Tardy.

Here is a link to some photos from Death Valley and Hawaii.

I apologize for my long absence. I did not intend to become the J.D. Salinger of the blogosphere. Oh, wait -- except everyone knows where I live. Well, in any event --

First, I want to thank everyone who contributed to the ride. Quite simply, I could not have done this without you. Everyone gave generously, and while I did not reach my goal of $6,000, I made $3,500, which is what I needed. Maybe next time . . .

Now, on to the ride itself. As you may have guessed, the most remarkable aspect of the day was the intense heat. On May 6, the day of the ride, the temperature in Death Valley reached a high of 104. And that number even understates the heat that you feel while on your bike -- because above the asphalt of the road, the temperature can be as much as 10 degrees higher. But it's a dry heat! I kept telling myself.

Anyway, because of the extreme conditions, the organizers decided to start riders off at 6 a.m. instead of 7, a decision that everyone supported. So here I am, about 15 miles after starting:





I had probably gone about 30 miles before the sun even peeked over the mountains. (Fortunately, the road to Badwater is nestled at the base of the Black Mountains, which form the eastern boundary of the valley, so that helps.) Occasionally I would be on my own -- there were only about 75 riders there, far fewer than the 300 who do the fall ride. But most of the time, I would say, I was riding with at least one other biker. We would each take turns "pulling" the other, so as to minimize the energy spent forcing our way through the wind, which for much of the day was a steady 20 mph. That meant for a stiff headwind from mile 30 to 50 or so -- fortunately, the wind stayed steady, and so we at least had a tailwind on the way back.

Anyway, I was the second rider to reach the top of Jubilee Pass, the 7-mile climb that marked the halfway point:



I had been hanging with another rider at the start, but he easily dropped me when he wanted to increase the tempo. The descent from Jubilee Pass was a joy. I barely pedaled, and hit a maximum speed of about 40 mph. You could distinctly feel the point when you descended back into the heat of the valley; it was like an oven. And for a while, I had a steady fierce tailwind. Soon, however, I started to really suffer from the heat. I had been drinking what I thought was a lot of water, naturally, but obviously I hadn't been able to train in Pittsburgh for the conditions in Death Valley. And so I got somewhat dehydrated.

I lost a lot of momentum in the last 5 or 10 miles; it felt like every revolution of the pedals was a minor miracle. Lucky for me the last mile or so was purely downhill. I'm not sure if I could have made it otherwise.

Anyway, the short version is that after I arrived back at the Furnace Creek ranch, I ended up getting a couple of bags of IV fluids. Mmm, tasty! That did the trick, though. I felt better immediately, and was able to put down a large dinner that evening. In all, the ride was an amazing experience, but in the future, maybe Death Valley in early May is not the best environment for a humble carbon-based life form like me.

I guess a minor victory is that at least my problems were not diabetes-related. Now that would have made for a sticky wicket. . .

I have returned.

After Death Valley, Jeanne and I went to Hawaii for a week. We returned Monday evening, but my personal time zone is still seriously disoriented. I believe I may now be operating on Albanian Standard Time. Or possible Easter Island Daylight Saving Time; I'm not really sure.

Anyway, more details of my travels to follow. Warning: IV fluids and lepers are involved.

Washington Post mixed-metaphor watch.

Mixed metaphor? Extended metaphor gone horribly, horribly wrong? You be the judge. The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus writes in an op-ed column:

If Kennedy is a dinosaur, we should all -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- lament the arrival of a new political ice age in which the ability to legislate is frozen and bipartisanship extinct.

Poetry. Translation: People usually say that Ted Kennedy is a dinosaur because he believes in outdated ideas about big-government liberalism. In fact, Marcus argues, Kennedy may be a dinosaur because he is willing to work in a pragmatic, bipartisan way with his colleagues across the aisle, and that is a rare quality today. I mean, that is a rare quality in this ice age of post-Cretaceous-Tertiary-extinction-event hyperpartisanship.

I express no opinion on the qualities of Marcus's political analysis. However, I balk at her implication that the dinosaurs went extinct because of an ice age. I believe that the current scientific consensus holds that 65 million years ago, an "impact event" (i.e., a giant, 6-mile-wide asteroid colliding with the earth) was responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs, not an ice age -- although the impact probably resulted in "nuclear winter" type conditions for a few years, which could not have been much fun. Nevertheless, this extinction event is not regarded as precipitating an ice age, the most recent of which began about 40 million years ago, with the last glacial period ending about 10,000 years ago. Or is Marcus suggesting that some dinosaurs survived into the next ice age, and that Kennedy is one of those dinosaurs? Is she hinting that dinosaurs originally invented the bicameral legislature? Who knows?!

Verdict: mixed (or at least seriously uninformed) metaphor!

(As with everything else important in life, I get my facts from Wikipedia: here for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event and here for ice ages.)

Thank you. I'll be here all week.

Person 1: Knock knock.

Person 2: Who's there?

Person 1: Control freak. Now you say, "Control freak who?"

Numbers.

Hemoglobin a1C = 5.6. (Normal is from 4 to 6.)

Miles bicycled yesterday: 70.18. Unfortunately, two flat tires in the space of a mile slowed me down somewhat, but at least I got some practice at changing flats -- not to mention a reminder to equip my bike with new tires before Death Valley.

Photographic evidence available on request.

On the bandwagon.

Yes, it's an internet phenomenon that is probably past its sell-by date. But I couldn't resist posting these Chuck Norris facts here:

• Outer space exists because it's afraid to be on the same planet with Chuck Norris.
  
  
• There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.
  
  
• Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
  
  
• Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.
  
  
• Chuck Norris frequently donates blood to the Red Cross. Just not his own.
  
  
• Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
  
  
• Chuck Norris does not go hunting because "hunting" implies a chance of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.

N.Y. Times mixed-metaphor watch.

The Times saw fit to print this article by Guy Trebay on how acts that once would have been shameful now function as career moves. At least, I think that's what the article is saying -- it's hard to tell sometimes. Here are some bits of truly purple prose. George Orwell, eat your heart out.

It would probably require a stopwatch to clock the lag time between sin and redemption lately, as media disgrace is transformed into a bargaining chip in a celebrity's career often before a bad boy or girl has stumbled home from the crime scene and showered off the taint of shame.

Eh, what? OK, OK. Take a deep breath, and let's take the metaphors one at a time.

1. A stopwatch clocking lag time. OK, we're engaging in some kind of science experiment -- or, or . . . maybe we're timing a race. Yeah, a race! Maybe a high school track meet? Must read on.
2. Sin/redemption/disgrace. The track meet is at a Jesuit high school. I get it.
3. Bargaining chip. Hmm. This first struck me as a metaphor, but then it occurred to me that I don't even know what a "bargaining chip" is. I mean, is there such a thing? Is it a physical object? Maybe it's like a chip that you bet with in poker. OK, I think we're at a track meet at a Jesuit high school in Las Vegas.
4. Stumbling home from crime scene/showering off taint. The athletes at the track meet have now hit the showers, that much is clear. But there was a crime committed by someone, perhaps during the race. I'm lost.

Let's move on to another excerpt, which may clarify matters:

If anything, the bubble-gum divinity apotheosized on the basis of a homemade pornography loop, a moronic catchphrase and a mental vacancy cavernous enough for storing yellowcake appears set to enjoy a media half-life about as long as that of a spent plutonium rod.

1. Whoa, harsh! Hey, I'd be careful throwing around the term "moronic" if I were responsible for this piece.
2. Ok, a "bubble-gum divinity" is being "apotheosized." Is this a memo from the department of redundancy department? To apotheosize something means to deify it. I don't think you can deify a deity. I mean, the deity is already deified, isn't it? Sort of by definition.
3. Whatever. If I were the divinity, I would be less worried about being re-deified than the fact that I am apparently residing in a cavern for storing yellowcake uranium, and at the same time enjoying a "half-life" equal to a "spent plutonium rod."
4. Conclusion: the Jesuit high school is holding its track meet not in Las Vegas itself, but nearby at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, where the U.S government stores highly radioactive nuclear waste in giant caverns underground. Interesting play for home-field advantage there by the track coach.
5. In the end, I'm not really sure how the divinity is involved. Did the coach bring along a crucifix for inspiration? Is there a patron saint of track meets? I'm stumped. Well, you can say this about the Times: It sure expects a lot from its readers.

Moving on:

And even before the model had checked out of the drying-out clinic, she was inundated in attention and work.

I like the contrast between "drying-out" and "inundated" here. I can't tell if it's an intentional attempt at sly humor or not. If I had to guess? Probably the latter. OK, here's the last excerpt because my brain is about to explode:

And so Ms. Moss's cool — the historical cool of bad boys and girls doing things that most of us, being properly middle class, might wish to do but will never get around to, explained Dr. Michael Brody, chairman of the media committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry — becomes something different and better in a marketing sense when one adds a dollop of scandal or edge.

1. I may as well admit up front that I don't understand what this sentence means at all.
2. I pity Dr. Brody, who probably was a respected name in psychiatry before this article was published.
3. All I can think is: Mmmm. . . A dollop of edge. That sounds tasty.

Still here.

And though my lack of posting might suggest a lack of bicycling, that's not true. Not true at all. No, indeed.

Last Saturday, I rode 65 miles. It took me about five hours.

Yesterday, the weather here in Cloud City was improbably gorgeous, and I rode for almost 30 miles after work. Today, I plan to do the same. And tomorrow, too, if the evening rain holds off.

That should be put me in good shape for a planned 70-mile ride this Sunday. Only two more weeks to go!

I hope they paid the sixty-eight women.

Here's some exciting news that the New York Times found fit to print:

Women can unconsciously detect the smell of fear, new research suggests, and the smell improves their performance on mental tasks.

Scientists collected sweat from seven volunteers — four men and three women — who watched horror movies while holding gauze pads in their armpits. Then, their sweat was collected while they watched videos with neutral emotional content.

Sixty-eight women next performed a word-association task while smelling the pads. The task involved watching two words flash on a screen one after the other, and then stating whether the two words were related. ("Arms" and "legs" are related; "arms" and "wind" are not.)

The subjects were divided into three groups: the first smelled the sweat pads of sweat collected during the frightening video; the second smelled pads collected during the neutral video; and the third, a control group, smelled pads with no sweat on them.

Without sacrificing speed, the women smelling the fear pads were more accurate than those in the other two groups when processing meaningful related words. There was no difference in speed or accuracy between the three groups when the words were not related.

Denise Chen, an assistant professor of psychology at Rice University and the study's lead author, says she believes that it was the smell of fear that improved performance. "The smell of fear may have made these people more cautious," she said, "and made them better at recognizing meaningful information."

None of the subjects could consciously assert that they could smell fear. "The effect on task performance," Dr. Chen said, "is likely subconscious."

The study appears in the April issue of Chemical Senses.

Heck, no one ever told me that watching horror movies while holding gauze pads in your armpits meant that you were doing science. Where I come from, that's called "any given Saturday night"!

Seriously, though -- this gives me a good idea, which I will generously share with you. For your next high-stress situation, where you may be called on to make snap decisions -- oral argument in front of a federal court of appeals, say (I'm just thinking out loud here) -- prepare your own "fear pads" ahead of time. Make sure to stash them in a closed, airtight container so as not to diminish their potency. Then, on the big day, attach your "fear pads" to your face, just below your nostrils. Be creative. Use colorful rubber bands, or modify the headgear some unfortunate adolescents have to wear with braces. Leave the house, walking tall. If anyone asks what you're doing, just say, "Wouldn't you like to know? Well, riddle me this: Arms! Wind! Related?" Then walk on.

Sure, some will laugh, but didn't they laugh at Newton? Didn't they laugh at Einstein? And so what if they also laughed at Bozo the Clown -- maybe if Bozo had been wearing his "fear pads" like I told him, he'd be having the last laugh.