The Freckle • • •

Marathon Saturday

2012-01-28T15:54:00.000-08:00

Due to a combination of this year's Krankheit Katastrophe (two weeks in and still going strong!) and general blog-posting laziness, this post is about fourteen days overdue. Math-savvy Freckle readers can deduce that "two weeks in" and "fourteen days overdue" both add up to the same date: January 14th. On that morning, I woke up early intending to watch the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, but instead woke up to two nasty surprises--1) the worst sore throat in recent memory, and 2) no Trials broadcast on NBC. Or anywhere for that matter. It took me about ten minutes in my congestion-addled state, but I soon figured out the following: NBC owns the broadcasting rights to the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. NBC decided not to broadcast the Trials. And because NBC owned the rights, no other network or organization could broadcast them either--not on TV, not live-streamed over the internet, not projected via any other visual, live-action means to anyone anywhere in this gargantuan, media market-rich country.

The Houston Course

To say that I was annoyed or frustrated by this turn of events would be an understatement. But my desire to wring the neck of that giant, rainbow peacock and those of all the suits who pledged allegiance to it with their multi-billion dollar exclusionary TV rights contracts was superseded by my need to find out what was happening in the Trials. Immediately. I flipped open my laptop and turned (virtually) to the one person I knew would have been up hours before me, her twitter feed at the ready: SR. She didn't disappoint. Through SR, I learned quickly what I'd missed: in the men's race, the field had been whittled down to a tight knot of Meb, Ryan Hall, Abdi, and Ritz, at a pace of about 5:00/mile. In the women's race, Flanagan and Desi were ripping into one another in a fight-to-the-finish-duel, with Goucher steps behind and Hastings hanging on in fourth.

In contrast to NBC, Runner's World and Running Times had joined forces and were live-tweeting/commentating on their websites and twitter feeds, so between the three--SR, RW, and RT--I soon had some sense of the action unfolding down in Houston. While the runners raced the last six miles, I made a few tangential observations. First, I understand that Olympics organizers want to design marathon courses with maximum spectatorship in mind--in the case of London this summer, it will be a circuit beginning and finishing on theMall--and that Trials courses inevitably follow suit (e.g. Houston's 2.2 and 8 mile loops this year, the Central Park circuits in 2007). Frankly, I think this sounds like hell to run; anything but a point to point course for 26.2 miles would be psychological torture for me, and even the improvised out and back at Big Sur last year felt strange (and I was only a relay runner!). I may be in the minority on this one, but I think all the Trials runners should be given an extra hour of post-marathon massage just for being forced to race past the same cowbells over and over again.

Pretty soon it starts to sound like a death knell

Second, I love watching and reading about Desi Davila run. Her "breakout" performance at Boston last year; the phenomenal Runner's World profile from a couple of months ago; her quiet tenacity and incredible self-discipline; you name it, I'm a fan. I like Goucher and Flanagan, too (and Radcliffe, and Kastor, and Lewy-Boulet, and a host of other remarkably talented female runners), and I particularly like seeing them all push one another to new running heights. But I have a hunch this might be Desi's year, and Desi's Olympics. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the woman from Chula Vista!

Third, Hastings' Cinderalla story is a headliner in and of itself--as SR tweeted, "omg hastings!". Kudos to an extremely talented runner for making her first Olympic team (and perhaps, if either Goucher or Flanagan heads instead to the track, her first Olympic marathon?)!

Meb, in Central Park, two miles from winning the 2009 NYC Marathon

Plenty of other blogs and articles have detailed the finish and results of both races better than I would, so I'll just summarize. Meb won--at 36, the oldest man to win the U.S. Trials--and I'm thrilled for him. One of my favorite marathon memories remains watching him race through the 24th mile of the 2009 NYC marathon in Central Park, on his way to victory, the first American man to do so in over thirty years, and while sporting a USA singlet to boot. Meb's story really is that of the American Dream, from Eritrea to San Diego to the Olympic medal stand in Athens. His humility and genuine respect for his fellow competitors make him a man to root for under any circumstances.

Shalane also won (and while running her second marathon ever), with Desi hot on her heels and Goucher (sixteen months after giving birth) only twenty-eight seconds behind. All three women broke 2:30, making the Trials the fastest day in the history of American women's running. It's incredibly exciting, and they all deserve a whole-hearted congratulations.

If only I could have watched it.

On the day they made history:

Desiree Davila, Shalane Flanagan, and Kara Goucher

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

2012-01-23T20:38:00.000-08:00

A Very Happy Year of the Dragon to you, from the freckled rooster who writes this blog! Above is a blurry photo of Grant Ave in Chinatown, which I took from the cable car on my way home this evening. The street seemed subdued for New Year's--at least relative to the exciting/deafening Chinese New Year's firecracker celebrations that I remember from growing up in the Richmond District--but perhaps it's because it was still early in the evening. Still, I love the red lanterns strung across Grant (somewhat visible in this photo), and KP and I had lots of fun at the Chinese New Year flower fair in Chinatown last weekend. Furthermore, in just a few more weeks, it will be time for the largest Chinese New Year's parade outside of China! Now, if only my pig and snake siblings were here to watch it with me...

Oakland: An Ode (of Sorts)

2012-01-10T20:53:00.000-08:00

I started working in downtown Oakland almost a year ago, but I'm still amazed that it's where I spend 75% of my waking weekday hours. Recently, I've been feeling a little guilty for giving it such a hard time--not that my displeasure is totally without cause, as anyone who reads a newspaper would surely agree--and so I've decided to focus on the aspects of it that I do enjoy. After all, I wasn't wild about Midtown Manhattan, either, and yet with the benefit of hindsight I now fondly remember lunch in Bryant Park, prawn sandwiches from Pret, the Treats Truck, the Naked Cowboy, and the screams of teenage girls outside the TRL studio, which were audible even in my 33rd floor office (okay, maybe not that last one. Or that second to last one). And so, Downtown Oakland, I won't wait to reflect on, and appreciate, your attributes. The following are my favorites:

Interesting architecture Downtown Oakland is home to some remarkably beautiful buildings. Whenever I have time to go for a walk in the afternoon, I like to stop and admire the green I. Magnin building at 20th and Telegraph; the restored Fox Theatre just around the corner; that cool building that reminds me of the Flatiron right where Broadway and Telegraph split apart; the storefronts on the "Historic Oakland" blocks; and the old Oakland Tribune tower.

Very, very good coffee I've always loved Peet's, and so would be happy even if the one across the street from my office were the only shop in all of downtown from which to procure robust cafe au laits. BUT, lucky, lucky girl that I am, there's also an incredible, independent, tiny coffee shop tucked just around the corner. In fact, Modern Coffee is so wonderful, the New York Times even deigned to mention it several weeks ago. Plus, it sells amazing pastries; between its koiugn-ammann and Peet's Semifreddi's almond croissants--and not to mention La Farine's frangipane, which are only two BART stops away--it's a good thing I'm still running 20< miles a week.

Used bookstores In this arena, Downtown Oakland really shines. I'm not a big shopper, but I've recently dropped more cash at Bibliomania, the Bookmark Bookstore, and De Lauer's (blast them for reliably stocking my kryptonite, Hello! magazine!), than I have even at that other favorite money pit of mine, the Village Market. Penury in exchange for funky $1 paperbacks of Lorna Doone and The Summer Game? I'll take it.

Guacachips The one junk food item for which I go truly weak in the knees (I consider croissants and ice cream to be distinct food groups, and thus don't count them as junk food). I've never been able to find them for sale in San Francisco. I have found them for sale in two stores in Downtown Oakland, both within 300 feet of my office. Commence upping of the weekly mileage.

El Chip del Diablo

Really good Mexican food Southern California-style shrimp veggie burritos (with extra guacamole) from La Calle, and featured in Sunset no less? Check. Baja-style fish tacos from Cosecha? Check. I've been making up for several years of East Coast-induced-good-Mexican-food-exile by eating my way through both of these restaurants.

Ratto's This place reminds me of Haig's, the international food section of Wegman's, and the Marin French Cheese Company all rolled into one. Hands down my favorite soup, sandwich, and Ritter sport spot.

Ferry commute Now that the evenings are getting light again, I can enjoy perhaps my favorite aspect of working in Downtown Oakland--taking the ferry home to San Francisco. I don't always have time to make the trip, but when I do, the fifteen minute walk down to Jack London Square, combined with the twenty-five minutes riding across the Bay to the Ferry Building, is a wonderful way to end the work day. Throw in a cable car ride to Van Ness and a two mile stroll home, and I return to the Inner Richmond in very good spirits indeed.

Best Part of the Commute

Keep impressing me, Downtown Oakland, and you'll make me just as wistful for your existence as 45th and 6th did!

The Novels of Nippon

2012-01-07T21:55:00.000-08:00

After I returned from Japan a few weeks ago, I immediately embarked on a reading course of Japanese novels. I realize that this might sound backwards, but it tends to be my MO whenever I take a trip: travel first, then read up on the destination. Aside from resulting in me asking my (usually patient) travel companion tons of questions that could have been easily answered with a little pre-vacation research--e.g. Why does that pagoda have golden horns? How come Kyoto's temples are all on the city outskirts? What do people mean when they say "Tokyo dialect"?--I find that my interest post-trip is so piqued that I end up learning and reading much more than I would have otherwise. Plus, lots of fresh reading material is a wonderful salve for the jet-lagged-induced crankiness that inevitably follows landing back at home.

Such was the case on this latest journey to Kansai. I've actually accumulated a fair number of Japanese novels over the years, but other than a couple by Mishima Yukio, hadn't read any of them. That all changed in the week between Christmas and New Year's, when I plowed through a veritable greatest hits of Japan's best twentieth century writers. First up, two by Kazuo Ishiguro, whose work I greatly enjoy, but whose Japan-based novels I'd never read: An Artist of the Floating World, and A Pale View of Hills. The former in particular was written in the enigmatic, almost suspenseful style that Ishiguro exhibited in When We Were Orphans and Never Let Me Go, and the latter had such a creepy, confusing final chapter that I subsequently went online to see if I'd misread it (apparently, this is not uncommon).

Next, I enjoyed the languorous, stately prose of Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters, which read almost like a 19th century English novel, but with the foreboding signposts of the 20th (Japan's Invasion of Manchuria, German neighbor children singing Deutschland uber alles, etc). Coincidentally, I gave my mother the movie for Christmas, and especially look forward to seeing it now.

And finally, I headed back to Mishima Yukio with his The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, largely because we visited Kinkaku-ji when in Kyoto, and the novel is a fictitious sketch of the monk who burned it down in 1950. The book is disturbing, to say the least, and reminded me of Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea. I don't want to give too much away, so I'll leave my description at that.

I took a short break to read Michael Ondaatje's latest, but am about to start Yasunari Kawabata's novel Snow Country. And I suppose at some point I'll finally read some Haruki Murakami...but after his lucid, makes-me-want-to-lace-up-my-shoes-and-hit-the-trails What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, surely his other books will be a letdown, right?

Happy New Year, 2012 (and Au Revoir, 2011)!

2012-01-02T18:47:00.000-08:00

2011 was a year of beginnings: new city, new home, new job, and trips to new places. 2012 promises to be even more exciting, and I look forward to seeing what the year brings. As tangerines are New Year symbols of good luck and health, I'm posting this photo of me and a tangerine tree in Nara, the first imperial capital of Japan, which I visited a couple weeks ago (I hope to see more of Japan in the near future). Happy New Year, and best wishes for 2012!

Notes on le Tour: Part Trois

2011-07-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

This picture says it all! Congratulations, Cadel, on a well-deserved victory--one that has been many years in the making! And a big merci to the entire peloton for another wonderful Tour. Until next year...

Notes on le Tour: Part Deux

2011-07-18T19:48:00.000-07:00

The peloton is now riding towards the Alps, and it's hard to believe the Tour's more than half over. Some quick observations at this point in the race:

A tip of the chapeau to Johnny Hoogerland. And a big fat you're on notice! to the TV car driver who slammed him into a barbed wire fence (and sent Juan Antonio Flecha spinning across the road skin-side down) during Stage 9. Thirty-three stitches later and Hoogerland lived to wear polka dots for another day.

Nationalistic bright spots. The sentimentalist in me really likes that American Tyler Farrar won his first Tour stage on July 4th, and that Thomas Voeckler wore (and kept) yellow on Bastille Day. Likewise, Norwegian cycling fans must be ecstatic that their two compatriots in this year's Tour have both won stages--Edvald Boasson Hagen on Stage 6, and Thor Hushovd on Stage 13.

Speaking of that speedy Norwegian...My shock at watching Hushovd retain the maillot jeune through the Massif Centrale has been supplanted by my even greater shock at him winning Stage 13. No one's ever uttered "Col d'Aubisque" and "stage-winning sprinter" in the same sentence--at least, not in my lifetime. I was very, very, very surprised!

The Col d'Aubisque: where sprinters (used to) go to die.

Them's fighting words. Tyler Farrar, after just barely losing to the Manx Missile in Stage 15, gave my favorite post-stage interview of the Tour thus far to Robbie Ventura. Still slick with sweat and breathless after the finish-line sprint, Farrar emphasized Cavendish's "remarkable" comeback after "being dropped by the gruppetto for about 70k yesterday", reiterated how frustrated he was, and then stepped away from the camera. I was impressed. Farrar's perennially good-natured, and even when voicing his displeasure he remained relatively polite--which, of course, just underscored how angry he is. Farrar-Cavendish showdown on the Champs d'Elysees!

Jens Voigt is indestructible. I know that everyone likes to cite Chuck Norris as the bar by which all feats and phenomena may be measured (i.e. "When it rains, Chuck Norris doesn't get wet, the rain gets Chuck Norris'd", "Chuck Norris got his driver's license at the age of sixteen seconds", etc.), and that recently Super Sam Fuld of the Tampa Bay Rays has been experiencing the same mythic treatment ("Manny Ramirez retired shortly after testing positive for Sam Fuld in his blood stream", etc.), but let's be honest: neither could endure what Jens Voigt has survived--nay, thrived upon--in his cycling career.

For example, on a long descent in yesterday's Stage 15, Voigt crashed twice, but seemed annoyed rather than rattled. Last year, his front tire exploded and he crashed on an alpine descent, but despite significant road rash, fractured ribs, and a host of other injuries, he continued to race. In 2009, I thought I'd witnessed my first fatal Tour casualty since Casartelli when he crashed on the Col du Petit San Bernard. Etc etc etc. And yet he continues to drive the Shleck brothers down the roads of France with brute force. He's also forty and has six children despite sitting twenty-plus years in the saddle. Take that, Chuck Norris.

The Man. The Myth. The Legend.

Tom Danielson rides in the GC Top Ten. I'm very happy to see Tom Danielson riding so well in his first Tour. I've been a fan of his since he signed with Discovery back in 2005, and can't imagine the frustration he must have felt during the last few years (starting with that bout of undiagnosed giardia). I've also been a fan of his wife Kristin, who was a cycling star at Fort Collins, and who used to have a great mountain biking blog on cyclingnews.com that I loved to read back in grad school. All in all, very happy to see the Danielsons on the (inter)national stage!

Now on to Stage 16...allez, allez, allez!

Notes on le Tour: Part Un

2011-07-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

This July marks the first since 2006 that I’ve devoted so little time to watching the Tour de France. During that particular summer I lived in a tiny New Hampshire town without a television—the perfect environment in which to study for my graduate school exams, but not conducive to following the world's greatest bike race. Thus I missed witnessing both Floyd Landis’s improbable Stage 17 breakaway and the media’s feeding frenzy over his equally improbable “testosterone defense” (although I did end up reading Positively False several months later).

My lackluster viewing habits now, however, are more difficult to explain. Blame it on any one of the following factors: a new job and commute; the chance to watch—in person and on TV—Giants’ games now that I’m back on the West Coast; the change-up in the VS. broadcasting team. Still, my love for the Tour endures, and it inevitably grows as the stages pass. Which is why, in order to feed my Tour fire, I know that I can refute every one of these factors: I can handle three weeks of sleep deprivation! The baseball season is six months long! Phil, Paul, and Bob still sit behind the VS. anchors’ desk!

In other words, bring on the 240 minute stage recordings, those golden Phil Liggettisms, and that money shot of the peloton snaking through the puy of the Massif Central. I’m here with my 32” television and my laptop, and I’m ready for some bike racing!

Still, since I know that I won’t have time to compose much commentary, I’ve decided to write my observations as broad notes. Hence, “Notes on le Tour”. On that note, what follows are my thoughts on the first nine stages of the 2011 Tour de France:

What he wears when he's not in yellow or rainbow stripes.

The Hammer of the North stays in yellow, defying both common cycling wisdom and his fast twitch muscles. I was stunned—STUNNED—to see Thor Hushovd crossing the line with the leaders on Stage 8. My money’s always on him and the other sprinters rolling off the back of the pack as soon as the peloton hits the first baby hill. At least Stage 9 brought a glimpse of Mark Cavendish barely clinging to the main pack as it flew over a series of rollers—thus proving that my understanding of pro racing isn’t totally shot.

Always the bridesmaid. Always. Cadel Evans has remained one of my favorite pro cyclists for years. I love to watch him race, and I nearly cried as well when he won the 2009 World Championship. And yet, for all of his talent, he never quite catches a break in the Tour. This year I had my hopes, and as he crouched one second behind Hushovd for the last few stages, I thought for sure he’d be in yellow by the Pyrenees, and perhaps (dare I hope?) into Paris. Then that blowsy bride Thomas Voeckler rocketed off on one of his signature breakaways and sure enough, Cadel now sits a few minutes back. But hear me loud and clear, Cadel: I’m still rooting for you. Let those BMC boys speed you through the Alps and on to victory!

Favorite Phil Liggettism so far. Thomas Voeckler is not only the source of my current Cadel woes, but also that of my favorite Liggettism. On Voeckler’s shrewd/lucky breakaway into the maillot jeune, Ligget proclaimed, “the likable little Frenchman has played the ace again!” He then referenced one of my beloved Tour memories, the “cheeky breakaway” that Voeckler rode into yellow in 2004, thus depriving Armstrong of the jersey until nearly halfway through the race. The man’s a poet.

He's the man.

Ivan Basso, Alexandre Vinokourov, Christian Vandevelde—whither the commentary? Chalk this up, perhaps, to my abbreviated stage viewings, but I’ve been surprised by the muted commentary on a variety of big name riders. I didn’t even realize that Basso was in the race until Stage 7, when I saw his name in the top twenty, nor did I know that Vino was back in Astana colours until a few days ago (granted, I didn’t watch the TTT stage in its entirety). And Vandevelde seemed to be persona non grata until Horner crashed out and the commentators appeared to go looking for another potential American GC contender.

These riders and a few other big ones used to be the focus of much remarking, and Basso in particular has been riding well, so I’m curious as to why they are no longer (true, Vino did receive more attention during his Stage 8 breakaway and ill-fated Stage 9 ride). In the case of the Italian and the Kazakh, could it be—dare I say it—the stain of le doping?

Why does the Leopard-Trek team appear to be wearing Bianchi green? Maybe it’s the camera/my TV, but when the Schleck brothers and that Bear from Bern Cancellera pedal by with a flash of hairless leg, their kit appears to be accented with Bianchi’s signature celeste green. I realize that this is impossible—after all, they ride Treks. And yet, the stripes on Andy Schleck’s helmet match my bike’s bar tape. Go figure.

Crashing, crashing, and even more crashing. This year’s opening stages have been marred by some spectacular crashes. So have the opening stages of every other Tour I’ve ever watched. That might be a slight exaggeration, but in my Tour viewing dotage I seem to recall that every July everyone says “we’ve never seen so many crashes in the first week of the Tour”, or something to that effect.

True, this year’s been a doozy—a whole slew of GC contenders have been knocked out, including that brave Brit Bradley Wiggins, whose teeth-gritting performance on Ventoux in 2009 stands out in my mind. But spectacular crashes in the Tour’s first week are like drunk Santas in December—ubiquitous, gratuitous, and ripe for contentious discussion among friends and family.

France: L’original. Last week, I read a Wall Street Journal article that discussed all the crazy things that happen every day in Wal-Marts nationwide—their sheer number and size apparently mean that if on any given day an American is going to do something crazy, odds are that it will be in a Wal-Mart—and thus the very busy lives that Wal-Mart’s PR team leads. Some of these things include spreading superglue on store toilet seats, jumping up and down on the hood of suspected shoplifters’ cars in a store parking lot because the jumper is “sick of the lawlessness”, adopting a feral nutria as a store mascot, and recording an illicit rap video in store aisles.

I cite this article because part of me likes the idea that there’s a place where the collective crazy is reliably on display. And, one might argue, le Tour serves this purpose for the great nation of France. This is a race in which the cyclists are regularly preceded across the finish line by gigantic gummy candy mascots; a race in which spectators—frequently bare-chested, frequently trashed—run in the road alongside the competitors; a race in which, on any given day, one might see a medieval chateau, a fixie-shaped crop-circle, or a podium girl dressed like Minnie Mouse. And did I mention that the winners of each stage get a giant stuffed animal? I thought so.

Ah, France, you hold a special place within my heart! Now on to Stage 10, ma chérie…

The real stage winner.

Pointing my Bat: West

2011-07-01T18:29:00.000-07:00

Legend dictates that during Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, Babe Ruth pointed his bat towards Wrigley Field's center bleachers, and then promptly hit a home run to center field. The Great Bambino never confirmed whether or not he called the shot, but the metaphor remains compelling, particularly when one is contemplating one's own loaded grand gestures.

No championship series was at stake in December, but that month I decided to pull up my stakes in New York and head west. I pointed my bat at San Francisco, and touched down in my native city just before Christmas. Friends old and new rang in the New Year with me up at Yosemite--a very special place to me, and the best one in which to mark my move back to California--and since then, things have been an absolute blur.

A New Year and new beginnings in Yosemite

Seven months later, and my day to day life looks very much like the dream at which I pointed my bat last winter. I didn't know what to expect, much less what I would find, when I left New York--I had no detailed agenda or plan, and for the first time in my life, I literally had no idea what I might be doing in the foreseeable future. But I had a very strong sense of what I wanted, even if I couldn't see exactly what it might be. And I decided to trust myself.

I'll never be a major league baseball player (for a variety of obvious reasons), but even if I were, the odds of reaching the Babe's heights are close to zero. Still, I'll never forget the moment when I paused, stepped back, and took a very clear look at my life in NYC. Then I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and swung.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-30T17:54:00.000-08:00

Most Thanksgivings, I stay where I am. I dislike traveling during that week, and of the handful of trips I've ever taken over this holiday weekend, all have been either bus or car rides of only a few hours. This year I planned to hop a Vamoose to Washington, D.C., but at the last moment I decided to stay in New York and celebrate with friends. On Wednesday evening, I picked up the ingredients for my culinary contribution--a Calvados-soaked apple currant pie, the recipe of which I'd never attempted--and then strolled past the balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, which begins just around the corner from my apartment.

Thanksgiving in New York City is a curious thing. On the one hand, the Parade, which remains the focal point of most American televisions on Thanksgiving morning, creates an atmosphere of loud celebration in the days prior; high school bands, dancers, and performers from across the country descend upon Midtown, and the crowds surrounding the balloons the night before rival those of any I've encountered during my time in NYC. But on the actual day of Thanksgiving, the city feels deserted, and oddly quiet. Subway trains run on a slow schedule, many shops are closed, and the rare human beings one encounters on the street are hurrying either to or from the cozy confines of their homes.

This year, I awoke early, made my pie crust, read the paper, and then pulled on my running shoes. The Parade had already left the Upper West Side, and an empty sidewalk surrounded the Museum of Natural History. I entered Central Park through the Hunter's Gate, my gate, and started running. I had enough time to run my favorite route, which is the upper five miles of the giant Park loop; I cut across to the East Side at roughly 72nd St, and headed north past the Met and the reservoir. Other than an occasional dog walker, I saw no one, and I let my mind roam while my feet carried me towards Harlem Hill.

Before too long, however, my thoughts focused themselves, and they chose a subject worthy of that particular day--gratitude. For me, there's no better time to reflect on the things and people for which I'm thankful than a run, and there are few places better than Central Park in which to do so as well. And one of the most wonderful things about my favorite five mile route is that it takes me past the sites of so many memorable experiences of my life here, from the elementary school at which I voted in the 2008 presidential election, to Belvedere Castle, where I celebrated my 28th birthday with a giant egg hunt, to the meadow where I celebrated my 29th birthday with a skateboard triathlon, to the Great Lawn where I and many friends listened to the Philharmonic's outdoor performances, and to the fields where we watched Richard III earlier this summer, to say nothing of the Delacorte, which hosts my beloved Shakespeare in the Park. I ran past trails on which I and my fellow coaches had taken our young athletes for their runs, past lawns on which I'd played bocce ball and croquet, past benches on which I'd attempted crossword puzzles and finished novels, and past the bridle path, on which I'd walked home from work nearly every day for almost two and a half years.

It's been a good run, I thought to myself, in every respect of the word. And then, just as I rounded a corner north of the reservoir, I saw Martha Stewart. In a Park practically empty of human beings, and at a time when one would expect her to be knee-deep in organizing a dinner for dozens up in Bedford, the queen of all things culinary and crafty was walking towards me, her quilted jacket perfectly tailored and her blond hair neatly blow-dried. On a day in which I was to attempt a pie recipe I had never tried (who brings a previously unattempted dish to a seminal holiday gathering?), and on a day when friends and family come together in close quarters with pounds of potentially undercooked poultry and a plethora of sharp cooking instruments at hand, my Martha sighting struck me as a powerful omen. Chaos and mistakes and uncertainties aside, the universe was as it should be. Martha was walking in Central Park, one of my favorite places in the world, and I was running in it. I laughed, danced a little circle in the middle of the road, and let my feet fly.

By the grace of Martha, it turned out well

I've celebrated three Thanksgivings in New York--one in Harlem, one on the Upper West Side, and one, this year, in Park Slope. Each has borne the distinctive feel of its participants and circumstances, and each has been filled with the love particular to a gathering of scattered friends and acquaintances on a day traditionally marked for family. I loved each one of them, different as they were, and I feel lucky to have been included in each one of them. And this Thanksgiving, as I left Brooklyn on the F train, my nearly empty pie pan at my feet (it was good!), I thought about how this sentiment applies to my time in New York, too. As different as it is, I've loved it, and I feel lucky to have been a part of it.

Pictures from four seasons of running in Central Park

Quotes of the Week

2010-11-24T17:49:00.000-08:00

What would I do without LP? Months come and go, and yet he remains my most reliable source of memorable quotes. As a result, I post the two following LP quotes for your reading pleasure--enjoy!

-----

On a co-worker

LP: “He eats very healthy, like broccoli, tofu, vegetables, smoothie, all day”.

CGC: “Well that’s not bad”.

LP: “No, but that diet, it is asexual”.

CGC: “What do you mean?”

LP: “I don’t know what comes first, what is the chicken or what is the egg, or whether it is the wimpy diet and then the asexual or the asexual and then the wimpy diet”.

CGC: “What?”

LP: “As a wise man say, ‘A man always orders and eats a whole steak on a first date’”.

-----

LP: “Do you want to hear a sad story?”

CGC: “Sure!”

LP: “It is about an Afghanistan dog”.

CGC: “Like a dog from Afghanistan or an Afghan dog like an Afghan hound?”

LP: “No, a dog in Afghanistan”.

CGC: “Is the dog an Afghan hound?”

LP: “Stop talking”.

2010 San Francisco Giants, I salute you.

2010-11-22T17:04:00.000-08:00

Because you made me truly excited about baseball for the first time since Will the Thrill played at the 'Stick. Because your players and pitchers, complete with Shakespearean nicknames, long-legged strides, mohawks, red thongs, and tar-black beards, roamed the field and stalked the mound of America's most beautiful ballpark. Because your defense was as beautiful to watch as your home runs, and because your team chemistry was more remarkable than any one player, and because you made three generations of my family, spread out across 3,000 miles, insanely happy. Because a team of misfits and castoffs brought San Francisco its first World Series trophy, and because it's felt like Christmas ever since. 2010 San Francisco Giants, I salute you!

Cycles of Cycling

2010-10-23T12:45:00.001-07:00

In two and a half years of living in New York City, I've never settled back into cycling. I've certainly ridden, and not only outside in Central Park and up to Piermont and Nyack, but also indoors on my trainer on the days when snow falls past my living room windows. These rides have affirmed new friendships and re-invigorated old ones, led to the discovery of my greatest Hudson River valley culinary delight (the Bunbury muffin), and let me pedal through autumnal landscapes with a sense of flight that only cycling allows. But the visceral joy that would course through my veins as I charged Buttermilk in Ithaca, or Mt. Tam in the Bay Area, hasn't reappeared since I moved here, and I wonder at its absence as keenly as I feel it.

This is actually fun.

I've considered these ambiguities before, and I should emphasize that the existence of these ambiguities doesn't mean that I haven't had fun on any rides here, or felt real excitement at flying down the Great Hill, or relished the dappled sunshine as I ride the shady Palisades river road. It's more that I haven't found cycling to be as fulfilling here as I have in other periods of my life, and a strong indication of this lack of fulfillment, so to speak, is that riding doesn't make me as happy as it used to. And so I don't do it as often, if at all. In contrast to my years in Ithaca and the Bay Area, months can pass in NYC without me touching my bike unless I'm either injured (and thus can't run) or want to get out of the city via something other than a train or zipcar.

The root of this disenchantment remains difficult for me to identify; it's certainly possible that the combination of limited places to ride and many, many people wanting to ride in them makes cycling feel more like a chore to me than it does elsewhere. I won't deny that on weekend mornings when I've gotten a "late" start (i.e. 9:00 am or so) and have ridden into Central Park hoping to complete three or four six-mile loops, I've egressed from Olmstead's idyllic fields after just one--the sheer magnitude and general obliviousness of runners, pedestrians, dog-walkers, rollerbladers, pedi-cabs, horse-drawn carriages, bird-watchers, children, Central Park Conservancy vehicles, and other cyclists can make riding impossible and my generally low blood pressure skyrocket. At the same time, however, riding in the Bay Area isn't always a picnic either; anyone who's had to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge when the bike lane is closed, or through Golden Gate Park or up La Honda on a weekend morning, can attest to the extreme riding congestion there as well. And Ithaca had its own host of cycling-related problems, from non-existent bike lanes/road shoulders to enormous potholes and frost heaves to cyclist-hating dogs (they always seemed to find me on deserted rural roads with spotty cell phone coverage).

My guess, however, is that I'm just in a period in which my love of cycling has abated for a while. I'm actually okay with this abatement, because it's allowed space for other activities to emerge again; it was here in New York that I re-discovered the soothing properties of lap swimming, and that I returned to hiking with a vigor that my Ithaca years in particular lacked. At the same time, my obsession with the TdF has yet to suffer a reprieve, and every Fall, including this one, I spend about a week mulling over whether or not I want to do some cyclocross racing. In fact, when AK emailed me last week and asked if I wanted to race in Highland Park next weekend, I spent an hour mentally listing what I would need to do to overhaul my bike in time.

But I'm not there yet, and one reason I know I'm not is because the day that my joyful love of cycling returns, I won't spend an hour thinking about 'cross race prep--I'll just do the 'cross race prep. Ditto for waking up pre-sunrise and wondering if I really want to go spin through Central Park; instead of wondering, I'll simply hop on my bike, just as when I now wake up to go running, I simply run out the door rather than curl up under the covers and ponder my desire to sprint past Sheep Meadow. It's happened before, and it will happen again.

One day I shall again jump 'cross barriers.

As a result, I do have faith that this love will return at some point, although I can't predict when exactly. I recently went through a bunch of my old graduate school emails, and in the process, I came across the following one, which I'd sent to the cycling team on a chilly, beautiful Fall day five years ago:

From: ____@cornell.edu

Subject: Saturday ride, 10am, CTB

Date: October 14, 2005 2:58:43 PM EDT

To: cucycle-l@cornell.edu

At the risk of tempting the rain-gods, I'm posting a ride for tomorrow morning, leaving at 10am from CTB. Right now the forecast says tomorrow will be cloudy with occasional showers, and not too cold, so fingers crossed....

I'm thinking approx 25 miles, 15-17mph, probably Ellis Hollow to Whitechurch to Coddington unless there are any strong objections.

Come ride before snow--not rain--starts to fall!

Best,

CGC

I remember how much I loved riding down Whitechurch, with the leafy hills rising on either side of the valley and the scent of snow in the air. Someday, and probably fairly soon, I know I'm going to feel that joyfulness--the kind that only two wheels can create--again.

Quotes of the Week

2010-10-21T07:46:00.000-07:00

Since work has dominated my life to a disquieting degree these last few months, I have few quotes to post, and all occurred, well, at work. Still, each is a subtle gem, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

-----

On an email MJL had just sent.

CGC: "I like that when you emailed to say that she'd stopped by, that you wrote "cher" with a lower case "c" so as to distinguish her from The Queen".

MJL: "Precisely".

-----

While meeting a student at Princeton with AXD.

AXMD: "Hi, I'm Anne".

PS: "What?"

AXMD: "Anne".

PS: "What?"

AXMD: "Anne, like Anne Boleyn".

PS: "What?"

AXMD: "Anne--A-N-N-E".

PS: "Oh, Anne".

-----

While discussing an agile herd of ibex on the side of a dam.

CGC: "Maybe in my next life I'll be one of those goats".

LP: "How do you know you are not one who's in a dream of human life?"

An Interview with Kary Haddad

2010-10-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

This week I had jury duty. It was, for lack of a better word, unpleasant, not least because I had to bail on attending a live performance of The Slate Political Gabfest with my friend Kary. As I sat for hours in the windowless jurors' waiting room of the New York State Supreme Court, I tried to think of how best to make said bailing up to him, until, like the dingy fluorescent light bulb buzzing over my head, the perfect solution flashed before me. What better salve than a Freckle interview? The moment the bailiff let us turn on our phones I emailed Kary his five questions, and, good friend that he is, he returned his answers in a matter of minutes. Thus I present to you the arch insights and commentary of Kary Haddad, who not only introduced me to Obadiah Parker's cover of "Hey Ya", but who also helped bring the phrase "PI Land" (meant to describe any tract of land that might possess poison ivy) into general usage. And by "general usage" I mean used by me, him, CMXD, and sometimes LVT.

Kary, in Ithaca, serves an unstoppable ball towards PI land

CGC: What is the worst thing about having to be at work by 8:30am every weekday morning during the academic year?

KH: The worst thing about getting to work at 8:30 is realizing that I am a half hour late, because I am supposed to be there at 7:55 for homeroom.

CGC: Did Roswell, NM, enhance or diminish your sense of empathy towards UFOs?

KH: My sense of empathy towards UFOs is unchanged. My sense of *sympathy* is significantly increased, due to the realization that the UFOs landed in a really uninteresting part of the world. They probably had no idea that they were landing in the type of place where residents think nothing of dressing alien blow-up dolls in patriotic American flag t-shirts without any apparent irony whatsoever.

CGC: Why is Avenue A a better musical than American Idiot? Or is American Idiot a better musical than Avenue A?*

KH: Avenue A is not a musical, and so therefore cannot be better than American Idiot. If you are referring to Avenue Q, then I'd have to say it's a better musical because I have friends that worked on it.

CGC: Fill in the blanks: Glee is to _________ as Rochester is to ________.

KH: Glee is to _underused emotional nouns_ as Rochester is to _fading centers of industry_.

CGC: If you could only play one game for the rest of your life, would it be Beersbie, The Settlers of Catan, or Apples to Apples?

KH: Beersbie, while fun, caused me my first sports-related injury since elementary school so that's clearly out. Apples to Apples is fun, but highly dependent on the crowd you're playing with. So that leaves Settlers of Catan by default.

*This question underscores The Freckle's near total ignorance of contemporary musicals.

The First Monday in October

2010-10-04T19:54:00.000-07:00

Early this morning, on my run in Central Park, I had an unusual person on my mind: Elena Kagan. The point of that sentence isn't to suggest that Kagan is essentially "unusual" (although her life now is by no means "usual"), but rather that she or any other Supreme Court justice is an "unusual" individual for me to consider as I round Cat's Paw and summit the Great Hill. This morning, however, thoughts of a determined little girl from the Upper West Side replaced my "usual" mental fodder of breakfast foods and athletically-themed daydreams (last week's featured a long fantasy of what it would be like to run Western States).

Much of the focus on this First Monday in October has been on the Court's docket, which features a number of potentially incendiary cases, and which will reveal how the Court's new liberal minority bloc will act. But the docket and its adjudication are things that I consider while eating lunch or arguing with friends; early morning runs create instead the forum for imaginative epic narratives, the ones with larger-than-life characters and powerful dreams and enormous, messy questions. And so, you see, I found myself charging the Three Sisters while wondering what motivated Kagan to pursue her Supreme Court dream for so long, and what sustained her in pursuit of that dream despite the realization that so much depended on timing, and the other nominees, and the President, and the Senate.

Pondering Kagan's narrative mishmash hasn't led me to any sense of resolution, other than that I'm very impressed that she realized the singular focus of her life-long ambition. It does strike me as almost exquisite that all of the variables listed above fell perfectly into place, and I wonder at the number (10? 15?) of lawyers and judges with similar dreams who came so close to that same realization, only to see it disappear because of one better nominee or one flubbed confirmation hearing. Still, I can't help but think of Kagan and these other would-be justices in light of William Deresiewicz's recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "What Are You Going To Do With That?", particularly with regard to his comments on how we make choices, take chances, and make mistakes. Or more accurately, how many of us don't make choices, or take chances, or let ourselves make mistakes.

What I'm really wondering about, as a result, is to what extent Kagan and the other justices and those would-be justices really, truly wanted the positions that they currently possess (or don't). My guess is that they must have or they wouldn't have achieved them; on the other hand, what if they're seated on the bench because it was easier and more obvious than not sitting on the bench? In other words, a bright, hard-working, driven young woman at seventeen--the year that she wears a judge's robe and holds a gavel in her high school yearbook--has decided she wants to be a Supreme Court Justice, and from that moment on the following steps on this chosen trajectory are clear: college, law school, law review, clerkship, law practice, Justice Department lawyer, law professor, etc. etc. etc. Isn't it easier to follow religiously this completely visible path than to recognize, say, halfway through law school, or while snowed under a mountain of Justice Department cases, that maybe this isn't exactly what one wants, and, harder still, to change direction? Or did she--or any of the others in this data set--pause at each step, honestly assess herself, her happiness, and her dreams, and realize that, yes, this was the path she wanted to pursue?

I have no reason to doubt that Elena Kagan is and was very happy with her choices, or that she is, as Deresiewicz says, someone who "[made her] choices for the right reasons", and who recognized and embraced her "moral freedom". But it's on my mind because right now taking chances is very much on my mind, as is the difference between perceived safe choices and the right choices for oneself. I suppose that what I can't shake is the sense that by sticking for so long, and from such a young age, to the same ramrod trajectory, that Kagan never opened herself to other possibilities (who knows what those possibilities could have been?). On the other hand, I'm very happy that today a fourth female Supreme Court Justice takes her seat.

So, on that note, I say Happy First Monday in October, Justice Kagan. And here's to your new path.

Cold Weather, I salute you

2010-10-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

Because your arrival signifies a happy shift to cool morning runs and sweat-free subway rides. Because with your frosts and nightly temperature drops come honeycrisp apples, acorn squash, and a plethora of pumpkins. Because I've missed knotting scarves, wearing socks, buttoning up my peacoat, opening my living room windows, and including my oven in my cooking routine. Because I welcome my electricity bill sans air conditioner usage, and because your rain washes away the NYC street detritus better than any maintenance crew. Because you highlight the simple pleasures of autumn in a northeastern city. Cold Weather, I salute you!

Where I've Been

2010-09-30T19:14:00.000-07:00

Well. That was a bit longer than I expected. In fact, I'm not sure how to best explain my absence these last two months. Was it due to a whirlwind of travel, friends, and good books? Or perhaps to long runs, longer bike rides, and even longer days at work? Was it the result of a summer heat-induced malaise, or of an unfocused excitement about Fall's arrival?

This picture basically sums up the last two months

I've decided, while pondering my ghostly blog presence, that listing the events, happenstances, and general phenomena of August and September might yield the clearest explanation for my disappearing act. The medievalist in me loves lists and catalogues, so without further ado I give you the Eighty Seven Thousand Six Hundred Minutes of the Last Two Months, measured not only in love, but also in...

Six states, two countries, and five cities...
Four airplanes, six buses, three airports, four trains, two rental cars, two pairs of running shoes, one pair of hiking boots, one bike, and four hours in standstill traffic on I-80...
One backpacking trip, four rustic huts, two volcanos, and one troll-treasure-hiding waterfall...
One inadvertent swim with Montauk jellyfish, one lava-warmed Icelandic hot spring frolic, and one consequently dyed-red bikini...
One hip surgery, two head colds, and one perpetual sore throat...
Three reunions with high school friends, three get-togethers with family members, two reunions with college friends, one reunion with an Oxford friend, and countless serendipitous encounters...
Six novels, eight Old Norse manuscripts, one book of essays, and several New Yorker, Sunset, Runner's World, and New York Times issues...
One successful identification of a mysterious painting, one graffiti-esque initials-marking in volcanic ash, one game night, and one visit to the Rubin...
Eleven rounds of Beersbie, five volleyball games, seven pond circuits in a kayak, and one hand-built wedding platform...
Two Lands End runs, one Piermont ride, one Breakneck Ridge/Cold Spring hike, one Golden Gate Park run, two Baker Beach runs, one Presidio/Crissy Field run, and countless runs in Central Park...
Ten pounds of kale, three kleinur, one Peets latte, one perfect Gordo's burrito, and 120+ cups of tea...
A lot of work, a few sad goodbyes, and several cherished, laughter-filled moments.

Hmmm. No wonder things felt frenetic!

Ride On, Lance.

2010-07-21T06:54:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason--for whatever perfect storm of national calamity, difficult personal circumstances, ceaseless high temps, and general malaise that's decided to descend upon us--this summer has been tough for most people in my life, myself included. Maybe it's because, in the last few months, the news from abroad and at home hasn't been good, and never seems to get better. Maybe it's because, since Memorial Day, the heat never seems to cool, and a run in the steamy humidity of 6:30 am feels just as unbearable as one under the relentless noontime sun. Maybe it's because jobs keep not materializing for friends looking for work; maybe it's because clumps of Deepwater Horizon oil could start washing up on the East Coast. Or maybe it's because, all other factors aside, sometimes the only expression that best fits so many of these things is that frustrating and nebulous adjectival phrase, plain old "bad luck".

With this in mind, and as friends and family members know, I tend to retreat for three weeks in July to watch the Tour de France; by retreat I mean I hibernate with my flat screen and clunky window air conditioner for hours and hours in order to watch the peloton circle to Paris. I look forward to the Tour all year--the first week of August is when I experience my post-Christmas morning crankiness--and even in a year like this one, which showcased the Olympics and the World Cup, my excitement has remained unabated. Particularly as this summer has progressed, the Tour has loomed like an athletic oasis, and one in which the event's characteristic unpredictability, epic nature, and challenging geographic context would be most welcome to a doldrums-lingering viewer like me.

The Tour, suffice it to say, has not disappointed, but the ways in which it has not disappointed have of course defied my expectations. I'm neither the first nor the last to state that all one can expect of the Tour is the unexpected, and I embrace the fact that every year the Tour holds true to this maxim. On its 97th journey through the French countryside, the Tour seems to be adhering to the same Boethian cycle that the rest of us have; in other words, Lady Fortune has not looked favorably upon most of the riders. For the first time in years, the Tour de France had to neutralize the results of a stage because so many rides crashed spectacularly on a freakishly oil-slicked descent, a decision the Tour organizers haven't even made when riders have died. Garmin-Transitions lost its team leader, its sprinter, and its lead-out man in a matter of days. Frank Schleck--his GC brother's most trusted lieutenant in the mountains--kissed his Tour goodbye after a collarbone-snapping crash on the unforgiving cobblestones of Stage Three; that same day Lance Armstrong began to lose his maillot jeune dreams with, of all things, a flat tire. Cadel Evans attempted to hide his broken elbow--sustained in yet another crash--on his one day bearing the yellow jersey in the stony Alps, and later broke down on the steps of his team bus as the reality of its loss sank in. And in a move that will be hotly debated by Tour viewers and participants for years to come, Alberto Contador attacked and won the maillot jeune from Andy Schleck not because the Luxembourger betrayed a moment of physical weakness, but because Schleck dropped his chain.

True, for some this Tour has been exceptional; French riders, for example, have won a commendable six stages so far, including an extremely difficult one by the petit blanc Thomas Voeckler, who famously wore yellow for ten days in 2004. Similarly, Thor Hushovd, that sprinting Norwegian "Hammer of the North", continues to defy gravity and re-capture the green jersey on mountain stages poorly fit to his ballast-like frame and fast-twitch muscles. And Clean Bottle man, perhaps my favorite TDF mascot in years, has landed TV coverage on almost every stage (it can't be easy to run up the edge of the Col de la Madeleine in a faceless, full body water bottle costume!). But on the whole, the general mood of most riders and the seemingly non-stop freak accidents--flats? dropped chains? oil-slicked roads?--seem to fit the overall wtf? ambiance imbuing the summer of 2010.

Which brings me to Lance Armstrong. Lance, as the cycling-obsessed public knows, is riding his thirteenth Tour, and hoped to win his eighth. He's thirty-eight years old, but there are older riders this year--Christophe Moreau and Jens Voigt among them--although none were gunning for the podium. He had every single teammate from last year's champion Astana squad (with the obvious exception of Contador), plus he had Johan, the mastermind behind every one of his Tour victories. He began training and racing earlier than he had last season, when he commenced his comeback and placed third; he even had a brand new sponsor. In other words, Lance possessed everything he needed to be a serious contender, and a record podium finish seemed tantalizingly within reach.

And yet...despite acing everything that's within his control, like placing fourth in the prologue time trial, nothing seems to be working right. The man who always seemed to glide by misfortune, even down the side of a mountain, has been caught in crash after crash after crash, including one on the way to the starting line. The man who flicked off any little mechanical like an annoying insect had to wait by the side of the pavé for almost a minute for a new wheel. The man who ruled the peloton as a legitimate patron now works as a domestique for Levi Leipheimer, an amazing cyclist in his own right, but one who as a Postal rider ten years ago wasn't even selected to ride for Armstrong on his nine-man champion Tour squad. It's almost as if, all other factors aside, Lance spun the wheel and landed on several years' worth of straight up bad luck.

Which is why, as the days pass, I'm rooting for Lance. Not because I think he's going to win, but because he's in the Tour at all. Because he never needed a comeback, but he decided to risk one anyway. I choose that word, "risk", deliberately, because it's a big gamble to chance that the last entry on your athletic CV isn't going to be "seven time Tour de France winner", but could instead be "finished 25th in his last Tour de France with no stage wins". Sure, Lance was hoping that it would say "eight" or even "nine" time winner, but he knew that there was a decent chance it wouldn't. And, frankly, I admire him for that. I admire him for doing everything he could to give himself the best possible shot at another win, knowing full well that it could blow up in his face, and then, when it did, for still showing up every day anyway and racing his bike. Because the fact of the matter is, no one who doesn't want to be racing in the Tour de France is riding in it; it's simply too hard. So the man who already had the perfect postscript threw his hat in the ring again, in spite of his age and with full awareness of the risks, because he loves it for what it is.

And so yesterday, as I sat on my couch with my clunky window air conditioner running full blast, I watched Lance attack on the hardest stage of this year's Tour, a stage that justified the Pyrenees' nickname "The Circle of the Dead Men". The peloton released him and the nine other riders who eventually joined him; none were a threat to the overall standings, not even one of the most celebrated Tour winners of all time. Up the Tourmalet and then the Col d'Aubisque he attacked and counter-attacked. He was visibly tired, and in the finish line sprint, he simply wasn't fast enough. He knew it, too, but he sprinted anyway. And as I watched, I remembered watching him win the Limoges Tour stage fifteen years ago, when I was half the age I am now, in the middle of a foggy San Francisco summer. It was only a couple of days after his teammate Fabio Casartelli died, that gifted Italian cyclist whose memorial the peloton passed just earlier this week. Lance, despite winning the 1993 world championship, was no GC rider at that time either. He took off on a solo breakaway, and the peloton let him go; he crossed the finish line alone, and pointed his finger toward the sky. I think now, upon reflection, that these are two of the greatest Tour stages I've ever seen.

"It was a tough day", Lance said later yesterday at the finish line. "I paid for it at the end [...] I warmed up a little bit before the race and it went right at kilometer zero. 200 km at the front took it out of me. I had no sprint at the end. But I tried".

You sure did. Ride on, Lance.

Quotes of the Week

2010-07-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

The past two months only produced a few notable quotes, but what quotes they are. Enjoy!

-----

LP: "I have something highly inappropriate to say".

CGC: "What is it?"

LP: "I leave it to suspense".

-----

JML: "I was electrocuted last night".

CGC: "You were?"

JML: "Yeah, just a little bit. It kind of felt good".

-----

LP: "I bought a Dutch tile".

CGC: "You bought a Dutch child?"

LP: "A Dutch tile".

CGC: "Oh. That's inappropriate?"

LP: "No, that wasn't what I was going to say. But, some Dutch tiles are very inappropriate".

-----

While ordering ice cream at Sweet Melissa in Cobble Hill.

MS: "Chocolate chip?!? I am SO OVER that flavor; I've been over that flavor since I was five years old. Tell me one thing that chocolate chip can do that cookies and cream or mint chip can't".

-----

While sitting in the Salt Lake City airport.

CGC: "How come neither Betty nor Veronica ever seriously dated Reggie?"

LRC: "Are you serious?"

CGC: "Of course I'm serious. Why didn't they?"

LRC: "Because Reggie was an a**hole!"

A Morning on Mt. Judah

2010-07-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, while at Sugar Bowl near Donner Summit for LRC2's wedding, I decided to go for a run. As this decision was made on Saturday morning, or the day of the main event, I knew that I had about three hours until the wedding began. I also knew that, based on the location, any run would involve an elevation gain of at minimum 1,000 feet, would test my total lack of altitude acclimatization, and would be mind-blowingly beautiful. Indeed, even if I just ran to the end of Sugar Bowl's parking lot and back, I'd still be treated to a vista of Mts. Lincoln and Disney, the shade of lodgepole pines, and bright patches of mid-summer snow. In other words, I couldn't lose.

Since I currently live in Skyscraper National Park, however, I wanted to make the most of my (perhaps) only high Sierra run of the summer, and so after a bit of hemming and hawing, I settled on the Mt. Judah loop. From the Sugar Bowl lodge, this run would take me up and onto the Pacific Crest Trail above Donner Pass, skirt around the eastern flanks of Mt. Judah, lead me up to and over the summit, then circle down between Mt. Judah and Mt. Lincoln back onto the PCT, once more past Lake Mary, and finally back to a shower and my waiting wedding guest garb. Based on the map the complete route looked to be about seven miles with 1500' of elevation gain, and despite little sleep and acclimatization, I sensed that I could run the trail, stop to enjoy the view, and shower/get ready all in time for the ceremony. I slathered on some sunscreen, drank some water, and ran out the door.

Donner Lake, as seen from Donner Pass Road not far from the PCT trail head

The run up to the PCT trail head felt surprisingly easy; granted, I was taking it slowly, but the altitude and searing sunlight--which was exacerbated by the black tar of the Sugar Bowl access road--didn't take as much of a toll as I would have expected. Once on the PCT, I enjoyed picking my way among the loose and dusty rocks up the switchbacks, which is a skill I rarely get to use on the smoother bridle path of Central Park. The trail rose quickly and consequently so did my heart rate, such that the "good morning"s I uttered to the hikers I passed were more strained and breathless than normal. Donner Lake loomed into view below the Pass, and I spotted several hikers enjoying a late morning snack on the rocks above the vista; less than a mile later, I was running east above them on the Mt. Judah loop trail.

Jeffrey and lodgepole pines cast the trail into a cool shadow, and giant cabbage-like plants carpeted the mountainside. Pine needles muffled my footfall as I climbed a bit for half a mile, and then as the trail turned south towards the summit, I encountered my first massive patch of snow. By "massive" I mean I could see the trail disappear underneath it and was at a loss as to where it emerged! Fortunately, a hiker coming from the opposite direction was crunching his way across the snowbank; he said that the trail paralleled the creek running to my left, mentioned that there were several other patches higher up, told me that I'd have no trouble crawling across them, and wished me a great run. I crossed my fingers, splashed up the creek, found the trail as it resumed switch backing out of the snow, and emerged with it above the treeline on Mt. Judah's eastern side, just below the summit ridge.

Almost at Mt. Judah's summit

From here I could see the mountains of Squaw and those ringing Tahoe's western side, as well Mt. Rose to the east in Nevada. With the exception of a light breeze that rustled the treetops, the world was silent. I stretched my arms and looked up at the sky, then turned and immediately ran into a second massive stretch of snow. Luckily, the muddy footprints of previous hikers gave me some idea of where the trail lay; unluckily, my trashed running shoes lacked the grip that their boots had given them. After slipping twice--and catching myself, barely, with my hands on wet, relatively grip-less snow--I chipped out two footholds with my toes and stood up to survey what lay ahead. Since I knew the trail paralleled the ridge line until it joined the ridge and lead over the summit, and because I was above the treeline, I was able to see where the trail "should" be. I decided that my safety lay on the rocky slope just above the snow, and so I scrambled up and then slowly made my way along the scree before scrambling back down to the trail once it re-emerged. I breathed a sigh of relief, ran along the trail as it skirted the flank just above a drop-off into a verdant valley far below, and then, right as the clear path to the summit came into view, hit a snowbank so long and so wide that I knew that I had no choice but to crawl across it. Fortunately, there were no ominous black clouds in the sky! I crouched down and carefully picked my way across, stepping into muddy footprints to the best of my running shoes' ability and squinting against the glare of brilliant white snow in bright sunshine.

I finally cleared the snow and ran the now-dusty trail up and over the Mt. Judah summit; worried about the time since it took so long to make my way over and around the snowy patches, I didn't stop to look around. The summit, at about 8250 feet, marked the high point of my run, and from here the trail commenced a beautiful and relatively languorous descent back to the PCT. I dipped back into the trees and enjoyed the dancing feeling that comes from trail running downhill; right as I turned back onto the PCT, I caught up with two ultramarathoners who were out for a decent, oh, twenty-five miles! I tailed behind them and their dog all the way down the mountain, watching their nimble footfalls and noticing how their arms--complete with a water bottle strapped to each hand--tucked up against their ribs. As I ran off the PCT and towards Lake Mary, they flashed me a grin and gave me a hearty salutation--"great running!"--that sated my ego for the rest of the weekend!

Looking towards Mt. Judah (on the left) from the top of Mt. Disney

Knowing that my mother would be worried, I sprinted the final mile down the access road and to the Sugar Bowl lodge where, sure enough, I found her seated on the deck with an iced tea and a magazine. "I know, I know!" I said, as she smiled and pointed to the time. I ran upstairs, plugged in the kettle for some post-run fuel (instant oatmeal), and hopped in the shower. Within an hour, I was dressed, high-heeled, and waiting for the bride's arrival--and with an aisle seat, no less!

Carve Designs, I Salute You.

2010-07-05T10:52:00.000-07:00

Because you are the sartorial brainchild of two outdoorsy, surfing California women. Because your bikinis, board shorts, and dresses are designed for gals with athletic bodies, and because they're perfect for both mountain lakes and oceanic surf. Because you sponsor super-talented female athletes, and because you keep sponsoring more of them. Because when I wear your bikinis out in Montauk or your t-shirts on the Upper West Side, I can pretend that I'm at Ocean Beach or back in the Richmond District. Carve Designs, I salute you!

Summer's Greatest Gift

2010-06-27T16:01:00.000-07:00

In addition to steamy subway platforms, hot, humid nights, and a plethora of soft serve trucks, summer in New York City offers what I consider to be the season's greatest gift: outdoor Shakespeare. I heartily partake of this offering each year, and one major reason why this month has seen so few blog postings is because I've been spending much of my free time outside in the company of Stratford-Upon-Avon's favorite son. My devotion to outdoor Shakespeare in this town is not quite as obvious as it might seem, however; as anyone who has spent ten summery NYC minutes with me knows, I cannot stand extreme heat or extreme humidity, and I particularly cannot stand extremely humid heat (n.b. "extreme heat" for me is anything north of 80*F). Why, then, would I willingly spend three hours traipsing through northern Central Park, or sitting in the still, steamy air of the Delacorte, or standing on the hot asphalt of Battery Park, much less four additional hours waiting in line in said humid heat?

Shakespeare in the Park

I've pondered the reasons behind these hot hours of willful Shakespeare-induced insanity, and what's resulted are a few plausible explanations. First and foremost, I love to be outside, and even when the temperature's unbearable, I still rise early to run or ride, walk home each day through Central Park, and embrace eating out outdoors (most recently at Ocean Grill, Pier I Cafe, and Frankies 457). Call me crazy--and I am, because even though I ultimately love to be outside in the summer I still complain freely to everyone within earshot about how gross the weather is--but there's something wonderful about a warm evening spent walking home from a candlelit dinner under the trees and the stars, while wearing just a sundress and carrying only a book and a wallet. I try my best to remember these magical summer moments when I'm sweating heavily on a hot subway platform at 8:30 am.

Second, I really, truly enjoy--dare I say, love?--Shakespeare. I'm not a Shakespearean and I don't claim to possess scholarly insights that others do not, but I have spent several years reading, studying, and even teaching his texts, and my affection for his work only grows as time passes. His rich language, use of metaphor, re-casting of source texts, and general sense of humor continue to impress me as I grow older and spend a little more time in this grand experiment we call mankind. And while every time I re-read one of his plays I see or hear something that I did not initially notice, I also treasure the characters, themes, and dramatic moments that ring as true as the first time I encountered them. Gower sang his "song that old was sung" in my Oxford attic bedroom over Christ Church Meadow eight years ago, and then he sang it again in Riverside Park last year when I was tutoring on Saturday afternoons; Henry V pitched his Agincourt battle in a high school classroom in foggy San Francisco, and drew his battle plans once more one leafy Fall when I drove through Vermont; several years ago Perdita vanished at the Roundhouse in Camden, and she vanishes again this summer at the Delacorte.

Frederick Sandys's Perdita

Attendant to this love of Shakespeare is my delight in seeing, hearing, or reading the same story re-worked in different ways, and not just with regard to the Bard's texts. For example, one of the reasons I enjoy Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida so much is because of my devotion to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde; I like untangling each author's embellishments and general re-workings, and I find the texts' respective shifts in perspective and interpretation to be more exciting than simply reading a "different" or "new" story. Similarly, to the consternation of an ex-boyfriend, I once created a music playlist that played in succession various musicians' renditions of "Down by the River" (Neil Young's, the Indigo Girls's, and Buddy Miles's, to be specific), because I loved hearing how each artist spun the same song into his/her own. And so while I rarely go to other plays, I see Shakespeare's whenever I can--not only because often each performance is a welcome re-visitation of a text I've read or seen before, but also because every production offers a company's or actor's own interpretations and re-workings as well (e.g. Samuel West's Cold War Hamlet at the Barbican, the almost Edwardian setting of the Public Theater's current Merchant of Venice).

Gorilla Rep's Bottom and Puck, and Hermia and Puck

In sum, the outdoors, a love of Shakespeare, and a desire for textual/artistic resonance are the best explanation for why I would willingly subject myself to weather that makes me want to collapse in front of an air conditioner. After all, heavy, humid air seemed a small price to pay to see fireflies dart around Lady Anne's skirt and hear Clarence's mournful voice float above the meadows of northern Central Park during the New York Classical Theatre's production of Richard III. Ditto for the heady scent of warm grass at Summit Rock on the evening when NCT and I watched A Midsummer Night's Dream, courtesy of Go rilla Rep. Even better, at times the weather can dramatically aid these performances in a way that no air-conditioned theater ever could; last summer, while I was enjoying the Classical Theatre's production of King Lear at Battery Park, the heavens swirled and broke in a massive, dark thunderstorm right as Cornwall gouged out Gloucester's eyes--it was chilling, to say the least.

The Delacorte

Still, I nearly reached the limits of my extremely humid heat tolerance last Wednesday, when I decided to brave the standby line at the Delacorte in the hopes of getting just one solitary ticket to The Merchant of Venice. I joined the line at 4:30 pm as the thermometer hovered around 91*F, and after three and a half very hot and pretty uncomfortable hours sitting on a concrete Central Park path--during which I'd exhausted my reading material, and as it began to seem unlikely that I would end up with a ticket at all in spite of how early I'd arrived--I swore that this would be the last time. No more heat, no more mosquito bites, no more loud New Yorkers screaming at one another about line jumping. At 7:55, with 23 people ahead of me and no obvious standby tickets in sight, I nearly left (visions of my air conditioner were dancing in my head). At 7:58, I positively, absolutely decided that I was only waiting one more minute and then I was leaving. At 7:59, a box office employee ran towards us with a fistful of tickets, and forty five seconds later, as the sun set over Central Park and the Delacorte quieted, I was sitting in the middle of the seventh row, ready to see Bassanio ask Antonio for a fateful 3000 ducats. Somewhere, the Bard smiled.

Sugar Snap Pea, I Salute You.

2010-06-04T18:23:00.000-07:00

Because you are my favorite legume hybrid, and because I love you as much whole as I do shelled. Because I first fell for you at 4 Corners Farm in Vermont, and because my affection for you only grows as we continue to meet at farmers' markets in California and New York. Because you are the perfect companion to lush butter lettuce and arugula salads, and to big spicy radishes, and even to sardines on toast. Because you are an English cultivation well-suited to New World soil, and because you are my favorite harbinger of summer's bounty. Sugar snap pea, I salute you!

Oxford's Professor of Poetry

2010-05-31T10:05:00.000-07:00

Every five years I have the opportunity to participate in a unique democratic exercise--the election of the Oxford Professor of Poetry. My suffrage was first granted six years ago when I became a member of the Oxford Convocation, which consists of all matriculated students and alumni of the University, and was cemented for the rest of my living days when I received my M.St. one year later. If any institution exists in the next life, however, it's probably (for better or for worse) Oxford, so there's a good chance I'll be voting in this election in perpetuity.

Convocation Members, not discussing the Oxford Professor of Poetry

Paul Muldoon held the Chair during my M.St. year, and in addition to receiving a salary of roughly £5,000, he delivered three public lectures at the Sheldonian; I attended the last one, in Trinity Term, which was less a lecture than a conversation with Seamus Heaney, who was conveniently visiting Oxfordshire that week. Both poets read, and while I can't remember if Muldoon read Heaney's work or vice versa, I do remember that the experience of hearing their rich brogues dancing through the poetic cadences, and under the eyes of the Sheldonian cherubs, no less, was positively heady. I left the Theatre in an ebullient daze, and was basically babbling when I returned to the Somerville MCR. Even now, when I read Heaney's "The Real Names", I get goosebumps.

As election watchers know, my second chance to vote should not have been this year, but instead 2014; after Muldoon finished his term, Christopher Ricks assumed the Chair, and his tenure should have ended in 2009. However, due to a little incident known as the Walcott-Padel Controversy of 2008, which resulted in both the withdrawal of Derek Walcott from contention and the election and resignation of Ruth Padel (who was also the first woman to win the Chair), Ricks stayed around for an additional year, and the Convocation is now voting again. Despite, or perhaps because of, this aberration, the recent issue of Oxford's English Faculty News made no mention of this scandal, with the exception of the following oblique statement: "As readers will know, the election in May 2009 for the next Professor of Poetry resulted in the elected candidate's standing down from the post without ever taking it up". Ah, British circumspection. In keeping with this reticence, I'll offer two observations--first, I love how "The Walcott-Padel Controversy of 2008" possesses the same titular ring as Acts of Congress or landmark legal cases (e.g. "The Glass-Steagall Act" or "The Dred Scott Decision"). Second, instead of explaining the nuts and bolts of this poetic scandal, and in line with how most voters educate themselves on significant issues, I encourage you just to Google it.

Being the good Convocation citizen that I am--for this is truly a scenario in which "citizen" holds the full original meaning of civis--I registered, received my voting codes from the British Electoral Reform Services, and voted. For whom, one might ask, did I cast my vote? A poet of integrity, of course. A poet who can memorialize Plantagenet kings as well as that bad a** Mercian Offa, a poet who can elegize and word-play, a poet who can rhyme "door" with "moor". I voted for Geoffrey Hill. And with that vote, I hope to help usher in a new era of poetic partisanship, poem-making, and positive poetic discourse. Dominus Illuminatio Mea!

YES WE CAN!

Bear Mountain Redux

2010-05-29T18:16:00.000-07:00

Two days after I returned from the West Coast, JSH, ZH, and I headed north to hike Bear Mountain. JSH wrote and photographed a great account of our day trip, so I'll leave the record of that day to her, except to say that I was inspired to return and find a better hiking route from Bear Mountain to Peekskill than the one we undertook. Enter my and JSH's colleague Dr. Salmon, who with his wife has covered most of the trails in the tri-state area, and who as a result provided me with an accessible, relatively safe, and gorgeous alternative: the Camp Smith Trail.

Armed with this new intelligence, LVT, JC, J2, JFV, and I hopped on a train for Manitou--or in my case, literally sprinted through Grand Central with seconds to spare--and disembarked at the tiny hamlet with its small Hudson beach and cattail-covered flats. As we hiked up to Route 9 and the Bear Mountain Bridge, which was the world's largest suspension bridge when it was built in 1924, we encountered a species that is seen more frequently in the suburban Northeast than other American regions: the suspicious property owner. While I recognize and respect the need of property owners to ensure that their homes and lands are safe and unmolested, I fail to see how five respectful and peaceful hikers walking down the short road from the train station to the trail pose such a threat to the houses on either side that they literally need to be driven off said road and verbally admonished by one of these property owners (complete with Land Rover and riding boots). And while this may seem, and was, a minor blip in the experience of that day, the incident provided much conversational fodder as we hiked for the next several hours.

Bear Mountain Bridge and Adams Nose, over which the Camp Smith Trail lies, as seen from Bear Mountain

From Manitou and Route 9 we crossed the Bridge, passed through the Trailside Zoo (a memorable moment occurred when both LVT and JFV covering their faces with their hands as they saw a river otter in a disturbingly tiny cage neurotically swim in a circle over and over again), rounded Hessian Lake, (the site of FDR's polio contraction?), and ascended Bear Mountain on the Major Welch Trail. We then descended along the Appalachian Trail--on which we witnessed part of this restoration project--and emerged into the middle of an African drum and dance concert on the broad fields next to the Bear Mountain Inn. With our cultural needs sated, I insisted we stopped at the Hiker's Stand so I could eat a hot dog and thus ingest the holy trinity of hiking fuel--fats, protein, and sodium nitrates. Yum. JFV followed suit, although he didn't consider it such a wise choice about three miles (and 1500 hot, sweaty vertical feet) later on the Camp Smith Trail.

In order to reach this virgin hiking route, we crossed back over the Hudson, partially retraced our steps on Route 9, and then ducked up through the trees and east along the AT, towards the Taconic Mountains. The trail was relentlessly steep and rocky for a good mile, although it did switchback and occasionally provided actual steps. Still, the steep rockiness was much more welcome than the sticky, still heat and oddly dull and oppressive sunlight that--to me, at least--characterizes summer on the Eastern Seaboard. I could feel sweat lying on my skin in a slick sheen, and its stubborn refusal to evaporate was only made more perturbing by the tiny flies that became entrapped in the yucky sweat-sunscreen layer on my exposed epidermis.

Bear Mountain Inn, as seen from the Camp Smith Trail

The beauty of the Camp Smith Trail, however, more than made up for this annoyance; once we followed the blue blazes off of the AT and headed south, the trail opened into high meadows, long and lush groves of trees, and tall, rocky hillsides that provided sweeping vistas of Bear Mountain, Indian Point, and the Hudson. After this hike, I can say with some confidence that Camp Smith is now my favorite trail in the New York area (although I do really like Breakneck Ridge as well). That said, the next time I undertake its rambling trail, especially in combination with a Bear Mountain loop, I'll bring more water--three large bottles was barely adequate--and try not to go on a day so bright and warm. By the time we five were seated at the Peekskill Brewery, the majority of us had lost our stomachs to the appetite-killing combination of heat and physical exhaustion that is the enemy of yummy food and delicious microbrews. Also, in hindsight, mussels steamed in cream sauce might not be the best recovery meal. Now that I possess this valuable knowledge, however, I think a third trip lies in the near future!

The Woman in White

2010-05-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

I know that I recently waxed rhapsodic about a wonderful 19th century novel, and that I've previously discussed the intricate task that is choosing reading material for a trip. Acknowledging these two former posts, however, only underscores what I'm about to discuss here; namely, that I read an incredible, enrapturing, can't-think-about-anything-else book at the beginning of May, and while in Eugene no less. Ladies and Gentleman, the novel of which I speak--a novel which I exhort you to run out and purchase/borrow and sink into as soon as possible lest you wish to deny yourself an immensely gratifying reading experience--is none other than Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White.

I'm neither a Victorianist nor a Historian of the 19th century, but from the standpoint of pleasurable reading I do know that when an English novel of the 1800s is good it's really good, and The Woman in White is no exception. Since I can sense myself teetering on the edge of uninformative hyperbole, I'll backtrack a bit; the night before I flew to Eugene, with my suitcase packed and my alarm set, I stood before my bookshelves and considered the options before me. No one book stood out as an optimal choice, and so, mindful of a need for sleep before my 3:45am wake-up call, I simply picked the thickest novel that I hadn't read, threw it into my tote bag, and went to bed. I slept on the flight from New York to Salt Lake City, but once I'd boarded the prop plane for Eugene I was wide awake; thus, as we rose out of the clouds and into the sunlight over the Great Salt Lake, I opened Collins's text and began to read, "This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve...".

And what a story it is! By the time the plane touched down among Oregon's verdant fields I was deeply absorbed by Cumberland, where "the distant coast of Scotland fringed the horizon with its lines of melting blue", by the love story of Walter Hartright and Laura Fairlie, and by the remarkable character of Marian Halcombe, of whose keen intellect even the cunning and malicious Count Fosco could not help but be enamored. Over the next few days, and whenever my brother, mother, and I needed a break from one another, I would dive back into Collins's novel, the result of which is that I cannot think about the text now without remembering the scent of fir trees and the taste of apple turnovers at Espresso Roma.

Of course, The Woman in White, like any great novel, is more than a sum of its parts, and even more than the smells, tastes, and experiences that attend its reading. Still, since I don't want to give too much away, I'll merely say that in addition to the narrative elements I mention above, this book possesses thrilling--nay, suspenseful and frightening--plot twists, intriguing shifts in narrative voice (the story is told from several perspectives), and character development and description that rivals the best I've ever read. At several points I found myself both terrified of and unable to resist discovering what happened next, and as I reached the last 100 pages of the book, I dreaded the thought of finishing it--I wanted The Woman in White never to end. Since it inevitably did, however, I'm left with only the following option: to preach the Collins gospel, and convince others to read it.

On that note, dear reader, I ask you to consider this Victorian door stopper on your next trip to the bookstore or library. As Marian Halcombe would pragmatically say--and did, actually, to Walter in the dining room at Limmeridge House--"I suppose we must come to it sooner or later--and why not sooner?"

An Interview with Connor Callaghan

2010-05-20T02:00:00.000-07:00

When I visited Eugene a few weeks ago, I decided to interview my beloved younger brother, Connor Callaghan. Connor and I possess an interesting relationship; some of our most memorable interactions include me forcing him to translate a passage on Servius Tullia (I was his Latin tutor--not a good role for a sibling), us playing a game of chess in which one player ended the game with a rook up said player's nose, and a bizarre conversation/argument about a dinner of meat versus quinoa that is now legendary in our family. Because we live thousands of miles apart from one another, I don't see Connor nearly as often as I would like, but I was still very happy to see him flourishing in his life in Oregon. Now LRC and I just need to get our brother to New York!

Where Connor thinks his deep thoughts.

CGC: Why should Levi Leipheimer or Lance Armstrong win the 2010 Tour de France?

CSC: I'm not sure that they should win.

CGC: Describe the University of Oregon in ten words or less.

CSC: Fun, challenging, athletics, Phil Knight, facilities, scenic, expensive, not racially diverse, Mary Jane, Busch Light.

CGC: If you could change one thing about running so that it would be more enjoyable for you, what would it be?

CSC: That it wouldn't take so much time. And I don't see the point of running.

CGC: Is a BMX bike or a Tahoe longboard a better means of transportation around San Francisco?

CSC: BMX bike--it's more versatile. It's also a pain in the a** to longboard up a hill.

CGC: Do you prefer the novels of Tim O'Brien to those of Tom Perrotta, or those of Tom Perrotta to the novels of Tim O'Brien?

CSC: I don't know; I can't pick between my two favorite authors. I like that O'Brien's stuff is emotionally enticing, and that Perrotta's novels are contemporary and relatable.

Flip-Turn Frenzy

2010-05-12T18:58:00.000-07:00

My parallel life as a small, freckled cetacean reached an interesting juncture last week: I returned to flip-turning. Lest this admission cause JSH to choke on her coffee--have I really managed to swim mile after mile without a trusty flip-turn?--I'll simply say that in the recent past my flip-turning has mostly resembled the pathetic half-somersaults she describes here. Back in my middle school swim team days I could flip-turn with the best of the other seventh-graders, but ever since I left California, swimming has assumed a role that emphasizes languid fun over focused speed. I suppose that's the enjoyable price one pays for demoting a sport to cross-training.

This is not me.

Recently, however, I've found myself becoming both faster and more focused in the pool. Perhaps it's because my three main sports--running, swimming, and cycling--are all on a par at the moment; I spend a roughly equal amount of time on each, and am not currently training for events in any of them. At the same time, I've noticed that the more hours I spend in the pool, the greater my desire grows to go faster (is this inevitable for any endeavor that involves moving forward?). And so, over the last few weeks, I realized that I was regularly looking at the clock after my 500 meter segments, and that I was finishing my standard mile and a quarter significantly faster than I had been earlier this spring.

Neither is this.

All things considered, only one habit, or lack thereof, has so far prevented me from gaining real speed: engaging the almighty flip-turn. Unfortunately, the JCC pool does not lend itself well to flip-turning; with three to four swimmers in a lane at any given time, and all usually going at different speeds, there's often someone spread out at the end of pool, with his or her flippers, snorkel mask, water bottles, kickboard, and other detritus creating a beautiful yet annoying whirlpool of flotsam right where I want to tuck my body under and push off the wall in a sleek slipstream. As a result, I haven't really practiced my flip-turns, not only because it's so much easier not to, but also because I can pop up and push off faster than I can half-somersault my way through this aquatic garbage eddy.

This *is* me, not flip-turning, in France.

And yet, one late evening last week, my lane emptied as I neared the end of my swim, and so I vowed to myself, "CGC, you will flip-turn your way through the next 250 meters". Which I did, sort of. After two flip-turns I found my nose full of burning chlorine, and my heart racing due to my ill-timed strokes, breaths, and flips. Obviously, my flip-turns demand more work, and so from now on whenever I find myself in an empty lane, I'm going to practice. Speedy swimming, here I come!

Quotes of the Week

2010-05-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

April showers not only bring May flowers, but also unique quotables from friends and colleagues. Enjoy!

-----

While watching a band warm up at Parlour on the Upper West Side.

KP: "What kind of music do you guys play?"

Trombone Player: "You know, '80s and '90s music."

LRC: "You can play '80s music on a trombone?"

Trombone Player: "You can play anything on a trombone."

-----

While discussing what happens to booster rockets once they fall off a main rocket that has just taken off.

CGC: "What if you're rowing a boat in the middle of the ocean and a booster rocket falls on you and kills you?"

LP: "The odds are very small...but if that happens to you, then you deserve to die."

-----

On Moby Dick.

LP: "According to a Soprano, it's about homosexual aggression."

CGC: "A Soprano?"

LP: "Soprano is where I get my peek of American life".

-----

Regarding an overly detailed letter he had to write to his boss.

LP: "It's like explaining to E.T. what is sex. 'What is sex?' 'Love.' 'No, harder'. 'Looooove'".

-----

CB enters the office with a big grin on his face.

JL: "Well, you look like you have your hand in the marmalade jar".

CB, puzzled, looks at palms of hands.

-----

And finally, I offer a few observations from the nine year-old girls I coach on Sunday mornings. They recently ran around the Central Park reservoir twice--two miles!--and this occasion resulted in the following commentary:

E: "This is really hard, because yesterday I had the busiest day of my life".

D: "I want to kill myself".

E: "I wish I had enough money to buy 10,000 Gatorades".

Postcards from Eugene

2010-05-08T17:08:00.001-07:00

I just returned from a week in Eugene, OR, and (briefly) San Francisco. Some sense of wanderlust must have been afoot in New York City, because all of my immediate colleagues decided to jet off as well, and so for a few days Oregon, Orange County, Chicago, Louisville, and Providence hosted the occupants of our empty offices. I'm back now, as are they, and it's not an understatement to say that we're all a little wistful about our recent adventures.

Tall trees everywhere

I haven't been to Oregon since I was a kid, and I've never been to Eugene, which is where my brother currently lives and goes to school. My visit to him had two small objectives--the large one being to read and walk as much as I wanted--first, to spend some quality time with my male sibling, and second, to run the Eugene Half-Marathon, the finish line of which lies on legendary Hayward Field. My running, as devoted Freckle readers know, hasn't been going so well since I moved to New York, and aside from running the 2008 Nike Women's Half-Marathon with UMP, I've neither trained for nor completed any other events. That said, for whatever reason my running from Christmas to about mid-March had been wonderful; my training proceeded without a hitch, and I was running faster times than I had since college. Unfortunately, however, I fell a couple of times while descending on Mt. Washington, and my left leg, in particular, had felt funky (for lack of a better word) ever since. I suspended all training and all running, and stuck to swimming and cycling for the six weeks leading up to my trip. As a result, just getting to the starting line was going to be a big accomplishment for me, and my nervousness grew as my departure date drew near.

Both the trip to and the first days in Eugene took my mind mostly off of the run, however; from the moment the puddle-jumper touched down in Oregon, I reveled in an environment that made New York City feel a million miles away. Tree-covered buttes and mountains ringed the horizon, cyclists and runners dotted the roads, trails, and sidewalks, and on every block Douglas firs and redwoods stood guard over the Victorian houses, coffee-shops, and bookstores beneath them. My brother, mother, and I spent the days walking, reading, yelling at one another, and drinking ridiculously good lattes while an Oregon spring blossomed around us. Heavenly. And yet, running could never be that far from my mind. Aside from the 8,000 marathon runners milling around Eugene, the Oregon Relays commenced at Hayward Field two days before my event, and so The Emerald City seemed full of unusually swift and lean individuals. The starting line early Sunday morning only verified this impression--I've never done an athletic event with such fit looking runners! I suppose Track Town USA doesn't earn its title lightly.

As I had no idea what to expect on the course, either in terms of its quirks or my performance, I told my mother and brother to come to the finish line much later than I normally would have suggested. About two miles into the run, however, I realized I'd made a major miscalculation--I was flying. I was not only running much, much faster than I ever would have anticipated, but I also felt phenomenal, and I knew that I'd be able to maintain a quick pace for the next eleven miles. My ability to know my body well is continuously a happy surprise to me; there was no evidence, based on the previous month and a half, to suggest that I'd be able to run the time that seemed within my reach, and yet I just knew that I would. I turned my brain off and let my legs lead the way up through Amazon Park, down the Willamette River, and through the gates into Hayward Field. When I rounded the historic track and heard the finish line announcer call my name, my throat tightened--I was so grateful to be running well and running strong. As I told JSH in a bleary post-run email, it was one of the happiest running days of my life.

Hayward Field Finish Line

Fortunately, my mother never listens to me, and so she had not only arrived at Hayward Field much earlier than I had told her, but she also saw and photographed me as I finished. Even better, she patiently waited while I devoured a plate of pancakes--Krusteaz was a sponsor--and tried to form coherent sentences. A hot shower, a giant mug of tea, and one Sunday New York Times later and I was a very sleepy and content camper.

Leaving Eugene was tough--I don't get to see my brother as often as I would like given where we each currently live, and Eugene itself possesses a certain sensibility that New York City is unable to provide. In some ways, Eugene reminds me of Ithaca, plus a dash of Northern California. The resemblance between the two towns was brought to the fore one evening while I ate dinner at Market of Choice; as I imbibed a delicious and sales-tax-free soup and salad, I read The Eugene Weekly, which is uncannily similar to The Ithaca Times. I skipped immediately, of course, to the classifieds, in which I found the following gems, none of which I would find in an Upper West Side publication:

"Lost and Found: Clay sculpture from my porch. Medium sized, roots twisting around man's head, spiral base. Please return no questions asked. It's a part of my soul".

"Help Wanted: work-exchange Buddhist community. Includes room, vegetarian meals, living allowance. Seeking hardy experienced people, also for book bindery. Must have spiritual interest".

"Counseling: Urban shamanism. Awaken your personal power and magic. Find your path to health, happiness, and who you're meant to be".

"M for W: I love the outdoors, camping in the nude, nude beaches, motocross, swimming, and nude hiking".

Ah, Eugene--you shed light on a part of my soul that's too often kept dark. And with that, I hugged my brother goodbye, packed the car, and drove to California. Until next time, Beaver State.

Pelican, I Salute You.

2010-05-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

Because I never tire of watching your sleek form dive-bomb into the Pacific. Because you float on the thermals and updrafts like a crafty hawk, and yet you possess the silhouette of a dodo. Because your name graces an English press, an expensive Muir Beach Inn, and a Pensacola baseball team, and because Western Civilization has invested you with metaphorical significance for two thousand years. Because you are the first sentient being I look for when I return to the ocean bluffs and trails of San Francisco, and because you (almost) never fail to greet me. Pelican, I salute you!

Going West, Going East

2010-04-27T11:27:00.001-07:00

I've discussed the tension between going east and going west on this blog before, and the fact that I went east has been on my mind again this week. Call it an intense case of "synchronicity", to borrow Jung's phrase by way of Tom Wolfe; first, the New York Times published Wolfe's op-ed on Mark Twain; second, my hometown paper reported on a current debate taking place in the Tahoe area regarding Twain's alleged lakeside campsite; and third, I spent the last few days reading Wallace Stegner's The Sound of Mountain Water: The Changing American West. Suffice it to say, I've been knee-deep in myths, histories, and ideas of "The West", and the ways in which this narrative affects both "western" writing and "westerners'" self-perceptions.

West

One conspicuous outcome of this synchronicity, so to speak, is that I've wondered how "western" I am. True, unlike Twain I actually did grow up in "The West", and while I've never worked a farm, cleared a plot of land, or depended on manual labor for sustenance (and no, corralling three year-olds does not constitute manual labor), I've spent years living in and exploring the hills, mountains, and watersheds of Northern California. My predilection for hot showers and a bed means that I've never spent months camping--as NCT can attest, after days of backpacking I cartwheeled with excitement down the flanks of Mt. Blanc to Courmayeur, solely at the prospect of getting to use a hairdryer--but I've slept under the stars in Western Marin, on the shores of Upper Angora, Fallen Leaf, and Aloha lakes, in the redwood groves of Sonoma County, and in Yosemite's broad valley. Perhaps most significantly, I've never started a wildfire while cooking dinner at a campsite.

East

I suppose "The West" will always be a kaleidoscopic concept, and from a mix of personal, literary, and historical standpoints. I like Stegner's twist on the "idea" of "The West", which I think he crystallizes particularly well in The Sound of Mountain Water in a fictitious vignette that features both Route 66 and Walt Whitman. He write as follows:

"I can imagine the good gray poet, not afoot but definitely lighthearted, taking to the open road down Highway 66, and I can see his eagle eye and his wind-split beard, and hear his words as he squints westward along the vista walled by the work of these latter-day pioneers.
'Oh road,' I can hear him shouting,
'You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you
are not all that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.'

It is hard to fool a poet."

But not, according to Wolfe, a wannabe Westerner.

In the Bliss of Routine

2010-04-22T07:54:00.001-07:00

Last week, and aside from the general rhythm set by work, errands, friends, and sleep, my evening walks home anchored each day with a sense of calm familiarity. The days have stayed light until seven thirty, the adult softball and kickball teams have returned to the Central Park baseball diamonds, and beside every field the trees stand tall with thick green canopies. As I begin my third summer in New York City, I'm surprised--again--by the new things I learn and discover while treading the same paths and reading on the same benches. The wisteria that retreated last June has blossomed once more by the bridle path, and the April light cuts across the Gapstow Bridge as I walk northwest and home.

I recently finished Donald Hall's latest memoir, Unpacking the Boxes; of a poetry class he took at Harvard with Archibald MacLeish, Hall writes, "Because I worked on poems for hours every day, I was offended when MacLeish called me lazy. He referred not to hours worked but to the ambition of my endeavor, to a conflict between apparent size and real scale". Something about my walks, for me, evokes MacLeish's distinction--the forty-five minutes are small relative to the other pursuits that fill my time, and yet they are a mountain in the mind, and, perhaps, the sustenance on which my life grows.

Hall, in any case, seems to have resolved the conflict. In "Routine" he writes a world into five lines, and, to me, with both the scope and focus of another year in New York and a wisteria flower in spring. Because I can't help but feel--can anyone else?--that I will live forever in the late evening sunlight, while the cheers and crack of bats echo through an April Central Park.

"Routine"

In the bliss of routine

--coffee, love, pond afternoons, poems--

we feel we will live

forever, until we know we feel it.

An Interview with Julia Lowd

2010-04-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

I first met my cycling buddy, travel partner, and fellow New Hampshire lover Julia Lowd on the cross-country ski trails around Ithaca. Actually, I think our proper first meeting took place in the dingy Cornell Outdoor Education basement, but the cross-country ski trails sound like a more auspicious setting, and it's true that this context foreshadowed many of the events that would occur in our years of friendship (e.g. me crashing spectacularly on skis while Julia obliviously skied on and continued our conversation ---> me stumbling into, and resignedly walking along, a rouge road drainage ditch while Julia and I hiked from Amboise to Chenonceaux, our conversation unabated). Luckily for me, Julia is now my UWS neighbor, and so we can continue to talk past each other while we circle the Central Park loop on our bikes on early weekday mornings. Who better, then, to interview in this month of bike cleaning and daffodil blooming?

This is how we do it in La Drôme Provence

CGC: Why is "Granite State of Mind" such a brilliant parody?

JFL: "Everybody pump your fists and yell 'live free or die! Live free or die!'" That about sums it up. Jay-Z couldn't have said it better himself.

CGC: Which of the following do you find most terrifying: French washer/dryer combo machines, looking for an apartment in NYC, or people who have never ridden bicycles?

JFL: Oh gosh, that's a tough one. I think the French washer/dryer combo machines are going to have to win out here. There is absolutely nothing worse that having damp, wrinkley clothes... every time you do your laundry. There's also something just a little off about the same tiny, tiny machine both washing and drying your clothes.

CGC: In what ways are the novels of Marguerite Duras superior to those of Dan Brown?

JFL: I can't believe I just spent 10 minutes thinking about all the ways I could answer this. Is this a trick question?! Dan Brown's ability to write a sentence makes me cringe.

CGC: Which two individuals deserve the titles of "greatest male alpine skier of all time" and "greatest female alpine skier of all time"?

JFL: For men, it has to be Ingemar Stenmark, Swedish superstar of the eighties. He's won more races than any other skier, and he really rocked those eighties outfits. If we're going for the most game-changing skier, though, I'd have to say Bode Miller. I know he's a cliche these days, but he totally revolutionized the slalom turn. For women, I'm putting in my vote for Janica Kostelic, the once unknown country girl from Croatia. She's tough as nails and if she sat on you, you'd probably end up with a few broken bones. She's also won 6 Olympic medals and is one of only two females to have won world cup titles in all 5 disciplines in a single year.

CGC: If Fabian Cancellara called you tomorrow and told you that you were the love of his life, what would you say?

JFL: Ohh, he's pretty dreamy. I might go weak in the knees for a minute. Then I'd ask him if I could ride in his team car during the Tour. Then I'd see if he could hook me up with Andy Schleck.

The Whale

2010-04-14T08:04:00.001-07:00

As I near thirty, I've decided that it's time to shed some of my literary antipathies, and because I found Thomas Hardy so unexpectedly wonderful, I next approached a novel of which I've always been very wary: Melville's Moby Dick. Notwithstanding years of AFD's avid endorsement, as well as more recent praise from HMS and AJS, Moby Dick and I had yet to make an acquaintance--Billy Budd proved to be a poor mutual friend--until I toted the text along with me to New Hampshire last month. I began reading the night we arrived, and within a paragraph Melville disarmed me by listing the Germanic etymology of the word "whale". For a crusty American author, he sure knows the way to an Anglo-Saxonist's heart!

Philological discourse aside, Ishmael's narrative captured my attention from the start; perhaps this can be traced to his immediate description of Manhattan, my current home, as "belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs", or perhaps it's because he self-reflects with such statements as "whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul" (could this be the American equivalent to Dante's "per una selva oscura"?). True, Melville intertwines natural history, Shakespearean characters, classical tragedy, swashbuckling action, and poetic imagery all into one impressive text, but I found myself most taken with the latter--beautiful and striking images that continue to stay with me days after I've finished the book. For example, Ishmael speaks of the Nantucketer "[who] out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to the rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales"; similarly, with regard to the relentless whale hunt, Ishmael states, "and as upon the invasion of their valleys, the frosty Swiss have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the savannas and glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can at last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate glassy barriers and walls there, come up among icy fields and floes; and in a charmed circle of everlasting December, bid defiance to all pursuit from man".

Spermaceti Cavities?

Call it literary destiny or not, but my reading of Moby Dick coincided with my return to regular swimming, and in the last two weeks I've noticed the following strange phenomenon as I freestyle my way through the pool: I swim like a sperm whale. Laugh all you want, but it's true; on the day that I ate lunch late at work, and two hours later felt my full stomach roll side to side with each stroke, I could not deny the sense that I was a small, freckled cetacean out for a swim. Furthermore, the longer I considered this bizarre perception, the firmer it grew--soon my swim cap became a ridged cavity full of spermaceti, not a blond ponytail, and the children in the adjacent lane swimming with their flippers and snorkel masks along the pool's bottom became aggressive sharks out on the prowl (I swam especially fast that day).

The stomping grounds of the small, freckled cetacean

I wrote, with some concern, to AFD about my new aquatic identity, and he replied, "sometimes I wish I were a sperm whale"; then he suggested that I read Philip Hoare's new book, in particular the section in which Hoare swims with real sperm whales. I had already added the book to my list after reading the Times' review a few weeks ago, but I felt better knowing that I was not alone in my odd self-perception. I'm always a little wistful when I finish a rich, thick novel, and Moby Dick is no exception. Still, as with all great narratives, and just as the sperm whale ingests the colossal squid, I know that the story and its resonant images will remain within me for a long time to come.

Quotes of the Week

2010-04-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

Spring is here, and if most of these quotes are to be believed, then love is most definitely in the air (or at the very least, amorous sentiments are). Vive l'Amour!

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While encountering CGC in the office kitchen.

SPA: "You received a haircut".

Pauses and looks CGC over.

SPA: "It is a substantial haircut".

-----

On CRP's two month-old baby girl.

CGC: "How's your daughter doing?"

CRP: "She's very lazy".

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JL: "I think dating gets harder as you get older".

CGC: "I agree".

LP: "It definitely gets harder when you're married".

-----

CGC: "Are you seeing anyone right now?"

CP: "No, but as of Monday I'm in love with someone".

-----

While discussing CP's new found soul mate, who shares her love of olive curing.

CP: "And then we each named our ideal olive, and it's the same olive!"

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While watching a bunch of amorous frogs in a bog at Rockefeller State Park.

CGC: "If a frog climbs on another frog's back, and then another frog climbs onto that frog's back, can all three of them, um...make it happen?"

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While pointing to some clearer, less crowded water.

CGC: "If I were a frog I'd go hang out over there".

NCT: "Not if you wanted to pass on your genes you wouldn't".

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And finally, in honor of the Stanford women's basketball team, which made it to the NCAA final and nearly defeated UConn for the national title, I offer the following observations from legendary coach Tara VanDerveer:

TV: "Why would you shoot a water pistol when you can have a cannon?"

TV: "They say they're Cinderella. Well, it's midnight, so send them back to the pumpkin patch".

TV: "The movie 'Dumb and Dumber" was already made, and you were not in it".

TV: "You're a Ferrari. Stop moving like a Volkswagen".

TV: "You want to have fun. Try winning. Now that's fun".

Celeste in Spring

2010-04-06T09:33:00.001-07:00

A recent slew of sunny days motivated me to undertake some spring cleaning, and several stoop sales on my block indicated that my neighbors felt the same way. However, spring cleaning for me doesn't signify an apartment overhaul; I'm a neat freak year-round, and I don't own that many things to begin with. Instead, spring cleaning means one crucial chore: a thorough, no-holds-barred bike cleaning and tune-up.

Celeste: Bianchi Birota

Back in the days when I used to wrench under BobWölfé's tutelage, I would have dedicated an afternoon to cleaning my bike myself; in other words, I would hosed, rinsed, pulled apart, oiled, re-cabled, scrubbed, and trued until my beloved Celeste looked, sounded, and felt brand spanking new. Now, however, I find that the following three things prevent me from doing so: lack of outdoor space (i.e. no hose or area conducive to hosing); lack of advanced tools (i.e. no bottom bracket tools); and straight up laziness. Luckily for me, the Upper West Side possesses a solution to all three of these problematic concerns, and that solution goes by the name of Imbert, although most people call him Master Bike. Thus, when the sun shone without cessation and the stoops overflowed with random household crap, I knew that it was time to pay Master Bike a visit.

The three days that Celeste stayed with Master Bike were very challenging; I couldn't help but gaze enviously at the cyclists rounding the Park on my walks home each warm evening, and I hated the giant empty wall space in my apartment where Celeste normally rests (she likes to hang from her rear wheel). And so it was with a happy heart that I picked her up last Thursday, and I exclaimed with joy at her sparkling clean frame and pristine cassette, save for an invisible film of lube. I had even asked Master Bike to spiff up her handlebars with new celeste green bar tape--a difficult request, since the last person who had wrapped my bars was my 'cross idol Barbara Howe, and I liked to think that she transferred some of her awesome cycling power to me each time I touched the tape--and as a result Celeste practically glowed.

Celeste: Elaphas Babara

I bid Master Bike goodbye (he had first greeted me with a "Ciao, Miss Bianchi", as I believe he only recognizes me by my bike model), and then, with my noble Italian steed by my side, I skipped home, where I hung her in her rightful place. Soon after I met JFL early in Central Park, and under a grey April morning sky, we spun past Sheep Meadow and up Harlem Hill, and then spun past them again and again. Throughout the Park blooming daffodils lined the paths and the magnolia trees stood heavy with full pink blossoms, while the whirr of bike chains and click of gear shifts mingled with our non-stop chatter (what can I say, we're girls who love to ride). Each time I looked down at Celeste I smiled. Here's to months of wonderful bike riding, and to the arrival of Spring!

A Stone Barns Sunday

2010-04-05T11:15:00.001-07:00

Chicken On the Run

On Easter morning, NCT, LTV, JC, and I rendezvoused at Grand Central and caught a 9:56am train to Tarrytown. Our destination? Rockefeller State Park and its 10+ miles of broad, bucolic trails. Although I like the steeper and rockier hikes at Cold Spring and Breakneck Ridge, I did enjoy the easy conversation that Rockefeller's paths allow, as well as the quick pace that JC set. We explored the park's "thirteen bridges", traced the southern boundary of Swan Lake, and spent some time observing the hyperactive mating rituals of some very muddy frogs in a very brackish bog. NCT even claims to have seen an eagle (perhaps a hawk?).

After exhausting Rockefeller's trails, we cut across a long, rolling green field and entered The Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture; moved by a desire for baked goods and cold drinks, we headed to the Center's cafe and shaded flagstone terrace. The unseasonably hot April sun, in my opinion, forced me to purchase and quickly devour a large slice of cold potato and goat cheese frittata, a serious helping of chilled beet salad, and one bottle of Fizzy Lizzy grapefruit juice (I rarely ever drink juice or soda, so clearly something untoward was taking place). This stands as one of the best meals I've had in a while, and it particularly felt fitting as an Easter lunch; I'd even stowed a Cadbury cream egg in my backpack for a mid-hike celebratory hike, but I forgot about it until I'd returned home and unpacked. C'est la vie.

Food and shade nearly resulted in a catatonic outcome--i.e. nap time--but we roused ourselves to tour the farm, and thus see the flora and fauna that would soon rest on Blue Hill's elegant dinner plates. In the course of our self-guided tour we saw the following: a gorgeous greenhouse with dirt floors and a retractable roof; a boisterous sheepdog guarding many woolly and hungry sheep; lots of roosters clucking up a storm; several pigs snorting and rooting about in muddy straw; sleepy cows on a sunny hillside; four humans trying to peel pithy grapefruits (that would be us).

Verbena and Rosemary Babies

Perhaps someday I will nibble on petite lamb chops and dandelion greens on Blue Hill's summery terrace; until then, however, I'm happy with picnic lunches and early spring hikes, sunny afternoons and a sleepy train ride home.

Cara Cara Orange, I salute you.

2010-04-02T12:25:00.001-07:00

Because you are the sweetest mutation I've ever tasted. Because you are equally at home in an early spring salad, an icy sorbet, or alone at the breakfast table. Because your ephemeral season belies your magnificent flavor. Because your history includes Venezuela, Florida, and California, and because you occasionally show up in distant New York city supermarkets. Because you are the citrus equivalent of a sultry samba, and because you are truly a "beloved" tree fruit. Cara Cara Orange, I salute you!

Saying Hello to Uncle Daniel

2010-03-28T07:56:00.000-07:00

In light of HBO's The Pacific, which began airing a few weeks ago, I thought I would mention a small tradition that I undertake whenever I'm back in San Francisco. I've already devoted considerable space on this blog to my treasured SF runs (click on the running tag for a sampling), and I've also discussed how much I enjoy spending time on the Coastal Trail, which traces the northwestern boundary of the City. One of the (so far) unstated reasons that I particularly like the Coastal Trail, however, is that in the course of any run or hike along its sandy path I get a chance to say hello to my Great Uncle Daniel.

The entrance to the Bay, as seen from Land's End

To clarify, Uncle Dan does not live along or perpetually stand on the Coastal Trail, although that would certainly make for rich blog fodder. His memorial, however, does; it stands right at Land's End, at the point where San Francisco drops into the Pacific, and thus at the half-way point for all of these runs and hikes. As a result, before I turn around and head east to home, I spend a few silent moments with the memory of him and his men, which is made all the more poignant by the memorial's vantage point over the interminable Pacific.

U.S.S. San Francisco Memorial

Uncle Dan, along with other male members of my family, was a U.S. Admiral who served in the Pacific Theatre during WWII; he was also FDR's naval attache and the commander of FDR's presidential yacht prior to the war's commencement. While in the Pacific, Uncle Dan commanded the U.S.S. San Francisco, and the bridge of this ship--its sides now pock-marked with shell-holes--is what stands on the Land's End precipice today. Why the ship bridge now rests here, of course, is somewhat self-evident. During the first naval Battle of Guadalcanal, which took place in the middle of the night on November 13th, 1942, Uncle Dan discovered that his ship was surrounded by Japanese Admiral Hiroaki Abe's destroyers; he ordered an aggressive attack, and was soon killed along with most of the ship's senior "bridge" staff. Survivors continuously stumbled over his long 6'6" frame, which was lying across the bridge, for the remainder of the dark battle.

6000 miles to Guadalcanal

My great-grandfather, who was commanding the U.S.S. Missouri in a different part of the Pacific, knew his brother's fate soon after; my grandfather, who would soon leave for the Naval Academy himself, learned of it from a newspaper while riding the streetcar home from high school. It's difficult for me to conceptualize what any of these experiences might have felt like--the battle, the news, or the war itself. A few years ago my siblings and I were on a memorial cruise of the U.S.S. Potomac on San Francisco Bay; one of the men on board was one of the U.S.S. San Francisco's survivors, and he spoke reverentially to us of our great-uncle's leadership during the battle as well as during the days prior. I don't know that I've ever felt more alien from someone with whom I've spoken; it's as though he were describing an experience that he'd had on Mars. And I'm very grateful that--fingers crossed--such experiences have remained so unfamiliar.

I think about these things, sometimes, when I'm out at Land's End; other times I just watch the water, which stretches thousands of miles beyond my sight line. Then I kiss my fingertips, place them on Uncle Dan's name, and run home.

An Interview with Dan Poston

2010-03-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

Dan is his homeboy

I've eaten funnel cake in Bryant Park with exactly one person: Dan Poston. In the spirit of that singluar experience I would add that Dan knows more about giraffes, psychoanalysis, and staging classical dramas in space than anyone else I know. He also makes a very good root soup.
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CGC: If you could be any animal, which would you be and why?

DP: Hard to answer since being an animal of another kind would change my motivational system. I think it would be nice to be a large bird who was more intelligent than large snakes and carnivorous mammals, who felt safe flying through a network of its species' earth-traversing tunnels and enjoyed sunny landscapes and wormholes to planets like Saturn.

CGC: When is the perfect time to visit Iguazu Falls?

DP: When you need to be overwhelmed. There is at least one spot and time of a particular day when that can happen for you there quite unexpectedly or overwhelmingly, but you have to find it yourself and you might miss it, in which case Iguazu will just weep vacantly in close almost cold amistad.

CGC: Are the books of Dr. Seuss more or less accessible than the works of Sophocles?

DP: The books of Dr. Seuss are just pleasant rhyming books written by a very kind, warm man who knew a lot. Sophocles' plays are already accessed. They are about gods. I think we already think like Sophocles' plays, so reading them can be like having an empty resonant headache, or it can just be distracting how weird and idiosyncratic the words or rituals used to be. Seamus Heaney's Burial at Thebes is a great adaptation of Antigone.

CGC: Riverside Park is the best place in New York City for a walk: discuss.

DP: I would like to erase the question and yet not claim falsely.

CGC: Complete the following sentence: I am the ____________ painter you will ____________ .

DP: I am the lover of a painter you will meet in a dream of nighttime desert mountain rain storms and nice far back eyes.

March on Mt. Washington

2010-03-21T18:19:00.001-07:00

Mt. Washington, as seen from Jennings Peak

Mt. Washington possesses an imaginative hold over me, and to be honest, I'm not really sure why. It's not a particularly interesting looking mountain, nor is it particularly high. Its fauna resembles little of that of the California coastal range or the Sierra Nevada, the two mountain playgrounds with which I grew up, and its weather can be brutally miserable--far more miserable than a mountain of its size should dictate. And yet, I find myself often daydreaming about Mt. Washington when I imagine new trips and hikes to undertake. Maybe the legend of Tyler Hamilton's multiple victories in the Mt. Washington Hill Climb has something to do with this, or the fact that the mountain stands in one of my favorite states. Either way, when NCT and I began casting about for a quick early spring trip, a winter summit of Mt. Washington immediately came to mind.

As I've previously noted, after driving north from New York City through the Connecticut River Valley and cutting east on NH RT-25, we woke up bright and early in Plymouth, NH, on Saturday morning and headed to the Sandwich Range. This chain of smaller peaks lies just south of Waterville Valley, and from its summits one can see both Western Maine as well as Mt. Lafayette and Mt. Washington. One purpose of this trip was to familiarize ourselves with crampons and ice axes--neither of which I've used in the past--and so NCT and I strapped on our winter climbing boots and walked across a tiny snow bridge before hiking up Jennings and Noon Peaks. As a first-time crampon wearer, I approached the icy trail gingerly (regular hiking habits die hard), and it wasn't until I started stomping each foot into the packed snow that I began to appreciate the sheer awesomeness that is the crampon. NCT articulated the experience best--"I feel like a spider", he commented at one point, while hanging from a vertical section of trail--and while we duck-walked up the mountain, I started humming "Spider Pig" under my breath. This resulted in the same outcome that my singing of The Sound of Music repertoire did in the Alps, and after NCT thus made it clear that he would no longer tolerate "Spider Pig", I switched to "Walk like a Duck" (sung to the tune of The Four Seasons's "Walk like a Man"). As a result, we then each did our own thing for a little while, and rendezvoused just before the summit of Jennings Peak.

Western Maine

The winds on Jennings Peak, which is about half the height of Mt. Washington, were very strong, and I began to worry about our summit attempt on the latter the next day. As luck would have it, a winter storm was scheduled to hit the Eastern Seaboard within the next twelve hours, and a successful summit began to look unlikely. Still, we rose at 4:45 the next morning and decided to hike as high as we could. As we drove north along the Pemigawasset River, the mountains alongside I-93 began to shape; when the sun rose, Cannon Mountain immediately loomed into view. Rain had been falling for about an hour by the time we reached the Ammonnoosuc Ravine trail head, and the winds in just the parking lot felt as strong as they had the day before on the top of Jennings. We didn't say much as we strapped on snowshoes and placed our crampons inside our packs.

An avalanche two weeks before had stripped one side of the ravine completely bare, and given the deep snow pack, we hiked up the opposite side of the gully from the traditional trail. Once we began climbing above Gem Pond (about two miles from the trail head), the rain turned into ice pellets, and given the strength of the wind, the pellets felt like shards of glass when they struck our faces. Still, the beauty of the trail and the snow-covered birch trees was undeniable, and I couldn't help but marvel at how wonderfully different snowshoeing up the mountain felt from summer hiking. When we reached the treeline just below the ridge and the Lake of the Clouds hut, we stopped to strap on our ski goggles, face masks, and extra layers. I took a deep breath, and we emerged above the trees and into the full force of 60mph sustained winds. The world became entirely white; the wind-whipped snow pack beneath my feet, the swirling ice and snow blowing around us, and the occasional, jarring appearance of a krummholz were all that I could see. I felt as though I were walking on the moon, and given how little I could hear, smell, feel, or actually see (given the goggles, wind, head layers, mittens, etc.), I don't think I've ever experienced such sensory dissociation. It was incredible.

The makeshift Ammonoosuc trail, just below Gem Pond

The wind impeded any real progress, and two gusts of 80mph almost knocked me over and nearly resulted in the loss of my poles. Given the wind's strength, we decided to turn around before we reached the ridge and gusts of even greater force; descending into those winds, however, proved even more difficult. We would start to glissade on our snowshoes when the wind would literally push us into stumbling or slipping; at one point I wondered if it would be faster to crawl down. That said, once we reached the treeline we were able to commence full-on glissading, and we essentially "skied" our way back to Gem Pond. At certain points the trail even resembled an icy luge track, and an inadvertent fall (which I still wish I could have seen given how hard NCT was laughing) turned me into a human bullet. I think I might have descended those forty feet 100 times faster than I ascended them.

By the time we returned to the trail head, at which point the snow/ice had transformed back into rain, NCT and I looked like two human icees. Everything was soaked and coated with a slushy frost; I pulled a wet ball of Cliff bar out of my pocket and contemplated using it for a prank, but ultimately decided that it was too disgusting even for that. We unsuccessfully tried to dry ourselves with the car heater before driving to the Crawford Notch Lodge for bowls of steaming chili and mugs of hot chocolate. We sat in front of a huge fireplace and stared catatonically at the fire while we devoured our food. After several minutes of silence, I looked at NCT, and he stared back at me. "I'm really, really cold", I said. "And I think my feet are wet".

Birches on Mt. Washington

Fortunately, our motel room possessed a powerful heater, and by the following morning everything was dry, including my feet. On our drive to Hanover for breakfast, during the course of which our exhausted bodies demanded Dunkin' Donut holes and maple candy, we discussed our first winter mountaineering attempt. Well, we tried to. I found that my tired body and apparently addled brain were unable to string coherent sentences together, and NCT kept stopping mid-sentence to stare out the window. As a result, the jury's still out. A summit attempt on Rainier? I'm on the fence, but I think I remember NCT saying he'd be up for it. Attempting membership in the Winter Forty-Sixters? Very tempting. And a return to Mt. Washington? Absolutely.

Quotes of the Week

2010-03-20T13:34:00.001-07:00

Let's call a spade a spade and acknowledge that these blog entries should be called "Quotes of the Month" and not "Quotes of the Week". Still, for the purposes of uniformity I'm leaving the titles as they are. Enjoy!
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LP: "He's not bald, but he has no hair".
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CGC: "If I were Canada I would have chosen a grizzly bear instead of a beaver as my national animal".
LP: "Beaver? Beaver! You can't even say 'beaver' in this country. Even I know that!"
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On Avatar.
SM: "I've played video games with better plots, including Dune 3.0"
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LP: "You know what I learned today?"
CGC: "What?"
LP: "You have a giant forehead".
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While recently examining the expiration date stamp on a cup of yogurt.
DP: "Do you think these stamps are reliable? It says January 11th".
RAK: "I would not eat that".
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While in the dark, enormous mud parking lot of the Italian Farmhouse outside of Plymouth, NH.
CGC: "This parking lot is huge. Why is it so big?"
NCT: "Maybe it's overflow parking for something else".
CGC looks around at the dense, dark, surrounding woods.
CGC: "Are you serious?"

Mt. Cube Farm Sugar House

2010-03-17T16:55:00.000-07:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when one makes an early spring trip to New England, one must visit a sugar shack. As a result, when NCT and I decided to climb Mt. Washington last weekend (more on this to come), I insisted that we stop at my favorite sugar house on our way back to New York. Now, it might seem odd that a young woman who has never lived in New Hampshire for more than three months might possess a favorite sugar shack, but I should point out that that three month residency belies the many weeks I've spent visiting NH over the years, and it most certainly belies the deep and abiding love I possess for the state. At the risk of turning this blog entry into a long digression on why I love New Hampshire, I'll simply say that, well, I love New Hampshire. I love its mountains and its river valleys, I love its lakes and great expanses of northern hardwood forest, I love its blueberry patches and its well-maintained interstates. I love the Granite State in snow and in sun, in its autumnal glory and in the heart of mud season. I love New Hampshire so much that I should probably, as NCT muttered during one of my long I-love-NH speeches during our six hour car ride, just marry it.

Since the government has yet to recognize person-state marital unions, however, I'll have to be content with visiting New Hampshire when I can. Unfortunately, since I moved to NYC I haven't been able to hang out in NH as often as I would like; the drive is a little too long, and the flights a little too inconvenient, for me to undertake quick weekend trips, and when I have longer stretches of vacation time I usually head home to the West Coast or off on more far-flung adventures. Still, the fact that I haven't been back to New Hampshire in almost two years was partly why we (I) decided to head to Mt. Washington, and as soon as the Upper Connecticut River Valley unfolded before us on I-91 last Friday, I began to bounce with excitement in my seat.

We passed the Mt. Cube Sugar House on our drive into Plymouth, NH, (our base camp for the weekend), which provided a wonderful opportunity for me to point out to NCT where he would be forced to stop in three days on our return trip. The Sugar House sits on NH RT-25, which bisects the state from east to west and loosely separates the White Mountains from the lakes region to the south. My first encounter with RT-25 occurred on my bike almost four years ago; I was living in Hanover for the summer with MAR, and occasionally we would ride a 40 mile loop up to Orford/Fairlee on RT-10. On the Fourth of July, after we'd watched the Orford parade, we turned west on RT-25 and headed out towards Wentworth. The primary motivation for this trip was to test part of the Prouty's route, but an unexpected bonus was my first visit to my soon to be favorite sugar shack. Even the bone-shattering frost heaves on RT-25 couldn't dampen my enthusiasm. Maple cream! Maple candy! Maple syrup! The Mt. Cube Sugar House sold them all, and at Carlisle Trophy-winning quality.

My last visit to the sugar shack occurred two years ago on my last visit to New Hampshire, which I'd taken with JFL to her parents' house in Waterville Valley. That weekend marked the first time I really started to explore the White Mountains region, and a beautiful run to the top of Mt. Tecumseh on a clear day stands as one of the best runs I've had on the East Coast (yes, I do mentally catalogue runs in that way). As we drove back to NYC, we unanimously decided to stop at Mt. Cube, and I clairvoyantly stocked up on a few containers of maple cream. Still, I ran out long before NCT and I headed north, and so when he and I entered the shack on Monday and I saw the little jars of said cream on the back shelves, I whooped for joy. Lest one think I'm exaggerating the wonderfulness that is maple cream, let me just say that I would choose maple cream over Nutella as a toast-topper any day, and that I really, really like Nutella.

I managed to convince NCT to purchase a jar as well on this visit, and we also each chose some leaves of maple candy for the drive. The sugar house stood exactly as I remembered it--well-stocked, cheery (despite the cold temps), and with its honor box for payment just inside the door. I looked around and reflected on the many things that had changed in my life since I first visited, as well as the good and important friends who've accompanied me each time I've pulled off of RT-25 for my maple fix. NCT asked me if I wanted to buy anything else, but I shook my head. We walked through the springtime NH mud, hopped in the car, and drove to Hanover for breakfast at Lou's with MAR2. NCT even ordered real New Hampshire maple syrup for his pancakes.

And so, my beloved Mt. Cube Farm Sugar House, it may be some time before my car or bike dances with the frost heaves and I return to your rustic environs. Do not doubt, however, that I will visit should I find myself near Mt. Moosilauke highway, and that I will purchase your maple products and copies of Edible White Mountains as long as I have money in my wallet. Until then, I will comfort myself with the words of that San Francisco native and New Hampshire resident Robert Frost, who wrote as follows: "'O fireman, give the fire another stoke, / And send more sparks up the chimney with the smoke.' / I thought a few might tangle, as they did, / Among bare maple boughs, and in the rare / Hill atmosphere not cease to glow, / And so be added to the moon up there. / The moon, though slight, was moon enough to show / On every tree a bucket with a lid, / And on black ground a bear-skin rug of snow. / The sparks made no attempt to be the moon. / They were content to figure in the trees / As Leo, Orion, and the Pleiades. / And that was what the boughs were full of soon".

The Trumpet-Major

2010-03-05T19:23:00.000-08:00

Every few months or so I read a 19th century English novel, during the course of which I usually experience one of the following two phenomena: either a sense of tedious yet dogged perseverance, or a sense of excited wonder. To the former I chalk up Charles Dickens's Hard Times, which far and away trumps all the other texts that fit that category (although, fortunately, this novel is only about a quarter the length of Dickens's others). To the latter, however, I would add George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch, Dickens's Bleak House, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, the novels of Jane Austen, and most of the novels of Henry James (if we want to deem him "English"), among others. The jury's still out on Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, of which I've only creased about fifty pages, as well as Eliot's Silas Marner, the story of which I didn't particularly enjoy but the experience of which I did, largely because I heard it as an audiotape while driving through Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada with AFD one summer.

Into this indeterminate third category I would place Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, which I read as a college freshman for a survey course. I remember finding the plot interesting, but the text never grabbed me in the way that a truly pleasurable reading experience mandates. As a result, in the years since I've never sought out Hardy's novels, although somewhere in storage I know I possess an old Penguin edition of Jude the Obscure, and in spite of the fact that "Drummer Hodge" is a favorite poem of mine, not least because of the word play with which Robert Hass engages it in his poem, "English: An Ode". And so instead of seeking out Hardy, every now and then I'd stand in the back aisles of Green Apple or some other used bookstore and stare both glumly and uninspired at the Victorian covers gracing The Return of the Native, Far From the Madding Crowd, and Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Until now. Two weeks ago I stood yet again in the back section of Green Apple's used fiction annex, to which I'd wandered in a fit of pique. I had an early morning flight back to New York the next day, and, as always, I needed something to read. Something consuming, yet detailed; something that would require me to notice and sink into the writing as well as the narrative. Something like a 19th century English novel. And then my eyes alit upon a petite orange spine, which was tucked between two copies of Tess. In straightforward black letters, the title read simply, The Trumpet-Major.

Dear Reader, if I could press this book to your chest with my warmest wishes, I would. That's how good it is. I say this as a reformed Hardyite (if only my grad school Victorianist roommate were here to tell me if that's an accurate term), and as one who now plans to read The Woodlanders and The Return of the Native as soon as possible. The premise of The Trumpet-Major may sound lighthearted--indeed, such is the reason many contemporaneous critics embraced this novel--but the characters are so finely and deeply sketched, and the events so uniquely depicted, and the voice of the text so true that one soon sees how much richness this premise actually allows. And the wittiness! Not only from the droll voice-of-the-narrator Hardy, but also from characters like Simon Burden and Corporal Tullidge, who pop up like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and from hot-headed Festus Derriman, who is outsmarted by everyone in sight, including his myopic uncle.

Anne Garland is now a favorite heroine of mine, she who "beneath all that was charming and simple in this young woman there lurked a real firmness, unperceived at first, as the speck of colour lurks unperceived in the heart of the palest parsley flower", and as she moves like a spectre among the hills, fields, and coastline of fictitious Wessex, I only wish that Hardy had given her another novel as well. Since he did not, however, the petite orange spine with its 320 well-thumbed pages rests on my bed stand, among which lie Overcombe and its residents, who picnic, and mourn, and love, and sail, and stroll, and sleep under no "strange-eyed constellation". To think, they do all that under the threat of Napoleon! And while no power-hungry Corsican threatens your reading time, I urge you--do not delay. Savor, enjoy, and read this novel, for as another English poet once wrote, "Old Time is still a-flying".

Wherefore Art Thou, Pelican?

2010-03-02T14:00:00.001-08:00

I like many birds--red-shouldered hawks, eastern bluebirds, california quails, chestnut-backed chickadees, blue-crowned amazon parrots--but I've always had a soft spot for pelicans. Growing up in San Francisco, I would often see them soar above the beaches and the Bay, much like the raptors circling the headlands across the water. And not unlike those hawks, the pelicans could instantaneously transform from floating observers into swift predators; they'd tuck into themselves and dive bomb without a splash into the water, surfacing a moment later with beaks full of fish. Their dodo-esque stature when they stand on the sand is also endearing, and belies the speed with which they can swoop out of the sky.

In happier times...

I recognize the pelican's historical Christological significance--one of my colleges in England bore the image of a pelican pecking at its bloody breast on its shield--and I appreciate how this symbolism enriched much of the literature I used to study. But my love for the pelican is due to the visceral joy I feel when I see them fly, and surf, and float, and soar. Whenever I return to San Francisco and head out on my first run on the cliffs above Baker Beach, I keep my eyes peeled for flocks of pelicans. Once I see them, I know that I'm truly back home.

As a result, one can imagine my anxiety when I learned two months ago that pelicans along the West Coast were dying and disappearing in great numbers, and for no obvious reason. Now scientists believe that El Nino, among other winter storms, disrupted the accessibility of the fish upon which the pelicans normally prey, but in mid-January a giant question mark remained the dominant theory. Furthermore, when I returned to San Francisco in late February for a business trip, I saw no pelicans at all on any of my runs or walks, and only three total one afternoon as I drove into the City over the Golden Gate Bridge. How empty the coast seemed without them!

I'm hopeful that they'll have returned, in some number, the next time that I do, too. Until then, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that both plankton and anchovies can resist the Pacific-churning forces of El Nino, and thus let my pelicans fly home.

XXI Olympic Winter Games, I salute you.

2010-03-01T18:07:00.001-08:00

Because you proved the maxim that the only thing one can expect is the unexpected. Because you showed us the grit, determination, focus, and character of athletes from around the world. Because you gave us the world's fastest alpine skiers on icy mountainsides, speed skaters with quads like pistons, hockey players who cut their teeth on the legend of Lake Placid, snowboarders with the swagger of cowboy surfers, nordic skiers who are all fast twitch muscle, an aerial skier who lit the night with a hurricane, and a figure skater with a rose on her back who blew a kiss to the sky. Because you overrode the cynics, the bloated budget, and even the warm weather, and demonstrated, once again, that an indefatigable spirit lives on in the human heart. XXI Olympic Winter Games, I salute you!

Rosemary and Meyer Lemons

2010-01-15T18:32:00.000-08:00

After spending three winters in Ithaca, I have yet to find January in New York City unbearably cold. Still, the return to New York from my Christmas holiday in California coincided with a frigid, wintry blast not unlike those that used to sweep down from the Arctic, across Cayuga Lake and straight into my face as I walked home from campus to Fall Creek. I haven't cut back on any of my outside time (in other words, I can still be found running the trails of Central Park in the morning and walking home from work in the evenings), but I have noticed some reluctance on my part to leave my building unless absolutely necessary. I've also sensed, in the past couple of weeks, a desire for something savory-sweet, something that could both cut the richness of holiday food and hint at the eventual return of spring and warmer weather. Enter my beloved Sunset magazine.

I came across this recipe in Sunset's December issue, and so it was the first culinary possibility I considered when I saw a mound of gorgeous Meyer lemons for sale at Fairway. After rummaging for a bundle of pungent rosemary in the produce section, I returned home, diced a stick of cold butter, and rolled out a crumbly shortbread dough. One hour and a drinking glass rim-cum cookie cutter later, I was spooning puddles of lemon sugar glaze onto each button and dotting them with rosemary sprigs. Upon eating the "test" cookies, I discovered the following two things: first, I like the bracing strength of the rosemary alongside the lemon sugar base (it prevents the buttons from being too sweet); second, I had found the perfect January dessert. And the perfect occasional early morning, pre-run breakfast. Enjoy!

An Interview with Larkin Callaghan

2010-01-12T13:32:00.001-08:00

Siblings, Stick-Eaters, and BFFs

Picture this: it is a foggy and cold June night in San Francisco. The year is 1983, and in the Inner Richmond District a bright-eyed two year-old is playing with her godmother. Although most toddlers would be in bed at this hour, this particular child never goes to sleep before 11:00 pm. Tonight, however, she is awake--and still playing--for a different reason. In a few minutes, she will be summoned to her parents' bedroom to meet someone very important, and this person will change the course of her life forever. She is about to meet someone who will not only be her closest friend and ally, but also her mind melder and occasional proxy. She is about to meet Larkin Callaghan
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CGC: What was your best experience as a party tart proxy?

LRC: This was obviously a plug for me to mention the time you left me in charge socially while you went off to read in your room. However, there have been a lot, and I would also mention either bursting open the pinata in front of the 3rd Ave flat on your birthday, or leading the troop of ribboned, nicely coordinated and well-dressed in pink 8 year-olds through Fairyland in Oakland.

CGC: Describe the perfect New York City day, and how it differs from the perfect San Francisco day.

LRC: The perfect San Francisco day is anything within the borders of SF, Marin, Alameda, or San Mateo Counties. Specifically, a morning run in GG Park, a walk through Muir Woods ending at the Tourist Club, a dip in the Bay and lay in the sun on Crissy Field, dinner on Union or Chestnut or in Mill Valley, and a show at the Warfield. It would be tightly scheduled. The perfect New York City day is anything within the borders of New York County. Specifically, a morning run in Central Park, a trip to the Boat Basin for brunch, a walk up in the Cloisters, a Broadway show, dinner at a ridiculously overpriced West Village restaurant, and watching the movie projected on Chelsea Piers while hanging out at the Frying Pan.

CGC: Why are you not as excited by the Tour de France as me and CSC?

LRC: This feels like character assassination. I like the Tour. You are just borderline fanatic.

CGC: True or false: luna bars are superior to olives.

LRC: Absolutely false. Are you on crack?

CGC: How would you defuse a fight between hipsters from the Mission and hipsters from Williamsburg (and what would the fight be about)?

LRC: The fight would likely be about which coast's hipsters were more true to the movement's themes of trust funders slumming with no sense of irony, political correctness without actual political understanding, and general perversity and disregard for societal norms that have evolved over the decades out of respect for things like hygiene and grooming. I would choose to not defuse the fight in hopes that they would wipe one another out in a furious explosion of fedoras, felt vests, and chuck taylors dirty from dumpster diving. Let 'em riot.

Quotes of the Week

2010-01-12T10:13:00.001-08:00

As my devoted readers have no doubt noticed, I took a hiatus from The Freckle in December. A sad by-product of this break has been a dearth of bloggable quotes, not only because I haven't had my ear cocked for quoteworthy utterables, but also because I was traveling and swimming in typical holiday chaos. My return to work last week, however, resulted in some great tidbits with which to kick off the New Year. Enjoy!
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CGC: If I were an animal what animal would I be?
LP: Fox.
CGC: What?
MJL: What would JL be?
LP: Rabbit.
CGC/MJL: A rabbit?
LP: Because of his limitless libido.
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LP: I got fined $100 in the subway.
CGC: You got fined $100? Why?
LP: I didn't pay.
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While discussing a popular book on linguistics that JL is currently reading.
CGC: Do you like that book?
JL: Kind of. It's light. It's like the wet dream of an NPR segment producer.

Yorkshire Gold, I Salute You.

2010-01-11T19:15:00.000-08:00

Because you help me greet each day with a kick and a smile. Because your rich, malty taste fortifies me for both frigid winter mornings and humid summer dawns, and because a splash of milk only deepens your malty richness. Because you emerge from both the flowering fields of Assam and the edenic highlands of East Africa, and because you are blended on the bracing Yorkshire moors, and because I can find you at both Fairway and Wegman's. Because I've carried you in baggies over the Alps, and driven you across the United States, and stored you in emergency stashes in every single one of my apartments. Because you are world harmony in a tea cup. Yorkshire Gold, I salute you!