there are racers and there are racers

Last Saturday on the club ride we had time to chat because of a good number of flats along the way. One topic of discussion was wheel weight and how one guy bought a used wheel with a Powertap. The rear wheel weighs 1700 grams alone and he rebuilt the Powertap with a lighter rim and it saved him 200 grams.

Then yesterday during the weekly criterium race I can't help but notice one guy on a bike that squeals. After the race I was asking him whether he notices the noise from his bike. He said he ignores the noise. Another guy rolled by and pointed out that he spokes are loose and rubbing.

It just surprises me how extreme people are: either they care about every gram they carry or they are totally insensitive about savings to make their bike go faster. Go figure.

How odd

We were playing a card game at home - a variation of slap jack where we call the cards from Ace to King and slap when the card matches the call. I have played this game lots of times and for the first time in my life, the whole deck was dealt and non of the cards matched! So what is the probability of a set of cards that does not match their ordinal position at all? I have to think about calculating that...