4-mile bookends or not much to report on this day off

My wife likes it when I go with her on the mornings when she runs, but she doesn't want to make me come, so she slinks away quietly. This morning I was drowsy but didn't think I could fall back asleep so I threw on some shorts and a t-shirt and went downstairs. I initially thought she had already left since it was so still on the ground floor, but she was there and happy to have me along.

The main bulk of the day was spent at the CS&T club minding the kids as they did swim team, tennis lessons and then swim lessons. We have a girl who does this the other four days per week but since I have Wednesdays off, she has Wednesdays off too. While there I got another few chapters of Stalin's Ghost read: Our hero has survived being shot in the head and few other scrapes in his suicidal attempt to bring the bad-guys to justice. Also, ran into the mom of one of Dahlia's friends, just back from three weeks in France. Naturally we had a lot to talk about.

Once home, I cleaned-up the breakfast things and lunch things which was enough to run a load in the dishwasher. Next, I put together a batch of spaghetti sauce for dinner tonight and a few other nights. We ate early due to Surenna having to go to a hip-hop workshop. After dinner there were enough pots, pans and dishes for the dishwasher to set-out again on its mission.

After all of this, there was still plenty of light for a run though it was still 80 degrees out. When we haven't had a heat-wave in a while, I sort of relish the idea of blitzing-out a 5-miler in the middle of the afternoon. It is a challenge that I enthusiastically embrace. It has been more-or-less continuously hot here for a solid month and now running in the heat just seems like drudgery. I think that this is the reason for my times being so lame in the last couple of weeks. Still, with heavy heart, I went out for a four miler.

One small reward was that I got to see how fast I was going. The police have put up a radar sign which flashes your speed. I have noticed it in the car and wondered if it would register a runner. There are two criteria that would have to be met: 1. There must be some threshold speed to be met since you wouldn't want it wasting its time flashing zero all day from the speed of the road itself. 2. There must be a reflection threshold. You want it to pick-up a car or motorcycle, but not, presumably, a breeze. this would not seem to be a tough problem since motor vehicles are made of metal, which is pretty reflective to microwaves, versus air which is not very reflective. (There are such things as storm and wind speed radars btw.) The key here is which side of the threshold is a person? I am mostly water and the only metal is a wedding ring and a couple of bits of dental work. The answer is that it did pick me up. It was on a slight down-hill and picked up my speed as 8 MPH from about 200 feet away. Naturally I sped-up and managed to hit 11 MPH (which is a 5:30 pace). I think I could have hit a higher speed but didn't want to pull something and cripple myself. Also, just for comparison; I could run a 1/4 mile in High School at an average speed of 15 MPH. Double also; I was a distance runner and the real quarter milers were much, much faster than me.

Physical contrasts

In our first house we had 3 acres of forrest and a wood stove: It was a no-brainer to heat with wood. Turning a tree into firewood involves heavy and hard instruments: Chainsaw, axe, sledge hammer and chisel. In the 4 years we lived in that place, we had two children, so we had small kids around--they were infants and toddlers.

The pleasure of wood heat was in the contrasts: The house was very warm because it was small and easy to heat and the fuel was effectively unlimited. Yet, I made and hauled firewood when it was cold out. I would spend my time at hard labor in bitter cold or relaxing in a warm house. After handing the loud, hard and heavy tools of firewood making, I would come inside and play with my small, delicate, soft and cute little girls. They seemed even more delicate and soft after smashing apart great wheels of oak and maple with my axe.

My wife was out walking Meenah and met some folks along the way. They live in a cape, much like the one we had in Vermont and they even had wood stoves in it. They had the stoves removed because they have small children! Ack! Our kids never showed any impulse to touch the hot stove, probably because it got pretty uncomfortable to get close enough to touch it when it was running. But had it been a problem we could have used a really sophisticated technique to assure safety: Not use it! I just can't believe sane people would rip out two perfectly good wood stoves!

So Sad...