Experience and Nature

Mount Ventoux today.

I'm constantly struck that the re-discovery of doing things for the hell of it - of obtaining experience for its own sake, rather than as an incidental consequence in the pursuit of some virtue or other goal - is done in the context of walking and nature. In 1336, Petrarch hiked to the top of Mount Ventoux, which cyclists will recognize as often being on the Tour de France route. Among many other meditation-worthy gems, his letter to his fiend Dionigi contained this:

While my brother chose a direct path straight up the ridge, I weakly took an easier one which really descended. When I was called back, and the right road was shown me, I replied that I hoped to find a better way round on the other side, and that I did not mind going farther if the path were only less steep. This was just an excuse for my laziness; and when the others had already reached a considerable height I was still wandering in the valleys. I had failed to find an easier path, and had only increased the distance and difficulty of the ascent. At last I became disgusted with the intricate way I had chosen, and resolved to ascend without more ado. When I reached my brother, who, while waiting for me, had had ample opportunity for rest, I was tired and irritated. We walked along together for a time, but hardly had we passed the first spur when I forgot about the circuitous route which I had just tried, and took a lower one again. Once more I followed an easy, roundabout path through winding valleys, only to find myself soon in my old difficulty. I was simply trying to avoid the exertion of the ascent; but no human ingenuity can alter the nature of things, or cause anything to reach a height by going down. Suffice it to say that, much to my vexation and my brother's amusement, I made this same mistake three times or more during a few hours.

(Full letter here.) The abstract lesson to be pulled from this episode is probably an obvious one, but he goes on to detail the other thoughts which came to him as they pushed on into the sky. Like many vehicles for meditation, I doubt you'll find everything in his letter worthy of your agreement - it's not for me - but considering them all, and understanding why you think he missed the mark, is at least equally important.

Why was a hike up a mountain so profound? At this point in history, people didn't do things for fun, or at least they didn't admit to such frivolous motivations. Granted, at this time in history getting enough to eat and avoiding plague and banditry were enough adventure for most, and there's probably something to that. But there was something to the medieval European mindset that actively excluded experience for its own sake, and this is why Petrarch's letter is taken as a kind of transition fossil from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance. Europe probably isn't the only place where such transitions occurred. In Japan, I found that very often when I ran up the local volcanic hill near the town where I was staying, there was a small shrine at the top. Until the last century these places would have been manned by small groups of monks. It struck me that they'd scoped out the same places that appeal to modern hikers and traily types. They were us, just with different decorations, trying to escape the dangerous intrigue of Tokugawa (or even pre-shogunate) Japan, rather than the silliness of status-driven consumerism or office politics, and hear themselves think, or not think.

Installment 512 of "Why Haven't I Been to Norway Yet"

Behold the Atlantic Ocean Road:

Friends of Del Mar Mesa Officially Nonprofit

Story here; for more on the very, very long discussion about how best to protect Del Mar Mesa, see here.

La Jolla Shores, 1906

Coyotes Hither and Thither

Two nights ago I took my girlfriend out into Rose Canyon to look at the thick black millipedes which are all over the place right now, just because their locomotion is cool, but their squirmy-ness proved too much for her and she squealed loudly out into the canyon. And a coyote answered her. After she remained quiet, it sounded off again. And then we heard it in the brush, and then I shone my headlamp, and there it was, two green eyes looking back. The train came through and chased it off, not giving me a chance to prove to her that no, it wouldn't have eaten us.

Then last night in Tecolote I saw a group of four in broad daylight (if you run much in the canyon, you know exactly where I mean too.) I howled at them but I don't know what I said in coyote and it wasn't interesting enough for them to hang around. Who knows, maybe it was this handsome young family that someone filmed from inside their house. Must be interesting to live right on Tecolote.


And I saw a bobcat in Penasquitos Canyon, last Saturday.

It's green out there - take advantage of the spring. The critters certainly are!

A Nifty Rope Swing

The Evolution of Junk Food and Humans

Just wanted to pass on this great article on the (junk) food industry:

Discover what consumers want to buy and give it to them with both barrels. Sell more, keep your job! How do marketers often translate these 'rules' into action on food? Our limbic brains love sugar, fat, salt. . . . So formulate products to deliver these. Perhaps add low-cost ingredients to boost profit margins. Then 'supersize' to sell more. . . . And advertise/promote to lock in 'heavy users.'

While an evolutionary lens (and what anthropologists used to call among themselves the mismatch hypothesis) is useful to understand why we crave some foods that hurt us, and how that can be exploited and how we should eat other things, such a view is not the ultimate solution. And as with all things humans do, it can become just another way to reinforce pre-existing beliefs. This excellent article by an evolutionary biologist takes the paleo community to task for, among other things, a gaping blind spot in their dietary theory that many people including myself have been pointing out for a while. Essentially, it's this: if the way we ate for 500,000 years is so important to modern health (and everyone is sure it's somewhat important) then what about the 5 or 50 million years before that when we were obligate vegetarians? Why is only the romanticized caveman past a contributor? A killer quote is this:

It's common for people to talk about how we were "meant" to be, in areas ranging from diet to exercise to sex and family. Yet these notions are often flawed, making us unnecessarily wary of new foods and, in the long run, new ideas. I would not dream of denying the evolutionary heritage present in our bodies—and our minds. And it is clear that a life of sloth with a diet of junk food isn't doing us any favors. But to assume that we evolved until we reached a particular point and now are unlikely to change for the rest of history, or to view ourselves as relics hampered by a self-inflicted mismatch between our environment and our genes, is to miss out on some of the most exciting new developments in evolutionary biology. At the same time that we wistfully hold to our paleofantasy of a world where we were in sync with our environment, we are proud of ourselves for being so different from our apelike ancestors.

Theories can be useful but the proof is always and only in the data, in proactive and longitudinal epidemiological studies.

Another excellent quote showing that yes, population genetics can shift quickly:

Humans are not the only species whose environment has changed dramatically over the last few hundred years, or even the last few decades. Some of the work my students and I have been doing on crickets found in the Hawaiian islands and in the rest of the Pacific shows that a completely new trait, a wing mutation that renders males silent, spread in just five years, fewer than 20 generations. It is the equivalent of humans' becoming involuntarily mute during the time between the publication of the Gutenberg Bible and On the Origin of Species. This and similar research on animals is shedding light on which traits are likely to evolve quickly and under what circumstances, because we can test our ideas in real time under controlled conditions.

Sometimes the selection pressure comes from our own choices as humans. Tibetans split from their Han Chinese cousins on the low subtropical plains only 3,000 years ago, and yet Tibetans have already racked up 50 (!) mutations having to do with oxygen metabolism. And not surprisingly, some of the detoxification enzymes (the CYPs) differ dramatically between populations, based on foods they have adopted over the centuries; East Africans and Middle Easterners in particular have a cluster of mutations that make them better at metabolizing alkaloids not found in foods outside that part of the world. Is it really that difficult to see how this could apply to humans adopted starch-based agriculture in general? But again, the proof will be in the data.

The Creation of the California Cityscape

This is mostly an outdoors blog but it's driven largely by my love affair with California, so I thought this cross-post from my science fiction nerd blog Speculative Nonfiction was appropriate.


The Theme Building at LAX

The same guy (William Pereira) designed all of these buildings. In order roughly from south to north:

San Diego: San Diego Airport, Grossmont Hospital, Scripps Clinic, and Geisel Library at UCSD

Irvine: the entire city more or less, including UC Irvine

Newport Beach: the entire city more or less

LA: USC's campus (he was a professor there), and that weird central building at LAX

San Francisco: SFO, and the TransAmerica Pyramid


Geisel Library at UCSD. The first time I saw this I literally stumbled across it, and I started looking around for Gort and Clatu.

Pereira was a major science fiction fan and intentionally designed things to look futuristic. Talk about life imitating art. (And some of these buildings ended up being used later in science fiction movies - that's the UC Irvine campus at that last link.) That said, a lot of these buildings do look pretty dated; to paraphrase the Simpsons, they look like what they thought the twenty-first century would look like in 1970.* But it's amazing that one person is responsible for so much of the iconic construction of this state, and more amazing that he's not more famous. One of Pereira's students also went on to some fame - Frank Gehry.

The whole state of California is named after a fictitious country in a sixteenth century science fiction novel, so maybe this kind of reification isn't so surprising.


*Ah, you read the footnote for more architecture-bashing! Excellent. Modern architecture in general often gets dated quickly because the ways it tries to be original become inextricably linked to a very narrow era - you don't look at a medieval cathedral and think "Oh my gosh, that's so tacky, it just screams fourteenth century." Another mid-to-late twentieth century American architect was Eero Saarinen, and his best-known works are probably the Arch in St. Louis, the international terminal at JFK, and the terminals at Dulles (you know, the ones that require a custom-made land-crawler as a shuttle. Stupid.) Note that of these, only the Arch has avoided looking dated, at least from outside. Even saint Wright suffers from this to some degree. Probably the worst offense in all architecture is here in San Diego, the Salk Institute, perpetrated by Louis Khan. Horrifyingly, every day one can find packs of drooling architecture students visting from Europe and Asia, memorizing this Golgotha of right angles, excited to return home and desecrate their own cities with a similar pile of cinder blocks. Just as with Wright's work and that of other famous architects, the bathrooms in the Salk are awful. (RE Wright, in Falling Water they're bad but in the Beth Shalom synagogue in Philadelphia they're criminal. Tiny, dungeon-like, insufficient for the facility, their function damaged by their size and remoteness - seemingly not an afterthought, but the victims of deliberate malice. The bathroom is the most important room in the building.

Del Mar Mesa Preserve

This morning I got out for a run to Del Mar Mesa Preserve. I'd been through there a few times before after noticing a blank spot on the map, and even led a little Poway-to-UTC multi-canyon run with some friends back in July. Today I wanted to connect Penasquitos Canyon to that single track you see leading south from the dead end of Camino del Sur right below the 56. What a day for it too - nice and warm and clear and a slight easterly breeze from this mild El Nino we were having. And in the process I was lucky enough to stumble across the amazing Deer Canyon/Tunnels area. I think the canyon's only competition in San Diego County is from next-door Penasquitos.



Who knew this was here? Well okay, lots of mountain bikers. According to one forum, this is the biggest stand of oaks south of Morro Bay. A lot of the area is technically off-limits, but looking at a satellite map you can clearly see all the unofficial trails. The most recent trail proposal I could find looks like this - the red circle and little connector is a trail that is NOT there (I was just there today) but is on the official proposal, and which I would be very excited to see get completed. (If I can join a work team, I'll help clear it! Though I would have really liked it about 10am today.)



Why is so much of the area off-limits? The surrounding communities have been deciding what to do with this area for a while, and part of it is under the jurisdiction of CA Fish & Game. There's a great article at Voice of SD about the delay and how it's damaged what's supposed to be protected and kept out the people who respect the land. And I've certainly never seen anything like an official patrol back there but today I ran into a couple of hikers who told me horror stories of people being ticketed and even bikes being confiscated. While putting preservation proposals into action legitimately takes time, there's a general feeling that maybe the foot-dragging has more to do with property owners not wanting an official park in their back yards that appears on maps - and maybe from property developers who don't want the area to be off-limits.

If you're an adjacent property owner, there are two good reasons you should be in favor of the preserve being made official ASAP, and open to access by trail-runners and -riders:

1) Being next to park land raises property values. Multiple studies have been done on this. Plus, what do you want to see to your north, more houses, or your current awesome view?

2) If there are legitimate park users there, there are far fewer squatters. If you don't believe me, read this 2008 SD Reader article about how many squatters used to live in the canyon before the mountain bikers started using it heavily. There was even a pot farm found there in '09. The more heavily used the area is by outdoors types, the less of this will go on. Once it's officially a park, there's clear law enforcement agency responsibility, and fewer people lighting fires at night. The riders and runners aren't the people to worry about!


Some of the controversy has been about why, and to what extent, the preserve remains a wildlife preserve. Whatever protects the land from development soonest is what we should be for. We can work out the details once it's official and open, so the public values it more and votes to protect it. This is in the San Diego city limits and it's in the political districts listed below. It took me 10 minutes to write all of these representatives!

Sherri Lightner (San Diego City Council District 1)
Brian Maienschein (CA Assembly District 77)
Marty Block (CA Senate District 39)
Scott Peters
(US Rep District 52)


I hope to meet you while we're both volunteering to dig or maintain a trail once it's official out there. Until then, here are some articles about the recent history of the struggle to protect the place in a publicly accessible way.

Articles:
Years of Broken Promises on Protected Land, Dec 2012
Canyon Trails Traffic Jam, Dec 2008
Del Mar Mesa Preserve Trail Plan Discussion on the SoCal Trail Riders forum
Update on Del Mar Mesa Trails, 2008, San Diego Mountain Biking Association

The Trail La Jolla Half Marathon

From Solana Beach, through Crest Canyon, and then that disconnected piece of Torrey Pines, to regular Torrey Pines and up the trail, then back.  Better than that dumb old course they use in April with the running on streets the whole time and the people and everything.  What a great weekend though, the warmth was nice and I got a little sunburned.

Advanced Statistics in Football

A New Republic piece about how statistics isn't just for baseball anymore.  One statement that I did find interesting:  “'Most of the analytical brain power in football is on the financial side,' according to Burke, but teams are 'waking up' to the on-field possibilities."  To the extent that franchises believe their profits are related to their performance and win-loss record, they will care about their performance and win-loss record.  A future project of mine will be to correlate scores and win-loss records with team profits and changes in profits over time.  I submit that the teams with independently measured higher fan loyalties will show less of a difference; sure, it's kind of just common sense, but it relates to the business decisions made by the owners. 


Meanwhile, March Madness is coming up, and I'm planning a more expansive crowdsourcing experiment than the interesting one last year.  Let's see how the wisdom of crowds stacks up against the pundits that pundittracker.com follows!

The Altai Mountains, South-Central Siberia

This looks like an awesome place for trailrunning, as well as to be the origin of a language family. 




The Altaic language family must have been so successful because they all went running one day in different directions, and next thing you know, whammo!  From the Blacke Sea to the Pacific.  (For the record I support the inclusion of Japanese and Korean in Altaic.  Now that you know that, you can sleep at night.  You're welcome.)

We Hold Contests To See Which Humans Are Fastest And Strongest

The History and Future of Boxing!

From the Kids in the Hall TV show of the 90s:

Santiago Peak For Real

Done. Didn't start in time for the side trip to Modjeska. The saddle of Saddleback doesn't look as pretty from the top as the pre-Divide Road portion of the route Santiago was, with lots of wooded areas and some of the biggest damn ferns you'll ever see. The view from the type is a nice look straight across to San Jacinto, Banning Pass and San Gorgonio. Baldy was there too, really the only snow yesterday in the San Gabriels, with the smog pouring east from LA still considerable. As for many SoCal hikes, Nobody Hikes in LA is a great resource to plan your hike. Just keep in mind how annoyingly indirect that Divide Road around the summit is. Since it's for cars that need a level surface, that road is pretty much the opposite of the shortest route.

If you've had any of the bugs going around this year - one of several* viral flus, or a nasty strain of Strep pneumo that I was lucky enough to host for two weeks - you know how hard it is coming back from this. Very frustrating! The up-side is that when you're coming back from an illness, those parts of your training you hate and neglect have a more obvious impact. For many people it's hills; for me (and also many people) it's sprints. See you at the track!

There must be several viral strains going around this season because there are many people who got their flu shots, your blogger among them, and still got sick. That's no excuse not to get immunized!

Hollenbeck vs. Sycamore Canyon

I finally got to Hollenbeck Canyon. It was a rainy and misty yesterday but that was actually quite cool. I shouldn't be surprised at the riparian-ness and greenery of these South County parks anymore, especially in the winter, but somehow I still am. It's a deep, dramatic canyon, and I saw a big coyote trotting off into the mist while I was heading up the trail. I've been sick for quite awhile so it was good but frustrating to finally get out onto a trail, even if it wasn't high mileage. (Have you had your flu shot yet?) The drive out there is pretty cool too. A lot of folks tend not to go south of the 8 very much but you feel like you're in the Old California when you get out past were 94 is no longer a freeway.




From High on Mountain Biking and East County Magazine respectively.

Now here's where Sycamore Canyon fits into this: my original plan was to run from Sycamore to the lakes in Santee (map below). But I got to the gate on 67, and it was closed, but said to drive around to the north side accessed from Poway, about a 30 minute drive. Fair enough, but guess what? THAT gate was closed too, no reason given! I wouldn't be so frustrated if something like this hadn't happened TWICE before: once when the website gave the wrong closing hours, and once when I went to the Route 67 gate and it was just closed, no explanation. As you might guess I'm a little upset about this and I've given up on going to Sycamore Canyon. This is no way to administer a park. I'm starting to think it would be better if the county sold it off to a private owner. At least then we wouldn't ever expect it to be open and waste our time!

Sorry to whine on my blog but I bet I'm not the only one who's had this happen. If you want to email them about it, go here. I'm annoyed enough that I'm sending printed letters to several people outside the county agency. I hate to say it but things like this make me a lot less enthusiastic in supporting San Diego County Parks.

InjectStrong

I'm a very bad person for laughing so hard at this.

Input and Output in College Football

Now that college football is over, it's time to talk about college football.  Naw, but I just thought this was an interesting observation by notorious intelligence investigator Steve Hsu, formerly of Oregon, now research VP at Michigan State.  A second's reflection will show you how important recruiting is to any sport; your input is players and coaching, and your output is the end-of-season rank.  Which sets up an interesting reverse-quality gradient in coaching.  Hsu says:  "One of the big adjustments I had to make in coming to Michigan State was to Big 10 football. The offensive execution reminds me high school play ;-) Does any team squander more athletic talent year after year than Michigan?"  He has a video of some Oregon play calling to make his point.

That inverse correlation is that if you have weaker players from the get-go, you have to make up for it in better coaching (training and strategy).  Hsu points out that coaching seems better at Oregon than in the Big 10 because the big 10 has strong-recruiting legacy programs that draw more players more broadly. As a result, the Big 10 coaches have better players, but don't seem to work as hard strategically.  (Plus these teams get a break in the pre-season rankings and have an opaque computer system so the college football enterprise can trick fans into thinking the ranking numbers represent an actual competition, which is to say, maximize profits.)

(Note that I valiantly resisted the urge to make Notre Dame fans feel bad.  It's kind of like scolding your dog after it gets beaten in a fight by a cat.  Oops!  I did it again!)

Bristlecone Pines

This piece starts out with a brief mention of the cosmic microwave background from the Big Bang, so you know it'll be good.  (Cause that's cool.)  About the impact of climate change on the oldest trees in the world, here in California.

Meaning in Nature, from an Unlikely Source

David Allen is the Getting Things Done guy, so it was with surprise that in an interview with him I ran across this gem about how we filter, and how nature is information-dense but meaning-light:

Information overload is not the issue. If it were, you'd walk into the library and die. As soon as you connected to the Web, you'd just explode.

In fact, the most information-rich place in the world is the most relaxing: it's called nature. It has more varied horizons, more detail, more input of all sorts. As a matter of fact, if you want to go crazy, get rid of all your information: it's called sensory deprivation.

The thing about nature is, it's information rich, but the meaningful things in nature are relatively few—berries, bears and snakes, thunderstorms, maybe poison oak. There are only a few things in nature that force me to change behavior or make a decision. The problem with e-mail is that it's not just information; it's the need for potential action. It's the berries and snakes and bears, but they're embedded, and you don't know what's in each one.

People's Republic of Pennsylvania Demands You Buy Their Wine

For my PA readers: it's already bad enough that your alcohol is controlled by a North Korean-like state apparatus. (True story: when I was at Merck, I once ordered lab-grade ethanol from a supplier in New Jersey. First the the State of Pennsylvania had to buy it from the supplier, and hold it in a special warehouse for 9 weeks where apparently it would become less evil or something. Then they would sell it to Merck, who of course had to pay the warehouse fees.)

As if to revel in the absurdity, the monopoly holding State has now started selling its own brand of wine. Now, apparently one of the reason the State keeps the monopoly is because alcohol is bad, and Pennsylvanians must be protected from it. But now they're making their own...(sound of head-scratching)

It bears repeating that the PA liquor tax was enacted to pay for the cleanup after the Johnstown Flood. Yes, really. And last time I was there, Johnstown was doing okay. How much longer are people going to put up with this?

Backbone/Bulldog Loop in Malibu, and Not a Lat Injury

Despite a current injury, I relied on my low levels of common sense and did an awesome 15 miler (this trail with side spurs) in the I-can't-believe-I-haven't-run-here-before Malibu Creek State Park, in the Santa Monica Mountains. Some of the views would not be out of place in Colorado, except for the Pacific being below your feet of course.



From photographyontherun.com



There sure am be some green stuff back there, and the rock formations and sea views from the top of the ridge can't be beat.  Plus along the way I saw the MASH filming site.  It's only right now that I laugh out loud and realize I ran the aptly-named Backbone loop (and Bulldog).

Why is that funny?  Two posts ago I mentioned a possible injury to my lats that I got (I think) from bicep curls.  Despite knowing that something didn't fit, i.e. the location of the pain wasn't really where your lats are, I didn't update my belief.  Saying the same thing in medical language, I should have moved "lat tear/sprain" down my differential and thought about what to move up.

Long story short, there are many reasons to think that my current (and previous) pain are a disc herniation, rather than a lat injury.  I have contralateral pain at a different level that also fits the bill for herniated disc that's stayed with me for a year but I can tolerate it; this one has gone from comparatively much worse to almost resolved in a few days, and it's moved downward a little too (n.b., muscle injuries don't do that).

Fortunately, scary though it sounds, disc herniation is usually self-resolving or only causes mild discomfort, and can be managed conservatively with NSAIDs, heat, and activity restriction.  15 miles up and down hills didn't bother me too much; I guess I just need to find a bicep exercise that doesn't involve shock-loading my spinal column.

Redwoods in SoCal

Previously I attempted to turn San Diego into the Bay Area by planting redwood trees around my house and in a nearby canyon.  This has not come to fruition; after attempting even sillier techniques, I resorted to the correct way of doing it (and with the little kits you can buy), and even then wasn't able to make one grow.  But all is not lost.  Gary Valle reported last year on a grove of redwoods (planted by humans) doing well in Malibu Creek State Park, but also links to a short 2004 report documenting the rapid decline of landscaping redwoods planted in Ventura County, and broadly surveying their use elsewhere in the state outside their native climate.

The author blames pathogens rather than climate, although the latter could predispose to the former, and with a spotty distribution that's more intense in certain areas.  But hey.  At least the invasion is begun!




Above: Rose Canyon, two centuries from now.

Lat Injury and Running

(As always, advice welcome.)  I've re-injured my left lats, most likely from bicep curls.  Last time I did this was 12 years ago and I couldn't run for 6 weeks, which of course were the 6 weeks immediately prior to the Boston Marathon.  This time it's immediately before my Christmas break, during which I was hoping to get in some serious mileage.


It isn't as bad as it was before so I'm going to continue trying to run but pay attention to it.  A 14 miler the day after the injury didn't seem to exacerbate it.  But DAMmit.  I'm starting to wonder if there's something about anticipating vacations that makes me hurt myself!

Snow and Bears

Went up to Angeles NF yesterday to play in the snow.  At the Baldy trailhead, the trail up to the cabin was (and thence to the summit) was pretty white, but we got started late so we just fooled around and then went back down.  Fact:  bears in SoCal do not hibernate in the winter.  Do we know what their trigger is then?  (Sun here too bright?  Too warm?  Not enough snow?)

And speaking of bears, now you can go camping without anxiety:

Taxpayer Money for Stadiums: Sports Welfare

If you missed the Craft Beer Debate in September - about whether taxpayer money should be used for new stadiums (hint: it shouldn't be) - then here's a great article about that infamous parasitic 47%, in the form of pro sports franchises demanding and getting your money. "... the team owners sitting in luxury boxes built with taxpayer dollars, charging PSL fees for seats constructed with the same. They’re the athletes writing off fines for bad behavior. They’re the multimillion-dollar professional leagues, Ozymandias-shaming college athletic departments and -- ahem -- charitable bowl games all enjoying lucrative and dubious non-profit status."

Hometown Girl Hikes Appalachian Trail

"Hometown" as in Reading, Pennsylvania that is (the first third or so of my life). Kudos to Samantha Dalton for doing it. And kudos to the Eagle for summarizing her favorite parts of the trail. I still haven't been on a trail in the Smokies, which Samantha confirmed are as awesome as I've heard they are.

Baxter Creek Trail in the Smokies. From americanforests.org.

Big Oil? Big Beer

Here's an article about how increasingly large beverage conglomerates are increasingly pressuring microbreweries. Though serious beer snobs will already know this, the golden age of American microbreweries was ushered in with a change in the law. But this is not enough to guarantee their continues survival. I just recently learned (direct from the founder of Stone Brewing at the craft beer stadium debate) that the giant breweries have exclusivity contracts with bars and other venues, like stadiums. That's why even here in San Diego it's harder than you would think to find bars and restaurants serving your favorite brews. Recently, century+-old breweries in Germany have been getting gobbled up by big companies. Did you read that? Beer in Germany is being damaged by this process. If that doesn't scare you I don't know what will! In most industries, this would be considered anticompetitive. That said, in many industries there are de facto arrangements between product-makers and distributors if the two businesses are separate. Case in point, big entertainment companies and radio stations. And that must be why music radio stations are the cutting edge of art for the serious music connoisseur, producing a high-quality product for a diverse range of discriminating tastes. Just like Anheuser-Busch.

Cholesterol and Sunlight

If you do not like serious fitness-health geekiness, then won't you please look away now, madame or sir.

Humans make Vitamin D in our bodies when UV radiation (sunlight) strikes 7-dehydrocholesterol (7DHC) molecules in the skin. These same molecules are used as precursors in cholesterol synthesis. One day while running in sunny San Diego I thought about this and wondered what the relationship was between cholesterol and vitamin D. And of course the whole reason we care about cholesterol is because high cholesterol causes heart attacks. (It's rare in biomedicine to be able to make such an unequivocal statement as that, but it's very well-supported.) So how might this work?

Possibility 1: if you have a lot of cholesterol does this mean you have a lot of precursor available and therefore will also have a lot of vitamin D? And does this mean that by taking a statin, you'll lower your vitamin D production? My excuse for geeking out about this is my own high cholesterol. Half of your blogger's LDL receptors have a glutamine instead of an arginine at the 3500th amino acid residue. (Thanks Mom!) Hence without pharmacologic intervention, my LDL runs about 160. So did I save myself from premature coronary syndrome more by moving to California and getting lots of sun during my runs, than by taking that statin?

Possibility 2: Can a blockade of one or the other pathway result in diversion of more precursor to the other pathway?  By that argument, (a.) people congenitally unable to synthesize cholesterol would have loads of vitamin D from all the piled-up 7DHC, assuming they get enough sun and that the reaction does have some kind of ceiling.
OR (b) the opposite - do people who don't get much sunlight have loads of cholesterol from all the piled-up 7DHC not getting turned into vitamin D?

For Possibility 2a above, it turns out there are people missing the enzyme to make cholesterol (7DCHR); the disease is called Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome (SLOS), and people born with it have significant deformities and health problems. Most interesting for our purposes is that although they DO have piles of 7DHC sitting around (because they can't make cholesterol out of it), they do NOT have more vitamin D or D precursors than other people. The research team even matched patients for season of collection (to make sure we didn't get all winter samples from SLOS patients, and sunny summer samples from healthy controls.) We don't yet understand how they can avoid poisoning themselves with vitamin D, but somehow they're compensating.

Which brings us to Possibility 2b. In 1996 a British group looked at the relationship between sunlight exposure and cardiovascular disease. These plots show what they found.  (Click on them if they're hard to see, especially the first one with the countries, which is kind of cool.)

Note that they included a cholesterol plot but a) this paper doesn't investigate the direct relationship between vitamin D and cholesterol and b) consequently they can't show vitamin D to be in the causal pathway, despite the interesting figures. The relationship with sunlight exposure they show is definitely interesting but we already know that physical activity, diet, and genetic differences all definitely play an enormous, hence confouding role. It's tough to compare Japanese with Swedes and say that sunlight is a causative factor in cardiovascular differences, rather than diet, which as you might recognize all differ substantially!

Furthermore, the SLOS patients are able to "rebalance their accounts" with respect to precursor utilization, so it's not unreasonable to expect that a similar mechanism could be operating the other way in health, erasing any benefits that cholesterol-precursor-eating sun may have. (For a different opinion, you can read That Paleo Guy's take on this, which is where I originally found this paper. I do not endorse most of his opinions, so if you want a hint on how to weight our conflicting arguments, consider that I'm the one in medical school. Just sayin.)

My conclusion is that this is interesting and I'll certainly be reading any articles that come out on this, but for now we just don't have evidence that sun exposure lowers cholesterol and therefore coronary syndrome risk. And if your output in thinking about sun exposure is all-cause mortality, then even with a putative cardiovascular benefit, we're going to be looking at a U-shaped curve because there are other considerations, chiefly among them skin cancer of course. So if you're concerned about your cholesterol, exercise regularly and take a statin if recommended by your physician.  In the meantime, I'll be running in the sun because it makes me happy.

Santiago Peak, Orange County

Went up from Trabuco Canyon via Holy Jim trail.  I should qualify that and say I stopped a mile or so short of the summit since it was getting dark and there has apparently been a lot of kitty activity up there recently.  It was a lot prettier than I thought it would be. Despite the picture I chose below, it's not just SoCal scrub forest but actual patches of woods, and the last half mile of the trail before hitting Main Divide Road is pretty exposed and cool.



The silver lining of my strange fit of common sense?  This leaves the peak for my future 22-mile A-to-B where I go up Holy Jim from Trabuco, gain Santiago, cross the saddle and gain Modjeska before descending to Silverado.  Hopefully next week if I can talk a certain person into shuttling me...

Running A Lot Doesn't Hurt You

That seems to be the conclusion of a study to be published in the British journal Heart next month. The press release published by the WSJ spins it differently though, stating that running a lot later in life eliminates the mortality benefits. With the tone they take it's hard not to be tricked into thinking the evidence being presented is that running hurts you, but nowhere (in the summary piece at least) is this claim made.

It's a strange article to say the least. "Danger! Danger! Doing activity X that you enjoy doesn't harm you!" doesn't seem to be a crucial finding. To quote Kenneth Cooper in the article: "If you are running more than 15 miles a week, you are doing it for some reason other than [physical] health."' Agreed! (Qualifier mine.)

Ohio State and BCS Rankings: Always Transparent, Meaningful

From the "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" department, a team that can't possibly go to a bowl because of sanctions ends up outranking Florida. I'm not a Buckeye or Florida fan but I like it because it makes a mockery of the whole system. I'm waiting for a good Onion article, which has consistently led the way in BCS-pointlessness-highlighting.

A Fake Marathon. No, Not The Running Of It, The Actual Race Itself

Some goober has created a website for a marathon which is admitted on its face to be fake; maybe s/he is hoping a real event will grow out of the online presence. For the Borges fans out there, it's a sort of Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius of endurance events. The internet abounds in such opportunities!

If you haven't yet read it, this New Yorker account of a Michigan dentist's much more deceptive faking of marathons is fascinating.

Humans Have Brains For Running

Why do humans have brains so much bigger than our bodies, relative to other animals?  As it turns out, maybe not so we can be so smart.  Most theories have to do with the physiology of bipedalism.  You may have heard of similar hypotheses before (the most famous being the radiator hypothesis) but the go-to guy for "human brains are adapted for (bipedal) running" theories is Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard.  Both transcript and video at link with him explaining this increasingly well-supported theory, it but unfortunately the video is not embeddable. 

Brains are very costly. Right now, just sitting here, my brain (even though I'm not doing much other than talking) is consuming about 20- 25 percent of my resting metabolic rate. That's an enormous amount of energy, and to pay for that, I need to eat quite a lot of calories a day, maybe about 600 calories a day, which back in the Paleolithic was quite a difficult amount of energy to acquire. So having a brain of 1,400 cubic centimeters, about the size of my brain, is a fairly recent event and very costly.

The idea then is at what point did our brains become so important that we got the idea that brain size and intelligence really mattered more than our bodies? I contend that the answer was never, and certainly not until the Industrial Revolution.
 

What is the answer then?  Bipedal locomotion over long distance.  Remarkable that this is part of what made us able to start asking other questions about our existence.  There's a lot more but here's another telling passage.

The other reason we often discount the importance of brawn in our lives is that we have a very strange idea of what constitutes athleticism. Think about the events that we care about most in the Olympics. They're the power sports. They're the 100-meter dash, the 100-meter freestyle events. Most athletes, the ones we really value the most, are physically very powerful. But if you think about it this way, most humans are wimps.

Usain Bolt, who is the world's fastest human being today, can run about 10.4 meters a second, and he can do so for about ten or 20 seconds. My dog, any goat, any sheep I can study in my lab, can run about twice as fast as Usain Bolt without any training, without any practice, any special technology, any drugs or whatever. Humans, the very fastest human beings, are incredibly slow compared to most mammals. Not only in terms of brute speed, but also in terms of how long they can go at a given speed. Usain Bolt can go 10.4 meters a second for about ten to 20 seconds. My dog or a goat or a lion or a gazelle or some antelope in Africa can run 20 meters a second for about four minutes. So there's no way Usain Bolt could ever outrun any lion or for that matter run down any animal.

A typical chimpanzee is between about two and five times more powerful than a human being. A chimpanzee, who weighs less than a human, can just rip somebody's arm off or rip their face off (as recently happened in Connecticut). It's not that the chimpanzee is remarkably strong, it's that we are remarkably weak. We have this notion that humans are terrible natural athletes. But we've been looking at the wrong kind of athleticism. What we're really good at is not power, what we're really phenomenal at is endurance. We're the tortoises of the animal world, not the hares of the animal world. Humans can actually outrun most animals over very, very long distances. 

The marathon, of course, is a very interesting example. A lot of people think marathons are extraordinary, and they wonder how many people can run marathons. At least a million people run a marathon every year. If you watch any major marathon, you realize that most of those folks aren't extraordinary athletes, they're just average moms and dads. A lot of them are charity runners who decided to raise money for some cancer cause or diabetes or something. I think that proves that really your average human being can run 26.2 miles without that much training, or much ability to be a great athlete. Of course, to run a marathon at really fast speeds is remarkable, but again, it just takes some practice and training. It's not something that's really extraordinary.

Oct 20 - Riparian Habitat Restoration With the US Bureau of Land Management

Last October volunteers planted coast live oaks in the drainage of a canyon in the BLM's Sycamore Canyon area, off Highway 94.  This area was hit by both the Otay Fire in '03 and the Harris Fire in '07, and the BLM needs the public's help bringing back the oak, willow, and sycamore trees that supported the wildlife in this remaining natural area.  The history is pretty cool - Rancho Jamul was used by the Kumayaay Indians for thousands of years for forage and living purposes, Spanish missionaries for grazing land (using the Kumeyaay Indians for labor), then owned by a series of private individuals, most notably Pio Pico, the last Mexican Governor of California. Prior to acquisition by DFG, the property was used for farming and grazing by the well-known Daley Family of San Diego.



Details: meet at Rancho Jamul Ecological Reserve at 8:30a.m. for orientation. Wear long pants, a hat, and sturdy shoes. Bring water and a water bottle if you have one. Water and snacks will be provided. To RSVP, and for directions or for more information contact Cathy Chadwick, info@earthdiscovery.org. Be sure to let her know you heard about the event here at MDK10outside!

General Location: Rancho Jamul Ecological Reserve is located in the eastern part of San Diego County between the towns of Jamul and Dulzura; Rancho Jamul can be found by following Eastbound Highway 94 (AKA Campo Road) from Spring Valley.

Directions: Directions from Downtown San Diego are as follows: I-5 south to I-94 east, follow Highway 94 east through the town of Jamul and look for a Rancho Jamul sign immediately following the Rural Fire Station. After approximately two miles, you will find the entrance on the south/west side of Highway 94.

Baseball/Football Ratio Predicts a State's Political Orientation

I know you're not already getting enough politics so here's the article. What's really interesting is that polls move in concert with people's ticket purchases, ie when baseball ticket sales rise in a state, the party favored by baseball improves at the polls. (Have to read it to find out which is which. Too bad Americans can only afford two though.)

Mountain Lions

At Point Reyes:


Amazing one from earlier this year in Yosemite:


But sometimes they're just damn cute:

Mount San Miguel

Saturday I ran up to the top of San Miguel Mountain from Rolling Hills Estates on the south side. Imagine something halfway between Black Mountain and Woodson, probaby closer to Black Mountain. The hill itself is little-known, like of a lot of San Diego south of the 8 - if you've been in Hillcrest Hospital and looked southwest and noticed a peak with radio towers on it straight past the opposing toward of Scripps Mercy, that's it. (That's why I wanted to run it.)

The mountain itself is not particularly pretty, BUT the views of downtown and the bay are excellent - reminded me of San Francisco actually - AND the place is just deserted. For being equidistant from downtown as Cowles and closer than Iron or Woodson, that's kind of cool. I felt like I was in old California driving out there.

Scorpion Hunting Fail

Part of my bucket list is seeing certain critters in the wild. I have yet to see a manta ray, great white shark, gila monster, or wolf running around loose. But one I thought that would be easier to cross off was scorpions. So thanks to James who went in halfsies with me on a UV light, I set out to Mission Trails one night last week to find some. Fail! Scorpions love hot weather and needless to say, after this ridiculous hot summer and fall, that night San Diego decided to be cool and overcast. The first time I've ever wanted it to be hot here!

As a final insult, while I'm out tramping around the sage in the dark, buddy Garron finds a Centuroides (bark scorpion) right in his office.

But the lesson here is that all living things have a defense mechanism. Mine is a vanishingly short attention span. Scorpions are now off my bucket list. That's one way to do it! In the meantime enjoy this Arizona fellow who was more succesful than me.

San Diego Foundation Preserves North County Land

$651,000 to a number of organizations to assemble protected areas. Trails and preserves! Great job, thanks guys!

This Will Make You Feel Good

Marines in a triathon carrying a kid whose prosthetic legs failed during the race:

SD City Council: No Power Plant at Mission Trails

No to the Quail Brush project.  Story here.

Yet Another Baby Rattler

Shouldn't be surprising after this hot summer, but I saw another one, this one up in Carlsbad. I've been seeing them all around 630pm on sandy/dusty sections of trail adjacent to grassy areas.

Have you seen one too? Add your encounter to the rattlesnake map! (Below.) Plus it's always available at right if you click on the snake.


View Rattlesnake Encounters in San Diego County in a larger map

It's Still Hot Out In That Peninsular Range

Went up to run Noble Canyon yesterday in preparation for doing a litte group hike there the Friday after Thanksgiving.  Nice run with some actual ferns, but the bugs were bad in the wooded sections and I forgot how annoying the trail is in the upper half.  As in, going every direction but the direction you want to go to avoid minor terrain obstacles, until in the last mile it inexplicably goes up the steepest remaining incline.  Still hot up there!  Take water!




From lanesbike.

Pundit Tracker Shows Best Baseball Predictors

Pundit Tracker keeps those talking heads on TV honest by actually looking at the results of their predictions - and here they are for baseball. The results are about what you'd expect - "The pundits’ collective yield over the three-year period was $0.80, meaning that betting equally on all their picks would have resulted in a 20% loss. Only three of the fourteen pundits generated positive payouts."  More information at the link.

Prevention and Treatment of Lightning Injuries

Mark Tanaka helpfully posts a link to a review paper, with evidence classifiers. (If lightning hits you, it's doubtful you'll end up as lucky as this guy.) In SoCal it might not be as scary as in the Colorado mountains in the summer, but it's still useful to know if you spend time outside. You might be the one to save someone's life!

Another Rattler, This Time in Marian Bear Canyon

Saw one during my study break (ie nightly 7-miler) on the trail in Marian Bear Canyon, between Genesee and Regents, about 715pm.  Not surprising after a hot day like today.  Another baby one actually, although compared to the last one I saw a week or two ago, this one was having none of my tomfoolery and went into full-on defensive-posture when I gently kicked dust at it to get it to move.  I added it to the Rattler Map, which is starting to get filled up with people's rattlesnake encounters around San Diego.  Seen one?  Put it on there so we can see where we run across them, and avoid harm for both them and us.



View Rattlesnake Encounters in San Diego County in a larger map

The Stadium Debate Wrap-Up

I was thrilled to be present at the inaugural official Craft Beer Debate. Thanks to Omar Passons for conceiving and organizing! To be clear, the question under scrutiny was whether there should be taxpayer funding for a new (privately owned) stadium. The points I reproduce below don't represent the whole discussion - for that go to the Craft Beer Debates website, where they will soon post video. Even if this discussion isn't your thing, Passons has big plans for serious local topics to be discussed at future events, so get on his mailing list!

Greg Koch, co-founder and CEO of Stone Brewing, moderated. Consequently there were lots of pointed questions for the pro-stadium side about the poor beer selection at the games. (Myself, I enjoyed a Scotch ale during the discussion.)

National University economist and major sports fan Eric Bruvold spoke for the no-taxpayer-money side and quickly made the point that stadiums are black holes. Even if you use them as more than just football stadiums, they don't bring dollars in from outside the region, and they certainly don't offset their cost. There have been peer-reviewed studies by economists showing this to be the case.

Mark Fabiani spoke in favor of taxpayer dollars funding the stadium, not surprisingly, since he's the lawyer that works for the president of the Chargers. I reluctantly admired his mastery of rhetoric. For instance, one of the best arguments against a taxpayer supported stadium is that if it's ever justified to use taxpayer money for a private venue, it certainly isn't now, when the city is broke! Before this point could be made, Fabiani co-opted it by saying that old Qualcomm is costing us money already (ahem, sunk cost fallacy) and since the city is so broke, we can't afford NOT to build a new stadium! (He didn't explain why the new stadium will also not cost us money to maintain.)

At one point the pro-taxpayer money for stadium side said that the area around PETCO used to be pretty bad, but now it's redeveloped. During the audience question part, I asked how he knew that downtown San Diego's improvement happened because of PETCO, and wasn't just part of the national improvement that happened in just about every city's downtown during the 1990s. He said he just didn't believe that. Up to you to decide if that's a good argument.

I don't think the audience was overwhelmed by the taxes-for-Chargers argument, and what's more interesting, both Bob Filner and Carl DeMaio are opposed to it. But overall it was a fun night with a lot of good beer and spirited by civil debate. I'm really looking forward to future events!

Background for Craft Beer Debate - Chargers Stadium

The Inaugural Craft Beer Debate about a new Chargers stadium is this Wednesday 12 September, at 6:15pm at Slater's 50/50.

Thanks to reader Thurston for sending me a great link, an interview of an expert on the economics of professional sports, Roger Noll. Note that this is a pro-free-market podcast, EconTalk, at the Library of Economics and Liberty, so these aren't people that have anything against money or sports. Early in the interview Noll says this:

Baseball and football stadiums...there aren't any that have been substantially subsidized where the local community has received anything remotely resembling a reasonable return on investment. They are financial black holes. Especially football stadiums...What you've created is something that essentially sucks the blood out of a neighborhood...indeed, they create slums.

Wow.  This isn't some opinion jockey.  This is a Stanford economics professor who has spent his career studying these questions.  [Later edit:  I wasn't even looking for it, but the day after posting this ran across another article, "Stadiums Are A Bad Investment".]

The whole interview is worth listening to. Hope to see you Wednesday night, although this event will fill up so go to the Debate website and register.

Rattlesnake Encounter Map for San Diego

Most of us who spend time on trails around here have seen a rattler or three. I just saw one tonight, a cute lil baby one on the side of the trail in Los Penasquitos Preserve. Most of the time our sense of where to be most cautious is informed partly by anecdotes, but if we share this information systematically, eventually we'll start to see where the hotspots are (and at what times of year) and both species can stay out of trouble.

The map is up and right now the oonly thing it's missing is YOU, i.e. it needs more user-generated data. If you've seen one or two or ten on trail or in your yard, take 20 seconds to go to the map and add your own.   The community appreciates it!



View Rattlesnake Encounters in San Diego County in a larger map

Dehydrated Beer Mix for Hiking

By Pat's Backcountry Beverages in Alaska.

America is great.

Craft Beer Debate Sept. 12: Fund the Chargers Stadium with Taxpayer Money?

Craft Beer Debates is a great idea - providing a venue for people to discuss important questions in a passionate but friendly way. Importantly, over good beer. Per the title, here's the first topic to be discussed, with some good links. (Hopefully the companionship that drink creates will overcome the zealousness.) The first official debate will be at Slater's 50/50 off Rosecrans near Point Loma on Wednesday September 12th. The debgate will be moderated by the CEO of Stone Brewing.

Those are all the details I have right now, but I'm planning on going. Say hello if you recognize me from the blog. Be not confused, for I no longer have a goatee.

An open debate like this is a real nightmare for the proponents of the new stadium, because these kinds of deals usually go on well out of view of the public, since they benefit politicians and franchise owners at the cost of tax revenues sorely needed for schools and services. Build whatever stadium you want to. Just not with taxpayer money. Other people don't have the right to demand our money for their sports teams. Imagine if the city wanted to support a Mexican Soccer League expansion team with your cash. Not so great? Agreed! And this applies to ALL private enterprises, sports or otherwise. What's worse, building a new stadium doesn't bring in economic benefits to the city.

Marathon Cheater Article in New Yorker

Amazing article, highly recommended.

Link of the Day

If you're bored of normal tourist destinations, check out Atlas Obscura. They end up being mostly outdoors and natural things. Nature is usually more unexpected than things other humans do. Except when it's not, because one of the articles on the front page is about an island in the Canaries where the pastoralists have developed a whistled language.

San Diego Needs Public Transportion, But Coaster Sucks

I thought it would be fun to head up to Carlsbad for some wine-tasting today and since I've lived here 3 years and never used the Coaster, I thought today would be the day. Like many urban "transportation" systems, the Coaster likes to put obstacles in the way of people who want to use it.

1) The cost-benefit, on all fronts, comes down on the side of driving. (See table below.)

2) The last train south from Carlsbad is at ***6:40pm***. Great! Let's have dinner at 3pm so we can plan our day around Coaster! Said nobody ever, much to the chagrin of Carlsbad merchants (and people who want to enjoy Carlsbad without risking a DUI.)


Here's that cost-benefit.  All numbers are round-trip for two adults:

	Train	Drive	Winner
Cost	$25.20=$22.00 train+$3.20 gas*	$7.50=$0.00 train+$7.50 gas	DRIVE
Time	2h09m=1h39m train+30m drive*	56m=0m train+56m drive	DRIVE
Must go home super-early?	Yes	No	DRIVE
Must plan ahead/constantly watch time?	Yes	No	DRIVE

*It's ridiculous that both of the asterisked numbers are not zero or very close to zero.  30 minutes driving and $3.20 in gas to use the train?  How am I supposed to take this system seriously?


So, Coaster is asking me to spend $17.70 more money, an hour and thirteen minutes more time, all so I have to leave by 6:40pm after nervously glancing at my watch all day.

I really want San Diego to have better public transportation. But the Coaster is not it. Realistically, it's very hard to expand (let alone begin) a train system in an expensive developed area.  On the other hand, a real bus system is not that expensive or difficult to put in place, which is why it's so mystifying that to get to my house (in non-isolated UTC) from the airport, it involves two bus rides and a 1.5 mile walk between two stops. So San Diego:  if you want people to take public transportation seriously as an option, and I do, you have to stop making it difficult to use, and at the very least make it go where and when people need it.

Why Lie About Your Marathon PR

An important question, relating to a (suddenly much more) public figure.

The Paleo Theory Takes a Hit

[Added later: turns out caloric restriction doesn't extend life either, at least in primates; it's just unpleasant. And if you're reading this, you are one. Don't bother telling me about rodent studies.]

As nice as it is to see people trying to unify theory with action, it's even better to compare actual data against your theory, and when the theory doesn't fit the data, you fix the theory.  (Not the other way around.)  Or at the very least, you decrease your certainty about it.

Recently, Pontzer et al published a paper in PLoSONE (and Pontzer summarized it in the NYT here) about metabolic rates in a group in Africa.  Meet the Hadza:

The Hadza live in simple grass huts in the middle of a dry East African savanna. They have no guns, vehicles, crops or livestock. Each day the women comb miles of hilly terrain, foraging for tubers, berries and other wild plant foods, often while carrying infants, firewood and water. Men set out alone most days to collect honey or hunt for game using handmade bows and poison-tipped arrows, often covering 15 to 20 miles.

Paleos par excellence! A paleo wet dream! It doesn't get better than this without a time machine. So what did the researchers find, carefully measuring metabolism using two separate isotopes?

"...average daily energy expenditure of traditional Hadza foragers was no different than that of Westerners after controlling for body size." That is to say, "We found that despite all this physical activity, the number of calories that the Hadza burned per day was indistinguishable from that of typical adults in Europe and the United States. We ran a number of statistical tests, accounting for body mass, lean body mass, age, sex and fat mass, and still found no difference in daily energy expenditure between the Hadza and their Western counterparts."

There are two aspects to controlling one's physique: exercise and diet. The paleo evangelists of the world love to tell us endurance athletes that we're bad, bad people for doing long-term cardio instead of being miserable for short bursts in gyms. It turns out that side of the equation is less important than we all thought, judging by this research (which doesn't exist in isolation - look at the references). What it does mean is that diet becomes even more important.

Evolutionary Economics takes issue with the conclusion and also refers to Razib Khan's point that metabolism has undergone differential adaptation in humans who settled different parts of the world, and ate different things. (No kidding - for one extreme example, look at the fat distribution on the now very multi-ethnic sumo wrestler corps in Japan and this cannot be disputed.) That being the case, I would also argue that different populations of humans might respond differently to varying diets and exercise regimens. There has clearly been selection in muscle proteins, that your partly-sequenced blogger has found himself and his ancestors subjected to.

But most importantly, I hope the paleo exercise people start to settle down in the preaching.

Wild Parrots in San Diego

I saw a flock of 10 in Hillcrest this afternoon. I thought I'd heard them before in Balboa Park but now that I've seen them it's official. To help you in your own urban birdwatching, they have a fairly distinctive talkative squeaky sound like this:

Ranchers Conserving the Open Wilds of Southern Colorado

While I was driving through the amazingly empty southern Colorado/northern New Mexico area on my awesome trip a few weeks ago, I got curious about the mountains to the west of I-25.  It's an interesting ecological area, the border region between the Chihuahuan Desert, the high plains, and the Rockies, and among those empty mountains are 14ers and dinosaur tracks.


You've never heard of any of these; they're kinda sorta the Front Range of the Rockies but way down in southern CO, called the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. From Sangres.com.

Turns out the army is trying to expand their little-known base there, and in a familiar theme, the local private landowners, ranchers, environmentalists, and outdoors types recognize they actually all have a common interest to work together.  The story here is a fascinating (and useful one) on multiple levels.  Here's the Summitpost entry for one of those peaks (Culebra), some of which are privately owned - but accessible thanks to the owners.

No Algodones Dunes Marathon: Or, the Rare Triumph of Common Sense

After a scouting trip to the desert, I decided to take a pass on my brilliant idea of running the Algodones Dunes from I-8 to 78.


Running this for 22 miles? No thank you sir.
That's actually one on of my worse ideas, which is saying something.
Even driving it like these guys would suck.
As if to emphasize the point that this is a blighted land, while we were passing through nearby Brawley on the way to the Blythe Intaglios, the Earth delivered up some nice earthquakes.  The timing couldn't have been better.  I had to put down the coffee I was preparing and ran out of the convenience store.  I went back in to finish it and another one hit. 

But a bad idea that I still think is good is the San Diego coastal relay! 78 miles, 10 runners. Who's in? Main problem to solve, running along the shipyards and whatnot along the east side of San Diego Bay would be much less pleasant than running along the Silver Strand, but how to cross over from OB/Point Loma to Coronado - add a kayak leg?


View Larger Map

The San Juan Mountains Are Neat-O

So I survived the three months of my surgery rotation only by imagining the promise of the San Juan Mountains in my future, and what a promise it was. Somehow all my wanderings around the Western U.S. had not taken me to them, and last week with trusty pal Dorothy I finally set off to correct this. Interestingly, my neglect of the San Juans and CO Rockies generally seems to be shared by my fellow Californians - we noticed a dearth of CA plates, but no shortage of TX, OK and KS. The route, which was every bit as awesome as it looks:



(Geek point: to figure out the best trip, I prioritized what I wanted to do, then used an online Traveling Salesman solver and added nodes sequentially, seeing where there were significant jumps in travel time. Not surprisingly, there was a jump in travel time for paying my respects to Caballo Blanco by going for a run in Gila Natl Forest or going to the Oklahoma Panhandle just because.  I will definitely be planning future roadtrips this way.)

You will notice on that route a visit to Flagstaff, a cool town that people are unfortunately finally discovering; Wupatki Ruins (including the ball court and wind cave that I forgot about) and finally entered the Navajo Nation, which I seem unable to permanently escape. There we saw easily the most amazing rainbow of our lives. We stopped for the obligatory fry bread and passed through Monument Valley and Mexican Hat. Notes: don't eat fry bread with honey while driving. Monument Valley is oddly unsettling at dusk. Mexican Hat has a little restaurant (the Olde Bridge Grill) with great lamb dishes overlooking the San Juan River near the famous goosenecks. And finally: the Four Corners area does in fact close at night. But eff 'em because it's not really the Four Corners anyway.

Wupatki Ruins, north of Flagstaff.   A ball-court at Wupatki.   A double-rainbow in Navajo Nation.  We seemed to be driving into the base of it for 30 minutes.  I didn't ask what does it mean.   From there we passed through Cortez on the way to Durango. We decided not to go back to Mesa Verde and Hovenweep Natl Monument. Cool though they are, especially the coded steps, my travel companion told me that where she's from there are thousand-year-old dwellings all over the place so she wasn't so impressed anyway. Durango bills itself as a Four Corners-area town but SW Colorado is the outgroup of the four states that come together in that region. Because it's higher it's greener; Durango just looks different. Once arriving in Durango we recognized that it apparently has a law that only awesome things are allowed to be there. The mountains and trails around it are of course spectacular, plus there are brewpubs and fun restaurants, plus there's a hiking train (!) plus just randomly one day there was a plane taking off with a glider in tow right next to town.  Even the flea market is awesome (see the scorpion-lamp below):

Scorpion Lamp by Ron Howell.  Check out bracelets, lamps and more here.  He's a cool guy and he only makes dragon and scorpion stuff.  Ron doesn't screw around.
The only downside is that my Jeep Liberty kicked the bucket in February and there were a number of trails we couldn't get to without a 4WD.  It's not like California dirt roads (i.e. getting to Holy Jim Falls and Santiago Peak in the Trabuco Unit of Cleveland NF) - when Coloradans say 4WD-only, they're serious.  The first day: Engineer Peak, starting at Coal Bank Pass. Every day we got chased by thunder. In California we don't usually have this problem, but in Colorado every year people are killed by lightning. Lesson from this trip: when hiking Colorado peaks in the summer, start early. Early early early!

Famous image of a woman on a mountain observation deck.  Lightning struck within minutes of this picture being taken, badly injuring her. Don't put yourself in this position in CO in the summer, start early!  Here's one guy who got off easy.
Post-glacial kettle-pond On the way to Engineer Peak.

A rock glacier on the north side of Engineer.


Landscape with sasquatch.



 

The area north of Durango, around Silverton where we did most of our San Juan explorage.
Afterward we headed into Silverton, a town which I absolutely fell in love with.  Why am I so smitten by this struggling mining town full of eccentrics?

- It's full of eccentrics.
- At over 9,000', only Leadville is higher.
- It has its own 100 miler (the Hardrock 100), most recently won by Hal Koerner. (Go there for photos if for no other reason.)
- Of course it's surrounded by amazing hikes and climbs.
- As if to lure me in, the first business I walked into (an old Victorian Hotel) was showing Blade Runner, my favorite movie of all time.  (Actually it kind of spooked me.  Reminds me of that one bit from Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.)
- Finally, this tiny town has not one by two restaurants that serve Rocky Mountain Oysters. (More later.)  One such establishment helped me trick my travel companion with a Jackalope, while serving us Durango Brewing Company's excellent blueberry beer.  (Does anyone know where we can get this in CA?!?!)



Rocky Mountain Oysters, which we euphemistically called "nuts".  Someone (not me) insisted on coming back a second night in a row for these, so delicious did she find them the first time - which led to me on subsequent evenings to sleep uneasily in a protective position.
The next day, still in the San Juans, we headed up to Ice Lake, which may have been my favorite of the trip.

 If you told me the world was created starting from this place, I might not be surprised.

It was during this hike that my companion advanced her controversial theory that people of Germanic descent enjoy and are better at trail-running and hiking in temperate or boreal forest because we are after all a post-glacial forest people. My counterargument to her: say no to drugs.

This fellow was insultingly relaxed.  As in, he actually relaxed at us seemingly to prove a point. 

The lake was pretty cool, so we took some video, although we dared not dawdle due to the hail and thunder.  Don't ask me what those people were doing camping up there.




We also took video of a less-relaxed marmot who lived by the lake and who was telling us what's what.


The next day we went up to Ouray (pronounced by locals "yeRAY" - people in Denver, take it up with them, not with me), where we hiked to the Bridge of Heaven.  Not as high as the area around Silverton and a little drier - this was actually in Uncompahgre National Forest.  Ouray is where much of the original True Grit was filmed.  It was also the inspiration for Galt's Gulch in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, although there was no solid gold dollar sign hanging over the valley.  (I did once see one near Cholame, CA once, but that's another story.)   A great brewpub, real live cowboys, and of course more trails.  Ouray seems to have developed better than Silverton.

I was sure glad to get above the gritty urban hustle and bustle of Ouray.  (Above, lower right.)   

 The camera didn't believe how green these trees were.
I took a couple videos getting up near the top. When I was coming back down I decided to record a little bit of the run (sorry for the Blair Witch motion-sickness-prone among you). I had to stop and tie my shoe so as not to take the fast way back down to Ouray.



After we came back down we chillaxed by the car at the stream and looked at trees and clouds, after which time we headed up to Montrose.

Before leaving the San Juans, a geography note: Shotgun Peak in Rio Grande Natl Forest in the southeastern side of the San Juans looks very strange geologically.   See all those valleys east-southeast of the msa?  If you run across this article searching or by a news alert, and you have some clue, drop a comment - I'm curious as heck what's going on there.


Things change when you get north of Ridgway. You're out of the San Juans, and it gets very dry and flat and you feel like you're in New Mexico or Utah. Black Canyon of the Gunnison is there, and it is, as one hotelier put it, "Well...it's a big canyon." If you're in the area see it, but I wouldn't go out of my way.



It is at this point you will notice a dearth of (good quality) pictures - because Dorothy lost her phone at the Mt. Elbert Trailhead (if you see it email me! LOL!).  The upside is that there are few pictures of me with a beard, which she made me grow.  The only record is me at the summit, which a nice fellow on top took and sent to me.

So I've bagged the #1 and #2 peaks in the lower 48.  SWEET.  I also saw a pika during the climb, way above the tree or even the grass-line.  We ended up racing back down as dark clouds gathered.  Why?  Thunder.  Start early!

From there, we headed to Boulder to see friends Dave and Jacqui. It was really good to catch up with them (thanks guys) and good to experience some actual heat. On the way from Elbert to Boulder we realized we'd never hike all the NFs in Colorado. For that matter I still haven't been to Rocky Mountain Natl Park! But Dave took me on a nice run up the Flatirons right next to Boulder.


This is the knife that cut Joe Simpson's rope - i.e. the guy from Touching the Void. In Neptune Mountaineering in Boulder.
From there, someone was too good to drive back to San Diego, so I took the Princess to DIA, leaving poor me all by my lonesome. Actually there was cool stuff on the way back. I finally got to drive up to Pike's Peak (wanted to see how the car did at 14,000'; would've run but no time); checked out the Garden of the Gods (red rocks below); and then drove the amazingly empty strentch of I-25 from the Springs to Santa Fe. There are two things out there, Jack and Sh*t, and a whole lot of 'em at that.

A special note on Santa Fe:  what a cool little town.  Again, somehow I'd passed by or quickly through this place in the past, in retrospect to my detriment.  The old town and Plaza Mayor are gorgeous and Maria's New Mexico Kitchen is in the coolest little-big adobe with the tastiest food ever.

A church door in Santa Fe's old town.

It was damn hot south of Albuquerque even at night, so I shouldn't have been so surprised to see that sidewinder crawling across the highway in my headlights. Sorry guy.

At daybreak I got off the highway at Socorro to head over to the Very Large Array (VLA), a radiotelescope installation I've been obsessed with for a while.  If you've seen Contact or 2010 or Terminator Salvation, you've seen the VLA.

This was a wall of post-it notes from visitors who wanted to leave messages for the astronomers who run the place.  Below:  this was my own helpful note, after having seen Terminator Salvation. But I think I was too late because the place was completely unmanned. I didn't see a single person the whole time I was there, even in the (open) visitor center.

Originally after the VLA I was going to head down to Gila NF to pay my respects to the late Caballo Blanco, but there had just been a fire there and it's out of the way anyway; I'll get there some other time. I'm not sad since I ended up being amazed by the greenness of western NM/eastern AZ at this time of year. This is probably the most surprised I've ever been by the way a part of the U.S. looks. They also have cool (weird) names for towns. Right after this one, I went through Omega also.

After that I paid a visit to the Mogollon Rim in Sitgreaves Natl Forest, Arizona. It was so green that there was a fern-filled valley in one place (sorry, no pics) and plenty of awesome trails; I got in one last run on my last day.



Above:  the Mogollon Rim is that green stripe. It's the southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau. The running was fantastic but pretty hot (90 F) even at 7500'; then again, let's not get carried away complaining since after all it was Arizona in August.

During the run I saw a fire starting on a distant peak, which by the time I was getting out of the Natl Forest toward Mesa had blossomed into a full-on fire. There was dry lightning all around. The way back included normal Phoenix traffic, the endless emptiness of I-8 west of Phoenix, a sandstorm in Yuma, the fires in the mountains here, and almost hitting a flying owl on I-8. It was like a fantasy novel or something. I fought the demon horde, then crossed the Empty Quarter, survived the smothering sands, then braved the land of fire and darkness. One does not simply drive into Mordor.)


Yuma. It might actually look better when you can't see it.  Imagine all that grit in your teeth, which is what happens when you have to get out to pump gas.


Coming up the east side of the Peninsular Range on I-8.  The fires to the left (from my vantage point, south in the range, in Mexico) were much bigger than what remained of the San Diego County fires at that point, although they were less reported here.  The sunset they produced was spectacular.

This trip was a blast and was exactly what I needed to unwind after surgery.  Thanks to Dave and Jacqui for putting us up/putting up with us on Friday night, Jason for hiking tips, and Dorothy for being the best road trip buddy EVAR!


[Added later for your enjoyment if you travel in the area as well as my own later consultation:

- Dave Casler's blog, which has a huge amount of SW Colorado information.
- The Excellent 4 Corners Hikes of the Ancients.
- An amazing gallery by Matt Trappe from the 2012 Hardrock 100 Miler around Silverton.
- Hal Koerner's race report from his victory in that same race.

Thanks to those of you who put this information online to help the rest of us enjoy the area!]