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Archive: May 1, 2008
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From:
| 508 Race Office [raceoffice@the508.com] |
Sent:
| Thursday, May 01, 2008 6:18 PM |
To:
| Ole Eichhorn [ole@pacbell.net] |
Subject:
| Furnace Creek 508 |
Attachments:
| 2008entry508.pdf |
Hello and congratulations!
You have been selected to compete in the 25th Anniversary Furnace Creek 508 on October 4-6, 2008, "The Toughest 48 Hours in Sport". You are part of a select group who will participate in this world-famous spiritual odyssey through Death Valley and the Mojave Desert. We look forward to sharing the experience with you!
To confirm your spot in the race field, please submit the appropriate Furnace Creek 508 entry fee and the attached three-page Pdf form WITHIN ONE WEEK.
2008 will be an extra special edition of "The Toughest 48 Hours in Sport" as we celebrate the race's 25 year history. Thank YOU for being a part of history!
Best of luck with your preparation and please let us know if there is anything else that we can do to help.
Sincerely,
Chris Kostman
Chief Adventure Officer, Race Director, and Totemizer
AdventureCORPS, Inc.
http://www.the508.com
Yay, I made it! Or maybe, crap, now I'm in for it... Whew. There are two tragedies in life, not getting what you want, and getting what you want. Which is this? Stay tuned :)
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As you saw, I have been accepted to compete in the Furnace Creek 508 bicycle race, "The Toughest 48 Hours in Sport". This is a pretty incredible event; competitors have 48 hours to complete 508 miles through Death Valley and the Mojave Desert, including 35,000' of climbing. For some people it is a race to see how fast they can do it, for me it will be a contest to see if I can do it. It will be one of the hardest and coolest things I've ever done.
 To give myself extra motivation, I'm asking all of you to sponsor me, and will donate the proceeds to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. You may know, in addition to being one of the greatest cyclists of all time, having won seven consecutive Tours de France, Lance Armstrong is also a cancer survivor, and his foundation is prominent in funding cancer research, raising awareness of cancer, and most importantly helping cancer victims and survivors. It is a wonderful organization and [I think] a very appropriate recipient of whatever donations I am able to raise in this way.
If you are interested in sponsoring me and making a donation to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, please let me know. Your interest will be a pledge, and if I am successful in finishing the race, I'll let you know so you can make a donation. The race is this October 4-6, and I'll post / email progressively more information as that date gets closer. I also plan to post periodic updates so everyone knows how much money we've raised together!
I am pretty excited about competing in this race, but also pretty daunted by the difficulty. In the middle of the night on Saturday, with 250 miles ridden and 250 left to ride, the idea that I'm helping to raise a bunch of money for cancer will be a great motivator. Thank you in advance for your sponsorship (!), and stay tuned for more details...
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Happy May Day to you! Man, four months gone in 2008 already, one third of the year. Not that it hasn't been eventful - wow, has it ever - but still it does not seem like it has been that long. Among other things, that means I've been blogging again for four months! Yay. I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am :)
Biking news - today I did the Stunt / Piuma loop, with my friend Tim; man, I felt strong. Last Tuesday I did the Mount Palomar / Lake Henshaw loop, and that felt good, too. I think I'm ready for Breathless Agony Saturday; now I just have to eat and drink a lot tomorrow, to make sure my tank is full.
As you saw, today I was accepted to ride in the Furnace Creek 508 (yay!) and am turning it into Ole's Ride for Cancer (yay!). I'm pretty excited about that!
So that's my news, now, let's see what's happening everywhere else, shall we?
 TTAC on the Dodge Challenger: the retro-flop has landed. What I think is really interesting is the accompanying picture, see at left, comparing the 1970 Challenger to the 2008 model. Each seemingly epitomizes the design ethic of its time. Now, which is more attractive? To me there is no question, the 1970 car is way nicer looking. The thick bodies, skinny windows, and big rear ends of today's cars are ugly. It can only be a matter of time before the pendulum swings back... 
I'm shocked: Twitter said to be abandoning Ruby on Rails. This should spark a great debate in the Web 2.0 echo chamber, but really, we all know Ruby performance sucks, so why would it scale?
Other shocking news: Blu-ray: the future has been delayed. "Hot on the heels of last week's report from ABI Research noting that many consumers may not see the picture quality difference between Blu-ray and standard DVDs comes the latest Blu-ray sales figures from NPD Group. And they're not pretty." The real problem is online video, the attack from below. Apple just announced they will be selling new movies on iTunes the same day they're released on DVD. That's just another nail. Blu-ray will never be big, before long it will be irrelevant, its "victory" over HD-DVD long forgotten. Remember laser discs?
 Here we have the R2D2 DVD projector. Once you see it, you realize this was inevitable, how utterly cool. Too bad it costs $3,000, however...
 Derek Miller on the joys of the old IBM 101 keyboard. Man, I loved those keyboards, makes me want to go find one. Nothing quite like that real metal base, with the unique buckling-spring key action. And you can be heard typing for miles :) Right now I use a nine-year old Micron keyboard; I love it, but I know the day will come when a key will break, and then what? Today's wimpy limpy keyboards are massively worse. Well there is always eBay...
Finally, via my friend Peter, these pictures of a record-breaking Coke / Mentos explosion-fest, as 1,500 students discover the joys of Chemistry. Whoa.
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