The Sofy Cloth

My fifteen dollar made-in-China Aspen Sports Watch came with some pretty specific instructions about its “funtion.” Yesterday I shared with you how its insurance card said “this product would be insuranced all functions well” by the company. The owner’s manual grabbed your attention right away. (Below: My Aspen Watch still going strong at 3:37 during the NYCM, even if I'm not.)

PAY ATTENTION MATTERS

. Becatse the electron meter made by precise electron spares, so you can’t dismantle sillfully, except appoint expert.
. It can’t be pushed button underwater while you swimming.
. It must be repaired right now by the appoint expert while there have some water vapor.
. The electron meter can bear the generalshake. But it must be avoid within strong collide. Strong shake. Used rudely and falled on the spolit place.
. It can’t be used in extremely hot or bitter cold weather.
. It can’t be washed in chemistry matters. Soap. Otherwise it will corroded the rubber sheet of the surface. So it can only be cleaned in sofy cloth.
. It can’t be carried in strong electric field and static electricity cytle etc.
. Lot electricity will be lossed if long using cool light crystal.
. Cool light is not to be seen under sunlight.

I have enjoyed this little instruction booklet even more than the watch, which I don’t use anymore. The timepiece sits on a shelf fifteen months after my 2006 NYCM, still showing that marathon’s net time of 3:52:34, with its “alarum” going off at 7 am every morning.

But from reading these delightful directions, I know the Aspen Sports Watch can “bear the generalshake” so long as the “strong collide” is avoided. If you invented this watch, you would want it to bear your name too, and you certainly would be appalled if it was “used rudely.”

I think General Shake created the “sofy cloth” too, with which you can clean “the rubber sheet of the surface” without having to resort to washing it “in chemistry matters.” I’ll bet the sofy cloth could clean anything. (Right: Is that a beauty on my right wrist or what?)

That’s what I would like to obtain the franchise for, the sofy cloth. Anybody know how I can contact General Shake?

General Shake

Before the 2006 NYCM I bought an Aspen "running" watch at a drug store counter for $15. It was single function stopwatch/wristwatch and it took me through the five boroughs, exactly recording my time of 3:52:34. Manufactured in China, I call it my General Shake watch, imagining him to be the inventor of the timing device as well as the brother of the more famous General Tso, creator of the tasty chicken dish. The timer's instructions are as hilarious as they are incomprehensible. I am not making this up.

The instructions are a half page of written text and a page and a half of schematics with brief explanations accompanying each diagram. They are a little hard to follow, despite the lavish illustrations. For instance:

STANDARD SIGNAL AND FUNCTOR

TO SHOW ALARUM TIME PRESS S2 UNBEND, REMAIN NERMAL.

It identies the power source as

(Bettery: Cr2016)

The really funny stuff is in the written instruction section:

MORE FUNTION SWIMMING SPORTS WATCH INSTRUCTIONS

INSURANCE CARD

This product would be insuranced all functions well by our company, since you buy it within one year. If the product malfunction, our company would injust or repair it free.
But when following conditions happened, you should pay the ray material fee.
. When you didn't obey the pay attention matters lead to the product damage.
, Battary were used up and appearance fade, scar etc. You must show the insutance card when it repaired.
Date buyed:
the retail dealer's seal:
(The card will effective after sealed by te retail dealer.)

Next Up:

PAY ATTENTION MATTERS

...electron meter can bear the generalshake. But it must be avoid within strong collide. Strong shake. Used rudely and falled...

General Shake wrote this section, I'm guessing. Wait til you read about the sofy cloth.

Fantasy Football

Is Tom Terrific going to complete his dream season in Super Bowl XLII on Sunday? Or are Osi, Justin, Michael, and Fred going to rain on his parade? (Left: Working on the Brady Bunch. Tom's ex, Bridget Moynahan.)

I already completed my dream season. I won my Fantasy Football league's championship. My team was (ahem) the DC Spinsters.

Two years ago I was a novice at it and lacked savvy. I got knocked out of the playoffs in the first round, but I won the shadow playoffs, made up of the first-round losers, and came in fifth.

Last year I made the championship game but the opposing QB, a guy named Marc Bulger, had a hall-of-fame week and I lost. Marc who? Exactly.

This year I won it all.

My secret was to let the computer draft my team. It strictly applies a formula to the needs of your team versus players available when your turn comes up, while everyone else is playing hunches and using rank favoritism to pick players.

Then I made big trades and scoured the waiver wire for pickups. Before the season started I traded my starting WR and RB, two big name players, for Randy Moss and Clinton Portis. Neither Moss nor Portis had done much the year before so they were a gamble. They both turned out to be scorers who had banner years and paid terrific dividends. (Right: Tom's current, Gisele Bundchen.)

You have to give value to get value. Late in the season I traded the best tight end, Antonio Gates, for a productive RB coming back from a mid-season injury. I was able to do this because I picked up the Redskins' TE, Chris Cooley, on waivers. He was very productive and had his best year, and the RB I acquired was prolific as well.

Lastly I did not change my lineup at all during the final five weeks. This drove league members batty, who were playing weekly match-ups (essentially, game-time hunches).

Fantasy Football is a godsend for the NFL, a marketing dream. In recent years I had fallen away from devoting my Sundays to watching football on TV. All the regular season games seemed to be the same. I could name only four or five NFL players. Suddenly I found myself watching the Tennessee Titans play the Jacksonville Jaguars to see if Reggie Williams would catch a ten-yard pass and pick up a Fantasy Football point. I was delirious if he scored a TD (six points). Reggie who? Exactly. (Below: My man Reggie.)

Some people in the league subscribed to NFL services and got live feeds. They’d be watching two games on two TVs, listening to a third on the radio, keeping track of yet another game in the corner of their computer and be getting live information on players in the red zone at that exact moment streaming across the top of their laptop screens. Can you spell revenue bonanza?

If the NFL ran its games back-to-back-to-back all day Saturday and Sunday, half the men in America would not emerge from their houses during weekends in the fall. Ever.

Fantasy Football. A football fan's dream and a football widow's nightmare.

Half Done

The Reebok Wirefly National Half-Marathon Training Group Program I run with on Saturdays is half over. We had our eighth long run on Saturday. (Left: Jeannie's group forming up outside Gotta Run,)

Jeannie was back from her travels (Germany, India, Egypt, Jordan and Israel, the Pakistan segment was cancelled because of the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Bhutto) so she took the novice group on a nine-mile tour of the heart of DC (Iwo, Key Bridge, the Georgetown Waterfront, Rock Creek Park, the Mall, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon). This is a woman who gets around!

(Right: Wintertime on the Mall.) Sasha was out of town so I took over her intermediate group. We attached ourselves to Matt's advanced group and ran twelve miles through South Arlington at a 9:30 pace.

The area is a warren of raised highways down there and Matt showed us how to get from the north-south Mt. Vernon Bike Trail which runs along the Potomac to the east-west W&OD Bike Trail which runs forty miles out past Leesburg. The W&OD maddeningly stops a mile short of the Potomac and is a veritable dead-end.

(Left: Wintertime on the Tidal Basin.) Making your way from the Mt. Vernon Trail to the W&OD involves obscure twists and turns along the city streets of Alexandria to a pedestrian bridge over twelve lanes of I-395 at Shirlington, a charming section of Arlington comprised of restaurants and shops. This route is known for the most part only to bicyclists, who are usually the only fit people in the area who know how to get from Virginia to DC without taking the hilly Custis Trail in North Arlington. After years of talk, money has finally been appropriated to extend the W&OD one more mile to the Potomac.

Coming back we ran the eleventh mile up Ridge Road, a long steep hill in South Arlington infamous to local runners. I was leading at what I thought was a strong pace, but as I huffed and puffed up the hill looking desperately for the crest, I could hear Matt and his group members casually chatting while following along right behind me. After the run Jeannie and Not Born To Run made time to go out for coffee with me so the morning provided an excellent start to the weekend. (Right: Matt's fast group made me an honorary member last week,)

Uh, whatever

I got in a little family hot water last fall when I received an email from one of my sisters saying that my nephew had become engaged to some woman he'd met on some trip he'd taken. I didn't know the woman but that sounded nice. When they set a wedding date, I supposed I'd focus on it and see if I could go.

My sister was outraged. None of her siblings sent her son a congratulatory email. She definitely had a check list going. I asked when the wedding was taking place so that I could circle the date on my calendar.

She said that it was going to be sometime during the summer. Of 2009. In Canada.

Ahh! I don't have a 2009 calendar yet, but I sure do have plenty of time to get a passport.

More recently I received a call from my sister inquiring whether I was likely to attend. For a week. In Canada. On some indeterminate date in the summer of 2009. And would I be bringing a S.O?

I'm not even dating currently. But at least my sister didn't ask if any of my three estranged sons, who haven't spoken to anybody on my side of the family for five years, would be coming.

It sounded like some list was being created. Some talk was evidently underfoot about renting a family compound so that all of the future in-laws from the states could gather together to bond or commune on the celebrated union or something. For a week. In Canada. On some indeterminate date in the summer of 2009.

Without hesitation I said to put me down as a yes on all counts.

What would you have done?

Happy Birthday, Dad

My father was born on this day during the roaring twenties. I was present when he died in 1986 after a courageous battle with lung cancer. I remember my mother standing over him weeping quietly, my brother sitting next to him with a long, set face, and my father obviously choosing that exact moment to leave us because it was time.

He was the most influential person in my life. Father, husband, lawyer, scholar, soldier, leader, doer, ethical man.

He just got things done with no fanfare. In WW2 he was a radioman in the Marines. At the battle of Okinawa he was atop a ridgeline during a torrential downpour when his aerial was struck by lightning.

This was one of the few war stories he ever told, none of which involved "combat." It came up in relation to another family member's description of a close encounter with lightning.

He said he was alone on a hilltop transmitting in the rain when suddenly there was a brilliant flash and a terrific sound. He was dazed and looked down to see sparks shooting from his fingertips. Then it got quiet and he realized that a lightning bolt had struck his extended antenna.

That was all he said about it but I asked him what he did next. I had visions of the forties equivalent of dialing 911 to get medical attention there fast, at least to look him over.

He said, "Oh, I got up, ambled around for a minute, decided I was okay and so I went back to transmitting."

Those were the days. That's the type of man he was. That's how he spoke. He was a hero to me.

More beginnings

Yesterday I tole you about the single best inspiration I got when I first started running in 2000, the comment to go longer.

Today I’ll tell you what was the single best advice I received at that time, the suggestion to run early. I consider these two conversations, both so different, to be the linchpins of whatever success I have enjoyed as a runner, I really do. I can relive both conversations in my mind’s eye as if they occurred eight days ago instead of eight years ago.

I was talking with a colleague at work about my effort to lose weight by running and dieting. She said simply, "Run in the morning. That way you’ll never have an excuse not to run."

So simple and yet so...true. Her advice immediately took hold in me and I developed the habit of arising from bed, donning my running apparel, going to the curb and beginning my run in about 3-4 minutes. I would run 2.1 miles out and back at a swift pace and be back in under twenty minutes. I would head inside and enter the shower in about 2-3 minutes. That was it. I went from lying in bed to entering the shower, my run already done, in twenty-five minutes.

I stayed with this routine for at least three years until it became ingrained. I developed a liking for running alone. It gave me time to reflect, to sort things out. When my wife filed for divorce, thus initiating five years of nuclear litigation, running kept me sane. Because divorce litigation is insane.

My routines have changed somewhat, to be sure. I like running with people now. I don’t run so fast. I run longer (further). Sometimes I run on the Mall at noon.

But whenever I need to jump start my running, I return to 6:30 a.m. runs of short and fast duration. My old standby route is 2.5 miles out and back on a nearby secondary road that cuts through the warren of subdivisions around where I live. This run includes a pretty nice hill and has a large school parking lot at its furthest point, which I use for running backwards while pretending to be an NFL cornerback. There are a few steps there too which I pound up and down whenever nobody is around.

If I hit the turnaround point at right around ten minutes, I’m running well and will finish with sub-eight minute miles (it’s downhill on the way back). Those are morning runs worth remembering. Evening runs just aren’t the same.