New Year’s Day Ride — Two Weeks Late

01.19.2011 | 7:20 am

Kenny is big on tradition. Every Spring, for example, he puts on the famous (and very, very law-abiding) Ride Around White Rim in One Day (RAWROD).

And every New Year’s Day, he puts on a New Year’s Day Ride.

Of course, in order to survive, most traditions have to adapt to changing times. Like this Spring, due to a mudslide that destroyed a section of the Horse Thief climb, RAWROD is going to have to have a somewhat different route.

And last year, due to bad road conditions on the traditional route (up Squaw Peak Road), Kenny changed the ride to be up a snowy road and then packed snow single track in Diamond Fork to the “Hot Pots” — a hot spring where we could soak, eat, and get the smell of sulphur deep into our skin.

We all liked the new route so much we decided that we should do it that way every year.

Seven Degrees Fahrenheit Is Not Warm

On New Years’ morning this year, The Runner looked out the window and didn’t like what she saw. So she fired up the computer and confirmed the bad news: it was seven degrees fahrenheit outside. Which is quite chilly.

And according to the forecast, it wasn’t going to get a lot warmer that day. In fact, seven degrees was the projected high temperature for the day.

Being a man, I did the manly thing: I called Kenny (a lesser man would have merely texted) and said, “There is no way in the world The Runner and I are going biking in this temperature.”

Kenny assured us that seven degrees isn’t really that bad, and that the ride was going to go on as scheduled.

I wished him good fortune and went back to setting up my rollers.

Later, when I asked how the ride went, Kenny admitted that nobody but he and Heather showed up. And that their eyeballs froze solid. And that because it had been so cold and snowy, no snowmobiles had packed the single track down and they had to abandon the ride at the trailhead.

Hearing this, I reflected upon an amazing fact: for the first time in my life, I was elated to have missed a ride.

Two Weeks Later

Two weeks went by. The Runner and I, having checked the forecast for Saturday and finding a projected high of 40+ degrees, called Kenny and said, “Hey, how about that Hot Pots ride we were going to do?”

True fact: Kenny never ever ever (ever ever ever) turns down an offer to go on a ride.

So, starting at about 11am, a complete change of clothes in our backpacks (we learned that lesson last year) and our tires inflated to 10psi (we learned that lesson last year too), we headed out toward the hot pots.

The first few miles are on road. Or, more correctly, the first few miles are on snow that has covered the road. These miles went by fast — the road had been packed by snowmobiles. It was hard but not icy, and the line was clear.

Then there were a couple of miles of snow-packed single track, which is a very different experience from riding on dirt single track. For one thing, if you drift off the trail by even an inch, your front wheel disappears in the soft snow and you get dumped, suddenly and softly, into the powder.

I never get over how awesome it is to fall off your bike and not be hurt at all. I assure you, it’s much, much better than crashing onto sharp, embedded stones. In short, if given the option, I highly recommend falling onto soft snow.

Even though digging yourself out takes a while.

As with the road, the single track was packed and in good condition; we got to the hot pots in hardly any time at all.

A Sulphurous Feast

The Runner and I had prepared well for lounging in the hot pots. We had brought several PRO Bars, two bags of Chex party mix, and some Gatorade.

Kenny and Heather, on the other hand, had brought the following:

• Brownies
• Two kinds of cookies
• Cashews
• Grapes
• Chips
• Triscuits
• Cheez Wiz (Kenny attributed bringing these to simply being obedient to Beck’s exhortation to “get crazy with the Cheez Wiz.” “How shall I get crazy with the Cheez Wiz if I have no Cheez Wiz with which to get crazy?” Kenny asked. I could not deny that he had a point.
• Every kind of beer in the world, and some Tequila too.

This brings up an important question: with the way he eats, how is it possible that Kenny doesn’t have a gut at least as big as mine? That question is rhetorical, by the way because I know the answer: “Because life isn’t fair.”

We ate. And soaked. And rinsed and repeated.

When we got too hot, we’d jump out of the hot pool into the adjoining stream, which was exactly as warm as it needed to be to not be ice.

Of course by “we” in the above paragraph, I actually mean “everyone except me,” because unlike everyone else, I put a foot in the cold water and declined to put anything else in.

This decision was not met with what I had hoped for. Specifically, nobody expressed admiration for my independent thinking.

“I already know I’m the wimpiest person here,” I said. “This merely reinforces what everyone knew anyway.”

Nobody argued. How could they?

The “Ride” Back

Eventually — nowhere near the 9-hour record Kenny and Heather hold — we got out of the hot water, back into tights and wool, and began riding back toward the trailhead.

Meanwhile, the day had warmed up.

And the snow had softened.

The result of this was that, every few feet, or or another (or more often: one and another) of us would get off the dead-center of the trail, at which point he or she would endo into deep, wet snow.

Seriously, I think our cumulative crash count must be near 100, 60 of which I can claim as my own. And mostly, these crashes didn’t hurt at all.

There was, however, one searingly painful exception.

I had just veered — for the umpteenth time — off the trail. Unlike most times, I hadn’t tipped completely over. Instead, my right foot came unclipped and — simultaneously — the crank, driven by the weight of my left leg — spun around backward and whacked me in the right shin as I crashed crotchfirst onto the top tube.

If you’d like to simulate the pain I experienced, simply go find a ball peen hammer and a professional kick boxer, then, on the count of three, hit your shin with the hammer while the kick boxer delivers a good hard kick to your groin.

So yes, you could say — quite accurately — that I groaned with pain.

You could also say — equally accurately — that I screamed like a little girl and very nearly threw up from the wave of nausea.

“You OK back there?” The Runner called back, unaware of my acute misery.

“Yes,” I managed to shout, in a high voice. “Go on, I’ll be with you in a while.”

Some kinds of pain must be dealt with alone.

Afterward

It turns out that Life Flight was not necessary, and in fact later, when I peeled off my tights, I was disappointed to note that the horrible gash I was certain my pedal had given my shin was in fact a nick, about as bad as you might get when shaving.

But I bet you there’ll be an awesome bruise. It’s just taking a while to show.

And — my very serious injury notwithstanding — we agreed that we really ought to do this again before next New Year’s day.

As long as the weather’s good.

Comments (40)

And Now for the Actual Interview With Phil Liggett

01.18.2011 | 7:00 am

I’m in Cocoa Beach, FL all this week. So far, I have not actually been to the beach part of Cocoa Beach, because I’m working. More to the point, I’m in a conference room from early ’til late in the day. So I’m in the kind of weird position of being enviable (I’m at Cocoa Beach!) and pitiable (I may as well be in Iowa!) at the same time.

I tell you this because I am absolutely convinced that you are very interested in every single aspect of my life.

Anyway, until now I haven’t had time to upload the interview I did with Phil Liggett. And now I’ve just spent a ton of time doing the following:

1. Learning enough about Audacity to edit out the leading and trailing stuff of the interview.
2. Trying to get the crappy internet connection in my room to work.
3. Uploading the MP3 file.
4. Finding out that I am apparently technologically inept and don’t know how to set up an embedded MP3 control in a blog post.
5. Researching how to embed a playable MP3 in a blog post.
6. Giving up when what I tried doesn’t work.
7. Deciding that I’ll just cheat and turn the interview into a “video” consisting of a single still photo and the audio from the interview, and then uploading it to Vimeo, because I do know how to embed video in my blog.
8. Uploading the “video”
9. Feeling a little bit foolish about how much time and effort I have spent on making this interview available, considering that I don’t feel like I did a very good job with the interview and that I kind of blew a big opportunity.
10. Writing this tenth step just for the sake of having there be a nice even number of steps.

And now, at long last, here’s the interview.

Comments (19)

An Interview with Phil Liggett

01.17.2011 | 7:19 am

Here’s a little something you may not know about me: I’ve interviewed people before. For real live magazines and stuff. Back in the ol’ days, I edited a couple of programming magazines. So I’ve interviewed Bjarne Stroustrup (the inventor of the C++ programming language). I’ve interviewed Anders Hejlsberg (the inventor of the C# programming language). I’ve interviewed Kent Beck and Alan Cooper, together, which actually made some waves in the world of programming, back in 2002.

And while I don’t work in magazines anymore, I still interview people all the time. It’s a big part of my day job.

My point is, by now I should be used to interviewing people.

But interviewing Phil Liggett was different.

About two hours before the interview began, I got very nervous. I got very sweaty. Distracted. Had to go to the restroom about three times.

“Why am I nervous?” I asked myself. “I actually know a lot more about the topic of this interview than I do with a lot of the interviews for my day job. I know that the person I’m interviewing is a great talker; we won’t run out of things to talk about. And I’m pretty sure he won’t still be holding the “Phil Liggett Fired” thing against me; it’s been five years, for crying out loud.

But honestly, I knew why I was nervous. I was nervous because I was starstruck. I was nervous that I’d be so excited to be talking with Phil Liggett that when the time came I’d completely blank and wouldn’t be able to say a thing.

To hedge against this possibility (okay, probability), I IM’d with dug to figure out a bunch of good questions. A mix of funny, flip questions and real questions.

As interview time approached, I told The Runner that I wanted her to leave the house while I was conducting the interview. I was going to be sweating enough as it was; I didn’t need the additional pressure of having my wife watching over my shoulder during the interview.

Then I set up my phone to record, and waited for Phil to call.

And while I waited, I went to the restroom three more times.

Changes

As soon as I heard “Hello, Phil here” on the other end of the line, all my plans went out the window.

For one thing, the audio wasn’t so great. I think that Phil must have been in a very crowded room, in which every single person was talking very loud, because we each had to speak very loud to drown out the voices. And the repeated use of “what’s that again, please speak up” doesn’t exactly lend itself to witty, spontaneous exchanges.

Much more importantly, though, was the fact that when it came right down to talking with Phil, I couldn’t make myself ask the goofy questions I had written down. He’s too respected. Too respectable. He doesn’t need his generosity with his time to be repaid with questions about what citizens of Adelaide are called (Adelaideans), and whether it’s possible to say “Adelaidean” without following it up with “Eeee-hooo!”

So I scanned my questions, rooting out the impertinent ones on the fly. As I listened to him, I marveled at the way Phil always responded in well-formed, complete sentences. At the way he treated each of the questions as if it were a really good question, and deserved a complete and considered answer.

Entertaining Things Phil Said

It would make me so happy if someone besides myself listened to the entire interview. Later today, I’ll try to get it uploaded for your 22-ish minute listening pleasure.

That said, I won’t hold it against you if you just don’t have that much time to listen to Phil try to understand the questions I ask him. In which case, please at least try have a Phil-like voice in your head as you read the following quotes:

• Apart from sprints, where will the drama of the Tour Down Under be? “Whoever finishes first on the old Willunga hill (Saturday’s stage) will be the overall winner of the race. That’s the way it works. You’ve got to be an outstanding rider to win the Willunga stage, because they just rip each other apart on the hill. It’s unbelievable. And then there’s a very, very fast descent on the backroads along the vineyards to the finish. If you lose ground on the hill, there’s not a lot of chance to rejoin the leaders.”
• Should race radios be banned? “The use of race radios seems to make since. I’ve been against them because I don’t want to see a sport of robotic men. At this level, there’s only a fe w percent difference between their abilities. So if the team manager tells you soon enough, you’re going to go with your guy and probably hang on, and I don’t like that. If they say, “No, it’s safety. Without them, we can’t tell riders there’s a crash around the corner or there’s a hole in the road.” I agree entirely. Then — they can’t have an argument — everybody on the race is on the same frequency. And then they wouldn’t be interested because they couldn’t talk tactics, and that’s the real reason. So I’m against them if they all stay on different frequencies. In these modern times, they’ve got televisions in the car, and the race has got wall to wall coverage, so they can see who’s on the front of the race doing all the work. And guys are moving up and saying “Watch out, because Contador’s moved up 15 places in the past 10 Kilometers, he’s going to make a move, keep an eye on him.” Look, the riders are riding the bike race, not the managers. This isn’t a made-for-TV sport like soccer or baseball. This is a bike race and it’s still individuals.”
• What are those big headphones Phil and Paul wear for? “It depends on what we’re doing. Basically, we hear our own voices in the can. We can also hear the radio of the Tour, and the producers of the program directing us to ad breaks or telling us what he needs from us or explaining something. There are three or four conversations going on in the cans; the most complicated is Radio Tour, because that’s in French and it’s coming at you thick and furious sometimes. But you get used to it. I was a journalist and used to compose stories with ten phones ringing in the office. So I can block out peripheral noise easily. And so can Paul, funnily enough. But we’re also paying close attention to what’s going on in the screens, because we only ever see the same picture you see; we get no extra advantage on that.”
• How do you communicate with each other? “It’s a sixth sense. Sometimes in the flow, Paul might put a finger up to say he wants to make a point and I’ll get out at the end of a sentence and he’ll jump in. But we have a policy that we never designed — it just happened — that we’ll never jump in on each other, because that’s just annoying to the listener. We’ll wait until the other guy’s finished, and then we’ll carry on. We’ve been a great team, and are officially the longest-serving commentary duo in any sport, something like 25 years now, which is quite nice to know.
• Did you know that practically every cyclist has you and Paul in our heads as we ride our bikes? “It’s amazing, but people stop me in the street and say, ‘Hey, you got me over the hill yesterday.’ I’ll say, ‘What?’ They say, ‘Yeah, I heard your voice saying “he’s losing it, he’s losing the gap, I’ve got to get on and close it now,” like they’re listening to my commentary. People are just amazing.
• Any chance Phil and Paul will commentate the Ironman if Lance does Kona? “Well I’ve done the Ironman for NBC in the past, when Mark Allen was the big champion. And I still do commentaries for Ironman, from afar usually. But last night I asked Lance if he was going to do the Ironman, and he said, ‘heh, I want to,’ but he’s not saying, ‘I am.’ Because he says, ‘If I do it, the cameras will stay with me, and man, I might want to stop and walk, but the cameras will not go away.’ When he did his 2:59 marathon, he said, ‘Boy, I wanted to walk, and I couldn’t because the camera followed me the whole 40 kilometers.’
• Who’s the most erudite cyclist you’ve ever talked with? “Probably somebody like Eddy Merckx in the old days. I used to race against him and I was useless. Then I became a journalist and we seemed to bond very well. He tells the truth, tells it like it is. He doesn’t pull any punches.
• Who had the best team kit, ever? “I liked Barloworld. Very easy to pick up on television, and it’s sad they’re no longer in the sport. Their red and white was a perfect design. This year, though, we’re faced with three problems with Leopard, Sky and Garmin all looking identical when their heads are down in a bunch sprint.
• Who had the worst team kit, ever? “For me it was probably that bloody horrible brown thing (Footon-Servetto). It’s such a horrible brown thing, it makes you feel sick every time you look at it! Although AG2R do well to coming pretty close to the worst.
• Who’s the class clown of cycling? “It’s still Jens Voigt for a bit longer. He just has brilliant responses when you ask him questions, and he’s a character. He has six kids now, he just had his sixth baby yesterday.
• Who’s the best director of all time? “Well, Johan Bruyneel is certainly the best director ight now, and arguably ever.”
• How do you and Paul survive the long, boring, uncontested stages? “Well, that’s when you earn your money I think. You’ve got to get out your stories, and tell them well, and not bore people. I listen to people on other televesion channels and I want to turn the bloody television off. So we have to start making people enjoy themselves. We hope (boring stages) don’t come too often, but when they come, we’ve got to get out of it, so we try to make it interesting.

And in the end, he even cheerfully accommodated my blushing request: to record an outgoing voicemail message for me.

PS: Be sure to check VS on TV for daily 30-minute recaps (6pm ET all this week) of the Tour Down Under, as well as versus.com for expanded coverage.

Comments (28)

How to Identify a Bike Thief

01.13.2011 | 3:53 pm

How do you go about identifying a bike thief? It’s a simple question, really, and the answer is correspondingly simple. You look for a person with the following traits:

• Shifty eyes
• Gives off an air of evilness
• Tends to buy bushels of apples and correspondingly large quantities of razor blades around Halloween
• Foul odor. Worse than a many-years-old jersey.
• Unpleasant smile, accompanied usually by a sinister cackle
• Dull eyes
• Trips old ladies who are trying to cross the street
• Talks and texts during movies
• Doesn’t recycle
• Chews with mouth open
• Picks nose
• Tells you how the book you’re currently reading ends
• Comments on blogs that the author has too much time on his / her hands
• Is seen riding the following bike:

Hey, wait a second. I think I’ve seen that bike before, in a tweet (oh yes, I follow the Twitter nowadays. Can’t get enough of those tweets.):

This, of course, brings several very important questions to mind:

• What is Gary going to do now that he doesn’t have a bike?
• How does that black and white bag hove magically in the air like that?
• Why no kickstand?
• Is the saddle really tilted back at a seven-degree angle? And if so, why?
• Has Gary checked the garages / basements / workplaces of everyone he knows who has access to his basement?
• How could anyone possibly steal a bike from someone as adorable as this?

Seriously, he looks like he’s about to break into song. It breaks my heart to think that anyone would ever steal a bike from someone about to break into song on the streets of San Francisco.

Darn it, I want to help Gary get his bike back.

Help Me Help Gary Get His Bike Back

Because I — like pretty much everyone who has owned a bike — know the feeling of violation that comes with the theft of a bike, I have applied my considerable technical skills to the photo — taken just before the theft — of Gary’s bike.

Specifically, I opened Photoshop (Special Criminology Version with Voice Recognition Software) said, “Enhance. Enhance. Enhance.” Here is what I found:

Egad! Some nefarious person — I’m not sure who — was clearly staring at that bike, with what appears to be very sinister intent!

Now, I don’t know for sure that this guy stole the bike. It could have been someone else.

So Gary needs your help finding this bike and the alleged perpetrator, whether it’s this guy I found in the picture, or someone else.

Here are the distinguishing characteristics of Gary’s bike:

• Blue Trek FX frame
• Schwalbe cream color tire on the front
• Bontrager cream color tire on the rear
• Handmade hardwood top cap and valve caps
• Tubus Fly minimal rear rack
• Japanese Crane brass bell
• MKS Touring Light “butterfly” pedals
• Oury grips
• White saddle
• White and black bag hovering mysteriously near the rear wheel

If you see this bike, please post a pic and info to Twitter with @Gary_Fisher and hashtag #FindGarysBike, or post a pic to Trek’s Facebook page.

Big, Big Prizes

Of course, as a person who hates thievery, you need no reason to help Gary find his bike other than it’s the right thing to do.

But you know, a reward wouldn’t hurt.

So, if your tip or tweet or Facebookization turns out to be the piece of information that helps Gary get his bike back, well, Gary’s going to give you a brand new Trek FX of your own.

And then you could tell your friends, as you rode your new bike around town, how you singlehandedly helped Gary get his town bike with a levitating bag back, and how Gary — in gratitude — gave you this bike in thanks, as well as an autographed 8 x 10 of himself. Like this:

Okay, actually the autographed 8 x 10 is just something I made up, not actually part of the reward. But I bet Gary would give you one if you asked, because he’s that kind of guy.

And you’d have the satisfaction of knowing you helped put someone (not necessarily the person illustrated here, but perhaps someone who looks like him) behind bars:

And I think we’d all sleep a little better at night.

Comments (34)

I Am Getting Ready to Interview Phil and Paul

01.11.2011 | 11:04 pm

Tuesday afternoon, I got an email from Versus’ PR company, with the big, bold, all-caps, and centered proclamation:

VERSUS TO AIR LANCE ARMSTRONG’S FINAL RACE

OUTSIDE THE U.S.

WITH DAILY COVERAGE OF

THE 2011 TOUR DOWN UNDER

Wow. With that kind of emphasis, it simply cannot be denied: this is truly important information, and must be shared. Right away.

I read the rest of the announcement, then immediately copied and pasted the entire thing into my handy blog editing software (recently moved from Ecto to MarsEdit, in case you’re curious, which you aren’t).

With — of course — the intent of courteously providing a pro bono edit of the press release.

Change of Heart

And then I saw the personal note above the announcement:

Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, the undisputed voices of cycling, will be on site in Australia to provide insight and commentary for each day of the network’s coverage. Please let me know if you would be interested in speaking to Phil and/or Paul this week to preview the upcoming race.

Well. That changes things. Specifically, it changes what I’m writing for today’s post. Even more specifically, it means that instead of me making fun of the way the announcement gives the impression that LANCE WILL BE RACING HIS BIKE IN AUSTRALIA and oh yeah some other people will too, I’m going to consider the kinds of things I will ask Phil and Paul when I talk to them later this week. Cuz, you know, I’m kind of a fan. Even though I tease them a little.

Questions About Commentating

First, I’m very interested in what goes on behind the scenes in the booth when Phil and Paul are watching a bike race. I’d love to ask the following:

• What are you listening to on your big headphones when commentating?
• Do you have someone working in the background, collecting stats and interesting tidbits of information for you to relay? Or is that what Google’s for? Or do you actually know all that stuff?
• I’ve noticed that the Liggett / Sherwen commentating split is about 65% / 35%. Why is that?
• Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night with a crazy metaphor in your head and say to yourself, “I’ve got to say that tomorrow!”
• Do you have special hand signals you give to each other to communicate things you don’t want us to hear? Things like, “Please take a turn talking, I am about to have a coughing fit.” Or like “I have nothing at all to say at this moment.” Or “Hey, let me talk, I want to use that crazy metaphor I came up with last night.”
• Do you have a list of emergency metaphors, colorful adjectives, or very descriptive adverbs you keep on hand, just in case?
• How boring is it to commentate the long, flat stages where the breakaway rider has a fifteen minute lead? Seriously, on a scale of one to ten. Or maybe we should go to eleven. Or possibly fifteen. Regardless, sometimes the only thing interesting in some of those stages is the fact that you two manage to keep finding something to talk about. And while the rest of us can zoom through at 4x speed, watching for wrecks, you have to watch the whole thing and talk about it. So, anyway: How boring?
• When you’re sitting in your booth, are you wearing pants?
• If you were to do the exact same commentary about the exact same sport, but one of you had an Idaho accent and the other of you sounded like you were from the backwoods of Oklahoma, do you think you’d be as popular?
• Does Bob Roll spit-talk a lot when he gets excited? How about when he’s not excited?
• Do you have a pronunciation key for cyclists’ names? Why not?

Who’s the Most?

I would like to get Phil and Paul’s take on the people, teams, and moments of cycling who have been superlative at one thing or another.

• Who’s the most erudite cyclist you’ve ever talked with?
• Who had / has the ugliest team kit, ever?
• Who is the class clown of cycling?
• What was the best stage of the TdF you’ve ever commentated?
• What was the most awful stage of the TdF you’ve ever commentated?
• What was the most boring stage of the TdF you’ve ever commentated?
• Who’s the cyclist you would most like to invite over for a barbecue?
• Who is the most misunderstood cyclist of all time?
• Who is the best DS of all time?

Who Would Win?

I think the world would be very interested to know, between Phil and Paul, who would be better at a number of both cycling- and non-cycling-related activities. Which, between the two, would win at:

• Boxing
• A stare-down
• Climbing the Alp d’Huez
• Yodeling
• Making sarcastic remarks
• Arm wresting
• Pie eating
• A spelling bee
• Trash-talking
• Obscure pop-culture remark-making

Additional Very Important Questions

Of course, not everything I would like to ask them has to do with their commentating style. I’d like to ask them a few “left field” questions, to just kind of mix things up.

• Do you have a running bet about who will retire first?
• Does it bother you when you are called “The Siskel and Ebert” of cycle commentating? What? You’ve never been called that before? Well, what if people started calling you that. Then would it bother you?
• You’ve seen Eddy Merckx race in person. Honestly, does anybody compare?
• What bikes do you personally ride?
• Do you ever mountain bike?
• Paul, does it irk you that everyone says “Phil and Paul,” never “Paul and Phil?”Would it make you happy if I put your name first, say about 35% of the time?
• What’s your favorite kind of cheese?

Questions About the Suitcase of Courage

Finally, I think I’d like to ask them a lot of questions about the term, “suitcase of courage.” In fact, I think it’d be fun to conduct an interview with them containing nothing but questions centered around this term. For example:

• When did you first say “suitcase of courage?” What was happening at the moment?
• When you said “suitcase of courage” for the first time, did you realize it was going to become a catchphrase of sorts? That people like me would say it whenever we try to do impressions of you?
• Did you borrow, buy, steal or otherwise appropriate the phrase “suitcase of courage” from someone else, like from a manufacturer of very brave luggage? If you bought this phrase, how much did you pay for it? Would you say you’ve gotten good value for your money?
• Suppose that, instead of “suitcase of courage,” you had said, “satchel of courage” or “bushel basket of courage.” Do you think it would have had the same impact?
• How about “Container of courage?” That’s nicely alliterative. Do you think that would have been a successful signature phrase?
• Do either of you own “suitcaseofcourage.com”? Why not?
• Did you know that “suitcaseofcourage.org” takes you to the Fat Cyclist website? Now that you do know, do you wish you would have trademarked the term? Do you think it was worth the price I paid and time I spent to acquire the domain suitcaseofcourage.org so I could write this joke?
• What color do you imagine the suitcase of courage would be?

I could go on. You know I could.

At the time I write this, I have no guarantee that I’ll actually get to talk to Phil and / or Paul. After I post this, I suspect my chances will go down considerably. Alas. I shall keep you apprised.

Meanwhile, I would be delighted to have your input into what kind of questions I should ask Paul and Phil, should I get the chance.

PS: Props to dug for helping me come up with a buncha these questions.

PPS: I now have an appointment to talk with Phil (not Paul) Friday at 4:45 MT. I doubt I’ll be able to sleep tonight. Or tomorrow night.

Comments (76)