PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE

It's been a day of practicing. From sketching my desk to sketching basketball players as well as practicing "Landscape people."

Practicing basketball ... drawing, not playing.

My desk. Also practicing drawing faster for whatever reason.

Character interaction.

"Landscape people" in watercolor.

I did get a chance to work a little on live sketching a few blocks away at lunchtime. It's an apartment building with businesses on the ground floor.

My first sketch of the building s along Broadway and Market streets.

The drawing above was a very quick sketch just to get a feel for the perspective and scale. These buildings are actually a block down from the ones in the drawing below. The drawing below is/will be more detailed but I like the feeling and sense of urgency and spontaneity of the one above. 

I call this building the "Young at Art" building because it
houses that business and it has one of the most dominant
signs. This is my lunchtime project that will take me a few sessions
to complete.  I only get between 5-10 minutes at a time to work on
it at lunch, in between rain showers. This is the second day I've drawn.Because of all the straight lines and perspective,
I was tempted to use  a ruler but decided to freehand it. 

A NEW DIRECTION

Well, I've taken a turn, or maybe it's a U-turn. After 20-plus years since I put down my pencil, pen and ink (I used to cartoon for a hunting magazine and draw as a past-time.) I've decided to get back into drawing.

I've been drawing lots of stick figures

For now it's mostly just working on hand-eye coordination with lots of drawing exercises ... circles, circles, circles, lines, lines, lines, circles, circles and an occasional actual drawing. Oh, and eyes, noses, mouths and pages of stickmen and stickwomen, and mannequins in various poses and gestures.

I think I've gone through a half of ream of copy paper just drawing circles.

It really does help build my hand-eye coordination by drawing circles and lines and makes it a lot easier for my brain to tell the pen where to go. I think mostly it helps to learn to "feel" the objects I'm drawing. I think feel in drawing, at least for me is very important. If I can feel it on the paper, it becomes easier to draw.

And lots of poses. I've been watching lots of Youtube videos
Which is where I copied these from. You can learn a lot from Youtube

Sort of an urban sketch.
Rebecca bundled up while outside in the snow.
Watercolor.

I'm not sure what kind of art I'm leaning toward but it'll probably center around cartoons. However, I'm trying out urban sketching

and am liking it so far. Urban sketching is simply sketching your surroundings on location. Or as urbansketchers.org puts it: "all sketchers out there who love to draw the cities where they live and visit, from the window of their homes, from a cafe, at a park, standing by a street corner... always on location, not from photos or memory."

Besides urban sketching I'm delving into political cartoons, caricatures and watercolors. A whole new way of thinking about people and colors.

The Kona Life has undergone a lot of changes since I started it nearly 10 years ago (10-year anniversary is July 19. From ramblings to triathlon to adjusting to mainland life again to drawing.

Hopefully I'll begin posting drawings and watercolors — don't laugh at them. They are very, very elementary. Especially the watercolors. As with photography and writing it takes time and practice to find your voice/style and that's what I'm trying to do by experimenting with different genres.

It's just like taking photos to capture the flavor and atmosphere of your surroundings only it takes a lot longer ... and a lot more patience.

Trump portrait to caricature trial.
Still needs lots of work.

A house in Kona. OK, this one was drawn
from a photo rather than live. Watercolor.

At the mall food court. watercolor. 

cartoon characters.

More cartoon characters. Watercolor.

HAPPY 2017 -- MAKE IT COUNT

Have a great new year.

PAUL "ALWAYS QUOTABLE" WESTERBERG

"The best I can say is that it's better for me to write about despair and darkness than to be incapable of getting off the sofa. It's better to write about suicide than to contemplate it too heavily."

I knew this quote long before I knew who said it. I can honestly say I feel the same way. I write when I'm depressed not when I'm happy. It's my therapy, much like running.



Running clears my head. Writing clears my heart.

I finally looked up who said this and I was impressed with all the quotes attributed to Paul Westerberg

Who you ask? You know, he was the lead singer of The Replacements. No? The 1980s alternative rock band. Nothing yet? Well how about his solo work. Maybe that'll ring a bell. If you've seen "Singles," "Melrose Place," "Friends" or "Tank Girl" His song appear on each of those.

Here's his website: Paul Westerberg



Photo by Heather Douglass via Wikipedia


So here's a few quotes attributed to him and for some reason I connect with most of his quotes.

"I'm beyond caring what anyone expects of me anymore."

"A rock'n'roll band needs to be able to get under people's skin. You should be able to clear the room at the drop of a hat."

"I think it should be evident by now, but I'm as lost as anyone."

"I have my own language and it's high time I put a little of it out there."

"Reading music is like listening to flowers. I don't understand the concept."

"Stick with your heart and you'll be fine."

"Although, my experience when I've been depressed, not only am I too depressed to sit down and write a song, I'm too depressed to pick up my feet. So if you can at least write about it, you're halfway away from it."

And finally, to quote someone else, and I'm not sure who said it first ...
"THE END"

THE QUIET, FAT LIFE

I've been backing up my blog posts just in case Blogger dies. Reading some of my posts from my time in Hawaii makes me realize something.

Compared to where I was then I can't help but feel I now live a life of total obscurity.

I knew people back then.
People knew me.

I swam, biked and ran with some really awesome athletes, both famous and regular, everyday peeps. World-record holders and back-of-the-packers.

I haven't written on this blog for some time. Not that many people come here nowadays and if they do it's usually an errant search that brought them here. Even back in the day people mostly stopped by because they were doing a search on Hawaii and for some reason my blog showed up in their searches.

My "CHRISTMAS IN HAWAII" blog post from 2008 or 09 still get's lots of hits.  But when you put Christmas and Hawaii together search engines are bound to find it.

So these days I live in complete anonymity. No training partners. No group swims or runs or cycling. No training at all, actually. A little running now and then. Growing old and fat and slowly becoming that couch potato I once was.

I've thought about shutting down "The Kona Life" blog. Deleting it all. Erasing what seems like a dream now. Maybe someday. There's still a faint glimmer of hope that triathlete deep inside me will emerge once again.

But for now in these dreary days of winter here in Oregon I like re-reading my misadventures in paradise and dream of palm trees,  warm ocean swims, running along Alii and long, hot rides on Queen K.

A QUICK UPDATE 1/17/17
I haven't swam or biked since posting this. I have ran off and on though, but not much. I still miss Hawaii and all those wonderful people but I have lost weight. I weigh less now than I did when I weighed in for Ironman in 2009.  Probably less than I have in 20 years but it's from diet not training so not nearly as much muscle as I used to have. But maybe when the weather turns ...

REVISIONS

OK, I knew trying to reach 50k, or 31 miles, by the last Sunday of the year was really pushing it. Two weeks ago I got greedy and I ran 18 miles for my long run on Sunday. It should have been a 16-mile run that day but I wanted to push it to 18 so I could have a shot at 31 miles 6 weeks later. Big mistake. Combined with running in the much-more hilly Salem area verses the pancake-flat Woodburn area,  everything went wrong. I bonked plus I strained something in my lower right leg below my calf muscle and beside my achilles tendon.

My last two miles were close to 15 minutes each -- that's slower than walking speed. So I ended up taking the following week off just to recover from my stupidity. It took me until the following Wednesday to even start getting any energy back. Bonking really takes it out of you. Eight days later I tried an easy 2 mile run to test the calf muscle, which still hurt but I wrapped it up tight and it was manageable, I thought.

The next couple of days (Tuesday and Wednesday)  I ran an easy hour each day. By Saturday I felt back to normal so the plan was to do 10 miles that included the one little hill we have in Woodburn, which is three miles from my house. It was pretty cold out but I felt good. My leg felt strong so I didn't wrap it.

I was doing hill repeats in the cold sunshine and felt good. Then on the third trip up, just before reaching the top of the hill, SNAP! a sharp pain just beside my right calf muscle, right where it had hurt two weeks before. I could barely walk on it and I was 3 miles from home.

After a mile or so of limping I tried running and as long as I stayed on my heel I could jog, sort of and finally made it home. Now I'm trying to recover from a more severe injury and hoping I'll be over 10-mile long runs by the end of the year. So forget the 31 miles. But that's running or rather my stupidty or greediness or whatever you want to call it. We have to adapt as life, and age, gets in the way.

So while I am recovering I'm riding the bike trainer every day and after several years of playing around with trying the Pose method of running I finally bought the book  — The Running Revolution: How to Run Faster, Farther and Injury-Free for Life, by former Olympic coach Nicholas Romanov and sports writer Kurt Brungardt. I'm hoping it'll live up to its promise about injury free running. I actually bought the e-book deluxe addition ($11.95) that included a lot of videos. I figure if I can't run I might as well read about it.

I'll let you know if I can learn to run natural or not.

Oh, I'm also planning on entering the lottery for the Tahoe Rim Trail 50 miler that runs in mid-July. The lottery entry begins Dec. 7 and ends Dec. 21, 2014, and they draw the names Jan. 1, 2015. If I'm picked, this will be my first 50 miler. You can find out about the lottery for the TRT 50 miler, the 50k and the 100 miler at Ultra Signup.

I'm hoping to do a marathon or a 50k in the spring if I can find one close enough, whether it's an official race or me just going out on my own. It sounds funny talking about running 50 miles when right now I can't run a step and even healthy I bonked on 18 miles, but I learned from Ironman that good, solid training and a positive attitude can make the impossible possible.

Keep your fingers crossed.

CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN ZOMBIES AHEAD ...

It's slow going but I'm up to 12 miles on my long runs and 10k (6.2 miles) on my other running days. I still need to add one more day of running to get it up to 4 days but I just don't know where I'll get the time, especially with winter coming on.

This Sunday I should be up to half marathon distance (13.1 miles). I can't wait to get up to three hour runs but by then it'll be cold and dark and rainy here. I know, I'm a wimp, but after training for years in Hawaii it's hard to get motivated in poor weather.

Karen and I, NJ and the twins are planning on racing zombies on the 25th in Albany. My guess is we'll not make it too far before we are "bitten." But it should be fun anyhow. I've always wanted "The Walking Dead" to do a show on zombie babies, especially zombie twin babies.

Oh, since Ironman World Championship is this Saturday, here's a video of my first world championship finish shot by my friend Giovanni.

This is from 2009. Back then 13 miles seemed like nothing. In fact I remember racing a half marathon a few weeks before where I went out and ran 3 miles as a warm up then ran my fastest half to date just so I could get in my 16 mile run for the day. Dang I miss in that kind of shape.

31 MILES TO SUNDAY

Let me just put this out there so I have a little bit of accountability: I’m working toward running 50k by December 28 - Fourteen weeks from now. My goal is to reach 50k (31 miles) by the end of the year in prep for a 50-mile run next spring.

Sundays are my long run days and this Sunday I’ll be at 11 miles. I know, that’s not that far but I took the past spring and summer off dealing with a stress fracture, which is still hurting, and trying to get rid of skin cancer, which I’m still fighting. Note: chemo, even in cream form, sucks.

Adding a mile a week and NOT having any recovery weeks or injuries, I should be at 25 miles by Dec. 28. Oops! Gonna be short. Now I could just push the last week and run that extra 6 miles just to hit my goal, but we’re talking an extra hour’s worth of running on day that’ll probably be cold, rainy and short on daylight.



(I was a runner once, and young! This is a spoof I did back in the day of a Zoot commercial I saw on TV that featured the great Jason Lester and I thought, "Ya know, I wear those exact same Zoots. I could do that commercial." So Karen and I headed to the Energy Lab with an old handheld 8mm camcorder just shot it in about 30 minutes. I remember I had a pulled calf muscle so it was pretty painful to try not to limp. Don't know why I never got a commercial contract with Zoot.)

Here's The Real Zoot commercial starring the awesome Jason Lester "Got Ultra?"

BUT, if I increase my mileage by one and a half miles per week that’d land me just a half-mile short of my goal a week early. But lets be realistic here. There are two major factors. Make that three major factors: 1) This is Oregon and it’s going to rain and snow and get pretty cold so I’ll be carrying a lot of extra weight in clothing. Plus I’ll be doing most of my running in the dark. 2) I’ll never make it injury free or without throwing in a recover week here and there. And 3) I’m lazy, which means I’ll miss some runs during the week because of (insert any lame excuse here) making my long runs even harder and putting me more at risk for injury.

Besides running marathons, the longest training runs I’ve done were 20 milers. And unlike a race, this will be done solo (I think I’m the only runner in our town during the winter) and with whatever support crew I can muster from the family.

Can I do it? I’d like to say HECK YA! But honestly, I’m doubtful. I haven’t had a real goal since I left Hawaii and I’m thinking that this might be fun to try - at least until it turns cold, wet and windy. Then I reckon the Ironman in me better kick in with that “anything is possible, I am an Ironman” attitude.

I'll be doing shorter runs throughout the week: a couple of hour runs and maybe an hour and a half run followed by the long run on Sundays. Probably a lot of it done on the tready once the weather turns. Btw, if anyone has any advice for training for ultra marathons, feel free to pass it along.

They say the first step is the hardest. Yeah right! Let's see how the 500,000th step feels and see which is harder… Oh, by the way, if anyone has any connections with a running shoe manufacturer, I’m looking for shoe sponsors … ha!

See ya out there!

DEATH BY ZOMBIE

"A zombie film is not fun without a bunch of stupid people running around and observing how they fail to handle the situation." - George A. Romero, director, writer of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, among other zombie movies

Well I participated in my first-ever zombie run recently. It was a 5k run at Blue Lake Regional Park in Portland Oct. 26.

I managed to make it about halfway before I was consumed by the mindless, brain eating walkers -- who, just for the record did some running to chase me down -- what's up with that?

Oh well, it was fun and even my 19 month old grandson liked seeing all the zombies, who looked pretty good, er, dead.

Here's a few photos from the event for your entertainment. These are all frame grabs taken from video from our GoPro Hero 2 camera. Love that camera.

Here's a link to my flickr account with more photos:
Zombie apocalypse

A QUICK CHECK-IN

It's been a busy time since we left Hawaii just over a year ago. We've lived in three different time zones and have driven across the U.S. four times. We have seen Yellowstone, the Atlantic Ocean and had a few tornado scares. Three grandsons have been born in the past few months, including twins, (giving us 6 grandkids total) and so much more has been going on that it has been hard to catch my breath.

I've barely had time to do any running or biking over the past year. I've only been swimming twice since leaving Hawaii, which is really sad. I love swimming. Now we live just 2 miles from a swimming facility so hopefully once we get settled in our new location - Oregon, by the way - I'm hoping to get back into the water.

This blog has slowly transformed from a triathlete's journey off the couch to more of a family focused blog, but I'm hoping as we get settled in the Northwest I'll get back into training and find some interesting experiences to write about such as how hard it's going to be to "learn to swim" again. Or how to get and stay motivated in a cold, rainy climate. 

I've always marveled at how mainlanders could stay motivated to train for a triathlon all winter long compared to how easy it is to those of us in Hawaii who always have great weather and a beautiful ocean to swim in. Now I'm about to find out.

Anyhow, this is just to revisit "The Kona Life" and say what's happening. I should change the name of this place but I think I will keep it. After all, The Kona Life is a state of mind more than a place where I lived. 

Take care and I'll hopefully be writing again soon.

CROSSING THE COUNTRY

At the beginning of this month I got to drive and run across America. All in only 3 days. From Idaho to North Carolina by way of Alabama and Georgia. Long, long days.

( Each pin point on the map represents places we have been over the past month. From Portland, Oregon, to Yellowstone National Park to Georgia to North Carolina and back again.)

Our son, Daniel got married in North Carolina and we decided it would be more fun to drive across the U.S. instead of fly. It would give us a chance to see places we have never seen and also to stop by and see our daughter, Rachael, and our two grand-daughters, Maddie and Zoey, in Georgia.

Somewhere in the planning stages I thought it would be fun to try and run in each state we drove through. After all, how many chances will I have to do something like that. So I decided I would try to run at least 5k (3.1 miles) in each state, But knowing we would only have three days to drive nearly 3,000 miles I knew that would be tough. Plus the second day of driving we would hit 6 states. That would mean driving a thousand miles and running 21 miles all in 15 hours.

A pretty ambitious plan. One thing I didn't figure on was how cold it would be in the first few states we passed through. It's been six months since we moved here from Hawaii and I still don't have cold-weather running clothes.

I can say I didn't hit my 5k goal in every state and I did skip running when we passed through Tennessee, our sixth state in one day. It was dark, cold and I was tired.

Nonetheless, we had a blast. There were a lot of firsts for me. The first time driving across America. First time being in most of the states we've been in. First time in the eastern time zone. First time I've ran in 5 states in one day. (How many people can say that?) And my first time to see the Atlantic Ocean. Not bad for a couch potato.

So get off the couch fellow couch potatoes and get out there and do something. Have fun, get healthy. Life is calling ...

(Maddie and me making faces for the camera)

(Daniel and I at the beach at Camp Lejeune)

(Running in Georgia)

(Karen and Rebecca at the beach)

Karen and I at the beach)

(Maddie)

(I got the chance to shoot with some Marines at the shooting range.)

(Running next to the Atlantic Ocean)

(Echo Canyon in Utah)

(Daniel and Dawn's wedding)

(Running in Utah)

(Running at sunrise in Iowa)

Maddie and I shopping

Zoey.

(Running in Missouri)

The Atlantic ocean

(Stepping into the Atlantic)

(Rebecca at the beach)