Engagement

"Whitney, will you marry me?"

(post is a few days late, sorry!).

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West Coast

"Leaving San Francisco is like saying goodbye to an old sweetheart. You want to linger as long as possible." -Walter Cronkite
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California Coffee

Outside the Guerilla Cafe in Berkeley. My latte came in a bowl - amazing.

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Pier 39, San Fran.

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Boise City, Okla.

For real:

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Berkeley

"I never saw so many well-dressed, well-fed, business-looking Bohemians in my life." -Oscar Wilde
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Merry Christmas

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Hot hot hot

Death Valley yesterday ... sunny and 70 degrees = just about perfect!

Happy Christmas Eve :)

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Rocky

"Do you have any petrified wood or rocks in the vehicle?" -the park ranger questions us upon entry to the Petrified Forest National Park.
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Red Rocks Today

"My favorite thing is to go where I've never been." -Diane Arbus
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Overload

"Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen." -Benjamin Disraeli.

Vegas?!
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Ruffled Feathers

Sign outside our motel room in Elkhart, Kan. Amazing.

Santa Fe tomorrow!

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Go West

"Before he sets out, the traveller must possess fixed interests and facilities, to be served by travel. If he drifted aimlessly from country to country he would not travel but only wander, ramble as a tramp. The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere so his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations." -George Santayana

...and so the Great Road Trip adventures begin :)
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Dreaming

"Together we will outsleep the night." -Insomniac by Galway Kinnell (as heard on the Writer's Almanac; full text here).

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Lessons in Learning

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned, and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly." -Thomas Huxley
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Staying Cool on Labor Day

The Heart of America marathon makes another appearance in Runner's World magazine (Jan '10 issue) ... although I have to say, about 15 seconds in the ice bath was more than enough for me.

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Hearing Voices

Handed to me in a trail-side parking lot after a run:

Must've been desperate for business...

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Final Days

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school." -Albert Einstein

One week left in the semester...
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Home

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Craigslist

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Show Me the Money

"He missed his opportunity for a sugar momma." -a friend comments on his brother failing to date a doctoral student.
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Winter Weather

"It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it anyway." -Teilhard de Chardin, French geologist. Well, it's definitely cold here in Missouri.
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Issues

Good grief, let it go, Hal.
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After Life

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Job Talk

"A job's what you force yourself to pay attention to for money. With work, you don't have to force yourself. There are a lot of jobs in this country, and that's good because they keep people occupied. That's why they're called 'occupations.'" -a line from Blue Highways, by Columbian William Least Heat-Moon.
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Grammar Joke

“I know a guy who had to have part of his colon taken out. He ended up with a semicolon.” -as told by a recent interviewee (after he told me about his wife's colonoscopy...ick).
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Bells are Ringing

"May all your miles be merry." -on the Jingle Bell 5k T-shirt (happening today!). Ho ho ho.
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Injuries = No Fun

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Best Gift Ever

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They Want My Business

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Lots of Love xo

"I was poor as a church mouse... I told her, if we don't do a lot of expensive things, I could see you every day." -one of the men I interviewed for a story about Columbia couples who've been married 50+ years and who are still very much in love. Must've worked, they've been together 52 years :)
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An Education

Another Ragtag movie (how I spent my last night of Thanksgiving break). Very British, made me miss Uppingham.
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Foxy

"If you're gonna cuss, you're not gonna cuss with me, you little cuss!" -Badger, in Fantastic Mr. Fox. Great film :)
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Reading Days

"Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack." -Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting.
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Check Minus

"If Spivey felt Marathon to be unrealistic, he hasn't been in the sport that long." -Hal Higdon's reply to my review of his book on Amazon.com. Apparently finishing seven marathons - including Boston - doesn't justify my negative response to the book's ridiculous conclusion (heat waves, tornados, photo finishes, helicopter crashes, sponsorship issues, romance, supermodels and the pope?! Please.). Maybe I'd take his criticism more seriously if he realized I'm a girl (I have interviewed him, after all). See the entire fiasco here.
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Give Thanks

"Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for - annually, not oftener - if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments." -Mark Twain
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Be Alive

"A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh proposition; they do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life." -Robert Louis Stevenson, An Apology for Idlers.
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Holiday Pounds

"I'm having such a fat day; everything's just hanging out." -some lady in the locker room who decided to share her weight woes with me.
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Thanksgiving Break (finally)

"Come, woo me, woo me, for now I am in holiday humor and like enough to consent." -Shakespeare.
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Coen Bros. Strike Again

"Accept with simplicity everything that happens to you." -a line from Jewish scholar Rashi sets the tone for A Serious Man, which played last night at Ragtag. Definitely a film to make you think.

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The Few, The Proud

Another bumper sticker sighting...
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Evening at The Blue Note

My Mason Jennings concert review & an amazing audio-slideshow HERE.

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Winston

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give." -Churchill ... A quote out of my new 2010 (!) planner.
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Direction

"If stuff lights up for you, if you’re excited by certain things or feel joy, you should follow that. Trust that’s the right path." -part of my interview with Mason Jennings. Read my story here, and see him at The Blue Note tonight!
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A Blessing

"Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body, I would break into blossom." -James Wright. Full text & Garrison Keillor recording here.
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Lost in Space

"Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm." -NPR's Neil Conan references JFK during Saturday night's Ensemble Galilei's Universe of Dreams.
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Jackie Speaks

"If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much." -Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Bungle. Good word.
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Run for Your Life

My morning (not the usual weekend 5k!):

XCX - Cross Country Xtreme from Off Track Events on Vimeo.

Check out OffTrackEvents for the details...
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Up and Up

"You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall y our grandfather was." -Irish proverb.

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Research

"It's great to do what you like in life and even greater if it helps others." -MU's Dr. Stefan Sarafianos. Profiled here in today's Vox.
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Ewok Moonwalk

Sorry for another video, but this one is too funny to pass up:


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Adding Up

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -Albert Einstein. Well said.
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Blast from the Past

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Sad but True?

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Saturday

"The rhythm of the weekend, with its birth, its planned gaieties, and its announced end, followed the rhythm of life and was a substitute for it." -F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Fashionista

"I wouldn't come to the tennis court in just a pair of shorts and a tennis shirt ... I have to approach life with my own aesthetics about style." -Andre Leon Talley in The September Issue.
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Yes They Can

"The Obamas will be the first First Couple having sex in the White House." -a professor shares her thoughts on the President's love life.
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Turn that Frown Upside Down

"Every time I smile, it hurts. But I don't think that's a reason not to smile." -a kid in my writing class explains how his face is healing after a bike accident. Aww.
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BRR 2009

A snippet from Vox's BRR ride video (yes, that is Snow White followed by me as the "Nerdy" dwarf). Check out the whole thing here. Pictures here.
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November

"Since golden October declined into sombre November and the apples were gathered and stored, and the land became brown sharp points of death in a waste of water and mud.” -T.S. Eliot. Welcome to winter. Ug.
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Hi Hoooo

"It's a dead body!" -a young trick-or-treater freaks out at our inflatable Snow White being towed behind a bike.
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Happy Halloween

"One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place." -Emily Dickinson
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BRR 2009

The Monster Bash from Off Track Events on Vimeo.

Riding to Rocheport tomorrow!
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Hitting the Streets

“I don’t think I would let my 8-year-old run New York City alone.” -Former Columbian Wesley Paul, who completed the NYC marathon when he was an 8-year-old. See the complete NYT article here.
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Pre-Halloween

"Tonight the Great Pumpkin will rise out of the pumpkin patch. He flies through the air and brings toys to all the children of the world." -Linus, in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

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Words and Words

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." -Thomas Mann. Starting to believe this is true as the deadline for my thesis prospectus quickly approaches.
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Religion Flowchart

I'm right where I should be. Amazing.

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Saturday Night

"Whoooo! Going to buy some porn! Yeah!" -some random guy yelling out his car window - through a megaphone - near the Olde Un Theatre. Columbia gets a little crazy on game days - whether or not you're a football fan.
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Don't Mess With

"Change comes whether you want it or not. The question is whether it owns you or you own it." -Evan Smith, former EIC of Texas Monthly, who spoke to the Magazine Staff class yesterday.

Later in his lecture: "The thing that Texans hate more than anything else is ... not executing people. (pause) That joke is funny in all other 49 states. The thing Texans hate more than anything else is having Texas explained to them."
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Race Across the Sky

"You're lining up with everybody; it's just not an elite race of the best bike racers in the world." -Dave Wiens, six-time winner of the Leadville 100. Check out the film :)
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Peter Cottontail

"Does your rabbit like ice cream?" -A Sparky's scooper questions a girl accompanied by a black and white bunny on a leash.
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Competition

"If there's one thing that a makes a guy work, it's hearing footsteps ... and I'm hearing a lot of them, and most of them are from you all." -photojournalist Bill Eppridge addresses Mizzou students at yesterday's Missouri Honor Medalist lecture.
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Coop de Ville

"I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very little feast; and, if I were to fall in love again (which is a great passion, and therefore, I hope, I have done with it), it would be, I think, with prettiness, rather than with majestical beauty." -Abraham Cowley, Of Greatness

Thought this was appropriate after staying in a little Chicken Coop over the weekend :)

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Family Reunion

"Your mom called; she says she'll meet you here on Sunday." -awesome church sign near Osage Beach (sorry I didn't stop for a photo).
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Road Trip

"Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that's even newer. I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake." -J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

Headed back to Columbia today. In the car. Ugg.

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Southern Mo.

"Missouri has the reflexes of its own celebrated mules; this is a state with a kick." -John Gunther, Inside U.S.A.
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