Author: kennettron

Last week I did the Rapha race/ride from Neskowin to Portland. It was a 137-mile team time trial; an unofficial race since there was no traffic control or referee. There were two checkpoints that we had to make and the race ended at some bar in Portland.

Jim won a Kink radio contest (or in my opinion robbed a bank) last winter and the prize was a huge amount of money in gift certificates at Spanish Head Hotel– just south of the race’s starting point. So, our six-man team, which included me, Jim, Chris, Rob, Adam, and Brian, plus our drivers Karey and Gavin, lived large the night before the race. Money was not an issue. If something on the menu looked good, you could just have it. Appetizers, room service, wine, Champaign, brandy, cigars, tea and crumpets, dinner at a restaurant where burritos were not on the menu, you name it, we had it.

Here Jim and I are at the dinner table showing off a gold colored piece of tinfoil wrapper from a piece of chocolate.  Now that’s high class.

After horseback riding on the beach, we each relaxed in our own private saunas before being treated to massages with happy endings. Later in the evening, we took a helicopter tour of the coast and saw a pod of blue whales. Jim wanted to get a closer look and the rest of us agreed that a bird’s eye view was not the best way to observe Mother Nature, so the helicopter pilot took us back to the hotel and we switched to the submarine.

Whale watching grew tiring though, which is a reoccurring issue when living the lavish life. When one is as privileged as we were, one grows ‘tired’ of things. Such as: “Alfred, I grow tired of these jesters, off with their heads.” We needed something to pick up the evening before dinner, and a good bit of fencing was just what the doctor ordered to give us an appetite for our 12 course dinners.

Having accomplished all the things rich people must do (eating appetizers, horseback riding on the beach, helicopter rides, submarines, fencing), we went to sleep in gold leafed quilts and had nightmares that we lost all our money in poor investments or stupidly gave it away to orphanages.

The next morning we rolled out from the start line as 76 trombones played for us and the massive crowd that had gathered. It was an awesome ride, one of the more fun ones of the year. I started with the idea in my head that it was going to be simply for fun and I didn’t care how we placed. But my legs were feeling good in the cool, coastal air as we ascended our first climb of the day. It was almost foggy out and everything was green around us, just like I had predicted it would be. All of a sudden, we passed our first team.—-there were 23 teams in the race, with the slowest going first, followed in order by faster and faster teams at 3 minute intervals. We started 20th, meaning the organizers thought our team was the fourth fastest. That meant that the first team started an hour before us.—-Anyways, we caught that first team within ten minutes somehow and I began to think of victory. No longer were my thoughts on going at a pace everyone was comfortable with. We had tasted blood, and now it was time to hunt down and kill the rest of the weak prey in front of us, smearing their dead carcasses across the road like the road kill they were equal to.

But things didn’t quite go like that. Because 20 or 30 miles later, the team that had started behind us, Nike, was within a minute of us and we could look back and see them on the long straight sections of road. We ramped up our pace immediately. Being the prey seemed to spark a little fire under everyone’s saddle, and we began pedaling with urgency.

It worked too, because they soon became out of sight. By now we had been making excellent time, averaging over 23 miles an hour over some hilly terrain. The pace felt good. But about 2.5 hours into the race, we came to a stop at a country gas station. Some of us thought we were stopping because it was our first checkpoint, and when we learned that it was only for filling up our bottles, we got pissed. Nike caught us as we got back on our bikes; luckily they stopped for water too. I was mad because I thought we had just thrown away two minutes for no reason. It wasn’t hot out yet and most of us still had a bottle and a half left (we each carried 3).

Turned out that stopping was a very good idea, because later on in the day, some of the guys would be hurting a lot from overheating and dehydration. Those two minutes could have easily been 20 minutes if we hadn’t stopped.

Chris and I rode pretty hard on the front for the next couple miles as we burned off some frustration. By this point, I wanted to win and just felt like hammering it the rest of the way. But one of the main ideas about this race is that all levels can do it and compete together. We had a team with two cat 1’s, two cat 2’s and two cat 3’s. And finishing and working together was our primary objective. Plus we were racing against teams with cat 5’s and single speeds, so if you think about it, winning was probably the least important objective.

Although, one thing to always keep in mind if you can’t succeed, you should always attempt to bring others down with you (or preferably below you), which is why I yelled taunts to each team we passed. Yes, tears were shed, which in turn gave our team more drive. I thought I over-did it when I yelled “BOOM. Gotcha,” to the women’s Veloforma squad, but Chris was the meanest out of our group by far. I only made vague insults about how slow the other teams were riding. But Chris took it a step further, attacking their personalities, appearance, mothers, and even their choice of bike frames.
“Not only are you fat and stupid-looking, but you’re riding a Trek 1200. Were you beaten as a child or what?” And this was him only getting warmed up.
“Watching you attempt to peddle that thing makes me want to gouge out my eyes, roll around in a black berry bush, then hop in a bath full of lime and salt. A legless hippo riding a unicycle would be more graceful than you. I hope your tire slips out on a piece of gravel and you slide under a semi truck.”
“You call that pedaling?? How about you hand that bike over to me and I’ll show it how it’s supposed to be ridden, kind of like I did with your mother last night. And by the way, she was about as pleasant as the up-slash of a porta-potty.”

His insults, fueled by his rage for seagulls and other ocean dwelling avians, grew into intimidation and then physical threats.
“HEY! Out of the way, Ironclad, or you’re going in the ditch!” Chris shouted as he shouldered one of their riders to the ground.

At mile 80 or 90 Brian and Rob were hurting pretty badly; we had just come down from the coast range where it had been cool and shaded. Now the terrain was flatter and exposed to the sun’s 90 heat. Things started going downhill.

Chris broke a spoke during a gravel section, which took about 5 minutes to get figured out. We still had a lot of riding to do and people were getting more and more tired. We had to take an emergency stop at Ace Hardware for something to drink and eat, which took a huge chunk of time. But it was necessary.

There were about 25 miles to go after that stop, and suddenly Jim started getting a terrible stomach cramp. A few minutes before, he had been fine. It was either some Coke he drank, the heat, or something he ate, but whatever it was, it completely destroyed him.

With 10 miles to go, we started climbing Thompson hill to get into Portland. I think it was a 3-mile climb, but felt way way longer. Maybe like 3.2 miles or so. Chris, Adam, and I pushed Jim the entire way up, while Rob and Brian suffered behind with one thought in their heads “there’s beer behind the hill,” which is what I think Rob’s mantra had been since mile 50.

We got into town, rode through traffic to the finish line, and came in 5th overall with the third fastest time of a little over 7 hours. Not bad at all and some serious celebration was in order that night.

Here we are at the finish line bar.  Apparently Rob went so hard he lost a massive amount of brain cells, Chris went so hard he thinks Brian is Karey and is about to kiss her balding head, and Jim went so hard he’s taking a nap standing up.  Much like a horse.

ps Adam, I stole this picture from you, so thanks.

I have some good material for a new post, but I haven’t gotten around to writing about it yet. Most likely, I’ll forget what I was going to write about by the time I write it, but I will try to remember. That is all I was going to say.

The other day I was driving in a car somewhere with my brother and his friend and I farted. Before I could smell any flatulence, the aroma of greasy fried food drifted through the open window and completely overpowered any and all other smells. A Burger King was about 150 meters up the road from us. We hadn’t even passed it yet, but its smell swarmed into the car and extinguished what would have been a gasser you could be proud of. A gasser that left you grinning and waiting for the reaction of when it hit the nostrils of your prey. A gasser that had just the right amount of noise, length, and aroma. A gasser worthy of a name, such as Hamilton or Marshell. Why am I writing this? First of all, it gave me an excuse to write about farting. Second of all, I think it brings to mind a very current event. Healthcare. The day that a semi-vegan fart is vanquished by the drifting scent of a fast food restaurant a block away (who’s food tastes just about as good as a decent fart) is a sad day for all of us. It use to just be McDonalds, but now it seems like every fast food place pumps out that greasy smell of fries and frozen meat patties so heavily, you can’t think about anything other than food. And with ever increasing amounts of these fat shacks polluting the continent, the streets will only become more saturated with the stench*, just like our arteries.

In the United States 127 million adults are overweight while 60 million are obese. You can blame the people themselves for being either lazy, poor, over-worked, for their unfortunate upbringing by obese parents, or even for their poor genetic make-up. You can blame fast food and junk food corporations for their Philip Morris-like attitudes towards their customers. Or, everyone likes blaming government for things, so why not blame them for selling out to the fast food companies and giving subsidies for the cheap production of their nasty food? Did you know that from 1995-2006, we’ve spent $56 billion on corn subsidies alone? That’s a lot of cash on the cob!!! Just think if that money was spent on broccoli and carrot subsidies instead of high fructose corn syrup. There’d be a lot of pissed off children for one thing. But a lot of happy rabbits. Over the years, I think schools have wised up and realized they could make a tiny bit of much needed cash by serving hamburgers and Coke for lunch. I’m not sure if it’s better to have fat educated kids or stupid skinny kids. I guess in this country you have to pick one or the other. Although smart is probably an exaggeration. Who else is there to blame? Television of course. It’s just another excuse for us to sit on our asses, as is the internet and blogs. Then there’s the car companies for making it unnecessary for us to walk anywhere. City planners for making it impossible to walk anywhere. Iraq for hating our freedoms. Dentists for fixing our teeth and making it possible for us to continue eating candy… The list goes on and on until you reach the very bottom. The sole reason why the US is reaching an obesity epidemic: Farmers. If it weren’t for these pure evil, black-hearted demons plotting and laughing like mad men up in their combines, there would be no obesity issue at all. And because of this, I suggest the new healthcare system includes a mandate that does away with all farmers. Assuming the rest of the world follows our lead (because of course they would–they want to be free like us), the scenario would play out as such: There would be a short period of time where people died in the hundreds of millions as they unsuccessfully fed themselves on the remaining livestock, natural animals in the woods, dogs, cats, squirrels, the 17 fish that are left in the oceans, and then each other. I’m guessing the world population would go down to around 10 million before we reached an equilibrium with the planet and all the other animals. Assuming all of the governments were still functioning and continued to forbid any type of agriculture, humanity would remain here in a state of hunter gatherer peace. No more wars, large scale disease, famine, obesity, pollution, or traffic jams. No more homework, debt, or paper cuts. No more brilliant farts being cancelled out by the smell of french fries from a block away. Obama, please take my plan into consideration, as I believe it is the best way to address healthcare reform. Either that or model it after our tiny, third world, embargoed neighbor to the south, Cuba.

*I actually like the smell, but it sounds better if it’s a negative thing.

It’s about time for another post.  I don’t feel like being creative though.  So screw you Nick Skenszickche.  It’s going to be a list of facts and events in chronological order.  Wow, it just took me forever to figure out how to spell that word.  Anyways, like I said this post is going to be no nonsense and purely functional, just like this jacket:  Coat Store.

I will be speaking this in a German accent–in my mind mainly, so do not expect me to be writing in a German accent because that would use up my time unnecessarily and would not be no nonsense; it would be an excess and therefore not functional.  If you do not have necessary German accent in your mind now, I trust you will click on the link provided above and watch you the video so that you do have a German accent in your mind to hear.  Then you must read this last paragraph again.  

Thursday last week.  Or maybe Wednesday actually, I went to the coast with mein father to look for a shipwreck.  The location and details are top secret, though.  So I cannot tell you them.  We took our kyakas, which are made for rivers but are functional in many conditions, to the beach and paddled out through the surf to investigate sea caves where we thought there might be shipwreck remains.  The idea was that the pottery shards, which is what we were looking for for evidence of the wreck, would be more preserved in the caves due to less weathering.  Unfortunately, there were no sand beaches or shelves in the caves like we had hoped (just vertical rock walls) and therefore no chance of us finding anything without using diving equipment.  But the caves were cool anyways, and we did a bit of surf kayaking afterwards even though the waves were tiny that day.

 My dad, who’s taking the picture, is somewhat claustrophobic and was happy to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.

A few days later on Saturday, my brother and I went over to the coast again, this time to investigate some waves on our surfboards. It was our first time surfing at The Point in Seaside, and the waves were great. 8-10 feet with big intervals. We would have caught tons of waves if it weren’t for a couple greedy guys there that went for every wave in the set. This one guy with a blond pony tail and yellow gloves probably had 70 rides in the time we were there. I think I had less than 10. Actually, Yellow Gloves had more like 100 if I had around 10. He’d always be up on the wave first, and if you know anything about surfing, you know that you can’t take the wave if someone else catches it before you. He’d always paddle up and cut into the inside, take the wave right out from under your nose, ride it perfectly with however many cutbacks he felt like throwing in, and get back in time for the next set to beat you to your wave again. Every time.

Galen caught a decent amount of waves there, but we got out after 4 hours and ate lunch while discussing ways we would have liked to see Yellow Hands perish. A gray whale had come within 20 feet of us, and about 5 feet away from another guy out there, and I personally would have liked it if the whale had gone Pinocchio style on Yellow Hands and made him into a quick snack. We also would have liked to see him get smashed up on the rocks or attacked by a sea lion. In fact, if I had a sea lion pall, I would train him to go around and bite the leashes of everyone else’s boards.

After lunch we surfed the Cove, which is next to the point but closer to the beach. The guys surfing there weren’t as good, so we got plenty of waves and surfed until it began to get dark. I don’t have any pictures of us surfing, so I’ll paint a picture in your mind: it was at the ocean…there were waves in the water…it was kind of cloudy but also sunny. That aught to do the trick.

Sunday and Monday: Qwin (Quinn Keogh) came over on Saturday night to spend the night so we could get a mini training camp in over the next two days. By the way, I’ve stopped thinking in a German accent by now. I stopped a long time ago. On Sunday we did a nice little 5+ hour jaunt in the Sherwood/Newburg area. Bald Peak, Parret Mountain, a bunch of flats, and some other hills. It rained on us for a few hours and was super windy, but we got fairly lucky and had good weather for most of it. We ended the ride at his house in Beaverton, ate food and watched the Vuelta, went to bed, and got up the next morning to go on a ride with some other guys out to the Bridge of the Gods in the Gorge. Today, as you know if you spent any time outside, was not very pleasant for the most part. The pace was hard, for Qwin and I at least since our legs were loaded from the day before; and the the rain and cold drained them even more. Qwin got a flat on a giant pothole that I failed to point out while I was on the front, and that’s when we all got cold; while he fixed the flat. I had forgotten what that sensation felt like. Cold. Wet. It’s already becoming a distant memory, but I think it was unpleasant.

When one is cold and or when one is growing tired, in fear of bonking, has bonked, or just wants to drop a number of hammers,,, one should stop at an establishment that serves the beverage known as the Hi-Rev Mocha. One must fill a cup with the liquid, drink as much of it as one can in a short while so as not to be seen by the cashier, then fill it back up. While one is drinking a Hi-Rev Mocha, one must slurp loudly and quickly, so as to not let the flavor escape into the atmosphere, for the flavor of the Hi-Rev Mocha dissipates as one nears the bottom of the cup. It is not known why this occurs, but scientists believe that it is the mischievous doings of spirits and or fairies. Upon completing one’s cup and a half (or two cups if one is a very fast drinker and does not care if one burns one’s lips), one will experience a feeling of ecstasical euphoria. [Not to reader, the author just made up that word, which is derived from ecstasy but used as an additive]. The feeling will last for quite some time, as the sugar and caffeine content of the Hi-Rev Mocha is beyond measurement. During this time of ecstasical euphoria, one must ride a bicycle fast. Or attempt to do so.

I drank my hi rev mocha and we were on our way again. It had stopped raining, and the rest of the ride was nice. I felt pretty good during the hard efforts and had plenty of energy the rest of the way home to Sherwood to make it a 130 mile ride in a little over 6 hours. By the way, OBRA race promoters, I think (and everyone thinks) that the road season should NOT start in February, end in June, and pittle away with a bunch of crits in July and August. I like crits, but I’d much rather have road races or a weekly circuit race in the summer. Or both road races AND crits. Ok, at least some road races. At least 4. Or even 2. Please, at least 1. That’s not too much to ask for is it? And they’d be well attended because A) if you started the season 6 weeks later instead of in February people wouldn’t get as burned out so quickly and would still be racing in the summer B) road races are much more pleasant when it’s hot out than when it’s raining and snowing at Hagg Lake, and C) rats have good night vision and sturdy tails, therefore making them excellent at climbing during dusk. As evidence of people wanting to do more road racing, I present the Rapha race. Why are people so excited for it? Well, to answer that I’ll have to do another alphabetical list: A) they miss road races, B) they’re tired of short, 60 minute crits in parking lots, C) it actually isn’t a road race, but it’s kind of like one, D) it involves winning lots of beer, E) I don’t know why the moon does all the stuff it does, F) I imagine there will be lots of trees to look at. And studies show that walking through a forest decreases stress, G) stress is spelled with the same letters as trees, H) rats come in many shapes and sizes, but the most common is the black rat, which is black and shaped like a rat, I) just want to tell you how I’m feeling.

My next post will be about the Galapagos and I will include many pictures of sea lions and other Galapagos aminals.

–Written by Sam Nicoletti, AKA The Tiniest Sprinter–

hola and holla, all!  it is i, sam n, and this is my guest bloggin’ post for kennettron5000!

last week kennet asked me to write something to post up here about what it means to be vegan.  the vagueness of that request was appealing to me, because it meant i could pretty much point this topic in just about any direction i wanted to and pull the trigger.  unfortunately, just like when i’m faced with too many kinds of apples to choose from at the grocery store, instead of making a decision and moving on, i choked…

anyway, after days and days of standing in a puddle of my own drool, staring slack-jawed at the mind-boggling variety of crispy fruit, i think i’m finally ready to put something in my cart and check out.  and by that, i mean i’m ready to write something.  about being vegan, not about apples.  although apples are vegan.  see how i came full circle and linked everything up there?  that’s called “magnificent writing,” dear readers, and you can learn more about it at your local library.

ok, on to the vegan stuff!

first off, i’d like to say that being vegan is a lot like bike racing, in that both of them are really awesome.  being vegan is like bike racing in other ways too.  try to follow me here:  imagine the racer as the vegan person, and the bike as the vegan guidelines that they ride on.  as all of us who race bicycles know, the racers are the boring half of that equation, right?  right!  so we’re going to focus on the bikes.

obviously, in a bike race, not everyone rides the same bicycle.  while all race bikes have some strong similarities and the same ultimate goals (speed, efficiency, expensiveness), there are still so many different kinds.  some people ride konas, some people and their moms ride matching cervelos, some fancy people ride vanillas, some old people ride treks while wearing black shoes, postal service jerseys, and clip-on rearview mirrors…  the list goes on and on.  furthermore, even if three people all ride the same type of bicycle frame, it’s very likely that two of them will be using brands of components crafted out of twigs, dog feces, bad dreams, and baby tears, and the third might be using campy.

vegetarian stuff is just like that.

you’ve got a lot of people who are vegetarian (myself included), and while there are some basic rules that most of us share, there are so many different approaches that you can’t safely just lump us all together.

as far as i know, none of us eat red meat, and almost all of us refrain from eating birds.  bicycles have two wheels and handlebars, and most have brakes.  you dig?

from there, the types of vegan/vegetarian lifestyles start to differentiate from one another with the details.  lacto-ovo vegetarians don’t eat any meat, but do have milk and eggs.  there’s a word for the people who include fish as well, although i can’t think of it right now and i certainly can’t be bothered to reference the internet.  there are people who don’t eat meat as a general rule, but make exceptions for meat that comes from animals that were raised on certain kinds of farms and/or killed in a certain fashion.  there are all kinds of rule-sets that people make for themselves and their vegetarian diet, and even more reasons for each them.

and then you have the strict vegetarians, or vegans.  that’s how i roll.  in this brand of vegetarianism, you stay away from all animal products.  you don’t eat cows or pigs, you don’t eat shrimp or sardines, and you don’t eat eggs or dairy.  you don’t eat whey protein, you don’t eat gelatin, and you don’t eat fish oil pills.  this brand has probably the least amount of variation.  you can only buy it built up with campy.  there are still some gray areas for sure – do you eat white sugar, sometimes bleached with bone char?  do you drink beer that’s made with isingless finnings or gelatin? how about honey? – but they’re not as big as whether or not you consider fish to be meat.

if it comes from an animal, whether you cut it off of them, squeeze it out of them, or take it from their nest, you just stay away.  those are the “rules.”

i put “rules” in quotes because it’s a convenient way to describe the lifestyle, but it’s not what i would consider the right word.  if people imagine there are rules, then they can easily picture drawing a line between ok and not ok, so in that regard, “rules” is a helpful word.  in reality though, every rule of a vegetarian lifestyle is generally self-imposed, so “choice” is probably a much more accurate word.  if somebody really wants to fit a strict definition of a certain type of vegetarian, then by all means they should approach it as something with set rules to obey, but i personally don’t know anybody that lives the veg life for that reason.

and that brings us to the reasons to be vegetarian!  jesus, i haven’t made a transition that slick since i was wearing elastic-waisted jeans in middle level writing class!

ok, so just like saddle choice is totally personal and not really worth trying to analyze too closely, the reasons to abstain from eating animals are as numerous as the people who abstain from eating animals.  probably more, actually, because i know i have a lot more than just one reason.  i’ve got health reasons, environmental reasons, and of course moral reasons.

everything else takes a back seat to the moral reasons in my eyes, though.  there’s a lot that goes on in the animals-for-food industry that i think anybody would be hard-pressed to justify, and i’m not ok with that.  however, that’s a post for another day – and on my own blog.  i’ll just say this:  even if being vegan made me slower and shortened my life expectancy, i’d still do it.

that said, the good news is it probably does just the opposite!  all the fly studies show that doing the vegan thing is good for your ticker and your fudge factory (heart and colon), and i can say with complete certainty that my athletic performance right now is the best it’s ever been.  also, i haven’t been sick in like 2 years.  and i’m really good looking.

now don’t get me wrong, as a big fan of science, i’m not about to attribute the above to me being vegan.  i obviously haven’t done experiments and used bunsen burners and squeezed bulb pipettes or anything, so don’t think i’m claiming that being vegan is the answer to a stinky crud cavern and consistent dfl finishes.  i’m not.  all i’m saying is, it certainly hasn’t appeared to hurt me any, and my gut tells me that it helps.

also, keep in mind that, as a good vegan, i pay some attention to my diet to make sure i’m not missing anything i need.  a bad vegan could easily turn into a big pile of health crisis if he or she ate freedom fries for every meal, but note that the exact same thing holds true for the omnivore.  a bad diet is a bad diet, meat or no meat.  i really believe that having a good diet is easier as a vegan though.  i get a lot of questions about what i do for vitamin/mineral supplements and protein, and the answer is pretty much “eat lots of vegetables.”  i take a b12 vitamin, and that’s it.  plant-based foods have no shortage of the things that are generally associated with meat and dairy, and they have so much of the things that people lack when they displace vegetables with more meat and dairy.  i’d love to start throwing around facts right now, but “facts” on “blogs” on the “internet” written by “vegan bike racers” probably come across as “credible” in the same way that 50 cent comes across as “a good rapper,” so i’ll refrain (i’ll also stop using quotation marks so much).  i’ll just say this:  it seems wacky to me that some people think a vegan diet for an athlete is crazy and full of supplements and pills and whatnot, when those same people are drinking accelerade-hammer-whey-powder-4:1-saltlick-shitsoup from water bottles all ride long before going home and making a milkshake-smoothie-3000%-daily-value-protein-barf-stew with a few scoops of mystery powder from a big tub.  if one supplements as an omnivore, they’ll probably supplement as a vegan, and if that person doesn’t supplement as an omnivore, there’s certainly no reason they’d have to start if they made a vegan switch.

oh, and being a vegan makes it pretty easy to be skinny if you want, which i hear makes your powertap graphs all ten kinds of better…

and that’s how being vegan/vegetarian is just like racing bicycles!  it was a flawless analogy, am i right?  of course i’m right!  all right!

ok, i’m gonna pinch this one off.

but not before putting in one more cuss word:

i fucking love you all,

the tiniest sprinter

ps:  kennet, i can’t wait to see what you type up for my web blog.  bonus points if you work derek’s mom into it somehow.

pps:  kennet, please add baby pictures to this, if you feel up to it.  the secret to finding the best baby pictures is searching for “fill in the blank baby” on google, and using whatever comes up on the first page so that you don’t have to waste energy clicking the little arrow at the bottom.

Why I liked the book called The Plague by Albert Camuut  

By Kennett Peterson

Mr. Dyer’s Class Period 5

The book by Albert Camut called “The Plauge” was written in 1947 by Albert Camut.  Albert Camut was a French existentialist.  Existentialist believe that life is meaningless.  In Albert Camut’s book called “The Plauge”, he talks about many things.  The first one of these things is that the people in his book don’t like to do boring things like go to work.  The second thing is that there is a lot of rats in the cities and rats spread diseases like polio.  The third thing is that people don’t like to be trapped in a city that has lots of people dying of diseases and lots of dead rats that have bad fleas.  I will talk about these things and more in my essay on “The Plague” by Albert Camut.

The people in this book live in a big city in Algeria, but they speak french for some reason.  No one knows why.  Scholars still debate.  The people in his book go to work in the morning before they want to wake up, then they work, then they come home and go to sleep.  They don’t like to do this but they are only concerned with making money.  They work during the week and then they are very tired on Saturday and don’t do very much, but go out to cafes at night.  I don’t know why they go to cafes at night.  But the young people in the city like to go to them and stay out late and be loud in the streets.  Then on Sunday the people in the city likes to go to the beach and go for a swim.  Albert Camut says they debate whether or not they should go to church, but usually they decide to go to the beach instead because they want to be happy in the short term.  

Rats have lots of diseases and live in sewers.  They come out of the sewers one day and they start dying all over the place.  Thousands of rats die and throw up on this old guy’s shoes.  That guy owns a hotel and hates the rats because they are bad for his business, so he throws the dead rats outside and he swears a lot, but the book I’m reading has the swear words crossed out with a Sharpie so I can’t see what he’s saying.  That old guy, who’s first name is Mme. picked up a rat by the tale one day, and a few days later he dies and gets a bad fever.  All the people in the hotel don’t know it’s the plague but the main character in the book, who is a doctor, begins to get suspicious when his patients starts to die too also.

A lot the people in the book start to die a lot later in the book. they get the plague and the city is closed off other people and they are trapped.  No one likes it their anymore and they hate being trapped.  But they don’t really do anything that different than before, but they don’t like being there anymore.  Camut is showing that they are stupid and don’t realize that their lives were the same before they were trapped by the plague and now that they are trapped by the plague they just begin to realize how pointless and stupid their lives are.  That is my thesis statement.

I like the book called “The Plauge” because it was very interesting and it showed me that A) rats spread disease and I should not pick up a dead rat by the tail B) rats can be very large C) rats have thick legs that are good for climbing D) rats not only eat cheeses, but they also eat dead things and things in sewers and in storm drains E) rats are very intelligent animals and their wiskers are sensitve.  I think everyone should have a rat as a pet.  This book was a good book because it also showed me that I should just go to the beach every day instead of just Sunday.

First off, I want to let you know that Sam Nicoletti is planning on writing something for this blog about what it means to be vegan–or something along those lines.  Since he is a vegan and a cyclist and a writer, I think it will be good.  Plus he won the state championship criterium a few weeks ago, so he is somewhat of a celebrity.

As for my own veganism, I have been asked to stop referring to myself as vegan and even somewhat vegan, sine I have been eating meat and other animal products.  Apparently it is insulting to other vegetarians and vegans for me to call myself a vegan when I have occasionally been eating non vegan food.  I completely understand.  Because if someone were to call themselves a cyclist and not ride their bike 365 days a year, I too would be insulted.  Hahaha.  That’s for you Mike!!  Oh, and thanks again for letting me stay at your house this weekend. 

But in all seriousness, I do think that calling myself a vegan or even ‘veganish’ may be misleading.  Since starting my vegan diet on Wednesday of last week, I have eaten multiple servings of whey protein, a dinner of jumbalia which included shrimp, chicken, and sausage; a meat sandwich today, hot and sour soup that was made with broth and had a few pieces of meat in it, some cabbage that had mayonnaise in it,  fish oil and cod liver oil, and of course some “contaminated food,” such as spaghetti sauce that had meatballs in it even though I didn’t eat any meatballs.  Considering those are all the animal products I’ve eaten in the last six days, I think I have done pretty well.  My goal now is to keep doing what I’m doing and eat an “animal reduced” diet.  I will no longer refer to myself as vegan and I apologize to all those who I’ve upset.

The Eugene stage race went very well.  Rob English won, which everyone knew would happen.  But our team had some great success as well.  Jim, Chris, Eli, and myself made up our squad, and the team’s goal was to support Eli as much as we could.  And Eli did great.  He ended up 8th GC in a very tough field, and snagged some cat 1 upgrade points for next year.

After the prologue on Friday, which I road very slowly in, the road race became my main goal of the weekend.   78 miles, three laps of the Thursday Nighter.  It was fairly hot, but not too bad.  Our plan was to get Eli in a breakaway.  I attacked a number of times in the first lap, but kept my aggression much lower than normal, since I’ve been off the bike for so long.  I could definitely tell I was riding slower than usual, but considering this probably as slow as I get, I didn’t do half bad.  

By a lap and a half, I was in the lead breakaway with Matt Ritzow from Paul’s and Cliff Heaberlin From Guinness.  We quickly had 40 seconds on the field after some hard work, but after 6 or 8 miles we heard a chase group of 5 guys was only 25 seconds back and the pack was a minute behind them.  We talked briefly and decided to just soft pedal until they caught up, since they were going to catch us anyways.  Luckily, Eli was in the chase group, which gave me a reason to work in it.

I began bonking with about 20 miles to go and started missing pulls.  We were down to seven guys now, still plenty to keep the gap healthy.  So at this point I would have just sat in, even if it meant being yelled at, because every little rise was slowly destroying me.  But I wanted the break to keep going for Eli, so I kept taking my pulls.  Although, I knew I had to be careful and not overdo it because after taking a pull, if someone decided to do even a weak attack, I’d be off the back and no help to Eli.  

Eli and Galen were definitely the strongest in the break, and Eli was probably doing the most work out of everyone.  I tried to get him to do less, but I think he mainly just wanted to make sure the break stuck even if it meant not having energy at the end for a good finish.  I’ve felt this way before too, but the person who cares about the break sticking the least, sometimes has the best odds at actually winning.  

That probably wasn’t the case with this race though, because Galen sure wanted the break to stick.  He worked pretty much the entire time, and even though we all knew where and how he was going to attack, it didn’t matter.  None of us could hold on.  

Galen waited until we were 1/4 the way up Sprinter’s hill; Eli had been on the front (not good) and Galen went off like a rocket.  I just held on, my bonked legs praying for the end, six of us made it over the hill together, with Galen off the front.  Eli went to the front immediately and despite my efforts to calm him, he did the majority of the work to bring Galen back.  I did all I could, and we actually got very close to completely closing the gap, but a few guys weren’t doing any work so we never did catch him.  With 400 meters to go I tried going to the front to give a lead out for Eli, who was sitting second wheel behind Paul B, but I was maxed out and fell short.  He took a very respectable 3rd place, which he could have done without my help I’m sure, and I drifted in a few seconds later for 6th.  

The next morning, Mike and I drove over to the TT start and rode very very slowly and easily around the 15 mile course.  I averaged 264 watts, about an average pace for an all day endurance ride.  Surprisingly, it did make my hamstrings hurt, which have been tight and sore since I ran six miles on Wednesday.  I wasn’t last, though, as others had the same plan in mind–save it for the crit if you’re not going to place top 10 GC.

The crit went according to our plan, which was to either get Eli in a break or to keep the guys right behind him in GC out of breaks that didn’t include Eli.  No breaks lasted for more than a lap or two.  I went off the front to grab a prime to pay for the weekend’s gas bill, then did a bit of work to keep Eli off the front, which is where I kept finding him for some reason.  I got caught in a crash, but stopped and unclipped just in time to avoid going down, keeping my crashes limited to only one this year.

With three or four laps to go, Chris found me near the front of the pack and glued himself to my wheel.  I kept him out of the wind and confusion near the front until the last half lap, where I turned the gas on and jetted out front for one last race effort for the year.  I got Chris around the final corner and he jumped hard, leaving the rest of the pack multiple bike lengths behind and taking the win.

The last race of the year…sigh.  September and October will include some riding and cross training, but the real training doesn’t start until November and December.  It’s going to be a long wait.

I made it through last night and I’m still vegan(ish). I ate some spaghetti sauce that had meatballs in it. Even though I didn’t eat any of the meatballs, a true vegan wouldn’t have touched the sauce. Plus I’ve had fish oil pills and cod oil of course. But basically I’m still vegan. It’s not that hard actually, but I feel like I need to find some good protein sources because I haven’t had much in the last couple days. Tofu is expensive but tasty if cooked right, Sam suggested Seatin, but I don’t know how I’d prepare him; quinoa isn’t that high in protein and I eat it all the time anyways, so it’s off to Albertson’s to get some ideas.

Eugene Celebration starts today with a 5 mile prologue TT up McBeth–a pretty steep hill. Saturday is the 78 mile road race that covers three laps of the Thursday Nighter, and Sunday has a 15 mile TT in the morning and a 60 minute crit in the evening at the Tuesday night crit course. This will be a shock to the system. Nick, you want to soft pedal up McBeth with me today or are you going fast?

Oh, and I almost forgot. I got a great haircut from Leeann last night.

Ok, this vegan diet is really getting old. It’s only been a day, but I don’t like it anymore. It was a novel idea a few days ago, but even last night, before I started, I was having second thoughts. As I said before, this morning was slightly difficult because of the no eggs breakfast. From breakfast to lunch was fine, though. Not too difficult. Just some almond butter and jam sandwiches and other stuff. Dinner wasn’t too hard either. I had quinoa with olives. In fact, I don’t think I eat that much meat or other animal products on a daily basis anyways, but at least I have the option to. And that’s what I don’t like about veganism. I am being forced to not eat things, instead of forgoing on my own.

I will admit, I did cheat a bit today. Like I said before, I’m still going to take the fish oil pills and cod liver oil. And as punishment for that, the Vegan Gods decided to strike me down with terrible cod liver oil burps throughout my entire ride today. Every few minutes, I’d burp and taste the fowl, fishy odor of cod oil. If you’ve ever taken cod liver oil, you know the nasty taste it has. It tastes like fish, except really really bad.

My brother, who did a vegan diet for six weeks last spring, was going to do this vegan month with me. His stamina was even shorter than mine though, because he just came home from the store with Haggen Das bars, pork, and the ingredients to make chili cheese nachos. I think the thought of going for four weeks brought back deep, troubled memories from his subconscious. Terrible vegan memories that he had pushed back into the crevices of his brain, too painful to think of and too sickening to deal with. Like a war veteran with post dramatic stress syndrome, he never dealt with what happened during those six weeks of hell last May, which have just been stirred up today during his second tour of vegan duty, and now those memories have come back to wreak havoc on his life. As he reaches down for another nacho, his fingers touch the bottom of the plate. He looks down. No more nachos are left. He franticly begins licking the chili and cheese residue off the plate, but soon there is none of that left either. In a panic for his fix, he scrambles off the couch like a possessed attic and runs to the fridge. It’s empty, nothing but condiments, some stale tortillas, and a pot of steel cut oats from breakfast. He yanks the freezer door open and begins clawing through packages of frozen peas and soy beans, throwing them over his shoulder onto the ground. It has…no…meat. No Haggen Das. His eyes go blank. A strand of nacho tainted saliva drops from his half opened mouth as he stands before the empty freezer. His knees give out and he slumps to the ground. He crawls over to the corner of the room and gathers his legs to his chest, folds his arms over them and rocks back and forth, starring wide eyed off into the distance, chanting, “You can’t have a corn dog without the dog. You can’t have a corn dog without the dog. You can’t have a corn dog without the dog…” His future will be grim.

I imagine quitting animal products is like quitting any type of addictive drug. Nicotine, heroin, coffee. Once you get past the first few days or weeks, things start getting easier. As the months go on, you begin to function without it, even having momentary lapses where you’re not obsessively thinking about how badly you want it. Years go by and you begin to forget about your past addiction, although when you pass a hot dog vender on the street, the aroma hits you so strong you have to sprint to the store for meat flavored gum before you give in. By now, you’ve decided it’s best not to hang out with meat-eaters anymore since they’re a bad influence on you and the temptation to just have one bite of pizza is too much. Yep, pretty much, deep down, for the rest of your life you’ll crave a steak. It’s something you’ll have to live with until the day you die, which ironically will be much further away now that you’re a vegan.

I’m home in Sherwood today after two weeks in the Galapagos. I’ll write all about the trip later, as right now I’ve got my hands full with a PB&J. I’ll be racing Eugene Celebration starting on Friday, but I’m sure I’ll be going pretty slow. The last time I raced was Cascade and since then I think I’ve ridden less than 15 hours. So if you see me suffering a bit, please do as I did throughout the season and take pity by courteously slowing the pace down a few notches.

Today is my first day being vegan. I’ve decided to give the vegan diet a try for 4 weeks while my training slowly starts up again and the intensity is pretty minimal. I want to do it partly to keep my weight down and even slowly lose a little muscle mass, but also to just see what vegetarianism is like. This morning I didn’t eat any eggs. So far, that’s been the only thing I’ve had to purposely skip today. Although skipping out on two eggs may seem like a small thing, I almost cheated right then and there, contemplating the inclusion of eggs into my vegan diet. But I held strong. All day, though, I’ve been going back and forth about whether I really want to do it and right now I’ve reached the conclusion that I’ll do a revised vegan diet. It will still include fish oil pills and cod liver oil. And because of that, it might as well include fish now and again, but not too much mind you. Eggs are also a good source of omega 3, so I don’t think it would be wise to cut them out completely. Eating less protein will help with weight loss, but I don’t want to lose too much, if any, power. So I’ll have to keep my protein up with weigh powder, which is a dairy product. Chicken is another good source of protein that I normally eat–much better than any plant source since the body more easily digests and uses amino acids from meat than from plants. I’ll make an exception for chicken, and maybe other poultry on occasion. And of course I don’t want my iron levels getting super low, so I think a steak or hamburger once or twice a week would help with that. Other than those things, I’ll be completely vegan. It’s going to be tough. I’ll let you know how it goes.