It’s cool but not too cold. I feel tired, exhilarated. Not sure I can do it. I’m out running early in the morning, doing intervals for c25k. I’m not sure if I can do it, i’m not sure if I’m doing it right. Every day is a new Personal Record, a new thing, a new realization.

I don’t see myself as a “runner” yet. So I just see myself as this guy out at 6:30 or 7 doing short runs around the neighborhood, slightly self-conscious. I know my brother may or may not be watching my progress via the running app I use. I’m hoping he’s watching cause it’s great to get the feedback, hoping he’s not cause I’m embarrassed at how I’m performing.

This is before I really having a running injury. This is before I’d even run a full 3 miles! It’s before the gadgets and before the tights and before the gear. Just me with some crappy shorts I’ve had for 3 years and shoes I purchased for a treadmill 4 years ago. Cotton t-shirt like a fool.

I don’t really know about heel striking or barefoot yet I don’t know about stress fractures or heart rate training. I’m just running outside, listening to some music, following a program. I go fast when I’m supposed to, slow when I’m supposed to. Enjoying the cool mornings, the smells, the clouds in the valley below.

Somewhere after hurting my knee and during the half-marathon training running became something else. There’s more involved, more data points to pay attention to. I’m more aware of what I do wrong.

So it’s different, now. Not necessarily worse, but I’m not sure better. It’s less simple, now. Now there are tights and compression socks and heart rate monitors, and GPS devices to make me a better runner. No longer simple up-and-run to the program; listen to the music, delight in each new discovery and new achievement. Now it’s “Gotta do a 5 miler today or tomorrow. I need to make sure I crosstrain. Crap, I didn’t stretch when I got back!”

Maybe it’s just that I’ve let fear in. Fear of injury. Fear of overtraining. Fear of undertraining. Fear of the unknown rather than joy in the unknown.

Who knows though, it’s entirely likely I’m conflating disparate things together. Work has encroached on my life incredibly in the past few months. When I run anymore it feels like running to escape. Maybe I bring it with me despite my best efforts.

And to be sure, all those things like the tights and shoes and statistics add a dimension towards running mastery that I really, really enjoy. I am still delighting in my new levels of athleticism.

So perhaps this is just innocence lost. I’d like to reclaim my early simplicity. I’m not sure it’s possible. You can’t unpluck the fruit of knowledge.

For now I’m just relaxing and basking in the accomplishment!

Pre and post race footage

Evening after thoughts about it

In a conversation with a friend I was reminded of Future Sound of London, so I queued them up and had a nice memory. Sometimes I have these memories and they’re visceral, as if I recorded all the sensation then locked the data away forever. Never degrading through remembrance, the memories sit there waiting.

This may be an amalgamation of several experiences in fact, but I’ll go with it. I remember listening to this and other FSOL tracks back in the 90s. I remember cruising to IUSB, in my 82 Corolla. It was blue. A stick shift. The car had manual steering (i.e. didn’t come with power steering), and I remember hoping that would help me develop beefier arms. Silver lining. It was a bitch to turn the wheel if the car wasn’t moving.

I remember it being warm. All the windows were rolled down. I was smoking Marlboros, the sun was shining, maybe 85° F — just a little bit too warm for a car with no A/C. FSOL was blasting on a dubbed cassette. I had a janky stereo I’d gotten many years and two cars prior. The head unit was a birthday gift after I got my driver’s license and first car. It was crappily wired into the dash.

Kind of a theme, really. You could see the power and speaker leads just dangling underneath, running under the driver and passenger seat connecting to two amplifiers. A Rockford Fosgate amp (good) ran to some speakers I’d purchased but never installed. They just kind of sat on the back dash inviting someone to steal them. An Alphasonic amplifier (crappy) ran to my “bass” speaker.

This speaker was actually the monitor for my guitar, an 80 watt guitar amp. It worked well enough and I could feel the bass. The speakers in the back dash were Clarions and actually produced nice sound given they weren’t ever bolted down.

So I would tear down mishawaka avenue or grape road, smoking cigarettes, blasting obscure electronic music I was positive no one would recognize as I drove past them. It was good times. Dirty, smokey, dusty car with half-wired stereo playing music I loved. Shifting to the beat, grinding gears cause the synchros were going out. Too hot for pants. I think the vents only worked on the top highest settings, and were always slightly blowing hot air.

Few things are as pleasing to me as hot, late-summer wind, mixed with second hand smoke and dusty, 80s-era car interior.

I’d decorated and personalized my Corolla. There was a decal of the cover of Ministry’s Psalm 69 on one window. There was a small stuffed bear, blue with orange stomach, (won in a claw machine) jammed in the front window. Papers and junk all over it. Rust.

I loved that car. It was like a little crappy shuttlecraft. A steep hill at 65 mph and I’d downshift from 5th to 3rd. The exhaust sort of smelled bad. I put an 8-ball shift knob on it because it was ridiculous to do so.

Eventually someone stole all the speakers and the good amplifier. That was heartbreaking. Especially since they left the crappy head unit and crappy Alphasonic amp as if to spite me. The car slowly broke down from that point until I had to get rid of it.

But for a long time that car was my own little creation. It represented me, my joys, and my interests.

So the car is gone, but I still have Future Sound of London.

So, I’m registered for the Lake Sammamish Half Marathon. It’s on the 9th of March. That means it’s a little over a week away! I have a 10 mile long run this weekend, and then next week is all tapering down.

So, I’m hoping the fact that I’ve been doing all hill training will help me out a bit, because that mileage jump is crazy. I think I can do it if I don’t try to be a hero, but man that’s going to be a long time on my feet.

Wish me luck! I’ll probably broadcast on my runtastic account so you can cheer me on should you like.

I like this one better, though. So, without further ado, my workout smoothie.

You will need
30 roasted, unsalted almonds
1T chia seeds
1T flax seeds
1/3c greek yogurt
1/3c plain yogurt
8 oz milk or soy milk
5 oz plain coconut water
1 banana
1 clementine
8 or 9 ice cubes
small pinch of anise seeds

First crush all seeds with the almonds and the soy milk together. Once the seeds are fairly broken up, add all other ingredients and blend until desired consistency.

This one is not overwhelmingly sweet, which is my preference. You can add honey or another banana if you like. It’s a bit nutty.

The B vitamins and potassium from chia and coconut water, along with everything else, will really help you out of a hangover/post-workout recovery.

Actually one of my friends, Nick, called me out over twitter about not uploading anything for awhile. So I put together a short music video like so

I’m slowly figuring out what I’m doing on the video front. Like anything else, it just takes practice, the willingness to fail. Also the willingness to identify and delete stuff that just isn’t that good, while you’re editing.

We flew to Oklahoma to visit my wife’s dad. It was a fun trip and really neat to see flat lands once again. It can get a little claustrophobic living amongst the foothills, here. But it was also dry and cold and there was no green left in the world. We were all happy to come back to west of the Cascades where things are still green. We missed some rain and mist, and came back in time for the start of some sunny winter weather. Huzzah!

Still running, and am working my way up to a half marathon in March. Glad to live in the Pacific Northwest where it’s possible to train outside all year long!

Lastly, I purchased a new domain and am looking to migrate this site. Am tired of having a vaguely porn-sounding domain name. I will keep you appraised as things develop.

So, the fact that I actually decided to watch this video aside, I had a sudden kind of identity crisis, or switch or something. It’s like, I could totally grok what this guy was saying. He said something along the lines, ‘You know how you want to run or work out but you’re injured so you can’t. You just think about it a lot and it really bums you out”. And I totally empathized with him. I know that feel.

See, the reason I’m writing this down and exploring this is that my entire identity is wrapped up in my brain. I have a self image built on geekdom and science, art and theater, words and soft humanities. There is scant sports in my upbringing. I have had athletic friends but they were always a sort of “other”, something I was not.

In the last three months I’ve transitioned into someone who is passionate about a sport. I watch marathon videos, I read books about running, I look at training regimens. To a certain extent it’s still a “puzzle I’m figuring out” so I can see the connection. But from another level it feels like an orthogonal change.

Or maybe it’s actually an untapped resource I always had. Indeed, whenever I’ve tried to do something athletic (pushups, karate, now running) I’ve surpassed my own expectations. Maybe the thing is that we all have the brain and the brawn aspect at our disposal, but we pigeonhole ourselves.

I don’t have a serious injury preventing me from running. I only had a jammed leg that stretched some tendons, threw off my right IT band. Slight overuse injury.

But I haven’t run for 5 days and I feel like a caged beast. I’m preventing myself from running and it’s such a weird feeling. It feels like depriving myself of internet. I am not sure if this is a shared experience with you, but at least it is a common bond with athletes apparently, and I never ever thought I would have that.

* That is, kind of enviously

So the thing is I’ve run 5k distances before. I’ve run them on steeper routes than this morning. But this morning there were extra things I’ve not had experience with. What’s it like to run with other people? Run in a city? With other runners, some good some bad? At home I can control for the weather and just go home if things get tough. Not so much in Seattle. I have to make sure I have everything I need. Where is the route? Is it clearly marked off?

It turns out that running with other people is really, really awesome! When you’re by yourself it’s easy to get discouraged or focus on yourself. When you’re with a big group of strangers all doing the same thing, it’s really easy to get caught up in the run. I really enjoyed it, this morning. If my leg hadn’t been bothering me, it would have been perfect.

At the starting line I had “One Big Moment” by Orbital playing as I crossed and I seriously almost started crying because it was so emotional. I was so happy it was a nice day and I had everything I needed and felt like I could just run.

Next time I’m starting closer to the line. My official, gun time was 28 minutes, but my chip time was 40 seconds faster. Too many people in front of me. Also, too many people after the start going a lot slower than I wanted to go. So, people are a double-edged sword I suppose!

Anyway, I a really happy to have that done. Tonight my knee popped like it just needed to be cracked all along. Here’s hoping when the tendonitis dies down my legs will be good to go!

Related video:

(Sorry if there’s weird stabilization going on. I can’t get youtube to undo it.)

I was reading a post by Dale McGowan in which he describes telling “age stories” to his kids. His daughters pick an age and he tells the a story from his life, so they can know their dad. I like the idea, though it would feel a little narcissistic to me.

Anyway, at the end was a Five for Fighting video. Not a great song, but an okay song. The video triggered a memory of what it actually feels like to be a teenager. It was so visceral, I want to remember it. So ephemeral, I want to capture it here.

Five For Fighting – 100 Years by A-Simple-Girl

I was 17, I think it was fall. I was living with my Dad, moved to Indiana from Iowa just a few months prior. So, a new school and my senior year of high school. For some reason I was dating a sophomore. If I’m honest with myself, I think I was just lonely and out of place. And further I just wanted to date someone, anyone in high school before I was out of there. That was my only relationship.

I met her parents at her house in Michigan. The lived way out in the country across the train tracks. Had it been in town, it would have been the poor part of town. She had a poodle and wanted it to be a show dog. That seemed weird to me.

I remember taking her to St. Joseph and having my first real kiss. She smelled like foundation and makeup. We sat in the parking lot by Lake Michigan because it was fall and it was too cold to walk on the beach. Another occasion we went for a halloween hay ride. We hung out with some of her friends, I didn’t really have any.

Those days were filled with anxiety and hormones. As an adult you sort of forget how intense that is, but it’s so new and unexpected. If I think hard about it, my synaesthesia kicks in and the memories have the sensation of coldness, and indigo. The cold of fall at dusk, right after the sun has gone down, before it’s too dark to see each other. Wet leaves in damp grass. Old car smell.

I’m not sure what she hoped to get out of dating me. Maybe she thought I was a nice guy, maybe she wanted to date a senior. Who knows. At that age, you couch your motivations in colorful language about romance, partnership, or sexual prowess; but really you’re just trying things out and trying to fill needs you haven’t defined yet.

She ended up breaking up with me in an oblique way. I’d let her have my ring to wear on a chain — that was a thing they did at the school. She left it in my car when I dropped her off one day. It was heart breaking to find it there, and took me three days to finally confront her about it.

We both entered and exited the relationship as virgins. I presume she was, what with being a sophomore. Though perhaps not and in fact she broke up with me because she realized I really wasn’t as worldly as me being a senior in high school might indicate. There’s no telling. I was kind of a lump that year, and for awhile. For my part, I didn’t think she had enough maturity or perspective.

But you know, for a few weeks or months, it was really neat to realize that someone thought I was interesting. It was really neat to finally kiss a girl. It was really neat to have a person to give affection to. I’m glad for the experience. I wouldn’t go so far as calling it “first love”, but I will say that it was the first time I got a glimpse of what it might be like.

Well, I wish her well. I wish that old me well, too.

It’s a different guy writing that kid’s biography.

I heartily recommend this program to anyone. I mean, I’d run a mile or two on a treadmill before, but this is far and away different and more better. Just get out there and do it.

Also, running on hills is really hard.

I remember listening to “Mysterons” by Portishead when I was 17, senior year of highschool. I came back from my dad’s to visit my mom and brother over spring break.

I’d moved to Indiana and was lonesome for my old high school friends and the familiarity of Iowa and an old home. I didn’t think it through.

I arrived in Iowa, then spent a majority of the time playing a vector-based tank game on mom’s macintosh with Portishead’s album “Dummy” on repeat. I slept in late. The days seemed aimless. I hadn’t considered the reality of being the only one on vacation.

I visited my old high school. I don’t know what I wanted to accomplish by that. Everyone else was there for school, while I wasn’t. It had kind of the feel of “College Freshman Returns Triumphantly to High School”. Except I wasn’t from college, just Indiana.

It was neat to see old friends, but they couldn’t play; so, I went back to mom’s house and played on her computer. Listened to Portishead. Smoked a bit.

I was trying to prop myself up with things and decorations; outsider going back to his roots, listening to music my previous peers hadn’t heard of before, reveling in my faux-adulthood as a smoker — but dress and raiment aren’t load-bearing, and no one really cares about those things when you get right down to it.

This is a continual lesson for me, and it’s particularly galling. From my mouth I dislike using things to equate to quality and social stature, but from my behavior I seek to use them all the time. It’s just Bona Drag all over again.

So I’m trying to divorce that memory and just enjoy the Portishead.

And here’s a freeing thought to consider: If no one really cares what you like or what music you dig or what games you play, then you’re free to like whatever you care for. That makes me happy.

So I switched back to a rooted Captivate running Jelly Bean. And because a friend asked what I found detrimental about Windows Phone, I decided to list them out here, both for myself and for others.

Too many phantom screen taps
It is way too easy for me to accidentally swipe a carousel or tap a button with the heel of my palm while holding the device. The phone ended up feeling like a field of landmines to avoid. This can be resolved in software or with a better bezel design. As indeed it has been with the iphone and most android devices I’ve used.

Getting photos and files off is way harder than it needs to be
I’m not sure how it works on a PC or under Linux, but on a Mac one needs to install and run Windows Phone 7 Connector to sync the device. I would love to just browse the filesystem, but I have to go through a wonky file interface. And you have to do it in the right order. God help you if you plug the phone in before starting up the software.

So you start the program on the computer, then plug in your phone. Then you have to checkmark stuff in this quasi-filesystem pane to sync between the phone and computer. And then if you’ve transfered photos onto your machine there’s a further step where you have to wait for iphoto to finish importing. So what should be a click and drag step ends up taking around 10 minutes of actual time waiting for various pieces of software to finish.

Skydrive integration goes from “meh” to “what the hell?”
Like, it works, but gets in the way. I never wanted to use the built-in twitter thing to send an image, because Sky Drive seems geared to Sending People Into the Sky Drive Interface. E.g. I attach a pic to my tweet, or FB post. You, the viewer, click on the link and you get a heavyweight Sky Drive Experience. You get a skyrdrive shortened link, but it takes you to an interface with the resource rather than just the resource. At least yfrog, as whored up with adverts as it is, loads quickly.

Oh also, I couldn’t get videos to autoupload to Sky Drive. And if you manually upload they force you to downconvert from full resolution? What’s up with that? So my 720p video uploaded to skydrive is only ever at a crappy resolution.

Also, there’s a real feeling of “this is on Sky Drive, this is Local” that permeates. So though I want to stream music from the cloud I cannot. Though I want to stream my videos from the cloud, I cannot. I can’t even look at my uploaded photos without Going To Sky Drive specifically.

Video recording has problems
Speaking of video, when shooting relatively steady handheld video in bright light, the autofocus constantly does this thing where it goes out of focus then in focus again. Like someone new to camera work constantly adjusting the lens while shooting. Also sometimes it just doesn’t autofocus for literally about 30 seconds. Seriously, I have the cutest video of my daughter bouncing on a trampoline, but you can’t tell because it’s blurry for most of it.

Camera isn’t actually that good.
For having such a nice lens (I guess?), the photos sort of look like crap. Maybe they just talked it up too much, but I had higher expectations.

Marketplace problems
The marketplace/appstore thing doesn’t indicate what apps you’ve installed. If I search for something, there isn’t an indication in the list that says “installed” unless I view the app page.

There’s a real problem that most of the apps are also-rans in terms of quality. But I think they’re kind of hampered by the OS. I had an app for running that couldn’t operate in the background, so the timer stopped if I tried to snap a picture or do anything else while it was going. And if I try to SMS or mail the picture I just took, the OS helpfully kills the suspended running program, so I have no easy way to get back to where I was. As I understand it, this is a limitation of the operating system and how it handles background/suspend/resume. It definitely surprised me because I don’t think that workflow is that extraordinary.

Another example: In order to use last.fm/audioscrobbler you have to start listening to music and then run the last.fm app in the foreground. That’s… like… I mean, I want that to just happen ambiently. I don’t want to think about doing extra work.

Another example, and this illustrates something you take for granted too. When I search a map for “baja restaurant” I expect it will show, if not restaurants, at least places with “baja” or “restaurant” in the name. Ones that are around me, since I’m in a map program that knows where I am. If I do that search in Nokia Drive or Bing Maps, it kept jumping me to Baja Mexico. I live in Washington State. I did get results if I swiped back to my home, but jeez why the extra step? This continually happened to me in maps.

Bad UX makes limited space a huge issue
So I already said it’s a pain in the ass to get stuff off the camera. I also said it’s a pain in the ass to get videos to SkyDrive. So that means that 1) I avoided transferring stuff off the phone since it was a painful process, and 2) I couldn’t rely on The Cloud to save me. Thus the 16G, non-expandable space filled up really fast. A couple times I blindly deleted old videos (hoping I’d gotten them off already) just so I could capture a moment, such as the first time my daughter tried rollerskates.

Whither headset controls?
Lastly, the thing that kind of broke the experience for me. I know the headphone controls thing is kind of not widely supported. But at the very least the play/pause or mic feature has worked on all my phones from Blackberry, iPhone, Android, etc. Even the original Razr if I recall correctly.

The only way that the mic button worked on my Lumia was if the screen was actively on. I mean, that’s just… if I’m looking at the screen I don’t need to use the mic button. I guess the screen turns on if there’s an incoming call, but that button works as a play/pause button too. And it does, in fact if I have the screen up. But when running you can’t tap the mic button to pause the music.

–

So all of those aggravations were resolved going back to my old phone. Jelly Bean is a pretty neat OS, too. But it’s really too bad because the Lumia is the best touchscreen phone I’ve ever used; it’s just bad at everything else that’s supposed to make it a smartphone.

Towards the end, as my wife can attest, I was saying, “Did they even use this phone? Do they use phones like this?” And I’m still trying to figure that out. Maybe I just don’t use my phone the way the winphone’s target market uses their phone. It’s like the designers and developers use their phones like, “And now I am making a call. And now I am done with a call so I am looking at some pictures. And now I am done looking at pictures here so I will look at pictures on the cloud. And now I will go to Facebook. etc”

Perplexing.

Anyway, those are my reasons for switching back. Holla.

1. Story

One important thing is to have a narrative, something you’re trying to say. A lot of times I’m just trying to give an impression of what it’s like to be on my route. Sometimes I want to show some amusing things. Sometimes I have an anecdote or rumination I’d like to convey. But overall, there needs to be something for the viewer to hang their hat on. I’m not very good at it so far, but it’s really fascinating to try to piece together footage into something coherent.

2. Throw stuff away
I’ve learned in still photography that one thing you really need to do is delete most of your photos. If you can’t say definitively that some picture was crap, you aren’t going to learn how to make it better. As long as you keep crap photos around you’re sort of saying, ‘well this was okay I guess’. It’s extra important in video, it seems, because that long shot you liked of the ocean is only meaningful to you because you were there, it’s just boring to the viewer unless you can tell them why it should be interesting. If you can’t do that, you have to delete it.

A corollary is that less is best. You can give the feel of the ocean (I guess an “establishing shot”) with about 3 seconds or less of footage. Anything more is a waste of time and attention.

3. Change perspectives

There’s a reason people use jump cuts: it keeps things interesting. Sometimes I bore myself watching me go on and on. If I cut a bit of silence so there’s a sort of jump, it keeps me engaged in what I’m watching.

4. Delete the ums
Exactly what it says. Cut out the parts of the video where you say “um” or “uh”. Even better: don’t say “um” and “uh”.

—-
I guess the main portion of what I’ve learned so far is to delete stuff. I’m getting pretty good at that (seriously, I have maybe 45 minutes of monologue and lovingly slow pans across the trail you haven’t seen). Next up is trying to get a more cohesive narrative and find a solution to the whole bouncy camera thing. I don’t like the imovie/youtube shakiness adjustments because all it does is zoom in and rotate to compensate for jumpiness.

Maybe I can spring for something like an HD Hero2 Camera

My context is a really fast ramp-up on a project at work. I also have a tight deadline. I also am taking on some managerial responsibilities for this project. And amidst all this my new endeavor with running, as well as getting ready for a trip to British Columbia for my 4^th anniversary. I feel stressed and am having difficulty relaxing.

So, with that as the frame, the following really resonated with me.

Buddha told a parable in sutra:

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

Am I the man? Am I the vine he grasps? Am I the mice? Yes, and also I am the strawberry, I am the tigers, and I am the chase.

It’s easy to feel as if you’re not really doing it because you’re just doing intervals or what have you. But the fact that I’m actually out there every morning doing different levels of a run says otherwise. That made me happy.

The reality is you have to pace yourself. It’s not really a lot easier to go more slowly, but you can endure for a lot longer if you get a rhythm with your footfalls.

Today I was able to tackle the 7% grade without slowing down. Wanted to run up it, but I was too fast on the prior section and ended up in the brisk walk interval at the hard part. There’s always Friday!

What helps is good music. I picked Chemical Brothers, “One Too Many Mornings” as a source song and let itunes genius make a playlist. It worked out surprisingly well!

Also makes it a lot harder to give up when I’m being public about it. So there’s that. It’s a kind of accountability.

Also the video blog thing is kind of interesting. I’ve never tried to do a sort of clip show before, so that’s another avenue to teach myself something new. I have no actual training in how to construct a compelling video, but I’m learning some things that work and some things that don’t.

Probably the most important, and most obvious in hindsight, is having a list of things you’re going to talk about. There’s a reason actors have scripts: ad-libbing doesn’t come across well, typically. So that’s another fun thing.

Looking forward to the next week!

p.s. the autotranscript is kind of nuts

This is also my first time attempting to video blog anything I’ve ever done.

It’s really weird to watch yourself talk and realize how incoherent you are when you just freestyle. I say “um” and “so” a lot, and I tend to have a weird cadence when I speak. Kind of odd.

Anyway, this is a sort of half-assed review of a windows phone app for keeping track of your couch to 5k progress (Total Couch to 5K). Now that I’ve done kind of a first iteration, I can think about mapping out a real format for the reviews.

The point here is you can kind of fake it if you do a little research and just throw caution to the wind.

First off, I based my chai recipe off this recipe from Whole Foods

It asks for cardamom. I didn’t have that. However, you can fake it with cinnamon and nutmeg. Maybe a little ginger. I also didn’t have whole ginger, so I used ground which is quite different. But someone on the net suggested adding it later to soften the effect.

Lastly, I didn’t have black tea, but I did have Yogi brand “Perfect Energy” tea, which has black tea and several other spices in it.

Thus, my ingredients list went:

1 cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp cinnamon + 1/2 tsp nutmeg + 1 pinch ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground ginger
6 whole cloves
3 pinches of anise seed
4 whole black peppercorns
3 cups water
2 single-serve tea bags
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 cup low-fat milk

So you what you do is combine all the spices except 1/2 tsp of ginger and the sugar into a pot with 3 cups of water. Bring it to a boil, then simmer for first 5 minutes. Then add the 1/2 tsp of ginger, stir, then let sit for 10 minutes to steep.

[I strained first before adding the tea bags, to prevent them from getting clogged up.]

Strain the brew through something like a sieve or a coffee filter [I used the grounds holder on a percolator pot]. Put spice tea back into pot and bring to a boil, then remove from heat and steep 2 tea bags for 5 minutes or so.

Remove the bags, then add a cup of milk and the brown sugar. Stir, and serve.

It made two large coffee mugs for me. Tasted like good chai!

Mount Rainier is one of the most impressive things I have ever seen. It looms on the horizon like a strange and silent god.

The mountain isn’t always apparent. It disappears depending on the haze and distance, so you forget there’s this huge thing sitting around. And then on a clear day you suddenly notice it there. You wonder how it could have remained hidden — it’s too big to be easily lost, yet it was invisible just a day ago.

It doesn’t help knowing that when it finally erupts it could potentially kill millions of people.

I am a big fan of this pen.

This state is kind of bizarre. Two hours east of where we live is essentially desert conditions. This was taken near Ginkgo Petrified Forest.

Very hot. Very arid.

Then you drive back west and gradually the world becomes lush and green, until you reach the dripping expanse this side of the Cascades.

You should see even farther east, though. It’s all rolling steppes and high grasslands where wheat and grains are grown. The ground rises to the sky in a long, slow wave with the interstate and irrigation sprinklers the only signs of civilization.

On our trip out one year ago we stopped at an inexplicably Viking-themed greasy spoon for burgers and shakes. Then headed back on the road only to see a lone unicyclist making the long climb up a hill on the interstate. At the restaurant someone was talking about striking it rich in their dig. Maybe it was natural gas?

Farther east is Spokane. Not much to say about that. A cop pulled up next to me and waved for me to go slower than 1 mph over the limit. Jerk.