Curvechasers Photos are Available!

For photos from this weekend's Putnam Park Track Day (Curvechasers) Click Here!

Thanks!

Putnam Park Track Day

I shot another one of Curvechasers Track Days at Putnam Park road coarse yesterday. We had a rainy start, but after lunch the weather cleared and the track filled up. I couldn't ask for more than that!

I'm editing the photos now, and will post them on my site for sell in the next week. Watch for the link if you want to see some of the bikes that came out!

Self Portrait

Take in Chicago last spring...I think.

Citizens...cast your vote...

Hey all, I entered a design contest for SIGG bottles. They're reusable water bottles. Lauren saw something on her fav. show ever, Ellen, about them, went to the site, and found the contest. She said I should enter, so that night I stayed up till 11:00 trying to come up with a design. In the end, I picked something super simple, but I think it might look nice on a bottle.

Follow this link below to vote, and look for my name. It's the green bottle with the recycle pattern on it.




Thank you ahead of time. If I win I get 100 bottles to hand out, and if you tell me you voted for me, I'll send you one!

Put another blog on the fire.

Ok, here's the deal.  I started this blog a few years ago because I was researching blogs for work, and what better way to get to know the process than to start one for yourself.  Right?

Well, over the years it has served as a place to rant, a place to post useful things, and a place to post every day whatevers that people might find interesting.  I never really expected anyone to read or give a damn about it.  I looked at it like that book you keep in the bathroom.  You pick it up every now and then while you're doing your business, you read a few paragraphs, and then it's back to work/life/whatever it was you were doing before you felt nature calling - never to give what you just read more than a passing thought.

I don't expect any of you to come here looking for profound resolution to life's great mysteries.  If you do, god help you, because there are much better places to find those answers.  I, for one, use Google.  It hasn't failed me yet.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that while so many bloggers out there are trying to use their blogs to sell themselves, their ideas, or other people's products, this blogger will not.  In fact, this weekend I was a button click away from taking the whole mess off the internet forever after reading the nonsense of some other bloggers - trying to promote their words as the ultimate truth.  Like their blog was going to be the most important thing since apple butter.  Well, let me tell you un-named bloggers,  if your ideas are in fact that important, I guess I'll read about them when Google links me to them.

Then I realized that this is the only journal I've kept semi-consciously for the last few years.  All the others I start, write in for a few months, and then forget about it.

So, for now, I've decided to leave it up.  It's just too convenient of a place to keep random thoughts to take down.  So thanks to those who read these words.  I appreciate your patronage!

AT Trip Pictures

I just got the pictures back from my annual Appalachian Trail Death March trip. You can check them out here:

http://www.madflydesign.com/atPics/atPics.html

It was a grueling hike...mostly uphill and over rocky and bouldered ground. Needless to say, we planned to do 36 miles over 3 days, and ended up pushing out 20 some miles in 1.5 days, due to rain and extreme fatigue. If you would have asked me on the first day if I'd do it again, I'd say "never again".

If you ask me now, I'd say "hell yes!".

I guess next year we'll have to plan another trip!

1/4 mile to go...

This weekend I volunteered for the Mini Marathon here in Indy - helping out the communications team. As an amateur radio operator, opportunities like this are plenty in the summer. Having never volunteered for the mini, though, and having ran it a couple times, I thought I'd see it from the other side for once.

It was a blast! I was stationed with another radio operator at the 1/4 mile to go marker...so basically at 12.85 miles in. Our job was basically to call into the "net control" when the first wheelchair passed us, when the first male runner passed us, when the first female runner passed us, and when the "meat wagon", or the tail end bus passed us, signalling the end of the race. In between all of that, we were to act as safety personnel, traffic control, and emergency communications if runners went down in our area.

They warned everyone on my frequency, basically everyone in the last mile of the race, that we could very possibly see some runners collapse and be in need of emergency medical help. I knew it was possible, but I didn't think it would actually happen.

Around 9:30 it did, though. I was watching a runner near me sort of staggering around, and then pick back up running again. He would run maybe 10 steps, then stagger over to the side of the road and dry heave a bit, then take off again. I was watching this, and then I heard my partner on the radio. "Net control, this is 1/4 mile marker, we need medical assistance. Runner down..."

I looked over to his position, across the 4 wide lanes of New York Street, filled with runners, and his arms full of a collapsed young woman. He was about to drop her, so I sprinted through the crowd to help him. Net control was calling back, but he was unable to answer them, so I took over. "Net control, this is 1/4 mile marker, we have a runner down, female, bib number ######, I'm making my way over and will give more information when I can get it."

When I got through the running masses, we got the runner into the grass. She didn't look good. She was pale, breathing very deeply, and her eyes were rolled to the back of her head. She was sort of moaning with each breath - in and out of consciousness and not responding to the standard "are you ok?" questions I was asking. I checked her pulse at her neck and noticed her skin was very cool to the touch.

By this time a crowd was starting to gather. No one seemed to know what to do, so I thought back to my first aid training. I was drawing a complete blank. She was breathing, her pulse was steady...106 beats a minute. 106 is 6 beats per minute above the resting heart rate of a healthy adult. A person who was just running a 13 mile half marathon should have had a much higher heart-rate, but she was breathing...so all I could do was wait. I took down her information on the patient tracking forms they gave us as volunteers, and relayed the information back to the net control.

It seemed like 10 minutes before the EMT's arrived. When they finally did arrive, "BB", our runner, was starting to come to. She was responding to a few more questions we were asking her, about her husband and if he was there, and if his number was the number on the back of her bib. When the EMTs arrived they sat her up, and she started to realize where she was and that she was so close to finishing. She told them she wanted to just walk down and cross the line, but as she tried to take a step, she started passing out again. That was all it took for the EMT's to say "no way", and put her on the cart to transport to the medical tent for an exam. I heard her say "But I'm only 1/4 mile away!" Then she said "Oh well..." and gave in to her obviously exhausted condition.

They took her away, and that was all we heard of her. There were no more serious events that happened in our area the rest of the race. When we were done, and my partner and I came across the street to talk again, we both said "I wonder how that girl is doing now?" It made me think about all of the people who do emergency medical stuff for a living, and how they can go to work every day knowing that they were going to see people in a very unstable and dangerous condition, and that their job was to keep them alive until more help arrived. Then they hand them off, and just have to wonder...will they be ok?