Clubbing...

This was a common term back when I used to go to night clubs and so far as I know, it is still used. It never quite made sense to me in that these "clubs" were not really clubs at all. They were private businesses that would allow anyone in as long as they were properly attired and were willing to pay the cover charge. There weren't actually any members at all. Well, language is not always logical and so this is neither the first nor last example of that.

What got me thinking about clubs is that I joined one last week and participated in it today for the first time. It is a local running club and I joined because I figured it would help with my training. It just seems to be a fact of human nature that when you do things with others, you get better at it than if you try to go it alone. It is no real mystery: More minds focused on problems will come up with more solutions. Also, there is a kind of bench-marking that goes on--when you see how well a thing can be done you will push yourself to approach that level. In an earlier naive state, you would have been happy with your proficiency.

It is not necessarily "all-good" though; small groups are susceptible to group-think and it is easy to fall into alignment with this since the experienced members should and do know more about the subject at hand. One thing easily overlooked is that in the past there may have been a strong, but misguided, personality who got everybody thinking along some line and it hasn't been questioned since then. I should note that I saw no evidence of this today, but these are the kinds of things I try to be aware of.

Today the mission was to go to the Boston Marathon course and run a bit of it. It was a beautiful day and I had a very pleasant run. The nice thing about a group run is that there is always somebody you can run with who is close to the same speed. My pace was pretty good even though I didn't feel as if I pushed myself as hard as usual. Also, I normally take Saturday off and am rested up for the long run on Sunday. Besides this, I ran fast on Friday, which is a habit that comes from the expectation of Saturday off--so I started today already a little sore.

Perfect execution, less than optimal time and place

Between degrees at the university, I took some time off to do a little skiing and a lot of minimum-wage drudgery at a fancy ski resort.

One night, the suits rounded up all the warm bodies they could find to help with an emergency: An overhead fire sprinkler pipe had burst and flooded the ballroom and a gala new year's eve party was scheduled (and sold-out) for that room.

We had about 30-40 people to tackle the problem. First, we used wet vacs to suck-up water that had pooled on top of the carpet. The next step was to pull up the carpet. This was complicated by the fact that the carpeting was in strips about 12 feet wide and as long as the room. The system we used was to have 3-5 guys start from one end of a strip and crawl under it. Then we would stand-up, lifting the carpet and teams on either side would feed us chairs which we would arrange behind us as we progressed forward.

This process is probably the most dangerous work I have ever done: The linoleum floor was wet and slick, the carpet was heavy wool and blocked-out most of the light. The chairs provided ample tripping opportunities and were appearing from seemingly random directions and velocities. In spite of all this and the fact that this effort was happening around 3 AM, I don't remember anybody getting hurt.

The chairs we used were the kind that are made of plastic and metal and can be stacked onto carts to about 8 feet high. These ones stacked such that the seat back and the seat were each angled at about 45 Degrees. The bare parts of the floor, as I had mentioned above, was very slick. I had even gotten into the habit of taking a little sprint before the bare parts and then crossing that area by sliding. Naturally, I had an impulse to put these two things together and we were on a break anyway...

Running at top speed toward a 7-foot tall stack of chairs I slid the final 15-20 feet. Then took a jump upwards, using my hands leap-frog style as an assist I rotated backwards and stuck the landing in the chair at the top of the stack.

I was delighted for about 2 seconds: Then a serious-looking man wearing jeans and a sweatshirt walked up to me and said something to the effect, "If you do that again and don't break your leg, then I will break your leg". Being young and self-righteous, I retorted that my bones--broken or whole--are really only my business. He walked away, shaking his head exasperatedly. A couple of seconds later, a coworker sidled up to me and let me know that I had just told-off the CEO! I could feel the blood drain from my head.

I didn't get fired, in fact; every worker that night got (in addition to time-and-a-half) comped a dinner for two at any restaurant on the property. In retrospect, the trick I did was really risky: If I had slipped while making the initial jump then a crash into the stack of chairs would have been the result. Slipping would be a high probability since the floor was slick, the jump was taken while in motion--which means the timing of when to jump comes into play and the jump must be forceful since a fair amount of height had to be obtained. The landing was equally tricky and risky--falling from 7 feet onto hard, slick floor with a stack of heavy chairs most likely also falling, seems like the sort of thing one does not emerge from unscathed. So, the CEO had a point. I think I had just gotten so used to risk from the carpet-lifting work, that the trick seemed like nothing.

In all it was a good night: Got paid and rewarded but could have gotten fired and/or crippled.

Dried-on bugs

I'm not sure if this will be a reoccurring series, but in case does become so, I want to give credit where it is due: One aspect is right from this guy's series called Remembrance of things Pabst. and the other is from a writing assignment from this nice lady.

I now live in the Boston area, but grew up and lived in the Pacific Northwest until shortly after getting married. Every place has bugs in the Summer and they tend to make a mess on your car windows, especially on long highway trips. In my experience this is much worse in the inter mountain West (between the Cascades and the Rockies). I would guess that it is a combination of very arid conditions, so the bugs desiccate and harden-onto the windshield very quickly and something about the climate such that all the bugs hatch at the same time. I have seen swarms of gnats so thick it looks like it is foggy out.

It can get difficult to see, to the point that you need to clean the window but they don't clean easily. The wiper-washer combination makes a dent, but you go through the fluid pretty quickly. Most gas stations have window washers, but even these just will not cut through a really thick layer of bugs. I eventually, through a lot of trial-and-error, found a really good solution:

All you need is one of those flat, one gallon plastic containers like the ones that anti-freeze always comes in. Most rest areas have a faucet so that you can re-fill the container but you can start a trip with it already full so that you can use this method any place you care to pull-over. All you do is turn-on the windshield wipers and then get out of the car. Open your Prestone bottle and lay it on the roof of your car so that it can drain onto the windshield. Between the flood of water and the wipers, it just clears the bugs away like magic.

I think the way it works is that the wipers clear away the bugs parts as they re-hydrate. With the small volume of the windshield washers, the bug parts just form a viscous solution with the wiper fluid. You need the large volume provided by this technique in order to clear away bugs.

Once I discovered this method, I almost hoped for bug swarms. My car may have been a piece of crap, but it would be the only one with a clean windshield.

The furniture re-arrangement chain-reaction

The Pappasan chair in our new home office never really fit in the space we had chosen for it. My wife had the idea that if one of the file cabinets could be moved, that this would help.

She spent a couple of hours moving all the stuff out of the file cabinet and I lugged it up to Dahlia's room, where it was re purposed into a toy box.

It didn't really help the Pappasan situation though, so we moved it to the living room where she had always thought we needed a bit more seating room anyway. So the living room had to be rearranged to accommodate this addition. This left us with no couch in the home office though.

We have two futons in the house. The downstairs one in the family room is the kind where the width of the couch form is the length of the bed conformation and so it was too big for the office. We have one which is used as Jemma's bed frame (she has a regular mattress on it) and it is the kind which folds out into three sections and so is love-seat sized when in couch format.

This upstairs futon was taken apart, hauled down and reassembled in the office. The cushion from the downstairs futon wouldn't fit on it though, since it is too plush. So the original thin futon mattress was hauled down from its place under Surenna's bed and installed on the office futon. The thicker mattress was too thick to slide under Surenna's bed, but we managed to get it under by lifting up on it until the futon mattress cleared the foot board.

The family room futon needed to go to Jemma's room and be used as a bed frame, but it is a really complicated design so we tried to bring it up without taking it apart first. We ended up taking it apart at the top of the stairs, where it was solidly stuck.

Every thing is put back together now, but let me tell you about my aching back...

Today's route

Ends of the food spectrum

The fancy dessert my wife fashioned for tonight..

I dined alone for lunch and so had a kind of man-lunch: Smoked oysters, beer and crackers.

Saturday Family time

Just an easy Saturday:

My wife normally lets the dog out on weekdays, so I like to--when I can drag myself out of bed--take on this chore on some weekend days. It is a big thrill for both the dog and the wife. The normal routine is for the dog to go outside, do her business and then she runs upstairs, jumps up on the bed and wakes me up. The dog seems to do this more out of duty than love, still it is nice. When I take care of her in the morning, she quivers with excitement before I release her to go upstairs. Then she dashes, as fast as she can go, to her mistress' bed. The dogs excitement is thrilling to my wife, who really loves the beast.

Later, we had scrambled eggs, sausages, orange rolls, toast, potato patties and coffee for breakfast.

Dahlia needed to do a make-up Karate session from 11:00-Noon today, so we took the dog to the dojo and walked her on the bike path while the girl practiced her Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique.

Right after we got home, my wife took Surenna for a hair-cut while I napped on the papasan with the dog.

Off to the movies! We deposited the kids in the Percy Jackson movie and then went and saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It was very entertaining. I think Madonna had sucked all the talent out of Guy Richie (he never made anything good while with her IMHO)but the talent seems to have seeped back in, if this movie is anything to judge by.

On the way home we picked-up Chinese food from the better (and more expensive) of the two places we acquire it from.

And it was great!

Chicken Pot-Pie

Fill with meat and vegetables.

Add some gravy--home made of course!

Add a top crust and bake.

Enjoy!

I know it is a spoof

But I still like a lot of the songs from, A Mighty Wind

Now, if I was a music critic and I wrote about these same songs AND didn't realize they were from a mockumentary, then I would be justly derided a fool.

Case in point:

Bernard-Henri Lévy

The Big Silver Jugs of Jaipur

There were two identical (as far as I could see) jugs like this. It seems that Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II, when he journeyed to England for the coronation of Edward VII, only wanted to drink Ganges water on his trip. These vessels were commissioned for that purpose.

These jugs and other impressive items, such as weapons were housed in buildings that are part of the City Palace complex, most of which is still occupied by the royal family.

This is the pavilion which houses the silver urns and had been used for royal audiences back when the Maharaja ruled.

That fickle feeling of speed

I would be willing to bet that this has happened to most people who drive: You travel some long distance on an interstate highway and then the last few miles to your destination are on regular streets. You look at the speedo and are doing 65 in a 30 MPH zone! It is perfectly understandable, not to a police officer of course; you've gotten used to tooling along at 80 and so 65 seems slow. You really have to rely on your instruments.

Speed, when running is measured differently than in driving: Runners will mostly express their efforts in minutes and seconds per mile. The range of speeds is much narrower than when driving. Drivers could realistically expect to be going anywhere from 25 MPH to 80 MPH while a typical runner may go as fast as 6 minutes per mile (in a short race) to as slow as 9 minutes per mile in a long slow workout. This is a range of only about 4 miles per hour. Even with this small range, it is easy to tell within 20-30 seconds/mile what your pace is.

In spite of this fine precision, one still feels the effects of habituation: For instance, I have been injured for a few months and now that I am feeling better, am trying to get back to my usual speed. At my age, I need to run 8:00 minutes/mile to qualify as an entrant into the Boston Marathon, so I naturally try and keep all of my training runs at or below 8:00 per mile. Last week I finally broke 8:00 a couple of times and not by more than a second or two per mile. It felt really fast and not due to effort--my cardiovascular system is not being pushed at this pace. I'm just not used to this speed. Again, it is good to have instruments: In this case a digital watch with a timer on it. If it wasn't for the watch I would think I was right back up to speed, rather than around 30 seconds per mile slower than I ought to be for these distances.

Double Papasan completes the project

My wife's workspace: I made the desktop and Ikea made the rest of the table. She has always wanted a double papasan chair. Back when she was pregnant with Dahlia, we went to a Halloween party at Attila and Michelle's place and they had such a chair. She dressed-up as a big black pregnant cat (she was past 8 months by then) and curled up on their papasan chair. She stayed put for the better part of the party and vowed then that we would one day own a chair like that. 10 years later, the dream has come true. My work space is over on this side.

Weekend Lunch Update: Mussels

My wife and I left the kids at home and went to a fancy v. the usual grocery store--this is pretty much a date, or at least bonding time. I toyed with getting some sushi, but it was kind of expensive and of questionable provenance. The mussels were only half the price but I had to get a pound of them, which is a couple of times more than needed plus they don't keep and nobody else in the house likes them.

I got through most of them though.

See?

Looks like it is something he can't help.

Which is really kind of a relief: He's not just bowing to our enemies.

Fatehpur Sikri between Agra and Jaipur

There were many notable things about this site. It was really huge: One would go through a cluster of buildings and into a courtyard, then there would be buildings on the other side of the courtyard, with a courtyard beyond that etc.

One odd and ironic thing which struck me was in regards to water. Our guide claimed that the city was abandoned due to lack of water and yet this was the only fort/palace we visited with such obvious water-handling civil engineering as this place had. In the above picture, the drainage channel was one of many throughout the complex. It would seem that excess water was the problem when the place was being built.

Cider-making

I had tried my hand at cider making before the trip to India and the results were fine, but the trip ended my production line.

What I had been doing is starting a new batch of 64 oz each week by pouring a little of the previous batch into the new one. To the yeast it must have seemed like escaping from a crowded and polluted slum to rich, verdant and unpopulated countryside. The alcohol and CO2 that are my whole purpose for doing the fermentation are waste products and therefore pollution, from the yeasty standpoint.

I can usually get two 64 oz apple juice bottles for $3.00 and each will give 5 1/3 12 oz servings, so this comes to about 30 Cents/serving. Not bad considering that pre-made cider I buy costs about $ 7.00 for 6.

Me and the 1984 Woman's Olympic Marathon.

1. I watched it on television and was thrilled that an American (Joan Benoit) won the first time women were allowed to compete in the event.
2. I was amazed by the Swiss finisher who, due to heat exhaustion, took 5 minutes to stagger through the last 400 meters.
3. I met the Swiss woman's (Gabriela "Gaby" Andersen-Schiess) husband. He was the night manager at The Sun Valley Company and I worked the night shift in the housekeeping dept. I noticed the iconic picture of Ms. Andersen-Schiess on his wall and indicated that it was a riveting scene. That is when he mentioned his spousal relationship to her. I would also guess, given his last name is Andersen, that that is the source of the first half of her last name.
4. Many years later, I was working in Tech Service at Affymetrix, Inc. and I used to run (very occasionally) with a woman who ran in college up in Maine. She knew Joan Benoit from the running community there.

Sunday mixed-bag

Ran out and got bagels--they discontinued the onion, which were really only onion seed, so the loss was less. We had smoked salmon on-hand from before the trip, so that helped.

Roasted coffee for the first time this year.

Attached the new desk top to the frame. We stopped at the Ikea in New Haven on the way back from Newark and got the missing T-leg. The guy who helped me was great! It was all a fog though because I hadn't slept on the flight from Bombay--which had departed at midnight India time.

Went for a slow and painful run. I have a marathon in 3 months but am crippled by injuries: There isn't time to wait and heal--then train, so I will have to just grit my way through.

Reverance for the cow

We didn't see cows roaming the streets in all parts of India: Some parts had a lot, like the back-streets and alley-ways of Jaipur, other places like Mangalore had hardly any. Wherever we saw them, the cows were very gentle and serene looking. Maybe they are just used to being around a lot of people.

This cow which we saw on temple grounds was the only one in India I saw eating grass (Jemma is feeding her a flower in this picture but earlier she was grazing on the lawn.) The city ones lived on scraps like orange peels and paper. There were vendors selling freshly-made sugar cane juice and often there would be a cow on the scene eating the smashed canes.

Pleasant as they are, the cows are not pets: They give milk and dairy is a big part of Indian cuisine.

Time to buckle-down

The last time I went for a run was about a week ago on a Goa beach. I ran without shoes or shirt or stopwatch, so I was a little nervous about today's run here in snowy-cold Boston.

I was slow and achy--situation normal, but it was daunting just getting out the door. It takes remarkably little time to get soft both physically and mentally, but especially mentally.

In all, it went fine: I was a bit slow but ran a good distance and am hoping that the injuries of early November are now behind me for good. Whether they are or not is pretty much moot though since Boston is in April and I really don't have time to wait for injuries to heal. Update: Sunday 8:36.46 per mile 7.9mi

Monday 8:43.08 per mile 5.2mi

Tuesday: Between meetings at work and voting for Scott Brown, no time to run.

Wednesday 8:20 per mile 6.48mi

Thursday 8:16.15 per mile 5.2mi (wiped-out on black ice right at the end)

Friday 8:04.62 per mile 5.2mi

The trend was toward increasing, if still slow, speed. Also, my hip was hurting so badly that I very nearly gave up on the Friday run within the first couple of steps.