First Time This Year for Fireoak

Today I turned my bike's wheel toward one of the neighborhood's bigger hills, Fireoak. In just a four-tenths of a mile, the road first drops by 60 feet and then retakes every foot back up, plus a few more. The ends of the road make for steep climbing, but I managed to stay out of the smallest front chain ring, the kind of bravado some cyclists trade after a hard hill. I've heard my friend Ron calling out "No granny, no granny" while climbing up a steep hill in Burnet County, meaning he was trying to stay out of the little ring that leads to the easiest "granny" gear. (He managed it, but I didn't on that day.) Fireoak reminds me today of the kind I will need to get accustomed to along that Burnet County Road 303, the hardest stretch of this year's ride. One month from today, I'll be done with that stretch.

I'm making an 87-mile effort over three days this week, with 10 today, 24 on the Rosedale Ride on Saturday, and then the 53 of Dripping Springs. 87 miles in three days is not 120 in two, but it's getting closer.

Maybe he's the right guy for HP's trousers

I just finished up my early report on HP's new CEO, Mark Hurd, for the 3000 NewsWire. He looks like a much better fit for the company than his rock-star predecessor, Carly Fiorina. It was a hoary marriage between HP, the reticient gentleman of the Silicon Valley, and Fiorina; nothing could illustrate that better than the board's selection of a successor. Hurd has worked for NCR, his only employer, for 25 years, and lives in Dayton. Few things could be more vanilla than a 118-year-old business machine company or its headquarters city which grew up in the shadow of Cincinnatti. (The town does sport a crackerjack baseball writer in Hall of Famer Hal McCoy, still knocking out knockout columns even though he can hardly see anymore.) I know a lot about that kind of industrial Ohio, since I grew up in another town on the I-75 corridor, Toledo. Glass capital of the world, you know, and then there's those scales...

Hurd took his degree from Baylor, which might be the opposite end of the universe from Carly's Stanford alma mater. (For a fabulous novel about the Baylor and Waco, Texas culture, check out Greg Garrett's novel "Cycling." Willie Nelson tried a year at the Baptist college and fled.) Hurd's kids attend public schools alongside the children of people Hurd had to lay off to lift NCR out of a sea of red ink. Carly doesn't have kids and concocted a merger that left thousands jobless, all while she lived behind a security gate and travelled with bodyguards. (In a 2003 radio interview Carly noted that thank goodness, her bodyguards weren't the kind that "pack heat.") Kids in class with schoolmates whose parents were laid off -- bodyguards and gates. That's a wide difference in accountability.

How glad is HP to be rid of Carly? In its "Hurd's hired" press release the company didn't even mention Fiorina, noting that Hurd is replacing interim CEO Bob Wayman. It's a good bet that Hurd won't be tempted to take to a stage alongside Gwen Stefani like Carly did anytime soon. That hubris spawned a top-drawer parody site of the HP Carly era. Hurd might be poked fun at because he isn't flashy, but his career and demeanor at today's press conference bears a striking resemblence to the archtypical HP executive, like Lew Platt, or Bill Hewlett himself. One report at Computerworld described NCR as collegial as HP. The times I've been to HP's HQ have felt like campus visits to me.

Business analysts like writers at The Motley Fool are calling Hurd's appointment brilliant, which also seems to cast aspersions on his predecessor. Not that she made that difficult; there's a wickedly funny parody of Carly's post-firing diary, a la Bridget Jones, on the Fool's Web site. My analysis is that Hurd will be able to return HP to the profit machine it was during the first 15 years I covered the company. NCR is about the size now that HP was when I started reporting on it in 1984. That Baylor Bear should enjoy his honeymoon, but I think he won't be so tempted to knock out the walls of his new home in computing the way Carly did.

Hurd might let some HP customers forgive the company for quitting its legendary legacy business, the HP 3000. Many held out hope when Carly arrived in 1999 that HP would treat the computer as more than a withered stepchild. That certainly didn't turn out to be the case. This time the CEO arrives with a healthy appetite for vanilla, a flavor easy to attribute to the 3000. HP just isn't a miniskirt-and-fishnet kind of company, deep in its soul. Maybe now it can put its pants on one leg at a time, instead of trying to merge itself into better business. It might be safe to start calling the company Hewlett-Packard once more. Perhaps Hurd can restore those words to the company's logo. There's been enough "invent" on HP's underbelly to last another 66 years.

There goes the neighborhood

We enjoy a lively symphony of birds every morning in our Northwest Austin neighborhood. Barrington Oaks bristles with trees, platforms where a cast of birds from morning doves to cardinals salute the day. But this spring the grackles, nature's boorish tourists, are taking over the airwaves. The grackles pose a problem in suburban environments; I watch them muscle out the other ground-feeding birds outside my office window. Even the blue jays, not a retiring bird, are no match for the grackles' hubris. Cornell's Ornithology department agrees with my low estimation of the grackle song: "The brief, unmusical song is often described as sounding something like a rusty gate." If it seems like there's more grackles in your neighborhood too, well, it's because Cornell says the bird has become one of the most abundant breeding birds in North America.

But you can't order up birds like those free elm trees from TreeFolks that we planted last fall . When the grackles find your neighborhood, the songbirds become a minority, at least to my ears. This is a quiet place, our neighborhood, and so I know there's lots more noise outside other offices. But then there's the comic relief of the new dogs next door, a pair of yappers whose barking passes for a big chunk of their personality. They must be set on a hair trigger, because any nearby siren now sets off a chorus of howling, picked up by most of the other hounds in the hood. Animals domestic and wild are talking it up around here.

Made Up Miles on a Blustery Easter

It might not have been the most religious way to spend an Easter Morning. But Ron W. and I felt the spirit of the holy chain under our seats when we pounded pedals through a 20 MPH wind, a real norther. We got shut out of our "Georgetown Breakfast Club" training ride earlier this month. So when the skies dried up we headed for the Williamson County seat. We didn't have pancakes at the Monument Cafe. Sundays can be a little too leisurely at that diner for bike riders. The Breakfast Club is the only training ride on the Hill Country Ride that features a meal in the middle. Ron and I settled for a couple of budget tacos and some vending machine cappucino at a little strip-mall eatery, just inside Georgetown's city limits.

It's not easy to ride 19 miles in Texas on a Sunday and not pass a church driveway, but we almost managed it, until we hit the strip mall. The Church of the Rock was in full session. We thanked the Buddha and our gods for catching our breath, then headed back. The wind whipped us along, even carrying us up the shorter hills, after it had laughed in our faces on the northward route. We pedalled right back because I had an afternoon invite to Fonda San Miguel, where for $35 and a couple of hours' wait you could eat some of the best interior Mexican cuisine in Austin. A brunch that was Mucho Gusto, to be sure.

Missing Our Miles

Rain! It’s gotten in the way of our training this season for the Hill Country Ride. Once more, we had to cancel a long ride out in the Hill Country — just a few miles off the course of this year’s ride — because of a thunderstorm watch today.

The Dripping Springs ride route that got away today. Only four roads, but a dozen hills among the 53 miles.

The Dripping Springs-to-Johnson City ride is way out in the country. Some parts of the route don’t have cell phone services, kind of a risk in case a rider goes down in a crash. And that kind of crash can happen, even to an experienced cyclist. A few weeks back one fellow reached down for his water bottle, took his eyes away from the road for a moment, and ran off the pavement. Broken hip, required surgery.

Today’s course would have been fun in the right weather. We might do the 53 miles later on, but it will have to be rescheduled soon. The ride starts five weeks from today. Tomorrow my wife Abby and me and my friend Ron Wilcox will try to make up for the missing miles by riding to Georgetown and back, about 44 miles altogether. It's called the Georgetown Breakfast Club Ride because it can include a stop at the Monument Cafe for pancakes en route. Last time we tried to ride it, we got rained out.

Maybe the next time I'm here, I'll be wearing my bike jersey. From the right end and working counterclockwise, that's Fred, Abby, me, Leo, Phillip, John and Ellen on the other end.

Tomorrow's weather prediction is for 16 MPH winds with temperatures in the 50s. Brisk for a Texas springtime. Even through it's late March, I'll be wearing the full-fingered riding gloves again.

Easy Riders Today

Abby and I rode the neighborhood's easy roads today, just enjoying the sun and the wind and being on the saddle. It can't all be about heart rate monitors and average miles per hour on the cycling computer. Sometimes it's got to be about coasting downhill and saying "Whee!"

But I do have 19 miles on the week so far. At least another ride, too, on Friday, before Saturday's climbing in the Hill Country.

We coasted past a couple of grade schools, just ready to let the kids out. Tomorrow afternoon they'll say "Whee!" when they get out for a four-day "Spring Holiday" weekend. Yeah, spring holiday, something a bit more even-handed than saying "Easter" on the school calendar.

I don't begrudge the kids a minute of it. When I was in grade school we had two holidays in February to celebrate Washington and Lincoln. Now it's Presidents' Day, just one.

Talking about writing in the warm sun

My writer friends Laurie and Larisa sat with me in the bright sunshine this morning, sipping coffees at Barnes and Noble and talking about our writing. Larisa brought a chapter from her novel, "The Gender Game," for us to workshop, and Laurie brought wisdom from the mouth of Richard Ford, whose career includes the first book to win both a Pulitzer and a Pen/Faulkner Award. (The link comes from Powell's, the great independent bookstore in Portland that covers a full city block with four floors of books new and used.) Ford talked at Texas State yesterday, but the Q&A afterward for students that Laurie peeked into gave him his best opportunity to tell how to make fiction happen.

Ford writes longhand, a point that made me smile; I bought another fountain pen last week, so I could write slower on first draft, from Pen City, the greatest resource for writing instruments and ink. Ford reads everything aloud, another fundamental. But on that Powell's interview link there's a story about him reading 700 pages of a manuscript aloud, twice through, to his wife. Permit yourself the freedom to pursue excellence, he said. At 61, he's had time enough to achieve that over and over. The service of a dedicated spouse who'll listen to a 700-page manuscript must really help. I have a lot of spirited support from Abby, who I have probably read 700 pages to over the last 10 years. Thanks, honey.

We talked about Larisa's plot and character revelations, pushing ideas both good and hair-brained at her like a couple of fledgling psychologists. I put sunblock on my forehead while the March day rolled past 75, and I squinted a lot while I faced the sun, but enjoyed the white light off my notebook while I wrote down what Ford said. Texas State has passed on both me and Laurie for its MFA writing program, but that doesn't mean we can't still be learning about writing from its program.

Near the end of our gathering we looked at a little scene I'd composed for Viral Times, my long-term novel project. I have my best chance at simple language in my first drafts. I've got a blog on the project, a place to publish the raw material before I do all my reading aloud.

The Miles Begin to Mount Up Now

Today we finished our first ride of more than 30 miles to train for the Hill Country Ride for AIDS. The spring has been rainy and cold until recently, so we're running behind schedule on our training. This year I am learning to care about more than my own conditioning, because I'm a training ride leader. That leading is the service that I hoped the HCRA would let me deliver when I joined the ride two years ago.

Today's ride out to the Mansfield Dam on Lake Travis and back was challenging, as well as affirming. The last time I did this ride I was two years younger, riding a heavier bike. Today both the bike and rider were lighter, and I had the juice to help people with flats and ride alongside those who were mounting the hills to the dam for the first time.

There's a managing component for this year's ride, too. Saturday I "convened" the ride around the loops on South Mopac, a close-in ride leaving from a local elementary school.

That's me in the picture, third from the left, looking at my watch to give the intermediate riders a five-minute head start. Pushing off on time is important to respect everyone's time they donate on their weekends.

All that rain means the wildflowers are already popping up alongside the highways, including our famous Texas bluebonnets. There were plenty today on our 36-mile Mansfield Dam route, with more high hills than I wanted in the last six miles. While crossing the peak of the Crystal Mountain ridge, I was hoping it was the last hill of the afternoon. There were several more waiting. As a ride leader I had already stopped to help fix a flat and rode alongside newer riders to encourage them to finish out the day.

Abby mounted her bike today too, and finished 18 miles all the way to the dam, including lots of hills! It's her first year, a daunting one since she's never ridden more than 30 miles in a day. She takes to the road with cheery hope.

Here she's saddled up for a turn around our neighborhood, which has plenty of steep hills if you take the right turns. I'm so proud of her. First year training rides can be as scary as the 120 miles we'll do on the ride April 30-May 1.

This coming Saturday is the Dripping Springs ride, our longest of the training schedule. Today was a great warm up. This was my first week of more than 60 training miles this year. Next week I'll top 70.

They're all off to college, or learning, soon

Nick, his girl Elisha, and Nate at our Valentines' Day Party

A long letter from my brother Bob in Ohio, a phone call from my friend Steve in Maryland: They each tell tales of getting their girls into colleges. Bob's daughter Carlye is already in college, even though she won't graduate high school until June. The state of Ohio pays for college at a state school for the seniors who make the grade. In Maryland, Steve's daughter has been accepted at the Eastern Shore's Washington College, where a lot of scholarship money awaits.

Here in Texas, our boys have been learning about life in the real world. Nate turned 33 last week, and his latest goal is to break out of the shackles of HEB produce by becoming a jailer in Williamson County — so they'll put him through the police academy after a year of service. Nick is finishing his first full-time pay period at Compass Bank, where he works as a teller. Nick met me for burgers, beers and pool Wednesday night at Waterloo Ice House. He'd driven up from downtown and got there before me. I walked in to see him with his blue dress shirt sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, enjoying a Labatt's Blue out of the bottle at Happy Hour. Another milestone crossed for me as a dad — seeing my grown son waiting for me at happy hour after he's clocked out from the job. That's a lot of years down the road for us, from ordering burgers for us and drinking sodas, then driving down to Slick Willie's pool hall to show him the first things about how to shoot pool. Once we finished our burgers on Wednesday, he drove me down to the pool hall in his car, then picked up the tab at the pool hall. Kind of a graduation in itself, I guess — paying for some fun after a day at the job.