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Lately, I have been absolutely addicted to this song. This happened when I discovered this video. (Look, I will embed this time!)

Now, every time I am riding with the team and we start getting antsy and begin to take sharp attacks at each other - which is to say, most of the time - I hear this song. The Allegheny Springs loop ride today was full of great stretches of road where attacks could be sustained, burningburningburning your legs up. Really beautiful terrain and environment, Allegheny Springs is.

As a side note, in the video, notice how the leader of a high-speed pack pedals all the time while those behind do little to no pedaling. At speeds above 25mph, the first rider cuts the wind so much that it can’t wake immediately, so those immediately behind experience remarkably low wind resistance. Thus, the first rider works a lot more than everyone else (called “pulling”) and the group usually rotates the leader position so as to maintain a high speed. This is specifically the case when chasing because a group is often faster than a single person over a long stretch. Two weeks ago, our Sunday team ride went down a stretch of US460 and we maintained no less than 30mph the entire length of about 5 miles, simply because we rotated leader to fight the wind. It’s a really neat tactic.

Yesterday, I was told I share a nose with Jason Schwartzman. I can’t complain.

Everyone in the world, save the American government, agrees that the Système International d’Unités, also known as the Metric system, is the best and most convenient way of transferring architectural, engineering, programming, zookeeping, whatever data from one person to the next. At least for humans, given that our mathematical foundation looks nice in multipliers of 10.

So, when I come across nasty English units in any given homework problem… I cringe. And, worse yet, when I discover ridiculous units of measure in my daily living, I roll my eyes practically to the point of blindness.

For instance, I love the new resistance cycles in the War Memorial Gym - which I had to make use of tonight given the earlier rain. Great machines, overall. But. They use the worst, absolute worst, measure for power. Naturally, the most common form is the Watt, but I even would accept something grossly English like Btu/hr or ft*lbf/hr or even, dare I say it, horsepower. No, these machines use MET which is practically a dimensionless way of making everyone feel the warm fuzzies.

Without knowing the internal settings for the resistance cyclocomputer’s MET conversion, there’s no way to accurately pull that number into Watts, which would have relevance to me. Instead, I’m stuck with trying to subjectively tell myself, “well, this feels as tough as last time. i think”. Even the wiki articles has this to say regarding the inconsistency of the MET from person to person: “A workout of 2-4 METs is considered light, while intensive running … or climbing can yield workouts of 12 or more METs”. Twelve or more? “Considered”? They might as well install aromatic candles in the bikes at the gym. This is nuts.

Good grief.

At least for the next academic year, considering the amount of cycling and related training that I am doing, it is becoming pointless for me to cook my own meals. I quickly came to the point where I don’t have the time to make such extravagant meals that could satiate my appetite. I truly am eating on the order of 4-5k calories per day. If I spent the time to make that much food, my days would consist of little more than sleeping, school, cycling, and cooking. Hmm, that actually sounds exactly like my typical day. Odd.

My breakfasts are still the most sacred moments of my day. Even before morning rides, I toast a whole wheat bagel and slice a banana on it and top that with cinnamon sugar. Lunches are toasted, sliced bread with some sort of fresh tomato and cheese mix - often just mini-pizzas or mozzarella-tomato sandwiches. Dinners are where I shine; my day of biking around town and then my training have made me hungry enough to devour local landmarks. Fortunately for my digestive juices that probably can’t handle concrete or marble, I look to the kitchen. And I eat.

With the exception of the dumptruck loads of M&Ms and the random other desserts, my diet is very vegetarian and healthy. It’s just that I eat a lot of healthy stuff. This may sound like a weird point to make but when I go to bed my stomach is usually larger than average - an above average stomach, absolutely full of bread and vegetables. When I awake, my thin waste has returned. I suppose the broken-down proteins and whatever are going to my legs or, perhaps, my tyrannosaurus arms. Overall, I haven’t gained a pound since I began this level of training, though, I seriously have doubled the amount of food I eat.

The trick for the future months is so figure out how to eat less but still retain the same training methods. My body needs to find how to be the most efficient with the food I give it. I suppose it can do that on its own, or I can treat it to a round of electro-shock therapy like a lab rat to correct any erroneous digestive habits.

Eating this much food is really weird. I recognize this.

On another health note, I swapped out my Madone’s 100mm stem with an 80mm stem. It stretches my back far less and I am a much happier rider now. Plus, some Nashbar-ordered items arrived for the cold weather; but, to my dismay, the cold weather disappeared and we now have a second summer here in Blacksburg. Curses.

For a few years, I have been reading textbooks unrelated to my courses of study. Mainly philosophy textbooks, or psychology, a few history ones thrown in, too. And, to date, I still have a very difficult time grasping the usefulness of that which we term ‘theory‘, or, in the terms of wikipedia, “theory as model”.

I am currently taking one completely random course that goes over the education and scientific cultures of just about every vibrant society that has existed, and using “vibrant” in the western world’s view of technological progress and adaptation. While America has historically had a view of merit as something to be earned, France, historically, sees merit as something you are born with and is later discovered through formal education. I wonder if they ever have people climb the ladder in business culture, but this generality assumes that blue collar breeds blue collar and white collar breeds white collar and the elite breed only their own kind.

Jumping back to theory, what I was taught, those generalities, are theories about how French children are given access to their world. It assumes that every child’s mind is cultivated according to its birthright potential. But what about the exceptions? Theory as model suggests that exceptions are ok and natural. Then, what does the presence of exceptions say about the theory? Do we need a better theory? An all-encompassing, single theory to rule them all?

I suppose that string theory in physics is attempting to do just that. My biggest issue with such grand theorizing is a basic query that, surely, most people must pose: what’s the point? A theory generalizes a bigger picture, down-samples reality into a handful of consumable packets that university educators can feed to kids unwilling to search for a grander image. I am not brushing off the importance of education, but theories themselves seem flawed. I have a feeling that cultural and societal and historical theories only play the modern role of stimulating stereotypes, rather than providing legitimate foundation for greater research.

Theories need some work. At some point in humankind history, we lost interest in specialties and instead began looking for the general, as if we were trying to zoom out of the frame. I believe that cultural theories could improve rapidly if they reversed focus, swapped out the wide-angle and attached a macro lens, and got right up against the individual. Physics once tried to back further and further out, to try and encompass all of the universe - one, fantastic Newtonian theory. Then, atomic patterns and forces were discovered, fully throwing off-balance the prevailing idea that mass was the ultimate mover and shaker. The change of perspective shook the univerisity physics departments all over the world.

Cultural theory could use some earthquake of its own.

Somewhere back there in generation four, I lost interest in iPods. The click wheel never appealed to me - though, I always agreed it was a great feat of interface design. Now, iPods are either debilitated iPhones or portable servers for music, the latter I’m sure Adam appreciates.

My ideal iPod has a measurable mass, has an LED-backlit display with contrast controls, contains a small harddrive (flash or HDD, doesn’t matter), and has distinct buttons for play controls. You know you’re out of the technological loop when you desire to step back in time, not simply to reminisce but, in order to feel comfortable and in control. For working out, I want an iPod that is a lightweight tank; strangely enough, there has yet to be any iPod design that I have appreciated as much as the first generation iPod shuffle, which meets and exceeds the toughest, sweat-drenching demands of my gym workouts.

Frankly, I don’t listen to music that frequently outside of my place here in the house. Even the Apple TV rarely plays anything other than episodes of The Office. iPods have long been just another expense that I don’t feel like keeping pace with. They’re neat, yes. But not necessary.

My half-pound 2G iPod, my infrequently touched 3G, and my shuffle are a family that I am proud to have residing under my roof. A new, video-playing nano would only turn my comfortable community into a Green Acres catastrophe. I was simply thinking about iPods tonight.

Two for the price of one.

Lately, I have been in need of some great gym-located-sprinting-workout music or pre-cycling tunes that have strong, hard-hitting dance beats. I used to have such a weakness for great dance music, but my love for the genre waned leaving me a general appreciation for most rhythmic or electronic music. Right now, a quick search of “Electronic” by genre in my iTunes library brings up 30% of my songs. Anyways, buying dance music is tough - the quality of albums and types of dance/techno/house/club tunes varies significantly - but the sampling capabilities of the iTunes Store allows me to find a lot of great stuff. Then, it hit me. Dance Department, a once favorite podcast. Now, I am overflowing with training tunes and satisfying my repressed urges to rhythmically nod my head.

Deep inside, the “primal urge” to groove to a consistent beat but years of training ourselves to ignore such instincts spawned other music style, each beautiful in their own right - baroque, jazz, The Beatles. I’m surrendering to my ancestors’ great beginnings, at least temporarily.

Second. My roommate occasionally calls me “a battlefield type of guy”. Over 4 years ago, I purchased Battlefield 1942 once it was cheap. It was kind of a neat game, at least worth the $20 I had to give to BestBuy in order to take the box home. After I first beat the game, I pretty much stopped playing video games entirely and only messed around with it once or twice per year for the next so many years. Then, Battlefield 2 became cheap, $10 cheap, and I picked it up from Amazon. Then, my Intel iMac magically began booting into Windows and I messed around with BF2 to see what it was like. After a month of on/off playing, I had effectively mastered the single player potential of the game. Boooorring.

One day, I randomly hit the Multiplayer button, assuming it would jump me out of the game and to a website where I could pay X dollars per month for online multiplayer gaming. Instead, clicking Multiplayer brought up a real-time updated menu of free servers where I can hop onto a game with other BF2 players. Thousands of them. I found a popular server and joined the game.

I must say, playing a complex, team-oriented video game with a team of real people makes it a lot of fun. Using actual military tactics with people who are anticipating your moves is a wild transition from anything artificial intelligence can manufacture. I never thought I would be this interested in a video game, but Battlefield 2 is crazy fun.

So, I actually play a video game now, which is something I would have scoffed at a year ago. Honestly, it’s neat. It can swamp your time if you aren’t careful, but I quickly learned how to minimize my weekly exposure to the game.

And, anyways, cycling or working on my bikes takes up most of my time now, which is far more enjoyable than a game. Speaking of cycling, I recognized one of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team backup bikes from Flickr shots of the Tour of Missouri. It’s the second one from the driver side of the SAG car [support & gear]. Another photo reveals that it is actually my bike, but likely outfitted with Dura-Ace shifters and derailleurs; I even have that same saddle now (eBay purchase). Kind of neat, I thought.

Worlds sprint tonight. Hot dog.