July 7th, 8th & 9th

On Saturday, my day off, I mostly spent the day watching the Tour de France and looking for a new mattress.

On Sunday I worked the morning shift, which was easy and went smooth.

Yesterday, also my day off, I went to Filene's basement and spent a fair bit of time trying to find a decent work short and a watch. I also purchased a pair of sneakers from a shoe store called DSW, which stocks mostly clearance items. I got a decent pair of adidas for $45.

I'm not one to spend money if I don't have to. I've been putting off getting new shoes for a little too long.

Jay and Rachel checked Rome out from the library, so I've been watching that, and Campus updated, so I've been reading that as well. I spoke to Becca (my friend in the UK) on the phone yesterday for two hours. She flies into Boston on the 7th of August and leaves on the 22nd.

Tour de France 101

The Tour de France is a stage race, and a grand tour. That means the riders race everyday for about three weeks, and that each day's race is different. They're all in different towns, and the course is sometimes flat, sometimes hilly, and sometimes mountainous.

There are 21 teams in this year's tour, and each team starts with 9 riders (some drop out). each team is named after their biggest sponsor (much like NASCAR), and team names often change for this reason. Riders need to race in teams because they have to draft each other, and work together to chase down breakaways.

There are a lot of different awards in the TdF, but there are four bigs ones. They are awarded with jerseys (maillots). There are the Maillot Jaune (yellow), Vert (green), Blanc (white), and Pois (white and red polka dot).

The Maillot Jaune is the leader's jersey, and is awarded to the rider with the best overall time.

The Maillot Vert is the points jersey, but it is also called the sprinter's jersey because a sprinter almost always wins it. You gain the most points by winning stages, and there are more flat stages than mountain stages. Sprinters power up to the line on the flats, so sprinters tend to win more stages, thus Sprinter's jersey.

The Maillot Blanc is awarded to the best young rider under 25. Best is determined by GC position.

The Maillot Pois is also called the King of the Mountains. This white jersey with red polka dots is awarded to the rider with the most climbing points (there are climb check points on every route).

Here are the 2006 TdF Maillots: Damiano Cunego, Floyd Landis, Robbie McEwen, and Michael Rasmussen.





Here's some jargon:

GC- General Classification. The overall standings, not just that day's race.
Peleton- The group of riders (comes from the word platoon).
Breakaway- Rider or riders that race away ahead of the peleton. They are usually caught near the end of the stage.
Bonk- Completely lose energy and power.
ITT- Individual Time trial. This is when each rider races a set course by themselves, racing for the fastest time. Riders tend to wear a lot of aero gear to shave off time.
Aero- short for aerodynamic.
TTT- Team time trial. Same as ITT, only five riders race as a group. The last rider over the line is the time for the whole team. There are no TTT in this year's tour.
Saddle- bike seat. Announcers will says 'he's out of the saddle' when a rider stand up on his bike.
EPO- Erythropoietin. This is a chemical produced by your kidneys to regulate the production of red blood cells. Dopers will take it to increase their rbc count, which increases endurance.


Note on Sprinters vs Climbers.

A sprinter cannot win the Tour de France. Sprinters are bigger guys, with powerful thighs and gluts that help them reach speeds of up to 60mph in order to win flat stages. Because of their additional muscle weight, they tend to suffer in the mountains. Some drop out altogether. Climbers are also very strong riders, and occassionally they win sprints, but usually they stick to winning in the mountains. They are a lot smaller than sprinters for this reason: When you climb up hill, every ounce of additional weight pulls against you and decreases your time. Some riders like Michael Rasmussen are so obsessed with reducing weight that they shave all their body hair. Here is Sprinter Tom Boonen compared to climber Michael Rasmussen:

July 4th, 5th and 6th

On the fourth I considered going to the Charles river and watching the fireworks, or seeing the Boston pops. I did neither of these. Instead I called relatives and caught up with their lives. My father informed me that my Aunt Cathy, who has been struggling with cancer for the past few years, has decided to forgo chemo in favor of spending her remaining few months relatively pain free and doing what she loves. This made me depressed all day, and I was unable to sleep.

Which brings us to the fifth. I stayed up all night and was exhausted when 5am rolled around I headed to work. I kept up an internal dialouge, reminding myself throughout the day not to expend too much energy, for fear of passing out. I requested not to be on register too much, and my shift obliged. Event though I was going easy, I still busted ass, and later in the day I goofed off with my manager, which was refreshing because I really like her, and I enjoy 'bonding'. I also love it when she teases me about being a 'terrible worker', 'can't stand her' etc, which is often. When I got home at 1pm I passed out and slept until 7pm. I got up, went to the store, dicked around online and went back to sleep at 11 or so. I slept until 1pm. I was so friggin tired.

Today, after waking up at 1pm, I went to the bank. I stopped at a Buck on my way home, the store near Mass. General and bought an iced chai. There were two transplant surgeons getting drinks there and one of them asked for two large cups of ice. I laughed out loud and hard, and said "You do realize how hilarious it is that you just ordered ice." They laughed with me and then I left for the train station.

Now I am going to head to the store, grab some grub and then watch Superman Returns, followed by Batman Begins.

I live as few men dare to dream.

A few weeks ago I went to a trivia night at a local tavern, and all the teams chose their own names. One team was named the Gaza Strippers, and another Fuck the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority). I thought of that today, when after work I hung out at 1 Financial, Rachel's 'Buck, killing time because the outbound Red line was experiencing technical difficulties. I spoke at length to a woman named Cory, who is a 'Buck partner in New Hampshire. I asked her to guess how long I had been a partner, after we discussed coffees and drink recipes, and she said "At least 2 years." Try two months.

When Rachel clocked out we went to the Braintree/Ashmont platform, which was insanely crowded, and we kept each other from having bad anxiety attacks while waiting interminably for the next outbound train to JFK/UMass. When we got home we both raided the fridge I crashed on the couch. I didn't wake up until 11pm. Rachel and Jay went to some barbecue. I would have gone, but I was exhausted.

Tomorrow I'll probably go watch the fireworks at the Charles River.

On SiCKO

The guys over at the Cato Institute are a lot smarter than I am. Here's what they had to say about Michael Moore's new movie Sicko

"56 Word Review of SiCKO" by Michael Cannon

SiCKO was a very funny film, and I praise Michael Moore for starting the conversation and pointing out many horrors of the U.S. health care system.

But from a policy standpoint – and I say this more in sadness than in anger – SiCKO was so breathtaking a specimen of ignorant propaganda that it would make Pravda blush.

"Sicko" Health Care Reform

by Michael D. Tanner

Michael Tanner is director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute and coauthor of Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It (2005).

I recently saw a sneak preview of Michael Moore's new movie Sicko, and I can tell you honestly that the movie is both funny and poignant.

Some of the stories Moore tells of Americans who have been caught up in the bureaucracy of the American health system are truly heart-wrenching. The insurance company bureaucrats he exposes are cruel and capricious.

There is no doubt that Michael Moore is a skilled filmmaker and an effective propagandist, but serious advocates of health care reform would be advised against relying too heavily on his view.

Moore ignores the positive side of American health care altogether. For all its problems, the United States still provides the highest quality health care in the world.

Eighteen of the last 25 winners of the Nobel Prize in medicine either are U.S. citizens or work here. With no price controls, free-market U.S. medicine provides the incentives that lead to innovation breakthroughs in new drugs and other medical technologies.

U.S. companies have developed half of all the major new medicines introduced worldwide over the past 20 years, and Americans played a key role in 80 percent of the most important medical advances of the past 30 years, according to a survey by the president's Council of Economic Advisors.

When you are sick, the United States is the place to be.

Comparing the outcome for specific diseases like cancer or heart disease, the United States clearly outperforms the rest of the world. Take prostate cancer, for example. American men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than men in other countries, but we're less likely to die of it.

Fewer than one in five American men with prostate cancer will die from it, while a quarter of Canadian men will, and even more ominously, 57 percent of British men and nearly half of French and German men will.

Similar results can be found for other cancers, AIDS and heart disease. When former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi needed heart surgery last year, he didn't go to France, Canada, Cuba or even an Italian hospital - he went to the Cleveland Clinic.

Moore points out that too many Americans lack health insurance, but ignores the fact that most are uninsured for only brief periods of time. Nor does he mention that nearly 10 million of the 47 million uninsured Americans are actually eligible for Medicaid, but fail to apply.

Moore highlights the stories of several Americans who were denied reimbursement for experimental treatments. Some of the results are tragic. But does he really believe national health care systems would cover such treatments?

Indeed, Moore generally overlooks the flaws of national health care systems. For instance, he downplays waiting lists in Canada, suggesting they are no more than inconveniences. He interviews apparently healthy Canadians who claim they have no problem getting care. He even follows an uninsured American who slips across the border from Detroit to visit a free Canadian clinic.

Yet somehow, Moore couldn't find any of the nearly 800,000 Canadians who are currently on the waiting list for treatment. Nor apparently did he have time to interview Canadian Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin, who wrote in a 2005 decision striking down part of Canada's universal care law that many Canadians waiting for treatment suffer chronic pain and "patients die while on the waiting list."

Similarly, in a truly funny sequence, Moore struggles to find the payment window at a British hospital. It might not have been so funny if he had talked to any of the 850,000 Britons waiting for admission to those hospitals.

Every year, shortages force Britain's National Health Service to cancel as many as 50,000 operations. Roughly 40 percent of cancer patients never get to see an oncology specialist. Delays in receiving treatment are often so long that nearly 20 percent of colon cancer cases considered treatable when first diagnosed are incurable by the time treatment is finally offered.

The American health care system clearly needs reform. But it would be a shame if Moore's latest piece of propaganda stampedes Americans into sacrificing the quality, choice and freedom that our health care system provides today.

Went to the fed building, after that I cut through the common. On my way a gent in his fifties, apropos of nothing, started ranting to me about the homeless people who camp in the common. He digressed into a diatribe about welfare, taxes, why single mothers are whores, why everyone needs religion (i.e. Christ) and why gays are deviant and evil.

I told him "You can have a strong moral core and not be religious, and you can be 'religious' and have no moral code. I work my ass off, I got to church, I pay my taxes, I'm a registered republican, and I've been gay my entire life."

I ditched the gent near Downtown Crossing and headed to Congress st. I hung out with Jay, Daniel, Aaron and Phil for half and hour, then went to work. After work I walked to the public gardens to watch the sun set. The sky was amazing, tumultuous. On one side it was bright blues and brilliant whites, and on the other it was rolling mass of grey-blue hues highlighted by the red-shifting sun. The Boston sky reminds me of the Portland sky, reminds, me of the Palm Springs sky, reminds me of the Alaskan sky. All sky can seem the same, it's the surroundings that distinguish it. The sun reflecting gold off the forest, or the forest of buildings.

I went home and made dinner. I've been eating two Clif bars, a box of macaroni and a vitamin everyday. Also hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

I insistently relayed my daily anecdotes to Jay and Rachel's patient ears.

Nothing at all happened today

Today I accomplished very little. I surfed the net (I still refer to it in those terms, and most likely forever will), and later in the evening got completely trashed with a few friends. Sean, a guy I just met, is a member of the Coast Guard reserve and a friend of Big Joe's. Earlier I had a dream about hanging out in a bookstore/pub with Jenn, Keegan and Rebecca (from work). Keegan and I drank Maker's Mark, I teased Rebecca about her bad taste in sci-fi books, told her I was David Edding's niece, and hit on Jenn a bit. That's all I remember. A few minutes ago I watched some Henry Rollins and decided to be more dedicated in recording my life, even if it is mundane. Tomorrow I work at 2:15, but I have to head to the bank at the O'Neil federal building to grab rent monies before then.