Adventures in Onionism

I spent the weekend in Stockton at an Organizing for America training camp. If you support Obama's basic principles for health insurance reform then make sure you've pledged your support on his website . If you're further left than the President (like me) and are bummed that Obama seems to have waffled on the public option, you should still sign. If you're on the other side and think it's cool that America spends the most per capita on health care and yet gets only the 37th best results, and that 47 million people have no insurance (but drive up your premiums because they'll end up getting treated at your county hospital when their preventable illness becomes an emergency (and thus super-expensive)), then I guess we'll just have to agree that I think you are lame. Sign the pledge now, then go look for a congressional sendoff in your area . Basically, OFA is bundling together all these pledges and delivering them to Reps/Senators on their way back to DC n...

I don't buy it . But then again, I pretty much believe in nothing, so the fact that I'm skeptical should be a foregone conclusion. Also, I enjoyed District 9 . It had decent direction from a technical perspective with an enjoyable schlub as the unwitting hero and obvious but not too blunt parallels to important issues.

Ugh. School starts tomorrow. I might be able to get away for a long Labor Day weekend, but the summer's pretty much over. For some dumb reason I'm signed up for a 9:00 AM Spanish class that meets M-F, I'm teaching 3 sections of Econ 100B (Macro), and I'm facilitating a student-taught course on impact evaluation of poverty relief programs. I don't see a lot of research getting done this semester. On the eve of the death of my freedom, what did I accomplish this summer? Certainly not what I set out to do. I most certainly did not break the Pacific Crest Trail speed record. My friends Scott and Adam did , however. Hearty congratulations to the both of them. They did it without setting foot in a car the entire way, and were only met by their significant others along the trail a couple times over a two-day span. Basically, they summited Everest alpine style with no Sherpas and no supplemental oxygen; they kicked ass in the most environmentally friendly and aesthetica...

I spent the 16th to the 22nd on a Big City Mountaineers trip to the Lillian/Jackass/Chittendon/Vandenburgh Lakes area in the Ansel Adams Wilderness & Sierra NF. The kids were (mostly) from an Oakland org called What Now America? (the name makes no sense to me either, and I even had the founder try to explain it to me.) There were 5 adults (one team leader with WFR training, one guy from the org (WNA) that already knew some of the kids, and three regular volunteers) and 4 kids (usually 5, one couldn't come at the last minute). I don't think it was a radically life-altering experience for anybody, but I do think it was definitely a good experience for everyone in terms of character-building. Along those lines, it refreshes my anger that Boy Scouts is a bunch of bigots, because if a week-long trip can help kids out, then imagine how much seven years of this stuff could do for somebody. Despite the trails being lower, dryer, and dustier than I'd prefer, and despite only h...

Got back from a week in the woods with BCM (that'll be my next post). In the meantime, Dan Simmons' The Terror , a historical fiction account of the most disastrous polar exploration ever changed to include something like a killer abominable snowman, was a great entertaining read. Haruki Murakami's What I Talk about when I Talk about Running was a very staid if not robotic and boring account of a novelist that runs marathons. Cormac McCarthy's The Road good. Not great. Style not my thing. Incomplete sentences. Sometimes great, though. For example, when the s--- hits the fan: What is happening? I don't know. Why are you taking a bath? I'm not. For some reason, I love that part. Hurt Locker was good for what it is, an action movie. (500) Days of Summer was cute with a great soundtrack. Rosemary's Baby was not scary but just screwed up, like the director, whose films I try to avoid (except that Chinatown is one of the best ever). I went with my little bro...

I'm leaving for a trip to the Sierra National Forest with Big City Mountaineers tomorrow. Back next weekend.

I was on EBMUD property near Briones Reservoir the other day and noticed "Mokelumne Coast to Crest Trail" signs. Mostly I was ticked off about how little access EBMUD allows, supposedly to protect the watershed but at the same time allowing cattle grazing that I assume produces way more erosion and poop-in-water-itis, but I figured I'd look into this MC2C Trail. From the website , it doesn't look like it's moving along very fast, but it's a nice idea. It'd be a nice way to get to the Sierras from the coast. The American Discovery Trail already does the same thing, but further north and with a lot of pavement and by going through downtown Sacramento. Maybe if the MC2C ever got finished it would be a prettier way to traverse the foothills, although I bet there'd be a million cows. Map of proposed MC2C .

I ordered a copy of the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail Guidebook from half.com after I got home and just took a look through it this morning. Apparently the TYT, although proposed by the Forest Service, has never been official, and even if you read old Sierra Club Bulletins, there wasn't much info on it, so the author (Thomas Winnett) wrote the guidebook to try and help the process along. The first edition was published in 1970, mine in 1987. The book describes (in a southbound direction) a 180-mile route from Meeks Bay on the western side of Lake Tahoe to Tuolumne Meadows, and my edition includes black, white, and blue topo maps of the whole route, likely the only ones you'd need to hike the trail. Here are my thoughts on the route (arranged northbound): From TM to Bond Pass near Dorothy Lake the TYT is the PCT, so nothing new to me there. But here the TYT goes NW through Emigrant Meadow, by Relief Reservoir, and hits highway 108 near Kennedy Meadows (that's the NORTH Kennedy Me...

Just thought I'd ask if anyone out there (excluding annoying touts from guiding companies) has experience doing trekking in Malaysia or Indonesia, preferably as independently as possible. Why? Part of the price of my truck was to visit my sister in Indonesia, so I'll probably do that for three weeks this winter. I'd like to go for a little longer, but Cal is hosting a Wilderness First Responder course in January that I'd like to do so I can start volunteering with Search & Rescue. Anyway, a cursory reading of Lonely Planet's Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei says Taman Negara or Endau-Rompin might be cool parks to go to, but they might be straight-up closed in Dec/Jan due to monsoons, and you have to hire a guide (which I hate, hate, hate) to climb Gunung Tahan. Another option is to just surf all day every day in Banda Aceh. I have never gone surfing before, but I've never met a single person that didn't love it, so this seems like a good opportunity t...

I'm presently too lazy to make a website with all my photos from this summer, so I decided to temporarily let anybody see the albums I already made on facebook. You don't have to have a facebook account to look at them. Thirty photos from the first 454 miles of the PCT. Ninety-eight photos from ~500 miles in the Sierras.

1. This could make for a fascinating dissertation. 2. Holy crap . Nick Kristof knows his stuff when it comes to backpacking. I did not expect that.

I ran the Headlands Hundred in 26:48. It was four times around a 25-mile loop run in alternating directions ("washing machine loops"). The course could have been less loopy, but thanks to California's budget mess, Mt. Tamalpais State Park is closed to special events (econ thought--Couldn't the state just charge enough to make hosting special events profitable?) so the course had to be entirely in the federal Golden Gate National Rec. Area. My 25-mile lap times were 5:09, 6:10, 7:39, and 7:50. I've previously been of the opinion that you can't bank time, so you shouldn't go out fast and should run even splits, but I don't really feel like the fast first loop was a mistake--I just think that until I do a lot more training I'm always going to be slow in the middle of the night after 80-some miles. The views were great, and the weather was beautiful--foggy and 65 to 70 Saturday, with the fog staying thick until around 2:00 PM then rolling back in at 5:...

I'm presently carbo-loading for the 100-miler tomorrow. You can check my times every 25 miles online . It starts at 7AM and I'm shooting for 28 hours. Mostly because that's a nice round number that makes for easy math so I can tell my pacer when to show up for the last 25 miles (Thanks AL). I'll be happy to finish; I think It'll be kind of funny to "run" a 100-miler without having gone running a single time in over two months. Oh, wait. I think I ran like 3 or 4 miles with my friend in Logan July 4. Oh well. The past few days when I haven't been wasting time on the computer or trying to find a place to live, I've been trying to deck out the camper shell. The windows aren't tinted so it's obvious when I leave things in the back, and since I don't have a room of my own, the bed is presently full of stuff I'd like to have not stolen. So I made drapes. Originally I attached them at the top and thought I'd sew in a dowel rod at th...

I thought I'd post some thoughts on my gear for my two ~500-mile trips this summer. I won't do a gear list because it's pretty much the same as it was for the CDT, which is posted on my CDT page: REI Sub-Kilo 20-degree sleeping bag, Tarptent Contrail, whichever ULA pack best fits the circumstances, Patagonia Houdini jacket, plus as little else as possible. Sleeping bag: I've done the PCT, Peru, Pakistan, Kilimanjaro, CDT yo-yo, and now this 1,000 miles (340+ nights) in my Sub-Kilo. It's about had it, but mostly that's because I hung it on the radiator in Salida, CO and made a portion of it a little crispy/crinkly. Down is coming out near the drawstring grommet. The comparable Marmot of Western Mountaineering is probably better, but for the money, the REI bag is unbeatable. Tarptent: I don't usually wear gaiters, but I tried some DirtyGirls on this trip, and I guess that although they keep twigs out without over-heating your feet, I regret it since they rip...

My truck is successfully registered, I bought a camper shell off craigslist, I made some drapes for it so I can feel a little safer about leaving stuff in the back overnight, I got a Berkeley parking permit in a sweet close-to-campus location, I signed up for a 100-miler this weekend, and I'm looking for a place to live. If you know of some kayaker/climber/cyclist or otherwise cool folks in the east bay with an extra room, hooks me up. Once I get a place to live, I'm interested in leads on wheat grinders, bread machines, and sewing machines. Evans is mostly a ghost-town, so it doesn't make me regret skipping out on work most of the summer. There's pretty much zero chance I'll finish this year, because I'm pretty tired of my baseball idea and the academic market is rumored to be terrible. I'm working on picking out the best photos from my trip to post, then I'll start posting hike stuff.