Barefooting and sandal making

So I went for a barefoot run yesterday and have come to the conclusion that (A) having double jointed toes= a bad time running barefoot on concrete and (B) my left leg is shorter than my right. I spent most of college running barefoot but that was on the soft Kansas prairie and didn't destroy the bottom of my feet. This city barefootin' isn't very fun, it consists almost entirely of dodging tiny broken glass chards and feeling the concrete sand away the bottoms of your feet. So I'll be sticking to my nike free's for now until I can make a nice running sandal. I was thinking of something like what the Tarahumara Indians wear or something similar to ancient greeco/roman sandals. I still have to find a good base for the sandal though and I haven't figured out where to get leather straps.

WIND!!!

I did a 3hr long bike today. It was more difficult than anticipated. There was 20mph winds gusting to 30mph. I almost got blown off the road a few times, but I got all 3hrs in. Up all the hills on the IM course too! Now I'm off to run for a while.

So this what a good workout feels like!

Today I had good training sessions, and I'm so glad. The last month was awful, and this weekend I was overwhelmed by the bad training that went on. The past month was a lesson in what not to do. Loosing count during swim workouts, cycling the IM bike course with 30 mph crosswinds in the rain, running out of fluids and calories during runs and last week was the worst of them all.
Last week I had 2 flat tires and shredded my outer casing, forcing me walk 10 miles in cycling shoes. Last week I overheated in every swimming workout I did, turns out the Y likes their pool water warmer than my body does, 83* F is too warm! Last week also saw me going from a half marathon run the week before to not being able to run at all.

So today, when I was able to swim all 2200yds and bike 1hr 15 minutes with out incident; it was a GREAT VICTORY! What a confidence booster! This weekend I was contemplating not even doing IM wisconsin, so to have such good workouts put me back on track. Thank God for small victories because without some progress, something to show me this training is actually worth it, there is no way I would still be training.

Rant Alert!!

What do I want to do when I grow up?? I don’t know. It’s hard when you don’t have any ambitions. I once thought I would be a car designer. I couldn’t hack it as a REAL artist, so I had to abandon that dream. Then I thought about Civil Engineering, and Engineering as a career in general. I loved the Idea but when I barely passed remedial math in high school that was decided for me. Besides, I really didn’t want to be in school for 6 years. I thought what’s left, well there is this auto restoration school. I decided I’d go there and figure out what I wanted to do later.

It’s now Later and all I know is what I spent 4 years getting is neither what I’m good at nor what I actually want to do. Now I’m thinking about running, not because I’m any good at it or have shown any particular propensity for running long distances FAST(in fact quite the opposite, I can run forever at a slow pace.)but because I love it. I do run long, I do train hard, I do love running but ultimately being a professional athlete is not something you decide to do and then do it. You can have the best work ethic in the world but if you don’t have natural born genetic talent you’ll never win, which is what I want to do.

So what else, I thought about coaching but again you actually have to be a good athlete if you want to have clients. I really don’t know nothing catches my fancy that I’m also good at. I’m mediocre at best at everything that I do. I have to work my ass off for every little advancement in any given area of my life, and these advancements to me seem huge, but other people don’t notice and still comment on how I under perform. So what am I supposed to do I love to travel, but I’m absolutely scared of other people, not because they are dangerous, or untrustworthy, I have in fact found the opposite is true everywhere I go but that I’m terrified of actually having to talk about myself to others. I usually get horribly insulted, that has been the rule, not the exception. The same has been true everywhere I’ve lived; Europe, the east coast, the Midwest, the northeast, a tourism job is out.

So what the heck am I going to do. I’ve been out of work for 7 months now trying to figure out what I really want to do. I’m no closer to figuring that out than I was 7 months ago. I’ve tried getting work in a bike shop but apparently 4 years of auto restoration does not make me qualified to work on bicycles. It sucks, I have two degrees, one in technology, and one it history and neither is a viable career option. I love history but I’m not willing to suffer through grad school just so I can get a shitty job at some community college for the rest of my life. To do anything with history you need a PHD from a top school, known the world over for its history program. I really don’t know what to do because apparently the only thing I’m good at is intellectual thought and manual labor, neither of which excite, or inspire me.

I’m honestly considering the HOBO option, that is drop out of society and float around for a while. It seems like my only real option considering I’m either over qualified for a job or under experienced. Seems like a Damn conspiracy against 20 somethings! I’d love to move out of the country but you have to have a job in the country you move to first!

So what’s the conclusion of all this? Beats me, I still don’t know what I’m going to do and no one seems willing or able to hook me up. Those of you who actually have good jobs out of college are very lucky. Seems like my only choice is to beg for a McDonald's job at $6.00 an hour!

What a Fucking lie, you go to college get your degree and you get a good job. That was what colleges and my parents sold to me. Turns out the job is only never guaranteed and is only available to you if you have connections and a willingness to lie, steal, break the rules, and love the stock market. I went to a job interview, with a company I will not mention for fear of being sued.

The interview included a day where you would go along and help out to see if it’s what you wanted to do. So I go and do it, the job description included “work in sports marketing, with major organizations,” the reality was it was a door to door salesman job selling trinkets from the major sports leagues, not what I wanted to do but a job is job. The company, showed me how to sell, they said present it as if you were representing a charity organizations and if the customers would donate to the “charity” they would get the product. They took cash “donations” posing as a “Charity.” Quite illegal, they asked me is this something that you want to do I say NO WAY!!!

They said ok well good luck. Problem is I got a ride from one of the “Salesman” out to some small Wisconsin town like 50 miles from where my car was and they told me they would not give me a ride back unless I accepted the job. I had to hitch hike back. Luckily wearing a suit and tie I didn’t look like mass murder and was able to get a ride. Is this really the way America works!!! Lets cheat, and steal our way to riches! That should be the motto on the dollar bill not “In God We Trust.”

but I digress…

So what am I really going to do? This experience and others like it has soured my desire to work at all. Why the hell should I compromise my morals just to get and keep a job!?! I’d rather be a pauper than work for the American corporate machine. Well, I guess the search continues, hopefully I will eventually find a job. Something I’m both good at and Love to do.

The Future of the Automobile

I just read an article in this month's EVO magazine about future European Union emissions standards and how they will affect sports car manufacturers. In this article author John Griffiths reports that the EU is thinking of a ban on cars that get less than 35 miles per gallon, and cars that produce more than 130G C02/km. He writes that both Porsche and Italian Supercar manufacturers Ferrari and Lamborghini will pull out of the European auto market because it is impossible for them to meet emissions and fuel economy standards and still have similar performance to what they currently have.

What does this mean for the automobile in Europe, in the world?

Clearly the automobile as we currently view it is doomed. In as little as 10 years the EU could legislate the Internal Combustion Engine out of existence, and other governments will follow. Is the US, Canada, Australia or Japan next? I think so. We now need to start thinking about real, viable solutions to this problem. Obviously we the general public won't be able to change world wide government policy, but what we can do is come up with solutions to work around the pollution problems. There are alternative already out there but how many are actually viable?

Alternative fuels are very costly to the environment, plant based fuels reqire a lot of fossil fuels and toxic pesticides and herbicides to plant and grow them and with the emerging worldwide food shortage they become the ultimate in feel good, opulent, excessive consumption. Those fields should be growing food to feed people not our cars. Alt-Fuels are out, what about Hybrids?

The Hybrid relays heavily on the Internal Combustion Engine and outside of the city during highway cruising virtually never uses its electric motor. Hybrids also do not do much to improve on CO2 emissions. A Toyota Prius that drives 10km in the city will spew 1045g co2, not very good. Clearly the Hybrid will be out. What about pure electrics?

Electrics are very good if you don't want to drive across continents in a single trip. Right now the best electrics could give about 300miles range on a single charge, that's great, but what if you want to drive from California to New York? In today's car you could do it non-stop in 2-2 1/2 days if you're not speeding. With an electric you have to stop every 300 miles to recharge it, and there are currently no quick ways of fully recharging a car. You must stop and let it charge overnight. The trip would take weeks!

There is one technology left, it's a technology that most people think of as old fashioned, impractical, and unsafe. That technology is Steam. At the turn of the 20th century in America, steam cars were the second most common vehicle on the roads. It was second only to Electrics, it was second because it was expensive, and somewhat dangerous, but it was well know.

Steam technology and operation was well know and well understood at the turn of the century. Steam died out after World War One because boiler technology had not been able to advance as fast as Internal Combustion Engine technology, and Steam car manufactures stuck with tried and true manufacturing techniques common the the 19th century carriage industry, in short they did not adapt to new technology. But the steam car works.

In 1906 the Stanley brothers of The Stanley Steam Car Company set the land speed record with one of their cars in 127.659MPH. On the second run, the run in which the car crashed it was rumored to have been going more than 170MPH. Production models of the Stanleys cars could do 100MPH but there was a better steam car. It was the Doble Steam car, only 40 were produced in the late 20s and early 30s but they were and still are the best steam cars ever produced. By the 1920's boiler technology had caught up with other technologies and it only took 45 seconds to make a full head of steam as opposed to the hour or so it would take with 1900s technology.

The Doble had the potential to restart the steam car market but because Abner Doble, the designer was such a perfectionist he would not let any car out the door with out first installing the latest technologies so the cars cost so much and were so slow in production that the steam car died with the Doble.

The point of all this history is to show just how practical steam still is. The last of the steam cars were fast, convenient, fuel efficient, and luxurious. They had great range in the order of 500 miles or more and they ran on any fuel, and you would fill up both the fuel tank and the boiler(with water) just like you would with an internal combustion engine. Why is this technology in the past?

We now have on demand water heaters in our homes that provide instant hot water the second you turn on the faucet. Why can't this technology be adapted to boil water instead of just heat it. We now have super efficient steam turbines capable of thousands of horse power and virtually no maintenance. All the systems nessesary for the modern steam car exist; fast efficient boilers, and efficient engines that are also lightweight. The boiler could be electric, eliminating green house gas emissions, and the whole system could be 100% condensing eliminating the need to fill up with water. Best of all we would be able to keep our sports cars.

Steam powered sports cars would be fast, light, have great handling due to the low weight of modern steam engines, and have the range that us modern drivers want. The future of the automobile will be diverse and it will mirror the early history of the automobile in that there will be many competing propulsion systems. This time around, though, I think that Steam has a real chance of winning out and becoming the propulsion system of choice for the next century. What do you say, let's put our energy into throwing off internal combustion and the limits of fossil fuels and lets take on EXTERNAL combustion(Steam) and look forward to future of clean powerful automobiles.

Traffic patterns of the 21st century

As I was surfing the internet the other day I came across an interesting article about city planning, and traffic control in the Netherlands. The article "European Cities Do Away With Traffic Signs,(http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html)" it is quite interesting.



In the Netherlands, city planners are removing street signs, traffic lights, no parking signs, and even lane markings. They want all forms of traffic to interact in a more human, less regulated way. They say that all that is bad about traffic is improved with deregulation. Planners say that it forces motorists to be more careful about how they drive and their speed.
I cannot speak from experience but I think I would be a nervous wreck competing with pedestrians, cyclists, runners, old ladies walking at .5mph down the middle of the street,etc. I don't know if I would be able to handle not having lanes, or some sort of regulation at intersections.

I could to deal with the increase in bicycle traffic, but I couldn't deal with people just walking down the middle of the street. This no regulation idea is a terrible Idea. What happens when traffic increases as cities grow, and how would such a lack of regulation work in American cities with grid street patterns? People are not that civilized in America, manners don't exist anymore. I don't think this system could work in an American city.

I am for some deregulation, parking where ever you want for example, but with no regulation and such high population density it would just be a nightmare! Cars wouldn't be very practical on streets who's speed is realistically limited to the top speeds of the slowest user. I would go as far to say that the current automobile could not exist in these types of traffic situations.

What European Planners want us to do is go back to the middle ages. Their cities might be able to handle that, but a Modern Grid street city could not. The photo included in this post is a street scene c. 1910 in Chicago. If you look up American street scene photographs from the turn of the century, it is utter chaos. The streets are jammed with every type of vehicle imaginable and they are literally jammed! These photographs are the strongest evidence against deregulation of traffic.

Our entire road system would have to be rebuilt to allow for such a lack of regulation. In old European cities roads wind, they are not straight, they have narrow alleyways, and few roads. The roads they do have, seem to have a natural flow.

American cities on the other hand, are standardized. They were build with the automobile and bicycle in mind, and were designed to work with the regulation of traffic. Having streets that go North, South, East and West at unregulated intersections would cause traffic jams.

Everyone cannot go every direction at once. That was the point of regulating traffic. I do not think the European planners could import their anarchy to the modern city with much success. If this plan did cross the Atlantic it could only be used in limited areas and it could not be city wide. American cities are not designed to handle traffic like that, it would just result in widespread gridlock.

Technology and Society

I can't help but think that this western world that we live in just isn't good enough. I keep seeing all these technological advances, and new ways of communicating, and new gadgets, and things meant to entertain us, and keep thinking that this isn't the way it's supposed to be.

It seems like all this progressive technology never lives up to what it promises. I look back on the industrial revolution and see a crescendo of life altering and life improving technologies. Then suddenly it seems from about WWII onwards the promise that all this knowledge and science and technology holds becomes less meaningful and less good and becomes something more akin to an unstoppable monster.

We are loosing our very humanity. It used to be that people would actually talk to each other, face to face. Then came computers and cellphones and the internet and it's all gone. Even as I blog on the internet there is no real social interaction, no reading of body language, no smells, or tactial sensations. It doesn't seem real.

I see the western world and see that we are all withdrawing from society and I hate it. I loved technology, I used to dream of being the next Edison, or Henry Ford, inventing the next big thing, the next life altering technology, but I see now that technology cannot fix the problems of the world.

It takes people face to face, discussing, arguing, planning, thinking, and yes, sometimes fighting. I want that. I want to be in a real society, a real culture, something tangible, something physical.

These computers are great machines, but they are just that, machines. No more capable of being human, than a tree could be human, and yet we treat these machines as extensions of our own bodies. Our tongues, our minds, our memories, and we even let these machines mimic the physical world.

I don't dispute the amazing capabilities these machines have to do work, work that would take millennia, in some cases for humans to do, but they are still just machines. I used to long for life in the 1920's but as I got older and I studied the 1920's I realized that they weren't that great, and I began to long for the 19th century and then I read Thoreau and longed for times even earlier, pre industrial revolution.

I realized that what happened in the industrial revolution was just a precursor to today. The beginning of the disconnect that is making itself evident in my generation. Technology used to evolve over centuries, and society had time to evaluate the good and the bad of new technologies. That is not the case anymore, it just comes at us too fast, ever changing, never content, ever improving, never perfect.

I long for the good old days. Days when life was short, and brutish, but at least it was real. People used to live in communities, tribes, cities, nations that were based on real person to person contact. Those are the days I miss.

Technology is great but what good is it if it takes our humanity away? What good is it if it robes us of human contact, and real physical near-distance communication.

What I absolutely hate about this hyper connected, but still lonely existence we call modern living is the total and complete lack of privacy, secrecy and personal rights. It used to be, before the twentieth century that biggest intrusion into your personal life was the town gossip. Now the government, Big brother, corporations, your employers, and random strangers all know what your up to. That GPS, while great if you don't have a map can also track you. That Email you sent out bashing your boss could come back to haunt you. There is no privacy, only the illusion of privacy, and forget about rights to secrecy. They know what your up to and that just sucks!

I long for the days before the microchip, before the transistor, before trains, planes, or automobiles, before Gasoline, or steam, or even steel, before police(yes, there was a time), before Shire reeves, and kings, and czars, and dukes before all of that. You see because, while life was short and brutish back in those days, life was pure, you knew your purpose, you only had a few options, only a few possessions, you were free to do as you pleased as long as you fed, clothed, and housed your family. If indeed you had a family at all.

There are only a few jobs in the world that I want, and sadly all of them have been taken, long ago, and been made completely obsolete. I don't want to be an inventor any more, I see that technology doesn't solve problems it only magnifies, or creates new ones. I don't want to be involved in this modern life.

No, the life I want to live and the people I look up to are the adventurers, the explorers, the traders that journeyed across vast distances of the globe, over the alps or through deserts carrying that little trinket from a distant culture. That real tangible item, made, or found, or grown by a real human being from another place. Or the messenger, traveling across vast distances to deliver an important message, to foster communication, person to person, the Telecommunication of old.

Those are the people I look up to, those are the people I want to be like. It is the reason I am an athlete, so that I can do what those ancient people did. Move through God's magnificent creation, exploring, learning, and communicating with people all over the world. That is what life should be about, this technology is just a dangerous distraction forcing us to give up our very humanity for sake of the machine.

I wish I could give up this glorified type writer for real society but, if I did that I would have no society, no community, no people, so for now I'll keep typing, and continuing to be just another slave to the machine.