‘thon

Marathons save more people through road closures than die during the race.
Ha, fantastic.

Morning

Several exciting things happened this morning:

1) I caught the last half hour of Saved by the Bell Wedding in Las Vegas episode while I was eating oatmeal and preparing for my departure to the Emerald City. The show was everything you’d hope it would be.
2) It was really clear this morning and I could see the Farallon Islands for the first time.

Um I guess that’s it.

Pug Life

Pug Life
Originally uploaded by noctambulator

Max 8 Feet

Max 8 Feet
Originally uploaded by noctambulator

Max is listed at 7’2″ but these photos clearly show him ducking underneath the NINE FOOT ceiling at the Bears team shop. Dude is well over eight feet tall. He’s not getting any playing time, the starting Cal center is 6’11”. Why would you play a 6’11” guy when you have an EIGHT PLUS FOOTER sitting on your bench?! He’d pull down thirty or forty boards a game, with twenty blocked shots if they’d just let him play.

back to the yay

Back in Berkeley and it’s soggy and more rain coming this week. Fun weekend, saw lots of cool Pasadena people, went to the SO’s fancy company Christmas party at the Ritz, hiked the not-too-shabby San Gabriel Peak (I miss the SG Mtns). Also, trying to decide which BIG ADVENTURE to go on next year:

Kili?

or Denali?

torres del paine?

 

Some other snow-covered mountain? Blog readers – vote! All two or three of you!

papers

Man I wish I knew about this program years ago. I’ve searched for this paper about fifty times over the last few years.

Corbitt

An American distance running pioneer died yesterday: Ted Corbitt.

Another good article on him. Two laps around Manhattan for a long run (64 miles), thousand mile month.

“The marathon demands patience and a willingness to stay with it. You must be willing to suffer and keep on suffering. Running is something you just do. You don’t need a goal. You don’t need a race. You don’t need the hype of a so-called fitness craze. All you need is a cheap pair of shoes and some time. The rest will follow.”

bbbllloooooddddd

I had an epic experience giving blood today. First off, the Red Cross screening process is pretty amazing. I thought I could skip much of it because I’m not a new donor. Well, the screening lady couldn’t figure out how to enter a “Southern California” donor into her computer here in the Yay Area, so she decided just to make me a new donor. Also, she must have asked me seven times what my name was. Then when I told her I went to Mazatlan a couple years ago, she asked me three times if I went to any other cities. My pet peeve is when people ask me the same question multiple times, expecting a different answer perhaps. Then she asked me if Mazatlan was in Sinaloa, I said I thought so, but my Mexican geography is not superb. I gave blood to that machine that centrifuges your whole blood then pumps the plasma back into your arm.  You can feel it pumping the cold fluid back in, it’s kind of creepy. Also, that one arm got really cold. The whole process took like two hours, but I got some free Nutter Butters and a sweet T-shirt out of it. And up to six lucky people get to have my RBCs, WBCs, and platelets. Well I guess they’re not so lucky.

GCRs

I’m being pulled back towards cosmic rays! CRAZY. I wonder what’s going to happen tomorrow? The answer is: something new and exciting. Maybe I’ll trip in the park again.

BEAST

I’m going to make an effort in the future to get into “The City” more. “The City” refers to San Francisco, the only real city for John Steinbeck: “You know what it is? San Francisco is a golden handcuff with the key thrown away”, and which the natives refer to as “Frisco” or “San Fran”. (Snobs). Anyway, the city is cool but the person I met last night in The City is even cooler: Beast. We ate some Eritrean food a block from Haight & Ashbury and some hippy crepes, mine was a work of art. I’ve only been over there a couple times, and it’s pretty easy to get there from my Berkeley Hills cottage but it’s not easy to find parking, what with all the hippies reciting beat poetry in the street. Also, last night was one of the very few nights I’ve gone to sleep after 10pm, weekends included. I guess that’s pretty lame.