5K Run

We ran in the YMCA family fun and fitness 5K yesterday as a family. I've got to tell you, I haven't run 3 miles all at once in probably 30 years. The last time we ran, in a YMCA 2K fun run (which is about 1.2 miles) I jogged about a quarter mile, then walked a hundred yards or so to get my breath, then jogged some more, then walked and, you get the idea.

Yesterday I set out with no great expectations. I started out with about 150 runners down the course and just tried to stay within my head. My breathing was pretty easy and I didn't try to keep pace with anyone else. We made the turn at the end of the first street and headed up a slight incline. Uphill, even slightly, seemed to take much more effort, but I kept my breathing even and pushed on.

I was surprised when, still jogging, I passed a chalk marking on the street announcing 1 mile. Wow! I hadn't been able to jog a mile since Marion and I first started dating. I stopped at the water station for a second and then ran on. I had been slightly ahead of Nik and Marion for most of the way, but soon I heard the slapping of Nik's tiny shoes running up behind me. Marion, Nik and I ran together for the next mile or so, and yes, I was still running.

In our third mile, on the way back to the finish line, we had more uphill running. Nik and Marion slowly pulled away from me and I was running alone. They ended up finishing about 150 yards ahead of me, but finish I did! Brodie had run by himself the whole way ahead of us and he finished about 1 minute before Nik and Marion. Brodie's time earned him the 3rd place award for 10 and under boys and he got a medal. Nik's finish was captured by a photographer from the Ventura Star and appeared in Sunday's newspaper. You can view the article by clicking here:http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2009/jul/26/ventura-family-ymca-holds-fun-and-fitness-5k-run/

So, how was I able to run 3 miles? I've been training with a personal trainer 5 days a week for the last 3 weeks. They work me so hard that sometimes I don't know if I am going to pass-out or puke, and both are a possibility. During the 3 weeks I have seen my stamina increasing, and I guess this run shows that it's made a difference. That being said, I am sooooo sore today, as is my whole family. You know it's bad when your 5 year old complains about muscle soreness. Never-the-less, I am proud of my whole family for running together and finishing strong.

Brodie and Nik's Tree Fort

Well, it was a long time coming, but construction of Brodie and Nik's backyard tree fort has finally been completed and the grand opening was celebrated on Saturday afternoon.

This structure sits over 9 feet high in the branches of the 40 year old plum tree in our backyard. I've never tried to build anything even remotely this difficult before, and my computer-programmer hands are blistered and raw from the effort. I relied greatly on the help and experience of my neighbor Chuck Yuncker in coming up with the final plan and executing it safely. It's a scary thing to trust your children's safety to the inexperienced carpentry skills of their father, so I appreciate Chuck's suggestions to make sure this was properly built.

Although it sits nestled in the cradle of branches of the tree, almost none of the weight is borne by the tree itself, but instead it is supported at the top of four 4X4 beams bolted to brackets set in concrete poured almost 2 feet deep. Even so, there's still a few inches of sway at the top of those beams when people are moving around up there, which is as it should be in a tree house, I say.

I started work on this in January before my first trip to Africa, but only got the concrete foundations poured before I had to leave on my trip. When I returned 2 weeks later I was so exhausted that I wasn't able to work on it for my first 5 days at home. I only had one more week before I was to leave again for Africa and I was determined to finish it before I left. I worked on it every afternoon and made good progress, but Mother Nature intervened before I could finish. I only had one day's work left to finish the ladder stairs when it started to rain, and it rained for the last 2 days before I again boarded a plane for Africa. I felt bad leaving again with it undone, but there was nothing to do about it.

When I returned last week from Africa I was eager to finish, but again my jet-lag and exhaustion kept me side-lined for a few days until the weekend. On Saturday it was only 3 hour's work to finish the stairs and open for business. The boys are very excited, of course, and happy for their new club-house/fort/reading lounge/play house. They've moved some chairs and toys up there already and have grand plans for additions and improvements.

Pete the Bird

Out of all the animals that you might see when visiting Africa, one of the most amazing is the Marabou Stork. This impressive and ugly bird can stand nearly 5 feet tall and have a wing-span approaching 10 feet wide.

In 2008 during our first extended visit here to Kampala for the taping of season 2 our director, Dennis, was having lunch with our executive producer, Richard, on the patio at the Serena hotel. As they were dining there they noticed these gigantic birds walking not far away in the gardens. Never having seen a bird like this before they asked the waiter, "What is the name of that bird there?" The waiter said he didn't know, but he would find out for them.

He came back a few minutes later and informed them that, "The bird's name is Peter, but I don't know his surname."

In both Kampala and Nairobi you can see large flocks of Marabou soaring high in the sky and you often see dozens of them nesting in the trees.

My friend, Raj, in trying to describe these birds described them as "nearly Beryl-sized", referring to a member of our Nairobi staff, pictured here. For the record, Beryl has nicer legs.

A Walk Through Kampala, Uganda

Yesterday after we finished taping, instead of going to the Fitness Centre here at the hotel I asked John Sibi-Okumu (JSO, the host of our show) if he would take a walk with me through the city. Click on the slide show, below, to go directly to my Google Picasa web album.



In two weeks here this was my first, and possibly my only chance to get outside of the hotel where I live and work. It was a warm and humid afternoon when JSO and I started on our walk at about 5pm.

We started off walking down towards the Sheraton and after walking through the beautiful lobby of that hotel we walked into their gardens, which also serves as something of a public park. Exiting the gardens on the opposite side we walked along the busy streets. The traffic in Kampala, like much of Africa, is incredible. The cars and trucks are packed closely together, and boda-boda motorcycle taxis weave in and out of any open space. Trucks with 20 men standing in the back drove by, but we were unable to grab photos of that. I needed to be careful in openly taking pictures on the streets as some people might be offended, so we took our pictures of street scenes by pretending to take pictures of each other and then shifting the focus of our camera at the last minute.

Our walk took us to the famous Nakasero Market, a large public market not for tourists but for those who live here. Hundreds and hundreds of small stalls crammed under a shelter where you could buy produce, spices and other food stuffs, and household goods of all kinds. It was a wild scene with the shoppers packed almost as closely as the vendor's stalls. It was my favorite thing I've seen on this trip, by far.

Our walk took us along the busy streets and many times we had to cross them. You take your life in your hands crossing the street; The cars and boda-boda don't slow at all and sometimes drive so close to the side walk that you are nearly swiped by their side mirrors. Plus, they drive on the wrong side of the street here, so I'm always looking the wrong way when I want to cross.

JSO took me to a nice little curio shop hidden under a street in a subterranean shopping area and I had my first and only chance to add some money to the Ugandan economy.

It was a wonderful time and a very different view of Kampala than that which I see from the hotel balcony.

Happy Birthday Brodie!

10 years ago today my first son, Brodie, came into the world and changed my life in wonderful and magical ways. Before that day I thought that love was something that was finite, something you stored in a jar, and if you wanted to share it with more people each would get a smaller share.

Brodie showed me that love multiplies. When he came into our lives he filled our home with more love than we had ever before known.

Brodie is smart, generous, curious, kind and above all, loving. He is one of the brightest lights in my life, and I'm sorry not to be at home with him on this day when he celebrates his first decade on this planet. I've no doubt that if he wants to, he will celebrate some of his birthdays on other planets, too.

Brodie, I love you, I miss you, and we'll celebrate when Dad comes home.

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

When Hamlet gave his famous soliloquy with these words he was contemplating suicide. Thankfully, that has not been much in my thoughts (except for about 3 hours on Friday night when things were going particularly bad.) My thoughts have been more about peaceful sleep.

The long hours that we work here are not conducive to rest. We normally work at least 15 hours each day and sometimes as many as 19. When you finally get a chance to get to your room and lie down your mind is still churning away so that sleep doesn't come quickly or last very long. Couple that with the 11 hour time difference and the resulting jet-lag, and you can see that good sleep is hard to come by.

On Saturday night after our first day of taping our Director, Dennis, asked me to try and fix an annoying problem with the video output from my computer, a white raster flash that occured every time a new question was displayed. I worked from 8 until 10:30 on the problem without finding a solution, so I decided to 'sleep on it'. This was the first time since I had arrived that I had been able to get to bed before 1am, and in 6 nights in Uganda I had yet to sleep for more than 4 hours. I fell asleep quickly and slept well until about 2:30am when I woke up with the solution to Dennis' problem. Apparently sleeping on it actually works! I lay in bed for a while going over the solution in my head and was excited to find that it should actually work. Well, there was no more sleep to be had that night, so at 4:30 I got out of bed and showered and then headed down to the control room to re-program my application to institute the change. It worked perfectly, by the way.

Sunday night was my first good night's sleep. I got to bed at 10:30pm and woke to something I had never seen before in my room, and it scared me half to death. Daylight! I opened my eyes to see light coming through the window in my room and I bolted out of bed in a panic, thinking that I had overslept and was late getting down to the control room. Actually, it was only 6:45am, and I had plenty of time for a shower and breakfast before work, but the adrenalin rush lasted for several hours.

Monday night was another good night's sleep; I was actually awakened by the alarm on my cell phone, which I have turned on and put into Airplane Mode just so I can use it as an alarm clock. On Tuesday we had our fourth day of taping and finally reached the half-way point. It was my best day, energy-wise, so far.

Wednesday is a 'dark day' here, which is to say, a day off from taping. All of the participants and most of the crew were being sent out on tours to Jinja, the source of the Nile river. Mary also arranged a night out at a club for our crew on Tuesday night with a special reserved area for them with bottle service, all payed for by the production. This was a great chance for the crew to get together and socialize, blow off some steam, get rip-roaring drunk and then have the next day open to sleep it off.

As much fun as that sounded, I opted to stay at the hotel and turn in early again. Sleep is more fun.

An Army Marches On Its Stomach

As I write this, it is one in the afternoon and we are just coming back from our lunch break after having recorded 2 more shows this morning.

In years past, the quality of the food has been one of the biggest complaints of the American staff working here in Uganda. It's not just that the food has been different from that to which we are accustomed (which it has,) but that sometimes the food has made us physically ill.

In the most memorable example from the first year, the caterers prepared finger sandwiches for afternoon tea, which the crew descended upon with gusto. Unfortuately, the warm mayonnaise dressing did not fare well in the 95 degree heat there and we ended up losing almost 20 percent of our crew the next few days to food poisoning, some of them even needing hospitalization.

Last year in season 2 every meal was a buffet of indistinguishable hunks of meat simmered in some saucy stew served with rice, usually chicken or goat. While goat is a delicacy here in east Africa, usually reserved for feasts, it did not appeal to our American crew day after day, especially as it appeared to have been butchered by a blind man with a meat cleaver; Bones hacked in half, weird joints in the middle of a hunk of meat, gristle and sinew in every bite, it became the joke of the event, "Try the goat!"

In this, our third season, we would be spending a week longer here to tape double the number of shows as previous seasons and Mary and her staff realized that morale would be an issue, so they devoted considerable effort to the menus that the hotel would be serving. Mary already works 27 hours a day on this project, and indeed, moved from California to Kenya this year to make even better use of her limited time, so for her to spend hours on the crew menu shows that it had some importance to her.

She and her staff came with cookbooks and their own recipes from home and together taught the Ugandan kitchen Chef to make chili, tacos, jerk chicken and Philly cheese-steak. They have arranged a nice variety of themed meals to break up the monotony, and provided comfort foods to help us better manage the incredible stress that comes with this production. Yesterday at lunch we even had some honest-to-goodness chocolate ice cream.

It has definitely made a difference this year for most of us, and had made this sometimes hellish experience less unpleasant. Having said this, I've just this moment been informed that tonight's menu includes goat. Seriously. Oh, well.