Here it is, the eve before National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo,) sort of an ongoing joke started by Chris Baty where tens of thousands (150,000+ this year) of people line up like entrants of the Bay to Breakers marathon, and pound out 50,000 words of prose.

This month I throw my hat in the ring, with a manuscript loosely based on the great western classic, Deadwood Dick, the Prince of the Road.

At the moment I’m up to my armpits in research. Did you know that in 1860, Sir Richard Francis Burton wrote about a trip to California on the Overland Stage? Burton has an amazing ear for Western experience, slipping into dialect and salting his narrative with tall tales along the way. The book, written one year before Samuel Clemens made the same trip, is remarkably similar to Roughing It, written by Clemens 12 years later. Burton’s book is more philosophical, while Twain’s is more humorous. Together they make good bookends for era.

What to do until midnight when I can unleash the muse and begin my own marathon dash through the English language? I suppose I’ll brave the zombies of Halloween, go out and get a Black Jack taco and a fifth of frontier whiskey and settle down to write at the stroke of midnight.

Minivan opened like a soda can

The number one choice of discriminating bruins? According to the LA Times black bears in Yosemite have come to think of minivans as their own personal “meals on wheels.” Minivans roll into the park wafting the aroma of spilled Cheerios and milk, and the bears seem to have learned that the classic Mom-missile is your best bet to find a secret stash of Frosted Mini Wheats.

When snaking a tub use the overflow plate

Today’s frontier adventure involved snaking out the bathtub drain. First we tried using a Zip-It flexible strip. These plastic drain cleaners are a gross, yet effective way to de-gunk most drains. Problem is that a bathtub drain takes a left turn at Albuquerque, leaving you without much room to move the strip. Liquid Plumber failed us and so did the natural method to unclog a drain with vinegar and baking soda.

Fortunately Google knows all, and I learned that the key to unclogging a bathtub drain is to remove the overflow plate and stopper mechanism, and feed the snake down the overflow drain. I was able to quickly remove the offending clog this way and we’re back to normal drainage.

Four monstrous dogs in our tiny yard

Daughter Em and her husband Matt and their four dogs - more like a single four-headed whirling entity from Hell - landed on our doorstep two weeks ago. And it’s killing my routine. My attempts at running, attempts at writing, attempts at riding…everything has gone to the dogs. As it were.

I’d like to post more about this, but at the moment there’s a horrendous bark-off in our tiny yard and I’ve got to go throw a shoe at one of these miserable creatures.

Riding the slippery slope in the Angeles Crest

The plan was to be in Merced by now, well on my way to Yosemite, Bodie, Tonopah, Tuweep and parts beyond. The reality is that the bike is in the hospital, getting a blood transfusion. If they get the ABS system sorted out (soon let’s pray) then I’m changing plans and heading for the Range of Light Gypsy Tour out of Red Bluff. It sounds like a huge ugly mob of adventure riders in the midst of some very beautiful scenery. And hot.

Also, you might notice, that Red Bluff is UP from me…on a map…not DOWN, which makes it a particularly hard way to go. If you want to get down that is. Silly.

Anyhow, if you’re interested in some gnarly dual-sport action featuring more R1200 GS bikes than you can shake a stick at, follow me on Twitter (also on FaceBook). I’ll be posting semi-regular updates…sometimes including my GPS coordinates from my Spot Tracker.

I’ve been following a glycemic-index diet for about a year. I lost weight consistently for a while, then stopped. So now I’m adding exercise, notably barefoot running.

For three weeks I did the following:

Monday-Wednesday-Friday alternating-day intervals (run for 60 seconds, walk for three minutes) or fartlek (jog 15 seconds, sprint 15 seconds, continue to add 15 seconds to jog and walk times until reaching 1 min 30 seconds and then go back down.)

On Saturday I jog a Long Slow Distance, actually 30 minutes at about 10 minute mile pace.

Complication: knee pain. So I started taping my arches, nothing fancy just two strips of tape around the foot at the arch. Seems to help.

Results: 230 to 227 in three weeks. Plus I can zip up my Adventure Pants.

[Via ThinkGeek] Finally, bacon with a 10 year shelf life. But if there’s a can opener within reach this stuff isn’t going to last ten days in my cupboards. Billed as just the thing for zombie standoffs, this bacon is brought to you by the good people at CMMG Inc, where you can find all things tactical.

Other weapon-related food items:

• Tactical food fighting spoons
• Tactical Ice Cream Unit
• MRE Smorgasbord

[Via Metafilter] It looks like my Sierra Club SIGG bottle isn’t BPA-safe after all. The CEO of SIGG admits that their aluminum bottles manufactured prior to 2008 had BPA in the liner - something that SIGG never exactly admitted but Treehugger long suspected.

What’s the fuss about BPA…an endocrine disruptor that may (or may not) leach from polycarbonate bottles and bottle liners? One word: Manboobs.

There is significant debate in the scientific community about the safety of products containing BPA. What that means for consumers, however, is that we must wait for more studies to be sure.

In the meantime the choice is to replace our reusable waterbottles with ones that we know (not think) are BPA-safe. Or, if you’re a guy, just start thinking about placing your order for a man-bra. (You do NOT want to Google that. Trust me.)

Started the week at 230 lbs, ended at 227.2 lbs, two week rolling average is 229 lbs. Completed three days of 1-minute runs, eight reps, 3 minute walking recovery. This morning I did a Long Slow Distance…an embarrassing 1.55 miles in 20 minutes. Barefoot. Or practically barefoot…I’m trying a pair of Vibram Five Fingers instead of running shoes.

This Week’s Struggle

Blindness. It’s early out when I run and I can’t see the sweep secondhand on my Swiss Army watch. So I switched to my dress watch (Timex is as dressy as I get) with the Indiglo backlight. Fail. The secondhand is no wider than a flea’s whisker, I still couldn’t see it. So for the time being I’m running with my GPS receiver because I can at least read the elapsed time.

Tell Me Where It Hurts, Son

I’m having some pain and swelling in my left knee. In the past it’s been my right knee. I went to an orthopedist who says that there’s no damage or indication of arthritis. If I run “through the pain” I tend to feel better. But the next time I run…ouch. This is why I’m trying barefoot running. And the reason I’m trying to get back into running at all is because there is some evidence that running actually promotes knee health.

So here is the dramatic tension…can I keep this up for another week? Will getting “unstuck” in the body weight department help me get “unstuck” in other parts of my life? Tune in for more…