Airport

I’m on a business trip. I’m a nervous traveler, always checking my watch and re-checking my bag for my wallet, and my wallet for my driver license, and confirming for the tenth time that I have my boarding pass. When I’m in the security line I take off my belt and wristwatch and stash them in my bag long before I reach the x-ray and metal detector. Then I go to check my watch again and it’s not on my wrist and I freak out for a second.

The heightened security measures at airports are so obviously absurd and useless that they don’t bear mention in this—or any—blog. A few years back I did have an especially odd episode at the airport in Munich, though: I was made to leave behind the rubber tip from my gum stimulator and my toddler’s plastic-coated fork. I thought about asking the security guy if he really thought I was going to gum the pilot to death, or try to injure him with something designed for a small person with shockingly poor motor skills. But the security guy in question was carrying a machine gun and didn’t look like he had a sense of humor, and I sucked it up.

What with the economic downturn I’m a bit out of practice with business travel, and found myself this morning getting into the wrong security line at SFO—I was in at First Class instead of Coach. I had a pretty good idea where the right line was, but I held out some vain hope that if I engaged the guard she would take pity on me for being lost and would allow me in the First Class line. The trouble was, I couldn’t come up with the word “Coach” and was having trouble finishing my sentence. All I could manage was, “Excuse me, do you know where the line is for the, uh … unwashed masses?” I hoped the guard would have a sense of humor. She didn’t. She gave me a resolutely dour and humorless stare, and didn’t even answer my question.

A couple other guys were just getting into the line and overheard me, and one of them chuckled. At first I was gratified that somebody thought I was funny. But then as he said “It’s over there,” he gestured toward the coach line a little too emphatically, slicing the air with his arm as he pointed, like a referee. I realized his chuckle was actually born of the little extra pleasure I’d given him in the exclusivity of his First Class status. The physical distance between the lines is like the curtain in the airplane between First Class and Coach, separating the wheat from the chaff, and he seemed to enjoy banishing me from his line. I’ll confess I was slightly irked, but only slightly. After all, at least he did point me in the right direction.

As I started on my sad Coach-class way, the security guard finally spoke. “You have a boarding pass?” she asked. I produced it. “You can use this line,” she said. And so I found myself in the rarified elite line, right behind the First Class guy. He looked startled to see me. “They let you in the First Class line?” he blurted out, before (I suppose) realizing how petty this sounded. I told him it must be my lucky day.

That was the high point of my airport experience. From there things unraveled predictably enough. Unlike last time I flew, I did manage to remember the quart-sized Ziploc bag for my toiletries (if we American travelers carry our deodorant and toothbrushes in anything but a quart-sized Ziploc, then the terrorists have already won), but I forgot to take my laptop out of the case and was roundly chastised at the X-ray. I boarded the plane and in stashing my stuff realized I’d forgotten the cord to my headphones. The flight attendant said over the loud speaker, “After stowing your bags please step out of the aisle and let life pass you by.” No, that’s not what she said, but it’s what I heard as I smashed myself into my seat, knees around my ears because the airlines would rather have nobody to assist the crew at the Exit Row than to give these superior seats away for free.

But then I took a moment to relive my little victory at the security line. I’d really turned the tables on the established social order, hadn’t I? Part of what those First Class travelers are paying for is their separation from the likes of me, and yet—mere moments after snubbing me—this elite guy had to share a line with me. How did it happen? Perhaps the security guard, already beaten down by carrying out arbitrary procedures all day, decided her First Class passenger was just a bit too smug in directing me to my lowly place.

Tax Day

Every year at tax time, and of course at other times as well, we hear about simplifications to the tax code. I’ve generally assumed these were a ruse for the rich (damn them) to pass more of the tax burden on to the likes of me, and I’m all for adding a few new line items if I can save a bit of money. But this year I finally came around and have thought of several improvements to the code.

Software

The software should be free, and it should be made by the WordPerfect folks in Orem, Utah, who wrote the last software of any kind that actually worked. Tech support should be live, and free. I had a problem with my Intuit product this year, and was astonished, and then immediately thereafter totally resigned, to learn that their tech support is e-mail only and has a 48-hour turnaround, which is absurd for a) any Californian (state motto: “we don’t have time for this crap”), and b) anybody waiting until the last minute to do his taxes (i.e., everybody). My e-mail to Intuit included the sentence “I am livid,” which is usually a sign that a company has earned a lifetime boycott by me.

To describe how the IRS software free tech support should work, I’ll cite a real-life example: my own phone call the other day to Electrodyne, makers of a modem line tap I occasionally use at work. To give you an idea how outdated this instrument is, the “high speed” version goes all the way up to 2400 baud. (Note to Homeland Security blog eavesdroppers: a modem line tap isn’t as sinister as it sounds. It’s no more dangerous than a TCP/IP sniffer. Now go look up “sniffer” on Wikipedia and stop bothering me.) I went to the manufacturer’s website because I feared I had the wrong power supply for my instrument, and within moments found a toll-free number listed. A guy picked up on the first ring, and he sounded like just the kind of crusty old veteran who could be of great help, which he was. “I’ve got a 2400A modem line tap and I need to know the current for its power supply,” I said. He didn’t even take time to scratch his head. “That will run about 800, 900 milliamperes,” he said. (You think Microsoft is that savvy? Huh. Their spell-check dictionary doesn’t even have “milliamperes.”) I told him what I had (700 milliamps), and he asked the voltage. He said I’d be fine. Done. IRS: take note. This is called customer service.

SASE

Unfortunately, on the day I finished my taxes, which was not coincidentally April 15, I’d had a hard workday, squinting at my modem line tap output on another venerable device, the Navtel datascope. The Navtel is more reliable than, say, a modern Blackberry, which due to an inscrutable user interface did a unilateral spell-check substitution recently such that I accidentally e-mailed a colleague to ask, “Do you still have a navel?” Fortunately, she was cool about it.

The Navtel’s screen is small and blurry to begin with, and the data on it very hard to decipher. I’ve added some extra blur to this picture to show you how it looked to me by 4:30 p.m., and because there could be sensitive data on there. (Note to Homeland Security blog auditors: see? Totally illegible. Now go bother somebody else.)

So anyway, I was already mentally fried when I went to finish of my last-minute tax effort. I managed to pull everything together, only to not have any luck finding an envelope. I looked everywhere, becoming increasingly annoyed. I finally decided to stop at Safeway on the way to the copy shop and get some COM10s there. Why was I even having to do this? The IRS should send us self-addressed stamped envelopes, and serve refreshments. My sense that this should be so only increased when I got to Safeway and discovered they don’t even sell envelopes. You can buy a three-hole punch there, and thirty different kinds of toothbrush, and chemical products for the home that probably shouldn’t be allowed to exist, but no envelopes. I’m this close to boycotting them for life.

Copy Shop Fee Holiday

On April 15, the government should subsidize tax return photocopying at copy shops nationwide. This would reward good corporate citizens like me who don’t do their personal photocopying at work. Now, I know it seems petty, me complaining about the $1.96 I spent on two envelopes and fifteen photocopies, but it’s not about the money. It’s about the time. I went to a small family-run copy shop, and they couldn’t make change from my twenty. (I’m not quite shameless enough to put $1.96 on my Visa card.) The register drawer didn’t have any fives or tens, and neither did the cashier. The owner, or maybe it was her dad, didn’t either. The manager, or maybe her uncle, finally dug out his wallet and produced the missing bills, and I was out of there in under ten minutes. But just under.

Coordinated Government Websites

Okay, the IRS is a government entity, as is the US Postal Service, and they work hand-in-hand to supply tax forms and accept completed returns. Why don’t their websites support each other? The first thing you see on either website around tax time should be a field where you type in your zip code (which surely usps.gov knows all about), so the website can tell you the hours, on April 15, of your local post office, and the location of the nearest post office that’s open late. I thought about rewriting the tax code such that every post office in America is open late, but that might bankrupt this country since every town in America, including Oscuro, Colorado (population zero), has a post office. Anyway, I wasn't exactly in a rush to get to the post office, figuring it would be open late, this being Tax Day and all.

I showed up at my local post office branch at exactly 5:01 p.m. Imagine my delight when I was greeting by a uniformed postal employee at the door. Coffee, sir? Doughnut? Now imagine my crushing disappointment when I learned that he was standing there simply to bar me from entering. He told me they were closed. I said I just had two envelopes to drop off and could he please, please take me in? His reply? “Sorry, we can’t. There’s only one guy working back there.” I almost pointed out that there would actually be two guys working back there, if he’d simply lock the door behind me and report to his post, but I’ve learned never to try to reason with government employees, at least the kind who interface with the unwashed masses like me. At least I got him to tell me where the closest post office was that would still be open.

Dammit to Hell

So that is how I spent an hour and a half driving around the tangled headphone cord of highways that tie Albany and Berkeley to Oakland, and within the screwy yarn-ball of Oakland itself. Of course I got lost, totally lost. I’m hopeless to begin with, even when I haven’t spent a day staring at network protocol violations and have had my anger turned up to 11 by a postal employee. While I drove I had to listen to a radio report about how Obama has vowed to simplify our tax code. I hope he reads this blog.

When I finally reached the post office I didn’t even see it, because it was just too huge for me to make out, like an ant trying to identify an elephant from an inch away. I blew right by, as I only eventually discovered. When I got to the port of Oakland and the giant cranes that inspired the Imperial Walkers in “The Empire Strikes Back,” I turn around and headed back. (Otherwise I’d have ended up in the Pacific Ocean.) On the return trip I spotted the post office by the protesters out front, whom I considered running over with my car. How idiotic is it to protest taxation, when your audience is here to get tax dollars back?

I suppose if I were really clever I’d recommend a tax code enhancement that would keep me from getting lost, but I’m not that clever, and it’s been a long day.

Refreshments and Entertainment

Tax Day could be a really fun experience for Americans, almost like Cinco de Mayo or Carnaval, if the government made a little extra effort to liven up the post offices where so many Americans drop off their tax returns. At first I thought this was what they’d done, as a nice spread of coffee and pastries was set out on card tables, but this was only for the extra employees they’d hired to stand alongside the road and accept envelopes from passing motorists. (Yes, California is the king of the drive-thru.) Standing in the long line, I wished for something to break the ice among all the taxpayers. Music? A live band? The Las Vegas airport has a nice take on the boring security checkpoint video: they made their own, with real, famous actors and Vegas performers, some in silly costumes. The IRS and the Post Office could team up and make this American Tax Day institution more like a happy hour.

The highlight of my wait was when a woman came and asked if this was the line for dropping off tax returns. During my snottier teen and college years, I’d have been tempted to deliver some witty and rude comeback designed to convey what I’d have felt was the stupidity of her question. Instead, I basked in the realization that I’m not actually the most hapless person on the planet. This more modern reaction is called wisdom.

There was actually one other guy there who was less savvy than I. He was wandering around asking people in line for the address to mail his tax return to. (See “SASE” above.)

Corn Cob

On a recent ride with my bike club, I got some ribbing about this blog from my friend Marty. (Marty can give me all the flak he wants, because the first words I ever spoke to him, back in’88, were “I have no respect for you,” in a heated moment after he beat me in a bike race.) Apparently referring to my tendency to blog at great length on trivial topics, Marty suggested I write a blog about corn cobs. Corn cob, in this context, refers to a rather small bicycle gear cluster in which each cog is just one tooth bigger than the next. This gives a racer great precision--but no range--in choosing a gear to pedal in.

"You could write an essay about each cog," Marty teased, "or better yet, you could write a sonnet, an ode to the corn cob!" So, here it is.


Ode to the Corn Cob

When I was nine I had a ten-speed bike.
I loved it, though it suffered from the curse ooooooooooo2
Of tires not as thin as I'd have liked,
And of a spoke protector, even worse.

We didn't call them spoke protectors though,
As "pie plate" better mocked how big they were. ooooooio6
They caused the largest cog to seem to grow--
A mean illusion, awful to endure.

A bigger cog meant lower gearing, see;
The stuff of weaker boys, embarrassing. ooooooooooooo10
We longed for smaller clusters, finally free
Of pie plates. Lack of metal was our bling.

At age eighteen I realized my dream:
I ran a straight-block corn cob, plate-less, clean. oooooo14


oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 
Footnotes & Commentary

Line 1: Bike

I got the bike when I was nine. It was a Fuji Junior, bright red, and it’s still on the road today, now piloted by my nephew Jake. That’s him (with his mom), on the very Fuji of my childhood, in the photo above. This was my first bike: my brothers and I were unique in a) being pretty late in getting our first bikes, and b) getting ten-speeds long before any other kids. What a glorious day that was when I had my very own bike to ride and no longer had to run alongside my brothers and their friends as they rode up and down our neighborhood streets.

I really did love that Fuji, and defended its honor passionately when my brothers called it the “Fudgie” and told me that it was made by “Fuji Heavy Industries.” My brothers also loved to tease me about my bike being called “Junior,” as opposed to their coolly-named Motobecane Nomades. It’s hard to imagine why I was so ashamed of “Junior,” but clearly I was, because at some point I actually painted over the decals with red touch-up paint. (As for Fuji Heavy Industries, they don’t make bikes. They make Subarus.)

The bike had Suntour shifters and derailleurs, which I noticed when with great delectation I examined every last feature of the bike. Suntour seemed like a really cool word. I didn’t grasp at the time that it was brand of component; I thought Suntour was a sub-brand of the bike, as though Fuji was the make and Junior was the model and Suntour was the sub-model, like they do with cars now (e.g., Honda Acura Integra Basilica XLS, Sport Series). I remember riding up and down the block joyously singing “Sun-TOO-or BYE-sick-UL!”

Missing from the Fuji now are the toe-clips. I know I had them because—like everyone—when I first got them I kept forgetting to loosen the straps, tipping over again and again.

Line 2: Cursed

The bike was not cursed—I was. I wasn’t alone, of course; also cursed was every other kid who was painfully aware of the uncoolness of his bike based on its not resembling a pro racing bike in every detail. Kids—heck, humans—make a lot of trouble for themselves scrutinizing everything and placing it within a rigorous, heartless hierarchy like this.

Line 3: Tires

The original tires were 24 x 1¼ inch. (The small wheel diameter made it possible for the frame to be a reasonable 18 inches while still allowing me to straddle the bike.) I dreamed of tires that were only 1 1/8 inch wide, which is what my brothers had by then. Oh, how they lorded that eighth of an inch over me. I became fairly obsessed about it. Eventually my brother Geoff crashed his bike (I believe he was riding at night and hit a brick) and totaled his front wheel. Unable to find a replacement 24-inch wheel, my dad bought a 600C, which had an aluminum alloy rim instead of steel and was thus much better. Not wishing to reward Geoff for his foolishness, my dad put the 600C wheel on my bike and Geoff got my old wheel. This was all well and good until the mandatory bike shop safety inspection a couple weeks before my first bike race, the Red Zinger Mini Classic, in 1981. My bike failed the inspection due to worn-out tires, and the shop only carried the 600C tire in the 1 3/8 inch width! Man, that is really fat. The mechanic lectured me at length about how tire width really doesn’t matter and skinny tires won’t make you go faster. His unspoken assumption was that aesthetics shouldn’t matter to a kid—but why not? I guarantee his tires were nice and skinny! To my great relief, my dad found a 600C x 1¼ inch tire in Denver for me.

Line 6: Mockery

Not all the mockery was in the direction of pie plates in general. Much of it was directed at my pie plate in particular, which my brothers convinced me was even larger than theirs. That my bike was different from theirs singled it out for all kinds of contempt. It didn’t matter that their French bikes had those awful plastic Simplex shifters and derailleurs. To this very day, despite having spent his teen years as a bike mechanic wailing about the awfulness of French bikes, my brother Bryan won’t concede that my Fuji was better. “Are you kidding? Never!” he says. “The Motobecanes were elusive, romantic French bicycles, with light-weight derailleurs and wedge-shaped tires! I remember loving that Nomade like it was a girl. Your bike was made by a Heavy Industries factory in Japan, mine by French people, who made racing bicycles, and knew about love and stuff.” My dad had bought the Motobecanes at Basque Sports in Boulder, and every time we drove by the store in the car, we’d all chant its name, both in homage and because it was such a hard name to pronounce. The “–sque” butting up against the “S” in “Sports” created a hissing effect that, since we couldn’t avoid it, we ultimately accentuated: “Basques-ssk-ssk sports-ssk-ssk.” (Nobody ever knew or cared where my Fuji came from.)

Line 8: Awful to endure

It wasn’t just the size of the pie plates that rankled us. I couldn’t find room within the sonnet to address the issue of pie plate rattling, so I’ll mention it here. Mine didn’t give me much trouble, but my brothers’ pie plates rattled like crazy. Finally Geoff couldn’t take it anymore and figured out a solution: he took a length of surgical tubing, maybe half a centimeter in diameter, sliced it lengthwise down the middle, and ran it along the edge of the pie plate, so it was held in place by the spokes. This worked for awhile, though the tubing tended to peel off eventually. He solved this by sewing it on there with kite string or dental floss or something. Eventually the tubing turned yellow and brittle in the sun, making the pie plate look more ghastly than ever. As you can see from the photo above, the pie plate on my old Fuji is going strong. I doubt it has ever occurred to Jake to despise it.

Line 9: Gearing

It seems intuitively obvious to me, as it did when I was a kid, that a larger cog indicates personal weakness. When I really think about this, I see that math is involved, and it wasn’t until I read my sonnet to my wife, Erin, that I realized how much I take for granted when it comes to the proportions of bike components. Imagine: she can look at a large freewheel and not pity the bike owner at all! But then, she didn’t have, as a pre-teen, a gear chart taped to her stem, showing which front/rear gear combination represented the next highest or lowest gear. Bryan, at fourteen or so, actually wrote a computer program to plot the gear inches on a logarithmic scale. Gear inches refers to the number of teeth on the chainwheel up front, multiplied by the wheel diameter in inches, divided by the number of teeth on the rear cog. Any teenager I rode with then knew by heart not only that, say, 52 x 13 was a 108-inch gear, but exactly how fast that gear would propel him at top cadence. Bikers were nerdier then, I think.

When I started racing, my brothers helped me strip down my bike, ditching the reflectors, replacing the stem-mounted shifters with down-tube ones, and removing the so-called “chicken” or “suicide” levers, those brake-lever extensions that made it possible to brake while riding on the tops of the handlebars. I distinctly remember Geoff, at age thirteen or so, sawing off the chicken-lever stubs with a hacksaw so the bolts would sit flush. We/they also removed the chain-guard on the crankset, which now strikes me as a step down aesthetically (it was a giant, pretty, chrome thing, and I remember well how often I had a grease print of the chainring on my pant leg after the chain-guard was gone). The rear mech is a Suntour V-GT Luxe, which my dad installed along with a larger freewheel to give me—you guessed it—lower gearing, which of course was a bit humiliating. Why me? Was I such the runt that I alone needed lower gearing? Oddly enough, the larger freewheel actually made the pie plate look smaller—but just try telling my brothers that. The bike never did shift very well after that “upgrade,” which is why in races I’d often get dropped in either the highest gear or the lowest. This doesn’t mean I didn’t get dropped when using other gears—I mostly used those two gears, and always got dropped.

Line 14: Straight-block

When I upgraded from the Fuji to my first Miyata, I went from a 32-tooth large cog in back to a 28, and I was thrilled at the sleeker, racier look. It still had a pie plate, but it was aluminum, and not as shiny, thus less conspicuous. A couple of years later I bought some wheels from my brother Geoff that had the same 28-tooth cog, but with no spoke protector. That was a huge step forward; I think my ego doubled that day. At age fourteen I started racing in the United States Cycling Federation races, where your smallest cog couldn’t be smaller than 17 teeth—far lower maximum gearing than I’d been riding in the Mini Zinger. (The idea was to save the youngsters’ knees.) It was practical to run a straight-block freewheel with that limitation; even with only six cogs, you could do 17-18-19-20-21-22, with 22 being a totally reasonable gear for getting up just about any hill in the Boulder area.

The next year I moved up an age group and was allowed to have a 15-tooth cog, and I went to the new Suntour 7-speed freewheels, and had an almost-straight-block of 15-16-17-18-19-20-22. Still, a 22 was the freewheel cog equivalent of sensible shoes, and I wanted something more bold. Finally, I switched to Shimano gear cassettes and for the first time could easily create custom combinations for specific races; for example, if I was racing with the adults I could use a 12-tooth cog. At last, I could build the highly impractical gearing combinations that fully satisfied my vanity: for criteriums or bike club photo-shoots I’d set up a 12-17. (Shimano wasn’t doing 7-speed yet.) What a rush that was as a teenager, to look down and see not a giant cluster with a humiliating pie plate, but this tiny little freewheel, a man’s freewheel, a svelte cluster fit for a real racing bike, and above all a highly visible manifestation of my strength. It was like the bicycle equivalent of giant muscles. It never occurred to me that to most people, perhaps even to you, it’s just a bunch of damn sprockets and whatnot that don’t really mean anything.

So did I outgrow all this macho nonsense? Of course not. I still snort at pie plates (though they’re made of plastic now). After a couple of months of dating Erin (back in ’92) I quietly removed the pie plate from her mountain bike. (She never noticed.) As for gearing, the modern-day equivalent of a giant rear cog is of course the triple front chainwheel, which accomplishes the same thing (i.e., addresses the same weakness). A triple requires a longer derailleur cage, which I equate—with a shudder—to that old V-GT Luxe on the Fuji. If a friend, new to cycling, asks me about triples, I’ll tell him they make sense given the hills around Berkeley. But a triple for my own bike? Are you kidding? Never!
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Easy Camping Recipes

Burgers Tartare

1 pound grass-fed beef, ground
6 sourdough rolls
Heinz ketchup
Mustard
Sliced tomatoes, pickles, onions
Ice

Before you leave for the camping trip, slice the tomatoes, pickles, and onions. The pickles will need slicing because they’ll be the whole-cucumber kind, and good ones. The onions should be sliced so thin you could practically read through them. This guideline always applies, but especially when you’re camping, and overconsumption of raw onions goes from “annoying” to “dire” within the confines of a tent. (Slicing these things ahead of time might be the one thing you get right on your camping trip.)

This is a great recipe for that first night at a hike-in campground when you’re exhausted and it’s totally dark by the time you get your tent set up. Say, for example, you tried to use a bike trailer but didn’t know that half a mile of the 1½-mile hike is along the beach, where a fiendishly strong, cold wind is blowing and the deep sand makes it almost impossible to push the bike along (much less ride it), and suppose also that the trailer breaks before you get to the trail and it takes another hour to drag the lurching, tipping thing to camp, and that you left the headlamp in the car and can’t really see what you’re doing, and that the wind is howling through the campsite, blowing steel plates off the table, and from the tent your children are whining about the cold and one says, “All my memories of this trip will be negative.” This is a perfect night for burgers tartare.

Separate the ground beef into six balls and smash them angrily into a large frying pan. Ignite a burner on a large heavy Coleman camp stove, setting the flame so that the burner gasps and wheezes. As the burgers cook, dink with the stove a lot, pumping more air into it and wondering what the hell is wrong with it. When by dim flashlight you can see that the patties have shrunken a bit, tear a roll in half and submerge it in the fat in the pan. Eat this. Assemble the rest of the burgers , not forgetting the condiments. (Note: it is never okay to serve a hamburger without sliced tomatoes, onions, and pickles—no hardship excuses this.)

Halfway through your first burger, shine the flashlight on it and note how raw and red the beef is beyond the thin membrane of cooked exterior. Note also that your entire family is making yummy noises. Finish this burger and eat another. Delicious. You have introduced your family to burgers tartare. (Ssssh, don’t tell!)

Smordités

1 bag marshmallows
1 large Hershey bar
1 box graham crackers

This is a handy variation on the traditional s’mores recipe. Obviously, the enduring popularity of the s’more stems from its alignment with the slow food movement, but nutritionists are now questioning the health effects of charred marshmallows and dirty sticks. Meanwhile, our global warming crisis has become sufficiently dire that environmentalists are now becoming critical of that favorite camping institution, the campfire. Not sure where you come down on this one? If it’s too cold to even think about gathering firewood, and too windy to light a match, and too dark to see if your campsite even has a fire pit, the decision is obvious—but just try telling your kids there won’t be any s’mores.

Preparation couldn’t be simpler. Thrust a graham cracker, a square of chocolate, and a marshmallow into the hand that extends greedily from the tent. Enjoy.

Chocolate pancakes

Pancake mix
Water
1 large Hershey bar
Cooking oil

One of the challenging things about camping is that even if you thought you brought enough supplies to sink a ship (or break a bike trailer), you’re bound to have forgotten something. Say, for example, maple syrup. Voilà! A new recipe is born.

Prepare the pancake batter according to the directions. Oil the pan liberally. If you run out of fuel halfway through the first pancake, no problem—you are now actually glad you schlepped in that extra gallon can of fuel. Feed the botched pancake to the raccoons and start over.

After flipping the pancake, break some pieces off the chocolate bar and place them on the top. When the corners of the chocolate pieces start to get rounded and the text of “HERSHEY” begins to warp, serve the pancake. (Click to enlarge photo.)

Instruct the eager diner to spread the chocolate around with the underside of her fork. Exquisite.

Little Star vs. Big Zach's

Before I begin, here’s a picture of a slice of Zachary’s pizza, in case you haven’t seen this most excellent fare before, or haven’t seen it in way too long. The point of the bike computer in this photo is that I had leftover Zach’s waiting for me at home, along with my darling daughters, after an 80-mile ride. Nirvana.


The Contenders

Little Star Pizza in San Francisco has been around for about four years, but I’ve been eating at Zachary’s Pizza, in Berkeley, for almost twenty. I only heard about Little Star recently, from my friend Mike, who—inevitably—compared it to Zach’s. The comparison is predictable because both places serve a deep-dish Chicago-style pizza. The surprise was that my friend said Little Star is actually better. This struck me a bit like saying Curad is better than Band-Aid, or Puffs is better than Kleenex, or the Safeway-branded salt is better than Morton’s, or David is better than Goliath. (Okay, I guess that last one has actually been established.)

As only a Bay Area foodie can, Mike described his latest culinary observation in great detail, explaining the problem with Zach’s that Little Star has putatively overcome. “You see, Zach’s originally put the pie in the oven without the tomatoes on top,” he said, “and let the top crust bake a bit before taking it back out and adding the tomatoes. But eventually they got lazy and started adding the tomatoes right away, so the top layer of crust never actually gets baked. You don’t notice, because you think the top layer is just cheese. But this is why you always feel so bloated after eating Zach’s … the uncooked dough is, like, rising in your stomach.” Intrigued, I resolved to dissect the next Zach’s pizza I got. But when you’re eating Zach’s, or at least when I am, it’s impossible to remember to do this—the sheer sensual delight of the pizza overpowers all thought. I always remember this theory, though, when I’m getting my Zach’s hangover. The idea of pizza that’s even tastier than Zach’s, and easier on my digestive system, was highly intriguing.

I went to chowhound.com to see what its foodie readers had to say. I expected a spirited debate, because besides eating and writing about food, bickering seems to be one of the things chowhounders (and other web bulletin-boarders) like best. For example, when I looked up China Village, my favorite local Chinese spot, I happened upon the thread of a seemingly innocent question—“Do they use MSG?”—that provoked a long argument about whether MSG belonged in Chinese food. Some argued that Chinese food cannot be considered authentic unless it has MSG. Another claimed that it was the Americans who introduced MSG. Another said the Chinese use it wisely but the Americans, by overusing it, had given it a bad name. And on and on. Oddly, nobody answered the original question. I happen to know that China Village does use MSG, but can withhold it in most of the dishes. I posted this response, and got a grateful reply from the original inquirer: “Thanks, I was starting to wonder if anybody was going to answer my question!”

Oddly, nobody on chowhound disagreed with anybody else on the Little Star vs. Zach’s comparison. Also surprising was the unanimous conclusion that Little Star was actually better. Out of twenty comments on the latest “Zach’s vs. Little Star” thread, not a single person came out in favor of Zach’s. I found this both thrilling and disturbing. When you love a product like I love Zach’s, the prospect of something even better seems almost too good to be true. Which brings me to the disturbing part: could it be that the first few pro-Little-Star postings were so emphatic and imperious that the Zach’s supporters ran and hid? Is it possible that chowhound is being taken over by food Nazis? (I’ve wondered this before, having come across paranoid disclaimers like “haven’t tried it, I am ashamed to admit” and “don’t hate me but I like….” If you search on “shame” or “embarrass” on chowhound you’ll get endless hits, as though a fear of unpopular declarations has become rampant.)

I resolved to give Little Star try. It took me awhile to finally get over there. Though I work in San Francisco, Little Star isn’t open for lunch, and dinner with my family (on the East Bay) is usually the highlight of my day. Finally, a few nights ago, all the planets lined up and I met up at Little Star with some old buddies from Santa Barbara. What follows is my review of Little Star, especially as it compares to Zachary’s. Perhaps my friends from out of town, who haven’t had Zach’s, could review Little Star on its own merits; I myself could not, any more than you could describe Greg LeMond’s performance in the ’85 or ’86 Tour de France without mentioning Bernard Hinault.

The Ambiance

Generally, I’m not a big ambiance guy. If the food is great, I generally don’t care much about the surroundings. There are exceptions. If I have friends from out of town, eating at Skates on the Bay, with its view of the Golden Gate Bridge, is an easy call. My favorite Boulder restaurant, Café Gondolier, has suffered in every one of its many relocations, though the food has been the same at each. The Taqueria Cancun on Market Street is a bit too sketchy for me: from my table I was unpleasantly aware of the disinfectant fumes from the bathroom, mingling grotesquely with the second- and third-hand pot smoke from the dudes at the next table. (By contrast, the Mission Street Taqueria Cancun, with its long picnic-style tables and occasional live music from wandering panhandlers, is an exquisite dining environment.) I went to Little Star expecting to care only about the pizza, but right away realized that their ambiance is important, too.

Little Star (I went to the one in the Western Addition, at 846 Divisadero) feels like a neighborhood place. It’s very dark in there—not pizza-parlor-dark like Shakey’s but pub-dark. (I’m not exactly sure what the difference is.) There’s a curtain around the door to the bathroom, which seems just a bit jerry-rigged. And there’s a bar. (I was very pleased at this, because the first of my friends showed up fifteen minutes after I did, and our whole party wasn’t assembled for another hour.) I’m no expert on restaurant bars, but this one suited me fine: enough stools, good (or good enough) beer selection, and a bartender who was somehow authentic (I’m not sure how to explain this, other than he was clearly not what a TGI Friday’s waitress is). The small, crowded tables have little lamps. Like many restaurants, Little Star has low-key art on the walls, so far in the background I scarcely noticed it and cannot recall it in any detail. The overwhelming impression is of the sheer bustle of the place as crowds of people find their spots and tuck in to their food. Sitting there waiting for my friends, I could have been in any small San Francisco restaurant; only a “Little *” license plate over the bar (their star looks better than this), and a simple logo on the waiters’ t-shirts, gave the name of the place.

The upscale retail neighborhoods I’ve seen that Zach’s has restaurants in—College Ave in Rockridge and Solano Ave in Berkeley—are like clones of each other, so for Zach’s to capture a real local feel is a tricky matter to begin with. It doesn’t help that both restaurants (being almost identical themselves) suffer from a bit too much polish, especially where promotion of the Zachary’s brand is concerned. In fairness, there are only three Zach’s locations, so for corporate feel it’s a far cry from Pizza Hut. Zach’s doesn’t have its logo on every cup, napkin, and pizza box, but it does go out of its way to remind you, at every turn, where you are. Most of the walls are covered with large framed paintings, created and donated by amateur artists (many of them children) as totems of appreciation for their beloved pizzeria. While there is great variety among these paintings, they all say Zachary’s and they invariably show pictures of the product. Then there’s one wall covered with best-of awards seemingly from every magazine and newspaper in existence. Even the menu has quotations from glowing reviews, as if to prevent the diner from, at the brink of ordering, suddenly changing his mind and deciding to eat elsewhere.

This self-referential, almost solipsistic approach to décor gets a little old after a couple of decades. It reminds me a bit of the big sign on the approach to the Napa valley saying, “Welcome to the world-famous Napa Valley wine country!” Would you ever see that in Champagne, or Burgundy, or any other European wine-growing region? Of course not. Oddly, I only became fully aware of Zach’s overdone self-promotion when I looked around Little Star and saw how understated and casual it is in comparison. (That said, Zach’s, which is brightly lit, quieter, and much more spacious than Little Star, is far more kid-friendly. I imagined taking my kids to Little Star, and could envision Lindsay hiding under a table, sucking her fingers and twirling her hair.)

The Pizza

Okay, at long last let’s talk about the food. The first thing I’ll say is that Little Star has a great thin-crust pizza. We got their Italian Combo, which has white onions (sliced super thin), bell peppers (not an overwhelming amount), pepperoni, salami, and (this took a minute to figure out) pepperoncinis. It was a gorgeous pizza and I just wanted to look at it awhile before tearing in. It looked a bit like a pizza with fresh herbs I once had at Chez Panisse (which was of course even more splendid, as it had better be). I’ll say more about the thin pizza later, but it wasn’t the main attraction. I didn’t go to Little Star, nor do I go to Zach’s, for the thin crust style. To me, that’s a bit like going to a rock concert to hear the warm-up band.

A moment later, the two deep dish pizzas arrived. (Yes, we ordered three large pizzas for five of us. The waiter warned us that would be much food, which would normally be good advice. What he couldn’t know is that for all intents and purposes, I can eat an infinite amount of pizza. At the end of this meal, it took all the discipline I could muster not to finish off the last two slices—one thick, one thin—that I’d promised to bring home to my wife.) I took a close look at the tomato-covered pies. So familiar, yet so other, like the bearded parallel-universe Spock on the “Star Trek” episode “Mirror, Mirror.”

As with a Zach’s deep-dish pizza, the diameter was not vast. The Little Star large is purportedly 12 inches, though this looked a bit bigger than that. The overall impression is of serious heft. As with Zach’s, these pies are thick, at least an inch deep, and seriously dense. Spread over the top you have stewed tomatoes. Below that, the cheese and everything else, like the pizza equivalent of a lasagne. One style was the Classic, which had sausage, green peppers, onions, and mushrooms (which is exactly what the Zach’s Special has on it, suggesting this pie was designed to go head-to-head with the incumbent). The other deep dish pizza was the Little Star, which (I can tell you after cheating and looking at the menu online) had spinach, ricotta, feta, mushrooms, garlic, and onions. The way these pizzas are built, of course, you couldn’t pick one or the other out of a line-up until you taste them.

As similar as Little Star’s deep-dish is to Zach’s, you could never confuse one for the other just looking at them. The color of the tomatoes is different—Little Star a bit more on the orange side of red, Zach’s more on the pink end. (Of course, it’s so dark in Little Star everything seemed more sepia than Kodachrome, which may have heightened this perception.) The rim of crust on the pizza before me was a bit darker than a Zach’s—not as though it was baked longer, but as though the dough had been darker to begin with. Not whole wheat, of course, which would have been a travesty (nutrition be damned, I’d almost rather have wheat germ as a topping than in there spoiling my crust). Cutting into my first slice confirmed that this crust was different—it sort of crunched under my fork.

So, the first bite: wow. First of all, Little Star pizza is great. Comparisons aside, nobody needs to worry about getting a good meal at either of these two pizzerias. Mozzarella, fresh sausage, green peppers, onions, garlic, tangy tomatoes—what’s not to like? Second of all, this pizza really is different. Little Star, though clearly influenced by Zach’s, obviously didn’t just try to clone its pizza and differentiate itself solely on atmosphere and location. The biggest difference is that crust. It’s crunchier, and grainier, almost gritty. Where Zach’s uses white flour and apparently lots of butter, Little Star uses corn meal and perhaps more olive oil. Little Star has a slight suggestion of Mom’s corn bread, while Zach’s is flaky, like a French pastry or a pie shell. Yet even after the countless Zach’s pizzas I’ve eaten since about 1990, this Little Star pizza didn’t seem foreign or strange—it seemed oddly familiar. It took about a second to realize what it reminded me of: Pizzeria Uno.

I’m not talking about Uno Chicago Grill, that nationwide chain that both exploits and sullies the brand of the original Pizzeria Uno in Chicago. The crust at any of the chain restaurants is more like Pizza Hut’s: airy, crispy, and greasy, sitting in a little puddle of oil in the pan. I won’t bag on it, because it’s a guilty pleasure (I love all pizza, even bad pizza, even Totino’s frozen), but the strip-mall version is of course nothing like what I had once at the original Uno in Chicago. That place seems utterly uninfluenced by what its distant, sellout cousins have wrought. It has a grainy, crunchy cornmeal crust. If the original Uno really is the authority on true Chicago-style pizza, than Little Star wins out as the most authentic, hands-down, on its crust alone.

I don’t want to give the impression that my entire focus during this meal was comparing Little Star to Zach’s. That’s not it at all—I was hanging out with old friends and drinking beer and eating pizza, and enjoying all of this. It probably wasn’t until halfway through, as my pace slowed down a bit and maybe there was a lull in conversation, that I started to ruminate (almost literally) about whether Little Star really is the new gold-standard in West Coast deep dish pizza. And my conclusion eventually dawned on me: presumed authenticity aside, I actually prefer Zach’s. The Little Star cornmeal crust, though very good, was just too dominant, like if Philip Seymour Hoffman showed up in a Vince Vaughn movie.

Maybe I’m just not that sophisticated a pizza-eater—maybe I’m too much in touch with my inner Philistine. In some regards I’m just not ready to let authenticity get in the way of base pleasures: I’ll take a San Francisco Philly cheese-steak, with its onions and peppers and Provolone, over the real Philly cheese-steak with its Velveeta and its total lack of vegetable matter. And I want my Mexican (or perhaps I should say Mexican-American) food with cheese, regardless of whether that’s the way they’d do it in Mexico. As a defense of my new-fangled, irreverent, willfully unenlightened attitude, I’ll remind you that Chicago-style pizza itself is an almost complete departure from the pizza you’d get in Italy (or so I’m told by anybody who’s been there).

Beyond the crust, there are other things about Zach’s deep dish pizza that I like better. The tomatoes are a bit less garlicky, which to my tongue means they’re just right. In other words, I think Little Star overdoes the garlic a bit. Also, the Zach’s tomatoes have a bit clearer, brighter taste (which is how my wife, who also prefers Zach’s, described it). Moving on to the toppings, the sausage at Zach’s is just tastier. Meanwhile, the combination of items in the Little Star combo was a bit too complicated (which is why I had to look at the menu to recall what all was in it). I did notice the feta, because it took the pizza from being on the verge of over-salty (like Zach’s) to perhaps just slightly over the edge.

The thin pizza at Little Star, on the other hand, was just as delicious as it looked. The pepperoncinis were a clever touch (the pulpy, seedy mess off the core had been removed) and the crust was thin, not bready, and captured the perfect combination of crispy and chewy. Though I have no problem with Zach’s thin pizza, this was clearly better. (That said, for thin crust pizza Lo Coco’s in Berkeley is better than either one, if you ask me.)

The Aftermath

You may recall, though it was awhile ago, that I mentioned my friend’s explanation—raw dough—for the uncomfortable bloat brought on by Zach’s pizza. That discomfort alone might justify switching to a new pizzeria. So it’s time to answer the question: does Little Star let you down easier when you’re trying to digest it all? Has the unfortunate deep dish hangover problem actually been solved?

In a word, no. I’m sorry to say I suffered just as much after eating Little Star as I always do after eating Zach’s. I slept terribly after that meal, getting up throughout the night to drink water, and waking up with all the skin gone from the roof of my mouth. The next morning, my gastrointestinal system wasn’t happy. I’ll probably never know whether this is a result of the salt, the garlic, the acid from the tomatoes, the sheer richness of the ingredients, the beer, or some combination of these. Of course it doesn’t help that I eat about 5,000 calories worth of pizza at a sitting. (A friend once said, “I want front-row seats at your autopsy.”)

The only way I know of to mitigate the Zach’s hangover is to eat it for lunch instead of dinner. I seem to eat a bit less this way, and have many hours of being upright and moving around to achieve the digestion-aiding peristalsis we don’t get so much when sleeping. Of course, since Little Star isn’t open for lunch, you’ll just have to pay your dues afterward, unless you’re one of those freaks of nature who can moderate his intake of really, really good pizza.

In Closing

I wonder, given Zach’s popularity, how many others actually like it and are, like me, just too timid to admit this on chowhound. I will freely confess that the scene at Little Star better matches how I’d like to see myself: young, hip, and retro. (Never mind that I’m pushing forty and appreciate a kid-friendly place.) Food aside, I have to wonder if Little Star’s style advantage exerts undue influence on the chowhounders. It’s hard for me to grasp how every single chowhound review is squarely on the side of Little Star, with many heaping vindictive scorn upon a venerable Berkeley institution that, if not actually better than Little Star, ultimately sells a very similar product.

In any event, as good as both these pizzerias are, I wouldn’t dare tout either of them as the real deal to somebody from Chicago. (I made that mistake once before and got totally schooled.) Suffice to say both restaurants are great, and who knows—maybe if I lived on the other side of the Bay I’d develop a taste for Little Star’s crunchy cornmeal crust.

Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Trainer – The Ins and Outs of Indoor Training

Note: I rate this post PG-13 for mild strong language, mild violence, mild drug references, and a mild oblique gang reference. Please use your discretion.

Who are You?

Look, if you’re not interested in bike trainers, just stop right now. I suppose if you’re not really that interested in bike trainers, but have boundless faith that I will make good on my steadfast goal of making you laugh, you could skim this until the “human interest” parts, which will include Technicolor loogies, shameless (and shameful) name-dropping, loud cursing, violent attacks on inanimate objects, and unfair treatment of an animal. But really, if you haven’t ridden a bike indoors and see no reason to start, this post in all likelihood just isn’t for you. Go find something better to do.

Who Am I?

Before I advise you on what trainer to purchase, I should let you know I’m not a world authority on trainers. I’ve only owned four. I’m sure there are bike geeks who have owned many more than that and could go on and on about the features of each. What I’m really out to do with this article is to help you with the other advice you haven’t even asked for: how to decide if you’ll really use a trainer, and how to make the most of it if you do. In fact, since you should really decide first if you really want a trainer before choosing a type, I’ve decided to move the trainer information to Appendix A. And since I can’t have an Appendix A without an Appendix B, I’ve included that as well. I’m not an HTML expert, so you’ll have to scroll down for these appendices instead of clicking here. (See? Does nothing. Sorry. I hope you’re not in a rush.)

Before I get started, here’s a video showing how a stationary trainer can be fun for the whole family. (Not shown: my wife, who is having fun shooting the movie.)




Good Intentions

I got a fortune-cookie fortune once that said, “Hell is paved with good intentions.” Not just the road to Hell, as the old saying goes, but Hell itself. Perhaps it’s true. I picture Hell littered with stationary bikes, Nordic Tracks, dumbbells, Soloflex machines, and exercise balls (not to mention food processors and Crock-Pots). See, before you actually get any use out of a trainer, you have to overcome three serious obstacles: Lack of Gumption; Tolerance of Drudgery; and, the Ravages of Moisture. If you learn how to deal with these, you’ll get plenty of use out of your trainer and be glad you bought it. If, on the other hand, you let one or two of these get the better of you, you’ll wish I’d steered you away from an indoor trainer altogether.

Obstacle One – Lack of Gumption
Few people, I would imagine, have much trouble getting motivated for their first indoor trainer ride. After all, your trainer is an expensive new toy, and you bought the thing for a reason (or for many reasons; snow, rain, gloom of night, and “stealth training” come to mind). But after the harsh reality of that first workout, it’s hard to seriously contemplate ever riding the thing again. After all, riding an indoor trainer is boring, painful, boring, and painful. “Boy, that was a good workout,” you may tell yourself, “and I’m going to ride indoors whenever it’s too [dark, rainy, etc.] to ride.” Many an unrealized good intention was proclaimed with such empty words.

I think there are two basic forms this gumption obstacle can take: one, the general matter of whether you really believe a seasonal indoor training regimen is worth adopting; and two, the specific, immediate matter of how to motivate to ride that thing when you’re tired, or it’s early and cold, or you’re simply dreading what you’re about to do.

For the more general type of gumption challenge, about all I can say to motivate you is that the trainer really works. You can get a really sweet workout in a relatively short amount of time, and your form in the spring won’t be so affected by how wet and cold the winter was. Case in point: when I became a dad in September 2001, I lost out on almost all opportunity to sleep, much less ride my bike. I struggled badly with the transition from normal person to parent. I had very little time to ride, and even less energy. Despite all this, I was determined to ride the Death Ride that July (125 miles, 16,000 feet of climbing, at altitude). Before the big day, I’d managed only twenty-three road rides (fewer than one a week!), totaling a mere 509 miles (vs. my 2,000+ miles of usual pre-Death-Ride training). My longest ride to that point was a whopping 36 miles. But, I’d ridden the trainer 31 times, to which I largely credit my basically appropriate physique and modicum of fitness. This was evidently enough: I did manage to finish that Death Ride. And even more remarkably, my brother Geoff—who lives in rainy Holland—once completed the Death Ride without doing a single actual road ride in preparation. It was all on the trainer.

Attaining the more specific, day-to-day gumption is the harder thing, I think, to overcome. The intellectual mind is adept at contriving lofty resolutions, but when it comes to remembering pain and suffering and tedium, the less dissembling lizard brain is more realistic, and exerts an awful lot of influence over the organism as a whole. Let’s look at the two main ways in which a trainer ride is thwarted: procrastination and bedwetting.

Procrastination: You figure you’ll ride the trainer when you get home from work. You end up working late, either because there’s actually work to be done, or because deep-seated fear of pain and suffering tricks you into pretending there’s work to be done. Or, you get home from work and realize you’re too tired to ride, so you decide, “I’ll do it tomorrow instead, without fail!” (This little subroutine, of course, gets you nowhere.) Or, your buddies talk you into getting a drink after work, and you realize you can’t ride the trainer with any alcohol in your system. Or, you get home and your spouse/other has made a nice dinner or wants to go out. Or, or, or…. Almost anything can short-circuit the mythical evening trainer ride. (The exception that proves the rule is my brother Geoff, whose routine is to ride at like 11:00 at night, which works if you have the strangest lifestyle on Earth and/or don’t mind being terribly, terribly sleep-deprived.)

On the weekend, of course, you can ride at any time of the day, so you bounce from one distraction (kids, hobbies) to another (chores, errands), all the while holding your good intention in the forefront of your mind, until suddenly it’s somehow bedtime and in addition to not having ridden you experience, or at least ought to experience, a bout of self-loathing.

Bedwetting. You realize, through trial and error (see above) or from reading this blog, that the only time of day that will really work for your trainer ride is the early morning, before anybody is awake to waylay you and nothing else is going on that could distract you. So your alarm goes off at 5:30 or 6:00, and you immediately silence it, and then send a foot out from beneath the blankets on a reconnaissance mission, and discover (as on a deep-seated level you’d actually hoped) that it’s cold out there, too cold to even think about getting out of bed, and you let yourself fall back asleep. Or, you actually make it out of bed, pee, realize it’s cold out there, contemplate all the steps that go into setting up the trainer (or “torture rack,” as my brothers and I like to call it), and suffer a crushing failure of will, climbing back into bed hoping sleep will return quickly to release you from a totally appropriate bout of self-loathing. I call this scenario “bedwetting” because if you fall prey to it, you deserve to be called a bedwetter. Consider this getting off easy … there are of course far worse things you could be called (see Appendix B).

I have offered above the only solution I know to the procrastination problem (i.e., ride before dawn, no matter how free your day appears to be). I can suggest three solutions to the bedwetting problem: mise-en-place, caffeine, and the buddy system. My experience has shown that you really need to put in place at least two of these solutions, for every ride, or you’ll manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Mise en place. I’ve borrowed this phrase from the French-originated term for a correctly configured cook’s station in a busy restaurant kitchen. What I am suggesting here is to get the whole trainer setup assembled the night before your ride: the tarp, the trainer, the bike, the codpiece (see below), the headband, the bandana, the shorts, jersey, socks, & shoes, the energy drink, the fan, the tunes, and the heart rate monitor & strap. This achieves two things: it keeps you from stumbling around in the dark the next morning while your spouse/other slumbers, which often ends in “screw this!” and bedwetting; and, it forces you out of bed because you’ll feel like a complete idiot if you end up dismantling the whole mise en place the next morning without having ridden.

Caffeine. How long does it take to ingest caffeine? Note that I didn’t say “coffee.” It could take a long time to brew coffee, and the whole ordeal—hunting around in your kitchen for the beans, the grinder, the filters, the little adapter doohickey for the Mr. Coffee, a clean mug, cream, sugar, etc., all before dawn–could easily lead to “screw this!” and bedwetting. I firmly believe you need to have either a large mug or thermos of coffee setting right there on your bedside table, or even better, a No-Doz. Now, don’t go telling me No-Doz is like a drug, or is somehow unsafe, or whatever. It’s the equivalent of a vente-grande-whatever cup of Starbucks, without the one-block walk, the $4, and the liquid. So here’s what you do. When the alarm goes off, you silence it, sit up, swallow the No-Doz, chase it down with some water, and now—bam!—you’re committed. You can’t fall back asleep now, and your mise en place is, well, en place, so get over to that trainer and start pedaling! (Caffeine works particularly well if you’re following my special un-doping protocol, documented here: http://www.dailypeloton.com/displayarticle.asp?pk=6072.)

The Buddy System. The simplest form of the buddy system is following up with your biking pals about whether or not they rode, and hassling them if they didn’t (the term “bedwetter” is useful here), and letting them return the favor. But that’s not terribly effective by itself, because bedwetters also tend to be enablers; after all, how hard can you be on your pal when you yourself also failed to self-motivate? So the better system is to phone your buddy first thing in the morning, as soon as you’ve consumed your caffeine, to make sure he’s up and ready. I do this two or three times a week with my brother Bryan. Here’s a typical exchange:

Bryan (after a long pause): “Hello?”
Dana: “Bryan? Is that you?”
Bryan (after another long pause): “Hello Dana.”
Dana: “You up?”
Bryan (nothing, just a very long pause; he may have fallen back asleep)
Dana: “Hello?”
Bryan (after another pause): “Yeah.”
Dana: “Are you caffeinated?”
Bryan: “I’m getting there.”
Dana: “So … are you going to do this thing?”
Bryan: “Yeah … I reckon.”
Dana: “Okay. Let’s get ‘er done.”
Bryan: “Okay then. See you later.”

This works at least half the time. Occasionally your indoor training buddy will fall back asleep, and sometimes he will get embroiled in some other activity. So a final technique is to go get on the computer and follow up your call with an instant message: “Why aren’t you on your bike?”

Obstacle Two – Tolerance of Drudgery
Okay, so you’ve bought into the indoor training concept, you have amassed the faith that this is worth doing, and you’ve carved out a swath through the logistical morass that thwarts so many good intentions. That’s great, but it is really only a start. If you don’t get results from your indoor riding regimen, and/or you find the activity far too dull and painful to return to, ride after ride, then your program is bound to be short-lived. The ways I’ve found to deal with this are intensity and entertainment.

Intensity

You cannot log long, slow distance on a trainer. It’s physically impossible, and not just because “distance” implies movement and this is a stationary trainer we’re talking about. My point is, base miles can only be gotten on the road, with pals. Your trainer workout cannot be the cycling equivalent of “My Dinner with Andre.” It has to be the cycling equivalent of Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch.” That is to say, boredom can be thwarted if you turn the ride itself into an act of violence. The sustained nature of your output on a trainer makes it ideal for generating adrenaline and endorphins, if you can just go hard enough. Meanwhile, a really intense workout is bound to do the most good, thus reinforcing the value of the whole enterprise. Beyond caffeine (which has proven benefit during exercise), the key to intensity is measuring your output. And for this you need a heart rate monitor.

You don’t just use the heart rate monitor they way your utilities company uses a gas or electric meter. Your heart rate during the exercise is not a matter of trivia to be looked at after the fact. Think of it more like an applause meter. If your heart rate is below the target zone (this zone being 70-85% of your maximum heart rate), that’s like being booed. If it’s merely within the target zone, that’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but not much; in applause terms this is either nothing or polite clapping such as an bored retiree might do at an amateur theatre production. When you’re above the zone, on the other hand, this imaginary audience is cheering you on. If you can set up an internal feedback loop where you loathe yourself the whole time you’re not above the target zone, you’re on the right track. After five or ten minutes of hammering, the pain should start to recede and you can “float” your heart rate at a pretty high number. You’re still aware of the intensity, however—just like when a dentist is pulling a tooth and there’s this incredible pressure, even if the Novocain masks the pain itself. Thus you’re spared the soul-crushing, seemingly pointless loping along that a low-intensity trainer ride would produce.

Keep in mind, though, that this level of intensity can turn you into a bit of a maniac during the workout. When my kids come down to watch (or more likely to ask for something), I refuse to engage with them, because this causes my heart rate to plummet and my rhythm to get all fouled up. I have been known to yell out, “Go tell your mother to make you breakfast!” or “Go turn on the heater!” (knowing this will get the kids out of my hair as they huddle over the vents for warmth). Once, I saw our cat head into her litter box, and—fearing the kind of hugely stinky defecation that normally clears the room and could be dangerous to someone breathing as hard as I was—I yelled, “Misha, NO!” The poor beast looked at me with total bewilderment. Wasn’t this exactly where she was supposed to do this? The good news is, after the workout you should be much more mellow that during it, and probably more mellow than before it. It’s like when you douse your raw eggplant slices with salt to disgorge all their bitterness.

Entertainment

People doing the exercise bike or treadmill at the gym will often read magazines. This is okay if your main goal is to catch up on Us or People Weekly. But if you’re after a real workout, you cannot read while you do it. “But I work up a sweat while reading!” you protest. Sure, but in most of the U.S., like here in the Bay Area, you can work up a sweat making the bed. (If you’re in arid Boulder, working up a noticeable sweat is much more difficult, but then, the average fitness level in Boulder is so high a mere sweat still doesn’t mean anything. )

Which brings us to TV or videos. These don’t work very well for me. My brother Geoff has gotten good results watching boxing or a Steven Seagal movie. (The highly unusually agitated and oxygen-deprived mental state induced by a good trainer workout can make otherwise unwatchable programs enjoyable as simple spectacles.) My friend Pete has reported some great hammering results while watching the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. But for me, visual entertainment is too distracting to really keep my nose on the grindstone. For that, I need music.

The ideal trainer music is rap. This is because it has an unfailing beat. This isn’t to say you can’t find rock music that’s just as reliable; I also get good results listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers, White Stripes (at least the first few albums), Soundgarden, and some of the more rousing Radiohead. The point is, lots of mellower music, like Elton John or Cowboy Junkies or Simon & Garfunkel, just isn’t going to cut it.

What you want is a driving beat to sync your pedal cadence up with. Once synced up, you choose a gear that gives you enough resistance to get that heart rate up. This will be difficult, but staying in sync with the music will make sure you don’t slow down and/or forget to hammer. And you can lie to yourself that you only have to hold this cadence, in this gear, at this heart rate, until the end of the song. I figured this out after getting some time trialing advice from none other than Levi Leipheimer. (Of course, for Levi to advise me on time trialing is a little like Catherine Zeta Jones giving beauty tips to a burn victim.) Levi said that to help maintain his time trial pace, he finds a landmark (a tree, telephone pole, whatever) up in the distance and tells himself he only has to maintain this pace until he gets there. Once there, he reneges on this promise and chooses another milestone. In like fashion, at the end of a song I reward myself with a mouthful of energy drink and make a new suffering commitment for the next song.

Obviously, I could have given this advice without resorting to shameless name-dropping. I provide this tidbit, and the photo below, for three reasons: 1) I can’t help it, 2) I want to promote the NorCal Mountain Biking League and their annual fundraising dinner that can give you, yes you, the same opportunity to hobnob with a top American professional racer while supporting our next generation of cyclists, and 3) hey, me and Levi! Look!















Another benefit of rap music for indoor training is that the lyrics are interesting, and there are gobs of them, so you won’t get bored with this music too easily. Plus, the anger and violence so often described in rap music are inspirational (in your altered mental state). Beyond that, it’s hard to feel sorry for yourself about the drudgery and pain of your workout when you’re hearing about poor kids from broken homes, forced to deal crack and having friends killed in drive-by shootings. If you can afford a bike and a trainer, chances are you’ve got it pretty good and have nothing really to complain about. I sometimes imagine Eminem saying to me, “Whatsa matter, dog, does riding that thing make your vagina hurt?”

If you’re doing your workout before your household is awake, you’ll probably need headphones. I recommend noise-canceling ones, because if you turn normal headphones up loud enough to drown out the trainer noise, you could eventually damage your hearing and be one of those unfortunate old people whose only utterance is “Huh? What?” or whose wives are always nagging them to turn their hearing aids down because the high-pitched whine is bothering those of us who can still hear perfectly.

The importance of music cannot be underestimated. Without it, I doubt I could last ten minutes on the trainer. Whenever I’ve had problems with my music player, I’ve always had to halt the workout until I’ve resolved them. So be sure your batteries have a good charge before you get going, and if you have a backup MP3 player, keep it handy. I have more to say about music and training, but to keep us on track I’ve put that in Appendix B below.

Obstacle Three: The Ravages of Moisture

I mentioned above that a little sweat does not necessarily indicate a good workout. If you’re really going hard, you should be producing rivers and lakes of sweat. You’ll even fog up the windows in the room (and elsewhere in the house, if it’s a cold enough morning). In fact, sweat can be a very serious problem if ride your trainer a lot. Before I figured out how to deal with this singularly corrosive form of moisture, it caused all kinds of problems. The quick-release skewer on my front hub rusted almost solid. My front derailleur adjustment screws literally did rust solid, making the derailleur useless when I tried to use it on another bike. My stem fused to the fork and almost became impossible to adjust. Worst of all, my steel fork rusted badly—and invisibly—where the steerer tube meets the crown, resulting in catastrophic failure and a bad crash on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Then there’s the mess and the stench, unpopular with roommates or spouses/others. You could ruin the carpet or rug. And my brother had a serious problem with his perforated-leather saddle absorbing sweat and getting all squishy. The leather eventually came unglued and separated from the shell like a banana peel, and he had to pitch the saddle altogether.

Here’s how to deal with all the moisture. First of all, put down a tarp. This not only catches the sweat, but keeps your trainer’s feet from damaging the carpet. Plus, the tarp gives you a place to spit. Something about intense exercise makes a guy have to spit a lot. This can get pretty gross, especially if you’re going through a lot of energy drink, which brightly colors your loogies. Just spit them all up onto the tarp, and wipe it down thoroughly with a dirty towel after your ride. (I’ve experimented with a big bowl to use as a spittoon, but it didn’t work very well—I kept missing it.)

Next, you’ve got to have a fan. This greatly increases the speed of sweat evaporation, keeping the sweat from building up, and possibly helping your body to sweat less to begin with. You’ll be more comfortable, too. Get the kind of fan that has its own stand, so that it’s roughly at handlebar height. It should be big (18” or so in diameter) and powerful. But don’t get a really nice one, because it’ll eventually rust, and you’ll probably be hawking loogies at it. This might seem crazy, but if you’re riding out of the saddle and you’ve got a good rhythm going and the music has you in a trance and you don’t want to change a thing, but then you get this big pink loogie rising up your throat, and the fan is just a foot or so away, you might just give in and launch a sputum torpedo at the rusty grille. And once you’ve done this once or twice and the fan is already gross, the impulse just snowballs and pretty soon you’re defiling the fan without thinking twice about it. I thought I was the only barbarian who spits on his fan until I compared notes with my brothers. Geoff is an inveterate fan-spitter (though Bryan still finds this appalling). If you dare, click on the photo below to zoom in.

To keep sweat out of your eyes and help keep it from flying off your head onto your bike, the walls, etc. you should wear a headband and a bandanna. I like to wear a full-zip sleeveless jersey (unzipped) to absorb sweat as well. Also, if you ride sitting up instead of bent over the bars, you’ll drip a lot less on the bike. (For some reason this also increases my heart rate.)

Oh, and don’t forget the codpiece. The what? Well, I don’t know what else to call the terrycloth thingie that stretches between your seatpost and your brake lever hoods to keep sweat from falling on the bike. In addition to the obvious proper use of the codpiece, you can have some fun deliberately using it wrong. Next time your mother, or better yet your mother-in-law, is visiting and you’re getting ready to go out for a ride, strap that thing across your crotch. One strap goes right between your legs and the other two around your butt. You’ll have to hold it in the back, but you only have to “wear” it for a minute or two, until it gets noticed. When your mother-in-law is taken aback, calmly explain how cold it is out there and how poorly insulated bike shorts are. See how long you can keep the hoax going until you burst out laughing. See? Indoor training is fun!


Oh, one more thing on moisture. No matter what other precautions you take, you’ll want to dry off your bike carefully after the ride, and dry off your headphones too. If you have the over-the-ear type headphones, take a tissue and get all the sweat off the inside of the cushions. I already wrecked a pair by not doing this faithfully enough. (I happen to know that if you do wreck your Bose headphones, and they’re out of warranty, you can still trade them in for a big discount on a new pair.) Also, take the insoles out of your shoes and dry them in a sunny window, and if it was a long workout and you’re going again the next day, you might want to stuff newspapers in your shoes.

Conclusion

If you’ve made it through this much text, chances are good that you have the stamina you need to embrace an indoor training regimen and really stick with it. Of course, sticking with it only means riding the trainer during the dark, wet months; if you’ve ridden the trainer a lot, you’ll be more than happy to leave it behind until the next winter.

And now, as promised, the appendices. The first one concerns types and brands of trainers and their pros and cons (as the title of this piece kind of promised). The other appendix is about music and training, as I have more to say on this matter.

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APPENDIX A – Trainer Types — Pros and Cons

The Wind Trainer

My first trainer (back in the ‘80s) was a Specialized thing that supported the bike under the bottom bracket and had these “Tailwind Fans” at the back for resistance. The fans were pretty darn loud, and the thing took a good while to set up each time, but it basically worked until somebody in my household stuffed newspaper in the fans for reasons I never did grasp. In any event, you can’t buy this type of trainer anymore so don’t even worry about it.

Rollers

In the ‘90s I had a set of Al Kreitler rollers with the “Headwind Fan.” The fan sat about six feet ahead of the rollers and was powered by a belt running to the front roller. Hands-down this won the “green” award. The fan was plenty powerful enough, and it blew on you harder the harder you rode, which was great. A little door on the fan made it possible to control the resistance, which was incredible as well—more than enough workout. The fan was pretty loud, though, and frankly it was hard to mount the rollers day after rainy day because they do require skill to ride, and sometimes you just want to grind away without doing anything tricky. The other problem is that I got these rollers for free because they’d sat in a friend’s car in the sun and melted. The drums weren’t round anymore, so it was a bumpy ride. I called them the Paris-Roubaix rollers. I’d doubtless still be using them (at least some of the time), except—I’m embarrassed to say—I somehow lost them. I’ve often thought of replacing them, but Al Kreitler rollers, especially with the fan, cost a truly breathtaking amount of money. Chances are, if you make enough money to afford the Kreitlers, you don’t have time to ride.

There is a really good reason to get rollers, which is that they improve your form. You can always tell when somebody’s been riding rollers because his or her pedal stroke is really smooth, and he or she can ride in a perfectly straight line. The fixed trainer, meanwhile, has you pedaling squares afterward. (As I mentioned before, though, you probably won’t always feel like balancing on rollers; just about everybody I know who rides indoors has a stationary trainer instead of, or in addition to, rollers.)

If you get rollers, make sure they have resistance of some kind. Most rollers, oddly, don’t offer this. Without resistance, you can get a good warm-up, but not a very good workout. Some rollers have smaller-radius drums that are supposed to make pedaling harder; I haven’t tried them myself.

The Magnetic-Resistance Stationary Trainer

There are still plenty of magnetic-resistance trainers out there; for many years I used the Blackburn Trakstand. The only real problem with this trainer was that after a few years of frequent use, I began having a problem that I think is endemic to magnetic-resistance trainers: the Screeching Blades of Whirling Death. Somehow the spinning disk in there got too close to the magnet and started to rub. I found that by dinking around with the resistance knob I could mitigate this, at least at first. But the problem went from extremely intermittent to once in awhile to somewhat often to almost unavoidable. The screeching could be halted, but it was mighty frustrating to have to jump off and dink with the adjustment knob several times per ride.

Eventually the only solution was to set the thing to maximum resistance and leave it there. This worked for at least a year or two, and then I started sporadically having the Screeching Blades of Whirling Death all over again. I tried to solve this by shouting profanities. This did nothing. So then I directed the profanities right at the resistance unit. Amazingly, this did quiet the screeching for a short while (though this could have been coincidence). When it started up again I switched to kicking the crap out of the resistance unit with one cleated shoe while pedaling one-legged. This worked sometimes, failed sometimes, but always made me feel a bit better. Finally one day I kicked the thing too hard and it ground to a halt. Fuming, and sweating profusely from my exertion, I took the resistance unit apart, burning myself on the blade in the process. The blade was all bent up from my kicking, which is weird because the plastic cowling hadn’t broken. (Isn’t that a great word—cowling?)

I straightened out the blade, removed a bunch of ground-off metal filings that had stuck to the magnet, put it all back together, and—dang, there was still the awful grinding. So I took apart a bike chain and took some of the bushings out and used these to space the blade a bit farther from the magnet, and—voilà!—the trainer was good to go for many more years. By the time I had my final episode of the Screeching Blades of Whirling Death, which inspired me to kick the trainer literally to death, I’d gotten like ten years out of it. The powder coat finish had completely peeled off and most of the trainer was rusted. So I can’t say I was exactly disappointed with its longevity. (My brother has a somewhat newer version of the same trainer and also struggles regularly with the Screeching Blades of Whirling Death.)

The Fluid-Resistance Stationary Trainer

Now I have the CycleOps Fluid2. It’s more stable than the Blackburn, which had a tendency to drift around across the floor. The CycleOps’ legs can adjust to make it stable on an uneven surface, which is cool. It also has a bigger roller than other trainers I’ve seen, which may be why I’ve never gotten a flat with it (which did happen on the older-style trainers, oddly enough, and not just to me). The CycleOps is fairly quiet, but I still recommend noise-canceling headphones. I’m frankly not sure why these trainers make any noise at all. They just kind of whir. If you want to know what the CycleOps sounds like, play that video at the top of this post.

The only odd thing about this trainer is that it doesn’t give me enough resistance when I’m riding out of the saddle at a really low cadence (as when I’m trying to simulate a really steep climb, which is most of what I do on the road). It’s possible I got a defective unit, though perhaps this is just a silly thing that I’m trying to do. Since I only do this for a few minutes at a time, I’ve experimented with using a good old-fashioned leather toe strap to lightly apply the rear brake—just enough so the pads drag on the rim for extra resistance. This works just fine, and has the added benefit of making me feel (in my distorted mental state) like I’m some kind of badass.

I included all this trainer information as an appendix because frankly, the type and brand of trainer you get will likely have a lot less to do with your fitness than the rest of the things I discuss in this essay. Imagine telling your training buddies, who have just had to wait for you for several minutes at the top of a climb, “Sorry, guys, I bought the Travel Trac instead of the CycleOps, and I’m really feeling it.”

Oh, one more thing about good intentions. I just looked on craigslist, and found a Bell trainer for $60, a CycleOps for $150, a Minoura (new in the box) for $130, a Vetta for $25, and several others. I’ll bet none of them has been used more than once or twice. Assuming that very few well-intentioned cyclists will read this blog and save their money, you’ll probably always have plenty of used trainers to choose from if you’re looking to save a few bucks.

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APPENDIX B – A Few More Notes About Training with Music

Since I’ve recommended music so emphatically as a way to train harder, I think it’s my duty to point out that I don’t support riding outdoors with headphones and in fact strongly discourage it. First of all, it just dangerous: not only because you can’t hear cars coming up behind you, but because as I described above, the music puts you into something like a trance. You just become lost in it, and cannot be as alert to your surroundings. A good friend of mine made me promise never to ride with headphones after a friend of his, riding with headphones, was hit by a car and suffered brain damage. I’ve held to that promise.

“But wait,” you tell me, “I’m one of those guys who likes to live on the edge and thinks you’re just a buzz-kill cowardly lecturing-parent-type, and/or I falsely equate the dangerousness of riding with headphones to the likelihood of being hit by a meteor.” To which I respond: first of all, it would be a meteorite in that case, dumbass, and besides, people who ride with headphones are obnoxious. I ride up behind the headphone-wearer and say hi and he doesn’t notice, and I feel snubbed until I notice the headphones, by which time it’s too late because I’ve already decided he’s a jerk. Plus, on many occasions I’ve accidentally startled a headphone-wearing cyclist, just by my very presence (my greeting having been unheard), and he then decides that I’m a jerk (which, true or not, isn’t the point). So just don’t do it.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that disclaimer out of the way, here are some examples of music that has served me will in my hundreds of hours of indoor training. It’s possible or likely you’d hate some or much or all of this music, which is fine; all I’m saying is that this music has the right beat to support a useful indoor riding cadence.

Beastie Boys
Devo
Eminem
Ice-T
Jay-Z
Jimi Hendrix
The Hives
Lady Sovereign
Living Colour
Nas
Nine Inch Nails
Obie Trice
Public Enemy
Radiohead
Rakim
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Rolling Stones
Soundgarden
Stone Temple Pilots
The Strokes
Thomas Dolby
White Stripes

Another thing I’ll point out is that riding indoors to music can offer, or at least has given me, the opportunity for useful “flashbacks.” That is, after a solid regimen of indoor training accompanied by the right music, you may find yourself on the road one day minding your own business when suddenly your circumstances will require a sudden increase in output, and a good harsh angry trainer song will pop into your head, unleashing your useful dark side. Consider this true story, taken from my 2006 training diary:

Well, there I was, out there feeling like death-not-even-warmed-over, more like death-left-out-all-night-to-get-stale-and-then-served-cold, with nothing to give the pedals, hating myself, hating the frigid, foggy weather, hating my malfunctioning HAC4 bike computer, hating cycling, just dragging myself along up Fish Ranch Road, heart rate barely even in the zone, putting out fewer than 100 watts if the HAC4 was to be believed, which it wasn't, wondering how I could possibly be so tired, lamenting having had to cut the ride seriously short for sheer fatigue, in short just totally demoralized, and then, shortly after turning right on Grizzly Peak to head home, all of a sudden, out of the blue, for no apparent reason, with no provocation whatsoever, this dude blows by me. And frankly it kind of shocked me, because he didn't give me much room, much less in fact than he really ought to have given me, and I stared at him, wondering how he could be going that much faster than I, pathetic as my pace in fact was.

And I quickly realized that this was a Major League Wanker. His helmet had this giant visor on it. He was wearing this big puffy neon-green jacket, and riding a $3,000 cawbun fibuh bike of vulgar brand, both expensive and unimpressive, devoid of character but completely yuppy. Of course he had the big seat bag, stuffed full of every accessory the lucky bike shop salesman had been able to talk him into buying. He also had this giant red LED tail-light, the oversized one that looks like a Ford Taurus, or like something out of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And the worst part? He was out of the saddle, but instead of rocking the bike from side to side, he was going straight up and down, like some damn human piston, a guy who is only vaguely aware of the need to get out of the saddle when attacking but without having the foggiest idea what you're actually supposed to do. And he had this look in his eye, like he'd seen the prize and now was going to get it. No greeting, no nod, just a pure animal resolve to kick my club-jersey wearing, cool-Euro-bike-riding, low-velocity-achieving ass.

How on earth did this goob manage to blow by me so fast? I mean, sure, maybe he could set his sights on me and gradually reel me in, but how was he going like 15 mph up like a 7% grade? Then it hit me—duh, he hadn't turned onto Grizzly Peak road like I had; he'd been on it already. He came from the other side of the intersection, so he'd been going downhill. This loser had seen me toiling away up ahead, and had decided (despite terrible visibility owing to the fog, the idiot) to blow through the stop sign and keep all his momentum, the better to school me. Passing too close was just his little "Top Gun" gesture—you know, a little flair, a little panache as he crushed me. Okay buddy, I thought, that is it. I don't care how lousy I'm feeling, I am going to do whatever it takes to smack you down. Instantly I got this rap song in my head, "You wanna be me," by Nas:

“So you … wanna be me
You bitch you phoney you clone me
You wanna be me? Son:
I’m the one and only, but you
Wanna be me
You suckers, you weak, you flunkies, you fake
You couldn’t come close on my worst day, but you
Wanna be me
I’ll burn you and learn you a lesson
Concerning this my profession
Turn your direction
You can’t be me.
Not in your wildest fantasy.”

I started hammering, and lo and behold, my frail, tired heart and limp legs started to get themselves together, just as a flat inner tube starts to unfold when you pump air into it. I started kicking out 450 watts, if the HAC is to be believed, which it probably isn't, and my HR crept up above the zone, but just barely, to 161-162, and in accordance with natural law, I started reeling in El Dorko Mejor pretty quickly. By the time I overtook him, his momentum was all gone and he was showing his true colors, which were not pretty. I didn't look back (lest he realize I even considered him worth paying attention to), and I didn't dare slow down. For three minutes I kept on it, eking out a passable performance, and only when I approached my turnoff (to descend South Park) did I look over my shoulder. Of course the Nerdinator was nowhere to be seen. I hope he savored his moment of glory, because he'll never be getting it again.
It’s also possible (at least I find it possible) to insert a good song in your head as you begin, say, a hard climb. Most likely you won’t be able to sync your cadence to it, but the spirit of it might help you keep up your intensity. At a bare minimum, a mental library of rap or hard rock tunes can help you out should you be riding along with, inexplicably, some random song, say Elton John’s “Daniel,” stuck in your head.