Old Yarn - The In-Flight Voyeur

Introduction

Here is the sixth “old yarn” on albertnet (following in the footsteps of “The Cinelli Jumpsuit,” “Bike Crash on Golden Gate Bridge,” “The Enemy Coach,” “The Brash Newb,” and most recently “The Day I Learned Bicycle Gear Shifting”). This is the kind of story that would normally be a “From the Archives” item, except I’ve never before written it down.

[Picture by ChapGPT, as my daughter was too busy to create original art by press time]

The In-Flight Voyeur – ca. 1998

I used to travel a lot on business. Once a month I flew to Columbus, Ohio and there was no direct flight. Often I’d get a late flight home, after a big expense-account dinner, and I’d be too deep in a calorie coma, not to mention blown from the week of meetings, to feel like reading. Back then you were lucky if you were offered an in-flight movie, which was whatever they happened to be showing on the crappy old tube TVs mounted from the ceiling, every ten or twelve feet, above the aisle. They charged to rent earbuds and (being the world’s cheapest man even then) I seldom sprung for them. So I’d be bored to say the least.

For the first six months or so of this business travel routine I’d dig out my Bellcore T3POS manual, which reliably put me to sleep—usually for the duration of the flight—until it (eventually, unfortunately) started to make sense, and its magic ended. This was before commercial airlines offered electrical outlets (much less WiFi), and before laptops had reliable batteries; mine was usually spent pretty early. Bose noise-canceling headphones hadn’t come out yet either, so listening to music was out of the question for anyone who valued his eardrums. Sometimes there was just nothing to do on these late flights but sit and stew.

During one such flight I was bored out of my mind and happened to notice, while rooting through my seatback pocket, that the passenger sitting in front of me using his laptop had a novel email interface I’d not seen before. I was so bored I took an interest and peered through the crack between the seats at his screen. (I know … pretty pathetic to be that bored.) I wouldn’t have looked for very long, but the email this guy was writing was pretty racy. I assumed it was a guy, anyway, because his email was to a woman, and was of a romantic nature. I’ll quote him as best I can from memory; obviously this is approximate but true to the nature of what I was reading.

“I’ll be there the week after next and would love to pick you up and take you out to a nice dinner. Then we can go for an evening walk before heading back to my hotel,” he typed, and then, after a pause, added, “where I will make passionate love to you.” After typing this he paused again, the cursor on his screen flashing as if waiting for the next detail of this steamy proposed liaison. But then he backspaced over the last bit and rewrote it: “Then we can go for an evening walk before heading back to my hotel, where we can get some drinks and see where the night leads us.” Another long pause.  He backspaced again and revised his proposal to “get a drink and have a nice chat.” Dude was losing his nerve already and hadn’t even met up with the woman yet! I suppressed a chuckle.

He wordsmithed the email some more, adding some logistical details, and I was just starting to get bored when he filed the draft in a folder with the name of the eastern bloc country where his potential paramour presumably lived. To my surprise, he had at least half a dozen such folders, each representing a different eastern European destination … Ukraine, Slovenia, Croatia, etc. He opened another of these folders, which had two or three email drafts in it, opened one of the drafts, and pasted in a passage he’d copied from his previous email, evidently being fairly pleased with it. He continued to work away like this, seeding at least eight or ten romantic rendezvous to coincide with his next two or three business trips to the region. Presumably he’d been getting leads from some kind of Internet mail-order bride service. I was shaking my head, kind of amazed at the cynicism and audacity of this guy—what an operator!—when suddenly he shifted in his seat and closed his laptop rather abruptly. I quickly slumped back into my seat, pulse racing … had he detected me snooping on this very private activity?

I grabbed my book, opened it, and hid behind it, turning a page to increase the illusion that I was just reading away, minding my own business. I could just imagine this guy craning his neck to give me stink-eye. I kept an eye on his flight attendant call button, fearing it might light up and bong, indicating he was about to lodge a complaint. I wasn’t too worried since of course he wouldn’t want to draw attention to what he was doing, but you never know. Eventually enough time had passed that I stopped worrying, managed to engage with my book (my sudden burst of adrenaline surely helping), and lost myself to the pleasure of reading until the end of the flight.

When the plane landed, taxied, and was parked at the gate, the lights came up and everyone started their rush to retrieve their stuff from the overhead bins and deplane. Now I would get a good look at the business travel casanova. I pictured him as someone needing to cut corners romantically, which meant he was probably not a real looker. Sure enough, he  had a pot-belly, nerdy glasses, and that kind of unfortunately hybrid scalp where, to compensate for where he was bald, he grew the rest of his hair out too long. I made sure only to risk a quick glance at him, in case he had caught me snooping and was sore about it. We busied ourselves, alongside our fellow passengers, with the tedious process of hauling down our roller bags and waiting, tired and hot and restless, for the cabin doors to finally open.

Now the ardent emailer was facing me, and to my absolute shock he suddenly sucker-punched me right in the groin! I am not kidding! His fist flew out, right at my crotch, and it’s a miracle I was able to instinctively jerk back swiftly enough to avoid the hit. As you can imagine, I was absolutely astonished at the attack; relieved to have escaped injury; and in full fight-or-flight mode should the dude make another move. Obviously I’m just using “fight-or-flight” as an expression here … there could be no flight, commercial air travel being obviously one of the most hemmed-in situations modern man finds himself in.

A lot flew through my mind in this moment. Obviously his attack was a bit over-the-top since all I’d really done was witness his untoward behavior, but I could grasp why physical retribution took the place of a verbal altercation that could embarrass him. What perplexed me was how he figured he could come out well in a combat situation, since I frankly towered above him. Beyond this practical matter, though, I had this strange sense that I kind of deserved this retribution, as my voyeurism was frankly a dick move. But of course I could only be this magnanimous because his punch had missed the mark. Above all else, I was simply bewildered by the entire situation.

But now it got even stranger: the guy started apologizing profusely. What the hell? A change of heart? Change of tactic? He was looking down and I followed suit, and now realized what had happened: his roller bag was totally top-heavy and unstable, and had tipped over the moment he set it on the floor. The handle was fully extended, and had been flying right at my crotch. When he reached out to grab it, he managed to catch it only when it was inches away. His hand, catching the top of the handle, had only seemed to form a fist.

My god, what a relief. Not only had he not attacked me, but the sincerity of his contrition made it pretty clear my voyeurism had gone undetected.

And so it was only out of a strange perversity that I responded to him by paraphrasing the rapper Ice T: “With the ladies, you’re not just a Don/ In fact you’re more like a Don Juan/ Pull ladies in bunches/ Break their hearts, you roll with the punches/ ‘Cause you’re like a hard core casanova/ Diss you once, girlfriend is over/ Write her off like a tax, no respect/ She ain’t down? Next.” 

Naw, I didn’t really say that. I was just messing with you. But everything else in this post? One hundred percent true. It’s a weird world…

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What if Allegiant Air Pushed Things Further?

Introduction

The name “Allegiant Airlines” is a bit of a joke.  If I were to swear allegiance to any airline, it wouldn’t be the one that dangles a cheap fare in front of me and then nickel-and-dimes me to death with extra fees.  These guys charge not only for carry-on baggage but for the privilege of selecting a non-middle seat.  In fact, they even charge extra for selecting which non-reclining middle seat I want.  Allegiant Air should be called Bad Meets Evil Air, after the Eminem song:  “I’ma put air in a bag and charge people to breathe.”

How would Allegiant look if they pushed things just a bit further?  This somewhat fictional post is intended to provide a comic balm for anybody who bemoans the growing number of companies that now charge for basic stuff that has always been free.

NOTE:  There’s a lot of joking around here, some of it concerning safety.  Please do not read this while aboard a passenger airplane.  You could get me in trouble with the Federal Aviation Administration!

Booking

Carry-on bag fees apply.  Please see baggage table fee.  Oversized personal items will be assessed an at-airport fee.  Checked and carry-on bag fees are assessed on a sliding scale as described in the online baggage fee table.  An online tutorial on the baggage fee table is available for $5.  Classroom training is also available on a quotation basis.

The fee for seat selection varies with location, from the premium Giant Seats and Legroom+ ($$$) to the basic window or aisle ($$) to the middle seat in the  back row by the toilet ($).  If you skip seat selection you can avoid this fee, but you really don’t want to do that.  We know where the screaming babies and seatback-kicking children are on this plane, as well as the in-cabin pets (which are welcome on Allegiant for a $100 fee).  If you skip seat selection we will make sure you are punished for your insolence.

Allegiant Air does not allow bookings from any discount online travel websites, but we are pleased to offer you reservations by phone for a $15 fee.  You are encouraged to use our mobile app for your boarding pass at no apparent charge.  The mobile app is “free” (though you may reasonably suspect we are selling your personal information).

Airport

You may print your boarding pass at the airport for a $5 fee.  Chair and bench seating are available at the gate.  The cost is $5 when booked in advance, or $10 at the gate.  If you choose to sit down for free at an adjacent gate, please be advised that we do not employ a public address system and reserve the right to board the aircraft very abruptly.  Allegiant is not responsible for failures of the waterboarding process.  Did we say waterboarding?  We meant boarding.

Priority boarding is available:  $4 when purchased in advance, $12 at the gate up to an hour before the flight, and $20 if you waited to check the length of the line first.

Boarding

As you board the aircraft, smiles and greetings can purchased from the flight attendants for $3 (male) or $5 (female).  There is no discount for smiling back at the attendants or returning their greeting.

Please take your seats immediately.  There is a $2 fee for asking the flight attendant why your seat doesn’t recline.  There is a $2 fee for each additional seatback inquiry (e.g., “You’ve got to be kidding me—no seat reclines on the entire plane?”).  Allegiant Air charges $3 for each snide comment (e.g., “I’m sorry, but a 90-degree angle does not count as “‘pre-reclined’”).

If you are seated next to an emergency exit, you will be asked to pass a written exam on the special procedures you may be required to perform.  A study guide is available for $3, and a self-paced online tutorial for $5.  The tutorial requires our Allegiant Air Exit Row app, which is available for an additional $5.  If you fail the written exam, or do not wish to take it, please ask a flight attendant to reseat you.  There is a $10 reseating fee, and the fee previously paid for reserving this Legroom+ seat is non-refundable.

Please stay in your previously selected or assigned seat.  If you decide to relocate to a better seat after the aircraft doors are closed, please note that a $10 reseating fee applies, and you will need to pay the difference in fee between your original and new seat, plus a $5 in-aircraft seat selection surcharge.  You must also pay a $10 restocking fee for the seat you vacated.

Beer and wine are available for purchase only when the aircraft has reached cruising altitude.  You may not bring your own alcohol on board. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires any alcohol consumed on board be purchased through and served by an Allegiant In-flight crew member.  To the passenger in 28E with the hip flask:  we’re looking at you.

Allegiant is a non-smoking airline.  Smoking is prohibited on the entire aircraft including the lavatories.  You may not bring your own nicotine patch aboard.  Nicotine patches are available for purchase by non-minors for $10 apiece.  There is a one-time age verification fee of $4.  Tampering with, disabling, or destroying the smoke detectors located in the lavatories is prohibited by law.  Charging of e-cigarettes, and use of the word “vape,” are strictly prohibited.  Any passenger caught smoking on board or tampering with the smoke detector will be asked to leave the aircraft.  Parachutes are available for purchase for $8,000.

Safety

Allegiant Air does not employ a video entertainment system, so please direct your full attention to the flight attendants as they demonstrate the safety features of this aircraft.  There is no fee for this demonstration but please note that our flight attendants rely on tips for their livelihood.

During takeoff, landing, or whenever the seat belt sign illuminates, you must fasten your seat belt. Insert the metal fittings one into the other, and tighten by pulling on the loose end of the strap. To release your seat belt, lift the upper portion of the buckle.  If you violate the seat belt safety policy during the flight, you will be cited and fined $35.  If you claim in your defense that you couldn’t figure out the seat belt, you will be fined another $35 for insulting the flight attendant’s intelligence.

There are several emergency exits on this aircraft.  Please take a moment to locate your nearest exit.  If we need to evacuate the aircraft, floor-level lighting will guide our Giant Seats and Legroom+ passengers towards their exit.  Passengers in other sections can use our online app to find their exit.  WiFi surcharges will apply.  WiFi is not available on Allegiant flights.  It is hoped that WiFi surcharge revenue will eventually fund this feature, pending approval from shareholders.

Cabin pressure is continuously monitored. In the event of a decompression, an oxygen mask will automatically deploy from above your seat.  To start the flow of oxygen, pull the mask towards you and swipe your payment card at the armrest terminal.  Place the mask firmly over your nose and mouth, secure the elastic band behind your head, and breathe normally. If you are travelling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your mask first, secure their payment, and then secure their mask.

In the unlikely event of a water landing, life vests are available for purchase, as is your seat cushion which can be used as a flotation device.  Rates vary with the size of the device and the severity of the situation.  There are inflatable slides at each exit which double as life rafts.  Seating in the raft is metered at $10 per hour.

When the aircraft reaches cruising altitude the Captain will turn off the Fasten Seat Belt sign, and you may move about the cabin.  If you loiter in the aisle you may be ticketed.  Lavatories are provided free of charge for our Giant Seats and Legroom+ passengers in the dedicated Urinal+ lavatory.  Any other passenger loitering near these seats or attempting to use the Urinal+ lavatory may be ticketed or charged with trespassing.  Standard lavatories are available for $5 for lower class passengers.  A post-use cleaning fee may apply as assessed by the flight attendant.

Flight attendants will be passing around the cabin in a few moments to offer drinks and snacks for purchase, on approved credit.  There is a non-refundable credit application fee of $5.  Bottled water may be purchased for $2.  There is a $2 fee for asking the flight attendant, in vain, for a cup of tap water.  This is in addition to any beverage purchased.  Please note that the water in the lavatories is non-potable.

Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.  Thank you.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Epic Colorado Ride

Introduction

Whenever I visit my hometown of Boulder, Colorado, I do an epic ride with my friend Peter. He plans out a suitably difficult route and I follow along, suffering. Last month I visited, and we rode, and I’ve only now recovered sufficiently to write about it.

Here is the view of the Flatirons visible from most parts of Boulder:

Who is Peter?

Peter is a lot like me, only better. I met him at a bike race back in 1985 when we got in a breakaway together. At the finish he outsprinted me by such a huge margin it appeared he’d actually soloed to victory. Ever since that day, he’s been stronger than I every time we’ve ridden, with one notable exception: the Colorado State Road Championship road race in 1987. Peter, the reigning state champion, got hooked by another rider and crashed with 300 meters to go. As I approached the finish, I looked back to see him bearing down on me. I just nipped him at the line. Afterward I discovered that the crash had bent his front brake bolt, mashing one of the pads into his rim. You couldn’t even turn the wheel by hand.

That was the one time I got the better of Peter. It’s been Bambi vs. Godzilla ever since.

Preparation

How does one prepare for a brutal ride like this? Well, if you’re lucky you have access to a really nice stationary bike like this one:

That bike actually has some tangible benefits over what you see at the gym. It’s fully adjustable, for one thing. And I’ll be that flywheel really helps smooth out your pedal stroke. Plus, the thing weighs like a gazillion pounds so you could do curls with it, at least if you’re as strong as my brother Max (shown here).

But actually, instead of preparing for this ride, I prepared with it, for the upcoming Everest Challenge. Some say training at altitude is a great idea; others say you shouldn’t train at altitude but rather just hang around there. Well, I’ve done both. I’ve even drunk beer and eaten big pasta at altitude. I’m covering all my bases.

Finding a bike

My Boulder trip was short so it wasn’t worth spending $100 each way to bring my bike. (For details on the travesty of bike fees on airlines, see Appendix A below.) I tried to line up a loaner bike, but largely in vain. A friend of a friend—a guy I’d never met—was nice enough to loan me a cool old Cilo, and I did ride it a fair bit during my trip, but it was too small to do an epic ride on. (The guy even gave me the go-ahead to move the saddle all around, but the seat binder bolt looked like it had rusted back in the Reagan years and might snap if I so much as looked at it wrong.)

It was tempting to do the epic ride on my brother’s rickshaw-wheeled cruiser, Big Red:

You might assume that Big Red is a one-speed, but it’s not. As detailed here, it’s got a 7-speed internal gearing système. But the gears aren’t really low enough and the bike is too valuable, and too cool, to risk on a guy like me.

So I figured I’d just do a “Performance Road Rental”—i.e., rent a $6,000 full Dura-Ace Serotta from University Bikes, the über-cool bike shop in Boulder. I went there the evening before the ride, with my shoes, tape measure, and pedals, to make sure I got the fit just right. Alas, some portly stockbroker beat me to the Serotta by a matter of hours, just so he could have a better bike for his little 30-mile muffin ride. (Okay, for all I know he was a total badass doing an ever harder ride than I.) I had to settle for a “standard road rental,” which meant a cheap Cannondale, with mismatched wheels, a triple crankset, and a front reflector.

For me to use such a bike on the epic ride seemed like a punishment of some kind. Front reflectors are for people who ride on the wrong side of the road at night without a light, and elsewhere these pages I’ve made clear my feelings about triple cranksets. As for Cannondales, they’re perfectly fine bikes, but as detailed in Appendix B below, I’ve just never liked them much.

The bike did fit well, thanks largely to the nice folks at uBikes who swapped out the stem for me. But man, it was amazingly heavy. I think it’s the heaviest road bike I’ve ridden since my 1981 Miyata 310. I didn’t realize anybody still made such a heavy road bike. I didn’t even think the current state of the art was capable of producing such a heavy bike. Maybe they fill the frame up with buckshot, to make sure the low-end bikes don’t cut into sales of the pricier ones.

The other issue was the saddle, which was one of these giant sofa-like things with the big ravine down the middle. How much padding could a guy need? There’s room in that foam for Magic Fingers. I call this the “prostate intimidation” saddle, because it’s designed to capitalize on vague fears men have about their prostates, much in the way that, back in the ‘70s, that one laundry detergent fear-mongered about the nonexistent bane of “ring around the collar,” or that one shampoo made dandruff seem like a love-life-threatening global epidemic. On principal alone I couldn’t ride the prostate-friendly saddle, so I borrowed Max’s tiny, rock-hard saddle, a Selle Italia SLR or some such. There’s probably a whole range of SLRs, and this is the smallest, lightest, and hardest (the “SLR Nano,” perhaps). It’s also pretty old, and by far the hardest saddle I’ve ever sat on, including those all-plastic BMX saddles. It was like sitting on a 2x4.

Epic beginning

Here is the requisite “before” photo. You can tell I’m a bit worried about the ride. Pete, meanwhile, looks like he’s pre-savoring his schadenfreude.

Peter had planned out a difficult route indeed. After just a couple miles of warm-up we went straight uphill, up Flagstaff, a road used many times as the prologue time trial for the Red Zinger and Coors Classic, which finished about halfway up the main climb near the Flagstaff House restaurant (where I had my wedding reception back in ’94). Here, you can see it’s still pretty early in the morning:

At the end of the main climb we took a trip up Summit Road to where there’s a little amphitheater, and then we went back to the main road and continued on up toward Kossler Lake, which turns the ride from “Flagstaff” to “Superflag.” According to mapmyride, this climb is a Category 1. (The categorization scheme is taken from the European pro bike race standard. Category 1 is considered the hardest climb, and Category 5 is the easiest, though really easy climbs aren’t categorized at all. Special climbs are regarded as “Hors Categorie,” aka HC, meaning “so hard they cannot be categorized”—kind of like the “evil whose name must not be spoken.”)

I really suffered on Superflag, even on the shallower sections where I could snap photos:

I was breathing really hard on the climb, despite my heart rate being down in the 140s. It was as though my heart were saying, “Look, I’ll beat faster if you give me some more air. My job is to oxygenate the blood but I have very little oxygen to push here.” Kind of like a contractor sitting around at the job site waiting for lumber to be delivered. Altitude really does matter—coming from sea level, I find that even climbing a flight of stairs in Boulder (at 5,400 feet) is a huffing-and-puffing affair. I don’t know how anybody could compete at the US Pro Cycling Challenge who didn’t acclimate to the altitude beforehand. (Max, who has lived his whole life in Boulder, complains that he still hasn’t acclimated.)

It was of course hard to tell how much of the difficulty was the bike, how much was lack of sleep, and how much was trying to keep up with Pete. My struggle to keep up continued when we turned off on a dirt road and began descending toward Gross Reservoir. I’m no slouch at descending but riding on the dirt on that foreign bike with its too-tight brakes and cheap tires was a little scary. It was a bit like in a job interview and knowing my fly is open and there’s nothing I can do about it.

It’s a very bumpy descent. I tried to do this ride back in 2005 with my brother Geoff but we had to abandon: between the two of us we had only one pump, and it fell off during this descent and was never found. We’d had to abandon the ride and head home because getting a flat on this desolate dirt road would be a real drag.

Here are Pete and I toward the end of the descent.

From there we took Coal Creek Canyon Road up to Wondervu, another Category 1 climb. Of this climb, oddly enough, I remember almost nothing. Then we headed up a freshly tarred-and-feathered road (a Category 2 climb) to the Lake Eldora ski resort. (No, the road wasn’t really feathered.)

Sustenance

By the time we made that summit and descended to Nederland, we’d ridden about 45 miles, but with all that climbing it felt like a lot more, and I was worrying about bonking (in the American, not British, sense). Dinner the night before had been a nice pork chop with a handful of fingerling potatoes: tasty, but decidedly lacking in precious carbohydrates. So when we stopped at a convenience store I went for the good stuff:

Not shown here are the Hostess fruit pies. In terms of calorie per dollar, and calorie per unit volume, they can’t be beat. I think Pete had cherry, which has a whopping 480 calories . As much as I adore the fruit-flavored varieties, I had to go with chocolate: 520 calories. These pies should be a controlled substance—there’s no reason on earth that anybody but a distance athlete should ever consume one.

More climbing

After Nederland (strangely named for a town that sits at more than 8,000 feet above sea level) we headed up the Peak To Peak Highway over two more Category 2 climbs. I must confess I used the smallest chainring quite a bit. (My wife asked about this later, and suggested that perhaps the triple really was appropriate. “Yeah,” I told her, “but only because it was such a crappy bike. It’s like a really awful restaurant where they’re thoughtful enough to give you a barf bucket.”)

We were pretty low on beverages around our highest summit, at 10,400 feet. In this photo, the half-cropped mountain on the right is Mt. Audubon, elevation 13,223 feet.

I was so oxygen-deprived and tired, I completely forgot how ugly my rental bike was. We totally should have used Pete’s bike for this photo. Anyway, if you look closely at that picture, I’m sort of smiling but it’s really a lie. Look in my eyes. There’s a lot of suffering there. At no point in the ride had I been hammering, but the miles and elevation were piling up and taking their toll.

We searched in vain for water; it was all shut off. Fortunately, the next thirty miles of the ride were virtually all downhill. The day got progressively hotter as we lost elevation. We encountered about a dozen raindrops. Eventually we arrived in Lyons, a big player in the thriving sandstone industry, where it was good and hot and we drank giant Cokes. Then we headed south on Highway 36 toward Boulder.

Home stretch

It’s a long trip back to Boulder from Lyons. Kind of a Room 101 for many a Boulder cyclist: I know more guys—myself included—who have bonked on that stretch than any other I can think of, and on shorter rides than this one. We’d gone 90 miles, which meant we had another 20 to go.

I’ll just come out and say it: my ass hurt. Real bad. I’d set the saddle a tad too high, and did I mention it was the iron maiden of bike saddles? My butt never used to hurt on long rides. I don’t know if it’s just ageing, or not enough training, or what. The modern cycling shorts don’t seem to help. They’re over-engineered these days, each chamois thicker than the last. It used to be that a pair of shorts cost $30 and had a single-ply pancake-thin chamois. Now they’re this thick puffy three-ply thing, like a short stack, and can cost upwards of $200. By this point in the ride my legs had turned more than 30,000 pedal revolutions—they should have hurt the most—and yet my ass, which had just been sitting there most of the time, was giving me the most trouble.

Even more alarming was the realization that we weren’t even heading straight back over the gently rolling hills of Highway 36. In the photo above, you see the purple mountains dead ahead on the horizon? We had those yet to climb. It was at this point in the ride that I toyed with the idea of despair, then immediately dismissed it. What good would despair do? Besides, I’d been on harder rides than this. To borrow from Faulkner, it may have killed me, but it hadn’t whupped me yet.

We took a right on Lefthand Canyon Drive. This is a pretty shallow one, but it goes along a right fur piece. After six miles we took a left on Lee Hill Drive, which is a real sumbitch of a climb. At least, that’s how I always thought of it when I lived in Boulder. The two sections together comprise a Category 2. Lee Hill Doesn’t look too steep in this photo, and yet you can tell Pete is working pretty hard—plus I’m pretty far behind.

The last climb, Wagonwheel Gap Road, was only a Category 3, but it’s dirt. I’m not sure mapmyride takes that into account. Nor could it have known how tired we were. (Or at least, how tired I was. As usual Pete showed no sign of strain. For him this may have been like an easy stroll.) I could barely keep enough traction to make the bike go, so I couldn’t take any more photos. Here’s a nice shot of clouds from earlier, anyway.

After that it was a short descent back to the house for some nice cold sugardrink. I forgot to take an “after” shot but here’s a picture of my salt-encrusted helmet.

This helmet is less than two months old (purchased after my recent crash). Note the board-stiff chin strap. Note also the little flowers, for which I’ve taken plenty of flak from my pals. But hey, I can handle it. I just did a big ride on a cheap bike with a triple crank and a front reflector!

Here are the map and elevation profile (click to zoom in).

Appendix A: Bikes on airlines

Our modern airline industry has done everything it can to make me hate them. Airlines are the number one offender in the pollution category; they’ve stopped serving meals; they charge for baggage; they impose useless security measures like putting toiletries in little plastic bags as an insult to our intelligence; they’re charging money for the privilege of sitting in an exit row; they charge for checked luggage; the frequent flier free flights are universally blacked out except certain red-eyes between Houston and Lubbock via Seattle; and they’ve made the pricing so crazily random it’s like day trading trying to book a flight. So I shoudn’t be surprised that the rate for carrying a bike has gone steadily up even as the weight of bikes has come steadily down.

A few people have told me Southwest will take bikes for free. Their website could lead the unsuspecting passenger to believe it: “Non-motorized bicycles, including Bike Friday and Co-Pilot, will be accepted in substitution of a free piece of checked baggage at no additional charge, provided the box containing the bicycle fits within the 62-inch sizing limit.” This is a bit like saying “Children eat free at Denny’s provided they are under 12 inches tall.” The smallest adult bicycle I’m aware of is a 44 cm, and it comes in a box whose overall size (length plus width plus height) is 80 inches. My bike frame alone would require a 78-inch bike. So, Southwest will take certain kids’ BMX bikes for free but beyond that, don’t get your hopes up.

Appendix B: Cannondales

Now, I realize what I’m about to say could alienate certain albertnet readers, so I’ll try to be careful. But I have to say it: Cannondales are not my favorite bikes. It’s probably totally unfair of me, and if you are a happy Cannondale owner you should really ignore me on this topic because I’m sure your bike is great. (A college teammate of mine won a ton of races on his Cannondale, and the Liquigas team rides them with vigor and aplomb.) But I’ve just had it in for those bikes for decades. Perhaps it’s because Cannondale stole Klein’s basic design back in the eighties (they were sued, but prevailed). Maybe it’s because Cannondale got their start with touring bags and a weird Velcro water bottle and so forth and I can’t shake the association. Maybe it’s because their early mountain bikes were so hard to build and service, due to their having (for gimmicky reasons) a smaller rear wheel, which fouled up the chain line and made the front derailleur hard to adjust. Or maybe it’s because every single new Cannondale to be assembled (when I worked at a Cannondale dealer) was badly scratched in the same place, and included a smashed bottle of touch-up paint. Whatever the case, I should put aside my distaste for them and be less judgmental, but I’m just not big enough. I’m sorry.

dana albert blog

From the Archives - Business Travel

Introduction

I used to travel a fair bit on business. Not so much anymore, partially due to technologies like conference calling and net conferences. I realized recently that I’ve gone over a year now without a business trip. In observance of that anniversary, I offer here a humor piece on business travel, from my archives.

Rest assured I did not actually submit this extravagantly detailed report to my employer. That said, every item, thought, feeling, and reflection presented here is 100% factual.

The photo below has nothing to do with this post. I just think it’s funny.

From the Archives - EXPENSE REPORT

“Please include all details of Meals, Entertainment, and Other expenses (IRS REQUIRES).”

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $14

Description (names, titles): Myself, Super Shuttle to SF Int’l Airport

Details: The van showed up early, catching me just out of the shower. Ran to van with belt and shoes in my hand, hair wet, tripping over my duffel bag. Van got me to the airport almost two hours before my flight.

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $4.15

Description (names, titles): Myself, Burgers, Etc., SF Int’l Airport

Details: “Burgers, Etc.”: the name suits the place nicely. Totally uninspired, dutifully descriptive; they could have called it “Burgers & Crap.” If you’ve looked at my receipt, you may wonder why I had a meatball and a tuna sandwich at 8:13am. It was a mistake: the clerk, Rhad, was new and hit the meatball sandwich button by mistake. He then made matters worse by canceling the tuna, rather than the meatball, sandwich. If you’re wondering why I got a 20% “Airport Employee Discount,” it’s to compensate for the price difference between the meatball and the tuna (so Rhad wouldn’t get in trouble for botching his over-ring).

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $333.59

Description (names, titles): Myself, flight to Columbus, OH

Details: Asked for exit row for more legroom, got wrong exit row seat that had no extra legroom and didn’t recline, had no left-hand armrest. Felt guilty for ignoring flight attendant’s safety instructions. Airline magazine had pointless article about Ruth somebody, founder of Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, and how it was called “Chris’s Steakhouse” for years until our enlightened period when she could put her own name on it. I wonder if the waitresses still wear short denim miniskirts. Ads in the magazine were for Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and for a variety of products and services aimed at executives: seminars by either Steven Covey or Charles Kurault, on either improving quality or increasing shareholder value, or both. Dozens of ads for new laptops, new cell phones, new two-way pagers, more ways to accrue frequent flier miles—evidently ads designed to rub travelers’ noses in the frantic pace of their lives.

SkyMall catalog was equally depressing: pages and pages of ads for inspirational posters, framed or unframed, with captions like “DEDICATION: If we don’t take care of our customers, somebody else will” below, incongruously, a close-up of a handshake. Or, “ATTITUDE: It’s the only buzzword you lowly cogs of industry could ever hope to understand,” below a picture of a grossly magnified drop of water hitting the surface of a pool. The silent movie was “Dante’s Peak,” starring Pierce Brosnan. Another Hollywood loss-leader, mercilessly foisted upon the trapped traveler, and I wasn’t about to spend $4 on headphones to find out if it’s any better with sound.

In-flight “meal” was blanched pressed ham product, white foam bun, little Pepperidge Farm “Exquisite Cookie” which was a sandwich cookie the color of an undercooked waffle with a brown middle tasting like the faintly minty product they put in green mint chocolate chip ice cream. Beverage: my usual tomato juice, of which they must have a glut, because they gave me the whole can, which I spilled. Paper napkin became a red, stringy mess, like a murder.

Flight attendant’s singsong voice was a perfect replica of some prototypical flight attendant of long ago, who should be paid royalties for his or her now classic inflection, with special emphasis placed on those words that are the most unnecessary: “Please do be sure to check around your seat for any personal items you may have left on boaaaaard. Be careful opening the overhead bins as items may have shifted duuuuring the flight. Should your future travel plans again call for air travel, we do hope that you will again choose America West as your airline pro-viiiii-der.”

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $4.51

Description (names, titles): Myself, Pizza Hut, Phoenix Airport

Details: I do not know why the receipt says “Manhattan Brew T8.” It must be a ghost of what this Pizza Hut once was. This was my layover. I had one glistening cheese pan pizza, purchased after an endless search that kept turning up the unhelpful trio of “America’s Best Bagels,” “Hot Dog Factory,” and “Cinnabon” repeated in disorientingly identical food courts throughout the airport. The other alternative was an airport bar full of miserable smokers. Had just enough time after my Pizza Hut “meal” to stand in line at a phone booth behind three other business travelers, all apparently running late and ready to murder a women who couldn’t get her calling card to work. Gave up on getting voice-mail. Saw several joyous family reunions at the gate, wished I was travelling on pleasure.

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $143.15

Description (names, titles): Myself, Avis, rental car, Columbus, OH

Details: Car was a midsize, Buick Skylark or equivalent, as promised on my itinerary. Can’t remember what it was, but it was exactly equivalent to—certainly no better than—a Buick Skylark. That is to say, it was the kind of car that nobody would actually buy; the kind of car people win on game shows. A car that was so nondescript that it got lost in parking lots—I would find myself wandering about, befuddled, comparing the license plate number on my keychain to that of a hundred other fleet cars. Felt trapped because the seatbelt would automatically lock me in when the engine was running. This would have made it awkward when dropping off passengers, though I had no passengers. Just somebody else’s car stereo presets.

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $18.86

Description (names, titles): Myself, Grady’s American Grill, Hilliard, OH

Details: Service was, as usual, impeccable. Everybody in the Midwest is so nice. They bend over backwards and it’s really unnecessary: I’m eating by myself, with nobody to impress with my choice of restaurant, no business to conduct that requires silent, efficient service with no distractions. Don’t make too much fuss, I want to say, it’s just me, taking in my nourishment. The waitress was new. I asked her if she recommended the seafood pasta, and she said, “Well, that depends. If you like pasta, and you like seafood, then I would recommend it. But if you don’t like seafood, then I wouldn’t get it.” Fair enough.

During the meal the waitress—perhaps sensing my loneliness—refilled my water six times, brought more bread, and asked, “Does the seafood pasta taste good?” I assured her the taste was excellent. We did not discuss texture, appearance, or quantity, all of which were excellent. On my left, a couple, the man grand, the woman petite, having a fine time, the man eating most of his wife’s dinner and all of his. A group of six were loud and boisterous. Another couple, perhaps on their first date, were eager, polite, reserved, and stricken, either with love or shyness. I alone was quieter. I wish sometimes for a restaurant that only seats single diners—all tables of one.

(Before settling on Grady’s, I had wandered into TGI Friday’s and was immediately scared off by its lively music, “fun” crowd, and paper-lined plastic baskets of onion rings, fried mushroom buttons, and other munchables. A fun place, you know, to take a bunch of friends, especially if you’re all losers. I also ruled out Spageddies, as I had eaten there once before and found it highly mediocre. I remember that meal well: I’d had a fettuccine dish consisting of limp pasta in what had to be Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, with the lightest dusting of fresh Parmesan cheese, dispensed ineffectually by the waitress, who was new, and who held the excellent Zyliss rotary cheese grater backwards and upside down, turned the handle the wrong way and unscrewed it from the grater, until finally I gave up and said “when” and that’s all the cheese I got.)

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $97.23

Description (names, titles): Myself, Homewood Suites Hotel, Hilliard, OH

Details: Depressingly palatial. Huge living room, desk with two chairs, sofa, armchair, TV, VCR, kitchenette with range, fridge, dishwasher. Two closets. The bed was longer than my queen at home, and wider than it was long. Could’ve slept my three brothers and myself easily. I used just one edge of it, like Gulliver in the seldom remembered “Brobdingnag” episode of his travels. There was a second TV in the bedroom—I could have watched two shows at once. Two bureaus, two nightstands, two Gideon’s Bibles. Imagine: a traveling couple cannot manage to share a Bible, so they each take one up and sit there, side by side in that gargantuan bed, reading.

I imagined putting up all my friends here the night before a bike race. Three would easily fit in the hide-a-bed in the living room, four in the bed, a dozen more on the floor. We never had such nice accommodations when I was racing; we’d be crammed into the available floor space of a single room. Here they have a pool, a spa, cable, continental breakfast, even “getting to know you night,” which is every night, and which is free food down in the lobby. Free food! Imagine! The calendar on the fridge tells what food is on what night: on August 4, it was “baked potatoes with the works.” The next night was Spageddies night. I never did attend “getting to know you night,” because I am depressed by the thought of getting to know the hotel staff. Am I really here that often?

Actually, this is my first stay at the Homewood—the latest stop in my nomadic search for the least offensive hotel. You see, as embarrassed as I am by how seriously these places take my simple needs, I’m strangely irritable in all matters of hotel comfort. Since convenience is the only benefit to travelling, the silver lining on being away from my wife and everybody else I know, I have become slavishly devoted to it. The slightest flaw becomes egregious. I gave up the Sheraton Suites because, besides being too far from the office, they insulted my intelligence by having Nintendo in the room, and had this ridiculous round mirror, on an articulated arm, bolted to the main bathroom mirror. What its use was I’ll never know, but it just banged around and got in my way, and distracted me as I found myself struggling, time and time again, to figure out its purpose. The Wyndham Suites was too noisy: the air conditioner shrieked like a wind tunnel, the bathroom fan was always on, wheezing and rattling, and a construction project—a badly needed renovation—caused various annoyances like a half-mile detour to get to the elevator. Beyond that, the shower head came out around my chest, so washing my hair became a contortionist’s act.

The Sumner Suites, meanwhile, is so convenient to the office that it took a huge number of grievances before I finally gave up on it. For one, the elevator bell was way too loud, which not only woke me up (I sleep nervously on the road) but insulted me with its needlessness. I mean, who doesn’t notice that his elevator has stopped, and that the doors are open? Then, their workout room was absolutely swimming in Lemon Fresh Pledge. One time, the housekeep left my door open all day. What’s more, once when my Vingcard stopped working, the front desk staff gave me a new key, no questions asked, meaning any respectable-looking fellow could get instant access to my room. And, perhaps most annoyingly, when I routinely smuggled the extra bath bar into my toiletry bag, they never replaced it. As though the housekeeper was saying, “I know your kind—you soap stealers, do you think we’re stupid here! I saw your squirreled-away soap! You’re not getting two bars a day just to take home!” Damn it, that soap is rightfully mine. It’s like my consolation prize, something to take home to my wife as a peace offering after leaving her home alone all week.

Now, the Homewood Suites is much better. I’m sure I’ll have my minor grievances—I’ll tire of the two identical paintings which won’t vary from room to room, and of the sandpaper-like fake Kleenex, never more than five tissues to a box. And, I’ll probably never get over the fact that the windows won’t open. I read an article about hotels, actually, and about what they’re willing to do for customers and what they aren’t. Your nicer hotels are willing to use tan-colored towels, for example, even though they can’t bleach them—a nice touch. But almost no hotel will have windows you can open, because, among other things, they’re worried about people jumping.

dana albert blog