From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XIV

Introduction

This is the fourteenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, and Volume XIII is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another and can be read in any order, in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, and/or not at all.)

What are bits and bobs? In the context of albertnet, they’re mostly excerpts from emails, letters, etc. that I wrote to friends and family before blogs were a thing. Read on if you’re too tired to watch TV. Better yet, read this aloud to your pet or your plants.

February 2, 1990

I spontaneously decided I was through wearing old bike race t-shirts etc. Among these were the polo shirts I got from being a media liaison at the Coors Classic, and some other polo shirts (the bright red ones) that Mom got from somebody who’d marshaled at the Coors Classic. It’s a ton of shirts. Simultaneously, my art studio roommate, C—, whom I call Dithers (for reasons I don’t myself understand), and who calls me Dithers as well (ditto), decided he was tired of wearing nothing but grey and black (which was, and probably still is, the unofficial uniform of the starving artist). So I offered him virtually my entire wardrobe, and that is all he wears now. Buzzard to peacock literally overnight. Naturally, the fact that every single garment promotes cycling, in which he has zero interest, has not escaped him; I guess you could say he wears the shirts ironically. Every so often he complains to me about some nerdy cyclist type who quizzed him eagerly about his involvement in the Coors Classic, and who was disappointed when C— replied, “I was never a marshal for anything and I don’t even know what the Coors Classic is.”

January 19, 1991

[Reminiscing to my brother.] And so, a job at a factory. Underwear. Cans. Crates. Cardboard. Time clock, big bell that rings for break, picnic tables and vending machines. The factory like a giant hive, hundreds of sewing machines going at once, turning out underwear. You and I sticking endless size/color labels on the cans, crating them, stapling wooden lids, packing boxes, filling out shipping forms, noting on invoices where an order—seemingly every order—is short because the factory cannot sew underwear fast enough.

You speak fondly of the experience. Fighting together against the oppression of our (rightfully disgruntled) factory floor colleagues, underpaid immigrant laborers. After-hours hijinks. You and I singing “G— W—” [the factory owner’s name] to the tune of “Richard Corey.” Disabling the safety mechanism and firing the high-powered compressed-air staple gun out over the factory floor. You grin, laugh, reminisce, and what do I do? I sit back, real cool like, maybe mumble a little bit. Do you know why? It isn’t because I don’t cherish those memories. It isn’t that I didn’t enjoy it. It’s that my ambitious preoccupations are censoring me from admitting to having enjoyed a factory job. Yeah, god damn it, it paid the rent. No it wasn’t a stepping stone. Yeah I did it but only because I’d been unemployed. No brass plaque from that one to hang on the wall. It wasn’t a part of my plan. But these are all only delusions of dissatisfaction. I was afraid to admit that I enjoyed it. Afraid I might never transcend it. Gotta getta outta here. Gotta move on. Drive, man, drive.

I have this vision of driving that ‘52 Ford, the closest thing the factory had to a work vehicle, down to the warehouse, unloading all P’s and G’s personal shit because they were too cheap to rent a storage locker. This is not important company business. This is something others are too lazy to do. No talent here. But we were talented in a way, weren’t we? We taught ourselves how to enjoy it. I took half an hour rolling down the screwed-up window so I could coolly hang my arm out and try with one hand to steer that horribly misaligned truck in a straight path down the driveway of the factory, all the time checking out the tits ‘n’ ass of the girlies in little round pictures mounted on the dash. You’d have a book of human sexuality on your lap (found among P—’s stuff), reading aloud with fascination at all this scholastic explanation of the carnal. Written by experts.

But at the factory, we were the experts, making it all a big joke, stumbling through our work recklessly, giddy like little kids left with a babysitter who lets us cuss. Fuck, shit, god damn. Look at my crazed smirk when I say that. Hey G—: fuckin’ shit bitch hell. Laughing so hard we’re dribbling spit down our chins which we wipe away with the back of an arm. After a while the babysitter says, “Hey, quit cussin’, it sounds like shit,” and we are back on the floor, rolling with laughter. Laughing so hard we can’t even make our lips shape the next obscenity. That was our factory life, in all its true glory. It was like a science fiction role-playing vacation, not Westworld or Futureworld, but Factory World. We knew it wasn’t our life, it wasn’t our destiny, but a few months of living paycheck to paycheck, no lofty ambitions, standing in line to punch the clock behind a fat ‘n’ sassy waistband technician. It was like a vacation. But now I’m in dangerous territory. I better shut my trap before I say something stupid like “I’d like to go back.”

April 3, 2000

Next week we’ll be putting an offer on another house, also in Berkeley, that’s ugly on the outside but really groovy on the inside. We should have a bit better chance on it, I reckon, due to its ugliness. (How far we’ve fallen since we started this seemingly doomed house hunt!) It’s on kind of a sketchy street—generally nice, but with a couple of totally derelict houses. One of the houses is abandoned, and the other ought to be condemned whether it’s occupied or not. It looks like it would collapse if you blew hard on it. There’s this big old truck out front that looks like it was driven through the fires of hell. It has a really bizarre mural painted on the sides and back, that looks kind of cult-y. We asked a neighbor what was going on, and he said, “Oh, that’s Mike The Mover. He’s been here since the dawn of time and always will be. He runs an illegal moving operation out of that house.” Fingers crossed … Mike The Mover could become my new neighbor!

January 16, 2001

Oh yeah, I’ve heard of the Stinking Rose, and in fact I ate there once. It’s somewhat famous, probably because of its name and its gimmick (which is, of course, gobs of garlic). It was written up in a “Smithsonian” article on garlic (and is probably mentioned in every other article on garlic as well). It has a prominent location on Columbus Ave, not far from House of Nanking. E— and I took a couple of friends from out of town because they specifically wanted to go there. It was a bit overpriced, and they didn’t really do anything fascinating or brilliant with garlic other than, well, using too much of it. They also had these order-placing devices that looked like phasers, so they could shoot your order into the kitchen rather than walking there. Neat idea, and fun for the diners, but it seemed to actually slow things down. The most memorable part of the evening was when our gay, bald waiter said to me, sternly, “What’s your name?” I told him and he said, “Dana, let’s get one thing straight. I would kill for your hair. Kill!” (My hair was shoulder-length at the time.) Anyway, if they had a Stinking Rose in Phoenix I might go there during a business trip, but you can certainly do better in the Bay Area.

April 26, 2001

Quick question for you. Any tips on child care? E— is due in September and we’re having a hard time finding good day care. Some of these places fill up a year in advance (I guess the couple gets on the list before even trying to conceive) and we don’t want to end up having to settle for one of those places where a chain-smoking ex-hippie sits forty-five kids down in front of the TV, puts her pit bull in charge, and then heads into her bedroom to work a psychic hotline.

I think you guys said you had a nanny back when C— was a toddler? Gosh, that brings me back to a nanny my brothers and I had. I didn’t learn her name until years later but the whole time she watched us, we called her “Darlin’” for reasons we ourselves probably didn’t understand. Probably she called us “darlin’s” and we got confused. We actually thought that was her name. Not that we thought it was her first name—we would never call an adult by her first name—but more like she was a Cher or Madonna type who had only one name. Darlin’ was a very old lady, and very cool because she would let us watch “Adam 12,” and would occasionally give us Trident gum. The only downside was, she absolutely forbade us to suck our thumbs and would always threaten to cut them off if we persisted. In fact, once she chased me under the bed with the kitchen scissors. I remember peeking out from under there, terrified, watching her stick her head down under the bed and say, “Stick out your thumb! I’m going to cut it off!” Such an exciting lady. We always looked forward to having her over. Reading over what I’ve just described, it doesn’t appear that this was top notch child care, but in fact it really was.

Is having a nanny way expensive? Day care places are running about a grand a month and that’s what we’re expecting to spend. It seems impossible anything could be more expensive than that but then you’re probably already laughing at my naivety.  I’m thinking I could just drive down to Fourth Street and find one of the nameless workers that gather down there to get picked up for day labor. For $5 I’m sure a laborer would find childcare easier than digging trenches or putting up sheetrock. Of course, if I suggested this to E— our daughter would end up being raised in a single-parent home (assuming E— beat the murder rap). So I’d appreciate any advice you could give.

September 4, 2001

Thanks for the advice about strollers, particularly the bit about how newborns can’t ride in them because their heads will flop around, frightening Mommy. Someone advised I start with a pram. Near as I can tell, a pram isn’t a terribly useful device, as it only gives the baby a view of the sky. There’s probably a lot to see up there, but not as much as if the kid is facing forward. We’re borrowing a “Baby Bjorn,” which is some kind of frontal baby seat that you wear. Our birthing and bondage coach insists that they’re terrible for the baby’s back, and we should use a sling, but with a sling the kid can’t see much of anything. What do you think? I’ve always had a terrible slouch, giving me a “vertebrae be damned” attitude, so I’m not completely sold on the Baby Bjorn prohibition. I’m tempted to ignore the birthing teacher’s advice simply on the grounds that she’s a radical post-hippie alternative type, but I’m anxious to get the birds-eye low-down from people who know such as yourself.

I was trying to remember what model of Maclaren stroller youse guys had there in the Netherlands. If you’re still using the original one I saw when we were out there, and that you brought out when visiting us, that alone speaks volumes for its durability, as does the fact that you can get replacement parts for it. I also like the British in the web-page descriptions, particularly “colourway.” Some of these look incredibly fancy. Needless to say I won’t be getting the titanium one; if I don’t have a titanium bike, my daughter’s not getting a titanium stroller.

January 21, 2005

E— and I took the youngsters to House of Nanking on Sunday, and in the midst of L— detonating and doing her best impersonation of a fish out of water—in fact, an alcoholic fish out of water having the DTs—no, make that a fish out of water having the DTs combined with a generalized spaz attack—a guy at the next table noticed my Gaastra pullover and got all excited. (Only once before did somebody recognize the Gaastra brand on this garment; it was my friend D— who does a lot of windsurfing, and he asked, “Why do you have that?” to which I replied, “Why, whose is it?”) Our dining neighbor was a kind of nerdy, kind of . . . well, European-looking guy, and he asked, “Hey, are you into kites?!” It was all I could do to keep L— in my grasp—she was on the verge of launching herself out of my hands, and as I was standing up, she could have landed right on the guy—and so instead of having him on, which I might have been tempted to do (“What makes you think of kites?” / “Your Gaastra pullover. They make kites.” / “Is that what they make? I thought they made that heartburn medication!”), I only stammered that I don’t have a Gaastra kite, but rather a brother in Holland. The guy was crestfallen.

January 23, 2009

You asked about the wounds on my finger. They’re from a farming accident—my arm got caught in this big threshing machine we call the Mangle. Oh, wait, that’s how I lost my arm. The finger cuts were from a freak dishwashing accident.

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Ageing Focus - Make Balance a Habit!

Introduction

Last week’s post, though perhaps an amusing romp, wasn’t very responsible. I mean, why showcase my bad habits? Whose idea was that, anyway? I hope I didn’t come across as condoning any of those behaviors (though honestly, as odd as they are, you’d have to be some kind of kook to adopt them). This week I hope to provide a whole-grain, high-fiber, wholesome corrective. I’m offering up sincere and helpful advice here and I will try my best to make it amusing somehow.

Some background

My younger daughter is home for the summer and perhaps being around her vivacious youthfulness emphasizes how fricking old I’ve gotten. I guess I’ve reached the age where I worry more about my advancing decrepitude than reveling in whatever vigor I still have left. Sure, I can still make my bike go pretty fast when I dig deep, but I also dread the prospect of, say, my back going out for no good reason. (A buddy of mine, though he is still athletic and does all kinds of yoga, threw out his back putting on a sock.) I contemplate how to preserve my physical faculties over the last few decades of my life.

Strength and heart health are all well and good, but I lately I’m putting more focus on balance. Seventeen years ago I read a fascinating New Yorker article about the role balance plays in graceful ageing, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The article, by the doctor/professor/writer Atul Gawande, is called “The Way We Age Now.” (My friend P— and I have a running joke about Atul Gawande. P— is a doctor, and I fancy myself a writer, and we complain to each other how Gawande is a better doctor and writer than both of us, and is also better looking; we naturally assume he’s even seduced our wives at some point.) In the article Gawande describes how he tagged along with a Dr. Bludau, a geriatrician, during a routine physical exam of an 85-year-old woman:

It seemed to me that, with just a forty-minute visit, Bludau needed to triage by zeroing in on either the most potentially life-threatening problem (the possible metastasis) or the problem that bothered her the most (the back pain). But this was evidently not what he thought… The danger for her was losing what she had. The single most serious threat she faced was not the lung nodule or the back pain. It was falling. Each year, about three hundred and fifty thousand Americans fall and break a hip. Of those, forty per cent end up in a nursing home, and twenty per cent are never able to walk again. The three primary risk factors for falling are poor balance, taking more than four prescription medications, and muscle weakness. Elderly people without these risk factors have a twelve-per-cent chance of falling in a year. Those with all three risk factors have almost a hundred-per-cent chance.

What is to be done?

How do I address these three risk factors?

1. Being an athlete is a non-negotiable part of my lifestyle, because cycling is a) fun, b) something I have enough experience in that it’d be a shame not to do it, and c) my number-one way to burn off stress. Cycling addresses the strength part of my ageing, to a point. (I know that ideally I should do core exercises, join a gym, do yoga, etc. and I’m trying to muster the resolve to take those things up.)
2. In terms of prescription medications, I’m not sure how feasible it is for any of us to avoid needing them when we’re old. It’s not like we can just resolve to go without. I’m lucky enough to be blessed with low cholesterol, and my blood pressure is decent, and so far I have no risk factors for diabetes, but you just never know what I may need for this or that ailment in my codger years.
3. Balance: this is the area where I think I can make the biggest difference.

How can we improve our balance?

I’d like to think that being a cyclist automatically gives me great balance, and of course it can’t hurt, but I don’t think it’s actually enough. I learned this when I was doing physical therapy after breaking my femur. As we began my regimen, my physical therapist asked me what my goal was for the therapy. As I’ve explained in these pages, I’m not actually that into goals, but this time I had one. “I want to come out of this better than I was before,” I declared. After all, I had a gym to work in and an expert to guide me … why not dream of shoring up some of the classic deficiencies of the pure cyclist?

To start with I had to learn to walk all over again, and realized in the process just how complicated walking is. With every step, the back leg has to swing forward, the knee bent so your foot doesn’t hit the floor, and then you have to plant that foot and swing the other leg forward, and that swinging is more rhythmic when we realize. But because I didn’t trust my bad leg to bend properly, I was kind of swinging it around sideways so I could keep it straight, and thought I was doing pretty well until my physical therapist, laughing, told me to walk toward a mirror and watch myself. I looked like a drunken zombie.

After relearning how to walk, one of the toughest things I did in that gym was a toe-tapping exercise on a fairly unstable platform. It was basically a square plank of wood with a half-cylinder under it (i.e., a half-circle cross section), kind of like a teeter-totter that you stand on. I would start by standing on the plank, balancing so it wouldn’t tip forward or back. Then I’d tip the plank forward until its front edge tapped the floor, and then rock back until the plank was level again, the slower the better. I’d do this ten times, and then I’d switch to rocking back, to tap the back edge of the plank on the floor, return to level, and do that ten times. Once I mastered that with both feet, I learned how to do it standing on just one foot. Oddly, I was no better at this with my good leg than my recently healed one, but in time I went from incompetent to totally proficient, even after adding in a barbell in one hand to put me slightly off balance. I cannot tell you how stoked I was to have learned a new trick that I couldn’t have done before my accident. I actually was better than before.

So now, with Gawande’s article in mind, I want to continue that trajectory of actually improving my balance. The fun way is to ride indoors with my bike on rollers, when it’s too dark and/or wet to ride outdoors. The less fun, but logistically easier, way—and, more importantly, the way I can recommend to you, albertnet reader—is to do the PT balancing trick on a balance saucer. You can buy one of these (one manufacturer’s product name is “Wobble Balance Board”) for about $20. This is even harder that what I did in physical therapy.

The regimen

The great thing about the balance saucer is that you can do your whole routine in 5-10 minutes. (I suppose this duration will vary as you become more proficient, and based on how much you want to do.) My current regimen consists of the following exercises, in sets of 10 repetitions each:

• Standing on both feet, tap the front edge of the saucer on the floor
• Standing on both feet, tap the rear edge
• Standing on one foot, tap the front edge
• Standing on one foot, tap the rear edge
• Standing on both feet, tap the right edge
• Standing on both feet, tap the left edge

I hold a barbell in one hand, and after the first five reps I pass it to the other hand. If I feel like it, I pump the barbell in the air for extra exercise and instability. (I plan to figure out other cool things to do on this saucer, maybe even incorporating my upper body.)

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, and five movies totaling two minutes at 60 frames per second is therefore worth about 7.5 million words, here are videos showing the exercises:

(Video credit to my daughter, expertly wielding her superfly non-phone camera.)

Don’t be surprised if it takes a while to get good at this. When I started up again (over a decade after my physical therapy days), I was pretty wobbly and struggled for a while.

Make it a habit

Did you notice in that video that I wasn’t in a fancy studio with mirrors and mats, wearing PrAna yoga pants and fancy workout shoes and headphones and a fitness tracker? All you need for this is the saucer and a pair of shoes with good, grippy soles. With worn-out or loose-fitting shoes, I have a lot of trouble, and if I try to do this barefoot my feet slide off. But other than that, no special gear or preparation is required, not even a warm-up. That said, this activity is oddly strenuous given how low-impact (actually, zero-impact) it is. During winter, when I’m working from home and stuck at my desk with my blood congealing, almost like suspended animation, I like to take a break and do my balance regimen to get my blood flowing. It really warms me up.

Making this a habit is key. Initially you’ll need plenty of repetition to develop the balance needed for these exercises, and then you’ll want to maintain that consistency so that five, ten, and twenty years from now you won’t have lost the ability. It’s kind of interesting to ponder how well we could maintain this, if we do it daily … can you imagine having this kind of balance at 80? Assuming we don’t, at least we’d be declining from a pretty decent height of capability. I think that’s well worth pursuing.

Postscript

A few more notes, as I have used this thing for a couple years now:

Make sure your shoes are not only grippy enough not to slide, but are completely dry before doing your balance regimen. I started in on my routine once, months ago, when my shoes were a bit wet (though I thought I had wiped them enough on the mat). My saucer squirted out from under me and I fell, wanging my wrist. Not all saucers have the same anti-slip texture; my brother has one (from the same manufacturer as mine, but newer) that is much grippier. I will probably buy some of that sandpapery-textured tape you put on stairs and add it to my saucer. So be careful!

Not all these saucers have the same depth, so get one that is appropriate for your balance level (which may have a lot to do with your age). I recently tried my mom’s saucer and it’s far shallower than mine, which makes the exercises vastly easier (too easy in my case, but probably much better for, say, an octogenarian). Mine is four inches deep; I have seen three-inch versions and even 1.5-inch versions available online.

This article (also available in a schlockier form here if you get blocked by a paywall) suggests that a good measure of your body’s effective age is how long you can stand on one leg, especially your non-dominant one. The doctor who wrote the article cites Mayo Clinic research and concludes (as paraphrased by ChatGPT), “While balance tests offer a simple method to gauge physical aging, incorporating balance training into regular exercise routines is crucial for sustaining overall health and mobility.” Running the calculation cited in the article, I have determined that a typical person my age ought to be able to stand on his or her non-dominant leg for about 22 seconds. That seemed way low to me, so I tried it out. I stood on my left leg for a couple of minutes, no problem, and then I started to get bored so I passed the time by doing the Wordle, then added stickers to my Wordle snapshot before sending it to my daughter, and finally, after over eight minutes on one foot, I was really bored and my leg and foot were starting to hurt so I bagged it. Needless to say, this balance regimen really works!

Another postscript

More recently I came across an article suggesting that a good balance challenge is to tie your shoe while standing on one foot. This capability is said to bode well for preserving balance into old age. I didn’t find this much of a challenge, and decided that tying my shoe while standing on the balance saucer would be a better trick. It is, and now I’ve incorporated it into my saucer regimen. Check it out:

If you perceive that the above video ran a bit long—i.e., that it took me longer than necessary to tie my shoe—it’s because of the role vision plays in balancing. As it turns out, where we look has everything to do with balance. If you close your eyes while on the saucer it’s almost impossible to do the taps, etc. described in this post. And I’ve found that looking at my shoe while balancing on the saucer totally messes me up. Something about locating ourselves in space is instrumental to balance. Only if I look out into the room can I tie my shoe while on the saucer.

Give it a shot and let me know how it goes!

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My Bad Habits

Introduction

My daughter A— read one of my old posts recently (this one) and drew my attention to a passage from it:

Even less promising [in a list of 101 blog post ideas] was prompt #51, “Create a blog post about your bad habits,” which said, “Smoking, alcohol, drugs, yes they could be blog ideas too! Tell them something shocking!” In general, not just with my blog but in life, I try to avoid incriminating myself in writing. Meanwhile, my bad habits are not exactly shocking. Sometimes I go to bed without flossing, or get crazy and have a second beer.

My daughter said that this actually could be a good blog post. I reminded her how harmless my habits are. She said no, they don’t have to be bad bad, just outlandish, and cited my “neuroticism about loading the dishwasher” and “compulsion about bike gear,” along with “rapping Eminem lines randomly” which is “peculiar for an old(ish) white dude.” Well, Eminem himself is an old(ish) white dude, but point taken … he’s the poet, he gets the poetic license. My family doesn’t actually need (or deserve) my drastically inferior cover versions.

And so, I’ve taken the bait and compiled a list of my “bad” habits. How many of these do you share? And how many inspire you to think, “That’s nothing, compared to the way I…”? Post your comments below, or email me them, and if I get enough I’ll do a follow-up post! And now, with no further ado, here they are.

Neuroticism about loading the dishwasher

My daughter hasn’t elaborated on this point, and my wife seems reticent to do so. I will say I am a meticulous sort, and have been known to remove and reload recently placed mugs, saucers, and plates even while my wife is still loading. There is historical basis for my corrections; a  mug that’s not properly inverted can fill with sudsy water and turn the dishwasher into a steam room instead of a sauna during the dry cycle. But the fact is, the dishwasher actually stopped working months ago and is now only a dish dryer, so my fastidiousness is arguably overdone. Meanwhile, reading over this paragraph I realize even just the description of this could be more than any sane wife could take. Clearly this is a good habit gone bad.

Compulsion about bike gear

I ride bikes a lot, and will not go out unprepared. The amount of gear in my pack for mountain biking is arguably excessive (details here). And (as my wife just reminded me), when something is missing or I’m packing the car for a race, I can get pretty agitated. This is surely based on “my favorite failure” which you can read about here. But gosh, I sound like a pain in the ass, don’t I? Don’t worry, not all my habits are this tedious.

Rapping Eminem lines randomly

Is it ever not random to rap Eminem lines? Some of them are very apropos and deserve to be cited; for example, there are many scenarios where one could sagely point out, “I don’t go around fire expecting not to sweat.” But I don’t rap that line; I’m more likely to just say it, with the preface, “In the words of the famous philosopher Marshall Mathers…” The random rapping really is more of a spontaneous outburst. On some level I think I’m training myself for when I become senile one day … if my utterances are going to be random anyway, they might as well be interesting. I can picture myself in a long bleak hallway of the old folks’ home, picking my way along with my walker, and suddenly yelling, “PISTOL-WHIPPIN’ MOTHAFUCKIN’ BOUNCER SIX-TWO!” to the shock and mystification of fellow codgers and staff alike.

Pondering unimportant grammatical matters

Words and grammar take up far too much of my brain activity. Whenever I see a sign saying “Entrance,” as in “enter here,” I automatically think that it might as well be saying the word we pronounce “en-TRANCE,” meaning “to put into a trance.” This gets me thinking about heteronyms in general, which really nobody needs to ever do. I’m also picking apart sentences all the time. For example, the recorded message that plays on the subway at every stop, saying, “The doors are closing … please stand clear of the doors” gets me thinking about how “the doors” got to be the subject of the first half of the sentence, and then became a mere object in the second half, like it got demoted. What a pointless realm of thought. Think of how much good I could do in the world if I used this brain power for good!

Apologizing for belching

I don’t belch on purpose—a belch will just suddenly overtake me—so I can’t call that a habit. Apparently there’s a way to muffle them, but I haven’t really mastered that, much less made it a habit. (Lack of a good habit isn’t the same thing as a bad one.) But without fail, I’ll say, “Sorry!” afterward. I guess this is faster and more efficient than saying “excuse me.” I think I got this from my brother G— because I seem to say it with a bit of a Dutch accent, like the one he’s acquired after over thirty years of living there. Or who knows, maybe he’s unconsciously modeled this behavior on some Dutchman’s. Anyway, it’s weird, I’ll admit it, and the strangest thing, is I’ll apologize even if I’m completely alone. Someday there’ll be an intruder in my house, sneaking up behind me, and suddenly I’ll burp and apologize and scare the crap out of him, since he’ll think I knew he was there all along. Until that day, this is a pretty pointless behavior.

Gesticulating broadly while belching

Sometimes I realize I’m about to belch and it’s gonna be a good one: loud and long. So I’ll make it as big and proud as possible, and part of that is making a grandiose gesture such as a master orator would make when delivering a speech in front of a vast audience. I totally got this from my brother G— and amazingly I was barely aware that I do it, until my wife pointed it out as one of the habits to list on this blog. I was like, oh yeah, I guess I do do that! I’m not sure if she was complaining or what, but she’s never, like, applauded or anything.

Buying boxers online

There are spam emails from J. Crew that I actually open … on purpose. Are they still spam? Decidedly yes, as for the most part they’re a waste of my time. I’m talking about the emails with titles like, “Time’s running out: extra 60% off sale.” The “extra” means it’s 60% off the already discounted price, so it’s actually a good deal. I can get a pair of boxers for like $4.50 instead of $24.50. The trick is that they’re usually the seasonal ones, so I get boxers with hearts all over them in late February, or Santas in January, or raccoons on skis in spring.

You see, there’s apparently a romantic tradition of a woman buying thematic boxers for her boyfriend as a gift. I actually received a couple pairs of these when I was younger. The first pair was way, way too big and my girlfriend was super embarrassed, so much so that when she bought me another pair, they were way, way too small. Maybe I’m trying to made amends for all the money she wasted … naw, I’m just a cheap bastard. The upshot is that I now own more pairs of boxers than I could possibly go through, with themes like Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, even Easter. And yet, like all guys, I don’t retire a pair until it’s like twenty years old and literally falling apart at the seams.

Is there anything wrong with this habit? Sure! At $4.50/pop, for something I already have plenty of, this is still a waste. If I bought three-packs of manufacturer’s seconds at Ross Dress for Less (never mind that they’d fit wrong, like they’re on backwards), and donated the money I saved to UNICEF or Oxfam, I could make a big difference in the world. Instead I have boxers featuring St. Bernards with Christmas wreaths for collars.

Edgy humor

I think some of the best humor is edgy. For example, when my late father was in a nursing facility after a cancer surgery that hadn’t gone so well, he decided he should revise his will and get fresh signatures on it. We were in his room helping orchestrate this, and while trying to explain something to us he suddenly suffered a massive coughing fit, that, given his gravely ill state, made it look like he could actually expire. This inspired my brother M—to thrust a pen at him and yell, “Sign it, quick!” This was obviously totally inappropriate and our dad sure didn’t appreciate it, but man … it was just so damn funny! Another time, my brother G— was in the ICU after a terrible car accident, and though he wasn’t technically supposed to have visitors, my other two brothers and I were in there hanging out. We were supposed to be really quiet but just couldn’t manage it. Finally G— motioned to us to come closer so he could whisper something to us—you know, the kind of thing a guy does before delivering his last words —and as we craned to hear him he croaked, “Could you guys try and keep it down? There’s people trying to die in here.” It killed me. And so, a lot of the time I just can’t resist dark humor. For example, when this charity solicitation arrived in my mail, addressed to my father  (who passed away almost seven years ago and had never lived at this address), I couldn’t help but to annotate it a bit:

(No, I did not send that to the good folks over at the Ocean Conservancy ... just to a couple of appreciative family members.)

Workplace humor

At my workplace we all had to take this harassment training—a guy in our Legal department did a road show and gave the training in person to everyone—and one of the things he advised was just to never make jokes in the workplace. He says that’s what gets people in more trouble than anything, and most of the time they’re not trying to make anyone feel bad, but humor is just too subtle and it’s not worth the risk. And yet, I often just can’t help myself. A workplace with zero humor just doesn’t seem like anything anyone should have to put up with for an entire career. Of course I try to be careful and so far, so good. I go for the goofy stuff which seems like safer ground. For example, I cracked wise during a team All-Hands online meeting with like 70 people. Normally people are muted by default with this big a group, but in this case we actually weren’t, and I could hear some background chatter as people joined. And then we all heard, clear as a bell, some guy say in a singsong voice, “Do you need to go potty outside?” I came off mute and said, “Nah, I’m good.” That got huge laughs but I know I’m messing with fire. Somebody I’m gonna, like, offend a sensitive pet owner, and my career will be over.

The Wordle

As explained here I wasn’t initially inclined to do the New York Times Wordle puzzle, but was won over because it’s a fun way to have an ongoing (but low-stakes) dialogue with my daughter. I can now say I’ve done 654 games, and it’s a good thing they usually take under a minute. Actually, just to amuse my daughter, I spend as much time adding fun stickers to my completed game card as I do on the puzzle itself:

My daughter has gotten into the decorating too, though her picture editing tools are perhaps not as sophisticated:

I guess this is harmless, but man … 654 games. Seems like in that amount of time I could have created a critical vaccine or something.

Trying to interest my wife in sports

As much as I enjoy pro cycling coverage, such as of the Tour de France, I cannot interest my wife in it. And yet I still try. I showed her the breathtaking final kilometers of the recent women’s Olympic road race, but she was somehow unmoved, even with Kristen Faulkner claiming the first American victory in that event since 1984. And still, I keep trying. I mentioned how I had to school my brother after he suggested it was Alexi Grewal who last won the gold … he was tied with Connie Carpenter, who won the women’s event that same year. My wife couldn’t even be bothered to yawn. So I said, “And Connie’s was arguably the more impressive win because she didn’t deliberately screw over her teammate, as I have it on good authority Alexi did.” Absolutely no response, but that’s okay, because a had an ace up my sleeve. “You know what I mean by ‘good authority’?” I asked. “I don’t mean I read it somewhere or somebody told me. I got the entire story from Alexi Grewal himself, in the flesh!” She looked at me like I was some kind of idiot, as if to say, “So what! I don’t care!” I said, “How many people do you know who got to hang out with an Olympic gold medalist?” Another blank look. She has been steadfastly uninterested in sports in the entire time I’ve known her … so why do I still try? Force of habit, I guess.

(In case you’re interested in the story of how Alexi screwed over his teammate, Davis Phinney, you can read it here. Alexi had told it to me so I could turn it into freelance article, but then revoked the permission when he found out it would be in an online-only magazine, dailypeloton.com. He eventually wrote it up himself for his now-defunct blog; fortunately for those among us who do care about sports, Velo Veritas picked it up.)

Yanking out white sideburn hairs

I get these really weird, wiry, long white hairs growing in my sideburns. They aren’t that noticeable against the blonde ones around them, and I’m not exactly vain, but they annoy me. So I frequently take a moment to try to grasp a hair and yank it out. It’s easier said than done … in the mirror it’s hard to focus on a tiny hair because I have to be close up and the depth perception is tricky. Plus, it’s hard to get a good enough grip. Why do I bother? It’s not like I’m a model or anyone is paying that much attention. The time I spend doing this must add up … time I could be spending doing something more useful, like emptying the cat box more often.

albertnet

As of this past February, as detailed in my 15th Anniversary post, I have spent something like 3,500 hours—that is, 1.9 years if this were a full-time job—writing this blog. I guess that counts as a habit. Is it a good one? Well, I just compared it to the 7 habits of highly successful people, and even the 8th habit I came up with myself, and it’s not looking so good. Blogging doesn’t really match any of the effective habits. But hey, better than drinking, smoking, and gambling. If you are hungry for the salacious details of a blogger’s bad habits, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

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What Are “Men Extenders”?

Introduction

Have you ever come across the term “men extenders”? Perhaps? But maybe you can’t recall where? Well, I don’t recommend googling it. For research purposes I had to do this, but at least I used an Incognito browser window. The results were not pretty. It took me a while to turn up the origin of the non-penile sense of the phrase, but I am finally equipped (no pun intended) to tell you where it came from. Following that I’ll launch into a full exegesis, as is my wont.

The origin of “men extenders”

Outside the realm of the saddest cosmetic surgery known to man, the term “men extenders” appears nowhere on the Internet except pages deep into the Quotes section of the IMDB entry for “Barbie.” Here is the reference:

This movie is a perfectly fitting place to kick off this new (and highly useful) term, because as we all know from being kids, Barbieland’s denizens are replete with accessories. (Here’s an old joke from my brother: “Hey, have you heard about the new Divorce Barbie? She comes with half of Ken’s stuff!”) Of course, most of the accessories are hairbrushes and pink dream houses and pink convertibles, etc.—i.e. her stuff—and whenever one of my daughters got a new Ken doll the first thing she’d do was rip all his clothing off, exposing his greatest lack (which is an interesting counterpoint to the non-Ken context of “men extenders).”

I can’t remember exactly what got me thinking about men extenders, but I know it came from a dialogue I had with my wife, where she posed a question along the lines of, “What are the quintessential men extenders?” It turns out to be a fascinating realm of exploration.

But first, some housekeeping

Look, I’m going to get into some ideas here involving what’s manly, and what a man ought to be able to do, and what it would actually mean to extend a man’s, well, manliness. (And no, that’s not a euphemism for his member—enough with that already!) Naturally there has been a lot of evolution, perhaps even revolution, lately about what it means to be a man and what ought to be expected of us. So I should state right up front that I’m not going to be so progressive as to ignore the past, or try to make this all about a new male paradigm, much less delve into the realm of non-binary. This post is about the traditional sex roles that, looking across the landscape of mankind, continue to be predominant: roles that even the most modern man—and woman—are still saddled with.

Yes, modern man is more civilized than he used to be, particularly in progressive countries (of which, say, Afghanistan would not be an example). We men have learned to dress better, scratch our groins less publicly, be a bit less dense about equality, and may more willingly share the boardroom with women, to a greater or lesser degree. But this doesn’t change, in my mind, the fact that we men have certain impulses—unconscious biases might be the better term—that we either quell or indulge, depending on our personalities, our position on the cultural spectrum, and the situation. What I’m getting at is, when our intellect, education, and breeding cause us to modify and refine our behavior, what is the knee-jerk behavior that’s being subdued?

My past and present have enabled me to come at the thing from both directions: the base primitive male and the educated, enlightened, housetrained modern man. Consider the following photo:

Look at the dazed look in my eyes. I was not just the kind of dad who bottle-fed his baby once in a while so he could get brownie points for having done so at all. For complicated reasons, I bottle-fed one of my babies a great deal, in lieu of sleep. And I changed a lot of diapers. How many? Well, if I were to say in the presence of my wife, “I reckon I changed about half of A—’s diapers,” she wouldn’t burst out laughing. (I actually tried this. She said, “Probably more like 40%,” and didn’t even roll her eyes.) On top of that, I am such a modern man, I am able to keep track of a non-cisgender person’s preferred pronouns when they have changed. (This surely seems like no big deal to Gen Z, but believe me, it’s not easy for my generation and I assure you, we are trying.)

And yet, evolved as I am, I am a person who over the course of his childhood was in a number of fistfights, and rather than looking back on those episodes in shame, I recall them wistfully—fondly, even. And although my now fully formed neocortex would prevent me from ever resorting to actual combat anymore, I still like to have an excuse to duke it out (metaphorically speaking) with some rando when I’m cycling (see here, here, and/or here). Many a woman would call this “macho bullshit,” and maybe it is, but I’m gonna own it … it’s my macho bullshit and I’m not giving it up (even though I did a huge load of dishes earlier).

For more on the topic of male impulses that won’t go away, click here. On the other hand, if you are so highly evolved that the last few paragraphs have triggered you, maybe it’s time to stop and go read something else instead.

So what are the quintessential men extenders?

As you saw earlier, the men extenders example given in “Barbie” is the horse. Certainly this makes sense; in an archetypal way, a man on horseback is utterly masculine … just think of the Marlboro Man. Of course, nobody rides horses anymore, and a modern man who can afford a horse and the land, stables, etc. required for one is probably more like a polo player than a cowboy … not exactly macho. It’s only because “Barbie” itself is so archetypal that this notion works in the movie.

So what about a motorcycle? Consider the Bon Jovi song “Wanted Dead or Alive” and its central lyric, “I’m a cowboy/On a steel horse I ride.” Frankly, I think this song kind of killed any chance of a motorcycle extending anyone’s manhood. The video, showing well-groomed pretty-faced rock stars playing in a stadium full of star-struck teenage girls, makes them come off as pretty much the opposite of an actual cowboy.

A truck? Now we’re getting somewhere. A big manly truck … built Ford tough, etc. I certainly see a lot of pickup trucks when I’m out biking, and it’s not uncommon for one to accelerate mightily as it passes me, as if to demonstrate something. If I’m riding with a pal when this happens, I’ll generally remark, “Wow … did you hear  the size of that guy’s testicles?” And more often than not, the dickhead who uses his pickup in that antisocial way is a well-upholstered middle-aged white guy and his truck is immaculate and probably never leaves the asphalt. In contrast to that, the smaller pickups that pass me, which invariably give me plenty of room, are usually more run-down, and are full of gardening tools (shovels, mowers, etc.) and driven by workmen, usually Chicano ones, like the guys who, in a few short hours, dug a deep trench in my backyard to install a French drain, while I watched from the kitchen window while doing dishes, feeling deeply inferior as a man.

Does this mean a big, expensive truck can’t be a men extender? Why, no. It’s just that a pristine Range Rover with leather seats exemplifies only wealth, not manliness, so there has to be more going on. Take, for example, my friend B— who drove a bunch of us to the Deschutes River recently to go inner tubing, and hauled everything in the back of his big pickup. Nothing about his payload that day was particularly impressive, but he mentioned that a pal gave him the truck because it was so old and beaten down it was getting hard to keep running. B— gladly accepted it because he has a lot of fun making little repairs to keep it on the road. And that is fundamental: the know-how that goes with the physical object. Bonus points for lashing a canoe to the roof and knowing all the right knots so it doesn’t slide off and maim somebody.

The more I ponder it, the more utility seems absolutely central to men extension. This is why, in fact, a beard or a tattoo or an ear gauge cannot be a men extender: because these decorations don’t do anything; anybody can choose to have one. It’s a sartorial thing done to you then you just parade it around, as frivolously as a fancy woman of old showing off with a big feathered hat.

Is know-how itself a men extender?

Not all know-how is a men extender; it has to be paired with the right object. For example, men who are really good with tech stuff, while they can earn legendary amounts of money, will always be considered a bit nerdy, and seeing these tech titans in action isn’t very impressive. “Look at how his fingers fly over that keyboard!” moaned no enraptured woman ever. And the C-suite types? Knowing how to properly tie a silk necktie isn’t a men-extending behavior, and the hoodies of the Mark Zuckerberg set are frankly childish. What about men who are just really good communicators? Tony Robbins might be worth $600 million, but he’s never going to star in an action movie or get a grill named after him. His tools—a ballroom and a microphone—aren’t the kind the guy next door would secretly covet. How about a telescope and a masterful knowledge of astronomy? Naw. No layman could ever appreciate whatever it is these oddballs see in the night sky. I myself got to see Halley’s Comet through a powerful telescope at an actual observatory, and it was pretty much the most boring thing ever.

I guess I’m not exactly unearthing the pure essence of men extenders here, but it’s like so many things: you know it when you see it.

The men extender I wish I had…

I myself cannot mourn not owning a beater pickup truck, or a canoe, or the earth-turning tools that (combined with laborer-grade sinews) might enable me to dig a giant trench in no time flat. Based on the gentrification of my neighborhood (which somehow transitioned from the Prius Belt to the Tesla Belt while I wasn’t looking), I don’t think my neighbors would appreciate a dilapidated F150 dripping oil on our street. Meanwhile, I don’t generally do much boating (in fact, when my wife and I have tried to canoe together, we just went in circles). And if I were a career gardener who needed a work truck, I probably wouldn’t earn enough money to live in Albany, and my kids needed good schools a lot more than they needed a manly dad. (In fact, having now left the nest, they scarcely need me at all anymore, which is fine I guess—I mean, it’s according to plan.)

But what I do long for, if I could just get my act together as a man, is a barbecue grill … and the know-how to use it. I mean, yeah, I could buy one of these giant gas grills that’s basically a stove you use outdoors, but I’m thinking more of something more traditional, like the classic Weber. Or, better yet, a giant commercial-type grill with the big ring you crank on to raise and lower that big blackened mechanism—a spit, is it?—that’s suspended by chains. You know, like you could roast a whole damn pig on (if you knew how). Because the fact is, I love barbecues, I love grilled meat, I love the smell of flaming lighter-fluid-soaked briquettes even if they’re deadly. And of course I’d love to extend my manhood … but even all these things put together aren’t enough to motivate me to actually buy a grill and learn how to use it. After all, I’m middle-aged, and already eat a dangerous amount of cheese, and had better look out for my health. Moreover, knowing I’d be buying this grill just to extend my masculinity … that seems somehow kind of wrong, kind of sad, kind of … well, emasculating, if that makes any sense.

My own favorite men extender

My wife assumed that to the extent I have any men extension, it would have to do with my racing bike, and my mountain bike, and the athleticism I’m able to pair with them. Honestly, I don’t think bicycles get the job done. Yes, I can ride them pretty effectively, but there’s really nobody around to see this except other cyclists, and at least on this side of the Atlantic the sport has never had the respect it deserves. Above all, a cyclist only propels himself along, and this doesn’t do anybody else any good. A fisherman with his own boat, especially like one of the guys in The Perfect Storm who braved horrific weather to haul swordfish out of the ocean, is very manly, as is a soldier, but some guy pedaling a bike faster than some other guys? Big deal.

My own favorite men extender is my toolbox, because it’s full of a lot of very cool bicycle-related tools that I actually know how to use, and which keep my family’s entire fleet going. Ditto my workbench and my smattering of household tools (drill, hacksaw, wood saw, etc.). Also ditto the tools I carry mountain biking paired with my ability to fix a student-athlete’s bike when it breaks down on the trail. Some of these bike-related tools are weird enough that the layman wouldn’t have any idea what they do. Others, like my wheel truing stand, have an obvious purpose but the layman wouldn’t know where to start. (Truing a wheel, by adjusting the tension on each spoke, is a real art and most DIY types could only cause harm with such tools.)

And what’s my absolute favorite tool? That’s a tough one, but I guess I’d have to say my Dremel rotory tool. It’s kind of like a drill, but you can put various different cutting bits on it, the coolest being a disc-shaped blade that will pretty much cut through anything. Sparks fly everywhere, which looks cool. The first time I encountered this phenomenon—though with some even cooler tool in my dad’s machine shop—I  asked him, “What are all those orange sparks?” He said they were tiny bits of molten metal. “Won’t they burn you?” I asked. He said by the time they hit you they’ve cooled off enough. So I think being brushed by a shower of sparks is actually kind of pleasant. (Of course I wear safety goggles—I’m not an idiot.)

Recently I bought a bike from a pal, and it came with a U-lock, hanging from the top tube, that alas lacked a key (thanks to my pal’s typically clueless teenager). I think I got a bit of a discount based on the hassle of that lock. But I had it off within minutes using the Dremel.

I used my Dremel again the other day, cutting a metal plate out of a giant cooking pot it’d gotten stuck in, and I mentioned to my wife, probably not for the first time, “The Dremel blade spins at ten times the speed of a drill.” Without grabbing my biceps, my wife did not say, “Get over here, you big hunk.” In fact, I don’t even thing she was listening. And that’s perhaps the most interesting thing about men extenders: I don’t think women even notice them. Women just aren’t tuned into that stuff.

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From the Archives - Our Fiesta

Introduction

When my wife and I bought our house, in Albany, California, we probably thought it was a starter home. Well, over 24 years later, we’re still here. Thus, what we assumed could well be the first of several housewarming parties became possibly, probably our only one. Fortunately, the party was glorious, mainly because we procured the food from our favorite (and alas, now long gone) Mexican restaurant, Mario’s La Fiesta . What follows is an account of that party—or, more precisely, the food, because that’s almost all I wrote about. Please enjoy this mouth-watering account from my archives. (At least, it made my mouth water.)

[Here’s the picture we included on our invitations, which we actually printed and mailed out. No, that’s not really our house.]

Our Fiesta – April 1, 2001

[My wife] E— came up with perhaps one of the greatest ideas ever conceived by the human mind: to get the food for our housewarming party from Mario’s La Fiesta. There were gobs of details to worry about for the party (cleaning the house, having enough toilet paper, providing a wide variety of healthy-style soft drinks for the non-drinkers and four pregnant women at the party, battling the logistics of having more than a hundred beers cold at once), so it was great not to have to worry about assembling decorative trays of whores-douvres. As it was, cleaning the place took several evenings, because we didn’t want to spend all Saturday cleaning and then be too tired to entertain our guests. The yard out front had been completely infested with weeds, and completely covered in fallen leaves (the camphor trees seem to do all their shedding at this time of year), and E—happened by a small crew of gardeners working in the neighborhood, and asked them to come out and give a bid, and they did a bang-up job for $100. By six we were almost completely ready. I realized I am an amateur party-giver when I loaded about 100 pounds of ice into a giant tub, before putting in the drinks, then had a devil of a time plunging the drinks through the ice. A bottled fizzy juice thing forced in head-first must have ruptured slightly, because there was a hissing sound somewhere in the tub. But we were essentially ready.

Our first official guest, a middle-aged lady from E—’s work, arrived at 6:10, some 20 minutes early. Then, nobody arrived for a very long time, and I was starting to worry that nobody would show, when everybody seemed to show up at once. Things were so busy that I actually forgot about the food, believe it or not, until I suddenly realized I was starving. “Man, what do they give you to eat around here?” I incongruously thought, before suddenly realizing I’d completely forgotten about my 7:15 food pickup at Mario’s. Panicking, I looked at my watch: it was already 7:15, on the nose. I looked around at a large crowd of guests who didn’t have a single thing to eat: not a cracker, not a celery stick, and certainly not one of those hackneyed spinach/artichoke dips inside a hauled-out bread bowl that seem to curse every party I’ve been to since college. No, my guests—spared though they were from the insipid brie wheels and 7-layer dips and inedible highfalutin pâté-style nonsense—were starving.

I quickly found an able assistant, my former colleague P— who immediately spoke up because he has a brand-new truck, one of those massive one-and-a-half-ton pickups with crew cab. We rushed to the restaurant, making a horribly time-consuming side trip to the ATM to cash up as La Fiesta doesn’t take credit or checks. Inside the restaurant, there was general confusion because a) nobody could understand that I’d placed the order days in advance, since they assumed I was there for a standard take-out, and 2) I was in the wrong place—I needed the banquet facility around the corner.

So I was like half an hour late, and lo and behold there was a La Fiesta employee waiting out front. Kind of an older looking guy, robust but not fat, and I had the distinct impression I was in the presence of somebody important. Sure enough, it was Mario himself! Not even the son of the original Mario, but the very founder, 42 years ago, of La Fiesta! I even shook his hand! He had the solid, nonchalant confidence and cheerfulness of somebody who knows his customer will be completely satisfied.

Mario saw how far away the truck was parked, and said to bring it right up front and double-park. Then we went into the banquet facility and I saw my food there, on the counter, in two huge, four-inch-deep aluminum casserole trays, next to three deep tubs of salsa (one a smoked tomato thing, one a classic salsa roja, and the other green tomatillo). My heart soared like a hawk to see so much La Fiesta food in one place at one time. At this point Mario beckoned to P— to come forward and help haul: “We’ve got a lot of food here!” Imagine my amazement when another member of the La Fiesta family approached, wheeling a large dolly with a stack at least four feet high of more giant trays of food. It was probably more food than I’ve ever seen in one place. (I’m not counting Sizzler as food.) I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

Mario’s wife Rosalinda settled up the bill. I’d ordered 30 flour tortillas, which weren’t on the menu but which Mario supposed he could provide, though he had no idea when I ordered how much they would cost. Well, they ended up charging me four dollars and change, roughly a quarter what I would have paid at Safeway. And somehow, though I’d meticulously calculated the total and the tax, the bill came out about $25 lower than expected. All in all it was an extremely reasonable sum: within fifty bucks or so of the most expensive dinner for two I’ve had with E—, and we were feeding forty-plus people.

The food absolutely filled the bed of P—’s truck, and this is one of those massive pickups that it so large, in fact, that it doesn’t deserve to exist except as a legit work truck, with the type of oversized bed that could carry the space shuttle, the lunar lander, and any modern sedan all at one time. There wasn’t even room in the bed for the salsa and the bag of chips (which was the size of a small cow), which I carried up front on my lap. I was so excited at this point I thought I was going to cry. We were just about to pull away when I remember the Agua Fresca. Agua Fresca is a lot like punch, except that it’s made from fruit instead of corn syrup and food coloring. Thus, the flavors are things like pineapple and strawberry instead of “blue” and “red.” It’s delicious stuff, and I’d ordered four gallons. So I went back, and found to my horror that I couldn’t get back in. The banquet facility is right next to People’s Park, which is so full of desperate homeless people I couldn’t blame La Fiesta for having a big locking gate out front. It was some time before I discovered the doorbell. Mario came back out, and I said, “The Agua Fresca!” He threw his hands up in the air. “Ah, the Agua Fresca!” he shouted. He turned back and went inside, yelling, “The Agua Fresca!” Everybody in the place starting running around yelling “The Agua Fresca! the Agua Fresca!” and looking for it as though it were a small animal that could run under a table and hide. Suddenly Mario found it, seeming to pull it out of thin air, though it was a massive lidded plastic pail, at least three feet tall. He loaded it up on the dolly and we rolled it out to the car. It took all my adrenaline-boosted strength to hoist it up into the crew cab. I could hear the ice cubes clattering around and I all but drooled down the front of my shirt.

[Here’s a photo of another giant order from La Fiesta, from another party years later. You get the idea.]

We drove as fast back to my house (my house!) as is prudent in a truck filled with such a precious and precarious cargo, and when we pulled up I ran into the house and yelled for assistance. At least half a dozen guests, half-crazed with hunger I imagine, streamed out the door and helped unload. It was like an army of ants carrying massive crumbs to their queen. I distinctly heard a colleague of mine ask another, “Have you ever seen Dana this happy?” It didn’t even all fit on our dining room table. The dining room was instantly thronged with people. And the food was a hit! I was in there for at least half an hour before I got anything to eat, and the burden of socializing with guests was starting to be a severe obstacle. I almost wanted to dismiss the whole party so as to get at those enchiladas verdes and chiles rellenos, the magical refried beans and the rice, the guacamole (a huge tray), and the three, count-em three, kinds of salsa.

The husband of one of E—’s friends approached me, plate-less, looking quite grave: “I will know if this is worth eating,” he said in a low voice, “after just one taste of the guacamole. If it isn’t good, nothing will be.” I practically forced a chip into his hand. (Later in the evening, his gut bloated with gas and cramp, he apologized for having doubted my choice, explaining that he’d been subjected to a dreadful hotel-catered “Mexican” buffet the previous week, the awfulness of which was heralded by milky-sour-cream-based, uniformly weak and thin ersatz guacamole. 

Eventually I made my way to the table and had, over three or four trips, what in aggregate could be called the Super Mario platter—at least three each of rellenos and enchiladas, with rice and beans and tortillas accompanying each round. I ate more La Fiesta that night than I ever have in a single sitting. It may have been because I was standing up, thus giving more room in my gut. Plus, it’s very hard to cut a chile relleno with one hand (the other hand was holding the plate), so I ate at least one of them in a single bite.

Ten years ago, had we the inclination and the means to throw such a party, I imagine it would have ended at three or four AM or whenever we ran out of booze. Instead, the last guests left at 2:40 AM, which was actually 1:40 AM except we lost an hour at 2:00 AM (when daylight savings began). Many of the guests had assumed it was BYOB, and we ended up with more than half, perhaps even two thirds, of the beer un-drunk. We never even opened the tequila, and barely tapped the vodka. The bowl of spiked Agua Fresca was only half gone at the end, though the total of un-spiked Agua Fresca left over was only about 2-1/2 quarts. When I think about it, I realize it was more popular than the booze! Part of that was the pregnant women at the party, but then again all of their husbands should have been drinking for three. I guess my generation is slowing down. As for me, I spent a lot of time in bed on Sunday, not because I drank a lot (I didn’t) but because I had eaten so much. Kind of a lard hangover.

The leftovers? A vast amount. I think when you order large takeout from Mario’s, they pay little attention the quantity you actually ordered and just give you gobs of food. Maybe they round up to the nearest hundred items (I’d ordered four dozen of each). I can’t wait for my next excuse to throw a party.

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Biased Blow-By-Blow: 2024 Tour de France Stage 15

Introduction

As you should know already from my last post, this year’s Tour de France has been pretty exciting. Two weeks in, the GC is still fairly tight. Today I provide my no-holds-barred, biased and barbed blow-by-blow report of what they’re saying is this year’s hardest stage.

Tour de France Stage 15 – Loudenvielle to Plateau de Beille

As I join the action, the riders are on the Col d’Agnes, a Category 1 climb, and about 40 miles from the finish. There’s a breakaway that has broken up a bit such that we’ve got three riders in the lead, a couple of chasers 39 seconds behind them, a couple more 32 seconds behind that, and then the GC group at 3:45. The GC group is down to 20 riders, and now I have to step away because my cat has just done something indescribably stinky in her cat box.

Okay, I’m back. The leaders are Laurens De Plus (Ineos Granadiers), Enric Mas (Movistar Team), and Jai Hindley (Red Bull – Bora Hansgrohe). “Laurens de Plus is a deceptively good rider,” the commentator Phil Liggett declares. So … what does that mean exactly? He’s good, but nobody can tell? He’s good but you can’t trust him? It’s a mystery.

The Olympic road race champion Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) was in the original breakaway but missed the attack of the three leaders and is now chasing. Back in the GC group, Visma-Lease a Bike has only two riders supporting Jonas Vingegaard, their star rider who sits a couple minutes behind the maillot jaune, Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates), in the GC.

And now Carapaz has caught the leaders with 62 kilometers (about 38 miles) left in the race.

I’m watching the race on Peacock, and earlier they showed footage of one of their commentators sitting in an inflatable baby pool with several drunken Frenchmen. It was so corny, and the sight of his pale, hairy middle-aged chest was so disturbing, I almost threw up in my mouth. Who contrived this silly stunt? How could it have seemed like a good idea? But here’s a silver lining: it’s really hard to get photos of this coverage (since Peacock blocks screen grabs) so I don’t have a photo for you. Consider yourself lucky.

My cat has taken up residence in my lap. I’ve forgiven her for the cat box episode.

Wilco Kelderman (Visma-Rent a Bike) leads the GC group over the summit as Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) zips up for the descent.

The commentator Tejay van Gardaren just used the phrase “eat out this advantage.” I’m quite sure he didn’t say “eke out this advantage,” which also wouldn’t have made much sense in the context. I’m not sure what Tejay’s relationship is to language, but it looks pretty rocky from here.

“He wisely takes a gel bar there,” Phil says of De Plus. I wonder if Phil has looked closely at the consumables available to the riders? There are certainly bars, and gels, but I’ve never yet heard of a “gel bar.” Maybe Phil needs to pay more attention to the constant ads for The Feed that Peacock keeps showing. And I need to pay less, obviously, since it’s pretty sad that I’m even aware of them. I have a grudge against The Feed. I was led to believe that as a high school mountain bike coach I could get some free product, but it was a scam … though I abandoned the “registration” process midway through, The Feed now spams the crap out of me and I had to set up an email filter. Bastards. Don’t go for the “free water bottle” offer … your inbox may never recover.

It’s a long way to the final climb so I’ll fill you in on what’s happened so far in this Tour. Even though Vingegaard has won the last two Tours, he came in as a big question mark because he had a brutal crash this spring and was in the hospital for like ten days, and until a few weeks ago nobody was sure he’d even start the Tour. Pogacar, on the other hand, has been on fire all season, destroying his so-called rivals in the Giro d’Italia. I was starting to worry that this was going to be a totally boring Tour, but then Pogacar got COVID not long before the Tour started. So it looked like there might be some drama. So far, it’s been pretty good. Pogacar won the fourth stage, taking 37 seconds out of Vinegaard, but at least the Dane seemed to be on reasonably good form (as opposed to former winner Egan Bernal of the Ineos Granadiers who never really recovered from a bad crash a few years back, and lost 2:42 on this first mountain stage). Pogacar had a great Stage 7 time trial, taking another 25 seconds out of Vingegaard and 22 seconds out of another GC rival, Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe). Meanwhile, Evenepoel has been riding well, winning the time trial. In Stage 11, Vingegaard managed a stage win but didn’t take any time back from Pogacar, though he did distance Evenepoel by 25 seconds. In Stage 12, Roglic crashed hard and had to abandon the Tour, alas. Then, yesterday, Pogacar took another stage win and 39 more seconds out of Vingegaard, who at least took 31 seconds off Evenepoel to move into second overall. Vingegaard now wears the polka-dotted KOM jersey though it actually belongs to Pogacar.

Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) has clawed his way back to the breakaway, making it five. But their lead is down to just 2:41 over the very strong GC group, and I think this break is probably doomed. I have to confess, it’s always slightly annoying when I’ve devoted some energy describing the breakaway, naming its participants, etc., all for nothing. Now you’re laughing at me and saying, “Poor baby! These guys are slaying themselves for a chance at glory, but your poor fingers hurt from all that typing?” Well, yeah. And remember, these guys are getting paid. I’m just here as a public service … and you might be the only person ever to lay eyes on this text. What a waste, all around.

Now the same commentator who had sat in an inflatable pool earlier has put his shirt back on and is interviewing some random Slovenian fan.

INTERVIEWER: Why do you like Tadej Pogacar so much?

RANDO: You’re pronouncing his name wrong.

INTERVIEWER: It’s not TAD-ay Po-GOTCH-ah?

RANDO: No. It’s Tad-AY Po-GOTCH-arh.

INTERVIEWER: Sorry.

RANDO: [huffs]

INTERVIEWER: So why do you like him so much, even though you said you’re not much of a sports fan?

RANDO: Because he’s so young but already so accomplished. He’s at the top of the leader board for a reason.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that actually passes for insight?

RANDO: No, I never said I knew anything about sport. I was just minding my own business here when you came and stuck a mic in my face.

INTERVIEWER: Do you want to sit in the baby pool with me later?

RANDO: Please just leave me alone, you’re kind of creeping me out.

Okay, I have to admit something. I didn’t even try to give you an accurate transcript of that interview. My job is to entertain, and although that’s ostensibly the job of the commentators as well, they don’t always deliver. This is the trouble with live journalism … the footage they get, which deserves to end up on the cutting room floor, is just shoved at you like cafeteria-grade gruel in real time. They hoped this rando would be entertaining but he just just wasn’t. And who is this commentator? Where did they find him? Why is he ever on camera when he knows nothing about cycling?

They’re showing a list of past Plateau de Beille winners. I’m kind of surprised to see Lance Armstrong on the list, for 2002 and 2004. “Contador and Pantani won officially,” Bob Roll explains, “and Lance Armstrong won but was then disqualified … fairly or unfairly, time will tell.” Huh? WTF? I had kind of thought that after Lance made a fool out of himself on “Oprah” that the matter was settled. Isn’t that the acid test? I mean, after Tom Cruise jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch nobody has ever taken him seriously again … why would posterity ever return Lance’s past glory to him? This makes no sense.

Here’s an aerial shot of the final climb. A lot more interesting than a football field or a basketball court, innit?

The peloton reaches the base of the Plateau de Beille, and Kelderman, completely knackered, sits up and goes straight out the back.

The American Matteo Jorgenson, Vingegaard’s super-domestique, drills the pace on the front.

The gap to the breakaway is tumbling with a quickness. At the front, Carapaz attacks!

The GC group is down to nine riders. I’m not giving you their names … several more will get dropped soon. Suffice to say Evenepoel is still in there … for now.

What a waste of an exclamation point a couple sentences ago … Carapaz was reeled in like a retiree watching a timeshare seminar. (You won’t get metaphors like this with mainstream sports coverage.)

Jorgenson continues to drill it on the front, like a boss. Pogacar picks his nose. (His own nose, I mean. Not Jorgenson’s.)

The breakaway is breaking up. Mas, wearing an exquisite death-rictus, hammers on the front but it won’t be long until they’re caught. Note that Carapaz not only failed to get a gap, but slipped off the back of these two.

Carapaz regains contact and immediately attacks again. I’m sticking with a period this time, no exclamation point for him.

Vingegaard attacks! Only Pogacar can hang with him.

The duo blows by the dropped breakaway riders like they’re nothing, which they are. Look how weird De Plus looks in this photo. Some kind of A.I. auto-retouching, perhaps?

Now the leaders fly by the remaining breakaway riders. Carapaz latches on.

Evenepoel has already lost 30 seconds. And now Carapaz is dropped.

Evenepoel overtakes Carapaz. “He’s riding well and putting his rubber stamp on this race,” Phil says cryptically. I’ve certainly heard of “stamping your authority,” but the rubber stamp thing … doesn’t that normally indicate something very rote? I’m not getting this metaphor at all.

Pogacar has been out of the wind this entire race. He’s just sucking Vingegaard’s wheel, which is of course perfectly appropriate. And it’s a 9% grade so they’re probably not going all that fast, so it’s not like Vingegaard is being taken advantage of, exactly. But still, you wonder how long he can last. He had to attack early, so that in the unlikely event of Pogacar faltering, the Dane would have enough road to stretch out his lead and take the yellow jersey. But Pogacar looks super comfortable.

Peacock is patching in audio from their random, clueless baby-pool commentator who I just learned is named Steve. “I’ve already summited,” Steve says, as though being driven up a mountain is  some kind of heroic achievement. “I can tell you that it is very steep up here,” he continues, as though providing value. “Later I’m going to visit a day care center and hope to get some graham crackers and a juice box,” he does not go on to say, though he may as well.

Evenepoel is hemorrhaging time. He looks pretty demoralized. Or maybe he’s just hurting. I mean, of course he is.

And now Pogacar attacks! Rude! Gosh, with three miles to go, this really isn’t the prudent move of a GC leader with a decent lead who seems like he could theoretically lose the race by digging deeper than necessary. Very cheeky. Don’t get me wrong, I love panache, but this just seems gratuitous. Pogacar looks back, to taunt the Dane.

They ask commentator Christan Vande Velde, on the motorbike, to comment on Vingegaard’s unfolding nightmare. “He’s really suffering,” Christian says. “I haven’t seen him look this horrified since his family accidentally abandoned him in ‘Home Alone.’” Christian is to be forgiven for confusing Vingegaard with the child actor Macaulay Culkin because after all, the two are very nearly identical. Also, I made all that up, needless to say.

Pogacar goes under the 1-kilometer kite. Why is it called a kite? I don’t know. It just is.

Pogacar gets the win. He does the controversial “I’ve just woken up and am stretching” victory salute, as if to rub his rivals’ nose in it.

Vingegaard crosses the line, 1:08 down. His elbows are locked, as though even his arms have given out. I know the feeling.

Evenepoel finishes, losing 2:51 to Pogacar and 1:43 to Vingegaard. Presumably, more riders trickle in as the footage turns to Pogacar drinking water and once again being congratulated by various staffers. Yawn.

Now Carapaz limps through, well over five minutes down.

Bob Roll describes Pogacar’s win as “pure joy.” I’d say killjoy is more like it. Remember when riders were vulnerable and occasionally cracked, especially after winning races all season long? Pogacar has 16 pro victories this season, which is a similar number to the races he’s entered. He dominated the Giro and is now poised to be only the eighth rider in history to win the Giro/Tour double, and the first since the fully lubed Pantani in 1998. Some might find this exciting; to me it’s a lot like that egghead kid in the schoolroom who’s always got his hand up when the teacher asks a question, and who goes “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” when she pretends not to see him.

As they show a super-slo-mo of Vingegaard crossing the line, they play a recording of what his director said over the race radio: “Really, really good job. You did everything Jonas … Pogacar is better, and we have to accept this, huh?” Gosh. That guy should moonlight as a motivational speaker. (And no, I didn’t actually fabricate that quote, for once.)

As Pogacar warms down, of course he’s on his phone. What’s he doing? Doomscrolling? Social media? The Wordle? We can only speculate.

My online correspondent writes, “Well, the Tour is officially boring.” True, true.

And now it’s time for the uncomfortable conversation: could Pogacar possibly be clean? Well, I just read on cyclingnews.com that “Dutch journalist Thijs Zonneveld reports that Niki Terpstra has calculated [Pogacar’s] climbing time as 3:39 quicker than Pantani’s 1998 Plateau de Beille record.” So … how would this amazing feat be achieved clean, knowing that Pantani was coked to the gills throughout his career? Is it because Pogacar has electronic shifting? Better nutrition? Just wanted it more? Uh-huh. I’m not sure what to do about this. Maybe the TV networks will sue WADA for failing to police doping better, so that the stages could last longer and provide more advertising opportunities. Think of how much revenue they’ve lost through the curtailed coverage since every day the riders come through far sooner than expected.

They’re interviewing Pogacar.

INTERVIEWER: Well, thanks to your absurd dominance today, the Tour is officially boring.

POGACAR: I never would have imagined this. It was really hot, a super hard day, incredible, I’ve been cooling down and everything.

INTERVIEW: Half of your [stage] victories have been in the Pyrenees. What do you make of that?

POGACAR: Well, think about it. There are two mountain ranges used in this Tour and I didn’t win the time trial, so … duh.

INTERVIEWER: How did you pull this off, taking so much time out of your rivals?

POGACAR: They didn’t have the legs. More specifically, they didn’t have my legs.

INTERVIEWER: That sounds rather arrogant—did you really just say that?

POGACAR: No, I have said very little actually, which is why this blogger is taking liberties.

INTERVIEWER: What were you doing on your phone a bit ago, during your warm-down?

POGACAR: I was reading albertnet, of course.

Here’s the stage result:

And here’s the new GC:

Mark Cavendish (Astana-Qazaqstan Team), who won Stage 5 to set a new world record for most career Tour stage victories (click here for details) crosses the line, flanked by teammates, less than two minutes before the time cut would have ended his Tour.

And now the French sprinter Arnaud Démare comes over the line, a minute before he’d have been cut. Why is this remarkable? Well, he’s an amazing climber, having set a new Strava KOM for the final climb of the Milan-San Remo classic back in 2016. Of course, he had a bit of help in that he was hanging on his team car the whole time up the climb in what must be the worst example of unpunished cheating in the history of sport (click here for details). The good news is, Démare totally sucks now, failing to win a Tour stage since 2018, and I love to watch him lose. And I’m glad he made the time cut so I can watch him lose the next flat stage as well.

Jorgenson really sacrificed for his team leader today, losing 9:30 and dropping from 10th to 12th on GC. But hey, he was doing his job and I respect that. In other news, they’ve awarded Carapaz the Combativity award for today’s stage, which he totally deserves.

They’re interviewing Evenepoel now.

INTERIEWER: Well, you blew big greasy chunks today. How do you feel about that?

EVENEPOEL: Actually, I am happy. I consolidated my third place and my white jersey.

INTERVIEWER: But you lost big time to Pogacar and Vingegaard.

EVENEPOEL: I was getting my time gaps to them over my radio, but I didn’t want them. I just wanted to hear about the guys behind.

INTERVIEWER: That’s really defeatist of you.

EVENEPOEL: …

INTERVIEWER: Why the COVID mask? Do you really think I’m gonna give you COVID?

EVENEPOEL: Well, you do seem to spit a lot when you talk. But actually, I’m wearing this mask because earlier my directeur sportif was giving me a hard time about my yellow teeth. So I’m just covering up.

INTERVIEWER: Is that true?

EVENEPOEL: Of course not.

Well, I was hoping they’d interview Vingegaard, but they never did and now the coverage has concluded. Tune in again next year because I’m not going to bother blogging any more about this officially boring Tour.

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