Hold my hand like Kim Jong Un

It's been almost a year since I wrote this song but given the recent developments, I think our friend Kim deserves a reprise. Thanks to Rachel, Henry, Ingrid, and Gargamel for appearing in the video.

White Mountains 100 report

Hey Ben. I wanted to let you know you are 4th on the waitlist. There is a chance you could get into the race so you may want to plan on coming to the pre-race meeting.

Ed's email gave me a sweaty bowel tingle--like the feeling you get after downing some shady street food but before the full on food poisoning begins. I told Rachel in the next room.

"Are you going to do it honey if you get in? What about your wrist?"
"I think so. It's feeling a lot better." 

My name was the 117th pulled at the White Mountains 100 race lottery last October. According to the BLM permit only 65 racers are allowed to ski, bike, or run the course. 117 minus 65 placed me safely and comfortably at number 52 on the waitlist. All the glory of appearing on the roster of an elite adventure race, but no entry fee and no chance of actually having to ride (or push) my bike 100 miles on snow machine trails.  

Hey Ben. You are #2 on the waitlist now. 

The day before the race, Tyson sold me his Hüsker Dü tires (more umlauts can't help but make you go faster right?). Rachel dried bananas and I bought some salt capsules from Goldstream. I'd had problems cramping at the Chena River to Ridge race a few weeks before.

Martin gave me the bike after it got smashed on the back of my car last year. The aluminum inserts where the front axle grips the fork got ripped out but I used some JB Weld and they've held up so far. (Ann Olsson took this and the next few photos)

Hey Ben. You are now #1 on the waitlist. I will let you know if we get in drops before the meeting tomorrow. But there is a chance someone might not show at the pre race meeting.

10pm the night before the race: my bike is upside down in pieces on the kitchen floor to mount the tires and unstick the chain.

"This isn't a bike shop daddy."
"It's way past your bedtime Ingrid."

I hadn't even started packing my food or planning my clothes when I realized that I left my race packet at the church.

"I can go pick it up for you honey."
"Thanks so much Rachel."

Almost to Wickersham Dome, downing a dark chocolate Ensure in Amy and Cody's back seat, I reached for my sunglasses and remembered leaving them on the dash of the truck to defrost. Amy lent me her extra pair of shades but it was the faux-leather nose-guard taped to the glasses I was really worried about not having. It was -20F in the valleys and my sniffer is prone to frostbite. 

Frosty scramble stuffing my framebag at the startline.

"Why do you always wait till the last minute," Rachel's voice echoed in my head.

One bag of cashews and pretzels or two? Knee warmers on top of tights or underneath? Salt capsules in feedbag or framebag? How many Ensures?

Andrew handed me the liability waiver form (since I still wasn't officially in the race) and signed me in. I noticed that my hydration bladder bite valve was already freezing up and jammed it down my jersey. Now I just had to find a place to leave my final bowel movement.

"Everybody across the road!" Ann's megaphoned voice directed the racers to move from the parking area to the start line. "We'll all cross together."

Notice my bike on its side to the left of the sign. I left it there while frantically looking for a toilet. 

There was an outhouse at the trailhead but it was occupied. Ann gave the two minute warning.

"How much longer are you going to be"? I asked the stranger in the stall.

"Hopefully less than two minutes." 

I gave up and ran back to the start line.

They did the final countdown, we burst across the line, and I realized I didn't know where the trailhead actually was, beyond generally on the east side of the parking lot. I dropped in behind Joel (he always knows what's going on) who led me to the trail. The adrenaline rush scared the poop way back into me (I didn't hear from it the rest of the race) and soon enough, six of us had pulled away from the pack and we were pumping along the narrow ridge trail in a tight paceline of fatbikes.  Squinting into the rising sun, worried about my bladder nozzle and nose freezing, and grinning stupidly, I panted up the hill.

(Thanks to Mark Conde for taking race pics! For more click here).

Just before the first checkpoint, the top five riders started pulling away. I was feeling good, but not good enough to pursue so I let myself fall off the back. With 84 miles to go I didn't want to burn my legs, and figured I would still be able to finish in the top ten if I dropped back into the next group. It was 9:40am.

Can you tell which way the wind was blowing?

Going into a long ride, I always think I'm going to have so much time to really get some thinking done. But there's something hypnotic and soothing about sustained physical effort, and I end up just zoning out, or singing the chorus of "Highway to Hell" for four hours. 

Now that I wasn't in the top pack, it was fun to watch the leaders' tracks. As snow conditions changed you could see where they had stopped to air down their tires or take a pee. You keep tabs on your competitors' homeostasis by noting the darkness of their urine in the snow. You can also get a sense of how they're feeling if their tracks struggle on climbs or if they've walked soft sections. 

Despite the new snow, almost all of the course was firm enough to ride. I did go over the handlebars when my front tire broke through the crust just before Beaver Creek, but the soft snow caught me tenderly. I'd never ridden the trail before and the landscape was stunning. Craggy limestone peaks, scraggly spruce, and giant Alaskan blue sky.

Eating while riding a bike on a snow machine trail, is a bit like trying to apply eyeliner on the subway while wearing mittens. I always feel like Cookie Monster as I mash mittenfulls of nuts and gummy candies towards my face, spilling more than I get into my numb, stiff lips. I was burning through Rachel's banana chips and nut mix however, and I felt like I was keeping on top of my caloric needs.

It was noon as I pulled up to checkpoint two. To my surprise, there were three bikes outside the cabin, meaning there were only two riders ahead of us. Josh, Joel, and Kevin were inside fueling up and drying off. Kevin's bladder had leaked and Joel's knee was paining him. I cracked open another Ensure, which after four hours bouncing along the trail had deliciously solidified into softserve icecream consistency. The volunteers gave me a baked potato and I headed back onto the trail.

Now came the big climb over the Cache Mountain Divide. I aired down to six or seven PSI for more traction and took off my fluorescent jacket, which I tied around my shoulders. There was enough perspiration on it that it immediately froze into an outstretched cape shape, making it look like I was going fast even when I was barely crawling up the hill.

I'd seen pictures of the divide but didn't have any concept of how high it would be. After the checkpoint, the trail curved into a narrow valley terminated by an imposing mountain bowl. As I climbed the gradual gradient in the valley I scanned the bare cirque in front of me in unbelief, looking for some sign of a trail on its 30 degree slope. Thankfully, just above treeline the route turned left and breezed over a low pass into the next valley.

Crossing the divide, happy the trail had turned so I didn't have to climb the bowl to the left!

After a couple miles of fast powdery downhill (and another headfirst trip into a snowbank), the trail broke out onto the notorious "ice lakes." This section of wall to wall, angled overflow ice was really impressive and unnerving. Luckily there was no water on the surface so I just aimed my front end downhill and focused on not turning, pedaling, or braking. Jamie and Jason at the first aid tent gave me some encouraging hoots as my wheels touched snow again and I was on my way.

I made it to checkpoint three at 4pm. The weather was still fabulous, my mind was clear, and my legs were cramp-free. My final Ensure was frozen solid but in a moment of genius, Theresa popped it in a ziplock bag and plopped it in the hot water jug, thawing it in minutes. Josh was finishing up his meal when I got there and Heather showed up just as I was leaving, putting me between two strong riders, in fourth place. 

Wanting to catch up to Josh and put some trail between me and Heather, I hurried across the river. In my haste I hit a small section of overflow--this time with water on the surface--my front tire slipped out and I splashed into the water, slamming my injured left wrist on the ice. Miraculously, everything seemed OK and I hopped back on the bike and took off.

The next 18 miles of trail were like a winter wonderland, weaving through a narrow canyon and between giant spruce trees. For fear of another section of overflow, I didn't air up my tires, despite the firm trail conditions--a move that would come back to haunt me.

At 6pm I caught Josh again at checkpoint four. I quickly snarfed some Ramen noodles, drank some Coke and got back on the trail a minute or two before my red-vested friend. I was feeling totally fine and climbed hard out of the river valley. After twenty minutes with no sign of Josh I thought I might have put a gap on him and have a chance at third place. It had started snowing and my sunglassless eyes were getting tired of blinking back the flakes. Just as I pulled past the trail shelter at mile 90 I heard the clunk and whistle of a bike behind me.

"Can I sneak past you there"? Josh asked politely.

"Hi Josh! Of course."

Crossing some overflow just after Josh caught me.

Overflow is a delightful trail treat. You're riding along, it's 10F. Everything is dry and boring, then you get a refreshing splash of liquid water to wake your feet up and coat your drivetrain to make sure things run smooth.

A little snotcicle and some bloodshot eyes ten miles from the finish.

I still thought I was feeling fine but I was starting to suspect I wasn't feeling as fine as I figured. 18 miles on soft tires and my uphill attack on Josh took a lot out of me. I also hadn't drunk anything since checkpoint four and had only eaten a several-year-old, expired HoneyStinger waffel bar with a picture of Lance Armstrong on it.

When we got to "the wall," a 600 foot climb in less than a mile, we both dismounted and pushed out bikes up the hill. Josh is a speed walker and he quickly left me behind. I was growing more and more concerned that Heather was going to overtake me as Josh pulled farther ahead. When I looked back over the valley from the top of the wall I thought I saw Heather and Jay getting trail tips from a polar bear at the bottom of the hill. But after squinting real hard I realized it was just two spruce trees and a snow drift.

Finally a couple miles after the wall, around mile 95, I stepped off my bike and looked to the heavens. The light was almost gone and I was dizzy.

"It's too bad I got this far and will have to call for a pickup." I said to myself with my eyes closed. I took a long suck from my bladder and swallowed a couple salt capsules. "Wait, how am I going to call in?" I Cookie Monster gobbled a handful of cashews and sour-punch straws. "I guess I'll have to ride it cause I really want one of those hotdogs right now." I put my hat on took another swig of sports drink. "I wonder if they'll let me have extra mustard. That sounds really good to me." 

I stepped back on the bike and started teetering ever so slowly up the final climb. By the time I passed the "One mile to finish" sign, my strength had returned and I was feeling good again. Amazing how quick you can go from fine to hungry and hypothermic. 

As I crossed the finish line and stepped into the heated wall tent to claim my hotdog, I thought about the 60 racers still on the trail. If I was feeling that spent after 13 hours, how were they going to do it for 24 or 40? Those are the real endurance athletes in my opinion. Way more grit and commitment than I have. Kudos.

My body pulled through the trek relatively unscathed. I did discover the following ailments the day after the race: frost-nipped belly button (my jersey came untucked), rattly lungs from so much cold air, a slightly raw bottom (would have been a lot worse without the high-quality Goldstream Sports chamois), wind-burned nose (peeled a little bit two days later), and a sore wrist from my previous condition and reinjury on the ice.

Thanks to everybody who put on the race and a special thanks to Archana and Martin. Martin gave me the carcass of his bike (which I rode in the WM100) after I totalled it in a car crash. Archana is running a far longer and more grueling race than this and still is thinking of others along the way. 

Do you pee in the shower results

 I know it's been a long two weeks for some of you, waiting for the answers from our important survey. Sorry for the delay and thanks for your patience. Thanks to your outreach, we had an impressive response with 203 participants split equally between the sexes. For results this exciting and with such serious implications, you want to be sure you've double checked everything before publishing.

So, do you pee in the shower? The short answer is, yes you do (or at least it's very likely that someone who shares your shower does). Only 7% of survey participants reported never having peed in the shower and 59% said they urinated "often" or "always" while showering.

Figure 1. The distribution of responses classified by shower peeing frequency. Numbers 1-6 correspond with the following responses: 1. I have never peed in the shower 2. I have on occasion peed in the shower 3. I sometimes pee in the shower 4. I often pee in the shower 5. I almost always pee in the shower 6. Since urine and shower water are the same temperature and make the same sound, I don't know if I have ever peed in the shower.

To analyze the results I coded the shower peeing frequency responses 1-6 (definitions in the Figure 1 caption). The average of all responses was 3.7 (between "I sometimes pee" and "I often pee") with a standard deviation of 1.3. A whopping 37% of respondents reported always peeing in the shower (surprising even to me, a frequent shower pee-er). Also surprising was the lack of significant differences between sex, age, and relationship status (Figures 2, 4, and 5). The results suggest that we are all equally likely to pee in the shower.
Figure 2. Comparison between female, male, and unknown (not reported) sample groups. The black line at the center of each boxplot represents the average. There were 97 male responses, 98 female responses and 8 responses where sex was not reported. Though the mean response for males was slightly higher, the difference was not statistically significant.


Figure 3. A word cloud generated from the text entered by participants explaining their reasons for peeing or not peeing in the shower. The size of the word represents how often it was mentioned in survey participant's responses.

There were also some surprises in the reasons why participant's did or did not let loose in the stall. By far the most common justification for shower urination was some variant of, "Why not!" or "Because I can." People just like to be able to do what they want to do. Though we didn't ask about nationality, anecdotally several of the self-described "never" pee-ers were European, which raises the question if their reticence to exercise this quotidian liberty comes from an underdeveloped sense of freedom, dulled by years of oppressive socialism.

The top reasons to pee were:

1. Why not? (often followed by, "It's all the same pipes")
2. Convenient
3. Feels good
4. Conserves water
5. Saves time
6. Treats athlete's foot

The top reasons not to pee were:

1. Gross
2. Inconsiderate to others

Other justifications were sometimes contradictory:

• "It's gross and if I do, I do it carefully. If you pee on the wall you are sick though."
• "I like to see how high I can pee."
• "Just to try it.  Only at home though."
• "I was in a hotel room and I figured 'what the heck, it's not mine.'"
• "It's like a full body bidet."
• "Mostly convenience, I also like the challenge of getting into the smaller drain. It is so easy to get in the toilet but getting it into the small drain is really a treat."

For the record, there doesn't seem to be any medical support for the claim that this practice treats or prevents athlete's foot. If you are curious, here is the link to see the full list of responses. 

Figure 4. Shower peeing frequency by age.

Figure 5. Shower peeing frequency by relationship status.

Do you pee in the shower?

Riding with three friends a couple of weeks ago on a warm day in January, the conversation turned to peeing in the shower. Two of the riders admitted to shower peeing and considered it a widespread and normal behavior. Two of the riders expressed disbelief and thought the behavior was deviant and uncommon. A mutual German friend suggested administering a survey to get a non-biased sample. Please submit your answer below (all responses are strictly confidential) and we will publish the results next week. Thank you.

Ingrid's art

It's Ingrid's birthday today. One of this year's many developments is her graduation from scribbles to pictures of things. Her drawings provide peaks into her wonder filled mind (though like Rorschach inkblots, they may reveal more about me than Ingrid). Below are a few examples since September spanning her "persons" artistic period (here's a link to the complete collection):

Not only has her work evolved from designs to subjects, it usually has a back-story  I can't tell if she draws with the story in mind or looks at the finished piece and invents an explanation.

In September she moved from faces to whole individuals.

October brought multiple individuals with distinguishing characteristics (Ingrid with curly hair and me with the ant like body).

The middle of November was a rich time for her. With chores out of the way, and the world a frozen wasteland outside, she could devote all of her time to drawing. She discovered perspective and started incorporating objects (usually represented by a squiggle). 

Then the backgrounds began. In this case a sky.

And now a sun. Notice Ingrid's signature (the I) below this family portrait.

  

This piece from late in November shows Ingrid revisiting and expanding her previous motifs. Hands now have fingers, legs have two sections, and the body is carefully colored.

And my favorite of the collection. Sun, sky, grass, something in the grass, body language, and something ineffable that draws it all together.

Travels and travails

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. -The Coda

Uncle Sam introduces Henry to night vision goggles.

Initial hesitancy finally gives way to appreciation.

 I knew I left that coat someplace.

 Brighter than Alaska

 Grandma and Ingrid were instant friends.

 More sand than in Alaska too.

80 years and three generations between these same colored eyes.

Just chillin

Accidental Utah brownies. 

We found my childhood teddybear. Ingrid kept him safe. 

Since Grandma's memory has started to go Grandpa has become the caregiver. I've never felt such a strong spirit of love and dedication. They hugged and laughed every day.

Ingrid took this picture of Henry and Rachel. Fun sister or squash me sister?

Even before this trip there was a lot of stuff needing checking off at work. Being behind becomes really problematic when you realize that it’s going to take more than a frenzy of productivity to catch up. An all nighter isn’t going to dig you out, and your subconscious knows it. You are too far back to sprint to the pack and draft. If an evening of brutal typing isn’t going to meaningfully reduce the problem, why not instead listen to Manu Chao and have a mint chocolate chip ice-cream cone? After all, some work does solve itself when you neglect it. Right? That’s when I start yearning for freedom—which for my child mind still means winning the lottery or marrying a baroness.

“Can you imagine how you’d feel if you could just be done with work and clock out?”

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if you didn’t have to work? You could write songs all day and open a free bike shop.”

Past procrastination and well into delusion. When the payoff is so many weeks ahead, I’m much more likely to write a blog post than a dissertation.

“When you’re this far behind, it’s either abandon ship or change how you live.” I told myself a few days ago. So I read Frank Herbert’s final novel, Chapterhouse: Dune. Herbert writes dialogue like other authors write combat sequences, and after only a few pages of vibrant conversation, I realized I wasn’t going to get any work done until I finished the book. Besides, it would refresh and give me a new psychological perspective on my research. Right? And then, sure enough it did. In a chapter preface, a line from the Bene Gesserit Coda: Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

As someone who has tried both approaches I certainly feel that’s true. But do wisdom sayings really change us? Can they provide our flabby self-control the special fitness plan it needs to actually meet goals and keep commitements? I see people around me who fulfill their potential. I read stories about them. Are they genetically distinct? Relatives of Stephen Covey? Or is it that they have better bits of encouragement on their fridge magnets?

Our Sunday school lesson yesterday was on different approaches to modifying behavior. Is it most effective to focus on do or be? We read Lynn Robbins' recent talk, "What manner of men and women ought ye to be?"

"Many of us create to do lists to remind us of things we want to accomplish. But people rarely have to be lists. Why? To do’s are activities or events that can be checked off the list when done. To be, however, is never done. You can’t earn checkmarks with to be’s. I can take my wife out for a lovely evening this Friday, which is a to do. But being a good husband is not an event; it needs to be part of my nature—my character, or who I am."

I want things I can check off. Tasks which won't have to be revisited. But if I can reallocate energy spent yearning for a carefree existence towards cultivating a love of work, then I will be free (and not so darn behind in everything). Stop yearning for a break and enjoy the toil. The break will be sweeter and the toil tastes better too.

A bit of wisdom from a poster in the halls of AGU.