randomduck

Activity: road cycling
Location: Reston, VA > Ashburn > Leesburg > Ashburn > Reston
Distance: 40.9 miles (mildly hilly)
Duration: 2:12
Weather: partly to mostly cloudy and humid, 70-80 degrees
Avg HR: 134 (max 163)
Type: aerobic

The Reston Bike Club Century day dawned with very little sleep, but I arrived at the ride start quite ready to go. I missed riding with one friend, but ran into 8 others at the ride start so I began the ride with them. As many of them had been out riding on Saturday (a “death march,” according to one who was there), their pace was slower than I’d planned to ride, so I went ahead.

I was doing great, averaging close to 22 miles per hour for the first hour, when I heard a “bang” from my rear wheel while riding on Route 15 out in Leesburg. Normally, that’s nothing to worry about: it’s usually a rock that’s deflected after being pinched by the tire. But the loud noise was followed by a scraping noise and perceivable drag. I looked down and saw that my rear wheel had a huge wobble - closer inspection (when stopped) revealed that one of my spokes had snapped when I hit the rock in the road, and the wheel had deformed due to the lateral release of force from the rock’s escape. The wheel now rubbed against my brake and my frame with every rotation.

I stopped on Edwards Ferry Road and was passed by a friend or two (riding with their racing team). A few minutes later, the PPTC gang showed up and offered mechanical assistance. I wrapped my broken spoke around a neighboring, good spoke, and one of the PPTC folk put my wheel in true-enough form to get me back to to ride start, albeit while skipping the big hills for the day. I rode back to Reston on the W&OD trail, which made my planned 102-mile ride into a 40-mile ride.

If there are any bright sides to be found, I did get to work on my spinning during the return to Reston (the wheel couldn’t take much torque, so no standing allowed, and I didn’t risk using the brake on the wheel for fear that it would fail). And now I have a brand new Mavic Akisum on the rear of the LeMond - matching the Aksium that’s been riding on the front of the bike all summer.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Activity: road cycling
Location: Dupont Circle > Hains Point > Dupont Circle (laps)
Distance: 22.3 miles (flat)
Duration: 1:09
Weather: overcast and humid, 73 degrees
Avg HR: 140 (max 173)
Type: aerobic

Interval laps down at Hains Point are an old Thursday standby. I got off to a late start, but did fine. The weather was ultra-sticky, but not hot - a big plus. The best part? The peloton of folks in their local team kits (NCVC, Squadra Coppi, Artemis, DC Velo) looking down their noses at me on my steel frame with a triple crank - then watching my behind as a smoked ‘em all on the sprints.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Activity: road cycling
Location: Dupont Circle > Avenel, MD > Dupont Circle
Distance: 27.2 miles (moderately hilly)
Duration: 1:31
Weather: foggy and misty, with some drizzle, 65 degrees
Avg HR: 135 (max 168)
Type: aerobic

PPTC “Downtown Breakaway” ride, Mountain Gate route. The weather was quite gloomy for this one: mist and fog, fairly cool. I’d work arm and leg warmers, though the former were ditched about 15 minutes into the ride. Only four riders showed up, and Jonathan and I were the only A-class riders there, so the two of us embarked on the ride, thinking that we may need to cut even the shorter Mountain Gate route down a bit due to darkness.

Fortunately, the light situation didn’t get any worse, though my glasses got foggy if we had to stop. We ended up doing the full, 27-mile route and had a blast, making good time the whole way. It did rain on us briefly, immediately after the Mountain Gate Road climb, but that was the extent of it. Once again, I was über strong on the hills, and dropped Jonathan on every incline of distance.

Popularity: 18% [?]

A co-worker died over the weekend.

Now that’s not uncommon at a university, where thousands of people of all ages work - especially one where the title “emeritus” is bandied about with some frequency.

But this one hit closer to home: the co-worker was a person in my department.

While he didn’t work in my exact office, he and I worked closely to achieve our work tasks. More often than not, I’d need his skills for something, and he’d need mine for something else.

Above all that: he was a cool guy. He was a walking encyclopedia of 80s musical knowledge who was stumped by not even the most obtuse, obscure question about a tune that peaked somewhere in the high-100s of the Billboard chart. He had a semi-regular gig spinning “crap 80s” music at The Black Cat, and I’m sorry that I never had the chance to hear his brand of tune selection.

He was hip. He dressed - and lived - the part of the hipster. You’d always be able to tell what was “in” and what wasn’t, which is no small feat in IT, where fashion sense is usually a trait that’s surgically removed upon acceptance of any job that requires the knowledge of umpteen specialty acronyms that have no meaning to the world at large. Yet he somehow managed to be whip-smart in tech knowledge while remaining on the forefront of “teh new hip.”

His life touched many at my workplace. One of his closest friends sits next to me at my office, and I hate to see her grieve - though she’s doing well, thus far. And others who worked more closely with him also tried to put up their best appearances, though grief was apparent beyond the façade of strength and concentration.

The news of his death matched the cool, murky, gloomy weather that greeted me on my ride to work this morning. Similarly, the cold, gray rain that accompanied my ride home was fitting: a sky full of tears, falling for a man whose life ended far too early.

So rest in peace, Trent. I hope the pain is gone.

Popularity: 20% [?]

It’s been hard to avoid stories of the mining disaster in Huntington, Utah. With six miners still missing and (at this point) presumed dead, and three rescuers killed in a subsequent cave-in, there is a lot of sadness, anger and questions created in the aftermath.

It’s well known that the owner of the mine, Robert Murray, is known for putting profits ahead of safety. In his Illinois mines alone, he’s had nearly 2,800 documented safety violations since 2005. I’d imagine that his track record for the Huntington mine, as well as his other Utah holdings, is equally terrible.

Furthermore, Richard Stickler, chair of the Mining Safety and Health Adminstration (MSHA), was a 2006 recess appointment by President Bush. Bush knew full well that Stickler’s record on safety was abysmal, and that he would never pass the scrutiny of the then-GOP congress in the wake of the then-recent Sago disaster in West Virginia (12 dead, one survivor). So Bush, in his infinite smugness, appointed Stickler during a time where no scrutiny was possible.

Deep level mining is a dangerous trade. Miners put their lives on the line every day, with the short-term danger of explosions and cave-ins a constant sword over their heads, and the long-term risks of exposure to carcinogens (coal dust, radon, lead and arsenic, to name a few) being a floor of surgical-steel spikes on which they have to walk. They work for pay that is very low, often supporting families that can barely scrape by in times of increasing costs of living.

And they do this for owners who seldom care for anything more than profit margins that continue to dwindle as two forces drive the old-school energy market into a tailspin:

1. Increasing production from foreign countries that have lower operational costs (usually with inherently lower safety standards) and therefore lower market costs; and
2. A move away from high-pollutant, carbon-rich fuels, which contribute highly to both global warming and low-atmosphere particulant pollution.

This latter factor was used as a point of tantrum by Murray, who blamed the “global warming militants” for the problems that led to the initial cave-in.

Whatever, Mr. Murray, but you’re way off base - by about a country mile, give or take.

Coal mining is a dying enterprise in the United States. It is a form of fuel that is increasingly obsolete due to the very legitimate threat of human-influenced climate change, and the true need to reduce the impact of industry on the ecosystem. While some influential people are still in denial of global warming, the scientific consensus is that it is happening and that there’s precious little time left for mankind to stave off a rapid - and likely catastrophic - increase in global temperature and decrease in air quality.

So rather than cry over lost profits, Mr. Murray, perhaps you should think about looking for clean, next-generation energy sources for your investment. Build a wind farm in central Utah, where conditions are most favorable. Start a solar array. Buy a few thousand acres and grow corn or soy that can be converted to clean-burning oil and petrol. Invest in science that could hold the key to clean energy for generations to come.

And shut down your mines. Do so while educating your miners (through investment in the miners’ pursuit of GEDs and college diplomas) so that they can get jobs in the new economy. And make sure that the closed mines are not eco-disasters in waiting: close up the tunnels properly.

And finally, both you and Mr. Stickler must come clean with your intentions about further rescue operations. You’ve dragged around the hearts of the missing miners’ families for far too long, building up hope and stringing them along for weeks. Simply state your intent, as painful as it may be, and allow the grieving families to start the healing process.

Popularity: 48% [?]

After a last-minute cleaning blitz - most of the responsibility for the cleaning goes to sprite - we welcomed her parents into town for a weekend of dining and baseball. It was wonderful to have them back in town (they lived here nearly full-time for 14 years), and they got to see the Mets crush the Nats today, 8-2.

It’s somewhat sad that, just as they left to resume full-time residence in Connecticut, DC got a MLB team. But they’ve been back every year to take in a Mets-Nats game. And with this year’s win, the Mets are now 2-1 in games the family attends together at RFK.

Of note is the fair-weather fandom of the Nats fans at today’s game. By the 7th inning stretch, after the Mets went ahead for good, fans in Nats gear started to make their way home. This worsened in the 8th, when the Mets added insurance runs. A few die-hard Nats fans stayed, including a very vocal man about 3 rows behind us, who tried to get the crowd to chant “let’s go Nats.” A happy usher urged him to continue, saying “it’s not over yet” as the Mets continued to score runs.

But the crowd also had its fair share of Mets fans (DC is a city of transplants, after all, and NYC is a short train, bus or plane ride away), and the chants of “let’s go Mets” were loud, with the reactionary “boos” from Nats fans getting less and less audible as fortunes turned towards the boys from Flushing.

Being a quartet of Mets fans, we stayed to the very end - after all, the Mets have an uncanny reputation for blowing leads in the 9th. But the Mets held on, giving up nothing in the end.

A funny sight at the game: Sandy Alomar, Sr. (3B coach for the Mets), giving signals to Sandy Alomar, Jr. (C for the Mets) during the latter’s first at-bat in the game. “Junior” was called up from New Orleans yesterday, as their top two catchers - Paul LoDuca and Ramon Castro - are on the disabled list. And at 41, he still does a great job as catcher.

16 more home games at RFK before its baseball days are over.

Popularity: 31% [?]