No workout today (burp)

The Calgary Farmer's Market is one of our favourites. Can you say Yum Bakery and High Country Bison? And lots of others. Today, there was food trucks for Sundown Chowdown! I looked forward to this all day. I've been wanting to try Alley Burger.

We got there a bit early, knowing that it would be popular, and the parking a total zoo. Worse than that, a rodeo at the zoo. The trucks were lined up on the service road beside Blackfoot Trail for max visibility. They formed a little laager with about a dozen trucks. Here's what it looked like essentially empty before most of the trucks opened.

Linda went to the Naaco truck and got this. I don't know what it is. Lots of veggies and quite tasty.

Then the trucks all opened up, and that area essentially became a sea of line ups. There is something fun about the food truck line ups that make it acceptable to chat with the people around you. It must be very gratifying to see people lined up for your stuff. Even though we got there about a half hour ahead of time there were about a dozen people in front of me. This is the Whole Truck, with poutine. It's a good thing I was hungry. That is a monster, very very tasty burger! I can't imagine getting two, or even three patties. The very idea of poutine used to repulse me, but lately I've been kind of craving it.

That was a lot of food. We wandered through the market getting some other stuff, and left as the crush was really getting on. Sure enough, trying to get into the lot was a mess. A couple people were directing traffic, and one idiot was holding up the entire show by being a jerk, INSISTING there was parking in the lot. I'm writing this at home, drinking some wine, and can feel the torpor building. If we had stayed at the market I might have fallen asleep in the sun or something. 

Here's a shot I took while out for a walk the other day.

I just updated my Facebook cover page with this photo. It might be the canal beside Penticton, or something else. I can't remember, and I don't even have the context of surrounding photos anymore. There were a whole bunch of photos that I thought would look good dressed up by Snapseed so put a bunch in a folder and will work on them as the mood takes me.

Lastly, one of my faithful readers suggested I write a bit more about my wine. I could have a go at it, but I'm not sure what I'd say, since it's hard to describe how wine tastes without sounding like a pretentious prig. Is that something people would be interested in, to see a photo of a bottle, and me talking about what it tastes like, where it's from and all that? Silence implies me doing whatever the heck I want, but I do try to respond to the people that comment.

go naked YYC shill

This morning's swim was the subject of considerable internal debate. I was feeling a bit beat up from yesterday's hill (of death) run, and the hard core yoga class, and wasn't sure at all how my shoulders would feel about a swim. But I went anyways.

It's downright weird swimming 25 m in the training pool, after swimming 50 m in it all summer. Still it went really well. No, seriously, I stretched a bit before hand, and promised my shoulders I'd go easy on them. Within the first length I found a groove and settled in. I was hardly breathing at all, and my shoulders weren't minding a bit. The last couple lengths of the 1000 m were a little sloppy so I stopped there. 18:45, not even trying, not breathing hard, not really working it at all. I'm pretty pleased. Stretched out my shoulders and back. I'm glad I went.

I know what I'm doing on Sept 29 and 30. There are tours and open houses in many facilities throughout Calgary. Check it out, there are 35 seriously cool places to visit and see behind the scenes. I love this sort of stuff. It's unfortunate that I don't think I can visit them all, no matter how carefully I plan. I'm tempted to visit Pine Creek and see if anyone I used to work with is down there. I badly want to visit Talisman Centre, that could be several hours right there. Maybe the Energy Centre. Or the Traffic Management Centre. What would you like to go see?

On the way home the Police Chief was on the radio talking about increasing the punishment for distracted driving. As it stands now, there is a $172 fine for using your phone while driving, including at red lights. It's one of those laws more honoured in the breach than the observance thereof. There have been some serious incidents from people texting and driving.

The Chief wants to start discussion leading towards demerit points, rather than just a fine. Drivers aren't getting the message, he says, so we need to up the punishment. They only handed out 4000 tickets in the last year which is only 10 a day. That doesn't seem like much, considering a cop standing on a downtown street could probably do nothing all day but write tickets for that infraction, with no time for coffee or doughnuts. I counted cell phone violations by drivers today, starting from leaving the office. I didn't even get to the corner before I spotted my first one. I lost count at a dozen and not even half way home yet. I feared just looking was making me a distracted driver...

Don't get me wrong. I am completely convinced that almost nobody can talk on the phone and drive city traffic traffic safely. I don't care if it's hands free or not; the problem isn't the hands, it's the brain, or lack of it. I am completely convinced that nobody at all can text someone and drive safely while they are doing it. Nobody. Anywhere. End of story.

That said, I think the current take on distracted driving legislation is wrong headed. It itemizes a number of activities mainly related to cell phone usage and calls them distractions. The problem is that the list of things that could be distractions is nearly infinite. Some cell phone activities are no more distracting than fiddling with the car radio or CD player, and much less distracting than squabbling kids.

Driving an motor vehicle safely is a complex task that takes a variable amount of attention depending on circumstances, and every driver reacts differently to those circumstances. A situation can go instantly from requiring only moderate attention to one requiring all the attention and focus the driver can summon. A small fraction of a second can be all the difference between a tragedy and just needing to change your pants.

Some drivers can barely cope with even the easiest circumstances and plan their routes to avoid Deerfoot, Blackfoot, Crowchild, Glenmore, and downtown.  Others know how to read the situation, look ahead to avoid problems, maintain space around their vehicles, and never seem to be affected unduly by traffic. Others (far too many others) outdrive their actual skill levels, driving too fast for the situation, not seeing pedestrians or cyclists, and making poor decisions. Whenever you hear a driver say that something happened to them "all of a sudden" they are announcing they are part of that third group.

So rather than trying to write a law that outlaws distracting activities, and provides penalties for engaging in them, regardless of the circumstances or the driver's skill, we ought to take a two step approach.

The first step is educating people and helping them understand just how distracting these activities could be. A simulator is a perfect environment. Let someone drive, and try to text, and test their reactions. Chalk up how many virtual pedestrians they maim. How many children they run over. Simulate being struck by the truck they didn't see as they run a light they thought was still green, and shake the simulator hard enough to leave bruises from the seat belts. Apparently there are still some idiots that don't wear seat belts, we deal with that in the simulator too. I'm quite happy to see anyone that stupid leave the simulator with broken bones and a non-renewed drivers license.

The second part is to make it legal for the insurance companies to deny coverage to anyone proved to be texting or talking on a cell phone just before an incident. Make the automatic assumption that the person on the cell phone caused the incident, and let them be liable for all costs. All the injury costs. All the repair costs, including to the roadway infrastructure, which is astonishingly expensive. All the lost income costs. Let them be sued into bankruptcy and beyond, garnisheeing say 10% of their gross wages before taxes for the rest of their life. Never drive a motor vehicle again. I could even be convinced they have demonstrated they are too stupid to be an adult, so take away their right to vote, their right to legally sign papers, their right to buy booze, and whatever else we don't allow kids to do. Put that all up front when the drivers license is issued, and they sign a paper saying they've read that.

Whoa, you're saying, isn't that a bit harsh? Well, on average one Albertan is killed, and 65 are injured every day in motor vehicle collisions (source). Almost every one of which is preventable. If you are family to one of those people, you probably don't think it's harsh at all. The conservative estimate is that motor vehicle collisions cost us $4 billion (with a B) a year.

There are about 3 million Albertans. Let's just say 2/3rds of them pay taxes. That is 2,000 a year in additional tax. Of course, not all of that comes out of the taxpayer pocket, but it comes out of somebody's pocket. Shareholders. Employees. Ordinary people paying deductible expenses. Foregone income.

There is a brand new state of the art general hospital opening in south Calgary not far from where I live. It cost about 1.2 billion dollars. Stop the collisions and we could have 3 new hospitals like that, every year. Of course we wouldn't just buy hospitals. What else costs a billion dollars? That would get us a pretty amazing oil refinery, and we wouldn't need to build a pipeline to ship money and jobs to China, risking some of the prettiest landscape on earth. We could twin highway 63. A few years collision free could buy us a bullet train between Calgary and Edmonton (source). Maybe when we learn how to build it we could extend it to Fort McMurray for not too much more money. The point is that a billion dollars is serious money to throw at almost any kind of a project, short of invading Iraq or the like.

The other part of the problem is that the current regime requires that a police officer catch the driver cell-phone-handed, as it were.  I suspect this is what is behind the increase in distracted driving - people figure they'll get away with it. If they don't, well, $172 isn't that much money for lots and lots of Albertans. A great many people make that much before their morning coffee break. What do demerits or any other punishment matter if you aren't caught? Even if they are caught, where they'd pay a fine, they will go to court to fight the demerits. They matter for insurance. That just clogs up our court system even more.

So, as earnest as the Police Chief was, and much as it sounds like a good idea to apply demerits, I'm not going to support it.

The Bedstead Hill of Death

Run and yoga.
For a while I've been meaning to run, or try to run up the hill at the very west end of Fish Creek park, the trail that leads south of the river, and up. Look way up. Here's the intro sign.

The sign is not kidding. You can see the hill heading up, and it gets steeper. I've no idea what the grade is, but I certainly would not attempt to ride even my hybrid bike up it. Or down it for that matter. The bedsteads are at the top of the hill, in an effort to prevent people from riding down all unknowing. That would be a very scary ride.

I wanted to see what runmeter thought of the hill, and you can see the sawtooth bit in the middle. I'd have thought it would be much higher. Maybe I need to spend a bit longer at the top and give the GPS time to register. I ran from just before the sign up to touch the bedstead, and walked back down.

This is really the first time I've ever run hills. By the 4th time my legs were getting all trembly, and my breathing was distinctly an issue. I wasn't into the retaste zone, but I figured that another up would do it. I'll probably try that one again sometime. Here's the actual map.

First yoga class of the season. Fiona still has it. She said it was a nice intro session to get us warmed up. Yeah. Sure. If you say so. She has a knack for knowing what I need. Something changed part way through class, though I'm not sure if it was a good change or not. At least it wasn't something internally loud. I should know in the morning.

The 2 new recruits

Here's the results of the weekend bottling.

The Nebbiolo is ready to drink right now and very nice if I do say so myself. The Shiraz is a bit sharp and doesn't have much depth yet, but I think it's going to be a winner. I put a note in my book to give it 6 months.

Those labels look really nice, but the Nebbiolo was a pain to put on. These sorts of labels often are a rectangular piece of clear sticky plastic, with the design in colour. They peel off just fine and don't leave a residue. These ones the clear background follows the design fairly closely so I had to be more careful than usual.

I was going to do an inventory, which I like to do every now and then. Just because. Yes, I know I'm a geek. Last time I somehow got the list onto my phone, and I added the numbers onto my computer back upstairs again. But I forget how I did that. I got an xl onto my phone and I could read that ok, but I couldn't add numbers to it. Maybe I did it as a text document, or maybe using Evernote. It's getting late. I'll figure it out Thursday. I know just from the empty spaces on the racks that I've got just over 400 bottles. I don't think that's a Ryan estimate.

The pool was not crowded this morning, much to my surprise. Only 25 m lanes though. 500 m warmup just over 9 minutes. Lots of dolphin kick and pull. Then 6x50 m on 1 minute, all under 50 seconds, though the last one was just barely. My shoulders were starting to feel it so I stopped. They're just starting to feel better so I don't want to bang them all up again.

Water ran with my buddy Katie. Her arm is healing up, though she still isn't allowed to swim, or bend it more than a certain amount. I can sure sympathize with her because I know exactly how much it hurts, and how hard it is to avoid using it, and I didn't have to put my hair up or fasten a bra.

Work is still quiet, or at least my part of the floor is. My office roomie is on vacation so it's going to be a quiet week for me wrestling with some recalcitrant data. Why people would build a database that way is beyond me, and once built, why they would put data in that way is also beyond me.

Coming home was a bit of a fright. Lots more traffic than I'm used to, and having a suicidal cyclist down 5th Ave and Elbow Drive where it's really narrow didn't help. I watched one guy lose it because someone managed to turn in front of him, totally legit, but he couldn't take the thought of it. There was a smoker in the car in front of my. Gawd those things smell bad. I was waiting for him to drop it while we were at a light, and I was totally going to get out of my car, pick it up, and flick it back into his car. The back seat.

Then at coop a bunch of us watched in amazement as this young woman was trying to run things through the automated checkout. There's a bit of a trick to it, and the machine starts snarking to you if you take too long. So this ding dong with her is getting in her way, feeling her up, and kissing her as she's trying to get done. I was wondering if I should have said something, but they were clearly a couple. At least I think so.

Do you ever wonder if you should say or do something in a public situation?

The top layer of gunge

For a while one of my rituals of spring was to hose and brush off the house siding, and do the windows. Then a few years back we had a big hailstorm and had the shingles, siding, evestroughs, fascia, and some windows replaced. The following spring it still looked pretty clean so I didn't clean it. Then I didn't, and didn't. It was pretty grotty. I finally bought a pressure washer and sprayed off the top couple layers.

There was a layer of actual dust billowing off. Then some dirt, more in some places than others. Then there was a light gray or white layer that really had to be blasted. I'm sure it's not particularly even so I'll probably have to go over it again, but it looks better than it did. The siding looks blue again.

While doing this I discovered some bits of siding that are not as well attached as I'd like them to be for winter. Another task on my list, this one involving ladders. Maybe I've been watching too many fail videos lately, but I'm getting a bit more nervous about ladders in general. Perhaps I'm just more aware of my body's dwindling ability to heal itself.

The other task, the more fun one, was bottling a Nebbiolo. It's very tasty right out of the carboy. One more kit to go.

Somehow, a four day weekend is gone. Poof! That's the last of my four day weekends for now. I could very much get used to a four day weekend.

I'm in progress writing up my thoughts on The China Study. The current book is The City & The City, by China Mieville. So far it's a straightforward police procedural, with no strangeness like his other books.

A cat, helping

Once again Curtis is showing more than passing interest in what I'm doing at my desk. Saturday he was trying to get his face past my hands to get at my granola. Seriously, a cat interested in granola. The rest of Saturday was a bit of to do stuff in the morning, then the afternoon was a quiet day, reading and surfing and snoozing and playing with cats. In the evening I tried getting a time lapse movie of the moon rise. The bike stand made a pretty good mount with a dish cloth to help level it out. I'm pretty sure I've seen an iPhone holder that clamps into tripod stands. More research. However a bunch of clouds rolled in to obscure it, and the lighting in the living room buggered up the exposure so you couldn't see anything. Live and learn.

Sunday Curtis was at it again. I was trying to get some paperwork organized to claim some medical expenses through Linda's work. We both get $800 a year for massage, chiro, acupuncture, and similar stuff. Here's Curtis helping with the paperwork, making sure it doesn't fly away in a breeze or something.

Unfortunately, tails do not work so well for data entry.

 Sunday was the day for my long slow run, trying to keep my breathing relaxed and easy. I should have worn a heart rate monitor to see how I was doing, but I think the batteries in all of them are dead. I have three chest bands and monitors, all identical. The watch part of the first two of them died, and the newest is more than 2 years old now. The watch still works fine, but I haven't tried the heart rate function for a while.

It was a beautiful day for a run, if pretty windy. That helped keep me cool though. Mostly it went really well, running up to the reservoir and back. I felt pretty steady on my feet, though, and had a really good stretch after.

Now to the end is Runmeter stuff only, so if you're not interested stop reading now, and thanks for dropping by! Don't be afraid to leave a comment.

I like the pace graph, but I wish I could smooth out the lines slightly. The point of this run was to be steady and it looks like I'm all over the place. Km 6 in particular was gradually slowing, not because there is a hill, but I was right into the teeth of a pretty strong wind.

After some more exploring I found there is all sorts of things I can do with this, including graph bombing my Twitter and Facebook feeds. I won't do that. There is a heart rate monitor I can buy that talks to Runmeter. In fact, the ones I have now might work. Something to add to my to do list.

Supervised by a cat

A bit of a grab bag for you all this morning. This afternoon now, I got distracted in the middle of writing.

Swam on Thursday morning. It's amazing how much better that goes when your back and shoulder muscles are not a solid block of unhappiness. Earlier in the week a 96 second 100 m was all out.  Now that time is a relaxed strong but nowhere near all out effort. The water feel is back.

Today I got pointed to Runmeter as a way of tracking run information. It was only $3 so I downloaded it to give it a try. I'm pretty pleased. Here's the map and info it emailed to me after the run. In fact, it was waiting for me when I got home. As near as I can tell, the only downside is that I have to carry my phone to make it work. Most of my run gear does not have a pocket that big, or snug enough for the weight of an iPhone. Then there is the sweat issue. Hmmm.

This was just to get out and run and see how the app worked out. Not too far, not trying to be fast, just to see where I was. I'm actually a bit surprised it was as fast as it was. The run felt pretty good, and for the first time in a while my cardio was limiting things. My legs didn't mind running at all, and could have run faster I think. They felt pretty good throughout, and the shoes are so far so good. There's even another graph I found in the app when I was poking around.

No, I don't plan to inflict these numbers and graphs on you every time. I'll label them so you can avoid them if you want. That will let my buddy Julie find them easy, because I know she lives for numbers about athletic performance.

During my stretching after the run I was supervised. Before this he had shown me what an inadequate stretcher I am, and how inflexible. Yeah Curtis, this is not news. Sorry for the poor pic quality, it's from the iPad.

My buddy Jayne posted a photo of book titles making up a poem a little while ago. While out for a lunch time walk I saw the book exchange, and decided to try to make a poem out of whatever was there. It is what it is.

I'm very popular with the Federal Government today. At least they aren't asking for money.

I have already got a few things scratched off my list of things to do. My first attempt at a time lapse photo of the almost full moon rising was foiled by the cats knocking over the phone. Tonight I'm going to use the bike stand as a mount for the camera. Let them knock THAT over. Maybe I should wash that window first.