From attempts to bring dead animals and people back to life (using electricity), to measuring the weight of a soul (by carefully weighing a terminal patient as they expire), and inviting road rage (by waiting in a stopped car for an extended period after the lights turn green), Alex has amassed a collection of these weird and wonderful experiments, carefully catalogued into themed sections.

True to the promise of the title, there is also coverage of LSD administered to elephants, with rather unexpected and somewhat devastating results, in one case.

An interesting and light read.

1. Mathematics is the language of nature.
2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.
3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge.

Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature.

Portrait of a Young Forger

Marian Pretzel was a young Jewish art student living in Lvov, Poland. He talks about being fond of sports, the 'Dror' sports club he was involved with, and his decision to go to art school. But when the Nazi occupation came it quickly destroyed his family and landed him in the Janowska concentration camp.

It was painfully clear to Marian that he would not survive long at Janowska, and he soon made a miraculous escape from the camp. Previously, he and a friend were given the challenge of forging some stamps on an official-looking document; now Marian had to rapidly develop his forging skills to help his survival.

The book chronicles his journeys during the war years with various friends, around Poland, the USSR, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Each trip was backed by a well thought-out and rehearsed cover story, and suitable forged documents bearing all the right stamps.

His escape from Janowska was only one of his many brushes with death. Along the way he lost countless family members and friends who were not so lucky as he was. And although his survival was largely based on resourcefulness, ingenuity, and boldness, on many occasions it came down to pure luck. For instance, on one occasion he and a friend missed their train because they had to collect a boarding pass before embarking; the train became full while they were in the queue so they had to wait until the next day. Meanwhile, the place they were going to was bombed, and most of the inhabitants killed — had they caught the train they intended, they would likely be amongst those dead.

This book really puts things into perspective for someone who lives in London, goes to work every day, and has responsibilities including ironing work shirts and feeding the cat. The thought of not having anything to eat and dodging the Gestapo at every corner is quite a startling one.

Amazingly, through all this Marian manages to keep a clear head and a positive attitude at a time when many around him are paralysed, mesmerised, and stupefied, by fear:

I had lost everything but my life... I made a slow and careful inventory of the qualities I possessed and how they could be instrumental in my survival.

It’s only 10 minutes long; hang around for the finale, it’s good.

“Anyway, I’m not sure about all that, but I do know this stuff is coming. Man, it’s got to come; what’s going to stop it?”

[Via TED: Best of the Web]

The book comes to life with constant examples; they cover false stories like the kidney heist, where a businessman wakes up in a bath tub full of ice to discover his kidney has been harvested by organ thieves, and true stories, like the guy who lost 200 pounds by eating Subway sandwiches every day.

There are also a number of case studies that explore how to turn an abstract idea, such as a CEO telling employees to “maximise shareholder value”, into something more concrete and sticky, which relates to actual day-to-day work of the employees and is therefore much more likely to be understood and applied!

Chip and Dan set forth the six aspects of generating a sticky idea as SUCCESs:

1. Simple
   Find the core of what you are trying to communicate. Strip back the detail and make it a simple message, but without dumbing down. (Think proverbs.) Relate it to things that your audience knows about already, to help it take hold.
   
2. Unexpected
   Capture attention with a surprise. Avoid gimmickry. Break people’s “guessing machines” by making them guess something counterintuitive about the core issue. Make it “postdictable” — it’s not predictable, but once you know the answer it all falls in to place and makes sense.
   
3. Concrete
   Make ideas easy to understand and remember. Strip down the abstractions to something concrete. Use specific and vivid examples; make it real. Involve the audience. Talk about people, not data. The more specific you are, the more sense it makes.
   
4. Credible
   Make your message easy for people to believe and agree with. Use external credibility from an authority (expert, celebrity) or anti-authority (regular Joe), or internal credibility derived from things like providing specific details.
   
5. Emotional
   Make people care by tapping in to the emotions that appeal to them, be it empathy or rebellion. Don't assume that others care at the same level that you do — make them care! Appeal to self-interest.
   
6. Stories
   Use stories as a simulation, to tell people how to act, or as an inspiration, to give people energy to act. Stories can be like a flight simulator to engage people an have them imagine themselves in a situation, play by play.

If these summary notes don't make a lot of sense to you, that's because you should go and read the book in its entirety. Then you'll know how to turn a phrase like "maximising shareholder value" into something a little more... 'sticky'.

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth."
  — John F. Kennedy, 1961

After significant head scratching I managed to establish the root cause of the problem: The “faucet aerator” was to blame.

The faucet aerator is a thing screwed on to the end of the spout; it mixes some air into the stream of water in order to make it all soft and fluffy. The particular faucet aerator fitted had a “water saving” feature, which intentionally limited the flow of water passing through. (Blue mesh in the picture)

This combined with the pressure differential between the hot water and the cold water, meant that when using the mixer to create warm water what was actually happening was this:

1. Hot and cold water rush in to the mixing chamber together.
2. The warm water can’t exit fast enough because the spout is blocked by the “water saver”.
3. The hot water pressure is significantly higher, which overpowers the cold water.
4. Hot water dominates and begins to flow directly into the cold water pipe!
5. As the pipes between the boiler and the basin warm up, the hot water becomes progressively hotter.

Then you desperately attempt to rinse the soap from your hands before they catch fire, but you can’t do it quick enough, at which point you desperately swing the mixer over to maximum cold only to have the scalding hot water that has just backed up into the cold pipe dump out on you, followed by some warm water for a time, and eventually cold water (by which time your hands are already burnt).

Needless to say I quickly did away with the extra “water saving” part of the faucet aerator, and that faucet has been fine ever since!

As ‘DIY’ correctly noted in this comment, the root cause of the observed effect is that the hot water is at a higher pressure than the cold. The reason for this is that the cold water is fed from a water tank in the loft, whilst the hot water comes from the combi-boiler (which is fed directly from the water mains).

Aside:

If the mains water pressure is higher than that of the water coming from the water tank then what’s the point of having a tank? I’m not sure; I’ve yet to consult a plumber for the answer to this.

It could be a historic artefact. Maybe once upon a time the mains water pressure was not that great. Or maybe the water mains pressure is good with only one or two faucets on, but would be unable to supply all four flats in the property if everyone happened to turn on their faucets and flush the toilet at the same time? Or maybe it’s for isolation, so that someone in another flat flushing the toilet won’t make your shower go hot. (But that doesn’t really work out, because it would make your shower go cold instead, since the hot water from the combi-boiler is still fed from the cold water mains!) I don’t know.

What I do know, however, is that this isn’t the full solution to the puzzle. Even with a pressure differential, why would the hot water push back into the cold pipe rather than coming out of the faucet? Surely it's easier to come out from the faucet than to push back against the cold water?

So the question remains: How does the hot water end up in the cold water pipe?

Give up? Click here for the solution.

Consider the following observations regarding the behaviour of the mixer tap in the bathroom basin:

• The cold water flow rate is fairly paltry.
• The hot water flow rate is more reasonable.
• After washing hands with warm water, turning the mixer to maximum cold yields warm water for a time.
• When trying to investigate this phenomenon, feeling the water pipes under the basin shows they are both warm.

From this information it should be possible to conclude where the problem lies. However, it is probably not immediately obvious what is going on. (It certainly wasn’t to me, at the time!)

Can you work out where the problem lies?

Click here for a hint.

59 Seconds

Myths:

1. Visualising success will help you achieve it.
2. “Retail Therapy”: Buying things for yourself makes you happier.
3. Punching a punch bag can help you relieve stress.

What makes this book unique is that after debunking, Richard then continues to talk about techniques that, according to other scientific studies, actually work.

Truths: (well, hypotheses supported by the cited studies, at least)

1. Visualising the path to success, including specific actions that you will take, will help you achieve it.
2. Buying experiences makes you happier than buying things. 
3. Getting a pet can help you relieve stress more than a punch bag.

These findings are neatly summarised in little sections throughout the book which specify actions you can take (allegedly in 59 seconds) to derive the relevant benefits.

Another thing that makes this book unique is Richard’s casual writing style, with regular bursts of deadpan satire and exaggerations slipped in to make sure you’re paying attention. (And like The Undercover Economist, this book also features an amusing study involving students and an open bar — or so they think.)

See also: Richard Wiseman interview on the Freakonomics blog (includes amusing anecdotes about the practical complexities of “accidentally” dropping your wallet in the street... 200 times... for a study)

This trusty Dawes Horizon has been serving my commuting and training needs since 2003.
 

As you ride more and more, things start to wear out, crack or break, and need replacement. First come the obvious ‘consumables’, things like brake pads, which rub against the rim of the wheels to make you stop; the chain which propels you forward with every stroke of the pedal; the teeth on the chain rings which are attached to the pedals, and the the cassette of sprockets through which the chain drives the rear wheel; and eventually the tyres too begin to wear through.

Here is a selection of tyres; old and new. The new ones still have orange labels on. The old ones look entirely black from hundreds of miles of road grit.

In the chain, each link is held together by rivets spaced ½ inch apart. As the chain bends around each of the cogs in the drive train the links rotate about these rivets and, over time, begin to wear them out. The resultant effect is that the chain appears to grow longer as each of these rivets wear. Left long enough, this will cause the teeth on chain rings and sprockets to wear prematurely, and eventually the chain will begin to jump up and over the teeth when you apply more pressure to the pedals. You want to replace your chain long before that stage.

Here are some old chains that had piled up before I cleared them out (you wouldn’t tell it without measuring them, but they are too worn to be any good) and the chain rings from my earlier Eddy Merckx bike (the teeth are in perfectly good shape, but the cranks had to be replaced for other reasons).

As the brakes rub on those wheel rims more and more, through the warm summer and the cold, gritty winter, the rims start to wear out too. Left long enough you’ll wear right through the sidewall of the rim and before you know it you’ll go over a bump and the rim cracks and begins to collapse. You really want to replace your rims before you reach that stage.

Here is a collection of old wheels, front and rear, stocked up for occasional use in spare parts.

Next the pedals begin to show signs of wear, from bumps and scrapes and the occasional wipe-out. The cosmetics don’t matter so much, but eventually the bearings begin to wear and grow loose, and make odd clicks and other noises.

If this pedal looks rather odd to you, it is because it is designed for use with special cycling shoes which feature a small metal cleat on the sole. The cleat clips in to the pedal and keeps your foot in position; to release you twist out, sort of like a ski binding.
 

These cleats on the shoes tend to wear out too, especially if you walk around a lot as I do.

Spot the difference: An old worn cleat on the left; a new one just fitted on the right.

The repetitive movement of all those pedal strokes takes its toll on the interior of the shoes too. These are the shoes I bought with the bike, and the original insoles; it may soon be time to replace them.

The bottom-bracket is the bearing that the pedals are attached to. I’ve only had to replace that once — the one that came with the bike originally was not very good quality and wore out quickly.
 

The rack on the back lets you clip on a suitably equipped ‘pannier bag’ for transportation. The rubbing caused by vibrations has led to notable wearing in the aluminium arms of the rack.
 

Occasionally you get more spectacular results from wear, like when your handlebar snaps off.

I’ve actually had this happen to me twice on this bike (and miraculously managed to stay upright on both occasions). For future reference, creaking and crackling noises from aluminium handlebars means that there is a crack, and you’ll really want to replace them before they snap off on you.

Another time my front fork snapped off; unfortunately I couldn’t really avoid crashing that time.

If you do your own bike maintenance you soon begin to collect various tools, some more exotic than others — the ‘chain whip’ on the right is used to hold the gear cassette on the back wheel still when you want to unscrew the bolt that holds it in place.

Through all the rides you get to take in some truly amazing countryside and unique sights.

And if you push the pedals hard enough, you may even get a little something to show for it.

Tim Harford is the Financial Times' Undercover Economist, and his book of the same name applies economic theory to explain everyday curiosities, in a similar manner to Freakonomics. Also like Freakonomics, The Undercover Economist is a fascinating read with no economics pre-requisites, which should appeal to any non-economists.

Why are airport departure lounges so crappy and uncomfortable? Is it because the airport is struggling for money and can't afford more comfortable chairs? Perhaps. How about Tesco own-brand products, with their plain red and blue packaging; is the cost of a few more colours a limiting factor in the design of this packaging? In truth, the regular departure lounges have to be sufficiently bare and uncomfortable to motivate the business and first class passengers to fork out for their drastically more expensive plane tickets (and the associated departure lounge experience). It's not that better product design would break the bank for Tesco’s own-brand vegetable soup, just that better design would make the customer less likely to fork out for the more expensive alternative option.

It is important for retailers to keep the “premium gap” open, and not let the budget options trail too closely behind the premium option. If the premium gap gets too narrow, then some premium customers will “leak” to the budget option when they decide it’s good enough for them.

This is the sort of analysis you can expect from The Undercover Economist, illustrated with engaging examples (such as explaining the effect of zero-marginal-cost by looking at the drunken chaos that results from offering fixed-entry unlimited-drinks parties to university students).

And if you haven’t had enough after reading the book, you can follow the More or Less radio show (also available as a podcast) hosted by Tim Harford and packed with more amusing and topical analysis.

Thursday Evening

First we took the overnight sleeper train to Carlisle on Thursday night — they woke us up with tea and biscuits at about 4:30am. A former colleague of mine, David, lives near Carlisle in a village called Caldbeck and graciously offered to pick us up at our rather anti-social arrival time.

Friday

After a few more hours sleep at his house, and after the kids were off to school, we were out for a walk with David and his wife, Clare. We went up Ullock Pike, along Longside Edge, to Carl Side with the option of continuing to Skiddaw. The weather was not the “clear skies” that were forecast. We spent a good time being buffeted by wind and sleet, and opted out of Skiddaw extension:

Kelley on the descent from Karl Side; David and Clare up ahead.

 
Later on: Back down to sea level.

Saturday

Saturday’s main event was Kelley’s poetry reading at the Wordsworth Trust, where she was representing Flambard Press in the final of a series of three events highlighting small independent publishers. But not before we’d had a tour of Dove Cottage and lunch, courtesy of the Wordsworth Trust.

Saturday: A tour of Dove Cottage before the poetry event.

The view from William Wordsworth’s own private piece of mountain.

Kelley participating in the question panel, after everyone had spoken.

 
The view from Grasmere.

Sunday

On Sunday we got up early and managed to sneak up the nearby Helm Crag whilst the weather was relatively nice. We were back in time for a hearty lunch, though not before Kelley managed to sink calf-deep into a concealed bog near the Far Easedale Gill.

Sunday: Walking up Helm Crag near Grasmere; the weather a little more pleasant.

45 minutes later: Atop Helm Crag.

The sheep were un-phased by the giant snow flakes.

 
Nutrition: Welsh Rarebit with bacon and poached egg; chocolate milkshake on the side.

Monday

Finally on Monday, it was time for a leisurely morning and a trip on the bus to Windermere in time to catch our afternoon train back to London. The regular train was faster, though not nearly as roomy nor quiet as the sleeper train we took up there. Still, it was a good acclimatisation exercise to prepare us for our return from the peaceful countryside to the bustling city of London.

I ended up renewing my policy with Admiral, after discovering that their customer service is absolutely awesome, their renewal quote was reasonable, and they gave me a discount just for asking!

Admiral: Their website is a bit clunky, but the customer service is awesome. These are definitely the people I’d want to be dealing with if I ever need to make a claim. (Now, if only every call centre could be this good.)

The Process

To save dealing directly with insurers one-by-one you can go to comparison sites that gather quotes from dozens of insurers at once; and to save having to choose which of the comparison sites to use, you go to Martin Lewis’ Car Insurance Guide. There he will tell you not only which comparison sites to use, but the most efficient order to use them in! (Updated every quarter based on a full survey!) He’ll even optimise your job role: if you’re a software consultant you can save ~5% on your premium just by calling yourself a computer engineer instead.

After some eye-watering “best” quotes from the comparison sites, the renewal quote from Admiral wasn’t looking so bad. To take it down further I took my wife off the policy — she has decided not to go through with getting a full UK license for now, so taking her off the policy as a provisional driver was bound to help.

I also checked in with my friends at A-Plan insurance brokers to see if they could work some magic (don’t bother filling out the form on the website — call them on the phone and you’ll get a ballpark figure in 5 minutes. Ask for Jason Jarratt; tell him I sent you :-) Unfortunately Jason’s quick search yielded similarly eye-watering quotes to what I’d seen before,  so much so that he didn’t think there was much hope of finessing down the price with some direct negotiations. He advised me to stick with my current insurer.

The Findings

In the end, after about half a day of research I was barely able to beat my renewal quote. This came as quite a surprise; I thought insurers were meant to screw you on the renewals to exploit the inattentive and lazy? Maybe they only do that after the first couple of renewals, once they know you’re not paying attention and don’t have enough spare time to shop around...

I had already called Admiral to see about taking my wife off the policy and Tiffany was very friendly and helpful, so I figured there was nothing to lose in calling them again. Much to my surprise they were accepting calls at 8:30pm, how nice! I think their call centre is in the USA since both times I called the person I spoke to had an accent; I guess it makes it easier for them to be so friendly if it’s only 3:30pm where they are (rather than 2am for a call centre in India).

The Clincher

So I called Admiral and said I’d found a slightly cheaper quote; could they match it? After confirming the details of the policy to check everything was up to date (it was), the also-super-friendly Bethann put me on hold and went to speak to her manager. A minute later she was back with the offer of a discount that was almost 10% off the premium! My premium is pretty hefty, so that discount is nothing to scoff at. That’s quite a result for just asking!

It’s a good thing I got that discount too, because before she let me go the super-friendly-Bethann also managed to charm me in to an optional courtesy car upgrade. I got a bit of a spiel from Tiffany as well, before she’d let me go, so I assume it’s their ploy to win you over with awesome customer service then try for the up-sell. It’s okay; she earned it.

Clive Wearing has a neurological disorder called anterograde amnesia which is a condition that doesn't allow new memories to transfer into long-term memory. This means that he will never remember anything since his incident, similar to Leonard in the movie Memento.

On March 29, 1985 Clive came home with a very bad headache which wouldn’t go away for days, and wouldn’t respond to any medication. By the fourth day he had a high fever, and forgot his daughter’s name; by the fifth day he was very delirious.

Clive had contracted the Herpes simplex virus which attacked his brain and caused damage to the left and right temporal lobes as well as the frontal lobe. The temporal lobes contain a structure called the hippocampus which is involved in memory function, and in Clive’s case the hippocampus has almost certainly been destroyed in both sides of the brain.

Before his illness, Clive was a successful musicologist and conductor. One of the few things that have survived intact is his ability to read music and play the piano.

Now his memory-span is so short that he will often forget the beginning of a sentence before you have completed it. Or he may begin answering a question but forget the question before he’s finished with his answer. It’s not uncommon to forget what you ordered for lunch by the time the food is served; but Clive additionally doesn’t remember which flavours belong to which foods.

This book is essentially a mash-up of an easy-going children’s story with hard-core mathematical concepts that will stretch your mind. Flatland is a 2-dimensional world where females are lines with razor-sharp end-points; males are two-dimensional shapes; browsing the interline is always wireless because otherwise you’d be trapped inside a network of cables with no way to get out; meat comes mainly from oxagons – hexagons crossed with octagons; and books come as long lines rolled up into a spiral.

Vikki, a line from Flatland, is taken on a tour of different worlds by her guide, a space-hopper. On the way, they explore 3-dimensional space, 4-dimensional space, higher-dimensions, fractional dimensions, and more.

Although the story is fictional, the facts and concepts are most certainly not fictional. They explain the concepts of Hamming distance and error-detecting/error-correcting encodings in a way that is remarkably clearer than my university lectures on information theory! They visit topological worlds where doughnuts and two-holed doughnuts turn into teacups and teapots respectively. The milk comes from a one-sided cow named moobius, whose tail is joined to its nose with a twist; oh, and the milk is served in Klein bottles.

The book is full of incredibly witty puns, which are highly amusing for the scientifically-minded reader who has come across some of these mathematical concepts, and enjoys geeky jokes. One example: Moobius, the one-sided cow, has a loud marching band playing from within – this music cannot be stopped because that would be incredibly “orienting”, and besides, he is nothing without his “band”. (Geeky-pun explanation: A Möbius strip is a single-sided non-orientable two-dimensional surface embedded in three dimensions, and can be constructed by taking a band of paper and gluing its ends together with a twist.)

A non-technical reader can just ignore all the incredible puns and still enjoy the book, with all its challenging thought experiments and odd situations, written in an easy-to-read style.

2008 Speed Test Results

We’re on the O2 Standard Home package, which is rated at "Up to 8 meg" downstream and "Up to 1.3 meg" upstream, so I was quite impressed to be getting rather close to these ideals.

Let’s see how things are a year on:

2009 Speed Test Results

• The SpeedTest.net test server is allegedly 300 miles closer than it was last year.
• Which might be why the ping is marginally down, from 39ms to 32ms.
• Upload speed has decreased by 8% since last year’s value (from 1.11Mb/s to 1.02Mb/s).
• Download speed has decreased by 12% since last year’s value (from 8.05Mb/s to 7.05Mb/s).

So overall marginally worse than last year, but still quite good when you consider the variability of home broadband connection speeds. And given the level of customer service I received recently, I'm in no hurry to switch broadband providers.

I finally decided to upgrade my ageing Orange SmartPhone E650 (which is just a re-branded HTC s710) to something a little modern, namely the HTC Touch HD. It’s kind of like an iPhone, except that it runs Windows Mobile. Also, the screen is larger, and has more than twice the resolution of an iPhone. The built-in camera has a 5 megapixel resolution, which is nice (also more than twice that of the iPhone). The only thing is that it doesn’t support multi-touch, but I’m not too bothered about that. The full-screen video streaming experience is enough to compensate for that. And it comes with a handy little soft carry pouch, to protect the screen from knocks and scratches in your pockets. Very practical!

It’s nice to see that HTC has made a brand name for themselves, and entered the market without re-branding their gear. They even sponsored one of the pro-cycling teams participating in the Tour de France this year, so they must be doing well! (It looks like they made a good choice in team to sponsor too, because Columbia-HTC was the team with that guy who’s a bit good at winning sprints, and breaking British cycling records: Mark Cavendish.)

After last time I negotiated an upgrade with the Orange “disconnections” department I knew that a hard bargain was the route to success. By the end of the conversation they were offering me a free phone upgrade, on a cheap contract, with unlimited minutes and texts, and unlimited mobile internet for free! (This was after the previous guy I spoke to advised me that for ~£7.50 per month I could have up to 250MB of mobile internet browsing per month, but told me there was absolutely no unlimited plan available from Orange.) I really think the “disconnections” (i.e. “customer retention”) department has pretty much free reign to offer you whatever deal is needed to keep you on as a customer.

Alas, Orange discontinued the HTC Touch HD a few months ago; something to do with software problems — perhaps as a result of the branding “customisations” they do on the phones they sell — although I didn’t find out the reason for sure.

Instead I decided to go with O2 as a provider, who have a (publically advertised) unlimited web bundle for £7.50 per month, and very good contract deals available through mobiles.co.uk. My base contract is only £20 per month, with a good chunk of minutes, unlimited texts, and a £5 monthly discount on the O2 Home Broadband which we already have!

So far, so good.

The book is not just about the 2004 Tour de France — only the final one-third covers the Tour. The first two-thirds are all about the rest of the season before that, the wider pro-cycling peloton in 2004, and all the things around it. Training and preparations for the tour, including long hours in the saddle during the off-season, meticulously procuring the best equipment available (which Lance affectionately terms “The Shit”) and the equipment which he hopes will blow away the opposition (“The Shit That Will Kill Them”); Lance’s every-day life, interactions with his then-girlfriend, Sheryl Crow, and his kids. And although Lance is obviously the main subject, Dan does a good job of covering a number of other riders and teams as well.

Dan has an engaging writing style and covers a lot of interesting details, from the style with which Floyd Landis entered the road racing scene, to the words coming over the radio into Lance’s ear during the final time trial. I don’t think this book is just for the cycling enthusiasts; I read a little to my wife (who has no interest in cycling) and she was pleasantly surprised, saying that the writing was a lot more colourful and dynamic, talking more about the riders than the technicalities of cycling. Dan also includes a succinct appendix which can get the complete novice up-to-speed on pro cycling, types of races, teams, tactics, and cheating, in under 9 pages.

“Riders eat and drink the equivalent of three Thanksgiving dinners a day during the Tour.”

Here is a description of Floyd’s initial entry into the cyclist road racing scene:

He showed up for his first road race wearing a garish jersey, a visored helmet, and a pair of brilliantly colored Argyle socks, pulled high. He made his way slowly to the front row... wheeling a bike with a monstrously big 56-tooth front chain ring, so large that it resembled a pie plate. A slow crater of disgusted amazement widened around Landis... Then in a loud voice that rang with Mennonite clarity, Landis said what he'd planned to say, a reading from the First Book of Floyd:

"If there's anyone here who can stay with me, I will buy you dinner."

Laughter. Landis remained quiet, then replied.

"You shouldn't laugh, because that gets me angry. And if you make me angry, then I'm going to blow you all up."¹

More Laughter.

The race began, and Floyd rode up to the leaders. Then past them. He pressed the pace, slowly at first and then faster and faster, pushing his pie plate until it hummed, until the others felt like they were trying to follow a motorcycle.

"You like my socks?" he asked. "How do you like them now?"

They gasped for air.

"I'll take that for a yes," Landis continued. "How about if I go a little farther up the road, and you can tell me how they look from there?"

Landis won his first race by fifteen minutes, including a stop to repair his punctured tire. He won his second race by 45 minutes.

"Get Floyd emotionally involved and there's no way he'll back down," Geoghegan said. "He will go until his heart literally explodes."

           — Tour de Force, by Daniel Coyle

And before his entry into road racing he was a competitive mountain biker, known for riding wheelies during races... going uphill.

Footnote:
¹No, he wasn't threatening terrorist activity. In cycling, to "blow up" means to run out of energy, usually in a spectacular and catastrophic manner.