From the Archives - So We Missed the Eclipse

Introduction

I initially drafted this post back when my older daughter, A—, was home for Thanksgiving the year she moved away for college (but before COVID-19 brought her temporarily home again). I took advantage of her being around to query her on something close to my heart: what I should blog about next. (For me, coming up with a topic is, hands-down, the hardest part of being a blogger.) So long as she responded, this would be a can’t-lose situation: I might get a useable topic, and either way we’d have a meaty conversation.

In this case, I got both! Her topic? How our family missed out on doing anything fun around the total solar eclipse back in August of 2017. “I have a lot to say on that,” my daughter declared. So I grabbed my laptop to take notes, and we had a nice dialogue, which became a blog post. But for some reason, I never posted it. Now, with another eclipse have recently transpired, I’ve decided to remedy that.

Why would you read this? Maybe you are a father, or are going to be. Maybe you’re a daughter or son, or used to be. Or, maybe you care about astronomy, eclipses, or just science in general. Or perhaps you just hope I can make you laugh. As always, I’ll do my best.

By the way, this is the one photo I snapped from last Monday’s eclipse:

So we missed the eclipse – Nov 13, 2019

We didn’t entirely miss the eclipse but we sure didn’t get the most out of it. As I described in these pages at the time, I was totally disorganized and hadn’t thought up any great way to see it. My wife and I were vaguely aware that people were traveling to rural Oregon to experience the full effect, but we weren’t too keen on braving any crowds.

(By the way, here is the photo that pops up when you do a Google Maps search on Culver City. The 2017 eclipse has evidently put the place on the map.)

After the eclipse was over, that evening, my wife and I noticed that A— seemed glum. We tried to draw her out, to figure out the problem. College prep worries? A falling out with a friend? Finally I said, half-jokingly, “Is it the eclipse?” My daughter almost smiled. “It is, actually,” she said, a bit sheepishly. She was touring the Internet reading about the eclipse and came across Randall Munroe’s xkcd cartoon about it. If you hover your mouse over the cartoon you get an extra caption: “It was—without exaggeration—the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” Munroe is to my daughter what Justin Bieber is to most teenage girls, so this was a profound statement. It was dawning on my daughter just how much she’d missed out on by having a deadbeat, incurious, non-science-y dad. Little did I realize my daughter would bring this up, two years later, in one of our first real conversations since she went off to college.

DA. Okay, so yeah… we missed the eclipse. We could have traveled to see it but we didn’t. In my defense, you had not indicated any particular interest.

AA. I just thought that was one of those things you’d figure out. My friends’ parents booked hotels in advance and I expected you had a plan. I figured that as the offspring of a rocket scientist you would be interested in it the same way I was. You’d seen stuff like that as a kid … your dad had done so much when the eclipse came through your town.

[My late father was literally a rocket scientist.]

DA. At what point did it dawn on you I wasn’t stepping up?

AA. Well, when my friends were talking about their plans I started to realize we probably weren’t doing anything. But I wasn’t too disappointed because I thought it would probably be one of those lame things like “Oh, your shadow’s a different color,” where you have to try to feel impressed by it. Or maybe I was being all skeptical just so I would be disappointed.

DA. So it never occurred to you to speak up and let me know you had interest.

AA. I think I mentioned it in passing. But I wanted to seem chill, like I didn’t really care, you know. It wouldn’t be very “cool teen” of me to say, “Hey, we should build a vacation around this!”

DA: But you’re bringing it up now, so clearly you’re a little bitter.

AA: Yes, I’m bitter.

DA: So does this reflect on my parenting?

AA: More than anything else you’ve ever done in your life. This is what will come out on the therapist’s couch in twenty years. It’s what led me down the road to academic ruin.

(This “academic ruin” comment is my daughter having a bit of fun. Decades ago, my brothers and I were in our dad’s car, along with his second wife, and as we passed by Bear Creek Elementary School our dad said to her, “There’s the school that led my boys down the road to academic ruin.” This comment produced only awkward silence at the time, but ever since my brothers and I trot it out routinely, along with other famous Dad-isms like, “You’re not very bright, are you.” After our Thanksgiving dinner the other night, I took a walk with my wife and daughters, and as we passed by their old elementary school, I said to my wife, “There’s the school that led our kids down the road to academic”—here I paused for effect and to feel my daughters’ glare, and then continued—“glory.”)

DA: How much of this eclipse remorse is just envy of your friends, a FOMO thing?

AA: It’s one of those bucket list things, a cultural phenomenon, like this mass pilgrimage to the Pacific Northwest where everyone can all be there for the same reason … but we just sat at home, not doing that, just being lame.

DA: Are both your parents equally culpable?

AA: No, it’s more you, because this was more your area, with your rocket scientist dad and everything, so you should have seen this as a bonding opportunity.

DA: Did it occur to you that astronomy was not something that brought my dad and me together?

AA: Well, it was an interest he had that I thought you might share. Anyone can appreciate an eclipse whether or not you know much about it.

DA: So it never occurred to you that science in general, and astronomy in particular, was a sore spot where my dad was concerned…

AA: I didn’t know your dad ruined astronomy for you … I thought it was the other way around!

(Here I need to provide some more background. My wife, you see, is famous within our family for having “ruined astronomy.” Here is the whole story, as recounted in my 2017 eclipse post:

Back in like ‘97 we were vacationing at Canyonlands National Park and my dad joined us. We went to this very remote place, far away from any lights or people, and my dad set up his telescope. For the next 2 or 3 hours (or so it felt) he gave us an astronomy lesson. I’m not a great lover of this subject myself; the only constellations I can make out are the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt. To a simple guy like me, the constellations seem like such bullshit. It takes so much imagination for this or that collection of stars to resemble something, you might as well just make it up from scratch. “There’s the Devil’s Skateboard over there, you see, and if you follow that line of stars up—there, you see that cluster there? That’s Dracula’s Harelip.” So anyhow, my dad’s lesson was losing me entirely, I was suffering from museum knees, and then my wife heard a noise and turned on a flashlight to make a quick scan around us. “Thanks a lot,” my dad chided, “you just ruined astronomy.” (The flashlight beam had spoiled our night vision, you see.) I’ll never let my wife live this down. If she ever suffers a setback I say, “Well, you are the woman who ruined astronomy.”)

 AA: An eclipse isn’t like being lectured to … you could reclaim astronomy for yourself instead of associating it with boredom.

(At this point, my younger daughter L— happened to wander by.)

DA: L—, are you at all disappointed that we didn’t do anything to see the eclipse?

LA: What eclipse? I don’t remember. I don’t care about eclipses.

DA (to A— again): So here’s the thing. When I pointed out Orion’s belt to you, I mentioned that it’s my favorite constellation because it’s so simple and easy to see. So did you really take me for a guy who cared about astronomy? How science-y have you taken me to be, historically?

AA: I think you’re non-science-y as a deliberate act. You’re a smart guy and you’re good at math, so it’s almost like you’re trying not to care, like you want to act like it’s not a big deal because you have these negative associations…

DA: Associations based on …?

AA: On your dad, because he always lectured and made you feel lame, and small, and insignificant, and inferior.

DA: So you totally do get that he kind of ruined astronomy for me.

AA: Yes, but I thought this could be your chance to make it yours, to get it right, like a do-over. Like your entire family, Mom and L— are I, are your do-over. And this is why you’re so sorry to see me move away, because this family was your chance to have that positive father-child relationship, and now that’s coming to an end somewhat.

DA: But obviously I want you to go off to college.

AA: Yeah, but now your world is shrinking and something is coming to an end. Of course, our relationship is stronger [than what you had with your dad] which means you got it right.

DA: Do you think there’s anything pathological in my do-over thing?

AA: No, that’s totally natural, that’s the American dream, to give your kids better than what you had.

DA: Well, I certainly want to say that I didn’t become a father just to have a do-over. I wanted to have kids from so early on, I hadn’t yet realized there was anything wrong with my family. I still thought my dad was The Man.

AA: Well, yeah, that was a complex relationship, thinking your dad was The Man.

DA: But don’t all kids think their dad is The Man?

AA: Yes, but then you had to realize over time that this wasn’t a guy just to imitate like so many kids end up doing … that you had to figure out what was wrong with his parenting and not repeat that. I remember early on, when I was a little kid, how you told us that whenever you were trying to figure out how to be a good father you’d think of what your dad would do, and do the opposite.

DA: I’m a little surprised I would say that … I must have been sleep-deprived.

AA: Well, you wrote it in my journal.

(Yes, I had written something pretty scathing in her childhood journal but won’t print here. When I wrote it, on the occasion of my first Father’s Day as a father, I was definitely sleep-deprived and grumpy, but of course I could have revised it later and toned it down. But my judgment, though harsh, wasn’t wrong and I let it stand.)

DA: Well, in terms of doing the opposite of my dad, failing to get excited about the eclipse was at least consistent. My dad’s efforts around that Boulder eclipse were the rare example of him going above and beyond. There’s no way I could have come close to matching that. I don’t know how to rig up a telescope eclipse projector or make pieces of smoked glass to view the eclipse through. Of course I did have the resources to take you to where the eclipse was happening, but it didn’t occur to me you were interested. It just never came up. I didn’t even know that Uncle Bryan’s family was traveling to see it. We could have all gathered together for it … somehow we just never touched base on the whole thing. What a wasted opportunity.

AA. I thought it was one of those things where it’d be cool if it had been your idea.

DA: But you didn’t get really upset until you read what Randall Munroe said about it.

AA: Well, that was the icing on the cake, one more person saying this was an amazing experience.

DA: And a real authority too.

AA: Yes, a guy who has probably seen all kinds of cool science things but thought this was exceptional.

DA: You pointed out earlier that my dad’s lecturing made me feel small and insignificant … and I think it’s interesting that that’s exactly what looking at the stars is purported to do: to make us realize our insignificance.

AA: Yes, but in a way that doesn’t involve the ego. Stargazing is the broad and nihilistic way of feeling small, where there’s nothing we can do about it, nothing anybody can do. Knowing about rockets doesn’t matter, this is too vast. Ego is like people vs. people, whereas the heavens remind us we’re all small and insignificant, so there’s no point butting heads over it.

DA: I think that’s a passive way of appreciating nature’s grandeur, but I like an active way of fully experiencing nature’s power by butting up against it. I’m talking here about—

AA: Biking?

DA: Yes, about tackling a mountain on my bicycle to appreciate its sheer size and power, but without totally submitting. I’m putting myself against it, and though the mountain will be always be larger than me, I’m better for having flung myself at it.

AA: But there’s no way to actively fight the universe like that. Not even an astronaut can scratch the surface, and there’s nothing you can ever do in your life to take it on. An analogy I can make is that my friend is a math major at MIT so she knows a lot of math people, and most of them prefer applied math, because you can put it to use, so you’re, like, wielding it. But my friend prefers pure math, which is so heady most people will never understand the concepts or make any headway, so for her it’s like an art form, like beauty for its own sake, because the math has this unattainability. So she appreciates it in a different way, like we would appreciate music and other things that aren’t so concrete. Most people are more interested in things we can apply, because it makes us feel more powerful, more in control, more like “We’ve got this.”

DA: But you like tackling mountains.

AA: I like both realms. The attainable one is just easier. It’s easier to find the applications that give us that control. Chemistry is about what we can observe, what we can measure, experiments we can conduct, whereas astronomy can help us feel that awe, that cosmic awe. That’s the name of my band: Cosmic Awe.

DA: You’re in a band?

AA: My hypothetical band. Obviously.

DA: Had you shown this love of awe before the eclipse, and I just didn’t see it?

AA: Everybody appreciates that awe. I assumed you did too.

DA: It’s one thing to be awake to it, another entirely to plan a big road trip to go seek it. You know that I love the power of nature, apparently more than a lot of people around here who never take advantage of our regional parks, and cycling (especially mountain biking) is how I indulge that. That’s a lot easier than heading all the way to Oregon.

AA: But Oregon is more special, the rarity of this occurrence makes that worth the trip.

DA: Fair enough. So … the next full solar eclipse is in Austin, Texas in 2024. Let’s plan on it.

AA: Yes, let’s!

[Oops. That obviously didn’t happen. But at least my daughter, now a full adult living on her own, was complicit in not getting around to doing anything for it. At least we exchanged photos.  Maybe we’ll head up to Montana for the next one, in 2044! Check these pages in a couple decades for a full report.]

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Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2024 Paris-Roubaix

Introduction

Sometimes the infamous “Hell of the North” classic cycling race Paris-Roubaix is held on Easter, which is tricky if I’m supposed to be entertaining guests and/or my children. This year the only obstacle to my watching—and reporting—live is my own sloth, since it’s 6 a.m. on a Sunday. But I’m up, and have my coffee, strong coffee in fact, and that means (as usual) I won’t be pulling any punches in this blow-by-blow report. If a rider is a known doper I’ll give you that background (with all appropriate vitriol); ditto if somebody’s helmet is goofy and needs to be ridiculed. This is the (low) level of journalistic integrity you can expect. Also: if Riley Sheehan (Israel-Premier Tech), who finished 13th in the Tour of Flanders last week, does absolutely anything in this race, I’ll zero in on him, for two reasons: 1) I used to race with his dad, Clark; and 2) ‘Mer’ca!

2024 Paris-Roubaix

Here is the course map:

Wow. Isn’t it funny how pointless the race seems, from that perspective? I mean, it doesn’t really go anywhere, it just snakes around as if by random. That map as so complicated, the race is already hard.

As I join the action, there’s a breakaway with Nils Politt (UAE Team Emirates) and Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ), along with some Swedish guy. They’ve got about 20 seconds with about 70 km to go in the race.

“Danish,” Bob Roll says. “Oh, I’m sorry, did I say Swedish?” Phil Liggett says. Oh dear. Not these two again. I was hoping for the Eurosport guys, but then I’m watching on Peacock so this is what I get. If you come across any errors in this report, you can blame them on Phil. That gives me a lot of journalistic liberty, I now realize. Hmmmm.

They’re on a four-star section of cobbles. These ratings, by the way, are from Yelp users. I just read one of the reviews of this sector: “Pretty good rocks, not too slippery, and free Coke refills, but the riders were kinda rude lol.”

Whoa, a crash! Look carefully, it’s the background there. Some guy named Van Dijke.

The breakaway has been absorbed as though by an adult diaper. The peloton is very absorbent.

“They’re picking up the dust, and it’s getting through to the tires, from the looks of it,” Phil says. His voice is so agreeable, so confident and authoritative, it’s tempting to ascribe some meaning to his words … but so often I cannot.

Bob’s delivery has this chipper, upbeat flavor that is pleasant to listen to, but doesn’t really highlight the drama. I can so easily picture him narrating an elementary school crafts activity. “Well, it looks like they’re going to be doing papier-mâché, based on the newspaper strips and the balloons,” he’d say cheerfully.

Now Politt and Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious) are off the front but they won’t get very far. The much-touted favorite today is last week’s Tour of Flanders winner Mathieu Van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck), who has been so ballyhooed, I’d like to see someone else win just to make things more interesting.

OMG, Van der Poel must have heard me because he goes right to the front and drills it! How is he hearing me? Is his directeur sportif reading this report as I type it, through Van der Poel’s earpiece? That must be it.

And just like that, he has a massive gap!

Could he endure, solo, for 57 km? Yeah, probably. This year we saw Tadej Pogacar solo for 80 km in the Strade Bianche race (with a little help from his friends, and I don’t mean teammates). I’m not saying Van der Poel isn’t clean, mind you. But his dominance would be more believable if he weren’t breathing through his fricking nose. I mean, come on.

I don’t know, though. A 57 km solo breakaway? I mean, wouldn’t he get lonely? Is this some COVID aftermath thing where Van der Poel has forgotten how to socialize?

“They’re trying to chase but they’re soooooooo tired,” Phil says. I think he’s projecting. Why would they be particularly tired, this far from the finish? They’re professionals, and they’re not 80 years old.

The gap is out to 25 seconds with 53 km left. You know what? I’m tired of Van der Poel. And I don’t like his socks. They’re too tall, like the tube socks I wore in the ‘80s.

Tom Pidcock (Ineos Granadiers) is just sitting on the back of this disorganized, disheveled chase group. He’s an Olympic gold medalist in mountain biking and a cyclocross world champion, so I’d hoped he could figure in this race, but apparently not.

Is the chase group really “disheveled”? No, I confess it’s not, particularly. That was poetic license. I’m trying to keep myself awake because this race has gotten so boring.

“He’s the world champion, Van der Poel,” Phil says, as if helpfully. Yeah, Phil, I know what the rainbow stripes on his jersey mean. I think most cycling fans understand the difference between the world champion’s jersey and, say, the pride flag. (Van der Poel isn’t gay, as far as I know—I don’t pay attention to the riders’ personal lives.)

Come to think of it, I wish I were on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter that all journalists will always refer to as “X, the platform formerly known as Twitter,” because X is a stupid name) because then I could X (is that a verb, or do we still say “tweet”?) some irresponsible things like, “Amazing breakaway—will Van der Poel be the first gay winner of Paris-Roubaix?” That might get some traction because it would be perceived as the only interesting thing about this race today. (The difficulty in expressing facetiousness in such a short form is one of the main reasons I don’t do social media.)

“He’s just adjusted his cleats, and now he’s taking the corner!” Phil says. Bob replies with a chuckle, “Well, he’s not tightening the screws on his shoes, of course, but he is scorching this course.” I am not making this up. That verbal exchange did just happen. It’s so funny … these guys remind me of an old married couple, where the husband is always diplomatically saying, with a little good-natured head shake, “What my wife means to say is…”

Van der Poel’s lead is out to 1:31 and he’s still breathing through his nose. If that lead starts to drop, and gets down below like 20 seconds, all he’ll have to do is open his mouth, and that’ll be like firing the afterburners and his lead will go right back out again. Imagine how confident he must feel, knowing he’s got that Ace card up his sleeve if his legs ever start to hurt.

“Should he have a mechanical, his team car is right there,” Bob explains helpfully in case there are any idiots watching. I guess Bob is running out of things to say. And in fairness, that’s not really his fault. It’s gotten to the point that nobody even needs to say “Van der Poel” anymore, it’s just “he” because there’s really nobody else important in the narrative anymore. If you’ve read Wolf Hall, that’s the same narrative style that Hilary Mantel uses … throughout the book she never says “Thomas Cromwell,” only “he” and “him.” That’s why it’s so important to get our personal pronouns right … in case we ever become important enough to referred to only by them. Can you believe I’m rambling on about literature and pronouns? Trust me, it’s more interesting than this race.

How’s this for a headline: “Van der Poel crushes Paris-Roubaix … but does he have a crush on Pidcock?” I know that’s irresponsible. Pidcock isn’t gay, as far as I know, but without some kind of intrigue I’m going to give up on this race completely.

His lead is up to 1:46, which is actually interesting because I’m talking about Cromwell now. No I’m not. It’s Van der Poel, Van der Poel, Van der Poel. Blah blah blah.

He reaches sector #4, which would be good news if the numbers went up, but they don’t, the decrement. So he has just four sectors to get through safely, one of which (the last one) is so short and easy, even Cromwell could handle, it on a high wheeler. If you haven’t heard of a high wheeler, it’s another term for penny farthing. I’m not sure which term Cromwell would have used. I may go research that now, just for something to do. Stay tuned.

Phil just said, “Adri Van der Poel.” Bob, to his credit, doesn’t jump in and correct him. He pauses, surely squinting as if in pain and thinking, “Please Phil, please correct yourself.” Phil does, saying, “I don’t know why I keep saying Adri, that’s Mathieu’s father, I used to watch him race [back in the good old days when my mental faculties were intact].”

“He’s visibly flying over these cobblestones,” Phil now says. I guess he’s referring to the lack of any cloaking device that would render Van der Poel’s effort invisible. That would actually be a really cool innovation for this sport, if they could have cloaking devices. Riders would only get to use them for a set amount of time per race, or perhaps the cloaking device would draw down their strength and have to be used very strategically. So a good rider could turn it on, chase like crazy, and then suddenly appear on Van der Poel’s wheel. I guess it would take something like that to neutralize the Dutchman’s dominance.

“Surely [Wout] van Aert [sidelined with an injury] is watching these pictures with a little bit of frustration,” Phil says, “because I think he has a thing for Van der Poel and is very jealous of Pidcock.” Yeah, I made up that last part. It’s easy to put words into Phil’s mouth because nothing would seem out of character for him.

But what’s this? He’s overcooked a corner and goes off the road! Maybe he’ll stack and breathe new life into this race!

Nope, he saves it, and—interestingly enough—his lead actually increases by three seconds through this unexpected maneuver.

“The showers are very famous. Every rider’s name is engraved on the shower. Well, on the wall I mean. Of the shower.” Phil actually just said this. I think he meant every winner’s name. But how did he get to talking about the showers? I wasn’t paying attention (my mind having wandered to Wolf Hall and how engrossing that was compared to this race) and suddenly I hear the word “shower” which is one of the only words I’ve heard Phil use that isn’t a cliché. Perhaps he’s seeding innuendo.

Oh no! A rider totally stacks in a corner!

It’s Laurence Pithie (Groupama-FDJ) and man, that looked really painful.

While the camera was fawning over Van der Poel, the chase group behind broke up and is now down to four riders. Here it’s being led by Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ), who finished third in this race in 2022. But Küng doesn’t look like he’s trying that hard since he’s breathing through his nose just like Van der Poel. Or could I be mistaken about mouth-breathing being more effective? Is this Mona Lisa style some new aerodynamic thing?

Maybe Küng is just having an off day. It does look like his pre-race ritual was interrupted because he never worked that foundation into his skin. That’s not very professional, obviously. These riders are supposed to know how important it is to get their makeup right. Cycling is very much a psychological sport and a rider cannot show weakness, and of course cosmetics play a huge role. Studies have shown that the first thing a professional rider notices, on the start line, is his rival’s complexion, which is why foundation and concealer make such a big impact. Riders are often perceived differently if they have discoloration, under-eye bags, or blemishes. Fortunately Küng is blessed with almost perfect skin, which he’s used to great advantage throughout his career.

Jasper Philipsen, Van der Poel’s Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate, gets to just loaf on the back of the chase group, obviously. This means he’ll be nice and fresh for the sprint, and since he’s one of the fastest sprinters in the world to begin with, we won’t even have an exciting race for second place, unless Küng gets his face together, does something with his hair, and opens his mouth for the final sprint.

Here’s another boring photo of Cromwell. I mean Van der Poel.

Pithie seems uninjured from his gnarly crash and is now working well with Florian Vermeersch, Philipsen’s Alpecin–Deceuninck teammate, so perhaps they’ll catch the lead quartet of chasers. That would make it even easier for Philipsen to take second, making this race even more boring and predictable.

“If I just said ‘Adri’ I apologize,” Phil says. Which is kind of sad, because he hadn’t just said Adri; he’s simply doubting himself because he’s no longer aware of what he’s even saying anymore. I guess that’s partly my fault. Okay, now I feel bad.

Van der Poel is on Sector 3 now and his lead is now almost three minutes. Perhaps the only way he could lose now is if he got cocky and stopped to sign a few autographs. “But he’s far too clever a rider for that,” Phil does not say.

Not that you care, but leading the chase group is Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), a former Wordle champion. It’s rare to see a top rider who also excels at word games. Oh, wait. Bob has just corrected me: Pedersen is a former world champion. That actually makes more sense.

OMG, Phil just used the phrase “suitcase of courage” for about the four hundredth time in his career. “But I don’t think anybody is going to catch Van der Poel before the showers today,” he continues. Again with the shower thing! Perhaps he’s just as bored as I am. Actually he’s probably even more bored, because I’ve only been reporting on these races for eleven years (my first blow-by-blow being the 2013 Giro d’Italia), whereas Phil has been reporting on cycling for something like fifty years.

Van der Poel is on Sector 2, which is only a two-star section. Here’s one of the Yelp reviews: “This section is kind of meh, just a bit of dust and dirt and a couple weeds not sure why such a long line overrated imho.”

It looks like the chase group is down to three now, having dropped Küng (who will surely learn his lesson and never, neglect his pre-race makeup ritual again).

Wow, with five km to go, Van der Poel is already starting to celebrate, giving his DS a fist-bump. Maybe with three kilometers to go he’ll try to give this guy a hug, which would be just the kind of dangerous move that might make the race interesting for a moment.

Is that white nail polish on his right thumb? Is that a thing now? I’ll have to pay close attention to Küng’s nail polish. What color did he choose?

“What do you do with a horse, do you tap it on its neck, when it’s about to win?” Phil asks. What? Has he lost his mind?

“He will be the first rider since Peter Sagan in 2018 to cross the Paris-Roubaix finish line wearing the rainbow jersey of the Wordle champion,” let’s pretend Phil just said. Van der Poel is now on the velodrome with a gap of three minutes over the guys we might call “chasers” if they were actually doing anything but running out the clock and waiting for the sprint.

Well, here it is. Thomas Cromwell becomes the 121st winner of Paris-Roubaix.

Politt makes a surprising early attack on the velodrome but it comes to nothing. Philipsen takes second!

Isn’t it remarkable how little my exclamation point did just now to make that sprint finish exciting? I guess you’re probably not very impressed that I predicted the outcome. I guess that doesn’t make me an oracle or anything.

They’re interviewing Van der Poel:

INTERVIEWER: You have just won Paris-Roubaix, having won Flanders only a week ago. Does this win have a different flavor?

VAN DER POEL: This one was kind of oaky and jammy, with a toasty undertone and hints of cherry. Kind of a fruit-forward win but just a bit tannic.

INTERVIEWER: Was it planned, to take off that early?

VAN DER POEL: I find it interesting that you use the passive voice, “was it planned,” because that’s rather appropriate in that it wasn’t really anything active like an attack. I just increased my effort because I wanted to make the race super hard. I know it was a tailwind to the finish line.

INTERVIEWER: Were you worried about a puncture or some other setback [since obviously nothing else could stop you]?

VAN DER POEL: Well that’s always possible but I had a support car, duh!

INTERVIEWER: It must be pretty special to win two monuments back to back…

VAN DER POEL: Yes, well, what can I say? I had a good hair day.

INTERVIEWER: Is it really as simple as that? [Tom] Boonen was practically bald, after all.

VAN DER POEL: I’m kind of at a loss for words, actually. I’m a cyclist, not a statesman.

INTERVIEWER: You mean, a statesman like Thomas Cromwell?

VAN DER POEL: Exactly.

Okay, I admit, I made most of that up. The bit about the tailwind is real, though. And the support car part, minus the duh part.

Here’s the top ten:

And now Van der Poel hoists the famous cobblestone trophy. Note that they were able to affix the plaque well in advance because they knew he’d win today.

Here’s a fun fact: I did some research and it turns out the stone used for the Paris-Roubaix trophy isn’t actually a cobblestone, which would be composed mainly of granite. It’s actually mostly pumice, which was selected for these trophies some decades ago when too many modern cyclists were unable to heft an actual cobblestone. So the rock Van der Poel is hoisting there is very similar to this one that your famously wimpy blogger was able to handle with ease (despite my Oscar-worthy grimace which is just for show).

Okay, full disclosure, I freestyled a bit with the trophy/stone thing. It is a real cobblestone as far as I know. 

Here is the final podium.

Well, that’s about it for this year’s race. I’m sorry if this report was kind of boring, but at least I saved you some time … this race took me two and a half hours to watch, and I wish I could take that time back and do something more exciting with it, like sleeping.

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Easter FAQ - A Guide for Newcomers

Introduction

I work with people from around the world (generally via videoconference). Those who are overseas, or only recently moved here, are often unfamiliar with American traditions. For example, when I joined a meeting early and was chatting with a native-born colleague about Groundhog Day, a foreign-born colleague joined a little late and struggled to come up to speed. Flummoxed by phrases like “Punxsutawney Phil,” he asked, “Are you guys talking about football?”

With Easter Sunday coming up, I figured I’d try to provide a handy guide, in the time-honored format of Frequently Asked Questions, for anyone similarly mystified by this admittedly rather complicated holiday.

(No, I’m not really an Easter expert, but maybe it’s better that way; I’ll be less inclined to overestimate how much people already know.)

Easter Sunday Frequently Asked Questions

What is Easter all about?

Easter is a fundamentally a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, though non-Christians in the West often celebrate it as a basic festival, more in the spirit of springtime, a seasonal renewal. In America, as with so many traditions, it can seem like mainly an excuse to eat food that is bad for us.

When is Easter celebrated?

Easter is always on a Sunday, but where the specific date is concerned things get complicated. The holiday takes place anywhere between late March and late April, based on a complex algorithm that people have bickered about for hundreds of years. To this day, different Christian denominations celebrate it on different days. According to Wikipedia, the West celebrates Easter “on the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, which is the first full moon on or after 21 March (a fixed approximation of the March equinox).” So this year in America, it’s this coming Sunday, March 31. That said, the Greek Orthodox church won’t celebrate it until May 5. So, if you’re late getting a card in the mail, you’ve got your excuse!

Wait a second – if Jesus was resurrected on a specific day, why does the commemoration date depend on moon cycles?

I have always assumed this moon-phase-after-equinox thing was an attempt to move in on the pagans’ action and have the holiday compete with their traditional seasonal celebrations (like how Christmas is conveniently close to the Winter solstice, and my birthday is very close to the Summer solstice). (Yes, that last bit was a joke.) But my theory doesn’t appear to be correct; Wikipedia (which has a very long article about the date of Easter) declares, “The complexity of the algorithm arises because of the desire to associate the date of Easter with the date of the Jewish feast of Passover which, Christians believe, is when Jesus was crucified.” I like that: “the desire.” Whose desire? They don’t say. I don’t suspect very many people actually care how Easter relates to Passover, much less to any astronomical matters. It’s not like if we were out for a night walk anyone would ever say, “Wait a second, how can it be Easter tomorrow? Look at the moon! Does that look like a last quarter moon to you?!”

How is Easter celebrated?

Many Catholics observe various days during Holy Week (the week before Easter), leading up to Good Friday (celebrating the death by crucifixion of Jesus and no, I have no idea why it’s called “Good” Friday). On the night before Easter, some attend an all-night vigil, as I did once at a Greek Orthodox church as the guest of a friend. I had to stand the whole time because, as a relative heathen, I didn’t want to take up one of the coveted seats in the pews. I had been instructed by my friend that the vigil would end in the morning with special music and then the Paschal greeting, aka Easter Acclamation, whereby everybody would turn to his or her neighbor and say, “Christ is risen!” to which the traditional response is, “He is risen indeed!” At some point I forgot how I was supposed to respond, and sweated over it the rest of the night … I had one line to deliver—was I really gonna flub it? As the sleep deprivation got to me, I started worrying that I’d blurt out something like, “Amen, of course, yes,” or “Word up,” or “And also with you.” In the event, I didn’t actually choke … I probably took a cue from everyone else, and/or my response was indistinct among the hundreds of people talking at once.

Religious traditions aside, almost everyone tends to eat chocolate eggs and jelly beans on Easter, and to dye hard boiled eggs, and to have a special dinner, often something really tasty like lamb. And there’s lots of talk about, and pictorial representations of, the Easter Bunny, who’s kind of like a furry animal Santa.

What’s up with the eggs? Is that something Jesus was into?

If you really want to go down a rabbit hole (sorry, couldn’t resist), try googling “did Jesus like eggs.” One article says definitely yes, but I couldn’t get any details due to a paywall. A PETA site says Jesus certainly didn’t eat eggs and you shouldn’t either. Mostly the results are dead ends. I think it’s fair to conclude that the Easter egg has more to do with basic symbolism. Wikipedia says that in the Christian tradition, the eggs “symbolize the empty tomb of Jesus.” The Encyclopedia Britannica says that early Christians repurposed some existing symbolism from pagans who “viewed eggs as a symbol of the regeneration that comes with springtime.”

Does the Easter Bunny actually lay the Easter eggs? In other words, is she of the special order of mammals called monotremes, like the platypus?

I had to do a little research on this one. I can find no evidence that the Easter Bunny actually lays these eggs (even according to the folklore and modern traditions), nor that the Easter Bunny is even female. According to Wikipedia, “In ancient times, it was widely believed (as by Pliny, Plutarch, Philostratus, and Aelian) that the hare was a hermaphrodite.” Can a hermaphrodite lay eggs? Well, sort of, but more in the sense of sperm + eggs, not the kind of egg that has a shell and thus can represent an empty tomb.

Meanwhile, both Wikepedia and Britannica mention that eating eggs is forbidden during the Lenten period before Easter, but nobody tells the hens to stop laying, so the ensuing glut is part of why eggs figure in to Easter. So I think it’s fair to say these Easter eggs are chicken eggs, not rabbit eggs. In my family’s case, my kids were never nosy enough to ask where the Easter Bunny gets the eggs, so I didn’t have to make anything up. Perhaps that’s unfortunate; I’d have liked to work monotremic mammals into our family lore.

Why are the Easter eggs dyed?

According to Wikipedia, eggs were originally dyed red to symbolize “the blood of Christ, shed at his crucifixion.” I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that perhaps other colors were brought in to make the holiday more pleasant. Can you imagine how the notions of bloodshed + egg + Easter Bunny might get jumbled up in a young child’s imagination in alarming ways?

Easter egg hunts seem to be a big part of the tradition. Who (supposedly) hides the eggs?

I think the folklore around who hides the eggs will naturally vary from family to family. My wife and I didn’t like the idea of an outdoor Easter egg hunt, for reasons of hygiene, but also couldn’t be bothered to create any mythology around the Easter Bunny sliding down the chimney or some other explanation for how he or she would get in to the house, which we lock up like a citadel. Plus, the hunt was always for the eggs that the kids themselves had dyed, so to pretend the Easter Bunny hid them would have been a real stretch. So my wife and I were candid about being the hiders of the eggs.

According to this article, quoting Lizette Larson-Miller, a professor with the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, “We know that Martin Luther had Easter egg hunts where the men hid the eggs for the women and children and it probably has this connection back to this idea of eggs being the tomb.” I don’t think this aspect of the Easter tradition has survived to modern times.

My kids ultimately became too competitive around the Easter egg hunts, which took most of the fun out of it, so my wife and I turned the tables and had the kids hide the eggs for us. This became a real challenge because their hiding places were so devious, some eggs wouldn’t turn up for several weeks.

That photo at the top of this post is so weird. Is it typical of the holiday?

It’s part of an entire series of strange photos my dad took of my brothers and me with our eggs one year. We never saw the photos until decades later, after his death, because he always shot slide film and almost never did slide shows, owing to his clunky projector and his workaholism. Going through his stuff (so I could sell his house), I found boxes and boxes of slides, I mean like thousands, with this series among them. Check out this choice shot:

That kid looks really stressed. What’s going on there?

My brothers and I weren’t used to our dad paying much attention to us, and couldn’t figure out the odd posing of these photos. I suspect this kid, who is either Bryan or Geoff, was just kind of flummoxed, like “Who is this weird dad guy?” and/or was afraid of letting the old man down by not posing properly.

Why do those eggs say ‘Mommy Day’ on them? Is that part of Easter?

No, mommies are not celebrated as part of Easter; modern cultures have Mother’s Day for that. Who knows what this kid was thinking. Perhaps he was somehow conflating the two holidays due to sheer ignorance. It’s natural he wouldn’t have used the word “Mother” because we were afraid of it … we could only say “Mommy.” We were even more afraid of the word “Father” and could only say “Daddy.” I once said “Dad” because I was about to get spanked for a childish infraction and was trying to be as casual as possible so I said, “Sorry, Dad,” which seemed to fan the flames of his anger such that it was one of the worst spankings I ever had. To make matters worse, when my brothers later mocked me about the spanking (which mocking went on for many weeks), their chorus was always “Sorry, Dad.” Thus, nobody said “Dad” for at least ten more years. But I realize I’m getting way off into the weeds here. I want to emphasize that our family was not normal and our eggs and the way we’ve posed with them are not representative of any Easter tradition.

How did the Easter holiday come to incorporate candy instead of just chicken eggs and a big feast?

According to Wikipedia, “as many people give up sweets as their Lenten sacrifice, individuals enjoy them at Easter.” There’s probably some truth to this, but since a majority of Americans don’t observe Lent, this part of the observance is probably related more to: hey, candy! Yum!

As with most American traditions, the theme of excess is well represented by our Easter holiday. The number of candies and their size have increased significantly in my lifetime. No longer are we limited to egg-shaped chocolates; now we have bunny-shaped chocolates that one day will probably grow to be life-sized. In America, we have a word for this indulgence. We call it: freedom.

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The Power of Loafing

Introduction

I am not a lazy person and don’t consider myself an expert loafer. Nor do I advocate sloth in general. That said, I will argue that being judicious about when to take your foot off the gas can turn loafing into a superpower.

Who, what, where, when, why, and how?

This post is for the modern knowledge worker who nowadays has a lot of flexibility in his or her workday. The what herein is to explain how this freedom can be an issue. It doesn’t overmuch matter where this work is done, but the ability to work from home is part of the equation. When is of course right now and going forward, and the why is because I sense the encroachment of so-called “grind culture” and want to help spare you from it, just as I continually attempt to spare myself. Now, there is plenty of literature out there about the evils of grind culture, but I’m going to illustrate, through what I hope is a potent metaphor, how to convince yourself to passively fight it—that is, to loaf strategically.

Some background

If you haven’t come across the term “grind culture” (aka “hustle culture”), you either lead a blessed work life, or (like me up until recently) you have been missing out on a handy way to describe something you’ve surely noticed, probably pondered, and—I hope—have found yourself questioning. The New York Times, in this article, calls grind culture “performative workaholism” and cites Elon Musk’s pro-grind tweet, “Nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week.” It’s worth pointing out that Musk, who advocates working at least 80, is a douchebag.

Grind culture promotes unabashed ambition, supported by long hours and what its proponents like to call “grit” (though “self abasement” would be more accurate in this case). Its adherents don’t seem to realize, or at least don’t tend to acknowledge, that a company’s executives are the main beneficiaries of this culture. Grinders also apparently don’t grasp (or perhaps simply don’t care) that this relative minority of highly ambitious people can set a new productivity standard for a workplace, that spills over onto colleagues who might prefer greater work/life balance.

The Times article I just cited was written before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, I fear things have only gotten worse. These days, a lot more knowledge workers work from home, and the flexibility this gives them to tend to personal matters (e.g., picking up a kid from school, putting in a load of laundry) also gives management a reasonable basis for expecting employees to be available for a much longer period of time each day. As another Times article explains, “Cellphones and laptops have made it impossible for many people to wall off eight hours of the day for paid labor and another eight for everything else, and they threaten to return all of us to an era of nonstop, undercompensated labor.” And as this Forbes article asserts, even as productivity has increased with teleworking, management doesn’t often perceive this; a study by Microsoft found that “49% of managers of hybrid workers struggle to trust their employees to do their best work.” In this climate, perhaps the nervousness we may have about the visibility of our output (since we’re not observed to be in the office at our post) contributes to our temptation to send emails or Slack messages at 10 p.m.

So how do we combat this impulse to work longer and more? How do we fight the trend toward performative workaholism? For me, it’s a matter of differentiating between doing more and doing my best. Since this is a vague notion, I will now proceed to my metaphor.

Life imitates sport

I’m an assistant coach for a high school mountain bike racing team. Unlike a track coach who just stands around on the infield with a clipboard and shouts instructions, we cycling coaches actually ride with the kids, the whole time, every practice. This gets progressively, inevitably more difficult every year. The kids obviously never age because it’s a rotating crop: every year a quarter of them graduate and are replaced by incoming freshmen. I, on the other hand, am not getting any younger, or stronger, and my bike gearing isn’t getting any lower. Needless to say, the hills around here aren’t getting any flatter.

It’s been such a wet winter, there are only a few trails we can reliably ride without getting bogged down in mud. This leaves two main routes we can ride right now: Big Springs Trail and Seaview Trail. The summit of Seaview, at 1,905 feet elevation, is the highest point in the Berkeley hills, and the climb up it is a bitch. In fact, there’s a section I can barely make.

Let me describe how this works for me, with my last trip up it as an example. There’s this long, steep opening bit that is a total grind, but doable, and then we descend for a bit and catch our breath. Then it the trail starts climbing again, and this time of year we’re dodging puddles and so forth, and then, just before the grade gets truly brutal, there’s a very shallow, almost flat bit. I happen to have a photo.

After the slow slog up to this shallow bit, it’s always tempting to pick up the pace, but I never take the bait. For this reason, I frequently get passed at this spot, as happened last time. One of the kids I coach had been nipping at my heels the whole way, and when I laid off the pace here he blew right by me. I cared not a whit. He’s inarguably faster than I am, and after all my job isn’t to beat him, it’s to coach him. Moreover, my job in this moment was just to get up the damn hill.

I continued to loaf, and before long could hear another rider behind me. And now the grade suddenly became almost unbearably steep. I had no choice but to dig deep. I could still hear the kid behind me, gears whirring and panting increasing, and I now faced the hardest part of the climb: a very rocky place with a lot of tree roots, which don’t actually look so bad in this photo but can easily stop a middle-aged rider dead when he’s barely handling the climb to begin with.

Over the years I’ve compared notes with other coaches about the best path through this notoriously difficult section. On this last trip, I managed to thread my way through, just barely, through a combination of the perfect line and an all-out, leg-searing effort that bumped my bike over the inevitable rocks and roots I couldn’t steer around. And now here’s my point: the rider behind me didn’t manage it. I heard the distinctive sound of a cleat clicking out of a pedal (so he wouldn’t tip all the way over after losing all momentum) and the inevitable whuff of frustration. A rock or root had stopped him cold. And this didn’t happen because he’s less strong than I am (after all, in the group I ride with these days, they’re all stronger than I), nor because he’s less skilled. It’s almost certainly because he was closer to being redlined than I was when he reached that section: because he was already drilling it before the steep stuff began. On the shallow section, I wasn’t just loafing to loaf. It was a matter of survival. That steep, rough part is so hard, I have to be rested—physically and psychologically—before giving it my all to get through it. When a 100% effort is required, you (or at least I) cannot already be maxed out before reaching it. That pause to collect myself was as important as the odd, protracted centering routine a high-diver goes through before starting his or her dive.

Alas, the grade doesn’t ease up: this section of climbing demands several more minutes of excruciation. But you know what’s worse? Trying to get rolling again on a rocky, pebbly, loose, root-infested 16% grade with only one foot clipped in. It’s awkward and frustrating and saps your will. There’s a world of difference between making it the whole way in one shot, and getting stymied and starting over. Having to unclip from your pedal is how you lose a mountain bike race.

I trust this metaphor isn’t particularly hard for you to decode. Just as I would advise you, on your first-ever bike ride up Seaview, to ease up and rest your legs before the really steep part, I  want to convey to you how important I think it is to pace yourself elsewhere in life. Alas, the metaphor falls flat pretty quickly, because life does not  always imitate sport. In real life, you’re not heading up a known trail; you can’t plan ahead where you’re going to strategically loaf.

When to loaf in life

My workplace, which I suspect is typical of a modern American corporation in a fast-changing industry, is unpredictable. It’s generally impossible to predict when the hammer will come down. (I sometimes envy tax accountants or line cooks who know in advance when things are going to get crazy.) In my industry we’re conditioned to see change as opportunity, and to embrace the ethos of “disruption,” to figure out new schemes to go take more market share, and blah blah blah. We don’t have the luxury of cooling our jets just ahead of a big effort because we never know when that will be—or, more to the point, we’re supposed to be bringing it about ourselves, constantly. That is the essence of grind culture. (This extends beyond the workplace, of course, unless you’re a childless bachelor(ette) and orphan. Families introduce countless opportunities for entropy to throw us into a tailspin, particularly if we’re trying to run our family like a CEO would run a business.)

So, without guideposts like a really steep, rough section of trail, and with the constant pressure to find more work to do, how are we supposed to know when to loaf? My answer is “whenever we reasonably can.” Of course this will vary from job to job, and from life to life, but the point is, we are all free to pause and question, throughout our workday, what truly needs to be done next, and when, and why. Who is waiting on it? Am I doing this because somebody is counting on me, or am I trying to show somebody up?

In my experience, we’re not always given deadlines, but instead are asked how soon we can have something done. This question can feel like a version of “How good are you?” It can seem to force a reckoning: am I going to do right by my employer no matter what the personal cost, to prove I’m a team player and the kind of baller Elon Musk would praise? Or do I stick up for my right to work a normal day? Actually, I think this is a false dichotomy. Over-committing yourself and failing to deliver doesn’t help anybody. We have to accept—actually, to understand and to some extent define—what is sustainable for us. I define “sustainable” not as “the outer limit of what I am capable of” but “what I can sustain without wearing myself down, making mistakes, and spinning my wheels.” To return to my cycling metaphor, I don’t want to overextend myself, grind to a halt, and have to clip out of my pedal.

Strategic loafing isn’t just about how we run our day, but how long we run our day: when we decide to shut down and what shutting down means. Just as a physical workplace used to help us segregate work and life, the act of powering off our computers became the more modern way to close the door on the workplace, even for telecommuters. Now, as the Times has pointed out, cellphones can tether us for our entire waking life. Strategic loafing means the courage to close down Slack (etc.) at a reasonable hour and resolve not to open our work email until tomorrow. (Ideally we’d resolve also to limit indulgence in our digital “feed,” that fusillade of incoming crap so many invite in for their poor brains to grapple with on personal time. But that’s another post.)

More cycling metaphor

Cycling has taught me more than just how to pace myself in the moment. It has also taught me how to pace myself through the season. There is a time for rest, and a time to hammer. Yes, I can give it my all, that heralded 100%, but only for about two hundred meters until I go anaerobic. And I can dial my effort up until I’m at my anaerobic threshold (e.g., like when going up Seaview), but I can’t keep that up for hours at a time. And not every ride can be a hammer-fest; some days need to be mellow—a conversational pace. Time off is necessary, to let the body recover. The analogy here to resting our minds and psyches throughout our workweeks and careers should be pretty obvious to anyone who doesn’t brag about how long he’s gone without a lunch break or a vacation. What if all that world-beating doesn’t end up enabling a person to make a killing and retire at 45? Then what? Twenty more years of the same? I guess Elon Musk has never heard of base miles.

Call to inaction?

When I entered the corporate workforce, I was terribly afraid of workaholism. What if it ran in families? My dad was a hopeless workaholic. Every morning he was in the office by 8:30, came home promptly at 7:45 for dinner, then left again and wasn’t home until after 10pm … seven days a week. It was the rare week he didn’t put in at least 80 hours. Alas, this didn’t result in a particularly brilliant career; in fact, when he was right about the age I’m at now, he burned out completely and fell out of the workforce. (All three of his marriages had already ended.) That was my example of what not to do.

Such was my paranoia about falling into bad work habits, I made a point not to put in too many hours. I was willing to risk not meeting some vague expectation; I figured if my hours were too low my manager would let me know. Obviously my output had to be on par with my overworked colleagues, which meant working fast. Cycling had given me an obsession with efficiency, and I applied that to my career. Hoping that MO would be enough, I didn’t layer overlong workdays on top of it.

So did this approach work out? Well, here’s a telling anecdote. A few years into my career, I was at a team-building offsite in Palm Springs (back in the days of such things) and management presented a bunch of awards. I don’t remember the categories, etc. but toward the end our branch director presented a big one, and started describing the winner: he’s this, he’s that, and (this is the part that jumped out at me), “He is no stranger to working long nights and weekends.” At this, I started to feel something like sour grapes—as in, “Is that what it takes to get recognized around here?” but then I caught myself and reflected on my principles. I reminded myself, “Hey, I don’t need to be the big winner. There’s more to life than career ambition. I have work/life balance. Let this guy have his glory, he’s made sacrifices for it.” My rumination was suddenly interrupted when the director called out the name of the winner: “Dana Albert!”

I was absolutely stunned. Me? Long nights? Weekends? Huh? It wasn’t until I reflected on this later that I realized the director wouldn’t have been around in the evenings or weekends to see me hard at work, any more than my dad’s bosses had witnessed him. That I put in long hours was just an assumption. My reputation was based more on results than on rudimentary metrics like hours worked. So: if what ultimately matters is our output, who needs the performative workaholism of grind culture?

Let me be clear: I’m not advocating naps throughout the day, or only working eight hours a day as a golden rule. I’ve used the word “loafing” here somewhat flippantly, to get your attention. What I am talking about is more of a return to a work life with guardrails. If the traditional work/life boundaries are no longer available, at least we should have an awareness of the need to set new ones. I want to take care of myself first, and my employer second, because this serves us both better in the long run. Professionally speaking, I want to be the guy who, when a bomb is dropped, isn’t already overwhelmed, isn’t sleep-derived, won’t get frazzled, knows how to work fast, and can quickly put his hands on all the resources he needs. In a nutshell, I want to be the guy who’s not gonna clip out and tip over. To the tired old cliché “I work hard and I play hard,” I would add a crucial third element: “I rest hard.”

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