Hooray for Firefighters!

I went down to LA this past weekend to attend my brother's graduation from the firefighter academy. My brother was always kind of the bad-boy of the family, but look at him in the front standing at attention! What my parents would have given to get him to stand like that for just 5 minutes!

My dad pinning the official firefighter's badge:

Posing with the new firefighter:

Horrible car accident with conflagaration. Good thing all these firefighters were there to put it out:

All geared up:

This is a lazy post today. I'm going camping, and hopefully I'll have more interesting things to blog about after that.

13,413 Baby!

That's right! I came in 13,413th place! Not bad considering there were something like 63,000 people and also because it took us 16 minutes to even cross the starting line. My official time was 1:58:51, but by my watch, it actually took 1:42.

Boy oh boy, what can I say? Where do I start? Well firstly, this is a really fun race, and if you're in the Bay Area the third Sunday in May, sign yourself up for the Bay to Breakers race. 12k sounds like a lot, but it didn't feel like it at all. I ran it with my friend Mary and her little sister.

We got there just before the starting time, and were greeted by a huge crowd in different stages of dress (and undress--I saw way too many bare butts by the end of the day, but none of them particularly picture-worthy):

There was some strange tradition of people throwing tortillas. I tried to get a pic of the hundreds of flying tortillas, but couldn't quite catch them while any of them were airborne.

It got pretty nasty closer to the starting line because the whole pavement was covered in trampled tortilla paste. It had been raining the night before and that morning, so it was gross and slippery.

With so many people starting the race at the same time, it took us a while to move forward past the starting line, and I was beginning to wonder if we would even know where the starting line would be once we passed it, but alas, the start:


It was really crowded, and the jog was a nice slow and steady pace. It was actually the perfect pace--it let you have enough breath to talk and point at the naked people and laugh at people's costumes and just take it all in. I was soo prepared for this. I mean, I could have run faster, but was totally enjoying it all.

And the Hayes Street hill. Did you know I was stressing a little over this? When I saw it on tv in years past, the hill looked so steep and daunting, but you know what they say, the camera adds 15 degrees to the steepness of a hill, so it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and I had been training on steeper grades than that. A lot of people were walking, so we had to come to a walk too, but that was fine. A perfect photo opp:


Come on, look at those smiles! Was I really stressing over this race? I mean, I think it was great that I put so much training into this, but I'm even more glad that this was a fun event and not some grueling and hellish test of my will. What also made it easy was Mary's cool, laid-back, and downright optimistic attitude. For her, the race had only one hill at the beginning and the rest was all downhill from there. It's really good to bring along an optimist for these kinds of things. The mile markers flew by, we rose from out of the busy commercial districts into the residential neighborhoods and into the cool, green embrace of Golden Gate Park and finally into the wide open arms of the Pacific Ocean:


I'm so proud--check out those breakers behind me! I did it!

Time is Running Out

The BIG RACE is on Sunday, and time is running out. Running. Get it? Time is running out? Cause I'm going to run that race? Could I be any dorkier? Last weekend I went to R.E.I. and picked out a running outfit. I was so tempted to get a tank/jersey thing with a super-hero looking symbol on the front that would have matched perfectly with my running shoes, but I didn't. Instead I just got a very practical tank and a pair of running shorts. I hate running shorts by the way. They've got those annoying underwear things stitched inside and they're way too short. In high school we had white running shorts that were practically see-through. And with all the rain and cold weather we had, my legs are shark-bait pale. Oh well. I'm ready. I've trained for 6+ months. My legs are ready, my lungs are ready, my outfit is ready. Even if we walk half the race I don't care. All that matters is that I cross the finish line.

I just need to say that I am proud of myself. Or maybe impressed. Or maybe both. After I got back from LA in December I was so down, so depressed, so weak, so sad, so exhausted. But I pushed myself every day. I'm not quite sure how I managed to go from breaking the 30-minute ceiling I had created, to going all the way up to 75. I guess it's good to have a goal, and to have people to push you, and to just be so darn stubborn. Every time it hurt, I was like: Keep going! Push yourself! You have no idea what real pain is, so you just keep running because it's not going to kill you! And it didn't kill me, even though there were days when I thought my legs would fall off, and I swear maybe they actually came a little loose, but I guess they fixed themselves. And it's not just with running. I managed to find my way back into taiko, and there are new, exciting, challenging, and even scary things on that horizon. But I'm so into that now--doing the things that scare me. Like when someone asks, "Hey Kathryn, how about standing up in front of a bunch of people and talking and teaching and stuff?" And inside I'm thinking, no way! but instead I say yes because I know that I really do want to do it, and I can't let being scared keep me from doing cool stuff. So I won't, ok?

I'm telling you, it's all about the rider

Last night we played a gig for the art school in the City. We played at the swanky Phoenix Hotel, which is the hotel all the cool rock stars hang out in when they visit the Tenderloin. Anyway, the gig was a private party for the advertising students and it payed 600 bucks and we were supposed to get two hotel rooms thrown in (to do what with, I'm not sure). So when Susan asked us if we should do it, we thought it was a good deal for two 15-minute sets. That's like $20/minute for all you accountants out there.

Anyhow, there were only 4 of us, so we packed the van and headed over the bridge to the City. Did I mention the theme of this party was supposed to be Zen? Do any of you out there know what Zen really is, and how it relates to parties, and how, for godsakes, Zen relates to taiko, especially Emeryville Taiko, the genkiest taiko group around? Susan mentioned this Zen idea when she was first talking about this gig. That should have been a warning. That should have set off all kinds of warning signals in my head, but did I listen? No. I saw dollar signs. I don't know about all you other taiko players out there, but good-paying gigs are few and far between, and opportunities to raise $600 for the dojo for half an hour's work sounded pretty good to me. When we arrived, we pulled up to some people setting up the check-in table and piled on the table were cheap prayer beads. Not prayer beads even--cheap, hip wooden jewelry that were supposed to be prayer beads. I was kind of appalled. I mean, it's one thing to have a Zen-themed party, but to be giving out prayer beads--what's up with that? Oh, but it gets worse--keep reading.

We were met by a guy named J--. Let's just call him J, and anyhow J had us set up next to a lovely pool, and directed us to one of our two hotel rooms, which were, by the way, reserved for all the people who were helping out at the event, so it was more like the waiting rooms you see in an American Idol episode. Anyway. Here's a picture of our lovely drum set-up:

Looks good, huh? But as soon as we wheeled in the big odaiko, the manager of the hotel came running out and had words with J, and had words with Susan, and the consensus was that they wanted "quiet" taiko, which I guess is what Zen taiko would be if there were such a thing. J was pissed, since it was his party and he paid a lot of money to rent the space. Manager-lady wanted peace and quiet, I'm guessing because of the other guests at the hotel who weren't there to listen to Zen taiko. We were amused. Susan was trying to be convincing that we could play quiet taiko, but really, how convincing can a person be with that giant drum looming in the background?:

There was an open bar, and everytime we saw J, he had a drink in his hand, and every time we saw J, it was because he was telling us that we just had to wait a little while longer. We were the openers. This being an arty event, everything was running late. An hour after we were supposed to start, we were sitting in our cramped hotel room waiting for the go-ahead. Satan was so bored, she passed out:

Then, a troupe of martial artists joined us in our tiny room. I think they were supposed to be Zen too, but I don't know. They were all under the age of 20, overflowing with testosterone, and extremely hyper. Nice guys, I have to say. And acrobatic. Their thing was to do karate kicks and backwards sommersaults simultaneously. At one point, the plan was for them to do their kicking/flipping around us while we played taiko. They said they could do their thing to whatever beat we were playing. I don't know if that was comforting at all. As they were warming up outside I was thinking, oh my god they're going to kill me while I'm playing Heiya or they're going to kick me into the pool, or I'm going to knock their teeth out and then they'll kill me. Really.

And do you know why we were running late, or one of the reasons, anyway? It was because the "Dalai Lama" was late. I thought the Dalai Lama was that Tibetan holy man who is in exile. Seriously, I didn't put it past them to hire some guy to look priest-like and say a few words to add to the Zen ambiance or whatever the hell (or should I say nirvana) they were trying to go for. But then I heard the organizers say "Oh good the Dalai Lama is here! We can start soon." And I looked up, and who was heading into our tiny room but a real Buddhist monk. You could just tell he was a real monk, and not just some guy off the street in an orange robe. At that point I was just so ashamed of it all. I mean here we were, the performers, all serious practitioners of our respective arts: martial artists, taiko musicians, Buddhist monk, and they had us all crammed in a room, on call to perform for their show--for what, money? I cleared a chair of boxes for the monk to sit down on (he politely refused). We talked about the basketball game on the TV.

Well, the show started, and we played horribly. We had to rework Heiya for 4 people, and we missed all our cues, but managed to keep the song together. It was fine. I was waiting for the ninjas to knock me out, but I guess they decided not to kill us and instead they just did their thing after we were done. Then the monk came out and gave a blessing, but you could totally tell he knew that they hired him for his image and played right in to the stereotype they hired him for. I hope they paid him well.

True to our word, we played the second set, even though I was sure the manager-lady was going to jump out of the bushes with handcuffs to drag us away. We played Saidai, which is our loudest most hotel un-friendly song, and even though I didn't see her, Susan said she saw manager-lady after we played the song (perfectly) and she had steam coming out of her ears. Yeah, we were loud and proud. You can imagine how fast we packed up and got our Zen-taiko butts out of there.

I just want to say that this should be a lesson to you all. Gigs are for the money. But if you want to drive home from a gig with more than just a check (say, your dignity for instance) make sure you have a rider. Make sure you get a contract saying that you're going to go on at such-and-such a time, and that you get your own green room and your own case of bottled water and the check ahead of time and if you don't get all those things, well you just pack up and go home and cash your check asap. Get it in writing. It really is important.

Oh and one other thing--don't ever do a gig for anything that includes the word Zen. Believe me. Just don't go there, it's so not worth it.