App Advice

A year ago I heard about an app that tracks your sleep patterns, and can adjust one's alarm clock to harmonize with the body's natural cycles.  Ten years before, a climbing buddy wanted to design an alarm clock that would do exactly that, but his idea, as I remember it, used an elaborate set-up of infrared cameras.  Curious about an idea that re-entered my life as a 99 cent creation, I downloaded it.

The sleep cycle alarm has been a failure for me.  I generally do not set an alarm if there is flexibility in my wake-up time, furthermore, the few times I have tried to use the alarm, the phone has fallen out of bed (which never seems to happen when I am not using a sleep tracking alarm).  While this should not be a problem, it seems that the app, recording either the best sleep of my life, or my death, has decided that either way, there is no reason to bother with the alarm.

The sleep tracking aspect was fun for a while.  I would tuck my phone under my pillow, feeling warmed by an eight hour visit from the radiation fairy, and drift to sleep.  My movements were recorded, and plotted against time, and any noises I made, above a certain threshold, were recorded as well.  Nothing entertaining ever came out of the noise recordings, just light breathing and an occasional cough.  The chart of my sleep cycles matched nearly perfectly with my how I rated the restfulness of my sleep.

If I awoke feeling well rested, the chart was smooth, and my bed easy to make.  If I awoke feeling groggy, the chart would be rough, and my bed would be messier.  Since I felt good or bad depending on how I slept, and if I felt bad, I had to spend more time making my bed, I was acutely aware of the restfulness of my sleep.  Regardless, when I turned off sleep tracking in the morning, the app on my phone would dutifully ask how I slept.

Eventually, my groggy mind started to perceive a surly tone in the question.  It was never a problem on 5-star nights, but the single-star mornings, I think the app was programmed to take on a different tone.  It was no longer a dutiful nurse at a sleep clinic trying to diagnose one's condition, but rather the jerk from summer camp who put tacks in your bunk.  My mind started to paint the app in an even more vindictive light.  The app took the role of the devil on my shoulder, but rather than imploring me to do something sinful, was lambasting me for being tired.

"You didn't sleep well?  Yeah, probably because you went to bed later than you were supposed to.  Even if you had slept well, it would not have been enough sleep.  Is Wikipedia really that interesting"?

The app, all in my mind, would continue to become more belligerent, and I feared not sleepiness, but the imagined guilt and attitude my telephone would berate me with if I did not sleep well.  If I had a hard time falling asleep, I would stop the recording, delete the bad section, and try again.  I knew that my phone "knew" what I was up to, and I would loose sleep knowing that my phone was neatly tucked under my pillow, dreaming up some rude comment for the morning.

I had to stop using the app.  I have successfully stayed away from apps that "help" me with any type of tracking.  I use the calendar, the normal alarm clock, the internet, but not anything that "tracks" something for me, and my relationship with my phone has improved.

Recently, a friend downloaded a calorie journal to her phone.  In addition to recording the calories she has eaten, it sets consumption goals, and calculates calories spent during exercise.  The app is fairly aggressive, because if you go over the consumption goal on Tuesday, the calorie goal for Wednesday is reduced by the overshot.  Almost instantly, her phone took on a sinister air in my mind.  She did a 3000 calorie workout, and went over her consumption goal by 100 calories.  Still running an over 1000 calorie deficit, the app docked her next day's consumption goal to illustrate its disappointment.

"You overate yesterday," I heard it saying in its judgmental tone.  My friend and I both argue back, for I was implicated in this purported gluttony in an even larger way, "We walked all day up to a mountain pass!  We had to cross an icefall"!

"Nope," her evil calorie app exclaims!  "You," it continues, "do not get ice cream today, because you ate a cookie yesterday."

I know I will concede to it, or try to sneak my snacks in outside of the all knowing gaze of the advice giving app.  And while I will admit that these guilt inciting pieces of programming may be useful for weightloss or sleep disorders, I think apps have a long way to go before I can trust them with any information they may judge me for.

Texas, Florida, Shame

National Public Radio published that researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, have found that online ranters prolong their anger.  This seems to hold true with the cliche that the longer one complains about it, the longer it hurts.  As such, I held off writing about Texas passing laws that abridge a woman's reproductive rights.  Then, I held off on posting about the ruling that the murder of Trayvon Martin was legal.

I doubt that the hurt this type of legislation and legal precedence will ever truly stop hurting though, no matter if I complain or not.  So I will enter in my own lamentation, though my thoughts are not poignant through my words, or my position in life.  I will, instead, seek the succinct approach of offering two simple questions to addressing these travesties of justice.

In Texas, would a law be passed to deny a man to the full rights of reproductive health?

No, because the Texas lawmakers are misogynists, and so too, likely, are those who elected them.  No law, to my knowledge, has ever been passed to ban vasectomies.  In civilized nations, in fact, vasectomies are paid for by national health insurance.  In Texas though, the guiding light for law making is the subjugation, or continuation of the subjugation, of women.  Laws like this make it clear that a Texas man is not great, nor powerful, but is simply a bully who feels powerful when he attacks, belittles, or berates others.  Shame on Texans.

In Florida, would a minority, black or otherwise, be found not guilty of murder if they armed themselves with a deadly weapon, stalked a white person, was urged by public safety officials to stand down, then killed a child after instigating a confrontation?

No, because, apparently, six of six Floridians are racist, and condone the murder of other races.  How many Floridians would it take to get one, just one, who felt that the rule of law forbade the murder of children, regardless of their race, or affinity for midnight Skittles?  The jurors in this case represent Florida, every citizen therein, and have set the legal precedent that what was once premeditated murder is now self-defense.  Shame on Floridians.

The blame does not rest entirely on the blight on human civility that are the people of these two states, but on all Americans.  We, Americans, citizens, patriots, we are the oppressors and the murderers.  We have decided to side with the strong over the weak, to oppress rather than empower, and we have the cowardice to call it protecting life and freedom.

Shame on us.

American Vanity

Internet privacy is an important idea.  Unfortunately, corporations, not any government, were pioneering ways to track people long before the internet was in every home.  Owing to corporations, there is no internet privacy.  In some ways, I agree, this is a terrifying prospect.

My credit card companies know that I am wont to show up, unannounced, in a foreign country, and buy something in a grocery store.  More or less, I do not need to tell Visa that I am heading overseas, they know I will pop up in a random place, and start buying fruit and vegetables.  Conversely, if I want to buy furniture, Visa is going to need a DNA test to prove that yes, I am interested in owning a bed.  They know my preferences better than I do.  I remember a credit card company advertising the "service" of monitoring every single purchase to protect you from fraud.  The ad I recall had a handsome man describing himself to the audience as a "t-shirt and jeans guy," who decided to get married and thus bought a tuxedo, at which point, the credit card company called him to verify his identity.  Society, it seems, bought the service side of this spying.

As consumers, it seems, we gain piece of mind and increased services if we let Visa, Mastercard, and American Express know us better than ourselves, by spying on our every moment.  It is accepted as common place that to enjoy the full warranty on one's new blender, Osterizer needs to know your annual household income.  Yet, when it comes time for the Census, the American people seem to be hesitant to tell the government the number of people living at the address.

By completing the Census, schools, roads, airports, and social programs get funding.  Libraries and museums may open or close in the neighborhood, but these are not, apparently, services as worthy as the ninety-day warranty on a coffee pot.  What fear of the government could possibly be worth sacrificing livelihood for?  I doubt, in fact, any fear would be worth it.

Fearing one's government is not actually about fear, I think.  Rather, fearing the government is about the vanity of thinking one's life is something special.  I do not want to condone the NSA or CIA spying on anyone.  Yet, as a society (and it seems universally human to do so), we have come to the conclusion that we need to employ spies to keep us safe.  However, we fancy that our secrets are too dear to have them found out by a stranger sitting on the outskirts of DC, or Salt Lake City.  When it turns out that clandestine services do spy on people, particularly Americans, rather than asking why, it seems that we react with vehement fear of our secrets being found out.

The reality about it is that you, and everyone you know has secrets that are far too boring for that spying to be worth it.  An NSA file on me would be short, boring, and on a tape drive gathering dust for lack of use.  I would like to think I matter, that I travel enough, or have poignant enough blog posts, to have a detail of NSA agents following my life and times.  In fact, if the agents' viewing of Faux Social gets counted as a "page view" by Google's servers, I would be happy to pepper in juicier words like explosive, jihad, and McVeigh just for my own vanity. -Oman-

I do not think that this will work.  To me, the internet is a public domain, I think about it like a busy street with storefronts, and people moving about.  It seems totally preposterous to think anything you do there is "private," yet, like the busy street, most of what you do is "anonymous."  This is not anonymous like voting, but in the numbers of it.  When I shop at Amazon, they and I know exactly what I perused, then did or did not buy.  A store with security cameras could do the same.  I feel anonymous not because Amazon does not know who I am, but because we are strangers.  In the company of strangers, we are free as if anonymous because there will be no repercussions for our actions, no need to blush, lie, proclaim, or explain in the realm where everyone is a stranger.  Yet, like a police officer walking the beat, well trained people may be able tell the difference between a stranger and a potential bad guy.  -Anthrax-

Thus, in my view, I do not think Americans (or anyone) should be actively monitored in public (including the internet), not because it is an issue of privacy rights (which it may be), but because I doubt it is really worth the money.  If all of the money invested in monitoring Oman went into improving the lives of the poor there, how many people would choose extremism?  If  the money Americans spent on lipstick and fighter jets went into schools, libraries, healthcare, and financial security, would there be gangs and religious/political extremism?  If Afghanistan had access to a port, electricity, phones, internet, and literacy, rather than a century of imperial domination, would it have the Taliban?  There is no one fix, but the real problem is that militarism cannot solve social crises, and Americans are worried about the vanity of being spied upon, more than they are about foreign policy.

-Terrorist-

Microcosm Societies

Before I had ever lived in a camp, I read Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. The title is far more clever than I ever gave it credit for while reading it. It is a play on Microsoft, on feudal social structures, and general computer nerd-dom, which, I suppose, is as far as I took it while reading the book. Living in camps though, the idea of microserfs, the peasants of the smallest microcosms of a society, becomes fascinating, far from the confines of computerized LEGO programming in Silicon Valley.

Like Coupland's imaginary startup, a camp has its visionaries, its leaders, its middle class and its serfs. The social structure is a rigid caste, and the only thing that keeps the society functioning is that there is the promise of life after camp. People come to a camp to pay for what they do when they go home. To pay for lives that do not include the people they spend most of their time with. It is a weird dynamic. Imagine a water cooler conversation where no one will ever know anything about anyone else, where no one did anything over the weekend, and where there are not plans for the coming weekend. One functions in this environment because they have to.

In all camps, there is a hierarchy. It is essential that people have a leader, as anarchism simply does not get a job done. These duchesses and feudal lords can be brutal or kind, just as any others. They may plan for the winter, or their fiefdoms may starve. It is impossible to know before one has been in the camp what the leadership is like. Leadership though, is strange. In the Medieval period, these microcosms worked because an army backed the leader, and the leader backed the army. A symbiosis occurred at all levels of the chain, where the over- and underlying social strata agreed where everyone was. In a camp there is no army, instead, there is the upcoming Visa bill.

We are all Visa's indentured servants in these microcosms. Maybe a person has no debt, maybe a person always pays cash, but in the end, we owe now or in the future, and we know that we must fill our role in order to make that payment. It is the army of creditors that keeps a camp in check, there is no symbiosis.

This, makes something of a leadership vacuum. The camp leaders lead only by directing the work, yet s/he who directs the work does have power. If the leader is a fan of a football team, days when that team plays may end early, the basketball enthusiasts lose out. If the leader likes to run in the mornings, the morning meeting will be later. If they like an early dinner, workers will be early to their jobs, but back at the mess when the food is served. The power comes from the little things.

Who gets the power? How do they keep it? Like in any political struggle, the key players start to show their hand, and the knights, rooks, and pawns move into position. The power positions in a camp are the same as chess, and society. The king is all powerful, but crippled by the burdens of leadership. Their second, the queen is more powerful, s/he faces the conundrum of Lady Galadriel, to be pure and good, a champion of the pawns, or to become all powerful dark sorceresses. In either case, the queen may, intentionally or not, seek to usurp the king. Lastly, are the bishops. These are the hidden players, they control the conscience of the serfs, and thus, wield power that the king and queen can only demand. Pawns are the first to choose sides.

In minerals exploration, the pawns are usually the locals. They are infinitely replaceable, yet impossible to control. They see the whole camp establishment as outsiders. Often, race or ethnicity complicate relations between the monarchy and the serfs. They have nothing to lose in their meager existence, and so they are eager to choose sides with the person who gives the most present, and often petty rewards. If the bishop offers a workday that is 10 minutes shorter, the bishop will win the pawns. Yet, the pawns are the downfall of s/he who controls them. For the locals want things that are often contrary to the desires of the more loyal, more skilled knights, who will triumph against the pawns every time.

Knights in the camp society get the work done. They have a platoon of serfs behind them, but they get samples submitted, they log core, they run the computers, they collect the data, and deliver the goods. In the camp power struggle, the knights will win the battle. Yet, an exploration campaign, like a war, is not about a battle, but the compound effect of many battles. In order for one to win the war, a strong position must be held through many skirmishes. For these, one looks to the rooks.

Rooks, in the camp society are consultants and technical experts. The knights can win the battles fought today, but the rooks win the battles that will be fought tomorrow. The rooks are motivated by entirely different things. Rooks are motivated by professional reputation, by what happens outside of camp, more than within. From the top of their battlements, a rook can see what tomorrow will bring beyond the confines of the short field campaign.

From my tower, for I fancy myself a rook, I can watch the battles ebb, and the tides turn. I see racial and ethnic tensions flare, and the knights rally around their banner. I have time to sit, and ponder, in this microcosm society, who are the allies I want to maintain when I leave this camp? Who will bring me the most benefit when I deliver my fealty? It will never be the bishop, s/he lacks the wherewithal in my networks. It may be the king or queen, or with enough ambition, I can usurp even these leaders. So I, and the other fortresses watch, listen, and wait.

All of this, requires that outside force. The creditors, whether they be from the Bank of America, or the Society of Economic Geologists, we all seek the value placed on us by those outside camp. In this way alone, we are truly a microcosm of society. The technicians are microserfs, not only because we are a microcosm, but because they are more insignificant than the feudal serf. They are nameless, and ephemeral, they are but leaves on a tree, inconsequential today, and forgotten by fall. The brave knights, who fight for the banner of their fancy, they are no more influential in society. They are not minuscule because this is a camp of 50, but because this is a country of 300,000,000. This microcosm functions not independent of society, but dependent upon society.

While I wile away hours with an iPod, and an endless cylinder of rock, I contemplate why people work. Why people live in these camps the way they do. I watch the power struggles, and I come back to the same idea again and again, they do this because they will leave here. I wonder then, what would a truly micro-society look like? What will be the dynamics of the Mars One team, when they land with no intention of returning? What will keep them going? There is no creditor, there is no army, there is no future, just today, for the rest of their lives. In this strange world, I wonder, will there be microserfs?

Living in Elbonia with DRMs

Readers of Dilbert will recognize Elbonia as the fictional mud-filled country, and its totalitarian neighbor to the north, where Dilbert's company outsources work.  Nonreaders of Dilbert now probably know enough to gather that one would not want to live in Elbonia.  Like the characters of Dilbert, I have no desire to ever visit Elbonia, let alone live there.  However, like the profit driven corporation, I send myself to deal with whatever evil stands in for the mud in whatever place stands in for Elbonia.

My current Elbonia is Tok, AK, but most of the places I have lived in the last year or so remind me of Elbonia in some way.  I dream of escape, yet My beard is getting thicker, and I am starting to fear that I will never get all this mud off.  The only hope I have in these camps are the reminders of civilization I bring with me.  Unfortunately, all of my chocolate has melted in my 90 degree tent, and DRMs are preventing me from escaping with multimedia.

Apple, for various reasons, has been frustrating me for a long time now, so one day I decided that I should cut my final tie with the company, and move on from iTunes.  Still wanting to pay for my music, I tried Google Play, and discovered that in places with limited and slow internet, it really isn't a good medium.  I then tried Amazon, which is as convenient as iTunes, perhaps more, because you can buy music, rent movies, and ship garden tools to Florida if the mood takes you.  Amazon even has less restrictive DRMs than Apple, provided you are using a Windows or Android operating systems.  Playing iTunes files outside of iTunes proved too difficult to bother with, and thus, like a Dilbertian corporate slave, I went back to the most restrictive product to have the easiest access to the products I legally own.

Then, I bought a laptop with Windows 8.  Windows 8 was buggy, difficult to use, and credited with slowing down the sale of new PCs because of its general horribleness.  When it crashed, I switched to Ubuntu.  On an open source operating system one should be able to access their music, but not their iTunes music, nor download their Amazon music (though Ubuntu is installing with a link to Amazon on the dock).  Thus, while stuck in Elbonia, I am confronted with the realization that the things that remind me of a better place, are actually just reminding me of Northern Elbonia, where instead of a totalitarian state, it is a totalitarian corporation supported by the state.  Or, it all just came full circle, and I am in the cubicle maze with Wally and Alice.

In the end, only a few things are inaccessible to me here, while I choose if I want an operating system that doesn't work (Windows 8), or one that doesn't do what I want (owing to DRMs).  While I consider this, I have often considered that if I had stolen the media I cannot access, rather than paying for it, I wouldn't have any of these problems.

The Tallest Mountain On Earth

I have no understanding of why this is, but many people do not want Mt. Everest to be the tallest mountain on Earth.  Why would it matter whether or not the highest point on the planet is also the tallest mountain, I cannot fathom.  Really, I cannot really understand why the "height" of the mountain really matters to people who are not climbing it, after all, the height of the mountain and how impressive it is are not really the same thing.

Colorado mountains, for example, are beautiful, but they do not have the jaw dropping base-to-peak elevation of many smaller mountains.  The Colorado Rockies are also, as a generalization, less rugged than other peaks.  That said, a Colorado 14er has a more rarefied atmosphere than an Alaskan peak at 12,000 feet, regardless of cold, glaciers, ruggedness, or base-to-peak, so climbing to 14,000' is harder than to 12,000', all else being equal.

What the anti-Everest crowd key into is that Mount Everest is part of a mountain range, and therefore, "cheats."  How a natural system can cheat, I am not exactly sure.  I am also not sure what is so problematic about plate tectonic created ranges versus mantle hotspot created volcano chains, but I am not inside the mind of those who wish to find obscure measurements to discredit Everest.

The first step in discussing the elevation of a summit is how one defines elevation.  The traditional method is to measure from sea level.  This is useful for humans because we can stand at sea level.  The breathable atmosphere is taken to be about 1 atmosphere of pressure at sea level.  It can be, with only minor complications (the oceans are not flat, think tides), easily measured.  Perhaps best of all, it provides a common point from which one can measure the elevation of other things.  Other points that might be useful to use would be the shore of the Dead Sea (the lowest point not covered by water, -1371'), the Bentley Subglacial Trench (the lowest point not covered by liquid water, -8,382'), and the Challenger Deep (the deepest point on the sea floor, -35,755' (or deeper)).  Choose any of these other datums, and Mt. Everest remains the tallest mountain.

Using any datum on the surface of the earth, the highest point remains Mt. Everest, and the elevation of every summit simply increases (or decreases) by the amount that the new datum lies below (or above) sea level.  The one datum that changes the highest point calculation is the center of the planet.  Owing to the fact that Earth is not spherical, Chimborazo (20,564') in Ecuador is 3967.1 miles above the center of the planet (beating out Everest by 1.3 miles).

Using a standard datum (e.g. sea level) makes surveying (and science) possible.  Some people do not think elevation should be measured from a standard point.  The most common way to measure a mountain from a non-standard datum is prominence.  The goal of prominence is that a peak with high prominence will, generally, be more impressive than a peak with low prominence (if you want the full scoop on prominence, check Wikipedia, or Peakbagger).  Mt. Everest has the most prominence of any mountain (even if disregarding sea level), but as with any moving datum, prominence does have some drawbacks, and the "tallest mountain" crowd will certainly find some nonsensical way to discount this standard method of measuring mountains.

Elevation, as measured by those seeking the "tallest mountain" is commonly the base-to-peak elevation.  I have often considered the base-to-peak issue.  The first problem is actually defining the base.  In my mind, the base of a mountain, to illustrate how impressive it is, would be the highest elevation of a col that connects it to another peak.  I seem to be alone on this, and the base seems to be the lowest point where the mountain is no longer the mountain, but the valley, or gentle slope, in the case of Denali.

Using the base-to-peak measure, there are mountains that are taller than Everest, including Denali.  Denali has a base-to-peak elevation of something like 18,400' to Everest's 13,500' (ish).  Denali's base-to-peak is, of course, much taller than Hawaii's Mauna Kea (13,796', above sea level and base-to-peak).  However, the claim goes that Mauna Kea does not begin at sea level, but rather at the sea floor.

Measuring a mountain from the sea floor is tricky business.  First off, it seems meaningless because one can never gaze from the undersea "base" to the summit (or climb from base to peak).  Second, the scale changes dramatically.  The sea floor is dominated by gentle changes in elevations that would never seem related on the surface.  Mona Kea, for example, if you count all of the volcanism on Hawaii as "Mona Kea," but exclude the Mauna Loa side, stretches out for as much as 100 miles.  Above sea level, humans would never count being 100 miles away from a mountain as being "on" the mountain, yet in the world of submarine "mountains," this is a standard practice.  Using GeoMapApp to plot the bathymetry (and elevation), Mauna Kea's steepest, largest slope has the gentle rise of a slug's tail.

The elevation profile from approximately -5000 to 4000 m over nearly 80 kilometers distance of Mauna Kea's supposed base-to-peak elevation.  Note the volcanic plateau clearly visible at about sea level.  No vertical exaggeration.

Assessing Mauna Kea from other angles reveals even more unimpressive base-to-peak elevation profiles.  From the east, the volcanic plateau that Mauna Kea sits on becomes more evident.

The gentle rise of the Hawaiian volcanic plateau (from 0 to 60 km), and the gentle slopes of Mauna Kea (from 75 to 120 km), separated by the clear plateau (from 60 to 75 km).  Vertical scale from -5000 to 4000 m, no vertical exaggeration.

If Mauna Kea were a mountain above sea level, most people would judge it as having an impressive 13,000 meter base-to-peak, sitting on top of a 20,000 foot plateau.  If all of this was above sea level, plopped in Louisiana, it would be the tallest mountain on earth, and the volcanic plateau would be the highest plateau on the planet, but most of it is submarine, so, just like the off-shore base of Carstensz Pyramid (the highest island high point), it does not count.

The last problem with this measure of Mauna Kea, is that it ignores the existence of the other five volcanoes on Hawaii, like Mauna Loa, elevation 13,679' (120' lower than Mauna Kea), which is said to be the biggest in terms of basal area and volume (which may need to be considered at another time).  Looking at the broad saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the base-to-peak elevation can be measured as little as about 6500', impressive, but hardly the most impressive peak on the planet.

The 2000 m (6500') base-to-peak elevation of Mauna Kea's south side.  Vertical scale from 0 to 4000 m, no vertical exaggeration.

If measured from the lowest point on the sea floor that lava from Mauna Kea has reached, to the highest point on the mountain, Mauna Kea reaches an impressive 33,500'.  This height towers above Mt. Everest's height above sea level, and Everest's base-to-peak.  However, if submarine mountain bases are in play for largest mountain, than volcanoes will never overcome the mountain building of plate tectonics.  In the same way that the Himalaya tower above the Hawaiian volcanoes, coastal and submarine mountain belts built through plate tectonics tower over the Hawaiian seamounts.

The island nation of Tuvalu is expected to be the first nation to be destroyed by sea level rise.  Though not home to lowest country high point (a title belonging to the Maldives at just under 8'), Tuvalu's 15' high point is a sand dune that has already been over topped in a storm surge.  However, if bathymetry is taken as elevation, Tuvalu becomes not an island nation, but a mountain top nation.  It seems strange that a nations crowning a 15,000' mountain will be the first to be destroyed by a sea level rise of mere inches.

The mountain top nation of Tuvalu will likely be the first nation to be overcome by sea level rise.  Vertical scale -4000 to 0 m, no vertical exaggeration.

Tuvalu, is not a great example of the massive mountains built by plate tectonics, as it too is volcanic.  Mount Lamlam rises 1,332' above sea level, marking Guam's highest point.  This unassuming island high point does not seem like it would be a candidate for tallest mountain in the world, but the Mariana Trench runs just off Guam's coast.  From the Challenger Deep to the top of Mt. Lamlam, Guam's base-to-peak elevation is a stunning rise of up to 37,248', almost 4,000' taller than Mauna Kea.  If measuring from the Challenger Deep to the top of Mt. Lamlam is a stretch (the Mt. Lamlam massif rises above the Challenger Deep, but the peak arguably rises only out of the Mariana Trench), even conservative estimates rank Mt. Lamlam as a 10,000 m peak, putting the peak in contention for the title of tallest.

Guam's inconsequential Mt. Lamlam, possibly the tallest mountain in the world.  Vertical scale from -10,000 to 0 m, no vertical exaggeration.

While Mauna Kea is an impressive volcano, changing the definition of "tallest" to distract from what a mountain is does not respect the peak.  Denali is not taller than Mt. Everest, nor is Mauna Kea.  Each peak is impressive for what it is.  There are plenty of unnamed peaks in Alaska, and throughout the world, that are majestic, and staggering in scale, regardless of how they compare to the other peaks of the world.  The tallest mountain on Earth is Mt. Everest by any rational measure, all the other mountains are spectacular in their own way.

Running for the Next Bend

"Anyone can run 50 miles," I said to a small group of people at breakfast.  I said it knowing that obviously not anyone can run fifty miles, but rather to illustrate a point.  My point was that my running is not amazing in the few truly long distance runs I have done, but rather they are experiences in the wilderness that are obtainable to those who want them. 

My breakfast comment met some resistance, the usual, "I can't" response is the easiest to deal with.  I told the group, "that is your first problem, you have already decided without trying."  I know I am being a bit of a smartmouth when I say these things, but the point has to be made.  "How far do you run right now," I ask? 

"Say one usually runs five miles," I continue, "when you finish that, run it again, until you have run it ten times, 50 miles."  This attitude convinces few people, but there are two points to be made.  First, thinking about 50 miles is really hard, but thinking about increments getting there, those are each manageable.  I do not think anyone can truly set off to cover a great distance, those people will probably never see that they are making progress.  Rather, the success at covering great distances comes to those who pursue the next bend in the trail.

I find road running to be drudgery.  I am not a snob about this, I just lack the motivation to plod along the pavement, in pursuit of a distance, a pace, or a time.  I run on trails to experience a new place, or something new in my own mind.  In my pursuit of running great trails though, I, at some point, had to start by forgetting everything anyone ever tried to teach me about running.

My first marathon I ran while in high school, and I did it more or less off the couch.  I do not want to gloat, some people can do things off the couch, and some cannot, I count myself among the lucky.  Regardless, no one claims that running a marathon off the couch is possible, thus my point is simply that I was apparently never very good at listening to stories about what I can and cannot, or should and should not do.  This, is the second lesson in my pursuit of running.

How most people learned to run was by doing laps around a track or gymnasium, while a whistle-weilding adult in a track suit told you to go faster.  It was about going nowhere as fast as you could.  This form of running is purified to it essential elements on the treadmill.  Pace, distance, and television show re-runs are all that matter in the fitness running of conveyor belt health.  Instead of a race to nowhere, why not an experience in going somewhere?

The runner will soon forget about pace, time, and racing.  Meet your run where your running is.  Walking hills is often sensible, not shameful, because there may be another hill just out of sight.  Stopping to enjoy the scenery, chatting with friends, or simply catching your breath is part of the journey.  Forget trite running rules, and instead dream of the best places to run.

In pursuit of the best places to run, I have compiled a list of trails and destinations.  These dreams of better runs of the future power me through painful runs of the present.  Memories of past great runs, create dreams, and a running euphoria that makes present runs better than previous runs.  Running for the journey creates a cycle of better and better runs!

Using a week of free time, Sarah and I are currently doing some reconnaissance travelling and running to investigate a long held dream destination, Switzerland.  In this land of mountains, trails, and easy to use civilization, the potential for trail running seems to exceed what I had hoped.  With just a week, I will walk away from this trip not with an understanding of Swiss culture, the secret sights of Switzerland, or really having even "been to" any place in this country.  I will walk away from this with 13 miles of sun-scorched views of the Matterhorn, trail maps to plan a proper running trip, and dreams and memories for when the next bend in the trail seems like a little too far to go.

(Pictures and stories of Switzerland soon to come!)