Saturday, July 27, 2002

We just walked to Pearl Park in South Minneapolis.  I saw something I'd never seen before.  A woman had a kid on the crossbar of her bike.  The product he was sitting on was called a Funrider and it consisted of a foam pad wrapped around the crossbar and a shield to keep the kids feet out of the front spokes, and then a strap with which the kid was strapped to the rider.  I asked her about it and she said it's great, retails for 70 bucks but she found it at Petter's in Edina for ten.   All links to this product made by the company Kidz First seem to be dead.  Perhaps they went out of business. 9:06:51 PM    comment []

This morning I swam a leg of a relay in the 5-mile swim across Lake Minnetonka.  It was about a mile. I haven't swum a stroke in more than a year so it hurt.  My atrophied muscles could not work hard enough to get me out of breath.  They just said, "Nope, no oxygen needed here, thanks.  We're just twitching anaerobicly".    The other people in my relay were Charlie, a friend since college, and his 65 year old dad, Drew.  Drew swam a two mile leg.  It was the first swimming race he's ever been in and he did great.  I was inspired, as I always am at amateur sporting events by visuals of crowds of enthusiastic people of all ages and sizes setting out to do their personal best at something, or maybe just finishing.  200 people running into the water in Excelsior to face a challenge just put a lump in my throat. 12:44:23 PM    comment []