Murdering Anti-Cyclist Douchebags

A one-two punch of cycling death news articles has put me in a rather angry disposition this morning.

From Reuters today (source):

Spanish driver sues dead crash cyclist for damage

MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish driver who collided with a cyclist is suing the dead youth’s family $29,300 for the damage the impact of his body did to his luxury car, a Spanish newspaper reported on Friday.

Businessman Tomas Delgado says 17-year-old Enaitz Iriondo caused $20,500 of damage to his Audi A8 in the fatal 2004 crash in La Rioja region, the El Pais newspaper reported.

Delgado, who has faced no criminal charges for the incident, wants a further 6,000 euros to cover the cost of hiring another vehicle while his car was being repaired, El Pais said.

The youth had been cycling alone at night without reflective clothing or a helmet, according to a police report cited by El Pais.

His family won 33,000 euros compensation from Delgado’s insurance company after the firm acknowledged he had been driving at excessive speed and this could have contributed to the incident, El Pais reported.

“I’m also a victim in all of this, you can’t fix the lad’s problems, but you can fix mine,” Delgado told the newspaper, ahead of a January 30 legal decision on his suit.

The family said they had previously pitied Delgado for the guilt he must feel at killing their son but were now disgusted that his greatest concern appeared to be money.

“This was the final straw, a kick in the teeth,” the youth’s mother Rosa Trinidad told El Pais.

And then from yesterday, a story from Tucscon (source).

Jailhouse calls lead to longer sentence

A recorded jail conversation in which a woman made light of the bicyclist she had killed led to her getting a longer sentence in Pima County Superior Court on Tuesday.

Two months ago, Melissa Arrington, 27, was convicted of negligent homicide and two counts of aggravated driving under the influence in connection with the December 2006, death of Paul L’Ecuyer.

She could have received as few as four years in prison, but Judge Michael Cruikshank sentenced her to 10.5 years, one year shy of the maximum.

Cruikshank said he found a telephone conversation between Arrington and an unknown male friend a week after L’Ecuyer was killed “breath-taking in its inhumanity.”

In a call from the Pima County jail, the man told Arrington an acquaintance of theirs believed she should get “a medal and a (expletive) parade because she had taken out “a (expletive) tree hugger, a bicyclist, a Frenchman and a gay guy all in one shot.”

Arrington laughed. When the man said he knew it was a terrible thing to say, she responded “No, it’s not.”

The article goes on to mention that Arrington “was driving on a suspended license for a prior DUI,” and “had a blood-alcohol content of 0.156 percent, nearly double the DUI level.” More about the victim, L’Ecuyer, who it seemed was a very admirable individual, can be read here.

I don’t know which of these two news stories I find more despicable, but I wish the very worst on both of them. At least some form of justice was found in the case of Arrington, which is far better than the 2006 case of Jennifer Stark who killed cyclist Matthew Wilhelm because she was too busy dowloading cell phone ring tones to pay attention to the road. She got away with what was essentially a slap on the wrist, being charged with “improper lane change” which results in a maximum penalty of “six months of conditional discharge (probation without reporting to an officer), a $1,000 fine and traffic safety school.”

Modern Nostaliga

While still on the subject of Pete and Pete, check out this video from The XYZ Affair for their song “All My Friends” and see how many ’90s Nickelodeon cameos you can spot.

From their web page, they write:

In this video an epic battle rages between ourselves and our nefarious neighbor, Marc Summers. We call on a few friends (some of whom you might recognize from early 90s Nickelodeon shows such as “Pete & Pete,” “Clarissa Explains It All,” and “Salute Your Shorts”) to help us clean house. But all goes delightfully awry. AYE DIOS MIO!

Big Pete Rides

Nada Surf has a new video out for their song “Whose Authority” featuring big Pete from one of my favorite ’90s shows, The Adventures of Pete and Pete.

Bacon

More bacon love

Midnight Ridazz: Pillow Fight

Since I wanted to at least try and get some rest before my brevet, I opted to not do the Midnight Ridazz ride last Friday. The theme this month was the “Pillow Fight” ride. Kind of sad I missed it. Look at how much fun it must have been!

I did manage to do the Wolfpack Hustle ride on Monday, though. Totally different feel from Midnight Ridazz, but Los Angeles night riding nonetheless (my favorite kind of riding). I think I’m going to start doing the Wolfpack rides more often. I was able to keep on this one, my second Wolfpack ride, though only barely. I might be able to ride long distances, but I’m still slow in the grand cycling scheme of things and I wouldn’t mind kicking things up a notch.

200km Brevet, Part 2 of 2

All in all, I think the brevet went extremely well. I honestly felt pretty good at the end of the ride, and whereas before a ride longer than the 200km seemed intimidating, I can now see myself taking on the next big hurdle, the 300km (185 miles) ride on February 2nd. (And yes, I do realize how crazy riding that far sounds but that’s why I like it!) I felt less fatigued and less sore after riding 200km than after doing, say, a 10-mile hike or 6 miles of backpacking, which, for one thing, speaks to the beautiful mechanical efficiency of the bicycle.

What Worked

So clearly I was doing something right. As far as “training” goes, I didn’t really do too much beyond what I normally do. I bike commute daily, about 7 miles each way, splitting my time about 50/50 between the road bike I took on the brevet and my track bike. To supplement my commute, I did a couple of longer rides, one metric century, and a few 30-milers, along with the usual collection of Midnight Ridazz-style night rides. I think that anyone who does a regular commute should be able to finish a century or a 200km without too much difficulty. This isn’t a race so one just needs to know how to pace themselves and keep spinning at a comfortable speed.

What worked fantastically for me was my eating and drinking regimen. In the past, when doing really long rides I’d get both fatigued and ravenously hungry. This wasn’t a problem this time around and was probably due to a combination of eating and hydrating well in the days leading up to the ride as well as during the ride. On the ride, I snacked on whatever they had at the controls. While in the saddle, one of my water bottles was filled with Perpetuem, which was the first time I had used it or really any fancy-pants sport concoctions. It seemed to do its job exceedingly well as the only other thing I munched on was a sack of fruit and nut trail mix that I kept in my handlebar bag’s rear-facing pockets.

Speaking of my handlebar bag, it and my saddlebag are recent acquisitions from Acorn Bags, a husband and wife outfit cranking out handmade bags in Gardena and selling them on eBay. The bags are absolutely gorgeous, receiving many compliments on the ride, and are very well made. Even better, they’re a great value when compared to similar offerings from Rivendell, Carradice, Velo Orange, or Gilles Berthoud.

What Didn’t Work

My primary complaint was that I ended up packing too much. I had gotten into my head that randonneuring is supposed to be all about self-sufficiency and being prepared for anything be it mechanical troubles or adverse weather conditions, which is essentially true. That’s the purist spirit. However, this ride was more lax than that, which was great as it added to the supportive air of the event. There were ample snacks and water at each of the controls, and a roving SAG vehicle was available for any mechanical issues that may have popped up. I ended up making hardly a dent in the snacks that I brought myself.

Then there was the weather. Weather.com said there was a 10% chance of rain in the morning so I figured better safe than sorry and brought along my rain paints and an extra pair of gloves. I don’t know what I was worried about. This is southern California, after all. A 10% chance of rain means that there will be no rain. A look outside my window could have confirmed that and this isn’t the type of region where sudden weather changes sweep in without warning.

The other thing I would’ve done differently would be to acclimate myself to my bike shorts earlier. I don’t normally where padded bike shorts as I find my Brooks saddle is generally comfortable enough on its own. For this ride, since it was of a significantly longer distance than any other ride I’d done, I thought it prudent to wear the only pair of bike shorts that I own, which I bid on one day on a whim off of ebay when I thought “hmm… maybe I should have a pair of bike shorts.” I think prior to the brevet, I had only worn these on a couple of Midnight Ridazz rides underneath my Swrve knickers and the mileage of the average Midnight Ridazz ride is nothing compared to a brevet; it’s often times comparable to my daily commute. This brevet was then the real introduction between my bum and my bike shorts. Unfortunately for the first 90 miles or so, we really weren’t getting along well. But around the century mark, things started to fall into place. I don’t know if this is due to me finally getting used to the shorts, or to my body learning to ignore the pain I was feeling all around. At any rate, I think I could’ve benefited from breaking myself into the attire beforehand.

What Really Didn’t Work Out

The stupidest thing I did didn’t even happen on the ride. I had made tentative plans earlier in the week to hang out with my friend and soon-to-be groomslady, Emily, that evening. When I got home I was still feeling really good so I took a nice hot bath, scarfed down a slice of banana bread, and hopped back on the bike and headed out to meet up with her at the Dresden. There was a considerable line at the door, which was pretty unusual as I’ve never seen that happen, so we opted to head to my absolute favorite neighborhood bar, the Tiki Ti. The Tiki Ti is a small shack of a place and one of the few establishments that allows smoking indoors. As a result, there isn’t much oxygen in the bar. This, combined with sudden pangs of hunger, are what probably led me to fainting within five minutes of entering.

The doorman was quick to help me up, asking Emily, “How much did he have to drink?” To which she responded, “Nothing! Like a sip of my drink! But he rode like a hundred fifty miles on bicycle today.” They helped me outside where the cold fresh air and a bottle of water got me back to my senses. The doorman was totally cool, emphasizing, as he puffed his cigar, that he just wants to make sure that everybody’s having a good time and enjoying themselves. People fall over all the time in the Tiki Ti (they have extremely potent drinks), but it’s not usually under my circumstances. At any rate, as soon as I was collected, Emily insisted that I eat something so we headed to The Kitchen (my favorite neighborhood restaurant) where I scarfed down a bowl of mac ‘n’ cheese.

So the lesson learned here: RECOVERY is crucial. For the 300km ride coming up, I will be sure to spend the day after with a stack of movies and probably an entire pizza or something.

200km Brevet, Part 1 of 2

After much anticipation, I did my first 200km brevet on Saturday. At 127 miles, from Malibu to Carpinteria and back, it was the most I had ridden in one day. Previously it was something like 70 or 80 miles. I spent a good deal of time the weeks before the ride researching recommendations on gear lists and nutrition (this fantastic post by a fellow Bike Pirate was extremely helpful). I also used the ride as an excuse to pig-out… err… carb load all last week.

The night before the ride, I made sure all my gear was together and that everything on Grant, my trusty Bridgestone RB-2, was in working order. Bronwyn and I also went out for a nice (and carb filled!) Italian dinner at Il Capriccio, though good conversation over a tasty bottle of chianti lead to us staying a bit longer than we probably should have and I ended up going to sleep around midnight with the alarm clock set for 5:15am so that we could leave the apartment at 6am and be in Malibu before the 7am start.

The Ride

The morning of the ride, I managed to wake up and shower just fine. I cooked up a hearty breakfast of bacon (the gift of bacon truly is the gift that just keeps giving), eggs, and a couple slices of banana bread that I had baked earlier in the week. This made for kind of a leisurely pace and our 6am departure time was starting to look more like 6:15am. That wasn’t all that worrying as I was getting my eat on, however things started to turn panicky when thetrunk rack for Bronwyn’s car had a malfunction. I spent some time trying to fix it before deciding it was a lost cause. Instead, we dropped the rear seats in Bronwyn’s Civic and managed to slide the entire bike into the trunk. Now fairly late, we rushed off to Malibu, arriving at 7:30am. I was the absolute last person to check in, rolling out at 7:45am.

Once in the saddle, the hectic morning was pretty quickly forgotten as I pedaled along the PCH with some absolutely stellar weather. It was sunny and clear with dazzling blue skies and morning temperatures in the high 50’s that would eventually get up in to the 70’s by the afternoon. I spent the first leg of the trip, 37 miles to the first control, riding solo up and down the hills of Malibu maintaining around a 15mph average. Eventually someone on his morning ride passed me going an average of 17mph and I started following him for about an hour before he turned around. The step up in speed really wasn’t that difficult once I got into it, but I found it harder to maintain that rate when there wasn’t someone off of whom I could pace myself.

At the first checkpoint in Port Hueneme I met up with John Vu (his account of the ride is here) who had also gotten a late start (I saw his name on the sign-in sheet just above mine). The control had brownies and water which I happily scarfed down and after a quick break, we headed out together with another rider, Mike from Pasadena who had gotten an early blow out and so was lagging behind from the rest of the more punctual riders.

Now in a group, we were able to take turns pulling and drafting so it definitely helped, especially since there was a slight headwind. The day was warming up and the terrain was pretty flat at this point so it was a rather leisurely ride, though we maintained a 15mph pace. However, as we got around the 60 mile point I was starting to feel some soreness in the saddle regions as well as in the shoulders and neck.

We reached the second control and the turnaround point at a park in Carpinteria just after noon and they had wraps, sodas, chips, trail mix, and cupcakes available. We enjoyed a nice lunch break on the grass, while the folks at the control commented on John and my “true randonneur”-ness in the form of our old lugged-steel bikes and wool jerseys. As John noted, it was interesting to see that our bike styles were actually the minority as most of the riders out seemed to opt for their “fast” bikes a la fancy titanium and carbon fiber.

After lunch, we headed back to the Port Hueneme control and for this part of the ride we flew. We had a nice tailwind and I think a lot of the ride was very slightly downhill so we made fantastic time and felt pretty good at the third stop with 30 some miles to go.

A short break there and we were off. Interestingly, the soreness that I had felt earlier disappeared for the most part during this leg. Maybe it was me getting used to my bike shorts (this was the first real ride I’d done in them), or maybe it was just my body starting to ignore the aches, but I amazingly felt pretty good as we continued along the PCH.

John apparently didn’t have as much luck. Things slowed down unexpectedly as he hit the wall shortly after the century mark. He both quickly tired and started cramping, which he attributes to not drinking enough water. Facing the Malibu hills again probably didn’t help either.

I hung back with John as Mike took off. We managed to eventually make it to the end, only needing to stop for the occasional stretch break. I think we came in sometime around 6:30pm or 7pm so it was in all around an 11-hour ride. John and his girlfriend Emily, who was waiting at the finish line with a cup of warm tea ready for John, were kind enough to offer me a ride back to L.A.

In the next post, I’ll write about what did and didn’t work.

Kerry Backs Obama

This just in from Kerry:

Martin Luther King said, “The time is always right to do what is right.” So I’m choosing this time to share an important decision I’ve made, one I believe is right for this country.

The JohnKerry.com community has been very important to me and very important to the Democratic resurgence over the last couple of years, so I wanted to let all of you know my decision before I confirm it with anyone else. I want to share with you my conviction that in a field of fine Democratic candidates, the next President of the United States can be, should be, and will be Barack Obama. Each of our candidates would make a fine President, and we are blessed with a strong field. But for this moment, at this time in our nation’s history, Barack Obama is the right choice.

Please join me in supporting Barack Obama’s candidacy.

I’m proud to have helped introduce Barack to our nation when I asked him to speak to our national convention, and there Barack’s words and vision burst out. On that day he reminded Americans that our “true genius is faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles.” And with his leadership we can build simple dreams, and we can turn millions of small miracles into real change for our country.

At this particular moment, with our country faced with great challenges in our economy, in our environment, and in our foreign policy, and with our politics torn by division, Barack Obama can bring transformation to our country. With Barack, we can build a new majority of Americans from all regions who can turn the page on the politics of Karl Rove and begin a new politics, one worthy of our nation’s history and promise. We can bring millions of disaffected people - young and old - to the great task of governing and making a difference, child to child, community to community.

Please click here to give what you can to Barack Obama’s campaign for President and help build this future for our country.

The moment is now, and the candidate for this moment is Barack Obama. Like him, I also lived abroad as a young man, and I share with him a healthy respect for the advantage of knowing other cultures and countries, not from a book or a briefing, but by personal experience, by gut, by instinct. He knows the issues from the deep study of a legislator, and he knows them from a life lived outside of Washington. His is the wisdom of real-world experience combined with the intellect of a man who has thought deeply about the challenges we face.

History has given us this moment. But we need to decide what to do with it. I believe, with this moment, we should make Barack Obama President of the United States.

Please join me in supporting his campaign.

Christmas Recap

Things are finally getting settled back home. Having been away for a week and a half visiting the future in-laws in Memphis for Christmas and New Year’s as well as going to Knoxville and celebrating the wedding of Bronwyn’s cousin, we got back last Tuesday meaning last week was a short one at work and this is the first “normal” work week I’ve had in a while.

Anyways, vacation was great. It consisted primarily of sitting around in pajamas watching the Discovery Channel in high definition. If you haven’t experienced that yet, get thyself to a Best Buy and tell the salesman you want to see some grizzly bears.

I also spent a lot of time acquainting myself with one of my Christmas presents, a shiny new PSP. When we weren’t watching the mating rituals of Galapagos iguanas, one of the things we would do whilst exploring Memphis was drop into the local Gamestops from which I quickly put together a core collection of PSP games. Most notable of those acquisitions are two peculiar games. One is Loco Roco, a game in which you roll a singing blob around a maze, all the while munching on bugs and berries to plumpify your Loco Roco. The hypnotic experience is akin to playing with one of those ink hourglass things that were so popular back in the ’90s, except that this sings and won’t break and stain your carpet. The second game is called Puzzle Quest, which is an unlikely pairing of a puzzle game and RPG. At first the concept seemed a bit too quirky, but the game appeared on the top of 2007 lists of quite a few sites, like Gamasutra’s Top 10 Games of the Year and Gamespot’s Best Game No One Played, so I thought I’d give it a try. Basically, you move around a map completing quests, collecting treasure, conquering undead hordes, and laying seige to cities, except that all manner of “combat” is determined in a puzzle game match up. As odd and dorky as it sounds, Puzzle Quest is ridiculously addictive. I had to give it a few hours of gameplay before the mechanics actually started to click and I figured out why I couldn’t beat the stupid giant bat (it’s his shriek spell, duh! Like Officer Michaels’ coitus interuptus of McLovin, I’ve got to block his mana collection).

At any rate, as great as my shiny white PSP is, it pails in comparison to Bronwyn’s other gift to me: the gift of bacon. It’s a collection of five of the top bacons of 2007 according to The Grateful Palate, which offers a bacon of the month subscription service, so they should know their bacon. We cooked up the first of the bacon this last Saturday morning for breakfast, opting for the Jim Oliver’s Hickory Smoked Country Bacon.

Alls I can say is, “Oh, Glory!”

CNN Projects Obama Win!

I actually stayed a little later at work hitting refresh on this page so I wouldn’t miss the results during my ride home.