occasional

Trans Rockies Challenge - Done!

2008-08-18T00:04:00.000-07:00

I should be in bed, but instead I'm sorting through pictures (I'll post 'em soon, you can find a raw dump in my Flickr stream), drinking beer, and listening to this which they played every night at the awards ceremony (warning: very cheesy video. Your best bet is to let it play in a background tab).

Trans Rockies was HARD, way harder than I expected it to be; Jen and I are both pretty strong, and we finished 19th out of 30 teams that started in our category (Open Mixed).

I didn't realize going in that most people train for at least a year for it; I did it mostly as a lark, and had an absolute blast, but it was incredibly humbling to go from winning at adventure racing to being back-of-the-pack.

I'll try to do a better write-up in the coming weeks, but the whole thing is basically impossible to describe; it was hard and amazing and inspiring and scary and frustrating and rewarding and I'm a better rider by at least an order of magnitude from when I started. I also have an idea of how much I have to learn about the sport, but I think I really started to get why people are so passionate about it, and am looking forward to getting better and being able to RIDE stuff, not just survive it.

Anyway, great people, great race, great course, hard, hard, HARD work. I loved it.

Trans Rockies Challenge

2008-07-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

OK, so Jen talked me into doing the Trans Rockies Challenge, a 7-day mountain bike stage race, and since I'm a masochist I said yes.

The course changes a bit from year to year, and they don't release details until the week before it starts, but here are some details from last year:

Stage 1: Panorama to Invermere - 33km, 1139m of elevation
Stage 2: Invermere to Nipika - 60km, 1300m of elevation
Stage 3: Nipika to Nipika - 90k, 1522m elevation, 43% single/double track
Stage 4: Nipika to Whiteswan Lake, 113km, 1139m of elevation, 45.1% single/double track, 54.9% gravel road
Stage 5: Whiteswan to Elkford - 93k, 1528m of elevation gain, 46.8% single/double track
Stage 6: Elkford to Sparwood - 116k, 2300m elevation gain, 57% on gravel roads, 27% on single/double-track (this is the Queen stage; the hardest stage of the race)
Stage 7: Sparwood to Fernie - Unknown

Stage info found here: http://www.teamrunningfree.com/wordpress/index.php?s=transrockies

It's going to be pretty epic, and I'm definitely nervous about it, but there's no backing out now!

Ellsworth Truth

2008-07-23T17:46:00.001-07:00

Ellsworth Truth
Originally uploaded by dolface

I got a new bike (again).

It's an Ellsworth Truth with mostly SRAM X.0 components, and Ellsworth XC wheels. It's a lot of bike, and while I've only taken it on one real ride, so far I love it.

I'd sort of been thinking about getting a full-suspension bike for a while since they're really nice for longer races, but didn't have a compelling reason to spend that much money (fancy full-suspension bikes generally go for something north of $5k).

Two things happened: Jen asked if I wanted to do the Trans Rockies Challenge with her, and Ellsworth offered a pretty amazing deal to some of the adventure racers out here.

There are plenty of people who do the TRC on hardtails, but they're MTB racers and I'm not, plus, this was the perfect excuse to get a full-suspension. I NEEDED it for race .

Ellsworth's deal clinched it for me , so I jumped.

As a result, I'll be flying up to Calgary on August 9th, and spending 7 days zig-zagging back and forth across the spine of the Rockies on my new bike, doing my best to live up to it's potential.

It's gonna hurt.

Back in the saddle

2008-07-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

OK, let's try to get this thing back on track.

To start with, Brynn and I adopted a critter, you can read all about her here.

More stuff soon.

holidays

2007-12-26T15:26:00.000-08:00

B and I are spending the holidays at her parent's house in Mammoth. There's snow on the ground and it's snowing as I write this, very wintery.

This morning B, her mother, and I drove down to the green church next to 395 went for a short run. It was clear, windy and freezing where we were, but looking west we could see snow squalls along the tops of the mountains.

After the run we drove out to Wild Willy's hot springs and nearly got hypothermia in the period where we were in our bathing suits but not in the water.

We soaked for quite a while, and then went through the whole hypothermia routine again when we got out.

Brrr.

Get your geek on

2007-11-19T12:02:00.000-08:00

A couple of math videos that are really worth watching.

Moebius Transformations

Turning a sphere inside out< (it's 20 minutes long, but at least watch the first 1:45 to see how it's done).

Gold Rush 24 hour Challenge Redux

2007-11-12T10:35:00.000-08:00

A year ago this weekend I raced in my first 24-hour adventure race, the Gold Rush 24 Hour Challenge. I wrote about it in great and boring detail here, and one of the things I wrote was "it was UNBELIEVABLY fun and i fully plan to win one at some point."

Last weekend my team and I won this year's edition of the race. I'll write a full report later, but here are a few random items from the race.

The race started at 8:00 a.m. and it rained from 8:00 that evening to 8:00 the next morning

We got lost 3 times

I crashed my bike twice

The second running section took us 9 hours and was gorgeous

Checkpoint 1 was in the wrong place (everyone found it)

Checkpoint 16b was in the wrong place (no one found it)

Out of the 21 teams who started the race only 2 finished the whole course and only 3 crossed the finish line

We won by less than 20 minutes

We saw a deer swimming across the lake while we were kayaking

It took us 27 hours

What I ate:

7 Dole fruit cups

1 can of Campbell's chicken Noodle soup

2 cheese and butter sandwiches

1 PBJ

8 small boiled potatoes with salt

3 Lara bars

1/2 a Clif bar

4 packages of Clif Bloks

3 Pringles Snack Packs (regular flavor)

1 Twix

1 Starbucks Frappacinno (the kind in the bottle)

1 can of Pepsi

2 slices of pizza

Approx. 5 liters of water

40 oz. of Conquest

1 cup of hot chocolate

Edit: full report is here

what a week (and it's only tuesday!), and some gear porn

2007-11-06T18:04:00.000-08:00

I've been gearing up for the Gold Rush 24 Hour Challenge this weekend (last year's report is here) and it's gotten a little hectic.

First my teammate Oliver crashed his bike and badly bruised his heel, so he's out since he can't run. Mari, Jonathan, and I talked it over and decided that we'd just race as a 3-person team; we'll be a little bit slower on the kayak section (a double and a single are slower than 2 doubles) but faster on everything else (less gear, fewer people to get through transitions, fewer people on the rappels) so while it's a bummer that Oliver's out, it's deal-withable.

Then I got an email today from Ali who is/was crewing (driving the car with all the crap we need in it from transition area to transition area and helping us through them) telling me that there had been a death in her family and she wouldn't be able to crew.

The race isn't doable without a crew, so I'm emailing like a madman trying to find someone to take her place.

Why do I like this sport again? Oh yeah, I'm a masochist.

On a totally unrelated note, I lost my beloved Marmot fleece a while back and have been trying to replace it.

Marmot was bought by K2 a while back (after I bought the fleece), and now none of their stuff fits me. The best way I can describe it is that the cut and sizing has been "Americanized"; sizes are bigger and much larger in the waist/torso. One of the the things I loved about the Marmot was that it was tailored pretty closely to my body, and now all the new ones are bulky in the waist, which I freakin' hate (and it makes layering harder).

Anyway, when Brynn and I were in Seattle we went to REI and I tried on a metric assload of jackets, all of which had the same problem: too bulky in the waist.

On my way out I grabbed a softshell I hadn't seen earlier to try on, and of course it fit like a glove.

It also cost more than I'd ever spent for a piece of clothing, so I left it.

About a week later I still hadn't found a jacket I liked, and I got a coupon from REI.

Done.

I am now the happy owner of an Arc'teryx Gamma SV jacket, and I absolutely love it. It fits, it's the right weight, and I wear it every day.

I'm still a little uncomfortable with how much I spent on it (which really isn't that much in the big scheme of things, it's less than I spend on a 24-hour race, and it'll last longer) but I REALLY like it.

there's a reason we make fun of the south

2007-10-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

i'm still trying to get my head around the fact that this is an ELECTED official.
(via blurbomat)

Added Twitter feed

2007-09-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

I added my Twitter feed over there -->

I wasn't sure about Twitter when I first signed up, but I've come to really like it. It's an easy way for me to write down quick thoughts and observations, especially since I can (and almost always do) update it via SMS (you can follow my updates that way as well; just click the "follow me on Twitter" link).

randall said it better than i could

2007-09-11T17:38:00.000-07:00

from the generally awesome xkcd (click the image for the full-size version).

Mt. Whitney, East Buttress

2007-09-05T19:18:00.000-07:00

Been a long time since I've posted so here are some links to what I've been up to:

An attempt to get all the California 14,000' mountains over the 4th of July (pics only, I'm still working on the write-up).

Kit Carson 24-hour adventure race

The East Buttress of Mt. Whitney (see below for some details on this one).

My buddy Steve asked me if I wanted to attempt the East Buttress of Mt. Whitney with him and a couple of friends over Labor Day, and, while I'd been on top of the highest point in the contiguous 48 on on two other occasions, I'd never done a technical climb up it, so I said sure! The route we were planning was a 5.6 (explanation here) 10- pitch (about 1,000') that started at about 13,500 and finished at the summit (14,505').

We drove over on Friday night, camped at Tioga pass to sleep at altitude, and drove down 395 to Lone Pine the next day. We did a couple of warm-up routes in the Alabama Hills that evening, then drove up to Whitney Portal to sleep. Our 2:00a.m. wake-up came all too soon, and by a little before 3:00 we were hoofing it up the North Fork trail on our way to Iceberg Lake.

5,000 vertical feet later and after a little scrambling around looking for the base of the route and not finding it we started climbing around 7:30 a.m. I was paired with G-Funk, and Steve and Aaron were climbing together.

We made our way up a couple of pitches towards where we thought the route was (it turned out later that we were on the harder 5.7 variation) and eventually found it.

The climbing was mostly easy, but I get pretty freaked out by exposure and was glad that I wasn't leading. Despite that I did most of the route in my running shoes (the other guys were all wearing approach shoes) and only had to resort to rock shoes for a couple of pitches.

It was warm in the sun, but cold in the shade, and it got pretty chilly on some of the belay stations. Moving was good, so we tried not to stop for too long.

G-Funk was a great leader, placing his pro securely but in such a way that it was easy to get out; I didn't need to use the nut-tool once.

By the 9th pitch we were all ready for it to be over. We'd been climbing for almost 8 hours (and only gotten a few hours sleep the previous night), it was starting to snow (better than rain I guess) and we were all tired.

The last pitch was just a scramble over a boulder field and then we topped out to more snow (it wasn't sticking but it was still weird). A few minutes in the summit hut to warm up, then a brief search for the start of the Mountaineers Route (our way down) and we were moving again.

The route down SUCKED; steep, sandy, slippery, slide-on-your-butt class 3 stuff which was no fun at all. We met a couple who were on their way up at the bottom of the steepest part and were all a little puzzled as to what they were doing. The guy was in shorts and short sleeves and carrying a day-pack, and the woman he was with was in street clothes. We told them it was snowing on top and they nodded and smiled and kept going, the guy coaxing the woman up over the ledges. They were in for a long night.

We kept moving down the steep chute, my knees beginning to protest at the descent. Eventually we got to Iceberg lake and started making some decent progress. Sorta.

Steve and I were moving well, happy to have a trail ahead of us, but Aaron and G-Funk were slowing down. The long day and all the miles were starting to get to them. Steve and I would get ahead of them, then sit down and wait until they caught up, and we'd start moving again.

We got through the ledges as the last of the light was fading, then put on our headlamps and kept going.

G-Funk picked up the pace at the very bottom of the trail, right before it meets the main trail, and we were basically running when we hit the intersection.

I kept running because it felt GOOD, and Steve stayed with me for a bit, then he dropped back while I kept going, my heavy pack bouncing a bit as I ran.

A little while later I was back at the parking lot, just over 17.5 hours since we'd left.

The rest of the crew showed up a few minutes later and we threw the gear into the cars and drove back down to town for some much-deserved food and beer.

My altimeter showed 7,600' of vertical gain, and I'd guess we covered about 14 miles. That's what I call a good day!

(We went back up to Whitney Portal to sleep and escape the heat, and I was woken up around 3:00a.m. by a bear scampering through the trees where we slept. I sat bolt upright on my tarp and my sleepy brain decided that yelling 'hah' as loud as I could was the right thing to do, so I did. Then I lay back down, went to sleep, and didn't wake up until the sun was up.)

Update coming soon

2007-07-12T20:37:00.000-07:00

In the meantime, I'm thinking about this: Patagonia Adventure Race.

(If you know anyone who might want to sponsor us lemme know; we stand a good chance of a podium finish).

bikes come in, bikes go out

2007-05-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

There have been changes in gang of bikes that I ride and maintain: (I'm sure you're fascinated) the road bike (a 2004 Masi, a Taiwanese TIG-welded Reynolds 853 frame with Ultegra components) has been upgraded to this:

It's a 2006 Trek Madone 5.9 SL with mostly Dura Ace components that I built myself, including the wheels.

It rides like a rocket, and is lighter than either of my track bikes. (Click pics for more).

The mountain bike (my beloved Trek Pro-Issue carbon hardtail, details here) has also been replaced. It was broken in transportation from the finish of the Baja Travesia.

After much hassle and thrashing around the race directors paid for a new frame out of their own pocktets, and here is the result:

Trek 9.9 Elite carbon hardtail, Cane Creek wheels, Rockshox SID Team fork, carbon FSA Team cranks, Magura Marta disc brakes, and SRAM X.9 shifters and drive train.

It's heavier than my old bike due to the brakes, but it rides like a rocket, and other than the fact that I hate the color it's a great bike so far.

As a result of all this, I find myself in possession of two bikes that are each worth more than my car.

I kinda like that.

the dread pirate roberts

2007-05-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

the thing is clearly broken:

Which Princess Bride Character are You?

screed

2007-05-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

my aunt sent this out tonight:

Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in
Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black Muslim from
Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white atheist from Wichita,
Kansas.

Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii.

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned
to Kenya.

His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a radical Muslim from Indonesia.

When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocated to Indonesia. Obama
attended a Muslim school in Jakarta. He also spent two years in a
Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is
quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also
attended Catholic school."

Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that
Obama's
introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was
temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon
after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over His
son's education.

Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham,
introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school
in Jakarta. Wahabism is the radical teaching that is followed by the
Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.

Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when seeking major
public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the
United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim
background.

Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential
candidacy.
Please forward to everyone you know. The Muslims have said they plan on
destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at
the highest level.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

i responded with this:

I'm extremely disappointed that you're helping to spread this crap.
One of the tenets that makes this country great is the separation of
church and state, and while that is not true in practice, I firmly
believe that it's something we should all be striving to achieve.

The email you forwarded looks like nothing more than a cheap attempt
to distract voters from the issues by creating false controversy.

We cannot forget that this country was founded by people fleeing
religious intolerance and looking for a place where they could
practice their beliefs in freedom. To ignore that not only flies in
the face of the basis of the Constitution, it makes a mockery of the
ideals that our founding fathers fought and died for.

If you disagree with Obama or Brownback or Clinton or McCain that's
fine; convince me with your points about the issues, but please don't
sling mud. There will be more than enough of that during the campaign,
and we, as citizens, as the the government (because that's what we
are; WE elect the government to act on our behalf) have a civic duty
to ensure that it's the issues that are at the forefront, not
prejudice or bias.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

my response is heavy-handed and jingoistic, but fer fucks sake, this campaign is going to be ugly enough as it is, we don't need to fan the flames.

batten down the hatches, it's going to get UGLY!

mine! get your own!

2007-05-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

DF 96 EA E5 EC 72 8D AD C7 E3 20 C0 7A C3 0B CD

(get yours here)

baja kayak clip

2007-04-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

check this out, you can see us starting at about 2:55

Baja Travesia 2007 Race Report

2007-04-10T11:51:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to to posting the race report for Baja Travesia, it's long as hell but it's got pictures!

http://www.baarbd.org/community/forum/view_topic?topic_id=438

letdown

2007-04-06T22:39:00.000-07:00

i want to be back in the race; it was simple and and very hard and had clearly defined goals.

i liked that, and i liked being part of a team.

obfuscation

2007-04-05T20:16:00.000-07:00

"Preliminarily, information suggests the agent may have been fatally wounded as a result of the accidental discharge of another agent's weapon during a dynamic arrest situation"

From this story about the death of an FBI agent.

Who the hell talks like that?

race report

2007-03-20T18:45:00.000-07:00

I forgot to post this, it's my report from the BAAR Brawl, an infamous Bay Area training race. No one has ever finished it.

(This is also worth reading if you're into that sort of thing; it's another race account of the race and it made me laugh out loud, but maybe you had to be there).

summer

2007-02-16T13:18:00.000-08:00

it's 72 degrees Fahrenheit, sunny, with just a few clouds in the sky and a soft breeze.

happy February 16th everyone!

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

2007-01-15T17:10:00.000-08:00

i posted the text of this speech on MLK day last year, and i'm going to do it again. it's worth reading (and re-reading).

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

kayak lessons

2007-01-14T19:11:00.000-08:00

i just got done with two full days of kayak lessons, and my brain is full and i'm TIRED!

the first day was all about the 'forward stroke' which is what the correct/most efficient paddle stroke is called. when done correctly it can look like this.

when i do it it looks more like a broken robot who's batteries are running low.

the class was held south of Santa Cruz, in Elkhorn Slough, and the place is littered with sea otters. they were everywhere; big rafts (i think that's what they're called) just hanging out and hassling each other, and a couple of loners who came over to check us out. they'd dive down occasionally and come back up with a rock balanced on their chests and a clam in their paws, which they'd proceed to slam against the rock until it broke open. then they'd crunch it up (it sounded like they ate the shells too) while seagulls heckled them for scraps.

it was also freezing cold (almost literally), with temps in the mid 30's F* in the mornings. we're in the middle of an unusual cold snap right now, and i didn't have the appropriate gear. we rented wet suits but my hands and feet got really cold.

fortunately this class was all about paddle technique and we didn't have to get in the water.

day two was about surf: how to get off the beach through breaking waves, and back in again without getting dumped and sent through the washing machine. the waves weren't that big, maybe two to three feet, with the occasional set of four to six footers.

when your eyes are only two feet off the water, three-foot high waves look BIG, and they can flip you ass over tea-kettle before you know what's happening. our instructor, roger, has been paddling for years and makes it look easy, and is beautiful to watch.

we weren't like that. we flailed, go dumped, got tips and pointers, flailed and dumped again, but eventually got to the point where we could get through the break, and back in again, without going over.

and every once in a while we'd do it right on the way back in and catch a wave and ride it, and holy crap that was fun!

by the end of the day we were tired and waterlogged, but the waves didn't look so scary anymore. we knew what to look for, what our options were, and that if we kept our heads we could ride them in.

i'm tired. muscles i've never used hard are whining about the effort but they'll just have to get used to it. i have the beginnings of a new skill set and THAT is fun.

little fish, medium fish, big fish

2007-01-03T19:06:00.000-08:00

to recap, my company got bought about months ago, and while the deal hasn't closed yet, i've been working with the new company on a couple of projects, and getting ready to make the move once all the paperwork is done.

today, the company that bought my company was acquired by a MUCH larger company.

so all of sudden i've gone from working at a small company with less than 100 employees to working for one that has 50,000.

it's a bit of a shock.

i don't know how i feel about it yet, and i won't know all the ramifications for a while, but for now it looks like i still have a job.

ding dong saddam is dead...

2006-12-29T22:56:00.000-08:00

by most accounts, saddam hussein was hanged by the neck until he was dead, dead, dead sometime in the last few hours. (to be realistic about it, his neck probably snapped, severing his spinal cord, less than a second after the trapdoor underneath his feet opened, which is more than he deserved.)

i never met him, and i've only met one person (that i know of) who was directly affected by his presence on this planet, but i'm glad he's dead.

there was an article in the new yorker some years back, post-gulf war I (the one that caused me to register as a conscientious objector) that described how one of his sons (i don't remember if it was uday or qusay) had bought a machine that was designed to shred plastic for recycling, and had used it to kill people.

if you were lucky you were fed into it head-first, but most went in feet first, and took several tens of seconds to die.

the remains were collected in garbage bags and fed to fish.

i am a self-acknowledged bleeding-heart liberal; i am in favor of gay marriage, the right to abortion, legalization of most drugs, universal education and healthcare, et bloody cetera.

i oppose the death penalty in almost all cases because i think, as a society, we have an obligation to live and deal with the results of what we've created (and we can certainly afford it) and simply killing off the products of our society we don't like is a cop-out.

that being said, i also believe there are people who would better serve humanity by being dead, and hussein is one of them. he is not (by far) the worst there is, and i don't believe for a second that his death will deter other dictators or warlords, but what it will do is remove him from society, and perhaps give some sense of justice to those he wronged.

it's a small comfort for those who's loved ones were tortured and killed, and for those who are being killed in the continuing war, and it's very easy for me to say from the comfort of my living room, but i'm glad he's dead.

suggestion

2006-12-17T01:01:00.000-08:00

first off; mom, don't read this.
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so, as a general rule, i'd just like to suggest that you not ride your bike (or walk) between a car which contains people who are shooting, and the car they're shooting at.
it's exciting, but not the kind of exciting i like.

i'm just saying.

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sorry mom, but i'm fine.

30:06:45

2006-11-25T16:49:00.000-08:00

30 hours, 6 minutes, 45 seconds is how long it took me and my team to finish my first-ever 24-hour adventure race a couple of weeks ago.

it was hard.

we covered about 125 miles, climbed about 17,000 feet, got rained on, frozen, didn't sleep, smelled really bad, and finished third.

it was UNBELIEVABLY fun and i fully plan to win one at some point.

the full, boring, and very long details are below.

(if none of the terms i use make sense, there are definitions here).

########################################################

The day got off to an inauspicious start with a barn owl committing complicated suicide by flying through the wheels of several of the bikes on the roof before wedging itself into mine.
And it was raining. Ugh.

We were on our way to the start of the Gold Rush 24 Hour Challenge in the Sierra foothills and I was excited and apprehensive; it was my first 24 hour race, the weather wasn't looking good, and I'd slept very poorly the night before.

On the other hand, we had a great team; our navigator Oliver Pohl was a very experienced athlete, Donato Polignone (DP) had been racing for years, and Mari Chandler was known to be blisteringly fast, in addition to which she got big points for signing up for her second 24 hour race ever with 3 guys she'd never even officially met. I was the only weak link and hoped I was up to the challenge. Jonathan Owens, another very experienced racer was crewing for us, despite having a broken rib, so we were all set.

The course had 28 CPs and looked long; as Oliver was planning the route (with me watching over his shoulder to see how it was done) he mumbled something about it looking more like a 30 hour race than a 24.

The rain let up just before the start (although it looked ready to start again any second), and a few minutes after 8:00 a.m. we were off!

We started off with a short trek with 2 CPs, the first of which was on top of a steep hill less than a mile away. To get there we had to run across the shoreline of a lake which was covered with ankle-breaking rocks, and I slipped, fell, and cut myself almost immediately. As my teammates helpfully pointed out, I was now officially having fun.

We bushwhacked up the side of the hill, my heartrate maxing out, did a short class 4 scramble and found CP1. Back down the other side of the hill, through a campground, out across the dry lake bed and across a very muddy creek and we had CP2.

Back towards the start now, with the rain starting again and people pulling on jackets we hit the shore of the lake where the boats were, punched CP3, and started putting on our paddling gear.

Despite the fact that we were only 100 meters from the start this was an unassisted TA. We'd had to lay out everything beforehand, and weren't allowed to leave anything behind even though Jonathan was right there and eager to help.

We hit the water about 8 minutes after True Grit and 1 minute before Thin Air and got to work. Within a few minutes Thin Air came flying past us in their beautiful wooden triple, while we wallowed along in our plastic doubles like bath toys.

About 45 minutes into the paddle we had to beach the boats and trek to 2 CPs, both of which were up above the lake. As we made our way up the fire road that snaked along the hillside we looked for other teams coming back and didn't see any, but caught the occasional glimpse of Thin Air ahead of us.

All of a sudden they disappeared, and we started looking around in the very thick brush for CP4. It wasn't there, and now teams were coming up behind us, but they weren't finding it either. After thrashing around for far too long, Oliver headed back down the hill a bit, and there it was, right where it was supposed to be. We'd pay for that little debacle later, but in the meantime we had to get to CP5.

That was no problem, and we traveled with Team Big Bear to the CP (and were able to see Thin Air already far out on the lake) and back to the boats.
We were in the water before Big Bear, but after a bunch of other teams, and before too long Big Bear came steaming past us.

DP and I were in one boat, and Mari and Oliver in another, and DP and I couldn't keep up with them. The paddle is my weakest discipline, but this was a little ridiculous. Eventually, tired of lollygagging around, Oliver put a towline on our boat and things went better, mostly because the towline helped us stay in the wake of their boat.

The rest of the paddle was uneventful except for some rain, and we actually managed to pass another team on the way to CP6 where we would leave the boats for good. Before we could do that though, several things had to happen; we wouldn't hit another TA for about 12 hours, during which time we'd bike, hit the ropes course, trek, ropes again, and then bike, so we had to pack climbing gear, trekking shoes, food for 12 hours, and clothing to keep us warm after nightfall, and the temperatures would drop quite a bit as the storm moved through and the clouds cleared. But before we could even get on the bikes, we had to get them across the lake, and there were rules: our crew person was only allowed to cross the lake once each way.

Jonathan figured that the quickest way to do it would be to put two bikes on the bow of each boat, held by the person in the front cockpit, while the person in the back paddled. Drop off the bikes and the front people, paddle the boats back, pick up Jonathan, back again to drop off the two racers, and then Jonathan towed one boat back across.

It worked pretty well, and it was interesting to see how other teams did it; some had a raft that they put the bikes on and towed (how'd they know to bring a raft?) and a couple just tied a line to the boats, paid it out from the shore, and pulled the boats back once they were empty. That worked really well until a power boat came along and severed the lines.

Eventually we were on the correct side of the lake, packs bulging with clothing, lots of teams ahead of us, and bikes ready to... hike-a-bike. We were in a river canyon, and the terrain was by turns sandy, rocky, sketchy, muddy, and sandy. We rode where we could and were able to pass a few teams and eventually the canyon opened up a bit and we hit a fire road. We blasted along that, following the river until we came to another stream we had to cross, and there was Team Big Bear.

They got across the stream before us and were out of sight by the time were all on the other side. After a fairly short ride we found ourselves at the ropes section, with two teams already waiting. We punched CP7, put on our climbing gear and trekking shoes and got in line.

This was where we paid for the delay in finding CP4 as we ended up just waiting around for about 40 minutes for our turn on the ropes.

The ropes section was a scramble (assisted by a rope with an ascender) up to the top of a cliff, followed by a rappel back down. The scramble was no problem but the rocks were covered with moss and wet from the rain which had started again, and we were glad to have the ascenders.

At the bottom of the rappel we punched CP8, stashed our climbing and biking gear in garbage bags and headed back down the way we'd come in, on foot this time.

We retraced our steps back to the stream crossing, and turned to follow it up the canyon, and this is where things got really good.

The trail was a very faint (and invisible in places) single track that followed the wall of the canyon; it wove through chaparral, stands of oak, river-bottom brambles, alders with leaves the color of hot iron, hazelnuts burnished a rich gold, and the occasional aspen radiating yellow light into the gathering dusk.

Along the way we caught and passed Team Big Bear, passed a couple of abandoned mining sites and homesteads and eventually hit a fire road, where we bumped into team Mojo coming the other way.

CP9 was right where it was supposed to be, and we headed off for CP10. We had to cross a stream to get there, and after we scouted up and down for a place to cross, Mari picked a shallow section and sloshed to the other side. The rest of us chickened out and found another place but still got wet, although I managed to keep one foot dry.

We continued up the fire road in the gathering dusk, Mari and I a little in front chatting about this and that, and keeping an eye on the tracks Mojo had left in the soft road surface. We caught and passed them near the top of the climb and continued on towards CP10 as it got dark. CP10 wasn't where we thought it should be, and Mojo passed us as we looked around in the brush for it, but we realized soon enough that we hadn't gone far enough, trekked another couple of hundred meters and there it was.

CP11 was back at the ropes course, mostly downhill from where we were, so we picked up the pace and bit and headed down. And down, and down, and down. The descent was steep, rutted, littered with loose rock, and felt like it went on forever. My left knee, which I'd been worried about, fulfilled my worries and I felt the beginnings of the tendonitis which I'd thought had healed.

By the time we hit the bottom I was pretty uncomfortable and a little worried about being able to finish the trek without shredding my knee. Fortunately the the trail was flat (we were re-tracing a portion of the bike from the end of the paddle to the ropes) and that seemed to feel ok.

We hit the ropes (CP11), scrambled to the top, rapped back down, got our bike gear on and headed up the canyon. The trail was rocky and technical and we spent a lot of time hopping on and off our bikes. At one point I went down hard; we weren't going fast but it still hurt. I managed to spear myself in the hamstring with my handlebars, my right shin was trapped between two rocks and got really badly bruised, and something (I wasn't sure what) really bad happened to my right wrist. A few minutes of walking and hopping in circles and making breathy screaming noises and we were on our way again. The next time we got off the bikes I managed to slam the bruised section of my shin against a boulder and screamed like a baby.

After another bout of hopping in a circles and cursing I was ready to go, and shortly the single track opened up into a fire road. We blasted along it until we hit CP12 (which was underneath a bridge), and while DP went to punch it we took stock of our food.

It wasn't looking good; we were down to about a bar and a half each, had at least 2500' feet of climbing up to CP13 and it was starting to get seriously cold. I felt ok, and so did Mari, but Oliver and DP weren't doing so well. We made sure they ate, shucked a few layers and started up the climb (a fire road called Briceberg Grade).

Mari and I quickly found ourselves pulling away from Oliver and DP and stopped to let them them catch up and assess the situation. Oliver was falling asleep and DP was soaking wet, freezing, and slurring his speech. We forced more food into them, got DP to put on the last of his clothes,and kept climbing, taking turns encouraging DP and talking to Oliver to try to keep him awake.

Mojo passed us (again! I was starting to hate them) looking strong and disappeared up the road.

We were moving slowly enough that I was getting cold and I'm sure Mari was too, but there wasn't a peep out of her other than her conversation with Oliver (she was way better than I was at maintaining a coherent discussion at this point).

We finally hit the top, and after a few false starts in the maze of fire roads we were bombing downhill towards the saddle that would take us back up to the top of Black Mountain and CP13.

We'd been out of food for a while, but it was all downhill from CP13 to the TA and it's not like we had options so we pressed on, freezing as we descended into the saddle. At the very bottom of the saddle, right before the climb to CP13 started, and right where all the coldest air had pooled, Oliver got a flat. He changed the tube quickly, but the valve on his CO2 cartridge was either frozen or broken, and the cartridge went skittering off along the road accompanied by curses.

It was cold enough that a stop of more than 30 seconds meant getting chilled, and the shell I was wearing didn't breathe well, so I was soaked. Five layers of fleece and technical fabric were doing an excellent job of keeping at least a pound of sweat next to my skin with nowhere to go and I couldn't feel my feet or my fingers (on the upside, the cold was doing a great job of distracting me from the bumps and bruises from falling off my bike).
I'd been saving a pair of leg warmers and thick wool socks for the descent from CP13, but realized i needed them now, so I pulled them out, put them on, and was ready to go when Oliver finished pmping up his tire.

We rode for a bit more and turned off on the fire road that would take us up to CP13. Calling it a fire road is being generous; it was a chute filled with slippery shale, steep as hell, unrideable in our state, and I've never been so happy to see hike-a-bike in my life, because that meant warmth!

Oliver and Mari cranked up it like it was flat while DP and I floundered along behind, watching their taillights go up and up, and wishing they'd stop.

We finally made it to the clearing at the top, Oliver busted out the clue map to show me where the CP was and I went off to get it. As I rounded the rock I saw the CP square in my sights, a welcome, cheerful yellow, and right below it; treasure! Someone (we found out later it was RD Mark Richardson) had cached two cases of Pepsi there. I gleefully called back the good news to my teammates, and after the initial disbelief they told me to quit goofing off and bring the valuables back.

I'm not a huge fan of caffeine and I rarely drink soda, but this was heaven. We drained our cans, stashed the empties in our packs and, accompanied by the echoing sounds of our burps, headed for the TA and CP14.

Jonathan was waiting for is in the TA, and with him was Randy who was crewing for Gaelforce and kindly offered to help out. We made sure DP got dry clothes on, and then stuck him in the car to warm up while the rest of us got on dry base layers. While we were getting ready Jonathan told us that the temperature was now below freezing, and it was just going to get colder as there were no clouds in the sky to keep the daytime warmth from heading straight out into space.

We hopped back on our bikes for the short ride to the CP15 where we would drop our bikes for a 3 CP trek. On the way Oliver nearly crashed his bike a couple of times: he was still falling asleep.

We found the CP with little trouble, poured a Red Bull into Oliver, dumped our bike shoes and helmets into garbage bags for Jonathan to take to the remote bike drop where he'd leave them for us, and headed up the trail on foot.

CP16 was no trouble, just up a creek a bit, but CP17 took some work; a confusing scramble through brush and boulders along a different creek, but Oliver led us right to it.

CP18 was on top of a hill, and supposedly there was an overgrown trail that led up the hillside to the fire road that would take us to it. We couldn't find it so we just headed straight up the hill. The way was clear at first but shortly we ran into a stand of brush and began trying to thread our way through the maze of growth. Promising paths turned to dead ends and we'd have to re-route but we kept making progress. Eventually we came to a dead end; impenetrable brush on three sides and no apparent way forward. After casting around for a little while Mari spotted something, dropped to her hands and knees, scrambled for a few seconds and found the road. Sweet!

We followed her and started up the road and after few seconds Oliver said "It should be right here". We turned off the road, hiked up the hill for 20 seconds and landed right on top of the CP.

We trekked on towards the TA (CP19), I was gently hallucinating and Mari thought she was too when she spied the glow of a streetlight in the distance. The streetlight part WAS an hallucination, but the glow was from the fire at the TA. Two groggy guys got up from underneath the off-road-modded truck they'd been dozing under, chatted with us a bit and went back to bed.

We changed our shoes, put on our cold and wonderfully clammy helmets and got back on the bikes.

The bikes were different. They were just like ours but better. Jonathan, the ne plus ultra of support crews had taken the time to tune, tweak, and lube them before leaving them for us.

We knew the sun (with it's accompanying warmth) would be up soon, and we pressed on through a maze of fire roads. How Oliver got us through that mess I don't know, but he did. At one point we lost the way and Oliver took a bearing, grabbed his bike, and started hiking through the woods. Part of me was dismayed, but another part (the newbie part) was thrilled. Bikewhacking! Sweet! It helped that the forest was mostly open and we only went a short way, but I got a reminder of how long we'd been out at one point. Oliver had stopped to take another bearing and we stopped while he did so. All of a sudden, there they were: powerful, seductive, overwhelming. Sleepmonsters! "Bastards! You'll never take me for I have the power of the newbie!"

Turns out the sleepmonsters couldn't keep up with the bikes so as soon as we found the road again we lost them. CP20 was right where it should have been, as was CP21, and then we were at the TA and CP22.

We switched to a ride-and-tie here, and we'd talked about who would do what on our way in. Since my knee was essentially jacked we decided that I'd take the bike so I could ride and rest my knee. That worked out GREAT. The first half mile was uphill hike-a-bike, and the mile after that was downhill hike-a-bike. The terrain became rideable for about a quarter of a mile before realizing its mistake and reverting to hike-a-bike again, and so it went.

To be frank, this section sucked; it was all fire roads, the nav was easy, we retraced some stuff we'd done earlier on the trek, and for some reason I was hallucinating that it was raining. We got the first 2 CPs with no trouble, then forded and a stream and began making our way up the monster climb (hike-a-bike for me, natch) to CP25, baking like quiche in the sun (but not smelling nearly as good, especially in the case of DP who was having some intestinal problems, and insisted on letting the world know all about it at frequent, pungent intervals).

When we got to where CP25 was supposed to be, we found Team Bullmoose Extreme, and no CP which was weird, as all the other ones had been dead-on. We thrashed around in the bushes for a while but to no avail, and had pretty much decided to bail on it when some guys on dirt bikes came riding by. They stopped and chatted a bit, asked us what we were doing, where we were going, and so on, and then went on at great length about the cool loops you could do in the area on a bike. They pretty much ignored all of our comments about "yup, we were there, yeah, we went there too, uh huh, did that one, we've been going since 8:00 a.m. yesterday...", but they were nice enough.

After a couple of minutes one of the guys blasted away up the hill, spewing dust and exhaust behind him, and returned a few minutes later to say something along the lines of "I'm not going to tell you where it is, but there's a big bush up on that hill, and it's what you're looking for."

And he was right; there was CP25, 200 feet higher than it should have been.

The less said about the trek back to the TA the better. Suffice it to say it was boring, it went up and down a lot, it was on a fire road, there were lots of dirt bikes, and we could see where we needed to go from a long way out.

The TA was almost deserted, but Jonathan was there to make sure we punched CP26 and to tell us to skip CP27. I was pretty bummed about that because it meant we'd been short-coursed, and I'd really wanted to get every CP on my first 24 hour race. I even suggested that we swing by the CP just to see if we could punch it, but Oliver pointed out that it was probably already down, and besides, we'd be breaking the rules if we did get it.

Jonathan had everyones bikes and gear laid out, and after a pretty quick TA we were on our way to the finish. We'd been told it was all downhill, but we knew better than to take that at face value.

But sure enough, after a short climb from the TA we were bombing down a wide dirt road, my wrist protesting at the washboard bumps as we skittered over them. Oliver and I were leading, reveling in the speed and wind, when all of a sudden psssssshhhhhhhhhhttttttt: Oliver had flatted.

A quick change of the tube and we were blasting downhill again, and shortly after that we hit pavement, formed a paceline and really cranked it up. Oliver took a long pull in front, and when he pulled aside I moved up for my turn. All too soon we made the right turn to the finish, signed in, and were done.

30 hours and 7 minutes of racing got us third place and I was happy with that. (Besides, there's always next year!)

Although I've got nothing to compare it to, the race was unbelievably fun, very hard, and worth every moment. It helps that I had a great team and a fantastic crew, and if you have any doubts about doing it, set them aside and sign up for next years race, you won't regret it.

update

2006-10-31T18:44:00.000-08:00

so, the row i'm hoeing right now has gotten a little tough; i'm confused and unhappy about what's going on with me and the girl i like, and the company i work for has been bought, so there's some uncertainty about my future employment.

i will almost certainly have a job for the immediate future, but whether it's doing something i enjoy, and what i'll be paid are up in the air (although i'm pretty sure i'll take a pay-cut). currently my job description (if there even was one) covers about four different areas, and most companies have four different people to do those things.

additionally, the company that bought us is approximately nine times bigger than we are, and i've never worked for a firm that big.

all in all it adds up to a lot of uncertainty, and i don't thrive on that, at least not when it relates to real life.

on the plus side, i'm injury-free, did an adventure race solo a week and half ago and got fifth, and my new workplace is close enough that i don't have to drive to get there, which is pretty cool, i'm sick of driving.

shortbus

2006-10-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

while i was in manhattan last week amy and i went and saw 'shortbus', john cameron mitchell's (hedwig and the angry inch) most recent film.

i really liked it; he didn't use actors for it, he found people from the city and asked them to be in the film, and the result was really good. the characters feel genuine and believable and REAL.

there is a lot of graphic sex in the movie (the version i saw was unrated) but it doesn't feel gratuitous or exploitative; it's integral to the plot and serves a purpose.

i won't give away any of the plot, but one of the strongest feelings it elicited in me was loneliness, if you've seen it, what did it make you feel? (if you haven't seen it, go if you get the chance).

trans sierra!

2006-09-11T20:09:00.000-07:00

over labor day weekend my friend peter and i hiked the high sierra trail across the sierra nevada mountains. we started at whitney portal on the east side, and finished at crescent meadow in sequoia national park.

peter picked me up from work a little after noon on wednesday, and after some shenanigans with route-finding in the the south bay we were on our way.

we drove to lone pine campground and were able to get a spot there (it was the same spot i camped when i did mt. whitney in 2003, space 26. it's a good one).

day 1
whitney portal to crabtree lakes

the next morning we went back down into lone pine to try to get a permit to hike the main trail. the process for getting a walk-in permit for any of the mt. whitney area trails is opaque and tortuous so i'll skip the details (contact me if you're really interested). suffice it to say, we had our permits by 11:30ish, and after some running around we were on the trail at 12:44.

our plan was to travel light and fast; no tents, the minimum of gear, and light shoes.

two out of three isn't so bad i guess; my pack weighed in at 28lbs, peter's was 32 (he's well over 6 feet tall and outweighs me by at least 50lbs, so we chalked the weight up to food).

we made it to trail crest (13,600') in just over 4 hours, which is pretty good time for 8 miles with 5,000' of climbing, and started down the john muir trail towards crabtree lakes, which the sign said was 5.8 miles away.

we needed to make it to crabtree because there is a bearbox there, and we had too much food to fit in our bear can, so we cranked up the pace. we cruised by guitar lake, and continued to follow the valley (and stream) as we went.

after a couple of hours, as the sun was getting lower and peter and i both had a case of 'get-there-itis'; my feet were getting sore, my pack needed adjusting, and we were both hungry and getting chilled. we had figured on making about 3mph from trail crest to crabtree, and we were well past our estimate of 2 hours and starting to look for places where we could hang our food when we hit a trail junction and a sign:
crabtree - 0.2 miles
trail crest - 7.5 miles.

that explained THAT!

we stopped by to say hello to the ranger, refilled our water containers from the spring, cooked up a quick dinner (peter had a delayed reaction to the altitude and threw his up) and crashed.

it was a cold night. we had foolishly camped near the creek, right where all the cold air drained off of the mountains. i did okay, just put on all my clothes, closed the sleeping bag over my head and endured the assault of my altitude-induced farts.

peter suffered; despite having a warmer bag than i and a bivvy sack, he froze his ass off and didn't get much sleep.

distance: 17ish miles
vert: 5260
time on the trail: 6:17

day 2
crabtree lakes to moraine lake

we were freezing when we woke up, so we packed up quickly and hiked down the trail until we found sunshine, unpacked, and had breakfast.

as we ate we talked about our plan for the day. the trail took us west over to the kern river valley, dropped us into it, and followed it south for a long while. there were hot springs marked on the map near the southern end of it, about 16 miles away, and that seemed like a reasonable place to camp.

after breakfast i messed with my pack a bit (this was the first multi-day trip i had taken this particular pack on, and i'd never bothered to get it adjusted properly and was paying the price), and set off on our way.

a little while later, just as we started our descent down the canyon that would eventually take us to the kern river we bumped into john and yosh.

they are the folks who are mostly responsible for the whole trip: they're friends of peter's, and asked him if he would hike the trail east-to-west while they went the opposite direction so they could pick up each others cars.

they were doing a much more leisurely trip, they had started the saturday before us, had big packs, and were taking side trips to bag various peaks (they'd done mt. tyndall the day before, and were going to do mt. whitney and mt. muir on their way out).

we hung out and chatted with them for a bit, traded bear cans (the one we had was bigger and lighter and actually belonged to them [they'd gotten some bad information and thought that they could do the trip sans-can, but the ranger at the permit office had made them rent one]), talked about our itineraries (they confirmed that kern hot springs was a good place to camp) and headed out again.

the hike down into the valley was long and kind of boring; not a lot to look at, and it got hotter as we descended. peter's long-ass legs served him well on this section, he was out-hiking me by a lot, and i was having to scramble to keep up. on top of it, my toes were getting sore from banging into the toebox on my shoes.

we hit kern hot springs around 3:00, looked around and decided to push on. we had a 3000' climb back out of the valley, and we decided that it would be better to get it over with rather than to try to do it in the morning.

while we were stopped i checked my feet, which felt like they were developing a couple of hot spots, and found a blister on my heel. wtf? i NEVER get blisters! i drained it, duct-taped it (and my other heel as well), and cursed my shoes.

there was a catch though: we'd already hiked about 16 miles, and the nearest water was a further 7 miles down the trail. ouch.

we got moving, really cranked on the climb, and hobbled into sky parlor meadow around 6:00. we stopped there to make dinner, and wearily picked up our packs to hike the last mile and a bit to moraine lake, pretty much done in.

distance: 23ish miles
vert: 3260
time on the trail: 9:26

day 3
moraine lake to hamilton lakes

we were pretty sore when we woke up, but the view out over the lake was stunning, and we took our time packing up and eating breakfast.

we took it easy as set out; plenty of stops to snack and look around, take pictures, and figure out out plan for the day.

we started out with a climb, about 3 miles long, up into big arroyo, and hiked into my favorite section of the whole trip. the valley was carpeted in alpine grass, puntucated by clumps of trees, granite boulders, and a profusion of wildflowers and surrounded by rugged peaks. there were streams all over the place, and fluffy clouds, the kind we rarely see in california, floated overhead.

we hiked up the valley, and eventually made our way through the kaweah gap, at just about 10,000' and started down towards hamilton lakes. it was all down hill from there, and i felt the sadness i always do when i start to come down from the mountains.

there was plenty of good stuff left though; precipice lake, with mini icebergs floating in it, and the mind-boggling spires of valhalla soaring over hamilton lakes (where we would camp that night).

but first there was the 2,000+' descent, and that's when things started to kinda suck.

my feet were pretty trashed, i had gotten another blister, and my toes were raw from banging against the front of my shoes, so i was walking funny already. on top of that, i could feel my left knee starting to get tendonitis as i lurched down the trail, but there was nothing to be done about it.

i stumbled on, trying not to think about the tendons in my knee becoming raw and inflamed as they rubbed together, and tried to take in the sights around me.

after too long i reached the bottom, and hobbled over to the lake where peter was already sitting down and relaxing. i dropped my pack, stripped off my accursed shoes, and peter and i both went and stood in the lake, groaning in pleasure as the cool water soothed our various aches and pains.

we lounged around camp, trying to come up with things to do until it was time for dinner, and after we ate we lay on the rocks by the shore, watching the sunset light up the mountains, and the bats scooping up insects as they flew over the lake.

distance: 16ish miles
vert: 2500
time on the trail: 6:56

day 4
hamilton lakes to crescent meadow

we wanted to get an earlyish start because we still had to drive back to san francisco once we got to crescent meadow, so we packed up camp and hiked for a couple of hours before eating breakfast.

my knee was in bad shape; we had another couple thousand feet of descending to do, most of it over steep/rocky, technical trails, and every step was causing me pain.

i found a stick and used that to take some weight off the knee, but it wasn't enough. eventually i stopped, cut one of my shirts up and used it to strap my knee, but that didn't work very well either.

it turned out that peter had a neoprene knee-brace in his pack, which, when it was put on over my improvised strapping job, helped support my knee.

we hiked down into the forest, and then contoured along the canyon wall for a long time, occasionally popping out of the trees and encountering spectacular views.

a couple miles from the end of the trail, peter hiked ahead by himself. he was constantly having to wait up for me which was breaking his rhythm, and there was no reason for him to hang around while i gimped along.

i stopped a couple of times to refill my water container (i was going to miss drinking straight from the streams), paused to let a young bear (the only one i saw the whole trip) go crashing across the trail, and eventually started encountering groups of day hikers.

a few minutes later i passed a sign marking the distance to the parking lot, and 5 minutes later i was there, walking on pavement and surrounded by cars and people.

distance: 17ish miles
vert: 1880
time on the trail: 5:48

we both had clean clothes (yay!) in the car, which we changed into immediately, tossed our packs in the back and got going.

after a quick stop at the ranger station to return the bear can we headed north and west, hoping to get home before dark.

as we drove we talked about the hike, the things we'd seen, the miles we'd covered, and both agreed that it had been a fantastic trip.

a couple of notes about gear
peter and i both bought smartwool t-shirts for the trip, and they were amazing. 4 days on the trail and they didn't smell (and neither did we). i don't know what kind of magic they worked, but i'm sold.

peter bought a jetboil stove, and it performed flawlessly, it boiled water VERY quickly, was incredibly easy to light, and packed down fairly small. i'll be picking one up.

pictures are here, as soon as i have a second i'll post some of them inline.

big basin bike ride

2006-08-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

i decided that i was going to ride down to big basin redwoods state park yesterday, the route i picked was a little under 70 miles, and jen was going to be down there volunteering at a race, so i could hitch a ride back with her.

i got my route all planned out and finalized the details with jen on saturday, and was ready to go.

and then i had an AWESOME idea; i'd ride the fixed-gear! it would give me a better workout, and it'd be an adventure. it meant i'd have to carry a pack because there's no place on the fixie to attach a pump or water bottles, but since i wear a pack for pretty much all my workouts these days that was no biggie.

i started out at 8:30 sunday morning under really gloomy skies; thick fog down to about 1000', and not a glimmer of sunlight anywhere, and it seemed to be affecting my legs. they felt heavy and slow, and i actually got off my bike a couple of times to see if something was mis-aligned, or rubbing on the frame.

nothing was, it was just me. not an auspicious start.

i hit the first hills and hoped i'd start feeling better, but no luck, and by about mile 25 with the first big climb just ahead of me i still felt like crap. i debated turning around for half a second, but decided that i should just tough it out, and started climbing.

and climbed, and climbed, up into the fog, up a seemingly endless hill, with no end in sight. finally topped out after 1600 vertical feet in a whiteout of fog, and stopped to eat something.

after my snack i plunged shivering down the backside of the hill, and realized that, in addition to switching to a smaller gear, i should also have put on a brake. ah well, next time.

i broke out of the fog a few miles further down the road, stripped off some layers, and kept moving. i was finally beginning to feel a little better when the cramps started. what next, i wondered, locusts?

so i'd ride until i couldn't pedal anymore, then get off and walk until my muscles relaxed, and repeat. fun!

finally i think my body resigned itself to the fact that i wasn't going to stop, and wasn't going to turn around, and it started behaving a little more normally.

my legs still had no spring in them, but at least the cramps were gone and i could ride without stopping.

the last 10 miles or so were mostly downhill, and other than bouncing around in my saddle a little as my cadence went up over 130 rpm, uneventful. the winding single-lane road that led into the park was shaded and beautiful, and the trees smelled great.

still, i was very grateful to pull into the park headquarters, haul myself off the bike for the last time, and limp around trying to decide which parts of me hurt the most.

lessons learned: 47x17 is too big a gear for a ride like that, and a brake would have been nice to have.

you can check out the route here if you like (it worked out to about 67 miles with 6200' of climbing).

mtb race

2006-07-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

on saturday i competed in my first mountain bike race, and while it went ok, i don't think it's the sport for me.

the race is put on anually as part of the fairfax fat tire festival at a boy scout camp in the hills above fairfax in marin, and it's a pretty low-key affair.

it was blazing hot (someone told me that it was 112*F), and the race started at noon which seemed a little cruel. i was initially going to race in the beginner category, but switched to sport (intermediate), after thay announced they were shortening the course because of the heat, so i was looking at two laps of the course (about 10 miles).

the pro/expert class started a couple minutes before we did, blasting down the fire road and out of sight in a cloud of dust, and then it was our turn.

it was flat-out from the get go; hurtling down a frighteningly loose and slippery fire road, screaming around off-camber corners and desperately keeping an eye out for holes, ruts, and wash-outs.

i made it to the bottom of the hill without crashing, and the course made a hard left onto a long uphill section of singletrack, with a bunch of switchbacks in it. there was a pile-up at the first switchback, everyone off their bikes and running to get clear of the mess, and then we got back to climbing.

still going flat out, but i was starting to feel better, getting my legs and breath back. the problem was, it was singletrack so i couldn't pass anybody, so i sat back and just waited.

the singletrack ended with another hard left down a very steep and gravelly fire road, the kind of stuff that scares the crap out of me, so while i picked my way down it a bunch of lunatics bombed it at full speed, leaving me choking in the dust.

the fire road climbed again, which let me pass a bunch of people, and then more singletrack; very rocky, twisty, technical (at least for someone with my lack of skills) and down hill. i hated it, but survived.

then it was fire road back to the start, and time for another lap.

the pack was spread out by this time, but i still got stuck behind a couple of people who promptly went howling by me as soon as we got to the downhill fire road.

i negotiated the tricky downhill section again, slogged across the fields in the sun, and sprinted to the finish, just missing catching the guy ahead of me, and finishing firmly in the middle of the pack.

my time was about 1:15, which is not enough time for me to get warmed up, find my pace, and really start cranking, but whatever, now i know.

adventure race #2

2006-07-17T14:02:00.000-07:00

i raced in the gold rush summer challenge on july 15. you can read my race report here or the synposis below:

synopsis:
it was hot as hell, my legs looked like someone had put a couple of ferrets down my pants after the trek, we saw a porn photo-shoot in the middle of the race, and we finished second.

also, did i mention it was hot? the thermometer said 108*F when we finished.

there are a few pictures here, i'll add more as i get them.

right now

2006-06-27T13:26:00.000-07:00

as i write this, they've been on the move for 2 days, 7 hours, and 47 minutes. daytime temperatures have been over 100^oF, there hasn't been enough water, and most of them haven't slept yet.

they're not even half-way to the end.

primal quest 2006, the biggest adventure race of them all, is happening right now.

87 coed teams, most of whom just want to finish, but the winning team takes home $100,000.00, major sponsorship deals, and serious bragging rights. these people are serious.

adventure race!

2006-06-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

i participated in my first adventure race this weekend, and it was hard, but i finished which is what i was hoping for.

you can read all the details here

all kinds of stuff

2006-06-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

busy busy.

sunday i competed in an orienteering event (only the second one i've done). i did the brown course (in ascending order of difficulty, courses are white, yellow, orange, brown, green, red, and blue, where white is literally a walk in the park, and blue puts you at risk of being eaten by wild animals), and did ok.

my main problem was not knowing what the symbols on the control list were, so i spent a lot of time running in circles in the general area of the control before finding it.

but i finished in (just barely) under 2 hours, and i was pleased about that.

on monday, baarbd.org, the adventure racing site j. and i have been working on, finally went live.

it was a shitload of work, and i'm still kind of amazed that we went from concept to live site in a month.

there's still lots to do, but at least now it's out there, and hopefully people will use it.

pupating

2006-06-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

so i had a little 'aha' moment tonight, nothing earth-shaking, but it made a lot of sense.

i feel a little like i'm pupating; indeterminate, not here and not there, waiting for the waveform to collapse.

it's interesting and exciting, but also a little lonely.

rinse, lather. repeat.

2006-06-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

event: urban rogaine
setup: 60 checkpoints in san francisco and daly city, marked on a map, each worth a certain number of points.
object: hit as many of the checkpoints as you can, in any order you want.
format: choose one; foot, bike, or half foot, half bike (must do first 8 hours on foot if doing duathlon).
teams: male, female, mixed, veteran (average age of team members must be at least 50 on race day). minimum team size is 2, max is 5
rules: you have 16 hours, starting at 4:00 pm

the team i was on was a coed (mixed) duathlon team with 3 members. o., is an experienced adventure racer and was our navigator. s. is a triathlete and coach, and was our female member, and me, i was along for the ride.

i'm not going to go into a lot of detail because it's boring if you weren't there ('first we found THIS checkpoint, and then we were going to go over to this other one, but on the way we realized that we could take this back alley and get THAT checkpoint, so we did that, and on the way we drank gatorade'. gripping huh?), but it was a hell of a lot of fun.

i've never done an event that long, and i was a little worried about how i'd deal with fatigue, given how cranky i get when i'm tired, but i didn't have any problems with that, and didn't even need resort to caffeine.

we made a decision to skip a couple of low-value time-constrained-checkpoints (they basically expired after a certain time) early on, which ended up costing us first place, but other than that we did well. o.'s navigation was really good, and s. and i were able to provide a bunch of shortcuts and local knowledge (my runs on san bruno mountain paid off here) that saved us a fair amount of work.

the purple roughly covers the area the checkpoints were in.
the team aspect was really cool; the way we all were able to contribute in different ways to achieve our common goal was really rewarding, in way that trail-runnning or cycling (at least not on a team) isn't.

ok i'm done babbling. i've had a 4 hour nap, and as near as i can figure, covered something like 80 miles before that. i'm off to bed.

beta

2006-05-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

so http://www.baarbd.org is what i've been working on for the past couple of weeks.

j. and i cooked up the idea in a bar one night, and finally got it ready show people.

it's pretty weak design-wise (my fault) and we need more content, but hopefully there's enough there to start. there is definitely a niche for it.

other than that i've been trying to learn how to mountain bike; went over the handlebars 3 times on saturday, not at all on monday.

progress.

say hello...

2006-05-07T17:51:00.000-07:00

to the newest addition to the family; approximately 23lbs of carbon, rubber, aluminum, and plastic.

i went for my first ride on it yesterday (and my first real off-road ride ever), and it went ok; i was able to keep up and i didn't crash, but wow, mountain biking is DIFFERENT!

a lot of it is obvious; the gearing is very different, handling as well, and the suspension fork takes some getting used to (but i was very happy to have it).

but climbing and descending are just... it's going to take some getting used to.

for climbing, you're trying to find a balance between getting over the bottom bracket and keeping enough weight on the rear wheel to maintain traction. on the road you just get out of the saddle and hammer.

for descending, you're trying to keep your weight WAY back, over the rear hub (or even behind it) if possible, but then having to scoot forward to keep the tail of the bike from kicking up too much when the rear wheel goes over bumps. all that while working the brakes to try to keep the rear from skidding and the front from locking up.

it's a lot of work, ocassionally pretty scary, and lots and lots of fun!

the weekend

2006-05-03T18:24:00.000-07:00

been a while...

so, on saturday i ran a 37k trail race, which went FAR better than i expected it too, given that i don't feel like i've been training as much as i should be. i did the same race last year with my friend p. and we finished in just over 4 hours. i'd held back a bit to stay with him, but didn't really slow down all that much.

this year, same course, and i finished a few seconds over 3:24, which blew my mind, AND i got 2nd, which is my best finish ever in a run. i was (and am) shocked, and very pleased.

on sunday i went for my second ride with the bike club from my climbing gym and managed not to die. i was pretty sore, but i figured that cycling muscles are different enough from running muscles that i could pull it off.

the ride covered about 60 miles and started in woodside, then climbed up and over the mountains, dropped down to the coast, and then went back over the mountains again. it was astoundingly beautiful; redwoods, grasslands, oak savannah, redwoods again, more grasslands, and the final climb followed little stream as it made it's way down a steep redwood canyon. there were ferns, moss, flowers, rays of sunlight slanting through the trees, and little waterfalls all over the place.

it's a good thing it was so scenic, because i was DONE, nothing left in the tank. it was all i could do to make the pedals go around, and it's been a long time since the sight of a road made me as happy as the one at the top did.

april 26, 1986

2006-04-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

i remember when chernobyl blew up, and the global panic that followed, and the stories of the fire-fighters and helicopter pilots who died puking and bleeding, their skin blistering, within hours of trying to fight the radioactive fire that burned there.

a couple of years later someone (maybe the discovery channel back when they didn't suck) made a documentary, where they sent a robot with a camera into the sarcophagus, and all the way into the blown-out reactor chamber.

i was incredibly freaked out by that, knowing that the radiation levels there were so high that anything living would be killed, very painfully, in minutes if they were there, but there i was, watching it.

there's a photo essay here about the effects on the people who live/d there. (some of the pictures are pretty hard to take).

about fucking time

2006-04-13T19:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.google.com/calendar/

crew

2006-04-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

over the weekend i crewed for j. and her team for a 24-hour adventure race. she's been racing for a couple of years and so have her teammates, but this was the first time they'd raced together.

this race had 5 transistions (which is more than normal apparently, the order of legs went like this:

orienteering scramble (get any 2 of 4 possible controls) followed by a kayaking section
run/trek
orienteering, bike or foot, 9 checkpoints
run/trek
bike, 3 checkpoints
trek

teams had anywhere from 1 to 4 members, with most, including j.'s, being 4-person coed (at least one woman).

the race started at 2:30 p.m., and our job (there were 2 of us), was to drive the cars to the various transition areas, have all the gear, clothing, and food for the next leg ready to go, fill water bottles, and do whatever else the team needed, (bike maintainence for example), then clean up and organize everything and drive to the next transition area and do it all over again.

adventure racers are crazy; no sleep, crappy conditions, (it didn't rain, but everything was soaked from the previous weeks of rain), no sleep, weird food (pringles and ensure?), physical abuse, and sadistic race directors (it took most teams over 6 hours to get all 9 controls in the orienteering section, one of them was down a narrow, 30-foot long hole in the ground that opened up into a cave) to name but a few.

it looks insanely fun, and it was surprisingly hard to just be there watching and not doing. i felt like a slacker.

but i had a blast, and j.'s team got 3rd, finishing in just over 19 hours, with 10,000 feet of climbing, and something like 70 miles, which is pretty freakin' impressive considering that it was their first race, and the two teams that beat them were semi-pro.

bleagh!

2006-04-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

i know it's lame to write about the weather, but it's rained something like 26 out of the last 34 days, and i'm freakin' SICK of it already. ugh.

in other news, i ran my first race of the year a couple weeks ago, and did ok, but felt like crap. i need to start training properly if i'm going to survive the year.

in completely unrelated news, i got a new camera, it's a little canon sd450 and i'm really happy with it (thanks to manduca for the recomendation!).

if it ever stops raining i'll take some nice pictures of the nature and post them here.

and so ends the dumbest post in a long time.

overheard...

2006-03-22T20:26:00.000-08:00

while picking up take-out tonight: "i like running in the morning and jesus, and you don't like any of those things!"

(i'm tempted to try to make a mcsweeney's list using that that as a starting point.)

lust in my heart

2006-03-15T19:19:00.000-08:00

wow. i have massive geek-lust for this

the pictures on that site suck, so here are some better ones that i stole from here

getting my fix

2006-03-08T16:37:00.000-08:00

this morning before work: one hour run with j. in the hills above pacifica
this morning at work: half hour run with some co-workers i'm training
lunchbreak: one hour bike ride (fixed)

i feel GOOD!

more bike stuff

2006-03-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

saturday i rode in a bike race that went from dolores park in san francisco to the north american handmade bicycle show in downtown san jose (about 50 miles).

72 people, most of them on fixed-gears, showed up for the race, and after the usual confusion at the start, we took off, only about 20 minutes late.

the format of the race was such that you could pick your own route to the finish, as long as you hit 3 checkpoints in between. i had agreed to ride with a group of friends, one of whom had figured out a super-sneaky, flat, and above all, fast, route out of the city.

it worked. there were only 4 guys ahead of us once we got out of the city, and they stayed there too steadily building their lead throughout the race.

our group was too widely varied in strength and experience to mount any kind of challenge to the leaders, so we concentrated on making sure that no one got ahead of us, and managed to pull that off. with about five miles to go, a group of us pulled away, hoping to avoid a messy sprint at the finish.

we avoided it all right, by getting lost, and riding an extra couple of miles, so instead of coming in 5, 6, 7, 8, we came in 8, 9, 10, 11, in a little over 3 hours.

j. also did the race (geared) got lost part of the way there, and ended up riding an extra 20 miles or so, but still finished, albeit starving and a little sore.

after stretching out our cramping quads we rode over to the bike show (the entry fee for the race also got us into the show) to drool at all the bicycles. while i was there i put down a deposit for one of these, which i should have in about 4 years, barring a huge spurt in production.

after the prizes for the race were handed out (8th was good enough for pedals, shoes, and a fleece hat that's my new favorite) we took caltrain back to the city, ordered takeout, stuffed our faces and passed out.

tahoe again

2006-02-27T14:40:00.000-08:00

j. and i and her friend j.o. went up to tahoe again this past weekend. we left saturday morning and spent the afternoon cruising around (and up and down) the mountains at carson pass.

j. and j.o. were on tele skis and i was on snowhoes. the sun was out, the snow was great, and i don't know how far we went, but by the time we got back to the car the sun was down and we were all pretty worked.

on sunday we hiked up to eagle lake, and then drove back down 50 to echo lake, where j.o. went skate-skiing, and j. and i ran around on snowshoes, and tried not to get blown off the ridge we were on as a storm came in.

i'm starting to remember why i used to like snow.

24 hours in the wilderness

2006-02-21T14:43:00.000-08:00

the weather sucked on saturday; cold, grey, and rainy, so instead of going running j. and i went climbing, then out to brunch, and then lay around watching bad movies while we tried to convince each other that we didn't feel guilty for not running.

sunday morning we packed up our gear, jumped into j.'s truck and drove down to big sur to go camping. our plan was to hike about 10 miles into the ventana wilderness and camp near some hot springs, and that's what we did.

what with one thing and another we didn't start hiking until 2:00, and our packs were heavier than they would normally have been because it snowed the two previous nights, and we had all kinds of warm gear.

the trail was beautiful, winding up and down ridges and in and out of canyons, giving glimpses of snow-covered peaks and moss-drenched gullies, and all the while we could see one mountain ahead of us with a dark cloud sitting on top of it, and snow-covered flanks slanting down out of it.

we made good time, and even though we lost the sun early because were down in the canyons, we reached the hot springs with a little time left to find a campsite before the light faded.

that turned out to be a bit of a problem; the mountains in ventana are STEEP, and there's not a whole lot of flat ground to be had. what there was had already been claimed by other campers on both sides of the river, and it was starting to look like were were going to have to wedge into a table-sized nook for the night.

after a little running around we spotted a nice flat, sandy site right by the river, and away from the other campers. the only problem was that it was on the far side of the river, and the only way to get there was to wade through the absolutely frigid, thigh-deep water.

it hurt but we did it, and were rewarded with a great site with plenty of wood for the fire, and great natural stone bench to sit on.

by the time we'd had dinner and wine it was late, and we went to bed, bundled against the cold.

we slept late, and then had to scramble to hit the trail because we had a reservation at the teahouse spa in santa cruz for a hot tub and sauna session. we double-timed it back out and managed to cover the 10 miles in just over 2.5 hours, which put us back at the car exactly 24 hours after we left, gave us just enough time to get to santa cruz.

on the way back out of the wilderness, perched on a steep slope, we saw a santa lucia fir*, the rarest fir tree in the world. i'd been wanting to see one for some time, and it was a nice surprise to stumble across one so unexpectedly.

we drove up the coast as we left santa cruz, watched the sun set over the pacific, stopped in el grenada for dinner, and were home, tired but happy, early enough to be in bed by 8:30

so of course i dorked around until 9:30 and paid for it when my alarm went of at 5:00 the next morning.

(there would have been pictures of the trip since i remembered to charge my camera battery AND pack the camera, but i forgot to make sure the memory card was in there. sometimes i'm an idiot).

*the site i'm trying to link to seems to think that blogger is some kind of spammer, so the link gets redirected. i emailed them to ask what was up, but until they respond, you can copy and paste the link the get there http://www.ventanawild.org/news/fe98/slfirs.html

neener neener neeee-ner!

2006-02-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

it's sunny and about 65 degrees out, i just got back from a bike ride, stuffed a bunch of food in my face, and am going out for another ride with j.

meanwhile, there's two feet of snow on the ground in new york.

i like california.

UPDATE: so, on my way back home from the second ride i got in an accident. i was on a bike path that crosses a street at one point (the panhandle one, where it crosses masonic), and had sped up so i could make the light.

i was in the middle of the crosswalk, with 2 seconds on the countdown timer, and a subaru outback in the far-right line edged into the crosswalk, leaving me nowhere to go.

i didn't even have time to yell; i slammed on the brakes, and somehow the bike slewed to the left, so that when i hit the front quarter-panel of the car i was mostly parallel to it.

this turned out to be a good thing, since my hip and shoulder, (and a little bit of my hand) took the brunt of the impact, and saved me from going head-first over the hood.

the woman driving was totally aplogetic, j. was a little freaked, and everyone who saw it (including the driver and her passengers) agreed that it was completely her fault.

the upshot is that i'm a little banged up, but nothing major so far, my bike is a little dinged up, but i'll take it to the shop on tuesday to get a full dx, and i'm drinking a beer.

snow, skis, and my sore ass

2006-02-09T13:51:00.001-08:00

friday night j. and i and her friend j.o. drove up to south lake tahoe where j. has a share in a ski house for the season.

we got there around 12:30 and found the place was packed; there were people sleeping everywhere, and floorspace was in short supply. j. and i took over a walk-in closet, j.o grabbed half a bed, and we crashed.

we woke up far too soon to the sight of windy rain coming down pretty heavily, and groans of disgust at the weather from the other folks in the house.

since skiing seemed to be out, we piled in j.'s truck and drove up to higher elevations where the rain morphed into something resembling snow, strapped on snowshoes, and headed out along the -- mostly -- frozen echo lake.

as long as we stayed sheltered behind trees or ridges the weather wasn't bad, but as soon as we found ourselves exposed we got blasted with wind carrying a stinging load of ice crystals which scoured exposed skin like sand. we toughed it out for a few hours, then went back to the house for lunch and power naps.

the sun was out when we woke up, so we went back up the mountain again to find a place where j. could practice telemark skiing (she set herself the goal of learning to tele-ski this winter).

while j.o. and i goofed around on snowshoes, j. practiced her turns for a while, and we managed to stay out until about 5:00.

we went back to the house, made dinner, and then sat around talking to some of the other people in the house while j. and i put a sizeable dent in a bottle of scotch.

sunday dawned cold and clear and cold, and after breakfast we pilied in the car again and drove to the resort where j. and j.o. planned to ski. since it's been may years since i've skied, i planned on renting cross-country skis because the risk of injuring myself seemed smaller.

once i got set up with the skies i took off along one of the many truly beautiful trails that run through the woods, and other than falling down on the exact same place on my ass every time i had to go downhill and turn at the same time, things went well.

i took a break for lunch, and went back out again, and by the time i was done i'd covered about 30k, and was completely whipped.

all the cool kids seemd to be doing this new-fangled skate skiing thing, which was a lot faster than what i was doing, and looked a lot more fun, so i'll probably try that if i go up again.

endogenous chemicals

2006-02-02T16:07:00.000-08:00

i finally feel like i'm getting back to normal after the holidays. the weight i put on is mostly gone, my muscle tone is coming back, and my climbing, while not back where it was, is starting to improve again.

i've got a decent workout schedule going (it needs a little tweaking still, but it works for now):

mon: climb
tue: san francisco bootcamp, work bootcamp, climb
wed: run, maybe ride
thu: san francisco bootcamp, work bootcamp
fri: climb
sat: run
sun: ride, or off

it's made me realize (again) how much better i feel about myself, and things in general, when i get regular exercise.

on top of all the endorphin-y goodness i've got going, i started dating someone a couple weeks ago, and have the happy brain chemicals that come from that as well. she's arguably more sporty than i am, gets up early, kicks my butt running hills, likes to drink beer, and is cute as hell. perfect!

san bruno mountain

2006-01-25T18:12:00.000-08:00

i switched up my schedule a little while ago, and started running with my friend j. on wednesday mornings instead of climbing, so i could get more miles in during the week.

(j. is hardcore; she does adventure races, and recently set a course record for women on a trail race she did. i can keep up with her if i'm having a good day.)

she's more of a trail fanatic than i am (running on fire roads pains her) but we've been running on san bruno mountain because it's near her work, and on the way to mine, and it's the closest (and hilliest) dirt we can find.

for those who aren't from here, san bruno mountain is a not-very-lovely, steep-sided, grass-covered pile, that runs from runs from west to east between the 280 and 101 freeways in south san francisco. its flanks are gradually being disfigured by creeping developments, there is a high-tension-line running along its spine, an antenna farm on the higher western end, and a quarry eating a huge hole in it on its northern flank.

despite all that, it's not SUCH a bad place to run, and there's a state park on the top of it for some odd reason.

we've run there a couple of times, leaving from the north-western end, and this time we decided to try the east end. j. had scoped it out on her bike, and had found parking and what looked like a way up to the ridge.

so we headed out there around 6:30, and after i nearly got us killed by backing up for about 50 feet on the busy two-lane road that runs along its base because i missed the tiny turn-out, we got out of the car, circumvented the chainlink fence (ok, we walked around it, but circumvented sounds better) and started up.

holy steepness batman! the sides of the thing are steep, way too steep for me to run, and there aren't really any trails, but eventually we made it up to the top, hit the fire road, and took off for the antenna farm.

more steepness followed in the form of rollers, with jarring downhills and quad-crushing uphills, but the sun was coming up, the dew on the grass looked really pretty, and at times we couldn't see the power lines.

it wasn't dipsea, but it wasn't pavement either.

it took us about 75 minutes car-to-car, and we made it to the antenna farm, which was the whole point.

you can see the route here if you care (click and drag the map to move it around).

August 28, 1963, the Lincoln Memorial

2006-01-16T20:25:00.000-08:00

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

GOD-FUCKING SHIT-HELL DAMMIT!

2006-01-13T20:28:00.000-08:00

that is all.

something i hate

2006-01-03T21:00:00.000-08:00

referring to women/girls as 'females'.

they're people goddammit, and using gender as a defining label is
offensive and limiting.

ow

2006-01-01T15:51:00.000-08:00

beer
gin and tonic
cold sake
hot sake
kir royale. MANY kir royales

happy new year everyone, my head hurts.

2005-12-13T20:23:00.000-08:00

masi

creeping insanity, or, the hotties of harm reduction

2005-12-08T23:38:00.000-08:00

i went out for drinks tonight, which is pretty much unheard of for me,
at least on a week night, and what with one thing and another, ended
up in a different neighborhood than the one i started out in.

i figured i'd take a cab home, and after saying goodbye i set off to
walk the few blocks to the nearest major street to grab one.

it was a nice night; clear, cool, quarter-moon in the sky, all that
stuff, and as i was walking, i realized that i was only a couple of
miles from home, most of it slightly downhill, so i picked up my feet
a bit and started jogging, 'cause it was quicker, and the air felt
nice.

after a few blocks i stopped to take off my jacket and tie it around
me, and decided 'fuck it, i'm gonna run home'.

so i did, and it rocked; easy, fun, and beautiful.

as i got close to my house i saw a paper sign scotch-taped to a
telephone pole that said (with a big arrow) 'looking for the hotties
of harm reduction?'

i wasn't, so i went home, but fucking hell, i LOVE my neighborhood!

ultra

2005-12-03T17:34:00.000-08:00

in addition to being a huge dork (but in a charming and handsome way), i am now officially an ultra-marathon runner.

i ran my first 50k today (and yes, for those of you keeping score of my insanity on your own, it was a week ago that i ran the quad dipsea).

i'll spare you the details, suffice it to say that it was a beautiful day to run, the course was gorgeous, and i felt like someone had worked me over very carefully with a meat tenderizer for most of the race.

but i beat my time on the quad dipsea.

quad dipsea

2005-11-28T15:40:00.000-08:00

(this is another entry about running, so you might want to skip it).

on saturday i ran the quadruple dipsea trail race; 28.2 miles and
9200' of climbing on a double out-and-back course (mill valley to
stinson beach and back, then turn around and do it over).

(i think i've mentioned before how much i like the dipsea trail, the
terrain is varied, the views are gorgeous, and the trails are a nice
mix of singletrack, fire roads, and stairs, LOTS of stairs. it's a
justifiably famous run).

the weather was perfect, very clear with a bit of a breeze on the
hilltops, and 242 people started the race at 8:00 sharp and headed up
the 676 steps for the first time.

and then i ran for 5:42:27 (58th), which is a long freakin' time to do
anything but sleep. it's the longest period of time that i've run for,
and by the time it was over i was completely trashed.

i hurt all over, my skeleton hurt, i was a little nauseaus, my
calves felt like they were going to explode, and i haven't been so
happy to stop doing something in a very long time.

i was hoping to finish in under 6 hours, so i'm pleased. next year i
wanna finish in under 5:30

and one more...

2005-11-25T15:34:00.000-08:00

i've taken another step in my continuing quest to own more bikes than is reasonable for one person.

the newest addition is a cyclocross bike that i've been working on for about a month, and i just finished the last details.

so that makes 5 rideable bikes, and at least one (and possibly two) more on the way.

i may have a problem.

why don't we take a tour of the bikes? there are pictures! (and all sorts of mind-numbing technical details if that's your thing).

this is the cyclocross bike, and the most recent addition to the pile.

type: cyclocross
construction: welded aluminum, production
model: 2004 redline conquest pro
built by: me (means i bolted all the parts on, not that i built the frame)
notes: the front and rear brake levers are reversed (rear on the left, front on the right) to make it easier to brake while dismounting.

here comes the geeky stuff

tubeset: some kind of crazy-light aluminum stuff
wheels: shimano 600's laced 3x to mavic open pro cd's
tires: ritchey speedmax cross (700 x 32).
cranks: 172.5mm ultegra double, 53 - 39 (need to get a 46 to replace the 53)
cassette: ultegra 9-speed (12-27)
front mech: ultegra
rear mech: ultegra
shifters: ultegra
saddle: selle italia gel
seatpost: thomson
bars: salsa bell-lap
stem: no-name
brakes: rear: radius, front: oryx
pedals: shimano spd 959

the road bike

type: road
construction: welded steel, production
model: 2003 masi special premio
built by: some guy at the bike shop
notes: the masi brand is now owned by some giant asian bike conglomerate, and has nothing to do with the original masi family

here comes the geeky stuff

frame: steel, reynolds 853
forks: carbon, reynolds ouzo comp II (i have no idea what that means)
wheels: mavic cosmos
tires: vredestein fortezza se's
cranks: 172.5mm ultegra double, 53 - 39
cassette: ultegra 9-speed (12-25)
front mech: ultegra
rear mech: ultegra
shifters: ultegra
saddle: selle italia slr
seatpost: no clue, but it's carbon fiber, which freaks me out a little
bars: no clue
stem: daeda
brakes: ultegra
pedals: shimano spd-sl 6610

the fuji track

type: track
construction: lugged steel, hand made (this is a guess)
model: 1977 fuji sprint
built by: me
notes: this was the first track frame i bought, and it was a real find. it's in immaculate condition, fits me perfectly, and gets babied. i only ride it when it's nice out.

here comes the geeky stuff

frameset: steel, fuji 331 (proprietary butted tubeset)
wheels: 36h high-flange campagnolo super record pistas laced 3x to velocity aeroheads
tires: vredestein fortezza se's
cranks: 165mm sugino super-mighty, currently running a 47t chainring (vintage)
cassette: no cassette, 17t sugino track cog
front mech: n/a
rear mech: n/a
shifters: n/a
saddle: selle italia slr
seatpost: campy 26.8 2-bolt super record
bars: nitto b-123's, 38cm, njs
stem: nitto jaguar, 100mm, njs
brakes: n/a
pedals: pro-ace, njs

the levante track

type: track
construction: lugged steel, hand-made
model: 198? custom
notes: i got this on ebay, sort of on a whim. the description of the frame sucked, and i couldn't find any details on google, but once i got it and built it, it turned out to fit me perfectly, and have a really nice ride.
this is my foul-weather bike, the one that gets the fenders and all the lights, and rained on.

here comes the geeky stuff

frameset: steel, columbus multi-shape (a short-lived tubeset that columbus came up with for the track; it required special lugs as every tube has a different cross-section).
wheels: 36h high-flange phil woods laced 3x to mavic 33xp's
tires: vredestein fortezza se's
cranks: 167.5mm campagnolo stradas, modified for the track, 47t chainring (vintage)
cassette: no cassette, 17t phil wood track cog
front mech: n/a
rear mech: n/a
shifters: n/a
saddle: selle italia titanium flite
seatpost: campy 25mm 2-bolt super record
bars: chopped and flipped cinelli, 38cm
stem: cinelli 1A, 85mm
brakes: front: dia-compe rear: n/a
pedals: shimano spd 853

the peleton track

type: track
construction: lugged steel, hand-made
model: 1998 keirin
notes: this is my favorite bike right now; i got it from japan, and it rides like a dream.

here comes the geeky stuff

frameset: steel, no idea what kind.
wheels: 36h high-flange dura-ace laced 3x to saavedra featherweights
tires: vredestein fortezza se's
cranks: 165mm dura-ace, 45t chainring, njs
cassette: no cassette, 16t dura-ace track cog, njs
front mech: n/a
rear mech: n/a
shifters: saddle: mosquito five-gold, njs
seatpost: dura-ace, njs
bars: nitto 123aa, njs
stem: 110mm nitto jaguar, njs
brakes: n/a
pedals: mks custom nuevo, njs

and that's the lot, at least for now. all of the bikes get ridden on a regular basis, some more than others, but none of them are 'wall queens' and i like them all for different reasons.

moving up

2005-11-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

i got 4th place in the race i ran on saturday, which is the best i've
ever finished.

it was only 20k, and i didn't push very hard because i'm tapering for
a big race on this coming saturday, so i'm pretty pleased with how i
did. (i'm especially pleased that i was 45 seconds per mile faster
than i was when i did the same race last year).

one of the most fun parts (other than the stunning views out over the
coast) was flying downhill on the pretty techicnical last few miles,
solidly in the groove, and only stumbling once.

colored bubbles

2005-11-17T20:19:00.000-08:00

i know it's all over the web right now, but this is the coolest story i've read in a LONG time.

yes, i'm a dork.

bonus pics here (courtesy of bOingbOing)

chicago round-up

2005-11-14T16:43:00.000-08:00

total number of races: 2
races busted by cops: 1
races not busted by cops: 1
people arrested: 1
people hit by cars: 2
bones broken: 2 (radius and ulna)
total number of racers: ~50
fastest time: ~1 hour, 10 minutes
slowest time: 3 hours, 40 minutes
number of red lights run: many
most flats by one rider in one day: 4
cans of old style consumed: many
rain: yes
wind: yes
flickr tag: bffgmng (pics are still being added)

bikes, beer, and mayhem

2005-11-10T15:33:00.000-08:00

tomorrow i am heading to the 'city of wide shoulders' for this
http://bffg.absenter.org.

there are going to be somewhere between 50 and 70 people, from all
over the country, mostly drunk, racing bikes with no brakes all over
chicago.

if i don't die i think it'll be a lot of fun.

wish me luck.

remembering

2005-11-05T17:21:00.000-08:00

i did something i NEVER do today; gave a sick junkie enough money to
get well, because, for a second, i remembered what it was like, and
how much it sucked.

then i went home, grabbed a tent and a sleeping pad i don't need, and
went back to give them to him.

of course he was gone, and i couldn't find him.

so, dan garibaldi, i have a tent and a pad i'd like to give you, and i
hope you're keeping warm tonight.

and now i'm a little bit sad.

guest blogger hysteria

2005-10-25T23:04:00.000-07:00

my friend mike (of the great and hilarious ogblay) proposed a blog swap, and i fell for it.

what follows is his contribution, (mine's on his site natch), and any and all complaints should be sent his way.

(thanks mike!)

this weekend x. and i climbed mt. everest, then y. and i ran to the
moon, and then since there were a few more minutes left before monday
morning, z. and i biked in circles. that's 1,260,365,035 of vertical
feet in one weekend.

the mt everest climb was pretty fierce. it's a 27-pitch, 92-star,
infinity.9, so i let x. lead the climb. i've lead infinity.8s before,
but never a .9. as you'd expect, the route was a typical knobby juggy
burly dihedral dodecahedron. i flailed on the rope for a bit, and we
ran out of oxygen near the top, but the view was beautiful. the 200
mph winds buried the ice shards into my skin in amazing patterns.

i was pretty amped from the climb, so y. and i got started right away
on our run to the moon. nasa was conducting a space elevator contest
this weekend, so it was the perfect time to maximize my vertical feet.
we ran out of oxygen near the top of the nanotubes, and the cold
vacuum of space was pretty dehydrating, but the view was incredible.

of course it wouldn't be a good weekend without a bike ride, and i was
anxious to try out the latest bike i'd built. it's made out of mud,
which is hilarious if you're familiar with japanese-based dirt bikes.
here's a picture of my latest baby:

cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/257/1474/320/newBike1.jpg" alt="" border="0" />
my apartment is getting pretty crowded with bikes, but i think there's
still a little room on the right:

z. and i had a great ride. the views riding around in circles were awesome.

it was time for beer afterwards. a. told b. and b. told c., i'll meet
you at the top of the coconut tree. we had beers there. it was another
20 vertical feet.

265 feet per mile

2005-10-22T14:51:00.000-07:00

that was the average elevation gain on my run today (the actual hill
profile looks more like what you'd see if you gave a kangaroo a bunch
of meth, tied a glowstick to his head, and set him loose in the desert
at night).

p. and i did the double dipsea again (have i mentioned i like that
trail?), with an extra 6 miles in the middle, for a total of 20. the
fog was thick when we started out, but we had climbed out of it by the
time we reached the turnoff for the ben johnson trail, and we could
see a blanket of fog for miles, with sutro tower rising above it to
the south.

we were in and out of the fog for the rest of the run, which was
great, especially when we were on the edges of it. the rays of
sunlight splintering through the redwoods and lighting up the little
floating droplets were really stunning.

p. and i kept talking about how beautiful everything was, to the point
that if anyone else had been there they likely would have wanted to
slap us.

this run was a little longer than the last time i was out (20.0 miles
vs. 18.6 miles) but had the same elevation gain. i was about 25
seconds per mile faster, my average heartbeat was 5 bpm lower, and i
FELT stronger.

i think i'm getting back into shape, and i'm pleased about it.

just don't

2005-10-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

please don't write or say the following two things, they make me itch:
anyways
where i'm/it's/anything is at

thank you.

the relay, redux

2005-10-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

199 miles, 36 legs, 10 2/3 runners, 26 hours of feet on the road (not all mine), 2 hours sleep (all mine), and crazy-fun.

details to follow. (last years post is here. [the post referenced appears to have asploded due to a weird css/blogger bug that i've forgotten how to fix and am too tired to look up. {mike, if you remember what the fix is, will you email me?}] [hooray for bracket-layering!]).*

*all fixed now

UPDTATED

ok, first of all, our team was called nerd.run() and our t-shirts (one of the team actually made a silkscreen, and we all printed our own one night) said:

10 nerd.run()
20 nerd.sleep()
30 goto 10

and if you think that's funny, you're right.

our team finished in 26:58:30, 34th out of 221 total teams, and 5th(!) out of 56 mixed-gender (6 or more women) teams.

the weather was almost perfect, clear but not hot (well, our start time was 1:00 p.m. and our first couple of runners had to run in the heat, but it got cooler as the race progressed), and i got to run across the golden gate bridge at about 2:00 a.m., the city shining across the bay and an almost-full moon bright enough to compete with the streetlights.

i was in van 1 this year, which was nice since i was in van 2 last year, and new territory is always good, but if i do it again i'll try to get into van 2, as there is less waiting around, and two real chances to sleep, as opposed to just one.

our team was down a runner from the start due to a (minor) car crash, and our van lost another 1/3 of a runner to injuries (she ran her first two legs, but couldn't do her third). i'd asked to pick up up one of the extra legs because i'm weird like that, and others jumped in to cover the other 3 that needed runners.

we had some really fast runners on our team this year; one averaged sub 6:30's, another sub 7:00's, two who went sub 7:30, and three who averaged sub 8:00's.

overall it was blast, and i'll most likely run it again. my personal stats are below. i'll post pics as i get them (i brought a camera, but didn't take a single picture. i'm dumb like that).

leg rating distance ascent start time pace total time

6 e 4.5 40 4:11 p.m. 07:01 00:31:47

12 h 4.8 520 9:33 p.m. 07:37 00:36:34

18 h 5.8 360 1:44 a.m. 07:31 00:43:36

30 vh 3.1 1020 10:03 a.m. 08:54 00:278:37

18.2 1940 07:39 02:19:24

my favorite legs were 12 and 30 because they had the most climbing, and because they just felt good; i was in the groove, working hard but not killing myself, and i passed a lot of people. (i'm not competitive at ALL).

leg 30 was particularly fun because there were a ton of vans stopped along the way, all cheering like crazy as i (and all the other runners too) came by, making a noise like a steam engine and my tongue hanging out.

cooking

2005-10-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

i've recently started cooking again, after not really bothering for a long time, and i'm pleased about how much fun it it still is, and how
much enjoyment i get out of it.

i'm not doing anything complicated, mostly asian-influenced stuff; stir-fried vegetables (although this seems like a misnomer to me as there's no frying, just getting the vegetables hot enough to make them sweet, while retaining their crispness. stir sauteing-maybe?) with lightlife chik'n strips (i hate the name) on short-grain brown rice is my current favorite.

(how's THAT for a punctuation-infested run-on?).

the rice has been a revelation; nutty, with a wonderful texture, and was something i got turned on to again when i went back east this summer (thanks dad!).

i usually saute the mushrooms separately to keep them from getting soggy, and then add them right before i eat.

(note: if you use oyster mushrooms sauteed with a little garlic and olive oil, don't taste them before adding them to the rest of the
vegetables or they'll very-likely not make it. i'm just sayin').

vertical mileage

2005-10-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

i went on a great run with p. this morning up in marin.

i got up at 6:00 (despite having slept poorly due to a combination of
too much beer, and rage at whoever stole the parts off of my bike),
was out the door by 6:45, picked up p. at 7:00 and we were at the
bottom of the stairs for the dipsea trail, ready to run, at 7:30.

we ran the normal dipsea route, with a detour along the ben johnson >
bootjack > stapelveldt > tcc connector loop to add some miles.

the weather was perfect: cool and clear, with enough breeze to make
the sun feel good.

the trails were really beautiful; sections of them had yellow sycamore
and alder leaves scattered across them, giving a wonderful autumnal
feel to things, (which was added to by the chill in the air in the
canyons), others were covered with a soft, springy layer of redwood
needles that smelled great.

by the time we go back to the bottom of the dipsea stairs, 18+ miles
later, we'd climbed just under 5000 feet, so i turned around and went
back up all 3 flights to finish at just over 5300 feet, and the most
climbing i have ever done on a run.

jacked

2005-10-07T23:57:00.000-07:00

my sweet baby peleton, my favorite bike, got stripped of bars, stem, saddle and seatpost while i was watching 'a sunday in hell' in the mission tonight.

i'm surprised at how sad i am about it.

weekend stuff

2005-10-03T16:14:00.000-07:00

on saturday i drove to santa cruz to run a 35km trail race that
started at the beach, then did several loops through the forest of
nisene marks state park, and ended back at the beach.

the course was absolutely beautiful; winding through oaks and
redwoods, up and along ridges, and back down into the canyons. the
only sour note was running through a cloud of pissed-off yellowjackets
and collecting 5 stings. it had been quite a few years since i'd been
stung, and i forgot how much it freaking HURTS!

other than that the race was great. i took it easy for the first
28km,a nd then ran my guts out for the last 7km, i finished in just
under 3:30, which was good enough for 5th out of 19.

sunday was all about fun; started off the day going to the beach with
h., her dog, and a couple of other friends where we walked around,
threw logs for the dog, and the dog found a decomposing leatherback
turtle carcass to roll around in.

after the beach i went to see the last giants game of the season. i'm
not really a baseball fan, but i do like going to games. there's just
something about $7.00 beers and sunshine that i like.

after the game s. and i rode over to golden gate park to see dolly
parton play a free show. she was amazing and so was the show, despite
some problems with the sound.

the crowd that turned out to see her was huge and enthusiastic, and
everyone seemed to have a really good time.

it was a good weekend.

the right thing

2005-10-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

i did something this weekend that i should have done a while ago ('m
not going to say what it was).

it was the right thing to do for everyone involved, it was the honest
thing to do, and it didn't cause any harm to anyone.

i feel pretty miserable about doing it.

blah.

sigh

2005-09-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

and as a consequence of my not setting up blogger properly in the
first place, all the posts previous to the one below this one have
their formatting all messed up by the html paragraph tags i put in.

dear lazyweb, how do i do a global search and replace on my blogger archives?

writing

2005-09-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

i've realized that part of the reason i don't post here very often is
as follows; i'm lazy, and so i won't post for a while, and then i'll
feel behind, which makes me feel all angsty, so i'll agonize for a
while, and get more behind. rinse, lather, repeat as needed.

in an effort to change that, i invested the 15 seconds necessary to
set up blogger so i can update it via email, which, with any luck,
will make it less of a hassle ('cause you know, clicking on a
bookmark, and then on a couple of buttons to publish a post is such a
hassle) for me to post.

we'll see how it goes.

it's my BAG baby!

2005-09-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

i've been away on vacation, and got back a week ago, but instead of telling you about that right now i'm going to tell you about my new bike.
i built the whole thing up (including the wheels) from parts i painstakingly collected -- mostly from japan -- over about six months.
the frame is a 'peleton' (which, if you're a huge bike-nerd like me, you'll think is funny) and it's a keirin frame.
all the parts except for the rims are njs-approved

The riders all use similar steel framed bikes, specially built racing machines. They have some choice over the gear they ride, 12-16 teeth on the sprocket and up to 55 on the chainring, but only frames and components approved by the Nihon Jitensha Shinkokai (Japanese Bicycle Association) NJS, are permitted to compete at Keirin races.)
from here

at some point i suppose i should do a post about my bikes; currently i have 3 track bikes, 2 road bikes, a coaster-brake bike, and 3 frames. everything except the coastie are in my apartment.
yes, i'm aware i have a problem.

numbing

2005-09-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

dooce's husband says it more eloquently than i can hope to.

you can contribute here

this guy is blogging live from new orleans

and finally, i saw this quote in an ap wire story today, "The president is starting to grasp the magnitude of the situation,"

how many days ago did katrina hit?

tulomne

2005-08-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

friday night p. and i drove up to tioga pass in yosemite national park. we left the city around 7:00 pm and got up the eastern edge of the pass by about 12:30 am, crashed in the woods for a few hours, and went back down to the lembert dome parking lot for breakfast around 7:00.

the plan was to spend the day climbing, and that's what we did. we started out on phobos, a 3-pitch, 5-star 5.9. the approach is pretty steep, and by the time we got to the route we were hot and the sun was pretty fierce, but we counted on there being a breeze a little higher up.

(p. led all the climbs we did; he's a veteran of yosemite climbing, and there is no way i am up for leading trad 5.9)

the route starts off with a really burly couple of moves from under a small roof, and then moves into a crack system where you actually climb two parallel cracks at the same time. those then merge into one crack (the most sustained part of the climb) after which the angle pitches back to go through a weird little squeeze, and then an easy walk to the last 5.9 move to top out.

the first pitch of phobos, it starts in the shadow in the lower right corner of the picture

i am not a crack climber. it's not a skill i've developed, and i did a fair amount of grunting and flailing around, and hung on the rope a couple of times trying to remove recalcitrant pieces of pro. (p. made it look so easy, he just fired them in with barely a pause in his upward progress. bastard).

more of phobos

after phobos we walked across the road to aqua knobby , a 3-pitch, 4-star 5.9 (depending on who you talk to) that was in the shade.

aqua knobby. if you look closely you might be able to see a rope and a couple of people in the right part of the picture.

it starts off with a 5.6 slabby approach pitch, which was fun, and then the real climbing starts with another little roof before moving into some fairly steep, really knobby, face climbing. this was way more my kind of thing, and i had a blast on that section. then there's a ledge where the belay is, and the route follows a left-leaning, perfect hand crack, that was sheer joy to climb.

by then it was 2:00, so we grabbed some lunch, and drove over to the daff dome to get on crescent arch , a 4-pitch, 4-star 5.9 that's impossible to miss driving east on 120.

crescent arch. the route follows the obvious line.

the first pitch starts off with a really awkward, slick, flaring offwidth crack that i had no idea how to climb. i groveled and cursed and sniveled and hung on the rope, but eventually made it out. next came a little underclingy traverse, which wasn't too bad, followed by a perfect dihedral that was all lay-backs and stems, with very slick feet.

the second pitch follows the arching roof, and is also all lie-backs, before moving out onto a head-trip of an undercling traverse, then back to more lie-backs and underclings before coming out over a little roof for a little bit of face climbing.

the arching roof section.

just before the scary undercling traverse.

last, desperate section of undercling. i fell off about 3 seconds after this picture was taken. i was too torched to hold on to the great knobs that were coming up.

the pitch is sustained, strenuous, hard on your back, and feels long.

the last pitch doesn't count, as it's a walk-up to the top of the dome.

p. on top

looking east from the top of crescent arch, you can see tuolumne meadows in the distance.

two quick rappels and an easy walk around the base of the dome and you're back on the road.

after we drank about a gallon of water each, had a couple of beers, and ate everything we could get our hands on, we drove back down the pass a little to try to find a different place to sleep, one where we wouldn't wake up covered in frost as we had saturday morning.

we found what looked like a perfect spot, put our bags down and… it was too hot. and there were mosquitoes. and they got worse. it sucked.

we toughed it out until about 2:30 before making the 30-minute drive back to our original spot.

sunday morning after we ate we went for a run, starting where yosemite creek crosses 120. we did a 16 mile loop, and by about mile 14 i was hammered. dehydration and lack of sleep had caught up with me, and it was a slog to get back to the car.

too exhausted to climb any more we stuffed food in our faces and bolted for the cool fogginess of san francisco.

of course, to get there we had to cover several hours worth of baking inland valley, and my ac doesn't work, so that was a bit of a pain in the arse, but we made it.

posting from ms word

2005-08-18T15:42:00.000-07:00

so, apparently its now possible to publish to your blogger blog from microsoft word. I’m not thrilled about the microsoft part, but hopefully blogger will come out with a version of the plugin for openoffice as well.

for now, it’s a nice way for me to save and organize my posts on my laptop, without having to do the copy/paste stuff I currently do.

the plugin can be found here.

rivers and trains

2005-08-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

k. met me a logan, and we took the t into boston proper and got off a havahd squayah. it's been a long time sine i last visited boston, and i'd forgotten how lovely it is; lumpy brick sidewalks, old stone and brick buildings, and trees everywhere.

k. lives in somerville, less than a mile form harvard, and she's doing her internship at cambridge hospital, a 10-minute walk from here house. it's really nice neighborhood, lots of little streets with small houses on them, and a couple of different shopping/restaurant districts within easy walking distance.

we hung out on saturday night, went out to dinner and walked around a bit, and then packed it in. the next morning k. had to work, and after she left i went for a run. i figured out how to get to the charles river from her house, and did an easy 90 minutes along it's banks. the weather was almost perfect; overcast with a little breeze, and the run was great. there were boats and buildings to look at, and a nice dirt trail that paralleled the river.

k. was supposed to get off at 12:30, but because she's a lowly intern she was required to cover for someone until 7:00, so i borrowed her bike, rode around a little bit, picked up some beer and a book, went back to her house and sat in the really lovely garden in the back, drank the beer and read the book. it was great.

after she got off work we went out to dinner again, and then to bed.

i woke up early to see her off to work and say goodbye, and since i had a bunch of time before i had to catch my train to springfield i decided to go for another run.

i went back down to the river, but ran upstream this time. there was a light rain falling, not enough to soak me, but enough to offset the humidity and keep me from melting. there were guys in racing shells training on the river, a couple of old men sitting patiently in the rain waiting for fish to bite, and lots of canada geese.

when i got back i stopped in harvard square for a muffin and latte, went back to the house to pack, and grabbed the t to train station to catch the train to springfield to meet my dad.

trains, as inconvenient as they are in this country, are still great, and are probably my favorite way to travel; there's stuff to look at, plenty of room to stretch out in, and the comforting sway as they roll along the tracks.

add a good book and ben watt laying down some seriously deep grooves and you have an all-around great travel experience.

the back garden

water feature in the garden

one of the lilies

sunset

travelin' blues

2005-07-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

i had a 7:35 flight out of oakland to boston, i figured that if i got to the airport by 6:40 i should be fine. seems reasonable, right?

grabbed the first bart train to oakland, arrived at coloseum station at about 6:30, hopped a cab to the airport, and had my bag checked and boarding pass in hand by 6:40 and was heading for the gate... HOLY fucking shit! the line for security was THREE TIMES as long as the terminal and moving slowly.

i have no idea what the whole massive cluster-fuck was about, maybe they forgot that a whole bunch of people who wanted to fly were going to show up that morning? i can see it now; "dude! where did all these people come from? what are we supposed to do? how was i supposed to know they were going to show up!?"

mix in not one, but two kids pitching world-class screaming tantrums and you have an all-around crappy way to start a saturday.

i only made my flight becuse security started pulling people out of the main line and routing them through an 'expedited' line; still slow, but just fast enough to get me to the gate right before they closed the doors.

cue screaming kids; the kind of loud, protracted shrieks that say 'i'm in this for the long haul'.

thank god for itunes, headphones, and laptops is all i have to say.

lessons learned

2005-07-24T13:44:00.000-07:00

it turns out that if you don't eat enough, ride in a bike race in very hot temperatures, don't drink enough water, and then drink a whole bunch of beer you get very drunk and wake up with a hangover.

this is your chance to learn from my mistakes.

alaska!

2005-07-18T18:23:00.000-07:00

thursday evening j., p., and i flew up to anchorage to run a race called 'crow pass crossing'. it's a point-to-point, unsupported trail race that includes one river crossing and covers about 24 miles from girdwood to eagle river. p.'s sister c. and her husband live in anchorage, and they'd offered to let us stay at there place while were were up there.

the plan was to get there thursday night; bum around anchorage on friday, go to the mandatory pre-race meeting friday night, race saturday, and then j. and i were going to catch the red-eye back to san francsico at 1:00 a.m. sunday.

p.'s brother a., who lives in the phillipines, had also flown in for the race, and p., c., and a.'s mom and her partner had flown in from austin as well, so it was a big family thing, and there was going to be a big bbq blow-out after the race.

we got into anchorage at about 10:30 p.m., and after some minor hassles with the car-rental folks were driving through the late-evening sunlight to c. and p.'s house, where we crashed almost immediately after introductions were made.

friday we had breakfast, then took off to run a bunch of errands and buy food for dinner. we'd been able to catch a glimpse of denali (about 120 miles away) the previous evening, but on friday the visibility was minimal and there was a strong smell of smoke. we learned that there was a fire across cook inlet, and the smoke was sitting in the valley with no wind to clear it out.

after the errands we went back to the house, did some prep for dinner, and drove to the u. of a. campus for the pre-race meeting.

the race was postponed for one week due to air-quality and visibility issues.

argh.

two hours after the meeting the smoke cleared out completely, and didn't put in appearance for the rest of our visit.

let me retiterate: argh.

the silver lining was that we got to go see c. sing that evening; she's a classically trained singer who's recently started singing jazz standards, and not even the crappy sound system or the mediocre band could hide the fact that she's a talented singer with a truly lovely voice.

we decided to go for a nice long run on saturday as a consolation prize, and after much consultation and poring over maps and phone calls we had a route. we set off saturday morning around 8:00 in perfect running weather; cloudy and cool with a bit of a breeze.

every thing was great until we got to the top of williwaw pass, where it got seriously cold and windy. since, like idiots, we hadn't bothered bringing layers or windreakers or anything sensible like that, things got pretty uncomfortable. add in a sky that looked like it was going to start dumping rain any second and you had a group of unhappy runners.

thngs got better as soon as we reached the valley floor though, and from there on the rest of the run was wonderful. j. headed back to the car after about 3 hours, and p. and i went on to climb the misleadingly-named 'near point' mountain before returning to to car.

we were out for around 4.5 hours, climbed 5000' and covered about 22 miles (my best guess for the distance based on time).

the bbq was wonderful; tons of food, interesting people, kids running around all over the place, tons of food, home-brewed beer, tons of food... you get the idea.

the flight back was a slog, as red-eyes are, and i was happy to get home, but i'm going back to anchorage next year for the race, check back then for an update.

on the climb up willwaw pass

looking back from the pass

looking towards the head of the valley

the route down the back side

one of the williwaw lakes

looking back up the valley with wolverine peak in the background.

sidewalk sale!

2005-07-11T16:50:00.000-07:00

yesterday n. a., (my across-the-hall neighbor)and i, had a sidewalk sale. i needed to clear out a ton of stuff, so did n., and a. had a few things that she wanted to get rid of as well.

we set up around 10:30, just as the fog burned off and the sun came out, starting a day with the kind of weather that makes the mission famous (at least in san francisco).

things were REALLY slow to start; we broke out the beer at about 1:00 out of desperation, and be the time we were on our second one people finally started to trickle by. (i'd forgotten that breakfast happens around noon on sundays here).

because i'm not always so smart, i didn't take taking pictures of people who came by until late in the day and so missed some real gems, but here is a selection from what i got (with aplogies to vice).

the latino mom with a couple of little kids, totally standard outfit until you got to her feet, and then, pow!

glasses guy; his shades are just the best acid/lime green you can imagine

good-hair-girl: there were a bunch of girls rockin' this type of outfit over the course of the day, but she pulled it off better than any of them. the combination of the glasses, the attitude, and the black socks was a 'very good thing^TM'.

n., a,. and terry. terry is a 54 year-old speed-freak who hung out with us for a bit. he talked so fast he was almost impossible to understand, and was very sweet, but fucking tragic. he seemd to have a pretty good sense of where he was; homeless, tweaked out of his mind, and not much going for him, but a genuinely good guy with a daughter who graduated from college this summer.

the dog: marked down from $5.00 and not feeling too hot about it.

sleeves girl: charcoal grey jeans, black t-shirt, black sleeves, the white glasses, all topped off with a german accent. she was like franka potente, but better 'cause she's real.

mt. whitney

2005-07-04T19:07:00.000-07:00

yesterday some friends and i hiked to the top of mt. whitney, the highest point in the continental u.s.

just over 6000' of climbing, 22 miles roundtrip, maximum elevation of 14,497', 11.5 hours car-to-car (inluding 2 on the summit), it was a blast.

pictures are in order from lowest elevation to highest.

top o' the continental united states ma!

i'm in it for the t-shirts

2005-06-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

saturday i ran the double dipsea, an out-and-back, point-to-point trail race with 4500 feet of climbing. it starts at stinson beach, and then follows, more or less, the dipsea trail to mill valley, turns around and comes back.

it's a race i've been wanting to do for a while, but the timing has never been quite right, and i've been a little scared of it, but coming off a pretty good 37k trail run the weekend before, i figured this was the year to go for it. i couldn't talk anyone else into running it with me, which was good and bad; because it's less fun to run alone, and because i'm not very good at holding back early in the race, which i usually end up paying for, and good because i could focus completely on the race.

the race is handicapped, with runners starting with more or less of a head-start based on age and gender. the first group (women 70 - 75) started an hour before the scratch runners (my group), with everyone else in between. it turned out to be a pretty cool way to do things because there wasn't a huge jam at the start, and also because every person i passed moved up one place closer in the final standings.

i've run the dipsea trail a lot, but because the race is point-to-point there are all kinds of shortcuts that i didn't know about, and i was a little worried about getting lost, but my strategy of following anyone who left the main trail turned out to be a good one; i got all the shortcuts and didn't get lost.

i was hoping to finish the race in 2:45, and figured if i felt REALLY strong i might try for 2:30, which is about 17 minutes faster than i've ever run the trail.

i felt pretty good going out, and tried to be disciplined about walking the stairs (300+ on the way out) and the steeper hills, as well as making sure i downed some electrolytes at every aid station.

i hit the turnaround at 1:09, which gave me 1:21 to get back to make 1:30. i thought i'd need the extra time to get up the 671 steps on the way back, and to make up for being slower due to fatigue.

as it turned out, i got to the top of the last big climb at 1:58 with 2.5 miles to go, and all of a sudden i realized that i might be able to make sub-2:20 if i pushed it. so i did, down the single-track faster than was safe, praying i wouldn't cramp or lose my footing, pushing as hard as i could up the last little rise (called 'insult hill') but still having to walk, and then more single-track through the woods, out on to the last section of trail, and finally, onto the last 200 yards of paved downhill to the finish, with the clock showing something over 2:19.

as soon as i hit the pavement both calves started cramping, but i was able to modify my stride enough to keep it from getting too bad, and still able to push WAY past my anerobic threshold (my heartrate hit 205) to finish in 2:19:52, in 99th place.

and i got my t-shirt.

update: i finished 6th out of 23 in my age-group (30 - 34)

day 1

2005-05-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

ok, so we stopped in san luis obispo to eat and get gas, and while we were there we figured we'd see if there was any climbing.

turned out there were some boulders just a few minutes from where we ate, so we drove to the parking area, hiked the short approach, and got to it.

there were only a couple of boulders, but the rock was nice; some kind of volcanic stuff that felt really solid, and had lots of little crimpers, which i liked. we put in a couple of hours on the two main boulders (called pete and chlorissa), did a little on another one that was a poison-oak infested 5 minute-hike away, and decided to move on to santa barbara.

the area we went to in santa barbara is up on top of the coastal mountains, and has mind-blowing views of the channel islands and the surrounding area.

the rock is fine-grained sandstone, with scary, slopey, highball, top-outs, and holds that have a disconcerting tendency to break off.

the boulders are nestled here and there in the chapparral, and are hard to see from the ground, but once you get on top of them it's pretty easy to see the full extent: there are TONS of them, and very few people. the whole time we were there we only saw one other party of climbers.

argh.

2005-05-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

i have had two hard drives fail on me in one week, hence the utter lack of any updating.

i will try to get something up in the next few days.

roadtrip!

2005-05-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

on april 24th 2005, j., m., and i got into a rented minivan at 7:00 a.m. and headed south on 101 for a week-long climbing and bouldering (mostly bouldering) roadtrip through california.

our original plan was to drive to sonora first, since it's only 3 hours away, climb there for two days, then head to bishop on our rest day, climb there for two days, then on to joshua tree for two days, and home after that.

the weather had other ideas though; there was an 80% chance of rain in sonora on saturday, so we went with our back-up plan, which was to head down to santa barbara, where, according to a few sites i'd found in the web, there was great bouldering to be found.

more to come...

flowers

2005-04-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

j. and i went up to turtle rock in marin yesterday so we could start getting our skin in shape for climbing on real rock.

these are a couple of pictures i took of the wildflowers up there, which were absolutely amazing.

v6

2005-04-14T09:34:00.000-07:00

i got my first v6 bouldering problem yesterday, and i'm pretty stoked about it.

the rating felt pretty solid (well, maybe a little on the easy side), but the crux move was hard (sort of a half-mantle-y iron cross with no feet), and the moves leading up to it required some pretty good core strength and technique.

it's nice to see progress.

peevish

2005-04-11T16:12:00.000-07:00

today i am irritated with people use the word 'epicenter' instead of 'center' when talking about things other than earthquakes.

stop it!

velodrome

2005-04-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

yesterday i went down to the hellyer velodrome south of san jose. i went with a few people from a discussion board i frequent, only one of whom i knew.

we left the city at around 7:30, and got to the track about 8:30, and then spent close to an hour getting everybody there (about 25 - 30 people total) signed in, waivered, and biked (there are rental bikes available for those who don't have their own. i brought the fuji ).

hellyer is a - nominally - 333 meter outdoor, concrete track that was built in 1962, and it shows. the signs are faded, and the surface is bumpy, but it's the closet track to the bay area. the next-nearest one is in l.a. at the home depot center. that one is new, indoors, 250 meters (international standard), made of wood, and just hosted the world track championships (there are some pictures here).

we started out with a 40-lap warm-up, then moved to team-pursuit (two teams of 4 start at opposite sides of the track and chase each other for 9 laps. the winner is determined by the space between the two teams after 9 laps, or when one team catches the other. all times/results are measured off of the third teammember to cross the line).

the winning team then had to race again, against a fresh team of four riders. my team won 3 times, and i was pleasantly surprised to find that i was not only able to keep up, but also to take some extra turns at the front when other people got tired.

the rest of the morning we did more pursuit races, as well as a some sprint drills, and by the time it was all over i was cooked, but happy.

it's been over 12 years since i've been on a track, and i'd forgotten how much fun it is; remembering the tactics i learned, the sensation of speed, and the adrenalin rush you get from having your front wheel six inches away from the bike in front of you at 30 miles an hour.

i'm going to go back.

leg	rating	distance	ascent	start time	pace	total time
6	e	4.5	40	4:11 p.m.	07:01	00:31:47
12	h	4.8	520	9:33 p.m.	07:37	00:36:34
18	h	5.8	360	1:44 a.m.	07:31	00:43:36
30	vh	3.1	1020	10:03 a.m.	08:54	00:278:37
		18.2	1940		07:39	02:19:24