Crenellated Flotsam

The Olympics are over, which is good news for my television. The old beast needs to rest up the next two weeks to be ready when Formula 1 starts up again in Bahrain and bicycle racing starts filling up my TiVo.

I’m either a huge fan of the Olympics or a sucker for them, depending on your point of view. No matter how obscure the sport, I get a huge kick out of watching these people from all the world trying their best at them. My fasciantion, of course, isn’t served well by American coverage, but maybe I’ll get to that later.

I run only slightly faster than an oil spill and my skiing experience is limited to one downhill run. I would have done more, but I never got the hang of turning so my descent was a series of straight lines and tipping over to avoid running into trees. I was exhausted from all the standing up by the time my ex completed four complete runs, smiling and waving at me each time she passed.

I’ve never handled a javelin, discus, or shot, so the field events are as foreign to me as ice skating. In short, I’ve never been much of an Olympian, but did finish in second place at some thing at our local playground, finishing just behind my best friend of the time and ahead of no one. His dad was a gym teacher who took great delight in signing us up for sporting things no one else in the world was aware of.

Anyway, the Olympics are over and my eyes can remember what it’s like to go hours without tearing up. No, the heartwarming personal stories that interrupt the coverage don’t do much for me, but seeing the smiles of the winners moves me. I learn all I need to know from listening to the five second commentary that introduces them while they compete. Their faces, though, speak volumes to me, and I can’t look at any cheering crowd all decked out in their country’s garb without thrilling for them.

See, that’s the thing. I feel as happy for the French when someone from their country wins as I do for the US when we claim the prize. Maybe even happier. We’ve got a lot here in the US, which makes a medal for Croatia or Finland all that more precious. We’re the world’s super power last time I looked, which taints our victories for me and reminds me of Kramer’s wins in Seinfeld over his karate class of ten year olds or Monty Python’s student-teacher soccer match.

I’d like to see more of the actual competition than just the Americans and those who tip over, but as long as I’m outnumbered in this country, all I’ll ever see is how great we’re doing. That’s not very sporting to me, but unless the games come to a city near me and I can attend in person again and sit through a day’s boxing matches between people I’ll probably never hear about again, it’s what I’m stuck with.

Which reminds me: If anyone needs to prove Andy Warhol’s fifteen minute thing, watch the Olympics. That Canadian woman whose mother died just before her skating is someone I don’t think I’ll hear about ever again. I wonder what she’ll do with her life.

Not that I ever gave it much thought, but …

17

That sound you just heard is the noise my brain makes when I learn something new and it expands to include the new information. I’m, naturally, pretty used to it by now, but it sometimes frightens children or disturbs those right next to me.

Today, thanks to the Olympics, I actually watched part of a game of field hockey for the first time in my life. Although I’d heard about the game quite some time ago and knew it existed, I’d never seen a match or game or whatever it’s called. Now I have, and I must admit to being underwhelmed, if not bored.

My ten or fifteen minute exposure showed me all I need to know about the game, which is that it’s soccer (or football or futbol) played with shepherd’s crooks and what I suspect to be a harder, solid ball. The main thing I took away from the experience, and the first thing I noticed, is that the game looks to be an exercise in torture for the back. There’s a great deal of bending over, which I suppose would make it a natural for anyone who works all day picking fruits and vegetables.

The only reaction I had while watching Germany win the Gold Medal over the Netherlands was … ouch.

According to many, the Amgen Tour of California is the premiere bicycle racing event on the planet. One reason for this may be that it’s the last event team Jelly Belly will be part of in California, except for the Sea Otter Classic and the mildly less famous Chevron Manhattan Beach Grand Prix.

Anyway, I went to see the finish of Saturday’s race in nearby Santa Clarita.

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I could almost feel the sweat, except it was a cold day and they weren’t sweating nearly as much as I’d seen before.

Instead of hanging out on the side of the road, I was near the finish line, at the 100m mark. I tried to watch myself on TV, but my TiVo improperly changed channels and I ended up with two hours of pretty exciting weather channel broadcasting. I tried, again, to catch the later showing, but the channel that showed the race started the program half an hour late, which meant I never saw the last half hour of the program which would have featured me and the thrilling climax.

The one thing I noticed this time, being on flat ground, is that the peloton, or group of 100 or so riders who are all bunched up, generate one hell of a lot of wind. It wasn’t noticeable the first couple times they passed (they had to do a few short laps to finish the race for some reason, probably something American), but on their last pass they were right next to the barrier that kept me from interfering with the race.

They generate, I’d say, as much wind as an eighteen wheeler.

The other big difference about being at the end of the race is that you can spend quite a bit of time and money buying souvenirs and crap from the many vendors, including Health Net whose team, ironically enough, was nearly all wiped out from illness. I bought a pair of bicycling gloves for the reasonable price of $5 and a thermal shirt for the less reasonable amount of $35. It says Rock Racing on it, another new, hip team, whose designer owner has so much money to burn his team’s support cars are Cadillacs.

Not that the other times use Toyota Corollas, mind you. Racing, at this level, is all about money and the burning thereof. It takes money to win, and winning is just about everything in this competitive sport.

We left before finding out who won. There was one of those incidents, one of those judge review things, that can take forever. Also, the rain was nearing our location, and while my UCLA knit cap has much to recommend it, sheltering one from the rain is nowhere among its many benefits.
If you’ve never seen a bike race, I’d recommend it. You get to spend hours eating chips waiting for a brief glimpse of what looks remarkably like lots of guys riding bicycles for a living flanked by motorcycles and cars carrying spare bikes, yelling managers, and first aid. Plus, sponsors come by and give you free shit. I snagged a can of Xcito energy drink, a product proudly produced in the USA by CytoSport, which I’ve never seen before.

One can expect it to stay in the fridge until someone really sleepy drops by.

It’s nearly July and that can mean but one thing: hunting season. I just printed up my hunting license to kill (the small version) and was preparing to begin my annual onslaught against the ants when a singular event occurred. I was in the kitchen scouting out ideal locations for the sweet, sweet nectar of death that ants crave when a rodent bumped into my ankle.

It surprised me more than her (or him), not the least because I don’t, in fact, resemble the old lady from the nursery rhyme. Also, and more importantly, it led me to exchange my ant hunting license for the varmint variety.

Although I didn’t leap onto a chair, I didn’t get a good look at the critter, either. It may have been a mouse, it may have been a small rat, but I wasn’t convinced there’s any functional difference, anyway. It was an unwelcome guest in my kitchen.

Ideally I’d devise a means of catapulting the critter out of my property. I’ve had luck in the past with putting a handful of dry dog food in the bottom of a plastic bucket near the steps that lead to the back yard, but not often. What’s ideal about that method is the mouse smells the food, steps off the step to get it, and ends up trapped in the bottom of the bucket. Then, it’s a short ride in a shoe box in the early morning to the refuse bins behind some fast food place I never go to.

But that takes two things: luck and time. While rodent hunting season, I’ve decided, doesn’t officially begin until the first of the month, housecleaning may begin this weekend.

I went to the store and bought some traps. Two of the old, wooden and baitable variety and two plastic ones (“Power Kill Rat Trap”) that trip when stepped on. I think that should be enough, but I’m never convinced they’re ruthless enough. A cat or terrier, I think, would be much better at hunting down my enemies.

It would be better, of course, to use poison, but there’s a couple problems with that tactic. One, if successful, there ends up being a smelly corpse stuck in the wall or under the house half the time and while that stench doesn’t last long it’s hardly conducive to enhancing my appetite. The other is that I have the unwarranted fear that one of the dogs will find and eat the poisoned remains and follow the little rodent over that rainbow bridge.

Yeah, I know, it’s completely unrealistic. My dog has never eaten roadkill or even expressed much interest in it, but it’s not a logical impossibility. These traps will have to be set in places the dogs can’t get to or step on, but I’m optimistic that they’ll be more successful than I would be if I got a pellet gun and played Rambo.

So, the traps are set and while you’re reading this, I’m huting.

This weekend marks the return of Formula One racing, the 2007 edition. The cars sound better than ever, especially when listened to very loud, look better than ever, and with the notable exceptions of Michael Shumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya, the drivers are all back, too (even the one who most resembles a twelve year old girl).

This may also, because of proposed rule changes, be the last year I follow the sport. One of differences between F1 and any other motor sport is that the cars had to be constructed by the teams from scratch. The teams built the cars, hired the drivers, and tested them against the other teams. Starting next year, a proposed rule change would allow the teams to buy cars and race them, and I think that would render the Constructor’s Trophy just plain silly. If they go that way, they may lose me as a follower, and I’m sure they’re taking that into consideration.

This year, also, they’ve added a little light just in front of the cockpit that will indicate if the car and its driver has suffered excessive g-forces during a crash. This would alert rescue personnel about the wisdom of moving the driver, and I expect something like this to be on all cars in the future. It’s a simple thing and could save many neck and spine injuries.

Of course, the little light would have blown up when David Purley set the record for survivable g-forces back in 1977 when he and his LEC experienced 178 gs (!!) when they went from traveling over 100mph to zero in about two feet. The fact that he lived through it prevents us from saying it came to a dead stop. Yeah, he was messed up and broke not a few bones, but he lived to race again. I’ve heard his car is on display somewhere, Doninghill I think.

So it may be a bitter-sweet season for me. I guess it’s progress and all for the best, but it’s also another indication that the world I grew up in and loved is the also past.

If you were wondering what Toyota was doing with all that money they make selling the Camry and 4-Runner, meet the TF-107, which was debuted this past weekend. I don’t know what they do with their profit from hybrids, but one can only hope it isn’t hosting banquets featuring whale.
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This year Toyota promises to win a grand prix for the first time, ever! “Our fundamental target this year is to get the first victory,” says Chairman and Team Principal Tsutomu Tomita. I wish him luck. As he noted, “We announced that a year ago, but we failed to succeed in 2006. And therefore we want to repeat that challenge in 2007.” I’m sure some of the Toyota executives are wondering when they’ll get a payback for the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars they’ve spent chasing F1 titles.

They could do a much better job of winning if only McLaren, Ferrari, and Renault weren’t coming out with new cars, too. McLaren’s already introduced their 2007 challenger, the Vodafone MP4-22 McLaren Mercedes, which is as beautiful a car as one would ever wish to see.

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The TF-107 is a pretty car, but I’ve got a fondness for red and white, my high school colors. This year’s car carries the same sponsor, tires, engine, and drivers as last year, so they’ve got consistency going for them. Still, they keep finishing behind Honda, which has to really piss them off.

They also keep losing to Ferrari, who’ve also launched their new car.

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As always, if you like Italian racing, red is where it’s at.

Over the weekend I began receiving gifts, the kind that come from those who care. Among others, my neighbors installed their Christmas lights and due to their generous use of extension cords I can now run portable heaters and other high energy devices. I can hardly wait to begin smelting iron and welding up some wrought iron goodies for all the people on my list!

I have some of those electric icicyles, too, and should probably put those up some time today, but it isn’t as if this house is dreary as Scrooge’s would have been. This year there’s a couple of those inflatable things resting out front, one snow globe and one waving snow man. Very festive.

Except during the day, when it looks as if there’s been some sort of industrial accident that resulted in puddles of plastic.

While the weekend started off poorly with Army losing to the Navy, a game I stumbled on and that I watched in respect of my late father, later on, of course, my Alma Mater triumphed over the hated men in skirts. I’ve yet to visit the campus, but I want to see all the cardinal taunts painted on the Bruin walk so I can be smug. In the meantime, I have to console myself with this article from the Daily Trojan, which I saw on Saturday.

It’s always good when UCLA wins. I don’t know why, since the athletic departments have little to do with the school, but it quiets some unwelcome noise and reminds me of the days when my car had a bumper sticker.

No, not the last word. I’m not that presumptious.

With the end of the 2006 World Cup (vai Italia!), message boards across the US are pretty much done with talking about soccer. As could be expected, many in the US deride the sport, mock it, and remain as partisan and chauvinistic as they do when they talk politics.

I don’t see the glorious and fulfilling future promised me, nor does it leave me much hope for humanity.

For those who complain about the lack of scoring, or of ties, I sob. One of the neat things about soccer is that it isn’t easy to score. I know Americans like that more than just about anything, but I like things that are hard. Hell, in basketball you can score a couple times every minute, so that can’t be hard at all. American football has five to ten scores each game, and baseball isn’t all that far behind. Used to be there were pitcher duals, but those went away when the American League came up with the Designated Hitter. Between that and aluminum bats, I’m surprised the sport, long my favorite, still survives at all.

The other knock against soccer is all the diving, writhing athletes. Yeah, it bugs me, too, but isn’t any worse than basketball’s final two minutes of intentional fouling nor football’s use of intentional grounding. If you can overlook those, you can overlook soccer’s acting.

I love the World Cup. If that makes me less a man, or less an American, I admit guilt.

Hah! Fooled you! You probably thought I was going to write more about soccer, and maybe I will, but first I need to write about the other big sporting event going on now, bicycle racing.

I created a new page for my website, one that shows the results of the Tour de France in a more conventional scoring format. On that page I indicate some of the things about the Tour’s scoring that annoy me, and I also mention how I get around them. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t find things to complain about.

Russ’s World Famous, Formula 1 Scoring Tour de France page.

Like I say there, I was going to make a column showing which bikes are in the lead, but for a racing-type event I’m astonished by the utter lack of talk of which bikes are used. Motorsports talk a great deal about cars, engines, body designs, but none of that is mentioned in the TV coverage here in the US. It looks as if each team rides one bike, and no two teams ride the same ones, but the bikes are never mentioned.

Nor are the gears (universally Campagnola, I think) or any other elements of the bikes. In fact, the emphasis is so limited to the riders that the bikes don’t matter at all. In other endurance-type rallies (and I’m thinking of the Dakkar now), if your vehicle dies so do your hopes of finishing.

But in the Tour de France, the bikes are a replaceable commodity, and I think that’s a shame.