Category Archives: This is who we are

Back to the Pool: A Story in Four Acts

I. Between being sick and the high school being closed for spring break, today was my first day back at the pool since the 10th. I had gotten a little used to sleeping in—all the way to 5:30—but I was still pretty happy about the chance to get my swim on. How would it feel? Pokey? Speedy? I had no idea. Frankly, I didn’t care; I was just happy to be back. Usually I have a plan, and today I decided to swim 2,000 yards continuously. Easy to remember.


II. I was glad to see Pat there when I arrived.

“How was your marathon?” I asked, and she made a face that was hard to decipher.

“I ran twenty-five and a half miles. I was feeling really good. It was so weird; we were all running, and then we literally all just stopped inches away from the person ahead.”

“Man, that sucks.”

“Yeah, but I still have my legs, so I can’t complain. I’m just glad my daughter met me at the 20th mile to run with me a bit, instead of waiting at the finish line.” I did the math on the way into work. At the pace she was going and the distance she had already run, she was probably less than five minutes away from the finish line when the bombs went off.


III. I have a little ritual I do three times a week at the pool. I sign in at the little table on the pool deck and then walk to the nearest open lane, where I sit and dangle my legs over the edge while I put on my swim cap and adjust my goggles. Then I look down at my watch and reset it before hopping into the water and convince myself to get going. Today, when I went to look at my watch, all I saw was the fur on my arm.

Oh dear, this could be a problem. How would I know how far I had gone? For a continuous swim, my pace is slow enough that I can pretty easily use the time on my watch to figure out my distance. “A little under 33 minutes swam,” I can say to myself, “means 33 laps. Only seven more to go.” No watch means no easy lap-counting.

Pat offered to lend me her watch, which I’m pretty sure is a water-resistant analog watch with a leather band. Not that there’s anything wrong with wearing a lady’s watch in the pool, but it’s an interesting sartorial choice. (Of course, Pat did wear sunglasses at the reservoir for a couple weeks before somebody suggested goggles with optically corrected lenses. And I’m glad they did, because I got in on that action really fast. Seeing where you’re going is a good thing.) I declined the watch offer, since I thought it would be nice to have a little bit of extra freedom, and the wall clock would tell me how long I took to do my 2,000 yards. I started at 5:45, almost on the dot.

Without a watch I had to pay attention to swim the right amount. I counted . . . en español on the way out and en français on the way back. Uno/un to bente/vingt twice. That seemed to work pretty well. Having a lane to myself also helped, since there were fewer distractions: I didn’t have to worry about anyone getting in my way, and the lane dividers made it harder to see what was going on in neighboring lanes.


IV. At the end of my swim, the guy one lane over (who was recovering between sets) asked, “Do you do triathlon?” Yes. Yes, I do. So we chatted a little bit about how much fun it is. He told me that he will be doing the same tri in Hopkinton that I will. “I guess the water is only supposed to be 60º.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that last year it was around 56ºF (13ºC). “Do you do a warmup swim?” Personally, no, but I never do a warmup. (It’s just another variable with with the pre-event diabetes management. Plus, that’s what the first couple minutes of the race is for, right?) “I’m just worried I’ll get out and be cold while standing around for the start.” Yeah, that’s a real possibility (and another good reason not to do a warmup), but the water will definitely take your breath away.

Only three more weeks. I can hardly wait!

Posted in Reluctant Triathlete, Swimming, This is who we are | 1 Comment

2013 Boston Marathon

I don’t want to inject myself into today’s events, but I can’t ignore them either.


Like every year, I had been looking forward to the Boston Marathon for quite a while. Patriots Day (a.k.a., Marathon Monday) is my favorite day of the year, and for good reason. It’s the day that I go to work and am largely allowed to shirk a good deal of it. Walking from my office to the center of town through idyllic suburban neighborhoods is refreshing and often full of cheery conversation with coworkers. The weather in mid-April is usually beautiful, and—at 10 miles into the race—Natick Common is early enough that the lead runners are still together, and most runners are looking strong and fresh. I try to arrive early so that, before the elite women and men run through, I can watch most of the push-rim wheelchair, handchair, and mobility impaired athletes. Each year, my appreciation for what they’re doing deepens a little bit more, even as I simultaneously become more certain that, for a true athlete, it’s far more unnatural not to do the thing you love no matter how great the challenge.

This year, like previous ones, I left the marathon feeling inspired and eager to do something. In 2010, even though I had been running for about a year, I knew I needed to start racing again. In the three years that followed, I’ve had events events to look forward to, and the marathon gets my competitive juices flowing. Over the last few years there’s been a growing feeling inside of me that I want to run this race—my race, the one I’ve been watching for fifteen years, the one that everyone loves whether they run or not. Sometime last year while running the course, I started to say “yes” to the thought of a marathon as long as I someday qualified for and ran Boston. Today, as I walked back to the office, I was really eager to put my lingering cold behind me and get outdoors, to have a good run, and to get back to training.

Like last year and most of the rest, I counted the number of buses on the Mass Pike between the I-495 and Natick exits on my way to work. There were 95, including the police-escorted VIP bus. I like seeing those flashing lights, because I love the idea that (for at least one day) elite athletes are treated like the extraordinarily talented, hard-working people that they are.

Like last year, I had some great conversations while waiting for the elite runners to arrive. This year, instead of being with complete strangers, I hung out with some of my coworkers. Five people from my group showed up, including Mr. 2:22 himself, who decided it would be nice to be with us this year instead of right downtown in the midst of the action. I learned that one of my coworkers got a Southern Baptist education from pre-K to 12th grade because there were a lot of bomb threats in her part of Florida at the public schools, and her parents (both Buddhists) felt better about the odds of giving her a culture shock instead of an actual jolt.

Like most years I watched the finish of the race online at my desk since the office cafeteria crowd was deep into the Red Sox baseball game, and I’ve fought the battle before to switch from the Sox game to the marathon and just barely made it out alive.

But this year, as we all know, was a little different.

Around 1:00 a coworker from another group called to ask if one of my peeps was running Boston this year. He had taken the day off to go down to the finish and hadn’t seen him come through yet. No, I said, he watched the race with us from Natick.

Later in the afternoon, a couple of coworkers stopped by, interrupting a code review, and nervously asked if I had heard about the “explosion at the marathon finish.” Surely it was just an electrical explosion in a manhole or something like that, I thought, and went back to my work. After finishing the code review, I checked a slow-loading news site, and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. When Lisa called a bit later and asked if all my coworkers were okay, I got choked up for the first time, thinking about what might have happened to them and to the other people I know who watched the marathon at different places on the route or were running it (including Pat, my swim peep).

On the commute home I watched all of the unmarked cars and special detail units with their flashing blue lights speed down the turnpike toward Boston in a bizarro inversion of my drive into the office nine hours earlier.

I really needed to go for a bike ride or a run when I got home. Even if it couldn’t help me make sense of what happened, it would at least clear my head or wear me out enough to not think about it for a while. But I knew that getting “worn out” was exactly what I didn’t need to do while recovering from this cold, which seems to be about 80% better, so I took it easy and got to work downloading and editing my photos from the race.

As I was looking at the photographs I realized something quite vividly. Regardless of who did this and why, it won’t change a thing about how deeply marathon fans love this race. Even though most of us will probably never run it, it’s our race. It’s my race.

Seeing the vans full of SWAT police in the past hasn’t ever made think twice about why they’re part of the event preparations and decide that I want to stay indoors on a glorious spring day (or even a miserably cold and drizzly one for that matter) to watch the race. And today, when I saw the SUV full of bomb squad officers drive by ahead of the elite runners, it didn’t change an iota about how much I loved the race or whether I want to be part of it some day. Just as I’m sure that, despite the actual bombings, there will be just as many people working their hardest to attain a coveted Boston qualifying time or raising as much money as they can to justify their charity entry.

This race—the oldest marathon in North America—has been run 117 times and will be run again. We love this race because of its history and because it tells us something about ourselves. New Englanders are flinty, contrarian, history-bound, and stubborn. This is probably the surest way to make sure that the marathon will be held long after humanity has given up on the idea of competitive road running. I mean, just think about it: The marathon happens on the Monday closest to the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, an event steeped in the notion that a free people choose not to live under threat of coercion or fear and the belief that our nation is what we actively make it.

Someday, hopefully soon, we’ll know more about what happened today and why. As a result, we will grow and adapt. But our love for this race and this day will never be diminished.

Posted in General, Photography, Running, This is who we are | 8 Comments

Tin Ear


(Image from Eknath Gomphotherium)

This post is for the hypochondriacs out there. You’re welcome.

Lisa says the high-pitched, continuous ringing in my ears that I mostly hear in quiet environments (or like right now when I listen for it) isn’t normal. She says it’s tinnitus.

I had always assumed everyone filled the usual background with some sound, but evidently that’s just something that I do. Well, me and 50 million other Americans. It’s not like it’s new—it’s just new to Lisa. As long as I can remember, that’s the way the world has been, and (thankfully) it doesn’t really bother me. I hear perfectly well—touch wood—although it is a really unfortunate pitch.

Oh well.

What causes tinnitus? WebMD gives a laundry list of causes that range from the obvious to the mundane: everything from having a loud profession, listening to loud music, aging, and head trauma to aspirin, ear infections or blockages, and something called “ostosclerosis,” which I can only assume is caused by putting fatty, cholesterol-rich foods in your ears.

Oh, and it’s associated with a whole host of other medical conditions, including a couple that I have: allergies, anemia, and (you guessed it) diabetes.

What a crazy thing is this human body.


p.s. — I promise I’ll tell you about the half-marathon I ran a week ago really, really soon. Promise.

Posted in Diabetes, General, This is who we are | 1 Comment

ACT UP Against Diabetes?

I’ve been spending a lot of time in my basement recently as the long winter months s-l-o-w-l-y slouch toward spring. Because of the snow, I seem to do all of my bicycling down there, not to mention a good deal of running and even (yes!) swimming. The “swimming” is actually dryland strength training with resistance tubing, but 25+ minutes of pulling pretty much feels like a normal swim workout when all is said and done. I still go to the pool a few times a week when it isn’t closed for winter break or because of snowstorms. I do hit the road, trail, and track for my Thursday speed sessions and my Sunday long run. I’ve even been out on the road with my bike a couple times this winter, but mostly I ride in the basement.

Last Saturday, while spinning through a two-hour endurance ride on my tri-bike while going nowhere, I watched the entirety of the documentary that is going to win the Academy Award this weekend: “How to Survive a Plague.” It was phenomenal . . . one of the best documentaries that I’ve seen in a long time. It was relevant, important, and insanely well-produced. There are a number of very poignant moments in it. None more so than when respected activist Larry Kramer angrily interrupts a meeting petty squabble brewing into a full-blown internecine battle within the AIDS activist community of the late 80s. “Plague!” He belts out, as if the voice of an oracle, silencing the argument. “We are in the middle of a fucking plague! And you behave like this?! Unless we get our acts together we are as good as dead.” Powerful!

It was also extremely relatable.

However you feel about the ACT UP organization, the documentary provides a lot for people with diabetes to think about. The “PWAs” (People With AIDS) in the 80s and 90s clearly had a more immediate and inevitable risk of early death than PWDs (People With Diabetes) do now, but it wasn’t until they organized and started to take direct action that they started to get noticed. They had (and continue) to battle the belief that their disease is an inevitable (and some even said deserved) consequence of their “lifestyle choices.” The FDA was very slow to approve new therapies to control HIV, preferring to get all of the data on efficacy and safety as if it were just another health condition, and not one that was killing people while it delayed. After ACT UP became immersed in the scientific literature and informed about the drug approvals process, they proposed a new, medically sound treatment protocol, which doctors and regulators at the FDA and NIH eventually started to take seriously. Patients/advocates interacted constructively with pharmaceutical manufacturers, who—like everyone I have ever heard of in diabetes medical research—truly wanted to improve the lives of their customers/patients. Nevertheless, the struggle to find an effective treatment for HIV/AIDS also involved issues of healthcare access and cost, since early treatments cost tens of thousands of dollars per year and still continue to be out of reach of many in developing countries even at more modest prices.

I remember the AIDS crisis and ACT UP from my youth, and I sometimes joke that the diabetes advocacy community needs to be willing to get arrested every once in awhile to highlight the fact that we still live with an expensive, incurable disease, which continues to kill people of all ages far too often, and that the FDA approval process is far too slow and the NIH budget for diabetes is far too small. I never seem to get anyone to say they would be willing to follow me to the barricades when I suggest this on DSMA . . . probably because I am also unwilling to get arrested. After all, I have a mortgage and a wife and a cat who depend on me; and I would probably lose my health insurance if I got arrested. That wouldn’t be good.

I do wonder though, what can people with diabetes learn from ACT UP and its offshoot Treatment Action Group? How far can we go to raise awareness without (say) occupying the NIH? How do we make the public take notice of our disease and be more active on our behalf?

What do you think?

Posted in Diabetes, This is who we are | 2 Comments

Repeal It

I originally wrote this post last Friday night and then, in a moment of doubt on Saturday morning, unpublished it. It wasn’t that I didn’t completely believe in the argument; I just wanted to make sure that it was the kind of thing I wanted to appear on this site. It is.

I try not to get political here very often. [1] But I cannot contain myself today. I am angry and heartbroken by the massacre of twenty schoolchildren and six adults in Connecticut. I think about the topic of gun violence every time there’s a gun-related mass-casualty incident, and it feels like I’ve been thinking about it a lot in recent years. Today, though . . . I just do not understand how it’s possible to perpetrate such a horrific act on such a scale. However, I do know that it would not have happened without a gun as part of the equation, and I think it’s about time we did something radical with guns.

Before you dismiss me as a knee-jerk, Eastern liberal, you should know that there were handguns in my house when I was a teenager. I shot one of them twice with my stepfather, as part of a “there are now guns in the house, and this is why you should leave them alone” campaign. After the first shot we realized that I had really good aim, despite only having one good eye. The second shot took me completely by surprise, and I dropped the gun out of fright. I can still see the damage done from the first shot, and I won’t ever forget the fear-turned-embarassment of the second. Of course, on one other occasion the same gun almost featured tragically in a situation I would rather forget.

Despite all that, in the past I was deeply opposed to gun control. In fact, on my college debate team, I twice argued passionately in favor of a right to keep guns and use them for hunting and self-defense and as a means of preventing tyranny. (Yes, I actually bought into that paranoid, militia-esque belief that a well-armed citizenry was all that kept us from a totalitarian hell state. That was a long time ago.) I believed that private gun ownership made sense in sparsely populated rural areas (like Wyoming) where everyone was a law unto himself as well as in crime-riddled urban areas (i.e., everywhere that wasn’t Wyoming).

Time has passed and now I can only see those beliefs as outdated and immature. Sure, guns can prevent some crime—and hunting, however you feel about it, is a different beast altogether—but firearms contribute to so many deaths and violent crimes. They are fundamentally different from other kinds of weapons in their ability to indiscriminately cause damage from a distance. I find it hard to justify handgun possession, since in my mind they are scaled down weapons of mass destruction. With the carnage they caused today, how can they not be thought of in the same class as WMDs?

I am tired of gun violence apologists—and let’s face it, that’s what they are—saying, “Oh, well, it’s just an isolated incident and the act of a deranged mind. We can’t prevent against this kind of event.” Not so. All of these tragedies may be uncoordinated, but there is a sine qua none that binds them together: the gun. How many repeats of the same tragedy must we have before we do something about guns? How many murders, attempted murders, and assaults do gun (ab)users have to commit before we say the consequences outweigh the supposed “benefits” of private gun ownership?

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that most (or even a small percentage) of gun owners are just a hair’s breadth away from homicide. But I do think most guns have only two purposes: either to project the intimidating possibility of violence to all within the bullet’s range or to actually inflict harm on another person. It’s perfectly possible to own a gun responsibly and never use it, and it’s possible to use a gun in order to prevent harm to others, but this is not how most guns in this country (when used) are used. Moreover, the magnitude of gun ownership in this country has a corrosive effect on the overall safety and well-being of everyone in the US, as we saw from today’s events.


I’m not an originalist when it comes to Constitutional interpretation—nor am I a judge—but I understand the late 18th century point of view on this issue. Guns were in the culture in post-Revolutionary America and were used during Shay’s Rebellion out in western Massachusetts (1787) and the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 by both the groups seeking to oppose tyranny/taxation and the militias that were used to put down the anti-state insurrections. Frontier violence was a fact of life, even though the presence of guns contributed to its worst abuses. (Well, guns and liquor together really.) Hunting was also a part of life for a large number of people. (And don’t forget the fear of slave revolts.)

Times are different now. The Civil War pretty much settled the issue of how dangerous state militias can be, and the idea of private gun ownership preventing a tyrannical government with a well-trained standing army from taking away our liberties—given some far-fetched dystopian scenario where it actually wanted to—is laughable. Furthermore, handguns and assault-style weapons create a much different gun environment than even 100 years ago.

The second amendment no longer protects American citizens by providing a framework for well-regulated gun ownership and/or militias. It provides a cudgel to prevent responsible regulation of firearms. The amendment has outlived its usefulness.


It’s time to repeal the second amendment. Remove the pretext of gun ownership and/or citizen militias as a Constitutional necessity for the preservation of individual liberties and happiness, and in its absence let the people decide how much and what kind of gun restrictions we really want. I will likely come down differently than you do, but in a democracy we should all have a voice in the decisions about the kind of society we live in. Different jurisdictions should be able to tailor gun laws to the needs of their populations.

The current Supreme Court has shown that there cannot be meaningful gun control in this country while the second amendment is in force and while Congress has a pathological inability to enact sensible regulation on its own. If, after a horrific tragedy like what occurred in Connecticut today, we can’t figure out a way to change the gun culture that exists in the United States so that it protects people, we never will. Something has to give on the second amendment; either we abandon our fetishistic attachment to it as an idea that prevents any meaningful gun regulation, or the entire amendment has to go. The blood of those killed in the next “isolated incident” will be on our hands.


1 — I occasionally write about healthcare economics here. It’s an issue that I don’t feel should be politicized, but sadly it is. Affordable healthcare is important to me, and I feel the problems about access to it are totally solvable, even if it’s going to be difficult to do. [back . . .]

Posted in General, Life Lessons, This is who we are | 2 Comments

Just Do It… No Matter What

For some reason, stories like this one about BethAnn Telford, who ran the Marine Corps Marathon with brain cancer yesterday just two weeks after competing in the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, are really getting to me lately.

I guess I’m just a big softie after all.

Posted in Reluctant Triathlete, Running, This is who we are | Leave a comment

Death Valley or Bust

Supposing that you read this on the morning that it was posted, I’m on my way to Las Vegas or already there. I’ll be spending the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon with Victoria, mon amie du sud. We first met around this time last year at Simonpalooza, and she convinced me to do a JDRF ride with her this year. We settled on Death Valley—as all you loyal readers and donors know—and the time for the ride is finally here. I’ve only seen Vegas before from the airport tarmac as we stopped to change passengers during a stopover on the way to visit Lisa’s parents many years ago. I’m looking forward to actually putting my feet on the ground and seeing this place that a friend once described as “the simulacrum of America,” a kind of tromp l’oeil painting of the American experience.

From there we head to Death Valley for a little orienting, hiking, and chilling out time at Furnace Creek on Friday before doing our 105 mile bike ride on Saturday. (The forecast high temperature has fallen by a degree to 99F, or 37C. Woo hoo!) I’ll write all about that after I get home.

Unlike the Twin Cities Tour de Cure, this ride so far has been much more about advocacy for me than anything else. I didn’t really ask for any money for the TdC ride, since I was primarily going to see friends and have a nice little ride. This JDRF ride, however, has much more aggressive fundraising requirements, so I started fundraising early and really put my heart and time (and a couple iTunes gift cards) into it. Also in the six months that I’ve been actively soliciting funds and preparing for the ride, I’ve talked about living with diabetes with many people who donated and who will be riding with me. (JDRF and the ADA are very different groups, and I’m curious to see what this ride is actually like as a person with diabetes. I’m holding back on making up my mind until after it’s all done, but it just has a very different feel so far.)

I’m so excited to say that I exceeded my initial fundraising goal of $3,000 . . . by a lot! As I’m writing this, generous people—friends, family, coworkers—and The MathWorks have contributed $12,125!! That’s over four times what I thought I could get. I can’t begin to express how grateful I am for all of this support. Some of my biggest contributors were from close family and coworkers, but I also received a $500 donation from a fellow cyclist coworker who I don’t think I’ve ever met. There’s a lot of power in just asking everyone you know every couple months to give whatever they feel they can and in being pretty chill about it the rest of the time. (If you missed out on your opportunity to give, there’s still time.)

Because I had to keep track of all my coworkers’ donations in order to get matching funds—which totaled $5,520—and because I have a bit of a thing for numbers, I ended up with a fair bit of data. For my fellow number nerds quants out there, here are some details (excluding the matching funds).

  • Number of donations = 103
  • Total of all donations = $6,605
  • Total from current and former coworkers = $5,565
  • Average donation = $64.13
  • Median donation = $50 (of which there were 38)
  • On my best fundraising day, people gave $1,054

People donated anywhere between $5 and $500, and I’m just as appreciative of the smallest gifts as the largest. Someone donated $179 to help me meet my initial fundraising target. (I promptly raised the goal amount!) Another donor gave $36, because in Jewish mysticism multiples of 18 (or is it 9?) are considered especially blessed, because the letters associated with the numbers spell out the word for “life.”

Thank you, everyone, for helping to improve the lives of people with diabetes!

Posted in Diabetes, This is who we are | 5 Comments

Odds and Ends – Back to School Edition

There’s been a lot going on in my life, but little of it is important enough on its own to warrant a full post. And the big stuff is all really big. Perhaps if I write about all of the small stuff at once . . .


Insulin: I got a phone call earlier today from my mother-in-law who is helping clean up her late father‘s and step-mother’s house. Turns out, he had type-2 diabetes (which I knew) and was on insulin (which no one seemed to know). The phone call I got was to answer the question, “How do you dispose of insulin?”

I had to think about it for a moment because my normal way of disposing of insulin is to use it all up in my pump. And when the vial is empty, I just add it to my ever-growing hoarding / art project. I had to think back to what I did on the rare times when a vial wasn’t empty before I started keeping them all, and I couldn’t really remember. So what to do? It’s not a control substance. It’s not something people abuse. It has a short shelf life. It’s not going to pollute the groundwater or landfill. The containers aren’t dangerous.

A quick check of Google supported my suspicions: “I think it’s okay to just throw the open vials away. It’s just kind of a foreign concept to me.”


Español: Tonight, I’m starting an eight-week “Introduction to Spanish” community education class. “¿Por qué?” you might ask. Well, several reasons:

  1. A trip we hope to take in two or three years will involve trekking in a country where se habla español, and I’d like to be able to talk to the locals in their own language.
  2. Ditto for the next time we go to Spain.
  3. Shakira, my Latina girlfriend, habla a mi corazón, and I’d love to be able to understand her better and reply in her own language . . . as well as French. French is always going to sound super sexy. . . . Anyway.
  4. I’ve been soaking in Spanish here and there for the last twenty years—to the point where I was (mostly) able to converse with the Iberia staff, not to mention some college friends taking first-year Spanish—and I would love to actually pick up some grammar and vocabulary to go along with the little bits that I know and (maybe) have a conversation or two.
  5. Lots of people in my community and workplace speak Spanish (and/or Portuguese) in addition to English, and they think it’s fun to talk to the Spanish-as-a-second-language folks.
  6. It feels wrong to live in a pluralist society and not have a passing familiarity with the second most popular language. ¡Viva la reconquista! (Just kidding.)
  7. I no longer worry that time I spend learning Spanish is time that I could be learning French. Because of some francophone junk e-mail that I get and all the French and Québécois music I listen to, I’m learning lots of French words and idioms without really trying.


A Brand New Car: In tangentially related news, we bought a new car last weekend. The 2013 Hyundai Elantra is our first car purchase in almost eight years, and it replaces our 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid. It was the only car in the intersection of all our requirements:

  • A sedan.
  • More luxurious than our Civic Hybrid. That’s not really hard, but we both wanted something with more than just gas and brake pedals, a steering wheel, and CD player.
  • Lower cost than our house payment.
  • Roughly the same fuel economy as our Hybrid.
  • Isn’t a hybrid. (Hybrid vehicles are great until they’re not. Then they’re really expensive, or they don’t work at all.)

It turns out those last two were difficult to satisfy. It’s possible to find lots of cars with more amenities and extras than our Civic; just don’t ask for anything better than 25-30 MPG without going super-compact. The Elantra certainly isn’t going to be mistaken for an Audi or BMW, but it has nice styling, leather seats, a sunroof, iPod/iPhone integration, Bluetooth, and XM radio.

Which brings me to this morning’s commute, my first with the new car. I spent the whole drizzly, slow drive listening to the top 40 countdown of Canadian francophone music. It was pretty awesome, but I think it—along with the iPod integration—is going to slow down my CD project.


A-Z backwards: Since the end of last year, I’ve been working my way backward through our CD collection, from Zydeco to Abba. It’s taken slightly longer than I’d expected, and I blame U2 and Bruce Springsteen for that. Turns out, we didn’t have many of the early Springsteen or U2 CDs. So I kind of (accidentally) doubled the number that we had of each. Oops!

(Of course, I spent a couple of weeks not listening to Van Halen’s greatest hits album, “Best of Both Worlds.” I eventually summoned the courage to do it, but it almost made me quit. Part of what I wanted to do with the project was find the hidden treasures that aren’t on my iPod, to enjoy what I already own, and to listen really closely to the lyrics and styles of the artists in our collection. Let me just say that we while Lisa and I have a lot of overlap in our tastes, we’re definitely two different music lovers. And there’s no double-entendre worse than an 80s hair-band double-entendre.)

But I did make it through all of the Springsteen and U2 albums (and a whole lot of others) and am currently hanging out with my (previously mentioned) Lebanese-Colombian girl, who until recently held the distinction of having more concert albums in our collection than studio recordings. That’s no longer the case. Anyway . . .

I noticed some interesting things about Springsteen. His earliest work is not to my liking at all. It was all knock-off Dylan with blue-collar lyrics about girls and cars and beaches. There were some gems in there, especially when the E Street Band got really rocking, but it wasn’t until Reagan came along and he got introspective or righteously angry about the working man’s plight and sufferings in love that I started to really like him. To my tastes, he alternates between some of the most soulful music ever made and the most banal. Oh, you can say whatever you want about my fastidiousness, but Bruce had some real duds after “The Rising.” (For example, “Devils & Dust” and “Working on a Dream” were not my cup of tea. Not at all.) But, taken as a whole he’s just an amazing songwriter and band leader.


The Beatles: Eventually I’ll get to The Beatles and probably make Sir Paul McCartney a bit of extra cash, but I listened to my first two Beatles albums a few months ago. Ever. I know, I know. It’s like admitting illiteracy. And I knew I was culturally slacking for several years beforehand, but I just couldn’t figure out where to start. Somehow when it came time to pick an initial foray, I started at the end with “Let It Be” and “Abbey Road.” This wasn’t intentional, but it was enlightening. The group broke up before I was born, and I know that a lot of people (including my father) blamed Yoko for it, but I’ve always thought that sounded like a convenient bit of misogyny. If you listen to their later albums—which have some really good songs on them—they are all over the place. Four songs, four writers/arrangers, and four different sounds. In my mind they were a Liverpudlian Wu-Tang Clan, getting together to make music between solo gigs; they just didn’t know they’d broken up yet.


Apples: I’ve been eating a lot of apples lately. (This is a very random post, isn’t it?) I’m not sure why, except that one day I was picking up something at Stop and Shop on the way home from work, and I could tell that I was going to have low blood sugar soon if I didn’t eat. An apple sounded just right, and I felt adventurous, so I bought a Honeycrisp, and (to paraphrase Robert Frost) that has made all the difference. This was a big gamble, since I dislike certain varieties, but I can say without a doubt that Honeycrisp has joined Granny Smith in the apple pantheon. Also delicious are Cortland, Braeburn, and Empire. I found Royal Joburn and McIntosh a little disappointing. The jury is still out on Fuji and Gala.

How about you? What is your favorite apple variety?

Posted in Diabetes, General, This is who we are | 2 Comments

Doing Intervals for Fun

My girl Chrissie Wellington reminds us to have fun amidst all the OCD, type-A BS that is triathlon training:

Someone asked me a few weeks ago “Chrissie, if you are not racing what is your goal for this year?” My goal? “It is to revel in sport for sports sake and really take the time to enjoy the moment.”

Having finished my 70.3 a few weeks ago, this is exactly where I’m at right now.

I’m taking an extra day off each week, and when I go out I usually make up the plan on the fly. “What do I want to do at the pool this morning? How about a set of three 400-yard hard efforts? Or maybe a nice 2,250 yard swim. . . .” Tuesday, my feet somehow found their way to the trail without much thinking on my part, and the four of us—my two feet, my thoughts, and I—had a nice six mile run on the almost empty bike path. Yesterday, I had a vague idea of where I wanted to ride, and I was feeling good, so it turned into an impromptu interval session, where I rode hard to a landmark—the top of a hill, the intersection with the highway, etc.—instead of going by time or heart rate. Wednesday, I mowed the lawn.

I’m racing a 5K this weekend because it’s in my town and follows almost exactly the same route that I’ve used for training over the last four summers. Yes, I’ll be using it to get training paces for the next big thing I will train for, but I’ll mostly be there to have fun and enjoy racing when there’s nothing really at stake. The last couple of “5K” runs that I’ve done to get training paces have seen me sprinting down the bike path by myself just racing the clock, and I’m really eager to be around other runners and enjoy the day.

The time to train again—probably for a half marathon in March—will arrive soon enough, but for now I’m just out to have fun.

Posted in Cycling, Reluctant Triathlete, Running, Swimming, This is who we are | Leave a comment

Casper

Lisa and I are finishing up the first part of The Great Rectangular State Adventure of 2012. We arrived in Denver on Saturday and drove up I-25 to Casper, Wyoming, to visit my mom and her husband.

For those who don’t know, I was born in Iowa, but I grew up in Wyoming. The Equality State holds a special place in my heart (despite everything that’s “wrong” with it from the perspective of an urbane person who lives in a major Eastern metropolitan area with high-tech jobs and cultural attractions and diversity and laws). I made great friends here, did a lot of fun things, and heard so many fantastic stories about all of the crazy things that happen in a state with more cows than people. While hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, and driving around the state alone and with friends, I built up my own trove of Wyoming lore, too. (Most of it’s even true.) High school cross-country and debate trips were almost always overnight affairs with lots of shenanigans and fun. I estimate that I met 10% of the people my age during the three years that I lived here full time.

But, like most of my friends, I went away for college and never moved back. We’re a band of expatriates, and—as with all people who move away—when we come back this place is strangely familiar and foreign at the same time. I walk a line between nostalgia for an idealized golden age and trying to appreciate the state for the way that it really is now, warts and all. I love thinking about this place and all of the things that we did at the same time that I wonder what I’m possibly going to do this time without just doing the same things that I’ve done in the past.

(One of my best high school friends keeps finding her way back to Wyoming. She’s the most improbable native daughter a state like Wyoming could ever have. We had hoped to meet up, but sadly, we’re just going to miss her on this trip and won’t be able to make the reading from her collection of short stories, “Cowboys and East Indians.”)

This trip is one of the rare times that we’re here in the summer, so we’re doing more outdoorsy things. Wyoming is a great place to be outside, even when it’s been hot like this week. (Although, it’s definitely nicer when you’re not in the direct sun.) Because I’m deep into triathlon training, I brought my bike, so this is also the first time that I’ve been cycling here in almost 20 years. Hiking and cycling in Wyoming is so much different than where Lisa and I live now. The mountains are higher; the roads and trails are less crowded; and views are much more impressive.

The elevation is much higher here, too—5000+ feet vs. 300 at our house—and I can definitely feel it. Actually, I feel it a lot! Tons of sparklies everywhere I look. (I think it’s also wreaking havoc with my blood sugar, making me low all the time.) Sunday’s 60-mile ride with Mom and Miles was a bit more challenging than I expected. And my plan to ride up Casper Mountain this morning was thwarted after the first six miles by a 25 MPH headwind and the sparklies. (Although the 50+ MPH ride back down was totally sweet and all too short!)

After my less-than-successful attempt to ride up the mountain, we all drove up in the car a little bit later. We took a short hike, saw a rattlesnake, and visited a fantastically beautiful (and new-to-me) part of the mountain. I loved being on the edge of one mountain, seeing the range extend far into the distance as the shadows from the clouds moved across the meadows between them, the air full of the smell of sagebrush. This particular park has a quirky, New-Agey mythology to it that is very much not normal for Casper, and it just made me very happy to be there.

I’m kinda sad that we’re starting the next phase of our adventure tomorrow when we drive to Colorado Springs.

Posted in Cycling, This is who we are, Travel, USA, Western Adventure | 3 Comments

Fifteen

On June 29th, 1997, I married Lisa Wheaton, my best friend and the sweetest woman in the world. We’ve had so much fun since then, and I love her so much more today than I had figured possible on that beautiful day fifteen years ago overlooking Mount Hood in Oregon.

For reasons that I still don’t fully understand, she decided that I was the one for her shortly after we met on the first day of our four years in Grinnell. I’m so, so, so glad that she did. It took her the whole first semester to win me over, since I was dating someone else at the time. But as her friend from high school predicted, that other girl didn’t have a chance. (Ladies, it turns out that “needing help with your calculus homework”—whether you actually need it or not—is still a pretty good way of getting yourself lodged in some guys’ minds.)

The day after the wedding we started a three-week honeymoon in the Canadian Rockies, which seemed to kickstart our habit of enjoying our travels together. Since then we’ve traveled so many places: India, Australia, London, Paris, Barcelona, the Rockies, various places in Canada, and different parts of the US during our multiple baseball tours, just to name some of our longer trips. She’s a great travel companion and navigator, and it feels wrong to go places and do fun things without her.

After returning from our honeymoon, we started the long trip eastward into the unknown. From Oregon to Wyoming to Iowa and then finally to Boston, we did the Oregon Trail in reverse, picking up things from the different parts of our lives at each stop before settling in. We hated the moving experience so much that we didn’t do it again for another seven years, when we moved to the house where we live now. The day that we moved into our tiny apartment, our new landlord gave us some good advice: “Don’t ever sleep apart if you’re angry with each other,” which is advice that we’ve managed to follow all of this time. (Notice he didn’t say not to go to bed angry. That’s going to happen, but avoiding the other person doesn’t make the problem go away or let you feel better when you wake up next to a person who still loves you.)

You can learn a lot about another person and yourself over fifteen years. I’m so happy with what I’ve discovered about Lisa, and she’s helped me become the man that I always had in mind when I thought about myself as a “grown up.” She had the chance to change her mind about me so many times, especially when I was diagnosed with diabetes just two short years after we married and moved to New England. She took the “in sickness and in health” part of the vows seriously, and it made us stronger and more in love to struggle through those early days together. Fortunately, we also managed to make it through the “for richer and poorer” part unscathed, too.

So, Sweetheart, these fifteen years have been great! Sorry about not helping you understand Riemann sums before our calculus final. And thank you so much for always talking to me about The Iliad. Je t’aime de tout mon cœur.

Posted in General, I am Rembrandt, Photography, This is who we are | 4 Comments

A Year Later, I Can Do This. You Can, Too!

A year ago, when Kim announced the “You Can Do This” project, I could just tell it was going to be an important addition to the online landscape of diabetes. A year later, it’s become bigger and more empowering than I had ever imagined.

Whether we’ve had diabetes for three days or thirty years, we all need a little reminder from time to time that we can have lots of good times in our lives with this disease and that the bad times don’t last as long as we think. It gets better and then it gets worse and then it gets better again . . . but you can do this.

After a huge reversal of my A1c back to where it was when I started trying to lower it, I’m at one of those points where the encouragement of all the people online whom Kim has harnessed with her project is so welcome. I was so heartened to see that the currently featured video on the YCDT site is by Kris Freeman, “elite U.S. cross-country skier, member of U.S. Ski Team and Olympic athlete.” Having someone like him tell me (and all the rest of us) that we can keep aiming for and achieving amazing things despite having diabetes is exactly the message that I needed to hear right now. My A1c got worse, but I’m figuring out how to make it better at the same time that I keep training and racing and enjoying my life (with diabetes). As I told y’all in my own video, “You can do this.” And I believe I can do it, too.

Thanks, Kim, for starting something so wonderfully motivating and empowering!

Posted in Diabetes, Life Lessons, This is who we are | 4 Comments

Iowa – Part 1

I’m ready for a ride. I packed the bike last Thursday after a fast interval session, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Most of that is just the general desire to go for a ride, but a bit is because I’ve been trying to figure out where I was going to get a torque wrench to put it all back together again after my flight to Minnesota on Saturday. And then, once I picked it up from the enormous REI store in Bloomington (which I had called to hold one for me) I started wondering where I was going to get the hex drivers for my new wrench.

Fortunately, Scott Johnson, everyone’s favorite diabetic hugger, suggested that we look at the Sears at the Mall of America. (Voilà, all set.) We were at The Mall to meet a bunch of his local Minneapolis peeps with diabetes. I met a bunch of fun people, and I think we all had a great time. Scott’s a great guy with a great family, and I’m so thankful that he kept me entertained between the time that I arrived yesterday and when I left for Iowa today. Thanks again, Scott.

I’ll be in Iowa for most of the next week visiting my family and some more diabetes peeps before the Twin Cities Tour de Cure ride next Saturday. Today, I spent time with my father’s side of the family, most of whom I hadn’t seen in three years. Tomorrow, after a short ride in the morning, I’m going to visit my brother.

It’s strange being back in Iowa, a place that I feel I should like more than I do. I was born here. It’s where I passed the first fifteen years of my life and where much of my family still lives. It’s also—most importantly—the place where I went to college and met Lisa. And it’s pretty . . . in a very Grant Wood kinda way.

Until next time, here are some pictures.

Posted in Cycling, I am Rembrandt, This is who we are, Travel | 1 Comment

Blood Glucose Just Is


Wow, time has flown by! Diabetes Blog Week is almost over. Today’s prompt: “What is one thing you would tell someone that doesn’t have diabetes about living with diabetes?”

I feel like I should have something profound to say here, as if after almost thirteen years of diabetes—has it really been that long?—I should be some kind of sage. But when it comes down to it, living everyday with a chronic illness renders it rather banal.

Doing all of the diabetes things (checking the blood, using insulin, changing infusion sets, looking at CGM graphs, being mindful of all the factors that affect blood glucose, and doing so many other activities) becomes just another part of living. It’s an unwanted part, to be sure, but those of us living with the disease integrate it into the fabric and rhythms of our life because we have to. Sartre and Camus would remind us that we’re always making choices, but practically our options are severely constrained when it comes to either accepting this disease and making it part of who we are or deciding to ignore it and face the consequences.

What this means is that we live life in multiple ways. We have the “normal”/”healthy”/non-diabetic portion with jobs, commutes, families, hobbies, and obligations, not to mention anxiety, joy, boredom, failure, and success. And then we have the part where we pick up the slack for our malfunctioning endocrine systems. This brings its own tasks, obligations, diversions, emotions, friendships, and opportunities to be better than yesterday. Diabetes is just another “thing” that we do. And like other things in life, sometimes it’s surprisingly easy, while other times it’s cruelly difficult. Sometimes we use these challenges in life and diabetes as a springboard to transcendence, and other times we just can’t wait for them to be done so that we can say, “Well, that sucked. Let’s never fucking do it again if we can help it.”

Diabetes just is.

It’s an aspect of my life that I manage (or mismanage) like any other part. Could I have better BG numbers and be less afraid of insulin? Yes. Could I also sleep more, floss regularly, and worry less? Yes to all. Do I mostly do alright with the diabetic and nondiabetic parts of my life? Absolutely. Diabetes isn’t a separate thing from me, but it is also not an essential, defining part of who I am. Just as I would never say, “I’m a toothbrusher,” it seems ridiculous to assume that my diabetes shapes the essence of my life any more than my toothbrush. I would rather say that I’m a husband, a software engineer, a triathlete, and an international playboy, and I just happen to do all of these things with diabetes.

That’s what I would say to people with or without diabetes: This illness is just another part of life, so don’t expect it to be our top priority or our defining characteristic. There’s more to us than that. It is, nevertheless, an important part of our lives, and it’s going to have an impact on what we choose to do and how we do it. Occasionally, it’s going to mess everything up. Try to be as Zen and thoughtful in your acceptance of this part of us as we are trying to be ourselves and as you would be of any other aspect of our lives.

Posted in Diabetes, Diabetes Blog Week, Life Lessons, This is who we are | 2 Comments

Does This Post Make My Butt Look Big? Seriously, I Have No Idea.

I’ve been thinking about this post—what to write and how to write it—for many weeks now. In fact, I’ve been wondering whether to post it at all. Primarily, I want it to be helpful and not self-indulgent or confessional. Not knowing what my message is makes this a big risk. Furthermore, I don’t feel broken any more . . . well not very much . . . and I’m not looking for anyone’s sympathies. This is for the people out there who may have a similar story and assume that they’re alone.

The few people that I’ve talked about it one-on-one have all said that it will likely be useful to someone out there, so I’ve decided to go ahead and write it. Besides, May is Mental Health Month, and reducing the stigma of mental health issues by bringing this kind of thing to light is what the month is all about.

Enough stalling. On with the dispatch!


When I graduated from high school, I weighed 135 lbs (61 kg). Since I’m 5’11″ (180 cm) tall, that put my BMI at the extremely low end of normal and healthy. I was always thin when I was growing up—some used to say “skinny,” which I always hated hearing because there was usually judgment involved when it was said. I was, to quote Lisa’s matter-of-fact assessment, a “stick boy,” but to me that seemed normal. The way I looked at 18 was how I’d always known myself. Being thin and athletic was part of my concept of who I was.

Why did I weigh so little? Simply put, I didn’t eat very much. I just wasn’t that interested in food. Don’t get me wrong, I ate three good meals a day, and throughout my whole life I’ve enjoyed good food and indulged—yes, even overindulged—when it was plentiful. For the most part, though, it wasn’t. I don’t want to make it sound like I was starved, because I wasn’t. I ate at mealtimes; I ate what was available, which was pretty healthy; I didn’t ever feel overly full; I rarely got a lot of satisfaction from eating; and I didn’t mind being a little hungry.

When I got some freedom in high school, I kept eating the way I always had. Eating healthy was a choice, and (perhaps) I put more pressure on myself than was necessary to eat well for several reasons. (1) I had good eating habits and enjoyed some of the healthier foods, although (even then) eating veggies wasn’t a routine choice. (2) People in my family tend to get larger as they get older, and I didn’t want that to happen to me. In our defense, my grandmother’s desserts are delicious and plentiful! (3) As an athlete, I knew food is fuel. Even at that age I understood that the better the food, the better my running performance was. (4) It was America in the late 80s and early 90s. Even though obesity wasn’t an American epidemic yet, the media was starting to get saturated with stories about “good foods” and “bad foods.” I seemed to take those stories with more gravitas and certainty than they likely deserved.

I thought I was normal. I still do think my teenage self was alright, if atypical. I certainly never thought I had an eating disorder. There might have been clues that I thought about food the wrong way, but I didn’t see them as such. After a cross-country race I was cooling down with a friend who we all thought had an eating disorder. When I declined a hunk of French bread from her loaf, she said, “If I have to eat, you have to eat, too.” Then there was the time in my first year of college when the resident assistant on my floor tried to give me a flier for an eating disorder support group. And when we were newly married and going on road trips, Lisa would from time to time remind me that normal people eat lunch even when it’s inconvenient. I was able to shrug off the first event—my teammate was being friendly, and I certainly wanted her to eat—and Lisa and I were doing the normal thing of figuring out a shared schedule. But the support group suggestion upset me quite a bit. How much I ate was no one’s business but my own, I thought, and I certainly didn’t see myself as having a problem.

Was I calorie deficient? No. Did I have an eating disorder? It’s difficult to say looking back after all these years, but I’m inclined to say “no.” I certainly had several of the elements of disordered thinking about food and body image that are typical in anorexia and orthorexia, but I never actually avoided eating when I was hungry. Eating disorders are serious medical conditions, and I don’t feel any need to include myself in that group lightly. Plus, I was always considered very healthy; no doctor that I can remember ever suggested I was underweight or malnourished. Nevertheless, it’s a fine line and I was close to it. (Looking back, I’d say “uncomfortably close.”)

What I do know, after more than 20 years of being thin and then gaining and losing weight a couple of times, is that at 37 I have body image issues which occasionally lead to anxiety and unhappiness.

In a nutshell: I simply cannot see myself objectively.

I know that when most of us look at ourselves in the mirror, we see things that we like and don’t like, and those things usually look worse to us than they do to other people who also get to see them. That’s normal human behavior. I suspect even Clive Owen looks at himself in the mirror and occasionally sighs in frustration.

What I’m talking about is not really knowing whether I’m the right size and not knowing if the things I don’t like about myself are actually problems or just a symptom of my messed up body image. My mind’s concept of myself is still the person who weighed 135 lbs, had bony arms, and a very outie belly button.

As a triathlete who trains all the time and weighs between 145-150 pounds—depending on the season or phase of the moon, it seems—I’m able to convince myself that what I see isn’t actually the way things are, but it’s all based on faith and logic and not on what I think I see. This I can manage pretty well. “That Buddha belly there,” I think to myself, “isn’t really there. And besides you need it for your infusion sets and CGM sensors. So don’t get any ideas.” And, “That kind of jowly area you have there . . . it isn’t really there either. Really. Really. I know. Trust me. Really.”

What I still have a hard time dealing with are the comments from other people that I’m too thin.

I feel like I’m in a very good place with both my weight and my feelings on food. (Although sometimes I think diabetes would be easier if I didn’t have to eat, that’s completely beside the point and only ever happens when I really, really want to eat but am battling long periods of high blood glucose.) I like to eat. I look forward to eating—and cooking, too! I eat meals of all sizes. I snack. I eat so-called junk food along with my healthy lunch from home. I adore ice cream. Food and I are tight, and my weight stays where it is only because I workout.

But when other people suggest that I’m working out too much or have lost too much weight—even though I haven’t lost any in almost 18 months—my mental equilibrium gets thrown off. I know that I should take it as the joke or sarcastic compliment that it almost certainly was. But not knowing what I really look like and having been defensive in the past, these things leave me worried that maybe people are trying to tell me something that I really should be able to see for myself— just like my RA suggested almost 20 years ago. There’s a fine line for me between shrugging off these comments while being happy with who I have become and accepting that I really just don’t know whether there’s a kernel of truth in them.


I don’t really know how to end this post except to say that it’s not as bad as it might sound from the last few paragraphs. I think about food all the time because I have diabetes, and I think about how I look most mornings after taking a shower and whenever I change my diabetes paraphernalia, but I don’t feel dragged down by food or my body image very often. Mostly I just want anyone reading this to know that (a) if you’ve felt the same way, you’re not alone, (b) body image problems and eating disorders can happen to men, (c) sometimes people are trying to help you the best way they know how and sometimes there just wise-cracking, and (d) it’s okay to like yourself no matter how you think you look. Well, that’s probably enough rambling for now.

p.s. — Yes, this post was scary to write, but it was scarier to publish it.

p.p.s. — If you feel like leaving a comment—which I encourage—please be open-minded and courteous.

Posted in Diabetes, Life Lessons, This is who we are | 13 Comments