Took the Trek 1200c on a 34 mile ride today through the Great Rounds Scenic Byway in Minneapolis. It’s West River Road along the Mississippi, then down Minnehaha creek over to Lake Harriett and Lake Calhoun, and back. A damn long ride it was.
This breaks the record set back in April of just over 31 miles – but that one had a break in it of a few hours – this was a continuous ride with only water and bathroom breaks included.
I think I need a Madone now….
On my Trek 1200c road bike, I use the Shimano SPD clipless pedals with a pair of Shimano shoes.
The advantage to this setup, of course, is that you gain a significant energy increase because the upstroke with your legs adds power – whereas without a pedal system or clips, you’re losing this extra energy boost.
The disadvantage is when you’re at the end of your ride, and you’re tired, and your brain is drifting.. and you fall.. if you can’t disengage your clips from the pedals you’re in for a really nasty landing.
And thus the four tears on my left leg near my ankle from where my ankle met the ground and part of my sprocket and some other bike parts.. and the reason we wear nice helmets from Giro.
Ouch.
I didn’t notice the bleeding until I got back to the room. My socks are ruined.
Ouch.
Yesterday’s Washington Post had an article delving into the Chief Justice’s decision to keep his medical condition a private matter. Some great quotes:
During his 1986 Senate confirmation hearings for chief justice, Rehnquist, who had been hospitalized in 1982 for withdrawal symptoms related to a reduction in the dosage of his prescription pain medications, said that “so long as I am able to perform my duties, I do not think I have any obligation to give the press a health briefing.”
Later in 1986, when a reporter asked him if the court could give out more health data, Rehnquist replied, “You people behave like a bunch of vultures.”
Eventually, I suspect that I’ll get around to writing about this, but it’s interesting to watch reactions as more and more facts trickle out. In any event, Lileks, as usual, says things far better than I ever can:
Anyway. The arguments over the Rove / Plame affair are best hashed out elsewhere. was nearly swayed by an interview with noted thinker and finger-painter Ted Rall today, until he said he wouldn’t believe the administration if they said the sky was blue. People say this as if it proves their bonafides as a critic, but really, that’s a rather easy thing to verify. If the sky is indeed blue and Scott McClellan makes that point, you could assume that they have painted the windows, I guess. In any case I’m amused how this Scandal seems disconnected from the issue of yellowcake in light of the post 9/11 atmosphere. Given all the tales in the 90s about the threat Saddam faced – a threat everyone accepted when Clinton was launching strikes and pulling serious faces – the idea that the whole Niger-yellowcake nexus should have gotten a big shrug in 2002, when the WTC rubble still smoked, seems to be another act of willful amnesia. If anyone in 02 could have thought we’d be parsing who said what about which agent re a politically motivated rewrite of the intel, they’d have heaved a sigh of relief: so we didn’t get hit again.
It’s all a luxury that seems vapid only after something bad happens again. You’ll note that when Blair gives a press conference nowadays the press doesn’t bring up the Downing Street Memo. Give them time, though; in due course the press will shake off that ill-fitting caot of national solidarity and start asking why the bombers weren’t detected by orbital satellites the day they were born. The role of the press is to reset the clock to yesterday morn, ferret out the slightest hint of imperfection, and splash the front page with the words that give them that priapic prang: Ongoing Investigation. Questions remain. But sources say.
[…]
Well: what of the families of the charter airline pilots?
You may recall the story. The xx ran big piece on a charter airline the CIA was using to transport suspects. This isn’t just outing a covert operative; it was outing a covert operation. In the case of Wilson / Plame, we had an attempt to point out how two opponents of the adminstration were trying to thwart the foreign policy of the US government via the pages of the NYT and Vanity Fair; in the case of the airline, we had an attempt to peel back the Tupperware lid of secrecy of an anti-terrorist organization in order to ruin – I’m sorry, let the people know what they needed to know about the operation. Did anyone wonder whether the families of the people in that charter airline might be harmed in anyway? Did anyone wonder whether this information might compromise attempts to interrogate suspects? Did anyone ask what the devil was served by running this story?
Imagine the war was prosecuted by a Democratic administration; imagine a GOP operative blowing the charter airline’s cover to make a point about billing irregularies. Imagine the GOP operative slipping photos of the planes on the tarmac, tailfin numbers visible, to the press.
Imagine the press running with the covert-ops story, outraged that the Democratic administration had covered up this crucial story. Can you see that happening? You can?
The air on Bizzaro World – what does it smell like, exactly? As fresh and sweet as one can only dream?
Yesterday’s New York Times covers the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruling that military commission trials are fair under the Constitution:
Judge Robertson had held that the commissions could not go on because they did not provide minimally fair procedures and violated international law. His conclusion threw into doubt the legal proceedings devised by the administration to deal with hundreds of suspected terrorists captured by the United States in Afghanistan during the military campaign that toppled the Taliban following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
President Bush has declared all Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters to be unlawful enemy combatants, and as such not entitled to be treated as legitimate prisoners of war.
Critics of the administration have argued that the military commission trials do not afford all the legal protections that courts-martial do. But in the appeal upheld today, the administration argued that the commission trials were fair – and not incidentally a vital part of its war on terrorism – and that since the stateless Qaeda terror network had never signed the Geneva Convention, its members were not entitled to the protections afforded prisoners of war, which include the right not to be put on trial for hostilities.
Administration lawyers had argued that Judge Robertson, in conferring Geneva Convention protections on Mr. Hamdan and by extension others like him, had “put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war.”
Those “legitimate methods,” as described in the Convention, include wearing uniforms to distinguish fighters from civilians and prohibitions against making civilians targets. The administration argued that Al Qaeda fighters had openly defied the Convention.
The court also ruled that Al Qaeda fighters were not prisoners of war – they were illegal combatants.
Take that.
A couple serious thinkers, such as Lex, have asked lately the two burning questions all of us should be faced with right now:
Can we win?
Or.. Can we lose?
And the answer to both of these questions is yes.
I’m the son of a Vietnam veteran, the grandson of two World War II veterans. Both of these experiences weigh heavily in my own thoughts and feelings about the conflict that we find ourselves in today.
World War II was undeniably the good fight – where right triumphed, with great sacrifice, over wrong. Millions died, not a few of them Americans and our allies. Great sacrifices were made on many fronts. All that we had as a nation was poured into that war.
Vietnam was another story. Our nation was sorely divided over our role in the conflict between North and South Vietnam – and the aftermath on our nation and on our military took years to recover.
The shadow of Vietnam looks over everything that we do today.
I firmly believe that regardless of the current situation that we have done the right things as a nation since 9/11. Going after the first sanctuary of terrorism in Afghanistan was the right thing to do – and confronting Iraq and taking military action such as we have done was also the right thing to do.
I believe this because I believe that our nation’s outlook on what it would take to defend our people, our territory, and our interests changed significantly – we could no longer take the risk that a nation like Iraq could possess weapons of mass destruction – so we took that government out.
But even more importantly, these actions combined, over the long term, will change the long term outlook of this region – the power structure of what makes up the Middle East will change and change in huge ways in years to come… if we are successful in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In these areas, I believe we are on the path to victory.. we can win.. but it is not going to be easy.
And this is where I think we can lose.
I think that since Vietnam, we’ve lacked a certain sense of will and determination overall. It was obvious during World War II that it was there.. Korea a bit less so, Vietnam clearly not so overtime. Even during Operation Desert Storm you saw the warnings about massive casualties and major defeat for our forces…
I fear that we’re in for a long multi-year struggle that will take place on many fronts – economically, politically, and militarily – it will happen on distant battlefields, on the high seas, on airplanes and airports, in shopping malls and subway trains, but most importantly around our own dinner tables. As we saw in London, the terrorists are going to bring this battle into our backyards – it’s only a matter of time before we see suicide bombings here in the United States.. and that’s a day as a professional that I dread…
But the most important conversations are those that will happen around our dinner tables, around the grill in the backyard with the neighbors, and in our own living rooms – it’s about being prepared for the battle ahead – and the long road it will take to be safe and secure in our nation and around the world.
It’s not going to happen overnight – it’s not going to be easy – but we have no choice but to engage the world and those trouble spots in this conflict. That’s where the left is dead wrong – and where I fear if we listen to their arguments – and travel down their path – that we’ll lose.
And that cost will be too high for us to bear.