Tag Archives: featured

Sports! Sports! Sports!

I grew up in a small town. I loved sports. I played four sports throughout the year up until my senior year of high school. I wasn't spectacular but was pretty good at track so that made me passable at other sports.

My oldest is turning 14 soon. She plays soccer and dances. She will also most likely run track in high school next year. The problem is that I think the soccer commitment is ridiculous. She plays on a travel team in the fall and spring/summer. She also plays for her school team in the fall. Practice for her spring team starts in November - essentially two weeks after the fall season ends.

I keep reading about how parents are pushing the kids to do this. I'm sure there are parents that push their children in sports but the majority of parents I talk to don't like the time commitment. It is the organization that is pushing this.

I am happy that she is active and seems to enjoy it. I tell her she doesn't need to go to the offseason practices but she likes to do it. As long as it isn't too much for her, I guess we'll go with it. I'm just not sure she knows how much is too much.

This brings me to child #2. She will turn 12 this winter. She plays for the school volleyball team in the fall and dances. Volleyball is a few days a week in the fall. Dance is 1-2 days per week throughout the school year. She doesn't do any sports or physical activity in the summer. I worry that she doesn't get out and move enough. She used to play softball and basketball but as they got to be bigger time commitments, she wasn't that interested.

I just wish a sport was a sport. I don't know if it is a small town versus suburb thing or a generational thing but I just feel like there is too much specialization and not nearly enough playing of sports just for enjoyment.

First Monday Book Day: Goals

December is here. The final month of the year, where everyone starts publishing their "best books of the year" lists and I start to compile my reading list for 2015. More on that next month probably. This month is our last chance to meet our reading goals for 2014 (if we set any - I did, of course, and I tracked the whole thing on a spreadsheet, because that's who I am).

I had two goals for 2014.

1) Read 60 books (I usually set my goal somewhere around 50, then adjust as life happens). I'm about 50 pages from finishing my 58th book of the year right now, so things are looking good for that.

2) Read about one "big" book per month that I have wanted to read before, but never found the time. An attempt to clear away some of my backlog that really worked out well, I think. Read some really interesting books and checked off a few bucket-list books.

Here's my final list of "big" books for 2014 in general order of how much I enjoyed them (I'm going to start Midnight's Children next week and finish before the end of the month).

Author Title
Laszlo Krasznahorkai Seiobo There Below
David Markson This is Not a Novel
Georges Perec Life A User's Manual
Roberto Bolano The Savage Detectives
Bruno Schulz The Street of Crocodiles
+ Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Fyodor Dostoevsky The Idiot
Jorge Luis Borges Labyrinths
Neal Stephenson Cryptonomicon
John LeCarre The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
+ The Looking Glass War
Italo Calvino Invisible Cities
Haruki Murakami 1Q84
Kobo Abe The Woman in the Dunes
Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire
Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow
J.G. Ballard Concrete Island

So, what do you have left to read in 2014? What are you reading right now?

Diary of a 50 Year Old Widower

The cards and photos have long been lovingly put into a nice box and stored away.  The calls asking “so how you doing” have slowed to a trickle too.  Most of Elaine’s clothes have been brought over to Goodwill and I have started to move some of my stuff into her old dresser drawers.  The medical insurance has all been figured out and I haven’t seen a doctor’s bill or EOB in many weeks.  It’s been six months since I’ve become a widower and as time moves onward, the rhythm of a new life is starting to emerge.

Continue reading Diary of a 50 Year Old Widower

8 at Eight at 28

Got out for a cool run this morning with my running group.  Funny how during the week I try to get every minute of sleep I can in the morning, but on Saturday I'm up and at 'em for the long run in any temperature (28F this morning) and any weather.

Will be doing the Moustache Run in Mpls over the Thanksgiving weekend - did it last year and really enjoyed it.

 

First Monday Book Day: Reading in Translation

J.M.G. Le Clézio - DésertLast week, as we rolled south toward Kansas, Mrs. Hayes and I occupied our minds with podcasts. The pillowy ride of the new (to us) full-size Buick sedan and the monotony of eastern Iowa might have lulled us to sleep were it not for The Incomparable, The /Filmcast, Roderick on the Line, and Radiolab. "Translation," last week's Radiolab episode, got me thinking about the books I've read in translation, particularly the book I'm reading right now –  J.MG. Le Clézio's Désert, translated in my edition by C. Dickson.

This is my first modern French novel. I dutifully read, as I'm sure many of you did, Voltaire and Victor Hugo and Guy de Maupassant in high school. I might be forgetting a few. Since I don't speak French, I never read any of them in anything other than English, just like I'm reading Le Clézio. Mostly, reading this book is flying blind. I'm ignorant of any conventions in French literature, and completely reliant on C. Dickson to convey Le Clézio's entire persona as an author – characterization, phrasing, pacing, voice, everything except the plot. If Désert were a film by Godard or Melville I might have more to go on; I wouldn't need a translator to help with anything other than dialogue. But C. Dickson's my only lifeline to the ship Le Clézio is sailing across the Sahara. I'm over halfway through it, and while I can't say if I "get" it yet, I can say with conviction I'm in awe of the writing. Or is it the translation?

I read and translated a little Russian literature in Russian as an undergrad: Pushkin and Akhmatova and Gogol come to mind. I don't speak or read Russian well enough to read a book anything but haltingly, but at one time I got along enough to form a few opinions, mainly about poets. Blok and Akhmatova blew me away. I know enough about Russian literature and culture to have a decent idea of what an author or poet is doing or the society his work is engaging. With the French, I have no idea. (I will be even more lost when I finally get to Ha Jin's War Trash, hopefully by the end of the year.)

It's funny. Some of my favorite authors are those I can only read in translation. Murakami, for example. There are books of his I like better than others, but despite my near-complete ignorance of non-automotive Japan and my total Japanese illiteracy, he is definitely near the top of my list of favorite writers. How much of that do I owe to Murakami, and how much of it to his English translators, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel? I suppose I could answer that by saying I never recommend anyone read Constance Garnett's translations of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or anybody else. (Please. Read the newer and superior Prevar & Volokhonsky translations.) A good translator gets out of the way and imparts as much of the original author's vision and voice as possible, and a bad one can completely destroy the original while leaving the reader completely unaware of the demolition. The problem is knowing which translator has been at work.

What are you reading?

Don’t Tread on Me

A slow, sluggish run this morning with my Fleet Feet training group.  We did 8 miles, and it was cold outside, but I fell way behind.

At the end, I was looking at my running shoes (Brooks Ghost) and realized my tread on the outer right side of both shoes had worn down considerably. I got the last pair back in Sept - surprised they had worn down so much but I have been piling on the miles.

I bought a new pair (same model), and trying them on I could tell the immediate difference.  Looking forward to the next run (and the extra hour of morning sun we'll get with daylight savings Fall Back).

Here's an interesting article on what it will take for a human to break the 2-hour marathon record (Spoiler - it's not EPO).

http://rw.runnersworld.com/sub-2/

 

Mohonk Mountain

Nice 8 mile scramble through the trails around the Mohonk Mountain Preserve trails this morning - lots of cliff climbers out there today.

Plenty of color still in the Hudson Valley, but enough of the leaves are down so you can see the geological structures of this area. - awesome.  Some spa-time at Mohonk, and Osso-bucco/Nebbiolo for dinner - not bad.

Just finished (from the Mohonk library) the book The Long Run by Matt Long - incredible account on how a NYC fireman/Ironman got nailed by a bus, destroying most of his interior - and after being  stitched back together, had the verve to run the NYC Marathon, as well as finishing IronMan at Lake Placid.  Wow.

 

Keeping Track — The Hill

I wrote the following 6 years ago today.  I thought about it yesterday as I rode up that same hill with no problems.  It's been 6 years since I originally lost 40 pounds and have basically kept that weight off.  In fact, over the last couple months I have recommitted my self and have lost additional weight so that I am nearly 50 pound less than my early 2008 nadir.

 

Near Fort Snelling there is a very steep hill that connects a bike trail to the Mendota Bridge. The hill has a good 30+ degree slant and is long. For us flatlanders in the Midwest, it’s a pretty nasty hill for bike riders, the steepest I know of along the river. Early this summer I tried to ride up the hill but had to get off about mid-way and walk. I vowed that by the end of the summer I would be able to ride my bike all the way up that hill.

If life was a Hollywood movie, what would be seen next is a montage (with a kick-ass rock song on the sound track) of me exercising, training on other hills, working that hill and getting closer and closer to the top before I had to get off. But life isn’t a Hollywood movie with rockin’ montages. I did remember my vow and when I was riding my bike this summer I would attack any hill I came across a little harder. I hadn’t, however, been back to the Fort Snelling trail.

This being Minnesota, the bike riding season is fast coming to an end and my vow was weighing on me. Thankfully Saturday was a beautiful day and I had some time. I was going to see if I could make it up that hill. It might be my last time I had this season.

Coming up to the hill I was pretty confident, I noticed that other hills that had given me trouble earlier in the year were easily ascended but as “The Hill” drew nearer, my mind was clouded with doubts. First among them is that the hill trail is perpendicular to the river trail, meaning I wouldn’t have a running start. But more worrisome was what if I failed? What would that do to my confidence? Would that mean the hundreds of miles I put on my bike this summer would be for naught? I approached the hill with trepidation and had further worries when I came to the hill and, due to the nice weather, found it full of other walkers and bikers – I would have to weave my way around them.

Life throws hills at us all the time. Relationships, work, finances, old houses and cars, etc., seem to constantly present some sort of obstacle that we need to overcome. Just dealing with those day-to-day obstacles can be physically and mentally tough, sometimes overwhelmingly so. But I think it’s also important challenge ourselves with hills of our own making. It doesn’t matter what it is, it can be improvements in your personal relationships, it can be that you’re finally going to learn how to play guitar, it can be stop smoking or lose weight. The important thing is to set a realistic goal and accomplish it. Just by doing that you can gain more confidence to address all those other problems that life throws at you.

So yes I made it up the hill. In fact about a third of the way up I knew I was going to make it. It was a lung buster and wasn’t easy but I made true my June vow. Even more satisfying than making it up the hill was the fact that I passed two guys probably 20 years younger than me walking their bikes. Will making it up that hill change my life? Probably not, but who knows maybe it will a little bit, and if I can make little changes for the better, maybe they will add up to bigger changes over time. Know what my next goal is? To stay in shape over the winter so that on the first nice weekend in April when I bring my bike out for the first time, I attack that hill and once again make it up without stopping.

How about you, any hills you’re trying to conquer?