My Bad Habits

Introduction

My daughter A— read one of my old posts recently (this one) and drew my attention to a passage from it:

Even less promising [in a list of 101 blog post ideas] was prompt #51, “Create a blog post about your bad habits,” which said, “Smoking, alcohol, drugs, yes they could be blog ideas too! Tell them something shocking!” In general, not just with my blog but in life, I try to avoid incriminating myself in writing. Meanwhile, my bad habits are not exactly shocking. Sometimes I go to bed without flossing, or get crazy and have a second beer.

My daughter said that this actually could be a good blog post. I reminded her how harmless my habits are. She said no, they don’t have to be bad bad, just outlandish, and cited my “neuroticism about loading the dishwasher” and “compulsion about bike gear,” along with “rapping Eminem lines randomly” which is “peculiar for an old(ish) white dude.” Well, Eminem himself is an old(ish) white dude, but point taken … he’s the poet, he gets the poetic license. My family doesn’t actually need (or deserve) my drastically inferior cover versions.

And so, I’ve taken the bait and compiled a list of my “bad” habits. How many of these do you share? And how many inspire you to think, “That’s nothing, compared to the way I…”? Post your comments below, or email me them, and if I get enough I’ll do a follow-up post! And now, with no further ado, here they are.

Neuroticism about loading the dishwasher

My daughter hasn’t elaborated on this point, and my wife seems reticent to do so. I will say I am a meticulous sort, and have been known to remove and reload recently placed mugs, saucers, and plates even while my wife is still loading. There is historical basis for my corrections; a  mug that’s not properly inverted can fill with sudsy water and turn the dishwasher into a steam room instead of a sauna during the dry cycle. But the fact is, the dishwasher actually stopped working months ago and is now only a dish dryer, so my fastidiousness is arguably overdone. Meanwhile, reading over this paragraph I realize even just the description of this could be more than any sane wife could take. Clearly this is a good habit gone bad.

Compulsion about bike gear

I ride bikes a lot, and will not go out unprepared. The amount of gear in my pack for mountain biking is arguably excessive (details here). And (as my wife just reminded me), when something is missing or I’m packing the car for a race, I can get pretty agitated. This is surely based on “my favorite failure” which you can read about here. But gosh, I sound like a pain in the ass, don’t I? Don’t worry, not all my habits are this tedious.

Rapping Eminem lines randomly

Is it ever not random to rap Eminem lines? Some of them are very apropos and deserve to be cited; for example, there are many scenarios where one could sagely point out, “I don’t go around fire expecting not to sweat.” But I don’t rap that line; I’m more likely to just say it, with the preface, “In the words of the famous philosopher Marshall Mathers…” The random rapping really is more of a spontaneous outburst. On some level I think I’m training myself for when I become senile one day … if my utterances are going to be random anyway, they might as well be interesting. I can picture myself in a long bleak hallway of the old folks’ home, picking my way along with my walker, and suddenly yelling, “PISTOL-WHIPPIN’ MOTHAFUCKIN’ BOUNCER SIX-TWO!” to the shock and mystification of fellow codgers and staff alike.

Pondering unimportant grammatical matters

Words and grammar take up far too much of my brain activity. Whenever I see a sign saying “Entrance,” as in “enter here,” I automatically think that it might as well be saying the word we pronounce “en-TRANCE,” meaning “to put into a trance.” This gets me thinking about heteronyms in general, which really nobody needs to ever do. I’m also picking apart sentences all the time. For example, the recorded message that plays on the subway at every stop, saying, “The doors are closing … please stand clear of the doors” gets me thinking about how “the doors” got to be the subject of the first half of the sentence, and then became a mere object in the second half, like it got demoted. What a pointless realm of thought. Think of how much good I could do in the world if I used this brain power for good!

Apologizing for belching

I don’t belch on purpose—a belch will just suddenly overtake me—so I can’t call that a habit. Apparently there’s a way to muffle them, but I haven’t really mastered that, much less made it a habit. (Lack of a good habit isn’t the same thing as a bad one.) But without fail, I’ll say, “Sorry!” afterward. I guess this is faster and more efficient than saying “excuse me.” I think I got this from my brother G— because I seem to say it with a bit of a Dutch accent, like the one he’s acquired after over thirty years of living there. Or who knows, maybe he’s unconsciously modeled this behavior on some Dutchman’s. Anyway, it’s weird, I’ll admit it, and the strangest thing, is I’ll apologize even if I’m completely alone. Someday there’ll be an intruder in my house, sneaking up behind me, and suddenly I’ll burp and apologize and scare the crap out of him, since he’ll think I knew he was there all along. Until that day, this is a pretty pointless behavior.

Gesticulating broadly while belching

Sometimes I realize I’m about to belch and it’s gonna be a good one: loud and long. So I’ll make it as big and proud as possible, and part of that is making a grandiose gesture such as a master orator would make when delivering a speech in front of a vast audience. I totally got this from my brother G— and amazingly I was barely aware that I do it, until my wife pointed it out as one of the habits to list on this blog. I was like, oh yeah, I guess I do do that! I’m not sure if she was complaining or what, but she’s never, like, applauded or anything.

Buying boxers online

There are spam emails from J. Crew that I actually open … on purpose. Are they still spam? Decidedly yes, as for the most part they’re a waste of my time. I’m talking about the emails with titles like, “Time’s running out: extra 60% off sale.” The “extra” means it’s 60% off the already discounted price, so it’s actually a good deal. I can get a pair of boxers for like $4.50 instead of $24.50. The trick is that they’re usually the seasonal ones, so I get boxers with hearts all over them in late February, or Santas in January, or raccoons on skis in spring.

You see, there’s apparently a romantic tradition of a woman buying thematic boxers for her boyfriend as a gift. I actually received a couple pairs of these when I was younger. The first pair was way, way too big and my girlfriend was super embarrassed, so much so that when she bought me another pair, they were way, way too small. Maybe I’m trying to made amends for all the money she wasted … naw, I’m just a cheap bastard. The upshot is that I now own more pairs of boxers than I could possibly go through, with themes like Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, even Easter. And yet, like all guys, I don’t retire a pair until it’s like twenty years old and literally falling apart at the seams.

Is there anything wrong with this habit? Sure! At $4.50/pop, for something I already have plenty of, this is still a waste. If I bought three-packs of manufacturer’s seconds at Ross Dress for Less (never mind that they’d fit wrong, like they’re on backwards), and donated the money I saved to UNICEF or Oxfam, I could make a big difference in the world. Instead I have boxers featuring St. Bernards with Christmas wreaths for collars.

Edgy humor

I think some of the best humor is edgy. For example, when my late father was in a nursing facility after a cancer surgery that hadn’t gone so well, he decided he should revise his will and get fresh signatures on it. We were in his room helping orchestrate this, and while trying to explain something to us he suddenly suffered a massive coughing fit, that, given his gravely ill state, made it look like he could actually expire. This inspired my brother M—to thrust a pen at him and yell, “Sign it, quick!” This was obviously totally inappropriate and our dad sure didn’t appreciate it, but man … it was just so damn funny! Another time, my brother G— was in the ICU after a terrible car accident, and though he wasn’t technically supposed to have visitors, my other two brothers and I were in there hanging out. We were supposed to be really quiet but just couldn’t manage it. Finally G— motioned to us to come closer so he could whisper something to us—you know, the kind of thing a guy does before delivering his last words —and as we craned to hear him he croaked, “Could you guys try and keep it down? There’s people trying to die in here.” It killed me. And so, a lot of the time I just can’t resist dark humor. For example, when this charity solicitation arrived in my mail, addressed to my father  (who passed away almost seven years ago and had never lived at this address), I couldn’t help but to annotate it a bit:

(No, I did not send that to the good folks over at the Ocean Conservancy ... just to a couple of appreciative family members.)

Workplace humor

At my workplace we all had to take this harassment training—a guy in our Legal department did a road show and gave the training in person to everyone—and one of the things he advised was just to never make jokes in the workplace. He says that’s what gets people in more trouble than anything, and most of the time they’re not trying to make anyone feel bad, but humor is just too subtle and it’s not worth the risk. And yet, I often just can’t help myself. A workplace with zero humor just doesn’t seem like anything anyone should have to put up with for an entire career. Of course I try to be careful and so far, so good. I go for the goofy stuff which seems like safer ground. For example, I cracked wise during a team All-Hands online meeting with like 70 people. Normally people are muted by default with this big a group, but in this case we actually weren’t, and I could hear some background chatter as people joined. And then we all heard, clear as a bell, some guy say in a singsong voice, “Do you need to go potty outside?” I came off mute and said, “Nah, I’m good.” That got huge laughs but I know I’m messing with fire. Somebody I’m gonna, like, offend a sensitive pet owner, and my career will be over.

The Wordle

As explained here I wasn’t initially inclined to do the New York Times Wordle puzzle, but was won over because it’s a fun way to have an ongoing (but low-stakes) dialogue with my daughter. I can now say I’ve done 654 games, and it’s a good thing they usually take under a minute. Actually, just to amuse my daughter, I spend as much time adding fun stickers to my completed game card as I do on the puzzle itself:

My daughter has gotten into the decorating too, though her picture editing tools are perhaps not as sophisticated:

I guess this is harmless, but man … 654 games. Seems like in that amount of time I could have created a critical vaccine or something.

Trying to interest my wife in sports

As much as I enjoy pro cycling coverage, such as of the Tour de France, I cannot interest my wife in it. And yet I still try. I showed her the breathtaking final kilometers of the recent women’s Olympic road race, but she was somehow unmoved, even with Kristen Faulkner claiming the first American victory in that event since 1984. And still, I keep trying. I mentioned how I had to school my brother after he suggested it was Alexi Grewal who last won the gold … he was tied with Connie Carpenter, who won the women’s event that same year. My wife couldn’t even be bothered to yawn. So I said, “And Connie’s was arguably the more impressive win because she didn’t deliberately screw over her teammate, as I have it on good authority Alexi did.” Absolutely no response, but that’s okay, because a had an ace up my sleeve. “You know what I mean by ‘good authority’?” I asked. “I don’t mean I read it somewhere or somebody told me. I got the entire story from Alexi Grewal himself, in the flesh!” She looked at me like I was some kind of idiot, as if to say, “So what! I don’t care!” I said, “How many people do you know who got to hang out with an Olympic gold medalist?” Another blank look. She has been steadfastly uninterested in sports in the entire time I’ve known her … so why do I still try? Force of habit, I guess.

(In case you’re interested in the story of how Alexi screwed over his teammate, Davis Phinney, you can read it here. Alexi had told it to me so I could turn it into freelance article, but then revoked the permission when he found out it would be in an online-only magazine, dailypeloton.com. He eventually wrote it up himself for his now-defunct blog; fortunately for those among us who do care about sports, Velo Veritas picked it up.)

Yanking out white sideburn hairs

I get these really weird, wiry, long white hairs growing in my sideburns. They aren’t that noticeable against the blonde ones around them, and I’m not exactly vain, but they annoy me. So I frequently take a moment to try to grasp a hair and yank it out. It’s easier said than done … in the mirror it’s hard to focus on a tiny hair because I have to be close up and the depth perception is tricky. Plus, it’s hard to get a good enough grip. Why do I bother? It’s not like I’m a model or anyone is paying that much attention. The time I spend doing this must add up … time I could be spending doing something more useful, like emptying the cat box more often.

albertnet

As of this past February, as detailed in my 15th Anniversary post, I have spent something like 3,500 hours—that is, 1.9 years if this were a full-time job—writing this blog. I guess that counts as a habit. Is it a good one? Well, I just compared it to the 7 habits of highly successful people, and even the 8th habit I came up with myself, and it’s not looking so good. Blogging doesn’t really match any of the effective habits. But hey, better than drinking, smoking, and gambling. If you are hungry for the salacious details of a blogger’s bad habits, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

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Counterpoint - Shimano and Campy “Design Blunders”

Introduction

An alert reader sent me an article from “road.cc” magazine that isn’t very recent but is timeless: “Retro: Shimano and Campagnolo’s greatest design blunders.” I found the story interesting and entertaining, but I take issue with a few of its points. (As a blogger, this is kind of my job.)  If you’re a bike geek, read on. If not, bail out now and go back to your Sudoku, your yoga, or your Arduino, so you can feel all superior.

Campagnolo Delta brakes

Delta brakes were the “road.cc” article’s headliner. “Looked great, worked indifferently, weighed lots,” we’re told. To be honest, I’m not in love with the looks:

I never got to try these myself; even though most of my friends and I had pretty sweet bikes by 1986, we couldn’t afford top-of-the-line C-Record. Actually, at that time I had a full Dura-Ace equipped Team Miyata and a Campy Super Record equipped Mercian, so I could have swung the Delta brakes had I really wanted them. But I was growing disenchanted with Campagnolo’s sudden spasm of innovation, which brought us lots of low-end components, bizarre designs, and eventually the Syncro indexed shifter, which was about as well-made and well-received as the movie “Gigli.”

Though I’d heard Delta brakes didn’t work that well, I sure don’t remember seeing any footage of riders totally stacking because of them. Back then, cyclists (at least, my friends and I) cared mostly about brand, weight, durability, and serviceability—we could forgive less-than-perfect function. For example, it was widely acknowledged even in the early ‘80s that Dura-Ace derailleurs actually shifted better than Campy, but most people didn’t really care—they loved how durable, serviceable, and no-nonsense Campy was. Meanwhile, it was well known that Suntour Superbe Pro brakes, with their weird orange-brown pads, only worked well in dry conditions, but nobody seemed to begrudge them this.

Where I can’t agree with “road.cc” is their calling Delta brakes a design blunder. Sure, these brakes were a nightmare for mechanics, but couldn’t we say the same thing about Sturmey-Archer 3-speed internal-geared hubs, which were phenomenally popular for decades? Okay, I’ll grant that Delta brakes were possibly the first factory recall Campagnolo ever had. But to knock them for their overcomplicated design is to wrongly assume that their main job was to provide optimum braking performance to pro racers. That’s kind of backwards: it was the pro teams’ job to use and promote whatever their sponsors gave them. And while these brakes were heavy didn’t work that well, they had one thing totally going for them: they were distinctive.

I challenge anybody to deny that the Delta brakeset was the most recognizable bike component anyone ever made. You could spot them a mile away. And since pro road teams didn’t generally mix and match components, the Delta brakes signified that the whole bike was Campy-equipped. This was important for Campagnolo because after years of dominance (as of 1986, 16 of the previous 20 Tours de France had been won on Campagnolo equipment), they were suddenly being seriously challenged by totally reengineered Dura-Ace and Mavic components. Lots of budget-conscious riders had been riding Suntour components for years, but now Campagnolo was battling to maintain leadership at the high end. (Over time they have certainly lost their prominence; amazingly, only 2 of the last 20 Tours de France were won on Campy-equipped bikes.)

In the mid-’80s, for Campagnolo to show the casual observer they were still on top demanded that their gear totally stand out, and at this job the Delta brake did brilliantly. Check out this famous cycling photo:

It’s plainly obvious what components Stephen Roche was riding when he won the 1987 World Championship road race. Adding the logo on this Campagnolo ad was almost beside the point:

Who cares if highly skilled pro racers had a harder time braking? Using Delta brakes enhanced their ability to showcase their sponsor’s product line, which was their job, after all. To the extent this improved sales for Campagnolo, the revenue growth was probably in the rapidly growing lower-end groups like Victory, Triomphe, and Athena, which had traditional brakes that worked fine. In other words, the crummy design of Delta brakes probably helped the company without hurting anyone.

When Campagnolo finally retired the Delta brakes and needed something else to differentiate their C-Record brakeset from lower models, they gave it a fake blue gemstone in the center nut and called them Cobalto.

These were a big step backward aesthetically, particularly because the gemstone wasn’t a real stone—it was a cheesy-looking fake, affixed to the (flat-topped) center nut with adhesive. In other words, it was basically a sticker, and these stickers tended to fall off. I remember ribbing a friend about all the Cracker Jack he was going to have to buy to find another set of Cobalto “stones.”

Actual braking be damned … the Delta brakes at least did one thing well.

Shimano Dyna-Drive pedals

I also cannot agree with “road.cc” that Dyna-Drive pedals were a blunder. I loved these pedals and used them until 1992 (i.e., 8 years after they were discontinued). Alexi Grewal loved them too, and in fact used them on the otherwise Suntour-equipped bike he rode to victory in the 1984 Olympic road race. (Since they weren’t standard issue for his team bike, he probably paid for his Dyna-Drive setup—pedals, crankset, and bottom bracket—out of his own pocket.)

Why did I like Dyna-Drive pedals? Is it because, as “road.cc” attests, they cornered better? Naw, that was never the point. The benefit was that they enabled you to lower your saddle by two centimeters, for better aerodynamics. For a tall guy, it was great—you could get a better draft. I finally didn’t feel as much like a big gawky dork sticking out above the peloton. (I know I’ve left myself wide open here … please add your insult in the Comments section below.)

Dyna-Drive pedals also offered an adjustable toe clip, which no other pedal did at that time, and they were light. And yeah, they also did have better cornering clearance (especially the Dura-Ace AX version). Meanwhile, by having no axle, these pedals put your foot right at the axis of rotation, instead of above it. This just felt better. Why? Hard to describe, but think of a unicycle … pretty ungainly, right? Now think of one of those “giraffe” unicycles, where the rider is way up in the air, with his bottom bracket at least a couple feet above the wheel axle. Waaaay more unstable. That’s kind of how my foot felt on a traditional pedal, compared to the Dyna-Drive.

Another benefit of this no-axle arrangement is that it was really easy to get your foot into the toe clip. Maybe this wasn’t a huge deal, but if you ever rode with toe clips you know how tricky that could be, giving the toe clip just the right downward tap to spin the pedal around so you could jam your foot in at the right point in the spin. Screwing this up at the start of a criterium was a perennial danger, and I never screwed it up with the Dyna-Drives.

Yeah, the bearings were hard to adjust, and needed servicing more often than, say, a Campy pedal, but compared to overhauling a Dura-Ace Octalink bottom bracket, or seating a new tubeless mountain bike tire, or truing a modern wheel with its paucity of spokes, this was really no big deal. I was such a vocal fan of this system, my nickname on the UC Santa Barbara cycling team was “Dana-Drive.”

(I do wholeheartedly agree with the comment “road.cc” made about how pedals, with their ubiquitous 9/16” thread diameter, are “the last true standard in bike parts.” Check out these three pedals, from the 1960s-era monstrosity to one of the last high-end non-clipless pedals to a fairly current Dura-Ace … any of them could be installed just fine on my old three-speed’s cottered crank.)

Shimano Biopace chainrings

Don’t get me wrong, I always thought Biopace was a completely lame innovation. But when “road.cc” describes it as “ill-fated” I have to protest. This is one of those products that is so universally reviled in retrospect, nobody wants to admit having ever embraced it. It’s kind of the bike industry equivalent of the expression “YOLO.” Everybody groans at how utterly stupid that expression was, and yet it was insanely popular—for a time. As the “Huffington Post” reported, “the expression ... quickly went from a simple motivational phrase to a social death wish.” In contrast, Biopace, though similarly denounced by bike veterans now, was hugely popular for almost a decade, from 1983 to 1993. I worked at bike shops for much of this period, and I can tell you, Biopace chainrings (and their down-market cousin, SR OvalTech) were everywhere. They were a real pestilence.

Why did I hate them? Well, for one thing, they made adjusting a front derailleur really hard. Derailleurs of that era were barely up to the task to begin with, and setting them high enough to clear the tallest tooth created a big gap for other parts of the chainring. Given other common problems certain bike models had, like bad chain lines, getting the front derailleur to shift well with Biopace rings became a real chore.

The other problem with these stupid oval rings was that they put me in a tough moral position. When customers came to the shop looking to buy a set (or, as happened surprisingly often, using Biopace as an excuse to buy a whole new bike), I had to pretend to support the idea. “My doctor says these will reduce knee strain!” a customer would say, and I had to offer some noncommittal response like, “Well, you should always listen to your doctor!” rather than express my true opinion, which was that Biopace was complete malarkey.

I never actually owned a set of these chainrings. I’d just jump on my friend’s bike and ride around a bit, noting how awful the pedaling felt, and particularly how exaggerated the effect was in the little chainring vs. the middle and outer ones. Why should this have been the case? If the effect of this shape is good, wouldn’t you dial in the same improved pedaling characteristic for all three rings? It never made any sense to me. (I think there were limitations in what could be economically produced.) My intuition told me to avoid these silly chainrings, and even when a new bike came with them, I’d incur extra expense to put round rings on there.

So yeah, I completely agree that Biopace was lame—but “ill-fated”? As with the Campagnolo Delta brakes, we have to concede that bike component companies are for-profit corporations. Their job is to persuade people to replace their perfectly good equipment with new (also perfectly good) equipment. In an ideal world, everything new the industry came up with would be demonstrably better, but innovation just doesn’t happen that fast. If companies don’t keep that hype- and gimmick-driven money coming in, they can’t afford the R&D that produces significant improvements. When I ride my modern mountain bike, with its carbon frame, hydraulic brakes, and super-crisp shifting, I’m pretty blown away … and if this technology was funded on the backs of suckers who wasted money on the drivetrain equivalent of snake oil, I can’t bring myself to care. Given its long period of cash production, to write Biopace off as “ill-fated” is a bit of a stretch.

Will oval chainrings ever make a comeback? Of course, so long as there’s money to be made. Certain Team Sky riders have used them, such as Chris Froome. I think oval chainrings’ main benefit to him is the ability they confer to poo-poo accusations that his power stats are “not normal.” He (and others) claim that oval chainrings will cause the power readings to read anywhere from 4% to 6% high. This is pure bullshit of course, just like the myth that Froome is clean. All this being said, I have no issue with oval rings enjoying a resurgence … after all, the industry can use the money, and I don’t work at bike shops anymore.

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