Date
|
Celsius °
(C*9/5)+32=F
|
Place of run
|
Duration (min)
|
start time
|
One inside loop
|
9 flights (sec)
|
Sets of 11 pull-ups
|
6 May
|
≈ 5
|
Nizhenskaya,Moscow,
|
≈ 33
|
13:13
|
1:21.65
|
32.83
|
3
|
What a
great run today! A fresh Wait, Wait in
my ears…and a good one, too. My knees
are almost completely healthy. I
returned from Albania this morning, took a nap, and then went running. It’s raining off and on.
All
winter, I have been sleeping with only a sheet covering me. Most evenings, I have even had a window
open. This morning, though, my apartment
was freezing. When we say ‘central
heating’ in the US, it means that there is one heating system for the whole
house—the furnace is usually in the basement and it sends warm air where it is
needed throughout the structure. In
Russian cities, ‘central heating’ means that there is one heating system for
the whole TOWN. This year, in the fall,
my former land lady was getting upset because the weather was getting cooler
and she was anxious for the heaters to begin warming up the place. A couple days after she began to get worried,
the heating began and stayed on for the rest of my stay. That might have been October 1.
This spring, it seems that the
calendar has dictated the time when the heat would be shut off as well. I left a warm apartment on April 30, and came
back to a freezer box on 6 May. So from
October 1 to May 1, the houses have been cozy.
Now, Moscow is frigid. The temperature is above freezing, but
relatively, it’s darn cold. Especially for
me because not only don’t I USE a blanket, I don’t even HAVE a blanket. I’m wearing a t-shirt, thick sweatshirt, track
pants, and a pair of socks. My trusty
sheet does its best, but sometimes…
I’ve been colder during the last
week than I have been all winter—even during -26 C degree weather in Iowa. In Tirana last week, I was also freezing.
Some readers might have read my blog piece about the coldest place on Earth,
Albania. Why? Because they refuse to admit that it gets
cold there. They build their houses
without insulation or heating systems.
Therefore, people have to wear all kinds of clothes, and use space
heaters. The result is that people use a
heater to warm up the room where they are reading or playing games or whatever. They have a space heater in the kitchen, too. If they have to the kitchen to refill their
water glass, they quickly open and close the door, freeze their little toes off
running to the next room, shut the door and then warm up again.
The article below describes how
the Russian government sees the protests in Ukraine. There are outside actors,
the US and Europe, who are destabilizing the situation. May 9 is a huge holiday here; they are
celebrating the 50 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany. It is a time of increased patriotism. Many
people are wearing ribbons that are orange and black striped to show their
support of Russian in the Ukrainian conflict.
Personally, I’m not feeling much. As I was getting out of a bus, leaving the
bus empty, the driver asked where I’m from.
After telling him that I’m from the US, he asked me something about why
the US wants war. I didn’t understand
him completely, partially because he was not a native speaker of Russian (and
neither am I J). I kept a smile on my face as I told him that
I’m not the US government.
Last
night, I went to an English-speaking group that plays board games. Native speakers in such places are treated pretty
much as rock stars. Among other
questions, they asked me why I began to study Russian so many years ago. As always, I answered that the Soviet Union
was always the biggest enemy of the US and I wanted to find out if the propaganda
we heard was true, so I began to study their language. Then they asked about my time in Russia and I
said something about the Peace Walk in 1988.
The organizer of the group sat down at the computer which was hooked up
to a projector and looked for pictures of the Walk. I thought of the essay and
pictures that I have uploaded to Youtube.
It was a great time of reminiscence for me.
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