Ornoth

Having just picked up the new Google Pixel 6 Pro, specifically for some of its photo capabilities, it's time for me to share my first look at the Pixel's camera features and performance.

My previous two cellphones were the HTC One 11 and the HTC One M8, both of which received high marks for their cameras. But in 2017 Google bought most of HTC's R&D team and integrated them into their efforts to improve the Pixel lineup. So I've been closely following the Pixel line, and between the need to upgrade to 5G and the Pixel 6 Pro's new 4x optical zoom camera, its October release convinced me to finally replace my beloved HTC.

So on the first sunny day after getting my new unit all set up, I took a little photo walkabout in Pittsburgh's Southside, capturing the images that follow. All images were uploaded to Flickr exactly as they came out of the camera, unaltered in any way, although you have to click through to the full-sized versions to see the actual, untouched originals and their full level of detail.

Let's begin with a couple basic snaps that I took just because they caught my eye. These were taken at various levels of zoom (more on that in a bit). Under conditions of harsh afternoon light, the Pixel's HDR processing did a good job pulling detail out of the shadows, even if in some cases that was desired, and in some cases it wasn't.

Aside from the fairly subtle HDR, Google's next image processing trick is "portrait mode", which identifies a human subject in your shot, and then applies a not very subtle blur to everything else. Here's a couple portrait-treated shots, and a normal shot for comparison.

A couple shots to test the Pixel's color handling. Nothing too special here.

Next we have two panoramic images, as created by the Camera app's image processor. The stitching is pretty good, and produces very usable results.

Like any panoramic photo, the wider the scene, the more lens distortion occurs at the edges. While it's not noticeable in the first image, it's far more noticeable in the second, which spans a nearly 180° arc.

Google has included beta versions of two tools that try to capture motion. The first motion capture mode is "long exposure". The idea is to simulate taking a long exposure, where static elements appear clear, but moving elements are blurred.

Sometimes this works well (the moving cyclist below left), and sometimes it doesn't (the ghost bicycle at right). Sadly, Google's camera app doesn't offer the kind of "clear image plus light trail" effect you'd normally get on an SLR with a flash synced to the front or rear curtain.

Note that in these cases where the Pixel is post-processing images, it saves both the altered image as well as the original.

The final feature I wanted to test was the Pixel's "magic eraser" function, which allows you to selectively remove unwanted objects in your photo, kind of like an intelligent version of Photoshop's healing brush.

The left photo below is another action pan shot I took, this time with two cyclists in the frame. The lead cyclist is in focus, but the trailing rider is a little blurry, so I chose to remove her.

She definitely was erased from the image, although I might not go so far as to call it "magic". The Pixel did a good job figuring out what I wanted to remove, and how to back-fill the area, and matched up the berm and railroad tracks well. But I did have to go back and run the tool a second time, in order to also remove the rider's shadow, an oversight that many users might easily make.

The overall result isn't bad, especially given how little user input it required. Good enough for casual use, but for better quality I'd still do the work in a desktop photo editor.

Overall, I'd say I'm very happy with the results. Big plusses are graduating from my old phone's 12MP main camera to the Pixel's 50MP, and the amazing 4x optical zoom. I'm happy with the panorama mode, and am more than willing to play with the good but imperfect magic eraser and motion blur modes. I'm also looking forward to testing out the Pixel's improved low-light and video capabilities.

From a photographic point of view, there's very little to complain about. The Pixel 6's noticeable "camera bar" design hasn't been an issue for me so far. The only serious shortcoming I've noticed is that the front-facing selfie shooter is a meager 11MP, which is 31% smaller than the 16MP on my 5 year-old HTC.

That's all for today, but watch this space -- and my cycling blog -- for more images from the new Pixel 6 Pro!

With the end of cycling’s high season, I was free to spend a week with Inna checking out Portland. Not the familiar largest city in Maine, where I lived for eight years, but its namesake, the largest city in the state of Oregon.

Although we’d both visited before, neither of us had experienced much of the city itself. My 2004 visit was based an hour east of Portland, at Timberline Lodge on the slopes of Mt. Hood; and in 2008 my second visit was even farther away in coastal Astoria and Seaside. Inna’s only visit had been for a brief convention. So Portland was a new city to us. But we had pretty high hopes, based on its reputation and several friends’ experiences.

Wed 2 October

Inna framed by the Columbia River at Vista House

Travel day, flying Pittsburgh to Chicago to Portland. Upon arriving at O’Hare, we had to wait for another aircraft to vacate our gate; and a long delay because the jetbridge at the gate wouldn’t work. The second leg was no better: a delay on the taxiway, and the paid in-flight WiFi internet service was broken. That’s four strikes against United Airlines.

It didn’t get much better at Enterprise car rental, which had a line about 40 people long waiting for customer reps, followed by another dozen in line at the vehicle pool. At the counter Inna confirmed that she had premium status, so we’ll know to cut the line next time.

Finally we were on the road for the four-mile drive to the AirBNB Inna had reserved. We got into the cute and modern over-garage studio unit with no problem. It would provide a comfortable base and refuge for our time in town.

Still midafternoon, we went on a walking tour up and down nearby Alberta Street, one of Portland’s more “artsy” neighborhoods. At Melville Books I picked up “The Essential Dogen” and Jack Kornfield’s “The Buddha Is Still Teaching”. At cat shop Roar I picked up a tee shirt, sticker, and a krinkle toy for Begemot. Stuck my head in Gladys Bikes and got the local scoop while Inna hit the herbalist next door. Stopped at haute coiffure (sic) Salt & Straw ice cream for a malted shake, which was forgettable; Inna tossed most of her coffee-chocolate, which was disappointingly over-salted. Then dinner at Cha Ba Thai, which I’m pretty certain I visited back in 2008.

All that walking was hard for me due to an achilles injury I picked up in late August. But over the course of the week it would improve, despite the ton of walking we did.

Drooping, we headed home, catching one of our hosts on the way in. We admired the little kitty solarium built into the side of their house—although there were very few kitty sightings—and an apple left by a squirrel atop a high wooden fence between the neighbors.

We unpacked and were in bed around 8:30pm, tho to be fair, that’s nearly midnight Eastern time...

Thu 3 October

After a very satisfying shower, we had an expensive breakfast at Vita Cafe on Alberta, then visited Inna’s employer’s local office. As a satellite for the Seattle office, it wound up being little more than two guys in a suburban office park conference room.

Then a stop at Powell’s Books at Cedar Crossing. Inna was overwhelmed by choice, and I chose poorly, getting two books by my former meditation teacher Larry Rosenberg (one of which I later learned I already own), and a tiny book entitled “Rebirth Explained”. Thinking it was written by Bhavana Society founder Bhante G., it was only later that I realized that the author wasn’t H. Gunaratana, but V.F. Gunaratna. At least I'd only spent $1.95 on it! While browsing the manga section, I was amused to find “the life-changing manga of tidying up: a magical story” (sic) by cleaning (but apparently not grammar) guru marie kondo (sic).

Heading downtown, a quick but fruitless peek into Western Bikeworks was followed by a stop at Eb & Bean frozen yogurt; I had vanilla with chopped hazelnuts and white chocolate bits, which was serviceable but unremarkable, tho Inna enjoyed her ginger with streusel topping. Then the city visitors’ center, where the singleminded attendant piled us high with neighborhood-level brochures when we repeatedly asked for a city-wide map.

The most productive stop of the day was at West End Bikes, where I talked to a very forthcoming guy about the local road scene before it turned—horror movie style—into a mad soliloquy about sedentary car drivers being sheep and the desperate imperative of eating healthy.

After freeing myself, Inna and I hit Powell’s flagship downtown store, but by that point we were both too overstimulated to fight the crowds. We headed back to our home base, where we had another brief chat with the other half of our host couple. Then a stockpiling trip to the grocery store and a frozen pizza for dinner.

Fri 4 October

Orny & Inna after dinner at Kachka

Panoramic view of the hiking trail in Forest Park

The view upriver from Vista House

Multnomah Falls

Pond & bridge @ Japanese Garden

Sand & stone garden

Tortured treelimbs

Pavilion and foliage

Full Portland Photoset

Fatigued, we took most of Friday off. While Inna slept, I turned in accumulated reward points for a timely $500 credit on my Visa card.

We stopped at an herb shop on Alberta, but for the second time found them closed. I gained nothing from checking into both River City Cycles locations.

Then dinner at Kachka, a restaurant founded by a second-generation Russian immigrant, and whose cookbook (of the same name) Inna enjoyed… although the fake Cyrillic font constantly misleads both of us to read the name as “Kdsnkd”. Inna's initial excitement wore off the more she ate; whereas I received a chicken leg and overcooked potatoes, which—due to my skepticism and narrow palate—I considered a culinary victory until I received the check.

Friday evening Inna dropped me off at the Portland Friends of the Dhamma meditation group. It seemed like a nice, friendly, focused group of a dozen experienced practitioners. We chanted the refuges in Pali, sat for 45 minutes, and participated in their ongoing discussion of the Vitakkasanthana Sutta (MN 20).

Afterward, I walked through a neighborhood full of bread factories and delivery trucks to where Inna had simultaneously attended a regular Portland Authentic Relating Meetup, where she’d met a new local friend named Lauren. We compared experiences on the drive back to our lodgings.

Sat 5 October

Saturday morning, Inna bounced out of bed like a Muppet in order to get to the big Portland Farmers’ Market at Portland State University, which we verified upon seeing dorm windows with My Little Pony drapery.

With such an abundance of agricultural crops in the Pacific Northwest, the market’s nearly 200 stalls were indeed impressive, including tons of fresh flowers, live pepper charring, and Mexican food fried on huge, round grills, but surprisingly no ice cream. Inna picked up mushrooms, chard, tempeh, and a rice ball, while I came away with chocolate-covered hazelnuts and cayenne kettle popcorn.

From there, we drove over to peruse the art offerings at the riverside Portland Saturday Market. Inna acquired some baseball cap technology, some tiles featuring chickadee artworks, and a “purrmaid” card from Whatif Creations for our catsitters, and I picked up a Bike Portland tee from Local922. We stopped to enjoy the sun, a burrito and ice cream, and watch people on a suicide prevention walk-a-thon along the river.

After an abortive attempt to park at the Portland Japanese Garden, we drove up into the hills and walked one of the trails through Portland’s wooded Forest Park. Although it was true all week long, this is a good time to mention that our visit coincided with some striking autumnal foliage, to Inna’s constant delight.

Some neighborhood exploring led Inna to another herb shop, while I scouted around and discovered Ruby Jewel, an ice cream shop with an unwelcoming, boarded up door, but which immediately won me over by playing Devo background music.

With weary legs, we turned back toward our local grocery store, where I picked up ravioli and alfredo sauce to cook at home, while Inna fried up her marketplace haul.

Sun 6 October

Sunday it was my turn to get up early, leaving Inna to sleep in while I drove to a 9am orientation group at the Portland Insight Meditation Community. The founding teacher, Robert Beatty, arrived late due to the Portland Marathon running through town. I spent the extra time staring out the window at the cats in the neighbor’s yard.

Eventually he arrived and asked myself and the seven women who’d showed up to introduce ourselves and say what question brought us there; my question was whether he knew the cats’ names. Then Robert provided a very eloquent summary of Vipassana meditation, punctuated by a squirrel pausing on a fence inches outside the window and staring in. Then it was time for the 10am sitting in the main hall.

PIMC owns a large former church, and around 90 people attended the sitting. They sung (not chanted) the Three Refuges in English (not Pali), accompanied by Robert on guitar, and the unexpected aura of American folk spirituality jangled my nerves. Then a 45-minute lightly guided meditation, followed by 10 minutes of qigong movements that I declined. Then Robert gave a rambling dhamma talk on afflictive emotions like anger. The group seemed to have the same basic lineage and connections as Portland Friends of the Dhamma, but more diluted and Americanized.

I made my way back to the house to catch a soccer game. Inna was out having brunch with her new friend Lauren, whom she subsequently brought over for a brief visit.

Other than that, we mostly hung around all day, taking it easy. I noticed that—with respect to my achilles injury—my heel felt better than it had in weeks, but for some reason my calf had begun hurting more.

Mon 7 October

After another aborted plan to hit the Japanese Garden, I offered to take Inna on the old scenic highway along the Columbia River Gorge, since she hadn’t seen the river yet. With some fall colors, the drive was very picturesque.

Our first stop was at Vista House, which I’d visited in 2005 with my DargonZine authors. As you’d infer, the little observation tower perched on a high bluff provides a great viewpoint up and down the great river.

Next we continued on to Multnomah Falls, which I’d also visited back in ’05. Despite it being a Monday morning, the limited parking area produced a real traffic jam, which we luckily avoided by having someone pull out of a parking spot directly in front of us as we inched along. We admired the staggeringly high falls, and climbed up to the footbridge perched between the upper and lower cascades.

I was headachey and the crowd was getting to both of us, so we turned back homeward. Inna picked a food joint along the way. McMenamin’s Edgefield turned out to be a huge 74-acre complex that began life as the county “poor farm”, but their restaurant fulfilled our needs.

After resting at home, we went to NEPO 42, a local pub, for burgers, and had a lengthy and enjoyable conversation with Lauren, who met us there.

Tue 8 October

Our final morning in Portland saw us pack up and leave the AirBNB at 11am, but we had all day (and evening) to kill before our midnight flight.

While a heavy rain passed, we took up residence at Cool Moon Ice Cream, which we both agreed was our best ice cream experience in Portland.

After the rain departed, we made our final, successful trip to the Portland Japanese Garden, which was wonderful and would have been amazing in better weather. The pictures do it more justice than any writeup.

A brief stop at The Meadow—a shop selling literally “Salt - Chocolate - Bitters - Flowers”—was followed by a terrible snack at The Fireside gastropub. Then off to the Game Knight Lounge, a gaming cafe where we killed a plateful of nachos and a few hours playing different games.

Then the usual dance of gassing up the rental car, dropping it off at the airport, getting through security, and finding our gate. True to form, our flight—which had only an 8 percent on-time record—was late arriving, which delayed our departure. And then...

Wed 9 October

The redeye flight was painful for me thanks to United’s ludicrous and Scroogian definition of “legroom”, and Inna was so uncomfortable that she barely got any sleep. When we arrived at our intermediate stop in Newark, they threw us another curveball by moving our outbound flight to a completely different terminal, necessitating a hurried shuttle bus ride. We hustled along as quickly as we could, and managed to make our tight connection just as they began boarding.

Then—let me be clear which airline this was—United hit us with a final insult by announcing that our flight was at least twentieth in line for takeoff, and they were multiplexing one runway for both takeoffs and landings, so we’d be delayed another 30 minutes. Fortunately, we didn’t have to worry about any further connections and could relax. Following the flight: the drive home, and an enthusiastic welcome home by the resident house-tiger. Job done!

Overall Impressions

Thinking about Portland as a possible place to live, let’s start with the positives. Like the other cities we’ve visited, it does meet much of our absolute baseline criteria. In addition, it doesn’t really snow in Portland. And for an outdoorsman, the environment is amazing: ocean, rivers, nice flat areas, hills, mountains, and even volcanos and hot springs, and woodland everywhere! It’s incredibly scenic and great for an outdoorsy person.

Unfortunately, that’s kinda it. In contrast, there are a pile of less-than-desirable features.

The climate is cooler, overcast, and drizzly, especially in winter. Not the nice, warm oasis I’m hoping for.

The entire town felt shabby, underdeveloped, run-down… even what passed for a central business district. Lots of boarded-up buildings. It didn’t show any signs of the vibrance and growth I’d been led to expect. It left me concerned about the tech job market. And despite—or perhaps because of—the drivers being extraordinarily timid, it was surprisingly slow/difficult to get around by car.

I didn’t get any sense that Portland has distinctive neighborhoods; there were no obviously affluent sections and no lower-income hoods, just an endless, undifferentiated mass of bland urban standalones amid strips of half-occupied, depressed-looking commercial buildings.

In the same way, also I found none of the ethnic diversity you’d expect in a thriving city. Just a lot of nondescript middle-class white people doing your average mainstream white people things.

Portland would also make it difficult for us to travel. The small airport has limited direct flights, necessitating connections on United at O’Hare, Newark, or Denver (and if you’ve read this far, you’ll already appreciate my feelings toward United). And it’s pretty prohibitively far from our preferred travel destinations: Pittsburgh, Albany, the Caribbean, Europe, and (potentially for Inna) Israel.

There’s also no kyudo in the city at all; the nearest group is three hours away in Seattle. And no casinos nearby.

So on balance, Portland doesn’t seem like the place I would pick if I had the unimpeded opportunity to choose where I want to live… and I do.

The Big Picture

This was the third expedition on our tour of places we might want to live, and the last of our “first tier” options, having hit Boulder & Denver in July, and Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill & Charlotte (no writeup yet; hopefully forthcoming) way back in March.

At this point, the routine is getting awfully tedious: making arrangements, traveling back and forth, trying to feed ourselves, driving around residential neighborhoods, interrogating the locals, asking the same questions. It’s a big expense and a lot of physical, mental, and emotional effort.

We have yet to hammer out our conclusions, but all these cities have their own advantages and disadvantages, which are different for the two of us. It would be silly to think we’d find any place that was absolutely perfect for either of us; and we’ve long known that—due to our perpetually mismatched preferences—no city could ever be ideal for both of us.

With that in mind, there’s no clear and obvious winner among our candidate cities. So our next step is to sit down and decide what compromises we can each live with, and whether it makes any sense to “satisfice” or incur additional delay to look beyond our initial top picks for something else.

It having been over a year since my initial Begemot photo post , I suppose it’s time for a few more images of our special guest star.

He still exhibits completely catatonic midafternoon shutdowns, as described last time, which Inna & I take as ideal times for molestation.

But he has developed one really cute/strange behavior. One of his first toys was a squeaky weasel stuffed animal. Every evening, about two minutes after we turn out the light, he trots off to find it. Once he’s got it, the little guy—who virtually never meows at all—starts howling and crying like it’s a bloody emergency. That lasts maybe 30 seconds until he trots into the bedroom, carrying the weasel in his mouth, and offers it to us. Then he quiets down and settles into bed for the night. And in the morning, he’ll usually get up and bring it with him into the living area (usually without the verbal announcements). It’s pretty hilarious, but equally adorable.

His other favorite toys include shoelaces, the brown construction paper sometimes used as packing material (see below), and he’ll come like a flash if he hears anyone crumpling up a credit card receipt. Between all that and his diverse collection of boxes, the floor’s always a bit of a mess.

It doesn’t take a lot to keep the boy happy, and he definitely has reciprocated by keeping Inna & I happy.

Click for teh bignesses.

For three hundred and sixty-three days out of the year, our apartment is located a couple blocks from Schenley Park, the second largest municipal park in Pittsburgh. But for two days every July, the park—and our neighborhood—are taken over by the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix, a free motorsports festival that draws hundreds of racers and a quarter million spectators. And from our house, the roar of the action sounds like a big hive of extremely angry bees.

Having been a racing fan in a previous life, I had to check it out. There really isn’t a lot of story to tell, but I did bring my SLR and took a few hundred action shots of the cars powering along roads I typically bike on. In this case, the photos probably tell the story better than words could.

Here are a handful of my better shots, but if you like these, you can see a couple dozen more in my PVGP Flickr album.

“Kinda bored on a Wednesday morning, I guess I’ll go see what’s shown up in the ol’ RSS reader. Ah, the Humor folder. Really nothing in there but LOLcats from the I Can Has Cheezburger site, but I like cats, and the captions are often worth a smile… Delete… Delete… WAIT A FREAKIN’ MINUTE THAT’S GRADY!”

So that was my morning surprise. Yup, someone took one of my photos of my cat, posted it on ICHC, and over a dozen people have added LOLesque captions. And for whatever reason, one of them was posted to ICHC’s RSS feed and thus straight to my mailbox.

Although unintentional, that caption was particularly apt, too: Praying? No… Imagining this around your throat… Yes!

You can see them below and click for bigness, or just go to the photo’s index page on ICHC.

How do I know that’s Grady? Well, aside from knowing my own cat, I’m also a photographer and know my own pictures. The original was posted to Flickr here back in 2008. For more words and pictures about Grady, read my post after he died last year.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time a photo of mine showed up on ICHC. Back in 2009, a coworker uploaded an embarrassing photo of an eagle that I’d taken on my trip to Scotland in 2002. You can see the resulting LOLpix and read my reaction in this blogpost. It provided a very handy template for this posting!

What I said then about the eagle pictures applies equally well to the LOLcats people have made of Grady: it’s a little slice of notoriety that I find amusing, and it’s interesting to see what captions other people have added to it.

I kinda wish he was here to see them…

Ten months ago, I went out to the Insight Meditation Society for their 9-day New Years retreat. It was my first time doing a retreat of that length, and I found it vastly more dramatic and emotionally challenging than any retreat I’d ever experienced.

When I came home, I hoped to share my experiences in two separate blog posts: one public, the other friends-locked. Although I completed the first draft of the public post, I never shared it, because I was unable to adequately express the more personal stuff in the private post. And external events interfered, as well.

Nearly a year has passed now, and so much has changed since then. I guess I probably won’t ever complete the private half of my account, but I thought it appropriate to clean up and share the bit I’d planned to post publicly, for those of my friends who are interested.

So here’s my report on last year’s New Years retreat, albeit belated and edited for privacy.

Back in December, three women and I shared a car ride out to the Insight Meditation Society in Barre for their 9-day New Years retreat with guiding teachers Yanai Postelnik, Catherine McGee, and Pascal Auclair.

This was only my second time at IMS, the prior visit being a 5-day retreat two years before. After reviewing my blog entry from that first visit, I made damned sure to bring more than a single pair of socks!

As you might imagine, the weather in the Worcester hills at the end of December provided a spectacle of its own. The first three days were fairly mild (35-42°), and the ground was bare, so I took the opportunity to familiarize myself with the miles of walking trails through the woods behind the center.

That was followed by five straight days where it didn’t get above 22°, and dipped below zero for several nights. Thankfully, our rooms were kept comfortably warm, although I noticed one space heater being used to thaw some frozen pipes in the basement of one of the dorms.

We had two snowfalls of about 3 and 6 inches, neither of which stopped me from regular trudges through the wooded paths out back, as you can see from the photos at right.

While walking outside on New Years Eve (before the snows), I realized that the long hedge in front of IMS was made up of large holly trees. Having grown up in Maine, I have a deep affinity for holly, which thrives in similarly cold and desolate places. So I gathered a handful of holly leaves and berries from the ground and placed them along the windowsill in my room (see photo).

The cold weather peaked on day eight of the retreat, when I took what could be conservatively called a brisk 3-mile trek around Gaston Pond. The sunrise above the snowed-over pond was lovely, but I nearly lost my fingers taking the accompanying photograph in air that was seven degrees below zero! Ironically, that was during perihelion, the time of year when the distance between the Earth and the Sun is actually the shortest!

Then the temperatures miraculously shot back up to nearly 50° on a misty morning on the last day of the retreat. The fog only thickened as the week’s snows rapidly sublimated and completely disappeared.

I definitely didn’t sleep well, and heard similar reports from several others. My theory is that the amount of time spent each day with eyes closed, observing the mind, builds up so much momentum that it’s difficult to shut it down to go to sleep at night. But that’s just one theory.

On New Years Eve, the teachers led us through a ceremony that included writing something we’d like to give up or leave behind on a piece of paper, then depositing them into a container to later be burned. I was sitting next to the container, and it was interesting to observe how most people emphatically threw their unwanted attributes into it, often ritually ripping the paper into bits beforehand. And then a very few folks (including myself) were much more reluctant to drop theirs in, as if they were letting go of a safety blanket.

The second Saturday—day eight of the retreat—was the day that all hell broke loose.

After returning from that long, frigid sunrise walk I mentioned above, I noticed that my throat was really sore. I had come down with a cold. I had taken lots of careful precautions, knowing that retreats are ideal breeding grounds for disease, but it had still caught up with me. Thankfully, there were only two days left before we headed home!

But that was nothing compared to what followed. At the start of the midday sitting, the teachers asked us to immediately go and check our rooms and secure our valuables, because someone had gone into several meditators’ rooms (there were no locks on any of the doors) and taken all their cash! Eventually we learned that eight to ten people in one particular dorm had been robbed, and some prescription painkillers had been taken, as well.

Having spent an entire week opening their hearts and allowing themselves to work with their emotional vulnerabilities, it would be difficult to describe the sense of violation that my fellow retreatants felt. However, with the wisdom of the teachers, the group found some ways to respond to the invasion that helped people heal.

First, the entire retreat—more than a hundred people—took up the “om mani padme hum” chant and walked in a procession from the main building’s meditation hall, through my dorm, then across a passage to the affected dorm, and back again. The chant was moving and powerful, and the combined strength and goodwill of so many people helped the meditators in that building feel that we had “taken back” the space.

Then arrangements were made for small groups of people to voluntarily take shifts doing walking meditation in that building all night long, so that the residents would know that someone was awake and present at all hours to protect them in case the thief returned. I would have volunteered, but I knew that getting a good night’s sleep was imperative for fighting my oncoming cold.

I wasn’t particularly concerned about my own safety. My room was near the main building, and no one in my dorm had been robbed. I was mostly concerned for the others. But as we went to bed that night, everyone was on edge and emotionally primed to respond to the potential return of the trespasser.

So it was in that state of mind that I woke up at 2am when the door to my room was opened. In the dim light from the “Exit” signs I could see the silhouette of someone slipping into my room from the corridor. By the time I was conscious enough to respond, they’d begun backing up, but that was when it hit me that this could well be the guy!

My heart racing and barely aware of what I was doing in my panic, I threw off my bedding, grabbed the door, and screamed “HEY!!!” The interloper was backing off hurriedly, then cowered on the opposite side of the corridor from me, saying “Imsorry Imsorry Imsorry, I got confuuused!”

That wasn’t the response I would expect from a thief, so I froze in mid-leap. That gave me enough time to scan what I could see of the person’s features in the darkness. Out of a hundred complete strangers at the retreat, I thought I recognized one of the women I had shared a ride with… “Claudia, is it?”

Apparently it was. She apologized again, and I think I just said “Okay” and closed the door on her. I would have flopped right back to sleep, except my heart was pounding and I was chock full of adrenalin. No matter how still I laid or how much I tried to calm my mind, there was no more sleep that night.

The next day—the last full day of the retreat—the teachers held a a small session for people who still felt they needed to work through some of their reaction to the burglary. I decided I would go and just ask how to deal with my body’s response, because no matter how much my mind had settled, my heart was still racing along in fight mode.

Claudia also appeared at that meeting, and we talked through the event. Apparently she had been one of the people doing walking meditation during the night, and in returning hadn’t realized that the passage from the second floor of one dorm led to the first floor of the other. She had walked into what would have been her room if she had been on the second floor, but because she was mistakenly on the first floor, she’d walked in on me instead.

People going into the wrong room by accident isn’t unheard-of there, since the doors all look the same, and there weren’t any locks on them (there are now). Of course, having that happen to me at 2am the night after a burglary was pretty much the worst timing imaginable. Since it was conceivable that something like that could still happen again, the following night I slept with my bed frame blocking my door from opening at all. I didn’t want to go through that a second time!

The final day brought the closing feedback session, where I spoke a brief piece about how the retreat had affected me emotionally much more than any previous retreat. And Claudia and I and the other two women in our car were the last ones out of the center after the retreat ended.

So, that’s a good bit about the body of the retreat. Now I’ll talk a bit about some of the ideas that came to me while spending all that time in silence.

Everything we experience, which feels so personal and unique to us, isn’t; it’s actually just one instance of sensations that virtually all humans experience at some point in their lives. Viewing them as universal phenomena makes it easier to hold one’s own pain lightly and feel a lot more compassion for others.

I thought up two interesting metaphors for how we relate to time. One can only see what’s happening clearly by being fully engaged and aware in the temporal present. Our past experiences can be like the film on a dirty window, making it more difficult to accurately view what’s going on in the present; our histories leave a residue that obscures or filters one’s view of the present. One need to try to see through or beyond the obscuration, or somehow clean the obstructions away. Similarly, focusing on the future can cast a shadow that darkens and obscures one’s view of the present; you can either spend all your time planning for and living in the shadow of an as-yet unrealized future, or step out of the shadow and experience the present moment in its full, vivid brilliance.

There’s an old instruction that goes something like this: never miss an opportunity to make someone else happy. I had some opportunities to play with this during the retreat, and the results were rewarding. I’d like to remember to do this more often.

When dealing with strong emotions (positive or negative), the best way to relate to it is with curiosity. Trying to suppress it isn’t healthy, and conversely one can easily lose perspective by self-indulgently wallowing in those emotions. The correct prescription is to explore one’s emotions with a sense of curiosity, because then one can understand, see the value of, and learn from those feelings.

In meditation, we cultivate a separation between the observer and the observed. In that way, the part of the persona that is observed can experience an emotion like anger, while another a part of the mind is at a slight distance from the experience, observing it, and learning from it. This separation of the observer from the observed isn’t just useful to help us see ourselves more clearly. Conversely, for those of us who have difficulty with our emotions, or are afraid of giving them free rein, it’s also a good way to free part of one’s persona to be fully absorbed in our emotions without the fear of losing control or being overwhelmed by them.

The common conceptual framework we inherited tell us that the heart is the place where we feel emotion. But saying that the heart is the seat of emotion is no more accurate than saying you hear sound through your kneecaps. If the heart was truly where emotions were located, people with man-made artificial hearts would never feel emotion, and doctors would perform cardiac surgery to cure depression, rather than prescribe drugs that impact brain chemistry! It’s time to stop referring to the heart as the seat of emotion, which is merely fossilized lore from a distant time of human ignorance.

There’s a huge amount more to say about that retreat, but I’m afraid the rest of the story will have to wait.

How does one find the words to eulogize a true hero: a dear friend, a tireless mentor, a great benefactor, and a true inspiration?

When I did my first Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride back in 2001, my coworker Jeremy—who was doing the AIDS Ride—told me about a group training ride starting at Quad Cycles in Arlington. “It’s run by this guy named Bobby Mac… You have to meet him!”

So one weekend I went out and rode with them. Bobby was a charismatic older guy who was the obvious center of the group. He’d bark out endless advice about how to ride, always interjecting a characteristic bit of self-deprecating humor or belting out snippets of songs from the 60s and 70s. He’d shamelessly (but harmlessly) flirt with the ladies, who all adored him. On the road, he always stayed with the slower riders, mentoring them and offering helpful advice for how to both survive and enjoy whatever charity rides they were training for.

Bobby Mac made riding fun.

Like so many other neophyte riders, I started out wearing canvas cargo shorts and a tee shirt, riding a heavy, flat-handlebar “hybrid” bike. Over the course of thirteen years with him, Bobby sculpted me into a spandex-clad veteran roadie who rides 10,000 kilometers a year on his carbon-fiber road bike and has raised over $100,000 for cancer research.

But I am just one person out of hundreds and hundreds of riders whom Bobby has encouraged over the years. Himself an inveterate charity rider, he and his team of “Quaddies” were often top fundraisers and volunteer crewmembers for several of the largest charity rides in the area. If you added up all the good works performed by Bobby Mac and the legions of riders he has encouraged, the sum total would be staggering.

As you can imagine, Bobby Mac was a huge part of the local community. He recorded several PSAs on behalf of charity rides and local cycling advocacy. No matter where we went, we’d always run into people who knew him. Whether you were a cyclist or not, it seemed everyone was friends with Bobby Mac. No matter who you were, he made it very easy to feel like you were his best friend.

We also loved Bobby for his idiosyncrasies. It was a mark of seniority if you could say that you’d seen him ingest anything other than Cytomax sports drink. Back when the ride stopped at Kimball Farm, Bobby proved that his popularity extended even to barnyard animals, as “Buff the Powerbar-Eating Goat” would run up to the fence to greet him and receive a treat.

As he aged, Bobby suffered from macular degeneration which gradually eroded his eyesight. I once watched him nearly ride straight into a sawhorse barrier that a road crew had put up when one of our regular roads was temporarily closed. It was a mark of real trust if Bobby let you lead him through a charity ride on unfamiliar roads he hadn’t already memorized.

Due to his worsening eyesight, we all feared that Bobby would eventually be unable to ride. Knowing that his time was limited, in 2006 we organized the first Tour de Mac, a special ride in his honor, complete with tee shirts, rubber wristbands, and an award presentation for the guest of honor. In 2009 we held another ride to celebrate his 60th birthday, which I recorded with an emotional writeup and video. Everyone loved Bobby, but despite repeated operations to maintain his vision, we all harbored silent fears about how much longer he would be able to ride.

However, Bobby wasn’t destined to live long enough for his eyesight to fail him. Three weeks ago, Bobby went into the hospital, suffering from pancreatic cancer that had metastasized. It was terminal, and last night he passed away in his sleep at home.

When his diagnosis first became public knowledge, the hospital’s staff very quickly learned how special Bobby Mac was. They weren't prepared for the hundreds of his friends who came to visit his bedside. The nurses put up signs, limited the duration of visits, and still more people kept coming, sometimes queueing up in shifts of ten at a time outside his hospital room.

The first time I visited him in the hospital, I had something special I wanted to share with him. When a rider surpasses $100,000 in fundraising, the Pan-Mass Challenge gives them a silver pin with the PMC logo as a lifetime achievement award. I had received mine six weeks before Bobby went into the hospital, after 13 years of riding and raising money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

I wanted Bobby to know about that accomplishment, and how it was due in large part to his inspiration. And that if I was only one of hundreds of riders he’d encouraged, then he’d achieved a whole lot of good in this world. His characteristically self-effacing response was to shrug off his role and emphasize mine, saying that I had long been the most dedicated of his charity riders.

It’s bitter irony to me that the man who was my hero and inspired me to ride the Pan-Mass Challenge was taken from us by the very disease I’ve raised so much money to combat. It goes without saying that this year—my final PMC ride—will be dedicated to the memory of my hero: Bobby Mac. It will be a very emotional ending when I reach the Provincetown finish line for the final time and lift my bike over my head, consciously copying Bobby’s signature victory salute.

With his innate charisma and his natural role as the center of a circle of people, Bobby reminded me a lot of my father, or what he might have been, if my father had been motivated by kindness and generosity. In that way, Bobby has been a role model for me, an inspiring example of what a fatherly male figure could be—and could accomplish—in this jaded, selfish world.

There’s one particular exercise in Buddhist meditation called “Brahmavihara practice”, wherein we use visualization to cultivate our capacity for friendliness, compassion, and joy in others’ happiness. Typically, we start by directing compassion toward someone whom it’s easy to feel affection for, then slowly work our way to people we feel ambivalent about, and then challenge ourselves to work with people we find difficult or hateful. But we start with someone who is often referred to as our “benefactor”.

Years ago, when I started that practice and was asked to identify someone whom I felt unalloyed affection for—someone whom I considered my benefactor—one person’s name immediately jumped to mind: Bobby Mac. Bobby was my exemplar of friendliness, affection, compassion, and generosity. In my opinion, Bobby was the absolute embodiment of the concept of a “benefactor”.

Bobby’s presence and personality made everyone’s world feel much more friendly, much more optimistic. He put a whole lot of love and goodness into the world.

And he took a whole lot of love and goodness with him when he left: both the love of his many friends which was directed toward him in his final years, and also the love and goodness that have gone out of this world with his passing. For everyone who knew Bobby Mac, the world feels a little colder and more lonely without his energetic encouragement and his incorrigible smile.

Here’s to you, my friend, my mentor, my benefactor, my inspiration, and my hero. As you enjoined us at the start of every ride, we will do our best to “ride with love in our hearts and smiles on our faces”, thanks to you, Bobby Mac.

I won’t belabor the ask, but if you wish to make a donation to fight cancer in Bobby’s memory and sponsor my PMC ride, you can do so here.

I find myself in the mood to record a brief rundown of the major events of 2011.

In terms of my Buddhist practice, a few nice things happened. I completed a year of dedicated compassion practice, I became a paying member of CIMC for the first time, I began volunteering to read announcements at Wednesday evening dhamma talks, I continued attending CIMC’s Long-Term Yogis practice group, did another sandwich retreat, and attended our kalyana mitta group’s first weekend retreat. My daily practice thrived, partially due to finding time to sit during my lunch hour at work, and partially thanks to the mild competition fostered by the Insight Timer Android app, which allows one to earn badges and see how often one’s Facebook friends are sitting. Overall, I am comfortable with my meditation practice and happy with the results.

As alluded to, I also went back to work after a 2-year hiatus. Like any job, the new gig has its ebb and flow of both rewards and annoyances, but the influx of cash is certainly welcome. And despite having to overcome frequent outbreaks of stupid amongst my coworkers, I am getting to do the frontend design and development work that I enjoy. Unfortunately, it’s the longest commute I’ve had in a long time, but during the summer that gives me the opportunity to get some weekday bike rides in.

On the cycling front, the miles I gained by commuting didn’t quite offset the fact that working for a living meant I couldn’t spend summer days riding, so this year my mileage dropped from 5,000 to 3,000. But the income gave me the opportunity to do a long-needed complete overhaul of my bike and buy a new mapping GPS cyclo-computer. And I still did all my major events, racking up seven centuries, only one less than I rode in 2010. Notable rides included a rainy Jay Peak in Vermont with my buddy Jay, and a rainy three-state century with Paul and Noah. And I even had a training question published in the online magazine RoadBikeRider.

This year’s Pan-Mass Challenge was very memorable, as well. I began the season by attending my first PMC Heavy Hitter banquet and also the dedication of the PMC Plaza that comprises the entrance to Dana-Farber’s brand-new Yawkey Center for Cancer Care. I shared the ride itself with Jay, who enjoyed his first PMC. And despite riding on a loaner wheel because I discovered cracks in mine at the last minute, I still did my fastest Saturday ride ever. After the ride, I was delighted to find that a photo of me leading a paceline occupied the PMC Home Page for more than three months, and then was used again in a thank-you advertisement that Dana-Farber placed in 105 local newspapers throughout Massachusetts. Being the PMC’s poster boy and attending the dedication of the PMC Plaza both made me immensely proud of the years of work I’ve dedicated to the PMC and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Despite all that, I have to say that I was frustrated by this year’s cycling season. This was the first time that I had clearly lost ground against my riding buddies, who admittedly are 20 years younger than I am. I don’t know whether that fall-off was because my competitive spirit has lessened, because work prevented me from training more, because of the natural fall-off due to aging, or whether there might be something more serious going on. All I know is that some of my rides (especially the Climb to the Clouds and the Flattest Century) were really painful, unpleasant slogs this year.

In the same vein, this was the first year where I felt that my health had declined. I found myself fighting frequent intense headaches that often included nausea and vomiting, especially when I traveled (which turned the Flattest Century and Jay’s Labor Day ride around Mt. Wachusett into terrible experiences). I also noticed that I sometimes experience cardiac issues when riding flat-out, where I feel a sharp, intense pain in my chest and my heart rate drops by about 15 bpm for 30 to 60 seconds. These have, of course, been added to the list of things that I need to bring to my PCP, but they’re also the first indications that my body is starting to decline. Which brings me right back around to my spiritual practice!

In other noteworthy events, I observed my tenth anniversary of buying my condo, and remain extremely pleased with that. I got to see the Cars perform live, which was truly a once-in-a-lifetime event. I got around to making ice cream flavored with Pixy Stix candy with SweeTarts bits mixed in, which was fun but not quite the confectionery orgasm that I was hoping for. And I decided to punt on my planned trip to California for the second year in a row; the good news being that I am more committed than ever to making it happen in 2012.

Speaking of which, I’m not making too many plans for 2012, but there are already some themes emerging. I’m going to spend a week on the Riviera Maya (outside Cancun) with Inna. I’m finally doing my first residential meditation retreat at IMS (5 days). I’m once again going to try to make California happen in September. Of course I’ll be doing my 12th Pan-Mass Challenge and probably Outriders, but I also hope to do some new cycling events, such as the Mt. Washington Century, the Eastern Trail Maine Lighthouse Ride, and/or the Buzzards Bay Watershed Ride.

So if things work out, 2012 will be an interesting year, too. With just nine hours until it begins, here’s hoping!

Last weekend’s Pittsburgh trip: not much to talk about.

Saturday morning, a package I’d ordered arrived: new Teva sandals. I put them on and went for lunch at the Prudential mall food court, which was overrun with costumed attendees of the Anime Boston convention. Pretty surreal.

Full Photoset

Grabbed my bag and left home, but on the way out, I received another package I’d been waiting for: a second battery for my video camera. Threw that in my bag and made my way to Logan.

The flight was fine except the descent into Pittsburgh was bumpy due to wind. The woman next to me squealed on touch-down. Weather a balmy 82 degrees but overcast.

Hit a grocery store that Inna wanted to visit, then dinner at Maharaja, an Indian restaurant tucked inside a Days Inn by the highway. It was set in a long-abandoned ballroom, with used dinner plates littering several of the many empty tables. To my horror, Inna violated my first rule of Indian—never order the buffet!—and it delivered in spades. Spots in the steam table labeled rice and naan were empty, and what food there was looked like it had been sitting on the Sterno for months. At least they didn’t serve Goat Bone Curry like Ajanta used to!

Since Inna’s mother was traveling, we stopped by to feed her cats Theo and Pumpy, then called it a day.

Sunday was Easter, so I tried to get Inna to sample a chocolate bunny, but she refused. We spent a mostly lazy day doing not much of anything, since most places were closed for the holiday. We walked around Shadyside and had ice cream at Oh Yeah!, then drove around at random, ending up having a nice walk around the reservoir at the summit of Highland Park.

After feeding mom’s cats, we went to a place called Thai Cuisine on East Liberty, which was unmemorable, then home so that Inna could study.

Monday I walked down to the Fifth Third Bank and snagged some small bills, then off for ice cream at Klavon’s. Drove around Lawrenceville, and saw three deer in Allegheny Cemetery. Back in Squirrel Hill, we stopped at Radio Shack to pick up Livestrong wristbands for the cats to play with, and chocolate for us.

Dinner was a burger at the Elbow Room in Shadyside, which wasn’t bad, then we went home and played “Wits & Wagers” and some “World of Goo” game on Inna’s Wii.

Tuesday I packed up and we hit the Waterworks Mall where Inna shopped for clothing while I picked up some Eneloop batteries and found a kitten to play with at Petco. We made our way out to Moon Township and had a tasty lunch at Mad Mex before saying our goodbyes at the airport.

All told, it was a very low-key visit, which seems pretty typical of Pittsburgh. Atypical, however, were the mediocre meals, since my experience has been that the thing Pittsburgh usually gets right is its food. But the weather was pretty gorgeous for early April, which made a nice change from the freezing cold of my previous two visits. Mostly it was good to see Inna, since she’s been buried up to her eyeballs all year with work for the one-year sustainability MBA program she’s enrolled in.

Sunday my buddy Jay dragged a bunch of us out to the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome for their 50th anniversary airshow. They’ve got a collection of a couple dozen antique flying machines, plus a few automobiles and miscellanea from the early 20th century.

I’m not going to launch into a huge writeup; instead, I’ll just point you at my Old Rhinebeck photo set, of which the following are just a small subset.

The one thing I will mention is the 10-minute ride we took in a 1929 biplane, which was pretty superlative. I brought my GPS and recorded our flight path, which you can see here (sadly sans altitude data). We went 10.5 miles, taking off and landing around 60 mph at 345’ and maxing out at 82 mph and 1225’, which would be 880’ above ground level.

On the descent, I was even able to fire off a quick status update to Twitter and Facebook: aloft aboard an 80 year old biplane. HALP!

All in all, it was an excellent trip, providing a dash of adventure, contact with friends, plenty of sunshine, and lots of awesome photo opportunities.

See the full photoset