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Saturday, October 18, 2003

Ride to Santa Cruz




Today was Motorcycle day. First I hung out with Lars at the BMW dealer in Mountain View (October-Feste bratwurst and drinks), then I headed my dear Monster towards Santa Cruz, along the twistiest roads I could find; beginning with Stevens Canyon Road, which forks into 9. Never did this one before and although narrow at times, not too interesting. Highway 9 was beautiful as always, and there were not too many cages around. Decided to go on a detour along 236, towards Big Basin State Park. The first part of 236 (coming from Skyline) is narrow, bumpy and very twisty: great fun! Briefly checked out the park (contains some big ass redwoods) and the museum at the park headquarters. Back on the road: 236 remains a lot of fun for a while, then forks into 9 again - alas, this is the boring part of 9 (through the towns of Big Boulder, Ben Lomond etc). In Felton I got tired of the slow traffic and decided to improvise: took Felton-Empire road, which turned out to be a delightful, smooth, medium-paced climb towards the coastal mountains' ridge; it led to Empire Grade, passing along the backside of Wilder Ranch Park (of mountain bike fame), past UC Santa Cruz onto Highway 1.

Lunch in my favorite Greek restaurant in Santa Cruz, then it was time to hit the Pacific Coast Highway: sweet and scenic as we know it, but also cold, because of a stubborn cloud masking the sun. Cruised past the beaches and the kite surfers and after 30+ miles I arrived at the junction with my beloved Pescadero Road. Did a quick gas stop in the quaint small town of Pescadero, and then the road was all mine: a marvelous sequence of numerous tight turns and fast, short straights through the coastal redwood forest. It was all bliss and it felt divine, until I overcooked one turn (blind - and tightening); I was leaned into it carrying too much speed and didn't dare to brake or lean more, so of course I ended up for a brief episode in the wrong lane; no car, fortunately, but this was bad bad, I was shaken and all pissed about it - over-confidence is your worst enemy - the resulting under-confident period didn't last too long however, and soon I was enjoying the most twisty and bumpy section: the part after Pescadero Road turns into Alpine Road; it was bliss again and sooner than I wanted I found myself on the junction with Skyline Boulevard. Heading back home I did engage in some squid behaviour for which I now feel quite remorseful - sport-bike style passing at high rpm of a bunch of slow cars and Harley's - but then they went so slow. Conclusion: had an awesome ride but I have to be careful; when too comfortable I tend to want to go a bit too fast - why o why is speed so exhilarating? - therefore, I should keep confronting the sickest, bumpiest and tightest twisties I can find: a good reality check and one learns from it, plus: rides stay interesting at reasonable speed.

Friday, October 17, 2003

Sports
And now: sports. For some reason, locals seem to be all excited about a baseball game last night. Tom even called from a bar in Manhattan where he was watching it. I refuse to become interested in baseball or American football and the likes. Instead: ice hockey (acceptable), watching mountain bike freeriding or Monster tricksters (real fun), but the best: Anderlecht games in the Champions League (the ones they don't lose, which are quite rare these days, I admit). OS blues
The real Empire of Evil, in the meantime, has struck again: yesterday I had to waste another 20 minutes in the office to install-con-reboot another 'critical update'. I'm doing half baked efforts to convince people at work to use a proper operating system, but without much luck. This is intensly depressing, because personal computing was basically invented at Parc, and in a not so distant past we used to be forerunners on this, not followers. Satan is in Rumsfeld's ass
I was ranting about the Bush administration and religion only yesterday, and now this NBC piece of news about a certain general William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense, came out. Compared to this demented lunatic, colonel Jack Ripper out of Dr. Strangelove looks like a reasonable guy. Some of his better quotes:

"Why is this man [Bush] in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."

"The enemy [of the US's war against terror] is a spiritual enemy. He's called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan."

This would make great satirical stuff for a black comedy, if it wasn't so REAL! This also makes me believe that the former times under Ronald Reagon in his Alzheimer-induced 'Empire of Evil' days were not too bad after all. And for the first time I felt a slight trace of compassion with Donald Rumsfeld, while he was speaking on the radio trying to defend his employee: "I simply can't comment on what he said" because he did not know "the full context" of Boykin's remarks.

Thursday, October 16, 2003

Dark ages
Malaysia's prime minister delivered a chilling anti-semitic speech on an Islamic summit; here a couple of 'highlights':

"They [the Jews] invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy, so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone, we must use our brains also."

Besides manifesting himself as a complete and utter moron, he does make half of a point: thinking and religion are not compatible.
More bleak religion news: some results of this poll are quite disturbing (in case the results are to be trusted). Take for instance this line:
"More than 60% of American born-again Christians, American Catholics and Korean Christians, more than 80% of Peruvian Catholics and Hindus, and over 95% of all Muslims surveyed say they will suffer negative consequences if they disobey their religion. "
Or, these particular idiots won't even dare start thinking for themselves (btw, our fearless leader, president Shrub, is a born-again Christian - not sure if he belongs to the 60%, but I think I'm up for a bet). It's like being in the Dark Ages once again and hence it's high time for a second Aufklaring: smart people all over the world should stand up and speak out agains the irrationality and insanity of religion and the army of fundamentalists it never ceases to spawn! These guys make an effort...
Finally, it would be ridiculous if it wasn't so depressingly real: see what these nutcases in Wyoming are up to.

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Budget issues
The 2004 budget for NIH (National Institutes of Health) will be in the order of 27 billion (27 x 10^9) dollars; as commonly known, the proposed Iraq reconstruction budget is 87 billion; this certainly indicates where the priorities of the Bushites lie. Of the 87 billion, 66 billion is reserved for financing US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 20 billion for the actual reconstruction. A substantial amount of this 20 billion looks to be going to (at best) pretty dubious expenses. Of course, then there is the record federal budget deficit (estimate for 2003: 400 billion), not uncorrelated to Dubya's tax cuts (which the majority of the population will hardly notice). But don't worry, there is a jobless recovery going on! Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot and other observations
Blijkt dat Limbaugh (een soort Amerikaanse talkshow host versie van Filip De Winter) verslaafd is aan pain killers en dat hij zichzelf heeft laten opnemen in een ontwenningskliniek. Ik stel voor dat we Rush's eigen advies opvolgen en de hypocriete vetzak in de Mississipi jagen:
"Limbaugh routinely condemns drug abusers and said in 1995 that "too many whites are getting away with drug use. The answer is to find (them), convict them, and send them up the river." (uit het yahoo nieuws article)
Ondertussen heeft de voortreffelijke Al Franken een nieuw boek uit dat ik dringend op mijn te-lezen-lijst moet zetten...

Sunday, October 12, 2003

The West is the best
It's october 10: the sky is blue and clear, the air is crisp, the sun shines and it's a comfortable 20C. No rain expected for about a month or so - o, the greatness of California! Went biking in Purisima Creek, on the gorgeous Whittemore Gulch trail (see pic), the Pacific in the backdrop. The trail, IMO one of the most enjoyable long descents in the area consists of the following sections:
-the Vista's: views from open meadowlands along side the Skyline ridge to the west side of the Santa Cruz mountains and the Pacific
-the Switchbacks: snaking singletrack with plenty of tight (and not-so-tight) switchbacks
-Roots: entering the upper part of the forest, a number of fun obstacles are posed (jumps on the way down, hops on the way up)
-the Gulch proper: high speed rollercoaster downhill, through the bowels of the forest, along fern fields and creeks
The climb up is challenging, especially given the steep, loose and rocky fire road towards the parking lot at the very end.