J. D. Salinger’s book The Catcher in the Rye started out as filler material during the University of Alberta’s International Week. There’s loads of time to kill waiting for lectures to start, and not a whole ton of homework to fill it with, so I started cruising through another book. It took until reading week to gather enough time together to finish off the last couple chapters but it’s not because I didn’t enjoy it. I’d say it’s probably one of the better books I’ve ever read.

Salinger really manages to share his thoughts about phonies, societal uniformity, and finding purpose in life without ever straying from the story he’s telling. While I thought the massive quantity of goddams and other assorted curses was kinda humorous I can see why my Mom’s recollection of the book is one of the controversy it caused rather than the content.

So for highlights of the book, I guess the whole commentary that Salinger is making on the everyday person’s “facade” is really what I started digging out as I read through it. The best snippets (that I remember) are below:

“Then, after a while, right in the middle of the goddam conversation, he asked me, ‘Did you happen to notice where the Catholic church is in town, by any chance?’ The thing was, you could tell by the way he asked me that he was trying to find out if I was a Catholic. He really was. Not that he was prejudiced or anything, but he just wanted to know. He was enjoying the conversation about tennis and all, but you could tell he would have enjoyed it more if I was a Catholic and all. That kind of stuff drives me crazy. I’m not saying it ruined our conversation or anything – it didn’t – but it sure as hell didn’t do it any good.” — Page 112-113

“You should have seen him when old Sally asked him how he liked the play. He was the kind of a phony that had to give themselves room when they answer somebody’s question. He stepped back, and stepped right on the lady’s foot behind him. He probably broke every toe in her body. He said that the play itself was no masterpiece, but that the Lunts, of course, were absolute angels. Angels. For Chrissake. Angels. That killed me. Then he and old Sally started talking about a lot of people they both knew. It was the phoniest conversation you ever heard in your life. They both kept thinking of places as fast as they could, then they’d think of somebody that lived there and mention their name. I was all set to puke then it was time to go sit down again. I really was. And then, when the next act was over, they continued their goddam boring conversation. They kept thinking of more places and more names of people that lived there. — Page 127-128.

So, this Holden Caulfield kid is pretty critical of everyone else who goes about life being fake and achieving nothing. Really though, he’s being the dead weight in society. He feels entitled to go about life cruising New York and avoiding reality because he’s being himself and not some phoney, who doesn’t want to be himself. To be honest I’m just waiting for someone to slap this guy up side the head and send him out to work for his daily wage. Where’s the balance supposed to go though? Let people fake their entire lives as long as they do so in a socially acceptable way, pulling their own fair share of the world’s weight? Or should we embrace the “enlightened” and allow them to go about their enlightened ways because somehow they are bringing some good into our lives.

If you stretch the analogy too far, which I did because I had the time, you start to wonder why the government should support any form of arts, any form of advanced research, any form of sport, that cannot fund itself by the capital it can raise on it’s own. If Canada can’t support a nordic skiing team based on public interest and event ticket sales why does anyone have the right to do that as their profession. How come some sociology professor can study Buffy the Vampire Slayer with government funded grants when they cannot support that research with the funding of an interested commercial enterprise. Why should I get a ride on government funded scholarships to study material properties, fly back and forth to Holland, and try to get papers published in academic journals when there is no industrial application ready to be put into production.

Holden Caulfield acts as though he has some right, or entitlement to behave in the way he does because he feels he is being true to himself. His own measure of integrity is internal and fully variable with each day’s circumstances. We in some sense like the guy, partly because he’s the protagonist and we’re supposed to, but mostly because we see what we’d suggest are phonies all around us. People towing the consumerism line, married with 1.4 kids and 2.2 cars. Holden’s entitled because he is real, but where is my definition of real coming from. I can’t swing too far that way without making myself sick. There’s a perceived real-ness to being the granola munching, bike riding, sweater-pant wearing, communist voting, anarchist protesting hippie. Isn’t that form of real-ness somewhat different from the form of real-ness that is in fact honorable and beneficial to the world. There’s a fine line between being the practice what you preach form of “real” and taking such a hard and fast interpretation of real-ness that you’re incapable of being real yourself.

Between the end of classes and the beginning of exams there is a dangerous pause in the life of any student. There’s enough time to take a bit of a breather before diving headlong into the new semester, there is also enough time to get thoroughly distracted and forget that you’ve still got more than 50% of your GPA to earn in the next 10 days of tests.

It was during this dangerously relaxing stretch of December that I picked up Lance Armstrong’s first autobiography entitled It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life which tells the story of Lance Armstrong’s rise to triathlon superstar in the jr leagues and then competing on the national and international stage as a cyclist.

The book tells the story of his nosedive in health from full time pro athlete to full on bed-ridden cancer patient. The thing about it though is that his mind takes a bit of a lag to get hit by the reality of cancer after his body does. Following surgery Lance writes as any athlete would write or say:

“But I was starving. I was used to my three square meals a day, thanks to my mother. I thought of heaping hot plates of food, with gravy. I hadn’t eaten anything in hours and my last meal had been some kind of cereal. Cereal wasn’t a meal. I mean, come on. That was a snack.” — page 118

Within a couple months the focus had changed, it “wasn’t about the bike”, it wasn’t even about being healthy, it was about surviving the cancer. When the focus of life is so significantly reduced there are only a couple things that really matter. It’s amazing how universal they are, that’s what really struck me. Lance Armstrong was, and so far as I know, continues to live a life independent of any faith in Christ Jesus. His needs though are identical to mine, when I boil off the superfluous aspects of my existence and his existence, we’re pretty much the same person.

The story is not a great one to read but because I knew how it would turn out I never really debated whether or not I should keep on cruising through. And of course I wasn’t disappointed. Again there was a mental lag between some physical recuperation and the development of the toughest psychological cyclist on the pro-tour. When it started to happen though the story was grand and awfully inspiring.

“From then on, all we did was eat, sleep, and ride bikes. Spring had just begun moving up into the mountains, creating a constant fog and drizzle that seemed to muffle the the piney woods. We rode in the rain every day. The cold seared my lungs, and with every breath I blew out a stream of white frost, but I didn’t mind. It made me feel clean. We rode winding back roads, only some of which were paved and mapped. We cycled over gravel and hardpan and beds of pine needles and under hanging boughs.

At night, Chris made big pots of pasta and baked potatoes and we sat around the table wolfing down the food and having unprintable conversations. We told stories and laughed about old times and the start of our friendship, and my first years as a pro.

I called home each night, and Kristen could tell that I was starting to sound life my old self; I was having fun, joking, I didn’t seem depressed. When I would tell her about the cold and rainy weather or how far we had ridden, I would laugh `I’m feeling really good,’ I said, almost puzzled.” — pages 195-196

The opportunity Lance Armstrong had to rebuild himself from nothing to be exactly what he wanted isn’t an opportunity that very many people have physically in life. It’s also probably not something you’d ever really wish on yourself either, but it was essentially the reason he was able to construct a 165 pound climbing and time-trialling powerhouse.

When you start being able to add back into life, things in addition to that common basic threshold that Lance experienced as a cancer patient, there is going to be a sense of joy. When bits and pieces of what is typical get removed and then added back there’s a greater appreciation for them.

“I passed the rest of the trip in a state of near-reverence for those beautiful, peaceful, soulful mountains. The rides were demanding and quiet, and I rode with a pure love of the bike, until Boone began to feel like the Holy Land to me, a place I had come to on a pilgrimage.” — Page 198

I figure that I should be keeping up to date with writing down my thoughts about the books I’ve read. Relatively close proximity to the reading is probably going to do a better job of relaying information than distant memory… So here goes.

Cry The Beloved Country by Alan Paton was Christmas Break reading material. Riding the bus around Belize was conducive to inhaling books for some family members but not myself unfortunately. I finished it up during the first week of school instead.

Cry, the Beloved Country is a story written in the years leading into the establishment of full fledged apartheid in South Africa. The novel tells the story of two sons who leave Ixopo, the village of their pseudo-common-heritage and move to the big city of Johannesburg. There they create lives for themselves, but the lives they are able to choose are dictated for them by their race. The black man, trapped by a culture of ‘native crime’, becomes a criminal and murderer. Paton contends loosely that this cannot be far from inevitable due to the lack of any social structure for the black population following the breakdown of the tribal system. The white man, who is thrust into success and education by the color of his skin, then is unfortunately forced to live with the consequences of the society built around him. The story is told through the experience of the black umfundisi of Ixopo seeking out his lost son in the big city. Through his travels and discussions the reader learns why the nation is hurting, and is prompted to cry or at least ache a bit, because the health and beauty of what once was is no longer seen in day to day life. While the main storyline is enough to drag you along and sucks you in, I found that it was the side stories: the history of the slums, the discussion about the economics of the mining industry, and the recurring failure to establish quality agriculture that make the book fantastic. They’re really the bits and pieces that bring to light how damaged the country had become.

While we now can look back at the pain that South Africa went through and be thankful that things are finally slowly turning around towards reconciliation I feel an urge to pause and wonder what role I’m playing to push social structures that are unjust. Paton’s message is of course multi-faceted but the bit that caught me repeatedly is the ability of society to come to half of a resolution and then move forward, never having really done justice to an injustice.

“In the meantime the strike is over, with a remarkably low loss of life. All is quiet they report, all is quiet.

In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest there is a leaf that falls. Behind the polished paneling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet except for fools.” — page 224

While I cannot sit here and list all of the “social structures” I’m supporting I am wise enough to realize that I do so, and do so frequently and forcefully in daily life.

Within the Faculty of Physical Education at the University of Alberta there is a group of people studying the effects of hard exercise on inflammation in the lungs (following exercise, not during it, but I’m not doing the study so don’t ask me). Participation in these kinds of studies is of course voluntary and you don’t get paid. You do however need to pass a VO2 test to qualify as “fit enough” to participate in the study. A VO2 test is supposed to be the best indicator of aerobic fitness, unfortunately it’s not easy to do, typical lab testing costs about $120 a pop. That’s not exactly student pocket change. So I signed up, not because I have buckets of time, but because who wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to save $120 that I wouldn’t have spent anyways.

VO2 max is a measure of the maximum capacity to transport and utilize oxygen during incremental exercise. (The derivation is V̇ – volume per time, O2 – oxygen, max – maximum). It is also called maximal oxygen consumption or maximal oxygen uptake. It is also known as aerobic capacity, which reflects the physical fitness of a person. – The Stolen Definition from Wikipedia

If you do a VO2 test on a bike you basically start riding at an easy wattage and the required power for you to generate is incremented slowly until you die. That’s just about it, oh and the fact that you’ve got this huge tube down your throat and some girl yelling at you with instructions.

Above are some photos of the event, and the final one is the most important piece of the result. It shows a line plotting all of the measured points during the test and the ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen over a short interval of time. What you see is that early in the test I am processing a low amount of oxygen somewhere around 0.5 L/min and as I increase the amount of oxygen I’m taking in (by cycling harder) the amount of C02 I’m getting rid of maintains the same ratio. That’s the case until I reach my aerobic threshold “wattage” or “effort” or “speed” and then the graph starts to kink. When that kink occurs I’m essentially firing on all pistons but not yet accumulating any oxygen debt or lactic acid in my muscles that I cannot get rid of. That measurement is worth a lot to an athlete if it is calibrated to a heart-rate. That’s why these fitness centers can charge $120 to get your VO2 max tested. Once you know what heart-rate you are at when you reach the threshold you can then measure your “arrival” at threshold without lugging around a computer and shoving a tube down your throat. Training at that threshold is the fastest way to gain aerobic fitness, basically it’s the recipe to get in the best shape in the most efficient way possible. For me the magic number is 170 beats per minute. Typically athletes can measure their maximum heart rate and then estimate this magic spot between 80% and 85% of their max heart rate or 75% to 80% of their reserve heart rate. These two estimates put my magic number in the domain of (163, 174) or (164, 172) correspondingly. Guess what? I follow the pattern, the number is 170.

So, did I qualify for the study? No I missed the mark by 2.8 ml/kg/min. “High calibre” athletes needed to meet the mark of 60 ml/kg/min and I scored only 57.2, not good enough. I still scored about 30% better than the average “non-athlete” (45 ml/kg/min), but it still feels a bit crushing. I have to say that my mass has got to be a disadvantage for something like this, if I were a dozen fewer kilograms like our buddy Lance Armstrong was things would be a different story. Since missing the mark I’ve done a bit of poking around to try and find a bit of solace in some non-standardization of the test. Indeed there is some floating around online, the test is said to be slightly biased towards the smaller athlete (which, at 196 cm I am not) by a fraction proportional to “the difference in masses to the one third power”. That means my inclination to loose weight and score better is right, but I think it also means that it is not really worth it.

Oh, and the other number that’s kinda cool is that I died at 520 watts. That’s pretty good power if I had to say so, and that’s following a 9 minute effort. I kinda doubt (as a matter of fact I know) I would be able to crack a mean grand in a track 1km sprint but the indication is that I’d be respectable, I can confidently say I’d be beyond 750. They say, but I don’t know exactly who “they” is, that to split 40 km per hour in a flat 40 km time trial (on a good bike with aero wheels), you need to stick around 300 watts on the pavement.

Reading week finally arrived. I cruised into it a bit late, sticking in the lab until 8pm on Friday, but decided to take a brain break from the world of engineering and fiddle around on the computer. I brewed a whole pot of coffee and baked a dozen muffins and then sat down to code like I haven’t coded in months.

I wanted to make it possible for people to comment on weBLOG posts as well as on photos using a single universal piece of comment software. I dreamed up a means to do so and have the vast majority of it working. Comments are possible on all weBLOG posts from either the SeatoSea end of the website and from the “krabbe.ca” end of the website. It’s currently set up so that I need to approve all posts before they are publicly displayed. This is mostly to ensure that I get to see all the comments, I don’t want to miss any! It’s also good practice I suppose as far as avoiding spammers is concerned. I don’t know how soon that would ever happen but whatever, it’s a safety measure.

While I was at it I added a search option to my weBLOG because I was having trouble finding old posts in a short period of time. It’s also got a dropdown menu to select any of the “keywords” and access those subdirectories of the weBLOG. That page is linked HERE or from the top of the standard weBLOG page.

I really have a ton of other things to write about but I think I’m going to call it a night, pack up the computer and start getting ready for a little cross country ski vacation. I’ll post pictures and commentary on my VO2 test from this week sometime this weekend… so more on that later.

Please pray:

• For the right route. Ask God to lead Ed Witvoet, our tour logistics manager, to the exact route across the continent that He intends the cyclists to take.
• For accommodations. The tour will need approximately 55 places to stay overnight. Please pray that God will make suitable places available for the size of our group; that these places can be found and booked quickly and inexpensively.
• For support crew members. The tour will need a host of volunteers to travel with the tour to ensure a smooth and safe journey. Please pray for people to apply; specifically, tractor-trailer drivers and a kitchen team leader are needed.
• For increased awareness. Ask God to bless the efforts to communicate and promote the tour and its goals to churches and individuals so far, and to give creativity to organizers to spread the word further.
• For tour sponsors. Pray that those being contacted as possible corporate sponsors will catch the vision and come on board to help underwrite tour expenses.
• For celebration rally planning. Local committees are being formed to organize Sunday celebration rallies along the route. Pray that passionate and gifted people come forward to lend their time and energy to these events.
• For cyclists. Riding across North America is a major challenge and commitment that needs the support of family, friends and co-workers, and the Spirit’s clear discernment. Pray for safety as riders train for the tour.
• For the steering committee. Organizers have a lot to plan with not a lot of time. Pray for wisdom in decision-making and unity within the committee.
• For those living in poverty around the world. May compassion be evident in God’s people and may justice prevail in the hearts of those who govern.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to spend my time outside in Sundre at Pioneer Ranch Camp instead of inside cooped up in Edmonton doing school work. It was great, I looked forward to it for a solid 3 weeks after getting back into Canada and while there I soaked up every ounce of the weekend. Jenna sometimes says this phrase that I think is super dumb, she’ll say someone’s “in his glory”. I guess I’m a bit quicker to refer to such a situation as someone “feeling like they’re king sh!t”. But I guess maybe the english language is supposed to operate with a wider range of words. It’s really Jenna’s phrase that described the weekend, not mine. We had amazing people leading us in times of reflection, got to study a passage of scripture with 50 people, got to learn the ins and outs of soaring from Micheal, got to skate on a pond in the light of a 20 foot bonfire, got to go for a star lit walk with some of my best friends in the whole world, and even managed to beat Cayley’s team during a wide-game (This is a rarer occurrence than you might think).

I guess figuring out why “camp” situations are so likely result in “in your glory” situations than everyday life is something I should have figured out by now, having spent so much of my time in those situations. It wasn’t until this past Thursday that I got a better idea of it though. I wouldn’t say I know the answer all of a sudden, but I have a better idea. Neil’s quote from Thursday was great:

• “Will Woods, Ryan Lemphers and all those guys. I think they’re so great that I would jump down a well, break my legs, and just hang out with them”
  –Jan 31, 2008

I would add to that list a few people or subtract a few, depending on where you are: Aaron Jansen, Colin (Elwood Blues) or Luke (Fred) just to name a few. Soaking up what life’s got to offer happens when you’re doing it with some people who have got an idea of what it means to live life.

When I blogged about One hundred people signing up to ride across the continent on December 8, I didn’t really imagine that in the next 2 months we’d actually make it all the way to 200 cyclists signed up for this awesome adventure!

Well, the deadline to sign up occurred this past week on Thursday at midnight I guess. And there was a bit of a flurry of registrations, God is good! I’ve got 199 cyclists to make friends with over the course of 9 weeks next summer. That doesn’t even include the mobile kitchen staff and support crew, who I can imagine will get to become some fantastic friends as well (maybe even best friends?).