Epic France Trans Alps Cycling Trip - Part II

Introduction

If you’ve been on albertnet lately, you’ll have learned that I recently did a week-long, fully supported bicycle tour through southeast France, tackling most of the Alpine climbs that are included in Tour de France routes. You’ll also have learned that I tend to get sidetracked by culinary matters, which is great news for those who tire of cycling lore. Well, I’m back, and this time promise to focus more on the suffering—mine in particular (your favorite!). As before, this report doesn’t have a very specific structure … it’s more like a highlights reel, because there were just too many rides, too many climbs, and too many meals to worry about sequencing them properly.

Navigation

I’m really bad at navigation. I don’t have much of an explorer’s curiosity, and am happy to keep riding the same training routes over and over again. Even when I did a nine-month bike tour with my wife, we made literally zero effort to plot any kind of route—we just started by heading south along the California coast almost to Mexico, then went randomly east or north until we got to Maine. Let’s be clear though: It’s not just that I’m not interested in navigation, it’s that I lack the mental faculty for it. So my biggest fear with this French Alps tour was that I’d get dropped and then get lost, in this strange foreign land where you can’t even get a normal cup of coffee.

Hoping to have my fears assuaged, I asked K, our supported-tour veteran, if getting dropped would necessarily mean getting lost. His reply was emphatic: “If you don’t download the GPX files, you will definitely get lost.” D’oh!

This is kind of a classic pitfall of modern society: you’re expected to be an expert in the latest technology whether you like it or not. Events and itineraries are now communicated via social media—never mind that these vanity platforms were originally designed solely to increase teenagers’ insecurity. Case in point: the bike tour organizers took to sending important schedule updates via WhatsApp, a platform I do not, and shall not, use. On top of all this, I’m suddenly supposed to know what a GPX file is …. presumably it runs on a Garmin (i.e., one of the expensive gizmos I don’t own).

Well, I found the email with all the routes, downloaded a GPX file, tried to open it on my phone, and was offered two apps to try. One of them I hadn’t heard of, but the other was (surprise!) an app I actually use. It’s Sigma Ride, the workout tracking app for my cheap, weird bike computer that nobody else in America has. Well, the GPX file opened right up, which was a pleasant surprise but not that helpful. After all, it’s not like I want to ride around the Alps peering into my phone the whole time. On a whim, I clicked a three-dot icon and saw an option to beam the route into my bike computer via Bluetooth. And, voilà! There it was, the route loaded in my bike computer so it could give me step-by-step directions … a feature I was vaguely aware it might have but had never before investigated. Sweet! Now I could totally get dropped and all I had to worry about was everyone snickering at my frailty behind my back! (You know, the devil I know…)

Col de Joux Plane and Col de la Columbière

I don’t remember much about our first climb of the day, Cat 1 Col de Joux Plane, other than we started up it immediately, with like zero warm-up. That’s okay, because I was raring to go after a great night’s sleep. Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. Actually I hadn’t slept for shit, between jet lag, the room being too warm, anxiety about the big day of riding, etc. Plus, my older daughter phoned me in the middle of the night. Why? Well, my phone had gone berserk and had been texting and re-texting her my Wordle result and some trip photos almost continuously, all night, creating the illusion I was awake and insane and already on my phone. At least, that’s what led my daughter to forget the time zone difference. My roommate was oddly gracious about the whole thing; turns out he was wide awake at the time anyway. I’m not the only one having trouble sleeping.

Anyway, the pace on the Joux Plane was fine. The photo above is from early in the climb. The first descent was beautiful and fast and fun, and my rented Felt FR road bike handled very well—so if you stumbled on this blog by searching on “Felt FR,” and are this close to buying that bike, and don’t mind a 73-degree seat tube angle instead of 72, well, shoot, just go ahead and buy it. It’s a good bike that does not hesitate to dive right into the curves.

Near the base of the Hors Categorie (i.e., “too difficult to even categorize”) Col de la Columbière, as if in some kind of harmonic convergence, my East Bay Velo Club teammates Craig and Ian and I all had to pee at the same moment. (As far as you know, we dutifully used a public restroom and any photo you may have seen of any less responsible behavior was surely Photoshopped.) Following this stop we found ourselves off the back of the group, which by this point had pretty much split apart into tiny clumps, pairs, and individuals. We passed them all, like in one of those car race video games. It was super fun. Craig paced Ian and me, which is bog standard for all the rides we do, as though Craig were our super-domestique … except that in the end he always sails off into the sunset instead of us.

Sure enough, about three kilometers from the Columbière summit, where the climb gets particularly hard, Craig accidentally dropped me. He would never, ever attack; it’s just that he forgets how limited my endurance truly is, and after all he doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head. Sometimes he realizes I’m gapped and he holds up, but other times I’m too far back and just does his own thing. It’s kind of like a cat playing with a snake, and not realizing he’s actually killed it, and then he wonders why the snake isn’t very much fun anymore.

Guideposts

Did you notice something just now? Something very odd for albertnet? Like, how I used the metric system to specify the distance from the summit? Nice catch. As you know from this post, I’m a proponent of the imperial system of measurement, even if this puts me at odds with the entire scientific community. Well, I haven’t renounced those views; it’s just that in the very specific context of Alpine mountain passes, kilometers have their place. It’s because of these cool guideposts you’ll see on every major climb:

If you click to zoom on the above image you’ll note that that sign gives all kinds of info. It gives the name of the climb (which, believe it or not, you can forget if you’ve targeted several in a day and are severely oxygen-deprived); the distance to the summit in kilometers; the current altitude (alas, in meters, which is still not so useful to me since I can’t do simple arithmetic under physical duress); and the average percent grade for the next kilometer. This info is generally very useful (though at times it can seem to be taunting me, like when the end of a climb seems to never come). Do I wish all this info were in imperial units? Well, almost, except that, kilometers being shorter than miles, this arrangement obviously gives me more signs to look at, and a better sense of progress. So I’ll accept this use of kilometer as the exception that proves the rule.

On the final climb, the Category 1 Col de la Croix Fry, Craig and I encountered some lovely cows, bells a-jangling:

I still had great legs on this final climb of the day, which was so satisfying, I cannot tell you. As I said, I’d worried about not keeping up, and embarrassing myself, and trying the patience of my pals and other Epic A riders, but this is not at all what was happening. My legs were totally up to the job. This surprised me because I knew I hadn’t trained enough for this trip. I just can’t seem to carve out enough time, and I’m getting too old to simply wing it—at least, that’s what I’d assumed, only to end up riding just fine. But this satisfaction with my fitness wasn’t only about ageing well. Let’s just say the last couple of years have been hard on me, so to be doing something bloody difficult, but with aplomb, gave me renewed faith in my whole self (even if my competence is in the largely useless realm of amateur cycling). The scenery was pretty glorious, too.

After a sweet, sweeping descent to our next hotel, and a giant snack there involving cured meats, we wandered around the little town of La Clusaz and noted their brilliant open-air market. Check out what you can get from this little vender:

Not to be unpatriotic or anything, but this sight reinforced my growing sense that farmers’ markets in America are a joke. I think that, as with factory outlet stores, farmers’ markets started off well—an actual farmer could sell truly local, fresh produce directly to consumers—but then morphed into a sham when deeply cynical minds realized that once people had latched on to an idea, they’d pursue it indefinitely regardless of whether there was any value in it. So we have people setting up tables at these farmers’ markets with produce they just bought somewhere (which is sometimes still in someone else’s packaging!) and then they actually mark it up because the farmers’ market seems like a “premium” experience that is worth paying extra for. Sheesh.

Bad weather!

Oh, man, the forecast for the third day was not promising: a 93% chance of rain from 5 a.m. through late afternoon. Sure enough, it was already raining when we woke up, and raining when we rolled out. What a grind. I don’t have a good rain jacket, for the simple reason that—as documented here—I don’t ride in the rain. What I do have is this big puffy thing that doesn’t breathe very well, doesn’t wad up small enough to easily fit in a jersey pocket, and isn’t really waterproof. I think of it as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Jacket.

Perhaps halfway up the Cat 3 Col des Aravis the rain let up somewhat, and I had a nice time riding by a lot of cows, their standard-issue bells making the usual pleasant racket.

The respite didn’t last, and on the Cat 2 Col des Saisies, K and I rode through a downpour of biblical proportions, the rain drumming on our helmets and jackets, the road completely flooding. You know how when you’re in a car wash, you sometimes get the sensation of the car rolling forward though you know it isn’t? Same deal: the water rushing past my wheels gave me the illusion of hauling ass up the mountain until I lifted my gaze again. I wish I had photos and videos of this, but of course you can never get that footage … you’re too busy suffering and shivering. There was thunder and lightning, and K wisecracked about opportunistically riding next to me so he’d never be the tallest object.

Here’s a photo of the summit, where the rain had finally let up. K and I are offering our gratitude, or at least a photo op, to Saint Anne, whom we took from this shrine to be the patron saint of travelers. Turns out (based on some very light research) she’s actually the patron saint of unmarried women, housewives, and women in labor. Whatever.

We warmed up at the van, scarfing Cokes, cookies, fruit, chocolate milk, and of course cured meats. We had a decently dry descent and, during a brief stop at one of those darling French villages, stashed our rain gear in the van for the climb.

We began the final climb up the Hors Categorie Col du Pré. Halfway up, the skies got darker again, and Craig and Ian fetched their (slim, scrunch-able, actually waterproof) jackets from the van to have on hand. I decided to take my chances (which gave me the opportunity to noodle on ahead). The climb was a lot of fun. It’s a gorgeous road with a lot of super steep pitches.

The sky grew increasingly tenebrous as we climbed.

The climb went on and on.

This could have been a great photo if the smartphone camera software weren’t so janky:

I mean, look at how small Ian looks compared to Craig—like a dwarf or something! Craig’s head looks as tall as Ian’s torso! And Craig’s front wheel looks way larger than his rear. What is this nonsense? This is why you want a real camera.

With 4km to go, I got my last photo from the Col de Pré … after this, the skies opened up and the rain just absolutely pummeled us. I was soaked to the skin. At the summit, we piled into the van and went through our backpacks of warm gear. Ian had an extra jersey for me, and after some discussion four of us, plus the guide, decided to forge ahead on the descent while the rest of the crew went down in the van. It was a frigid descent, rain flowing over the road like a water slide at a theme park. A road construction crew, decked out like stormtroopers, stared at us dumbfounded. Ian, riding a bike with rim brakes, eventually thought better of the whole enterprise and pulled off to the side to be picked up. When we reached the town down in the valley, the rain showed no signs of letting up, and Craig reported, with fascination, that my lips were completely blue. With only a relatively unexciting flat run-in to the hotel ahead, we bagged it and climbed in the van. The heater was blasting in there. By the time we got to the hotel we’d all been basically poached alive in our wet gear. I hope there are no pets in the cargo hold of this aircraft, proximate to my luggage, as I make my way home. I have never before encountered such stinky cycling gear, and that’s saying something.

Brides-les-Bains

We lodged at a strange health spa type hotel in Brides-les-Bains. This is where unhealthy people with unhealthy lifestyles go to get cured by the special waters and various spa treatments, so that they can enjoy robust health going forward without changing any of their unhealthy behaviors. Several of these guests regarded us with a bit of the ol’ stink-eye, as if deeply suspicious of our very presence at their spa.

This place had those fancy outward-facing elevators that are like glass cylinders so you can watch the world go by during your vertical trip. They were also among the slowest elevators I’ve ever encountered, with disconcerting juddering at times. Most interesting of all was the sound they made: think of a giant, like the one atop Jack’s beanstalk, groaning, combined with the sound of a whale calling out across the ocean. The noise was nearly constant. At the request of my wife I’ve attempted to recreate the sound:

Dinner got off to a good start, with a salad that was like 70% Serrano ham.

The entrée, though, was a bit on the small and non-starchy side:

The menu described this as “Veal nut with its juice.” Needless to say, this led to all kinds of sophomoric humor (“testicle of a young bull, with…”). The dessert, or “desert” as the menu called it, was a peach clafoutis, which I guess was supposed to be like a cobbler but was practically frozen. We’d have starved except the very good bread was plentiful (though still bereft of butter or olive oil). But then, breakfast the next morning featured the excellent pastries we’d come to rely on, so no harm done.

At every breakfast I had a croissant and a pain au chocolat, sometimes two, along with a big bowl of cereal, some eggs, cured meats, cheeses, and yogurt. This is how I managed to gain four pounds in a week—the same week I rode almost 400 miles and climbed almost 60,000 feet. God bless these Alpine cows and all the butter they make possible.

To be continued…

Well, that seems like enough for this round. I’m getting cold just remembering all this. Check back soon because I’ll be reporting on the Col de la Loze, which is considered the hardest climb in the entire Alps; the famous Col de la Madeleine; and the absolutely brutal Col du Glandon. And of course I’ll describe our caloric intake as well, to include one of the weirdest and French-est dinners I’ve ever had.

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2021 in Review - the Quiz

Introduction

As I close out 2021, I thought I’d give my readers a little quiz. You can consider this open-book (because after all, how could I police this anyway)? Or, for an extra challenge, try it without peeking. 

(Don’t worry, you don’t have to wait until next week for the answers … they’re right down at the bottom of the post.)

2021 in Review – the Quiz

1. The movie Wonder Woman 1984 sucked because:

a) Diana (Gal Godot) got all soft and mushy as soon the love interest, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) arrived; she stopped being badass and was mainly clingy and needy, pining for him (I know, bad pun, I couldn’t resist), which was distracting and annoying

b) Diana stubbornly refused to give up Steve, though this was necessary in order to save the world (according to the absurd logic of the so-called plot) and wasn’t until Steve sternly mansplained the whole thing to her that she fell in line, as if it takes a man to save the world, even when he’s not a superhero

c) It’s totally unrealistic that a woman as gorgeous as Diana would wait for forty years for her sweetheart to reappear rather than moving on, and it’d have been so much cooler if Steve had shown up suddenly in 1984 only for Diana to say, “Uh, sorry Steve … I’m actually in a relationship”

d) The female villain in the movie was meek, nice, and nerdy until she gained her powers, which consisted of being charming, beautiful, and strong, at which point she instantly became evil as well, as if the natural consequence of empowering women is that they become total bitches

2. Why is a low-sodium diet not necessarily for everyone?

a) Modern life has people working too much, exercising too little, eating a lot of crap, and then trying to undo the damage by eating less salt … nice try
b) When I surveyed my bike team, 17 of 23 responded that they don’t worry about limiting their salt intake, and yet we’re all very healthy
c) Added salt is not a major contributor to hypertension; the salt in processed foods is more often the culprit, and these are the foods we should all be avoiding anyway due to their trans fats, nitrates, refined flour, etc.
d) Sometimes a little salt goes a long way, like regular peanut butter that has only 6% of the recommended daily value, whereas low-sodium peanut butter is so disgusting I’d rather eat my scabs … and in fact I’d almost rather eat your scabs

3. Knowing what we now know about football, and looking back at the NFL’s lawsuit against M.I.A. for flipping off the camera during the halftime show, their lawsuit is absurd because…

a) These halftime shows are so lame, the scandals (like this one or Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction”) are really the only even slightly dramatic or exciting things fans ever get to see
b) Innocuous gestures like the flipping the bird are nothing compared to the domestic violence committed by football players, which the NFL happily tolerates as detailed here
c) The NFL has a long history of turning a blind eye to the rampant concussions suffered by their players and took great pains to block research into the problem, so they cannot claim any moral high ground
d) Football fans, being remarkably tolerant of all this, should totally be able to handle being flipped off

4. Primoz Roglic’s come-from-behind victory in Stage 7 of the Paris-Nice cycling stage race was actually kind of lame because…

a) Despite having already totally stomped all over his rivals for the GC, Roglic needlessly passed up Gino Mäder, a young pro who had launched a very brave breakaway and would have achieved his first-ever WorldTour victory if Roglic hadn’t cruelly nipped him at the line, thus crushing his dream
b) Roglic did this great big alpha-male victory salute as if this were the most impressive victory of his career when really it didn’t matter much, this being such a minor stage race for a rider like him
c) The way he punched the sky, it was just so tone-deaf, bringing to mind the smarty-pants kid in the classroom who’s constantly putting his hand up and, when the teacher ignores him, raises it higher, higher, higher, so his shoulder is raised, half his butt is lifting off the chair, and he’s going “Ooh, ooh, ooh” and can’t figure out why the teacher won’t call at him yet again

d) We’re all kind of tired of Roglic anyway

5. As of April, 2021 (i.e., pre-Delta) variant) what generally had to be true for COVID-19 to be transmitted from one person to another?

a) The two people had to be in fairly close proximity to each other (within about six feet)
b) There had to be a lack of good air flow (e.g., the two had to be indoors without much ventilation)
c) The exposure had to be fairly prolonged (e.g., more than just a few minutes)
d) The people had to not be wearing masks

6. Which of the following is a totally legit Tom Swifty?

a) “Nice boobs!” Tom tittered
b) “Lousy dog doesn’t even have a pedigree,” Tom muttered
c) “Denmark is full of assholes,” Tom said disdainfully
d) “Oh dear, I can’t get it up,” Tom said softly

7. What was interesting about the post-race interviews at Stage 9 of the 2021 Giro d’Italia?

a) The ever-stoic stage winner Egan Bernal said, “It may look like I’m crying right now but those are just raindrops, or maybe snot”
b) Geoffrey Bouchard, who had gotten passed with only 400 meters to go after a daring solo breakaway, said, “I hear Bernal has been sleeping with my girl as well”
c) Bouchard said, “My dad just texted me, ‘You’ve always been a loser, son,’ so my disappointment is absolute and my pride irrevocably shattered”
d) Both interviews were embellished if not outright fabricated by a playful blogger

8. What was interesting about the post-race interview at Stage 9 of the 2021 Tour de France?

a) The interviewer said to winner Ben O’Connor, “You’re a little glassy-eyed … are you gonna start crying now, like a QuickStep guy?” and O’Connor replied, “I think I can avoid that … I’m able to control myself better [than when I crossed the line] and I’m not yelling ‘yay’ anymore”
b) When the interviewer said, “Walk us through that victory salute, where you clapped your hands like a little girl at a birthday party,” O’Connor replied, “I went into that victory salute completely unprepared—I wasn’t meant to be in the break, I screwed up, I didn’t know what to do, then I heard we had three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, one fish two fish red fish blue fish, it was a mad stage, conditions were atrocious”
c) O’Connor said, “At the end there, I had to not panic, and when you think you’re gonna win a stage you can freeze up, and … look at me, dammit, I am starting to cry”
d) It’s possible the entire transcript of the interview was fabricated out of thin air

9. It can be argued that the metric system is not actually superior to the imperial, aka US customary, system of measurement. How?

a) Celsius is inferior because the units are too large, and because its scale goes beyond the temperatures generally experienced by humans, such that part of the scale (38 to 100) is wasted, and to express very cold temperatures you have to go into negative numbers, which is awkward
b) There’s no arguing that 60 mph—that is, a mile a minute—is a really handy mnemonic, since it’s roughly the speed we drive on the highway, so a destination 300 miles away will take 300 minutes to reach; no such mnemonic exists in the metric system
c) The metric units of weight, kilograms, are too large to be precise, and since a majority of Americans would like to lose weight, the units are demoralizing because who wants to forgo snacks for a whole week and only get to say, “I boy, I lost a whole half-kilo!”?
d) Base-10 is overrated because it lacks sub-multiples, so it’s poorly suited to calculating quickly in your head via fractions, which is why we don’t have a base-10 system for measuring time

10. What is the key to making good guacamole?

a) Don’t put sour cream in it
b) Don’t mix it in a blender—just roughly hack it up so it’s nice and chunky
c) Don’t use inferior ingredients—the whole idea is that Mother Nature makes the guac great so long as you don’t screw it up
d) Don’t add peyote, even if the characters in Oscar Zeta Acosta’s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo spiked their guacamole with it (and note that Acosta himself just said no)

11. This year’s Paris-Roubaix bike race was particularly fun to watch because…

a) It was raining so with all the wet cobblestones and the dirt turning to mud, it was slicker than snot and there were tons of crashes
b) Gianni Moscon, who is a total scumbag who’d been in the news a number of times for misbehavior ranging from racial slurs to deliberately crashing a rider to getting a tow from the team car to punching a rival to throwing a bike at another rider, was off the front solo for a good while before falling on his ass, which made the race feel like a morality play
c) Sonny Cobrelli celebrated his victory with the most over-the-top hysterics in the history of the sport, shaking his bike at the sky as if daring the gods to defy him, throwing himself on the ground and howling like an animal, “BAAAAAA-HOO-HOO-HOO! BAAAAAA-HA-HA-HA!” and generally carrying on like he’d completely lost his mind
d) Cobrelli, when chided by the post-race interviewer for having mud on his face, replied, “No, you’re mistaken, this is an oatmeal facial mask; you see, it’s important to rehydrate your skin after a tough race like that, and oatmeal is a humectant, which means it helps the skin retain any moisture added to it, and meanwhile, oatmeal has naturally occurring glycolic acid, which effectively exfoliates dead skin cells and speeds up cell turnover, so you’re left with softer skin, less visible pores, and a more glowing and dewy appearance”

12. Which of the below products, promoted as a gift during the 2021 holiday season, is mind-bogglingly lame?

a) The aromatherapy candle, “poured [by] skilled artisans in the USA using only premium and cleanest soy wax available,” and “ideal as an aromatherapy candle or relaxing candle for yoga, meditation, and stress relief” and, best of all, “decorated with a cute, fun, adorable, and always heart-warming message of assurance,” which says in giant bold letters on the label, “I’D SHANK A BITCH FOR YOU RIGHT IN THE KIDNEY”
b) The smartphone-controlled coffee mug that enables you to set the temperature of your coffee remotely and even to set up alerts in case your coffee is in another room, since it’s simply not practical to just throw your coffee in the microwave for 20 seconds if it cools off too much
c) The clock that shows the hours and minutes as math problems you have to solve, so that you have to stop, shift gears, waste valuable time calculating the hour and minute, and then spend more time trying to calm back down because you’re pissed off now about having had to do all this
d) The $995 Gucci shoe/slipper that is a leather dress shoe in the front and a fur-lined slipper in the back, like what Chewbacca would wear if he went to prom

The answers

Great job, you made it to the end! Let’s see how you did.

Guess what: all answers are correct, thus I congratulate you on a perfect quiz! You are clearly a very astute reader of albertnet, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog for the last twelve months. Come back next year and pay close attention, because some of my upcoming posts are gonna be on the test!

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

The Case Against the Metric System

Introduction

It’s easy to argue the merits of the metric system—its ubiquity in the developed world, the ease and elegance of doing calculations with it, etc.—but this is not very interesting. Meanwhile, proponents of the metric system (aka “metricites”) have often struck me as very secure in their position, to the point of smugness. My dad—a gruff, dyed-in-the-wool engineer—was this way, and after decades of sucking up to him, trying to gain his approval, I became disgusted with myself and looked for ways to occasionally nettle, annoy, and provoke him instead. Toward this end, I discovered that praising the imperial system of measure worked great. The withering, disgusted look he gave me, bordering on anger, was priceless. Ever since, I’ve been pondering the advantages of the imperial system and planning a more widespread assault on the metric. Here it is.

(A semantic note: in this country, the measurement system developed by the British, generally referred to as the imperial system, often goes by the term “US customary system.” I’ll use the term “customary” in this sense throughout this post.)

Leadership vs. subservience

Because some metricites will write off the customary system purely because most of the developed world has, I’ll start there. The prevalence of the metric system cannot be denied: look at this map of who uses what system.

Look at how many nations are on the metric system! Could this many people be wrong? Sure! Keep in mind that almost 3 billion people worldwide waste their time, ruin their privacy, and compromise their emotional health by using Facebook. And when they do, the vast majority use a terribly antiquated and inefficient keyboard layout. Don’t look to your fellow man for the best way to live a perfect life.

Meanwhile, consider that the map shown above would probably bear striking resemblance to a map of where you can get a good taqueria-style burrito, and what nation creates the best movies, software, and rap music. The US is not traditionally a follower on the world stage. We’re probably much of the reason English is the lingua franca of world trade, and our dollar is also the foremost global currency. Don’t look at that turquoise coloration and think “outlier.” Think “leader” (or at least “leadership potential” since, admittedly, the rest of the world doesn’t always follow us).

Temperature

This is an easy one. The fact of Celsius having zero as the freezing point of water and 100 as its boiling point is admittedly cute, but not actually very useful. My brother Bryan, solicited for comment on this debate since he’s an engineering sort but also an expansive thinker, has eloquently pointed out:

As elegant as the Celsius scale is, I find it’s a bit crude for actual measurement of the human condition. Most of our experience takes place between really cold and really hot, which is to say from well below the freezing point of water to a bit above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Much above 100 F, you’re kind of toast anyway; once your flesh starts burning it doesn’t really matter what the number actually is. It’ll never get anywhere near 100 Celsius, so that part of the scale [38 to 100] is just wasted. And if you want to talk about it being really cold with C, you have to use negative numbers, which is kind of awkward, especially if you want to compare temperatures.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Meanwhile, the other obvious benefit of Fahrenheit is that the units are smaller so it’s more precise.

Distance

No matter how handy calculating with base-10 may be, there’s no arguing that 60 mph—that is, a mile a minute—is a really handy mnemonic, since it’s roughly the speed we drive on the highway (the >60 mph speed limit being offset by roadside stops, etc.). If our destination is 300 miles away, it’ll take about 300 minutes. The kilometer cannot offer any similar trick. And since the typical speed limit on a city street is 35 and on a residential street it’s 25, we can estimate the time for a non-highway trip by just doubling the miles … so a five-mile drive across town will take roughly ten minutes. (If your community is more congested than this, leave your car at home and use your bike. In fact, do that anyway.)

Another benefit to miles is the word “mileage.” This is a very useful word, both literally and figuratively (e.g., “Your mileage may vary”). There is no equivalent in the metric system: “kilometerage” is not a word and if it were, it would be a dumb word used by nobody ever. Same with the word “milestone.”

Weight

As with temperature, the larger weight units in the metric system make it less precise, a kilogram being 2.205 pounds. But the lack of precision isn’t the only problem; it’s also the case that since a majority of humans would like to lose weight, this larger unit is demoralizing. Imagine eating right and foregoing fattening snacks for a whole week and then having to express your weight loss with a fraction: “Oh, boy, a lost a whole half-kilogram!” That kind of discouraging scale (no pun intended) is the last thing America needs.

Liquid measure

Actually, this is one area where Americans do dabble in the metric system: although we measure most liquids (fuel, beverages) with customary units (gallon, pint), there’s one product that’s sold in metric units: wine. How fitting, since so many wine lovers are annoying and pretentious. Humbler, more down-to-earth Americans drink beer, which is of course measured in ounces (excepting some small and/or lazy overseas breweries that don’t bottle or label their product specially for the American market).

Why does it matter that wine is sold in metric units? It’s because Americans have no sense of milliliters, so we can’t keep ourselves honest when drinking wine. It’s hard to develop a sense of volume with an ungainly basis like the liter, as it’s too large, and nobody ever uses deciliters—they’re too small (less than half a cup)—and there’s nothing in between a liter and a deciliter. With beer, you can keep track pretty easily: whatever vessel you pour that can or bottle of beer into, it’s a known entity: 12 ounces, one drink. From a temperance perspective, the 750-ml wine bottle is a black box: the servings vary with your glass and how much you fill it; the milliliters are like Monopoly money; you just pour and pour, and you wake up hung over and overweight. This is what happens when Americans indulge the metric system.

Another benefit to the customary system: when you go out for a beer, you can say to your pal, “Shall we go grab a pint?” This has a nice ring to it. What would you say in France? Perhaps “Allons-nous prendre un demi-litre?” (literally, “Shall we grab half a liter?”) That sounds terrible—how do you grab half of something? And “Allons-nous prendre un litre?” sounds like you have a drinking problem—I mean, drinking beer by the liter? Yes, I know the French wouldn’t actually say this; they’d say, “Allons-nous boire un verre de vin?” (literally, “Shall we grab a glass of wine?”). I rest my case.

Air pressure

When it comes to inflation, you can’t beat the pounds-per-square-inch (PSI) unit, because the proper inflation for a road bike tyre is a nice, round 100; for a commuter bike it’s a nice, round 50; and for a mountain bike it’s a nice, round 25. What are the metric equivalents? That would be 6.895, 3.447, and 1.724 BAR, respectively. Nothing nice or round about that. (Apparently some Europeans prefer kilopascals, which is just fricking goofy. Imagine pumping your bike tires up to 690 kPa, or 690 of anything, for that matter … I’d be afraid!)

Meanwhile, the giant size of the BAR presents an obstacle to precision. I can input my weight, tire width, and riding style into a handy-dandy mountain bike tire pressure calculator and it gives me a nice precise inflation number: in my case 25 PSI for the rear tire. Since the calculator is trying to be metric-friendly it also gives me 1.8 BAR … but that’s not right—that’s actually 26 PSI, which could be the difference between great handling and merely good. To be sufficiently precise we have to go into the hundredths, with 1.72 BAR, and who can remember that?

(Arguably air pressure measurement isn’t that important, but it’s simpler than some of the next few categories.)

Construction

As detailed here, much of American industry does use the metric system (which, I hasten to point out, is no reason everyday Americans need to do so in their personal lives; after all, it’s not like web developers speak in HTML at the dinner table). One standout is the construction industry, and for good reason. As my brother Bryan explains:

Using inches is really handy for doing the mental arithmetic associated with carpentry. When a carpenter uses inches, he’ll keep track of the bit smaller than an inch using fractions, with as much resolution as is necessary for the application at hand. For example, if he needs to cut a two-by-four to use as a brace while framing a house, he may only need to cut it to within an inch. If he’s cutting a piece to be used as part of an internal structure for something, he may need it to be accurate to half an inch. If it’s a finishing piece, he may want it to be much more accurate, say a sixteenth of an inch. Using fractions, you can decide before you start cutting what units you’ll use—half inches, quarter inches, and so on. Each division is twice as precise. It’s easy to adjust the accuracy of your calculations as you go, too. For example, if you find that ¼ isn’t accurate enough, say you want slightly more than a ¼ inch, you just go to eighths of an inch: ¼ is 2/8, so a smidgen more than that is 3/8 (three of them instead of two), and so on. The tape measure shows these gradations elegantly with longer and shorter ticks, making it easy to visualize these fractions as well. So in ‘merican, you have all these units to choose from that we’re all familiar with and that are easy to convert among: 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and even 1/32. In metric all you have are centimeters and millimeters, which are significantly different in size, so if a centimeter isn’t enough resolution, you have to jump all the way to millimeters and keep track of a bunch of them.

Another thing that carpenters often must do is find the midpoint of a piece of lumber or whatever. So if a carpenter’s board is 21-½ inches long, he can calculate half of that easily: 21 divided by 2 is 10-½" for the whole part, plus ½ divided by 2 which is ¼ for the rest. It’s easy to add the ½ and ¼, since ½ is 2/4, making ¾” for the fractional bit and thus 10-¾” for the whole thing. Dividing that in two is 5 & 3/8”, which is easy to compute since dividing a fraction in two is just doubling the denominator. I feel like doing this kind of mental arithmetic keeps us closer to the numbers and to their scale, while just plugging numbers into your phone and tracking them to four significant digits makes you lose touch with reality.

Yeah, exactly! This guy knows what he’s talking about ... he even holds a math degree!

Firearms

Okay, that was a lot of math so this next category will be simpler: guns & ammo. This is another area where Americans are dabbling in the metric system. Traditionally, firearms were described in customary units, such as the .45 Colt, the .308 Winchester, and the .30-06 Springfield (all of which numbers indicated the bullet diameter in inches). These are all old school, and American. Now, your more worldly guns, like the Uzi and the Glock, use the metric system with their 9-millimeter round. Which is better? From a practical standpoint there can be no difference because the utility of a firearm, for civilians, is essentially zero. To split hairs we’ll have to consider the matter culturally. In that vein, I have to admit that the modern automatic weapons heralded in rap songs sound cooler and more sophisticated (e.g., “slapped a clip in my nine”) than older American standards—and that’s exactly why the metric system is a bad choice. America has a huge gun problem and the last thing we need is to be glamorizing firearms of any kind. If the .45 Colt and John Wayne seem anachronistic, that’s good … because guns are, too. The wild west days are over and (to paraphrase Ice-T) your best weapon now is your mind.

Shoe sizing

It’s pretty normal when thinking about the metric system to lump the European shoe sizing standard into it. Thus Americans are tempted to think that European shoe sizing, with its smaller units, is both a) metric, and b) more precise. In actuality, European sizing is a disaster. As explained here, this sizing is based on the “length of the last, expressed in Paris points,” which are 2/3 of a centimeter. There is absolutely nothing elegant or sensible about this, and even with this smaller unit of measure I’ve bought cycling shoes in half sizes (e.g., 45.5). Any perceived benefit of greater shoe sizing precision is an illusion, because with shoes you simply must try them on as the fit will vary widely across manufacturers (shoe size expressing only one dimension to begin with).

So why is this a mark against the metric system? Because Americans who have been brainwashed that the metric system is superior will automatically assume that European sizing is a) metric, and thus b) better. If Americans stuck to their guns (an unfortunate turn of phrase, I’ll admit) about our customary units, we’d probably kick this silly European shoe sizing basis to the curb as well. At least our size 12 shoe is approximately 12 inches long … give me one good reason why 45 makes more sense.

Let’s put this base-10 thing to rest

Naturally the metricites among my readership are all saying, “But wait, none of the above matters because base-10, base-10, base-10! Elegant calculations! Engineering! Stuff that matters!” Even if I indulge this by pretending that the industrial world is more important than the quotidian doings of your average joe, I take issue with base-10 being obviously better. Why? Because the base-10 system lacks sub-multiples. To explain this, I will quote from my friend Peter’s son’s friend, a recent high school grad named Kellen Sisco (who may or may not be ready for the worldwide fame he’s about to achieve through this blog). Kellen, in an anti-metric essay he decided to write (totally unconnected to this post, by the way), explains:

In base ten, there are two sub-multiples: 2 and 5, and these are both prime, inconvenient numbers. Now, contrarily, base twelve is good, as there are eight sub-multiples: 2, 3, 4 (which divides by 2), and 6 (which divides by 2 and 3). So, at least four times as many sums in base twelve will [yield] convenient numbers. Base 24 has 19 sub-multiples! Number 16 is a particularly liked number amongst mathematicians because it is good for halving and doubling. As one can see; number 10 is not a distinctly good number; numbers 12, 16, 24, and 60 are considerably better numbers.

Now, I don’t expect you to take this young man’s word for it that mathematicians like the number 16, or that 12, 24, and 60 are better than 10; instead, I’ll give you some real world examples. Consider mathematicians … what do they even do and why do we even care? Well, you like money, don’t you? And what math is lucrative, besides the boring engineering that goes into, say, building bridges? Answer: the Internet. Mathematicians do crazy-ass stuff like string theory which you assume is useless until they suddenly solve some Internet routing thing and become gazillionaires, etc. And I’m here to tell you, Internet engineers just dig hexadecimal, which is base-16, just like Kellin said. A classic dot-com interview question, when hiring engineers, is a pop quiz on network subnetting, which requires the kind of in-your-head division I described above in the construction example; it’s fractions, not getting out your phone and calculating to several decimal places. So beloved is hexadecimal among engineers, I had a boss who balanced his checkbook with it! Sometimes network guys will use octal (for arcane reasons), and when constrained by electrical engineering requirements around on/off (i.e., 1 or 0) they’ll use binary, but they don’t tend to use decimal unless they’re pressed into financial projections (the least fun part of the job).

And what about 12, 24, and 60? Well, it’s no coincidence we use those to describe time, whether we appreciate all the sub-multiples involved or not. We can say “Meet me at quarter past nine” and that’s really easy to grasp (and to visualize, clocks being as elegant as they are). With a base-10 time system we would all be totally screwed. Decimal time has a 10-hour day, so the units are impossibly huge: the minute is 1.44 times the size of ours, and the hour 2.4 times the size, so you’d always have to use decimals since you wouldn’t have handy fractions to play with. Just look at this preposterous base-10 clock:

I’ve tried to figure out how to express 9:15 a.m. in a base-10 time system, and my head exploded—and I’m no slouch at math (being well versed in binary, octal, and hex, and being nerdy enough to blog about daylight saving time, leap years, and leap seconds). If my head explodes contemplating base-10 time, surely billions of heads would explode worldwide if we tried to adopt it. And of course nobody has (except, briefly, the French, who abandoned it after less than a year … ‘nuff said).

Since we thus acknowledge base-10 is not necessarily superior, I think we can agree the metric system doesn’t automatically get a huge benefit from it. So to the STEM types promoting the metric system on this basis, I have this to say: you talk dog farts.

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