Snow Day

The view from our bathroom window this morning

 A winter storm came through and covered Portland and Forest Grove in snow. This morning the sun came out and presented us with the above view. It was hard to stay in and participate in the meetings of the day.
 Still a lot of work to do and yet another meeting, but I snuck out for an hour and drove around the neighbourhood taking pictures.

David Hill winery behind our house

 It is amazing how much time you have when you don't exercise! I've been sick for a week now and very busy with work. No running. Instead of taking pictures, I would have gone today, but it was just too pretty and all icy anyway.
 A little more fat, but some nice pictures in return. You can see the full album here.

Mt. Hood

Happy New Year

Chief Kiwanda Rock by Pacific City

Mack and Val had rented a house on the coast for a few days and invited us to visit them and their kids. Lee Ann and I spent New Year's Eve with them and came back home today. A storm was moving in and freezing road conditions were predicted, so we all packed up and came home to beautiful sunshine.
Although the trip was short we had a fun evening playing the Phase 10 card game. It rained quite a bit, but it did open up this morning for a few pictures here.

Franklin Ridge

Click on the images to get a better view

Last weekend Dave, Balazs, and I went on a hike to justify, calorie wise, the beer drinking afterwards. We did well. Although we are not sure whether we walked 10.35 or 11.6 miles, we are sure we worked hard and earned our dinner and refreshing pints.
We climbed from the Columbia river to Franklin Ridge, almost 3,000 feet, and came back down again along Multnomah Falls. The exact mileage is uncertain due to technology. Gmap-pedometer.com thinks the loop was 10.35 miles long, while Dave's paper map insist that the path segments add up to the larger distance. Unless the person (Dave) doing the adding, had too much beer.

Independent of that technical detail, it was a beautiful day and hike. It was quite warm, but most of the route is under the shadows of trees and along cool mountain streams. Once we got past Triple Falls, we were basically alone. Except for the snake in the top picture. Dave may have accidentally stepped on its tail and felt sorry. But it gave us the opportunity to play guessing games on how poisonous that snake really is, and take pictures of it. He was not in a good mood. Maybe it was the picture taking, a hurting tail, or just annoyance about having to share the wilderness with us. He kept snapping at us. I hope he heals up.

A path interrupted

 In several places we had to make detours around damaged parts of the trail. The biggest gap is in the picture above. A major section had been washed out and required a detour through the riverbed. This was quite a bit back in the valley and I do not envy the workers who have to haul their equipment back there to fix it.

Mt. Adams

  At the top of Franklin Ridge we were rewarded with a nice view of Mt. Adams. From there on it was all downhill. I have been to the bottom of Multnomah Falls before, but this time I got to see it from above. That was quite impressive, but some of the other falls we saw on this hike were very nice too.

Multnomah Falls from above

Triple Falls

For dinner we went to the Horse Brass pub. Maybe not the highest level culinary institute, but I enjoyed my bangers and the beer was good too. Balazs, visiting from Japan, practised his tipping skills. He wasn't thrilled with his Sheppard's pie. Dave and I explained to him that it was not the waitress who tosses it into the microwave and that he should not stiff her for that.

As always, the remaining pictures are on picasa.

Vacation

Chichen Itza

In May we spent a little over a week in Mexico, just in case Trump wins and builds that wall. We were far away from any international borders, but there was no shortage of American (and other) tourists. It was off-season and not too bad and we enjoyed it. It was just Lee Ann, Anika, and me. James felt that as a newcomer to the startup company he works for now, it would not be prudent to go slack off. Meanwhile, I forgot everything I ever new about work and let my inbox fill up.

Ek Balam

Lee Ann had arranged a program for us to see several Mayan pyramids and archaeological sites. In between we stayed at the Grand Mayan resort on the coast, alternating between tourist attractions, sheltered resort life, getting lost in tiny  villages, and seeing glimpses of local life through the hedges along the highway.
The toll road between Cancun and Valladolid is long, straight, and boring. There is almost nothing to see because the shrubbery along the side of the road blocks the view. There was almost no traffic (we got up too late in the mornings to see the tour bus caravan's head out to Chichen Iza.) Occasionally we saw bicycles despite signs forbidding them on the road. We were wondering where they were headed. They were hours from any settlement.
Sometime pedestrians crossed the road too, or had what looked like barbecue parties hidden in the bushes in the median. Another thing that struck me, was that Mexico is big. We have been to several parts and even rode a bus between Puero Vallarta and Guadalajara six years ago, but studying the Yukatan maps was the first time it really sunk in.

Cool birds near Ek Balam

Anika's Spanish was of great help, but almost everyone we met spoke at least some English and most of them very well. Barely knowing a few words, I still could tell that some of the young waiters liked Anika's Spanish and were wondering what it would take to get rid of the two old people in the group.

Fauna at the resort

And flora too

We did see some interesting animals during our explorations, but we actually saw more within the resort itself. Maybe it was the location of the jungle next to the ocean, or all the food scraps the tourists leave behind, but there were tons of birds and, of course, the ever cool iguanas.
One day one of them jumped into the pool with us and swam to the other side. They are amazingly agile in water and an unexpected surprise for us to see that they can swim. One of the bigger ones was Pablo. The staff would yell his name when they chased him away from the poolside drinks and snacks.

Pablo's friend. They hung out together at the same corner of the pool

It was a nice mixed vacation of relaxing and getting sunburned at the pool and going out into the heat, climbing pyramids, and learning history from Mayan descendants.
People everywhere were super friendly. Not a single rapist or killer in sight. As always, all the pictures are over on Picasa.

Oregon = Ireland, almost

The September 27, 2015 eclipsed supermoon

 Almost a month ago now, I went out to take pictures of the moon. A lot of people were doing that because it was the rare occasion of a supermoon and an eclipse at the same time. This will not happen again until 2033.
 From where we live, the moon was to come up over the horizon partially eclipsed and not far from Mt. Hood. I tried to find a spot where I could see that and hoped that Mt. Hood would still be visible at dusk while the moon was rising to the left of it. I found a great spot on the ridge behind our house, a few miles further up.

Daylight view, with a hazy Mt. Hood, from my vantage point

 This is what it looked like before it got dark. Mt. Hood is in the distance but difficult to see clearly that day. This happens a lot here. No clear, 80-mile views of Mt. Taylor that we used to have in Albuquerque. It is more like Ireland. The humidity often limits how far and clearly we can see.
 The last time I took pictures of a supermoon, a full moon when it is closest to Earth, was in Ireland. You can read my report and see the pictures in the Spring 2012 blog entry. Back then it was just a supermoon, not an eclipse. But, just the same as this time, haze on the horizon prevented me seeing the moon until it was quite a bit up in the sky.

Haze and the dimness of the moon made it hard to see at first

 I was alone when I set up my camera and took the daylight picture above. By the time the moon became visible, there were about thirty people around me, waiting for the spectacle to begin. Everybody knew the time when the moon was supposed to rise, but nothing happened for almost an hour, until finally the moon started to appear out of the haze. Of course, by that time Mt. Hood was in the dark.
 Just like Ireland, it was also getting cold. Both Dublin and Portland rarely get snow, but the above freezing temperatures feel much colder because of the humidity. Waiting for the moon to climb higher, I turned around and got a nice shot of the big dipper. You may have to click on it to enlarge it to see it properly.

The big dipper setting in the West

 Taking a picture of the full moon is actually not easy, if we you also want something else in that picture. With a short exposure you get the the moon's face, but everything else is in the dark. Longer exposures show the landscape illuminated by the moon, but its face is just a bright light without features.
 With an eclipsed moon, things are a little bit easier. Now the problem is to have a long enough exposure. The moon (and the rest of the sky) moves quite quickly and the needed long exposures create blur.
 Clearly, I need to practice this some more. Good thing I'll have until 2033 before I have to be ready!

The beginning of the end

 As usual, the rest of the pictures are on Picasa.

PDX Marathon

A medal, a pendant, and a coin! All that for jogging 26.2 miles!

 At the beginning of this year I signed up for the Portland Marathon. I had been running a little bit and things were going well. I had gained weight in the last two years that I wanted to lose again, and I still felt I should be able to run a marathon under four hours, based on my Dublin Marathon experience. Having a goal would make me go out and exercise, even when work was hectic and other life events interfered.
 It sounded like a good plan nine months ago and things got off to a good start. I now have run more than a thousand miles this year. More than double of what I have done in any year before. (And infinity more than the 0.0 miles in each of the first 46 years of my life.) The weekly milage chart below shows that there were some gaps and setbacks, though.

My runs this year so far

 During late Spring and in the Summer we were looking for houses, found one, bought it, and then moved. Some weeks with no running at all, and others with only a couple of short ones. Then in late August and September my Achilles tendon flared up again. I have been spared that excruciating pain for more than a year, but jumping into a high-mileage regimen in August instead of ramping up properly, was probably the cause.
 Earlier in the year I had high hopes to come in well under four hours. Despite the training lapses during the Summer and the injury in Fall, I was still optimistic and did not adjust my target time. Which, in hindsight, is an easy mistake to spot. The two taper weeks before the race were excruciating. No extra runs at this point would help -- to the contrary -- and my Achilles tendon was only slowly healing. I spent the time obsessing over my race day pacing strategy.
 The goal was to stick with the 3:45 hour pacing group, start conservatively, and fall back, if necessary. This should have left me with plenty of time before the four-hour mark at the end.
 Other than having to get up really early, race day started out fine. I was in my starting coral about 30 minutes before the gun went off, ready to go. At the expo, the pacers had handed out wrist bands with the pace and target time for each mile. The pace was adjusted for the terrain and even effort throughout the race. Using FindMyMarathon.com, I had created my own bands for times between 3:45 and 3:59.
 When we took off, I felt like we were going way too fast right away. That's not supposed to happen. After training and taper, the body is supposed to be well rested, fuelled, and full of adrenaline and endorphins. At the beginning of the marathon, things should be easy, you are supposed to find a steady-effort pace, and concentrate very hard on going much slower than you feel you can and want to go. Instead, I was trying to keep up with the pacer and trying to figure out why I was breathing so heavily.

Click to enlarge

 The first mile was way too fast. By mile 2 we had gone uphill a little bit and I slowed down. This was not a pace I could keep up for several more hours. At mile 4 I could still see the pacer but had fallen back quite a bit. There was nothing conservative about this start and I began to make plans to slow down even more, let the pace group go, and settle into a more reasonable pace for me.
 Then all of a sudden my right hamstring cramped. I had visions of Dublin all over again. Nothing else hurt, but I had to slow down, experiment with my gait, stretch, and try to find a middle ground between making progress while keeping the pain in check and not making it worse.
 By the half marathon mark it was still painful, but I felt I could speed up again.  Unrealistically, I started to hope for something near 3:50 again. It didn't click that I was looking at the conservative start plan with a negative split. This is where I should have started to speed up. Instead, I decided to take it relatively easy -- I was afraid that pushing now would bring the cramps back -- conserve energy to mile 22 and then race with whatever I had left. The next four miles felt good, but of course were way too slow.

Two runners deep inside the rose. I think I'm the left one.

  I didn't realize that, and am not sure I could have gone much faster, without bonking near the end, but I probably should have tried. By mile 22 the 4:00 pace group had caught up with me.  They had started several minutes behind me, so that was bad news. It felt just like Dublin.  I sped up and kept with them. It felt very fast and I wasn't sure I could keep that up for another four miles. Plus, I had to be faster than them to reach 4:00.
 I was able to pull ahead for a while, passing tons of people -- being passed too. But it didn't last. On the Broadway bridge the 4:00 group was right behind me again. Between 25 and 26 they passed me and looking at my own start time and the feeling in my feet, I realized I could not make the four hour mark. I slowed down.  This was not worth the pain, although I wanted to do better than Dublin.
 Three years older and four minutes faster. OK, but still a little bit disappointing.  I did feel a lot better at the end of this one, then in Dublin. No blisters this time, but I think I added two black toe nails to the one I started with.
 I think I can do 4:00 with proper pacing. Maybe even 3:55, but the strategy needs to be conservative start with the expectation that I cannot do a negative split. To the contrary!! I also don't want to spend training another year just to try, and it would be nice to get below four hours around my 55th birthday. There are a few more marathons this year on the West coast. Maybe I'll try one more time.
 

At least I'm faster than Midsy.

 Results: Time 4:04:48 (unofficial), average pace was 9:21 per mile. I was 94/252 in my age group of M50-54, 1,092/2,709 of all males, and 1,619/5,500 overall. My age grade for this race is 58.06%. This is a method where 100% is world record level for a given event and takes into consideration your age and gender to calculate how well you did. It is meant to allow comparisons among all participants.

Tokyo again

Sensoji temple in Asakusa

 As always, more pictures, full resolution, are on Picasa. Click on the ones in this blog post to see a larger version.

 We had another meeting in Tokyo. This time the trip there was much easier than the disastrous adventure last time, and I was able to stay over the weekend. On the last trip I barely made it there and then had to turn around to fly to San Francisco to be at Anika's graduation. The only problem this time was that it was too short! Tokyo is a wonderful and interesting city.

Glitter in Akihabara

 Two of my colleagues also stayed over the weekend and we set out to explore the city together. After the business part of our trip was over, we headed for Akihabara on Friday evening. This is the flashy, modern, electronics and manga-centric corner of Tokyo.

Multi-story buildings full of plastic, LEDs, and electronics. Cool!

 We went into several gigantic stores and explored floor after floor full with the latest gadgets, tons of plastic manga figures of every size, and, of course, the actual manga books and magazines themselves. One store even had a curtained-off section, over 18 only, manga section.

A neighborhood street in Nezu

 Saturday was our first full day of sightseeing in Tokyo. In the back of one of my guidebooks it listed neighborhoods in the Yanesen area as a place to go to see some of the old Edo charm and get away from most of the tourists. We picked Nezu as a starting point. There were no specific sights or a guided walk. Just narrow streets, temples and shrines everywhere.

Temples galore

 From there we wandered into Ueno park. Lots of museums, but the weather was too nice to spend time inside. Ueno is a large, wide open park. Perfect for children to play and street artists to show off their skills.

It was cold, but the tulips and children didn't seem to care.

 One of them walked up to us and asked, in very good English, what kind of animal we liked. He then proceeded to draw a horse, upside down, using water dripping from a sponge attached to his umbrella.

Using water from a sponge to draw figures on the ground.

 This was right after we had a long discussion of whether a picture of a piece of art is also art. Some photography, Ansel Adams for example, is art. Is taking a picture of a sculpture even more art? Art squared?

He drew and wrote this upside down, standing above the title of his artwork.

 By the way, the subway system in Tokyo is excellent. Easy to navigate and use. Each line has a color and a letter assigned to it. For example A for the Asakusa line or H for the Hibya line which had the closest stop to our hotel. On each line, the stations are numbered sequentiality. It is always easy to tell whether you are going in the right direction, and how many more stops until your destination. The stations and cars were very clean. And, during the workweek, they even have cars reserved for women.

Some subway cars are reserved for women only

 For the later part of the day, we took the subway to Asakusa. The 17th century Senso-ji Shinto shrine is at the heart of this neighborhood and attracts a lot of tourists. The many shops surrounding it help. We had sushi and sashimi for dinner and I figured out the difference. Sushi is served on rice. So, all you Atkins diet fans, order the Sashimi!

Shopping and dining in Asakusa.

 Sunday was another sunny but cold day and we headed out to see Yasukuni Jinja, a memorial dedicated to about 2.5 million Japanese, Taiwanese, and Koeran soldiers who have fallen in various wars since 1869. It is a popular spot for visits but also controversial. Since 1978 there are several class-A war criminals listed, yet Japanese prime ministers keep visiting the shrine, infuriating China and Korea who suffered under Japanese colonialism. I didn't even know there were different classes of war criminals!

Why are the names all six symbols long?

 On the way to the shrine from the subway station we walked through a very interesting flea market. Really not that different from other flea markets in the world, but there were things for sale you would not usually see.

A picture of cameras taken with a camera. Is this photography?

Items for sale.

 Next we strolled through the Imperial Palace East garden. It is a little bit early in the year to fully enjoy it. A visit in Spring or Fall would probably be great.

In the Imperial Palace East garden.

 For dinner we tried to find a restaurant recommended in the guidebook. This was the second restaurant out of that book that we were unable to find. Instead, we had dinner near Tokyo Station in a modern shopping complex in a California-styled restaurant named after Italian Autostrada A17. The pizza and wine was good, and our feet were tired from walking.

Sunset in the water park next to the Wadakura Funsui Koen Restaurant.

 After dinner, I tried again and found the water park we had been looking for. The Wadakura Funsui Koen Restaurant right next to it, the one we had been searching for, was boarded up for renovation. I was just a little late to get a really good sunset picture, so I headed over to the Ginza district that is famous for its shopping and large crowds.

Too late in the evening to compete with the Getty Image

 I got some good nighttime shots in Ginza, but it was already late enough for the sky to be pitch black. So, no Getty-quality images, but it was fun nevertheless. A little bit more planning and extra time on another trip should do the trick.
 The clock on top of the famous Wako department store commemorates the Hattori tower which stood at this location before the store was built.

Mushu from Mulan. No, wrong dragon, wrong country ;-)

The neighborhood temple near our hotel, guarded by the dragon above.

 Monday, the last half day of our too short trip to Tokyo. We decided to go one subway station up the hill into the center of Roppongi. This is a business district with few attractions, but we had hopped to reach the top of the Mori Tower. It is a sky scraper with an observation deck on the 52nd floor that we wanted to visit. Unfortunately, it was closed for renovations. The shops in the large structure were not open yet, and we didn't have time for the museums also located in that tall building. So, we headed to Shibuya.

Shibuya.

 With its underpasses, overpasses, and cars, buses, and trains flitting by, this reminded me of a science fiction movie. I had left my guide book at the hotel, since we had only a short visit to the Mori tower planned. Shibuya was fun, although we did not have much time and wandered around aimlessly.

Shopping in Shibuya.

 The back streets of Shibuya belong to the worker class and it seemed a little bit more rundown than the other, more touristy parts we had seen so far. It was not dirty by any stretch of the imagination, but this was the first time we had seen a little bit of trash laying around. Nevertheless, a very worthwhile visit and I would like to come back and explore it more.

An interesting building in Shibuya.

  In the afternoon we took the train back to Narita airport for our flight back.

Takeoff in Tokyo. The sun is about to set on Monday evening.

 From here, Tokyo is on the other side of the date line, and crossing it is a little bit weird. We left on a Tuesday morning, flew to Seattle, changed planes, flew to Tokyo and landed Wednesday afternoon. The short trip to Seattle was uneventful except for the bit where we didn't actually land the first time around. It was fogy and we -- and the pilot -- could not see the ground. Just before we should have set down, I started to see the runway a few feet below us, but just then the engines roared up and we went up again. The pilot said he didn't like the conditions. We flew a big circle and tried again without any problems.

Still above the clouds approaching Portland. The Monday morning sun is greeting us.

Below the clouds now with a nice mirror effect on the Columbia.

 For the flight back, we left Tokyo on Monday afternoon just as the sun was setting and then landed in Portland on the same Monday just as the sun was coming up! That was interesting. I went home for a shower and to repack. Then back to the airport for an evening flight to Albuquerque. My sleep pattern over the next few days was erratic. Back now and recovered. No trips until the end of February.