The Coach

(Note – Ting and Zoe got out here safe and sound on Oct. 12th. It's a joy to have them back with me and to be together as a family. The story below is from the proceeding weekend… Just a disclaimer so you don't think I'm ignoring my wife and child by going out on the town on my own ;-)

Reno is a funny mix of artists, California ex-pats, and old west culture. To satisfy this weird conglomeration of people there are probably a dozen independent coffee shops and cafes scattered around town. Deux Gros Nez (pronounced "Due Grow Nay" in bad American French) is probably the oldest and most eclectic of these businesses. The fact that the owner is a huge cycling nut and coordinates one of the largest road races in the western states – Tour De Nez – means that I had to go and check out the joint.

It was a Saturday night when I grabbed my copy of Desert Solitaire and headed to Deux Gro Nez. I'm not much for posing in smoky cafes trying to look pseudo-intellectual but I was interested in this restaurant (and besides I didn't have much else to do). The place had only six or seven tables thus I decided to make myself at home at the coffee bar. The dimly lit walls of the cafe are lined with very cool cycling memorabilia from the last twenty years. Hanging from the ceiling are leader jerseys from historic stage races from all over America. Names like the Red Zinger, Tour DuPont, and Coors Classic harken back to the time before Lance Armstrong when America saw the emergence of a young phenom from Reno named Greg LeMond. But enough with the cycling stuff; I ordered a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie.

It's tough to go to a restaurant and seriously read a book. I opened up my Edward Abbey and pretended to read but really I was listening to the music, checking out the clientele, drooling over the cycling decor, and listening to the interplay of the staff as they whipped together sandwiches and cappuccinos. Eventually I struck up a conversation with another guy at the bar. He was an older man, probably in his mid sixties wearing a green polo shirt with a United States Marine Corps logo stitched over the pocket. He had a flat top Marine haircut and everyone who came in and out of Duex Gro Nez seemed to know the man as "Coach". He seemed a little out of place in the funky cafe.

As we talked I learned that he was the retired coach of the Reno High School track and swimming programs. His eyes lit up when I asked him about his students going on to UNR's nationally ranked swim team. This launched into a long discourse about the inequities of different college sports. From there we moved on to debating the public vs. private school issue and the Coach's concern that parents just didn't put the time into their kids that they once did. We probably spent two hours talking about various subjects. I learned that the Coach had grown up in Reno. He told me about the Hells Angels motorcycle gang invading from San Francisco in the late 1940’s. We discussed water rights, illegal gambling, prostitution, and the other calamities that Reno had weathered through the years.

By the time we had finished it was 10pm. The Coach had downed a couple glasses of port wine and my own head was buzzing from a mix of coffee and Yerba Mate. He got up to pay his bill and asked me about my book. I tried to explain that Edward Abbey was a nature lover who wrote about the desert back in the 1960’s. It would have been tough to describe a man who writing ignited the environmental movement to an ex-Marine like the Coach. As I paid my bill I asked the Coach about his book. He smiled sheepishly and said the Nora Roberts was not one of his regular reads. We both headed out into the night, thankful for the conversation; the Coach, glad to have someone to talk to, and myself, feeling slightly more at home in my new town...

Eagle Canyon

I'm starting to appreciate hills.

Last Saturday I went out on a local club ride north of Reno. I showed up and waited around for two other members to appear. After one guy dropped off it was up to me and Tom. Tom looked to be in his mid-fifties and was sporting a jersey from a local high mountain century. He had the grizzled look of a man that's spent a lot of time in the saddle.

We headed north through the sprawling suburbs of Sparks and Spanish Springs snaking in and out of new housing projects. The morning sun started to beam down on us and I could feel the heat coming off the blacktop. The roads were clear. It was going to be a good day to ride.

We slowly worked northwest and began the ascent of Eagle Canyon Road. Eagle Canyon is an undulating road that climbs up over some mountains then descends into Hungry Valley. The climb is approximately 3 miles of varying 4-6% grade with several false flat sections. As I climb I leave the tile roofed houses of the Spanish Springs for sagebrush, sand, and jeep trails. There is no shade on this road. Riding mid-summer would be punishing. Our goal was to climb over the top and then follow the rolling downhill road to the Reno Sparks Indian Colony.

The funny thing about this climb is that the very first 1/4 mile is probably the steepest approaching 6%. I gear down and start to pedal with Tom approximately 50 yards behind me. My face is not looking at the scenery but instead I'm locked on the pavement concentrating on the rhythm of the climb. Since leaving Chicago I've started to learn a thing or two about gearing. I'm in a 39/27 gear and I'm spinning comfortably at 80 rpm. This means that I'm climbing Eagle Canyon Road at about 9.5 miles/hour. The climb is "sit and spin". Any steeper and I have to stand on the pedals and crank. Tom has now dropped about 100 yards behind.

Now, about a third of the way up the climb, I'm having a moral dilemma. If I slow for Tom I'll have to drop my cadence below 80 rpm. This lets my lungs relax but my legs will be forced to muscle their way along in slow motion. If I decide to speed up then my cadence increases above 90 rpm, I go anaerobic and my body starts to burn like a candle. Cycling is sometimes a numbers game that would make a baseball fanatic happy.

Today I feel like the Gringo. I've ridden the climb before and I know my limits. My cadence is good and I don't want to burn up my legs by slowing. I'm about half way up the climb and feeling strong. There are no cars on this road. No one has any reason to go to the Indian land on the other side of the hill. There are no strip malls or restaurants only a half-dozen rows of government built houses. I can ride down the middle of the road and I do. Tom is now back several switchbacks and is slowing.

At the top I slow and hop off my bike. On one side is the urban sprawl of the north side of Reno. Multicolored roofs denote each new development. On my other side is the barren Hungry Valley. The Indian colony where 500 people live seems tiny compared to the mountain range to the west. A truck in the distance is the only sign of activity in Hungry Valley. A plume of dust, probably cryptobiotic soil years before, streams behind the speeding vehicle. Massive Peavine Peak stares down at me from twenty miles west. Although I am happy with my climb, the valleys and mountains make me feel insignificant.

Tom comes up huffing and puffing. He explains that he is not feeling well today and, after a brief exchange he turns and begins to descend the Eagle Canyon road. I am alone under the big sky in the middle of the road. I can follow Tom down or ride over to the reservation land. I choose to continue on. I hop on my bike and begin to fly down the side of the mountain, alone, smiling, and going much to fast down the middle of the road.

Gmail!

FYI... In case you haven't heard, Google is going into the e-mail biz. GMail is Google latest product targeted at Microsoft Hotmail, Yahoo, and other free e-mail services.

I've been on Gmail for about a month, and while I haven't had a total flood of e-mail, I've been pretty happy with the features (despite some of the controversy). One of the main advantages of Gmail is that they give you 1 Gig of storage right off the bat. That means that you don't have to worry that much about deleting out old e-mails. Google's search function also lets you go back through old e-mails to find that long lost message that you thought was gone.

Finally, one of the cool things about Gmail is that, since the service is new, there are still a few cool names left (unlike Hotmail or other services that have been out there for a while). I couldn't get Steve@ or Hammond@ but I did get one I like. I have approximately 8 Gmail invites if anyone is interested in trying out the service then drop me a message below with your e-mail and I send you an invite!

Debating the Global Brain

A couple of things this week that have been making me itch to write. First off I finally finished a book with a new scientific twist on evolution called Global Brain by Howard Bloom. The day after finishing the book I turned on the radio and caught the presidential debate. What's really interesting is how these two "Taboo" topics have been dovetailing together in my mind.

Global Brain is a whirlwind tour of history from the Big Bang to today's current society of man. Harold Bloom takes into account microbiology, Greek philosophy, psychology, chemistry, and a number of other socio-scientific principles in an easy to read book backed up with numerous footnotes and bibliographic references. The interesting twist of this book is that it looks at evolutionary theory from the standpoint of networking. Evolution is possible because of like creatures coming together. This happens on the microscopic level with bacterial colonies literally changing form due to chemical imbalances in their environment. A more tangible example is the current ability of the common flu to somehow morph into a more virulent strain every year despite millions of dollars worth of research to stop it. Global Brain also gets into the forces that shape a network and thus force an organism to evolve. The need to create, the need to conform, the need to rebel, all are factors that can be seen on the playground, in the petri dish, or even in a flock of birds. Harold Bloom argues that these same forces have been at work with all species for millions of years. The network is what causes cities to grow. Wars to start, and creation to take place. Without networking and interaction, evolution stops.

SOOO... What does a wacky book about evolution have to do with a presidential debate? Actually, in my mind, a whole bunch! Let me start off by saying that I hate to discuss politics. Like religion and abortion, politics is one of those topics that, once brought up in conversation, forces this listener to immediately start forming stereotypes. Because of my beliefs, for the last ten years in every election I have registered as independent. I'd rather form an opinion about the politician based on what he/she has to say; NOT what party they belong to. Voting straight ticket in my eyes is a slap in the face to our political system...

Back to the debate. I started listening the night after finishing Bloom's book. The entire premise of this debate was the war in Iraq. I knew that Bush had to be on the defensive for most of the debate because of the obvious - wars are never popular. What did raise my concern was our current administration's stance on working with other countries. America seems to have really given ourselves a black eye in the world perspective by going into Iraq. Admittedly Saddam Hussien is a bad man and needed to be stopped. The issue is that by stopping Saddam we have raised the ire of most of the Arab world and certainly downgraded our perception of America by a bunch of other countries which once called us allies. In the long run this will hurt us.

Call me a globalist but I believe that we have to learn to work with our fellow countries out there and not bomb them, exclude them, ignore global treaties, and basically act like the playground bully. In Global Brain, Harold Bloom points out the dangers of exclusionism; being out of the "network". His book, written in 2000 talks about the threat to America by Osama Bin Laden a year before 9/11. We, as Americans, receive very little news of the world around us beyond the headlines on the nightly news. Perhaps the size of our country is partly to do with it but we don't speak other languages, we don't learn about other cultures, and we don't respect those who are different. One of the effects of going outside of the network is the polarization of viewpoints by our own nationality. This can be seen today by the seemingly opposite views of our two political parties. People quickly stamp themselves as conservatives or liberals and then hold onto preconceived notions of those who hold a different label. As these labels are hammered into us it makes it increasingly more difficult to remain objective. Just like our nation needs to become more diplomatic we as Americans need to show more understanding of our our fellow man - our neighbor. If we remain as we are then our evolution will slow.

As a footnote, I'd invite any readers of this blog to check out Global Brain. The concepts are interesting and the knowledge is bound to change your view of the network of your own life....