Category: rambling

Tagged

Zappoman tagged me while I was in Death Valley and I am a little late responding. I apologize in advance to the four people I tagged.

Jobs I’ve held (in somewhat chronological order. Many overlap)

  • City Planner research assistant
  • Architectural Intern / CAD Operator / AutoLISP Programmer
  • Hoddy. Mixed and hauled mud for adobe/stucco construction
  • Architect
  • Bike Mechanic. (The job, along with programmer, that I am best at, but by the time I was 36 my hands couldn’t take wrenching full time.)
  • Ski tech. (A bike mechanic has to do something in the winter.)
  • Dishwasher
  • Rental bike fleet manager and camp resident manager
  • Web designer/HTML coder
  • Web/DB programmer

Movies I Can Watch Over & Over (While there are lots of movies I like, it is rare I want to watch a movie many times.)

Favorite books (Yep, I added this question. It was a glaring omission really.)

My Guilty Pleasures

  • Electronic gadgets and computers.
  • Running shoes. Seems like every time I find a shoe that fits it’s discontinued so I am constantly searching.
  • Books … though my Safari subscription has dramatically slowed the growth rate of my book collection.
  • Beer, especially home brew.
  • Dark chocolate.
  • Dark coffee.

Places I Have Lived

  • Oklahoma
  • Texas
  • Connecticut
  • New York City
  • Colorado
  • Vermont

Shows I Enjoy

  • Versus/OLN series Fearless. No longer on. : ( Short biographies of contemporary athletes. The episode about B.A.S.E. jumper, Jeb Corliss was one of my favorites. Karen Smyers and Pat Tillman are permanently on my DVR.
  • Discovery I Shouldn’t Be Alive.
  • Discovery Man vs. Wild, but the name of the show offends me.

(Favorite) Places I have Been on Vacation

  • Rio Lagartos, Mexico
  • Greek Islands
  • Paris
  • Switzerland
  • Krueger Park, South Africa
  • Death Valley

Favorite Foods

  • Macaroni and cheese. Unfortunately there is no good vegan substitute.
  • Bird bars, vegan muffalettas, almond macaroons, yummy vegan salads and anything else vegan from my friends’ bakery
  • Gingerbread and brownies from my friends’ bakery. Unfortunately they’re not vegan so I live vicariously by giving them to friends and family.

Websites I visit Daily

Body Parts I have injured

  • Collarbone broken when I was 4 jumping off the top of a slide
  • Both shoulders injured in bike crashes.
  • Broke hand falling down stairs.
  • Tore meniscus in knee falling down stairs. (Different fall)
  • Compartment syndrome in AT compartment while running ultra
  • Stress fracture in right foot.
  • Scar on forehead from being hit by a golf ball during a high school match. It was a drive on a hole paralleling the one I was playing, Fortunately it bounced once before it hit me.

Awards You’ve Won

  • Boring stuff. Mostly school and golf.

Nicknames you’ve been called

  • Kramer, as in Seinfeld. I used to have hair like his.

Pick 4 Other Bloggers…

Home

valleyincloudssmall.jpg

I thought about putting a question mark after that, but it is home for now. This was the view driving into the valley yesterday evening.

George, Leigh and Bonnie outside Panamint.Bonnie and I had an incredible adventure. Bonnie stayed with a wonderful family in Lone Pine, while I worked with the Badwater race staff. After the official event was over, Lisa Smith-Batchen and her crew welcomed Bonnie and I to their team. Lisa was not able to complete the solo double this year, but her amazing crew ran a relay from the finish line back to the start line. You can read more about the relay on Lisa’s blog.

If you can spare a dollar or ten for MPD research please consider donating through Lisa’s FirstGiving page.

Thanks to Mike Ehredt for the photo of George, Leigh and Bonnie.

Treading water

30 mile hike. West Peak. 6 Aug 2006.Not much to say. I feel like I am treading water just waiting to be able to start training again. I have been doing core, leg and foot/ankle exercises once or twice a day including Ron Jones‘ push-up, shoulder and buns matrices, and a few “matrices” of my own; hip abductors/adductors with theraband, trikonasana/half-moon, and a chair pose series I learned at a Sarah Powers‘ workshop a few years ago. Of course I’ve also been juggling weights, but I feel like my juggling skills have hit a plateau or regressed a little. Then again, my juggling may be worse because I’ve mostly been watching the Tour de France while juggling and not watching the balls.

Today I finally got mountain bike shoes that are wide enough for my feet. They have been backordered since April!! I have to say that knowing what I know now it is probably best that I did not get them earlier. Since I didn’t have bike shoes that fit I wore the boot when I took Bonnie for bike rides which was probably better for my foot.

While looking for a clip of Knowing What I Know Now (which I did not find) I found some great Shawn Colvin videos on YouTube. This is from a VH-1 set, Round of Blues. Another from 2001, Nothing Like You. I can so relate to her comments in this interview. Not being able to get out on the trails, has made me feel a little trapped and made me wonder what I am still doing here.

She is one of my most favorite artists. I first saw her at the Lowell Folk Festival near Tanglewood, MA, in 1988, before she had released an album. I bought a cassette from her and practically guarded it with my life until her Live ’88 CD came out which was basically the same thing with a couple of extra songs. It is all acoustic, and I think she is very much at her best when it is just her and her guitar. She is also a triathlete so writing about Shawn Colvin is not that far off the “training” topic.