View of Pikes Peak from Mary's Mtn

I climbed this seldom climbed peak this morning. There was a register on the summit that had been placed in 1988 with only seven entries on it. Here is the Garmin GPS track I recorded. Notice the line of the Cog Railway.

New Rules: A Religious Test with Bill Maher

Rage Against the Machine - Testify

How soon we forget. Insanity continues. Why are we so insane?

Dennis Kucinich * WAKE UP AMERICA!!!* Dems Convention 2008

Noa - Beauitiful

Keep the laughter in your eyes!

In Focus: Contesting Oil's Legacy

Apalling. Yeah. Let's drill ANWR. We can trust the oil companies.

Leadville

Pre-race photo with John Genet and me.

The Last Episode of it's the End of the World...

Atheist

Mistakes were made, but not by Rebekka: A Leadville Story

Rebekka and I arrived in Leadville around 11 A.M. on Friday morning in time for me to weigh in and catch the mandatory briefing before the Leadville Trail 100-mile race. Part of the mandatory briefing came from the official doctor for the race, Dr. Tom. His briefing was both informative and humorous. To get your message across humor turns out to be a most effective way to make an imprint on the memory. What I remember from Dr. Tom's speech were 1) how to know if you were dehydrated is upon examining your urine flow if it is the color of Coors beer then you are okay, but if your urine is the color of Foster Lager then you had better hydrate ASAP and 2) the story he recounted of a woman at the Hopeless Aide Station just below the summit of Hope Pass who had become overcome with hypothermia, and how the only remedy turned out to be getting into a sleeping bag with two sweaty male runners. At the time of this briefing by Dr. Tom I had no inkling that both of these stories would have relevance to me the next day, nor did I realize that I would also get to know Dr. Tom on a more intimate basis.

At race start on Saturday at 4 A.M. it wasn't raining. Since the weather forecast for race day was at best 60% chance of thundershowers and up to a foot of snow this was a welcome start. We didn't get any precipitation until about 3 hours later with a smattering of hail on the approach to Sugarloaf Pass. At race start I tried to keep reminding myself that this was a 100 mile race. Still I found myself settling in with the front pack and wound up cruising down the "boulevard" with the two leaders. Joshua Mietz talked about running the Silver Rush 50-mile run, where he placed 5th in 8+ hours—this was a new addition to the festival of races associated with the Leadville 100. When he and the other leader ran hard up the steep cut leading to the trail round Turquoise Lake I let them go. Scott Jaime and Andrew Skurka passed me, but a little later Scott ducked into a bathroom. I was in fourth. Andrew made a wrong turn and I followed—mistake #1.

Soon we had popped out on the road. Confused we ran along the road for a few minutes before I said this is not right. Though the last time I ran this race was four years ago I knew that it never went on the road but followed the lake proper on a dirt path. Finally I said I was turning around. Andrew followed. When we came back to the trail we had mistakenly followed we came on about seven runners also going astray who we turned around. One complained that his race was over. I told him to stop complaining since though he had lost maybe 45 seconds, we had been running around off course for 10 minutes. Back on the course perhaps foolishly trying to make up ground I passed several runners before catching up to John Genet. I fell in behind John just to force myself to slow down. Unfortunately I did more than slow down--I fell down—mistake #2, in the process dislocating my little finger.

My finger was concealed in my glove but I knew from the pain that something was seriously wrong in there. Mayqueen, in and out and I was on the road again at 2:01. Pretty good running, good pace, I mostly passed runners up and over Sugarloaf Pass and down to Fish Hatcheries, mile 23 by 3:55. Mistake #3—Rebekka tried to get me to change shirts and put on a jacket—I told her I would wait until Treeline, another four miles.

The wind, rain, and lightning were wicked all along the open road leading to Treeline. By the time I reached her only half an hour later I was cold and disheartened. Taking off my gloves I saw my finger for the first time and it didn't look good. Ken Chlouber, the race director was there and asked me if I wanted to drop out. "No way!" was my response. He put a plastic bag on my hand and recommended not putting on a glove until I reached the aide station at Halfmoon. Halfmoon was no help—the medical tech there was not able to do anything to my finger though he did manage to help me put my glove on.

I left Halfmoon with only half a bottle of water in the confusion. They didn't seem to have water available--only Powerade and coke. Weird. Over the next miles I got dehydrated, though I did fill up my bottle twice in streams. As I approached Twin Lakes at mile 40 I was bonking badly.

At the Twin Lakes aide station a volunteer asked me "You're acting very spacey, are you always that way?" "No." I sat down and started eating and drinking trying to revive myself. Soon Rebekka was able to join me and then Dr. Tom came on the scene. He looked at my finger and asked if I wanted him to yank it back in socket. Yes. As soon as he yanked it into place I felt a surge of fresh pain and my hand began to swell. He put an ice pack over my hand held by a loose ace bandage. I had already been getting cold, but the cold pack only accelerated the process. They placed blankets over my shoulders but I kept shivering. Finally Dr. Tom told me to get in a sleeping bag. When that didn't do it, Rebekka climbed in with me. I still couldn't get warm. I suggested to Dr. Tom that maybe I should get in my car and turn up the heater. Unfortunately, since he now had me in his custody he couldn't let me leave the aide station without removing me from the race. By that time my legs had stiffened up and I could barely walk and couldn't imagine running another 60 miles so I let him snip off my band and dq'ed myself.

Serious crisis in Pakistan (crickets in DC)

So now that that the Bush administration has rallied all terrorists everywhere under a single banner, allowed Al Qaeda to grow stronger and better trained, and depleted US abilities (militarily, financially, and diplomatically) ... a civil war or any serious power structure threat in another country - especially Pakistan - is a threat of epic...

read more | digg story

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Presidency

Nancy Pelosi tells CHANGE Ohio she hasn't read Impeachment articles

Tony Rice - Freeborn Man - Bluegrass

Great bluegrass rendition of Freeborn Man. Found this on must-read blog piece on Mountaintop Removal. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/4/9422/50529

Mayer: DOJ lawyer says lunatics running the country

Bush murder trial book faces media blackout

Some links

Lance Armstrong and Dave Wiens' 100-Mile Duel in Leadville

HuffPo: Frances Beinecke: Distraction, Misleading Energy Claims, and the Washington Post

The Nation: Robert Scheer: Georgia War: A Neocon Ploy?

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman interviews Ron Suskind on his important new book, The Way of the World: How the Bush Admin Deliberately Faked an Iraq-al-Qaeda Connection and Undermined Diplomacy, Democracy in Pakistan and Iran

OneGoodMove: The Daily Show's Jon Stewart interviews Ron Suskind

Download Human Rights Org's Elect to End Torture '08 kit

Video: Olbermann on Dobson's asking followers to pray for rain on Obama's speech at Invesco Field, Denver

John Kerry emails video on the new SwiftBoater lies about Obama and what we need to do to counteract them

Utne Reader on Peak Population and its ramifications

Just a reminder that Russia isn't thru until Saahkashvili is gone...

"They shot their brother Russian peacekeepers, then they finished them off with bayonets, so we are not going to see them there any more," said Dmitri Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to Nato in Brussels.

Medvedev spoke by phone with the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solanaand told him "there are a few things that need to be discussed to get a full ceasefire," said a European official.
"The Russians are saying that they will never again accept Georgians in any form in South Ossetia. They see them as a Trojan horse that started the attacks last week."

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/215810.html

COL. SAM GARDINER: Absolutely. Let me just say that if you were to rate how serious the strategic situations have been in the past few years, thiswould be above Iraq, this would be above Afghanistan, and this would be above Iran.

On little notice to Americans, the Russians learned at the end of the first Gulf War that they couldn’t—they didn’t think they could deal with the United States, given the value and the quality of American precision conventional weapons. The Russians put into their doctrine a statement, and have broadcast it very loudly, that if the United States were to use precision conventional weapons against Russian troops, the Russians would be forced to respond with tactical nuclear weapons. They continue to state this. They practice this in their exercises. They’ve even had exercises that very closely paralleled what went on in Ossetia, where there was an independence movement, they intervene conventionally to put down the independence movement, the United States and NATO responds with conventional air strikes, they then respond with tactical nuclear weapons.

It appears to me as if the Russians were preparing themselves to do that in this case. First of all, I think they believe the United States was going to intervene. At a news conference on Sunday, the deputy national security adviser said we have noted that the Russians have introduced two SS-21 medium-range ballistic missile launchers into South Ossetia. Now, let me say a little footnote about those. They’re both conventional and nuclear. They have a relatively small conventional warhead, however. So, the military significance, if they were to be conventional, was almost trivial compared to what the Russians could deliver with the aircraft that they were using to strike the Georgians.

I think this was a signal. I think this was an implementation on their part of their doctrine.

Full interview by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman: Transcript

Tracy Arm

The sun finally came out after a week here in Juneau. We enjoyed a fabulous boat ride up the ice-filled fiord, Tracey Arm.

Juneau Gallery

Juneau days

Jose and Rebekka outside the wonderful Silverbow Bagel shop. We found that Silverbow Bagels supplies local grocery stores with wholesome multi-grain breads. Tomorrow we take a boat up Tracy Arm, a fiord that ends at Sawyer Glacier. This morning I went on a 10-mile run Douglas Island on a boardwalk trail through muskeg bogs and misty firs and ferns to a forest cabin high above the sea.

Juneau Marathon, Aug 2nd

I just finished the Juneau Marathon in my fastest time in three and a half years: 2 hours 57 minutes. I wore some new very light and fast shoes: The Nike Lunarlites weigh only 5.5 ounces. Unfortunately as you can see from the photo they pinched my little toes resulting in their becoming big red blood blisters. I was third overall and first masters finisher.