ornoth

It’s been a standing joke for as long as I can remember: what is Ornoth’s body fat percentage? Well, after my recent purchase of a scale that includes body composition, we now have a definitive answer.

Sort of.

Before this posting, I solicited guesses from our studio audience. There were four non-outlier responses: 5, 11, 12.4 and 17.5, which yields an average of 11.5 percent. And now I’m ready to reveal the answer. Or answers, actually…

The problem is that the scale has two modes—athlete mode and tuber mode—and if I measure myself in both modes, the readings I get vary by nearly eight percent, which is a huge difference. So how do I know which mode better reflects reality?

Fortunately, the manufacturer provides a helpful definition. An athlete is “a person involved in intense physical acivity of approximately 10 hours per week and who has a resting heart rate of approximately 60 beats per minute or less.”

But that doesn’t really help. In the summer, my cycling usually qualifies me for athlete status, even though my actual measured moving time doesn’t always break the 10 hour minimum. But in the winter, I’m about as sedentary as anyone.

So what to do? Do I switch between modes as the seasons change? Do I consider myself a 70 percent athlete and do some specious math to come up with a guesstimate? There’s no easy answers.

But you want to hear my numbers, not a bunch of disclaimers. So here they are. If you use athlete mode, my body fat percentage averages 6.6 percent, but it jumps to 14.1 percent if you use Average Joe mode.

Based on that, it’s probably safe to say that I have a body fat percentage in or close to single digits. But if I want to get a more reliable measurement, I have to wander down to the Weymouth Club and pay $60 to use their Bod Pod.

On the positive side, if you pick one mode on my scale and stick to it, the measurements are quite consistent, so you can track relative changes. You just can’t get a single, absolute, irrefutable number.

But that’s okay; it would only just depress you, anyways… ;^)

O-taaay… first week back in the working world. Impressions?

After taking two years off, Monday I started working for www.edvisors.com, a small company that provides information and tools to help students navigate the admissions, financial aid, and loans tangle surrounding higher ed. So far it seems like a good group of people, and the company is growing after surviving some challenges resulting from 2008’s big credit crisis.

As a marketing/product company, it’s quite a change from the consulting lifestyle, but I think it’ll be a positive. Since much of their business moves in step with the academic calendar, hours and stress levels should be more predictable. And there’s essentially no travel, which is both good and bad, as you might imagine.

Although they have some properties that are oriented toward grad students, the majority of their user base are high schoolers and undergrads, so their user demographic has huge implications for site design. Although there’s not much happening in the mobile space yet, it’s definitely being talked about, which is really exciting to me both as a designer and developer.

My title is UI Team Lead, which means I have some degree of strategic input, which fits with my level of experience, but I’m still expected to do plenty of the hands-on coding work that I love. There’s some people management, but it’s really a team environment, and it’s too small to get all crazy about hierarchy.

At around two dozen people, the company sometimes feels similar to my previous tenure at Business Innovation. But unlike BI there’s a frontend practice whose design methodology and process I can help build.

As a minor sideline, the company funds a separate charitable education foundation that was founded by the owner and his father, who was a prominent educator and administrator. It funds local and national educational opportunities, especially for disadvantaged youth.

Technically, they’re a PHP shop and are mostly using the Kohana framework. It’s also a Mac shop, which is going to be a change for me, tho not a huge one. The transition is made easier by the fact that they gave me a MacBook Pro i7, which has two 2.66 GHz cores and 8GB of memory; in other words, the machine screams! It’s delivering 3 times the work as the Dell Latitude that Optaros gave me, and nearly 10x what I can get from my personal Lenovo Z60m. And that’s after I throttled it back to run at only 80 percent capacity!

The office is right in the middle of Quincy Center, so it’s a bearable 40-minute T ride (Green to Red) and reasonably bikeable. It’s 12 miles each way, which is pretty equivalent to my old commute to BI in Woburn. When I ride, I’ll mostly follow the Outriders route, which includes a short section of the Neponset River Trail, which is cool. On the other hand, it also includes Morrissey Boulevard and Granite Ave, which are both nightmarish major arteries, which may drive me to take a more inland route thru JP. It should provide some good base miles this spring, but there are no hills, and the urban streetscape won’t permit real interval training.

So how do I like it after Week One? So far, so good. I think it has a lot of promise, and I’ve yet to uncover any obvious sources of trouble. Of course, I’m sure my attitude will be more effusively positive at the end of the month, when that first infusion of cash hits my balance sheet!

After two fun kayak excursions last year, this spring I ponied up for a season membership at Charles River Canoe and Kayak despite my unemployment, hoping that it’d both save me money and incent me to spend more time paddling on the river.

So how did it go?

Kayaking and cycling compete for good-weather days, so even though I had the whole summer off, I wound up going out 9 times: once in June, August, and October, and twice in May, July, and September. I went three times from CRCK’s Kendall Square location, and twice each from Nahanton, Allston, and their primary facility in Auburndale.

With a total of 30 hours on the river, my average outing was 3 hours and 20 minutes. I paddled a total of 90 miles, averaging 10 miles per excursion, with my longest being 15 miles. GPS logs of my paddling trips can be found here.

Had I paid for my own rental time, that would have come to $458, but the season pass only ran me $292. If I include the discount my brother and niece got on rentals via my pass, that’s $173 less than what it would have cost renting by the hour. So the pass wound up saving me 33 percent.

Having a pass also allowed me to stay out as long as I cared to, without worrying about how much each excursion would cost and when to get back. As such, I found it not very difficult at all to go out and do 10 or 12 miles per day.

I encountered a surprising amount of wildlife (muskrat, painted and snapping turtles, great blue herons, hawks, cormorants), on the river, even right in the middle of the city. Tho I didn’t see either the harbor seal or the alligator that were discovered in the river this season! I particularly enjoyed playing in the shallow rapids below the Watertown and Newton dams, and in the huge waves kicked up on windy days in front of Community Boating.

The next step in my paddling evolution would probably be excursions out into Boston Harbor.

It was fun exploring the river, and I covered just about the entire expanse of water accessible from the CRCK locations. However, it wasn’t quite as interesting returning a second time to areas I’d already covered. For that reason, I don’t feel the need to buy my own boat right off, since I’d quickly tire of endlessly paddling around the Charles River basin. So I don’t think I’ll buy a boat of my own until I have a car, so that I can transport it to new and interesting places.

While I thought that kayaking’s upper body workout would be a good complement to cycling, it wasn’t quite what I expected. If you do it right, the proper kayak paddling motion mostly works the hips and core abdominal muscles, rather than the arms. So unlike true upper body work, it wasn’t a perfect complement; on the other hand, paddling was actually of direct benefit for cycling, since you use those same core muscles to steady your torso and back on the bike.

Will I buy another membership next year? Actually no, not unless I’m unemployed again. When I’m working, I only have nights and weekends to ride, which makes it hard to get sufficient training time on the bike. So I wouldn’t spend enough time kayaking to make buying a membership work financially, though I will probably take a boat out a couple times on an hourly basis.

But I’m very glad I took the membership out this year. It definitely was a great way to spend the “rest days” built into my cycling training schedule. And there’s nothing like spending a sunny Monday afternoon paddling alone on a quiet stretch of river, thinking about all one’s wage-slave friends trapped in crowded office buildings, far from nature.

Those of you who have sponsored me on previous Pan-Mass Challenge charity rides have my profound thanks once again.

On the other hand, if you have not sponsored my ride, this year’s 2010 Pan-Mass Challenge would be the perfect time to start. Why? Read on…

This year, you can both sponsor my ride and not spend a lot of money doing it, because I really need your help. This year I’m trying to get 100 people to sponsor me, so even a $5 donation will help me reach my goal. If you can afford a five dollar donation, please consider it, because it will really help me out.

As you probably know, the PMC is a two-day, 200-mile bike ride across Massachusetts that raises money for life-saving cancer research and treatment via the Jimmy Fund and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Over 5000 people ride, over 3000 people volunteer, and a quarter million people sponsor riders each year, and 100 percent of every dollar goes directly to the Jimmy Fund, which has earned 9 consecutive 4-star ratings from Charity Navigator.

Since I began riding the PMC in 2001, outpatient visits and infusions at Dana-Farber have more than doubled, and the number of clinical trials available to their patients have increased by 80 percent. Thanks to the help of people who sponsor riders, the PMC provided the single largest donation in Dana-Farber’s 7-year, “Mission Possible” campaign, enabling them to reach their billion-dollar fundraising goal a year early. Construction is well under way on Dana-Farber’s new, 14-story Yawkey Center for Cancer Care, which will open next year. These are all the direct results of the quarter billion dollars raised by PMC riders.

On top of that, 2010 marks a big milestone for me: this will be my tenth Pan-Mass Challenge. I hope you’ll help me celebrate a decade of cycling -- and raising over $60,000 for cancer research—by sponsoring me this year.

Finally, in order to put the “challenge” back into the Pan-Mass Challenge, this year I’m going to do a true “pan-Massachusetts” ride for the first time. While the PMC covers 200 miles over two days, it only goes two-thirds of the way across the state. So in order to ride all the way across Massachusetts, I’ll be biking an extra hundred miles through the Berkshire hills on the day before the PMC kicks off, making it an arduous three-day, 300-mile expedition.

You can see me talk a little more about these goals in the video that follows at the end of this post.

I hope those are enough reasons for you to consider putting five bucks in my hat.

Remember, with my 100-sponsor goal in mind, even a tiny donation will make a meaningful contribution to my goal. Please make a donation to the Jimmy Fund at this web page:

http://ornoth.PMCrider.com/

And if you want to read about this year’s training or look through my writeups, photos, and videos from previous years, those can all be found via http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/

Please help out. And thanks!

Watch on YouTube

Jothy Rosenberg is one of the most recognizable people who rides the Pan-Mass Challenge. There aren’t many one-legged cyclists on the road, after all.

Just recently, he published an autobiography, entitled “Who Says I Can’t: A two-time cancer-surviving amputee and entrepreneur who fought back, survived and thrived”.

Thirty-five years ago, Jothy lost his right leg to bone cancer when he was 16 years old. Three years later, the cancer had metastasized in one of his lungs, which also was removed. At that time, he was told that no one with his condition survived, but he agreed to undergo experimental chemotherapy that saved his life.

However, the amputation put him in a class of people called “disabled”, which he loathed. He compensated by becoming obsessed with undertaking every challenge anyone laid before him. In the process, he has achieved an incredible number of athletic victories that would be impressive on any able-bodied person’s palmares.

Cancer and Amputation

The book contains a number of amusing and informative anecdotes about how he and others have related to his amputation, from scaring a coworker by shooting an automatic staple gun into his “leg”, to his volunteering to have his “leg” chopped off in a haunted house act.

But he also relates the many and sometimes unexpected complexities of life as an amputee. A simple question like, “How much do you weigh?” requires an evaluation of whether to disclose his actual physical body weight, whether he should add the weight of his prosthesis or not, or whether he should come up with some extrapolated weight as if his artificial leg were made of flesh and bone.

Another thing you wouldn’t think about is how incredibly fatiguing something like simply standing around at parties is for him. While most people alternate putting their weight on one leg and then another, unconsciously resting each leg in turn, Jothy cannot.

Jothy also tells us how difficult it can be to carry anything while walking with crutches, although that might not seem like such a big feat after you read his description of ascending a ladder—one-legged, of course—while carrying an adult golden retriever!

I learned two noteworthy things about cancer from Jothy’s description of his treatment. His cancer metastasized in his lung, which apparently is the most common place for it to spread, since the lungs are the first place venous blood goes after returning to the heart.

The other deals with how traumatic chemotherapy treatment can be, even as saves one’s life. Jothy’s psychological and physiological reaction was so intense that merely seeing a rug with the same pattern as that in his treatment clinic would cause him to start vomiting. Although we’ve come a long way in being able to treat cancer, the treatments can still be extremely traumatic, and more targeted therapies need to be developed.

Cycling and the PMC

Although Jothy’s athletic accomplishments are many and diverse, my interest in his book was largely due to his cycling and his participation in the Pan-Mass Challenge, so let me talk about those for a moment.

Jothy came to cycling fairly late in his recovery, so it is not a major part of the book. His participation in the PMC gets about half a chapter toward the end of the book. Despite that, the book’s full-bleed front cover photo shows him riding a bike in his 2003 PMC jersey. The cyclist in me chuckled at the photo, however, because I noticed that the quick-release on his front brake is wide open.

Jothy relates all the basic facts of the Pan-Mass Challenge, along with numerous memorable moments, passing very briefly over his speaking at the inspirational pre-ride kickoff show one year.

I was especially amused when he described something right out of my own second-year ride report: his dismay when the 192-mile route came within blocks of its Provincetown destination, then made a hard right turn out to the sand dunes of Race Point. That last-second detour adds a hilly five miles to the PMC route as it circles Provincetown before finishing on the opposite side of town.

In terms of cycling with one leg, Jothy faces two major complications. Starting and stopping are both challenging as they require careful balancing and timing. And he cannot stand on hills, a technique that two-legged riders use to increase their pedaling force when the road pitches up. Remember that last part, as I’ll return to it again in a bit.

Mortality

One of the themes I looked for was how cancer—or more generally the threat of mortality—changed him. I’ve observed that in the face of death, people usually do not become depressed or resigned, but are transformed by the realization of how wondrous and truly precious each moment of life is. Jothy seemed to confirm this when he described his response to his cancer diagnosis:

It’s not as if I was obsessing over the prospect of dying. I really didn’t dwell on it. I didn’t bemoan my fate, lash out, or become frozen in either fear or self-pity. It moved to the background, but it underlined everything I did. […] I felt a sense of urgency about everything. “Hurry up and live” could have been my motto.

The knowledge and acceptance of the reality of death, whether it comes as a result of a cancer diagnosis or mere philosophical soul-searching, has the power to transform us by giving direction to our daily lives. While I wouldn’t wish a cancer diagnosis on anyone, Jothy illustrates how beneficial it can be to come to terms with death when he writes, “I was able to see [that] my diagnosis was actually the beginning of a journey toward the meaning and purpose of my life.”

Tone

There are a pair of opposing pitfalls that face a disabled person in writing their autobiography: if you emphasize the disability, you run the risk of the book appearing like a solicitation for pity; or if you emphasize your accomplishments, you run the risk of bragging and appearing arrogant.

There’s little question where Jothy falls on this scale. His book is focused firmly on his prodigious athletic, educational, and entrepreneurial achievements, and less on his diagnosis and disability. There is a thin line between celebrating his genuine and noteworthy accomplishments and self-aggrandizement, and Jothy has to dance around that line to get his message across.

Knowing this, I wonder how critical the description of his entrepreneurial success is to the book’s message. While his athletic accomplishments represent obvious and inspiring victories over his physical limitations, his career as a founder and executive at several technology start-ups is much less directly affected by his amputation. Although it does further illustrate his characteristic response of rising to meet all challenges, it left me wondering how much of his risk-taking is rooted in his own innate personality trait, rather than something he developed as a reaction to his physical disability.

For those reasons, I found one anecdote particularly interesting. He describes riding a bike on a dirt road down a long hill into a valley and finding himself stuck. Without enough traction in the road’s loose gravel, he couldn’t ride forward over the next hill or back the way he came. He had to face the prospect of breaking his rule of always riding to the top of any hill he started, no matter what:

Calling someone to get me out of this situation would just feel too embarrassing. I had only one option. I was going to have to do what I said must never happen: hop [one-legged] up that hill.

Because Jothy spends so much time writing about his victories, I’m curious about how he related to this failure, but all he tells us is that he misjudged that particular ride. Describing what he learned—or even why he chose to include that story—would have been a nice way to balance out the tone of the book, to keep it from sounding too preoccupied with his successes.

Rising to Challenges

I’ve already alluded to the most recurring theme in the book: Jothy’s need to prove himself by overcoming every challenge he could find. In the book, he introduces this by describing how demeaning it is to be offered a compliment, such as “You’re a great skier…”, then have that praise undercut with the caveat “… considering you only have one leg”. To a disabled person, this seems like a diminishment of their abilities, and that perception is what drove Jothy to spend most of his adult life trying to excel at swimming, cycling, volleyball, hiking, skiing, water skiing, sailing, whitewater rafting, and other sports.

For Jothy, that word “considering” is an insult which led him to believe that

The disabled person needs a constant outlet where they can excel, where they can overcompensate, where they can leave the temporarily able-bodied people in the dust.

and

The most gratifying moment in the recovery and rehabilitation of a person inflicted [sic] by a disability is when someone able-bodied says they cannot compete with that person.

In describing his philosophy, Jothy defines a “level playing field” as the ability “to excel beyond those who are not disabled”. To me, that characteristic striving to be “super-normal” sounds like an overreaction, a psychological overcompensation for his disability.

One of the pivotal questions unanswered by the book is whether others would respond to a similar disability by also taking every single dare or challenge they could find. A willful youth even before his initial diagnosis and amputation, Jothy would have naturally responded in this way, but is that true for others? Was that merely his particular way of responding to his disability, or is it a common experience for most people who suffer some form of disability?

I also wonder whether the amputee’s age plays into one’s response to such an immense challenge. Teenagers usually rail against anyone or anything that implies that they cannot do something. Is this kind of overcompensation a typical adolescent response? Do adult amputees respond differently?

Or is the amputee’s gender a contributing factor? Do girls who suffer the same experience respond in the same externally-focused way? To what degree does the psychological need to prove oneself physically normal, competent, and strong correlate with gender?

This raises another interesting question. Did Jothy’s disability help him in the long run by channeling his rebellious teen anger in a practical direction: toward overcoming his disability and pushing his physical limitations, rather than challenging his parents and pushing the behavioral limitations they would have imposed upon him?

The book offers some limited evidence that Jothy’s reaction may be normal. In one passage, he cites a study which uses the term “post-disability syndrome” to describe his response. It quotes one polio survivor as saying:

Don’t let anyone tell you that we just want to be “normal” like everyone else. We have to be better than everyone else just to break even… and that may not be enough.

Unfortunately, the age and gender of this individual are not reported, but this compulsive need to be better-than-normal doesn’t seem to be atypical. Whether this reaction is usual or not, and whether that’s attributable to age or gender or basic personality makeup remains unknown.

But if this is a common reaction, I think there’s a double-standard being applied. On one hand, disabled persons expect and demand that society treat them just like anyone else. On the other hand, they may not view themselves as ordinary, and overcompensate for this by holding themselves to a superhuman standard. They expect everyone else to treat them as normal, but are unable to see themselves or treat themselves as normal.

This disconnect was most apparent to me in one passage where Jothy talks about his “super-aggressive drive to perform at a higher level”, his need to “overcompensate and prevent that dreaded pity reaction”, and the “constant attacks on [his] self-confidence”. In contrast to such exaggerated perceptions, his very next sentence describes these feelings as “a healthy voyage of self-discovery”. Perhaps those feelings are common and unavoidable, but they don’t sound like a mature response to me.

Letting Go

Still referring to the faint praise of being excellent at something “considering one’s disability”, Jothy makes the following insightful observation:

Everyone gets hit with the “considering” epithet in some way for some thing. It stings, whether it’s because you are too Black, too Asian, too female, too old, too young, or too disabled to perform in the manner in which some people think you are supposed to perform.

I find this interesting because it shows that we all have to come to terms with being perceived by others as disabled—and subject to their lowered expectations—at some point in our lives, even if only as a result of the natural aging process.

If someone told Jothy that he was too old and infirm to do something, I would expect him to react strongly and undertake that challenge just to spite the person. However, later in the book he surprised me by turning around and saying of himself:

Perhaps now it is okay to say, “He’s fast considering… he’s getting old!”

One of life’s great lessons is that we all eventually have to come to terms with our own reduced capabilities. I find it interesting that, at 50, Jothy can be philosophical and accept the reduced abilities that come with aging, whereas as a young adult, he put so much physical, mental, and emotional energy into denying the changes in his physical abilities that came with his amputation. I wonder whether that reversal in attitude is a sign of Jothy’s maturation, or the natural result of the confidence that came after repeatedly proving himself, or whether such a common disability as aging is simply more acceptable to him.

Turnabout

In closing, I want to take a moment to turn the tables. While Jothy spent his life battling against people making assumptions about his abilities, there’s one point in the book where I was surprised to find him making the same kind of assertion about what able-bodied riders can do.

In talking about the disadvantage he has when climbing hills with one leg, he says of the rest of us:

Even serious riders who try one-legged riding don’t sustain it for very long and would never try a hill that way.

Jothy, when people expressed disdain about your abilities, you invariably took it as a personal challenge and proved them all wrong. After reading your expressed skepticism of able-bodied riders’ abilities, I have every intention of responding as you would: by taking up the challenge implied in your comment. This spring, in preparation for my tenth PMC, you can expect to find me riding hills one-legged. After all the comments you took as personal challenges, turnabout is fair play, after all!

Haven’t been inspired to write much lately, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle. So I guess it’s time for another potpourri posting. I’ll try to be brief, although there are a lot of little things to go over, and a few lengthy ones.

Everyone always asks me about employment first, so… I haven’t found anything yet. I haven’t been too worried about that, since you learn as a consultant to save during good times to get through the bad, and there’s nothing like taking a year or two of your retirement when you’re young enough to get out and enjoy it. At the same time, it’s really time to make this a top priority, now that summer’s over.

However, it amused me to no end to find a TED talk by a designer who totally espoused my beliefs about taking time off during one’s working years, and demonstrated some fabulous design work that came as a result. Check out the nice, eloquent, short talk here.

Ironically, my net worth right now—nearly a year after being laid off—is the highest it’s been in seven years. More surprising still is that if I go back to the last time my net worth was this high, it was December 2002, about a year after I was laid off from Sapient. What is it about being laid off that causes me to get richer, when one would normally expect one’s savings to be depleted in no time?

Well, actually it makes sense. Tech and consulting layoffs correllate pretty closely with stock market bottoms, and the market usually recovers nicely in the following twelve months. So although my savings has eroded somewhat, my mutual funds have appreciated much more. So remember: buy stocks whenever I lose my job!

The next most common inquiry concerns biking, and I have such a tale of woe about the incompetence of my bike shop. Sparing you the details, my bike has been in and out of the shop since the Fourth of July, and has been completely out of commission since early August, while two major components were shipped back their manufacturers (one of them twice).

Meanwhile, I’d been putting a lot of miles on my Bike Friday folding bike, including my first century ride on it. The folder isn’t bad, although I will complain that it’s heavy, which means I can’t climb hills as well on it.

Thankfully, I just got the reassembled bike back from the shop, and after all that travail, it’s running fine. Just in time for cold weather, of course. There’s a lengthy writeup about the whole long ordeal here.

Since I measure my cycling year from mid-October to mid-October, I just concluded my 2008-2009 season. I wound up with 4,000 miles on the road and about 500 more on the indoor trainer. With five centuries under my belt, it was a really good year.

In other news, Boston’s bike coordinator has targeted my street, Commonwealth Ave, for some very non-standard bike lanes. I’ll be curious to see how they pan out.

The deadline for PMC fundraising has passed, and this year I raised a total of $8,266, which is pretty good for a recession year. My lifetime total is now $52,657. The check presentation isn’t until December 5th this year.

This also seems to be the year I started sea kayaking. After expeditions with my brother and my CIMC friends, I also spent three hours recently on a very choppy Charles River basin, having rented from Charles River Canoe & Kayak’s new Kendall Square location. My obliques got a real heavy workout. Once I’ve got an income, I really do have to start thinking about picking up a boat. Meanwhile, I’m looking into my storage options, which are limited in my condo.

Indoors, I recently re-read Alan Watts’ "Wisdom of Insecurity", an awesome little tome that was my first serious exposure to Buddhist philosophy, back in January 2003 (original review). I’ve also just re-read Robert Anton Wilson’s 1975 "Illuminatus!" trilogy, which was interesting, especially when some of the details of his dystopian future turn out to be accurate predictions of policies enacted by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11. Here’s an excerpt:

"Their grip on Washington is still pretty precarious. […] If they showed their hand now and went totalitarian all the way, there would be a revolution. Middle-roaders would rise up with right-wingers, and left-libertarians, and [they] aren’t powerful enough to withstand that kind of massive revolution. But they can rule by fraud, and by fraud eventually acquire access to the tools they need to finish the job of killing off the Constitution."

"What sort of tools?"

"More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. […] The people reason—or are manipulated into reasoning—that the entire populace must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can’t be trusted."

Online, I’ve put some time into finally revamping OrnothLand. The new version can be seen at http://www.ornoth.com/. I was pleased to be able to easily include my most recent Twitter tweet, Livejournal blog and cycling blog posts, and Flickr photograph by parsing their RSS feeds. And I’ve implemented (although not perfected) long-desired features like the ability to search through past entries as well as see only what’s new since your last visit.

A couple notes on Facebook, while I’m here. A while ago I stopped getting notifications when a friend added another friend to their list. I miss that feature, which was sacrificed to one of Facebook’s rewrites; however, now it seems to be about to come back. On the other hand, I also recently stopped getting notifications every time a friend took a quiz or took an action in one of their applications, and I have to say that’s been a godsend, and saved several inane people from being un-friended. I’d already manually ignored 787 applications, but I haven’t added to that list in several weeks.

I’ve also spent some of my free time expanding my cooking repertoire, which has paid nice dividends. I started with basic stuff that I’ve cooked before but hadn’t in years, like roasted beets, roasted potatoes, sour cream cookies, tollhouse cookies, brownies, and my family’s traditional spaghetti sauce, which I modified to include a bit more heat. I added steamed broccoli to the list of things I’d make, and I continue to experiment to figure out how to make stir-fry that doesn’t produce allergic headaches. Sadly, I think garlic and onions are the culprits. I also just made Hi-Rise Bakery’s vanilla loaf, which came out nicely, but boy is that one expensive piece of bread!

People often ask about Grady… He’s doing okay. Nothing really to mention there. He’s mellowed out a bit, even to the point of tolerating being held, but he’s still quite the little athletic hunter, especially when it comes to wadded up balls of paper. I should probably take and post some more pictures of him.

Speaking of photos, this photo of mine will be displayed in two five foot long resin displays at the Red Rock Canyon Visitor’s Center outside Las Vegas. Very cool thing to add to the resume/portfolio, and it’s another paying client. And made another photo expedition to the top of Boston’s Custom House tower; results (here).

On a side note, my friend Inna is DJing a show on Duquesne student radio. Visit wdsr.org Fridays from 5-7pm.

Closer to home, this is a big year for Boston politics. There’s a big mayoral vote this year, plus the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.

The autumnal equinox has passed, which means the end of summer, which I hate to see go. The fourth quarter is always the worst time of year for me, starting with my birthday, which as usual I’ll thank you not to observe. I’ve been kicking around ideas of what to do, but I suspect it’ll look a lot like last year’s observance… hopefully with the same result!

October and November look to be very busy at the sangha, as there are two big events coming up. In October I’m participating in a metta (lovingkindness) practice group. I’ve sometimes scoffed at metta practice for being simplistic and pointless, but at the same time, all the challenges I encounter in my practice are pointing me in that direction. So this’ll be an interesting experiment. And there’s also the annual Sandwich Retreat in early November, which is always revelatory. You can of course expect writeups. And there are several interesting topics and speakers at CIMC’s Wednesday evening dharma talks. So it’s going to be an intense couple months of sitting motionlessly with one’s eyes closed.

That’ll be quite a change, tho. The center was closed for their usual summer hiatus, and until recently I’d seen very few of the people in my dharma circle since July. I miss that. Unfortunately, the previously copacetic dynamic has deteriorated after some of the usual adolescent antics. It saddens me, even though I know that change is, of course, inevitable.

I should take a second to record a couple interesting tidbits from the most recent talk, given by John Peacock. There were three key points he made that resonated with me, each from a context outside Buddhism, in addition to coming from completely separate contexts from each other.

One of his main points was to approach life with a sense of wonder, to see things deeply and anew as they are encountered. By looking at a tree and seeing "a tree", our minds see little more than our pre-existing conceptual model of "a tree", rather than the specific instance before us, which might differ radically from that mental construct, and is certainly much more vibrant and alive. This obscures reality and inhibits one’s ability to see special and meaningful details that make this tree unique. It’s these kinds of penetrative insights that also give a fiction writer the experience and the vocabulary to build a compelling mental image of a scene, which is a belief I’ve held strongly since writing an article about Tolkien’s use of vocabulary for a fanzine thirty-five years ago. You can see one incarnation of that particular rant on the DargonZine site, at http://www.dargonzine.org/dpww/docs/wonder.txt. So you can imagine how John’s words about wonder and careful observation resonated with me.

Another interesting bit was John’s response to a question I asked that went something like this:

Having a background in Tibetan Buddhism as well as Theravada and IMS, you seem singularly qualified to speak on the topic of viewing Buddhism along a continuum from extremely rational and scientific to extremely superstitious and ritualized. I don’t know how it is at IMS or Oxford, where you teach, but here at CIMC we hear almost nothing about jhana (concentration) practice, despite the fact that it is very heavily emphasized in the Pali canon. Where on that spectrum do you see jhana practice falling?

The response was that jhana practice is useful in developing concentration, but he seemed skeptical about the existence of the specific sublime mind states described in the suttas. He also said that the suttas actually equivocate, pointing specifically to Majjhima Nikaya Sutta 26, the Ariyapariyesana Sutta (The Noble Search). That sutta includes the Buddha’s unsatisfying search for enlightenment by studying under other Indian teachers, many of whom taught concentration practice. So the canon seems to imply that concentration practice is helpful, but not sufficient.

Finally, John was presented with the standard Buddhist question that sets Buddhist virtues of patience and acceptance of life as it is against the human desire to correct injustice and make progress (positive change) in the world. The answer is, of course, that wise action is virtous, but the important factors are that one perform such actions with a wholesome intent rather than coming from a place of aversion, and that one must perform all actions without becoming so attached to a specific result that it causes suffering if it does not come about. This relates very closely to managing one’s expectations. I first learned the importance of expectation management in my professional consulting career at Sapient, where common knowledge held that one should always under-promise and over-deliver, so as to always exceed clients’ expectations. A yogi should bring that same attitude to the actions they take in the world, letting go of the attachment to a particular outcome, and being delighted if things transpire in a positive way.

Finally, I’ve taken a bit of time to do some formal goal-setting for 2010. Here’s what I’ve got:

Get a new job
Travel to the Bay Area and:
- Participate in the annual Buddhist Bicycle Pilgrimage
- Meet and thank Gil Fronsdal
- Hang out with some of my friends in the area
Complete my 10th Pan-Mass Challenge
- Possibly crossing the entire state by starting in New York State
- Exceed $60,000 lifetime fundraising
- 5th consecutive heavy hitter
Participate in at least one week-long residential meditation retreat

So those are some of the things that have transpired over the past couple months. Although my cycling blog will be a bit less active in coming months, hopefully this one will get a little more attention, even if it may not be the most exciting reading in the world.

I have an older brother who lives in Victoria, British Columbia. Every other year, he flies back to Maine to visit family, and on the opposite years my mother goes west to visit them. However, my mother is 83 now, and for the first time she really needed someone to travel with her. I actually haven’t been out there myself since 1993, so last week I accompanied her on what will probably be her last trip west.

Last Thursday I took the T to Logan, where I met my mother, who had come down from Maine by bus. She was pretty anxious about the trip, and doubly so because she was having some health issues. We flew from Boston to SFO, then north to Canadia. The advantage of flying with someone in a wheelchair is that you are the first people to board the plane; the disadvantage is that you’re often the last people off.

The flights weren’t too bad, although boarding the regional jet north from SFO was a challenge due to the 5-level ramp from the gate down to the tarmac. In Victoria, we were the last people in line at customs, but we finally got to my brother’s house at 11pm Pacific… sixteen hours after I left home.

Friday I was the first person up, which was poor judgment, since my 15 year old neice’s pet bunny decided to throw a tantrum when it realized that someone was awake but not feeding it. We drove into town and picked up my rental road bike and miscellaneous other supplies for the week.

Around noontime, the family drove off to enjoy high tea at the Empress Hotel, which I was delighted to escape, preferring instead to explore the Saanich peninsula by bike. The weather was cool, but improving from misty rain to mostly sunny, a pattern which would repeat throughout our stay.

I warmed up by climbing 400-foot Mt. Tolmie, which was a nice little knoll with a beautiful view of Vancouver Island. Next I made my way to the top of 850-foot Mt. Douglas, which was a major challenge. It’s very reminiscent of Great Blue Hill or Prospect Hill in Waltham, but instead of ascending in short leaps with flats in between where you can rest, it was the most monotonic climb I’ve ever done. I finally gave in to the unforgiving incline, making two brief stops to let my legs and heart catch up with me. After admiring the view, the descent was bone-jarring and filling-loosening due to the horrible patch job they’ve made of the (and I use the term loosely) road.

Full Photo Set

From there, I followed the Seaside bike route north through Cordova Bay, then hooked up with the Lochside trail, which hugged the coast and took me from Victoria’s suburban Yuppie warrens into very rustic farmlands. However, the path degraded to a gravel rail trail, then dirt singletrack before I arrived at the Victoria airport. I took a more inland route back home, aiming to climb Mt. Newton but missing the turn. However, I did climb 750-foot Little Saanich Mountain, aka Observatory Hill, which was a steady, manageable ascent up to an astronomical observatory and the “Centre of the Universe”. The smooth pavement made the descent an absolute joy, in contrast to the crappy surface on Mt. Doug.

In the end, I logged about 45 miles. It wasn’t the most scenic ride in the world, but the hills were nice, and it was good to be back on the bike after all that time cramped up in an airplane… even if the bike was a heavy steel loaner!

I was especially pleased when we decided to order Thai take-out for supper. After Day One, the trip was going pretty well!

Saturday was a grey day, and we had nothing planned but seeing the musical The Fantasticks at a local theater. The play was reasonably interesting, the cast did a good job, and the music was tolerable (which for me is saying a great deal).

Aside from that, I was able to handle some key errands, including the all-important grocery run and a trip to the bank, where I was surprisingly able to obtain fistfuls of small US bills for entry into Where’s George. When the weather cleared again, we had a wonderful supper of steaks on the grill. It was a good way to let my legs recover from all the hills I’d ridden the day before.

Sunday’s weather was a reprise, starting out rainy but ending sunny. We began the day with brunch at The Marina, a fairly upscale establishment in Oak Bay that hosted a surprisingly good all-you-can-eat buffet. I utterly stuffed myself with waffles, french toast, bacon, sausage, ham, smash browns, cookies, chocolate cake, and probably a half dozen other things I’ve already forgotten. Gotta build my strength back up, see? Because…

Then it was off on a bike trek through Victoria’s Highlands district, which featured a lot of hills, but nothing quite as excessive as Mt. Doug. Despite being a single lane road (Millstream Lake Road) for much of its distance, the Highlands route was very nicely paved and a pure joy to ride, swooping up and down and around for kilometer after kilometer through mossy, rocky, majestic Pacific Northwest woodland. At one point a young deer crossed the road no more than 10 meters ahead of me. It was arguably one of the most beautiful rides I’ve had, and one I’d be delighted to revisit.

But there was another whole half of the ride to go, with a very different feel… Returning to town, I briefly followed the Galloping Goose trail, which after crossing a trestle bridge over Victoria’s Upper Harbor, rapidly disintegrated in a deluge of construction. I found another bridge into downtown and suddenly found myself in front of the Empress Hotel, the British Columbian Parliament buildings, and the soulless tourist hell that is any cruise ship terminal.

I followed a tour bus as we skirted the James Bay coastline until I reached the Ogden Point Breakwater and Beacon Hill Park. From there, the Coastal route brought me around several well-developed but scenic rocky headlands and small, rocky beaches, then back to my brother’s neighborhood around UVic. I logged another 45 miles, and had a frozen lasagna for supper, which was plenty after the huge brunch at the Marina.

My brother had signed us up for a kayak expedition Monday morning, but I wasn’t really looking forward to it, because the forecast called for rain and temperatures below 60 degrees. Nonetheless, we bundled up and drove up to the rental place in Brentwood Bay, where things weren’t quite as bad as advertised: it was foggy and misty, but not actively raining, and the temperature was quite tolerable. We met up with our guide, a savory young Scotian named Trish, and another gentleman who would accompany us on our paddle. I was delighted to find that we were given standard fiberglas sea kayaks, rather than cheap and worthless composite boats.

After a skills refresher, we followed the coast north for about five miles, exploring the coves along the way. It was quiet and scenic, and generally a pleasant experience, save for getting a bit wet (I’d foregone securing my skirt in favor of access to my camera) and developing a blister (from windmilling and too tight a grip on my paddle). But we saw eagles and herons and a waterfall and several oceanfront mansions, and admired the mist rising from the steeply wooded hillsides.

The return trip was more direct, as we’d seen everything once on the way north, and also because a breeze had kicked up out of the south, making the paddle back a bit more arduous. However, we returned to the dock after three and a half hours, soaked but satisfied with the effort.

The remainder of the day included returning the rental bike, packing, and an excellent meal at the 5th Street Bar & Grill. We were up Tuesday at 4am to catch our 7am flight home, which passed reasonably uneventfully, save for the constant sharp ache in my hamstrings from the kayaking.

Overall, I think the trip was quite successful. My mother enjoyed it (especially after her health issues resolved themselves), and I found my usual preferred balance between activity and rest, complementing my bike and kayak expeditions with a couple rare talks with my brother and his wife. Had we spent more time in Victoria, I might have enjoyed a full-day bike ride further afield (probably the Malahat) or some window-shopping downtown, and we lacked time to fire up the Vandercook for the letterpress project my brother and I had talked about; but on the other hand, it’s best to leave before one strains the host’s patience, and my mother and sister-in-law’s mobility issues would have made a longer stay more trying.

Thus ends (to my knowledge) my only major trip this year, and the final use of my current passport, which will need to be renewed soon.

I recently attended a five-week practice group with CIMC’s teacher Michael Liebenson Grady entitled “Wisdom: From Reactivity to Discernment”. One of our homework exercises was to spend a week noting whenever we had a pleasant experience, and to explore the nature of our reaction to it.

So on the way home from that session, I started taking mental notes. I didn’t discern any particular clinging to pleasant experiences, but I did notice the quantity of them, so I started counting: one, two, three… By the end of the week I had noted over two thousand three hundred pleasant experiences, which translates to one every minute or two of waking time.

Now, granted, this was one of the first weeks in May, when everything was just coming into bloom. The week also included cherished time spent with my dharma friends and our expedition to see the Dalai Lama. But interestingly, the rate of pleasant experiences was highest when I was out on the bike, riding through the countryside, seeing a lot of sights.

Most striking, though, was the sheer number of positive experiences, especially in contrast with our homework the week before, which was to note negative experiences, which had numbered no more than a couple dozen.

That discrepancy really made me stop and reflect, and I’ve got a few thoughts about it that I’d like to share.

When you’re young, you spend an awful lot of time and energy focusing on improving the material quality of your life: getting a good job, a good family, and a good home full of material wealth. I did that once, and had some success at it. Below a certain point, there is a very real enhancement to quality of life by improving one’s material standing.

But there’s a limit. Contrary to the totemic human belief that more is better, beyond a certain level, wealth and stuff gradually lose their effectiveness in enhancing one’s happiness. At that point, how one relates to the world becomes more important than material desires.

I’ve long held the belief that, irrespective of circumstances, people make their own happiness and sorrow. Some people’s minds are just wired to see the good things in life, and they can see beauty in even the most unlikely places; conversely, there are people whose natural inclination is to overlook the good and see only the flaws and problems in life.

I was fortunate: I started transitioning from the latter to the former around the time I entered college, and I think I’ve made pretty good progress. These days, no matter where I go, I find myself surrounded with cool, interesting, and beautiful stuff: stuff worth not just noting, but thoroughly enjoying and celebrating. In the process, my perceived quality of life has increased dramatically, way out of proportion with the material reality.

But I was still surprised at the overwhelming number of positive experiences I was noting. Sure, I thought my life was good and I know I treasure parts of it that others fail to appreciate, but I never dreamed the balance was so radically lopsided. Sure, there are occasional, inevitable problems, but on balance I really, really love my life and the elements that comprise it, from the smallest to the largest.

I think the next step for me is to fully experience that imbalance and somehow integrate it into my overall sense of well-being and satisfaction. I still have a lot of behaviors, such as judgmentalism, that are lingering residue from a time when I thought life was less satisfying, less enjoyable. But if I am really that happy with my life, I need to put more effort into internalizing it, because someone with that strong a sense of satisfaction should project a very different presence than the one I’ve retained from my youth due to unexamined habit.

Granted, this wasn’t what the practice group was designed to bring out, but I find that the growth of wisdom is seldom so linear a process. It’s kind of like striking a vein of silver in the middle of a gold mine: unexpected, but equally precious.

I noted one other implication when I examined my reaction to all those pleasant experiences. According to Buddhist psychology, one would expect there to be some sense of clinging to a pleasant experience, a desire to preserve it or keep it from changing or fading away. While I looked, I noticed very little of that clinging in myself. I attribute that to the sheer number of positive experiences, and the confidence it gives me to let go of Experience X in full knowledge that there’ll be another pleasant Experience Y coming along very soon.

It remains to be seen whether this constitutes a more advanced form of clinging to pleasant experiences in general, as a class, rather than as singular individual experiences. Clearly, more sitting is required.

I’ll have another set of serendipitous revelations coming from that group, as well, but I haven’t gotten them down into phosphor yet.

Those of you who have sponsored me on previous Pan-Mass Challenge charity rides have my profound thanks once again.

On the other hand, if you have not sponsored my ride, but have the means, this would be the perfect time to start. With the economy forcing many former sponsors to tighten their budgets, it would really, really help if I could get a few new sponsors to make up for some of this year’s shortfall.

On August 1st, I will line up for my ninth Pan-Mass Challenge. However, I’m doing something a little different this time. Instead of sending you yet another long email with the same familiar talking points, this year I’ve put together a video that will hopefully communicate how important the PMC is. Here it is:

Watch on YouTube

Last year the PMC donated a total of $35 million to the Jimmy Fund, and I raised a record $12,000. In this, the Pan-Mass Challenge’s 30th year, the sour economy has forced me to reduce my goal to simply surpassing the $6,700 Heavy Hitter level. If I raise that much, I will also exceed $50,000 in lifetime fundraising, which is an achievement I’ll take great pride in.

Regardless of whether the economy is good or bad, hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to die of cancer each year. I hope you will support my fight against cancer by making a donation to the Jimmy Fund at this Web page:

http://ornoth.pmcrider.com/

And if you’d like to look through my writeups, photos, and videos from previous years, or keep updated on this year’s training, those can all be found on Orny’s Cycling Page.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear from you soon!

Two years ago, I posted a pointer to a Globe article about Louie Evans, Boston’s iconic tricycle-riding “woop-woop guy”. At that time, someone had stolen his bike, and the guys from my local bike shop, Back Bay Bicycles, were taking up a collection to replace it.

Then, last June, I mentioned in this blog entry that I watched Game 3 of last year’s Celtics championship over the Lakers at the Rattlesnake, sitting next to Louie.

Now, (and about time, I must say), an Emerson student has taken upon himself to film an excellent little eight-minute documentary on Louie. Includes interviews with the guys at Back Bay Bicycles, and images of him riding around my neighborhood, including the closing shot you see here, which was taken just outside my living room window.

Brian, thanks for letting us share and preserve the memory of this Boston icon, and thanks to Back Bay Bicycles for taking good care of him!

With summer here, it’s once again time for my annual posting to ask you to sponsor my Pan-Mass Challenge ride.

Apologies to those of you who have seen this already. Bear with me; I’m afraid there’s quite a bit of overlap in many of my communities.

And since most of you here have already heard plenty about the PMC in previous years, I’ll limit myself to the highlights.

You already know that the 200-mile, 2-day ride raises money for life-saving cancer research and treatment via the Jimmy Fund and Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and that the PMC is the Jimmy Fund’s largest single contributor, generating half of their annual revenue and enabling many kinds of research that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

The PMC is also the most effective athletic fundraiser in the world. Most fundraisers devote as much as 30% of contributions to the administrative cost of running their event. In contrast, the PMC is a model of efficiency, running a bike ride that spans two days, seven different routes, sixteen water stops, and supports over five thousand riders passing through forty-six towns—in addition to running twenty-two smaller kids’ rides—without taking a single penny of the funds raised by our riders.

Last year, I was able to play a bigger part in that awesome achievement than ever before. Thanks to many of your help, I raised over $10,000 for cancer research, treatment, and prevention, and I have now raised over $37,000 during my eight years as a PMC rider. This year’s minimum is $4,000, and my goal is to once again surpass the Heavy Hitter level, which is $6,700.

Last year I rode in honor of my friends Ken and Christine. Ken was diagnosed with Stage IV Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in early 2005, and spent that summer enduring an intense chemotherapy regimen. In 2006, shortly after his first anniversary post-treatment, Ken’s cancer had fully returned, and he spent the winter of 2006-2007 in another six months of chemo.

At the time of last year’s ride, Ken had made it through that treatment regimen, and he and Christine were looking forward to a planned wedding in May of 2008.

But Ken’s cancer returned just before Christmas, and he went through his third series of chemotherapy this past January. Afterward, Ken’s doctors told him that there was little they could do to achieve a permanent cure short of a bone marrow stem cell transplant.

A month or so ago, just before the stem cell transplant, a PET scan showed that Ken has new tumors in his spine, spleen, and armpit. He immediately began his first radiation treatment, which will be followed by a fourth round of chemo, and possibly the removal of his spleen.

All this occurred just days before the original date of Ken and Christine’s wedding, which they had to put off for another year.

Because they’ve had such a difficult time of it, this year I am once again riding in Ken’s honor.

Cancer is both pernicious and pervasive. One in three Americans will contract cancer during our lifetimes, and one in four deaths is attributable to cancer. It is imperative that we devote the manpower and money necessary to better understand, treat, and prevent this deadly family of diseases.

Each year, I make a concrete contribution in the fight against cancer. It gives me an incredible sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, and hope. It’s a feeling I hope you’ll share if you choose to sponsor my ride by making a donation to the Jimmy Fund at this Web page:

http://ornoth.pmcrider.com/

As I did last year, this year I am also offering a special bonus for anyone who contributes $200 or more. This year’s gift is a Pan-Mass Challenge logo refrigerator magnet, such as can be seen here:

http://ornoth.com/pmc_magnet.jpg

And if you’d like to look through my writeups, photos, and videos from previous years, or keep updated on this year’s training, those can all be found at:

http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/

Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear from you soon!

I’m really bored, so I guess I’ll write about last Thursday’s purchase.

I decided I needed a tiny little point & shoot digital camera to take with me on the bike, and especially for next month’s Pan-Mass Challenge. And, of course, it would also be handy to carry around, to catch the shots I see when I leave the 70-pound dSLR at home.

My criteria were (1) size, (2) image stabilization, (3) cost, and (4) maybe some sort of movie mode. I wound up picking up a Nikon Coolpix S200.

I played with it a little bit last weekend, and am mostly pleased with the results. Size-wise, it’s smaller than an Altoids tin. Cost-wise, it was tolerable, although I could have gotten it cheaper had I bought online rather than at Bromfield Camera. Movie mode far exceeded my vague desire: it can do 640x480 at 30 fps, plus it has stop-motion and time-lapse modes that I may try playing with.

You can see a couple shots I took up in Maine this weekend here.

The only minor disappointment is the image stabilization, which I thought was optical, but is actually digital, which is not as desirable. Still, it’s got to be a huge improvement over my near-worthless cameraphone, even if it is another device to carry.

I’ve gone out and done some on-bike tests, both to see how it performs and to get familiar with operating it while piloting a moving vehicle. I think it went well, so you can expect to see more and better pictures of this year’s PMC ride, and maybe a video or two of the more interesting bits!

As just about all of you know, in August I’ll join 4800 other riders and bike 200 miles in two days during my seventh Pan-Mass Challenge, which supports cancer research, treatment, and prevention through the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Jimmy Fund.

I’m asking each of you to consider sponsoring my ride this year.

The PMC is the largest athletic fundraiser in the nation, having given $26 million to the Jimmy Fund last year. In an industry where most charity events aspire to raise $1 million, last year the PMC’s donation to the Jimmy Fund grew by $3 million. To give you an idea what that means, the PMC represents fifty percent of the Jimmy Fund’s annual income. And the PMC donates an unsurpassed 99 percent of the money raised by riders, which is unmatched by any other fundraisers.

In my seven years, I’ve personally raised $26,000, and hope to raise over $6,300 this year. Thanks to my sponsors, last year I raised a record $6,260 for the Jimmy Fund. That not only beat the minimum fundraising level of $3,300; it not only smashed my previous record of $3,865; but it also qualified me for the $6,000+ “Heavy Hitter” status, an achievement that I didn’t believe I could ever make. I was incredibly proud to see my name listed—for the first time—in the PMC’s 2006 Yearbook. My thanks go to those of you who have made that achievement possible.

Last year I rode in honor of my good friend Nicole, who was going through five months of chemotherapy to treat ovarian cancer, after the painful loss of both ovaries. I’m happy to report she’s still cancer-free, and delighted to have her hair and eyebrows back. In the past year she has traveled to India three times for work, and has more travel planned this summer and fall. I saw her recently, and was delighted to hear that she’d just celebrated the one-year anniversary of the end of her chemo treatments.

However, cancer can reappear at any time, as I learned last fall. On November 5th I was just getting ready to leave for the PMC’s 2006 check presentation ceremony when I got a message from my friend Christine: two months after they celebrated the one year anniversary of the end of her fiance’s chemo treatment, his cancer had recurred.

That—and everything else they have been through—is why I’m riding in his honor this year.

Ken and Christine had known each other via the Internet for three years in 2005, when he was first diagnosed with advanced stage Hodgkins lymphoma. He and Christine met in person and became romantically involved over the summer of 2005, while he was undergoing six months of chemotherapy. He successfully wooed her, and proposed that December. Things looked good, and they moved into an apartment together in Virginia last July, where they celebrated the anniversary of the end of his treatment.

But a late October followup PET scan showed that Ken’s cancer had unexpectedly come right back to Stage IV. He immediately began another six-month regimen of chemotherapy, which has been extremely difficult on both of them. His treatment ended just a few weeks ago, and he should be back to his former strength again soon. And hopefully he and Christine will be able to celebrate another end of his treatment anniversary when they are married in Chicago next May.

Ken and Nicole’s stories show both how much we have learned about cancer recently, and yet how much more we need to do to overcome this persistent disease. Both those lessons are also clearly depicted in a recently-published book called “The Cancer Treatment Revolution: How Smart Drugs and Other New Therapies are Renewing Our Hope and Changing the Face of Medicine”.

The book was written by Dr. David Nathan, former president of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the research hospital that is the beneficiary of the Pan-Mass Challenge. In his book, Dr. Nathan describes the amazing progress made against all forms of cancer during his fifty years in oncological research, and the equally amazing and heartening prospects for the future. It’s an amazing way to discover the work that has been done at the very facility that your PMC donations support. Read more about the book in my journal entry here: http://ornoth.livejournal.com/109013.html

In order to share some of the book’s perspective on cancer with my supporters, this year I will purchase and send a free copy of “The Cancer Treatment Revolution” to every person who makes a contribution of $200 or more (before employer match) in support of my ride this year. It’s my way of both offering my thanks and sharing the real progress that your donations have made and/or will make possible.

The battle against cancer has become one of the most important causes of our lifetimes. In March, DFCI announced “Mission Possible: the Dana-Farber Campaign to Conquer Cancer”, with an audacious $1 billion fundraising goal by 2010. Read about it and—the PMC’s role in it— here: http://www.pmc.org/ems_client/html/pdf/BillionCampaign.pdf

And on a more personal level, last November I came across a familiar name on the Internet: one of my best friends from grammar and high school, whom I’d lost contact with. After surviving testicular cancer, had also become a charity rider, raising money and doing activism for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Small world…

The focus on eradicating cancer is very heartening, but research and prevention are still hobbled by lack of funding. In April, Lance Armstrong wrote an article that appeared in Newsweek, protesting when Congress cut the National Cancer Institute’s funding for the first time in thirty years, which galvanized his “Unite” campaign. See the article here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17888477/site/newsweek/

That’s why events like the PMC and individual donors like you are so very important. In many ways it’s your and my contributions that will make the real difference in the battle against cancer.

In August I will participate in my seventh PMC ride. and I hope you’ll help me raise more money in 2007 for cancer research, treatment, and prevention than I ever have before. Although the ride’s August 4-5, I can take donations until the end of September. And if your employer has a matching gift program, please make use of it, because that will double any contribution you make at no cost to you. And if you donate $200, I’ll send your book out right away.

Thank you again for allowing me to play an active part in what I believe is the most important cause of our time.

Here are the important links:

Make a contribution by credit card:
https://www.pmc.org/egifts/giftinfo.asp?eGiftID=OL0003

My cycling page, with writeups of my previous Pan-Mass rides: http://users.rcn.com/ornoth/bicycling/

My PMC profile page and this year’s fundraising total: http://www.pmc.org/mypmc/profiles.asp?Section=story&eGiftID=OL0003

The Pan-Mass Challenge: http://www.pmc.org/
The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: http://www.dfci.harvard.edu/
The Jimmy Fund: http://www.jimmyfund.org/

The following is my travelogue from the 2007 DargonZine Writers' Summit. The official project writeup and photos can be found here, while my favorites out of my own photos can be found here.

Wednesday, 21 March 2007

      Woke up to 20 degrees, but at least it was sunny. We'd had snow showers the day before, and a serious snowfall last weekend. I finished packing and swept the house, then left for the airport at 11am.
      We were about ten minutes late taking off, due to the outbound aircraft showing up late, which made me anxious because my connection in Denver was tight to begin with. Despite the fact that we wound up landing on time, by the end of my brisk walk the length of Denver's Terminal B my second flight was already boarding Seating Area 2, which meant me. No time to stretch out my back after a five-hour flight from Boston!
      The flight to Vegas added another couple hours onto that, continuing to stress my back, which has been painful since I stood in line for three hours waiting to tour the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy in Boston two weeks ago.
      The approach to Vegas was absolutely stunning from the air, the Earth a carpet of rugged mountains and etched canyons. After passing over one final high ridge, we approached the McCarran runway that runs parallel to the Strip, passing the Stratosphere, the Wynn, the Bellagio, New York New York, Paris, and the Luxor, among the sights. It was pretty impressive. On arrival at 6pm, it was 70 blessed degrees.
      I met up with two of my writers -- Rena and Dafydd -- at the luggage carousel, then we drove off in Daf's white Lincoln Town Car to meet Carlo -- another Dargon Project member -- in the lobby of the Green Valley Ranch Casino in Henderson.
      From there, we had supper at the Red Hawk Tavern, which was clearly a dive for the locals. The food was mundane, but at least it wasn't a chain, and the waitress was friendly. The highlight, however, was the quite busty other waitress, whom I eyed as she worked the booths. Very nice, I must say.
      After dinner and chat, we hit the Albertson's grocery next door for some supplies, then made our way back to the town house that Dafydd, this year's host, had rented. The nighttime view of the city was interesting: a huge grid of lights filling the valley, tightly bound by arid mountains, with the Strip in the middle.
      As for the house, called Cappellini, there's not much I can say about it but “Oh my gawd!” Okay, aside from the pool and hot tub, and the pool table, and the wireless Internet, the place was gigrontic. I think it had seven bedrooms, but I'm not sure. I wound up picking a nice little suite with -- of all things -- a very high sleigh bed. The place is a new development, and the accommodations were absolutely unsurpassed. Stupendous.
      I stayed up for a while, unpacking and getting ready for Thursday's planned bike ride. I finally hit the hay sometime around 1am, which would have been 3am Eastern. Long day!

Thursday, 22 March 2007

      Sadly, my internal clock was still on Eastern time, so I was awake at 5:45 am. After a casual breakfast, Dafydd and Rena dropped me at Las Vegas Cyclery, where I talked to a friendly dude and rented a 60cm Cannondale Synapse: the other bike I considered when I bought my Roubaix a year and a half ago.
      While the others headed off to tour the Luxor and Caesar's Palace, I started the westward ride out of town, which promised a steady four percent grade, gaining of 2500 feet over a dozen miles. After a few miles, I caught up with another cyclist at a stop light, and I chatted pleasantly with him for several miles, until the end of Alta, where he turned right to do some offroad riding, while I turned left to get back down to West Charleston and Route 159, which would take me out to Red Rock Canyon.

      I knew Las Vegas was in the Mojave Desert, but I had no idea it was surrounded by mountains. You can see the Spring Mountains and Red Rock Canyon from the Strip, and it only took me six miles to get outside of town and into very serious desert scenery.
      Within an hour I turned into the park's 17-mile scenic loop road, which began a more serious ascent, skirting the entire circumference of valley between the Calico Hills (huge thousand-foot cliffs of red sandstone) and the immense Spring Mountains. As I slowly made my way up to 4800 feet, I took a few sets of pictures, but absolutely no photos can do justice to the immense wall of rock on my right. Although it hadn’t taken long, I was very glad to see the sign for the highest point on the loop road, because my springtime legs had been pretty well used up.
      From there, the remaining two-thirds of my ride were all downhill or flat, starting with the descent from the canyon, which featured lots of switchbacks and speeds up to 40 mph. At 2pm I stopped at the end of the loop road and took another panorama of the canyon before hopping back onto Route 159 south toward the tiny village of Blue Diamond.
      Route 159 was great: smooth, wide, and all downhill. Despite a very stiff headwind, I was still making 25-35 mph before I turned onto Route 160, a busy road that led back into Vegas from the south, near where our house was. However, since Dafydd and Rena were touring the Strip, I skipped the house and turned left onto Jones, through an industrial area, where I found a penny in the road. I figured finding money in the streets of Vegas would be a good story, so I took the time to stop and pick it up.
      The last five miles of the 50-mile ride were tough, between the wind, my bad back, and my legs losing power on this first significant ride I've done in six or eight months. I finally pulled back into the bike shop and returned my ride, stretched, then plunked myself down in front of the store to wait for Dafydd and Rena to pick me up.
      When they did, we had to exchange the Lincoln Town Car for the behemoth van we'd use to transport the nine of us around town. That was a bit of an adventure, as we had to return the car in one place (after missing the rental car return exit twice), take a shuttle bus back to the airport terminal, then catch another shuttle to a different rental place. Then we drove the beast back to the house to again meet up with Carlo for dinner.
      After I took a quick shower, we headed out to where Daf thought an Ethiopian restaurant was. We found the strip mall, and even the sign, but the restaurant was gone. However, there was an Ethiopian grocery and a “club” next door with silvered windows that hid the interior. Eventually Daf stepped into the “club”, and we followed timorously.
      Inside looked like a VFW hall, with a bunch of tables, and a group of natives huddled at one. It took several minutes for Daf to get any attention from the residents, but eventually we sat down and were served. The staff seemed very surprised, and we soon found out that they were out of some dishes because it was an Ethiopian fasting holiday. We ordered anyways, but I have to say the food was singularly bad. I got lamb bones and bread, and that's about it, so I was pretty glad to leave that adventure behind.
      From there, we returned to the house. Both Liam and his wife (MaryEllen) and Jim and his wife (Naomi) showed up late that evening, and we played a game of Carcassonne, which I won, surprisingly. Eventually it was 2am, and I hit the hay.

Friday, 23 March 2007

      Friday was another 6am start, but it was a pretty casual morning. Eventually the group got together in the van and Dafydd drove us down to Hoover Dam, where we promptly parked and headed indoors for the tour.
      The tour really wasn't too much: a movie, an elevator ride down to the generator floor, then a walk past one of the huge bypass water pipes that feed the turbines. Somehow I find the dam both stupendously huge and yet thoroughly trivial at the same time. It's 780 feet high, and two football fields deep at the base. The lake behind it is absolutely huge. But ultimately it's just a simple waterwheel. It's kinda like having a 300-foot screwdriver.
      After the tour, we stepped out into the sunlight of the observation deck to take some pictures, then walked the length of the road atop the dam, across to the Arizona side of the Colorado River. The intake towers were kind of interesting, and we spotted a couple lizards lounging in the sun on one of the cement walls atop the dam. Although the wind was calm on both sides of the dam, it was brutally strong right in the middle, which was very odd. When we'd had our fill, we went through the gift shop, then into the cafe for lunch, where I had chicken fingers.
      Then it was back into the van up the arid no mans land along the edge of Lake Mead. The landscape became gradually more and more rugged, and it reminded me a great deal of Scotland: driving winding roads in a van through huge mountains, while half of the passengers slept.
      At about 4pm we finally found the entrance to the Valley of Fire, another immense outcropping of red sandstone. We took a short walk up to Elephant Rock, an odd stone formation on a hill overlooking the visitor center. I encouraged Liam and his wife to climb up to it for photos, while a mother nearby lectured her kids about not leaving the trail.
      After a short breather, Jim fetched the van and we drove on to another point called Seven Sisters. Getting out of the van, the weather had turned breezy and cool, and one could feel the occasional raindrop. The wind picked up to storm levels, kicking up eddies of sand and driving us back into the van.
      From there it was another short side trip to a place with the intriguing name of Mouse's Tank, which turned out to be absolutely fascinating. It was a very narrow box canyon, a third of a mile long, bordered by huge sandstone cliffs and boulders of all sizes and shapes, many of them covered with petroglyphs that could be one or two thousand years old. At the head of the canyon is a small hollow filled with water. The whole area defies description, and was one of the highlights of the trip.
      From there we went a little further to a place called Rainbow Vista, which offered an intriguing perspective: more huge red rocks in the foreground, but contrasting sharply with the verdant valley and higher mountains beyond. It was visually spectacular.
      We returned to the main road and stopped a final time at a place called the Beehives, which not only offered a similar overlook, but also a view of the rainbow promised in the title of the previous stop. By then we were getting pretty tired of spectacular scenery and big red rocks, so we hopped into the van and headed back into town for our next adventure: teppanyaki.

      We piled out at a Japanese beast row called Fukuda, met up with Carlo, and took up positions on the perimeter of a stainless steel grill. Not long after our order was taken, a Japanese chef showed up and starting in on his theatrics, flipping knives and spatulas and eggs and keeping up a lively banter as he began to prepare our food right before our eyes: shrimp, lo mein, fried rice, assorted veggies and meat, and a flaming tower of onions. The meal was very good, and very well presented, even if the chef did drop one knife and a plastic squeeze bottle of oil. I've always been skeptical of Japanese food, but the teppanyaki was a great show and an enjoyable meal.
      When dinner was over, half the group went straight home, and the rest of us went to the airport to pick up Jon, our final arrival. We snagged him, then made a grocery run before getting back to the house. Everyone was tired, and a bit frustrated when we couldn't figure out how to get the hot tub's heat to activate. After greetings were exchanged, we all retired.

Saturday, 24 March 2007

      Once again I was up at 6:30am Saturday. Jon and Liam managed to break one of the house's pottery cups by cooperating too hard. Then we kicked around and played a little pool while waiting for Liam to make a run to Office Depot to pick up an easel pad.
      When he returned, Daf presented us with some amazing gifts he had prepared: several decks of custom Las Vegas Summit playing cards, and a whole case full of ceramic poker chips bearing the DargonZine logo. That was quite an impressive item!
      At the same time, Liam mentioned two books to us. The first was a textbook called “Writing Fiction” by Janet Burroway, and Liam read to us a section about the importance of allowing yourself to write garbage first drafts. The other was the Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones, which is written like a tour guide but makes scathing fun of all the stock fantasy cliches like stew, ale, grand viziers, and so forth.
      With that out of the way, we got into the working sessions, which began with Liam facilitating a brainstorming session on where story ideas come from. The list included:

My philosophical ideas or inner demons
My ideas for inventions
My dreams or daydreams, especially the surreal ones
External requirements/expectations/motivators
Doing research, including maps (Dargon or otherwise)
Start writing about a character and just see where it goes
Take a visual impression and work it into a story
Rewrite/alter/extend/follow up on someone else's story
Getting struck by an idea (character, line, scene)
A story in an article/book/radio/television/song

      Next I took the floor for the only thing I had to present this year: a talk about how to take a simple basic plot and add complication upon complication until it becomes almost baroque in its ornateness, using the scriptwriting of Buckaroo Banzai as an example. It was a quick session, but hopefully people left with an appreciation of how little work it can be to make a fast-paced story if you pare everything down to just plot.
      After that, Dafydd and Liam talked a little bit about how the Doravin arc had changed under their current plan. I'm glad to see it moving forward, and even if it's not going in the original direction Daf intended for it, it's still a great addition to the milieu.
      By this time it was noon, so we broke for sandwiches. Carlo arrived in the middle, and walked us through some of the graphics work he's been doing, including revised maps.
      And the final item of the day was to go around and talk about the stories we'd each written in response to a writing challenge Dafydd had posted to the list several weeks earlier. My own story was originally written to fulfill the need for a “Dargon walking tour”, as expressed at our previous writers' Summit.

      That left us the balance of the day to go exploring, and Dafydd drove us west of the city to Mount Charleston, at 11,918 feet the eighth highest peak in Nevada. We stopped briefly at the visitor's center, where several people picked up sweatshirts, since they were unprepared for the cold air around 9000 feet. Between Las Vegas' dryness and the altitude, Jim's wife Naomi even suffered a couple inconvenient nosebleeds.
      From there, we drove a few miles to a short trail called Robbers' Roost. This footpath went up into the aromatic conifers that were the only real trees I saw in Nevada, and we were quickly trudging through wet snow among the boulders and pinecones. The mountain goats among us quickly shed followers, until it was just me, Jon, Liam, and his wife, having gone about as far as we could go without climbing gear. As we stood there, I looked up and noticed carabiners on hangers attached to an immense overhang above us, as Dafydd and Jim caught up.
      After a few minutes' rest, we tromped back down to the van, and rode on to the Desert View Overlook. Here we milled around a bit before piling back in the van for the ride back into town.
      The descent was interesting, and made moreso by the van's overheating brakes causing it to vibrate badly until Daf set the van into low gear. But eventually we got back to town, safe and sound.
      Having given up on trying to meet the (fondue) Melting Pot's dress code, our dinner stop was at a place called Thai Spice, which served passable Asian, including my Szechuan chicken. The highlight of the meal was the Summit toast, which was given by Liam and Jon, each alternating words in a hilarious impromptu improv routine. I tried to capture it on my camera phone, but it failed to record the audio, as I'd feared.
      We returned to the house at 8pm, where we again split into two groups. The two married couples -- Jim and Naomi, Liam and MaryEllen -- drove up to the Strip and toured the Paris hotel and casino. Liam came back and validated my impression that the Strip really wasn't worth my time, as I wouldn't have enjoyed it, although Jim did get some wonderful pictures of the Strip at night.
      Meanwhile, Dafydd, Jon, and I hung out in the hot tub, since we'd been told how to operate the thing earlier in the day. I took great pleasure in lounging in a hot tub while eating Haagen-Dazs and some of my $230 bottle Port Ellen.
      We finished the day with another game of Carcassonne, then crashed.

Sunday, 25 March 2007

      Sunday's working session began pretty promptly at 9am, with Jon's review of our financials, followed by voting for officers. One of the votes we took changed the Editor position so that it is appointed by the board, rather than a lifelong position. Another change was Dafydd's election as Vice President, which is a largely titular office, but it was still a great thing to see.
      Liam then led us through a discussion of the tasks that need to be performed in order to consider the DPWW ready. The DPWW -- Dargon Project Writers' Workshop -- was dreamt up last year to give new writers a way to get peer review of non-Dargon works as a way of ramping up on DargonZine and our processes. Five things came out of the discussion: instructions for mentors and mentees, a closer partnership with Carlo's Arcane Twilight, a reorganization of the writers' section of our web site, moving the DPWW mailing list to dargonzine.org, and a document defining the process for responding to new writer signup requests.
      We also were led through a brainstorming exercise on what the word “aspiring” means in our mission statement, since there'd been a debate on the list about its relevance. We came up with the following attributes of an “aspiring writer”:

Desires to (and does) write and improve, and explore the craft
Shares their writing with either the public or other writers
Values critiques, is willing to learn
Sees their work as not perfect yet

We ended the working sessions by once again going through our Summit challenge stories, deciding on points where our stories could refer to one another. After taking some time to hash that out, the writers went off to work on their stories, while I kinda milled around a bit.
We took something like two hours to figure out who wanted what kind of pizza, then trying to find a place to order from, then finding the right franchise to deliver to our area, then waiting for the pizza to show up. It finally did, and we scarfed it down in no time at all.

      After lunch I took a quick group photo, then we played another game of Carcassonne before we finally got the group together for a trip over to South Point, the nearest big casino. After four days, I was finally getting the opportunity to put some money on the tables at Las Vegas!
      We wandered around for a bit, with Dafydd, Liam, and Jon following me to the blackjack pit. I walked around the tables, looking at who was dealing shoe versus hand, who was winning and who was losing, which dealers were talkative, how fast each dealer was operating, where the players were, and the rules set. The rules weren't great: no surrender, and the dealer hit soft 17. As I walked around, Liam asked me what I was doing, and I explained the idea behind scoping the pit out a little before sitting down. Jon commented that I gambled like I write (so cautiously that it never happened).
      There was one table that we watched for a few minutes. The dealer seemed pleasant, and there were four open seats, since there were three people playing. But as we watched, hand after hand the dealer smashed the players, dealing himself improbable 21s and other outs. It was a massacre, so we moved on. A few minutes later, Liam pointed out to me that the table was now empty: the dealer had busted all three players and driven them off.
      What happened next would be termed a learning experience. Liam seemed eager to start playing, so he said he was going to go over to that very table and sit down. I was incredulous, and said as much, reminding him of the bloodbath he'd just witnessed. But he wasn't dissuaded, and Jon and Daf tagged along, so against my better judgment I sat down, as well, laying out a $500 buy-in and telling Jon that “No, I don't gamble like I write”.
      As I predicted, the dealer hammered us. I ate through my buy-in, despite playing solid basic strategy, and put another $500 on the table. From there, things were up and down a bit. Jon managed to get $100 clear and left for the roulette wheel. Daf had purchased a basic strategy card, but turned it over to Liam, who seemed to need it more. He soon joined Jon, with $50 in his pocket. Liam was a different story. Despite having the card on the table in front of him, he made a number of plays that contradicted basic strategy, which jarred my nerves. He blew through his ante, and I was left alone at the table for a while.
      Being so far down, I was in for a long, difficult climb back to even, but I didn't have the time, because we only had about 45 minutes before we had to meet to drive Rena to the airport. So I played it out as long as I could, and left the table still $265 in the hole. Technically, that's not bad, given that I was down about $700 at one point, but it's not what I could have done, given more time and a better table.
      So we gathered up in the parking lot, meeting up with our other group, who had gone bowling in the meantime. We drove through the Strip on the way to the airport, then came right back to the casino, where after some deliberation we backed our way into the inevitable Vegas buffet. It was about what you'd expect -- average food at average prices -- but it was okay to have a normal meal for a change, and the all-you-can-eat soft-serve was okay, too.
      From there, I made my way back to the blackjack table, experiencing yet another distinctly odd experience. I found a happy table and bought in for another $500, and settled in for a good long run. But within half an hour, the guys came by and told me they were done, and Daf was probably going to drive them home at some point. Okay, I said, and continued playing. I'd found a good table and was making hay.
      About 20 minutes later, they called from the house. They had immediately left, and had called to let me know that I should call them whenever I wanted a ride home.
      Well, as it was, I was pretty close to finishing, or at least taking a break. I was about $450 to the good, and I automatically step away from the table when I'm up $500. But I wasn't quite there yet, and it would have pissed Daf off to have to turn around and pick me up after just bringing the others home. So I told them I'd continue playing for a while and call when I was done. The night was still young; it wasn't even 9pm yet!
      So I continued playing, and you can imagine how things went from there: it was a mixed bag, but mostly downward. They called me again around 10pm, checking in just before they started a game of Carcassonne, but I decided to bail. I'd been struggling to keep ahead of the game, and the longer you play, the lower your chance is of winning. So I stood up, leaving the table with $100 more than I arrived with, for a net loss of $165. That's not too bad, considering how the evening started, but it’s also not the $250 gain that was near my maximum gain, either.
      Daf graciously picked me up, and when we got back to the house I started sorting and entering my 300 bills into Where's George, much to the amusement of my companions. At the cage, I'd picked up two straps of ones and $400 in fives, in addition to a fistful of Bens and some spare bills, and managed to give the casino about a dozen marked Grants and about the same number of Bens. Hopefully those'll go interesting places and garner interesting hits, since I've never had a hit on a bill larger than a $20. And now I've got about two months' worth of cash to distribute that was all entered in Las Vegas!
      After I finished all that, we played a couple games of Carcassonne while the others gradually nodded off. Jon and I decided we were going to stay up all night, since we had to leave the house at 5am to catch Jon’s 7am flight. Ugh. Ironically, my last all-nighter was a couple years ago, driving down to Philly and back for Jon's wedding.
      But 5am finally came, and we woke Liam up to drive us over to the airport. We got through ticketing, but security... Well, let's say that the line to go through security was five people wide and about 500 feet long. It was obscene. Fortunately, they were moving people through pretty well, and my flight wasn't until 8:30am. After eventually getting through security, I went to Jon's gate and saw him off, then hung out at my gate until we boarded. Thank you Las Vegas for being the only airport I've been to that had free wireless Internet!

      And that was it for my first trip ever to Las Vegas. The Strip really didn't seem like my cup of tea, and the rest of the town was basically just 1200 square miles of strip malls. And it definitely didn’t come close to living up to its “sin city” reputation at all.
      But the food was interesting, the accommodations were absolutely unmatched, and the landscape and outdoors activities were surprisingly breathtaking. Although I'd known Las Vegas was in the middle of a desert, I hadn't expected it to be surrounded by huge mountains, which were absolutely stunning.
      I'd expected it to be arid, but I was surprised by how that manifested itself. Specifically, my nose was constantly dried out and clogged, and the cuticles on my fingers painfully cracked and peeled. Not exactly the symptoms I'd expected!
      The bike ride was, of course, an absolute pleasure, and I'm very glad I took the time to enjoy that. I enjoyed the whole trip as a photographic opportunity, although I feel like I could have done better if I’d devoted more time and better composed my shots. And, of course, the gambling... Well, I'm pleased that we fit it in, even if I'm not entirely happy with the net result.
      The working sessions were reasonably productive, and the company was good, although I'm always disappointed when we have no new writers at the Summit. As for giving up control of DargonZine, every day convinces me more and more that I need to give up all responsibility and any sense of ownership I still have in it, because it will never be what I dreamed it would. But I still care about the people, and enjoy our annual get-togethers a great deal.
      And it hardly feels like a week has gone by. With the notable exception of our twelve days in Scotland, the Summit always feels too short, and I dread the beginning of the goodbyes and the unavoidable return to the working world. But the Summit itself... that was a wonderful experience, and I'm glad to have my fellow writers as friends to share these wonderful memories with.

Some good article pointers. Cred to somervillian for the bike-related ones.

Married Bed Death and Sexual Play: Several good points here, like porn and BDSM having value, men not being depicted as sexual predators, and so forth.
Male Bisexuality: Interesting points, not just about sexuality as a continuum rather than two discrete opposites, but also how sexuality can vary, leading to a host of problems for people who cling tightly to the idea of sexuality as an “identity”.
The Most Energy Efficient Method of Transportation in the World: Especially good is the last set of data, where it’s shown that an automobile requires FIFTY TIMES more energy per mile travelled than a bike.
The Most Popular Method of Transportation in the World: And here’s another interesting tidbit: there are three and a half times as many bikes on the road as there are cars. So you’d better get used to ’em!

The following is a transcription of a phone post that originally appeared in my main journal, here.

Hey this is Ornoth and I've completed the Pan Mass Challenge for this year. Sunday's ride of about 80 miles or so was pretty fine.

I spent most of the time with my buddy Charlie, who actually wound up breaking a spoke at one point, and so we had to stop and then stop again to get it fixed. We also hung around with a couple people from his team who were toodling along, so we took it real easy today, as opposed to yesterday. Yesterday I actually think I set a new record as far as getting into Bourne early; but getting into Ptown, no record there! We took it real easy, and enjoyed the sunny weather, it was absolutely beautiful. I'm about to head out to Race Point Beach to go float around in the ocean.

So, everything is good here, and I want to again thank everybody who helped out and who contributed because in addition to being just a wonderful experience on the bike, it's been a really wonderful experience doing the fundraising and incredibly sucessful, much more successful this year than previous years. It's all great, I'll be posting followups at some point.

The immediate report is everything's great and I really enjoyed it. Thank you everyone, and I'll talk to you later.

The following is a transcription of a phone post that originally appeared in my main journal, here.

Hey everybody, I have arrived in Bourne, at the base of the Cape Cod Canal, after a 112 day ride in the saddle [transcriber's note -- not a 112 day ride in the saddle, 112-mile ride in 1 day] that featured a little bit of cramping, a lot of just general tiredness and heat on a beautiful weather day and it's really so far been a pretty positive experience.

I want to especially again thank all of my contributors, my sponsors, because I've already met both my fundraising minimum as well as my most ambitious goal and blowing right by those and continuing on, so . . .

All the news is good at this point and I've already had 3 bowls of ice cream here, because the ice cream tends to run out early. I've already had my massage, so things are well underway and the next item on the agenda is about 6 ears of corn on the cob, so....I hope everyone's having a good weekend and again, thank you for your interest and your support.

This is -- you know, the ride is very much my -- they always say the ride is your reward for all the fundraising work you do, and the fundraising has gone well and I'm really enjoying the ride. It's been a great experience so far, and I'll have another report for you in less than 24 hours when I have biked another 70- or 80-odd miles up to Provincetown at the end of Cape Cod. That's it from here, and hope everyone's doing well, and thanks again. Bye bye.

Hey, folks. It’s once again time for me to check in with you and ask you to sponsor my sixth Pan-Mass Challenge ride in support of cancer research, treatment, and prevention at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Most of you know that I train year-round for the PMC, which is the most important event of my year. The PMC is by far the biggest athletic fundraiser in the nation, and generates half of the Jimmy Fund’s annual revenue. On top of that, there are a couple things that are different this year, and I’d like to share them with you.

1. Last year, the PMC donated 99% of the money raised by riders.

Athletic fundraisers usually donate as little as 60-70% of their contributions to the charity they’re supposed to support. The PMC is required by its charter to donate at least 91%. Two years ago, the PMC astounded everyone with a 97% pass-through rate, and last year increased that to an unsurpassed 99%, which we are justifiably proud of. So you can rest assured that your donations are going straight to the charity, not to the people who run the ride.

2. This year, I hope to exceed $20,000 lifetime fundraising.

I’ve never raised $4,000 in one year, but that’s my current goal, so I can reach the $20,000 plateau in this, my sixth year as a rider. I really need your help to get there. And if your employer has a matching gift program, please take advantage of it. You can double your contribution at no cost to you other than filling out a simple form!

3. This year, it’s personal.

For the past five years, I’ve been lucky: no one I knew was undergoing treatment for cancer. This year is different. This year I’m riding for my good friend and former co-worker rubyred660, who has had to face this disease again and again over the past five years.

Her mother fought a brain tumor for seven years before succumbing just a week before rubyred660’s wedding day. A year or two later, she and her father both received precancerous diagnoses that required removal of their colons. After another couple years, she lost one ovary during the removal of a football-sized benign cyst. Unfortunately, it recurred a month later, and her remaining ovary was removed. As another kick in the teeth, the doctors discovered some ovarian cancer cells, which meant five months of preventative chemotherapy, which she has just completed. After subjecting her body to all that chemo, rubyred660’s prognosis is good and she’s doing well, but after all that trauma, she’s also learned to be cautious when thinking about the future.

Imagine if you had gone through all that in the past five years. No one -- certainly no 28 year-old—should have to endure such an unbelievable amount of pain, fear, and loss. So this year, I’m riding to honor her, and the tremendous spirit she’s shown in fighting such a terrible disease.

I’m once again asking you to help me do that. I hope you are in a position where you’re able to financially support this incredibly important cause this year. It means a huge amount to me, and to the researchers and doctors at the Dana-Farber.

My page on the PMC site is at:
http://www.pmc.org/mypmc/profiles.asp?Section=story&eGiftID=OL0003

and you can go directly to the online donation form here:
https://www.pmc.org/egifts/MakeADonation.asp?eGiftID=OL0003

and you can always check out my cycling journal, ornoth_cycling, here:
http://ornoth_cycling.livejournal.com/

A final post before I head out to this year’s Pan-Mass Challenge.

My training is complete, and the weather looks like it’ll be absolutely Stella. However, I’m a bit cautious about how I’ll do after having strained my back last weekend helping a friend move. I’d say I’m about 85% right now; I’ll certainly start, but we’ll see if I finish.

If you’re curious about the route, I’ve put together an interactive route map using the excellent Google Maps interface. It’s not done, but the current version can be found at:

http://users.rcn.com/ornoth/pmcmap.html

If you’re local, NECN (New England Cable News channel) will have coverage periodically throughout the weekend, including Friday evening’s opening ceremonies at 8pm and a Sunday evening wrap-up. People further afield can also view some of the coverage on their Web site:

http://www.boston.com/news/necn/Shows/specials/pmc/

As usual, next week I’ll be sending out a short debrief of how my ride went, followed by a complete write-up a week or two later. I’ll also send out a fundraising wrap-up after the annual check presentation to the Jimmy Fund in November.

Fundraising is at about $1,500, which is only half of what I need to raise to meet the required minimum.

I want to once again say thank you to those of you who have made this weekend possible, and for making a meaningful contribution to the very important fight to overcome cancer.

And those of you who have yet to make a donation, there’s plenty of time, as I can accept cash all the way through mid-October. Donations can be made here.

Have a great weekend!

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Entries tagged with cycling

Dicklich Gemacht

Dot Eee Dee Yoo

Fluviatile Corrivation

2010 Pan-Massachusetts Challenge

Restless Leg Syndrome

Cancer and Amputation

Cycling and the PMC

Mortality

Tone

Rising to Challenges

Letting Go

Turnabout

Poe Poori

Two Thousand Years B.C.

Life on Pleasant Street

2009 Pan-Mass Challenge

Something to Woop-Woop about

2008 Pan-Mass Challenge

Yo, shot!

PMC Time!

2007 DargonZine Summit: Las Vegas

Wednesday, 21 March 2007

Thursday, 22 March 2007

Friday, 23 March 2007

Saturday, 24 March 2007

Sunday, 25 March 2007

Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign...

My world and welcome to it

Voice Post: 2006 PMC: Provincetown

Voice Post: 2006 PMC: Bourne

Cancer charity ride SOLICITATION

Closer by the mile...

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