Fnordia

A friend challenged me to sum up my musical taste/influences in a mix CD. It was really hard, but I managed to narrow it down to 39 tracks on two discs.

Since it's Hanukkah, I'm making it available for download for a very limited time.

Enjoy!

When we last left our hero, he had just finished a spectacular run through the Englischer Gardens in Munich and was packing up his belongings to move to a more expensive hotel.

The new hotel was easy to find and the room much nicer, but riddle me this: why when I'm paying 79 euro for a room are both breakfast and wireless internet included, but when my company is paying 229 euro per night, there is no wireless, wired internet is $10/hour or $30/day, and breakfast is $15? Answer: People in this hotel have expense accounts.

After getting settled, I hit the streets again to wander the old town. I hit up three very pretty cathedrals (St. Michael')s, St. John's, and Frauenkirche, all of which I must have been to before, but none of which I remembered. After that, I swung by a beer pub for a tasty lunch of with a lady born in Munich, but now living in South Florida (unlike in the US, in Europe people randomly join you at restaurants, especially if you are alone). I had venison goulash with potato dumpling. Tasty, but I've had better.

Now sated, it was time for the day's adventure. My 5-year old guidebook tells the tale of the Andechs Monastery, a Baroque church nestled in the rural Bavaria, a 45-minute walk from the end of one of the train lines. It wasn't the walk that scared me, but the fact that I didn't have a map covering the area.

About an hour later, the train terminated in the beautiful town of Herrsching, southwest of Munich. Herrsching is a beautiful little town, situated on a huge lake and full of little restaurants and ice cream shops. Fortunately, a nice crepe lady was able to point me in the direction of the monastery, and off I went. The walk turned out to be truly beautiful - not on streets, but on a small, sparsely populated path through the woods. One thing the book neglected to mention was that it was all uphill. And luckily, the weather was gorgeous, so there were enough locals around to point me in the right direction at all the forks in the road.

I made it to Andechs with an hour to spare before the church closed, and it was indeed gorgeous inside. There was a restaurant/beer pub attached, and according to Rick Steves, one that serves up the best beer in Germany. Sadly, I don't drink beer so I couldn't sample it, but it did seem to be popular. I was able to sample a giant pretzel and a fried pork thing the size of my head that seemed to be all anyone was eating. Mmmm...

My dinner was cut short, however, by the setting sun on the horizon and knowledge that I had 45 minutes of poorly marked trail hiking to get back to the train station. There was just enough light left, and I arrived back in Herrsching just as darkness hit, and lucked out by catching the train just 2 minutes before it left.

Once back in Munich, I strolled back to St. Michael's, arriving half an hour before a Hadyn concern was rumored to be starting at 21:00. The choir was upstairs practicing, and the singing was stunning in the acoustics of the cathedral. By the time they finished, many locals were filing in, grabbing Bibles or prayer books or whatever they are and taking seats as I sat there wondering why you'd want a Bible for a Hadyn concert. My suspicions were correct, and I soon found myself attending my second Catholic mass of the day (the first was at Andechs), thus tripling the number of Catholic masses I've been to in my life in just one day (although I only stayed for 10 minutes of each one today).

And that's a wrap. Tomorrow, hopefully I'll get up early enough for a run and then it's off to Salzburg!

Gutentag from Germany.

I hitched a ride on the red-eye after work, for a 7-hour flight to Amsterdam for my two-hour layover. I thought airports in the US were overpriced, but with the weak dollar and airport markups, Schipol takes the cake? If you want to pay over $10 for a subpar panini or $5 for a small bottle of water, that's your place.

I landed in Munich and finding the train into the city was no problem. Buying a train ticket, on the other hand, was. The machines had an English mode, but I just could not figure out what kind of ticket I needed. Hautbanhof (ironically probably the biggest and most popular station in the city) wasn't on the long list of stations with prices. After being frustrated enough by missing the first train, I randomly decided to get a 2-zone ticket and hopped on the train. The trains in Germany are all on the honor system, so I figured that would be good enough.

I exited the station and tried in vain to find one of the streets that was on my Google map, so I could follow the directions to my hotel. Drained after 15 minutes of searching, I ducked into a bakery for a pretzel to regain my strength and fortunately the lady there could fine my street. A short 10 minute walk later, I was at Hotel Bristol.

Exhausted from the 3-hours of airplane sleep I'd gotten, I lay down for a 90-minute nap, being triple sure to set the alarm to avoid the wonderful jetlag "wake up at 1 am" effect.

After the nap, it was time to explore. I walked through the shopping streets, stopping for an incredible hot chocolate at a fancy tea shop - the Germans take their tea very seriously. I'd planned to walk for a couple hours and then find a schnitzel house for dinner, but not long later, I passed an Italian restaurant with a shrimp, mango, curry, and coriander pizza on the menu. How could I pass that up (answer: I could not). And delicious it was. Post-dinner, I wandered some more, searching for a big book store that might have a pocket German-English phrasebook, which I neglected to bring. I found the book store, but alas, all their German/English dictionaries were written for Germans. Oh well.

The book store closed at 8 and once again, I was exhausted. I headed back to my hotel to watch The Calimari Wrestler and hit the sack early. The Calimari Wrestler, by the way, turns out to be one of the greatest films ever made.

After sleeping for 10.5 hours (wow, I can't remember when the last time is I slept that long), I awakened bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and ready for Sunday. I started the day with a 90-minute run through Munich's huge central park (aka Englishe Garten), a gigantic park just two short train stops from my hotel. The park was gorgeous, full of fall color and relatively empty this early on a Sunday morning. I love parks like this - close enough for city folk to use, but big enough that the only sounds of the city I heard was the constant clanging of church bells in the distance.

It's only Day 2, but I have a feeling that run will be the highlight of my trip.

After the run, I had just enough to catch the tail end of my hotel's breakfast, where all the waitstaff though I was weird for not wanting only water, rather than the usual coffee and/or tea (they asked me around 6 times in 15 minutes, just to be sure).

Now it's 11:30, and I have half an hour to shower and get repacked to move to the sure to be three times as nice (assuming price and niceness correlate linearly) hotel my company is paying for.

Aufweiterzein! (I am too lazy to look up if I'm spelling that right).

Yesterday was the Bucktown 5K race not far from me. While it was a bit chilly when I woke up, it warmed up a bit and turned out to be perfect weather for the run.

My time was 28:06, at a 9:03 pace. Not fantastic, but that's fast for me post-surgery. That put me in 989th place (top 1000 woohoo!) out of 2351 and 164th in my age group. That was good enough to get beat by a 7-year old and two 9-year olds. I smoked the 6-year old in the race, though.

The over-abundance of corn syrup in American food has been getting on my nerves lately. It wasn't until I started paying more attention to food labels that I realized how much stuff it's in.

And then my recent trip to Japan made me realize how good food can be without it. So I think I might try a No Corn Syrup Diet. Not religiously, but we'll see how it goes.

I'm a bit worried about two things. First is getting my chocolate/sugar fix. No corn syrup means no more of my beloved M&M's, 3 Musketeers, or any mainstream candy with caramel. But luckily, pure chocolate is okay, and that should force me to eat more high quality/dark chocolate, which is better for me.

The other thing is ketchup. It's hard to eat fried or mashed potatoes (that's right, mashed potatoes) without it and even if I can find a substitute at home, pretty much all restaurants only have Heinz.

But we'll see how it goes. As soon as this rather large bowl of Halloween candy on my desk is gone, it's so long HFCS.

Yes, I've been inspired to start updating this again. Or at least to start updating something.

A few weeks ago, I ran my second Chicago triathlon (the other being in 2006). It was also my only big race of the year. Probably 90-95% of my training this year had been running, so I was expecting to somehow make it through the swim and bike, and then ace the run. Well that was not how it went.

The morning started out poorly as, while riding to transition at 5:30 a.m., my front tire went flat about half a mile away. Knowing they'd be closing up in about 10 minutes, I ran the rest of the way and managed to make it inside in time. To my surprise, I even managed to change the flat before they kicked me out.

Now, thanks to my age group, I had 3.5 hours to kill. Luckily, that was plenty of time for the adrenaline rush of the flat to die off. I decided to cab it back home and get a couple more hours of sleep before the race.

Okay, race time. The swim went quite well, and I finished in 34:07, significantly faster than the last time around. Next up was the bike. There was a decent wind blowing out of the north, but it wasn't too bad. No real problems here either, although I was a bit cautious since I knew that without another tube, if Lake Shore Drive's potholes gave m another flat, my race would be over. My bike time was 1:29:56, roughly the same as the first time around.

Next came the run. Oh, the run. The run was brutal in its entirety. I have no real explanation for that, other than that perhaps my lack of preperation on the bike took more out of me than I thought. I finished the 10K in 1:10:48, a pathetic pace of 11:24.

Overall, my time was 3:24:17. Not great, but only 2 mnutes slower than the previous time I'd done Chicago. I was hoping to beat my old time, but considering how much less prepared I was this time around, I'll take it.

1.5K Swim: 00:34:07 (Rank: 2197)
T1: 00:05:24
40K Bike: 01:29:56 (Rank: 3241)
T2: 00:04:01
10K Run: 01:10:48 (11:24 pace) (Rank: 3380)

Total: 03:24:17

Overall rank: 3236 of 4103 (425 of 502 age group)

WESTMINSTER – Adams School District 50 is defending its decision to punish a third grader for sniffing a Sharpie marker.

Eight-year-old Eathan Harris was originally suspended from Harris Park Elementary School for three days. Principal Chris Benisch reduced the suspension to one day after complaints from Harris' parents.

Harris used a black Sharpie marker to color a small area on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. A teacher sent him to the principal when she noticed him smelling the marker and his clothing.

"It smelled good," Harris said. "They told me that's wrong."

Eathan's father, John Harris, says the school overreacted for treating Eathan as if he was huffing, or inhaling, marker fumes.

"I think it's outlandish," John Harris said. "It's ridiculous."

Eathan shyly shook his head "no" when a reporter asked if he knew about "huffing."

Benisch stands by his decision to suspend Harris, saying it sends a clear message about substance abuse.

"This is really, really, seriously dangerous," Benisch said.

In his letter suspending the child, Benisch wrote that smelling the marker fumes could cause the boy to "become intoxicated."

A toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center says that claim is nearly impossible.

Dr. Eric Lavonas says non-toxic markers like Sharpies, while pungent-smelling, cannot be used to get high.

"I don't know whether it would be possible for a real overachiever to figure out a way to get high off them," Lavonas said. "But in regular use, it's just not something that's going to happen."

"If you went to Costco and bought 50 bags of Sharpies and did something to them, maybe there's a way to get creative and make it happen," Lavonas said.

Adams County School District 50 leaders were unfazed by the poison control center's medical opinion.

"Principals make hundreds of decisions everyday based on our best judgment. And in that time, smelling that marker, I felt like, 'Wow, that's a very serious marker,'" Benisch said.

Despite the medical evidence, Benisch promised to draw an even clearer line on markers.

"We've purged every permanent marker there is in this building," he said.

Eathan Harris says he's happy to be back in school after his suspension, but he did confide he worried the school's disciplinary action might hurt his dream of one day becoming a professional football player.

Taken from http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=89333

Today was the Shamrock Shuffle, which must mean that it's Spring! Well, judging by the temperature, maybe not. It wasn't too bad during the run, though.

This was my 3rd year doing the Shamrock 8K. In 2006, I finished in 49 minutes flat. and then fell to 50:03 last year. This year, I clocked in at 49:21, putting me in 13013th place. That's my worst place finished, but I'm ecstatic to have broken 50 minutes, given the surgery and the fact that I'm only been running or doing any cardio at all for a couple weeks now. Especially since I thought I've been running 10:30 miles since the surgery (as it turns out, my nike+iPod thing is calibrated incorrectly).

Speaking of the surgery, the recovery has been going excellently. My knee's been steadily improving, and particularly in the past two weeks, it's felt a lot more solid - I know longer worry when running, slipping, or pivoting on it.

Tomorrow morning is what should be my final doctor's and physical therapy appointments. I'm hoping to get the all-clear to go back to aikido. Wish me luck!

Ah, the joys of standardized testing. Its doing wonders for our educational system.

Weird science: Lessons on hold to prep for FCAT
When Priya Mistry returned from winter break, she expected to spend the next quarter in chemistry learning about Avogadro's number and converting moles to mass. Instead, her teacher said he was throwing out the chemistry curriculum for the next seven weeks and teaching a review for the science FCAT.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2008/01/30/s1b_skscience_0130.html

Just being in the Tokyo airport for a few hours has reminded me about how awesome Japan is.

The nice people, the toilet technology, the food - it's all here.

Wonder of wonders, they're actually pretty good! When you first bite in, the flavor of the maple glaze hits you. After that, the chocolate comes through. Then just when you think it's a normal cookie, bam! A mouth full of bacon.

For the holidays, I've decided to make bacon chocolate-chip cookies. After finding the recipe online and discovering that bacon chocolate isn't half bad, how could I resist?

So far, it's been an expensive undertaking. While I cook, I rarely bake, since when I do, I usually eat at least half of the finished product and I don't need that.

Due to this, of the required ingredients for bacon cookies, I had only the salt, butter, and cinnarmon. The remaining ingredients cost an additional $40. One thing of vanilla extract is $10! Who knew? Add another $20 for a mixer, cookie sheets, and a sifter, and we're looking at more than $60 for these delecacies. But you can't be pinching pennies when you're seeing a bad idea through to the end.

Making the batter was easy. I forgot how much easier baking is that real cooking - the lack of chopping saves a lot of time! The finished product was quite dry so I added one more egg, but besides that I followed the recipe. Most cookie recipes call for two eggs anyhow.

I have to say, it was tough to add that bacon, though. The bacon goes in last, so there comes a point when you have a bowl of delicious cookie dough and you have to pour two cups of bacon into it. That took some serious will power!

Now the batter's chillin' in the fridge. In another 90 minutes or so, I should have some piping hot bacon cookies. Yay!

Here's an action shot - look at all that bacon!

My apologies to my vast fan base - I've been neglecting you.

Rehab from the surgery continues to go well. I returned to work last week and also ditched the crutches about a week ago. I still wear the giant knee brace, but only when walking outside, as the ice and snow scare me. My physical therapist says I already have almost my full range of motion, although I'm still about a fist away from being able to touch heel-to-butt (apparently the goal of any knee surgery).

It seems things are healing really quickly, but it's still a slow process. Running is still two months away and any other sports at least 4 months.

I also got the bill for the 90-minute surgery - a mere $8236. The agreed upon rate that the insurance company actually paid? $2535. Yes, if I were uninsured, the surgery would have cost more than triple as much. No, our health care system isn't broken at all.

The surgery went swimmingly, and my reaction to the anethesia wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. Thanks to all who sent well wishes!

My ACL reconstruction is tomorrow morning. Hope it goes well!

Marathon Attempt #2 was a success!

My official time was 5:05:52, securing me 1068th place. Not bad for a guy missing part of his knee.

Now I'm really looking forward to that 5-hour drive home.

Well it's official, I'm going under the knife!

I'll be having a cadaver ACL put into my knee on November 13th.

It's an outpatient procedure, but does involve general anesthesia. According to the doctor, I can look forward to having the knee totally immobilized for a week, crutches for 3 weeks, 6 weeks to be able to walk without a limp, 10-12 weeks to be able to run, and 6 months to resume sports/martial arts. So it'll be a long process!

The average success rate for ACL surgery is about 90%, although this doctor says he has done more than two thousand, and can count the number that did not take on one hand.

This was the scene at every aid station I ran through (except a couple didn't even have water):


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbZTI7Cw0rM&NR=1

I'm including this one just because it has Mr. Testicles:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL9wPUtUQqc&NR=1

Well the 30th (and last) "LaSalle Bank" Chicago Marathon was certainly a doozy! As those in the area know, it was hot! In the high 80s downtown and over 90 out in the suburbs. Humid and sunny too.

Yet the marathon started as planned. The first few miles weren't too bad, but around Mile 5, things took a turn for worse. I was getting tired quickly and the sun was starting to beat down. I'd skipped the first aid station at 1.5 miles and imagine my surprise when the next two (at miles 3 and 6) were totally out of fluids! What the officials are saying in the Tribune is not true, as one of those stations wasn't there - they'd even removed the tables! And I was not bringing up the rear of the race; there were many thousands of people behind me.

Around Mile 7, I seriously thought about stopping, but after all I'd gone through, I decided to just walk a mile and go from there. Fortunately, the next aid station had water along with super-concentrated Gatorade syrup. I rehydrated, ate a gel, put on my headphones, and managed to finally get into a groove at that point.

I picked up the pace and managed to make it to the half way point without too much more pain. It was tough though as the remaining aid station were either low on supplies and/or extremely disorganized. Not all of them had Gatorade and the ones that did had the "concentrated" kind. Most had water, but it was poured out of bottles rather than set up, and quite difficult to get more than about a cup.

I finished the half in 2:46. That's only 16 minutes behind the pace I was shooting for, so considering the conditions, I'm happy with that. After Mile 13, we turned back into the baking sun, so I slowed down about a minute per mile. It was amazing - everyone was walking through the aid stations, up the "hills", and through the long sunny sections. This was also where I saw a lot of medical problems start creeping up - people were passing out everywhere; it was bad.

I managed to continue at between a 13:00 and 14:00 pace for the next 4 miles. At Mile 17, I noticed some police activity at one intersection. I thought it was a fight or something, but apparently this is where we were supposed to turn southbound. They'd cut the race short and were just sending us directly to the finish line. The people in the crowd, myself included, were *not* happy. There were no announcements of any kind, and nobody had a clue what was going on. According to the paper, anyone who crossed the half before noon (later changed to 11:45 and then 11:30) were allowed to run the course, but I crossed at 11:09, and I didn't have that option!

I crossed the finish line in 3:56, but after running just 18.5 miles. My marathon was cut 8 miles short and I should have had well over 2 hours to knock out that last 8. I was not too tired (considering) and can almost walk 8 miles in 2+ hours! But it was not to be.

Now a few hours afterwards, I see the race was a disaster all around. More than 350 people were sent to the hospital and one is already dead. Thousands of people were cut off with me at Mile 17, while other groups were stopped at Mile 23 or even Mile 25. Information was very hard to come by during the race (non-existent in my case).

I do think they made the right decision by stopping the race. As I said, people were dropping left and right, and the ambulances were very overworked. But I blame the race organizers for people for being so hugely unprepared and letting it get to that point. These record high temps were predicted over a week before the race, and as far as I can tell they did nothing to plan for that except send out a mass e-mail saying it was going to be hot. I've never organized a race, but here're 5 things I would have done:

1) Move the start time of the race up an hour or two
2) Add fire hoses and/or misters to the course
3) Add additional water/Gatorade aid stations
4) If the aid stations really had enough fluids, as race officials are claiming in the Tribune, then there were either not enough volunteers or they weren't trained properly. Fluids were non-existent (at worst) or hard to find (at best) by the time I got around to them and there were many people behind me
5) Warn people in advance that the race might be cut short

All in all, it made for a miserable run. I didn't finish, but I'm still happy I made it 18.5 miles under these conditions, and I'm not even all that tired or sore right now. I made it through a torn ACL in August, horrible shin splits the past two weeks, doctor's orders to not run a marathon, and 18.5 miles of the Race From Hell, only to be forced to stop early. But I'm proud I made it as far as I did!

Congrats to everyone who finished and thank you to all the volunteers and onlookers - even if the aid stations were poorly run/organized, it was not their fault! I hear they get next to no training/instruction, so they did the best they could under the circumstances.

I'm not sure what's next for me. I'm still under doctor's orders not to run, but my knee made it through today just fine. I'm strongly considering driving out to Des Moines for their marathon in two weeks. I hope the weather cools off by then!

FINDINGS:
There is a complete disruption of the proximal to mid anterior cruciate ligament. The posterior cruciate ligament is intact. The extensor mechanism and patellar tendon are unremarkable. The medial and lateral collateral ligaments appear normal. There is degenerative signal present within the medial greater than lateral menisci without definite evidence of a tear. There is no significant knee joint effusion. Evaluation of the patellofemoral joint reveals no full thickness cartilaginous defect. A small multiseptated popliteal cyst is identified, The bone marrow signal intensity is unremarkable.

IMPRESSION:
ACL disruption. Small popliteal cyst. Degenerative signal within the menisci without definite evidence of a tear.