Just call it Burma

I'm very happy to relearn new names of countries and places as usually the original name is the name given to it by conquerors and the new name is chosen by those who survived and kicked out their oppressors. However in Myanmar/Burma's case that's not so.

Quote from: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107808.html

In 1989, the military government officially changed the name of the country to Myanmar. (The U.S. State Department does not recognize the name Myanmar or the military regime that represents it.)

More info on the current protests as of this writing can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Burmese_anti-government_protests

So all in all. Just call it Burma.

Bill Clinton - I miss you

I usually don't blog about politics since there are plenty of beyond excellent blogs like the Daily Kos, Alternet's videos, and Rachel Maddow's video blog. But who can resist when Bill Clinton gives such a great interview to CNN that blasts the GOP about how disingenuous they are to attack Move On instead of doing something useful about the war.

My dream presidental ticket has been Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama for a while now if I can't have Dennis Kucinich or Barbara Boxer (who's not even running sadly). Hillary is looking pretty unbeatable now, and it occurs to me that voting for Hillary would get Bill too. I like that.

Friends and the gay press are critical of the Clintons for not being gay positive enough, but I'm beginning to think they are just political realists. Not that I like it, but if Hillary is brave enough to go on Ellen and talk about it, I'm really starting to think that if she thought it were politically possible she'd totally support same sex marriage. What makes me think this is that Hillary (and a lot of Dems) wants to get rid of Don't Ask Don't Tell, and that was a policy that was dreamed up as a compromise measure during Bill's presidency. Now that the idea of queers in the military is not such an earth shattering concept, they seem willing to dispense with that artificial construct. This leads me to think that once the nation became a little more used to the fact that we'd like be able to get married as well that the nation (and thus Hillary and congress) may well become more open to it.

I Wanna be a Gamer When I Grow Up

My interest in computer games pretty much begins and ends at Myst. Basically beautiful, immersing, puzzle based worlds. First person shooters have nearly no appeal to me. So the release of Halo 3 the new Xbox game makes me notice/envy(?) that attention it gets, but doesn't compel me to run out and get an Xbox.

Well one day my brain combined that with the fact that Seniors (retirement type, not the high school type) usually need all the practice they can get with improving and maintaining their reaction time.

So why not have seniors play video games? They sure play poker and also bridge, even nearly contact bridge if you will, why not? Especially since meds for arthritis are improving. So I can see games like Halo in my future and I must admit it sounds fun.

Another Way to Go Downhill

I was semi-idly thinking that offroad scooters or skates might be a viable if unusual way to get down the slick, ball bearing like fireroads that we often have here particularly on Mt. Diablo and Rose Peak.

I did a quick Google and found that I wasn't the only one thinking along these lines. There are a lot of off beat solutions. While Rollerblade has a discontinued off road skate called the Coyote:

http://starbulletin.com/98/08/25/features/story3.html

the most interesting looking skate is called Trailskate by Gateskate:

http://www.skates.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=21LG&Show=ExtInfo

In the scooter realm, there are lots of bike x scooter possibilities listed at:

http://www.electric-bikes.com/kickers.htm

The coolest one being from Germany and called the Mountain-Scootboard ant only 500 Euros (!):

http://www.scootboard.net/

A really interesting one that really isn't for my purposes, but still fascinating is the Trikke:

http://www.trikke.com/

and there's also the more bike-like Diggler:

http://www.digglerstore.com/scooters_mountain_01.html

What's interesting to me is that the more skate-like contraptions are still under the radar as far as off road laws go. Can skates be used on a no bikes trail? Fortunately, it's not really an issue as the problem I have is with gravelly fireroads and they usually allow mountain bikes (backside of Diablo, Montara Peak, Mt. Tam) and I intend to be biking most of them. The exception is Rose Peak that only allows bikes at the beginning of the trail and then it's hikers only. In that case, I would carry the skates with me and then use it going on that steep downhill which allows bikes. Or one could just lock the bike to a tree out of the way as someone who climbs up that far is not looking to steal a bike or whatever - I probably should just try that first since I already have the bike.

My Foot Is Improving with Icing

Hooray - my foot finally appears to be improving, and it's suspiciously happening at the same time as I got more serious about icing it (along with the anti-inflamatories). Doctors and other medical staff often talk about icing an injury or RICE (Rest, Ice, Compession, Elevation) and it's easy to say yeah, yeah, but after more than 2 weeks of this I decided to get more dedicated to it.

Way back in the 80's, my girlfriend at the time was very physcially active and there was an almost macho approach to ice then. It was supposed to be freezing cold, it was supposed to hurt. and it was messy as ice packs weren't very commonly available then. I, of course, hated it.

Now "they" say (guess I should find a reference huh? Just google for: rice therapy (seriously :)) that there is such a thing as too cold. Your skin is not supposed to turn white (hello, that's frostbite), and you should cover your skin with a towel or something (in my foot's case a sock does quite nicely), and in the 90's all these great gel-based ice packs that you can make cold or hot became commonly available.

I really like one gel ice pack that I got for my wrist (pictured) it has a fabric covering and is very comfortable. the label says Elasto-Gel. I've found that I can just velcro it around my socked foot (not pictured you don't need to see my foot :) and elevate it while leaving it on for 15 minutes or so. I've been doing this twice a day and this morning my foot was noticeably better. I should tell Mark my corgi owning physical therapist friend about it, he'll be thrilled.

I should also look up a reference on how ice works. It's not rocket science. The cold causes the blood vessels to contract which reduces the amount of inflammation (over simplification). Inflammation is usually bad because our body is paranoid and treats every injury as if it were an infection and sends in the white blood cell marines, and like real life military get in the way of real progress (healing in this case) if they're not needed.

Now that icing is easy, and not painful or messy there's really no excuse for not doing it.

A New Toy

So I did get the Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo mountain bike and oh man is it nice.
I did ride the Tassajara but only got a block before I turned around (I had already ridden the Hoo Koo E Koo). There was no comparison: the handling, the shifting, the braking. The Tassajara was ok, the Hoo Koo E Koo was awesome. It's more than I wanted to spend ($1050 to start) but given that I keep bikes for 20 years and I already have the money especially when I sell the Trek, it should be fine.

I did also buy bar ends and a new seat. Ian who was helping me pointed out that I need a new helmet since mine is a 2001 and they only last about 5 years. I decided that I'd get one from REI when I returned the WRB seat that I got from REI. Ian picked out the seat (a Specialized Women's one) and it's so nice.

This is also ironic as I can't ride much right now since my foot is unhappy, but I'm glad that I did it. It's also a 2008 model Hoo Koo E Koo, so it's not like it's going out of date anytime soon.

I listed the Trek on Craigslist and within 1 1/2 hours heard from 3 people. I don't think any of those inquiries are going to pan out but I can tell that I will sell it this week. I do need to locate some flat pedals for it as the only pedals I have for it are the clipless SPD one's that came on the Fisher (I'm keeping the ones that were on the Trek - well they were on the BikeE).

I so looking forward to riding it (probably at Redwood Regional Park to start with) once my foot has healed. During the test ride, I did ride it up the hill on UCB campus and it was so nice.

How Social Change Really Happens

In a very moving press conference video, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders announced today that he is supporting same-sex marriage, which is a reversal of a previous position.

This is partially (I'd guess mostly) because his daughter is gay.

http://cbs5.com/video/?id=26888@kpix.dayport.com&tr=y&auid=3016956

It occurred to me that sure you can legistlate social change and we should, but when someone has to confront the reality of what their opinions imply, it seems so much more effective. Mayor Sanders (a Republican and I most certainly don't get most Republicans) said it best. He could not look his daughter and her partner in the eye and say that their relationship is not as important as he and his wife's. He was in tears and he clearly has a heart.

Not that this sort of change is fast. My parents and I didn't talk about gay issues for 7 years after I came out to them. I was happy to leave it that way, but it was my Dad that broke the ice. He didn't want this to tear his family apart. Now that's admirable. My father, while not a Republican, was a huge homophobe, so it was a big step for him.

I swear I don't understand OJ

But really now who does? He's like an expert on the precisely wrong way to resolve a problem.

This person that he knows has some sports memorabilia that he alleges belongs to him. The other person disagrees. Sounds like a court case to me, something that he has a lot of experience with. Does he file a civil lawsuit? Oh no, that would be far too pedestrian. Allegedly he and some armed men [or unarmed golf buddies depending on who you ask] break into a Las Vegas hotel room to steal them. And of course they get caught.

Now this is just too weird for words any way you slice it. I mean what is it that motivates him really? Bad publicity? Some say no publicity is bad but I'm not so sure.

And knowing his propensity for getting into trouble, would you accompany him on this caper? We're not talking about a few million dollars here. We're talking about sports memorabilia of questionable value.

OJ could turn his life around and chooses not to. I can't help, but recall Tookie Williams, founder of the Crips, who was recently executed for being convicted of murder. While in prison, Tookie wrote kids books about not joining gangs. What does OJ do? The discrepancy is starting to bug me. Oh that's right OJ was found innocent .

Terri and Spin Class

I got Terri to go with me to spin class on Sunday. She's been putting it off but finally assented. The upshot is that she's looking for something perhaps a little less deliberately over the top as spinning class is. I explained that its very over the top nature is what the appeal is but she clearly isn't as taken with it as I am (too bad since I won't be able to do it for a month or so)

I think Body Pump may be more to her liking.

A New Injury

I appear to have an injury that I've never had before. There's a swelling at the base of my index toe (or between if and the big toe). By base I mean where the ball of the foot it (the first joint). My Dr can't feel it but I can but only when I walk on it. It's like there's a non painful pebble like pressure in there.

Since it's not at all clear what it is I did some internet checking. The closest I can find is something called Turf Toe (http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/cybertherapist/front/foot/turftoe.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turf_toe) and it's when the toes are hyperextended up and the ligament at the base of the toe is damaged. This happens particularly on hard surfaces where the person is wearing soft soled shoes (who me?).

For me that implicates both hiking long distance on hard surfaces, and spinning class. In both cases my shoes are softer than what is generally recommended to give my hip a break. Well that appears to be good for my hip but not so good for my feet which have to bear the brundt.

I was hoping that it was just from hiking and that it would go away but that hasn't occurred so I must suspect spinning class with its jumping up and back down in the pedals (great workout but apparently tough on the footsies.) So I need to lay off of spin class (bummer - I love it) for 4 weeks or so and then when I go back I should go back with classic hard soled cycling shoes instead of the mountain bike ones that I love so much.

Oh and keep taking my NSAID Voltaren.

There is a suggestioon that you should get an X-Ray, but if it was fractured it would hurt a LOT more and that's not the case as it really doesn't hurt at all.

I'll have to figure out what Bladium class to do in the mean time. I'm thinking Body Pump and maybe Body Flow. Body Pump is group weight work out which is nice but I have to be careful and work on my form as othereise I'll get hurt

I already have Dr. Grant telling me to buy new hiking shoes. I can come up with about $400-500 worth of shoes that I could use. Cycling shoes, Running Shoes, Hiking Boots, General workout shoes, and on and on. Yeesh.

I'm Getting a Mountain Bike

After discovering Craigslist and selling the recumbent and my electric guitar, I now have a nice chunk of change for a mountain bike. After some research and agonizing I've decided that I want a Fisher hardtail again. I have yet to ride them recently, but their reputation is that they are quick and also excellent climbers. Perfect.

What's funny is that the Hoo Koo E Koo has gone upscale and is just over $1000. The one I should be looking at is that Tassajara which is around $700. So I'm having Mike's bikes bring them both over to their Berkeley store so I can try them out. I'm leaning towards the Hoo Koo E Koo as I tend to hang onto bikes for a long time so the difference in prices, while significant, is not a big factor. Also I've decided to sell the Trek as well and just get a set of street wheels for the moutain boke. I can probably get around $200 for the Trek so I wouldn't be stretching much at all to get the Hoo Koo E Koo. Besides I like the name (tee hee), and the Hoo Koo E Koo is 2008 and the Tassajara is a 2007.

Real Money Poker

So I'm trying to learn real money poker (low stakes) which is a very different animal.

I started with the 5/10 CENTS CAP level but found that when I won I wasn't able to make enough money when I had a good hand so I switched to the No Limit Level

It takes a lot more concentration and it's more like work than a table #329 play money party.

I am able to win a goodly part of the time, but I still make costly mistakes and that's the price of learning. It's actually encouraging that I lose money due to my mistakes as I can work on those. What a great challenging psychological game (though I often call it "stupid game").

Basic early observations are:

• the No Limit level limits how much money you can initially bring to the table - this level the limit is $10
• As with many things, money is power in a huge way, as other folks with less can't bust you then and you can put enormous psychological pressure on someone by betting a level that is large for them and not for you.
• Given money is power, always, always go into the game with the table maximum instead of the suggested amount
• Always concentrate
• Don't over focus on your own hand, keep in mind what other possibly higher hands are out there.
• Pay particular attention to betting style. If someone readily calls a significant raise then watch out. Bluffers usually ponder a moment before betting, the ready raiser has a hand they like
• Sit at the table long enough to get to know how skilled of a better (and how skilled or timid) is
• It's usually cheaper to fold rather than lose a lot of money
• Ready raisers rarely fold - this is great if you know you have the better hand, but can be a huge expensive trap Walk away if necessary
  
• Live to play another Hand

Never had so much fun losing money. :)

Discovering Craigslist

I've bought many things on Craigslist but beyond giving away electronic equipment on it, I've never sold anything on it. Since I've been indoor cycling more I've been wanting to get a mountain bike again as I really love climbing hills (on or off road). This realization along with being able to make the upright spinning bike work for me, made me take a long look at the recumbent and decide that it would be happier in a new home as one thing recumbents aren't very good at is climbing since you can't just stand up in the pedals.

So I took photos (really important), made an ad and posted it to Craigslist. I heard from someone with in a few hours and it was sold in a couple of days. Flush with that success, I listed my electric guitar that I've had sitting around all this time. That sold in 12 hours. Wow. This is cool. Now everything doesn't sell that quickly, I've had a wetsuit listed for a couple of days and have only sold the booties, but a wetsuit is more obscure.

What I really like about Craigslist is that you're dealing locally. No shipping unlike eBay. They come to look at it, you agree on a price, they hand you cash and they take it away. I like that.

After much agonizing, I think I should sell the Trek too as it's honestly too large for me (it's a 51mc and I really need a 49cm.) I hesitate as I really love the bike and I like having both a Mtn and a Road Bike as they are so different. Maybe I can compromise by getting a nicer mtn bike and then get a second set of rims and tires for street use.

Now I have the $ for a new mtn bike and of course I don't know which one to get. The Craigslist experience has taught me that I should consider resale value when I buy a bike, so even though the REI house brand Novara is a nice bike, no one has ever heard of it which kills the resale value.

Brand names I like are
Fisher (of course - my old bike was a Fisher)
Specialized
Yeti
Salsa
Canondale (some of them)
Trek (some of them)
Marin (I think)


Maybe I should consider high end used as I can get more bike that way if I can find a 15 or 16" one that fits me.

Wonder if I should subscribe to the current mtn bike magazines. What's annoying is that they tend to review $4000 bikes (oh please) which is way annoying as the manufacturer isn't giving me a bike like they do them. Oh and they consider $1000 entry level (grrrr.)

Improving

Great workout last night.
Started with spin class with Amelia who is the only instructor who can push me into working at 90% (anaerobically - about 163 bpm for me). Normally I just automatically back off from that level and I've been trying to mentally get myself past that as my muscles can work that way - they're not failing at least not right away.

After class, I continued riding at 90-100 rpm for about 10 minutes, then took a break, changed shoes, and then used the weight machines that Dr. Greg Grant suggested I try to strengthen my right leg: The Calf Raise, and the Seated Hamstring Curl. I did 2 sets of 20 on each and then also did the Hamstring one for each leg.

Then still feeling great, I walked on a treadmill for 30 minutes at max incline (15 degrees).

Not terribly sore today though I did take a voltaren.

My resting pulse is down to 56 bpm - hooray.

What's really funny to me is that I'm getting in great shape, but my weight hasn't changed at all (not even my body fat %). What a hoot, and what a mistake to only focus on that.

Tomorrow I'm going to hike Rose Peak from Del Valle. I'm going to try to get there at 7am which means leaving at 6am - yikes.

Let's do Day "Hikes"

Apparently I can't let go of summiting Mt. Whitney. I've basically concluded that I'm going back next year on the main trail but I was checking what permits are still available for this year and there's quite a few day permis available for October. Well given that I'm comfortable climbing in rain and snow that sounds great (hope I don't regret saying that), so I went ahead and got a Day Hike permit for Sat. Oct 6th.

Now I've been on nearly all of that trail and I'm quite comfortable on it so traveling it at night will be fine. The only (ha) daunting thing is the distance: 22 miles, and of course my usual nemesis of AMS. The advantage of a day hike is no heavy backpack and I now know I can take the Diamox in much higher quantities (250mg 3x a day if necessary) and I can start 125mg 2x a day 3 days before I leave.

I think I need to do a couple of long hikes just to get a feel for how my feet will hold up, and I will be carting along a foot pharmacy to see what works in keeping them healthy. Things like moleskin and other blister padding, foot powder, towel, extra socks, maybe a knee brace just in case.

What's also nice is that I can take real food along with me. I'd love to be out on the mountain and just have a nice sandwich. You do have to be careful about mayonnaise (best to leave it off) as I've been ill off a good sandwich before that contained it, but the more palatable you can make food at altitude the better since appetite tends to disappear with the thin air. Cold pizza sounds good too.

I think I'll hike Rose Peak from Del Valle Lake at least once beforehand. This guy has good write ups on the hike, (http://www.coloniapress.com/hikes_trips.html) though he hasn't met the truly obsessed hikers that I have so I think he has a faulty idea of what is a death march. He's also under the impression that Mt. Diablo is hard to climb which I sure don't think it is.

--

Today I went to one of my Dr.'s (the one that has a lot of orthopedic experience) to ask about my hip pain and my dragging right foot. The hip pain is the biggest concern as I've been dealing with that for a couple of years now. He sent me off for an X-Ray and we'll meet back in 2 weeks. I need to remember to call ahead so I can pick up an X-Ray CD from Summit before that appt.

For the leg weakness he suggested using the 2 hamstring machines at the gym (the traditional one that I don't care for as it seems too large for me and one where you pull with your legs - will have to look for that one), and also the calf raise machine as it also exercises the tibialis too. If it gives me thunder calves then so be it.

The Road Home

In California if you have a ways to travel it can usually be as dull or entertaining as you wish depending on how much time you want to take. This time we opted for entertaining and went back via Santa Barbara and Monterey.

I did my undergrad degree at UCSB and I spent a total of 9 years there (it's a hard place to leave) and as a result have a fair bit of history there. Originally I wanted Terri and I to eat lunch at the famous Mexican food shack La Super Rica, but they were closed on Wed. This turned out to be quite fortuitous as then I tracked down where the Sojourner Cafe was, Some time ago the Soj was bought by a friend of mine Donna Mudge and I was thrilled to learn that not only did she still own it but that she was there that day. It was so cool to see her again, have her meet Terri, and spend a few minutes catching up (we of course exchanged contact info so we could continue the conversation when she's not working.) And the food was blissfully delicious. If you live near there I highly recommend it.

Since there is currently a major fire going on in the Los Padres forest Donna told me that she was telling others about our misadventures during the last major Santa Barbara fire. I stayed through that one and it's a whole blog entry on its own.

I also showed Terri what remains of La Conchita after a sizable part of the hillside came down on some of the houses there (very sobering sight), and where I used to live in Carpinteria and we walked out onto the beach there. There's an entire swimming area and ocean kayak rental place there now. I'm jealous. I swam there long before there was a swimming area and I would have loved to have a kayak available.

I also showed Terri Folk Mote Music though I was unsuccessful at trying to get her to buy a nice Kentucky Mandolin, and I showed her the elaborate Courthouse.

I also tried to find my old place in Goleta where I went through the fire, but was a block off so didn't succeed and we have to get going north to Monterey anyway.

With Monterey the series of happy accidents continued as we found a room at the Cannery Row Inn with a very gracious and helpful host named Mark who found us a place to eat at 9:30pm (Skooners - yum).

We then spent most of the next day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and it was fantastic as I haven't been there in years so I hadn't seen the new open water exhibits or the penguins. Blogger now features a video upload and we'll see if it works as I just love the video clips that I wound up with.

I tried uploading a video and it failed after uploading the entire thing. Guess I'll just put them on my site and put links in.

• Jellyfish
• Kelp Forest 1
• Kelp Forest 2
  
• Tube Anemone
• Sea Otters

I need to do a run down of the fish in the Kelp Forest but that's a lot of work. Ones that you see are:

• sturgeon
• leopard shark
• bat ray
• chinook (king) salmon
• rockfish of many kinds
• 7 gill shark (the big ones)
• spiny dogfish (looks like a sleek shark.)
• anchovie school (the shimmering silver in the 1st Kelp Forest clip)
  

Maybe I need a new obsession

Well a different additional one that is. I love to climb things and I grew up backpacking so that's one way I did it, but I never really set out saying this is what I want even though I specifically went back to it after taking a long break from it.

But the reality is that:
1. I get altitude sickness really easily
2. It's hard to justify backpacking as being very good on your body

1. I've been reading a lot about AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness - use Google, there's a ton of refs on it). And the reality is that if I wanted to continue to do mountaineering without being ill all the time I'd have to learn to stick with the limits of not going up more than 1000' in a day (from my experience I can do 1500'), and that's just horribly impractical especially if you work for a living. I like mountaineering but I could get a lot of skiing or biking done in the 4 days that it would take me to go up Mt. Whitney without being ill. I know it's contrary to the idea that you should just enjoy the mountains, but reality does assert itself eventually and I think about all the other fun things I could be doing while I wait around for my body to acclimate. I will continue to do it every so often but I think I'm really going to refocus on rock/ice climbing, skiing, and perhaps kayaking or swimming or skating or mtn biking or something else entirely.

2. There's always been this idea that you should be comfortable carrying around 1/3 your weight and that it's something you should work towards (sort of like a fitness holy grail). Trudging up the Mountaineer's Route I was mentally doing the math and realized that in my case that's like suddenly gaining 50 pounds (ok, my pack was 44 lbs), and it was like instantly becoming 200 pounds which can't possibly be good for one's joints (mine were ok, but I could feel them working harder). I now have a very real reminder that if I want to remain healthy that I should never weigh 200 pounds as that would be too much for my frame That lesson became all the more clear on the very strenuous downhill that had large downsteps - and I did have trekking poles which I made heavy use of.

I asked Terri "So backpacking really isn't very good for one's body is it?" She responded by saying how emotionally good for her it was to get a few days away which all I could say back was: "So it really isn't very good for you huh?" She laughed, but pointed out how important the emotional aspect was. Well maybe to her. I like the physical challenge of climbing. I do love the views, but I really don't have a compelling need to escape humanity, or a compelling need to suffer - at least in this way. :) Maybe I find it easier to escape humanity as I'm often alone exercising in situations where I probably shouldn't be by myself (like when I crash my mtn bike and get a concussion or just fall running and rip my knee open and have to stumble a mile down Mt Tam - so I need more supervision than I get - I'm pretty good at misadventure unfortunately.)

Let's hear It for Plan B

Well the plan was to climb Mt. Whitney via the Mountaineer's Route.
As usual things turned out a little differently.

We did indeed climb the Mountaineer's Route up to Lower Boy Scout Lake, which is something we've done before (I keep forgetting what a tough climb and descent it is). But once we got up there Terri was ill and though she did recover, she wasn't looking forward to repeating the same scenario 2 or 3 times as we progressed up the mountain. I was doing so-so and could tell I would get more ill over time so I was agreeable to changing plans.

So instead we:

• spent the next day at LBSL bouldering and scrambling (it's an unheralded bouldering paradise)
  
• descended the next day and traveled back via Santa Barbara and Monterey

In short, it was surprisingly - a blast.

This will have to be a whole series of blog entries as if I try to fit it in in one go, I'll never finish.

BiFriendly - Aug 14

We had a great BiFriendly meeting on Mon Aug 14.

Topics included

• Bi men romancing bi men - why it doesn't seem to happen that often
• Cautionary tale of stealing your neighbors wireless internet access - and us giving theories about what happened.
  
• A photograph or an image is Artificially Induced Color Reality - and I feel very remiss in not remembering to bring up Magritte's painting Ceci ne c'est pas un Pipe
  
• Chicken John running for SF mayor
• Hi Tech Pen
• Men marking territory
• Lesson in writing Chinese charaters - traditional vs. simplified
  
• Birthday greetings to Richard

And more. Hope you can join us next time.

Off To Whitney

Tomorrow we leave for Whitney and I'm really excited about it. What's weird is for about a year I've been on the verge of giving up on mountaineering as I very easily get altitude sick (AMS) and I've been trying all sort of things to cope with it with limited success.

Last June I was at Shasta and was sick at 8000' and was really depressed about it as I was sure I had to give it up and move on. Then 24 hours passed and I was fine and was even able to hike up to 10000' . what's mysterious to me is that at Whitney last year I stayed sick for more than 24 hours but I didn't stay at the same elevation, and I went up more than 1500'. When I hit 1500' it was like hitting a wall and I should have stopped there but stupidly continued up another 500'.

So this time we are going to be changing elevation each day, but only in small increments (well sort of.)

Portal 8365
Lower Boy Scout Lake 10300 (big jump, but can't be helped)
Upper Boy Scout Lake 11500
Iceberg Lake 12500
summit day 14505 (new measurement)

Also though it's not supposed to be a factor in AMD, I'm in great shape as I've been attending spinning classes regularly. The only thing I haven't been doing a lot of is carrying heavy pack, but I've been rationalizing that by the fact that we're keeping the backpacking days short, and the spinning class does a lot of arm work.

Of course as I'm writing this I'm avoiding packing the pack though it's all laid out now.
Anyway I'm feeling very confident about the climb.

[unrelated]
Hurricane Dean is starting to sound serious. I wish everyone in its path the best.

Silly addendum:

Right after weighing my pack (40 pounds sans water - but with 12 pounds of food and bear canister) I opened a fortune cookie that said "You will be free from the heavy burden you have been carrying." Er, not for long. Maybe I should take that to mean free of the effects of MS or of AMS. Maybe, but honestly it was literally true, as I had just taken the pack off. I can already feel some muscles that haven't been getting much use are going to get a lot more over the next few days. Good thing it's mostly food as that will get lighter. Good thing the summit day is only with a light day pack.

Billboards - what were they thinking?

Maybe the title should be Car Ads - What were they thinking?

The one that drives me just nuts is the Chevrolet Cobalt ads where the car is yellow or red.

Cobalt while not blue naturally, turns blue under heat and there has long been a bright blue pigment called cobalt. (ref: http://www.chemsoc.org/viselements/pages/cobalt.html). Sometimes I think advertisers think they can just change the meaning of words just by using them repeatedly. Verizon claims again and again that it's the most reliable network and never has presented any evidence supporting that. They just proclaim it louder. In Chevrolet's case, they just keep making the non-cobalt colored Cobalt bigger and brighter. In my eyes, it just makes them look all the more stupid and they're working at making some Americans go along with them.

But Chevrolet isn't the only one with surreal marketing campaigns. Even my favorite Toyota is not exempt from putting lots of money into something really odd. In the SF Bay Area there are billboards that show a gas gauge with the needle on F(ull) saying "There's no E in Toyota." I have these visions of every driver passing that sign shouting "THERE'S NO F EITHER!!!" Who thought of that and are they just deliberately yanking our chains? (And would you believe Google has no matches for "There's no E in Toyota"? (Well there is now.)

Then there are the ad campaigns that are not stupid at all, but astonishingly brazen. SF is the gay male capital of the world if there ever was one. Abercrombie and Fitch is a clothing company that markets using just simply gorgeous, well muscled male models and A&F clearly gets a healthy income from gay men. For months/years on a very prominent billboard in SF, the clothing on the models got less and less and in recent months the clothing disappeared entirely and all you saw was a hunky male chest. Which was really funny. Whisps of clothing have returned less we forget that they actually are technically in the clothing business and not the skin trade (we think).

Predatory Lending - a detailed look

Like any homeowner, I get lots of refinance offers that I don't need. The difference is that before it gets recycled, I'm prone to read the fine print to spot the catch. Over the years these offers have been getting more and more outrageous the closer to bursting the housing bubble got. Now that there is no longer a bubble and foreclosure rates are increasing I'm still getting them and they are just amazing.

Personally these days I think it's safer to arbitrarily wander into any car dealership that deal with these loans as you don't have to be nearly as savvy. Interestingly though the mortgage lenders are taking a page from the car salesmen: Emphasize a low per month payment. The thing that makes these riskier than buying a car is that these are "teaser rates" they are going to almost certainly go up as only when the market interest rates are falling will the rates go down. What's really cool for the lender is that with Adjustable Rate mortgages that are tied to a standardized index, they can honestly say they don't know what the rates are going to do (how convenient).

So I get this offer from "Customer Service Center" (won't even use their real name - hmmm)
in Rancho Cucamonga, CA.

What caught my eye immediately is that they capitalized the word "FIXED." Now if you're familiar with these offers they almost always are Adjustable Percentage Rate (APR) as that way they can make the payments low to begin with, Fixed Interest Rate loans are almost always more expensive looking to begin with as they don't change over the life of the loan. Could this really be a Fixed Rate offer? The answer is "Yes, BUT(!)"

The Program is called "FIXED Pay" and it quotes some essentially meaningless guesstamated percentages on the front. Turning over the p age and looking at the fine print tells a very different story that makes you want to hang a "DANGER: Go Back!" sign on it if you could.

This is a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. [that's good so far] Initial payment and APR are set for 5 years only [Er, WHAT?] After the first 5 years, rate and fully amortized payment are based on the fully index 30-year fixed rate [it doesn't specify if they mean today's rate or the rate in 5 years]. The initial payment rate and payment reference is a minimum payment option which is fixed for the first five years and will result in deferred interest. (!!)

That's just totally scary. It's one thing to do that with a student loan (I did that) but this means that the longer you pay the minimum, the more you will owe on a house that is probably too expensive for you anyway. You are basically building no equity in the house. You are essentially renting it while still taking on the risk and hassle of ownership with none of the payoff. This would only work if the value of the house increases in the next 5 years and it ain't gonna. After 5 years, your payments will be more than what you would have paid if you'd been able to get a fixed rate loan. The lenders win and you lose big time.

Financial Butterfly Wing Flapping

I've been meaning to post a detail rant (it's my blog and I can rant since nobody pays attention anyway) about a Predatory Lending offer that I received (my revenge for them sending them to me), and I probably will still do so but this is growing beyond a simple ripoff. Entire economies are teetering because of the foreclosure rate and I had no idea until it started to happen (I'm no economist, I just get pissed off when I see people being ripped off.)

Here's one ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_financial_crisis

and a better one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6943083.stm

Because these lendors got home buyers to go for a loan they simply could not afford when the rates went up, the default rate has gone way up. Easy to see but a lot of that debt got repackaged and resold around the globe. I guess that's one way to share the pain but it's likely to have an effect on the perceived value of any US obligation. Ok that's an overstatement, but it's quite a lesson on how one's own selfish/selfserving actions can cause real harm to a whole lot of others.

Reality Complicates

I've been working on a blog entry that is from some amateur observations of human behavior at the online internet poker table. It's been really fascinating and a little disturbing, and the curve ball (and what makes it completely amateur is that I got included inadvertently and it's messing with my little theories. So I'll continue working on the post but there's a new twist that I'll need to account for.

Tilting at Avatars?

Full Tilt Poker is a fascinating place for psychology. Seriously.
I've been enjoying a particular group that hangs out at the Play Money 5/10 Pot Limit level. They're very friendly and talkative an occasionally get around to playing poker too. However there is one guy (an assumption) that shows up that has a really short fuse and gets into arguments with people at the table. Actually arguments is not the correct word. He starts spewing virile and threatening people One time it got to the point that we all agreed to "mute" him so we couldn't see his typing. It was like a group shunning and it worked very well.

But that only goes so far. The other night he was yelling at the perceived women at the table calling them some really hurtful things and any perceived male that intervened got of course called a f.a.g.g.e.t [sic] (how anyone gets the time to include periods in their name calling is really beyond me.)

What's interesting to me is that while there really are people behind the pictures/avatars, one really has no way of knowing who they are and yet it's really easy to make some completely unjustified assumptions about them. Female avatars and female names are assumed to be female and male ones similar. I really like the guys (a fair assumption) who start flirting with the very busty female avatars. Hello? Those are pictures - you're flirting with a picture, one that the person did not even create.

This guy is behaving in such a classic alcoholic/abusive way as after he has an explosion, he then apologizes and makes nice. There's even a very talented young woman (I know she's a woman) who will listen to him, take his shit and forgive him and even talk us into unmuting him. Can you say codependent? I don't think they know each other in real life (or at least I hope so).

So last night (hope I finish this today) things took an unusual (in my eyes) turn. It's common for the chicken (my avatar) to be threatened with being turned into dinner and another avatar who is a kitty started teasing the chicken. "Here chicky chicky" This was all pretty amusing and this guy started to defend the chicken, pseudo threatening the cat to stay away from the chicken. (Yes really this is at an online poker table in a little itty bitty chat window - you can create a world out of anything I swear.)

Now WHY would he defend the chicken? The only things I can think of are (a) the chicken is perceived male and the cat could be perceive female (b) the chicken is now known and well liked at the table - though the cat's known too (c) he was seated in between the two avatars and it seemed like the thing to do.

This does complicate things for me as now there's something of a "relationship" though I have no idea what it is. The next time he goes off the chicken may actually be in a position to talk sense to him or he will be even more angry at the chicken for not being loyal. (I'm going to have to brush up on my male bonding code.)

Harry Potter: A Wonderous Phenomenon

I've talked about this theme so often I forget that I haven't written it here.

Today I trotted down to my local bookstore (Books Inc.) and cheerfully paid full price (I think - I didn't check) for the new Harry Potter book. This is despite being offered it as a loan. The reason is that I so much want to support this endeavor.

Do you realize that kids are going crazy over a series of BOOKS! The Nintendo/Nickelodeon ADHD generation can't wait to get their hands on a book. How cool is that? As a bookworm, I must admit to being a little jealous, but honestly, they need this more than I or my bookish peers do and we take part anyway (and we don't have to harrass our parents to buy it.)

Now I need to find time to read this tome before someone gives away the details to me. Now that's one thing I'm really jealous of. Getting the time to read. I also regret having eyes that fatigue easier, but I will get absolutely no sympathy for that as I didn't need glasses till I turned 40 and was no longer able to compensate for an astigmatism in both eyes. The challenge for me now is to adapt. Accept that I can't focus as well and keep getting better glasses and stop fighting the issue. My father has demonstrated how pointless it is to fight reality and work with it instead. Too bad there's not a gym for your eyes, though my ophthalmologist seems to think that eye exercises don't seem to do a lot of good anyway.

Even more spam humor: Anatrim the ground-breaking

This is the very same spam as before, but they clearly had their top editor work on it. 
Oh and I just love the claim that people write to them.   Clearly not in English.

My fav is still the "world-spread community"  Though "less eating insanity" is pretty
memorable as well.
Seize the opportunity! Anatrim The up-to-the-moment and most 
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Predatory Lending

About three+ years ago I realized that something like the following article I knew would be written and it still is heartbreaking.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/29/MNGRVR91S21.DTL

LIVING THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE FORECLOSURES ON THE RISE: As the housing market softens, a combination of consumer naivete and aggressive lending means owners with subprime loans are increasingly getting sucked down a financial black hole

These aggressive lenders knew this was coming. They knew they were setting people up for financial ruin. It makes me angry that they were allowed to mislead people and I really think they should be rotting in jail for it. Sure there was consumer naivete (a lot of it in the Bay Area housing market that looked like it would never fall though you knew it had to), but there were lenders lining up for the chance to take advantage of them. How do these rip off artists live with themselves?

How do you tell someone that they shouldn't buy a house when there is some shyster telling them that they can and is offering the front money to make the dream possible?

They offer an adjustable rate mortgage with a super low starting rate and a monthly payment that is made to appear low, but it turns out that they're paying either interest only or less than that. In a rising housing market this is risky, but ok. In a flat or falling housing market this is financial suicide. If the value of the house drops, you will end up owning more than what you've been paying in as you have no equity in the house. All the while, the adjustable rate keeps adjusting upward towards market interests rates and the homeowner's payment goes up, and surprise the homeowner finds themselves trapped.

If the homeowner can afford the increases ok, but homeowners who can afford such increases are not using subprime lenders and risky loans. The "system" only works if the value of the house goes up (or if the homeowner's income goes up) and they can then refinance it to a better loan. This is the dream that the lenders sell them. And it's for this that I think they should have to walk over well heated coals. They knew this would happen. Grrrrrrrr.

Poker Strategy

Oh cool another boring poker post.

I think I've played enough practice poker play to come up with a basic strategy that works for me at least at the 5/10 No Limit w/ $300 Bet limit Cap per hand.

I experimented with generally staying in until the flop as long as it wasn't too expensive. This was I could see if a poor hand might turn into a full house, or three of a kind or even 2 pair. But honestly I seemed to over all lose more money that way that if I promptly folded poor hands. Sure I'd lose out on the occasional good hand but there were plenty of really good hands to be hand without the so-so hands costing me extra money.

Criteria for staying in (not folding)

• a pair
• at least one face card or an Ace
  
• both cards same suit (potential flush)
  
• both cards sequential or nearly so (potential straight)
  

Criteria for staying in for the Turn card and the River

• Is there a better possible hand?
  
• Is someone betting like they have it?
• How expensive is staying in?
  

If there's some moron who's going in all the time even before the flop just sit out till they run out of money & go away. If this doesn't happen in 5 minutes go to a different table. Telling them to knock it off via chat sometimes works.

If I clearly have the best hand and it's only the flop, lure other bettors in gradually. Bet 10 to see who wants to play. Then next round bump it to 70-100. Those with a semi-decent hand will be tempted to continue. Now they've invested something in the hand. Go All-In. Wise players will fold, but once one has sunk that much money into something it's really hard to do and if one player calls, you will often get more than one and you walk away with a very nice pot, and folks are either impressed or making amusing comments about cooking the chicken in a pot or both. (Yoshi uses a chicken as an avatar.)

Though if it's only the flop, you can lose as there are still two other cards to be dealt. You really have to watch out for potential full houses as they beat regular flushes and straights. If you've already All In'ed then you just have to accept it which is why it's nice to wait till the River before an All-In.

More spam humor: Anatrim: the earth-shaking (?)

I decided to take a look at the text of one of those "Obesity is dangerous. Stop it!" spams.

Oh it's good, even better than autogenerated nonsense poetry that some programs are so strangely good at. It even has the "attracting lose flesh" reference that's so, er, inspired. Bolding is mine as you might guess.

Profit by the opportunity! Anatrim The very up-to-date & most
attracting lose flesh product available

Can you count up all the situations when you told yourself you would do
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I had always led a cool private life until last year my girlfriend
told me I was obese and in a great want of keeping eye on my health. ...

Click right here to scan invincible Anatrim bargain we are so proud to
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One can only hope that this is machine translation (which I oh so dearly love) and not something someone actually wrote. The text of this email has survived for months which is amazing all in itself. Is there really truly no one around them that doesn't understand English well enough to see how strangely it's worded? I mean HTF does one even parse "attracting lose flesh product"?

However now that I look at it, machines don't usually confuse incredible and invincible unless it was spelled so poorly that the spell checker guessed wrong. In that light "attracting" may have been intended to be attractive. "Lose flesh" is still way loopy but probably was meant to be weight loss. But let's hear it for "attracting lose flesh" - that's priceless.

The BMI (Body Mass Index)

I must admit I dislike the BMI (Body Mass Index), which is a ratio of your weight vs your height (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index). It does not take into consideration how muscular you are or how in shape you are or you strength or what your body fat % is. A truly buff person (not me) will come out as obese. While I don't like the sites that talk about it as they're out to prove the obesity epidemic is a myth and I don't believe that - it is a problem. But this site (http://www.obesitymyths.com/myth1.1.htm) among others lists several famous people who are technically overweight if you use BMI alone.

Now in all fairness, the BMI has me tagged correctly. I am slightly overweight. However as I get more and more in shape the BMI is not going to reflect that and in fact it may show it as getting worse as I'm gaining muscle and that's heavier than fat.

One site (http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/) even says that the BMI is a calculation of your body fat %. Is that right? How could that be? Though the BMI computed for me now is not too far off the mark, when I gain muscle, my body fat % goes down (according to my Tanita scale), but my BMI goes up.

Now in all fairness, NIH does have a page talking about the limitations of the BMI here:
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/obesity/lose_wt/risk.htm#limitations

First Spin Class

I went to my first spin class yesterday. It was fun but I have a feeling the instructor was being kinder than is typical (Rick thought so when I told him about it). I definitely had a great workout and was definitely whooped, but for me, walking up a treadmill at full incline is more work. My criteria for that has become: when I sweat on my scalp - which is rare but consistently happens when I'm on a treadmill at either a run or a hike with full 15% incline.

The spin class approached that but didn't really hit it. Though my leg muscles were definitely tired and it's not like I felt I could do more

At a different time, I did spend about 1/2 an hour on one of the spin bike adjusting it and just getting used to it. I'm really glad I did that as there are at least four different ways to adjust it and I wouldn't have had time for all that during the class.

The pedals have clips on one side and cleats on the other and my cleats do fit it which makes the uphills so much nicer.


The work out featured lots of intervals, speed work, and hill climbing where you stand up in the pedals. There is a computer on the bike to keep track of you cadence and the instructor will often say what the target cadence is.

It's been about 20 hours and my arms are twitchy, which is making it hard to type.

Trash Talking

As I'm sure everyone in the vicinity has heard. Waste Magament, the trash/recycling contractor for the county I live in: Alameda County is in the midst of an ongoing labor dispute. Stories of people's trash not getting picked up for 2 weeks are all over the news.

What I find a little more than embarrassing is that our trash is getting picked up. So why is my trash somehow more deserving that someone's in East Oakland? Sure it's a mostly white neighborhood, but I think the important point is more of social class. Regardless of race, it's a professional, mostly white-collar neighborhood. Average income is while not stratospheric, is likely above average and it appalls me that money is what has the clout in this country. That with limited "resources" (I believe the correct term is "scabs"), somehow my neighborhood ranks higher than East Oakland. Happy as I am to have my trash etc picked up, that really bites and sends a horrible message. And what really sucks is that it 's not like there's a picket line that I can't cross or something.

Spam Humor

At work I have to check our spam filter for anything legit that gets caught in it. Also email to frap.org is only very loosely filtered, so as a result I see all sorts of goofy lost-in-translations.

I just got this one:

Hello my friend!

I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here (http://somesillyfakerx.cn) are bad.

Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong..

My dog and I are still alive :)

kill himself _and_ eat his dog? In that order? Impressive.


But that doesn't even come close to my all time reoccurring favorite:

Obesity is Dangerous - STOP IT!!

Oh terribly sorry - I'll stop it right now. I just hate it when I do that.
Who writes these things? This one in particular comes up over and over again.

My Dad should be a Blogger

My father should be a blogger. He's not, and never will be. He types poorly and his hands shake too much to even write with a pen much (likely Essential Tremor). He even dislikes writing checks which creditors do not like. But he loves to extemporize, theorize and solve the world's problems (something I don't do here - the most I ever do is solve dog problems and that's in the dogs' blog), and it would give him a place to rant instead of taking it out on innocent bystanders. It would do him so much good - sigh.

There are medications you can try, but his doctor didn't think they'd help much. There's a line in this reference that made me laugh:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000762.htm

All people have some degree of tremor during movement. This shaking normally involves mainly the hands. Stress, fatigue, anger, fear, caffeine, and cigarettes may temporarily worsen this type of tremor.

He has not one, not two, but Every Single One of those risk factors! Sigh.
Oh they left stubbornness out of the list. That should be the first one.

Temperature control

When I'm in bed and I feel too hot my natural inclination is to stick a leg out from under the covers. Unlike a lot of other folks this mostly just results in my still being too hot and I have a cold leg too. Conversations with other folks conclude that well it should work and you're just weird. Well ok.

I didn't think too much about it until a 60 minutes interview with the long distance cold water swimmer Lynne Cox (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/15/60II/main573256.shtml?source=search_story) (http://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Antarctica-Long-Distance-Swimmer-Awards/dp/0375415076)
and they said a researcher had a theory that she is able to tolerate extremely cold water as her body shifts more warmth to her core when the temperature drops. My mind immediately went back to being too hot in bed with a cold leg. If there's any truth to the shifting of body warmth, then I have my answer and maybe I'm not such a freak after all (or maybe I am).

After listening this I decided to try the next time I got too hot to tossing the cover off my core and that seemed to help better though still not perfect. Perfect is waking up enough to change covers.

[Aside] what is it with world class women athletes named Lyn/Lynn/Lynne? Lynn Hill is a famous world class rock climber (http://www.lynnhillclimbs.com/). I'm perpetually confused.

More FTP Poker

Now that "Yoshi" has some savings of play money, I feel more comfortable trying out various strategies. My usual style is to often fold, but it it's not gonna cost me over $50, I'll stay in long enough to see the flop (first 3 cards on the table) as once in a while you can get these fluke full houses and win with nearly nothing in your hand That works ok but only if I can really get used to folding good hands if there is a better one out there and they're betting like they have it (and you're pretty sure they're not blowing smoke)

I was playing at a Pot Limit table (no limit but you have to start with $1000 and you can't bet over what's in the pot already (in other words you can only double it which is usually just fine.) My generally decent hands usually lost out to better hands and I soon ran through the $1000.

Tail between legs I went back to my usual haunts of 5/10 no limit $300 Cap per round. Lost another $700 or so, switched tables and went back to folding often and bidding my time It paid off. Made over $2000 in one round. won some more and came out ahead for the evening.

It's tough having to be able to fold when you have over $100 in, but that means not losing another $200. No sense in making more of a donations than you need to.

It's all about patience and lots of it.

Yoshi got called a cockerel (mean rooster? I should look it up) - it was pretty funny.

Other people also have a tough time walking away from a hand they're invested in, so I've developed this style of starting the betting low and then incrementally increase it and then "all in" (or close) at the end. Many get sucked right into it (I know I have many times.) When it works it often pays huge rewards. It may take 200-300 of folding but it often pays off handsomely. Of course luck has a equal say in the matter. So being lucky helps.

One of the more clever sharks often seemed to take the first round up to 50 or so which makes the pot larger. That gets expensive though.

Full Tilt Poker - Beware of monkeys offering advice :)

I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but I've been playing fake money online poker at Full Tilt Poker under Corgi Yoshi's name and he's been doing quite well. You get to pick an "avatar" to represent you so his is, of course, a chicken. FTP is one of the few online casinos that have a Mac version of their program available.

You also can chat with the other players and that's just as much or more fun than playing the game. Especially that Yoshi is getting more well known in the tables we frequent (5/10 No Limit CAP Hold 'em). Calling a game with a $300 maximum per hand "No Limit" is something of a misnomer but the Cap keeps him from losing a ton of $ at a time, but when he wins he can still do very well (unlike in Limit games where we just seem to get slowly poor.)

He can also keep notes on other players so he can remember them when he seems them again. But people remember the chicken now (probably because the chicken does win often). But the chicken is learning to play poker properly so he folds a fair bit - probably not as much as one does in real money mode, but frequent enough to be noticed.

So last night we were playing, and in comes this monkey saying "I'm taking over now Yoshi" I didn't have any notes on him, but he was familiar and clearly knew Yoshi the chicken. Next hand I folded and he was saying "You folded!" "Er, well I had a bad hand." I folded the next one and the monkey started saying things like "Come'on play." The next one I had a playable hand (KQ) so stayed in for the flop and he was saying "Stay with me Yoshi." The turn card came up and it became immediately apparent that a much better hand was possible (more than one - there was clearly a possible straight on the table and the cards were low and not face cards) and I would typically have folded, but Yoshi had over $30k in "savings" so could afford to lose some for entertainment. I said "I am going to lose." He said "Stay with me Yoshi." I replied "I'm making a donation." Sure enough someone all-in'ed and just to humor monkey I called (and so did he). River card appears and someone else wins.

I told him "I'm sending you a bill for that" which amused several people at the table. He said "I saw your hand, it was good" "Yeah in a different universe." (One gets the impression that monkey isn't the best poker player). He said "you have to believe in yourself" I ask "what do belief and poker have to do with each other?" He said "idk" (I don't know). Thanks monkey some inspriational speaker you are (should have told him that.) This continued this way for the next hour or so. He called Yoshi a chicken and I said "Well I am a chicken" Someone else (I think a lizard who is a pretty good player) mentioned that other parts of the world consider monkey brains a delicacy (this is in reference to people threatening to eat the chicken), so monkey (we used his username actually) became known as Monkey Brain, and we continued to razz each other while we both lost money. I think I lost 1K total - actually it was considerably more until I got tired of it and started playing more correctly and gained a lot of it back.

Monkey Brain doesn't actually know that Yoshi has over $30k (I only play with $2k or so, as $30k kinda gives lie to the chicken image). Maybe I'll tell him next time. He implies that you can't win if you don't take chances. I do take chances, but ones where I'm likely to win (choose your battles). And Monkey Brain is clearly taking the wrong chances.

One hard poker lesson I've learned is that you have to be willing to walk away from what would normally be a decent hand if it's clear someone else has a better one. Over time, you can learn if someone likes to bluff or not.

It occurs to me that a fun user name would be "poulette merde" with a chicken avatar, but FTP probably wouldn't let you have a name with merde in it. They wouldn't let me have yoshitrek as it contained "shit" which I didn't even realize until it told me.

Whitewater Kayaking Class

This last weekend I was repeatedly dunked underwater, crashed into a bridge, and thrown from a cliff into a river with a throng of drunk, cheering spectators looking on. What a great time.

I was in a kayak and was taking California Canoe and Kayak's Intro to Moving Water. This was on the American River pretty much within the general Sacramento metropolitan area (hence the drunken onlookers).

First of all, I've spent next to no time around a river that's part of a major urban area. I'm originally from LA area where the "rivers" are concrete so we went to the beach. As such, I was unprepared for what an extraordinary party scene it is. Small flotillas of floating house parties. Huge inflatable rafts that I started calling inflatable yachts. And then us kayakers. Fortunately even though there was an inherit clash of cultures (?) - the paddlers and the alcohol imbibing floaters, the river was plenty big enough to accommodate all of us and everyone got along fabulously.

We also did our part to provide entertainment. The dunked underwater reference was part practice in what to do if your kayak capsizes. This is good that we did this as I then proceeded to capsize my boat 4 more times during Saturday. Since doing the classic rolling is a more advanced skill, they taught us first how to exit the kayak when underwater (there's a "spray skirt" that you have to detach, and secondly a "T-rescue" where you can partly pull yourself up on the bow of another kayak and then can snap your hips (seriously - it really works) to get upright again.

I was apprehensive about learning to do this and admitted it so they broke it down into steps for me. The first time they rolled me over and almost immediately rolled me back. I had neglected to put on my nose plug and had water shoot up my sinuses and I was very disoriented when he brought me back up. This did not bode well, but surprisingly it got easier. While practicing the nose plug did help but I realized that if I dumped accidentally it might make me feel constricted and panicky so I took it off after practicing.

There were two rescue skills that they taught.

The first one was how to exit the kayak underwater. While upside down, you have to bend forward to pull on the strap on the spray skirt to pull it free from the kayak and then you place you hands on the gunnels and push yourself away from the boat and then let the PFD (Personal Flotation Device) float you to the surface. I found that when upside down I had no idea which way was up (I would close my eyes usually), but the PFD certainly "knew" and would lift me to the surface.

The second was a tandem rescue or T-rescue. You capsize and while upside down raise your hands outside of the water and tap your boat. I felt like I should be calling out "Garcon (Waiter). Oh Garcon!." Then within about 5 seconds an instructor will have raced at Mach 9 over to your boat and taps your boat with his bow. This tells you what side they're on. You then reach up and grasp the bow and pull up enough to where you can rest you hands and head on the bow. Then you snap your hips towards the side furthest away from the rescuer and most times you will find yourself upright and feeling quite surprised. If you were to start to run out of air then you can always exit the above way.

I later capsized 4 times and got plenty of practice. Ironically this did wonders for my confidence though I did trade in tippy boat (a Kangaroo Ammo which is not supposed to the tippy (I think I could more successfully have paddled an egg), and then on Sunday used a Kangaroo Burn which was perfect and I did not dump it.

Before all that fun we started with the more pedestrian, but essential topic of paddling technique.
There is the
- forward stroke - the paddle is held nearly vertical you should be able to see a watch if you had one on the higher positioned wrist)
- sweep stroke (to encourage your boat to change directions - the paddle is more horizontal and enters the water slightly further out from the boat.
- stern backwards stroke the adjust the direction that your boat is facing (I did this a lot and automatically since I remember it from canoeing)
- forward stroke at an angle (usually used with "edging" see below)

Eddies
What is an eddy?
Where two different currents meet. Cause the water to act somewhat unpredictably. Current that are not part of the main downstream current often flow somewhat upstream or in a circle.

Entering eddies (crossing eddies)
from quiet water to main current
"SALE"

• maintain Speed
• enter at an Angle that points the boat towards upstream without being straight upstream
• Look (downstream) where you want to go when it's time to enter the main current and the boat will start to turn.
• lift the upstream Edge
  

Exiting eddies

• "moon the current" (point your butt slightly towards the eddy current it by lifting the downstream edge
• turn upstream as you enter the eddy
• I think of it as like a ski stop
  

Edge control

• lift you knee and drop your opposite hip and the edge on the lifted knee side will lift and the edge on the dropped hip side will engage the river.
• use it to move down the river
• use it to turn (I am not good at this)
• use it to keep boat from spinning (semi ok at this)
• forward stroke paddle on same side as edge (this is counter intuitive and has to be done at speed to work.)
  

Moving down the river
As I said I dumped the boat 4 times and learned a ton
#1 being don't panic
#2 ask for T-rescue first if feasible
#3 after about 5-10 seconds just exit the boat and swim it to shore

Once out of the boat, if you find that you're being pulled down the river, go on your back feet first to keep from crashing into rocks (didn't get to practice this. :)

[continuing on]

Out of the 4 times I capsized on Saturday 2 were exit the boat and thw other 2 were T-rescues. The first one happened as we were practicing preliminary T-rescues and I hadn't gotten the T-rescue technique down yet (I'd successfully done it only once before), so I got to do my first exit the kayak and I was so thrilled that I could do it with keeping my wits still working and without panicking. I told them that I was very happy that they had gone over how to do that before starting the T-rescue stuff. Taylor said "believe it or not there is an order to what we teach and that's why."

The next time was during our practicing of crossing eddy lines (from eddy to main current). I had done this successfully several times but let myself drive further down the river and had to work pretty hard to paddle back to the group so I may have been a little tired. I paddled out towards the current and the kayak turned sideways in the eddy.

Before I had a chance to fix it I was knocked off balance by a wave and found myself upside down in the water. I raised my hands out of the water, tapped the boat and in a matter of a couple of seconds I felt the tap of a kayak bow. I reached up and grabbed the bow and pulled my head above water with both hands. I then rested my head on the bow, and then was reminded that I should snap my hips and after a couple of tries, did so.

By that time I was fairly far down the river so decided to just hang out and wait for folks as they were about to start heading down themselves. This departure was delayed a bit as I wasn't the only one to "take a swim," but they eventually got going and I rejoined them as we paddled down the river for basically the first time.

I found that every stroke the Ammo boat would spin slighly in the other direction. Now these are river play boats and as such they are designed to turn on a water droplet. The Ammo is a bit wider which should make it more stable but now that I think about it, the width made it very difficult for me and my short torso to hold the paddle vertical for the forward stroke, and as such was in effect using a hybridized stroke that wound up pushing the boat sideways as much as forward. So I zig zagged down the river burning lots of energy and noticing that others were having an easier time of it, but I was still having a great time.

Now all of this is on class 1 water. Class 2 is some movement and splash over the rocks and we were coming up on some The key in this type of water is to keep the boat straight with the current and commit to paddling through it. I got through this ok but then capsized at an eddy line where the water was acting strangely. Fortunately Taylor was right there and with some work at getting the boat perpendicular to his, I was able to right the boat. I was thrilled that I was able to do this but noticed that the boat had still taken on a fair bit of water so we went off to shore to dump it out but the shoreline was pretty hard to reach due to trees so he managed todumpe it out while on his boat by holding mine over his head (this is a pretty wirey guy which made it all the more impressive.

This put me behind the others so one the way back I unintentionally had an instructor (Taylor) all to myself. So we wended our way down and he pointed out the "take out" spot which was just beyond a car bridge and a pedestrian bridge.

Bridges can bite

Now there are several objective hazards on the river that we discussed:

• rocks
• trees
• other objects such as fishing lines
  
• other boats and swimmers
  
• other kayakers
• and they belatedly realized they neglected to mention: bridge pylons
  

And they also talked about something that I know well from mountain biking: Object Fixation and Look where you want to go. This means that if you see something you don't want to hit don't look at it but instead the place you want to go. If you stare at what you're trying to avoid odds are very good that you will hit it. Now I may know this on the ground but it doesn't always translate to brand new circumstances that are sort of inheritly interesting (wow, look at that) and don't appear to be a problem at first glance.

The car bridge supports were large and didn't change the current at all and presented no problem. Unfortunately this left me completely unprepared for the pedestrian bridge 100 feet later. The pedestrian bridge was supported by pylons that were vertical steel griders about one foot square. The effect of this relatively small footprint support was that the water was rushing around it and I of course looked right at it (wow cool) and found myself being drawn right at the pylon though it hadn't occurred to me that this could be a problem, and was pretty much immediately sucked down into a capsize.

There is another precept when dealing with hazards that I accidentally did correctly. Fall into the hazard (rock, tree, pylon) as if you get pinned against a hazard the other direction your boat is just going to fill up with water and you may not be able to move which could potentially be a Very Bad Thing. So "Love the rock/tree/pylon." I had grabbed onto the pylon and wasn't letting go as it was keeping my head above water (I'm sideways at this point).

Taylor in order to get me out, pulled me off of the pylon and I was instantly upside down in somewhat turbulent water. I'd had enough, so didn't even try asking for a T-rescue, but just exited the boat. I came up several feet past the bridge. Taylor took the boat, and then I got to swim to shore which was fun for the first 20 feet or so (even was swimming faster than Taylor was paddling though it sure didn't feel that way), but eventually I had to stop to rest. Taylor came back to offer to tow me, but I decided to keep swimming (after all he's not always going to be around and I do have a PFD on so I'm in no danger). I finally got to shore and then had to carefully walk/wade back the 30 feet that I had overshot the take out point.

Ironically though quite a few tourists saw this happen none of my classmates did as they were looking elsewhere while waiting for us. Bruce and Chris were kind enough to help us carry the boats back to the van and I reassured that I was ok and had a new respect for bridge pylons. Taylor was saying - oh yeah and bridge pylons - did I mention that bridge pylons are objective hazards?

This was the end of Saturday.
Sunday is where we learned more finessing of strokes, entering eddys, judging white water, portaging, and entering the water from places considerably above the water line.

Sunday

Today I asked to switch boats and was trying to decide between the Recoil or the Burn (all Kangaroo river kayaks). This prompted Brett to put the Recoil, the Ammo, and the Burn side by side and upside down to talk about them. The Recoil is actually a higher performance boat with less of the kayak in the water so it's quicker. Chris said he had one yesterday and is switching as it was too squirrelly. The Burn is a slightly longer boat that tracks in a straight line but it harder to turn. The Ammo is a wider more stable hybrid. More of the kayak is in the water than the Recoil and is even wider than that Burn (though shorter). I think the width of the Ammo combined with my short torso is what made the Ammo unstable for me. I had to lean over more to get the paddle properly in the water and it put the boat off balance.

So I went with a small Burn and was very happy I did so. There were 4 separate occasions where I was leaning as much as what would have dumped me over in the Ammo but the boat righted itself like I would expect it to. I did have to argue with it some to turn it so I wouldn't mind if they came up with a shorter Burn but the lack of width was a huge boon. I could finally paddle properly and I wasn't zig zagging down the river. I didn't dump the boat at all which is almost a shame as it's such good practice. But I figured that the 4 times yesterday was enough and I wanted to work on something else.

Before we left for the river we spend time with a whiteboard and Brett using a smurf kayaker as a model of entering and exiting eddies. The main thing when entering an eddy is paddle upstream at an angle and when your kayak enters the main current look downstream, keep the upstream edge lifted, and let the current turn the boat while paddling on the downstream side.
(We worked on this yesterday also).

They also introduced a way of crossing the river called a "ferry" where you face somewhat upstream and lift the upstream edge, paddle normally and let the river surf you across. (this was fun when it worked.)

Every so often my boat would want to go so well I would find myself in a position where I had to really work at paddling back to the group. Taylor mentioned to me that the easiest way to do this is to ride the eddies on the edges back as those currents are mostly going upstream. He was right mostly. It was still work, but it was easier.

We then headed down river and paused before a rougher water section. Brett said that when going through taller waves it's useful to put your paddle right into the wave and power the boat over the wave and ride it into the trough. This did work but I found myself wanting to do it several times to get the feel of it.

We then broke for lunch and watched the house parties float by. One even stopped to ask if we were part of the beer club. "What? Oh of course we are - what do you have?" A beer club what a great idea. Too bad they were only drinking Budweiser. I now have seen a "Beer Bong" in use. It's a rubber tube with a spigot on one end and a funnel on the other. The beer is poured into the funnel (spigot closed) and then someone puts their mouth over the spigot and it's then opened. Truly a class act (not). Quite amusing.

The rules say that everyone on the river has to have a PFD/life vest. Similar to dog muzzles in Italy, it doesn't say you have to wear them, so a lot of vests spend a lot of time tied to the raft. I don't know what the accident rate is there, but it's likely far lower than it deserves. :)

We're doing what?

Then we were back in the boats for a short while and then pulled over to the shore and people started carrying boats up an embankment (I was behind and hadn't heard the instructions - it just looked like we were practicing a portage - we were in a sort of twisted way). Now the Burn is longer than me so me carrying it the classic portage way with the seat back over your shoulder was a bit of a joke as the nose was dragging and I had to struggle with lifting it slightly sideways in order to carry it but I was determined to muddle through it.

I noticed Linda seemed to be struggling too and then I saw that she wasn't wearing booties, but instead was barefoot. She turned back to where we stopped saying that the small rocks were too hard on her feet and that she didn't want to do the jump off a cliff thing. What? I could see the folks ahead setting up in their boats on the edge of a 10' embankment by the river with a vertical drop off. Oh. My. God. I looked back at Linda considering. Clearly I could opt out and just paddle around. I looked back at the group on the mini-cliff. Now absurdity really does appeal to me. It was highly likely that I would survive this encounter (liability release non-withstanding) as I hadn't heard anything on the news about kayaker sacrifices on the American River. And most importantly, it will make a great story (in the "live to tell about it "sense.)

Giggling that nervous in-over-one's-head sort of giggle, I lugged the boat (which now felt like what a crucifix must feel like) up the rest of the embankment. By the time I got up there, the first kayaker, sitting in his kayak, paddle at the ready, had been ceremonially shoved off and came crashing down into the water to the cheers of many onlookers who would have surely been seated in a Roman coliseum in antiquity. I took careful note that the kayaker had landed perfectly in the water and was completely fine though laughing that I-can't-believe-I-survived stress laugh.

I asked "Why are we doing this?" and Brett said that sometimes there isn't a water's edge available and that this is the only way into the water." "Oh, I'm so sure" I thought. If I couldn't find a launch point then that means to me to keep looking. But I'm not going to wuss out now. 3 others went and seemed to be ok. Now it was my turn. I decided to just not worry about it any longer and just go with it. Brett shoved my boat out into the air and it and me hit the water perfectly level and then for an instant I was completely underwater (still level) and then just as fast was back on top of the water and paddling and I could just then hear a very loud crowd roar. I couldn't see a thing and pulled my glasses down so I could wipe my eyes. Well glad I could provide crowd entertainment. Brett then managed to push himself off and since he's much larger and his boat is smaller so he also when completely underwater.

All in all I was glad I did it (good confidence builder) and didn't chicken out but I don't see me making a habit of it.

We then stopped again to get a view of some rapids. Brett talked about how rapids were divided by rocks into channels, and he also mentioned that the shape of rapids was a V shape (at least this one was. Basic advice was to stay to the left of the V and then cross into it if you chose. It turned out that I was having trouble getting the spray skirt properly on and after several minutes of struggling (I should have pulled the boat further onto shore) and drifting closer and closer to the rapids I finally gave up and went down the easy way without the spray skirt on and then pulled to the side to dump the boat out. I sort of missed going through the rapid, but it was clear this was just about the end of the day and that if I wanted rapid running practice I should take the River Running class so I wasn't too put out.

We then proceeded on the the take out place and then waited for the van to come by.

All in all it was a great experience and I very much want to take subsequent classes and trips.

How into this do I want to get? I'm not quite sure. Unlike skiing or mountaineering the fit of the equipment isn't nearly so critical so I see no reason to actually purchase a boat and the small mountain of equipment that accompanies it. Renting a boat actually includes the paddle, spray skirt, over shirt (or whatever it's called), and helmet.

River kayaking unlike sea kayaking is also a large logistical undertaking as there is always a beginning point and an ending point. (Unless it's a very calm river where you can start by paddling upstream and then turn around and go down stream like the Big River in Mendocino). Which involves two vehicles, and at least one of them has to be able to carry the kayaks.
Personally, I'm all for someone else managing these details so while I want to do more kayaking (I can totally see skiing in the winter and kayaking in the summer), I think when it comes to river kayaking (instead of sea kayaking) I'll just pay to go on trips.

Another thing that surprised me is that while kayaking is great muscular exercise, it is not an aerobic exercise unless you're going fast. This is both good and bad. It's not going to help you keep in shape for other sports (except for perhaps arm wrestling), however it is something that someone who is semi fit could do in retirement. Terri pointed out that beside the 15 year old in the class, I was likely the youngest one there. I think a light fast sea kayak could be a good aerobic exercise - will have to try that in the estuary.

I also got to see how different subgroups use language (this is not exactly a tangent I swear). A woman was renting a sea kayak that weighed only 28 pounds which intrigued me. I was looking at the boat and I noticed the word "Epic" on it. "Who decided to call a kayak 'Epic'??!'" "Oh that's who makes the kayak." an employee said. I decided that I was in a different crowd and it would take too much explaining. In climber/mountaineer parlance an "Epic" is a serious climbing misadventure often including risk of personal injury or worse - though at least one person has to survive to tell the tale. (Think "Touching the Void"). I really like that kayak, but it would take a lot of mental gymnastics to get past that name, as I don't need help having misadventures.

I'm totally sold on a kayak vs a canoe. I've rented a canoe twice and was forever struggling with it zig-zagging and always having to do the compensating "J-stroke" to help it track in a straight line. Terri and I also went sea kayaking with my sister in law up in the San Juan islands and that was gorgeous. But I wanted to try whitewater and I think I want to do more whitewater too. (Sea kayaking vs. Whitewater is kinda like Cross country vs. Downhill skiing - I happen to like them all.)

All in all it was a great class. California Canoe and Kayak's website is: http://www.calkayak.com.

BiFriendly - 9 July 2007

Had a fun time at BiFriendly on Monday evening. It was just Richard, David and I (Terri was out of town), but we had a great conversation.

Topics included:
- David posting BF on Craigslist and it got pulled (?)
he also posted on Squidlist but we didn't see anyone from there.

- We talked in depth about the different communication styles that occur between two men vs. two women. It was pointed out to me that women like commuicated via talking whereas some men prefer doing. I was incredulous that 2 men could work on a project all day long and only exchange a few words related to the construction (and that that's ok). I said that when I'm working on something with another women (or man for that matter), the conversation just flows. It's like the work is the lubricant for the conversation serving to increase the bond.

Other topics were:
- how tough it is to be a FTM who's attracted to guys (queer FTMs often end up with each other)
- other publicity thoughts
- the challenges of printing a large hi res black and white image using color equipment
- various personal bi stories that I can't go into detail about as I don't have permission.

More fuel truck roulette

Argh. It wasn't widely reported, but we had another fuel truck attempt to take out the Maze. this time the tractor separated from the load, took out a guard rail and spilled a bunch of fuel and throughly tied up traffic (me included as we were coming back from Santa Rosa from herding training). About the only difference is that there was no fire and it was on the 80->580 connector instead of 80->880.

More on oxygen

It appears that only plants can pull oxygen out of water (I've misplaced the reference) animals - not even fish - don't. Animals depend on the plants to secret oxygen similar to plants waiting on us to give them CO2. No wonder I find myself thanking plants and trees as I start to come across them during a decent when I'm above treeline and really hurting from the lack of air pressure.

This of course doesn't stop some bright folks from selling oxygenated water. Wonder if it does any good? The only problem of course is that water is heavy. It's actually lighter to carry O2.

Maybe I'll just carry a plant with me - I'm sure weirder things have been done. :)

I was also toying with the idea of getting an inexpensive oximeter, but it seems like to get one that works at all I would have to spend about $200. There are claims that the $60 one aren't accurate at all. (Not sure if I believe that.) While it would be interesting, I don't really feel like I need it.

I'm really looking forward to this climb. I'm in shap for it (assuming I don't completely slack off this month) and I have the climbing skills to get up the steep class 3 section of the route near the summit, and I have the time to chill for a day if I need to.

The only thing left is to figure out food.