There are a few things about this walk to make it notable:

1. I got up from my desk at 11:35pm and headed out for a brisk walk, mainly so that I could try to get over 6,000 steps today.
2. I measured my steps using a Fitbit, and had the specific target because it’s part of an internal fitness challenge Automattic is hosting through Keas.
3. I took the chance to compare Fitbit to RunKeeper for measuring walking (mainly looking at distance accuracy, but also at calorie burn).
4. A guy (probably high) most definitely lined me up to attempt to mug me, he even tried to walk with me/talk/engage to distract me and get me to stop, but I out-walked him and he kind of gave up.

So; fun stuff all around. Here’s the data, from RunKeeper:

and for the same time period from Fitbit:

What’s interesting here?

• FB reports that I burned 163 over RK’s 126; that’s a 23% difference.
• FB reports that I covered 1.22 miles, while RK reports only 0.76 miles. Almost 40% difference.
• Pace is barely even worth comparing when distance is so differently recorded. Time even shows as 40 seconds different, although I’ll give FB the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s rounding.
• You can actually see the part where the guy approached me, because I sped up. If you look at the map from RK, it was on Larkin St, between Broadway and Pacific. He tried to “walk with me” so that he could get me to stop, but instead I just walked faster. I topped out right there at 14.4 minutes per mile according to RK (just over 4 miles per hour).
• If I hadn’t been trying to meet a daily fitness goal, I wouldn’t have been walking around at midnight, making myself a target for getting mugged

Maybe I should run instead of walking, since high/homeless/whatever people are even less likely to give chase?

I’ve had or tried a bunch of different messenger-style bags in my time, but I may have come across the Perfect Bag™. The Timbuk2 Command has all sorts of neat features and extras that make it suit me absolutely perfectly. Here are a few highlights:

• TSA-compliant: There’s a perfect sleeve in the back of the bag for sliding in a laptop. It also has a separate, well-padded and super-soft sleeve for dropping an iPad in there (yeah that’s right, specific sleeves for your laptop AND iPad. Welcome to San Francisco). The best part about these sleeves is that they’re on the back-side of the bag, which zips to fold out flat. Butterfly this baby open, drop the bag in the x-ray machine and don’t even fret about that “enhanced pat-down”.
• Luggage pass-through: Ever tried juggling multiple bags in an airport? It’s a nightmare. Between work and pleasure I travel quite a bit, so knowing that I can slide my bag over the handle of my rolling carry-on is a nice touch. When I’m not using it for that, the bottom velcros shut for an extra, over-sized sleeve to drop things in for quick access.
• Quick-adjust shoulder strap: I always wear my messenger bags on my right shoulder (so the bag is on my left hip), so the quick-adjust buckle is in the middle of my chest. This puts it in the perfect position to quickly adjust where the bag hangs, and doubles as a super-handy place to temporarily hang my sunglasses from.
• Super-slick buckles: while they’re a little tricky to get into position right now (it’s brand new, so the straps are still very flat), I love these buckles, and think they’re way more stylish than the previous clip-buckle style on most bags.
• Space: I got the small version of this bag, and it’s (relatively speaking) HUGE. OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it’s perfect for what I need, and fits way more than I was expecting. I can easily (and comfortably) carry a 13″ MacBook Air, power adaptor, towel, book, water bottle (tall Kleen Kanteen style) and a bunch of small things (keys etc). That reminds me…
• Dedicated power brick pocket: There’s a neat, almost hidden pocket below the main compartment where you can store your power brick so that it’s easy to get to without taking out everything else in your bag.
• Napoleon Pocket: This is the one thing that is a bit of a bummer for me. There’s a cool side-accessible pocket into the main accessory panel, but it’s only accessible if you wear your bag over the left shoulder. It would have been nice if they had the zipper on both ends of this pocket (which doesn’t seem like it’d be a problem), and then it would be completely ambidextrous.

Between the travel-friendly features, the double-gadget sleeves and the overall space available, this is probably my perfect bag. If only the Napoleon pocket was double-ended, I would have literally nothing to even kind of complain about. Well played Timbuk2, well played indeed.

Today I had my first check-in (from home), and it was fun. It also felt good to know that I was helping the city keep track an emergency system that might save lives at some point. I checked in via the repeater at 443.100+ tone 114.8 and had a bit of interference, but it was clear enough for the net control to hear/understand me after a clarification. ”KJ6LFV, back to net control”

Over the Thanksgiving break, some friends and I went camping over on Angel Island, in the San Francisco Bay. It’s quite a unique experience, camping in amongst so much city/so many people, yet being so isolated. We caught a ferry from SF over to Tiburon*, and then another from there to Angel Island. Once on the island we checked in with the ranger, then backpacked (via North Ridge Trail) over to our spot (campsite #3, on the East Bay side of the island).

We were greeted with a pretty amazing view out over the East Bay, which continued all night as it remained clear and cold. The lights were thoroughly impressive and provided enough light for us to night-hike up to the top of Mt. Livermore (once our eyes had adjusted). The view from there was even more impressive, providing complete 360° views of the entire bay area.

Not having a fire there was pretty rough (only charcoal fires and camp stoves are allowed, due to fire hazard), so we had to have a nip of whiskey to keep us warm instead. We also got to see a few pretty big shooting stars while we were sitting out chatting at night.

In the morning we took our time to get up, enjoy some breakfast (more Thanksgiving leftovers!) and then hiked back down to Ayala Cover, where you catch the ferry. 2 ferry rides later and we were back in the city again.

*Note: During summer it would be much easier to just catch a ferry direct to Angel Island, but because it was off-season and the day after Thanksgiving, the ferries were running on holiday schedules, so we had to do it this way.

If there’s one thing that travel has done for me lately, it’s made me recognize and accept how addicted and reliant I am upon my smart phone (in my case, an iPhone).

When you travel (internationally), you have to make a hard choice — do I shell out big $$$ to AT&T to get an international data plan, do I shell out even bigger $$$ to use roaming data, or do I sever the umbilical and disable roaming data. Roll the dice on being able to get wifi. Or worse yet — don’t use the internet at all. Gasp.

Traveling with others, I get this feeling that some people who don’t get an international plan are hopping from connectivity bubble to connectivity bubble, holding their breath in between and hoping they make it to the next one alive. There’s a sense of relief when they can get back online. Check Twitter. Check email. Check in. Check a map. OK, now hold your breath and hope we can find somewhere else with wifi before it’s too late!

I’ve found myself more and more often opting to not get any data access at all, and to actually relish the experience of not having connectivity for the most part. When I was in Chile, it was rough at first, not having access to maps, Google, etc. But I got used to it. It was like taking a step back in time. I talked to people. I used a paper map. It wasn’t so bad. It turns out that not having connectivity to the world wide web forces you to live in… the world right in front of you.

That’s not a bad thing. Try it.

A while back, I got a Wakemate and was pretty gung-ho about it being a great device for monitoring your sleep and helping you feel a bit more refreshed when you wake up. I recently picked up a Fitbit as well, so as a bit of fun, I thought I’d compare the 2 devices for sleep monitoring and write up a bit of a review. Here we go.

Getting Started

Once you’ve got yourself a Wakemate ($59.99) and a Fitbit ($99.95), you’re ready to get started. There isn’t much initial setup with the Wakemate, since it just interacts with your phone. You have to pair it like any other device but that’s about it. For the Fitbit, you’ll need to actually install an app on your computer (I did it on a Mac, running OS X Lion). The app that is installed handles syncing your data when you’re in range, or when you plug the device in to recharge.

Sleep “Session” Handling

I prefer the way that you use the Fitbit for tracking sleep. It has some intelligence built into it so that when you record an “activity” overnight, it takes that as your sleep. To do that, you just hold down the (single) button on the device for 2 seconds. When you wake up, you need to hold the button down to stop your “activity” again, which I sometimes forget to do.

With the Wakemate, I need to load the app on my iPhone, make sure Bluetooth is on (sometimes I turn it off to save battery), turn on the wristband (I constantly have to turn it off because the battery life doesn’t seem very good), make sure it’s connected, then hit the button to start a sleep session (and make sure it initiates properly, because I’ve had problems with that as well. Once your alarm goes off, you need to wake up enough to enter your code to unlock your phone, then hit the “I’m Awake” button. Sometimes this can be tough if you’re half asleep

Between the two devices, I think Fitbit wins here for a couple of reasons:

1. It’s really easy (push button on, push button off)
2. No additional devices involved (doesn’t require interaction with my phone)
3. The wristband is more comfortable

Sleep Data

Both devices give you a website where you can review your data. Both devices also now have native iPhone applications which include access to your data (current and historical). The Fitbit app is a lot more full-featured, but that’s because Fitbit in general is targeting a lot more than just sleep. Here is a side-by-side comparison of data collected from each device, on the same night, wearing them on the same arm:

Wakemate Data

Fitbit Data

Features/Functionality

A big point to note here is that the 2 devices are fundamentally intended for different purposes, they just happen to cross over a certain amount. The Fitbit fundamentally measures steps (through motion) and will give you a distance and calorie approximation as well. The design of the device allows you to clip it just about anywhere on your both or clothes. The Wakemate tracks your sleep through the same mechanism, but does not give any measurement other than “movement” while sleeping. Since it is a wristband, your options on how to wear it are pretty limited. The Fitbit also allows you to view your current (for today) data right on the device (via an integrated OLED display) which is  a really nice touch. Being able to check how many steps I’ve done in a day is a great motivator to get up and do some more.

Verdict

Overall, I think the Fitbit is a better purchase, even though it’s nearly twice as much. Since it is a more general-purpose device, and since you will be more likely to wear it all the time, you’ll end up with a lot more, valuable information. With a longer battery life, simpler daily use and a more refined appearance in general, it’s just a better product.

Now that I’ve tried these, I’m really curious to see what the Jawbone UP is like…

This past Saturday, I had a test that was long overdue — a test that I originally should have taken almost 2 years ago. I tested to go from Level 4 (Green Belt) to Level 5 (Blue Belt) in Krav Maga at my gym here in San Francisco. I have missed this test twice now (once each year) because of scheduling conflicts, and thought I was going to miss it again this time around. Luckily things worked out and I was able to put the time in so that I felt ready for the test.

It feels like every time I walk around in San Francisco (and other places), I see all this cool artwork, quotes, stencils etc on the sidewalk that I’m sure a lot of people are missing or not appreciating. SidewalkScribbl.es will be a place to share those things. The site will most likely get a facelift to make things look better, but in the meantime I’m just getting started with some of the things I’ve already collected from around the place.

Keep an eye out for another *Scribbl.es site soon

A few weeks ago I attended a 3-day course titled “Scout Urban Escape & Evasion“, delivered by onPoint Tactical. The idea of it was to learn how to get around in a hostile  urban environment, assuming you were being pursued. That pursuit might be active or not, and might be post- or pre- apprehension of some sort (e.g. kidnapping). Sounds like fun, right?

So what did we learn? Here’s a quick summary of the material we covered during the 2 days of class-work:

• Understanding stress and its effects on the body
• Situational diligence
• E&E priorities/immediate actions
• Gear priorities, tiers & rules
• Caching: where, how, what
• Knowledge of terrain/area intel/Briefing Book
• Escaping from custody: picking handcuffs, escaping rope, duct tape and zip-ties/flex-cuffs
• Basic social engineering
• Understanding the baseline of an environment
• Disguises: cover for status, cover for action, fake ID
• Surveillance: types, detection, counter
• Lock picking
• Urban movement at day and night
• Dealing with attack dogs
• Working with cyclone fence, barbed wire and razor wire

We spent a lot of classroom time learning how to pick handcuffs and locks which was fun. Once you know how to pick handcuffs they are ridiculously easy. Picking door/pad-locks is a bit harder but also surprisingly easy. The highlight of the course was the full-day field exercise on day three (Saturday), which went something like this:

On the Friday night  we cached anything we thought we might need on Saturday. Whatever you hid had to be put somewhere that someone wouldn’t find it, otherwise you’d have to do without it. It was suggested that we’d need lock picks and some cash would be a good idea. Disguises optional, but might help evading our pursuers. We hid some smaller pieces that contributed to disguising us (hat, glasses, bag, coffee mug) along with lock picks, cash, a map, a small bag, a frisbee and a few other things we didn’t end up using. On Saturday morning we arrived at the hotel in Santa Clara at 8:30am and were whisked off to a room upstairs. Inside, the furniture was pushed out of the way and the lights were off. A single lamp shone in the corner and there was a guy there in a balaclava and ski goggles, dressed all in black. After a bit of back and forth, he pushed us against the wall, frisked us (taking anything he found that we weren’t supposed to have) and then threw us on the couch. We were then handcuffed to each other, hooded, and our hoods were duct taped on.

At this point, the “kidnappers” all left the room and we jumped into action. My hood was relatively easy to remove, so I got it off and then went to work on the handcuffs. I actually had 2 different picks and a shim on me that had escaped my cursory pat-down, so I grabbed one from my sock and undid our cuffs. We picked up some instructions from under our feet that would guide us through the day. Once we were out of the room, we headed for the stairs to make our escape. Right away, we ran into a couple of “Hunters” (the people who would be pursuing us all day). We dropped down a couple of floors and bolted across the hotel to the other set of stairs. There we headed back up stairs to shake them (which apparently worked) and eventually made our way downstairs and right out the front. We had wanted to get down the service elevator but every floor we passed had someone working there.

From the hotel, we made for our caches and picked up our stuff. Then we started zig-zagging along back streets and improvising weapons along the way (mostly bottles and concrete chunks at this point). Our instructions had informed us that we were to rendezvous at a set location with a “partisan” who would give us some information if we convinced them we were who we said we were, and that it would be a good idea for them to help us. Once we got that information, we were headed off to a specific intersection down towards San José. We headed off on foot towards transit options (bus), again sticking to back streets.

Along the way we came across a soccer ball which became a part of our disguise. We ended up kicking that thing for a large portion of the day. It helped to set our pace and kept our focus off the fact that people were supposed to be hunting us. Our path took us along an abandoned railway line for a little while, which was a gold-mine of improvised weapons: steel hooks, broken bottles, strips of metal, you name it. Eventually we got down to a major road where we could hop a bus headed in the direction we needed to be going. That got us close, but then we realized we were setting ourselves up to go through a choke point, so we hopped another bus to get past there. That took us past where we needed to be, so we doubled back through some running/hiking trails and hit our target intersection from a different angle.

Here we had to pick a lock before we could get some more information that would guide us for the rest of the day. Once that was done we were headed off towards downtown San José, which is where we were to be spending the rest of the day. Once we got there, we were to stay within a bounded area and never stay in one place for more than 30 minutes. We had a list of tasks to accomplish that kept us pretty busy: things like finding a working pay phone, acquiring $2 from someone (legally) and location outdoor-accessible potable water. Once all of that was done, we had to meet at a final meet point (at 4:30pm) for a debrief and beer.

It was a long day, and according to RunKeeper (which I had running for most of the day; we had to have our cellphones with us for safety reasons, but we’re allowed to use them to help us), we covered almost 18 miles (including the bus trip). We managed to avoid capture for the whole day, and in fact the only run-in we had with the Hunters was in the morning. One of them said that they had seen me towards the end of the day, but couldn’t get to me to capture me. We finished all of our tasks and got to the final meeting point roughly on time (although we had to get a cab for the last bit to get there on time, because we hadn’t realized how far out our final destination was).

All in all it was a great course that was a lot of fun for someone with no real training in this sort of thing but a solid interest. I feel like it gave me a better understanding of things in an urban setting, and definitely gave me a few new skills to practice (especially picking hand-cuffs/locks!). I was actually expecting to be roughed up more/treated a little worse during the field exercise, and assumed that we’d get caught, or at least chased. I don’t know whether to put that down to being too tough and good at this stuff, or that they were soft on us and weren’t great at covering all the ground they had to cover as Hunters. I’ll probably go with the second set of options Either way, this is a good set of skills to add to my hopefully-never-need-to-use-this-but-it’s-fun-to-know-anyway list.

About 9 years ago, I picked up the movie The Hunted from an ex-rental discount bin. I hadn’t heard of it, and didn’t know what to expect, but it had Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro in it, so I figured it would be at least decent. Instead of being just decent, I loved it. Apart from becoming a favorite movie, it started me down the path of discovering Tom Brown (who was a technical consultant on the skills and knife used in the movie) and a field of interest that continues today.

Tom Brown is a man with a lot of history. I won’t bother reciting it all, but to summarize; he was effectively raised by arguably one of the last truly native-living native Americans, an Apache known to him as Grandfather. Grandfather had spent his life learning the skills of all the still-existing “primitive” peoples, and passed on a good deal of that information to Brown. Part of Brown’s upbringing was to learn Grandfather’s love of the Earth, and his fear that modern people are destroying it, and before too long there will be nothing left to destroy.

Since 1978 (when the school opened), Brown has been on a mission to educate as many people as possible about the Earth and the peril it faces through our hands. Through the lens of these primitive skills and ways of thinking, he aims to bring people closer in touch with the world around them, and at the same time to make them more self-sufficient in a survival situation, or to even be able to live fully from the land.

Fast forward to about a year and a half ago, when I picked up a copy of the book Emergency: This Book will Save Your Life after hearing Tim Ferris talking about it. Amongst many other awesome things (it’s a fantastically fun read!) the book mentions attending Tom Brown’s Tracker School and learning skills for surviving after “TEOTWAWKI” (The End Of The World As We Know It). I’ve long been at least a little bit interested in the Survivalist mentality and community, so this caught my attention.

I looked into tom Brown’s Tracker School and found out that the “Standard” class (the foundation for over 75 classes run by his school) was run periodically in California, as opposed to his normal offerings in New Jersey. Convenient. In a conversation with my boss, we talked about the book I said that I wanted to do this class. To my surprise, he was also interested and threw down the challenge of “if you do it, I’ll do it”.

Done deal.

Now jump forward another few months to a Sunday morning in May and we were driving together down to Bear Creek, California (near Santa Cruz) in hammering rain, wondering what the next week would hold for us. After hiking our gear in to the camp area and setting up our tents (still in the rain), we were ready to find out.

What followed were 6 days of the densest transfer of information I’ve ever been a part of. We were up and at it most days before 7am, and often didn’t crawl into our damp tents until 11pm or later. Most of the time we were in a classroom setting, where I filled two entire notebooks with notes and diagrams, quotes and questions. When we weren’t in the classroom, we were outside in the classroom of Nature.

Rather than trying to walk you through the entire week (this is already a long post), here’s a list of some of the things we covered (in rough order):

• Knives: picking the right type for the job and how to sharpen a blade
• Survival mentality
• Fire: why it’s important, how to create it, where to position it
• Cordage: how to create it, basic techniques and materials
• Water: how it moves, where to find it, how to filter it
• Traps: catching game for food
• Tracking: gait, identification, standard vocab, pressure releases, movement, track aging, sign tracking
• Brain tanning
• Stone tools/flint knapping
• Camouflage
• Shelter (basic: debris hut through more permanent round-houses etc)
• Cooking techniques and approaches
• Throwing sticks
• Awareness (an entire section/discipline)
• Edible and Medicinal/useful plants

At the end of it, I’d like to think that we came away with a foundational understanding of some of the skills and attitude you need to keep yourself alive in a survival situation. I’m definitely not running out to live in the forest any time soon, but I feel a lot more confident that I could at least survive in some tougher conditions than before.

In addition to those “basic” survival skills though, are some of the more interesting ones which can influence your every day life. Appreciation for the uniqueness of everything in Nature. Thinking about the very style with which you walk (and therefore leave tracks). Increased awareness of what’s going on around you. The near-meditative state of wide-angle vision, and maybe even the Spiritual connection of all things to a single thread.

Tracker School was a truly unique experience, something I will never forget. I don’t know if I’m ready to go back for another class of some sort just yet, but I quite possibly will at some point. I have a huge new family there now, who have all shared experiences that most other people don’t understand, and won’t understand just from reading these words. If you feel any desire to do anything like this, I would strongly encourage you to act upon it. The experience might just change your life a bit.

I’m on a bit of a “body modification” kick since reading The Four Hour Body and also Born to Run, and am making some changes and testing the waters in a few different things.

I’ve signed up to get full bloodwork done to check all my different nutrient/vitamin/everything levels checked (“NutrEval FMV Amino Acids”), and also to see what/if food allergies I have. Should be pretty interesting. The tests are I think $120 and $160 or something (with insurance). They are both done through a company called Genova Diagnostics.

I’ve always been skinny, and I finally decided to try to do something about it and put a bit of weight on. I got some Withings scales and have been tracking my weight. Baseline was around 160 lbs. I’m 6’4″. So yeah, lighter than you’d expect. I’ve already put on 5 lbs since I started tracking (Feb 10), just by being more aware of it and trying to eat more. As part of trying to gain weight, I’m trying to consume a lot more (at least vaguely healthy) calories. The target is 3000+ per day to get up to at least 180 lbs without blowing my body-fat ratio too far out of the water. I had been manually keeping a food log to add it up manually at the end of the week, but I found an app for the iPhone that seems to be pretty good for doing it all easily. Apparently if you mark someone as a friend, it shares all your information with them though (weight etc), so don’t do that if you don’t want folks knowing exactly how much you weigh

I’ve started running (I hadn’t run in literally about 10 years), and I got a new pair of Vibrams that have slightly thicker soles to try them out (was previously running in these, which I’ve had for a while). Went for a run in them today (right after buying them) and they felt good. Here are the results of that run (as tracked by RunKeeper, which I’m using to track all of my runs). I know running isn’t going to help me gain weight, but I’m enjoying it anyway. And still going to Krav.

Oh, and I have a 40 lb “SandBell” (sand-filled KettleBell) on the way from HyperWear so I can try it out as well.

Updates to follow.

My theory has always been that after I had glandular fever about 12 years ago, sleep has never left me feeling rested or fully revived. That’s been very difficult to quantify or keep track of though, other than saying “I feel crappy in the morning.”

I had been looking a little bit at a new startup called Fitbit when Matt turned me on to Wakemate, a company that not only is he investing in, but they are building a system specifically for analyzing your sleep and helping you figure out what helps you get better quality sleep. They also have a “smart” alarm system that wakes you up during lighter sleep cycles to avoid that groggy feeling in the morning that I’m all too familiar with.

Last week I received my Wakemate and here are some of my initial reactions:

• The device itself is a comfortable, padded wristband that you wear to bed. It communicates with your phone (iPhone, BlackBerry or Android) via bluetooth to keep track of your sleep cycles via movement.
• The smart alarm thing works! If you’re using an alarm of any kind to wake up at a certain time, this is a better solution. Your new alarm will go off up to 20 minutes before your specified time, and you’ll wake up immediately, feeling like you’ve just taken a quick, refreshing nap.
• I had to wake up to get to the airport after only about 4 hours sleep, and woke up using the smart alarm feeling surprisingly fresh and ready-to-rock.
• It’s obviously early days. The bracelet is a little rough-around-the-edges, with raw-feeling components inside. The app (I’m using the iPhone version)is very simple and feels like it was designed by an engineer, but it works.
• Battery life could be longer. It’s kind of cumbersome to charge via a USB cable, so it’d be nice if you only had to do it once a week at the most.
• There’s no option to set an alarm for ‘x’ hours for now (you can add it up yourself obviously, I just mean a quick way to say “wake me up in 8 hours” would be good).
• The Wakealytics service they provide for looking at your data for each night and comparing nights is interesting, and I’m really looking forward to collecting more data so that I can hopefully start seeing some trends and seeing my sleep change as I make changes (like getting a new bed).

All in all I’m really happy with it so far, and will definitely keep using it. Even without the analytics side of things, just having the smart alarm is worth the current price. I’m not sure how useful it’d be if you had someone else sleeping in your bed and/or waking you up, but for a single guy, it’s working out just fine.

When I was growing up in Wagin, almost all of the meat that we ate was home butchered by my Dad. He is the kind of guy who looks at most things and says “I can do that” and then just does it. I remember raising our own goats and slaughtering/butchering them. We had pigs at one point. The farm my Dad worked on provided us with endless sheep. I even helped out with some rabbits once in a while.

It’s been a long time since I lived around all of that though, and now here I am, living in the middle of San Francisco with access to “artisinal” meats, grass-fed this and organic that. Guess what? It’s the same stuff I grew up on, and people back then considered us “a little bit country” because we did it ourselves. Now it’s becoming trendy to do it yourself again, and there’s a growing community of people whonare interested in self-sufficient living, re-learning some of these skills, and maybe taking back control of some of their lives from the military-industrial complex that otherwise dictates so much of it.

During my recent trip to Australia, I stayed with my Dad for a feww days and one of the meals he prepared contained home-butchered meat. That got me thinking a bit about this skill that I had never really learned myself, but that if I had stayed in the country, I would probably do as part of my everyday life. The idea of having just missed out on something like that bugged me, so I looked into what I could do aout remedying the situation.

Enter 4505 Meats. I had heard about these guys from a few friends who are obssessed with all-things-meat. 4505 Meats is a small company, started by Ryan Parr, a passionate chef and self-taught and butcher who is gaining a cult-following in the Bay Area and beyond for his delicious meat-treats and hands-on, down-to-earth approach to fine food.

One of the ways that 4505 is bringing a love of meat to The City is through their butchery classes. Hog, Beef and now Lamb. Pick your animal, pay your fees then turn up and take part in breaking down a whole animal (pre-slaughtered/gutted/bled) into primal cuts, then down into meal-sized cuts of the tastiest meat you’ve probably had in years. Bag it up, and you get to take home the fruits of your labor for the night, making it an even better deal than it already was. And trust me, it tastes even better knowing that you were involved in the process some way.

And so, on a Monday night in the middle of the Haight, I and 12 other strangers walked through a side entrance and into a commercial kitchen where two 74 pound sheep hung, awaitaing our amateur blades. Afterbrief introductions, we jumped right in. Ryan answered questions on where the sheep were from (just outside Sacramento) and what sort of tools we’d need to butcher our own animal (hatchet/cleaver, mallet, saw and good boning knife will get you through most everything) as he started us on the 3+ hour process of turning these 2 carcasses into little baggies of deliciousness.

At first, most people were a bit apprehensive, standing back and grimacing here and there. Staring at this (for most people) alien thing which was to be the source of their lamb chops and sirloin steaks. When was the last time you were in a room with a whole dead sheep? As soon as we all had a go at something though, initial hesitations were pushed aside and before too long we were all elbow deep in meat and bones, cutting and tieing, “seaming out” (cutting along the muscle seams to preserve the natural cuts of meat) shanks and frenching ribs.

Kent, one of the guys from 4505 Meats, cooked up some tasty treats for us as we finished cleaning up the kitchen and then wrapping each cut in 13 equal portions so we could take it home. We bagged everythig up, said our goodbyes and then headed our separate ways.

Since then, I’ve been eating a lot of lamb, and really can say that it’s been amazing. Apart from learning at least the very basics of a skill that (I believe) is a valuable one to have, having a really fun experience, and reconnecting with something I associate with my childhood, I have also been able to eat some of the tastiest, freshest lamb around. The meat you get in the store doesn’t taste like this. The meat you get from the farmer’s market might not even taste like this.

Now that I’ve done it once, I really want to do some more. Get more experience with all parts of the animal. Try their Beef and Hog classes. A whole new skill has opened up, and I’d like to explore it all.

• Woke up in a tent, in the rain,
• Ate meat (and eggs) for breakfast,
• Drove home in a truck,
• Ate meat (as a burger) for lunch,
• Took apart and cleaned my camp stove,
• Pulled apart and put back together my sink,
• Ate meat for dinner,
• Drank beer,
• Oh — and I did all of the above, with a beard, which makes everything more manly.

Not bad, even if I do say so myself. I’m almost getting used to the beard thing as well.

The cold blue glow
of a smartphone, or perhaps an iPad
illuminates his face from below
casting ghoulish shadows of distortion.

Moments of otherwise peace
spent mindlessly striving.
Inbox Zero.
But only for a moment.

Catching up on email.
Only to fall behind again.
Is there an end?
Is there a point?

You have new mail.

Last weekend I went along on a trip with Bay Area Expeditions, a small outdoors/adventure company based here in San Francisco. I found out about them via a deal on HomeRun, and jumped at the chance to go on a guided camping trip, curious to see the equipment, the people, where we’d go, etc.

Chris was our guide, and Ingrid was our chef (yes, I said chef, on a camping trip!). Apparently Ingrid doesn’t always come along, but she arranges food which Chris then prepares as part of the deal. Everything she prepared or brought along was delicious, and made for a really nice touch to the trip. This included an awesome curry with meat and veggies, and lemon-ginger oatmeal with tequila-soaked raisins (seriously!)

I got a ride to the trailhead with Chris, and we chatted pretty much all the way there. He obviously knows his stuff; grew up in the Bay Area and has clearly spent years camping, hiking, offroading etc in the area. He’s been through a ton of equipment and knows what works and what doesn’t, who makes the best stuff, where to get it, etc. The best part is that he’s more than happy to pass all this info on to you either on the trip, or via packing lists and other tips after you get home.

The equipment we were provided with was top-notch, military grade gear. If you needed it, you could have pretty much turned up empty handed and come along. The “team gear” was split up and carried amongst us, and I tried out 2 different (Kifaru) backpacks; both of which were super comfortable once adjusted correctly. We were all given a primer on how to adjust a backpack to fit us properly before heading out; as Chris said “these backpacks are great, but even a $500 backpack will feel like a $50 one if it’s not adjusted correctly.”. The hike in/out was nice and easy – around 2 miles in each direction with not too much elevation.

Once we got to our campsite (after only seeing one or 2 people on the trail), we snacked for a while, then set up the giant tipi that it turns out I was carrying in my backpack. The thing was huge — literally big enough to sleep all 9 of us if it needed to. As it turns out though, it was such a beautiful night that most of us ended up just sleeping out under the stars; only three people ended up in the tipi. We stayed up chatting until tiredness got the better of us, then we bedded down for the night, looking up through the treetops and listening to the river gurgling away below us in the valley.

The next morning we got up and took a short hike up the hill to an old homestead ruin. There were some clear rock walls, signs of plants that had been obviously planted there (prickly pear, cotton, some kind of chestnut), including some lemon trees that were fruiting heavily. We grabbed a couple lemons for a snack (amazingly delicious and refreshing; my mouth is watering just thinking about them), then headed back down to our campsite. After breaking down camp and re-packing, we headed back on the short hike to the vehicles and to make the trip home. On the way I saw/heard my first Rattlesnake which was pretty exciting. It definitely lived up to its name — it took me a second to realize what I was hearing, but then it was very clear what was going on. It was off to the side of the path we were taking so we just gave it a wide berth and then we were good to go.

I’m definitely signing up to do a couple more trips with BAE — I heard about a Wilderness First Aid one and a trip out into the Desert which both sound awesome. This is the perfect way to get out into nature if you 1. haven’t before and don’t know where to start, 2. don’t have your own equipment, 3. don’t know where to go or 4. don’t have anyone to go with (or any/all of the above!). I think it works out as fantastic value given what you get for your money: food, transport (first come, first served), equipment and expertise provided.

The first night of their trip here, they stayed in SF (after a lot of trouble with their hotel room — use a reputable booking website, kids!). We got up in the morning and headed over to Oakland where we had breakfast at the Oaks Card Club. Did you know there was a casino in Oakland? Me neither. It was super busy at 9am as well, which blew me away. At the front it’s a normal, pretty boring-looking bar, then out the back is a huge cards-room. Apparently it’s a hold-over from the prohibition era.

After that, we went next door to a place called Fantasy Junction. Now although this place sounds like a strip-club, I assure you it’s not. Although there are a lot of exotic curves to be seen…

From there, we headed south via Saratoga, where we stopped for a snack. Peter’s eyes bugged out when he spotted a Tesla Roadster, until I explained to him that their headquarters were roughly in the area, and that they were becoming kind of popular with the sorts of folks who are likely to live in Saratoga. While we were standing there admiring it, the owner, one Doug Cheeseman came walking over. Peter was grinning like a kid in a candy-store, and Doug was an incredibly nice, cheery guy. He offered to take Peter for a drive (which of course he accepted immediately), and by the time they came back to where we were waiting, Peter was actually driving (massive grin still firmly in place.

After that brief interlude, we continued on to the destination which had actually brought us via Saratoga: The Hakone Gardens. This is a beautiful, traditional Japanese Tea Garden — apparently the oldest one in the Western Hemisphere. We spent a while exploring the gardens, then dropped back into Saratoga to get some food before heading to where we’d made reservations for that night, in Marina (pretty much everything in Carmel-by-the-Sea and Monterey was booked out!).

We stayed that night in Marina, and ventured into Monterey for touristy dinner of seafood. When we got to the restaurant we were aiming for, someone had fallen down some stairs and gashed their head open, and was being taken away by EMTs. Bad stuff. Dinner was OK, then back to the hotel where I saw my first wild raccoon in the parking lot (the thing was huge!). The next day we were up and off, headed South on the Coastal Highway. We stopped in to check out some sea lions near San Simeon, then across the road and went to Hearst Castle for a tour. That place is amazing, and the pictures don’t do it justice. Hearst basically built a small, extravagant Mediterranean town on top of a hill, at the end of a 5-mile driveway, in the middle of nowhere.

After The Ranch (as Hearst referred to his place!), we continued on to Ventura, which is where were bunking down for the night. The next morning we got up and headed to the highlight of the trip for Peter (and I must admit, it was very impressive for me also); The Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, CA. This place has an incredible collection of vehicles, most notably a load of incredible Bugatti’s (including a prototype Veyron!) . One of the vehicles was purchased for thirty MILLION dollars. No kidding. The best part? It’s actually a private museum, housing mostly the personal collection of one Peter Mullin.

Later that day we skipped back over to Santa Barbara to take a look around, and stopped in at the Four Seasons Biltmore (which I’d been to previously for a wedding) for a coffee and snack.

One more night in Ventura, then it was time for Mum and Peter to get to the airport, and me to get to Mike’s house. I was headed there to stay a few days and work with Mike, since he’s a colleague of mine who I don’t get to see to often (since Automattic is completely distributed), and I was going to be in LA so that seemed like a good idea. I stayed there for 2 nights and got to drop by Intelligentsia twice to get some amazing coffee. We also visited a couple of Mike/Michelle’s favorite spots, including a delicious taco-truck that visits CalPoly.

On Thursday night I took the FlyAway bus to LAX and hopped a flight back to SFO, where my trip ended, having come full circle.

You can see all of the pictures I uploaded on Flickr in my Coastal Highway Roadtrip set.

This weekend I got together with some friends and headed down to Big Basin State Park to go camping for the weekend. We headed down on Friday, taking our time by going down Hwy 1 (beautiful coastal drive) and stopping for lunch (Burrito Friday!) in Moss Beach, then going through Pescadero and visiting Harley Farms Goat Dairy (awesome!). From there we wound our way in to Big Basin and secured our 2 camping spots, which turned out to be fantastic. We got a pair of walk-in spots right next to each other, all the way in the back of the available sites (away from the parking lots/noisy people).

Apart from all the awesome food we ate (we really ate like kings!), we went on a most excellent hike on Saturday that wound up (for Rick and I) being around 11.5 miles. Here’s very very roughly what it looked like (I recorded a few waypoints using MotionX-GPS, then pieced this together on Google Maps):

View Big Basin/Berry Creek Falls in a larger map

We all (Rick, Tony, Alli and I) set off from the same parking spot (P) and headed out on the South line (Hihn Hammond Road). We rose through some elevation and had a series of walks out along ridges that put us in the full sun where it felt almost like being in the desert (but with occasional views of the ocean!). Once we got down again and met up with the Skyline to the Sea Trail, we got back to Berry Creek Falls and stopped for some lunch. At that point Tony and Alli headed back along that trail to the park headquarters, while Rick and I continued North, then turned East to come back to the same place via Skyline Trail. We got to see another 2 (smaller) sets of waterfalls, and had a pretty tough hike back which we really powered through.

That night we ate some massive burgers and then had the luxury of a shower. Some warmer water would have been nice, but just getting the grime and sweat of the day off was quite the treat. This morning we got up, broke camp and headed back to the city via Skyline Boulevard.

Here are a few snaps from the weekend:

The underlying premise is that a major disaster will overwhelm first responders leaving many citizens on their own for the first 72 hours or longer after the emergency. Our goal is to teach as many San Franciscans as possible that, with basic training, they can make a difference in the lives of their families and others when, not if, they are affected by a disaster large or small.

This is actually a pretty impressive program in my opinion, and is part of a bigger, national program called CERT. It contributes not only to individual, personal safety and education, but obviously helps build a more robust community that stands a better chance of surviving a disaster situation. The idea of distributing this sort of resilience also really appeals to me after reading books like John Robb’s Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization. So what did I learn?

1. Basic disaster preparedness
2. Utility control (safely shutting off gas/electricity at the mains, and when to do so)
3. Small fire-fighting skills, including an opportunity to actually use a small extinguisher and put out a fire. We spent quite some time on fire which was fascinating and frightening at the same time. We watched a “controlled experiment” go from a small flame in an armchair to a fully-involved, completely obliterated room in around 2 minutes.
4. Hazardous materials storage and handling
5. Disaster medicine and triage — we practiced on “live” patients where we were required to assess their condition and assign them a treatment status in under 30 seconds
6. Light search and rescue skills
7. How to set up an Incident Command Station using the standardized “Incident Command System”. This included looking at the city-wide disaster plan and how NERT fits into that
8. Disaster psychology and how people are likely to react in a mass-casualty/disaster situation
9. Terrorism and likely urban attacks

Once you’re done, you get your identification card (pictured) a helmet, vest and gloves, and are ready to rock. The idea of this kit is that it gives you something to identify you as an “official” volunteer of some sort — it indicates that you’ve gone through some training and perhaps know roughly what you’re talking about. To be honest the training (we opted for a 2-day intensive, versus the once-a-week-for-six-weeks approach) was a bit rushed, and there was a lot to digest. I’m definitely hoping to get to some of the regular training drills that NERT holds to hone my skills and learn new things. I’m particularly interested in more ICS training and HAM radio operation.

As a Bay Area resident, I’d strongly recommend this to anyone else living in the area. It’s a pretty easy, completely free way to learn a bunch of useful skills that might help you, your family and even your neighborhood in a disaster. If anything, my only disappointment was in the lack of younger people at the course (other than a few who appeared to have been dragged by their parents). The very people who could be massively valuable: the fit, healthy, physically able folks; weren’t there. It’d be great to see more interest in this sort of thing from the 25 – 40 sort of age group.

I’ve created a Google Calendar for NERT activities which you can subscribe to via iCal etc, or you can view it as HTML. I’ll try to keep this up to date from now on.

Picture by yoavf

When I was picking them up from Nomadic Outfitters here in San Francisco, the woman who was serving me said that back to the manufacturer, they were sold out of size 44′s, and everything black (for males). She also described them as being ”like drugs” and said that once people are hooked, they want more, more MORE. She said she had one guy come in and buy 10 pairs. Apparently he sold them on eBay at $140 a pair (a ~$60 premium).

Initial Wearing

When I first put them on, the shoes felt weird, but “cozy”. I didn’t have any immediate pain/discomfort, but I was only wearing them for shorter periods. There was a distinct feeling of walking around barefoot, yet still feeling protected. It took some getting used to when walking around downtown or somewhere where I was quite conscious of the idea of walking in that area barefoot.

Krav Maga

After being warned that I should “take it easy” while I was getting used to my new shoes and the new style of walking they encouraged, I made the rookie mistake of wearing them to a couple of consecutive Krav Maga classes. I found they had lots of grip, almost too much (on rubber floor pads), and that it felt quite weird (almost unsafe) to have separate toes gripping/flexing independently. The day after I wore them, my calves and butt-muscles burned and felt super tight.

Camping

I’d heard that people went hiking in their Vibrams, but I wasn’t ready to go that hardcore just yet. I was going camping though, so I took them along  to try them out. They performed pretty much as expected; They were not warm (not wearing socks), I could feel more sticks, stones etc, and my actual feet got wet very easily from dew on the grass. On the flip side, they provided great traction, even in mud/on stones and allowed me to feel more directly connected to the Earth. They also made it much easier to feel your contact with the ground and walk quietly/carefully (while still protecting your soles from sticks and things stabbing into them).

Out & About

The last test is what they’re life for “everyday wear”. I get lots of stares & looks from random people. They look at my feet, then up to me. Back to my feet, then back to me. Your shoes are now DIAMONDS. Sorry, I got sidetracked I get people asking me “are they shoes” and wanting to know about them, so I end up being a traveling marketer. Great advertising for the brand I guess. People ask about if my feet hurt, if they protect my feet, etc etc. Oh, and I have also most definitely been approached/hit on by girls in a bar, based purely on the shoes

I’d recommend giving them a shot, especially if you have the flexibility to wear them around quite a bit (e.g. if they’d be acceptable at your place of employment). The biggest downside I’ve noticed is that my feet smell absolutely horrible when I’m wearing them, and I haven’t found a way to remedy that just yet.