Did a little bit of riding this weekend, totaling about 15 miles. I hit part of T100, including a fun section that is immediately north of the Dreamy Draw parking lot. This thing is only 20 or 30 feet long, but is a nice decline into the horse tunnel.

I also hit some riding around the neighborhood. Made it up a steep slick rock climb that I hadn’t cleared before - good progress. There is also a nice part that sends you into a narrow channel next to a boulder, and also a smooth downhill that takes you out of the park area.

As far as I know, Clark’s TT was the first perpetual time trial on the web.

From that, others such as the Crank TT and Sidewinder TT popped up.

Locally, the first and subsequently largest perpetual time trial is the Helipad TT, followed by the Sunrise TT, maintained by MTBikeAZ.com.

Recently, the Dreamy Draw TT site was launched, which features five individual time trials based in the Phoenix North Mountains, on and around Trail 100.

I’m following suit based upon one of my frequent riding spots - McDowell Mountain Regional Park.

A new page has been added to theorangedog.net - the McDowell Mountain Time Trials page.

This page adds 5 new loops to the Phoenix Time Trial circuit, all based upon the major trail loops at the park:

• Long Competitive Loop
• Sport Competitive Loop
• Tech Competitive Loop
• Sport-Tech-Long Loop
• Pemberton Loop

The page was just recently launched, and already some leads have been seized and claims staked. I will be interested to see if anyone can take down Tyler’s 37:28 Long Loop time, which is unbelievably fast!

With the page in development, expect updates and additional useful information to be posted. This will include additional specifics, such as rules, and GPS files. However, while under development, the GoogleDoc is fully functioning and not anticipated to change - so feel free to post your time!

I was reading through comments at the WSJ the other day when a poster drew a connection between Cash for Clunkers and healthcare. The general idea followed this line of reasoning (paraphrasing):

Do we really want to entrust healthcare to the same entity that generated the massive failure of Cash for Clunkers.

I’m not really sure that is a fair question, as some I’ve asked have said that their opinion is that Cash for Clunkers was always meant to be a failure, financially at least. For some strange reason, that does almost make sense.

In any event, I was curious as to how Cash for Clunkers shaped up in terms of a return for the taxpayer.

I broke the analysis in the following parts:

1. Capital Outlay 1: total claims in dollars
2. Capital Outlay 2: financing expenses
3. Return 1: savings from the cost of oil
4. Return 2: dividends from auto manufacturers
5. Return 3: cash equivalent of the environmental impact

Each of these is viewed as marginal, in that they would not have otherwise occurred.

The executive summary: Cash for Clunkers created a -34% return for taxpayers.

A pdf showing the full analysis is attached here.

Essentially, the argument follows the line that tax dollars were used to stimulate the economy, aid the auto manufacturers, and generate a benefit to the environment. To accomplish this, we spent $2.9 billion. In return, we saved $1.3 billion on oil, and in theory would receive $1.1 billion in additional value or dividends through ownership of auto manufacturer stock (assuming all equity is owned by US taxpayers - probably not a valid assumption). We also saved CO2 emissions to the tune of 11 million tons. However, because not everyone can pay cash for these new vehicles, additional financing costs of $0.8 billion would need to be incurred.

The end result is that on our $2.9 billion investment, our return is ($1.0 billion).

To be fair, I tried to keep my assumptions, where used, conservative, in that I did not deliberately try to force this into a negative return situation. This statement alone will reveal my preconceptions, but if anything my awareness of these notions was heavily guarded against. From that standpoint, I think the bulk of the analysis can withstand argument. However, I would appreciate any feedback on the approach and results.