A beautiful hike, although a cold and wet one. Our vibrams handled the conditions with aplomb. And we managed ok ourselves (fresh food and warm drinks at the Island Pub a short walk from the trailhead is helping tons).
Another story is that if he finds a rider eating something naughty the whole team had to go out for a ride even if it's dark, with the boss driving behind with the headlights on so they can see where they're going. Quite often I would see riders from this team in races with only one bottle cage on, given that we raced in 40 degrees celsius heat a lot of the time I can only imagine what minor offence they must have committed for the manager to take one of their cages off.While my team wasn’t quite this bonkers there were a few incidents. One time the woman who cooked for us did us sausages as a treat. During dinner the president arrived so our cook shouted at us to hide the sausages quick before he saw them. On another occasion when eating at a hotel the night before a race, we went to dinner without our manager and sat down to a delicious tasting meal of roast potatoes and pork. Nothing wrong with that you’d think. Well when the manager arrived he went ballistic at the hotel staff telling them we should have been eating pasta and chicken instead.
via velonation.com
Wow -- having been involved with the sport for some years now, this sort of thing doesn't really surprise me. But reading someone's firsthand account of it is still strangely fascinating!
Many of my critics imagine that they have no stake in the well-being of others. How could they possibly benefit from other people getting first-rate educations? How could they be harmed if the next generation is hurled into poverty and despair? Why should anyone care about other people’s children? It amazes me that such questions require answers.
Would Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, rather have $10 billion in a country where the maximum number of people are prepared to do creative work? Or would he rather have $20 billion in a country with the wealth inequality of an African dictatorship and commensurate levels of crime?[1] I’d wager he would pick door number #1. But if he wouldn’t, I maintain that it is only rational and decent for Uncle Sam to pick it for him.
via samharris.org
I've always thought that considerations of this nature aren't made by so many of the wealthy (and wealthy hopefuls) to be disturbing; what happened to foresight? Again, hat tips to Diego.
Darwin explained all of this with one brilliantly simple idea - natural selection, driving gradual evolution over immensities of geological time. His is a good theory because of the huge ratio of what it explains (all the complexity of life) divided by what it needs to assume (simply the nonrandom survival of hereditary information through many generations). The rival theory to explain the functional complexity of life - creationism - is about as bad a theory as has ever been proposed. What it postulates (an intelligent designer) is even more complex, even more statistically improbable than what it explains. In fact it is such a bad theory it doesn’t deserve to be called a theory at all, and it certainly doesn’t deserve to be taught alongside evolution in science classes.
Hat tip to Diego.
via vimeo.com
via youtube.com
Beautiful video (of panoramic-stitching) from a park in SF; captures a lot of what I love about this city.
*hat tip: tom reeve
This past weekend we made yet another trek to and about Emigrant Wilderness in the Sierras. Joining us this time were a few of Sanny's co-workers: Ned, Mike, and Islam. So what changed since we were there 3 weeks ago? A lot actually -- some good, some bad.
Actually, the only bad that I can recall were the mosquittos which were quite ferocious in a number of spots. Otherwise we found: far less snow -- and of course -- snow melt, lakes and trails now passable that were not safe or passable before, and more campers (but never so many as to be a crowd). Cherry Creek, which we forded at the end of Saturday was up to my mid-chest (I'm 6'2) and had a swift ice-cold current that I managed only by walking upstream before entering it -- the force was strong enough that no matter how I tried it pushed me a step downstream for every lateral step I progressed; I can hardly imagine what it must have looked like 3 weeks ago when even the Piut Creek (which we crossed this time by way of a short log) was a raging river.
Highlights include: pan and stone cooked steak, 3 adventurous barefoot water-crossings -- numerous others by fallen tree, amazing views of the night sky, hiking and setting up camp in the dark of night, delicous mountain water for both drinking and swimming.
Day 1 (or maybe day 2 -- we hit the trail @ 11:30pm, Friday).
Day 2
San Francisco's famed Irish coffee is back from the valley of the shadow of death.
Irish coffee had been all but down the drain for want of the special glass in which to make it, without which the drink becomes airport cocktail lounge swill.
The glass had been stamped "obsolete" and discontinued by its manufacturer. It was going to cost 250,000 bucks to resuscitate it, and nobody had the money.
But when the Midwest company that owns the patent read a front-page story in The Chronicle about nostalgic citizens caring enough to mourn a glass, it swallowed the startup costs, dusted off the mold and went back into production.
It is so rare for a city tradition to be rescued after having last rites read over it that Mayor Ed Lee has declared San Francisco Irish Coffee Day on July 28 to celebrate.
via sfgate.com
Question: who's joining me on the 28th?