Longest Bike Ride

Miles Run:122.9

Miles Biked:129.09

Miles Hiked:8.70
Total Miles:260.69
Stadium Stairs Run*:2244
Steep Steps Run*:1340
Days to Rainier:104
Summit Team:7
Aspirin Tablets:42

My week has been fun. My work, which is in a secret location, has been very varied and allowed me to share a little bit of the Gospel with my not-yet-Christian friends. I even got to build a library system for a pastor with a 1,600 volume library. Hopefully in two weeks his entire library will be digitized.

I even went on my longest bike ride yet from my house in West Seattle to the new Shoreline Campus of Mars Hill (25.7 miles). The first event at Shoreline's new home was a lecture/sermon by Sam Storms in the topic of spiritual warfare. The talk was awesome (check it out at http://bit.ly/fame6u). Their facility is amazing. It seats 357 people with additional overflow rooms. Their children's space is huge with plenty of space to grow. Donald bought me teriyaki; that was soo kind and soo amazing, I was blown away by his generosity. Charlie and Lacey gave me a ride all the way back to West Seattle. Then I hade the highlight of my entire day! The back door was wide open at 10:30PM. I got to do a room by room clearing drill! So much fun.

The downside of the week is that my summit team is in decline. I lost my guide, who has been to the top; he is no longer able to lead us up Mt. Rainier. So unless I can find a new leader, our team has no first-hand knowledge of what lies above Camp Muir. I know only 40% of the route. I cannot lead this team in good conscience up to the top. So if no leader emerges, I will have to call off this adventure again. That means a fourth failed season.

I am considering soloing Rainier. I cannot endanger my team. But I am in the best shape of my life and I will be more-than ready for a summit. I know a secret campground at Camp Muir which will enable me to avoid the Ranger checkpoint. I can then cross Cathedral Gap onto the razer ice field on Ingram Glacier. After traversing the steep field, I can scramble up Disappointment Cleaver to the longest 2 miles of my life as I work up to the Caldera. Then circle to the true summit.

I can do this alone. But if anything goes wrong, if I slip, if I get disoriented, if the volcano produces nasty lenticular clouds or storms I might not come back because there will be no one to help me.

I can't invite someone else to join me on this journey. I can't ensure their safety.

Oh and Easter is only two weeks away! 20,000 people will come to Qwest Field on April 24th 500 will be baptized, the biggest church service in the history of the Pacific Northwest! Come. It will be amazing!

Page-Rank and Page

Miles Run:122.9

Miles Biked:103.39

Miles Hiked:8.70
Total Miles:234.99
Stadium Stairs Run*:2244
Steep Steps Run*:1340
Days to Rainier:104
Summit Team:8
Aspirin Tablets:42

I'm over my sickness, feeling better.

I have started reading The Google Story by Vise and Malseed about the first six years of Google Inc. The company was begun by two Stanford grad students who sought to create a better way to gather information from the seemingly endless Internet. Their system used popularity as expressed by total number of links made to a given website and also a ranking of the importance of a website determined by the total number of links made to that website. Existing search engines were good at collecting keyword associations and reporting them to users. Google's usefulness came from it automatic ability to place the most relevant search results at the top of what is reported to a user. Now what is required to properly rank every single website on the entire World Wide Web? Two things, continuous automatic web crawling of every website on the internet and multiple complete backups of the entire Internet. The Entire Internet!

Google maintains these records.

So Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Google Founders, focused single-mindedly on creating this search engine and refining it. They brew through tens of millions of venture capital dollars with minimal focus on monetizing their amazing technology. Their first step to make Google profitable was to license their search to other big Internet companies. They had marginal success, but then the world of advertising opened to Google's consciousness. Their simple text only target ads that directly relate to the search results reported to the searcher. This shift in focus and specific verifiable ads allowed advertisers to spend money to garner attention to a product/service that lead to sales and also made Google madly profitable.

Soon afterward, Larry and Sergey became billionaires and shifted Google from a privately held company to the biggest IPO in Silicon Valley's history. That's as far as I gotten. It's a good read, check it out.

Last night I went on a little hike on a dark and rainy night...and 9 other people came with me. So what does that say about them...Or me? It was cold and everyone got soaked, but they seemed to have fun which was the whole point. I got another 4 bricks up to Tiger Mt. It was really fun.