Once again it is that time, time for the Brian Redman Challenge, the vintage auto races at Road America, Elkhart Lake, WI. Ross and I left the cities very early Friday morning, dropping Toad off at Luka's house. Our goal was to get to Madison by 11:30ish in order to have lunch with Moria and Edward. We actually stayed on schedule and made great time. We walked to a Turkish restaurant just down the street from their house (ah, Monroe Street, ah, Madison!) and had a wonderful meal with wonderful conversation. Nice to see them both looking well.
Then it was a very easy drive from Madison to Elkhart Lake, so easy that we decided to go that way in the future. Got to the track in time to set up our tent, get informed about Scott's secret plan to propose to Jen, and drive into Elkhart Lake with Clancy. Friday evening is the race car concours, when selected race cars drive from the track into town and get admired and judged. Scott's plan was to stop at this specific corner, jump out and propose to Jen (who would be riding with him in the Sprite). Photos of this event are on my flickr page.
The concours was great. Saturday was great; the usual combination of racing, relaxing, walking around a lot, putting earplugs in and out of ears, looking at stuff for sale, etc. Scott had some good qualifying sessions - he and Clancy run their Austin Healey Sprite race car. The street car concours on Saturday night was nice, too.
Saturday night we got rained on from about 1 a.m. until about 6 a.m., but my tent kept us dry. The rest of the day was just right; Scott's race was at 9:30? and went beautifully until an incident with an early-braking Austin healey 3000 put Scott in the difficult position of deciding between hitting the Healey or going off into the gravel. So he spent half of the race in the gravel... frankly, the better choice. The Can-Am race was exciting, with the L&M Lola in second place and never quite able to fight for first.
Then Ross and I got packed up, said our goodbyes and hit the road, heading north through Green Bay, then Wausau, on our way to St. Germain where Ross' mom's side of the family was having a week at a cabin. There we joined Ross' mom Sara, her sisters Abby and Sue, Sue's husband Fred, Abby's daughter Melynn, her husband Jeff and their daughter Lexi. Nice quiet cabin on Found Lake. Fun time spotting eagles, frogs, turtles, loons. Played Wii games - fun.
And despite all the relaxing we had over the course of the five days, we came home exhausted and in need of sleeping in!
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Weekend - summer goes too fast
Katie and I went to Taylor's Falls on Saturday, and a nicer day there couldn't have been. Skies were clear, temps were balmy, winds were refreshing. No wasps or mosquitos. We had the Keyhole area to ourselves (except for a couple of hikers peering over the top).
We rappelled, then pulled the rope and I led The Keyhole (5.6). I belayed Katie to the top. We rappelled and climbed Keyhole Direct (5.9). Fun. I led the route to the right of the Keyhole, which I've led before and is actually quite good despite ending in a bush. I scrambled to the top of Double Cracks (5.9+) and set up a toprope. We each climbed it about three times. I thought about leading it, but didn't. Led it once before, with a hang. Then Katie did a practice lead of the Keyhole (on toprope, but placing gear and clipping the second rope to the gear). She exclaimed that it was a lot harder.
Great day.
On Sunday Ross made the Jag sedan run(!) and I started sanding a batch of kitchen cabinet doors, moved some raspberry plants, washed clothes, did some minor house cleaning. That's what summer days are all about... staying cool and getting things done.
We rappelled, then pulled the rope and I led The Keyhole (5.6). I belayed Katie to the top. We rappelled and climbed Keyhole Direct (5.9). Fun. I led the route to the right of the Keyhole, which I've led before and is actually quite good despite ending in a bush. I scrambled to the top of Double Cracks (5.9+) and set up a toprope. We each climbed it about three times. I thought about leading it, but didn't. Led it once before, with a hang. Then Katie did a practice lead of the Keyhole (on toprope, but placing gear and clipping the second rope to the gear). She exclaimed that it was a lot harder.
Great day.
On Sunday Ross made the Jag sedan run(!) and I started sanding a batch of kitchen cabinet doors, moved some raspberry plants, washed clothes, did some minor house cleaning. That's what summer days are all about... staying cool and getting things done.
Doctor Who - the emotional arcs
Note: photos are from time-and-space.co.uk, and from the gallery at chaotic-creative.comThe third season is the one I want to focus on, as it is so fresh in my mind and it really has the most compelling arc, the most immediate and raw. The loss of Rose at the end of the second season is the kickoff point, and of course the moment that he never really gets over. Throughout the third season we see his emotional pain made real and physical; certainly there is nothing to compare to it in the first and second seasons. He gets kicked around in this season.
His emotional state is very raw; even once past the barely suppressed pain of "The Runaway Bride" he struggles between a reluctance to open himself up again to such pain and the desperate need to not lose a companion again. This is beautifully illustrated by this moment from "Gridlock" when Martha is abducted. He has this desperate intensity when an acquaintance is in danger, taken away from him - even in "Daleks in Manhattan" when the acquaintance is a very casual one. The loss is too real, too great for him.
In "42", an episode I found uniquely compelling, not only are the Doctor and Martha on a spaceship 42 minutes away from crashing into a sun, but in short order they are blocked from the TARDIS and then from each other. As Martha tumbles toward the sun's surface in an escape pod the Doctor becomes possessed by the sun-entity.
It's an abrupt turnaround for their relationship; as he struggles to fight the unknown entity he's helpless and dependent on her to do what she can to save him. The moment in which he confesses, "I'm scared, Martha, I'm so scared," is a pivotal one. The Doctor is often scared but rarely so honest about it.
In "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" he is walloped both physically and emotionally; firstly by the action of the Chameleon Arch as it rewrites his DNA - he admits casually that it is incredibly painful, a fact that doesn't seem to give him pause. We, the audience, and Martha, our surrogate, are left to cringe in horror.
The emotional wallop comes later for him, when his assumed personality fights for selfhood, cries out at the thought of losing the woman he loves, the life he might have had.
OK, this pic is more for squee than anything else, but it is a moment that kicks off the climactic sequence of the last two episodes; the Master, regenerated, haring away in the TARDIS as the Doctor uses his ever-useful sonic screwdriver to lock the TARDIS guidance system.
And the scene that wraps up the emotional arc of the third season: the Master dies in the Doctor's arms, refusing to regenerate. The Doctor cries as if he's losing his second self. I've heard some speculation that they could be brothers? In some ways this wraps up the arc of the first season as well - the angst of the Doctor who believed even then that he was the last of the time lords.
But there is an afterword; it still remains for both Jack and Martha to say their goodbyes. At an earlier time both of them would have jumped at the chance to keep travelling with him, but they've grown... they've become more honest with themselves, and both of them realize that they want things they won't get in the TARDIS - human things.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
CONvergence!
This past weekend was CONvergence, which is currently the largest science fiction convention in the state. In addition it was the 10th CONvergence, so they pulled out all the stops and invited every guest of honor from the past, as well as some new ones. There were probably 20 of them. I got to meet Peter Mayhew (who played Chewbacca in the Star Wars movies). Odd fellow. I didn't talk long because I was actually in line to get an autograph from Mercedes Lackey, who has been my guilty pleasure for almost 20 years now. She writes fantasy novels. I'm finding it difficult to describe them... on a superficial level they are set in a world where psychic white horses with blue eyes bond with their riders for life. Anyway. I also went to a talk by David Weber, the premier name in military science fiction, and he was charming and very talkative and obviously well-read and insatiably curious about the world. I also went to a reading by Broad Universe, an organization dedicated to supporting female writers of SF&F.
The beauty of going to this convention after being away from the convention world for ten years was that I ran into several people who I haven't seen for that span of time. It was also fun, yes fun, to be so utterly immersed in the geek world. It's a mutating, shifting world, and I'm not entirely sure how much I want to be in it, but I love that it exists. It all takes time and I'm just more aware that I can't do everything at once, or else I didn't have as many things to do back in the days... Still. To walk down the halls of the Sheraton, past several Klingons, the guys from Ghost Busters, multiple pirates and maybe a couple of ninjas. Captain Kirk passes in the opposite direction, followed by a lady with a dragon tail sticking out from under her dress. This is the world of the geek. Escapist? Maybe. But we all live inside our heads on some level. We all need more than what we get from the input; we need to make things, to create, to express.
I remember the first time I went to Minicon; two days of convention activity, and I went home with a dejected air and the thought that I would have to wait a WHOLE YEAR for the next Minicon. It seemed unbearable. This time I thought about the whole thing more; the world was smaller. The Romulan ale sucked. I watched this world I had been away from and felt that, yes, I could go back again. But I could wait a year. Or two.
The beauty of going to this convention after being away from the convention world for ten years was that I ran into several people who I haven't seen for that span of time. It was also fun, yes fun, to be so utterly immersed in the geek world. It's a mutating, shifting world, and I'm not entirely sure how much I want to be in it, but I love that it exists. It all takes time and I'm just more aware that I can't do everything at once, or else I didn't have as many things to do back in the days... Still. To walk down the halls of the Sheraton, past several Klingons, the guys from Ghost Busters, multiple pirates and maybe a couple of ninjas. Captain Kirk passes in the opposite direction, followed by a lady with a dragon tail sticking out from under her dress. This is the world of the geek. Escapist? Maybe. But we all live inside our heads on some level. We all need more than what we get from the input; we need to make things, to create, to express.
I remember the first time I went to Minicon; two days of convention activity, and I went home with a dejected air and the thought that I would have to wait a WHOLE YEAR for the next Minicon. It seemed unbearable. This time I thought about the whole thing more; the world was smaller. The Romulan ale sucked. I watched this world I had been away from and felt that, yes, I could go back again. But I could wait a year. Or two.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
The end of the third season of Doctor Who
Watched the last episode, "The Last of the Timelords" on Sunday night. It was large in scope, although emotionally more distant than the finales from the first and second season. In my opinion. By having the Doctor appear as a 900-year-old gnome they really missed out on the huge opportunity to get maximum use out of the Master/Doctor relationship. The final confrontation and death(?) of the Master was everything I could have hoped for. Really the culmination of the emotional beating that the Doctor has taken throughout this season; his tears and entreaties were heartrending.
And from the Television Without Pity season three recap by the amazing Jacob, here is a statement about what "Doctor Who" means to its fans and why it matters:
"One thing I think it is not, though, is the Companion setup. I don't like to think that the show, this weird phenomenon that's twice as old as yours truly, comes down to escapism, to the romance of neglecting and avoiding and running away from life. I mean, I realize that it's more than that -- I can't seem to shut the hell up about all the other things it is -- but the thing about stories, like dreams, is that they're all you. In Jungian terms, the Companion is the Ego and the Doctor is the Self and the TARDIS is the Ego-Self Axis, and if you ask me why, as an atheist, I'm so obsessed with writing and reading about religion, that's the pat answer that I won't give you, because it's too small. It's a collection of trees that can't actually express the forest. But I think in human development there's something that leads us on, some gift of the world, that gives us guidance toward becoming whole. I think there's something, a Doctor, that wants us to look in those dark corners and tease the mysteries out and become strong enough to see things the way they are, without all the magic and hope and fear and ugliness that we project on them, because when we do that, we're abusing ourselves, because the world inside our head is where we actually live, and the best we can hope for is to work until it matches the world outside our heads as closely as possible. So I've never found it weird or particularly interesting to cast Doctor Who as either a meditative experience of the divine or as a description of individuation, the process of growing up. Those are all just a bunch of words for fairy tales, which are all just versions of the Quest, and the Quest never ends. You shouldn't go around kicking trees when you're in the middle of the forest, because if you miss the forest, you're screwed, because it's a...really awesome forest."
And from the Television Without Pity season three recap by the amazing Jacob, here is a statement about what "Doctor Who" means to its fans and why it matters:
"One thing I think it is not, though, is the Companion setup. I don't like to think that the show, this weird phenomenon that's twice as old as yours truly, comes down to escapism, to the romance of neglecting and avoiding and running away from life. I mean, I realize that it's more than that -- I can't seem to shut the hell up about all the other things it is -- but the thing about stories, like dreams, is that they're all you. In Jungian terms, the Companion is the Ego and the Doctor is the Self and the TARDIS is the Ego-Self Axis, and if you ask me why, as an atheist, I'm so obsessed with writing and reading about religion, that's the pat answer that I won't give you, because it's too small. It's a collection of trees that can't actually express the forest. But I think in human development there's something that leads us on, some gift of the world, that gives us guidance toward becoming whole. I think there's something, a Doctor, that wants us to look in those dark corners and tease the mysteries out and become strong enough to see things the way they are, without all the magic and hope and fear and ugliness that we project on them, because when we do that, we're abusing ourselves, because the world inside our head is where we actually live, and the best we can hope for is to work until it matches the world outside our heads as closely as possible. So I've never found it weird or particularly interesting to cast Doctor Who as either a meditative experience of the divine or as a description of individuation, the process of growing up. Those are all just a bunch of words for fairy tales, which are all just versions of the Quest, and the Quest never ends. You shouldn't go around kicking trees when you're in the middle of the forest, because if you miss the forest, you're screwed, because it's a...really awesome forest."
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