Run DMZ

I stopped contributing to this blog once I realized Google had abandoned the platform, opening the door (not even a back one) to bad actors with malicious intent and forcing the few of us left to give up the ghost. I even took it offline until the other month when I had a change of heart. I could move to Substack or whatever the cool kids are using these days. But why start from scratch when I can just pile on more posts to 20 years' worth of memories. Admittedly, I felt a little lost without my personal parcel on the internet. I'm also a wee bit worried about becoming another casualty of artificial intelligence. Not just the job loss, which will happen. I'm talking about its threat to humanity. One of the ways it initially insinuates itself into our society is through de-skilling. A doctor that relies exclusively on an algorithm's clinical diagnosis risks no longer recognizing diseases or disorders (or AI hallucinations!) using their own hard-earned training. A teacher...

 

The king tides pummeling the cliffs of La Jolla Cove were the most impressive I'd witnessed in all my years living in San Diego. Of course, I usually head to the beach during the other end of the cycle: the extreme low tides that expose tidal pools filled with crabs, sea anemones, sea cucumbers, and lobster shells shed either naturally or by vicious currents. But that morning, with everything bathed in a celestial blue thanks to an impenetrable marine layer, we watched serious swells march toward the sandy beaches of La Jolla Shores. Closer to us, an inlet filled repeatedly with frothy waters while a gulp of cormorants (yes, I had to look that up) bore witness to the sea's incessant violence from a safe distance. There must have been hundreds of the black birds blending in with the dark, wet stone and dim light. Pelicans settled in on another cliff, recovering from their aborted flights in gale-force winds. They flew so close we could make out the veins in their webbed feet, fe...

Some mornings you wish to put on repeat. Yesterday's was one of them. At the start of fall -- the false fall, where temps dip a day or two and then shoot back up to unbearable -- my friends and I created a master list of hikes we wanted to do when mornings cooled for good. I created a Google Doc and "as an example" filled the first set of tables with a hike at Volcan Mountain near Julian, with breakfast at a downtown diner afterward. Julian , for the uninitiated, is a popular, post-Gold Rush mountain town with a quaintness we city folk crave. Nestled in the Cuyamaca Mountains, one of the area's bigger natural attractions is the Volcan Mountain Wildnerness Reserve . My longtime hiking pals Deborah and Mary and I carpooled to the trailhead in Mary's year-old Honda Passport. There was little traffic along CA 67, 78 and 79 at that hour and we found ourselves pulling on our packs and adjusting our poles at the same time a festively dressed group was embarking on a holi...

Screen actors, on the whole, tend to be boring in public. They are never as attractive, charismatic, or tall in real life. They can be witty during live interviews, but you get the impression that wasn't the first time they delivered that line. Even when trying to appear authentic, they somehow remind us this is work. That's not to say I don't love seeing celebrities. I mean, I've ben riding my chance encounter with an A-lister during a run in Del Mar for years now. I am the most annoying kind of name-dropper. I'll casually mention how BD Wong asked for sushi recommendations the other night when actually he threw the question to the La Jolla Playhouse stagehands standing next to me. (To be fair, the late Roger Rees really did look me in the eye and ask my opinion on a play he wrote and directed. I told him it was fascinating, even though it was still rough around the edges. No matter, it made it to Broadway.) That should mean I'm the type of attendee to be dis...

  My favorite holiday is 4th of July, where the vibe’s low-key, family is optional, primary colors rule, and day drinking is encouraged. Independence Day is especially big in our former neighborhood, which hosts a run, a ride, a party in the park, and a parade. We return every year, making the 4th as much a reunion as anything. It is surreal to see the kid from three doors down now showing off his pregnant wife and my daughter’s flower girls turning into teenagers. I show off my young grandsons too. Me, the former neighbor with egg-cracking calves that ran for hours every weekend, now unrecognizable with lighter hair and a lumpy midsection.  Everyone asks if I ran the shorter or longer race and, for the second year in a row, I explain I don’t run anymore. This explains a lot, I sense them thinking as they politely drift to the next person with a red cup. Next year, I’m doing the ride – the longer one -- I vow after the seventh sip of my mango mimosa.  The parade is pur...

After staying dormant all winter and, so it appears, most of spring, I’m returning to Run DMZ.  My love/hate relationship with digital life continues. Other platforms I started and must now maintain exhaust me, especially when algorithms make it hard to find posts from actual followers. This blog has the deepest digital roots, even if its format and platform are long past their prime. So today I will try to breathe a little more life into a dying form.  Poppies along the Dixon Lake shoreline Wild winter = wildflowers extraordinaire  This winter was wild here in California, with waves of wet weather known as atmospheric rivers pelting hillsides, forging new tributaries, drowning wildlife, knocking out bridges, closing roads, flooding beach boardwalks, and providing one of the most beautiful springs on record.  All that rain might have canceled weeks, then months, of outdoor plans, but once the weather pattern changed from cloudy with a chance of rain to just cloudy,...

Until last month, my only experience with San Diego’s only national monument was glancing down at Coronado through a thick marine layer and standing in a long line to use a portable toilet. I never ventured beyond visitor parking for fear of losing my place among hundreds also needing to relieve themselves. This is at the starting line of the annual America’s Finest City Half Marathon , held every August in San Diego. It begins at the Cabrillo National Monument – accessible that morning only by shuttle bus – and winds through Pt. Loma, Harbor Island and the Embarcadero before climbing into downtown and then up Sixth Avenue into Bankers Hill to finish the 13.1-mile journey in Balboa Park. It’s really a great footrace, especially with the first 4 miles all downhill.  I’d forgotten about Cabrillo National Monument until we decided to get a National Parks annual pass this summer and realized there was only one place to get one in person – a place surrounded by deep teal seas, silent ...

A few months ago, while spending a weekend in Oceanside, guests from out of town asked if we could swing by “the Top Gun house” on our drive home. The blue bungalow where the character Charlie (Kelly McGillis) lived had recently relocated to commercial property near the Oceanside Pier. This was an improvement from the last place I’d seen the home on a dirt lot after being rescued from new owners who wanted it torn down. Townspeople rallied to save the structure, citing its historical significance as a place Hollywood made famous. An investor spent $1 million on a much-needed facelift.   That building, now a pie shop, got a lot of attention this past week as everyone readied for the official release of  Top Gun: Maverick , the sequel that originally was to open two years ago. Local news outlets all took turns promoting the pie shop that pays homage to the 36-year-old film. The premiere was held 45 minutes south on the USS Midway along the Embarcadero a few weeks ago. There were...

I’ll be honest: I’m not a fan of the winter holidays. I tend to see them as just more work, only unpaid. I wish I wasn’t such a Scrooge, but it takes a lot for me to get in the mood to buy and wrap and ship presents. To bake sugary treats and not give in to sampling. To sit through a sensory-friendly showing of   How The Grinch Stole Christmas at The Old Globe and not cry. To deal with indoor and outdoor lights. Babysit more than usual. To make one more library-book run to stock up for an anticipated work lull that somehow rarely happens. To find everything on grocery lists for special brunches and dinners. And, of course, nail all of my many work deadlines.       Not to mention, even with early morning temps finally requiring heavier jackets and sweaters, it doesn’t feel like Christmas. Never does here in San Diego.   But this is a great time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t this year, especially in keeping with this year’s theme:  Clean . In some...

The current mayor of San Diego campaigned on a pledge to treat the place like a metropolis rather than a network of sprawling suburbs . You think San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and New York, and you immediately think compact blocks with mixed-use buildings, high-rise apartments and stately rowhouses, corner convenience stores, great ethnic restaurants and excellent public transportation.   San Diego has those things too, except the great public transit.    I was reminded of how much San Diego has grown during a recent early morning walk from Little Italy to Seaport Village via The Embarcadero . And again, a week later when we visited  our old suburb with family in town.    I can remember some of my first runs along the Embarcadero, dodging more homeless people than tourists, even during Comic-Con . The Gaslamp Quarter was still the nightspot it is now, but you took greater risks walking beyond its boundaries in the dark.    Cortez Hill, East Vi...

  The adage “Once a runner, always a runner” may eventually prove untrue. But I’ve learned that friendships built around running endure if they are meant to. I think to my current circle of close friends and 90% of them began with us running together. I’m including one that began with a hike, not a run, but it’s the same foundation built from conquering distance, counting steps and breathy-but-not-breezy conversations.   Walking works too, but for me, my personal identity remains tied to running. It’s probably why I’ll commit to walking for the rest of my life, and within weeks pick up the pace despite knowing the higher risk of injury and arthritic wobbles. It’s not a healthy relationship, I admit.    I wasn’t always a social runner. In fact, one of the reasons I took up that form of exercise in my teens was to escape into myself. In my 20s, it was to escape crying babies and a crabby husband. And in my 30s and 40s, it turned competitive. You think when you pass ano...