Started out strong, but hit a wall around mile 5 that pretty much lasted until the finish.  It was tough. Was averaging close to 8:15 miles before that, and slowed to almost 10:00 after.  Thankfully I’d built up enough of a buffer.

Here’s a good shot (not mine) that shows the wicked crown in the bridge.

I was happy to achieve my goal (barely… 1:59:15!) but actually running it wasn’t much fun.  It was definitely a struggle.  Shouldn’t have skipped out on the 10+ mile training runs!  Still, it’s cool to be a part of such a big race.  And San Francisco is a great place to run because of the sea-level elevation (aside from the hills) and cool weather (probably 55-60 during the race).

At they end they were serving Irish coffee.  Drinking Jameson before 8:00am and just after running 13 miles was probably not the smartest choice but hey I wanted everything I was entitled to!

I think I’ll focus on interval training next, which supposedly has more health benefits than distance running, and takes less time.  What’s the workout that will make me hit more home runs at softball?  That’s the workout I need.

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They don’t mess around — it was pretty much climb up, clip-in, and go.  Fun times.

Bryn was all-pro and even made this video:

But I was seriously crippled afterward.  The backs of my knees / upper calves were annihilated.  Either I was doing something wrong (a definite possibility) or they were a little tight from my earlier run.

Thanks Grace for organizing!

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Never seen that many drunk people that early in the morning.  BART was a freak show even at 6 am.  In the city, it was a party in the streets 7 miles long.

Here are the famous “painted ladies” off Alamo Square:

I’m not even sure that street was on the race course route.

I met up with the South Cove crew, and it was very cool to see those guys.  It had been 10+ years for some.  I think we represented the barrio well:

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But they already had enough people, so I didn’t get called.  No real-life 12 Angry Men for me.

Avoiding jury duty is apparently a big deal.  There are tons of websites offering advice on how to get out of jury duty.  Some even go so far as to call it a form of slavery, or rather, “involuntary servitude.”  I suppose that’s technically correct: it’s a service you’re required to perform, and you didn’t volunteer for it.  In fact, you can’t volunteer for jury duty, and it’s illegal to skip when you’re called.

Is it really that bad?  Having never served, I can’t really say.

“Getting out of jury duty is easy. The trick is to say you’re prejudiced against all races.” –Homer Simpson

The pamphlet I received with my summons says that jurors are selected randomly using lists from the DMV and voter registrations.  So, if you really don’t want to ever be called for jury duty, you have an out.  Don’t drive and don’t vote.

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Of course they chose me.

The plot details of my sketch are a little fuzzy.  Something about the secret ingredient to the kitchen’s salad dressing.  Either way, it involved a large woman seducing me (or vice versa?), a German alias (Herr Mochi), a robe and a fez, some top-shelf cocktails garnished with Froot Loops and gummi-worms, and me getting squirted in the face with water from this lady’s boob.

Unfortunately for me, the top-shelf alcy I poured turned out to be just colored water.  But as you can see, the woman was quite the looker:

Turns out I got off easy.  The next audience-members selected had to sing and dance in an Elimidate-style competition for her love!

I don’t really have a problem being in front of large groups, giving presentations or something like that, but just get nervous when I don’t have any say in what happens next.

In the end though, I’m glad I got chosen, so we got the full Zinzanni “experience.”  But I feel like you should get some free drinks or something since all the other audience members are laughing at your expense.  And afterward I was free to enjoy the rest of the show without risk of being on stage again.

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Busted! Well, partially.

There are real baby carrots!  Aren’t they cute?  You can find them in the grocery store next to the baby corn and mini-bananas.

But the part about baby carrots being created from larger carrots is also true.  And it turns out the “manufactured” baby carrots are far more popular, and their story is a great business lesson.

In the 1980s, California carrot farmer Mike Yurosek grew sick of throwing away thousands of pounds of un-sellable (bent, twisted, knobby, partially rotted) carrots.  This waste was common; Mike and other farmers would routinely scrap a third of their carrot crop or more.

Yurosek figured if he could salvage any part of these wasted carrots, it would all be gravy.  He cut the reject carrots into 2 inch pieces, peeled them, packed them in plastic bags, and branded them Bunny-Luv.

And the rest is history.  Today baby carrots are a $400 million business and outsell regular carrots 4 to 1.  Not bad for a little side project aimed at reducing waste!  What other “baby carrot” opportunities might we be sitting on right now?

Did You Know?

• Carrots are now grown specifically for the purpose of making them into baby carrots.  Farmers are actually breeding them to grow longer to increase their per-carrot yield.
• Baby carrots are somewhat less nutritious than regular carrots, because the skin and nearby surface lost in the manufacturing process are very nutrient-rich.
• Overall carrot consumption has increased 33-50% since the introduction of baby carrots.
• Bakersfield, CA is the carrot-capital of the US.

Source: http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk

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Taxes are basically the price we pay in exchange for government services, right?  If I go to the store and buy a $100 widget, perhaps it makes sense for me to pay a tax since I drove on a public road to get there, and didn’t get shot, presumably thanks to the public police department.  That $100 widget cost $110.  Fair enough.

But what if I bought the same $100 widget from a store in Nevada?  Now I’m not using any California public resources, and neither is the store.  FedEx is the one driving on the roads now, and they got paid from the Nevada store, and sent the required sales tax into the government.  That widget cost $100.  Shipping cost $10, but was included in the price.  FedEx sends $1 to the government.  Fair enough.

In the Nevada store example, the California government gets $1 instead of $10.  (If the customer is Ned Flanders, they might actually get $11, assuming he reports his out-of-state purchases.)  But the fact is that less government resources were consumed, so California should get less.  A single FedEx truck making 50 stops along a route is far more efficient than 50 cars each making one trip to their local store to buy a widget.

I’m not sold that out-of-state stores should be responsible for California taxes.  They don’t have employees driving on our roads or children in our schools.  They can’t vote in California elections, they have no say in how their tax money is spent.  Making them pay would essentially be free money for the state, they get the income from the business activity, but none of the expense.  Taxation without representation indeed.

What about the local widget store that was undercut by their Nevada online competitor?  Economists have a semi-heartless term for this, “creative destruction,” which is a typical ingredient for progress and it’s all well and good until you’re the one getting destroyed.   But in business, price is only one selling point.  Maybe this local widget store has been in business 100 years, has unsurpassed widget expertise, amazing marketing, unbeatable service, and a great atmosphere.  Those are sales points they can compete on, and probably better than any website.

So what’s the solution?  I think something will have to be done on a national level.  There are something like 65,000 different sales tax jurisdictions across the country, and it would be a compliance nightmare unless something was standardized nationally.  However I imagine the congressman that proposes a national sales tax would be voted out of town pretty quick, so that might not happen anytime soon.

In the meantime, state and local governments could consider lowering their sales tax rates.  I think a lot of people would like to “buy local” and talk to a real person, especially for high dollar items, but sales tax rates like Alameda county’s 9.75% are driving people online instead.  They’re already taxing our income and our property; how much is “fair?”

Alternatively, states could spend some money on enforcing the current “self-reporting honor system.”  It probably wouldn’t take much to start a word-of-mouth / social media campaign that they’re auditing people’s online orders and tax payments.  A scared taxpayer is a compliant taxpayer.

Or we could all just move to Oregon.

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Revenue

It is likely that some online stores will chose to comply with the new law and dutifully collect the sales tax.  What percentage of overall CA internet sales receipts will this represent?  Hard to say.

Expense

Many large online stores will stop advertising on California-based websites, severely diminishing the earnings of those websites.  This will dramatically reduce income tax receipts for California, and will also reduce state sales tax as the owners of those websites cut back on their spending.  Some will move out of the state entirely and take their entire tax check with them.

The California government will also incur the expense of enforcement.  How will they determine what online stores shipped how much of what to California residents?  There is definitely an audit and compliance cost here.

And then there’s always the legal fees.  The 1992 Supreme Court decision Quill v. North Dakota expressly states that it is unconstitutional for an out-of-state retailer to be responsible for collecting in-state sales tax.  The legislature would be foolish to assume Amazon, Overstock, and others, will simply ignore this fact and not challenge them in the courts.  Lawyers are expensive.

Impact on Californians

Should this bill pass, every Californian who shops online will be worse off.  Even though people are supposed to report their online untaxed purchases on their tax returns, few do.  To the vast majority of the population, it will be seen as a “new tax” — which in today’s political climate might as well be career suicide for lawmakers.

Businesses here that make a living selling advertising online to out-of-state retailers could be devastated when those retailers pull out of California.

Owners of local brick-and-mortar stores will be the first to cry “victory!” But it will be a short-lived celebration.  With the exception of a few big-ticket items, I don’t believe “sales-tax-avoidance” is the #1 reason people shop online.  Convenience, better selection, and lower prices all rank higher.  Does anyone really expect the mom-and-pop bookstores to see a sudden overnight boom in business if this passes?   I imagine they still might have difficulty competing with Amazon’s economies of scale that allow them to offer still lower prices, free shipping, and the biggest selection on the planet, and stay open 24 hrs a day.  And that’s assuming Amazon would collect the tax, which they’ve already said they won’t.

So in the end, no one is better off.

I think the moral of the story, for California lawmakers, is that sometimes the best action is inaction.  By not passing this bill, you almost certainly save money for your state, and make your constituents better off.  Now it’s no longer a business decision, but a no-brainer.  (Insert cheap shot here about how that’s perfect for politicians!)

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The photographer, realizing this would be the most boring photo shoot ever, asked me to find some shoes we could use in the picture.  I came back with a couple pairs of Bryn’s shoes and one of my size 13 runners.  “We can’t use that thing,” he said, “it would take up the whole frame!”  So Bryn’s more petite Nine West flats made a cameo.

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So clearly what they meant to say was “Due: April 10, 2010.”

What’s the point of having a deadline if it’s not enforced?

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