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THE OCEAN NEEDS MORE FRIENDS

June 6, 2023 Guide to Life

The ocean makes up most of our planet, and plays a crucial role in our health
and survival. Unfortunately this precious resource has been abused by humans for
far too long. And now, more than ever, the ocean needs more friends.

Join us as we rally 1 million friends of the ocean to fight plastic pollution
and climate change so our ocean, waves and beaches are protected for generations
to come. Sign our pledge today and become a friend of the ocean.

#TheOceanNeedsMoreFriends

Music Credit: The White Stripes – We’re Going To Be Friends

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REMEMBERING CICADA STOUT

March 31, 2021 Beer

It was a warm spring night on May 15, 2013. The high temp that day had reached
85•, ten degrees higher than the historical average for that day. And that must
have been good enough to get the ground temperature up to 64•, the temperature
at which an underground army of cicada nymphs would emerge. And emerge they did!

* Look closely for climbing nymphs
* Bustin’ out!
* Pick a good spot
* To hang
* out and
* spread those wings

As predictable as the arrival of cicadas is, so is the return of articles
pointing out that they can be safely eaten. And as it happened, at the time I
was in an active phase of home brewing. I had brewed three beers since the
previous fall, a honey ale, a winter warmer, and a commemorative IPA for the
inauguration. So naturally, inspiration struck! Sure, you can eat a cicada. But
how would they in a beer? And thus emerged the inspiration for Cicada stout.

I documented all the steps along the way of brewing. A few I shared on YouTube
at the time, but many other videos documenting this brew have never before been
by the public, UNTIL NOW!

What type of beer should I brew with cicadas? I chose a stout intentionally.
With no idea really what kind of flavor a cicada might impart (and honestly
little interest in finding out), a nice heavy Irish stout is an excellent choice
that can mask any off flavors from the brewing process (or from weird
ingredients).

So, where to start? Well, you’ve gotta catch some cicadas of course. The good
news is, that’s not hard to do. cicadas are very slow movers, and clumsy fliers.
But chasing bugs is no work for adults, I was a brewer dammit! So I recruited a
few great kids from the neighborhood, and paid them to round up a bunch of
cicadas for me. Which, as you can see, they did.

And here’s what 50 cicadas in a bowl looks like. Ten more got added, so 60
cicadas came inside to meet their fate.

Cicada Salad?

The next step, clearly, is to kill and clean them. How to do this? Boil them! So
that’s what I did.

So now you’ve got a bunch of wet, steaming, dead cicadas. BUT, they are also
sanitized! What next? Let them dry out, you can’t work with a mushy cicada.

17 years underground, for this?!

Then pluck off their heads, wings and legs!

The cicadas were the only unique ingredient in an otherwise pretty standard home
brew recipe kit.

And Voila! Roasted cicadas!

Now, there didn’t seem to be much purpose in using cicadas as an ingredient, if
you don’t bother to taste that ingredient by itself. Right? So yeah, I ate a
cicada. And I had seconds!

So when do they get added to the wort? I decided to treat them like a finishing
hop, and add them to the end of the boil.

After that, the remaining steps were all pretty typical for brewing. Chill your
wort, pitch your yeast, and wait patiently for the wonderful magic of
FERMENTATION! Just 24 hours later…

You can’t judge a beer by its label. But you can judge the label itself, for how
good a job it does conveying to you the taste adventure that the beer inside is
offering. My buddy TJ, a stellar artist who collaborated with me over many years
in making beers, drinking beers, and labeling beers, really hit it out of the
park with the label he created for Cicado Stout “Brewed Two” (see what we did
there?!)

Final steps, drink, share, repeat, until you run out of Cicada Stout. A fine
fine beer I’m very proud of.

Why write about this now, eight years later? Well, here we are in 2021 and
there’s another brood about to emerge. This year, it will be Brood X. I wonder
what they’ll taste like? And I hope someone will try them in some beer (and
share one with me!)

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BRINGING OLD PHOTOS TO LIFE

February 26, 2021 Genealogy, Photos, Technology

Today I saw the below tweet from a genealogist that I follow, describing a new
free photo enhancement feature from the Heritage.com genealogy website. In
addition to choosing to enhance, and to colorize a photo, the new tool can
identify a face in you photo, and bring it to life with some simple animation.
And it’s really very very cool.

> Animate Your Ancestors! (though I suggest starting with one you didn't know
> personally) #genealogy #history #creepycoolhttps://t.co/7clF4az7U2
> pic.twitter.com/nfUIacnSrX
>
> — Megan Smolenyak🕵️‍♀️ (@megansmolenyak) February 25, 2021

So I thought I’d give it a try. These are my GGG Grandparents Vitus DeDera and
Rose Bicek on their wedding day, September 21, 1912. Vitus was 21, and Rose was
20 on their wedding day. And as is common in photos of the era, smiles as we
know them today were rarer. This wedding photographer didn’t shout out ‘say
CHEESE’ before snapping this shot.

I’ve written about Vitus (Victor) and Rose, and what I’ve learned about their
courtship here in my blog 15 years ago.

When I uploaded the above 109 year old photo to Heritage.com and asked it to
‘animate’ it, the tool first enhanced the photo, creating a much sharper image,
and it then identified each face in the photo and asked me which one I wanted to
animate. Not to play favorites, I naturally did them both. And here’s the
results.

Vitus Dedera – animated

Rose Bicek Dedera – animated

Pretty cool, and a little bit unnerving isn’t it?! It’s amazing what a few
blinks, a tilt of the head, and some lip movement can do to breathe life into a
static image. Freaking realistic! And in the context of this photo, where I
imagine Victor and Rose, holding still in their pose for this important photo,
pondering their future lives together, their animated expressions convey a
thoughtfulness that feels very genuine to me.

Of course, this technology would, I assume, work on any photo. But modern day
moving images aren’t quite as, well, eye opening are they (see videos, animated
gifs (hard G)). It’s in bringing old photos to life that I see the magic in this
tool. It makes me think of the portraits on the walls of Hogwarts, or the Mirror
of Erised in which young Harry Potter could see his dead parents as they were in
life. Cool stuff, I’m gonna be making LOTS of these!

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A MOJITO LOVE STORY

August 23, 2020 Guide to Life

“Will it be a regular mojito?”, she asked. “No my darling,” I replied. “It will
be raspberry, and it will be fabulous!”

“Will the mojitos be raspberry?”, my love asked. “No my darling,” I replied.
“They will be mango, and they will be magnificent!”

“Will the mojitos be mango?”, my love asked. “No, mi amore.”, I replied. “They
will be passion fruit and kiwi, and they will be magical!”

“Will the mojitos be passion fruit and kiwi?”, my American woman asked. “No, my
lady liberty”, I replied. “They will be watermelon and blueberry, and they will
let our freedom ring!” 🇺🇸

“Will the mojitos be watermelon?”, my reason for living asked? “No, mon amie,” I
replied. “They will be peach mojitos, and they will be peachy!”

“Will you put peaches in the mojitos?”, my Darling asked. “No, my Darling.
Clementines!”, I exclaimed, “and soon they’ll be gone forever, but not lost.
We’ll know just where they went.”

“Will you put Clementines in the mojitos?”, my adored asked. “No, you silly
woman,” I replied. “I put the lime in the coconut, and pineapple too, in the
mojito. Drink ‘em bot up and you’ll feel good in the morning!” 🥥 🍍

“Where is our charcuterie board from @americanfarmhousedesigns ?” my love asked.
“I’m using it for the mojito photo!”, I replied. “Will they be coconut pineapple
mojitos” she queried? “No sweetness,” I replied, “They will be strawberry and I
will dedicate them to batman!” “Who?” she followed up. “My friend @igotitdude he
made the board, and we once called him batman. I don’t remember why. But it must
have been something beautiful like YOU my dear!”

It was only Saturday when my love asked, “Why are you making the mojitos today
darling?” “Because I need it now!”, I replied lovingly. “Will they be
strawberry?” “Berry berry baby!”, I shouted with affection. “But which berry?”,
my daughter wondered aloud. “Blackberry and raspberry baby!”, I screamed
adoringly to my almost 30 year old baby! “And I made enough for ALL of us!”

“Will the mojitos be berry berry?” my love asked. “No my sugar plum, they will
be plum plum!”. “Sugar plums?”, she wondered aloud. “Black plums and red plums”,
I answered adoringly. “And they will be plum-tastic!”.

“Will the mojitos be plum”, my wife of 33 years asked? “No darling, I replied.
It will be a regular mojito.”, I responded passionately. “What’s in a regular
mojito?”, she asked. “Love baby, mojitos are always made with LOVE!”

WTF is this all about, really??

OK, let me explain. My wife and I enjoy a drink. A good beer, a nice cocktail,
it can bring some extra spice, some joie de vivre to life (redundant no?). We
like mojitos! Mojitos are easy and awesome, and lend themselves to
experimentation. And we have a mint plant on our front porch step. So all summer
long, I made mojitos. And very early on, I heard voices when doing so. No, I’m
not a nutjob (as far as YOU know), but the voices in my head as I made mojitos
were of a romanticized hollywood-ish dialogue of a dashing leading man and
gorgeous film starlet, discussing the mojito that I was making.

So yeah, look at it that way, my weekly binge drinks was just a response to the
voices in my head. I’m OK with that. Nevertheless, I make an awesome mojito.

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JOHN LEWIS MEMORIES

July 18, 2020 Guide to Life

I’m enjoying reading the memories and memorials being shared for John Lewis this
morning. I have three.

At the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston, I shared a few minutes with Rep.
Lewis while he waited for his scheduled satellite time for an interview at the
Democratic News Service where I was working. It was just him and I, and though I
can’t recall what small talk we shared, I’ll never forget how genuine he was. He
was completely unrushed (not a typical description of any Member of Congress),
and in the moment, as if those few moments with an anonymous staffer were as
important as his upcoming interview.

I’m proud of the fact that in 2008, my team at NGPVAN built his campaign
website. I see they still host his current site today. So I likely still have a
few keystrokes somewhere in johnlewisforcongress.com

And most recently, in 2016, my walk from the Metro to my office at Winning
Connections would take me past Rep. Lewis’ home on Capitol Hill, and I would
sometimes see him leaving for work in the morning. I’m not typically the type to
pester a public figure who’s just going about their life, but my daughter had
recently given me the first volume of the graphic memoir of his life ‘March’ as
a gift, and walking past him on the sidewalk, I stopped to say hello, introduce
myself, and tell him about the gift. “What is your daughter’s name?”, he asked.
“Katie”. “Well thank Katie for me, and I hope you enjoy the book.”

The book opens on January 20, 2009 – Barack Obama’s first inauguration day, with
Rep. Lewis waking early on a cold morning for what will be a historic, but still
long and hectic day ahead. At his office on Capitol Hill, met by a mother who
brought her two young boys to the inauguration, and took them just to see John
Lewis’ office, she’s surprised both at getting the opportunity to meet him
personally, and his unrushed generosity of his time, as he shares his story with
her boys. It would be easy to doubt that setup, but having experienced it
myself, I knew it to be genuine.

Rest in Power John Lewis. And thank you for what you made of your time on Earth.

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C-SPAN TURNS 40

March 27, 2019 Politics, Television, The Hill on The Net, Web Surfin'

C-SPAN, the public service cable network that covers Congress and so much more,
turned 40 years old this year. Many of my Facebook friends are noting this
milestone by sharing screen shots or clips of their own C-SPAN moments, and I
have enough of an ego to do the same. I have two of them…

The first is from January of 1995. At the time I was working for Sen. Edward
Kennedy and the Senator had just delivered a speech at the National Press Club
on the topic of ‘Maintaining Democratic Party Principles’ in the face of
electoral losses to Republicans in the previous election. Faced with new GOP
majorities in both the House and the Senate, the Senator spoke to how Democrats
must stick to their values and not become just “warmed over Republicans”. In the
Q&A that followed, Sen. Kennedy was asked about the advantage that the GOP had
developed in delivering their message via talk radio and cable television, and
what the Democrats would do to catch up. And about 30 seconds into his reply,
came my first C-SPAN moment. I wasn’t watching the speech live myself, and I
remember getting a call from a co-worker who was with the Senator at the Press
Club warning me that my phone would likely start ringing with calls from
reporters and that I shouldn’t respond until I had spoken with the press
secretary. “Why would I be getting calls from reporters?”, I asked. “Because he
just said your name in response to a question.” And they were kind words indeed.

My second clip is more than a mention, but me in the flesh. It was when my book,
The Hill on the Net: Congress Enters the Information Age was published. I think
it holds up, how about you? Terrible haircut, but at least I still had hair!
There’s a great commercial for C-SPAN’s own website at the start that I just had
to keep in place as it really helps provide a flavor and look at the 1996 time
frame of the interview and the state of the web at the time.

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THE GREAT BATTLEFIELD PODCAST

March 20, 2019 Politics, Technology, The Hill on The Net, Work

Few things are as satisfying as receiving the interest of others in what it is
you have done and are doing in your life, and inviting you to speak with them
about it. More humbling and flattering (and a bit intimidating as well), is if
they want to record you, to better reach a larger audience and remain available
long after the conversation.

In mid 2017, a friend and former colleague and employer, Nathaniel Pearlman,
began a podcast called The Great Battlefield. What IS the Great Battlefield?
Here’s how Nathaniel describes it in the opening of each episode;

> A great political battle is being fought right now between progressives and
> the forces of reaction on the other side. This show is about the political
> entrepreneurs and other progressive leaders who are finding new or improved
> ways to fight.

It’s an excellent podcast, and Nathaniel’s genuine interest in his guests, their
personal stories, and the work they are doing benefits from his personal
expertise, experience, and thoughtful questions. And so I was very pleased to
join him in a relaxed conversation about my own story about the path of my work
in political technology, and the help of the many colleagues and collaborators
along the way, himself included, upon whose smarts my career has depended. If
you’ve got an hour to spare, give us a listen.

The Evolution of the Internet in Politics with Chris Casey of ToSomeone.com |
Episode 278 | March 20, 2019
The Great Battlefield Podcast

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I OWE J.C.R. LICKLIDER AN APOLOGY

February 21, 2019 Books, Politics, Technology

Three years ago, I wrote a blog post that I was and remain pretty proud of. It
was titled Networks, Information, Engagement & Truth and in it I described the
influence that two great American thinkers have had on my own thinking of the
power of computer networks to advance and improve our political process, and the
threat of ‘bad information’ that could yet undermine it all.

One of the two mentioned thinkers was Thomas Jefferson. But I need to focus
further on the other, J.C.R. Licklider. This is how I described my introduction
to ‘Lick’ and his work in that blog post;

> Sometime around 1998, I read a wonderful history of the Internet by Katie
> Hafner and Matthew Lyon called Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the
> Internet. And through that history, I was introduced to the work and writings
> of the other bookend of my thinking about technology and politics: J.C.R.
> Licklider.
>
> In 1962, Licklider was the Director of the Information Processing Techniques
> Office at the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPANET
> was the predecessor of the Internet) and is considered among computer
> science’s most important figures. His prescient writings about computers,
> networks and their impacts, well, sort of blew my mind. The below excerpt from
> Where Wizards Stay Up Late captures the key Licklider (Just ‘Lick’ to many)
> prediction that I’ve never forgotten:
>
> “The idea on which Lick’s worldview pivoted was that technological progress
> would save humanity. The political process was a favorite example of his. In a
> McLuhanesque view of the power of electronic media, Lick saw a future in
> which, thanks in large part to the reach of computers, most citizens would be
> “informed about, and interested in, and involved in, the process of
> government.” He imagined what he called “home computer consoles” and
> television sets linked together in a massive network. “The political process,”
> he wrote, “would essentially be a giant teleconference, and a campaign would
> be a months-long series of communications among candidates, propagandists,
> commentators, political action groups, and voters. The key is the
> self-motivating exhilaration that accompanies truly effective interaction with
> information through a good console and a good network to a good computer.””

The book didn’t directly cite where this passage from Licklider came from, but
the very next paragraph described his “seminal paper”, Man-Computer Symbiosis.
Written in 1960, Man-Computer Symbiosis describes Lick’s imagined future where
“the main intellectual advances will be made by men and computers working
together in intimate association.” The paper is considered a key text in the
field of computer science. (For a recent look back, check out this article,
Another Look at Man-Computer Symbiosis by David Scott Brown, 1/3/18).

Given the placement of this mention of Man-Computer Symbiosis, immediately
following the passage about “the political process”, I naturally imagined it as
the source of the passage. Alas, it is not. And so for years I have shared this
excerpt of Licklider’s predictions on the impact of computer networks on our
political process as I originally found it in Where Wizards Stay Up Late, still
uncertain of its origin.

The Books That Led to Licklider

In 2001 a biography of J.C.R. Licklider titled The Dream Machine: J.C.R.
Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop
was published. I have a copy signed by the author at a bookstore event. And for
years, my copy sat on a bookshelf, always hovering near the top of my ‘to-read’
pile, but never quite making it to the top spot until I finally finished it last
year. And it led to a major breakthrough in my hunt for the source of
Licklider’s ‘political process’ writing, and in doing so, to the reason that I
owe J.C.R. Licklider an apology.

In The Dream Machine, Waldrop also singled out the same bit of writing that had
captured my imagination for years since first reading it in Where Wizards Stay
Up Late.

> “The key is the self-motivating exhilaration that accompanies truly effective
> interaction with information and knowledge through a good console connected
> through a good network to a good computer.”

In my blog post, I wrote;

> Information itself can be good or bad, and technology cares little about which
> sort it disseminates and propagates. Avoiding ignorance, as Jefferson’s hopes
> for civilization require, presume an ability to recognize and reject bad
> information to avoid being ill-informed. Licklider describes a ‘good console’
> and a ‘good network’ as needed for facilitating an ‘effective interaction with
> information,’ but not specifically ‘good information.’ An effective
> interaction with bad information is equally likely. Ignorance born of bad, but
> effectively delivered information can and does do damage to our political
> process.

Waldrop foretold my connection between Thomas Jefferson and Licklider, and also
my notion that Licklider had innocently overlooked the possibility of ‘bad
information’ in his formulation. Waldrop wrote of Licklider’s vision, “It was a
vision that was downright Jeffersonian in its idealism, and perhaps in its
naïveté as well.”

More importantly, Waldrop did me the favor of citing the source of this passage.
It came from a chapter titled Computers and Government that Licklider
contributed to an anthology published by MIT Press in 1979 titled The Computer
Age: A Twenty-Year View. (In their defense, the authors of Where Wizards Stay Up
Late included this volume in their bibliography, they just hadn’t directly
connected it to the ‘political process’ passage.)

So to the Internet I turned, where I located and purchased a copy of The
Computer Age: A Twenty-Year View, so I could at last drink of Licklider’s
predictions for ‘Computers and Government’ direct from the source.

And guess what?! When I found my treasured passage in Licklider’s 40-page
chapter in its original content, I found that in the very next paragraph he
addressed exactly the sort of potential bad actors and bad information that I
had previously accused him of naively overlooking.

And THAT, is why I owe J.C.R. Licklider an apology. Licklider was fully aware of
the potential pitfalls and dirty tricks that the network he was still helping to
build, and he described several of those potential problems with the same level
of prognosticative detail that characterized so much of his writing. I’m sorry I
suggested that this was a blind spot in his thinking.

And to correct this mis-characterization which I have perpetuated, below is a
fuller excerpt from two out of forty pages that contained my oft-repeated
political process passage, and Lick’s dose of reality that followed it. I have
bolded the original passage, and added a few bracketed notes throughout.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From Computers and Government, a chapter contributed by J.C.R. Licklider to The
Computer Age: A Twenty-Year View (1979, The MIT Press).

Computers and politics

It is technically possible to bring into being, during the remainder of this
century, and information environment that would give politics greater depth and
dimension than it now has [Remember, the NOW he’s writing about is 1979]. That
environment would be a network environment, with home information centers (which
would of course include consoles as well as television sets) as widespread as
television sets are now. The political process would essentially be a giant
teleconference, and a campaign would be a months-long series of communications
among candidates, propagandists, commentators, political action groups, and
voters. Many of the communications would be television programs or “spots,” but
most would involve sending message via the network or reading, appending to, or
setting pointers in information bases. Some of the communications would be
real-time, concurrently interactive. The voting records of candidates would be
available on-line [Generally speaking, they are], and there would be programs to
compare the favorable information about themselves and critical assertions about
their opponents. Charges would be documented by pointed to supporting records.
Under the watchful control of monitoring protocols, every insertion would be
“signed,” dated, and recorded in a publicly accessible audit trail [But who
makes and monitors the monitoring protocols?]. Because millions of people would
be active participants in this process, almost every element of the accumulating
information base would be examined and researched by several proponents, several
opponents, and perhaps even a few independent defenders of honesty and truth.
Nothing would be beyond question [The opposite has become the norm, EVERYTHING
IS QUESTIONED], and the question would go, along with whatever answers were
forthcoming, into the accessible record. Interactive politics would function
well only to the extent that the citizens were informed, but it would inform
them as the had never been informed before.

Such an environment and such a process would undoubtedly open up new vistas for
dirty tricks. However, by bringing millions of citizens into active
participation through millions of channels, it would make it more difficult for
anyone to control and subvert any large fraction of the total information flow.
It would give the law of large numbers a chance to operate, and within its
domain tricks would be more like vigorous expressions of the feelings of
individual citizens – unless, of course, a government [Russia, China] or a
syndicate [Facebook] controlled and subverted the whole network. The clandestine
artificial-intelligence programs, searching through the data bases, altering
files, fabricating records, and erasing their own audit trails, would bring a
new meaning to “machine politics.”

It is not likely that any agency of the U.S. government will deliberately
develop anything approaching computer-based politics, because congressman have
such a reactionary attitude toward meddling with their traditional political
process [Not so in today’s hyper partisan atmosphere in Congress]. However, the
development of networking for other purposes may create the facilities required
for highly participatory political interaction. This is yet another reason for
emphasizing the importance of computer system and network security, since it
would be absolutely essential to orderly an effective interactive politics; one
might even say that the security would have to be Watertight [A Watergate
related pun?

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SURF CITY RUNNING STREAK ENDS

February 4, 2019 Running
The Best Medal in Running

In 2008 I pursued and accomplished a long held goal to run a Marathon. It was an
exciting goal to achieve, and a surprising thing to choose to do more than once.
But I did, next in Baltimore, and then in 2010 my third, in my home town of
Huntington Beach, California… the Surf City Marathon. To me there are two
primary motivations to signing up for such a race, and the first is obvious, to
get myself up off of my lazy ass and run, especially having paid good money to
do so! But the second is for the fun of the destination, running a race in a new
city, and a new environment, can be an exhilarating undertaking that adds
adventure and distracts from the pain, and makes the whole thing especially
satisfying. And so, for most events, once is enough.

But the Surf City folks did something very smart. They created a special status
for runners who completed their event three years in a row. These runners earned
the distinction of being members of the Longboard Legacy Club. You ONLY earn
your membership after three consecutive years running the event, AND you have to
maintain having run three years in a row to keep your membership. It’s a trap to
keep you running the same race. And it works. So what do Legacy Club members get
in return? An additional t-shirt (long sleeves, some have been nice, others not
so much), a small stick-on extra for your medal (sometimes, not always), and an
exclusive separate entrance to the post-race beer line (almost always
meaningless). But runners who enter races are by nature competitive, even if
they have zero notion of actually WINNING the race, they want their medal and
they’ll chase other ways to feel like they’ve distinguished themselves. And for
me, since running Surf City provided a nice reason for an annual visit home I
returned year after year. Sometimes I ran the full Marathon in Surf City four
times (2010, 2011, 2012, 2016), and the Half Marathon five times (2013, 2014,
2015, 2017, 2018).

2016 Carbo Loading Dinner

Over the years, a number of traditions have developed around this annual race,
along with many special memories. Being a visit home, meant it was also an
opportunity to visit with old friends, and for years a collection of my closest
would always join me for a carbo-loading meal at The Olde Spaghetti Factory in
Newport Beach, a favorite restaurant of mine since childhood. I’ve also enjoyed
great fan support, from my folks, but also from one of my closest friends since
childhood, who would come out at both the start and finish to cheer me on and
run the last couple hundred yards to the finish with me. I love that.

Sadly, this year my streak has ended. I have plans to run Ragnar So Cal in
April, another event that has long been on my radar. And it just wasn’t in the
books to make back to back trips for two races, and so, regretfully, I did not
run Surf City this year, which would have been my 10th in a row. I’ve heard that
I picked the right year to miss due to cold and rainy weather. But I know I’ll
be back, and I’ll again be a Legacy Club Member, and next I’ll probably pursue
that Beach Cities Challenge Medal as well!

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