# blueollie

## Tip about I-80: Indiana and Ohio

One thing about I-80 through Indiana and Ohio: bring money. Indiana lets you use a credit card (at some toll booths anyway) but it is 7.50 all the way through. From the Indiana border to I-71 (to Cleveland) is is 11 dollars: cash, each way. The Illinois side had a couple of 1.50 toll booths.

March 16, 2013 Posted by | travel | 2 Comments

## Home: getting caught up.

Yep, that is me, at a rest stop between Cleveland and Chicago. I dressed up for my daughter’s university visit.

Mathematics Mano Singham has an interesting post on the “transitive property”; for real numbers this is $a \le b$ and $b \le c$ implies $a \le c$. For real numbers (or other totally ordered sets), this is no big deal. But there are some situations in which objects that would seem to have such an ordering really don’t.

Here is such an example. Consider dice labeled as follows:

Red beats green 4 out of 6 times. Green beats blue 4 out of 6 times. Blue beats red 4 out of 6 times. All the colored dice tie the “normal” die. More here.

Politics
Yes, it is great that a Republican Senator came out in favor of gay marriage, now that he found out that he has a gay child. Well, if it is really the right thing to do: why not come out prior to this?

A new well-being ranking shows the United States has an alarming ‘sadness belt’ in the South and Midwest where many residents are depressed, obese and disgruntled at work.
Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee scored almost as low as West Virginia in the annual Gallup poll, which looks at six categories including life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors and basic access.

What I found interesting: so many of the cold weather states are on the “happy” side. Why???? 🙂
I suppose it is because those who live there WANT to be there. 🙂

Social

Interesting. Yes, someone else’s obesity isn’t my business. And yes, obesity doesn’t measure pleasantness, intelligence, etc. And yes, too often, fat people are dismissed as being competent merely because of their size.

But this photo is clearly about physical attractiveness. And guess what: we find attractive what we find attractive, period. No one tells me “you had better find this person to be sexually attractive”; I have a built in mechanism that does that for me. 🙂

Note: while I often joke about women runners in spandex, I tend to find those who run the 5K in the 25-33 minute range to be the most attractive; they are fast enough to have some fitness but not so fast that they are all skin-and-bone. Though, yes, some of the faster ones are pretty cute too; these days women at those faster speeds tend to be too young for me. Not ALL of them though. 🙂

March 16, 2013

## Waterfall Glen “run” and sadness

Well, my daughter was not here long enough for my tastes; she is back with her Mom in Texas. In between we took a drive from Peoria to Cleveland to check out Baldwin Wallace University; last night we drove from Cleveland to Chicago so she could catch her flight to Austin.

Since I wanted to be nearby in case something went wrong (flight cancelled, etc.) and I couldn’t escort her to the gate (she is over 18) I decided to hang around Chicago with my cell phone handy; it so happens that near the airport there is this neat park called Waterfall Glen. You can see some photos from this post on a personal website.

Note: the trail did NOT look like this today; I’d say about 30-40 percent of it was covered with frozen slush and other parts were “sort of” muddy (but very runnable).

It was about 30, and it sleeted a bit. But at the trail head, there was a small crowd of trail runners and a group of college cross country runners. While out on the trail I passed a couple of hikers and got passed by one person on a mountain bike and I saw a large group of boys. There were perhaps a couple of dozen runners running in the opposite direction.

Going out I decided to walk a couple of minutes every 15 minutes; that didn’t matter too much because the frozen slush parts slowed you down anyway.

The first obstacle came when I got to the “flooded” sign; the part of the trail near a pond was under water. But there were railroad tracks nearby (with a wide right of way and a long way of visibility) that enabled you to bypass the flooded part (perhaps 200 meters worth?).

I then noticed that a MILF (no spandex; she was wearing nylon wind pants) gaining on me. She ended up ducking into one of the bathrooms (several on the course) and later was gaining on me.

By then (past mile 4, which took me 49 minutes to get to!) I decided to delete the walk breaks and stay ahead of her as long as I could. I then came to one turn and didn’t know which way to go. She came up behind me and laughed: “which way”, looked at the sign and said “this way” and left and I went trailing after her. I never caught up again; as she slowed (and sometimes walked up a hill) I’d almost catch her and she would start running again.

We did the final 5.3 miles like that; total was 1:48. When I got back to the lot she was in a car with some girls; we made eye contact and exchanged waves; this fun “sort of but not really” competition made it more enjoyable.

There were more people at this area (Cass Ave., just off of I-55 near the entrance of Argonne National Laboratory) when I got back; people seemed to be enjoying themselves and that lifted my spirits.

On the way back I stopped for a “skillet with pancakes” at Ruby’s Burrito II in Minooka. There is a large selection of food there and the portions are large and the food is good.

Now I am home (finally) and the house seems empty.

So, while the week was “whirlwind” by my standards (to Chicago and back on Tuesday, to Cleveland on Thursday, to Chicago on Friday and back home on Saturday), I still: ran 5 on Monday, ran 10 on Wednesday, lifted on Thursday, ran 4 on Friday and 9 (on trails) today. This wasn’t a full schedule of workouts, but better than zero.

March 16, 2013 Posted by | family, running, travel | , | 1 Comment