Good day/Bad day

Well, my day started out great. I found Trammell Crow Lake easily enough and on time. Ready to volunteer at 6:45, as promised. Helped set up and run registration. Actually, after setting up tables and the awning, I mainly just handed out T-shirts. Then the run was really fun. It was just what I want those runs to be. Fast enough that I feel good about it, but not so much that I kill myself. Results are not posted yet, and because it was officially a City of Dallas event, I'm not even sure they will be. But as I came across the finish, it looked like I was at 50:28 (8:07 pace -- I'm getting to the point where I could maybe do a race like this in the 7s. That would be pretty cool. Actually I think I could do that now, but only at the cost of working too hard.). I'm happy with that. It's over a minute faster than the last timed 10K I did back in February. And this was on a rough gravel/dirt/mud surface having to run up and down the sides of the levee 4 times. If it had been flat on a hard surface I think I would have been under 50 minutes. That would have been fabulous.

A cool part of the day was that the race included a contest between cadets in the Dallas Police Academy and the Dallas Fire Department Academy. The cadets all ran the race. Then based on the top four male times and the top female time for Police and the same for Fire, they averaged the times to see who was the fastest. The Fire Department won. Boy, were they excited! And it was fun dealing with the cadets at registration. They seemed like a great group of people. Men and women, all colors, they were bright, seemed happy, called me "sir" (which I'm not sure I really like, but I know they meant well), and all-in-all seemed like they would be a positive addition to the public safety of Dallas.

I have to say that I've had several occasions to interact with Police officers in the last couple of years, and have heard stories from a couple of other people who've also had interactions of various kinds, and every one of these experiences has been entirely positive. At least in the sense of "reasonableness" and willingness to exercise judgment rather than leap to conclusions or be excessively deferential to "the book." Yes, I know about the "Fake Drug" scandal, which was atrocious, and I've read stories in the paper that tend to reflect poorly on the Police. But speaking personally, I have been very impressed by the maturity, level-headedness and professionalism of the officers I've had direct or even second-hand experience with.

Then, this afternoon, I went for a nice (but still cold) bike ride. More fun.

So that was the good day part. What was bad? I hate even to get into this. George Freakin' Bush. Vetoes a bill that would have outlawed torture. While in the same breath denying that "America tortures." I just don't know what to say. Except that George Bush needs to go away. He needs to put himself out of our misery. He's a disgrace. An unmitigated disaster. I'm just glad that I didn't hear his public statement. I'm afraid I would have thrown something at the radio. How does he rationalize this stuff?

The U.S. military banned waterboarding decades ago. In my class I show an image and talk about how the Army court martialed and dishonorably discharged several soldiers for waterboarding Viet Cong prisoners during the Viet Nam war. I'm convinced that George Bush simply does not have the intellectual capacity to understand the implications of things he does. Does anyone think that the Viet Nam era Army would have banned waterboarding -- regardless of its "distastefulness" -- if they believed it consistently produced useful intelligence? And....

Oh, well.... That's enough. Sorry. I'm going back to writing about running.

And I'm actually feeling a little better. Listening to Pepe Romero playing guitar transcriptions of Bach. He's so good. Both Romero and Bach.

One more thing: For a while I've been making these great fruit smoothies. Some fresh fruit and orange juice, some ice, blend it up and drink. Fabulous. But fresh fruit is so darned expensive. I've paid $2.75 for a tiny (I had written "tiny little" there, because it felt natural, but I decided it was redundant. I mean, it couldn't be "tiny big." Right?) container of blueberries. And I seem regularly to have to throw some of it away because it gets fuzzy before I use it. The other day, though, I had a brilliant, totally original, unique idea. How 'bout frozen fruit? MUCH cheaper and I never have to worry about using it in a frantic hurry. Brilliant, huh? And original, huh?

Don't forget to Spring Forward tonight!!

See y'all tomorrow.