I just finished off my second week of "active recovery", after getting crippling knee pain in Colorado. I've been trying to keep my knee moving a bit and relaxing and letting the injury work itself out. I've almost got basic club juggling down, and my flexibility has increased markedly! Feeling pretty confident this weekend, I decided to make a bid for the summit of Mt. Shasta! I tagged along with my friend Natalie from the UCSB outdoor department, her sister, and 5 of her sisters friends. We wound up in Mt Shasta City preparing to climb about 7000 vertical feet over 6 miles, half of which was on thick snow, in one big push. Just two weeks ago I could barely move my knee, but regular yoga has done wonders. I still had my Kahtoola running crampons, my now worn-out pair of Inov-8 X-Talon 212s and a pair of Drymax socks, so I figured I'd be alright.

The start was mellow but early (7200ft, 1AM), I pushed mostly with my trekking poles and took it easy on my knee, not really knowing what to expect. We hit snow at 9400ft, put on our crampons, and started up the mountain. I had the lightest snowtravel system of the bunch, especially compared to the hard-shell boots that most of the party was wearing. All the way up people commented about my shoes and crampons, which looked (and were!) much more flexible, comfortable, and light than anything else on the mountain. I found that in normal shoes I would have suffered much more from cold feet. My tried-and-tested 212's give my feet plenty of warm blood, to prevent them from getting frostbitten. If the conditions had been less beautiful, I would have thrown on my extra warm pair of wool socks, but there was no need. Also, I can wiggle my toes even in crampons!

We summited with no problems, took a few photos, marveled at the view, and started back down. We met up with the rest of the crew about 200ft down, whowere a bit behind us. Natalie decided to summit again with her sister, who was suffering from wicked bruises from her hard-shell boots. I waited for them to come down, and we glissaded down over 3000ft of gorgeous snowfields. Needless to say, the way down was a bit faster than up, and we wound up back at camp by 4PM. My feet got really wet for the first time (despite the 212's being non-waterproof) during the glissade. Nobody was spared, though, from wet feet. Luckily, now down, my feet didn't stay cold for long.

Well, it's official! I am now have a BS in Physics from UCSB. Finally I can rest easy, knowing that I won't have to go into the registrar's office again to sort out general education credits. On to bigger and better things:

The stories from Costa Rica are on the YogaSlackers Blog (1 and 2). Getting there was another deal altogether:

The long story short, I am a moron, Jay Freeman (saurik) is a saint, United Airlines is incompetent, and Frontier Airlines is friendly and flexible.

Me, Chelsea and Jason are trying to get to Costa Rica, to do a former adventure race. Our plan was to fly out of SFO (because it was the cheapest), and cross Costa Rica coast-to-coast under human power, hang out for a week or two, and jet back home if we could muster the initiative. All was going according to plan until I realized that I had left my passport in Santa Barbara. I frantically called everybody I knew who I work with, eat with, and hang out with, coming up with a few leads: some craigslist folks who are happy to get the passport up here after my flight leaves, and Anna (yes, she is a plan in and of herself), who will try to arrange for a counter-to-counter transfer at SBA airport.

I had heard about the counter-to-counter transfer (which sounds wonderful) from Jay Freeman (saurik), the brilliant software man behind Cydia, the jailbroken iPhone "app store". Well, it turns out that Jay has just as much drive, initiative, and stick-to-it-ness outside of the computer world as inside it. Before I can say cat-in-a-hat, Jay has initiated himself as a "known shipper" with United Airlines, and is now driving to LAX (3 hours with traffic) to ship a forgotten passport to me, so it'll make it here in time for me to get on my 8:16 flight. He makes it to LAX, with time to spare, and gets the passport to the SPD desk at LAX (that's what they use to ship kidneys, I later found out), with 1:15 until the last flight that can get me the documents in time. I've sent all of my checked luggage with Chelsea and Jason, and I'm waiting until 8:05, when they tell me that my passport didn't make the flight. I was simultaneously heartbroken and outraged at all of this wasted good-will and elbow grease. Too late, and I waited for my passport to arrive on the next flight, which it did (though delayed an additional hour). I rescheduled my flight to Costa Rica to leave at 11AM the next morning (thanks Frontier!), and rode the BART back to Chris & Karla's place in Oakland. Rang their doorbell, and passed out on their guest bed…

Got on the plane the next morning, had a long layover in Denver, and made it to Costa Rica with my tail between my legs.

I gave a talk at WROLC '09 about Adventure Racing. Beginning with what it is, why you'd want to do it, what goes on, what goes wrong, and how to get back to normal after you're done! The presentation is available in the following forms:

HTML - Webpage-based presentation
PDF - Browse presentation with Adobe Reader

Well, I've gotten a new bike. I felt like I needed a bike that I could take with me, perform well in adventure races, and would be able to withstand my disastrous track record with breaking bikes. After some poking around, I settled on the Dahon Flo, a steel hardtail with the Ritchey Coupling, a way to break it in half and ship it in a small box. I got it a few days ago, and I was immediately impressed with some of the terrific design elements. Here's what I noticed:

The Ritchey Coupling

This is what makes the bike folding. There's two parts: the top tube and the seat tube are held together by the seat post. This means that you undo two bolts, remove the seat post, and that joint comes apart. The second is a sleeve on the down tube, right above the bottom bracket. Both look solid, and neither wiggles or warps during even heavy riding. Clearly some thought went into this.

The Disc Brakes

To facilitate travel, the disc brake rotors spin straight off of the hub, allowing easy removal. This way when you travel, they don't get dinged up by the other wheel that's bouncing next to it. Also, it comes with cable disc brakes, so when you travel, you don't run the risk that the hydraulics get mal-adjusted.

The Cables

All cables that go to the rear half of the bike have twist-release mechanisms, so you don't have a bunch of cables dangling between the two halves of the bike. Another good reason they went with cable brakes (I don't even want to imagine a twist-apart hydraulic line!).

The Stem

The stem comes straight off of the steer tube, which never has to come out of the headset. They have a great system to keep all of your headset parts together when traveling, and also allows you to easily adjust the height of your stem with just one bolt. Again, this is one of the worst things that happens when transporting a normal bike: the plethora of small bits and pieces in the headset all come and go as they please when you remove the fork & stem. I've very nearly been screwed by this…

The Saddle

At first I was dubious about the saddle, it definitely didn't look very comfortable. I was also shocked by the mechanism by which it attaches to the seat post. There's no way to attach any other seat to the seat-post! The mechanism they have designed is far superior to the standard two-rail system, in ease of adjustment, and simplicity of construction. The seat is actually quite nice, but your mileage may vary.

I have just posted 1.0.2 to the App Store, with any luck, I'll be back from the coast raid adventure race by the time Apple posts it.

I'll get your emails, don't worry! I'll respond hopefully around, maybe a bit before August 27th.

Thanks!

I am heading out on a climbing and packrafting expedition, so I cannot respond to emails or comments until next Wednesday.

Track me live! Click on live tracking on the main menu!

I have constructed a Java applet to show the electric field of a decelerating charge. Drag your mouse around in the view to change time, and view the different steps. For the first part, the electric charge is moving with constant velocity (about 0.8c). You can see the "squishing" of the electric field, caused by the special relativistic handling of the field. Then when it begins to decelerate (the particle enters the dark blue region), it begins to emit radiation, and once it comes to a complete stop, it looks like a regular old point charge.

You can view the applet here: decelcharge

And another, with a sinusoidally oscillating charge: sinusoidcharge

I just completed Sole's 2008 Baja Travesia as a proud member of Team YogaSlackers. The gorgeous, technical course took teams over 350 kilometers of desert wasteland, mountains, canyons, and ranches. Adventure Racing is strange because you don't ever remember the whole event, and it takes a long time to absorb everything that happened.

To get started, I picked up Lina Augaitis from LAX on my way home. Traffic and extenuating circumstances made me later, but I hope she has forgiven me. Once in San Diego, we packed, bought the remaining bits of mandatory gear, and waited for Randy Dunn and Jason Magness to arrive, so that we could pack into the race vehicle and depart.

We packed up the car (it was quite full) and rolled out around 10AM on Saturday. We made it successfully to San Felipe, the race start and check in. We checked in, tested out the paddleboards, and camped in the desert, away from the noise and commotion. The next morning we finished up the pre-race logistics and lined up at the start. The first leg was a relay paddleboard leg, and right from the beginning, I was ahead. I ran to the boards, picked them up, and was off. Before I knew it I was 40 meters ahead of the next person (Jen, from Dart/NUUN, I believe), and it felt great. What a way to set tone of a race! It was very difficult to make out the actual checkpoint on the coast, so I had to go guess a bit. Once in, Lina took the board, and maintained our significant lead, as did Jason in the last leg.

We made a hasty transition to running and booked it out of the town. Just outside of town, we were passed by team Dart/NUUN NW Kayaks, and continued on our way through the desert floor. We made it through the next few checkpoints without much of a problem. On the final road to the transition, we ran out of water and had a hard time pushing the final few kilmeters to the rally cars. Right before the transition, we noticed another team approaching us from behind. Renewed, and trying to stay in 2nd place, we pushed ahead, through the pain and heat to the transition. Once there, we realized that the team behind us was Dart/NUUN NW Kayaks! We were still in first, and feeling great. We raced in Warren's Barney (a kind of Baja car), and had a grand old time. Somewhere we hit a bump pretty hard, and the next time he shifted, the gear wouldn't take. We lost about 8 minutes waiting for the next team behind us, and got a ride to the transition to the canyoneering leg. We refreshed our feet, and got ready with our canyon gear, and rolled out of the TA just as our 1 hour wait time finished. We were just behind DART/Nuun NW Kayaks, but we didn't see them in the canyon for a while. As we hiked up the canyon we were going at a pretty slow pace, until we were overtaken by an absolute mad train, led by Dart/NUUN and ExtremeSports.dk. We latched onto the back, and rode and took turns leading up through most of the canyon. Near the top of the canyon, we got separated, and we took a wrong turn. After a few minutes, we noticed it, and corrected by going up and over the ridge to the north. We climbed up for a few minutes, descended again, and were cliffed out. We used our 6 mil-30 meter rope to descend the last portion (thank goodness we had the rope!) using a munter hitch. Jason descended first, and I talked Lina through the nerve-rattling part of trusting a rope not much wider than a shoestring, wrapped around a tree on the side of some godforsaken canyon. Then I descended, pulled the rope, and we quickly finished the canyon. Once at the top, we were presented with some gorgeous vistas, frozen ponds, and a renewed spirit. We continued on up the rest of the long trek to the "Top of the World" checkpoint and descended down to the TA.

We transitioned to bikes, and headed out. After some uneventful navigating to the next checkpoint, we continue down the hill. We encounter both Dart/NUUN teams coming back, coming towards us. This meant we were back in the running for first. We consulted our maps, and decided to try a risky maneuver, following Dart/NUUN backwards to a different pass. We followed this through, until we realized it was a terrible move, guided by the thought that we might be in 1st again. We headed back, found the proper route (that Dart/NUUN NW Kayaks had followed), and camped for an hour or so to regain our warmth and energy. It gave us neither, but we were found by a race official on a motorbike, who told us it was not far to the next checkpoint. We descended, and as we did, we discovered that Lina's front brake was on the way out. I cruised the downhill section, waiting every few minutes for Jason and Lina to catch back up to me. It was a blast, and we continued on to the next T.A, through many fields and the dark, cold, night.

Back on foot, we roll through the next checkpoint with not too much fuss. Getting here was a beautiful trek over the tops of some wonderful hills. After this, we pick up the pace, and I am beginning to feel pretty drained and sick. Nevertheless, my teammates force me through the last part of this leg, pushing me to run even though I am feeling terrible and have barely any water. We run out of water completely when we reach the next checkpoint, still an hour or two from the next checkpoint. We are out of spirits and not doing so hot. I can feel the starting stages of heat exhaustion begin to set in: dry mouth, loss of direction, a bit of hallucination. Things are not doing so well. My teammates run ahead to keep the pace, and I try hard to stay with them. A quarter of an hour after I took my last measly sip of water, I spot something out of the corner of my eye, a bottle of water under a bush. We're in the middle of the desert, and I stare at it, expecting it to waver or disappear, as so many things that I've seen have. I had seen many things I knew weren't real up to this point, cabbages in the road (rocks), houses in the woods (trees & rocks)… and I was convinced for a while that there was no possibility that this was true. I stared the bottle down, wondering who would win… What the hell, I'll check it out. I jumped the fence and nabbed the bottle. There was about a liter and a half of clear, glorious water sitting in the bottom of the bottle. I nabbed it, and sprinted after my teammates. "Look what I found!" I yelled at them, and they looked at me with curiosity. We treated the water with iodine, waited 15 minutes, and divvied it up. We complete the leg, which is much longer than it seems, kicking cacti the whole way, and thanking luck, or whatever, that I had found this water.

We transitioned slowly this time, making sure I ate and drank enough to get me out of the doldrums. We get on the bikes and make our way to the observatory. We navigate carefully, making sure not to set down any false paths. We climb to the top, and the entire time I am fully convinced that I have seen all of this before. I cannot shake the feeling that I have biked this all before, exactly, with my team, last year. We navigate through some cool downhill segments, but our bikes keep getting stuck in sand, and we have to walk them out. Finally at the valley floor, we turn right where the next checkpoint should be. We look around, and we cannot find it. We hit the SPOT device, indicating to the race directors that we have found the checkpoint. We look around some more, and take a nap. After that, we continue on to the TA, but halfway there, it becomes light, and we decide to check back for the checkpoint. We get there, find the checkpoint hidden in some brush. Obviously, someone or something had broken it off of where it had been hanging. We SPOT again, take some photos, and continue to the checkpoint, having lost probably 3 or 4 hours to this search.

We set in on the last trekking leg with a vengeance, we feel great, the pace is strong, and the scenery is gorgeous. We cruise the first of two canyons without much event. The second one turns much hairier, and we slow down. Lina's hurting pretty bad but she pushes hard and we make it to the last waypoint. We are stopped by a local landowner who tells us that we're on private property, and that if we aren't careful, we'll be picked up by the Federales, who are doing a marijuana crackdown at the moment… We tell him there's a race going through, and we'll have to tell the race directors. He lets us go through and we sprint to the final T.A., where we let them all know what happened, and rush onto our bikes. We're pretty sure that ExtremeSports.dk is pretty close behind us, so we don't sit around picking our noses. We get the new directions to the kayak portion, and get out and go. After the 9 or so water crossings, we make it to a main road. Once on it, we are passed by ExtremeSports.dk, and the race is on. We lose about 4 minutes to them, until we make it all back at a left hand turn. We are together again, and at the beach, we start the 5k to the paddling leg. They pull away from us initially, but we catch them in the end. We all end up in the kayaks, making a surf entry. As soon as they're in the water, the two swedish teammembers of ExtremeSports.dk, in a double kayak. pull away from Rick, who is in a single. Jason and Lina wait for me, and tow me to the finish. We finish right after Michael and Helena who collapse at the finish line, but ahead of Rick, who came in about a minute later. We finished as a team, ahead of them and we are in high spirits, in third, having made it solely due to good teamwork. What a race! What a finish! What a team!

Thanks guys: Lina, Jason, you guys were great.

I'm working on the website for my adventure racing team, Barely Legal AR. Keep an eye on it:

http://barelylegalar.com/

Don't mess up the website, or you're likely to land somewhere unpleasant!