Unless you’ve been under a rock lately you may have heard Palin calling Obama a socialist. Well now let’s take a look at socialism defined before starting the slam-o-gram.
(From Wikipedia)Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of an egalitarian society.
Ok, let that settle in for a few moments…
Got it? Ok, great. Hendrick Hertzberg wrote a piece in New Yorker about the Republican attempt to paint Obama as a socialist.
(clip from BoingBoing.net)
The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.
Word.
After getting home late on Saturday night after the SoCalCross Prestige Series race I swapped pedals over to my singlespeed bike and got my pit bike ready to go. It was late so I hit the pillow around 11:30pm.
Getting up at 6:00am wasn’t fun at all. I was a little sore from the crash and had a few little scabs up and down my right side. No problem though, I loaded the bikes and hit the road. Getting to Torrance for the Urban race was relatively quick. Only 80 miles. I got lucky and scored a space inside the park parking lot and made it over to the sign up area and got my number. There were only 5 of us signed up for the SingleSpeed A race. Disappointing but still, I don’t care if there are 5 or 55, I just want to race. The course at Entradero Park is evil. Pure and simple. Immediately after the start is a run up like no other I have experienced in my nearly 4 years of racing cx. Steep and sandy, almost like a sand dune! Then the ride down the other side is loose and sandy and really exciting. The rest of the course is pretty fast and normal as far as cx courses are built. I opted for a big gear on my bike figuring I could get in some good top speed on the flats and run up the climbs. Turns out I should have gone with my first gear choice. After 3 laps of hell I switched to my pit bike which has a much lower gear. This allowed me to ride up areas that were killing me on my race bike. After many laps of flogging I was caught and passed by the 1st and 2nd place racers. I was dragging with 2 to go but it was fun and I finished in 3rd. No flats and no mechanicals! That in itself is a victory!
Things were looking great for the 4th race of the series. This was going to be the first night race here in SoCal according to the race promoters. I had a soccer game to coach so I missed my age group race so I signed up for the Men’s 3/4 and got ready. The night before I had put a new derailleur and cogs onto my trusty Fuji Cross. The old stuff was destroyed in race #2 of the series.
Near the course was a huge parking lot that is used for the Verizon Amphitheater. I was riding over in the lot to get warmed up before the 6:30pm start time. At 6:20pm to be exact I got a flat rear tire. Yes, one more thing added to my already frustrating cx season. I rode the flat rear tire all the way back to my car, found my wife and got my key, changed the tube very quickly and made it to the start of the race with about 2 minutes to spare. Since I got the flat I ended up in the back of the field at the start. At the whistle I took off and passed about 15 guys in the first 100 yards. The start of the course was lit up very well by huge stadium style lights. Unfortunately one area immediately after a short run up was not lit up, in fact is was dark. I went flying into this area and instantly realized it was Gravel City on concrete or asphalt. Getting the flat prevent me from getting in a pre-race lap so I didn’t know about the hazard. As I hit the gravel my front tire washed out to the left, my right foot went down and skidded across the gravel. My left foot was off by then and I was 99% out of control for a second. Once I was out the gravel I got my feet back on and hit gravel patch #2 and hit the ground on my right side. I quickly got up and put my water bottle back in the cage (no feed zone race) and kept on racing. 3 guys passed me and I quickly reeled them in. As I made my way around the course I made several pages of mental notes. This course was tricky and technical, which I love, and it was even more of a challenge at night. As I wound my way back to the start line for lap #2 I reached down for my water bottle and didn’t grab anything. It was gone. Hmm, great, 45 minutes to go with no water. I hunkered down and just kept going. The rest of the race was great except for one off course excursion where I almost hit some spectators and took out some course tape. I caught several riders in front of me and got caught by 2. I am not sure where I finished, middle of pack most likely.
A highlight of the night was the costume race. There were a lot of costumed racers ready for a 3 short laps around the course. I had on my cave man suit and hairball wig. Dressed up racers were everywhere. I am guessing at least 40 people were in the race with costumes ranging from banana suits to speedos and everything in between. A few lords went for it with garters and g-strings. Good times!
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I just got interviewed by CNN for the fire video I submitted last night. Here is a map of other I-Reports. Zoom in and check out the icon in Chatsworth, that’s me!
I-Report Map
The moment before…well, you just know when that moment is.
You’re not going to believe it. At yesterday’s Back On Track Productions Urban CX #1 my rear tire started going soft on the 2nd lap. On the 3rd lap the tire was done so I had to switch to my backup bike. While the tire was going down I lost 2 spots, 4th to 6th, then was caught by another guy. My backup bike is geared lower than my SS CX bike so I was down on speed but better on the climb. I duked it out with this cat for the last 3 laps and finally shook him on the run up and finished in 7th of 9 in the Category A SingleSpeeders. Blah.
Well effin aye. My first race of the SoCalCross season did not go well. On the 2nd lap of the race just beyond the 1st turn of the course my cassette disintegrated. A completely rare event. I was feeling good and within sight of the leaders. I would have put myself somewhere in the top 15. I was just getting ready to sprint towards the barrier when I felt my rear derailleur go into the spokes….yeah, not good. I immediately shifted out of the gear I was in and tried to find a place for the chain to ride that didn’t make crunchy grindy noises…unfortunately there was nothing that would resolve the crunchy grindy noise. With much dismay I stopped and tried to straighten the derailleur…there goes two racers past me…I got back on and tried to go as fast as possible. At this point I was a long way from the pit area so I had to just tough it out and make due with what I had which was a non-engaging derailleur. Once I got to the pit area and switched to my mtb many racers had past me. Feeling pissed and frustrated I just put my head down and started cranking. I got past at least 6 guys and then was passed by my friend Tak on the last lap. Once again this stout racer caught me at the end of the race. Last season he did this to me several times. Once I recovered from the hill climb I shifted up a gear and passed him and didn’t look back. I held onto 26th out of 36. You do not know how frustrating it was to be feeling good and having a good race and then it all fell apart. After the race a fellow competitor said he may have rear-ended me on lap 2 and caused the destruction. I am doubting his tale since I got the real story once I was home and able to inspect the damage closely. When I got home I took the rear wheel off and easily removed the lock ring from the cassette. Not good. The lockring had ripped a couple threads off of itself when it was forcibly removed against it’s will from the freehub body. To make matters worse the pin that holds all 9 SRAM cogs together had backed out and resulted in the largest cog getting incredibly bent into its neighbor. Blah! When the wheel rotated the lockring hit the drop out and the entire unit looked like a weeble wobble. Grrr. I took it all apart and put it back together again. I had to straighten the mega-bent cog in a vise to get it straight enough to reassemble.
Final tally: derailleur is fubar, cassette cannot be trusted at this point but I will use it for a spare, derailleur hanger needs tuning, and the rear wheel needs a trip to the truing stand.
The take-away to all this: be even more prepared. This was my first mechanical in 14 years of racing. That’s an incredible run without part failure so that takes the bite off a little bit. But still!!!! AHHHHH!!!!
Singlespeed Sunday coming up!
Well effin aye. My first race of the SoCalCross season did not go well. On the 2nd lap of the race just beyond the 1st turn of the course my cassette disintegrated. A completely rare event. I was feeling good and within sight of the leaders. I would have put myself somewhere in the top 15. I was just getting ready to sprint towards the barrier when I felt my rear derailleur go into the spokes….yeah, not good. I immediately shifted out of the gear I was in and tried to find a place for the chain to ride that didn’t make crunchy grindy noises…unfortunately there was nothing that would resolve the crunchy grindy noise. With much dismay I stopped and tried to straighten the derailleur…there goes two racers past me…I got back on and tried to go as fast as possible. At this point I was a long way from the pit area so I had to just tough it out and make due with what I had which was a non-engaging derailleur. Once I got to the pit area and switched to my mtb many racers had past me. Feeling pissed and frustrated I just put my head down and started cranking. I got past at least 6 guys and then was passed by my friend Tak on the last lap. Once again this guy caught me at the end of the race. Last season he did this to me several times. Once I recovered from the hill climb I shifted up a gear and passed him back didn’t look back. I held onto 26th out of 36. You do not know how frustrating it was to be feeling good and having a good race and then it all fell apart. After the race a fellow competitor said he may have rear-ended me on lap 2 and caused the destruction. I am doubting his tale since I got the real story once I was home and able to inspect the damage closely. When I got home I took the rear wheel off and easily removed the lock ring from the cassette. Not good. The lockring had ripped a couple threads off of itself when it was forcibly removed against it’s will from the freehub body. To make matters worse the pin that holds all 9 SRAM cogs together had backed out and resulted in the largest cog getting incredibly bent into its neighbor. Blah! When the wheel rotated the lockring hit the drop out and the entire unit looked like a weeble wobble. Grrr. I took it all apart and put it back together again. I had to straighten the mega-bent cog in a vise to get it straight enough to reassemble.
Final tally: derailleur is fubar, cassette cannot be trusted at this point but I will use it for a spare, derailleur hanger needs tuning, and the rear wheel needs a trip to the truing stand.
The take-away to all this: be even more prepared. This was my first mechanical in 14 years of racing. That’s an incredible run without part failure so that takes the bite off a little bit. But still!!!! AHHHHH!!!!
Singlespeed Sunday coming up!
