[sic]

I’m gonna do something different and take the high road when it comes to Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron’s all-time 755 homeruns. Having made my peace that it’s going to happen within the next few days, when that moment finally comes I’m going to shut the hell up, acknowledge it for the lifetime achievement it is and move on. Juiced or not, you don’t get to that pinnacle without talent and staying power.

Make no mistake, I am soooooooo glad he went homerless when he and the Giants were in town last week, but not simply out of Dodger pride. For damn sure I was downright surly in not wanting our rival’s ‘roid riddled rudeboy to send anything sailing out of my park and into the record books, and I’m glad he left still one shy of tying the record not just because of a “not in our house” mindset, but of because of how ugly the L.A. faithful in the house that night would’ve reacted. It would’ve been nasty — like Philadelphia Eagles fans nasty — and all the booing and trash talk and garbage thrown onto the field and middle fingers and insults and fist fights and ejections and arrests would have been captured on camera and played and replayed around the world and forever more that’s how we would’ve been seen.

So it was a huge relief on two fronts when the Giants’ marquee player went away empty. Reeeeeejected!  But all the Dodgers did was postpone the inevitable. When the Bonds hit No. 755 in San Diego a day or two later and joined Aaron at the top of the mountain, I shrugged. I think most everyone did. Just turned the page. And aside from the fanfare that’ll splash across the media when he hits his next one I’ll turn that page, too.

Thankfully the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez makes that pretty easy to do. Just this weekend at 32 he became the youngest player in the history of the game to reach the 500-homerun milestone. If he continues to average an annual homerun total in the upper 30s as he has in his first 13 seasons, we could see him catching Barry’s number seven or eight year down the road.  Even if his output ridiculously drops to somewhere around 25 more four-baggers a season, when he reaches Bonds’ age of 43 he’ll have 775, which will probably be in the neighborhood of where Bonds’ll be when he retires.

Click to quadruplize, of course

I don’t fancy myself a sports reporter, and I certainly try not to kick a person when they’re down, but in regards to the game Susan and I walked to and from last night things were going relatively well for Dodger pitcher Mark Hendrickson and his team through the fifth inning (picture above) even though by the end of it they were down 2-1 to the Atlanta Braves. That was when manager Grady Little decided to yank his starter and bring to the mound some middle reliever named Brett Tomko to start the sixth. A third of that inning later Tomko got the hook having pitched as if he was getting a little $umthin’ $umthin’ under-the-table from the Braves: the first three batters he faced got hits. And before Tomko’s mess could be cleaned up the Braves ended up adding a couple more runs, ultimately winning by a score of 5-2. The Dodgers did manage to bring some life back to the party by putting two men on and the tying run at the plate in the form of pinch hitter Olmedo Saenz with two out in the bottom of the ninth, but Saenz struck out. Game over. Feh. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Pretty much everything else that afternoon went according to plan — with the exception of the bars that we found closed during our walk. My friend Stephen had called with advanced warning that Barragan’s was taking the day off, so we were prepared for no margaritas. But arriving outside the Silver Lake Lounge we had no clue that place was shuttered as well. What the hell’s up with that!? You’d think this was a holiday or something!

Fortunately our timing was such that the No. 4 bus was approaching while we were shaking our heads in front of the Silver Lake Lounge so we decided to decrease our output by boarding it to Echo Park where we were relieved to find the Gold Room open for business like true patriots and stepped inside its dark confines where a couple regulars kindly slid down a stool so Susan and I could sit and enjoy our $3 Newcastle drafts and soak up a bit of the local flavor of the cool cave as Mexico and Venezuala battled for soccer supremacy on the flatscreen TV off my left shoulder.

Adjourning the Gold Room we headed east on Sunset passing Barragan’s with disdain then crossed Douglas before making our way to Sunset’s north side where we escaped the heat by entering the Shortstop bar nondescript except fora sidewalk placard out front touting its Dodger home game-special $1.50 Pabst Blue Ribbon drafts. Inside with pints in tow we learned of free barbeque for the taking outside the back door.

With a tasty beer in one hand and an equally tasty burger fresh off the grill in the other, for a fleeting moment — actually several of them — I thought about not leaving My New Favorite Bar’s uncrowded corner in the pool table room. But like the 56,000 others in attendance and the (632 who didn’t drive) we had a game to get to and so undaunted and duly fortified we proceeded up the hilliest section of the trek, past all the cars piled up at the gate with occupants waiting to pay their $15 until we were at last standing sheened in sweat in the shade above Section 10 of the Top Deck, just in time for “God Bless America” and the National Anthem followed by a flyover from a massive and loud C-17 transport:

Afterward, we stayed put in our seats for the fireworks that were a far cry better than our last July 4 at Dodger Stadium. That pyrotechnical display in 2005 was shut down early on and unceremoniously after two small fires erupted in foliage near the launching site. Thankfully no nearby brush was harmed in the making of this year’s extravaganza and the finale was delightful — and the walk home was a special treat if you like strolling through smoke-filled streets of a simulated warzone of firecrackers, bottle rockets, the occasional M80 and regular series of sky-high starbursts and booms that rivaled the scope and sound of some we’d seen at the stadium.

It was almost enough to make me want to grab Susan and dive into the Shortstop for cover (and more beer) as we passed it on the walk back home, but not quite.

A Flickr photoset of pix from the walk, the bus, the bars, the booze, and the game can be viewed here.

A year ago today we were up in Troy, Montana enjoying an old-fashioned smalltown Independence Day parade and later an afternoon backyard barbeque by Susan’s Uncle Jim followed later by an awesome fireworks display launched from a park beside the Kootenai River (click to enlarge)…

that we watched from the front yard of Susan’s grandma’s house as if we were right underneath the light bombs bursting in air. Best Fourth of July Ever!

To celebrate this time around, we’ll be setting out at a leisurely pace around 4 p.m. for the two-mile walk to the Dodgers house from ours. And as it’s going to be exceptionally hot, we will be strategically stopping midway at Barragan’s in Echo Park for margaritas.

Though it will be decidedly cooler on the walk home I think a post-game/pyrotechnic display beer at Shortstop may be in order as well. Especially if the Dodgers beat the Braves. Which they will, of course. And the Padres will lose meaning the Dodgers will take over sole posession of first place in the NL West.

Pre-game item checklist:

• Transistor radio (tuned to KFWB 980)
• Compact binoculars
• Camera
• Tickets

The one thing I can’t locate at the moment is my Dodger cap and I — gasp! — have the sinking suspicion I may have sent it to Goodwill during a past closet purge, dammit! I just don’t see how I could do something so blasphemous so in the meantime I’ll have to go into full search mode.

Marathonfoto.com is the organization that stations photogs at points along the course to grab pix of every participant as they pass by. That’s a lotta lotta shutter clicks. So far, according to its website, identification of only 39% of all the images taken has been completed, which means there might be some more of me later (such as me trotting the last 10 yards to the finish line), but in the meantime, here’s a collage of the captures they got of me in somewhat chronological order from before the start (without hat) to just after the 26 mile mark (clickable to slightly enlarge):

While my faves are the second one and the last one, I particularly like that I was captured pointing and shooting my cam in the seventh one as well.

And by the way… that ain’t no peace sign I’m flashing in some of the snaps above, that’s a two as in dual as in duathlete, which is what I was on this day hell yeah.

UPDATED (03.08): Looks like there were plenty more snaps where those first nine came from. Twenty-four to be exact. Here’s a new composite of thumbs (embiggenable if clicked):

I won’t verbatim the post I just tossed up on Blogging.la. I’ll leave it at I’m better than this time yesterday, but still recovering from some odd repercussions my body’s experiencing. So while that continues (hopefully at a diminishing level), allow me to point you to the Flickr photoset of images from the day’s events.

As in six hours, thirty minutes and 36 seconds. That’s how long it took for me to walk the 26.2 miles from the start to the finish of the marathon today. Don’t do the math because I already did, and that time translates into a 14.9-minute mile, meaning I was finally wonderously able to rock a long overdue a four-mph pace — and that’s after barreling over the bike tour course in 70 minutes, getting back up to downtown, changing clothes, and hopping the Red Line to Universal City (where on route I was interviewed by a writer for the Daily News so I’ll be checking to see if my name’s in print in that paper tomorrow).

Obviously there’s a lot more to say(and more than 100 snaps to upload to Flickr, but my legs don’t work and my body’s tweaking around with my core temperture and the clattering chills are payback for the pain I put it through, so other than me throwing down a double thumbs up for my accomplishment and satisfactory physical condition, any report in-depth of otherwise will have to wait.

It’s 2:10 a.m., and as planned I’m wide alive in the dead of night — and of course it’s now and too late when I figure out an option that would have grabbed me a couple hours or more of shuteye and made this long day’s journey a little less so.

It’s simple really… instead of getting down there at 3 a.m. so as to better stake out my position near/nearer/nearest to the front of the masspack of 17,000 (or so) fellow bike tour participants and then spend the next three hours defending that tiny increasingly cramped piece of real estate just for the all-important purpose of getting out unbogged-down in the gripping midst of the molasses masses, I could have gotten down there at 5 a.m. and said to hell with crossing the start line from any sort of pole position and just mosied on down to, say, Martin Luther King Boulevard and Figueroa and jumped in from there.

Come to think of it I could’ve even gotten rolling say 10-15 minutes prior to the ride’s 5:50 a.m. send-off, giving me that much more of a headstart and allowing me to be that much sooner across the finish line near Exposition and Vermont, not only enabling me to go at a bit of a more leisurely pace, but also giving me a few more precious minutes in my narrow window of opportunity to get from there, back to the truck and my change of clothes and then to the subway for the trip up to Universal City and the marathon’s start.

Hell, I just might still do that last part, and at least from this early hour I can scope out that option rather than have to depend on it.

Well, I’m off and on my way. See you on the other end about 54 combined miles away.

On any given Sunday, a forecast of 80 degrees and sunnywarm would be something to enjoy and look forward to, but not for me on this one coming.

Not this marathon Sunday. 

Susan gave me the “uh oh” heads-up last weekend when she checked the longer-range weather picture and it reported March 4 would see clear skies and temps in the high-70s. Though I hoped for a trend downward, it never came and over the passing days the thermometer expectations have steadily climbed in the wrong direction from 76 right up to today’s prediction of 80.

Like I said, on any given Sunday (or any other day of the year) that would be hawesome, but for me planning on spending a large portion of that day out in it and  steadily pounding a helluva lot of pavement, that’s just irksome.

It may not seem like much from wherever you might be casually and comfortably enjoying that day, but consider the added fatigue/exertion/hydration burden it puts on fools like me who want to maintain a 4-mph pace walking the course’s 26.2-mile distance. 

Let’s put it this way: any hotter — and I’m talking no more than two or three more degrees – and I’m going to accept that a 6- to 6.5-hour finish will be even farther out of reach than it would otherwise be if it were cloudy and 70. In short, at that warmth it won’t happen because I won’t be aiming for it, just aiming to finish.

Any hotter than that and I’m going to have to consider throwing in the towel. Or bringing one.

If you’ve been around me and/or this blog for a bit you might remember that when I did both the bike tour and the marathon in 2005 (with absolutely zero training and 50 pounds heavier than I am now) I chronicled the painfully long day via phonecam snaps and audio blog posts. If you weren’t with me then and wanna check it out you can find them here in the archives of my Blogger blog.

Seeing as I’ll be subjecting myself to both events this March 4 it only made sense for me to live-blog it again as well. But this time I’ve set up a self-contained marathon blog on Blogger that can be found here.

I was sad to find there’s been a discontinuation of the old audblog service that I used to provide narration of the hell I experienced two years ago, but I’m hopeful that I can find another outfit that will allow me to provide regular updates of whatever new swear words progress made throughout that long, long day.