1 egg
2 T flour
1/8 t salt
1 apple, diced and peeled
1/2 c sugar
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 c nuts, broken
1 t vanilla

Beat eggs and sugar until smooth. Add flour, powder, salt. Add nuts, apple, vanilla. Bake in 8″ buttered pie tin 35 min at 350. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream. Serves 3-4.

Note: we triple this recipe for a 9×13 pan, but do not triple the sugar.

(Note for clarification: we were not on drugs of any kind. I feel it’s important to state that for the record. We were so squeaky-clean that you could’ve served a banquet for the Queen on our souls. Not that you’d want to, ’cause, dude, that would make for a really crowded table.)

One of us would slow down to catch his breath, look at the other, then start all over again. We reinforced each other in a positive feedback loop that had us laughing so hard that it hurt. Tears streamed down our faces, our stomachs hurt from doubling over, but we could not stop, not even if we wanted.

Last night, at w00tstock, it was just like being in Wendy Grace’s living room, except instead of Rob, there were three hundred geeks, and, instead of “The Commitments,” there was the greatest line-up of nerd music, movies and comedy this world has ever seen. And I just made my Saving Throw vs. Hyperbole, so that’s totally for reals. My sides still ache from laughing.

I don’t want to give a blow-by-blow recap, because Paul & Storm have said on their Twitter feed that there will be future w00tstock events and I don’t want to ruin the surprise. But I will give you these three things:

1) You couldn’t have asked for a better line-up: Paul & Storm, Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage of Mythbusters, Vork from The Guild doing stand-up, Molly Lewis and her ukulele, my new-favorite-comedy-musical-duo-who’s-not-Paul & Storm Hard ‘n Phirm, Josh A Cagan, Felicia Day singing “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?” (with the whole ensemble, plus Zabu). Sprinkled throughout were videos that were made with nothing but awesome.

2) There was so much love in that room. The audience was throwing out so much goodwill that it was impossible not to have a good time. It was like the performers and the crowd were wrapping each other into a giant nerdy Snuggie (but in a totally non-creepy way) and cracking each other up, not to cause snags in the show, but because that’s what you do with the people you love: you make them laugh until they’re on the floor, crying and gasping for breath. (What, you don’t do that with the people you love? What’s your deal?)

3) Okay, I’ll give one bit away: Adam Savage gave a talk called “One Hundred Wishes,” which was him going over the hundred things he’d like to do (build a house! Make a movie with his wife! Own a lightsaber, and a real plasma sword one, not one of the seventeen he’d milled out of aluminum). It was funny, and it was touching, and it was so nerdily joyful that it has given me a new goal, which is this:

I want to be part of the line-up for a w00tstock.

I want to be on the stage, in front of a microphone, reading to a theater full of geeks, and then making horrible pirate puns with Paul & Storm, Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage at the end of the show (and I got in one from my seat: as Adam Savage walked off stage after blowing one pun, I called out, “En-cARRRR!” Savage came back and said, “God, we can’t go out on that one.” WIN).

I want, in fact, to be reading the scene from the Principal’s Office from “The Right People” to that crowd, with musical and Foley accompaniment, the way Paul & Storm accompanied Wil Wheaton’s excellent “The Trade.”

So. There it is. w00tstock. When it comes back, if it comes to your town, go. You will not regret it.

(Rob: I am totally bringing you along next time.)

Anyway, remember how we were talking about the county ballot initiative to raise the sales tax for transportation, and how I was pretty sure we were going to get federal funding for a Westside subway extension, and you said it wasn’t going to happen in our lifetimes?

The MTA is going to start exploratory drilling in Santa Monica this week.

It’s still got a ways to go, but there will be a subway from Downtown to Santa Monica, and it’ll happen when we’re both alive and will be able to use it. And when it opens, I’ll be happy to pay for your first ride. See you on the train, Bobby!

Yesterday was the CBR finals, and I got dropped like a bad habit on the second lap. I was in the front with the mighty Ian Grimstad and tried to get a few wheels back, and I just couldn’t muscle my way into a gap. I wasn’t dead last, but I certainly wasn’t in the middle of the pack. Same thing happened at Brentwood, and my ITT time was 1:06.

On the other hand, I now have enough starts to upgrade to category 4, which is supposed to be smoother sailing. And I’ve got all winter to train.

Right now, I feel completely shagged out from this morning’s ride (and still a little squicked out by the elderly Irish gentleman who sat near us; he started out by talking about cycling and Oscar Wilde, and then began downloading his life story of travel, illness, and celibacy, including his longing “to hold a nude woman to my penis,” which he pronounced pennis. There are some things man was not meant to deal with before nine in the morning when the coffee hasn’t had a chance to kick in), and I’ve got a mountain of work to climb (starting with editing Windswept; now that it’s time to wade into it, I’m a wee bit frightened). The tomatoes have given their last fruit, and the weeds are threatening to make inroads in the roses, and I still have no goddamn idea what kind of creature is laying these monster turds by the composter…

And that’s a season. And this is a life. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Except a morning free of that Irish dude. shudder

I’m not perfect. I don’t always edit, and I let the occasional comma or capital letter slip away, and I feel like a lazy dumbass after I catch my mistake. However, I am still fully qualified to write the following to the person who left me a drive-by trolling last night:

Dear Adam Smith-

Thank you for your email and congratulations on your nom de web. I’m assuming you’re writing me in regards to my various Tweets and Facebook messages about my personal boycott of Whole Foods in light of John Mackey’s editorial about health care in the Wall Street Journal. Using the name of the father of economic theory in a drive-by flaming about economics? Well done!

However, my joy was short-lived when I saw the various grammatical mistakes in your email. I write, so words and the way they’re used is very important to me. I wanted to give you some corrections so you’d be able to express yourself clearer in the future.

First, it should be “cock-breathed liberals.” Note the dash between “cock” and “breathed”; it turns those words into a compound adjective, which is what you intended to do.

Second, you meant to say “You are such losing cock breaths,” not “cock breathes.” Since your implication is since that liberals engage in fellatio on a regular basis, the whiff of one’s partner’s penis is always on one’s exhalations (see the first correction above). What you wrote here implies that the penis is a respiratory organ, which would be a neat trick. My backstroke would greatly improve if I could use my cock for a snorkel.

So, if we put those corrections in, plus a few more for punctuation, capitalization and missing words, your email should have read like this:

Dear Cock-Breathed Liberals,

Fuck off!
Adam Smith

See? Clear, concise language. Granted, it still doesn’t make any sense, because my understanding of the Great Liberal Conspiracy was that liberals worked hand-in-hand with unions to bring down said successful business owners. But, hey, baby steps. We’ll work on thesis statements and backing them up next week. Good luck!

Love and kisses,
Adam Rakunas

(I do very much want to see Melissa Auf Der Maur’s Out Of Our Minds on Friday night, and I know Jetse de Vries and Daryl Gregory will be holding forth on some Very Cool Stuff. But otherwise, I’m going to try and soak in as much of Montreal as I can while making sure Andrew Tisbert doesn’t destroy my liver.)

Saturday
1500 Leave Montreal-Trudeau
2100 Arrive LAX

Sunday
0745 Rock the Brentwood Grand Prix with the Triathletix 4/5s
0830 Collapse

A few weeks ago, I finished my first novel. The other day, I finally got Bach’s Minuet in G. Yesterday, with Ian pushing and Jamie and Paul pulling, I stuck with the main pack of the Riviera Ride for two out of three laps*.

All three of these things were right at the edge of my current upper limits. The first draft was about twice as long as anything I’d written before. The Minuet only has one little position shift**. I needed Ian literally pushing me up Amalfi, one hand on my back as I pedaled like hell to keep up. These are things I can do, and I can probably do them well at this level of intensity and focus.

But I want to do more.

I want to lead the Riviera Ride for a lap. I want to play Bach’s cello suites (and Piazzolla’s tangos and Paganini’s Caprice and Zappa’s symphonies and whatever else there is). I want to write novels that entertain and sing. And all of these things will take work, a kind of work that I’ve never thought I could (or would want to) do before.

Here’s a secret: college was the first time I bumped up against my natural limits, and I wasn’t willing to do the work, which is the reason my diploma is from Cal Poly and not Harvey Mudd. I never got promoted at any of my video game gigs because I didn’t want to spend my off-hours learning how to crunch vectors in my head. These aren’t things to be ashamed of; they’re just facts (and, to be honest, I don’t regret the vectors-in-the-head thing. When you get down to it, learning how to Lindy hop and talk to girls are much more fulfilling).

It’s not the risk of failing that’s kept me away. It’s inertia. It takes energy to overcome, to build, to surpass those limits and build new ones. Yes, there’s going to be a point where I hit a hard wall (ie, I’m not going to ride like Contador, write like Moore, or play like Casals), but that doesn’t mean I can’t do my damnedest to find out where those walls are or how well they’re built. Before yesterday’s ride, I really thought I was giving it my all, but, no, I found I could dig a little deeper. I’d never written as much as I did on Windswept. And I was pretty sure I’d never get that tricky bit with the triplet and the hand shift. I bloody well got them, and I want to get more.

You do something, and then you stand on the edge of a cliff. Sometimes you fall, sometimes you die. And sometimes, you fly. So what else can you do but jump?

Today, that’s what I’m going to do.

* The Riviera Ride is three laps down San Vicente Boulevard to the bottom of Amalfi, then up through the canyons to Sunset and back to 26th and SV. You do this three times, and you do it fast.

** Actually, this is pretty self-explanatory: your fingering hand has to move up and down the finger board to get all sorts of higher and lower notes.

When I joined the Glorious Leisure Class in April, I promised myself I would spend every day at my desk in our home office until I wrote one thousand words of fiction. Some days I outdid myself, and others were a struggle. I had some interruptions for travel and family business (including a blazing hot week repainting my grandparents’ house. Tip for you homeowners: if someone tries to talk you into sandblasting the paint off the wood siding on the eastern-facing part of your house and not doing anything to protect that wood afterwards, politely laugh in his face and walk away. Your grandchildren will thank you later), but, more often than not, I sat and wrote.

Yesterday, I finished my first draft.

It’s ugly, and it’s a mess, and, no, you can’t read it. I don’t even want to read it, not until I’ve given my brain time to forget about the world of Santee Anchorage and its politics, weather and delicious rum-and-favor-based economy. I’m going to let this thing sit until Labor Day, the day of the Giro di San Francisco, when I will start my edits and revisions on the drive home (and if the Giro di SF is canceled, then I’ll just pound the hell out of myself on Latigo that morning, then edit). I’d hoped to have something to hand around to friends at Montreal, but it’s way to early for that. The novel I started at that bar is nothing like the one I wrapped up in a blazing hot hotel room in Arkansas, and it would probably be a good idea to make sure the thing swings from beginning to end.

How do I feel? Relieved, honestly. First drafts hurt, especially when they’re for something this big. My promise to myself on the bike course at Taupo to spend more time writing was certainly helped by spending a year focusing on that race. I know I can go the distance; now I just have to get there faster.

So. The first draft of Windswept, started July 27, 2007 at whatever that bar was where we had dinner for Yuki and Ken’s wedding that first night, Waikiki, Oahu, Hawaii; completed July 6, 2009, Gaston’s White River Resort, Lakeview, Arkansas. 84,037 words. Thanks to everyone who had encouraging words along the way. Now it’s time to get better.

Jeff Urban, when he’s not racing with us, takes very cool photos. When he is racing with us, his wife Jen takes very cool photos. One of them took this one of me climbing to the top at Ojai last week.

Please note: by the time this photo was taken, I was about a zillion miles behind the field. I was not working this hard to catch up; I was working this hard just to finish.

Now, if you’re like me and are way the hell behind, it’s easy for the refs to make the call. Someone tweets a whistle and points the side of the road, and you’re done. There’s no question that I’ve been pulled. However, once you get clusters of racers, things get a little tricky, which is what happened at Ventura, and is what will be solved by The Smart Future.

In the Category 4 crit, Jamie was holding his own about two groups behind the race leader. He wasn’t in danger of being lapped, though his bunch was slowly passing other guys who had fallen behind. As he passed the refs, there was a whistle, but no clear indication of who should go, just a blanket “You’re all out.” Jamie kept going, only to get yanked a few laps later.

Now, I can appreciate how tough a judge’s job is. You’ve got all these guys zipping by, and you’ve got to make quick calls to people who a) may not hear you or b) may be too tired to attention to detailed instructions. Bike racing tries to be as budget conscious as possible, and it’s cheaper just to point at a bunch of guys and relegate them than it is to, say, give everyone a timing chip that talks to racers and lets them know, so sorry, but you’re done, either by a piped electronic voice or electric shock.

Or is it?

After reading this post about a 90% drop in the price of RFIDs, I have your Smart Future solution.

Every year, I renew my USCF racing license. When I get my card in the mail, it comes with a bunch of RFID tags that I can stick to my bottom bracket. Every time I go to a race, I sign in, get a race number, and roll my bike over the Magic Cheap-Ass Timing Mat, which reads my RFID tag and ties it to my race number. Now, when we race, one judge can watch the race number while another can watch the screen that’s showing RFID results as we roll over the finish line, which is made of incredibly thin and durable Smart Tape, which is just reading the RFIDs rolling overhead. The screen judge will have a simple display of who’s in the lead, who’s lagging, and who’s about to get lapped. When it comes time to relegate someone, the magical software will spit out a list with race number, rider name and rider team for the announcer to say, before the rider approaches the line so he can actually hear his instructions, “Rider number 445, Adam Rakunas, please pull to the side.” If I’m in a pack with other guys, and I’m the only one getting pulled, the other guys can continue while I drift to the side, filled with equal parts shame and rage, an emotion that I will now call shrage.

I know there are RFID timing systems already available, but these rely on chips you wear on your ankle. They are also pretty expensive to rent and have long setup times and all sorts of other things that won’t work for a cheap-ass cycling race. But if NEC is talking about being able to print ten thousand RFID tags for a hundred bucks, then bracket tags could become an easy option. Hell, a race promoter could hand out his own tags in the race number packet, cutting USCF out of the equation completely. If the reader technology drops in price, then, dude.

Right. Let’s get to it!