Thursday, August 31

Action Shots #11

We successfully resisted* the temptation to get a mini-van and instead, we bought a new Subaru yesterday.

Here it is:


*Actually, we came perilously close to buying a
mini-van, actually driving up to Denver, test driving it, and making an offer. Then, we nicknamed it "Turd" and realized that we hadn't fallen in love with it, and it wasn't that good a deal anyway.

Wednesday, August 30

Uncovery #7

Cool Honda Civic commercial where all of the sounds of a car are beautifully imitated by a choir.

link

Wednesday, August 23

The graphicals

I'm stuck in South Carolina while my baby teeths at home. It bugs.

But I made some graphs of my run. Because I'm obsessed with graphs and charts.

The first shows my split times during the run. The line is my cumulative time. The bars are the times for each split.



This next one shows my speed over the course of the run, compared with my goal and last year.



This last one is the big daddy. I was watching it grow all year. It shows every run I've done this year. All 101. The pace per mile is graphed on the vertical axis, and the date is on the horizontal axis. The width of each inner circle corresponds to the distance of the run. The distance between the inner and outer circle shows the elevation gain of the run.





And here's something extra.

link

Saturday, August 19

Race Report

How do you like my badass baby blue bandana?
(Heather made it out of an old button-up oxford shirt for extra nerd points)


Before the start.

6:00am: We left the house, and drove through steady rain to Manitou. I was thinking that it would have been nicer to stay in bed than to run in cold rain for 4 hours. As the sun rose, Pikes Peak was wrapped in clouds, and it looked very intimidating.

7:00am: There was no rain as the race started.

9:20am: Two other runners and I were at timberline, with three hard, steep, oxygen-deprived miles to go, and the following exchange took place:

Runner 1 - The winner is finishing right about now.
Runner 2 - So, we don't have a chance then.
Runner 3 - Yeah, it's a tight race for second.

10:10am: There was a little girl standing by herself, cheering all of the runners on with about a mile to go. The guy in front of me told her, randomly, that she had the bluest eyes he'd ever seen. A couple of minutes later, he turned back to me and said "she did though, didn't she?" I asked him to consider the possibility that he was hallucinating.

I couldn't summon
up a brief running spurt
for the photographer.


10:15am: With a little more than half a mile to go, there was a man sitting by the trail with a plateful of Nilla wafers, saying "Have a vanilla thin, it'll get you to the finish. Guaranteed to take several minutes off your time." I grabbed one.

10:24am: Ty Shesky* finished.

Nearing the finish

10:30am: I finished.

Overall, it was a dream race. I was aiming for 3:45, and I got 3:30. Can't complain about that. My main impression this year was that I was surrounded by hardass runners all day, not like last year, when there seemed to be lots of twangy lowlanders around.

I'll put together some graphs and charts tomorrow, because I'm a little bit OCD about graphs and charts and spreadsheets, and I'll post them because Robyn demanded it.

*Ty Shesky, if you're reading this, I don't have anything against you. In fact, you're one of the good weathermen. But I wanted to beat you. One should never refuse the opportunity to beat a celebrity at something if one has the chance.

Friday, August 18

My Second Ascent

Tomorrow I'm running up Pikes Peak again.

The forecast tomorrow is for

And that means

On top of

So, I may have some good stories to tell. Like how it feels to be hit by

I'm sure I'll have lots of good charts and graphs, just like last year.

I just hope I beat Ty Shesky.

Thursday, August 17

A Question to Tell You #10

Actually, 3 questions to tell you:

1. Last week, Pete called me at work to tell me that if your clothes catch on fire, you're supposed to drop to the ground.

2. Today, he called me and told me that he deescovered that if you mix yellow and red, you get orange!

3. When I was walking to catch the bus this afternoon, I was informed by a young man in a low-slung car that I had a nice tie on and "where'd ya get it, Gays R Us?"

I like this tie.

Monday, August 7

Uncovery #6


Politics aside, this is pretty clever work. Now someone needs to do it with the donkey.


(link)
(via Neatorama)

Friday, August 4

Saskatchewan

Heather's reading a Scooby-Doo book to Pete across the room, and where there was a bigfoot character, she called it a Saskatchewan instead of a Sasquatch. She also says "gigantuan" to describe something very large, and believes it's a word (and I must concede that the urban dictionary agrees.)

And I married her 5 years ago today. I'm proud of my judgement and impressed by her grace.

Wednesday, August 2

A little break

Sorry for the lack of posting this week, but I'm in Abilene, Texas, the "Friendly Frontier."

Texas is like another country, which is an image that some Texans are probably happy to cultivate. The roads work differently. The streetlights hang sideways. And tonight, upon exiting Chili's Grill and Bar, I heard a pretty girl say into her cell phone, "I'm thinking Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles for dinner tomorrow night, what do y'all think?"