December

                                                                    

EBOLA SCOURGE

  We've al seen a lot of news about the Ebola plague  in the recent outbreak in West Africa, but have you read about what it actually does to you?  Maybe I can throw some light on this gruesome subject.

It begins with a runny nose, headache, flu symptoms. Then, probably you die. (50 to 90%).

The first outbreak was in Marlburg, Germany in 1967. The Behring Works , a pharmacetical company, imported monkeys from Africa,and killed them for experiments. but two workers were somehow infected. Thirty one people eventually caught the virus, but only seven died. (one in four kill rate). The virus ran it's course, then died out. They named it :"MARLBURG VIRUS".

   1976.  Southern Sudan. Mr. Yu G. , Contracted the Virus (no one knows how), Days later his co-workers started to die. Massive hemorrhaging from all orifices, of the body. It jumped from person to person in Sudan. When it got to the major hospital, with all the hemorrhaging going on, the entire  staff left it, which was  the best thing that could happen, as they were using dirty needles over and over.

Some of the patients suffered from major mental derangement. Some tore off their clothe, ran

 into town, looking for their homes.  This SUDAN EBOLA Ebola kills 50% of patients, Then thee virus disappeared, after about 300 people died.  a few months later, however, the virus erupted in Zaire. virus attacks every organ and tissue small bloodclots appear, the blood thickens and slows, this shifts the blood supply to various organs, such as liver, kidney, intestines, testicles breast tissue. Every opening in the body bleeds, The tongue surface sloughs off and is swallowed or spat out. eyeballs may fill up with blood, you may go blind. the liver bulges up and turns yellow, begins to liquify, then dies. the kidneys become jammed with blood clots and dead cells, and cease functioning. The intestines may fill up completely with blood.  The  lining of the gut sloughs off into the bowels and is defacated with large amounts of blood . Naturally, this makes the patient go into seizures and convulsions as he dies, spreading blood all over the place. Who do you get to clean it up if you know it is Ebola?

  The next outbreak was in Jan. 1980.  A Mr. Monet was brought into the hospital in Nairobi after flying a commercial flight from his town. You didn't want to be his seat-mate as he was throwing up part of his intestines and handed it to the stewardess (this was 1980). He was examined by a Dr. Musoke, during which, Monet threw up all over the doctor with a black vomit.. Not good!

However, contrary to everything you have heard, with everyone walking around in sterile space suits, The doctor survived.!   This has become known as the MUSAKE strain of EBOLA Virus.

  the next outbreak was kind of peculiar, as it did not kill any humans, only thousands of Rhesus monkeys. in 1983 in Reston, Virginia, an  another pharmaceutical co. who use these close friends of humans (along with Hamsters) as they are the closest to humans.  A shipment of a couple of hundred monkeys from the Philippines came down with a disease, which turned out to be Ebola virus. This naturally freaked out anyone involved with these monkeys.  Of course, research showed they came from Africa, near Lake Victoria. After the Army was called in and all the monkeys were killed, it was determined  that (1) they transmitted the virus thru the air. Good! , (2) This strain of RESTON EBOLA was not transferable to humans. Whew!.

  Okay, you've got a headache and  you begin to feel listless?  Don't call me!

 

 WINDHAM RESIDENCE, Forestville, CA

              

MAIN FLOOR PLAN

   A few years ago,  I finally got a job that would be my 'Piece de Resistance, my '"Swan Song",  I was pretty excited, to say the least. They were a middle aged couple, from Silicon Valley reserves, who wanted a creative house. But I should have known, he was a Texan, she from Britain. But they had purchased a good site, with room for about 5 acres of grapes.  overlooking Dry Creek Valley.  Design and contract Documents went smoothly, and we had a good General Contractor (Calletti) , under contract with a negotiated cost (His bids of all sub-contractors plus a percentage of construction cost for his Profit & Overhead. ) . I even designed a separate building for the racket-ball court, something all executives had to have at the time. This house had three kitchens, three bars. A secret door in bookcase to a floor safe, to mention only a few of the goodies.  Construction went well until the "Inferior Desecrator" turned up along with a young Landscape Architect.  Ms Green had some really 'swell' ideas about how to finish the interior of this 4,000 square foot “ essay of triangular space”. After I had already spent a great deal of time already doing that. We did not get along. We did not need her. I did not like her. Much to my dismay, the owners wanted her concepts (Zero) over mine (magnifique!) for the entire house. Example; The kitchen and Dining Room floors were to be black, split slate, except the area under the dining table and chairs, where the slate would be smooth in order to have a level place for chairs. She used  the current fashionable  bamboo flooring, but worse, stained it all dark!   Okay, enough about her, I'm getting ill just thinking about it.

POOL-SIDE

       

  Meanwhile, on the exterior , Mr Balcerak, is wreaking havoc with my hardscape design on the site. Unbeknown to this guy, the entire project was a carefully considered design of 45 degree angles ,naturally extending out to the gardens, walks, pool, etc.  Added to the mix, there were a lot of steps giving off to various levels.  In other words, what I had envisioned as a Tour de Force, was turning to a Tower of Shit!  In my past projects, I would always guide the Landscape Architect in the selection of planting material, but they usually understood the concept of my hardscape design. Although we're talking about a 3 million dollar house here, the owners also opted to dismiss the General Contractor and hire their own carpenter to finish it, fortunately after the steel and EIFS exterior wall was finished. I settled my fee with them in Arbitration, the first time in my 50 year career. And I have not been inside since it was finished (or trashed?) I am a sore loser.

    

ENTRY

                    

THE LITTLE REVIEW

“To express the emotions of life is to live.

 To express the life of emotions is to make art”.

 They don’t make them like that anymore. In the nineteen twenties, two brilliant women published a monthly intellectual magazine called “The Little Review” which published all the really Avant Garde writers and poets of the time.  We’re talking  T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and the likes. Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson (I am no man’s wife, no man’s delightful mistress, and will never, never, never, be a mother),   concentrated on publishing what its editors found worth publishing.

On one occasion when the editors decided that literature was temporarily moribund, there appeared a sixty-four page blank number prefaced by an announcement that there was nothing fit to print.

 

November SA

 

THE BIG ONE
I finally had a thought about the quake. We've got plenty food in our pantry to last a lifetime, but water is a problem. I've resolved that as I usually have a case or two of wine around, so that lasts me several weeks as it does now. However, no one has ever mentioned how to flush toilets when you have no water. I’.m not going to flush with my wine but my solution is to piss in a can, then use that for a no.two flush. I do expect a Nobel piss for that one.

VOTING

 We're making progress here. I can vote by mail now but am hoping to vote via internet before I die. Baby steps. Meanwhile, I have a few complaints about our ballots.

  First off - I don't want to vote for Controllers, Appraisers, Insurance types. How do their politics come into play when they are just doing a job like controller? why can’t they just be appointed by someone who has the power to do so.  Junior College member? I don't give a rats ass about who is capable of running a college. Why do they have to go through the whole thing of raising money for a job like that?  Maybe it pays pretty good but their politics, forget it. Maybe the whole thing is that you can’t fire the incompetents. But don’;t get me started on that.

  All that’s left is lets all vote more school funds every time. Not me! I know about the obscene amount of money squandered on our wonderful school system. Here’s how it works;  Public schools (College also) do not come under the scrutiny of our Building Dept., they have to be overseen by the State Architect. In this area, that means your school project has to be checked  and approved by a bunch of ass-hole anus loving Chinese engineers & architects who will beat any tiny amount of creativity you may have inadvertally expressed. But wait! It doesn’t  stop there, as now you have to hire another CONSTRUCTION INSPECTOR to make sure you are spending an inordinate amount of our hard earned dollars to construct this machine for learning    Now, I don’t believe that I am a Prima Donna,   Private schools  are weirdly, treated like any other construction project, by the local jurisdiction. I’ve done a few of them and always wonder, are we putting our wealthier kids in danger in order to eliminate them in the next big one?  I guess that would level the playing field, eh?   

 

VIDEO ALERT

I came across ‘Generation War’, a video from Germany, showing a different view of WW2.

Mostly fighting Russians, and not those pesky Americans.

Another good one RESCUE DAWN, a recent video of Vietnam “Incident”, well done. Kind of like an escape from the Stalag. 

 QUESTION;  Is horrific a word?

 KIVA

I mentioned that a couple of years back I loaned $25 to Kiva Organization. They gave a couple of loans to some motivated people in Kenya and I got all the loan back recently. It went so well, I donated it to their management to use to offset expenses.   Kiva, unlike other huge organizations, spends a very small percentage on managing, but uses local people to do that.

TAKE NO PRISONERS  Why do they always refer to her as Hillary Rodham Clinton?  Are there that many Hillary Clintons around?  On the other hand, when talking about a prisoner, they always use the middle name. Kind of make’s me wonder.

NORTHWEST PASSAGE

It took me longer to find his book than it actually did his finding of the Pacific.

BOOK REVIEW  -  I have been searching for a description of the Pacific Coast by McKenzie in 1778, a Canadian who beat even Lewis and Clark’s venture.  I finally discovered a book recently as strangely, there doesn’t seem to be much written about his adventures.  Well, that’s no surprise since I opened up his tome, it was a direct reproduction of his original book of 1780, but how surprising to find it in OLD ENGLISH, which means that the letter’ ‘s’  was not used much as it was substituted by a character that looks like an’‘f’, but subtly altered with part of ‘f’s’ cross over. Anyway, let me give you an example of what I had gotten into;

 “ My new Conductor(guide)  being very much difcouraged and quite tired of his fituation, ufed his influence to prevent our proceeding. He had never been, he faid, at the Benahulla Toe, or White Man’s Lake; and that when he went to the Efquimaux Lake, which is at no great diftance, he paffed over land from the place where we found him, and to that part where the  Efquimaux pafs the fummer. “

This all went well, except for a couple of spots, like:  lefs = less,  the ’s’  is only used on double ‘s’  words.

How about ‘fubfiftence’ or ‘fciffors’? (subsistence, scissors)  that can really slow you down.

Anyway, we all got to the coast above Vancouver and safely back again.

VIDEO ALERT

I came across ‘Generation War’, a video from Germany, showing a different view of WW2.

Mostly fighting Russians, and not those pesky Americans.

HOW THE FARMERS BEGAN

One of my favorite books is’ The History of Civilization’ which has some nifty insights into not ‘Why are we here’ but more like ‘When we were here.’  While we are all sitting around in coffee shops worrying about a change in world temperature of a couple of degrees, the author  describes the massive fluctuation of world temperatures, fo the past few million years.  His enlightening graph shown here is derived from some drillings in some ice masses that are 3,000 feet thick at least and calculated from relationship between two distinct  isotopes of Oxygen. From 200,000 years ago, it seems the earth’s temperature varied massively until about 10,000 years ago (8,000 BC) when it became very stable.  That coincided with the advent of farming and which resulted in the initial growth of cities.  It took a long time for the climate to get to a point where our ancestors could settle down to a farming life, and they took the first opportunity to do it.  Must have been some of my people.

One of my favorite books is’ The History of Civilization’ which has some nifty insights into not ‘Why are we here’ but more like ‘When we were here.’  While we are all sitting around in coffee shops worrying about a change in world temperature of a couple of degrees, the author  describes the massive fluctuation of world temperatures, fo the past few million years.  His enlightening graph shown here is derived from some drillings in some ice masses that are 3,000 feet thick at least and calculated from relationship between two distinct  isotopes of Oxygen. From 200,000 years ago, it seems the earth’s temperature varied massively until about 10,000 years ago (8,000 BC) when it became very stable.  That coincided with the advent of farming and which resulted in the initial growth of cities.  It took a long time for the climate to get to a point where our ancestors could settle down to a farming life, and they took the first opportunity to do it.  Must have been some of my people. 

SWIMMING WITH WARLORDS (Book Review) Kevin Sites

The author, a journalist describes his “Imbedment” with troops in Afganistan .  This war, not much different than Iraqs’, but we’ve only lost 2,100 of our young people so far, not counting the ones who  are alive but missing  legs or arms?

  He notices that the Taliban come from Pakistan. Most of their leaders are not religious, they want to tax the Afgani’s during the opium harvest and take the money back to Pakistan. There is no Jihad is their moto!

Here’s a thought for you “”Man-love Thursday” is a phrase about the Afgani men like to have sex with each other so they will not be distracted by lustfull thoughts on Friday, the Muslin day of prayer. Sexual relations between men and boys in Kandahar are notorious.  Hmmmm. I’ve never read anything about that in the newspapers.

 Some say 50% of Taliban are addicted to opium.  There are maybe a million addicts in Afgan,   and why not after 20 years of war (don’t forget the Russians). 
    Bagram is the incredibly expensive  military base in Afganastan, we spent $200 million in 2009 to expand it to a small city, with a population of 30,000.  Bagram is America’s duty-free space station in the war on terror and may be the most culturally isolated outpost on the planet. The world’s most effective killing machine has ensconced itself in a hastily constructed replica of a Mid-west strip mall”.

The author ,  Site,  gives first hand descriptions of blatant corruption on all levels.  He also makes note of the  suicides  of our troops. In2012, 349 had killed themselves, while 295 were killed in combat.

Was it all worth it? Sites points out a classified report from 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that chaos will engulf Afganistan without our aid, even with an ongoing investment of $8 Billion a year, the Taliban will likely take over the country by 2017. I told you so, doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?  Can't we get some of that 8 Billion to fix our pot-holes in Sonoma County?

 

SA October

A LOOK AT EBOLA, WHICH MAKES AIDS LOOK BENIGN
I'm re-sending this as it is the current crises.

My understanding of the Ebola Virus is it originated around 1976 in a huge cave in Africa that was made by elephants tusking around the edges, maybe for salt or something, then the walls kept collapsing where they were undermined. This resulted is a huge vaulted cavern where monkeys somehow got infected with something from the caves. Since Africans and some Asians eat the brains of some monkeys (Better make mine well done, please) it was passed into the human strain. Easily transmitted thru blood, it will devastate the body in a matter of days, during which the body has a melt down with large quantities of infected blood gushing out all over the place. Anyway, the virus was transmitted throughout Africa along the Kinshasha highway, mostly be truckers who frequented the prostitutes along the way. This virus is nasty, killing the infected within 2 to 18 days, with a death of 50% to 90%. This stuff destroys the blood vessel lining resulting in hemorragic fever. Fortunately it acts so quickly that it kills it’s hosts before it can spread all over. There is no known vaccine for it.
Can you imagine the mess, when a person has bled out all over the hospital room? Would you be a volunteer nurse to clean it up?

VENICE

 I suppose one must not miss the Caffe Florian , if you're hanging around the Piazza San Marco. We should have had coffee instead of drink, as the price was not as high as Harry's, but pretty close.  Anyway, one must immerse onseelf into a little history once in a while, damn the cost!. The first coffee house opened in 1683 on the Campo (Piazza), and Florian Francesconi open his in 1720. Soon there were 30 coffee houses on the Campo. But Florian seems to have prevailed, and his is the largest one on the Campo. I suppose part of the cost of your drink goes to pay the four musicians (Classical) entertaining you. Of course, this was the place to be seen for a couple of centuries, where now, we?re just all bloody tourists having a small taste of luxury.  The Rousseaus and Casanovas have all gone.  Let's go around the corner and see if we can spend more fore a Martini at Harry's Bar.

EIFFEL TOWER
I'm re-doing this as the published text got screwed up in earlier blog, somehow.

BOOK REPORT - The Tallest Tower by Jos. Harris
Towards the end of the 19th century, the holy Grail of construction was a one thousand foot  high structure, so that was the program of the competition of such for the Paris Exhibition of  1890 . Only Eiffel had the construction expertise to pull off his design, a basic minimalist tower
that would not be blown over and would carry fair goers to the top, as well as several posh restaurants   on the first stage.  By thee time the Paris Fair Board made up their mind which design they chose, there was two  and half years to design & construct the tower. Of course, the elevator was just being invented, to say nothing about one slanted and changing angles.
   At the same time, forged steel was just  being invented, but Eiffel incorporated both these in his bid to build it. He eventually got paid  $900,000 from the city of Paris, as well as putting up a million and a third of his own money.
When all was complete, on time, it was a little under budget. He had a deal to run the
concessions for twenty years, which reimbursed him for his investment. The previous tallest
structure was the Washington Monument in USA at 555 feet and took 36 years to complete in
stone.
  It as surprising to note that Eiffel did not design it, but his chief engineer did. Although very
probable Gustave was a major influence on the concept. Although we see the tower as
beautiful, his solution was strictly utilitarian, barely an extra pound of steel anywhere in the
structure. He made one exception to that to alleviate the feeling of the time that an arch was
necessary for a structure, so he added a superfluous steel arch on the four sides of the base,
something I've always wondered about.
In order to reduce the problem of the workers who would have to climb all the way down to a
cafe nearby and load up on cognac for lunch, Eiffel opened his own cafe so they could stay up
high but he only sold wine and food, all at a super reasonable cost. However, danger was still
rampant, as they worked through two winters, where wind, snow and ice were formidable foes.
But no loss of life, except for one idiot worker, showing off for his girlfriend after work, fell to his

Briar canal over Loire River

death. splat!
I've been on three of his structures, starting with the rail bridge over the Gironde river at
Bordeaux, (his first large project), the Briar Canal Viaduct that spans over the Loire river for  about a thousand feet, as well as the tower. We are not used to the concept, where the
designer is also the builder. Even though his designs are classic, his inventiveness of
construction methods were amazing. Hydraulic water jacks, sand jacks for alignment , etc. were  only the beginning of his creativity.

Le Canal Viaduct

MOSTLY EUROPE

ST SULPICE

ST. SULPICE ORGAN

Sunday mornings in Paris are usually taken up trying to miss the Noon mass, but catching the marvelous organ concert for half an hour is a real treat. St. Sulpice is an old church but somehow missed out  on all the Gothic architecture (too bad). The facade is embellished with scores of huge Greek columns combined with a lot of poor Romanesque details. However, this is the 2nd largest cathedral in Paris (After Notre Dame). But the organ! Installed in about 1750 by one of the masters, this thing will clear out the interstices of all your atoms when cranked up for some Bach or Buxtahude score. This must have been an awesome experience for the poor, unread masses  (Is that where the word mass comes from?). After each concert, a small lady emerges from the innards of the monster to bow at a small applause from us awed few.

TGV (Train Grand Vitesse or  train real fast)

TGV

But wait! Don't trade your car for a trian just yet. If they have a strong union you are screwed. Every time we go to France (We've been to Paris about 20 times) we get in the middle of a  massive Greve (Strike!). They do not tell ahead of time that they shut down all rail traffic for a week at noon. We found out about it when ewe arrived at the Geneva, Switzerland about noon and noticed something weird about the notification train board of Departures. A note (In French or Swiss or Italian noted that there were problems. No shit, Seymour! There were no trains going to France. Our original layover of one half hour became several as we got in a couple of lines for information, someone told us that the French trains ran from platforms 7 & 8 and maybe one would leave at about 1400. We had a nice Thai lunch with a bottle of wine, then got in a packed hallway to wait for about an hour . It was stifling hot, no place to sit, but in these cases one has to be flexible. Was this the First Class TGV section? Eventually, the door opened and we all ran up to the quai to await the ;Fast Train'. We interpretered the conflicting directions of where the train would stop as we had two bags each someone and wanted to be in our 1st class car. When the train finally arrived, it was a regular type but we surged thru the crowd to get on and find a seat on the upper level. (Most trains, even TGV are two level now). This was a really big surprise, as there ere only four other vagrants in our car. We pulled out of Geneva for Lyon, France but made long stops at several towns along the way. At one point, we were traveling so fast, I became concerned the this type of inter-urban train would de-rail. Maybe we were on a high speed rail line and didn't have many curves to negotiate. Anyway, we arrived in

Lyon eventually, calling our really apartment owner that we were hours late. Now, at the Gare, we followed directions to the taxi stand, got there and waited in vain until an off duty cabbie told us the strike was killing the taxis as there were no crowds. He told us to go to the other side of the gare to find taxis , which we did, and duly were dropped at our riverside apartment to meet Oriele. This was not exactly what we booked as there was no

OUR APARTMENT Two windows4th floor

Orange Cube offices

elevator (After all, this was built in 1875). She said it was on the third floor but Europeans call the 2nd floor the first. Here we were, an 84 your old with a heart condition and Medina with a sprained ankle. We insisted and the Owner humped all the bags up all four flights.

MILLE MIGLIA

Landed in Milan, they are adding to the terminal so we walked forever, took a taxi into town

as 5 of us with bags is formidable. An hours trip but cost 10 euros each, not bad for a start. Lots of big new skyscrapers under construction, we duly took in the covered street ; the Galleria', the Gingerbread Cathedral , Pomodoros sculpture, decompress from jet lag, then catch a train to Pisa. You'd think we wanted to see the leaning tower, but I've already done that a couple of times; the rest our group will return for a look-see. Train to Pisa not an easy thing to do, then getting to airport to pick up cars at Hertz. Our strategy was to intercept the Mille Migli on our way to Volterra, where they were stopped for lunch. We got more than we bargained for. After watching the old racers zoom around a roundabout, we forged on and ended on the same road, but on opposing lane as the race.

Our Locando in chianti

It got a bit hairy when some exuberant driver needed to pass and didn't like waiting for us get clear . There were a few Lambourgini's and Ferrari's there as they probably owned some of the old cars. Upon arrival at Volterra (known for their alabaster work) it was still clogged with the residue and motorcycles so we had to abort and seek our lunch elsewhere. We found a place in Poggibonsi for that and also to load up our grocery cart and wine for our new apartment. After a few short, windey miles, we found our split level, two story stone locando perfect for a few days here in Chianti.

Idiots Delight

LOVE KILLS

   Love is a strange emotion, it can be a great destroyer. Just observe the poor bridge in Paris, (Artists Bridge), a beautiful pedestrian bridge that has become infected with padlocks, Already, the guardrails are collapsing, can the bridge itself support the added tons our love-locks purportedly installed there by couples who claim forever love for each other. There are so many of these 'Love Locks' the the bridge may fail and fall apart. It was not designed for such heavy loads  frivolous poor mis-guided lovers have added? Hopefully, when it does collapse, a horde of lovers will be destroyed in the process, saving us further problems.

ARAGOS' MERIDIAN
 The French are sometimes far ahead of the time, and their establishing the first Meridian, or

A Medallion

line of latitude in 1850's is a prime example. The astronomer, Arago, established a line from the North Pole to the South, actually surveying it to North Africa, even though two years of the work was spent in a Spanish prison (At war with France). This allowed any mariner, who owned a chronometer on the globe fairly accurately. Up to that point, only the Longitudes were of any help. A while latter, the Damned British moved it to Greenwich, where it is currently. Never-the less, this great accomplishment was honored by an artist in 1980, who installed 6'' metal medallions throughout Paris to mark the actual original meridian. Don't ever go to Paris without trying to find one of these as they are mostly still intact.

HOUSEKEEPING

Traveling in Europe these days we rent apartments for a week at a time. This is cheaper than our hotel on the left bank and also we get to interact with the locals when doing our shopping, etc. However, it;s amazing some of these don't have the basic tools in order to survive, like a corkscrew. therefore, we currently have a 'kitchen bag' that we carry on our sojourns. This has all the things you will not find in these apartments; Serrate knife for bread & tomatoes, egg cup, corkscrew, Swiss Army knife (Big one!), sponge, soap, etc. The downside to a system like this is, when your wife (who wants to pack all bags) forgets her brain and puts that bag in Lamont's carry-on. When I arrived at the security at DeGaule Airport, in Paris, the agent knew she had struck gold. Imagine! All the sharp stuff in one small bag. Fortunately we didn't have our plastic wine glasses lost. We use them when we have lunches on trains with our cheese & bread. That sure made her day and her job easy that time. It also strained our filial relationship to the utmost. Some of these things I had found in France on previous trips and are now lost. Fortunately, at my age, I know you can't take it with you so we eventually became friends again.

THE FAN CLUB

Derived from the word, fanatic', you only have to see a few minutes of 'The Tour de France', the World Soccer games, or any professional sports game to observe Idiots in Action:. I would rank the behavior of the bicycle race fans as the worst. Although you have to understand that these poor souls have to camp out, set up, and wait for a COUPLE OF DAYS  in order to have a good place to view the race. Whether 100 degrees or a huge rainstorm, they just persevere. But when the actual competitors zoom by at 30 miles an hour for about THREE MINUTES for all 190 guys to ride by, these fans usually go berserk and start acting like chimpanzees. They all crouch down, holler and scream, clap their hands, or, wave a flag of some nation in the face of the riders. This is one of the few sports where the fans (Fanatics) have full access to the competitors, allowing them to pat them on the back or butt, run alongside of them if they're slow enough, get out in the street until here is virtually no path for these poor bastards on bikes to get through. It would seem that they were all trying to encourage the riders, but it really gets weird sometimes, as about half of the fans are wearing some goofy outfit, going completely naked ocoasionally.