Base Miles

I suppose I should begin by attempting to justify why I would think anyone else would even be interested in reading a blog entry about cycling.  The answer is, I don't really.  Much like any other fairly esoteric interest, it will probably only appeal to a small fraction of the public at large, familiar with the joys and frustrations and endless challenges of the sport.  

Cycling as a hobby and as a sport can be thought of as a graduated system of ever shrinking concentric circles of talent and intensity.  In the outer most ring are those who own a bike and enjoy riding for fun or to get from place to place.  Somewhere in the middle are the middle aged upper middle class nubes who watched Lance Armstrong on the TV and suddenly got the itch to buy a $5000.00 road bike, stuff their paunchy bits into a pair of lycra bib shorts, and wheel on up to their local club ride.  Nearer the center of this universe is a dense mass, a hard core.  It is within this crucible that I live; constantly working to move deeper and deeper toward the center; the peak.  

It is December 27th.  There is about a foot of snow on the ground, and I am already 6 weeks into training for the upcoming race season.  The more you ride and the more you race, the more you realize how unbelievably difficult the sport of competitive cycling actually is.  It is a discipline that rewards intelligence, sacrifice, strength, and above all, Suffering.  The more of each you have or can withstand, the more successful you will be.  That goes for training as well as competition.  

Daily Breakfast - Oatmeal, Egg whites
and Lots and lots of water

Training begins some time around Thanksgiving and continues more or less non stop until the end of your racing season, usually some time in September or early October.  You wake up one day and realize you have put on 15 pounds and 10% body fat.  You haven't looked at a training routine in months, and you realize that there is whole lot of painful work to be done.  It starts slowly.  You begin cutting calories and watching what you eat.  You start with short and lazy trips to the gym or training rides at pathetically low average speeds.  But as the weeks go by and the pounds come off, you go longer, you go harder, you go faster, you suffer more, and you become fixated on reaching that peak.  Everything else kind of becomes background noise.  Your mind becomes more and more preoccupied.  

There is no doubt that cycling is a selfish, selfish sport.  It involves a lot of time, a lot of money, and a willingness to not compromise on many things.  Half measures will not get you through a 100k race, up and over mountains, at speed.  Family members suffer along with you, and blessed is the man or woman who has the support of the people around them.  My wife initially hated me for it, but over the years she has realized that it is a vital part of my life and my happiness and is now my biggest and most valued supporter.  She indulges my strange requests, like a food scale for Christmas, and listens patiently while I blather on about wattage output and romanticize about local hills, that to her, are just hills.  She stands with my daughter at the side of the road during the shorter races each year cheering, "Go daddy Go!", and always encourages me no matter what the result.  It doesn't hurt that she is a trained masseuse either.  For all of that, you love family more than anything.  

Trainer set up in the basement.  Endless
base miles are churned out on the trainer
during the long winter months.

One of the mysteries of cycling is the fact that it can't really be said that it is fun.  Riding for hours on end up and over small mountains, with block head winds and pissed off motorists, muscles searing, and your goal speed or distance always just out of reach is not even remotely fun.  Yet you learn to love it.  There is an undeniable masochistic joy.  Maybe it comes from being pissed off at the world, or from being too stubborn to ever turn away from a fight.  Maybe the suffering it takes to hang with the other hard riders in that hard core gives you something better than fun; something you can't get anywhere else in a world full of duplicity and phoniness.  When you line it up at the bottom of a hill or at the start of a hard race, it is a yes or no proposition.  It isn't at all easy, but god dammit if it isn't fair.  All you need to succeed is to be hard enough and to be willing to suffer as much as it takes to not let yourself down.  

So with another three months until my first race of the year, I will continue on with the dieting, the training, and the dreaming.  It can be a lonely and exhausting process, one that tries your mettle and that of those around you, but the deeper and deeper you go, the harder and harder it is to turn back.  Some day my body will age and my performance will begin to decline.  Maybe then I will start to lose interest in all the hard work and sacrifice.  Maybe I will be more interested in coaching the youngsters coming up through the ranks behind me.  But until then, I'll be fighting and clawing with every piece of grit I've got to grow harder and stronger and faster; to chase down the dream wherever it may lead.  

 

 

... and Justice For All

The Death of Osama bin Laden

- American Power and American Principles   -   Daniel G. Harris

Like most Americans I awoke Monday morning to the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in a firefight with American special forces and CIA operatives at a compound just outside of Islamabad in Pakistan.  Unlike the people who gathered in front of the White House or in downtown New York to chant and cheer, my first reaction was one of pause and reflection.  

     While this was obviously a moment of emotional importance for many who view Bin Laden as the embodiment of evil, and upon whom they place the preponderance of blame for the coordinated attacks that took place on September 11, 2001, I felt that the celebrations and cheering were a bit premature.  For all the emotional significance of the moment it has done little to change the dynamics of the ongoing Global War on Terror.  When viewed from that perspective, the hunt for Osama bin Laden had become little more than a fascinating subplot of a much larger story.  In the end it was just one man’s life, ended in a spasm of violence like thousands and thousands of others over the last decade; casualties of a conflict whose motivations still largely remain unresolved.  

     The definition of who should be considered a terrorist, and what represents terrorism has always been almost entirely a matter of perspective.  The old adage that “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” would certainly seem to apply in many instances throughout history (Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela, Yasir Arafat, and others).  The case of Osama Bin Laden is no different.  Such nuanced points of view probably qualify as high treason these days in most parts of the United States, but the fact of the matter is, his message was deeply inspirational to many across the Arab world, and so long as this message continues to resonate the man himself will be of little meaning. 

     The list of grievances that feed Anti-Western/Anti-American sentiment in the muslim world are many.  The United States and its allies have an ignominious history in the middle east, and indeed around the world, of supporting brutal dictators and subverting democratic movements inconvenient to our interests.  While I concede that terrorism is both a morally indefensible and ultimately self defeating means of addressing such resentments, it is also necessary to acknowledge the fact that we have done very little to offer an alternative perspective for disgruntled individuals in the Arab world.  

     After the 9/11 attacks, two main schools of thought developed regarding what would be the most successful strategy for defeating terrorism.  The first advocated for a strong military and intelligence response aimed at rooting out the terrorists themselves and preventing further attacks by substantially enhancing the level of security in the United States.  The second took a broader view of the problem and aimed to fight the underlying motivations for terrorism by redefining our relationship with the muslim world.  Withdrawing support from dictators, advocating in a meaningful way for reform, directing foreign aid to humanitarian and development causes, and implementing internal structural reforms that would lessen our dependence on oil, and therefore our interests in the region, allowing us to play a more disinterested and therefore plausibly more productive role in the middle east were some of the many offered possibilities.  With a few notable exceptions the last ten years has shown, perhaps unsurprisingly given the pre-existing internal dynamics of American cultural insularity, the American economic structure’s over reliance on the military industrial complex, and the American political landscape, we have opted almost entirely for option number one.  

     The death of Osama bin Laden is arguably one of the most successful results to date in our response to the attacks of 9/11.  However, no sooner was his death announced to the world than words of caution were being issued warning of the potential for reprisal attacks, and reminding us all that Al-Qaeda still poses a major threat.  Bin Laden’s death was an uplifting moment, but the now seemingly interminable War on Terror goes on as if nothing of any consequence had changed.  

     This brings us to the second piece of this story.  What has come to be referred to as the “Arab Spring”, the protest movements in nations around the middle east seeking democratic reforms and freedom from decades of dictatorial rule.  Many commentators are eager to weave bin Laden’s death and these recent democracy protests into one broad narrative reflecting a sea change in Middle Eastern society and public opinion.  In that story Osama bin Laden represents a  resentful and disenfranchised Arab society searching for existential validation through post nationalist islamic identity and righteous rage toward an outside world that has been historically hostile to their sovereignty and their interests.  The protesters, portrayed as a more moderate generation of young people, who have large demographic majorities in most all middle eastern nations, are seen as the positive alternative; rejecting fundamentalism, and calling for a new path forward based on modern secular democratic values; principles that seem to be naturally aligned with the philosophy and values of America and the west.  It remains to be seen however whether the calls for reform currently emanating from so much of the Arab street will in fact be acknowledged and aided by the west.  The happy ending so many are over eagerly trying to write will only come about if these protesters receive vigorous support allowing them to see through their reform agenda.  Failure to offer this support runs the risk of allowing momentum to falter, and the spirit of positive change that has so unexpectedly appeared to be snuffed out, maintaining the status quo for perhaps decades to come.  Such a failure would open the door for all that stymied youthful energy to morph once again into a smoldering resentment and anger at the failure of the United States and the west to stand up for and act upon the principles to which we seem only to devote so much empty rhetoric.  

Tahrir Square Demonstrations

     When the protests first erupted in Tahrir square, state department spokes people did not rush to the nearest panel of television cameras to announce our unqualified support for the demonstrator’s cause.  Indeed, the political and historical context of the situation had us squarely on the side of Mubarak, a dictator we had supported financially and politically over three decades while he openly rigged elections, ruled through emergency law, and tortured and oppressed the people of Egypt.  Similar reform protests have erupted in Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain and  have been met with brutal crackdowns by those governments.  Throughout, the United States has been heard to utter nary a word, or lift nary a finger in support of what, again, seem to be protests for true democratic reform and more freedom, values for which the United States has supposedly been carrying water for almost 250 years.  Why have we been so reticent.  Let’s take each case by case. 

     The United States Navy’s 5th fleet is moored in Bahrain.  The friendly and stable cooperation of the Bahrain government is a crucial component of the logistical network supporting not only our ongoing, though almost forgotten, occupation of Iraq, but the protection of all our strategic interests in the Persian Gulf.  The government in Bahrain is Sunni, the protesters are Shiite, and presumably would have closer ties to Iran if granted more authority for self governance, a potentially huge disruption of the status quo in the region.  

 
     In Yemen, leaked documents have revealed that President Saleh is little more than a puppet of the United States, allowing us almost full and unfettered ability to conduct covert operations against al-qaeda in the northern part of that country, while killing scores and scores of innocent civilians in the process.  Yemen is also strategically located opposite our African Central Command in Djibouti at the mouth of the Red Sea, together offering control over one of the world’s major shipping arteries.  The risk here, like in Egypt, being that more radical elements of Yemeni society could come to exercise power, again threatening our hegemonic influence and disrupting a status quo built around the presumptive unquestionable necessity for the assertion of military power to preserve order in the region. 

     Finally, in Syria, a stated enemy of the United States, the most violent crackdowns on protesters have taken place.  Here the reasons for the failure of western response are a bit different.  I suspect it has to do with memories of the war in Lebanon in the early 1980’s and the potential for violent fragmentation and sectarian bloodletting if a strong central authority were removed.  Also, the removal of president Al-Assad would almost certainly leave a void that would be filled by Hizbollah, a proxy for Iran.  The implications for the detente which has developed between Israel and its neighbor to the north can then only be speculated upon.   

     The bottom line in each instance is that the United States seems to be willing to choose to protect the stability of the region, to preserve the status quo no matter how oppressive or hated by the populations of each country, that we may continue to project our military and economic power throughout a region upon which we are utterly dependent for vital resources.  It is a dangerous game we are playing and one that could better than any other strategy serve to guarantee the perpetuation of exactly the types of resentment and rage that have fueled recruitment for organizations like Al-Qaeda for decades.     

     To summarize: The death of Osama Bin Laden marks an important historical milestone for the now decade old War on Terror, but the death of any one man is of little significance when viewed in broader context.  For too long the United States has fueled the underlying causes of terrorism with duplicitous rhetoric and action fueled by a false notion of political realism that overvalues the exertion of brute force and undervalues the power of ideas to change the world.  For all our efforts, military and otherwise, the world is still just as dangerous a place as it was before 9/11.  The protests in the middle east offer us a rare opportunity to project American power in a manner that truly has the potential to change the dynamic of Arab/Western relations for generations.  Rather than focusing exclusively upon economic and military might, we have the opportunity to be seen to take a stand for what has always been both the most enduring and most redemptive aspect of the American character; our commitment to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.  Such are the reflections I mulled over upon hearing today’s news.  We can only hope the people we put in positions of leadership have the wisdom and understanding to make the right decisions, for all the good news of late could come to nothing if we continue to make the mistake of relying on the principle of power over the power of principles.