Suicidal animals

Over the years of biking I have had the chance to observe a lot of the natural world around me. It's interesting to realize that by making so little noise on a bike you can sneak up on a coyote on a city trail, or get within a dozen yards of a family of deer crossing the street way out in the country. Or course you can also get the joys of learning which houses along your routes have the aggressive dogs. My personal favorite was the house with the bullmastiff. I swear that the dog was level with the top tube of my bike as he was running in the ditch!

Oddly enough though, dogs probably aren't the most problematic animals you can face while riding. Sure they will chase you until you leave their territory. But often they are just looking for a bit of fun. I found that out when I crashed while being chased once and the dogs (yes there were 3 of them) just stopped to look at me as if to say "Hey, why did you do that? We were having fun.". No the worst animal to encounter out there is a squirrel. I swear that they are suicidal little fuckers, that's the only way I can explain their behaviour.

The other night as I was riding down a hill and getting ready to take the gentle curve as fast as possible a squirrel came darting out onto the road in front of me. Now there was a enough distance between us that I had plenty of time to think of what to do. Do I go around behind him, crossing the path that he just took? No, that's never good. I've done that before, and they run back to where they came from, usually taking a path under you wheels. Maybe I should just go in front of him, you know, try to encourage him to go back the way he came. But wait, it looks like he's rocking forward, ready to sprint right at me should I go to that side. Maybe it would be best just to aim right at him, he wouldn't be stupid enough to stay right there, would he? Oh shit he's spinning in circles!

Seriously you can never predict where these damn rodents will go or any other small animals for that matter. For the animal lovers in the crowd don't read any further because I'm about to detail my "hit list" from the years I've been biking.

1. I'm still not sure if I really did get this one or not. But when I was living in Montreal a squirrel did exactly what I mentioned above, only I chose to go behind it. It also chose to run back that way and found itself between my front and rear wheel at one point. So considering I heard a squeak I guess I did run that one over, though I think he made it out alive.
2. After a long ride in Edmonton I was cruising in along a river valley trail with one other guy. After going over a little bridge a sparrow came upon my left side, and proceeded to fly through my front wheel! The damn bird made it out alive, though possibly nicked by one of the spoke (one more reason for low spoke count wheels). Because he seemed to be rather pissed and proceeded to peck at my right crank arm a couple of times before flying off.
3. On a pre-race ride of a course near Edmonton our group of six riders were in single file along the edge of the road. As we approached a ground squirrel that was on the side of the road he started to run the same direction as us. This was fine for him, until he decided that it would be safer to try and run to the left, right across our path. Well he ducked behind the lead riders front wheel, but didn't get out of the way of the rear wheel. Before he could recover from that one I was there and got him with both wheels (and I could feel it as I rode over him). By this point he was turned back towards the ditch, but once again before he could get any further rider number three got him with both wheels. He did not live though that.
4. Finally this last one was just kind of scary. I was leading a 4 man team time trial outside of Edmonton on a Tuesday night race. We had just turned around and were doing roughly 40 km/h (25 mph) in close formation, I know I was on my aerobars (making bike handling a lot harder). Anyway all of a sudden I noticed something brown streaking at my from the left. The next thing I realized the brown object was colliding with my downtube, just behind my front wheel, in a puff of feathers and a squawk. All I can say about that one is that I'm glad it didn't find it's way into my front wheel because that would have been much more messy and dangerous.

So yeah, I've gone on about people being stupid before on this blog, but clearly this seems to be a natural animal condition. Though with squirrels I can only imagine that the only reason that they haven't gone extinct is by pure strength of numbers.

Short and sucky

Yeah, I really kind of suck at posting things on the blog recently. And guess what, it's not going to get all that much better with this post, I think I'm going to resort to point form updates.

See part of the problem is that I just haven't felt the usual spur of creativity (ok, usually it's anger) that gets me to write a blog entry...actually that's not entirely true. Recently my office has been besieged several times by construction workers. This wouldn't have been so bad except that they showed up unannounced, twice! See the joy to all this is that the work is taking place though the wall directly above my desk. So when they come in I need to vacate. However if the come in without warning it seems that my usual arrival time of 8:00 am is too late, and they will have started dropping crap on my books, notes, computer... In fact this week they managed to "clean up" one of my platinum electrodes for my microfluidic chip, thanks a lot fuckers! All because they didn't think to warn us that they would be doing work that day.

This past weekend I entered my second race of the year. Yet another crit, they seem to really like crits here. Unfortunately even though they are extremely spectator friendly races they seem to hold them in out of the way locations, like behind a hospital in a little town called Hutchinson. Though the location was kind of useful after all. It stated raining at the beginning of my race making some already sketchy corners even worse. Well in the race there were three crashes that I saw. In the first one I almost ran over the guy's head as he turtled in middle of the road. Though now that I think about it, even though we were right next to the hospital it took about 20 minutes for an ambulance to show up and take care of him...I guess he had the wrong insurance, you've gotta love the American system. Oh, I finished about 12 or 15th out of 45 starters, I held onto the tail end of the lead group the whole race, so I'm getting better again.

Speaking of the great American system I've started to realize why lawyers here have such bad reputations. Now I have lawyers as friends in Canada and they are in no way the kind of scumbags that seem to be the stereotype of the industry. If you recall I got a speeding ticket in Wisconsin on the way back from Pittsburgh. Well shortly after I got a letter from a law firm in Wisconsin telling me that they could reduce the fine and prevent me from getting any points on my license for only $50 (or some crap like that I never really read the toilet paper it was printed on). Now my question is: is this the most noble manner of performing law? By scouring the public records for legal infractions and then soliciting them for money? And you wonder why people think lawyers are scum. Why don't real lawyers stop these idiots from making them look like total sleazes?


Oh and I'm feeling even older now. My little brother turned 26 last week and spent the weekend dealing with things for his friend's wedding. When the hell did he turn 26? Why are his friends getting married, I mean mine only started getting married 3, 4...damn I'm getting old!

And one finally joy I need to share with the rest of you is the climate of my temporary office while construction is going on. This hallway turned office space (normally used by other members of my lab) is ridiculously hot! It's literally hotter than it is outside. Now in a place like Minnesota that would normally be a good thing throughout most of the year. But when it's at least 30 C (86 F) in your office you kind of start to sweat just by sitting down. Now some of the beautiful irony to all this is that the construction work going on is to bring cold water for the air chilling system of the other chemistry building. Incidentally the water is coming from a building that is literally on the other side of campus campus.

Anyway that's about it for now, yeah I know this entry kind of sucked, but like I said last time, it's not my job to entertain you. But if you are in the twin cities area and are looking for some entertainment Friday night head to downtown Minneapolis. The Nature Valley Grand Prix, a pro, 5 stage, bike race is taking place this week and Friday night is the crit stage. It was damn exciting last year and should be this year as well. Oh and if you are only into racing for the crashes, it's likely to rain so there are likely to be lots of crashes.

I just got flipped off!

Nobody reading this needs me to explain just how much of a cyclist I am. It's pretty evident that I'm into it, just look at my choice of photo for my profile. And as such I'm the type of guy who will stand up for the rights of cyclists. This normally seems to occur in my simply taking my allowed space on the road. I try to set a good example and show motorists that it's easy to coexist with cyclists. Of course I have been flipped off, yelled at and for some unknown reason (mostly in Alberta) I've been called a fag by motorists. The funny part about that is that the motorists calling me a fag a probably football fans. You tell me, which is more homoerotic:












Anyway there are however times when I'm not in favour of what I see cyclists doing. There are some real morons out there that almost seem to go out of their way to piss off people who aren't on bikes. And since these people probably don't ride as much or as extensively as I do they are less likely to feel the repercussions of their actions. Whereas I may have to deal with the irate motorist the next time he sees one of those "damn idiots riding a toy in the streets".

Recently I have had issue with a number of cyclists around the university area. The walk to campus takes me along a rather heavily used bicycle route. Part of the reason it's frequented by cyclists is the path that is next to the driving lane and separate from the sidewalk. Thus giving everyone ample space to get to where they need in safety. So when I see someone riding a bicycle on the sidewalk I tell them that there is a bike path for them to ride on.

Well this morning as I was walking in I noticed a cyclist coming up behind me as I walked under the train bridge. As he passed I said to him that "There's a bike path". But I got no response. I mean he didn't even look at me, react or anything. So this kind of pissed me off. I know it's irrational but I can't stand it when someone on a bike takes this better than me attitude when I'm not on my bike. Because let's face it, if it came down to any level of riding skills/strengths I would crush these college commuters. Hell this dope didn't even have a helmet on. And it's not like the could claim it was to prevent it messing up his hair because he was wearing a baseball cap...sorry about the little rant, I just have this thing about people not wearing bicycle helmets. Anyway after not getting a response from him I decided that maybe he needed to have this message reinforced a little. So ass he rode away (slowly I might add) I shouted to him "Hey! There is a bike path for bikes!". Well at least this time I got a response, he didn't look back but he did flip me off.

What can I say, some people are just asses. So remember, if you are pissed off by cyclists, look closely at them. The ones you are pissed at are probably the idiots riding in jeans and a baseball hat not the flamingly gay guys in bright spandex, shaved legs and wearing helmets.

Damn, I'm hungry again!

Wow, it's been a while since I posted anything, sorry about that. I know that a few of you have been checking regularly for updates and I almost feel bad not having anything new up here...then I remember it's not my job to entertain you.

What has kept me busy has been for the most part may work. I don't think any of you need to hear the details of that, for the most part it's pretty damn boring. Hell, I'm a chemist, most people's eyes glaze over at the mere mention of my career field. So let's just leave it at that.

The other aspect of my life that has started to take up more time is my bicycling. Those that know me know that I'm nuts about bicycling. I will talk about it endlessly given the opportunity and I will help anyone buy/fix/ride any bike...which is why I was once called a "bike fairy" but that's a whole other story.

Part of my desire to ride more is because I've started racing again...maybe I should rephrase that, I've started to try and race again. When you only last 20 minutes of a 90 minute criterium before being lapped things aren't good. Though in my defense the whole field was lapped by the four leaders. So evidently I need to get out and train lots more. And thinking about it there were plenty of signs that I was not in shape before I even entered the race, but I guess I needed that humiliation to drill things home. Though one of my teammates did point out that I have pasty white legs, a sure sign that I haven't been riding enough (and not using the tanning lotion).

The funny part to me though is that I realized another sign that I've been slaking off lately. Last night I went out to do intervals, repeats of a 4 km stretch of road as fast as I could. When I got home I had dinner and felt nicely full. This morning though I was starving! Seriously I was ravenous, until I had a bowl of cereal and everything was good. Of course after being at work for half an hour I was starving again. I couldn't figure out what the hell was wrong with me. And then I figured it out, my stomach hasn't stretched yet!

I know this sounds damn strange to most of you, but it really happens. Cyclists it seems do the opposite of what the super morbidly obesse need to have done. We need to stretch out our stomachs so that we can get enough food in a sitting to replenish the energy we spent. Come the winter however we have to be careful to limit how much we eat since we often don't need as much since we are working out less. It's really funny that a cyclist can eat as much as an inactive person (and sometimes more) and these are the results you get:

So right now I'm kind of like an infant, I can't get enough food in me in one sitting to last me all night. Though I don't wake up in the middle of the night crying...well not because of hunger. The really sad part is that I don't feel that I'm close to training enough yet. Anyway, I'm off, I need to find more food, yet again.