urban hiking

its been nice outside, and by that i mean, in the 90s with humidity. while it doesn't feel great to be moving particularly fast, a little bit of movement feels a lot better than just sitting.

yesterday, i went for a run and breakfast with some of the hctr folks. most of us are either racing next weekend at huntsville (tx) or jemez, which is near los alamos, nm. afterward, i finished reading outliers by malcom gladwell (two thumbs up!) and then headed down to brew-b-q to watch some chihuahua racing. brew-b-q turned into actually bbq-ing at a friends, followed by the obiligatory jump in the pool fully clothed and then ice cream and moving watching in a very air conditioned house. all in all, it was a very enjoyable day.

this morning i woke up and went for a quick 5-miler and then decided i wanted to do some urban hiking. i wandered down to the austin botanical gardens, and would share pictures, but it was a huge failure on my part not to check the camera batteries before i left and it turned out they were dead. oops! it was beautiful though.

its amazing what you start to notice when you move a little slower and pay attention to your surroundings. i found several yoga studios and a whole series of trails i had never noticed before...and i run by all of them every day!

tuning my ukulele is giving me more problems than playing it. i'm starting to play somewhere over the rainbow, but it takes me a good 30 minutes or so to get the thing tuned. i know what its supposed to sound like and i have a pitch pipe (not to mention online resources). i think i get the tuning right though and go to play a song only to find out that i haven't tuned correctly. i guess that's just part of the learning process!