Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Growing Up

When I was young, I was terrified of growing up. I pretty much figured that I would die in a blaze of glory before turning 30, so I could enjoy the best years of my life in full and just forfeit the awful rest.

But now that I'm rapidly approaching the dreaded 3-0, I find myself actually looking forward to my middle-age years.

Don't get me wrong, being a kid is great. We get to live off our parents' dime and discover all the joys and hardships of life.

The temptation is to hold onto this time of discovery, our youth, for as long as possible. But that leads to a path devoid of purpose and meaning, when meaningful 'discovery' becomes aimless 'wandering'.

Growing up is finally willing to circumscribe our existence -- to draw our boundaries and live within them. It is being responsible for our own lives, and maybe others too.

To me, having that weight put on my shoulders is almost like having a burden lifted off of them. I don't have to worry about what I'm going to become, or what I'm going to accomplish in my life. I just have to go out and do it.

Andrew Zuckerman's Birds


Check out Andrew Zuckerman's photographs of birds.

The bird pictured above is the Vulturine Guineafowl (Acryllium vulturinum). It lives in the Northeast African savannah.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Land Skimming on the Pulse

Last Saturday, I transitioned to my first intermediate wing, the Pacific Airwave Pulse 9 meter.

Setting up a Pulse 9m is pretty similar to setting up a Falcon 140. The most important difference is to make sure the foam sitting under the wing's leading edge is not creased before tensioning the glider. The Pulse also has a nose cone, a detachable king post, and a few extra battens that are inserted underneath the wing, but those differences are impossible to overlook when you're setting up.

I launched my glider from the 40' hill. I belly landed my first flight and ran out the second. On my third flight, my instructor Justine noticed that I was pulling in after my launch. So the next time out, I let the glider fly at trim and promptly crashed. My right wing dipped into the hill shortly after take off and I was spun completely around. I cut my arm on the ground but fortunately the wing was undamaged.

Justine took a test flight in my glider and determined that the trim was set too slow. She adjusted my hang strap a quarter inch closer to the nose of the wing, and my next flight was perfect.

Afterwards, we tried to figure out why I couldn't sense the glider was trimmed improperly. Several variables probably affected my judgment: it was a post-frontal day at Ed Levin so the wind conditions were faster and more cross than normal, I was flying a glider I had never flown before, and I was running downhill strong enough to overcome any stalls.

Next time out, I want to take 3-4 more flights on the 40' or 50' hill and then advance up to higher altitudes. Then, I will hopefully be able to evaluate how the Pulse performs compared to the Falcon.

Friday, November 6, 2009

A Personal Reflection On Narrative

On Wednesday, I attended my friend Miriam's poetry reading in Sausalito, a small well-to-do town just north of San Francisco. During her reading, she explained that her work intentionally evokes the "cultural landscape" of her childhood, a small indigent rural farm where everything is old, dilapidated, and mystical.*

Her comment got me thinking. A burden common to all narrative -- in literature, film, and music -- is to successfully conjure up a shared landscape for the author and her audience. While the scale of these landscapes can vary -- they can be as vast as entire worlds or as small as single emotions or thoughts -- they must be clearly delineated within the course of the narrative.

Something to keep in mind if I ever attempt to write a story.

* I enjoyed her poetry very much. This poem is one of my favorites.

A Year of Weddings

Earlier in the year, someone from my high school updated her Facebook status to read: "You know you're getting old when your friends are posting photos of weddings on Facebook instead of photos of drunken frat parties."

So true. Jess and I been invited to six wedding this year, and we've attended four. We're getting old!!

Lebenskunstler

Yesterday, I met up with N. for the first time. Like me, N. quit his job last year, traveled around for a bit, and has been living off his savings.

When I told him my situation, he smiled in knowing delight, "Oh, you're a bum like me!" He continued, "In Germany, we have a saying for people like us. They call us lebenskunstler, which literally means 'life artist' in English."

I like that term -- it certainly has a better ring to it than bum.

Breakup Songs





featured in This American Life episode 339.

The Golden Hills and Nike Women's Marathon

On October 10, I completed the Golden Hills Marathon, a point-to-point trail run through the East Bay Hills. The next weekend, my girlfriend Jessica ran her first 26.2 miler at the the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco.

The Golden Hills Marathon is a small event that features just under 110 participants. Although a handful of elite runners participate in the marathon, most of the participants are just average runners like me. It is run in conjunction with the Dick Collins' Firetrail 50, a competitive 50-mile ultramarathon.

The main appeal for the GHM and DCFT is the beautiful setting along the hills of Berkeley, Oakland, and Castro Valley. Much of the course traces the East Bay's Skyline Trail, which offers fantastic views of Mt. Diablo to the west and the San Francisco Bay to the east. My favorite portion of the race came about halfway through the course, along the French Trail in Redwood Regional Park, which immersed us in an old-growth redwood forest just a few miles away from downtown Oakland.

Before the race, I worried about the conditioning needed to complete a trail marathon that included 4800 ft. of climb. I had only run one marathon before, and it was a relatively flat course. My fears, though, ended up being unfounded. Even though I walked up all of the hilly portions of the course, my finishing time was only 1 hour slower than my previous marathon time.

The Nike Women's Marathon is a completely different event. San Francisco swells with runners and spectators from around the country, even though a lottery culls the event to just under 20,000 participants. Still, the race is so large it takes 20 minutes just to get all the runners across the starting line at Union Square.

The course makes it way through some of the most scenic places in the city, including North Beach, Crissy Field, Golden Gate Park, and the Great Highway.

Many spectators pay an extra few bucks to sign up for text messages that help locate their loved ones throughout the course. I wasn't aware of the service, so I picked a spot near the finish line and waited for Jessica the old fashioned way. Even though I was waiting for an hour to spot her, the DJ made the waiting seem more like a party than a spectating event.

Overall, we were both very happy with our respective races. Jess was thrilled to be running in the largest women's marathon in the world, and I was thrilled to participate in a small, well-organized marathon in a beautiful setting.

My Own History of Plagues

by Miriam Bird Greenberg

The year of drought was followed by the year of locusts,
the year of grass fires, the year when daffodils
threaded with cyanide seeds got all the goats.
Then it was the seventeen-year cicadas.
Next the two moons in the sky
looking askance with their white eyes
like a rabbit shucked of its skin in one fluid motion.
The year of my flea-bait boyfriend
with his flock of coonhounds. The year my father
took a long swig from a can of Sterno
and didn't make it back up the basement steps.
The year Jennie got lockjaw turned stiff
and gray as an old board.
Cats got the kitchen mice, but a possum
got the cats and some chickens too,
and Bill shot the possum but didn't count
on the kick, broke his collarbone like a hacksaw gone toothless.
At the end of twelve days ants had got the possum,
and maggots and fifteen kinds of fly,
and we all sat on the porch where the boards hadn't rotted through
drinking gin out of old jam jars as the sun sank
behind grain elevators. Then grandma excused herself,
and Lolly who'd been the hired hand for about a hundred years
left after her, and when I got up for the kitchen
I saw from the corner of my eye
him brushing hair out of her face,
and she had her hand on his waist,
and I knew both would be gone by next year
and the well caved in besides.

Read more of her poems at No Tell Motel.