May 2007

I have to confess I love a good donut. I do not have a Homer Simpson type obsession with donuts, but if there is a good donut around, I will consume it …. rapidly … and without guilt. I think this all traces back to my childhood when a new family moved in down the block. The lady of the house made donuts, good donuts, in her kitchen on a regular basis. We could smell them frying and would start hovering outside her door waiting for the inevitable handouts. They were usually given out but for a short period, apparently due to family fiscal problems, she charged and we gladly turned over our coins for the delectable, spongy fried pieces of bread.

For a short period when I started college I worked as a baker’s apprentice. Being a young apprentice meant I was tasked with cleanup more than any actual baking. But I did get some hands-on experience, and making donuts was second only to making pies as favorite items to make en-masse.

One of my projects as a field biologist took me to the Caribbean island of Montserrat. We rented quarters just outside the main town. Across the street from where we stayed one of the locals ran a bakery on his front porch. We were jolted to consciousness each morning with the smell of baking bread. We would wander across the small road, get loaves of the hot, fresh baguettes, and slather it with the local tropical honey¹ to eat with our morning coffee. Late in the morning he would start frying donuts, and we would again wander across the street for our mid-morning snack. Plain, raised donuts rolled in sugar or glazed. They were wonderful!

I lived for 15 years in Fremont, California, in the Irvington District. We had a great donut shop in the neighborhood ran by a nice Cambodian family. I would occasionally ride the bike down there on Sunday mornings to pick up a paper and donuts to go with the morning coffee. Delectable. During that period Krispy Kreme made it to the Bay Area with great fanfare, folks heralding the delights of their donuts. I tried them, found them mediocre at best.

I have not had a donut in quite a while. I pass Roger’s Donuts and Deli on my way to the train station each morning, but have never stopped in for a taste test. But they say their donuts are healthy, so perhaps it is time to make that stop.

One of the strip malls I pass most morning as I ride from the train station to the office has a tenant named Chez Nicole whose sign advertises their donuts and chinese food. That triangle - French, Chinese, and donut - scares me. Not sure if I will ever be tempted to make that stop.

¹The honey on Montserrat was from an economic development project funded by the Canadian government. They helped locals set up hives in the local forests where the bees fed on a variety of tropical flower nectars. Best honey I have ever tasted; deep floral flavors unlike any of the honey I have found in the US. Just wished I could get some more.

I went to high school in the ’60s, in a politically conservative region. In my sophomore year the family moved a couple of towns to the east and I transferred to a different high school. I was appalled out how outdated some of the rules were at the ‘new shcool’, most particularly that women had to wear dresses to all school events. School events included sports venues, so women students were expected to wear dresses to football games, in snow country, sitting on metal bleachers … The absurdity gnawed at me and some of my classmates, and being the ’60s the response was a series of sit-in demonstrations to get the dress code updated. Some of the original response we got from the school board and administrators was typical, along the lines that we men could be equal by wearing dresses to school activities. We persisted and soon the school board caved, the dress code was revised, and women were allowed to wear pants to school and all school activities. All was not well as the school board wove a new piece of inequality into the code; men had to wear socks with all footwear and women did not. The justification was that men’s feet were unhealthy, women’s were not. We fought for equality on that issue, several of us going without socks for most of senior year, but never got the board to reconsider before we graduated.

At one of the grad schools I attended the building in which our research facilities were located had an odd restroom arrangement; restrooms were on each floor but they alternated gender, men’s on one floor, women’s on the next, etc. Our research wing had one public exit, on the first floor where the restroom was a men’s facility. Traversing the four floors of our facilities to the one exit then making it to a restroom was a challenge, especially for women who had to get to the first floor, then, if proper, go to the staircase and make their way to either the basement or second floor to get to a women’s restroom. We adopted a unique form of accommodation to the issue; we treated the first floor restroom as a unisex facility. Not ideal, especially for some of the more modest, but better than the alternatives.

Later in my career I returned to academia, to a major urban university. Once again equal restroom facilities was an issue. The building in which I had an office, an old five story legacy of the ’50s, was built to accommodate a majority of men; there were men’s restrooms on all floors but the first (no restrooms on the first floor), but women’s restrooms on some floors, only. And the men’s rooms usually had four stalls plus urinals, the women’s only two stalls. Women students, now a majority in that building, complained but the official response was that they had to live with what was there, too costly to do infrastructure renovations. A colleague, Dan, and I thought the adminstration’s response inappropriate and decided on our own course of action. Late one evening, when the building was relatively empty, we went to the men’s room on the second floor after the cleaning crew had finished and bagged the urinals. We then swapped signs, converting the four stall men’s room to a women’s restroom, the men getting the two stall facility on that floor. We moved all gender appropriate additional facilities to complete the transition, added some extra home-made signage, then deemed the change good and went home. The next day there was complete confusion, an uproar from some administrator’s, some positive feedback from women, some negative comments from some men, but the change stuck. The confusion lessened as time went on, and when there was a building renovation a couple of years later the change was made complete, and official, with removal of the urinals from the second floor women’s restroom.

Dr. Kim has taken umbrage, rightfully in my opinion, at the “women can’t descend” comment I overheard at the Mt. Hamilton Road Race. I abhor the mentality behind the comment. The comment embodies much of the “testosterone superiority”¹ view that I have fought against since high school. I knew at the time of the comment that it was related to a crash in the Women’s 4 field on the first descent; we may have been 38 miles from that spot of the crash but word had spread. Crashes are not the sole domain of a specific gender. Crashes are caused in most cases by someone being careless and/or inattentive, a problem that transcends gender and is more common among the inexperienced. The correct response, in my view, if crashes are the concern is to neutralize the descent in future races for all the less experienced categories regardless of gender. Response based on causality, not bias. Equality.

¹My endocrinology course in college was taught by a woman, who spent one and a half lectures explaining why estrogen was so superior to testosterone. Perhaps in some ways, but I prefer to look at the world as an ‘all are best for their purpose’ view rather than the ‘one is better overall’ perspective.

Playing hurt

The Wife had every reason to pull out before or during the race on Sunday. She had a gastrointestinal issues for several days prior, leading to a caloric deficit and severe nausea before and probably during the race. I know what it was like; I came down with whatever it was a couple days earlier. Add to that a severely infected in-grown nail on the big toe of her left foot, so bad she could hardly walk. Yet she had made a commitment to her team so she went out and rode all 38+ miles of the race. Tough lady.

Cinzano patrols?

Even though she was feeling like crap, The Wife tried to race to the end. In the last quarter mile she was trying to pass another racer from an un-named team (RW) but a guy with no number kept blocking her attempts. She was never able to pass the other rider. Back at the car, the woman racer and the anonymous guy were loading into the vehicle right in front of ours; the guy had come off the mountain after drop-off at the same time as I had so it is obvious he rode up the course and was interfering with riders to the benefit of someone he knew. Perhaps we need the Cinzano team from ‘Breaking Away’ to patrol the course for these types of thugs and then teach them a lesson.

Overheard

from the judges table:

• “Next year we will have to neutralize the women on the first climb and first descent. Women do not know how to descend.”
• “Can you believe that Jeff Gordon is not going to race if his wife gives birth on a weekend? Induced labor, that is what it is for. Induce mid-week so you can race on the weekend.”

Center-line

They talked a mean talk about center-line violations; automatic DQ and a citation if seen by the CHP. In at least one instance they carried through on the former threat. A Masters 45+ guy from an un-named team (DV) was fit to be tied when he found out he had been DQ’d for a violation in the sprint for 3rd place (two Webcor guys were uncontested for 1st and 2nd). His argument was that it was just a couple of inches. No dice he was informed. Over is over, and he was out.

TR driving SAG

Tom Ritchey, the mustachioed one, was driving the drop-off van for the Project Rwanda guys. Street duds at that time, but after they finished he was in lycra out pedaling around the parking area with the guys.

Next Sunday, June 3rd, is the day of the local Sequoia Century. This is an event ride well suited to my climbing and endurance, but I have never ridden the event. Lots of reasons why I have missed out; I refused to ride it some years when they included Devil’s Slide, some years I had commitments on my time. I did register once, in 2002, but the day of the ride was just a couple days after I had the casts removed from both my arms and there was no way I could ride on the road, period, much less a hilly century. So The Girlfriend used my registration that year. A number of years my travels have had me crossing paths with the ride as I did my own course across the Santa Cruz Mtns. for some reason or other. Last year I was on my way to Felton to meet The Wife, who was doing a retreat with her SF group of friends, when I first crossed paths with the Sequoia riders. I led the charge up Redwood Gulch then Highway 9 to Emigrant Gap, a feat considering I had a lot of junk in the trunk. I am sure some riders were wondering why someone on such an event was riding with two large panniers!

This year they have coalesced their double metric and hundred mile routes to create one ride, 112 miles they say. The organizers usually seem to find about 9-10K feet of climbing in a hundred mile route, so surprised they are advertising a mere 9100 ft over the 112 mile route. Sounds like a fun training ride. The Wife will be doing a Time Trial in beautiful Winters, CA that morning and gave me a pass to ride what I wanted. Tempting, but she will be the only member of her team at the TT, no one else for moral support, help, company on the drive, etc. So, priority one is to be there for The Wife, give her some assistance, company, and cheer her through her tribulations. Perhaps next year I will ride the Sequoia Century, that is unless a higher priority intervenes.

I am just getting back from the food poisoning or bug that had me sidelined at the beginning of the week. Blech! Unfortunately, The Wife has the same issue and with a race this weekend …..

This pic is from the 73 mile ‘Century’ I rode while sick on Sunday.

Saturday night I was feeling a bit queasy, more of the same on Sunday morning.  Went out and rode the ‘Foothill Century’ (metric) doing the 68 miles from my home to the school and around the course in 4 hours elapsed clock time (7AM-11AM).    Fast tempo ride.  The last few miles I knew I was not feeling great.  Got home and the real churn begins.  Apparently got a bit of food poisoning on Saturday.  Surprised my body let me push that hard while trying to squash the invasion of whatever foreigner came with one of Saturday’s meals.   No ride today.  Sigh!

I just finished the local ‘Foothill Century’, a fundraiser ride for the South Peninsula Hebrew Day School. It is advertised as the “The Only Kosher Ride in the West”, a pretty big claim.  But even the processed peanut snack in the bags given to all riders is kosher.   Interestingly they were serving Starbucks coffee at one of the rest stops, and I have not seen Starbucks advertising their coffee as kosher, though Peets has had signs in the all the local stores for the past couple of months with their rabbinical certification.  As my friend Josh said when we were discussing this ride, ‘no pork cracklings at the rest stops’.    It was amusing that many of the riders assumed I was Jewish and had children attending the school.

I rode the ride alone.  The Wife had some lame excuse about needing to pre-ride the Mt. Hamilton Road Race course for next weekends race.  My friend Josh did not want to miss the Bay to Breakers, which he has run for something like 15 straight years;  seems rather predictable behavior to me!   And Erika thought that riding in Provence was more important than riding with me on this ride.  Lame.

The start point was only 5 miles away, and they were sending out e-mail noting the lack of parking; good reasons for me to just ride over.   About 2/3 of the way to the school for the start I hear some huffing and puffing behind me so I turn around to see Ravi, an Indian guy who lives across the freeway from us who has become an avid cyclist over the past 3 years or so.  He was on his old Schwinn converted to fixie and was holding a floor pump layed across the handlebars.  Turned out he was heading to the Century as a volunteer so we rode together to the school and chatted a bit.  I noted he had not been very vocal lately, out of character for him as he has been an active advocate.  His excuse is a ‘personal matter’ has been cosuming his time.  Given his age and background I think I detect a wedding in the making.

Since I was riding solo I used this as an excuse to do some hard tempo riding.  Head down, cadence steady, pounding away the miles.  I did stop at all stop signs and lights, which a couple of riders used as an opening to pass me over and over just to have me blow by them a couple of minutes later.  Would not have been so annoying if not for the instance where they had me pinned to the inside of the lane after the stop sign and did not seem interested in letting me pass them.  I never saw them after mile 60 or so; do not know if they were too ragged to keep bombing past me on the hills or if they just decided to do a shortcut.  Good riddance either way.  Had a good leapfrog game going with a couple from Fairfield riding a tandem.  They would pass on the downhills, I would pass on the uphills, and we would chat briefly on each pass.  Did not see them after a point either.  Their plan was to ride the event then go over and ride up Sierra Road to see what it was like.  That would be quite a task on a tandem!

The only problem I had on the ride was some cramping, first in the right gastrocnemius then the hip flexors on both sides, near the end.  I had been stretching and taking in electrolytes, so do not know what that was about, but I worked through it and was one of the first finishers among the long route riders.  A quick burger, with folks asking about my Jewish background (none) then the quick ride home.   Now to important matters: finalizing reservations for a vacation!

Had a weird thing happen on the train last night.  After I get on it is supposed to stop at San Carlos, Palo Alto, California Ave., Mountain View and so on.  Last night San Carlos was fine, stopped at Palo Alto, everyone is ready for the California Ave. station and the guy blows through the station without even slowing down.  Then he realizes his error, slams on the brakes, and we are at a standstill more than a 1/4 mile down the track from the station.  Conductor came down, on his cell phone, opened the back door, and they hit reverse backing the train into Cal. Ave with the conductor doing lookout.  Glad that express behind us was not breathing down our neck!  Then folks at the station got confused and thought it was the northbound train.

I was a host of one of four Bike To Work Day (BTWD) ‘Energizer’ station this morning. Myself and the traffic management guy for the city manned a station at the corner of Wolfe Road and El Camino Real from 6:30A-9:30A, handing out Hobee’s coffeecake, coffe, juice, water, bananas, apples, oranges, and a variety of maps and literature to all passing our way who were brave enough to stop. This is a traditional location for the city to host an ‘Energizer’ station on BTWD and in past years the count of cyclists at this corner has been, reportedly, less than 80. This morning our count was 177, or 178 if you add me to the mix. Holy derailleur, Batman! A 100%+ increase! And I did not count the bikes on car racks passing

Notables from this morning:

• At one point I noticed that several folks arriving from different directions were all wearing the same T-shirt, logowear for an Energy company (fuel-cell development). Soon there were 9 of them. They then headed north towards their offices, reportedly with one more collection point to meet co-workers on the way.
• About 10 minutes after the group from the Energy company left I spotted a long line of northbound cyclists heading our way. Turned out to be 17 from the same Energy company, all wearing the same logowear T-shirt. A bit of prompting and they spilled that the CEO had encouraged them, threatening to have any cars that showed up in the parking lot this morning towed away. A bit of incenting by the top cheese. This group was coming in from Los Gatos, probably 12-15 miles total each way, and the folks seemed to be enjoying themselves.
• We had a mommy-train show up, a mother with a youngster on a trail-a-bike and 4 slightly older children on their own bicycles. They were on their way to drop the ‘cyclists’ off at a local school but mom had diverted the train to the ‘Energizer’ station so the young ones could get a treat. She volunteered that they often get abusive actions and language from drivers on their school run. Too bad. Perhaps a decoy cop in the train could do a bit of ‘education’ on those motorists.
• Lots of nice old bikes; a classic ’70s Motobecane, a nice 1983 Trek, classic Miyata’s and Nishikis, and all the owners loved to stop and talk about their bikes. One guy on a modern racing bike, all dressed in team kit, even got enthusiastic in the discussion about the Motobecane and classic French bikes.
• Hobee’s coffee cake is not universally desired. What’s up with that? Half our sheet was left at the end. The traffic management guy said that a few years back there was a near revolt wanting to rid the ‘Energizer’ stations of the coffeecake. Luddites, I say.
• While the large group from the Energy company was at the station, the sprinklers for the nearby planter turned on. Seriously misadustment on the amount of water needed. The overspray area was about 3 times the size of the planter …. and included the totality of the ‘Energizer’ station. Lots of soggy papers, maps, and napkins. Fortunately the plastic wrap was still covering most of the coffeecake. And we got soaked, and the only spot not being hit by the sprinklers was in the shade! Parks and Rec dept. will get an earful later.
• Only two complaints all morning. One was a guy who was upset that the city has done away with bicycle ‘buttons’ at intersections in favor of loop detectors. The other was a woman who did not like the timing of the traffic signals at the intersection of Wolfe Rd. and Fremont. Guess two complaints from a group that large is not half bad.
• Best of all, The Wife dropped by for a visit. Thanks sweetie!

I am now working from home. Will find out more tonight when we have a debriefing meeting for the city. Too bad it conflicts with the regional BTWD ‘Bike from work’ party at a local brewpub. I think we should just move our meeting to the brewpub

May in National Bike to Work Month (BTWM) across the U.S. of A., though that seems to be a closely guarded secret in most parts of the land.  One of the local county supervisors, Ken Yeager, has taken the concept to heart and has pledged to bicycle to work the entire month.  He has a blog to chronicle his attempt to ride everywhere.  Now if he can get the county board of supervisors to stop such silliness as their midnight deception (SB1233 giving local jurisdictions the right to exclude bicyclists from expressways) and to become bicycle friendly.  One can hope.  I have a personal attempt to avoid driving to work this month, not much of a stretch since on average I drive only about one day a month.  My plans may be squashed unless I can get a bike locker at the local train station; the project I am working on will launch its product next Tuesday and I may need to be in San Francisco between 7 and 8AM.

This week is National Bike to Work Week (BTWW), even less noteworthy to most folks than BTWM.  BTWW is significant mainly in that local communities can designate one day in the week as Bike to Work Day (BTWD), an event getting increased visibility over the past couple of years.  Many people who seen me on my bicycle the past week or two have commented on BTWD, ranging from homeless folks to women in business suits.  Locally, the region has selected tomorrow, Thursday May 17th, as BTWD and there will be a number of activities to assist those commuting by bicycle ranging from free guarded parking (would be nice to have that as a regular perquisite) to food and beverage ‘Energizer Stations’ along major bicycle commute routes.  Today there are a number of articles on BTWD in local papers today, though I have not been able to confirm if the local rag from our hometown has the article for which I was interviewed last week.  Ironically, since I will be hosting an ‘Energizer Station’ in the morning and attending a BTWD debrief in the evening I will probably telecommute tomorrow … though I will bicycle to and from both the ‘Energizer Station’ and the meeting at City Hall.

Take the challenge, commute by bicycle tomorrow and then continue when possible.  Anyone commuting near the Wolfe Road and El Camino Real in Sunnyvale is welcome to stop by and say hello between 6:30 and 9:30 AM tomorrow.  Perhaps they will provide spiffs for me to hand out.