Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2024 Critérium du Dauphiné Stage 8

Introduction

Bike races are becoming hard to watch, in every way. First, you have to subscribe to a different streaming service for practically every event. Second, so many races seem to be dominated by a single rider, it’s getting super boring (e.g., Tadej Pogacar winning the Giro d’Italia by almost ten minutes, picking up six stage wins in the process). Finally, our eyes are getting bad … at least, mine are. And the Critérium du Dauphiné is particularly hard because the coverage starts at 4:00 a.m. Pacific time. So if you’re looking at all the text on this page and thinking, “Oh, it’s so long, and there are so many photos, I’m not sure I can commit,” consider that it could be much, much worse.

(The good news is, as I’m adding this particular paragraph after the fact, I can tell you today was not boring! Read on!)

Critérium du Dauphiné Stage 8 - Thônes > Plateau des Glières

As I join the action I’m pleased to hear Christian Vande Velde and Bob Roll announcing. The guy Peacock has narrating the replays sounds lugubrious, and of course Phil Liggett has become nonsensical. Not that Bob’s commentary is always scintillating. “That is the peloton,” he now says emphatically. Not sure whether his emphasis is this French term, or he just really wants us to understand what’s going on.

As early as I arose this morning (4:40 to be precise), the riders have just 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) to go. Fortunately it’s all uphill as they approach the Category 1 Plateau des Glières.

Michal Kwiatkowski (Ineos Grenadiers) is taking like six bottles from the team car. Not sure why on earth he’d do that so close to the finish, except maybe these bottles contain PEDs. (This is Ineos, after all.) It’s also puzzling that he’s even being allowed to take bottles because the supposed rule is no feeding after the 20-kilometer-to-go mark. Maybe Kwiatowski ran afoul of team management and is being made to haul these up the mountain as ballast. Kind of the equivalent of dropping and doing twenty pushups, which protocol they’d have to modify because as everyone knows, most pro cyclists are incapable of doing pushups.

There’s a breakaway of nine riders with just over a minute on the peloton. They’ll probably get overwhelmed. I don’t think the term “overwhelmed” has been used for describing a break being caught but it’s actually the perfect word. Let’s see if it catches on.

Wow, the gap is plummeting. I’m not even going to learn the breakaway riders’ names. They’re like temps in an office. Do companies still hire temps? Like the Kelly Girls of old? Let’s revisit that later.

The peloton is still pretty huge. I guess race leader Primoz Roglic’s Bora-Hansgrohe team hasn’t decided to lay down a fast tempo yet. The GC favorites are waiting until the last minute, totally ignoring their moms’ perennial warning. These guys!

As usual for France, the towns and countryside are gorgeous.

Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates) is in the breakaway. I guess he didn’t learn his lesson yesterday when he soloed from like 40 km out and then got caught with just a couple kilometers to go. He lost like seven minutes on the last climb. D’oh!

The breakaway is dissolving like animal crackers in hot soup. I don’t believe that metaphor has been employed before. Fellow race commentators take note.

Sean Quinn, an American on EF Education First Easy Post Whatever, is leading the breakaway, wearing some kind of stars-and-stripes jersey. Either he won a national title or he’s just hella patriotic.

Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) attacks! He sits ninth on GC so we can presume he’s just looking for a stage win.

I’m kind of rooting for Ciccone right now because he seems to be such a good sport about riding with the equipment he’s given, which includes in this case these totally goofy handlebars and levers that stick out at a crazy angle, bringing to mind fallen arches. I would refuse to ride with such silly equipment but he’s not only getting on with it, but trying to solo!

Looks like all the breakaway riders have been stubbed out in the race ashtray. Ciccone has 22 seconds on the GC group which has maybe 15 riders left.

Here’s what’s gone on in this Dauphiné this past week. Nothing major happened on GC until the time trial which Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick Step) won handily. Then there was a massive crash in Stage 5 following which they neutralized the race. The yellow jersey changed hands in Stage 6 which Primoz Roglic (Bora-Hansgrohe) won (typically enough), and then the GC got really boring when Roglic won Stage 7 as well. I’m only deigning to watch today because Roglic does have a knack for losing stage races on the final day.

This is interesting: David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) is going out the back. He was kind of considered a GC contender this year and was his team’s protected rider. He’s one of many promising racers who just fizzle out. Also of note is that he’s cooling himself off … this might be the first hot day of the race. The only interesting thing Roglic said in his post-race interview yesterday was, “When will summer be here?” I’ve been wondering the same thing.

Laurens de Plus (Ineos Granadiers) is leading the GC group and they catch Ciccone. Ciccone’s brake levers were just scooping up too much wind for him to be able to stay off. I hope he learns his lesson and switches to more aerodynamic equipment after this.

Whoa, this is interesting! Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos Granadiers) is driving the pace on the front, and Roglic has let a gap open up! Best yet, the American Matteo Jorgenson (Team Visma – Lease A Bike), who sits second on GC just 1:02 behind Roglic, is right on Rodriguez’s wheel! This could actually get interesting!

(Jorgenson is a baller, by the way. He won this year’s Paris-Nice stage race, as well as the Dwars door Vlaanderen. He was born in Walnut Creek, right here in the Bay Area. He’s young enough to be my son, and  he stands 6’2” which is pretty rare for a dude who can climb so well. Amer’ca!)

Cicconi tries to close the gap, with Roglic sucking his wheel. Where are Roglic’s Bora-Hansgrohe teammates?

Derek Gee, the Israel-Premier Tech rider on the front, has been riding a great Dauphiné, having won Stage 3. Moreover, he’s sitting third overall, just 11 seconds behind  Jorgenson and 1:13 behind Roglic. He flicks his elbow but nobody pulls through. By “nobody” I mean Jorgenson and Rodriguez (who is very hard to see … probably part of his strategy). All the others are gone.

The break now has 15 seconds. That’s a quarter of what Jorgenson needs, but there are only 3.6 kilometers to go. It’d be a long shot for him to unseat Roglic but you never know. Now Jorgenson comes to the front and you can see Gee is really suffering.

Roglic, who takes over from Ciccone, is going pretty well but his socks are the wrong color and they’re too tall. They’re kind of a lemon yellow and the jersey is more canary. I can’t root for a rider with such poor aesthetic taste. Maybe he’s colorblind? But then, why hasn’t a teammate or staffer jumped in with sartorial advice? Are they afraid of him? Is he a tyrant? Probably.

Evenepoel, who was evidently dropped at some point, starts to close the gap to Roglic. Evenepoel got totally shelled yesterday. He’s like that … he does a huge effort and then pays dearly the next day. Roglic’s heroic domestique, Aleksandr Vlasov, is on Evenepoel’s wheel and if they catch up, maybe he could help Roglic. Vlasov was amazing yesterday.

There’s still a chasing duo behind the leaders. It’s De Plus and Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious), but they won’t catch back up. As if to prove my point, Buitrago chooses a very poor time to engage in literal naval-gazing, which is not only annoying but non-aerodynamic.

Up in the break, Jorgenson attacks!

Gee is dropped but Rodriguez manages to close the gap.

The two leaders are under the 1-kilometer kite! They’ve got almost 40 seconds, and there’s a 10-second bonus! Jorgenson needs only another 11 seconds to take the GC win!

Heading for the line, Rodriguez is stronger and Jorgenson can’t come around! Rodriguez takes the win!

He almost forgets his victory salute, but pulls it out! Look how dejected Jorgenson is … he needed that first-place time bonus, and of course a stage win would’ve been nice, particularly if he doesn’t manage to steal the GC.

Roglic drills it, knowing full well he could totally lose this Dauphiné!

He’s gotta be shitting bricks. He lost the 2020 Dauphiné on the last day, remember, by crashing like two or three times. And then he famously lost the 2020 Tour de France on the final stage, with his silly time trial helmet creeping off his head. To lose this second-rate stage race on the last day simply by not managing to ride fast enough … that would be just too humiliating.

Roglic crosses the line and it looks like he made it just in time to hang on to his GC. Note the silly piece of tape Ciccone has on his nose, which is somehow supposed to improve his breathing. I’ll bet he has a really dorky tan line there (which I find just as interesting as Roglic winning another stage race).

Here’s the stage result.

They’re interviewing Rodriguez.

INTERVIEWER: You picked up the stage win. So I guess your parents were wrong about you.

RODRIGUEZ: I felt really good. As hard as the team worked, we had a plan, yeah, get in a breakaway, try to go for the stage win.

INTERVIEWER: That’s not really a plan, per se, that’s just a goal.

RODRIGUEZ: After that I just raced as hard as possible in the finale, on the last climb. I couldn’t do enough to get on the podium so I wanted the stage win.

INTERVIEWER: You kind of ignored my last comment. That really hurts my feelings.

RODRIGUEZ: The legs feel good. This result was for my teammates. See you at the Tour.

What the interviewer evidently doesn’t realize is that nobody is translating the questions for Rodriguez, so he’s just saying whatever he feels like. Also, I’m just typing whatever I feel like. So it’s a win-win.

Here’s the final GC result. I’m tempted to say it was a nail-biter, but I refuse to normalize that disgusting behavior. Let’s just say it was a close one (in fact the closest in Dauphiné history).

Now they’re Interviewing Roglic.

INTERVIEWER: Yesterday you said something interesting about the weather. Do you think you can do similarly well today, or will we be back to your mind-numbingly boring, anodyne statements like “my team did great”?

ROGLIC: No, not really, it was quite crazy actually, I’m happy to be able to win the Dauphiné, with everything happening in between, it’s beautiful.

INTERVIEWER: Did they tell you [Jorgenson] was gaining time?

ROGLIC: Yeah, exactly. Both dudes in the car were spouting off, like, “Primoz, you fool, he’s destroying you!” and I was like, “Shut your pie-holes ye bleedin’ pricks!”

INTERVIEWER: Were you suffering?

ROGLIC: Did you really just ask me that? [Note: the interviewer actually did.]

INTERVIEWER: Are you confident for the Tour de France?

ROGLIC: Definitely. But, one is Dauphine, other is Tour. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.

INTERVIEWER: What does that even mean?

ROGLIC: I have no idea. They switched to a teleprompter this year and I think someone is screwing with me. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have got to take out these contact lenses. My eyes are getting really dry as I age.

David Gaudu smiles incessantly as his fans pose with him for photos. What’s he so happy about? He’s supposed to be a GC favorite and he didn’t even crack the top ten today. He finished all the way down in 30th, over four minutes behind. Still, that’s better than his teammate, the hapless Chris Froome, who was third-to-last almost 27 minutes down.

They’ve just announced that the team director of Bora-Hansgrohe suffered a fatal heart attack while watching Roglic almost lose the GC. Okay, I made that up. It was just a joke. Was that in poor taste? Perhaps. Could I delete this paragraph? Yes. Will I? Obviously not.

The camera loves Roglic. They just keep zooming in on his face, trying to get some footage with actual emotion in it. Here’s perhaps the best they could do.

Not a bad shot, really. In fact, when he sees this post perhaps he’ll download that picture. He could use it as his new profile photo.

Rodriguez mounts the podium to celebrate his stage win. After eschewing podium girls entirely, the race organizers are gradually bringing back approximately half of the tradition. The new UCI rules dictate that there can only be one female; there must also be a dumpy man; the female must be called a “podium woman”; and, she must look like Taylor Swift.

Jorgenson takes the podium having sealed his victory in the best young rider competition. Will he lead Visma-Lease A Bike for the Tour? Who knows. I haven’t been following the sport too closely now that cyclingnews.com put up a paywall, the bastards. All I know about Visma’s prospects is that last year’s Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard may not even race it this year as he continues to recover from a bad crash in the spring, and last year’s Vuelta winner Sepp Kuss was sick during this Dauphiné (and didn’t even start today), so it’s impossible to know how his form is.

And now, Roglic steps on to the podium for his final yellow jersey presentation. As he likes to do, he drags his kids up there, little realizing how confusing and upsetting this surely is for them. His younger son nervously bites his fingernails. How sad to be taking up this disgusting practice at such a very tender age. Roglic tries to intervene, but it’s surely too late for this kid. Oh well. At least the Slovenian champ has another stage race victory to add to his palmarès.

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Cycling Spotlight: “I Must Do This … Alone”

Introduction

There are so many reasons why cycling is the coolest sport ever. You get to go fast, you cover vast swaths of terrain every ride, you get to eat whatever you want because you’re burning so many calories, and there’s all this cool equipment besides. But one of the best things about it is that you can keep doing it well into middle age. I went to a Coors Classic bike race reunion a couple decades ago and saw all my childhood heroes (Andy Hampsten, Davis Phinney, Ron Keifel, Alexi Grewal, pretty much every great American pro from the ‘80s), and they were in their fifties, and all still looked great and were still riding. Can you imagine an NFL reunion of fifty-somethings? Especially if they’d all kept playing football?

The low-impact nature of cycling isn’t the only thing that makes it a good choice as we age. Cycling is also logistically simple. Other sports, like Ultimate and soccer, require two entire teams to coordinate their schedules and play on a designated field. Golf requires reserving a tee time, paying a bunch of money, and wearing dorky clothing (while getting relatively little exercise). Tennis is only two people, but again you need to secure the court. With cycling, you obviously just need your bike and some public roads or trails. Thus, this sport can accommodate the most unpredictable of schedules. Perhaps only running is logistically simpler, though ageing runners usually have bad knees, tendonitis, lockjaw, and depression. (Yes, I made all that up and I have no fact checker.)

What I didn’t realize until the last few years, though, is that not all cyclists ever learn the art of riding solo. My brothers seldom ride alone, and my older daughter (a former racer) almost never does. As an assistant high school mountain biking coach, I occasionally encounter graduates from the program who, I’m disappointed to learn, stopped riding once the team element came to an end.

This post is about the particular joys and challenges of riding solo.

I must do this … alone 

Often as I head out for a ride, I’ll tell my family members, “I’m going out there. Don’t try to stop me.” This is a family shibboleth, and they’re supposed to respond, “You fool! You’ll be killed!” (I guess it’s been long enough since my worst ever cycling accident that this isn’t too sore a subject.) To this I reply, “I must do this … alone.” My brother and I have been saying this last part since about 1988, quoting some junior I coached back then who was, I believe, quoting “Buck Rogers.” Googling this quote now, I find it attributed to “Thor,” “South Park,” “Lord of the Rings,” and “Monsters vs. Aliens.” I guess it’s kind of a classic sentiment, perhaps particularly for Americans, with our love of the individual and the individually heroic.

Solo riding has been part of my routine since about 1984. That was when, as described here, my cycling friends kind of “outgrew” me, because while I was still floundering in races, they were winning, and they became too fast and—they evidently felt—too cool to even hang out with me, much less ride with me. We went our separate ways and I realized I would have to either train alone, make some new friends, or quit the sport. So for about a year, before making new cycling friends, I rode alone most of the time. I had a part-time job on top of school, so a fair bit of this training was after dark as well. It’s remarkable I was able to build much fitness during that off-season; the next year was when I finally broke through and got some results.

Philosophy

I suppose the willingness to ride alone is related to a tolerance for drudgery, or at least for resignation. As I’ve discussed elsewhere in these pages, gaining the fitness to succeed at bike racing requires a lot of sheer repetition, just like with anything difficult. Endless repetition produces the incremental improvements in performance that matter to the diehard. It’s not always that interesting and it’s not always that fun, but that doesn’t stop the committed athlete.

The more recreational cyclist, on the other hand, rides for fun and as a social outlet, and probably has better things to do than ride alone. If he or she can’t get a group organized, or at least one pal, perhaps the ride simply gets postponed. My wife likes to ride with me, but not so much by herself. And when we do ride, she doesn’t want to ride my standard, well-worn routes. She’s curious—what’s up this street? Where does this go? We end up touring the residential streets of the Berkeley hills which I otherwise seldom do. When I ride alone, I stick to a plan and a route and it wouldn’t occur to me to alter it. (Actually, that’s not entirely true; sometimes Lomas Cantadas, a particularly hard climb, beckons, like it’s actually taunting me, and ignites my caprice by being such a pointlessly difficult way to get home. For details click here.)

For those who develop a taste for solo riding, subtle pleasures do accrue. Sure, it’s not as fun as riding with a group or a pal, but it’s a way to get outside your routine, remove all social interaction from your plate, and get both inside and completely outside your head. You can ponder something, or alternatively zone out completely, without any specific demands on your attention (other than navigating and negotiating the terrain, of course). Nowadays, when I haven’t had a solo ride in a while, I begin to crave it.

Anecdote

It was spring of 1986 and most of my training was with my friend Pete, and often our pal Dave who had been on my team in the 1985 Red Zinger Mini Classic. Pete was way stronger which could make things difficult. He’d be hammering at the front and I’d be hanging on for dear life, and then when I would take the lead, looking forward to slacking off a bit, he’d yell, “Don’t let the speed drop below thirty!”

One cold, windy spring day we were riding around the Morgul Bismark course east of Boulder (a route made somewhat famous by the Coors Classic bike race and the movie “American Flyers”) and I just wasn’t feeling it. I couldn’t match Pete’s pace and, he, being an angry young man (actually, more moody than angry I guess), was getting ornery. I in turn was getting fed up, and we finally agreed it was best to part ways. He kept going, and I turned around and started heading home. Well, this was no better because now I was pedaling straight into the wind. (It was well known in those days that you always had a headwind on the Morgul; the theory went that there was a tornado in the middle, blowing counter-clockwise unless you turn around and then it reversed itself.) I plodded my miserable way along, more lugubrious than ever, and at one point I happened to look behind me. (Who knows why; maybe I thought Pete might have changed his mind and would come scoop me up.) In the distance I saw a rider in a red and green uniform; I took him to be one of Boulder’s 7-Eleven juniors coached by Dale Stetina. This guy was coming up fast. And then I realized he looked pretty big. Too big to be a junior.

Well, whoever it was, he came blowing on by, and I dove for his wheel and managed to catch it. He was moving at a great clip and somehow I found the resolve, and the strength, that had been missing throughout my ride thus far. I was absolutely dying on this guy’s wheel but totally stoked to get these miles done faster, with no more headwind, and besides, who was this guy? Somebody important? I hung on all the way into Boulder, when the guy slowed down and sat up, and I rode up alongside him. He gave me a friendly greeting and asked my name. Though shy, I managed to introduce myself. He grinned and put out his hand for a handshake. “Davis,” he intoned. Daaaaaamn! Davis Phinney, the famous pro, who later that year became the first American to win a stage of the Tour de France! Just think: had I continued my original ride, instead of being willing to peel off and ride home alone, I’d have never had a chance to ride with this great champion.

Alone, but not alone

If you’re lucky enough to live in a community where cycling is popular, you’re seldom really alone out there. (In there—meaning at home on a stationary trainer or rollers—is of course a whole other story.) Where I live, in the Berkeley area, there are always all kinds of cyclists out and about. I see the same guys out there all the time whom I recognize though they’re still strangers, and then I see all kinds of random riders I’ve never seen before and may never see again. I always say hello if I’m passing someone or being passed, and offer a head nod or chin lift to a cyclist coming the other way. Some riders are too cool to acknowledge me, or perhaps just too far into their heads. It does seem like a slick club-racer type is more likely to ignore me, to a point … the pros I’d see as a kid in Boulder always smiled and acknowledged me (though perhaps it’s just because I was young?). The riders I encounter whom I like the most are generally the more novice ones who really light up when I nod or wave. They flash a big grin, like they really appreciate the novelty of becoming a part of the cycling community.

I guess ever since suffering through the COVID-19 pandemic, I have developed a keener appreciation for just being among my fellow humans, even if just to share a public space with them, however briefly. I want to see people and feel their presence ... even if I do not actually wish to interact with them beyond a simple greeting. I guess this is what you get when you cross an introvert with a claustrophobic. 

During the high school mountain bike season, I coach the Albany High Cougars a couple times a week. Sometimes the late afternoon ride isn’t possible for me due to work commitments, so I don’t get out until well after five to do a solo road ride. Several times this year I’ve seen the team heading home along Wildcat Canyon Road as I’ve been heading out, and they’ve waved and called out, “Hey, Coach Dana!” I’m stoked that they notice me even though I’m on a road bike and in a different kit. It means they’re paying attention, and moreover I’m setting a good example of riding alone when meeting others isn’t possible. Nota bene, Cougars!

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Five Home Remodeling Mistakes to Avoid

Introduction

Spring is in the air. Out in their driveways, your neighbors are beating on old Turkish rugs with broomsticks, maybe more enthusiastically than is really necessary. Birds are building nests in your trees, without asking. No matter where you look, spring cleaning and other restoration projects are underway. The warm breeze is whispering in your ear: “Time to start pulling your weight.” Or maybe that’s your spouse, and it’s proceeded from a whisper to plain speech to aggressive beseeching all the way up to a flat-out demand, which has become increasingly hard to ignore. So it’s time to bite the bullet and agree to a home remodel. This experience can be anything from transformative to ruinous to existentially harrowing, like a Lars Von Trier movie. Here are five mistakes to avoid.

Mistake #1: create a budget

Too many earnest homeowners think the first step in planning their renovation is to figure out how much they can afford, and scale the project accordingly. This is pure folly. As all home improvement veterans know, every single task will run over budget, and every part of the structure that is touched will unveil previously hidden damage. For example, what you thought of as a simple case of catastrophic dry-rot will turn out to be an ongoing termite infestation, and a foundation you thought was only rotating will turn out to be twisted like a strand of fusilli. That seismic retrofit you paid $5K for, to have the foundation bolted, will turn out to be purely cosmetic, as the foundation is bolted to nothing—that is, to thin air in your crawl space. And as often as not, routine excavation will turn up a body, meaning the murder squad forensics team is going to turn the whole place upside down. Where remodels are concerned, the #1 rule is, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” Rule #2 is, “If you have to borrow money to pay for a remodel, you can’t even afford the home you have.”

Now, if you’re one of those data-driven people who simply must have hard numbers to work with, budget your entire nest egg for this, and what’s left over at the end will determine how long you’ll need to postpone your retirement. If you’re not prepared for that kind of commitment, you can opt for the “zone defense,” meaning you start with a single room to renovate and then if there’s any money left over, you can start to think about the next room, or at least the hallway.

Mistake #2: collaborate with your partner on the design

In some cases, a widowed or divorced homeowner will renovate his or her home, but usually these people are spending their money on fancy clothes, cool cars, and plastic surgery—as well they should. The truth is, most remodels are the work of a couple. And since this project will disrupt both of their lives for months or years, and define the space they’ll get old and die in, it can often seem like the two should work together on design decisions that will please both of them. But this is just a fantasy. It is the exceedingly rare couple that could agree on anything aesthetic or functional, and trying to find common ground is a sure way to bring on a protracted, acrimonious battle, threatening the marriage to the point that the house may end up being sold off instead of fixed up.

Where real-world remodels are concerned, one party or the other needs to call all the shots. Am I saying that one member of every couple should be a complete pushover? Not at all. I’m saying every good couple includes a person who is completely devoid of any opinion on matters of home design and décor. This person won’t mind foregoing all input and having blind faith that his or her spouse will make great decisions. In my own marriage, I have a verbal prenuptial agreement that my wife unilaterally makes all the choices, aesthetic and otherwise, about the home. I, in turn, get to store my racing bike in the home office.

Mistake #3: find alternate lodging during construction

Home remodels create an incredible amount of dust, noise, and other disruption, so it’s tempting to relocate your family to a hotel or Airbnb during construction. Bad idea. If your situation is typical, there’s about a 50% chance that your contractor will bail on your project halfway through, totally ghosting you and pocketing the hefty retainer you unwisely doled out. You need to do everything in your power to improve your odds of seeing your project through, and being onsite is part of that. As the saying goes, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”—and your contractor so close he can smell you. Breathing down his neck and threatening to micromanage his crew is the best way to motivate this person and his minions to get the work done, get their tools packed up, and get the hell out. (And if you’re worried about the health effects of inhaling all that dust, sawdust, and the welding fumes, consider that these people do asbestos abatement for a living, and they seem a hell of a lot healthier than you.)

Mistake #4: pay attention to ROI

Unlike many things we spend money on, fixing up our homes improves their value such that the project can seem to pay for itself. But this kind of thinking is a trap, and a sinister one. Real estate agents will tell you that all that matters, financially speaking, is location and square footage. This is true if you’re hoping to sell your home to a complete idiot, but hopefully you live in the kind of neighborhood that idiots can’t afford. The fact is, if you’re lucky, your home was designed by a professional who knew what he or she was doing and made the most effective use of the space available. And now you’re going to go tack some extra room onto the side of your house, like some kind of tumor, just to add square footage so your kids might inherit more money when you die, if some idiot buys the house? How does that serve you, exactly? The floor plan was right to begin with. Stop being greedy, and just resurface a couple floors, replace that grody tile, slap up a fresh coat of paint, and honor what your home is supposed to be: a living space, not an investment vehicle. In other words, forget about ROI.

Mistake #5: get all the necessary permits

A responsible homeowner doesn’t cut corners, and gets all the necessary permits when remodeling. Though this obviously makes all kinds of sense, it’s not enough to protect you from serious financial distress or even complete ruin—because permits don’t prevent cost overruns, they enable them. That’s where the proper approach to permitting can really save you. Just follow this rule of thumb: if you need to pull a permit to get something done, that shouldn’t be part of your remodel. For example, if you want to add a bedroom, that definitely requires a permit, whereas adding a bed to the existing room does not. (May I recommend a bunk bed in this instance?)

Obviously there are simple things you can do without a permit—such as painting, tiling, carpeting, installing new counter tops, and finally scrubbing that toilet—that will make your home much more livable without burying you financially. But did you know there are other, bigger improvements that still don’t require a permit? In Berkeley, as you can confirm here, you’re allowed to construct an oil derrick without a permit! Do your neighbors have one of those? Didn’t think so!

One mistake you shouldn’t avoid

You might have thought it redundant that I’ve listed “mistakes to avoid,” since “something to avoid” is baked into the very meaning of “mistake.” But we’re not robots, we’re people, and I’m going to actually recommend a mistake: dare to fall in love again. You loved this house once, with its avocado-colored appliances and its knob-and-tube wiring, its total lack of insulation and its single, overworked bathroom. How come those weren’t show-stoppers before? Didn’t you use to find it charming when you’d start the microwave oven and all the lights would flicker? Wasn’t it cozy staying in bed because it was too cold to venture out? Isn’t it possible that all this desire for so-called “improvement” is just a result of boredom? Haven’t you lived ten, twenty, or more years in your home without having an oil derrick out back?

Gosh, I made such a good case just now for leaving well enough alone, I might have convinced you this isn’t a mistake. Well, it is. Once your spouse starts lusting after home improvement, you’ve have to be crazy to stand in her way … but it just may be a lunatic she’s looking for. No, it isn’t. Damn, I’m really losing the thread here. Let’s just say at least you now know what the mistakes are. Make them or don’t—it’s none of my business.

Disclaimer

As you may have gathered, I’m not really qualified to dispense advice here. I did very little research for this post, and what I try to convey as sound practices are based mainly on my own knee-jerk reaction to a prospect that frightens me. Also, my neighbors have never beaten their rugs out in the driveway … I don’t know where I got that.

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From the Archives - Guitar Man

Introduction

In 1986, I took a high school creative writing class. The teacher, Mr. Kroop, wore Jams and played whale music and didn’t do a lot of lecturing; instead, he gave out gobs of assignments. We seemed to have something due almost every day. One day he assigned us a character sketch. I think my effort came to more than that, in its primitive way. (Note: by “sketch” he meant only in the literary sense. The drawing below had nothing to do with the assignment and Mr. Kroop never even saw it.)

Guitar man – February 3, 1986

Olga leaned back in her chair. It creaked, threatening to collapse. She belched loudly, and then slumped over the little built-in desk. She was in a meeting at an alcohol rehabilitation center, where she had been sent as part of her sentence for shoplifting at a Liquor Mart. Having smuggled in a flask of Jack Daniels, she was too inebriated to pay attention to the lecture that was being given. Plus, she spoke almost no English.

A bearded man came around passing out magic markers and big sheets of butcher paper. Olga assumed they were to write lists of some kind. Goals? Reasons to do better? Excuses? She wasn’t feeling inspired to write anything, and nobody would be able to decipher her Cyrillic characters anyway. So she just slumped at her desk, her cheek resting on her arm, watching the proceedings unfold sideways. The bearded man said something to her which she ignored. Then she happened to spy, on the wall, a framed picture of a man playing a guitar.

Something was weird about the picture. It was sideways. Of course, Olga’s head was turned on its side, so the picture ought to look sideways, she reasoned, but it just wasn’t right. It was, like, double-sideways. She sat up and looked at again, with her head straight. Now it was upside-down! She shook her head a bit as if to clear it. She looked again. Yes, she had been drinking, but not that much, and the picture was definitely upside-down. What was this, some kind of joke? Some kind of trick? Or a result of very haphazard janitorial service? Was this some visual aid, to be used in some group exercise, serving perhaps as some metaphor? Well, it didn’t matter. Not Olga’s problem. And then she remembered something she’d learned once in an art class, decades ago, back in the old country. Something about drawing upside down, and how it helped you draw what you see, not what you suppose something looks like. Olga realized that, with her butcher paper and marker, she was in a position to draw this right now. Upside-down.

She hadn’t drawn anything with a marker in ages (a spray can being her preferred medium), and she held it tightly in her fist like a toddler with a crayon. She drew rapidly, looking at the framed picture rather than her paper. Once in a while she glanced down and was thrilled to see her drawing taking shape and looking, actually, a bit like a work of art. Some of the lines kind of did their own thing, some petered out instead of joining anything up, and she noted with a frown that the guitar player’s right hand looked a little palsied, but all in all it wasn’t bad. Now if she could just not screw up the face! She focused on the lines and tried to forget what they were supposed to be leading up to. Halfway through finishing his head she couldn’t go on—there was too much goodness on the paper to risk screwing it all up. It had to be considered Done.

She turned the paper around so it was right-side-up and gazed upon her work. Had she really just drawn this? How much time had passed? She realized suddenly that the room around her was in motion, chairs scraping back as people stood up. Somebody was collecting the papers. No! Not hers! She started to roll it up but her fingers were fumbling. It was like she’d used up all her skill and had nothing else left for this task. She stood, stepped back, and tripped over her chair. Her arms flew back and she caught herself from falling, ending up in a crablike position. Her contraband whiskey bottle flew from the pocket of her baggy overcoat and spun across the floor. This caused massive commotion—with all the alcoholics in the room, that bottle was like blood in shark-infested waters. Olga lumbered off toward the exit as if in flight, embarrassed and ashamed to have her smuggling operation discovered. The door swung closed behind her, letting out a little sigh.

The bearded man shook his head and strode toward the abandoned whisky bottle, which was still half full. Nobody raced him for it, but all eyes were on it. Suddenly there was motion again at the double doors, a struggle from the other side, and they started to open together. Olga staggered through, a look of fierce determination on her face. The bearded man practically sprinted for the bottle, but to his surprise Olga marched right by him. There was a large sheet of curled paper near the chair she’d overturned, and she snatched it up, rolled it into a tight scroll, and—flashing a defiant and satisfied look—strode off, in her galumphing way, back out through the door.

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My (Hypothetical) Post-Race Interview - NBS Criterium

Introduction

If you’ve ever read my “biased blow-by-blow” reports of pro bike races, you’ll have noted that I like to put words in the racers’ mouths when covering their post-race interviews. This is because they so often have so little to say (either because their brains have been too deprived of oxygen, or they’re just camera-shy and/or vapid to begin with). Since the bike races I’ve done myself over the decades haven’t had media coverage to speak of, I have had very little opportunity to try fielding reporters’ questions myself. But what if I did?

Here’s how I might have described a certain race I did as a 15-year-old, had the press seen fit to interview me about it (and had a lot of time and patience in doing so). Note that, unlike in the case of actual interviews that I take liberties with on this blog, what I recount in this hypothetical interview really happened as I describe it, to the extent I remember everything accurately (which I do). Naturally, I needed to put words in the mouth of the fictitious interviewer, so I had some fun with that.

Note: the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in Boulder, Colorado is now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) and is the home of one of America’s atomic clocks. Note also: the photos in this post aren’t from the race I recount, but from the final stage of the Red Zinger Mini Classic on the same course later that year.

Interview – NBS Criterium – Spring 1985

INTERVIEWER: What does it mean to race here at the National Bureau of Standards?

DANA: Well, it’s a very cool course; any time you have a figure-8 shaped criterium on a hill it’s gonna be exciting. And I guess the Bureau is a pretty important place for, like, scientists.

INTERVIEWER: I understand your dad, a rocket scientist, works here and was out watching you race today. Did that make this race extra special?

DANA: You heard wrong. He doesn’t work here, and it wouldn’t have occurred to him to watch me race. He did drive me to one race last year, but he didn’t have a very good time because I got my ass kicked. I think he was ashamed of me. It was a very quiet, uncomfortable drive home. It’s too bad he wasn’t here since things obviously went better today.

INTERVIEWER: Walk me through the race. It really looks like you had a solid plan and executed it.

DANA: No, not at all, that was an illusion. Things actually started off really badly. My mom drove me to the race but had run out to do some errand first, which took longer than she thought, so she got me there too late and I couldn’t race in my normal division. Fortunately they let me race with the men later in the day, but of course I wasn’t nearly as confident in that group. I was pretty furious, because even though I’ve historically kind of sucked at this sport, over the winter I finally hit puberty and was riding well, and was really pumped to have a go here. But going up against grown men … that’s another thing entirely.

INTERVIEWER: Were you excited to have your big brother in the peloton with you? Did you guys work together?

DANA: Not at all. Several times this season he’s come in second to the same guy, and of course it would make sense to help each other out to try to finally beat this dude. But my brother naturally assumed I’d be useless. In fact, when we were suiting up for the race in a restroom here at the Bureau, he advised me that if he got in a breakaway, he wasn’t going to wait for me, I was on my own. I was thinking, like, thanks for the support, asshole.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me about your big attack. It really seemed perfectly timed.

DANA: Actually, it was totally spontaneous. I was staying up near the front watching for my brother or his nemesis to make a move, kind of waiting to see how things shook out. Although I was feeling really good, my breathing was pretty loud—I have some seasonal allergies which can make my respiratory system a bit noisy. So some douchebag with a mustache says, “Jesus Christ, kid, are you about to collapse a lung or something?” It just pissed me off so bad, being spoken down to like that by this complete stranger who just assumes, like my brother, that I’m a hopeless case. I wasn’t going to take that, but then I couldn’t figure out a clever response, so I just decided—very spur-of-the-moment—to attack the shit out of him, and of course everyone else in the process. It was a very unguarded, uncalculated move, born of pure anger and adrenaline, and I think I caught everyone—including myself—completely by surprise. When my attack blew the pack apart and only two guys were able to join me, I was stoked, especially since the two were my brother and his nemesis, both of whom had done well all season, so I knew they were super strong.

INTERVIEWER: You seemed to work really well together.

DANA: Yeah, we knew the break had a chance to survive so we were all motivated to share the work and really commit. In my case, less was expected of me since I’m just this scrawny-looking kid, right?

INTERVIEWER: It seemed like you were actually dangling at the back quite a bit, like you might even get dropped.

DANA: Yeah, it really sucked because the last time I raced here, I crashed out and was hauled off in an ambulance. Everything had been going great—this was the last day of the week-long Red Zinger Mini Classic and I was in a 3-up breakaway with the GC leader and the guy in second overall—but it started raining, and got a bit slippery. In my case it was especially bad because I’d punctured during my warm-up and borrowed a wheel from a friend. Unbeknownst to me and probably to my friend, he’d mounted a track tire on there that was not designed for wet conditions. So on the fastest corner, in the descent, I slipped right out and that was the end of that. My shorts were so badly ripped, my junk was hanging out as I lay on my back being attended by paramedics. All these spectators were crowding around, including my brothers, who gave me endless shit afterward for reaching down and tugging the ripped Lycra to cover my johnson. Their point was that if I’d really been injured, I wouldn’t have had the presence of mind to do this. Whatever, dudes. Anyhow, I was really spooked by that crash, and my mojo was shot, so I couldn’t keep up on the downhill today. Every lap I’d lose ground and have to chase like a madman on the climb to catch back up. So that kind of sucked.

INTERVIEWER: Did you figure you were doomed, then? How could you possibly go for the win if you’re always gapped like that?

DANA: Well, in the end I managed to use it to my advantage. The other two were so sure I wouldn’t be a factor, they only marked each other. With a couple laps to go I realized that if I could possibly get my head together and not get dropped on the downhill on the final lap, I’d be in perfect position and have the element of surprise. So I just gritted my teeth and willed myself to just bomb the last descent and not get gapped, and it worked! I was tucked right in as we made the final corner! Heading up the hill toward the finish, seeing my brother and this guy watching each other, I decided to go early and see if I could get a big enough gap to hold it. So I went right up the fucking gutter and totally caught them napping—it must have seemed like I came out of nowhere. So now I was just going for the line, absolutely all-out, kind of channeling into my effort a lifetime of sibling rivalry and being bullied, so I didn’t care a whit if I pedaled so hard I ripped myself in half, and I was watching that finish line approach and just kind of begging it to come closer before I got caught. And to my shock and pure delight, finally I was over it and nobody had come around.

INTERVIEWER: Your victory salute was really something … a whole lot of whooping and punching the air. What was going on there?

DANA: To actually win, and against my big brother, and all these men, after having been so distraught at missing my start earlier, and to have success after so many fruitless years in this sport, particularly after my friends had kind of abandoned me since my sucking at racing apparently made me a dork … there’s just so much satisfaction in winning here, such a feeling of absolute vindication. It surpasses my wildest dreams. And now I get to give my brother so much shit, for the rest of our lives. I just wish I could go find that dickhead with the mustache and give him a hard time for bagging on me. I’d love to tell him, “I hope the rest of your race went better, not having to hear me breathe anymore because I dropped your ass.”

INTERVIEWER: I think you’d better head to the medical tent. You’re showing signs of acute testosterone poisoning.

DANA: Naw, I think I’m okay. I’m a teenager, these levels are normal for me!

Postscript

So, forty years on, is it the case I’ve given my brother endless shit about having beaten him in this race? Well, yes, but it hasn’t been quite as satisfying as I’d hoped: he maintains that he doesn’t remember it. At all. I find this astonishing. I mean, if I never brought it up until recently, yeah, that kind of makes sense, but I feel like I’ve reminded him a great number of times! I guess at the end of the day, this was just an unimportant local bike race, not any kind of championship or anything, so nobody would bother to remember it at all, much less care. Except me.

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Test Ride - Specialized Turbo Levo SL 2 Carbon E-Bike

Introduction

I almost called this post a “road test” like in “Car and Driver” magazine, as I did technically test the Specialized Turbo Levo SL 2 Comp Carbon on the road, or more precisely the street (but I don’t think “street test” is a thing). Obviously a trail test would have been better, as the Levo SL is a pure trail bike, but it’s also an e-bike, and the electronic aspect is the bigger deal. So the eight minutes you spend reading this will be worth it, trust me.

Overview

I suppose I should start by telling you what this bike is and what it purports to do. It’s an $8,000 motor-assisted mountain bike that provides “2x You” performance. That is, it’ll basically take your ability and double it. So, if the Stone Temple Pilots guy singing “Half the Man I Used to Be” bought this bike, he’d be made whole.

Since we’d all love to double our performance, it’s tempting to think this bike is for everyone—but it’s not. I learned about it through my friend R— who texted me about it and said, “Only level 3 coaches can get this bike.” He’s referring to the most advanced NICA high school mountain bike coaches, of which I happen to be one. But coaches shouldn’t ride e-bikes at all, and surely Specialized would sell this bike to anyone, wouldn’t they? R— can be cryptic in his texts and ignored my request for clarification, so I went to the Specialized website for more information.

The web page for the Turbo Levo SL 2 Comp Carbon explains that this bike is “for the trail rider who craves serpentine singletrack, sending it skyward, and lives for advancing your skills and fitness.” This confused me further. So, this trail rider, a third party, lives for advancing my skills and fitness? Lives for it? Really? Sounds kind of obsessed, like a stalker. Or maybe I’m just being deliberately dense, reluctant to acknowledge that this Specialized marketing person simply got stuck with that old pronoun problem, his vs. her vs. his/her vs. their, and didn’t want to be political. I can understand that. But this innovative switch from third person to second person could have been even more dramatic—how about switching to first person? “For the trailer rider who lives for advancing my skills and fitness.” I’d be like, your skills and fitness? Who are you?” And the marketing person would be like, “Exactly.” And I’d be scratching my head, like, “How did we get into a dialogue? It was just words on a page.” And you’re like, “Exactly.” (By “you’re” I mean the marketing person. Even if that isn’t you.)

So why is this bike $8,000? Well, they spared no expense to make it as awesome as possible. For example, they “stripped away the mass to keep the Levo SL lean and responsive.” Thank goodness. I hate it when a bike manufacturer leaves all that mass on there. So many bikes, especially e-bikes, just have big clumps of material, maybe it’s actually fat, and the bikes are sluggish. My Salsa backup road bike, though not electric, is just massive and clumpy. (I still love it though, like an oversized teddy bear.)

The Turbo Levo SL 2 Comp is loaded with innovation, such as having a 29-inch front wheel and a 27.5-inch rear. But it doesn’t stop there. Check this out: “If you prefer the rolling and traction benefits of a 29” rear wheel, just flip the pivot link chip and mount the big wheel.” The big wheel? Where would you get this big wheel? Does the bike come with two rear wheels? Or are we talking about the Big Wheel from the 1970s, i.e., this?

It’s a very confusing bike all around. Like, where does the name “Turbo” come from? Well, according to the website, this bike offers a “TURBO OPERATING SYSTEM.” So, I guess the way this works is that there’s a turbine powered by the exhaust system that enables the bike to suck in extra oxygen to mix with the fuel, so ... wait. I’m getting confused again. This bike is electric, not internal combustion. And “operating system” sounds like software. I guess they mean “TURBO” as in, just, really really good. I’m getting tired now, processing all this nuance, so I’m going to go make a sandwich. I’ve got fresh avocado and San Luis Sourdough so it’ll be a totally turbo sandwich!

Okay, I’m back. To round out the tech specs of the bike (before I get to the test ride itself), the website says this model has a “new kinematic with flatter leverage curve which provides more support and playfulness off the top, but plenty of control in rougher conditions.” What is “kinematic”? Wikipedia says kinematics is a “subfield of physics and mathematics” and offers this illustrative graphic:

So what does this “kinematic” have to do with bikes? I was a bit lost so I googled it, and found that this bike-themed web page mentions kinematics (albeit only once). I guess “kinematics” is kind of like “geometry” but that term is so dated, so pre-electric. I guess we should just absorb and acknowledge that a “new kinematic” is a good thing. As for the rest of that sentence, “playfulness off the top” and “flatter leverage curve” may have to do with a kicky, young, sexy woman who might be a little bit flat-chested. I mean, obviously the kinematic doesn’t literally have to do with that, but it’s just the feel of this thing. If this bike were a young woman she’d be playfully alluring and her name would be, like, Kylie. And you’d be dying to meet her. Wow. I can’t believe you just said all that. Who are you? (Besides, of course, a marketing person who understands that the majority of e-bike buyers are male.)

Speaking of which, it’s high time I stopped blathering about the Turbo Levo’s specs. I should get to the test ride itself.

The ride

I’ll start by saying that I didn’t have the proper shoes, or even a helmet, when I rode this bike. I hadn’t planned on riding it at all. I’d been at the pub with some pals, two of whom are cyclists. One, in fact, was R—, the fellow coach who’d alerted me to this bike. For once, we weren’t talking about bikes. We were talking about R—’s mentally ill neighbor who put padlocks on his garbage and recycling cans and constantly hassles everyone and at one point got right in his other neighbor’s face, yelled something like, “You wanna piece a me!?” and ripped off his shirt. (His own shirt, I should clarify.) I said, “In fairness, though, who among us hasn’t done that?” I know all this backstory has nothing to do with the Turbo Levo SL, but I’m just setting the stage here. Think “Deer Hunter.”

When it was time to head home, R— had a surprise for us: he’d gone out and bought himself the very Turbo Levo SL 2 Carbon I’ve been writing about. No, he won’t ride it on high school team mountain bike rides, because that would be cheating, and setting a bad example, and embarrassing himself because we coaches pride ourselves on being able to (more or less) keep up under our own power. R— uses the Turbo Levo for commuting across the Richmond Bridge to Marin County. The spanking new bike was locked right out front (with a lock worth more than an entry-level mountain bike, I’ll bet). He invited me to try it out and I didn’t hesitate.

I set off up Solano Ave, and right away discovered that the Turbo Levo really does have a new kinematic. In fart, wow … what a strange typo. I went to type “in fact,” and because I’m on the Dvorak keyboard layout, the “R” is right next to the “C,” so it’s a pretty predictable typo and I’m only surprised I haven’t made it before. And no, I’m not at the pub as I type this, I’ve actually only perhaps had too much coffee. So where was I? Oh yeah: the new kinematic. It was, in fact, so dramatic that some rando on the street corner yelled, “Nice kinematic!” Full disclosure, it wasn’t actually a total rando, it was M—, the owner of a local bike shop, whom I see at the pub sometimes. Well, okay, even that isn’t completely accurate: to be totally transparent with you, nobody on the street corner actually yelled anything. In truth there was nobody there. But that doesn’t change the fact that this bike’s kinematic really was breathtakingly novel and refreshing. Its flatter leverage curve and playfulness off the top had me whispering, “Come here, you.” (Naw, just kidding. That was actually you.)

Well. If you’ve ever ridden an e-bike, particularly the Class 3 type (click here for details) that simply add to your power as you pedal, it’s a pretty awesome experience. Instead of pushing a button or operating a motorcycle-style throttle to engage the motor, you just pedal along as though you were on a regular bike, but you go way faster, still in accordance with your effort. So it rides a lot like a regular bike, except you feel like you’re young again, and impressively strong. Naturally I wanted to intensify this experience. Instead of going only 15 or 20 mph, I wanted to steam up Solano Ave at like 25. So I shifted up.

The SRAM GX Eagle AXS wireless electronic shifting is smooth and precise and I would have been very impressed, except the button I pressed did exactly the opposite of what I wanted it to. It shifted me into an impossibly large cog in the back (the cassette being a 10-52). This made for such a low gear, there was nothing for the motor to do as I spun ineffectually at a comically high cadence, my speed dropping woefully. It was like all the wind suddenly vanished from my sails. Now I was mincing along pathetically and getting nothing out of the electric assist. If I weren’t such a mature, unflappable type I might have started crying. I fumbled around with my thumb trying to find the up-shift button but could not. I pulled over, frustrated. I will not say this is a criticism of the SRAM GX Eagle, since this was my first time using it, but it is a bit odd I’ve never struggled with this kind of thing before in my life. Perhaps I was a bit light-headed from having to adapt to the new kinematic.

There wasn’t enough light to see the controls, as I live in the kind of upscale community that doesn’t need to supply powerful streetlamps. Plus, my eyes are going. I have this irrational fear of already getting cataracts. I think it’s happened to all us 50-somethings. You should see my home: it seems like every week my wife brings home a new area lamp. As much as I squinted I couldn’t discern a second button. I got out my smartphone and struggled to unlock it. The fingerprint reader is pretty tricky and the facial recognition scanner even more so, especially in low light. (I really wish Samsung had gone for a TURBO OPERATING SYSTEM on this phone.) Finally I got the torch feature going, and found the up-shift button. Tech tip: it’s right above the down-shift button.

Based on what you’ve read of my test ride so far, you might be wondering at this point how much I’d had to drink. I want to assure you that, like all those who appreciate quality, I enjoy it responsibly. Was I tipsy? Well, of course, a bit … I mean, it was boys’ night out after all. But was I, to borrow a phrase from James Acaster, “hella tipsy”? I was not. Four of us had shared two pitchers (not counting the one that mostly gone when I arrived) and one of them was Trumer Pils, noted for its 4.9% ABV content and very flat leverage curve. Plus, I’d had two dinners right before meeting my pals. (One dinner was at the new pizza joint that, obviously, has miniscule portions.)

Now that I’d mastered the shifting, things got real, real good. I won’t say I could feel the difference with the 27.5-inch rear wheel—the “compact chainstay and super responsive behavior” weren’t prominent—but I did have that warm, relaxing sense that with this bike I’d never need to wonder if it would be wise to rotate the tires occasionally (which would be a hassle since they’re tubeless ). I’m also not sure I was fully appreciating the “low bottom bracket, slack headtube angle, and reduced fork offset” because I was just riding on a city street, not shredding singletrack ‘gnar, but the important thing about this bike is that it was fast, easy to pedal, and probably made me look really, really cool particularly because I wasn’t even wearing a helmet, mine being locked to my 3-speed back at the pub. For that reason, and because I didn’t want R— to think I’d made off with his superfly new ride, I made a nice sweeping U-turn in front of Gordo’s taqueria and made my way back to my pals. I cruised up the sidewalk and … WTF? Where did they go, and who were these randos standing out front?

As it turns out, the two randos were R— and H—. Even though they were right where I expected to find them, the fact is I didn’t recognize them. And they were behaving strangely, staring right at me as if they wanted something. For a moment I felt an impulse to rip my shirt off and yell, “You wanna piece a me!?” but it passed. R— was wearing a new helmet and maybe that’s what threw me off. Or maybe, just maybe, the Turbo Levo SL 2 is that special kind of bike that makes you see the world differently. Okay, thinking through this a bit more I guess that’s probably not it, since I have long believed myself to be face blind. My struggle probably had nothing to do with the bike.

Well, it was kind of sad climbing aboard my 3-speed Triumph commuter bike after that. I call this bike the Arseless, short for Arseless Horse, after the hero’s bike in A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle. The Arseless is so old (older, even, than I) and has been so neglected, it probably wouldn’t even roll downhill if you didn’t pedal. All its bearings are practically seized. None of its mass has been stripped away, and it doesn’t even have an operating system. But I couldn’t help but to ponder, as I pedaled my way home, that the difference between this bike and the Turbo Levo SL 2 is a lot less than the difference between a bicycle and nothing. The Arseless cost just $65 (albeit secondhand), practically nothing compared to the $8,000 Turbo Levo, but both of them are infinitely superior to walking. In the final analysis—to quote the Irish cycling champ Sean Kelly—“a bike’s a bike.”

Postscript

Lighthearted mockery aside, I love Specialized bikes. I still have an old Stumpjumper; I bought my daughter a Stumpjumper M2 for her first mountain bike; and I met my wife at the bike shop where I sold her the Rockhopper Comp she still rides. The Turbo Levo SL 2 Carbon is an amazing bike and if you’re looking for an e-bike, you should totally buy it. Just don’t ride it on no-e-bikes-allowed trails (which I think ought to be most of them ... but that’s another post).

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Can We Unplug our Kids?

Introduction

A new book is out, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by the N.Y.U. professor Jonathan Haidt. Both The New York Times and The New Yorker have reviewed it recently, here and here respectively. The book decries the effect of social media and constant smartphone use—citing their role in widespread anxiety, depression, and other mental-health disorders—among Gen Z. As the Times sums it up, “Mr. Haidt lays out an ambitious set of interventions in his new book, which include: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16 and no phones in schools.” With regard to these goals, the New Yorker writer declares, “All of these strike me as not just reasonable but irrefutably necessary. What is less clear is whether there is enough collective and institutional will to accomplish them.”

But what if society cannot make these adaptations? Is the next generation doomed, or can parents reverse this digital tide and create appropriate boundaries for their children? Can iconoclastic families go it alone and not get swept up in this modern miasma? The answer, I can tell you from experience, is yes. That’s what this post is about.

How parents are complicit

As is typical, the New Yorker review wasn’t so much a review of the book but an examination of its overall topic: the mental health crisis faced by Gen Z, and the role of the Internet, social media, and smartphones in it. The New Yorker writer cited the role parents play in this quagmire:

By the time that smartphones and social media were becoming omnipresent, in the late two-thousands and early twenty-tens, children were also spending less and less time engaged in unstructured, largely unsupervised play with their peers. This deprivation owed to their parents’ concerns for their safety—a fretfulness known as “safetyism”—and to a competitive, college-fixated mind-set that prioritized adult-led, résumé-building, and “enrichment” activities. Unaccompanied kids doing normal kid things like walking home from school or visiting a playground became conspicuous, strange, perhaps even the subject of a 911 call or a C.P.S. investigation.

It’s disconcerting to see how helicopter parenting and Internet technologies have dovetailed such that parents cannot resist not only allowing but expecting their kids to have smartphones. It’s a true codependence. Kids are willing to surrender their autonomy by letting their parents track them; in return, kids get unfettered access to a virtual realm that distracts them from the real world, to say the least. Meanwhile, parents (perhaps succumbing to FOMO) set poor examples by being glued to their own smartphones as well … maybe not engrossed in Instagram and Snapchat, but in their doom-filled “feeds,” which is probably worse.

Well, not me. You may find this annoying, but I shall now explain how I’ve not only eschewed all this, but successfully opted my kids out of it for their entire childhoods. If you still have young children, perhaps you can find some inspiration here.

My Internet & phone policy

Almost eleven years ago, arguably before the Gen Z mental-health crisis was widely acknowledged, I blogged about my concern that smartphones, with their steady stream of engrossing social traffic and bite-sized entertainment content, were teaching our kids impatience. I proposed three ways parents could combat this: 1) set the right example; 2) work deliberately to teach patience; and 3) don’t let your teens have cellphones or social media accounts. I wrote that post when my older daughter was twelve; I hope a few readers at that time chuckled at my pledge and assumed I’d fall short of actually enforcing it. Here’s how it actually went.

As I explained in a later post, I think every family should have an Internet acceptable use policy, just like corporations do, and here is the one my wife and I laid out from Day One:

• No social media as long as you’re under our roof
• No video gaming (the exception being, briefly, an arithmetic game assigned for school)
• Limits on video entertainment
• No Internet after 9:00 p.m.
• No cellphone until high school
• No smartphone until college

This wasn’t just aspirational; we stuck to our guns. On our home WiFi network, I blocked all social media for all users, other than allowing LinkedIn for myself. (I use it as a digital Rolodex.) I blocked all video gaming as well (the only wrinkle being that my firewall erroneously blocked https://www.aerobie.com/ which isn’t video gaming but for outdoor products like Frisbees; I had to whitelist that one).  Until they were in middle school, my daughters had to log their Internet time on paper, noting when they were online and for what purpose. The idea wasn’t to give me reason to cut them off, per se, but rather to get them thinking about their use vs. letting it be as automatic as a smoker lighting up.

To make video less appealing, I throttled the bandwidth down to 250 kbps, which is a trickle by modern standards—it turned YouTube (etc.) into a pointillist slide show. This wasn’t quite effective enough, so I monitored the usage and blocked specific sites as needed, including gostream, watchcartoonsonline, 123movies, gogomovies, and dailymotion. (I did eventually increase the bandwidth allocation during the COVID-19 pandemic, to support video conferencing.)

I configured my WiFi network to shut off my daughters’ Internet at 9:00 p.m., to start with. My daughters were on separate networks, so later on I changed the older one’s cutoff to 10:00 p.m. When they reached high school and used the Internet for a majority of their class assignments, I allowed them to request an extension on an ad hoc basis if they had a paper to write or something. Eventually, I moved out the shutoff time to 11. So I guess maybe I caved a little on that one.

Meanwhile, as strict as my cellphone policy may seem to you, I really did apply it. I’m not going to lie: my older daughter was not a fan of this aspect of my parenting. She often entreated me to relent. On one occasion, I asked her, “Why is it that you even want a phone? How would that benefit you?” She replied, “Well, it could lead to greater freedom. I could go to more places by myself, and you and Mom wouldn’t have to worry.”  I told her that our merely knowing where she is won’t keep her out of trouble, and added, “Besides, if your parents can reach you whenever they want, that’s not really freedom at all.  Freedom is having enough trust that we don’t need to know where you are.”

Against her protests, I held firm and didn’t get her a cellphone until high school, and even then it was a cheesy feature phone I bought on the cheap from Amazon. I was curious to see how much texting she’d end up doing, and it turned out to be almost none: she basically scrapped the phone entirely. Part of the reason is that it embarrassed her by ringing randomly when she was in class. The ringer volume wasn’t actually adjustable, as far as we could ever figure out, and she struggled to silence it while her classmates laughed. The situation worsened as she struggled to find, in the phone settings, where to turn off the ringer. This phone was so weirdly designed that as you pressed its buttons it would read out the name of each function, as though the user were blind. Some words were pronounced with a British accent; others were in this very annoying, braying female American voice. Our entire family enjoyed mimicking how the phone would sternly yell out, “SETTINGS.” This phone was a complete dud. I only ever received one text from it: “This Is A Message For Dad. Maybe You Can Reply!”

Perhaps with her sister’s experience in mind, my younger daughter never did show any interest in a cellphone. So all through high school, she had nothing.

The result

So how did this work out? Were my unsupervised daughters abducted and sold into slavery? Did they get lost somewhere, for lack of GPS, and never turn up? Did they become total pariahs, scorned by their peers for not being tech-savvy? Or have they made up for lost time and become utterly enslaved by the technology, having not been inoculated against it during their formative years?

The results were a bit mixed. Only one of my daughters was abducted. Kidding! In seriousness, my younger daughter totally embraced the non-digital life. In fact, I have a very fond memory of something I overheard (from the next room) when she had a bunch of friends over for dinner. They were gathered around the table and my daughter said, “Dammit, P—, put away your phone now!”

My older daughter, other than being embarrassed by her feature phone as described above, didn’t tend to complain unless she happened to overhear me describing my family’s draconian policies to another parent. My smug anti-tech priggishness was as annoying to her then as this blog post surely is to you now. But she made do throughout high school without social media, gaming, or a phone, and when she got a smartphone the summer before leaving for college (so we could have some visibility into her nascent habits), she appreciated the utility without getting totally dragged into the virtual-first life. She’s never glued to her phone, at least in her mom’s and my presence. As far as I know, the only social media she’s on is Instagram, and she says she only posts occasionally. (I’ll take her word for it.)

I will say that I do a lot of texting with my older daughter these days—far more than I’d ever expected. But I still don’t think I’m setting a bad example; for one thing, she knows not to expect an immediate response, and I don’t either. Also, the majority of our texts fall into just a few categories: photos of my cat from me to her; the daily exchange of our Wordle scores & snapshots; the occasional snapshot from a bike ride, hike, etc. That’s really about it. The social media culture of broadcasting a curated version of yourself and hoping for a lot of likes does not enter the equation.

As for my younger daughter, she’s now in college, and she still doesn’t have a smartphone. My wife exhorted her to accept one (we’d even pay the bill), but got nowhere. Our daughter eventually agreed to accept a prepaid feature phone (albeit a decent one that doesn’t yell “SETTINGS”). For roughly 90% of her two years at college, the phone has been lost. (I think she’s on her third one … good thing they’re cheap!) For the remaining 10% of the time, the phone has mostly been powered off. If we propose a phone call over the weekend, and our daughter remembers, she’ll turn it on and call us. I periodically ask her if her offline approach has caused any social friction. She maintains that it hasn’t and doesn’t. During her freshman year, in the dorms, she said, “It’s great—the only way people can reach me is to come knock on my door, so I never have to make plans—I just get whisked away.”

The bonus effect

The Internet/phone policy my wife and I devised was based on a few principles: a) nobody should be glued to a screen; b) virtual life should not take priority over real life; c) nobody should be on a social dopamine drip, craving constant affirmation from a wide but shallow network of quasi-friends; and d) we should all avoid the shrinking of our attention span that is afforded and ultimately created by these technologies. My wife and I have been very satisfied with the outcome as we look at our adult daughters’ online behavior.

We perhaps took for granted how important it also was to eschew the safetyism described earlier in this post: the impulse for parents to monitor their children’s whereabouts and activities through their phones, almost like a digital leash. That safetyism washes both ways, I think: the offspring learn not only to expect but to accept and even welcome their parents’ supervision and assistance. Of course kids can text (etc.) their friends for support, but these friends are a shared resource among a wider group, whereas parents are fully invested in their children and ready to bend over backwards. I’ve talked to several parents who were kind of surprised at how closely their kids kept in touch during college, via texting etc. … even to the point where these parents became a bit concerned about the kids’ lack of autonomy.

I think it’s worse when a parent isn’t worried about a lack of autonomy. A few weeks ago my wife and I enjoyed a getaway with a few other couples at a glorious guest house near the ocean. We were out on this back deck taking in the first really sunny day of spring, nibbling fancy snacks and enjoying a rambling conversation, except for one guest, a friend of a friend. She was on her phone the entire time, which I originally took for shyness (she knew only one person there) but which turned out to be a crisis her son was having that she was trying to mitigate. If it had been a real crisis, of course she should have gone off to a private place and phoned him. But it was just the unfolding drama of the kid believing he’d just flunked a college Statistics midterm. To the kid and his mom this was an absolute disaster that threatened to unravel his entire future. Every twenty minutes we’d get an unsolicited update from the mom. “He needs this class to graduate!” she cried out at one point. I replied, “Maybe he should change his major to Drama.” I realized in saying this that I was burning to the ground any chance of ever getting to know this person better, not just for myself but for all those who burst out laughing. But I don’t regret it.

And that’s an effect of this no-phone policy that I hadn’t expected or consicously intended: that it would make my kids more autonomous and resilient. My wife and I haven’t become these de facto fixers who are just a quick digital poke away. Curious as to how true this assessment truly is, I fact-checked myself by going through all my texts and emails from my daughters, to compile the instances of them reaching out for help. Here’s what I came up with:

Daughter A:

• A request to order her a sketchbook (before I’d given her my Amazon login)
• A photo of some well-cleaned road rash (doesn’t appear I replied), either to ask how she did or just to flex
• A solicitation for money (before we worked out a standard practice of 80% reimbursement for necessities, payable several times a year upon request)
• An email on March 10, 2020 telling my wife and me to suspend our plan to visit over spring break: “There is a very real possibility that there won’t be classes next quarter due to the coronavirus.” (I thought she was crazy … this was about a week before the pandemic asserted its grip on everyone’s lives.)
• A request to review an English paper
• An invitation to an awards ceremony, the day before graduation, for exceptional academic performance
• A request to review a cover letter for a job application

Daughter B:

• The following requests sent via text: “I’d like another pillow and something to microwave tea in”; “Tell freya I said hi”; “whats the water to rice ratio again”; “Could you give me tha grandmas phone number?”
• An email request for some books needed for a class that aren’t available at the bookstore
• A request for my “Southwestern corn goo” recipe
• A request for money (i.e., to settle up, as described above)
• This text: “yo could you send me the link/give me the name to your party megamix and other music collections you’ve made?  I’m looking to expand my list”
• An email asking how to send a camera in for repairs

This isn’t to say my wife and I are totally immune to the impulse toward safetyism. In my case, sometimes I text my younger daughter and when I don’t get a reply (i.e., most of the time), I think, “Dang, I hope she didn’t lose her phone again.” For my wife’s part, she does worry, being a mom after all. She’ll say of our younger daughter, “I haven’t heard from her in like a week and a half. I hope nothing’s happened.” I’m always very supportive, reminding her that in the vast majority of cases, when a college kid doesn’t respond to her parents it’s because she’s been abducted, either by human traffickers or space aliens. I also reminder my wife that this daughter was on the wrestling team: “I pity the fool who messes with her—she’ll go full Hunger Games on they ass.”

Conclusion

If you have young children or teenagers, you don’t need to wait for Jonathan Haidt’s proposed utopia to become reality, such that all of society embraces limits on digital culture. If you have the chutzpah to decry this modern tend toward safetyism, and you have the rapport and authority with your kids to impose limits of your own, you don’t have to wait around and hope that society corrects. You can carve out a family culture, starting right now, that doesn’t put your kids at the mercy of for-profit technocrats. Yes, you’ll have to give up the irresistible prospect of remotely babysitting your teenagers, but after all, you came out okay … right?

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