More Advice From a MAMIL

Dear MAMIL,

In my regular “non-cycling” life I like to think I’m a natty dresser. I don’t skimp on my cycling kit, either. And yet I get the sense that when I roll up to the coffee shop for a group ride, the other guys are kind of snickering at me. What am I doing wrong?

John D, Oakland, CA

Dear John,

Right off the bat, I’d guess this is all in your head. Your cycling pals could be snickering about anything, or nothing, or the snickering could be a figment of your imagination. That said, cyclists can be a judgmental lot so let’s proceed with the assumption that they’re actually judging your costume. Starting with your assertion that you don’t skimp on your clothing, I’ll advise that one can spend a lot of money and still look foolish. For example, you could be wearing a WorldTour pro team kit when you’re clearly not on the team, which 41% of a panel of veteran cyclists deemed “laughably Fredtastic” (i.e., demonstrating the tone-deafness of a newb). Or, you could be wearing Rapha in a cycling community like mine where we all shun that brand as overpriced hipster apparel too closely associated with Team Ineos and Chris Froome. Or, you could be underdressed or overdressed, or rocking arm warmers with a sleeveless jersey, or doing something similarly silly. But don’t sweat it. You’ll develop a sense of style on the road just like you have in your non-cycling life. If you’re impatient, go ahead and query your friends (however politely or bluntly you wish, from “Is there something untoward about my choice of apparel?” to “Fuck you starin’ at?!”). Or, consult this article, bearing in mind that “fitting in” is not a fundamental, necessary, or even commendable aspect of the sport.

Dear MAMIL,

I am somewhat new to cycling (in my late thirties) and have lately been doing group rides. A couple times I’ve heard this or that MAMIL talking about “digging deep.” I kind of have a sense for what this must mean, but can you explain it to me?

Virgil S, Louisville, CO

Dear Virgil,

As a former bike racer, I use this term to describe the kind of over-the-top suffering that we racer-types assume can only be achieved by the likes of us; that is, cyclists who have frequently found themselves in do-or-die race situations requiring the kind of massive effort that would frighten a recreational cyclist. Through trial and error we realize that we’re actually capable of more pain than we’d ever thought possible, because it means the difference between glorious victory and heartbreaking defeat. Do this enough times and you begin to think you’re special, and that casual cyclists couldn’t even begin to relate to what you can put yourself through. This is the essence of “digging deep.”

The problem with this expression is that if you use it outside your tight cabal of racer-types, and your audience doesn’t automatically feel included (due, perhaps, to not having raced), he or she or they may catch a whiff of arrogance in this usage. And then—depending on the pool of rapport available and/or the number of beers you’ve all consumed—he or she or they might give you a hard time about this usage, not just in the moment but repeatedly over time, almost as if to taunt you for your superciliousness. As you may have already guessed, this has happened to me with a pal who—though he hasn’t ever raced—recently completed a 400-kilometer ride. I don’t think anyone achieves that without digging deep. So use this term carefully.

Dear MAMIL,

You’ve gotta help me. I’m a teenage girl and the Lycra bike shorts my dad wears are disgusting. They’re so worn out they’re starting to become transparent in places! Some even have holes in the sides! It wouldn’t be such a big deal except he rides an indoor trainer and likes to parade around the house before and after his workout. My brother and I even chipped in and bought him a brand new pair of shorts but he doesn’t wear them, claiming he’s “saving” them for special rides. Would it be ethically wrong for me to “disappear” some of his worst clothing?

Lydia L, Portland, OR

Dear Lydia,

That really is a tough bind! Cycling clothing is notoriously expensive, and the Lycra often wears out before the chamois—so it can be difficult for a cheap bastard to part with them. Fortunately, there’s a modern solution: buy your dad a pair of baggy mountain-bike style shorts. I used to think these were pointless since they don’t have a chamois, but actually, that works in your favor: he can wear his thrashed old disgusting shorts under the baggy ones. A fellow mountain biking coach pointed this out to me … he is stoked to be getting a second life out of all his old road shorts. Give that a try!

Dear MAMIL,

I confess that I am officially a MAMIL, but I’m apparently still something of a “newb” since I’ve “only” been cycling for about five years. As difficult as this sport is, I thought I’d get some respect from the non-cyclists in my life. But instead they seem to cast aspersions. My sister-in-law said I’m at real risk for giving myself a heart attack, and a couple of people have said cycling actually reduces bone density. What’s the deal? Did I choose the wrong sport?

Jeff B, Columbus, OH

Dear Jeff,

I’ve been hearing rumors for well over a decade that too much exercise can damage your heart. Cycling sometimes gets singled out, because you can do it day after day. (Nobody runs back-to-back marathons, but lots of cyclists put in hundreds of miles a week.) I’ve written about this supposed cardiac risk here. The question for your sister-in-law is: if Tour de France type riders—despite making a living at this and being tough as nails—don’t tend to ride themselves to death, how could you? I mean, no offence, but if a recreational cyclist were actually putting himself or herself at risk for cardiac arrest, the pros would be dropping like flies. And would humans actually evolve to have the capability of working themselves to death? Statistically, the greater risk is when a middle-aged person who doesn’t exercise at all suddenly does something really rigorous. When I lived in Colorado we’d hear every year about some guy having a fatal heart attack while shoveling the snow from his driveway.

As for osteoporosis, it is true that very fit people, because they carry less weight on their skeletons, are somewhat more prone to it. Cyclists in particular can be at greater risk because it’s a low-impact sport, lacking the thumping-along of running that can help maintain bone density. Another issue is that you can sweat a ton during a really long ride, which deprives your body of calcium. So yeah, there’s something to this. But obesity is a far more common ailment among the middle-aged, so it’s not like cycling is unhealthy. Just add in some weight training to your regimen, and make sure your diet has plenty of calcium. Also, I once did a quick Google search on “is beer good for bone density” and apparently beer has boron in it, which is good for your bones. I’m not going to research this any deeper because I have the answer I want, and now you do, too.

Dear MAMIL,

What is it with the modern cycling sunglasses? They are so goofy looking! Have all you MAMILs (and MAVISes) lost your minds? Why not a tasteful pair of Ray-Bans or Maui Jims?

Julie D, Miami, FL

Dear Julie,

I agree. It’s hard not to find fault when you compare modern cycling sunglasses to classic styles like the Ray-Bans.

The problem is, as much as we’d like to blame the designers for deliberately making their product “edgy” (i.e., dorky), to some degree this actually form following function. I’m not in love with the looks of my own cycling shades, but they really do well at not letting light leak in from the sides, not fogging up, and being easy to stash in my helmet vents so I don’t drip sweat all over them during a long climb. A couple of times I’ve forgotten to put in my contact lenses before heading out for a ride, and instead of clomping through the house in my cleats I’ve just put on my prescription Ray-Bans, and I’ll tell you, they don’t work nearly as well. So maybe this is a matter of MAMILs choosing to feel marvelous vs. look marvelous.

Dear M. Hamill,

Can you put to rest the rumor that your car accident was a suicide attempt based on your humiliation over having starred in the “Star Wars Holiday Special” on CBS, a program so awful one critic suggested it could have been “written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine”? I’m sure it was just an accident. And I know that TV special wasn’t your fault either.

Irving M, Irvine, CA

Dear Irving,

I think you’ve got the wrong columnist—I’m a MAMIL, not Mark Hamill. That being said, a quick Wikipedia investigation shows that the car accident happened before the TV special, and this article points out that during filming of the special he was still recovering from the facial injuries sustained in the crash, “under a thick coat of make-up and on heavy painkillers.” (Part of me hates to veer so far off my column's topic, but I don’t like the idea of you carrying around such a blatantly false misconception.)

Dear MAMIL,

Someone wrote in before about whether the real point of Lycra, for men, is showing off their junk. Your answer was totally unsatisfactory—you were clearly prevaricating. What’s the real story? Why can’t you admit feeling sexy is part of biking’s allure?

Kim G, New York City

Dear Kim,

I assure you, MAMILs and even their younger counterparts have no exhibitionist tendencies. In fact, I have seen widespread evidence of teenagers being as modest as possible. When I was growing up in the cycling mecca of Boulder, Colorado, a fad started among those teenagers lucky enough to stand on the podium after a race: they would put on regular shorts (Ocean Pacific brand, usually) over their cycling shorts, for modesty’s sake. After all, to be on the podium is to be right in the public eye. I myself partook of this tradition, but with my own spin: I would roll up the cycling shorts under the regular shorts, to be less nerdy, to buck (part of) the trend, and because I was actually trying to prevent that ridiculous tan line cyclists get. Here I am on the second place tier rocking that look.

I had some influence at that point, but not enough to start a new tradition, as you can see above with the race winner, Pete, sticking with the previous tradition. But later that summer, in the Red Zinger Mini Classic, he’d adopted my rolled-up look and—given his dominance of that 9-day event—had driven 100% adoption in the new style across the podium by the end. You’ll have to take my word for it that he and the second place rider, David, were still wearing their cycling shorts in the photo below. (I didn’t have a second pair of shorts handy this time as I’d ridden to the race, which goes to prove how unnecessary this tradition even was.)

The double-short tradition persisted until the bike clothing industry wised up and started extending the padding in cycling shorts in the name of modesty. Fortunately, this evolution was complete before I hit puberty. ;^)

Dear MAMIL,

What’s the deal with power meters and Strava? Why do we even use these? Sometimes I wonder if I’m just trying to make myself feel bad by scientifically tracking and documenting the decline in my strength. I know you can’t answer for me in particular, and I wish I could, but I can’t other than to say I’m a blind follower of trends. So: why this trend?

Larry M, Atlanta, GA

Dear Larry,

I think I can take a stab at this. Starting with Strava, surely it succeeds for the central reason social media in general does: repeated doses of dopamine through the social traffic of the platform—kudos, comments, etc. There’s also the gamification of it: the KOMs, the PRs, etc. I’m not on Strava myself, but a friend tells me it has age-group-specific leaderboards to encourage ageing athletes.

As far as power meters, to some degree it’s just a cool new toy which fits in naturally with all the tech that cyclists enjoy. Beyond that, I find that—since I’m pretty new to having a power meter—I appreciate how it actually helps me feel better about certain stretches I ride. There’s a particular part of Wildcat Canyon Road that always made me feel weak and worthless because it looks like a fairly steep downhill but actually isn’t; I always felt like I should have been able to go faster through it. Now I see that, though my speed is barely over 20 mph, I’m putting out close to 400 watts, which ain’t too shabby.

The other thing to bear in mind is that those of us who are middle-aged now didn’t have power meters in our prime because they hadn’t been invented yet. So instead of comparing my time up South Park Drive to what I’d done in my 20s or 30s, I’m comparing my power output on it to what I did just last winter. Not such a comedown!

Dear MAMIL,

At the coffee shop this past weekend I overhead a couple of MAMILs talking about “luft.” Apparently it’s to do with cycling caps. I’ve been at this sport for a couple decades but never heard this term before. Care to enlighten me?

Sarah B, Boulder, CO

Dear Sarah,

“Luft” refers to how a cyclist wears his or her cycling cap. It should be worn high on the head, not pulled down tight; the higher up and puffier it is, the more luft it has. Below you can see Miguel Indurain getting it right, and your humble columnist getting it wrong (due to youth and ignorance, I must point out).

Not long after the above photo of me was taken, my brother Geoff schooled me about the proper way to wear a cycling cap. He did not use the term “luft” but he got the point across, and I learned my lesson. To this day I always employ plenty of luft.

Dear MAMIL,

How do you veteran cyclists tolerate having practically no body fat, particularly on your butts? How do you survive and sit comfortably? I’m a regular guy and my butt hurts after pretty much every ride.

H.Z., Princeton, NJ

Dear H,

First off, not all MAMILs have low body fat … only the former racers who somehow tamed their appetites in retirement. It’s the huskier MAMILs that earn us the reputation for being the wrong people to wear Lycra. But even those of us on the skinny side are just fine, because the padding is in the saddle itself, and the shell of the saddle, made either of plastic or carbon fiber, is designed to flex in just the right way. The saddles may look barbaric and torturous because they’re so narrow, but really it’s just your “sit bones” that need to be supported. If there’s pain involved it’s either due to chafing, or the saddle being set too high, or perhaps the rider putting too much weight on his butt and not enough on the pedals. Invest in a nicer saddle and you’ll probably be a lot happier.

I say all this because even at the peak of my fitness I really suffered when I tried too hard a saddle. The modern ones seem to be a step forward. Some even have a big valley down the middle, which is supposed to spare your nether region, though I can’t tell any difference. Such saddles do provide a nice way to stash your sunglasses, though.

Dear MAMIL,

I’m not a biker and have resigned myself to witnessing it (and being baffled) as a bystander. And I’ve always wondered this: why don’t biking gloves have fingers?

Julie D, Santa Fe, NM

Dear Julie,

There are lots of official reasons. Many a cyclist would tell you the gloves are mainly for crash protection, to keep your palms from getting scraped up, without any need to protect the fingers since they tend to curl inward. Or you might hear that the gloves are to pad your hands but the fingers don’t bear any weight, and/or the gloves are fingerless so they’ll be cooler. But I’m going to give you the truth. The number one reason for cycling gloves is that soft fabric, almost like terrycloth, on the back of the glove, between the base of the thumb and the wrist, which is used for wiping the snot from your nose. Other than that, most cyclists wouldn’t wear gloves at all. And cycling gloves are fingerless to facilitate nose picking. I know this is gross but that’s just the way this sport is.

A MAMIL is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask a MAMIL,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Exploiting Our Children's Brains

Introduction

Some big news recently:  Snapchat (which is like Instagram but with a “this-message-will-explode-in-ten-seconds” kind of ephemerality to it) refused a $3 billion buyout from Facebook.  This, despite Snapchat never having made any money.  The reason, of course, is that this novel technology is worth far, far more than $3 billion simply because teens love it.  As we all now know, the world revolves around teens.  (They’ve known this for generations, of course, but we grownups—always a bit slow on the uptake—have only just realized it.)

I don’t have $3 billion to throw around and yet I’d like to personally benefit from the teens, and I’ll bet you would, too.  What do I envy most about the younger generation?  Frankly, it’s their sponge-like ability to memorize stuff.  In this post I substantiate this “sponge” claim, examine what realms of vicarious memory I stand to get the most out of, and provide some ideas as to how to exploit children’s agile young minds.

Are children’s brains overrated?

I’m no expert on child development or the human brain, but—this being just a blog—I don’t have to be.  I would characterize a child’s brain as a miracle of raw processing and storage power, but without a lick of sense.  It’s widely known that a very small child transplanted to a foreign land can easily learn the new language while keeping intact his native tongue.  This is impressive considering that young adults can spend four years majoring in a foreign language in college without attaining nearly the same fluency.  And yet, even my own kids—whom I refuse to believe are below average in intellect—will laugh at even my coarsest efforts at physical comedy.

Not all kids’ brains work the same, of course.  At the risk of over-generalizing, I’ll say that you could divide kids into two rough categories:  1) those who apply their razor-sharp intellects to the task of how to become cool, and 2) those (like my pre-teen daughter) who do pointless eggheaded things like memorizing a bazillion digits of Pi.  I’m glad my kid is the second kind, because for one thing, I don’t want her to get any dates, and for another, in being un-cool she can better relate to her father, who has never been cool and never will.  (As Anthony Bourdain has pointed out, “the essence of cool is not giving a [damn],” and parents bloody well better give a damn, and even if you used to be cool, like he was, “there is nothing cool about ‘used to be cool.’”)

So the best I can do is try to turn my daughters’ willingness to memorize vast troves of information into something I can tap into.  The problem is, kids don’t tend to memorize the kinds of information an adult might want quick access to.  They tend to memorize information that is useless.

Useless crap I memorized as a kid

One bit of information I wish my young self had committed to memory:  did I not bother trying to be cool because I realized that cool was probably an innate thing that I simply didn’t and couldn’t have, or did I not even register, until it was far, far too late, that there was even a such thing as cool?

No matter.  I applied my mind to memorizing all kinds of things, often without conscious effort.  For example, at age ten, my memory acquired all the lyrics to all the songs in Pink Floyd’s double-album “The Wall.”  Not only all the lyrics, but all the background noises and utterances (to the extent I could make them out).  All the tunes, the helicopter noises, the background TV snippets … probably terabytes worth of artifacts from that album.  Oh, and tons of other music as well, including music I didn’t even like.  To this day I’ll get songs from Styx’s “Kilroy Was Here” album stuck in my head.  It’s a curse, especially considering that there’s no room left in my brain to store new information.

That wasn’t all, of course.  Back in ’77, when I heard my brother Geoff listing off all the cast members of “Star Wars,” I naturally committed them to memory myself, no questions asked.  I’m not just talking about Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford.  I’m talking about Anthony Daniels (who played C3P0) and Kenny Baker (who played R2D2).  Never mind that these weren’t actors who went on to have actual careers, where it might have been useful to recognize their names.  (Kenny Baker went on to play a character called “Bruce Foreskin” in the direct-to-video “Boobs in the Wood,” and no, I did not make that up, and no, I have not watched it.)  Carrie Fisher probably doesn’t remember much about her roles in the “Star Wars” movies, having been an adult when she acted in them, but I remember a ridiculous number of her lines (“Get this big walking carpet out of my way,” “Fine … if money is what you want, then money is what you’ll get,” “You came over in that thing?  You’re braver than I thought,” etc.).

I didn’t learn a bazillion digits of Pi because, though I didn’t know what cool was, I knew what a dork was and felt I’d already presented several of the risk factors.  Peers were more judgmental back then, I think.  In contrast, my daughters boldly pursue whatever they like.  (Paradoxically, this probably makes them cooler than I was.  It’s complicated.)

Can kids be ordered to memorize things?

It’s tempting to say that kids cannot be ordered to memorize things.  For example, I have been trying to teach my kids a set of “family best practices,” like saying “thank you” after a meal, but they almost never comply.  I think this is an authority issue.  After dining at friends’ houses, my daughters do remember to say thank you (unless their hosts are lying to me).

Teachers do seem to have enough authority to command kids to memorize stuff.  I still have bits of dialogue rattling around in my head from junior high French class, when I was made to memorize my side of several rote conversations.  These snippets pop up almost whenever I choose what to eat—“Je voudrai avoir un bifteck frites … et une salade, bien entendu!”—and whenever I’m running late—“Zut!  Il est déjà cinq heures!”—with this last utterance continuing to cause me much confusion, every time, because “cinq heures” is 5:00 a.m., and surely these French kids weren’t waiting for a bus at 5 a.m., so why did our textbook say that?  Perhaps the most egregiously useless thing a teacher made me memorize was the entire list of prepositions in the English language, in alphabetical order.  That list survived in my memory for at least a decade; probably I removed it through sheer will.

(Not that I memorized everything I was assigned.  I refused to learn the many parts and functions of the female reproductive system in Health class.  My reasoning was that I don’t even possess any of these organs, though truth be told I was only a little better at learning off the male parts.  I did, however, remember the single most important lesson from Health class, which we kids summarized as “Remember the rule:  protect your tool,” along with like a dozen cruder variations.)

Likewise, my kids are given all kinds of things to memorize for school, and they dutifully comply.  They haven’t yet learned to instantly forget everything five minutes after the test.  For example, my younger daughter was commanded to memorize a really, really awful rap song about the parts of speech, and as she practiced it, my older daughter chimed in, still remembering the song from when she had to memorize it three years before.  (This is why I didn’t let my kids see my own, child-inappropriate “parts of speech” rap:  for fear that they’d instantly memorize it, start singing it on the playground, and get us in trouble.)

A few nights ago my older daughter announced that she had most of the Periodic Table of the Elements memorized; this came on the heels of her little sister memorizing, for school, a poem about an exploding turkey.  Of course my younger daughter had gotten a really late start on her homework and had to memorize three stanzas of the poem in like five minutes, and though she was totally panicked (in fact, perhaps because she was totally panicked) she pulled it off.  This pair of memorization episodes is what got me thinking that I really need to capitalize on this childish parlor trick.  If kids can memorize this much stuff with no greater a carrot than decent grades or their own whims, then I—the holder of dessert and video privileges—should be able to get in on this action.

What should we make our kids memorize?

Oddly enough, even though I curse myself daily for my inability to shunt things into memory like I used to, it wasn’t easy to come up with something for my kids to memorize for my benefit.  The most obvious things adults struggle to remember are passwords, but for obvious reasons I don’t want to entrust my kids with those.  I could assign my kids memorization tasks like remembering the birthdays of my dozen nieces and nephews, but I’ve decided not to, for a couple reasons.  First, since there is a tangible consequence of a failure of memory here (these are kids, after all), I don’t want to take the risk.  Second, it really does seem that the most amazing feats of memory involve pieces of information that are linked:  a poem, a song, or a list. 

I thought about assigning one of my kids to memorize the table of civil twilight start and end times for this area, because those tell me how early in the morning or how late in the evening I can go for bike rides on any given day.  It would be so handy to be able to yell across the house, “Hey Alexa, what time is civil twilight tomorrow morning?  And when are you going to practice your piano?”  The problem is, the civil twilight table comprises 730 data points.  Sure, I could have Alexa memorize the start and end times for the first day of each month, and the average “drift” for that month, to be able calculate this information for any given date, but it’s a non-linear thing and would end up being more of a math problem than a memorization stunt.  Besides, I have a handy printed chart for this, just like I have my nieces’ and nephews’ birthdays in my computer calendar.

I finally got my inspiration after joining a work-related conference call.  This was a high-attendance bi-weekly training thing where a roll call is required, so operators field each incoming call, asking for each attendee’s name, with spelling.  As often happens, the operator had difficulty with my name, even though I spelled it out:  “Dana—that’s Delta Alpha November Alpha.”  She said, “What?  Bana?”  I think this is because I have a girl’s name.  Perhaps she thought it was more plausible that there was a word she didn’t know, belta, and a name she hadn’t heard before, Bana, than that a man could possibly go by “Dana.”  It seems like I go through this issue almost every time I join this conference call.  Maybe the operators are screwing with me.

Anyway, my own struggles notwithstanding, the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet (aka NATO phonetic alphabet), is a very handy thing to know for spelling things out over the phone.  For one thing, it’s faster than thinking up words on the fly.  For another, it’s less ambiguous (e.g., if I said “D as in dog,” the operator might think I said “B as in bog”).  And most of all, the NATO phonetic alphabet gives your speech an air of military authority—it sounds official.  What seems cooler to you:  “A as in apple, L as in lion, B as in boy, E as in elephant, R as in rabbit, T as in tennis,” or “Alpha—Lima—Bravo—Echo—Romeo—Tango”?

Naturally, you’ve already spotted the flaws with this scheme:  it’s not such a lot to memorize, and I’ve apparently already memorized it anyway.  It’s not like I’m going to pause my phone conversation to yell across the house, “Hey Lindsay, what’s the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet word for Y as in, uh, yellow?”  So this memorization task falls short of my dream of using my kids as portable voice-activated almanacs.  On the other hand, having any influence at all over what my kids memorize is a nice win as a parent, particularly as they reach their tween and teen years.  Getting them to memorize something slightly useful, for their own edification, is enough for me.

Getting them to do it

I mentioned above how teachers, in commanding children, seem to have more authority than I do.  I also alluded earlier to powers of persuasion I myself might have due to my control over dessert and videos.  Gosh, that was sloppy blogging.  In fact I would never bribe my kids with dessert or videos because that would set a dangerous precedent.  Any intelligent kid would realize, Hey, I could do this cool thing I’m already inclined to do, but since this thing would also please my parent, I should hold out for some kind of reward!  (Believe me, my kids have tried this, but I always refuse, telling them “I will not negotiate with terrorists.”)

So instead, I talked to my wife, in my younger daughter Lindsay’s presence, about how cool the NATO phonetic alphabet is, and then I threw Lindsay a bone by mentioning the game Battleship, which (like many children) she unaccountably enjoys (despite its being completely pointless).  When I was a kid, the play console was very spare and we called out simple letter and number coordinates (e.g., “G-4!”).  Now the console looks all badass, with pictures of military technology like targeting systems, and simulated rivets, etc., and the x-axis is labeled with Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc. instead of A, B, and C.  So the kids call out “Bravo-7!” instead of just “B-7!”  I told Lindsay this was probably to help prevent confusion, such as B not being confused for D.  (This probably has less to do with it than the modern hardcore military aura the game tries to create.)  Then I asked her how many of the letter names she could remember.

By afternoon, she and Alexa were talking about this phonetic alphabet, and though I never made good on my plan to print out the list and leave it lying around, I didn’t need to.  At dinner the next night I asked Lindsay how much of the phonetic alphabet she could recite.  I figured that after Oscar, which is where Battleship leaves off, she’d fizzle out, but she didn’t.  She needed hints on about ten of the letters, but she eventually got them.  Then Alexa rattled off the entire list like an old pro.  Mission accomplished!