Friction shifting finds its limits

 At the end of September last year, the m5100 rear derailleur on my Carl Strong frame started making funny noises, and shifting performance deteriorated. I finally narrowed it down to the pulley wheels, and after taking the upper one apart saw immediately that the bushing had failed.

A pair of replacement pulley wheels were only $10, but would take a few days. I saw that there was an ebay offer where I could get a GRX 822 rear derailleur for $80, and decided I'd order that as well and install the first one that arrived.

The GRX rear derailleur would handle a 10-51 rear cassette but was designed for 12 speed. Of course, years of shifting with friction shifters have made me blase about using unmatched rear derailleurs. I figured since the job of the derailleur was just to move the chain from one sprocket to another, as long as it could handle the chain and the cassette's spread I should be good to go. It didn't hurt that the derailleur was a good 40g lighter than the m5100 derailleur that it replaced.

At first, I was actually quite pleased with the rear derailleur. It was a lighter action --- whether it was because the higher end derailleur had smoother bearings or pivots and just a lighter action spring, the shifts definitely felt smoother or faster.

The problem was that the shifts were not reliable. For instance, the 45t sprocket was easily one of my favorite sprocket on the m5100. However, it was no longer quiet, making a strange sort of noise whenever it was on that cassette. In fact, the rear derailleur was finicky about staying on that sprocket. Any sort of nudge on the shifter would knock it off that sprocket. Even stranger, once in a while the chain would slip off a sprocket and then rather than recovering to that sprocket the derailleur would shift all the way down the cassette.

I lived with this for awhile, thinking that it was just a matter of retraining my friction shifting muscle memory so that the shifts would be good. But 3 months later it still wasn't good and worse, the chain started falling off the chainring even when the clutch was on. I went so far as to check the chains for both pin wear and lateral wear, and nope. That wasn't my problem.

I finally pulled off the derailleur and put the m5100 back in with the new pulley wheels, and immediately the problems all went away. So somehow, Shimano managed to make their 12s rear derailleur incompatible with the 11s rear cassette even when you're using friction shifters. That's a level of incompatibility I'd never seen before. One possibility is that you really need 12s chains, but since those are expensive I guess I won't make that experiment. In the mean time I guess I have a relatively new GRX 822 rear derailleur for sale.

Review: The Age of Diagnosis

 The Age of Diagnosis is written by a neurologist/psychologist.  It starts with a discussion of Huntington's disease, which is a genetic disease with no known cure, and goes through case study after case study as to why even though there's a non invasive definitive test, people don't get diagnosed for it. Apparently, people show up at her office thinking that taking the test is the responsible thing but looking for permission to not test.

Then she launches into discussions of much more controversial topics, especially topics like autism, which has had increasingly broad ranging diagnostic criteria, to the point where almost anyone could self-diagnose as being on the spectrum. The author is british, and when she spells out the criteria for getting a diagnosis (one thing I learned in this book is that self diagnostic tests are not accurate, and as many as 50% of people who self-diganose are mistakenly thinking that they're on the spectrum when they're actually not!), I'm astonished that the rates of autism have been going up so much. And then she reveals that a lot of the increase in diagnostics come from a small number of physician groups who have an incentive to diagnose more people as being autistic! Even worse than that, the highest functioning autistic folks presume to speak for everyone on the autism spectrum, and of course, the ones most afflicted with autism have a hard time even getting dressed, let alone speak up for their positions, which leads to huge amounts of conflict both within and without the medical and patient communities. (She doesn't mention the elephant in the room, which is that by writing the criteria for autism so broadly, the medical community has inadvertently armed the anti-vaccine folks, who're using the increased number of diagnosis to turn public opinion against vaccines!)

There's a bunch of other diseases discussed in the book, including breast and ovarian cancers (certain genetic mutations vastly increase your chance of getting both, and one way to protect yourself against those cancers is to have those organs removed, but then you have to trade that off against when to have the procedure because you want to maintain maximum optionality for having offspring), down syndrome (testing there has sufficient false positives to make the decision a hard one), long covid, lyme disease, and probably one or more items that I've forgotten about because I read this book in paper format and not on the kindle.

The book ends with a discussion of pyschiatric syndromes and psycho somatic disorders (which the author takes pains to note that a psychosomatic disability is just as real and painful to live with as one with physical manifestations). One of her concerns is that the diagnosis of having one of those boxes you in, and if you believe in that diagnosis enough, it becomes an excuse to not work on getting better in those areas. You start to believe in that instead of your own ability to induce positive changes in yourself!

The book left me quite a lot to think about even though it's short and easily finished in a handful of hours. Definitely worth your time.

Review: King Sorrow

 Stephen King (and his son Joe Hill, who wrote King Sorrow) books all have the same plot structure: there's a problem which the protagonist solves through some supernatural means. It works and empowers the protagonist, who takes it further, and then the negative side effects show up and gets worse and worse until he/she loses control of the situation, upon which the protagonist has to deal with the situation in which the solution becomes much worse than the original problem.

It's a simple plot structure, but within that structure you can tell a large number of stories and the nature of the plot structure if handled well draws you in and keeps you reading, provided that the characters themselves are compelling.

King Sorrow works on that structure, with the protagonists being 6 friends, one of which got into trouble because he did a good deed one day while visiting his mom in prison. To solve this problem, the 6 friends summon a dragon to deal with the evil-doers. The deal with the titular dragon in the novel is that the friends take turns choosing some deserving evil-doer a painful death via dragon.

Where the book rings false is that I have no problem in real life dealing with the kind of power Joe Hill portrays. In this case the side effect is innocent people dying but the reality is that when you look at the scale of damage certain folks like Vladimir Putin cause the kind of collateral damage described in the book wouldn't bother me whatsoever. Yet, Joe Hill makes this a central dilemma of the book, and the only person in the group of 6 for whom that doesn't bother is of course the villain.

The actual fantasy of the book is well done. I enjoyed the urban fantasy aspects, the references to the Arthurian mythos, the tie-in to the internet and trolling. I also admire how Joe Hill started the narrative of the book in the 1970s, and then advancing the narrative by decades to 2022 over time, allowing the protagonists to age and dealing with contemporary events and technological advancements. This integrates the novel with your know.

While this is unlikely to be close to the best novel you've read this year, it was good enough for me to keep reading it (though to be honest I had to take several breaks) and finish it within the library's 3 week return period.

Review: Notes on Being a Man

 Notes on Being a Man is Scott Galloway's open letter to his two teenage sons. It falls into the same genre of self-help books as Succeeding, and since they're both written by rich white guys who won the birth lottery, have the same attitude of excessive confidence and insufficient exposure to different lifestyles and alternative approaches to life.

Nevertheless, both are highly opinionated, and not afraid to call on BS, which means that they're worth reading, and entertaining while reading. In particular, Scott Galloway is one of the few faculty members willing to berate and publicly call out Universities as completely failing to serve their mission by turning themselves into exclusive clubs and aiming for a high rejection rate rather than attempting to educate as many deserving kids as possible.

As smart, talented, and hardworking as their parents were at their age, young people can’t get into the same-quality colleges, higher education having figured out a way to extract more money by artificially constraining supply, thereby forcing these kids to attend lesser places that are—wait for it—exponentially more expensive. (kindle loc 1600)

The top twenty universities could expand their supply—seats for incoming freshmen—50 percent within the decade. But they won’t, as the prestige that stems from scarcity is the ointment for irrelevance that most academics thirst for. (kindle loc 3189)

Rich people who got rich and get to pontificate a lot get to tell their life story. Galloway tells his with an unusual amount of humility --- he got into UCLA on appeal because his mom was a single mother despite having awful grades. He got hired as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley because he was a rower and the interviewer hired anyone who was a rower. As a selfish person he divorced his first wife for no good reason other than that he wanted to move to New York, having become a wealthy successful guy. Basically, his big skill was being able to give great talks, which shows that you can be successful as long as you can talk your way into other people giving you money.

Nevetheless, the book is full of great aphorisms that are told well, and as someone who's a parent, would do well to heed:

The kid you have this summer is leaving… forever. The skinny boy with the lion’s mane who tiptoed into our room and, on first evidence of me stirring, would say, “Dad, let’s make a plan for the day,” is gone. It’s incredibly sad. A relative of his will be back next summer, but different. The compensation is that there will be new attributes you find hilarious and endearing. But still, sad. I put, mentally, a big sign above my boys’ heads: LIMITED EDITION, YOUR ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD SON, ONE SUMMER ONLY. (kindle loc 3200)

 Central to the prosperity and survival of our species is mothers and fathers who have an irrational passion for their kids’ well-being. To fill this role for people who aren’t your offspring is generosity toward the planet and species. I’ve never understood the idolatry of Steve Jobs. The world needs more engaged fathers, not a better fucking phone. (kindle loc 3764)

Of course, I'm biased. Whenever I read an author, I largely judge them by whether I agree with them. 

the United States is the best place to make money; Europe is the best place to spend it. (kindle loc 1582)

(The preceding sentences prior to my quote, however, I completely disagree with).

One of the criticisms I read of this book is that many of the issues Galloway talks about apply also to young women, or even non-white men. I agree. On the other hand, I think that criticism ignores the purpose of the book, which is for a well-intentioned father to leave notes for his son so that if they ever decide his stuff is worth reading (which seems unlikely if his sons are anything like mine), they will have something to refer to. (And they will have no excuse that their Dad didn't say anything or provide decent advice)

If there's any criticism I have about this book, it seems to me that Galloway has pretty low standards for being a father. He admits that he spent most of his kids' childhood traveling for work and focusing work rather than being there for them. He seems to think that the extent of a father's job is to show up for the kids' soccer games and providing lots of money (he flies his kids business class). I guess for a lot of people just becoming super wealthy is the big attribute that most people would want in a father.

The book  is worth reading because it's entertaining. I'm not sure I'd agree with Galloway, but hey, one person can only live one life, as as Pengtoh says, the best way to get to live multiple lives is to read a lot.

Point Reyes Coast Campground

Point Reyes has two fantastic campgrounds, one of which is Wildcat, the other is Coast Campground. (the other campgrounds are either only accessible by boat or inland) We've been to Wildcat on the way to Alameres Falls but never been to Coast Campground. I saw that someone cancelled their reservation for December 30th, and the weather forecast for the 30th was good, so I shifted my existing reservation from New Year's Day to that day.

Coast Campground is uniquely accessible by bike. It's only 3 miles from the Limantour Lodge trailhead along a mostly flat trail, so we brought our bikes: I put my gravel wheels from the Roadini onto Bowen's. Boen's Salsa Journeyman was already set up with 38mm Pacenti Pari-Moto tires, and I brought my ancient Airborne Hardtail as it already had a trailer attachment installed. Xiaoqin, of course, brought her newly acquired Ritchey Montebello. I had purchased Rhinowalk Fork bags for Xiaoqin and Boen's bike, but only 3 out of 4 bags arrived, and Boen didn't like the unbalanced feel of having only one side. We also packed our saddlebags. The Yakima bike trailer was loaded with the car camping oriented Wawona tent and a backpack with all the sleeping bags.

Driving from home, we bought lunch in San Francisco and ate lunch at a picnic table along the way. Arriving at the Limantour Lodge, we saw that it had vacancy, but since we already paid for the campground just got out the bikes and started riding. The bike ride wasn't completely flat, and with a load I actually needed to shift to the lowest gear for the final approach to the campground. You actually saw the beach pretty quick, but the trail took you to the campground where there was a bike rack. We had Site #3, and to my surprise when we pitched the tent we had an ocean view. I was disappointed when I saw we had no fire ring so our firewood was useless.

After pitching the tent, we walked down to the beach and walked around before heading up the Coast trail. It was already 2:45pm, so we didn't have time for an extended walk but we'd never been on this part of the Coast trail before so we just decided to treat it as an out and back. Along the way, we could see various bluffs, beaches, and gaps on the cliff side through which we could see the ocean. We even spotted Elk towards the 3:30pm turn around point. It was very windy. We had talked to some campers who were leaving as we were entering the area and they said that it had been very calm the night before so this was just a sign of the impending storm.

Returning to camp, we made coffee and apple cider, then started making dinner. I noticed that there was a spot near the beach which was protected from the wind, so while waiting the requisite 10 minutes for the mountain house dinners to cook we walked there and admired the gorgeous sunset and ensuing light show. I'd forgotten to bring headlights, but between the two phones and my Garmin we had light.

The night was awful. The wind kept flapping and shaking the tent making it hard to sleep. Even the kids complained. By the time it was 6:00am Xiaoqin was up and in a hurry to go. "I'm not waiting for the rain!" We packed everything up and started cycling back to the car. To be honest, it wasn't very cold and I regretted putting on long underwear and wearing my jacket as I warmed up pretty quick.

We reached the trailhead and there was Yoyo Zhou and his daughter and son, whom I'd never met. We said hi and caught up while Yoyo helped us put the bikes back on the roof. Yoyo's wife showed up --- she had spotted us while we were riding and she was running and we'd never met either! We made brief introductions but since we hadn't had breakfast we were in a bit of a hurry to head home. I would only realize later that Yoyo's birthday was New Year's Eve!

It rained quite a bit on our way home, but when I got home I realized that the bikes weren't even really wet, indicating that all the spots on the windshield were because we were driving at 65mph. Nevertheless, it started raining in earnest so we were glad we got out with a dry tent.

Review: The Escape

 The Escape won an award for the best Sports-related book of the year. It was on sale for $3 on Amazon (and the library didn't have a copy). The book is an autobiography of Robert Millar (now Philippa York), a professional cyclist in the 1980s and 1990s who transitioned to being a woman after he retired from the sport.

What makes the book unique is that rather than being ghost-written by David Walsh, it is written as a series of conversations between Walsh and York as they are journalists for two different periodicals covering the 2020 Tour de France. So the book goes from the 2020 Tour de France to older editions of the same race from Robert Millar's point of view, which sort of makes you think that the various editions of the Tour are largely similar, going over the same mountains with similar rivalries between the various participants.

This is not true, of course. Millar retired from cycling just as the EPO era was taking off. Before that, the drug of choice were steroids, which weren't actually very effective for endurance sports. So while York does admit that Millar did occasionally dope, she could claim that while cheating was rampant it didn't have much effect on the race.

Probably the best reason to read this book is to gain an understanding of how someone could grow up wanting to be a woman yet was gifted with a strong body that could reach the pinnacle of an extremely male-dominated and demanding sport, but at all points could still wish that he was a woman. Keep in mind that Millar did marry a straight woman and had 2 children!

Having said that, you get the feeling that Millar was such a completely different person from York (Walsh mentioned that no way would have wanted to drive around France with Millar!) that her perspective on Millar was maybe quite warped.

I am of two minds about this book. On the one hand, I think I would have preferred a traditional ghost-written autobiography. The way the book was written it felt constantly jarring to flip from a contemporary Tour De France to previous races. I feel like I gained a lot more understanding of what a body dysmorphic person feels. But I also got no special insight on what a professional cyclist's life was like. Millar's story was just too unique.

The book is short and a quick read so maybe you should just read it and judge for yourself.

Review: Jan Ullrich - The Best there Never Was

 I saw Jan Ullrich on the used book shelf at the library for $3, and at that price I bought it and took it home and read it.

The book is written in what I consider an odd fashion, with the author going over Jan's career coming out of East Germany's training system and then joining Deutsche Telekom as a budding pro. His successes and failures (which are well documented) were at this point in the book attributed to his upbringing and personality (the guy loved food and when he was in his off season was famous for wiping out the contents of his friends' refrigerators).

Then you get into the later half of the book before the author brings up what was common in that era of cycling, which was doping with EPO. There's no question that Jan Ullrich was an enormously talented rider (his teammates described him going from getting dropped to beating them over 3 days during a training camp), and that everyone else in that era doped with EPO because there were no tests for it and the UCI simply set a hematocrit level that was acceptable, essentially giving everyone a license to dope up to the 50% mark. What I didn't know was that when the test was finally developed you could go back to urine samples taken from those years and it would definitely prove that Ullrich had EPO markers in his urine.

I have a controversial opinion about doping, which is that it should be allowed as long as the doctors and researchers involved documented and published what it did. The sport would change from being hero worship about bike riders to something like Formula F-1, where the true heroes are the engineers and mechanics rather than the drivers. I could definitely get behind a sport where the doctors and physiologists are the heroes getting paid multiple millions of dollars in salary and getting a share of the prize money. The contribution to medical science would be significant, and people would give up on hero-worshiping athletes simply for being genetically gifted. Of course, doping does distort the field --- the prize would go towards people whose bodies respond better to doping. On the other hand, none of the sporting events I've ever bothered to watch seem particularly big on "natural" human behavior anyway.

Anyway, this part of the book was badly written, I think partly because Dan Friebe probably assumes any reader of the book is a big fan of Ullrich and would know all the sordid details of his life already. I certainly didn't, so kept wondering why some irrelevant details kept coming up until the reveal of the doping scandal that ended Ullrich's career. The story all seemed pretty sad up to that point but then once you realized everyone in the Peloton was doping you found yourself wondering what was the point.

What was interesting to me was that Friebe indicated in the book that Germany became a big cycling country only after Ullrich won the Tour de France and Deutsche Telekom (later T-Mobile) became a world famous cycling team. I'd always thought that Germany was huge on cycling because I saw so many Germans on bike tours, but of course soccer was always more popular. In any case, apparently because of this Jan Ullrich got way more attention in Germany than even Lance Armstrong did in the USA during the period, which probably affected his mental health as well.

Anyway, the story of lost potential in the book comes across, as well as a note that while Ullrich never lived up to his potential, mental fortitude and discipline must have genetic components as well (and obviously many people will tell you we're all moist robots without free wheel), so overall Ullrich probably never had a chance despite his prodigious physical talent.