Adventures in Onionism

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11  by Lawrence Wright [Audiobook] This book is fascinating. Anyone even remotely interested in US foreign policy, or failing that, just looking for a riveting crime thriller, should find it well worth their time. I listened to the audiobook over the past couple weeks and finished it on my drive home from C&O. The book starts off with Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian scholar and American student whose writings from the 1950's inspired Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current al Qaeda leader, then brings in Osama bin Laden and other major players, and describes their entire lives, from childhood to construction company, to Afghanistan the first time, to Sudan, to Afghanistan the second time, to the embassy bombings, the Cole, and 9/11. The first half of the book, which discusses Qutb's writings on religion, his dealings with the state of Egypt, and all of Zawahiri's terrorism there, revived all my negative feelings about religion in gen...

Ran 52 or so this week. Didn't get in anything super long on the weekend because I volunteered at the C&O Canal 100 Saturday and Sunday. The course was basically 25 miles of the canal out and back twice. I manned an aid station that got hit four times with one other person. It was all pretty low key, so I had time to go running on the canal, but I only did 8 because it was supremely flat and boring. I did a nice 8 at 6:50 pace on Thursday with the young rabbit guys from BMRC. Remember when I could run 26 miles at that pace? It's really nice to occasionally be able to gut out that type of speed. Then again, I basically hate running on suburban pavement, so I can only do it because of the group. Up next weekend--Bear Mountain 50 Miler. Definitely more my style.

Here are some bridges I run over. Wissahickon East Falls East Falls and Several Others

Mr B and I went to the Penn Relays, the oldest and largest track meet in the US. There were weird events like the distance medley relay (1200, 400, 800, mile) and the hurdle shuttles (4x110 (female) or 4x110(male), back and forth on the same stretch), as well as age group 100m dash, where former Olympians were still kicking butt, and a few Olympic Development competition groups where hopefuls were showing that they are, in fact, quite fast. Best of all, a kid from a high school in my home county won the national high school championship in the mile. He led from the gun. (But was nowhere near Alan Webb's record.) I also volunteered at the C&O Canal 100. So now I can run Western States. It was fun, mostly because it was gorgeous out and I just sat in a camp chair all day. This is only the second time I've manned an aid station overnight, and I was surprised how haggard people looked. "You look strong! You're doing great! How many fingers am I holding up? Men i...

The dog park, running back to Marks on Kater, Broad St., etc. Dogwoods Investigations Kater St. Shadow Broad St. [UPDATE: Notice the guy giving me the finger? Ha ha!] Blooms at Sunset

I am seriously contemplating pulling the trigger on this bike . Thoughts? ("Be safe" and "Wear a helmet" are appreciated, but "How much are you really going to ride it? Isn't George in the car with you 99% of the time you go anywhere, because you only drive anywhere to go running or stay overnight somewhere, so how's that going to work?" might be appreciated more. "Here, buy my similarly priced bike with a sidecar instead" might be most appreciated. On the topic of shopping, I bought two pairs of Brooks Pure Grit shoes. Mostly because they're last year's and they're cheap ($65). I'm not sure how I feel about them. They don't have rock plates, which to me is almost the definition of a trail shoe, so I'm not sure how much I like them on the roots and rocks around here. I wore Brooks Cascadias nearly exclusively for the last five years (last year's are also cheap ), so I should probably stick with them, but I f...

Last week was pretty bad, with only 34.2 miles. My excuse is coming down with a cold on Thursday night, and having motorcyle safety/licensing class on Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The most interesting, if not the longest run of the week was Thursday evening's Bryn Mawr Running Company 's Media store run . It's always pretty lame on scenery, and largely just paved streets, but usually makes for good conversation and a really good pace (this time 6.55 mi at 7:29 pace). I never run that fast by myself, but can fairly easily do it with a partner to push me. But it's also on pavement. So which of those is the most important factor? I'll do some regression analysis and get back to you. Oh, and yes, the previous paragraph does imply that I took a motorcycle safety course . And I passed, so I now have my motorcycle license. I got the temporary permit a few months ago, but now I can have passengers and ride at night. And as far as I can tell, states recognize mot...

Watch this. The Colorado River —The Most Endangered River in America 2013 from Peter McBride on Vimeo . h/t Pmags.

A very good week. Started strong, lagged in the middle, finished strong. 91.97 miles for the week. That's got to be the most I've ever run in a week without a race. Did a good 24 in the Wissahickon with MRB Saturday, then 15 more there today with a new Swat alum guy I met. He's from Colorado, so mostly we talked about how much better everything is out west. Here's a great picture I got of George and a new friend he made on trail. The other dog (whom I'll call Max) looked more like George than any other dog I've seen. Flying

Here's something that's bugging me: conservatives who are liberal on the one issue that hits them close to home. Yglesias calls this the " politics of narcissism ," Mark Schmitt called it " Miss America conservatism ," and I call it hypocrisy. You're conservative, but you think the government should support special needs education, and you just happen to have a child with special needs? You're conservative, but you support marriage equality, and you just happen to have a gay son? Well, Palin, Portman, and outdoorsy/environmental friends who joke about their taxes being given to people who don't work as hard as they do, it's really too bad that you can't empathize with any situations that don't happen to affect your very own family. I was like that too, until I hiked the Appalachian Trail (living on government land for free for four months) and realized I'd be a horrible person if I was in favor of government programs like the AT t...

Google Reader is dying. Everyone should start using The Old Reader instead. It looks like the old Google Reader, you know, before the redesign, and before they got rid of shared items. So use it, and look me up on there. I tried netvibes.com as well, but as far as I can tell it doesn't have the ability to search, making it much more difficult for me to find the link to some cool development paper on something or other, especially when I can't remember whether I read about it on Blattman 's or WB Impact 's blog.

A movement is starting. ( Rolling Stone )

Garmin keeps improving the web interface for their GPS watches ( Garmin Connect ), which makes me happy. It seems obvious, but they finally just added automatic monthly and yearly totals (instead of just weekly). So here you are: P.S. Do you use Garmin Connect and are a friend or acquaintance of mine in real life? Look me up on there.

Running was off this week--gf was in town so I did less running and more hiking. Probably something like 45 miles total, 15 of which was walking/hiking. Have I mentioned I'm addicted to running now? Because I totally am. Big deal, you say, you run ultras and of course you're addicted. But I've never run anywhere near this consistently before, at least not since 2003 or so, when I training for my PR marathons in St. George, and even that's doubtful. Anyway, I basically need a fix of 5+ miles 6+ days a week or I'm a little out of sorts. The highlight for the week was camping and running on Assateague Island National Seashore and walking around the national mall looking at the cherry blossoms. Chase me faster, dammit! George loves running. Tidal Basin Cherry Blossoms MLK MLK Cherry Blossoms FDR George Dogwood In other news, I watched Ewan McGregor's motorcycle adventures Long Way Round and Lo...

Much better this week. Ran 79.3 miles, plus some minor biking and walking. Here's the best run, part of which was with MB in the Wissahickon. Maybe I should move to the Roxborough neighborhood of Philly/Manayunk so I have better access to all these trails? I'm getting a little bored with the same 12 miles of Crum. Though I'm sure I'd get bored with a 1:20 commute pretty fast, even if I only had to do it three days a week. But at least there'd be a coffee shop in the neighborhood open after 6PM. (Also, since when did Craigslist get a map view? It's pretty excellent.)