As I mentioned previously over on Disruptive Conversations, the folks at Automattic (the folks behind WordPress) were going to run a 5K today, April 10, and were encouraging other bloggers and others to run, walk, roll, or do anything else like that.

Naturally, I had to play along, particularly since today was the first truly gorgeous day we’ve had that since the winter where I’ve been able to run! Temps in the mid-60s (Fahrenheit), sunny skies, most all of the mud was dried up… all around perfect conditions for a first outside run of the season.

So run it, I did.

Headed up to the beautiful Woodlawn and Greenlawn cemeteries here in Keene, NH, and did two loops through both cemeteries… stopping right at the 3.1 mile mark which, as it happened, was just after my second loop through the Greenlawn cemetery and right as I hit the bridge between the two.

As you can see from the map to the right, I got a bit creative coming up with ways to burn up some distance and still keep myself within the cemeteries. The pace image, too, gives you a good idea of where the hills are 🙂 And yes, that U turn where I was at my slowest was at the top of the incline leading up to the Sumner Knight chapel, if you are familiar with the cemetery, and then down the steep decline, too.

All in all it was a beautiful day for a run. Clocked in at 32:41 for an average pace of 10:30/mile. Not bad for a 43-year-old guy who just started running last year…

The even better news was that I could have continued running… I just stopped at 5K because that was my goal for today… but I still had energy and could have probably run the rest of the way home.

Now, I’m looking forward to the next race I can run with others…

With temperatures up in the mid-40s Fahrenheit and never going below freezing at night, it’s no surprise that the local ski areas here in southwest New Hampshire are all ending their seasons. As we drove by a local area just outside of Keene yesterday we could see that while people were skiing there was mud on some of the trails… and a ski area up near Concord, NH, we passed today seemed to be closed up already.

Sure, the big mountains up north will keep going for a number of weeks more, but our weekends are getting all crazy… so for us… well, the season’s basically done. One more chance, maybe… but that’s probably it, if it happens.

It’s been a truly fantastic year for us for skiing. Our oldest daughter is 8 this year and she took lessons at our local “Granite Gorge” on Saturday mornings. The cool part for me was that while she was off with an instructor for an hour lesson, I got to ski alone for that time. When her lesson was done, the two of us then got to ski for another hour together.

Repeat that for almost 6 weeks in a row and you have a darn good winter! (One week we did not do it was when there was too much wind and the lift was closed.)

It was an interesting winter for me personally because it was a chance for me to really work on my own parallel skiing. You see, the last time I skied a large amount was: 1) about 18 years ago; and 2) entirely on telemark skis.

I was a “tele” skier all through college during the mid-80s and on up into the ’90s when I stopped skiing as much. Sure, I had learned to do “regular” downhill skiing, but had moved rapidly into telemark. When our daughter was 3, we were living in Burlington, VT, where skiing is a big part of life, and so I took her to a local hill, donned parallel skis myself, and helped her learn to ski. As any parent who has taught their child to ski can attest, those first few years are… um… “challenging”… and you yourself don’t get much in the way of skiing. Two years ago our daughter had classes on her own, but on a weekday when I wasn’t able to ski, and we weren’t really able to ski. Last year we had the combination of not-terribly-great snow … and a newborn daughter… so we only went maybe once or twice.

This year, though, was a completely different year. Outstanding snow conditions… and Saturday classes… together made for a fantastic year… and a great father/daughter experience.

She pushed me, too. While I’d skied all sorts of terrain on my tele boards about 20 years ago, I’d stuck mostly to the beginner or intermediate slopes on the parallel skis. As the season went on, though, she went on the more advanced terrain in her classes and by the end of the season I was right there skiing all the black diamond trails with her. 🙂

We ended on a truly awesome note, too… our last day of skiing was on a beautiful morning before the warming spell at Crotched Mountain Resort where the trails were wide and the snow was outstanding. Skied almost every trail on the mountain and had a wonderful day.

Now, as we put the skis away and look forward to getting into the warm weather activities, all I can say is that it was a great season… and I’m looking forward to next year!

Perhaps you have to live in a northern US state or Canada to truly appreciate this video… but for those of us who do, we definitely appreciate “the plow guy”. For those of us who choose the “Granite State” as our home, too, we can appreciate many of the many cameo appearances in this video…

Note – if you have not seen the first “Granite State of Mind” video, you may want to do that before watching this one. Almost 2 million people have now watched that video… and it lays the foundation for this video.

And, again, you may have to live here to fully appreciate the videos… but I got a great laugh out of them. (And was amused to see dear old Keene get a mention in the second one.)

Fun stuff…

It is hard to believe that the Challenger explosion was 25 years ago today…

I had grand delusions of writing something profound on this anniversay, but the reality is that even now…

…there are no words.

At the time, I was a freshman at the University of New Hampshire and was gathered with a group of others who loved everything about space exploration in the lounge of our dorm to watch the launch…

… and then the utter shock… and then the endless replays…

For those of us who were (and are) fans of space exploration, it was an iconic moment that will forever be with us.

R.I.P., Challenger crew… and best wishes to all of their families on this anniversary.

How much do you know about religion… and specifically religions around the world? The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently released their U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, a nationwide poll conducted from May 19 through June 6, 2010, among 3,412 Americans age 18 and older, on landlines and cell phones, in English and Spanish. One of the interesting overall data points:

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

It makes for fascinating reading if you are interested in topics relating to religion.

BEFORE YOU READ THE SURVEY, though, take the Pew Forum’s quiz at:

http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/

It’s a short 15-question quiz.

THEN you can go on to read the full survey results (since they give away some of the answers to the quiz). As I said, I found it a fascinating view into the knowledge level of U.S. citizens.

I also found the quiz quite interesting… how did you do on it? (I did quite well, but I’ll wait to post my actual score for a bit…)