tyler's take

Yesterday morning I saw Wendy at the gym and we chatted a bit. She texted me later to tell me about about a public star-gazing party going on that evening that she’d heard about on the radio; she said she and Jon were planning to go.

Jon called me later and invited me over for the meal he was making prior to nightfall (those guys are great). Just for fun I grabbed my photo maker as I was heading out the door. On my way over to Jon and Wendy’s there were still a few clouds in the clearing sky and one of them presented a nice opportunity for a tricky shot (texting while driving may be illegal, not so sure about photography …).

Dinner was great. Jon did some expert grilling with an improvised marinade made from a hot sauce that Eddie Reese had introduced to us last month. Jon and Wendy can really cook!

When night fell we made our way over to St. Stephens high school. The star party was happening on the football field, and what a crew we found when we finally arrived. The biggest collection of astro-geeks that I’ve seen since my college days when I took a paleo-astronomy class for my social science credit (or was it fine arts?). Most were quite friendly and very willing to share the views from their fancy scopes. I grabbed a few long shutter shots of my own:

While I had my camera out I took a picture of the nearly half moon. Previously some doofus had seemingly tried to blind Wendy by telling her to look into his telescope while it was pointed at the moon without a light filter (the moon is actually quite bright). My photo
is definitely lower resolution, but also less blinding.

Being at this star party reminded me of the last star party I had attended, which was hilariously narrated by some Tennessee state park rangers during the Bicycle Ride Across Tennessee over the autumn equinox of 2005. I did that ride with David and his dad, and my mom and dad, and thinking of that reminded me that my parents had just gotten home from successfully completing their 8th (and allegedly last!) Oklahoma Freewheel.

Looking deep into the wonders of the universe from a dark hilltop on a starry night, and stirring up all these memories reminded me of how blessed I really am to have (and have had) such wonderful friends and family. And that made me think that today would be the first day for my own father to be only on the receiving end of these words: Happy Father’s Day, dad!

but today there is lots of sun, thankfully.

and Christmas comes 361 days of the year!

Yesterday I swam my penultimate postal swim of 2009 (and possibly my life): the 6000 yard swim in a 25 yard pool (for those who prefer some help with the maths that’s 240 lengths or 120 laps). I somehow talked a real-life professional athlete into doing the long swim with me (what a sport!). Here’s a shot where he’s all smiles (yes this *is* before the swim, but there were still some smiles after):

Everyone needs a counter/timer/verifier for a postal and we each had our own. One of us was somehow talented enough to talk the 2009 Wisconsin Ironman Champion of the World into being his counter. The other one of us had to make do with the only other person who was willing to sit still indoors for over an hour on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and record splits every ~30 seconds (thanks Larry!).

Race preparation
Apparently, a pro triathlete prepares for a long pool race slightly differently than a pure swimmer does. For example, while we both followed our regular training routines through Thursday, one of us trained hard in swim practice on Friday, but sat out a portion of the hard stuff, then swam easy on Saturday and followed that with the regular dryland routine, but did some of that with super-light weights and bands. The other one of us did who-knows-what crazy training on Friday, did a long, long ride on Saturday, and then did a hard ride on Sunday morning *right before* the 6k swim (it shall be left as an exercise for the reader to determine which is which).

Race Report
We swam side-by-side in two adjacent lanes, and both started from a push at exactly 5 minutes after straight-up noon with absolutely zero prior warmup in the pool (this zero-warmup strategy seems to work well for me, for others not so much).

For suits we both wore similar all-textile Finis Hydrospeed legskins (still legal until at least January!). Some people can tolerate wearing a full bodyskin for a long race like this, but I find that even a 1500 is far enough to let the suit cut me up fairly substantially. For example, the TYR Sayonara that I wore for the 1500m swim portion of the Austin Tri cut me fairly well on both lats, as well as rubbed off most of the top layer of the back of my neck where the zipper cord wanted to be (I suppose some kind of body lube might help with the chafing, but I’ve never tried it). The Finis legskin ended up working well, but whoever designed the super-short booty part needs to go back with the tape measure and rethink it a bit (i.e. not all swimmers are plumbers, and big … erm … “gaps” let in a lot of water, which is not a good thing for cutting down on drag). Fortunately, the suits had a bit of stretch in them and getting them wet seemed to help bridge the gap (so to speak). Overall, the legskin did provide a lot of good muscle compression, and did seem to help ward off fatigue.

In general, I felt fairly strong the whole way and my pacing was fairly steady. I did not finish the swim under the hour mark (and going in I did not expect to), but I did go significantly further at the hour than I had last January, which made me feel pretty good about my current conditioning … at least, my distance conditioning … we’ll have to wait and see about the sprint races!

Immediately after touching the wall on my last lap I found my triceps and lats to be very sore, but my legs felt fine even though I had kicked quite a bit (quite possibly this lack of soreness in the legs was due at least partly to the compression provided by the legskin). From past experience with other long swims I anticipated the upper body soreness to carry on for at least a day or two, but after a short swimdown in the pool (only 300 or 400 yards) I found most of the soreness has dissipated. By the next morning I felt relatively back to normal, but this may have been partly due to the awesome post-swim Taco optimization that took place with the two swimmers and one counter (optimize in 45? I think we made it).

As far as postals go, there’s only one left for me: the 3000 yard swim (25 yard pool). I have exactly 4 weeks from yesterday to get it done, and this time I need to convince two more guys, or one more guy and two gals, to do it with me so we can make a “relay” out of it (technically, it’s an aggregate swim not a relay, as there is no exchange). The 3k actually should be easier to persuade folks to do than the 6k, but time’s marching on, and there are not that many more opportunities for open lanes in the TSC … we’ll have to wait and see!

Tuesday morning I skipped most of my normal swim workout to help out a friend, and consequently arrived at the pool about an hour later than typical (to run with friends after practice … I did not go all that way to swim for 15 minutes). This unusual timing proved rather serendipitous.

After briefly crossing paths with Ande in the parking garage (apparently he got out early), I began crossing the street to the swim center, and as I looked around to check for traffic I noticed other things.

To the east I saw the rising sun punching crepuscular rays through the opening rifts in a recently passed thunderhead. As I let my eyes follow these rays to the western vista I perceived a most beautiful apparition: a nearly full rainbow glowing brightly in blue sky above the distant dark background of an advancing storm.

Again, I was hamstrung with only my lesser recorder. Alas. It does at least convey the general idea.

After crossing to the other side of the street I saw one end of the rainbow coming down seemingly in the pool (olympic gold inside):

Looking back towards the capitol I found the other end (isn’t that where they keep the rest of the gold?)

Here they are in a pseudo-panoramic digital collage:

The rest of last weekend turned out to be about as beautiful as Friday evening. Saturday provided even more gorgeous sky shots.

And even the evening proved to be worthy of some imaging.

Sunday got off to something of a slow start. I had intended to get up early and run around the lake, since I haven’t seemed able to completely kick my cross training habit yet. But perhaps my body was asserting its opinion that running rather brutalizes it, as I ended up sleeping in until the sun was high enough to make the run seem unfun (and hence, not done). Instead of running around in a big circle downtown I instead stayed home, mowed the lawn, and trimmed back the bramble.

After that I thought it might be time to assess the growing things that I planted so many months ago.

By autumn, the meyer lemon tree, which at one point in the spring had over 100 blossoms, had only a sole surviving fruit:

The topsy turveys were something of a mixed bag. The serrano was somewhat fruitful, but not more than had it grown upside up:

The santa fe pepper produced only three or four peppers during the entire summer (but aren’t they cool looking? I think I’ll grow these again, but in the ground or a regular pot next time):

For most of the summer I was ready to accept the tomatillo as a total failure. It grew far more green leaves than either of the peppers (by a factor of 3 or 4), but never flowered. Still, I kept watering it (and it kept needing water). I suppose after several months of it essentially ignoring me I was not quite ready to give up on it (is that tenacity or just stubbornness)? Then, sometime around my birthday I noticed that it was actually flowering! Of course, since then it’s basically back to ignoring me. The flowers (amazingly) are still there, but as yet no fruit. It *has* been a really hot summer after all (far too hot for good growing). Perhaps the cooler fall weather will be more productive … I think I’m not quite ready to give up yet:

Finally, at some point over the summer I stuck a pineapple top in a pot. They’re rather slow to flower (2 years or so) but it’s fairly well taking off. I like to watch them grow:

Then I decided that it was probably time to change the oil in my car …

I took this shot hand held (no tripod), basically in the dark (it was after 9 PM local time), under a slight breeze, no flash, with my 50mm portrait lens. Sure, there’s some background noise and it would have been better with better light. But considering the conditions, I think it kinda turned out.

I think if I get one more “cutest picture known to man” comment about Dexter I’ll have to open up my own studio (or maybe just a franchise).

The Dexter

Pango tango

The Chatmeleon (how *does* he do that?)

the spaz-o-maxic

Syd the elder

Big Tex of the western highlands

Meowzers