Random Thoughts With Melmer

I miss the Tour de France. I miss the countless hours of cycling on tv. I miss guessing which Frenchy will go on a suicide break each day. I miss guessing which doper will get caught, and which doper will win and not get caught. I miss the Bacardi mojito commercial, I really miss the Bacardi mojito commercial. I don’t miss the repetitive SAAB commercial – like playing the damn thing every 5 minutes wasn’t enough, they have to repeat themselves 3 times within every commercial. Excruciating – born from jets indeed.

I flipped a guy off yesterday. I got a flat tire within 10 minutes. Five birds, five flats.

Also on my ride home yesterday the greenbelt ugliness achieved an all new level. Minding my own business, roll around a corner and there is a hippo in the middle of the greenbelt – oops, my bad – it’s a fat dude – in the middle of the trail – bent over messing with his shoe – a full 6 inches of hairy ass crack exposed. Aargh, that’s just wrong. I held my breath and squeezed around on the side. Oh the horror. Why me?

I wonder how beer tastes out of a water bottle. I think I need some.

After all the trauma yesterday, and a little stomach uneasiness over night I drove to work today. It was an interesting change. When I drove past Fred Meyer I noticed a single wide trailer in the parking lot with a sign on it that said ‘Pharmacy Open’. Nice. In Garden City too. Perfect.

Speaking of perfect, I also noticed the St. Lukes hospital downtown has the biggest smoking area in town. It’s disturbing how many doc’s and nurses there are out there. It’s like a lung cancer staging area.

Umm, OK?

So I saw this commercial the other day – well actually I saw this commercial several times the other day (thank you VS network for mind numbing repetitive marketing). The commercial is for something called the ‘Gold Kit’. You call a special number, someone sends you a big puffy envelope, you stuff all your gold into it, and then they send you money.

Umm, OK. Voluntary robbery by mail. I know, why don’t I send you my bank account information too so you can direct deposit my windfall. What? You need my credit card info to charge a small processing fee – OK. I have some silver too – do you take that? Diamonds? OK.

Unbelievable. You know even if it were legitimate, I’m thinking it might not be a good idea to stuff my heirlooms in a big ass envelope labeled GOLD KIT and then put it in the mailbox. Wonder if any of those get lost.

Got to give them some credit though – if I were going to advertise something that ludicrous on tv it would be on VS, the Ultimate Fighting/Bull Riding network. They got their target audience nailed.

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right and The Eight Turn Circle

I ride criterium races like I ride mountain bikes. Not very well.

Its not that crits scare me a whole lot - I think that my lack of aggressiveness and my ‘whatever’ attitude are incompatible with the criterium race format. I’m not into fighting with guys for position, I’m not into going around corners really fast, and when I ride my bike I usually prefer to turn both left AND right.

So given that, I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to race both the Masters B crit and the Cat 3 crit one right after the other at the state championships on Sunday. It was either commitment or stupidity – or a stupid commitment – or a commitment to stupidity.

You get the idea. Here’s the race recap…

Masters B. Riding along, ho hum, turning left, riding some more, turning left again, was that a right turn? – no just kind of a right veer, that guy wants in front of me – ok. Turning left, ride a little bit, turn left again (was that a brick crosswalk – not good), whoa what is that up there – a chicane? Yup, I think they call that a chicane – I think I call it a cluster fuck and a bad idea, ride straight some more, turn left (whoops, drug a pedal – whatever). Repeat for 45 minutes. Is this the last lap – good. These guys are nuts, they can have their medal – I will buy my own.

Cat 3. That last race was harder than I thought. Turn left, ride a little bit, turn left, veer right. These guys are faster than the other ones. Turn left, turn left, chicane go strait, left, left veer right, straight, left, left, chicane, who’s bike is making that sound, left, left, veer right,left,left,chicane,left.left – repeat for about 20 minutes until – well this sucks I am getting pulled – thank God.

All in all not a bad day of crit-ing. Didn’t fall off, that’s always good. They said the course had eight turns, but it was essentially a circle – I don’t know how that works. Maybe that is why I am lousy at crits. Whatever…

Success at any Cost

I have been struggling this year to meet my cycling goals. I don’t think I have achieved one yet. The best I have finished in a Cat 3 race is 12th. I was first loser in a Master’s B race that I should have won. I even went origami during the LP 200 – completely folded.

A month or so ago I decided that I needed to make some changes in order to start meeting some goals. I had a few choices. I could cheat, I could quit, or I could change the rues. I decided to change the rules, it is the American way after all.

I developed a new system that ensures success. Introducing – Multiple Choice Goal setting. I borrowed the multiple guess system of standardized testing from the American educational system and bent it to meet my own goal setting needs.

All you need to do is set about 4 goals at a time and hope you meet at least one of them. It helps if one is ridiculously easy. Here is an example…

Melmer’s Summer Goal 2008

A. Place top 10 in a Cat 3 bike race.
B. Climb Bogus Basin in 1:05:59 or less.
C. Buy a new bike.
D. Buy my wife a new bike.
E. None of the above.

Notice each one gets easier.

This is how it works - Only tell your friends and teammates about the first one. Later when they ask if you met your goal, just tell them yes. The only one you are lying to is yourself, and who cares about that.

By the way, in case you were wondering – I already met my summer goal. That Bogus Basin is a tough climb…

The Truth About Spandex

INTRODUCTION

To test the Melmer Theory of Spandexivity I needed to measure peoples social acceptance to varying levels of spandex tightness and brightness.

METHODS

I devised a scheme (experimental design) where I would wear different types of clothes on different days. To measure social acceptance I would say ‘Good Morning’ to everyone I came across and quantify the number of responses. Here are the clothes...

I call them 'Baggies', 'Performance Guy', and 'Tight n' Bright' respectively. I compiled some data then I did some ill advised statistical tests.

RESULTS

Here is the data I collected...

Here are the ill advised statisical results...

mean1 eq: 0.308 (sd=0.462) (se=0.0646)
mean2 eq: 0.476 (sd=0.499) (se=0.0634)

difference between means:
-0.1685 (sd=0.9479) (se=0.0898)
95% CI: -0.3444
t-value of difference: -1.877; df-t: 111
probability: 0.031263 (left tail pr: 0.96874)
doublesided p-value: 0.0625

mean1 eq: 0.308 (sd=0.462) (se=0.0646)
mean2 eq: 0.556 (sd=0.497) (se=0.0749)

difference between means:
-0.2479 (sd=0.932) (se=0.0979)
95% CI: -0.4397

CONCLUSIONS

Ultimately, the results indicate that if you wear not bright spandex you are less socially acceptable than if you wear baggies - and if you wear tight n' bright spandex you are way less socially acceptable.

SUMMARY

Except for a brief period in the 80's, it is not socially acceptable to wear spandex. God forbid your spandex is tight n' bright or you will be a real social leper. No wonder professional cyclists do drugs.

The Theory of Spandexivity

June made me re-think spandex. I got made fun of by a CODE 300 women in a bikini, and a 20-something chick on a bmx bike. People that have thighs that weigh more than me shouldn’t point and laugh as I go by. People older than 12 who ride bmx bikes shouldn’t make fun of anyone. If you are older than 12 and your primary mode of transportation is a bmx bike you might be a loser – I don’t care how much gas costs.

Anyhow, I decided that people don’t like me because of my spandex.

I have a new theory. I call it Melmer’s Theory of Spandexivity. It goes something like this…

As the tightness and brightness of your spandex increases, your social acceptance approaches zero.

I figure that spandexivity is measured on a scale of 1 to 10. One is not so tight and not so bright, 10 is obnoxiously bright, and inappropriately tight. It is a subjective measure but here are some guidelines.

1. If the color of your spandex can be described as fluorescent, bright, or God forbid neon you are automatically at spandexivity 8.
2. If your spandex has sponsors you are at least spandexivity 5.
3. If the base color of your spandex shorts is anything other than black – spandexivity 7.
4. If your spandex is so tight that passersby can see unfortunate ass features – spandexivity 11.

Keep in mind spandexivity is somewhat additive so reaching 10 (complete lack of social acceptance) is not that hard for the average bike geek. To give you an idea – those old school lost river kits (orange AND green) – 10. The old school LAC grey and green kits – 10. Current LAC kit – 7, current lost river kit – 8. Performance catalog guy kit – 3-5. Spandex under baggies – 1. Just baggies – 0.

Ultimately, the take home message is that the higher your spandexivity, the more likely you are to get hassled. Don’t believe me? Wait for the results of my spandexivity experiments…

The Tour de Pants

We all have them. Or at least I think we do. Well, maybe it’s just me.

I have a closet. The closet is full of pants. A lot of pants. A khaki rainbow of pants. Probably over 20 pairs of pants. I wear about 5 or 6 of them. Over and over again until they break. The rest live in the closet.

In order to make my closet a better place I decided that I needed to get rid of a few pairs of pants. To decide which pants to get rid of I decided to start at one side of the closet and wear a different pair of pants every day until I wore them all – at which point I would throw out the pants I liked least.

Believe it or not I have already done this a few times in the last year. I used to have about 30 pairs of pants…

So this is the 3rd ever Tour de Pants. One pair each day (stage) for twenty or so days – work days that is. I don’t wear pants on days I don’t go to work?

Its Tour de Pants time everybody!