Accelerating My Personal Collapse

Be joyful, 

though you have considered the facts... 

Practice resurrection. 

-Wendell Barry 

In the past month, I've put about 5000 miles on my 1995 Honda Accord. In car-years that's like 5000 x 7. Like a sturdy mule, she's taken a pounding, visiting construction sites across the county. But her most recent ailment was the exhaust system. First, her good looks started to fade but then the sound and smell thickened and then finally her underbelly ballooned into a neighborhood biohazard. My Golden Child, as I call her, turbo-aged into The Kraken in just a few short years of faithful service.

In previous years when I had more fragile mental health, I would have broken down in tears and paralysis as I often did in the face of these kinds of mini life crises: cloogged drain, toilet paper drought, utility shut-off, flooded basement, cat pee on the briefcase, rolled ankle. Practice makes perfect, right? I am reminded of my uncle Ed's sage advice for me when I started my biz, You'll make an excellent entrepreneur if you can map out the worst case scenario and then be okay when it happens, because it probably will. 


The Kraken has one good eye, just like my Honda.



Release the Kraken!!

Luckily, I knew a guy and called in a favor. So, my mechanic friend, who fixes cars in somebody's girlfriend's back yard for cash, really helped me out of a jam. It only took ten days of his procrastinating and me without my car. I spent those ten days riding my bike to the office, reminded once again that Cincinnati is a cool river town, rather than a cruel traffic town. Of course it was only fun once I learned to dress for rain and make peace with the Metro bus drivers. This episode of feeling helpless actually turned into an excellent dress rehearsal for The Collapse, much like the No Impact Experiment that I had planned on participating in anyway... as soon as it was convenient. 

By Collapse, I'm not totally sure what I mean-- no one does. But I'm convinced it is inevitable and already happening. All my hours spent in the car have hammered the point home. I've spent them listening to podcasts by various economists and futurists talking about the big brew of funk that is bubbling over, like the insolubility of the American balance sheet, looming hyperinflation, collapse of the dollar, the ramifications of peak oil and other resource depletion issues (topsoil, phosphorus, uranium, copper), not to mention 200 species' extinctions per day and global weather weirding.

Reluctantly, I've converted into a collapsitarian. This really just means I believe... No... "Believe" is the wrong word-- rather, I finally acknowledge the mathematics, biology, and geology-- that all exponential functions on Mama Earth have their limits. Historical precedent agrees. It just so happens that the point on the curve that I used to acknowledge as collapse happening "way out there" is suddenly right HERE affecting my commute to work. Instead of calling it The Collapse, we might do ourselves a favor by calling it The Transition. That sounds way more fun.

In the book Limits to Growth (1972, by my hero Donella Meadows (et al)), a team of systems analysts ran a "business as usual" simulation which predicted a global collapse between the 21st and 22nd century. Simulations with rosier outcomes required drastic interventions to stem aggregate growth and system overshoot. Those drastic interventions never saw the light of day according to the Limits to Growth: The Thirty Year Update (1992). Remember Kyoto Protocol? Neither does anyone else. 

Since 1972, the "business as usual" data just keeps piling up. Damn those dotted lines!

At this point in the conversation I can feel my brother bitch-slap me, C'mon dude, I'm just trying to have a beer. And he's right! I'm sorry-- I'm not here to proselytize doom and gloom or even educate. It's here that Dimitri Orlov would remind me that anyone who has the time of day to research The Transition is the kind of person who won't do so well in a collapse, anyway. (Which means my candy ass is fried in its current shape. But I'm working on that). Instead, it's the people busy fighting to survive day-in and day-out that are going to continue to survive. These people confront their own personal collapse daily. Never has the misfortune of others felt like such a comfort-- we're in it together boys!

In the sprit of hastening The Collapse and transitioning into a post-petroleum future, I've started crafting my 2013 goals. I've been drafting my Christmas letter, which after a 3 year hiatus, is soon to be the most fucked up Christmas poem anyone's ever received. Neither has anything to do with being naughty or nice or peak coal issues. Both revolve around starting a better conversation around what Charles Eisenstein calls "living in the gift".


The Christmas Letter Uncensorsed Draft 1.0
First, I want to let my neighbors know that we exist as neighbors despite our awkward avoidance of each other over the years. Everyone gets automatic forgiveness of for bad manners, dangerous driving and their politcal yard sign allegiances.


Secondly, we've got your back 24/7/365, in a sort of New Yorky post-9/11, "true spirit of Christmas" kind of way. You want room for your teenage domestic partner and immigrant baby Jesús at the inn? We've got it, baby! In fact, my brother Matti will be moving into our garage. Please don't call the cops and please don't kill us for our tomatoes or gold. We have neither, but together we can work on both. Plus, how could they kill us if we are their go-to source for value-added guacamole or its post-petroleum/ post-Super-Bowl replacement-- Thunderdome Salsa? We may even include some Mad Max Hummus in their care package.

Post-apocalyptic. Thunderdome (with Tina Turner). It could happen to you, but in a good way, hopefully. 

Third, I'll ask for forgiveness for saying something like this Santa Claus character is a big hairy bullshit. What kind of wacked-out out cultural psyche dreams up a superhero who anonymously sneaks into our houses at night, reverse-theiving us into owning junk we don't need, leaving us no opportunity for reciprocity or to thank him or let him know what our real needs are? He's very careful not to leave any trace of connection, which is a sure sign of a society whose members have no need for each other. Ok, the fact that he eats our cookies is his saving grace. But is the Santa Claus fetish the spill-over from the collective fear we have of someone sneaking into our homes to leave us interest bearing debts for all the stuff we actually do need like motherhood, clean water, good health, and education? Should the highest acclaimed moral virtue really be to give anonymously and ask for nothing in return? That sounds more like a poisonous attitude of someone who feels the recipients of their ultra-pure gifts have nothing to offer-- no relationship, no interdependence. Without the need to need each other, we have no community.


Fourth, I'll ask the neighbors if we can use their yards for planting A) a calorie dense staple foods like potatoes, beans, and squash and B) a nutrient dense food like kale, chard, and herbs. Then, I'll gently plant the seedling of an idea that eventually we will need to rally together and guerilla-garden the ample green spaces around our neighborhood like the local golf courses and baseball outfields. How cool would it be to turn them into fruit orchards and food forrests? I got dibs on the Kentucky bananas.

Have yourself a Needy Christmas and Transitiony New Year!

I feel the need...the need for NEED.

"You can be my wingman anytime." "Bullshit, you can be mine."



Cold Weather Running Gear Hacking

Procrastination makes easy things hard and hard things harder. 

-Mason Cooley

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the laws of how to dress for cold weather running. Following my laws can be daunting if you're not prepared to scavenge, skimp, or splurge. So, today's edition is all about different strategies applied to proper (or improper) outfitting over here at the Dwyer household. 

This blog almost didn't happen. I wanted to write it on a better keyboard. I wanted wiser input from more knowledgeable friends. I wanted my running wardrobe anchored by sexier items to talk about. Of course, all of these procrastinations are silliness in the same way as are my winter running wardrobe laws (recapped below). 

My Laws for Winter Running

0th Law - Do as much daylight running as possible (~lunchtime, ~sunrise, ~sunset)
1st Law -  No trench coating
2nd Law - No cotton (It dries poorly, rubs the nipples into bloody popsicles, and makes you feel cold, and accumulates weight)
3rd Law - Using 60 °F as my balance point, add one layer to any body part for every 10 °F drop in temperature. 

My laws are fool-proof. But like all good laws, the magic sometimes happens when breaking them. If you want to run in cotton, then run in cotton. Heck - run in a cotton trench coat!  Just don't run only in a cotton trench coat. There is simply no use in procrastinating on our adventures. So my laws should be regarded more like speed limit signs - that is, they're generally good ideas, sometimes annoying, always disregard-able as long as you're prepared to handle the consequences. 

As the temperature drops, you can immediately see from my laws how if one plans on running more than a couple of days per week, then they might need a pretty size-able wardrobe, wallet, or list of excuses about why they shouldn't go outside in the winter. That just doesn't have to be the case. In fact, I've gradually evolved my strategies, finding somewhat of a balance between being a Skimper, a Scavenger, and a Splurger. These three archetypes can be likened to primary colors with which the runner can paint their own personal style. What you will NOT see below is a LIST of items you "need" to go out and buy. That would be an example of clothes defining you rather than the other way around. 

The Skimper

A winter runner who skimps either doesn't stay a winter runner for long or doesn't stay a Skimper for long. This is the larval stage of runner development. The next morphological stage is growing dosage of Splurginess or Scavengerness or both. 

But metamorphosis from skimping usually takes place one body part at a time until there are only one or two holdout body parts remaining. On any given winter day you can see evidence of those holdouts - those brave souls who will wear shorts no matter how cold it gets. Perhaps they have no nerve endings in their penis, thighs, and shins. Others skimp on gloves - they cleverly turtle their hands up into their sleeves. Others (myself included) skimp on socks - perhaps relying on blister friction to warm our toes up or are training our feet to run barefoot in the snow. 

The Scavenger

On a good day, I'd like to call myself a Scavenger, but realistically, I'm still stuck trying to evolve from being a Skimper at heart. Growing up with four younger brothers, we were all sort of good at making do with less. If I owned anything nice, it could easily go missing, or euphemistically "borrowed". We learned that hand-me-downs had a circle-of-life of their own. We also learned to shop at Goodwill, and what's cool is that Goodwill is still cool. Their return policy is non-existent, but the consequences of lousy purchases are less damaging to your budget. 

A winter runner who goes from Skimper to Scavenger may have a wardrobe with some of the following characteristics that my wardrobe has:

*It looks a lot like a soccer wardrobe repurposed. Three of my brothers played collegiate soccer and are now soccer coaches. That means expired sponsorship gear. I've recently scored some great cold weather gear from them, that they are simply not allowed to wear any more. 

*It has base layers that look a lot like women's clothes. That's right - I've reclaimed lots of technical shirts that my wife no longer wears. I use them as base layers (invisible to others) since they fit closer to my body (trapping heat). Similarly, TJ Maxx has a huge selection of cheap women's technical shirts compared to the men's section. I've found many for less than $5. 

*Higher end sports stores usually have an end of season clearance rack. You just have to have a little bit of foresight to anticipate next year's needs.  

*It has my friends and family's old gear. Sometimes barters can work too. I have a surplus of old ties and dress shirts from my teaching days. My brother Dan has surplus warm up pants. The swap serves both our needs. 

*It consists of gifts - let's face it, if you let your loved ones know you're into this or that sport, you immediately become easy to shop for. You're kind of doing them a favor by putting your wants and desires out there. 

*It has multi-sport redundancy - that is, many articles serve multiple functions and many functions are served by multiple articles. It's kind of a permaculture principle, but really it's just universally good system design. For example, I use my cycling windbreaker also as my running windbreaker and the windbreak function can be served also by my fleece shell or emergency windbreaker. My fleece cycling pants are also my fleece running pants are also my sub-zero long-johns for construction site inspections or for skiing. The long-john function can also be served by several other articles - be they running tights or actual cotton long johns.  

*Entering races usually comes with a race t-shirt and other swag that proves you were there. Rather than regard the Ironman finisher T-shirt as a $600 article of clothing, it can equally be regarded as a free perk from a clever scavenger. Entering races is a great way to build your wardrobe. This is how I came to own my first pair of arm warmers, which are surprisingly practical, (but could equally be hacked from a pair of old soccer socks). 

The Splurger

If you can think of your favorite article of clothing you ever bought for yourself, I'm pretty sure it was something that felt like a splurge at the time. Maybe you felt like you were spoiling yourself, which I think is healthy to do every so often. My favorite piece of clothing I ever bought was a fancy red Goretex rain jacket I got for the "great American road trip" in college...that just never materialized, unfortunately. But other adventures are now destined to manifest because I psychologically committed to them when I bought that red jacket. And that jacket became the prequel to the second greatest jacket ever which is the orange one below, busy kicking ass. 

There are definitely merits to having really nice gear. And by nice, I don't necessarily mean expensive. Sometimes that's the case, but it doesn't have to be (see The Scavenger). The quality of the gear may be the mental catalyst needed to embolden us to get out the door at all, to tackle the rain or cold or the mountain.  Saving up to buy quality stuff can make you appreciate it more. It feels softer, warmer, lighter, cozier, shinier, [enter superlative here]. It can make an important fashion statement. It can be a form of reward for our hard efforts. It can make us feel like we are "playing the part". It usually lasts longer (more uses, not necessarily more years). It might come with a warrantee or a good return policy. It might enhance or extend the life of other gear (I'm thinking of jackets especially). 

One of the unintended consequences with really nice gear, however, is that it drives the second and third-tier gear out of circulation. The nicest gear is the first to get picked out of the clean laundry pile. It effectively shrinks your wardrobe, increases your laundry duties, and could put upward pressure on you to covet more really nice gear. Be prepared for those consequences - want more, wash more, or buy more. 

If you are a disciplined launderer, you can get away with a smaller wardrobe, whether it consists of really nice gear or just stinky normal clothes. And if you're not a disciplined launderer, then never underestimate the greatest invention born in a college frat house.

Necessary gear I either splurge on or scavenge the heck out of include:

*Socks - This is a hot zone of my own evolution. Even though I'm traditionally a sock skimper, I'm gradually being won over. I have socks that Santa brought me that have taken the abuse of 10 years of pounding and trucking garbage cans to the curb without shoes. I still have my first ever pair of Smartwools. I've been gifted a couple of pairs of Smithwick cycling and running socks which are always the first pairs I pick out of the laundry. I even chased down a Smithwick van on my bike once to tell him how great his socks are and he ended up giving me a free pair. 

*Shell - the outer layer's water/wind/thermal resistance protects and leverages the value of the base layers. It's also the most visible. It needs to be the most durable and versatile. That's a tall order to meet without a splurge. I'm currently on the hunt for the greatest running jacket ever. I keep seeing nice jackets on sale, but I'm actually going to hold out for this one to be my best splurge/scavenge ever. When I find it, you'll know. 

*Fleece tights - necessarily fleece and necessarily tight despite the ridicule from my brothers who think I look like a "candy ass mama's boy". Those boys are just used to baggy soccer warm up pants, which are great for training, but not for racing. They just don't know and won't know until they've run a 20 miler in sleet. 

A good pair of fleece pants might cost $150.00. While that sounds like a lot to pay, if you divide the dollars per mile, you'll actually find that you'll be getting far more pleasure AND VALUE out of your splurge or scavenge. You'll never go back to skimping again. Of course, this "never go back " law is also a vanity I plan on breaking when I do an Ironman in my denim jorts and sleeveless flannel shirt.

Cool dude from the Jorts Athletic Club 

I'm interested in other people's strategies, their best scavenge triumphs, their most indulgent gear splurges, and their most regrettable skimps. Leave your comments below or send me a message. I think we'd all benefit from the exchange. If I can get my schizer together, maybe I can post a vid next week, or maybe someone else can. 

What is Clo? It's Good for Mo. Fo Sho!

You can prevent your opponent from defeating you through defense, but you cannot defeat him without taking the offensive.

- Sun Tzu

If you’re like me, then once Halloween is over, you find that Cincinnati can be an oppressive place to live right up until about Opening Day. There was that one time when I was 8 years old when the Bengals marched their way to a Super Bowl (defeat). But since tumbling down from the pinnacle of those glory days, once our clocks “fall back” from daylight savings time, every year it becomes a psychological battle for me to stay positive. If I’m not positive, I stop moving. And if I stop moving, I lose positivity, and end up staying indoors, where it's dark... and not so positive. My mind-body system gets caught in a reinforcing loop acting to drag my system in the 9th-ring-of-hell direction. External darkness begets my internal darkness.

I’ve heard it said that “an un-medicated depression may be the first step toward enlightenment.” So, on those days where I suffer more sharply than others, I try to look for some value in the darkness. It can be an opportunity for rest…mindfulness…stillness. It can also be an opportunity to deeply feel the need for others and work on my connectedness, while I’m busy mis-believing in my personal isolation. However, once I attain my “right-minded” version of myself, I realize that “otherness” and separation are, in fact, tenuous and temporary illusions. Until then, I just sit with it, like the way of the warrior,  chewing on the darkness like a rancid cud. 

Meanwhile, another part of me doesn’t believe in or practice un-medicated depressions at all. I go on medicating. Actively and aggressively, I try to counter that negative reinforcing loop with a balancing feedback loop. Over the years I’ve found only one solution. It’s basically Buddhism, but in the way my father-in-law has summarized it for me—“Face the fucker."  That means a showdown with my fears-- with Ol’ Man Winter. Sometimes he's kickin' me in the balls and sometimes I'm kickin' him right back. 

Specifically, for me, it means running in cold weather, biking in cold weather, composting in cold weather, and when I can handle it, swimming in cold weather. Treadmills are complicated medication. They are kind of like chemo-therapy. Sure they kill cancer, but they kill the good stuff too. So, I try to avoid them. Maybe that's why I signed up for the Burning River 100 this week-- my first ever 100 mile trail race. 

Running on the trails in the local parks, however, is the closest thing I have to a silver bullet for the winter blues. The colors and contours of the forest change by the day and hour. Small creatures still scurry around, being cute and tough as crap. Over the course of a year and a couple thousand miles of running, I'll have only three or maybe four runs that I completely regret doing. Inevitably, it's the ones where I've dressed poorly. Improperly understanding how to dress for winter can lead to soggy, frigid, depressing runs. But happy running, or at least depression-management running, requires a rudimentary understanding of clothing technology. In other words, what is Clo? 

Clo is a standard unit of measurment like the pound or calorie. It is defined as the amount of insulation required to keep a resting person warm in a windless room at 70 °F (21.1 °C). For my fellow energy geeks, this comes out to be equivalent to an R-value of 0.88 °F·ft²·h/Btu [1]. For some perspective, a naked person is wearing 0 Clo. In case you need a visual, here is what 0 Clo looks like. 

Visualizing 0 pounds or 0 calories is much harder to do. 

Energy research from the 1970s revealed that a man dressed in a business suit for work is wearing ~1 Clo. Women tend to wear about 0.75 Clo to work, and are thus more prone to turn the thermostat up in the office. (Or perhaps the researchers were 70s men biasing their study to focus only on scantily-clad women). In either case, Clo is a low-tech solution for an energy crisis that was well studied in the 1970s, but is even more appropriate to pay attention to nowadays.  

[3]

If a person is running, their internal metabolic reaction rate increases, so there is much more "waste heat" produced, warming them up from the inside, decreasing their need for Clo. Also, the radiative effects of sunlight further dimish the need for Clo. Once you get moving, even on a winter day, staying cool rather than warm could quickly become the dominant matter of business, so you have to be strategic with your outfit. Additional factors like wind speed and humidity further complicate matters. Balancing metabolic core temperature with ambient comfort is really about finding your own personal sweet spot-- a bandwidth of comfort. 

As a rule of thumb, I've found that 60°F is my body's general balance point when I'm active. If it's
 >60 °F, I could run naked, but below 60°F is when I start to need Clo. When it gets down to 40°F, I know I need to wear about 1 Clo. Anyone who's had to chase down a taxi or dance at a wedding knows that a suit can get uncomfortably hot unless it's 40°F. Then, it's perfect. 

At 20°F, I'd need a trench coat to find my bandwidth of comfort. Of course, the only man who could pull off the trench coat look can fly, knows karate, and how to hack the Matrix. So what use would he have for running?

Is that air you're breathing out of your rear end real?

So here are my strategies for winter running:
0th Law - Do as much daylight running as possible (~lunchtime, ~sunrise, ~sunset)
1st Law -  No trench coating
2nd Law - No cotton (It dries poorly, rubs the nipples into bloody popsicles, and makes you feel cold)
3rd Law - Using 60 °F as my balance point, add one layer to any body part for every 10 °F drop in temperature. 

Examples
60 °F - shorts and a technical shirt = "minimum base layer"
50 °F - shorts and a technical shirt + one layer (pullover or long sleeve shirt)
40 °F - shorts and a technical shirt + two layers = pants, technical shirt, pullover = shorts, technical shirt, pullover, hat & gloves
30 °F - pants + technical shirt + pullover + pullover 2 + hat & gloves
20 °F - pants + technical shirt + pullover + pullover 2 + hat & gloves + shell
10 °F - the mathematics start to break down at these temperatures and we get a singularity as we approach 0 °F, and all bets are off. The run may or may not even happen. 

This is all fine in theory, but affording all the technical clothing can be an epic task in its own right. With some help from some running friends we will be blogging next week about how to scavenge for our favorite cold weather running gear. There are certainly different strategies involved, depending on your budget, fashion sense, and networking skills. 

In the meantime, have a happy Thanksgiving with your loved ones! 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_comfort
[2] http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/02/body-insulation-thermal-underwear.html
[3] http://www.blowtex-educair.it/DOWNLOADS/Thermal%20Comfort.htm

Gettin' Krunk on Kvass (Part II)

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my friend, neighbor, and bacterial co-father, Dan, who showed me how to make kraut and beet kvass and keep it klassy. I'm happy to report that our children have reached maturity! Time to get get krunk, baby!

Maximized handy-manliness himself, lifting the skirt of the kraut jar to download our baby

5 jars of kraut from two 5-lbs heads of cabbage

It looks like toilet water and vomit, but that's a sign of the DELICIOUSNESS.

Beet chunks, brine, turmeric, ginger, and garlic = Orgasmatonic

After straining out the chucks, it yields a 12 oz and a 16 oz bottle of kvass

Anya and Dan were both sick when I came over for harvest time, so they were feening for the kvass. I would have been sick not to have a shot too. While preparing the kvass, Dan and I had our first domestic dispute over whether to put any turmeric in the kvass. Dan said, "We got it put it in, Chris. We have to try it." And I said, "You've gone too far. That bell can't be un-rung." Dan is the Marine, so he won the argument. And I'm glad he did.

A shot is pretty potent. I'm not sure you'd want to drink much more at a time.
It would make a great salad dressing, though. 

OO DAG! Best kvass I've ever had. Could the Orgasmatonic be as good as Dan's famous Bubonic Tonic? I'm going to make it my mission to find out.

Recycled beet chunks-- after harvesting, Dan refills the jar of beet chunks with more filtered water and will let it sit for another week or so of fermenting. It's a the "re-fried beans" of the raw fermentation world.

Co-fathering Kraut and Kvass and World Peace

If there is to be peace in the world,

There must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations,

There must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities,

There must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors,

There must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home, 

There must be peace in the heart.

-Lao Tse

I've spent the last several weeks blissing out-- like I've become privy to surfing one of the Universe's best and biggest waves in a long while. Maybe it's what psychologists call being in the flow.

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. [1]

Except, I don't feel like it's exclusively my own flow, but a LARGER Flow that I'm lucky enough to be caught up in.

Bethany Hamilton-- back in the flow after a shark ripped her arm off. [Photograph: Getty]

In spite of the feelings of Flow, this election season's to-do list of American moral imperatives feels like swimming with sharks. As you may have picked up on, one of the underlying themes of this blog has been the study of what I like to call kick-em-in-the-dickenomics. Kick-em-in-the-dickenomics was born out of an existential angst I feel toward participation in a cultural system that I feel just doesn't hold much promise of Flow for me. The wonky, gnarly system is the proverbial "man" and I really want to stick-it-to-the-man, smear his face in it, and then kick him in the dick for good measure. Practically speaking, I pre-occupy myself daydreaming of righteous-anger voting, or frustrated food choices, or Facebook friend-deletes. But these feelings are not Flow-worthy either.

Thankfully, there are an influential handful of people in my life whose unwavering commitment to love and a more hopeful vision is proving itself way more infectious than my own vision.

For example, two weeks ago, I was gifted a scholarship to the World Peace Yoga Jubilee--
CHA-CHING!!!! It was my first ever Jubilee. (Thank you Anna Ferguson!) Yoga has always been for me a brilliant idea-- and I'd recommend it to everyone. But if yoga is a matter of being compassionate to one's self, then NOT doing yoga is the form of yoga I practice daily. (Running 20 miles per day is somehow a more compassionate form of mediation in my world.)

Does it look like we support the military-industrial-petro-agro-pharma-animal-exploiting complex?

Nevertheless, I participated in my first ever group yoga class. I didn't understand a word of the instructions... so I just kept making my own shit up, clearly caught up in some kind of flow.

Non-violence in thought, word, and action is truly a Herculean experience, not for the weak. But neither is it a matter of brute strength, as I'm discovering. The days of Newtonian forces are numbered and dying-- when life is merely seen as action-reaction force pairs across an empty Cartesian grid of disconnected atoms. Instead, the awareness of our connectedness grows. The illusion of our disconnectedness dissolves.

The Jubilee was the perfect mixture of summer camp, yoga intensive, vegan pot luck, concert, drum circle, educational conference, and the scene from the Blind Melon video where the tap dancing bee finally finds a meadow of fellow bees. Unfortunately, I could only attend the Jubilee for one day. Had they served fruit, it would have been my World Cup of high holy days. Now I can't resist posting the Yoga Girl video. 

Riding the momentum of flow, when Susie was overcome this week with an upper respiratory infection, our friend and neighbor Dan came by the house with a batch of his homemade hardcore hippie beet kvass. I didn't think Susie would touch it in a million years, but something about the garlic, ginger, and beets appealed to her senses and she went totally bonkers for it.  

Then, like the hardcore hippie peace-pushing Marine he is, Dan invited me over to teach me how to make my own saurkraut and kvass. These are old time preserved foods that families could harvest in the summer and fall and store through much of the winter by "pickling" them through lacto-fermentation. It doesn't sound all that sexy to store cabbage in the basement for winter, so Dan likes to be ready at all times for his Zombie Apocalypse. Meanwhile, my excuse is I'm planning ahead for the collapse of the oil age. 

He was quick to point out that it is a little unusual for lacto-fermentation bacteria cultures to have two dads, but what a dad he's turned out to be. Please be open minded about non-traditional cultures. 

~2 dudes, 7 chopped beets, 1 head of garlic, 1 root of ginger, turmeric, and some salt water

Two 5 pound cabbage balls

Dan making use of the Ginsu-weapon of mass destruction.

Dan likes to chop the cabbage in noodly strips. But I hate chewing anything bigger than a toe nail.  This was our first domestic dispute. 

Every pound or so of chopped cabbage gets thrown in the mixing bowl and sprinkled with salt, juniper berries, and caraway seeds. 

Punch that cabbage, Dan! Salt + Dan's muscles squeeze the juices out of the cabbage, forming a bath of brine. 

The kvass is held submerged by a big cabbage leaf.

Wow, it's exciting watching that culture grow up. 

Fraternal twins! Kvass on the left. Sauerkraut on the right. 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

The Cincinnati Michael Jackson Society of Awesomeness

Cincinnati Observatory

My head is still abuzz with amazement at what I heard and saw and the Cincinnati Observatory Friday night. The cloud cover made for lousy star-gazing, but the history of Cincinnati had me and John Quincy Adams grabbing our crotches Michael Jackson-style, soaring through the cosmos with pride.

CINCINNATI, I LOVE YOU. HO!!!!!!

The history that I heard is so crotch-grippingly-sweet that I became enraptured by the key players and the badassness of those early Cincinnatians. Ormsby Mitchel, John Quincy Adams, Nicholas Longworth-- you are bigger than the Big Red Machine. What their efforts must have meant in those days!!

I'm not sure we even know how to think along such heroic lines any more. Where could we draw the parallel between what got done in 1842 Cincinnati and what its equivalent would be in today's terms?

A future parallel...
In 2018, Cincinnati changes the name of its Hyde Park neighborhood to Billclintopia. Because that would happen easily, right? If you know Hyde Park, then you know that would be paramount to calling 2012 Georgia Obamaland. How could an ex-president possibly, and so convincingly, transcend partisan politics to get some REAL QUALITY LEGACY shit done that everybody likes and needs?

In his last public appearance, Clinton lauds the Cincinnatians gathered at the Wasson Way Amphitheater for helping him manifest his lifelong dream. He calls it "one of his finest life achievements", after spending two terms as president, failing to ignite Congress to sieze the greatest humanitarian opportunity a nation ever had. America couldn't do it, but Cincinnati did. This is basically what John Quincy Adams did with our help, led my Ormsby Mitchel-- the Bill Nye/Michael Jackson of his time.

A recent historical parallel...
In 1993, after spending $2 billion on construction and planning, Congress pulled the plug on the Superconducting Super Collidor in Texas, that would have been five times more powerful than the now world-famous CERN particle accelerator in Europe. Can you imagine if Cincinnati would have been there to say, "You know what-- screw you Congress, we want the world's most cutting edge science and we want our citizens to not only own it, but use it-- men, women, and children."

...Except this parallel would fall short on many levels:
1) as bitchin' as a particle accelerator is, it's not as universally FUN for people of all ages as the Observatory;
2) its scientific contributions aren't as immediately applicable to ALL facets of daily life and safety (time keeping and weather predicting);
3) it would have to have been built by donated time and materials from locals who believe in the mission and act out their commitment to the values of the Republic;
4) its architectural beauty would have to be enduring and worthy of hosting a wedding 150 years later (as it hosted mine);
5) and perhaps most importantly, it would have to meet humanity's most threatening identity crisis.

I'd just like to give a shout out to the volunteers of the Observatory. They number over 100 strong. They are geeky and proud and they just want to share the passion for planets. Our host for the evening was Leo, who remained true to the spririt of Omsby Mitchel, the Observatory's founder. The Observatory's website had this to say of the man whose passion made it all happen:

Ormsby Mitchel

Mitchel's enthusiasm and clarity impressed his audiences. As one person who heard him has said: "In New York the music hall is thronged night after night to hear his impassioned eloquence poured in an unbroken flow of 'thoughts that breathe and words that burn' on the excited thousands. A sublimer spectacle in lecturing was never seen. The theme, the orator, the intellectual audiences, the rapt attention, the almost painful intensity of feeling, all crown him the prince of lecturers." The great expansion of interest in astronomy, and the proliferation of observatories during the next few years owes a great deal to the efforts of Mitchel, who has sometimes been called "The Father of American Astronomy.

Race Report: North Face Endurance Challenge, Madison, WI Sept 15, 2012

Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water, [do hills]

After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water, [do hills]

-Buddha's CrossFit coach

Monk Power-- Preparation
The North Face Endurance Challenge was mine and my wife's first 50 mile run, and it turned out to be my favorite race of all time! Perfectly managed. Perfectly unmanaged. Never mismanaged.

On one level, I get that all this racing and training is an utter vanity. The results, the accomplishments, the gear, the jealousy, the expectations-- they're all vanity of Biblical/Koranic proportions. So, 10 pm, four days before the race, stricken with some kind of 24 hour Buddhist virus, I suddenly decided my hair, too, is vanity, and that's it's gravely important to shave my head in order to transcend it all. Detatchment, grasshopper. Ommmm! 

The mediation started out with zen-like clarity-- See the trail. BE the trail. Find your freedom. Release the hair. 30 minutes into it, my wife, Susie, stumbled upon me helplessly fudging with the clippers in the kitchen. Here. Let me help you, babe. Then Susie commandeered my little monk plans and proceeds to tells me,  Hon, sometimes you just gotta let the mo' flow. Yunno? Then the purity of my feng shui scalp quickly veered from the monk to the punk-direction.

Sometimes you just gotta let the mo' flow. Yunno?

Mohawk it is, then! After all, monasticism, too, is a vanity with it's own egotistical pitfalls, (which I know a little too much about).

Ultimately, the race turned out so well, I think, because... 
1) I was able to approach it stripped down of all the baggage that normally shackles my mind (appropriate training drills, performance goals, ego's attachment to outcomes, fruit-eating logistics, etc) As a trail run, it just felt so pure-- devoid of all the pavement, triathlon gadgetry, the hulking-type-A personalities, the glitz and glam of million dollar bike corrals, etc; 
2) it was a stunningly beautiful day among breathtaking scenery on the famous Ice Age Trail; 
but most of all, it was awesome because of  
3) FAMILY! In their clumsy, loud, and sacrificial way, they turned it into a giant lovefest. 

How it went down
In typical monk fashion, I never run with ear phones. I prefer the minimalism of going noiseless and shirtless. However, at this particular 4 am race day juncture, I decided to de-frock the monk and detach from past precedent-- going WITH a shirt and WITH earphones. It would be cold, dark, and solitary, after all. I set my Pandora station to "Elton John- Tiny Dancer" which guarantees lots of classic rock songs that I can sing to. This is important because by singing along I am guaranteed to keep my competition subdued and my heart rate at the appropriate zone- NOT panting- ~80% of max heart rate. 

Headlamps are mandatory and essential till sunrise.

My karaoke-based heart rate plan backfired like a mother, though. First of all, with a 5 AM start time, my heart was still asleep and not quite ready to do 80% to Tom Petty's "Runnin' Down a Dream", so the first 6 miles were a rude awakening. Secondly, by mile 18, the dang Pandora station played "Let It Be" four times and "Imagine" twice. John Lennon was slowly tranquilizing me to my demise. I found out the hard way that there is such a thing as "too hippy". My iphone's arm band made the screen so impossible to see and touch that I wasn't able to skip to a new song or change stations. I stopped and stumbled with it several times unsuccessfully. Let that be a lesson to never try anything new on race day.

By mile 12 or so, the sun was rising, the frost melting, and I emerged from the woods and into the rolling meadow section. This is where I had an emotional mountaintop moment as the Skynyrd song, "Simple Man" played. It always reminds me of my dad. He's the greatest and simplest man I know, true to the song (minus any redneck or racism). His love has always been mohawky-- not the smoothest thing in social situations with me, but sloppy, raw, spunky, balls-to-the-wall, generous, heroic human love. It reminded me of the legacy I want to leave planet Earth.

Hotel California came on soon after and I was feeling dang good about a "dark desert highway...cool wind in my hair." I pulled my arm warmers off, feeling warmed up, and I latched on to the heels of a local who claims he runs 70 miles per week on the Ice Age Trail. What a lucky dude! I was feeling in a groove, reminding myself to reserve some gas in the tank-- the race would begin at mile 40.

The meadows were so beautiful. It was like running back in time.

When we finished that 5 mile stretch through the meadows, the local dude claimed that we ran it 10 minutes faster than we should have. I'm not sure what his plan was, but I was running my own race confidently, with my heart rate steadfastly locked at 80%.

Prior to mile 40, I had two benchmarks in my mind-- 1) the marathon mark, because I mean, C'MON, it's a marathon; and 2) the 28 mile mark, which is where I could pick up my pacer-- my brother-in-law, Mike. I'd been looking forward to running with him for about a year since we first started talking about the possibility of this race and Mike first started taking up running. Mike is the most interesting and creative man on the planet. I knew I'd want his company and Jedi warrior skills, but I underestimated how essential his bag of tricks would be. 

Mike is also a Reiki master and if there is anything you need at mile 30 in a race it's Reiki and voodoo. Reiki is an acknowledgment of the fact that permeating all of reality is energy and vibration that affect and can be affected. Think of The Force. The practitioner intends to promote healing by way of attuning and facilitating energy flow. I don't know enough about it, but I asked for it and I believe it helped. It usually requires the laying on of hands, but rather than break our stride for touchy-feely hanky-panky, Mike laid his hands on my voodoo doll while we ran. I asked him to work on my quads, which were starting to feel fatigued and on the verge of cramping.

My doppleganger voodoo Reiki doll. See how inflamed my quads got?

When I picked Mike up, our original Plan was that he'd only be with me for 7 miles, to the next aid station. The plan was for him to escort me to Lee Ann at mile 35. Then he'd retrace his steps and crew for Susie too. Lee Ann is a veteran Ultra runner and dear friend and the sister I never had. I crewed for her at the Burning River 100 last year and that's where she planted that little ultramarathoning seed in my head. I was hoping she'd pace me into the promised land, maybe helping me break the 8 hr mark. Anyway, when I picked Mike up at mile 28 aid station, Lee Ann was there and alerted me that she changed The Plan. She wouldn't be running at all with me because Susie was in need of veteran crewing ASAP. She was in a dark place on the verge of not making her cutoff times at the checkpoints. So, I consented.

Even though I was running with Mike through the beautiful pine forests of Ewok-repute, I was distracted by my concern for Susie. I was also worried that I wouldn't have any company for the closing miles of the race because I wasn't sure how much gas Mike had left in his tank. The 22 miles to the finish would be longer than he had ever run before. 

The pine forests of Kettle Moraine State Park looked like Endor from Star Wars.

There weren't a whole lot of women on the course, so when Mike and crossed paths with Susie in the forests of Endor, she might as well have been Princess Leia herself. I was very happy to see her, but she hadn't yet picked up Lee Ann at mile 28, so we kept the chit chat short, high-fived, booty slapped, and I told her what a bad bitch she was. Because she IS. 

I need to note that when I picked up Mike at mile 28 I took a little equipment break to change my Pandora station to tap into the direct satellite link to the testicular spark plug of the universe-- my Enrique Iglesias and Shakira station. The stretch of trail to the next aid station at mile 35 was certainly the hilliest section of the course. This is where Enrique lit a fire up under my cockels. True to my plan, I took the uphills in such a way that kept my heart rate at 80%, which usually meant walking or very slow running. BUT on the descents, I threw caution to the wind and attacked them hard. I knew this was risky, but I was feeling realllly good. It almost took more effort and caused more pain to run cautiously than to basically treat them like a controlled fall, powered by gravity. I had a feeling the strategy might come back and bite me later in the race, but I don't think it did.

Mike was in much better form than me on the uphills, where he had to slow down for me, but the descents were starting to take a toll on him. I think his motor had the power, but his chassis wasn't quite ready to take the pounding. Somewhere around mile 36, we separated. I wouldn't see him again until the finish. I blame/thank Enrique and Pitbull. 

Running downhill, I let my body do the talking, making lots of horse sounds.

This was the toughest section of the race for me. Mile 43 was my low point. The day had heated up to about 80 F. I was out from the shade of the forest, and the aid stations were just far enough away from each other (5-7 miles) that I ran out of water twice and got dehydrated. Not only that, but my salt tabs fell out of my pouch somewhere and the aid stations had no salt, and the race placed my drop bag at the wrong aid station and we couldn't find it. Together, I blame the cramping that ensued on those mishaps. I would be in a total groove, passing people right and left, and then I would clip my toe on a root and as I caught myself from falling, my legs contorted with cramps all the way down my hamstrings and quads. I'd take a little stretch break, see some people make up some ground on me, and then I'd build the pace back up steadily. Then the cycle would repeat-- speed-up, trip, cramp, stop, stretch, build it back up.

When I hit mile 40, I was ready to start racing as a race. Before that, I had to treat it like normal training run. I was prepared to allow my heart rate to drift to 85-89% and I allowed myself to fully feel torturous pains. I find I can sometimes treat this feeling like a familiar friend. It's almost like being out of my comfort zone is in fact my preferred comfort zone. Some torturous pains are constructive while others become destructive. I was trying to run that fine line between them.

I took extra water at the two remaining aid stations at mile 40 and 45 to see if I could recover some of my hydration. I started to pass people like crazy between 40-45. They were all slowing down while I continued to get faster and faster, churning out some of my fastest miles of the day. In fact, it became pretty clear that I was going to run the second half of the race faster than the first half.

The folks I passed lifted my spirits further with their, "Good job, dude" and "Way to go mohawk." I tried to reciprocate their kindness. However, my cramps had other plans for me and would bring me back from cloud 9 to reality. A man can't run, or walk, or encourage others, if he can't get rid of his own cramps. So, from mile 45 to the finish, the only way I could keep the cramps away was to keep my heart rate at 75%, not the direction I was hoping to take it.

Coming out of the forest was a huge relief. The park road was lined with fans and I could hear the music blaring from the finish chute. On the one hand, the feel of the flat, predictable blacktop was a depressing contrast from the lush beauty of the forest, but it was also kind of familiar and homey, and more importantly, it meant that I had done what I had set out to do- RUN 50 MILES! Emotionally raw, I crossed the finish line and dove into the arms of Mike and the rest of the family and started tearing up. They were such great fans, I didn't know how to thank them.

I finished in 8:26, doing the second half of the race ~20 minutes faster than the first half. I've never negative split in my life. After a quick recovery in the on-site ice bath (which I'm pretty sure was mostly icy urine), I got back in the car with pointman Earl and Susan, on the hunt for some more Susie-sightings. 

2 Live Crew. Mike Davison was a champ as dad and photog and pacer. He chats it up with Ben, while Earl is busy playing crew chief with Susan. They were a welcome sight for this tired dude.

Lee Ann and Earl going over The Plan.

Earl created the ultimate map that showed the race course, roads, aid stations, glacier history, migrant bird flight patterns, THE WORKS! We knew exactly where to be, and when, in order to see Susie and cheer her and Lee Ann. 

Having your body-and-soul mate to train and compete with is the coolest part of the adventure.

It's also a special feeling seeing your fan club in matching T-shirts with your name on them while they massage your feet and when your feet feel like this:

Sorry, nail, you're a goner.

Susan is a saint.

The BEST CREW in the world on the hunt for some carbo-loading the day before. 

Food and Poo
All right. You knew I had to address it, but to be kind, I saved it till the end. Poo was a non-issue. I've mastered it. Woke up at 3 am race day, drank a liter of water. Then the system did its duty just like clockwork.

Food for the weekend and the race had a few hiccups. I brought a cooler of frozen bananamammajamma (banana puree) for the weekend which was essentially my meal plan for the whole weekend and it worked great. We also went out for dinner two nights in a row to a bar which actually had an amazing wild rice salad. I

n typical Dwyer-fashion, I also brought several pounds of pitted dates that I had soaking in water. True to minimalist form, I forgot my blender. After three days of soaking, the dates basically separated into mushy fiber balls and high octane syrup. I drank the syrup, but the dates were nasty at that point. Thus, my race day drop bag date-o-rade plan was a bust. I survived the entire race with an unscripted nutrition plan-- I ran on what the race provided-- ~300 calories per hour of Gu gels, Gu Brew, Nuun, SaltStix (I brought), and water. I snuck a few advil in there, too, but that was a once in a lifetime thing.

Fiber balls in high octane date syrup

Post race grime

Post race kiss with legendary Ultramarathon Man Dean Karnazes

The icing on the cake was eating breakfast the next morning at the hotel, when along walks the legendary Dean Karnazes looking for bananas and sees a huge pile of them on my plate. He's a kindred spirit. "There are my bananas!" 
"Hey Mr. Karnazes, thanks for putting on such an epic event. And thanks for really helping lift my wife's spirits when you high-fived her on the trail. We just love you." 

Susie had the composure to sweet talk him into posing for a picture. 
"Dean, can I kiss you?" 
"I'm from San Francisco-- of course, man."