Seven days with the Motorola Backflip

My well-loved Nokia 6820 -- a text messaging powerhouse -- succumbed to water damage a couple of weekends ago. While running I got caught in a spectacular lightning storm and made the mistake of taking the phone out to reply to a text message. Oops!

While losing my phone was bad, in retrospect it could have been a lot worse. At the time another runner and I were running home along the trail on the top of the Addicks Dam, which is at treetop level. We remarked that we were some of the tallest objects out there when a bolt of lightning struck less than a half-mile in front of us. After seeing the resulting red sparking fireball in our path, I can honestly say that we were pretty foolish for not descending to lower elevation sooner. So here's my public service announcement for today: People and massive discharges of static electricity do not mix!

Returning to the phone discussion: In need of a new cell phone, I shopped for a new model just as I do for running shoes: I read reviews to develop initial impressions, then did a lot of test-driving in the store to select a final winner. After nearly thirty minutes of giving in-hand time to all the display models in the AT&T store, I had confirmed that my number one candidate, the Motorola Backflip was the right choice for me.

At first glance, the reverse-clamshell design struck me as odd. But the more I have handled it, the more brilliant this arrangment appears. Opened, the screen and keyboard are aligned at virtually the same angle as the two halves of the Nintendo DS Lite, and it's nearly as natural to handle. Closed, the Backflip operates as a simple touch-screen slab, just like the Apple iPhone.

By the way, I really wanted to like the iPhone, but a combination of three things put an end to that:
1) An iPhone (and Motorola's Droid for that matter) is a half-inch taller and a half-inch wider than a closed Backflip. The Backflip is a better fit in the palm of my hand and is better at sharing space with the wallet in my pocket.
2) After being spoiled by the old Nokia, I really do want a tactile physical keyboard on my phone, and it has to be well-sized. (I can't help but think that the Blackberry engineers at RIM are all dainty ladies with tiny hands.)
3) iTunes for Windows makes me want to tear my hair out. The less I have to see of it, the better.

In the closed position the Backflip's keyboard is disabled, so there's no worry about the dreaded "butt dialing" phenomena. And despite being always exposed, I'm not very worried about the keyboard. It has no discrete keys, having one imprinted and continuous sheath covering the keyswitches.

The camera in my old phone was terrible, so the Backflip's 5-megapixel camera with LED flash is a welcome step up for me. I discovered that the reverse clamshell design enables the use of the LCD screen as a viewfinder in both directions. Want to take one of those phone-in-outstretched-hand self portraits? The Backflip makes this easy. I'm surprised that none of the reviews I've read has pointed out this fun fact.

On the back of the touchscreen is a small trackpad called "Backtrack" used to scroll and select items on screen. I'm rather lukewarm about this feature. It sounds great in concept, but so far it doesn't seem to be much more effective to me than the arrow keys on the keyboard. Perhaps I just need more practice to appreciate its true value.

I trashed the Motoblur widgets that display by default on the home screen of the phone. It's supposed to be like a running ticker of social networking notifications, but I find it more showy than useful. In addition, the default setting of Motoblur to continuously get background notifications is a battery drain. Instead, I've installed full-featured clients for Facebook and Twitter (Twidroid) and just refresh their listings only when I want to.

I do like finding so many free apps in the Android Marketplace. So far the most expensive app I've splurged on is the MLB At Bat 2010. I'm listening to streaming audio play-by-play broadcast of a Cardinals-Braves game right now as I type this.

Now what I might really enjoy is a dependable Blogger app. I actually began composing this post originally in the application AndroBlogger right on the Backflip itself, but it crashed on me ("force close") right as I was nearing the end. AndroBlogger is a free app, and I suppose I got what I paid for!

Green 6.2

For Sale: One (1) wildflower-seeded race bib and one (1) D-Tag from the debut running of the Green 6.2. Potential collector's item, pristine condition, never used. Will take pint of frustration-soothing chocolate ice cream or best offer.

I remember being so pleased with myself this morning -- getting up early after a good night's sleep, getting a decent breakfast and leaving home when I intended. It was quite a surprise when I arrived at CityCentre and was told that I had completely missed the start of the race. As it turns out, for weeks I had the wrong gun time written on my calendar. I was so late that the course was already dismantled, except for the finish line welcoming back the last stragglers.

I had come prepared to run anyway, of course, so I simply took off on my own unsupported run around the Town and Country area -- an impromptu eight-mile double loop, featuring an up-and-down the five levels of the CityCentre parking garage. For this morning, score me as "DNS due to incompetence."

"On your left" . . . times thirteen thousand

I planned today's six-miler so that I could take a break in the middle and watch one of the starts of this weekend's BP MS150. Shortly before dawn, I reached my perch overlooking the Omni Hotel just as the singer began belting out the first bars of the national anthem.

Over the next 45 minutes, wave after wave of cyclists pulsed out over the Addicks Dam and down into the misted forest. The State Capitol in Austin -- their final destination -- waits for them 180 miles away. It's a sight you don't see every day:

As I was leaving, I couldn't resist snapping a final picture of the Brightroom photographers. After having them capture my not-so-glamorous side at so many events, turnabout is fair play, I say!

Dear Jerry

Has it really been a year since you hurtled into my life while being rudely hurtled out of your own? Not long after the hit-and-run accident that brought us briefly together, I saw that your loved ones had planted a cross in the ground at the crash site. I've wondered if they needed the landowner's blessing to do this.

This eventually developed into a two-part memorial to you. Close to the curb where your motorcycle went airborne, a heart-shaped patch of mulch marked "JERRY" faces Katy Freeway traffic. The cross still stands on the downslope a few yards away, on the edge of the detention pond where your body came to rest until LifeFlight arrived to take it away.

Eventually, I became comfortable enough to resume running in this area again. (I run exclusively facing the oncoming traffic now. I still carry my cell phone with me and I'm very good about wearing my Road ID -- two choices that I still heartily endorse for anyone who runs outdoors.) During those runs, I could pause by that intersection to look at the changing selection of seasonal items that they're leaving in your memory. During my last run-by, I took note of the Happy Birthday balloons. You're certainly on their minds.

The driver of the truck that hit you is still unidentified. Sadly, a year later no one has been able to come forward with information that could hold someone accountable. Crime Stoppers still has the Jerardo Luis case in their "unsolved" files, and a reward could still be out there for the right person that picks up the phone and dials 713-222-TIPS.

With the passage of some time, I came to accept that there was really nothing I could have done to save you that night. Anyhow, I resolved to do something to make myself feel less helpless in a crisis, so a couple of months ago I took part in a mass CPR/AED training by the Red Cross in the NFL Texans practice "bubble."

During the class I got really good pointers on how to remove rubber gloves without getting cooties on my hands and how to roll unconscious persons into a "recovery position" so they wind up in a good place to gain consciousness and puke. Oh, and I also learned that delivering sets of chest compressions are a pretty good workout in itself. By the end of the morning, I joked that perhaps I should bring one of the dummies home as cross-training equipment.

Doing a thousand practice compressions on dummies couldn't have helped your situation last April. But I guess I do feel better knowing that maybe I'll be better prepared to help someone else in a different type of emergency. I suppose that's one important takeaway I gained from the whole ordeal: We can't change the past, but with a little foresight and preparation, maybe we still have a shot at making the future better.

I'd like to think that I'm now driving sober more often. Mind you, to me driving sober is much more than just a BAC number. It's the having the mindfulness of the responsibility we take when we pilot a car on the roads, and a focused awareness of what's around you. Uncontrolled, the amount of kinetic energy that two tons of steel and plastic has at highway speeds can really ruin a lot of lives. I've wondered if your hit-and-run driver may have been occupied on a cell phone, or simply neglectful of checking a blind spot that terrible night.

As I remember all this, I am affirmed in my belief that the act of running is a declaration of my vitality. To go outdoors, draw breath under the skies and propel my legs over the ground is my acceptance of an innate directive to pursue the horizon. All the while, I'm mindful that this ability -- and my very life -- could be taken from me at an hour and in a manner we have no way of predicting. As a witness pointed out to me afterwards, I was crossing that very intersection less than a minute before the wreck.

Once in a while, especially when crossing that curb at Memorial Brook Boulevard, I feel like I truly am running some of these miles for you and others who won't run on the earth again. Rest in peace.

By the Book

At a minimum, I need to drop 10 to 15 pounds -- again.

Two and a half years ago, my weight had bottomed out at a nearly magical 199, before stabilizing around 210 pounds.Today the scale at my office building told me I've reached the 225-pound mark. I can't ignore the reality of having gained back half of the weight I had lost since my epiphany moment on Thanksgiving '04.

So there it is: I've admitted there's a problem.

Now comes the hard part: doing something about it. I remember what lost the weight for me in the first place -- portion control and running regularly. I've slacked, and it's time to live by the book again. In addition to being more conscious of how much food I'm consuming, I'm going to take the extra step of abstaining from soda (including the diet stuff) during the workweek until further notice. This probably won't shave off too many calories, but at least it will be a tangible sign of a return to self-discipline.

My running is slowly coming back, helped along by the arrival of spring. (Winter blues in even our mild climate has convinced me that I should never be a Yankee again.) I had a nice four-miler along the Buffalo Bayou hike/bike trail last night. I spent much of that run thinking about the extra pounds are literally weighing my running down. The 30-minute 5K and 60-minute 10K were things I could just about take for granted; now they're dream runs once more. As I encountered a lot of cute bunnies along the trail on that Easter Monday, I was thankful that they seemed to be all out of Cadbury Creme Eggs or other fattening treats.

I find myself wishing that I was returning to Angie's Half Crazy this weekend, but this spring a 10K (and one somewhere around 1:15 at that) may have to be my distance benchmark.

Before taking off on my run, I briefly explored the new Kendall Neighborhood Library, which conveniently sits at the intersection of Eldridge Parkway and the aforementioned trail. I decided that after nearly a year-and-a-half of living in this Houston neighborhood, it was a good time to get myself an HPL library card. Oddities I found here:

• Half a dozen parking spaces have signs proclaiming that they are set aside for "fuel efficient vehicles." I'm OK with setting aside some spaces based on vehicle size, but in my opinion this is going too far.
• The circulation desk has a drive-up window -- fitting for America's driving capital.
• On the far wall of the teen section, there are two large TVs equipped with Nintendo Wii consoles. What are students studying these days, anyway?

Four The Park

Mouth is alive with juices like wine and I'm hungry like the wolf....

It still feels odd to see that 80s pop music has become the "safe choice" for DJs and cover bands to play at family-friendly events. So I let out a little snort when I stepped off the shuttle bus this morning and was greeted with Duran Duran's greatest hits gently blowing through the trees in front of the Memorial Park Tennis Center. I was here to test my feet against a four-mile loop course in the creatively named "Four The Park Fun Run" benefiting the Memorial Park Conservancy.

I suppose I may have to give the DJ an itsy-bit of credit for switching to something more recent-sounding immediately before the kids 1K run/walk. Still, I don't think any of the wee ones that were getting their pictures taken with the Easter Bunny were even yet born when the Backstreet Boys were in their heyday. After watching the children scramble out of the starting corral, I started in the opposite direction for a couple of warmup miles on the Lieberman Exer-trail. After getting passed by Lisa Foronda, the former KHOU news anchor, I had a brief notion to try to keep up with her, but decided against it when I noted that she was jogging at what would likely be my race pace.

My race itself had no real surprises. With a twinge of discomfort in my achilles area during mile 3, I stepped off of the unforgiving macadam of Memorial Drive to stretch, then opted to finish the mile on the softer trail surface next to the road. The final mile found me just about out of gas, so I had to save the energetic-looking strides for the areas in front of the Brightroom photographers. When I crossed the finish line, I was back in the 80s once again as the live band was covering Mötley Crüe's "Home Sweet Home."

The not-really-positive positive splits, for the sake of full disclosure:

Mile 1 - 10:37
Mile 2 - 10:29
Mile 3 - 12:00
Mile 4 - 13:52
Elapsed time per Garmin Forerunner 205 - 46:57

My award for best in-race advertising goes to the bridal shop that had several young women running in white veils and T-shirts with the store logo.

With the race site sandwiched between the Uptown district and the emergent "strip of hip" on Washington Avenue, I should have been expecting post-race fare a cut above the usual bananas and bottled water. Michelob Ultra was representing with a sponsorship tent, and with the temperature approaching 80F, some of those cans of brew were getting tucked into sports bras as cooling devices. Freebirds had attracted a line for their chow, but I wasn't really in the mood for a burrito. Instead, I wolfed down a slice from the California Pizza Kitchen, then sated my craving for a Firkin fruit-filled crepe from the guys at Firkin & Phoenix.

While I didn't spot any bananas, on the shuttle bus ride back to my car I did notice that runners were going home with other tropical fruits in hand -- pineapples, coconuts, and bags of key limes. Not mere slices of pineapple, these were whole fruits that would make some good pies after ripening a little more. If I return here next year, I'm going to have to pay more attention to the edible giveaways.

Other notes:

• I was a little disappointed by the crowd behavior prior to the race during the national anthem, as most of the race participants just ignored it and continued chit-chatting with one another.
• For those that haven't visited Memorial Park in a while, a new pedestrian bridge now connects the north-to-south over Memorial Drive. Look for it on the west side of the park; it parallels the railroad tracks that run over the Woodway/Memorial split.
• Another race sponsor I was introduced to, providing some of the shuttle service today, was The Washington Wave. A dedicated transport catering to crosstown pubcrawlers -- where was this when I was in school!? (Is it only a matter of time before Houston is ready to be covered by jeepneys? Mabuhay!)