::: {.Section1} [\< ?xml:namespace prefix = o />We went down to the start of the Ironman yesterday morning. It's a great spectacle: 1800 athletes all of whom intend to do something that I couldn't possibly accomplish. The race begins at 7:00 and the cut-off for finish is midnight, so you have 17 hours in which to: swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and run a full marathon. Along a course that runs through a vast lava field, so not only do you have in-the-shade temperatures in the 80s, but incredible black-body radiation (I mean, imagine biking 112 miles through a parking lot). ]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"}
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\< ?xml:namespace prefix = w /> [An [80-year-old ]{style="FONT-STYLE: italic"}did it with about :45 minutes to spare. Which I thought was impressive until I saw that he had been beaten by a 76-year-old nun. Other especially impressive athletes include Sarah Reinertsen, a full-leg amputee and Johnny Blais, who has ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Not that anyone who does it deserves anything but total respect. ]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"}
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[\< ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Then, to get out of town, we went up to the summit of Mauna Kea (13,796 feet) to get a tour of the telescopes. Serious geekery. ]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"}
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[The hour or so before sunset on Mauna Kea is incredibly beautiful. The strong inversion layer which gives the mountain such exceptional seeing means that you're looking down on a sea of clouds and, as the sun lowers, you see an incredible effect where the mountain's shadow becomes visible, projected into the sky and clouds to the East. ]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"}
[The sunset itself has deep colors but at least last night was not really better than what we get every night from our lanai. ]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"}
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[As soon as the colors started to fade we scampered out of the [freezing ]{style="FONT-STYLE: italic"}air (it was probably high 30s) down to the visitor's center at 9,000 feet where there was a Hula Kahiko performance ("ancient" hula: very different and to me vastly better than modern hula and nothing like the skirt-shaking stuff you get at a resort luau). What a rocking day, although by the time we got home we were all dog-tired. ]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"}
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