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.

Julian Sayarer

...just read about this guy on a blog. He is closing in on the world record for circumnavigating the globe on a bicicyle at an incredible pace of 111 miles per day. He's been riding for 149 days and is now in the states before returning to France to finish.

http://www.thisisnotforcharity.com/index.html

Hot pocket

Do you remember the jingle from the television commercials for hot pockets? I don't mean all of the lyrics...but it was a call and response thingie, where the response is a three note "Hot pocket!". I've adapted it for everyday use. If you get perfect liftoff on your next farmer blow, you can sing "Snot rocket!". Did you just buy a motorcycle? "Crotch rocket!" If you just discovered there's another wall outlet behind the dresser..."Light socket!" Did you just run interference on that douchey guy that's trying to get with that girl you like in sixth period "Cock block it!". It need not be applied only for things ending in "...ocket" either. it will work for many 3 syllable combinations, especially when its two words, the first being monosyllabic. "Sock monkey!" There you go, my gift to you, a multipurpoe jingle to enhance your day, every day.

speaking of vega$

this rocket from my past courtesy of greg. i still have a copy but its nearly completely faded. binion's horseshoe, that monument to the old & real vegas, used to have a glass case with a million dollars in cash in it. for years you could go get your picture with a million bucks, for free.

Could have just gone to Vega$, ok maybe not

I guess its time i got around to writing about our trip to Italy. Three independent parties had suggested that we could skip Venice- we've seen it in the movies after all, and theres one in vega$ anyway. Our Australian friend David told us it smells like the diaper wiff we always get in our local train station (false, Aluche rocks the stench by far). Other folks told us its expensive as hell (true) and absolutely full of douchey tourists like us (true). But heres the thing, theres no other place like it, except of course the one in vega$. Amsterdam also has some canals but the charcater of the city is totally different. Also Venice is not that crowded outside of the top five tourist destinations. The secret is that Venice, in its impossible to navigate entirety, is the destination, not some cathedral or museum (one caveat here: the Palazzo Ducalle does have five Bosch paintings...just something to think about). i enjoyed every second of wandering the streets and bridges, Becky had dreams about being lost there, which was true most of the time. You will pay with your own organs for a gondola ride (had to do it)and see so many other kidney-less tourists doing the same, that it feels like you're on a water ride at the Epcot center. Despite the kidney loss and the hordes it was pretty fun, our gondola guy was funny and weaseled into several pictures. On the other hand you can bring an old soda bottle to a wine shop and have it filled with wine for a couple bucks. it's kind of like my old fantasy of 7-11 selling big gulps of beer. So you can destroy the other kidney fairly cheaply. Go to Venice if you can, its cool, bring organs. Oh yeah whenever you order a coffee or a beer, it costs more to have it at a table. So remain standing unless you want a 5 euro coffee.


Next we went to Florence, Pistoia, Pisa, and the Tuscany region for a few days. In the cathedral (the Duomo), there is an enormous cupola with a painting on the inner surface. I'm pretty sure it was modeled after the cover of a Dio record, or maybe it was Grim Reaper. Seriously, there's demons eating people alive, the nine rings of hell, the judgement day and all of that. I guess this is supposed to frighten you into christianity. Later we ran into the fake David by Michelangelo. Why the fake David? Well, the real one was moved inside of a different museum to protect it from vandals. But who gives a shit, I already saw that thing in Caesar's Palace. Renaissance art doesn't do much for me. It just seems to be about inexplicable gratuitous nudity, rippling muscles, oversized hands and feet and undersized penises. I understand that it was a big change from relatively flat medieval art lacking perspective,it emphasized the human form, and occasionally portrayed something other than Jesus but you know I think I like medieval art - granted theres only so many Jesus's I can bear to look at. Anyways- David- he looks like Jay Cutler, the most overrated cocky dickbag of a quarterback ever. I hate Jay Cutler, and Denver Broncos are so much harder to hate now that he's gone. The Boticellis were worth seeing though, and no Jesus, just good ole paganism. I was so sick when we went to Pisa, we just turned around and left after we finally got there. Tuscany really was beautiful, its medieval towns are surrounded by open countryside in contrast to alot of places. Food was decent but it won't make you do a backflip like everyone tells you. I'll take enchiladas or chilis rellenos anyday.



Finally we went to Rome. At first it was just mediocre, we were tired and kind of in the "I've seen so much stuff I'm failing to appreciate Rome" rut. Things were pretty, including nice views from some famous steps, some famous fountains and plazas (more renaissance, woohoo), but it wasn't stunning. Not until we blundered into the Pantheon. That is a legit 2000 year old Roman temple still standing, with columns like redwoods. Its the sort of thing that our country likes to copy in all of its official buildings, but this is the real thing. The next day we visited the Colliseum, and the adjacent archaeological park. The park consists of the Palatine Hill and the Forum. We had a book which said most visitors leave the forum underwhelmed. Of course my previous knowledge of the forum was gained at Caesar's Palace- its a place with Gucci and Louie Vuitton stores, animatronic statues, and a fake sky that changes. Turns out the real forum is awesome, I don't know what kind of dolt could leave there underwhelmed. It's a junkyard of columns and foundations, arches, and temple fronts. Every rock fragment in sight was a piece of an ancient building. I've never seem anything remotely similar. Everywhere you go in this part of the city there is some excavated something several feet below the modern street level. It may be a gladiator training facility, a reconstructed tile floor, or a colony of nasty feral cats. After all this the Vatican was so unimpressive, except the pope mummies were pretty intriguing. The impression you get is: WHAT DISGUSTING WEALTH!!! When they pass around that plate for cash, you can rest assured they ain't feeding those freeloading poor people with the cash. They spend it all in dipping popes in molten gold and encrusting them with rubies. We blew off the Sistine chapel entirely because we suck at being tourists.

..by the way i'm getting lazier about pictures, these are all Becky's pics.

Dear jerk sauce:

OK, I just got back form a geek conference in England, now we are off to Italy tommorrow. The tourist trifecta: Venice, Rome, Florence

We will be in the States from 30 Sept until the 26 Oct. That first week of Oct we will be in Michigan. Then we'll fly to phoenix and stopover briefly in Flagstaff. Then its 2 weeks of field work in Northern Arizona and Utah, with a pass through Moab. We will again pass through Flag to return the car rental, then continue on to Vegas for the final few days of our stay in the good ole US of A.

So contact me by email, and we'll catch up. Vegas friends can also reach me at my folks house in the twenty somethings of oct.

Friends in Europe and the States who were considering a visit: november is still pretty open. let us know whatever you decide.