happybday29475

So I'm back from a nice tropical Christmas vacation, wherein I over-ate, to the point of being uncomfortable, at each and every meal over the course of the entire vacation. In between Pina Coladas and schnorkeling, I decided that I am OK with not racing in 2017.

Since I've been back home, I've been overwhelmed by the compunction to get back into race shape and to weigh less than ever, and both the trainer and the gym have already re-learned my name.

Which way is up?

LAJ

Yes they are.

Well done on the battery replacement. You're one of the few people that could call me, and I'd help bury the body. Helping you with a battery would have been a walk in the park, had you wanted a hand.

Racer Ex 

happybday29475

Self-centered, subjective interpretation:
being held by parent == 50+ cat 4 racing
being submerged in shark tank == 50/open racing

Heathpack 

So?...

Where'd ya go? And why have we seen no pics?

LAJ

That works.

happybday29475

Bali
Pics are over in the Pina Colada forum.

Good luck with your stressors, all will be better in short order.

Cleave

I killed the comment thread or was late to the comment party so it's easy to find my observations and opinions on the blog post.

Regarding Como Street, I stopped riding it in the early 1990s (after starting in 1979) because the group was blasting through stop signs and red lights on the roads leading up to El Toro and because the group was taking up all of the traffic lanes, especially in Santiago Canyon.

My last Como Street ride was when a someone in a pickup truck was trying to pass the group on the rollers coming out of the canyon (before the toll road existed and before Santiago Canyon was multiple lanes wide). The pickup pulled into oncoming traffic lanes, got past about half the group before an oncoming car came into view. He couldn't just pull back into the lanes because of cyclists so he slammed on his brakes while trying to move right. The truck fish-tailed wildly, barely missing some riders, and the oncoming car barely missed hitting the pickup truck.

I saw all of this because I was at the back of the group riding on the shoulder. I let the group go and rolled back to the start and never went back. I get tempted sometimes but then I come back to my senses.

Cleave

This.

Doge

Likely we road together. I used to meet the old guys (Phil, Simo) at Harvard and Warner and drink Rolling Rock post ride with them. Later 1990s I was mostly on a white tandem.

That ride now mostly stops at all lights and is very good with traffic. I've had my kid on it since about age 12. Even the annual Rogers Cup race takes lights into account as a variable and they since moved the finish.

revchuck 

I grew up not too far from where Rolling Rock was brewed. I didn't know it made it out to the Left Coast back then, it was still pretty much a regional beer. Must've been like drinking Coors back East.

Doge

It was not known in this region. I found it in PA and then a local source. So I ended up bringing it in a cooler for post ride. I didn't go into that detail in prior post, just knew if the poster was drinking rolling rock - or around the guys that did - I was there.

Hermes

I was very saddened to hear the Christopher Reed was killed in a helicopter crash. Christopher was a professional helicopter pilot and a track racer at VSC and former President of LAVRA. He did so much for racing and volunteered his time to promote our sport. He will be missed but it can be said that he died doing what he loved to do. That is a tiny positive from such a great loss. RIP.

Heathpack 

I saw that on Facebook through a post on a trackie friends page. Was he in the helicopter that went down in Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor?

Hermes

I do not know. I saw it last night and my details are sketchy. It is so hard to believe and get my head around. This was a very meticulous guy at the track and very experienced pilot. Something must have gone terribly wrong.

shovelhd

Condolences over the loss of your friend, Hermes.

Sarals, I'm thinking of you.

Hermes

Worlds Fastest Woman. The World?s Fastest Woman - WSJ Amazing article, pictures and video in the WSJ.

TOOELE COUNTY, Utah— Denise Mueller, a 43-year-old mother of three, pedals hard atop the Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah, making a run at an eccentric land-speed record—the fastest bicyclist on earth.

Heathpack 

I just googled it. Yes he was the pilot in that crash. The article said today would have been his 42nd birthday.

They still don't know what happened.

Cleave

@Hermes, I didn't really know him. I looked him up on Google and I recognize him be we never interacted to any degree. Sad that two people died in that accident and sad someone from our cycling community passed. I wasn't at Roger's Session last night. I might have heard some talk about the accident if I had been there.

RIP.

Cleave

As I mentioned, I've had urges to try it again after more than 20 years. Of course these days, I would be on the old man route, if that group still exists. No way I could hang coming out of O'Neill Park these days.

Doge

There is only one group now. They leave from Starbucks Jamboree and I-5.
Everyone goes out El-Toro and it gets fast on El-Toro and a bit on Trabuco by the Great Park. Normally group is together at the El Toro light.

Then at Portola some go long. Others go up Cooks. I have lots of video of that ride. Up Cooks is as fast as it has ever been and a race. As I mentioned I started my kid on that very young. He grabbed the Cooks KOM a couple years ago which at a local level was pretty cool. Its now up to 76K attempts. https://www.strava.com/segments/764232

Hermes

I knew him from the LAVRA racing. Here is an excerpt from an article on the accident. He was the pilot of a Robinson R22 helicopter with a photographer aboard to take pics of cruise ships in the harbor. It appears that Robinson helicopters may have an issue. 160 crashes with 239 deaths seems like too much.

Robinson R22 helicopters have been involved in 160 fatal crashes, with 239 deaths, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The manufacturer came under scrutiny from a New Zealand aviation agency last year, which suspended the use of Robinson helicopters after a series of crashes. Locally, three people were injured recently when a Robinson R44 helicopter made a “hard landing” on Mount Baldy.

Heathpack 

I know this was a funny anecdote but sometimes little comments like this trigger my brain to start churning.

The question really is 'why?'. Why do bike racing at all? What's your motivation? What do you get out of it?

I think starting with your motivation can really help you decide what to do. This is something I kind of continually explore, but I think if I had to answer the question of motivation right now, I'd probably say bike racing improves my well-being.

Some of that is the literal improvements in strength, coordination, aerobic conditioning, flexibility, weight, mental acuity, etc. But really the core of it is trying to capture a feeling of mastery of the thing.

Then the next question becomes if mastery is the goal, why cycling? Why not something else? This one is harder to answer but for me right now that answer I think really has to do with the fluid nature of cycling (as in I like that this is a moment by moment sport where you need to maintain focus/effort vs something more static like archery), it's endurance component & how that meshes with my physiology. The TTs also appeal to my intellectual side & feeds my world view that hard work pays off. Truthfully it doesn't always but having TTing in my life enhances that sense that you get out of something what you put in, and I like to believe that. I also happen to have fallen into a crowd of people involved with TTing that I really like, so it's enjoyable on that level too.

So then I think the question for all of us becomes: given my motivators, is cycling the best use of my time/energy/resources?

I could make some guesses as to what your motivators are but that would really just my superfical impressions looking at it from outside of you.

I'd also be pretty interested in hearing from anyone else that cares to answer: what motivates you to ride a bike (note that I did not say 'race' because I think my motivators have been consistent all along, even before I started racing)?

I suspect that you could address a lot of your motivators with other endeavors. But I think there are some unique aspects to bike racing specifically that might address these motivators more fully, that when you think about it you may be back in on those grounds. The main counter argument being, with cycling, the time investment required for even small payoff.

Bandera

I've always enjoyed riding a bicycle since early childhood, was faster than most other kids, had a neighbor growing up who had raced on the board tracks pre-WWII to introduce me to the sport which seemed "normal" to me.

Being wired to be competitive I found that in motor sports, road rallying in particular, $$$$ bought Motor.
In cycling no such thing: You had your own to build and maintain for an investment in time & work.
Some had the sprint motor, some the TT motor and some the uphill version but the currency to get a faster more durable version was not monetary.

What did I get out of it?
The ability to still ride a straight line and move right smartly along for an elderly person and enjoy being on the bike like when I was a child.
I may keel over after typing this but my medicine man tells me that the sport has provided significant health benefits over the gen-pop and keeping at it is a very good idea.

The camaraderie of old school club riding was and still is important, the people I'm still in contact w/ 30-40 years on are mostly old teammates not college buddies.

Oh, and the racing thing.
I enjoyed stuffing the machine into a decreasing radius corner at full chat, coming shoulder to shoulder to the line, muscling past the crest and reading the dynamics of the field to as my 1st coach advised: "Be there at the end."

And it's still not quite The End just yet.

-Bandera

sarals 

R-22's and R-44's are flown by mostly low time or student pilots. Most of the accidents that have occurred with that type were pilot error and most of those pilots were relatively inexperienced. The R-22 was intended as a low cost trainer when it was introduced by Frank Robinson to the industry many years ago. It had some issues with main rotor blades early on, and then some other kinks that had to be ironed out, but it's a pretty decent machine overall. I've got about a half hour of flight time in one, and they fly well, no worse or no better than any other helicopter I've ever flown.

@Hermes, I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. I didn't know about the accident until it was mentioned here. It's never good to hear those things, and then when it affects people you know, it's doubly hard.