Baby's first picture.

This is a first-trimester sonogram. You can see the family resemblance, I think.

Sunday's ride.

I felt good, especially considering my 40-miler yesterday -- today, I just squeaked past 50 miles, and I still had something left in the tank at the end.

Unfortunately, living on top of Mt. Washington as I do, no ride is complete without a final brutal ascent of Sycamore Street, 0.65 miles of 12% grade, with a bone-rattling chaser of Wyoming St. pave. It takes me almost six minutes, which translates to barely 7 mph.

Actually, the climb used to play a decisive role in a famous bike race, the Thrift Drug Classic, won by Lance Armstrong three times in a row. That was before his cancer, recovery, and 7-year win streak in the Tour de France. Sadly the Classic is now defunct, but in its heyday was a major fixture on the North American racing calendar. Here are some pictures from the 1997 edition that I found here.


Here's the beginning of the climb. Why is it that hills never seem as steep in photos?












And here's the pave I mentioned, which in the U.S. is called Belgium Block. There's a lot of it around Pittsburgh -- seemingly always on hills that otherwise would be quite challenging enough, thank you very much.

Saturday's mileage.

The weather on Saturday, while near freezing, was at least dry and sunny. My aim was to explore some parts of the South Hills that were new to me -- ultimate destination: South Park. No relation to the TV show. Unfortunately, the roads were pretty trafficky and narrow. It's too bad, because beyond the built-up area is Washington County, full of deserted beautiful country roads. Finding a good way through to that part would be the equivalent of the Northwest Passage -- so, in this case, I guess the South-Southeast Passage. Or something.

Ghosts of Pearl Harbor.

A trip to Hawaii may be in my future, after Death Valley. While looking at various parts of Oahu on Google Local, I found that you can actually see the remains of the battleship Arizona in this satellite photo. I think the large ship to the southwest must be the U.S.S. Missouri, site of the Japanese surrender.

Saturday night's all right for biking.

I joined some members of the Western Pennsylvania Wheelmen, a local bike club, for a easy ride around the bucolic town of Cecil, PA. I saw cows, I saw geese, I saw a loose dog that chased my rear wheel. Fortunately my sprint was better than his. The weather was supposed to be in the upper 60s. I think it probably reached maybe 62, and then it started raining shortly after we finished. Still better than tonight's gusting wind and driving snow, I admit.

"Interesting" would be one way to describe it . . .

Liz Seymour, 56 years old and newly divorced, turned her three-bedroom 1927 Colonial Revival house into a seven-person anarchist collective. Hmmm. "Anarchist collective." Isn't that a bit of a contradiction in terms? Anyway:

So Justin and I entered a microeconomy in which it is possible to live not just comfortably, but well, on $500 a month. When we pooled our skills in our new household, we found that we had what we needed to design a Web page, paint a ceiling or install a car stereo. Sharing services and tools with people outside the house saved us thousands of dollars a year. If there is a historical model for the way we live, it is not the communes of the 60's or the utopian experiments of the 19th century, but the two-million-year prehistory of our hunting-and-gathering ancestors. Looked at through that lens, the life of our miniature tribe feels a lot like the way people were meant to live.

. . . .

As for produce, a typical evening of hunting and gathering in various grocery store Dumpsters brings in plenty of food: cartons of apples, oranges, potatoes, bananas and red onions, slightly soft or spotty perhaps, but still fresh and edible.

. . . .

For the most part, though, my memory keeps up a pretty sturdy firewall between the time I have come to think of as "before" and now. Where I live now is not utopia. What it is, though, is fun. It is fun to hear people laughing on the porch; it is fun to dance in the kitchen; it is fun to go out on a Wednesday evening Dumpster run. As messy as it is, to my mind it is a lot more interesting than utopia could ever be.

I don't want to nitpick her choice of metaphors, but I will point out that a "firewall" is a barrier that you erect to protect yourself from a massive out-of-control raging inferno. So there you are, safe on one side, and there's the fire, burning itself out on the other side. Which side does she think she's on now? Based on the article, I'm not too sure.

Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof.

My mileage from this past Sunday. Meager, I know, but the hills in Pittsburgh make it feel like twice as much. Two weeks before I went for a 46-mile ride. So I'm a little behind where I want to be with two months till Death Valley, but I'm confident I'll be able to "find my form," as the professionals say. "Where is that form of mine? I could swear it was here just a second ago. . ."

And if the whole biking-on-asphalt-roads thing doesn't work out. . .

There's always this:

As long as I hire a gang of laborers to lay track in advance (and pick it back up once I've passed), this solution has a lot of potential. Note to self: must remember to stay alert for road hazards like, uh, oncoming freight trains.

(Thanks, Make.)

My trusty steed.

She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts.

Words to live by.

"When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Pittsburgh because it's always twenty years behind the times."

- attributed to Mark Twain. I say this with affection, as a proud citizen of the Steel City. (Actually, Twain supposedly said this about Cincinnati, but I figure it works about as well here.)