Monthly Archives: August 2007

Our trip to Seattle was full of adventure. Clinton and I enjoyed some rare quality time together. Some of the highlights of our trip included:

• The Woodland Park Zoo!
• The Fremont Sunday Market!
• “The Empire of Medieval Pursuits” at Gasworks Park!
• Pike Place Market, of course
• Our awesome bed & breakfast on Capitol Hill!
• Bubble tea and Pho!
• Riding the Metro!
• The (new) Seattle Public Library!

We have a small collection of good pictures from our trip here. (Note to Autumn: you might enjoy the first eight pictures or so of the library. We took them with you in mind!) Here’s a picture of Clinton and Crystal’s amazing green dress:

The Crystalizer, hottest thing on wheels!

Check out more fun bike ride photos here and here.

Yes folks, we are on our way. Marathon, here we come! Stay tuned for news about our 40-mile bike ride tomorrow. “The Crystalizer” has a new cape!

Great pictures of all of us who rode in the Tarheels Bikefest in Hillsborough yesterday are located here! 62 miles, baby!

Great pictures of Kitty and Hadley’s triathlon in Chapel Hill this morning are located here! Congratulations to both of them on their super fast times and especially their courage and hard training! Also, Kitty won FIRST PLACE in her age group!

I adore science fiction movies from the early 80s! I just watched The Last Starfighter last night, which has made it onto the Some of Crystal’s Favorite Movies list. It is truly a masterpiece of sci-fi cheesiness, and it is both funny and very uplifting. Please note that Centauri, the space alien, is played by Richard Preston, who played Harold Hill in The Music Man! Sweet!

My favorite part of the movie was The Death Blossom. I won’t tell you what that was, so you can be surprised!

Here’s the plot summary, from Netflix:

Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) lives in a trailer park and spends his days playing the Starfighter video game. Upon meeting an alien (Robert Preston) who convinces him to use his skills in real combat, Alex heads to space to protect the galaxy from invasion. He gets to the Starfighter base station before deciding the trailer park wasn’t so bad, but returns home to find he’s being stalked by an alien beast — and the planet’s future is in his hands.

103 degrees and humid this evening, great running weather. Haha. Nicole and I did just 3.5 miles so we wouldn’t overheat and die.

If you want a good read, check out Jose in Africa , a Web log by a guy named Jose who is pretty much one my new favorite people. It’s all about his life as a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin, and he has some very thoughtful insights and seriously funny stories.

So, this morning Julia and I did what we think may be the craziest thing we’ve done so far: we ran 14 miles before work, from 5:30 AM to 8:00 AM!

The first part of the run was dark and through the woods, with only moonlight shining down on us (!). Obviously I was running along with my trigger finger on the pepper spray. Fortunately for me, Julia is a world class sword fighter and is about 6 feet tall, so I’m pretty sure that between her and me, any given bandit would end up very, very sorry he messed with us.

We finished the run this morning thinking it was very odd that we were not very tired. It must have been the inspiring talk given by ultramarathoner Missy Foy at the Godiva Marathon Training Program kick-off meeting last night. Marathon, here we come!

For anyone who’s interested, you can check out my online training log here at Runner’s World.

My friend Kitty sent me this crazy piece of Internet news, which may be simultaneously the strangest and cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Check it out.