Beauty in the Big Ugly

This post is inspired by Cliff Carlson's comment, that he refers to our ride through west Chicago as "the big ugly". I was prompted by this to look for what beauty there is in the Big Ugly on my ride to work this morning. First of all it is a beautiful day! It has been hot, hot and hotter, the haze and dull gray of the sky pressing on us with day after day of 90+ heat. Last night the heat broke and it rained. Today the clear light of a bright day shone on me as I embraced the 72 degree air on my ride in. As I ventured east of the park and started into the big ugly, east on Harrison, I looked at my surroundings and noted the vacant lots, the boarded up buildings, the trash strewn streets gleaming with broken glass and I do understand why Cliff says what he does. But then when I settled into my ride, no traffic, I got in front of the Number 7 bus, a tailwind pushing me, I was cruising, 22.5 mph, my heart was beating and my breath was coming on, I felt this sense of inner beauty, the wonder of the human machine, how well I feel, the state of my conditioning, how easy cranking at 22+ mph is, how my tan legs look pumping the peddles-- ah, a thing of beauty! The beauty that shines from within is always with us, no matter where we are, if we only remember to look inward to see it. As I rounded the corner on Kostner and back on to Harrison I passed some of my homies who always greet me, the old man with his dog, the gent on his front porch leaning back on his chair, each one of them calling out to me "morning, morning..." the comfort of seeing them every day on my ride, their warm greeting-- indeed, a thing of beauty! all along the route I see and greet the same folks, the welder, the security guard, the news paper vendors, and the group of homeless folks at the shelter, it makes my day, it is a fine and beautiful thing. The flowers in the window box gleaming with rain from last night's storm, the cloudless blue sky, making the light with out having to touch down-- another thing of beauty. Yes, it is a beautiful thing to be alive and not too hard to find the beauty even amongst the squalor of the ride through the big ugly.

It was a splendid father's day for me. We went on our first ever family run! Ryder's first one mile run! We mixed in some walking, he got hot and took off his shirt, he struggled a bit but never complained. Once we went past Mills park, the one mile mark, we walked all the way to Starbucks and had some chocolate milk and blueberry muffins (Ryder) while I had a grande skim 3-shot iced latte and Karen an iced Americano. Then we walked home. It was lovely. Rather warm to be running for sure 85+, but the leisurely conversation and nature tour was about as good as a father's gift as a man could ever hope to receive. And the book shopping trip to Border's was pretty cool too!

and we never stopped moving....

From six AM on Wednesday to 8 PM I was on the move, gathering my workers together, transporting us to Urbana, harvesting 40 hens, half of whom have been fed flax seed for 9 months now, doing the necropsy, collecting the tissues, documenting each hen's condition, then packing all the samples up for the trip back to Chicago, dropping my workers at the train station or Rush Med center, back to the lab to dispatch the samples, and home.....then Thursday, I picked up my bike at Dan's where I'd left it Tuesday night to get the rear wheel trued and my spokes tightened, so I road to UIC down Roosevelt. It was hot. It was very hot in Urbana too, 95 degrees. But riding down Roosevelt really sucked. I would not recommend this as a bike route from Oak Park. Once you get past Independence and on east from there, when the bike lane commences, it's not too bad, and riding on the northern edge of Douglas Park is nice, but the condition of the road and the traffic, make Roosevelt a poor choice for the bike commute. I've heard stories of bicyclists being assaulted in the vicinity of Douglas Park, but my impression was that this stretch of Roosevelt is the best part of the ride. I hooked up with Paul for the ride home, after our chicken summit at Rush (Friends of the Hen) and as we traveled west on Congress, at Pulaski there was an open fire hydrant issuing forth a tremendous volume of water onto the street. I hunkered down to ride through it and just as I hit the wave a kid stepped out from the curb and blasted me with a big water gun, right in the face. It was a shock, but was without effect, the volume of water insignificant relative to the fire hydrant. I looked back and Paul had disappeared. I feared he got knocked down, but soon, he emerged- having run the gauntlet and ridden on the sidewalk to avoid the water. He still got wet! That was about as close to being assaulted as I've experienced on my bike ride-- no big deal. Considering the heat (94 at 5:30 PM) it was more of a pleasure than a pain.

Today I met up with the bike gang, all six of us, and I joined them on the ride to the loop. We went the bike rally at the Daly Plaza. Free breakfast and t-shirts, lots of promotions and hundreds of bike commuters. Bikers of all stripes and colors, riding super fast ultra racers and recumbent, mountain bikes and hybrids, commuters and folding bikes, and wearing everything from suits to bike racing outfits. My crew was in the middle, bike clothes but nothing fancy. After the boys chowed down off they went, but I lingered at the plaza to hear the speeches. Da Mayor himself gave an impassioned talk, and of course, seeing Amy Jacobson up close and personal is always a treat. Indeed it was a good looking group of bikers on the plaza today. I rode back through loop traffic to UIC, very glad I do not have to brave downtown traffic on a daily basis. The Mayor said that Chicago is the most bike friendly big city in America. You could fool me. Bike lanes are ok, but drivers who hate bicyclists, and buses that share the bike lanes make it a pretty tense experience. Riding through the west side from Oak Park to UIC is a breeze, relatively little traffic by comparison. Hats off to the loop commuters!

The lure of the road

I am counting down the days until we hit the road for our great western tour. I90 to Sioux Falls, then Rapid City and Mount Rushmore, then onto Fort Robinson, NE for the family reunion in the bad lands. Then Yellowstone! We will be camping at Lake Yellowstone and Ryder and I are really looking forward to fishing and frying up the fresh caught trout. I haven't been to Yellowstone for decades but have profoundly fond memories of our family trips there-- all my trips to Yellowstone were pre-journal, so I lack written records. The memories flood back and make me feel close to my mom, dad and sister Traci. Our popup trailer tent, the bears, the geysers, the camp fire.... memories Ryder will now acquire for his fond remembrances when he is an old fart like me. We will be on the road for 4 days all told, and this is, to me, one of the pleasures of my life. The road goes on forever. The thoughts come and go as the music plays. Adventures with Ryder, but no dogs along this time. I will miss my dogs and cats and garden. Ryder asked me today why I didn't ever get vacation. I said we were going on vacation, but he wants to know why I still go to work even though its summertime. good question! wouldn't it be lovely to just have time to enjoy the summer? in another life.

I weighed in at 216 this morning. On May 15th I was 230. How is this possible? It seems too good to be true. I have >650 miles on the bike and have been avoiding pasta, pizza, pastry and not eating my midnight bowl of cereal, or bun with my burger at lunch. But I have not really gone on a diet diet. Once I start to lose weight I am less hungry and it feeds forward. This is pretty darn fun, I must say.

the yellow tape is gone but the house remains boarded up. The fire last month no longer conspicuous to the passer by. The graduation banners are gone now too. The front steps are filled with people, and much to my surprise I would bet that most of them live in the house they sit in front of. 8 or 10 folks in a 3 bedroom flat. Young girls in their teens pushing baby carriages, their grandmothers my age. 'tis a different world to be sure. Lots of those folks have the summer off-- and the rest of the year too. I've noticed The Preacherman at the park on Harrison and Washtenaw-- he has a shall across his shoulders, holds a bible in his hand and preaches to whom ever happens to be with in earshot. I thought it was interesting seeing him now every day on the way home, the homeless folks at the shelter with a new form of amusement, and he is preaching in shorts. As I ride by the crowd and wave to the group, I hear many of them call to me, and someone always says "Hey Doc!" they too have the summer off.

Summer cicadas and CHO

Such a lovely day! Even before 7 this morning as I sat on my bike waiting to cross Ogden, I could feel the heat rising. The sun is well up into the sky at that hour and the day has that quintessential summertime feeling. Strains of Gerswhin serenade my nascent brain. As we rode in I took note of large graduation banners hanging from west side porches and fences, celebrating the high school grads in the neighborhood. The juxtaposition with the house that suffered the tragic fire a few weeks back, still boarded up with yellow police tape cordoning it off-- the irony. I am reminded of the many images shown on TV of some senseless tragic shooting, a outstanding (by all accounts) young person just entering their prime, gunned down, innocent bystanders of some gangster's gun play. They always show the graduation picture. It breaks my heart. A moment of quiet reflection as we zip on by.

finally we got to experience the cicadas. We believe they passed an ordinance banning cicadas in Oak Park, for there are but a few. Saturday we drove out to Elmhurst to visit our best friends Steve and Mary and experienced the little guys in all their glory. Ryder just couldn't have been more pleased. The sound is amazing. Rather pleasing. And the density of the discarded shells is quite something. Very cool biology in action. 17 years from now when the emerge again, Ryder will be 23 1/2 years old. Holy cats, what a thought. I will be 70. We will still be doing as we did yesterday. Running and biking together with our dog. Perhaps it will be only the occassional run when we manage to see each other-- only the future will tell. But one thing for sure, I will have out lived my father by then. I read the obits and note the birthdates of the deceased. There are relatively few who were born in 1915 or there abouts now. Amazing how many folks my age are checking out. Not me baby, not by a long shot.

Faced with parties and massive amounts of food, it is really a challenge to control my eating, and especially tough to not carbohydrate out. CHO is the main ingredient in all snack food, so those chips and dips, and fries, and fritters, all are fat and carbs. Last night we had our neighbors over so the kids could play in the hot tub and Greg brought some steaks, we had some chops, and some lovely trout. I do not eat beef and haven't seen a steak on my grill in 20 years, but with a little coaching, I grilled these giant fat NY Strips to their liking. The chops were easy, and the fish, I tried Mark's suggestion-- wrap the fish in foil and add butter and lemon. I used olive oil instead. It was delicious. The skin could have been crispier, but the flesh was succulent. The meat eaters all enjoyed the chops and steak and with the big salad it was a great feast. Oh, I forgot the 1/2 corn cob. Now if it weren't for the chips, left over from the Indian Guides Sox party, I would have been nearly virtuous. We observed that chip have some drug in them that makes you unable to not stop eating them once you start. None the less, I weighed in at 217.5 this morning. The 6 miles with Ryder, Steve and Mirabel yesterday must have helped. It is so hard to not eat carbs and I have a hard time allowing myself to eat fat. But the evidence supports this approach.

Hot Sox winded in the city

The Yankees came to play this week and the White Sox were most hospitable, only taking one of the four games from their visitors. Last night's game revealed the problem the Sox are having--they seem to lack any enthusiasm at all for the game. The boys are dogging it. Can't fault the starting pitchers, but if they don't pitch a complete game then the Sox may as well concede like they did last night. Lead off walk in the top of the 8th to Jetter who just went into the game. The begining of the end. The grand slam by A-Rod in the top of the 9th and the rout was on. By then though, we were on our way home cooling off in the A/C in the car. What a great day we'd had, even if the Sox did lose 10-3. We arrived at 4:15 to stake out a place in the parkinglot and wait for the rest of the tribe. It was surreal, 95 degrees and the wind was blowing 50 mph. The lot was nearly empty and we parked near the gate-- and then took a look around. Barren. Hot. Boring! So we moved to the trees on the west side of the lot next to the Metra trax and settled in. Soon the Hahns and the Schatauer's arrived and Ryder had lot's of company. The Potawatomi Indian Guides storm the Cell. We played bag toss, grilled dogs on the new mini-grill I got for an early Father's Day gift, drank beers and had a grand old time. The trax shielded us from the wind, the trees gave us some shade, and the other tailgaters were fine company, 50-50 Sox and Yankee fans. Steve and Ross joined the fray, and soon Steve and Mary found us. A bit buzzed, hot as all get out, and soon we were in our seats. All was well until the open game fireworks went off, much to Ryder's distress. He heard that they shoot of the fireworks when the Sox hit homeruns. He sat with his fingers in his ears fearing a repeat. Of course there were no Sox homers to fear, even so, he plugged his ears even when the Yankees were playing. Not a big baseball fan, my son. It sure was fun, none the less for all concerned.

The wind persisted into the AM hours. no way I could muster the oomph to join the boys for the ride in, though I slept fitfully, I did not rouse myself until 5:50, ah, too late, so I stayed in bed until nearly 7. Decadent indulgence. Today Ryder slept late for a change. yesterday we were up and at it and the three of us arrived at Lincoln School before 8 AM. We were treated to the a concert performance by the Kindergarteners-- a snappy medley of 15 songs. Ryder knew all the songs and clearly enjoyed his performance. Not a dry eye in the house-- our children have completed this wonderful first year of public school and now are ready for 1st Grade. We were sent home with homework for the summer. To our surprise it was 3rd grade math for the 2nd grade graduate. Wait-- Ryder just finished Kindergarten! We are so pleased the school can provide curriculum for our smart guy. I wish I had his work habits. he sits down and gets his work done. He is drawing a series of objects and labeling them in Spanish, in preparation for Spanish Immersion next year. We will learn Spanish too, no doubt.

So the wind persisted and I humped it in finally after 9. I averaged over 20 mph, cruising at 25 mph for good stretches of the road. 20 minutes door to door (7.5 miles) it was fun. I paid the price on the way home, into the wind. Bent and drawing power from my center, I still managed >15 mph the whole way. And now, Friday night, yeah. Pandora serenaded me with my Bob Dylan channel, which had me singing "I'mg going to give myself a good talking too." Yeah, instead of doing my real work today I keyed in 7 1/2 years of weight data (50 entries per year) and plotted my weight trend over the last 20 years. Quite a nice data set, nearly weekly values input for all those years.

I have gone through three significant weight loss and re-gain intervals over the last 20 years. I started recording my weight when I started running. I dropped 20 pounds over the first 2 years of running-- with no real adjustment to my diet. Then as I transitioned from post-doc to assistant professor and we moved from Ann Arbor to Oak Park, I gained 20 plus pounds back over the next 2 years, though I kept running. Then I became a marathon runner and lost 20 pounds again, over a three year interval. When I became a vegetarian I started to gain weight back-- very interesting observation. Injury and burnout yoga instead of running and in another 3 years I was back up those 20 pounds again. Then in June 1997 after an indulgent visit to New Orleans, I came upon Calorie King Diet Diary and started to track my calories, and consciously reduce my fat intake. The low fat diet and calorie tracking worked. I filled over 20 little diaries in the next year, and lost 20 more pounds, but this time I kept the weight off for over three years. Then well, sure enough, I started to gain it back again. What happened this time? After the year of running (2000, 4 marathons, 1 5oKm, 1 50 miler) Ryder arrived in my life and I started to gain weight. the diet diary did not seem to be enough. My colleague in nutrition assured me that I was very much underestimating how many calories I truly was consuming which discouraged me from keeping the diaries, and this loss of vigalance contributed to my weight gain. Change of life, once again, here come da pounds. I continued to run less, eat more, and finally, in 2004 suffered my catastrophic injury and those 20 pounds are the ones I am NOW LOSING. Diet and exercise are both required. The data tells the story. Now, the new diet. Cut the carbs. the P-diet. no pasta, pizza, pastry, or pan, it provides me some philosophy to guide my food choice. No, Virginia, fat is not the evil thing the AHA , Pritikin, et al would make us believe. I still feel queasy about it, but early evidence supports this approach. I've dropped almost 10 pounds in the first 6 weeks of this diet. And it is not a diet-like diet, just a matter of choice. The induction concept is attactive for subsequent maintenance. there is no doubt that my trend line is up, not down-- I need a mechanism to get down and stay down. And you know, as I approach 210 I feel really good. And as I get under 205, a rare occurance, I feel even better. Should I ever be able to break 200, my goodness, I would feel great, look better, liver longer and my poor old knees would be a lot happier too. yeah baby.

star wars and dog ears

What a sensational day-- gorgeous by all accounts. We massed at the west end of Columbus park and the six of us road through the wilds of west Chicago into the rising sun. Traffic at 6:30 is easy to negotiate and we made good time. The guys have been interested in getting a tour of the lab, so all six of us came into the College of Medicine on our bikes and came to my lab for a visit. Most of my friends assume that since I am a professor I teach. Well, that's true, but what I do is research and this is a very abstract concept to the lay public. Today they got a glimpse on the inside. There sure are a lot of bottles! What are all these pipes for? Oh, gas, vacuum, distilled water.... Then I showed them the posters in the hall of our recent presentations and gave them a 1 minute spiel about ovarian cancer, chickens, early detection, the virtue of flax seed etc and they were off. No doubt a bit of breakfast conversation was provided by this excursion.

As I prepared for work early this morning I heard W ranting about his missile defense program he wants to plunk down in Prague. Star Wars, can you believe it? Ronnie's big dream and Bush the Seniors plan. And W had this great idea before 9-11 happened, as if the shield would protect us against that sort of attack. Typical of this moron, he does not have an original idea in his head, or for that matter a brain in there either. Star Wars 2007-- another doomed multibillion dollar fiasco. I thought Rumsfeld put him up to this-- must be Cheney after all. Or Rove. What possible rationale could justify such a ludicrous expense. Not rational at all, that's for sure. He is going to do all that he can to completely destroy America's credibility, no wait, he's already done that-- to destroy America. No child left behind because there will be no children left at all. Just discarded embryos....

Mirabel is the most amazing dog. She is all business. She is so fast, and absolutely dedicated to getting that ball, or making you throw it again. When I give it a mighty fling she takes off like a rocket after it. She runs with her ears back, pulled tight against her head. No stopping her, you can see the intensity in her gait and her body position. Then she snags the ball and her whole countenance changes. Her ears relax and flop a bit as she canters back. When she is winded she will circle me with ball in mouth, and not drop it until she catches her breath. And then she is off, bark bark and away she goes. A pure wonderful entity she is, German Shorthaired Pointer supreme, and the sweetest, friendliest, dog you could ever want. And a great watch dog too. Perfect. She has learned well from Cooper, and taught him a few things too. Joy to the world, dogs place in our lives.

Dirt, roses and cyclooxygenases

finally the day had arrived, the big Run for the Roses that Ryder had been so looking forward too, and me too, of course. He was up at 5:45 and we were out the door just after 6 AM on a clear blue-- to the east Sunday morning. As we drove west on 290 we approached an ominous looking sky and soon found ourselves in a fog bank as we arrived in Roselle for the pre-race festivities. Marilee and her son Storm had already arrived and she had her minivan positioned for the Clydesdale weigh-in. We were greeted by Mark Mandel the race director who called to Ryder by his name. We were psyched! Ryder and Storm were going to hang while we did the weigh-in, and then the kids were going to be in the race provided child care while we ran the 5K. After our 5K came the big event of the day, the 0.6K kid's race, which Ryder has been training for. he had his running clothes on and was ready. Then, surprisingly, Ryder walked up to me sobbing, holding his hand to his head. He said he needed water, his ear hurt. I was rather involved in weighing-in Clydes, but managed to get him some water. This did not help. Soon he was very upset and had a very bad ear ache. Now I know many kids are prone to ear aches, and these can be quite debilitating, but Ryder has hardly ever suffered from these so I did not know what to do. Marilee was great. She wrapped him in a blanket and sat him in her car. I gave him an excedrine which he chewed up and swallowed, dispite how unpleasant it must have tasted. He was inconsible. Ryder is not someone to complain and he is not prone to tears, so seeing him thus distressed-- it was clear what we needed to do. I bid my commrades adieu and we hit the road. Ryder was so upset-- he said "and we were suppose to have a really fun day today...." Yes, indeed, I was very disappointed too. I would have weighed in as a Clydesdale C for the first time in years (>225) though this made the competition tougher for me-- none the less, I was looking forward to the race but more so to Ryder's race and the post-race festivities. Mark always puts on such an excellent event, one of the best races of the year, and so great for kids and families. but it was not meant to be. We were back home before 8, when the gun went off. A hot pack, his mother's loving attention, and some children's advil helped bring him comfort. I ended up taking a nap, then going to the CVS to buy him some more drugs. A call to the doctor, could be swimmer's ear, could be middle ear infection, hard to say. As the day progressed Ryder felt much better, sporting an ace bandage around his neck which seemed to help him feel better, and also garner more attention from our sympathetic neighbors. We were both really bummed out, but of course realize on the grand scheme of things, it was hardly even a blip. so it goes....

As I bent to the garden, finishing the planting, installing the fences around the beds, and pushing the hand mower I felt as though I was with my father. I had such a strong sense of Wayne being present, reliving times from my youth when my dad and I did stuff, or had our plans changed resulting in big disappointments. It was as though Wayne came to be with his son and his grandson he never got to meet. So the company was good while I pushed the hand mower around the yard. My neighbors give me grief "I know the price of gas is really steep, but not that high..." or "you little cutter" as each of them fires up their gas machines and mow their lawns in the time it takes me to do ones small section. Sure it takes me an hour to mow our lawn, but it is silent running, no fumes, and exercise! And my lawn has a very particular hand cut look to it as well. I have to use the trimmers and sweep the clippings off the sidewalk too-- how old timey!

And then the dog walk when I had a bit of an epiphany. Yes, of course, the point of these transgenic models we are building, or at least proposing to do so in the grant I am finishing, is not building the model, but studying the effect. Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) has been implicated as causative in male aging, so our Leydig cell specific Cre recombinase will enable us to breed with mice that carry floxed COX-2 or COX-2 over expressors, to either silence, or over express COX-2 in the testes. so the point is to determine the role of Cox in Leydig cell function and to get there the new models must be developed. it is not the journey but the end in this case, such is hypothesis driven science, not just description or discovery, but testing a hypothesis. In this case, over expression of COX-2 accelerates aging. Of course we won't know until we do the experiment, and we may find that these mice get testicular cancer instead.... now wouldn't that be a new journey to take off on.

May totals, a surge in bike riding

June 1st, the official start to meterological summer and hurricane season. It has seemed like summer here now for a while and we all know summer does not commence until the Solstice dawns bright on the 21st. The 1st of the month brings a brief review of the month which has just passed. I was on the treadmill this morning in the gym after my ride in, a bit of a tune up prior t the Run for the Roses on Sunday. Legs feel great no damage or trauma post 19 miles last Saturday, though I have only ridden my bike since. It was a spiffy run and I had some pleasant company on the adjacent treadmill, comrades in drudgery. I did a quick mile and then some Pilates. Feeling good! While I was on the mill listening to Dick's Pick 25, a stellar rendition of Cassidy, which lasted more than a mile, CNN captions were scrolling across the TV screen. May-- 122 US troops killed in Iraq, 1920 Iraqi Civilians-- clearly the surge is working! Mission accomplished! More billions and billions of dollars for a president who cares more for the health and welfare of Iraqis than Americans, and is doing more to destroy their country than they could possibly ever hope for. Appropriate to consider 40 years ago today, Sargent Pepper came to play and it was the dawn of the Summer of Love. And the Viet Nam war was raging on. We need more Pepper, more love, and NO WAR! Endless War--> End THIS war. enough is enough. We elected a new Congress to get us out. perhaps it will take getting nimrod out of office to regain our purchase on sanity. America has become the most despised and disrespected country in the world with W at the helm. Think of all of the horrific things which have happened on his watch. Enough! The left will rise again and throw that idiot and all of his handlers and cronies out on their butts, back to the sticks of Texas where they belong. Apologies to the Lone Star State.

May found me riding my bike to work everyday except one. A notable accomplishment for me if I do say so. I dropped some weight too. Too bad my Pilates class has ended, I was on a roll. Now I have to retool and adapt to the AM routine. Based on the positive atmosphere in the gym today, it was most encouraging and entices me to go back to the routine of ride to work then hit the treadmill. My challenge then is to stay awake all day. 7 AM to 5 PM work day abbreviated by an hour in the gym. OK, 8 to 5, I guess I can slide by. speaking of work...