Archived entries for travel
AGHHHH!
That was pretty much my face throughout the entire freefall.
First skydive, Fox Glacier, June 25.
The Secret Life of Booze: A Cocktail History
When I was in New Zealand last week I spoke at Webstock Mini in Wellington, in conjunction with Full Code Press (more on that in a future post). The evening featured presentations from my friends Liz Danzico and Jason Santa Maria, plus eight 5-minute talks on topics of presenters’ choosing. I talked about the history of the cocktail, based on my recent read of the book How’s Your Drink by Eric Felton.
Bay to Breakers
Or, yet another reason for San Franciscans to don costumes.
Yesterday, Ben, Erika and I ran in San Francisco’s 98th annual Bay to Breakers race. B2B is a 12K (7.5 mile) run from the San Francisco Bay to Ocean Beach. It’s known for being a party disguised as a race.
Highlights include crazy costumes, a tortilla toss, a school of salmon who wear fish hats and run upstream from finish to start, centipede groups of 13 who compete in a connected line, giant floats lots and lots of naked runners. It’s unlike any other race I’ve ever done, and I’ve only seen the costumes that passed me on their way to the start.
I tried to get back to a suitable spectating location once I finished the race, but the roads were so packed (80,000 runners + crowds) that I couldn’t get close. Next year I’ll run in costume, I swear.
Erika brought flowers for Ben and I to carry since
we were under dressed (as runners).
Erika, on the other hand, was well dressed in her
Burning Man BumbleBee dress.
Token naked guy photo, because, well… there
are a lot of them. And they all carry bags.
There were a lot of Elvii at the race – this one
finished up just in front of me.
My week in Milan
I’ve just returned from Salone del Mobile in Milan, where I introduced Kicker Studio in a presentation I gave last Thursday. I took a million photos of all the cool designy fair, which I *tried* to narrow down to just few. Here are the pictorial highlights of the work I saw, from Established & Sons, Tokyo Fiber, Swarovski Crystal, and the designers at Superstudio:
just do it
So here I go. I started my spring training on Saturday, trying to to get myself back into some sort of shape for the Philadelphia Triathlon on June 28. The race is an olympic distance triathlon, which means it’s a mile swim, and 24 mile bike, and a 6 mile run. Not so far really — any one of those legs is manageable on its own. In combination they’re not so difficult, they just require some training to get used to doing all three together. I don’t do these things to win them, just to finish and finish well, meaning at a pace and comfort level indicative of a certain level of fitness. I’m no where near that level right now, so I have a lot of work to do.
I kicked off the festivities with a mini indoor tri at my new gym at UCSF. I started with an 800 yard lap swim, followed by a 10 mile bike (on a stationary bike) and a 3 mile run (on a treadmill). It wasn’t all that hard, given the fact that I hadn’t been in a pool in 6 months and hadn’t really done more than an hour of exercise consecutively in at least that long. But it did everything very slowly, which is what I really want to fix. I’m not sure how long the swim took, but the bike took 36 minutes, and the run another 35. Hopefully I’ll get faster over the next couple of month, and can try the same workout again with better results.
Running has been the hardest part so far. I want to be running a 9ish minute mile, and right now I’m at more like an 11:30. Big gap there. And it’s a depressing fact to deal with every time I try to run. On Sunday Ben and I went out to Crissy Field for 5.5 miles in the wind. I think it took close to an hour. in theory, running with someone who’s faster than I am, as Ben is, should help me speed up. But it more often makes me more aware of just how slowly I’m going, and doesn’t seem to make me any faster.
On Monday I did an hour of cycling on an indoor bike. I try to make the stationary bike somewhat challenging, using the hill profile on 8 or 10, but it’s not the same as riding a real bike. I need to start riding my hybrid bike to work (been talking about that for weeks now) and need to get out on my road bike an start training on hills. I’m scared of the hills here in San Francisco. They’re tall, and they’re long.
Yesterday I got back in the pool in the morning, and then ran in the evening. The lap swim wasn’t as much fun this time as on Sunday. Slow, slow going, I think I did 1200 yards. That’s probably only around 1000 meters, and probably took close to 30 minutes. I need a lot of work on my stroke efficiencies I think, and more than that I just need to get stronger. Which means lifting weights, which I haven’t done since December. For the evening run, Ben and I drove to Ocean Beach and ran along the water at sunset. And as he says, that really does not suck. I imagined myself as I was running enjoying it much more at a later date, when running comes easily to me instead of laboriously as it does now. The view was gorgeous, but not quite enough to distract me from the fact that I was huffing to manage a 1030/11 min/mile pace, and again ended up in the 11:30 range, taking close to 40 minutes for 3.5 miles. There was wind again, so we could blame the wind, but it’s also all the extra weight I’m carrying slowing me down. Which brings me to the other aspect of training – diet.
As of Saturday, I’m *trying* to keep to a 1,500 calories a day, so I can shed some of the XX lbs I’ve put on since I started doing triathlons in 2002. I keep blaming the bread and wine in Italy for the extra weight, but I’ve been back for 3 years now. Unfortunately, it’s not going to go away until I do something real about it, so here goes. Enough with the programs and the nutritionists, and the other routes I’ve tried for a few days at a time, this time I’m making up my own routine. I’m writing everything down (again). I’m upping the fruit and veg. I’m keeping my white flour and cheeses to a bare minimum. And I’m watching the alcohol. This doesn’t mean I’m not drinking at all — that’s just not realistic. But I’m trying to be judicious about it, and keep to my daily calorie count. It’s been all of 4 day so far, but so far so good.
Why am I documenting all this minutia you ask? Simply put, to keep myself on track. I’m hoping that recounting what I’m up to will add a smidge of extra obligation to my usual inner dialogue, and that once I get a bit further in I can start to report some progress.
The bottom line is that I needed to stop complaining about not being thinner/faster/stronger, and just get off my ass and do it.
So here I go.
sxsw recap
Forgot to post this earlier this week…
I’ve been back a few hours now from Austin, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to recap my last week or so of conferenceuary (term coined by Neb). In truth I’m supposed to be doing more official writing at the moment, and I’m hoping this warm up will get my fingers flowing. So here goes… first thing I’ve decided about SXSW is that the Hotel San Jose is worth all the cost and cache it’s got. I spent several nights on the patio at the San Jose this year, which I knew from last year as an oasis from the crowded bars of downtown Austin. But last night I slept on a cot in one of their guest rooms — a cot! — and I slept better than I have all week. Perhaps it was the balmy weather, and the fact that there was actual air from the outside world in the room itself. But even though I was on a cot it was beyond pleasant, far superior to the gigantic and generic Hilton. The other obvious thing the San Jose has going for it is the other guests — not only were Molly and Ben staying there, but also Neb, John, Kevin, and my friends Meg and Jason from NYC. Good friends and good cava. What else can you ask for?
Apart from accommodations a few other things stood out about Austin and SXSW. There were the breakfast tacos, of course, which I finally got a hold of this morning. And the migas….mmm egg and tortilla strips. Oh and the texmex martinis, which I tasted on Saturday at the Dryskill and talked about for the rest of the week. Tequila, cointreau, lime and olive juice and a salted rim. Giant yum. Apparently the San Jose also had a special cocktail, a beer concoction called a michelada, but I never got to try it. I was distracted by the cava.
Okay so that’s lodging, food and drink. On to the conference itself. What did I see? None of the keynotes, unfortunately. They were inconveniently timed. But I did get to many of the morning sessions — Molly’s tangible interactions in urban environments panel, Jason Santa Maria’s panel about Design narratives, Liz’z designer and developer shoot out, and a slew of others that weren’t social calls. The role of time in mobile, sex in science fiction, the journey to the center of design, are the first that come to mind. Even managed to get a glimpse of my movie star boyfriend Paul Rudd with friends Jason Segel, Jamie Pressley and John Favreau on the token “film stars entertain us” panel that’s part of SXSW film.
Yesterday Tom and I hosted our own session: “Collaboration or Collision: Achieving Studio Bliss,” a discussion group on collaboration in design. We had about 30 participants in the room, and everyone seemed entertained and engaged in the conversation. We ended up focusing on the design process and guidelines for dealing with clients who don’t understand it, which wasn’t where I’d imagined the conversation going. But it was meant to be a collaboration, so it went where the room wanted it to go. I found myself reluctant to speak too much, for fear of guiding the discussion too directly or stilting the conversation. In the end the participants said they got a lot out of it, and a few said they’d be going home with new ideas about tactics to try at the office. So I guess it went well!
There’s plenty more to the trip than the food & drink and the conference itself, but I need to get on with the other writing I was meant to be doing — a review of Objectified, which premiered at SXSW on Saturday night. You can find that on the Kicker Studio blog, as soon as I get it up there.
Almost time for SXSW!
Back for a second year, I’m returning to the South By Southwest Interactive festival as a speaker next week. This year I’m hosting a core conversation titled “Collaboration or Collision: Acheiving Design Studio Bliss” with fellow Kicker Tom Maiorana. We’ll be sharing how our past experiences with collaboration inform our work at Kicker Studio, and talking with anyone who joins the discussion about what makes collaboration successful. We’re looking forward to it, and hope you are too. We’ll be in room 7 at 3:30pm on Tuesday March 17th. Please come see us if you’re at the conference! (Oh, and if you’re particularly into drawing/diagramming/mindmapping please let me know… looking for some help with documenting the chat. 
)
SF Prologue: wrap up
We made it all the way across!
We arrived in SF on Saturday evening. We took the little XA for a bath before entering the city, and stopped to ice the champagne we’d been carrying with us all week. Jessica met us when we got here and we all celebrated the end of the trip. You’d think we were tired after the week we had, but somehow we managed to unpack half of my house! I really don’t want Jeannine to leave. How do I get her to move to SF?
Tweets from the road on 2009-01-24
- art and aliens in the southwest! – day 6 update on http://www.jennbove.com #
- The fog is lifting over the desert and it’s time to drive on to SF. Eep! #
- “Le monde entier est un cactus. Il est impossible de s’asseoir.” (Dutronc, and me…at full volume) #
- Apparently talking so fast I’m incomprehensible. It’s going to take me weeks to decaffinate. #
- Speeding ticket = buzzkill #
- <175 miles to San Francisco #
- East bay traffic…. #
- Stopping in Oakland to wash 12 states worth of dirt off my poor little car. #
- HELLO SAN FRANCISCO. #
- I don’t know what I would do without @trixiepeacone and @onlyinthrees. #
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