In which three more passions coalesce

My bike-only friends may not know that I consider myself a Romanticist. Everyone calls me an "English major / teacher / professor" (not yet), but my specialization is the literature of the British Romantic period, which ran from around 1770 to 1830. Political, aesthetic, and agricultural revolutions all occurred in this period, as did the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. The period's seminal text is usually thought to be Lyrical Ballads, a 1798 volume of poetry written by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

I love Wordsworth in a way that academics shouldn't. My love for his work often blinds me to beneficial and relevant critical thought and leads me toward the affective fallacy, that brand of non-critique which praises poetry for its emotional effect. But most of my fervently held beliefs originate with Wordsworth: in the power of nature and wilderness to heal, in the beneficence of self-propelled travel and movement, in the leveling power of good art, in a radical Marxian politics, in the restorative sublimity of the imagination. The ways in which our culture thinks about nature, the imagination, the role of the artist, and the transformative power of art all begin with Wordsworth.

So imagine my ass-slappin', whoop-shrieking joy when I saw THIS:

God love 'em, the folks at Rivendell already make a bike named after Tom Bombadil. If you've only seen the movies and not read the books, old Tom, "Eldest," is my favorite Tolkien character, who thankfully didn't make the shooting script:

So a bike named after a Wordsworth character? I'm in heaven. Too bad I can't ride one; it's a women's specific design:

 Remember what I said yesterday? about the sexiest thing in the world being a woman on a bike? Uhh, yeah. How about more specifics: a red-head on a Rivendell named after a Wordsworth character? Jessica would just have to forgive me. Unless I BUY her one. HMMM.....

Anyhow, here's the first three stanzas of "The Idiot Boy," the poem in which the name "Betty Foy" appears:

'TIS eight o'clock,--a clear March night,
The moon is up,--the sky is blue,
The owlet, in the moonlight air,
Shouts from nobody knows where;
He lengthens out his lonely shout,
Halloo! halloo! a long halloo!

--Why bustle thus about your door,
What means this bustle, Betty Foy?
Why are you in this mighty fret?
And why on horseback have you set
Him whom you love, your Idiot Boy?

Scarcely a soul is out of bed;
Good Betty, put him down again;
His lips with joy they burr at you;
But, Betty! what has he to do
With stirrup, saddle, or with rein?

But Betty's bent on her intent;
For her good neighbour, Susan Gale,
Old Susan, she who dwells alone,
Is sick, and makes a piteous moan
As if her very life would fail.

Wordsworth's great contribution (the credit isn't entirely his, but for the sake of argument...) was to make lyric poetry about beggars, tillers, gleaners, shepherds, leech-gatherers, war widows, fishermen and the like. Shepherding this sort of dramtis personae  and speech into the elevated realm of lyric poetry was a radical act, one of many revolutionary sentiments and habits Wordsworth embodied in his early career.

And besides examining the lives of the laboring, rural poor, the "Idiot Boy" also makes heroic the actions of a mentally challenged child. One day I'll write a book about Wordsworthian disability portraits. Disability Studies is a relatively recent field in literary theory, one which I find of particular interest because of my daughter Katie's autism diagnosis and the pejorative use of the adjective "retarded."

But damn! That bike!

Sixty-five miles. Napa County. Good friends. Pain-free back.

Plastic and I on Wooden Valley road, west of Fairfield.

 Pete and I at Monticello Dam in Solano County. Two Micks on parade.

In which my passions for parenting, politics, and cycling all coalesce

I got a Facebook update today from Brooke Miller, a woman I've met several times and have come to admire a great deal. She holds a PhD in Evolutionary Biology from UC Santa Cruz AND a few stars and stripes jerseys as both Road and Crit national champion:


We met several years ago, when I was racing for UC Davis and she for UCSC. My daughter Abbey was pretty taken with her and the rest of the female racers, so whenever Brooke was racing as a pro nearby, I'd usually take Abbey along to say "hi."

Brooke has been a great ambassador for women's cycling, so when she posted about a letter on the Velonews website, I took a look:

I think this is bullshit, so I wrote a response:

 

In my letter, I failed to admit an additional bias: I want Abbey and Katie to have as many opportunities to compete as their talents allow.  I don't have sons, so perhaps I'm blind to some of the reverse discrimination that Title IX supposedly causes; men's wrestling, tennis, and the like are getting cut on some campuses becasue football creates such a huge disparity of male to female participants. Some athletic departments are forced to favor women's tennis over the men's game in order to offer as many spots to women as they do to men. Title IX, however, promises access, not equality, but some administrators like to use it as a scapegoat to defend their budgetary decisions.

So, I think that media should cover women's sports in order to grow them. One of the only reasons they aren't more popular is a dearth of coverage motivated by an ideology which teaches women not to play sports because they aren't athletic enough. Of course, some anthropologists think a female's slower and weaker physiology (compared to men) is culturally (ideologically)  determined, and that in a truly gender-neutral culture, the women can be just as fast and strong as men.

But, and butt: the ways in which we market or cover female sports is often just as sexist as a total absence of marketing or coverage. I call this the "Liz Hatch Effect":

I know that Liz is a looker. She conforms very closely to one of the new standards beauty found in our culture. And I think that glorifying a healthy, athletic body type is much better for young women than trying to emulate the "America's Next Top Model" ideal. And, I'll admit, I like to look at bodies. I'm not a prude. There's nothing "immoral" about Liz's willingness or ability to create these kinds of images. She's marketing herself and her sport. She's empowering herself by taking ownership of a thing about herself that others would like to exploit. That's a good thing, Right? But why is Liz so much more known and admired by male cycling fans?  Why do we pay more attention to women who pose for provocative pictures than we do to women who kick ass and win races without baring their bodies outside the competitive arena? Why is the hot tennis player more famous than the average-looking one? When I see images culled from the Cycle Passions calendar pasted next to exploitative motorcycle posters on the walls of bike shop service areas, I start to ask myself if maybe we haven't lost the plot. 

So, yeah. I think a woman on a bike is the sexiest thing there is. I love watching women race, and a small part of my enjoyment stems from how they look in spandex. But a wise young woman I used to know once taught me that while third-wave feminism offers women ownership of their own sexuality, it certainly doesn't demand that they sell it.

Hesitant, cautious...

I'm almost scared to report anything. I've been almost healthy so many times since I wrecked my back in October. But....

Three weeks of easy, light base training on the Elliptical Trainer at the Downtown Y. 45 minutes at a stretch is all my mind can tolerate, but I've done it four times a week for three weeks--with no discernible back pain. And I can maintain Zone 2 / LE the entire time and still manage to read an entire New Yorker article. 

Three weeks, too, of AA weight work; I've been following the recommendations found in Weight Training for Cyclists, and I've found that its emphasis on plyometric power training works my fast- twitch muscle fibers really well.

I did plyometrics when I was running track and playing football in high school--lots of box jumps, skips, and single-leg hops. Of course, that same program sometimes involved getting pulled along a football field by George Achola as we were connected to each other by heavy-weight surgical tubing. Two runners would stand in single file, both wearing weight belts or harnesses connected by elastic tubing. The lead runner would explode forward at the gun, pulling the stretched tubing tighter and tighter as the second runner braced his ground. The leader would experience progressively more and more resistance until he felt like he was running in jello, but then the tail runner would start and get pulled along by the contracting tubing and the lead runner's momentum. I once ran a sub 10-second 100 meters while George pulled me along.

Brother Wilmot, the controversial Jesuit who fell out of favor at Prep for allegedly hitting a student  with the shaft of a golf club shaft, used to pull the sprinters behind the lawn tractor. I hear that sucked. Tubing was better.

Of course, George lettered in football at Nebraska. Dave Jandric went to Notre Dame for football, Ricky Davis to Stanford. Damn. THOSE were athletes. I just tried to hang on and not embarrass myself. Kind of like riding bikes with guys at UC Davis who went on to win national collegiate championships and have careers in the professional peloton. Maybe that's my destiny--to serve as a metonym for others' greatness.

So my back has tolerated three weeks of decent cross-training; I've had no real pain symptoms for two. But today, I put the new CCR1 in the trainer.

And I survived. I only spun for 20 minutes--just a quick sweat, a little test, a gentle nudge against my recovering back as if to ask, "we cool?" I stretched for 30 minutes afterward and did a circuit of light weight work. And I worked at the dissertation for the rest of the day with no pain. I picked up the kids at school with no pain. I emptied the dishwasher, made dinner, ate with my girls, and cleaned the kitchen again. With no pain.

The Fuji CCR1 is a warranty replacement for my Team Issue, itself a warranty replacement for my original Team RC. They also intend to send me another frame; this one is just a lower-grade carbon stopgap until the one I'm entitled to is shipped over from Taiwan. I'd put a link here to the shop which helped me with the warranty, True Wheel in Council Bluffs, IA, but they have no website. Just a dedicated owner who bent over backwards to get me a frame and supply a quality re-build and tune-up. Steve's a good guy.

So this week, I spin on the trainer for 30, 30, 45, and 60 minutes. Lots and lots of core and stretching is also in the offing. But I may be on the road--to recovery. Let's all hope, shall we?

I miss Davis. I miss some good friends whom I love. Some are thriving, some are suffering. I offer congrats and condolences. But for the few who need me, the cavalry's coming. I'll be there this week.

On the road.

Recovering.

odds and ends, in abstentia

My ongoing back injuries have kept me off the saddle (and my sit bones) for the last 7 weeks, so I've curtailed my blogging--it's hard to write laying down. And even harder to think about cycling when it's just physically impossible.

However, I've made substantial improvements during the last two weeks, thanks, in part, to the excellent care of Dr. Mark Wurth, DC. Before each adjustment, he uses interferential stem therapy to loosen the muscles and tissues surrounding my bulging discs, which seems to make the "cracking" more effective. I hope to resume training in another week to ten days. Now if I could just take a break from all the damn snow shoveling, I might actually make a full recovery.

Today I'm sitting in a cool, funky coffee shop in Springfield, Missouri, the hometown of my wife's family. We're here until the middle of the week. Missouri State University's campus is expanding, and nearby downtown Springfield, such as it is, seems to be experiencing a slow renaissance and redevelopment. All of the old warehouse buildings and brick storefronts were boarded up as recenetly as ten years ago, but today I passed several cool looking clubs, a few vintage clothing boutiques, a theatre company, brew pub, and a really, really cool bike shop. The shop's owner is a Springfield native who returned after a decade in Chicago, and last year he sold over 200 fixies and single-speed commuters. I guess watching Cavdendish do this two years ago helped build the bike scene just a bit:

On a personal note, I've decided to accept an offer to race next season with Team Type 1, an Omaha-based regional affiliate of the Continental Pro team. I still plan to race a weekend or two with my Rocknasium brothers in Davis next year, but for the Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri races (12 on the schedule, woohoo!), TT1 offered the best mix of personalities. Many thanks to Pat Cash and Brandon Fenster, two proactive Omaha cyclists who helped me connect with the Omaha race scene. I'm really excited to see the results of Brandon's efforts to expand Bike Master's race team.

Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance - $18.95 | Velogear.com | Cycling Clothing and Gifts

Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance - $18.95 | Velogear.com | Cycling Clothing and Gifts

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Justin Hall's Fantasy Bike Ride

A friend and teammate of mine back in Davis is a bit of a card player. Well, he's also a bit of a race-car driver, tech. company manager, and master's bike racer, but he's talked a fair amount about driving to Northern California casinos for "cash-flow positive recreation."

From the Sac Bee:

So how many poker-playing bike racers are there? I couldn't begin to guess. But I know of at least one--and man, do I have a bike ride for him.

Leaving my house in Country Club and rolling east through Omaha's residential neighborhoods  seemed a bit intimidating at first, but with my new-found  Omaha Commuter Map, I pieced together a route along side streets without a ton of stop signs:

For Omahans, I started at 49th and Blondo and followed Lincoln Blvd to 33rd, scooted over to Burt, and then continued east on Burt to the Quest center, using the new Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge as a sightline landmark.

I grew up in this town, and I thought I knew its streets pretty well. But I rode down boulevards and avenues I'd never seen, past some pretty stunning architecture:

When I got downtown after about 10 minutes of easy spinning through idyllic, historically preserved neighborhoods, I saw some immediate signs of Omaha's future:

That's the new home of the College World Series and Omaha's AAA baseball team; to the right is the new Qwest Center arena where Nebraska plays hockey and hosts the collegiate women's volleyball Final Four every few years. I think there's an NCAA basketball super regional scheduled there this year, too. Neither facility was even in the planning stages when Jess and I moved to Davis seven years ago.

Downtown, the riding changed from neighborhood side streets to multi-use bike paths:

That's the bridge over the Missouri River; it's reserved for non-motorized travel only. There's been a spate of vandalism lately, but the bridge provides a vital link from urban Omaha to a trail network that leads to the rural Loess Hills on the Iowa side of the river. 

After I crossed the river, I rolled along a nice, wide, multi-use path that followed the water south for 2 miles. But then things took a surreal, JHall-friendly turn.

See, Omaha let its AK-SAR-Ben horse-racing track die in the mid-1990's by refusing to allow the non-profit foundation that ran it to install slots to compete with newly built casinos on Native American reservation lands 30 miles away from town. However, Council Bluffs, IA decided that it couldn't watch all that gambling money drive north out of town to be deposited with the Omaha, Onawa, and Winnebago tribes, so the little Iowa town allowed Vegas gambling interests to build hotels and Riverboat casinos just across the river from downtown Omaha. 

So I'm rolling south on a perfectly lovely trail, and what do I see? I'll let the pictures tell the story:

The path actually meanders under the walkway from the hotel to the boat, through the parking garage, and past the boat itself:

 

On the other side? A continuance of the sylvan path. But wait! Wait? Just in case we override our compulsion to freak the hell out of the losers sitting around in a smoky haze and playing quarter slots at 10:00 on a Saturday morning by waddling past their tables in our spandex and cleats, we have another choice just two more miles down the trail:

 

Let's parlay those roulette winnings into a brunch-time run at the hold-'em table. We already have our Oakley's with us! Or better yet, let's sit down for a few hands of Omaha! There's a prime rib buffet for recovery! 

So, my new version of the 20-mile Davis to Dixon loop includes laboring over steep hills through midtown, surviving a tourist-dodging foray across a twelve-million dollar pedestrian bridge, and buzzing UNDER and past TWO riverboat casinos.

If I keep pedaling south along this trail, I can eventually link up with the Wabash Trace, a crushed limestone rail-to-trail conversion that runs 70 miles into Missouri. Evidently, every hairy-legged Fred in Omaha convenes on this thing for a drunken, often topless weekly  Taco Ride during the Summer. 

Justin, pay me a visit; I'll take you you on a Poker Ride with a Taco Ride for an encore.

Things have definitely taken a turn toward the bizarre.