Thursday, August 7, 2008

Run For the Hill of It



Two weekends ago, Rachel and I ran the "Run For the Hill of It" - a 5 mile race along the river next to Chestnut Hill College. As you can probably tell from my picture below, I was less than thrilled to have my picture made before the race (besides the fact that I was up running 5 miles at 7 AM on my Saturday morning). My payback... Rachel gets the headline photo.


In all honesty, the race was actually pretty good. It was on an unpaved path that followed Wissahickon Creek. Almost the entire run was covered by a canopy of trees, and the morning was unseasonably cool for late July in Philadelphia. As poor as the pre-race pictures may look, believe me, they are much better than the post-race pictures would have been. Plus, it was nice to get the day's workout completed before lunch.

REFLECTIONS - This Dyson Guy is Pretty Smart



I am sure that most of the readers of this blog are at least topically familiar with the Dyson line of vacuum cleaners. They are the commercials with the guy who describes his invention of the bagless vacuum cleaner that uses multiple cyclone technology to prevent the vacuum from losing suction. Although very expensive, the vacuum cleaners are pretty darn cool.

At any rate, Mr. Dyson's new invention is located in the bathrooms at the Providence, RI airport. This is a picture of the Dyson hand dryer. Instead of the conventional convection heat hand dryers in most public restrooms, the Providence airport are trialing these babies. It is a "green" alternative to the heated dryers. No heat. In only 3 seconds, this device literally sucked every bit of moisture from my hands. It was AMAZING!!! Apparently, it uses much less energy than the conventional dryers, too.

3 comments:

Mark said...

You can tell by the pictures whose idea it was to do the run. That might be the first picture I've ever seen of you not grinning from ear to ear. Classic stuff. Congrats on the run.

Bill said...

I like the game face. Makes you look mean, or tired, or both.

How many kilojoules did you use this time? Where's the slide ruler, & scientific calculator? I'm guessing the new aero-Steve does this under 10M or maybe you walked in protest.

Reed said...

That Dyson guy is amazing. Out of nowhere - he invented vacuum and stole over 50% market share. How cool would it be if I could put one of those hand dryers in my bathroom?