rainy day

Here in Seattle-by-the-Rockies, it's been raining for what feels like a month. The grass is lush and soggy. Taking Artie for a walk on the long leash, he runs circles around me dragging the rope through the wetness. The green belt is full of rabbits, which the owls and the coyotes appreciate. When the dog takes off, half-crazed with bunny lust, after one of these, the rope snaps taut: throwing off spray and an occasional rainbow.

Meantime the boys are on summer break, constructing cities and subterranean caverns of Lego on every flat surface in the house. When this palls, Ian painted the grey skies and trees outside the kitchen window. The yellow tree is a honey locust, its leaves a bright green on the yellow side of the spectrum.

Here's the picture with a background of sordid domestic detritus.










In closeup,

The dog that didn't bark

The Barkin' Dog Duathlon, 5k run/30k bike/5k run, now in Cherry Creek State Park. It used to be in Keenesburg, CO, "Home of 500 Happy people and a few soreheads" and featured an utterly flat 30k with one turnaround. There was the occasional agricultural by-product to dodge on the way, but it was a good ride. The farmer's dogs would come out and bark at the bikes, hence the name. The run went along a dirt road next to the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad which gave the town its reason, now the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe. At times we'd be hurting ourselves along the road as a massive freight train rumbled by, "ground tremble birdseed fly in all directions", made me feel like a small fragile mammal. Eventually the few soreheads tired of roads clogged with Lycra-clad freaks and the race had to move. In Cherry Creek the locals still don't like Lycra-clad freaks but at least they're used to us.

Last year race day was cold and rainy, perfectly miserable weather for bike riding. Today's forecast was for the same, but in the event was clear and cool. I'd decided to do two 5k runs with a jog in the middle if it was raining. The over-45s all started together, with a modicum of creaking and groaning. A mop of white hair shot to the front and was last seen streaking through the woods - turned out to be Scott Hajicek, 54, running a 17:13 first 5k. It's been twenty years since I could run that fast. In the last 3 Dogs I've done:
first 5k, 19:59, 19:53, 19:54
second 5k, 21:20, 21:30, 21:10
I haven't broken 19:50 on a standalone 5k in ten years. Today's race was 19:05 first, 20:10 second. This was entirely due to a new pair of Newton shoes. They have four fat lugs on the forefoot which are supposed to encourage 'good running form', whatever that is. I didn't really believe it but will try anything once, especially now I'm old fat slow and desperate. The shoe is essentially flat - height of forefoot including lugs is the same as the heel. This I suspect is the key. Whatever it is, a 5% improvement from shoes is astonishing. Now I'm on the hook for $160 for new Newtons every year, dagnabbit.

The 19:05 was good only for 6th place in the over-45s. We are very serious old guys: old enough to have the money to buy aero goodies and engage in the whole arms race of buying speed with bike bits; old enough that we've either made our pile, or have given up trying, so have time to train; young enough that there's something left to train with; "made weak by time and fate", but denying it with all the strength left to us. Though perhaps I speak only for myself, in which case strike out the bit about 'made our pile'.

Duathlons tend to attract strong runners who can't swim and don't bike much, so my relative weakness on the bike becomes a relative strength in these races. The bike too had a winter makeover. Brand new used Hed aerobars, plus high-end tubular tires to replace the Continental Sprinters, which are sturdy but slow. Thanks to AFM, whose indefatigable testing of tires has produced the reference database of rolling resistance, for the idea. To my surprise, spending $100 per tire instead of $50 per tire, does produce a difference in the ride quality. Bike aficionados tend to witter on about 'ride quality' but I've always figured a racing bike is going to hurt and there's no doing anything about that. However these new tubulars produce a distinctly pleasurable sensation, even on the ruts and potholes of the Cherry Creek road. They are also faster I think, though the effect is not currently measurable as the new aerobars confound things.

The aerobars are carbon, which I've previously avoided on general principles. Several different carbon fly rods have exploded in my hand while casting: this is not a problem when footling about in pursuit of fish and standing foursquare on the good hard ground; but exploding handlebars at 25mph, suspended several feet above that same hard ground by two square inches of rubber, would be over-exciting. A lust for speed induced the sleep of reason so now I'm riding carbon. The trick is to not overtighten the bolts holding everything together, a torque wrench is a necessity. My bike mechanic-skills were all learnt by making mistakes in a poorly lit garage at 11pm, after the day's work is done. Wrenching on carbon provides an opportunity for new mistakes.

I’d adjusted the length of the aerobar extensions and timidly tightened the retaining bolts to what seemed appropriate. Descending from Cherry Creek dam road at 30+mph, the right-hand extension came loose. This was still manageable, steered with the elbows on the pads, held the loose bar with one hand and shifted with the other. I thought, "as long as the LH one stays solid, I can finish" so of course about 5km later the LH one comes off too. Stopped, jammed them back in, tried to start uphill in a big gear, cramped, got off the bike and downshifted, retried. This was very annoying as I'd been on schedule for sub-45 minutes over the 30k, which would have been a new land speed record for me, averaging close to 25mph. Bashed on regardless, cradling the extensions in a delicate yet firm grip, to the transition.

As usual both calf muscles cramped rigid in the first few steps of the second run. I'd worn compression socks for the full tri-geek look, also to see if it would help with the cramps, but no luck. Peglegged along for a quarter mile or so, then they began to relent. Mr CEO Challenge, Ted Kennedy, had repassed me on the bike during the equipment malfunction, and was slowly dwindling into the distance. Chased, but did not have the legs for it.

At the end of it all I'd won the 45-9 age group by 20s, and 41s ahead of 3rd place. There were four 50+ guys ahead of me though, so felt a bit of a fraud. On the other hand, I've been fourth in AG at races where I'd have placed in every AG but my own: call it karma and feel no shame. The awards are always a nice beer glass with a howling dog on it. I've heard several people complaining about the awards, having too many of these glasses, but that's not a problem for me. In fact the boys usually fight over who gets the dog glass, so I'm very happy to have two now.


There were several dogs at the finish, none of them barking. Most notable, a big Newfoundland the size of a small island, slobbering genially at us all.

Picture from bike leg is here, looking agonized in full aero tri-geek mode.

Racing is a kind of addiction. The reward is an altered state of consciousness, more precisely the obnubilation of consciousness, a holiday from the quotidian: "the strong life; it is life in extremis". This is true, win or lose: but there are many ways to win, and only one way to lose: which is to let winning matter.

Calvin's eschatology

Dinner-table conversation with the 7-year old. Calvin prompted the dialogue,
C: if I go to heaven where you enjoy yourself being good, but I enjoy being mischievous, how will I enjoy myself in heaven ?
Aged P: maybe you'll live a long time, become an old man like me, then you won't want to be mischievous.
C: do you think you get to choose how old you are in heaven ? How old would you like to be ?
A P: I'd like to be as old as I am when I die, with all my memories: but a 25-year-old body.
C: I think I'd like to be six. Or seven.
.. tires of talking, heads off to climb into the dog's crate with him, an activity C terms 'fur therapy'. I tried to take a picture of this, but Artie saw an opportunity to get in an affectionate lick on my chin. All I captured was two loving brown eyes, closing fast.

Arches NP

This carefully-framed pic elides the popup camper next door, fully equipped with a generator which ran reliably during all permitted hours. In my simpleness I thought the infernal machine could be run for some period within those hours; but the neighbours believed in the ants' dictum, 'everything not forbidden is compulsory'. Breakfast and dinner were accompanied by its steady brrrr. Otherwise, an excellent site, moderately sheltered from the cruel month's winds, with an unbeatable view across the sandstones to the La Sal mountains. The sand was fine and soft, marvellous below the sleeping bag, not so good as a companion in it.

The boys scampered up the rocks to find a sunny warm spot for re-reading the entire Calvin & Hobbes oeuvre.











A short hike from the campground gets us to Broken Arch, which is not in fact Broken. At kid hike pace, stopping to examine and discuss lizard versus snake trails in the sand, create sandslides, pick up attractive bits of sandstone, etc etc: this hike took nearly 3 hours. On another morning I ran the loop in 18 minutes. Still, the journey's the thing.

Broken Arch from below. There's a goodly bite out of it, and a crack across the narrows so it may not be long. On another day we hiked past Wall Arch which isn't there anymore.










From the top of the arch, views to La Sal. The mountains were clouded and snowy all the time we were there. Somewhere in the dead ground between here and there is the Colorado river. Our last trip on that section is essayed earlier in this screed.


Quoth young C, "I'm enjoying myself in two different ways. It's fun climbing on the rocks, and it's fun making you nervous".






SandDune Arch, good for an hour's innocent amusement. Surely there must be a way to climb up top and teeter precariously above one's aged parent ?





Sunset on red rocks.






We'd planned a nice easy bike ride on the Bar M loop but I managed to snap the rear derailleur cable on the Schwinn Continental. It was only 18 years old, can't imagine why it broke. Of course I had a full set of cables and housing languishing in the garage at home for the last several years, awaiting my pleasure. There was a bucket'o'tools in the car, using for a bit of deck construction in Palisade on the way over, but no cable. We needed to visit Arty the Wonder Dog in town anyway, at his lodgings with the Moab vet, so back to town.

I walked into Uranium Bicycles and waited for the owner to finish selling a $6k Wilier frameset with Dura-Ace tubeless wheels, probably a good $10k overall. Then I asked him about fixing a cable on a shamefully dirty $25 bike. He couldn't do the job before the next day and I didn't want to drive the hour-plus back to town, so he was kind enough to cut housing and sell me a cable for $6. They have some beautiful road bikes for rent, thought briefly of getting one for a long ride through Arches: eheu fugaces, I have children and dogs and a campfire to attend to. I replaced the cable while Arty got a walk through the cow pies at the vets'.

Weather rather shut down over the next few days, windy and cold. It rained the last night, then froze. The drive home as always took place through a blizzard.

gmail offline

James Fallows asks:
" For all of Gmail really to be available and searchable offline, the entire cache of old messages would obviously have to be stored on your own hard disk. That's now a maximum 7+ gigs per regular Gmail account. More if you've bought extra storage. Do I really want to have all of that on my laptop -- which is the main place where offline access matters? From a couple of Gmail accounts? And Google's "Gears" system of offline sync, already in use with Google Docs, seems to create a separate cache for each browser you use it with. So you could wind up with one 7GB cache for Firefox, and one for Chrome, and... Will there be a way to choose how far back you'd like the sync to run?"

Excellent questions all. So, per my investigations:
- yes, a separate cache per browser. Hm.
- no way to choose how far back to go. For one small account of 128M, Gmail says they will back up to 5 years ago. Larger accounts will presumably not go so far back. There's no information I can find on whether the older emails will be cleared out of the offline cache, or left there.
- On the hard drive, the 128M that Gmail says I'm using, becomes 137M.

The Google Gears FAQ tells us where the data is stored for IE and Firefox, but oddly enough not for Chrome. For Chrome, attachments are stored plainly at for example
C:\Documents and Settings\uname\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Plugin Data\Google Gears\mail.google.com\https_443\GoogleMail[4]#localserver

The messages themselves are in SQLite databases found similarly
C:\Documents and Settings\uname\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Plugin Data\Google Gears\mail.google.com\https_443
The data appears to be binary, so not readable without Gears or some SQLite tool. The files don't have .sqlite extensions, but that's what they are. Open them using any of the handy SQlite tools, for example SQLite Administrator which allows export of tables as CSV, HTML, etc etc.

In my install, a file named accountname@gmail.com-GoogleMail#database is the database. The table MessagesFT_content has the message contents. Interestingly all the email body is in html.

Conclusions:
1. it's still a proprietary format, although SQlite utilities can be used to extract the useful information.
2. the lack of control over synchronization means it's not a good backup solution.
3. I still need to test actual offline operation - is the search as good as it is online ?

more birds

last night I took Artie the Wonder Dog for a run. He pulled me for five miles. When we got home he did a few dozen laps of the yard, then went a couple of rounds with his old blanket. I was exhausted, he was energized. Today my quads feel as if I just ran ten miles down Mt Evans - had to brake on every step against his enthusiastic trot.

There were redwing blackbirds churring in the reeds. That is the earliest I've ever heard them in Highlands Ranch. On the other hand, every year for the last eight at least, the date has been moving up. I know this because it's noted in my training logs. Since we're right on the edge of its year-round residency, I guess that soon they'll be here continuously, and I'll lose my 'first-robin' marker on spring runs. Well, 'runs' for a generously-defined value of run: I'm working my way down to walking.

I suppose I could switch to the American robins themselves. They are thrushes like the rwb (the English robin is considered an old-world flycatcher) so not too much of a leap; but the rwb has this characteristic midday song so that he who runs may listen. It's easier to ID by ear. Then too, the robins are moving fast as well, according to the Audubon report.

The report also notes the meadowlark population is plummeting. Theirs is the true summer note. I always look forward to hearing their liquid trills on the bike in Chatfield.

weighing anchor

a marvellous poem by Seamus Heaney in the New Yorker ends up at:

As I age and blank on names,
As my uncertainty on stairs
Is more and more the light-headedness

Of a cabin boy’s first time on the rigging,
As the memorable bottoms out
Into the irretrievable,

It’s not that I can’t imagine still
That slight untoward rupture and world-tilt
As a wind freshened and the anchor weighed.
**

Exactly so. Old, trapped and grounded, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything; a last synapse flares, a spark in the punk; we can still set sail out of the dim caverns of the skull; somewhere there may yet be found
"still green water and clean bottom sand,
..
Above a seafloor where striped fish pass in shoals"