Play Calvinball

Courtesy of SFist, DCist's little brother, who was caught by his parents smoking pot in the hallway bathroom with the fan on...


(Quoted by SFist): This could very well be the most exciting extracurricular activity in the world, ever. Next to building a fort out of couch cushions and blankets, that is. (Why, yes, we are in fact five-years-old. Thank you.)

Her's the deal: Simply show up, receive your free cardboard tube, and start whacking away at your fellow Bay Area residents with impunity. So simple. Really, this needs to happen at least once a week.

When: Sunday, 10/28
Where: Justin Herman Plaza, 1 Market Street (at Embarcadero Plaza)
Time: 4 p.m. - 8 p.m. (rain or shine)
Site: www. tubeduel.com

The Internet can be a dangerous thing. Perusing it at your leisure typically ends up with ideas that sound good in theory... but when forced to carry out, hurt.

That is what happened on Sunday when Messrs Matt Shiel, Charles Pratt and Adam Croce participated in the Merrell (TM) Oyster Racing Series: The Ultimate Urban Adventure Race.

It began like this: Surfing the Internet while looking for a job and a house, perched on the right hand sofa cushion of Erin's couch, I came across the race info through some link some how. It was also found through some painfully long visits to REI where Erin and Miranda would buy half the store and bring this stuff with them to Peru. Anyway, as a birthday present to us, Erin graciously paid our entrance fee for Matt and I. This gave us the privilege to fund raise money as well as destroy ourselves at 8:00am on a Sunday morning.

Just as a brief teaser, here's what the website says (www.sfoyster.com): The Oyster Racing Series is billed as the “Ultimate Urban Adventure Race” for its uncanny ability to combine pure athleticism with thought-provoking strategy. Cure triathlon monotony and the swim-bike-run routine; come have fun with our run-bike-paddle-skate-trek-climb-and other stuff that makes this event so darn fun "routine."

That's right; "CURE TRIATHLON MONOTONY." What the hell are we thinking? Well, I think what we were thinking is that this would be more Idiotarod (2nd place, for those who don't know) and less IronMan. But we saw strategy and urban and thought we had a fighting chance. So we sign up...

Wait a second. What day is this? Oh, October 14th. That's fine. Wait... Wait... isn't there something going on that weekend? Oh, right. Matt's house is having a party that Saturday. Umm... well... that's gonna be rough. (The following is the slow realization shared by Matt, Chas and I). This also brought upon the team name: The Morning After.

Fast forward to Saturday night. Party Theme: Cowboys in the Orient. (Don't ask). Ends up being a lot of cowboy hats, an infant cowboy onesie and someone dressing up like sushi. Drunken 80's dance/karaoke party in full effect. Sleep - 3 hours.

So, 7am rolls around and the three of us drive towards Crissy Field, which is the park that most pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge are taken from and would also be the main staging area for the race. We get our little spot to dump our crap and bikes, sign some waivers, listen to some legal mumbo jumbo and we're off and running.

But before I get into that, you have to realize something. Some of these people are... INTENSE. One guy looks like he's been injecting human-growth hormones directly into his face since his second trimester. People are outfitted in sponsored triathlon gear, have all the right equipment, support staff and one team even had a laptop. We had... 30 year old commuter bikes, $6 fan chairs and roller skates. Yes, SKATES. Like two by two, not roller blades. On to the race!

Each leg had a task the team had to accomplish and also the type of travel you could use. They were usually clues to a location or landmark. Here's Chas' paraphrased summary of what we did...

Leg 1 - Travel by foot to do the following: 1) Picture of team with local drinking Starbucks / 2) Picture of team with statue at Ft. Mason / 3) Picture of team with plaque at the Palace of Fine Arts

Totals: Run 4.5 miles


Leg 2 - Three separate tasks
a) Chas - Travel by foot to baker beach and find staff to punch card
b) Adam - Bike wrong direction and get lost
c) Matt - Skate to CityShare car and find string in car / Bike for Adam the right direction to the Legion of Honor for picture of statue

Totals: Run 3.5 miles / Bike 7.2 miles / Skate 3.5 miles


*CLARIFICATION: I did go the wrong direction but I wasn't LOST. I was sent the wrong direction because Google tricked me. I was looking for the Legion of Honor with the Rodin Sculpture. Google Text sent me to Fine Arts Museum. I find this out when I hit a bike rental place, stole their tour map and saw I was way off.

Leg 3- Bike to Pier 40 where two members are supposed to paddle around a pillar of the Bay Bridge while one member travels by bike to Gordon Biersch to pour and drink a beer and watch football.

Totals: Bike 12 miles / Paddle 2 miles / Drink 1 beer

So, since Matt did two parts on the previous leg, he got to pour the beer. We decide to bike as a group against traffic in a bike line on the Embarcadero and make awesome time, hence breaking our first rule of the day: "Obey all traffic laws." F- that. We leave Matt at Gordon's, Chas and I go kayak. I proceed to paddle like a retarded walrus but we finally get a groove. About 10 minutes into it, we get our route shortened because the water is too choppy. Score. Chas and I finish, bike back and find that Matt isn't there yet. Turns out he was watching the Redskins game and eventually shows up like two minutes after us.

Leg 4- Travel by foot to China Town for picture of team at China Town Gates and purchase a three fingered ginger root. (Public transportation is allowed)

Totals: Run 4.5 Miles / Rode the 30 bus for about 2 miles of it.


Thank God for the Bus. I was starting to hurt on this one. The run back from the bus station to the staging area was a rough mile or so. But the bus was packed with other teams on the edge of death so we had some bonding time.

Leg 5- Travel by skates to Hyde St Pier and tie string acquired in Leg 2 into one of the knots shown on the display.

Totals: Skate 6 miles

I made it about half a mile and said F- this. Roller skates and me were not boys so I used one of our three Rockefellers, which is essentially a Get Out of Jail Free card that allows a participant to skip an event. Go ahead and call me whatever cause I don't care. We needed to make up some time and two people go faster than three. Pure strategy. Since it was getting late in the day and we still had one leg to go, I hop on my bike, cheat, and pull Matt on his skates with the bike. We get back to camp and find out that they aren't letting any more groups go, so we can't finish the final leg. Keep in mind, this is 7 hours, 33 minutes after we started. Some groups had finished the whole thing. The last leg was doable, mostly because public transportation was required... which would've been us calling a cab and heading to Whole Foods and REI.

In the end, we survived. Two days later and my quads are sore (from pulling Matt's fat skating ass) and so are my shoulders (damn kayak). They rewarded all participants with free Chipotle and beer as well as some silly little door prizes.

The Morning After. Yup, it definitely hurts the morning after...

It's October 10th. That means it's my sister's birthday. She's two years and two days older than me and never lets me forget it.


Let's go through the dynamic that she and I shared throughout the years...

Her: 3, Me: 1 - While may parents were giving us a bath, she proceeds to whack me in the head with a wooden spoon that my parents had thrown in the tub as "toys." Thanks for that one. Was the rusty chainsaw not available?

Her: 5, Me: 3 - Photogenic happy times were captured in extended periods of us being forced to hang out together.

Her: 9, Me: 7 - Angst began through soccer. Ferd would always coach Lauren's division, which at this time was the 9-10 year old. Once my 7-8 age game would finish, my mom would drive me over to the fields where my sister was playing. For a laugh (or an over exuberant soccer dad), Ferd would throw me into these games to compete against the big boys (all leagues were co-ed).

Her: 13, Me: 11 - Angst escalated because she would join my travel soccer team. This brought about A. Croce and L. Croce on the back of our jerseys. Not cool.

Her: 15, Me: 13 - Semi-hatred started because I would never study for school and instead piss Lauren off. This is the time range of most of the physical altercations, all won by me. (Don't ask her to verify this; She'll just lie).

Her: 17, Me: 15 - Silent car rides to school. I attempt to change the radio station - "Adam, DON'T touch the radio." I attempt to open the windows - "Adam, it's too cold. Leave the windows alone!" I am alive - "Adam, STOP BREATHING SO LOUD!"

Her: 18, Me: 16 - Lauren heads off to college. Her leaving went like this:
*Mom: Lauren, say goodbye to your brother.
*Lauren: (carrying a bunch of stuff and halfway out the door) See ya.
*Adam: (eating lunch and watching TV) See ya.

Her: 20, Me: 18 - Angst subsides, most likely due to area code relocation by Adam.

Her: 22, Me: 20 - A beacon of hope! I come home over the summer to surprise Ferd for Father's Day (still the best reaction ever, probably cause I woke him up out of a dead of sleep). Anyway, the next day Lauren finds out how to sneak me into the local college bar cause I am not legal yet. She is friends with the bouncers and they say 'Just come before 9pm for dinner and stay inside. We can't card you then.' We do, I stay and find out that Car Bombs are like $4 in New Paltz.

Her: 23, Me: 21 - Lauren finishes her AmeriCorp program. We start to get along. Maturity wins (?)

Her: 26, Me: 24 - Things are looking on the up. We get along, harass each other and have even had tag-team efforts to annoy Morgan to the point of her stomping away and yelling, which actually is quite comical in person.

We've come a long from the Spoon Incident (which I still have a scar from)!

Happy Birthday, Swissy. And here's to many more...

For those of you who watch SNL still (Spencer), this will be old to you.

But if you don't, here's Kanye, pissed at the media.

[Credits to Max for finding this first. Yeah, I'm stealing it].

I stopped by the "Hardly Strictly Bluegrass" festival for a little bit today to see some Bela Fleck & Victor Wooten.

It was a free concert in Golden Gate Park so you know it was packed and there were so many bicycles locked up it was like a Kryptonite lock convention.

I was waiting for Shiel to show up and made my way to the front gate to meet him instead of trying to slice through the crowd. At this point, I saw a shirt that made me cringe in anger, boil in pain and almost tempted me to beat this guy with a goddamn tire iron.

Hey, Adam, what'd the shirt say? You know what? I'm gonna friggin tell you.