fdsailor.blog-city.com — July 2004

Back from Russia - the main report..

Well, the last three weeks seem like a blur, and things have finally settled down a bit so perhaps I can write some about our trip to Russia. How does one write about a set of continuous experiences, where time seems not to stop, and where it seems that nothing short of fifty pages will do? In blog form with the time I have it simply can't be done. Had I had a laptop with me would not have mattered - it seemed that every minute was spent sleeping, eating, but especially talking with friends - a very rich feeling. But there has been not enough time for reflection - for me this happens on long walks where I can think about anything, past or future. So perhaps I will have more useful thoughts then.

We were in Russia for 17 days, and during that time we slept in 8 different beds - with Natasha in her apartment in St. Petersburg, in Borovichi with (a different Natasha) and her family, with Tanya and her family in Pestovo, with Natasha and her family in Novgorod, on the train to/from Moscow, and with Olga in Moscow. Finally we stayed 4 days in cabins at a camp in Valdei - lots of swimming and fishing.

It all really seems a blur, but at the same time seemed familiar. It has been four years since I was there last, and each place has its character. So let's talk places...

Novgorod continues to form the centerpiece for our trips to Russia, the same as it did four years ago. This place holds fond memories of friends, the first place we called home four years ago, and still true today. Not only is it Rochester's sister city, but a very old and beautiful city. It took us a week to get there once we arrived in Russia, but when we got to Novgorod, it felt in a way like we were arriving home - as soon as I got there I felt that I knew where I was. At the same time, it has changed considerably. It feels to us that in the four years of time it has progressed by 8 years. I can't quite say why - it is sort of scattered all about and through the fabric of the city. Yes, the buses and many of the public places are exactly the same, but the commercial sector is modernizing like mad. Many stores open 24 hours or at least from 8 until 11, new apartment buildings, and general signs of wealth. Supermarkets even I could figure out, and people on rollerblades. Both G and I noticed that the cars all seem much newer compared to 4 years ago - no longer the "how does this thing run", but now standard cars, although on the average older than in Europe. And smaller than in America (thank God - let's hope that "western" characteristic does not catch on).

And all this in the city of all the old churches and the Kremlin...

Pestovo also has gained a special place in my heart - being sort of half town, half city, this town wins an award for having the most character. The people seemed very real there - leading real lives, with practical, everyday concerns. And the ourskirts of the town were rather rural, which is my style. Indeed, by American standards, Pestovo felt most like one of our older city suburbs. Picket fences. From an American standpoint an interesting mix of country, village and "old America".

St. Petersburg seems to be a standard (larger) European city - not as quaint as, say, Paris, but recognizable. In the area near N's apartment, I went for a walk at 10 at night. There is a set of walking paths and a park nearby, and I really enjoyed what I saw: couples holding hands just walking, the rather common sight of pairs of women walking and chatting, each carrying their own beers, and groups sitting in the part around campfiles, drinking, talking, having fun and playing guitar. This is an experience you just can't have in the US - we don't as a rule spend time outdoors in the late evening unless we are "camping". In this way Russia seems to be a wonderful place to grow up and have friends. Basic stuff we tend to miss here.

Moscow is a large city. Quite modern (we visited a shopping mall that is cleaner and more modern than most in the States), good metro and public transportations, and lots of people. In the apartment area where O lived, we tried to estimate the people density - came out with perhaps 300K per square kilometer, perhaps? To large for me - I'll leave this to the New York city types.

Valdei (forgive me for the spelling) was where we stayed in cabins for several days. This is a beautiful area located between Novgorod and Pestovo - unlike Novgorod, here one finds gently rolling hills and multiple, small lakes. In the past (and probably currently) I understand this was/is a preferred place for dachas (the nice kind, not the kitchen gardens) of government officials. It is easy to understand. The campground was cool - it was rather "fishing" oriented (after all, N's dad, a fisherman, helped choose the location), but had local swimming. And (strange, but true) a table tennis pavilion - a standalone "tent" with walls, a door, and a table tennis table! Very cool. Natasha and I played there for several hours. She taught me the word "pochtE", i.e. "almost" - very useful in this game, at least at our playing level.

There are places and there are impressions. Here I can only give you a sample of the many:

• Puskin palaces (or something like that just south of St. Petersburg) - fields full of tall grass around a series of lakes. Here and there couples and families beat down the grass and sunbathe, etc. Islands of people in a sea of grass.
• A rail yard by N's apartment (one can hear this all night, trust me) - let's say you have a long train that you want to reassemble into a number of smaller trains so the individual cars get to their final destinations. You have a switchyard and some engines. What is the fastest way to do this? <Think for a while about this one>. OK, here is the solution they used, which just makes too much sense: have a single, long track climb up a short, perhaps 5 meter hill. On the other side of the hill, you have a series of switches that fans out into, say 12 tracks. Put an engine at the far end of the single long train, on the long track. Have it slowly push the entire train down the track such that the "end" of the train starts climbing up the small hill. As an individual car reaches the top and starts to go downhill again, cut it loose. As it rolls downhill on its own, throw the switches so that it coasts into (i.e. crashes into) the newly assembled "smaller" train. By this time the overall slower train has moved enough that the next car is ready for the same treatment. Cool solution - no switching of train engines, backing up, etc.
• St. Petersburg, 10 pm - couples and friend walking as though night was far away. It was - the sun will remain up for over an hour more. Time moves slowly in Russian summers. (We won't talk about the speed of time in the winters, however).
• Also late at night - an (older) boy, perhaps 16, trying to fly a kite. Unsuccessful due to lack of wind. But how many people have you seen flying kites at 11 pm?
• Older women seen in the woods in the morning with baskets, looking for berries and mushrooms. If you find a woods, if you wait long enough you will find a person doing just this (or so it seems).
• Pestovo - look up at the telephone poles, and see individual strands of telephone wire hanging in a bundle. I have read about this in my engineering career, but never actually seen it just like this. If there are 20 houses on a street, you will find 20 individual, thin, wires.
• Is there a standard on if the hot water tap goes on the left or the right? I think not - it seems random to me. You actually have to look - what a concept.
• Washing machines - now here you see lots of variability. You just have to experience it - I won't describe...
• And yes, motion sensing hand dryers are now a normal fixture in Russia, even in bathrooms where you buy your toilet paper from the old women in the front. Really, though, many of the bathrooms are pretty decent - a big change from 4 years ago.
• The "cheap" food store in Novgorod which seemed hidden in a set of warehouse buildings. At first I thought we were stopping for fertilizer, or perhaps to have a chain saw sharpened. Walk through a few doors, however, and what do you find? A grocery store!
• High speed internet, computers in most houses.

And one final note, and a wonderful beginning - we had the wonderful opportunity to meet our exchange student-to-be: Masha. I won't get into personal details, but this is going to be a lot of fun for all. If you are reading this Masha, Hi!

I could go on and on, but one has to stop somewhere, or I will miss writing about the now current events (a week has passed since our return to Russia). It was a good trip...

Published: Wednesday, 28 July 2004

9:50 pm Warm and humid

TGIF-day (i.e. Thank God it's Friday) - in this case because, due to summer hours, I get Friday afternoons off (this priviledge is earned by working 9 hours for the rest of the week). I would like to say I did something really fun in my afternoon, but due to no wind and intermittent rain instead I came home, lay down to read for a bit, and woke up two hours later. I guess that if I need to go to work a half-hour earlier then I should probably go to bed a half-hour earlier also. Yeh, right!

The last two days have been hot (around 29) and humid - sort of the type of weather that inspires sleeping and generally being lazy. I took Anya for a walk earler just down the street and it felt like there was steam rising off of the street where it was still damp from an earlier rain. The buzzing of the cicadas completed the summer soundscape - everything seemed to be saying that the slow days of August will be here soon.

G and I went skating for the first time in several months - it was a good change (I actually needed to wear a fleece jacket), but it seems really odd to take OFF a jacket before going outdoors to the car. At first there were just 4 other figure skaters there, but at mid-session we were attacked by a dozen "tiny tot" hockey skaters (I think they are about 6 years owd) - after they started buzzing around like bumblebees it somewhat decreased the solitude, you could say...

Published: Friday, 30 July 2004

Russia, 2004

Here is a summary album of some moments in our Russia trip. Over the course of the trip 140 picutres were taken, and even these do not record everything we did. So instead I just picked some pictures I liked - sometimes silly, sometimes with people in them, and sometimes just landscapes I liked. I offer no apology as to my selection (or skill as a photographer).

To start things off, we have Natasha, in a rare moment of cooking dinner for us :-) . She is in her apartment in St. Petersburg. To the right is a view of one of the many "parks" outside her apartment. We would call them parks, although I think in this part of St. Petersburg this is how many of the streets are just done in this rather residental section. That's the good news. Just beyond the park are "the trains" - a switchyard that runs all day and (especially) all night long. With a loudspeaker to tell everyone what to do... Let's say it added "character" to the area.

This picture above is G and two Tanyas (lotsa Tanyas in Russia...). We also have a picture of G with Natasha's family in some "Puskin park" south of St. Petersburg (G - can you fill in the correct name?)

On the left is yet another place I liked in the Puskin park. The next several pictures are taken in Pestovo. There seem to be several heating options in Pestovo - wood, steam (city steam is available - during the winter you apparently can find the pipes underground where they melt the snow) and gas or electricity (not usually employed for heating). Wood is the norm, and lucky me, I was there for its delivery. Yes, this entire load of wood was placed in Tanya's back yard, where some combination of the family will evenually cut and split it for stove use.

Here is Tanya standing in front of her back yard. Most houses have one or two gardens for growing food (and some flowers). In Tanya's case there is the back yard garden and a share of her grandmother's "dacha" - we'll see one in a bit.

Tanya has a cute cat - she brought it home to her unsuspecting family several weeks before we arrived. Cute animals get pictures in my book, so I did the "cat + bag = amusement" thing...

Here we have a piece of a park in the central part of Pestovo. I like their parks - nothing formal about them, but great places to sit and read, talk with friends, etc.

The next picture is one of several I took from the "<insert name here>" annual festival. For a proper history of this festival, see the <<insert link>> page. But here are some of the things I remembered, as told by Tanya. During this particular day, swimming in the water is supposed to have some magical healing power for whatever ails you. In fact, it you walk too close to the water, there is a tradition that others may help this healing process along by pushing you in - after all, they are doing you a favor, right? But oh, the water is useful for other things also. Apparently if a girl goes swimming and a guy helps her out of the water they are destined (sometime in the future) to marry. I don't even want to know what happens to you if you swim many times and get a broad range of help, but I expect you will be very healthy and very busy. There is also something with a crown of flowers, but I forgot the details.

Well, this particular day it was lightly raining and cold, so not many people were taking advantage of this easy cure (or matchmaking service). Later Tanya and I decided to wade in up to our knees, so in we went. Tanya really wanted to swim, but with no towels decided no to do it afterall. I got cold first, so got out and put on my sandals. Tanya then started out herself. To save her from sandy shoe syndrome, I lined hers up on shore. She picked up her first shoe and I reached out to steady her. A horrified expression formed on her face and she screamed "DON"T TOUCH ME!!!!!". After some brief confusion I remembered what I had been told earlier - that would have been awkward, my being married and everything!

Here is a picture of Tanya's grandmother at her dacha - they share it and work on it together. Talking with Tanya I get the idea that her grandmother thinks she should quit all of her school and job so that she can work the garden all summer long. Lots of work.

The blue flowers I just liked - can't even remember where they were - probably alongside the road.

Here is an picture of boats along the river that wraps around Pestovo. Very pretty. And on the right is dinner! I have never seen such a sequence of such wonderfully prepared (and a bit too filling) dinners. It seems that as soon as breakfast was over lunch appeared - a short break then it was dinner time. But as I said earlier, this kept us from losing weight on our trip! This is classic Russian fare, although I am hoping it is not so carefully prepared on a day-to-day basis!

Fast forward a few days - after Pestovo we drove to Novgorod, met Natasha, and boarded the train to Moscow. This was an overnight train, and a rather hot one at that. We traveled in first class, where there were four beds to a compartment. Since there were three of us, we shared it with a fourth woman, who had a top berth. In the middle of then night there was a mighty "CLUNK" - it you can belive it, she had fallen off (they removed the safety bars). Luckily she was not hurt, but rather confused and disoriented for a while. But I digress. On the left is a shot of downtown Moscow - only one of a number of pictures I took, but representative. And on the right is Natasha and her sister Olga doing girl things. Maybe some day they will forgive me for publishing their pictures, but I think they're cute together.

Another day another city. We returned from Moscow to Novgorod again, via another overnight train, but without the leaping lady this time. I liked the juxtaposition of the volleyball game and the Kremlin walls. On the right I yet another in the "Natasha and Gwendolyn sitting on a bench" pictures - I have quite a collection over the years.

Another day, another bed to sleep in. The next several pictures were taken in Valdei - sort of a fishing resort with cabins. On the left is a picture of the "fish pond", which was stocked with fish (but you had to pay for what was caught). And yes, we did eat a lot of fish. On the right is Gulda, Natasha's dog, or rather her family's dog, since when she moved to St. Petersburg her Dad refused to let Gulda go.

OK, here's another picture of Gulda being cute.

On the right we introduce Masha, second from the left. Masha is going to be staying with us as an exchange student for the next year. Brave kid! No, really, we all expect we will all have a wonderful year together. One of the really cool features of our being in Russia is that we were able to meet her before she came over - and this was good, no only because we got to meet her family, but we also resolved some last minute airplane ticket issues. From left to right you have your's truly, Masha, G, Masha's dad, Alexi, an Rochester exchange student staying with Masha for a few weeks (getting confused yet?) and Masha's mom.

We will end with a cute picture taken in St. Petersburg of a merchant that really likes to sell watermelons. You've gotta love her shop!

Published: Saturday, 31 July 2004

fdsailor.blog-city.com — June 2004

9:39 pm - Weekend mission accomplished

It's Monday evening, and we're just winding down a three day Memorial Day weekend. The stated goal of this weekend has been to move from "spring mode" (and spring activities) to "summer mode" (and summer activities). Pure and simple, we can't do everything all the time, and we must change our patterns with the seasons. Now that May with its bird migration is pretty much over, it is time to turn out attention to our summer weekend mode of camping, sailing and generally lounging around by the lake, at least on Sunday.

But getting there the first time is part of the fight. Friday night was ice skating, and not much else. Saturday was a rather busy day, or at least the latter part of it. We started by sleeping in a bit, then worked to get the house and yard into shape (read "weed"). We then went canoeing with J's dad A visiting from Russia, followed by some sight seeing. Fun was had by all, even if I couldn't understand what G and A were saying. We paddled in the river area just south of Irondequoit bay, which was really peaceful - a great place to canoe!

On Sunday we finished up all of the things that had not gotten done yet, generated a list, checked it twice, and then packed to camp at the yacht club. We went down, met K & K, and generally chilled. There was no wind, so we didn't sail. After dinner and a litre of wine we crashed in the tent. The birds work me up in the morning (LOUD!), I enjoyed it for a while, then started my day. Today, Monday we were supposed to sail in the Memorial day handicap race, but the rain and wind won - with very little interest, cool temperatures (17C), rain and a 18+ mph wind, racing was cancelled.

This afternoon (in the rain) we went to visit K & K's new house - and this house is actually both new to them and really new on an absolute term. And it is beautiful, guys, regardless of whatever color the walls end up! Congratulations and good luck in your future trips to Home Depot!

Tonight I made Chili - lots of it (7 L). I got a bit carried away with the Chili pepper, and it is pretty hot. We will eat it for dinner tomorrow night, freeze what will fit in the freezer and (if there is any left) give the rest away.

Oh, one other newsworthy item - on Friday, we started doing some Russia scheduling, and extended our trip by 2 days. There were just too many things to do, and too many places to visit. N and T - I will be talking with both of you soon to make some specific arrangements.

Last week my running obsession tended to overshadow my diet non-obsession. We need to change that. As for running, I am going to try to keep doing it at least some to find out what it is good for. Racing with thousands of people is sort of amusing!

That's all for the moment - as always, more as it happens!

Published: Monday, 31 May 2004

10:04 Suggestions for reading this blog

First of all, in this blog, of course the most recent entries are first, so it is sort of like reading a book from the back to the front. If one is "starting from scratch", it works much better if you start in the past and progress towards the present. To do this, you click on either the calander or archive section.

One thing that is not ideal is how this site archives old blogs - instead of getting a list like the main page, you instead get a list of links to individual entries. But what if you want to go to the "next entry"? Where is the "next" button?

Well, as it happens it is there, but hiding (not my fault). Once you look at an entry, at the very top there are some really small << H >> signs - use the arrow signs to navigate to the new blogs (i.e. previous and next), and use H to return to the blog "home" page, which lists the recent entries normally.

Hope this helps, and enjoy your reading. One final disclaimer - this blog does not have a spell checker, and I am lazy and don't proofread that well. So please forgive me in advance for all the bad grammer and spelling.

Published: Tuesday, 1 June 2004

11:31 PM - Wildlife night

Couple 'a cool things happened tonight. First, while coming home from a walk / ice cream, we saw yet again a small fox kit. Now, I don't know if this is our standard fox or not, since it was on a road about 2 miles from the normal place we see the other fox kit (and we tend to see that fox every 3 nights or so, always walking around in the road - almost hit him once, and now drive very slowly). But the behavior seemed familiar - you see the eyes in the shoulder, then as you approach the fox trots into the road. This time (s)he outdid himself, however. First, said kit had a rabbit in its teeth - the rabbit seemed about half the size of the fox. And when it ran into the road, it then decided to trot (no hurrry!) down the double yellow line for about 100 feet, as we followed 30 feet behind. It wandered over to the other side of the road, stopped and stared at us, then doubled back along the shoulder towards the car. I rolled down my window and watched it from about 20 feet away, and then finally left it so it could eat dinner.

Then later tonight G found a great moth - a prize to anyone identifying it (leave a comment). The moth, of which you only get "underside" views, has a wingspan of about the width of my (male) hand (10 cm) - i.e. darn big moth, but not in the Luna category. I got several photographs:

Really cool antenna system, and really scary body. Whoever identifies this moth gets a free trip to Saskatoon, SK sometime this winter!

Published: Wednesday, 2 June 2004

12:53 pm - Moissanite

OK, time for a truly random topic. It is time to check in on the state of artificial or imitation diamonds. Until recently the solution was cubic Zirconia. CZ, as long as it is clean and unscratched is indeed mightly hard to distinguish by eye from a diamond. However, it has several weaknesses - it is softer (harder than glass, but less than, say, sapphire) and it's index of refraction is somewhat lower than diamond. An expert can tell pretty easily, and there are widespread devices that measure thermal conductivity which can tell instantly.

Enter a new artificial gem called Moissanite. Unlike CZ, this stone is virtually indistinguishable from a diamond, including by index of refraction (~2.4) and hardness (9.3). In fact the only reliable method is by using a special thermal conductivity meter. In fact, it is rumored that even as we speak many people think that they have diamonds who really have Moissanite.

In case anyone is interested, here are some links for as long as they work:

That's all.

http://www.jewelrysupply.com/noframes/moissanitescamreport.htm
and http://www.moissanite-stardust.com/moissanite-overview.html
and http://www.tradeshop.com/gems/substit.html

Published: Wednesday, 2 June 2004

11:22 pm - The fox is still around

On my way back from Wegmans I saw the fox kit again. But this time I saw him at a distance, and hence could see where he come from, and why we always seem to see him in the road. Pure and simple, as my car approached from a distance he was lying down in the middle of my lane in the road. As I approached he slowly got up and then trotted into the bushes as I went by. I looked at the spot where he had been - nothing there - so he wasn't eating something there, etc - just taking a rest! Not a survival strategy. He mom was supposed to teach him this stuff - hope she is still around..

Did yardwork tonight - after moving tree branches for 1 1/2 hours I logged the exercise into my palm and found "you can still eat 1150 calories today and still meet your goal" - and this after dinner. Well, I celebrated with about 450, and declare the day a success.

K - a reminder - DO HOTELs then email me!

Published: Thursday, 3 June 2004

11:27 pm - Sailing, finally...

By 5:30 AM, the sun was out and several wrens were singing their hearts out. GOOD MORNING, ISN'T IT A FINE DAY? GEE, I THINK ITS A GREAT DAY. HELLLLLOOO! YOU, THE SLEEPING ONES - WAKE UP. RISE AND SHINE! Along with about 50 other birds with essentially the same message. Urr - where am I? And boy, aren't those birds loud? Hmmm. Grrr. Oh gee, I seem to be in a tent - does that make sense? Did I go to sleep in a tent? Boy are those birds loud - this can't be a dream...

Here we lie in a tent at the yacht club, where we crashed last night at 11, and not wanting to get up at such a silly hour in the morning, if you call this morning. Well, the birds weren't going away, but I did have a pillow to stuff my head in. Finally awoke at 8:15 to the cell phone ringing - it's K, worried that "I may not be awake yet", and should he come down to race? Oh yeh, I think - that's why I'm here - I knew there was a reason...

I walked down the the waterfront, and there was a nice, gentle SSE wind at about 6mph - perfect for the first sail of the year. We set up the boat and it looked a bit windier out, so I put on a spray top. K did not, because, (as he put it) - "I don't get wet like you do, since I am out on trapeze, and only my legs get soaked". Well, once we were on the water the wind had suddenly (out of nowhere) built into the upper teens and occasional forays into the lower 20s. Since I was "getting my sea legs", we delayed launching the genoa, during which (when K was NOT on trapeze), he got soaked head to toe. He thanked me for this bracing experience, but wisely didn't complain too much, since he knows I get this all the time while he is staying dry on the wire. Finally the genoa goes out, the boat takes off, and we are launched for the season. We meet up with out tuning partner (S and W), and we sail for a bit - more survival than pairs tuning, but there we were anyways. On the first tack K (my crew) looks back and notices that in S's boat the "pointy end is no longer up". The centerboard was pointing towards the sky instead - not fast. They climb on the boat, struggle, and finally have it ready to right. However (and this is normal, unfortunately) the sail, though horizontal on the water's surface, was upwind, and sure enough, as soon as they righted the boat it promptly capsized on top of them. 30 seconds later they are back where they started, if you don't count their personal energy level.

This time they try to right it with the infamous "flying waloosa" technique - more amusing to watch than describe. S on the centerboard, belly down, reaching his arms to W, who is standing on the gunwhale and leaning backwards. Fun, but didn't seem to be working well. Looked more relaxing for S then for W, in the meanwhile.

Enter K the frogman. K takes off the trapeze harness, I sail behind the capsized boat, and splash in he goes. He later told me that the lake is not very warm :-). With three their boat rights and stays that way. I regain my crew, and S sails back into shore to put on a wetsuit - he was quite cold, but still was "talking sense" so was presumed not very hypothermic.

20 minutes later they came back out (this time with better attire) and we had a good tuning session in the decreasing breeze - upper teens quickly turned to a wonderful 12-15, then 8, then 6 then... 0. We paddled in.

Oh yeah, minor thing - during this period I was steering upwind coming out of a tack and the "feel" on the hiking stick felt really light. And worse yet, I moved it and nothing happens to the boat's course. Hmm - a quick look confirms my suspicions - it is no longer attached to the tiller and the boat is steering itself (and sure 'nuff, is presently thinking that another tack would be fun). I dive in an grab it in time, so no flips for us. Now, about that boat maintenance program...

Came home, ate dinner, then did some yardwork. I then went running (3 miles, zone 3, i.e. heartrate 130 - 148, which is simple, aerobic for me), and went to Wegman's.

All told, it feels that slowly everything is starting to fall into place, and that we are making ground on winning back the house mess, the yard, and our lives. Next challange on deck - my Mom goes into surgery this week. MAJOR surgery, which has us all a bit scared. K my sister (sorry, too many K's around) will attend, and I will be on deck, handling logistics as things come up. And after that, we have to get serious about planning Russia.

Speaking of Russia, we haven't forgotten you guys in St. Pete's, and N, thanks for your comments! And N and T, we will call you sometime soon! I know that our part is easy - we just show up, but you guys need to do the planning thing. So we will talk.

So never a dull moment here, although a few dull moments would actually be quite welcome. There is lots of other stuff going on, but I will save it for another time.

Finally, about the mystery moth. K, my dear sister, writes the following: "that moth a few entries ago is a polyphemus, one of the largest species in the country." And boy, now that I know that, I really wish I had gone to the other side of the window and looked at the top of the wing - for a link to what the full moth looked like, see http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/mpages/polyphemus_moth.htm. Thanks, Kath!

Published: Monday, 7 June 2004

9:15 Crazy, crazy week

Gosh this has been a busy week - probably sets some sort of a record, and not the sort of record one want to set. I am sorry I have not blogged sooner - there was simply no time or opportunity.

On Tuesday, I went to my Mom's house to drive her to the airport. This went uneventfully, but still took essentially all day. But it was a major accomplishment, delivering Mom to Mayo (a several hour flight away) before she became so sick she couldn't fly. And it really was "touch and go" - I didn't know if she was going to make it until the actual day she flew out and I got her on the plane. Literally just in time, I suspect.

G also left for NJ to see her Mom and siblings on Tuesday, to return this last Sunday. So Wednesday was my only night to do just about everything around the house - pack for a trip myself, clean the house, and veg a very little bit.

On Thursday I flew to Washington on a 6:30 AM flight, which meant waking up at 4:30 am. The trip went fine (long days, though), and I returned on Friday night just before midnight. I quickly dropped into bed and....

...woke up next morning at 7 to drive to a 5Km running race on the runway at Rochester International (yeh, right) Airport. Yup, you guessed it, they close one of the runways, and you run up and down it, for a total of 3.1 miles. I ran with my sailing partner K. The race went well, and I did better than I probably had any right to. My goal was to run at an average pace of 8 minutes a mile or better. I achieved that goal and then some (which I will attribute to the really flat course). The stats are as follows (I will leave off the graph this time):

Mile Split Tot.T Ave Pace Ave HR
0.5 3:41 3:41 7:20 129 (bad HR connection)
1.0 3:55 7:36 7:48 172
1.5 3:55 11:32 7:55 172
2.0 3:59 15:31 7:53 175
2.5 3:59 19:30 8:00 177
3.0 3:41 23.12 7:14 182
3.1 0:20 23:31 6:17 187

Average resultant pace was 7:35 per mile. I finished in the top third of the runners overall, and in the top half of my age group. So I can't complain. And most importantly, I didn't injure, although I was pretty useless until about 3 pm that afternoon.

In the late afternoon I packed, gathered my "boat tools" and went down to the club. I pitched a tent, worked on the boat (FD's always need something to be fixed, and today was forestay takeup and removing the (unused) traveler cars. I went to Wegmans for dinner, and sat outside eating and drinking a glass of wine (it was about 20C out). I followed this with an Abbot's cone, and life was good. I tented and awoke to birds.

On the mother front - on Thursday (while I was in Washington) they amputated my Mom's right leg. A tragic thing, yes, but it was absolutely clear that this was the right thing to do. She came out of the operation and immediately began to feel better than she had been. And being my Mom, she has already started to "move on" with her new situation. Long recovery ahead, but in some ways she is going to (hopefully) be healthier than she has in the last three years.

Back to Sunday. Wind south at 17 - good stiff breeze. A bit more than I would really desire, but the boat is still controllable in these conditions as long as nothing unexpected (read: helm or crew mistakes) happens. We got out into the lake, unfurled the genoa, and ZOOM, we took off (the FD is the fastest 2-person boat upwind of all the international sailboat classes). We settled in (K leaning back on trapeze and starting to relax) when BANG, the sky fell. K describes it as "I didn't really know what was happening - it was as though either the genoa became uncleated or the trapeze broke, but then I noticed I will still attached to trapeze - but really close to the water, in fact, sort of dragging through the water". Well, I had a better view, and it was immediately clear that the genoa halyard broke - indeed, the genoa itself came down. Well, the genoa keeps the mast from falling backwards and down - normally there is about 250 Kg of force (and yes, I know, a KG is a unit of mass, not force, but you don't really want newtons, do you...no, I didn't think so...) on the genoa halyard. So the mast starts falling down. There is a forestay, however as a backup in this very event. This came into play (indeed this was one of the things I had fixed the day before), and the mast remained standing - just leaning back about three feet further than normal. There was some deck damage as it tried to pull out, however, and of course the genoa halyard itself disappeared into the mast, so I get to thread it through again (not my favorite job - takes lots of time, which is what I don't have).

Refusing to get depressed about this, we took out a pair of Lasers instead, and enjoyed a wonderful practice session / sail. Stayed out for several hours, and it was glorious.

So this week's back to normal for a change. We will try again to plan Russia, and apologize for ignoring this. But as you see I have some good excuses, and this is what primarily matters :-)

Published: Monday, 14 June 2004

9:13 pm - the Bird Seed Lady

In the movie "Amile" one of the continuing threads of the film concerns the great mystery on why a particular man's photographs keep showing up in instant photo booths. As the film continues this issue never seems to be resolved, until finally near the end, "aha" and the story is known.

Well, I have had my own mystery. As I take walks during lunch at work, a find numerous small areas of birdseed on the sidewalk. Sometimes there is none, and sometimes there is a bit every 10 meters or so. Curious.

Who puts this here? Is it sort of a community thing, does the town do it, does a man with an occasionally leaky bicycle basket ride home from Wegmans and leak seed? I figured I would never know for sure.

But yesterday, I return from a walk, cross the street, and meet an old woman slowly waddling down the sidewalk with her cart - going to Wegmans, it seems. Then she stops, reaches into her bag, and sprinkles bird seed. Ah - the bird seed lady! I address her as such-- "Oh wow - its the bird seed lady!" She is not surprised at all - as though I was the twentieth person to call her that today. She simply replies "well, someone has to do it - I don't know what the birds would do without me". I smile, thanked her, and walked on, not telling her that the birds would do just fine as it happens. But she is happy, and the city has thousands of European sparrows living off welfare. As a result, the sun keeps rising each morning - one more person to keep the world spinning.

Published: Thursday, 17 June 2004

11:34: Gift card guys - say it ain't true!

I just got back from Wegmans, and saw something that was rather amusing. First of all, remember - it is past 11 pm, which pretty much puts and upper age limit on who tend to shop at that time (myself excepted, obviously). Well, I look down the card isle - normally this isle is completely, 100% women, picking through the cards. It is a NO GUY area - guys aren't found in feminine hygiene, and they aren't found in the card isle. Just one of those simple facts of life that keeps the world balanced in a a way.

Well, tonight, I was very surprised to find 6 or so late-teen GUYS there, picking out Father's day cards, with occasional glanced to the side to ensure no one was watching. Still, this just somehow didn't seem natural. Then I noticed that there were two or three woman - were these the "guards", ensuring that their boyfriends (or male subjects in general) were doing the "right thing" and buying cards? I looked for enforcement devices - you know, whips, cattle prods, stun guns - couldn't find any. So I guess I'll never know if the guys were then on their own volition of not....

Published: Saturday, 19 June 2004

11:50 pm - Sailing, Russians and life

This last weekend for me at least revolved around boats. Since last week we had so effectively put the FD out of commission, this Saturday was devoted to fixing it so it works again. It was a good day for boat work - rather cool, too windy to really want to sail. In general everything went fine, repair wise - still some things to do, but we got to where we needed to.

Sunday we raced two races, albeit with only two boats (the third main boat is out with an injury for the next month). We won both races, but believe me, we certainly tried hard to lose the first one - TWICE. After the first beat yours truly called a very controversial jibe on the first reach. Reaches are not supposed to require jibes, and sure enough, I regretted it as soon as I had done it - just don't ask.... Once we got pointed in the right direction we sailed a rather good set of reaches, and made up our distance, passing the other boat on the second reach. We then sailed a terrible beat in the shifty westerly winds (10 gusting 17). As a boat in another class behind us observed - we seemed to be going very fast, just not in the right direction! WE redeemed ourselves on the run, catching perhaps 20 boat lengths in a wonderful run, planing all the way. We rounded outside the other boat, but they had a genoa jam and we sailed to a win.

The second race went much better - the shifts seemed to be hitting well, our boatspeed was pretty good, and we didn't flip, despite a spectacular effort on my part when I caught the tiller in the end of the boom, wrapped around the outhaul - gee couldn't have done that if I tried. It took two hands to get it back as I steered by kicking the tiller with by feet. K was wondering why the boat was going in random directions as it tipped and spilled him all over,but her has figured out I don't do this for jollies.

So that was the weekend. One other point of news that has not made this blog yet. To make a long story short, G and I agreed to host an exchange student this coming school year, through the ATAD program. Once paired with a student ("M", sorry I can't list it out), we were immediately disappointed that the local school said that it had enough students for this year and that we were out of luck. This was a major bummer. So last Monday I wrote up a "fact sheet" on why the school should change its mind, enlisted help from the ESL teacher, who knows us well, and made an appointment with the principal. I don't know if any of this was necessary or not, but the next day we were told that they changed their minds. So thanks to whatever god(s) there are up there - M will come in the fall, barring other unforeseen obstacles. We have already exchanged emails with her and I think we all will have a fun and productive year together. (And if you ever read this M, "Hi" :-) !!)

Oh yeah - I went running tonight, and had another small "first" - I ran 5 miles (8 km) non-stop. It was not a very fast 5 miles (50:11), but it was not designed to be - the rules I had set were to stay in heartrate zone 3, which is 130 - 148 for me. And most of the time this meant between 145 and 149 or so, as I don't naturally run slow. So I am happy, and it leaves me beliving that 10 km (just the run, not the race) is possible.

Time for bed.... 'night all!

Published: Tuesday, 22 June 2004

fdsailor.blog-city.com — June 2004

7:42 pm - The mystery of the missing forks

We just can't explain it - one of those true mysterys in life. In everyday circulation, we keep 8 each of salad forks, dinner forks, teaspoons, soup spoons and knives. The suits our ice cream and midnight snack habits very well. Except that rec

We just can't explain it - one of those true mysterys in life. In everyday circulation, we keep 8 each of salad forks, dinner forks, teaspoons, soup spoons and knives. The suits our ice cream and midnight snack habits very well. Except that recently 4 dinner forks have disappeared. WE can't find them anywhere, and no ransom notes have appeared. Very mysterious!

Published: Tuesday, 22 June 2004

fdsailor.blog-city.com — May 2004

1:21 PM

No, contrary to some rumors, I have not disappeared from the face of the earth - just been rather busy. And no, I do not intend this to foreshadow a decrease in blog rate. I will write again tonight (promise...)

Instead, I'll leave a treat - one of my favorite poems. Those who know me well will agree that I can really associate with this poem - it describes what I think about nature better than I could, certainly:

I love the accomplishments of trees,
How they try to restrain great storms
And pacify the very worms that eat them.
Even their deaths seem to be considered.

I fear for trees, loving them so much.
I am nervous about each scar on bark,
Each leaf that browns. I want to
Lie in their crotches and sigh,
Whisper of sun and rains to come.

Sometimes on summer evenings I step
Out of my house to look at trees
Propping darkness up to the silence.

When I die I want to slant up
Through those trunks so slowly
I will see each rib of bark, each whorl;
Up through the canopy, the subtle veins
And lobes touching me with final affection;
Then to hover above and look down
One last time on the rich upliftings,
The circle that loves the sun and moon,
To see at last what held the darkness up.

("A Final Affection" by Paul Zimmer in Crossing to Sunlight. University of
Georgia Press, 1996, p. 79)

Published: Monday, 3 May 2004

10:50 pm

It is snowing out - or is it hail? Kernels of white, well, chunks falling out of the sky. Certainly doesn't look like snow - more like white rock salt. Hmm. Perhaps embarassed snow (for falling in May), or perhaps scared snow (since it is bound to be unpopular coming at this late date). This is supposed to happen in April, not May. Gee, just 3 days ago we were walking around in shorts and t-shirts, as it was 25 C outside. Now it is +3 - go figure.

So where have I been? Well, let us count the days - really quickly now.... Last Thursday night I went to an orchestra concert (we orignially had a pair of tickets for this coming Saturday, but Gwendolyn will be at a weekend of "sewing camp", so I split it into two Thursday tickets for myself) - very good, well performed, and good music. I'll spare you the details.

Friday we went skating, and it went pretty well. Then we just chilled after the work week, and went to bed early. Saturday morning we got up early and went up to the lakeshore to go birding - Spring migration is just starting in earnest. I think we did just great - by noon we were up to 54 species, and that with very few warblers and ducks. And I do love warblers! Magical little colored birds, no more than 11 cm long, often with amazing songs. Pure magic. Just add water and bugs and you get instant wonderment.

On Saturday afternoon I travelled to pick my Mom up in Buffalo airport. She is returning from the Mayo clinic (they were looking after her knee), and is now going home. Boy, that poor woman. The good news is that she has several braces that stabilize her right knee so she can hobble along with a walker. But given her shoulders are also really bad with arthritis, even using the walker hurts with each step. Either way, she is happy to be back home. To make life easier, we attached a basket to the front of her walker - she puts things in there, goes where she wants to, then takes them out again. It was sort of funny - at one point she was sitting on the side of the bed picking up all her cloths with this long "pickker upper" gizmo and placing them in the basket. She then walked out to the kitchen and put everything in the wash. Another amusing moment (for me, not her) occured after we had eaten our Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner. I was in another room reading and heard a "splat" followed by a "darn!". I came to see what had happened, and it just looked like one of those pictures they given you in grade school and then tell you to write a story about it.... She had put the chicken box (with leftover food) in her basket, waked over to the trash can, picked it up, given it a toss and... missed. Splat. Damn. Anya liked it, though - we removed the chicken bones and she took care of the rest In fact, I sometimes wonder if the whole thing was intentional to feed the dog...

Published: Monday, 3 May 2004

11:14 pm

OK, I'm tired of reading the articles - let's design a voting machine tonight. I don't understand why it is so hard.

First a quick history review. Current voting machines seem to all have their problems. The ones we use in this part of NY state seem to work fine, but are old and not manufactured anymore. Some other ones involve people punching holes in cards - seem to be prone to failures, change of mind and "hanging chads". In Optical readers reading pencil and pen marks are also not very compatible with people, who can't read, follow instructions, or push hard enough when writing.

Enter electronic voting machines. The main concern here is one of fraud. There seem to be several problems, at least with the one machine made by Diebold. It is an all electronic machine that records the votes, and then at the end dials a central center and downloads the results. Yep, sure enough they are tried this out in several places and found several problems - duh - it seems any peer review could have anticipated them. Let's name a few - several machines crashed and it was unclear if they forgot all of their votes or not. They all dialed the same place at the same time to download votes, and guess what - the phone was busy. Gee, like no one thought of that... And then there is the theoretical (at least) possibility of "hacking" such machines to bias the results. Gee, that seems like a reasonable concern. Indeed, one university class in computer security decided (as an exercise) to try to take a similar machine and write some hard to find code that biased the voting if a certain sequence of keys were entered. Well, they at least sort of succeeded.

In summary, although the hacking fear is probably overblown, the lack of printed, hardcopy records is proving to be a significant shortcoming if the darn things crash, or there is a power failure, or....

OK, let's start our 10 minute design. Well, first, we will need a hardcopy record. The voter needs to be able to verify their vote (preferably off the hard copy), but is not allowed to get a receipt themselves (otherwise they could be bribed to vote a certain way and the briber could ask to see the receipt for payment - with no receipt there can be no verification, so bribery or other pursuasion does not pay). And we need this thing to be pretty hack resistant.

I would separate the overallall function into two collaborating machines, made by two, independant manufacturers. The first machine translates a vote entry into a marking on a record. This marking should be robust, so let's say we use a combination system - a punch in the paper, as well as an ink mark in the punched area (i.e. a black dot with the center punched out). To make things really sure I would also encode "no vote made" as a punch/mark by itself - so every row lets say has 1 of N marked. This is all the first machine has to do.

The resultant paper vote is then rolled into a adjacent machine. The purpose of this machine is to read the vote (use optical means to see the ink and either optical or mechanical means to read the hole). If they don't agree, an error is flagged, and a human somhow resolves it (such as by loading more ink into the first machine). If they agree, the results are displayed on a screen and the voter hits a "confirm" button, which punches a (redundant) "confirm" marking. This machine also tallys the votes (advances machanical counters as well as electronic ones). If the voter made a mistake, they could void the vote, and try again.

In this way at the end of the day you have records of the votes (like in the current system), failsafe mechanical counters (these don't clear in a crash or power failure), and still an electronic record to downloading to the election site - or the numbers could be called in as per current technology. Statistical cross checks of paper records vs recorded votes (done by yet a third manufacturer) could be performed. It is rather hard to hack this system because most attacks would require both machines to have to same bad code - if one was compromised, the displayed results (from the paper tape) would not match the entered vote, and a human (the voter) would be likely to see this. And if the final tally / reporting software was compromised, you still have the correct record (made by a different manufacturer) to perform the statistical audit against.

There - design done. Why is is so hard??? Am I missing something?

Nite nite.

Published: Monday, 3 May 2004

10:31pm

Saw the fox kit again (this is our fourth sighting). (S)he always seems to be by the road, but of course statisticly that is a useless observation, since we see him at night when driving - where else could we see him? But then again, by political standards we could proclaim - "clearly this fox lives in the road's shoulder, since 4 out of 4 times it was seen there". Sort of like

We went to ballet again tonight - or rather the other people in the class were doing ballet, and I was randomly moving body joints with my head rotated 90 degrees so I could see what the instructor was doing, somehow translated the her movements (she was facing me from the side), get left and right figured out, and then try to do the same with the correct body part. Needless to say, this was not a real-time exercise - my phase lag was approaching 360 degrees.

Afterwards one of the students (Nadia, and yes, surprise, from Russia) had brought her 5 (?) year old daughter. She had been coloring during class. I went through her coloring book (which was teaching spelling), and named off about 2/3s of the various things in the book (bird, river, man, woman, etc). Luckily I didn't have to spell them, although that is certainly one thing that is much easier in Russian than in English. Afterwards we introduced Natasha (the girl's name) to Anya - she liked it.

Apparently my Mom and her occasionally visiting home helper cleaned out drawers today. Gee, this hasn't been done for decades. She claimed to find calanders from 1973 and other assorted things that haven't been used in decades. We have (is anyone surprised) very messy drawerswith random contents, and none (other than the silverware drawer) have "themes". Maybe some day they can throw out the florescent light tubes that have probably been in the closet since I was in 6th grade... (Hi Mom...)

I'll end with a true non-sequatur - whoever invented angel food cake should be knighted or something... Yumm.

Published: Tuesday, 4 May 2004

10:55 pm

One more thing - I can't believe I did this. My group at work (most of them considerably younger than I am, I may say, and one just finished a marathon this last weekend) pressured me into "running" (for me more like "run / walking") in a local 5.6 km "corporate challange" race. I can't tell if the main point of persuasion was ET and AM's smiling faces or the BBQ promised afterwards. May 27th. Goal - don't injure. And guys - I'll thank you now, but later I am not so sure...

Now on to oboe.

Published: Tuesday, 4 May 2004

11:33 pm

Tonight was a slow, mellow night. I took Anya for an hour walk, followed it with the now traditional "twist kiddie cone", then came home. I was bummed that West Wing, the only (and I mean only) television show I watch was preempted for some sort of special related to the ending of "Friends", which I have never watched. So instead I started making a Word table (with sound clips) to help me learn the songs of the 36 warbler songs. Learning the first hundred bird songs is not actually that hard, but some warblers can be tough to impossible. So in this particular case, just listening to the CDs does not cut it - we need written analysis and cross comparisons if I am going to have a chance.

BTW, if anyone out there is interested in learning bird songs, I highly recommend the Peterson Field Guides Birding By Ear (Eastern / Central), followed by the same series More Birding by Ear. Peterson publishes other bird CDs with different titles, and you want the ones I mentioned. The first guide is very good - people at all oriented to this sort of thing should have no problem learning at least 60 species, and as many as 100. The second picks up from there and adds another 100 species. But before learning bird song it of course is best to just look at some, and right now (May in general) is THE time to do this. But you have to be willing to get up in the morning. If anyone wants, BTW, just express interest and we can make it happen, or I can tell you what you need to know. Even have loaner binocs. Sorry, dear Russians, getting together with you is harder and more involved...

Published: Thursday, 6 May 2004

11:39 pm

This afternoon the weather was absolutely beautiful - about 23C outdoors, sunny, light wind. It was not helping my concentration at work (I have been doing system design and investigation, and now it is time to "dump my brain" onto paper, and I was having "start the term paper" procrastination problems), so I hatched a plan. Since I knew it would be raining in the evening, I traded an hour in the afternoon for an hour in the evening, and went for a walk in the woods during the afternoon. I then worked for an extra hour something (until 7) while it rained. It was a good deal.

Dinner was gourmet pizza (yumm...) then I went to an orchestra concert. The first couple of pieces were quite nice, but the final piece, Sibellius Symphony #2 was just wonderful. I know, this is an acqured taste, but I seem to have acquired it. The second movement is just haunting in a way, and the development and climax of the final movement (especially as they performed it last night) was a wonder to behold! Glorious glorious!

Driving up our hill at night in the rain was another "dodge the frogs" experience - no snakes this time, and no fox, however.

Published: Thursday, 6 May 2004

12:14 pm

This seems to be the day of strange things happening - here's what's going on:

When I walked into work this morning there was a Rochester Water Department truck parked along one of the major roads. About 10 meters from the truck I saw a yellow box with an antenna sitting in the grass - I stopped and looked at it - yup, interesting, no markings. Wonder what that's for. Hmmm... Further down the road there was a Water department worker pointing at the ground with an elaborate piece of equipment looking something like a weed whacker. I took an educated guess and asked him "do I assume that this is some sort of a metal detector used to look for pipes?" He indicated it was. I then asked about the other box - he said it was a receiver of some sort - it was placed over a place where they KNEW there was a water main, and then the thing he was holding transmitted a signal into the pipes - the yellow box received the signal and then used the antenna to transmit its findings to what it heard. "Great," I said "does it work well?". He indicated that it did not work very well at all, and that in the end he ended up using a set of divining rods to actually find the pipes, and just used the gadget to determine if they were the right pipes. With this said, he then went back into the truck and got his divining rods - think of two pieces of coat hanger about 50 cm long, each bent at right angles to form a 15 cm "handle". He held these two, one in each hand, with the "pointers" initially pointing straight forward. He then walked from the curb towards the sidewalk, and sure 'nuff, at one point the wands spread out. He then repeated this (his thumbs were up and hence unable to manipulate the rods) and repeated the result. He then took his spray paint, painted a line on the sidewalk, walked down the road several meters and repeated the find / paint.

I have seen this before, tried it myself, etc - it obviously (to me) is a con, but it is interesting on how straight-faced and earnest the workers I have seen employ it pull it off!

<Wrote this text at 9:30 am> I then got into work and tried to log on. Last night they changed our account structure and as a result much of my PC does not work - or rather all my personal settings are lost and I cannot get to some key network drives I need. So I dialed the help desk, and am listening to "on hold" music as I write this - so far we are 15 minutes and counting. I expect they are having a really special morning bonding with their customers.

<Back to 12 pm> Well, as it turns out they eventually got back to me in several hours, by which time I had asked around and fixed the problem by myself. But as it happens, something else had happened which was really funny.

Like good engineers, we like to play tricks on each other. And heaven help you if you go on vacation - if you are the "right" person, you never know what you will return to. Well, here's what they did to poor RF, who went away for a week:

The materials were easy - 1033 balloons, 4 pounds(!) of glitter, and lots of labor.
The method was easy - pour some glitter into a balloon, inflate (use a compressed air hose)
The logistics were less easy - where to store 1033 balloons - it takes quite a few weeknights to inflate all of them?

The answer for storage was to bag them in large trash bags - store some in the cubicle itself, and others in just about any closet they could find. Last night they emptied all of the bags into the poor guys cubicle - they had to extend it towards the ceiling with plastic wrap to hold them all.

This morning said victim walked in and explored what used to be his cube. He eventually popped a balloon - no one could have predicted what would happen.... The first balloon popped, sending glitter flying in every direction. Well, the glitter has sharp edges, and popped some of the adjacent balloons. A chain reaction ensued, throwing glitter in every direction (it is currently "all over" the entire lower level of out building, since it sticks to shoes and clothing, etc). Within several seconds hundreds of balloons had popped. There were several other chain reactions as the remainder were popped.

There is (at least as this is written) a web site about this now - a must see, especially the first page (the second page takes a long time to load). It is at: http://home.rochester.rr.com/akotlarz/bobcube.html - but be prepared to laugh!

Published: Friday, 7 May 2004

10:53 PM

After work took Anya for a walk, ate dinner, then went skating (G is away for the weekend on a "quilting retreat" - we call it "sewing camp"). On the way back saw the fox kit (probably up to 5 kg by now) on OUR PROPERTY! The other four times we saw it it was about 1 mile away. Anya saw it too and got very excited - we had to have a little talk about fox kits, and that she is not to try to find it (luckily she is pretty good about staying in the yard).

It was wonderful today also (about 16C), but tonight it is expected to get down to about 1, with frost warnings for "inland areas and higher elevations" - sounds like us!

Published: Friday, 7 May 2004

11:04 pm

Gee, I can see a trend showing here - on weekends I actually have LESS time to write, not more. And I thought this weekend would have a luxury of time - yeh, right!

<Speaking of yeh, right - in how many languages do you have two positives make a negative...>

On Friday night I took Anya for a very muddy (but wonderful) walk, and then practices ice skating. Things went pretty well - making progress.

Saturday was a sort of busy day in a social sense. It started quietly with my weekend trolly trail bird walk. I wasn't expecting much because it was quite windy (the birds don't bother to come out, and even if they did I wouldn't be able to sense their movement, since the eye latches on to movement, and if all the leaves are moving you find nothing), but I did come up with about 35 species. Then in the early afternoon one of my Russian friends (going to school here) came over with her dad, who is visiting for her graduation. Now normally visiting Russians who only speak Russian (given I don't speak Russian) come over and we smile at eachother a lot. Not this time! He had questions - lots of questions. So with his daughter serving as interpreter, we talked and toured the house for over an hour. Questions about how it is heated, what happends when the electricity goes off, why aren't our houses made of cement blocks given that is cheaper (which it isn't here), why is our house sooo darn, well, BIG for the two of us? All great questions. It will be fun to let G loose at him for dinner some time - they'll have a blast together once they can actually TALK the same language.

Then I went to another friends Bday party, which was good, although I got pretty "socialed out". That evening I was not good for much, but I did take a brief visit to the gym and give my leg muscles fair warning that in a couple of weeks they would need to carry me (hopefully running much of the time) for 5+ km. So I ran .25 mi, walked 1/16, ran 1/4, walked 1/16. etc until I had run 1 1/4 miles. And stretched a lot. Hopefully in the next week I can be up to run/walk 2.5 miles, then I'll start working on the continuous run stuff.

ON Sunday morning I originally planned to go birding early, but woke up to rain and went back to sleep. Around 9 am I work up, got dressed (a useful feature if you're going to go out) and drove to the lakeshore (Ontario) for birding, since the rain had stopped. I birded for about 2 hours, by which time I had found about 46 species of birds. Later during the day, G was returning from quilting camp, and stopped at Montezuma. I was cleaning house, so we both put on our headsets (she on cell phone), and we talked continuously while she birded. Pretty amusing, and if we combined our two lists, we get to about 70 species, which is really cool. Her best bird was a Snowy Egret. Mine was a American Redstart.

We then went skating. For most of the session it was uneventful. During the final "stroking" class, G fell while skating backwards and sprained her hand (the one that had surgery a month ago). It hurt a lot and she was really pissed that she decided she didn't need to wear her wrist guard given her wrist was finally feeling better. She is going to be OK, but it was a bad way to end the night.

Later on, I find out that my Mom is not necessarily doing well. I will have to learn the details tomorrow, but I might get an express trip to visit her. I feel so sorry for what she is going through - her life is quite hard right now. But on the other hand I wish this would resolve itself one way or the other, and I fear we are getting the other.

Thanks N and T for your Russia planning help- the enthusiam you show for our visit warms our hearts - we wish we could spend months there visiting. We will start working out the details. G is talking about possibly extending our trip by a week because there is soooo much to do and visit, but we will see. Either way, we are looking forward to a really awesome trip and can't wait to see you guys!

Nite nite!

Published: Sunday, 9 May 2004

12:48 PM

OK, actually talked to my Mom, and she is quite chipper. Alert level down to Yellow. Anyone that could be as emphatic as she was couldn't possibly be that sick: "No, I don't need you to come here right now, I am FINE. Worry about something else!"

During lunch I went for a walk down East Av - it is warm (about 26), partly sunny, and just a WONDERFUL day out there. The trees are in that state where most leaves are out in varying stages, but with the light yellow green of spring. Other trees are flowering in whites, pinks and yellows. There are flower buds on the sidewalks. Birds are singing and setting up their households. The lilacs are out in shades of white to red to lavender to violet. The air smells like flowers, like spring, like life. A beautiful time of year! Life is good.

Published: Monday, 10 May 2004

11:07 PM

Tonight instead of my normal walk (which is about 3.5 km), I did a combination of walk / run. Anya was a bit confused as to why I sometimes seemed to be chasing her - she didn't think it was supposed to work like that. I would catch up to her and tell her "go on" and she would shoot ahead again, sort of looking back at me as though to say "what is this - boot camp?" I walked for a while then did a 2 min run / 2 min walk/2R/2W/2R/5+W/4R/2W/4W/4W/2R - since the running was done at what I presume is a bit slower than an 8 minute mile, I ran for a total of about 1.8 - 2 miles.

I still enjoy (and expect I will always enjoy) walking to running - no doubt about THAT. When I run everthing goes by far too fast. There were several trail landmarks that I always look forward to that I didn't even see when running. So this is not really the start of a new thing - more a means to avoid my killing myself when I try to do 6 km of it.

G's wrist is feeling normal again. Expermented with softening some HDPE (if you don't know you don't care) to see if a "wrist brace lite" could be fashioned - moderate success. Polypropolyne (sp?) is the desired material, but is a semicrystalline plastic and... well, never mind...

Published: Monday, 10 May 2004

8:31 pm

Tuesday was uneventful - we played hooky from ballet (hard to get psyched when its wonderful and light outside, and you have spent all day inside. So we pulled weeds in the front yard then went for a short walk. After all walks of course is the obligatory ice cream cone - kiddie cones, of course because we are on a diet :-)

Today was another wonderful day - around 27 degrees, so a bit hot. AFter work we went to Highland park for a picnic dinner before the Lilac festival starts. And OH is it beautiful! If in the area it is highly recommended!

Later tonight after it cools off I will try to get psyched to go running - if not I'll walk. But watching West Wing is the top priority for tonight.

Published: Wednesday, 12 May 2004

11:36 pm

Nope, this "from nothing to 3.5 miles in 3 weeks" running thing is not going to be easy. Realism has set in, goals realigned. Prior to starting this I told myself that this was not about the physical, it was just a matter of willpower. Well, tonight I ran one mile, walked a .1 mile, ran 1 mile, walked 1 mile, and boy was that second mile hard. No, not quite that - I wasn't that much more tired after the second mile (my time was a bit faster and my heartbeat a bit higher), but rather the legs start to give out. Even if "significantly motivated" (insert whatever thought your imagination desired here), my legs in their current condition couldn't do it. "Need more fuel, Captain!". Well, tomorrow's a day off, maybe Friday I'll try 2 miles non-stop. And then again, maybe not.

Walking is more enjoyable. I think I will go to bed.

On a totally different obsession, anyone who wants to read about detecting migrating birds using the NEXRAD network is directed to the tutorial at http://virtual.clemson.edu/groups/birdrad/index.htm. Heck, it is a good tutorial about NEXRAD displays, even if you could care less about birds. In fact you can use them to find tornado components. Nexrad itself can be found at: http://www.wunderground.com/, which is also a pretty good weather site for the US.

Published: Thursday, 13 May 2004

12:23 AM

TGIF day (or rather "yesterday" was, given when I am typing this). A productive week, I guess, if not a bit amorphous. Tonight I have been a lazy person - I skated, but didn't run, and didn't practice oboe. In fact, I really don't even know what I have been doing for the last hour and a half since I got home from skating. Hmm, guess I'll go to bed.

Yesterday K came over - K and I had dinner together with G (Thai - yummm), then hung out, walked, talked about this and that. Life is interesting, but I won't get into that. We did talk about the upcoming sailing season - the tentative plan is to sail FD together, of course, doing morning club racing and at least several of the regattas (Cannonball and Cazenovia, plus with luck one other). In adddition, we will try to get Laser racing working, which will help us develop our individual skills, especially tactical. The details are still TBD. Probably next weekend will be the first weekend we camp at the club, and perhaps set up the boat. It is almost time to start the summer routine, which seems like it is coming too soon, but I am looking forward to it. The first FD racing will probably be Memorial day.

Time flies. Too fast for comfort. About one tenth this speed would feel about right.

Published: Saturday, 15 May 2004

11:12 PM

A couple of cool or amusing things happened today.

First to be mentioned was that we attended Julia K's graduation from Brockport college today, with a BS in Mathematics. Congratulations, Julia! After three years and a scare that you may not be able to finish your degree you have it now!

This evening, after 2 days off (it was supposed to be one, but it didn't work out that way) I went running again. My goal was to run 2 miles continuously regardless of pace, and I achieved that. In fact, although the conditions were unrealistically perfect (indoor track), I exceeded my goal by quite a bit. After running the first 2 miles I felt I could go on more, so I walked 1/8 th mile laps, took my pulse (150 - OK), then started running again. It soon became clear that I could complete the last 1 1/4 miles without stopping, so that is what I did. Total distance: 3.5 miles, total running 3.375 miles, Total time: 31 minutes, 46 seconds. I am very pleased, even if I never meet or exceed this. Of course outdoors in the real world I certainly will not match it, but I have revised my goals for the actual event: Basic Goal: Finish in 45 minutes or less, Desired Goal: Finish without walking, or with a time less than 40 minutes. Really cool, but unlikely goal: finish in 34 minutes.

Next phase expected: disillusionment, although it would be great to skip that step. We will also try to skip the injury phase.

Afterwards I went to Wegmans. I terrorized the deli counter person when I asked her to slice "4 tenths of a pound of meat". She asked what "4 tenths" was - was it less than a half pound? Yes, alas I have seen this before. It is particularly amusing since the scale she weighs things on is calibrated in .01 lb increments. Indeed, she must know from memorization or something at a third is .33 and a half is .5. Well, I told her to add stuff until the display read 0.40 lbs or so. She had a worried look on her face, but nervously she started to slice. As she approached .4, I made encouraging noises. She put another slice on, got to .43, heard the encouraging noises stop, then asked me "is this enough?". I told her it was. AFter getting a 1/2 lbs of something else (no problem there) I then asked for (once again) .4 lbs of salmon, saying "you didn't know there was a test!". Luckily she passed. I decided not or ask for .6 lbs of ham - decided to quite while she was ahead or she might poison it of something. We'll try her again in a few days.

Tomorrow we wake up early and look for those flying feathered things that sit in the trees. It will be fun. Then I will start getting my brain around to sailing season.

Published: Saturday, 15 May 2004

11:17 PM

Well, let's see what's been going on. First, a Sunday summary - birding, sleep, skating, sleep pretty much summarizes the day. We finally ended up with 52 species of birds in the morning. We started with trusty Island Cottage Woods, where we, little by little tallied a pretty respectable list, although due to lots of leaves it took us a lot of effort to actually SEE the birds - quite a few species were only heard. << Digression: which for those who don't follow this particular obsession, hearing birds "counts" if you know what you are hearing, but isn't very satisfying - a really good birder (not me) can reliably list recognize over 250 species of birds by voice alone. Since one of the purposes of birding is to get a feel for where the birds are when, this acheives this purpose, but unless you are listening to a winter wren (or simply "wren" in Eurpope) you don't fall in love with sheer existance of these magical creatures without seeing them!>> After ICW, we drove over to Braddock's bay, where you tend to see some different birds, since there is water there. Well, along the way G noticed some birds just alongside the road in a willow tree. We stopped, and lo and behold, we had found one of those magical "hot spots" where the birds just happen to be. The birds don't seem to care that cars are wizzing by - they just were. After another 45 minutes while not managing to be hit by cars we had found another dozen species. Very cool.

Ice skating was uneventful, which is a good thing, since "events" are usually negative, relating to falls, etc. I worked on edges and waltz-8s - seem to be getting a good handle on them. Still don't have any BI edges, but heck, neither does anyone else.

On Monday I went running - in this case on a dirt trail beside the canal. Distances were unknown, but based on time and heartrate I think I managed to run probably about 3.2 miles at about a 9:30 per minute pace. So there's hope. I walked a couple of miles to cool down and declared success. Success = kiddie baby cone == yum.

AFter far too much internal struggle finally decided to buy myself a heart rate monitor. I will save you all the details about how I picked what I did - in the end I have ordered the Timex Bodylink system, which in addition to the heart rate band also has a GPS gizzy to tell you how far you've gone (and your pace, of course) and a USB link to download your heartrate in detail to your PC for analysis. In case anyone's interested, the prices range quite a bit on these items, so shop around. My final choice was www.bike-run-walk.com - fantastic prices. I don't do gadgets very often (usually try to blame them on G), so spending money on this is sort of scary. But G sounds like she may use this also, so maybe I can make it her fault! :-)

Ballet tonight was sort of blah. I am getting about as much out of this as I am putting into it, which is not much. I think the solution is to put more into it, which means practicing. Hmmm.

Tomorrow one of our Russian friends and her dad, who is visiting from Russia is coming over for dinner. He doesn't speak English, so G will have her work cut out for her. We intend to show him the web - put the keyboard in Russian, put him in front of Google and let him go. If he has never done anything computer before I expect this will be interesting!

Onto another obsession - copying all of my CDs to the computer for storage. I sometime will talk more of the details, but the general project is as follows - some time ago I bought a 160 GB disk drive on special ($79!!!). If all goes well, I plan to copy 300+ CDs to this, either in high quality MP3s (320 kbps) or lossless compression. When this is done, I can do the following at will: a) quickly produce lower bit rate MP3s, WMA, RTA files for palm pilots, iPODs, etc. b) Not have to worry if I scratch a CD, c) (perhaps) someday I could replace the CD player with one of the evolving "play from your computer to your stereo system" boxes - they look like stereo system components, but network to your computer for playing your music collection.

So far I have just been defining the ground rules and process - you really want to get this one right. The actual project is huge, and will probably span over many months, assuming an average rate of 2 CD's per day.

Sorry... I can't help it - I did say this blog was about obsessions, didn't I - you were warned!

Published: Wednesday, 19 May 2004

11:36 pm

Gosh, it's been three days since I have written! That's because I have been at the computer. This apparently has been the social week. On Wednesday night, J's dad (visiting from Russia) and J come over for dinner. I cooked salmon grilled on a cedar plank - it turned out quite well, and was tasty. He doesn't speak Engligh, nor I Russian, so a lot of work for J and G performing translation - otherwise is just listen. J's dad is (it seems to us) a bit atypical - he asks lots of questions, and not quiet in any way, and just sort of begs to be talked to. He also apparently wanders around the city during the day, stopping to talk to people and takes lots of pictures. Fearless. Either way, it was fun, and G got a language workout - just what she needs.

Thursday we went to a friends vocal ensemble concert, which was followed by a party. In my classic styly I avoided any interaction with anyone else by finding a friend of ours that is getting a PhD in anthropology, and asking millions of questions about skull sizes, etc. Another day ending at 11:30 pm.

Tonight had two accomplishements - first and most importatnly, I took my collection of gadgets, set off to Farmington, and ran a 3.5 mile course. If anyone cares, the following circuit is also exactly (to within .03 miles) 3.5 miles - the loop formed by Green Rd (I used to own a house there), Bowerman Rd, Allen-Padgham rd and Hook road. Either way, I succeeded, and had times far better than I have any right to expect - I worked at keeping an even to increasing pace, and pretty well met my goals - since I am proud of it, here are my splits, based on GPS position:

Distance Lap time Av. Pace Av. Heartrate

0.5 4.20 8:34 /mi 160
1.0 4:24 8:49 164
1.5 4:24 8:50 154
2.0 4:20 8:43 157
2.5 4:20 8:41 159
3.0 4:09 8:18 158
3.5 3:52 7:38 161

Overall: 29:52 total time, average pace 8:32 / mile, peak heart rate 179. So I'm allowing myself to gloat a bit,and just ate another chocolate chip cookie.

After this, J's dad came by and we went ice skating together. He enjoyed this a lot, which makes sense since otherwise he was just going to stay home and watch television in a language he doesn't understand. And by the end of the night he remembered quite a lot of the skating he had done 25 years ago. Afterwards, with G as interpreter, I asked him lots of questions that I had from our exchange student experience, such as:

• What freedoms do 17 year old kids really have, and what do they not?
• Do you generally have a clue where your daughter is? (answer, no, but Mom has a better idea...)
• Do Russian parents check up on how their kids homework is coming?
• What happens if you want to kill your spouse - is it OK to do it in front of the kids, or is this just not done

The answers were very interesting, but I'm not telling anyone what they were. The take home answer is that some things are just universal, and other things do differ a bit culture wise (but not as much as our exchange daughter would have us believe).

Oh yeh, forgot an important event, although not a very fun one. My Mom, who has been having continuous problems with an infected knee finally passed over the threshold today and decided for once and for all that it's time to amputate her knee. We all agree that this is the best thing for her health, but still the thought of someone actually making such a decision is hard to bear. I have made all of the necessary arrangements for her, and we are going to do what needs to be done then move on in life.

Finally for the good of the web community, here are my observations so far about the Timex BodyLink system:

• The chest strap - works just fine. As per instructions, you do need to moisen it a bit to ensure contact, unless you are already sweating. Ideally I assume EKG electrode gel would work best, but I just use Aloe Vera gel and it works great. Of course just spitting on it would do as well.
• Watch - connectivity is fine, although interestingly enough it loses contact with the chest strap when I set my wrist on top of my keyboard - presumably some interference thing.
• GPS unit works as advertised - once it locks on it even works in the car at 50 mph, but remember - this advances your odometer on the watch, so don't get impressed by how far you have run! You want to use smoothing, no doubt. Also, when you turn around and walk back on your path (lunchtime walks) it takes 10 seconds for it to determine you turned around, which somewhat messes up your pace. But for gently curving stuff this is a non-issue. One item I still don't quite understand is when the GPS is synched (flashing green light), the watch still takes a minute or two to pick it up - and yes, I did press the "find device" button.
• The data recorder is the coolest thing - a must have. There is an issue, however - the device is rather subject to malfunctions due to static electricity. I called Timex on this (and read the web) and the story is that this is presumably due to Electrostatic Discharge getting into the USB contact, especially when it rubs against cloth (like while running...). You get your name on a list and when they come out with a fix they will exchange the units. In the meanwhile, you load the data to the PC and clear the memory of the unit and this fixes it until next time. Also, don't put it in your pocket, and put some black electrician's tape over the contacts when using it. This all seems true, but even with the tape, and strapped onto the chest strap (i.e. contacts against sweaty skin - not a high static environment) it still reset - not a feature. Next I will try carrying it in a antistatic bag to see if that helps.
• Suggested place to buy: www.bike-run-walk.com - great guy, great service, best prices you will find.

OK, enough obsessing for a day - time for sleep, as it is 12:30 am now...

Published: Saturday, 22 May 2004

6:27 pm

Today was mushroom soup day. I made lots (about 5.5 liters!), so it should last us a while. Of course we don't all eat it at once - instead we take it and package it into a number of 500 ml packages and freeze them. Since it is really yummy in my opinion, here is how I did it - please excuse the stupid english measurements, but that's how this strange country works:

C's Chicken / Mushroom Soup

Makes about 15 servings
189 Kcal / cup with no fat skimming
~ 120 Kcal / cup after fat skimming

Ingredients:
2T Extra virgin olive or canola oil
2T Butter
1 large onion
4-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb Crimini mushrooms
1 lb Shitake mushrooms
(if possible) 3 oz. Porcini mushrooms
6T flour, or enough to make a thick roux
14 cups chicken stock
6 oz vermouth
2 lbs boneless chicken thighs
1T rosemary, finely chopped
2T poultry seasoning
1T pepper
1T parsley
1 teaspoon thyme

Preparation (food processor):
1) slice 1/3 of the mushrooms 4 mm
2) slice 1/3 of the mushrooms 2 mm
3) grate 1/3 of the mushrooms
4) slice onion 2 mm
5) slice chicken 2 mm

Cooking:
1) In large stock pot, heat oil and butter med-high heat
2) Sautee onions 5 min til light golden
3) Add garlic, sautee a bit more
4) Add mushrooms, sautee 5 - 10 minutes
5) When liquid released, add flour, mix to make a roux
6) Add the stock and spices
7) Add the chicken, bring to boil
8) Simmer for 20 minutes

The weather has been wonderful - I think the entire last week in the half has been between 18 and 26. Sometimes it rains, but usually it does not - most everything comes down sort of all at once.

Published: Saturday, 22 May 2004

11:12 pm

Gee, when I look over the times in the evening that I tend to blog, it is pretty consistent. And it is also too late at the same time - I always thing this is going to take 10 minutes, and when I am done I look at the clock and a half hour has past. I guess we'll go back to Saturday evening. Gee, I can't remember what we did on Saturday - must not have been much. We did have Chimay, our friends standard poodle, and Anya's, well, "not quite twin" come to stay for the weekend - her parents were travelling, and we often exchange dogs. Here is a picture of Anya and Chimay together - sort of cute, aren't they?

Well, later that night I took them for a walk on a trail along the canal I often walk on. The plan was to walk most of the way, and run two, brief 1/2 mile "intervals" at a faster pace than usual (7:15 min / mile) to remind me what that feels like and to see if I can do it. Well, it was not to be. Why? It was the "pacer poodles"! In case anyone ever asks, I now know, with GPS and stopwatch accuracy that poodles trot an 8:30 per mile pace - not faster, not slower. They would run ahead, and I would catch up with them. When just running with Anya, this is not a big problem - I just say "Come on!", and she tucks her tail between her legs and trots off ahead of me for a while. But two poodles! Hah! They trot happily along at 8:30 / minute, and short of tripping over them there is nothing to be done about it. So that is what I did.

Sunday was uneventful - mostly cleaning house and reading. For the entire weekend it seems we have been having a series of wonderful thunderstorms. What makes them particularly wonderful is that they are not isolated - for much of the weekend you could always hear distant thunder. When a storm finally passed over us, I always feel the incredible urge to run outside and dance in the rain with the heavens exploding overhead and the rain pelting down... But I digress.

Sunday night I just ran on one of our nearby streets - from our house to the "bed and breakfast" and back is exactly one mile. It was dark, and it was wonderful - again, the always present thunderstorms to the north giving a real show on the horizon. Where I was there was not wind, no rain. Very cool. Then, out of no where (really!) I heard what was wind about 500m away. I told myself that this is probably in advance to coming rain, so I should speed up a bit. Well, it was not wind, but rain. Less than 30 seconds from when I first heard it, I started pouring cats and dogs. My data recorder tells me I held a 7 / mile pace back to the house for the last quarter mile.

Gosh, I really apologize for all this writing about running, especially since I don't particulary love running. But my first (and perhaps only) race is this upcoming Thursday, so after that you will hear less, because I will be spending less time doing it. Looked at another way, three weeks ago I had no plan to run anything, and then suddenly I find I am signed up to race - this usually takes more like 2 months to do right, so I have to be a bit obsessive. So bear with me.

Monday night (we are up to tonight), was my final "full length" training run, around the Green road "course" of 3.5 miles. The temperature was good (about 18C), but the wind was rather strong (10 - 12 M/sec). I tried to make this into an excuse for not running, but it was not convincing. The good news was that I ran the course, and finished with a good time - given the conditions a bit improved from last time. But boy, doing this (for me) is a hard thing. After about the first 1.5 miles, my brain was pretty much continuously telling me "you can stop now - certainly a break wouldn't be unreasonable, and what are you trying to prove, anyways". Just walk for a while - you can blame it on something! After all, you have been running too much lately." On and on, and it never stops. From a sheer willpower thing there are very few things in my life that have taken more sheer determination to persevere - the urge to give up is very strong. And while this is happening, I am not really that tired - heart rate 160, pace 8:40. This goes on until mile 2 has ended (the first 2 miles are very slight downhill). The last 1.5 miles alternate uphill, slight downgrade, up hill again, then flat to the end. True, the uphills are only a 2.5% grade (don't ask, but I know this). Boy can you feel 2.5%! Heartrate up to 172 (this is where I have programmed my watch to beep), and pace drops to below 9:30 per mile (now my watch is beeping in two different ways simultaneously). But only a half mile to go! At the end my lungs can't collect oxygen fast enough, and I start to float several inches above the pavement - a very scary, and I expect dangerous, feeling.

For those interested in statistics, here they are:

Dist. Tot T Lap T Ave. Pace Av. HR
.5 4.07 4.07 8:10 124 Starting off too fast + slight downhill
1.0 8:20 4:13 8:25 156 Flat, downwind
1.5 12:37 4:17 8:38 160 Flat, downwind
2.0 16.51 4:13 8:25 162 Flat downwind
2.5 21:22 4:31 8:56 167 Uphill, into the wind
3.0 25.43 4:20 8:46 169 "" ""
3.5 29:31 3:48 7:36 178 Final pretty flat, anaerobic sprint followed by death

Final time: 29:31, average pace: 8:25

Here is the grahp (first .1 mile was warmup):

-----------------------

In case I don't run the Green road loop again any time soon, I need to give credit where credit is due. First of all, this used to me my home (I indeed run past my old house). This was my first house, oh house surrounded by tall stalks of corn, and the area is my friend. The way I run it I do all the boring things first, and save Green road proper for last. Here (I will omit those hills for now) you run past field and farm, houses and corn. At mile 2.5 I always hear the bobolinks singing their amazing and impossible to describe "tripping over themselves" song, and the savannah sparrows buzzing the the background. And I can look over and see the hang gliders perched on the top of the tall hill and launching into the air (or the ground, depending on their skill). So after the oxygen is back in my brain, this is the memory it leaves me with. And if I did not go there running, I would probably have had no reason to return there.

Published: Tuesday, 25 May 2004

11:00 pm - Corporate Challange Race

OK, the event of the day was the Corporate Challange Race, held at RIT - everything else was boring. I will fill in with more colorful details (and there certainly were some) when I get more time, but until then, here is a quick summary:

• I think there were something like 9500 runners.
• I survived - in fact, there is no doubt I had fun.
• Running in a sea of people is an interesting concept - like a school of fish
• I am proud of what I have accomplished - OK, my absolute time was nothing to write home about, but for my first race at my age with no prior experience, I feel it is quite an accomplishment - hopefully a model of other accomplishments yet to come in life
• Kudos to everyone else at my company and especially my group that ran and talked me into this. My hero of the day is A from work (you know who you are) - I can't remember her exact time, but I think it was in the 26 minutes something, including the 30 seconds or so it took her to get to the start line - so by the way I measure it in the 25 something minute range! And this is less than a month after she ran a full marathon. Congrats!

Here are the statistics as reported by my gadgets:

Distance Split Total Pace Av. Heartrate Comments

.5 4:25 4:25 8:42 160 First half mile was uphill slightly (2.5% grade), and people to run into
1.0 3:55 8:21 7:54 165 2.5% downhill, finally room to run - pacing to my watch, trying not to go too fast
1.5 4:13 12:34 8:27 169 Flat from now on - learning that with HR at 170 I am stable - cool!
2.0 4:06 16:41 8:15 170
2.5 4:09 20:50 8:19 171
3.0 4:13 25:04 8:20 173 Slight grade, starting to explore pushing HR up a notch
3.5 3:55 29.00 7:45 175 Increasing pace to finish - 3.5 mile mark based on GPS, not course
3.59 0:34 29:34 6:14 184 Final sprint - peak HR 186, about my theoretical max HR, and feels like it.

Average pace: 8:27 (counted by course), or theoretically 8:17 (based on GPS / theoretical distance ran)

Official finish time: 31:28 (I started my watch when I crossed the start line, which was 1:54 after the gun went off and the official clock started - a standard road race problem), so the actual course clock included this time when you effectively walk (OK, not even that fast) to the start line.

It is interesting to note the slight difference on GPS vs. final course, which I am sure was accurately measured in the middle of the road. My guess is that GPS counted some of my "jigs and jags" as I moved through the river of people. If you think about it the difference is 2.5% - if I take the arccosine of this you get an average "deviation from straight line" of 12 degrees, which seems about right, given literally thousands of people to dodge. It doesn't really matter, anyways - the time I count will of course be the course time of 29:34, but the theoretical time I used to compare with, for example Green road times. Of course, I really just like to analyze things if they need it or not!

And of course this stuff would not be complete without the graph:

Published: Friday, 28 May 2004