it was only a pitiful 2 miles, and i was going glacially slowly, and my calves do hurt a good bit -- but i got me a nice little runner's high during my run today, the first on my 5fingers!
for the span of a block, the music, the sun, the wind, and the forward momentum all came together, and i forgot all about prepping my feet for impact, and landing just right, and leaving the ground properly, and bracing the hips for impact -- i just ran. yay.
i got my lead climbing certification on monday, and hops got hers last night. that means we're both certified to climb and belay on lead in the gym. spu hasn't passed his test yet.
lead climbing is scary, and that's all there is to it. up until the first clip, the climber is totally unprotected. even after the first clip, and the second, and the third, there's a chance that even with no belay mistakes, the climber could hit the ground after a fall. beyond the third clip (and, of course, before it) there are a multitude of mistakes the climber and belayer can make that diminish the safety of the climbing system.
so it's scary. i've got a really well calibrated system of judging fun vs risk. it's why i take most of my fun from things that kill me chronically rather than acutely. but lead climbing is more likely to kill me acutely, and i still do it.
nevermind the why, the how is actually more interesting to me. during the class, and on the test, we were made to intentionally let go of the wall and fall, to give us practice with falling and to give the belayer a chance to catch us. this exercise, i think, opened the door for me to reach the buddha mind which i will describe in a moment. letting go of the wall when i had a perfectly good hold and imperfect confidence in my belayer and belay system, for no concrete or immediate benefit to myself -- this was a mental contortion that i had not undergone before.
it was still difficult to do the third or fourth time i did it, but it wasn't as difficult. with more practice (that i won't be getting now, i passed) i could do it on cue.
last night after hops passed her test, we did one lead climb before leaving the gym. at the base of my climb, tied in and ready to go, i looked up, mentally walked through obtaining the first clip, worried a little about the length and difficulty of the climb (it's only a 5.9, but it's tall, and all of the clips are left-handed -- tiring after a while), and then my mind went about as blank as it's capable of getting. i climbed the climb, and did some scary (on lead) moves -- like a damned spun-hold undercling -- with a mind totally focused on finishing the climb, and nothing else. slowly, methodically, and perfectly carefully i climbed up, punctuated by moments of calculated, fearless risk-taking on holds that were somewhat sketchy, until i reached the top, tired and safe.
i suppose at some point the novelty will wear off and leading will be just as undistracting as toproping, but for now, it consumes my entire attention -- my focus leaving no room for fear -- and that hasn't happened to me in a very long time.
nothing like bacteria multiplying in my sinuses to edumacate me about exponential growth.
ugh.
money, meet mouth.
i read this. although it is full of really bad logic and falsely drawn conclusions, it does make at least one cogent point: 30+ years of running shoe technology and we're still getting injured. 30+ years later and i still hate my fucking running shoes.
so i went for my second "barefoot" run in my fivefingers. i did my first just after i got them, many months ago. at that time, i didn't much like it -- but now, after many months of walking on them, and a couple weeks of "getting back into running" and focusing on eliminating my heel-strike, i felt pretty good.
i didn't run far, but i ran a little father than run #1 in my 5fs. my shins hurt, as they're wont to do when i don't run with superfeet. and i was slow. and i didn't go far.
but it felt good. my shins got tight but my feet didn't hurt (though the toes were getting a little burnt from the hot asphalt!!). lately i've been running much shorter distances than i was running on my last bout. so shoehorning my 5fs into my routine should not be such a big problem.
if you're not working
and you haven't gone outside today
why are you living in the 650?
for xmas i promised hops we'd take a lead climbing class. lead climbing is rock climbing where you take the rope up with you as you climb and attach it along the way to clips attached to the wall. previously, we'd only done top rope climbing, where the rope is attached to the top of the wall. when you fall on top rope, there is very little slack, since hte rope is affixed above you. when you fall on lead, there may be quite a lot of slack, because you have to bring the rope up, and any rope between you and your most recent clip counts as slack.
consequently, falls on lead can be quite long. for hte class, to accustom us to the worst case, we had to do purposely extra-long falls, the sort of falls that would only result (in the real world) from climber error (forgot to clip in) or equipment failure. or, as it turns out, from the natural settings of the climb -- the clips are farther apart out in the wild, they say.
anyhow, hops was belaying me, and attached to her was a 70 pound "belay melon" (sand bag, basically). when i took my final fall of the night, i fell from the very top of the climb, and ended up at hte first clip -- 10-15 feet off the floor. she and the belay melon rose to meet me. in total, i fell 35-40 feet. it entertained the whole gym, staff and climbers were very excited to see such a spectacular fall.
after that, i ended up belaying my friend spu (his belayer injured himself during his fall). spu fell nearly as far as i did, which is surprising because the weight difference between us is not so great as the weight difference between hops and i. he ended up around the second clip, and i was yanked up to the first clip. we came to equilibrium with me hanging about 15 feet off the ground.
"now what?" i asked. "let yourself down," said the instructor. "how?!?" i asked -- i hadn't been instructed in how to do that because i'd only been belaying hops, and she didn't pull me far off the floor!
anyhow, it was very easy to let myself down, and then spu after me.
in all, it was a good class, and though hops probably should not belay me even with two melons, she's attentive and careful. spu as well. really, the only difficult part about the climbing is the attention i must pay as a climber to not make any errors (clipping the rope incorrectly, stepping on the rope, getting tangled in it), and the frightening distance i have to go before reaching hte first clip off the ground -- before i get there, i am not protected by the rope. even once i'm there, a fall most likely means i hit the ground.
speaking of falling, the toughest part of the class was actually letting go of the wall for the planned falls (i took no unplanned falls). i have a particularly strong survival instinct, which is normally dead set against me doing such things as intentionally falling. i've never overridden it before. it got a little easier by the third fall, but not much. just plain letting go, even when my belayer had warning, was not an easy thing for me.
each fall produced a whole lot of adrenaline. whoopdie do.
it's 3pm on a friday, 1 week from the announced deadline for layoffs.
my manager is out on vacation.
phone rings. caller id says it's my manager's manager, our division VP.
"OH CRAP", i think, "THIS IS IT FOR ME".
i answered, and he wanted to talk about a new, somewhat exciting web service i've created, sort of on a whim, for the company. he has feature requests.
huzzah!
an oldie but goodie found while searching for something altogether different.
it's going to be a long time before i set another deadlift pr. the biking prohibits it.
it's the birthday of thomas jefferson, or darn near it, as close as i can tell. TJ and i would have been friends. i've always been a big fan.
a month ago, all we would have had to talk about was politics, which would have been kind of boring, because we would not have disagreed enough to really have a discussion. now, however, we could talk about wines, and maybe even find something to disagree about -- so far, i'm pretty convinced that california wines are better than french wines, a point that may have been contentious between me and my powder-wigged buddy.
anyhow, after a bottle or two and some fine california rye whiskey, i'm sure he'd come around to my point of view.
could this be it? am i done with beer?
i haven't brewed any in almost a year, now. since beginning my "wine journey" last month, i've had nearly no beer at all. last night i went to an easter party at the captain's apt, where, of course, beer was served, but while tasting the rare beers (a batch 001 from russian river!) all i could think of: when's the wine on?
yes, the beers were good. oh boy, hops. and, uh, orange peels. but where were the strawberries, the blackberries, the tannins? oh my, the tannins, which i thought i hated, but, like brussels sprouts, now cannot get enough of?
at last, after slogging through three or four (rare!) beer tastings, i finally got to have some wine, a gifted, over-oaked california syrah -- and that was the beverage i enjoyed for the evening.
this morning i considered getting rid, finally, of my brewing equipment and my electricity-hogging beer fridges (to be replaced, of course, by electricity-hogging wine fridges).
one thing has remained constant, though, and gives me cheer in its constancy: want some rye? COURSE I DO!
i considered a consideration the other night, which, in the current economic climate, is perhaps too real a consideration to be taken lightly, that were i to lose it all, were i to need to sell everything just to put food on my table, i'd keep just one thing. my smallest, heartiest, most beloved shot glass, which found me in a thrift shop, having abandoned its former owner to find its way to me.
even were water all i could afford to fill it with, i would still meditate upon the count of its bubbles, and further, meditate upon who prior to me meditated upon the count of its bubbles.
fred brooks wrote some books about how to design software. i read them in college and refer to them all the time, even though management doesn't listen, which is one of the things fred wrote about.
his book was written in the early 1970s about the development of an IBM mainframe OS. amazingly, not only are his lessons still relevant, they may be more relevant now than they were back then, if only because in the 40 intervening years, people haven't listened to his lessons much at all.
in addition to telling us how to develop software, fred makes a compelling explanation of why we write software.
i could not have said it better myself.
it's Frobuary 4, YOMHC 0x40!
this was supposed to be a military-style short-on-sides-long-on-top dealy, but that didn't really come together, so it's a short short buzz. maybe next time.
brrr.
my love-hate with running is currently in "love".
i put superfeet in my runners yesterday and ran ~3mi, then ~2mi today. feels much better. i think that superfeet are a help when i weigh > 200lbs, and a hinderance when i'm under 200. that's the best i can figure.
i ran to a loop of the "ZOMG ZOMBIES ARE CHASING ME!" theme from "28 days later". it's really motivational. i sprinted the last couple of blocks to arrive at my finish before the end of the song (that is, before the undead got to me) and nearly had to smash a u-haul who didn't look. i made it by 1 second.
when i go to make jokes about how old i am, i can't remember if i'm 31 or 32.
who am i? what am i doing here?
actually, that's not true. bas rutten makes me want to be bas rutten, which is a much better desire: i actually could take mma classes, which would be time consuming, difficult, and injurious. however, i can't be bas rutten, no matter how much effort i devote to the endeavour. thus, i can very efficiently quit without trying.
but i still want to be bas rutten. he got his eyeball plucked out and still put three dudes in the hospital.
i thought the other day that since i no longer really have a big read beard, i should change the name of the blog.
but that's really hard and who has the time for it? i think i'll just grow another big red beard.
i've decided that there's really no good reason for me to be as pudgy as i currently am. sure, i'm still married and that'll fatten most guys, but i'm not most guys. i'm not training for powerlifting like the last time i got all chunky. i'm not cramming in the calories for a century. i have no excuse.
so i'm off on a diet, with a goal: to reach 195lbs on the scale. my lunches are now reduced to minimal proportions, and to stave off hunger and achieve my secondary goal of orange skin by may, i'll be eating lots and lots and lots of carrots.
my initial goal was 200 lbs but i figure i should aim for under 200. so there we go. 195 with orange skin, hopefully by month's end.
