I celebrated by drinking an entire carton of eggnog.
Just kidding. The Save On Foods nearby isn’t selling eggnog for at least a few more days.
Instead I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, other than being treated to a nice dinner out by Jeff. The day was gray and wet and cool, like a fall day, except it’s technically still summer.
Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer and sunnier. It figures.
On the plus side, I’m still around and kicking and complaining, so there’s that.
And now, a birthday haiku:
Another year gone
A little less hair for me
Better bald than dead
Not even halfway through September, with it still officially summer and me still dressed in shorts, Safeway begans selling eggnog.
Save On Foods had already started selling pumpkins before that, and every place that has a “pumpkin spice” drink like Tim Hortons and Starbucks rolled them out to officially start this year’s blurring together of all holidays.
It has happened slightly earlier this year compared to previous years, so retailers are still testing how far they can push this nonsense. I predict we’ll have August eggnog within a few years.
I kind of hate everything right now because of this.
Bah humbug, you might say.
(By the way, if this all sounds familiar, it’s because I wrote a similar rant last year, when eggnog appeared in October. How we have progressed!)
Today is the first time since July that I’ve worn actual pants and not shorts.
It makes me sad.
It was not an unwise choice, though, as the day started cloudy, turned to showers and the temperature is dropping instead of going up, as it properly should during a summer day.
All of this also makes me sad, though the showers will make the parched grass happy. Since the next few days are forecast to be damp it’s quite possible the Fire Danger/No Smoking signs will finally come down at Burnaby Lake, the Brunette River and Hume Park. If they are removed they probably won’t go back up until May or June of next year, depending on how whimsical climate change is feeling.
It’s also four days until the last official day of summer, September 21. The sun is setting earlier, leaves are turning (the trail at Burnaby Lake isn’t quite festooned with fallen leaves yet but it’s starting) and there’s a general sense that summer 2017 is coming to an end.
Summer is my favorite seasons, so I always feel a bit down when it’s over. I like the long nights, the warm days, everything being green and alive. Early fall is not so bad but the days quickly shorten, The Rains begin and soon enough every day seems bleak and gray.
And now in preparation I’m drinking hot chocolate and the AC is off.
Run 534 Average pace: 5:21/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 10:52 am
Distance: 10.04 km
Time: 53:50
Weather: Rain
Temp: 14ºC
Humidity: 86%
Wind: light
BPM: 169
Weight: 156.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 4159 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
The weather finally changed yesterday and today it changed even more, with lower temperatures, actual rain and the blessed end of the smoke haze (again).
I was curious to see how it would go with the different conditions, and it turned out to be very different.
And also mildly horrifying. But I’ll get to that in a bit.
It was 14ºC and showering steadily when I headed out and stayed that way before, during and after the run. The only change was sometimes during the run it would start to rain a little harder, then ease up. It’s the first time in months that I’ve run in rain from end to end.
My hands actually felt a bit cold by the time I got to the lake. It was weird.
A large walking group was assembled near the dam, their umbrellas jostling against each other. Fortunately they had just ended their damp jaunt so they weren’t an obstacle. A second group later on were actually parked out of the way at a trail intersection, being talked to by their presumed leader (“Glad we all brought umbrellas today, lol!”)
What surprised me, though, were the number of joggers out. The spitfire was out, as were plenty of others. Naturally a pair of tall, thin, supersonic jets were speeding along the first boardwalk (after I’d already dodged an umbrella-carrying couple). Fortunately they were so thin I slipped by without too much trouble.
More than any other recent run I felt genuinely energized. I never pushed to run fast, I just naturally gravitated to doing so. If I was sweating at all it was impossible to tell as I started the run thoroughly drenched. By the halfway point I stopped trying to dodge all of the shallow puddles and instead embraced them. When I got home I had mud and muck above my knees. And everywhere below them.
The energy level wasn’t all in my head as my pace was a relatively blazing 5:21/km–that’s a full 19 seconds better than Monday’s 10K and only five seconds off Thursday’s 5K. Yes, that’s how much my performance is affected by warmer temperatures. Who knows how fast I’d be running at the Arctic Circle. My BPM was also way up, to 169, not surprising as I was moving a lot faster and over a longer distance, but I felt surprisingly good throughout.
It was only on my walk back after that I noticed something wrong.
I have over the last few years developed strangely and highly sensitive nipples. Why, I don’t know. It’s annoying. What I do know is that if I run in the cold or in the rain (even a summer rain will leave your skin feeling cold), the nipples will start to ache. When I get home after such runs I need to let my skin temperature get closer to normal before having a shower or bath to avoid turning the ache into a glowing pain.
As I walked along the now-raging river, I could feel the nipples doing their thing. I looked down at my chest, as I do from time to time, and noticed a strange streak of dark orange (the shirt I was wearing today was orange). It looked like the fabric was bleeding color. I lifted the shirt to see if my skin was now stained the same color, but it looked fine. I kept looking up and noticed something strange and mildly horrifying.
My nipple was bleeding.
Both of my nipples was bleeding. The stains I was seeing were trails of blood. I was simultaneously grossed out and embarrassed.
There wasn’t anything to do, so I kept walking and tried to cover up the twin tracks of nipple bleeding as I passed by others. When I got home I doffed the shirt and confirmed the obvious. It was like I was lactating blood.
Grossbuckets.
I rinsed the shirt in cold water and presumably because it was fresh, the blood washed out with little effort. I then hit the web to be my own doctor and found that “runner nipples” are such a common thing that some running stores sell nipple guards to prevent what had happened to me.
What had happened to me? When my shirt got thoroughly-soaked it started to cling to my skin but the motion of running meant that the fabric continued to saw back and forth across my chest. This chafing action can cause the skin at the top of the nipples to break. When it breaks, it bleeds. Making it stop during a run is pretty much impossible, so preventative measures to avoid chafing are advised:
wear band aids over the nipples
wear those weird nipple guards
apply petroleum jelly or some other lubricant (presumably one that won’t stain and ruin your shirt)
wear a waterproof out layer
I suppose you could also try running topless. In fact, just after I crossed Still Creek bridge I saw three guys who, judging from their stances, had just finished a run. They were young and chiselled and none of them had bleeding nipples so I hated them a little. Actually, my nipples weren’t bleeding at the time, but I hated them, anyway.
I’ll probably try band aids and see if they work. I’ll have to do some shaving as I have a hairy chest. Curse my hair and nipples, I say.
The trail itself was mostly fine for the first half of the run but a puddle-palooza in the second half. I did see one change–near the 5K marker they’ve piled on another layer of gravel, further elevating that stretch of the trail. The 5K marker was also missing, possibly buried under all the new gravel. I am assuming they’ll continue with the bonus layer of gravel along that entire stretch. No flooding so far!
Despite the bloody chest and incessant rain, it was nice to have real energy and not feel slowed down by the weather for a change, so overall, a good run.
I recently bought a Cherry MX switch tester from WASD keyboards. It’s cute in a geeky sort of way and makes for a decent conversation piece:
I don’t actually leave it parked beside my mouse.
Its purpose is to let you try different types of mechanical keyboard switches without spending $1000 on six full-size mechanical keyboards. It also came with cute little o-rings that can be inserted to dampen the sound. The blue switch on the far right, for example, makes a very loud CLACK when you bottom out the key and I hit keys like someone trying to ring the bell on a strongman machine at the fairground, so this is important to me.
But after clicking and CLACKing I am still uncertain which one I like best. The blues actually feel nice to me and the noise isn’t really an issue since I’m just typing all by my lonesome here. The browns I find unsatisfying. They lack the satisfying CLACK of blues and feel like an inadequate compromise between the blues’ firmness and noise level.
The reds have very little CLACK and are fairly quiet as a result. The action is smoother than the browns, so they seem like a good choice if I decide noise is important after all. Possible drawback: accidental actuation if my fingers go rogue, since they require less force (especially compared to the blacks as noted below).
Blacks feel like firmer reds, with little difference in noise.
Clears feel firm but have less CLACK. Sort of a kinder, gentler blue, even if they require about the same force to actuate.
Finally, greens are, according to WASD’s mechanical keyboard guide, “almost identical to the Blue switches, but have a harder spring for a much higher actuation force.” This does not strike me as a good thing.
Reading over the above, I can rule out:
brown switches (unsatisfying compromise)
green switches (blues have the same CLACK but don’t require as much force)
clear switches (very similar to the greens)
black switches (no CLACK and requires a lot of force)
Of the remaining two:
blues have great CLACK and moderate actuation force
reds have no CLACK but require less force than blues
So it really comes down to CLACK or no CLACK. I am leaning toward CLACK.
I may bring out my DAS blue switch keyboard again to remind myself what blues are like. The eventual new keyboard will be an 87-key model, meaning it will not include the numeric keypad (which the Das and my current Logitech keyboards have). Smaller keyboards are more ergonomic and I don’t really use the numeric keypad that often (and can always get a separate one if I really missed it).
WASD lets you choose both the design and color of the keycaps. I’m still experimenting with the trillions of combinations but I’m liking this distinguished black and gray variation I came up with that uses a centered layout for the lettering:
I didn’t wear pants for the entire month of August. It only rained once, overnight while I was sleeping. Even the few cloudy days were warm. The smoky, hazy days were downright hot.
This calls for a haiku.
August was dry and hot
My pants would have been on fire
Solution: pants-free
Run 529 Average pace: 5:17/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 9:27 am
Distance: 5.04 km
Time: 26:42
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 19-20ºC
Humidity: 56%
Wind: light
BPM: 177
Weight: 157.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 4119 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
For once I actually got up and headed out for a run at the actual planned time. On a day I wasn’t planning to run.
But I figured with a movie in the afternoon and dinner after I wouldn’t be getting in a whole lot of activity, so better to get it done early.
With the forecast calling form warmer temperatures, I headed out around 9 a.m. and it was actually up to 20ºC by the time I finished my run, a 5K at the river.
Conditions were nice, with a soft breeze, the sun high enough to not get in the eyes, and enough canopy to make most of the run pleasantly shady. As expected, I pushed a little harder as I often do on the river, coming in with a pace of 5:17/km, one of my better 5Ks of the year. My BPM skyrocketed over yesterday, though, all the way to 177. Apparently I just couldn’t slow down.
My legs felt a bit stiff for the first few km but loosened up after that and I experienced no issues otherwise.
The trail was relatively quiet, a few cyclists and other runners were out. In the end this was perhaps an even better way to end my vacation runs–a quick, brisk and spontaneous jaunt. My next run should theoretically be Tuesday after work. The current forecast is for a high of 29ºC that day. I see profuse sweating in my near-future.
Today there was a solar eclipse, where the moon passes in front of the sun, blotting it out and making things darker (or just plain dark, depending on where you are). Back in the good old days people ran around in terror because they thought the world was ending.
That still happened today but it’s because Trump is president, not the eclipse.
At 86% totality, the eclipse over the Vancouver area was both neat and disappointing. The disappointing part is that even with only 14% of sunlight getting through, it was still bright enough (on a clear day) to only be a little dimmer than normal, similar to what you might see on a gloomy cloud-covered day.
On the neat side, the dimness did have a surreal “this ain’t right” quality to it, and shadows were even darker in relation. Trees were casting weird crescent-shaped shadows as the moon traversed across the sun’s path. I forgot to take pictures. Also, the temperature got noticeably cooler–not cold, but more pronounced than just steeping from the sunshine and into the shade would be.
Inevitably you see people do dumb things. As I headed downtown on the SkyTrain one guy wearing glasses with clip-on sunglass lenses (that did not appear to be special protective lenses) kept looking out and up at the sun, squinting and shielding his eyes with a hand. At one point he stopped and rubbed both eyes a good bit. That’s because you are damaging your sight, you dum-dum! When the rear-facing seat at the end of the train became free, he shifted to that so he could continue to stare at the sun. I seriously think he did damage to his vision. How can people be so utterly stupid about this? There was information about safety precautions all over the place.
Speaking of idiots, guess who else looked directly up at the sun?
It was still a spiffy, science-y event, though it has to take second place to the one I witnessed as a 15-year old in Duncan in 1979. That one was a total eclipse and having the day go from complete daylight to night in moments was very unsettling (but cool). This eclipse, though not total, still comes in ahead of the Bonnie Tyler song, though.
And today I kind of tipped over on my new bike and fell off a ramp into some bramble. I got a long but shallow scratch on my otherwise sexy left calf and about a 10 cm swath of abrasions on my lower left arm. On the plus side, my new gloves kept my hands in pristine condition!
But let me back up a bit.
For awhile I’ve been thinking about getting a bike again–my last was stolen from Tim’s garage by a safety-conscious thief (he took the helmet, too). I rode that one to work and really, it was okay for urban riding but even going over a curb made it feel like the frame would bend like a pretzel. After a suggestion from Jeff, I perused the selection of bikes at MEC and settled on a Ghost Kato, which sounds cool, of nothing else. There was a choice between 26 and 27.5″ tires but it became obvious quickly that 26″ is passe–you know, “Grandpa tires,” while 27.5″ is sexy and happening.
I’ll include a picture of my bike soon but here’s a generic shot for now:
I picked up a bunch of other things to take advantage of the 10%-off-with-purchase-of-bike deal:
stylish black helmet which I look dorky in, anyway
fingerless gloves
padded undies because I’ve been on bikes without padding for my butt and my butt was very cross with me after
water bottle and holder
a small kit bag for holding repair doodads (it goes behind and under the seat)
After a few adjustments and a couple loops around the guest parking at the condo, we headed out and up SFU, then rode down two trails. The first was wide but very much a downhill thing. I used the brakes a lot and found out they worked well. I only had one brief moment near the beginning where I hot a patch of loose gravel and felt the tires start to slide, but I maintained control.
Then we moved onto the second trail, which Jeff described as not as steep but more narrow. This seemed like a fair trade-off to me, so we ventured onto Dead Moped.
I almost immediately ran into trouble because although not steep, it was still downhill and very twisty and turny, requiring a degree of coordination that only existed in my imagination. I tried to channel my imagination into reality but the bike was firmly on the side of reality. I muddled along and then got to a point where somehow I was in the lead (I’m still not sure how that happened) and was navigating one of those narrow plank bridges, which are sometimes directly on the ground and other times elevated about a foot or so off of it. They look like this (this is actually taken from Dead Moped):
I went to the handy trailforks.com website, which has several nice photos and videos of the trail. I found one video and managed to grab a blurry still which you may gander at below:
Just past that tree on the left, where the bridge turns to the right…I turned to the left. I didn’t plan it that way, but somehow my combination of speed, balance (and lack thereof), and inexperience combined to where I could not correct quite enough. I very nearly stayed on the bridge, but in the end my balance shifted a little too much to the left and gravity took over. I had a moment to consider if I could put out my left leg to somehow brace myself but this bridge is elevated and my legs are not freakishly long, so I just toppled over onto my side.
A guy came up, seemingly out of nowhere and asked if I was okay. He offered a hand to help me up. I thanked him and said I was okay (except for proving what a noob I am when it comes to two-wheeled transportation). While it may be true that you never forget how to ride a bike, I can verify that it is quite possible to forget how to ride a bike well.
And here’s the damage, nothing a little Polysporin can’t fix:
Pretty minor, especially compared to actually embedding gravel into my hand last summer.
I walked my bike the rest of the way out of the trail (it wasn’t that far), not willing to risk finding another way to separate myself unexpectedly from the bike.
The ride along the rest of the route home (a little under 7 km) went without incident.
Overall, it was actually pretty fun, if terrifying from time to time. I’m flattered that Jeff (who rides these trails with the ease that most people would walk them) thought I could manage it. I later learned that Dead Moped is rated Blue–intermediate difficulty. At this point I’m probably best to stick to whatever color they use for “can barely stay upright on a bicycle.” But I’ll improve.
Today the sky was blue. This may seem like no big thing in the middle of August, even in Vancouver where the weather is known to be a bit on the soggy side.
What makes today’s blue sky so amazing and wonderful is that it’s the first time in about two weeks that the sky has been anything but a dull, yellow-tinged gray, thanks to the interminable smoke haze from forest fires a-far. The combination of a very strong high pressure ridge and smoke finally broke today with some southwesterly (re: normal) marine wind moving in. The haze isn’t 100% gone yet but it’s very minimal–the North Shore mountains are visible again. It’s like coming out of The Mist to discover the world is still there, which also happens to be an ending that is a thousand times better than the movie version.
With the promise of overnight showers, the rest of that stupid fine particulate matter should hopefully settle to the ground, which means the run on Monday should be much more pleasant–even if it’s raining!
