Sanitized, for your protection

We're moving again, to another province and city. Perhaps, this time, we'll stay put for a few years. At any rate, my wife and son have gone on ahead, so my son can start school at the beginning of the school year, instead of 3 week later, when we actually take possession of our new home.

I've stayed behind, to pack up everything in the house in preparation for the moving truck to show up, and transport all our belongings. Not only do I have to pack up the house, but as it hasn't been sold yet, I also have to keep it in near show-home condition as I do so. It actually isn't that difficult to keep in show-home condition. It is a large house: two storeys with a basement, 3 bedrooms, and 3.5 bathrooms; when I'm not actively packing any given room, I generally don't have to go into it.

Except for the bathrooms ... and I hate cleaning them. Many years ago, Saturday Night Live did a skit, where the owner of a bar cleaned the bathrooms with, of all things, a flame-thrower. Afterwards, he applied a label across the bathroom doorway: "Sanitized for your Protection."

I'm not using a flame-thrower, but I have taken a page out of the barkeeper's book. To prevent myself from accidentally using 3 of the 4 bathrooms, and having to clean them yet again, I've stretched packing tape across the doorways:

"Sanitized for your protection"

The Early Bird catches the Worms

When my son, Garith, was only a year old, we moved to the US. For the first 5 years, things were ok. We longed to return home to Canada but the job and the money were too good. Then Garith entered school, and we watched in horror as he slowly became "Americanized". Although we tried to explain to him that we were Canadians, apart from Zee -vs- Zed, it wasn't clear to him what that meant. With 9/11, and the "war on terror", he would bring home posters which said "these colors[sic] won't run", and requests to hang an American flag outside our house so "the bad guys will leave us alone."

It was clearly time to head back home to Canada.

So, we packed up the car, and drove North for a bit of house hunting. And while in Canada, I picked up an album of a group I had never heard before. A friend in San Diego had given me an MP3 of a hilarious song called The Last Saskatchewan Pirate performed by a band whose name I don't recall. That band was merely covering the song; it was actually written by a Canadian band called the Arrogant Worms. So sight unseen - or rather, sound unheard - I picked up their album Live Bait which contained the song.

On the drive back to the US, the album was played over and over. We all loved the album! And something unexpected happened. Garith, between the songs Proud to be Canadian and Canada's Really Big, all of a sudden found his national identity! (Someday, he'll turn beet red when he finally groks the line "it isn't what you do with it; its the size that counts!" Till then, he'll be singing it out loud when the song plays.)

After 9 years in the US, we've finally made it back to Canada. The Arrogant Worms have passed through Calgary a few times, but the concert has always been sold out before we found out about it. In the spring, we found out they were passing through Calgary this fall, and again they were already sold out!

However, they were also playing in Edmonton, just 3 hours away. And when we checked for tickets, there was just one group of 3 seats available. And no, they aren't available any more - we took them!

- the guy with computer know-how.

Scarred for Life

For those of you just returning to Earth from an extended leave of absence, on July 21st, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out. You may want to run out and pick up a copy of HP6 and read it before continuing to read this post.

Book 6 left us with a number of unanswered questions. First off, who is R.A.B.? Sirius's brother, Regulus Black, is the obvious candidate. But according to Sirius, Voldemort had Regulus killed, but didn't do it personally because he wasn't important enough. If Voldemort knew Regulus had taken the locket, I'm certain Voldemort would have personally seen to Regulus. Of course, Voldemort may not have been aware of the theft of the locket when he had Regulus killed.

Mr. Borgin, of the Borgin & Burkes shop on Knockturn Alley seems like a bit of a dark horse here, but there are some subtle clues. He was at the shop when Tom Riddle worked there collecting the antiques, and could have easily guessed what Riddle was up to. He is not a willing supporter of Voldemort; Draco Malfoy had to threaten him in order to get him to repair the Vanishing Cabinet.

What became of the locket is another mystery. R.A.B. wrote only "intend to destroy it as soon as I can." Was it destroyed? If R.A.B. is Regulus Black, then the unopenable locket found in the Black's house - 12 Grimmauld Place - could be the locket. Harry may need to speak in parseltounge to get the locket to open. Or perhaps the locket is hidden in Borgin & Burkes. Or it really was destroyed.

Apart from two destroyed horcruxes and the locket, there are 3 more horcruxes. Dumbledore believed these to be: Helga Hufflepuff's cup, an unidentified Ravenclaw/Griffindor relic, and Nagini the snake - a living creature. Now Dumbledore asserted that Voldemort chose objects of significant sentimental or historical value to create the horcruxes, and creating each one with an important murder. Dumbledore believed the 6th horcrux was to be created with the death of Harry Potter, but since that backfired, Voldemort may have created the 6th horcrux with the murder of Frank Bryce.

Now here something doesn't ring true. Frank Bryce was anything but important. Once Voldemort had resurrected himself, he would probably wait until he killed Harry Potter to create that final horcrux. There may been an artifact standing by at the end of HP4, for this purpose. To make a horcrux in his "weak" state at the beginning of HP4, from a random unpremeditated murder just doesn't sound right. So as of yet, there may not be a 6th horcrux.

Then again, creation of the horcrux requires the creator murder an individual, which is "the supreme act of evil", that "rips the soul apart." Merely trying to murder Harry may have successfully ripped the Voldemort's soul, depositing it into a waiting horcrux.

Now here we get to some sinister possibilities. The spell to kill Harry backfired. How exactly does it backfire? Voldemort himself was killed - except his horcruxes resurrected him. Perhaps then the beneficiary of the horcrux spell was Harry, and Harry has a piece of his soul in a horcrux somewhere. Or perhaps Harry - or more specifically Harry's scar - became a horcrux for Voldemort. This would explain the connection between Voldemort and Harry. It would also make it really hard to destroy Voldemort without destroying Harry at the same time. Of course that would also explain why there isn't going to be a book 8.

There is one other disturbing possibility. Harry's mother may have planned to kill Voldemort, and in the processes torn her own soul, by dying to protect Harry. When Lily Potter died, her soul may have shortly afterwards been deposited in a horcrux ... Harry's scar. It would explain the numerous references to Harry having Lily Potter's eyes.

My guesses:

• R.A.B: Mr. Borgin,
• Locket: destroyed,
• Horcrux #5: Ravenclaw artifact,
• Horcrux #6: never made.

Probably 20 to 1 odds. Any takers?

Race Day

“♫ … but get me to the race on time ♪♫”

In the silence of a dark hotel room, a watch cries out a high-pitched chirp, and is quickly silenced. It is 5am, and I’ve been waiting for the alarm for hours. Race day … and I haven’t slept a wink.

I climb out of bed as quietly as I can, and retreat into the washroom to get dressed. A few moments later, I re-emerge for the laptop and then retreat again to check the weather forecast one last time. The expected rainfall for the morning has decreased from 15mm to 5mm, and the wind is no longer forecasted to be gusting to 60 km/h. It may actually turn out to be good weather for the run after all.

At 5:22am, I’m down at the entrance of the hotel. At 5:25am, my sister Barb shows up to pick me up. She’s 5 minutes early, not having slept either. We return to her hotel, and have breakfast with her friend Barb². After they check out, and we’ve all had many trips to the bathroom since we’ve all been busy hydrating for the last 36 hours, we head off to the event.

At 6:45am, we park and start hiking down Chancellor Matheson towards the event grounds. At 6:55am, and a little over half-way there, we hear the start of the Wheelchair events. We’re going to be late! We pick up the pace, and arrive in the start area just after the race begins. No time for one last bathroom break; we quickly join a crowd of people shuffling towards the start-line. We glance up and see the banner overhead … “10k Walk / Super Run - Start.” … we’re in the wrong crowd! We quickly duck under the tape barrier, cross the boulevard, and duck under another tape barrier to join the crowd shuffling towards the “Full Marathon / Half Marathon - Start” banner. The pace slowly picks up.

7:02am. Hundreds of chirps announce hundreds of timing chips on hundreds of feet crossing the starting mats. We’re off!


The Wile E. Coyote / Road-Runner Hour
The crowd of runners is initially quite thick, completely overtaking University Crescent. It is difficult to stay at our target pace, as we slowly thread our way forward in the crowd, towards the runners who are running closer to our pace. Before I know it, we’re approaching the first mile marker, where the drums of Fubuke Daiko are playing. Like perfectly matched tuning forks, the gait of the crowd of runners suddenly resonates to the beat of the drums. The spectators are cheering for us at the sides of the road. The energy flowing through the air is almost palpable.

Ten minutes into the event, Barb’s watch chimes signaling the start of the first one-minute walking break. The beat of the drums is still audible behind us, and none of us really feel we need a break yet. Still, we’re wary of wearing ourselves out too soon, and heed our training: we take the walk break. A minute later, the watch chimes again, and we speed back up.

Around us, always, is a mass of people, some moving faster than us, some moving slower, some walking. It is a chaotic system … a kind of vast fluid flow experiment, where people represent the fluid molecules. Yet there is some order to it, the same people are visible, or often reappear as you move at the same average speed but with different run/walk schedules. But others pass by you, or are passed by you, never to be seen again. In this crowd of unfamiliar faces, Barb spies a familiar one … her tax accountant. “I’ve got some questions about my taxes,” she jests. He responds that he has a little bit of time right now, but the banter ends there. Barb² asks about her friend who is running the full marathon, and finds out she’s somewhere not too far ahead of us. Since Barb² is also running the full, and we’d be leaving her anyway at the full/half split at mile 5, Barb² opens up her stride and speeds off to catch up with her friend, leaving Barb and I in the dust.

Sometime later, I spy in the distance a purple-spotted shirt. “I think I see Barb²!” Unfortunately Barb is 10 inches shorter, and can’t confirm it’s her. Later still, while rounding a long bend in the road, again I spy the purple-spotted shirt. This time, Barb can confirm it is Barb². We’re gaining on her. A couple of run/walk cycles later, gaining and losing ground respectively, we catch up and surprise her. She’s found her friend doing the full, as well as another who’s doing the half. But the reunion is short-lived, as we’ve just arrived at Jubilee … the full/half marathon split.


Hospitality Stations
Throughout the course, and getting more frequent as we get closer to the end of the race, are various hospitality stations, aid stations, water stations, and toilets.

As you pass through a water station, volunteers are holding out cups of water. You can grab one while you pass, spilling perhaps a third of it. You try to drink the remainder while at a run, perhaps managing to get half of it in your mouth, while the rest goes over your face and down your front. (You could also get Gatorade, but I wouldn’t recommend trying it at a run, unless you don’t mind becoming a sticky mess!) The cup you then dispose of by tossing at a “target” on the side of the road … or more commonly, just tossing on the side of the road. There are other volunteers with brooms sweeping up the cups when breaks in the crowd of runners permit, although to me it seemed the sweepers were losing ground.

At other stations, volunteers are handing out wet sponges. You could use these to cool off, or to wipe off sweat … or the Gatorade from the earlier water station. Again, as you pass through these stations, the ground is littered with sponges. The cleanup crews are, of course, collecting these, and rinsing them off, and recycling them for the next runners.

The toilets along the first half of the course have all had fairly long lineups. We could have stopped at any of them, but it would kill our race time. As we pass the half-way point by the Bridge Drive Inn (a great place for ice-cream, but unfortunately not a hospitality station!), we finally see some toilets without any line up. Two minutes later, we’re back on the road. Barb points to a hospitality station volunteer holding up a wooden stick with yellow stuff on the end, and exclaims, “Honey!” The information books offer the helpful warning, “This is lubricant - not honey. Do not eat it.” So I had to reply, “and just after the honey pots, too!” Mmm - yuck! Moments later, Barb’s watch announces it is time to walk again, but just had a break at the toilets, so we push on.

The next fluid station we encounter is not an officially sanctioned station: someone is in front of their house offering beer to the runners! If it was closer to the end of the race, I’d have taken them up on it. But with 6 miles still to go, I’m sure I’d be toast if I indulged myself.

As we approach the turn onto Dunkirk, Barb reminds me to take the inside of the turn, to avoid running extra distance. But I ignore the advice and take the outside of the turn. I’m hopeful, and it pays off. Jackie J is there, cheering me on. I give her the high-five as I pass by.

On Dunkirk, there is a hospitality station with cut up oranges. And I thought I was sticky after the Gatorade! Again, the ground after the station is littered with orange peels. I briefly think of bananas as easier to eat, and less sticky, but then I have to chuckle at the thought of banana peels left on the road for the next runners. Whoops!

The next hospitality stations start to have showers you can run through (red tent on the left). And here and there are now spectators with garden hoses making impromptu showers at other points. Not to be outdone, Mother Nature also started to provide a shower over a significantly larger area, but it is a welcome sprinkle, not a drenching downpour, and doesn’t last long.

Eventually, we turn onto Bishop Grandin, and head up and over the bridge … the only significant hill on the course. The wind is at our backs, but this doesn’t help. In fact, it almost hinders, since the coolness of the breeze is gone. We head down the bridge, and past the “mile of smiles” where musicians play and spectators cheer us on. As we turn onto Pembina Highway, the cool breeze returns, and we begin retracing our footsteps back towards the starting line.


The Finish Line

As we arrive back on the University grounds, Barb’s watch again signals the start of another walking break. We’ve got a little under a mile to go. We decide to take our minute break, and finish strong, rather than run straight to the finish.

We cross the starting line. It looks bleak and barren, compared to 2 hours before. We turn the corner onto Chancellor Matheson, and run towards the stadium. Barb asks what we’re going to do at the finish line. “Are you going to jump in front of me for the photo? Should I trip you? Or should we hold hands?”

A crowd of spectators is visible in the distance at the service road which leads to the stadium entrance. As we reach the turn onto the service road, I hear the cheers of my wife. My son rushes out to give me a high five, and runs with us for as far as he's allowed ... a few dozen meters. We turn into the stadium, and start the final ¾ of a lap.
Our pace quickens, and with a burst of speed, we race towards the finish line. We grasp hands, and hold them up high. And suddenly, the timing mats are under our feet. We finished. We finished strong.

And just as suddenly, another girl is running beside me, as we slowly slow down in the cool down stretch. She’s asking me questions, “how do I feel, am I hurt anywhere, do I need water.” I tell her I’m feeling great. I’m vaguely aware of someone running on the other side of Barb asking her similar questions.

We finally slow down to a walk. It has probably been less than 10 seconds since we crossed the finish line, but to me it seems like minutes. Everything was happening in slow motion. An official gives me a medallion for completing the half marathon. Barb bows her head to a different official, who puts the medallion over her head.

Then we join a long line of people moving into the rest and recovery area. Another runner thanks us for running a nice pace. Apparently, we were her pace bunny. We get to the recovery area, where there are bottles of water, bagels, oranges, bananas, and yogurts for the taking. We grab some food, and go sit on the grass and feed ourselves. After we’ve eaten, I take stock of my body. Nothing hurts, my breath is steady, my heart isn’t racing, I’m not exhausted. I feel … great! Fantastic, even. I feel like I could get up and run another ½ marathon right then and there. It was quite an amazing feeling.

Then I tried to stand up.


Aftermath

	Finish time	Overall position	Same gender	Same gender / age
Arthur	02:18:33	#2373 / 3469	#1414 / 1743	#182 / 213
Barb	02:18:33	#2372 / 3469	#959 / 1726	#133 / 216

Average speed: 9.14 km/h (6’ 33” / km)
Maximum speed: 13.36 km/h (4’ 29” / km)

Bathroom break: Lost 120 seconds … 60 seconds @ 3.5mph, and 60 seconds @ 6mph. Or equivalently, 95 seconds @ 6 mph. We could have finished at 02:16:58!

And finally ... Barb agreed that next year, it'll be the closer to my home, the Calgary Stampede ½ Marathon

20,000 Chains over the Prairies

My sister coerced me into running a half-marathon (13.1 miles) in Winnipeg with her this Father’s Day. How she managed to coerce me, I don’t exactly remember; nor does it really matter. What matters is: you don’t just go out and run a half-marathon; it requires a considerable amount of training. So November and December found me out running around my neighbourhood. January quickly followed with a membership to the YMCA so I could run indoors out of the snow and ice.

Now running indoors is quite different from running outdoors. For one thing, the scenery doesn’t change much. For another, my Timex Navman II GPS & Data Recorder don’t work. My sister came to my rescue here. She told me about running shoes that communicated to an iPod how fast you were running, and then the iPod picked music appropriate for your pace. Now, I needed a new pair of running shoes anyway, and I “needed” a new MP3 player, since my old one was a heavy bulky brick. So March found me the proud owner of a pair of Nike+ running shoes, an iPod nano, and the Sport Kit to wirelessly connect the two. This was great, since I could now tune out the unchanging scenery of the Y, and “tune my run.”

My Nike+iPod has been my running companion ever since, indoors and out, joining me from 4700 feet in the Canadian Rockies, to - ahem, if my GPS is to be trusted - 50 feet below sea level in the Florida Keys, and everywhere in between.

It turns out my sister had heard wrong: the iPod doesn’t actually select music based on your pace. But it does monitor your work-out time, pace, and distance, and provides you audible encouragement messages, like “4 miles completed”, and “400 meters to go”, and even “Hi, this is Lance Armstrong. Congratulations, that was your fastest time for the mile so far.” It records your pace - and when you play your “Power Song” - over the course of your workout, and lets you visually see this information afterwards. It keeps track of your personal best times for a variety of distances, as well as the total distance, time and calories for all of your workouts.

The real eye opener, of course, was these totals. 59 workouts, 257 miles, 51 hours, and 44,000 calories. I had run over 250 miles in order to run a mere 13.1 miles. Actually a lot more than 250 miles, since the iPod “odometer” didn’t start until March, and I had been running since November.

I started to play with the distance “250 miles” just to wrap my head around such a vast distance to travel by foot. I remember thinking long ago that “20,000 Leagues under the Sea” was depth beneath the ocean, until I figured out that it was 7.5 times the diameter of the earth … a little too deep to be a depth. On a lark, I tried to express 250 miles as 20,000 units of some kind, and got 66-foot long units … which turns out to be exactly the length of Gunter’s chain which was used for surveying.

This coincidence got me thinking about the distance of a marathon … 26.219 miles, or 42.195 km. Neither of those numbers is a nice round number, so I began digging for the history behind the distance. Turns out the marathon distance comes from a soldier who ran non-stop from Marathon to Athens, to report the defeat of the Persians, and then dropped dead from exhaustion (490 BCE). There were two roads the runner could have taken, one being 21.4 miles, the other 25.4 miles. Fast-forward to the 1908 Summer Olympics. The marathon was arbitrarily set to be exactly 26 miles, but on the day of the event, King Edward VII - who was going to start the race - had a cold and was advised against going outside. So the race was extended 385 yards, to start in the Great Courtyard of the Castle. This extension stuck.

So, in two days, I’ll pack my family into a car to drive 20,000 arpentlin over the prairies, to run an arbitrary distance with my sister and my iPod. Unless I get a cold, in which case it may seem longer.

Backyard of Dreams

Ever noticed how seeming unrelated items are connected? I decided to get my teeth straightened -- or rather, get them uncompacted, so I could floss between them -- and ended up losing weight. Not, at first blush, intuitively causal; even James Burke may be impressed. It worked like this: I wore progressively straighter (in a curved sense) plastic molds over the teeth over the course of a year. To eat anything, I had to take the molds out, brush my teeth and molds, eat, brush my teeth and molds again, and put the molds back on my teeth. Of course, this means carrying a tooth brush and tooth paste everywhere you go. If you forget, you can’t eat. On the other hand, walking past the lunch room and noticing free cookies, the thought process goes something like “mmm - those look good … but damnit, it is too much work.” Eat less, and the weight comes off.

So, how does this relate to backyards? Well, almost a year ago, we moved to a brand new house, in a new city, in a new province. The yard is nothing but mud, and more recently, weeds. And while the step from our back door isn’t quite neck-breaking, it certainly comes close. Since the ground has had a year to settle, it is clearly time to do something about making it into a yard, with grass, mature trees, and a spacious two-tier deck. Since we’re dreaming big, we know the costs are going to be high, and we should look for ways to save money. One way is to hire individuals, instead of a decking company, to build the deck. Now a decking company would come with its own insurance, where as if we hire individuals, they would have to be covered by our home-owners insurance. This got us thinking about insurance. Since we’d been here a year, it was, of course, time to renew everything. We’d received renewal notices for the cars, but hadn’t received one about the house insurance. After some checking, we were told it would have come about 45 days ago, if we actually had any, which apparently, we didn’t. High time we got some, don’t you think? We did, so we did. And that money we were looking to save? How does a year of house insurance sound?

Didn’t see that one coming, either.