Around-the-world cyclist II

So the guy I mentioned in a previous post (Julian Sayarer) seems to have broken the world record for cycling around the world, though its not yet official. He blew through Spain in 3 days, came through Madrid even. You'd think this would be news like the Tiger Woods thing that I just can't get my head around (now wait, was he in a car wreck or cheating on his wife? how are thee things related? why was he expected to tell the press abotu his extra girlfriends? were they driving his car? all at the same time? really, what is the deal with the car wreck, I cannot find one intelligible article about this supposed scandal...), but it ain't. Great cycling acheivements are rarely news. I actually entertained the thought of trying to guess where his route would pass so i could watch him ride through my city. Didn't though, wouldn't have guessed the right route anyway. So it seems he averaged 109 miles per days which puts a hurtin' on James Bowthorpe's record of 103 miles per day just a few months ago. This is despite numerous parts failures. I checked his twitter posts every day, and I read through his entire blog and became quite a fan. I liked the down-to-earth vernacular posts (e.g. wheel fucked...again), and the honesty of his pretty decent writing even when he got caught in seemingly random rants about police (i don't like them either), chinese people (the ones in my hood are ok by me), and Mark Beaumont (the guy who Bowthorpe beat, before Sayayer beat Bowthorpe). I even let a little anti-Americanism slide in his writings (I ain't the world's biggest patriot, but it's tiring to her smug euros bash your country when you know their countries behaved NO BETTER, MAYBE WORSE, when they had alot of power[I mean Spain, England, France, Holland, Germany, Italy, and more]). I let it slide because he said he could have ridden down the Oregon Coast for the rest of his life. I've done that ride, and I agree totally.

Then a wierd thing happened. He finished in glorious style and all he writes about is how much he hates Mark Beaumont, the guy who got the record before Bowthorpe. I mean he rips the guy. The word "cunt" was used, even. Granted, from what I've read about Beaumont even on his own web page, Mark Beaumont is kind of a self-promoting prom queen, but he also set the record, raised a little money for charity, and regardless of any self-aggrandizing motives he contributed to documentaries about his ride that will inspire people to ride bicycles. He apparently made some money off of his endeavor. What is the big deal, this is not a life poorly spent. Maybe he's just smart, getting paid to do bike tours.

The problem with Julian Sayarer, my recent short-lived former hero, is that he defines himself by what he's against rather than what he is about. I understood that the title of his website "this is not for charity" meant, instead "i'm doing this because I think bicycling is awesome and there is no need for additional motivation to do a ride like this". But this is a case in point, it sounds as if he's saying "I think charity sucks", even though he's not really. And unless he writes something better about how awesome, difficult, easy, lame, exhausting, uplifting, boring it was to ride around the freaking globe on a bike and encounter different cultures and scenery, unexpected aid and threats, hammers and nails rain, exploding tires, and freely given best-burritos-of-your-life, we'll never know how he defines himself, we'll only know he's not Mark Beaumont.


James Bowthorpe, the guy who did ride for charity, defined himslef by what he was for and has raised 100,000 pounds for Parkinson's research. I think I'd rather have him keep the record really. He didn't mention one word about the guy he beat, except that he set a high standard and was tough to beat. That's the kind of record holder you want.

Beaumont's page
http://www.pedallingaround.com/start/

Bowthorpe's page
http://www.globecycle.org/

Various

Random recent pic. La Pedrera, Sierra Guadarrama. pretty nice.

1. I couldn't figure out how to watch football last year. The pay services primarily work in the US, and it seemed impossible to find links to games online. Some Irish bars show American football. The problem is my game is always the late game, so I would have to get on the metro, ride into the city center to be there for kickoff at 10:00pm, blow 25 euros on pints and then one of two things would happen. Option 1: Its tied in the fourth and the bar closes because it a slow sunday night. Option 2: The bar takes pity on you an stays open, but the metro line you need to get home stops running at 1:30, leaving you stranded.

But I have watched the last five games (all wins by the way) in my own home, start to finish. If you live in Europe and suffer my plight of last year you need to download 2 programs: stream torrent an sopcast. Then go to myP2P.eu and find a link to your game. These ain't the best broadcasts, often the image sucks, or you get kicked off (like me last night), or it takes 20 minutes to get it to work. But its something, and for that I am thankful. I watched a game which was commentated by two Danish guys apparently sitting in a bedroom. Sometimes its an English feed with a couple completely unknown NFL players commenting, with some middle aged British guy. Its cool just for the surrealism.

2. Spanish douche style: Spain has their own special douche fashion. It's pseudo hip-hop (late 80's), part frat boy, part Miami vice and ALL douche in spiky hair gel flavors. They rock the popped collars, pink shirts, and faux hawks. Some of the older ones grow pencil line beards. The hairstyles can only be described as Vanilla Ice, with lines etched in or white sidewalls. There is almost always: 1) a shaved part, 2) a spiky part, 3) short shellac spiky bangs glued to one half of the forehead part. There is also multiple face piercings, always with white or black beads instead of naked metal. This might be accessorized with a kefiyah, aka a paisley "jihad" scarf like back last year when Rachel Ray became a jihadist in a dunkin donuts commercial, maybe even in douche pink or turquoise...though i have noticed that that is fading. Its so '08. They are fond of tight Don Johnson color tees, and this is commonly worn under an all white ensemble featuring a fur lined hooded jacket. They have these incredible pants over here, which manages to simultaneously mimic skinny jeans and gangsta sag. The trick is that the waist actually fits, and the legs are tight, but the crotch of the pants is almost own to the knees. Its like when a toddler has shit in his diaper.

3) We made plans to travel in France and Andorra between x-mas and New Years. New Years in this town:
beat that, chump.

4) Strange anthropological observations: In the metro or trains stations sometimes its so busy that the escalators get real crowded. Like most places, people are lazy and would rather wait in a line to ride an escalator than take the stairs right next to it. I don't blame anybody, some metro stations are better than the stair master. That's not the wierd part, this is: the escalators break often, and when they do everbody crowds onto the stairs and avoids the escalator. I see a broken escalator as a perfectly servicable staircase, some people could climb the stairs and others the escalator so there wouldn't be 10,000 people all on top of each other. But they avoid the non-running escaltor like its dangerous or illegal or something.

5) Lard Alert: I knew I needed to drop a few pounds but I was shocked when I found out I was over 210 pounds!! My eating habits have always been somehwere in between cookie monster and Bacchanalian orgy. But I stayed reasonable thin by exercising alot. Gradually, my spartan exercise routine got replaced by a spartan train ride to and from work and a spartan work-eat dinner-have a beer or two-sleep lifestyle. The month long trip to the states didn't help much, since me and my old friend Thai-food-that-doesn't-suck had to become reaquainted. Thats not even mentioning Mexican food and plenty of it. Most Americans have no idea just how incredible unlimited chips and salsa is, they just take it for granted. Well I'm telling you A-holes, its awesome and you won't know that 'til you go somewhere it doesn't exist and it will hurt your soul. It will make the baby Pancho Villa cry. But awesome aside...all of these things had resulted in my highest weight ever.

So my plan is simple but effective....1) Skip the beer. I am allowed to drink beer if i go to a party or if we're out for the night. But I don't need three hundred extra calories just because a beer sounds delicious after work. Tough but necessary. 2) Exercise pretty much every day. the weather and my broken derailleur is not favoring alot of cycling right now, but we go to the gym twice a week, and i started running again. I've worked back up to 6 mile runs, and I don't even mind it in fact its fun. So we've been back a month and I'm at 200 pounds now. I need to drop at least another 5. Lard sneaks up on you.


6) I haven't had alot of beaurocratic nightmares lately, plus i try not to dwell on annoying shit (it ain't good for me), but this one is so frickin' funny...Becky finally got her national ID card this morning after entering the country last February. Since it took so long it will only be valid for two months, and its already time to renew.