I’m ready to ride, but the MS Society isn’t quite ready to let me; I’m a bit short on the fundraising goal. Thanks to Thick Bikes, my Univega Safari Ten miraculously transformed into an even more ancient Grandis Campione Del Mondo. It’s a beautiful handmade Italian bike, worthy of a blog post of its own.

About MS and the National MS Society
Multiple Sclerosis is a disease which weakens the immune system and damages the nervous system, often leading to visual problems, cognitive difficulties, and muscle weakness. The National MS Society is an organization devoted to raising awareness and funding for MS research.

If you would like to donate
Please do so by pledging support for the Escape to the Lake

The game begins with 30 seconds of Tetris play, then the board rotates π for 30 seconds of Breakout play. If the ball misses the paddle, all bricks drop one spot.

To play, javascript must be enabled (Javascript is not enabled), and your browser must support the canvas element (canvas is not supported).

I started this project to learn more about canvas and jQuery, and in that respect it has been a huge success. Please keep in mind that this project is not finished. There is no end-game yet, and there are some collision bugs. I don’t think the pieces rotate correctly. I’ll add scorekeeping as soon as I figure out how to draw text on canvas.

Firefox users may encounter some lag due to not using WebKit :p and some issues with holding down keypresses. Chrome and Safari are recommended.

Click to start

Many months ago, I heard about the Virginia Beach Shamrock Marathon from an Appalachian Trail alumnus. It looked pretty cool. 16,000 people all dressed in green? Great. Free beer? Even better. Sign me up.

But then I looked into the logistics. It turns out there are no flights between PIT and ORF — they’re all routed through Detroit or Newark. Fortunately I like airports, so I picked the itineraries with the slightly longer layovers so I can explore a bit.

The hotel situation taught me a valuable lesson in foresight. I had counted on crashing with that AT hiker. However, as the days passed by, and my messages weren’t returned, I needed to take some action. Couchsurfing has never let me down, but will it save me again with less than 24-hours notice? It’s crunch time. I drafted a desparate message in a way that made it sound not so desparate, and sent it out to 25 people. 25 very gracious, kind, welcoming people. So welcoming, in fact, that my phone rang three times while going through the security checkpoint at PIT. Within an hour of sending out the messages, I had not only a couch to sleep on, but also a ride from the airport. Chris and Brent, you rock.

By sheer awesomeness, they were also hosting an Irishman from New Zealand, Thomas, who is traveling the east coast southbound to Florida. Unfortunately for those running marathons the next day, this means they were up til who-knows-when playing drinking games. Chris was happy enough to offer up his bed to me, which worked out because they were going to pass out on the floor downstairs anyway.

6:00am, off I go. Like a ninja I crept downstairs and out the door, with barely a whisper — not like anyone would have been conscious enough to hear me anyway. The shoreline was six miles away, so I made sure to give myself at least two hours for walking plus an hour for pre-race whathaveyou.

Six oh one AM.
Arm out, thumb up. Here’s a car.
Life is oh so good.

I like to use this as an excuse for my laziness: Work and school keep me so busy I can’t possibly find an hour a week to run. Yeah, it’s pretty bad. So I was understandably nervous going into the run. As were about half the other runners. A minute before the start, the announcer asked, “Who is running their first marathon today?”, and a third of the crowd raised their hands. “Who didn’t train for this?” yielded many more hands and applause. I felt a little better about my condition.

The course started in a huge crowd, with so many supporters for the first few miles, but it dwindled down quickly. After passing through Fort Story Navy Base, it followed a sectioned highway for a dozen miles to the turnaround. At mile 18, I felt not-so-good about my condition. I looked around and saw quite a few other people limping along with me. Well, the best I can do at this point is just finish, regardless of time.

I limped the last eight miles. The splits are telling:
First 7.0 – 1:08:21 – 9:45
Next 6.1 – 0:59:04 – 9:41
Next 4.9 – 0:55:36 – 11:21
Last 8.2 – 1:52:53 – 13:46

Let this be a lesson. If you’re going to run a marathon, it helps to run a bit beforehand.

The next series of events shouldn’t surprise anyone who really knows me and my friends.

Justin, Greg, Ben, and I ripped them open the next weekend, played every combination of deck-booster builds, spent an egregious amount of money on more cards, and trained like Pokemon Masters for the next three weeks. Our Victory Road led not to Indigo Plateau, but to Mansfield, Ohio.

On Friday, January 29th, 2010, you may have heard Joe Esposito’s “You’re the Best Around” blaring from a VW Jetta in the distant west. If you were near, you may have seen four twenty-somethings fistpumping and headbanging and trying to name all the Pokemon. Cleveland didn’t know what hit them.

The rest of that night is best left to the historians and janitors.
The following day, however, shall be reminisced by my grandchildren.

There was a pretty decent turnout, 25 or 30 people showed up. It made me a bit nervous. A guy in his late twenties walked in with a Pokemon messenger bag full of trainer badges from tournaments throughout the last ten years. A few scruffyneckbeards and an illiterate dude balanced it out, though. Justin and I had a decent draw, Justin with the full Typhlosion evolution line and me with the full Meganium line, along with a few Chanseys to take the beatings, which carried us both to a 4-1 score. Ben fared fairly well at 3-2, but Greg really had the short end of the stick. No Chanseys, no decent trainers, nothing.

Most of the competitors are really into this stuff. They cringe when they see a deck bent and shuffled without card protectors. They spend hours trading cards back and forth. They dropped their jaws when the Elite Four casually handed over all of their cards to the kids in the Junior league after the tourney. It absolutely made our day.

Emily and I registered for a Wilderness Risk Management Conference in Durham, NC, over October 14-16. The Pitt Outdoors Club’s semi-annual Seneca Rocks climbing trip was scheduled for the weekend immediately following the conference, so we planned to learn us some knowledge then hopefully not put it to use on the rock. Alas, it was not meant to be.

Everything was great on the ride down. We took the scenic route through the mountains, rocked out to Iron and Wine and Fleet Foxes, visited Tamarack (The Best of West Virginia), and sat on the side of I-85 for an hour and a half waiting for a tow truck. We were 15 miles from our destination when the mighty Chevy Malibu suffered an ill-fated heart attack.

Of course, we foresaw this happening, so we prudently brought bicycles with us! I still think this was the best part of the trip, cycling in perfect fall weather in a distant unfamiliar city.

Our Couchsurfing host, Larson, happened to already know Emily from a college they both attended in Connecticut. I swear she knows everyone on the east coast. We saw David Wax Museum at a local bar, a “mexo-americana” band, which “infuses Mexican son into its literary, countrified folk rock”. They recently released Carpenter Bird, which you should buy.

The WRMC is a two-day conference composed of eight sections, in each section five workshops are offered. We attended some of the more managerial workshops, which would be more beneficial to the Pitt Outdoors Club. Staff training, complexity and risk measurement, incident reviews, and volunteer coordination were big topics.

And just like that, it’s Friday night. My most awesome incredible father drove his giant truck for nine hours, slept a little in some parking lot, rented a trailer, and drove back to Pittsburgh. I have no idea how he manages those long drives.

Last Sunday was Pedal Pittsburgh, the annual city-wide cycling event, offering 60-, 50-, 35-, 25-, 15-, and 6-mile rides starting throughout the morning, designed so everyone finished around the same time in the South Side Works for a huge cookout. Thanks to LBSs Iron City Bikes and Thick Bikes, my revamped Univega Safari Ten survived the 60-miler, ending with a 10-mile loop up and around Mt. Washington.

About MS and the National MS Society
Multiple Sclerosis is a disease which weakens the immune system and damages the nervous system, often leading to visual problems, cognitive difficulties, and muscle weakness. The National MS Society is an organization devoted to raising awareness and funding for MS research.

If you would like to donate
Please do so by pledging support for the Escape to the Lake

May 15, 2008

From Icewater Springs Shelter, Charlie and I left at 9:15am and didn’t stop until TriCorner Knob Shelter for lunch at 3pm. It was a wet, cold, windy, miserable day, but we kept on keeping on with Standing Bear Farm in mind as a goal. We passed OD&CC, who I failed to mention earlier. We first met OD&CC at Fontana Dam, where they received a large mail drop from home and left some really good food in the hiker box. I picked up Meatless Mexican Rice and Charlie picked up Chicken and Brocolli. OD, a retired Army Ranger, is hiking with his wife, and packaged his own dried meals ahead of time. Charlie is pushing OD to start a small business, starting by sending meals to Charlie once OD gets back from his section hike.

At lunch, we caught up to Ted, who left earlier in the morning. He joined us for the remainder of the day’s hike.

From here it was nonstop until dinner at Cosby Knob Shelter, the most depressing shelter ever. It was completely packed with (obviously) section-hikers, Ted and Ryan (The Brothers Not), and Haggis (the Scotsman). It was 9pm when we rolled in for dinner, when most were going to sleep. There were groups of 3 or 4 people scattered about, day hikers, friends who came out to hike in the rain but ended up staring at the ground, not speaking. The Brothers Not and Haggis were great company through dinner, and when we left there was little to do but sleep. However this was only the beginning of the night for us 3 hikers. We had 7 miles to go and no sunlight.
The only thing that keeps anyone going at night is conversation. “If you were to unintentionally fall off Clingman’s Doom, what would you yell?” “How many 5-year-olds would it take to kill you? 10-year-olds?” “What would you name your Leki poles?” “Why does Charlie call every headlamp a Petzl, and every trekking pole a Leki, even though he uses Black Diamond headlamps and trekking poles?”

We finally arrived at 12:25am, at Davenport Gap Shelter, 27.4 miles from our starting point. Sleeping here were the couple Turtlefast and Little Bear, and the Three Canuck Girls (Mama Maple, PB, Jam).

Let me stop here to introduce the Three Canuck Girls. Ever since I left Amicalola on day one, they’ve consistently been one week ahead (from reading shelter journals) and they always have the longest, most-thought-out journal entries. It was great to finally meet them, but not under these conditions.

We caused a little ruckus getting our packs sorted out but finally went to sleep around 1am.

There’s a good reason for all of this night-hiking, and it is two-fold. If you get to a hostel at night, you’re essentially paying only to sleep, and that’s wasted money. It’s also a zero-day, which is a waste of good daylight. So the best time to get to town (or to a hostel) is early in the morning, so you have a day off without losing mileage.

May 16, 2008

Today we hiked 3.3 miles from Davenport Gap Shelter to Standing Bear Farm, where my mother sent chocolate no-bake oatmeal cookies, and my friend Jordan’s cousin Vicky sent me pictures of the upcoming trail along with a map of southwest Virginia and an invitation to a camping trip. The day off was well-needed ever since my ankle developed a sharp pain this morning.

Curtis runs the place, which provides Internet access, hand-wash laundry, and resupply. I spent some time typing up my earlier journal entries but gave up pretty quickly. A hot shower and clean clothes are a nice bonus out here.

Curtis explained that in the morning, the Davenport Gap Shelter crew arrives, then around noon the Cosby Knob crew shows up, and sometimes people come in from TriCorner Shelter in the afternoon and evening, so he keeps everything open and available all day and night, completely honor system. At 4 or 5 he goes for a beer/dinner run for the hikers.

Ted and Ryan (The Brothers Not), Haggis, OD&CC, Turtlefast, and Little Bear were all from these shelters and came in throughout the day.

Another couple spent the day with us as well, taking 5 days for a short hike between school and work. The girl left the privy in terrible condition, and the guy didn’t really talk to us at all.

Tomorrow we hope to hit 30 miles for an easy day into Hot Springs. We’ll see how that does. The weather is crappy throughout the ease coast.

State borders on the AT are huge milestones (which also explains why all 550 miles of Virginia is so loathed). So when I approached my first state border, Georgia-North Carolina, I was really pumped. Uphill from the border mark was a small rock outcropping from which I took my notebook and wrote a good-bye letter to Georgia, without making a copy or taking a picture to remember, and left it in the register.

A few days later at a hostel, I received an email from Gentjack with a picture of the letter. Take a read:

Then a year later I got an email from Georgia! Really I know!

It has been a year since you were last here, and I have seen many hikers again on their journey..
My mountains are green and lush this year and teh wildflwoers are enjoying all the rain.
Hope this email finds you well and happy..
Thank you for your gracious message.

Georgia

I’m glad Georgia is keeping in touch.

As a related topic, the Pitt Outdoors Club needs trip leaders for the upcoming Fall semester. Recently, the university ruled that only those older than 25 may drive university vans for club trips. This put a huge hamper on our operations, since most of our large trips (Coopers, McConnells Mill, Seneca Rocks) use two 12-passenger vans plus a few student cars. If you’re over 25, and have some current involvement with the university, we need you to drive us places. Please?

I ran the 2009 Pittsburgh Marathon in 4 hours and 30 minutes. I’ve been stretching constantly and walking down steps backwards since I still don’t have full control of my quadriceps. It really hurts.

What else is on my list? Foreign language fluency and summiting Katahdin.