Charlene was recruited for the race by a group that was raising money for the Gavin R Stevens Foundation. They needed a real deal blind person to run the race with them (to add, I guess, some verisimilitude to the undertaking) and not surprisingly it proved tougher than they expected to find a blind person willing to undertake a mud run. Charlene is a balls to the wall athlete who has been blind from birth. She has run marathons, done sprint triathlons, completed a 50 mile race, (tandem) biked in Europe – there’s not much she’s afraid of (except flying insects getting in her face). The race officials were going to let her go around all of the mud pits to which Chuck responded, “No way!” and made her go through at least a few of them. He went through a bunch as well, and ended up sliding into one pit that turned out to be deeper than he expected. At the finish he was so mud-covered that we couldn’t really see what he had done to himself, but later in the day it was clear that he had done a bit of a number on himself.

Day One, after washing

Day Two, looking icky

At the doctor's

Three days on antibiotics

As the images show, things got ugly. It didn’t help that the next day we decided to do an ocean swim and he pulled on (then pulled off) a wetsuit over the leg. Each day the leg became a bit more tender and got redder and angrier, and finally this past Wednesday, as puss started oozing out from the chunkier wounds he decided it was time to go see a doctor. Three prescriptions and one shot later we headed home. He’s on two antibiotics and has some cream he’s supposed to put on it. What was really amazing is it took less than 12 hours on the antibiotics for his leg to look better.

The thing is, we forget that he was getting cancer treatments for 18 months, and that those only wrapped up about six months ago. The chemo took such an obvious toll on him – he lost his hair and looked and felt awful, but he was on immunotherapy treatments for an additional year. And though the immunotherapy drugs didn’t make him lose his hair or look sick, the one thing ALL the cancer fighting drugs had in common was that they kicked the crap out of his immune system, leaving him vulnerable to infections of all sorts. He’s had two colds in the past six months – and this is a guy who never gets sick! Cancer is a real bitch, and the recovery is no cakewalk either! I’m going to try and make a bigger effort to remember that and try to keep him from doing any extraordinarily harebrained activities in the future (hahaha!!). Like I said, I’ll TRY.

Anyway, he’s mostly fine now (nothing’s oozing) and plans on staying out of mud pits for a while.

• Never have any portion of your body directly over a fireworks device when lighting the fuse.

This ends my public service announcement for the day.

I’ve been running races for, well shoot, 34 years or so. Over the course of those years I’ve seen a lot of changes take place in the running and racing world. It’s been a bit seesaw-ish, sometimes running was replaced by aerobics, or rollerskating, or disco dancing as the happening way to get fit. But over the past ten years or so there has been a steady increase in the popularity of running (and racing). That’s a good thing, right? Sort of. The downside of it is that there’s been a real trend away from serious racing to a more casual let’s just go out there and have some fun, take the kids and heck even bring the dog(s)! And don’t observe even the most common of courtesies and get out of people’s way. Stuff like that.

Take today for instance: and I have to, at least to some extent, blame the race organizers. As I said, they advertise this as a neighborhood race. You have a pretty big ass neighborhood when 2,500 folks show up, and you use timing chips and charge $45 per head to run. But that’s cool. What’s not, in my mind anyway, is that the organizers persist in letting people with dogs and people with strollers mix it up with the general running population. The first two miles or so of the race are pure mayhem where the main goal is to stay upright and not get run into. Two years ago (this isn’t a new problem) I was shoved to the ground in the first 50 yards, and the idiot who did it just kept right on going. Because he was so going to win that race! (Not.) Grrr.

I know, I should shut up and just enjoy the race or quit doing it if it’s so annoying. I think that’s what we’ll do next year, or find a local race that nobody know about (and then I won’t write about it). I also realize that I am really sounding like an old grump in this post. Argh!! Not only that, I’ve become a SLOW grumpy old fart!!

*sigh*

More on battery life next. Oh, and the burning question we’ve all been asking: will it blend? Yes it will!

A few years ago we went to New Jersey and I saw the, well, mansion may be too strong a word, so I’ll just call it the big ass house where Chuck grew up. And I saw clearly then the reality of the choice that his mom had made all those years ago. She literally gave it all up for love. She and Chuck’s real dad and stepdad are all dead now, so we can’t ask them the big questions, like “Was it worth it?” “Would you do it all again?” We go through life, making choices, making decisions. Sometimes we think the decisions out, other times we just jump. In my life I have never heard of anyone who made a leap of faith the size of Chuck’s mom. Could I have ever made a choice like that? I have no idea. Could you?

On a related note, I also read the following shocking statistics: PG&E spent $46 million to convince voter to vote yes on Prop 16!! (It failed.) Meg Whitman spent $90 per vote in the primary (for a total of $80 million) versus Jerry Brown’s 20 CENTS (thanks Calbuzz for the info).

Hey, here’s an idea!! What if all of the big spenders took all of the money they throw away so casually on stupid campaign propaganda and contributed it all to a fund to pay down California’s deficit (currently in the $20 billion neighborhood)? Okay, even if you combine all of the spending (somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million) that would make only a dent – but maybe some teachers could get their jobs back, some libraries could stay open, some highways could get repaved.

Just saying.

• $24.99/month: 20 MB Data Global Add-On gives you 20 MB of usage within more than 90 countries
• $59.99/month: 50 MB Data Global Add-On gives you 50 MB of usage within more than 90 countries
• $119.99/month: 100 MB Data Global Add-On gives you 100 MB of usage within more than 90 countries
• $199.99/month: 200 MB Data Global Add-On gives you 200 MB of usage within more than 90 countries
• Overage rate is $0.005/KB within the more than 90 discounted countries

We opted for the $60 for 50MB of data. They told us to cancel when we got back to the US. Cool!  So my new billing month started on Apr 20, and I kept international data roaming active until Apr 27 when we got home. My bill came today and when I looked at data roaming, they started charging me per kilobyte for international data on Apr 20. My total bill: $421.50. Snap!

When I called customer service (after having printed out my entire bill – sorry trees!), they said that since I hadn’t kept international data roaming active for the ENTIRE billing month, they started charging me a prorated amount per kilobyte from the start of my new billing cycle on Apr 20. I stood firm, and said that we had not been told this when we signed up for international data roaming (and if you read about the package here you will see no mention of prorating or early cancellation). End result: they extended the international data roaming to the end of the month for $40, and forgave me the overage charges, reducing my bill to $283. at&t was quite nice about all of this, but guys – if you had better documentation you wouldn’t have so many peeved customers.

Moral of the story: if you sign up for international data roaming packages, keep them in effect for the entire billing month you’re traveling even if you are only gone one week of the month. If you don’t you may be in for a surprise at the end of the month.