So, the Jericho video is coming along nicely, and I’m sure you’re all glad to hear that.

Other than that? I have nothing to tell you. I feel like this has been a few weeks of either learning really stupid things, or not learning anything at all. Here’s what Ryan has learned:

• Don’t buy Halloween candy three weeks before Halloween.


• Racing cyclocross on a road bike is fun, and even funny, but a cyclocross bike and proper tires are going to be faster, and less painful.


• Gord is faster than me.


• On the right day, Kenny is faster than me.


• Let’s not even talk about Jeff, Brian, and Johnny, who are consistently faster than me.


• Small dogs love rice cakes, and will steal them out of the cupboard and eat an entire package almost as big as the dog itself. Twice.


• If you’re the guy holding the video camera, everything you say gets recorded on the sound track.


• Other things small dogs like: cookies, rolls of masking tape, cat food, and shedding. I can’t say for sure the small dog likes shedding, but it sure does it a lot.


• Ikea’s Antonius racks with wire baskets are good shoe storage units. We know this because we suffered for several years with terrible shoe racks. Hey, shoe racks matter.


• Sleep is good.

It is done. Share & Enjoy. You are cautioned that this is a 30 MB movie, and it is well over 7 minutes long.I am inordinately proude of this, especially since all the source material was shot with my same old Coolpix 2500 that Eric sold me about a year ago. That means no shots longer than 15 seconds, which imposes a very useful discipline on the auteur. Deflecting the first likely question, the music is two Björk songs from Selmasongs: "Cvalda" and most of "In the Musicals." Selmasongs is the soundtrack album for the movie Dancer in the Dark, a film which I regard as the best movie which depends on an Idiot Plot.Thanks the people (Pinner, Duncan, Gord) who mentioned they liked the first video, and to Krebs for such a good event. Results are up.PS: let me know if there's any interest in a shorter version of this video (say, 4 MB with just a bit of dismounting and no Björk) or if anyone wants either the raw footage or the uncompressed version of this film.Update: Andrew "Pinner" Pinfold, winner of the event, has a nice diary entry that describes the battle between him and Rick Federau for the lead.    

Update: I have adjusted the link to the video. It now points at a more permanent home at Escape Velocity. Thanks, Gord!

Looking good at the weekend 'cross race. Well, the truth is my photographers make me look good.

16th. out of 30. Exactly halfway down the field again. At least I'm consistent. Gord, sigh, was faster than me.

The video of the A men is coming. Patience!

My enemy Gord has posted an excellent precis on the degenerate art of cyclocross.

I will also be at the Saturday race, and would further note that the organizers are doing a "learn to cyclocross" clinic starting at 8 am. Cross-curious types are encouraged to attend, and reminded that mountain bikes are permitted in all races except the A category men.

But I'm really posting this as a pointer to a very short video (4 megs of Quicktime) I shot at last weekend's race: it shows you how several riders in the A race handled the delicate art of the dismount.

Of interest is the fact that many of these riders do not use the classic cyclocross dismount (though the eventual winner, Andrew "Pinner" Pinfold, does. Please, no letters about my atrocious typo in the movie titling. Argh).

It's really easy: leave your left foot locked in. Unlock your right foot and swing the right leg back: this is a natural dismount move, something most riders already do. The trick is to then bring your right leg between the left leg and the frame. This is surprisingly easy. Practice it five times and you'll get it. The reason you do this is so you can put your right foot down first and ahead of your left leg, which is unclipped from the pedal only at the last minute. Do it properly, and you can hit the ground running at full stride.

Putting your right foot down behind the left pedal is the lazy way out, but forces you to slow down more. You can't hit the ground in full stride.

Enjoy!

No, really, they do. In the course of a month, they have annoyed Harlan Ellison, then they made Jack Johnson so mad he tried to have them arrested.

Not that that's a bad thing! You know what the thing about aversaries is? You need to have worthy ones. Penny Arcade versus the EB clerk? Silly. Penny Arcade versus one of the most acclaimed sf writers ever? Better. Driving a misguided, video-game-hating, attention-seeking lawyer absolutely crazy? Using huge checks? Very nice.

A worthy adversary is also what makes my erm, ongoing relationship with Gord so much fun. He's worthy! He's got those lungs, and stuff! So chasing him down is worth the trouble. The idea is not original to me: I first read it in Guy Kawasaki's How to Drive your Competition Crazy, an amusing book with some interesting ideas about marketing. From an interview with Guy:

[The enemy] you pick is like a mirror: It defines your image. If you pick a wimpy competitor, you'll never know how great you can be--and God help you if you fail, because everyone expected you to win.

I encourage my readership (all 20 of you) to go out and get yourself a worthy opponent. You won't regret it. This space will now solicit submissions on the subject "my best enemy." The usual prize will be offered for submissions which our panel of judges deems praiseworthy.

Yeah yeah, he beat me at Bayside II: the revenge match (I'm pretending the Coastal race didn't happen). And he made a taunting photo.

Next stop: Vanier Park. Less words, more ride. It is on, Ross!

It's been rather too long without a post, eh? Savvy readers may believe this is because I don't want to talk about my last bike race. (B race, scroll just about to the bottom).

But here's the short update: it's wet, the household is okay, excepting a dog with a newfound commitment to incontinence, and after I thought I was done with jelly for the year, it turns out I'm going to make some grape jelly, thanks to a harvest from my parents' grape arbor.

I don't have any great insights for this post, so I'll leave you with Beedogs. Warning: humiliated dogs.

My birthday has just passed in the last few days, leaving me in my early thirties, same as last year. My blog-o-matic also tells me this is my 399th post, and that's worth reflecting on, too.

I still don't know why I do this. I recently installed a page counter here at Wired Cola, and it tells me there are about 10-20 of you visiting on an average day. Welcome! That level of interest has convinced me of two things: this site is worthless, but amusing enough to my friends and family to continue. Enjoy!

What have I learned in my 30-ish years? Nothing really special. I'm a pretty happy guy, and the key to my happiness has probably been irrepressible optimism and enthusiasm, something which may or may not be genetic. Some people think I'm a pretty decent human being, and that has been a result of using my religion as a basic guide, and probably specifically the essential decency and politeness towards others which my mother and father taught me. I think politeness is an underrated social lubricant, especially in mixed company. In unmixed company, I tend towards Hitler jokes, which certainly suggests I should hang around in mixed company more.

Failings? I'm hard to live with. I'm lazy. I have such a problem with telling people what they want to hear and white lies that I made it my personal motto as a reminder: "honest in small things, honest in great things." It sounds better in the latin Luigi provided for me: verum de parvus, verum de magnus.

That's it for personal assessment. I've written nearly 400 posts to this blog, minus a few provided by my coauthors. Reading those is probably as good an insight as you're going to get, if you care.

Thank you for your indulgence. In the future, I hope Wired Cola will be less introspective and more devoted to finding interesting things to talk about.

But Sunday was special.

I went out and did a cyclocross race in White Rock. Gord and several other club-mates turned out, as did I.

If you recall last weekend's bragging race recap, I was riding a mountain bike. This time I brought that bike, but rode my road bike: Kenny hooked me up with some tricky inverted-tread 28mm (extremely narrow for a cross bike) tires, and thus I went from having the ruffest tuffest bike in the last race to having the most road-oriented bike in this race.

But horses for courses: last week's race had steep climbs and some rough terrain. This week's race was hardpacked dirt and gravel trails, very gentle elevation changes, and only one technical bit, a rocky descent where success was a matter of picking the quick line around the rocks. In other words, a super-fast course.

If last week's crushing victory was fun, this week's mid-pack finish in the B race was even more fun. The course was thrilling, and I was racing with a bunch of riders the whole way. I even managed to stay with the lead group for most of a lap before I washed out in a corner, which taught me the limits of my tires (sort of: I had a few other minor off-course excursions, but nothing that put me on the ground).

In the last two laps or so, I caught about four riders, who can neatly be divided into guys who had more technical skills (or maybe better tires) than me, but who were generally slower, either because of bike choice (singlespeed MTB, full-suspension MTB) or due to conditioning. The exception was Gord, who is decisively stronger than me, but who couldn't hang on in the technical sections. In fact, I actually passed him in one of the barrier sections, which was a shocker since this is my second 'cross race ever, and it's Gord's second season. Chalk that up to the fact I've never blown a re-mount of my bike (which tends to hurt a lot) and thus have no fear.

Oh, and this may not mean much to most of you, but I finished ahead of Ron.

The best part was definitely the cake. Cyclocross is a much more casual sport than most other forms of competitive cycling, so it has pre- and post-race activities like eating cake, and cheering for the riders in the other races. I indulged with enthusiasm. Eating a chocolate brownie as your pre-race meal, and going home with a satisfying result. That's a nice Sunday morning.