I am the Champion!

Holy Cow! I may have waited almost 57 years to get my first athletic trophy! This morning I played in the biweekly Ironman racquetball tournament at the Olympic Athletic Club for the first time, and I won!

The tournament has an interesting format. We used both courts, and had eight players show up. Each game is played to seven points, with the winner staying on the court for the next challenger. The loser puts his name on challenge ladder for the next available winner. The winner can stay on for for three wins before he gets a rest and goes to the bottom of the challenge ladder. The player with the most wins wins the tournament and gets to keep the trophy until next time. It's a fast-moving format with lots of action and lots of different opponents. In two and a half hours, I won eight games, with the next nearest competitor winning six. I also lost about six games, but fortunately, losses don't count against you.

And now on a totally unrelated subject - Chinese censorship. Caroline is currently in Beijing, and just sent me an email saying that my blog is blocked on the internet there! I didn't realize I was such a subversive force.

This and That

Much to the relief of the women in my life, my year-long experiment with a ponytail has ended. I had never had a ponytail in my misspent youth, so why not in my misspent retirement? In the end, it was concern for Spin, my barber. He had had no revenue from me for over a year, and with Hal's recent adoption of the Mr. Clean look, the reduction in income had put the nutrition of his twin girls in jeopardy. In any case, it was fun while it lasted.

A couple of recent celebrity deaths have dominated the news here for the last couple of days. Farrah Fawcett's famous poster certainly brings back memories of the times. The hair, the flashing white smile, the right nipple trying to poke through the bathing suit... Ah sweet dreams! I didn't follow Charlie's Angels or any of the many made-for-TV movies that she did, but I certainly remember her role as Robert Duvall's wife in The Apostle. I think I might have to put that one in my Netflix queue to watch it again.

I was never a huge Michael Jackson fan. In fact, I remember his chirpy songs with The Jackson Five as extremely annoying. I do however, remember the Thriller album quite vividly. I had just moved to St. Louis in 1983, and the airwaves were filled with the album's various hits. And who can forget his dancing? Incredible never before seen moves, that even I as anything but a dance aficionado, couldn't help but admire. But was he really that big a star? Big enough to warrant wall-to-wall cable TV coverage? His talent was long past its best-before date, and his private/public life was pathetic. He was an extremely talented but also tormented individual. I guess it's just another opportunity to highlight the vacuousness of the American media-industrial establishment.

Healthcare Debate

The current healthcare debate is driving me slightly nuts. Republicans are lying and Democrats are using a lot of weasel words in the debate. The Republicans are drawing the line by refusing to support any plan that has a publicly financed option, and the Democrats have retreated to the point that they will not even consider a single-payer plan. Having a government financed public option competing with private plans is about the most progressive hope out there, and even Obama is wishy-washy in his support. Everyone is concerned about the cost and the massive tax increases that a public plan would entail, but what most politicians and commentators fail to mention is that the money is already there in the system we have today. There should be more than sufficient money already being spent on healthcare to give everyone in the USA first rate care. Right now, the US spends more money per capita than any other nation in the world, and still leaves people uninsured and under insured. That existing money just has to be redistributed and spent more efficiently.

Here are some interesting statistics on healthcare among the OECD countries in 2004. The OECD is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and consists of the top 30 developed countries.

................................................................US.....OECD average

per capita spending............................$6,102..$2,560

% of GDP................................................15.3....8.9

admin costs per capita .......................$490.....$66

life expectancy.....................................77.5.....78.3

infant mortality(per 1000)..................6.9........4.0

deaths by medical error (per 100k).....0.7........0.4

It certainly seems that the USA isn't getting much bang for its buck. I constantly challenge my conservative friends to name one empirical bit of evidence that the US is the best in any medical outcome they choose to measure. Based on their responses and the research I've done, I pretty sure I can safely say there are NONE!

Most of the OECD countries have some mixture of private and public insurance, with everyone guaranteed a certain base level of care, usually with no direct cost to the consumer. Surely we can come up with a better system than what we have, but long as the issue is demagogued by politicians and lobbyists keep throwing money at politicians, I'm not so sure.

If you want to read more, here's the link the OECD report.

Solstice 09

Well folks, it's that time of the year once again in Fremont. Enjoy a few shots of the Fremont Solstice Parade. And no, once again, I was an observer, not a participant.

This was a better than average parade. Lots of participants, and it seemed to flow better than in previous years. And also, the police presence was lower key this year. In past years, they've set up a mobile command post, complete with trailers and lots of cops, as if they were preparing for riots or something. I guess this year they realized this is the streets of Fremont, not Tehran. An idea occurred to me along those lines. Wouldn't it really throw the mullahs for a loop with hundreds of thousands of people marching naked in Tehran?

And what better way to start off the bachelorette party for Megan's friend Marian than a naked bike ride through the streets of Fremont? Marian is the one with the veil!

Tom's Wedding

Here's the Dukovac clan complete with the newest members, Alvin and Devin.
They clean up pretty well, don't they?

It was a gorgeous day, and everyone was quite comfortable.
The Friesen clan in a rare shot without food in our mouths or closed eyes. And no, those are my keys in my pocket.
A final shot of the Dukovac/Friesen tribes, minus Devin (I think she was spending some time with her old family). If I was better at Photoshop, I'd put her in the picture, but I think I'll leave that to someone more skilled.

It was good to see Pete's family again. I last saw John and Yoli in Vancouver a few years ago, but I hadn't seen Emil and Monique for something like thirty years. And I'd never before met Nada and Jim. Good people, all.

As usual, Marian and Pete were gracious hosts, serving up prodigious amounts of food and drink. We all had a great time celebrating a happy family event!

I Hate Seattle!

Yesterday I drove the 800 miles back from Edmonton. I left dark and early (well actually, bright and early because the sun was up when I hit the road at 5:30), the roads were good; the weather was great; I had a thermos of coffee and a pound of Spitz, and all was well. I flew through Jasper and Kamloops, the Coquihalla, and Hope. I hit the Aldergrove border with no lineups. In fact the border guy even had to wait while I dug out my passport. I went through Bellingham and hit I5, well on my way to setting a new record time. It took under 12 hours to drive the 780 miles to the junction of I5 and I405, and then everything STOPPED.

It took over an hour to go the last 20 miles!

While I was gone, I had my hardwood floors refinished, and the guys did a great job! The only thing is that everything is covered in a very thick layer of very fine dust. Once I dig myself out of the mess, I'll do a post on Tom and Devin's happy nuptials and the rest of my trip.

Shoot the Pass Shots

Here are a few shots from my weekend's travels with about 100 of my closest friends. Well actually, I only knew a few of the people from 'Sno Jokes, a Seattle ski club, who put on an annual bicycling tour of Washington's wine country. This was the first one for me, but probably won't be the last.

One of the fixtures of the event is Jim Gayther, the proud owner of a Cadillac hearse, a Cadillac ambulance, and a Cadillac trailer, all mauve. His job was to haul a bunch of people and bicycles up to White Pass, the summit on Highway 12. From there, we rode about 15 mostly downhill miles to lunch at the Trout Lake Lodge. From there, it was another 15 mostly flat miles to Naches. Most of us loaded up our bicycles at the Lodge and drove the rest of the way to Prosser. There were a few hard core bikers who biked the 110 miles to Prosser, but I wasn't one of them.

We spent a couple of nights in Prosser, covering about 25 miles and a half dozen wineries(and one micro brewery YEAH!!) on Saturday. On Sunday, we loaded up and drove to Zilla for another four or five wineries and maybe 15 miles of bicycling in a light rain.

Here's Gail, the hard-core biker, leading the pack as usual. She was one of the iron butts who biked the whole route from White Pass to Prosser.

Here's some of the crowd at a lunch stop. I don't think the whole group was ever in one place at one time, so I don't have a shot of the whole bunch of us. My retro-cruiser bike was the only one of its kind in the crowd, and attracted a lot of attention. Every one else had zillion speed road bikes or mountain bikes. Even though many in the crowd wore their dorky biker gear (where do they think they are, on the Tour de France?), they were a pretty good group. The biggest laughs I got out of the dorky biker gear are the riding shorts. Apparently these padded shorts are great at protecting the nether regions while biking, and lord knows I could have used a little extra padding, but if the shorts weren't pulled up tight while off the bike, the sagging padding made the wearers looked like kids in diapers with a load on. 

Anyway, it was a fun trip, and not counting the two cases of wine I bought, it was relatively cheap.