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To start off Masnick’s bachelor party on Saturday , we went to the Yankees vs. Giants game at AT&T park… It was a glorious Saturday, complemented by perfect June weather. Our seats were *right* in front of the Yankee bullpen, so I was hoping to see some of the relievers warm up. The bay area Taiwanese community was super excited that Chien-Ming Wang was scheduled to pitch, although I was a little worried since he’s usually pretty efficient, so it was possible that we didn’t see any relievers at all with him there. I’m pretty much indifferent to the outcome of the game, so I just wanted a close contest with a lot of bullpen action. Masnick predicted that the game would go very quickly, as both Morris and Wang are known to be pretty fast pitchers..

And he was right, through the 6th inning.. Wang had a perfect game going into the 5th inning, and the Yankees were looking good, completely out hitting the Giants. But, as Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over”

The wheels basically fell off for the Yankees in the 7th, but the good news was that we got to see a bunch of pitchers warm up in the bullpen. Our seats were right on the rail, so we could probably reach out and smack the ball out of the pitcher’s hand if we wanted to. Lefty-sidearmer Mike Myers was warming up on the mound closest to us, and with each pitch, it seemed like he was gonna reach out and punch Masnick in the face. But yah.. Torre went through 4 different pitchers in that inning..

A-rod tied up the game in the top of the 9th with a solo HR, so now things are getting good… The Yankees are running a little low on relievers, and finally, Rivera comes out to warm up…

Sweeeet. Damn, these guys throw hard. That guy Farnsworth throws really hard too. The game pulls ahead into 13 innings. Awesome! 44% more game, for the price of a normal ticket! I comment to Mike that it would be awesome if Clemens were to throw in today’s game..

And then.. the rocket himself pops out of the dugout and trots over to the bullpen.

Sweeet! With Clemens himself starting to warm up in the bottom of the 12th, things are starting to look pretty exciting. The Yankees have Rivera and Clemens left, and also have two kids that can hit in place of Proctor, who is currently pitching. Then… the inexplicable happens. With two outs and a man on first, Torre leaves Proctor in the lineup for his first career AB. Uh. Wha? I don’t get it. Needless to say, he strikes out.. (ok, to be fair, Chris Basak was warming up to pinch hit, and it would have been his first major league at-bat too..) Anyway… it didn’t really matter, cuz the Giants won it in the bottom of the 13th with a dying quail single.. Bloop.

Anyway.. my pics here. Box score here.

Douggates: you need patience for the first 50 seconds.
Douggates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cYWfq–Nw

[thanks Doug (obviously)]

I went to go visit Zuad and Mike over in Hoboken yesterday — we were supposed to have lunch last Tuesday, but apparently Baby Michael had other ideas and decided to be born that day. They look like they’re doing great. The kid is super sweet and alert — I can’t believe how tiny he is — this is the earliest that I’ve ever seen a baby, so I didn’t really get how tiny they are. So cool!!!

Babies kinda smell good. Puppies smell good too, I wonder if that’s like an evolutionary thing.

wiffleball + hurling = wiffle hurling (bonus… with sombreros).

Woohoo!! I’m now the #6 dennis on google. Is it really, really nerdy to be excited about this?

Don’t answer that.

Anyway… as to not be done with the reunion fever, I had dinner with a bunch of OHS classmates when I got back to NYC.. It was awesome to see everyone again. Mike had a fabulous story about Kofi in our junior year computer class that I do not believe I can do justice to on this blog, so I’m not gonna tell it here, but yah. Good stuff.

OHS 1993 RULES!

So yah.. this weekend, I went up to Ithaca for my 10th reunion.. Wow. Like, 10 years.. that’s a long time. Scary. Apparently we’re like old or something. I drove up Thursday with Carla, who had to leave the reunion early on Saturday to go to a wedding that day. Most people got there Friday or Saturday, so Thursday was actually quite pleasant since we essentially had the whole campus to ourselves. Dinner at the Nines was pleasant and crowd-free, and in general, roaming frolicking was had around the campus with nary another soul.

Ben and Michael met up with us for dinner, and then we found Eric and Kevin at the Chapter house later.. It was a little strange cuz most of my college friends were not staying in the dorms, whereas most of my SF Cornell friends were — so I was kind of split up between the two groups… but I guess it all worked out..

The campus has changed quite a bit since we left it back in 1997, most notably with most of West Campus being torn down and replaced with hugenormous “houses” (instead of dorms) each of which had their own dining halls and super fancy tv rooms with like 72″ plasma tvs. The dorm I was in freshman and sophomore year was still there, which was good, since if those got torn down, that would completely destroy the ivy league feel of that portion of campus…

Friday and Saturday were a little more of the same.. Running around campus and Ithaca, reminiscing and trying to capture bits and pieces of nostalgia here and there.. Ice cream at the dairy barn, drinks at ruloff’s, lunch at viva taqueria, drinks at chapter house, drinks in the alumni tent, more drinks at ruloff’s, more drinks at dunbars, etc. etc. etc..

So yah.. good times.

The weird thing was — I think that everyone that I knew didn’t look *that* much older. I mean, barely any of are even married, or even dating anyone seriously.. And everyone else seemed to be old, married, and with kids. As Audris explained.. we’re all in a state of Arrested Development. Which is fine with me, cuz I really liked that show.

Anyway, all of my pics are here.

Hehe.. I guess Ichiro isn’t gonna end up in Cleveland next year…

“To tell the truth, I’m not excited to go to Cleveland, but we have to,” Ichiro said through an interpreter. “If I ever saw myself saying I’m excited going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’m lying.”

I remember when we got our first Japanese restaurant in Cleveland when I was a kid. We went, but my parents wouldn’t let us order the sushi cuz they were like.. um.. do you SEE an ocean anywhere near here? Yah… maybe that fish isn’t so fresh. But I think with like planes and stuff, it’s ok now. Maybe.

[Thanks James]

Woohooo.. Well, I successfully completed the 2007 Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon and yah, that was kind of hard. It was a foggy and cold (ie.. normal) day here in SF, which actually was kind of nice… At 4am, I headed over to the Marina, where I joined 1600 other crazy people to jump off a perfectly good ferry, swim to San Francisco, and then bike and run around the hilly parts.

Here are my splits — I didn’t finish last. I actually beat 6 dudes in my class. Yay. There were 163 dudes in the 30-35 age group.

Total Time	Swim Time	Swim Trans	Bike Time	Bike Trans	Run Time	Sand Ladder
4:01:32	0:50:22	0:12:49	1:14:45	0:02:35	1:41:01	0:03:40

I met up with a bunch of peeps from my triathlon club on the ferry, so that was kind of nice to have some people to talk to whilst I awaited my doom.. It seemed like an excruciating wait between the time that we actually boarded the ferry and the starting gun.. As the moment neared, we all crowded toward the starboard side of the ferry, causing it to list severely to that side.. And then… like lemmings, people started jumping off into the bay. The cold wasn’t as shocking as I expected — I guess those training sessions at aquatic park paid off.. What was surprising was how far the city looked off on the horizon. Crap. That’s far. What the hell have I gotten myself into? Hmm. I hope I don’t die.

I started swimming, and as expected, I started off at a pace that was WAY too fast. But again, I knew I would do this from my practice sessions in AP, so I consciously tried to slow myself down as to not tire myself out too quickly. As I swam into the channel, things got kinda choppy. Literally. The swells started getting bigger, maybe 6 feet or so. Not huge huge, but still, a lot more than I had ever seen. Freestyle got tiring. I switched to breast stroke, which I knew was a bad idea cuz it uses your legs a lot more. But, who cares as long as it propels me closer to home. Hmm.. let’s try sidestroke — I read somewhere that it was super efficient or something. Some dude behind me was doing elementary backstroke and he looked pretty happy, so I tried that one too. But damn, that’s so slow. So, I finally settled into a good rhythm. 5 strokes of freestyle, then, 2 breast strokes to sight land and straighten myself out…

But.. apparently, my sighting wasn’t working that great. The race is timed such that the ebb current pushes you out towards the Golden Gate. So, you’re supposed to sight towards Fort Mason, and then the current will push you right into the finish. I apparently need to aim at Oakland. All of a sudden, a dude in a Kayak yells..

“Hey YOU! Go LEFT!”

I stop for a sec, look around, and realize that the ENTIRE field is to my left. Oops. But (thankfully) the exit is now in sight, albeit like 300 yards to my left now, which, of course is now against the current. Crap. I put my head down and swim hard for the exit and after a few excruciating minutes, I creep slowly towards the exit. Woohoo. I made it. Legs are wobbly as I stumble onto land. My transition bag is easy to find because, well, I was pretty slow, so most everyone had already gone ahead of me.

I jog the half mile back to the transition area, happy that I didn’t die somewhere back there. But now I get to bike and run. Great.

The bike portion was super fun. I’ve done the bike course a ton of times, so it’s my home turf, so I felt quite solid and strong on the bike. I actually passed a bunch of people, cranking pretty hard up the hills and then bombing pretty fast on the downhills. My new Ksyriums and the Specialized Pro tires were super solid and instilled a great deal of confidence in my riding, so that was pretty cool.. So yah.. hooray for biking. I felt pretty damn good. Zoom zoom. I biked above my swim/run rank, since I was ranked 1,175 in the bike, and well into the 1400s for the swim and the run.

The bike course took us from the Marina, up past the GGB, over to the Legion of Honor, down around the Cliff House, down Ocean Beach, around Golden Gate Park, and then.. all the way back.. It’s an 18 mile course, but super hilly. I passed a bunch of people that were from out of town and were completely taken aback by the sheer hilliness of the bike course. Apparently Chicago… not so hilly. So yah, I guess all of that fixie riding around town paid off..

Then.. the run. Ouch. I hate running. It’s painful, and I’m not very fast. I’d blame my broken ankle, but honestly, that was the only part of my legs that didn’t hurt today. The run was an 8 mile run, from the Marina, to Baker Beach and back… with a climb up the deathly Baker Beach sand ladder. All in all, it really sucked, but I actually jog/ran most of the course, which I’m actually quite proud of myself for doing. Then again, I don’t think my running is *that* much faster than my walking. The slowness of my running was exemplified when, at the turnaround, I was passed by a 71 year old dude. Man, that old guy could move.

My legs started cramping up somewhere near the 6 mile marker. Ouch. I gulped down some cytomax, and that seemed to help, but that wasn’t very pleasant. I just tried to keep on truckin’ and eventually, the finish was visible in the distance. I kicked hard for the finish, and when I got there, I was met with Mom, Dad, Andy and Meredith at the finish line. Thanks guys for coming to support me!

Despite my slowness on the run, I decided that I would book up the sand ladder as quickly as possible. I got what I think is a pretty respectable (compared to the people that finished near me) 3:40 for the sand ladder. I can’t run too good, but sure.. stairs? Done.

So yah.. I do admit that I did think to myself that I wouldn’t be too disappointed if “something” happened and I couldn’t do the race. But, I’m glad I did it, and I don’t think I’m gonna do that again. I think I’m gonna do more biking now, and maybe some more swimming — but limit that to a pool. Oh, and I guess I’ll still run, but only to beat Carlo and Sunnia in our Nike+iPod challeges. The SF to LA Aids Ride started today (Go Dana! Go Chad! Go Steph!), so I think I’ll do that next year.

More photos from Dad, Andy, Meredith, and Brightroom.