The Attitude

A title of one of Maynard's short stories. I read it the other night in the book (print, paper - old skool).

But that commitment is a given among their peers. It goes without saying. And having to endure pain and frustration simply comes with their territory. Davis Phinney loses lots of sprints. Greg LeMond only wins a few races a year. Guys have bad days or bad luck at bad times.

If you ride 150 races and win 10 you're a superstar. You lost over 90% of the time but everyone wants your autograph.

Worth revisiting again and again.

There is nothing like experience. Knowing when to go, how hard to work, when to bury yourself. There is no substitute for racing and the most demanding discipline with two wheels with that caveat is Road Racing.

Put that back to back with his essay "smilin george" about George Mount. This essay has got to be one of his best, more nugget packed racing advice stories coming through Maynard's fingers.

And coming off the heals of the death of the LSD inventor (who woulda thought a dude like that would live to 102) the last couple lines in the story are awesome:

He told us that one season, right after the Giro, he realised that during the previous 50 days, he'd raced all but five.
"It was eat, sleep and ride your bike," he said, "but no drugs. You don't need drugs to race the bike."
He smiled into his notes.
"Besides," he quipped, "drugs were for recreation."

something to think about...

Something else?
Check out the editorial cartoon nicomachus posted yesterday.

And something else yet again?

Heavy brake drivers. Heavy foot drivers. I had essentially this conversation with two different people yesterday. How people drive.

You have the people who buy a hybrid to save the planet. Great. Good for you. Now DRIVE IT TO MAKE IT WORK! MORON! It has a regenerative brake in there. If you FAHKING HIT THE BRAKES HARD IT DON'T DO YOU MUCH GOOD! HELLO.
Didn't anyone tell them?
Late brake people ain't just wasting it in hybrids. Late brake folks increase their own consumption even without a hybrid.

Add heavy footing it, and you would think gas was free.

People driving around w/o a single care in the world regarding how to maximize their fuel economy. Do they just not give a shit? Do they just not understand? WTF?

They bitch and bitch and bitch about the price of fuel, but will be happy to spend 15 minutes idling through the drive through at Dunkin Donuts while the walk in counter is empty. Yeah. You care about the price of fuel. MORON!

Those enviro hippies and their hybrids bug me more. THEY have a car that CAN actually do some good. BUT. Well. Ya know it actually takes understanding and knowledge to figure out that you can actually get way better fuel economy driving a little Yaris/Echo than a fat ass heavy Prius. Sure some people drive em right. But I can tell you that in my bike commuting observation of society 99% of the prius/civic/you name it hybrids are NOT driven with max fuel economy in mind. Why not.

Ride your damn bike. Learn just how much work it is to accelerate from a stop. And learn that it is far less work (energy/fuel) to accelerate slowly than to pedal to the metal sprint.

Got cruise control? USE IT. These new drive by wire things actually work pretty fahking well. WAY better than the vacuum driven throttle cruise control of the old days.

I know, it shouldn't bother me, right? Everyone does stuff to keep up appearances. Not everyone intuitively knows how to drive and can easily figure out how an engine works.

Back to bikes. I'd forgotten about one failed climbing attempt this morning.

Riding up one of the leaf covered challenging slopes I spun out and fell over on my left side. when i stopped sliding down the hill i realized the weight of my left leg getting me up was pushing on my spokes and had tweaked the rear der a bit. got a little wobbly hop to the rim now. hopefully i can true it to some less noticeable lateral deviation.

DA Wings play tonight. On that Bull riding network. Should be a great game. But it don't start till 10pm. No way in H E double hockey sticks would I be staying up to watch that whole thing even if I had cable. At least if Day Trois prevails and takes the whole western conference, they are still Eastern Time zone and that is a good thing cause the eastern teams are all eastern time zones... means no 10pm games... i dunno if they would have a Stanley cup game that late at night... that i think make no sense - barely any to me - too tired to fix it and make it make sense if that makes any sense.

It is a good thing i don't have a couch in this office...

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