Month: March 2005

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On the Bike

200medal

Yesterday (Saturday) was a no-post day because of excessive bicycle-related preoccupations. I did the Davis Bike Club’s 200-kilometer brevet. For those uninitiated or uninterested in the argot of randonneuring — and I imagine that’s about 100 percent of non-randonneurs — what that means is I got on my bike at 7 a.m. in Davis to ride 62.5 miles or so out to a little Grange Hall out in the middle of what passes for nowhere in California, then turned around and rode 62.5 miles or so back. Beyond all the great scenery and Spandex you get to see, one of the reasons people go out and do this is to qualify for one of the 1,200-kilometer (750-mile), 90-hour rides (randonnee) held around the world as a test of cycling toughness, fatigue tolerance, and overall ability to outlast your sore ass. (Plus, you get nifty medals, like the one here, for a reasonable price after you climb off your bike at the end).

The ride went tolerably well for someone who had not ridden 100 miles in a day since last August. I went out a little too hard the first few miles — mostly because I just get swept along in the excitement of riding in a big group. I felt slightly queasy and found it hard to eat for a good part of the ride. There was something of a headwind coming back into Davis — not a killer, just a good consistent breeze from the north and east that made us work a little. And I lost my brevet card, the little passport you carry to check in at various spots along the way to prove you did the ride; I’m hoping I won’t be disqualified for that. But otherwise, the day was perfect — we went from gray, rainy, cool winter to spectacularly clear and warm spring overnight.

After the ride was over, I got a burger, drove back to Berkeley to pick up Kate, then went up to Napa to stay with our friend Pete. We were there to stay with his son Niko while he got up well before dawn to run the Napa Valley Marathon. He did well — running it in about 3 hours and 41 minutes and finishing in the 80th percentile of all runners. Then — the most impressive feat of all — he came back home and grilled up a midday repast for his visitors.

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Driving While Distracted

Cimg3578

Some people have their cellphones, their breakfast burritos, or finicky stereo systems to keep them from watching the road while driving. Me, I’ve got my digital camera, used while behind the wheel to record remarkable road occurrences, such as the antics of some of my fellow distracted drivers. Every once in a while some other on-the-road scene or oddity catches my eye. Yesterday morning, while headed over to Marin County on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, it was the word emblazoned on the apparatus depicted above. It’s a big name in the world of concrete pumping.

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Spaceman in Jail

Walter Anderson, who probably has spent more than anyone on trying to develop a private spaceship, is in jail in Washington for allegedly evading hundreds of millions of dollars in federal taxes. One of the conundrums about Anderson is that, unless you’re a real space junkie, you’re not very likely to have heard of him. Over the past 20 years, he quietly became very wealthy by starting and selling telecommunications companies. Then he turned around and ploughed tens of miillions into private space research, including a spectacularly unsuccessful venture called Rotary Rocket that tried to build a vehicle that would blast off from an airstrip like a rocket and land helicopter-style, but back end first. He also got behind an outfit called MirCorp that hoped to take over the historic and scary Soviet/Russian space station and send tourists there. Anderson’s space ambitions came wrapped with an unpleasant, somewhat paranoid grandiosity that’s profiled in an exceptionally well-done story Elizabeth Weil wrote for The New York Times Magazine in July 2000, and is touched upon in her exceptionally poorly executed book, “They All Laughed at Christopher Columbus.”

After all that, Anderson’s in jail. The government alleges he’s hidden hundreds of millions of dollars in off-shore shell companies and other dubious tax shelters to avoid paying taxes. Anderson says his plan all along was to give his money away to space ventures; but all bets are off on that plan, he says, because he’s broke now. In any case, Anderson might be realizing his long-expected martyrdom. In Weil’s magazine story, he makes no secret of his dislike of the feds and concludes: “In my life, if the U.S. government doesn’t try to kill me, I probably won’t have succeeded in meeting my long-term goals.”

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This Day in ’87

Tomcake

I will leave recounting all the events of this day 18 years ago to my memoirs (not in stores yet, but it could happen any decade now). But let it be recorded that on March 3, 1987 — before the World Wide Web or MP3s or DVDs or TiVo; before emo, but after Led Zeppelin and The Clash; back when Saddam Hussein was still a good guy, the Berlin Wall was still standing, and Dutch still had most of his marbles; back when Barry Bonds had just 16 career home runs and before Michael Jordan had made it to the second round of the playoffs — yes, let it be recorded that on that day Tom Brekke was born (he’s expressed a preference for "Thom" lately, but I still haven’t made the transition).

As of today, he can vote, buy smokes legally (he pointed that out), be charged as an adult (he pointed that out), enlist in the armed forces, and sign up for the Selective Service System. And lots more that I’m not thinking of, I’m sure.

Anyway, T(h)om B., happy birthday from your pop.

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1,500

Today in Iraq:

“BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) The number of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq campaign rose to 1,500 on Thursday, an Associated Press count showed, as the military announced the latest death of one of its troops.

The soldier was killed Wednesday in Babil province, just south of Baghdad, part of an area known as the ‘Triangle of Death’ because of the frequency of insurgent attacks on U.S.- and Iraqi-led forces there. …”

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Tropic of Error

The picayune concerns of a picayune mind: I noticed looking at the generally well-put-together site for the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer mission that they’ve mixed up latitude and longitude on their map displays showing where the plane is. Of course, the mission has bigger problems now — due to an unexplained problem, pilot Steve Fossett has several hundred gallons of fuel fewer than he’s supposed to at this stage of the flight and he might not complete his nonstop circumnavigation at all. Despite the larger problems at hand, I couldn’t stop myself from sending the following note:

I’m sure I’m the latest of a million people to point it out, but the current mission status windows have latitude and longitude reversed (for instance, Steve’s current position is given as Longitude N33.25447 and Latitude E145.54005. My understanding of these coordinate systems on planet Earth is that longitude is expressed in degrees east or west of the prime (Greenwich) meridian and latitude is expressed in degrees north or south of the Equator.

Having done some Web site design, it seems like it would be an easy enough fix to make. What gives?

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’24’: Week in Review

So, Jack Bauer, America’s rogue agent for life, appears to have foiled the terrorist mastermind Marwan and averted 99.some percent of the nuclear catastrophes facing the United States (104 nuclear plants could have melted down, but just one did). Earlier in the day, he easily solved the kidnapping of the secretary of defense and his daughter (Jack’s girlfriend) and wiped out the terrorist contingent that was going to try the secretary live on the Internet for war crimes. Plus, he rehabilitated his disgraced former partner, Cubs’ fan Tony Almeida, and staged a convenience store as a diversion, ran out of ammo during another shootout with bad guys, tortured his girlfriend’s soon-to-be-former husband, and captured the turncoat who gave the terrorists the “”override device” that made it possible to take over the nation’s nuclear plants. Jack did all that in eleven hours. Which means just one thing: His “day” has another 13 hours to run. So — despite the mopping up that still must be done — capturing Marwan; catching the Turkish terrorist dad, freeing his son, and delivering the mom to the responsible authorities; dealing with a few hundred thousand casualties from the Southern California nuclear plant meltdown — all of the proceedings so far are just an appetizer for some horrific main event.

Guesses, anyone? It looks like the nuclear meltdowns were a diversion themselves. Either that, or they’re not really over. I’m puzzled.

The other question is: What purpose is served by the absurd subplot involving the Counterterrorism Unit station chief, the stoic but bitchy Erin Driscoll, and her schizophrenic daughter, Maya? Last night, Maya committed suicide, thus sparing viewers her continued histrionics.