ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY SHOW AND WE’RE BACK! Back with Jeff! Jeff Monnig! Jeff is someone who I’ve known for awhile who I originally connected with through a love of craft beer, then eventually music, mutual residency of Orange, and then as it goes with many folks, we just came to have a lot in common and maintained a friendship. I appreciate Jeff’s perspective on things because he is considerably younger than me and keeps me on my toes and in the know on music, etc. He’s a great guy (I almost want to say kid) and I really enjoyed our conversation. This was actually our second go at this, as the first one had a pretty significant recording error that rendered the final product untenable. Cest la vie.
You can find me on Twitter here and on Instagram here.
This show took us so damn long to churn out and finish, the next show is already in the can and up for editing…sheesh. I will try not to be such a slacker in the future.
As always, thanks for reading and listening. Be well.
-dg
LaShawn is someone I met through our mutual work in Human Services almost a decade ago and since then we’ve maintained a friendship full of laughs, friendly jabs, and some strong (and sometimes conflicting) opinions. We go over lots of the things that make us who we are, as people and friends, in Social Justice, Race, and Faith. Through it all one thing above everything else is confirmed for me; LaShawn is definitely one of my favorite people. I had a great time talking to him in the garage and I hope you enjoy it too. As noted by John in the beginning of the episode, there was a slight screw up in my settings during recording that leads to that odd “popping” noise. All apologies.
Miki Vuckovich is someone I’ve respected for a long time. From first seeing his name in skateboarding magazines when I was a young Orange County skate rat, to having the chance to work with him at 411 Video Magazine, to now, where as older adults we’ve reconnected over bikes, Non-Profit work, and just…life. Miki is a great guy and very knowledgeable about a myriad of topics. We discuss skateboarding, having a mid-life crisis (or not), and analog vs. digital in the 21st century. It’s a great conversation and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoy talking to Mik. We had a good day full of bike riding, veggie food, hanging out with Ezra, and just general hanging. Please check out Mik’s book The Atom Bomb and Other Pleasant Dreamshere at Move Elore Press.
My guest for next month is LaShawn Hye. A great friend of mine whose career in Non-Profit track has run a similar track as mine. I am really looking forward to recording that episode.
As always, thanks for reading and listening. Be well.
-dg
My good friend and professional colleague Dana Ransons joins us for the February 2016 episode of “Three and Two and One” so I guess that means…yes! The show is back! I had some challenges at the end of 2015 recording shows and finding guests that could make recordings, so I capped off the year with my mothers eulogy, took a break in January, and now I am happily back this month with what I think is another great show.
Dana and I worked together previously at Orange County United Way and have since gone our separate ways, myself working more closely with the issue of Domestic Violence, and Dana working in LGBTQ advocacy. We talk about Reproductive Rights (Dana also used to work for Planned Parenthood), Secular Judaism, and….baseball! Spring is almost upon us and I believe the day we recorded, pitchers and catchers were starting to report for Spring Training. Ah, that lovely time of optimism where all of us feel like our team has a real shot at winning. My team has lately won the World Series every other year…last season was an off year, so I expect nothing less than 110 wins and sweeps all the way through to another ring for the city by the Bay.
This episode was edited by John Holzer (@JohnHolzer). I am as always so thankful for his friendship and help.
The show is available on both Twitter and Instagram @321Podcast, and I’m @dgafterdark on both as well. My guest for next month is shaping up to be Miki Vuckovich, the Executive Director of the Tony Hawk Foundation. It should be another great conversation.
As always, thanks for reading and listening. Be well.
-dg
My Mother, Jill Marie Thibodeau, died on November 23rd, 2013 of kidney cancer at the age of 57. She was diagnosed in late July, had major surgery in September, and passed in November. This is a recording I made last week of the eulogy I wrote for her in December of 2013.
Originally this show was recorded as a conversation between my brother Adam and I about our Mother and our lives growing up, but there were some fuck ups in the recording process and the sound quality isn’t appropriate for the podcast.
This episode was edited by John Holzer (@JohnHolzer). I am as always so thankful for his friendship and help.
The show is available on both Twitter and Instagram @321Podcast, and I’m @dgafterdark on both as well. Though my plan for 2016 is less screen time, and less social media.
As always, thanks for reading and listening. Be thankful.
-dg
Knowing that this episode would release on Thanksgiving, I thought I would do something a bit different this time around and build a piece around some work my friend Erika (Episode 002) and I did back in August around the homeless situation in the Santa Ana River Trail, a local bike path I ride frequently. It’s here where my personal passion for cycling collides with my social justice passion and career focus on ending homelessness.
It’s a brutally hot day in mid-August, so we go for a bike ride and discuss the general explosion in the homeless population numbers along SART, meet and talk to several of the people living there, consult local citizens that see it as they fly by on their bikes, and a meet with a faith-based group that comes out to feed the homeless community every Sunday.
Erika’s work on this piece is really good, so I will let it speak for itself.
This episode was produced by Erika Aguilar (@erikaaaguilar) and edited by John Holzer (@JohnHolzer). I am as always so thankful for their friendship and help.
The show is available on both Twitter and Instagram @321Podcast, and I’m @dgafterdark on both as well.
As always, thanks for reading and listening. Be thankful.
-dg
David “Fairbrook” Layden, good friend and a man I truly, dearly appreciate, steps into my sweltering garage for the October episode of “Three and Two and One” and we discuss depression, Jazz, books, and whatever else comes to mind, mostly mental health. David is truly one of my favorite people. He’s a really good guy and I am so grateful that he was willing and able to come on to the show and chat with me.
Oh, did I mention I’m racing the shit out of some cyclocross this year? (Full disclosure: “racing” is subjective and it’s done in the 4th category, the slowest possible)
First, the history piece. At the end of 2011 I picked up one of my Dad’s old bike frames from his days of touring and racing and converted it into a malfunctioning single speed. Despite coming from a family that was semi-cycling obsessed when I was very young, I hadn’t ridden a bike with any seriousness since the late 90s (mountain) and I hadn’t been on the road since the early 90s.
In early 2012 I got a proper bike, again, and started riding. A lot. It was shortly after that that I decided what I really wanted to do was start racing ‘cross. I bought myself a very inexpensive Blue, and built it up around Christmas in 2012, too late to do any races that year, but I started to practice and learn some things in anticipation for 2013. I remember practicing on Valentine’s Day.
My Mom got sick in July of 2013, but I thought learning to race and racing might bring me some much needed distraction. It didn’t really work out that way. Sometime in late August or early September I went to an organized practice by our local race promoter/coordinator. It went ok, but I was still wildly inexperience and not in cyclocross shape by any stretch of the imagination. On the way home, I drove through a Jack-in-the-Box drive-thru for a Diet Dr. Pepper, and ripped my bike off the roof of my car. I was calm at the time but inside, with everything going on, I was melting down. I wrote off the season. More practices and practice races, but no real races. My Mom had her massive surgery in mid-September and passed away in November, never recovering, and I was coaching Soccer for my Son at the time and struggling at work and home. No time for anything else, but it’s fine. Priorities.
I made racing cross a priority in 2014. I did a handful of races and finished last or close to last in each. I was ok with it. I got lapped every single race by the front half of the field. Nonetheless I had fun and I knew it was about learning how to actually race, but I wanted to get better. Badly.
So, this year. I resolved to lose weight and just get better at this damn sport. As of the first race of the year, today, I am down 30-35 pounds since the last race of 2014. My riding on the road has improved, but I had fully planned to practice skills much more and do more work on intervals etc. I’ve been running and that has been improving and has helped a lot. However, I really should have been doing more cross-specific practice and training. I also, thanks to two awesome friends I have made in Washington DC, Jon and Travis, I was able to join a really, really cool team who do a lot for cross locally on the Mid-atlantic seaboard, Crosshairs Cycling.
Today, I raced. The first of 2015 at Verdugo Park in Glendale. I sucked, and I DNF’d.
The day started off shit, I actually got up at 2:30am, unable to go back to sleep, and decided to do my leg/vascular-opener ride for about 40 minutes and 10 miles. Nice and easy, but in the dark. I ended up double-puncturing because of bad rim tape on my clincher/training set of wheels and had to walk home about a mile and a half, at 5:30 in the morning. I got home, fixed everything, and realized my race wheels which I run tubeless, had lost a lot of air overnight and need more sealant added to it. No time to take care of that now, I am running my clinchers.
I got to the race nice and early, my mood started to shift to the positive. I had a good warm up. I saw lots of lines in the pre-ride that made sense to me through learning and practicing; predicting ruts, cutting apexes in turns, going tape to tape, running a little further before remounting when i needed to, etc. It’s not an ideal course for me, there is LOTS of soft dirt, a shitty bending sand pit, and drops I have to run instead of ride. Not ideal, but I felt ok. It was pretty warm, but not too hot. I felt sort of confident. I was using knowledge gained from the holy bible of cyclocross training.
In the call-up for my group, I got into the first row. Now last season this meant I was getting passed and shelled out the back on the hole shot before the first turn. It didn’t bother me much last year, I was learning and expected it. I wanted better this year.
I got a good start, but still bobbled by not clipping in quick enough. Nonetheless I jammed it out and didn’t really feel my heart rate rising too much either. I kept on the tail of four riders who got an even better start than me, and took a look over my shoulder.
I had a gap. A good one. Probably 3-4 seconds before the first turn. After the turn, leading into the barriers, I extended it by a second or two. By my standards, I was flying.
During pre-ride I never ran the barriers, never looked at them, never knew where they were. I came in on them WAY too hot, and didn’t brake enough or dismount quick enough, or some combination of the two. I was desperate to hold on to the gap I’d already gotten. In cyclocross, position is everything. It was stupid of me. As Jon later commented on my instagram “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” Rationally, I know this. I’ve read it in the cyclocross bible tons of times, practiced this way, etc. In the heat of the moment, it never occurred to me. I knew the course a bit, and I knew my limit and I would have been wiser to give up a few places and go smooth…picking people off, or just getting passed through the course.
Instead, disaster. I clipped the first barrier, crashing between the two, and taking out some riders with me. Face down in the grass and amid the screams of “GET UP CROSSHAIRS KEEP RACING” I dislodged myself from other riders, tried to remount, and realized I’d dropped my chain. Got off, got chain back on and started jamming. While the entire group passed me in the interim, I was able to get onto the back thanks to a long straight away immediately after the barriers and a turn. Didn’t do much good though as the crowd was pretty thick with some of the features (deep dirty, twisty, terrible sand pit with a 90 degree turn in the middle of it) and eventually I got caught behind a crash and never was able to get back on.
Before that, I had to run up some stairs and I realized how I’d strained my knee considerably in the crash, and it was a knee that was already bothering me thanks to riding with a lower saddle the day before (bad idea to change fit the day before a race). I came around to where my wife and kids were waiting with a bottle handup of water for me, and picked off a couple of women’s riders from the group that started in front of us, but the men were in the distance to me. Feeling my knee swelling and realizing this was the first race of the season, I pulled the plug after one lap. It’s a long season and I was pretty worried how my knee really felt. Sitting here this morning, it’s better, but not great and I’ll stay off the bike today.
They say cross takes at least 3 seasons to “get.” I definitely felt more confident in this race. I had no nerves, and no expectations. Just wanted to do better than last year and I had the sole goal of finising on the lead lap with the group I start with, even if it was at the very tail end, 7 or 8 minutes down. Based on the lap times I heard, minus the big crash and getting caught behind the second one, even on a course that didn’t suit me, I think I would have accomplished that or at least come pretty close. I have pretty modest goals, I think.
This next week’s track is much more favorable to me, and then I get a break for two weeks until the next time I toe the line. I’ve got some priorities in training over the next three weeks before that particular race. Namely: practice, practice practice. I’ve got at least one “organized” practice with some race intensity this week, hopefully two. I need it. Live and learn right? Fight another day? All that shit. It’s a long season and only #2 for me. Brush it off and get back out there. Gotta work on those barriers. I’ll leave you with a video of my main dude handing me some water during my only lap. See you next week (and every week thereafter) with another race report.
Erika Aguilar the Orange County reporter from KPCC joins me on the September episode of “Three and Two and One” to discuss Latino identity, America, moral responsibilities, bringing people together through the power of food, and happiness (or the unachievable quest for it). Erika is typically on the other side of the mic, so this is a new experience for her, she’s also a friendly native Texan who is handy with great conversation. I really enjoyed our time together and hope you do too.
