Sprinting to the End

As I continue to focus on the recent running race I participated in, I'd like to expand on something I wrote about in yesterday's article.  At the end of the public three-mile run, I found myself in the company of a diverse group of runners.  Some of them were clearly pooped out and were just trying to finish the run.  But others, myself included, suddenly reached deep inside ourselves and found a reserve of energy, which we then used to engage in an almost insane sprint against each other to the finish line.  It mattered not who was running against me: I had to beat them!  As it turned out, as far as sex/age groupings of the runners were done in the final standings, none of my end-of-race worthy opponents were in my category.  And also, our final placings and times depended on when each of us individually crossed the starting line at the beginning of the race.  As for me, although I crossed the finish line in 26:15, I was given the final time of 25:45 because the timing chip I was wearing showed me taking 30 seconds just to reach the starting line at the beginning of that very crowded race. So someone edging me out at the race's closing moments was really irrelevant as far as the final placings were concerned; that runner could have started the race way ahead of me.  Still, there was that rush at the end and the excitement it brought.

After I finished my run, I hung around at the finishing line for a few minutes to watch the slower runners finish.  And it was funny: no matter how slow they had been going for almost the entire race, a large segment of the finishers engaged in this sprinting game at the end, against whomever happened to be around them. 

But that's cool, since after all, we should all have been out there having fun.  And the little sprint at the end was a nice, spicy topping to the whole experience.  Of course, we brave, "strong" finishers were all aided by one factor.  The last few hundred yards were decidedly downhill!

Running Climate

Florida is not exactly known as a place whose summer climate is conducive to running, the temperatures usually soaring during the afternoon into the 90's.  That's been the case lately here in Gainesville; actually for July it's been relatively moderate.  And now, in a freak reversal of fortunes, our weather is relatively runner-friendly compared to other places north of us in the eastern United States.  Why, Minneapolis of all places, known for its mild summer weather, just reached 101!  I think I'll just go with the low 90's here, thank you.

Speaking more figuratively of "running climate", our current era has provided a much friendlier social context for running, and this cuts across age and gender.  That is quite different from the situation when I was growing up in the late 1960's and early 1970's.  In that era (and in my working class neighborhood) a solitary runner jogging down the street would be viewed as a target for harassment and bullying, while the numerous stray dogs all around back then would delight in chasing the misguided soul, sometimes getting in a bite or two in the process.  No, it wasn't so pretty back then, and yet I know that there are places even today that are hostile to runners.

It was encouraging yesterday at the Melon Run race to see so many competing, and with such a diversity.  At the end of the run, I found myself first passing an elderly gentleman and then a younger man.  Then, I caught up with a young woman pushing one of those aerodynamic super-strollers, passing her with the same relief that I felt passing an elderly runner with his dog late during the Tom Walker Half-Marathon last year.  But as the finish line grew closer, here came that stroller back to challenge me.  It passed me and rolled on to glory at the finish line. Beaten by a baby.  Wonderful. And just before I finally crossed, a young teenage girl came out of nowhere and passed me.  Wow: the old man, the middle-age man (me), the young woman, the young man, the teenage girl...oh yeah, and the baby!  Yes, quite a bit of diversity in the span of a few seconds dashing to the end of a three mile run...

My Melon Run 2012 Report

About five hours ago I ran my first public running race in six months, going "light" with a short three-miler, the Florida Track Club's annual July 4 Melon Run, held here in Gainesville among the sloping roads/sidewalks in and around Westside Park.  I set out not to set any personal speed records, and that was fortuitous.  For there were a record 500 entrants in this race (a sell-out) and it was much, much more congested than the Melon Run I participated in two years earlier.  The course was essentially the same except for the eastern leg, which was a road a little further down from the Loblolly Woods pathway used in 2010 (who knows what they did in 2011).  Still, I kept a good pace in spite of the crowding (with a higher concentration of slower runners this year) and hills (my normal neighborhood training course is as flat as a board).  My official finishing time was 25:45.  When I finished I didn't hang around for the awards ceremony, instead speeding back home.

I thought the race went better this year than in 2010.  For one, the organizers and volunteers seemed much more enthusiastic and friendly.  Also the timing was changed to a chip system, eliminating the screw-ups of the past.  But the packet pickup lines before the race for those who had already registered went slowly and were confusing.  And the actual print-out list of the pre-registered wasn't in alphabetical order, slowing down the process considerably.  Still, the race finally began and we had a good time...

I was very impressed by the post-race refreshments, with bananas, watermelon (of course), bagels, cookies, Gatorade, water, and, I'm sure, other stuff being offered.  It's these little perks (or their lack) that can make (or break) an event for me.  Well done, Florida Track Club!

Oh, the weather cooperated today, as much as I suppose it would this hot time of year: after all, it didn't rain.  The temperature was in the upper seventies and so was the humidity, more or less.  Not exactly pleasant, but I managed to get through it...

Happy New Half-Year, Anyway

Sometimes I get too far ahead of myself and write stuff which, although it sounds pretty good, is actually based on faulty information and/or poor mental processing (MY mental processing).  Such was the case yesterday when I wrote a blog piece (which I subsequently deleted) revealing that July 3 was the median day of the year and that, consequently, one could look on July 4 as "New Half-Year's Day".  Sounded great, except for a couple of things: this year, 2012, is a leap year, so it has no median day: July 1 is in the first half and July 2 is in the second.  In a 365-day year, July 2 is the median day, with 182 days before and 182 following.  So this year July 2 would have been the big "half-holiday", not nearly as impressive as my initial revelation.

Oh well, I can still write down some half-year resolutions anyway...

Gainesville Radio Stations Speak With Same Voice

Maybe this is just a transition period, yeah, that's got to be it...otherwise, broadcast radio here in Gainesville has just made a turn from mediocre programming (at best) to insane programming.  What happened?

Although Gainesviile has other radio stations on the AM dial, there have historically been two main stations in competition with each other: the privately-owned WGGG on 1230 kHz and WRUF on 850, owned by the University of Florida.  Recently both have featured all-sports programming, mostly just talk but also play-by-play of certain events.  That lack of diversity was bad enough, as far as I was concerned.  But still, if I were in the mood for sports programming and I wasn't satisfied with what was being discussed on one of the stations, I could try listening to the other.  No more, I'm afraid...

Starting about a week ago, WRUF assumed WGGG's programming, including its important ESPN Radio contract.  This left the lower-power station on 1230 with a question about what type of programming it would broadcast.  When I first found out about this change, I tuned in to WGGG to see what it was up to.  And it turned out, nothing different!

Both WRUF on 850 and WGGG on 1230 are broadcasting identical programs throughout the day!  I can't recall this sort of thing happening.  Nor can I understand why.  In another sports context, if a player from one team goes to join another, you're not going to see him/her simultaneously playing for both!

I'd like to see WGGG switch to another kind of programming soon, but if it does I hope it isn't another sorry conservative talk radio format as I have seen on too many stations here.  How about just oldies, classical music, or even easy listening?  But the current situation of identical programming with its cross-band competitor is ludicrous and pointless...

Olympic Swimming Qualifying Coverage Slanted

The other day I was watching the Olympic qualifying swimming trials for the American team on the Versus Channel, which I believe is affiliated with the NBC network.  They were running heat after heat, with most of the participants naturally doomed to miss out on the few available spots on the Olympic squad.  In one women's heat, the announcers (and cameras) focused in on one aspirant, a favorite to get to the Olympics.  But she performed poorly on the qualifying heat and missed out making the team (at least in that particular event).  Instead of reporting on the unexpectedly successful swimmers, though, all the announcers could do was spotlight this one more well-known contender (even though she failed).

I wonder how someone would feel who, after all of the training and sacrifice that culminates with trying out for a spot on the U.S. Olympic swimming team, actually succeeds in a nationally-televised qualifying race...and is then virtually ignored by the announcers and cameras.  I suspect, perhaps, the on-air "experts" really only know about a few of those trying out, and if someone outside the "loop" slips through, they really can't talk about them because of their sheer ignorance.  So they conveniently ignore them, the way I see it. Until, I suppose, they eventually get filled in on the particulars about the new "sensation"...

End-of-June Monthly Running Report

Another month has come and gone, and once again I am happy to report success in my running training.  I attained my 100-mile-per-month goal with a total of 109.1 miles.  Also, I ran on every day in June, extending my personal record consecutive running day streak to 61.  My longest run was 6.2 miles.  But the hallmark for this month was my consistency, with distances within the range of 3.3 to 4.3 miles accounting for 24 of the 30 days.  And I seem to doing fine with that regimen.

As expected for this time of the year, the weather is definitely turning hotter.  Still, I am managing to get my runs in while the temperature is below 90.  But in July, that might be problematic, unless I stick with indoor treadmill running or run earlier in the morning when the temperature is lower but the humidity is much, much higher.  On the other hand, since I don't plan to attempt outdoor runs longer than five miles, the hot weather shouldn't present much of a problem as long as the air is relatively dry.

I did sign up to run (not race) in the local Melon Run in July 4, so I'll just go out there and treat my participation as a three-mile training run for that day.  Who knows, maybe later that afternoon, being off from work, I might run a couple of laps around the block in my home neighborhood as well...

ACA Unexpectedly Ruled Constitutional by SCOTUS

As was the case with many other observers, yesterday's United States Supreme Court ruling upholding the 2010 Affordable Care Act, in particular its mandate provision, completely threw me off guard.  I expected this Roberts Court, which never sides with the regular guy against the rich and  powerful when the latter's financial interests are in play, nevertheless did just that by a 5-4 vote.  The four justices on the more liberal side (Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagen) went for upholding the law while three of the predictably hard-rock right-wing pro-business justices (Scalia, Thomas, and Alito) were for striking it down.  This left Chief Justice John Roberts, expected all along to side with his arch-conservative colleagues, and the "wild-card" perennially deciding vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy.  I saw no reason for Kennedy to change his pro-big-business ways on this case, and I had given up on Roberts long ago as just a "robe" rubberstamping everything Scalia said.  So no, I didn't think the ACA had a snowball's chance in hell of not being ruled unconstitutional by the court because of its mandated coverage provision.  And it turns out I was completely right about Kennedy.  But Roberts' vote? That's what astonished me (and many others).

John Roberts, like the court's conservative wing, dismissed the claim that Congress had the constitutional right to pass the mandate due to the Commerce Clause.  Frankly, I agreed with him about his skepticism of the argument that an individual not buying something was an act of interstate commerce and thus gave an opening for the federal government to impose the mandate to purchase health insurance.  Instead, Roberts broke with his right-wing colleagues by holding that the mandate was constitutionally valid rather as a tax, implicitly upholding it (and thus the core of the law).

Suddenly, Chief Justice Roberts has become the unexpected star of this "show".  I had been very disappointed in him for his first few years on the high bench as he appeared to be towing a very biased ideological line.  But with this decision, he seems to be returning to what he stated during his confirmation hearing when he used a baseball analogy to describe the appropriate role of the Court: the Supreme Court isn't supposed to be a player.  Instead its proper role is akin to that of an umpire, calling balls and strikes.  He did a pretty good job of umpiring with this case, although I still think he has some work to do with his political impartiality...

My objection to the mandated insurance clause of the bill was that by simply being alive, one became obligated by law to purchase private health insurance.  That didn't sound constitutional or democratic to me, but rather fascist.  I still have problems with it, but I also understand that simply raising taxes to pay for the program instead of this mandate (the fine for a violation thereof is a de facto tax anyway, according to the Chief Justice) would never have passed Congress.  So we're left with this law, which is at least a less-than-ideal improvement over the previous situation...

कल: A Suspicious Word

In studying some Hindi recently, I came across an intriguing word:  कल (kal), which translates into either "yesterday" or "tomorrow" depending on its context.  Initially, I thought that this was pretty strange that a word could essentially mean its own opposite according its usage.  Then, this morning I looked at the header for an article in the local section of my newspaper The Gainesville Sun: "Suspicious pawn shop owner foiled theft, officials say."  Well, it wasn't quite 6 AM when I glanced at this, so naturally I read it wrong in my bleary-eyed sleepiness.  After all, I tend to, justified or not, associate the idea of "pawn shop owners" with "suspicious people", i.e. people meriting suspicion from others.  But no, the news here was that the owner was suspicious of someone else and foiled a theft.

"Suspicious", like कल, is one of those words whose context can drastically change its meaning.  In Hindi, one needs to either read the appropriate verb tense form to determine whether "yesterday" or "tomorrow" is indicated or get a sense of the intended meaning from the surrounding text.  Likewise, I'm "suspicious" that something very similar holds true for my English example.  But I am a native speaker of English and still have a problem with "suspicious" and its ambiguity.  I wonder if native Hindi speakers feel the same about कल...

Debby Lingers, Drops Load of Rain Over Area

I did not anticipate this current tropical storm, Debby, hanging around and dumping so much rain.  In fact, the expert meteorologists didn't either, blowing one forecast for its trajectory and movement after another. First it was predicted to veer westward and eventually hit Texas around Houston. Then that model was scrubbed in favor of the idea that it would move north into Georgia and merge with a frontal system, speeding up in the process.  Instead, though, the damned thing just stayed stationary for about three days, dumping flood-level rains over the panhandle...and my Gainesville.  But...

Apparently, we have been spared catastrophic flooding around Gainesville by dint of another previously developing problem: chronic drought, which had pretty much parched our ground dry.  Yes, there is a lot of standing water around right now as it keeps on and on with the rain.  But I look at a nearby drainage ditch and see its water level far below what I've seen on many other occasions when the rainfall was more consistent, if not as intense, over the span of weeks.  So the soil has a long, long, way to go before it's saturated.  In fact, I have a prediction...

I predict that, before August rolls around, they'll be lamenting the drought we're back in, probably accompanied by scattered brush fires sending noxious smoky haze over us.  Why can't we instead have a "normal" summer? Seems like, if memory serves me correctly, we did have one back in 2003...

Baseball Sheds Other Sports' Distractions

Well, suddenly I find myself without basketball, and so baseball has finely shed the distractions of other sports and I can now concentrate on it.  But not as far as ESPN is concerned, for I know better about how they run their shows...

The obsessive, often hysterical commentators on that channel can't get enough of talking about LeBron James right now.  One was visibly ANGRY that Miami had won the championship and that the evil James had his moment of glory. After the interest in this topic begins to fade, I have no doubt that the talking head-cases on ESPN will get back to the sport at hand, as far as they are concerned: razzing Tim Tebow and in the course of doing so, complaining that everyone is talking about such an untalented backup quarterback.  But I think I have one way to filter out at least some of this crap...

If an ESPN "talk" show features people sitting around a behind a counter, then although the discussion may be at times unbearable, there at least stands the chance of someone coming out with something interesting that reflects professional journalism.  On the other hand, if there is no special guest present and they are just sitting back in their comfy cushiony chairs, I say quick, change channels!  All you will get from this type of forum is a lot of garbage.

But I just want to follow baseball right now.  It is strange to see the Phillies struggling in the National League East while the erstwhile cellar-dwelling Nationals are setting that division on fire with their incredible pitching rotation.  I like how my Yankees are doing, especially how they are able to compensate as well as they have for the absence of their legendary-but-injured relief closer Mairano Rivera.  But although New York is out in front of the American League East, that division is very tight from top to bottom. 

I guess we're getting closer and closer to the All-Star game, something about which I care next to nothing.  As a matter of fact, to be perfectly honest about it, I don't really care all that much about the standings and how "my" teams are going, even the Yankees.  For my interest in this game is more on the situational level, with me in from of my TV watching the pitcher face the batter in the context of that particular inning. Not even the overall score of the game at hand compares to that, as far as I am concerned...

Tropical Storm Debby Soaking My Area

Right now I am sitting huddled in my living room, avoiding the continuous heavy rains outside.  Tropical Storm Debby, currently centered in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico just west of north central Florida, is one of those asymmetrical systems whose most intense bands of rain are on one side.  Florida's side, with almost the entire state under water right now.  The Tampa-St. Petersburg area is now getting the worst band, but I'm afraid this one is headed our way. 

Originally, the computer models most favored by the meteorologists indicated that Debby would slowly move westward and eventually hit Texas around Houston.  But now another set of models shows it instead moving into Florida.  Slowly.  With lots and lots and lots of heavy rain.  So today and tomorrow that's what we will get.  And that's O.K., but I would have preferred this not to be happening on my days off from work!

Congrats to Heat, Help Sonics Find Way Back Home

The Miami Heat won their NBA championship playoff series against the Seattle Supersonics by handily defeating their opponents in the fifth game 121-106.  It was a great team effort, with the bench being a big factor in the victory.  Much is being made of the fact that LeBron James finally won a championship.  That must be an awful burden to place on someone: you'd better win it all or you're a loser (and if you do win we'll hate you anyway).  But that was the same kind of label that Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki was saddled with until his team won the championship last year.  I couldn't care less that James left Cleveland for Miami, or that the Heat were an assembled, artificial team.  Well, if they were, than so were the Boston Celtics a few years earlier. But I didn't hear the negative outcry against them for this that has been so vehemently directed against Miami.  Last year I rooted against Miami because I was tired of LeBron James giving up in the middle of games and showing poor sportsmanship toward opposing teams.  He has certainly come a long way and matured a great deal.  I wish him only the best.

As for the Supersonics, it is a shame that they lost their way and got stuck playing in a place like Oklahoma.  I'll be happy to help them find their way back home, though, with my Google Maps feature.  But even if they just go west until they run into the Pacific Ocean, and then turn right and keep going in a generally northward direction hugging the coast, they're bound to run into western Washington state.  And I bet the good folks up there would then be only too glad to guide their returning hoops heroes back home to Coffeetown...

My Travels Few and Far Between

I have written before on this blog that I have a tendency to be a homebody, seldom traveling.  That doesn't mean that I dislike travel, though.  But I tend to regard my "voyages" as adventures akin to the mythical Sinbad's, when he would tire of his mundane, humdrum life in Baghdad and then do set out on an adventure.  Naturally, my adventures probably haven't been as dangerous as those of this fictional character, but then again I don't think Sinbad ever rode the Interstate down a curving, steep mountain gorge in the middle of a driving storm at night or ran down the beach in the middle of a severe lightning storm with bolts crashing down all around.  Well, we all have our own little personal "danger" memories, don't we? Well, at least those of us do who survived them, I suppose...

It's nice to go someplace interesting every now and then, and of course visiting relatives (who from my experience almost never live anywhere interesting) is always on the agenda of things to try to get around doing (occasionally).  But all things said, I usually would just as soon stay at home.

The late legendary science fiction writer Clifford Simak wrote a short story, one of my all-time favorites, about this tendency on the part of people like me to avoid travel.  Titled The Huddling Place, the story's setting is a future where people can surround themselves with all of the creature comforts and necessities they could use without ever leaving their home estates, making extensive use of automation, environmental controls, and robots. The Huddling Place had one of the most significant and sobering endings that I have ever read, and its lesson has never left me.  Instead, it has prodded me to try to resist this instinctive tendency of mine to stay put, at home, and in the "security" of my routine day-to-day existence (not that I have to concern myself with fending off any presumptuous robots, at least not yet).  Try to read Simak's tale if you can find it somehow.

I have been a Florida resident since 1957.  I have never been abroad.  The furthest west I have been was Dallas, Texas in 1994 (retracing JFK's assassination route) and the furthest north was in Manhattan's Central Park just north of the Metropolitan Museum of Art a couple of years ago.  I have flown on planes on two different trips.  In my lifetime (well, maybe once I was on a plane in infancy, but forgive me for not remembering).  As far as the states in which I have ever been (on the ground), here they are: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia.  Thirteen states in 55 years: that's it, and with the last one on the list I was there only for a few months during infancy and remember nothing.   Not that I'm complaining ...

A Very Generalized Lesson

A long time ago, I wrote an article about bully coaches, in particular adults who seem to get off on browbeating and humiliating little children in the setting of organized sports.  I can now expand that category to driver's education, as I have discovered some apparently sick individuals are "instructors".  One student inevitably hits one of the countless orange cones lined around the very demanding driving course as obstacles and one of these types, riding on a bicycle, chases after the young teenage driver, yelling at her, "You're dragging around a child!" How utterly tasteless and mean to say that, when the young students are trying their hardest to develop the motor and coordination skills needed to become safe and courteous drivers.  Another bully instructor, when a student notifies him that she hasn't had the opportunity that others have been given to practice some of the more difficult elements of the course that she would soon be tested and graded on, decides to ridicule her for being upset in front of the whole class, eliciting derisive laughter from other students. Or how about sticking a couple of instructors-in-training together in the back seat of a training car and let them take turns almost constantly yelling at a poor student driver to do this and not do that...

I am very, very disappointed at what I am hearing about the unprofessional, overly aggressive and even cruel behavior on the part of paid workers who are supposed to be teaching our children how to drive, at least in this backwoods town of mine with its pathetic pretensions of academic and cultural sophistication.  I wonder how in the world anyone in these classes will learn the crucial values of courtesy and respect toward others while behind the wheel.  And then I look around me on the road at the epidemic rudeness coming from other drivers and realize that perhaps I am picking on these instructors too much.  Maybe instead, they just represent a random sample from the general population regarding their (lack of) character and I should finally just cut to the chase and admit it to myself: these people, these bullies, are thickly spread throughout the population.  But there ARE some awfully nice people, thankfully...

Happy, Scary Moments in Heat/Sonics Game

Last night I was watching the close of the fourth game in the NBA championship series between the Miami Heat and the Seattle Supersonics.  After Game #1, curiously played in wild, wacky, and okie-hokey Oklahoma City, of all the places you'd expect to see a national-level game (the goofball fans there all dress alike, even more than in slightly less goofy Miami), it looked as if the Sonics would decimate the Heat.  But in the last three games, Miami has turned the tables around with three close victories to take a three to one series lead, with only one more win needed to secure the title. But last night's Heat win didn't come without a heart-stopping moment for its fans.

Miami and Seattle were tied at 94 with only a couple of minutes left in regulation.  It looked as if the game could go either way.  Then Miami's superstar franchise forward LeBron James began to seriously limp around the court, and he was clearly in pain.  Oh-no, would this be another Derrick Rose  moment when one team's indispensable player would go out with a season-ending injury, dooming their chances?  James initially played it brave and tried to play on, even hitting a monster clutch three-point shot to put them ahead for good 97-94.  But finally he had to leave the game, putting the Heat's fate into the hands of his teammates.  Led by Dwyane Wade, the rest of the Heat took the challenge to the Supersonics as they took control at the end of the game and won 104-98.

The series isn't over, and the injury suffered by LeBron James apparently wasn't an injury after all, but rather leg cramps.  James vowed to keep himself rehydrated from here on as a precaution against this known recurring problem of his returning.  Well, dude, why haven't you been doing this all along? Even a pseudo/pretend athlete like me carries along a bottle of Gatorade while I run...

And yes, I think I'll just continue with my happy delusion about Seattle still having their NBA team.  Somehow I could picture myself visiting there one day, getting a cup of java at some streetside cafe, and then slipping in to see a good Sonics game.  On the other hand I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to ever set foot in the usurping, politically hyper-reactionary state of Oklahoma, much less its capital city. They say that the Miami Heat is such an unpopular franchise these days that only those living around South Florida are rooting for them to win this championship series.  Oh, and those in the Seattle area, too: apparently, they aren't quite as able as I am to revel in self-delusion...

...and how about those spunky Seattle Pilots winning baseball's National League Central Division last year?!  

Upcoming Running Race in Gainesville

Well, it's been a while since I ran in a public running race.  Actually, it's pretty easy to tell how long it's been: my last race, the DeLeon Springs Half-Marathon, took place this past New Year's Day!  So we're talking six months, although I have still been filling that time up with 100 mile/month training runs, including my current personal record streak of 50 straight days of running.  Still, a little social context might do me well.  So...

The Melon Run, taking place on Wednesday, July 4 and presented by the Florida Track Club, may be just the hot summer running event for me.  It is a 5 kilometer race, but should I enter it, I won't be doing any racing.  No, I just want to hang out for a little while with some others who share this interest while performing a training run at my usual training pace. 

I ran in this race two years ago and was a little disappointed.  But this time around, my priorities have changed and it should be a fun experience.  I know one thing: I won't be lingering around the place for the "awards" ceremony, which largely consists of volunteers unloading watermelons from the back of a truck and handing them over to top finishers in the various age/sex categories.  And if they screw up the finishing times like they did last time, then so be it: like I said, my priorities have changed...
 
The race course is very familiar to me: the starting and finishing point is Westside Park, with much of the run taking place east of it, going down sidewalks on 8th and 16th Avenues and connecting them on a trail through Loblolly Woods Park (North).  

Registration for this race doesn't close until June 30, so I have a little time to mull over my participation.  If I sign up, though, I think I'll forgo the cotton tee shirt, which I will probably never wear and represents $10 tacked on to the basic registration fee.

My President

Since I have been eligible to vote, I have voted in eight of the past nine presidential elections.  In four of the eight, my choice won; in four he lost.  The election I missed saw the candidate I was leaning toward winning.  But get this: win or lose, I always carried the attitude that the individual holding that high office was MY president.  Now this doesn't mean that I agreed with his decisions; often, much too often I found myself shaking my head in disbelief, readying myself to support someone else with a more agreeable political philosophy in the next election.  On three different occasions, I supported a candidate's initial election to the presidency and voted against him for reelection (all three times unsuccessfully).  So I have not been ideologically monolithic, instead going back and forth from one party to the other.  I suppose this might imply that I am a centrist, or a political moderate.  This tends to bear out in conversations I have with liberals who say I am conservative, or with conservatives who say I am liberal.  But that doesn't mean that I am devoid of strong opinions on the issues.  I just believe that some of the ideologically-based positions on them tend to be short-sighted and lacking a sense of the greater needs of the nation and its people.

Each and every president in my memory has been MY president.  Unfortunately, the trend increasingly seems to take presidents one opposes and regard them as not legitimately belonging in office.  According to this type of narrative, depending on your perspective, Bush stole the 2000 and 2004 elections and Obama wasn't really born in the good old United States of America, so he wasn't really elected in 2008 (in some people's universes).  So instead of having a leader one recognizes as the leader, whether for better or for worse, we're left with a much lower discussion of whether the individual is really legally president.

We desperately need to get away from this destructive way of thinking if we are going to survive as a viable, civil democracy in the future.  Barack Obama is my president, and he's yours, too, if you are an American.  It matters not how conservative or liberal you are, or whether or not Mr. Obama has said or done (or been alleged to have said or done) something that offended you.  He is your president.  Mitt Romney isn't exactly my first choice for the presidency.  But should he win the election this November, guess what?  He's gonna be MY president!

Basketball and Bond Tonight

I was enjoying the Miami Heat-Oklahoma City Thunder NBA Championship Series game tonight when, during one of the endless commercials, I checked out what was going on elsewhere on my TV set.  And lo and behold, the BBC America channel was airing a James Bond marathon, specifically a Pierce Brosnan James Bond marathon.  When the game was over, I switched channels and enjoyed Goldeneye (and am still doing so).  The next movie will be Die Another Day.  Ah, the joy of these holiday marathons.  Well, it IS a holiday in a manner of speaking...

What Are They Looking At?

I don't often have the occasion to pass through the University of Florida campus around twilight.  That's just how my life is structured: it seems to be somehow designed for me to avoid UF, although I am always passing by it on one side or the other, on the way to somewhere else. The only recent exceptions to this have been the unavoidable doctor and medical examination appointments I've had at Shands Hospital, an incredibly huge, sprawling, and fast-growing complex dominating the south side of the campus.  But then again, Shands is so separated from the rest of the University that I tend to think of it as a completely separate entity.

Tonight I happened to get off a little early from work and decided NOT to pass right by UF, but instead turn into campus and get a sense of what's going on there.  I drove from the west past Lake Alice on Museum Road and veered around a curve to the right, toward the main heart of the campus.  Suddenly, to my left I noticed a crowd of people congregating at a fence, looking inward at what appeared to be an empty field.  So what was the show?  I didn't see any sign of a sports game going on. Anyway, the student recreational complex was further back, south of me.  This crowd was intently watching something completely different.  I was flummoxed about the source of their interest. Then, just as I had almost completely passed the field, I saw it.  Something that I remember from pictures.  Bat towers were situated back in the field.  The spectators were obviously waiting for the bats to come out and join the night!

I can't recall seeing any bats in the wild around Gainesville myself, but my daughter has seen them flying around my own neighborhood, which is in far northern Gainesville, quite distant from the University of Florida and these towers.  I am very happy to know that we have a thriving bat population around us, if for just one reason:  they help curb the horrendous onslaught of mosquitoes this time of year by feasting on them!

Maybe I should set aside some time to watch the bats myself at UF.  It's funny to me, though, how the towers are just right out there by the street, for anyone to see.  I would have thought that they would have been placed in a more secluded spot, if only for the sake of the bats themselves.  Shows how little I know about bats, I suppose...