The Generosity Manifesto

A friend of mine, Mike Zserdin, wrote a piece called "The Generosity Manifesto." I asked his permission to post a section of it here, even though he hasn't finalized it yet. Thankfully, he agreed. Hopefully I'm not posting too much, but it is a really inspirational piece that parallels my desire to influence people to become radical givers. It also explains how being generous releases chemicals in the brain that make you feel good, like a natural high. Giving doesn't just help the receiver, it helps the giver too.

The final piece will be launched on his website shortly. I'll be sure to post a link here once the website goes live.

On March 14, 2010, a bunch of entrepreneurs and bloggers were at a party in Austin, TX, during South by Southwest (sXsw). At some point, word went around that Matt, a man most of them didn’t know, needed a wheelchair. He was 18 and a firefighter, and had recently gotten a virus that left him temporarily paralyzed. While his parents could cover the entire treatment, they weren’t opposed to a little help from Matt’s friends and family. Even with insurance medical care is costly and without a wheelchair, he couldn’t leave his bed. Can you imagine being stuck in bed for months as an eighteen-year-old?

The room, like so many at SXSW, was filled with some sincerely likable and generous people including bloggers, public speakers, and business owners. One woman who knew Matt, Annie, shared Matt’s story with a blogger named Thom Singer. Thom was so impacted by the story he opened his wallet then and there and gave $20. They told the story to Ian, Scott, and Cindy, who in turn shared the story with a half-dozen more. Together, they raised a couple hundred dollars in 30 minutes and made Matt’s last wheelchair payment. Matt’s life was transformed by the unexpected gift from complete strangers. Not only that, the generosity that Annie, Thom, and the others showed transformed their lives. Giving made them feel good, not just in the moment but, for long afterwards. Annie had high expectations of her time at SXSW, but finding a group of generous friends to help a stranger wasn’t one of them. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the highlight. The million-dollar presentations and flash-filled exhibits were probably soon forgotten. She probably didn’t even remember the deluge of information she got from the conference. However, she will never forget the look on Thom’s face as he gave that $20, or the way it felt to witness the viral response of others.

When Thom blogged about it later, Annie commented that Matt’s mom was “thrilled and grateful (if not a little confused) for everyone’s generosity.” Rufus responded to Thom’s story with simple note of, “Thank you for sharing.” Lynn H. said, “Life is about noticing the good little things, if you ask me. Wait for big deals and you wait too long. Notice the little things, and they add up.” Tracy Lee said, “I am sure Matt and his family will never forget the kindness offered up by strangers. This is really an inspiration to all.”

He goes on to explain that to inspire people to give, there has to be a need to give. Well...the need is here. 600,000 Oklahomans will wake up today and wonder where their next meal will come from. Oklahoma ranks as the fifth hungriest state in the nation. I don't want to get into politics here, but we shouldn't need government programs to help out the people around us when we have the ability to help them ourselves. I've worked in the government for nearly 9 years now, and I can tell you that we can do it ourselves much more efficiently and effectively.

Spero can feed a famly of 4 for 10-14 days for $15. Each person who matched my donation from Mineral Wells stage race fed two families for two weeks.

Two families of 4...for 2 weeks...for $30. It doesn't take huge gifts to change the world. It only takes a small amount, given regularly, by lots of people, to make a big difference.

Breakfast of Champions

When I was in highschool, Breakfast Of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut was my favorite book. It actually had nothing to do with Breakfast or Champions, but it was a pretty funny satirical read.

I may have mentioned that I finally got my copy of the Feedzone Cookbook last week after it was back-ordered a couple months. There are some pretty awesome recipes in there, but the ones that stick out most are the breakfast dishes.

For years my staple has been Old Fashioned Oats cooked with water, and then peanut butter mixed in. I probably eat that 6 days per week on average. My favorite breakfast recipe I've tried so far is the muesli. I've modified the recipe slightly to meet my vegan needs.

1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup soy milk
a large dollop of vanilla soy yogurt
a good sprinkle of cinnamon
a handful of raisins
a small diced apple (I've been using jazz apples since the fit in my juicer without having to cut them. They are also a perfect size for this muesli)

You just let the ingredients sit overnight in a covered Tupperware, and they are ready in the morning. No cooking is required. It works great since I'm out of the house at 5:30 am. I can grab the container, head to work, and eat it at my desk. It's about 11 grams of protein and only about 250 calories. It's easy to eat, tastes good, and leaves me pretty satisfied for a few hours.

If you aren't vegan, some greek yogurt would probably work awesome.

I'll probably keep eating this two or 3 times per week at work. The other days I'll treat myself to some Peanut Butter and Co "Dark Chocolate Dreams" mixed with some old fashion oats. It doesn't get much better than that, and I feel like I'm in some weird way supporting cycling since they sponsor a pro women's team :)

How not to race a rainy crit, and more videos

I have a couple videos leftover from this weekend. The first is about a 10 minute section of the crit. Like I said before, it was cold, rainy, and pretty miserable, but also a really good experience. I'm definitely more comfortable with rainy races in the future, especially knowing that lower tire pressure really does seem to help.

This video is a great example of how not to race any crit, but especially in the rain. I left the first 7 minutes or so uncut so you can see just how bad it was. Gaps kept opening up and it was taking a lot of energy to come around the guys to make it back up to the main pack. It's a pretty helpless feeling. As soon as I would get behind somebody so that I could take a deep breath, they would drop off and I'd have to come around.

I was really disappointed that my camera stopped filming 45 minutes into the race. It quit just before Joey's crash, which would have been pretty epic to see. I know he was really looking forward to seeing it.



Here is the clip of my crash in normal speed and slow motion.



Here are the last 27 minutes of the road race. I didn't realize how much time I spent in the wind throughout this last part of the race. No wonder my sprint sucked.



Here is the last 4 minutes or so if you don't want to sit through the 27 minute video, which I admit is only going to be interesting if you are in the race, and even then it isn't all that great. The last 4 minutes were pretty animated, so that is why I cut it down.

$30 won and donated today. I challenge you to match it.

I ended up placing 7th in the grand classification. It wasn't the result I hoped for, but im happy with the way the racing went.

Today was an interesting day. I had great positioning going into the sprint, but I wasn't patient enough. Patience is something I constantly focus on, but today it went out the window and had a poor result because of it. Better luck next weekend I guess.

This is a short post today, but the videos are still uploading and I'm too tired to give a play-by-play that could be shown to you in 5 minutes. Check back in tomorrow.

If you pledged to match my giving, or want to, it was $30 to http://www.thesperoproject.com/Make_A_Donation

Mineral Wells day 1 wrap-up

Today was soggy and cold. The weather report last night said it would clear up by 10 am, but it was still raining at 6 pm.

Joey and I waited until the last minute to take our jackets off and ended up getting to the start line after everyone was already lined up. I got a bad start and it teally dictated the rest of my race. I race better from the front, and I spent the day sitting in the back. Joey moved up quick , which is what I should have done, but I slowly picked off riders as they were getting popped. Tail gunning like that isn't a great idea in a crit, and it is even worse in the rain. It means you are behind all the wrecks. I got behind one that I couldn't get around and ended up going down and flatting. I got Back out after the repairs and stayed there until 3 to go. Joey was in front of me with 3 laps to go as the pace was gettin pretty quick and he slid out. The main field gapped us good and we couldn't catch back on so late in the game, but we ended up 19th and 20th out of 60 starters.

It wasn't the finish I wanted, but I raced pretty stupid so I got what I deserved. It was nice to get my first race of the year, first crash of the year, first rain crit of the year, and first flat of the year all taken care of within one hour of racing. I don't count the mountain bike flat from 2 weeks ago.

Brian played it safe in the rain today, and I think that was a wise move. With his bad luck here last year, there was no reason to risk it. Tomorrow is another day and he's riding so well. It would be a shame to have a wreck today mess him up mentally for the road race.

The time trial was a bit better. I didn't warm up at all really. It was really cold and raining harder than earlier, so Joey and I just hung out in the car. I rolled around for about 10 minutes and headed to the line. I started 3rd. I rode well within myself for the first half and never got out of my aero position, even on the climbs. The bike felt great. I caught my 30 second guy and started picking it up as I got closer to my minute man. Going into the last climb I heard a weird noise and noticed the non-drive side of my disc cover was no longer attached to my rim and was floating around. I reached down and opened the rear brake up so the cover wouldn't get stuck. I tried to throw it down on the last climb and averaged 440 watts for the last minute. I ended up with a 335 watt average power, and figured it would have been top 10.

It was actually good enough for 5th, which pretty pleased with. 4th was less than a second ahead. In a time trial, every second counts. Joey beat 2 guys by less than a second. Tires, tubes, helmets, bike fit, etc all make a difference in these kinds of races, especially points based stage races like this.

Our cat 3 team and cat 4 teams did well too. Our two 3s got caught up in the 2nd group and never stopped trying to catch the leaders. They pulled some guys around that out sprinted them at the end, but they were both top 20.

Our 4 team is second in the points standings right now.

Our 5 team would have been strong today, but their races were cancelled
Because the rain made the course so bad late in the day when they were supposed to start. Se with the women's 4 race.

Pre race chaos

The first race of the year always has extra stress involved. I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a bit nervous today. I always seem to lose the smoothness of my pre race routine by the time February comes around. Packing always takes longer for that first race because I forget everything I usually bring. I packed way too much today, but since I was driving my own car it was ok.

Joey and I got our 4 bikes, extra wheels, and all of our coolers, tools, and bags inside my wagon.

This race is the one where I wrecked on the crit last year and when I stopped to help Brian out in the road race when he broke his leg.

The stress really started to compound when I realized there is a 70% chance of rain at the start of our crit tomorrow. Last time I raced in the rain was Tulsa tough, and that ended in a wreck and a dnf. Tomorrow will be my "web redemption."

The nice thing about cycling is we get to race almost every weekend. If
Things don't go my way tomorrow I'll try again next week. I never had that in skating. There were so few races that each event had the chaos involved with being the first race of the season.

Tires and Tubes for Race Wheels

Most of the post today is about clinchers, but a few topics go both ways. If you have questions about setting up some tubulars, you should check out http://warracresbikebandit.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-glue-tubular-tire-on-carbon-rim.html

That is Joey Mesa's site and he has a good video to walk you through the gluing process.

Tire choice is important. You want something fast, but you also want something with some puncture resistance. To get an idea of which tires roll fast, I use the spreadsheet at http://www.biketechreview.com/tires_old/images/AFM_tire_testing_rev9.pdf

You can see that the difference it takes to keep the fastest Vittoria rolling and a Bontrager Sport is over 11 watts per tire. Sure, that is an extreme example, but even when looking at two tires that are considered high quality, there is a noticeable different. A Vittoria Corsa Evo CX (my choice for race day) takes 12.3 watts to keep it rolling. A Conti GP4000S (my training tire) takes a little over 15. That is 3 watts per wheel...and that is still a pretty big difference.

The flip side is that the GP4000S is a much more durable tire. I get about 7000 miles out of a set. I get about 700 (1/10th) out of those vittorias before I see a bunch of little cuts.

You'll also notice in that chart that the Conti tubulars don't perform very well. That is because they use butyl tubes in their tubulars instead of latex. The fast tubulars, such as Vittoria's, use latex.

They sell latex tubes for clinchers too, but they are tough to find locally at times. I bought the last one from Schlegel's two weeks ago, but they should have some soon. You can see by that chart that a latex tube takes about 2 or 3 less watts to keep rolling. That's a great upgrade for $15 per tube. That is probably similar savings to a $1000 set of wheels for $30. Some people will tell you latex tubes aren't flat resistant, but that simply is not true. Do some research. They are just as durable as butyl tubes in my experience. They are also lighter.

So once you have your tire picked out and some latex tubes in your hand, you'll have two more decisions to make. Do you want to keep the tubes light, or do you want to add some stan's liquid latex or Slime? Last year I ran them without any sealant. This year I'm going to give Stan's a try. It is cheap, doesn't have side effects other than a little extra weight, but if it works to just seal one flat, it was worth it.



The vittoria latex tubes (and most others) have a removable valve core.



Pour about 100ml of sealant into each tube. These stans bottles come with a plastic tip that butts up against the valve. It barely spills a drop when you tip the bottle upside down and squeeze it in.



The next question is what type of valve core extender you will use. There are the type that screw over the existing valve core. To let air out of the tire, you'll have to stick something in the extender to push down on the pressure release. I prefer the extenders that replace the existing valve core. They screw into the tube and basically just make the valve stem longer. These seem a little more reliable to me.





Installation of the latex tube is the same as any other. Take extra care not to pinch the tube. They are more thin than butyl tubes and pinch easier. The liquid latex won't help you here.