From Eternity to Here
Posted Wed, January 27, 2010 - 8:35 PM
science, physics
What could this possibly be?
SubscribePete Curtis
A software architect, endurance athlete, and musician living in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA.
This is my own humble place to share the things I enjoy.
contact (at) petestuff (dot) org
What could this possibly be?
I'm starting to get back into my language series, doing some more (time-consuming) online research to find traces of linguistic diversity. And I feel the need to vent for a minute.
One of the most helpful resources has been the Ethnologue. It's perhaps the most complete assessment of the world-language situation available anywhere. Another useful resource has been Global Recordings. But if you take even a minimal amount of time on either site, you'll find some disturbing similarities.
Time for another beginning-of-the-year meeting to plan our outdoor adventures! Last week we met at the Happy Gnome, fittingly, to discuss the future of Gnome Hunters.
This year is better than last, since we have at least three good expedition level races - the biggest one is Untamed New England, which will take place in the Dixville Notch area of northern New Hampshire (which I've been to, and it's beautiful). There's also a 3-5 day near Las Vegas in the fall, and finally, Fat Otter Adventure Sports is making their first foray into expedition length events with a 2-3 day in Wisconsin. That's right in our backyard, and probably worth it, even if they haven't had the experience of other race organizations.
We've contracted a bit this year too, with five primary members, although Corey is looking to do the Spring 12 hour and move on to longer events if she likes what she finds. We talked a lot about one-time subs (since they're always necessary), and about rebuilding Gnomads to at least have a sport team.
Brian has spent a lot of time working on our web site and Facebook page. It makes me think that this might be the time to start courting sponsors again, although with the state of the economy and based on long experience, sponsorship for AR is always hit and miss unless you're a nationally competitive team. Right now, I think we're just at the cusp of being players on the national scene - with results like our 13th place at Nationals year before last and 6th at MIX. We even picked it up beyond either of those two races at the Wild 24 hour race, and perhaps this is the year to move on to the next level.
Corey and Val are both great runners. I already gave credit to Val in a prior post, and Corey's best marathon was somewhere around 3:15. That's a definite difference from previous race years. I'd like to spend some time this spring helping them with mountain biking, since that should bring us to skills parity with the best team in Minnesota - and likewise, with many of the best teams in the country.
The day before I left Hawaii, Annie and I were browsing the shelves at Barnes & Noble before she headed to work next door. I was perusing the local interest shelves and I bought this book for the plane ride home:
Its author, David Lewis, has had years of experience sailing the world's oceans. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he undertook a study of the fast vanishing art of indigenous navigation across the open expanses of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. He sought out native navigators across the Pacific and learned many of their techniques in the most effective way possible - by actually voyaging with them for many days at a time and essentially becoming apprenticed to them. In 1976, as part of the bicentennial celebrations in Hawaii, he was one of the crew members who sailed the 65-foot voyaging canoe Hōkūle‘a (which is the Hawai‘ian name for Arcturus) from Hawaii to Tahiti using only traditional techniques, no instruments, and no Western knowledge.
In the book, he details the essential techniques he learned from these very competent navigators, and tries to convey the completely different worldview that informed their practice. In particular, none of the navigators he worked with were ever really able to understand nautical charts, something we would consider absolutely basic to the task. Nevertheless, it was pretty amazing to find so many correspondences between the navigational techniques of the islanders and the techniques many of us use every time we run an O-course, or do an adventure race.
More detail (much more!) below the fold.
The first orienteering event of 2010 this afternoon. It was our usual winter format - a mass start, 90-minute score-O - which meant that everybody would get back at about the same time, and there wouldn't be any late finishers holding up control retrieval on these short winter days. The morning started out a bit raw, in the teens with a southwest breeze.
As usual, much much more behind the link.
Today was our third annual "Ski to Beer" day where a bunch of us get together and XC ski from Wirth Park to the end of the Mall in Uptown, then go out for a late lunch plus refreshments. I missed last year because I was in Seattle, but this year we had a bigger group than ever - Stephen, Mike, Julia, Ian, Molly, Molly, Justin, Darryn, Jim, Tom, Kelly, Paula, Peter, Andrew, Jesse, Alan, Earl, Jason, Andrea, Waima, and Brian! And I feel like I'm forgetting somebody. Then Kari and baby Sydney came down to meet us at Old Chicago afterwards.
We rambled from the Par 3 warming hut through the Front 9, skirted J.D. Gardens and headed over by the Quaking Bog before crossing 394 and getting out on the lakes. Minneapolis Parks runs a grooming machine right down onto the snow-covered ice and packs down a pretty nice path for everyone. The classic tracks were in good shape and fast across the lakes, although I could have done without the gradually increasing headwind and the temperatures hovering near 5°F. Still a fun day with lots of good company.
For your viewing pleasure. It's a little bit bumpy, but that's the nature of running on uneven terrain.
A bit over a half hour of skiing (it was only 2°F out), and then two hours dinking around with my video software. However, I did figure out how to use a low resolution version of my captured footage to do the editing, and then re-render it with the HD original. It's called "offline editing". Man, is there a lot to learn in the video production world.
Finally! It's exactly what it sounds like. Gnome Hunters now has a Facebook page, just like several hundred million others. The nice part, though is that we've uploaded 1000+ photos from our various and checkered race history - fertile ground for risking the "overexposure" on today's social media... it's a good thing adventure racing is such a wholesome sport. I wouldn't want to have any trouble with photos of me partying too hard!
Oh... that reminds me of something.
Knob Noster State Park, in the beautiful state of Missouri, was the site of my first Possum Trot, way back in 2002. I think it was just me, Ian, and Brian May at the time, and the other two had decent runs there. Which means Brian won, by a lot. In contrast, I was overwhelmed by the map and the course, and ended up DNFing. But it was only my second year in the sport, and I was wasn't quite in peak shape yet :) This year, I could rightly say I had a little more experience, particularly with Missouri style ridge-and-reentrant terrain, and felt good about going back.
And I ran well. Well, for the first 27 controls. I wasn't worried about the navigation this time, I was worried about the competition!
