You are currently browsing the Dinhternet posts tagged: Drew M

Team-Ups

March 26, 2011 Books / Comic Books / Friends / Movies / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Stories / Videos
3 comments

I’ve never been much of a Green Arrow fan. Always felt he was a bit too much of a Robin Hood rip-​off.

That said, Green Arrow does get some inter­est­ing team-​up sto­ries with other JLAers. In that spirit, I was pretty excited to orga­nize a group archery les­son with some friends.

After some last minute ros­ter changes, Drew M, Randy T, Thu H, Tim C, Tony T (Thu H’s boyfriend), and I met up at Paci­fica Archery today.

Tim C and I got there a bit late, but the staff was very nice. We signed a waiver and got out­fit­ted with an arm­band, glove, and a recurve bow. They gave us a quick safety course and begin­ner tech­nique les­son (we were all com­plete newbs other than Thu H), and then they let us loose on the range! They also adjusted our tar­gets and gave us point­ers on form and aim between fir­ing rounds.

The only thing even remotely close to archery train­ing I’ve had in the past was read­ing Wizard’s First Rule, and I have to say, not quite there. I’ll admit, there were a cou­ple of times where a shot “felt” right, but I think it’s just because archery is so much about con­sis­tency, and I had gone through a men­tal check­list before those shots. Maybe with a lot more prac­tice, I can “feel” and “pull” the targets.

Any­way, here’s some video of us shoot­ing about halfway through our session:

Tim C -

(Down­load)

Drew M -

(Down­load)

Thu H -
This one got cut off a lit­tle early, but there was excited jump­ing going on. If you know Thu H, you can imag­ine. :)

(Down­load)

Tony T -

(Down­load)

Randy T -

(Down­load)

and me -

(Down­load 1)(Down­load 2)

I think we all got pro­gres­sively bet­ter for the first 2⁄3 of the ses­sion, and then fatigue set in and we got a lit­tle sloppy towards the end. I ended up with two shots on the bor­der between yel­low and red sec­tions, and sev­eral that were solidly in the yel­low. (I’m pur­ple feath­ers and Drew M is red feath­ers.) Tony T got one solidly in the outer red ring, but Tim C was the ace of our group with two arrows inside the inner red sec­tion, just a hair above the dead cen­ter X.

We shot around for a lit­tle over an hour. (The staff was pretty loose on the time limit, we finally left the lanes just so the next group could go.) Wan­dered around the pro-​shop part for a bit to check stuff out. They have some very inter­est­ing prod­ucts. I think Tim C in par­tic­u­lar was very smit­ten, he took some equip­ment brochures.

Oh, and the store gave us each a free rental coupon to be redeemed any Tues­day through Fri­day between now and the end of June. Want to join us for Round Two?

Incom­ing search terms:

  • recurve bow
  • recurve bow and arrow
  • recurve­bow
  • a bow recurve and arrow
  • bow recurve
  • recurve
  • recurve begin­ners bow
  • recurve bow pack­age deals

Ginned Up Charges

September 16, 2010 Friends / Stories
No comments

Here goes my first Write One Leaf post. The topic is gin. I won­der if they mean the alco­hol or the card game. I’m going with the for­mer, since I don’t have amus­ing sto­ries about the latter.

Gin is prob­a­bly my least favorite alco­hol. In 100 Bul­lets, Agent Graves says he likes vodka because it is “slip­pery.” I sup­pose I dis­like gin because it usu­ally feels oily to me. Can’t really explain the sen­sa­tion, any more than I sup­pose Graves could explain vodka being slip­perier than other liquors. Any­way, since I’ve been intro­duced to a higher class of gin lately, I don’t mind it as much, but I would still take basi­cally any other shot over it, given the option.

My favorite mem­ory of gin, though, is from sev­eral years ago when we took Drew M on a bar crawl around Davis for his birth­day. Actu­ally, I’m not sure if it really counts as a crawl…

We started with some wikis at Café Bernardo, of course. Drew M made faces as he downed his, and we were going, “You’re crazy, these are great!” Then we wan­dered over to the Can­tina (yes, that’s how old this story is). We got there early enough that they hadn’t quite cleared the tables away to turn the restau­rant into a “club.” Some­one, I believe it was Andy M, got Drew M a Long Island Iced Tea. He took a sip, made a face, and refused to drink the rest, claim­ing, “I can taste the gin!” We pres­sured him for the rest of the night to fin­ish his drink, to no avail.

Even­tu­ally, the staff did clear the tables, and we sat at the few tables they left in place by the front entrance. Every­one was pretty wasted, and one per­son yakked in the mid­dle of the floor. At least one per­son yakked in the bath­room. And then we left.

The end!

The Whooshing Sound

July 27, 2010 Exercise / Friends / Videos / Work
2 comments

This past Sun­day, I did the first half of the San Fran­cisco Marathon with Aaron L. (Andrew M, Eric G, Ian R, and Stacey F did the full marathon.) Look­ing back, I’m still pretty amazed that I fin­ished, let alone at a decent time. My offi­cial time was 2:39:13, or a 12:09/mile pace! (If you want to see me at the fin­ish line, go here and search my bib num­ber, 62,423. Sorry I couldn’t find a way to rip the video and make it more convenient.)

The title of the post comes from this quote:

“I love dead­lines. I like the whoosh­ing sound they make as they fly by.” — Dou­glas Adams.

And that’s pretty much the approach I took to my training.

You see, the idea to sign up for this crazy thing started back at the begin­ning of the year, when Joe M and Sang D were still liv­ing in the same house as me, and the three of us would go on runs every night. I got up to about 6 mile runs at around a 10:00/mile pace, and was pretty excited about it. Aaron L had been run­ning in Davis and then back at home in Santa Cruz, so we chal­lenged our­selves to do a half marathon. SF was close for both of us and scenic, so we signed up for that. We were both pretty excited. Aaron L seemed more excited about his bar-​hopping plans imme­di­ately after the race, though. :)

Like it often does, though, life got in the way of plans. Sophia Chew (and her ten­ants, Joe M, Sang D, and me) moved to a new place, and the neigh­bor­hood wasn’t as nice, and Joe M and Sang D moved away, and I got busy with work and APhiO and lost moti­va­tion. Aaron L had to deal with per­pet­ual sick­ness and study­ing for the New York Bar.

Two weeks before the race, I took time off to go to Min­nesota and visit my fam­ily. I brought my run­ning shoes and told myself I would train every morn­ing up there. The first day there, though, I went out to the play­ground to play with my cousins and hurt my knee. Com­pletely slacked the rest of the first week. The sec­ond week, I did runs of 2, 4, and 8 miles, then went back to 2 miles for the rest of the week to let my feet recover from some blis­ters that had formed. I started at around 12:45 and moved into the 13:30/mile pac­ing dur­ing my practice.

I came back to Cal­i­for­nia and drove out to SF on Sat­ur­day, pretty damn ner­vous about my lack of train­ing. Did the math, and I real­ized I would need to keep a 15:00/mile pace to keep ahead of course clo­sure. (I was in Wave 6, and Wave 8, which started 20 min­utes after me, had 3 hours to fin­ish or else the course would be closed in front of them, and they would have to move to the side­walk to fin­ish.) I wasn’t sure I would be able to do it, since my prac­tices never went past 8 miles, and I didn’t know how my endurance would hold up. I also didn’t know how I would han­dle the hills.

Talked it over with Aaron L, and he shared my con­cerns about a lack of prac­tice and we agreed that we would just do as much as we could, and if noth­ing else, we could enjoy a nice break­fast on North Beach.

Sun­day morn­ing came around, and we wan­dered out to the Embar­cadero to start. Eas­ily made it all the way around Fisherman’s Wharf and North Beach. Aaron L real­ized we were run­ning at a 9:00/mile pace, so we decided to walk all the uphills, which was a good deci­sion on the big one lead­ing up to the Golden Gate Bridge. On the bridge itself, I strug­gled a lit­tle at first, but caught a sec­ond wind and really enjoyed a sweet spot, although that came at the expense of tun­nel vision and get­ting sep­a­rated from Aaron L. I had some more trou­ble on the hills right after the bridge, but stuck to our solid strat­egy of walk­ing up the hills. Around mile 11 or so, after the last water sta­tion, I was really hav­ing some trou­ble. My legs felt like they were under­wa­ter, and it was get­ting hard to lift them and keep my strides up. Switched back and forth between jog­ging and power-​walking, but I even­tu­ally made it to the fin­ish line, where Dong Ha and Aaron L were wait­ing for me.

When I stopped after­wards and downed a whole bot­tle of water that was handed to me, I real­ized that my lower body was wooden and heavy, and my upper body was numb and tin­gling. Even my tongue tin­gled as I drank the water! Had some hot tea and a banana, which helped a lot. Stretched (but not nearly enough, because I was too sore to move for a solid day) as we waited for the shut­tles to take us back to the start­ing line.

Now Aaron L and I are talk­ing about doing a full marathon next year. Maybe I’ll even train prop­erly this time!

← Older Entries