Adventures in Onionism

This week I read about worms, externalities, and the Peabody Picture and Vocabulary Test, but more interestingly, went for a couple excellently muddy rides, went to Roselyn's and learned some good Swahili vocab, and went to Iten, which is outside of Eldoret and home to some of the runner training centers. It's maybe 4-5 hours on three matatus--Busia to Bungoma, then Eldoret, then Iten. You can get a reasonably nice one (i.e. one person per seat) from Bungoma to Eldoret, but for the rest, it's the usual 21 people in a 14-legal seats mini-van. I walked the road 6km from Iten down to just past Kessup and stayed at Lelin Campsite, which overlooks the Kerio Valley--finally, variation in topography! I visited a marathon training center this morning, but was pretty disappointed that it basically seemed like a sports camp for rich western white kids--not at all like the one I visited last time outside Kitale in the Cherangani Hills, which was just ugali na maharagwe na bad-ass Keny...

Tim DeChristopher's going to jail for 2 years for protesting (invalid) BLM oil & gas leases. He wasn't allowed to argue much of any defense in court. Read his statement before sentencing. "I am here today because I have chosen to protect the people locked out of the system over the profits of the corporations running the system. I say this not because I want your mercy, but because I want you to join me." Read what Terry Tempest Williams wrote about the trial. Get sent to jail in a few weeks in Washington, D.C. by protesting the tar sands pipeline , which Jim Hansen says would be "essentially game over for the climate." I believe that Peaceful Uprising is the org Tim set up.

Nothing like a night-time boda boda ride home from the Blue York to make you feel alive/like you're going to die. Especially when you see the best, longest lasting, most colorful shooting star of your life from the back seat.

Deworming nationwide in Kenya didn't happen in 2010 , despite it being awesome; my friends mentioned. Kenya made a data website . NYT says the World Bank is opening up its data vaults too. The government prosecuted an ultra-runner for small-time mortgage fraud, big fish are all still free.

Bikes in Kenya all have Woods/Dunlop valves ( http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gloss_w.html#woods ). I assumed they were a cheap Chinese import or something, but Sheldon Brown says they're from the UK, which makes sense given Kenya's colonial past. I couldn't find the leak in my Schrader tube from home, so I walked to town and pumped it up at the gas station and bought a new Woods tube and a pump at bike parts store. I love that my reaction to prices now is something along the lines of "What!? 250 Shillings for an inner tube, and 300 for a pump? Highway robbery!" ($6 total)

Started a mapping exercise yesterday, riding my bike to all the shops and restaurants and recording gps coordinates and taking photos. I'll put them all on Google Earth when I'm finished. This is a pretty easy task when there's only a dozen places you'd ever want to go. Went for a second ride yesterday, this time through the shamba, and I got a flat. I'll have to walk the bike a mile to the gas station in town and do the repairs there where the pump is. I should look around town for a pump as well, but I bet I'll have to go to Kisumu. Not to disrespect the recently deceased, but this was a funny conversation last night at dinner at Chauma with a big-time VIP from USAID who reports directly to Raj Shah (the head of the agency), and a TV visible out of the corner of my eye. Her: "So, with all your experience in development, what is the one thing you would like me to take home and tell USAID? Garret, you first." Me: "What!? Amy Winehouse is dead!?...

I should've brought a pair of not-tinted sunglasses. The bike rides through the shamba at dusk (from 6-7) are loaded with bug inhalation and bugs in the eyes. I might be living in Kakamega starting next year. It's not any hillier than Busia, but there is a rain forest national park right out the back door. It's a bigger town for sure. That could mean more noise and pollution, or it could mean more people to hang out with. Still thinking about the finer points of cluster-randomization. It's not settled how much you should stratify, or whether you should do pair-matching. This ( http://cyrussamii.com/?p=837 ) is a good discussion, but it's a little over my head.

Loaded the rest of my photos from the last weeks in California. http://picasaweb.google.com/gsc123/CaliforniaCountdown Here are pictures of my bike, the road in town, and the water filter in my house with a little surprise. I hate it when you go home from work and then immediately take a nap that lasts too long, then wake up at 8 or 9 and know you won't be able to fall asleep until 3 in the morning.

I occasionally joke with people who ask me about running injuries that I really can't help them because I'm biomechanically perfect. Obviously this isn't true since I'm 75% midget and I get tendonitis in my knees occasionally, but it's also not true because I get diarrhea traveling internationally without fail. South Korea, Peru, Pakistan (I like to blame the ice-creamy noodles I nicknamed "tuberculosis pudding" in the market in Peshawar), Kenya 1, Indonesia, and now Kenya 2 in just five days. Actually it's not seeming like it's such a horrible case, I just think it's a little ridiculous that the inevitable happened so soon. And why have I never (knock on wood) gotten sick backpacking in the US? Also, my maid irons my blue jeans and undershirts, I took the bike out for a ride yesterday evening through the shamba south of the road, the sunset was amazing as is often the case, Dostoyevsky's "The Gambler" is disappointing thus far, a...

Currently I live in "New House," but in two weeks I'll move into "MSF House," which comes with a dog(!!), a giant yard, a garden, a gazebo, an oven, and a bed that isn't laughably large given the space in the room. It's a little less nice in terms of modern amenities, but that's cool with me. I took a boda to town and bought a set of metric allen keys for 500 KES. Dinner at Chauma tonight, after several nights of matoke with groundnut sauce at Blue York, and mung beans over the weekend. (I'll try and grow some sprouts soon.) Sunrise and sunset is going to be 6:47 and 6:55 give or take ten minutes for the next two years. I have to be at the office at 8 AM like a normal person. Spent yesterday reading McKenzie & Bruhn on how to randomize (AEJ:App 2009, http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=9667047646383966202&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 ) and today learning KML to map seasonal vs. perennial springs and shared vs. unshared-across-villages sprin...

I assembled my bike and went for a ride. Google Map . Look at how flat the terrain is. Yes, I brought my GPS with me. Speaking of which, does a halfway decent set of topo maps exist for handheld GPS units for anywhere outside the developed world, or Kenya specifically? I have a Magellan Explorist 500 that I got in 2007, and it came with topo for the US that I can put on an SD card. I've got most of the Western US loaded on there, but if you don't have that, the default background map is pretty crummy in the US, and in Kenya it's horrible--all it shows is dots for the 5 or 6 largest cities in Kenya and the border with Uganda (which is actually helpful since I'm so close to it). Other than that it's a blank slate--no roads, features, nothing. Not even an outline of Lake Victoria, which is a huge bummer, since I'm definitely within a day's ride of that. Anyway, the bike got a little dinged up in transit; I should've added a lot more padding. The disc brake ...

I've arrived in Busia. Flew on KLM from SFO to Amsterdam then Nairobi. Spent a night there, then flew to Kisumu and rode with a boss and co-worker to Busia. Some things are the same--the road was crappy, R is still making tea, N is still happy to see me and maybe carrying large boxes of data from store-rooms across the street. The Internet is still slow, but at least there's wireless. I went to the new supermarket, Tesia. It ain't f--ing Berkeley Bowl, I can tell you that. I'm thinking I might be able to pull off being vegan here, however. I thought I'd have to downgrade because black beans were the only vegan source of protein I could remember, but lentils are easy and I even found (absolutely foul-looking) TVP at the supermarket. Had my first Tusker last night, it comes in 500ml bottles, so that's good. It's no Downtown Brown, but it's for sure better than cheap American stuff. I've almost finished assembling my bike. I need to go get a bike fundi ...

The first rock concert I ever attended was the 1997 Quadrophenia World Tour by the Who at Nissan Pavillion with Marco and Paul. I got into an argument with my dad about whether or not it was "rational" to attend. I believe it ended with me yelling something like, "If Bach or Beethoven were in town, you'd think it was 'rational' to leave a friend's Eagle Court of Honor a little early to drive an hour to see them perform." Obviously, the concert rocked. Having told you all that story, I can now donate the T-shirt from the concert to Good Will.

The original plan was for my forearm, but it seemed too big, blocky, and high-contrast for that, and the artist recommended against shrinking it because of the text, which might blend together. So it landed on my shoulder. "What Everett Ruess was after was beauty, and he conceived beauty in pretty romantic terms. We might be inclined to laugh at the extravagance of his beauty-worship if there were not something almost magnificent in his single-minded dedication to it." "The peculiar thing about Everett Ruess was that he went out and did the things he dreamed about." --Wallace Stegner

Last Thursday I went to Yosemite with friends and hiked an awesome 19 or 20 miles. A raging Yosemite Falls (too many people), top of El Cap, a couple miles on snow, gorgeous granite, and pretty wildflowers in a burned section. Then I went to San Diego for the Western Economics Association International conference. I presented my paper and discussed a paper on combat exposure and punitive discharges from the military in some defense economics sessions set up by RAND. As this is "the vacation conference" I of course also hung out with the Ruts, went to Del Mar Beach and Torrey Pines, and walked around the San Diego Harbor. Today I biked a nice 38 miles. Map . Hopefully it won't be my last ride, because I came down Centennial, which really isn't that fun--too steep and straight to really enjoy. Claremont is better. Remaining in the California Countdown: my first tattoo, a very long run, Eddie Vedder concert, and perhaps cliff jumping at Sword Lake.

Do I know anyone in the Bay Area with a basement or garage who won't be moving for the next two years? Everything I own consists of 5 rubbermaids of gear/books/clothing, 2 file tubs, a box of maps, and a bicycle. All told, this is less than 3' x 3.5' x 6'. Obviously I can get a storage unit, probably a 4' x 4' for $37/mo., but it strikes me as unnecessary to pay some company money to store my stuff when I could pay a friend with a six-pack and some adventure stories.

Photos from recent fun I'm cramming in before leaving.

And I'm not paddling there. Wanna buy my kayak ?