The big bike race in San Francisco always means plenty of people out in Lycra and plenty of cops, and this year was no exception. Actually, the coolest thing I saw all day was a sideshow, sponsored by Giant, the bike maker, where they had two big ramps and three professional stunt cyclists doing 360s in mid air. It was incredible on all fronts, incredibly dangerous, incredibly hard to do, just overall incredible. I met a woman who had just done the woman's race, who was strikingly laid back, considering. She had two kids and was in her 40s, but she had just won the silver medal in the world championships in Europe. I also met an insane man who appeared to live on his bicycle.

Anyway, after all that, and a brief visit to Arturo, a Jamaican who worked in Germany to make hundreds of millions of dollars in dot com money, who was taking his giant sailboat out, we went over to the Dolphin Club, where I met a guy who, when asked his name, said, "I go by Bear". Which amused me. He was a triathalete, and was about to swim the bay, after having run and biked. All triathaletes are kind of similar, at least the ones I have met, in that they are soft spoken, have distain for any sort of hyperbole, yet are very competitive. So this guy was standing next to me while I was reading the record board, and there were these record length swims, like a guy who swam to the Farralone Islands, which is where the white sharks breed, and the swim is almost 100 miles in open ocean. Plus you need a pilot boat to go along side you with a rifleman, to kill any sharks that come along. On the board there were also some crazy speed records, like going out to Alcatraz and back in 28 minutes, which is over 2 miles in brutal currents.