Posted on June 22, 2011
Mt. Whitney here we come
I’ve been trying to set big goals since blowing out my back twice in the past two years. PT and rehab have been good, and I’ve returned to doing many of the things I like to do. Surf? Check. Swim? Check. Stairmaster? Check. Hike? Check.
So when my friend Scott suggested we try and tackle Mt. Whitney again this year, I thought: (Holy crap, no!) Why not? Two months from today, I hope to be enjoying the view from the summit. There’s a lot to do before we get there, though.
Scott got our permit sorted out, which is for a single day in the so-called Whitney Zone. This means we have a day to do the bulk of the hike, up roughly 5,000 vertical feet. This, I’ve discovered, is what’s now commonly known in hiking circles as an “extreme day hike.” And it sounds a bit insane to think that I, a sea-level dweller, can bag a nearly 15,000 foot peak in a day.
We’ve agreed to wing it a bit on the trip. We may try to do a short hike and overnighter if possible on Tioga Pass. We’ll throw all our gear in the car so we’re ready for a longer hike/overnighter on Whitney if we can luck into an extra day’s permit when we arrive. Then we can acclimate a little better and hopefully have a better chance for the summit. If not, we’ll go anyway and see how far we can get in a day or before we start puking or the legs give out. If we have to do the extreme version, we’ll get up well before the crack of dawn and we’ll benefit from headlamps and late daylight on the way down.
Today we also have the internet at our disposal, and access to discussion boards about current trail status (how much snow is on the face/switchbacks?) and an advance on the weather. We’ll know what we’re getting ourselves into before we go.
Flash back to 1996, the first time I tried Whitney. Me and Scott did the trek up to Trail Camp (~12k feet), and hunkered down just in time before getting slammed by a wild thunder and hail storm. We couldn’t summit the next morning due to snow on the switchbacks. I also recall being sore as hell that morning. So the prospect of doing the entire hike in a day is indeed a big goal. I don’t recall any altitude issues that trip, but we didn’t go higher, either. I was in pretty good shape. And I was 21. But we’ve vowed to return and try again, so this is it.
When PT for my back ended about a month ago, I started training in earnest with regular trips to the gym, the pool, biking, and more recently up local trails. This weekend I did two hikes up the 7.2 mile (roundtrip) PG&E Trail at Rancho San Antonio County Park, which after the second trek on Father’s Day kicked my ass pretty good. It’s one of the tougher trails in the area — a calf-burner on the way up and a thigh/knee-killer on the way down. I’m trying to push myself without over-doing it, so as not to F-up my back again. In addition to getting in shape, the hikes are proving to be a good gear test as well.
My primary gear, so far – all recently purchased:
- REI Venturi 30L pack
- 2 liter Camelbak water reservoir
- Salomon Quest 4D GTX boots
- REI Traverse Shocklight trekking poles
Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
- I’m beating myself up right now but am generally fit. I’m not too concerned about fitness overall if I can keep up my current workouts.
- I’ll be glad to do some 10 mile hikes this summer. We have our first scheduled on Mt. Diablo in early July.
- I’m happy to be breaking in my boots early. My feet are torn up. Heel blisters, toes are smashed, ankles are a bit cut up.
- I hiked with my 30L pack weighted on Friday. Every hike now will include a pack with some weight. Just having the straps on you while going uphill and sweating up a storm takes some getting used to.
- My 2 liter water reservoir may not be enough and I may upgrade to a 3L. Then again, not sure I want the extra water weight/space taken in my pack.
- I’m loving the REI backpack – it’s a great size, and not too heavy even if loaded. It has great airflow through the back and harness. However it won’t be big enough if we get an extra night on the mountain.
- I don’t want to hike in with my ratty old North Face pack. It’s like hauling a potato sack on your back compared to the new REI pack. My how materials have evolved in the last 15 years.
- I need a blister kit and am considering sock liners, on the recommendation of another friend.
- I need to get to the gym.
- I should probably start running a bit.
- I need to hike more.
Two months left. Getting there is going to be a tough but fun climb.
Updated on March 15, 2011
Kauai Trip 2011: Hits & Misses
We’re just back from a week on the north shore of Kauai. It was a good trip. It was a bad trip. It was a trip! Here’s the roundup.
Hit: Successful travel with three kids, two of whom were lap babies on the plane!
Miss: Both flights during nap time (there was no napping) and we were, in fact, “that” hell family on the plane that everyone wanted to throw off. Sorry, folks.
Hit: My parents were there too, as was my sister and her family (my nephews). Still, some quality time was had! Babysitting was had!
Miss: Not enough time to really hang out what with naps, early bedtimes, dinners, etc.
Hit: First time surfing since November due to my ongoing back injury. My hours of PT paid off, and I was grateful to get some fun knee-high waves in warm water on a rental longboard in Hanalei Bay.
Miss: The weather generally wasn’t great, the surf was blown or small, and the swell filled in on the day we had to leave, natch.
Hit: Easy snorkeling off the reef at Tunnels beach.
Miss: As the reef dropped off to deep sand bottom, the constant tug reminding me that about 100 yards away was the spot where Bethany Hamilton lost her arm to a huge tiger shark.
Hit: Queen’s Bath was near our place, and it was fun to hike to and swim in.
Miss: That’s the only hike we took during the week.
Hit: N’s first shave ice!
Miss: They ought to put warning labels on those sugary suckers, for parents.
Hit: I’m tan!
Miss: Should be tanner, but that weather… those naps…
Hit: Ample time on the beach. We spent just about every morning on the sand, somewhere.
Miss: Not enough time to do much else. Kauai is the place you just want to explore – not easy with 19-month-olds napping every day after lunch.
Hit: Air-temperature, non-chlorinated pool in the condo complex.
Miss: Air-temperature pools can be chilly!
Hit: Date night for sunset cocktails at the St. Regis hotel bar, which overlooks gorgeous Hanalei Bay…
Miss: It looms over the bay’s main pointbreak/reef, which was small and glassy during the sunset we watched. Plus I’m too out of shape to paddle that far anyway. It was kind of hard to look at.
Hit #2: Amazing sunset for an otherwise cloudy day.
Miss #2: Damn, the service is slow.
Hit: About a week and a half off from work!
Miss: Vacation came unexpectedly in the middle of the launch of a crash project to ship the Royal Wedding site on Yahoo. Our team rocks – they pulled it off perfectly without me.
Hit: Celebrated Dad’s birthday at the Hanalei Dolphin restaurant and had amazing sushi.
Miss: Think I was able to sit for 20 minutes with the kids then had to bail on the table to run around outside and make sure nobody fell in the river.
Hit: Feeling that blast of warm, humid, Hawaiian air as the plane doors open in LIH, and feeling glad you wore shorts on the flight.
Miss: Landing at SFO… to horrible news of the Japan quake, and arriving at home news of the tsunami.
Updated on January 21, 2011
To the girl I nearly killed yesterday
(From the Endopolis archive. Originally posted 10/08)
Dear anonymous surfer girl:
Sure was a nice afternoon in Capitola on Sunday, wasn’t it? The surf was up — some of those sets rolling through, breaking on the outside reef were solid head-high — and it was pretty good, even at high tide and with that breeze on it. There was a lot of water moving around — really the first real swell we’ve had this fall. I had some long rides and managed to get slapped around a little — it was the kind of day we live for, the kind of day the ocean lets you know you’re alive.
So I’m sure it looked pretty tempting from shore, but it was pretty dumb that your boyfriend (I assume that’s who he was) lead you straight out to the peak when you got in the water. I could tell you hadn’t surfed much before. You paddled pretty well but had a bit of a fearful look on your face, like you didn’t really want to be out there. Maybe it was a little too big for you. We’ve all been there before. I understand.
He was also kind of a loudmouth, but the waves were too good for me to really pay much attention. At least until that one set came through. I paddled over the first one, and got ready for the second. That wave, it was going to be my best of the day. I had eaten shit on the previous set, as a nice big one crashed on my back before I could get up — I was just a little too far inside. That was kind of embarrassing, but I shook it off and got ready for the next one. I was pretty determined.
So when it came, and I spun around to go for it, I saw the look of sheer panic in your eyes below me. You were quite a ways down — that wave was meaty. You were sitting right in the impact zone — right where I was aiming — and your boyfriend was right next to you, sitting there, yelling at you to “GO FOR IT!” You froze as the wall built in front of you, with me on the peak. Neither of you moved, and I was forced to abort before I could get up to turn out of your way. I pushed my board off to the side and tried to jump the other way.
That wave was pretty powerful — it rolled me good and dragged me pretty far. And as I got sucked over the falls and went through the washing machine below, I was just thinking: Please god do not let my board smash this poor girl in the head. I was coming straight at you. I had no idea if I had killed you, but I was really afraid that you’d at least be missing some teeth, it’d be messy, and your boyfriend would want to kill me.
So when I came up and figuring out that everyone was okay, my concern turned to anger. Not because I missed the wave (there were plenty of others), but because your BF put you in that position and almost got you and me hurt pretty badly. I shouted, “What the fuck!?” And gave you and your BF the stink-eye as I climbed back onto my board. I think you started crying and hightailed it back to shore. I didn’t see him after that either.
As I collected myself and paddled back out, I had a chat with an older guy who was really surfing well. We agreed that Capitola is indeed a good spot to learn how to surf, but not on a sizable swell and not on the main peak or in traffic. One of the great things about that spot is it’s friendly to all-comers. Locals, valley weekend warriors like me, kids and the surf schoolers generally all have a lot of fun out there, and there’s always a good vibe in the water.
So, I’m sorry for shouting at you, and for nearly killing you with my 9-2. It wasn’t your fault. We’ve all gotten mowed by a wave before — it’s part of the experience. Even though that wave and I wrecked your day, I hope you don’t stop surfing and hope to see you in the water again. Just leave your boyfriend on the beach.
Mahalo.
Posted on January 21, 2011
Baby got (bad) back
Long time no post. Life has been busy. Work has been busy. I’ve been injured. I tend to spend what little free time I have stretching and strengthening, and icing what has been a very bad back.
This all began back in March of 2009. I was working crazy hours at the startup and it was stressful, but I was generally in OK shape. One weekend we tried to demolish our backyard for a landscaping project and I think — I know — I overdid it with a sledgehammer. Ow.
A couple weeks later I was laying in an MRI machine, only to discover two herniated discs. I took 50% of my orthopedic doctor’s advice and began trying to loosen up and swimming regularly (the other half was physical therapy, which I deferred). The pool workouts were going great – I was swimming over a mile each time out. The back pain and sciatica never got better. I started seeing a locally well-respected chiropractor and therapeutic/sports masseur. Over time, the pain became tolerable with 2x daily exercise and stretching.
Flash forward to September 2010. New job, less overall stress, but more kids to hoist. I was in Oregon visiting family, and while venturing out with my sister we were rear-ended pretty badly in her car. She and her husband were taken to a hospital for observation, while I stayed behind and sorted out insurance and cops. I didn’t feel any immediate pain. A few days later, my shoulders and neck started tightening up. Over a week or so, the tension began moving down my back, and eventually locked in the same spot as my previous back injury. A couple days later, I was laid out on the floor, unable to move. My back muscles had tweaked so badly that I couldn’t straighten my torso. I was bent in a weird angle, and couldn’t get out of it. I could barely walk. My hips started to hurt because they were tweaked so badly, my left leg longer than the other. I spent some of that time on the floor sobbing. It’s a bizarre feeling for someone who’s always been active and relatively fit to be literally crippled. After a few days, even though you tell yourself it’s temporary, the pain and crookedness of your body starts to mess with your head.
Tried the chiropractor, tried stretching, ibuprofen, heat and ice. Nothing worked, and the pain worsened. So I loaded up on meds and went back to the doctor who said the accident probably re-injured the discs and that the muscle was doing its job to tense up and protect the area. The doc gave me a week’s supply of vicodin to “break the mental chain” between the pain and tension. Then and on her advice, I found a physical therapist.
So the loosening and strengthening continues, only this time it’s much more regimented. Strength workouts are focused on core, hips, and legs. The insane back tension that floored me is gone. Now we’re starting to think the discs are healed but that tension in my piriformis muscles are causing the general low back tension. We’ll spend the next few weeks working on that. I haven’t had any ibuprofen for about three weeks. Victory!?!? I won’t say that until I wake up without sciatica, or can sit in a chair longer than 30 minutes.
I’m starting to think about getting back in the pool for very light workouts. I’m focused on getting strong enough to surf a bit during our trip to Kauai in March. I can’t go snowboarding. Worse, for a few weeks I couldn’t pick up my kids. The family is sick of me being in pain and I’m sick of dealing with it. You’re probably sick of reading about it too, so we’ll leave it at that. Only stories of improvement from here on out.
Posted on August 13, 2010
Dude, you’re back at Yahoo! (Or, Dude, you’re back at Yahoo? WTF?)
Yeah, I came back to Yahoo, and I’m proud of it. I’ve actually been meaning to write this post for a while but finally felt compelled to do so after seeing what’s going on in the company today, and reading some disparaging remarks about the company (again) in the blogosphere.
Here’s my story. It starts way back in 1998 so bear with me. I was a newspaper reporter struggling to make ends meet on an annual salary of less than $20,000. In the Bay Area it’s almost not doable. I eventually started covering some high tech stories in Silicon Valley and was exposed to a number of technologies and people doing interesting things. (This after attending Cal Poly and somehow missing the whole computer science thing.) Anyway, I somehow lucked into a part-time copywriting gig with Yahoo that paid more on the contract than I was paid in three months of work at the newspaper. It planted the seed, even though copywriting wasn’t really for me: There’s opportunity in web content.
A year later, I took a job as editor of a startup regional newspaper which turned into a magazine covering the dot com boom. It folded but not until we covered some cool stories and I, again, was exposed to some incredible people and companies. It was easy back then to see $$ in content. I will never forget going door to door in South Park, dropping off our magazines and seeing creative people doing cool stuff online. So, I taught myself HTML before the magazine folded.
By late 1999 I was working at TechTV, and was finally really doing web content as a reporter, editor and producer and making well over double my newspaper salary. I was stoked. It was a great place to work. But I was a south bay guy, and had always kept my sights on Yahoo. Why? It was the first company doing web content at scale, and doing it at scale in ways that nobody else was doing. I interviewed with Yahoo at one point around 2001 and barely lost out on the job to someone I’m still friends with today. (Yahoo is that kind of place.) I was bummed but it was fine – I figured I still needed to grow. Funny enough, I also interviewed at Google around that time, just as they were beginning to monetize search. I thought the place was weird. Not sure what that says about my judgment, but there you go. If it had been a good fit I might be retired by now. C’est la vie.
In 2004 TechTV was bought by Comcast, and I was given the option to move to LA to join the new G4TV network. I declined and took a severance. Prior to walking I helped lead a content deal with Yahoo, in which TechTV video was distributed out to Yahoo News for a new technology section they were building. Through my contacts at Y News I inquired about a job, and there happened to be one opening. I applied, and was lucky to nail it. That was in 2004.
I worked first as a producer and soon as a product manager for News until late 2008, starting out on the team when it was tiny and working through its massive growth, the media group’s move to Santa Monica, the push into original content, and the rise and fall of our CEO Terry Semel (and many other managers). I left the company at the peak of its uncertainty in Nov. ’08 for a good opportunity, to run the content operation at a startup. Ultimately, that didn’t work out for a number of reasons. It is what it is, and it was a great experience.
I interviewed at a handful of companies early this year. When I asked myself what I really was looking for, the following emerged: 1. I wanted to be working with really smart, great people, both on the engineering side and the content and product side. 2. I wanted to be involved in building web content experiences and products at a really big scale, 3. I wanted some job security and benefits (hey, it’s the economy, stupid) and 4. I really still liked Yahoo. I had been hearing good things about management and the changes that happened while I was gone from friends still at the company, so I figured it’d be worth another shot. In March, I was hired, and I’m now leading product management for a team that builds cool custom content and advertising experiences. Our group is responsible for delivering on a lot of revenue, and our sites serve millions of users. I’m lucky that I can check all the boxes that I wrote for myself during my job hunt. Hell, I’m lucky I got a job this year.
I’m not one of these I-bleed-purple Yahoo people. I’m cognizant of the fact they could lay me off tomorrow without cause. I don’t sell my soul to companies. In fact for a while I really didn’t think I’d end up working at Yahoo again. But as a Yahoo user since around 1995, I definitely have an affinity for the company and its products. With News, I worked with great people and learned more on the job than I ever had before. I wanted that again, so I found a great opportunity and went back.
The company has its faults and challenges and hasn’t always made the best decisions. Hindsight is 20/20. But the company isn’t dead. Far from it. I’m not sure why anyone implies it or ever writes Yahoo’s obituary. It’s got the talent, it’s a huge brand, has a gigantic user base and world-class advertisers. What is Yahoo? I see it as a media services company – we provide services and content, and we sell ads. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Every time I see a freakin’ Twitter fail whale, I’m reminded of one way Yahoo is amazing: our sites don’t go down. This is actually an internal mandate, and frankly is something that can add to the infamous bureaucracy we all read about. But, our sites don’t go down. There aren’t many web companies that can achieve this, especially given the traffic Yahoo sees. There are smart people at Yahoo who have figured out how to make this happen and are preparing for problems of bigger scale. This is just one example of things I’ve seen within the company that prove there are countless good, well-reasoned decisions that are made at Yahoo every day.
Here’s another. On Dec. 26, 2004 a huge earthquake hit Indonesia and the ensuing tsunami devastated the region. There were only a couple of us working during the holiday, and nobody knew the magnitude of the event until the next day. We went into scramble mode, and held an emergency version of the editorial meeting generally attended by editorial folks from across the company. With the holidays there was only a handful of people there. As we discussed our coverage options and pages we could launch, I looked to my left and realized that David Filo was sitting next to me offering ideas, the availability of engineering help and hardware support. The same thing happened after Hurricane Katrina. Yahoo mobilized, the founders got involved (I parked next to Filo yesterday – the guy still goes to work), we provided great coverage, Yahoo sourced millions of dollars in aid, and the company helped people on the ground in New Orleans. There are worse companies in the world…
So when was the last time you saw a 404 on a Yahoo web page? Google does search really well but does it have the best News, Sports, Finance and Entertainment websites online? I believe in the powerful combination of human editorial and great technology, and nobody has both like Yahoo. I’ve been involved in quite a bit of strategic planning recently and have been exposed to new leadership that continues to bring fresh ideas and good opportunities to the company. The future remains to be seen but it’s definitely bright, and I’m again stoked to be working at Yahoo.