John Muir Day Day 112 of 2008 254 days left in this year

PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY—  Gutpela: Good
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY

WEB SURF SPOT OF THE WEEK — “The Green Issue” - NYT Magazine
WEB VIDEO OF THE WEEK — National Geographic
PODCAST OF THE WEEK — Earth News
BLOG OF THE WEEK — The Environmental Blog

At the age of 29, Muir suffered a blinding eye injury and when he regained his sight a month later, he  began his years of wanderlust. He walked a thousand miles from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico. He sailed to Cuba , and later to Panama, where he crossed the Isthmus and sailed up the West Coast, landing in San Francisco in March, 1868.

He explored the high country of the Sierra Nevada, making California his life-long home. He also traveled widely in Alaska and throughout the American West, writing numerous books and articles describing natural wonders and arguing for the need to preserve wilderness.

In 1892, Muir and a number of his supporters founded the Sierra Club to “do something for wildness and make the mountains glad.” He served as the Club’s president until his death.

In 1901, Muir published Our National Parks, which brought him to the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1903, Roosevelt visited Muir in Yosemite.where  together, they laid the foundation of Roosevelt’s conservation programs, responsble for the creation of many national parks and monuments.

John Muir’s home in Martinez, California, where he lived from 1890 until his death in 1914, is  today John Muir National Historic Site.

It’s a perfect day to run the Boston Marathon, cool and sunny, and the normal (and at this time of year, chilly, wind) that blows off the ocean is rarely to be felt. The wheelchair races are done, as are the shorter races (5K, 10K and 15K) and the actual marathon has begun.

Today is a state holiday in Massachusetts - Patriots Day. Everything is closed, and that makes sense - most of the main roads, especially Mass Ave. are blocked for runners, making traffic (and public transportation above ground) a nightmare.

It is at this time that Boston and Maui share some characteristics. One is a cry I heard Saturday night near a restaurant: “I want my town back!” The place is overrun with tourists, clogging avenues, restaurants, and public transportation. A group of us waited an hour and 40 minutes at a restaurant on Sunday morning for our breakfast, and then left - we still hadn’t been served what we had ordered.

There’s not a hotel room to be had in the city or nearby. The marathon suffers from a tremendous increase in visitors this year - Boston is the site of the American Olympic Marathon trials. 25,000 runners, and nearly 500 Olympic hopefuls, running in skimpy shorts and paper-thin T-shirts, in 46-degree weather. Most runners have private support teams (many teams of just one person). And for them the course is a test of logistics.

While the city provides basic services to runners (standby medical services, etc.), the additional services (extra shoes in case, extra clothes in case, personal needs like towels and water sprays in the face and so forth) come from friends and family members who station themselves at key places for their runners.

It’s an option: the runner may choose to keep going, and run by her team. Or, stop, for a new shirt, a spray in the face, whatever. Then, she is off again, and the team scrambles to the nearest subway stop, down the stairs, to the cars, and the next location. (The city puts on triple the number of subway cars during the race to handle the additional capacity. Subway cars are packed with people with portable coolers, damp towels thrown carelessly over their shoulders, and a tired look on their faces.) Typically, a team will do this four or five times during the race (which, for those of you uninitiated, covers 26 miles and 385 yards).

I like that the race ends smack in front of the main, downtown library. Stands build for the occasion sit in front of the main door, mixing the athletic with the cerebral.

The men’s and women’s races are in the final stage now - a hill all runners know as Heartbreak hill, more than 6 miles up. The inclines seems not a problem when you walk it, but it wears on you. It comes late in the race, and pumps lead into your legs and fire into your lungs. The current leader as I write - Cheruiyot - is just 20 seconds ahead of Kwambai - and losing ground. For the women - Biktimirova and Tune run side by side, each, one supposes, waiting for the other to try to make a break for it. Word on the street is this could be one of the most exciting finishes in the race’s history.

To give you an idea of how fast things change in this race, just in the time it has taken for me to write the last paragraph, Kwambai is suddenly fourth and losing ground uphill, and Cheruiyot is pulling away. His projected finishing time is 2 hours and about 6 minutes - to run more than 26 miles, much of it uphill. My my.

Minute by minute, stride by stride play can be read at http://www.bostonmarathon.org as well as all race results.

– Maui Curmudgeon, somewhere in Boston