Author: Dan Brekke

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‘You Don’t Need to Know’

A nice entry on The New York Times Olympics blog on the hair’s-breadth finish in the men’s 100-meter butterfly that gave U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps his seventh gold medal in Beijing. The Times and its sister publication, the International Herald Tribune, tried to get underwater footage from the official timekeeper, Omega, that reportedly gave a clear view of the finish. At first Omega said the footage would be distributed. Then FINA, the body that oversees competitive swimming, said the news media would not be allowed to view the pictures. The explanation, as related by the Times, is a pretty good working definition of arrogance:

“[FINA’S Cornel] Marculescu said it was a matter of policy, and that the Serbian team [whose swimmer finished second] was satisfied with the ruling after seeing the images — so there is no need to share the images.

“[Asked] why FINA wouldn’t distribute the footage if it showed the margin conclusively. Marculescu said: “We are not going to distribute footage. We are not doing these kinds of things. Everything is good. What are you going to do with the footage? See what the Serbians already saw? It is clarified for us beyond any doubt.

“He’s the winner in any way. He’s the winner no doubt. Even if you could see the pictures, I don’ t know how you could use them.”

[By way of Pete in the comments: Sports Illustrated has the next-best thing to the official photos–an amazing underwater sequence showing the race’s final two meters or so.0

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More Advice from the Neighbors

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We do “pick up after” our dog. But if I were to somehow not see The Dog take a dump after dark, or forget to bring a plastic bag with me, or suffer some other lapse of responsibility, I sure hope the pile would happen right under this sign. My antagonism toward this precious advisory isn’t rational, and I can’t really explain it. I suspect, though, that part of my feeling arises from the belief that the sort of people who put up notes like this wouldn’t give you the time of day if you passed on the street–unless it was to tell you that if you want the time, you should be careful enough to own and wear a watch.

The other day, I was walking The Dog when we approached a woman sitting in a lawnchair alongside the sidewalk. Her back was to us. The Dog was about 40 or 50 feet ahead of us. He passed Lawnchair Woman, and I approached. I got ready to say, “Hi, there,” which is my normal greeting to someone I meet in such circumstances. But as I approached, I heard her croak, “Six feet.”

Me: “What?” “Six feet. The city ordinance says you have to be within six feet of your dog.”

Discussing this later, I agreed with someone who has a much calmer demeanor than my own that the proper response to such an utterance is a simple, “Thank you.” After offering thanks, the proper course of action is to continue on your way and count yourself lucky that this person does not live next door.

I won’t recount what I actually said or what Lawnchair Woman said by way of retort. But it wasn’t “thank you.”

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No, Jerkball, We Can’t All Get Along

We have a fondness for storytelling, for the art of the narrative arc. Here’s a case in point, by way of VeloNews, on a recent spate of headline-grabbing car/bike rage incidents. The piece–a column called Legally Speaking by racer-turned-lawyer Bob Mionske–recounts tale after tale of drivers and cyclicts getting into brutal and often bloody tangles. The most sensational of the stories involves a Los Angeles emergency-room physician who is facing felony assault charges for an incident that left two cyclists badly injured. Read Mionske’s column (which, now that we’ve come to the end of it, we see was written and reported by another lawyer–what a sweet gig for Mionske!): it’s one of the best police-blotter pieces we’ve ever encountered.

It ends thus:

For the media, and for the new cyclists who, lured by the

combination of warm weather and high gas prices, are venturing out onto

the road for the first time, these stories of road violence, one after

the other, may indeed have seemed like “a new kind of road rage.” For

seasoned cyclists, the stories were more an indication that the daily

violence cyclists encounter had finally managed to capture the

attention of the public-at-large. But underlying the “bikes vs. cars”

eruptions of violence, the larger questions remained unasked, and

unanswered in the media: Why are cyclists the daily targets of road

violence, and what can cyclists do to change that reality?

Fortunately, for every cyclist who has ever asked those questions,

there are answers; next week, we’re going to delve deeper into this

issue for answers to those deeper questions.

Where we take issue with Mr. Mionske, Esq., and his brother at the bar who “provided research and drafting” of the column, is the assertion that the “larger questions remained unasked, and unanswered in the media: Why are cyclists the daily targets of road violence, and what can cyclists do to change that reality?”

In fact, whenever the subject of car vs. bike conflict comes up, those questions are implicitly part of the story and the conversation around them.  We’ll proffer just one exhibit to support that contention: David Darlington’s “Broken,” an exhaustively reported, beautifully written and ultimately tragic narrative on cyclist deaths in Sonoma County in the January/February 2008 edition of Bicycling magazine. The incidents he focuses on are different in nature from the ones that Mionske & co. discuss: the Sonoma deaths were the result, uniformly, of negligent, reckless, and/or drunken or drug-addled driving. But the issue at the heart of the matter is the same: why is it happening, and what can be done? (In answering the second question, Darlington’s story showcases the successful efforts of Sonoma County cyclists to pressure the local district attorney to vigorously prosecute drivers who had killed or maimed riders.)

Mionske’s column promises a discussion of these questions next week. While we wait for that piece to appear, we’d just observe that our own experience and recent reading (“Traffic,” by Tom Vanderbilt) suggest that one of the basic elements present in all the incidents Mionske describes is our readiness to contend for our space–to fight for what we think is ours or ought to be. Although it’s risky to say so, we note that this tendency appears to be as pronounced among humans who cycle as it is with humans who drive. There may be a peculiarly American element to the willingness to instantly resort to a fighting stance when our right is challenged–we honestly don’t have enough experience of riding elsewhere to say.

Mionske being a lawyer, we expect somehow that his curative prescription will involve the courts. I guess that’s fine, though we’re reminded of Lincoln’s advice that it’s better to yield a path to a dog rather than be bitten contending for the right. “Even killing the dog would not cure the bite,” he said. In terms of practical advice for the every day cyclist (and driver), we think that part of the solution is to be willing to back off rather than rising to and responding to every slight. It’s a hard path to follow. But we really do want to get along with all those people we share the road with, and we’re willing to believe that most of those people, deep down, feel the same way.

And if they don’t, well, the hell with them.

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‘The Best Way to See a City’

A marvelous little story in The New York Times: Reporter
Katie Thomas took a ride on regular old civilian bikes with
Olympians Jason McCartney (U.S.) and Michael Barry (Canada). She
wrote that McCartney seemed a little skeptical, but all that
changed once they were riding:

“… As we coasted along streets that were as flat as a moo shu pancake, McCartney was almost giddy. ‘Isn’t this the best way to see a city?’ he shouted.

“And it was. Heavy rains a day earlier had cleared Beijing of
the humid air we all had been living with for the past week.
The weather had been so oppressive that McCartney was one of more
than 50 riders who did not finish the road race.

“We breezed through Beijing in fast forward, pedaling past
storefronts decorated with Chinese flags, a mother washing her
toddler’s face, a pair of soldiers standing at attention. A block
or two later, the traffic cleared and the stone walls of the
Forbidden City appeared. Through an archway, we saw a cobbled
courtyard, stately trees, and hordes of Chinese tourists.

“ ‘You want to go in?’ McCartney asked. Although he had arrived in Beijing a week before, this was the first sightseeing he had managed to do, given his demanding training schedule. While the road race had taken McCartney past many of the city’s main attractions, they appeared as a blur. And because he is planning to compete in the Tour of Spain beginning Aug. 30, McCartney was leaving Beijing the next day.

We rested our bikes on their kickstands and had a look around. Within minutes, we had become our own attraction. First there was the man who wanted to sell McCartney a Mao watch. The leader’s hand bobbed up and down, ticking off the seconds. The man wanted 150 yuan, or about $22. McCartney smiled. ‘Twenty,’ he said, offering less than $3.

Then there was a teenage boy, who could sense that these two tanned, fit men clearly had something to do with the Olympics. ‘Did they win a medal?’ the boy asked. When he heard the answer was no, he walked away.”

[Belatedly: the story comes with a very cool two-minute audio
slideshow. Some great pictures of working bikes on the streets of
Beijing. Really well done on the part of the Times.]

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‘The Best Way to See a City’

A marvelous little story in The New York Times: Reporter Katie Thomas took a ride on regular old civilian bikes with Olympicans Jason McCartney (U.S.) and Michael Barry (Canada). She wrote that McCartney seemed a little skeptical, but all that changed once they were riding:

“… As we coasted along streets that were as flat as a moo shu

pancake, McCartney was almost giddy. ‘Isn’t this the best way to see a

city?’ he shouted.

“And it was. Heavy rains a day earlier had

cleared Beijing of the humid air we all had been living with for the

past week. The weather had been so oppressive that McCartney was one of

more than 50 riders who did not finish the road race.

“We breezed

through Beijing in fast forward, pedaling past storefronts decorated

with Chinese flags, a mother washing her toddler’s face, a pair of

soldiers standing at attention. A block or two later, the traffic

cleared and the stone walls of the Forbidden City appeared. Through an

archway, we saw a cobbled courtyard, stately trees, and hordes of

Chinese tourists.”

[Belatedly: the story comes with a very cool two-minute audio slideshow. Some great pictures of working bikes on the streets of Beijing. Really well done on the part of the Times.]

Posted on

‘The Best Way to See a City’

A marvelous little story in The New York Times: Reporter Katie Thomas took a ride on regular old civilian bikes with Olympicans Jason McCartney (U.S.) and Michael Barry (Canada). She wrote that McCartney seemed a little skeptical, but all that changed once they were riding:

“… As we coasted along streets that were as flat as a moo shu

pancake, McCartney was almost giddy. ‘Isn’t this the best way to see a

city?’ he shouted.

“And it was. Heavy rains a day earlier had

cleared Beijing of the humid air we all had been living with for the

past week. The weather had been so oppressive that McCartney was one of

more than 50 riders who did not finish the road race.

“We breezed

through Beijing in fast forward, pedaling past storefronts decorated

with Chinese flags, a mother washing her toddler’s face, a pair of

soldiers standing at attention. A block or two later, the traffic

cleared and the stone walls of the Forbidden City appeared. Through an

archway, we saw a cobbled courtyard, stately trees, and hordes of

Chinese tourists.”

[Belatedly: the story comes with a very cool two-minute audio slideshow. Some great pictures of working bikes on the streets of Beijing. Really well done on the part of the Times.]

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Ming’s

Mings081308

23rd 22nd and South Van Ness (I think), in San Francisco’s Mission District. After work, I looped up over Potrero Hill, crossed the 101 on the pedestrian overpasses up there, and ended up at the 24th and Mission BART station. It’s a great place to walk.

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Cancellara, Larsson, Leipheimer

Men’s Olympic time trial:

1 Switzerland Fabian Cancellara 1:02:11.43 Gold
2 Sweden Gustav Larsson 1:02:44.79 Silver
3 United States Levi Leipheimer 1:03:21.11 Bronze

Other notables: Contador fourth, Evans fifth, Zabriskie 12th, Schumacher 13th.

Women’s time trial:

1. United States Kristin Armstrong 34:51.72 Gold
2. Great Britain Emma Pooley 35:16.01 Silver
3. Switzerland Karin Thurig 35:50.99 Bronze
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Yes, He Did

The Berkeley Police Department puts out a daily bulletin summarizing each day’s large and small crimes. The bulletin comes out a few days after the fact, but if you’re concerned about what’s going on in your neighborhood–and we’ve had a series of sexual assaults in the area recently–it’s a good way to catch up.

So here’s an item from last week: a sidewalk grocery snatch that also netted the victim’s wallet, credit cards, and ID. What caught my eye is the thoroughness of the description of the suspect. He, and his declared political leanings, made quite an impression:

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In case that graphic doesn’t show up clearly, the suspect description is: “White male, 30-40 years old, straw hat, black ‘Obama’ T-shirt with red/blue printing, pants with high cuffs, no socks, ‘Keen’ brand or similar hybrid hiker/sandle [sic] type shoes, with a green ‘Long’s Drugs’ shopping cart.

Chicago’s on the cornhole map

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Corn Hole: The Game

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I took about 300 pictures last week on my trip to Chicago and northeastern Ohio. I have a fantasy of editing that down to a couple dozen for a little travelogue. I have the same idea for piles of pictures taken last August and for various trips and events going back three or four years.

While waiting for the dream to become reality, here’s just one from Geneva on the Lake, Ohio. It’s a little resort town on Lake Erie, about 50 miles east of Cleveland (and just west of Ashtabula). The place is a mix. There is the faintest undercurrent of something sort of upscale trying to happen there–some fancier housing, some motels cleaning up their act, even a half-decent coffee shop with free WiFi. But the bread-and-butter going back to the 1920s, judging from the dates on some of the businesses, including one (vintage 1924) that claims to be the oldest continuously operating miniature golf course in the world, is catering to middle class and working class families escaping Cleveland and Pittsburgh and other old industrial towns. One form that focus takes today is the welcome extended to bikers, by which I mean Harley-riding hordes. My brother and his family were in town the Saturday night before last, and they said the town was absolutely packed with bikers and folks cruising up and down the main drag. And yes, there were lots of families with kids at the sidewalk burger and barbecue stands and arcades, too.

We got into town on the Sunday after the crowd descended. The town was already winding down for what everyone told me was the typical quiet period between weekends. John had pointed out the coffee shop, Gail’s Coffee Cafe, and early Monday I strolled up the deserted strip from the cottage my sister Ann rented to get caffeine for the two of us. Then I encountered the sign above.

“Play Corn Hole Game Here.”

OK, wait a minute. Where I come from, cornhole has a distinctively pejorative connotation to it. And it’s not just me: Here’s what the Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary has to say about it:

cornhole: to perform anal intercourse with : BUGGER — usually considered vulgar.

That, however, is not how bean bag tossers in northeaster Ohio (and elsewhere: check out the search results for “cornhole” on Google. There’s even an American Cornhole Organization, “the governing body for the sport of cornhole.” The ACO site includes a link to a Wall Street Journal story from last summer (“More People Give This Game a Toss, Corny as It May Be“) which both mentions the delicate matter of the name and notes that the game is spreading (like a mysterious rash?) across the nation’s midsection. (Oh, yes: Chicago’s on the cornhole map, too).

So I’m late to the cornhole game. That doesn’t mean I’m above learning about it, though. Later Monday, someone had set up a cornhole game–which consists of two boards, each with one 8-inch hole, placed at the ends of a roughly 25-foot long court; the object is to pitch your four corn-filled bags and get them in the hole–in the driveway at our cottage. Ann, my niece Ingrid and I tried it out. We were so good at it that soon we found it more amusing to throw the bags at each other (Ann and Ingrid were actually pretty good; me–too much force and impatience). Later, I saw the family staying in the next cottage over playing the game. Mom, dad, and a son (maybe 14) and daughter (10). It was a cut-throat game, and it turned out the mom was the ace of the group. As my sister said, they were probably appalled at the way we cheapened their game.

Cornhole080408

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