There seems to be a huge difference between the US and EU portrayals of this event.  Everyone in the US seems surprised when I tell them that air travel is essentially stopped for the foreseeable future, while the EU media are spelling doom and gloom.  Some are discussing government airline bailouts similar to what happened after September 11th.

Plenty of people from the conference are still staying in my hotel and most have rebooked flights for some time next week.  They seem optimistic that the winds will shift or the eruption will die down in time for their flight to leave.  I don’t think anyone really knows.

At this point the ash cloud covers most of Europe, so any airport remaining open is destined to be crammed with people trying to get out.  There really isn’t anything I can do but sit tight and see what happens.  If my flight is canceled on Tuesday, then it will probably be time to think about finding another way home.

In the meantime, my legs are getting beat up from the running, especially on the trails and hills.  Walking around in the city probably doesn’t help either, and unfortunately, I don’t have a bike that I can borrow.  The trails sure are great, though.

Today, a few of us still here took a bus tour around Stockholm.  We drove around much of the city and saw a few things I hadn’t seen when walking around.  The best tidbit I learned was that Swedish soldiers and sailors once received a 2 liter daily beer ration.  Two liters of beer per day!

Tomorrow we may go to one of the nearby museums.  Laundry is now another thing to do on my list since I’ve been here a week and could only pack but so much.

Day 1: Saturday 4/10/2010

When I arrived in Norfolk, there was a mix up at the ticket counter – the web check-in boarding pass I printed the day before was invalid and it took some work for the ticket agent to print a new one.  When we arrived in Chicago that afternoon, it was a very long trip from the B concourse island to the international terminal.  We had to go under the ramp, into the main terminal, and take a train to the international terminal, a good 15 or 20 minutes.  Fortunately, the terminal was not busy and we were able to check in at the SAS counter without any issues.

The TSA agent checking my boarding pass at the O’Hare International Terminal commented about me being from Virginia; she said she had never been there.  When I travel to other parts of the country, I always get interesting comments from the locals about me being from Virginia.  In Palo Alto, a waitress commented that it was cold in Virginia, when at the time I remember it was really much warmer at home than in Silicon Valley.  When in Gloucester visiting an old roommate, I got a comment from his neighbor that I was from “Virginny.”  I’ve also heard another Massachusetts resident (who attends school at William and Mary) refer to “Virginny,” as well.  Hollywood always portrays Virginians with thick backcountry accents when the reality is nothing of the sort.  Some have the Tidewater accent, but it’s unnoticeable to the untrained ear.

Also, there were no restaurants in the O’Hare International terminal: 8 bucks for a pre-made sandwich.  Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long until the Stockholm flight departed.  I noticed that nearly everyone waiting was Swedish, for there were no blue American passports that I could see.  Once on the plane, I realized we lucked out on the seat assignments and got extra legroom since we were just behind the premium economy section.

On the flights, my adviser and I talked about the direction of my career in school and afterwards.  Placement at a faculty job would probably require more time in school, perhaps up to another year, while a research lab may require less.  It’s all about gaining enough experience to do what you want to do.  It was interesting to talk to him about the possibilities since he has experience in both industry and academia.  Both have benefits and drawbacks and there is no way I want to close the door on any particular track just yet.  Just this week I talked with some other students in our department about the time required to complete a Ph.D., and those Master’s students involved in the discussion were wary of spending years in school to graduate.  I would not be opposed to spending another two years in school as long as I worked hard enough to get some good papers published in the hope that I could get a good faculty position at a research university.  From the looks of it, I have plenty of time to think about it and decide.

Day 2: Sunday 4/11/2010

As usual, I didn’t sleep much on the plane, only short bouts of 10 or 20 minutes.  The sun came up quickly and the clouds parted, giving us a view of jagged mountains and snow and little sign of life.  Before landing, the ground was covered up again by thick fog, which we soon descended into.

Though it was 7:30 in the morning, the airport was almost completely deserted.  Immigration and customs was a breeze considering we were the only flight arriving at the time.  A high speed train took us from the airport to the Stockholm Central terminal; a speedometer read well over 200kph as trees and buildings flew by.  I doubt any train at home travels anywhere near that fast.  From the train terminal, we took a subway two stops until we were near the hotel.   One thing I found odd was that the subway tickets had to be purchased from one of several convenience stores surrounding the subway entrance.  In the subway terminal, there were no ticket machines or windows and no signs indicating where tickets could be bought.  Instead, we had to ask someone at the entrance looking for freeriders where we could purchase tickets.

The city was mostly deserted, though it was a Sunday.  Stores were closed and nearly nobody was on the subway or walking around on the streets.  Even the school where the conference was to be held was nearly empty of students with the library closed.  Weatherwise, the day started out cloudy but later the sun came out, with temperatures in the lower 40s – pretty much a December or January day at home.  It’s a good thing I brought my heavy coat.

The hotel had a room available as soon as we arrived, which was surprising since it was only 9 in the morning.  My adviser and I slept for a few hours and then headed out in the afternoon, exploring Gamla stan and the area around the conference.  We walked by the parliament building and the Stockholm Palace, taking a ton of pictures.

To me, it seemed as if everyone was pretending that the weather was nice.  People at coffee shops sat outside at tables, wearing winter coats while being punished by the wind.  Others stood in lines at ice cream stands, despite the 40 degree weather.  Plenty more were out running and biking.  I suppose weather can be much worse in Stockholm.

The crowds picked up some in the afternoon, but there were few restaurants around our hotel so we settled on a Mongolian BBQ place.  I’ve been to similar places at home, but in the brief time I’ve been here there wasn’t anything interesting that caught my eye.  Just the usual McDonald’s and a few other places labeled “American Grill,” or “Steakhouse.”  I travel thousands of miles to get away from American food, among other things, but it seems I can’t escape it.

Day 3: Monday 4/12/2010

Though sleep was better than the previous night, I still had trouble.  I almost never sleep well on trips since it’s always hard for me to adjust to new environments.  I got up before 7AM and went out for a run beyond the university where the conference was, noticing there was a large park I could check out, so I headed that way and was surprised.  City blocks now packed with commuter traffic and sidewalks packed with people suddenly gave way to a vast forest with tons of dirt trails.  Plenty of other people were out running and biking.

I tooled around on the trails for awhile and headed back.  I was surprised that traffic would stop even if it looked like I was about to cross the street.   In addition to the trails, there were large paved paths with marked lanes for bikes and pedestrians.  Sweden seems to have solved the bike path problem so prevalent in the United States.  By making the paths wider and by separating pedestrians and cyclists, cyclists can cruise the bike paths without having to dodge pedestrians.  In the city, sections of curb separated bike lanes from vehicle traffic, also decreasing the chance of a bicycle accident.

On Monday, there were a handful of workshops; I attended one on “Cooperating Objects,” which appears to be a new buzzword in the embedded/sensor networks community.  A few people spoke about event detection and machine learning, with ideas similar to my research.  There were easily several hundred people, much more than at previous conferences I attended, people from all over the world.

At the reception Monday evening, I met Alexandra from Romania, who attended school in Slovenia.  It was interesting talking to her, considering that we are from very different and faraway places, yet we work in the same field.  We hung out quite a bit between breaks throughout much of the conference and through her I was introduced to a few others from Eastern Europe.  At school, it can feel very insular with few people to share your work and ideas with, but at a place like this, everybody is doing the same thing, and they come from everywhere.

Day 4: Tuesday 4/13/2010

Tuesday was a long one.  I was up at 6:30 to run, with plenty of daylight.  I explored a different part of the park than before, but ended up by a factory.  I’m still surprised at the number of trails in the city.

The plenary speaker seemed to be more of a biologist, speaking about human and animal brains as a control system.  There were quite a few talks in IPSN about machine learning and/or event detection so it was interesting to see others’ approaches to similar problems.  Later on, there was a poster and demo session which lasted until nearly 7:30 at night.

During the poster/demo session, I met a guy from the University of Utah which had concocted a sort of “x-ray” vision with 802.15.4 radios – I remember reading about this on the internet a few months ago.  Link quality between radios would change due to people moving about in the room, and with enough links, the moving people could be localized.  Apparently, his paper based on this was rejected mostly because nobody believed it.

Day 4: Wednesday 4/14/2010

On Wednesday, I hit the motherlode for trails when out on my run.  On previous runs I seemed to hit dead ends – running into roads, office buildings, or even factories, but today I found a trail that took me out to the rest of the park.  There were plenty more trails and open space by the time I had to turn around.  It was also sunny right from the start instead of morning fog.

The IPSN tracks were pretty interesting, again with a few on event detection and machine learning.   One group took a twist with a technique I used in my paper that I hadn’t thought of.  I also went to the CPS conference sensor network track, but didn’t really see too much differences compared with the typical sensor network research.

Day 5: Thursday 4/15/2010

I ran again in the morning, out to all the new trails I found the day before.  Unfortunately, the clouds returned.  At the conference, my adviser’s adviser, Jack Stankovic, was the plenary speaker.  During his talk, he used the example of a storm in Chicago as a reference to real time job scheduling.  The next day, I was supposed to return home via Chicago – hearing about any airline problem in Chicago was the last thing I wanted to think about.   This example eerily foreshadowed the problems to come for my return flights (through Chicago).

There were a few other sessions in the IPSN track that were interesting – at least one other event detection paper that was related to my work.  Then, in the afternoon, it was time for my presentation.  Since I was in the sensor networks track of RTAS, most people were in the concurrent IPSN track, so I didn’t get a huge audience.

Just before the presentation, I found out about the ash cloud coming from Iceland.  One of the other people in the room mentioned about flying back through Chicago the next day, as were my adviser and I.  He then mentioned something about maybe not getting back, and that’s when I found out about the ash cloud causing a huge mess in the UK and northern Europe.  It was headed to Sweden next.

With this on my mind, it was my turn to present.  I thought I did reasonably well and finished on time, except that I rearranged my slides just before the presentation and wound up having a backup slide placed ahead of my last slide, causing me to skip through it.

Following my presentation, my adviser and I locked ourselves in a discussion room in the university library and proceeded to call the airline reservation number to get a new booking.  The earliest we could get was the following Tuesday, over four days away.  Weather reports stated that the cloud might stay for days or weeks.  I walked back to the hotel and extended the hotel reservation until Tuesday while in the lobby other conference attendees scrambled to adjust their plans.

At the very least, I’ll get to see more of Stockholm and Sweden, though the weather isn’t supposed to hold up.  Fortunately for this week it has been fairly warm and sunny.  We’ll have to take it day by day to see if the ash cloud will dissipate enough to allow us to go home.  If Tuesday comes and goes and there’s no sign of the cloud letting up, it might be worth a try to head south via train or bus through Denmark to somewhere where I can fly out.

Unfortunately, in 2006, the school president at the time decided not to protest the NCAA’s ruling that the feathered logo was offensive.  Without any prior complaints, the NCAA decided on its own to review the logo and the use of the word “Tribe”.  I recall the local media interviewing the state recognized Native American tribes, finding that none of the tribes found the feathers or “Tribe” offensive.  While the NCAA permitted “Tribe” to remain, it threatened sanctions if the feathers were not removed.  The school president could have chosen to stand and fight the NCAA, but caved to the demands instead, leading to the featherless interim logo, and finally, in 2007, the design of the “WordArt” logo.  A weak design begotten from weak leadership.

Also this week, the college athletics department announced the new mascot, hopefully ending several years of controversy which began with the logo.  For a few years, there was Colonel Ebirt, a caricature of colonial attire, but it was retired soon after the logo brouhaha began.  ”Tribe” is pretty ambiguous, and neither my teammates nor I cared that we were without a true mascot.  ”Tribe” by itself seemed more to symbolize the members of the school better than any mascot could.  Screaming it before the start of a race reminded me that I wouldn’t be alone in the suffering to come.

The new mascot, a griffin, was narrowed down from a possible six, but I’m sure just about any of the choices would inflame much of the student body.  I bet the pug was included as a strawman so that anyone complaining would say, “at least it’s better than the pug.”  I’m not sure how a griffin will fit in with “Tribe.”  A tribe of griffins?  As with the logo controversy, it’s more about change for the sake of change instead of leaving well enough alone.  It reminds me of a great quote from Calvin and Hobbes: “A good compromise leaves everyone mad.”

I searched for a replacement, preferring to buy online since it’s easy to find the same shoe online for 30-40% less than in a brick and mortar store.  From suggestions on Internet forums, I bought a similar shoe from an online retailer made by the same manufacturer.  However, the new shoe felt like running in sandals compared to the discontinued model.  It gave me no stability and very little cushioning in the forefoot.

Why do shoe companies insist on changing their shoe lineup every year?  There isn’t a shoe model that either doesn’t get changed or discontinued on a yearly basis.  The shoe that treated me well for so long was suddenly gone.  I probably bought 15 or 20 pairs of that model, and what does the manufacturer do to reward me for my loyalty?  They hang me out to dry.

There’s no functional reason to update, discontinue, or introduce new running shoes with such magnitude and frequency.  Some research indicates people are better off without running shoes.  However, shoes are generally made to accommodate a small handful of biomechanical differences in runners.  With these differences identified, each manufacturer should make a shoe that successfully addresses these problems for most of the population and let things be.  With the current cycle of drastic shoe changes, either running shoe technology is so terrible that the manufacturers are constantly scrambling to find shoes that work or human evolution is taking place at unprecedented levels.

Instead of producing something consistent and functional, shoe companies care more about generating marketing hype surrounding their products.  They want consumers to crave the latest running shoe with its biodegradable materials, patented cushioning materials, and futuristic looks.  I don’t care how many proprietary materials the shoe is made out of or what the shoe looks like, I only want it to keep me from getting injured.   Every shoe I’ve ever bought goes from mostly white to a dirty, muddy mess in a matter of days, but as long as it keeps me in one piece, that’s all that really matters.

The constant shoe updates also force me to buy from a regular retail store since I have to try on several pairs to find a new one that works.  Sizing changes from model to model, so I’m wary of buying a new pair without first trying it on.  Retail stores mark up prices as much as 100% of what they paid the manufacturer, so it’s easy to find an online retailer who charges far less than the suggested retail price.  Going to the store today, I’ve found that what was the $80 shoe five years ago is now the $100 shoe.  Some shoes are nearly $200.  All of them wear out in 300-400 miles, so what exactly is it that warrants the extra cost?

Running shoes shouldn’t be any different than a household appliance.  Shoes should be something that do their job faithfully and can be replaced at the end of their lifespan with a model that performs exactly the same way.

Today marks the first time since my knee surgery, nearly a year and a half ago, that I’ve run for seven consecutive days.  The last time I ran six days in a row was at the beginning of September, and I felt awful by the end of that streak.  From mid-August to the beginning of September, I ran about five or six days in a row and then took the other days on the bike to try to alleviate the completely trashed feeling from running.  By the end of September, I had been running about six miles on the days I ran and started to feel more smooth doing it, but I was still pretty beat up.

Part of the beat up feeling was more than likely due to me favoring my non-surgery leg when running.  I had been fighting an adductor strain on my right leg that gradually got worse until I was unable to walk without limping.  While my left knee felt fine, my right leg hurt just about everywhere.  At first, I thought it was just the humidity, but as the summer ended, the problems persisted, and I was forced to stop running at the beginning of October. From then until the beginning of December I spent most of the time on the bike, with a few botched attempts at running once my thigh problems calmed down.  However, within the last few weeks I’ve been able to restart running while keeping everything under control.  With the introduction of cold weather, it’s a lot easier to run than bike, despite buying warmer clothes to ride in the cold and rain.

At this point, I’m certain that I’ll never feel as good running as I did when I was on my college team.  On the team, even on the worst days after a race or hard workout, I still felt light on my feet and able to cruise through a 10-15 mile run without thinking.  Today, each step I take is a considerable effort, like I have to drag myself through five or six miles.  Comparing how I felt when running on the team with how it feels now reminds me of a passage in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. A character in the book compares the power of a bandsaw to other saws and a Vickers machine gun to other firearms:

[T]he most noteworthy thing about the bandsaw was that you could cut anything with it and not only did it do the job quickly and coolly but it didn’t seem to notice that it was doing anything. It wasn’t even aware that a human being was sliding a great big chunk of stuff through it. It never slowed down. Never heated up.

Guns could fire bullets all right, but they kicked back and heated up, got dirty, and jammed eventually. They could fire bullets in other words, but it was a big deal for them, it placed a certain amount of stress on them, and they could not take that stress forever. But the Vickers in the back of this truck was to other guns as the bandsaw was to other saws. The Vickers was water-cooled. It actually had a fucking radiator on it. It had infrastructure, just like the bandsaw, and a whole crew of technicians to fuss over it. But once the damn thing was up and running, it could fire continuously for days as long as people kept scurrying up to it with more belts of ammunition.

Before my surgery and when I was on the team, it was as if I could just go forever and chew through any workout or race, “firing continuously for days.”  I never slowed down and rarely heated up.  There were limits, of course, but reaching them required hundred mile weeks, punishing pace runs, and draining interval workouts.  Like the Vickers, there was also quite the support infrastructure of coaches, trainers, and teammates.  But now only running a few miles is “a big deal” for me.  It places quite a bit of stress on me, though it is easier than in the late summer.  I’m quite sure I’ll have to spend a lot more time on the bike, but maybe I’ll get to the point where I’ll want to run a race.

With respect to school, I’ll be travelling to Stockholm in April to present a paper at RTAS.  I’ve been working on several projects related to event detection with accuracy guarantees, which will probably form the basis for my thesis.  I also went to RTSS in Washington, DC two weeks ago, but only a few tracks were on wireless sensor networks, but most were about job scheduling and cache replacement policies with the latest multi-core architectures.  I’ll also be starting a project with mobile phones with a few other students in our department, which should be interesting.  The traditional concept of wireless sensor networks entails small devices with cheap sensors and the processing power of a scientific calculator.  However, mobile phones have considerably more power as well as onboard sensors and have more potential for practical applications that people would actually use.

It’s interesting that I spend much of my time writing, creating presentations, and sketching out designs and high-level solutions.  About half of my time is actually spent programming.  It’s probably a good thing since it gives me a balance between different tasks.  Writing papers and creating presentations can be tedious since it can be difficult to cram in months of work into a short paper or presentation.  It’s also difficult to create a good balance of high-level descriptions and details to keep people interested but not get confused.  When working with a small group of people on a project for a long time, it’s easy to get stuck in a box and not consider things that outsiders would see as obvious.  Working with a few other students on my next project should help with this.

It’s when I run into my old teammates that I realize that despite being in the same town and same school that things are really different.  One of my teammates got married a few weeks ago and at the wedding, it really hit home that I’m living in a new era.  We’re no longer kids.  School has taken on a whole new meaning.  My relationship with my longtime girlfriend has also taken on a new meaning.  Many of the people and the places are the same, but life is different.

Years ago, the biggest road race in the area was the Shamrock marathon and 8k with a modest entry fee.  The turnout was smaller, but the fastest finishing times were still comparable to today.  Recently, the local running club handed over control of the Shamrock to a for-profit company.  Volunteers were replaced by paid staff.  Prize money for elite finishers was increased.  What was a well organized regional race was turned into a full blown production with all the frills.  Consequently, entry fees skyrocketed.  The hype induced a similar increase in turnout.  However, the fastest finishing times also only showed marginal improvement.

What does the average runner stand to gain by paying $90 for a race?  As bad as $90 sounds, it was only the registration fee several months in advance of the race; the fee increased to $110 three months before.  So, does that $90 get you better competition?  At a smaller (and probably cheaper) race, there may be fewer runners, but the average half marathon runner will still find plenty of people to try and chase down.  Is the $90 worth the dry-fit t-shirt or extra junk that comes in the race packet?  Maybe the finishing medal is better.  Or, maybe the experience is somehow intrinsically better just because the race was expensive.  Clearly, the average runner stands little to gain by running in a large scale production-style road race orchestrated by a for-profit company rather than running in a local road race staffed by volunteers.  Somehow, people still pay anyway and all the backhanded marketing hype draws them in record numbers like mosquitoes to a bug zapper.

The increased registration fees only really benefit two groups: the elite runners, and of course, the organizers.  With increased entry fees at large races, elite runners are often provided with free travel and hotel rooms.  Naturally, they don’t have to pay an entry fee while the increased costs to all other participants provide a larger pile of prize money to the elites.  That $90 provided by 20,000 participants also does well in providing the organizers with a nice chunk of change.  Those who were once volunteers and provided a great service to the community are now ransacking their fellow runners’ wallets for every last dollar.

It’s bad enough that the registration fee is so high for many of these races.  It’s even worse that these high profile races don’t even allow registration transfers in case of injury, lack of training, or sudden employer-mandated travel plans.  As a result, some strange things happen as people struggle to cope with a significant monetary loss.  Some will trade numbers under the table, throwing off the results when a supposed 55 year old blows away the masters division with a near record time.  Others who didn’t prepare or who suffered an injury may force themselves out on the course and punish themselves because they want to get their money’s worth.  Others still may decide not to run altogether, leaving several thousand non-starts that could have been filled with ready participants.

I could never justify the cost of such a race, even after I had recently exhausted my college eligibility and was looking for races to run.  I had considered slapping down a few massive entrance fees to run a few half marathons or marathons.  Before I got that far, my knee gave out.  It just isn’t worth it to fork over the $90+ for a race several months in advance that I might not be able to run because of injury.  To me, it’s not the hype or the junk that comes in the race packet.  It really isn’t even about the competition anymore.  If my knee were to withstand a race, I would do it only for enjoyment and I don’t think I need to pay $90 to get that.  Even if I had to pay for all of my college races, I don’t know if I could justify the cost if I had to pay extortionist entry fees at each one.  I can get much more than $90 worth of enjoyment just by running on my own.

When I ran competitively, I only paid for a handful of races, most of them when I was unattached in college.  I think I paid $15 for a cross country invitational at UVA, another $15 to run a 3k at George Mason, and about $50 to run the 5k at Penn Relays.  That $50 at Penn Relays got me in a race with plenty of competition, including Alan Webb, who ran 13:30.  I ran about a minute slower, just barely getting lapped by him at the end, but it was him and the other runners that helped me drag myself around the track towards the end.   In that case, the extra costs of the entrance fee and travel may have been worthwhile, but such cases are outliers.  Today, I’m no different than the average recreational runner and I don’t have to pay $50 – $75 more and travel hundreds of miles to race when similar competition could be found right where I live.  That is, if it’s competition I want.

I consider myself very fortunate to have crossed paths with people who found that satisfaction didn’t always come from making money.  I had high school and college coaches that gave most of their time to me despite earning little or no money.  I ran plenty of local road races staffed by volunteers who came just because they loved to be there.  It was this passion that came from people like these that helped me go a long way with my running career.  Ironically, it was from the same people that I realized I could never run professionally.  Like someone who forks over $90 for a race, there would be too much external pressure from a sponsor to run through injuries, train harder than I felt comfortable, and to turn a daily release into a daily grind.  Money and love don’t always mix.

It appears as though things that were once steeped in intrinsic value are falling to the marketers.  Road racing is only one example.  Even coaching for these expensive races is now being offered at an equivalently steep price.  Those who once freely gave their time and effort are now turning their passions into profit, raking fellow enthusiasts over the coals.  Those who may have run for pure enjoyment are now forking over cash to attend pre-race expos, get race packets stuffed with “free samples”, and get hyped with bands blasting music along the race course.  It’s one less thing that’s done because it’s fun.  It’s one more thing done only for the money.

That said, it was an interesting trip, or sequence of trips, covering Boston for a paper presentation and then to Charlottesville for a Wireless Sensor Networks “retreat”. The first thing that happened started several days before I left to Boston, tripping on a downed branch in the street which nuked my ankle and plantar fascia, as I later found out. I got up when it was still dark out the morning I left for Boston and went running only to find my foot in incredible pain. It was the worst plantar fascia pain I’ve ever had, despite having trouble in that area plenty of times. So after getting back I found myself unable to walk without searing pain in my heel and barely able to limp around. This, right before a day of airports, subways, and walking around Boston.

Fortunately, the flights did go well this time around. Everything was basically on time going out and coming back from Boston. I left last Monday morning, connected through Washington, and took a shuttle flight to Boston. I had to take a bus from the terminal to the T station which was tricky since there were several buses that all looked the same but went to different places. The subway was straightforward but I did have to change trains once. It dumped me out two blocks from the hotel and I just walked limped from there.

In an effort to save the department some money, I went a day late.  It turned out that when I got to the hotel in Boston on Monday afternoon that there were no sessions scheduled for the rest of the day.  I had hoped to sit in on a few to see what everyone else was doing and to be sure that I had about 20 minutes to present.  Since nothing was going on, I dropped off most of my junk at the hotel and went outside to walk around, despite my heel pain.  I figured I might as well take advantage of being somewhere else besides school for a change.

Clearly, people in Boston know a good day when they see one and get out when it’s nice.  This was the first time in awhile that I had been there when it wasn’t winter.  The previous times, the Charles was iced over, snow piled up, and winds whipped through the streets.  Not many people were out then.  This time, I walked through Boston Common and it was packed.  I didn’t realize there was a pond that you could swim in.  I went up and down the streets near the hotel, found some food, and went back to the hotel to crash.  As tired as I was, I didn’t sleep.

My presentation was first thing Tuesday morning so I practiced the night before and hoped that the length would be about right.  I wanted to get up early and run in Boston before I presented, but I realized that my heel pain was too great to do that.  When I got to the conference room where I was to present, there was only one guy in there in charge of the projector.  Nobody else came, not even the session chair, until five minutes before I was to start.  After I got going more people showed up including another professor from William and Mary who also had a paper.  Fortunately, everything went well and I handled the questions without any real issues.

The next trick was getting back since I had to go to UVA the next day.  I was booked on a 3 PM shuttle flight from Boston to LaGuardia, but that would give me less than an hour to connect.  If there were delays, I could miss the connection and get stuck, as I experienced little more than a month ago.  I wanted to get on an earlier shuttle flight but when I booked the ticket, the system wouldn’t let me.  Interestingly, the book I was reading had a character that took a shuttle flight to LaGuardia and then was able to return anytime without charge since it was considered an “open” ticket.  I’ve also heard elsewhere that you could just change your ticket on shuttle flights if there was room.  Since the flight out had few people on it and the Boston shuttle terminal was nearly empty when I arrived, it seemed that changing my ticket wouldn’t be limited because of full flights.  I got the subway and bus back to the airport and got there early to see if I could leave sooner.  Nope, the gate agent demanded 50 bucks.  So much for all the hype over “open” tickets.  Another guy asked the same question, but apparently arriving an hour or two early was worth the money to him.

I sat in the empty Boston airport for several hours while two other shuttle flights left for New York, both with very few passengers.  Finally, when I got on my plane, I was assigned an exit row where the seat in front of me was removed.  I had double legroom.  I guess I was rewarded for waiting.  The flight back to Norfolk was a little late and I managed to get home at 8 that Tuesday night.  This time I really did crash and slept for over 11 hours.  Yet another big day was coming up.

On Wednesday I left home for Charlottesville and picked up the other student in our group, Zhen, from Williamsburg.  We got there Wednesday night and stayed at a hotel that was hopefully within walking distance of where the meeting was the next day and Friday.  Since I couldn’t run and was still in pain, I took my bike with me so I could explore Charlottesville in the early morning hours before everything started.  Biking was interesting since it was dark and there were a lot of big hills compared to Williamsburg.  On Thursday morning, my headlight came off its mount and shattered all over the pavement.  I had to get a new one.

My adviser told us that the retreat was to be held in the rotunda, which motivated the choice of hotel since it was within walking distance.  I had been to the rotunda before and it seemed weird since it was only really one room where tours were given.  I asked him several times if that was where it was, but when we got there Thursday morning the doors were locked and nobody was around.  I had the number of a UVA grad student which told us that it was at the business school, which was nowhere near the rotunda or the Computer Science building.  He couldn’t say where in the business school it was, and after looking at a map, the business school complex was huge.  We might never find where we were to go.  Somehow we managed to find the right room and building after running into a knowledgeable receptionist right after we walked in the door of the first business school building we found.  We got to the right room 45 minutes late.  Other UVA students laughed when I told them that my adviser said the meeting was in the rotunda.

The retreat was more or less an informal series of conference-style presentations.  Most everyone was a UVA student presenting on a work in progress.  There were lots of unsolved problems which led to all kinds of nasty questions.  It appeared as though some students didn’t practice since they went way over time or were cut off entirely with zillions of slides left.  The few that finished early were given plenty of discussion to fill in the gaps.  There were lots of interruptions, especially from the professors, and usually the adviser of the student would cut in with some difficult question about something that hadn’t been fleshed out yet.

The retreat went all day Thursday and then Friday until just after noon.  There were a lot of demonstrations, including that of a fall detection system for the elderly where the user would wear several accelerometers and gyroscopes.   One of the students with sensors taped to his shirt and legs fell down on the floor five or six times, which was pretty amusing, especially since the system didn’t indicate a fall until the last attempt.  There was a breakout session where my group discussed future applications and system designs.  An interesting thing that came out of that was the release of more iPhone/Google Maps-style APIs for third parties to make use of the deluge of data from sensor networks.  Someone commented that very soon you’ll find a microphone, panoramic cameras, among other sensors on every street corner, essentially providing a live Google Street View.  Imagine what someone could do with that: follow people remotely as they go about their day or generate a tag cloud of things people are discussing the most and break it down by location.  When I got home, I noticed that Google Maps now has a traffic congestion tool that uses GPS and speed readings from mobile users to determine if a road segment is congested.  Stuff like this that people currently consider to be invasive is going to be more commonplace and acceptable.

After all that I managed to get back home last Friday afternoon.  Since the traffic was such a mess in the tunnels, I wound up going through some nasty parts of Portsmouth to get around everything, something I hadn’t done before.  It took me as long to get from Charlottesville to Williamsburg as it did to get from Williamsburg back home.

Overall, the trip was probably worth some of the fatigue and heel pain since I gave a conference presentation and got a fair amount out of the retreat.  With the start of the fall semester, most the travelling is done for awhile and it’s time to get going on work that I haven’t been able to get to since I was gone.

As we made our way back to Williamsburg, the guy said he was here on vacation with his family.  I guess the map made it obvious he wasn’t from around here.  Like me, he said he ran in college and then turned to cycling and suggested that I should start racing.  I’ve had a few people suggest this to me over the last couple of months, but I’ve never really considered it until now.  I’m pretty sure that my future in competitive running will be somewhat mitigated, if not completely over.  Today I was out again and passed by a pace line of JRVS guys.  I thought about joining in but yesterday was a long day and I had also run this morning so I was pretty beat up.  It did get me thinking though.

Since leaving my college team, the last two years have been spent more or less decompressing from that environment.  Lots of my teammates have gone straight into competing in marathons once they graduated.  A lucky few have even signed deals with sponsors.  I remember a conversation in the Caf one night about what we would do in terms of running when we were done with eligibility.  I was definitely going to keep running, but I wanted to go on how I felt, not based on a strict training schedule.  There were plenty of days where I suffered through a workout or race when I was beat up from training over the previous weeks.  I always thought it better to go on how I felt, but as being part of a team I had to do as directed by my coach and stick to the plan.  There were a few times where a really hard week would put me in a hole and in the next week I would be taken out by injury.  While I was given some respite from workouts when I was especially tired, it usually wasn’t enough.  Conversely, there were easier days where I felt really good and would wind up putting down the hammer.

If I were to consider bike racing, I would probably have to revert to a training schedule.  Just going out and screwing around for an arbitrary amount of time isn’t going to cut it.  If I were to try it, I would commit to it completely.  I could just show up to something local and see how it goes.  I would probably get my butt kicked.  I don’t think the training for the bike would be much different than running in terms of long range planning and workouts.  The same principles will apply.  There would be longer anaerobic threshold type efforts, hill workouts, intervals and gradual buildup of total mileage over time, which would decrease for the races I wished to peak for.

At the moment, I like just getting outside for awhile.  A training schedule would add a burden that I would have to carry, and the past two years have been nice without that.  But every time I pass by a group of guys tearing it up or manage to collect someone along the way, I remember what it was like and it would be good to do it again.

I remember thinking last summer that my recovery would be a success if I could run a few miles a day every other day.  I’m now doing that: yesterday I ran 25 minutes at an agonizingly slow 7:00-7:30 pace.  Given my history, that isn’t much at all but I’m glad to be doing it with little or no discomfort.  Supplementing with biking, I feel pretty happy with the way things are going.  A year ago at this point, I felt as if I were doomed.

Occasionally when running, I will feel something down in the joint area on the left (bad) side, but I think it’s mostly IT band.  The IT band on my right side has been tight and nagging at me ever since my left knee blew up a year and a half ago.  The IT band has been the most persistent soft tissue problem I’ve encountered, but I’ve managed to keep it at bay since April 2008 through endless stretching and icing.  It’s probably because I’m still compensating on that side because of the left knee.

The size difference between my left and right leg isn’t noticeable to me anymore.  Following the surgery and being stuck in a brace for 10 weeks, my left leg shrunk down to nothing.  The size difference was incredible, which was what probably contributed to my limp that lasted for several months.  Biking has really helped with regaining strength in my left leg, but it still doesn’t feel quite equal with the right.

Running still feels extremely awkward, but with running more, I’ll adjust and be able to go farther and faster.  The question remains as to how much I can do safely.  The doctor and PT didn’t place too many restrictions on that and even tried to get me back to running faster than I wanted.  Both said that because of the location of the cartilage tear, I would have no difficulty returning to running.  The PT said I shouldn’t do any really hard workouts or compete in races — it seems that those whose microfractures fail occur during really hard efforts.  Of course, my teammate had the same surgery and was able to get through three years without anything going wrong, but I don’t know if that’s a chance I should take.  For now, I’ll gradually add time every week and maybe try longer streaks towards the end of the summer.  Sitting down with my college coach last week, he said I could be in shape to show up to practice and “hammer the freshmen” by the time the fall semester starts.  I don’t know about that.

Interestingly, on my trip back from Rome, I read a novel about a CIA operative that also had to stop running and undergo surgery thanks to missing cartilage.  Like me, he ran until the pain became unbearable.  The author didn’t elaborate as to whether or not the character had microfracture, but it was mentioned that loose pieces were removed.  The surgery was provided as a way for a hit man to try and take out the operative as he recovered at home.  Of course, the character was nearly 40 years old, so at least he had another 15 years of hardcore running under his belt that I won’t ever get.  Not to mention that the whole thing was fictional.

Fortunately, I made it to Rome on the second try. My dad decided to come with me on standby but left a day earlier to ensure he would get back.  There was no way I was ever going to check a bag, after going through that routine on my last trip to NCAAs in the fall of 2005. I dragged everything with me through the airports, planes, trains, and through the city to and from the hotel.

The flights over were fortunately uneventful, but both were full. I got stuck in the back by the galley on the Rome flight and it was a zoo the whole eight hours. The flight attendants were banging around and the flushing of the toilet sounded as if someone was opening a door to the air rushing by outside. A kid threw up in the aisle behind me, right next to one of the lavatories and another guy behind me broadcasted his side of a conversation to half the plane about touring Italy with a bunch of Latin language students. The guy across from me yakked it up with a flight attendant for quite awhile because he learned that the flight attendant was from Pittsburgh. With the uncomfortable seat thrown into the mix, I didn’t sleep well at all. My dad was lucky to get a seat up in the front, but didn’t seem to have a much better time.

The flight over was about on par with the Scotland trip: I did manage to sleep enough to be able to make it to the hotel before crashing. Also like the other European trips, the sun never did set completely. It was twilight for a few hours and then suddenly the sun popped up and blasted the left side of the plane.

When we arrived in the morning on Tuesday, there was a massive mob surging to get through the passport control. There was no organization at all and everyone pushed and shoved their way towards one of the agents. Giant, uncomfortable crowds seem to be characteristic of Rome.

Fortunately, the conference center and the hotel were within a few blocks from Termini Station, so my dad and I took an express train from the airport which dumped us out right where we needed to be. Google Maps said the hotel was right across the street from the train station, but the place was packed with people and buses and we wound up walking right past the hotel before turning around after several blocks. The hotel was hidden in a row of similar looking buildings without much of a sign. It was nice inside and it wasn’t long before we got a room and zonked out for a few hours.

Tuesday afternoon we left the hotel and walked the short distance to the conference center for SECON where I got my registration stuff and walked through the poster and demo session. There weren’t too many posters or demos, and many of the presenters were not there to show off their stuff. The poster and demo session at SenSys was much bigger. On the whole, the quality of work was much higher at SenSys, though there were a few things that stood out. A lot of presenters couldn’t come because of visa issues. I almost couldn’t make it either.

Following the poster session, my dad and I walked down Via Cavour to the Colosseum, past the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill as well as the Circus Maximus. It seems nobody cares about the Circus Maximus anymore — it’s a dirty, grassy field that people just walk around in. It’s the only thing I saw in my tour of the city that resembled a park. There were no other open spaces anywhere. All the tiny sidewalks were packed with tourists.

Because of the lack of open spaces, I didn’t run despite bringing my running shoes. We did a lot of walking, and there were a lot of steps due to the steep hills.  It was the most walking I’ve done since the knee surgery and I’m not sure all of that was good for the knee.  It’s popped a few times and felt a little weird since I’ve returned.  The whole time, I only saw one guy running while going along a side street after we left the Circus Maximus. Sidewalks are only a few feet wide and packed with people everywhere, with intersections nearly every ten meters. Drivers are merciless and threaten to run anyone over. There was no way I was going to run in a place like that. I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. Somehow, there were people that would just walk out in front of the attacking cars and miraculously make it across without being touched but I wasn’t even going to think about risking that. There were only a handful of cyclists, but I did notice that cars gave them plenty of room despite the fracas. Unsurprisingly, plenty of cars had side and quarter panel dents as well as paint transfers.

We walked past the Trevi Fountain and climbed the Spanish Steps, all of which were packed with tourists. There were just too many people at the places we went to make it really enjoyable. The entire city seemed to be one giant tourist trap, with throngs of tourists packing the streets and all the major monuments and museums.  Oddly, many of the places we went to did not take credit cards, and had signs announcing this.  I remember it wasn’t but five years ago when it was like that at home and now I take it for granted.  We went through quite a bit of cash.

My dad and I looked up a restaurant in the Rome guide we had and managed to find our way there for dinner. I had pasta with bolognese sauce, which tasted nothing like the dish of the same name at home. At home bolognese usually means ground beef, but this was more like sausage, bacon, or something cured. It was different and definitely better than what I would find at home. I also had this massive mug of Italian beer that made it a bit tough walking back.

The hotel included breakfast as part of the deal and it was far superior to anything I would find at a standard American hotel. The hotel staff were extremely nice and when I couldn’t get their Internet connection to work with my laptop, asked me several times if I wanted to try it again or get help. The wait staff at restaurants were always wearing uniforms, and as my dad said, waiting tables in Rome seems to be a serious profession. There weren’t any sloppy teenagers with surly attitudes. The hotels and restaurants were an example of service done right and were a stark contrast to the approach taken in the United States.

Following breakfast on Wednesday, I went over to the conference with my dad and we sat through a panel session on the direction of wireless sensor networks. Everyone desperately wants wireless sensor networks to be more integrated with the rest of the computing world. People want IP stacks on motes, Java on motes, and applications to extend the social networking craze. I’ve seen several panel discussions and talks on this, but not much has actually happened yet. The powers that be are asking for papers in this area, but not much has been produced. The argument is that sensor network research is maturing and now it is ready for prime time. Tighter integration with existing systems through decoupling and modularization will allow this to happen.

Following the panel session, it was time for my session on routing. I watched three other presentations before it was my turn. Though the session chair wanted me to use another computer, my presentation worked fine. I didn’t screw up and I thought I did much better than the practice runs. I got some good questions and talked to several people afterwards about my paper.  A few people weren’t familiar with the zone-based forwarding approach, so I explained it afterwards.

In the afternoon on Wednesday, we took the Metro to the Vatican and stood in a massive line to walk through St. Peter’s Basillica. I found it interesting that people in line for over an hour were turned away because they were wearing shorts.  We also went into the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel.  St. Peter’s was massive inside, and really made me feel tiny.  Despite how big everything was, there were almost too many people to really appreciate it. We headed back towards the hotel, walking over the Tiber and past the Pantheon, another monument mobbed by tourists.

Every single monument or attraction in Rome is completely surrounded by buildings. You just walk through a narrow alley and out pops an obelisk. There are no skyscrapers; all the buildings seem to be made of adobe and aren’t more than a few stories high.  Just about everything is covered in soot and dirt.

Wednesday night, we found a restaurant near the hotel and ate dinner, another pasta dish that was very good. There was also a coffeehouse that was recommended in the guide, so we stopped there too. Drip coffee doesn’t seem to exist in Italy or Europe, instead everyone drinks espresso or cappuccino. Apparently, cafe americano is seen as crap, and you will get laughed at if you order it. The coffee I had in Rome was good, but espresso is almost like drinking liquefied beans. I like coffee strong and black, but that was overload. I’m sure I could get used to it, but I’ve never understood the enjoyment of shots, be it coffee or alcohol.

Everyone we interacted with, from hotel and wait staff to people on the street seemed to know we were Americans. This, despite me wearing loafers, slacks, and button down shirts. It’s like we had targets painted on us. At a grocery store, the cashier addressed everyone in front of me in Italian.  When it was my turn to pay, she spoke to me in English before I said a word.  I also made a fool out of myself since I didn’t know I had to weigh the banana and print out a tag with its price on it. An irritated line of Italian teenagers formed behind me as the cashier went to the back and weighed the banana.

On Thursday two women tried to pickpocket me as I walked towards the conference center. One grabbed my arm while the other waved something in my face, so I shoved my hands in my pockets, walked faster, and broke free. It reminds me of something I read in one of Robert Ludlum’s books: when attacked without warning, “reach for your weapon, not the wound.” Don’t fall victim to the distractions and protect what’s important.

My dad left for the airport Thursday morning and I spent the rest of the day at the conference. The most interesting paper was on detecting complex events by converting a timeseries of sensor readings to a string and performing string matching with training data. One guy from UVA gave a presentation and we talked for awhile afterwards. By the end of the day, with several shots of espresso during the breaks, I was beat. I never really got over the jet lag and didn’t sleep very well.  The jet lag did not set me up well for the return trip, which became almost as much a disaster on the way out, but I’ll leave that for the next post.

Fortunately the weather held up well: it was cool in the mornings and got hot in the late afternoons, cooling down again as the sun set.  The climate was much like central California, or Sacramento.

Overall, it was an interesting trip, but I don’t think I would go to Rome again.  It was like Colonial Williamsburg, but with many more tourists.  I’m sure there are plenty of less touristy and other interesting places in Italy that would be worth visiting if I was there for more than three days.