Bandelier

Bandelier national monument is about two hours away from Albuquerque. I have been there several times, always liked it, and want to spend more time there, but always seem to have only a few hours. It is similar to Mesa Verde, but much smaller and not as spectacular. Anika and her friend from Mills wanted to go see it and I tagged along to take some pictures. The sun was low and only occasionally hidden by clouds. We were there early enough to get some of the warm colors photographers like, before the sun could not reach down into the deep Frijoles Canyon anymore. You can see the whole set on my Picasa album.

The very fist time I was in Bandelier was in 1984 when my friend Jürg visited there on our grand USA tour. We've had had some trouble with our VW bus and kept getting flat tires. Just as we drove into Bandelier, we had another one. This time the culprit was a set of keys someone had lost. They were laying in the sandy drive and one of them pointed straight up, punching another hole into our tire.
Unbelievably, that's almost 30 years ago! That's when my second life started with a six-month visit to North America, and then continued a few years later with me moving to the USA.

These Bandelier pictures turned out okay. Some of them could have used a little bit more sunlight. For the one above I was waiting for the sun to come back out behind the clouds, but it did so only partially. Taking pictures at sunset is stressful. Should I wait for the light to get better or rush to the next site in hopes that there is enough time to get a good picture there as well?
It was a good time of the year to be there to take pictures. I had hoped for more snow on the ground to accentuate the pictures, but was compensated with a park that had a manageable number of tourists. I definitely have to go back and try again.

Did you know that the national monument was named after Adolph Francis Bandelier? And that he had been born in Switzerland? Another guy from Bern who likes New Mexico ;-) Here is another interesting article about him.
So, this brings us full circle: Swiss leaving their home country, going to Bandelier national monument, and ending up back in Europe. Bandelier in Spain, and me in Ireland.

Christmas

Christmas light display in Hoffmantown Albuquerque

Happy Christmas everyone. They say happy instead of merry in Ireland. I like that better. Merry seems more something out of Robin Hood. Google tried to avoid that whole problem by wishing everyone happy holidays, which some people took as a declaration of war on Christmas.
I view Christmas as a time to be off from work and spend time with family and friends. Those of you whom we haven't seen in the last few days: Peace, and we hope you are having a good time around this time of the year (whatever you may call it ;-)

Making a Picture

We're back in Albuquerque for the holidays and I had a little bit of time working on a picture. Click on it to get the full-size version. I got the idea when Lee Ann and I were walking through a Christmas market in Dublin. An artist had stitched together panorama pictures to create some cool images. I tried to recreate that. It came out okay, but is not exactly what I saw in Dublin. I need to play with this some more.
I started out with a bunch of postcards shown below and then arranged them to solve the puzzle.

Well, actually, I started out with the picture below. I took it last month when I was at Supercomputing. Kurt and I had gone up to Ensign hill park one evening and took a few pictures. Because it was getting dark, I put the camera on a rock and chose a long exposure time. That worked okay, but the picture was crooked since the rock surface was not level. For the picture in last month's post I rotated it and then cropped it. For this project I only rotated it to make the horizon level, but did not crop it. Instead, I put a frame around it.

Then I cut out the smaller sections, added a border to each section, and added a background. This took some time, since I wasn't sure how to get the effect I wanted, and two gigabytes of memory really isn't enough to process that many layers efficiently. The computer was swapping quite a bit. BTW, I use the gimp to this kind of work.

Sunrise and Sunset

Over the last week or so we had some very nice weather. Cold, but sunny and pretty. It just didn't last very long each day. The picture above is around nine o'clock in the morning. The kids are heading for school, frost is on the ground, and the sun is just now beginning to clear the houses across the park. By four o'clock it is well tucked away below the horizon.
This will be the last blog post this year from Ireland. The day after tomorrow we'll head back to Albuquerque to spend the holidays with our kids, but without our cats. A neighbor's teenage daughter is going to "mind" our cats while we are gone. We were discussing whether to activate the alarm system or not. Lately, a lot of house alarms have been sounding off in the neighborhood. Everybody has one because it lowers the home owners insurance, but none is connected to the police. Alarms go off for hours and nobody shows up. According to Dave Barry, the sound of a house alarms is reassuring. If a burglary was in progress, the thieves would have disabled the alarm a long time ago.
There were some break-ins lately around here. It seems one of our neighbors across from the park likes to leave her front door open; even when she goes out shopping. Times have changed. You can't do that anymore around here.

Sometimes clouds are good: a good sunrise needs some backdrop.

Not sure which one of those got burglarized.

Paperwork

Knocking at the Garda station

We have been going to the Garda (police) station a lot lately. Not the one in Enniskerry pictured here, but the one in the town center of Dublin. It is the place where you get visas and residence and work permits. It's a very busy place. We went there twice and were told that they had run out of tickets for the day. The ticket is a number that determines your place in the waiting queue. At another time we were there and were told that we could go in early, before all the foreign students applying for their visas at the beginning of the school semester.

Because Lee Ann is married to a Swiss citizen, she doesn't need a work permit. But she does need a stamp in her passport and a picture ID-type card with her finger prints encoded in the embedded chip to prove that she doesn't need a work permit. On our most recent visit to the Garda station in Dublin we finally accomplished that. I had to go along. It was not enough for Lee Ann to show them my passport.

Now Lee Ann can legally work here. She can also stay here, but only temporarily. As the wife of a Swiss citizen she has the right to reside with me here in Ireland, but that too, requires a form. In this case a residence card. We are halfway there with the paperwork for that, but not quite. The main obstacle remaining is proof that she has taken up residence in Ireland. They send her mail to the house we are renting here, and Lee Ann is responding with mail stamped here, but that is not enough. We need a utility bill that has her name on it and some other thing from the county board that oversees property rentals.

The electricity and gas bill comes only every other month. Given how they run their business, I'm not sure why the Irish government places so much trust in them verifying that Lee Ann actually lives here. It's not like Airtricity comes by and checks up on Lee Ann. They don't even read the electric meter. In many places that is done electronically, and at ours we read it and enter it on their web page. Inspectors do official checks a couple of times a year. Lee Ann and I called Airtricity together on the phone and both affirmed that she lives here now.

A few of those still exist.

It's time consuming at frustrating, but we are making progress. In the meantime it is almost time to pack for our trip back to Albuquerque. We'll spend Christmas and New Year's there.

Supercomputing trip

Part of the Supercomputing conference show floor.

Earlier this week I came back from a two-week trip to the USA. In three short weeks, Lee Ann and I will head back to Albuquerque to meet up with the kids and friends over Christmas and New Year's. The main purpose of my last trip was to attend and give a talk at the annual Supercomputing conference. It's a large conference with about 10,000 attendees each year. Different from most computer science conferences, it also has a large show floor with lots of vendors demonstrating their latest products, universities and research labs explaining their latest work. Because it is the premier conference in our field, it attracts a large attendance and is a great opportunity to network. I was lucky enough to have one of my papers pass peer review and get accepted for presentation at the conference.

When I arrived in Salt Lake City, a storm was bringing this Winter's first snow to the region. It was nice to be cold and see with my eyes that there was a reason for it ;-)

Supercomputing moves around within the USA each year. This year it was in Salt Lake city. Next year it will be in Denver. I flew from Dublin to New York and visited IBM Research at Watson. A lot of people there were still out of power from the storm Sandy hitting the region.
While on the East coast I also visited Michela Taufer at the University of Delaware and gave a talk at their weekly colloquium. Then it was off to Salt Lake for Supercomputing. And then I spent a weekend with Anika in the bay area.

Kurt and I went up a nearby hill one evening to take a picture of Salt Lake City at dusk.

Supercomputing was, as usual, interesting and very busy. This year I spent much more time in the technical sessions than one the show floor. There were quite a few interesting papers presented. Also as usual, there were quite a few people I ran into whom I haven't seen in a while (or as recently as a week ago) and the days were long with discussions going on late into the night over dinner and drinks.
It felt almost like a mini vacation after that to fly to Oakland to visit Anika at Mills. She is, unbelievably, in her third year there and we had a great weekend together.

Down at the wharf with Golden Gate in the background.

We visited San Francisco a couple of times -- once to have dinner with Dilma who used to lead our group out of Watson, but then left for a job in the bay area -- but also drove down to Monterey to see the aquarium and have dinner in Santa Cruz. The pictures from the aquarium are on picasa.

At the Monterey aquarium.

Somewhere in between all this traveling, we learned that Anika had been accepted to spend her semester abroad in Leeds, England; a 30-minute flight to Manchester and a car rental, or a boat trip and a short train ride away from Dublin.

Anika in her new Winter coat.

While we were in San Franciso, we came across this charming little hotel. Given some of the people we saw in that area, it is probably a fine place to stay. We needed some change for the tram down to Fisherman's Wharf and thought about buying a donut at Donut World to get it. After seeing the clientele there we decided to go to the California Bakery around the corner. Still a little bit iffy, but yummy ;-)

I wonder how much business they get?

I tried to find the hotel above (it's on Stevenson street) online to see what they charge and what the reviews are like, but was unsuccessful. On the other side of it is Market street and the building next door houses an adult cinema. Next to that is the Aida hotel, which may share a wall or a door to Hotel One. The reviews for Aida are amazing (follow the link to Tripadvisor): It gets five excellent reviews and is ranked 198th out of 237 hotels in San Francisco. That's despite that some of the reviews mention cockroaches, bloody bedsheets, and "scary people hanging around at the hotel door"! Man, and Hotel One doesn't even make it onto Tripadvisors. What snobs!

Dublin Marathon

My medal and pre-race notes.

Earlier today I finished the Dublin marathon. I had trained (reasonably) well for it and felt I should be able to come in well under four hours. But things didn't work out that way and now I am vacillating between "I hate running, and marathons in particular" and "Dang it, now I have to do it again next year to beat four hours."
This was my first race ever where they had pacers. These were runners who would run the marathon at a certain speed and ensure that they come in just a few seconds before some fixed time. They carried backpacks with flags sticking out of them with the goal time printed on them.
My plan was to follow the 3 hour and 45 minute group as long as I could and not let the 4 hour crowd pass me. That might have been  a little bit ambitious, but I felt it was a reasonable strategy. My training in recent months had gone OK, and my training plan predicted a 3:35:31 race. I knew I could not do that, but thought 3:45 might be possible and in the worst case I fall back and cross the finish line just under four hours.
14,350 people registered. I have never taken part in an event this large. By the time I showed up for my wave, the corral was packed. I was about 30 yards behind my pacers. Then the whole group moved to the start line and I was about 100 yards behind them. For the first two miles I didn't see them anymore and it was hard to catch up. There were runners everywhere and where the streets narrowed it was impossible to pass. It was easier on the wide boulevards, but even there you had to time your steps, wait for an opening, and squeeze through. After two miles I caught a glimpse of their flags going around a corner in the distance. It took me another four miles to catch up. When I did, I was able to slow down a little, but it seems a lot of people wanted to finish this marathon in 3:45. The space around the pacers was packed.
At eight miles I did an assessment. I had to work at it, but it was not impossible for me to keep up with the pacers. I was careful no to get ahead of them because I knew that going even faster would kill me in the last third of the run. Things were going great. I was dreaming of taking off near the end and leaving the pacers behind, and happy thinking that even if I had to slow down to a more comfortable pace, I had plenty of space in front of the 4:00 group.
When I run, something always hurts. This time it was the ball of my right foot just behind the big toe. But adrenalin was flowing, I was passing people, and I kept with my pacers. In hindsight, I should have paid attention to this pain. By the time I got home, it was a big, huge, bloody blister. I say four inches in diameter. Lee Ann thinks it is less than that; more the size of a grape. Still large and very painful, though. I haven't had a blister that size in decades, and I'm not sure why I got it. I worn these socks many times. The shoes are fairly new, but I used them in training for some short and medium runs and one twenty miler.
While I was ignoring my foot, I think my subconscious was adjusting my gait to minimize the pain. At mile 14 immense pain shut through the back of my right upper leg and I had to stop. Standing hurt; walking hurt; a lot. I stretched and walked for a bit. Then I tried a light jog, dropped back to walking, and tried again. By mile 16 I was able to do a light jog, but my leg hurt, and every time I put my right food down onto that blister I saw stars. I'm used to things not going well in races, but this was the fastest transition from feeling great to completely miserable I have ever had.
I kept working on my "speed" and after a few more miles things improved a little, but the pain in my foot stayed for the rest of the race. My running form was not good and pretty soon pretty much everything hurt.
I had still a little bit of hope to make four hours. I promised myself that I would never, ever have to run another marathon, if I finished this one below that mark. Then, four miles before the finish line, 4:00 pacers and a million other runners passed me. That was a horrible feeling and I slowed down even more. From that point on, it was just about finishing the damn thing.
I came in just under 4:10. According to the results posted so far this puts me in the first half overall, first half of men, and first half of my age group. I'm happy about that. I beat more than 7,000 people plus all the ones who didn't participate. But it is still disappointing and it came at a price. I haven't been in this much pain for a long time. It's hard to judge, but this might have been worse than the Ironman last year.
I limped through the finish line and could only shuffle to the bag drop and the rendezvous point where Lee Ann was waiting. Everything hurt, I was dizzy, and I had to sit down for a while before I could exit the race finish area. It was fairly cold, but until now that was no problem. Now that I could not move fast enough anymore to keep myself warm, I was beginning to shiver and started to worry about hypothermia. It seems it took for ever, but we finally made it to the car, cranked up the heat and eventually got home.
Every time I do one of these races I get reminded that I actually don't care much for running and certainly not at the speed and distance these events require. I do it so I can eat what I like. I try to eat healthy, but when something is good I tend to eat too much of it. And once in a while I can't resist a magic muffin. A day like today easily burns the calories of several of those ;-)

Mgic muffins for sale at the local Spar.

Twenty

Near the end of August Anika turned twenty. I was reminded of that yesterday when I was processing some pictures and found a few from the big day on the memory card. Even Anika had forgotten that she is now twenty. When we skyped today it took her a moment to realize what I was talking about.
We were in Switzerland that day visiting my Mom. That trip had come unexpected -- we had planned to celebrate in Dublin -- but us jet-setters can easily hop on a plane to Zurich and be in a few hours in Bern. One of the advantages of living in Ireland.

Kathrin and Beat invited us over and got these beautiful cakes. It was a very nice evening. A lot has happened in those twenty years and it is amazing to see that tiny, fragile baby grow up into a young pretty woman. I am happy with they way things have turned out and proud. Happy birthday (again) Anika!

Finally here

Yeah, Lee Ann finally moved to Ireland! There were some unexpected delays, but last month it finally happened: I flew to Albuquerque and picked her and the cats up to come over here.
Ireland did its best to welcome her: Three days of solid rain and cold. I told an Irish co-worker today that I had brought Lee Ann over and he asked whether I was nuts to do this in October. He told me that April or May would be much better months for such a move.
I took the picture above picture a few days after the rain had cleared, but before jet lag had completely worn off. Yes, that is an American flag in the background. It is the one that belongs to the embassy located in Phoenix park.
Now we're following the red tape through the Irish bureaucracy. Because I am (also) a Swiss citizen, Lee Ann doesn't need a work permit. That's fine, except how do you exactly show no permit to a potential employers? She is also entitled to reside here but we need to submit our passports, marriage certificate, proof of residence, and a bunch of other forms. The end result will be a residence card, but it may take up to six months. Our documents should come back no later than one month from now. In the meantime, it is difficult for her to open a bank account or look for a job without her passport. We are making progress; Lee Ann now has the Irish equivalent of an SS number, which is only supposed to be used for social security services, but without which no bank account can be opened, a job started, and so on. We'll get there...
The cats are still wondering what exactly happened to them, but they are adjusting well. Lee Ann too this picture:

Corporations

I wanted to cancel my American Express card. They had pissed me off, charge a foreign transaction fee, and an annual fee. I made sure the balance was zero and called them up. I had tried that a week before, but a web company put a yearly renewal charge on it, after I told them I don't want their services anymore. They apologized and reverted the charge.
On the phone, the Amex sales rep told me I had been a good customer for nine years and started adding incentives for me to keep the card. When I kept insisting to cancel it, he started to tell me how this would hurt my credit rating. But, after a while, he reluctantly canceled my card after having me say loud and clearly into the recording that this was indeed what I wanted to do; and realized what wonderful benefits I was giving up; and that it wasn't the fault of the sales rep.

A few years ago this would have infuriated me. Now that I have dealt with Irish companies, I wish they all worked like Amex.

I'm trying to cancel the phone and Internet service I had at the apartment. I have a different service provider now, but the old company insists on still billing me. I called them in June, but they said I cannot cancel due to a twelve-month contract. I wrote them a letter in July, and I sent them an email after being told to do that on their bulleting board. They do not respond to me at all. On the web page where I can view my outstanding balance, it is like a jo-jo. Last week it was 90 euro, then down to 33 euro. Today it is 370 euro.
Looking back at an old blog entry, I did know at one point that I had signed up for twelve months. I had forgotten that. However, there was a trial period and I canceled the new service before that deadline. Since I didn't keep that add-on, I certainly didn't want to keep the 12-month extension. They were sneaky, but now at least it would be nice for them to answer my letters.

I don't have my account at Ulster Bank, but a couple of month ago, their computer system went off-line after a software upgrade. Employers could not put salaries into their employees' accounts, people could not access their money or pay bills. For three weeks!
Ulster Bank belongs to the Bank of Scotland. While the computer crisis was going on, a radio host asked the CEO of the Bankf of Scotland whether he would forfait his year-end bonus. The CEO replied that he didn't think that would be necessary. The uproar was enormous and a few days later he said he would reconsider.

On to my bank... Once or twice a month I transfer money to the States. I use xe.com to do that. I'll transfer the euros to a local bank of theirs and they then transfer US Dollars into my account in the States. Last month this didn't work. My bank's online tool said I cannot make that transfer. After some back and forth I learned that my bank's computer system has a bank-wide limit of ten transfers to any one account at another bank. (Actually it is more complicated than that, but that would require another whole blog entry.) Anyway, xe.com, through their bank, must give my bank permission to send them money.
As far as I know this has not been resolved yet, but at least I know what is going on. But it cost hours on the computer and on the phone to get this far.

Fruitfellas.ie

Each household in Ireland has a black, a green, and a brown bin for trash, recyclables, and compost. You sign up with a private company to come empty those once in a while. My black one hasn't been emptied in more than five weeks.
I signed up with one online. They sent me a bill and I payed it. Nothing. I sent an email and Sinead said she needs the serial numbers off the bins. Sent those. She said someone would come and scan the bins (I think they have RFID tags) since the serial numbers were not in her system. Next trash collection day and nobody touches my bin. Complained again. Sinead asked whether I had attached a bin tag. No, what is that?
It turns out that the yearly fee is for compost and recyclable collection. For trash you pay by volume. You go to the corner store and buy a bin tag, attach it to your trash bin and leave it out. The trash collector empties the bin and rips off the tag. Repeat.
It took more than four weeks to learn that...
And why is there a tag and a serial number/RFID tag? Why not scan it when you empty it and charge me for usage?

Today, the only Irish company I like is Fruitfellas.ie. On Saturday mornings, at the crack of dawn, they go to the local food markets in Dublin and buy fresh fruit and vegetables. Then they come out to your house and bring you a crate full of good stuff.

Scotland

At mile 18 of today's run I was composing the start of this blog: "I'm sure you are glad to hear that today's 20-miler went much better than the previous ones and I came back with time to spare." Well, almost. At mile 18 I was 50 seconds behind, but thought I was ahead by that much and took it a little bit easier up that last hill about a mile from here. It's not really a hill, but a nasty incline. At least it seems nasty after anything over 12 miles.

We hiked up that hill. It was very steep.

So, I lost some more time and came in 2 minutes over my target time. But, no walking or other major problems. It was by no means easy, but I felt better than the last two times. I think it's mostly the shoes. Today I was wearing a newer pair that is not quite as worn and used as my usual pair.

I then walked over to the top of the fall.

Often when I run, cars stop and ask me for direction. Even if I wanted to, I can usually not help them. I don't know where the N4 is and how to get to it, and I'm on a timed run! On the other hand, if you want to cross the street, they don't stop for you. Often they honk their horns if you run on the street, in Phoneix park! It's full of pedestrians and bicycles, but lazy people drive in and commuters use it to cut through to the other side of Dublin. I think they should only allow buses and service vehicles and set up some parking lots on the edges. Then it would be a park.

Highland cows in Scotland

Our second week of vacation was in Scotland. You can see more pictures on my picasa album and Anika's. It rained quite a bit, but we got to see a neat corner of Scotland. To see all of it, would require much more time. It's a 40-minute flight from Dublin, so I know we'll be back.

Sunset near Kirriemuir where we stayed

Of Voires and Boiks

Last month the Tall Ships came to Dublin

Tonight I did my sprint exercises along the Royal Canal. I had my bike on one end of a stretch along the path I know is pretty exactly a mile long and more or less flat. I would sprint down and come back on a recovery jog and then get a drink of watter from the bottle on my bike.
I did this four times and at some point three guys had camped out near my bike putting their fishing rods into the water and drinking beer. When I stepped away from my bike after my sip of water, one of them asked me whether I had been checking on my bike. I told him No, just getting some water.
A few more words and they asked me what part of America I was from. I told them Albuquerque which prompted one of them to shout out "Breaking Bad". I have heard of that show and told him I don't watch it (I don't have a TV), but heard it was good. He said it was "the best f*ing thing on the telly." Then he asked me whether I liked De Voire.
So far into the conversation I understood about one or two words of every five these guys said. It was a lot of "What?" on my part and them repeating things that didn't become more understandable.
He called his buddy over and asked him how he said De Voire. He said "De Voire". After quite some time and many repetitions it became clear they were talking about a TV show called The Wire.
I told them to learn English and did another lap.
When I came back they asked me whether I liked Ireland. I told them I like the friendly people and also they way they talk, although I cannot understand it. He explained to me that it was the Doblin accent and I told him it was Dublin and bike, not boik. One of them chimed in "yeah, boycycle!"
He also told me that the other problem was that they were commoners, not educated people, although one of them had gone to welding school. He asked where I lived and when I told him Castleknock, he said "Noice" with a captial N! It is a nice area, but I'm not sure it deserves a capital N. So I told him that until recently I had lived in Mulhuddart (where the murder rate is somewhat higher) and the welder explained that this was where he works.
Earlier I had been thinking to ask them whether they couldn't hear the difference in speech between the shows they watch and the way they talk. Turns out that wasn't necessary: they can speak and imitate the American accent quite well as I was leaving when they were making fun of me with my "Wire" from "Albuquerque", "South of Colorado".

Another unrelated picture from the Tall Ship festival. Didn't have a camera with me to take a picture of the De Voire guys, and it was too dark anyway.

Vacation in England

In Lincoln

This Summer we vacationed for a week in England and another in Scotland. I posted the pictures I took in England on picasa. Anika took some very nice ones. You can see them here.
Not much really happened. We drove around quite a bit to visit various towns and mansions. In most of the latter it would have been difficult to take pictures inside, but it was usually not allowed anyway. It was relaxing.

I like the interplay of the evening light with the tree leaves on the colorful facades.

We had exchanged our timeshare week for a condo next to a golf course in Beltonwood near Grantham. It was very nice but a bit out of the way. Most of the tourists here seemed to be British people. Certainly not the usual Disney World crowd. (I guess a subset would be the proper term.)
I tried to keep up my running as much as possible, but it was not always possible to find the time, energy, or suitable routes. I'm back on a more regular schedule now and managed to finish my 20-miler on Sunday properly, although I was still a little bit slow.

We visited some cool, ancient pubs.

I got a blister on that run and thought maybe it is time to get new running shoes, especially since I did a steep hike and walked ankle deep through a Scottish moor in them (see next blog post ;-) After 300 to 400 miles the midsole starts wearing out, which can lead to painful runs and injuries. I looked through my training log. I have run 270 miles since the Achill half marathon. Another 250 since the start of my training program for the Dublin marathon in May, and another 125 miles at the beginning of the year. I have another 335 miles to go before Dublin, so by the end of the year I should be well past the 1,000 mile mark!
Until I had added all this up I felt like a slacker. Now I don't feel so bad anymore. Math is great! At the moment my short and easy runs are 10 or 11 miles. I do two of those per week, a technical run (tempo, sprints, or hills) midweek, and a long run on Sundays. I guess it adds up.

I took the ferry from Ireland to Great Britain to meet up with everyone else.

I remember only a few years ago dreading 8-mile runs. Now I worry about my 20s, but 8 is really no problem anymore (unless they are tempo runs. I hate those.) On the other hand, it is not that long ago that I started running. Only six years ago Bart talked me into doing the Socorro triathlon. I couldn't run and even a half mile caused severe side stitches and coughing. Now its a love/hate relationship. I still don't particularly like running, but I do like the great feeling a day or two afterward.
And just yesterday I read this article that says that people who become active in their middle age still reap enormous benefits. You may not live that much longer, but the onset of serious or chronic conditions is delayed until much later in live. Of course, they didn't subtract all those long hours you are in pain on your runs, but the math probably still comes out in favor of exercise.

End of Summer

I wrote this last week, but only now had time to publish it...

Mounds at Knowth with passage tombs

Sorry for not writing this long. It has been a very busy Summer with lots of trips. Until last the previous week Anika was here and we visited Newgrange and Knowth a few weeks ago. The whole area is a UNESCO world heritage site. These are 5,200 year-old burial mounds. Older than the Egyptian pyramids and fairly sophisticated. Depending on the mound, they are aligned with the Summer or Winter solstice. At Newgrange there is a lottery for about twenty people to be inside the mound on one of the mornings around December 21st. For a few minutes the passage aligns with the rising sun and the light reaches into the heart of the mound, illuminating the spot where five millennia ago the cremated remains of people who had died were presented to the sun to allow passage into the afterlife.

Although there are stones with markings from that time, nobody really knows what these people believed or why they built the mounds. They did a good job, though. No rain water has penetrated the tombs for thousands of years. That, in spite of many peoples coming afterwards and using the mounds for their own purposes. Houses, moats, and whole castles were built on them. Sometimes escape tunnels and places to hide were dug. But overall the mounds have survived very well.
The tours for the two main sites leaving the visitor center at Bru na Boynne are very interesting. You can see some more pictures on my picasa page.

On Sunday I went running. I have been doing it, but my training schedule had to bend and twist quite a bit to accommodate travel and weather conditions. My goal is to run the Dublin Marathon at the end of October. Sunday I was supposed to go for twenty miles, which I did, but I had to walk the last three. As I was dragging myself defeated out of Phoenix park, an old lady walked on the path toward me. Just as we were crossing each other she turns toward me and asks "Did you win the race today?"
I was still trying to figure out why I hadn't been able to finish my run and just stared at her. She said "There was a race, you know, here in the park this morning." I think there had been a 10k earlier in the day, so I finally said that I had not participated in the race. As soon as she heard me say that she told me "Of course you wouldn't. You are not Irish." and walked off. The tone of her voice clearly indicated that only an Irish could participate in or win this race ;-)
Looking at the race results, a Scotsman won the race, which may be close enough to Irish for the old lady.  Looking down the list, it does seem there are very few non-locals, although there is a chance: on rank 142 is an "unknown male".

Quick One

Hello, just a quick note from the Emerald Isle. We are back from vacation and I'm busy catching up with work things. Anika is here and will spend the next three weeks here until she goes back to school. Today we went to Phoenix park and came across this herd of deer. They let us get really close, but not so close that we could touch them.
I'll post vacation pictures soon. For being in England and Scotland for two weeks I expected a lot of rain. We had our share, but for the most part, the weather was actually quite nice. At work someone asked me why I would go there for vacation while living in Ireland. I explained that six out of us seven live in sunny places and don't mind some rain during vacation. (Anika, sitting next to me, complains that in the bay area the weather is not always nice and sunny. I think I still rather have that than Ireland ;-)
At the bus station in Edinburgh they have a vending machine that sells umbrellas!

Busy June

My baby

From the dearth of blog posts in June, you may have guessed that I had a very busy month. I (sort of) moved into the house, spent time in Switzerland and then visited the USA: Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, and New York. I came back the previous Monday and then left last Friday for Achill Island on the West coast of Ireland. I went there to visit, it is a beautiful place, and to run in a 1/2 marathon race.

Keel beach

I had hoped to come in under two hours in the half marathon. I managed to do it in five additional minutes. The course had some hills and it is difficult to find hills in Dublin without heading into the Wicklow mountains. This was a test race for the Dublin (full) marathon I want to do at the end of October. So I'm not quite at the necessary speeds in my training yet, and I only tappered for a week for this race. It was a fun race in a neat place and I'm happy with the result (although it could have been better ;-)

Strange flowers. I wonder if leprechaun paint these patterns on them.

I stayed two nights in a guest house on the island because I wanted to take some pictures. Saturday after the race was more or less dry, but far from what I would call sunny. Sunday was constant drizzle. That's better than what Dublin and the East coast of Ireland got that weekend: Three weeks worth of rain in one day! I didn't get very many pictures because of that.

There is a preserved area on the island that is littered with ruins of old houses that were abandoned during the potato famine. Now they are inhabited by sheep and archaeologists who are trying to piece together how the people lived back then.

They do think they own the place.

There is a road, called the Atlantic drive, to the West end of the island. It's nice, steep, narrow, and curvy. Perfect for a little bit of fast driving. There are no fences or guard rails, which adds to the challenge, but the bigger problem are the sheep in the middle of the road. They think they own that part of the island too!

Sheep everywhere!

At the Western most part of the island, at the end of the Atlantic drive, are steep cliffs. You have to hike up the hill to see them. I didn't do that that since the rain would have prevented me from seeing anything or taking pictures.

Now back to my busy work life, finish moving into the house, and get ready for vacation at the end of the month. It is not a castle, as afrodri suspects. So, no moat maintenance. However, even though I wasn't here for most of June, the grass is now about knee high in my yard. To the left and right, it is much shorter. I guess they mow it. I need a sheep! On Achill island, even in remote areas, the grass looks manicured (except for the sheep droppings) and neatly cut (bitten off) to about a 1/4 inch off ground.

An Irish sheep stack.