Race Report - 2017 Fort Ord CCCX XC MTB

Introduction

I belong to the East Bay Velo Club, a very generous outfit that hasn’t kicked me out even though my last race was in 2014.  Actually, we’re a very laid back bunch who care mainly about coffee, camaraderie, and chronicles.  The chronicles are mostly of our races (though I usually have to make do with ride reports).  These reports wisely focus on the food, because who really cares about the race?

Anyway, this report ought to appeal to anybody, even (or perhaps especially) anybody who hates cycling.

Executive summary – CCCX Fort Ord Mountain Bike Race – Category 2 Men’s 45+

Weather was great, course was phenomenal, I suffered pretty badly, but not badly enough, and lost the race.  Lunch was tasty but not big enough, and dinner was epic.

Here is my younger daughter with me before the race.

Short version                                                               

• Race stats:  19.83 miles, 1:34:26 race time, 1:12:40 above heart rate target zone, 0:00:50 at redline, 2,161 vertical feet climbed
• Dinner (night before):  1½ servings eggplant lasagna (tasty, a bit chewy, hearty enough), a few ounces of salmon (secondhand, insufficiently rare but “pretty yum”), one sip fountain Fanta (cloying, slightly flat), and one beer (make and model unknown) resulting from bartender error
• Breakfast:  half a muffin and one cup coffee, black, from the Rise ‘n’ Dine continental breakfast at the HoJoMo
• During race:  2 bottles energy drink (froot flavor), one chocolate Clif gel
• Glycogen window treat:  none (!)
• After ride (lunch):  one hamburger, two hot dogs in one bun, one piece styro-chicken-foam, one brownie, half a bottle energy drink (found on the ground)
• Dinner:  Stella Artois beer; Doo-Boo salad (tofu, corn, all kinda crazy stuff), Gangnam French Fries (topped with bulgogi, cheese, and sauce), Jap-Chae (glass noodles with veggie), Gangnam chicken (fried with special sauce) at Gangnam Chicken in San Mateo
• Verdict:  PASS(-ish)

I realized at the start line that this was going to be one of those days.  There’s a legend in these parts about men over age 45 who make a killing in tech, and then either retire or go to part-time consulting, and then—due to the same world-beater tendencies that helped them make a killing in tech—need to find some outlet for their competitive impulses and became these totally driven bike racers who train all the damn time, buy the best gear, race every weekend, and make it impossible for people like me to achieve any kind of success in the sport.  Is this legend true?  Well, in the words of one tough old dude, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”  In other words, I find it easier to face defeat if I can scoff at the top 7 riders and say, “Get a fricking life, man.”  (And then the next morning I wake up sore and tired and go back to work because I haven’t made enough money to retire early or make a living consulting part-time.)

To my credit, I was very successful in looking around at the start and deciding who the fastest guy was likely to be.  Once the race started I got right on his wheel, and sure enough he passed everybody during the slight uphill asphalt run-up to the dirt.  I hit the single-track in second position, died on the guy’s wheel for a few minutes, and then the single-minded, sport-obsessed, totally unbalanced evil bike bastards started passing me.  It was a long race, four laps, and my strategy was to pace myself and wait for the guys ahead to start detonating ahead of me.  Some did; most didn’t.  But—and this is critical—I rode well enough to not embarrass my daughter.  At least, she says I didn’t; maybe she’s patronizing me.  (And how did she fare in her race?  Better—but I won’t steal her thunder because she’ll likely write her own race report.  And—as my teammates are fond of telling me—it’ll be better than this one.)

Long version

My daughter Alexa is on the Albany High School mountain bike racing team in the NorCal League, and every January this team does a CCCX non-League race as a warm-up for the season.  As an assistant coach, I was encouraged to race.  The head coach reckons the kids deserve a chance to see us grownups suffer, and that we should be reminded of what we’re putting these kids through.  I (obviously) agree.

During the last pre-race training ride, we took a rest stop, got off our bikes, sat in a circle, and took turns describing our goals for the race and for the season.  I’m not real big on goals, but I declared, “My goal is to not disgrace my daughter on race day.”

Dinner the night before was pretty good, and most of the Albany Cougars and their parents and coaches ate together, which was pretty fun.  Now, about that beer.  On principle, I was not going to have a beer.  I doubted a beer would slow me down, but I felt I needed to show the bike race gods that I was willing to sacrifice pleasure for performance.  Besides, I needed to model temperance for the young impressionable racers.  But the bartender poured somebody a beer, and that somebody handed it off to somebody, and the bartender got confused and thought he hadn’t poured it yet, and poured another.  (Maybe he’d been embezzling libations?)  I ended up with the extra beer.  I can’t abide waste, so I drank it.  It was a bit warm and a bit flat by the time it made its way to me.  I Beck’sted a couple of friends and here are their responses:

“Drinking the night before a major race?? Do you expect to get a new contract?  You are dead to me.”

“The culture surrounding road racing and cyclocross couldn’t be more different.  Not only is beer an acceptable post-race refreshment, but in following Richard Sachs on Instagram and Flickr, I see that a flask of whiskey is not uncommon in the post-race team meetings.”

I got this second reply in the morning while preparing for my race (and my daughter Alexa’s race), and here’s how I responded: 

“A flask!  Great idea!”

Okay, I had some fun here but actually never drink whisky.  That flask contains Coleman fuel (aka white gas, aka solvent) for my bike chain.  This solves two problems:  1) how to transport a small amount of solvent (for chain cleaning) in a leak-proof and vapor-proof container, and 2) what to do with the hip flask.  You see, I got the flask as a gift at a company holiday party during the late ‘90s, and always wanted to put it to use, because it’s so nicely made, and seems like the kind of manly furnishing that would say I’ve really arrived, you know?  And yet, what situation could I possibly find myself in that I’d need to smuggle in an alcoholic beverage?  (Fear not, after this gag photo I applied a skull-and-crossbones label.)

Trying to carry out pre-race logistics for myself and my daughter was nearly impossible.  I couldn’t find anything, and realized that although we had five bottles between us, it would be impossible to coordinate the feed zone stuff because I had to be setting up for my race while hers was still going on.  I won’t bore you with my other struggles other than to say one of them worked out pretty well.  I was warming up on a stationary trainer when suddenly my bike pitched to the side and made this horrible noise.  I hadn’t secured it properly.  Hurriedly messing with the knobs on the trainer, I grazed my finger against a plastic burr and drew blood.  This blood fortuitously dripped on my race number, which a fellow coach declared was totally badass.

Despite the great start recounted above, I fell off the pace a bit, but still had the leaders in sight.  As they passed one of the Albany Cougars (who had started a bit before us), he crashed and blocked their path, giving me the chance to slip by.  Well played!  My rivals probably didn’t except teamwork between the Cougars and the EBVC!

Subsequently I took the wrong line on a descent and got passed back.  I took it pretty easy on the downhills because after a terrible bike wreck a few years back I’m on thin ice with my wife, cycling-wise.  Plus, this was my first mountain bike race in almost 30 years (no, that’s not a typo) and I’m no John Tomac.  (John who?  Exactly!)

I was a bit worried about bonking because I only had one bottle waiting in the feed zone.  So, despite having the wheel of a guy who was slowly gaining on the leaders, I decided to go for a gel.  It was really thick, and there’s just not a great place to eat such a thing on a race course that’s almost all single-track.  So my mouth got cemented shut like the pig’s mouth in Farmer Boy when she ate molasses candy.  I lost the  guy’s wheel and never got it back.  I probably never would have finished ingesting the gel if I hadn’t had the flask of solvent to wash it down with.  (Kidding!)

By halfway through the race there was nobody in sight ahead of me, nor behind.  It’s kind of hard to motivate under such circumstances, especially when you’re me, and when you’re out of contention. So I gamely kept hammering, kind of, but without quite the passion I’ve shown in, say, shame-based events such as the team time trial.  I mean, here you are (if you’re me), out there on some remote trail with nobody around, trying to motivate to dig deep when it all seems so futile.  I knew I could have ridden harder, because at certain specific times in the race I actually did.

Those times, of course, were my trips through the feed zone where most of my Albany High cohorts were gathered.  It’s really kind of amazing how much noise they were able to make.  It sounded like a stadium full of fans at a rock concert or something, just this tunnel of noise.  What a rush!  In accordance with the advice the Cougars coach had given his riders the day before, I tried to look my very best while riding this stretch.  Check this out:  two complete strangers are cheering me on here.

Actually, if you look carefully, one of the guys whose mouth is open seems to be looking behind me.  Could he have been cheering somebody else?  Possibly.  It’s also worth pointing out that the kid whom I’m partially eclipsing in the photo is one of the ones I coach, and yet he looks totally oblivious.  But that still leaves one guy who actually appears to be looking right at me and cheering.  I can’t recall the last time somebody cheered me on.  It’s not like I’m ever on a conference call and somebody yells, “Yeah, go, man, go!”  Or I’m on the subway and I successfully procure a ticket and the guy in the booth yells, “Yeah, way to transact, dude!”  And my kid never whoops it up just because I got her drivetrain clean enough to eat off of.  So, yeah, in this unsung life, I’ll take whatever cheers I can get. 

One more thing about the above photo:  isn’t my bike amazing?!  Sometimes I gaze upon it and I just can’t believe it’s really mine.  Okay, I guess I’m getting maudlin now.  Probably I’ve drunk too much solvent.

Here’s something else cool:  as I sit here writing this, my daughter is across the room pounding on her laptop keys as well, and I can tell from her occasional questions (e.g., “How do you spell chamois?” or “What’s it called when they hand you a bottle?”) that she’s writing her race report even as I write mine.  In that light, who really cares that I got my ass kicked in this race?  Those other 45+ riders, they’re probably totally estranged from their kids.  And their wives are probably reading my blog right now, wishing their husbands had been English majors.

Okay, so now you’re surely wondering (if you’re still there), did anything actually happen in this race?  Why, yes, and I’m glad you asked!  It came to pass that my strategy—letting myself get dropped on my own recognizance, pacing myself dutifully, and hoping somebody up ahead started to wear out—started to pay off.  I was gradually gaining ground on a guy who had passed me earlier, and whom I had nicknamed “Soulless Life Ruiner.”  I wasn’t pulling back much time, but I could imagine the effect on this guy’s psyche to be petering out.  I hope he felt like an old-fashioned flashlight whose bulb goes from white to orange when the battery runs down.  The trouble was, it didn’t look like I’d get him in time.  That’s when I got lapped by this guy in the Pro category.  He was kind of an old dude and wasn’t going that much faster than I.  So I decided to see how long I could keep up with him.  I followed his lines on the sharper, sandier turns, and the sheer pucker-factor of this activity surely drove up my adrenaline levels.

By the time the pro (inevitably) begin to pull away, I was in striking distance of the Soulless Life Ruiner.  Of course, I was also in pretty serious oxygen debt, but a short downhill took care of that.  On the last real climb, I powered up to him and—following the protocol of mountain bike racing as I understand it—called out, “Passing on your left.”  As I did so I was afraid he’d been loafing himself and would say, “Oh yeah?!” and then pick up the pace and pull away again ... but he wasn’t and he didn’t.  Instead, he said, “Bring it!”  So I guess he had soul after all.

Of course once I’d passed him I had to make it stick, so I was deep into the red for the last five minutes of the race.  Knowing my wife and kids and various Cougars and their parents were in the vicinity, ready to note my disgrace if I faltered, I found the energy to finish fast.  (As it turns out, the guy I’d passed finished nowhere near me, and if I’d just gone harder I might have caught another guy, who finished only 5 seconds ahead of me.  So that kind of sucks.  But I do take some solace in knowing that you, gentle reader, couldn’t care less.)

Look how delighted my kids are to see how much pain I’m in post-race.  Alexa is craning her neck to get a better view.  Peer past my sunglass lenses and you’ll see my eyes aren’t even open.  Note also how my jaw is jutted forward like I have an underbite.  Is that some effort to get more air, or am I doing flehmen, that weird smelling thing that cats do?  I have no idea.

So yeah, I suffered.  But it was a blast.  Racing on a great single-track mountain bike course is like riding a roller coaster, except it goes on for an hour and a half and you’re (ideally) in control.  Oh yeah, and your legs and lungs burn, but you deserve that.  If you’re me, anyway.

After my race I hung around the finish line cheering on the rest of the Cougars before heading over to our team tent and scarfing a hamburger, a couple of hot dogs, and this thing that looked like Chinese orange chicken but tasted like a combination of Styrofoam, foam rubber, modified food starch, and sawdust.  Plus it was cold.  Man that was disgusting, but I didn’t want to be rude in case the person who’d brought it (or had shat it out) was looking.

I’d have hung around eating more, but during her race Alexa had hit a bump so hard she lost both her water bottle and her pump.  This is amazing because the pump has (or normally has, or should I say had) a little Velcro strap.  (It’s a good thing she didn’t blow out her tire on that bump, needless to say.)  So we had to go back out on the course to look for the lost pump.  We pedaled along at walking pace scanning the trail, in vain, and then we realized that whoever was responsible for tearing down the course—that is, removing the little arrow signs and tape that indicate where to ride—was already at work.  Without the signage, we got totally lost in the network of single tracks.  Soon we were turned all around like in a bad dream, where we were bike-riding hamsters and our Habitrail was tangled up like a headphone cord.  Even when we gave up looking for the pump, we were just crawling along because we were both so shattered from racing.

By the time we got back to the car, we discovered that a) the whole Albany High team compound had been dismantled and packed away and everybody was leaving, and b) our car’s battery had died, so my wife was sitting there with the engine running, having gotten a jump-start.  So we headed out, afraid to stop at our favorite taqueria in Gilroy lest our battery wasn’t sufficiently charged.

Dinner was at Gangnam Chicken in San Mateo.  Gangnam French Fries—regular fries topped with bulgogi (i.e., beef), cheese, and the Korean equivalent of the sauce you get with hot wings—is a brilliant innovation, kind of an Eastern rendition of poutine.  Everything I ate at this place seemed brilliant.  Of course, if you went and ate there it’s possible you’d be disappointed, because I was just so damn hungry probably anything would have tasted great.  (Except that weird styro-chicken-foam after the race.  What the hell was that about?)

Epilogue – the heart rate charts

My daughter placed much higher than I did.  In case you’re wondering how a kid with my genes could achieve this in only her second season of racing, these heart rate charts tell it all.  Zoom in on these.

Her chart is the second one.  Look how much time she was in the red!  What’s particularly impressive is that her heart rate didn’t drop that much during the descents.  That’s some serious pucker-factor.  With drive and vigor like that, she’ll probably end up becoming one of those tech superstars who retire at 45 and go slay everybody on the bike race circuit!  I just hope she’ll still talk to me then....

Epilogue #2 – my daughter’s poem

A week after the race, my daughter presented me with this unsolicited poem about her experience watching me race:

To watch an off-road bike race feels strange
I’m used to observation from within
To see my dad partake is quite a change
The struggle’s not just mine, the fight to win

It’s not as fun, observing, as I’d thought
Though not competing, I still felt the stress
The race had fried my brain, my nerves were shot
I really wanted you to have success

My suffering was finished, yet, you see
I wanted you to finish feeling proud
Do you all feel this way when watching me?
Bike racing’s tiring, even for the crowd!

    I’m proud of you, you handled it with zeal
   Tough, intense, and strong, with nerves of steel

I suppose that if she felt moved to write that, I couldn’t have completely disgraced her.  So I got that going for me.  Which is good.

Epilogue #3 – the unpleasant aftermath

If you're interested in the unpleasant aftermath of my race, click here.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--
For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Ride Report - 2016 Grizzly Peak Century Ride With Teenager

Introduction

Last Sunday, for the second year in a row, I rode the Grizzly Peak [metric] Century with my daughter Alexa.  (Why not the full century?  Because I’m trying to promote the metric system in this country.)  Read on for a description mainly of the food, but also the jinx—high, low, and otherwise—we got up to.

Short version

We met up with my EBVC teammate Craig and his wife Susanne.  The weather was perfect.  The food was plentiful and yummy.  There were cool bandanas but no yellow socks this year.  Alexa rode like a boss (especially when she Froomed us on Pinehurst) and covered the entire ~120 kilometers—including almost 2,000 meters of climbing—with her customary flair and panache.

(Wondering what the verb “Froome”  means?  You’ll have to read the full report.)

Full version

Note that I don’t say “long” version.  “Long” in the context of anything written carries a distinctly negative connotation.  This report is “full” like “full-figured.”  But it’s certainly not long—I have just half an hour to write it so you’re practically done already.

Breakfast was the smear of jam Alexa left on a spoon.  My breakfast usually consists of my younger daughter’s bread crusts, but she wasn’t home.

I hadn’t ridden with Craig for like six months, even though he’s normally one of my best training buds.  That’s because this spring I decided, in lieu of my normal regimen, to ride less and get fat.  But I e-mailed Craig the night before and sure enough, he and his wife Susanne were registered for GPC, so we made plans to meet up.

Teenagers take a really long time at everything (except sleeping).  So Alexa and I were too late to meet Craig and Susanne.  Fortunately, fate was on our side and Craig got a puncture like 20 meters into his ride, giving me the chance to a) sync up with him anyway, and b) further promote the metric system via this report.

Here are the Alberts at the start, along with Susanne’s shadow.  Note my lack of arm warmers and leg warmers … that’s how nice the weather was.  This marks the first time I have ever rocked fewer biking garments than Craig.

Alexa got a new bike last summer, with a double (albeit compact) crank instead of a triple, so she’s forced to climb a bit faster, regardless of how much energy she ought to be saving.  But in fact she climbs much faster, beyond what her gearing demands.  At the base of the steep, winding part of Pinehurst, she stunned us all by suddenly yelling, “I am awaited at the gates of Valhalla!  Witness me!” and then launching a brutal attack.

Well, okay, I embellished that a bit.  (She hasn’t yet seen Mad Max – Fury Road.)  What actually happened is that she Froomed us.  That is, she was riding so well she accidentally dropped us without even realizing it, like Chris Froome always does.  I don’t think she noticed until she got to the top.  I had to speed up a bit to keep her in sight so I could stop my lap timer … I’m pretty sure she got a new PR by a large margin.  Her pace probably wasn’t very wise, so early in a long ride—particularly since this was only her second road ride of the year—but then, her prefrontal cortex is still under construction.  At least she’s not doing truly dangerous stuff like so many teens do, like stealing cars, snorting Drain-O, playing mind-altering video games, and texting 24x7.

At the first rest stop we tucked in to the famous GPC home-baked snacks.  In this photo Alexa does her best Vanna White impression, though her expression seems to be saying, “Did you really just give me a second plate of goodies for my very own?”  (No, they were mine!)

So that’s poppy seed cake, peanut butter cookies, ginger snaps, pound cake, zucchini bread, oatmeal cookies, and coffee cake.  There might have been some other stuff but I ate it too fast to notice.  Could there have been a home-baked aspirin loaf?  Possibly, if such a thing exists.

Next on the docket was a brisk descent of Wildcat Canyon, a trip through San Pablo, Pinole, etc. and on to the very heart of the ride, which is the oil refinery.  Here’s the requisite glamour shot … note how Craig’s head appears to be steaming.

We threaded along the newly restored Planet of the Apes road near Crocket, with a new diversion along an isthmus (?) past the C&H sugar plant, which (according to my handy GPC bandanna) was built in 1906 and processes all the cane grown in Hawaii, which is about 700,000 tons per year.  If my math is correct that’s 1.4 trillion pounds, which is particularly scary when you think of how rare sugar is compared to corn syrup these days.  Should I talk a bit about beet sugar?  Naw, let’s move on.  Here’s Alexa rolling past the dueling bridges of the Carquinez Strait.

We hit the second rest stop, ate a bunch more stuff, and let our legs get all stiff so we could have maximum difficulty on the next section of the route:  the famous, ruthless McEwen Road, named for pro sprinter Robbie McEwen, who compared this climb to having his spleen crushed in a giant mortar and pestle.  (Okay, I made that up … I don’t know where it gets its name.)

Craig and Susanne like to play word games to distract themselves from the pain of this climb, and were gracious enough to include us.  The standard game is naming world cities, going sequentially through the alphabet (e.g., Austin, Berlin, Copenhagen, Detroit…), but we decided to mix it up and try something new.  Craig suggested profanities based on the alphabet (asshole, bastard, etc.) but I nixed that since I’m supposed to be a parent.  We decided on non-profane derogatory statements by alphabet.  I started:  “Angry is how I feel toward you right now, Craig.”  Susanne had B, and of course that’s not very difficult (“bad” being a perfectly obvious choice) but she just couldn’t bring herself to say anything mean to anybody.  So this game didn’t last very long, though McEwen seemed to.

This year I didn’t forget to warn Alexa about the Pig Farm climb, though I’m sure she remembered it from last year anyway.  It was nice and green.  Here we are, having a good laugh, perhaps about how I talk too much and ought to be told to shut up.

Not surprisingly, Mama Bear was a mother.  The weather was now officially too hot for Alexa.  Plus, her neck was getting sore because she always rides on the hoods.  It’s just how she rolls.  Seems to work, anyway, and nobody could ever deny that she has better form on (and off) the bike than Chris Froome.  Would she complain if she had a mechanical problem and I took that moment to attack?  No.  She might ask me to fix her bike later, but then that’s what dads are for, at least in traditional patriarchal households.

As we rolled down the hill toward the final fueling station, and I mentioned my intention to stop for water there, Susanne said, “Do not, my friends, become addicted to water.  It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!”  I’m paraphrasing here.  For some reason she doesn’t like to stop at that last rest stop, so she rides on ahead and Craig fills a couple bottles, then hammers to catch up.  So here are the three of us, with Alexa clearly thinking, “OMG, are we really doing another stupid photo-op?”

We drank a couple ice-cold Juice Squeezes (70% real juice, with the other 30% being, well, whatever makes it the right color and flavor), had some more cookies, and hit out for the final stretch to the finish.

Along San Pablo Dam Road, Alexa seemed a bit frustrated and expressed the teen equivalent of “Are we there yet?” (I can’t remember the wording but the tone was unmistakable).  She’s a fine athlete but with the mountain biking she’s been focusing on, her longest ride this year has been around three hours and this was over five hours in, so I can’t blame her.  I decided she just needed a bit of encouragement, and I’d planned for this:  I whipped out a can of silver spray paint, sprayed it all over her mouth, and declared, “You will ride eternal, shiny and chrome.”  Alexa, delighted, cried out , “Am I awaited?”

(All of the above was communicated nonverbally, of course, and there wasn’t actually any paint, though I did remember to bring lip sunblock this year.)

At the finish, Craig and Susanne had saved us a spot at a shady table.  Well, at least they didn’t put a jacket or backpack down and tell us those spots were reserved for somebody else.  Fortunately that still mainly happens at the movies, though some dickwad did that on Bart during rush hour the other day, causing me to fantasize about holding his face against the electric third rail—but I digress.

The food was excellent, as usual.  Barbecued chicken; nude red potatoes; grilled onions, squash, peppers, and eggplant; jeweled rice; plenty of Acme baguette slices.  The guy working the bread station was so impressed with Alexa—that is, her rare combination of youth, lack of tattoos, lack of piercings, and willingness to be seen in public with her father—that he invited us to swing by after lunch for some free bread to take home.  We got like six baguettes and a sweet batard, which were hard to carry back to the car but then that’s a great problem to have. 

All in all, another glorious day of biking.  (I wish I could tell you what we had for dinner, but the sad fact is, I just don’t remember.  At this rate, next year’s report may be just a paragraph or two!)

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--

For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Ride Report - Grizzly Peak Century with Teenager

Introduction

Members of my bike club traditionally send out race reports, with a special focus on what was eaten before, during, and after the event.  I barely ever race, but decided to produce a report of the Grizzly Peak Century ride, a 73-mile effort I took on with my 13-year-old daughter Alexa.  This would be her longest and hardest ride ever, and also her best-fueled.  Read on if you’re interested in cycling, parenting, junk food, and/or a good laugh.

Short version

It was cold. The food was bountiful and tasty. Alexa rode like a boss. 73 miles; 5,770 feet of vertical gain; two pairs commemorative socks.  Post-ride BBQ was tasty, even the lentils. 

Long version

For breakfast, I served Alexa leftover homemade mac ‘n’ cheese.  I sneaked a few bites and man, it was good. But I didn’t dare take any for myself, for hell hath no fury like an Albert deprived of leftovers. The members of my household are like jackals.

We drove to the start, in Moraga, parked, unloaded, built up the bikes, and headed to Registration. As we approached the table the woman said, “You must be the Alberts.”  How did she know?  Well, Alexa’s name was flagged with “minor” and they don’t get many of those.  Huh.  Kids these days ... they have no time for exercise—they’re too busy playing “Grand Theft Auto XIII – Running Over Baby Pandas and Homeless People Edition.”

We met up with my teammate Craig and his wife Susanne and started the ride.  The plan was to ride together so long as we all enjoyed the same pace and I didn’t talk too much.  (I’ve ridden with Craig for years, and I actually had a Latin class with Susanne in like 1990.  She remembers it as being a really easy class and I found it really hard.  Story of my life.)

I don’t need to tell you it was brutally cold.  This Indian Winter is really getting old.  I’m tempted to complain about Global Warming but somebody out there would probably respond with a lame joke about “You call this warming?” so instead I’ll say this:  I’m really getting worried about Global Climate Fuckery.  Upper-80s on Thursday and every other day of spring is like living in an air-flavored Slurpee. I was glad to climb Pinehurst just to warm up a bit. I see one of you painted Alexa’s name on the road, but you spelled it “Alexis.” Thanks for the thought ... please try harder next time.

We cut the course a bit, taking Shasta down to Wildcat to the first rest stop rather than staying on Grizzly Peak the whole way. This is because so many residents on that road like to back out of their driveways without looking, and/or cut off cyclists and break their femurs.  I guess this isn’t exactly an epidemic but one time is enough for me.

I’d talked up the GPC food to Alexa, and she wasn’t disappointed.  Pound cake, banana bread, chocolate-chip/cranberry cookies, oatmeal cookies, crunchy ginger snaps, soft ginger snaps ... we tried it all.  I’m sure I’m forgetting some items.  I even had a cup of coffee, just so I could pee a gallon at every rest stop like I did at the first.

Did I mention it was cold?  I didn’t even have a jacket because I was leaving room for Alexa’s arm- and leg-warmers in the pocket of my Lycra bike racing shirt.  (I was about to type “jersey” and then I remember that there are pockets of hermitic sheepherders in Australasia who think “jersey” means “woolen sweater.”)

We descended Wildcat, hooked a left on San Pablo Dam Road, and went around the “Planet of the Apes” loop, a great little road threading along that piece of land sticking out (I can never remember what that’s called ... isthmus?) and giving a nice view of the Carquinez Strait and its dueling bridges.

There was a lot of ground to cover between the first rest stop and the second one.  As a veteran of century rides, I know to take extra cookies when I can get them.  Of course my daughter benefited from my savvy.

We descended to the second rest stop.  This stop didn’t have any baked goods unless you count bagels.  Craig asked for a sesame bagel; the volunteer picked up a bagel half, turned it over, silently registered that it had poppy seeds instead of sesame, and gave it to Craig anyway. I had a “nothing” bagel with Skippy peanut butter on it—a guilty pleasure if there ever was one.  The alternative was this health-food peanut butter product that looked like diarrhea mixed with gravel.  I think it might have been almond butter, which makes about as much sense as a strawberry newton (i.e., none at all).  I kind of wished there were a New Yorker around to launch into a diatribe about there being no actual bagels on the west coast.

I got some Gu version of Shot Bloks, which were like Jujubes for grown-ups, and Alexa coveted them, so I told her to get her own.  Turns out I’d gotten the last bag, so I gave her mine.  Note to other parents:  this is how to get your kid to do century rides—just relax your normally stingy treat policies during long rides.  (Of course, this only works if you deprive your kids the rest of the time.)

Next on the docket was the fierce McEwen Road climb.  Craig and Susanne came up with a word game to make the riding go more quickly, and this was so effective they dropped Alexa and me.  Once we’d conquered that climb, I told Alexa the next climb would be Mama Bear.  Of course this was false.  The next climb was actually Pig Farm, which is by no means insignificant.  As it dragged on and on, Alexa remarked on how I hadn’t warned her about this one.  (I wouldn’t say she complained, per se, but her displeasure was evident.)  Poor kid.  It can’t be easy having an idiot savant for a father.  (For those of you questioning the “savant” part, I’ll remind you I have great facility with iambic pentameter, which has saved my ass ... well, okay, zero times.)

At the base of Mama Bear, we stopped so Alexa could take off her leg warmers.  She’s normally impervious to the cold, being the odd sort of person who would be perfectly happy pulling an Iditarod sled while wearing gym shorts.  That she waited this long should tell you how frigid the conditions were (even though the sun was doing its best).  While we were stopped, a worried-looking woman rolled up, stopped, and asked, in a quavering voice, “How long is this climb?”  Nobody said anything for a bit, not knowing how to answer.  I mean, it takes as long as it takes, which depends entirely on one’s fitness.  She rephrased her question:  “How far up does this road go?”  All I could think of was, “It goes on a right fur piece,” so that’s what I said.  Got a chuckle out of her, anyway.

Alexa had really suffered on Pig Farm, and when Craig offered her a sleeve of Clif Shot Bloks she happily accepted.  By the top of Mama Bear she’d consumed the whole lot of them.  I found this impressive because those Bloks have stymied me in the past.  Consider this passage from my Everest Challenge 2012 report: 

Hunting in my jersey pocket I came upon a sleeve of Clif Shot Bloks that Craig had given me.  My hand groped it, trying to figure out what it was.  Once I’d identified it, my brain tried to comprehend what Shot Bloks were and what they did.  You eat them, right?  But what are they?  And how do you get into the package?  Is it like Pez?  I gave up trying to fathom this great Shot Blok mystery and managed to find a gel.

I guess all that piano playing has really enhanced Alexa’s fine motor skills.

After Mama Bear, Craig uttered the word “kit” in reference to our bike costumes.  I glowered at him and said, “I can’t ride with you anymore.” So we parted ways.  Okay, that’s not actually how it happened.  He never said “kit.”  It’s just that Alexa descends more slowly than those guys, probably because she knows her mom would kill me if she crashed.  Moreover, Alexa and I wanted to stop at the last rest stop (I mean, free food—hello?!) and Craig and Susanne didn’t need anything.  So they rode off into the sunset.

The last rest stop had more baked goods, and we had one more of everything, except the chocolate-chip/cranberry cookies—we had two of those.  They also had Crystal Geezer juice drinks and we took two apiece.  “So, we just have Papa Bear and Baby Bear, and we’re done with the climbing?” Alexa asked hopefully.  I replied, “Right, though we also still have to climb Mama Bear.”  This was not me teasing my daughter—this was me being an idiot.  Again.  Poor kid.  “Wait, I thought we already did Mama Bear!” she said, distraught.  I assured her she was right.  From now on, I’ll give her the map and have her tell me what’s going on.

On Papa Bear, we passed this angry middle-aged woman wearing mostly black.  It was this weird long-sleeve costume, and under her helmet she had a thin head-scarf, tied in the back, like what a Ninja wears.  In a brittle voice she asked, “Are you two doing both loops?”  Had I known the kind of person I was dealing with, I’d have been tempted to reply, “Hells yeah, beyotch!” but instead I said, “Oh no, just the first one.”  To which she replied, “Oh, well I don’t feel so bad then.”  Like it’s some kind of disgrace being passed by us.  Sheesh.

Baby Bear was a cakewalk (cake-ride?) and then we hooked a left on Camino Pablo.  Rolling toward Orinda, the woman in black caught up to us—probably she pulled a lot of time back during the post-Papa-Bear descent—and she blew right by us by running a stop sign.  On her way past, she muttered, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”  What a fascinating utterance!  Was she quoting Tolstoy’s epigraph, that opens Anna Karenina?  Or was she quoting Romans 12:19 as Tolstoy had?  Or am I paraphrasing her body language?

On that long, shallow climb just past Orinda, after Camino Pablo becomes Moraga Way, we passed the Ninja woman again.  As we rolled slowly by, she glared at Alexa and said, “You possess, in the highest degree, a quality that makes one forget all shortcomings; this quality is blood, that blood which tells, as the English say.”  So it was definitely Anna Karenina she’d quoted the first time, since this second utterance matched Tolstoy’s description of Vronsky’s horse, though I’ll confess it’s also possible that this strange woman said nothing at all.

About this time I became aware that we were being tailed.  This dude with a red jersey, white arm warmers, and a yellow helmet had been behind us, maybe 30 feet behind, for an awfully long time.  It’s not credible that his pace just so happened to be identical to ours.  No matter how many stop signs and stoplights we stopped at, he never got any closer.  I’m pretty sure he was with the Bureau.  Many a father/biker would have been spooked, but I’m pretty good with my fists.

We took a left on Moraga Road:  the home stretch!  There was a slight tailwind and we had a good head of steam, but that didn’t stop the Ninja woman in black from making her final move.  She came flying by, in her best approximation of an aerodynamic position.  Somebody should explain to this woman how to ride on the drops.  I guess she didn’t grasp what that part of the handlebar is for, because she had her hands on the hoods but her elbows bent way past 90 degrees, sticking down low.  It didn’t look very comfortable, nor very safe, but she could not have cared less.  Her face was stony with determination, her mouth a rictus of uncaged ferocity.  This time she didn’t say anything, but to my astonishment Alexa cried out, “She sucks nitro... with Phase 4 heads! 600 horsepower through the wheel!  She’s meanness set to music and the bitch is born to run!”  Okay, okay, Alexa didn’t really say that.  She hasn’t even seen “Mad Max” (yet).  What she really did say was something wistful, along these lines:  “Normally women that age are just waiting for the end, but she’s breaking new ground.  I think this was a big day for her.”  I should pay more attention to that child ... I think I could learn something. 

In case you’re wondering, the angry biker woman easily bested us in the end; she didn’t really even need to run that last stoplight in cold blood.  I wonder if she’s told her own glorious tale on the Internet somewhere, or at her book club, or on the wall of a public restroom.

Dinner was great.  I graciously accepted the  volunteers’ offers of roasted red potatoes, jeweled rice, and even lentil pottage, though I drew the line at the couscous salad.  To my surprise, Alexa also allowed all these things on her plate, though she then whispered to me, “I took the lentils to be polite, but you’re eatin’ ‘em.”  Then it was on to the barbecue station, for chicken and vegetables.  They had eggplant, peppers, onions, all kinds of groovy stuff.  Then, on principle, I covered my plate with corn chips and those glisteningly greasy no-name potato chips that come in the 5-pound bag. 

I was not going to be one of those guys hitting his forehead and saying, “I coulda had a V-8!” so I had one. 

I went back for more chicken.  The volunteers don’t give you that much, so I tried a new tactic:  instead of withdrawing my plate after the chicken was deposited, I just kept it there.  There was a brief stalemate before the volunteer divined my wishes and put more on the plate.  It was like a game of chicken.  (Get it?  Chicken?)

I’d have stuck around and eaten more, but Alexa wanted to get home before the library closed.  Can you believe this kid?!

“Glycogen Window” for Sports Recovery - Proven!

Introduction

Haven’t heard of the glycogen window?  It’s a period of time, roughly half an hour immediately following exercise, during which any carbs you ingest provide extra benefit in restoring muscle glycogen.  In other words, if you exercise good and hard, you not only deserve a treat but are well advised to have one because it’ll help you recover.  Among my racer pals, post-ride chocolate milk is all the rage.  (Protein, calcium, and antioxidants are also touted as important recovery aids.)

I suppose I should add that this glycogen window thing isn’t widely viewed as hard science.  I first read about it in “Bicycling” magazine back in the ‘80s; cycling hero Andy Hampsten wrote about it.  I’d link to the article, but I doubt “Bicycling” has archived all their issues electronically like “New Yorker” has.  (Perhaps “Bicycling” assumes their readers have no patience for text, especially old text that has been regurgitated countless times anyway, with articles like “It’s you—fit, fast, and self-trained!” and “10 easy ways to improve your power!” run in constant rotation.)

Naturally, I believed what Hampsten wrote because he won the Giro d’Italia and the Alpe d’Huez stage of the Tour de France.  I began eating things like ice cream, fruit, or yogurt right after a ride or race, and immediately noticed an improvement in my recovery so I’ve stuck with it over all these years.  (Yeah, it could be a placebo, but if so, it’s a strong one.)

In this post I will make a cursory examination of the evidence against the glycogen window theory, before presenting substantive proof, recently obtained from a very talented young scientist, that the glycogen window is for real.  Here is the scientist, enjoying the fruits of her labors, both scholastic and athletic.

The case against glycogen window

It didn’t take long to find “evidence” against the glycogen window theory.  The first Google hit came from an online magazine called evidencemag.com.  I won’t summarize their arguments—you can read them right here—but suffice to say, I’m not impressed.  This article depends entirely on a) other people’s research, and b) sentences beginning with “there’s little evidence that,” which only show the lack of information available to the author.  Perhaps evidencemag.com will retract the entire article after reading this post and seeing my evidence. 

One other thing:  their headline is really wishy-washy:  “Why Most Endurance Athletes Don’t Usually Need to Eat After Workouts” (italics mine).  It wouldn’t hurt to define what an endurance athlete is, and why some would sometimes benefit.  Meanwhile, this glycogen window thing (according to what I’ve read in support of it) only works if you do it as a standard practice—which means that nobody needs to do it sometimes.

That said, one thing mentioned in that article does present damning evidence against the glycogen window theory.  It’s one of the footnotes, linking to an article that supposedly supports the notion:  a book called “The Lance Armstrong Performance Program: Seven Weeks to the Perfect Ride.”  Obviously, if Lance Armstrong—a known liar—says the glycogen window is legit, then it must be a myth, right?  Well, it’s not actually that simple.  You see, it’s clear Lance didn’t really write that book, but merely lent his celebrity to the project.  So we’re still good.

You know what?  I’m tired of paying lip service to the glycogen-window haters.  You can research their silly positions on your own.  It’s time to get to the proof that it’s valid.

Hard science

Occasionally, I make the time to carry out scientific experiments on my own.  For example, I proved that cyclists have extremely high pain thresholds (click here) and that rinsing—the practice of tasting something sweet without actually ingesting any calories—actually does increase athletic performance (click here).  But I don’t have time to test every theory I come across.  Thus, when I had the opportunity to leverage the considerable brainpower, time, and energy of my daughter Alexa, I jumped on it.  (As I’ve documented here, I’ve long dreamed of exploiting my children’s intellect for personal gain.)

Here’s how I got my chance:  my daughter was assigned a science project having to do with heart rate.  It was supposed to be a fairly simple affair, such as measuring the heart rate of each test subject before and after eating chocolate.  (Needless to say, it’s never a problem finding subjects for such a study.)  Obviously Alexa could have done a really easy project like that, but you can guess what happened:  I got involved and pressed my personal agenda.

It wasn’t hard to get Alexa to tackle a difficult research project, because a) as a budding athlete and lifelong lover of sweets, she has a vested interest in validating the glycogen window theory, and b) she knew she’d get some treats, in the form of candy and accolades, during the testing process.

Of course, using heart rate to measure the benefit of sports nutrition is not particularly straightforward.  Alexa’s methodology involved measuring the change (i.e., delta) in heart rate between lying down and standing up.  On the morning after exercise, this delta is usually greater than if the subject didn’t exercise the day before.  Alexa sought to determine if getting a snack during the glycogen window reduced this morning-after effect.  (Where did she get this idea?  From me.  I read it somewhere, ages ago, and a coach once explained it to me.)

You know what?  Alexa describes all this better than I have: 

One way of testing your recovery time is by comparing the delta of your heart rate between lying down (first thing in the morning) and standing up.  After physical exertion, your muscles are tired, and standing takes more effort, raising your heart rate.  This assumption is based off of the existing studies on the subject. My experiment will in part test this hypothesis. However, the main point is to examine the effects of  getting a sugary snack within 35 minutes of exercising (i.e., during the so-called “glycogen window”).  It has been proposed that getting this immediate sugar helps replace muscle glycogen (which is like the fuel in your car’s tank).  This greatly enhances recovery (i.e., getting over fatigue).  In my experiment, half of the test group will have some form of sugar after exercising, during the glycogen window.  By comparing the delta of their heart rates, I will be able to see how the heart rates of the people who had sugar compare to that of the people who didn’t.

Procedure

Alexa’s project got off to a fine start:  she baked cookies for her friend’s soccer team.  Half the team would get cookies right after soccer practice, and the other half would take cookies home to eat later.  (Just try recruiting kids for the control group without offering them tasty snacks, too!)  Unfortunately, the soccer practice got canceled, and though Alexa tried to get half the team to forego snacks after the next game, they all (predictably) flaked.  So she got pretty far behind on her project. 

I always try to strike the right balance between giving my daughter too much help versus letting her make her own mistakes.  So, in this case I helped my daughter find replacement test subjects, but made her drive the project.  This resulted in a real nail-biter:  Alexa didn’t have all the data she needed until the morning the project was due.  At 6:00 a.m. she was frantically collecting the final test results, writing her report, preparing her graph, and putting the whole thing together.  (Perhaps this was the best thing about the project:  she learned the hard way not to procrastinate, and got some good practice working well under pressure.)

Here is Alexa’s procedure, in her words: 

Procedure: People participating will:

1. Take their heart rate first thing in the morning.
2. Stand up and take it again, recording the data, to get a baseline heart rate increase (aka “delta”).
3. Exercise in some way (something aerobic) at some point during that day.
4. Half of the group will have something sugary within 35 minutes of completing exercise; the other half won’t.
5. The next day all will measure their pulse again, first lying down and then standing, and recording the data.

Results

Alexa ended up with ten test subjects, their ages spanning 12 to 50-something.  One subject was herself.  I participated twice:  I served as a with-sugar subject and then (a day or two later) as a without-sugar subject.

In the table below, a row shaded in yellow indicate a sugary snack was received within the glycogen window.  I’m subject #1 and #2.  Alexa is #3.  My brother Bryan is #7.  As you can see, getting a  snack resulted in much less of an increase in the delta; that is, subjects recovered better when they had a glycogen-window treat.

Here is the conclusion Alexa wrote: 

I have concluded that my hypothesis is correct, and having sugar after a workout helps you recover.  The percent change in delta was in every case greater in the people who had no sugar after exercising.  This shows that getting up was more of an effort for them, meaning that their muscles had not recovered to the extent that others had.  This is illustrated by the graph.  The red indicates people who did not have a sugary snack after exercising, and the blue indicates people who did.

Just look at this graph.  The data unequivocally support her thesis.

 Every responsible scientist notes certain caveats that could make the results less compelling, and Alexa is no exception: 

In one case, the data set was not complete, and without a proper baseline delta, I couldn’t calculate that person’s percent change.  If I were to redo the experiment, I would try harder to get that data in time.

Her final sentence is my favorite, with its unexpected twist at the end:

This evidence supporting my hypothesis could prove extremely beneficial in the area of after-sports snack debates.

Happily, Alexa’s findings guarantee that she (and her sister and I) will continue to get glycogen window treats after every serious workout.  For me as a parent, this is a win-win because this coveted sugary reward guarantees my daughters will continue to do serious workouts.  (Alexa will do a 45-minute trainer ride for just five or six jelly beans.)  It’s touching to see these kids racing into the kitchen after exercise, jockeying for position and throwing elbows, yelling “Glycogen!  Glycogen!”

A final note

I realize that neither Alexa nor I made any effort to prove that the lying-down versus standing heart rate delta actually means anything.  But hey, we can’t do it all.  If one of you would study that on your own and send me your results, that would be great.  Or better yet, get your kid to do it!

From the Archives - Diaper Meltdowns

NOTE: this post is rated PG for very mild strong language and insinuations of antisocial acts.

Introduction

The other night was rough. First, our cat Misha—despite getting her typical middle-of-the-night breakfast—continued meowing plaintively and scratching at the kitchen door, a short flight of stairs down from our bedroom. Then our six-year-old, Lindsay, climbed into bed with us, having had a nightmare. (The nightmare was probably my fault; my bedtime story was a bit on the scary side, involving an ancient girl who was terrified at mistaking a helicopter, which she’d never seen before, for a giant dragonfly.)

In our bed, Lindsay did her semaphore routine, all elbows and knees, continually jabbing me, all the while loudly sucking on her fingers. Countless times I dropped back off to sleep only to be reawakened. She kept resituating herself, smoothing down her special blanket or adjusting her special pillow, which she’d brought in with her. When morning came and my alarm went off I was pretty much awake anyway, but far from rested. Of course, following all this Lindsay slept like a baby all morning. Here she is, still lounging in bed with Misha, our other nighttime nuisance, hours later.

Not that I’m complaining! These are the salad days, after all, sandwiched between the terribly difficult infant/toddler years and the dreaded teen years (which I’m told are particularly hard on parents of daughters). What’s a bad night of sleep here and there compared to the rigors new parents face, of night after sleepless night, and all those diapers on top of it? I’ll never forget the shock of bringing our firstborn, Alexa, home from the hospital and faking it as parents as we tried to learn the ropes.

The following stories are taken from an e-mail I wrote to my brothers and parents, probably as a plea for sympathy, when Alexa was about three weeks old. I reread that e-mail with a shudder, and a delicious sense of relief that those tough times are behind me.

Diaper Meltdowns – October 1, 2001

Erin, to my surprise, is handling the lack of sleep much better than I am. Perhaps it’s a new-mother hormone thing, or perhaps she’s just a better person than I, but she has a lot more patience. She does complain a lot about the cat, though, or so it seems. Every few hours she points out another thing the cat is doing wrong, the poor cat who micturates in her catbox and thus requires no changing, and never cries but instead meows rather demurely and sweetly, who is trying to adjust to the new household situation, which includes cruel banishment from the bedroom because she won’t stay out of the baby’s bassinet. But other than her complaints about the cat, Erin is pretty stoic. (Actually, she probably doesn’t complain about the cat all that often, but in my deranged, frazzled state, it seems to me that she does.)

Yesterday morning I pretty much boiled over. I was trying to change Alexa, and the towel we’d put down on the changing table was wet from an earlier changing (she tends to let loose right when you’ve got her diaper off), and so I wadded it up so that I wouldn’t soil her still-dry outfit, and set her down on this wadded lump, and then saw that she had this major boogerage in her eye (clogged tear duct), so I ran to the bathroom, jumping over a massive pile of bedding that was right in my way (it had been torn off the bed the previous night when Alexa had a diaper blowout).

The reason I ran to the bathroom, instead of walking, is that Alexa was screaming her head off, as though I were shoving bamboo beneath her fingernails. Then it took forever, like it always does, to get hot water out of the tap, and the screaming continued, loud enough to drown out my cussing, and then when the hot water finally came out, I knew that the washcloth would never hold the heat long enough to be comfortable because it’s a “baby” washcloth with less fabric in it than a Post-It would have it were made of molecule-thick cloth. Then I realized that the baby was in a precarious place because of the way I’d wadded up the towel on her changing station, and I feared she’d roll into the space heater we have on the table (to keep her warm during changes) and burn herself.

I leapt over the pile of clothes again, cleaned up the eye, changed the diaper, then realized that despite my best efforts, hazardous as they’d been to the welfare of the child, her outfit was in fact soiled, so I had to leap over the pile again to find an outfit from the bureau near the door. We have approximately 300 outfits for Alexa, many of which won’t fit for weeks or months, some of which haven’t been washed yet (we always wash new clothes lest the chemicals used in their manufacture irritate her skin), and some of which are the wrong type (i.e., sleeveless vs. sleeved) for a chilly morning. I finally found one, after a frantic period of searching (frantic because of the screaming, and because of the knowledge that my lovely daughter at any moment might roll into the space heater, which had become a half-ton ball of burning thermite in my mind), and again hurdled the giant pile of bedclothes.

Now I realized that I couldn’t change her on the changing table because of the vast flood of urine that had soaked everything despite my most irresponsibly dangerous wadding measures. So I moved her to the bed, and tried to wrangle her into her fresh garment. It had about 300 or so snaps, and not all of the male pieces are on one side of the garment. You need a degree from MIT to figure out how to snap everything into place. It’s not symmetrical either, and of course no two baby garments have even a remotely similar design. My fury at this point had invaded every cell of my body except from the wrists down, which I managed to control lest I accidentally harm my child. Finally I gave up and shouted “F––– THIS THING!” and hurled the offensive garment to its death. Actually, it didn’t even suffer from the landing, the damn thing, and I couldn’t pick it up and rend it into a thousand pieces, which would have been my choice, because it had Erin’s friend’s initials on the tag, meaning it’s only a loaner and has to go back, clean and intact, to its rightful owner, who can bloody well have it back right now as far as I’m concerned, perhaps soaked in my own urine since this godforsaken garment from hell will never touch the skin of my precious daughter.

So instead of rending the garment into a thousand pieces I did the flip-off dance. [Note to albertnet readers: you’ll just have to imagine this dance. I’m not posting a video.] It only helped a bit. Then I had to hurdle the fiendish pile of bedclothes once again, find another damn outfit from the 600 in the drawer, evaluate it not just in terms of size and laundering status but also in terms of the likelihood that I’d be able to properly fasten all the snaps along its bizarre appendages and whatnot. I found one, hurdled the pile of bedclothes yet again, and put the new garment on Alexa, who had been continuing to scream bloody murder the whole while, at a decibel level that guarantees she has a V0₂ max surpassing Lance Armstrong’s.

Having finally got my daughter changed, I picked her up, carefully ascended the Col du Bedclothes, made it safely down the other side, and brought the squalling youngster downstairs to her mother, who I hoped would be sitting on the couch, boob out, ready to nurse the baby into silence. Instead, Erin was vacuuming, further rubbing my nose in her superior ability to withstand lack of sleep. I sat down with Alexa and bounced her on my knee, trying to calm her down, and then Erin says, “Well, the cat is ruining this expensive rug.” This pretty much put me over. “Well, should we just put her to sleep then?” From my standpoint at the time this response was perfectly justified. Of course, from Erin's perspective—the more lucid one—my utterance must have seemed utterly bizarre. After all, she had given me the night off by sleeping with Alexa in the guest room, and was occupying her short period of respite from the baby by vacuuming, and had made a fairly innocent comment about the state of our handmade Turkish rug, and got shocking vitriol in response. Not a perfect domestic scene.

That’s not my first blowup, nor perhaps my most spectacular. The other night, I was trying to assemble the Diaper Genie, and could not get the damn thing to work. I don’t even want the Diaper Genie, and we’re only using disposables for a short time, but I figured we have it and should go ahead and use it. But I absolutely could not figure out how to install the bags that are supposed to hold the soiled diapers into a long linked-sausage configuration. Finally, after what was really only a couple of minutes, I became furious at it. It had no instructions, and didn’t seem particularly intuitive. The “refill,” which seems like a stupid name for the bag cartridge that was really the very first one ever installed, had directions on it, but they become obscured in step 2 out of 5 when you put the cartridge into the Genie. Now there’s a smart design! I had to keep pulling the cartridge out and reading ahead. It just didn’t make sense. I figured this thing had to be intuitive enough for the least educated, least intelligent trailer trash Diaper Genie owner to use; why couldn’t I, a college-educated Network Design Engineer, get it to work? I beat on the top of it with my fist, and then hurled it noisily down the stairs, much to the amazement and amusement of Erin and her friend, who’d come over to cook us a meatloaf and help out.

I phoned a couple of other new parents, for whom we bought a Diaper Genie years ago, and after a long period of intense discussion and troubleshooting we determined that what I have is an old, small-mouth DG in the box of a new, large-mouth DG, with the “refill” for the new, large-mouth DG. This is why it wouldn’t fit. Probably somebody re-gifted us a barely-used but obsolete DG, throwing in the modern-style refill to make it look new. But that won’t stop me from marching into Target with it and demanding a replacement. If they don’t pony up, I’m going to spread model airplane cement all over the damn thing and torch it right there on the showroom floor.

Baby peripherals aside, child-rearing is a hoot. Alexa is great. She’s getting cuter by the day, and is generally a very sweet baby. She’s a bit gassy, which is a bummer for everybody, and we can’t seem to burp her. But she’s eating up a storm nonetheless. I love to hold her and offer up my index fingers, which she grabs in her fists. We’ve even figured out how to get her, sometimes, to take the pacifier. That’s a big help because I can’t just sit there 24-7 with a finger in her mouth, and she does love to suck.

dana albert blog