Triathlon and other magazines have the power to influence a lot of people. Give readers something positive, equip them with both reasons for and methods to help the environment and make their triathlon experience a sustainable one. Don't give them some big semi-sensationalistic argument for why the green effort is pointless and inconvenient. Even if it is meant as a joke, is it really the most effective way for the magazine to reach its readers about this subject?

I am curious to hear what others think. Maybe I completely misinterpreted the article, who knows.

Some Observations

I have become one of those people with an obnoxious Starbucks order. Grande Soy Chai Latte with Three Pumps Chai and One Shot Espresso.

Yikes.

One problem with this perfect little concoction is that it's too freaking expensive for me to ever leave a tip for the poor folks who have to make it. I should switch back to a plain old soy latte and get back under the $4 mark, but it's not as good. Really I should stop drinking soy and stop indirectly supporting the destruction of the rainforests to make room for soybean fields and switch back to cow's milk, but there's another host of problems there. Maybe rice milk?


Separate observation: this past Saturday night, the night before my big almost-win, I spent like an hour trying to get these fancy elastic laces set up on my new racing shoes. It's an unnecessarily complex process, made more challenging by the fact that the promised "instructions inside the box" were not there. Yes this brand sports the magical Macca endorsement, but in my opinion the system is whack. I am going to take all the plasticky bits off and just tie the laces with a nice normal secure bow.


Another one: I am sitting here debating whether to register for a few races. I hate planning way far in advance, I like allowing for contingencies and these hefty non-refundable race entry fees definitely make me balk, but it would be even worse to miss out on racing entirely. I guess I'll just suck it up - BAM and Pacific Crest are the current races in question.


Lastly: I got a funny email from my Mom. She wanted to know how to type a parenthesis into a text message.

#500!

This is the 500th post I have written since I started this blog in May of 2006... Since today can be summarized in just a few words (overslept, it's snowing, s'posed to snow more, kitty says hi), today's post will instead be a little Courtenay's Blog Recap for those of you who weren't here from the beginning (which is probably everyone except my mom... took me a while to start posting daily with gory details all about my fascinating life!)

-I got engaged. (warning: from a gossip standpoint, it's all downhill from here...)

-I got famous.

-I stopped being engaged.

-I started documenting conversations with Mom. (see more here)

-I made a threat - little did I know it would actually happen!!

-I rode the crap out of my bike.

-I started teasing Huntress. Still haven't stopped... sorry Lisa you know I love you!

-I raced.

-Shaz and I picked the wroooong place to stop.

-ImetGregweemailedhemovedin!! (it happened so fast I didn't even get a chance to blog about it!)

-I got to hang out with the coolest massage therapist ever.

-I teased some more.

-I met Katie!

-I proved that girls love goggles.

-We moved.

-I won a triathlon!?!?

-I made tons of cool new friends (see links to the left I mean right!)


and the rest is pretty recent history...

Update, as promised

After conducting my favourite form of research, The Casual Survey of Friends, Family, and Readers, I have concluded that Charlie's peeing incidents were the direct result of my 10 day absence (and Greg's 10 days of alone time with kitty). Camp was the first of many multi-day trips for the year. Good thing none of our furniture or stuff is very nice!

Other interesting facts on the day:

-Greg seems to think that he can get revenge for the 10 out of 11 Scrabulous games he's lost to me by pelting me with snowballs. I will be reminding him later that I am the expert at good revenge.

-I ordered my USA Triathlon license online a month ago and I renewed my USA Cycling license 5 days ago. Both arrived in the mail today - interesting.

-I may have gotten out of an astronomical $150 doctor bill today via tears. But really I am frustrated by our healthcare system. I pay $120/month for health insurance that basically only gets me $5 off my birth control pills, unless I miraculously spend $5000 on doctor visits (which at $150 a pop might not be that much of a stretch) and other health crap within the year. Oh and I got a total of $15 off of a $200 lab bill, so that's pretty good I guess. I am tempted to cancel my insurance all together, however The Man has done an excellent job of brainwashing me into thinking it's way too risky and expensive and irresponsible to live without insurance and we have so many good affordable options in this country, UNLESS of course god forbid you have anything in your medical history like asthma or some abnormal test or something like that.

God.

Time to open a bottle of whine wine.

Heroes in a Half Shell

Happy New Year!

Well, after a CRAZY and PARTYLICIOUS New Year's Eve, I am finally finally feeling coherent enough to blog.

Psych.

Our NYE was totally boring yet totally perfect. Healthy dinner, some netflix, and then we passed out at 9:30 p.m. I am still feeling sleep-deprived after lots of late nights and early mornings on the east coast (basically midnight-8 a.m., nothing drastic but Cour10ay totally needs her 9+ hours in order to be remotely nice/charming), so this was the best possible evening for me!

On to other peoples' more interesting lives...

I recently learned that, in the Reno hospital system, health-care workers are not allowed to call overweight people obese, overweight, fat, etc. The term is now officially "bariatric" (like geriatric but with a b). And, the hospitals have special 4XL-sized toilets (the size of a small hot tub), wheelchairs, beds, doorways, the list goes on. I guess this is important in Reno, where 55% of the population is "bariatric". If you don't believe me, just hang out for 10 minutes in the Trader Joe's/Big Lots parking lot.

I also recently learned one reason why the McMansion Explosion is so huge in Anne Arundel County, Maryland (and probably more than a few other counties). Thirty years ago, there were hardly any developments in the whole county. Basically everything that wasn't a town was farmland. Then farmers began to sell to developers... My mom's friend Ricky Davis had a farm where he raised cattle and crops, and hosted Future Farmers of America events. The farm was in his family for over 200 years. Recently, Ricky's neighbor farmer died and none of his family wanted to keep up the farm, so it was sold to a developer who put up 15 or so monstrosities with crappy landscaping (read: no trees, so everyone from the road could see how ginormous the houses were). The people who moved in started going over to Ricky's, complaining that the cows smelled, the farm machinery was unsightly, the FFA events were disturbing them, etc., and he needed to stop doing all that. Ricky fought back for a while but eventually he saw that things were only getting worse, so he too sold out to a developer and moved to Iowa (to farm in peace, I assume.)

It all makes me cry. It feels so unsustainable to me - continually bulldozing over land to make it into strip malls or housing developments where everyone gets a 4 car garage with a couple of acres of land. In Reno, which p.s. is in a DESERT, this land is usually landscaped with all kinds of east-coast plants that require lots of water, which by the way doesn't really grow on trees in the desert, so to speak. In Maryland, it's just making everything ugly, and contributing to the death of the Chesapeake Bay, which is another rant of mine that I will save for another blog.

At the moment I am quite happy to be in Incline, where homeowners have to jump through twelve hoops to do anything to their houses lest they adversely affect the environment (or their neighbors' lake view).

Whoa.... where did the "happy" of my post-title go?!

I guess O'Neill's a fatty?!

Nathan O'Neill gets busted for prescription diet drug Phentermine..

Why does he have a prescription for an appetite suppressant in the first place? He gets too celebratory at Krispy Kreme after all his stage race wins or something? I am curious to hear how this gets spun.

Does this question really help Toyota at ALL?

Courtesy of a post-race participant survey from a race with Toyota as the primary sponsor:

When you purchase your next vehicle, how likely are you to consider a vehicle with Hybrid Synergy Drive?
- Probably Consider
- Possibly Consider
- Might Consider
- Probably Won't Consider

I'm sorry, but since when does totally wussified survey language offer anyone any insight to what consumer's might think? "Possibly Consider"?? Yeah. I'll consider it. Sure, why not. Maybe I'd consider buying it too, if the price weren't high, if the engine still didn't need fossil fuels, and if the Prius weren't a. so damn ugly and b. the latest symbol of "look! i care about the environment! i don't recycle and i can't live without air conditioning but i drive a Prius!".

I guess the wishy-washy questioning is par for the course. At least they're giving money to my sport, so I should probably can it...

Nevada Day and other randoms

Today, all the kids are off school and various businesses are closed so that people can watch parades and celebrate Nevada Day. I had never heard of such a thing, but then again I hadn't heard of Ski Week either prior to moving to San Francisco.

Back to me: today I did my run workout on the treadmill at the gym, so that I could do my core workout there afterwards. ("Doing Core At Home" is the biggest joke ever in my experience.) The gym has several TV's tuned to different channels. Here's what I got to watch today during my run:

-tail end of Dr. Phil, in subtitles. Most frequently used word was "gonna".

-Fox News. Headlines and stories included "Bomb Planner Released After Sucking Up to Yemeni President" (sucking up?! this is now a phrase for news headlines?!) and "$4000 worth of Underwear Stolen from Victoria's Secret" (this story took at least two minutes and featured gratuitous Vickie's runway shots, of course).

-1.5 episodes of Judge Judy. I find this show even more depressing than MTV in the revealing-America's-stupidity department.

-a 1-hour special on Travis Tritt, who apparently is a Country Music star who got married at 18, divorced at 20, married and divorced again, and I didn't catch what his status is now. Also he has hung out with Paris Hilton and he was good buddies with Ray Charles and Johnny Cash and he has a new album out. Also, (and this part is meant to be very interesting) he refuses to wear a cowboy hat.

I watched this last one the most. It was the least retarded.

Bad News for Cheaters

The DEA's "Raw Deal" operation...

I am so naive. This story totally shocked me. Especially the bits about the house full of new flat-screens, and the kitchen sink.

Hipster

There is a guy I see on my morning commute.

He is about my age I would guess. Rides an old cruiser-type bike, tends to wear hoodies and very patched up jeans. You know, your typical bay area hipster type guy who might take the Ugly-Is-Cool thing a bit too far, after all we are not talking about ugly babies here, but much bigger grown-ups, but I like to think of myself as the tolerant type and the more variety in my day, the better.

BUT, here's where I laugh.

He has been knitting this scarf for like 2 weeks.

It's brown and orange.

The cute part is he's pretty excited about it : "It's my first one!"

I could have told you that

Here's one big reason for moving.

I think there should be more and better carpool resources/incentives, expand BART, and double the bridge tolls. Even triple them. It's single-person cars that are behind the congestion - make it too expensive for people not to find alternatives.

Further Observations on Topics About Which I am Now an Expert

This weekend, we watched live coverage of the ITU World Championship Triathlon on the internet. Actually we just watched the men's race because the women's race was on at 4 a.m. our time. Side note: I have noticed that in triathlon, women tend to be treated equally to the men regarding distance AND prize money. That's nice.

But my point in this post is to whine profusely about the commentary in this "live coverage". It totally sucked! Cyclists are sooo spoiled by Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin! Ugh! We had to put the thing on mute, the commentary was so annoying.

"Well, Libby Burrell [WHY did the dude have to say his co-host's FULL NAME every single time?!] this is just literally the most literally exciting race of the year!"

Literally was this guy's favourite word. I didn't catch his name because, thankfully, Libby Burrell did not say it every 30 seconds, but she had her own irritating habits...

"Yes, Mr. Annoyingpants, this is truly shaping up to be an epic event. Javier Gomez is running to win. But no! Here comes Daniel Unger! Epic, this is epic!"

As it is, I HATE the overusage of the word "epic" with regards to sports. I mean, 80 miles in the pouring rain in Merced during March definitely sucks, especially since we usually pay to be out there racing, but it just doesn't quite hold up to Beowulf's and Aeneas' standards. Not Epic. The Tour can get away with using epic because the race is pretty insane, and because Phil and Paul recognize the value of only using "epic" for truly extreme circumstances.

Further: an olympic distance triathlon? This was a 1.5 K swim, 40 k bike, 10k run. The guys raced for like an hour and forty minutes! In weather-appropriate tank tops and little spandex shorts! Not not not not not epic, yes definitely hard, but not epic. I don't care if Unger collapsed from exhaustion/emotion/dramatic effect at the end. Which he did, but that just emphasizes the drama more than anything.

Anyway all this ranting aside, I enjoyed watching a bunch of incredible athletes trying to sort out who's best. After all, they didn't choose to have Libby Burrell and Whatsisface giving the play-by-play.


Oh, p.s., Cyclingnews.com's live coverage kicks ironmanlive.com in the tush. Royally, and completely.

Professional Extensive Product Review of Sony Ericsson w810i

So, the new phone is actually pretty cool.

Interface is good. Text messaging is WAY easier than on previous device, where I had to hit 5 buttons to get it to type in lower case. Datebook and alarm settings are good too (it even has snooze! what luxury!), the ringtone sounds great, and it came with a nice set of headphones. AND the camera is easy to use with cycling gloves on and takes very decent photos!

My complaint: all this Sony Walkman music application business is not compatible with my laptop since it's a (gasp) Mac. Not that I need the music features, but it would be nice to have the option. Oh well.

P.S. ADDED BONUS: I can hear what people are saying! AND they can hear me! How exciting! Now I just have to make sure that, going forward, we are travelling to races in areas that actually have cell coverage...

Goof Part 2

Here I am being a moron in front of a camera again:

The good news is Smartts seems to have joined me in moron-photo-land!

Anyway, yesterday was Team Photo Day in the Marin Headlands. I was amazed that it came together - everyone made it there on time, no one forgot their helmets or bikes or clothes (although apparently we did have some requests to do a nude photo shoot)(boys. typical.), everyone remembered their lip gloss, and the sun came out.

Afterwards we went to Sushi in the city, to a place I have been many times and always liked but NO MORE. Godzila was TERRIBLE to us last night! I am sure my outfit didn't help, I was freezing after the shoot so I kept my longsleeve on and so did Taitt, whereas all the other customers in there were in their perfumed $500-jeans Pac Heights finery, but still it was totally lame. We occuppied one of the 5 tables in the whole place for over an hour with no food, shoulders slumped over the table in full I'm a Starving Athlete Who Needs to Eat Constantly mode, waiting for our dinner, drooling as plate after plate of sushi got delivered to not-our-table, but instead to tables that ordered WAY AFTER we did... anyway it was awful.

And to top it all off we all somehow under-ordered, so when we finally got our food and inhaled it in 4 minutes and thirty seconds (including all the pickled ginger flakes and random rice kernels), we were of course still hungry. Not sure what everyone else did but I was on my couch eating a spinach salad with tofu and mushrooms at 9:45 p.m. I ran out of Ben & Jerry's.

But hey, we saved about $15 total because we left a zero-dollar tip. Don't mess with a former waitress, I know that it's not that hard to smile or to provide customer service.

A Death

My mom told me that a childhood friend committed suicide last Tuesday, leaving behind his wife, two young children, parents, and a sister who was supposed to be getting married in a month but now might be postponing the wedding.

He spent the day working on a construction site with his dad, then went home and put a gun to his head. The funeral was on Saturday.

Poor Carter, to have felt so miserable and to have seen no other way out.


I was stuck in my own misery of trivialities last week, now I don't even remember all the details of all the world's transgressions against me but for some reason everything just felt so terrible (no it was NOT pms). I had a feeling some real tragedy might come along to snap me out of my silly wallowing. Then I heard about Carter.

I remember a similar thing back in 2001. On September 7 of that year, I turned 23. It was a Friday night. I went out celebrating with a ton of friends (here I am on that night with my friend Ginny), and at the end of the night wound up toppling to the ground on Charlottesville's Downtown Mall, an outdoor pedestrian mall paved with bricks. My friend Alex fell on top of me. I cracked my head open, bled all over the place, had a huge circle of late-night concerned onlookers around me, and then went to the emergency room in an ambulance to get 5 staples in my head. I cried and cried, wondering how to tell my mom that The Good Child got drunk and fell spectacularly. I spent three days at home depressed in my apartment. On the fourth day, I went to the post office before going to work, stood in line behind one of my former coffee-shop customers watching the TV above the counter, and both of us wondered aloud if the plane flying into the building was some sort of hoax.

It was not.

I leapt out of my pool of self-pity pretty darn fast.

This photo was taken in October of that year, when Jessica, Brian, and I (L-R) went to New York for the CMJ Music Conference, which had been postponed from Sept. 14 to Oct. 13. Andy's old photo of himself inspired me to look through my archives...

I have no analysis or final word on tragedy. I do hope to have compassion and at least a small sense of perspective. E.g. if it rains and is generally meteorologically miserable at Sea Otter this weekend, I don't think I'll burst into tears and claim it's the end of the world. It's just bike racing. Just a small part of life, and one that's there to make us happy.

Press

Last Friday, after painting and lazing about all morning, I took myself and 3 of my bikes and a bunch of wheels and crap to the Freewheel so I could use their stands and tools and actually get some mechanic stuff done (with a little help secured via eyelash-batting and general Courtenay charm such as "Travis, do you have any special scissors that actually work back there?!"...).

Anyway, as I was sitting there fiddling with a seatpost, my cell phone rang, and for some reason even though it was an unknown number AND I was totally busy AND in a public place, I answered it.

It was a reporter from the San Jose Mercury News calling to ask me some questions about Sea Otter and women's bike racing in the U.S. We chatted for a while about both topics. (And I put my saddle and seatpost on totally wrong during this time).

The article ran today, you can read it here. I thought it was a good article, and I was actually glad to see that none of my words were used. I don't see myself on the same level as the Webcor women or the Colavita women. Not yet, anyway, not yet... My relative newness to the sport, combined with my background in economics, means that I actually have a pretty positive take on the state of women's racing in the U.S. I have more of an "all things considered the situation is pretty good" sort of outlook.

I must be getting soft in my old age - I think there is room for various opinions on this one.

Shh

Playing one's iTunes out loud at work should be BANNED. Get HEADPHONES.

(note: perpetrators are the assistants to the non-recycling rich parents mentioned yesterday)
(note #2: none of these folks are my co-workers. they are space-sharers but not co-workers)

Where was my camera?!

Post-race fashion faux pas of the day, for which I totally wish I'd had my camera:

BMC's Mike Sayers.
Red baseball cap,
Ankle socks with some sort of athletic sandals,
and capri pants.

Not joking. The look was wrong wrong wrong.

For one thing, if you are short, which I am so I know this from experience, and which Mike is so he needs to know, anyway if you are short and you wear capri pants and socks you will look even shorter.

For another thing, if you are a guy, don't wear capris. Wear either shorts or pants. Capri pants are for girls only because they draw the eye to the butt and hip area, rather than bulging biceps and broad shoulders and other manly physicalities. If your shorts hit somewhere in the calf-range of your leg, that means that the crotch of the shorts better be at mid-thigh or lower, because crotch-of-shorts-in-groin-area combined with hem-of-shorts-at-mid-calf means you are not wearing shorts, instead you are wearing girly capris.

I am spending entirely too much time on this explanation. If you are a guy and you are confused just let me know, I'll draw you some pictures or something, but I will spare the rest of you...

Anyway, back to Mike: For the sake of his as-yet winless team, I hope he goes along the same path as another pro whose appearance I recently critiqued - Henk won today!

Cat's Hill

Well, here I was yammering away about babies and work, when there was a much more interesting conversation going on elsewhere about the demise of yet aNOTHer lower-category women's race in favour of some Master's race.

In the words of my late grandfather: Let me say Three Things.

1. I appreciate the fact that Master's racing is the "bread and butter" for promoters and the cycling industry as a whole. They generally buy all their stuff, they like and afford the nice stuff, and a lot of them seem to race multiple times a day since they are eligible for multiple events. So to a certain extent, creating extra master's categories will be profitable for a promoter.

2. But this seems to be a case of viewing the short-term rather than the long-term, because adding masters' fields usually comes at the expense of a women's or junior's field, both of which tend to be smaller than the regular men's fields. How is limiting development-category racing good for the future of our sport? From a woman's perspective: as it is, we basically go from being a beginner to being a circus lion's plaything once we accumulate enough points to go from Cat. 4 to Cat. 3. Pitting juniors against adults calls up a similar image. Getting thrown in WAY over your head usually makes you feel like you suck and then makes you want to quit. Yeah, that's really great for development...

And 3. Regarding the Master's 45+ 2/3/4 so-that-the-cat-1's-can't-win-like-they-always-do... it's retarded. A win is definitely cheapened if you stipulate-out and qualify-out all your competitors. If you don't like losing, go do a charity ride or race against yourself. Or go ask a little kid if they want to play 52-pick-up.