Once or Twice a Week

Conness, conquered

2010-09-12T09:46:00.000-07:00

My first mountain adventure adventure in a while, and a story worth telling, was the recent Labor Day weekend in the high East Sierras. The weather forecast was clear and stable, our crew nothing short of distinguished - Jeff Miller, a true Pacific Northwest man of the mountains, and Jim Sinai, who has racked up many a thousand vertical feet carrying a whole spice rack on his back. I tagged along and was looking forward to a fun and relaxing weekend in the hills. As it turns out, we did get 'fun' and 'relaxing', but there was a little 'freezing', and 'lucky' mixed in there as well. From the top...

An early morning departure from SF saw us hit Denny's Oakdale for breakfast, with blue skies beckoning east and a perfect forecast. As predicted, 120 was busy heading into the park, but thinned out over Tioga. First stop: emergency rock shoes for one of our crew. Turns out there is a gas station in Tuolomne Meadows with a gear store attached... how convenient. We stopped for rock shoes, and left with about $500 worth of t-shirts, hiking shirts, shoes, DEET, and other 'essentials'. It's fair to say they guy behind the desk had seen our type before, and was happy to oblige us our shopping fun. We rationalized it as the equivalent of a high street shopping trip, of the 'Sex and the City' flavor, for mountain folks.

Moving right along, we entered through the Lundy Valley with the intent of reaching the '20 lakes' area, out back of Saddlebag Lake. About 3pm Friday we struck out from the car, and after an hour or so, the consequences of our trailhead choice were apparent; we had added a couple thousand feet of vertical to our first day ascent. This was a good tune up for the legs, especially when we tackled a 500ft chute of mobile, small-rock talus. It was totally worth it once we attained the plateau; so many lakes to choose from, and plenty of great campsites. Note that many of the peninsulas and islands are off-limits as they're too small, and don't offer sufficient distance from the water. We bedded down ready for a 'fun day climb' on Saturday.

The morning dawns bluebird, and we leave camp around 8am, drenched in morning sun and

cooled by a classic mountain breeze. Spirits are high and we rock up to the ridge, roping up at the first tower around 10.30am. The summit seems close; the day seems young. Our confidence is buoyed by a group of three, average age late 50s, who merrily claim to have climbed Conness 'several times' and 'never bothering to take any pro'. Next, we encounter a man climbing barefoot, having hiked around North Peak that day sans-footwear. Takes all kinds, we figure. In any case, we're all looking forward to a late lunch on the summit, followed by a triumphant downclimb and relaxed hike to camp by headlamp.

It's about now that we shift into a time warp. For some reason, everything starts to take a long, long time. We're taking precautions, but nothing outrageous - pro here and there, belays on the steep face, but we're trying to be efficient and we don't stop. It's just slow going. The rappel takes ages, largely due to a serious sideways component - tough for Jeff to set the rope across, and tough for me to follow... I've only rappelled down before, across is a new trick. Before we can start the summit pitches after the rappel, we have an awkward side-climb, which runs the clock down further. And despite our older friends scampering up without ropes or cams, we can't help looking down 2000 ft of bare granite and thinking we're too young to die. More pro, and we're on belay. You get the idea...

...and, a few hours later, we end up one pitch from the summit, watching the sunset. On the plus side, it's truly beautiful; California sun through Yosemite forest fire smoke is hard to beat. On the downside, it means we have about 15 minutes of climbing light, after which it will be all headlamps. Not a prospect we're relishing with this exposure. And it turns out that our final platform is separated from the summit by a few hundred horizontal yards, starting with a lie back downclimb, followed by the hardest move of the climb (a crack hold / smear thing), and all the time contemplating a nice 30ft pendulum fall. Climbing second, I was the least rock-xperienced, and suspected I would be the weakest link. This notion was reinforced as Jim narrated Jeff's progress across the face (I couldn't see Jeff): 'whoa, nice move Jeff! ah, Luke, you're gonna need to be ready for this'. Hmmm.

Well, I got across. Having never climbed down a lie back in an awkwardly narrow chimney, it was all bent knees and willpower. At 'the move', I learned the true value of commitment. Yes, you have a pack on, yes it's your first day out in your own rock shoes, and yes, you have zero technique; but you have to get up the rock. I improvized some hand jamming in the cracks and muscled up and over, doing all the wrong stuff and using about 5x the energy I should have. But I was up, and ready for a simple walk across. Off belay, a scramble to the summit, and we had conquered Conness.

Suddenly, it's dark. We had been climbing in the fading light, where your eyes work harder and harder until... it's dark. Fortunately we had caught a glimpse of the first part of the downclimb, which resembled some sort of rock bridge to some mou ntain lair; Lord of the Rings style. The cold breeze continued, so we had the good sense to take stock, make a plan, and gear up with warm clothes. Main issues were a shortage of water, after an unplanned 4 hours extra on the hill, and having eaten very little

through the course of the day. An oatmeal sachet

for breakfast, a bar, and a few shot blocks, left

us with a definite glycogen shortage. We resolved to downclimb and pause at water.

After a bit of routefinding madness on the summit plateau (when the SuperTopo says 'northeast corner', they are exactly right! Take a compass, or even better, a GPS with maps), we found the path down past Alpine Lake. It's now 11pm, and prospects for reaching any kind of camp are slim. We also know that the trail from here is tricky. For better or worse, it's time to hunker down - a first for all of us, despite many cumulative nights in the mountains amongst our crew.

All I can say is: thanks for the reminder. A timely reminder that sleeping bags and Thermarests really make a difference. And that the gear you take to rescue one injured person (which we had; a bivy sack, foil blanket, several down jackets) ain't enough if you're all overnighting. It was a 'warm' night, but we shivered pretty bad, as we alternated between the two-man-squished bivy sack, and the crack in the rock where man #3 huddled (I adopted a style which involved legs in pack, foil blanket around top half, and pack insulating torso from ground... which was good for 2 hours sleep). Brrrr.

With that setup, a pre-dawn departure was a no-brainer. Marching at 5am, we experienced a glorious sunrise and some fun routefinding as the black sky turned gray and finally blue. By 7.00 we were rolling along the glorious green valley floor, with the classic Sierra dappled sun and backdrop of crags. The fuel tanks were low, though, and we were in need of calories in whatever form they might take. Fortunately, we had a clear milestone in mind: the Saddlebag Lake diner, and a super-hospitable woman named Marge.

Breakfast was a riot of sugar, protein, carbs, butter, caffeine... you name it. I ordered a cookie as a side. We drank 3 cups of coffee (at least) as Marge kept it coming. All said, we spent about 2 hours eating, drinking, relaxing in the sun, and waiting for the water taxi. Call us soft, but after 24 hours away from camp (of which 18 were travelling), we needed some R&R. We'd all done endurance events before, but the added factor here was food and water deprivation. Running 8 hours on a trail makes you sore, but at least your muscles can fire. This was a really tough state of fatigue, truly bonking, where another few hours on the trail may simple not have been possible. Yes, lesson learned. But it was almost worth it to savor the simple pleasures of Marge's pancakes and sitting in the sun at Saddlebag.

The rest is standard stuff. Afternoon chilling by the lake, naps, books, a little fly fishing for Jim. We agreed that future holidays should include this, even if we don't pull a stunt like Conness. Monday morning we hiked out - a surprisingly hairy descent into Lundy reminding us that down is often harder than up, especially on slippery stuff - and reached the car by midday.

All in all, a classic high-country adventure. Plenty of lessons, plenty of bonding, and an excellent few days scenery around the majestic granite of the high Sierra. Mt Conness is thoroughly recommended. Those among you more confident will scamper up without

Full set of full res pics are here, email me for the password: http://lukebaxter.zenfolio.com/p798320041

Happy trails.

PS this one's going on Supertopo.com

A whole quarter later...

2009-03-12T02:58:00.000-07:00

Strange how starting work again coincided with three months of downtime on the blog. The easy conclusion to draw is that work and blogging are mutually exclusive. I'm never one for easy answers, so I'm going to fight... watch this space.

Meanwhile, just finished my first project after starting back in the consulting game. A slight shock to the system but I'm re-acclimatised now.

And tomorrow: I'm On A Boat. Just like the one in the video but with two hulls ... better than one!

Lookalikes

2008-12-16T10:20:00.000-08:00

OK, I'll admit this is cheap fun.

But in this case I'm pretty darn sure that Rahm Emanuel is just Robert Downey Jr's latest, most extreme method acting exercise.

Now we just need Rahm to make his part worthy of casting RDJ in the inevitable Obama flick ...

Enough about me

2008-12-09T00:53:00.000-08:00

As I flagged a few weeks (months? I lose track these days) ago, I've always been concerned about the ego-casting aspect of blogs. So this post is all about 'the others', and in true blogosphere style it was inspired by a post by a friend (Brett, I hope you're OK with that level of familiarity) referencing a mutual friend (who will remain un-named for now).

1. To all the peeps in the Bay, I miss you - especially those who, against all sound advice, read my blog. Can't wait to get back up there in '09...

2. To 'LWB', my most avid commenter and supporter during my earnest efforts to train for, and complete, the recent mountain race. I realize that thousands of people have run longer races, faster, and I'm not doing it for the pride, but a little affirmation is always a nice thing!

3. To Brett Keintz and Jonathan Bolden, who single-handedly keep the 'user-generated content' sector alive and humming. Twitter would be nothing without you guys.

4. To Dave Haase. I know it's probably Ashley posting on your blog, even when she's faking your barely-concealed lust for both members of the Keintz-Smaby household (I'm not judging you there, to be clear, we all feel it), but let me say this: man who posts on blog but does not respond to emails = off my Christmas card list. Plus I am intensely jealous that you'll be in Colorado soon...

5. To Nivi, who is a stealth commenting machine.

6. To Annie, who actually reads my 'serious' blog and pretends to admire my analysis.

And now I realize the problem with this game: endless list, disenfranchised peeps who are excluded. So rest assured, this was just a random sample to illustrate that I am intensely interested in all you good people. If you're not on the list, I probably think more of you than the poor schmucks I've outed. Except for Annie. D'oh!

As further proof, you'll note that the sidebar links have been cleaned up. Let me know if you want in - it's good for at least 1 click a year from some random Kiwi (if you're American) / American (if you're Kiwi) who you probably don't know.

Kepler Challenge, done

2008-12-07T12:48:00.000-08:00

Well, there it is. My project for the past 6 months, and go-to topic when people ask what I'm doing instead of work, is all over. I'm no longer 'training for the Kepler Challenge', I'm officially just 'hanging out for the summer' (which is not a bad thing, by the way).

After a race like this, it seems several things happen. First, there is dealing with the "Great Big Empty feeling", with no training plan to crunch out any more, and no race planning in the back of my mind at all waking hours. Second, there is the reflection and post-race analysis, trying to figure out: did I do well? Did I run a good / smart / strong race? Finally, there's the deep, dark question: will I do it again?

So leaving me to deal with the GBE feeling, I'll start with a race report before getting into the performance analysis. The star of this show is definitely the track (or trail for those in the US): a 60km circuit with about 1800 m (6000 ft) of vertical ascent / descent, winding through some of New Zealand's best wilderness. (If you are more into the pictures than the story, the full photo reel is here.)

The first few miles were a nice flat warm-up through lowland beech forest, the calm before the track heads for the sky. Nice and easy, a chance to check everything is working. But during that first steep climb, I began to get nervous about my race plan: a lot of people (who didn't look like mountain running heroes) were puffing their way hard up the hill alongside me, while I was trying to conserve my legs and keep my heart rate in check (which was the plan). I stuck to my guns, cruised up the hill, and reached Luxmore Hut a shade after 1:40 - pretty much in line with my race pace, and feeling relatively strong. Later I passed a bunch of the hill-puffers, which made me feel better about the self-control I mustered there! At Luxmore we had the gear check (rules require runners to carry a pack with full mountain clothing) and a chance to enjoy some gels, and the view.

The next stage was where the surprises began. Turns out my memory of the track from 2 years ago was a little, ah, optimistic. Instead of a rolling, smooth blast across the mountain tops, the trail was a brutal up-and-down, with lots of scrambling and balancing on rocks, and no chance of finding a rhythm. It was near freezing, with a strong head wind; my energy bars had to be hand-warmed just to make them chewable. I debated adding an extra layer, but decided to just keep on moving. Despite all this, there was no better place in the world to spend Saturday morning - amazing views over Lake Te Anau and the tops.

The descent from the tops redefined the term 'steep downhill'. Too steep to run, and with switchbacks every few metres, this stretch was an hour of making every footstep count - don't twist anything, don't burn out the quads, while using gravity to make up as much time as possible. Towards the half way point, the downhill eased, the track smoothed again, and it was possible to stretch out. About time after slogging through the rocks and peaks for over three hours.

At Iris Burn (28.4km) I took stock, stretched out, put my iPod on. The rest of the trail was well-made, mostly flat, and a chance to get rolling - in my race plan, this was the time to settle into a strong pace and drive home the negative split. On the flip side, I'd just been up and down over 1500m vertically, and there was still 31.6km to go. My longest distance previously was a marathon, so I was soon going to be in uncharted territory. In the back of my mind, I remembered the last 3 miles of the Big Sur marathon: pure agony, with cramping calves and burning hip flexors. If that happened this time at 40km, the last 20km weren't going to be fast...

So I played it smart, and kept my overall race goal in mind: be running strong at the finish. Ticking off the checkpoints, disaster was duly avoided, and I didn't cramp up, break down, or tear anything. I was able to enjoy the scenery... if you haven't walked the track, the Iris Burn Valley is a truly spiritual place. The field had spread out, so much of this half was run with nobody in sight, cruising through the rainforest on a leaf-litter path. I passed many hikers, who all clapped and cheered me on (even though I sure they thought we were all mad) - I even saw the Canadian guy who I hiked the Routeburn track a week previously, who was wearing a "Go Luke Go!" sign on his pack... thanks to Keith for giving me an extra burst of energy there.

After 50km, it's all a bit of a haze. The legs didn't really want to go, I cracked the whip and skipped songs until I found inspiration, and at last I saw the Control Gates around the bend in the river. With about 500m to go, I had enough for a 'sprint' (or at least what felt like a sprint) and claimed one more place (I had reeled a few people in on the back half) before crossing in 7:22:44, good enough for 105th out of a field of 400.

Which brings me to the next part - how did I do? After all the training, did I play it right? In terms of pace, you can do the numbers: over 7 hours for 60km is pretty slow. I was hoping for something the 7:00, but in hindsight my pace calculations weren't well figured. Consider that the winning time of 4:56 equates to 5 minute k's, or 8 minute miles - pretty slow for a winning time in an elite race. And this guy (Martin Lukes) recently placed 6th in the world ultramarathon champs, doing 100km at a pace of 4 minute k's, or 6.5 minute miles. So it's a tough course!

At the very least, I achieved three things: a negative split (about 4 hours for the first half, 3:20 for the second), running strong at the finish, and no disasters (cramps / hitting walls / etc) along the way.

I then got to wondering about the folks who finished around me, as a way of benchmarking. A little web-stalking revealed some interesting stuff. The girl who I sprinted past at the finish (with the possibly illegal help of Jay-Z's 'Encore' on the iPod) turned out to be a fairly serious triathlete from the US, highlights being: 2nd in the Big Sur trail half marathon, 1st in her age group for the ITY World Triathlon Champs (she's in the background of my 'sprint' photo). Behind her was a guy who recently clocked a 1:24 half marathon - certainly better than me, he's clearly no slouch. A few minutes ahead (7:20) was a guy who did the Badwater 15o miler Death Valley this year... so there's some inspiration.

When it's all said and done, though, this is called a "Challenge", not a "Race" for a reason. For me, it was simply unlike anything I've ever done, and everyone out there has their own story. The race has been run 21 times, and there was a guy running his 20th - at 72. There was also a young gun going for the big win, but who hit the wall with 10km to go, and came in second to the self-proclaimed 'wily' and experienced Martin Lukes.

Now for the big question: will I go back? Talk to me in a couple of weeks...

Here we go...

2008-12-04T17:44:00.000-08:00

One last day of contemplation and carbo-loading in Queenstown... on a glorious December day, no less. Time to run!

League vs Union... one Kiwi fan's story

2008-11-25T07:15:00.000-08:00

On Saturday night, I watched New Zealand win its first Rugby League World Cup with a 34-20 victory over Australia in the final. There's no sweeter victory for New Zealand than beating Australia. For me, the strange thing was, I was more excited about that game than the All Blacks v. Wales rugby union test match this morning. I began to reflect on the long-running battle for hearts and minds between the two rugby codes that we follow here in Kiwiland...

Every part of the world has it's 'football'. In most countries, it's the game we call 'soccer'. In the US, of course, it's their proprietary game with the helmets and the big hits. In New Zealand and Australia, it's any one of three games played with the oval ball: rugby union, rugby league, and Australian Rules (AFL). Needless to say, as a Kiwi, my interest in Aussie Rules is negligible, so for me (and most of my family), the salient question is: do I follow the 'league' or the 'rugby' (shorthand for 'rugby union').

Now, some of you might wonder if this is a serious question. After all, rugby has the All Blacks, famous around the world, and is the team sport in which New Zealand is most consistently competitive on the global stage (for a while, we had America's Cup yachting, but that's a whole different story...). What's with this 'league' thing, anyway?

Well, my experiences begin in the glorious 80's. At that time, rugby was the main (only) mass market winter sport in New Zealand. Unfortunately, it was an amateur game with rules which delivered a lot of kicking, waiting, and set plays - not much running, try scoring, or general excitement. And while the amateur aspect gave the sport an 'everyman' chic, the rugby boys couldn't really keep up with other professional sportsmen. Switching from the Soccer World Cup to the rugby was like switching on slow motion.

Then came the Winfield Cup. Australia's national rugby league competition, the Winfield Cup was like Rio's Carneval compared with the NZ rugby union. They had bright uniforms, a "Grand Final" day featuring Tina Turner, and most importantly, they ran with the ball. It was the razzle-dazzle - fancy flick passes, nifty side steps, big hits - compared with the strategy and kicking of the union. It also brought the drama of professionalism. Big salaries, big personalities, and off-field drama... the players and their girlfriends were in all the magazines, the scandals were on the tabloid front pages.

There was one thing missing: a New Zealand team. Amazingly, this didn't stop Kiwis from becoming converts to the league. As a 10 year old, I met the legendary Canberra Raiders and Queensland star Mal Meninga, and it was the biggest buzz of my life (at that time, to be clear), even though I was a Manly fan (and had a Manly jersey signed by their star fullback Matthew Ridge). We would all get together for the Grand Final and listen to Tina Turner belt out "Simply the Best". And it was the Best show in town.

Unsurprisingly, the players figured this out as well. Matthew Ridge, for example, was a rugby convert. Countless others traded in their grim, low paid rugby passions for the glitz and glory of the Winfield Cup. Soon, if you knew how to run and pass, you were heading across the Tasman. And rugby was suffering. in 1995, the first New Zealand team entered the competition - 'the Warriors' became the country's new sporting heroes overnight.

So, the empire struck back, and rugby went pro. The Super 12, a competition spanning NZ, Australia, and South Africa, was launched in 1996. The crowd went wild: this was as exciting as the league (new rules lead to faster play), and had all the fun and fanfare of the Winfield Cup (which had by now been renamed, as cigarette sponsorship was out of fashion). Rugby grabs the lead... for the next few years, it was all about the Super 12. I was certainly a convert, and my team, the Auckland Blues, dominated the tournament for its inaugural years.

Now, I'm not sure where I stand. Rugby has lost its lustre in recent years: the Super 12 has expanded, they've messed around with the rules, and on the international stage, the All Blacks haven't won a World Cup since 1987. Many great Kiwi players have followed the money to European rugby union clubs (unlike the drain to league in the 80's and 90's, the audience can't and won't follow them there). After watching the action-packed league game last night, this morning's game against the Welsh was a tedious affair, full of scrums being re-set, muddled linouts, and penalties.

There's also the big 'P' - 'personality'. League seems to have a different tone; it has always been the working class game, and exudes the blue collar values of hard work, pride, and commitment. The 'league boys' can be a bit rough around the edges, but they all some like good guys who love their sport and look out for their teammates. That was once true with rugby (union) as well, but these days, there is a faint prima donna feel about the New Zealand players. There's an assumed merenary streak, with every All Black assumed to be doing their numbers on whether to move to Europe, and the NZRFU grooming has turned them into slick and safe pros, on and off the field. Think Andre Agassi versus Pete Sampras... Pete has the record, but Agassi evokes passion.

Which begs the question, how do entire sports compete with each other for audience hearts and minds? It's certainly a complex equation, and other sports such as cricket are grappling with it at the moment. Something to explore on my 'serious' blog over the next few days.

In the meantime, GO KIWIS! A spectacular win, by a perfect bunch of 'good bloke' underdogs... and of course, my condolences to the Aussies.

Tongariro GPS Track

2008-11-22T15:53:00.000-08:00

OK, this isn't really new news. But I got around to plotting the GPS track from my run, and it's a pretty cool trace. The large snowy mountain on the right is Mt Ruapehu (where Aucklanders ski), the pointy one that my trail skirts around is Mt Ngauruhoe, and the lump to the left of the high point on my track is Mt Tongariro. They're all volcanos, and Ngauruhoe is still steaming...

The run started at the rightmost end of the little loop you can see; across, up to the trail summit, back down, and then around the top part of the loop to make up the necessary k's.

(Click for larger image)

A perfect day in the mountains

2008-11-12T17:28:00.003-08:00

Yesterday I remarked that the last long run is a complicated affair, mentally and physically. Well, I was right about that today; my five hours on the trail brought more surprises and challenges than the average training run. But the views were worth it, I didn’t break anything (which was lucky, as you’ll hear shortly), and I definitely got the ‘mountain workout’ I was looking for.

So, I started on the Mangatepopo track, which runs from Whakapapa Village (right by the Skotel where I’m staying) to Mangatepopo Valley, where the Tongariro Crossing begins. It’s about 9 kilometers, and is rated at 3 hours for hikers. But – and this is where I should have wised up – the sign notes that it could take ‘up to 5 hours in bad weather’. Turns out that this is a godforsaken, rugged, and very long 9 kilometers, offering up a veritable buffet of leg-destroying challenges. There are numerous stream crossings, so although the elevation gain is negligible, you’re always dropping into and coming out of stream valleys, and hopping rocks. That’s OK, in itself. The real problem is that in many places, the track is the stream – and even if there isn’t water flowing, the track has been so eroded that it’s often a slippery gulch up to five feet deep. There were times when it was more like canyoning – cross your fingers and jump. But wait, there’s more. For much of the track, it runs in a groove about a foot or two deep – no problem, except that the tussock grass has grown out across the groove, so you can’t see where your feet are going. Most of the time it’s even underfoot, but occasionally there are roots and/or nasty little potholes. Yes, I found this out the hard way. 45 minutes into the long run, I was on my face with some grazed palms… a great start!

Now, not only was this slow going, but it burned up my nice fresh legs. So much jumping, balancing, and adjusting for slippery or uneven ground takes its toll. I arrived at the Tongariro Crossing trail around 8.30am, shortly after most of the bus trips, feeling a little beat up. My run up the valley (which is the first leg of the crossing) was foolishly exuberant. Finally, I had some flat terrain and some people to whiz past (which is one of the fun parts of mountain running). Unfortunately, I didn’t think about conserving myself, and let the heart rate creep up a little high. Reaching the bottom of the ‘Devil’s Staircase’, an unrelenting 1000 foot / 300 meter climb, I powered on up, burning up my legs some more. Where was all that discipline I talked up yesterday?

The South Crater was a great reward for the slog up the hill, though. Still carrying snow, on a glorious spring day, there aren’t many better places in the world. I charged across, and got to try out the Gore-Tex Salomons and my new OR gaiters in the snow. Awesome! The surface was even but firm, and it was possible to keep up a pretty good pace.

Up the Red Crater ridge – a 600 feet / 200 meter scramble, I was feeling the legs. Reaching the summit, I tested the idea of going further, but about half way down the other side of the ridge, realized that coming back up the loose scree was going to be a killer, especially after another 10 kilometers. Sadly, I scrambled back to the top (although even that halfway scramble confirmed my decision).

Now I was on track for a 30 km run, which was much less than I had hoped for. Still, the vertical stuff on the Crossing is tough – very steep, loose underfoot, and of course carrying some snow – which was some consolation. Back across the Crater, down the Devil’s Staircase again, past the folks I had passed on the way up, and before long I was alone again (there is a definite ‘wave’ of hikers from the morning buses, and after that the Crossing is surprisingly deserted).

Cruising back along the valley floor, things got interesting. Knowing I had the nine k’s of adventure race terrain between me and home, I took it easy along the boardwalks, and changed my stride slightly. Boom! Cramp in my inner thigh (abductor). That’s a new one for me! Calves, sure, quads perhaps, but never there. Ouch.

Cutting a long story short, I managed to work through the cramp and get running. I refilled my water for the Mangatepopo – Whakapapa traverse and managed to hustle through that. I was 100% focused on managing my legs. Altering my footfall slightly to relieve load on the abductor seemed to work, although I forgot once and had to spend 5 minutes on a self-massage (not as bad as it sounds). Strangely, the legs would work fine for, say, 10 minutes, but then I’d pull some move (say, springing up onto a rock) and something would tweak. I figure I just plain overused all my stabilizing muscles.

The good news is, as I neared Whakapapa, I had enough gas left in the tank to take a pleasant detour on an even, firm track (yes!) to the Taranaki Falls. From there it was a glorious cruise back, slowly descending to Whakapapa. My iPod shuffle helped near the finish – ‘Speedway to Nazareth’ by Mark Knopfler, a story of NASCAR racing, ‘Encore’ from Jay-Z, which pushed me up a notch, and the party-time ‘Tive Rizao’ by Seu Jorge (Portuguese artist famous for his David Bowie covers in ‘The Life Aquatic’).

Then, the best part – recovery, mountain-style. Stick the legs in a nice ice-melt stream (nature’s ice bath) and refuel with jam sandwiches, protein shake, and the ubiquitous banana. A perfect end to a perfectly glorious and unpredictable day in the mountains.

Kepler Challenge – D minus 26 days

2008-11-10T23:46:00.000-08:00

Once again, I’m finding old adages to be true. As I crunch through the toughest period of training for the Kepler Challenge (NZ’s premier mountain run, held on December 6 and covering 60 km of trail), the old chestnuts are proving accurate:

Any little ache or pain becomes an instant source of obsession… true
Overtraining is the leading cause of injuries in ultramarathoners… yep
Motivation to run, say, 40km in training is hard to find… you think?
We redefine our norms continuously – now, when I read about the 100 mile races out there, 60 km doesn’t seem so tough, now does it?

I’m writing this on the eve of my last long run. To be fair, it should be a great day out – today I drove down to Tongariro National Park, the ‘big’ mountains in the North Island where I (and most other Kiwis) learned to hike, ski, respect the mountain weather, and enjoy getting out amongst it. The route I’ve planned will take me from my starting point in Whakapapa Village, across about 10km of rolling tussock terrain to the start of the world famous ‘Tongariro Crossing’, and as far over the crossing as my legs and the snow conditions will allow. And, of course, back again!

Regardless of the route, the last long run has a special place in any marathoner’s preparation. It’s the nearest you get to the endurance demands of race day; you’ll pretty much know whether you’re ready by the time you get home. However, it’s also risky – unlike race day, if you breakdown in a bad way, it could ruin your chances of running at all. In my case, I’m nursing a slightly sore Achilles / ankle on one foot, and I have visions of waking up the day after tomorrow needing a crutch. Moreover, it is by definition not a race – so there’s none of the race day ‘kickers’, like the adrenaline, the crowd vibe, the finish line relief, or the confidence of knowing you don’t have to run again any time soon. It’s just as the name describes: a long run, after which you enter the purgatory of tapering and ‘sustaining’ the training investment.

So, we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t ask: why? Although this is dangerous territory to explore on the eve of a long run, I’ll give you my answer. Because it’s a unique kind of experience, compared with most of what we do in life. Normally, hard things (like work) have extrinsic rewards. Not so running a long training run – you get from it what you want to get from it. Few activities better tune the mind to the body – when you’re feeling every footfall, adjusting for every twinge, and trying to pace yourself over six or more hours, it’s pretty darn holistic. Finally, it sets up some breathtaking moments. Today I was cruising along a nice flat piece of track, feeling the wind, and came around the corner to see Ruapehu in all its glory. Always a spectacular site, but somehow heightened when you’re dialed in to the trail and the heart rate is up.

Well, that’s the rant. Now for the run.

367 or bust... the states united once more?

2008-11-04T21:55:00.000-08:00

So there it is: history made, and about as clear a break from the Bush regime as the world could ask for in this election. Watching Obama's acceptance tonight was certainly spine-tingling stuff - we were sitting around waiting for the credits to roll - and there can be no mistaking the magnitude of this 'change'.

What we still don't know is exactly how many electoral college votes the new president will carry into the White House. Why does it matter? Well, any election is about a mandate. Right now, with this candidate, and after 8 years of partisanship, no mandate can be too strong. For every southern and midwestern state Obama can carry, he gains a little more political capital to spend on bridging gaps with Republicans, and keeping the democratic Senate and House in line.

And let's not forget the good old days of 'repainting the map'. Reagan's 525 electoral votes seems impossible in today's world, but it represented a broad-based support of his vision which lingers in voters' memories even today. Perhaps, if nothing else, this victory might give Americans the confidence to start believing in their presidents again, and allowing themselves to cross party lines for the right leader. Fingers crossed for 367 when the dust settles (that's what I get if I add North Carolina, Indiana, and Montana to the current total of 338), and when 2012 comes, can The One break through the 400 or even 450? Yes he can.

I am BACK (online)

2008-10-23T01:03:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? There are a number of reasons / excuses for this. First and foremost is the kind of self-reflection that sets in during any prolonged holiday. Self-reflection which included asking the question: "why am I writing on my blog, is it just ego-casting or self-centred or generally some sort of personality dysfunction?". (I've been reading a lot about perception of self, which I would thoroughly warn against doing if you want to stay sane.) Secondly, it was a heck of a busy travel schedule - since Avignon we've found our way back to NZ via 6 countries, 3 wine regions, and too many friends to count. Finally, since being back in NZ / Australia, it's been nice to just "unplug" from life and enjoy being free from obligations (blogging included).

So, for better or worse, I answered my question: "might as well write stuff down". However, I did identify a source of discomfort with blogging: I like to ramble about unimportant details (ie my life and travels) as well as more interesting ideas (technology, economics, business, whatever). So my plan is to split these two strands, and use this blog for jotting down my personal stuff.

First up: photos of the trip. Fully captioned after a nice late night editing effort ;-) Available as always here: http://lukebaxter.zenfolio.com

Secondly, the "new" blog. This is intended to be my less interesting / more analytical ramblings. The stuff that my mum doesn't care about but Jonathan Bolden (http://jhbolden.blogspot.com/) might. I'm also thinking, as I return to consulting, that it's important to have a place to jot down ideas to share with colleagues and clients. We'll see! Anyway, this blog is called: "The Painful Job of Thinking". It's here: http://thepainfuljobofthinking.blogspot.com/

It's good to be back!

Farewell, Avignon

2008-08-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

What a week... Provence is definitely a place for clearing (and clouding) your head in very pleasant ways. Staying in a church of miracles (see photo), working through all the offerings of the local boulangerie, and sampling the various Cotes du Rhone appelations... I could do this for a while. Also managed to get some internet together and drop a couple of blog posts - one on running and one on port.

That´s it for a while as we´re heading for the mountains - the Tour de Mont Blanc and my first hike that spans three countries. Au revoir!

4 months and counting

2008-08-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

On August 6 I took a short but sweaty run around the banks of the Rhone in Avignon. It was nothing remarkable - 5 miles in some serious European summer heat (93 F / 34 C), punctuated by some great landmarks (the Pont d´Avignon and Palais des Papes) - but is worth noting as the start of my 4 month countdown to the Kepler Challenge. Yep, I´ve signed up to run 60km at the end of the year, and have no idea right now how to make that happen. The advice I´ve had from the organizers so far is ¨run... a lot... especially hills¨. OK, got it!

So far on our travels, I´ve actually managed to get some great runs. I have to admit that they´ve favored scenery over duration, and the long (long) runs have to start soon. Although hiking around Mont Blanc next week will be a useful start...

Here´s a few of the highlights of my runs on the road since leaving Stanford:

Around Lake Tahoe on a still Sunday morning
Up to Mirror Lake in Yosemite in the golden afternoon light
Along the Seattle waterfront on a blustery afternoon
Through Denali NP in Alaska when the grizzly warning signs were up (apparently they want to eat the moose calves, but I still think I offer a tasty diversion)
Around Lakes Calhoun, Isles, Sissabagema in Minneapolis / Wisconsin
Up Mont Royal in Montreal (note, no snow when I was there...)
Around the cobbles of Lisbon
Across the Dom Luis Bridge in Porto

So from here, the training log gets a lot thicker and a lot less interesting. But the big day should be a good one...

Porto and the beauty of port

2008-08-01T04:14:00.000-07:00

I´ve drunk my share (or arguably a little more) of port growing up, but have to admit that I never really understood it. I usually bought tawny because that sounded more ¨serious¨ than the ruby, and figured older was better (ie 20 year is more expensive than 10 year), but never thought much about the story. In Porto, I learned that port is a triumph of innovation, trade, and foreign investment... and has a uniformly high alcohol content. I like port even more than before.

Of course, port gets its name from Porto, where most of it is made. So why do ports carry British brand names (Taylor´s, Graham´s, etc)? Well, it turns out firstly that this isn´t the case. We did a superb tasting at Vinologia (picture attached) where we experienced some of the fine flavors of the local Portuguese producers. These guys are typically smaller than the big names, and often use the grapes from one or a few quintas - the farms in the Douro valley which producce port grapes. And they make some great port, for sure. Look out for them at the bottlestore next time - names like Quinta de Silval, Quinta de Javali, Sao Pedro, basically anything you haven´t heard of is worth a try.

That said, most of the port produced and sold in Western markets comes from the big names, which are indeed British. Turns out that the demand for port came from Britain, although indirectly. The British were looking for supplies of hearty table wine, and the meaty grapes of the Douro valley were just the ticket - except they were too far away. The wine typically was spoiled before it reached England by sail. Hence, they struck on the idea of adding spirits (brandy, specifically) to preserve the partly-fermented wine, yielding a sweet, wine-like, 20% alcohol drink. Cheers to that! However, getting the industry up and running required real capital, and coordination between production and shipping. As such, the British were the major investors in establishing port ´houses´ in Porto, so when you look across the Douro (behind me in the photo) you´ll see the classic names emblazoned on huge warehouses.

There are plenty of business and political reasons why this all might have failed: the winemaking process was certainly unorthodox, and would probably not have been supported in France or Germany; the inflow of British capital might have ruffled some feathers (just look at the recent sale of Anheuser-Busch); and finally, the model relied on favorable trade relations, which were jeopardized many times (for example, during the Napoleonic wars). Bottom line: keep minds and markets open, and the good stuff will flow!

As a final note, I´d recommend trying a bunch of different varieties and producers. We tried dry whites (branco), sweet whites, rubies (LBV and Reserve), tawnies of different ages, and the range of styles is pretty amazing. The sweet whites could be served as a dessert tipple, and the rubies have the same kind of fruit weight and complexity as a good bordeaux. Also, it´s worth exploring producers. There are large Portuguese players like Ramos Pinto, small players as mentioned earlier, and the big houses like Taylors and Cockburns. All good in their own way. For the record, my favorite drop was the Sao Pedro das Aguias Vintage 2000 port... a huge and fruit-heavy beast of a thing, with lots going on and plenty of length to get you through to 3am!

Farewell to North America (done 5 ways)

2008-07-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

One thing I've learned so far: I'm no travelblogger. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your philosophy) I get a little preoccupied when I'm on the road, and uploading photos and breathless descriptions (“ was so awesome! Amazing to see the and visit the ”) falls well down the priority list. But there are times for reflection, and during the flight over the North Atlantic after my last few weeks in North America seems as good as any.

So, as for the '5 ways' thing. The food has been a highlight of the trip so far. Not necessarily for the quality, although there has definitely been plenty of that, but for the surprises and the settings. I'm a big fan of dishes offering something “3 ways” (or 4, or 5, whatever – you know, “pork 3 ways” sort of thing), and that's how I feel we've lived the last few weeks. One continent, experienced through a few different lenses (apologies for the mixed metaphor).

The downside is that this is somewhat long. As with a dish done 5 ways, pick and choose if you like, taste a little of each, or if you prefer, order something else.

Alaska by RV. Unbelievable. Driving 8 miles per gallon while watching the glaciers melt (60 to 90 feet per day). Following the pipeline carrying black blood and delivering checks to all the Alaskans. Not really believing that 600,000 people can survive up there. Going crazy with the midnight sun. Unexpected food find: Ernesto's Taqueria, which brought Californian near-the-border authenticity to the grim oil port of Valdez, and served up killer Shrimp Enchiladas. Big ups to Ernesto!

Portland and Seattle, driving' for the 4^th of July. A crazy pastiche of, well, cool stuff. The Full Sail brewery at Hood River where the employees (who own the brewery) will shut the plant to go kitesurfing on the river... a 'wind related emergency', of course. The Bonneville dam where migrating salmon are allowed past the dam in return for passing a window to be counted (or spied on by random tourists). Mark Knopfler at the glorious Arlene Schnitzer Hall, getting a standing ovation for Brothers in Arms and Sultans of Swing. In Seattle, the crumpet shop (more on that later). Discovering that Chateau St Michele is the world's largest riesling producer (it's a rare wine fact that surprises me...). And last but most wonderful, our 4^th of July experience on our friends' houseboat: Lake Union covered with boats, a USMC Chinook carrying a giant US flag, Dad's famous ribs... and a few firecrackers to boot. Unexpected food find: A gourmet crumpet shop offering nutella and ricotta crumpets, not to mention bottomless tea refills. My idea of heaven! 'Picture perfect' moment, however (although we lack a picture), was our final crab dinner prepared by our hosts with fresh Dungeness crabs from Pike Place market.

The Olympics by trail. Four days in the Elwha Valley, just the two of us, our tent, a snowmelt-flooded river, and a few random encounters. A Stanford alum living out her dream retirement in the woods, a young man escaping civilization (but trusting two strange foreigners with a message to his family), and old day-hikers with a kleptomania specific to walking sticks. Unexpected food find: Backpackers' Pantry Scrambled Eggs, left lying perfectly on the trail prior to our last night in the woods. Despite plastic consistency, consumed voraciously on the last morning and followed later in the day by a Dairy Queen stop at Squim. Honorable mention also to the watermelon provided by a friendly associate of mine we visited in Port Angeles.
Minneapolis and the North Woods by Jeep. The Midwest we never imagined. A swanky downtown, great food, and great times 'at the lake'. The mysterious, challenging, but extremely fun 'air chair'. Unexpected food find: everything. The superb restaurants (Lurcat's foie gras was definitely West or East Coast, or even Cote d'Azur quality), the many homemade delights (ribs with 30 spices, caramel rolls that defy description), the 'fish fry' with $3.50 beers (Spotted Cow from Madison, WI, winning the highly scientific 'tasting').
Montreal by Metro and sidewalk. There isn't much to say except, why aren't there more French/English bilingual cities in the world? The beauty of food and chatter en Francais, without the inconvenience of language barriers for getting stuff done. We took in a stunning Yves St Laurent tribute at the Museum of Fine Arts (of course) and we felt strangely compelled to climb Mont Royal (after which Montreal takes it's name) three times. Unexpected food finds (I'm giving up on trying to find one thing now): Juliette & Chocolate, a chocolatier offering dark and milk chocolate 'vintages' for

tasting in balloon glasses, and almost zero English service. Garde Manger, where Montreal's young hipsters hang out – great for the stomach, not so good for the self-esteem... they're a great looking crowd, even on a

Wednesday.

So there you go. After two years living and traveling there, the northern half of the New World still has the capacity to surprise. To all my Kiwi buddies who think that the US is just WalMarts and McDonalds, freeways and fat, and that an OE has to be Euro-centric, I say GO WEST!

That said, it's time to go East. Farewell, and to paraphrase the Governor of our adopted state, we'll be back.

This is not a travelblog

2008-07-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

Perhaps this really is as postmodern and complex as 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe', or perhaps not. But for the record, although I'm going to try and blog during our travels (yes, I realize, I haven't even done very well at that so far) I'm going to try and avoid the travelblog chronology style. You can read the '24 hours in Madrid' summary in the Lonely Planet; I'm going to try for a more philosophical and 'thematic' approach. That said, my US roundup is sort of chronological, despite my focus on our random experiences and unexpected culinary delights.

As a side note, I'm writing this on the high speed “AVE” train from Barcelona to Madrid, and it is definitely the way to travel. We're in the plush coach (when you're old like us, they make you buy the first class Eurail pass, dang it) and it beats business class on most airlines... without taxiing to the airport, checking in, and runway delays, the 3 hour 20 minute time compares pretty well on time as well. So what is it about English speaking countries that we can't build a fast railroad anywhere? In fact, we're generally slowcoaches on the ground. The Germans build roads for 200kph, the French can get 600kph from their TGV, and we grovel around at 100kph at best. Maybe that's why Euros are all so chill the rest of the time?

Still alive...

2008-06-22T07:20:00.000-07:00

Wow, no post for over a month. Guess it has been busy round here ... finishing up school, packing up house, graduating, and all that. Currently on the road with my parents and about to jump on a plane for Alaska. Sad to say goodbye to California but have a strong suspicion that (in the words of our great Governor): I'll be back.

More real posts to come!

GSB Conquers Mt Stanford

2008-05-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in life, there are things which just have to be done. For example: earlier this quarter, when a group of GSBers heard about the existence of a ‘Mt Stanford’, it simply had to be climbed. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Mt Stanford? Really? Perhaps you are talking about the Dish? Well, it turns out that Mt Stanford is not only a real mountain, but a superb peak sharing many of the attributes of our beloved university: lofty (13,963 ft / 4,256 m, ranking among the highest 20 peaks in the Sierras), beautiful, understated, demanding, and (most practically) located right here in beautiful California. Once we knew about it, our team of wilderness-loving MBA2s – Luke Baxter, Chris Harris, Jimmy Henderson, Dave King, and Jim Sinai – felt an obligation to put the GSB on top of Stanford, where it should be. And what are Mondays and Fridays for, after all?

So, over the weekend of April 25-28, we saddled up and headed for the King’s Canyon National Park. Arriving 10 minutes after the road to the trailhead opened, we had the park all to ourselves for the 40-mile roundtrip, which involved the grueling gain (and loss) of 9,000ft of altitude. The hike unfolded in spectacular fashion. After a glorious climb through dramatic granite valleys, we reached the alpine basin over which Mt Stanford presides, like a sort of craggy Hoover Tower looming over an icy Serra Street fountain. Christening our spectacular Saturday night high camp site ‘Upper Upper Arbuckle’ (elevation 10,500 ft), we grabbed some quick shuteye on the snow in preparation for the final assault.

Starting summit day at 2am, pursuing an unconventional approach along the North Ridge, the MBA2 contingent showed a resolve rarely seen in regular, carefree GSB life. We huffed up the Deerhorn Saddle, sucking down the thin mountain air like red solo cups of beer at LPF, and reached the summit ridge shortly after sunrise. Once there, Mt Stanford decided to remind us of the distinction between ‘summit ridge’ and ‘summit’; although we were a mere 150 feet vertically below the peak, we would have to scramble down about 250 feet, and back up 400 feet over steep, loose rock and hanging snowfields to reach the real summit. There was some debate within the group, with several members attempting to apply the complicated ‘wife test’ to assess the danger, but eventually we agreed to search for a route up the forbidding face.

The rest, now, is history. The GSB attained the summit around 9.00am, christening the final scramble the “Joss Ascent”, in homage to the great Dean Joss and his affection for Shackleton’s adventuring spirit. After some predictable Zoolander-esque summit antics involving Stanford apparel and flags, we enjoyed an eventful descent – marked by a perilous boots-on river crossing (the last 11 miles were hiked in a slow, squelching style) and a close encounter with a bear cub (made even more eventful by the presence of mommy bear).

This really was the best of the GSB in action – a big dream, a great team, campfire Touchy Feely, and an endless stream of those lame business gags and MBA in-jokes which just won’t fly when we’re back in the real world. In fact, it’s the kind of trip that we think should become a great tradition… Class of 2009 (Mr Nash-Webber and Mr McCarthy, perhaps?) over to you!

The Week of Wine - Second Instalment: THE FRENCH LAUNDRY

2008-04-23T21:00:00.001-07:00

On rare occasions, things happen that render even me speechless. In this case, it was a gift. In December last year ('07) we traveled around New Zealand with a bunch of our good friends from the business school. We had a great time and expected no thanks, but a couple of weeks ago, they held a great supper and presented us with a truly remarkable present: a voucher to the French Laundry, plus the French Laundry cookbook. At the time, we stammered some kind of thank you, and began salivating almost immediately. It's the gift you never expect, but secretly hope for.

Of course, there was a catch: reservations at the FL are hard. Actually, hard is an understatement... the rule is to call exactly 60 days ahead, at 10am, and the typical experience is: engaged signal for an hour or so, followed by apologetic response that 'we're fully booked'. To further complicate things, we received our magic voucher about, uh, 60 days ahead of our last viable date while we're living in the Bay Area. Dang! Fortunately (and this is on the down low) it turns out that even the FL has a heart. We explained our situation, made it clear that we were very flexible, and they found a cancellation in one week's time. Joy reigns in the kingdom of food! So, one week later...

...we walk into the little rustic building in Yountville. It was actually a French Laundry - a 'steam' laundry, apparently - and is still very authentic inside. We sat in the small room with 3 tables off the right on the ground floor, which was a lovely intimate little nook, and so it began.

There's no point running through the menu - the descriptions are inadequate, I don't understand half of the terminology, and the food is really only a vehicle for the experience. My best analogy: this was to dinners what Jimi Hendrix is to guitar riffs. Instead, there are some random highlights that stand out:

1. The Sommelier - He tops the list on the basis that few restaurants get this right, and expensive ones are often worse than cheap joints in this respect. They usually add either no value - just another order-taker - or they try to prescribe, regardless of your own knowledge / interests. This guy was perfect. Smooth, ruggedly tanned, and French, I should have been concerned for my marriage, but instead struck up a great rapport over the timing of the Dr Loosen Riesling. After a couple of glasses of Sonoma Chardonnay? Or before a nice NZ Pinot? The latter, it turns out. And he endorsed my choice of the 1998 Yalumba Octavius, which was my 21st birthday celebration wine, and one of the best premium Shiraz from the great 1998 Australian vintage.

2. The Salt - This pre-empts 'the Foie Gras' somewhat, but they brought out three types of salt with which to 'finish' my duck liver. And, of course, three stories... one was 'Jurassic Salt', from a copper mine in Montana, one was sea salt from Brittany in France, and the third was some equally involved origin requiring lots of air freight and carbon emissions. To make matters even more amusing, one waiter (#1) asks us if we want to keep the salts, we say 'yes', but then waiter #2 clears our table and takes the salt. No mind, it's back 5 seconds later, with an earnest apology from #1. Attention to detail!

3. The Foie Gras and Veal Heart - Two contenders for 'best dish ever'. The Foie Gras was, somewhat surprisingly, in a pate form, but retained the molten buttery consistency of the original article. It was serve with warm brioche - which an attentive waitperson replaced when it was 'cold' - and the three salts mentioned above. There was also an apple sauce and strips of ginger with which to create some glorious little flavor combos. Stunning. I savored it with the Dr Loosen for about 15 minutes... my 15 minutes of Foie Gras, I guess! The Veal Heart was not as barbaric as it sounds; it was served sliced (resulting in a pastrami-like appearance) and wasn't recognizable as a heart. I don't want to talk too much about the eating of said heart, other than to say it ranks as one of life's great guilty pleasures.

4. Oysters and Pearls and a Special Spoon - Well, the oysters (small, tasty) and caviar (fresh, tangy) were great, but the showstopper was the smooth, flat, generally sensual mother-of-pearl spoon. It made for one, well, smooth experience. Textures are a big thing for Keller and this was an awesome example.

5. The Goody Bag - Chocolates and shortbread to stretch out the experience for another day or so. Of course, the shortbread is probably the best you'll taste and the chocolates are very creative.

6. The Feeling at the End - Toxic shock, but in a good way. Admittedly, we drank about 1.2 bottles of wine each, so the alcohol may have been a factor. Either way, we walked home feeling satisfied in every way, and were in a merry daze for about 24 hours ... I didn't feel at all like partaking in the Arbuckle grill at 12.30 the following day.

Overall, it's just a ridiculous and fantastic (in the true sense of the word) experience. At some point in your life, save up the bucks and go. Note that I do mean bucks; our friends were generous with their voucher, and even then the excess was comparable to a very nice dinner in any major city (and the majority was still food, not wine). But this 3 Michelin Star Thomas Keller property is a defining work of art that must be seen, in the same was everyone should see Rodin's 'Thinker' or the Sistine Chapel. That said, it's my first (and last for a while) Michelin Start experience; I'm sure that places like Per Se (also Keller) and El Bulli are valid competitors.

And to all the GSB New Zealand crew: THANKS! You guys will always be 'the people who took us to the French Laundry' (and, of course, really nice people in your own right...).

The Week of Wine - First Instalment

2008-04-18T16:25:00.000-07:00

So, I'm almost at the end of a crazy week of wine. Last weekend in Santa Ynez, Wednesday night in Napa (for the French Laundry... more on that later), Thursday night drinking Gewurztraminer from my German buddy's uncle's vineyard, and Friday afternoon I'm sitting here in Sonoma playing catchup on my blogging. Looking forward to cracking open that first Chardonnay... but before that, let me copy-paste my last article for the Stanford Reporter as Wine Circle President, in which I tell the story of our GSB Wine Circle trip to Santa Ynez last weekend.

Oh yeah, and that's the same pink shirt and rose combination as in my profile shot...

Wine Circle 07/08 – The Farewell Tour

When the GSB hits wine country, it’s typically Napa. There’s nothing wrong with Napa, but after a few weekends stuck in traffic on Highway 29, tasting a dozen identical ‘affordable’ $50 cabernets dispensed by some couldn’t-care-less wage earner, it’s easy to get jaded. To escape the rat race, the Wine Circle rolled south en masse this past weekend, to the central coast paradise of Santa Ynez. If you’ve seen ‘Sideways’, you’ll have a feel for this place – a little more random, more rural, and more genuine than Norcal wine country seems these days. And so it proved… we discovered some great wines, and some great characters.

Starting at Firestone (founded by the tire family of the same name… I’m seeing a bad cryptic crossword clue: ‘tired of wine from the very beginning’, perhaps?), we found the oak-kissed Sauvignon and Gewurztraminer zingy and fresh, and the Estrella Syrah intense and grippy (with almost a Cabernet-esque finish). The star of the show, in an anti-Sideways twist, was the 2003 Reserve Merlot ($29), which showed how a tasteful dash of 10% Cabernet Franc can brighten and lift to create something special. Speaking of special, the spectacular private tasting room overlooking the barrel hall justifies a visit to this estate all on its own.

My notes, predictably, get patchier later in the day. Bridlewood is one of my favorite wineries, and we enjoyed a great lunch in the sun, with their refreshing Rose and perfectly balanced Viognier. A note on Viognier: it’s a great middle ground between the buttery heft of Chardonnay and the fruity aromatics such as Riesling and Sauvignon, so if you don’t know this varietal, give it a whirl this summer.

The story of the afternoon, as far as I can recall, was Syrah. This suits me fine, as it’s my favorite red varietal, and grows well in particularly beautiful places – Provence in France, Hawkes Bay in New Zealand, and, of course, Santa Ynez. Bridlewood’s various syrahs are all great value, and their Six Gun Syrah ($30) was a stand out – super smoky, justifying the funky name. Fess Parker’s Santa Barbara Syrah ($22) is a muscular example of the fruit quality in this region, and Gainey’s offerings (try the 2005 white label Syrah, $24) were definitely the best wines we tasted there. Bottom line, get some Santa Ynez syrah on your table this summer.

Finally, the trip wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the ‘after hours’ premises featured in the movie. The Hitching Post II offers up a very generous helping of the American Dream – Midwest steak, full-power desserts like chocolate peanut butter pie, and salt-of-the-earth service and ‘décor’. After that, wander the strip in Buellton… drop into AJ Spurs, and you may meet a man who runs on tequila, knows every song written between 1972 and 1978, and could teach many GSBers a thing or two about charming the ladies. Sometimes, happiness doesn’t need to be so complicated.

Right about now, it’s budburst time in the vineyards, and over the weekend we saw the first twinklings of next year’s vintage peeking out from between the leaves. It’s a time of hope, and not just for Democrats. Wine, for all the science and art involved in making and branding, is first and foremost a farming game – no two harvests are the same, and each year is a gamble. So it is with Spring Quarter at the Wine Circle, and the GSB at large. The MBA2s are done, ripened, moving into the crusher, in the hope of someday maturing into something great. The MBA1s are in the driving seat, full of hope, and we wish them well for their second (and best) year at the GSB. The Wine Circle is in good hands.

Brazil wrapup

2008-04-11T22:37:00.000-07:00

Back in the USA, and Rio is a hazy abstraction (similar to my recollections of engineering pub crawls). Wonderful city, some great meetings - including a session with the central bank in which they praised New Zealand's leadership in adopting inflation targeting monetary policy - and a few fun (and long) nights out.

The story in Rio is much more commodity-centric. Petrobras and Vale are both based there, and respectively are world leaders in their fields. Petraobras is the Brazilian state oil company (with some shares traded publicly) who is pioneering ultra deep water oil extraction off the coast of Rio, and Vale is the world's largest producer of iron ore. Both oil and iron ore are a lot more valuable than they were a few years ago (try 5 times) so it's good times for them. However, there are tough questions about how that wealth is distributed amongst Brazilians on the street, and how the companies will fare if there is a downturn. Although, they certainly present as impressive companies. Vale in particular has a superb branding video which convinces you to love them, even though they're a mining company and the video shows zero trucks, mines, miners, ore, or any kind of operations. That's a skill US companies would love to have...

The strong currency also surfaced in Rio. We met expats who pointed out that with the real tripling against the US dollar over the last few years, the decadent lifestyle of US dollar salaries has slipped away. That said, with beers $3 and worlds-best caipirinhas $5 (or so) it's still a great place to go out. We also had a spectacular dinner one night which ran (with wine) to $70 - not San Francisco or Palo Alto prices, for sure!

Just to make it even more of a crazy dream, a few of us signed off by hang gliding over Rio. A perfect way to see the mansions, slums, and beaches of a city that is very much alive in every way...

So, onward. Writing this from Buellton where we're doing a weekend of touring the locations (and wines) from the Sideways movie. Not that creative but hey, we'll let you know how it goes...

Brazil so far

2008-03-30T09:56:00.001-07:00

I’m on the bus from Sao Paulo to Rio – time for a change of gear in the trip and a chance to think about what we’ve seen so far.

It’s been a great few days: meetings by day, nightlife by, well, night. We’ve talked with multinationals, local heroes (like AmBev and Embraer) and finished our time in Sao Paulo by meeting with former president Cardoso.

Although this is a complicated (and, as we were constantly reminded, very large) country, there were a few major themes (with respect to business and economics – I’ll write about the ‘culture’ after my weekend in Rio…) that came through very strongly in our discussions:

Stability is paying dividends: After experience with annual rates of inflation over 100% in previous decades, things are back to ‘normal’ for businesses and consumers. Businesses can concentrate on formulating strategy and improving operations, rather than hustling to keep up with price changes and navigating through the Governments’ attempts to calm things down. Consumers can plan their finances, get mortgages (soon), and behave like ‘normal’ Western consumers (which we’ll assume is good for the time being). Now that things are stable, Brazil can think about growth.

Brazilian businesses have mastered their home turf, and can now look outwards: This is a large and unique market, and there are many successful businesses that have figured out how to serve it effectively and fend off foreign entrants. Now they’re figuring out where they might have competitive advantages over the rest of the world – for example, Cosan’s expertise in agritech and ethanol fuel technology. It’s an exciting stage for lots of the large businesses in the country.

They need to keep pushing with policy reform: Tax rates have been rising, now averaging over 45 percent, and are a huge burden on the businesses here. Starting a business takes over 150 days, firing staff is almost impossible, and customs charges are extreme (+60% on imported goods; say, a printing press from Germany that you purchase for your publishing business). With commodity prices where they are, the impacts of these frictions are masked, but over time it will have to improve.
Brazil’s society is still lacking cohesion and capability: I’m writing this driving into Rio, and although you’ve probably seen it on TV and in the movies, this country is palpably dangerous. In Sao Paulo, you can forget about it on rare occasions – in the main park during the day, at the cool bars and restaurants – but security is a very obvious feature of daily life. There are electric fences around most decent properties, armed guards at all the office receptions, and very few people walking around beyond the shopping malls and hotels. Even moving a few blocks, people take taxis (which, interestingly, are very safe). Everybody mentions it as a factor in their life, and knows someone who has been the victim of an ‘incident’. It’s a real cost, brake on the economy, and generally a tragedy. One of the root causes is poverty, and in turn education, and all the people we’ve met spontaneously mention education as a critical issue for the country. On that note, the Institutio Ayrton Senna is doing very impressive stuff in improving teaching quality and student engagement in the school system. But in short, there’s a huge gap between the wealthy and educated class – who are cool, cosmopolitan, and fun – and the rest, who end up in a tough place with limited access to jobs, and many barriers to building a satisfying life.
The commodity trap is beckoning: most presentations we’ve heard have gone along the following storyline. Brazil is a large, vibrant country. It has tremendous natural resources. And, it’s not just commodity production – there are lots of world class technology and service providers. By the way, Brazil runs an export surplus and the country’s GDP / stock market value / currency has been growing strongly. Sounds fair enough. However, the problem with this story is that the technology and service economy isn’t powering the growth – in fact, with the Real appreciating on the back of commodity export performance and high interest rates, value-adding exporters are facing tough times. This sort of tension, which is often called ‘Dutch Disease’ after the experiences of the Netherlands in 1960 after their North Sea oil production started, is a really challenge, but nobody called it out in our discussions. At some point, Brazil needs to either commit to building capabilities or assets which transcend commodities, or simply be satisfied with riding the waves of natural resource prices and redistributing the resulting wealth in various ways (a la Abu Dhabi, or Brunei). I think they need to do the former – unfortunately, although they have many resources, there are 200 million people with whom to share the proceeds. Not to mention the fact that redistribution is hard / illegal when you’ve sold much of Vale, Petrobras, and other resource rights holders to foreign (and legitimate) shareholders.

Overall, I’ve been impressed with the people. One great thing about having 200 million people is that, even if the country is poor and on average not well educated, you still have a Governing elite who are as wordly, intelligent, and capable of leadership as anyone in the world. They are the managers, politicians, and influencers that can shape the agenda. On the other hand, they have a tough task. Life within that elite is pretty good, and with skyrocketing commodity prices, it’s getting even better, so they have no burning desire to drive change. The challenge is for those who run

Brazil

to step outside their comfort zone and ask the tough question: how do we bring the 150 million poor folks to the party?

Speaking of party, we’re in Ipanema for the weekend. Uma caipirinha por favor?

Further observations

2008-03-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

1. Killing time in the terminal these days is all about the power. Walking around, you wonder at first why the folks with laptops are sitting in the dark corners, by the phone booths, on the floor, even by the travelators - yes, they're after the juice. I explored extensively and have scored a spot with the rare combination of 110V AC and sunlight.

2. The digital world really is confusing things at the airport. Time ago was, you would pick up a random book at the airport to read on the flight. I started walking around Borders, and then felt a sudden urge to grab my laptop - after all, how can you pick books without the Amazon / New York Times / Economist reviews and rankings at hand? Then, the situation grew more complicated. Maybe I should grab a DVD to watch on my computer? Hold on, why DVD - I could always just grab some iTunes / Movielink and be done with it.

3. So far, 3 Starbucks in Terminal E alone...

9 hours in George Bush Intercontinental, Houston, TX

2008-03-22T10:09:00.001-07:00

Sound like fun? Well, so far it's going pretty well. You might ask why I've decided to spend 9 hours in a sprawling hub in the middle of - well, Texas - and generally feel smug that it's me, and not you. Well let me explain, and assure you that I'm actually feeling very optimistic about the afternoon / evening ahead (it's not just the honor of spending the day in a building named ambiguously after two of the most Texan presidents in history).

Firstly, it's a welcome break amidst the travel madness of Spring break. We got back from Cabo yesterday (very nice, definitely worth the trip) via LA, and I only managed to sneak a few hours sleep before jumping on my 6am flight from San Francisco. So after 3 flights in 24 hours, it's time to chill.

Second, it's the most downtime I've had in months to crunch through emails, reading, and (yes, this one can be dangerous) actually think. There's a lot in store next quarter as we try to cram everything in before we leave - both sets of parents, a last hurrah to Santa Ynez with the Wine Circle, and some final fun in the mountains - so some planning time is most welcome.

Finally, I've always enjoyed hanging out at airports in a strange way. You can take on challenges, like finding all the Starbucks. You can try to guess where people are from and then listen in to hear their accents. Even better, you can eavesdrop on peoples' conversations and address that nagging concern we all have that other people have much more exciting lives. So far this morning, one girl has broken up with her boyfriend 'again', because he 'leaves the cereal bowls lying around' (ouch!), and somebody else has confessed to having 'two buckets' of pistachio ice cream at home. And that's only one Starbucks down...

So, here goes. If you get a long email from me today, you'll know why. In the meantime I'll see if I can resist "Pappas World Famous BAR-B-Q" (sic)...

A great GSB week

2008-03-14T23:55:00.000-07:00

I try not to make this blog a blow-by-blow account of life at school, because like most people's lives, it's probably far more interesting from my perspective than anyone else's. But sitting down tonight I realize the last week has been a pretty good microcosm of what it's like at the B school.

Last Friday (a week ago) we had a visit from Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, who is currently dealing with the whole credit crisis / recession / plunging US dollar thing. He was something of a surprise; most of us were expecting the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs to be a rather slick operator, but instead found him to be very direct, focused on content rather than delivery, and generally cerebral. He's clearly a smart guy stuck in a tough place. He can see the reasons for the problem, and the fact that some pain has to occur before it all sorts itself out, and is trying to temper the hotheads in Washington DC who want to hand out money and 'fix' things. However, he's also constrained by his circumstances as a member of the Administration, so I don't think we heard his true thoughts on the issue.

The weekend was a superb pastiche of the best things about Stanford - hiking in the Santa Cruz mountains, eating out at a random tavern in Pescadero, tennis on a sunny Sunday afternoon, and drinks in the afternoon.

Then, it was time for the annual Vegas trip. After an ill-judged night of revelry on Monday, I took my hungover on a Tuesday afternoon flight to Vegas wearing wig as shown (I'm in the middle... yes). The rest, as they say, stays there - but I can say it involved a club called Studio 54 and several disastrous dance moves.

Now, it might not seem like we do much work here (and so far, this blog post does little to refute that notion), but that's not true. We just work in short, intense bursts. So after plenty of R&R, Thursday and Friday were my immersion back into school life, and final lectures for all of my courses. This quarter has seen some great classes; we've had lectures from people in the IPCC (which co-won the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore last year), deconstructed the organizational failures leading to the sub-prime meltdown, and learned the realities of electric cars and biofuels. So it was fun to wrap those up. Final projects suck, of course, but it is university and that's what we signed up for!

Finally, on Friday, I had a chance to work with the first year students that I help with microeconomics. Occasionally I'm useful to them, and it's great when they make a breakthrough on certainty equivalence or something like that... but what struck me yesterday is that they're almost 2 quarters through. Which means I'm 5 quarters down, and one to go. Time to start appreciating the limited supply of these great GSB weeks...

What's up with Facebook's traffic?

2008-03-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

So, it seems like the debate about Facebook's success is largely over and most people are moving on to the far more interesting questions of advertising, privacy, and exactly when and how Mark Z is going to cash up his billions. Around here, certainly, the buzz is all about building billion dollar businesses off the back of Facebook - and simply assuming success of the core platform along the way.

For whatever reason, I thought I'd take a look at the latest numbers on usage, just to 'check' on the explosive growth rate (usually we don't let the facts get in the way of a good story, but occasionally a little rigor is handy). I was a little surprised to see a decidedly flattening curve - in terms of reach, and page views, things look very different to the 'glory year' of 2007.

Now let's be clear - if you look at the y axis, we're talking a 'flatline' at 6 percent reach, which is 6 percent of all internet users (in theory - if you know much about measurement, you can argue against this, but let's leave that aside). This is still a big business - for reference, Yahoo's reach is about 30 percent and Youtube's about 20 percent.

But it's no longer on a relentless path to dethrone Yahoo and others as the primary destination on the web. In fact, if we look back at history - which always suggest people do when it comes to assessing the 'next big thing' on the web - it seems to be flattening out at a similar place to Myspace in terms of pageviews (MySpace is red, Facebook blue):

Again, not a bad business. In terms of valuation, it's tough to be confident of anything in the social networking space, but it certainly raises questions over building huge forward growth assumptions into the Facebook model. And it means that all those folks who had put MySpace in the 'so 2006' trash should remind themselves that this is a 2 horse race, and the young charger is fading a little right now.

To that point, MySpace are pretty savvy operators and doing some interesting stuff with MySpaceTV (and their content portfolio in general). They're certainly a lot of 'fun' - where does Eliot Spitzer's (alleged) aspiring singer call girl keep her profile...?

Watch this space, and check the Alexa* graphs.

[* note on measurement: there are issues with Alexa's methodology. But it's free, and there are issues with the alternatives also. I checked Compete, and the story is broadly the same. By all means, snoop around the web and if you dig up anything contradictory, fire it into the mix. ]

The trouble with biofuels

2008-02-27T08:31:00.000-08:00

Uh oh, a 'serious' post... don't worry, it's pretty brief, but I wanted to put something out there with respect to a very popular topic in the press at the moment: biofuels, and more specifically, biofuels as an oil replacement.

Typically, the argument goes something like this: running cars on oil is an increasingly bad idea, because oil is expensive (well, more than it used to be), comes from troublesome parts of the world, and causes global warming. The good news is, there's an easy answer - grow plants, turn them into liquid fuels (currently, ethanol), and stick them in the cars we already have (no need to swap the 4x4 for an electric golf cart!). Plants absorb carbon dioxide, so it goes, and therefore you can charge around in your ethanol-powered Jeep without overheating the earth or supporting questionable foreign regimes. Three birds happily killed with the stone of biofuels.

Cut to my environmental science class, where recently I've had lectures from Chris Fields and Don Kennedy, who have both looked at this area in pragmatic depth. Unfortunately, the news is bad for the biofuel thesis - at least the way it's being executed now. For starters, corn-based ethanol (the leading US biofuel today) can be unequivocally shown to be bad - in a nutshell, they use too much land and too much energy, and their net impact on carbon emissions would be minimal (I'm not quoting numbers because there is some variance of opinion, but the direction is clear). It's the 'leading' biofuel only due to the very active farm and national security lobby groups. OK, but what about Brazil, which does an impressive job with sugarcane? Why not scale that up? Well, Brazilian cane is definitely more sustainable and has a better energy balance than US corn, but still requires land. And whenever land is transformed, a whole bunch of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. So Brazil can deliver economically viable fuel, but still with a finite environmental cost. Finally, there is the minor detail of location - ethanol is harder to transport than oil (although there are some developments in this space).

While the current situation is somewhat bleak, the holy grail of cellulosic ethanol is still attractive. 'Cellulosic' technology turns more 'solid' plant material (branches, stalks, fast growing grasses like the magic 'switchgrass' and so forth) into ethanol, and can use faster-growing plants as feedstocks. However, it's still only operating at pilot scale, and a way from commercial viability. It still suffers from land use issues, and although some people are pretty positive on the prospects, someone in the space characterized it as 'a technology that's 2 years away... and always has been'.

So in the meantime, the big question with biofuels is: what are you solving for? If it's just about energy security (not relying on other parts of the world for oil), then any solution that's economically viable is fair game. The bad news, of course, is that these practices are likely to have strong global warming effects. If, on the other hand, it's about climate change, then new technologies, crops, and farming practices will be needed. That's a much harder task.

It's a confusing space - not surprising, when you consider we're talking about changing a fundamental input of most all human activity - but at least you should always dig beneath the 'cure all' argument of biofuels. They can solve some of our problems, some of the time - but we still need to think about oil security, electric cars, and all that stuff for some time to come.

How obsolete are you?

2008-02-20T08:22:00.000-08:00

This is why the internet is cool. If it weren't for the collective intelligence and time-wasting power of the web there would be no list of 'obsolete skills'.

The question is, how do you rate? How many hours of your life did you spend acquiring skills that are now historical curios? Of course, you'll always have the memories. In my case, 'tweaking your Autoexec.bat and Config.sys to get close to 640k of memory' (remember 'Extended RAM'...?).

And as always, there is a mixture of the existential ("Freethinking"), along with the real oh-yeah-that's-right experiences like "Cleaning the ball of a computer mouse for better traction". But I'd really like to know who out there is sad about no longer "Chipping Flint or Obsidian Tools".

I guess one day "blogging" will be on this list, right?

.

Not a T shirt...

2008-02-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

...a “re shirt”. Basically these Austrian guys (http://www.re-shirt.net/) slap a screenprinted ID on somebody’s old shirt, list it on their site, and ship it out to you… pretty sweet idea! WorldChanging, understandably, focused their coverage on the environmental benefits - and it's undeniable that re-using a t-shirt is better than drenching the world in chemicals to make more cotton. What interests me is the concept of branded used goods. In a post-eBay world, how do you achieve the next big jump in resale and reuse of old stuff? Maybe this is it - create an umbrella brand, community, and governing idea, and build emotional value into what would otherwise just be an old Harley Davidson (or in this case, random German language) shirt.

Cool – they list everything with a back story from the previous owner, like where the shirt was bought (ie I bought this during protests in

Guatemala

), etc

Not cool – there are some cool vintage tees here and they all get a big orange square slapped on them!

Great concept overall, though.

http://www.re-shirt.net/

Brilliance in PR

2008-02-16T22:14:00.000-08:00

So, Lenovo has launched a thin laptop. They got beaten to the punch by Apple (with the Air), and their device is 50% more expensive and 20% thicker. But somehow they managed to get BusinessWeek to write an article titled "Building the Perfect Laptop" which portrays them as product development and strategy geniuses. Applause all round!

In fairness, the Lenovo X300 leads the Mac Air in some pretty significant features: 3 USB ports, a DVD drive, Ethernet port, and 1440 x 900 screen resolution. And we'll see the Vista machine can outrun the sluggish (by all accounts) Mac.

Looks pretty thin in this shot, but not super user friendly...

[STOP PRESS: turns out Annie's company Text100 does PR for these guys. Applause all round]

My first Wine Column...

2008-02-14T08:23:00.001-08:00

Well, no real news since last post. One weekend at Tahoe is pretty much like the next - although I should mention that last weekend I was introduced to a perfect apres ski drink, the 'Dirty Snowman', which is a house special at Northstar. This impressive concoction is Absolut Vanilia (or any vanilla vodka), Frangelico, hot chocolate, cream, topped with cream and chocolate sauce. Served hot, minutes after finishing the last run, by the fire, it's a pretty solid way to finish the day.

Meanwhile I did manage to slap together a column for the GSB Reporter (our business school newspaper) in my capacity as Wine Circle Co-Prez. Here it is, as printed:

Wine Circle Corner
By Luke Baxter, MBA2

Each break, wherever I am, I’m always working hard for the Wine Circle. Last winter it was trying to find where to buy Chateau d’Yquem in New York (Schumer’s on E 54^th St, it turns out); last summer I undertook a grueling tasting tour of the south of

France

. It’s tough work. Over this past break, I made it easy on myself and returned home with some skilled wine tasters from the GSB to try some of the latest and greatest

New Zealand

wines on your behalf.

Before I talk about the wine, though, a short rant about the practical business of keeping wine in the bottle (as you know, I’m usually all about getting it out). Historically, this has been done using a compressed wood closure know as a ‘cork’. This is truly a medieval sort of technology, which brings all sorts of quality issues – most notably, the wine can become ‘corked’, and assume a very unpleasant mustiness, due to the presence of a trace contaminant in cork called TCA. This happens to about 10% of bottles, give or take, or about one per case. Can you think of another product where you would accept a 10% failure rate? Would you buy bread where every 10^th slice was stale? Thankfully, the solution is here: the screwcap, or more precisely, the “Stelvin” closure. It is perfect in every way, except of course that you don’t need to forcibly haul it out with a metal spike, risking injury and mass spillage in the process. Apparently Americans find sport in attacking their wine bottles, and corks are therefore still the dominant method of containing wine here, but I noted when back in New Zealand that almost 100% of wine there is now under screwcap. Dear readers, I hope the

industry catches up at some stage!

Now the moment you’ve been waiting for – the GSB New Zealand Wine Awards for 2007. After extensive site visits, winemaker discussions, and of course tasting, the expert GSB delegation awarded the following trophies:

Best Pinot Noir: Well, it’s the Mt Difficulty Pipeclay Single Vineyard Pinot Noir 2005. Highly predictable from my point of view, but this wine is no less deserving for that. Unfortunately it runs to about $80 on the shelf here. The good news is, their ‘standard’ Mt Difficulty Pinot Noir 2006 is also excellent, and great value at $30.

Best Bordeaux Blend: Craggy Range ‘Sophia’ (various vintages, all impressive). This is a wine that should put New Zealand squarely on the map for producing outstanding premium Bordeaux styles. And you shouldn’t take my word for it, pick up a bottle for $50 (which is a bargain, this is GOOD stuff) from Wine Commune (an excellent source for New Zealand wines).

Best Chardonnay: Back to the South Island for this one. Admittedly, we tasted this wine after bungy jumping, sitting in the sun, with a platter of fine cheeses, but the decision was unanimous. The Gibbston Valley Reserve Chardonnay 2004 manages to deliver the mouthfilling richness of a New World wine while having an elegance and balance that could have come from a 6^th generation winemaker in Burgundy. Wonderful stuff. Unfortunately it’s tough to find in the US, so go with our very close second place-getter, the Te Mata Elston Chardonnay 2006 – superb value at $35, and very representative of the New Zealand style.

To find these wines, hit www.wine-searcher.com – they are reasonably rare, but someone (such as Wine Commune) will ship ‘em to you.

Happy drinking – see you at a Wine Circle event soon.

North American WINTER

2008-02-03T21:41:00.000-08:00

As some more vocal readers have pointed out, this blog has been a long time between updates... I may have to re-title it once or twice a month. I have my excuses, though. It's been a tough adjustment from hanging out at the beach to hanging out in the snow (and in Palo Alto, the rain, sadly).

The first weekend after we got back from NZ, we decided that immersion therapy was the best way to readjust to winter, so we hightailed it up to the house we've rented for the season in Tahoe. It's in Tahoe City (pop 1,761), which is a very cool little ski town - much better than South Lake Tahoe, which (counterintuitively) is a lot bigger, and straddles the state line with Nevada and is therefore full of casinos. So we like Tahoe City (so far). The house itself has plenty of character, being owned by a (very) Swiss family, and has a uniquely treacherous semi-circularly driveway down which cars and people alike can slide with ease (you can see our car is perched up there, with snowbank situated strategically behind).

Seriously though, being in a ski town with snow and ice everywhere is fun but not without difficulties. Driving into town for a bite to eat at night makes you feel like Tommi Makinen, and the carpark at Safeway can easily become crampon territory. Not to mention getting snowed in - they plow the roads but in a big storm, there's nothing you can do, and it can be a day or two before you can get out. Cabin fever anyone?

We skied Homewood, which is a picturesque little field - nice trees and lake views all round (as you can sorta see from the passer-by snap). It's also super close to our house, and cheap... what more do you need, really? Well, a few more chairlifts, it is kinda small. But it's got a few distinct basins, plenty of room to move, and a cool mix of hard-working beginners, cost-minimizing youngsters, and loyal "avoid the crowds" old timers. Many a chairlift ride spent listening to how Homewood is "way better" the Squaw, the "big" field nearby (where they hosted the Olympics in the 70's).

Here's some quick context, though. Homewood is "small" with 7 lifts - that's the same as Whakapapa. Squaw has about 30 lifts. Give me a break!

So, the next week we went to the opposite end of the spectrum: Whistler, the largest ski area in North America (the world?). 38 lifts, 8,100 acres, 1 mile (1,600m) of vertical drop. Anyway, it's big, and a lot of fun, and we had fresh snow on the ground (not a lot, but enough to kick up). It was my second time in Whistler, and believe me, the first trip was a hard act to follow... and although the weather and the partying was a notch down on last year, it was still "O for awesome" as we say in NZ. As a party town it is unparalleled, especially on "MLK" weekend in January when all the uni kids from Washington take advantage of the drinking age arbitrage (US 21 , Canada 19) and come to play. It's kinda ridiculous, it will be -10 Celsius outside and there are drunken girls in miniskirts cruising around, seemingly impervious to the hypothermic wind, and ready to stand in line for 20 minutes to get into one of the many underground clubs. As usual, the GSB took over a bar and in our unique 20-something "we're still young" way, managed to clear the place of most other patrons both young and old, with the exception of a gregarious few who were rewarded handsomely for their tenacity.

In short, a lot of time on the slopes recently. Although I haven't let this get in the way of some good Wine Circle action, and the great American institutions of the Superbowl and the Primaries. More about all that later...

Classic Kiwi Summer

2008-01-03T20:02:00.000-08:00

What a fantastic month. It's the end of almost a month of idyllic Kiwi summer, and time to get on a plane back to a freshly snow-dumped North America for some boarding.

We travelled around with the Stanford crew for two weeks, which was fantastic - we hit Auckland, Hawkes Bay, and Queenstown. More about that later.

Since Christmas, it's been a great montage of beaches, concerts, camping, baches (aka holiday homes) and classic Kiwi food and drink. Daily averages are definitely acceptable: 2 swims per day (often across multiple beaches), 1 pie, 2 slices of Vogel's bread (definitely try a toast banana sandwich, credit to Anita for that), and I won't share the beer consumption figures, mainly because I don't want to know the number myself. Been to Supergroove (awesome, especially the version of "Chains") and the Feelers, had a perfect Kiwiburger from the beachside takeway store, and had an intense all-comers beach cricket session.

All in all, a great time. And as per the picture, the pohutukawas are in bloom. Home sweet home!

Our AXE is BACK

2007-12-01T19:56:00.000-08:00

Each year, there is a "BIG Game". Stanford plays Cal (aka Berkeley, aka University of California Berkeley) for an arcane trophy (with a colorful history) called The Axe.

Well, Cal has had it for 5 years. And that's 5 years too long... and tonight our AXE IS BACK.

Final score: Stanford 20 Cal 13

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have several beers to consume by way of celebration.

Giving Thanks

2007-11-25T10:23:00.000-08:00

As an international student, it's easy to view the Thanksgiving holiday in late November as a welcome (if awkwardly timed) break from school as the days get shorter and lectures seemingly longer. Fortunately, we have wonderful American friends who welcomed us into their TG celebrations - and in the case of the Boldens, their home - and reminded us again that this holiday is emblematic of the USA - in many ways.

Firstly, America is steeped in tradition. Thanksgiving is no exception... the whole thing is scripted, with variations around the fringes to keep it interesting. Take one large (LARGE) turkey, add various forms of carbs (mashed potatoes, corn bread, stuffing, even pasta for a little riff), and an NFL game, then bake well, adding dashes of alcohol as necessary. Serves about 100, despite the fact there are only 12 of you (but more on that later). Along the way, pause to give thanks for everything.

As for variations, well, my big discovery this year was the "turducken". Before you deconstruct that and find fowl meanings (hmmm), let me explain - it's a turkey, within which is placed a duck, within which is placed a chicken. Yes, that's right... 3 birds, uh, 'nested' in each other. Now, I didn't have the opportunity to partake in said multi-bird, our turkey was just beautiful (thanks to the culinary skills of the Boldens), but I'm intrigued about trying it at some future date.

Secondly, Ayn Rand was right when she said: "Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday... the meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.". Basically, America is great at producing and consuming, and Thanksgiving is a microcosm of that. Personally, I consumed about 1kg (my best estimate based on weight difference) and still there was oversupply... very impressive! Turkey sandwiches until Christmas. Seriously, the volume has to be seen to be believed.

Finally, the serious note - Americans really do have deep principles regarding their families, nation, and fortunate place in the world. The foreign policy stuff might not always reflect it, but you average American is genuinely thankful for what they have, and wants to do what they can for the rest of the country and the world. Even if that starts with giving homesick Kiwis a taste of their finest turkey!

A class visitor

2007-11-09T07:09:00.000-08:00

I'm currently taking a paper on technology strategy at the GSB. It's more fun than it sounds - it's taught by a famous professor (Burgelman) and a very famous former CEO - Andy Grove, who ran Intel for several (pivotal) decades. They are both very impressive in class, bringing strategic perspective and historical lessons to bear on today's interesting questions.

Turns out, Andy has another ace up his sleeve: friends. So last week, a bunch of my classmates turn up to give a draft (early draft) presentation to the class on the evolution of the mobile phone industry after the iPhone. I was prepared to ask some curly questions, but it turned out there was a man sitting across from me who had far curlier questions and was far more willing to ask them...

It was a fascinating session. Steve Jobs is a unique individual. He's analytical while being a true storyteller; somewhat autocratic (most articles I've read disagree with the 'somewhat') but not brutish. He appears thoughtful, whether or not he's thought something through (although most often he has). He is smart, and seems to extrapolate this to conclude he is smarter than most other people. He does listen, and absorb; it's not really his style to acknowledge directly, but I noticed him taking notes, and I'm sure he's always revising plans and refining ideas based on what he hears. Basically, very similar to what you see on stage, but at a distance of 3 feet. I should mention here that it's a class of 20 students, sitting around a table, and he was sitting across from me - we're not talking a guest lecture, he was really kicking things around.

For a business school group, he posed some challenging viewpoints. (Note these are my highlights, not a summary what he actually said - he talked mainly about products and markets.) First, he really believes that Apple has software/hardware product capabilities that are unmatched and unmatchable for some time. As managers, we'd like to think that companies can build such capabilities if they really want to, and are willing to invest - for example, Microsoft, which is working hard on devices, and Sony, which is slowly but surely realizing that connectivity and seamlessness matter in this century. Second, he's not really into strategic thinking in the conventional sense. Clearly, Apple does enough work on, say, mobile phones, to know the size of the opportunity, the industry dynamics, what it takes to succeed. But ultimately Jobs believes in the primacy of product; if you build it, not only will consumers come, but you'll leave the opposition in your dust, and partners will surround you like moths to the flame (my paraphrasing, not a quote - although it could have been). Those two views are interesting, because they influence how much one should worry about product compared with strategy. My view is that the answer is somewhere in between - other companies could copy Apple's capability, but it's tough (again, look at Microsoft's costs in doing Xbox and Zune), and strategy definitely matters, but needs great execution on products and services.

Overall, though, there's something to be said for star power in all of this. As I write, a bunch of my classmates are meeting Warren Buffett, legendary investor and former world's richest dude, in Omaha. Will they learn how to get Buffett's return on investments? No. Will they open doors to work with / for / in conjunction with his companies? Perhaps, but probably not. No, the reason they've flown all the way to Nebraska is that we're all suckers for a brand name, a famous face, and a story to tell. And now I have my Steve Jobs story.

Back on deck... survived Half Dome

2007-10-18T16:12:00.000-07:00

This is how things always go, right? I'm in California for a year without going to Yosemite, then I go twice in 3 weeks. Still, it's a good way to get Yosemite Falls and the iconic Half Dome under one's belt in short order.

So the most recent of the trips was Half Dome. We did an "Outdoor Adventure" trip with a bunch of first and second year MBA classmates - these trips are held at the end of the first week of classes as a way for the two classes to 'bond'. Some second years interpret that more liberally that others, but let me quash any loose talk by clarifying that all conduct was most appropriate on our trip.

I'll admit I wasn't prepared for such a monstrous day hike. Thousands of people hike Half Dome each year, so I figured it would be easy - I should have looked at the numbers! 18 miles (29 km) round trip from our camp (16 miles if you drive to the trailhead) and (more importantly) 1,500m of vertical gain. That's almost twice the altitude gain on the Tongariro Crossing. It also ends in the famous 'Half Dome cables', a pair of steel cables bolted into a 55-60 degree granite which are used to allow the final scramble.

The cables are pretty ridiculous. Wikipedia describes them better than me, but they're a crazy concept you have to see to believe. Prior to 1875, Half Dome was thought unclimbable - and then some guy figured that bolts might help, and there you go. In 1919 they put permanent cables in, and now there are hundreds of people per hour climbing up and down - which, as you might hypothesise, is the problem. It's not the absolute steepness of the cables that is a problem, it's the fact that you can't use any conventional anchoring system (it's all gloves and hands) and that there are people trying to pass in various states of vertigo and exhaustion. Pretty ugly when someone freezes halfway up with a couple of dozen people perched downhill. My calves got a good workout standing there waiting for people to get moving.

But the view is fantastic and it's a must do. My next challenge is helping the Park Service figure out a better answer for managing the cables... after this recent death (#3 for the year) they're interested in ideas. Definitely a tough situation - can't take 'em down, can't stop idiots going up them. I favor some kind of time division system (10 minutes up only, 10 minutes down only, etc) which takes away the passing problem... but there's clearly an enforcement challenge there. Either that or limit total numbers with permits - but again, you need a ranger somewhere checking people out continuously. Put your thinking caps on!

Oh, and this is pretty crazy. In 1985 a bunch of hikers got stuck up there in a thunderstorm, which is evidently a bad thing - apparently Half Dome gets struck by lightning at least once in every major thunderstorm. There's even a book.

So if you're in in CA, go to Yosemite and do Half Dome - just take yer gloves and watch for thunderstorms!

Stunning insight of the day

2007-09-24T17:39:00.001-07:00

Sorry, this quote needs calling out:

- "The bottom line is, if you have money and you want to spend it you're going to spend it," said Scott DeCarlo at Forbes.

Mmmm, I agree. Does that mean if you don't want to spend it, you're not going to? You know, this theory is awesome, it really does explain all economic decisions. We're on the verge of something...

Rain!!!

2007-09-24T17:19:00.000-07:00

Well, not by New Zealand standards, but on Friday of last week we had 3.0 mm of cool, clear water fall from the sky. It was almost eerie ... I felt like I was transported back home for a few hours!

To put it in context, in summer it DOES NOT RAIN here. Let me be precise: June, 0.0 mm precipitation. July, 0.0mm. August, yep, nothing. September was completed dry until the rain on the 21st... so basically 4 months completely dry. I actually checked these numbers, so it isn't like I missed a shower here or there, there simply isn't anything showing up on the rain gauges. True, the engineers will point out that tipping buckets have a minimum threshold, but let's be real here - it's still pretty ridiculous.

Good thing we have the Sierra Nevadas, which get loaded up with snow in winter and therefore have lovely full reservoirs in summer. This is Hetch Hetchy, the monster lake which supplies most of our water. As you see on the Wikipedia entry, these days the dam probably wouldn't have been built, and I would have gone 4 months without showers or cups of tea. Which would have been sad indeed. Of course flooding the valley has brought plenty of problems - as usual, there's a lot of debate about this, but nobody can find another place to get water for 2 million Bay Area residents. So the dam remains and my shower keeps working despite the drought.

But now, after the rainstorm, it's back to 'normal' (as per the weather forecast at left). The locals tell me that we should expect rain this winter, unlike last year which was dry. This will be a little bizarre for all you Aucklanders and Londoners out there, but I say bring it on!

Crossfire cross-country!

2007-09-16T22:54:00.000-07:00

Well, not all the way cross country, but across California at least. Which was far enough to put me and my engineering school partner in crime Mr Andrew Douglas in Yosemite, Vegas, and LA over the course of last week. I'll post some stories and pix from each place but first, that most important ingredient of any roadtrip...

Last week I finally experienced the joy of finding an American car I like. And not in an ironic, 'aren't Hummers ridiculous' kind of way. Admittedly it shares components and design elements with the Mercedes SLK (OK, the chassis), but the Chrysler Crossfire is a wee beauty. 215hp of V6 goodness in a bodyshell that is supposed to be stiffer than a Porsche 911. Well, it's no 911 - although the engine is super-torquey - but it is fun, and most importantly Avis let two boys on an E-School reunion take it on unlimited miles for a week... and for that we salute them.

Handling = superb. Interior = functional but a bit cheap looking. Zee Germans would not approve. But the killer feature is the drop top. Cruising down the Strip in Vegas, or on the beach at Malibu, or blasting through the Sierra Nevadas, you gotta make the most of that Californian sun.

Good times, great music

2007-09-05T17:15:00.000-07:00

That was a tag line from an ad back home, I think... hmmm. Anyways, have had some fantastic live shows recently - here are 2 from the last week which are at opposite ends of the spectrum:

First, Crowded House at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga. A perfect night - almost. Amazing venue, excellent musicians, great songs. I like Crowded House's new album, and maybe 50% of the set was old stuff - all the favorites, Don't Dream It's Over, Weather With You, etc. They even played Something So Strong (our ceremony-ending song from our wedding) which was pretty cool for our one year anniversary.

But, you know, there's something about Neil which isn't totally engaging on stage. He's funny, seems nice, confident, but is still a bit... aloof, maybe a bit perfectionist. Take the singalong part where he orchestrated this complex harmonization thing where half the audience revealed their church-choir training - beautiful but not my idea of rock and roll. Contrast with Jordan Luck who is absurd and instantly likeable when rocking out in any setting. Of course respect where respect is due - but these guys are exactly that, respectable.

Of course maybe I'm just bitter I missed out on the BEST VERSION EVER of "World Where You Live" at the weekend, when Eddie Vedder took the stage with them and added some grunge magic. Video:

Last night, Kings of Leon at the Warfield in San Francisco. Whoa, man. Pretty much the opposite of Crowded House. Instead of open air under the stars, packed into a small, old-school venue (Kiwis, think St James meets Civic). Instead of Neil Finn's choir singalong, screaming to be heard above the crunching guitar and manic drumming. Instead of clever melodies and lyrical lyrics, this is all about the rhythm and the power chords, with about 90% of the words completely unintelligible. Awesome. A real rock concert, like the ones you see in movies when a teenage kid goes off the rails and 'rebels'. In fact, prizes for best band name (and runner up for best website) for the opening act, "Black Rebel Motorcycle Club". Cool.

But hey, it's a tough life when your biggest problem is deciding which concert last week was the best. Keep it comin'!

CROWDED HOUSE! In USA!

2007-08-29T23:15:00.000-07:00

2 things I never really expected I'd do:

1. Live in the USA
2. See Crowded House live

And tomorrow night number 2 is going to come true. You know, that whole Sydney Opera House 'final' concert was always painful for me... first, it publicly gave Australia full ownership of Crowded House (ah... songwriting? singing? frontman? Te Awamutu my friend!), second, it meant I was never going to see them in concert. Well, I salute you Neil Finn for getting the old crew together.

If you know Crowded House, you'll see why I'm pleased at the setlist (see below - that, and the video, are from a concert they did on August 8). Wish you were here!

The Set List

1. Locked Out
2. World Where You Live

3. Heaven That I'm Making

4. Walked Her Way Down

5. Love You 'Til the Day I Die

6. Fall at Your Feet

7. Don't Stop Now

8. Silent House

9.Italian Plastic

10. Don't Dream It's Over

11. Ghost Town

12. She Called Up

13. Pour le Monde

14. Distant Sun

16. When You Come

1st Encore:

17. Weather With You

18. Pineapple Head

19. Something So Strong

2nd Encore:

20. Mean to Me

21. Better Be Home

Search - in a new dimension

2007-08-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

So people have been playing around with different 'modes' of searching for a while. At the most basic level, there's topic targeting - picking News, Image, Local results for a text query (the links at the top of the Google search page). Now more sophisticated interfaces have emerged - Tafiti is an interesting Microsoft approach to things, I like the formatting of the results but have never been a fan of the 'fake writing pad' effect online. I understand it's a computer, that's why I'm not trying to write with a fountain pen old chum. And then there are 'specialist' search products like the disastrous and defamatory people search engine Spock (try it! you might be a convicted felon).

In the midst of all this boredom, I found a search product which is both fun and instantly useful. It's a 'color' search engine for images... so, if you want to find a photo which will blend / complement / contrast what is already on your webpage / document / company logo, this is your tool. What I like most about it is that it almost certainly hasn't been funded by a Silicon Valley VC and isn't run by a CEO who think this will save the world. It's just old school, cool tech.

I used it to pick this photo which goes nicely with my blog background:

http://color.slightlyblue.com/

USB is so cool

2007-08-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's a USB necktie fan. Now, a necktie fan? Sure, of course, very practical. Engineers will love it. But USB? Genius!

Fact is, there is a hotbed of new products of this sort out there. Who ever thought the USB standard would enable this kind of innovation? Sure, USB is supposed to be a high speed data port you can use to connect to printers, modems, external hard drives, etc, but most importantly it's a power supply which either:

sucks your laptop battery in 3 minutes or
powers things that you could plug into a multi-board anyway.

But hey, enough theory, there's no other word to describe these innovative peripherals but 'cool'. (and yes, the fridge really works)

Bay Area = Too Good to be True

2007-08-14T23:29:00.001-07:00

Summer in the Bay is soooo sweet. Here is sunset on Friday night up at Russian Ridge - a great mountain biking (and sunset) watching spot about 20 minutes from Stanford.

Notice the low cloud - this is looking towards the coast, and whereas we've had 4 months without any rain in the Valley, the coast gets plenty, and it's clear why!

Next, I managed to get up to Marin and look around. Fun for lots of reasons, but mainly to finally get a decent view of the Golden Gate...

Finally, it was pretty cool to see the place where Marin bikes (and mountain biking, to a large extent) comes from. Hanging out in Sausalito I couldn't resist snapping one in its home environs. And Sausalito's not a bad spot for an ice cream break, either!

Why think when you can link?

2007-08-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed how many blogs subsist just on posting links, and not really adding any value? Well, it looks easy and today I'm all about easy. So you should follow this interesting trail through my friend Brett's blog, Marc Andreessen's blog (am I the only one who has trouble spelling Andreessen? good thing his blog is called pmarca), to the LA Times.

I could just link to the LA Times page, but that would be cheating the internet sector out of pageviews and clicks. Here in Silicon Valley we need all the clicks we can get... but not unions (the subject of the LA Times article). Disclaimer: content is only mildly interesting although Brett and Marc's pages are otherwise extremely good.

My first US Summer Movie Season

2007-08-07T19:45:00.000-07:00

As a Kiwi, summer and movies aren't really connected in my mind. Partly because we don't really have a summer, partly because movies are something we normally do in the winter (ie, June or so, for those Northern Hemispherites) when it's (even more) rainy and cold. Coincidentally there are many good movies around at that time, which I always thought was tailoring to the local market.

Now I get it - we have been riding the back of the US "Summer Movie Season", which is a pretty impressive thing to behold. Like the strange pulse weapon things that the Decepticons use in Transformers, it's a barrage of heavy-duty rounds which wipes out whole weekends throughout the summer and drains cash out of parents, and me, until we beg for mercy and the new TV season begins in the Fall. But like any of the blockbusters it's a fun ride.

So far we've had: Spider Man 3, Pirates... At World's End, Ocean's 13, Knocked Up, Die Hard 4, The Simpsons, The Bourne Ultimatum, Transformers. And that's before we've been round-housed by Rush Hour 3 and War. Yes, most of them are sequels, but evidently that's how you make money in Hollywood these days. They even sell options on sequels.

The strange thing is, they've all been really good. Not in an indie-cult-cool way, but in a pure switch-off-brain-eat-M&Ms way. My favorite so far - and here's the power of recency - was Transformers, which I saw last night (Monday) at 10pm, and the only people in the cinema were my friend Brett and a bunch of cuddling girls (whatever). Back to high school days in more ways than one. Anyway you should go and see it, if only for the randomness which pervades the movie and is funny in a Monty Python / Office kind of way...

I have to admit I indulged in a bit of nostalgia, here is Transformers 80's style:

Now the 2007 version. Check out the Transforming-on-the-fly, very sweet:

And finally their cynical ploy to appeal to the mid-20s male demographic who grew up with Optimus and co... (which I thoroughly disapprove of, for the record):

A great day in the Bay... half marathon, Buck's, and the Spider Pig

2007-07-29T21:58:00.000-07:00

Today was an action-packed Bay Area day. We started at 3.20 am, rolling out of bed to drive up to the city for a damp and chilly San Francisco half marathon, then kicked back with a large brunch at Buck's (and for those of you who know Buck's, that means LARGE), and closed it out with The Simpsons movie and pizza.

Right now (given I still have lingering twinges from my mile 11 cramp-up), the highlight of this great day is a wonderful musical interlude from The Simpsons. It's a superb film generally - unless you hate The Simpsons , you'll laugh your socks off - but I think this is the piece of mad genius that will live on the longest... the "Spider Pig" song. Here 'tis.

(That said, the half marathon was still cool. Not every day you get to run across the Golden Gate Bridge! And big ups to Annie for finishing her first half ;-))

The Fray: concertgoing 2007-style

2007-07-22T22:49:00.000-07:00

July 21, 2007 - The Fray, Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, California

Went to a great concert last night. The Fray has a bunch of pretty catchy songs, most famous being "How to Save A Life". It's the one off Grey's Anatomy, which I guess is the story for them over the last few years.

But standing under the Californian moon (which, by the way, is almost as impressive as the Californian sun) I realized that this was about more than just the here and now. There was a lot before and after this concert which was pretty different to a decade ago. So 24 hours later, here's a lookback on concertgoing in a Web 2.0 world.

First up, I'd like to get a sense for what these guys are like live. Luckily, I have Ruckus, so the marginal cost of downloading their live album is zero. I love live albums, and used to hunt them out religiously; problem was, it was still $20 for the same songs, sometimes performed and produced in a disappontingly amateurish fashion (on that note, do NOT buy the Maroon 5 live album). So, Ruckus delivered the songs, and the Fray seemed solid live - albeit hard to tell over the teenage screams.

Now, tickets. How long since you went to a box office or ticket office? Imagine that - "let's go to The Fray, I'll just drive into town, park the car, go and buy the tickets, bring them home, try not to lose them in the intervening month...". Ticketmaster online all the way baby, buy in 2 minutes, print out 5 minutes before you go.

Next, time to see who else is going. iLike is one of the most famous and popular facebook apps, and it is pretty sweet. I said I was going, and could immediatelysee who might be moshing with me in the pit. For better or for worse, nobody of my age or gender, it seemed. Apparently the Fray are all married and responsible, which is a shame for them as they seem to own a demographic that thousands of aspiring 18 year old musicians are spending nights hammering out riffs in the garage trying to reach. So I prepared myself for (as expected from the live recording) some earsplitting adolescent female vocals in the crowd.

So far, so well informed, and our tickets scanned at the gate OK (clearly the barcodes are designed robustly to cope with sketchy inkjet printing).

Showtime! They opened with All At Once, one of my favorite songs. Even cooler was there opening graphics, a heartbeat monitor thing, echoing Grey's Anatomy I guess ... gotta give thanks to what made you.

Now, it's 2007 so given a few thousand youngsters in the crowd, there must have been a few hundred digital videocams, which means at least a few videos on YouTube. Bingo! Here's the opening song (with the heart monitor graphics) as captured by 'itsnameiskaren' (don't remember seeing them at the concert), don't turn the bass up too loud ;-)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ7onNlptzQ)

It was a really polished performance, I would have liked a little more improv / flair on the famous songs, but there was one bizarre highlight. They brought the (apparently cute) drummer forward and announced that "Ben is going to sing". Uh-oh. However it was a joke, of course, and they did a cool cover of "Hips Don't Lie" by Shakira. Ben is the guy, uh, not singing. And of course you can watch it here on YouTube. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoxRd3gkHWQ)

Now this is the postscript, I guess... it's 24 hrs after the event, and there are 4 videos already on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+fray+shoreline&search=), a bunch of photos on Flickr, and reviews all over the place. The content has been created, captured, personalized, organized (not always by Google, sad for them), and shared. And the cycle continues.

Rock on!

Metcalfe Lives!

2007-07-18T11:17:00.001-07:00

You may have heard a of a guy called "Metcalfe", he came up with something a while back called "Metcalfe's Law", which says that the value of a network is proportional to N-squared (give or take), where "N" is the number of "nodes" (= computers, users, dogs) in the network. See my friend Brett's blog for a reasonable explanation of this plus an eponymous extension to the theory (BK - you're supposed to let someone else name it after you, like Metcalfe did!!).

And he's legit - he actually invented Ethernet. Holy smoke. It's like something out of Austin Powers.

Anyway, I always assume that these old legends are dead, or retired, or mad, but it seems that Metcalfe is alive and visionary still. Brett, he may even review your 'extension' if you send it to him (although as you'll see, he stands by his law...). Forbes has recently done a review of "Networks" (a broad topic, you could say) but they included an excellent essay from Metcalfe himself, talking about supercomputers versus the human brain(s).

Warning: if you're uncomfortable multiplying powers of 10 (things that look like this: 10^6 ) or phrases like "human meta-brain" you should probably stay away.

This excerpt gives you a sense of his guru-ness:

"An SC5832 cabinet consumes only 20 kilowatts but holds 972 of Leonard's multicore chips, or a total of 5,832 processors (hence the name), or 10 11 transistors. Each of Leonard's transistors can turn on or off 10 10 times per second, but they are clocked at 500 megahertz to deliver, say, a mere billion computations per second.

Now, let's turn to the brain's "transistors." It's been a while since I studied neurons for my MIT undergraduate thesis in 1968 (fortunately we can't find copies of that anymore), and so I consulted with Raymond Kurzweil, a pioneer in artificial intelligence, Tomaso Poggio, a professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and with Chris Diorio, a professor of computing at the University of Washington."

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0507/052.html

Keep Fake Steve Fake!!

2007-07-16T17:03:00.001-07:00

Here in the Valley, Fake Steve Jobs is something of a sensation. Read back through his postings and you'll see the true comic genius of ... who? Nobody knows, because until now his (or her - wow, that would be cool) identity has been a secret.

Now, the net looks like it's closing. Please, don't destroy the last piece of mysterious writing in the world beside the Economist! Shame on you for using sneaky IP sniffing to smoke them out.

Then we'd only be left with Fake Steve Ballmer who, although funny, is no El Jobso. And making fun of Microsoft is kind of redundant, no?

Net radio lives... for now

2007-07-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

There are already plenty of people blogging about digital music, and in particular what the labels have been doing wrong. Well, here's an isolated (and probably temporary) case of them doing something right. And for what it's worth, big ups! This is an overview if you're interested / a user of the service.

The background, in a nutshell: DRM (the stuff that Apple and others use to prevent you copying songs you download from services like iTunes) really sucks. It's tough to understand and is largely being avoided by people buying CDs, burning them, and sharing them through P2P. So, as a response, some smart folks realized that streaming songs over the web - 'internet radio' - was an easier way to distribute songs legally. It turns out this is a pretty popular product and can power a reasonable business (advertising revenue-driven).

And don't think these internet radio companies were free-loading - they've been paying a share of their revenues to the music labels (who own the rights to the songs) for some time. It's pretty legit and one of the few 'working' models for content on the web.

Then this year the labels decided to take a bigger slice of this juicy and growing pie. Sadly the size of the proposed bite was a little ridiculous - a 12-fold increase, for one net radio provider. The details aren't important but basically it was a shift from revenue-sharing to various usage metrics (songs streamed, number of streams, etc). Not necessarily a bad idea, but misaligned with the overall market direction. For example, the changes hurt 'customized radio' (like Pandora, which I use and love) the most, as one of the charging dimensions is based on an archaic concept of 'stations'. It's obvious to everyone, except until last week the labels, that some kind of personalization is a big part of making music work for consumers on the web. However, the industry was basically saying, have your own station Mr Listener, but you're going to have to pay a lot because we don't understand this market.

Most analysts / managers / commentators thought this was going to kill some, if not most, of the radio offerings on the web. But, they've backed down and Net Radio lives: See the BusinessWeek article here.

Hurrah, bravo, and retractions of above insults - you guys in LA are catching on. Fingers crossed that the next step is an proposal which allows businesses like Pandora to explore the potential of streaming music. Otherwise we'll all be trapped listening to iMusic on iBoxes and paying the King of Cupertino (Steve Jobs, fakesteve.blogspot.com) for every measly song... and nobody needs that.

Long live Pandora... if you haven't tried it yet, take a look

Firefox tip: Load web pages FAST!

2007-07-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

I just turned this on and it rocks... seems there is some sort of risk but try it, you won't be disappointed. Hit some big nasty image / Flash / ad-intensive portal like Yahoo immediately after and you'll see the difference!!

Enable Pipelining

Pipelining is an experimental feature, designed to improve page-load performance, that is unfortunately not well supported by some web servers and proxies. To try it out, by using about:config to set the following preferences:

network.http.pipelining: Set this to true, to enable pipelining.
network.http.proxy.pipelining: Set this to true, to enable pipelining to the proxy server.
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: Set this to 8, to have a maximum of 8 pipelining requests at once. Possible values are from 1 to 8.

For more information about pipelining, read the HTTP/1.1 Pipelining FAQ.

11 flights later... NYC roundup and 4th of July

2007-07-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

4th of July (well, 4th of July eve) at the Stanford Oval

It's good to be back in the Valley. This is my first 'real' weekend of summer, since I finished school I haven't been home... pretty nice to wake up without assignments / exams / endless GSB events packing out my free days.

Haven't been writing much recently, as I decided that when travelling I would rather travel than blog. Frankly there hasn't been a lot of 'slack' in the schedule... I worked it out, I was on 11 long haul flights over 3 weeks, which eventually wears anyone down (especially when 2 of those are on Gulf Air).

So we were in New York last weekend. For a Jewish wedding no less... no photos (never sure about posting other people's pics on open blog) but suffice to say it was a new experience for me. Interesting because many aspects were very similar to Christian / Western ceremony, but some things were completely unique. Yes, they shout 'Mazeltov' and break glasses, and dance the impressive rotary 'Horah' dance... altogether it's a very spirited affair. And big ups to the groom's mother for adapting a rap song for her speech - and yes, she rapped it with a beat from the band. Awesome.

We managed to squeeze in some time around the city as well. Central Park in the summer is impressive, the weather was amazing, and even more amazing was finding someone who could take a half-decent photo. She even said she liked using the mighty Pentax... excellent.

Whoever dreamed up Central Park was a genius.

I still don't feel like living in New York, but what a place to visit. A weekend of great food, late night gourmet pastry raids, and watching the boats cruise past on Long Island Sound wasn't bad at all...

But it's good to be home!

What if?

2007-07-04T01:16:00.000-07:00

So from my optimistic 2-1 post last week, we've crashed to a 5-2 defeat. On the one hand it's a story of what if? What if we hadn't torn our spinnaker in race 5? What if we hadn't lost by 1 second in race 7? But on the other hand, we had 5 chances to stop them and they managed to get across the line in front.

Curiously, the predicted boat speed difference didn't really seem to be a huge factor, it was all about the crews. Although Team NZ has been practicing racing work for years, it seems that Alinghi was more error-free, more confident, and more adaptible than the NZ team.

They deserved to win. But we need to hang on - the America's Cup has a long future ahead of it, and part of that is a return to Auckland!

New Zealand leads 2-1... thanks to wind shifts and sacrifices to the sea gods

2007-06-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

We're in the lead! Seems like the boats are equally matched, and so far we've been picking (gambling) on the wind shifts more successfully than Alinghi. The Swiss are arguing that it's a fluke and if there's more (and more stable) wind they'll restart their winning streak. In-ter-esting. Although I laugh at the media trotting out the 'winner of race 3 always wins the cup'... because recently, it's also been the winner of races 1, 2, 4, and 5. Clearly we're in a tight match here, the sort of thing we haven't seen since Australia II.

So it's fingers crossed, good luck to the team, and let's stick to the sailing rather than going swimming:

The final countdown

2007-06-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

The 32nd America's Cup will start in just a couple of hours. Once again, it's Kiwi vs. Kiwi - nice picture of Brad Butterworth (ex-Team NZ, now Alinghi skipper) and Dean Barker (Team NZ helmsman) shaking hands.

Finally, time for revenge. All of New Zealand is hoping that Alinghi don't have a magic trick hidden in that slick looking boat of theirs... well, today we find out. I'm worried they do - Alinghi has talked about boat speed a lot, and why would you do that if you didn't have something special? Team NZ is firing on all cylinders though, so as long as we're about even on the track I would back us to fight to the finish.

Now to try and find a cable channel in Bangkok that's showing it ;-)

So hot right now (South East Asia edition)

2007-06-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

OMG. It's 0013 (ie, just after midnight) and Bangkok is still baking at 82 degrees and 80% humidity. Time to try and sleep.

Luke turns up, alive and well in Bangkok

2007-06-20T00:35:00.001-07:00

Back from the dead - well, France anyway. Seems they're not so much into the 'WiFi' over there so couldn't drop any blogs from Nimes and surrounds. Probably a good thing as well, there were few sober moments and friends don't let friends blog drunk.

Anyhow, a great trip. I survived Gulf Air; I was hoping that Bahrain's flag carrier airline was similar to Dubai's (the wonderful Emirates, much loved Team NZ sponsor) but, uh, no. However we did have the valuable feature of a 'Mecca tracker' on the in-flight display, which was more useful for the Muslim passengers than me, but I could appreciate it. In fact we came within 500 miles of Mecca (Makkah? not sure on the correct modern spelling) which is a new record for me. More on airlines to come, by happy coincidence the Economist did a 14 page feature on airlines the same time as I was flying around the world in 9 flights, with 5 carriers, in 14 days. So I have some comments on that ;-)

Also in the 'later' category:

photoshoot of Luke 'Derelicte' in the south of France,
lessons on life from Garry Kasparov (chess Grandmaster) and
the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's battle against the NZ dollar (which all of us on NZ Unofficial can only hope they win)

Plus photos once I figure out how to get my SD card connected to my bro's PC. Meanwhile time for a shower which will render me sweat-free for about 3 minutes before the 95 degree steam sauna conditions take their toll. Or perhaps straight to the Asahi Super Dry...?

London - so far so good

2007-06-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

Just got to London. I like it more than I remember. I'm going to go and drink Tanqueray in Trafalgar Square.

Fun in the Boston sun!

2007-06-12T07:19:00.000-07:00

So, I finally got to Boston and a chance to see the 'other' school. Very nice! A perfectly good place to read cases. Seriously, it was great to see Leah / Mike / Jules / Sophie (old Australian buddies of mine) and meet Priv (a rare Kiwi at HBS... although not as rare as GSB Kiwis I guess). And they've all had a wonderful experience there. I'm really beginning to understand why...

Firstly, the weather's not all that bad... a little more humid than Palo Alto, maybe, but hey. And that Charles River is so big and impressive - there's no way it could freeze over, they must be joking about that. Secondly, they have a *sweet* smoking - sorry, study - room with old school leather chairs and those desklamps with hoods. It's very plush, and I gather the HBS students really love it, because apparently they spend a lot of time there. Why wouldn't you! Finally, they have this fun culture based on lies... stick with me

So here is a statue, called the 'three lies'. To quote WikiP, here's the deal: "The statue, known by Harvard tour guides as the statue of three lies, claims that it depicts John Harvard, Founder, 1638, but in reality Harvard was merely a contributor, not the founder; the institution was founded in 1636; and the statue is actually a likeness of somebody else, often supposed to be a Harvard student or professor"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvard_%28clergyman%29

Those crazy MA cats! Turns out there are some more wrinkles to the story. I asked "if John wasn't the founder, who was?" and my Harvard buddies weren't sure. A little digging - I guess they don't have the WikiWorldWidePediaWeb on the East Coast yet, it's like the railroad, it takes a decade or so to build all the way - revealed the founder as "by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony". So really they didn't found it, they voted to allow someone else to found it. So Harvard 'only' gave them all their money and books to start with, he's not really the founder? Like I say, crazy they are over there! Must be all that sunshine!

The river really is cool. I was lucky enough to see it on 'sailing day', when a freakish combination of survivable temperatures, manageable breeze, and no rain allows people to get in their boats in tanktops and shorts. A&F must run out of stock when this weather hits!

Lastly back to the statue... and the last lie, perhaps? It's tradition for tourists to rub the shoe, hence the shiny finish on the featured toe (below). Well, they now claim that it's also tradition for undergrads to urinate on said shoe. Geddit? Then tourists rub it - hah! Glorious. Now, I asked myself, is this actually the fourth lie? What a way to preserve an important and misleading landmark such as this, without resorting to electric shocks or razor wire... just tell people the statue is covered in pee. (I actually told my hosts that I'd be honored to touch Harvard pee, which apparently isn't uncommon)

We at Stanford have a lot to learn from this oldest and most prestiguous of American universities.

Editor's note: Luke met up with a bunch of HBS and Kennedy people, all of whom are awesome and impressive individuals. So this isn't meant to be serious. Besides HBS love it when they think Stanford is jealously maligning them.

Why I chose George Bernard Shaw as my patron saint...

2007-06-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

Because he combines Oscar Wilde's wit with H. L. Mencken's cynicism. Here's a great quote that turned up on the web clip today:

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

George Bernard Shaw

(click the link for more quotes from the great man)

Shasta - The North Face

2007-06-03T17:09:00.000-07:00

Coming from the southern hemisphere, 'The North Face' never made sense - after all, in New Zealand that's the snow-free, warm, safe side of the mountain? Well, now I've seen the north face in true American style, and it is all good.

Short story: a bunch of us from the GSB had a go at Mount Shasta a week ago, going up the glaciated northern slopes (as opposed to the easy snow ramp that more pragmatic folks use from the south). For a mental picture, think Mt Ruapehu with another 1,000 meters or so tacked on top. For the Kiwis out there, the road end is at about 2,100m and the summit itself is 4,317m, so it's a bit higher than Aoraki / Mt Cook, and the vertical delta is like climbing to the top of Ruapehu from Ohakune. So it's a good slog.

It was a great weekend with the high point being our High Camp at aroun 11,000ft, where we entrenched in style and comfort. As you can see, we managed to dig a pretty good replica of a hot tub, but even with 4 MSR stoves cranking we couldn't fill it up. Sleeping under the stars at low camp was pretty special as well. (the bizarre photo with the light trails is dessert at Low Camp)

The attempted push to the summit was tougher, we picked a super-windy day and faced a stretch of ice on our revised route which was distinctly unfriendly. The first rope team made it up with ice screws for protection, only to find more wind. A member of my team (thankfully) needed an 'urgent break', and with cool heads teams 2 and 3 decided to back out. Even then, it was a long day, and given the number of first-timers on crampons, not a bad call.

The true genius in turning around was that by 7 o'clock we were sinking pitchers of beer and burgers at the Billy Goat's Tavern. Tackling the North Face is great, but it's nice when it's over...

Schnack is back!

2007-05-30T06:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess this is the beauty of having so many Kiwis in the mix. We now have a different kind of New Zealand matchup in the Louis Vuitton final - Tom Schnackenberg (head of the 2003 NZ defence) who is now on Luna Rossa, against his old helmsman Dean Barker on ETNZ.

The Oracle explosion is pretty funny... Chris Dickson does it again. Back in '87 when he failed to take Plastic Fantastic KZ7 all the way, people pointed to his 'domineering' style as the cause. Basically he was a complete control freak and egomaniac, and that doesn't really work on a racing yacht. At the time he claimed that it was just inexperience on his part, compared with Dennis Conner, saying:

"I guess 13 years' experience beats 13 months"

Well, this time around he can't complain about experience. And the last 20 years don't seem to have mellowed him, I guess Larry called that one wrong.

Well, bring on the next race. Team NZ are looking good, I have to say I'm happier seeing them take on Luna Rossa than Oracle at full power. And if this Alinghi broken rudder / broken boat stuff is true, then things just keep getting better for us!

What do Silicon Valley, Valencia, and Auckland have in common?

2007-05-17T18:07:00.001-07:00

At the moment, the America's Cup. In different ways of course - Valencia is the venue, and Silicon Valley and Auckland are the home of several of the players in this impressive game. So for me, it's interesting to watch Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle, head of the BMW Oracle challenge) with his $$$ and leadership, take on Grant Dalton (head of Team New Zealand), with his Kiwi ingenuity and dedicated sailing team. It's basically my adopted home versus the mother country... and that's before you look at who's actually racing on the boats.

You see, there are lots of ways to slice allegiances this time around - the 2007 America's Cup is really a story of the globalization of business, sport, and technology, all at once.

First, an update. We're at the semi-final round of the Louis Vuitton Cup - yes, this really is a sport for the masses - which is the tournament to find the America's Cup challenger. So the winner of the LV Cup will race the current Cup holder, Swiss team Alinghi. The semi finalists are Team New Zealand (from New Zealand, but more on that later), BMW Oracle under the US flag, Luna Rossa (Italy), and hometown heroes Desafio Espanol (um, they're Spanish).

The expectation is, or at least was, that BMW Oracle will meet Team NZ in the final. And wouldn't that be lovely, these boats look so sexy racing (see photos). Moreover, they're pretty good examples of this globalization thing.

Let's take BMW Oracle, flying the US flag and hailing from the Golden Gate Yacht Club. Money comes from Larry, successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur who likes sailing, and BMW (who sensibly decided not to back the German team, which has been knocked out). They have extensive research facilities in the US and Europe, and draw off BMW's Formula 1

technology. To top it off, they have a New Zealand skipper - Chris Dickson, who almost won the Cup back in 1987. An impressive team, flawless execution, pretty much what you'd expect from a seasoned veteran of the software wars on the West Coast of the US. Technically, right now they are my home team (or at least that's what I'll claim when they win).

OK, onto Team New Zealand. Where are they from? Hmmm. Well, yes, the team is mostly Kiwi: Dean Barker (the skipper) is from my home suburb of the North Shore, and the boats were designed and built in Auckland. This year, though, there's a new sponsor - Emirates. So the 'black boat' (NZ America's Cup yachts are black by tradition) carries the logo of Dubai's flag carrying airline, and represents the shiny uber-city of the Middle East. What's more, there's talk of holding the Cup in Dubai if NZ wins.

And speaking of winning, whoever goes through to the America's Cup itself will face Alinghi, the Swiss team with a skipper from (you guessed it) New Zealand. Without revisiting the debacle of 2003, when most of Team New Zealand defected to Alinghi and formed the core team for their victory in Auckland, it's fair to say that Alinghi created the global mindset we see this year. They won the Cup for Switzerland with design and sailing talent from around the world, and chose to defend it in Valencia - not that Switzerland was an option, of course. However in choosing Valencia they departed from America's Cup tradition, selecting a city based on the quality of the base, the reliability of the breeze, and the synchronization of time zones for TV coverage. Previously, this had been about pride, about defending the Cup on home ground, and about sailing rather than TV and lattes after the race.

Anyway, down to business (hit www.americasup.com for all the action). Team NZ is cruising at 2-1 up against the Spanish, but BMW Oracle is unexpectedly down 2-1 against a strong Luna Rossa. And the great news: New Zealand has raced more than 4 times without breaking a mast...

http://espn.go.com/oly/ac2003/s/2003/0227/1515550.html

So hot right now

2007-05-08T00:16:00.000-07:00

Today we hit 35 degrees: celsius.

I guess when the sun shines 360 days a year, it eventually gets hot...

But it's only MAY!

A marathon, not a sprint

2007-05-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

I was never one of those people who thought "I have to run a marathon some day". Nope, the idea of running more than 42 km was always pretty abstract for me. Until Sunday, when I found out exactly what 26.2 miles of hilly, windswept asphalt feels like against the sole of a running shoe. [warning for Kiwis - from here on in everything is in miles. Multiply by 1.61]

I'm still recovering, and the event photos aren't out yet, so this is a pretty dull post... but basically this race was like nothing I've ever experienced (or even imagined). In fact it's worth comparing with Auckland... this course has a 200m climb in the middle, and many 20-40m hills, the Auckland Marathon has the Harbour Bridge which is about 4om at the roadway. This course also has a bridge - the photo is of the Bixby Bridge, at mile 13, which is where I wish I'd been starting the race! We probably picked a tough course for our first marathon, but I guess now other races will look 'easy'... wishful thinking I'm sure. Short story is, wonderful day and we beat our 4 hour target by 10 seconds. Here's a condensed version of those magical 3 hours, 59 minutes and 50 seconds:

...

3.20am, out of bed. 24 hr Starbucks for a pick me up (!) get the bus at 4:30, at the start by 6am. Good morning, have a nice day. Enjoy the, uh, marathon.

...

Mile 0 - 6.40am. Milling around, PA is playing Eye of the Tiger... let's get going, please

Mile 10 - feeling good, approaching Hurricane Point

Mile 12 - finished Hurricane Point, feeling good - high fives all round. We're like a boy band.

Mile 17 - still feeling good... 3:35 perhaps??

Mile 18 - entering uncharted territory. Furthest I've ever run

Mile 20 - uh oh. Eating more GU but quads and hip flexors starting to fail
Mile 22.2 - 4 miles to go and we're falling apart. Not even the Exponents on iPod are helping. My buddy has cramp and my legs are shutting down

Mile 25.5 - what do you mean another HILL before the finish!!

Mile 26.2 - a last burst, shirts off as we get across the line in 3:59:50

Mile 26.2 + 10 minutes - heaven = cold beer, a sports massage, and bananas

...

Frankly, it's just a very very very long time to be running for. In training I was doing 16 miles 'happily' in around 2 hours, but it's those extra 10 miles, or actually the last 6 miles / 10 kms that really kill you. We were already 'softened up' by Hurricane Point, and then the rolling hills kept nibbling away at our fatigued muscles until we were hobbling up the hills. The fact we managed to run across the finish line - at sub 8 minute mile (5 minute km) pace - is proof of the power of adrenaline, because we were all out of gas in the tank.

...

Good times and kudos to all the Stanford folks who finished that day. My running buddy of Dave Haase deserves special mention for inspiring the shirtless finish even in a state of debilitating cramp, and Dave King for smoking it home in 3:20... sick.

...

And at last... a week where the traning target is zero miles (or kilometres, if you prefer)!

Gunshots Sunday, more on Monday

2007-04-16T21:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went for a hike in the Santa Cruz mountains, just south of Stanford. Nice part of the world, great views, good ol' Californian sunshine. Good times! The only unusual aspect of the experience was the sound of, ah, gunfire. Across the valley is the local gun club, and they pack some heat. This isn't surprising per se, the US is the home of the NRA and the right to bear arms, but it's a little strange in California - people are more likely to have a Prius than a pistol locked away in their basement around here. In any case, it was only a little noise, and easily avoided by sidling around to the other side of the hill, where we enjoyed the afternoon sun.

Today, the gunfire wasn't as easy to ignore. I heard about the shootings second hand from some classmates, and as we lamely tried to make conversation ("the earlier shooting has to be connected somehow... they should have shut down the campus") there was a twinge of something in the air. Not fear, that would be silly, but just an unease. In any case campus was quiet and a lot of folks were checking CNN.com for updates in the computer labs.

Next thing, I woke up in California

2007-04-03T23:33:00.000-07:00

So that was a quick (I'll resist any 'flying' puns) visit back home. I'm a bit dazed and confused after an excellent lineup of breakfasts, lunches, dinners, post-dinner drinks, early morning munchies... good times.

The BBQ on our final night there was a highlight. Bring on Kiwi summer / New Years 07/08!

Now back home and straight into the swing of school again. Had a great speaker today, former CEO of Global Procurement for WalMart. Buying a few hundred billion dollars worth of stuff from around the world is a pretty interesting job, he was an interesting guy. He provided some interesting counterpoints to the prevailing attitude that WalMart is pure suburban evil... for example, where else can a high school dropout with no prospects go from pushing trolleys to making 6 figures managing a superstore in less than 10 years? Not a bad point when you consider how tough things can be in the US when you get off to a poor educational start.

New Zealand is definitely a different world, makes me appreciate our free (well almost) University and quality state schools (quiet you boys from Southside).

Vegas, baby... and then, New Zealand

2007-03-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

Every year the GSB sends it's best and brightest to Vegas, cleverly disguised as a mishmash of Ocean's Eleven and Saturday Night Fever. The party starts on the plane (not counting beers at the airport) and continues on the plane - some of the other passengers get confused about the Neil Diamond karaoke coming over the PA system but they learn to roll with it.

Here are some of the misfits, and this is where the Vegas post stops. What happens in Vegas...

And now, back in New Zealand. It's, ah, damp. I got off the plane and wondered why the air was so hard to suck into my lungs... oh, that would be the 90% humidity. It doesn't help that our visit coincided with a nice tropical cyclone which has brought north easterlies and endless rain. Intellectually I appreciate that the weather has been nice over here recently, but there's actually a good chance that we'll get as much rain this week as we've had in California since September. That said I squeezed in a nice run along the East Coast Bays on Monday which reminded me why I'll be back here some day.

One other thing that's been nice to see, the advertising campaign is finally running for the last work I did before finishing school, the Yahoo! Xtra partnership. I wish I could take credit for the awesome creative... cool song as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NHYgeRjeKQ

So I figured I'd make the flashback experience complete - I'm writing this from Starbucks Vic Street with a Grande Mocha (no whipped) to keep my chin up. And tonight I get to revisit my old stomping grounds of Takapuna - R'toto's, of course.

God Defend New Zealand!

To start...

2007-03-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

Living in Silicon Valley without a blog just seemed plain wrong... or maybe right, given that blogs are 'so 2006' around here.

In any case, this is my plot of cyberturf, and as the title suggests I'll try and stick something once or so per week (whether it's interesting is another matter). On a good day I might even relate something genuinely interesting from the Valley / Stanford / tech sector. Currently interviewing for summer jobs so that may yield some news soon.

For now, a snapshot of life at school in California. Went to Tahoe last weekend (those are the pics, at Heavenly), it's a pretty amazing place. Americans always say that New Zealand is the most beautiful place in the world, and while they're right, there is some cool stuff here as well.

Tonight I'm flying out to Vegas for the night - it's a tradition at the school here, every year a few hundred Stanford kids fly out to LV for one big Tuesday night. Strange but true. Oh and everybody dresses in full 70's kit (I pushed for 80's this year but no luck ;-))

I won't bore you with all my snaps here, www.lukebaxter.co.nz has photos galore, downloadable in high res for your wallpaper pleasure (honestly, if you do put them on your background, I don't want to know...).

Adios!
Luke