Book Review: Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman

Just an amazing and inspiring book about energy, climate, and the world we live in. I hope everyone can read it some day, and I wish it was half as long, but, overall, it's great. My favorite quote:

"This is not about the whales anymore. It's about us. And what we do about the challenges of energy and climate, conservation and preservation, will tell our kids who we really are."

Lava Lake

I'm going to try to document and archive some of my biking experiences....roughly chronologically.

I got my first mountain bike late in high school. I'll never forget the bike because it was a fluorescent green RD Coyote 3. I thought the bike was so light, but by today's standards, it was a tank. Any way, I had this new mountain bike and I wanted to ride it in the mountains. I was discussing my thoughts on possible rides at work (I was a "grocery bagger" at the time) with the new-guy, Travis, and he mentioned that he had gone mountain biking a few times. I convinced him that Lava Lake would be a great destination because it was only 3 miles and I remembered the trail as being relatively smooth. He agreed, and a few days later we were unloading our bikes from the trunks of our cars at the trail head.

Now, over the years, I've learned a few important rules for planning a first time ride:
(1) either talk with someone that has personally ridden the trail or read about the trail in a book,
(2) if (1) is impossible, hike the trail first,
(3) if 1 and 2 are both impossible, be prepared to not ride at all.
(4) make sure biking is legal on the trail.
Of course, Travis and I pretty much broke all these rules. We failed to notice that part of the trail was in a wilderness area, where mountain biking is not allowed. I failed to remember that the trail is extremely rocky with large stones embedded in dirt and sticking out everywhere along the trail. For the first few miles, we basically just pushed our bikes or rode 5 feet before hitting a rock.

You would think that after just a few hundred feet of this misery, that we would call it a day. Of course, we were way to stubborn and stupid for that. We basically slugged along much further than any reasonable person would slug, and we finally made the wise decision to stash our bikes and simple hike that last little bit. The view from the lake was spectacular, but the ride back to the car was unbelievably abbusive. It took 3 solid weeks for my prostate to forgive me for that ride. It took me 5 years before I was ready to try moutain biking again.

An interesting side story is the guy I went riding with, Travis. Travis was a little younger than I, probably 15-16 at the time of this ride, and never really became friends. In fact, I think that this ride may have been the only thing we ever did together outside of work. Travis appeared to me to be one of the most 'normal' people in world. He had normal blond hair, normal blue eyes, normal height and weight; he never said much, but he always had a smile on his face. Any way, a year or two later I learned that he was incredibly mysogonistic and a heavy drug user. The moral of the story, as always, is to not judge a book by its cover.

goodbye...

...to one of the smartest authors I ever read. DFW could write amazingly well about an incredibly wide range of topics. I still cannot believe that such a talented writer could understand such complex mathematics (see Everything and More). Just amazingly sad....

Heroes and Cool People

No, this post isn’t about the (popular?) television series called “Heroes”, it is just a dynamic list of cool people. N.B. the list is in no particular order.

• Doug Coombs - a fellow Montana State alum, amazing extreme skier, king of the Ridge at Bridger Bowl, RIP
• Steve Jobs
• Grandpa Joe Danhof - character, character, character
• Tim Bray
• Del Elliot
• Phillip Yancey
• Charlie Peskin
• Tony Campolo
• Miguel de Icaza
  

I’ll add more later.

Book Review: “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan

Simply, this is probably the most interesting book I have read. I would rank it as one of the five best non-fiction books I have ever read, and I think it should be required reading for anyone that eats. The book loosely examines the “natural” history of four different meals — McNuggets, a meal from Whole Foods, a meal from a local farm, and one from hunting and gathering. However, the focus of the book is questions like, “Where does our food come from?”, “How is it processed?”, “What are the implications of food produced in this manner?”, and “What are the relative merits of the various production methods?” Obviously, these are incredibly complex questions, and Pollan does not give simple answers (or any answers in some cases). He does, however, give us information to begin answering these questions.

Book Review: “Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science” by Atul Gawande

This is Atul Gawande first book, it was a National Book Award Finalist, and I heard about it while reading a glowing review of his second book, “Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance”. The bulk of the book is various stories from Atul’s residency, and a few stories are from other surgeons. I love reading about medicine and surgery so I really enjoyed this book. Atul is a very good storyteller, and the experiences that he and his fellow doctors have had is really interesting. At its heart, this is a book about what doctors know, what they don’t know, and how they have acquired the knowledge/skills that they have. He raises interesting points on the training of doctors (i.e., training is essential, but some patients die as a result), the limits of what doctors can do (e.g., treating pain), the difficulty of making a diagnosis with limited/imperfect information. To top it all off, the book is the perfect length (250 pages). Final Grade: B+

My SOMA QuarterIronMan Experience

I participated in my first (ever) triathlon on Sunday, Oct. 28, 2007. The race started at 6:30am, so I had to get up at 5:00am. Here’s what I learned and experienced.

SWIM: To train for the swim (1km), I’ve been swimming roughly 1.1km twice a week for the past few months. I’ve trained as far as 1.5km and a few weeks ago I went for an open water swim in Lake Pleasant (sunny, 84 degree water). About a week before the triathlon I reserved a wet suit rental for the race. The wet suit was definitely a very good idea because the water was very cold for someone living in Arizona at 69-70 degrees. When the race started, I went through one of the most horrible experiences of my life. Specifically, I couldn’t, physically, put my face in the water, I was panicking, and hyperventilating. It was horrible. I felt I was prepared, but I was completely unprepared for the combination of wet suit, cold water, swim cap, and darkness. You see, I had never practiced under race-like conditions. My one open water swim was in warm water on a sunny day without a wet suit. I think my body was just in shock for the start of the race. I started swimming inefficiently with my head above water, but after 100m or so I thought I would have to abandon. Well, I back floated a little to help calm myself down (interestingly, my speed didn’t drop off much), continued to alternate between swimming with my head above water and back floating, and finally about 300m into the race I was able to swim with my face in the water for short periods. The short periods got longer as the race went along, but I would still have to reorient myself every 10-20 strokes. I ran into a fair number of other swimmers, but nothing too serious. If I ever do a triathlon again, I will practice swimming in cold water, in the dark, wearing a wet suit at least 3 or 4 times before the actual race. I was strong enough for the swim, but I lacked the ability to swim under those conditions. In the end, I pulled out of the water after 28 minutes (I had hoped for 20 minutes) very frustrated and in 418th place (out of 600).

BIKE: To prepare for the bike, I would bike to work and back (22 miles round trip) twice a week, and occasionally ride 40 miles on the weekend. The bike part in the race was simply amazing! I loved it! I had some pent up frustration from the swim, but the bike ride was really nice. I was able to pass over a hundred people, which was a big moral booster after the swim, and I felt really good. While I’d never ridden the exact course before, I’d ridden almost all the roads at various times in the past, and I felt really comfortable with the route. The course ended up being a little longer than I expected. Originally, the distance was listed as 28.5 miles, then I got a email saying it was shortened to 23 miles. However, my odometer read 30 miles and the official race results list the distance as 29.2 miles. I averaged 20.6 mph on my odometer (20.3 mph in the official results), which I am happy with considering I was trying to save some energy for the run. One additional item of interest: you are not allowed to draft in triathlons, and I was very careful to maintain distance between myself and the other bikes for the first lap. However, during the second lap the course was packed with bikers from the half-ironman on their first lap and drafting was unavoidable at times.

RUN: First of all, I don’t like running. It just seems so inefficient compared to biking. I had been training for about 3 weeks running approximately 4 miles twice a week. I only extended my training beyond 4 miles twice — a 6 miles run and an 8 mile run, and the race was 6.5 miles. To make matters worse, it was getting really hot by the time I started my run (mid to upper 80’s). I guess the run went well for the most part, and I’m pretty happy that I was able to average 8:48 per mile. I wish there had been one more aid station around the 3.5 to 4.0 mile mark because I skipped the station at 2.5 miles, but that was just a lesson learned (don’t skip aid stations when it is hot).

FINAL THOUGHTS: I broke 3 hrs (just barely) so I’m happy. I would definitely do another triathlon if it involved a swimming pool (instead of a lake) or a relay so that I would only have to do the bike leg. The Red Rock Company that put on the race did an excellent job. There were plenty of police and volunteers to make everything organized, easy to follow, and safe. I finished in 197th place (out of nearly 600) and the final results can be found here.