Photos, Book Reviews

More photos from my roadtrip are available here.

I tried (and failed) to read several books lately.
Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson. Repetitive and uninformative.
The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water by Charles Fishman. Alarmist and disjoint.
Audio: The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. Boring story plus over-the-top reading make this unlistenable.
Audio: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. This book is Forrest Gump for sappy leftists. Don't get me wrong, I love Barbara Kingsolver (and Jane Austen) as much as any self-respecting straight man can, and I'm definitely a leftist, but this book is a huge disappointment. I'll probably actually finish it, but doing so will be quite burdensome.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adze Picket Co. (I Love the PCT)

Image
Me at the Border I spent the weekend at the ADZPCTKO with Nitro , Tatu Joe, Ducky (the Wise) , Tomato, BearCan't , Mattress, Love Barge, Nano, Sly, Disco , WeatherCarrot, Too Obtuse, Nacho, Tall Paul, Mags , and Wildflower (AKA Icognito Cheeto Bandito). I got a ride down with Firefly. I'm tempted to just end my post there, as it would seem like complete gibberish to many of you. But I won't. The ADZPCTKO is the Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kickoff, held the last weekend in April (also known as NFL Draft weekend, where, miracle of miracles, the Redskins, despite Dan Snyder's best attempts to screw it up, actually managed to avoid throwing away multiple draft picks on Chad Johnson and instead traded for more picks. Hallelujah!) at Lake Morena campground, 20 miles north by trail from the Mexican border near Campo, CA. Conventional wisdom says that the weather window on the PCT is such that there's not much point to starting earlier thanks to snow in the S...
Read more

Hardrock 34:42

Image
It's Tuesday, I'm back in Berkeley, and I just ran my first Hardrock last Friday/Saturday in 34:42. I wanted to record thoughts immediately after the experience, because it was hard , and now that it's been a few days, I'm already forgetting the pain. [I don't want kids, so you'll have to insert your own reference to childbearing here if you so desire.] Start The race started at 6AM. I slept reasonably well the night before in my truck just behind the school gym where the race starts--Silverton is very low key, so it's easy to dirtbag inside the city limits. I did, however, have a bit of GI non-normality, but it didn't seem like a big deal. I started in shorts, T-shirt, and a windshirt. As expected, the windshirt soon became too warm, likely because of the clouds that were obviously going to bring rain sooner rather than later. First Climb I started maybe 30-40 deep in the field, going faster than I'd ever climbed in training, but not feel...
Read more

Update and Tahoe Rim Trail 100

Image
 Did I go to Alaska? Man, that feels like forever ago. As soon as I got back, I got to work on the house in Reno that Amy and I bought. We closed before Alaska but the sellers needed a short rentback. As soon as we saw the house empty I realized there was a bunch of work to do. We painted the whole interior, we had an electrician put GFIs on every circuit and improve wiring, had HVAC people do their thing, and then of course after we painted and moved into the new place and spent too much time cleaning the rental we were moving out of, the electrician did more work requiring drywall repair and repainting. At least we know the paint color--Swiss Coffee!  The most stressful thing was installing a new exterior front door. God, so stressful. I would trade a lot of stats knowledge for just a little carpentry skills. The new door closes well and is plumb and level and square and true, but I put pressure treated lumber under it instead of a PVC sill, and the latch side reveal is a li...
Read more