If you have not read the book, I highly recommend going to ...

... see the The Da Vinci Code movie. It will only cost you about 2h 29m run time and may save you the colossal misfortune of reading the book. I haven't read it, but if the online reviews can be believed, then the movie runs pretty slapdash close to the novel and so I am happy to get out as scot-free as I did.

It is interminably long and incredibley silly. Whole scenes are devoted to long expositions from the main characters explaining minor point of Gnostic doctrine. Nobody outside of Shakespearen monologues talks like this and at least there the words drip like jewels.

The Tom Hanks protagonist performs quicking thinking riddle solving and solves complex mathematical codes at every turn with never even a hint of hesitation or mistep ... and ....AND while under the threat of chase and possible death. The acting is uneven and the director must have been asleep to allow the actors's affect to run from the bemused to the contemptuously arrogant all during the telling a 2 min. faux historical tale. Watch their faces as the old koot historian prattles on. And then the plot is just dumb. And long. And boring. Did I mention it was long?

As a BBC reviewer complained incredulously, "THE WHOLE THING GOES ON FOR HOURS AND HOURS. The plotting, which seemed endearingly silly on the page, is snortingly preposterous on screen: our heroes tumble po-faced from peril to peril with insane regularity. At one point, they get saved by a pigeon."

That bares repeating.....

They get saved by a pigeon.

Do yourself a favor. Go see it in the theatres so noone will trick you into reading the book. You won't regret it.

If you have a weak stomach, you will want to avert your eyes

Not Phiddipedes yet

(Geneva, Switz.) - Slowly, gingerly, I made my way down my stairs. My every step bringing sharp shooting pains through my legs and an ugly twisted grimace to my face. My knuckles go white clutching the bannister. The poor older couple coming up the stairs decides to wait below and give me room as I make my way slowly down past them. I am obviously sick or injured or perhaps even a little permanently crippled as evinced by my gangly stiff legged lurch from stair to stair....

...The Geneva marathon was harder than I thought it was going to be.

I'd have it in my head for some time to do a marathon. And for the last year I'd had it in my head to do the Geneva one. And I'd had it in my head for the last 6 months to really start training for it. Which brings me to 5 weeks ago, where I thought if I was going to do this thing I needed to add to my 2x per week and do a kamikaze crash training program. So I started running about 4 times a week. In retrospect I shoulda taken the whole thing more seriously, but what is done is done. I shoulda done some more long runs. Lots of 1.5 hour ones and a few 2h. ones. Instead my standard one was about 45 min.

So all things considered I think it went fine. I had an ambitious - considering my training - goal of about 3h 20m. But if I went under 3h 30m I was going to be happy. The first half was easy, almost pleasant even. I hit the halfway point and was on a 3h 16m pace. And then the wheels fell off. Breathing fine. Overall energy levels fine. Legs...oh oh. Absolute agony. In 500m I went from great to them almost not working. Weird.

I slogged through the last half in more pain then I have ever been in any other athletic even ever (except for that time when I was 11 and I ran in a puddle of blood in a 1600m with a pin from a new pair of socks stuck into a toe). I thought that if stopped too suddenly I would fall over and almost did a few times. Again everything was fine except for my legs... and oh yeah... bloody nipples. Almost 3.5 hours of constant rubbing of my chest on my running singlet caused my nipples to start to bleed, which then soaked through said singlet and left two long stigmata like streaks on the front. As I went slower and slower and realized my 3h 20m was slipping away, I watched my clock and still figured a 3h 30m was possible. At 10K I needed to just put away 5 min. 1ks and I would close but OK. Still at 5K it I needed to do 5 min. 1Ks and I would close but OK. At 2k close but OK. At 1K I thought I am going to be just under my mark to do the 42K. At at the end! 3h 30m 2 s! Arrgggghhh!!!! What happened?! The metric system had happened. A marathon is not 42k, but 42.195K and that last 195m was that minute that I thought I had in hand.

I stopped and sat down and the couldn't stand up for an hour and half. People brought me food, and looked at me weird with my red stigmata, blotchy face, and the fact that I was planted like a tree, but I actually couldn't get up. Nothing. Nada. No Mas. What a weird feeling. They just didn't work. I wasn't worried, but it was weird. Finally, finally I was able to climb up the cyclone fencing to my feet and wobble off to find my way home, but only straight legged walking. If I bend my legs, I fall - BOOM - like a sack of sacked stuff.

And now after two days I am feeling better, but as I intimated above, I am still having problems with stairs.

A great. Day. Out.

(Chamonix, France) - As I mentioned earlier, I skied off the Aiguille de Midi in Chamonix France a few weeks backs. My coworker Alexey and I drove out early AM, he telling me along the way that his wife was pregnant and that I should take good care of him. As I wrote below, for this trip a guide is recomended, but my intuition was that as long as the weather has been good and there hasnt been snow then a guide is not necessary if you have rudimentary mountain skills, an idea about glaciers, and exercise a good deal of common sense. There can be crevasses, but it since the route is so skied if you just stick to the main pathway then you can be sure than a few hundred or so have skied it on that route since that last snow fall. It ended up being on of the most magnificent days of the year to do. Not a cloud in the sky and perfect 30F at the top and 50F at the bottom.

The lift to the top is a true engineering marvel. It ascends almost 9000 ft. from the valley floor in two stages to this little spire of rock (Aiguille is needle in French). Mostly I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Click on them for a blowup.

Me at the midstation on the way to the top. Getting ready for a great day. That is the edge of the Dome de Gouter in the background. The Grand Colouir that I climbed with Nick last summer is off the backside of that.

A shot from the bridge between rock spires at the Aiguille itself. We climb down the arrete, put skis on on the plateau and then ski off to the right.

Alexey getting ready to put his skis on. We have just climbed down the arrete in the background.

Me about 30 seconds before deciding I am incredibly overdressed

The Vallee Blance. The first big valley before hitting the Mer de Glace proper. That is Mt. Blanc de Tacul in the background. To give you a sense of the immense scale ... the ant-like dots down inthe front left corner are people.

Alexey and I taking the first quick break of the day.

A look across the Valley. If you click on the shot you can get a blow up where you'll see tracks on the slope. Many people hike up the far side to get fresh snow off the far ridge.

A look back up the Mer de Glace. We came down on the right. To the left is the Geant ice falls

Another shot of the Geant ice falls

Yet another view of the Geant ice falls from above.

Looking up the glacier towards the ice falls.

The long runout towards the end. We still have about 2 miles to go.

After the glacier is about a 10 min hike up throught the snow. And then we were able to ski almost all the way back to town. The now dissappears in the last 1 k or so and we had to hike it along with our fellow day trippers.

It was a fantastic day. 9000 vertical feet in a single shot!