The Random Thoughts Review

In May 2006, I decided to hike the Grand Canyon. I felt like I was in good enough shape, and, as they say, there is no time like the present.

grandcanyon.omnux.com.

I’ve made up a detailed website where I discuss the trip. It contains a lot of pictures. But, more importantly, I kept a detailed journal of the entire trip. I’ve typed up the journal and put it online, with lots of links to appropriate pictures. Hopefully you’ll find it entertaining. To get there, just go to the above link and click on itinerary/journal. Then you can jump to the excerpt from first day’s journal entry.

I’d recommend a Grand Canyon hike to anyone. I had been there once before, but stayed on the Rim. Getting “below the rim” is a wonderful experience.

Today I competed in my first ever running competition. A few days ago I was looking over the website for the local fireworks celebration and I noticed that they have a 5 kilometer walk/run as part of the festivities. As I’ve been doing on occasion lately, I said to myself, “I’m in good enough shape to do that!” The deadline for preregistration was back in June, so I wasn’t going to manage that, but for the $15 entry fee I got a t-shirt, and I figured that would suffice to cover my donation that I normally give to the group for the fireworks that will be later this evening.

So, on Friday I ran to the library and back. Total distance of around 5.2 kilometers. It took me 27 minutes. The first mile took me 7 minutes and 33 seconds. The second mile was near that time, but the third mile really slowed me down. The route to the library and back has more of a hill that the expected race route, though, so I was hoping for a slightly faster time. I figured if I could do 25-26 I’d be happy. 24 minutes would be really nice.

On Saturday I ran/walked about 6 miles. Mostly, I walked. It was about 95 degrees that day, and I just wasn’t really in the mood to kill myself. On Sunday, I walked about a mile and a half, and I didn’t do any leg exercise on Monday. I figured my legs should be ready for Tuesday’s race that way.

The race route

This morning I got up about 7:30 and had some Total cereal with milk. At 9:30 or so I started to drink a little bit of Gatorade, and at 9:55 I started walking over to where the race was going to start. I got over there about 10:10 and there were a lot of people already there. I found the line for registration and then I waited.
A few minutes after I got there, Rob showed up. He was about 5-6 people behind me in line. The kid’s race around Assembly Hall started right there while we were waiting in line. We slowly made our way up to registration and when I was about 10 people back, the guys getting tshirts were complaining that Extra Large was all they had. That’s a bummer. I was wanting a medium. Guess next time I need to get here sooner. I made it up to the registration table, gave them my form and my money, they gave me a number to put on my shirt along with some safety pins…. And that was it. They had run out of tshirts. So, no tshirt for me. 🙁 Oh well. Live and learn… Live and learn..

Anyway, we got registered and I stood in line for a while for the bathroom, but the call to line up for the race happened before I had a chance to make it to the portapotty. Luckily, it wasn’t a pressing need, and I went and got in line for the race. A guy near the front talked for a while into one of those battery powered megaphones and finally realized that no one could hear him, and he started yelling out directions: On Kirby/Florida Avenue, go how traffic would go. South side going out, north side coming back. Two water stations, and at the end, runners to the left, and walkers to the right. Then, good luck to all, on your mark, get set, and Go!

It was a bit crowded at the beginning as well over 400 runners and walkers headed out, but it didn’t take too long for things to spread out some. I headed up Fourth Street, turned east onto Kirby Avenue and made my way eastward. In the first half mile or so of my runs, I have to convince my body that I mean business. I go through a period there where it would be more enjoyable to walk, but once I get into the groove I can go for quite a while. Before turning north onto Lincoln, there was a water station where they were holding out cups to grab. I wasn’t feeling the need, so I kept on going. We turned north onto Lincoln, and at the first major cross street (Pennsylvania) I saw a sign that read ‘1’, meaning 1 mile in. I looked at my watch, and I was going at an 8 minute pace. I kept heading up Lincoln, and, at some point, saw the guys in the front of the pack heading south. Needless to say, I wasn’t providing them any competition. I made it to Jimmy Johns, which is near Nevada. The race was supposed to turn around near Nevada. But we kept going north. A couple of blocks later there was a water station and the turn around. I tried to grab some water, but no one had a cup handy for me, so I passed by, turned back to the south, and kept on going. At this point, I was watching the people on the other side that were actually slower than me. That’s a nice change. Before, I was seeing all these people, young and old, who were running faster than me. But now, I was getting to see some of the people who were thinking that about me!

Back down at Pennsylvania, I passed the 2 mile sign. 15:40 in. Did the second mile 20 seconds faster than the first. Would be nice to keep that up. Turned west toward home, managed to grab a cup of water at the water station there. Took one swallow, managed to get a lot of it down my nose, and coughed for a while there as I was getting rid of water that went where it shouldn’t have went. I could sense that I was slowing down a little bit at this stage of the race. But, there was too much left for me to really start kicking in the speed. So, I kept going as well as I could. Once I turned south onto Fourth Street, the end was only a few tenths of a mile away. I started building up speed. I went by the 3 mile mark. Kept going. Going.. Going.. and stop. I looked at my watch. 24:35. Wow! But, I wasn’t done. There was a queue at the finish line while people were getting their official times recorded. By the time I made it to the official timer, I was at around 24:58. I don’t know the actual time yet. A guy wrote down my number, and then they tore off the bottom part of the number paper as an official record (I hope they don’t ever drop those things out of order). Then, I found a place to sit down. Rob was coming up to the queue point then. He ended up having a time of about 25:30, probably 26 official. Both of us did really well! I’m quite pleased with my time. Fastest I’ve ever run that. But, I wish it had been faster. When you do the math it figures out to 7.58 miles per hour, or about a 7.91 minute mile.

We noticed a board where they were arranging people in order of arrival. After a while, I found my number. I came in 177th overall (Annoyingly, that picture chopped off the number row. The numbers you can see are for the row beneath mine. I’m right above the number for 227). Rob ended up at 216th. We got a poweraide drink that they had for the racers, and were preparing to leave when they had the award ceremony. The overall winning time was 14:42 (which, in my opinion, is very impressive) and set a new record for the event. For my age range, 30-34, the top three male finishers were all under 20:40. So, I don’t know exactly where I came out in my age range, but I wasn’t in the race expecting to win, so I have no complaints. My only complaint is that I didn’t get a tshirt. I wanted a shirt for my first race. Oh well. After that, I ran back home, took a shower, and here I am, writing it up.

We saw a few people that we knew. Bob McGrew walked with, presumably, his daughter. Marc, from BISS, walked in the race. Jim Myers, from NCSA ran, and Steve Bond also ran. Rob talked to a friend of his that I didn’t know. You just never know who you might see at these things. All things considered, a good event. It’s interesting to see the subculture that surrounds things like this. A lot of the people were wearing tshirts from 5 and 10k runs that they had done several years ago. People behind me in the registration line were talking about marathons that they had signed up for.. Interesting stuff.

UPDATE: In my age range, 30-35, the top times were 17:58, 18:59, 19:27, 20:37, 21:21, 21:49, 23:02, 23:28, 23:36, 23:49, 23:57, 23:59, 24:05, 24:15, 24:18, 24:23, 24:57, and then my official time of 25:04.

Link To Race Results

So, I came in 18th in my age group. Nothing to write home about, but hey, it was my first race!

I had a pretty good jog/run last night. Speed wise I didn’t break any real records, but the distance was pretty good.

Route Down South And Back

I left from the house, went all the way down to Curtis Avenue, then over to Neil Street, came back up by the ATM machine and then up to Kirby Avenue, over and back down.

According to the pedometer it was 5.17 miles. My total time gone (including the brief break at the ATM machine) was 49 minutes. That figures out to 9.47 minutes per mile. The big thing, though, is that this farther than I’ve ever went while actually not walking. I didn’t take any breaks, other than the ATM machine and maybe 5 seconds at a couple of stoplights waiting for the walk signal. Other than that, no stopping, no walking.. Just plodding along. Hitting new milestones all the time…

I made a cake for work earlier this week. People seemed to like it, so I thought I’d post the recipe.

Ingredients:
Duncan Hines Triple Chocolate Cake Mix (prepared)
Raspberry Jello
Smucker’s Simply Fruit (Red Raspberry, seedless)
Chocolate Cool Whip (8 ounce tub)
Hershey’s Premium Baking Bits Filled With Raspberry

I started with a triple chocolate cake mix and made it according to the directions on the box. I suspect that alterations could be made here with little damage. I had a Dark chocolate cake mix that I had thought about trying as well.

While the cake is cooking, prepare the jello. Boil the water, use the packet and add the cold water. Then, just leave the bowl of liquid jello sitting on the counter.

Once the cake has finished cooking, give it a couple of minutes to set, and start poking holes in the top. I used a toothpick, and put a hole about every half inch. Yes, it’s a lot of holes.

Then, pour the jello over the cake. Try to get it as even as possible. With the cake being warm, the jello will quickly drain into the cake, so you have to make sure to spread out the liquid over the entire cake. A spoon can help here to distribute the jello.

Then, set the cake in the fridge. I made the cake one evening about 11pm (I was bored). I let the cake sit in the fridge overnight uncovered, and in the morning I put a cover on the pan to retain moisture.

After the cake has had a chance to cool completely, run a knife along the edges of the pan and flip the cake over onto a serving platter. This could be tricky. On my cake, I had a section in the middle that stayed stuck in the cooking pan. I had to use a spatula to remove those sections and reform the expected “box” look of the cake.

Once I had the cake on the serving platter, I coated the cake with a layer of Smuckers Simply Fruit I think it was about an 8 ounce jar.

Then I put the cake back in the fridge to let the fruit maybe harden a little bit.

Meanwhile, I had the chocolate cool whip thawing in the refridgerator. Once the cool whip had completely thawed, I frosted the cake with the cool whip. You have to be careful here. The fruit doesn’t really harden much. It has the consistency of jam, so you have to be careful with the spatula to keep the fruit layer hidden from view. When you dollop a clump of whipped topping onto the cake, spread out from the clump to cover the cake. Don’t spread back in towards the dollop, or you’ll pick up the fruit on the spatula and end up turning the cool whip red. I used the entire 8 ounce tub of cool whip on the cake.

Then, to top it off, I used the baking bits. I can’t find a link for these on the web, but they come in a packet that looks just like a chocolate chip bag, and are probably in the same area of the store. When all is said and done, the cake ended up looking like the picture to the right.

There are a bunch of variations you could do on the cake. I had thought about going the chocolate/strawberry route, and I think it would have worked well. Most any fruit flavor would probably do well. Enjoy!

I’ve been playing volleyball a few times a week lately. It’s been fun. It’s given me a chance to meet new people, and a bit of exercise as well. For whatever reason, I love to ‘set’. I set everything. I shouldn’t, but I do. I haven’t had a whole lot of luck cultivating my ‘bump’, so I just set.

However, this isn’t the idea way to handle an incoming serve. I’ve known this, but it was really hammered home to me last night. I was in the back left corner of the court when a serve came sailing in, and my hands were in the wrong place when the ball arrived. My left thumb got jammed in, bent back pretty good, and I heard something of a pop (which I hope was the ball) and I instantly knew that I was in a bit of pain.

It was one of those pains that you really feel. I leaned over for 30 seconds or so, and decided that I could keep playing. One more serve (not to me, thank goodness) and then I rotated to the left end of the front row. I made it through a serve and found that I was getting more and more nauseous. I said that I was taking a break, found the nearest section of fence to lean against and sat down on the sand. I’m guessing that I would have fainted had I stayed up a few more seconds. It was one of those kinds of pains. 😉 So, I sat there for a while. My body started sweating like crazy for about 5 minutes and I was slowly trying to get my left hand moving again. My thumb didn’t really swell all that much, though. After this I got up, walked around a bit, and after 15 minutes or so decided that I was done playing volleyball for the night and brushed the sand off, put my shoes on, and ran home.

Upon arriving home I held a few ice cubes on the thumb for a while, took a shower, and then put some ice cubes in a bag and iced the hand for probably an hour and a half. There was a little bit of swelling. The thumb didn’t have hardly any motion, though. I could bend the thumb, but moving the entire thumb wasn’t easy. If I tried to move the thumb away from my hand, it quickly started hurting and I just couldn’t go very far.

Fast forward 12 hours through an evening of less-than-normal sleep and some internet searches, and I think I have a pretty good thumb sprain. Hopefully the thumb isn’t broken. It’s still swollen some, and certain motions (basically anything where I have to grip with my left hand, or anything that requires me to move the thumb in relation to the hand itself) simply isn’t easy, or even possible. From my searching, this is the type of thing that could take 4 days to recover from, or it could take 6 weeks. It sounds like it varies a lot. Right now it isn’t hurting much, and luckily I can type, since that doesn’t require me to move my thumb very far relative to my left hand. But, I just just don’t have any strength, and can’t do anything that requires my thumb to play an active role. Stay tuned, but I know I’m not going to be playing anymore volleyball in my current condition. 🙁

On August 22, 1989, my dad and myself went to Springfield and bought a new Toyota pickup with 21 miles on it. In the last seventeen years or so, my truck has been good to me. I’ve had a couple of major things done to it, but it’s been remarkably well behaved for its age. However, time is eventually going to become the enemy, and I decided a couple of years ago that I needed to start planning for this eventuality.

So, I started putting a little money aside each month to help make a down payment on a new or newer vehicle. The Toyota Prius has been a very interesting car to watch. I love the keyless entry and ignition, the gas mileage it gets is rather impressive, and it’s a Toyota. However, when I started running the numbers, I just couldn’t monetarily justify the Prius. The price premium would take many many years to recoup, and the hybrid technology is changing so fast right now that it really is a game for early adopters, and I wasn’t in the mood to do that.

So, I thought for a while about a fun two seater, but ended up going with something more useful: A Toyota Camry. Toyota had redesigned the Camry for the 2007 model year, and I liked the new design, so I started looking around.

I’ve never enjoyed the negotiation stage of car buying. For this vehicle, I thought I’d probe some dealers via the internet before going in and visiting in person. So, I went to Toyota’s website and sent in a request for a quote to the Toyota dealership in Decatur (about an hour from here) and the local dealership, O’Brien Auto Park. Dale Grinestaff from the Decatur dealership responded promptly. To this day, O’Brien still hasn’t responded. A day or two later I sent mail to additional dealerships, in Mattoon (about 45 miles away) and Danville (30 miles away). The Danville dealership never responded. Phil Holdren from the Mattoon dealership responded promptly.

I started working with the Decatur dealership. I asked for a price on a Camry LE, 4 cyl, auto, sunroof, VSC, and the JBL audio system. There were only 2 of these in the United States, apparently, and I thought a lot about it and ended up dropping the JBL audio system. I went to Edmunds, and got the “low down” on the car. List price, Invoice Price, and what other people in the area are typically paying for that vehicle. Even this new car was a pretty rare thing. In fact, it just didn’t exist. At the time, I wasn’t that concerned about the color, but I ended up settling on the red color over time.

Dale said that he had the option of trying to “change” one of the incoming Camrys to match my requested configuration. Toyota isn’t like GM or other companies, though. With GM, you can “order” a car to your specifications, and they’ll make it for you. With Toyota, you can “suggest” that they change one of their incoming cars to match, but that’s it. Each dealer gets their predetermined allocation, and that’s just the way it is. So, Dale said that he could try and change one. He also offered me a price about $1,200 below list as a starting point.

Phil, from Mattoon responded to my request. He said that nothing was available, but that he had had good luck changing cars and that he could try, if I was interested.

I went to the local dealer and test drove one of the Camry LEs. It didn’t have the stability control or the sunroof, but it gave me a feel for what the car would be like. I didn’t bother telling the guy there that I had sent an unanswered email earlier. I just let him give me the story on the car. After the test drive he “invited me inside” to check and see when they might get a car in that matched my request. After sitting there for 5 minutes or so the basic line was that there wasn’t anything, and they didn’t know when they would get anything. And, they offered to let me know when something came in. No mention or offer of trying to change a car to match my requested specs. I’d say I was there for about an hour or so. The next day I got a call from the salesman. He said, “You were looking for the Avalon, right?”. Not impressed.

Meanwhile, Phil kept in contact with me. One day in early May he emailed me and said that he had attempted to change an incoming car to match my specs, and after the second attempt, it went through, and that they should have a car on the lot June 10th that perfectly matched my specifications. I hadn’t been emailing him real regularly. I wasn’t in a huge hurry to purchase, but he had taken the initiative, and actually changed an incoming car without any sort of confirmation or intent to buy on my part at all. Granted, he could have, no doubt, sold the car to someone else from off the lot, but the fact that he was willing to do that meant a lot to me. I told him that the other dealer had offered me the price that it had, and he went a couple of hundred dollars lower than that.

I emailed Dale back and told him this, and I have yet to actually hear a response from him.

I was out of town the last half of May, but when I got back into town I confirmed the June 10 arrival with Phil.

On June 10, I got an email from him saying that the car had arrived the night before. Up to this point, I actually hadn’t offered a price at all for the car. I was content to just let the dealers battle it out. But, since one of the dealers had “left the building”, so to speak, that wasn’t working out well for me. Knowing that a car was on the lot solidified in my mind that it was time to make a decision. So, it was time to get serious. I had planned to get him down a few hundred dollars, and thought that I’d be able to do that. But, you never know. Brand new car.. they are selling like crazy.. hard to say. But, I sent him some numbers. One was at invoice price, and another was about 2.5% over invoice.

He responded, and agreed to the 2.5% over invoice price! If I had known he would do that, I would have gone lower. 🙂 This actually ended up six or seven hundred dollars below where we had been at before.

So, I responded saying that I’d need the car pretty quick if I decided to buy (I had to go out of town in a couple of days); that I didn’t know how I’d get down to Mattoon, and that I was curious about what they could do for financing.

He said that they could have the car ready, that they would come and pick me up (90 miles roundtrip) and he quoted me a loan rate about 1.5% lower than my own bank had quoted me. Furthermore, he said that they could be flexible on the financing. If I didn’t have the financing totally procured they could talk to the bank and make sure that things were in progress, or that they could work with a check and wait to deposit it.. Basically, they were wanting to work with me.

At this point, I decided it was time to decide. I decided to go for it, and, for the first time, picked up a phone to call him. I had done all of the negotiations without ever having to deal with the “car salesman” face to face. Granted, I did drive the car from another dealer, but, other than that, I didn’t have to see a salesman.

When I talked to Phil on the phone, he said that he could come up that evening and we could get things taken care of. So, he came and picked me up (got here a few minutes late). He was a youngish guy. On the way back down to Mattoon we talked about various things. He was friendly, but not “salesman” friendly. Just friendly. A few minutes after we got there, my car arrived from being filled up with gas. It was pretty. I looked it over pretty good. I found one tiny little scratch on the passenger’s side mirror that they looked into, and then I went inside to take care of all of the paperwork.

During that part of the process, I was asked to purchase extended warranties. Before Doug (the banker guy) showed me the paper, he said that everything was optional. They had extensions to 7 years, and something like 100,000 miles. As always, they had the “new” and “old” monthly payments listed. After asking a few questions, I discovered that the actual flat fee for the extended warranty started at about a $1,000 and went north from there. I said no, he took the sheet of paper away, and that was that. No hard sell.

While all of this was going on, Phil was putting license plates on the car, and working on that mini scratch a little bit. Once I had the paperwork taken care of (signing one’s name 17 times is always a good time) I went out to the car and Phil showed me how everything worked. We ran into a small problem with the sunroof. The tilt-down function was running the glass down flat, but then going back up again. Both Phil and Doug looked at it, but never did figure anything out. They said that there had been a bulletin at one point describing something similar that could happen if the sunroof hadn’t been properly initialized, and that they would get ahold of me the next day and have me press the proper buttons to see if that fixed it. If not, they would come and pick the car up and get it taken care of.



The car had 3.8 miles on it. I felt quite lucky to have the car with so few miles on it. This was one of the reasons that I didn’t delay very long in deciding to purchase it. I knew that if I did, they would probably let other people test drive it, and I just didn’t want that. Other than that, the thing seemed just dandy. I headed out about 7pm from the dealership and proceeded north towards Champaign.

Floormats were close to a two hundred dollar option, so I declined. But, I knew I wanted floormats, so I headed to Walmart to pick some up. I got some gray ones that matched the interior, and then I went over to Rob’s house to show him the car. He felt compelled to take a couple of pictures of me with his new camera. We went for a short ride around the block and then I went home and trimmed the floormats to where they would fit nicely and put them in.

The next day I tried the reset techniques for the sunroof that Phil and Doug emailed and faxed me. Nothing worked. But, a couple of times that day when I tried it, the button did what it should. The rest of the time it went down and up, but a couple of times it worked properly. Over the next few days it started working all the time. Now I can press the down button and it does exactly what it should. Go figure.

Since the purchase 9 days ago I’ve put over 900 miles on the car. I’ve been annoyed to discover that there is another red Camry in the parking garage where I work. But, when you buy the best selling car in the nation you have to expect that. I drove the car down to Missouri and managed 28.4mpg on the one fillup that I’ve had for it. I’m hoping the mileage gets better. No one can believe it is a Camry. The styling is totally different than before. I definitely approve of the new styling, though. I think I’m going to really enjoy the sunroof. It gives me a nice feeling to have it open. The car has a lot more power than my truck. I have to watch my speed; particularly when I pull out to pass another vehicle. All of the other features on the car (power everything) are also nice. It’s taking some getting used to, though. My truck didn’t have any of that stuff, so I’m still in a learning phase.

All things considered, though, I’m glad I made the purchase. Hopefully Toyota’s legendary quality will carry through on this car, and I’ll have many years of trouble free use!

I’ve been trying to get some exercise recently. I’ve been doing various things towards that end, but for this post, I want to talk about my recent jogging. I’ve been walking into work, but I didn’t walk on Thursday, because my legs were sore, and I didn’t walk on Friday because I had a pre work appointment that made the timing not work out. I did play some volleyball on Thursday night. Walked/jogged part of the way to and from the volleyball. On Friday night, I ran a bit over 4 miles in 41 minutes.

Square loop

That’s the track that I took. I actually went for about 2 miles without slowing down. Then, as I started the hill up first street (not much of a hill.. only 30 or 40 foot of elevation change) I started wearing out. I started walking and jogging, walking and jogging.. But, even with all of that, I still managed to average a bit over 6 miles an hour. I was relatively happy.

On Saturday, I jogged to and from the volleyball courts without stopping.

To the courts

It’s about 2.4 miles each way. Obviously, I can’t count that as 4.8 miles, because I took a 2 hour break in between the legs and played volleyball.

This afternoon, I ran to and from the library.

To the library

About 1.6 miles each way. So, 3.2 miles. 33 minutes. 5.8 miles per hour… If you throw away the 5 or so minutes i had to stand in line at the library, that’s in line with earlier times.

The ability to run/jog for extended distances is something of a new thing for me. Until recently I’ve always found myself getting tired after short distances. I’ve apparently crossed a line that is letting me get away with this. I like it.

Did another reasonable sized walk today. Needed to run by work and print some things out in anticipation of tomorrow morning’s departure, so I headed in that directon. Stopped at Champaign Surplus on the way there and picked up another pair of hiking socks. Also got a synthetic t-shirt that was on clearance for 5 bucks. Went on over to work, did my business, and then walked down through campus. That was kind of a neat experience, because today is graduation day, and there were lots and lots of seniors that were out in their blue robes. There was a line about 40 people long waiting to get a picture with the Alma Mater statues. But, the whole thing had me thinking to myself “been there; done that”. But, good for them.

Anyway, from there I kept heading south until I got to the main road south of town and took it over to where I could come back north and stop at Culvers for lunch. According to the website, the custard flavor of the day was Trufflicious. Sounded good. Got there, and the flavor of the day was actually chocolate covered strawberries. Which I also like a great deal. So, I had lunch there, stopped by the bank ATM to take care of some business, and then made it back to the house.

A little over 7 miles in all:

Gmap view

About 10 minutes before I got to Culvers, it started sprinkling on me. The radar didn’t have any organized cells, but this was just simple stuff. Kinda sprinkled on me the rest of the way home. When I got here, I mowed the lawn, in the light rain. Had to get that done before tomorrow. So, it wasn’t ideal lawn mowing conditions, but it worked. And, I’ve tried to call Mom a couple of times, but haven’t yet managed to actually find anyone at home. So, that’s the latest. Signing off for now. See everyone in a few!