Posted on 16 May 10:24 am

Slumping towards Cheeseburgers

I always seem to have this brief blogging slump in April or May. It must be that after the intensity of winter, I need to relax, rebuild, rethink, & recharge with things other than skating…

I’ve got so many posts & zen-10 interviews half-done, and a major series of posts on “training habits” I’ve been wanting to launch for about a year.

But I lack that extra bit of mustard necessary to finish & publish… Forgive me..

Also I’ve been riding a lot. The bicycle has sucked me in like that lovely corner diner in your hometown where you can get that perfect Cheeseburger & Milkshake.

Of course the great thing is that when you ride a lot, you can get away making more visits to that corner diner.

This image is shot while riding to work during yesterday’s “bike to work” day with a bunch of friends.

Tomorrow I ride the Salt Lake Century again, 100 miles, and it’s finally going to be HOT. One of my favorite posts I have ever written was about this ride last year.

I like it not just because of what I wrote, but that every member of my family, including my grandad, had something to say about it

This image is from that post, about 24 hours from when I click this “publish button” this is the school of fish I will be swimming in.

In the park across from my house, there are live bands playing all the time. On a lovely spring evening, these words were floating in the breeze

Una piedra en el camino
Me enseno que mi destino.
Era rodar y rodar.
(Rodar y rodar, rodar y rodar)

Tambien me dijo un arriero
Que no hay que llegar primero
Pero hay que saber llegar.

My friend Eric Krann was listening intently, misty eyed and with a glass of wine in his hand. I asked him to translate-

A stone on the road showed me that my destiny.
was to roll and to roll.
To roll and to roll, to roll and to roll.

A hard-traveling man said to me
That you don’t have to finish first
But you must know how to finish.

Vicente Fernandez - El Rey

Eric says that spanish speaking athletes will sometimes quote the end of this song to not only explain how a race went, but also to explain life.

A century ride attracts a wonderful blend of folks, from very serious riders to easygoing tourists.

No placings, no result list, just a bunch of rolling stones who know how to finish.

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Filed under: from home

Posted on 07 May 11:47 am

Coffee, Sky, & Prayer

I like this picture, the only thing truly in focus is the sky, and drops of high quality Puerto Rican coffee oils floating in the sky.

no matter what the cup says, this is not really a big glass of chocolate, but that is an intriguing possibility.

I’ve been quiet on the blog, deepest apologies….

I’ve been just about 20% sick, 20% overworked, 20% training-tired, 40% overwhelmed with housework, and pushed over the emotional edge by some recent entries on one of the best blogs I’ve ever read.

The Fat Cyclist has won several awards, inspired a lot of people, and his recent entry Dandelion Seeds is the only time in my life I have openly wept reading something online.

And it’s going get worse, be worse, and not get any better…

It’s one of those situations where it would be so comforting to be able to say/write to someone “I’m praying for you“, because that is the exact sentiment needed; an appeal to the cruel wheels of time & fate.

But if you don’t believe in prayer, what do you say? to them, or to yourself if you were in their shoes?

What do you do when all you have is that reflection of oil & sky in coffee-multiplied alertness?

9 Comments »
Filed under: from home

Posted on 02 May 06:55 am

Hammer on stone

On a blustery, cold, foul day with snowflakes spinning through the air, dryland training begins-

A wise friend of mine left this quote on my blog, about 2 years ago-

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it.

Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it - but all that had gone before.

-Jacob Riis

Now is the time to begin the hundred strokes.

Or in this case, this is Matt Shanahan doing the first of what will become thousands and thousands of skate position dryland jumps.

Note how his knee passes quite near his ankle, it makes each jump much harder and much more effective.

This is the time of year I think of the above quote the most, as it’s sometimes hard to see the value of the endless hammering, and the toll it takes on the body (has my ankle has received its hundred blows? it hurt quite a bit the next day).

Of course, these words apply to much more than just speedskating, as this image taken the next morning can attest to:

Life is effort….

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Filed under: sweat

Posted on 29 Apr 10:50 pm

Divergent & Convergent

Is this blog about speedskating? Or about something else? Sometimes I don’t honestly know, life takes you along for the ride. Sometimes you drive, sometimes it drives you.

But I do know that the driving forces in my life are going to converge with another force that will overpower all.

People are constantly asking me how Jessica is doing… In a few days she will be at 4 months, her energy yo-yos up & down, but she feels great & is slowly starting to look pregnant.

But ultrasound photos are what really blows me away-

There are the beginnings of a face there (with my forehead?) and it’s trying to suck it’s thumb. There is a real person there; I can’t wait to meet him/her. Its funny how we all started out like this, every one of us.

But life goes on, no matter this huge looming change (do I hear the soundtrack from 2001: A space odyssey, playing off in the distance somewhere)?

If I ever change the name of this blog to “Zen & the Art of Diaper Changing” then all my speedskating friends are permitted to have a good laugh & I will be truly lost to the sport.

But I can’t image that fully happening. To lose out on endorphin-addled grins like this one, taken tonight as I pedaled home from a bike race, would be just awful-

And I would lose something that I want to share with my future kid. Not necessarily cycling or skating, or even competition, but that essential something about an active, physical life.

Besides, isn’t a happy parent a good one? Doesn’t having one’s own passions & happiness also make one a more effective role model (me? Role model? The world is in trouble!).

Here is another weird camera phone pic after the race. Lots of strange details in this shot


  1. Fellow-skater/biker Inacio Lopez, incredibly happy after his strong 2nd place finish a few moments before-

  2. Some looming clouds, about to rain on us-
  3. The strange curves of my carbon fibre bike, the number plate affixed to the seat post-
  4. smeared on my rear brake, a glob of human spit, or snot, or some other biological substance. I can’t tell exactly what it was-
    I don’t know if it’s mine or someone else’s. But I found this quite funny-

Somehow, just from riding my bike to & from work, and doing a regular lunch hour ride with some extremely fast folks I work with, I’ve found myself a bike racer again.

It’s a fun sport, a bit dicey at times. There was a moment during the race, as the 40 person pack was tightening onto itself at high speed & folks were jockeying for position, I blurted out to a friend: “wow, I’m used to having a lane all to myself, all these people are freaking me out”.

Over the hiss of tires & wirr of gears, I heard a lot of good-natured chuckling at that. I bet a short tracker would have felt safer than normal.

I know my friend Kirk threw away his rock climbing shoes the day his first son was born, and as I respect Kirk tremendously, I have thought a lot about what that means.

11 Comments »
Filed under: baby stuff

Posted on 24 Apr 09:27 am

Note to Eddy-

I just got a semi-nasty comment on the last post, but I took it seriously, and spent as much time writing a reply comment as I do writing some posts.

So it’s worth republishing, and the discussion that might spin off from this could be interesting-

anyway, here is what Eddy “the cannibal” wrote:

Andrew why do you say “just for giggles” you decided to come out to the sprints on sunday??? We are glad you came because you rocked…and you help set the bar for people to ride faster

I mean you won, and it wasn’t by any short length, no one will contest that. However, we cheered you on to victory just like anyone else if they had won. You obviously have an aura of perfection about you by the way you glance and glare at certain “neo-beatniks” as you say while at an event. I think you are also numb to any kind of praise….

Is it possible you might be taking yourself a little too seriously here?? I detect some elitist bones in your body….There were two riders who usually come to the sprints but didn’t show up who are excpetionally fast, much like yourself.

i’m sure it would have been closer if they were there. It might have been a more enjoyable race for you to have some actual competition….and you wouldn’t feel like you were a god amongst men

I took this seriously, because his note got me thinking…. So here is my reply-

hey Eddy,

hmmmm, how to respond…. ok…

“for giggles” - well… I am really serious a lot of the time, speedskating can be an absolutely brutal sport, and it demands a lot of perfectionism & a competitive nature to do it well…

and yes, it can be a cesspool of Elitism at its worst (merely hierarchical at its best)….

You have no idea about this weird little subculture out at the Utah Olympic oval that I’ve been marinating in….

If it’s seeped into my bones, deepest apologies, and I need to have those bones removed with no anesthesia.

Believe me, I’m pretty chill compared to many… Part of me mentioning the “$30 and free beer” is that in 99% of events, Speedskaters race our hearts out for NOTHING. So any kind of prize is a shockingly wonderful thing.

This event was WONDERFULLY relaxed & fun, it was not about “winners & losers” in the stark terms that skating sometimes can be… it was about having a good time with some chill folks… My soul needs this sometimes…

I am glad to have done well at the sprints, but if those 2 riders come on out & mop the floor with me, I will still be having just as much fun… really…. my ego is not on the line during an alleycat.

It is worth noting I was the lamest of anyone at the trackstand comp.. and cheered on everyone else, as well as admiring the handling skills & guts of the folks who brave the “full contact” nature of the foot down…

“neo-beatniks” -no group of people exists in a vacuum, and I see a lot of commonalities between some things about the late 1950’s “Beats” & the current urban rider culture.. Much more than the 60’s counterculture….

Should I have used another term? yeah, all labels are limiting.. But how would you describe this loose-knit collection of folks? Like all groups, there absolutely are social norms & patterns of behavior/dress.

And I never would have written about myself the way Blaue Reiter did. I would have been an arrogant bastard if I had…. I am no “god among men”, I get my ass kicked all the time in races, and even if Olympians & national team skaters who are the ones administering said ass-kicking, they aren’t gods either…

They are just really talented folks who train frighteningly hard… That does not make them any better or worse human beings than anyone else….

All this said, I had an absolute blast at the event, and I look forward to talking to you when I am back…

13 Comments »
Filed under: from the coffee shop

Posted on 21 Apr 05:00 pm

$30 + free beer

Training monotony is something to be avoided like the plague, both in the body & the soul, as doing the same thing all the time leads to stagnation.

So just for giggles, I showed up at an “Alleycat” sprint race on my track bike. These are urban races that sprint the full length of a city block from a standing start. I was racing with the same bunch of biking neo-beatniks I filmed during the Salt City Sprints

Some of these urban riders are quite quick off the line, and there was a smattering of true bike racers as well, including fellow speedskater Inacio Lopez.

The bikes ranged from titanium & velodrome worthy rides, to things scrounged from dumpsters & rattle can painted.

I had good sprint legs this day, and ended up winning $30 for first place of the 30-ish riders, plus as much beer as I could drink at the after-party at the W Lounge (2 PBR’s was all I could down & still manage to bike home safely).

In addition to the sprints, they also had a fun event, called “foot down”, where the spectators form a ring, and the cyclists circle like sharks within the ring, and try to knock each other off their bikes.

The spectators slowly contract the ring during the event, and as I said, it’s low key fun, note the fellow drinking a beer during this-

My aluminum track bike is similar structurally to the beer can this fellow has in his hand, so I skipped this part of the competition.

However it got me thinking, imagine a short track event, maybe a relay, where the spectators are on the ice, creating an ever shrinking circle pad barrier. Contact would be natural!

It would eventually become just one long, endless corner pivot, punctuated by the thud of bodies into the pads.

If that does not attract the attention of ESPN, I am not sure what would (half naked, fur-wearing cheerleaders?)

It is one of the true mysteries in sports that short track is not all over American television, as it has EVERYTHING Americans love about sports….

Oh yeah, maybe if we did it in WWF masks, or in Speedos, or…..

P.S.SaltCycle blogger Blaue Reiter wrote about this event, and called me a “heap-big speedskater and general cool dude” in his post.. That made my day… Yeah!

Also he took a nice picture of me in my super-secret, holey, 18 year old, “bike-race-day-only” flannel shirt that few speedskaters have ever seen. Damm, my secret is out!

Again, this was just a lot of low-key fun.

18 Comments »
Filed under: from home

Posted on 17 Apr 09:58 pm

Caption Cycling

I am tossing out to the general readership an opportunty to write descriptive captions for these 3 bike-related photos. Each picture was taken this past week, in 3 different states, thousands of miles apart.

Humorous or serious, each caption should get at what is really happening in the photos.

Picture A

Picture B



Picture C

Thanks to Alice & my Brother, for their contributions to this.

14 Comments »
Filed under: from home

Posted on 14 Apr 04:38 pm

Bella Gallery

I have been chatting with Tom DiNardo via email- Tom is a photographer, and he directed me to some AMAZING galleries that he took of the North American Longtrack Speedskating Championships that occurred February 8th-9th & 10th.

For example, here is Kreg Greer warming up:

I love photos like this, where you can clearly see the light coming in under the front half of Kreg’s right blade, it shows exactly where his weight is driving through.

There are a lot of Canadians in this gallery, including Nicole Garrido, who I met 6 years ago in Calgary, she was just a kid then, now she is a cruise missile of Canadian national team speed.

Connor Slivocka, another young skater whom, every time I see him, seems to be an inch taller & 10 lbs bigger.

Here is a wild Panorama, of Canadian Kerry Simpson, (we think) crashing. Click on it for the big version.

I’m not sure who this is, but wow… that’s some nice 500m corner form.

Here is Tom’s homepage and the direct link to his North American Longtrack Speedskating Championships Galleries

Tom has tried to organize his galleries by skater, so if you competed there, check it out. Here are the skaters he has identified, and has multiple shots of:

Midway Speedskating Club - Women
Midway Speedskating Club - Men
Puget Sound - Non-Race
Saratoga Speedskating Club
Sault Speedskating Club
Askervold, Thorston
Belanger, J-R
Belchos, Jordan
Bergeron, Stephanie
Bernhard, Nathan
Berriault, Tobey
Blouin, Vincent
Boutin, Michele
Bucsis, Anastasia
Cribb, Evan
Dankers, Arne
Duffeld, Kelsey
Dutton, Will
Dyrud, Rebecca
Gendron, Kyle
Garant, Alexandre
Garrido, Nicole
Gladys, Timothy
Gregg, Sarah
Greer, Kreg
Goplen, Nick
Gozinsky, Marcin
Growden, Dan
Haire, Marty
Han, Jimmy
Hambly, Lisa
Hawke, Erica
Henry, Elyce
Hill, Jackson
Huot, Veronique
Jackowniak, Steve
Jeong, Clare
Johnson, Andrea
Kemp, Jennessa
Kitura, Jeff
Kriek, Ricky
Kryski, Eric
Kury, Tim
Lanser, Erica
Lapointe, Sabrina
Lay, Kirsti
Lee, David
Lewis, James
L’Heureux, Justine
Makowsky, Mykola
Marsh, Pat
Martel, Peter
Maunder, Justin
McCabe, Adam
Nam, Julia
Ouardi, Muncef
Parrot, Kyle
Phillips, Crystal
Plummer, Matt
Queen, Amanda
Riopel, Phil
Sadlier, Aaron
Savard, Mireille
Sibold, Shannon
Simpson, Kerry
Spencer, Haley
Stinson, Fraser
Starke, Alister
Sugden, Lynn
Sugden, Scott
Sulzer, Keith
Tutt, Breanne
Waples, Stephan
Zettler, Spencer

5 Comments »
Filed under: from the coffee shop

Posted on 10 Apr 12:05 pm

From a speech

“I believe sports is one of the best places you can learn about yourself,” Ohno said. “Sports puts you head-to-head with the demons you face, and you have to deal with it — right then and there.”

Apollo Ohno

This is from a speech Apollo recently gave at the University of Arkansas

and he is absolutely right…..

I did my first bike race in about 4 years on teusday (on the evening of my close encounter with that car) and although bike racing is certainly a very hard sport, and FAR more dangerous than long track, the nature of the Demons speedskaters face are unique, and in my own experience, nastier….

(of course, I never was able to dream about being anything other than an average cyclist, on the skates, it’s different for me.

So maybe the size of the demons correlates directly to the size of one’s dreams)

Opinions?

4 Comments »
Filed under: Quotes, from the coffee shop

Posted on 08 Apr 10:12 am

Mood: Enraged!

So I am riding my bike to work on one of those huge, open, Salt Lake roads that has room for 4 lanes + turn lane + parking + ample bike lanes.

a minivan darts through an opening in traffic, AND ALMOST RUNS ME OVER!!!

I barely have time to grab my brakes, as the minvan flashes by a mere foot in front of my wheel, -they are turning into a gas station.

My heart is jumping & twisting like a fish on a hook. After a few seconds to collect myself, I turn into the gas station after them.

These idiots are driving through the gas station, using it as a shortcut to get to a different road!!

Traffic is brisk, and they are stopped at the exit. I roll up behind them, angling towards the drivers side window….

Suddenly traffic clears and the minivan rolls forward. I am about to put my fist through their back window, but at the last second remember that is a really bad idea (for my hand, I don’t care about their window) so I do a loud open palmed thwack, and let loose with a stream of All-American obscenities at the top of my lungs (and I can be LOUD when neccesary).

Usually, confronting a 3,300 pound Plymouth Voyager while riding a 19 pound Bianchi is a VERY bad idea, but with a gas station full of people sympathetically watching, it’s a bit safer.

The minivan spins it’s wheels, & zips away with the driver giving me the finger.

I continue back on my commute, wobbly, angry, sick to my stomach, wondering if I did the right thing, and with a wild new feeling mixed in, that my life is not just about my life anymore…

32 Comments »
Filed under: on the road

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