The Rainy Day On Saturday Didn’t Get Me Down (and Thursday was even better)

My apologies for butchering the song by The Carpenters. I woke up at 5 o’clock Saturday morning to get ready for a run with Cyndi at 6:45. When I heard the wind blowing and looked out the window, I saw the rain pouring in buckets. I waited half an hour and sent a text message to Cyndi asking if we should cancel the day’s run and she agreed (thank God!). At about 6:30, the weather cleared a bit so I went out to the store to buy some produce and jelly beans (what a combination, huh?) before it started raining again. Would you believe it, but the sun came out so I was faced with the dilemma of whether I should run or not. I could have easily stayed home and gone with my back up plan of doing the stairmaster and stationary bike. But after seeing someone running, I decided that I should try it myself if the weather held. What really finalized my decision was seeing some palm fronds on the street blocking one of the lanes so drivers had to maneuver around it. I thought I’d do the community a good turn* and run to that location to clear the palm fronds. If that’s not a good reason to go out running, then I don’t know what is. I planned to take it easy and run for just 4 to 6 miles instead of the 8 I was supposed to do with Cyndi. Even though I tried to slow the pace down, I still struggled towards the end. I must have not recovered from Thursday’s run yet.

So let me tell you then about last Thursday’s run. I was going to write about it in another blog post but since I already mentioned it above, I might as well address it here too. I’ve always wondered ever since I started doing the Galloway method if it was still possible for me to run a 10k in under an hour. I wasn’t planning on racing against my GPS watch, but rather just running hard and see how it turns out. All I concentrated on was running hard for 4 minutes, then walking for 1 minute until I reached an hour and it was only until then would I know how far I ran after I turned off the stopwatch. I couldn’t believe the result when I first saw it but it was right there on my wrist in plain sight: 6.34 miles in one hour! That happens to be a 9:28 pace. My pace for an hour run using the Galloway method has been dropping in recent weeks from 9:49 to 9:43, and now 9:28. As long as my ankles don’t suffer too much from the pounding of running harder, I’m loving it! Hence, I attribute the difficulty of the Saturday run to not having recovered from the hard effort from Thursday. There, I found another excuse. First the palm fronds and next the exhaustion. The excuses to go out running after the rain and the result that followed.

* Do a Good Turn Daily: This is the slogan of the Boy Scouts. Some Good Turns are big - saving a life, helping out after floods or other disasters, recycling community trash, working with your patrol on conservation projects. But Good Turns are often small, thoughtful acts - helping a child cross a busy street, going to the store for an elderly neighbor, cutting back brush that is blocking a sign, doing something special for a brother or sister, welcoming a new student to your school. A Good Turn is more than simple good manners. It is a special act of kindness. (Excerpted from page 55, Boy Scout Handbook, 11th ed,(#33105), copyright 1998 by BSA, ISBN 0-8395-3105-2

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Gone Mental For The Marathon

People who don’t run often ask me: “What? You have to pay to run 26 miles?!” Wouldn’t you know it but I did it again: paid $86.20 for another chance to take a tour of Long Beach on foot this coming October. What would possess a person to run marathons, do triathlons, or other feats of human endurance when all that is required to stay fit is 30 minutes a day of exercise? Sometimes I wonder about my mental health and if it’s a sane decision to run another marathon considering the condition of my ankles. I figured I was able to do it last year using the Galloway method for the first time, so I can probably try the same thing this year. Last year, I signed up for the half marathon and ended up switching to the full marathon. This year, I registered for the full marathon right away so I could commit myself mentally to training for it. Maybe I should be committed to a mental hospital instead. Nuff said.

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Another Harasser or Stalker?

While I was out running last Monday morning, a car stopped ahead of me and waited. I thought it was another case of someone harassing me. I’m thinking – Oh, great! I’m being accosted by another weirdo who is going to harass me like what happened several years ago. Back then, I was wearing running tights during the cold winter months, and you know when a man wears tights, it might show a little bump in the middle front part of the lower extremities. Please banish the thought from your imagination right now because I’m sure it was not a pretty sight. At that time, the man driving a car stopped me in mid run and complimented me on my so called asset (no, not the back part). I thanked him, continued on my run, but this guy kept following me. I had to do some evasive maneuvers by running down some streets in the opposite direction of where he was driving, and just in case he was able to track me down, I headed towards a police substation in the neighborhood. Thankfully, I was able to lose him. I bought my first of several pepper spray canisters after that incident.

Now back to the present and another case of a car which appeared to be stalking me. When the guy rolled down his window, he called out my name! Well I’ll be darned if it wasn’t my former co-worker from the mid 1990’s at a now defunct psychiatric hospital. I hadn’t seen him in more than a decade and only once briefly since that hospital closed, but I recognized him instantaneously even though he had lost a lot of weight since then. What a relief! It was not someone out to harass me after all. Ron M. and I worked together on the night shift for a few years and it was a good partnership. It was too bad that the hospital closed down because it was a good place to work. We exchanged a few updates about our lives and after giving him my phone number and email address, I went on to finish my run while he headed for his next appointment.

At least I wasn’t harassed this time and maybe because I don’t wear running tights anymore.

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Working The Pace, etc…

Ever have one of those days when you feel that you are running hard, giving it all you’ve got, and all that effort just gives you an overall pace slower than what you perceived? All that huffing and puffing didn’t blow the house down after all. Well I had one of those days last Saturday when the average pace over 8.5 miles was 9:32, when it felt at least like 9:15. Was I disappointed? Maybe slightly, but I was content enough that the hard effort was made. Even though it didn’t feel like I was struggling with the pace, it didn’t feel easy either, so it was a good run overall. I shouldn’t really be compulsive with pace nowadays since my running is day to day, but it’s nice to see slight improvements despite the ankle pain. The more important issue is that I’m able to run.

I ran with Cyndi that day and she is still recovering from the very hard effort she gave at the Surf City Half Marathon two weeks prior. When I finished stretching afterwards, I saw a few runners finishing their run whose strides looked familiar from afar. Well, no wonder they looked familiar. Tam, Jaymi, Julie, and Jean have come back a couple of weeks after Surf City too, but they started at 7:30 while Cyndi and I started at 6:45. It was nice seeing the group and specially Tam who started running again after waiting patiently for her ankle sprain to heal.

Other notes about last weeks’ running experience: I ran my fastest pace using the Galloway 4 minute run/1 minute walk system. I averaged 9:43 pace per mile over 6 miles compared to the previous weeks’ 9:49. My ankles seems to hurt a different way while wearing the over the counter Heel That Pain orthotics, but I seem to get a better bounce in my stride while using them. We will have to see in the oncoming weeks how well that will work out.

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My Second GPS Experience

About three weeks ago I wrote about my first automobile GPS experience, which wasn’t a good one. I have since returned the device to the manufacturer and they sent me a replacement last week. It was also refurbished like the first one and it even included an SD memory card which the previous owner probably forgot to remove. But first, let me tell you an error I made while returning the original unit. I misunderstood the verbal instructions given to me by customer service and instead of keeping the mounting device (the parts used to attach the unit to the car’s dashboard), I sent it back as well. So when I received the replacement unit, I didn’t have anything to attach it to my car with. It was back to exchanging emails with customer service and I was told that they would send me back the parts but I would have to pay Fedex for the shipment. What other choice did it have? Buying a new set of parts would have cost more than the shipment price, so I agreed to the terms of the company. A few days later and $10.00 poorer, I received the parts and was finally able to mount the GPS unit on my car. That didn’t stop me from trying to use the device beforehand though. I charged the battery, upgraded the software, set the device in the cup holder and off I went driving to and from work with it. Surprisingly, even though the unit was a couple of feet below the windshield, it detected the GPS satellites very well. I then programmed my home and a couple of other addresses into the unit, and on Saturday morning, took it through its paces again. I input the location where I was meeting a friend for a run, and later where the family had the surprise birthday for my aunt. This time the GPS unit hummed along and performed perfectly, and didn’t have the problem of it turning on and off unexpectedly like the first one. So now, despite having to pay for shipping back the first one and for getting back the missing parts, I’m quite happy with this second GPS experience. With the free SD memory card, I ended up breaking even. It’s a keeper! (***Read the original post here: http://noeldlp.blogspot.com/2010/02/my-first-gps-experience.html)

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A Birthday Operation Worthy of the CIA

A clandestine operation was hatched by my cousins, Mary Ann and Kristine (with the help of another cousin, Danielle) a few weeks ago for their mom’s surprise birthday party. Auntie Ditas turned 70 last week without fanfare or any other special celebrations. Let me tell you this: my aunt doesn’t look, act, or move like she is 70, and lives a very active life of travelling and still even works once a week as a nurse. I talked to her on the phone on her birthday and she didn’t have a clue of what was going to happen a week later because invitations with a warning to keep it secret, were sent out to relatives from Camarillo where one of my cousins lived. They didn’t even tell my uncle because they knew he wouldn’t have been able to keep it to himself.

So how did they keep things on the down low? While we were waiting for my aunt to arrive at the restaurant, I learned from Mary Ann what the plan was. With the pretext of Auntie picking up her daughter Kristine and new 3 month old granddaughter Noelani coming from Camarillo on the Metrolink train, they were to have a private lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory next to the train station afterwards. But we had already gathered in the mezzanine dining area of the restaurant. With some relatives still arriving at the parking lot and hanging around the restaurant lobby, my cousin Kristine had to do some misdirection and maneuvering to distract my aunt from seeing those relatives. I’m sure my aunt’s excitement of seeing her new granddaughter again helped. Grandparents can have tunnel vision that way.

So they ushered my unsuspecting aunt and uncle to the restaurant and up the mezzanine, and the surprise was sprung. Thankfully she didn’t fall backwards down the stairs when we yelled, SURPRISE!!! Her reaction appeared to be: “why are there so many people here?” After the initial shock had dissipated, we commenced the joyful celebration of my aunt’s new birthday milestone. She was pleasantly surprised and very happy, for sure J. With the way my cousins planned this party, and if ever they wanted to work for the CIA, they just might qualify.

Other minor notes on the party: I finally met my new 3 month old niece, Noelani whom I’ve only previously seen in photos and on webcam. We saw a bunch of bearded men having their own party at the same restaurant and they turned out to be a Santa Claus club. My nieces and nephews loved them!

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Salvaging My Old Stationary Bike

I’ve had this upright stationary bike so many years and ever since I assembled it, the tension adjustment never really worked well and you can hear a clicking noise when you pedal. It has 8 levels of tension and even at its tightest it still feels relatively easy and not adequate to do stand up pedaling. That’s the reason why I haven’t been using it very often and opting for the recumbent bike instead.

I decided that the next time I had a few days off, I was going to try to find the problem and fix it. Already suspecting it had something to do with the cable, that’s where I looked first. Manipulating the top part of the cable near the adjustment knob didn’t solve the problem so I went farther down. This entailed disassembling the housing of the pedals. I encountered another problem when I tried to remove them because the screws were either too tight or already stripped. For some of the screws that I couldn’t remove, I ended up using brute force to break and peel the plastic housing apart. So I was now into the heart of the whole system, found the source of the cable, twisted a couple of nuts this way and that, but to no avail. All I could do was tighten the cable in a way not it was meant to be assembled. But it worked! Having broken the plastic housing, I just threw them away and the bike actually looks better without them. It looks more like a spinning bike now except that the handlebars are higher. Nevertheless the tension adjustment is tighter now, the clicking sound has disappeared, it's the quietest machine I have at home, and I got a better workout afterwards. With a series of what ifs (what if I do this, what if I try doing it that way), I managed to salvage an old bike and spared myself the expense of getting a replacement. I still want an elliptical machine though…

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From Taiwan to Canada to Following Up on Previous Blogs

Great! Someone based in Taiwan has been posting comments on my blog which has pornographic links. It appears that way anyhow, even though the main page of the website doesn’t show nude women or men, it does show suggestive photos. I wouldn’t know what the Chinese characters mean and I’m not interested in translating them. For all I know it could be a Chinese dating site. On a positive note, some people from Canada has been reading my blog and posting some comments too. They are fellow runners with similar goals, ailments and love for running. To our friends from the North, thanks for reading and commenting, ey.

This blog received 53 hits last Monday, February 15. That’s quite substantial for me. My previous high was 52 a few weeks ago and that entry was about running. Monday’s entry had to do with my job and the problems we had with the electrically locked doors on the psych unit which malfunctioned.

Let me follow up on what happened that night. An electrician who works for the vendor of the electric doors showed up at about 3 A.M. to try to repair the circuits. We were told that another fuse had blown and he replaced it. However there were still some glitches and he spent another hour or so diagnosing the problem. We jokingly threatened to tie him in leather restraints if he didn’t fix the problem. It seems like he managed to work out a solution for now because there were no other incidents of the electrical control panel malfunctioning (see the previous entries here: http://noeldlp.blogspot.com/2010/02/unlocked-psych-unit.html and here: http://noeldlp.blogspot.com/2010/02/unlocked-psych-unit-reloaded.html )

Do you think I should do an experiment? Should I tag one of my blog entries with words such as: sex, porn, nude, etc. Would I get a lot more hits? I’m betting it would work.

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Filing My 2009 Income Taxes

Aside from watching all those movies last week (http://noeldlp.blogspot.com/2010/02/movies-watched-in-past-week.html), I also managed to update my financial software (Microsoft Money) and do my income taxes using the free online tax preparation software from TaxACT (http://www.taxact.com/). I’ve prepared my own taxes in the past several years using software purchased from stores, except for last year when I downloaded the free TaxACT software. This year, I decided to try to use their online software. They offer free Federal E-file like most do plus a small amount for State filing. To my friends in the Philippines - we pay Federal taxes to the U.S. government plus State taxes to California. Filling out the forms were not too much of a problem since I had most of my income and expenses for 2009 in a Manila envelope already. I got that idea from a finance columnist in a newspaper years ago. At the start of the year, prepare an envelope and keep all your income and expenses in it so at the end of the year you don’t have to look high and low for them when you are ready to file your income taxes. Aside from the time it took to type in the data into the software and reading the instructions carefully, it was a pretty easy process. Despite a huge budget deficit, the government still managed to add some credits to reduce our payments. One had something to do with still being employed, and the other was about still owning your home without going into foreclosure (that’s how I interpreted them anyway). After a few days of waiting to make sure there weren't any more end of the year bank statements forthcoming, I filed both Federal and State taxes on February 11^th and within a couple of hours got confirmation by email that both were accepted by the government. I will now be awaiting a little refund. How little? Well, I can’t tell you how much I’m going to get back from the Federal taxes, but I’m getting $4.00 back from California! Woohoo! I’m rich!

Speaking of year end statements, I got a 5 cent check from Vanguard Investments after I transferred funds from a regular account to a Roth IRA. It cost them 44 cents postage to mail a 5 cent check. Unbelievable!

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Speedwork? What Speedwork?

Well, I did it again! If I remember correctly, last time I did it was around August of last year. I just don’t feel like digging into my logs to find it. I’m talking about the 3/2/1 road intervals workout. Because of the pain I suffer from my PTTD I haven’t been able to do any road or track intervals lately. I woke up feeling tired and lazy on Tuesday morning and went out for a run not knowing if I would feel better or stay flat and wasn’t even planning on doing any type of speedwork (believe me when I say that my speedwork doesn’t really have any speed, just an increase in effort). Nearing 20 minutes into the run and feeling warmed up, I thought I’d try at least a set of the 3/2/1 intervals. I’ve written about this before but I’ll refresh it here: 3 minutes of hard running followed by 1 minute recovery jog, then 2 minutes hard with 1 minute recovery, then 1 minute hard with two minutes recovery before starting the next set. After the first set, I attempted another one, then another, then another, until I ended up with 4 sets which was just enough to finish the 1 hour run I’d planned regardless of pace. During the hard efforts I kept a sort of a mantra in my head “don’t fear the pain of exertion”. Actually most of the time the pain of exertion is not a problem for me. My problem is the pain in my ankles. So anyway, 20 minutes warm up plus 4 sets of intervals made for a good day of running.

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Unlocked Psych Unit Reloaded

Well it happened again and this time earlier. At about 11:30 P.M. in the waning hours of Valentine’s night, the electrical system of the locked doors in the psych unit I work in had another meltdown. After being “fixed” earlier in the day, we were hoping that our problems with the system would be over and we could relax our guard and not have staff stationed on every door. The nursing supervisor had to send extra staff members for the day shift just to watch the doors and after it was repaired, the people were sent home. I was dreading coming to work tonight and was hoping for the best that the doors were fixed. They were, but not for long.

For some reason, something is tripping the control panel of the locked doors. We jokingly blamed one of our co-workers who doesn’t usually sit in that spot, that her magnetic field or aura is affecting the panel somehow. She sat there two nights in a row, and the system failed two nights in a row. Coincidence? We hope so, but we advised her not to sit in that spot again. I took a picture of the control panel complete with its rubber bands but I don’t have the necessary USB connectors to copy it to this computer, so I may have to add it later.

The control panel for the locked doors are held together by a web of rubber bands because it's that old and some of the switches don't work properly. The #1 switch is rewired to a makeshift push button and the #3 switch is rewired to #16. I know it’s kinda confusing when you read it. Imagine how confused the workers here are too if they didn’t know which switch controls what door, and not everyone knows it.

Well I found a way to get the picture on this computer. I took another photo with my cell phone and emailed it to myself. Please don’t laugh too hard when you see our patched up control panel. Remember, we are a locked psych unit and you could be one of our patients in the near future.

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The Unlocked Psych Unit

Well, we have some kind of emergency at work last night. Our electrically locked doors have lost power and any patient who has inclinations of running away can do so very easily. It’s about 1 A.M. so most if not all of them are asleep. All available nursing staff on the unit have been deployed to cover the units’ 5 exits. We can only hope that when the patients wake up, they won’t notice anything unusual so nobody tries to escape. In the meantime we shall keep our fingers crossed and maintain a high level of vigilance. It wouldn’t take much strength for a patient of decent size to overpower any one of use watching the doors. After all, if someone makes a good evasive move, he or she is out the door in a jiffy. Worse if a bunch of patients do it all at once. Our once locked unit is now an open psychiatric unit and even patients who are here against their will can now come and go as they please with little resistance. Welcome to the asylum. God Help Us!

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The Tricycle: A Human Powered Taxi

Ever heard of the Smart car? Of course you have. It’s that tiny two-seater motor vehicle popular in Europe and has been sold in the U.S. in the past few years. Where I grew up, we had our own version of such vehicle, but it was human powered. It was called a tricycle, otherwise known as a pedicab, or phonetically in the native Tausug dialect, a tarasikul, or jokingly since there were no taxis in our town, a taxikul. It consists of a bicycle and a sidecar, plus a headlight and a ringer. Normally, what we consider a tricycle is the three wheeled kids’ toy. In our small town, this is what a tricycle looks like:

It’s supposed to seat two passengers but with small children seated on their parents’ laps, you can have as much as four riders plus the driver. I don’t think you can fit that many people in a Smart car. If it rains, the driver attaches a transparent plastic cover on the front and sides of the vehicle while he remains exposed to the elements. When I was growing up, it used to cost between 15 to 25 centavos for a ride, depending on the distance travelled. Imagine how strong the legs of the driver needed to be to propel that vehicle especially uphill. Their legs were the engines that made the tricycle move, fueled by rice and fish. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an overweight tricycle driver. From what I hear, they use motorcycles now and I don’t know how much the fare is anymore, or if any of the drivers have gotten fat.

Picture used with permission from and courtesy of elementary schoolmate LTG.

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Movies Watched In The Past Week

Hachiko: A Dog Story, The Hurt Locker, Avatar, & Passing Strange

Has anyone heard of or seen the movie – Hachiko: A Dog Story, with Richard Gere, or one of the Oscar nominees – The Hurt Locker? It’s one of the best realistic movies made that hardly anyone saw in the theaters as opposed to Avatar which just about everyone has seen. I can understand the popularity of Avatar. At first I thought it was only because of the special effects, but after watching it, it was not so much the effects that I liked but the story itself. The Hurt Locker was already out on the internet a couple of weeks before it opened in limited release in the U.S. theaters and probably because it was released early in Europe or Asia. You can tell by the Oscar nomination and the good reviews how outstanding this film is. Another must rent or buy if you were to ask me.

In the meantime, I didn’t know about Hachiko until last week. There isn’t much of as story for this one and it seems to have been made just to tug at your heartstrings. It’s based on a real life dog from Japan in the 1930’s which has been adapted for the present time and it’s a tearjerker of a film. If you have a chance to rent it, don’t forget the box of tissues to go with the popcorn and soda. I guess Richard Gere’s name didn’t draw too many people to the box office for this movie.

Another movie I enjoyed watching was directed by Spike Lee and the title is Passing Strange which is a musical. It is funny and emotional at times, but always with great music. The IMDB plot states: A young black artist leaves his Los Angeles digs and travels to Europe to find himself. A theatrical stage production of the original Broadway musical.

Well, as you can see, I’m not much of a movie reviewer but I just wanted to let you know what I’ve watched lately and how I felt about them.

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A Beautiful Mind

Can there be too much of a beautiful mind? I know someone who happens to have one of those minds and as a regular person, he is a nice guy but as an intelligent person, it’s hard to understand what he is saying or writing about most of the time. My contention: is he trying to impart knowledge, or is he just showing off his knowledge? What good does it do if something you write goes over the heads of most people, even those who are of fair intelligence? For some people, the reaction to someone with such beautiful mind and the way he expresses it can turn ugly. Still, I have the utmost respect for his knowledge even though it’s a turn off for a lot of people.

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Bad Disks

Thankfully, this has nothing to do with bad discs related to lower back pain. There was a sale at OfficeMax for Verbatim brand DVD disks – a pack of 100 for $19.99, so I went and purchased it on Monday morning after running and weight training. I’ve had a bad experience in the past when I bought disks of a different brand (I think it was TDK), which I tried to use several months after I bought them. The whole batch of 100 were bad disks and you could not save any data on them. Since it had been months since I first bought them, I didn’t have the receipt anymore and couldn’t return them. Besides, the allotted amount of time for returns most likely expired already. So that was money down the drain. When I bought the disks last Monday, I opened them right away and tried to copy files on them. On the first disk, the software said it had bad sectors, so I tried a second one and this time it just said “burning” for the longest time. I know for sure it doesn’t take that long to burn a disk. So back to the store I went to exchange the product for another pack. Upon returning home, I tried to do the same thing I did with the first pack with the same results. So, I used a different computer and software and tried to burn a video file. While the computer processed the information, I left for work and when I got back home the next morning, I noticed the the DVD tray had popped open, meaning the disk was done and ready to use. I popped the disk into a DVD player and saw that the video was functioning well, but… no audio! So I tried it in the computers’ DVD player but got the same result. That could only mean that the disk was corrupted too. Dang it! Having just gotten home from work I went to sleep and when I woke up, I went back to the store to return the product. I didn’t want to get another replacement because my conclusion is either Verbatim didn’t make good disks, or a bad batch was sent to the store. Needless to say, I probably won’t try to buy that brand again. At least the salesperson was very nice and didn’t grill me about exchanging and returning two days in a row. I had been using a generic Staples store brand disks lately and it has worked very well so I’ll be keeping an eye out in case it goes on sale again. So if I can share a lesson learned here: when you buy new disks, try to use them right away to find out if they are good. At least you’ll find out early while you still have the receipt.

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Running Unfocused

It was still raining when I woke up Saturday morning but it stopped before I started my run. However, towards the east, west, north and south, the clouds were thick and ominous, as if ready to drench the area with more water. With no hint of sunlight breaking through, I bedecked myself in a Goretex jacket and a hat, expecting to get caught in a downpour. Then I headed out for my run without my spectacles. My eyeglasses would have been totally useless anyway. My near vision is okay, far vision totally the opposite, but as long as I’m not driving I can manage without eyeglasses since I run so slowly anyway. Thus began my unfocused run.

I had been visualizing this run in the past few days and since I was not signed up for the Surf City Half Marathon and had nobody to run with, I wanted to do a private half marathon alone. I was going to attempt to run/walk 13.1 miles. Starting out slowly, I could already feel heaviness in my legs and breathing. I must not have recovered fully from the hard 6 mile run I did on Thursday. I was hoping the feeling would be better after getting warmed up. I kept plugging along but after about 3 miles I realized that I would not have the energy to complete 13.1 miles, so I reduced my goal and decided to go out for 45 minutes and back for the same amount of time. 1 ½ hours of running would be good enough on the still slick streets of Long Beach and Lakewood. With the clouds looming darkly, I could only hope to finish before it rained again. The puddles of water on the ground had mostly drained but could reappear if it started raining again.

When I turned around after about 48 minutes to head back home, my legs and breathing felt a little better. Maybe it was a psychological effect of knowing that all I had to do was get back to where I started from. Somehow the clouds held up as well as I did and I made it back home without getting drenched other than with my own sweat. 3 ½ pounds of sweat, that is. Although my vision was unfocused for more than 9 miles and I couldn’t see too far ahead of me, I managed to navigate on familiar streets while half blind and got back home safely. 13.1 miles would have to wait for another day.

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Admiring the Walter Pyramid and Carpenter Center

The Walter Pyramid (top) and the Carpenter Performing Arts Center (bottom)

On my way home from the run last Saturday morning, I had to stop by Runner’s High store on Stearns Street to return something. Since I got there an hour early before their opening time of 10 o’clock, it gave me a chance to take a walk around the neighborhood. A block south lay the California State University Long Beach campus and that was where I headed. I’ve run around that campus numerous times but on this day I got a chance to explore around the perimeter of the Walter Pyramid and the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, two buildings erected only in the past couple of decades. The Walter Pyramid is named after Dr. Mike and Arlene Walter who were big donors to the university. It is what we used to call a gymnasium but is now regarded as an indoor multi-purpose stadium with its own health club. The modern health club is nothing compared to the dank and smelly weight room at my old university. The Carpenter Center is named after Richard and Karen Carpenter of The Carpenters singing duo from the 60’s and 70’s. They were alumni of the university and donors to the center. It was my first time to see the two buildings up close and it struck me how beautiful and massive (specially the Pyramid) they looked. Another thing I enjoyed were the walking paths between buildings in the immediate area of the Pyramid and the Center. I was pretty much alone because it was a non-school day, so I felt very tiny compared to the buildings that surrounded me. It was thoroughly delightful walking around that part of the university campus and it made me miss my college days in the Philippines where I also went to a State University.

So instead of sitting around for an hour in my car doing nothing while waiting for the store to open, I got to explore a couple of local landmarks while getting a little bit more exercise. It was an enjoyable walk indeed.

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My First GPS Experience

Now I’m not a GPS virgin at all since I’ve used GPS devices for running for so many years but this was my first experience with a driving GPS for the car. I recently ordered a refurbished GPS on the internet and it arrived last week. It was fairly priced and I thought it was a good way for me to get acquainted with the technology while not having to spend more money for a new device. After installing the mounting equipment on the car, updating the software, and charging the battery, I got a chance to take it through its paces last Saturday morning. I plugged in a course to Joe’s Crab Shack where I was supposed to meet some people to run with. The device told me to drive down a block over to Long Beach Boulevard to enter the freeway, instead of my usual route of driving down Atlantic Avenue and accessing the 405 freeway from there. That was one point against the device. Then it told me to enter the freeway on the left side of the street. If I didn’t know any better, I might have crossed over to the wrong side of the street and hit something. Two points against the GPS. Upon entering the freeway, the device turned itself off and I had to turn it back on again. This happened quite frequently during the course of the day to and from my destination, so that makes it strike three. On my way back home it again gave me the wrong side of the street for the freeway entrance again. As far as identifying street names and intersections for me to turn to, the device worked quite well.

I was really excited on buying my first GPS and wanted to find out how it worked, but I’m terribly disappointed that it didn’t function as it was supposed to. Now I’m faced with having to return it to the manufacturer for repair or replacement instead of a refund from where I bought it from originally. I’ve used several refurbished products before (like this netbook I’m typing on) and they worked quite well. This particular one did not. I like the technology itself so I hope that the company replaces it with something that works. There might still be a GPS device in my future.

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