A long farewell to Mike

These last couple of months my friends and I have been saying a long goodbye to our friend Mike Reid. Mike was diagnosed with a brain tumor the week before Christmas and he passed away this morning, 27 February.

The prognosis was not at all good, the cancer was inoperable and within a month Mike was in a wheelchair, having difficulty in finding certain words and struggling to follow trains of thought. Radiation treatment at the best only offered a temporary stay. So Mike decided, some 13 days ago, to take things into his own hands and he stopped radiation treatment and stopped taking any further nourishment – a very brave step indeed.

I can only imagine what thoughts went through Mike’s mind when he was wrestling with what was now his very limited future, and I cannot really know what kind of resolve it takes to stop eating and drinking until you die. All I do know is that, if you are otherwise healthy and strong, which Mike was, then this route is not particularly rapid - it took Mike 13 days. (Alas we are not as enlightened as our neighbors to the north in Oregon who passed a “Death with Dignity Act” to assist the terminally ill depart this world. It’s time we had something similar.).

I am not sure that I would advocate for the other extreme of too quick and easy an exit (everyone needs time to come to terms with the decision), but 13 days was a long struggle and, while I do not believe he was in any discomfort at any time, the latter stages were drawn out.

He will be dearly missed by all of us here.

The photograph below was taken in September of last year on the way up Half-Dome in Yosemite. I do believe at this point he was as fit as he had ever been, at least in this stage of his life.


Here is a link to some other photos of Mike - mainly taken on hiking trips over the last few years.

Skiing in Tahoe

This weekend I finally made it up into the mountains to go skiing. While I enjoy skiing tremendously, and while we have some great ski areas close by Sacramento, I have been a very infrequent skier in recent years. I just don't seem to have the enthusiasm to get organized and get up the mountain and fight with the crowds in the lift lines and on the slopes. Over the last 5 or 6 years the only time I have skied is when my friend Dave comes over from Austin for his annual week of skiing, and then I usually only manage one day. Must be getting old.

So anyway, this week Dave was over and a few of us Sacramentans (the usual suspects from the Ex-Exlog crowd) went up to Tahoe to ski with him.


We skied at Homewood, a ski area that I had never even considered before – it is a little further away from Sacramento than most resorts, and I had always considered it a pretty lightweight ski area – small, not particularly challenging, etc. Well, I was wrong – it provided us with a magnificent days skiing. Yes, it is smaller than the Squaws and the Northstars, but that has some benefits – we could park the car 30 ft away from where we put our skis on, it is much cheaper ($51 per weekend day versus $75 or so for the big resorts), and relatively speaking it wasn’t at all crowded. The slopes were very well groomed, and it certainly has some challenging slopes (but at my age I don't need to be challenged too much on the ski slopes – that can lead to broken bones). To top things off, Homewood has unsurpassed views of Lake Tahoe - it sits right by the side of the lake and once you get up the hill a little there are these jaw-dropping panoramas of the lake below.


So all in all a good days skiing. I should really do more of it, I know.

The Death Valley Marathon

This last weekend a few of us went down to Death Valley to run the Death Valley Trail marathon. Nine of us rented a large van and drove from Sacramento, others drove themselves or flew down to Las Vegas, and my friends John and Gabrielle came over from Houston for our annual marathon weekend. It was a great time with some great friends (about 16 of us in total). A lot of driving however - 1180 miles to be exact but it was well worth it and a great time was had by all.


We were very lucky with the weather. California has been a little wet of late and there were concerns that the race would not run on its intended course, which was through Titus Canyon - a spectacular canyon running from near Rhyolite in the east to the floor of Death Valley in the west. The canyon was closed for most of the week, but on Friday, the powers that be in the Park Service decided that the conditions were right and the race could go ahead as planned.


It just happens that Titus Canyon was purpose built for a marathon. It is almost exactly 26.2 miles from it's entrance on the main road near Rhyolite to it's exit in the valley floor and it is truly spectacular. I carried a camera and there were lots of photo opportunities - here's a link to my album. Alas the real grandeur of the canyon does not come across in my photos.

This was the first (and probably last) marathon that I have ever run with negative splits (to those non-runners that is running the last half faster than the first - this is what you are supposed to do but I have never done it before). However, the negative splits were not at all due to my fitness level, they owed everything to the course - a climb of 2,300 ft in the first 12 miles and a drop of 5,000 ft in the next 14 miles. As you can imagine, it is a lot easier to run down hill than uphill -hence the negative splits.

We bumoed into a group of runners who were shooting video out on the course (albeit a very low resolution and very low quality) but they posted it on YouTube here we are (Dianne, Lisa, Ed and myself) in our (or at least my) very first YouTube video.