The Black Friday That Wasn’t

Introduction

I hate shopping.  Whenever I exchange my money for products or services, I feel a stab of defeat.  The value I place on my belongings grows in proportion to their age—that is, to how well I’ve managed to amortize their original cost.  Of course we all seek to get the best value for our dollar, but I have a bigger goal, which is to never spend anything and forever make do with what I already have.  I’m a retailer’s worst nightmare.

I also dislike crowds, holiday lotion snipers, displays of retail abandon, and above all Christmas music.  And yet, I ventured out to Best Buy on Black Friday to buy my mom a new computer.  Not my cup of tea, but I had a rare opportunity:  my brother Bryan and I were both visiting our mom in Oregon (which doesn’t happen that often); Bryan knows more about computers than I do; and getting a Black Friday discount on a big-ticket item like a computer is worth some suffering.

Plus, I must confess, I saw a silver lining to the horridness of the outing:  I could blog about how bad it was.  You know, kind of a Heart of Darkness thing.  That’s something I like about being a blogger:  when something bad happens to me, at least it stimulates my creative juices and I can often get an interesting post out of it, and when something really bad happens to me, I might get several interesting posts out of it.

As it turns out, and as you knew already, Black Friday was a bust this year.  In this post I examine what the failure of Black Friday means to America; describe my non-horrid (but still somewhat remarkable) trip to Best Buy; and lay out my novel strategy for increasing the success of Black Friday.

 Who cares about Black Friday?

When you think about it, it’s kind of weird that, our own shopping aside, the success or failure of Black Friday is a guaranteed source of “news.”  Every year, the sales numbers for this made-up retail event are as widely reported as the outcome of football games.  And yet outside of our own shopping, why should we care what other people did on their day off?

The answer, of course, is that Black Friday is widely (though not universally) regarded  as a measure of consumer confidence, which is a yardstick by which we measure the health of our economy, and in turn the state of the nation.

I’m not at all sure any of this makes sense.  Why should we measure the health of our nation by how recklessly we spend our money, on this one arbitrarily declared day, on stupid gifts that probably won’t delight our family and friends nearly as much as we hope?  If that set of four Harvest Pumpkin soup tureens were actually a worthwhile product, you’ve have bought it for yourself.  Holiday shopping is all about retailers playing us for suckers and I can’t see how their success validates the health of the nation.

Why put any stock in consumer confidence to begin with?  How many Americans actually understand their own finances, much less the intricacies of the overall global economy?  Besides, there’s evidence to show that being confident doesn’t necessarily lead to good outcomes.  American students lead the world in confidence, even while their academic performance is sub-par.

Some suggest that the poor Black Friday numbers could actually be good thing, like this Nasdaq writer who theorizes that, because the economy has improved, people are no longer desperate enough to tolerate massive crowds just to save money.  Prosperity aside, I’d be more optimistic about our nation if journalists like this guy used better grammar:  “More than 6 million less people than expected actually went out and shopped” makes me cringe.  (Just in case you missed it, it should have read “More than 6 million fewer people…” or, even better, “Over 6 million fewer people,” though I would also gladly accept “over 6 million lesser people” though that does alter the meaning somewhat.)

Cyber Monday, meanwhile, was bigger than ever.  This reassured a lot of people that the nation is still healthy.  I’d like to think this means Americans are getting more introverted.  But actually it’s probably got more to do with laziness and just wanting everything shipped to us.

Oddly, what I would consider the greatest factor leading to Black Friday’s dismal performance is something almost nobody reported on:  Adult Thursday.  Maybe you haven’t heard of this one; it made its debut this year.  On Adult Thursday (yes, Thanksgiving Day itself), adult websites offer steep discounts and (probably more importantly) a suspension of tracking cookies, so lustful men can save a few bucks while enjoying greater anonymity.

Is Adult Thursday a good thing?  Well, I’m torn.  On the plus side, it shows the same American ingenuity that produced the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue (“Hey, men love sports, but also babes—let’s give ‘em both!”).  Not since feasting on Thanksgiving was paired with watching football have we seen this kind of clever alignment; by indulging licentiousness as well, we’ve hit the trifecta!  On the negative side, I’m repulsed by the notion of would-be shoppers being too glutted on dopamine to leave the house on Friday.

(No, Adult Thursday isn’t a real thing … at least not until this post goes viral and causes life to imitate art.)

My trip to Best Buy

My wife thought I was crazy to brave Best Buy on Black Friday, until she grasped that I was sacrificing my own emotional health for my writing.  (Like me, she has had too charmed a life to be a great writer; happiness is like a consolation prize.)  But as it turned out, the dreadful hordes never showed up.  The place was less crowded than our local Target on any given day.  I found a parking spot right away.

I also got plenty of attention from the Best Buy customer service associates.  Too much, actually, since their input is practically worthless.  I’ve read articles lamenting how online giants like Amazon are eating the lunch of brick-and-mortar chains like Best Buy, but I have no sympathy.  I can get gobs of info on products by shopping online, but almost no info in the store despite the best efforts of earnest but hapless salespeople.

“I’m looking for a very basic PC for my mom,” I told the guy.  “She doesn’t want a touch-screen and doesn’t need a lot of CPU or memory.  But she is brand-conscious and will want something that looks good.”  So the guy lead me to an Acer computer.  An Acer?  Wasn’t he listening to me?  I told him, “Look, Acer is a terrible knockoff brand that neither gets nor deserves any respect, and this chintzy, shiny PC you’re showing me looks like something that was extruded from an industrial robot’s rectum.”

No, of course I didn’t really say that.  I just said, “I’m not really into Acers.”  Even this seemed to hurt the guy’s feelings and he only mumbled from this point forward, which was fine, since he knew nothing that wasn’t printed on the little placards stuck to the shelves (i.e., almost nothing at all). 

Meanwhile, I didn’t see any “SALE!” tags anywhere.  This amazed me.  I thought the whole point of Black Friday was creating a feeding frenzy, via steep discounts, that enabled a merchant to make big-time money through volume, not margin.  I really did say to the salesman, “I’m a little surprised not to see more discounts.  I thought this would be a giant discount extravaganza.”  He said, “Oh, lots of things are on sale … it’s just that the original prices aren’t shown.”  Well, no wonder Best Buy is hurting!  They don’t know the first rule of merchandizing, which is to draw maximum attention to how much the shopper will save.  (Needless to say, Best Buy also hasn’t grasped the second rule of merchandising, which is that you should artificially inflate the price of everything just so you can “discount” it without actually lowering margins.)

Now, as I see it, every salesman’s job is to remove my self-doubt and convince me that the product I’m looking at really is a good one, suits my needs, and is a good value.  The perfect pitch for the PC I ended up buying would go something like this:  “Well, it’s a great piece of luck that your mom doesn’t need a touch screen, because check out this little HP number over here.  It’s a real thoroughbred, with an industry-leading Intel i5 processor, gobs of RAM, an HD+ display, and BeatsAudio—and yet for some reason they spec’d it without a touch-screen.”  Here he would lower his voice a little and lean in to give me the inside scoop:  “It’s crazy.  I even talked to the distributor and said, ‘How can they not put a touch-screen on such a sweet machine?’  He said, ‘I know, it’s killing us, it’s why we had to price these bad boys at only $500.’  So yeah, they’re practically losing money on this model to begin with.  But you know how people are, they gotta have their touch-screens, and so this model still wasn’t moving, which is why we’re having to discount it another $100 today.  For somebody who wants top performance but doesn’t demand a touch-screen, well, this is a marriage in heaven!”  BOOM—I’d be sold.  But instead the guy said nothing.  He just stood there, hopefully, like a wallflower at a prom.  It was almost embarrassing.

Bryan and I were discussing the merits of this laptop when an older couple happened to decide on the same one, and asked the salesman to fetch one for them from the warehouse.  “Hey, you know what?” I said to him.  “Make that two of them.”  The couple, who looked like the kind of rural Oregonians whose kids call them “Ma” and “Pa,” looked at us in surprise.  I said, “You guys look like you know what you’re doing, so if this PC is good enough for you, well, it’s good enough for me.”  The woman demurred, saying, “Well, my husband chose it, and he doesn’t know that much,” but I think they were both pretty chuffed.  See?  Wherever I go, I try to spread joy.

There was no line at the point of sale.  I asked the cashier how sales were, and he said, “Been here since midnight.”  I thought that was a pretty safe response—upbeat, but noncommittal.  But it was pretty clear their Black Friday wasn’t going gangbusters.

How to reinvigorate Black Friday

Odd though it might seem, I may just be the perfect person to provide a strategy for making future Black Fridays more successful.  After all, it’s people like me who, by staying home, ruin everything.  I have a proposal that would probably make a big difference.

My strategy is based on sexism.  If you think sexism is a bad basis for anything, I hope you’re highly outspoken about the ridiculous tradition of men watching football on Thanksgiving while the women cook.  Myself, I’m not bothered by it because convincing people to buy a lot of crap they don’t need isn’t exactly a noble enterprise to begin with.

So, where men’s purchases are concerned, I think brick-and-mortar stores need to get away from providing product information, period.  There’s just no way a low-paid clerk is going to compete with the vast troves of information provided by e-commerce sites, available to shoppers via their smartphones.  Men do like to look at products in person, and heft them, but that’s about all the extra info they need.  So don’t waste money on clerks who can’t help with products that basically sell themselves.  (Oddly, Best Buy actually hampered this process, by locking down the configuration of their display computers so shoppers like my brother and me couldn’t glean info about the PC from the PC itself.)

Purveyors of hi-tech stuff should take the money they save through these workforce reductions and put it toward free manicures on Black Friday.  That way, women will actually encourage their men to take them shopping at places like Best Buy, and the men will have as long as they want to play with the computers and such.  And when it’s time for the man to spend more than he and his significant other had agreed on, at least she’ll be in a good mood.   (And yes, he will be buying stuff for himself, as opposed to buying gifts like he’s supposed to.  This behavior is established fact.)

The real Black Friday players should be clothing stores; they have the edge over e-commerce websites to begin with, since nobody buys clothing without petting it first and trying it on.  These stores should run a one-day promotion where every men’s garment purchased automatically adds value—say, 20% of the purchase amount—to a gift card that only his significant other can use, and only on a later visit.

Why would this be successful?  Well, women normally like to shop for clothes without their men around.  That way they avoid his scrutiny—“What?!  Eighty bucks for a t-shirt?!”—and don’t feel rushed.  Men, meanwhile, seldom shop for clothes at all, not just because clothes are boring but because of the male’s deep-seated fear that he’ll get disoriented and end up browsing in the women’s section by mistake.  The gift card would incentivize women to take their men clothing shopping for a change.  The man will be more confident with his selection if she likes it, and once he’s bored he’ll readily buy pretty much whatever she tells him to, just to get the whole thing over with.  Imagine a Black Friday where foot traffic is not only increased, in these Cyber-Monday-proof environments, but where purchases are consummated boldly and swiftly, with zero need for extra salespeople.

I’m not just guessing about all this!  My own track record proves this approach would work.  I’ve only been clothing shopping twice this year, and both times it was at my wife’s urging.  Both times, I bought stuff on the sole basis of her liking it.  Both times, I feel I greatly overpaid.  In terms of the health of our economy, all this is good news.  After all, a defeat for the likes of me is a big win for the Retail Industrial Complex!

Almost Intelligent - Part II

Introduction

In my previous post I explored modern efforts at artificial intelligence, evaluating them in terms of two common criteria:  how well AI devices can simulate human dialog, and how well they translate languages.  In this post, I will look at another classic measure of the progress of AI:  how well a computer can play a game.

It’s not hard to see why this criterion is a valid one.  So often, a computer (or other machine) simply does what we tell it do (or at least it tries).  With a game, the computer—far from accommodating you—is carrying out its own agenda, which is in direct opposition to you.  Also, whereas Siri or a chatbot may not be “connection-oriented”—that is, may not actually consider sequential inputs in the context of an ongoing conversation, a computer playing a game most certainly is.  Thus, if it does a really good job of beating us, all on its own, it’s both the most successful and (at least to me) creepiest manifestation of AI there is.

My early, early experience

I got a very early start with computer gaming.  Before personal computers were a common fixture in homes, my brother Bryan wrote a game for the Hewlett-Packard Model 85, a computer which my dad bought and let us kids use (which stands out as one of parenting’s finest moments, if you ask me).

The game Bryan coded was Hexapawn, a simple variant of chess involving three pawns per player on a 3x3 board.  Wikipedia tells us that the game’s inventor, the famous mathematician and writer Martin Gardner, “specifically constructed it as a game with a small game tree, in order to demonstrate how it could be played by a heuristic AI implemented by a mechanical computer.”  I’m sure Gardner would be thrilled to learn that Bryan was inspired by his magazine article on the topic.  (I asked Bryan today if he can recall his precise motivation for that programming project, and he replied, “Well, I loved science, computers and futuristic stuff, not really sure why, heck, we all did, but there was just one problem, and that’s that the [HP-85] computer didn’t really do anything. There were a few primitive games and whatnot, but as you know, those got old pretty fast.”)

At first, the HP-85 and I were pretty well matched.  But once I got the hang of Hexapawn, I found I could beat the computer—but only for awhile.  The computer learned while playing:  it never made the same mistake twice.  Thus, after this learning period our games always ended in a draw.  But the HP-85 had one weakness:  when you exited the program, its memory was erased.  The next time you played, it had to learn all over again.

Deep Blue vs. Kasparov

I don’t need to say much about this because you surely know the story:  an IBM computer called Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion, at his own game.  I haven’t watched the matches (I’m not much into chess; in fact, I once lost to my four-year-old nephew) but I gather Kasparov got pretty heated.  He even accused the IBM team of cheating by helping Deep Blue out behind the scenes.  A documentary about the match, commenting on how visibly flustered Kasparov got, said he would be the worst poker player in the world.

In a sense, it wasn’t a fair matchup:  Deep Blue got Kasparov’s goat, but the computer had no goat.  An awareness of the significance of your activity is part of what it means to be intelligent, so to the extent that Deep Blue played mechanically, it wasn’t quite intelligent.  I cannot brood about Kasparov losing his temper against a soulless, ruthless computer without fantasizing about Kasparov grabbing a cheap knockoff peripheral device, unsupported by Deep Blue’s operating system, and jamming it into a USB port.  The machine’s calculations grind to a halt and eventually it blue-screens, thus losing by default to the human.  And the crowd goes wild!

My other  early experience

In 1984, a friend and I took on his Apple IIe computer in a game far more exciting than Hexapawn:  strip poker.  Needless to say, only our opponent would actually strip.  As I recall, we had three babes to choose from as our rival.  Now, before you get too excited (or offended), remember the quality of computer graphics in that era.  This was extremely low-resolution—the CRT equivalent of Pointillism.  Still, it was fun to play poker against, and strip, the babes.

We eventually discovered a huge weakness in the computer’s play, that has strong ramifications for AI in general:  you could easily win just by bluffing constantly.  So long as we bet big on every hand, no matter how lame our cards were, we’d have our opponent bare naked within minutes.  One babe was as gullible as the next—they never learned!  But then, how could they?  A smarter program could have noted the frequency of our bluffing, but this one didn’t.  Its creators could have implemented some sort of ratio-based “this guy bluffs” detector, but ultimately how smart can a computer get about human treachery?  Could it ever pick up on the hundreds of nonverbal cues that a human can?  Can it really learn the traits of its opponent?

Consider this anecdote.  I attended Poker Night (a fundraising event for my kids’ school) a few months back, and (not wishing to spend too much money) was very conservative with my betting.  When I finally got an obviously good hand (this was Texas Hold ‘em, a game unfamiliar to me, and I was hopeless at spotting opportunities), I finally bet big.  None of us had played one another before, so there was much conjecture about whether or not I was bluffing.  “He’s been betting low all night. He’s got something!” someone said.  “No, he might just have balls,” another guy said.  A third guy replied, “No, he’s in my wife’s book club, so I know he doesn’t have any balls!”  See?  Though he’d never played against me, that third guy had biographical information that came into play.  I’d like to see Deep Blue go up against a professional poker player.  It would get its CPU kicked!

What’s the point?

There are two main reasons I can think of for a computer to play a game.  One is so that a lone person can have somebody to play against.  The other is to prove that the computer can actually do it.  But what is the point of people playing games?  Why do we do it?  This question, I think, gets at the core difference between humans and AI.

Of course there are all kinds of reasons people play games, but a computer only plays a game because a human told it to.  And all a computer knows how to do is to try to win.  I play games to have fun (which a computer can’t do) and to teach my kids things. 

For example, my family loves to play Apples to Apples.  In this game, players take turns being the judge.  The judge turns over a green card that has an adjective on it (e.g., brave, difficult, scary).  Each of the other players has seven red cards, each with a noun printed on it (e.g., doorknob, t-shirt, egg).  Each player selects from his hand the card whose noun best exemplifies the adjective on the green card.  The judge chooses which player’s card matches the green card the best, and awards the green card to the player who provided it.  Although the Wikipedia article about it lists many variations for this game, none matches the way my family plays, which is that each player makes an argument for his choice, to persuade the judge.  (We assumed this was the whole point of the game; otherwise, the game seems pointless.)  These arguments are often elaborate, sometimes ingenious, and always funny.  I’m hoping this game will help my kids learn the art of rhetoric.  I cannot imagine that a computer will be able to even create a rhetorical argument, much less teach rhetoric to a human or learn it from a game, anytime soon.

My favorite game, Sorry!, exists in a computer version, and though I haven’t tried this version (why would I? I have kids!), I can imagine that a computer could do okay against humans if all parties took a similarly cutthroat approach to the game.  But for me, a cutthroat approach is out of the question.

Why?  Well, for one thing, I’ve been playing this game with my kids since they were very young and given to bursting into tears when they got bumped or Sorry’d.  (It’s natural to feel singled out when an opponent, faced with multiple options of how to play a card, chooses the option that hurts you, as opposed to another player.)  I don’t like to make my kids cry.  Also, I like to give a little help to my younger daughter to better her chances against her big sister.  And of course I want the game to be fun.  But most of all, I want to teach my kids about quid pro quo.  I want to teach them how to make deals.

“Okay, I’m going to show you mercy here,” I’ll declare.  “I could split this seven and knock your pawn back to home, but I won’t—I’ll just move seven spaces.  But I want you to remember this the next time you draw a ‘Sorry’ card.”  There’s no codified way of keeping track of these favors … they’re informal and involve approximations of justice.  Such deal-making is a crucial capability—not just in a game but in life.  I cannot play Sorry, in fact, without thinking about the epic failure of Flavr Savr genetically engineered tomatoes.

I read about these tomatoes in a 1993 “New Yorker” article, written a few months before the product hit the market.  The obviously creepy idea of genetically engineered food is not all that stuck with me from the article.  I was very impressed by the account of a Ed Agrisani, a Rolex-sporting, big-time tomato salesman interviewed for the article, who predicted (accurately, as it turned out) that Calgene’s $25 million experiment would be a complete failure.  To Agrisani, the quality of the new tomatoes was almost beside the point, because Calgene had no experience actually selling tomatoes: 

“What separates the men from the boys in this business is whether you can sell your tomatoes when nobody wants them, when you’ve got a whole field that’s just going to rot out there unless you can move ‘em out.  I’ve got customers who know that when the supply is tight they can call me and I’ll sell ‘em a load.  So when I get oversupplied I can call them and say, ‘Hey, I know you don’t need it, but how about buying a load?’  And they’ll say, ‘We’ll send the truck.’  It took me sixteen years to get to where I had the relationships to do that.  Now, maybe the folks at Calgene think they can come in and do it overnight—and, like I say, I wish ‘em the best—but it’s not a simple deal.”

I’ll let somebody else teach my kids chess.  For me, the speech-making involved in Apples to Apples and the deal-making in Sorry! are the better skills to learn, as they completely transcend the game itself.

Conclusion

A computer can play a mean game of chess.  But perhaps chess is unique among games in relying mainly on intellect, strategy, and computational ability.  When we consider games that use the full spectrum of human intelligence—interpreting facial expressions, ad hoc profiling of opponents, making arguments that appeal to quasi-rational humans, making deals, having fun—it starts to look like AI is still pretty far from the end zone.  And even if a computer gets good at a game, it will remain utterly powerless to take what it’s learned and apply it to real life.  (Of which, of course, it has none.)

This is all fine with me.  I’m all for improvements in AI to the extent this makes the machines into better slaves.  I’m much less excited about a computer defeating me at anything.

Other albertnet posts on A.I.

• I, Chatbot
• Almost Intelligent – Part I
• Smartphones & Artificial Stupidity
• A.I. Smackdown – Moto vs. Cortana vs. Siri
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 1
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 2
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 3
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 1
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 2
• Schooling ChatGPT
• Will A.I. Steal Our Jobs?
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part I
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part II
• What is ChatGPT Great At (and Not)?
• Tech Reflection – Two Sides of AI
• AI Smackdown – ChatGPT vs. Copilot vs. Gemini
• More AI Smackdown - ChatGPT, Copilot, & Gemini Write Poetry

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

From the Archives - When You Are Engulfed in Shame

Introduction

Last May, I took a writing class called “Memoir: Art of the Personal.” The instructor encouraged her students not to shy away from troubling material. Her advice was something like “go where the pain is.” This makes sense. Had Dostoyevsky written a novel called Obedience and Praise rather than Crime and Punishment, he might not be so famous.

More recently, I read a parenting book called Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children. It has a chapter titled “Why Kids Lie” that offers some, well, shocking statistics. A four-year old, a cited study attests, “will lie about once every two hours, while a six-year-old will lie about once every hour.” The book goes on to describe how “kids who live in threat of consistent punishment don’t lie less. Instead, they become better liars.”

As a kid, I was no exception: I was not above lying. Plus, I stole. If this seems interesting to you, perhaps you will enjoy this story, which I wrote for my class.

When You Are Engulfed in Shame – May 27, 2010

When I was about ten, I stole money from my family. Not just on one occasion, but repeatedly—daily, in fact—for a couple of weeks. I felt no remorse (at least at first), and had no regard for consequences. I was pilfering change from the bus money jar.

Every day, as soon as we got home from school, my brother Max and I would to get a dime from the jar for our bus fare, and walk about half a mile to the bus stop to catch the slow, meandering #5 bus that would take us all the way across Boulder to the YMCA. It was a boring trip made all the more boring by our taking it five days a week for years. At the Y we had swim practice. I hated swimming—still do—and especially hated being bullied in the locker room afterward. Bigger kids would roll towels into a “rat’s tail,” get the end wet, and snap us with it, leaving red marks on our bare skin. Then, my eyes burning from the chlorine in the pool, I’d wait with my brothers for forty-five minutes for our mom to pick us up around 7. Given the time demands of swimming and school, I had no life.

The money I stole was for Zēmis. A Zēmi was a fancy soft drink, prepared to order by a high-tech vending machine in the Y’s lobby. You’d put in your 25 cents, select your flavor (cherry, lime, whatever), and then watch in awe as a tapered plastic cup— ornate as a crystal goblet —dropped onto a little grille and was half-filled with crushed ice. The Technicolor syrup came next, climbing the ice. Then carbonated water fizzed in, right to the top—such precision! I’d treat my friend John to one, too. (He was a year older and really weird—he used to fly his hand along ahead of him as we walked, making it dip and soar, making cool spaceship noises.) My generosity was half the fun of the Zēmis for me: I loved being Big Mr. Moneybucks.

I wasn’t so naïve as to think the stolen bus money wouldn’t be missed. My family had already gone through a bus money embezzlement scandal. That time, my brother Max—the troublesome middle child—had been blamed, and was harassed for days. It finally come out that our dad had needed change and raided the bus money cache, and hadn’t thought to mention it. Though Max was exonerated, the stigma never really went away. So now, when I was stealing bus money for real, I figured I’d have a readymade scapegoat when the theft was discovered.

When Mom noticed the embezzlement, an ad hoc tribunal was formed. Each of the four brothers was both a prosecutor and a defendant. Max was harassed all over again, even while I continued to steal to support my Zēmi habit. I repeatedly accused Max myself, both to make my innocence more realistic and for the sheer joy of it. My brothers and I thrilled to the intrigue of crime and punishment, basked in the righteous indignation of shaking down a suspected wrongdoer and bringing him to justice.

(That it wouldn’t be actual justice didn’t matter a bit: the satisfaction was the same. Once, years before when I was like five, sitting around the house bored, I decided to scrape my leg with a Lego until a large red welt appeared. Then I went crying to my oldest brother, Bryan, telling him Max did it to me. I watched with great satisfaction as Bryan went over and beat on Max, bawling him out the whole time out for hurting his little brother. It made no difference to me that Max was innocent; the spectacle of richly deserved punishment being meted out was really all I needed.)

Perhaps to prevent us from all getting spanked by our dad, my mom actually offered amnesty. “Okay, this is your chance,” she said. “Whoever stole the money, step forward now, and you won’t be punished. Just admit you did it, and all will be forgiven.” I wasn’t even tempted to do this. Maybe Mom wouldn’t punish me, but I’d have to listen to my brothers castigating me not only for my heinous theft, but for having accused Max the whole time. It would also be tough to witness Max himself attaining new heights in righteous indignation.

And, truth be told, I had finally become ashamed of my actions. Funny how that works: if nobody had noticed the missing money, I’d have blissfully gone right on stealing (just like a pro athlete who blithely dopes and will go on doping until he gets caught and then, sobbing, apologizes to his fans and vows to help clean up the sport). I cursed myself, my friend, and those damn Zēmis. I’d never felt so low. It became more important than ever to hide my guilt.

The truth came out soon enough. My brothers, who had long envied my fancy drinks, now questioned whether it was really my friend John paying for them. I insisted that it was. “Well, I’ll just give a call over there and find out,” Geoff announced. I was almost sure he was bluffing—after all, all four of us were deathly afraid of the phone. (Just calling a business to find out its hours, as our mom sometimes made us do, was almost impossible. Whichever kid made the call would be almost unable to talk—his throat would go dry, his vocal chords would contract, and his strangled voice would come out in a thin, reedy squeak. Naturally, his brothers would mock him for this.)

But I couldn’t bring myself to call Geoff’s bluff. There was just that small chance that he would actually go through with the call, and my friend would unknowingly sell me out, and that was just too much to face. So I spilled my guts before Geoff dialed the first digit. I confessed.

Right away my brothers lit into me, cackling like hyenas, thrilling to my shame like rabid journalists. Max was the most triumphant. Over and over he cried out, “I can understand a liar—but a fieth?” He brandished this indignant cry like a Gatling gun, making sure everybody heard and appreciated it. It became the slogan for my defeat. I felt so low I didn’t even have the heart to correct my brother (“It’s not ‘fieth,’ it’s ‘thief,’ you moron!” I’d have said). I let my brothers have their day in the sun, and felt completely deserving of my humiliation. After all, I’d stolen repeatedly, lied, and—worst of all—sold out my own brother, all for a fizzy drink.

dana albert blog

Follow-Up: The Cost of Rinsing

Introduction

Right here in the pages of albertnet, I was dressed down for a recent report, “A Study on Rinsing.” It was a very public admonishment, given by my brother Bryan in a comment attached to the post. Now, I can’t fault Bryan for reproaching me; after all, he’s my older brother, so this is his job. In like fashion, the psychology of birth-order dictates that as the youngest brother I need to upset the apple cart by steadfastly refuting Bryan’s every point, right here in this public forum. (I suppose if we were on Facebook I could save time by simply de-friending him and letting the gossip mill tease out every detail of our dispute. But I’m not.)

This post provides a copy of my brother’s comment for your convenience, followed by my counter-argument. It must be noted that Bryan’s statements were completely serious but also tongue-in-cheek. I intend to match him tongue for tongue and cheek for cheek, in a seriously cheeky tongue.

Bryan’s comment

Bryan wrote:

“Maybe it’s the Dutch in me, but I just couldn’t make myself spit out perfectly good food, especially when it’s expensive exercise drink. (I don't know why that isn't an issue with you... Maybe you really do have a different father. That would explain a lot of things, actually...) Shoot, I can barely even make myself eat my own expensive energy food I got as samples from the various rides I’ve done, even though they are mostly out of date by now. I find myself thinking, ‘This ride isn’t really long enough or hard enough to deserve one of my precious gels.’ By the time I realize that I really should be eating my precious, it’s usually too late. But I never learn.“As for spitting it out, it’s not going to happen. I may swish it around for a while just to get the most out of it, but I’m sure that any psychological benefit from spitting it out would be overwhelmed by guilt. There are people exercising in India and we Americans are spitting out energy drinks out on the street. Really.”

You’ve doubtless noticed what a fine writer Bryan is, and perhaps you’ve even asked yourself, “Why couldn’t he be the blogger in this family?! This guy is concise, funny, and moreover he’s right.” I am moved to challenge only the last bit, but I shall give it my best.

Perfectly good food

Needless to say, Bryan is off-base here: energy drink is not food. It has absolutely no nutritional value, other than sugar. The sugar is useful only to the extent it supports the quality of the exercise, so if tasting the sugar without ingesting it does the trick for awhile, there’s no point in ingesting it as if it were food. It’s not like with Popeye; even if he could gain his amazing burst of strength from chewing his spinach and then spitting it out, it would still be better for him to swallow it, because spinach is a good source of niacin and zinc, and a very good source of dietary fiber, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, Vitamin K, thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin B6, folate, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, copper and manganese. But energy drink? No value there at all.

Wait, you might say: energy drinks have electrolytes! Yes, they have two: sodium and potassium. Now, sodium isn’t exactly hard to get and I can’t imagine Bryan would argue I don’t get enough of it to sustain me during my workouts (which have averaged only an hour and a half over the last six years). And as for potassium, the energy drinks provide only a scant amount (Cytomax provides 3% of the U.S. RDA, Gatorade 2%, and so on). Especially since I’m only talking about a small proportion of the drink being spat out, this laughable amount of potassium is clearly of no importance. (Eight ounces of orange juice, meanwhile, provides 14% of the U.S. RDA for potassium and 161% of Vitamin C. I would never spit it out.)

Expensive

Now I shall address Bryan’s comment about the expense of that wasted energy drink. To paraphrase something our dad once said to Bryan: “What we need here is a math major.” (The actual quote was “physics major,” because at the time Bryan hadn’t yet switched to math.) The point of this comment, of course, is to diss Bryan for failing to apply his considerable math skills to this matter. I was only an English major, but I knew enough to glean the most important lessons from my other subjects; for example, I mastered the factor label method from Chemistry. Applying that method here, I have calculated the cost per mouthful of spat-out energy drink (the price of energy drink is based on my last purchase of it, and I measured the mass of a mouthful of liquid by spitting water into a measuring cup):

So, rinsing twice per ride ends up costing a dime. I have averaged 121 road rides per year for the last six years, so the cost of my rinsing is about twelve bucks a year. (Bryan has averaged thirty-nine road rides per year over the last six years, so his cost of rinsing would be less than four dollars a year.) Hardly worth getting so indignant over, if you ask me. (Needless to say, I don’t rinse when riding the trainer. That could get really disgusting.)

Different father

I imagine the point Bryan is making with this aside is that my profligate spending is completely out of line with our father’s legendary frugality. To satisfy the curiosity of my albertnet audience, I’ll give just a couple of examples of Dad’s thrift.

On family vacation trips, we always camped. This was mainly because camping is fun, but there was a budgetary component as well, as was evident when the campgrounds were full and we’d have to get a motel. Back and forth along the streets of some little town or city we’d drive, late into the night, looking for the best deal. Then Dad would get a single room, and we would sneak, one by one, into the room. I can remember as a really young kid being scared that I’d make too much noise, we’d be discovered, and the whole family would go to jail. I also remember sleeping on the thin, scratchy motel carpet with a flimsy motel towel over me as a blanket.

There was also the matter of the thermostat. Winters in my hometown of Boulder were very cold, but we were absolutely forbidden to touch the thermostat. This isn’t terribly unique, of course; Jerry Seinfeld even has a shtick about it, where as an adult he phones his parents and taunts them by announcing he’s just turned up the thermostat, over which has father had had absolute control throughout Jerry’s childhood. Where our dad was unique was in overriding the absolute minimum that our thermostat could be set at. It had a little mercury-bubble switch that wouldn’t go below 60 degrees because the little bubble would hit up against the edge of its curved glass tube. Unwilling to incur the cost of keeping the house that warm, our dad removed the unit from the wall, took it apart, revised the label in his neat handwriting, and reinstalled the thermostat at a new, odd-looking angle so it would go down to 50 degrees, which is where it stayed, 24-7-365.

I disagree with Bryan on two fronts: 1) his idea that my lack of thrift suggests I had a different father, when in fact our mother was also quite thrifty; and 2) the very suggestion that I’m not thrifty myself.

It was from Mom that I learned that grocery shopping requires cunning and vigilance if you don’t want to get ripped off. She knew, and I came to learn, that no store has good prices across the board—you have to figure out which stores had the good prices on which things. For example, the Berkeley Natural Grocery has good prices on dairy products, but really high prices on produce. Monterey Market has great prices on produce and dairy, but lousy prices on prepared foods like peanut butter. Safeway has good prices on prepared foods but only if the items are on sale. Mom taught me how the whole sale and coupon business makes grocery shopping a lot like day trading. By carefully observing her example, I have developed her uncanny intuition to predict when a given item will go on sale, at which time I stock up on my beloved staples.

It was also from my mom that I learned about food expiration dates. These are largely fictional and can generally be ignored; just give the food a good sniff. I also would never have guessed that food that has turned usually won’t hurt you. Is the milk sour and lumpy? Don’t drink it then (my mom has advised me) if the taste bothers you, but if you accidentally ingest it, fear not: you won’t actually get sick. Mold on the bread or cheese? Just cut it off and eat around it. Mom is a microbiologist; she knows her stuff, and her lessons have saved me a lot of money. I came back from vacation recently and an old jar of salsa had begun to ferment; it fizzed and buzzed on my tongue like Pop Rocks Action Candy. I shrugged this off and used up the jar. Back in college I routinely fished food out of the trash that my cowardly roommates had thrown out prematurely. And a few weeks back I came across some expensive smoked trout hiding in the fridge; it was pretty old and had a trace of stink to it. I couldn’t bear to throw it out, though, so I threw it into a big pan of gorgonzola gnocchi. Gorgonzola is a strong cheese. The meal was a hit; nobody noticed anything amiss.

My precious

Bryan’s reluctance to use up his precious gels (and other energy foods) indirectly makes a point about frugality: perhaps the greatest threat to fiscal efficiency is being jaded. Most citizens of the First World have their basic needs (food, shelter) met; what keeps many of them from amassing real wealth is a combination of 1) limited earning power and/or 2) wasting a lot of money on stuff they don’t need.

For me, going to a garage sale is like seeing a parade of a family’s ill-chosen purchases. After all, if this stuff were totally worn out and used up, it wouldn’t be for sale; clearly, it is on the block due to a terminal case of buyer’s remorse. Similarly, craigslist is like a clearing house for the objects of fickle consumerism. On the consumable front, everything we eat and drink ends up in the same place—the toilet—so if it was expensive, it better have given us all the performance and pleasure we sought from it.

A rich quasi-family-member once took my mom and me to a fancy French restaurant in Berkeley. Throughout the meal, all he did was complain about the various ways in which the restaurant came up short. The food tasted fine to me; I came away wondering if being an epicure might not be a very good idea. Could it be that too much of the good life might just strip the pleasure from wealth? In contrast, when I did a long ride with Bryan in Oregon recently, and we were slogging our way up Dead Indian Memorial Road, he continually marveled at how tasty his energy drink was. He was truly stoked, just to have it. I came away impressed at how, simply by doing without, Bryan has cultivated a fine appreciation for simple things like sugary drinks. On this point—that frugality fosters gratitude for simple pleasures—I must agree with my brother.

From the Archives - Death Ride ‘99

Introduction

De Ronde van X recently got me thinking about the Markleeville Death Ride. The Death Ride is one of the most famous organized rides in California, covering about 125 miles with over 15,000 feet of climbing. I've ridden it twelve or thirteen times, and used to have a tradition of riding it with all three of my brothers. Click to zoom in on the map:

Alas, I won't get to ride the Death Ride this year. Registration is on the lottery system, with so little chance of getting in that my brothers and I no longer bother to try. But to motivate anyone among my readership who is doing the upcoming Death Ride (or any similarly tough ride), and as a companion piece to De Ronde van X, I present to you my Death Ride '99 Postmortem Report. I didn't bring a camera in ‘99, but to enliven this post I‘ve thrown in photos from the 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2007 editions.

By the way, there is a literary gimmick lurking in this tale. I will give a prize to the first reader who e-mails me at feedback@albertnet.us and correctly identifies the gimmick. (To my brothers and friends who have seen this report before, obviously you are not eligible.) Enjoy!

Death Ride '99 - The Postmortem Report

Bryan and I drove to Markleeville on Friday, July 9, the day before the Death Ride. That night we went to a Mexican restaurant in South Lake Tahoe for dinner, and man, we really packed it in. Then it was a short drive down to Turtle Rock campground, more or less at the starting line of the ride, where we pitched our camp on a brambly dirt patch, next to our car, just at the last hour of the dying day.

The stars came out, and we gazed for awhile, pondering tritely our own insignificance in the face of the infinite beyond. Soon we tired of contemplating our mortality, and managed to fall into a light, fitful sleep (which was all that was possible given our cramped quarters in the tent).

For the next hour or so campers continued to arrive, fitting themselves into smaller and smaller patches of rocky, lumpy ground (there are no actual campsites per se in Turtle Rock park), chattering boisterously, and it seemed to take forever before the noise finally died down. Earlier, I'd really enjoyed the rare treat of seeing the stars, without them being drowned out by city light, and now I savored the dead silence. Not even the chirp of a cricket or the croak of a frog could be heard.

The night passed for me in a series of catnaps, and along toward four o'clock, as I was finally achieving a peaceful slumber, my long-sought rest was cut down in its prime by the most foul, heinous sound you could possibly imagine. At first I almost panicked—I didn't know what in the hell the noise was. It was a terrible screeching, as though an animal were being slaughtered. I finally realized it was music being played over the loudspeaker—or, more accurately, an ill-fated attempt at music by some deadbeat rock band. All I knew for sure was that it was four in the morning, a full half-hour before I'd planned to be awakened by the alarm on my Timex Datalink watch (which I'd set up to beep in its nefarious "step-tone” way while scrolling the word "DEATH!” across its LCD face). I'll probably never know what the first "song” was, but finally the "singer” let out his last gasp and another song, much less irritating, came over the PA. We decided it was pointless to try to continue sleeping, and succumbed to the cruel Death Ride wakeup call.

Breakfast

We'd elected to buy the optional pre-ride breakfast, provided by some volunteer group, though to my dying day I'll never understand why. The food is abysmal—rubbery pancakes, clammy eggs, and sweaty oatmeal, the kind of food I imagine they'd serve on death row. As is becoming a tradition, one of us forgot his ride number, which is the only way to prove to the cafeteria cashier that you don't have to pay at the door for your meal because you already bought it when you registered for the ride. While Bryan went back to the car, I stood in line and killed time talking with other Death Riders. We chattered away in the most breezy and carefree way, as if to deny the grave difficulty of the day's undertaking. Bryan arrived at just the right moment, and we moved through the chow line, which was manned by volunteers offering their hellish fare with cheerful enthusiasm. One volunteer, a rather attractive young woman, I found particularly perplexing: she was holding up a plate of plain, unbuttered, and untoasted bread, which left her very little to do but stand there and do her best to look drop-dead gorgeous. The other volunteers were much busier, and I have a feeling this gal was supposed to be making toast for us, which I would have liked—but I digress, and though I could spend an eternity complaining about the food, I should hurry up and tell you about the ride itself.

First climb

There must have been cloud cover at some time during the night, because it was less chilly that morning than I've ever experienced before on this ride—a pleasant change, but it made us worry a little about how hot it would get later on in the great adventure. The weather looked so promising, we decided for the first time ever to pass on the jackets we would normally have carried in our jersey pockets. Still, it wasn't very pleasant slathering ourselves in sunscreen, but since my once gloriously suntanned skin is now closer to deathly pale, I'm forced to resort to SPF 15 to keep from getting horribly sunburned. Needless to say Erin would kill me if I came home looking like a lobster.

We started the ride at exactly 6:00 am, with a brisk descent—not as bone-chillingly frigid as in years past, but cool enough that when we started the first climb, up Monitor Pass, our legs were totally stiff. The road was thronged with riders — the field limit this year was 2,500, and it had been reached—and yet as many riders as we saw, we know others had started much earlier than we and had probably already crossed over to the other side of Monitor Pass. As always, we marveled at the wide range of body types represented on this ride—sure, we saw plenty of examples of the lean, ripped, almost skeleton-like breed of cyclist, but every year there are also people on the ride who are, well, not so fit. In fact, I'll come right out and say it: some participants are flat-out obese—heart attacks waiting to happen. By the third pass these ones would be goners, but you had to admire their spunk.

The front side of Monitor isn't all that tough, climbing only 2,813 feet in nine miles for an average grade of about 6%, and given the freshness of our legs we were able to dispatch the climb without too much suffering. At the top we each received our first-pass sticker: the way they keep track of who did all five passes, versus the majority of riders who don't make it, is to put a different sticker on your number for each pass you conquer. After the brief (five-second) sticker ceremony, we took our picture next to a very fitting landmark: a tombstone, basically, engraved with the name and elevation (8,314') of the pass, placed there and dedicated (to nobody in particular, apparently) in 1954. We also filled up on energy drink; bananas, a potassium-rich favorite; boiled new potatoes, an unlikely but very welcome Death Ride staple; and this year's innovation, Wheat Thins, which I'm normally not all that fond of but which, under these circumstances, were just to die for!

First descent

The descent down the backside of Monitor is probably the most dangerous part of the ride; although nobody's every actually died on this ride, this would be the place to do it. It drops 3,274 feet in just 8 miles, for an average grade of almost 8%, and because it's so early in the ride, cyclists are still bunched closely together (not like lemmings exactly, but almost). This fact, combined with the breakneck speeds possible (over 50 mph is a given for Bryan and me), mean that this would be a thrilling descent even if there weren't cattle guards. But of course there are, which caused me to ponder, as we flew down the mountain, what happens to the especially stupid cows who fall into them and break a leg . . . after all, isn't it standard procedure to shoot any horse that breaks a leg? Assuming cows are treated no differently, isn't the cattle guard like a Doomsday device for any cow stupid enough to wander into the road? Then I remembered that the whole purpose of most cows is to be slaughtered anyway, so there's no point worrying about it. Anyway, the game Bryan and I play is to see how often we can make it over the thin steel strip, maybe an inch or two wide, that crosses perpendicularly over the pipes of the cattle guard, so as to avoid that annoying series of bumps each time your tire crosses the bars.

Second climb

It was a totally killer descent, reminding us why the climbing is always worthwhile, and before beginning the long haul back up the backside of Monitor, we stopped only briefly to got some more energy drink and, of course, our second-pass sticker. The backside of Monitor is much harder than the front, not just because it's steeper, but because our vigor had been deadened somewhat by the first climb. Soon enough, though, our spirits were lifted by the appearance of what I could only describe as the ride's only full-motion water stop. This Death Ride institution, manned by a skeleton crew of tireless volunteers, apparently has as its charter the filling of every single empty bottle without a single cyclist needing to stop. A volunteer sprints like a hundred meters down to you, takes your empty bottle, and then practically kills himself running back to the water jugs to get the bottle filled in time to hand it back to you as you ride by. It's an inspirational thing to witness—those guys are out of this world!

The remaining six or so miles of the second climb passed away uneventfully, albeit with the standard-issue suffering that, although long dreaded, always somehow manages to astonish me with its intensity. It's always kind of demoralizing to reach the top of Monitor for the second time, feeling significantly worn out, and realize you have almost 100 miles and 9,000 feet of climbing to go before the ride finally comes to an end some ten hours from this moment. I'd also managed to develop a saddle sore (only the second one in my entire life); it barely hurt as we dismounted at the rest stop, but was positively killing me as we got back in the saddle after filling up on food and drink. I pondered, bleakly, how Laurent Fignon believed it was a saddle sore that cost him the 1989 Tour de France (a loss from which his professional career never recovered). I cheered myself up by recalling LeMond's inspirational victory that year—his big comeback after a near-fatal hunting accident a couple of years before.

Second descent

I wish the mother of the kids across the street growing up—who earned the nickname "Mrs. Trapdoor" for her constant safety warnings such as "Bicycles are deathtraps!"—could have seen us descend the front side of Monitor. The riders were more spread out by this point, so we had more of the road to ourselves and hit what would end up being the top speed of the ride, a seemingly death-defying 53.8 mph. Don't worry, though, this was really a very safe and reasonable speed—my self-preservation instinct has increased dramatically since I set the all-time Death Ride land-speed record of 60.5 mph back in 1993 (or perhaps 1995, I can't remember for sure). Glorious as it was, though, our swiftness only served to bring us that much sooner to our greatest nemesis: Ebbetts Pass, the climb that every year claims hundreds of riders—as if they were veritable human sacrifices to this diabolically steep, winding, asphalt shrine to suffering.

Third climb

Remember "deadlegs"—the sudden punches to the thigh that bullies inflicted on you with impunity, knowing you couldn't show the bruises to parents or teachers without lowering your pants? Well, imagine feeling that kind of acute thigh pain for over an hour, and you'll begin to understand why Ebbetts is such a killer. As we labored up monstrously steep grades, negotiating switchbacks that practically stop your bike cold, all conversation ceased, kaput. We became pedaling zombies. We were too close to breathless to utter more than an occasional moan, groan, or whimper. This is the part of the ride when it's dangerous to think about whether or not you'll make it to the top of Ebbetts, much less complete the whole ride. The best way to motivate yourself at this point is to look at the relative novices around you, who never did a race in their lives, the Fuji Road Look set who seem criminally unaware of how hard this is, whose presence on this climb make you deny how difficult Ebbetts is—in short, you succumb to a totally unspoken, tacit peer pressure, and chastise yourself for thinking this is hard. You almost want to turn it into a race and charge to the top ahead of everybody—but all you can do is hold on for dear life and try to keep your composure.

At the top of Ebbetts, elevation 8,730', we were toast. We were spent, gone. We were completely knackered—shadows of our former selves, ghosts, spectres. We were history, we were in the archives, we were lemures—in fact, you might even say we'd had the stuffing knocked out of us. Fortunately, the Death Ride provides the best support of any ride I've ever done, because we were in grave need of calories. Specifically, we needed that miracle elixir of life—no, not energy drink, I mean plain old Coca-Cola Classic. Of course they had it, ice-cold, and we chugged it greedily as we sprawled on a grassy hillside, our lifeless legs spread out before us like dirty laundry.

A fellow rider was deliberating aloud about whether or not to cash in her chips, so I told her what I thought was an inspirational tale about a 65-year-old man who told me, under identical circumstances atop Ebbetts during my first Death Ride, "You finish the first three passes on ability, and the last two on guts." She stared at me like I was some kind of imbecile, which I supposed I was, or am. But then, she departed for the backside of Ebbetts, so either my little speech got to her, or she'd simply decided not to be outdone by such a wanker. After a short rest—well, okay, a fairly long rest, something just short of eternal rest—we headed down the backside of Ebbetts ourselves, fortified with carbonated water, sugar and/or corn syrup, natural and artificial flavorings, caffeine, caramel color, phosphoric acid, bananas, oranges, cookies, and What Things (a fine nickname for Wheat Thins, if you ask me).

Fourth climb

Of our climb up the backside of Ebbetts and passing back over the top, absolutely nothing is known.

Fourth descent

We descended the front side of Ebbetts with jubilance, carving up the serpentine roads and drinking in the slide show of scenic vistas overlooking the great beyond. There is an impulse, on such descents, that has nothing to do with suicide but everything to do with the repressed desire to deliberately miss a turn, to fling yourself and your bike off the edge of a drop-off and whoosh your way along in perfect freedom through open sky. Needless to say, I resisted the temptation, or you'd be reading a much briefer Death Ride report—in the obits.

Final climb

On the way to the fifth pass, my bike suffered what is proving to be an epidemic of broken spokes. If I couldn't find the technical support truck, I'd be doomed to ride a drunken, wobbling, ungainly bike for the next 42 miles. At mile 90, we were told tech support was nine miles and a scant 1,500 feet of climbing away, at Pickett's Junction (who Pickett was I have no idea, unless it's the General Pickett of the ill-fated Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, in which he lost three fourths of his Confederate troops). Since fixing the bike could take some time, and Bryan's legs were even deader than mine, I charged on ahead—well, okay, I limped on ahead—solo.

Sure enough, technical support was there, and my bike was fixed in record time by a mechanic who looked exactly like Alfred Packer, the survivor of an ill-fated mountain expedition who ate his fellow explorers, and who appears on a mural at the University of Colorado's Alfred Packer Grill (motto: "have a friend for lunch"). From Pickett's Junction to the final summit, Carson Pass, is only nine miles with 1,573 feet of vertical gain, for a paltry average grade of 3.31%, so for the life of me I can't explain why it's so hard. Much of that nine miles is a "false flat," meaning it's not really a climb but rather a diabolical stretch of road that looks flat but feels like a climb. When it begins to get steep, it's almost a relief, because the cause of your hellish suffering is at least more obvious.

For awhile, our spirits improved as we realized the end was near, and we took some pictures in which we're actually smiling. The top section of Carson is really steep, though, and in the last mile our jubilance died down and we settled into a rhythmic pedaling drudgery. We were dead to the world by the time we rounded what we believed was the final curve (but without optimism, because there are so many false summits on a ride like this one). But sure enough, the Carson Summit sign was dead ahead, and our suffering was finally near its end!

I turned and looked over my shoulder at Bryan, who was about fifty feet behind me, intending to congratulate him on surviving Carson and to suggest we stop for a photo-op. Imagine my shock to see him sprinting, all-out, hell-bent on beating me to the summit! Nothing could have motivated me to sprint at that point—nothing, that is, except the mortification of being beaten to the summit despite having a good head start and a lighter and more expensive bike. It was a sprint to the death, and to this day Bryan insists I wouldn't have beaten him but for my Dura-Ace 9-speed STI, which enabled me to shift into a higher gear, under full power and without taking a hand off the bars, to nurse a little more speed out of the mighty Guerciotti and eke out a victory.

Final summit

At the rest top atop Carson, we grabbed more Coke and the long-awaited ice cream bars (another Death Ride tradition), and headed for some lawn chairs to rest our much-abused nether regions. At the time, we were vaguely aware of the difficulty of what we'd done, and certainly unable to calculate some of the statistics I'll now quote: roughly 16,000 feet of total vertical gain; .2244 horsepower (167 watts) average on the climbs (.2480 horsepower, 185 watts, for Bryan, who's heavier); four hours and forty minutes of climbing to end up here; 8,573 feet closer to heaven than our earth-bound peers back home. Our achievement was overshadowed, though, by that of another Death Rider: a man in his seventies, thinning hair white as snow, had finished all five passes! I would kill to be that fit when I'm his age!

It's hard to recall the full gravity of our suffering now, as I sit in a comfortable chair at home, and even harder to describe it. Suffice to say we were wasted, spent, totaled, used-up charcoal briquettes, mere smears of ash, quivering masses of protoplasm. But we had survived, and what's more, as we sat on top of Carson, which seemed at the time the top of the world, we had twenty-one miles of descending ahead of us.

Finish

A glorious descent it was, too, the highlight being when we blew this guy away, rode him right off our wheels. Then, we returned to the parking lot and enjoyed the hard-won opportunity to go to our reward: the poster signing ritual, a privilege granted only to those who finished all five passes. Even as we realized we were finally done, though, we were already contemplating our return to Markleeville and to the suffering in the California Alps, every year to our dying day.