Hotter Than Hell
And now a word about Hotter Than Hell.
Hother Than Hell is a hugely popular weekend of cycling in Wichita Falls, Texas that happens every year. There are lots of events- criterium racing, road racing, mountain biking, endurance rides, even a 5k run…It’s huge.
I decided to give the 100 mile endurance ride a try last weekend. (Of course, I didn’t just “decide” to do it on a whim. I had been preparing for the last 10 weeks or so...)
The number one thing I heard about the century was how many other people do it. “Prepare for crashes,” “Get there early,” “Be ready to stand with your bike waiting to start for a long time,” “Be ready to ride shoulder-to-shoulder for a long time…” Indeed there were at least 13,000 people out there on bikes on Saturday morning doing one of the various distances. (100 miles was the longest route.) But I must say I wasn't locked into a pack, shoulder-to-shoulder for very long like I expected (and worried about.)
Unlike other bike events I’ve done, every intersection was protected by police or blocked off for the entire length of the course, which is a real luxury. It seems like automobile traffic in the whole surrounding county or two just shuts down for this weekend.
FAQS
Was it hotter than hell?No. It was merely hot as hell. No hotter. In actuality, at 7am when the ride started, it was rather perfect riding conditions—mid 60s. Not particularly windy. As the ride progressed, however, and the sun started to climb in the sky, it got to the mid 90s. Not ideal, but certainly better than what’s possible in Texas in the mid-to-late summer.
How did it go?I started off the ride like a man possessed, like I usually do, passing people like crazy, feeling awesome and not working really hard. As we made a turn to the north I got even faster with a good tailwind.
And right about the point I hit 50 or 60 miles, I faded quickly. This was the point where the crosswinds and headwinds appeared and someone turned on the heat. The last 30 or 40 miles were miserable due to the conditions, the sparse, unshaded landscape and the strange things my body started doing as a result. I got nauseous, couldn’t really take in enough calories and was sweating out salt like crazy. My clothes weren’t so much sweaty as they were white with salt. Not a fun time.
But...I finished—in what turned out to be just about an average pace for me on long rides this summer.
And after crossing the finish line and sitting down staring into nothing while my pal Mindy (who kicked my ass and finished well before me I have to admit) tried to snap me back into reality, I went to the medical tent to lie down, cool off and take in some Gatorade. Luckily I didn’t require any IV fluids, but the doctor said that I had shown an “impressive” amount of salt loss. Um...thanks? About 30 minutes later, after proving that I could pee on command, I was off on my merry way.
So, all in all it was a pretty tough day. It was much more about
endurance- what I could make myself do- rather than about speed, which was a little disappointing.
Sometimes it goes like that.
The tough days make the good days seem sweeter, however.
The Morning Verses 8/25/10
Mornings are an interesting, sometimes humorous aspect of being human. They are simultaneously
harbingers of the future (of hope or dread, depending on a person’s mental state at any one particular point in time) and
reminders (of yesterday’s foolishness- “the night out drinking that shouldn’t have happened,” or yesterday’s piety- the choice to “go to bed early for a change.”)
I think everybody who works the day-shift experiences the phenomenon of mornings a little bit differently. For some it’s a model of chaos while for me, mechanistic efficiency is the name of the game. The alarm goes off, I rise, not really processing information, eat a small breakfast and head out the door for a ride or run.
But it’s that alarm part I want to discuss. I have a CD alarm. It plays songs to wake me up. I usually try to mix it up so it plays different CDs every few weeks. I thought it might be interesting or revealing to discuss the very first things I hear, for it’s important how we start our daylight life.
This morning’s song was spot-on appropriate. “Blessed Relief” by Frank Zappa. Anyone living in Oklahoma knows we’ve had our share of oppressive heat as of late, many humid 100 degree days. This morning’s temperature? The 60s. “Blessed Relief” indeed.
People talk about the weather. Other people talk about talking about the weather as boring and superficial.
I am starting to view weather as a metaphor that people talk about when they really are discussing much deeper things—the challenges and ease of being alive. We “suffer through” the heat just like we suffer through times where it seems life hands us “one damn thing after another.” Illness, death, bad luck—we trip through these periods with no end in sight. On the other hand, we rejoice in the fall colors as if they were some friend having a baby or getting married or falling in love or singing for no discernible reason at all. We are so tied to our environment. And we talk about the weather because amongst all of the other things in life which keep us apart from one another- the distractions and busyness- at least we all locally are experiencing the weather together.
The laid-back, plodding instrumental jazz-rock of the song today was the soundtrack to new hopes, change and all of those kinds of positive thoughts as I prepared for a pleasant bike ride to work.
Sometimes it seems the universe creates these appropriate correspondences to see who is paying attention.
Up With Books!
This, from Lev Grossman's profile of novelist Jonathan Franzen in this week's
Time magazine:
There are any number of reasons to want novels to survive. The way Franzen thinks about it is that books can do things, socially useful things, that other media can’t. He cites- as one does- the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and his idea of busyness: that state of constant distraction that allows people to avoid difficult realities and maintain self-deceptions. With the help of cell phones, e-mail and handheld games, it’s easier to stay busy, in the Kierkegaardian sense, than it’s ever been.
Reading, in its quietness and sustained concentration, is the opposite of busyness. “We are so distracted by and engulfed by the technologies we’ve created, and by the constant barrage of so-called information that comes our way, that more than ever to immerse yourself in an involving book seems socially useful,” Franzen says. “The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.”---
So, in essence- wanna be a person of substance in a nonsubstantive world? Read a novel! :-)
Energetic Thoughts
I have only a few stray thoughts on energy:
1) It is easy for me to under-appreciate exactly how far our dependence on oil and coal reaches. I tend to think in a very limited scope—the petroleum that is refined so I can put gasoline in my car’s tank.
But in actuality, I use energy all the time and don’t really think about it. Whenever I flip a switch to turn on a light at home or work, I am consuming energy. Whenever I turn on a device that is plugged into an outlet—my TV, stereo, subwoofer, re-charge my laptop or phone, use the microwave, the stove, or turn on my air conditioner, refrigerator, furnace, or hot water heater, I am using energy. (The last four are the easiest to overlook due to the mere fact that I don’t actually “turn them on.” They are automated processes that I program and forget.)
And of course, those are the most immediate, controllable ways I use energy. But energy is also expended on my behalf, behind the scenes. For something as simple as buying a new toothbrush, a mind-boggling chain of energy consumption is enacted:
A toothbrush-designing scientist goes to work one day—turns the lights on in the air conditioned office, makes a pot of coffee, fires up the ol’ PC, sends his sketch for a new toothbrush model over to the CAD modeler in another office with another set of lights, another computer, another coffee machine, another air conditioner, who sends the final specs over to the manufacturing plant, with air conditioning, lights, coffee maker and giant, industrial-sized machines that cut and form the new toothbrush from plastic blanks (which were also probably formed by a separate manufacturing plant with separate lights, A/C, coffee maker, computers, industrial-sized machines and then shipped either by gasoline-powered truck or plane, ship, or rail), packaged in slim boxes made of cardboard and plastic produced by a whole other production process, loaded onto a truck, airplane or train and shipped to my local Target store with its own lights, computers, cash registers, A/C, coffee makers; where I can then drive my car to pick it up and drive home to use it for a few months and then throw it away.Phew! That’s a whole lot of energy being used for something seemingly so simple for all of us, huh? (Granted, there is an element of scale involved here. These manufacturing plants produce thousands of products at a time. So, it’s not like all of that energy is used to make one toothbrush. I wonder, however, if efficiency studies of this magnitude are ever done by companies in their “greening-up” efforts.)
Of course, I have NO IDEA how to make this whole chain of energy usage work most efficiently. Like I said, it’s mind-boggling. Especially when you follow the similar chain for EVERY consumer product produced in the world!) I only know just enough to know what’s at stake.
There are very simple, seemingly insignificant ways that I try to reduce my consumption at home. Turn off lights in rooms when I’m not using them. I have replaced my standard light bulbs with the cooler-looking compact fluorescent bulbs (when they fit…grrr!) Program the house to get a little warmer in the summer during the day when I’m not there. Recycle all plastics. Thank the lord Oklahoma City’s metro utilities customers get this service for free. Or just thank Oklahoma City’s metro utilities if you like…
Although water is a resource and not necessarily energy, I still count its conservation as an important task and am careful to not leave it running while brushing my teeth (with my well-designed, totally efficiently-produced toothbrush! :))
Here’s where I fail:
Washing clothes—it seems my technical fabric running and cycling clothes can’t get washed with the rest of the laundry, so I wind up having to do waaaay more small, frequent loads of laundry than I would like.
I LOVE air conditioning in the summer. I keep my house very cool. (You will not get any exact numbers on here from me. Suffice it to say, you could hang meat in my living room!)
My gas-guzzling lawn mower. I think any gas I save with my bike commute is made up for in keeping up with my neighbors’ standards of acceptable grass height.
2) Charlie proffered a good visualization—a post-petroleum world. (Ever read the book _World Made By Hand_ by James Howard Kunstler? It’s a work of fiction that imagines just such a scenario. Kind of dystopian, I will warn you.)
What is the next energy source? I like wind and solar power because they seem virtually inexhaustible compared to our oil supply. (The sun won’t be flickering out for another million billion years or so. However, they are both intermittent. Sometimes the sun doesn’t shine on currently expensive solar panels, and it would take an awful lot of wind turbines to equal what we get from even present petroleum output.)
I think it’s true that the first trap we fall into with this question is thinking that there has to only be ONE energy source in the future. The cynical side of me says that the energy source will be whatever the giant energy companies can claim rights to and sell to us for a hefty profit. This single-source scenario is pretty much their wet-dream.
However, with cars and trucks and the electrical grids all being powered by a MIXTURE of fuel sources (read: competing companies in a true marketplace) we avoid the traps of our oily past—uber-powerful lobbies, price-gouging. And of course, true market competition allows for innovation and perhaps, just perhaps, increasing efficiency to the customer once the new sources have hit the market.
3) True confession time: when I watched the video footage of the recent oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico my first thought was not: “Oh, the poor marine life” or even “Oh, my gosh! What are the fishermen in the area going to do?” (Again, proof of how interdependent the players are in this energy game.)
No, sadly, my first thought was “Oh, Good Lord! What a waste of perfectly good oil! Surely there’s some way we can still capture that oil and harvest it and bring it to market! Surely this won’t be 80-something days of complete, abject, unrecoverable waste!”
Does that make me a bad person?
One for Ryan
Some days, God damn! It’s slow work. I’ll get to the site 6, 7, just to be out of the heat. You know, that sun bouncing back on that plated, tinted glass that the bigger buildings use…that’ll really kill your initiative around 12 or so. Sun beating down. I’m sweating like I’m bathing in it…Those are the days when I’m cussing to myself, singing, imagining buckets of ice and beer…anything to make it go faster. And then you know it’s one of those tall bastards that takes a few days, so what’ve I got to look forward to the next day? Another day of it! Soak, rinse, wipe, dry, sweat, repeat.
Then there are those lucky days you might be out on the east side of town. Shady and quiet. Breeze blowin’ Maybe even birds singing. Sometimes I’ll act like I’m focused on the windows and the washing. Tilt my head up as I’m stretching, but really I’ll be looking out the corner of my eye. Looking inside at the workers in their air conditioning. They have all kinds of ways that they look busy.
No matter where I’m working it’s the same old show inside The same old characters. You can usually tell them by the clothes. There’s usually at least one sloppily-dressed guy. They dress up just enough to keep from getting fired. Usually don’t talk to anybody, just sit in front of their computers all day like they’re hiding in a foxhole.
Then the smaller buildings out there on the outskirts of town off the interstate, usually have one or two young-ish women, fresh out of high school or maybe a year or two older. Still young and pretty enough to dress up for work in new clothes. You can always tell them because the office seems to buzz around them One of these days I’ll invent a game where you place bets on which guy will talk to the pretty girl in the skirt first.
The boss is usually the guy who never looks up at me and the scaffolding as he’s passing by. Doesn’t make a lot of eye contact, probably to keep from having to stop and talk. They’re busy guys. I’m always amused at how the offices seem to look about the same whether those guys are around or not. They’ll get there around 10 or so on a Tuesday morning. Go straight to their office and close the door. Reappear around 4, looking at their watch. Head out to the parking lot while talking on their phone. Nice trick!
Seems like I also see a lot of guys who just kind of blend in. Scenery. They’re like the guys who would be soldiers or spear-holders in one of those Shakespeare plays. Definitely not salesmen. They don’t talk enough or dress nice enough to sell anybody anything. One time I saw one of those spear-holder fellas rub his eyes really hard after staring into space for about half an hour, scratch his hair like he was roughing up a pillow and jump out of his swivel chair in his cubicle. He walked straight past one of the dressed-up young-ish girls without even looking at her, (sure left
her confused), and went over to the desk of one of the older ladies. She turned from her computer and looked up at him. He leaned in to tell her something quietly, which instantly, I mean, like super quick started the water-works. I mean she was cryin’ in seconds! He just walked away. I wish to God I knew what that was all about…what he said that would
do that…
Anyway, I think they all assume I don’t see any of this out there, if they notice me at all. They probably think the walls protect them. I know more than I let on.
