Blog of Bermanism

I have three other posts in queue that I’m working on, but I had to throw this out there. I was reading a Fark thread that was discussing a hacker’s attempts at breaking into the Fark servers. Someone on the site posted this picture, and I laughed so suddenly that the Diet Coke that I had in my mouth promptly went from my mouth, to my nose, to my keyboard. So, for your enjoyment:

I LOLd.

I hope you can appreciate the sick humor in this image as much as I do.

Out of the many types of people in this world, there are three that fascinate me. There are people that have a streak of adventurousness to them, people who like to push themselves to the limits because they enjoy the personal challenge, and people who do things because those things are helpful to others and make a difference in the world. My good friend Chris is one of those rare people that maintains all three qualities in equal doses, and in a manner that doesn’t (always) lead to self-destruction (not to mention he’s just a downright fantastic guy). Chris’s mission this year? Nothing much, just a mild-mannered, easy-paced bike ride from AUSTIN, TX to ANCHORAGE, AK!!! You heard me right, this nutjob rode his bicycle from Austin to Anchorage, just over 4500 miles, in 70 days and he arrives there today!!

Chris joined up with a group called the Texas 4000 for Cancer, a non-profit organization who’s entire goal is to raise money for the American Cancer Society and the MD Andersen Cancer Center in Houston, TX. Their goal this year was to raise $350,000, which would bring their four-year total to $1 million. In order to raise this kind of money, 40 people from the University of Texas at Austin area joined the Texas 4000 team in the ride of their lives. Two teams were formed, one that headed straight out to the west coast, then followed the coastline up into Canada, and finally into Alaska, and the other group that went through the Rocky Mountains, into Canada, and then cut over across the Yukon and British Columbia and into Alaska. Chris was on the Rockies team, which was great for him, but sad for me since the Coastal team made a two day stop in San Francisco, for which I was the host (it was awesome to meet everyone). But, that aside, Chris has been the only biker on either team to blog with such regularity that people were checking his blog to make sure that their loved ones were still alive and making it. Chris is definitely the blog winner this year. He’s made 62 entries so far, with none of them being from the final five days in Alaska (I’m sure he’s written them but needs the Intertubes to be able to post them. If you have an extra five days or so, you should really go read his blog entries from beginning to end (bottom to top). He chronicles his journey from the get go to the end and all of the nuances in between. I’ve been an avid reader of his blog since he left on this trip, not only because he’s among my best friends, but because the stories have been riveting. I could almost be on the trip with him, without all the hard work of course. He says that he plans on transcribing his blog into a multimedia book and publishing it online for all to read. I look forward to that day.

Anyway, the main point of this post is to congratulate Chris, and all of the people who completed the arduous journey from Texas to Alaska. Here’s to fighting the important fight, for pulling through when you wanted nothing more than to give up, and to doing it all for a very important cause. My hat is off to all of you, but you especially Chris. After this, you have no excuses for not skiing a double-black diamond run with me this year! Congratulations Texas 4000!!

As was noted in my prior post, Rachel turned 30 last week. What I didn’t say in that post, but eluded to in my next most recent post, was that the absolutely wonderful party that we had here in Sausalito was only the decoy party. For the last several months, I’ve been in constant preparation for what I was sure would the greatest surprise birthday party of all time; a surprise trip back home to Austin, TX to have a huge birthday bash for her 30th birthday. The enormity of the party was made necessary by the immense success of my surprise 30th birthday, in which Rachel surprised me with trip to Las Vegas where many of my closest friends and family were lying in wait to jump out and cause me to lose sphincter control. That surprise was difficult to outdo, but the feat had to be attempted. With that in mind, here’s how this last weekend went down:

Thursday, August 2: We came back from rowing practice and I took my time getting ready and hung out until Rachel had left for work. I then proceeded to run around the house frantically trying to pack her bags for the weekend in a manner that wouldn’t label me that poor, soulless, fashionless, husband that his wife dresses and now she can’t wear anything that I packed, kind of guy. I think I had half of her wardrobe out on our bed at one point trying to mix and match outfits that I’d noticed her wearing a lot while simultaneously trying to make them all fit in a carryon. By the way, all the different kind of bras, totally confusing! Once I had packed all of her things, minus her toiletries that she’d obviously miss that night and the next morning, I packed myself (considerably easier), made a list of the things that I’d have to grab as we were running out the door the next morning, put all of the luggage and backpacks into my car and took off for work. I spent the day and night being really antsy and excited, hence my last post.

Friday, August 3: I woke up at 6:15am, without an alarm (it was set for 6:20) after not having slept very much that night. I got showered and dressed and then I woke Rachel up. I could tell that she wasn’t happy that I was waking her up 2 hours before her alarm went off, but I continued anyway. I asked her to get up and get dressed because I had a surprise birthday present to give to her and I needed her to get ready. She was a little confused for a while, but she reluctantly and gingerly got out of bed and got showered and dressed. In a futile attempt to get me to divulge the nature of her surprise, she asked me what she needed to wear, how long we were going to be gone for and whether she’d need her toiletries or not. In response, I told her to dress like me (I was in a nicer t-shirt and jeans), that we’d just be gone for the day (yeah right), and that she didn’t need toiletries. Only while she was getting dressed did she notice that her swim suits were gone. She said she was suspicious, I played dumb. Finally, I asked her to take Izzy out and I ran around the house frantically grabbing her toiletries and chargers for her phone and camera, shoved them into my backpack and put it into my car. We got into the car and headed south, over the Golden Gate Bridge, and through San Francisco. The road I took could have lead to many places, including the airport, which she guessed at one point. When she realized I wasn’t going to tell her anything, she started calling everyone she knew asking them if they knew anything. Luckily, those that answered played along and didn’t give anything away. Finally, I pulled into the airport and opened the trunk to reveal already packed bags for a trip. Now, she was really curious, but I told her she wouldn’t find out where we were going until we were in the security line. Once there, I handed her her tickets and told her that we were going to Austin. She started crying and said, “We get to go home?” It was so cute, like I had read her mind. I told her that I thought we could use a quiet weekend in Austin and that we could go around and see the people we hadn’t seen in a long time. She was excited. Little did she know that she was in for quite a different weekend than she thought.
We flew into Austin exactly on time, which was both lucky and strange, and we went to the Thrifty counter where I had reserved a Chrysler Crossfire. I had originally planned on renting a Lotus Elise, but they became unavailable two weeks before we arrived, sadly. But, the Crossfire was fun. You’d think that at that point, Rachel would think that there was more going on than she thought, but she kept on believing me. I wouldn’t tell her where we were staying, but she immediately guessed the Four Seasons, because that would be the place that she’d most want to stay in Austin. Well, she was right, but she didn’t know that I had reserved an Executive Suite at the Four Seasons and that each of our families were also staying there. So, we checked in and I told her that we had to hurry because we were going to meet her best friend Abby at 7pm for dinner at a BBQ place in Austin called Pok-E-Jo’s. The plan was that everyone would arrive at Pok-E-Jo’s at 6:30pm to get ready for the surprise. I had figured out that, if our flight was on time, Rachel and I would arrive sometime between 7 and 7:15. Amazingly, we arrived at 7:08, half way between the time points that predicted. I had texted Abby to let her know that we were almost there (I had to pre-type the message into my phone so that all I had to do was press send so that Rachel wouldn’t notice that I was typing an extensive message to someone). So, when we got there, Abby was standing outside waiting for us. Rachel ran up and hugged her tightly and we walked inside toward the back room, where Abby said her parents were sitting. So, we walked through the restaurant to a closed curtain. Abby and I opened it, walked in, and 42 people from all parts of Rachel’s life looked back at her and yelled, “Surprise!!” The look on her face was priceless. She was SO shocked, she was shaking and continued shaking for about 20 minutes after that. She said later that the first person she saw was our friend Garrett, but that all she thought was that Garrett looked familiar. Anyway, Pok-E-Jo’s put together a fantastic trio of meats in a buffet for us all to feast on. I ordered enough food for 40 people, but I think there was actually enough for 60. Anyway, we mingled, ate, enjoyed the wonderful company, then headed back to our hotel to hang out in the posh lounge that is the main lobby of the Four Season hotel with some close friends. We went to bed early because we were exhausted from traveling all day, and Rach had experienced a good deal of stress from the string of surprises that day.

I don’t know what it is about the beds at the Four Season, but they are so comfortable that you inevitably sleep like a baby (not to mention the luxurious sheets and the fact that the staff puts out towels on the floor next to your bed with slippers on them so that you don’t have to touch the floor, snap!). Needless to say, we slept well.

Saturday, August, 4: At this point, all secrets were out because I just couldn’t deal with keeping them from her any longer. So, she knew entirely what was to come that day. We woke up and went rowing with our old teams on Town Lake (now horribly named, Ladybird Lake after the late Ladybird Johnson, but I’ll never call it that because it sounds stupid). Our old coach, George, was holding the Town Lake Ladder that morning, which is basically a 3,000m race in a 1x down and back on the eastern end of Town Lake. The race is as much about strength and technique as it is about steering a good course. You can add as much as a minute to your time if you don’t choose the best course. So, both Rach and I did it. I was not entirely pleased with my time because I lost a good 20-30 seconds almost hitting, and having to stop for, a buoy that I didn’t see. But, for not rowing in singles much in the last six months, it wasn’t too bad. Rachel, who didn’t kill herself at it and just rowed it for fun, did quite well herself. It was fun!

Afterwards, we went back to the hotel, got cleaned up and into our swim suits and headed up to Lake Travis for her lake party. I was really excited about this one, since around 70 people had RSVP’d and I had rented 4 wave runners and a ski boat. When we arrived, we realized that the park we had chosen wasn’t going to work for us since it was largely a scuba park and they didn’t allow motorized watercraft in the area. So, we had to scramble at the last minute and find another location for the party. We ended up finding a park right next door that worked wonderfully. While a few of us went off to pick up the jet skis, Rachel’s dad had the foresight to rent the pavillion that was at Bob Wentz park and moved the party into there. It was perfect. Once we had picked up the jet skis, and Rachel was driving one of them, I knew the party would be awesome even though it got off to a rocky start. I knew this because Rachel had a huge smile plastered on her face, and so did the others that came with us to pick them up. We got back to the park, docked, ate, mingled, and everyone started switching out on the jet skis and ski boat for three hours until we had to take them back. Once we got back, we did cake and ice cream. Thanks to the marvelous assistance of Vince, Darla, and especially Melissa, we got all of the food ordered, paid for, and set up at the party. This included getting a full sheet cake (vanilla with butter cream icing, of course) and specially made ice cream from Marble Slab, Amaretto flavored with M&M’s mixed in. We sang, we ate, Rachel was happy and so was everyone else. The cake was good, but the ice cream was a huge hit. It was gone. Once we finished with the cake and ice cream, we headed back to Austin to get cleaned up and meet for a late and light dinner before all the young’ns went out on the town for the evening. Rachel and I wanted to be able to spend some time with just the family for a while, so we went to the Austin Java Co restaurant and talked and ate a little for about two hours. It was really nice to be with the family. Afterwards, we met our friends at Cedar Street on 4th St. in downtown Austin. We always loved this place because they had a great bar and great music, all the time. Some of our favorite people showed up and we had a really good time while listening to an 80’s cover band that was also pretty good. Darla was disappointed that the music wasn’t really dance music, but it was fun anyhow. We got back to the hotel at around 2am and hit the sack pretty hard.

Sunday, August 5: We woke up on our own and went rowing, just Rachel and I, in a double. It was nice being able to row 5000m without turning around. After rowing, we showered, checked out of our fantastic room, and met up with the remaining family members for brunch at Hickory Street downtown. Unfortunately, my brother Ben had to leave for the airport early, so we didn’t get to see them again, but we at least got to hang out with the rest of the family on both sides. Vince and Don even showed up at the end of our meal and it was really nice to talk to them again. Afterwards, we said our goodbyes to the family and headed over to see our friend Lee’s house (which is currently bright pink!). After that, we went to Rachel’s best friend Abby’s new house and hung out there for a few hours catching up and watching her, her sister, and her parents unpack from the recent move to the new digs. It was so nice to see everyone and Rachel was feeling right at home again. Sadly, it was then time to come home to the bay area. We left Abby to her new house, jumped in our speed mobile and raced off to the airport. Rachel’s brother and his fiance were on our flight, so it was nice to see them for the long flight back to LA. Our flight from LA to San Francisco was delayed a total of three hours due to weather and fog at SFO, but we did, eventually get back (at 1:30am). Izzy was of course thrilled to see us and Edgar could have cared less. We were home from a great weekend and the surprise was a great success.

So, here’s a final thanks to all who were involved in getting the parties and trips set up, and a huge thank you to all those who came and enjoyed the time with Rachel. As I learned recently, it is the people that make the party good or bad. Without you, this party would have sucked, big time. This officially ends my elaborate surprise party planning for about another decade or more. Kudos to you if you made it this far in this post. It is freakin’ long!

Yup, yup, yup!!

Sorry, just had to get that out. Details forthcoming….

Peace, Love, and Jelly Beans

It has obviously been a long time since I’ve posted in my blog, and my regularity is similar to that of a 90 year old man who hasn’t been eating his Wheaties lately. So much has been going on, that is has been impossible to write. Two weeks ago, I went to Galveston to support my friend Chris in his dissertation defense at UTMB. It was so nice to be there, and he totally rocked his presentation. I’ve actually seen him give a few presentations in my time, and this was his best ever. His talk flowed well, was well balanced, didn’t overwhelm the audience with minutia, and was given clearly and calmly. His committee was obviously impressed since they gave him an easy time in his private defense. Apparently, they asked him to sit down and they discussed theory for two hours. I wasn’t so lucky and I got grilled pretty hard in mine. But, both of us survived the process and can now be “not that kind of doctors” together. After his defense, our other best friends, Brandon and Darla showed up and we went out with some of Chris’s local friends and his lovely and ever awesome wife, Amy, and we tore Galveston a new one, to the degree that that’s even possible. The next day, we all went to Chris’s sister’s beach house in Crystal Beach and had some awesome southern Texas BBQ and were in the company of what feels to me like close family members, since we’ve all been together for so long (since freshman year of college). These people and their families are seriously like my brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles. I feel as close to them as I would feel for any member of my family, and for me, that’s saying a lot. Unfortunately, I had to leave the party early to book it to the airport to catch a flight home. It was so nice seeing everyone, it is such a rare and wonderful thing when we do. Even better, when we do manage to get together, it is as if we were never apart. There’s no hesitation, no small talk, no tepidness about who didn’t call who or not knowing the person anymore. I think it is because we all have remarkably stable personalities. While we have all certainly matured since freshman/sophomore year of college, we’re all inherently the same people we were back then. And, because of that, our compatibility has never wavered. We’ll always be friends, we’ll alway be family, no matter what.

Once I got home from that, I started feverishly writing a manuscript from graduate school that I’ve been meaning to finish up for 1.5 years now. I managed to get it done in two days and off to my old professor. I’m still waiting on edits from her, but we’re one step closer to getting that unfinished business completed. On that note, I may be going to Memphis for a short amount of time in the next month or so to set up my database system on their servers so that my graduate legacy can live on beyond my time at UT Austin.

After I finished my paper, I got cranking in my current lab. I’m very close to finishing up a project on Parkinson’s disease and the development of a potential mouse model for it. The work is very exciting and I’m only a few experiments away from putting together the final version and getting the paper out. The project was started by a former postdoc in our lab named Wai. She had to leave the lab prematurely due to a career move by her husband. But, she’ll be glad for the project to be finished and published as well. With any luck, it will mark my first publication and will get me out of this hole of not being able to get my work out there, something I’ve been working very hard at.

Rachel turned 30 last week. We had a great party in her honor here in Sausalito. We had about 30 people come from around the Bay Area to our favorite Italian restaurant in Sausalito, Rustico. I had set up a set menu with four courses and the owner provided us with a jazz band. It was really great. Rachel’s mom and brother also joined us and two of her best friends from college, Kuan and Kelly flew in to surprise her for the weekend. It was so nice to see everyone and everyone had a really great time at the party. I must say, however, that the cake at the end of the night was the keystone event for the evening. I ordered it from the Sausalito Bakery. Rachel’s favorite cake is vanilla cake with butter cream icing. So, that’s what I ordered. I told the baker that we had 30 people and that her favorite flowers are red roses, so maybe he could make some icing red roses on the cake. Well, he made this gigantic cake for at least 60 people and he outlined the cake with REAL red roses. The roses against the beautiful white icing job made for a cake that most people would be proud to have at their wedding. Not only that, but it was absolutely delicious. Anyway, we had a great time and Rachel was brought into her 30th year with style.

Finally, we had a regatta on Sunday at Lake Merritt in Oakland. This regatta was the reason that I couldn’t plan something more elaborate for Rachel because I knew that she really wanted to race at this event. It was my first time at Lake Merritt, and it was a great experience. Once again, my coach was very good to me and put me in some really excellent lineups. I was in the top Men’s 8+ and a really fast Men’s 4x. Our primary competitors on the west coach from Kent Mitchell rowing club were out in force at this regatta and were out for blood after SW Masters in Sacramento, where we beat them all day long. As usual, Marin and Kent Mitchell traded places again and we came in a very close second to them all day long. Our 8+ was 1.6 seconds slower than they were (for those who don’t know, that’s about 2 feet out of a 65 ft. boat). Our 4x was also only 2 seconds slower than theirs. Both boats were a pleasure to row in and I’d certainly do them again. But, the race that I’m most proud of was the Men’s pair (2-) that I rowed with my great friend Ken. We’ve been practicing this boat, which is one of the hardest ones to row well, for about 1.5 months; not a lot of time for that kind of a boat. In this boat, we each have one oar on opposite sides, and there’s only the two of us in the boat. To be able to row it, the rowers have to be very well matched and technically similar in style. Our 2- has been really good from the beginning. But, we had never raced it before and we had never done a 1000m piece in it at race pace. This was to be our proving ground and we had some heavy competition. In the lane next to us was, of course, Kent Mitchell in the 2- that won Masters Nationals last year. In the far lane were two of our best older rowers at MRA, Andy Kerr and Dick Draeger (Dick won a bronze metal in the ‘62 olympics for the 2-!!). Dick and Andy had a 40 second handicap on us that we had to make up!! I figured that meant that we had to be 250m ahead of them to make up that kind of handicap, which is a whole lot against great rowers like them. Anyway, we lined up fast because the officials wanted to try to catch up on time, since they were behind schedule. Ken and I didn’t get in the long warm up that we would have liked, but we were ready to have a good row with no expectations. The line judge called, “attention, go!” and we were off. Kent Mitchel jumped a length on us after five strokes in the start (we need to work on our starts, but we knew that), but we were ahead of Dick and Andy. So, I just rowed our own race. I got us on course (I was steering while rowing) and we settled to a nice sustainable pace, probably 32-34 spm. At about 250m in, I looked to see where KM was, and to my surprise, they were right there, maybe 1/2 a length open water on us. I told Ken and we took a big power 10 at the 500. Ken called, “clean it up” and I lengthened out and relaxed a little, an then we really started to move. I looked again at 300 to go, and we were closing on them, and they were working hard to keep their distance. I called us up two in the rate, and we moved again. We had almost closed the open water gap between us and the US champion 2-. I called up two again, we really started moving. We were stern to bow with them. They made a move to hold us off and I called up two, one last time, and we were overlapped with them. They finished first and we were 4 seconds behind them, something I’m very proud of against competitors like that, they are certainly among the best in the US. Dick and Andy had a difficult row and finished nearly a minute after us, but we made us our handicap on them handily, which put us solidly in 2nd place. My steering was a pretty erratic (it is really hard to keep a 2- straight), so we probably rowed an extra few hundred meters because of it, but we managed to stay in our lane and not flip (which is really easy to do in a 2-). All that means is that we could be even faster than we were. If were to row the whole race clean, instead of just the last 500m, work on getting our starts faster, and go in a straighter line, we could be that much faster. Anyway, it was a great experience and it was definitely a proving ground for a very experimental boat. It also reassured Ken and I (and others on our team, I think) that the two of us belong out there with the groups we’re boated with. It was really fun, and I thank Ken for being willing to experiment with me, being that I’m a good 5 inches shorter than he is, and he’s quite a bit stronger than me.

This week and next week, I’m doing more animal behavioral studies. These things take up my life for two weeks, so that should be fun. That’s all I have for you today, but that hopefully catches everyone up a little bit. More on the other side…

Powered by ScribeFire.