Riding The Weather

That's how Danny Chew, he of the Dirty Dozen en RAAM, used to describe his approach to riding on the road in Pittsburgh in the winter. It's a simple approach, essentially meaning that any decent day you get, you try to ride, because between November and April, there will be plenty indecent ones. Decent as in: no snow or ice, and temperatures above your personal tolerance level. Since we got back from Rome (where we had coffee outside, in the sun) a little over two weeks ago, I've had to use the same approach here in Holland. It had gotten cold while we were gone, and the first day back riding to Amsterdam, I got confirmation when I saw a cat walk across the ice outside of Weesp. Having done nothing on the trip for five days straight, I was determined to get a full week of riding to the city, even if it would be a sub-freezing one. In Milwaukee, I lowered my personal threshold to about 10 Fahrenheit (-12 Celsius), so I'd get through a little bit of Dutch frost. The second morning was cold and clear, and just like a few weeks earlier, I saw the sun rise early in the ride. This time, however, it looked more like a radioactive blood orange, which I'm sure had to do with the cold air. The third day was notable too, because as I was plodding my way across the railroad bridge outside of Weesp I got passed by a very sharp looking dude on a Fort cross bike. There was no way I was going to try to get on his wheel, and not just because on the way in I tend to take it easy. This looked like a guy who was in the middle of cross season. My streak ended on that third day, because on Thursday it snowed, the beginning of a week with more snow and generally sketchy conditions on the roads. I rode the weather for as long as I could--and I got back into it as soon as it was possible again, last weekend. I had another three-day streak that may well prove to be the conclusion to my riding in 2009. Saturday a Lage Vuursche coffee ride on the mountain bike, as it was still slick here and there. In one turn, in Hollandse Rading, the fat tires kept me upright where the skinny tires might have been inadequate. The next day, a regular winter Sunday ride, was a few degrees above freezing, and I got a real ride (= no coffee stop) because my Sunday guys, the ones who insist on riding through the woods this time of year, never made it. One of them took a hard fall on the icy trails, and they had to cut their ride short. So much for riding the tractor this time of year. After learning the news, I just continued my loop, riding 38 winter miles on just one banana. This was after a big dinner the night before--don't try this on snack food or you'll bonk horribly (to add another Danny term). Monday was sunny, calm, and again above freezing. It's the holidays, so no reason to pass up an opportunity like that. I did the hooky loop again, averaging 18.5. December 31 is tomorrow, so perhaps I can add a few more miles to the annual mileage I'll be calculating in a little less than 24 hours. Don't touch that dial!

Obama's First Year: The World As It Is

It's been busy since the trip to Rome, and there has been snow, which has kept me off the bike and is making me cranky. But I did do an-op ed for the holiday editions of the GPD newspapers over the weekend, and I just saw that one paper has picked it up already. It's an evaluation of Obama's first year in office and addresses the criticisms from the right and left by arguing that given the challenges a year ago, he's done pretty well. Pretty well would already apply if all he had done was avoid big blunders or disasters, but I argue the president has done better. Perhaps more important, through his thoughtful, deliberate approach to the challenges he has faced, we can have some confidence that things will continue to be handled in a serious and pragmatic manner. This is quite a bit to hope for (in case you're disappointed now). Without the necessary votes in Congress, or a certain convergence of your plans with the interests of powerful, independently acting nations such as Russia and China (or Brazil, or India), not much is going to get done. So stop the timidity talk. It's called pragmatism, and it's a requirement for an American president like rarely before. Anyway, read all about it (in Dutch). I actually managed to bring cycling into the piece, by quoting my old cycling mentor and former legitimate amateur racer, Thijs, who casually used to say: "yes, go try do it" whenever you'd criticize the performance of one or other cyclist on tv.

My Own Private Hooky Ride

It was calm, it was sunny, and it was not too cold. So even though I have stuff to do, I just had to take advantage, also because I'll be on the road for the next five days with no opportunity to ride or do much of anything else. So at 2:30 I sneaked out for a quick, hour and ten minute, 21 mile loop by way of Vreeland, Loenersloot, Baambrugge, Abcoude, and Weesp. It's all pretty, but you've got to love the little river Gein. All small ring, but still 18.3 average, which actually was a bit too fast given that I had just skated yesterday. It's good to ride after putting all that pressure on the legs, but it's important to be spinning. I was spinning today (39x15), but maybe just a little too fast. Must have been the weather. On the way into town I chased down my old neighbor Sabina, a year-round commuter, who had been skating this afternoon. She was riding the 10 miles home from the Amsterdam speed skating oval, because she knows the right way to enjoy yourself and stay in shape.

Surging in Afghanistan

The New York Times reports on how President Obama came to his decision to send the extra troops in support of (a modified version of) General McChrystal's new strategy. Early on, the president came to the conclusion that the consequences of failure in the region are unacceptable. After that, it was primarily about finding an approach that has a chance to work in a reasonably short period of time so that the Western role in the country, at least the leading part of it, can be temporary. We're looking to turn things around in Afghanistan, a little like we helped turn things around in Iraq after 2006, so that there will be a chance for a more favorable development--for ourselves and for the people there. The former won't happen without the latter. That's all we can do, really: give ourselves and the people there a chance. There are too many uncertain factors, too much burdensome history in both places, to use words like "winning," or "resolution." At the same time, Iraq since 2006 has shown that apparently unstoppable downward slides also can be halted and partly reversed. What this NYT article is lacking is significant detail on how the president and his advisers defined the consequences of failure (presumably the result of a decision now to pull out of Afghanistan)--which doesn't mean that such a definition, such a discussion doesn't exist in the White House (or that the Times didn't do an article on this earlier). When I try to imagine the possible consequences of taking the advice of the many proponents of giving up on Afghanistan, I don't feel reassured at all that a withdrawal now would not make things worse for everyone except the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Elaboration: What I forgot to highlight from the Times article is how it reports on Obama's dismay about the cost of all this: human and financial, and how conscious everyone around the table was of earlier cases of "escalating" a foreign war (Vietnam under Johnson being the classic case). Anyone who knows anything about, for example, the Vietnam case will understand how this is different, and how the term "escalation" is hardly appropriate here. Maybe I'll elaborate more on this last point later. In the meantime, the Times piece is worth reading in its entirety.

First Salt of the Season

They put it on the bridges in Weesp, this morning. It had been clear last night, and I had been looking at the almost (one day short) full moon the whole way home from Amsterdam. When I got on my way today around 8am, it was mostly cloudy, and it didn't feel that cold. But better safe than sorry. Today was the first anniversary of my two falls due to iced-over bridges in downtown Amsterdam. It's that time of year. By now, I've pulled out all the winter gear, except for the balaclava. Hasn't been cold enough for that one. But I was happy this week to be wearing the thick tights and to have my gloves. This morning, looking over my shoulder as I was reaching the city, I could see the sun come up over some clouds just above the horizon, which was pretty; but when it was time to go home there was enough moisture in the air to make me take off my glasses. Wet weather, but not rain. In three weeks, the days will be getting longer again--not than today, but than December 21. It's something. Oh, and the whole way home I was thinking of how nice it would be to be able to bite into a big, juicy Qdoba burrito. No such luck in Holland, although rumor has it Chipotle is planning to expand into Europe. It would be nice to have that comfort food available, especially this time of year.

A Pacific President for a Pacific Century?

That could have been the title for my op-ed this week in papers of the GPD syndicate. Obama has called himself America's first Pacific president, and much of what goes on in the world in the coming decades will be determined by what the U.S. and China do, and how much of it they manage to do together. Instead, however, we came up with something about Obama keeping alive America's China dreams. The idea was for a historical perspective on the U.S.-China relationship, so I talk about U.S. expectations with regard to China since the "Open Door" notes around 1900. Meanwhile the future of America's 20th century China expectations is here, and it's not clear if Americans are happy about the way things have come out. China has become quite powerful (really the second of only two powers with a genuinely global foreign policy) whereas the U.S. has lost ground. The piece naturally ends with President Obama's recent visit. Given his own troubles and China's ascent, he was wise to play it cautiously. The Chinese leadership has its hands full at home, not least because it's a dictatorship. Part of America's expectations of China has been that the country would become more like the U.S.; in the realm of basic freedoms, that continues to be an aspiration of a lot of Chinese. Hence our title: America can indeed keep its China dreams alive; hence also the wisdom of Obama's caution, because there is little that would anger the Beijing dictators more than by being challenged politically at home by a foreing power like the U.S. And an angry China is something the U.S. can afford less than ever before. Read all about it, in Dutch, in today's Eindhovens Dagblad.

November Morning Sun?

I know there is such a thing as a harvest moon, the way the full moon looks at the end of the summer or early in the fall. When I lived in New Mexico I fully became aware of that one night when I rode home to White Rock, the suburb without a city, from my job at the lab in Los Alamos. I was headed east on Pajarito Rd when just before diving down the one-mile hill that's part of it (and where I once saw 57 m/h indicated on my computer--still my all-time speed record) I looked up to see this huge, bright yellow moon climb out from behind the Sangre de Christo mountains on the other side of the wide, Rio Grande valley. It was a stunning sight, one I looked for every time there was a full moon the remainder of my year there, but in vain. I was on the same bike yesterday morning as on that Friday evening in October 1994--my 1992 yellow Trek 2300: carbon for the main triangle, aluminum front and rear forks, still going strong--when I had a somewhat similar experience, but this time with the rising sun. It had been a wet and windy week. Wednesday it got so wild that even though I had braved the wind in the morning, I didn't feel like dealing with an even stronger wind on the way home, also because in the course of the day it had started to rain. Plus I would have had to get through it all after dark. Instead, I walked to the train, and came back to the city the next day using public transportation also. Thursday was a little calmer, and by the end of the day it had started to clear. Friday morning was plain bright, and it was light well before the sun had come up. So I wasn't thinking of the sun, the way I often do on a clear morning, probably also because there was no orange glow where I normally look for it leaving town. But approaching my turn-off onto the Diemen-Bussum highway, about 2.5 miles into my ride I just happened to glance over to the east, in part because that's where I was about to go. And there it was: a gigantic pinkish sun, only about one-fifth above the tree line between the Ankeveense plassen and the Ankeveense molen. I can't remember ever seeing the sun this wide, or this pink. There were only a few minutes before my route headed west again, along the Vecht toward Weesp. But in the meantime I was able to see it rise almost fully above the horizon, and it was a sight to behold. Partly to get another look I continued along the Vecht toward Muiden past Weesp, because on that section I'd have some easy glances eastward again. By that time, about ten minutes later, the sun was well clear above the horizon and quite a bit smaller, but it was still fairly easy to look at--not very bright at all, in spite of the clear morning. It's not something you expect to see, this time of year in Holland. But I did, and so it was a good week on the bike after all.