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