Training Log Archive: barb

A lovely bike ride, in two pieces, there and back, with coffee in between. This was a great way to start my morning, in high contrast to other, recent, mornings of sloth and procrastination. I arrived at work with my brain working pretty well. Though throwing my keys in the garbage can at Dunkin Donuts was not so bright. Kind of like getting lost on the way to an orienteering meet?

Riding on big roads with rush-hour traffic was good for developing some detachment about life and death.

C • keys 2

Random Swiss photo of the day: from the cemetery where a bunch of (untimely) dead climbers are buried:



Yes, that appears to be Jesus on a cross except the cross is an ice pick, and he's got a rope too.

Hiked the Moat traverse with Dave and Geoff. Coined the term "Swissish". Pretty gentle pace. There were a ton of ripe blueberries:



It was a nice day - some breeze:



We saw a red and black bird I am not familiar with. Google suggests that it was a scarlet tanager.

After hiking, we went to the Ossippee bluegrass festival to listen to, and then swim with, the Bag Boys. Then we went to see Pirates II. Spoiler alert - though I'll try to be somewhat obtuse. So, while the plot twists felt a bit tiresome and unmotivated, I enjoyed (as expected) the eye candy, particularly the principles, and the bits of romance because I like romance and I'm not going to apologize for it. The action scenes were somewhat amusing, but there was way too much hamster wheel (and the like). The three things that troubled me most were (1) the commodore all washed up (unlikely for his character) (though he did look very nice with a beard, I like beards) and particularly standing around doing nothing in various scenes, (2) the bondage (she attaches him to the ship) was totally unrealistic - they're in many a pickle that seems hopeless but they always find a way out so why would she assume this was necessary?, and (3) I loved watching the faces in the small boat at the end: she dealing with her bondage decision, and he wondering what is up with her after observing the inexplicable, but I found ridiculous the last "let's to go to the rescue" scene, all suddenly upbeat and trouble forgotten, as unlikely and blithe as Helena forgiving Bertram and Bertram loving Helena at the end of All's Well...

C • other fine points 2

Put on an orienteering event at Dana Park. Kids ranged in age from 3 to 13, but median was probably 5.

First experience of a control:



Map:



I didn't have any help, and there were a lot of kids (about 50) (many "clamoring"). I didn't get to spend as much time with each kid as I'd have liked, as a result. It was really interesting to see how the kids did with this relatively hard challenge: a "real" O course without numbers on the controls (you really had to know where you were on the map), for pretty young kids who'd not done it before. A lot of kids didn't really get it; some of the older kids did. I was particularly intrigued that this pair of relatively young girls got every single control right:


This got me thinking again about race and orienteering. I mean, orienteering is mostly a white person's sport. When I ran an after-school club last fall, I was hoping for a diverse crowd, and didn't get it. I think I need to recruit more aggressively. But I think the economics are a challenge. An after-school club is not as reliable as som regular after-school arrangements for working parents; it costs something, even if not much. Orienteering is also tough because to get serious, to get to the real woods, you need transportation. Maybe I should just find out more about public transportation; can we get to the Fells on the T + bus?

I also started daydreaming again about starting a Cambridge league. Samantha's school, wherever that is - Boston area league, maybe. Does Kristin H have kids in school in the area yet? That could be another one. The lady who arranged for me to be part of this "arts in the park" series today invited me to come and teach at 4 other schools in Cambridge this fall. If I could find four NEOC volunteers for those slots, this could start to gather some momentum.

Anyway, these girls really had the spatial reasoning down well. I told them that they must be good at math. They didn't seem to know what I meant. I asked how high they could each count. One girl said she could get up higher than 100.

Work Commute.

Random Swiss photo of the day - Schwarzsee map, Day 4, Zermatt.

Work commute...

Random Swiss photo of the day (I think Dave took this from the top of the Riffelhorn):




Today I'm spending some time making a map of a small neighborhood park in order to run an orienteering event tomorrow. Have to decide whether to expand into the neighborhood, perhaps as a second course, since the park really is quite small.

Soon I need to start thinking about whether and how to start getting some exercise again! Right now I'm somewhat desperately trying to catch up with work and other stuff before traveling again next week.

Commute to work.

Erg, I am backsliding into sloth. I'm back at work, and not too happy about it. Should I take personally that they now want a "succession plan" for what happens if employees leave?

Watched "Team America" last night. Hilarious. But I'm glad I didn't accidentally show it to the kids: "ooo, puppets, I bet they'll love it!"

Ran to Central Square to get milk, OJ, bread & NYTimes at the 7-11 (since it was before 6:00). Then I drove Carl & Linda to the airport. Came back home and played some ping-pong with Dave before heading to work.

Books I read on the Swiss trip:

"Freakonomics" - I liked some sections (e.g., crime drop in the 1990s) more than others (e.g., baby names - got a little bored). But in general I really like the idea of questioning conventional wisdom with well-formed questions, good datasets, and basic statistics. When I was part way through the book I started thinking about how to teach kids this stuff.

Margaret Atwood's "The Penelopiad." Fast read - I liked the concept, Penelope coping with her lot, smart and clever and human; it felt a bit tossed off, perhaps. I wanted her to be even more clever and in control and have a better relationship with her teenage son, but that all would have been less human.

Sue Monk Kidd's "The Mermaid Chair." Lovely writing. I would have preferred a resolution where she got to keep both of her relationships.

The memoir "An Execution in the Family" by Robert Meeropol, son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Fascinating.

Frank McCourt's "Teacher Man." I'm a sucker for stories of good teaching.

Started Umberto Eco's "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana." This guy loses his memory of his life (and therefore relationships), whereas Kidd's protagonist loses something like her appreciation for her marriage, but in both cases that magic bond stops having meaning.

C • freakonomics 2

Hiked up to the orienteering site.

Physical, lovely. Made same error, almost, as 2 days ago. jumped ahead a leg.

hiked down

Zermatt street-O on a 1:4000 map. This was a BLAST! Small ancient town with tiny little alley ways and twisty streets; some legs on the outskirts on steep grassy slopes. I was in the top half today, and FOURTH on the run in from the last control! Tee hee :-)

Hiked up to Trift and back down. Got a good view of tomorrow's orienteering area across the valley. Couldn't get the song "Edelweiss" (from Sound of Music) out of my head so I tried singing it out loud. Bad idea.

C • Edelweiss? 1

A couple more photos from the week:




From our apartment balcony, we could look down on one of the controls for the elite sprint prolog, the day before Day 1.




Our street, Hinterdorfstrasse, has a bunch of old houses on it. The runner is one of the elite prologuers.

Hiked from Zermatt up to Schwarzsee, today's orienteering site. I memorized the control numbers and features as I walked. I came up with hand signs for the features so that I didn't have to say "foot of southwestern, 2-foot-high cliff" in my head along with the numbers.

Day 4. Schwarzsee, "the heavenly day". Made one big mistake. But it was way cool to know the control numbers and features by heart.

Hiked down to Zermatt after the orienteering.

I heard that there is going to be a rogaine in the Swiss alps next July! And some orienteering events leading up to it. That would be pretty awesome...

If PG took 1:53, I took at least 2:00. We went up to the base of the real Matterhorn climb together, but I couldn't keep up on the downhill run. I did get off the ground on the first vertical section of the climb, but only for a second, long enough to plant both feet in a crack.

We could see the Breithorn, but couldn't make out Dave and Sharon and Ursula and Dieter and Beatrice who were up there somewhere, roped together and carrying ice axes.




(This photo taken yesterday from Klein Matterhorn.)

I got to meet Tapio. As I came downhill, he was going up, and asked if I were me (I was) and said PG had told him I was a few minutes behind.

I guess PG would do for a rogaine partner.

Am slowly adding photos to the previous training entries.

Here is Dave & buddies on top of the Breithorn:





They're holding an O map of the Breithorn. It came in our packet along with other highest O maps of the world, including Happy Jack.

There is a minigolf place in Zermatt with many fun "bingo" holes. Here is a picture of one. The hole is at the top of that steep ramp.

Hiked up to Furi, and then took the gondola from there to the orienteering site.

Incredible terrain/view. Trockener Steg. A lot of the terrain was until recently covered with glacier. It was all rocky:
yellow = open, runnable, some alpine-y grassiness but also sand & glacier leavings
light yellow = gravel, rocks
lighter yellow = rock

I had a lot of fun, though I was not navigating well. I ended up at SIX controls that were not mine, and punched them all, just for the heck of it. I also forgot entirely to go to #8, so I DNFed. Dave had a great run and was on a total high afterwards. Which is right in keeping with the official SOW 2006 slogan: "Get high ...!" (Elipsis included.) (Which slogan made it absolutely necessary to obtain an official SOW shirt.)




Start/finish area for Day 3, Trockener Steg.

Hiked down to Furi from Trockener Steg.



On the way down we had a good view of the Riffelhorn, where Dave climbed on Saturday. Climbing the Riffelhorn is one way to get certified to climb the Matterhorn with a local guide. You can see it behind Dave in the photo below. (He didn't climb it from the very bottom - you start around on the right side most of the way up...)