Punctuated Equilibrium

Leaps and bounds. The heck with stasis, and shaving two seconds off my best time here, another second there. Why not beat it by twenty-one seconds? 7.13, friends and family. Here's how. Follow the big Kenyan in the Colombia jersey, the guy who reads a book a week, from Neal Stephenson to Erik Larson, all the way to Nairobi. I mean the Circle. Stay tight on his wheel. Don't leave it.

At the Circle, when you've got the energy in your legs that you haven't had before, go for it. Leave the Kenyan behind without thanking him and ride for the top. Push til you puke, like Asprilla says, or just short of it. Once there, wonder at what just might have happened, that you used less energy to get to the place you usually are on Tuesday mornings in less time than ever before. Wish you would have paid a little more attention to high school physics and learned this lesson earlier.

Don't apply this lesson to the sprint, especially on a dry January day like this that brought twenty-nine riders out in the just dawning light. Instead of hanging eight riders back on the inside lane where you get boxed out, expend the energy early to get out front. Then you woudln't be sitting here wondering if you could have caught Johnny Utah at the line, rather than just getting in reach.

Adult Swim

Baleen and I went to Napa this weekend, the Disneyland for adults. Walking through our hotel lobby at 9pm on Saturday night, after a dinner at Bouchon in Yountville, was a little like walking through Tiger Inn my senior year at 2am on a Friday morning during soccer season. Fully grown adults were hugging each other in the lobby, red wine stains down their front saying, "It's just that I love you soooo much."

Baleen's seen it for a few months now, stone cold sober as she's been, while I haven't, either becuase I found my way to the bar a few times at those Christmas parties where she hadn't, or, more likely, because I haven't been out after dark in months. Nonetheless, what we did do well in Napa was eat. Our hotel was walking distance from Oxbow Public Market, where we had three of our four meals. Our only disappointment was that we so stuffed ourselves for the meals we had, that we decided against the Fremont Diner for Sunday lunch, opting instead for roast chicken and salad from C Casa in Oxbow Market, even foregoing a second visit in as many days to Three Twins Ice Cream when they'd run out of Cookies & Cream. I'll be back for you, Fremont.

When we got home Sunday evening, we again showed our age, by skipping the TV shows we wanted to watch, and preparing for a busy week to come. For me, that meant a Sunday dinner of fettucini and shrimp along with some laundry. For Baleen, it was the most healthy, wholesome chicken soup around, made on Sunday night, and enjoyed on Monday and Tuesday by simply dumping it in a pot and warming it for a few minutes. She even (and this is big so let's reward her for this, like the Sea World trainer's method of positive reinforcement, rewarding good behavior and ignoring bad behavior) put away all her clothes, from the clean laundry to everything that she didn't wear up in Napa.

The Mission Suburbs

Baleen says I glofiry the working class. I ignore their generalized faults and ennumerate those of the One Percenters, vaguely scheming and hoping to be part of them while still believing I've got more blue than white collar in me. Perception isn't reality, she says, reality is. It's why she corrects me when I say we live in the Mission (Noe Valley), that my parents own a ski condo in Park City (I'm a 1/3rd owner, having put down an equal amount as Margarine and Grizzly/WoodDuck) or point out that I'm more likely to tell somebody that I'm an Army brat than a Princeton grad.

It's true, and more difficult for me to recognize as I, like most others, sometimes see or present what I want to see, rather than what's in front of me. But the tables were turned this weekend when Baleen and I took our all day Dont Break the Baby in the 1st Two Weeks course. After eleven years in this city I feel like I know a fair amount of people, especially those around my age who can afford to take a course on infant care. So I was surprised that amongst the fifty couples in our course, I didn't know a-one.

The bigger surprise came from Baleen, whose four year tenure makes her less likely to know anybody. When I said I was suprised I didn't know anybody, she said she was surprised there was only one lesbian or gay couple. Oh, which one is that, I asked? The one in the back right corner, she said. I thought for a second. The one with the black sweater and ponytail, I asked? Yes, she said. They're not lesbians, I said. I saw the husband in the bathroom, he just has cherry cheeks and is smaller than she is.

Der Wind

At 6.14, just past Sanchez and 14th, Christopher Robin told me that the wind was no good. That meant that he'd been up well before then getting a detailed weather report like a Gloucester fisherman, and that an assault on Hawk Hill would be futile, no matter our effort.

But at the Presidio Gates at 6.30, where the warm weather had encouraged a crowd, there was talk of hitching a train to get Christopher Robin to the top in 6.35, the fastest ever time. So when the hill pointed up, a group took off. If I'm going to get left behind, as I almost always do, I want it to happen when I've got nothing left. I followed, lasting just over a minute before running into a wall of wind. I knew it was a bad wind from what Christoher Robin had said, and knowing that made it hard to keep going.

I limped along for almost five minutes, pushing hard, but not hard like I should have, and only got going when Nick at Nite passed me a minute from the top. I came across in 8.09, my slowest time since October of last year, reflective of the wind, but also my effort, and once we got into the Presidio, Packie Bonner nipped me at the line in the sprint.

Mistral

There's a break in the rain. It had been almost four straight days of it, pretty hard stuff, including a stiff, stiff wind on Sunday afternoon out at Ft Funston. I'd felt a hard wind on other runs in this city, mostly down at Crissy Field running toward the Bridge, but not at all like on Sunday on the beach below Ft Funston.

It was low tide. Between the weather and the Niners, I had the beach to myself. There were miles in front and behind me and at least forty yards from ocean to cliffs, with double that in some places. I ran as close to the ocean as I could as the sand that wasn't wet had no interest in staying where it was, but in attacking my shins and knees.

What took a little over twenty minutes on the way out, took a little less than twenty minutes on the way back and when I got home, and showered, Baleen had the Thai Chicken Curry ready to eat.

Equality

Good news: Mission Cycling wiped clean the digital jersey slate with our new fiscal year (beginning 1/18/12) so I'm no longer slogging around the bottom of the barrel for not having had a Garmin until last summer. The bad news: Christopher Robin and John Wooden, they of the 6.51 and 7.08 times up Hawk Hill, respectively (versus my best of 7.34), are new MC members. But as the actor playing Lord Grantham says about what it's like to act with Maggie Smith, the Dowager Countess, If you want to be the best, you've got to work with the best.

So to get any Hawk Hill jerseys, I'll have to be strategic. That wasn't the case this morning. I was a pack mule. I pulled Dr. Wooden all the way to the circle where I watched him pedal away while I spent half a minute trying to find my breath. And half a minute is what he beat me by, coming across the line with his second fastest time at 7.14.

On the Sprint, I led the group across the start and was planning to stay there as long as I could, again doing the work to possibly allow somebody else to slip away at the end, but Captain Fixie wanted to lead. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Who the hell knows what a gift horse is, but I know what it means, so I rode the Captain's wheel for a half mile and jumped just before the second stop sign. I felt somebody else on my wheel, but I pedalled like mad through the line for my first jersey of 2012, looking over my shoulder on the other side to find Vitaly, Vitaly, my old bete noire who Baleen said took all the jerseys I deserved. I'll have something to tell her tonight over some cheesy shrimp.

Mise En Place

We've got a week of menus on the ready here in San Francisco. That's what happens with 48 hours of rain.  I put them together on Saturday night, a little after 8, when Baleen began her hibernation, and the eating started for a well rested Baleen a little after 8 on Sunday morning with some buttermilk waffles. Lunch was a scramble of eggs, canned wild salmon and cooked feta, and a Sunday night dinner of Thai Chicken and Noodle Curry.

Monday's looking like Baked Eggs with yogurt and chili, a little reminder of Istanbul by way of an Israeli in London while Tuesday's Cheesy Baked Shrimp on Quinoa has less impressive a pedigree, but our expected first vote on the midweek taste test.

Wednesday's gonna be San Francisco fast food, omelettes and salad, Thursday a break day at either Flour & Water or the California Street Pizzeria Delfina with T & C, and then it's the weekend again. After all, we've got to do something between episodes of Downton.

Go Away

It's raining here in San Francisco. The farmers need the rain, the mountains need the rain, and us city folk need it, too, to ensure we're not taking Navy showers all summer. I'm okay with that rational rationing, like Baleen limiting my bike commute to dry days, but I don't like it. 

They're calling for three days of rain which means the Sierras can start looking like winter again. There's still a few months to go, but it's been a historic low so far. December was almost the driest on record and even with the good start in November the whole season's precipitation has only totaled 33% of the average.  

Still, I'm glad it's raining. Like I said, we really really need it, though you can be glad for something and secretly long for something else, too, like the dry warm months when you could bike in this beautiful city wearing hardly a stitch. 

Hens

If work keeps me from Hawk Hill, as it has, then Baleen's keeping me from missing it. Or at least making it easier. She came back from Palm Springs with another carry-on, a recipe from Barefoot Contessa that LG says is their weekly go-to.

The romance must be high down there in Los Angeles. The recipe is Engagement Chicken, the old wives' tale that if you cook this for your man, you'll be engaged within sixty days. We're late to the game, a year and a half into our marriage, so we'll see if it prompts a baby. Sixty days is March 18th, which would be ten days late for Baleen, and 18 days after Leap Day, the day I'm secretly hoping for.

March 18th would hurt. That might be another pound and a baby boy that skipped all those precious newborn clothes we've got for him and went right onto the 3 month onesies. But March 2nd is within sixty days, forty-four to be precise, which is what Baleen is hoping for and what last night's dinner allows.

Stingrays

I found my prolactin. It was in San Diego on top of a 12 foot wave. That's what 3 Speed told me we were surfing, a double overhead that Surfline called 4-6 feet, and that 3 Speed said should be doubled because they measure the middle to the peak.  In the comfort of my own apartment I've learned that's not the case, 4-6 feet means just that, but that's not what it felt like when I was pushing for its top.

It felt like I didn't really want it. I didn't. I was thinking, it's been awhile since I've been behind something like this, no matter what size it is. And it's closing out. And if I stay here, on this side of the wave, I'll be fine. So I did. Day two was much better, the waves a true 2-4 feet. If Surfline calls that waist to shoulder high, I say that's go for it height without fear of not making it back to Baleen.

Don't think I didn't get what I wanted. I did. It came around 5.30 each day with a cocktail on the patio, facing due west. It was followed by osso buco and the most buttery chocolate chip cookies, and preceded by breakfasts of frittata and Oma's favorite, German Apfel Pfannkuchen.

Evening sunset from 3 Speed and Lisa's apt

3 Speed applying the gremolata

Hopalong pausing before consuming the osso buco

3 Speed adding just the right amount of powdered sugar

A breakfast of German apple pancakes, just like grandma used to make

Palm Springs

Z & L,

As you prepare for your weekend in Palm Springs, let me prepare you for what's to come. I know you've both shared a bed with Baleen before. You know that her legs wander like a migrant worker in a good economy. Those were the salad days. 

She's a whole lot bigger now. What little room you once had is even littler. If she's got 2/3rds of the bed when you both lie down, and you can't sleep at 8.30pm so you step outside to read, there won't be any bed when you come back. Prepare to stand over her as your eyes adjust to the darkness, doing geometry in your head like a Minnesota pool shark, and ask yourself, which is the greater evil: waking and moving a pregnant lady or sleeping on the floor? The more you think about it now, the less you'll think about it am 3am.

Some primates (some percentage of the 10% of mammals where the male is involved in child rearing) gain twenty pounds of their body weight before their mate's give birth. It's the Animal Kingdom's way of preparing them to focus their energy not on their own sustenance, but that of their offspring's. I hope you have not gained 20% of your body weight for this weekend. That is above the call of duty. What I do hope is that you've slept thru the last few nights. Because you won't tonight. Or tomorrow. Be prepared for entirely chipper conversations at 1am and again at 4am. And if she's onto you, that she knows your answers reveal your true intentions of answering the question with the least amount of brainpower while trying to fall back asleep, be prepared for a punch in the gut.

Remember, this is only what I'm preparing you for. Those others, the unmentionables that nobody tells you about until they happen, you'll soon find out for yourselves.

Lots of love,
The cause of all your problems to come

Photo courtesy of L.G.M.

Kudos

Since work kept me from Hawk Hill yesterday, I went by myself this morning. Normally, my times on Hawk Hill suffer when I'm not chasing the hummingbirds. It's the absence of that competerone that I mentioned on Monday. Turns out, I've found another motivation.

Strava. That's the website that publishes and analyzes my times up Hawk Hill and everywhere else for that dedicated niche audience of Bay Area bikers to see. Thanks to Baleen, who got me the Garmin that stores the data to get uploaded to Strava, I spend a little more time than I should on that site, looking at my times and comparing them to others'. But that means that others do, too.

So sometime around 6.45am, the internal conversation went a little like this, If you're going to get up at 6am for a bike ride, might as well ride like hell. So I did, for a bit, and when I felt like slowing, the conversation went like this, It's not just you who will know that you slowed, but that dedictaed niche audience of eight other bikers who follow your times and you theirs. So with that, I kept on going, getting my fastest time yet on the final 2/10ths of a mile, the most painful part for no other reason than it's the end, and crossed the line with my second fastest time ever, one second off last week's PR. Hot bananas.

Short Delivery

Hopes are high for a short delivery over here in San Francisco. There's reason to believe it could happen. Baleen woke me up during the night with a vivid nightmare. The ghost of a young boy kept giving her a hard shove each time she tried to sleep. The little guy didn't look at all like our son to be, he just didn't want Baleen to fall asleep. It was her second nightmare in as many nights. While it's not good that Baleen's sleep was interrupted, how it was interrupted might be good news.

Studies have shown that women who dream are likely to have shorter deliveries. An hour shorter. They say it's in their dreams that the women do the hard, heavy emotional work of preparing for labor and the resulting maternity, and that by doing it then, they're resolving anxieties to come.

Even better, those who have nightmares instead of dreams have even shorter deliveries. So we're expecting a painless, in and out of the delivery room delivery. Ninety minutes tops, then a few days of hospital food, unless dad can sneak off to the CMPC neighborhood joint, Spruce for a burger to go for new mom Baleen.  

Health and Happiness

We're scheduling away here in San Francisco. Sleep schedule, potential postpartum doula schedules and meals for the parents to be. Monday was Mission Chinese with a guest appearance by James Bond while tonight is some potato and leek soup started on Sunday night along with a side of brussell sprouts swimming in butter.

On the calendar for the 21st, all day long, is newborn and infant care. That's a whole Saturday of somebody telling a wide audience, including Caitrin and Walker, how not to break the baby, while the evening of the 7th and 8th of February is the birthing class.

That's what Baleen's most nervous about. That progesterone we mentioned the other day is doing its thing, widening the birth canal, and Baleen's reminded of it each time her tendons ache, as they do now, she says. What I'm sure the birthing class won't tell us is what her pre-natal yoga instructor did, that birth isn't any harder than extending your arms flat like a table top and holding them there for five minutes. Just when you think you can't hold it any longer, you hold it for another minute. Voila. Happy and healthy baby appears.

Turn!

At 3:00 am this morning I shouted, Turn, Turn! loud as can be. Baleen woke up laughing and told me that she'd turn from her back to her side, but that I didn't have to shout so loudly. It was loud. I really shouted it. I was dreaming, I said. About what, Baleen asked?  I was playing in a soccer game with our son's team and our forward was in front of the goal with the ball headed his way and he needed to turn and go to goal. Baleen was wide awake now and wanting something other than what I wanted, which was to fall asleep again, and she asked question after question about our son and how he was playing and if he was aggressive or quiet or a good soccer player and how come he wasn't the one getting the ball in front of the goal.

Three hours later I was chasing St Nick and Subway up the Start. Christopher Robin was in bed, resting for the bigger hills now that he's a recognized racer, and the chase lacked a little uumph without him. I did what I haven't done much of lately, which is lead a group through the Flats, and when it came to the Circle, I was feeling it.

If I want to break 7:30 or even crack the Top 15 with 7:23, this is where it'll have to happen. Of the three main segments, I'm in the top 1% on the Start, the top 2% on the Flats, but just barely the top 10% after ther Circle. Woe to me. This morning's final push was good, my third fastest, and almost enough to catch Subway, but in the end, not quite good enough for either. 

41 seconds

That's the difference between riding solo up Hawk Hill on a Saturday morning and chasing Christopher Robin and St Nick. Each ride has a few variables, like the wind, but the biggest is who's there. I'll ask Baleen, the family scientist, if there's something called competerone that's lacking when I ride solo that keeps me from pushing past when I want to quit.

Lord knows Baleen's had some surges these last few months with a few more to come. It started with estrogen all the way back in London last summer when nobody knew Baleen was pregnant, not even her, and she walked out of an ice cream shop because everything smelled so foul in there.

Then came an abundance of progesterone, the one that among other things makes your joints and ligaments loose so you can get the baby from the inside to the outside. It's the cause of Baleen's latest complaint, which well get louder on March 8th, that her tendons are sore, which always makes me laugh a little. I'm still waiting for my competerone to kick in.

Grapefruit

Things will get a bit confusing here. Baleen's reintroduced me to Grapefruit, which was Shrimp Jr's nom de guerre in the made up bedtime stories told by Grizzly. Got it?

I didn't much like grapefruits then (the fruit, not the stories). When Grizzly would occassionally carve one for breakfast, dusted with sugar, I never ever liked it enough considering the strict sugar rationings imposed by Wood Duck to have any, and would refuse it as if it were a lemon.

But it's winter in San Francisco, despite the temperature, and when I run out of pears, Baleen's grapefruits are all that's left. So with a little maturity, I'm giving grapefruits a second chance, and while they haven't, and I don't think they will replace chocolate after dinner, it's a good complement. So far.

Boca Juniors

It feels like summer down here in San Francisco. 65 degree blue skies without a hint of rain. I haven't worn gloves since last year. It's like we're in the Southern Hemisphere with our winter acting as summer, but we're not. I know it becuase Margarine and Big Emma took us there a week ago. Not literally, mind you.

They cooked empanadas and locro, an Argentinan stew translated on their Patagonian menu as Cow Meat. There were bits of cow in there, along with plenty of beans and a few veggies, just the thing you'd want after a 15 mile hike (if you're Margarine and Big Emma), but what I really miss isn't that or the Malbec they served with it, but salsa on our ice cream.

Apparently, the Argentinians put dulce de leche on everything, according to the travellers, from their bread and coffee in the morning to the last thing they have before bed. The bottle they brought back simply said Salsa on the front and I did what Margarine did when Wood Duck handed him his bowl of ice cream and salsa, picked up the bottle and squeezed double the amount on top. Not a day has since passed since that I haven't thought of it (or you guys, M & B.E.).

Pancakes for Dinner

Baleen and I had an evening meeting with a potential night doula. It was 6:30 in the evening, toward the end of our day, but likely the beginning of hers. The email to arrange tonight's meeting arrived at 2am, which would be worriesome were it to come from an 18-yr old babysitter, but fine from a night doula as that's smack in the middle of her work day. Maybe she has pancakes for dinner.

We didn't. We had the second night of Baleen's chillingly good chicken curry. It's a meal of determination, one that required stops to three differenct grocers to find real curry paste, not a liquid curry sauce, and one that made her proud again.

Because the last time she made it, for Jimmy O, she didn't travel to three grocers, but got that curry sauce from the first one. Though it tasted fine to me, it didn't taste fine to her, and she'd been counting down the days until she'd get another chance.

PR

Well, shiver me timbers. A week in high altitude with a shortage of snow, forcing me and the family to cross-country and snowshoe, appears to have done the trick, akin to some blood doping down here at sea level as the first climb up Hawk Hill in 2012 was my fastest ever on two wheels.

Christopher Robin and St Nick were off at the gun, as they always are, and it took most of what I had to make it over the Start with them and then all of what I had to make it through the False Flats on their wheel. The motivation always dips when I've given my all only to see the hummingbirds pedal away when I've still got a third of the hill left, but I dipped my head and just kept pedaling.

It wasn't fun and when I got to the top, thirty seconds after the hummingbirds, I had to step off the bike and lean on the top tube, my legs feeling as wooden as an oak, and only then did it feel worth it, even if I had to wait another hour to get home and confirm that it was my fastest ever. And to top it all off, I got the sprint jersey through the Presidio.

2012

It's back to San Francisco and a week of routine for me starting with a day of work while Baleen continued her last day of freedom. That meant a healthy, wonderfully prepared meal of things that I hadn't thought of, like Dover sole wrapped with spinach and feta. I told you that Dover sole would be appearing again, and it has, thankfully.

Baleen's probably working from home tomorrow which means a few things. Breakfast together, even if hers is a healthy bowl of cereal while I return from the bike ride with Tartine, and another well-cooked meal, work permitting. Because working from home for me would mean walks around the neighborhood and general inefficiency, but for Baleen, it's the opposite.

It's heightened efficiency along with another 90 minutes of productivity in front of the computer rather than calling friends and family in the car. Half the time she never makes it out of her pajamas, which is how I find her in the early evening when I get home, starving for never having been outside. In about twenty hours I'll know if it's another wonderfully cooked meal at home or some wonton soup from Eric's, the Chinese restaurant a few doors down.