Names Changed to Protect the Innocent

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend about how to arrange rides with riders of dissimilar abilities. Since my lovely and talented bride has taken up cycling with a nearly evangelistic fervor and kicks my ass all over the place, this is a topic with which I've had some recent experience. We've found peace in doing longer hill rides, where she goes on ahead at her pace and then doubles back to fetch me when she gets too far ahead. Merging that with a drill we used to run in sailing practice where the leading boat has to do a 360 when the coach blows a whistle, I came up with the following:
1. Everyone starts together on a long climb. Any of several Lost River climbs works, Blue Mountain works, Dickey Ridge, you get the idea. All riders proceed at their own pace.
2. At a pre-determined interval, say 12 minutes, all riders except the last placed rider turn around and go back down to the last rider's position, from which all once again proceed at self selected pace up the hill.
3. Repeat until the first placed rider reaches the top of the climb, whereupon the rider reaching the top first turns around and heads down to the last placed rider to start back up again. Each rider reaching the top does the same, until all riders have reached the top.
4. Go back to the bottom and repeat as necessary.
I think we're going to head over to Italy and try this out on the Zoncolan in the spring. Should be fun.

Normally, good things happen to "10 Questions" subjects shortly after their interviews run. Matt Cooke double dipped, taking names at Green Mountain concurrent with the interview running and just now signing up with Team Mountain Khakis for 2010. The next 10 Questions subject jumped the gun, delivering a double dose of good stuff before he even returned all of his answers. Over achiever. Look for a good one soon.

A luddite no more. Okay, actually I'm still a pretty huge luddite, but I'll be less of one as I transition out of the dark ages of 9 speed transmission and into the bright shining "now" of 10 speed. Cue Shimano's announcement that they're going to 11 in 5, 4, 3, 2... Really, I don't expect anything at all to be different apart from a lot of convenience with wheel vans, spare parts and swapping stuff around with team mates.

As previously mentioned, I got out with two new team mates this weekend, and also did some road time with soon to be old team mates. I really like the old team mates, and I really like the new team mates. If one of my new team mates hadn't been a new team mate on Sunday's ride, I would have hated him. MF'er put the whole ride into the red zone like 30 times.

Twice in my life, I've been the recipient of "the bro shove" - sort of a reverse hand sling, where you are clunking through the gears (in this case the bodily gears, not the bike's gears) and going backward and an overtaking friendly presence gives you a hearty shove on the backside. How is it that such a small thing is such a huge hookup? After taking a rather longer pull than I should have on Sunday, aforementioned new team mate leg ripper gave me a quality bro shove that instantly turned all my gray skies blue and my strength points shot back up to full value. Probably I also need to stand up every now and again. My seat works harder than just about anyone in the game's - I never get off the stupid thing.

Hopefully I get to go mountain biking again this week, that shit is fun.

Oh, and have complete faith in the stock market. Absolutely. No asset bubble going on there. Nope. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain who wants to get his record bonus. No, what we are seeing here is pure value creation and productivity gains. I'm serious. Absolutely.