Adventures in Onionism

I wasn't feeling Henry Coe. By doing a long day trip instead I'll be able to get more work done and I probably covered more miles than I would've with a pack (and without the commitment device of having to make it back to the truck.) So I ran a 35 or so mile loop I've been thinking of for a while--Redwood & Chabot Regional Parks and EBMUD land over Rampage Peak and all the way around Upper San Leandro Reservoir. Lower trails were annoyingly muddy, but it was a beautiful day.

I did a long run on the Ohlone Wilderness trail east of Fremont last weekend. It was 40 degrees and raining with high winds, but I didn't die of hypothermia, so I consider it a success. I'm headed to Henry Coe State Park for an overnighter tomorrow in the few predicted days of sunshine this month.

Yesterday I rode my bike over to the Headlands to watch some of The North Face's 50 miler. There was significant prize money at stake, so it was quite a spectacle as far as trail runs go. I got there right as friend and fellow long distance backpacker Andrew Skurka (pictured) finished. I then went backwards on the course looking for Tattoo Joe, but I didn't want to ride home in the dark, so I turned back without running into him. Today I went to the workshop and replaced my bike chain. It recently started slipping, and when I inspected it today, there was an obviously bad link that was the cause. I also replaced a spoke and trued the wheel yet again. The ride home (in the rain) was silky smooth, so all is well. Why is working on bikes so much more fun than working on cars?

It snowed all day, I was gassed by the time we got to the cabin, and I got gnarly blisters, but the trip was excellent.

I'm up in Truckee for the long weekend. I went snowshoeing with Bink, Krud, and Monkey to Frog Lake. ( Anybody got 7.5 mil to spare? ) Overnighter to an off-the-radar cabin in the Mt. Rose wilderness tomorrow. I'm tired of radio silence, so I'm going to post a few blog entries to adventuresinonionism.blogspot.com, invite only. If you want in, shoot me an e-mail.

My roommate lost one of the bolts connecting the small and large front sprockets on his bike. The pressure of the chain bent the small sprocket, doubling it over completely, and rendering the bike useless. It was an old European three-bolt sprocket set with a cotter pin to attach the crank-arm to the spindle. The bike-shop didn't have the old parts, so my roommate asked me and we took it to the workshop today, found an old crank set with the exact same setup, and swapped it out. I wasn't familiar with the old cotter pin set-up (but I've never used a modern crank-puller either) but it wasn't that hard to figure out. So we saved a bike's life today. Good times. Now back to work.

I love this. As you may recall, I gave a presentation on the Sierra High Route to 5 Bay Area REI's this summer. They later gave my name to an East Bay trail group, and in early September I gave my presentation to them at their big annual hike & ride fundraiser. They just sent me their newsletter, and this is how the presentation was described: "The entertainment that evening was a slide presentation by Garret Christensen, who has hiked all the major though hikes [sic] in the US. He talked about hiking the top of the Sierra Mountains from one end to the other – off-trail! He showed us slides of the beauty of the High Sierras, the exhausting work that it takes to hike it, and the pitifully minimal equipment he takes when he goes there. I think we all came away from that talk admiring his persistence and resourceful- ness and thinking: “Thank God I’m not THAT crazy!”" Awesome. Support the Bay Area Ridge Trail . It needs to get finished so I can thru-hike it.

NYT article on pushing your physical limits. The Town was a great movie. So was The Ghost Writer . The Arcade Fire show at the beginning of the month was good, but I didn't think great. Conveniently it was at the Greek Theater 100 yards from my office so I had time for it, but I thought the jumbotron behind the band that showed live distorted video of what they were doing on stage was very distracting. You're standing right here in front of me, can't I just watch you jump around in real life? Is it just me or are Dem's chances looking a little better lately? All the Poisson regressions, county trends, and population weights are starting to work. Good times. Electronic music is good to listen to at work as it's less distracting than my normal indie/folk. Thank you, Ratatat. That's all for now.

Presented today. I think it went well. You know it's going horribly if nobody bothers to make comments, and I was worried about that at the start, but I realized that was just the part where I was talking about non-economicsy background stuff ("Here's how you join the military"). It got lively with lots of comments when I actually started showing results, and the faculty was dropping knowledge bombs all around. And the suggestions are stuff I can actually do, so that's cool. I was exhausted, so I'm spending the rest of the day buying groceries, doing my laundry, fixing some bike spokes, and maybe watching Carrie or reading Harvey Pekar's adaption of Studs Terkel's Working . (And talking to a guy at RAND about the control functions approach to eliminating omitted variable bias.) The only problem is, I bought the freewheel removal tool (the Suntour 2-prong model) but I've only got an 8-inch crescent wrench which is not giving me enough leverage. At ...

Well, it's been a fascinating few weeks. When research is going well I actually sort of enjoy insanely long days in the office every single day of the week with no time to even do my laundry or buy groceries. Or cook. Or eat. Today I have a minute to breathe, but only because I'm all the sudden really worried that my data are too good to be true in that they might exhibit evidence of time travel. (You see how I made "data" plural there? I hate that. Next I'll be speaking only in passive voice or talking about myself with the the royal we.) Obviously this means I've goofed or my model is mis-specified or something. Anyway, my birthday was a while back so I ran a fun midnight 15-miler up to Inspiration Point with Gazelle. I also caught a free sneak preview of the financial collapse documentary Inside Job . It's worth seeing, but if you already dislike investment bankers and have listened to the This American Life episode called The Giant Pool of Money , the...

Can anybody out-google me to a list of the names of those who died in the Persian Gulf War? Actually, I don't need names, I need service unit, home county/state of record, and date for all US military fatal casualties from Jan 1, 1990 to October, 2001. DoD press releases usually have this information, but they don't always issue a statement, and an incomplete set doesn't help that much. Monthly recruiting goals by service branch from 1990-2006 would be dreamy too. Otherwise, I'm 1600th in the FOIA line.

And with that, I probably won't be posting much for a while. I'm hoping to be on the job market this year, which means military labor supply research 12+ hours a day, 6.5 days a week for the next couple months. I'm signed up to present in a lunch seminar in a month, then if all goes well, job applications go out mid-November. I unsubscribed from a ton of blogs, removed a bunch of sites from my bookmarks toolbar, cook less, and run only enough to stay sane. Wish me luck, and if you're a potential employer, say, at a great school in a great location, I would be an awesome colleague and an excellent teacher and researcher.

I read Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, and I shouldn't have bothered. Reading Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance a few years ago was more than enough motorcycle-philosophy for one lifetime. First, I must admit, relative to other intellectual qualities I have, reading comprehension of philosophy is not one of my strong suits. Only when philosophy is reduced to near-math, or when it is very clearly applied to practical decisions in real life do I enjoy it. With that said, I still think Soulcraft is unnecessarily complicated, boring, and doesn't actually say anything that means anything. It's dense drivel. It's styled as a philosophical defense of the trades, and starts out talking about how it's easy to pick up good used machine lathes and other shop tools off eBay, because schools have been abandoning shop in favor of "the knowledge economy." Then there's a interesting disc...

I finally typed up my comments on the Western Express Adventure Cycling Maps for the AC cartographer who encouraged me to do so. I thought I'd post them here for the benefit of anyone who might google across them, as they're too long to just post in the comments of my original bike trip entry . Here they are. Map 2: Is Pinto Summit 7,376 or 7,351 feet? Is Pancake 6,521 or 6,517 feet? Is Robinson 7,588 or 7,607 feet? [I don't think these minor differences matter in terms of physical effort to get you to the top, but it's just nice to be consistent between sides of the map.] Map 1: The directions for map 6 in Placerville are wrong (and illegal for cyclists). On the detailed map, the red line stops, but the black line appears to direct cyclists onto Route 50 briefly starting at Canal St. (Westbound). The written directions just say "Placerville. See Detail... Merge onto US 50. Matchline." However, at the intersection of Canal St. and Hwy 50, although there is a ...

I just watched The Call of the Wild , a documentary about Chris McCandless, AKA Alexander Supertramp. I also re-watched Into the Wild for comparison. The latter I assume you've all seen and don't need to hear anything about; I liked it just as much the third time as the first. Pretty much the only thing I don't like is the font of the opening titles. Thanks for not blowing it, Spicoli. The Call of the Wild on the other hand is a low-budget independent documentary by film-maker Ron Lamothe who re-traced McCandless' steps. Lamothe was born in 1968, the same year as McCandless, and was obsessed with the story even before Krakauer made it huge. For the movie he went to Emory during graduation, Lake Mead, Slab City, hitch-hiked to Carthage, South Dakota, drove up to Alaska, and hiked to the Magic Bus, getting swept downstream by the Teklanika River and temporarily ruining his camera. There's a fair amount of thoughtful introspection--he interviewed random Emory grads, ...

Fine, the Internet is useful. It's also a huge waste of time and is making you stupid, so I dare you to read this whole post. In other words, I just read Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains . Carr is sometimes credited with starting this discussion with his article "Is Google Making You Stupid?" in The Atlantic a few years ago. The book goes into detail about how the brain is plastic (adaptable) into adulthood, and how using the Internet re-wires your neurons so that you're better at skimming than concentrating or thinking deeply. (When was the last time you made it through an entire NYT Sunday Magazine article online?) Carr cites numerous scientific studies showing that the distracting nature of hypertext and multimedia lead to lower retention and comprehension. These parts of the book are very interesting, just like any Malcom Gladwell-esque collection of interesting scientific findings. The book is also part intellectual his...

I just watched 180° South . Basically, some dudes take a trip to Patagonia, surf, climb mountains, and talk about conservation, and the meaning of life with Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins (the founders of Patagonia and North Face, respectively). It's sort of a re-creation of a trip Chouinard and Tompkins took in 1968 in which they drove south from California to climb Fitz Roy, then made a movie about it called Mountain of Storms (which now I guess I'll have to track down and see). 180° South was good, but I wouldn't say amazing. The surfing and climbing shots are of course beautiful. The soundtrack is very good, but a little too heavy on the Jack Johnson for my tastes. The discussion of dropping out/the meaning of life is fairly simplistic when it's from the point of view of the main narrator, but I think that Chouinard and Tompkins, given their impressive experience as both businessmen, dirtbags, and philanthropic conservationists, had more interesting and nuanced ...

You know what I'm tired of hearing about? I won't even mention it because it's the only thing in the news for the last forever and I am so pissed that there's even a question about whether they should (be allowed to) build it. Of course they should. Other than that: Good runs. A little barefooting (by that I mean VFF), 10 miles in Briones Regional Park (to a part I've never been to), two trips to the EBMUD land near Upper San Leandro Reservoir (again to parts I've never visited before), new bushwhacking and super-secret-singletrack on campus property (following the Lab fence from the High-C, and a track that crosses the creek at the Firetrail parking lot then goes up the hill close to the Connector where you can bomb down to the pool parking lot), a run with Nano down the ridge-trail to Sibley, and 10 miles along the Charles River in Boston from Mass Gen to Harvard and back. So by that I mean I went to Boston and Nano visited (twice). A+A got married and had a v...

Good NYT article about getting rid of your crap and living simply. Except it seems like it's saying that instead of buying fancy stuff you should buy stuff that helps you have cool experiences (preferably social ones). I'd say that's a fuzzy line to draw, and I'd advocate instead for buying pretty much nothing. But part of me does like the claim that buying "equipment like golf clubs and fishing poles" makes you happier as this obviously helps me justify the four Rubbermaid tubs in the corner of the room as well as the 40-pound box of maps. Applied to today's situation, would buying the special tool I need to remove a bike's rear cassette (and eventually a bike stand and a wheel truing stand) and doing the work at home make me happier, or would I be happier riding down to the community workshop and fixing my three broken spokes there? My guess is the latter, since I get to interact with the shop guys, who're pretty remarkable in that they have no ...

Alright Mr. Hope-to-go-on-the-job-market-this-fall, you can make me buy a stupid suit, but you can't make me like it. And you can't make me pay more than $15 for it. And no, unfortunately I'm not running the Headlands Hundred right now. My friend couldn't get off work to pace me and it would have prevented me from accomplishing anything for the better part of four days and possibly weakened to the point where I caught a cold. So instead I got the cold before the race and am spending the better part of four days sick on the couch watching movies: Breathless : sharp, but that's all it's got going for it. Infernal Affairs : I'll take Marty's version with Marky Mark in hospital booties over the original. My Dinner with Andre : One of the better two-hour long conversations about new-agey bulls--t that I've seen. The Straight Story : Heartwarming and beautifully shot (Iowa cornfields). Sometimes the main character either had poor line delivery or acted lik...

This one's for the running nerds. My route : I went over to Marin county today and did a nice 6 hour run on the north side of Mt. Tam on Marin Municipal Water District land. I've hiked and run on Mt. Tam a few times before, but always on the southern/western/Pantoll side. I generally don't like to drive to start a run, but I knew I'd be out long enough today to make it worth it. Traffic through Richmond and over the bridge is generally not that bad, and parking was easy and free, so that's points for Tam over Diablo or anything in the South Bay or on the peninsula. I started at Natalie Greene park above Ross Commons, up Tucker and Indian Rd., down a ridge to Lake Lagunitas, up to Collier springs, on Upper North Side and Benstein to Rock Spring, down the Cataract trail to Alpine Lake, Helen Markt, Kent, Bon Tempe Shadyside, and Fish Gulch back to Phoenix Lake and back to where I started. I liked the area. Not giant trees like in Muir Woods or even the French Trail in...

I just read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals . At times I found Foer's writing extremely pretentious (e.g., five pages of "Influence/Speechlessness" repeated over and over, consisting of 21,000 letters, which is how many entire animals the average American eats in a lifetime.) But in general I thought it was well written and enjoyable. I think Foer assumes to some degree that the reader agrees with (or at least doesn't virulently oppose) three ideas: factory meat farming is (1) inefficient (it takes from 6 to 26 plant calories to make 1 meat calorie), (2) environmentally horrible ("All told, farmed animals in the United States produce 130 times as much waste as the human population--roughly 87,000 pounds of shit per second . The polluting strength of this shit is 160 times greater than raw municipal sewage.") and (3) extremely cruel (cages are so small animals can't turn around. Watch Meet Your Meat if you need convincing). A few chapters of th...

One of my favorite memories from college was watching Seven Samurai and Magnificent Seven projected on our living room wall and remarking how similar Toshiro Mifune's samurai character was to my buddy Nielsen, just by the goofy look on his face and how he strutted around and was always scratching himself and laughing, but occasionally morphing into alpha male badass when necessary. Tonight and a week ago I watched Yojimbo and Sanjuro , which are absolutely brilliant. Mifune doesn't play the same character--less goofy, more grumpy, but still badass--but the resemblance is still there, and the movies are absolutely must-see. In case you're wondering, I've seen 10.5 Kurosawa films this summer: Rashomon --brilliant Drunken Angel --slow but good Throne of Blood --very good, and the final scene is fantastic, but I didn't quite like it as much as many people do I Live in Fear --slow The Lower Depths --unwatchable (and yet I watched it?) I'm sorry, but I require a pl...

I listened to Scott Zesch's The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier . Meh. It's about nine different kids captured by Apaches or Comanches, and I could never keep them straight in my head. It did make me think of one interesting philosophical question, however--there's lots of mention in the book about Native American dislike for typical white European settler working life (which at the time obviously meant farming) and the children had trouble readjusting to settler life once their abduction ended and often never readjusted to the whole working/making money thing. So in what sense, if any, is that "laziness" (how it's referred to by settlers in the book), in what sense is it Native Americans being smarter and knowing that he who dies with the most toys definitely does not win, and when can I start living in a log cabin in a brutally cold place with no facilities and spend all day chopping firewood and growing my own vegetables...

From an NYT travel article about a bike trip in the Four Corners area: Something else had changed up here, too. It takes nearly a day on these trips, John said later, but you always see it: Shoulders drop their tension. Eyes unpinch from their accountant’s squint. With every mile, the in-box and the BlackBerry retreat a little more in the rear-view mirror. People shed their daily worries, until their world reduces to the clean feeling of the right gear underfoot, and the blur of the gray road. As Mike put it: “I don’t have to think. I don’t have to do a damn thing, if I don’t want to. I get to ride my bike.” Articles about a family biking from Alaska to Chile. Guardian UK . Salon .

Something didn't work out like I'd hoped today, so I listened to Rage's Killing in the Name of , then fueled by a fresh dose of self-loathing left the office for an awesome 3 hours in the hills--up to the top, down to Orinda, and back. It's been far too long since I've run there; I live too far west now, so I need to get back in the habit of going from school so I can hit the hills nearly every day. The run was fantastic, so I'm sort of thinking about running the Headlands Hundred in a week and a half. I haven't been training, but since when has that stopped me? The course has changed slightly since last year, but it's still 4x25-mile loops, which doesn't excite me, nor does the $200 entry fee (despite my interviewing today for a one-day GSI training gig in August that pays $200). We shall see. I've got an open weekend, so maybe I'll do a long run and see how I feel. Today was also the last of my 5 REI presentations. They were a pretty good e...

Two REI Presentations: Pretty good reviews, with the inevitable exception from someone who clearly does not get my sense of humor. Three more this coming week. Inception: I almost always disagree with David Edelstein, and thus I loved this movie. Yojimbo: Badass Capturing the Friedmans: Interesting. American Splendor: Did I mention Harvey Pekar makes me happy? Our Cancer Year: I really dislike the art, but the story is great. An Unreasonable Man: Ralph Nader is cool. I wish I believed in something like he does. Dead Weather live at the Warfield: Even from the nosebleeds, Jack White and his giant eyeball backdrop are phenomenal. The Human Condition: Got disc 1 (of 4), haven't started yet. Ran several times but wasn't really feeling it, gave my bike a decent post-trip cleaning, picked 12 pounds or so of wild blackberries, made two pectin boxes worth of freezer jam, baked fresh honey whole wheat bread, and will make a pie tomorrow.

I rode my bike 770 miles or so from Salt Lake City, UT to Sacramento, CA. I started Sunday morning at 8:30 and finished Friday night a little after 11:00 PM. As usual, all during the trip, I imagine the wonderful, informative blog posts that I will write when I get back, full of helpful gear lists and vivid descriptions. Now that I'm back, however, I'm already bored, suffering from post-adventure let-down, wishing I were still biking, and thinking the Internet is stupid, so I don't really want to write about it. However, I'll force myself to do it now, otherwise it will never happen. So, what do I think of bicycle touring? I like it. I certainly still plan to do a longer trip someday (preferably with Marcus, since marriage is no excuse, buddy.) But do I like it as much as backpacking? It's different, that's for sure. It's more like hiking the Appalachian Trail than the CDT--it's a cultural experience, not a wilderness experience. I was on roads the entir...

He just made me feel OK with both life and my attitude about it, that's all. I'll miss him. NYT obit Cleveland Plain Dealer obit Fresh Air remembrance show Ohio Public Radio site with Pekar's commentaries

All done. Rode 160 today despite diarrhea and heat and chain giving me grief, making me eat it a few times. Train home tomorrow from Sac.

Plus, can i maybe do state cap to state cap in one day? It would be big, not quite sure how big.

Super 8 in carson city. Don't know why i got another motel room, maybe it was the 109 degree temps and tons of traffic and sprawl. 112 for day.

Not far from fallon. Butt very bruised, have to switch btw saddle positions every 3 minutes and crank standing, which is less easy w saddlebags. Still ok tho

133, camped at the shoe tree! Hot and flat after austin.

Austin nevada. 70 or so done. Aiming for carson city tomorrow night. Think it will get a little lower and hotter till tahoe. Finally got whole bottle vitamin i.

Did 126 to get to eureka. Everything closed at 8 so i am still buying vitamin i by the 4 pack at gas station. Camping at rv park. Mennonite breakfast tomorrow.

Made 108 yesterday. 20 this morning. Would love 105 more to eureka. Slightly cloudy, which is nice, but burning off.

90 miles so far today, 100 degrees, one tree. Only one more state named nevada to ride through!

Why does my body crave processed nacho cheese after a long sweaty day? Did i sweat out all my mono and diglycerides with the sodium hexa meta phosphate?

120-plus miles from slc to delta on my first day, first long ride ever. Cheap hotel and ice in order if i want a chance to do it again tomorrow.

Crappy gas station microwave burritos in eureka utah, 65ish in. Damn i love the open road.

Elberta utah. Jct w hwy 6. Feeling good. Neck tired from holding head up.

45 minutes in, waiting out my first storm for a couple minutes.

Here goes nothing!

start tomorrow am. Sent most stuff home with friend, will have to carry a few things to po on monday, no biggy. Delta tomorrow? I don't know how far that is.

At Paul's in SLC. Him and Kate have all the tools I need and a bike stand, so that's a huge help. I tried to tune the front derailleur but I can't quite figure it out and I'm out of patience, so I'm just going to take it to REI where they said they can probably squeeze it in while I wait. I like to think that I'm somewhat competent with bike mechanics and that I enjoy it to some extent, but I'm definitely not an engineer/tinkerer type. I managed to fix my commuter's front derailleur last week just fine (except for the lack of tools at the place I was house-sitting), but my fancy new one with STI shifters is a whole new ball game. Other than that, I think I've got everything I need except for spare nuts/bolts for my rack. Now I just have to decide what I'm actually bringing with me and what I'm sending back with a friend.

I am doing 5 Bay Area REI Presentations in July. If you're able, please come to one or more and heckle me by shouting out embarrassing personal information from my past. Here is the blurb the REI organizer wrote, along with dates. The Sierra High Route & Beyond: A Thru-hiker’s Dream: Since 2002, Garret Christensen has hiked the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail (a yo-yo thru-hike), and more. Tonight, Garret will share slides and stories of his most recent adventure–a 450-mile summer traverse of the Sierra, from Olancha north to Tahoe City . Join Garret as he travels the spectacular Sierra High Route, a 195-mile route (half-cross country, half-trail) above 9,000 feet, which showcases the best of the Sierra. Then, follow him the rest of the way on the Tahoe-Yosemite and Tahoe Rim Trails. Come learn pointers on ultralight packing, route planning, route finding, and safe backcountry travel. Find out how this thru-hiker extraordinaire covers 20...

I'm packing for my trip. I've been buying some accessories and gear the last few days. If I can I'll try to buy a new digital camera tomorrow morning. Friday I hope to ride the Alpine Loop (around Mt. Timpanogas) with Marcus, preferably all loaded up as a test run.

Marcus had a layover from 8PM to 6AM the next day, so we went on a long night trailrun through Tilden. Mostly my innards were trying to explode so I just sat and dry-heaved while M swam in Lake Anza at 3AM. M also provided a wonderful epiphany--since I'm a cynic and believe that all organizations are corrupt and the system is rigged and will always be so, my best chance for lasting happiness is to become evil and abuse the rigged system. Previously I'd thought my best option was to live in a remote cabin and chop my own firewood. Yesterday I started to run all 136 sets of urban paths/stairs in the Berkeley hills. I got about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through in 3 hours and realized it was pretty boring, so I bailed. Too much backtracking and pavement and stuff. Pretty great stair workout though. I finished reading Ted Conover's Rolling Nowhere , about a college anthro major who rode the rails to see what it was like. Apparently all hobos are short-tempered violent racist tooth...

My bicycle is on the roof of a yellow Mini Cooper on its way to Utah. I'm flying there on July 8th for M&S's wedding. Then I'm riding home. It's going to be ridiculously hot, I've never ridden further than 30 miles, and I really need to be doing research, plus I'm also disappointed to be missing Sweetgrass at its only SF engagement on July 11-12, a Kurosawa double feature at the PFA on the 14th, and a restored print of Seven Samurai on the 17th. My expected route is to head down the west side of Utah Lake then take 50 west for a long time. I ordered a couple of the Western Express route maps from Adventure Cycling, so maybe I'll end up doing some of that. Hiker friends did something similar a few years ago and trailjournaled it. Who knows. I'm not guaranteeing I'll do the whole thing (did I mention it's going to be hot?), but I've got to get out and do something so I don't go crazy. Like the man said, buy the ticket, take the rid...

My day was not quite as epic as originally planned, but it was still fun. I paddled from Berkeley Marina to Angel Island (7-8 miles), ran two laps (17K) around the island, one on the perimeter road and one on great single-track to the summit of Mt. Livermore, climbed around the old military buildings, paddled home with big scary waves at my back, then went for a 14 mile bike ride. I've come to the conclusion that for me, kayaking is a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself. It gets me to interesting islands, but getting out of the boat and exploring the island is the best part. Today was easily the hardest kayaking I've ever done, with 20-30 knot winds and a small craft advisory in place. (I didn't know this until just now, and I didn't know anything about conditions other than the tide schedule until I parked at the marina at 5:30 this morning and saw that it was already choppy.) The way to the island was difficult as I was headed out against big waves, b...

What a huge waste of time. Or not. Maybe it's a humorous creative outlet for my sarcasm and a way to keep in touch with people. Today, it's three youtube clips of folk/country musician John Prine, to whom I was recently introduced to by the movie Big Fan , Fresh Air , and a friend on facebook. Listen and enjoy. "Your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore/they're already overcrowded from your dirty little war/now Jesus don't like killing, no matter what the reason's for." Brilliant. The Fresh Air review of two new albums. His set at Bonnaroo .

Just now finished reading Michael Lewis' The Big Short . It was absolutely amazing. Can I be him when I grow up? Failing that, can I at least run into him at Berkeley Bowl and say hello? Seriously, this book is great. It's an entertaining tale of three groups of Wall Street outsiders (a one-eyed neurologist with Asperger's and some dudes living in a shack in Berkeley, for example) who foresaw the subprime mortgage meltdown and made a fortune by betting against the CDO's. I'm too excited about this book to really respond clearly, so here are random thoughts: Investment banking is worthless, but betting against the system is somehow fascinating. The system is totally rigged. Also, the Black-Scholes equation and the fact that people systematically underestimate the likelihood of very bad events occurring (behavioral economics!) Fascinating , huh? Also, I can't wait to read the next book in this non-trilogy (with Liar's Poker as the first and Short as the seco...

Because if it does, then it doesn't, and if it doesn't, then it does. Or did I just blow your mind, Bertrand Russell style? I just finished reading Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth , the graphic novel by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papdimitriou, and it was f---ing brilliant. It's about Bertrand Russell and his search for a logical basis for mathematics. Yes, it's a comic book about the history of math, philosophy, and logic. It reminds me of the epiphany-packed Journey through Genius . Also, I read The Full Burn by Kevin Conley, about Hollywood stuntmen. I judge lots of entertainment by whether it makes me want to be that when I grow up/wish I had studied that in school. Logicomix definitely passes that test; I totally wish I'd taken Math History my last semester in college instead of Pop Culture. Burn didn't really make me want to be a stuntman, although it did make me google amazing stunt scenes from movies, and I did imagine pretty cool altercations...

I ran a 50K on Mount Diablo today. It took me 7:57 , which is slightly ridiculous, but it was about 85 degrees out and the course climbs straight up and down Mt. Diablo twice with 8,900' of climbing, so I finished about in the median like normal. Last fall with a worse knee but better weather I did this course in 7:19. I'm disappointed in myself for making excuses not to ride my bike the 27 miles to the start of the race, but I'm happy with the run given the heat for which I am not at all conditioned. But I'm to the point where running 50K is not a big deal, so if I'm not in good enough shape to be setting PR's, then at least I can add a bike ride or extra miles to mix it up (and save the planet some carbon). Speaking of, I'm still tentatively planning on paddling to Angel Island for a run in two weeks. I'd given up on biking my kayak to the marina, since I didn't want to spend $300 buy a trailer, but today a friend suggested I just ask around and ...

I'm packing up to move today. I'll be moving into probably my seventh place in Berkeley, but it could be more depending on how you count friends' couches or "the woods." Regardless, hopefully this will be the last move until I graduate (hopefully next year). Other than my having been distracted lately, research is going well. I was busy grading exams, I may have to file a FOIA request, bla bla bla. The cool stuff: I went to Ventana Wilderness for three days. I took two friends from high school, one who lives in SF, and one who's visiting from Chicago. Here they are at the trailhead on Hwy 1 near Kirk Creek. We didn't get to the trailhead until 7PM, so we just did three miles or so to the first campsite. We made a big campfire, which was only the third time I have built one in all of my 10,000+ miles of hiking since 2002. I set them up with lightweight gear (we all used ULA packs), and I mostly had enough lightweight non-cotton clothing to outfit all of u...