Draw Your Own Conclusions

Support Eric McDavid

Adieu Chicago

Another trip nears completion. Capped off by waiting at O'Hare until United can find a plane to put me on. I've got no idea what's going on in the world. I think the Vuelta starts soon, and the USPRO Championships. I'm sure I've missed many stupid things said by Republicans. I guess I'll have to start catching up soon.

Until then:

Barney Frank, Well Done!

This Has To Go Here

Because sometimes Twitter just isn't enough


There's also a Star Wars one.

That's been the closest thing to sane my day has seen, maybe even my week. Still kinda bummed about Bahati. I was saying yesterday, "I don't know why I'm so bummed about it, it's not like he's my favorite rider." To which E responded "There's something about the way he rides, it would be really hard not to root for him." (Sorry for messing up your quote E) which pretty much sums it up. You can say he lost because he came in to the last turn too hot, or you can say dude laid everything on the line and it didn't work out. I say he deserved to win, and it's a damn shame he didn't.

Downers Grove

Big race today in the 'burbs of Chicago. US Pro Crit Championships at stake, and the right to wear the stars 'n stripes jersey for a year. There are lots of great places to get pics and the race report, so I'll avoid that part. In the womens race, Tibco was dominant, launching attack after attack, but somehow they managed to do everything except seal the deal. Brooke Miller got 2nd to a deserving Tina Pic, which is not what she came to do. While in the mens race, Rahsaan Bahati, left with no teammates due to crash after crash in the closing laps, was able to bridge a big gap to the lead group and get a jump on them coming out of the final turn, only to have his bike come out from under him with victory in sight.

The irony being that after dropping off E at the airport, I go to a BBQ with the Rock Racing guys (without Bahati) and E is on the same flight to SF as Brooke Miller.

I think I had more fun, since I got to drink beer and not wait at an airport for a delayed flight. But I bet E will have something to say about her fun as well.

Know Your Enemy

It doesn’t take Stephen Hawking to figure this one out.

Hawking is, you might say, living, breathing proof that these people are first-class fools.

Oh No!

He really is a commie bastard, Look!

You Don't Say

Not exactly surprising, and sadly devoid of sources. But still...

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Read the rest here.

The Whirlwind

One of the side effects of my job is that weeks, even months, can fly by without me noticing. Working 80 hour weeks, away from home, can do that. Hopefully tomorrow I can spend some time catching up with what is happening in the world.

My thoughts go out to Fatty and his family. Elden, you and yours have been a tremendous inspiration. I wear your jersey with pride.

Remember When The Skies Were Friendly?

Neither do I, but they weren't always this God-Awful.

The day starts with me having some coffee and waiting for the Super Shuttle. The Shuttle driver calls me to tell me he's 3 minutes away, and I get my stuff and get to the sidewalk. Once there I chat with the neighbor, on break from his daily leaf-blowing session, and after a couple minutes the Shuttle arrives. So far everything is according to script...

I was the 6th passenger on said shuttle, and the driver said we had one more stop. Cue the whining. Dude behind me starts demanding to know what the official Super Shuttle policy on stops allowed is. Seriously dude, wtf? Who Cares? There are 2 seats left on the shuttle and we're on schedule, what's the problem?

So we make the stop and pick up the passenger, then the driver goes in a way which no GPS would pick as a route to the airport. Whiney dude is muttering and guffawing the whole time, like he's expecting something more for a $20 ride to the airport. Throughout this, I was being Zen. I knew it was far too early in the day to let something like this get to me.

It turns out there was another stop (aha, this explains everything). So now the shuttle is full and we can go to the airport. The driver follows the GPS directions diligently but Whiney Dude doesn't like the way that we were going, he starts telling the driver he's going the wrong way. For a second, it seemed like we were slowing down, I really hoped the driver wasn't going to listen to WD, because then I would have had to berate WD in front of everyone including a person I took to be his daughter.

Alas, the driver played the "No English"? card (He was Chinese) and we kept going...

With all this, I was at the airport within the window acceptable window of time. Which was good, because the check-in line was a couple hundred strong. It was snaking it's way through and out the barriers down the terminal. This is bad, my morning had gone from pleasant, to frustrating, to annoying. But the line was moving.

Tangent alert: I'm sure there have been focus groups and surveys and all kinds of shit that tell the airlines that it doesn't matter how bad they treat people, as long they keep flights cheap. If that's true, why are you going Fucking Bankrupt??

The reason for the line was that the counter was severely understaffed, no surprise. But the line moved and check in was without incident. Of course check-in is only the first, and the least painful of the lines. On to security...

Again a big line, again because they only had 2 of the six stations open. I make my way through and my bag gets pulled. I follow the genius over to his little test area and he asks me "is there anything fragile or dangerous in your bag?" Uh well there's an Ipod and a camera, if you drop them, they'll break. If you try to eat the batteries, you'll probably get sick... "So I'll take that as a 'No'"? Sure, why not.

Now, I was still ok timewise, but spending 20 minutes to check in and 20 minutes to get through security was cutting into that (To be somewhat fair, I haven't waited at SFO this long in probably 3 years). Now having one of TSA's finest examine my stuff like he knows what he's looking at is starting to get annoying. I'm sitting there watching, wondering what's in the bag that made them check... Finally, at the bottom of my bag he pulls out my 10mm Combination Wrench and holds it up to a ruler. No really, he did. Then he puts everything into a plastic bin and says everything looks fine, well except that my wrench is too long so I can't take it on the plane. He then asks if I would like it disposed of, handed to someone I know, or mailed. I told him to add it to his kit and I hoped it completed the set. He says "Am I to understand you are choosing option 1?"

He the reruns all my stuff with the wrench, and it checks out, and I come to Chicago.
Thank Jeebus that the other passengers didn't have to endure me having a wrench in my bag...