A retired orthopedic surgeon whom I feel I know fairly well (Dad) suggested to me that I strained my femoral neck by over training. Incessant pounding down long stretches of the Wasatch Mountain trails, quite technically, put too much weight-bearing forces from the trunk of the body on the femoral neck, causing the blood supply to the femoral head to be disrupted, which creates avascular necrosis of the femoral head.⁶

Needless to say, getting avascular necrosis on my femoral head does not feel as awesome as it sounds. But I do remember the culprint run: I ran from the Bountiful Temple, ran through famed North Salt Lake, UT by the Eaglewood Golf Course, all of which starts at 5,200 feet above sea level, and ran up over the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, and then down the mountain side 4 miles down past the Utah State Capitol and down to the backside of the LDS Conference Center. I then turned and ran back uphill,  up the mountain to 11th Avenue in the The Avenues neighborhood, east to the backside of the University of Utah campus, and then down another 5 miles — both Category-5 hills. I finished up heading down the Salt Lake City streets, winding down to Liberty Park and then back up to South Temple and over towards Temple Square. All in all, in was 20.38 miles of what seemed like uphill or downhill running. I took a beating, and I remember thinking my legs were going to fall off, but I persisted anyway and finished the run, feeling pretty good about myself but sensing I really beat the hell out of myself. I mean, who needs legs?

Later that week I did two more, more moderate 10-mile runs. At the end of that second 10 miler following my Death Run, I could feel something was wrong. I couldn’t run without a significant limp, which not only hurts but looks entertaining. Ever since, I’ve been a couch potato, gaining weight and bemoaning my fate.

The moral to this story? I wish my femoral neck would quit being a wuss and heal already. I am going stir crazy in the house!

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Butternut squash, I think you're classless!

BYU Quarterback Max Hall hates Utah. I, in a similar fashion, hate butternut squash. He and I share a distaste for something, and we’re not afraid to share it!

But what’s in a name? Or an epithet for that matter?  That which we call hate by any other name would…probably be no big deal. Taken a step further, hate in one context is not nearly as hateful as in an another. You can hate broccoli, the DMV and herpes, and you’ll have a lot of people agreeing with you; and those who don’t will not even take notice, must less take offense (however, you’ll clearly notice the people who like herpes, because they’re just plain nasty).

Mention you hate a person, like Taylor Swift because we all know Beyoncé’s the one who actually made the greatest video of all time, and people will tell you to settle down, but will still not fuss too much.

But, tell people you hate Jews, Muslims, Mormons or the Irish, and not only will people be grossly offended, you will quickly lose a lot of friends and acquaintances and will likely end up on a police watch list. That’s the kind of hater everyone loves to hate.

So where does Max Hall’s hate for the University of Utah rank?

Given how he said it and when he said it, it’s probably up there with my 7-year old’s hatred for broccoli. Or your hatred for being rear ended in your car. It’s the kind of hate you can actually agree with, or if you don’t agree you don’t care enough to voice disagreement (you have to admit, though, that getting rear ended sucks).

Every Utah fan who heard Max Hall’s post-game comments secretly thought, “No kidding you hate Utah. I’m still sporting my ‘Honk If You Intercepted Max Hall’ bumper sticker!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!” And you’re laughing all the way to house to watch your 2008 Sugar Bowl season-in-review DVD…again.

So, I’d recommend we don’t inflame the soundbite by describing it as a “spew of hatred” as Lee Benson did in the Deseret Morning News or saying it was “thunder” like Gordon Monson did in the Salt Lake Tribune. Breaking news: Max Hall hates Utah. Later on tonight’s newscast: Recent studies show that getting worms sucks. Back after this break!

But wait, what is this? Was this not the first spew of hatred in a college football rivalry? See below!

Breaking News: Morgan Scalley hates BYU right back. I remember watching Morgan Scalley say he hated those BYU pricks in this pre-game speech prior to the 2004 BYU-Utah game that was televised on ESPN.  I thought, “Of course you hate BYU. When they go undefeated, they get a national championship. When you go undefeated, you get…Pitt, and are expressly denied the opportunity to play for a national championship. OK, back to my ’84 DVD!”

So here me now: I hate butternut squash, but will not issue a press-release apology for it!

...he's a man's man

But running hard routes along leisurely city boulevards, even for long distances and up and down hills, doesn’t prepare you for all things running, particularly the Ultimate XC. I had been looking for a hard trail run, and signed up for the Ultimate XC via Active.com somewhat on a whim, since I had been training for the North Face Endurance Challenge Series in San Francisco, CA. which I later learned had sold out well before I got a chance to sign up. So, upon getting my routine email from Active.com, which contains links to all races & events within a certain radius of my domicile, I compulsively followed the link and signed up, looking forward to a hard trail run through the red rock country of Moab.

Let me qualify the word “trail” by saying I anticipated an actual trail – you know, a path that while not paved, was an actual trail on which other humans had treaded. I did not expect that the Ultimate XC would treat me to the full Bear Grylls experience, marking their 10-mile route up and down red rock cliffs, along canyon rims, and through flash-flood river beds still flushed with water from the recent rains.

The race began at the entrance of Pritchett Canyon, which is just south of Moab about a mile or so down Kane Creek Road. Right out of the gate, the race quickly left the trail for a winding run right up red rock ledges which at certain points you had to literally stop running and had to resort to climbing. Not only is this not a jog down your average Elm Street, but it’s a run akin to military training where you are literally scaling large rocks and cliffs at a runner’s pace, launching yourself forward almost as if you’re on a stair master. I read in the pre-race material that if you normally run a 10-mile race at 1:20, you should plan on 50-60% more time. Now I know why.

The running route is literally teetering on the edge of Hunter Canyon. Spectacular!

After scaling what felt like hundreds of feet in elevation and feeling like my lungs had just rolled back down the mountainside, you come to sandy desert which you run through, making you feel like you were running in place for a good 2 miles. After the running-on-the-beach feel, you’re back to scaling red rock cliffs for several miles, until you come to the rim of Hunter Canyon.

Hunter Canyon is a full Grand Canyon-esque canyon similar to the chains of red rock canyons you find in the neighboring Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah. The difference here you have no guardrail protecting you from death and no park rangers patrolling nearby. You are literally running along the edge, being treated to spectacular, rarely seen views and feeling shocked that this is the actual, marked running trail.

Pretty soon, the race course begins to wind downward – literally down the canyon walls – forcing you to once again stop running and start rappelling downward, although you’re without the Bear expertise or the rocks and branches, for that matter. You resort to all fours in order to follow the bighorn sheep path down the canyon to the river bottom. Upon reaching the river bottom, you find it has an actual river, which the race organizers have conviently marked with big, orange ribbons, letting you know that yes, this is the actual route you’re supposed to run and it’s not a mistake…right through the water and right through the high brush and trees that line the river banks. At this point, I am in full Bear Grylls mode, sloshing though the river, at some points up to my knees, and cutting through thick brush with my hands that forces me to literally stop running and begin fighting my way through the thicket.

Orange ribbons marked the race route. Convenient!

Despite the orange ribbons that marked course, I am questioning whether I am really on the race course or lost, since who in their right minds would put the race course right through the water? My feet now weigh 30 pounds with all the sand and water I’ve absorbed, the sand is cheese grating my feet, and the dry land that is available to run on is ankle-breaking rocky or not dry at all but extremely muddy. But I keep plowing along, wondering when this Man vs. Wild excursion will end and wondering if I’m in first place or last place.

Finally, I am up and out of the river bottom, utterly exhausted at this point even though 10 miles is not my max distance. But the diversity of the terrain and the extreme nature of the elevations and declines have made me feel like I am on the back-half of 26.2. But I continue, gradually recovering as my now shuffle-like pace lets me gather what’s left in the tank, and soon I am back to a regular pace on what is now an actual dirt road. Thank goodness for potholes, which are now the biggest obstacles!

Upon finishing – over 2 hours into the race – I learn I haven’t done too bad! I placed Third in my age group, which is medal worthy, and 5th overall. I feeling so good about my performance that I am wondering how much longer will it be until I have my own TV show! No balloon boys required here; just hard-core endurance running.

If Andrew is the Fresh Prince, does that make me a Fresh King or just a parent that doesn’t understand?

The Infamous Cisco IP Conference Station: Truly A Virtual Reality

All day at work I used to be on conference calls. Sometimes, conference calls color my Outlook blue from 7 AM to 6 PM, putting my business day in a strange virtual reality of voices, radio personalities and other characters that are sitting anywhere from Houston to L.A. to Seattle, but none of which I can see, smell or appreciate. In reality, a good part of my interpersonal interaction with people is distilled down to just this…no gleaming, smiling faces, no body language. Just voices. Voices in your head.

The Famed CNBC Decabox

What I wouldn’t give for at least an Decabox, like what CNBC liberally deploys to debate the latest bankruptcy. Look at what sight of beauty that is the Decabox! That’s 10 talking heads simutaneously debating why AIG’s collaspe is pure evidence of arrmaggedon. Can you imagine this on say, a full-year revenue forecast call? That’d be heaven on earth.

I love Jon Stewart’s rant on the Decabox, and the absurdity it is to need 10 experts to debate what 8 apparently could not.

President Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have all referred to this crisis as a ‘crisis of confidence’ at one point or another. They are right. But the confidence that is in crisis is not what you think. It’s not confidence in the U.S. Economy or in American ingenuity. It is deeper and more foreboding than that. This is a crisis of man’s confidence in man.

Man’s Confidence Man

In the late 1800s, there was a large plaque that sat in the original Dun & Bradstreet headquarters on 99 Church Street in Manhattan, which since has been forged into several duplicate statues that are now found in offices and banks around the country.  The plaque was commissioned during a time in which the extension of credit was a great innovation, not to mention a novel concept, that helped fuel the United States’ westward expansion. The plaque was adorned with the image of two men, a farmer and a laborer, holding hands in a display of confidence in the oaths they had just made to repay the debts they just incurred to strike out on the American Dream. Engraved on the plaque was a quote from a speech given by then-Massachusetts Senator and later U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster in 1834:

Credit. Man’s Confidence in Man. Commercial credit is the creation of modern times and belongs in its highest perfection only to the most enlightened and best governed nations. Credit is the vital air of the system of modern commerce. It has done more — a thousand times more — to enrich nations than all the mines of the world.

How true it is. The ability of a person to gain access to capital that he or she can employ – merely with the promise to repay and irrespective of whether one was from an aristocratic or common laborer class – is one of the defining characteristics of the land of opportunity. However, if a nation begins to dishonor this obligation and behaves in less-than-enlightened ways, and consequently ceases to be one of the “best governed nations” as noted by Webster, the foundation upon which prosperity is built erodes.

The tragic story being written before our eyes – this crisis of confidence – is about the erosion of trust, and lately new chapters are being added. The downfall of Bear Stearns, the Fed’s intervention into the mortgage mess, and the volatile price of oil are all tales that tell how the trust that underlies the system is eroding. Future chapters will chronicle the results that these cracks have in foundations of institutions, just like these cracks brought down household names like Washington Mutual (click here for details on WaMu’s crumbling foundations) and AIG (click here for details on AIG’s struggle to stay liquid).

However, the moral of the story is that trust is being lost because the fix is in on Wall Street. Speculators, short sellers, back-alley deals, ill-conceived compensation plans and ‘irrational exuberance’ have thrown risk management out the window and turned the backbone of our modern economy – credit and its underlying trust – into a game of chance. People and institutions have made bets they could not cover, and now vows, covenants and promissory notes are not being honored. In an environment like this, the house wins for a while, but once the hot action cools all that’s left is a house of cards.

Financial Murder and Compulsive Gambling

Take the fall of Bear Stearns. Bryan Burroughs, in the August 2008 Vanity Fair, profiled what had been widely speculated and what many take as Gospel: that Bear Stearns didn’t just fail, it was murdered. Murdered by short sellers seeking to profit from rumor-fueled speculation that it was approaching illiquidity. In a market built on reputation, trust and the ability to cover ones debts, speculation of this kind can kill even the most storied firms. The lifeblood of investment banking is its ability to tap funding to fuel investment activity, and when that dries up due to a lack of confidence in the firm’s ability to meet its obligations, investment banks die.

If the fall of Bear Stearns is evidence item A that the fix is in, take the Fed’s takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as evidence item B. Fannie and Freddie’s indulgence in subprime mortgages – the riskiest of all – showed a willful disregard for the required principles of confidence and trust. These mortgages – sold to consumers with tenuous financial profiles – were later baked into so many exotic financial products sold into the far reaches of the system that soon nobody could tell the difference between a well-backed financial product from a highly risky one, undermining the market’s ability to make decisions based on sound information and known exposure to risk. As a result, the financial system’s perceived abilities to honor its obligations weakened dramatically, and eventually the whole system froze.

In hindsight, we all know the mortgage industry gambled with a fervor usually seen only on the floor of the Golden Nugget rather than in the lobbies of fine institutions like Washington Mutual. But Washington Mutual, dime-a-dozen strip mall mortgage brokers, and other organizations continued selling these mortgages on premises that were unsustainable, depending on perpetually increasing home values in markets where inventories clearly outpaced actual people who needed housing. The fundamentals didn’t support the mortgage bubble, and so it burst, leaving the greedy in a hangover from which they, and consequently we, have yet to recover. See MSNBC’s take on the Mortgage Mess, and CNBC’s great documentary House of Cards for more.

Financial Manipulation, Drainage and Milkshakes

Many believe the same type of trickery is happening to the skyrocketing and plummeting price of oil. Is the price driven by supply and demand? Some say no, and suggest that someone is counting cards and playing the system in order to create a profit. Conspiracy theorists actually have agreement from a number of credible, influential industry insiders on the idea that fluctuating oil prices are largely due to speculators taking advantage of and amplifying volatile market conditions at a time when the market is already prone to swings. This kind of opportunity is a prime target for speculators, and these quick ups and downs are just the kind of fast action they like. When the price of gas skyrockets on a holiday weekend, like it did on July 3^rd, 2008, people pontificate about supply and demand. When it drops again two weekends later, people wax on about how Americans cut back and discuss the incredible effect growth in China and India has on oil prices. Did 100 million cars hit the road in China and India just ahead of the U.S. Independence Day holiday, and then come off the road two weekends later? Of course not. That’s Dr. Seuss silly.

The price of oil is not following the more correlated trends of supply & demand, but in fact it defies them with regularity. Look how prices over the course of the summer of 2008. They dramatically spiked in the months of July and August – which are supposedly heavy drive times according to the AAA. Then, prices fell again on September 15th, after a Hurricane Ike slammed into the Gulf Coast, which in theory should raise oil prices (prices fell below $100 a barrel!). Many say that these price fluctuations have less to do with the true ebbs & flows of supply and demand and more to do with the various participants in the world’s financial markets who are looking to profit in the short term on these ups and downs. Whether that’s verifiably true or not, what is agreed-to fact is that people are no longer sure one can trust the markets to appropriately value an asset. CNBC, in their daily coverage of the markets, has gone as far as to display what they call the ‘fair value’ of a stock or commodity future, next to which they list where the value of the stock or commodity is trending. It’s a key to tell you whether the market is right or perhaps pulling a fast one.

Thankfully, the oil speculation issue has grabbed the attention of regulators. Robert McCullough, head of the cleverly named McCullough Research, issued a press release of their own saying they are scheduled to speak to members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources this month. Said McCullough in this press release, “The resemblance of the July 3, 2008 oil price spike to Enron’s market manipulation during the California energy crisis in 2000-2001 is eerie. Even more troubling is that data gathered by FERC, the FTC, the CFTC, and the EIA is too insufficient to determine whether the price of oil was manipulated.” A market without transparency is one you can’t fully trust, and as a result of all this, the Senate and others are jumping in to put a microscope to large energy speculators and how they trade. Perhaps change will come about as a result.

No matter what we do, we know one thing – man’s confidence in man has been shaken, and it is yet to be seen if we can fully recover. In our economic world, too many people are playing the part of Daniel Plainview, the greed-driven oil speculator in the movie There Will Be Blood, the 2007 period piece based on Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil! In the movie’s famous last scene, Daniel Plainview exacts revenge on Eli Sunday, the minister boy who is the bane of Plainview’s life for forcing what he views as artificial piety. Before bludgeoning Eli to death with a bowling pin, Daniel explains to Eli just exactly how he outfoxed Eli with a behind-the-scene deal to gain access to the Sunday Family’s land, which he then drained dry of precious oil. Said Plainview:

DRAINAGE! Drainage, Eli, you boy! Drained dry, I’m so sorry. Here…if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw, there it is, that’s the straw; see, watch it! My straw reaches across the room and starts to drink your milkshake: I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE! I drink it up!

Stolen right out from under him. Someone’s been drinking our milkshake. Now that we have been once bitten, we will be twice shy in investing, lending, borrowing, and repaying? Has our confidence in the markets, in transparency and in oversight all but been shaken? Time will tell. One thing we know for sure: The most enlightened and best governed nations depend on the recovery of man’s confidence in man.