Be an Optimist: Use the Heat

The SoCal heat wave is almost over. I hate heat, and anything over 65 F qualifies as heat. In fact I spent most of last year fearing the return of the San Diego summer, and I have to admit I quite liked the nice mild summer that we ended up having. But I still really hated the last few days, and knew that my runs would be miserable no matter what I did or where I went. BUT I'm an optimist! So I did runs that would be miserable anyway - sprints! And it turns out my 400 meter times were exactly the same as what they are when the weather is more reasonable. Any other stories out there? (Not just training, but anything?)

Also, when I have a cold and can't taste anything, I eat all the vegetables I can't stand but are good for me.

Claimed Herbal Treatment for Poison Oak

In the article on mugwort: "Many hikers and outdoor enthusiasts claim that rubbing this plant on skin exposed to poison oak prevents or lessens an outbreak or reaction to the poison oak, but this does not seem to be founded on any published data." I volunteer to do a sample size N=1 study next time I get poison oak, which is never far off. To be honest, I don't have high hopes, but the best proof is the proof that a skeptic can't ignore.

Earthquake Drill Tomorrow 24 September

Run by SDSU - more information on Facebook. This is really an experiment in social media and emergency response.

Meanwhile, the California-state-wide earthquake drill is still on for 21 October. I used to be jealous that Japan could and did get its s**t together for valuable earthquake exercises like this, but we never could in the U.S. That's about to change.

Would You Eat GMO Fish?

Poll here. My vote: yes. Chances are you already eat GMO stuff every day.

Childhood Obesity Caused by a Virus?

It looks that way. Some obesity anyway (most people probably can't blame the extra pounds on mom's lack of cleanliness). Nonetheless, a really startling and important piece of the puzzle. Need I point out that this was UCSD School of Medicine research?

[Added later: the indefatigable ERV, a virologist, addresses the finding in her characteristic idiom: (Title: "We are exposed to more viruses as we age. In other words, A VIRUS IS MAKIN MAH BABBY FAT!" Funny title, serious scientific critique.)]

Hummingbirds Are Awesome

I may have said this before but it bears repeating.



If you're still not convinced that they're awesome:

1) Remember that (like all birds) these critters evolved from dinosaurs. Descendants of giant reptiles (whose niches are now filled by mammalian megafauna) have taken over some of the niches of insects. Absurd! Amazing! What a planet!

2) Owing to their outlandish metabolism, hummingbirds can starve in a few hours. Their metabolism and speed appears to be constrained from going to further extremes by the fundamental upper limit of kidney filtration. It's a wonder their glomeruli don't put out sparks.

3) In Black Diamond Regional Park in the Bay Area, I once saw a blooming eucalyptus in winter, in the middle of grassy hills, not unlike the one in the photo a few posts down. It must have been the only flowering plant for miles, because it was swarming with hummingbirds. The tree sounded like it was made of electricity.

4) Aztecs thought that hummingbirds and butterflies were the souls of warriors who had fallen on the battlefield; ancestors as Valkyries.

5) They got purty shiny feathers.


If you're still not convinced they're awesome then what's wrong with you.

Afghan Olympic Sprinter Stands for Elections

If you watched the Olympics, you saw Robina Jalali coming in last, sprinting in a veil and track pants.

I should start a list of world political figures who are outdoors and running types. Here's another one: Prince Naruhito (next in line to the throne in Japan) is an avid hiker and mountaineer.

Aeorbic Fitness and IQ

Exercise is correlated with intelligence, according to several studies discussed in the NYT by Gretchen Reynolds.

This Shore Is Purty

Image credit Berkeleyside.com.

East County Stalkings of Women Joggers

Article here. Several cases, with a map, mostly near Steele Canyon, one near Lake Louise, involving men in a white van.

"Exercise Freaks Are Putting Stress on the Healthcare System"

Get this! Someone finally figured out why healthcare is expensive! And the answer is:

[drumroll...]

If you go to the gym a lot, or you put in a lot of mileage running or on your bike, if you do a lot of yoga or Crossfit or rock climbing - YOU are the reason the healthcare system is stressed. Not obesity causing diabetes and heart disease. Not smoking, not drinking too much. It's people who exercise. Problem solved!

It's funny that the guy who's making this claim is the eminently healthy, not at all overweight Rush Limbaugh. By "not at all overweight" I mean "a fatty-fatty-boombalatty with enough cholesterol in his left pinky to plug a feral swine's aorta, plus he's always getting caught with heavy-duty pain killers, and how many wives have you had by now?". As you can see in med school, students learn to be sensitive to the needs of overweight patients like the big fat disgusting about-to-collapse-under-his-own-gravity-into-a-black-hole-of-adipose-and-sweaty-yeasty-stomach-wrinkles Rush Limbaugh, that is, if he doesn't have a HUGE heart attack or die from diabetes first from being a big fat porker. Thus stressing the healthcare system.

[Added later: the brilliant advice continues. "Eat all the twinkies you want!" You'll "sweat it out"! (Note: zero medical evidence for "sweating things out"; note the rejection even of his personal physician's advice here.]

Below: Rush Limbaugh.

More Evidence That Glucosamine is B.S.

Long story short, a meta-analysis of 10 placebo-controlled studies of glucosamine and chondroitin (together or separate) showed no benefit in osteoarthritis. (H/T Neurologica Blog.) I posted about glucosamine before, based on earlier data consistent with this result.

Granted, "it doesn't help arthritis" isn't the same as saying "it doesn't help runners' sore and stiff joints."

But if you had to make a bet, and take this new information into account, which way would it sway you? And how confident are you that these two supplements can help you?

The kicker is, you are making a bet with your hard-earned money, every time you buy glucosamine or chondroitin. The supplement business is a huge, multi-billion dollar a year industry, and they're not interested in letting you know when their products have been shown to be snake oil. So remember this study, and save your money for better gear. Eventually there probably will be a study directly on either joint function or pain in otherwise healthy athletes. Want to make a bet on what it'll show?

Shocker! Med Students Experience Burn-out

That's the stunning conclusion of a Mayo Clinic study of several major medical schools, among them UCSD Med School. It was actually over half (definition of burn out? I don't know, go read it yourself, I'm too exhausted to read another paper.) So really this post is fishing for sympathy. ("Let's have a pity party, 1, 2, 3...(crickets)") But seriously, if you're an occasional reader and you get annoyed by my kvetching, that's my excuse. Have a heart m'kay? Cause you're my therapist.

How Does Your Commute Stack Up Against Mine?

Put in your zip code, see where people are commuting out to, or where they're coming from. Interesting to know. I used to work in South San Francisco and commute from Berkeley and would've guessed there were a lot like me; if this data is accurate, I was less than 1 in 200.

Stretching Bad!

...Or actually, just neutral, with respect to injury. Here's the USATF page linking to the study and here's the NYT article discussing the results.

I hate stretching and I'm very inflexible, so I like these kinds of results (which is why I gleefully posted similar findings before). But note a) the endpoint is injury, not performance: did the stretching runners go faster and/or longer? And b) If you're more flexible, do you perform better or get injured less? Which is what I think we care about; really stretching for a certain number of weeks is just a proxy endpoint assumed to correlate with flexibility.

I would like nothing better than for stretching and for that matter flexibility to have nothing to do with performance, but so far as I know these are still open questions. There may be studies that an exercise physiologist or related specialist could tell us. Hey, my Wyoming geography request got answered quick-like so why not ask about this too?

Pacific Northwest and Canadian Rockies

Notes on my trip, with links to photos:

- The Central Cascades. Cascades are awesome, enough said. Thanks to Matt and Lauren for the lodging and green eggs and ham; next time I hope I can impose for longer. Next time I go through Portland I'll have to time it for when the B-K Double can fit me in to his busy social schedule.




- Kurt Cobain originally got depressed under this bridge. There were all kinds of attempts at cleverness in the inevitable grafitti underneath, and for once I actually wanted to add something: "Kurt had textbook depression and he would have been just as great and productive an artist if he'd gotten therapy and/or meds, plus he'd still be alive." Med school has (thankfully) succeeded in eroding what patience I had for romantics who insist that madness and art must coincide. The farthest away grafitti-signature I saw was from Belarus.




- Olympic Peninsula and National Park: beach, Hoh Rainforest (tee hee) and Sol Duc trail. Maybe the only place in the Lower 48 where beach camping doesn't keep you from getting harassed by bears.



Some observations on Olympic NP:

a) Much like 134 F doesn't really feel that much hotter than 114 F, and the flora isn't markedly different to an amateur naturalist, 143" of rain a year in the West-facing Olympics doesn't seem to produce a markedly different biota than 43" in Seattle. Green to be sure, but greener?

b) The potential for fourth-grade humor in placenames on this peninsula is unparalleled. As if the Hoh Rainforest weren't enough, there's Humptulips, Sequim (which has a major throughway called Kitchen-Dicks road), and the town of Sappho is only a few miles from Beaver. Really. Combine this with other nearby toponyms which seem to have resulted from a linguist's experiment in creating dirty-sounding nonsense words: Chuckanut, Nooksack, Skookumchuck, and Dosewallips. Come on now. (And this is from someone who took the GRE because I was thinking of going back to school for linguistics.)

c) The last day I was there all I wanted was some salmon. Not unreasonable in coastal Washington State I think! In Neah Bay on the Makah reservation, there was a cool inter-tribal canoe race going on, but their famous salmon place was closed. In fact EVERY salmon place was closed, until I got to Port Angeles. So I had regular packaged salmon.


- Vancouver, as always, was fun. Even if you have to stay with M'alice. You know, my nemesis. The Vancouver Hash is a great bunch and as always set a fun trail that ended on Rec Beach, the scars from which are only now healing. The only bump was the unexpected grilling I got by the Canadian border guard, who seemed to deliberately be imitating Christopher Walken. I also got to ride in Steve's restored early 60s jeep, which is only about half as old as its owner. ZING!


- It rained hard when I drove up to Jasper from Vancouver, which was fine. The rest of the time I was in the Pac NW the sky had been crystal blue and had it not rained at least once while I was up there I would've sued somebody. I drove through Kamloops on the way, a BC interior town that resembles the northern U.S. Great Basin in its aridity; i.e., not what I was in BC for. BC is known for its wine but that's more in Kelowna and Penticton - Kamloops is a working town. So when I asked for local wine in Kamloops, they looked at me like I was nuts (which I may well be but not for that reason.) I ended up with a Jackson Triggs shiraz, which has a rubber cork. It served, perhaps only because my campaign to destroy my taste in wine has succeeded (elaborated here).




- I liked Jasper National Park better than Banff, I think mainly because it's higher up and further north, so the trails are above tree-line more often. Consequently the glaciers and glacier-views are more extensive. Being above tree-line is also nice in grizzly country, because you can't sneak up on each other then. I was quite nervous about this actually; I don't use bear bells, but I do sing a lot on trail, especially where there's no sign of other hikers, and there IS sign of bear, i.e. scat and tracks, which I did see. Note the classic overthrust formations you see all over Jasper. I think these were the best pictures I took during the trip. But look at Jasper; how could they not be?

Please note that iPhone cameras have bad fisheye, so all this stuff in these landscape shots is actually much more looming and imposing than it seems, and also that digital cameras in general don't capture profound color quite as well, so the glacier-milk blue-green of the lakes and rivers was much more stunning than what you're seeing here. That might be my favorite color now.





I should add that my opinion of Banff National Park was not helped by the miserable Parks Canada employees I had the misfortune of meeting in a bar in Lake Louise Village. (Dear Parks Canada: you run a great park system up there, and I certainly don't expect your employees to always be "on", but I also don't expect them to, on their off hours, try to trick tourists into fights or make hiking/kayaking suggestions that may lead to injury or death. It wasn't just one person either, it was a whole bunch of tag-team passive-aggressive as**oles. Apparently two of them had just been fired that day; that's a start.) Fortunately I met an cool guy from Boulder (hi Chris) and had easily the most interesting conversation of the trip.


- I went to see the Burgess Shale but a) it's expensive ($55 Canadian) and an all-day affair, because it's protected and a guide is mandatory. This would've been nice to know when I was planning my itinerary, so I added it to the relevant Wikipedia and Wikitravel articles. So, I just went to the visitor center in Fields, which is a pretty town all in its own, about 30 minutes from Lake Louise.



One thing that's cool: when the Canucks were building the rail line over the Rockies between BC and Alberta, owing to the severity of the relief, they had to do some pretty interesting engineering. The Horseshoe Curve in Altoona, Pennsylvania is interesting, but the Spiral Tunnel just uphill from the Burgess Shale is a marvel.


- I have no pictures, but Calgary is a much cooler town that I expected it to be. The dining scene in particular is nice. Although a friend recently did me the favor of finally introducing me to North Park, I think Calgary might actually have San Diego beat in terms of a large but walkable dinner and entertainment district. A nice index of a dining scene is how many non-gimmicky fusion restaurants a place has per capita, in which category Calgary kicks ass (for dinner I had an excellent BBQ pork sandwich at a Thai sandwich and satay shop). It also has an excellent metal scene.


- Not all border crossings are open 24 hours, especially not from remote Alberta into remote Montana/Blackfoot Nation land. Chief Mountain (another classic overthrust) is in the background there:



- I can't believe I actually had to debate whether to go back to Glacier National Park. Whatever that trail is called that starts above Going to the Sun Road, it's every bit as surreal as you think it would be. If you haven't been to Glacier, go. If you don't want to go, that's okay. It just means you are a bad person. Oddly, at the summit overlooking the glacier there were dragonflies swarming. I've seen a similar effect with an apparent mass-migration of butterflies over the upper slopes of Mt. Lassen in the past, but not dragonflies.





- I took pictures of the landscape as I drove south on I-15 just to document the change in vegetation and land forms. The last pines I saw immediately on the side of 15 were just north of Butte.



- In Butte, Montana, the Berkeley Pit is adjacent to a still-operating pit, and the company that owns it tries to charge $2 to see it. If you're content with seeing just the size of it and don't want to see the water, you can climb up to the fence for free. (They've actually pushed dirt up around the edge so you can
only see the water if you pay. But if you climb up, you might find a dollar blowing around like I did and come out a buck richer. Net $3! Woo-hoo!)



- The Uintas are nice, and I was amazed at how many lakes are right near the crest in Wasatch National Forest. Easily the greenest place I've ever seen in Utah. I was probably happy because I'd just hit Arctic Circle right before and got me some fry sauce. It was also fun overhearing families on the lakes listening to the BYU or Wyoming games.



- When you're in South Utah, don't skip Cedar Breaks National Monument. It's north of Zion (you can actually see south into the top of the canyon). It's not quite Roadrunner country like Zion or Bryce or Capitol Reef, but it's nice and green and purty at the top (10,000'+) with some nice red outcrops dropping off to the south.



Although class has started again, I feel great! I was actually tired of traveling (the best attitude to have at the end of a trip); plus, time at altitude does a body good,as I could tell in my runs since I came home. Now that I'm back I don't mind running in Miriam Bear where there are no grizzlies.

What is This Thing in Wyoming

This:


View Larger Map

It's east of Eden, Wyoming. It's about 20 miles north of I-80, in the Great Divide Basin, the area where the Rockies become two sets of rounded off hills between the Wind River Range to the north and the northern edge of the Southern Rockies to the south. Whoever tells me gets ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

New Painting - Redwoods

Cross-posted at my social science blog.





This time I actually spent some time mixing paint to get the right hue for redwood. It's a complex color! The second picture of the pair is an attempt to emphasize the three dimensionality of the thick paint in the middle of the trees; I tried to recreate the actual texture of redwoods with my brushwork. This is also the first time I did pre-work of any kind (on my computer) to decide how I would what paint when, and to be sure that I could represent distance using tree size.

Award-Winning Ironic Sign

Near Rancho Penasquitos, the most un-self-aware ironic sign that ever was:


I wasn't aware Nature was so discriminating about who could live there.

And while I'm at it, I saw this at Geisel Library (UCSD). There were some quiet guys in that area, but I don't think any of them were quite up to the level suggested by the sign:

Flies and Newts in Point Reyes

In July I was up in San Francisco for a few weeks and only now am I getting around to posting a few photos. The stand-out memory was these flies. They weren't particularly pretty, but they were on a tree stump and they were all facing the same direction. I would estimate it was high 50s/low 60s, damp and foggy a few hundred feet higher on the hill, with a very slight breeze (~5-10 mph) coming from the direction the flies were facing). Are there any entomologists who can enlighten me about this behavior? It's quite striking, but I can't even speculate as to why they would do this.




Also check out these pictures of a very cooperative California newt. It was practically making love to the camera with its eyes.

Hunting in Parks: Experiments in Land Use

Canada is establishing a new park in the Mealy Mountains in Labrador. The big deal is that they're allowing locals (mostly indigenous folks) to continue hunting on the land, as they have for millennia. Understandably, this proposal is not without controversy.

My take on this: it's actually not that radical of an experiment. In the U.S., we have national forests, which can be used not just for traditional park-type recreation but for hunting and lumber. Canada has parks, but no equivalent to national forests. (In fact I just had this conversation with a Parks Canada worker in Alberta last week.) So what Canada is really doing is replicating an experiment that has gone well in the U.S. The main reason people anywhere resist new parks' being established is that they're concerned that large tracts of land are being made unavailable for hunting or forestry. That's completely reasonable, especially if the people in question actually rely for nutrition on hunting and trapping. If managed, these activities can be made low-impact, and you can get the support of locals, which makes it much, much easier to preserve natural open space.

Even though we already have national forests, the interests that established them have since drifted apart. So think about this for a second: if the NRA and the Sierra Club lined up together to preserve the great outdoors, no one would stand a chance against them.

Mountain Lion Shot in Downtown Berkeley

In the Gourmet Ghetto no less. This is actually further from Tilden Park than I lived. The officers have wisely not ruled out that it could be an escaped pet, but a similar situation occurred in Palo Alto a few years ago when a young wild lion was found miles into "urban" Palo Alto, closer to the 101 than to the hills.

If I Were a Pot Farmer

...I would be waiting until after the election to do any work. The market in California is extremely uncertain right now. Your investment's value might suddenly plummet if the black market turns white overnight. That apparently hadn't occurred to whoever had planted on the Santa Ysabel Reservation. $100,000,000 worth. Really. At what point can pot be considered an invasive? That might be the best thing if Prop 19 passes! (Actually, best will be decreased illicit traffic on backcountry trails near the border.)

Now if I were a pot farmer in northern California, I would be preparing to establish a formal appellation - you know, like Napa or Sonoma. If you bottle wine and call it a Napa wine when it's really not, they can sue you. Similarly, Humboldt and Mendocino have to think about protecting their brand. That's one way that they're already anticipating the economic shock.

I'm curious as to whether people will still experience paranoia from marijuana use once it's legal. Because so what if everyone knows you're high?

Mountain Lion Tracking Maps

You might wonder how an animal the size of a mountain lion can sustain itself in the "wild" these days with the degree of development in California's coastal counties. The answer I used to think was true is that there are a lot of rabbits out there, but I never really believed that myself. The real answer is: mountain lions move. A lot.

In radio tagging studies you can see the incredible amounts of territory they
cover, stopping occasionally in clusters (presumably to eat a big kill). This one in particular came down from almost Mission Viejo to East County near the border. The amazing thing is the amount of mileage the lion covered during 9 days, from April 19th to 28th.



If you click on it you'll see a much bigger version that you can read better, but here you can still see the little tyke in the lower left, still with his kitten-spots. I'm shamelessly fascinated by camera traps and tracking studies like this, for any large animal. Same for sharks and sea turtles and anything else you can put a tag on. There's something almost wizard-like about knowing the secret lives of animals this way but at the same time it's amazing how little we still know.

You can read more about these cases here, here and here. Unfortunately the "tragic" lion that the stories focus on had killed multiple domestic animals (sheep). Ranchers have to make a living and people have to be safe, and lions can legally be killed when they become a nuisance to life and property.

It's still a damn shame that co-existence has become so difficult. Part of our heritage as Americans is the self-reliance and independence that comes from spending time out in the back country where these kinds of critters thrive, even if it's for just an afternoon - in a place where your own life and health and enjoyment are for the moment solely your concern and responsibility. I think we lose a lot of we don't preserve that for ourselves and our kids.

What You Have in Common with Amazonian Indians

Americans have been led into this narrative that goes like this: setting aside land for parks and preserves and open space in general is bad, because it gives the government power and runs counter to the principle of private property. The problem is that property values adjacent to open-space set-asides go up. (Do you own land near one of San Diego's canyons? What do you think would happen to your property values if suddenly that canyon were filled with apartments?) So the question is, who's pushing this narrative? If open space benefits property owners, and the general public, and wildlife, who does it hurt? Developers, who want to make an extra dollar, that's who. So where might this narrative be coming from, we might ask?

Having said that - the following article about the last surviving (and very isolated) un-contacted Indian in part of the Amazon rainforest may not seem directly relevant but it's way interesting, and this sentence jumps out:

The question of who'd benefit from clearing the land versus preserving it boils down to two people: the individual developer and the lone Indian.

Do you own property near open hills or canyons? Or do you enjoy parks and canyons and open space? Then you're the Indian.

I am an Alpha-Actinin 3 Knock-Out Homozygote

I just found this out today when I reviewed my DNA test results. To learn why that's significant for distance runners, go here.

Toasty in Eurasia

Boy am I glad I'm going to Africa instead of Central Asia. And the California coast was even cooler than usual, which is a phenomenon known in meteorology awesome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NOAA_Temperature_anomalies_June_2010.gif

Original file here; from 2010 summer heat wave article on Wikipedia.

Remember all those guys who were running around last winter proclaiming "We're having a cold winter in one part of the world, i.e. the U.S. East Coast! Sample size one! That means global warming is a crock!" Well you would expect all those same guys, now that we're having a hot summer, to be running around proclaiming (sample size one!) that global warming is proven. So where is everybody now? Almost as if...

The Pennsylvania Anthem

You know how your mom sends you all those emails with THIS IS SO CUTE1!1!!!! blinking in 40-point purple font, and it's either something you've seen a dozen times since it first circulated in 1997, or it's a baby with sunglasses or something? But every now and then, one of them is good for a laugh and it's actually worth opening. Well this isn't one of those but watch it anyway.

What the Farallons Look Like Up Close

Didn't see any sharks though. The red triangle disappointed me!

Cascade Rock Samples

From left: Sutter Buttes, Lassen, Shasta, Hood, Thielsen.

As I mentioned before, I went through a phase where I wanted to convince people that the Sutter Buttes were actually the southernmost Cascade. I even went so far as to talk to a geologist about it (who didn't share my conclusion) but the USGS now does; go figure. Anyway, I got into climbing the things to take samples of the lava at or near the summit where they were exposed of the snow (on the snowy or glaciated ones), naively thinking that volcanoes work like those diagrams you see in middle school where there is a big lava reservoir underneath feeding multiple volcanoes. The aforementioned geologist told me that the basalt composition will reflect the overlying crust; you can't necessarily tell it's from volcanic range XYZ because of the composition.

But I got some cool-looking rocks out of the deal.

Driving Through a Wildfire

If you haven't seen images of the Russian forest fires, go here. If you have and you want to see first-person video of someone almost getting caught, go here.

National Public Lands Day - 25 September

Have you found a place to volunteer yet? Have a park or forest you like and want to help keep it in good shape for the community and the next generation? Sign up at the National Public Lands Day website. I haven't decided yet where I'm volunteering, but there are 12 within 100 miles of San Diego.

San Diego County Watershed Wiki

I just ran across this website and wanted to plug it. A lot of these watersheds are also open space and recreation areas, like Rancho Penasquitos - check out the article for that one specifically. There are multimedia links (including a great documentary by Jim Karnik) and links to other resources.



Image of Rancho Penasquitos Creek from sdrealtypros.com.

Great Narrative For Western States

Read Mike Palmer's account here.

City Government Stifles Dissent to Develop Land

A Bay Area city government (San Ramon) is disallowing rebuttals on their ballot measure and moving their council meetings around to avoid having to face up to property owners. Read more here.

Of course we can't vote on the ballot measure in November, but the general lesson is still very relevant to us down here in San Diego. There's this myth that protecting open space somehow threatens existing property owners. Nothing is further from the truth. Protecting open space is good for property owners, because it increases the value of their property. The people who stand to benefit from opening more land to development (and who are happy to spread the myth) are usually the city governments - because more homes = more tax base = more $ for them, and of course for their friends the developers.

There Is an Army of Searchers: A Small, Very Well-Trained Army.

As with many things in life, more does not equal better. I had been wondering about whether us distance runners could put our proclivities to productive uses by offering ourselves as a standing army of searchers when there's a missing person case. The person I just spoke to at the Sheriff's office explained that while it's nice that the public wants to get involved (as in the Chelsea King and Amber Dubois searches), just having a lot of untrained people stamping around a potential emergency or crime scene isn't beneficial.

That means it's not a question of just signing up for an email alert and being part of "real" search operations. But, if you do want that training and you're willing to put in the time, you can certainly join the real SAR team. The Sheriff's Department does have training programs (call (619) 956-4990 to get the application) but you have to show serious commitment: starting in January, they have a boot camp requiring 200 hours of training, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Saturday mornings. There's another group, San Diego Mountain Rescue, that (apparently) has a less intensive training schedule and that's having their annual recruitment meeting on 8 September, 7-9pm at the Mission Trails visitor center.

Search Organizations

Motivated by the missing person case that's going on right now (see article before this one), I called up the SD County Sheriff's office, and yes there is already a program for people who want to volunteer with their Search and Rescue group at various levels (varying from administrative to rescuer to almost-deputized.)

They certainly seem to have an outstanding record to be proud of, but there is still the slight problem that whoever wrote the text on their main page doesn't seem to understand separation of church and state (at the bottom of this page). Kind of a bummer to think they would want to exclude non-religious San Diegans from helping their neighbors.

Missing Person Right Now, and No "Searcher Army"

This situation is ready-made for the army of runners pre-trained in organized search methods that I mentioned just a couple days ago. A mentally disabled woman has been missing in unincorporated El Cajon since last night.

SANDAG Trolley Route Will Not Go Through Rose Canyon

Great news. You'll be able to take the trolley from Old Town to UCSD, AND we get to keep Rose Canyon. Win-win.

Glucosamine Is Mostly B.S.

Glucosamine. Image credit Hopkins Arthritis Foundation.

Here's the study (here's the original journal article). Bottom line, there was a double-blind placebo-controlled study done of glucosamine in lower back pain in osteoarthritis. Glucosamine didn't do any better than placebo. That is, it was the same as not taking anything.

I was eager to post this because so many runners swear by glucosamine and related supplements - often uncritically. (For instance, are you taking it to alleviate pain, or to make your joints stronger? Never made that distinction before, huh? Most people don't.) And of course you can't generalize a single study to all effects of glucosamine in all settings. So maybe (for example) glucosamine might be better for knees than backs, maybe it's better in healthy athletes than in osteoarthritis patients. The way to find this out is from studies; that's how you cut through marketing hype and our own biases.

Before we get to the evidence, there's an important point there - it's often hard to filter out real evidence from promotion. Always remember that there is a lot of money in supplements, with lots of vested interest in not asking tough research questions. It's a multi-multi-billion dollar a year industry. And since these aren't legally defined as drugs, the standard of evidence for these companies' claims is basically nonexistent. This is why you should be very cautious of any statistics reported in running magazines or especially "alternative" or herbal pharmacies!

As a side note: it's very frustrating to hear people talk about evil pharmaceutical companies, when those companies provide evidence, and then these same people will slap fifty bucks down at a fancy pharmacy for evidence-free grass clippings in a bottle because they're "herbal". The supplement manufacturers are happy to let you keep believing, and they're also happy to sue anybody who they perceive as threatening their business with pesky evidence and studies. I would love to get publicity from them trying that after this blog post but I doubt this will come to their attention. I'm all for people making profits, but when someone else's profit motive interferes with my own desire to make health decisions based on evidence - well, guess which one wins.

So (drum roll) what does the no-nonsense, peer-reviewed, publicly accountable, non-conflict-of-interest evidence say? When you gather together the studies so far, there isn't much reason to believe that they do anything to help fix cartilage. On the other hand, several other reviews say there is maybe some spotty effect on pain (again, these are studies in osteoarthritis patients). If all it's doing is helping with pain relief, then I'll stick with my well-studied, cheap ibuprofen.

You might be reading this and thinking "Well, I take glucosamine and I know it works for me." And some of the people in the placebo group of that back pain study certainly improved on their own, and were dutifully convinced that they were in the group getting glucosamine. "But I'm really sure." So were they. This is why you do placebo-controlled studies. In my previous career as a clinical research professional, I worked on multiple double-blind studies where even the doctor didn't know what s/he was dispensing, and after the study the doctors always wanted to know which patients got what. And usually, even the doctors guessed worse than random chance.

So if you want to keep taking it, what's the harm? Besides to your pocketbook, none. Glucosamine and related supplements seem to have no side effects, although most of the glucosamine you take goes into your blood as sugar, not as glucosamine. So if you're on a low carb diet, think hard about that the next time you're taking your dose.

A Standing Army of Lost-Person Searchers?

It seems that once or twice a year, there's someone lost or missing in a park or wilderness or canyon, and there's a general call for people to help with the search.

It seems that the runners and riders of the world could really help out here, and many have already. The issue is that a) there is no central place for such announcements to be made, i.e. there's no Bat Signal for long-distance search teams; and b) search-and-rescue does require specific knowledge and training.

If it doesn't already exist in the area (I'm relatively new to San Diego) it seems that there's an opportunity here for us to make our fitness and love of the outdoors more useful. Imagine if many or most of the runners and riders in the area had already volunteered for a few hours of basic search-and-rescue training on some Saturday in the past. The next time the Bat Signal goes up (text messages, RSS feeds, cascaded on Meetups and at athletic stores) then bang, the search authority has a few hundred new pairs of hands (and legs) that actually know what they're doing. Granted, emergencies don't always happen on the weekend and not everyone can drop what they're doing at 2pm on a Tuesday when there's a lost hiker or missing person - but some could, and that's better than nothing.

Does this already exist and I'm re-inventing the wheel? (If so, how do I get the training?) Or if not, does this sound like a useful idea?

Rides to Trailheads for One-Way Runs/Hikes/Rides

Oftentimes I'll find myself thinking "I'd really like to do a one-way run on Trail XYZ, but I can't find anyone to drop me off and wait for a few hours to pick me up." Then I'll see someone on trail and wonder if they were doing it the other direction or the same direction. All that kept our respective one-way runs or hikes from happening was that we didn't know each other. I assume this happens a lot to people that do trails on their own.

But that's why we have Intarweb! There are various carshares and rideboards online along the spectrum of commercialness and formality. Why not for this? (Or does it already exist? If so, enlighten me.) I'm a web idiot and I'm in medical school, so if anyone does set this up, it won't be me. But it would be WAY cool because it would solve this problem and you'd meet people, and here's what it might look like:

1) Prescreening of participants. You want to have some accountability so it's not just hitchhiking and the only difference between the creepy guy picking you up on I-5 and the creepy guy picking you up at the trailhead is that the latter was able to sign up for an anonymous email. Maybe make it reference-based at the beginning like Gmail. Maybe use a phone call-back feature like some web services do. Large group meetings in advance work well but they also take time that people don't have.

2) Track features offered by ridesharers. Imagine a checklist on the sign-up. Some people will want a child seat in the car, or a bike rack, or a driver who doesn't mind dogs. For safety, some people might like to have someone else with them while they do the trail.

3) Enforce karma. For those people with cars, it won't do to have one core of nice people constantly offering rides, and other folks never returning the favor. The system could track who gives and who receives. Another possibility is that people could trade on their own - "Sure, I'll do it for $10." "Sure, I'll do it for five power bars. "Since I'm a landscaper, I'll trim your rosebushes for three rides."

Just a thought. It would also be great for people traveling, who could learn about the cool trails before they even show up.

Outdoor Health Emergencies - Be Part of the Solution

Do you know what to do in case of heat exhaustion or heat stroke? Do you know how to tell the difference, and which is worse? Yesterday I was out for a run when I ran across a couple laying on the trail, and the male of the pair looked bad - eyes half-open, stuporous, pale but with flushed cheeks. They had fluids but he'd been like that for half an hour. Since there was someone healthy there, they had fluids, and they were in the shade (but he was unable to walk), I went straight back to the ranger station to report it, and they sent people out to help.

There are two points to this story. The first is that you can't assume certain emergencies will only happen in certain places. I'm in Northern California right now and people still get heat exhaustion/stroke up here. Second, if you spend a lot of time outside, chances are sooner rather than later you'll be hurt yourself, or you'll have a chance to help someone else who is. Know what to do.

Here's information about heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Are you CPR certified? Here are San Diego area classes.

Also, snake bite

Also, broken bones/sprains.

Awww, LeBron James is Leaving Cleveland, Boo Frickin Hoo

I shall establish my sports journalism credibility thus: the sum total I know about LeBron James is as follows.

1) He is a professional basketball player.
2) Until recently he played for Cleveland.
3) He just announced that he's going to Miami, which is apparently newsworthy.
4) As a result people in Cleveland are saying things like this:

"This is the worst day of my life," said John Horn of Amherst, who watched in frozen horror with hundreds of others at a Lakewood bar when LeBron James announced live on ESPN that he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Above: John Horn of Amherst.

Sir, may I offer you and your compatriots the following piece of helpful advice: you are a dipshit. LeBron James is a professional athlete. Do you know what that word means? "Professional" means people pay him to do what he does. Since we're talking about a national franchise, in this case "professional" also means he is an employee who works through an office in your city, like McDonalds or Holiday Inn. The Holiday Inn franchise in Cleveland might be called "Holiday Inn #985", and the local NBA franchise is called "The Cavaliers". LeBron James just got a transfer and a pay raise. He's a smart guy with a good agent.

In the following paragraph I will assume I'm talking to a fellow male American. Let's say you (or maybe it's your son) work at the local office of a national franchise. Let's also say you talk to the manager of another office in this franchise in a neighboring city. They have an opening and it matches your skillset. If you get the job, it'll be a big salary increase for you. You (or your son) would do it! Would you be a "traitor"? Would you be "turning your back" on the town you'd previously worked in? Maybe that's how you feel, and maybe you won't pursue the transfer and promotion on these grounds. In which case your wife should and would be sorry she married such a commie, hippie, I'm-a-milquetoast-pushover-who-can't-stand-confrontation-so-I-use-the-excuse-of-putting-the-good-of-the-community-ahead-of-my-family-and-myself loser. That's what you're expecting LeBron James to do, you socialist community-activist sonofabitch.

Now, you might reasonably ask why, if I don't care about professional sports, I can't control the unchecked vitriol I spew into cyberspace about people's child-like loyalty to their athletic demigods. Yes, I do have a pet peeve, which is that I just can't frickin' take it when people have such brain-damaging tribal loyalty to the local office of a national franchise. Hey, you can't transfer out of that Taco Bell! You can't close that Taco Bell! That's our Taco Bell! You owe it to us! You owe it to the community! Guess what? There's no difference. The two situations are EXACTLY THE SAME. Why people insist on flushing their brains down the toilet when pro sports come into the picture is an absolute mystery. As long as professional sports are professional, stuff like this will keep happening, constantly, and you can cry your little eyes out until the stars burn out and LeBron James and the other real capitalists of the world won't care. Got it?

Who's the highest-profile crybaby in all this? Dan Gilbert. But Dan Gilbert I actually get; he has a real reason to try to convince other people that they somehow have a right to determine the future of LeBron's career, because Gilbert will actually lose money. "But it's not all about money!" you say. Yes, it is. It really is. Remember the word "professional" up above? Go back and re-read, or learn more here. Or, I guess you might legitimately believe "it's not all about money" because you're some kind of a socialist hippie anti-corporate leftist. I guess that's the other possibility.

"But his fans were loyal! He's from Cleveland! That should count for something!" you might also say. Yes. In the magical fantasy rainbow world of elves and unicorns prancing on lollipop mountain, yes, it counts for something. In this world, where you and I and LeBron James deposit our paychecks and take out mortgages, it doesn't count for shit. But hey. If you don't understand, I'm sure your boss will be quite happy to keep you working for less than you're worth because to take that promotion would be to turn your back on your coworkers in this city. And I'm sure Dan Gilbert has some James stuff to sell you. And while I'm thinking about it, I have a bridge for sale too.

To simultaneously gloat and be angry at infants crying to mommy for milk go here.

No More Alcohol at Bay to Breakers in San Francisco

As of now the funnest footrace held every May in San Francisco is banning alcohol. People couldn't figure out how to have fun without making a shambles. As someone who quite often consumed large amounts of this substance during past races but still was able to refrain from littering, peeing on people's doorsteps, and generally being a nuisance (along with the rest of the people in my group) I'm sad, but I'm also sympathetic with the city. For those familiar with San Francisco's traditions, this has gradually turned into Halloween in the Castro.

Also worth noting: in Japan you can buy beer out of vending machines, and drink it legally while walking around in public. Why? Because people behave themselves, that's why.

Trail Adoption Programs in San Diego?

Riverside County now has an Adopt-a-Trail program; apparently works the same as the Adopt-a-Highway programs we're already familiar with.

This is awesome. One of the most frustrating things about trails in San Diego County, especially the canyons, is that a lot of people seem to disrespect them and litter a lot. I think we could use this program here. (Again, if there's some form of it in action, let me know so I can volunteer!) I volunteer in advance for Rose Canyon. Except I bet Debbie at Friends of Rose Canyon is in line in front of me. Plus, you don't want those hippie socialist jerks up in Northern California to be better than you at policing their parks? Cause guess what. Right now they are. Come on!

A Rose Canyon crossing. Image credit to Shirla P.

The City Tries Again to Build Another Bridge Across Rose Canyon

The city just tried to commission a several-million dollar environmental impact report for this project, which homeowners don't want. If that's not bad enough, the bridge would cost about $37,000,000. You can see the article here.

Currently the fund for the bridge has less than a tenth of that. So we (taxpayers) are paying millions of dollars for an impact report on a bridge that we don't want, and that they probably can't fund anyway. (Where are we, L.A.?) Plus, if we have that kind of money laying around, why isn't it going to schools and firefighting?

Thanks goodness for council member Sherri Lightner, whose district this falls in, as well as council members Todd Gloria and Anthony Young who voted against this impact report. Visit Friends of Rose Canyon to email them a big thank you for their votes - I already did.

I Have De-Throned Basquiat.

A neighbor recently moved away and offered me all her spray paint. As an emerging power in the art world I snapped up the supplies, knowing I could displace that fraud Basquiat as Official Awesomest Spray Paint Artist. The following is looking down from the top of the trail to Black's Beach. Obviously:



Though admittedly primitive in technique, it's fair to say there are glimmers of Rothko, or rather, a howler monkey on coke set loose in a hardware store. You can see the essence of Black's Beach and the cliff, right? Sure, if you're legally blind, have no taste and less talent, and are on acid. I'm not legally blind. But over half of the cans had no pressure left in them so I had only four colors to work with. As a great artist, I was up to the challenge.

In all seriousness I went into this expecting it to be a colossal failure, and in that I succeeded famously (with verve and panache no less.) But - it was an experiment, and it was fun!

Where Are the Tibetan Marathoners?

I ask because a flurry of papers in the last month or two has shown that they've racked up a bunch of oxygen-efficiency mutations, unsurprisingly. What's interesting is it shows that where humans live can have rapid evolutionary effects on us, even in just a few thousand years (Tibetan and Han Chinese populations split less than three millennia ago). Most interesting is that one of the mutations much more common in Tibetans was already associated with improved athletic performance. (Science paper wasn't up yet so here's an article from the lay press; here are two more.)

So why don't we see more of these guys and gals out on the course? My prediction is that before long we will, although I'm presuming (since I haven't read the paper either) that these are genes which improve aerobic metabolism rather than muscle mass and will therefore enhance performance in endurance sports.

Rattlesnakes and Elevation

I'm heading up to San Gorgonio Peak tomorrow. I've mentioned to people that in one year of off-and-on trail running in San Diego County, I have (not surprisingly) seen more snakes than in ten years of much more frequent trail running in the Bay Area. Up there, the received wisdom is that if you're above maybe 7,000', you're out of rattlesnake territory. That's in the hills right around Tahoe, or on the way up to Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite (but not down in the valley.)

But, latitude makes a difference, and I don't want to get complacent about putting my hands where I can't see them above 7,000' in SoCal mountains. Several online sources about the altitude limits of rattlers repeated numbers around 6,500 or 7,000', but then I found an old publication with attributions and named eyewitness reporters, (Rattlesnakes, L.M. Klauber, 1972) which says: "...there is no doubt that [the Southern Pacific Rattlesnake] does reach an altitude well over 10,000 feet in the San Jacinto and San Bernardino mountains of southern California. Joseph Ewan reported a southern Pacific rattlesnake at no to exceed 20 feet from the peak of Mount san Jacinto, elevation 10,805 feet." He goes on to give multiple eyewitness reports of rattlers at these and higher elevations, up to 15,000' in Mexico on Orizaba.

Whether or not these are outliers, they're possible. In nature there are few absolutes. From this weighty philosophical principle we can conclude: regardless of elevation, no putting handies and feeties in little crackies.

Hey, Check Out the Idiot in the Comments on The "Abused Child" Post

S/he's a real winner. All mad at me because I said the solo-around-the-world girl's parents (plus the Everest-climbing kid's parents) are irresponsible. Seriously, s/he called me an "age-bigot"! That's the worst name anyone's called me in a while! Join in the fun, wontcha? If you're coming in on an RSS feed or you're just too damn lazy to scroll down and click, just click here.

I should add that this idiot is acting like a meanie and making very hurtful ad hominem attacks against your loyal blogger. Therefore I expect an apology for his/her insults from this moron, who no doubt is ugly, smelly, and drinks his/her bathwater.

Analyzing De-Motivation

My apologies if you actually waded through my kvetching in this post. If not, you didn't miss anything. For the record I did run 20 miles yesterday and today, and it really isn't that bad so far.

Lessons learned:

1) Get out of ruts with ruthless self-analysis.

2) Don't blog when you're really annoyed at yourself. No one wants to hear it, including yourself.

Ecozone Prediction From First Principles

We've all had that experience of running or hiking somewhere and saying, "You know, right here in this valley/mountain/prairie, you could trick me into thinking that I was in x." You might be thinking of another spot on the West Coast of North America, or you could be thinking of somewhere else entirely. As a recent transplant from NorCal to SoCal, I'm always noticing when somewhere in SoCal reminds me of NorCal. In the winter, in Miriam Bear if you squint, you can almost pretend you're in some parts of Marin County, and some of the parks in the hills behind Malibu similarly remind me of some of the more rugged East Bay parks.

I also find myself guessing more specifically at the impact to San Diego of various hypothetical climactic changes; instead of alternative history, it's alternative climatology. What if that wet winter San Diego had extended into June? What if this happened every year from now on? Unfortunate though it may be, we wouldn't look like British Columbia overnight; there aren't any Douglas fir cones around, for one thing, and the ferns would have to spread out of the very few canyons where we can now find them around here.* It would take awhile; after all, after the glaciers melted off of Europe 12,000 years ago, the preboreal period in Russia lasted a good seven centuries.

Of course such geeky speculation led me to further wonder whether you could take climate and geographic data and inductively fit an equation that would predict resulting vegetation with any useful kind of accuracy. For the ecozone values you could try to match your outputs to you could use the Köppen system. The most useful inputs would be:

Latitude - the further south you go, the more desert like it is. Pretty obvious, but it doesn't explain why there are redwoods in SLO County and deserts in British Columbia. The transition is often abrupt. Once in inland Washington State, I came out of the evergreens into the glaring July sun of a Western desert in the space of less than five miles - it was that abrupt (on Route 97 at the southern edge of Wenatchee National Forest.)

Distance from coast - again obviously, the further inland you are, the drier it is. Taking only the first two factors, a simplifed North America, e.g. completely flat, would look like the more gay-friendly map on the left, but in fact it looks like the map on the right:



Right about now you're wondering not without justification whether I've completely lost my mind. But do notice that I used humor just right up there. Because humans have been demonstrated to react positively to it. Also note that the no-mountains map isn't completely insane relative to the real-world map.

Of course the complication to the gay-friendly map is the terrain - elevation, drainages, plus angle and consistent gain of ranges. This is the tricky part of the equation, and it makes all the difference. A 30 degree slope for 100' of elevation gain? Who cares. For 3,000' of gain? If it's west-facing, it'll be greener. Look at the map of rainfall in San Diego County and you'll see what I mean. You can clearly see in the state map above the Cascades, plus the coast ranges and the Sierras. If you're in the lee of a real slope, you'll be drier and have less moderating benefit from the ocean. This is why Santiago, Chile has more extreme weather than Sacramento or even Bakersfield- Chile's coast ranges (as opposed to the next range inland, the Andes) attain 10,000'+, as opposed to California's which top out at ~6,000' with a ridgeline usually closer to 3,000'.

If you want to get really fancy you could use some measure of "evenness" of rainfall, i.e. what's the standard deviation on monthly precipitation? In Mediterranean climates this is high. San Francisco gets the same rainfall as Dodge City Kansas, except it pretty much all falls in a five month period from November through March. In Dodge City it falls pretty evenly across the whole 12 months.

But am I going to do this? No! The real proof in the pudding would be in comparing the real Köppen zones at some decent level of resolution (pixels of 100 sq mi?) and including the elevation information would require programming skills and time that I don't have. Also the end result of all this would be merely an exercise in predicting ecological regions from first principles. On the other hand, if there's an Earth-like planet among the 700 new exoplanet candidates that Kepler just unloaded, and you want to know where to buy real estate that's most like Santa Barbara, then give me a call and we can work something out.

*In other news the redwood cones I planted in January in case of massive climate shift haven't sprouted yet.

The Story of a Track Championship Gone Wrong

With illustrations. Hyperboleandahalf is hysterical. Hat tip ERV.

"The Best Post-Race Food, Ever, No Question"

Agreed. Why can't we have sauerkraut after races in California?

San Diego County Coast - Done, Finally

Friggin' hooray. Only 14 more counties to go. You think I can count the parts of San Mateo and San Francisco and Marin I did for my around-the-Bay thing?



Note: it is possible to run on one specific route through Camp Pendleton (or bike as most people do - south of Las Pulgas and north of Oceanside.) Just make sure you carry your drivers license, or your run ends at the entrance (North of Las Pulgas you don't need it.) It was very, very difficult for me to find this out - I ended up just driving to the guard box one day and asking them, since no one answers their public information line.

Abused Child Rescued in Indian Ocean

[Added 21 June 2010: turns out I'm not the only person to have such doubts. The whole article is worth reading but what jumped out to me was that Child Protective Services interviewed Abby Sunderland before she left for the trip. No word on whether it was a proactive family volunteering this to clear the air or a CPS representative who saw the press and wanted to be sure.]

Yes, I'm talking about SoCal 16-year-old Abby Sunderland, who was sailing around the world solo. A few days ago she put out a distress call when her mast snapped in the Indian Ocean; thank goodness she's now safe. Of course, this is on the heels of another SoCal kid (13 years old) who became the youngest ever to summit Mt. Everest. Both of these activities have non-zero chances of death. And at the end of the day, neither of them delivers more than bragging rights.

Why "abused child"? Because there's nothing inspiring or heroic in these stories at all, that's why. These are kids either being allowed to attempt, or being put up to, a stunt, by parents who are at best incredibly irresponsible and at worst willing to endanger their own children's lives to live vicariously through them. Abby Sunderland is a minor, and her safety is her parents' number one responsibility. Imagine those French fishermen hadn't found her; would people be so tolerant of her parents' permissiveness (or vicarious ambition) then? Or, imagine you have a 16-year-old kid, and she comes to you and says "I want to sail around the world solo." If you're a good parent, you'll say, "No. End of discussion." In fact you'll say that if you're a halfway mediocre parent. Frankly even Homer Simpson would say that. What do you think her chance of death was on this trip? Let's conservatively say 1%. Imagine your kid came to you and said, "I want to do X, but I'll have a 1% chance of dying." (For the record, attempting Everest has about a 5% chance of death.) What would the pay-off have to be for you to allow that to go forward? A hundred million dollars? Guaranteed entrance to Harvard? Most parents would be unable to even think about such a thing. If you have children, I certainly hope that there's no amount of money that would make you consider endangering their lives. Okay - so instead of money, what if the payoff was a few newspaper articles and an entry in the Guiness Book of World Records? Even more ridiculous, if that's possible. But she was really prepared! you (and she) might object. In case you haven't noticed, every teenager is immortal and knows everything. For that matter, everyone who's ever attempted Everest has thought s/he wouldn't be one of the statistics. But these are decisions each of us is free to make, for ourselves, once we've reached the age of majority.

If you think my tone is a little strident, please consider: do you find it distasteful, even borderline abuse, when children are allowed or pushed into the Hollywood acting scene by their parents? Then isn't it even worse that kids are allowed to (or encouraged to!) endanger their own lives with these kinds of stunts? The worst thing that happens to those Hollywood kids is a tabloid scandal and a stint in rehab ten years from now, and that's bad enough. But these kids could've died. Abby almost did.

Tourists in Guatemala is Some Goofy Bastids

Pacaya Volcano has been in the news recently for erupting. Really, it's erupting more now. I was there two years ago and it wasn't fully "off" then (volcanoes are not quantized). The mountain is less than an hour west of Guatemala City. I was in the country for a friend's wedding; he was kind enough to give me his camera to get some footage, and his father-in-law told me how to get to the highest village. Memorably, one kid in the village who was hustling people to try to get paid for giving tours was albino.

I took some video but only scrambled up most of the way. This is by far the most active volcano I've ever been on and if Hood or Rainier started acting like that, I would glissade down that minute, and then drive back to San Diego to boot. But this mountain was booming and shaking. And, there was lava coming out - as I soon realized, underneath the rocks I was standing on. Listen for the hiss when the water lands on the rocks:



In a rare moment of common sense, I turned around. That's actually how I ended up getting back down, by throwing water every couple steps so I could figure out which rocks weren't hot enough to fry eggs, and by extension where the lava was not. As you can imagine, it's a little concerning that tourists are flocking to this place now because, as the article says, "hundreds of people live in the nearby village so they must be safe". Nice heuristic! I bet Spirit Lake, Washington and Pompeii and Joya del Ceren probably felt safe too. Lightning is also a problem around volcanoes, even in Iceland, let alone in tropical Guatemala during rainy season.

Patronize Businesses That Give Back to the Outdoors

Eagle Creek, Ocean Minded and STM Bags volunteered for trail maintenance work at Elfin Forest. Thanks guys! I'll be sure to shop there!

The Ethics of Letting Your 13-Year Old Climb Everest

This post pretty much states my own misgivings about public admiration for this feat. If I told you I let my 13 year old kid do something that had a 10% death rate, what kind of father would I be? His parents will no doubt reply that their kid was special, and the 10% chance of death didn't apply to him. No doubt that's exactly what everybody in that 10% since 1954 has thought, and the fact that he happened to have made it up and down in one piece doesn't change the morality of the decision.

Time to Xeriscape Your Property?

It's cheaper, it's easier, and makes your home more San Diegish. Other reasons here. Theodore Payne is a native plants specialist and here's an article with pictures of the natives.

Only in Humboldt County

I really, really love Northern California and wouldn't mind living in Humboldt County specifically. But if stereotypes ever have a basis in fact, they certainly do up there: "Police in [Arcata] are warning LSD users to beware after responding to a rash of incidents apparently connected to bad acid trips." Imagine police crashing Woodstock with megaphones: "Attention hippies: there's some bad weed going around. Watch out. That is all."

Write-up About Rose Canyon in the Union-Tribune

Article here.

High-Volume Trolley to Be Put in Rose Canyon

I just learned about this only because it was in the minutes of my development's owner's organization. Just incredible. Fortunately, there's still time to do something - but not much.

Before I even get into how this would ruin the canyon - if you live anywhere near Rose Canyon, imagine trains going through every 4-5 minutes, instead of only periodically as the Coasters do now. Imagine the construction noise and dust for (how many) years. Imagine most of all what it will do to your property's value.

There's a lot more information at Friends of Rose Canyon's website, including the next (and last!) meeting here citizens can voice our concerns, coming up this Tuesday, and email addresses (which I also include below). I will be going to this meeting, and I've already sent my email. Yes, we're all busy, and yes it's a little intimidating going to one of these functions - but I've done it before and it's amazing how much impact you can have by going. But you have to show up.

Besides the damage to property values and quality of life (think about that! trains every 4 minutes!) another set of tracks will ruin the canyon, not only for our own esthetic enjoyment but for a lot of the plants and animals that live there now. There's precious little open space in San Diego set aside for our kids and their kids as it is. And the best part is, saying NO to more trains in Rose Canyon doesn't stop the line, it just moves it. The colored lines on the map below are possible lines. The yellow one goes through Rose Canyon. The others don't. This is good, because we need more public transporation - and stopping the SANDAG trolley in Rose Canyon doesn't stop us from building it; we just build it on one of the other routes.

[Update: A story in the La Jolla Light says that the MTA has endorsed the red line on the map below. This is great news - a real win-win. We get public transportation, and homeowners and and outdoors folks get to keep Rose Canyon. I don't know if endorsement constitutes the official end of the story so I'm still going to the meeting.]


Did I mention the effect on Rose Canyon property values?

If you can't make it to the meeting, please email the following people RIGHT NOW (time is running out!) and tell them you don't want more noise and trains and dirt ruining Rose Canyon:

To: midcoast@sandag.org

cc: sherrilightner@sandiego.gov

bcc: rosecanyon@san.rr.com


If you go to this meeting, I'll see you there (please come up and say hi):

Caltrans District 11 Office
Garcia Conference Room
4050 Taylor Street, San Diego, CA 92110
4-7pm
Tuesday May 25 2010
Bus stop/Transit station located at Taylor St./Juan St. & Old Town Transit Center

Statewide Earthquake Drill to be Held 21 October

More information here. I'll go out on a limb and say it might actually be fun, plus then people can't keep muttering "Sure they can do public earthquake drills in Japan but that would never work in the U.S."

Public Comment for Powerlines Cutting Through National Forest

A judge has said that there has to be a period for public comment on the proposed SDG&E powerlink. Here are some news sources and the organizations trying to protect these lands (news here and here, organizations here and here). I couldn't find the link to leave public comment; might not be up yet, I'll post it when it is.

Pony Express Re-Ride This June

Turns out that they already "re-ride" it. Info here; info on our run of the last leg from Martinez to Oakland here.

Rose Canyon From the North Side

Cross-posted at my blog The Late Enlightenment.

Looking toward the south side from the Genesee Highlands area. Acrylic on canvas.



When you're running, you perceive massive amounts of information just for a moment (that rock on the trail, that lizard skittering in front of you, a patch of mustard flowers hanging out on the trail) and literally after a second all that experience is gone, and you're left with an impression of a ridge and a valley with yellow grass and mint-green sage. That's okay; you can't take the sense-experience with you.

I'm not the first runner or outdoor enthusiast who's wanted to pay tribute to the lands I know and love by reproducing them in my own hand, by writing or painting, so I thought I'd try filtering Rose Canyon through a planist perspective. "Planism" is an umbrella term I use to catch many styles of art, including some named 20th century schools (including cubism) but also van Gogh and in particular Cezanne. I think given my lack of training it's clear that the idea is more interesting than the execution, but it at least prompted me to think about where my interest in this style comes from:

1) Planism is how humans actually see. We break the world into surfaces. This has been investigated scientifically and I've also had a number of personal experiences reinforcing and highlighting this aspect of visual perception. By this I mean the kinds of experiences that nature forces on you, if you're paying attention. Climbing a steep trail in mountainous country, endless parallel ridges backing up to the horizon reveal themselves this way and in so doing lift one corner of the veil off the inner workings of how our consciousness quietly knits itself together moment-to-moment. Even staring through a tree long enough can make the branches seem to suddenly stratify into planes of non-continuous depth. "Line" in representative art seems often (usually?) to really just be a way to emphasize the break between planes, a discontinuity in depth, and that's what inspired my amateurish effort here. Apparently in Europe a century or two ago the fashionable debate was between followers of Ruben or Poussin, who debated whether line or color should demarcate surfaces. Evidently none of these people were ever in the outdoors in California, because here, line clearly does exist in nature.

2) The recent history of line in Western art is a history of planism. Cubism and some of the other 20th-century -isms were descended from or influenced by Cezanne and van Gogh, who broke scenes into planes favoring certain angles (right or slightly acute in the case of cubism). Cezanne's paintings in particular (especially later in his career) flattened scenes into non-contiguous planes, often using dark lines.


Mont-Sainte Victoire, 1885, image from Wikipedia

Also moving toward a more planar style was van Gogh, influenced by Asian and in particular Japanese art which hadn't yet assimilated three-dimensional perspective or realism. (This is no indictment of perspective or realism as aberrations of European art - it's under-appreciated that realism was independently developed in sculpture at least one other time by the Maya.) In the end, if I'm trying imitate anybody, it's Cezanne, but true imitation would require talent and technique which as you may have noticed are absent in the work which begins this post.

3) The Pacific Northwest. A form of planism that absolutely fascinates me is the style traditionally referred to as Haida, but it really spans the Pacific Northwest culture region. (By planism I also mean art which appears to intentionally overemphasize the surfaces in a scene by dramatically decomposing them into planes. I'm not referring to all art which lacks perspective, in which case planism would be a useless term since it would mean, for starters, every drawing ever beginning with Lascaux and extending through 15th century Europe.) I might be trying to imitate Pacific NW style even more than Cezanne (except in full color, on canvas):


From Alcheringa Gallery.

This technique breaks up the subject in stylized ways, emphasizing through relative-size-exaggeration functionally important parts of the animal; teeth, claws, head and eyes; on birds, the wings and their anticipated movements are prominent. Most interesting is that Pacific NW representations are essentially the same in both two and three dimensions - that is, the style in drawings is essentially the same as the style in wood-carving. Think about that: they have more wood than they know what to do with up there, and yet when the style was developing they ended up imposing planes on three dimensions rather than imposing depth on two.

Boy, that's a whole lot of talkin' for one painting. If you made it this far I hope it was interesting to you.

I haven't decided whether the next one will be another planist attempt (on San Clemente Canyon, i.e. Marian Bear) or I'll do a Pacific Northwest mountain lion.