Turkey Day Drive

I'm thinking about going out to visit the wife's family for Thanksgiving. The gang in Kansas live about 1,200 miles away, something like 17 hours of driving time each way. We want to take the brother in laws with us and even with my miles its going to be something like $400 per person. I don't relish the idea of driving that far but 1) its alot cheaper and 2) it will be nice to have some time to hang out with the 2 knuckleheads.

I think we'd leave Tuesday night and plan on driving straight through. Theoretically we have 4 drivers but I would be shocked if I actually let any of them drive. I like the idea of driving through the night so that the kids are asleep for as much of the trip as possible.

Outbound:

Tucson	0:00	11/20/07 10:00 PM
Hatch	4:00	11/21/07 2:00 AM
Albuquerque	2:36	11/21/07 4:36 AM
Amarillo	4:00	11/21/07 8:36 AM
Oklahoma City	4:00	11/21/07 12:36 PM
Wichita	2:30	11/21/07 3:06 PM

Return:

Wichita	0:00	11/25/07 10:00 PM
Oklahoma City	2:30	11/26/07 12:30 AM
Amarillo	4:00	11/26/07 4:30 AM
Albuquerque	4:00	11/26/07 8:30 AM
Hatch	2:36	11/26/07 11:06 AM
Tucson	4:00	11/26/07 3:06 PM

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Fall TV

Last week my DirecTV HD got zapped during the rainstorm. It flipped on and off a couple times in the power outage and apparntly that made it forget all that it knew. So with the new fall season kicking off I thought it was an opportune time to start it all over and consciously pick the shows I am recording. Fortunately there is a history button that shows all the things you have recorded and deleted so the process wasn't as daunting as I'd expected. I first flipped through and got the season passes that I knew we wanted without having to think much.

The Office
Lost
Extras
Hell's Kitchen
Heroes
Saturday Night Live
Friday Night Lights
Ken Burns 'The War' mini series
Prison Break (sooooo lame, probably won't finish the season this time)
The Contender (ff all the talky talky parts, the fighting is interesting)
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Dirty Sexy Money ( I don't even know what this is about, it just has a funny name)


Stuff not in HD right now:
Top Chef
Mythbusters
Survivorman
No Reservations
Tim Gunn's Guide to Style (for the wife but I don't think she has watched an episode yet)
Los Ninos en su Casa (something in spanish for the wife)
Wildcat Rewind (cause I'm a glutton for punishment)


New Season stuff I am going to audition and will likely hate:

Chuck
Journeyman
Bionic Woman
Kid Nation
K-Ville

Lick Myself

Its not what you think.

Or maybe it is. This weekend at the wedding in Prescott someone brought along a cd of Triumph the Insult Dog's greatest hits. 'Lick Myself' was the track that somehow became the sort of theme song for the weekend. Its foul and funny and you'll find yourself humming the polka tune relentlessly. Don't listen to it, save yourself.

The wedding was fun and we had a good time drinking all weekend with old friends. Prescott was a surprisingly cool place.

Dirty Knees, Look at These

Editors Note: There is a 100% chance you don't care about the first few paragraphs and a 4% chance you will find the last 2 paragraphs funny. As always, I recommend you read something else.

City League game last night down at El Rio ( I think thats the name, its the neighborhood center over by the rodeo grounds at Irvington and 6th). We moved up to the 'A' league this season after winning the 'double B' last season without much effort.

We won our first game against a team that was also in 'double B' last season and who we played like 4 times. I think we split with them in the regular season and then had them twice in the double elimination playoff. This time around they were missing their big guy and we were really on and wound up beating them by about 12.

The second game was against what looked like a very strong team that included Neal (he played at Sahuaro a few years behind me and has only gotten quicker over the years) and a couple of other guys I don't know but looked kinda good. They only had 3 guys show up so we won by forfeit but scrounged some extras that were standing around and played anyway. The lady running the clock actually ran the clock even though we had no refs. It was a fun game, close the whole way. We were down 2 with about 30 seconds to go and hit a tough 3 pointer to go up by one. They came down and got a quick 2 and nearly stole the inbounds pass, it got tipped around to Eric who hit what had to be the ugliest off balanced one handed layup of all time to win the game. For a game that wasn't actually real, it was a blast.

Last night's game was against a very strong press team and we didn't have a true point guard to handle the ball for us. They were all good athletes and had played together quite a bit and though we were up as much as 11 in the first half as we wore down our turnovers increased. Even though they missed a bunch of free throws down the stretch to give us a chance we turned the ball over on 2 of our last 3 possessions. Down 3 with 1.7 seconds to go we managed to get a long baseball pass off to Krump who (amazingly) managed to jump about 30 feet in the air and tip it to a wide open Adam (who had hit a huge 3 just a few minutes ago). Unfortunately he missed the shot so we didn't get OT but it was a great game.

There was a weird moment mid-way through the 2nd half. They had this skinny white guy that could really leap. He had thrown down 2-handed on a dead play and tipped in a pretty nice alley oop from their point guard(conspicuosly wearing his Tucson Summer Pro League jersey, come on dude....be serious) but he wasn't very strong. I posted him up every chance I got and he had 4 fouls by halftime. This play I had the whole side cleared out and Jason was coming to me with the entry pass. When playing post defense from behind, you are taught to never square up completely, it gives the offensive player all the leverage. Instead you are supposed to either get around to the side of his body (usually the lane side to keep him from the middle) or to put your outside knee sort of between his legs so that you get the leverage advantage back and can move him around. It also forces his hips forward so that he can't get a good base to push off from.

ANYWAY...this guy tried the knee trick because I was actually physically restraining him from coming around the side. I don't know if it was because he was extra skinny or what but when he pushed his knee at me, instead of it knocking me off balance it sort of pushed between my ass cheeks. I jumped like I'd been hit with a cattle prod and the ref immediately called a foul thinking the guy had shoved or punched me. Me and the defender both kind of recoiled and I think silently agreed to never speak of it. He didn't argue the call and I went home to check WebMd and make sure that knee to ass contact doesn't put me at risk for any kind of disease. I still feel kind of violated.

No exercise today, I'll be taking 30 showers and trying to forget what happened.

Marathon Heroes

I've been watching the Heroes show on the DVD and its not bad all in all. It has its soap opera moments of bad writing and general cheesiness but it has a cool look to it and I think the Japanese guy Hiro (Snowcrash?) is hilarious.

I actually signed up for the actual Vegas marathon today so I'm actually $90 worth of committed now. God help me.

Edit: I forgot to mention about the Heroes show that whenever one of the people uses their powers they make the "i'm pushing out an uncomfortably large turd" face. Its annoying to look at after the 100th time.

10 Miles = Success!!!

Garmin Data

It irked me that I couldn't finish my run this weekend so I decided to move my off day from Monday to Sunday and redo the long run on Monday. This might turn out badly because I have basketball games Tuesday and Thursday and my buddy Hal says I'm supposed to lay off basketball for the duration. Apparently its bad on the joints or something.

Preparations for the long run included taking 3 Cliff Blok Shots (Lemon/Lime), Tina's phone (mine is about 20# and thick as a brick) and a 1/2 water 1/2 gatorade bottle in one of those SUPER cool fanny (not the British 'fanny' you dirty bird) packs. I also recently got some new shoes GT-2120 to replace my old GT-2110s. The people at Fleet Feet over by Sakura on Tanque Verde are incredibly helpful and spent alot of time with Tina on the treadmill etc. figuring out her arches and making recommendations. I highly recommend them and you should support your friendly local whenever possible. But ANYWAY...........I loaded up some podcasts (Allen I hope your eyes are not bleeding because despite that fact that its in fact an .mp3 I calls it a podcast cause its a thing I subsribe to and magically shows up in Itunes everyday) from Bill Simmons and This American Life and took off.

I mapped out a route consisting of a loop around my house and then working down the long jogging trail following Old Spanish Trail to where it meets Broadway. I live on a high ridge so its pretty much all downhill no matter which way I go. When possible I try to set it up so that I do some up hill in the early part of the run and save the downhill for later. The only problem with this particular run was that I started late and so it was very dark with almost no moon. Running down Freeman was a little nervy, I only saw 3 cars but they all tried to run me over and I couldn't see the shoulder well enough to get over much ahead of time. I think I nearly fell in a few holes but in the end no harm done.

The loop was fine and by the time I got to the downhill section I was cruising and felt fine. I changed the route a little and ran by the house my parents lived in while I was in high school. This took me a back way to Jessie Owens park along a road being chip-sealed which was smelly, gravelly and annoying. Made the turn on Broadway and did another mile and half back up OST where Tina picked me up.

I felt great throughout the run, my knee was still a little sore but nothing too bad. I'm due for a 12 miler this weekend but am going to be at a wedding full of drunken bad influences so I'll have to try for another Monday evening run next week.

By the way, I like Adam Corolla's appearances on the Simmons podcasts. He gives plot rundowns on fake movies and in particular this week he presented 'Snapper' the story of Blitz Rusher who is the fallen world's greatest long-snapper seeking redepmtion etc. I also listened to a This American Life about a Iraq war vet who had PTSD and couldn't stand being around brown looking people. He eventually joined a Muslim student association and everything worked out. Its actually better than it sounds.

10 Miles = FAIL!

I only did 4 miles of a planned 10.

I got a late start which meant it was hot but that wasn't the problem. The first 5 miles were pretty much all up hill but that wasn't the problem. I was running on a road w/ 4,000 road bikes constantly flying at me but that wasn't the problem. I forgot to slather my sensitive chest areas w/ goo but that wasn't the problem.


The problem was my knee. I fell on Thursday afternoon and bruised my knee on some asphalt. There was a kid w/ a 60 year old truck (that is roughly true) stuck on the uphill driveway to McDonald park. The high volume of cars coming down Harrison meant that for him to simply roll back into traffic (esp. w/ no power steering) would have been dangerous so me and a couple of other guys pushed it up the hill for him. This satisfied my good deed for the week but also cost me a nice long run. The knee felt fine when I played basketball Thursday night, in fact I kind of forgot that it happened. It was (and is) a little sore to the touch but not a big deal.

Around the 2nd mile when the hills/grade really started to get intense I think maybe the swelling started and in any case the bastard really started to hurt. I tried mixing in some walking with the running but to no avail. Everytime I tried running again, he started up. I bailed and will add some more miles to a run hopefully today.

Allen, I'm in your RSS reader writing LOLcat-isms

Interesting lunch discussion today that I thought I'd spend a minute fleshing out. Allen pointed out that cause we are not co-located (we being people that work together for this company for which be both work for (?!?)) we need to find a way to get the synergy back formerly realized from working co-located. After first delivering a roundhouse kick to the skull for using the word 'synergy' we talked about what some of the elements of a meta-chat (if you will) or meta-forum (if you still will) would be to improve communication in a distributed team.

A couple of definitions up front. A distributed team can mean just about anything, I've been in a chat were 90% of the group was physically sitting in the same room. Fundamentally this is about capturing the conversation that goes on when people are working together on something and actually being together. The right analogy for the conversation is probably something like a river, the river flows on and people (people are the boats? or are the ideas the boats? this is getting pretty thin either way) can join or leave as necessary. In the river or not, an observer can look from the outside at the river, the boats or especially the topless sunbathers on the shore. Lets abandon this paragraph now because I'm either going to use the word meta too many times or the metaphor is going to be extended to the point that the fish in the river will be the ideas and the boats have dudes fishing from the great river of of conversation for some scaly truth. As I said, moving on.

What I want is an IRQ style interface for my team. I want this to be an extension of the IM client we use now for no real reason other than we are using it now. The key though is that its basically just a kick-ass chat machine. I'm using the IRQ model because I don't like the fundamentally asynchronous mode that is a forum. Plus I just have this suspicion that weird people hang out on forums.

• A history of the chat should be maintained so that someone not logged in for any particular session will still have the full history of the conversation . This could apply even to a new team member, as soon as they join the group they instantly have access to all 'tribal knowledge' (I hear this phrase often, I wonder if its offensive...and if so to whom?) of the group. I guess its incorrect to say 'all' the knowledge but certainly all that was present in chat.
  

• The client needs to have a strong filter compoenent to both highlight and ignore posts as necessary. For example, I would want the word 'late' or 'delay' to be in giant red/bold letters. If my team is talking about being delayed or late, I want to know. Conversely if the thread heads off to the plot intricacies of CSI:Desperate Housewives I want to either actively ignore that or mark it in fuscia so I know its likely skippable. It is important to note however that the 'off topic' conversations are just as (possibly more) important than the direct work stuff. The piece that really is missing when a team is spread out is the bonds/relationships that grow intra-team. I have found that people who on projects for me are more likely to work late, take on tough assignments etc. if I have had some off topic time with them. We could call it the Beer to Work index, the more beers we have shared the more work I can expect.
  

• We'll need a couple of levels of alerts included: if I am not paying attention to the stream and someone needs me to perk back up there should be a yahoo style . The Buzz can go to an individual or a selected group.
  
  
• I would want a piece of the filter to hav ethe ability to select dates. If I am out Friday, I want to come in Monday and quickly review just the Friday conversation to see what I missed.
  
  
• There needs to be a way to tie entries together. Often in a multiperson chat, multiple unrelated questions are asked and the answer I give could apply to any of them individually. Its important to maintain the overall flow of the chat (not a recursive kind of thread system) so I am imaging a very messy, ugly arrow system where I click on the question I'm answering.
  
  
• A billboard should be in a sizeable window that keeps all the links refernced in the chat. So often the information/answer/shared experience is a link out to a website that drives conversation. The team lead should have the ability to make some 'sticky' as in keep them on top for . Otherwise they need to be indexable by date and frequency of use. Its possible that files could also be stored in somethign like that but I think that might be one of those add-ons that ends up sucking due to permissions/version control/packrat-edness.
  
  
• I've mentioned filters but we also need the general search functions (think google desktop here?)
  
  
• It is axiomatic that screen caps and animated gifs are a part of this tool.
  
  
• Private conversations of course will go on and there needs to be a way for a section of private text to be added to the big conversation. You'd probably want to make both parties click ok to allow it or something.
  
  
• Most people are on multiple teams and have various private chats going all the time. I personally like the tabbed interface we have in the current chat client which lines up along the left of the window all the chats I currently have open as opposed to managing multiple windows. Its a stylistic difference of course and we'll need it to accommodate either.
  
  
• Not sure its needed but the tool should be sort of self aware and do things like automatically build glossaries and keep stats (top five pies, common phrases, blabbermouth award).
  
  
• Polls and Voting
  

Again the goal on all of this is to do something to capture the sort of watercooler effect and not to add more work. I spend all my day chatting on IM with my team (some on conference calls as well) and I suspect that many people do too. Its not a hardship necessarily to type the same (ro cut/paste) information from one place to another but its possible there is some synergy to be realized from a long conversation.

By the way, if this plants a seed that grows into a piece of software that you make a botilion dollars on, remember the little people.

Didn't Have to Use My AK...

Pretty heavy exercise load this week. Starting with the Sunday ride that really wiped me out, Monday for recovery, Tuesday for basketball in a new city league, Wednesday a nice relaxed 5 mile run in the cool evening, more basketball tonight, off Friday and a 10 mile run Saturday.

Last night's run was good, but slow. I still can't manage what my percived vs. actual pace is. I really thought I was going faster than normal for the first 2 miles and didn't even look at the watch to confirm. Turns out I did the whole thing averaging 11:20 pace but finished a little faster than I had started. My heart rate stayed in the nice 150 zone the whole way and was back under 100 about 7 minutes after I ended the run and was walking to cool down. I feel great for the 10 miler this weekend but will definitely not try to go any faster pace doing that distance.

Actually it was a great day overall, I finished some work stuff up that is getting me closer to being able to move on to do another project, made > $200 playing online poker, took my son out for lunch to a Mongolian BBQ place my wife hates, made a simple but great dinner (sautéed a whole cut up chicken and made a red wine reduction from the brown bits plus some roasted vegetables) and had a good run listening to Bill Simmons interview Steve Kerr (easily UA's best alum). I even ate a bowl of ice cream which I never do. The point is, its one of those days when you get to the end and think...the only thing missing from today was beer.

Tom Waits Analytics

On Sunday's ride Tom and I got to talking about Tom Waits and how totally awesome he is. I think we also touched on how people that like Tom Waits are also totally awesome which I guess is axiomatic but the point is that everyone I know who likes Tom Waits is a good person. You don't have to be Waits-ian to be good, but you get the picture.

ANYWAY..... Tom asked me what my favorite TW album is and this always makes me scratch my head. I own a bunch of albums and more partial albums so its tough for me to say which I like best. Further when I first found out about TW I was in High School and several people gave me mix tapes that I listened to all through college. The problem of course is that they formed a sort of meta-album in my head that does not in fact actually exist. I stole a bunch of random stuff during the Napster days, which as I have said many times is bad and clearly stealing. I think the only physical CD I ever bought was Mule Variations sometime after I got married but I think it got stolen at some point. Once Itunes came around I began slowly filling in (legally mind you) my collection and I think I have something from every album (discography) but only full albums for: Alice, Bastards, Bawlers, Brawlers, The Early Years Vol. 1 &2, Frank's Wild Years, Mule Variations, Rain Dogs, Real Gone, Swordfishtrombones.

To try and figure out what is my favorite album that actually existed, I decided to make a playlist from each album of my favorite songs based generally on what I listen most to from each. There are bound to be other undiscovered nuggets in what I already own and even more when I get around to completing all of the albums but for now I'd have to say that Mule Variations is my favorite album based on the stats. Fortunately this confirms my subjective hunch but Bawlers and Frank's Wild Years are up there and on a given day could easily take the top spot.

Alice:
Alice
Barcarolle

Bastards:
Heigh Ho
Home I'll Never Be
The Pontiac

Bawlers:
You Can Never Hold Back Spring
Long Way Home
Tell It to Me
Fannin Street
If I Have to Go
Down There By the Train
Danny Says

Blue Valentine:
Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis

Bone Machine:
Goin' Out West

Brawlers:
Lie to Me
Bottom of the World
Rains on Me

Closing Time:
Ice Cream Man
Lonely

The Early Years Vol. 1:
Goin' Down Slow
I'm Your Late Night Evening Prostitute
Rockin' Chair
Looks Like I'm Up Shit Creek Again

The Early Years Vol. 2:
Hope I Don't Fall in Love with You

Foreign Affairs:
Barber Shop

Frank's Wild Years:
Hang on St. Christopher
Straight to the Top (Rhumba)
Blow Wind Blow
Innocent When you Dream
I'll Be Gone
Yesterday is Here
Way Down in the Hole

The Heart of Saturday Night:
Diamonds on My Windshield
The Heart of Saturday Night
Please Call Me Baby

Heartattack and Vine:
Til the Money Runs Out
On the Nickel

Mule Variations:
Big in Japan
Hold On
Get Behind the Mule
House Where Nobody Lives
Cold Water
Eyeball Kid
Picture in a Frame
Chocolate Jesus
Come on Up to the House

Nightwaks At The Diner:
Better Off Without A Wife
Warm Beer and Cold Women
Big Joe and Phantom 309

Rain Dogs:
Singapore
Tango till They're Sore
Downtown Train
Anywhere I Lay My Head

Real Gone:
Top of the Hill
Hoist That Rag
How's It Gonna End
Day After Tomorrow

Small Change:
Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)
The Piano Has Been Drinking
Pasties And A G-String
Step Right Up

Swordfishtrombones:
Underground
In the Neighborhood
Frank's Wild Years
Down, Down, Down
Soldier's Things
Gin Soaked Boy
Trouble's Braids

Long Way Home

Garmin Data

We rode 46.68 miles on Sunday. For well conditioned bike dudes this is no big deal. For me it was nearly fatal. I got home around 10 AM, ate about 4,000 calories of breakfast and went to sleep for 3.5 hours. Waking up I felt like dog shit the rest of the day. No doubt I wasn't hydrated enough going in and probably barely had enough to drink during the ride.

Dan and I met up at Old Spanish Trail and Houghton around 6 and rolled up to Collier's. Short rest there while Tom, who started late caught up and we rode with just a few short regroup stops up Tanque Verde to Sabino Canyon to Sunrise and stopped at the Dan and Tom's parents place to refill water. Ice water in the bike bottle on a hot day is really one of the underrated pleasures. After a 10-15 minute rest stop we headed back the way we came skipping Houghton and cruising through Tanque Verde (the community I mean). Tom blew a tire at Ridgeside and Speedway and I left him there while he did repairs because the heat was really wiping me out and I figured if I didn't get inside and cool off soon I'd die of heatstroke. Even from there I punked out and made Tina come pick me up at Broadway barely a mile from home.

That was a tough ride and particularly hot. I have now finally conceded that there is no reason to do the full 109 mile El Tour. I think I'll sign up for the 60 and do the full bit after I lose 30 pounds and get in better bike shape.

Life List

So I heard a radio show the other day talking about life lists and it got me thinking. My marathon and El Tour quests are the type of things people put on a life list. Herewith is my non exhaustive sure to be updated quick list of stuff I would like to do before I die in no particular order at all.

1. Finish a Marathon
2. Ride the full El Tour
3. Invent a Multi Level Marketing scheme
4. Recreate the recipe for Mongolian Beef from the Crispy Fry in Emeryville
5. Drive from my house to the bottom of S. America
6. Walk from my house to Mexico
   
7. Invent a candle made of cheese (if only I could think of a name........)
8. Own a car that a robot drives for me
9. Attend a Dallas Cowboys Playoff game in Dallas
10. Attend an NBA Final game 7
11. Superbowl
12. Final Four
13. See every UA football game in person for 1 season
14. Attend a UA football bowl game
15. Write a book
16. Master Spanish and pick up conversation in 1 other language
17. Build a rainwater collection system for my house
    
18. Travel (just a few = Australia, NZ, Japan, Vietnam, Lebanon, Israel, Greece, Turkey, Italy, St. Petersburg, Ireland, Scotland, Paris)
19. Ride the bike up to the top of Mt. Lemon
20. Buy a bespoke suit

Weekend Exercise 8/24 to 8/26

Friday I had a very good run. Just 3 miles so I tried to run under 30 minutes. (Garmin Data) I just barely finished in time but definetly felt good throughout and no lingering pain after.

Saturday was supposed to be a nice long 50 mile bike but we got rained out 7 miles in. The weather cleared later but I think we made the right call to bail (Garmin Data).

Sunday was scheduled for a 7 mile run but the day sort of got away from me and it was pretty hot so I wound up going at 8 PM under a big nearly full moon. It was fantastic (Garmin Data). I felt fine throughout and kept my HR right where I wanted it. I had to slow gradually as I progressed but it was the longest run I have done probably since the half marathon back in Dec. of 2005. The wife and the boy were very nice to bring me water at a couple of points along the way. I listened to a Bill Simmons podcast about football statistics and a This American Life '24 hours at the golden apple'. I liked both and am going to stick with my old policy of 3miles or less gets music on the ipod, 3 miles or more gets an audiobook or podcast. I could have gone further without any trouble and had my HR back under 100 in about 10 minutes. I feel good and am going to sign up for the marathon this week.

I know you are waiting with baited breath to know how my nipples fared. I used some product and they were fine, no issues at all.

Arizona Wildcats Basketball

One afternoon we were trying to recall which year we lost in the tournament to somebody and which guys played together on various teams etc. and I got inspired to put together as much data as I could find over the course of couple of days. It was surprisingly hard to find and the data is pretty spotty.

Blogger I guess doesn't let you upload files so I made a little Google group (link)

8/21/07 Run Till You Puke

Garmin Data

So I needed to get 3 miles in today but had only a limited window before Meet the Teacher night. Lacking the common sense area of the brain that my wife claims everyone else possesses, the plan I came up with was to run the same distance I normally would but just to do it really fast. I should also mention that I had lunch about 1.5 hours ago (Wendy's greasy burger/fries and Dr. Pepper), it was 90 degrees out and I was running on about 5 hours of sleep.

I ran the first mile a little under 8 minutes pace. This is substantially faster than the anemic 11 minutes per mile I usually do. My idea was to do the mile fast then walk like .2 to catch my breath and repeat. Felt great on the mile and the walk, starting back up on pace was tough and I couldn't maintain for very long at all before I felt like puking. I alternated running and walking and had to work very hard to not puke. I felt horrible all the rest of the way and all through the night. Running faster is not a good thing.

Tell me again, why do I have nipples?

Garmin Data

I have not run 5 miles in a very, very long time. I'm pretty happy with how I felt during and after this run. The retarded dog got loose and followed me for the first 1.5 miles so I had to turn around and chase him home and then pick up another mile out and mile back going the other direction. He walks in the middle of the street and is a bad training partner because I keep having to either chase him back home or out of the street so as not to get killed.

It was overcast and threatening to rain which was perfect because it stayed cool throughout the run. I had no problems with my lower legs after a couple of long stretching sessions during the day. I could easily have done more distance as I was not winded at all. I think I should pick up the pace on my 3 mile runs during the week because my fitness is pretty good right now and it will probably speed me up a little. I'm still not worried about time, just about completing the distances and I'm on pace for my modified version of Hal's Novice Marathon Training Plan. I need to find a way to show my workout plan online because I have running, swimming and biking goals all mixed in there. Next week's long run is 9 miles, that is a big jump from 5 and I may smooth out the mileage increase over the next couple of weeks

Anyway, the nipple thing. I have never had a nipple chafing issue until the tail end of this run. Stupid G$ mentioned this (nipguards) product a few days ago and I replied that I had never had that problem. I obviously should have kept my mouth shut. I'm going to experiment with different shirts, this one was drifit but not one I had run in before. Stupid vestigial organs.

Running With the Dog

Garmin Data

I have to run in the evenings now because it takes a good 30 minutes of stretching to get my lower legs to not hurt. I had to make dinner last night so I came up with the ingenious plan of doing a roasted vegetable pan in the oven and starting the charcoal for steaks right before I left so that when I returned the charcoal is ready to dump and the veggies need 20 more minutes. As I was leaving the dog started trotting along with me and wound up following me the entire run. He belongs to Tina's brother who is staying with us and is mostly mentally retarded (the dog not brother but....). Shady (the dog again, not the brother...do try to pay attention) has been an apartment dog nearly its whole life and living outdoors now is blowing his mind. He has even become a bit of a pack rat hunter which we totally need. I think he is an Aussie sheperad mix or something.

Anyway, we had a nice 2.5 mile run and he spent the first 1/2 running way ahead, side to side etc. The last mile or so he was beat and lagged way behind. I brought a plastic bag to scoop poop but when he finally decided to drop the load it was off in the desert and about 1/4 mile behind me so I didn't bother. We saw a pile of 4-5 big and dead packrats by the side of the road. I hope they were there as a warning to others.

This was one of the easiest runs I've had. I ran slowly and was barely out of breath. I hope to do 2 of these per week in very slowly increasing distances and a long run on the weekend opposite days of the bike workout. I think Hal would have me run 3 today and 5 this weekend to be on the novice marathon training pace.

Battlestar Galactica

I am going to defend this show and I'm not being ironic here. I'm not even being ironic about the irony. I legitimately think this is well written, nuanced and the right amount of cheesey.

First off I loved the original series when I was a kid. The spaceships, robots, pre-Top Gun fighter pilot bad-assnes all worked great for me then. I decided not to watch this because what you recall from your childhood can only be poisoned when brought out and examined. It is more pleasurable better to be nostalgic than accurate about what something was.

The basic rundown is that humans live on 12 colonies (a 13th 'Earth' is a legend that doesn't get referenced till the end of the first episode). Humans invent cylons to do work (you know pick cotton and sing spirituals etc.) and eventually the cylons decide that work sucks and so they go to war with the humans. We win or something and they go away for a while. The show starts when they come back but this time they have a few human shaped robots (I've seen 4 so far but I guess there are 12 total) and kill everyone on 12 planets. All except one battlestar (think space aircraft carrier) and a ragtag collection (can't you just hear Lorne Greene saying that?) of refugees who are the last 50K humans alive from the 12 planets.

Its about what you'd expect for a roster of characters. The Commander is Edwared J Olmos who is the grizzled old veteran and his XO who is the drunk grizzled old veteran. EJO looks alot like Tom Skerrit. EJO tricks everyone and says I know where that old 13th planet is. We are heading there now despite the fact that he hasn't got a clue. I hope that thread doesnt' get worn too thin.

Starbuck is the drinking, gambling super pilot with all the obvious insecurity and overcompensation issues you expect and interestingly a girl this time through. I thought that would be lame but its not. I'm interested to see if she does the playboy thing Faceman did in the original. She also has watched Top Gun.....ALOT. She does the chomp my gum in your face deal and sort of has Iceman's haircut. Plus the whole gender confusion I am thinking this whole show might be a kind of left handed Top Gun homage.

Apollo is the son of the commander they are estranged and he has to learn about leadership, blah blah blah.

Some people are cylons and all cylon women so far are SMOKIN HOT. I can't emphasize this enough. When those wacky robots sat down to make human clones, they did a GOOD JOB.

Baltar is the human scientist that had the secret code to everything in the the whole universe that he just sort of handed to the Cylon sex clone they sent to woo him. Because of his weakness for hot girls that want to nibble on him, billions of people die when the robots turn off the defense computers. Not that I am defending him but seriously the blond girl is yummy, you would consider it in his position.

As per standard science fiction, there are nearly no black people in space and not alot of brown really either.

I like the music, during space battle scenes they keep lots of quiet moments without background music...get it...space is quiet? When the music does come up its a kind of sparse, Asian martial sounding drum that definitely sets a tense mood.

There is the little geeky stuff like how the fighters fly and maneuver which seems alot more plausible than the old show.

Apollo from the old series makes an appearance. I guess you can't live on residuals forever.

I love the use of 'frak'. My hat is off to whoever came up with just making up a word so that people can cuss on tv.

And in the end (not the end really I've only seen 4 episodes) its a story about a journey. Those are the best kind I think and specifically the Odyessy journey home construct.

Its a cheesy show but not as cheesy as it should be. I don't recommend you watch it but I will, and I like it.

A Series of Near Misses 8.11.07

We decided to ride the Amado to Arivaca (link) road in place of the mountain for a change. I grabbed my Dad's truck (the inside of which always smells like ketchup, I don't think he eats ketchup per se but all his vehicles smell like ketchup...strange) picked up Collier, Dan, the bikes and gas and we were on the road before 6. Arrive in Amado (which appears to be 100% deserted like an apocalyptic dream) and park across from the (they claim) world famous Longhorn Grill. Unloading the bikes we find a bulge in Collier's back tire. Immediately after (coincidence? I think not) a car of Jehovah's witnesses screech to a stop in front of us and they make the 15 year old kid in the tie offer us 'maybe something to read later'. After a quick agnostic roundhouse kick they left.

With all the practice we have had in the last few bike rides, the tube is swapped out in short order. Leaving it fully inflated we go off to gear up but then suddenly hear what must be a gunshot. Obviously the JWs are back and they are pissed. After I got Collier to quit crying (ok not really but I think he was crying on the inside) we figured out that the tire had popped and the echo off the buildings was responsible for scaring the bejeezus out of me.

More tire work.

Repeat.

Change tubes and tires.

Explosion.

Watching creepy people driving by with bass boats and (I'm assuming) dark motives along with a few Border Patrol vehicles we eventually just gave up and decided to go for breakfast at the Longhorn Grill. In front of the Longhorn Grill was a prison transport bus with a broken something that forced the guards to get out and scratch their heads. The restaurant was closed so we declared the entire adventure a bust. I am sure that the ride and breakfast were near misses in that we would surely have died along the way. I am making a movie about the prison bus.

We would have required a hot female to make a solid group of 4. Think American Flyers meets Speed. One guy is the disgraced champion kicked out of cycling not for using illegal drugs but actually having robotic legs replace his own. Cut to the evil scientist (probably Christian Bale cause cycling is pretty Euro and he has sinister teeth) making him the faustian deal in the past, you can tell its the past cause the light is sort of washed out and everyone has funny haircuts. He will sacrifice himself at some point to get redemption, maybe just lose the legs all together. During the closing credits maybe he becomes world champ wheelchair racer as Peter Cetera (like a knight in shining armor....) plays in the background.

One guy is the wise cracking former track star (ie black and because this is Hollywood sure to not get the girl and die...sorry Collier) who as a punishment for his practical joke (something involve icy hot and jockstraps or spiking an oppoents water cooler with Viagra maybe) is assigned to the cycling team of misfits and ne'er do wells. He will be the first to die when we first learn how B-A-D (and we'll thrown in racist to make him reeaaaalllly B-A-D) Christina Bale in fact is.

The hero is the guy with all the potential but no killer instinct who can never win the big one. We know several things about him: 1) he will talk like Keanu Reeves 2) he will get the girl in the end (hmm...that sounds bad) and 3) he will very obviously save the day by riding his bicycle in some way that is impossible (maybe backward at 30 mph or something?). Cut to him trying the impossible thing in the past (que lighting and funny hair) and failing and Michael Caine as his cycling coach (who is probably Christian Bale's dad) saying something profound and cliche along the lines of 'winners don't ride backwards, winners win who don't lose to losers who ride backwards" or some other nonsense.

The girl has ALOT of curves and VERY tight fitting clothes that will be quickly ripped and indecent. I'll be casting Rosario Dawson and Scarlett Johansen in these roles for no real reason other than this is my movie and I respect their work.....or something. Despite being 5'1 and 105 lbs. she will at some point kick the snot out of a couple of 300 lb Samoan guys.

Billy Bob Thornton will reprise his creepy mechanic role from the movie U-Turn as the grease monkey sidekick who fixes up the bikes to go insanely fast or make eggs or whatever.

There are several chase scenes through the mountains, possibly jumping off of things and something along the lines of a Deadman's Curve that no one has ever made it past. The hero will have to eventually catch the bus, climb on, get dragged, jump in and finally save the girl. The bus will obviously blow up at some point and he'll escape with her riding on his handlebars (thats the movie poster btw) to safety.

This is a pretty good movie but it will need some karate/ninja to make it perfect.

8-9-07 Ride to Collosal Cave (almost)

We got off to a super late start due to it being retardedly early when we ride and the near certainty that one of us will oversleep on any given day. Once we got going we set a decent pace and things were going well until we got past Camino Loma Alta and started through the ups and downs of the washes. I was riding close behind Dan when we saw a thick track of sand across the low spot in the road. Dan took what looked like the least difficult track and immediatley sank about 6" into the muck. Now we have several problems. First Dan has to try and get out of his pedals (the basket kind but still holding him tight to the bike), second I have to stop so as not to crush him and third I have to get out of my pedals. I'm not 100% sure how it worked out but Dan fell into relatively soft sand and I avoided crushing him or breaking any of my own limbs. We decided that was plenty for the day and turned back about 3/4 of a mile short of the goal.

I remembered that JB was headed off for the first day of school so I really pushed hard to go fast and make it back in time to see him off. Collier stuck with me most of the way and then blew a tire at the base of the bad hill coming out of the riverbed. Same spot that got Dan the week before.

If not for tires, I see no reason we can't do the full 109 mile Tour de Tucson in November.

Garmin Data

Wrestling and NASCAR Suck

I stretched about 6 times through the day including the 'dog' and 'tree' stretches I found on a Yoga for Runners website. It made a world of difference and my calves never did tighten up. If finished the 3 miles running a bit over a 10 minute pace and kept my heart rate below 160 almost the whole way. I was getting worried that a long term running goal might not be possible but now I'm thinking the last outing was a fluke.

The downside to my run was the Sports Guy podcasts. I loaded 2 of them plus a This American Life just for good measure. Sports Guy #1 was Bill interviewing a NASCAR guy who drives the 33 car (this is only relevant because it was Larry Bird's number) as a job interview to become the drive Bill would follow. Appearantly the doofus being inteviewed didn't realize that the whole thing was a goof driven by that fact that he was from Indiana and drove a car with Larry Bird's number. He didn't deliver on any of the softwball jokes TSG threw him and just sounded dumber and dumber the more they talked. He continually referred to himself in the 1rst person plural ('we' love driving for the team, 'we' have alot of nicknames etc.). Everything about NASCAR sucks and I don't mind having that idea reaffirmed over and over. I hit skip about 2 minutes into it. Podcast #2 was TSG interviewing a guy that writes a wrestling magazine about the Chris Benoit guy that killed his family and himself. This could not have been worse. #1 wrestling is not a sport, its fake. I know everyone knows this but I think secretly some people don't KNOW it or something. How can they talk about who are 'good' wrestlers and not even in the contrived good guy/bad guy sense but in the skilled/succesfull sense? Am I missing somethign or isn't it all scripted? Damn you Sports Guy, Damn You.

I ended up on a This American Life leaning about how hard it is in the world of art to be an artist. To illustrate this point we listened to the story of a balloon animal creator guy who was no longer being taken seriously by his peer group for having 'sold out'. There was lots of isolated stereo sound of balloons squeaking and ponderous silences as we were left to contemplate the tragedy that is a tortured soul balloon clown.


Garmin Data

Bike Old Spanish Trail 8.1.07

Took a slower pace today because I have been feeling a little rundown and I want to pick up my running over the next couple of days. D had a tire pop again, he never should have spit on that llanteria brujo guy. The poor guy has probably spent $150 on tires/tubes.

Garmin Data

Hoops 7.30.07 and a Birthday Hangover

Basketball was good last night, everyone behaved and we successfully implemented a sign in board to manage the 17 guys that were there.

I felt pretty terrible yesterday and today after the bike ride even after a nice big Mexican breakfast and a 2.5 hour nap. I kinda zombie-walked through the day and I think I might have been de-hydrated. The 2 days before the ride were my birthday extravangzas where I ate WAY too much and drank more than normal.

Friday morning my wife and daughter wanted to take me out for breakfast so we had Bruegger's Bagels (my daughter's favorite place). If you have not had a jalapeno cheese bagel sandwich (I get sausage and cheese w/ no egg) you are missing out.

For lunch I met up with the guys at a place by the U of A called No Anchovies. They do gourmet slices where you pick from a prepped pie in a case and the rebelliously attired pizza man puts it in the oven so that its fresh and perfect. I've had the buffalo chicken wing several times before and its freaking awesome: blue cheese, wing sauce and tender strips of chicken. The other slice I had was a surprise and I think better than the wing slice. It was simple mozzerela, basil, crazily fresh tomatoes and a little cracked black pepper.

For dinner we had a great meal at Vin Tabla with my parents, kids, wife and sister. I'm lucky that my kids are behaved enough and willing to try things not necessarily on the normal 8 and 4 year old menu so that they can come out with us for a nice meal. Frankly nothing at Vin Tabla but I LOVE but the small plates concept is great and without exception everything we had was very good including a 2000 vintage bottle of sparkling wine from Roederer (?) and a great classic tasting French Burgundy that I didn't catch the name of but that the wine steward got all wound up about. I could eat the salume and cheese plates pretty much every day forever and the truffle fries are just silly with their goodness. The highlight for me was the red snapper ceviche. Just enough time in the citrus to give it a texture but not overdone/rubbery. Perfect summer food.

Saturday night my Mom made the old chicken fried steak standby including mashed potatoes, cream corn and gravy. I think I gained 12 pounds just from that meal.

Mt. Lemmon Ride 7.29.07 (10 Miles Up)

Felt really good going up today and didn't crash at all coming back down. I finally figured out how the watch stores data and so I made a quick table below to show the altitude changes. 10 was a good milestone and from the looks of it the next 2 or so will be relatively easy followed by a big climb up to Windy Point.


Garmin Data

Mt. Lemon Data

	Altitude	Altitude Change	Grade %
Start	2,888	0	0
Mile 1	3,132	244	4.63%
Mile 2	3,389	257	4.87%
Mile 3	3,659	270	5.11%
Mile 4	3,930	271	5.13%
Mile 5	4,220	290	5.50%
Mile 6	4,493	273	5.16%
Mile 7	4,736	243	4.60%
Mile 8	5,095	359	6.80%
Mile 9	5,316	221	4.18%
Mile 10	5,485	169	3.20%

Week	Bike Miles	Run Miles	Swim Miles	Basketball Hours
1 (7/16 - 7/22)	40	0	0	2
2 (7/23 - 7/29)	25	2.5	0	2
3 (7/30 - 8/5)
Total	65	2.5		4

Training Run #1

Running hurts and it sucks. I ran 2.5 miles today, the first time I have been running in months and it was painful the whole way. My cardio was fine, I never got over ~155 which is as the Mythbuster guys always say....the 'butter zone'. But my shins were killing me, specifically the inside part of my shin where it appears to be only bone and no muscle. I know it will pass once I go for a while but I just want to be on record as anti-running.

Marathon here I come.

Week	Bike Miles	Run Miles	Swim Miles	Basketball Hours
1 (7/16 - 7/22)	40	0	0	2
2 (7/23 - 7/29)		2.5		2
Total	40	2.5		4

Hoops 7/23

Not a whole lot to say here, it was a good run but with 21 guys at one point an awful long wait between games. Its a bunch of Raytheon and IBM guy plus a few strays and things run pretty well. We hit a tipping point though when we went over15 guys and a few others walked in late. They insisted that they should play in the next game because they had not played yet. They are idiots. We let them play even though I was forced to sit out 2 entire games and we then all agreed to institute the uber traditional write your name on the bottom of the board when you arrive system to avoid any drama.

A few notable moments included one skinny jumping guy who attempted the longest traveling jump stop I've ever seen. He literally picked up the ball around the hash mark and took 2 gigantic running strides and then a leap to land on 2 feet. He was cool about it when we called traveling but it was actually a pretty impressive athletic feat. I on the other hand am a shadow of my former self. I still finish pretty well and rebound but have alot of trouble getting my own shot from the post.

Week	Bike Miles	Run Miles	Swim Miles	Basketball Hours
1 (7/16 - 7/22)	40	0	0	2
2 (7/23 - 7/29)				2
Total	40			4

Mt. Lemmon Ride 7.22.07 - Blown Tire

Exciting ride today. We planned to go up 8 miles from the base which is 3 further than I have ever gone. We got off to a late start and 1 guy had a flat on the approach to the mountain and the 4 of us didn't actually start climbing until 6:25. We missed a guy we were going to hook up with at the base but apparently he did the same ride on his own.

Knowing this was going to be further than past rides I went more slowly on the first couple of miles and I felt pretty comfortable throughout. This was the first time I've taken my new bike up the mountain and I loved it. The last bike only had 2 gear choices in the front and it was great having a whole new range on the 3rd (smallest) ring. I tried hard to stay off the easiest gear to keep that for 'the hard parts' but that ended up frankly being most of the way. I wound up stopping a little short of mile 8 at the Bug Trail parking lot. Like a donkey I missed getting out of my pedals and fell and got a booboo on my elbow. I am a dork.

Coming down was alot of fun until it wasn't. I started last and quickly caught up to the gang finally getting onto the big gear and really cranking along. The views descending were truly incredible and for some reason I had my first real 'oh sh**' moment coming around a curve and staring into an abyss of a canyon. It felt like I was a million miles up.

Chill and I set a pretty good pace and according to the little GPS machine we peaked at 40.7 mph until I hit a rock. Apparently going about 36 mph I hit something with my back tire and knocked a chunk out as you can see below.


click the tire for a blow up of the blow up



Having never blown a tire at speed before I instinctively grabbed both breaks too hard and then my front tube popped. I fishtailed a little but managed to get it under control and amazingly my heart rate barely moved. Once I got stopped all the adrenaline kinda left me with the shakes but luckily in the moment I basically stayed cool. One of the guys was kind enough to ride down and get a truck to come get me because there was no way to repair the tire. I was annoyed I didn't get to finish the ride, all that climbing and then to miss out on the run down the mountain sucks.

MotionBased GPS Data:

7/22/07 Mt. Lemon Ride (Climb)
7/22/07 Mt. Lemon Ride (Descent - Blown Tire)

Week	Bike Miles	Run Miles	Swim Miles	Basketball Hours
1 (7/16 - 7/22)	40	0	0	2
2 (7/23 - 7/29)
Total	40			2

Bike Gear

Let me start by saying I know close to nothing about bicycles. I just like riding. Recently some jerk broke into our workshop and stole my old bike along with a ton of tools. It was a fine bike, but now I don't miss it. With the insurance replacement money I bought a slightly used bike and alot of replacement kit.

First, I got the really very yellow KHS Flite 500. I have Northwind Hornet shoes for giant men which attach me to the bike via Speedplay Zero Pedals. I have a little bag that sits under the seat in which I carry 2 spare tubes, tire levers and 3 CO2 quick refill cartridges. There are 2 water bottles that I usually keep 50-50 with water and Gatorade. For data collection I am just about to get the Garmin 305 (link) w/ Cadence (link) and Bike Mount (link). For music I used to take our 30 GB Ipod and soft of velcro it to the handlebars but have lately been using the much smaller and easier to mount 1 GB Ipod shuffle. Laundry cycle notwithstanding I usually go in my school colors AZ Wildcats jersey. I carry my phone in the back jersey pocket and a wallet in the underseat bag. The blue Bell Helmet is a must and when recnetly shaved I wear an UnderArmor skull cap to keep the helmet from chafing my head. I don't have racing sunglasses per se but the blue Oakley Minute shades I have work pretty well.

It's alot of gear but I don't think it's too, too much.

Training Ride 7/17

Rode the Colossal Cave out and back (link) today with Chill and Big D. Great weather and a really nice ride. I didn't know the exact distance we were riding and set an arbitrary 1 hour goal for myself on the outbound leg. Finished in 1:01:01 so not bad considering we went about .6 miles past where we should have. I didn't keep track on the way back but its much faster being mostly downhill, we averaged 30 mph for a big chunk of it between Camino Loma Alta and where the road turns north out of Rincon Creek. Feeling like a tough guy I passed an old guy who got on Old Spanish Trail at Camino Loma Alta and pretended to be polite saying 'Good Morning' as I blew past him on the big downhill. Apperantly Chill did and said the exact same thing right behind me and it was all wonderful until he passed and totally dropped me on the hill coming out of Rincon Creek. I'm a total noob on the bike and days like this help me remember that.

The new Garmin 305 (link) w/ Cadence (link) and Bike Mount (link) arrives today so I'll be able to post some detailed maps with all the good data along for future rides along with a review of the 305.

Week	Bike Miles	Run Miles	Swim Miles	Basketball Hours
1 (7/16 - 7/22)	28			2
Total	28			2

The Over Ambitious Plan for 2nd Half of 2007

To celebrate my 33rd year I am going to go for an athletic triple of things I've always wanted to do. I definitely see myself continuing on the bike but after the El Tour I don't see running as part of my long term exercise plans. Running kind of sucks.

9/16 /2007 Climb Mount Lemon (26.5 miles and 6,500' climb)

11/17/2007 El Tour de Tucson (66, 81 or 109 mile bike)

12/2/2007 Las Vegas Marathon (26.2 miles)

There are a couple of sub goals I hope to accomplish along the way.


10/21/2007 Get Moving Tucson 10 Miler
10/28/2007 Tinfoilman Triathlon (825 yard swim, 12 mile bike and 3 mile run)

This is of course way, way too much. Right now I am playing ball 2 hours on Monday and riding the bike 2x per week, hardly in good enough shape to make this work but I'm working on a plan to get there. I'm going to use this space to makes notes on my progress.

Richmond Trip #1 Monday

Got in very late the first night but I really appreciate that on this project they are building in travel days, whole entire days so I didn't bother to leave until about 1 PM and landed at like 10 or something. This time of year of course its 3 hours worth of time zones which is insane but when I come east I realize that even with the artificial time zones in place, the sun still goes down much later which seems weird.

The trip out itself was the usual mix of pain in the ass and interesting sociological study. For example I became obsessed in Dallas listening to the girl from Georgia behind me say 'mewved' for moved for 20 minutes. Our flight from big D to Richmond was held for a bit after everyone got on as we waited for a connecting International passenger. Its always fun to be THE LAST person on the plane because everyone watches you as you board, some staring lasers but the point is that everyone is looking. The lady that got on board was hefty, porcine really. In fact the first words that jumped to mind were 'Chris Farley'. This was helped by the fact that she looked to have put on a new coat of lipstick over her pancake makeup during some very, very bad turbulence. It was layered thick and sort of all over the place. She was loudly describing as she passed through THE ENTIRE PLANE how her flight from London had arrived late which forced her to run all the way through the terminal ruining her buzz. I just don't know what to say, it was terrible and fantastic all at once.

The Embassy Suites was about you'd expect except I got room 520.....get it? 520 like my area code!!!! I was unnecessarily proud of this all week. The desk man said the TGI Fridays in the adjacent parking lot was the about the only thing open that late so I went by for a beer and a sandwich.

TGI Fridays at midnight on a Monday is a hard place. On my left a gangster looking black guy cadoodling with the girlfriend on his left while ignoring for most of the night the completely bored looking bodyguard looking friend on his right. I call him a bodyguard cause he was like a man mountain. He appeared to be angry that he was there then, and in fact that anyone else was also s he scowled throughout the whole evening. On my right were 3 empty stools and on the other side were 2 groups. 1 a motley collection of well-worn desperate looking local bimbo types and a growing gaggle of what seemed to be servers from other restaurants that had recently closed. The servers were pretty laid back, seemed to know the bartenders well and were having a good time. The bimbos however all had an edgy sense of desperation. Didn't speak to anyone throughout, staring silently like predators. It was unnerving.

Vegas Final

I never posted anything else on my Vegas trip with good reason. It nearly killed me and I think I am only just now recovering.

Vegas Baby -- part 0

Finding my flight delayed now for 2 more hours I thought I would spend the time setting down some thoughts for the trip.

I am heading out today for the final delivery part of main segment of the project I have been running these last months. There are 400 people coming to a conference at Bally's in Las Vegas who need a new application on their computer. For reasons too painful for me to even recall, the best solution finally agreed to was to take a new hard drive for all of these laptops and build it in a configuration center in Illinois and then ship it to Vegas. Once there, each person in the group will arrive and drop off their laptops so that we can pull their old hard drive to replace it with the new one. To get to this point has been a HUGE effort as we encountered all the problems that we were possible and ended up in a huge rush over these last few weeks.

The next several days will be extremely busy making the swaps but if all goes well we should hand the last one back on Wednesday and then get to have a little fun Wednesday night and Thursday. From there I am meeting a group of friends for a bachelor party starting w/ dinner Thursday and etc etc. until I leave on Sunday. Its going to be a long week and if I'm lucky I'll have a few interesting anecdotes along the way.

Game 4

No time to warm up this game, Tina got back late from the store. She forgot about the game and was wandering aimlessly in the grocery store until I called to remind her about it. I trained the kids to chant 'ooooohhhhhh busted' when she walked in which I found amusing.

Tonight's game is against Jim S. who is a good guy that I played a couple seasons with in the past. They also had Bruce who is a big guy, like 6'8 and really solid. I always have trouble with him down low because he doesn't jump for fakes and is tough to move around. Jim shot ok but a little below his normal I think. They also had a guy I recognize from Rincon but I don't know his name. He is a very solid guard but fortunately didn't score much against us. The rest of their team wasn't much to worry about.

Due to Spring Break, we had 5 guys. I doubt I scored much at all but I held Bruce under 10 which was big. Tommy went off slashing and scoring a big chunk of our points inside. We barely shoot from the outside at all in fact. Brandon was huge down the stretch making 4/4 free throws . I felt ok after the game, finally starting to get some wind back. I don't think I dogged it up the floor too much and we didn't run alot as their guards were always in position to get back.

Game 3

Arrived 30 minutes early and had a nice slow shoot around. I like to walk through for 5-10 minutes and just shoot simple inside stuff, not jumping much just getting loose. I like to work the old 'around the world' progression from each block around the free throw line back down the other block. The first time through I'll do it flat footed and and then jumpers on the way back. From there I'll go into a 3/4 speed series of post moves followed by free throws and then 15-18' jumpers. This works best if I can get someone to rebound for me.

Brandon showed up and wanted to shoot so I rebounded for him through a progression. People don't realize how quickly you can get out of breath just shooting around and he got a little winded which was funny.

The team we played was clearly very talented. Adam is their main guy, 6'2" white guy that is a great shooter and drives well but tends to get upset easily and we managed to get him off his game a bit. I didn't know the black guy on their team, and got a little andro for a minute and picked up a technical for throwing an elbow at one point. Pete hit in the throat w/ an elbow which was funny (he was fine btw) because it is the only time he stopped talking in the 3 years I have known him. Their big guy wasn't very good or active and I was able to move him around at will.

I Scored a bit inside, maybe 6 or 8 plus 3 of 4 FT. Better rebounding, didn't run the floor as much to save some gas. I am not getting many touches on the post and most of our offense is from guard penetration. We still struggle against a zone but our slashing scorers are becoming very difficult to stop. I'll need to focus on rebounding in the future.

Overall, we won a fairly close one and pleased with everyone's performance.

Game 2

This was actually my first game having missed last week on the Disneyland trip. Our team won the first one by 15.

JB and I had to fly from his practice ending at 6 to make the 6:30 game and have a little time for me to warm up. As previously mentioned, I have not run at all since December at the Half Marathon and haven't played ball since July in Sweden. My performance reflected the neglect. I couldn't get up and down the court (which was short but wide) without my lungs bursting and I had to sit out twice to rest which sucked.

I don't know the guys on the team that well but we had a total of 6. The captain is a guy named Jose who looks just like Carlos Mortenson the poker player. Carlos is short, pretty agile, good w/ the ball and has a nice 2 step runner in the lane that is always right on the edge of being called as a travel. Tommy is a little taller and thinner but moves well and has a good nose for the ball, cutting and getting open often. Haven't seen him shoot more than layups so far though. Brandon doesn't really seem like a ballplayer but hustles alot. He makes unorthodox shot selections but really crashes the boards. Matt definitely appears to be a ball player, nice outside shot and good technique around the basket. Richard is an older guy, he didn't shoot much but seemed ok overall.

They had 1 legitimate shooter (Bash) that we did a good job closing out on but the other knuckleheads could not miss. The 800 lb. Gorilla (and no that's not a racial thing you bastard, its a colloquialism referring to the person w/ the power in a situation to do just about whatever they want) is a guy named Ime who evidently played ball for Yale and is essentially unstoppable in this league. He is a really nice guy which tempers my hate (based 100% on jealousy) for him to a seething disgust. He is extremely strong and a great leaper but in seasons past had a weakness shooting from the outside that seems to have disappeared at least for this game. The had a strangely buff Asian guy (A-Train on his shirt) who despite AWFUL form made every long range and off balance turnaround jumper he took. The rest of their team were standard players but to a man, hit nearly every long range shot they took.

We started the game in a zone which proved to be a bad choice as they could not miss from behind the arc. We stayed close in the opening minutes and Ime didn't take over the game right away. Of our first 10 possessions, we probably got whistled for 5 various (and dubious) violations that limited our opportunities significantly. The ref's partner didn't show and he didn't do a good job managing the game. I nearly got a T pointing out a guy that had been in the key for an hour. Our half court offense was ok and we got some decent shots against their 2-3 zone but I didn't have the legs to get many offensive boards so we had a bunch of 1 and done possessions. Our best success was running the floor. Tommy, Matt and I all scored on nice passes from Jose in the open court some of which were after made baskets when they were dogging it back. We'll have to find a way to keep an uptempo game going which means I need to get some wind back quick. They didn't do anything special on O or D but as mentioned shot the f-ing lights out. I think we went into half down 5 or 6. The low point of the half was Ime driving the lane, me stepping over to block the lane and take charge, him elevating to the point that the heel of his shoe hit me in the upper chest as he dunked. I clearly was in position to take the charge but got no call. I am a donkey for not just going up and fouling the bejeezus out of him and wont' make the mistake again.

During the halftime shoot around, Matt grabbed the rim which turns out is a technical though the ref didn't warn us or mention it until we came out of the break and had to start the 2nd half w/ them shooting 2 T free throws. We cut the lead to 4 twice in the second half but could not contain Ime who decided to score more and their shooting accuracy didn't diminish. We switched to man with about 12 minutes to go and Jose did a great job defending Ime on the ball and denying him passes. I think we should stick w/ man D only for the rest of the year.

With about 2 minutes to go they extended the lead to 6 and we had to start fouling. They made most of the free throws and though we did score on several of the last possessions, its wasn't enough.

We are undersized but I think should be fairly successful this year especially if I can get more in synch with Matt and Jose.