Salmon Bay school in Seattle.

It’s nice to take some time out to think about leadership and how I can help people have a say in decisions that affect their lives.

Seen on my Sunday long run.

Tune in to find out about Van and the great stuff he’s doing with Green for All!

Because Microsoft is going to launch a planetarium product soon, I heard about an open source package called Stellarium. It’s a cross platform piece of software that shows you the sky and a lets you navigate through it. It’s pretty cool, especially if you have a Mac and kids who expect you to know the names of stars in the sky.

During the lunar eclipse last week, we were outside looking at the stars. I was trying to navigate using a star chart in a book and saw a red star that I couldn’t quite place. After 2 minutes on Stellarium, I realized that we had been looking at Mars, a fact that would have sent Malcolm through the roof had I know it at the time. I can’t wait for the next clear night!

I’ve been running a lot in my triathlon training and I’ve been listening to podcasts on my hour plus runs. This American Life, of course, but my favorite is one called Radiolab out of WNYC in New York. It’s an hour long show that takes broad topics and looks into the current state of our scientific understanding of them, and does it in a highly produced format.

It’s a killer show and I’ve found myself looking forward to my runs just because I’ll get to listen to another Radiolab. I’ve been talking about the thought-provoking topics so much at work that I’m sure they’re all as sick of me talking about it as they were sick of me talking about Critical Mass 6 months ago. Oh well, at least I don’t talk about triathlon at work…

Try out Radiolab–you’ll dig it.

Malcolm and I made this today.

He hit my right side and sent me skidding. I then fell over backwards and landed in the open parking space he was headed for. My elbows hit (ow) and my helmetted head hit the pavement, but not very hard judging from the light damage to my lid.

Like most bike accidents, I was obeying traffic laws and the car driver was completely at fault. That doesn’t get me anything, unfortunately. Somehow in the accident my chain broke, but the rest of my ride appears in good shape.

I was definitely shaken, though. My first reaction was anger, then I was stunned for at least 4 hours. Pretty unsettling, even though I didn’t really get hurt. I headed back to the office and just started working again. It was a bit surreal.

So to all the drivers out there, Watch out for bikes! And to all the bikers out there, The drivers aren’t watching out for you!