we've moved

saturday was the big day for kim and me to move to our new apartment.  the weekend did not start as planned because i was stuck running a series of production trials from six on friday night through two saturday morning.¹  after a shorter than planned rest, i awoke to join kim in finishing the final packing and pick up the truck.  with the help of kim's dad, brother, and sister's husband tom as well as my dad, the moving of boxes and furniture was pretty quick.  the only trouble came when we tried to move our refrigerator into the new apartment.  our new place comes with a fridge and we didn't want to sell our year-old one so we planned to store it in the second bedroom.  unfortunately it was as wide as the door to the bedroom so i was forced to drive down to kim's parents' house to store it once we decided not to stick it on the back patio.  sunday morning we took a trip to ikea for some lamps and other household goods.  while kim grocery shopped i reassembled the bed and built her dresser.  we've yet to unpack almost anything and kim's last-minute sub job this morning means that the schedule has been delayed.

¹that's right, 2AM.  had i stayed for all of my trials i'd have been there until about 8, but i was able to get out after the most critical ones finished.

sign me up for two

today i went to rubios for lunch and caught a glimpse of the future:

the coca-cola freestyle is an amazing invention.  maybe you, like me, thought that soda fountain technology had been pushed to its limits by the gas station fountains that let you add squirts of cherry, vanilla, or lemon to your beverage, but that was nothing.  the freestyle has over one hundred variations available.  you start by choosing your main ingredient on the touchscreen and are then shown available variations to go with that beverage.  coke has developed a better way of storing the flavors which allows them to use highly concentrated syrups instead of giant bags of premixed sodas.  they're also able to track data on what varieties people prefer which should lead to wider availability of coke flavors.

i had raspberry coke which was excellent and probably should have seen what flavors i could mix with sprite.  in addition to the fun of using it, i was able to better enjoy my lunch because i got to see people really struggle with figuring out how to use the freestyle.  the directions were on the wall, but it seems that people aren't that quick even with a guide.  they were startled by the change, surprised by the overpowered ice dispenser, and, most hilariously, chronically unable to find the blinking "pour" button after making a drink choice.  i could have watched that thing for hours.  never have i seen something so simple confuse people so mightiliy.

while the freestyle is awesome and will probably be even better when it emerges from beta testing, it does have a few issues.  the aforementioned ice dispenser was too powerful and rubios had to set up wet floor signs on either side of the machines.  that was funny to watch, but tough to use.  the machine only lets you add one flavor at a time so if you want raspberry-vanilla coke you have to do the two separately which hinders my ability to creat something truly unique.  it also restricts the flavors you can add to different sodas so i was unable to have that raspberry flavor in coke zero even though it was available for regular coke.  lastly, i think the ratio of syrups is a bit high because i'd like it to taste like coke with a hint of flavor and not a melted slurpee.  all in all, i think this will be awesome and i look forward to seeing it in more locations.

running?

it's been at least two weeks since i've run at all and i'm starting to get antsy.  i took a full week off before the mt. whitney extravaganza because i've ruined some previous hikes by working out too strenuously beforehand.  this time i was overly cautious and it paid off, but the week of hiking recovery means that it has been a fortnight since i've done any exercise.  this week will be busy with moving with evening daylight shortened by the time change so i'm hoping i can make time for a few miles before the weekend.

my dad is still trying to get me to do the turkey trot 10k on thanksgiving and i know i could handle it, but do i really want to pay for a race without adequate training?  the worst that could happen is that i feel horribly and he beats me like he did in a 5k a few years back while the best outcome would be for me to feel good and still run a slower than optimal time due to low fitness.

sunday was the ny marathon which had not been won by an american since two years before my birth.  most of the media attention for this year's american hope was on ryan hall who has been the best of the american-born contenders in recent years.  i've rooted for the guy since 2001 when i saw him crush a good high school field with a 4:04 mile that left 2nd place about a hundred yards back and it would have been awesome had he won.  he finished fourth, but an american, meb keflezighi, did win for the first time since 1982.  unfortunately for meb, the fact that he's not american-born bothers a lot of people.  he and bernard lagat are among a  group of runners who emigrated to the united states and have represented america.  there's one huge difference between meb and most of the others: he moved to america when he was twelve and is a product of the u.s. running world.  lagat may have represented another country until he was 30, but meb never did.  his 2004 silver medal in the marathon elicited some of the same stupid responses like darren rovell's after yesterday's race.  rovell calls meb a ringer whose only american credentials involve passing a test.  clearly this guy is an idiot who probably doesn't realize that the last american to win the ny marathon wasn't born in the united states either.  alberto salazar won the race three times from 1980-82 and was the last american to do so, but he was born in havana which apparently means he's not an american either, no matter how long he's been here, how many tests he's passed, or what nation he claims or claims him.

mt. whitney part three

after joel returned with our forgotten permits at 4, we hit the trail in earnest.  hiking in the dark isn't the most comfortable activity under the most mundane of circumstances, but hiking an unfamiliar trail with heavy packs, at altitude, on little sleep is even worse.  somehow we managed to make good progress despite our challenges and the increasing presence of snow.  the previous week's snow had fallen much lower than expected and i managed to slip on the first patch of ice.  after that we were much more cautious while still managing a too quick pace.  we blew past lone pine lake, outpost camp, and a few other trail landmarks before stopping to take pictures above mirror lake at dawn.  the trail was increasingly snow-covered, but the consistency was good and we didn't' need our ice gear.  by 6:30 we had crushed the 6.3 miles to trail camp and gone from 8300' of elevation to 12000'.

after trail camp comes the 97 switchbacks.  this is often the toughest part of the trail for most people and it is where we started to really feel the altitude.  our blazing pace slowed to a crawl; we had to stop every few hundred feet to counter the effects of the altitude on our lungs and heads.  this section of the trail was very snowy, but ten days of hikers had created a good path through the muck.  this two mile stretch to trail crest took longer than the previous 6.  hitting the 13,600' mark at trail crest brought us to some awesome views to the west of whitney including a few sierra lakes.  it was really impressive, but we weren't nearly done yet.

the trail after trail crest runs along the backside of a few peaks before reaching the summit.  unfortunately this section makes you go down a ways before you climb again so the altitude hits you even more.  in the course of 2.5 miles the net elevation gain is only 900', but the gross is much more than that.  we were again forced to trudge slowly and were passed by a few groups.  after what seemed like forever we made it to the peak and the climb was over.  we signed the guestbook, took a few pictures, and quickly hightailed it down the mountain to avoid the peak's icy wind and use as much of the remaining sun as possible.

we immediately felt better and more awake as we descended.  every downhill step seemed easier than the last and we made it back to trail crest in good time with only a slight detour to regain the trail after coming down from the peak.  when we returned to the switchbacks we put on the crampons and broke out the ice axes to contend with the refreezing snow in the shaded eastern slope.  we were running really low on water so we stopped at one of the lakes to pump a refill and made it out of the snow near dusk.  the bottom part of the trail seemed to take forever.  i guess hiking it in the morning darkness did not prepare us to accurately gauge distance on the way back to the car.  after an interminable slog in the dark we hit the cars.  after seventeen hours we finally finished.

the trip was a lot of fun, but we were terribly sore and tired on the ride home.  the next day i really regretted my failure to use sunscreen.  all in all, it was a good trip, but i'd like to prepare better for the next go round.

mt. whitney part two

about ten days before our trip, whitney got its first snowfall of the season.  i knew this would make the trip more difficult and that we'd have to rent crampons and ice axes, but i wasn't too worried.  i was less sure that we'd make it to the top successfully after the snow, but the prevailing wisdom on mt. whitney is that nobody, no matter how prepared, can be assured of a summit trip so i just wanted to make a good attempt.

i took a day off work on friday to prep for the trip.  after seeing kim off to work, i ate breakfast, grabbed way too many clothes, rented the snow gear at rei, and bought a bunch of food for the trek.i met up with joel and tyler at joel's place near union station² in l.a.  the drive to lone pine wasn't too bad after leaving the 5 for the 14 and 395.  that night we stayed at the dow villa motel which provided us with three single beds for $50 which isn't too bad, but the fact that our room adjoined another without a way to lock the door in between was odd.

we woke up early and made the drive up to the trailhead by 3:40.  in another five minutes we were on the trail and just a few minutes after that we were waiting for joel to run back to the car to get our permit tags.  whoops...

²by near union station, i mean shares a parking lot with union station.

mt. whitney part one

on saturday, i hiked mt. whitney with joel and his friend tyler.  most people do the trip during the summer, train extensively, and take 2 or 3 days.  we went in october after the first snowfall, did no high-altitude hikes, and did it in one very long day.  this is my version of how it all went down.

my dad has hiked whitney many times.  he's done the one day, two day, blizzard, hot spell, rain, drag my mom to the top, and many other variations.  when i was nine¹ my dad attempted to take me to the top with two of his friends.  we were going to do a two-day trip where you start from the trailhead, hike six miles to Trail Camp, sleep, summit the second day, and go all the way to the bottom that afternoon.  i didn't even make it to trail camp before my head started exploding from the altitude.  kids tend to do poorly with altitude so my dad had to turn back with me.  his friends made it to the top and i spent the next dozen or so years waiting for another chance to go back to whitney.  in 2005 or so my dad planned another trip and i was set to go until a work meeting intervened.  i was bummed.  in the spring of this year he talked about another trip, but didn't offer to take me.  i would have been bummed, but the guys he took were so slow that they took twenty hours to make the round trip under june conditions which would have been terribly frustrating for me.

with that as my mt. whitney history, i was immediately in when joel emailed a few weeks back asking if i wanted to with him.  i hadn't trained at all, wouldn't have time to do so, and knew that the weather could be bad by then, but i was in with no reservations whatsoever.

¹literally my ninth birthday.

some things

here we go:

it has been a while since i've written anything.  ever since i stopped caring about politicians and their coverage in the media, i've been lacking in writing inspiration.  i still keep myself informed, but i'm not all that interested in the obvious and repeated biases of the media or the people they love.  here is an update which will hopefully lead to further and more regular writing:

as you may have noticed, i've decided to drop the use of the majestic plural.  i started it to both mock the self-focus of most blogs (this one especially) and to minimize the number of posts that repeatedly focused on me.  the former goal, which was never really a problem for me, succeeded, but i'm fairly certain the latter failed.  i'm not worried about it though.

kim and i are moving.  our formerly awesome apartment complex has become increasingly terrible.  the following things all contributed to our decision: ant/spider attacks, mishandling of situations by management, stolen bikes, a refusal to adjust our rent even as apartments in the complex rented for significantly less, long walks to and from parking, and, last but not least, a 50-garage fire which was set to cover the dumping of a dead body.  in the time since we first looked for an apartment, the rental market has taken a significant dive.  our formerly good deal apartment has become the price gouge apartment.  we've found a place in fountain valley (goodbye santa ana) with a second bedroom for significantly less money that's also closer to where we both work so we're out.

this weekend is going to be a big one.  thursday night, which is only the weekend because i'm not working on friday, i'm going up to pasadena to see mark weaver who is in town this weekend for an engineering exam and some other guys from school.  this will also serve as the last time i hang out with don stage before he moves to colorado on sunday.  on friday i'm going up to lone pine with joel and his friend in advance of saturday's hike up mt. whitney.  it's going to be an all-day thing and i'm hoping last week's minor snow does not hinder us too much.  sunday kim and i sign the lease on our new place.  all in all, it's going to be a busy weekend.