Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Aug. 31, 2011: A Few Notes

·         I’m back in the office today after being out in the field helping (a little) with restoration work after Hurricane Irene.  If you’re wondering, there were 850+ folks out of lights in Scarsdale yesterday at lunch.  By the time I left last night, we’d cut that to just over 250, and we’d (finally) managed to open all the roads—even the back streets.  This morning, there was something like 180 folks out, and the official projection has everyone back in service by midnight tomorrow.  I understand that folks get frustrated with being out of power, but all things considered, I think the response to this storm has been pretty good.  Considering that Westchester County got hit by an actual hurricane, it’s incredible to think that everyone in the county will have their power back in less than a week.

·         I get depressed about the Republican Party from time to time, especially when they let the fringe wackos take the lead.  The parts that I like the least are the nativist parts, the parts that want to go back to the “good old days”, especially when you consider the specific parts of the way-back-when that they want to bring back.  I hate it when they pine for segregation, look for ways to screw the little guy, and bottom line, protect the interests of those that don’t need protecting.  Do we need to make some hard choices?  Yes.  Of course we do.  But I don’t think it’s too much to ask for shared sacrifice, and I think it’s idiotic to have the desire to dismantle government as a platform for seeking higher office.  “We promise to do less for you” is not a compelling slogan. 

I bring all this up because I think it’s worth asking who Republican voters are.  Because right now, the country is quickly trending away from being majority white.  So with a little simple math, we can see that the Republican Party will probably cease to exist as a viable national entity some time within the next twenty years if it can’t find a way to appeal to folks besides upper class white folks, southern white folks, and evangelical white folks.  And right now I don’t see it.

Folks (of all kinds) will eventually vote themselves unlimited amounts of bread and circuses if you let them.  To avoid that, what you have to do is to find some way to include them in your vision for the future; you have to give them a stake in the continuation of the status quo.  You have to find some way to spread prosperity around—proactively—rather than simply offering a message that says, “We’re gonna step back and hope for the best.”  That message, that, “we’re gonna do less so our affluent constituents don’t have to pay as much in taxes,” that message right there is poison.  Maybe not at the party primary level.  But compared to the rest of the country, compared to the way the country as a whole is actually trending… that message is a slow, creeping death that only lacks time and patience from the opposition in order to ensure their rivals’ complete destruction.

It makes me sad that there’s no vision at the national level besides, “Fuck you, we’re gonna keep what we have.”  I think you’re going to find that, nationally speaking, that doesn’t have much resonance.

·         It felt good to ride into work this morning.  The upside of being forced off the bike for a few days was that I had fresh legs.  I kept wanting to get up and climb out of the saddle.  That was nice.  Tonight I’m hoping to go for a little run and basically start getting back into the swing of exercising.  It probably sounds stupid to say this, but I’m insanely excited about it.

·         Also back in full swing after a few months of low-ebb?  My D&D game, The Sellswords of Luskan

If you’re wondering, the Sellswords are currently down in the depths of the Underdark, fighting the lichdrow Asterlix and his hordes of undead minions.  See, Asterlix sold his soul to Asmodeus, the King of Hell, for an insane amount of arcane power.  But then he used a ritual to turn himself into a lich, thereby denying the devil his due.  So now Asmodeus wants revenge.  Only problem?  Glasya, Asmodeus’s daughter, hired the Sellswords to fetch Asterlix’s soul before Asmodeus’s own agents had a chance to collect on their master’s debt.  Got it?  So if the Sellswords collect the soul, then they’re making an enemy of the King of Hell.  Not generally a healthy think to do.  On the other hand, if they don’t deliver on their promise to Glasya, then their leader Jaeron loses his own soul to Glasya.  That’s the price of failure when you make deals with the Devil.

Bottom line, my Players are Damned if they do, and they’re Damned if they don’t.  Either way, it think they’re screwed.  Bwhahahahahaha!

·         For the curious: I use the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for SoL, and the reason is that it saves time.  Wizards of the Coast (WotC) publishes several pre-generated campaign setting for exactly this reason.   I mean, yeah, I do like the FR novels.  They are by far and away my favorite vice.  But even more importantly than that, using an established setting saves me having to explain the obvious to my Players.  And it saves time in world-building, which you lets me focus more on things that are actually important—like story and plot.  Every minute I can avoid spending on some meaningless triviality (i.e. “What’s the name of the King of Hell?”) is a minute I can spend worrying about the next complication my Players will have to deal with in the story.  And bottom line, I think that plot complications are a lot more important than coming up with weird names for widgets, especially since the term “widgets” is already perfectly acceptable, and we all already know what it means.

·         My friend Alan Evans is working on a new story, and frankly, I envy his motivation.  I really do.  But I can’t seem to write anything that isn’t Sellswords-related, and that Sellswords stuff seems to be enough to keep my creative side at bay.  I don’t know what that says about me besides maybe that my writing doesn’t have any potential commercial applications, and that the condition seems to be terminal.

*sigh*

I wrote a novel for the same reason that I run Olympic triathlons:  I wanted to prove to myself that I could.  But now, having done it, I have little or no interest in doing it again.  What else can I say?  I guess I just don’t have the Great American Novel in me.  All my mother’s hopes and dreams for one are gonna come to nothing.

·         Last thing: I’m taking Friday off, so that Sally and the girls and I can head back to Six Flags.  You may remember that we’d planned to go on Sunday, but (obviously) we had to postpone because of the hurricane.  Well, now we’re back on , and if luck is on our side, this time it’ll be even better than it would have been last weekend!

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Slow News Day

The most exciting thing I can come up with is that Justin and Jessica are apparently back on again.  They don't look so comfortable on those bikes, though.  *sigh*  When will folks learn to adjust their seat heights?

Monday, August 29, 2011

Storm Recovery

Well, Irene has come and gone, and the good news is that we're still here.  We don't have power or water, and in fact, it seems like the storm hit Connecticut much harder than it hit some of the other surrounding communities, but we survived in one piece and without damage to the house, so I suppose that's about all I can hope for.

Personally, I got called in to work on Sunday morning to start helping with storm recovery.  Right now, I'm the municipal liaison from my company to the Town of Scarsdale, NY.  That's kind of a normal thing for me in the aftermath of a big storm.  Anyway, the town seems like it's in decent shape.  I mean, they've got some power outages to be sure, but the damage doesn't seem to be nearly as bad here as it was last year during the big snow storm.  And for that matter, Connecticut seems to have been hit a little harder than this area as well.

So anyway, that's where I am and what I'm doing.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Waiting for the Storm

Went for a long run this morning--8 miles!--and since then Sally and I have spent the day getting the house ready for the hurricane.  So far, the track of the storm has been all over the place, but when I looked this morning I was basically horrified to see that the projected eye of the storm was gonna go right through my neighborhood!  Yikes!!!  Things are looking a little better now in that the storm seems to have veered maybe thirty miles to the east, and it seems to have weakened a bit as well, but still... here we are, sort of waiting for the worst.

If you're curious, here's the National Weather Service's Hurricane Tracker.  I find it sort of addictive, but then again, I'm right in the path of the storm.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Full-On Panic!!!


Well, New York has now descended into full-on panic mode.  Mayor Bloomberg announced a mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas in the City, and they’re gonna shut down the subway and the rest of the mass transit system starting on noon tomorrow.  Which is kind of unbelievable.  I’ve been here through some pretty spectacular stuff, but this is the first time I can ever remember an actual, pre-meditated transit shutdown.  Folks who have to get in to work tomorrow—which is a goodly amount of folks, at least in my company—are starting to think seriously about how they’re gonna get in, and frankly, I’m getting concerned about the Monday commute.

With that said, I’m personally lucky this time.  My boss and one of my co-workers are gonna man the fort tomorrow, so I can stay home with my wife and kids.  And that’s good because the storm track shifted to the east overnight.  Now, instead of making landfall in Queens, the damned hurricane is looking to cut a swath through my front yard!

Argh.  I’ve been through a few hurricanes before, and so far none of them has been a big deal, but I ‘ve not got a good feeling about this one.  This one looks like it could be pretty bad.

In other news, Tennessee Titans RB Chris Johnson continues to hold out, and I’ve started to think that he might fool around and miss the whole season.  In the first place, he seems to value himself well beyond what the market dictates, and then too, I’m not sure he’s accurately appreciating the amount that his skills could atrophy if he sits out a year.  And more to the point, I’m having trouble imagining who’s gonna sign him two years from now if he indeed decides to sit out and wait for that ever-elusive mass payday.  Bottom line, it’s getting to the point where I don’t think Johnson’s holdout is helping him anymore, but with that said, he seems like he might be the kind of guys who’s stubborn enough and determined enough to hurt himself in order to hurt the team.  And that’s a Hell of a shame.

I’m no fan of CJ’s agent, BTW.  I kind’a doubt that CJ is getting good career advice at this point.

Finally, while we’re on the subject of football, the Jets and the Giants are playing a preseason game tomorrow afternoon, immediately before the hurricane hits.  By that time, mass transit to and from the game will be completely offline, so the game promises to be an utter zoo from jump.  Personally, I can’t wait.

Have a good weekend!


Thursday, August 25, 2011

Batten Down the Hatches!


New York is all aflutter today about the hurricane.  In fairness, it looks like dear ol’ Irene is about to head directly through Queens.  In fact, the current track has the eye passing within two or three blocks of my friend Zahid’s house.

As you can probably imagine, I’ve spent the day analyzing the zillion and one things that can go wrong in our fair city’s electric system when a hurricane hits.  Been kind of an interesting day in that respect.  We’ve been dusting off old contingency plans, going back through old notes and historic flooding maps, and basically trying to figure out what’s the worst that can happen and then what’ll happen after that if worst really comes to worst.  Needless to say, I hope it doesn’t come to that.

I talked to Sally today and convinced her to buy some bottled water, some batteries, and various other odds and ends.  According to Stratford’s hurricane map, our particular house shouldn’t have a problem—at least not with storm surge flooding—unless we get hit with a Category 4 storm.  Frankly, I can’t even imagine how that could happen.  Irene is a fairly big storm now, but as she moves north, she’s expected to lose strength because the water will start getting colder.  Here’s hoping.

Of course, the flipside of that is that this area tends to get a lot less wind than, say, coastal North Carolina, meaning that we have a lot more old growth trees, which are in turn a lot more susceptible to even much lower force winds.  And then, too, with a higher population density, the odds are a lot higher that a falling tree will take out somebody’s power lines… or their house!  A tree can’t fall in a vacant lot if there aren’t any vacant lots.

In any event, folks tend to be prepared for the disasters that they’ve seen recently.  In New York, we take terrorism very seriously, but until this week, it’d been something like 50 years since we had an earthquake and at least 20 since we’ve seen a hurricane.  And even then, that last hurricane wasn’t a particularly big storm.  So, I’d say folks are at least a little freaked just because of the sheer novelty of the event.  Yes, we have Nor’easters with some regularity, but there is a BIG difference between 40+ mile per hour winds and winds that are fully hurricane force.  But, you know, we’re still not quite as far gone as they are in New Jersey where the governor has already declared a State of Emergency and begun talking publicly about mass evacuations.  But, you know, time may show that he was right to get a jump start on the madness.  Who knows?

Assuming that we don’t have any major problems with the house or our cars or anything, perhaps the biggest impact on our family will be our planned trip to Six Flags this weekend, which we’ve had to postpone a week for the obvious reasons.  Of course, the kids still want to go and all, but I doubt the park will be much fun with rain blowing sideways at 40+ miles per hour.  Beyond that, Sally and I have also had to move our half-marathon training plans around a little, though in fairness, I’m too worried.  Or, rather, I’m still sore enough from the tri last weekend that I’m not ready to start upping my run mileage drastically.  I hope to get out for a long run on Saturday morning before the craziness starts, but beyond that, this weekend’s looking like a wasted week in terms of PT.

There’s not a lot else to report.  Hopefully you guys are all having a good week.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Notes: 8/24/11



·         I know it’s hard being a stay-at-home mom and all, but I still get jealous sometimes.  After all, Sally declared this week her “stay-cation” week while I’m still working the same as always.  So far Sally and the girls have gone to the beach, the aquarium, and the movies, and it’s only Wednesday.  I’ve no idea what they’re doing tomorrow and Friday, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be something that’s a little more fun than double-checking New York City’s bulk power system outages and deciding on a minimum cost-effective generation mix to meet the city’s electric load given those outages and the predicted weather and business climate. 

Not that I don’t like my job.  I like my job a lot.  But, I mean come on!  I LOVE the beach.

·         The Indianapolis Colts signed quarterback Kerry Collins today, and speaking as a Titans fan, I gotta say that I am DELIGHTED.  I mean, I like Collins and all, and I think he’s probably about the best option that was available to the Colts this late in the pre-season, but with that said, I’m super-eager to watch as Colts fans finally experience the kind of misery that my Tennessee Titans have known for the last few years.  I don’t wish Manning any ill in the long term, but it sure as Hell won’t break my heart if he misses about four games this season and then looks rusty when he finally does come back.  Personally, I think it’d be nice to throw some of those Colts bandwagoners off the back of the bus and ground that franchise in a year or two of mediocrity.  Might breathe a little life into the rest of the NFL and let some of the national media focus on some other, newer stories for once.

·         Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry has taken quite a bit of personal credit for the number of jobs created in Texas in the last few yearsclaiming that this proves that the combination of small government, small business, and voodoo economics that advocates has been working in his state.  Unfortunately—for him and for the rest of the country—the reality is that most of those new jobs have come as a result of increased Federal spending in Texas, mostly in the form of incoming military personnel and/or support personnel and the business growth naturally accompanies incoming military personnel and their support structures.  So, bottom line, Rick Perry would be shit were it not for Fort Hood.

·         Hey!  We had an earthquake!  In New York City!!!

 I totally felt it.  In fact, my initial reaction was fear that some asshole terrorist had finally succeeded in setting off a nuke downtown.  That’s one of my recurring nightmares, if you’re wondering.

·         Finall, a question: if I throw out my old commuting bicycle helmet and start using new racing helmet for commutes, does that then mean I can then justify going out and buying a new $200 racing helmet for next season?


And that’s about all I got.  Hope your week is going well.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Litchfield Hills Triathlon 2011 Race Report


The infamous Litchfield Hills Triathlon was a couple of days ago now—Sunday, August 21, 2011, to be exact—and for the third year in a row, I competed.  Two years ago my wife Sally and I did it as a mixed tag team with me doing the aquabike portion and her running.  Last year, I just entered the race and then ran it solo, the second of two Oly’s I did that year.  2010 was kind of a breakthrough year in that way.  But every year is different, and this year one of my goals was to not feel quite so married to triathlon as I’d felt last year.  So I only put one Oly on my schedule this year, and really, I only did that because the fine folks at the Hartford Marathon Foundation they sent me a 10%-off coupon. 

Is that the right attitude to take into a race?  Who knows?  I haven’t been training any less this year than in past years—quite the opposite, in fact—but I’ve had less of a focus on competition.  And overall, I think I’m both fitter and a little more mentally sane, so maybe there’s something to it.  In fact, all things considered, I think my approach to the season has been something of a life-saver.  If you read this blog regularly, then you know that my mother died in April, and that my grandfather died a week and a half ago.  So it’s been a tough year personally in many ways, ways that I’m still struggling to understand.  I’ve spent a lot of time lately taking refuge in the simple acts of swimming, biking, and running, and honestly, I don’t know if I could have survived without that outlet.  With that said, against a backdrop of grief, the idea of scoring a PR in any given race is a lot less important than it probably would have been otherwise. 

Eh.  To tell the truth, I’d have scratched this race if I hadn’t spent $80 entering it.  I was very close to my grandfather, and his funeral was only last Saturday.  If I’d had my druthers, I’d have spent the past weekend doing a simple long bike ride followed by an afternoon of watching cartoons with my kids.  But since I’d already committed to the race, I didn’t want to back out—and lose my $80 for nothing—especially since I’d already put in a full season’s worth of training.  Physically, I knew I was about as ready as I was gonna get.  Plus, it’s not like there’s a substitute race next month or anything.  You can find sprints pretty easily in Connecticut, but I can only think of four Olympic distance races in our state, and one of those others was held the same day as Litchfield Hills.  Thus, scratching the Litchfield race meant not just skipping a single event but actually missing a whole season’s worth of Olympic distance racing.  I didn’t want that.  When Sally and I talked about it the night before the race, I told her that, bottom line, I didn’t care how I did in terms of time, but that I wanted to run a smart race and finish strong.  What I didn’t want to do was to push hard early and then wind up in triathlon purgatory during the last half of the run.  Heh.


Pre-Race

 One of the things I’ve learned this year is how important yoga is to my pre-race warm up.  With that in mind, I set my alarm clock for 4:30 and made sure to get to the race site early.  The race itself was scheduled to start at 7:30, so I made sure to get there by 6:00, giving me a full 90-minutes to check in, get set up, do maybe 25 to 30 minutes of yoga, and then head down to the water to actually warm up.  I loaded up my bike and my bag and all my various water bottles the day before, and for once, all of the pre-race stuff went strictly to plan.  I was done with set-up by 6:30.  I spent maybe 20-minutes doing yoga in a field beside transition, and by the end of it, I felt pretty good.  It was nice not to have put a lot of pressure on myself to perform well, especially for a race that was basically the culmination of an entire season’s worth of training.  I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily choose to make Litchfield an “A” race if there was a better race to focus on, but with only one Oly on the schedule and with the Fairfield Triathlon cancelled this year, Litchfield became my season’s de facto focus.  Like it or not, it was the hardest thing I’d put on my calendar.

In any event, I got down to the beach at around 7:05.  I stretched, set aside a gu (with caffeine!) and a cup of water, carefully placed my flip-flops at the exit of the chute at the endpoint of the swim, and then got in and swam.  After that, I got out, downed my gu and my water, listened to the final race instructions, and at last we were ready to go.


Swim

They changed the swim up a little this year.  They made the race an in-water start, moved the first buoy down about 400 yards to the left of the race’s start-point, and unhappily, they let the women lead off in the first heat of swimmers.  The net effect of these changes was to add maybe 200 yards to the total swim course and to make the middle of the swim leg of the race into an absolute zoo.  For me specifically, I had to fight through the usual scrum at the start of the swim followed by a second, even wackier scrum starting right around the first turn as I and the rest of the male swim leaders caught up to the slowest of the ladies.  So, bottom line, it took me a solid 12 or even 14 minutes to get out into open water, and by that time, I felt like I’d been thoroughly tossed around.

Still, I felt pretty decent when we started.  Right from the start, a little group of guys took off and swept me up in their wake, and believe me, I was more than happy to let them pull while I drafted.  Unfortunately, the fastest of those guys burned out about 100 yards short of the first turn—right about the same time we reached the stragglers from the women’s heat—and I was left on my own for the remainder of the race.  But I’ve done a lot of open water swimming lately, and despite everything, I felt reasonably comfortable.  In fact, I felt fast and light and happy right up to the last turn.  From that last turn, I confess that the beach looked small and far away.  Still, I made it in eventually, grabbed my shoes and the shirt I’d worn down to the start, and started running up the hill to T-1.

Roughly 1-Mile Swim: 22:11  (Approximately 1:25/100 yds). 1/21 Age Group; 7/249 Overall.

If you’re wondering, that’s about 3-minutes slower than I was on this course last year.  I know I’m swimming better this year than last year—for example, last year I was 14th out of the water at this race; this year I was 7th—so I’m guessing that this year’s swim course was between 200- and 250-yards longer than it was a year ago.  I didn’t measure it with a GPS, of course, but I’d put money on it being within 100 yards of exactly a mile.


T-1

Practically the hardest part of the Litchfield Hills Triathlon is the run up from the lake to Transition.  It’s about a quarter mile climb up a loose gravel road, and what makes it worse is that there’s still a lot of race left, so you don’t want to muscle it.  You just have to breathe deep and let it come to you.

I made it—eventually—grabbed my stuff, decided not to wear socks, grabbed my bike, and ran down to the road to start the bike leg.

T-1: 4:46.  7/21 AG.  81/249 Overall.


Bike

In past years, I’d have told you that the hardest leg of this race is the bike leg.  There’s a 2-mile climb at the end of the bike, and it’s a bear.  But I’ve been riding a lot more this year, and I’ve been riding a lot more hills and intervals this year, and to be honest, I really didn’t think the bike leg was all that tough this time.  In fact, I really, really enjoyed the ride.  I felt light and fast the whole way, descending like a rocket on the dry roads and climbing strong when the roads turned up.  Having come out of the water 7th, the folks that passed me were mostly the strong bikers of the race.  And yet, even then I found myself reeling them back in on the climbs.  I’m a heavier guy for a triathlete; catching folks on climbs is not normally my best thing.  Doing it this time felt like a major victory and a validation of the way I’ve been riding this season. 

As I climbed the last hill, I actually thought, “Wow!  That’s all?!”  At that point, I knew how far I’d come since last season, and I was elated.

24.5-Mile Bike: 1:14:34 (~19.4 mph).  10/21 AG; 86/249 Overall.


T-2

My legs hurt coming off the bike, so I walked most of the way up the hill from the road before finally jogging into T-2.  After that, I dropped my gear, changed shoes, and took off my shirt.  Then I took a second to stretch my hamstrings before taking off for the run.  The clock said 1:42 as I left T-2.

T-2: 1:17.  6/21 AG.  94/249 Overall.


Run

I thought, “Wow.  As long as I don’t completely implode here, I’m gonna finish with a terrific time.”  Famous last words.

Look.  It’s not called Litchfield Hills for nothing.  The run course is insanely hilly, and I run like shit anyway.  You come out of T-2 and immediately drop down all the way to the lake before climbing back up the gravel road from the beach to transition.  From there, you climb another little hill, and it’s steeply rolling the rest of the way… down, down, down, and then up, up, up.  Rinse, repeat, and then do it again. 

So anyway, I made it to Mile 4 before I imploded, but when I finally cracked, I cracked wide open.  Actually, even before that, I’d had a wicked side-stitch, and all things considered, at that point, I just did not want to be there.  I’d done the two legs that I enjoy, and I’d done them well.  Moreover, I’d put in a solid 2:15 worth of hard effort, which is about all the contiguous training that I ever have time for.  So when I hit the Mile 4 water station, I stopped—briefly—to suck down a full cup of Gatorade and to try to get my shit back together so that I could finish strong.  But as God is my witness, I could NOT make myself start running again.  It just wouldn’t happen.  And when I finally did start going again, my chest constricted like I was having an asthma attack.  Ugh.  I don’t know if it was all the cut grass in the air or the heat or simple dehydration, but that ended any thoughts I had of somehow finishing well.

*sigh*

Eventually, I started jogging the downhills and the flats and walking the uphills, losing—I think—around 10 minutes off of what was to that point probably the best race I’d ever run.  And do you know what?  I didn’t even care. 

6.2-Mile Run: 1:05:10 (10:30/mile).  19/21 AG.  201/249 Overall.

I finally crossed the line at 2:47.  Not the sub 2:40 I’d thought I was gonna put in there for a while but still… that’s not a bad overall time or anything.  It’s a Hell of a lot more respectable than I’d thought it was gonna be while I was out on the course.

Litchfield Hills Olympic Triathlon: 2:47:55.  10/21 AG; 101/249 Overall.


If I didn’t exactly put in the kind of performance I’d wanted—i.e. smartly paced with a strong finish on the run—it’s still true that my overall time wasn’t really the point.  I ran my race, I did some good things, and I lived to tell the tale.  I’m content.  Considering that I was ready to scratch at the beginning of the week, I guess that’ll have to do.

Going forward, it’s clear that I’ve got some things to work on.  For one thing, I spent the last year focused on riding.  Now, I think it’s time to become a better runner.  I need to be able to run easier and run longer.  And then, too, I’m not nearly ready to end my season yet.  I don’t want to end it this way, distracted and half-grief-stricken, not wanting to race.  I didn’t last week when I was down at my grandfather’s funeral, and I still don’t.  There’s no reason to.  I’m still in shape, and we have at least two and a half months of decent weather left before it starts getting cold.  I wish that somebody in Connecticut would organize an International Distance Duathlon for some point in October or November, but in the absence of that, Sally and I are gonna try to run the Hartford Half-Marathon on October 15th.  I’ve never finished a half before, and I suspect that that’s something I need to do if I’m ever gonna improve as a runner.  In the meantime, we still have the Westport Kiwanis Triathlon on September 11th; that’s a race I really enjoy, and it’ll be Sally’s first ever open-water tri.

In the larger scheme of things, I think I might take a break from triathlon next year.  If the Hartford Half goes according to plan this fall, I might make the Fairfield Half one of my “A” races next summer and then do a couple of long charity rides on top of it.  Maybe do the Tour of Litchfield Hills and some local ride that supports cancer research.  That’d be appropriate, I think. 

The races I’ve enjoyed most this year have been the ones where time wasn’t a pressure.  Going forward, I’d like to find a way to focus on that a little more and just spend time trying to enjoy the ride.  As I’ve said before, triathlon is a journey, not a destination.  This year in particular, that has become a poignant thought for me.  I don’t want to focus quite so much on where I’m going and what my time will be when I get there.  It’d be nice to spend a little more time enjoying the time spent trying to get there.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Sci Fi Reading Recommendations

My friend Zahid just finished Orson Scott Card’s classic sci fi novel Ender’s Game, and after we talked about it, Z asked me for a couple more sci fi book recommendations.  I sent him the following list:

1.  My favorite current author is Richard K. Morgan.  The Altered Carbon trilogy is probably the best sci fi that’s been published in the last decade.  Also, Z, you’d like Market Forces.http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_14?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=altered+carbon&sprefix=altered+carbon

2.  David Brin is probably most famous for writing The Postman.  I really liked Kiln People, which is a detective story set amidst an exploration of modern labor markets.

3.  We talked about Robert Heinlein.  He wrote Starship TroopersStranger in a Strange Land, and The Puppet Masters.  I recommend them in that order, followed by Friday.

4.  Ben Bova is another famous sci fi author with a strong background in actual science.  I liked Jupiter and Venus.  There are bunches more that are worth reading.

5.  You can’t really put a list like this together without including Isaac Asimov.  Foundation is wonderful.  After that first book, I think the series kind of falls apart, though.

My “one to grow on” is the Codex Alera series from Jim Butcher, my favorite fantasy writer.  Butcher is more famous for his urban fantasy series The Dresden Files (which was briefly a TV series on the Sci Fi channel), but Z, I think you’d enjoy the Codex Alera a bit more.

And that’s my list.  Enjoy.

Friday, August 19, 2011

What Do You Do with Your Money?


Around the office this week, we’ve been talking about the economy.  One of the persistent questions that’s come up lately is this: Where can you put your money?  

Right now, nowhere looks like a safe bet.  In stocks, you’ve got a kind of triple whammy coming: the specter of European debt default, an imminent downturn in the domestic economy brought on by super-cuts to domestic governmental spending, and rising domestic inflation at a time when the Federal Reserve has just promised to keep interest rates low for the next eighteen months.  And, oh by the way, unemployment is stuck at around 10% and starting to look like a permanent national fixture.  Any one of those things would be bad.  All three of them together are, well… you’ve seen the stock market lately, right?  I mean, it’d probably be a decent time to invest in high-quality value stocks if you’ve got some money lying around, and you can confidently call the bottom of the market.  But calling the bottom of the market is a lot easier said than done.  For example, if Greece really does default and thereby drags down some of the big European commercial banks with it, well, I mean, there are market bottoms and then there are market bottoms.  NPR’s Marketplaceclaimed that something like that wouldn’t just pull down ItalyIreland, and Spain.  A default that big would likely destroy France, too.  And probably the rest of the Euro-Zone as well. 

I dare say there are some big American banks with exposure to at least some of that soon-to-be-toxic European debt, too.  It really is quite a nightmare scenario.

Regardless, even if the worst doesn’t come about, I think that personal investors can be forgiven for looking at some other potential investments besides stocks.  At a minimum, it seems likely that American and European demand for consumer goods is likely to tail off even further over the course of the next year or two, and I know that at least for me personally, I’d just as soon not ride that wave down into the abyss.  Maybe there will be some few profitable companies (Apple, Proctor & Gamble, various utilities, etc.), but even those seem likely to be over-bought.  And even a good company is a bad investment if you overpay for its stock. 

So what else is there?

Well, unfortunately, the bond markets are affected by the same forces that are affecting stocks, albeit in different ways.  Bonds are ostensibly safer than stocks, of course—at least, you’re more likely to get your initial investment back in any case—but they’re hardly risk free.  In fact, lately the risk of default has been a real risk.  Moreover, with interest rates as low as they are now, bonds really don’t pay.  At all.  The Federal government right now is selling Treasures with roughly 2% yields.  That’s unbelievable!  If you believe that inflation is higher than 2%—and you’d be a fool not to believe that—then bottom line, you know that the government is actually making money by borrowing right now.  Or, to put it another way, right now folks are so scared of what’s coming that they’re actually lending to the U.S. government at a loss!  And this less than a month after we almost defaulted!

So bonds are out.  In fact, they might even be worse than stocks right now.

That leaves commodities, of course.  You can buy gold or oil or pig futures or whatever the Hell else catches you fancy, I suppose.  Around here, we’ve been talking about gold and oil, but my colleagues and I agree that gold might be in a bit of bubble right now given its current valuations and that while oil is probably not a terrible investment, it’s still not exactly safe, either.  I mean, we are talking about a significant potential drop in consumer demand in the U.S. and Europe, after all.  That seems likely to send oil lower, at least in the short term and on a rather unpredictable timeline, and if there really is a serious contraction in the U.S. and in Europe, all those Asian countries that depend on exports to the West to drive their economies are gonna suffer, too—probably even worse than we are.  And that’ll drive down demand for oil even more.

So.  What do you do?  You can’t just sit on your money because inflation will erode its buying power, even if you put it in something like a CD or a money market fund.  Those things pay less than Treasuries.  But none of the major investments look particularly safe, either.  No matter what you do, you’re looking at the risk of some serious losses in the next 18-months, even if you don’t do anything!

It’s a tough issue.  If I had the answer, trust me, I’d have opened with it. 

Hell, part of me thinks that the government ought to raise taxes now just because all the other uses for the world’s ambient capital are all so awful.  Nationally speaking, I think that might actually be the least-worst solution.  All the other alternatives seem to lead to even more unjustified asset price bubbles and ultra-low risk premiums in return for capital investment.  Frankly, that’s a game I’m getting a little tired of playing.

Eh.  Come to think of it, I think Warren Buffet said that this week, too.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Feeling Better & Getting Ready to Race


I’ve been feeling a little better since I woke up yesterday morning, and thanks for asking.  It was a lot of traveling Friday and Saturday, and by the end the work day Monday, I was dead tired.  That probably affected the tone of my last post as much as anything, and I can well imagine that folks don’t come here to listen to me bellyache about my family problems.  It’s been a downer around here lately.  I know.  In any event, I’m still sad, but I feel like I’m getting my feet under me slowly but surely, and that’s a good thing.  My back is still real stiff from being in my car a bunch over the last weekend, but I’ve got a chiropractic appointment this evening, so maybe that’ll help.  It’d be nice if it did.

Still and all… it’s kind of hard to focus.  I’ve got a race this weekend—the Litchfield Hills Olympic Triathlon.  My hardest race of the season.  And right now, honestly, I’d be just as happy to skip it and go for a longer, more relaxed bike ride on Saturday morning.  For me, triathlon has always been more about the journey than the destination, and in this case, I’d just as soon keep on riding.  But “the hay is in the barn” as they say, and so I’m committed to at least showing up and going through the motions this weekend.  I mean, how bad can it be, right?

Heh.  Don’t answer that.

Olympic triathlons are relatively short events in the multi-sport/endurance sport world, but they’re not really my best thing.  They start with a one-mile swim, progress to an approximately 25-mile bike ride, and end with a 10K run.  And, bottom line, the first 2/3 of that is totally fine, but I tend to suffer during the last half of the run.  My personal sweet spot for races is more along the lines of a 60- to 120-minute affair, which is basically anything from a 10K run by itself at the low end of things to a standard 5K-25K-5K duathlon on the high side.  In fact, I seem to do the best at races that are either just under an hour or just under two hours.  Don’t ask me why.  It doesn’t make sense to me either that I get a little second wind at about the 90-minute mark, but it’s happened consistently enough that I know that it happens.  Either the race is short enough that I can gut it out in one burst of continuous effort, or it needs to be long enough that I can settle into a pace, work my nutrition plan, and then get into some solid up-tempo work in race’s later stages. 

In either case, the steady, long-distance aerobic thing isn’t really my deal, though.  My best thing is working just outside my comfort zone, gutting it out at speed rather than going long and steady.  That was the way I swam, and it’s the way I race today, too.  An Oly, meanwhile, is about a two hour and forty-five minute affair for me, depending on course conditions and whether or not I’m on my game.  That’s a little bit long for up-tempo work for all but the very best endurance athletes, and it’s certainly a little long for me, especially that run leg.  Bottom line, I know it’s gonna hurt.

I don’t really think I’m gonna set any kind of personal records this weekend.  What I can do, though, is to try to run a smarter race than usual, to stay well within my aerobic capabilities for the first two legs of the race, and to try to go without crushing myself to hamburger before the run leg is even half way finished.  So my goal this weekend is to race smarter, not harder.  And who knows, maybe that’ll turn out to be faster, too.  But I know that if I think about going faster via strategy, that’ll have me putting in too much effort early on. 

So… I’m gonna try to race comfortable this weekend and then just see where I am when I get to the run.  At a minimum, hopefully that’ll make the race a less miserable experience than it was last year, anyway.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Vacation: Swimming, Hiking, Biking, and a Funeral


Vacation was pretty great, if you’re wondering.  We drove up to Green Lake in Maine and rented a little cabin on the beach.  Green Lake is about thirty miles north of Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, and it’s utterly remote.  No phone, no cable TV, no Internet.  No town to speak of.  Barely any cell coverage.  Hell, even our water was pumped in straight out of the lake itself.  We weren’t quite in the Middle of Nowhere only because, truth to tell, you had to drive half an hour just to get to Nowhere from where we were staying.  It was like falling off the edge of the world out there.

In truth, it was terrific.  We swam a lot, took the kids out on kayaks and on the cabin’s canoe.  I ran twice and rode hills once on my road bike.  Went for two open-water swims.  Finished reading a book and then read another one.  Went hiking a couple of times with the kids and the dog.  Visited a lobster hatchery and then went out to eat lobster rolls in one of the area’s many lobster shacks.  Took the kids out on our trail bikes and trail-a-bikes.  Climbed mountains, took pictures, and basically did what anyone would do when they have a chance to spend a week out at the edge of the world.  It was great, really.

The only thing bad that happened during the entire week happened on Wednesday.  I got the call letting me know that my grandfather had died.  All things considered, we were fortunate that the call got through.  Reception was spotty at best.  But it did, and he’s gone, and as usual, there’s nothing that anyone can do about it.

I don’t really feel like eulogizing my grandfather here, but I will say that he was a great man, and that his death, while not completely unexpected, came as a nasty shock at the end of what had to that point been one of my best days ever. 

I got up Wednesday and road hills on my road bike.  After that, we loaded up the trail bikes, the trail-a-bikes, and the kids and headed for Acadia.  We spent the day riding hills on the park’s carriage roads—an intense experience when you’re pulling a 60-lb girl on a trail-a-bike, especially if you’ve already ridden hills on your road bike earlier in the day—and I loved it.  I mean, I loved every second of it.  Hannah and I rode hard up Day Mountain, and I taught her to climb out of the saddle.  Then we stopped, took pictures, and waited for Sally and Emma to catch up before descending as a family back to sea level and then climbing again up to the next part of the park.  After three hours, we broke and had lunch and then headed back to the cabin, tired but euphoric.  The girls swam when we got back while Sally and I kicked back with some beer.  I told Sally, “This is one of the Top Ten days I’ve ever had.” 

And then Cindi called to break the news.

My grandfather, Pa Pa Dan, was a tremendously important part of my life.  I realized after he was gone that he’d been the sole source of consistency in my life, and having him gone is a weird and unmooring experience.  I’m gonna miss him.  I do miss him.

He got diagnosed with small cell lung cancer about a month after my mother died at the age of 87.  He’d never been in the hospital, and he didn’t want to go this time, but he knew he was sick and didn’t want to get sicker.  As it happens, he didn’t have the flu (like I thought) or pneumonia (like his daughters thought).  So, I mean, we knew that he was in a fight.  It’s just that it looked like it was a fight that he was winning.  But then he went downhill suddenly on Sunday and died a few days later.  That surprised everyone.

We tried to enjoy the rest of our vacation as best we could, but it was tough after that.  There were moments that were great, but the cloud of grief hung over it, and when we left on Friday—a day early—it was with equal parts sadness and relief.  We enjoyed hiking and biking and being away, but I also wanted to attend the funeral and pay my respects.  That trip loomed over the back half of our week away.

The funeral was Saturday, and I flew back home Saturday night.  I don’t have any more family in Tennessee, and frankly, I didn’t want to stay there any more without them.  I’ve always felt like at least half a Tennessean, but I don’t guess I am anymore.  I can’t imagine why I’d go back now.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Going on Vacation Tomorrow...

The title says it all.  I've no idea if I'll be able to post, but if I can, I will.

Here's today's Friday Hair Metal is White Lion's "Little Fighter."  Enjoy!


Thursday, August 4, 2011

Home Movies

I got bored at today's meeting.  So I made a movie of myself on my laptop.  Enjoy.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Debt Deal, Part 2

Now that the deal is struck, and I've had a chance to read through it, I think I'm kind of warming to the debt deal.  Reality is, I think, that the government is so amazingly dysfunctional, that we actually need these so-called crises to spur us to any sort of action.  So we cut a trillion now, and if a true bipartisan deal isn't reached by Thanksgiving--a likely failure given the lowered stakes--then we cut another trillion-and-half across the board.  Entitlements, the military... all the sacred cows get the axe.  I kind of love that.  I actually think that that kind of insane craziness is what's necessary to install some fiscal responsibility in our Congress.

The only thing that really disappoints me in all of this is Obama.  Man, he caves under pressure every time.  Yes, he got Osama, but besides that, he has been a complete and utter pussy as a President.  I mean, he may well get my vote next time around, but boy oh boy, that will be by far the best of a bad set of options.

Debt Deal

Well, it seems like the debt deal is finally going to get done, and as it happens, the price turned out to be massive cuts to defense and Homeland Security spending.  Republicans got to cut at least $2.5 trillion in federal spending, and Democrats got to take a substantial part of that from a combination of defense, non-defense security, and foreign aid spending.  Which means, I think, that the war in Afghanistan is over.  It may take some time to wind it all down, but bottom line, there’s no one left in Washington who still cares enough about it to give it—or the Army fighting it—any funding.

As far as the American People are concerned, I think the real import of this event will take some time to sink in.  Americans are not by any means the most subtle or intuitive people on earth.  They are easily fooled by even the meanest form of political or economic bait-and-switch, and lately, they’ve been coerced on all sides into voting against their own economic interests through an increasingly brutal use of so-called “values” wedge issues.  The facts of this particular bait-and-switch are that today’s Republicans drape themselves in the flag and image of Reagan while running full-speed away from the real man’s actual legacy.  Because while it’s true that Reagan was basically a supply-side economics guy, he was far, far more of a pragmatist than is today’s Republican Party.  People forget that Reagan raised interest rates *a lot* to get inflation under control in early 1980s.  He also raised taxes in his second term and didn’t apologize for it after the fact.  So while it’s true that he believed in “trickle down” economics, he was neither insane nor overly dogmatic about the way he governed.  He increased spending when that was needed, notably on defense but also on other issues.

Today’s Republicans don’t care about any of that.  They care about dogma more than facts, and they’re willing to wreck the country just to make the other guy look bad. 

I just can’t get behind that.

It’s frustrating to me, a registered Republican, because I feel like there’s no one left to speak for me in the Capitol.  No one seems to care about actually balancing the budget.  No one seems to care about how the country’s actually running.  The Republicans only want to eliminate tax revenue, and the Democrats only want to increase social spending.  They care about the execution of the dogma more than about the actually effects of their actions.  And it’s so bad right now that they can’t even come to a simple compromise anymore, even in a time of crisis.  Somebody’s got to win and someone’s got to lose, and the other guys can never do anything right.  With nihilists in Congress, it’s become a dangerous proposition.

People just don’t seem to get that some spending cuts are actually de facto tax increases.  For example, if the Federal government cuts funding for schools, sure the schools can lay off some teachers, increase class sizes, and use old text books, but they’re also going to have to raise property taxes—at the local level—to make up for the new shortfall in Federal spending.  Likewise, I think if more Americans knew the real effects of coal-fired power plants, we’d have a lot less crying about spending on the EPA.  The real cost to unregulated industry is increased asthma rates—paid for via increased Health Care spending—as well as higher food prices due to damaged aquifers, fisheries, and the like, and a general need to clean the water before you use or drink it.  That process of cleaning water is not free.  It is, in fact, quite energy intensive.  Along the same lines, utility bills are not technically a tax.  And since greater energy spending is technically an increase in consumer spending in lieu of a tax—albeit one that makes neither good economic nor social sense—it’s more palatable to today’s meathead Republicans, the actual effects of the policy be damned.

Once again, I’d be curious to get the thoughts of some of my classmates on this.  I mean, they’re the ones who’re really gonna get screwed here.  Is this enough of a betrayal by the Right to make them rethink their personal politics, or have they not yet read the fine print?