I'll take care of your pet when you are raptured away

What do you think? Should I join?

It's a question that all animal-loving Christian evangelicals must address: who will look after their pets on Earth when the Rapture comes and they are taken up to heaven?

Now a group of atheists in the US have come up with a tongue-in-cheek solution, offering to take in the cats and dogs of "saved" believers in return for a small fee.

All the atheists signed up by Eternal Earth-Bound Pets are self-confessed sinners and blasphemers, guaranteeing they will be left behind when the chosen are selected

I could probably start a small zoo of "small caged animals" or something after the rapture comes. Do tarantulas count as "small caged animals?" Can rapture-ready Christians have tarantulas?

Hat tip to Charlie.

Touchy much?

Some families in a Sedalia, Missouri school district are upset that human evolution was on their band shirts reports KMOV.

T-shirts promoting the Smith-Cotton High School band's fall program have been recalled because of concerns about the shirt's evolution theme.

Assistant superintendent Brad Pollitt said parents complained to him after the band marched in the Missouri State Fair parade. Though the shirts don't violate the school's dress code, Pollitt noted that the district is required by law to remain neutral on religion.

"If the shirts had said 'Brass Resurrections' and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing," Pollitt said.

Sorry Pollitt, those things are not equivalent. A Jesus pic would be an explicit statement by a public school's band about religion. Unconstitutional. Also, it would be lame. A depiction of human evolution is not a statement about religion. There is no resurrection or denial of a resurrection in it nor about any other religious matter. Only people who are weak in their faiths can find such a thing worthy of removal.

We continue on:

Designed with the help of band director Jordan Summers and assistant director Brian Kloppenburg, the light gray shirts feature an image of a monkey progressing through various stages of evolution until eventually becoming a human. Each figure holds a brass instrument that also evolves, illustrating the theme "Brass Evolutions."

OK. So brass instruments evolved. So did humans. These are facts people that are easily accessible in the modern technocratic literate state. How cool (well...and utterly dorky) that a teacher put these things together on a shirt. Fun stuff if you ask me even if totally wankalicious and geeky. But the dude's a band geek. Props. And way to get the students involved.

But no. Uptight fundamentalists just can't handle it. Weak.

Climate change deniers want a "Scopes trial" on climate change

The nation's largest business lobby wants to perpetuate the "manufactroversy" about climate change science reports the Los Angeles Times.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

Any responsible person today must recognize that the business-as-usual models must die and that from their ashes we have to create a new kind of economy that integrates social and environmental concerns into it as well. The kind of future we will live in - and much of the biosphere's future - depends on how we transform our industries now. We've waited too long already. To suggest otherwise is perhaps the gravest error we can make. It consigns the industrially poor to worsening conditions, indigenous people to lost or transformed space, and will perpetuate and accelerate the sixth extinction we have caused. All ecologists know this.

But the best part is this piece of newspeak:

Chamber officials say it would be "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" -- complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.

"It would be evolution versus creationism," said William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. "It would be the science of climate change on trial."

Like that? Equating climate science with creationism? Vile.

But this is what happens with entrenched and intractable interests. They invert terms so that love is hate and hate is love, ugliness is beauty and beauty is ugliness, and care is neglect and neglect is care. When you have nothing but empty profit to fight for screwing around with perception becomes the means because they have no real evidence with which to work so they manipulate fears with propaganda. It's a mock kangaroo court they want here

Remembering church as a little girl

Over at Answering the Apocalypse, Irena Reznik has a poignant post up about her church experiences as a girl. In particular, she remembers the public shaming that happened at her Nazarene church.

The church practiced public censure. When members did something that shamed the church, they were called to the front of the church, where they would confess their sins to the congregation and ask for prayers and forgiveness. As they wept, we would bow our heads and pray for the poor souls who had weakened the church community by losing their way. And as everyone else prayed for God to forgive a man for bathing in a communal pool or to forgive a woman for speaking to a man other than her husband, I prayed that God would just make this embarrassing scene disappear.

God never answered. I'd look up and still see a man or woman at the altar, shaking like a baby lamb who'd lost its footing. Everyone would go up afterward and hug the person, saying, "God love you, God save you." I was only eight when I thought that, if a god existed, he'd save these people from this church.

That's some pretty hefty stuff. And it's the kind of thing that a lot of people come to think; I suspect even more than we know because of the social and coercive power of religious institutions and bodies. I know people (so do you for sure) who just felt scared into staying in a church despite the fact that they have had nagging doubts for a long time, sometimes, like this one, since childhood.

At the end of all of this, looking at this story and many many others, I just wonder why god or the gods don't just explain things clearly for us to understand and engage with us in a constant and clear way. If it or they are so mighty and all-knowing, surely it/they must know that humans are easily confused animals who can nonetheless be reasoned with. If it/they love us so much why not clearly indicate how they do and what it is we are supposed to do and get out of this obscure revelation business that leads people into these shameful shaming practices. Why not save us all from our churches?

Here comes The Greatest Show on Earth

Queue some epic music...maybe Mahler's Symphony No. 5 in c# minor or the "Flight of the Valkyries" from Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen or put on an epic film score and get ready to read Richard Dawkins' new book, The Greatest Show on Earth. It's a comin'. Here's the book's beginning from The Times online:

Imagine that you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world — for the elegiacs of Ovid and the odes of Horace, the sinewy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, the strategic niceties of the Punic Wars, the generalship of Julius Caesar and the voluptuous excesses of the later emperors. That’s a big undertaking and it takes time, concentration, dedication. Yet you find your precious time continually preyed upon, and your class’s attention distracted, by a baying pack of ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar you would know better than to say ignorami) who, with strong political and especially financial support, scurry about tirelessly attempting to persuade your unfortunate pupils that the Romans never existed. There never was a Roman Empire. The entire world came into existence only just beyond living memory. Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Romansh: all these languages and their constituent dialects sprang spontaneously and separately into being, and owe nothing to any predecessor such as Latin.

Instead of devoting your full attention to the noble vocation of classical scholar and teacher, you are forced to divert your time and energy to a rearguard defence of the proposition that the Romans existed at all: a defence against an exhibition of ignorant prejudice that would make you weep if you weren’t too busy fighting it.

If my fantasy of the Latin teacher seems too wayward, here’s a more realistic example. Imagine you are a teacher of more recent history, and your lessons on 20th-century Europe are boycotted, heckled or otherwise disrupted by well-organised, well-financed and politically muscular groups of Holocaust-deniers. Unlike my hypothetical Rome-deniers, Holocaustdeniers really exist. They are vocal, superficially plausible and adept at seeming learned. They are supported by the president of at least one currently powerful state, and they include at least one bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. Imagine that, as a teacher of European history, you are continually faced with belligerent demands to “teach the controversy”, and to give “equal time” to the “alternative theory” that the Holocaust never happened but was invented by a bunch of Zionist fabricators.

Thank you. We've all been saying this for a few years now and we have it here in plain and beautiful English. Creationism is a realm of denial so out of touch with reality that it is practically shameful.

You can order your own copy through a web bookseller at richarddawkins.net. I'm on it.

Target sited! Illinois math teacher and atheist activiist must be expelled

Notable atheist blogger, activist, and math teacher, Hemant Mehta, is being targeted by some Christians in his area. They want to erode his position. At least they seem to want an alternative math teacher because his atheism might *gulp!* wear off on their children. According to Mehta, he never proselytizes atheism in his classroom. He teaches math. But Lauri Higgins and the Illinois Family Institute will have none of it. His blog is all the evidence they need that he is a corrupting force upon their children.

Read his account here and marvel at how religion can twist people's minds into Orwellian verbal inversions. When they say they want "choice," they mean they want "my first choice." The Illinois Family Institute has responded with this letter.

I have a few thoughts on this.

As if teachers aren't all the time leading their own lives and acting in ways they deem appropriate outside of the classroom and that those activities are recognized as distinct and separate from institutional life. Whether they are truly distinct or not is another topic.

We also all know that teachers hold and act upon beliefs we don't like. Plenty of them. But if we are to allow some group of religious activists to harp a school district about Mehta's private religious, social, and political beliefs then why can't we change Mehta's identity and see what we think?

Why not alert all the parents in the area that...just a pick a good Jewish name...Chaim Dershowitz actually practices such and such and really thinks that Christians are not chosen and that this might make him unfit to be a teacher in a public school. After all, he is active in his synagogue, has been known to publish in their newsletter, has raised money for the Hebrew school, is a regional representative of the Anti-Defamation League, and a member of the ACLU. Shouldn't parents know about this man's activities? Should they find him morally unfit and a potential (though not actual) bad influence might they try to coerce the district to hire another teacher or remove their children from Mr. Dershowitz's classes?

No. That would patently constitute religious and political persecution. Plain as day once we make it about a Jew. Would it be morally sound of me to encourage the school district to hire a non-believer English teacher because there are just too many Christians occupying the slots there now and they might be filling my son's head with Christian propaganda even if they don't know it? They all go to church on Sunday where they are receiving the most inane sermons and having their heads filled with ideas about a man being resurrected from the dead, something that is quite plainly impossible. No. Even if my son were to do an internet search and find Mr. Christianguy's blog, that should not prompt an action toward the school. What is Mr. Christianguy's behavior in the classroom and how is my child learning from him? Is it educative?

Is Mehta working with children to a) enhance their growth as individual people, b) improve their understanding as math students, and c) as people with integrated intellects? Those are the questions Ms. Higgins and the Illinois Christo-family Council should be wondering about. Parents do not have a right to not have their children learn from Mehta if their kids are enrolled in his school. What are you going to do, ask for a religious litmus test? That would be both unconstitutional and unethical. The Illinois Christo-Fascist-Family Panopticon have embarked on a soft-gloved witch hunt that should be met with scorn and admonition by anyone who thinks that religious toleration within reason (a teacher genuinely espousing violent action against their neighbors for religious reasons should not be tolerated), though difficult, is foundational to a thriving democratic community.

This is religious intolerance. It's bigotry masquerading as some sort of faith-induced virtue.

But I guess Higgins isn't really democratic. All people are created equal. Some are just more equal than others.

Faith: A deceptive authoritarians best friend

This in from The Independent on our nutty health care fight. The piece, from a British perspective, goes into a nice exposé of how totally bonkers the resistance to public health care is in the U.S., noting nicely that Stephen Hawking (who suffers from Lou Gerig's disease), is quite alive and not rationed out by some bureaucratic quackery. But the best part is here:

How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality? It begins, I suspect, with religion. They are taught from a young age that it is good to have "faith" – which is, by definition, a belief without any evidence to back it up. You don't have "faith" that Australia exists, or that fire burns: you have evidence. You only need "faith" to believe the untrue or unprovable. Indeed, they are taught that faith is the highest aspiration and most noble cause. Is it any surprise this then percolates into their political views? Faith-based thinking spreads and contaminates the rational.

This might be too convenient an explanation but I also find it compelling. I say too convenient because there aren't only religious zealots out there. There are libertarian free market true believers with bogus ideas about the "invisible hand" and Ayn Rand worshippers too. Well...those are kind of religious as well but who's counting? But Altemeyer found in The Authoritarians (also a co-author on a great study on atheists in America) those people identified as fundamentalists, the most infatuated with faith, are the most prone to authoritarian thinking. They defer to the power of their authorities more than those with less self-identified faith. The authority here is America and its holy place in history apparently and its big business.

So perhaps this is another example of God and country coming together to bathe one another in their proverbial blood. Thinking be damned!

As if corporations and profiteers weren't deciding when we live and die

I think this guy says it better than I can. Plus...he has video. This fear of socialism - the definition of which these yahoos seem not to understand - is so gargantuously awful. It is engineered by death merchants who parade as angels of freedom. They are the oligarchs of our socially Darwinian - Malthusian really - for-profit system.

They're all leaving!

Oh no. Ken Ham thinks that the youngsters are leaving the pews to go somewhere else. Like that vile world of secularism and all its trappings. Oh no! Reason! Evidence! They might eschew Biblical authority! But he's got the solution. What is it?

The Already Gone series.

Next Sunday when you go to church look around—two-thirds of the young people there are already disengaged from the message. And it’s not just happening on the nominal fringe; it’s happening in the most solid “Bible-believing” churches. Why? Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis commissioned respected researcher Britt Beemer of America’s Research Group to find out. The first scientific study of its kind reveals startling facts discovered through 20,000 phone calls and detailed surveys of a thousand 20-29 year olds. The results are shocking! There is a huge disconnect between the questions children are asking and what our churches are teaching. Traditional programs and approaches are failing. We are losing our kids long before college. Already Gone reveals what’s wrong, what’s missing, and what must change... before we lose another generation!

There are lots of recent findings - the General Social Survey, the Pew Survey, and Center for Inquiry's new survey on unbelief and happiness - that show that we unbelievers are doing just fine and are in the mainstream running for...DUN! DUN! DUN!...your kids' thoughts.

That's right. Instead of poo-pooing some of Ken Ham's religious hysteria I want to say that his Biblical literalism has a lot to fear because people are leaving churches. Though there seem to be a large number of people, even young people, gathering at evangelical events, the world of dogmatic nonsense is losing and it's losing a lot. Evangelical Christianity and most fundamentalist faith ties itself to racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-environmental dogmas. End of story. It's a 16th-century idea draped in TV and the internet. It has emotional appeals and no new solutions to the world's problems like climate change and human exploitation. But a secular ethic like utilitarianism might. Who knows? Religious dogma has so interfered with any secular notions of right and wrong that maybe it should just move out of the way.

May Ham's Bible has no definitive authority. Maybe that answers aren't in Genesis but are within us.

Wilderness 101-redux - Updated with new pics

It's over...for this year. As I wrote in my last post, I rode the Wilderness 101 as a team member for State College's Freeze Thaw Cycles on my Bianchi Sok single speed (pictured at right from the race's end). With only one flat and a vicious course change I came in at 9:07, 15th on single speed out of 68 and 58th out of 326 total starters.

The day started at 4 am with breakfast, email checks, the obligatory obsessive Facebook status update about doing the 101, getting my food, tubes, and tools together for the day, and getting a move-on to Coburn. I listened to a mix of great metal on the way including Iron Maiden, Cynic, Metallica, Obituary, Devon Townsend, and Angra. I was psyched.

Pulled in. Chatted. Changed into my kit. Pedaled around. Chatted more. Put in my drop bags to pick up at checkpoints 2,3, and 4 (miles 40, 60, and 74). Got in line (middle left in green and brown striped jersey and white helmet - pic thanks to Terri). Off we went!

The rollout is neutral before we hit the first climb and I was chatting with some different people and thinking again about strategy. How hard to go out. After two years out of this race and three since finishing, I wasn't really sure what to do. Should I peg myself to a pretty fast local with lots of experience, to my friends Todd and Josh who I'd done some long road rides with, or to a quick single speed guy? Choices. By the time we got to the climb I decided to grab my friend Steve's wheel who was up at the front of the pack and I was really close to the back. Clay and I made our ways up through the field, passing dozens, maybe 150 riders, to get up there. A couple of other single speed riders were with us in the mile or so it took to get through the thinning throng of velocipedes. By the time I made it to Steve, Clay was gone.

Steve-o was flagging. A bad start for him. I decided to push on and see what I could do. Up the road was a group of three including local hard woman Vicki, maybe 300 feet in front of me. This was tricky. To push a bit now and hope not to suffer for it later or not push now and risk losing some time from the draft I could get with those three. I decided not to risk it. I've suffered in this race from cramps and I was trying to avoid that. Better not to spin too hard and keep my heart rate down.

So I worked with some single speed guys with mixes of guys with gears for the first 20 miles. I should say guys and gals because we were with the women who would end up 4th and 5th. Most of them I would see later much to their chagrin. Steve-o's legs and lungs apparently woke up because just a few miles into the flats he blew by. Iron Men do that. On the short climbs I felt great and my legs were feeling pretty fresh.

A big group of 20 or more of us got into checkpoint #1 together and we started the second big climb up Thickhead Mountain Road. This little guy on a single speed rocketed away. All 140 pounds of him steadily disappeared into the morning fog. I saw him catching onto guys who had beat us to checkpoint #1. I hoped I could catch him later. Piece by piece, I picked guys off on the climb. I'm not a great climber but I'm super consistent and I was feeling the rhythm there and I set in and pushed along. Mindful of the fact that I had cramped a lot in previous races from overusing one muscle group (hamstrings and abductors) I stood a lot more to push with my quads and use my back and hips differently. I had been doing it a lot since June and it was making a big difference. Wow would that pay off. At the top of the climb I was in a gap between our entering group and the little escapee. The long flat on top of Thickhead saw a guy with gears catch back onto me and we descended Detweiller Run trail together, a knobbly piece of jeep trail that gives you major speed. We passed three people including the little man who had, it seems, had a mechanical.

Then another climb up Bear Meadows Road, some of it very steep, and a nice train of 8 of us formed to get to the top. An old friend from elementary school, Brian, led us to the top and down the other side to the trailhead of Lonberger Trail. Sweet.

The entrance was a muckfest. I watched these guys riding the little rock bridges over the puddles and decided not to wait for them to figure it out. "Local wants to pass," I shouted and one by one they let me go by. Out in front, I pushed the pace a bit, feeling the gently wind and swoop of the trail. Through some rocky washouts and up a quick grunt and down a small slightly root ridden chute and there was my friend Bill up the trail a hundred or so yards. Sweet. Billy is fast. Maybe I can work with him. Right in front of him is Runkle and they have a nice pace.

We get to the Three Bridges Trail and Runkle, wise man that he is, says that the single speeds should get ahead. The trail's opening mixes roots with sharp nasty rocks and makes for ideal single speed riding where power and inertia make you push faster than guys with gears who can use the torque of an easier gear to overcome the same obstacle. Billy and I move ahead and start passing guys. Most of them are agreeable and Billy gets around this guy who just won't budge for me and forces me into the sharpest rocks and some pointy severed sapling bottom. I flatted. I wanted to punch that guy. If you are being passed then make way. Don't futz around thinking you will hold your position in a 101-mile mountain bike race. It's okay. I passed him later.

The flat took too long to fix. Almost 8 minutes. The tire wouldn't seat and blah blah blah. 20 guys or more passed me. I watched them noting who they were. Mostly I didn't want 8 more minutes on my time. When I got back on my back to cross the three bridges on the trail two jackasses who had no skill on the bridges busted my groove and line and I didn't make it. I have made those bridges every time in the last 5 years. Ugh. Cleared the rocks at the spring (at left - pic from Eric N.). Then the rock garden that followed it? Same thing. It's a rock garden. The rocks are big and...well...gardeney. It's hard. Move. Use speed and inertia and finesse and power.

Wanker was breaking. He totally wussed out six feet in. I was yelling "GO!GO!GO!" and then "Get out of the way!" Nope. Wanker. I ran it and never saw him again. Seriously...he's not a wanker. But if someone is breathing down your neck in a mountain bike race then MAKE WAY!

Off up Laurel Run road, a 1 1/2 - 2 mile smooth fire road climb. I had to catch two of my compadres, Todd and Josh, who had passed me while I was fixing the flat. This was the highest I think I got my heart rate all day. I pushed pretty hard and caught Josh just before the crest, gave some random guy some water, and then dropped Little Shingletown. Caught Todd. He later told me that he thought he was going really fast and then I passed him and he was like, "WTF?!?!" He grabbed my wheel and we rode most of the way to the next checkpoint together (pic at left). I dropped off of the gearies in the long flat and Josh L caught me and we were in. He smiled.

I'll accelerate the rest of the race 'cause this is taking a long time. From checkpoint 2 at Whipple Dam to 3 near Greenwood makes everyone pay. Two huge climbs and two nasty singletrack descents put the hurt on. For those who wonder "Will I finish this race?" they really suffer here and start thinking things like, "I'm fucked. I can't do this. Holy shit this is long. Will this climb ever end? OMFG! It's still going up!" or "When does this descent end? Are there really more rocks? OMFG! It's still going down!" I took the climbs really moderately and housed the descents. Five guys passed me on the first climb (Greenlee) and I caught all but two by the top and then dropped them on the descent only to be passed by one of them on the flat and then the other on the next climb (Seeger Road). Local hard man Chip K was up on Seeger dressed as a Roman centurion or Spartan warrior (hard to know really) shouting people on and ringing a bell with his twin boys with him. I yelled something about Thermopoli and he shouted something about "HONOR AND GLORY" and pushed me up the hill. It was awesome. I caught both of the guys on Telephone Trail and never saw them again. I also caught my friend Todd who passed me on Greenlee giving me back all of my positions lost before Greenlee. Passed some other guys too.

At checkpoint 3 I saw Vicki who had gotten away at mile 3. She was looking a little humbled by the race at this point. So was everyone I should say. She and a three other single speeders left together up the 2-mile singletrack rock and root fest, Lower Sassafrass. I walked the opening and then one other long section further up with another single speed guy. We put some space between us and Vicki and the other guys. By the top we were clear and quickly to my favorite trail in the world, Upper Sassafrass.

Rocks on a tight trail on a slight uphill for a little more than a mile. I know this trail's rhythm and I sat in kind of light for the first portion to feel secure. Then, knowing we were getting toward its lighter undulations, I passed the single speeder ahead of me and the guy with gears ahead of him. Then the benchcut to end all benchcuts came. It is SOOOO steep. On your left, the mountain goes up at 60 degrees and on the right it goes down at 60 degrees and straight ahead, on a path about 18" wide, you go down the mountain with your ass behind the seat. I don't know 30-35 degrees? It's nuts. I FLEW down it. I've done it a few dozen times and I really wanted to drop those guys on singles behind me and I wasn't sure that I could do it on another climb. Some guy was walking his bike half way down and I yelled something. Maybe "Rider back!" or "Get out of the way!" or some combo of that with the word fuck in it. I don't know. It was fast. Eric N was at the hairpin turn taking pictures. That's it at right. Yep. A controlled fall.

Onto Lewistown Contingent which wraps like a wet brown snake for two miles through a mix of field, forest, and marsh. I caught my friend Rich S who was feeling horrid. Bad salmon the night before. Ouch. He's super fast (finished at least once at around 8:15...fast). He let me by and I gunned it feeling great for the most part. At a few occasions I got a cramp in the corners as I held my left leg up for counterbalance. The next climb was a flash and I passed one more single speeder. I think that since I dropped Telephone I had now passed 12-15 people. More to come.

Beautiful Trail. Shelves and ledges of rocks (pics are forthcoming). I cleaned the whole thing perfectly. Butter. Smooth as butter. Then No Name, a rocky bench cut. Imagine a ledge carved into a mountain side with pointy knobbly rocks for a mile. No breaks. At this point, Iron Maiden came on my iPod. I don't believe in angels but this was about as close to a choir of them as I could imagine. "Number of the Beast." "Moonchild." The real winner was "Caught Somewhere in Time" which blared as I rolled into checkpoint 4 with the fourth place women's rider who I passed on No Name.

Refill bottles. There are five or six guys hanging at the checkpoint. New goo. Bananas. On the bike for the worst climb of the day, Stillhouse. Two guys with gears pass me on the way up the rutted rocky evil. I pace myself on them and they essentially pulled me up the climb. I want more time between me and the single speeder who was at checkpoint 4 when I got there. I look back. He's nowhere nearby. By the end I put 20 minutes on him.

On the next stretch after the climb I drop the two guys with gears, pass some other dude, and by Sand Mountain I see Runkle. I can't believe it. In about a mile I reeled him in and passed him on some smooth trail that quickly deteriorates into some vile vicious rocky expletives and hike-a-bikes. I pass five guys who are all looking really unhappy and it's on to Little Poe Trail. Not Runkle. He looked alright. Smiling even.

Little Poe hurt. A mix of muddy double track, mossy hardpack singletrack, and knobbly rocks. My back is really starting to hurt. A lot. The 38 pounds of pressure in my rear tire (hard!) is hurting now. The rocky road down into Poe Paddy park hurts. I yelled expletives a couple of times because I was just feeling mugged. Fatigue had finally showed up. But I push on. I might be able to break 9 hours if I drop most of my stuff at the next checkpoint and just press on with no stop.

I throw two bottles and a tube to the volunteers at the checkpoint and go. A few guys are just hanging there and I ride for the next 8 of 11 miles with another single speeder. We pass a guy who rides for Independent Fabrication. He looks ashen and tired. The next 6 miles are pretty flat. Runkle and another guy with gears catch us. Runkle and I smile and chat about feeling pretty good. We are happy and congratulatory. We're close to the 9 hour mark. Not gonna break it but pretty close. We start the last climb together and the other single speeder and I push ahead of the geared guys. He gets away and I couldn't catch him on the last descent, on the Fisherman's Path (some of which is unrideable) and long flat trail to the end. I just spin.

Runkle passes me. My back is screaming. It now officially hurts to pedal because of my back. Another geared guy passes me before the last bridge and tunnel. I see the park across the creek. I roll in. As I do, my wife, son, and mother are getting out of the car. I nearly cried. It was fantastic. I hit the gong 9 hours and 7 minutes from the time I left the park that morning.

Sacha and Jess are the best thing to see ever. I eat food. I celebrate with friends and cheer people coming in.

Local fast guys crushed. Jacob L broke 8 hours. Richie Rich at 8:18 and Matt F winning 3rd on the single speed at around 8:20 (nuts!) and Billy at 8:33. Steve-o came in 8:55. Runkle at 9:05. Todd comes in about a 1/2 hour after me as did Rich. My friend Bob comes in about the same. Vicki comes in 40 minutes later. My friend Erik, who had been plagued by this race for a couple of years, does his best time ever at about 10:20. Josh L at 10:17. Ho at 9:56. Clay a little after 10. Sam and Jordyn and Jessie near 11. Rachel near 11:30. Raymo at 11:56 (and I owe NMBA $20 now on the bet he wouldn't finish on a single speed...Yeah RAY!) My riding buddy for the last 1o weeks, Leah, finished in 13:20! It was a struggle but she crushed it! And Pontzatron at 13:30. Nice guys.

Thanks for all of the help guys. Thanks to the great rides and the many to come. Thanks for the volunteers. Thanks to my shop guys at Freeze Thaw for the immense help. It was a brilliant day.

I think that I should put in a special note for Leah. She rode with me for so many hours this year. Every week for 10 weeks we rode on Wednesday or Thursday and on a few Saturdays with the Creamery crew. On a drunken lark we agreed to ride together because we had schedules that made it possible. Earlier in the season I was chunky and out of shape and she was willing to do long clunky miles with me until I found my form after lots of weeks. Basically, I coerced her into riding a double century (which she did in ace fashion) and then did the 101. So here's a paean to perseverance, the very thing for which the P in a gear is tattoed on my leg. Leah's got it.

But so does everyone else who finished.

Next year will I break 8:40 on single speed? I hope so.

Feds will seize Dinosaur Adventure Land

"Doctor" Ken Hovind, felonious tax evading creationist charlatan extraordinaire has just suffered another setback. Besides being incarcerated for 10 years for evading $470,000 in taxes. Yeah. He didn't render unto Caesar and claimed that because he worked for God he wasn't subject to the tax code. Or something like that.

PNJ reports, "A ruling this week says the nine properties that make up Dinosaur Adventure Land, and two bank accounts associated with the park will be used to satisfy $430,400 in restitution owed to the federal government." I wonder if the Creation Museum will buy some of this stuff for their super-scientific setups.