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...

 

  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...

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...

Several years ago a friend raved about a recent trip to a cooking school in Tuscany. She and 10 others stayed at this villa where you made and ate chef-instructed meals and took field trips in between. The setting was surreal, she said. The food, divine. Especially since every meal included fine wine. She wanted to go back with friends, so three of us made plans to go the following summer.   Then we didn’t go.   Let’s do this, I told my husband a few years later. He instead suggested we take one of those fancy train rides through the Canadian Rockies to celebrate a milestone anniversary. I looked into it and put down deposits, imagining views of Lake Louise and meals on wheels as the glass-ceiling train car rolled under canopies of aspens.   Then we didn’t go.   Booked a prized cabin in the middle of Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks so we could nestle among the ancient redwoods each night and explore beautiful lands each day. And, feeling adventurous, I paid in ad...

Lately, I’ve been telling everyone within earshot that I’m tired of working so hard. It took a couple of carefree weekends and slow Mondays to realize how much more padding I want around hard weeks’ worth of work.    I’ve been a two-income earner for many, many years. With a few years’ exceptions, I’ve always held more than one job, as much to keep my mind stimulated as our cupboards full. And until now, I handled two occupations relatively well. But decades of heavy loads and a shortening lifespan have me reevaluating how I want to spend my days ahead. It probably doesn’t help that most of my friends now are unencumbered by jobs and school-aged children and living their best lives. I have several years before I can join them.   The hours add up My lifestyle is no longer a novelty.  A lot of people work gigs  beyond a full-time job. As a professional writer and budding novelist, I spend way too much time tethered to a desk and chair. I do get up at least once ev...

I picked Labor Day to return to the gym because I knew everyone else preferred to do anything else but work out. There were a lot more signs on the door beyond the one I remembered warning to keep it closed. Now everyone entering was ordered to wear a mask and Department of Defense-approved athletic attire. A posted schedule showed the three times a day the facility closed for cleaning.    The check-in system was the same as it had been when I last used it March 2020. But the faces behind the desk were all new. I showed my ID and asked where the rowing machines were now located. Their previous location had been converted into an F45 studio – a gym within a gym and  the first on a military installation . The women’s locker room looked the same except for all the signs now prohibiting selfies, not just dying hair in the sinks.    When I first started attending  this gym  20 years ago, there was a lone rowing machine wedged between two pieces of Nautilus ...

A lot of the allure surrounding Coronado, an isthmus that likes to call itself an island, boils down to this: it’s flat, pretty and has plenty of shoreline. Gridded streets are lined with mid-century bungalows and large custom homes with deciduous trees and well-manicured gardens.  New homeownership  is out of reach for most of us (and probably residents who were fortunate enough to purchased property a half-century ago when the place didn’t have much going for it), but a heavy Navy presence adds a little diversity to the community. Coronado has two thriving restaurant/retail centers:  one offering sweeping views of the downtown San Diego skyline and a ferry ; the other, an  iconic hotel  and  ceramic cow .    Near the latter is a beach where they rake the sand daily, so everything looks just so. The result of that attention to detail has been Coronado Beach cracking the Top 10—sometimes even the No. 1 spot—on one of the most respected  annua...

Every year I pick one word to guide my actions, thoughts, intentions, practices and relationships throughout the year. Lots of us do. I find it is a much better way to remain focused on self-improvement than devising resolutions when you’re rested and hopeful and have yet to resume real work.   Last year’s word eludes me. Whatever it was, I obviously abandoned it quickly in favor of another: Survive. It sounds melodramatic, but in truth every single one of us, whether touched directly by Covid-19 or not, were thrust into survival mode.    We had to elude an unknown and unseen killer and take a harsh look at friends, family and neighbors who reacted in ways we didn’t expect, even as death tolls rose and public health officials implored us to think of others. We had to survive months of quarantine with people whose habits, hygiene, hobbies and humanistic shortcomings we could no longer escape. We had to survive being unable to hold, touch, even see our closest family member...

If you happen to follow folks from California on social media, then you know our Labor Day weekend hasn’t gone as anyone intended due to a massive, killer heatwave and series of wildfires punctuating this holiday with exclamation points for all the wrong reasons.    My official start began Friday morning with an early beach run at low tide as the sun turned up to make it safe for solo runners like me. Just me and the piping plovers and seagulls for the first mile. And just 75 degrees at 7 a.m., which is warm for here but still way doable for morning exercisers.   A day later, temps soared and forests roared, generating evacuations, energy “flex alerts” and poor air quality warnings every hour.  We also woke to find our fridge wasn’t working, which just seemed so on theme for this year given I splurged at Trader Joe’s the day prior. Of course, the refrigeration replacement part won’t arrive until the middle of next week. But we do have a functioning air condition...

  The other day I recalled a conversation decades ago with a fellow member of a corporate running team known as The Deadliners.  One of the stars of the team was running late for a highly competitive 10k in downtown Norfolk. We feared she’d be a no-show and, as a result, we wouldn’t make it onto the podium that day.    When June finally did turn up, she confessed she wasn’t enthusiastic about running the race, which carried a steep fee for the times.    “Remind me again why I just paid $45 to do something I could also do for free?”   I couldn't deliver an adequate answer. She had a very good point. But one of our colleagues, Dan, was ready with a response.   “Duh, June. We do it for the T-shirt and maybe a medal.”   And so, some 25 years later, here we are, now running virtual races for a T-shirt and maybe a medal (back then given to those who placed; now, to those who participate). If not a T-shirt, then we seek some other swag to justi...

The entire 22 years that my husband served in the military, he never talked about work. Sometimes he couldn’t, and other times he wouldn’t. I respected that decision, even if I didn’t agree with it. And, I compensated by talking  all the time  about my job. Now that he must work from home and in the open area of our townhome, it is impossible not to listen to him provide tech support. The big thing I’ve noticed? He’s very good at his job. He is patient, persistent in a nice way, and even quietly upsells features in a completely authentic manner. Frustrated callers quickly match my husband’s quiet, even tone. He constantly talks through what he’s doing, and he doesn’t try to rush through to the next person in the cue. I love that. And him. I’m glad to see stores here refusing service to people who fail to wear protective face gear. I think one reason the west coast (Seattle suburbs aside) is weathering the pandemic better overall is because states acted earlier (...

I may have mentioned the second half of 2019 was all about novelty races for me. My schedule and training limited my distances, but there are plenty of offbeat 5ks and 10ks here in my hometown of San Diego that I hadn't tried.  One of the big ones was the annual Santa Run in downtown Pacific Beach this past weekend. Just blocks from the Crystal Pier and boardwalk, this is truly a race for anyone and everyone. I walked it with my nephew and a friend and always had plenty of company because this race is big, as in 4000+ participants, all dressed in similar Santa Claus costumes. Getting there: Locals know it can be hard to find parking in PB, especially on weekends. Throw in road closures for the race and subsequent holiday parade and, well, welcome to San Diego. We assumed I'd be circling for on-street parking at least a half mile away on some side street. Then I turned the corner and found a spot one block from the start and finish on Garnet and Cass! Now, if y...

Post-race party in the park I bought those bright red running shorts exactly 20 years ago at a City Sports in Boston’s Downtown Crossing. They were on sale and fit—the only pair among the discount racks that day to meet my running-purchase criteria. I wore them often in the summers and early falls and then put them away come winter to get a little more life out of them. That strategy worked well until this morning, when I grabbed them to wear for the annual Scripps Ranch 4 th of July race and saw the elastic waistband was shot.  This should have been my cue to toss them, but we were in a hurry and I wanted to get one more race out of them, if only for sentimental sakes. This is my favorite summer fun run, where many former running friends and neighbors toe the line for the 10k or equally popular 2-mile fun run. And far as I remember, I’d always worn those red shorts to this race. I had lost my running shorts during the New York City Marathon , creating endl...

Time to pull out the holiday decorations, go pick out a tree and get used to peppermint replacing everything pumpkin. My favorite holiday tradition is finally here too: sending and receiving Christmas cards. I know these annual exchanges are sometimes maligned as annoying and pretentious and antiquated in the age of online social media. But I look forward to hearing from old friends since I never joined Facebook and LinkedIn only keeps me connected to those still working. I joined Instagram in August 2017, a bit later than most and after the company was bought by Facebook (prescient, given Facebook is falling out of favor—and fast). Immediately a few friends found me and connected. Since then several dozen more have. I like that I can go through my feed and see every single post that day because it isn’t overwhelming. Some people want as many followers as possible. Not me. When I was homesick for San Diego, I checked my feed often to feel connected to the place. I loved th...

The Cardiff Kook decked out for the holidays. One of the (truly) bright spots of running this month has been the brilliant displays of holiday lawns on my early morning runs. The decorations and lights pale in comparison to the previous night’s offerings, but there are enough of my neighbors who through their generosity or forgetfulness leave their holiday lights on all night. One house in particular takes the cake for its juxtaposition of the secular and the sacred. A nativity scene – the kind that over the past two decades has gotten municipalities in trouble -- is surrounded by a fence of giant candy canes. Just beyond are neon palm trees with glowing globes, while up on the rooftop is a giant Star of David. Each time I pass it, I wonder if the homeowners are showing homage or humor for such a distinctive display. This inner debate keeps my mind off the leaden legs and labored breathing as I charge up a nearby hill, where other property owners show more creative re...

"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings."   ~Eric Hoffer, Reflections On The Human Condition

Carmel Mountain Ranch Between my work life and medical appointments, I no longer have much time to socialize, even at 6:30 on a Saturday morning. Thus it was a special treat to be part of a holiday weekend kick-off with the Saturday Run/Walk Group that included a hilly and breezy course, followed by a wonderful breakfast hosted by friends George and Li at their beautiful home in Carmel Mountain Ranch. Less than six hours before, I was lying in my living room as our daughter, who'd flown home for a bridal shower and bachelorette party, assessed my mobility, flexibility and stability since undergoing another round of physical therapy. I've definitely made a lot of progress from where I was more than two months ago, which was clinging to ice packs and ibuprofen as I waited for excruciating pain to pass. My daughter works at a physical therapy clinic in Davis and was able to counsel me on other exercises and help me with some good stretches. I didn't pass the assessme...