KRAC Blog

Playing around with Amazon's Recomendations, "4 Way Street" popped up. I very nearly checked "Not Interested", on the spot, but thought I'd see what the reviews had to say about it. I was probably 14 when I got my copy, and although pretty much everyone has slammed it over the years, at the time my reaction was "Dig it" (as Steven Stills says, again and again). Of course, it does have both "Southern Man" and "Ohio"-- enough to sink any side, but I well recall thinking the world of Neil Young's "Cowgirl In The Sand" and "Don't Let It Bring You Down". Come to think of it, Crosby's stuff-- "Triad" ("The song that got me kicked out of The Byrds," he used to joke in concert) and "Lee Shore"-- were also pretty groovy. Now on re-issue it seems that there is more Neil Young and more Crosby goodness-- but there is still a lot more Graham Nash than anyone should want or need, and "Southern Man" and "Ohio". I guess you can't step in the same river twice, and I'm not interested after all. I mean, what kind of sad old hippie would have this on their shelves in the 21st Century?

CLA's move into the world of Rugby has been facilitated by Jim's mentoring-- there are so many subtle rules associated with a new sport. I found this list of rules about triathlon tee shirt rules to pretty much mirror what runners already know, but there are some variances. Maybe because it's British? I like rule #8: "A DNF'er may wear a race shirt if... the letters DNF are boldly written on the shirt in question." I have no DNF shirts,(knock wood) but I have used DNS shirts as throw-downs, which seems to me appropriate.

Lately I've been watching the reruns of the previous night's Mets game while on the treadmill at the gym. This'll stop once I start running outside, but for now I've actually seen more baseball for this time of year than is usual for me, and I've been enjoying it. It doesn't hurt that the Mets have been kinda fun to watch right now. Martinez has been a particular pleasure: although the bullpen has let him down, and he hasn't gotten consistent support from the lineup, he has been pitching like a Cy Young contender. It's April, of course, but from what I've seen to this point these Mets seem capable of improving over the season, and might be playoff contenders (if their bullpen situation stabilizes). Randolph has been exactly the sort of steady hand on the tiller you always knew he would be, the hitters are hitting and the starters are pitching smart.

I haven't seen a Yankee game yet, but they seem to be playing just about the way I'd have guessed, and it gives me no joy to say it. A good post at The Sports Economist seems to nail it: "[T]he Yankees run of success since 1996 has a lot more to do with sound and well-coordinated personnel decisions than financial superiority. From 1979-1994, the Yankees enjoyed a financial advantage that translated into mediocrity. They used their deep pockets to pusue free agents, who, for the most part, were big names beyond their best years such as Jack Clark, Danny Tartabull, Jesse Barfield, Wade Boggs, Jimmy Key, Andy Hawkins, Tim Leary, Jim Abbott, and Steve Howe They developed few of their own prospects. Team performance turned around when Bob Watson and Gene Michaels built the team around young (and cheap) players such as Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and Jorge Posada, while using their free agent war chest to plug-in holes with solid but non-spectacular veterans such as Brosius, Knoblauch, Martinez, and Nelson.
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"For all of the media hoopla in the last two years over the Yankee signings, the decisions from the Yankees' brass have begun to resemble those of the 1980s and early 1990s. Jeter, entering his 10th full season, and Posada, who is in his mid thirties, are the "young blood" in the lineup. The only prospect developed in recent seasons, Alfonso Soriano, now plays in Texas. Two of the starting pitchers are over 40. Rivera turns 36 while Mussina and Williams turn 37 this year. Jason Giambi is a deflated shadow of his steroid-enhanced self. If Mussina, Johnson, and someone else pitch very well all season, they may make some noise. If not, the ALCS collapse last year may have forshadowed gloomier days for Yankee fans."

Last night I downloaded from iTunes The Supersuckers' recent cover of "Hey Ya." Pretty funny. I'm sure they'll play it at their upcoming show.

More and more it looks to me like closing the parks was a ploy to punish legislators that didn't want to go along with Giambra. The whole thing turns out to have been unnecessary-- they've "found" some money. Of course, they could have gone to a fee for parking right off the bat (some of the county parks already do this, don't they?)-- but that wouldn't have accomplished the same end. The good news is, we will have the Ridge back shortly.

To the Ridge today with Jim and Jimmy and Annie and even Winnie-- only Cathy stayed away, which proves something. A runner who was finishing as we were getting ready to start reported that two weeks ago, during the slush storm, the Sheriff's deputies that drove by made a point of splashing people who were out running, but that otherwise there has been no law-enforcement hassle. We were late getting underway, so we didn't get a very accurate picture of what park use at peak running times looks like at the moment, but there were a dozen or so cars in the lot, and we encountered about the usual complement of walkers.

Here and there-- particularly close to the entrance-- there are some pretty substantial downed branches, some of which block the road. Deeper in, at the crest of Mother's Helper, for example, the downed branches have been cut and stacked. It sends a sort of passive aggressive message-- like the cops splashing park users, leaving the road blocked seems like an extended middle finger to anyone who finds their way into the park. This message is reciprocated, actually: the sign at the entrance of the park announcing that it is closed has been covered in graffiti since I was out there two weeks ago. The whole closing the parks thing seems to me to be like saying, "Hey, you elected us-- now pay the price."

I would estimate that a troop of Boy Scouts could get the park cleaned up and ready to use over the course of a weekend, with plenty of time left over to discriminate against gay and atheist kids, and sing songs, and eat hamburgers cooked in foil, and biscuits baked by twisting dough around a stick propped over a fire. It would probably take actual Parks employees about a month to get it into shape, but they wouldn't bake any biscuits. I can imagine a kind of a "Mad Max" scene developing out there as the summer progresses, with rogue cookouts and outlaw birthday parties taking over. For now, though, it seems like it is the usual runners and dog walkers. The plants are all tipped with green, and the leaves should be out by next week.

A better picture of my brother not wearing his KRAC singlet. 

I sent my brother a KRAC singlet with the stipulation that he provide us with a photograph showing him wearing it with the Opera House or a koala or something in the background. As far as I know the only race he's made it to was a Nike event for which the race shirt was also the race number. I'm liking the logo of Sydney's equivalent to Checkers-- but I still prefer our colors.  

I spent some time over the weekend investigating. First I took my bike out to see if I could chart a five mile course in Forest Lawn that would incorporate some hills. The short answer is that although one can get a nice workout in the cemetery, including some very challenging hills, the place has got more twists and turns than the collected works of O. Henry. Since my short-term memory is shot, the project proved to be beyond me-- I could mark the road with spraypaint, I suppose, but since Dave won't run at the Ridge because Joel Giambra says nay, I can just imagine his reaction if I went out and started tagging consecrated ground.

Yesterday I felt like cross-training, so after CLA's rugby game I rode again, out along the river to Mississippi Mudd's, where I had a hot dog. Some of the parks along the river are county parks, but the one that we used last year as a starting point is a Town of Tonawanda park, and was open and bustling. In fact it was so busy that I couldn't get a decent spin going, so I went home along Military Road. I finished just short of a 20 mile ride.

My purpose in running Around the Bay was to see if I could do the necessary distance during the winter to run a Spring marathon. (My purpose in registering as early as I did was to commit to doing the distance necessary to run Around the Bay-- this all gets very regressive.) When I think about cool marathon venues certainly Dublin comes to mind, but Paris-- in April, no less, would be pretty nifty. Not this year, not next year, but at some point that would be a great trip. As I was doing my thing, Meg Hourihan, famous weblogger (one of the developers of Blogger, in fact) was training for Paris. She ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon the week before I went to Hamilton, and struggled. Today she announced that she will not start on race day.

That takes a lot of guts, frankly. She has been out there in public saying she was going to, and now she will have "DNS" (or the French equivalent) next to her name. It can't have been easy to have pitched all that preparation, but her reason is sound: if you can't do the thing and have fun ("feel good" is probably asking too much) than you shouldn't do it. I've run more Boilermakers in pain than I have run Boilermakers healthy, but I've had fun at each one-- when they stop being fun, I'll stop. I wonder, though, if it might not have helped her over the hump if she had prepared for this race with someone. I'm looking forward to Saturdays this Spring, wherever we do our running. Knowing that other people are going to be miserable with me has gotten me out there on quite a few weekends.

I'd sort of had it in the back of my mind to drive out to the Ridge this weekend to see what the parking situation is. The fact the driving conditions were just about as bad as they have been all winter made this a stupid idea, and therefore irresistible.

What I found was a very intimidating sign that includes, inter alia, "no trespassing", "trespassers will be prosecuted", and "use at your own risk". I also found that the ramp accessing the park had evidently been plowed within the last 24 hours-- probably less, it seemed to me to be in better condition than the highway. At the top of the ramp, where the roadway crosses over the highway, at the entrance to the casino parking lot, there is a barricade (with another sign) that has room on either side for vehicles to pass. There were tracks going in and out, but the conditions were such that I thought it better not to proceed.

So it is accessible. I'm not sure what that means-- I wouldn't run there next week, since it is sure to be a mess, but what about Post No Bill's" cousin, "Trespasser's Will"? In Kelly v. Buffalo Bills Football Club, Inc. 171 Misc.2d 693, 655 N.Y.S.2d 275 (Erie County Sup Ct 1997), the case about the vendors outside of Rich Stadium, Justice Glownia held that neither the County nor the County's lessee could prohibit commercial activity on the County's property absent a showing that the contemplated regulation was " reasonably calculated to achieve the valid public purposes of maintaining its busiest streets as free as possible from congestion and of preserving them for their primary purpose of public travel." So we could probably sell stuff....

I hate Westlaw, by the way. I know I could find the answer faster using books, but wouldn't you love to know what Cambria v. Erie County Parks v. Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salisbury & Cambria was about? What do you bet that it wasn't an office picnic gone terribly wrong?

I'm going to spend a little more time on this, but I am beginning to think that a trespass prosecution might not stand up. It looks like reasonable restrictions on the use of public lands are fine, but I think an outright ban such as this could be unconstitutional.