crossfit games regional report

This weekend, I was a volunteer at the CrossFit Games NorCal Regionals. There were way more volunteers than necessary, and my team leader was overworked, so he didn't give me any specific responsibilities. However, my volunteer bracelet served as an all-access pass, so I hung around the control tent, where the athletes lined up to go on the field, then staggered off afterwards.

The first cool thing that happened was that I spotted Bob Harper, said hello, then tweeted a picture of him. 

More hanging around, until the head judge realized at the last minute that he didn't have enough people. He asked for volunteers, so I walked up. My job was simple:  

• Watch each team member row 1000 meters.
• Make sure they held on to the handle for the entire 1000m.
• Hit the reset button between athletes.

So I stood around and hit one button over and over. It turned out that the team I was judging set a worldwide competition record for that event, and a picture of them ended up on the crossfit.com main site... with me standing behind the rower, ready to press buttons. 

The head judge asked for volunteers again the next day, and this time someone handed me a JUDGE t-shirt as I was running onto the field for the final team competition. I pulled it on, but then the head judge realized he had enough people after all. I got to keep the shirt, but didn't have to judge; best of both worlds, because judging the final team event looked complicated and stressful, not to mention sunburny.

I noticed that the athlete's warm-up area was a total mess: water bottles and tape everywhere, dumbbells and plates scattered, not enough equipment... so I decided to tidy it up and keep it stocked. I set up the 345-pound barbell that all the individual men used to warm up for their final event, and all the athletes chalked up in the chalk buckets that I kept full. Each athlete selected the height they wanted for the rings, and at least one of them left some blood behind. I saw all the athletes up close; the men are really big and ripped, and most of the women are pretty small and ripped, except for their thighs, which are tremendous. This also put me in position to observe the athletes as they came off the field after each event, usually covered with sweat and dust.

I didn't know what volunteering would be like; the only part of my prediction that was spot-on is that my neck got sunburnt. 

To get involved in an event, volunteer. If you're not given specific tasks, you can still contribute, with this passive/active couplet: 

a) Cultivate passive availability: stand around where things are happening and be available.

b) Cultivate active service: look for ways to contribute, then jump in.

Also, 

c) A sunburn is a reasonable price to pay to be this close to champions.

dear recruiters

Dear recruiters,

I work at Twitter. It's the best job I've ever had. I love working with all of these incredibly smart and whimsical people. I love contributing to a site with millions of visitors. I'm working with all of the technologies I want to work with, and my co-workers created some of those technologies. The perks are delicious and the commute is just long enough to stretch my legs. I'm not interested in pursuing other opportunities. Thank you for your interest. 

-ben

back now

Whoops! I stopped paying attention to my online presence for a while -- other than twitter -- and this site fell off the internets. It's back. To all my fans, I apologize for my absence.

franzen does dfw

One thing I enjoyed in Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, was his use of David Foster Wallace-style intrafamily dialog. [spoiler alert] This scene, where Patty's father discourages her to involve the police in her rape, echoes the scene in Infinite Jest where Hal identifies his father as the "professional conversationalist", or the late night phone calls between Hal and Orin:  

"Coach Nagel says I should go to the police."

"Coach Nagel should stick to her dribbling," her dad said.

"Softball," Patty said. "It's softball season now."

"Unless you want to spend your entire senior year being publicly humiliated."

"Basketball is in the winter. Softball is in the spring, when the weather's warmer?"

"I'm asking you: is that really how you want to spend your senior year?"

"Coach Carver is basketball," Patty said. "Coach Nagel is softball. Are you getting this?"

Her dad started the engine. 

I enjoy this pattern, but not quite enough to justify reading the whole book. 

Another DFW-esque trick is the foreshadowing that never amounts to much, as in Freedom's opening sentence: 

The news about Walter Berglund wasn't picked up locally. [...] Walter had made quite a mess of his professional life out there in the nation's capital... [He is] in trouble now for conniving the with the coal industry and mistreating country people. 

When I read this, I was hoping that the rest of the book would emerge as the story of Walter's descent from environmentalist to corrupt crony, but Franzen pulls his punches. What could have been the climax of the plot, when precociously independent Joey calls his father for help in the middle of an arms-trading fiasco, is instead handled almost off-screen. The difference here is that DFW's foreshadowing -- of Hal and Don Gately digging up Incandenza père's head -- actually is the climax of multiple plots finally intertwining. Walter's scandal, however, sounds as a disappointing minor note in what could have been the unifying story line. Franzen could have used the scandal to show how all of this freedom led the main characters to betray their deepest beliefs, but he made it just another episode in a long novel that ultimately lacks a climax. 

migration to squarespace

I'm in the process of moving from jumpline.com and blogger to squarespace.com. Please let me know if you run into any broken links or mis-placed apostrophes. You know how I hate those.