Vlog 1 - Cycling Has Changed My Life

Initiating my new weekly videoblog, or Vlog, I decided to discuss the activity closest to my heart -- bicycling. In future weeks: architecture, real estate, unemployment, global warming, weightlifting, running, cats who know they're being videotaped... who knows?

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Last summer I was thrown into a human stew of folks working hard to get an 8-man team of cyclists with Type-2 diabetes from Oceanside, California, near San Diego across the country to Annapolis, Maryland. This was a bicycle race called Race Across AMerica (RAAM), and TT2 completed the race in 7 days 7 hours and 24 minutes. I wrote all about it here.

My role as part of this stew was to navigate the Team Van and make all the decisions for the riders such as who would ride when, and the durations of their "pulls" based on existing variables such as weather, road conditions, elevation changes, and energy levels of the riders.

My driver in the Team Van was Andrew Burgess, who I found out along the way is a singer and guitarist with the band, Dead Letters. The name of the band struck me as waaay too coincidental. You see, my wife, BalticTiger, wrote a novel in 1990, as yet unpublished, called Letters of the Dead.

Anyway, Andrew traveled to Switzerland this summer for the wedding of two friends, and while there, performed a song, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel. Here he is:

Cover of Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea," live from Switzerland from Andrew Burgess on Vimeo.

Obama Derangement Syndrome

"The American President just won the Nobel Peace Prize. By any reasonable measure, all Americans should be proud."