Getting Ready for a One-Day STP...

I've started training to ride the Seattle-to-Portland, a two-day double-century that goes from (you guessed it...) Seattle to Portland. About 9,000 people start the ride, about 90% finish. Somewhere around 20% do it in just one day. Actually, make that 16 hours or less because the official start time at the University of Washington's parking lot is 5 am on Saturday morning and the finish line checkpoint in Portland's Halliday Park closes at 9 pm.

I've ridden it for the past three years, but now I've been dared to do it in one day, so I've started to train in earnest. First, I realized that the bike I'd ridden for the three previous rides, a RANS V-Rex with a Rohloff Speedhub (a 14-speed internally-geared hub), just wasn't the bike to do this in one day. The V-Rex, especially one set up the way mine is, weighs around 31 lbs. The new bike to get was obvious: a Bacchetta Aero.Why was it obvious? The Aero started the high racer recumbent craze, it weighs 22 lbs, has a titanium frame, and is one of the lightest and fastest recumbents out there. After dithering over 24" or 650c wheels, I went with the latter (better tire choices, lower rolling resistance) despite worries over seat height (I'm 5'6"), and I'm perfectly happy with my choice.

I've had the Aero since early March and have found that it is easily 20% faster than the V-Rex on the flats and perhaps twice as fast climbing. I should have bought one of these when they first came out.

I went on a quick 30-mile training ride tonight. Here's the details, courtesy of my Garmin Edge 305 GPS/Cyclecomputer (ah... gadgets!) and MotionBased.com:


If you want to follow my ride, click on the 'View Activity' link above, then select the orange 'Player' tab at the top far right, then select 'Satellite' and set the speed to '0.5x', and hit the Play button.

Note the elevation graph, at the lower right. I live at the south end of one of a series north-south ridges (a result of glacial activity during the last Ice Age), and I have to descend almost 400 feet to get to the valley below (near sea level). Of course, there's lots of ridges in this neck of the woods, so I have to climb back up a 500' high ridge, then descend down the other side, ride in the Sammamish Valley for a while, and then climb back up the ridge I live on. If the hills don't kill you, they make you wish you were dead. Any wonder why I miss south Louisiana, where the highest hill is a highway overpass?

Why am I writing about this? Because now that I've put this goal in writing, I'm obligated to do it. Ouch.

Making the World Brighter Through Conversation

I ran down to the local Barnes & Noble this afternoon to pick up some books on Scrum methodology for my new feature team leads. After waiting a few minutes in the checkout line, the young sales clerk invited me over with the usual "I can help the next customer down here!"

As I put the books on the counter, the sales clerk started her banter. "How is your day going?"

"Fine," I replied.

"I just know today will be a good day for me, too!" she said. "The past several days have been really bad, so today has to be good, doesn't it?"

"That's an interesting question," I said. "Are you familiar with statistics?"

"No, I'm not."

I warmed to my subject. "Well, let me explain something to you. Let's say you flipped a coin a thousand times, and ended up with a thousand 'heads'. The odds against that are astronomical, right?"

"Yes, I know that much!"

"Okay, but did you know that the odds of your getting heads on the next flip is still 50:50? In other words, regardless of how lousy the past few days have been for you, the odds are just as likely that today, and tomorrow, will be just as lousy, or lousier."

The poor woman visibly deflated, but bravely tried to recover as she handed me my books and my credit card back. "Have a nice day!"

"You, too," I replied as I left.

Anniversary of the Decisive Gulf War Tank Battles

Take a look at this image, from Google Earth. I found it while dinking around this afternoon. It's the location of the Gulf War Battle of 73 Easting, almost sixteen years ago to the day, on the night of February 25-26 1991, when the US VII Corps caught up with one of the three Iraqi Republican Guard armored divisions, the Tawakalna Division and literally kicked their butts in a few hours. Click on the image to see it larger, and use the coordinates to help you zoom in with Google Earth if you want to check out the battlefield. This particular image is, I believe, the graveyard of the Iraqi 12th Armored Division, left behind to guard the rear of the Tawakalna Division while the Republican Guard units tried to retreat back into Iraq. I believe this division was destroyed mostly by Apache helicopter, with some assists from M1A1 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

I've looked further to the north, where the three Tawakalna battalions got theirs, but the density of destroyed vehicles is very low although there are hastily prepared fighting positions where they're suppsed to be. Perhaps the Iraqis salvaged the destroyed tanks after the war, starting at the north and working their way southward.

Despite the impression that we have of Iraqis being most militarily adept at surrendering, the Guards divisions were actually pretty tough customers who tried to slug it out with the American forces. Remember, these are the same tank units that defeated the Iranians for a decade. Their biggest handicap was lack of intelligence; looking at the most-southern fighting positions shows that they were expecting the attack from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to the south and east, and were completely surprised by our forces to the left. Coalition forces also had the advantage of superior equipment, training, and communications. Our tanks could detect and destroy their tanks beyond the range that they could even see us through their gunsights. In these battles, the first indication the Iraqis had that US armored forces were nearby was having one of their tanks blow up spectacularly.

One of the tactics used by the Iraqis as the battle raged on was to not power up their tank, instead letting it remain at the ambient temperature and thus be mostly invisible to our thermal sights. One of the US units reported coming over a small ridge and seeing 'basketballs' appearing and disappearing... and realizing these were the heads of Iraqi tank commanders coming in and out of their turrets quickly spread the word to shoot below the basketballs... ouch!

The smarter Iraqis kept their tanks cold and their heads down. After US vehicles would roll past these dormant tanks in the night, the Iraqis would crank their turrets around by hand and shoot us from behind. It was an effective tactic, but once a shot was fired the tank's temperature changed enough to become clearly visible on our thermal sights and most of these tanks only got off one shot before they were destroyed. Unfortunately, US tanks adjacent to those hit turned their turrets around to engage the bypassed Iraqis, leading to several incidents of fratricide, or "friendly fire" deaths when their gun flashes firing westward were mistakenly identified as enemy fire and engaged by oncoming US tanks to the westward.

After the destruction of the Tawakalna Division, the next Guard unit encountered was the Medina, leading to the Battle of Medina Ridge, the largest tank-on-tank battle in the history of the US Army. I think that only the WWII Battle of Kursk between the Soviets and the Germans was larger.

I think a case can be made that the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of the Gulf War and the lopsided US victory. Why? Because the Soviets were in Iraq supporting their client state with technical advisors and the latest and greatest Warsaw Pact armament. The Soviets always outnumbered the US in Europe, just as the Iraqis outnumbered us in Iraq, however US military strategy was predicated on the fact that large conventional battles would always be against numerically superior enemies like the Soviets and the Chinese. And yet, we defeated the fourth largest army in the world in less than 100 hours, while suffering more casualties in traffic accidents at home than we did on the battlefield. I think the Soviet leadership saw that all of their military spending, the decades of deprivation of their people, the lack of progress in their country's standard of living... it was all a waste. They'd never be able to conquer us militarily, they lost 40,000 troops and wrecked their army in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and they were getting left further and further behind, while their earstwhile junior partner China was making great economic strides. Despite the Soviets' best efforts, the US was less than 100 kilometers from downtown Baghdad with nothing in the way but sand. And so we saw the coup attempt fail shortly thereafter, and the Soviet Union was no more.

One wonders about the lost opportunities of the 1990s, starting with our running from Somalia to our ineffective responses to Al Qaeda. What would the world have looked like with Bush had won instead of Clinton? Would 9/11 or something similar have happened?

In A Post-9/11 World...

...Americans are refusing to be victims. We saw it when the airline passengers beat the snot out of the Sneaker Bomber, and we see it again when a group of American senior citizens, including at least one retired military, were confronted by three Honduran bad boys with knives and a gun during a cruise ship port visit. When the dust settled, two of the pendejos were running and the third bandito was permanently hors de combat, having suffered a broken collarbone and then death via lack of blood to the brain from what was probably a rear naked choke, a ju-jitsu hold taught in military combatives training.

My favorite part of the article:

The tourists left on their Carnival cruise after the incident and Hernandez said authorities do not plan to press any charges against them, saying they acted in self defense.

"They were in their right to defend themselves after being held up," Hernandez said.

Honduras is a pretty cool country.

Lesson #1: When your life is threatened, fight back with an overwhelming amount of force and definitively eradicate the threat. Mercy can wait until you identify the perp in the ER or the morgue.

Lesson #2: Picking on Americans can be hazardous to your health.

On The Morality of Clubbing Baby Seals

Don't ask me how I wandered on to this, but I thought it was powerful enough to share.



I've never heard of Craig Ferguson before, but he seems like someone worth watching.

The Perils of Shooting Your Mouth Off

Jim Zumbo
c/o Outdoor Life

Dear Jim:

I've met you at sportsmen's shows and at the SHOT Show. I've read your work for a couple of decades now. I'm really pretty disappointed in you, because I don't think you get why people are so upset.

I've hunted for almost 40 years, and owned guns for the same amount of time. I've been in the military. I've shot competitively. And, I've owned a gun shop and shooting range.

People could care less if you do, or don't, hunt with an AR-15, or Mini-14, or AK-47, or SKS, or whatever. That's your business. When you start denigrating people over their choice of hunting firearms, then it becomes a problem. When you call them "terrorists" and call for banning their weapon of choice, then it really becomes a problem. And, in today's political climate, where those who work to ban all firearms look for any and every opportunity to divide the gun owner community on the basis of cosmetics so they can gradually ban all guns by banning this type and then that type, you just handed anti-gunners some potent information. "Why not ban AR-15s from hunting?" they'll say. "After all, noted hunting authority Jim Zumbo says that they are unsporting and don't belong in the woods!"

Jim, the problem isn't that you didn't realize people hunt with AR-15s. It's that both your original post and your apology demonstrate you truly do not believe in the right to keep and bear arms, and that it extends to beyond what type of firearms may be suitable for a week-long elk hunt in the Rockies.

So, going on a hunt with Ted Nugent and using AR-15s isn't going to fix the problem. How about writing an article on how people who don't hunt also have a right to own firearms, including AR-15s, and maybe then following up with another article specifically for non-hunters who own semiautomatic rifles derived from military weapons, directed at how to get them to start hunting with those weapons. After all, we need more hunters!

Hunting as an activity is decreasing in popularity. I'd venture to say that, unlike when I was a boy, the majority of gun owners are not hunters. If you, as a recognized authority on hunting (certainly not guns), dismiss these people for their taste in firearms, then in a few years don't be surprised when hunting as a legitimate sporting activity is ended. After all, we don't need to hunt to feed ourselves, and we can farm elk and deer if we like the taste of venison. It's just a cruel blood sport, isn't it, and no one needs to kill a poor cute defenseless prairie dog or a clever and handsome coyote.

Gun owners and Americans in general are pretty forgiving, if they think you're sincere and if they see that you've changed. But the burden is on you, and not on them. If your apology really is sincere and you really don't think these guns should be banned from hunting, then you need to start writing... and soon.

Sincerely,

John Clifford

ht: Instapundit

The Perfect Birthday

I ran across a photo on an Internet site that reminded me of my eighth birthday, my best birthday ever, and my first true love.

I learned to ride a bike when I was five, on my own. My parents had bought my oldest sister a red Schwinn on her sixth birthday, and my other sister Sue and I spent the afternoon running behind my father as he attempted to mentor Amie in the art of cycling by holding the bike with her on it, running with it for a few steps and then launching her to wobble across the drive. She never really took to it and the bike ended up in the garage, unused. Sue never expressed any interest in the bicycle and so it languished for over a year until one day, after watching some of the older boys in the neighborhood ride and pondering on the subject I decided that I was going to learn.

I spent a few days on the sidewalk besides our house, starting at the top of the block and coasting down, dragging my feet at first until I finally figured out what to do in order to keep from falling... turn in the direction that the bike starts to lean. Shortly thereafter I was up and running, or cycling. I spent the rest of the summer cycling on my own without anyone being the wiser... and as the youngest child and the only boy that is just how I wanted it.

A week or two after school began, I made an offhand comment as we passed a bicyclist on the way home in the car with my mother and sisters. "What do you know about bicycles?!" Sue challenged. "Why, I'm a year older than you and I can't ride and I know more about bicycles than you do!" "I can too ride a bike!" I responded. "No, you can't!" And so on, until my mother told us both to stop arguing.

I slumped back in my seat and challenged her, "I bet you a quarter I can ride!" Now, a quarter was a lot of money in the mid-1960s. It was two week's allowance, and would buy five Cokes in those little glass bottles, or five candy bars, or any combination of the two. We're talking serious money for a five year-old... or a six year-old, for that matter. Sue had to put up, or shut up... and, really she had no choice; I had called her bluff. She could hardly wait to get home to take my quarter.

The car had barely stopped before we all piled out. I ran across the yard to the door under the porch and pulled the bike out, and then proudly rode it across the yard and up to the car. My mother was speechless with astonishment, and both of my sisters were calling, "Teach me! Teach me!" (I tried for a few minutes, but they wouldn't listen, and I eventually realized that they would have to learn on their own the same way I did, although being outdone by their younger brother was powerful motivation. I don't remember getting the quarter.)

A couple of days later, my father pulled up while I was sitting on the back steps. He stepped out of the driver's seat and pulled a brand-new 24" boy's bike out of the back. I was totally surprised; I guess my mother must have mentioned that we would need at least one more bike. This was a typical Sear's cruiser with lots of chrome plating, the taillight behind the seatpost, a swooping gas tank on the main tube, a headlight and a big spring shock absorber on top of the front fender. I immediately tried to ride it and ran into a problem. Either Dad overlooked my height, or lack of it, at five years of age, or more likely he bought a little bigger bike figuring I would grow into it. My father showed me how to start by stepping on the left pedal with my left foot, scooting a few steps, and then swinging my foot over the main tube, and I was able to ride it, but even at its lowest I couldn't pedal while sitting. I quickly learned how to stop the bike and get off without falling; ride into our hedge and then climb off as the bike was held up by the front wheel!

As you can imagine, with very little clearance between the top tube and sensitive portions of my anatomy, not being able to sit, and having to find a hedge in order to get off, I quickly parked the new bike under the porch and returned to riding my sister's 20" candy apple red Schwinn mixte (girl's bike). It didn't help that a few weeks later some cretin opened the door under our porch while we were out and made off with the bike. I was upset, but more with the idea that it was stolen than with the fact that I couldn't ride it anymore.

A while later, my father came home with a decades-old mixte with 20" balloon tires, painted pea green with a brush. I hopped on and rode it and fell in love. Everything fit, it was comfortable, no bar to crunch myself on, and it was mine. I don't think the manufacturers even considered using anything besides the same stuff you'd find beneath your bathroom sink for frame tubing, and the bike had to weigh at least 50 lbs. It was ugly, but it never let me down. I rode that bike for three years, until my eighth birthday... the best birthday of my life.

All that fall I had been entranced, dreaming of a bike in the Sears catalog. As you may remember, Sears had a good marketing habit of having at least two items in any category and often three... "Good," "Better," and "Sear's Best." The bicycle marketer must have understood small boys, because he had two Stingray-type bikes in full color. I lusted after the "Sear's Best" model, the 'Scream' with its butterfly handlebars, its 5-speed shifter in a console on the main tube, its banana seat, and its dragster-type slick rear tire. It was too much to hope for, but I would hold the catalog and walk in circles around my room at night when I was supposed to be in bed, dreaming. I literally prayed about that bike, even offering to take the "Better" model if that's all God thought I deserved... but I really figured there was no way I'd get any bike for Christmas. After all, even the cheaper model was $50 and the "Scream" was $80. The number was beyond comprehension to a person who got a quarter for his allowance. It might as well have cost a million dollars.

I remember my birthday, that December day in 1969, very well. It was raining and cold, and my father wasn't home for dinner so we all ate and waited for him to start on the cake. I heard my father pull up around 6:30 and ran to the front door to open it for him, and as I did the bike of my dreams appeared as he wheeled it inside.

I couldn't believe it. If you've ever really wanted something, figured you'd never get it, and then, lo and behold, it's yours, you understand. Nothing would do except that we go outside and ride it, in the cold December rain at night, so we did. And then we brought it back inside and I lovingly dried it off with a towel. My father even brought it upstairs that one night so I could sleep with it in my room. To this day, it was the best birthday present I've ever had.

But, like most love stories it ended badly. Six months later I went up to stay with my stepsister and her husband for a couple of weeks. Despite my repeated demands, backed up by my parents, that my bike not be taken out while I was away, my sisters did take it out, and left it out for a couple days in the rain. By the time I returned home it was rusted, the chrome flaking off. Once the paint blisters and the steel corrodes there is nothing that an eight year-old boy can do with Naval Jelly to restore his pride and joy. I still rode it but things were never the same. I'd look at the rust and the flaked chrome and alternate between depression and anger. A year later someone stole it from our garage, and although we came across the thief on the bike and stopped him, I could not get my father to take it from him even though I positively identified every scratch and defect down to the traces of Naval Jelly still remaining on the chainguard. We went home and called the police but the thief had hidden the bike by the time they came and I never saw it again. I was heartbroken.

That was the last bike I owned until I was an adult. I had forgotten what it looked like until I ran across a picture of it while Googling random stuff. Here it is... my first love.



I know, it looks ridiculous. I wonder what I ever saw in it. And then I realize that when one is in love common sense goes out the window. I've owned several bikes as an adult, some costing in the thousands, made of titanium with top-end componentry... and yet, no bike has ever made me happier. No photo can possibly reproduce the experience, the emotion, of owning my dream bike. Laugh if you will, but how many of you would have given everything for such a bike when you were eight?

Tragedy Isn't Funny: An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh

Hello Rush,

As a listener of yours since the late '80s, and a member for the past several years, I think you're going a little overboard on the astronaut.

I joined after the press was ganging up on you over your issue with painkillers. I didn't think it was fair, and I wanted to show my support.

Similarly, I think the story of Lisa Nowak and her actions this morning is really a tragedy. Captain Nowak is an Annapolis grad with a regular commission, three young children, and is at the pinnacle of her career as a test pilot and astronaut. Now, all of that is over. Regardless of the legal outcome, her career is ended and she will have to resign her commission because she can no longer be trusted behind the controls of a fighter aircraft much less in command of an aircraft carrier or in the Space Shuttle.

If she is acquitted of all charges, she will still be unemployable; no defense contractor or airline will have her for the same reason that the Navy and NASA no longer will. She will almost surely be court-martialed; if she is found guilty she will most likely lose her pension. Her marriage is most likely over as well. And, if she is convicted in a criminal court she will spend at least a decade in jail.

I don't know why Captain Lowak did what she did. I don't know what pushed her to act this irrationally. My point is, regardless of the reason this is a tragedy that has and will harm many innocent people, from the intended victim to the male astronaut to the Nowak children to Captain Lowak herself. The woman has lost everything. There's nothing funny about that.

Give the woman a break, okay?

Jane, You're Playing a Game You Never Can Win, Girl...*

It's amazing how time changes everything, how a new year, a new Congress invigorates one into thinking that perhaps they were right all along. Or, at least it must seem that way to Jane Fonda.

In a reprise of her antiwar youth, Jane Fonda finally came out and spoke to an antiwar rally in Washington DC last weekend. "I haven't spoken at an antiwar rally in 34 years," she said. But, "Silence is no longer an option."

Oh, yes it is! Hasn't this woman learned anything? After all, she apologized at least twice for her actions supporting the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, acts which she acknowledged caused harm to other Americans and which gave aid and comfort to the enemy. In other words, treasonous acts that at any other time would have seen her prosecuted. Haven't you learned to keep your ignorant mouth shut yet?

Maybe Jane and her Fellow Travelers should reminisce a little further back, and ponder the words of an American president who was himself attacked for leading the country into an unpopular war, who was savaged by his Democratic opponents, and yet whom, unlike Jane Fonda, was proven to have been on the right side of history:

“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.” -- Abraham Lincoln

Jane, we know your game. Silence is no longer an option... it's mandatory. Shut the hell up and let the President win the war.

Read this for more on Hanoi Jane and her avowed appetite for her own foot.

*apologies to Jefferson Starship

...And the Democratic (Non-) Response

After stewing on James Webb's response to the SOTU overnight, I felt compelled to write about what was said, and as important, what wasn't. I'm going to focus on Iraq because that is the primary subject in front of the country.

Many people who identify as Democrats think that Webb really put the wood to Bush last night. Yes, he was very eager to blame, but was anything really accomplished. I don't see it. Come on! What did Webb really say?

Whether or not you believe invading Iraq was necessary back in 2003 (I do), the fact remains that we did. All of the finger-pointing, blame-gaming, insulting, etc., is irrelevant. Yeah, I know it's red meat for the Democratic base, but it's basically just so much BS. The question is, what do we do now?

Some are urging that we leave Iraq as quickly as possible. They say that achieving our objectives is impossible, that those objectives aren't worth another American's life, or both. Some, e.g. Michael Moore, say that, because we shouldn't have invaded in the first place we deserve to fail and we should give up, retreat, and accept the consequences as our just desserts. What I haven't heard these types fully explain is their understanding and acceptance of what will happen should we heed their urge and abandon Iraq immediately.

Others realize that, as Hillary said (unfortunately not about Iraq), we must be "in it to win it." Whether or not we were right to invade Iraq, whether or not we've made mistakes, we have to deal with reality as it is, not as we wish it would be. And, the reality is that abandoning Iraq would be disastrous for the US and for the rest of the civilized world.

Abandoning Iraq would leave it to be controlled by Iran or by Al Qaeda after a fierce and bloody war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Abandoning Iraq would mean we'd leave the sanctuary of a nation-state with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil to be used as a resource by those who have repeatedly sworn to destroy us by any available means. Abandoning Iraq would give our sworn enemies a new, and much better base than Afghanistan ever was. Abandoning Iraq means the War on Terror (the war against Islamic extremists of both Sunni and Shia persuasion) would come to our shores, as it did on 9/11.

Webb held up the Korean War and the way it was ended as a desirable solution. The Korean peninsula is a mess today because we didn't finish what they started back in 1950. More than 50,000 Americans died and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent in Korea over the past half-century. Now, North Korea is frantically working to develop nuclear weapons to go on top of their ballistic missiles, even though they can't feed their population. So, offering the way we handled Korea as being a good way to settle Iraq is woefully ignorant at best, and dishonestly disingeneous at worst.

When I hear Webb mention that the Dems will "show [us] the way" I think about how they showed us the way out of Vietnam... and that way led over killing fields strewn with millions upon millions of bodies. Or, how they showed us the way out of Somalia... and that way led to an emboldened Al Qaeda and increasingly effective terrorist attacks against us culminating on 9/11. We've seen the Democratic way, and it doesn't lead to peace and stability. It leads to war and instability because the Democratic way tells our enemies that we can be attacked with impunity.

Here's the problem in a nutshell: the "cut-and-runners" believe that there's no way we can win in Iraq, there's no way we could win, and that we've already lost so we might as well cut our losses and get out now. This begs the question of why is it that the US can never win a war anymore while the our dilapidated and rag-tag enemies are inevitably victorious? Why is it that the most powerful nation in the history of the world can't win a war, while the weakest and most disorganized states can never lose? Why is it that Ethiopia can completely rout the Islamists in Somalia in a couple of weeks but we can't rout them in Iraq in three years? The answer is obvious... different rules of engagements. We can't win, these people believe, because they can't bring themselves to do what it takes to win.

I used to think James Webb was a smart man. Now, I wonder if he really did learn anything from Vietnam, or is he just embittered and angry and looking for someone or something to, as we rednecks say, whup up on. That's not what the country needs now. Why don't people realize this?