Gettin' Poked in Pokey!

So I'm still unemployed and enjoying sitting around all day far more than I have any right to.  I should be retired now, and then go work when I'm old and can't ride mountain bikes anymore.  That makes way more sense than the current system.
Anyway, while I'm not quite ready to go back to an actual job just yet, it's not a terrible idea to bring home some (very lean) bacon, so I rode my sweet new anniversary cruiser over to the Grifols Plasma Donation Center about a mile away to see if I'm a candidate for donating/selling my nice protein-rich blood.  It was a little anxiety-inducing because getting stuck with sharp things has in the past made me a little woozy--when I got my belly button pierced in 2003 I fainted dead away--but in my six years at a biotech company I gave blood a couple times and processed gallons of it, so I think I've toughened up sufficiently.  But when I walked into the facility I was put somewhat at ease by the friendly staff, the clean environs, the number of other potential donors and the distractingly terrible action movie on the TV in the waiting room.  (When the terrible action movie, featuring The Rock no less, ended, the staff put on the old pre-fully-homicidal and anti-Semitic Mel Gibson movie Maverick, which was so even more frighteningly terrible that I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.  What was Jodie Foster thinking?!)
After I proved my identity with driver's license, SS card and mail item showing my current address, I was taken into a very small room to have my weight and vitals recorded and my blood assessed for suitability.  The minimum weight requirement for donors is 110 pounds, and luckily I was allowed to keep my shoes on for the weighing because I came in at 115 exactly.  My pulse was 66 and my BP was 105/66, my temperature was 97.6F, all within the acceptable ranges.  Then I got my pinkie stuck so my blood hematocrit and plasma protein concentration could be measured; at 38 and 7.1, respectively, I am an excellent candidate for donation!  Go me.
Back to the waiting room for a few minutes of badly choreographed Wild West fistfighting, then into another, somewhat larger room for a brief physical examination and explanation of the procedure.  Apparently the center is about 4 days away from releasing an informational video that donors will watch, but in the meantime the poor guy who does the examinations had to read all the info to me from a binder, which he does about 20 times a day.  Then I had to take a quiz to test my understanding of the presentation, which I passed with flying colors (yay!), and after that I answered a battery of questions to identify any high-risk behaviors (basically, have you done heroin or had relations with a man who had relations since 1977 with another man who visited or lived in Africa).  Next was the physical examination, which turned up nothing unexpected, and a urine test that was negative for diabetes and proteins.  And presto: I was cleared for donating!
While the whole screening process was admittedly tedious, the guy who took me through it had a great sense of humor and we joked and had a good time, and I mentioned how I worked in biotech and am therefore familiar with hemotology etc.  He said that his job can get monotonous, but people like me make it better by joking and having some fun with the process, and that made me feel good :)
Back to the waiting room once again for a couple minutes of Maverick (Mel won a poker game on a ferry but then some other guy stole the money and bailed in a lifeboat, and then Mel and Jodie made out for a while), then onto the donor floor for the real business of the day.  The donor floor had a few dozen beds with plasma extraction machines paired to each one and three large flat-screen TVs on each wall so that we could all keep watching Mel's masterpiece.  The room was really cold (for me at least, in reality it was probably around 68 degrees) but the beds were quite comfortable, and I was concentrating on keeping myself relaxed.  Folks in white coats buzzed around constantly, checking donors' IVs and plasmapheresis machines, and the donors all looked thoroughly unconcerned with the process, watching the movie or reading books or playing with smartphones.  One other girl had a nice fluffy-looking blanket, and I made a mental note to bring one for myself next time.
Once I had settled myself on a bed in the corner, one of the techs came by and prodded the veins in my left elbow for a few moments, decided she wasn't up for the stick and called another guy over to give it a shot.  Usually my veins are pretty compliant, but the temperature of the room might have been playing a role.  The guy took careful aim and stuck me and got the vein, but then had to jiggle the needle around a bit before the blood would start flowing.  There was a cuff around my upper arm, and I was told that while I felt pressure from the cuff the blood was being pulled and I should squeeze my fist to help it move; when the pressure subsided the red blood cell fraction was being returned to my arm and I could stop squeezing.  The plasmapheresis machine continually pulls blood, spins out the plasma, and returns the red blood cells for anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on body weight and hematocrit, and is a pretty neat technology.  However after a couple minutes of me squeezing my fist, a tech came over and saw that I wasn't producing as much as I should; apparently the stick hadn't been clean and I had blood leaking into the surrounding tissues instead of all going into the machine.  They switched to my other arm and brought one of the more veteran phlebotomists come over for the re-stick, and she got it on the first try.  The guy who missed the first one felt really bad about it; he apologized and said he hated missing, but I said it wasn't a big deal and I was sure he had done hundreds of successful sticks so he shouldn't dwell on this one.
Thankfully at this point Maverick was over, and next the staff put on an Adam Sandler comedy, The Longest Yard.  It was considerably less terrible than I had expected, though I was a bit flummoxed by Courtney Cox's boobs.  When did they get to be so enormous?

???

And I couldn't figure out what was going on with Tracy Morgan's character:

Are straight people allowed to be offended by the use of trans characters as comic relief?

In any case, it was sufficiently distracting that I didn't pass out or embarrass myself in any other way.
Right at the point in the movie where the ragtag band of convict football players meets the prison guard team in their first match, I started feeling a lot colder all of a sudden, and looked down to see the color of the IV going into my arm had changed from red to pink: the saline was flowing in to replace the volume of the plasma that had been removed, so it meant I was nearly done.  The saline must have been at a significantly lower temperature than my innards, because before long I was shivering hard and getting more jealous of the girl with the blanket by the second.  After a few minutes, though, equilibrium was restored and I was unhooked and sent to the payment window for my $40 debit card and instructions to eat some protein and drink plenty of fluids.  I pedaled sedately back to the house and was roundly chastised by the dogs for the inhumanity of leaving them alone for 3 hours.
Apart from some lingering discomfort in my left arm from the initial stick, the whole process was pretty painless, and I think I will be back again.  There are a couple risks to the process, as with anything in life (air embolism, allergic reaction to the anticoagulation reagent), but they are vanishingly rare, especially with the current technology and safeguards. After all, $40 for 3 hours is better than minimum wage, and all I had to do was sit there and watch bad movies!
Today, my activity will be to adorn my cruiser with stickers.  I hope I'll have enough time, what with all the napping I've got scheduled...

To Go Balls Out Or Not To Go Balls Out: That Is The Question

And on this particular occasion, the answer was: only go balls out to the extent that you get enough points to win the series overall.
First, we'll get the suspense out of the way with the race results:
4th place in Moab, 1st place overall!

I did not get the memo about wearing shorts.

The Moab stop in the Big Mountain Enduro series was supposed to take place on Saturday, August 23rd.  Ever since the race venues were announced in early January, participants were freaking out over the chosen date.  You see, Moab is in the desert, and daytime temperatures usually stay in the upper 90s and lower 100s well into September--not ideal riding conditions, especially for a race with a stage that's 17 miles long.

(The red line is 17.2 miles.  Ouch.)

Last year BME had the Moab final in late September, and it snowed heavily up in the mountains (at the start line) the night before the race, making it a nasty, dangerous sledding situation for the first stage, as well as tearing up the trail and making the Forest Service very grumpy.  So this year, to avoid another mudfest, they held it a month earlier, but that in turn would put people at risk for heat exhaustion.  There's just no easy way to race in Moab, and rumor has it that the venue will be dropped for next year.
So, despite Moab's typical weather forecast, the area experienced a whole mess of rain the day before the race was to be held, so the organizers pushed the start time back from 5:45am to 7:45 am for the pros and 10:00am for the amateurs.  This was perfectly fine for me because I can't eat breakfast early in the morning without feeling nauseous, so it would give me a chance to fill up properly before riding.  On Saturday we awoke to light rain, then heavier rain, then intermittent downpours followed by short periods of blue sky and then more rain.  At 8:00am the organizers canceled the race for the day and established a tentative start time of 7:45am on Sunday.  This ruffled lots of feathers, as some racers only budgeted enough time for Saturday and had to return from whence they came, and they received no refunds or adjustments; unfortunately that's the name of the game sometimes.  Those of us that stayed found ourselves suddenly with a lot of time on our hands and nothing particularly exciting to do; rain is perfectly pleasant when you're at home and can curl up under the covers with a book, but when personal space isn't available stir-craziness quickly sets in.  My crew convened at Wake and Bake, a coffee shop on the main drag with free wi-fi, and watched a replay of the Downhill World Championship race going on in Meribel, France:

Nothing was actually happening on the screen at the time, we just wanted to make the picture more dramatic.
Finally, the rain let up, and we loaded up the bikes and went to the one trail near town that doesn't go to complete crap during inclement weather: Captain Ahab!  Apparently everyone else had the exact same idea, because the trail was positively swarming with bikes bearing number plates.  I'm sure we looked like complete dorks to any locals unlucky enough to be stuck on the trail with us that day, but it's okay because we're enduro.
(If you don't know what enduro is, just watch this video)
After the ride we went to a barbecue put on by BME to mollify us about the race delay, then a Mexican restaurant, then back to camp for an early bedtime.  Fun fact about Utah: in some restaurant establishments, you can't just order an alcoholic beverage; you also have to order food, and eat it.  I don't know what happens if you order food and then don't eat it, but the server at the Mexican place was very adamant that this was the case.  Mormons may be polite, but they really want to make sure that no one will have fun if they're not having fun.
Sunday morning: word comes from Facebook that the race is on, but only a fraction of the second stage will now be run because the Forest Service and BLM are having a shit fit about the trail conditions.  This comes as great news to the majority of racers, because it cuts out the nasty, grueling, cross country-y part of the stage that is mostly likely to kill everyone.  However, it means that the first stage, starting from waaaay up in the La Sal mountains, will be wet and slippery and extra sketchy.
This is where the strategizing comes in.  I hadn't originally planned to race Moab because it's not really my jam: long, tiring, lots of pedaling; and my endurance was in the crapper because I'd been too busy working/packing/cleaning to train ride my bike a couple times a week in the entire month of August.  My forte is take-my-time climbs and fun gnarly descents, neither of which describes the original second stage of the Moab race.  But when my friend Megan broke her arm on a trip to Jackson at the end of August, I decided to help her out and buy her race entry so she wouldn't lose $175.  Then I looked at the BME standings and calculated that all I needed to win the series (i.e., earn the most points) was to get 6th place or better in Moab.  I wanted to win the series overall for two reasons: one, it would look good on a race resume if I want to try and get enough sponsors to go pro; and two, they give out good prizes to the series winners.
So, as stated before, I kept the balls in and played it safe during the race instead of blasting down the mountain like a crazy person, picking my lines and braking more than I would have normally.  Even so, my front tire slipped on a wet rock halfway down the first stage and I almost lost it. After the two timed stages, everyone still had to get all the way back to town, which was about 20 miles any way you sliced it, and my crew was in serious need of some beer when we arrived back at the sponsor village, which was generously provided by Oskar Blues Brewery.  Then I checked the printout of the standings, and got a bit of a surprise: the girl who won in my category had, in previous BME races, placed 8th, 8th, and 18th.  I was stoked for her--she's a really sweet girl, and a good rider, but I'm not entirely trusting that the timing was accurate at this venue.  Timing inconsistencies also happened at the BME race in Keystone (they erroneously put me in 5th place when I actually got 2nd place, 10 seconds back from 1st), but I decided not to contest it on this occasion.  I came in 4th, which was pretty much what I expected, and kept me in a comfortable lead in the overall by 110 points.  The prizes were pretty good, as I thought they would be: tires, Smith sunglasses (MSRP $159), wheels (MSRP $999), and a cool little CnCd metal trophy, which I like better than the medal I got last year.  I'm keeping the sunnies, though the fact that they cost the same as a month of Obamacare health insurance is a little galling, and I'm on the fence as to whether I should sell the wheels or put them on my bike.  They're bright yellow and very enduro.  After the awards were doled out, we drank some more beer and then the rest of my crew rolled out to their respective homes.  I had dinner at the brewery with one of the locals, slept in the van outside another friend's house, went for a quick easy ride in the morning and then headed back north to Pokey.  All in all, a good trip!
Next time: new-ish news from Pocatello.