we are MOVING! new website address

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you have been warned... when gretainthebox.com expires in January, I will be deleting this blog. Thanks! SAC

its all about the mojo, baby

Compared to a lot of other amateur guitar hobbyists, I've never owned a lot of instruments. You can only play one guitar at a time (or you can do something ridiculous like Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick does, he'll strap on three or four guitars and switch them during the concert), so I've never seen much point in having more than a couple on hand at a time.

For years, I always wanted to make sure I had at least one acoustic and one electric. My first guitar, that my parents bought for Christmas after my 14th birthday (and getting a guitar was an entirely default position - they'd bought me a nice Zenith radio/turntable/8 track combo stereo for Christmas the previous year, and I had gotten seriously into ELP, and had begged to play something cooler than Bb clarinet - first I wanted keyboards, but Dad wouldn't consider putting even an upright piano in the house and a $1000 Moog synthesizer was entirely out of the question.

Apparently a set of drums was out of the question as well, so I finally bludgeoned them into getting a guitar), was a Yamaha acoustic dreadnought with action so high that it would leave dents in my fingers if I played it more than an hour at a time. I was coming up on 9th grade, they got me lessons with a local jazz guitarist, and I picked up chords fast enough to be the guitarist in the junior high jazz band... with a borrowed amp, and they dropped a pickup into the guitar (awkward setup really) that fed back like mad... so I ended up getting a Stratocaster/Peavey amp combination and that was my rig through my junior year in high school... before senior year, everyone was hassling me about "playing a rock guitar" in jazz band, so Dad found a used Gibson ES-335 that we dropped $350 for, and while I loved the way that guitar played, it also suffered from feedback issues.

But I hung on to both electrics for a long time. I'm sad to say I can't remember when I sold the Stratocaster - which was a piece of junk made when CBS owned Fender and had squeezed all the profit they could out of the company by cheapening the instruments - but I sold the 335 in the early 2000s because, well, I had a second wife that burned through money like K Street lobbyists... I managed to salvage a small amount of the sale price - which was to a local music store - and picked up a basic Ibanez GAX-70 SG style electric guitar so I still had something to play. The Peavey was long gone at this point, replaced by a Traynor Block 100G - a Canadian made Polytone knockoff that had been slowly dying for several years. I don't know where the amp went, because during the meltdown of my marriage in 2006, Wife 2 sold the amp and my effects pedals out of spite when I was out of the house, then claimed "I don't know what happened to your stuff - you must have misplaced it." I had also sold the original Yamaha years before, using the proceeds to buy a classical guitar my senior year in college. I don't remember when that classical left the fold, either... I also had a very nice Fender acoustic I'd bought at a music store in downtown Lynchburg that Wife 2 smashed in a fit of anger... anyway, enough dirty laundry (although I really liked that acoustic guitar - it had mojo that no acoustic I had before or since has had)...

On my journey out to California, I brought with me the Ibanez, and eventually found Watermelon Music in Davis, and picked up a 30 watt Vox modeling amp so I could rock out again. I had taken a long hiatus from any type of performances... the last time I played in public in a real band was in the summer of 1985 at a Seniom Sed (that's Des Moines spelled backwards) Friday afternoon beer party held at Noellen Plaza in downtown Des Moines, near the still controversial Crusoe umbrella sculpture.

I discovered the jam session started by Sac State music professor Joe Mazz @ Capitol Garage late in 2008, and started playing almost every Tuesday night and finally, after a couple of decades of playing for the Four Walls Band, I was playing live again, and regrowing some of the skills I'd lost as a player. I remember when I decided to leave UNI my freshman year, where I played in Jazz II - as a total non-music major - Bob Washut tried to talk me into staying, and taking some music theory because he thought I had some real talent.

Being young, dumb, and horny, and the UNI campus being a place where high school girls from NE Iowa went to get their degree before marrying their farmer boyfriends and popping out 3-4 kids, it wasn't exactly a great place for a young, dumb, horny nerd to be, so I kind of ignored Dr. Washut (who in retrospect was giving me a very high compliment considering I was not a music student) and transferred to Iowa, played for a couple of semesters in Jazz II at Iowa, and got sort of disgusted with the whole music major thing. UNI has since grown a very good jazz studies minor program that Washut built with players like me in mind as a way to keep the bands there stocked with good players without having to recruit all over the country to get music students to come to a campus in freezing cold boring Cedarloo, IA. But they do make hellacious Everclear punch up there. At least I made hellacious Everclear punch, and learned (the hard way) to stay the hell away from MD 20/20. That stuff should only be used to remove lead paint.

However, my point, which as usual I'm taking f o r e v e r  to get to, is that I did grow as a player at UNI, but lost some of those skills and my interest in playing music which was kind of stupid considering that's all I did in high school... partly as a way to keep my sanity in the whole process of surviving the silliness that is high school. And 20 years of banging away on acoustic guitars and fooling around with about 20 pages of fake book notes for a couple of hours every few weeks (I used to go weeks without playing guitar or even thinking about it) didn't grow my skills but it did keep them from completely going in the toilet.

It wasn't until - ironically - that I was kind of on my own driving out here in April 2007 in a 1981 Buick Skylark (but it only had 69K miles on it - there's a whole story attached to that car but I promised I wouldn't grumble about dirty laundry because, well, its done), paranoid to stop and look at any of the Great West because I was afraid the car would never start again - it had a carb and just *loved* to diesel when you tried to shut it off after it had been driven for a long time. I mean, we aren't talking about 10 seconds of dieseling here; I timed it once at three minutes and wondered if the car was going to blow up more than once (so I made sure to stand outside what I figured was the probable blast radius). But bless my late parents, they provided transportation and salvation at a time it was sorely needed, and the only condition was the St. Christopher's medal that was pinned to what was left of the interior roof liner had to stay with the car - it did when I sold it for $400 to some dude in a used Mercedes that I figure probably did not have it smogged with a Cali tag (I kept the Iowa plates on it for two years yes I'm such a rebel) and sent the $400 back to my folks because my Dad needed a molar pulled and they had no money for having a molar pulled.

Either the car was used for Something Very Bad, or its tooling around Northern Mexico all jazzed up and still smelling like its going to explode from gasoline vapor at any moment.

That car had mojo, though, even though no one here would ride in it with me, because, well, because it was old, smelled bad, and more importantly, it didn't have air conditioning. I drove it for almost two years here before I snagged my 2008 Civic Ex, which while not a sexy car HAS A MOONROOF and more importantly, doesn't smell or appear in any immediate danger of exploding. The car is like me - in the sense that I like things that are practical and reliable, which kind of explains the guitar collection I have now...

Because I kind of have one. Its not big, and I don't think its going to get much bigger because guitars take up space (well, you can get wall mounts and hang them up but I really don't have a room to dedicate to guitars). About the time the Vox showed up I also bought a cheap Yamaha dreadnought at Costco, but ended up donating that to the SSPCA (which means its probably in some hipster's Midtown apartment by now that snagged it at their thrift store) because it had sucky high action (god I miss that Fender acoustic).

But part of the personal musical revival thing involved going to Watermelon and playing the guitars they had on the walls. Its a Fender/Ibanez/G&L shop with other brands sprinkled in. That's where I found the Jet King III, which was a copy of Ibanez's "pawn shop" guitars of the 70s - its a Jazzmaster copy. It was fun to play but then I decided I needed a 'real' jazz guitar which means I bought the Ibanez AJD91 which is just really an ES-339 but with a cool Stratocaster body shape. Then Fender released their Blacktop series guitars, I played the Jaguar, loved it, bought it, then came back for the Jazzmaster... in the meantime, I sold the Jet King and the GAX70 because I'd upgraded my collection with the AJD91 and the Blacktops.

I had been reading a lot about the revival of the Telecaster as a popular "must have" part of your guitar collection, and I'd also found that none of the three electrics I had really had much mojo - where you just hold the thing in your hands and go "this is it. I could die now and at least I had ONE decent guitar." So, when Davis and Meredith were here this summer, we went to Watermelon one day, and I found a Candy Apple red MIM (Made in Mexico) Standard Telecaster that I picked up, and started playing - and I was more impressed with it than I'd been with either of the Blacktops or the AJD91. Surprisingly, Meredith was whining "Can we go? Can we GO?" whereas I figured Davis would be the bored one, but he wanted to pull the $1000+ instruments off the walls and touch them. I almost bough that Telecaster that day but both kids started getting whiny so, as to not bother the other customers, we took off.

I was so impressed with the quality of the MIM Telecaster that about a month after the kids left, I ordered one - to avoid sales tax, of course - from Amazon, in black. It arrived, great setup, but there was a thumb sized dent in the body near the cord jack and the neck pickup cover was gouged. Reluctantly, I returned it as I did like the setup and sound, but after dropping the box back at UPS the next day, I drove over to Watermelon, and the Telecaster I'd played was still out on the floor. I walked out of the store with it, and now I can use it as a way to say to Meredith that its far better to be patient... because you never know when, or where, you're going to find mojo.

Guitars are funny... especially mass produced ones like Fenders (oh, this also has a maple neck, which at the time Leo invented the Telecaster, the whole idea of dropped frets directly onto the neck rather than gluing a piece of rosewood fretboard to the neck was completely radical and unheard of). You can play a dozen of one model - the same model - and find that only one or two actually feels good in your hands. Now, this isn't unusual in places like Guitar Center, because the instruments that are on the walls usually have complete shit for setups and they're being played by mostly male tween, teen and 20somethings who are not especially gentle in rendering their Iron Maiden and Metallica riffs.

I have not, for example - even at Watermelon, where the setups are usually decent (at least they check the setup out of the box) found a Strat that I like the way it plays, but on Columbus day I picked up a black MIM Standard Stratocaster that I almost hauled off and bought - it had a nice jazzy sound on the neck pickup. None of the Teles I grabbed struck my fancy (and if one had, it would have been MINE). Its not so much the sound, because I think in a blind sound test Teles sound like Teles and Strats like Strats - but its how the setup feels in my rather small and sensitive hands - if the guitar feels good to me and I can shred on it without having to force the pick, its what I consider a good guitar worthy of my consideration.

Anyway, even though I wasn't wild about any of the Teles, one of the sales clerks, a kid that looked barely old to be allowed to roam the store free range style without someone having a tranq rifle handy, was peppering me with questions about "how do you play jazz like that on Telecaster? How do you play so *smooth*? (I was using the iRealBook on my cell phone to play off of)" I do think the Telecaster is the guitar for me (this week, it is all subject to change, Thoreau/Emerson style at any time), and I've already had more than a few of my musical friends remark that "the Telecaster fits what you're doing better than the Jazzmaster (OTOH, the Jazzmaster is GREAT for grunge)..." so perhaps my mojo has finally found its home...

I am not entirely sure what this post is about upon re-reading before posting LOL

urban cow half marathon race report or a race like no udder

Ha, proof that I'm getting a little lazy, because generally I post these a day or so after the race, but I was so pumped with the result this week.

Urban Cow starts at 7:30 am, so I had to get up a little earlier than usual. Grabbed a quick frozen waffle (of course, I popped it in the toaster), jumped in the shower so my hair wouldn't look too hideous (ha, in the finish pictures it looked hideous anyway, so I don't know why I bothered), my run gear was already all set out, dressed, put on the Garmin, got in the car and drove over to Land Park. One of the upsides of having lived here nearly five years (gasp, has it really been that long?) is most of the race courses start and finish in the same place, Land Park being one of them. Parking is never difficult in the neighborhood, even with 5,000+ supposedly registered for the half marathon and 5K. The worst part is getting caught at the stoplight on Freeport Boulevard at the Fart Rail tracks. It stays red f-o-r-e-v-e-r. I knew I had plenty of time to find a parking spot and walk comfortably to the starting line, but still... I'm always a little freaky before races, regardless of the distance. Of course, I got caught at the red light... ugh. It *should* be blinking red before 10 am on a Sunday morning, because there's no traffic on Freeport until then.

Since I got there about 40 minutes before race start, the close parking spots were already gone. Temps were perfect - mid 50s, dry, it was clear (a bit of a disappointment as they'd predicted cloudy skies for the morning hours, but I'll take dry weather over running in rain anytime (especially after last fall's Apple Hill Harvest Run, where we ran in cold pouring rain...) and much warmer than when I ran this race the first time in 2007.

Based on my performance a couple of weeks back in Buffalo Stampede, I thought that I could probably run in the 2:10 range, and if I ran < 2:10, this would be my 3rd fastest timed half marathon since I started running seriously in 2006 (and I'm guessing it would also be my 3rd fastest). I'm still not in the run shape I was in during 2007, but the IT band injury appears healed - I get twinges now and then but I don't need to have acupuncture to keep the hip loose anymore. In retrospect, I think I babied the injury perhaps too much - I didn't need to lose 2 1/2 years to running because of the injury, I should have sensibly and judiciously run through it.

I figured it would be far easier to do 2:10 also because Urban Cow added pace group leaders this year. I walked into the park, checked out the starting area stuff and vendors, hit the porta potty (well, not literally, because that tends to make them fall over), and moving into the starting scrum, as the race director kept announcing that "we have a record number of entries this year (something like 5,400)". I was craning my neck waiting to see where the 2:10 pace group leader sign was... Dianne hopped into the crush about five minutes before the start, the horn went off (after a local high school student sang the national anthem), and we began the shuffle...

The streets inside the park are nice and wide, and we did roughly the first (and last) miles inside the park, but this was the first race I've been in where elbow banging was an issue for more than the first mile or so (it was still a problem even 8 miles in). Like Shamrock'n', I made a point to stick to Dianne like I did Will - like glue. My experience in the 40+ races I've done since 2006 - regardless of whether they've been run, try or du - is that I get far better times chasing or hanging with someone. The minute that I start to let someone pull away, I lose them. So I didn't stop to grab water at the aid stations unless Dianne did, whether I was thirsty or not.

As usual, I felt kind of icky the first 3-4 miles. It takes me a long time to warm up in races (5Ks are just a suffer fest - you run like hell, hang on, run like hell some more, and then hurl at the finish line), but its always amazing to me that somewhere between 4 and 5 I start to feel halfway decent. I was kind of tired the entire race. I had made a point to get plenty of sleep during the week, but didn't follow through on Friday night knowing that I was going to see Wayne Shorter on Saturday night (although I was home shortly after 10:00 - Wayne's quartet only played about an hour and a half). If I'd gotten a better night's sleep on Friday I don't think the short night on Saturday would have made any difference.

Dianne kept an extremely consistent pace looking at my Garmin logs, we were always 5 seconds +/- 9:55/mi - even weaving through the pack the first mile. I was running a good race - I never felt winded, just tired - slurped down Gu at 4 and 8, but my body felt tired all the same (shrug) and I mentally struggled wondering if I was going to be able to hold the pace.

Around about mile 7-8, a guy was standing outside of Old Sacramento on side wearing a bright red Wisconsin hoodie. Of course, since Bucky had smacked Nebraska in Nebraska's first football game as a member of the B1G the day before, and as an Iowa fan (and GRAD BABY) that dislikes Nebraska far more than Wisconsin, I yelled "Way to GO Bucky! Nebraska SUCKS!" The guy yelled "Hell yah!" and gave me a thumbs up.

For some reason, because so much of this race uses parts of other courses (and they changed the route again this year), a lot of it just blurred together in my mind after 8... the small group of us that had been sticking together exchanged small talk, and I was suffering some - but not nearly as much as I did in March, so I'm definitely in better race shape (so much of racing is mental)... the miles crawled by... 9... 10 (and I start a countdown in my mind to the finish "Oh, now its only 3 miles! I can do that! Only 2 miles!")... we got to 11 and I started to feel better, probably because it wasn't that far. Dianne told us we could "take off if we felt good" but I hung with her until about 11 and a half, and then I just started to... pull away. Maybe I went a little early, because I did slow down a little too much from 12 to 13.1, but as I rounded the last curve around the back of the golf course in Land Park (this is the curve that's in nearly every race that starts/ends there) I heard a guy say "we've got a minute to beat 2:10", I looked at my Garmin, I looked at the finish, and knew I was going to make it < 2:10 without sprinting... and I did, by 11 seconds according to the official time - 2:09:49. I finished roughly MOP (Middle of the Pack), set my 3rd best half marathon time ever, and I'm set up nicely for California International Marathon, if I can get enough long runs in the next 6 weeks.

Stopped by the merchandise tent and bought an Urban Cow champion brand sweatshirt... I don't usually buy race gear, but I made an exception this time. All in all, a very good race!

cabo trip report

Back in 2009, I took my first real "out of the country" trip if you don't count a few hours in Tijuana in 1977 with my parents, and elderly relatives Uncle Johnny and Aunt Josephine, whom we were visiting in LA at the time. I remember Mom buying a metal supposedly Mexican made metal fish that was about a foot long, and that the back alleys of Tijuana scared the hell out of me (although possibly not as scary as going to Disneyland, and being terrified of roller coasters, going on the Matterhorn, crushed into the sledcar by my 68 year old Aunt Josephine, because... well, Dad was a heart patient, Mom "had vertigo" (Mom was full of the bullshit variety of vertigo, I suspect), Uncle Johnny was too old, but Aunt Josephine was actually pretty OK during the ride, although as a sullen 16 year old, about the only thing I remember about that ride was she weighed a lot, I was horribly mortified/embarrassed, and they had just added the animatronic Yetis to the Matterhorn to spice it up (I thought they were really lame), and when we got off, fortunately, the park seemed chock full of extremely tan hot SoCal teenage girls wearing the terrycloth rompers that were very popular that year, so I quickly forgot the embarrassment of riding and surviving a roller coaster ride with my sweet elderly Aunt).

So I digress... I went back to Disneyland in October 2008 and finally conquered my fear of coasters (I really don't trust the people that build the things - you know, low bid :p) by prompting boarding the California Screamin' coaster as the 2nd ride in. After you ride that sucker, which uses magnetic induction and throws you from 0 to 55 in 3 1/2 seconds as you hurtle up the first hill, the Matterhorn, which is a gravity ride and never goes above 35 mph, is, well, LAME. At my follow-up trip to D'land with my children (for their first ever visit) in October 2010, my son and I rode the CS coaster 10x. He *loves* coasters and extreme rides (my daughter, OTOH, would not talk to us for two hours after we took her on  Space Mountain, although she has since forgiven me).

You didn't need a passport to go to MX in 1977; of course now, you do. In 2009, I got my passport, we went to Cancun, to the Zoetry all-inclusive resort on the Riviera Maya. Its on a lagoon and not really "in" Cancun, its about a 30 minute trip from the airport. I really didn't know what to expect; the fact the resort was in a jungle, and that it seemed like there were police checkpoints every few kilometers and that nearly every resort was guarded by guys with assault rifles kind of made me, well, nervous, but once we got inside it was cool. In fact, we even had a mild Cat 1 hurricane go by in the middle of the night in the middle of the trip. Very little rain (it was a small storm), mostly a lot of wind and waves that threw hundreds of conch shells up on the beach. We had fun sifting through them, and tossing the ones that still had live occupants back in the ocean. I also confess that I felt very guilty taking the trip at the time my mother was undergoing chemo and radiation, but she told us to go and have fun, and that she would be OK. That was my Mom... not really different than a lot of other Moms, I suspect.

So, a year passes, I made a promise to Dawn that if she helped me close out Mom's estate/house - which she did in April 2010 (complete with house haunting - we were sitting in my old room sorting through pictures, and heard a loud persistent knocking on the wall. No one was at the front door, and the wall in question had eaves on the other side. Another evening, after having dinner with my childhood friend Kathy and her husband, we returned after dark, and I had left all of the lights on, including the front porch light - which as I drove up to the house, was off (no real estate agents had been in the house because it wasn't officially on the market yet). As I pulled the rental into the driveway, the light flipped on. Ummm... there had been no problems with the light fixture before. I hope the new owner isn't being plagued with hauntings) that I would take us on a nice vacation. Of course, time passes, kids come for the summer, the "perfect vacation deal" doesn't seem to pop up, so finally, I just decided the hell with it - since we did enjoy the time at Zoetry, we'd go to their resort in Cabo, which is a much smaller boutique hotel with 42 rooms (not that the Cancun is that big either). Zoetry does not cater to noisy parties; they promote wellness, exercise, the menus have calories.

One change we found out - actually, we knew beforehand that Zoetry's owners had sold it to the company that owns the Dreams series of resorts, one of which is next door to the Cabo property - is that at least the Cabo seems to sort of catering more to what I call the "Cheetos party crowd"... its not the same as it was two years ago; for example, they did not permit smoking at the Cancun resort, but at the Cabo one, not in the rooms, but you could in the balconies and pool areas. Um, considering my mother died of self-inflicted lung cancer, and that I hate smoking in general with a passion, this was a bit of a downside to discover when we got there, but that seemed to be the only variation from Cancun. Oh, and the Eurotrash techno music they played at the beach pool - we suspect that is also the influence of Dreams, where the resort basically has an assembly line of tacky weddings and wholesale drunkness going.

Anyway, I had never been to Cabo before, and kind of wanted to check it out because I am mulling retiring to Mexico (or taking my transportation planning skills to another country) because well, of my conviction that the US is clearly heading in a direction of not taking of people once they retire, and well, your dollar goes a lot farther in Mexico. Cabo also has the rep of being much different than the rest of MX, as it is not part of the mainland and has much stronger ties to Southern California than it does MX. My observations during the trip bore this out, except to say that its very much like SoCal except without the traffic, crowding, pollution and general insanity that make LA a place I don't want to live in other than visit (fill in tourist attraction HERE) for a few days at a time.

We took at 6 am flight out of SMF (Sacramento) on 6/10 and changed planes in PHX (Phoenix) on the way to the Cabo airport (SJD)... The Cabo airport is much smaller than Cancun, and the terminal has been recently expanded, which is to say its about the same size as the Des Moines airport was when I was a kid, except they have an immigration area that makes the terminal bigger, but it actually has only 6 departure gates. No jetways - you use stairs to deplane/plane. Like Cancun, you are assaulted by 40 jillion con artists walking into the lobby all claiming they are going to take you to your hotel. Don't listen, you just walk straight through to the outside, and then you try and find your prearranged hotel travel in the mob outside holding signs.

When we went to Cancun, because we booked directly on the Zoetry site, they had a SUV awaiting us. Because I booked Cheap Caribbean this time, it was arranged through Olympus tours, and it took a little bit of searching - I finally just asked one of the other drivers where Olympus was (you don't really need Spanish in Cancun or Cabo, the drivers that work for the travel operators all speak good English, but one difference I immediately noticed in Cabo is that people don't tip like they do in Cancun. And when you tip the driver in Cabo, they are genuinely happy to get it because, well,  people don't tip in Cabo for whatever reason), he pointed the coordinator out, and after about 10 minutes, we packed into a Toyota 15 passenger van with about 10 of our closest friends and were the first people dropped off at Zoetry Casa del Mar.

Ok, I'll freely admit I was much more nervous in Cancun and I hate humidity and jungle anyway, but Cabo - its a LOT different, even taking my more calm state of mind into account. Much more laid back, more friendly, less pressure - and I like the desert anyway, and desert with the Sea of Cortez right next to it is even better. Walking into the lobby of Casa del Mar, I liked the whole hotel much better... things were more spread out at this location, and of course, you have mountains in the distance and desert so its a completely different kind of beach than the Caribbean. No bugs (YAY), and the humidity level is perfect - my sinuses never so happy. It was windy when we arrived, not too hot, but what kept striking me was all the distance between the buildings, the pools, just how much more relaxed than Cancun was, where, quite frankly, it reminds me of everything I don't like about Florida (flat, hot, buggy, dirty water, lots of trash on the beaches). The staff certainly didn't seem as cranked up either (both a good and bad thing).

Got shown where the various pools were, and they golf carted us to the room, which wasn't quite as nice as the Cancun facility (HUGE ROOM THERE) but you're not there to hang out in the room, you are there to hang out at the beach. Still, it had a nice walk in shower, a jacuzzi bubble tub, and because things are all-inclusive, you don't worry about food, drink, they'll wash your clothes if you drop 'em off (and impressive turn around time - mine were picked up and back in the room in 2 hours!). We immediately put on our suits, slathered on as much heavy sunblock as our skin could take, and started hitting the pools and the beach.

Both the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific sides - the surf is very rough; there are some portions of the beach that are swimmable, but not a lot. We were close to the tip of the Baha at the points where the SoC ends and the Pacific begins, which meant our beach faced south, and the sun/moon would rise in the East and set behind the mountains in the West every day. Weather was perfect the entire time... it did get hot in the middle of our stay, but for the most part, temps never really got french fry temp, and on our last day (a Thursday) it was very windy again.

There's really not much to discuss about the trip that was exciting, because the point was to relax, and man, did I relax :-p Having healthy menus was interesting; I actually lost weight on this trip and never felt the need to snack... I also hit the hotel dreadmill to run 3x. Now I didn't run on the beach because it was very steep in the wetpacked sand and I did not want to aggravate my left IT band running at a sharp angle. We had breakfast in the main restaurant every morning, and usually had lunch by the pool... dinner was at the beachside restaurant every night except one, where that area was closed for a private wedding... having 3 divorces between us, we were sorely tempted to stand off during the nuptials, during which Dawn was going to scream "Mark (the groom's name) I'm going to have your baby! Marry me!" and then I was going to scream "No, Mark, she's not, but after my sex change operation, you'll just love being my husband!"

Nah. We didn't, and actually, it was a very classy wedding compared to the assembly line weddings going on at Dreams next door (we caught the end of one when we went over there for dinner... and saw the best man wander away half blasted on beer in the middle of the post-wedding photos. I think Dreams really caters to the Cheetos-Walmart crowd, and its scary seeing what wanders around over there. Which is why I will NEVER take a cruise ship vacation)... they had lanterns out, and to our surprise a small fireworks show was set up for after dark. We found that an acceptable tradeoff for eating at Dreams (although we could've had room service bring us dinner), but our curiousity to confirm that it was as tacky as we thought it would be got the best of us. Nothing like trying to eat when most of the people around you are smoking up a storm with their small children there. Ugh.

The seaside dinners were great, though, and we had a full moon every night to watch, sitting on a towel above the high water tide mark. It was beautiful, and just... really nice.

The Hilton, which I'm guessing is about a mile walk down the beach, has created a "swimmable" beach if you don't mind getting knocked down a lot and are strong enough to keep your wits about you so you don't get swept out by a riptide and bashed into the rocks that are under the water (you see them at low tide). We went down there 2x and enjoyed attempting to body surf. I even am rekindling the thought of doing triathlons again because I actually enjoy being in the ocean more than a lake. My contacts like the saltwater, you're more buoyant... and if I can take the attitude that all I'm trying to do is finish perhaps doing triathlons would be fun. I'm confident that I could probably finish an IM if I can become an efficient enough swimmer to make the swim cutoff time. You can rent the Zipps to make it possible to finish the bike ride within the time limit, and I know I can walk a marathon < 6 hours. Its just a matter of putting in the training...

The sun this time of year in Cabo is intense... we broke out the Patagonia sun hoodies the 2nd day to keep from getting toasted during the most intense sun of the day. I was careful, I used sunblock and I tan easily, but I still got a bit burned so after the first hour or so of sun exposure the hoodie went on and stayed on. They're actually quite comfortable in the water and while I had some red spots I didn't look as bad as some of the other guys in our hotel did after a couple of days in the sun.

We took two trips off property... one planned, the other not. We took a cab to the Art District in San Jose del Cabo and explored that area... some really nice art there and worth the trip and cab fare. Then, the afternoon the day before we left, Dawn accidentally knocked her blood monitor meter into a glass of ice that we had it balanced on to keep it cool (and her insulin in the ice) when she was moving the glass to adjust the sun umbrella. It only got dunked for a second, but it was long enough to make the monitor go nuts (it, of course, dried out and worked fine the next day).

Anyway, I got the privilege of visiting Wal-Mart, dropping $40 on a round-trip cab fare,  and watching her point and gesture to the non-English speaking pharmacy employee to buy a new meter. She's freaking out about the price, which was in pesos, with a dollar sign marking it as $741 pesos... I didn't have data turned on my iPhone so we had to wait until we got back to the hotel and look up the current exchange rate, which was $63 lol. About $20 cheaper than Sacramento, and no tax paid on the purchase. The lesson learned is next time you go out of country, you take two blood sugar monitors, you put fresh batteries in them and you carry new spare batteries.

And again, the next morning, the damn monitor worked just fine. But now she has two.

I really liked Cabo, though, everything was easy, I didn't see anything being guarded with an assault rifle, and people just seemed friendlier than Cancun. I'm sure it was all in my imagination, and, of course, I did not want to leave... and the grim reality of returning to work is about 8 or so hours away...

There was some fun getting through security screening in Phoenix after customs (which was easy)... no need to post the details, it was just a pain in the ass and they really do need to do a better job of instructing people how and what they want to put in the xray machine - as well as the new body scanners - the one in SF didn't burp on my wallet, the one in PHX did, which meant me getting pulled over and searched more. Just annoying as hell.

Plenty of pictures in my Facebook photo album if you wanna look...

5K foot pursuit race report

I know, I know, if I'm going to pay for the domain name and server space, I should write more often, right? Anyway, those that read my status updates on Facebook - where I'm far more active than my personal blog - know that I wimped out on Doggy Dash two weeks ago because, well, the California Rainy Season went long this year (Sacramento has gotten over 25" compared to the usual 19" or so, the Sierras are packed with snow and the reservoirs are full - all good things after several years of drought), and I just thought that running with a few thousand dogs on wet pavement was not a good situation to remain injury-free. Last two times I've run that race - and I enjoy doing it, don't get me wrong - I've about been knocked down by someone's Rover running between my legs, attached - if that is the term - to one of those damn retractable leashes. Since I'm finally running decent after 2 1/2 years of being effed with by an IT band injury (look it up, I'm not going to explain it, except to say that it hurts - a lot), then struggling with plantar fasciitis earlier this year, I figured why take a chance?

This is a new race that I signed up for that benefits local police chaplains - the folks who console people who've had really screwed up things that are not their fault happen to them, and the course looked fun... you run from Miller Park, which is on the Sacramento River, towards downtown, running city streets beside I-5, briefly in the pedestrian tunnel on the K Street Mall, turning around at the plaza clock, and then heading back pretty much on the same route, with a short section in Old Sacramento and part of the riverwalk (which is also part of the Urban Cow half marathon course). I'm not trying to do any really intensive short racing right now other than to use these 5Ks as an indicator of my overall run fitness and to see whether I actually AM improving as I build back the base, endurance and speed that a 2 1/2 year layoff sucked away.

My legs were pretty rested... I haven't done a 10 miler the past two weeks, resting my right ankle a bit, which has developed an annoying soreness on the interior side, figuring that if my body is screaming "I hurt" a little to pay attention to it before it blossomed into something I don't really want, but while I was in Cabo this past week (details to come in another post), I did do three dreadmill runs and had 11 miles in for the week before this morning's run.

Not a staggering total - I've been flirting with 20-22 mile weeks lately but I'll be around 17-18 for these past two weeks, and that's OK, every training cycle needs down/rebuild/recovery time, and marathon training doesn't start until August. My main objective between now and August 27th - when I run the Giant Half Marathon race in San Francisco - is to stay injury-free, have fun, and continue to build my fitness without burning out or otherwise doing stupid things to tear my body up.

There was really no prep for the race. I knew I'd be tired because of the flight back from SJD late Thursday, and I didn't go to bed that early last night. I was even a bit lazy in that I didn't bother - as I usually do - to shave or shower before this race. I said "hell, you're going to get sweaty and stinky anyway", slapped a Dry-Fit visor over my bed head and bug reflectors on my face. I'm not a hairy guy anyway, will never be able to grow a decent beard, so usually I can to 2-3 days without shaving before people notice that, well, I've stopped shaving my face :-p

I did slurp a Gu before I hopped in the car - its about a 15 minute drive in the early morning from my place to Miller Park. Parking was not an issue, this was a very well-organized race. Just sort of hung out, as I usually do, and chatted with a guy that was wearing his work uniform - he's a plumber - that was running for "my law enforcement friends". Turns out the dude is originally from NYC, and now, at 38, weighs 190 - down from 340! a few years ago, and he's run a 3:18 marathon. He was wearing his work boots and figured he'd just "jog a 10:00 mile". Pretty amazing, and I saw him finish right around the time that jogging a 10 minute mile would yield (just looked up the results - yep, he ran about 30:00). Anyway, I applauded him for doing such a good job losing weight and getting in shape without having to go on the Biggest Loser and have a whole bunch of fakey drama doing...

As I noted, I was a bit tired and not back into the rhythm of being home, so I thought I'd see how the first mile felt and run from there... and to my surprise, I clocked 8:36 in the first mile, but then deliberately throttled back as I didn't want to have a big collapse in the final 2.11 miles. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake to slow down to 9:15 pace, as I think I actually got more tired going slower than I normally would have if I'd kept up a faster pace.

But don't think I'm not pleased, because, well - while I'm nowhere near my 2007 run shape, I knocked a minute or so off of my previous 5K times and I didn't feel horrible or really too stressed to maintain a decent race pace the last two miles. I pushed once I saw the finish in the last .10 (ran 7:44 for that part) and had the wonderful fun of doing a small puke in the finish chute (I did avoid hurling on any of the volunteers or other racers though).

I'm still light years from being able to churn out a 9:00 pace for a half marathon distance (or any other race over 5 miles) like I was able to do in 2007... but - I can see that if I continue to progress that I can start turning in run performances that I can really smile about again. Not that I'm not having fun out there now ... I've run raced enough that I've got sufficient race experience to know that a lot of this is mental as well as putting in the physical training.

And while my time wasn't spectacular, I moved up to near the midpoint of my age group (and I've never been real high in that) and I moved into the upper half of the 5K finishers... and this, overall, was a fast race and course - even the walkers in the back turned in decent times.

Finally, unlike a lot of the other 5K courses here in Sacramento, this one really was 3.11 miles - usually they're marked at 3.15. Just a little quibble that I have...

I'm going to go ahead and sign up for the Urban Cow Half Marathon as my A training race for CIM, too. I think Four Bridges, which is Halloween weekend, is too close to CIM to race hard (at least for me - CIM is only 4 weeks later), whereas Urban Cow, being the first Sunday in October, is perfectly positioned to race hard and let you adjust your running schedule for the remaining 8 weeks to optimize your marathon preparation. Depending on how The Giant Race goes, though, I may register for Four Bridges as it is hilly and treat it as a training run rather than run it for time...

Official Finish Time 28:09 (Garmin 28:01)
Overall 175/491
Age Group (Male 40-49) 28/52

terribly frightening things in the mirror / two race reports

So, you've seen me gushing the past few weeks or so about my daughter, who elected to spend her Spring Break with me (her brother opted for Spring Break at his grandmother's - she has these wonderful things called cable, buying him anything he wants, the beach (with warmer water than I have here), and lax bedtime rules. I, OTOH, pretty much have none of that stuff and its pretty tough to compete with an 11 year old, especially on the cable and lax rules. But I think he had a fine time, and, besides, he gets to spend *all* of July here, and July is not that far off...

Meredith and I ran her first 5K together on 4/23 called The Resurrection Run. Its run by a local church that donates the proceeds to an orphanage somewhere in Africa. Meredith has been showing interest for quite some time in running - she seems pretty good at it, has some stamina, and sometimes it appears that she is floating above the grass rather than running to me. Anyway, when I suggested that we see if there was a race available to run while she was here, it was fortunate that this easy flat course in the River Park neighborhood here was available, and given that this race wasn't run by one of the larger local race organizations, I hoped that the field would be small, relaxed, and not too competitive - and I was pretty much on target.

I urged her to start training a little over six weeks before the race. Her stepfather is a decent sprint triathlete who has won his AG in a small race before, and he has a treadmill at his house in CT... being a parent with two boys himself and crappy weather about six months of the year, if he's going to get a run in, its going to have to be indoors. So I suggested to her that she try to work up to jogging - easy and slow - up to three miles on the treadmill 3x a week. Now, I have no idea if she actually got up to that total - she says she did - but figured the race would be proof of how much work she had put in.

As prep for the race, she got here, and I took her to Fleet Feet on J Street and got her a new pair of Nikes (there's really not that many choices in decent kids' running shoes - Nikes are fairly unstructured; most kids don't need any real support for their feet, they just need protection), and then hit REI for a 1/4 zip Patagonia long sleeve wicking shirt that was on sale. It was cool the week she was here and I figured it might be chilly the morning of the race (and I was right). I had asked her Mom to pack a hoodie (they have several) but for some reason that didn't happen, so, we got the 1/4 zip and she looked pretty snazzy in it. I found a pair of running shorts at the outlet mall in Folsom (although, DOH, Target right up the street from where I live carries a lot of young girl size workout clothes), and she was set.

I was probably more pent up about the race than she was; I let her sleep as late as I could race morning. Got some Cheerios in her, and we drove the 10 minutes over to River Park, and hung out in the car, mostly, until the race started, as it was chilly.

I had us in the back. There was no reason for her to get trampled; she's not a big kid, pretty much on the petite size for 9, although she's starting a preteen spurt now - she looks all elbows, knees and legs to me right now and she's skinny. My race plan was pretty simple - I'd let her set her own pace and run her own race. I had no idea how fast she would run, or whether she would run the entire race, but I had the Garmin on to keep track of pace and time.

She took off - like kids are wont to do - and ran without stopping until about .30 of the first mile. She wanted to run a 9:30/mi pace. I kept trying to tell her to slow down, because I figured if I could get her to jog around 11:30 she might be able to run most, if not all, of the 3.1 miles, but she preferred to "run fast". So, she'd run until she was breathless, then stop and walk, and start over again. Technically, she *was* following the Galloway method and that's how she ran the race.

What was very cool is she was so determined the entire way. I did not once have to urge her to start running again. She kept picking up and going for about a .10 a mile at a time. Now, we did have a race walker behind us that started to catch us near the end, and I did push her to run the final .10 or so without stopping, trailing her with my iPhone and taking video of the finish. Her time (which was interrupted by retying her shoelaces several times) was 43:06. Not bad, but her attitude was so good. I did ask her when we finished if she wanted to do another race and she said "Not right now." LOL

I didn't know whether we should have hung around for the awards, or not... there were so many kids I wasn't sure we had won anything (well, not we, but SHE as my time was the same as hers and I kind of doubted that a 43:06 in a 5K was going to get me anything), and she was hungry, so we took off, went home, I jumped in the shower and we went out and had breakfast.

Fast forward to this week; I checked the race website - it was all manually timed so the results were not up right away - and to my great surprise, Meredith placed 2nd! in the Female < 12 Age Group. Which meant she got an award. I emailed the race director, and voila! she was kind enough to drop the medal off at my house yesterday. I posted the image on FB; and its actually a very nice custom medal for the race. Meredith is all jacked about getting the medal, which I put in the mail last night, as a girl in her class that she's not particularly fond of brought a 2nd place swim meet trophy to class to brag about. Somehow, I kind of doubt that girl swam 3.11 miles...

And we are now registered for the Davis Moo-nlight 5K on July 16th (its an evening race, starts at 7:00) in Davis, CA. I told her that her goal was to slow down in her training and learn to pace herself, and see if we can't shave a few minutes off of the run time in July.

Oh, one of the cool things about this race - there's a guy that shows up at some of the races in town with a horse and an American flag. He was at Shamrock'n' at Mile 11. He was about 2+ miles into this race; I saw him, said "Hey dude... I saw you at Shamrock'n', right?" Very nice guy, doesn't look like he's run a block in years (he's got to be well into his 60s), but he's there with the flag, the horse, and a big smile and encouragement for all the runners. 

*******

So, I ran in the Parkway Half Marathon on Saturday, and shaved 2 1/2+ minutes off of my Shamrock'n' half marathon time in March - roughly six weeks between races. I didn't get a lot of high quality training in either - Meredith's visit pretty much shot holes through running that week, and the next week was Parkway, so I figured that 10 days of barely running really wasn't going to mess up my time.

Actually, it was in reality closer to 4 minutes, as I thought I wouldn't have to pee a 2nd time but here I am, at the start line, and I kind of have to go and there's no time to go... now, the Parkway has lots of woods and dirt mountain bike trails alongside it, but, its also peak season for poison oak, so, I just sort of held it until Mile 5, where the route passed under the Howe Avenue bridge where there were porta potties. I had to wait a little bit, ducked in, dumped the water I'd drank with a banana for breakfast, and resumed.

Garmin time was 2:16:19; chip time was 2:17:31. I'm still tons slower than I was in 2007, when I set my PR at the first Parkway Half of 1:58:12, but, hey, nothing like an IT band issue, a 2+ year layoff, and gaining 10 or so pounds to slow you down, and then, to have plantar fasciitis in both feet for the first time in your life starting late summer 2010 when the IT band finally calmed down enough that serious training could commence. (Also, props to Tian Wu Acupuncture - acupuncture works sportsfans - get poked today).

I really did not start rebuilding my run base until December, and I figure, all in all, that I've only had maybe 2 1/2 months of quality run training since January 1 of this year. And I'm 4 years older, with 50 glaring at me in November. So to get a four minute improvement without a weight loss or a lot of training regimen between 3/13 and 4/30 - and I'd done a hard 10K on 4/10 so I have no idea, really how "recovered" my legs were between races.

One thing about Parkway that I wish they would grab from other halfs - at least Shamrock'n' - is for them to put some pace groups in. I plan on sticking like glue to one of the pace groups at CIM (California International Marathon) in December, as the pace group leader was extremely helpful in helping me meet my 2:20 goal at Shamrock'n'. At this race, I was responsible for my own pace, which meant glancing at the Garmin - a lot - rather than just following a far more experienced runner/athlete that knows what they're doing (well, I sort of know what I'm doing - enough to be dangerous, that is). OTOH, the bike trail is so narrow, pace groups might be kind of a disaster - at least until the pack sorts itself out a couple of miles in. They limit the entries to about 4,000, I think, so the pack can move and people can actually crank out a decent time.

A change from 2007 is that they now have parking areas and shuttle buses to William Pond Park, where the race starts. The Parkway actually features two races - a half marathon walk and run. The walk goes east on the Parkway out of William Pond; the half marathon goes west - down past the Sac State pedestrian bridge, with the turnaround just past the golf course near Sac State. They also have a 5K for the less ambitious (I did it last year) that starts after the half marathon clears out. I parked actually fairly close to the entrance to William Pond Park.

It was kind of cold Saturday morning, and I was in a real dilemma as to what to wear. I knew I'd freeze my fat little ass off if I just wore a short sleeve wicking shirt - at least until I got going, but I found a solution the day before at REI - a Patagonia Sun hoodie. Its basically a kangaroo pocket pull over hoodie for wearing at the beach to look cool while you're surfing in the Pacific, dude, and freezing your fat little ass off doing so while wondering if you're going to be some Great White's breakfast snack. I pulled that sucker on before I left the house, and while I wasn't warm, at least I had something on my arms, because we had SERIOUS wind.

Like gusting well up into the 30+ mph range. Now, it was sunny, dry, and the air was raining pollen from our rainy winter. I debated whether I should wear contacts in these conditions the night before, and when I got up and saw the pollen coating my car, and the wind - which combined with middle age dry eye is such a lovely condition (I'm getting to the point where wearing contacts other than for vanity - and some sports - having to carry readers to see up close, I'm not sure its worth it anymore. OTOH, I have such damn thick glasses and look like such a geek... pardon my insecurities, but when I was growing up, I got hammered on by women for my glasses. Now, I know it shouldn't matter, nor should it hurt anymore - but it does) to deal with.

I just finally figured screw it - I've got transitions lenses in all of my prescription glasses, I didn't want to carry a bottle of rewetting drops with me, and I thought the last thing I want to deal with on a windy day in a long race is not being able to see because something blew into my contacts. In the end, I think I made an OK decision, as when I got done racing my glasses were also coated with pollen and dust from the crushed granite shoulders of the bike trail.

Because of the wind and it was 50 degrees, no one was really paying attention to the pacing signs at the start telling you where to corral. People were corralling where the sun was shining and warm. I pulled up my hood before the start and stood there like something out of Star Wars. Eventually, we started packing together right about the time the bagpipers came through to start the race, followed by the drums and singers. Yes, I love bagpipes, and it was all very cool. The National Anthem was sung, the air horn went off, and the zombie shuffle out of the starting gate began.

I bought the entire package of race pictures, BTW - great race photogs done this time, and there's some great shots of me in Yoda mode at the beginning - I kept the hoodie up until Mile 2. It just wasn't that warm... I jumped to the left outside shoulder of the trail, as the congestion, while not bad, people were jostling for position. Some poor guy that looked in his late 50s got racked @ Mile 1 - there's some posts to block vehicles from using the trail, as at that point it crosses an access road to a parking lot down by the American River - and this guy ran right into one of the posts and went down HARD. I sure hope he was OK... people were screaming at the paramedics just past Mile 1 to get off their ass and go 50 yards back and help the guy.

I kept glancing at my Garmin, and I was bumping around a 10:00/mi pace. I figured I'd see how long I could hold that; my only goal was to run faster than Shamrock'n'. I did pretty well, actually, in holding roughly that pace - or better - up to the turnaround, then I started to feel it a bit and I did run the last three miles kind of slow, but at that point I *knew* I'd beaten my Shamrock'n' time, I was tired, and wanted to finish - it was just a matter of how much I'd beat the Shamrock'n' time.

There's always people who seem to be in great shape, running the pace I am in these races that are carrying on serious conversations. You know, marathon runners that are simply using the race as a training run. I hate those bastards. But you hear some interesting stuff, including a woman in her late 20s who ran past telling some pretty good dirty jokes to the other women she was running with. Turns out she was in the Navy for a while... I handed over one of mine that she cheerfully agreed (and I warned her beforehand) was pretty tasteless. Funny, but... tasteless.

I passed a *lot* of people in the first 2/3rds of this race. It was only until Mile 9, where I began to run out of gas (and that's when I wish I had a pace group) where I'd get dropped now and then. By the time I got to Mile 10, the number of people walking had gotten pretty noticeable. That's roughly also about where a group of high school saxophonists - probably from the Rio American high school music program - they have a very good jazz band - were standing. When I initially passed them on the way out, I yelled - as I always do - "GIANT STEPS" as I ran past. I could hear one of the kids say "Hey, he just said "Giant Steps" - so they started playing the head from Giant Steps.

As I came back, I looked at them and said "OLEO" (great Sonny Rollins tune. And if you don't know who wrote Giant Steps, well, you're just culturally challenged, OK? :D ). They started playing the head from Oleo (for my non-jazz sportsfans, the "head" refers to the main melody of a jazz composition)... which somehow degenerated into the head from Afro Blue. I figure they were pretty blown out by that point, they'd been out there, standing for 2+ hours.

I've run and biked on the Parkway dozens of times - hell, probably hundreds of times - since moving out here in 2007 (man, I've been here four years now), and I actually did some of the last few miles with my eyes almost closed, between the sun, wind, and just feeling kind of Zen. I mean, I was suffering some - not bad, but enough that I was having to fight fatigue. Although its kind of cool to run with your eyes shut and just to trust your other senses that you don't fall into a blackberry thicket or patch of poison oak.

Came around the last big turn into William Pond Park, and there was a guy on the last uphill telling us a "Mile to go!" (not correct, it was more like 3/4 but I'm not going to quibble when you've got a cheerleader standing in the middle of the trail). He was a big fella wearing a bike jersey, doing high fives, I did one that *stung* :)

There's one sharp little jump into the park and then the last .10 of the 13.1, and I pushed to get some separation so I wouldn't be running into the finish chute with other people (hey, I don't want someone crowding into my finish photo, OK? Its all about looking good, even when you're a shitty runner).

Man, it felt so good to stop. It also felt awesome to get that finisher's medal, and to see the finish clock knowing I'd knocked over 2 minutes off of my half marathon time for the year. I was so hot, so thirsty that I shotgunned the bottled water, and wandered around the grass and bumped into a couple of friends, sitting there in the grass feeling my legs shake. I hung around long enough to see my posted results, then walked back to my car.

Not as triumphant as my 2007 Parkway, where I PR'ed and broke 2 hours for only the first of 2 times in a half marathon (and that was also a statement of freedom as I'd moved out of a state I really didn't like and was ending a marriage where I had been rejected). But I know I'll get under 2:00 again, this is just the start of Comeback 2011 and my 2nd comeback to running after taking off 20 years after college. 

Which brings us to the topic of races for the rest of the year. I don't have to start the marathon training cycle until August, so I'm concentrating on building a quality base with a training schedule I can maintain while the children are here in July. Right now, that means a regular weekly 10+ mile run and three shorter runs, with a minimum mileage total of 20 miles per week. I figure I can use 5K races as tempo runs, but in marathon the long runs are more, more important than interval training.

So I've signed up for two 5Ks in June - the Doggy Dash (to benefit the Sacramento SPCA) and the Foot Pursuit 5K, which benefits police chaplains. You know, its really a lot of fun to kick the shit out of big, muscled up guys who are cops and firemen at these races. Yes, they could crush me with their little finger but they can't outrun me. You take your kicks where you can get 'em at my age, because I have to go to bed early. My get up and go has got up and left, you know?

In July, there's the Davis 5K at night my daughter and I will run together.

Now, in late August there's Race for the Arts 5K, but I'm also toying with doing a half marathon in San Francisco that finishes in Giant Stadium. I'm going to be doing long training runs anyway, so why not do a half marathon then, and it gives me an excuse to spend the weekend in San Francisco.

In September, there's the Buffalo Stampede 10 miler sponsored by the local Buffalo Chips running club (yes, they are referring to Buffalo shit - the trophies for the male and female winners are a big lacquered pile of buffalo shit mounted on a wood plaque - I've seen 'em and touched it even).

I will probably sign up for the Urban Cow half marathon on the first Sunday in October. Its a fun race and right here in town. Now, approximately four weeks later and just over a month out from CIM, there's another half marathon, the Lake Natoma Four Bridges half marathon, that gives you some hill training around Lake Natoma in Folsom (and CIM starts near Folsom Lake on the dam road). Then I can always do the 3.5 miler for the Apple Hill Harvest Run two weeks out from CIM so I have a race experience but nothing that's going to blow up my taper before boarding the school buses downtown for the ride up to the dam and 26.2 miles of running with 6,000+ of my closest friends...

Oh, the mirror stuff... I look in the mirror and I see my parents these days. That is scary. I am *not* old. Really I'm not...

tougher than your average mail carrier

After I played tonight, and was pulling my guitar and fake books from the car on a rainy night to take inside, I was reflecting on how much my parents - my mother in particular - enjoyed watching my concerts in high school and college.

I don't think they missed any of the jazz competitions that they could drive to in high school - they didn't go to the Reno Jazz Festival in 1979 but they did pay for my plane fare to fly to Reno and play with the rest of the band (that's all they could afford to do... in 1979 $300 was a lot of money for a pink collar film editor to cough up for a plane ticket. When I was cleaning out Mom's house I found some of my Dad's bi-weekly pay stubs from the 1970s. He did not make very much money. I'm amazed we weren't eating beans and weenies after looking at some of the stuff that I found).

When I went off to UNI freshman year, they made nearly every concert, including one where they drove the 100 miles up, in the dark, and the fog, and frickin' freezin' rain - to see me play in Jazz II for a grand total of 20 minutes, and then after the concert I dumped them because "Hey, I have a date!"

Most of the jazz competition season in Iowa still takes place in the throes of winter, which means you're driving to some college campus at the crack of butt on a Saturday morning, with temps often in the single digits or worse. We were lucky in that we rarely rode in a "regular" school bus or packed into our friends' and parents' cars. Junior year, one of the kids in regular band had a parent that was licensed to drive a bus, and he just happened to have access to an old Greyhound bus the Des Moines Police Department used for various events, and that we were "free to borrow" for the cost of the diesel fuel to fill it up.

It had the reclining seats and was a hell of a lot more comfortable than your average yellow 1940s suspension technology death trap masquerading as a school bus. Anyway, we'd show up at jazz festivals all relaxed and fairly well-rested compared to our counterparts that were stuck in the yellow spine/and/soul crushers. Senior year, our conga player, Sam, joked about how when "we get off of the Police Bus we should get out in chains and shit."

That bus *was* nice, and warm and comfortable. Sometimes, my folks would ride in the bus, and sometimes they'd follow in their car, along with some of the other parents. I remember hearing someone whine during jazz band class (which was 6th period at the end of my day - kind of a great way to end the day - which started with the torture of regular band and classes in between that I had to pay attention to in order to graduate) "Are the Carsons (referring to my parents) coming with us *again*?"

Hey, they only had one child - me. So in my totally unbiased opinion, I think they were entitled to tag along.

We took that bus down to Wichita, Kansas one year for a jazz festival at Wichita State. The competition was the same weekend as the early Spring dance, Spree. Well, since none of us were going to Spree, they kind of celebrated it on the bus... not that I would have gotten anyone to go with me to Spree anyway. But, thanks to Linda and Kelly, at least I had two girls who weren't embarrassed to be seen with me at a dance so I wasn't totally dateless in high school (although I surely was one of the most socially retarded persons ever).

Anyway, thanks Mom and Dad, I sure as hell missed you tonight, and I'm sorry I dumped you back in 1981 for some floozy whose name I can't remember, although I'm sure she was a perfectly fine human being.

(Man, its getting dusty in here)...