Old Yarn - The In-Flight Voyeur

Introduction

Here is the sixth “old yarn” on albertnet (following in the footsteps of “The Cinelli Jumpsuit,” “Bike Crash on Golden Gate Bridge,” “The Enemy Coach,” “The Brash Newb,” and most recently “The Day I Learned Bicycle Gear Shifting”). This is the kind of story that would normally be a “From the Archives” item, except I’ve never before written it down.

[Picture by ChapGPT, as my daughter was too busy to create original art by press time]

The In-Flight Voyeur – ca. 1998

I used to travel a lot on business. Once a month I flew to Columbus, Ohio and there was no direct flight. Often I’d get a late flight home, after a big expense-account dinner, and I’d be too deep in a calorie coma, not to mention blown from the week of meetings, to feel like reading. Back then you were lucky if you were offered an in-flight movie, which was whatever they happened to be showing on the crappy old tube TVs mounted from the ceiling, every ten or twelve feet, above the aisle. They charged to rent earbuds and (being the world’s cheapest man even then) I seldom sprung for them. So I’d be bored to say the least.

For the first six months or so of this business travel routine I’d dig out my Bellcore T3POS manual, which reliably put me to sleep—usually for the duration of the flight—until it (eventually, unfortunately) started to make sense, and its magic ended. This was before commercial airlines offered electrical outlets (much less WiFi), and before laptops had reliable batteries; mine was usually spent pretty early. Bose noise-canceling headphones hadn’t come out yet either, so listening to music was out of the question for anyone who valued his eardrums. Sometimes there was just nothing to do on these late flights but sit and stew.

During one such flight I was bored out of my mind and happened to notice, while rooting through my seatback pocket, that the passenger sitting in front of me using his laptop had a novel email interface I’d not seen before. I was so bored I took an interest and peered through the crack between the seats at his screen. (I know … pretty pathetic to be that bored.) I wouldn’t have looked for very long, but the email this guy was writing was pretty racy. I assumed it was a guy, anyway, because his email was to a woman, and was of a romantic nature. I’ll quote him as best I can from memory; obviously this is approximate but true to the nature of what I was reading.

“I’ll be there the week after next and would love to pick you up and take you out to a nice dinner. Then we can go for an evening walk before heading back to my hotel,” he typed, and then, after a pause, added, “where I will make passionate love to you.” After typing this he paused again, the cursor on his screen flashing as if waiting for the next detail of this steamy proposed liaison. But then he backspaced over the last bit and rewrote it: “Then we can go for an evening walk before heading back to my hotel, where we can get some drinks and see where the night leads us.” Another long pause.  He backspaced again and revised his proposal to “get a drink and have a nice chat.” Dude was losing his nerve already and hadn’t even met up with the woman yet! I suppressed a chuckle.

He wordsmithed the email some more, adding some logistical details, and I was just starting to get bored when he filed the draft in a folder with the name of the eastern bloc country where his potential paramour presumably lived. To my surprise, he had at least half a dozen such folders, each representing a different eastern European destination … Ukraine, Slovenia, Croatia, etc. He opened another of these folders, which had two or three email drafts in it, opened one of the drafts, and pasted in a passage he’d copied from his previous email, evidently being fairly pleased with it. He continued to work away like this, seeding at least eight or ten romantic rendezvous to coincide with his next two or three business trips to the region. Presumably he’d been getting leads from some kind of Internet mail-order bride service. I was shaking my head, kind of amazed at the cynicism and audacity of this guy—what an operator!—when suddenly he shifted in his seat and closed his laptop rather abruptly. I quickly slumped back into my seat, pulse racing … had he detected me snooping on this very private activity?

I grabbed my book, opened it, and hid behind it, turning a page to increase the illusion that I was just reading away, minding my own business. I could just imagine this guy craning his neck to give me stink-eye. I kept an eye on his flight attendant call button, fearing it might light up and bong, indicating he was about to lodge a complaint. I wasn’t too worried since of course he wouldn’t want to draw attention to what he was doing, but you never know. Eventually enough time had passed that I stopped worrying, managed to engage with my book (my sudden burst of adrenaline surely helping), and lost myself to the pleasure of reading until the end of the flight.

When the plane landed, taxied, and was parked at the gate, the lights came up and everyone started their rush to retrieve their stuff from the overhead bins and deplane. Now I would get a good look at the business travel casanova. I pictured him as someone needing to cut corners romantically, which meant he was probably not a real looker. Sure enough, he  had a pot-belly, nerdy glasses, and that kind of unfortunately hybrid scalp where, to compensate for where he was bald, he grew the rest of his hair out too long. I made sure only to risk a quick glance at him, in case he had caught me snooping and was sore about it. We busied ourselves, alongside our fellow passengers, with the tedious process of hauling down our roller bags and waiting, tired and hot and restless, for the cabin doors to finally open.

Now the ardent emailer was facing me, and to my absolute shock he suddenly sucker-punched me right in the groin! I am not kidding! His fist flew out, right at my crotch, and it’s a miracle I was able to instinctively jerk back swiftly enough to avoid the hit. As you can imagine, I was absolutely astonished at the attack; relieved to have escaped injury; and in full fight-or-flight mode should the dude make another move. Obviously I’m just using “fight-or-flight” as an expression here … there could be no flight, commercial air travel being obviously one of the most hemmed-in situations modern man finds himself in.

A lot flew through my mind in this moment. Obviously his attack was a bit over-the-top since all I’d really done was witness his untoward behavior, but I could grasp why physical retribution took the place of a verbal altercation that could embarrass him. What perplexed me was how he figured he could come out well in a combat situation, since I frankly towered above him. Beyond this practical matter, though, I had this strange sense that I kind of deserved this retribution, as my voyeurism was frankly a dick move. But of course I could only be this magnanimous because his punch had missed the mark. Above all else, I was simply bewildered by the entire situation.

But now it got even stranger: the guy started apologizing profusely. What the hell? A change of heart? Change of tactic? He was looking down and I followed suit, and now realized what had happened: his roller bag was totally top-heavy and unstable, and had tipped over the moment he set it on the floor. The handle was fully extended, and had been flying right at my crotch. When he reached out to grab it, he managed to catch it only when it was inches away. His hand, catching the top of the handle, had only seemed to form a fist.

My god, what a relief. Not only had he not attacked me, but the sincerity of his contrition made it pretty clear my voyeurism had gone undetected.

And so it was only out of a strange perversity that I responded to him by paraphrasing the rapper Ice T: “With the ladies, you’re not just a Don/ In fact you’re more like a Don Juan/ Pull ladies in bunches/ Break their hearts, you roll with the punches/ ‘Cause you’re like a hard core casanova/ Diss you once, girlfriend is over/ Write her off like a tax, no respect/ She ain’t down? Next.” 

Naw, I didn’t really say that. I was just messing with you. But everything else in this post? One hundred percent true. It’s a weird world…

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Ask an Induction Range

Note

While this advice column is geared toward entertainment, the information herein is true and accurate, based on real world use of a modern induction range. You may take this post seriously if you’re considering switching to induction cooking. If not, read on anyway for your own amusement.

Dear Induction Range,

I want to switch to your technology because I’m worried about the emissions from my gas range. My husband, however, refuses on the grounds that he needs a range that is perfectly responsive, meaning he can adjust the heat instantly. I’d probably just ignore him, or perhaps even divorce him, but he is a great cook (I mean, his crêpes are to die for). So tell me: are you as slow to respond as traditional electric ranges?

Emma S, Seattle, WA

Dear Emma,

I have great news: stoves like me are actually even more responsive than gas. But don’t take my word for it—check out this little video:

(Ignore the voice-over … that’s just an induction newbie trying to grasp the nature of my functioning.) Not only is the temperature change instant, but there’s a digital power level indicator right on the stovetop, facing up, so you don’t have to peer under the pan while turning the knob. As for crêpes, tell your husband he won’t have to futz around rotating the pan like he does now due to his gas jets not firing evenly … I do a much better job. Just look at this beautiful crêpe I made recently.

Dear Induction Range,

I’m thinking of switching to induction but I heard I’d have to replace all my pots and pans. I’ve seen ads that suggest that you need to have specialty cookware designed for induction cooking. Is that true?

Megan L, St. Petersburg, FL

Dear Megan,

If you have a bunch of aluminum or copper cookware, yeah, it’ll have to go. But anything steel will work, from a cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven to one of these modern stainless steel fry pans with an aluminum core. If a magnet sticks to it, I can heat it up (or more specifically I can induce an electromagnetic current in it, causing it to heat itself). If you’re worried about the cost, consider keeping an eye out for used stuff at thrift stores (and bring a magnet along!). My master has been using a cheap Cuisinart saucepan on me and it’s gotta be twenty years old. You might also consider that with the cost of dining out going through the roof, and with the pleasure you’ll have cooking with induction, you might as well invest in your cookware.

Dear Induction Range,

I heard that your technology involves an electromagnetic current, and that for this reason I could use you (or stoves like you) to charge my iPhone, if I set the control to simmer. Is that true?

Ken S, Seymour, IN

Dear Ken,

Did you also believe the hoax that you could make an early iPhone waterproof by downloading an app? (Please note: that’s a rhetorical question—don’t write back to answer it.) Let me be clear: don’t do that with your iPhone.

Dear Induction Range,

A chef I know says that real chefs will never use conduction stoves because they just can't put out the BTUs, probably because they're metric. Even still, can you compete with a big bertha gas burner?

Bryan A, Bellingham, WA

Dear Bryan,

Real chefs can roast an entire land animal on a spit but that doesn’t mean you can do that in your kitchen. And a restaurant might have a crazy setup with giant flames coming up directly from hell to heat up a wok to 750°F. So yeah, a real chef might not settle for the likes of me. But for the average Joe cooking at home? There’s no comparison between an induction range and a consumer-grade gas or traditional electric range. I recently overheard my master saying, “I can’t believe  I ever raved about that measly 18,000 BTU gas burner I had on my last stove. That thing was a joke.” And he’s not wrong. The first time you see how fast an induction range can boil water, you’ll probably burst out laughing.

Dear Induction Range,

Hey, Im Natalia I accidentally sent you a message. Did we know each other in the past?

Natalia M, Glendala, CA

Dear Natalia,

You sound hot! We should totally hang out. In fact … can I bake you a pie?

Just kidding. I don’t engage with fraudsters or bots.

Dear Induction Range,

My buddy has a portable induction hot plate. It's fine except that it has a really loud fan. The peaceful morning is ruined by the howling of this hot plate, like someone with a leaf blower right outside the window, or worse yet, the neighbor with his new pressure washer. I can only imagine it would be worse with a big oven with more powerful burners. And beyond the noise factor, I’m thinking that fan must be there for a reason... is induction cooking just really inefficient, with loads of energy being wasted in heating of the electronics that must be blown away with these powerful fans, like an AI server farm? Is it going to cost a fortune to run that stove?

David P, Aurora, CO

Dear David,

Who cooks on a hot plate other than a complete dirtbag? I think it’s only because induction is so advanced that anybody would consider using a hot plate version of it. I don’t know what setup your buddy has, but a real induction stove like me doesn’t require any special fan—in fact, because there are no emissions, the overhead fan you probably already have, with your old stove, would be less necessary. In terms of other noise, there’s a bit of a buzz you’ll hear when you first turn on a burner, especially on full power, but either it quiets down or you just stop hearing it. Some claim there’s a high-pitched whine, but that’s more likely somebody’s spoiled kid who doesn’t want to eat his vegetables. Perhaps dogs hear something, who knows. I will confess, though, that induction ranges often do cause one particularly irritating sound: the insufferable blathering of their owners about how great they are. I suspect this would eventually subside in any case.

As for efficiency, we induction stoves blow doors on everything else. The website energy.gov states that we’re up to three times more efficient than gas stoves, and up to 10% more efficient than conventional smooth top electric ranges, and that “this improved efficiency performance can result in lower energy costs as well as lower rates of air pollution associated with energy generation.”

Dear Induction Range,

It embarrasses me to admit this, but my teenager is a total stoner. This is probably why he’s extremely careless in the kitchen, driving me crazy with brainless stunts like leaving a pizza box right there on the stove! For the last several years I’ve worried he’s going to burn the house down. Could a stove like you help make my home safer?

Lisa S, Fairfax, CA

Dear Lisa,

In many ways induction stoves are indeed safer. For one thing, there’s no flame at all; for another, even if one of my burners is left on, it won’t generate any heat unless there’s a pot or pan on it. This isn’t to say that my burners never heat up; if you’ve been cooking for a while, my surface will get hot from the cookware on it. But my display shows which burners are hot. I would say there’s definitely less fire and burn risk, but you should still warn your son that if he boils coffee on me, and then drinks it too fast, he could burn his mouth. Because it sounds like that’s the kind of wastoid we’re dealing with. Also, you should point out that if he keeps smoking pot, he may well end up one of those sad sack adults who cooks his meals on a hot plate.

Dear Induction Range,

Not to give anyone any alarmist ideas, but is all that electromagnetic radiation safe for life? I heard one guy say it’s even scarier than 5G.

Steve R, Asheville, NC

Dear Steve,

The NIH suggests that a induction ranges could interfere with pacemakers. That said, the American Heart Association doesn’t include them in its (long) list of devices that cause interference. If you have a family member with a pacemaker perhaps you should do some more research.

I’ve also heard that stoves like me can interfere with digital meat thermometers, but this would seem an easy problem to solve: you could move the pot or pan while using the thermometer; temporarily turn off the burner; or get an analog meat thermometer.

My master wanted to test radio signal interference so he did an Internet speed test over WiFi with his smartphone six inches from one of my burners. With the burner at its highest setting, his download speed was 38.5 mbps and upload was 21.4. With the burner off, download was 49.5 mbps and upload was 23.2. Not a huge difference.

As for 5G, the only scary thing about it is that it enables faster Internet access so fools can waste even more time doing YouTube, social media, and doomscrolling. Anyone describing 5G as dangerous from a radio wave perspective should be either completely ignored or ruthlessly ridiculed.

Dear Induction Range,

I live in California. Can I get a rebate from the state or federal government if I buy an induction range?

Tracy H, Berkeley, CA

Dear Tracy,

Alas, as of this writing there is not currently a federal rebate program for this technology, and although California had one for Energy Star certified induction ranges, the state is “no longer accepting applicants” (i.e., has temporarily halted the program). Certain cities like Alameda and Sacramento have rebates, but not Berkeley. Sorry.

Dear Induction Range,

You seem to like to blow your own horn, but be candid with me: what are the cons of induction ranges?

Emily M, Boston, MA

Dear Emily,

The main con is the expense: this is a major appliance, and the really nice induction ranges (like me) can be fairly expensive (or “hella bank” in urban stove parlance). But I’m cheaper than a Tesla, and will save you money on energy, so try to have some perspective here.

Some people complain that they miss the visual feedback of watching the flame on a gas range as they adjust the heat. But I never bought that. You’re talking about bending over to peer under a pot or pan, and what about the parts of the flame around back you never see? I have an upward-facing digital display for each burner, right on the stovetop. No guesswork. No, it’s not romantic, but neither is scorched or unevenly cooked food.

Dear Induction Range,

Do ranges like you have a glass surface that’s hard to keep clean or requires special solvents for routine cleaning? My mom had a glass-topped stove and it was always a mess. (Come to think of it, gas ranges are usually pretty messy, too...)

Julie M, Topeka, KS

Dear Julie,

No offense, but I think your experience with glass-topped stoves says more about your mom than anything. My glass surface is really easy to clean, with either a lightly dish-soaped sponge or a 50/50 water/vinegar solution. It’s easier than modern (but non-induction) electric ranges because my burners don’t get hot (other than from the pot or pan), so stuff doesn’t get baked on and you can even mop up while you’re cooking. And cleanup is way easier than taking the grille off a gas range, and fussing with the little burner plates etc. I did an octuple batch of Bolognese Ragu recently—a messy affair to say the least—and my master timed the cleanup: under six minutes to gleaming perfection.

Dear Induction Range,

My current gas stove works just fine during a power outage, or during Earth Hour, if I just light it with a match. What’s your strategy there?

Matt B, Temple Terrace, FL

Dear Matt,

You got me there. You’d have to eat a PBJ or a salad, or fire up the camp stove in the backyard. But are you going to select your cooking technology based on what works in the edge case of no power, which might occur a handful of times per year?

Dear Induction Range,

Google told me that the induction stove top creates a magnetic field which induces a current in the pot... Does this make a cast iron pan stick to the stove with incredible force?

Bobby L, Kansas City, MO

Dear Bobby,

No … there’s really nothing to this notion, nor to ChatGPT’s claim that the magnetic field helps to hold a pot or pan in place. In fact, if one of your pots or pans is slightly warped because somebody once left it on heat with nothing in it, it might be prone to unintended rotation on the glassy-smooth surface of a range like me (though it’ll still totally work). So no, your pan won’t be stuck to the stove.

You should be aware, however, that cast iron pots and pans are a fair bit heavier than aluminum, and steel cookware with an aluminum base is also a bit heavier. I would consider this a benefit for most people—it’s like lifting little hand weights!—but could be a bit of a problem for the very elderly.

Dear Induction Range,

Are you hacking into my text messages? I was texting with a friend and suddenly got this message, within the same thread, that read, “Ha aggiunto un cuoricino a un’immagine.” That’s Italian, and so are you (as my husband, the guy you patriarchally call your “master,” keeps boasting about). What’s going on and why won’t you respect my privacy?

E— A—, Albany, CA

Dear E—,

I did not send that message. I think it was created by your texting app in lieu of an emoji posted by your friend, which didn’t show properly due to an Apple/Android compatibility issue. The literal translation is “Added a heart to an image,” indicating a heart emoji. I have no idea why the message was in Italian. Trust me, I don’t even have Bluetooth, much less WiFi. (If I did, though, I’d totally be hitting on that cute Samsung fridge at the other end of the kitchen!)

An Induction Range is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask an Induction Range,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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From the Archives - Lake Tahoe & Mount Rose Epic Ride

Introduction

If I still raced, I’d file race reports with my bike club and then post them here. Since I don’t, I like to do epic rides instead, and report on them. Lately I’ve done nothing epic at all, so I’m running a very old ride report from my archives. You should treasure this as a rare glimpse into the exclusive inner sanctum of an elite cycling community. (Full disclosure: it’s not so different than my typical bloggage, but man, I gotta try to keep your attention lest you wander off to watch “reality” TV.)

Pre-Tour-of-California Lake Tahoe/Mount Rose Ride Report – May 18, 2011

Since I didn’t even race Mount San Bruno this year, much less anything else, I’ll have to make do with a ride report. Three of us (C—, N—, and I) did a fairly epic ride near Lake Tahoe the day before what would have been Stage 1 of the Tour of California had it not been abruptly canceled literally at the last minute, with all the pro racers staged at the start line. (Why was it canceled? You’ll just have to read on to find out.)

The tale begins, of course, with dinner the night before. On the way up to Tahoe our family dined at a rather good taqueria called Talavera Cocina Mexicana. It’s on Solano Ave. Yes, you read that correctly: the little place like half a mile from our house. We got such a late start, we ended up setting a new record for how soon into a road trip we stopped for food. I had a carnitas burrito with cheese and guac. It was big and, well, tasty enough. Alexa had the mushroom quesadilla which was really the star of the show. Happily, the mandatory Parental Tariff policy stood me in good stead.

The morning of the ride, at 6 a.m., I had a PBJ: Alvarado bread with Adams organic peanut butter, the salted kind of course—not like the heinous, inedible Deaf Smith unsalted brand I grew up with, which came in like a 5-gallon drum and was so runny we called it Quicksand because you’d lose knives in it, so every time you got to the bottom of the drum there would be like six knives—and my mom’s homemade apricot jam, which is nirvana.

It was pretty chilly when we started at seven, and the spray from riding through several large puddles got my leg warmers wet. So I was cranky (like Hank with his diaper from that old TV ad). We tooled clockwise around the lake for a while and then headed into Nevada and took a left on Highway 431 at Incline Village. This highway took us up over Mount Rose, the summit of which—at almost 9,000 feet—is the highest pass in the Sierras (and higher than the Col du Galibier in France, though you shouldn’t for a moment think that Mount Rose even deserves to lick the Galibier’s foothills). My form was, as we in the suffering industry say, “El Crappo Grande.” I think that’s partly because I never seem to ride at my best in the cold, and partly because I’d donated two units of red blood cells about two weeks before and my marrow hadn’t yet replaced them all. Also, I suck.

N— dropped us climbing Mount Rose, and his reward was to have to wait around in the cold wind for us, all the heat leaving his uninsulated body. C— and I added insult to injury by asking him hang out a bit longer to snap our photo. He seemed just a bit tetchy about this, which warmed me from the heart outward. I’m small like that. It was 41 degrees up there but at least it wasn’t raining. You can see it was windy, though: look how the wind is puffing out our jackets (I hasten to point this out so you won’t think we’re just fat).

Happily, it warmed up a bit as we descended. We stopped somewhere to take a leak and fill our bottles, and I asked a friendly-looking fellow traveler for directions. He looked strangely familiar, so I gave him a big smile just in case I’m supposed to know him, but he totally gave me the silent treatment. He seemed really distracted and in fact wouldn’t even look at me. I peered over his shoulder into his road atlas for a bit before realizing it was just a book.

Naw, I’m just messing with you, I never thought it was an atlas. Of course nobody would rely on me for directions; C— had mapped out the whole thing beforehand. He said to watch for Joy Lake Drive, onto which we hung a right. This was supposed to connect us to … well, I never actually got to find out how it was supposed to connect up, because at the gate to a, well, gated community we encountered a stubborn security guard who wouldn’t let us through. He had a walrus moustache and a walrus physique and immediately made me think of the Pink Floyd lyric, “It’s too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around.” He gave an impassioned speech about how the filthy rich people living in the McMansion compound were so tired of the thousands of cyclists streaming through their community, burning their homes to the ground, enslaving their wives and children, and littering, that they closed the gates and won’t let any more of our kind through. He said there was a great bike trail, though, and gave us directions that showed him to be either dyslexic, stupid, right/left colorblind, or maliciously faux-helpful.

So we had to backtrack, up the No Joy road we’d come down, and then continued on to Highway 395, where we headed south into a brutal headwind (surpassed only by what C— dragged a few of you through last week). I would provide a map of our route but C— won’t grant me permission to follow him on Strava. [Note: over fourteen years later, he still hasn’t granted me access.]

My strength by this point had decayed from hopeless to lugubrious and it was all I could do to suck C—’s wheel, shamelessly and parasitically. It was inhumane how little work I did, but that’s okay because C— has been training a lot and seemed to be punching through the wind just fine. We got into Carson City and C— had a general idea there was some really cool bike route to take, but we couldn’t find it, and then we happened upon another cyclist. “Which way do we go?” C— asked him. The guy responded, “Where are you going?” If there’s a such thing as the polar opposite of a tautology, this was it … a notion I pondered stupidly for the next hour or so.

Thus, we ended up riding right through the main drag in Carson City, and a drag it was. The wind was ripping the flesh off our faces. As we passed a used car dealership with all its dumb balloons straining against their strings in the wind, I wondered if there were a convenient way to end my own life. Falling off C—’s wheel would have probably done the job, but not swiftly nor mercifully. Plus, I’d have died hating doing something I loved, which just seemed wrong, so I chose life. Life without parole, it seemed like. We stopped at a mini mart for water and some guy said, “You guys heading over 50? You got a long haul there.” We acknowledged that indeed we were totally screwed (though we used a more polite term). As the guy headed out the door he said, “Have fun in the race tomorrow.” As if.

So we headed west on Highway 50 over Spooner Pass, which those familiar with Spoonerisms might call Pooner Spass, thinking they’re funny or clever. It started off pretty badly because the wind still seemed to be in our faces, but then it shifted and we had a tailwind. Wow, what a relief. It didn’t help so much, but it left me free to drop off both N—’s and C—’s wheels without dire consequences. I’d have liked the company, of course, but at least I didn’t have to hear the squeaky chain that one of their bikes had, which was almost loud enough to drown out my wheezing. At one point I had to turn around because I accidently littered. Eventually I reached the top. Don’t we all? Here we are at the Spooner summit.

There’s not much else to say except the ride went on and on. I started to feel okay by the end, probably only because I knew I was almost done. I was barely coherent. When I tried to talk, often I would say the same word twice, like a strange form of stuttering. C— pointed out that on this bike path were painted instructions saying to ride right, walk left, which he felt was a very poor idea as it would lead to head-on collisions if heeded. At first I didn’t even know what he was talking about—I thought he was warning against slime in the puddles—but when I finally heard him right I thought his point was that it was backwards, that you should ride left and walk right, and only after several minutes did I finally grasp the lunacy of the instructions: it wasn’t a single rule applied to both directions, but actually one lane dedicated to riding and one two walking, regardless of direction. Dang. Anyhow, at 117 miles, with 8,400 feet of climbing, this was my hardest ride of the year.

During the ride I consumed four large bottles of energy drink, two energy bars, and four doughnut holes. The doughnut holes I bought on a whim at 7-Eleven at our last stop. By definition doughnut holes have zero calories, being nothing but a void, but I bought them anyway because they looked kind of tasty in a grotesque guilty-pleasure—nay, shameful-pleasure—kind of way. N— had totally bonked and actually looked sick (in fact his skin was slightly green, like a Vulcan’s) so I can’t tell if it was in the spirit of helpfulness or schadenfreude that I offered him some of the doughnut holes. He declined. I offered again. He declined again. I saved a couple for my daughters, along with the two Hostess fruit pies I’d bought but didn’t end up needing, probably because I’d just pounded a 20-ounce Coke.

Dinner was the gastronomic equivalent of an extended hip-hop mash-up where every single rapper on the planet jumps in to freestyle on the mic. While the men were out riding, the womenfolk had spent the entire day cooking. (This probably sounds sexist, and it’s an exaggeration, but after the beating I took on the road I need to take steps to rebuild my masculine dignity.) There was spinach lasagne, two kinds of enchiladas, salad (though I didn’t eat any), fruit salad (ditto), a big ham, and some other stuff. Then there were individual pumpkin pies with whipped cream, two kinds of ice cream, those weird cookies that have big chocolate disks pressed into them, and the mandatory parental tariffs I took of my kids’ Hostess fruit pies from earlier. I just sat there for like two hours straight eating plate after plate. (My wife has rightly pointed out that if I weren’t so thin, this kind of eating would be a truly disgusting spectacle.) As if C— hadn’t done enough work on the ride, he did the dishes while I just sat there. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him for organizing the weekend and doing all the work.

The original point of this trip was to watch the opening stage of the Tour of California, but the strangest thing happened the night after our ride: it freaking snowed. As in, hard, and for a long time. In fact, Highway 80 was closed for a while. Look how much accumulated on my car, and how surly this has made my daughter. (Actually, this is her default expression. In fact she’s stoked because our cabin came equipped with sleds.)

The racers nevertheless assembled at the start line, but the snow showed no sign of letting up and they managed to organize a revolt. The organizers made noises about changing the start time and location, but ended up just canceling the stage entirely. Someone needs to remind Mother Nature that it’s May, and this is California. Oh well … at least my pals and I got a good ride in.

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