Myth is the material; tragedy is what you make of it

The world of professional cycling saw two news stories of no small import this weekend. Alberto Contador was stripped of his 2010 Tour de France title (as well as all his professional results since then) for a positive blood test at the Tour, having been issued a "retroactive ban" from racing, which will expire this August. In other news, the federal prosecutors investigating Lance Armstrong's alleged doping announced quietly that they were dropping charges against Big Tex. (Why were the feds interested? Your US Postal Service sponsored his team, so government money was involved in supporting his racing.)

One case of the other shoe dropping (well, the other fuzzy red slipper dropping quietly as the UCI crawls back into bed with its sponsoring businesses, hoping that they didn't notice anything. Successfully, it seems; love is indeed blinding), one case of a ball dropping (there being no instant replay, we can argue for months over whether Armstrong's legal team should have been called for defensive interference or given credit for a blocked pass).

Such is the stuff that myths are made of. And epics and tragedies are made from. Red Kite Prayer had a somewhat pedestrian retelling of Lance Armstrong as Oedipus, but it aims too low--dragging the story of Oedipus down from myth, from the things a culture just knows and attempting to nail it to the facts (such as they might be [re]constructed) of the Armstrong case. No, the point is that Armstrong is already a myth; the facts---facts are for prosecutors when they have balls and institutional support and no political armtwisting to leave them the fuck alone; it's World Cancer Day, and cancer is a trump suit and…where was I? ... Armstrong is a myth. Contador is a myth. They're bigger than life, bigger than facts. Creations, created through words and culture (and money, but hey, this is modernity, we don't create our myths by annual animal sacrifice anymore).

Now take the myths and spin out tragedy and epic and, if you can, comedy.

Some enterprising Aeschylus can tell of Armstrong's cancer as preemptive punishment for the wrongs he's about to commit; the final act in the trilogy can redeem the character through "selfless"--thinly veiled penance--cancer work. Redemption and closure are options in drama, after all; this isn't real life--maybe like a sweet formulaic Shakespeare moment, the redemption can ring hollow (don't tell me that the Montagues and Capulets weren't slaughtering each other in the streets again before the star-crossed lovers' blood had dried). The broken family echoing across generations, that's just the icing so you know what kind of cupcake you're getting.

A Sophocles can treat Contador--the Spanish enemy, dark-skinned of course, with a stupid finish-line post-up and bad teeth, to boot--and force us to confront his humanity, make us all complicit in his crime and bring us through the muck to come out feeling smugly better on the other side of it (I'm sure if the New Yorker doesn't pick this up, then the Atlantic will; liberals love that shit).

This leaves Greg LeMond, Tyler Hamilton, and Floyd Landis for a Euripides, and a sophisticated (ah, sophistry, thy name is WADA) romp through philosophical oppositions: the clean and the dirty, the wet and the dry, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the north and the south (of course; what's an American tragedy without north v. south?). LeMond, Hamilton, and Landis--each of them spinning, tumbling, but in orbit of Armstrong's gravity. LeMond crashing Lance's ("Cancer! I win. Cancer cancer cancer cancer.") press conference, melting into incoherence, every fiber of his being tied up in opposition to Armstrong; if LeMond is to be the greatest American cyclist, Armstrong can be nothing; if LeMond is clean Armstrong must be dirty and if Armstrong clean, then LeMond dirty--only narrative logic can explain LeMond. He has transcended humanity and entered myth.

Hamilton, equally twisted, and perhaps the most colorful of the bunch, bringing the brawl to an Armstrong bar (how West Side Story!), and opening a himself-themed restaurant (one gapes in adimaration of the heroic ego) whose centerpiece, no, whose omphalos, is its bathrooms--Armstrong bathrooms! Tread upon the symbol of my enemy while you defecate! Here is a master of the symbolic shambolic act.

In comparison to Hamilton, (how can you compete with a drinkin' man persona on the stage or screen or epic campfire telling?) Landis seems almost brutally pedestrian; he's the John Henry of the bunch, going up against not a mechanical steam engine but something more powerful, a story. Landis can hammer at facts all day and all night, in exquisite and heartbreaking detail. His soul slipping away is all subtext, of course; he's busy naming names and telling how it works.

This isn't the stuff for journalists anymore. Matt Rendell told the death of Marco Pantani, and for 320 pages, the story doesn't get out of the dirt; the facts are so… known. Cocaine, EPO, iron supplements, yeah, yeah, yeah, names dates times amounts.

The domineering Italian mother still convinced of his innocence; the girlfriends and "doctors" and psychologists and coaches, of whom Mama Pantani thought Marco innocent--now we're gtting somewhere, for they all tell stories, their stories all make sense only as stories, not facts. But the stories are better than the facts, and stories are what we make of myths, the things that we do to make the larger than life understandable while still larger than life. The Death of Marco Pantani, the Passion of Greg LeMond, the Twisted Saga of Tyler Hamilton, and the Ballad of Floyd Landis must be sung, not written.

This Thanksgiving, let's talk about the economy

My fellow Americans [that's how one is supposed to begin these things, no?],

This Thanksgiving, we will gather with our families and give thanks for the many good things that we have. The first thing we always put, with varying (and not necessarily related) levels of piety and sincerity, is each other. Then we enumerate, or mention, or ponder, our stuff. But while we're all here, let's have a talk. There are some folks missing Thanksgiving because they're camped out in public parks and various other public places across the country.

I don't know what to make of them. But I do know that they want us to think. And they want us to act. It's probably fair to say that they don't exactly know what action they want. But if we're to have high-quality action, we've gotta talk. You'll be sitting down at the table with those who love you, despite the fact that you each think that each others' politics are absurd. Now's the time to have a few drinks (we're tipping back the pinot noir with our turkey. Probably some white wine before, and bourbon after) and open up a conversation.

Resolve to bring up the economy. Because it sucks; we can all agree on that. And we can't vote in a new government (regardless of our politics, I'm sure we can all find someone representing us that we'd rather not), so let's start getting out of the gridlock at the grassroots level. Bring up the economy with someone you know disagrees with you.

Get past the frustration, and ponder that the person you're talking to has some rational or emotional reason for the opinions you're hearing. The explanation is not just "they're frickin' nuts." "They want to end the economy as we know it." "They're just jealous." "They're just defending the status quo."

Lefties: recall that it took the modern economy for "dignity of the individual" to have any meaning. Read Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Virtues.

Righties: recall that it takes respect for the dignity of others to make the modern economy work. Read Matt Taibbi's ongoing reportage series. Here's a good spot to begin.

Everyone, be thankful for the things that make this country great. Here's my favorite from the past couple of weeks: a bagel shop in New York, about to go out of business and getting white-knight investorship--from a pair of Pakistani cab drivers..

We come together at Thanksgiving--putting aside our differences is great and all, but how about resolving some of them?

On growing up...or not

A friend invited me to a bike race today. It's a big bike rice, a mountain bike relay race out west. Right off the bat, let me tell you, I am STOKED. This is going to be a little mini-vacation, or maybe an extra-large weekend. What's a little funny about it is that it simultaneously has me feeling like a little kid, too excited to sleep. And a Big Important Adult: I have the grown-up freedom to take a weekend off.

So you grow up, in order to be a kid again.

Peasant Riding: An Invitation

“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”

--Alexis de Tocqueville

This is the way I ride my bike: like a peasant. I aim for simplicity, and even rusticity--the fresh air of the country (to be found, for sure, in the city) and the rustle of trees over the road, the society of acquaintances associated with the village. The virtues I seek an acquaintance with? Self-reliance, hardiness, strength, bricolage, to name a few. The necessarily attendant vices? Miserliness, impatience, mistrust of the new(fangled)... I'm sure I'm missing many others. Coarse habits we have aplenty: Excess drinking, public urination, the stench of sweat. The simple graces, which I confess I'm still aiming for: An easy pedal stroke at high RPMs; a consistent line and pace in a group ride; a demure changing from sweaty and skin-tight clothing after a ride; a welcoming attitude toward strangers.

The early stage of civilization we aim for? England or continental Europe in the middle of the 20th century. An idealized version, to be sure, with no world wars or polio, no intra-club discord, flat tyres, rolled tubulars, or concussions. But a culture where commuting and training and riding-to-the-race ran together into riding somewhere. Where winter was the season not for boredom on the trainer inside, but for sloggingly spinning (or spinningly slogging?) a fendered fixed-gear in the snow. Where your racing bike + fenders and racks = your bike.

So I ride like a peasant, in the city, in the Information Age. I commute. Resistance on my training ride comes from hauling the kid-trailer. Or the kid. Or both kids. Or the dog. I sneak out in the morning or late at night, so as to have clear roads, clear mind, and a clear moment in the hectic schedule. I ride with friends; if they're faster, I struggle; if they're slower, I ride on the dirt or grass and let them ride on the pavement. Or I spin like mad. I do training rides to a bar (and recovery rides home?). I change out of my lycra (or at least pull on some warmup pants) when I get there. I get dirty with glee on a cyclocross course. I fiddle with my equipment constantly--but with secondhand parts. I have little patience for "data" (but it's so tempting for the going faster). I race, to challenge myself. I commute, for fun, thrift, and exercise. I ride like a peasant. Join me.

Run (!?!?) report

Just got back from a lunchtime run, with a few observations.

The park is overrun with adolescent ducks, about ready to head south for their first winter, the squirrels are all quite fat. The birds are slower than usual, too; I think they're putting on weight (insofar as creatures made mostly of feather and air are able to).

Discovery of the day: You can run under the Clarence Darrow Bridge (on the west side of the lagoon). Odd to realize that you've been in a place for years before finding something like this.

I've been running as a second (or sometimes only) workout for the past week and a half, as it's a quick way to get the heart rate up; more cardio fitness in less time than biking. (At least, that's the idea.) Did my "speedwork" on one of the bird trails, so as not to subject myself to embarrassment at how slow I am (instead, I'll talk about it on the internet so the whole world can laugh at me, with the exception of those--Hi, Mom!--who think I'm being charmingly self-deprecating). Realized this may have backfired when I was doing my recoveries at an even slower pace, with all the gasping and wheezing of maximum effort, in front of the golfers and fishermen.

Photo by Urbanrules, used, with thanks, under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license

Race Report/oddball chain-drop issue

Here's the situation: Cyclocross season started up yesterday* (How do you say, "Whoo hooo!" in Belgian?) and so I, being the larkity fool that I am, built up my bike on Saturday night for racin'. The frame is a vertically dropped-out Lemond Poprad--yer basic CX frame. I (in my usual spirit of cussed bricolage) decided (rather a long time ago) that I'd build it up (and race it) fixed if at all possible. I tried out a pile of chainring and cog combinations with a length of chain and found that 41 x 17 was the sweet spot: no fiddlin' needed and perfect shain tension. I procured a new chain (and a needed half-link), and a 17t cog (I'd been testing gearing on multi-speed freewheel), and went to assemble the whole thing.

No dice; chain too short. Okay, not a hard problem; it's the difference between a new chain-and-cog and an old one; I'll just grind a flat onto the axle so that I get the 1 or 2mm of adjustability I need to get into the dropout. Piece of cake; I didn't even need to grind past the threads to get it into the dropout.

And all was well; I raced in the Masters 30+; with a bit of rain sprinkling the course and for just a taste of mud and wet leaves, and performed embarrassingly as expected (hey, I was just getting my bearings back; I'd not ridden fixed in a year or two, not raced in two years and, oh, yeah, not trained either). All was well, my focus was on the 4's (beginner) race in the afternoon.

By the start of the 4's, it was really raining. Ahh, a mudfest! I remember I used to do well in these! (And my chain felt a bit loose. But how loose could it be? It was brand new, cog was, too, and I knew that the whole thing was pretty tight to go together. Besides, I was in the staging, and I damn sure wasn't going to lose my starting position in the race I had a chance of finishing in the points in.)

But I started almost as tentatively as the Masters race; where was the aggression? Then, maybe 500m in, it all clicked again: Not winning? GO FASTER! Not passing someone? GO FASTER! Braking? STOP BRAKING! I was really feelin' it; the virtue of riding fixed in the mud---rather than front-braking in the corners, skidding the front wheel (at worst), understeering, and scrubbing a ton of speed, I started challenging myself to take all the turns with no handbrake; slow as needed with the rear wheel to feel the slip in the mud, to carry more speed, to slip for oversteer rather than understeer…. It was going great.

Something had to go wrong. And it did: Chain drop, coming out of corner (I'd been resistance-slowing into the corner). I knew it was a bad sign; I could crank the chain back onto the chainring like a derailleured (derailleurisé?) bike. It was bound to happen again. And while it was fun to pass the same fifteen people, drop the chain, and repeat (twice more), when my rear wheel started falling off (and falling off again), I knew it was time to DNF.

But a blast was had by me--anytime you have to come straight in the basement door, undress next to the washing machine, and rinse your legs in the utility sink before entering the house, you've had fun.

QUESTION.
How did my brand-new fixed drivetrain go from sweet-spot tight to chain-droppingly loose in the course of 10K on roads (on the way to the race) and maybe 10K of racing on dirt, grass, and mud?

My first theory was initial chain stretch, maybe wear-in (it's a KMC chain, IIRC); my second theory is that the cog (a black Eighth-inch brand cog) was powdercoated all over, and I've worn the powdercoat off the teeth. I've since readjusted the wheel back in the dropouts, maybe 1 mm back, and it seemed nicely snug again--but it reared its ugly head on Wednesday morning again.

New theory, suggested by an iBOB: unround chainring and unround cog combining to give loose spots. Maybe a slightly bent chainring, too, with a tooth coming up outside the sideplates all on its own.

Other new theory (also via iBOB) is that the powdercoat on the sides--the clamping surface--of the dropouts is letting the axle slip forward.

Last new theory (home-grown) is that the axle is slipping up as I go over the bouncy ground, and into the middle of the dropout, no matter where in the dropout I start it out.

(New datapoint is that the chain is pristinely new-length (12" per 24 links).

Thoughts?

*wrote this a-Monday; late posting to the blog since this is my last venue for readership.

Fun with English.

-ee	eak/each	ight	ought/aught…	Notes
	wreak		wrought	Thinking about this is what started this whole table.
see	seek	sight	sought	Here’s a nice complete version.
	teach	[tight???]	taught	Variation of -ch and -k. All would have been like a Scottish or German ch back in the day (where BITD means late medieval period mas o menos).
may	[meek???]	might		(I’ll note here that “ought” seems like avoir in the French to have become merely an “ending” as a modal verb.)
buy		bight	bought	(Is this why Microsoft picked “Bing™” as their search engine name? Get that subliminal “Buy! buy! buy!” message in there.) I’m having trouble envisioning a semantic connection between “bight” and buying. Anyone?
vie (fie?)		fight	fought
	catch		caught
	think		thought	I suspect that an original -in- shifted to an -ee- , lengthening in compensation for dropping the n, but I may have it backwards.
	drink		draught	Aha! Why draught is spelt as it is!
	sink		shaft	Mining on the brain?
	bring	[bright???]	brought	Here, the -ink has softened into an -ing.
		light	laughter	I would love for these to be connected. Too good to be true?
plea		plight
flee		flight
knee		knight		Knights kneel to be knighted. “Kinn-nigget” isn’t a bad approximation of the BITD pronunciation.
[free???] fray	freak	fright	fraught	“Freak” is speculative because it’s awfully nouny, and everything in its column so far is solidly in the verb camp.

Blue indicates speculations. Red things that on semantic grounds don't seem to belong. I came up with this before (while?) falling asleep the other night. Its sense may be naught.