Gardner WebLog

“I mean, any bank that wants to remove toxic assets from its balance sheet can do it at a stroke - just declare them worthless, and poof! they’re gone. But of course, that would reduce confidence and capital, not increase it - and that’s not what Hank and Ben are talking about. They’re talking about turning the assets over to Uncle Sam, and getting cold hard cash in return. And then the question is how much cash they get in return. It’s all about the price. 

Now, if the price Treasury pays is very low - anything comparable to what financial institutions are able to sell the stuff for now - it’s going to do nothing for confidence and capital. If the price is high, confidence and capital will improve - but taxpayers may well take a big loss.”

The second piece is the trade-off — it really is a genuine bail out — there’s no sugar-coating it here — taxpayers will literally be buying up worthless investments so that banks can get rid of them, investors will like the banks more, give them money, which they’ll then lend out and the problem is solved.  The only bad part is that this all costs $700 billion (or over $2300 per US citizen).  Other people say that if the US were to borrow this money, it will increase inflation, which could arguably hurt consumers more.

If anybody has time and an ipod (and who doesn’t these days), download the “Planet Money” Podcast from NPR.  They are quick 25-30 minute episodes that offer good insight in plain terms –

A few months in advance of the endorsement-fueled craziness that is sure to be the 2008 Beijing Olympics, we should take a quick look at the steroids controversy from a West Los Angeles perspective.  The question at hand, given Marion Jones, Barry Bonds, and countless other undisclosed users of performance-enhancing substances, is this: what is the difference between doing a cycle of Winstrol (Rafael Palmeiro) and getting your nose redone (Ashley Simpson)?  Rephrased:  Why does Roger Clemens get a congressional subpoena for his alleged drug abuse, while aspiring starlets just get more close-ups in People Magazine?  They’re all celebrities, they just have different jobs.

The Motive Argument.

Athletes who use performance-enhancing substances (and there are WAY more of them than anybody knows) do so in order to increase performance — hit balls farther, run faster, and enjoy the accompanying financial and emotional payoffs.  I argue that the motive to tuck the tummy, trim the schnozz, or laser zap the back hair does the same for other celebs.

The Health Argument.

The potential side effects of performance enhancing drugs vary as widely as the dosages, varieties, and ‘flavors’ of the drugs themselves.  Few doctors, however, will say that bar-none, all performance-enhancing drugs are bad for you.  Similarly, the jury is still out on the long-term side effects of various plastic surgeries.  Let’s keep young actors from pursuing dangerous surgeries in response to a casting directors’ comment just as we slap suspensions on minor league athletes who take amphetamines before games to ‘make it.’

The Justice Argument.

I believe it ultimately comes down to cheating.  Whether you are a struggling actor or a Low-A 3rd baseman, you have the option to pursue artificial enhancements to your body that could improve your performance and make you a lot of money.  Access to these substances/procedures, however, requires money and connections that not all aspiring celebrities possess.

So look for me standing along the red carpet, waving a huge bag of silicone and holding a huge sign that says “Cheaters!”

Watching playoff baseball at 10pm, falling asleep in D.C. during the fall is comfortable, as Joe Buck’s voice lulls you into a pitching-change induced slumber.  In Los Angeles , the games start at 4:15, are over by dinnertime, and you still have time to catch primetime TV before bed.  Don’t know why or how this affects the circadian rhythms that set the pace of our lives, but it is a significant difference between the coasts.

At any rate, October is here, lazy three day weekends are gone, the summer is over, and it’s hotter than usual.  What this really means is…

the blog is back.

I think the last entry I made was a day before Sara got here.  The delay in another blog post was due primarily to such a crazy schedule of baseball, tourism, and plain old fun (or maybe a slight bit of laziness.)  Sara was here for about ten days and I think we did more than most people do in about a month’s worth of time.  I’ll briefly run through the week and touch on the best parts.

One of the best views of London besides the eye is from St. Pauls’s Cathedral.  You have to walk around 400 steps I think to the top (yes Nathan, I know it’s not Zhangjiajie National Forest and 3000 steps but it’s still hard.) Sara and I headed there on Friday afternoon to introduce her to the city top.  St. Paul’s is the second largest dome in the world next to St. Peters, and one of the most interesting things about it is what’s called the Whispering Galleries inside the dome.  The acoustics of the dome up above inside the church are so uniquely arranged that I went clear across and whispered something to which Sara heard perfectly.  It’s hard to explain, but it was cool.  After St. Paul’s we went home and had some great (missed dearly) Mexican food that mostly Sara cooked with my occasional halfway productive assistance. 

Saturday was gameday for the team I coach, and we won both of them.  Sara was our team manager and kept the bench in line and focused.  It always rains on Saturdays for the younger guys and never for the men’s team on Sundays.  It’s strange.  After a few rain delays we got the games in and had a successful day at Finsbury Park.  Sara and I hurried down to meet Marcel, my Swiss climbing buddy and his girlfriend for dinner.  They took us to a very modern type Thai restaurant around the Soho area, which turned out to be great food for great prices, score.  Instead of your average London West end musical or play, Sara and I went for the more lively show of Stomp.  It was a blast (haha) to watch them make rhythms with virtually anything from a construction site you could possibly think of.  My favorite was the beat using zippo lighters, in the dark, think about it.

On Sunday the men’s team had a game down in Brighton which is directly South of London right on the coast.  It was a perfect day for baseball, and it was also the first game we got to play in our new top notch Nike uniforms.  We took a team picture and if I ever figure out how to put pictures up on this blog, take a look.  We played well and ended up with two victories, while Sara was our team photographer the whole day, catching some great poses showing off our good looks.  Ben Moore, our catcher, was nice enough to drop Sara and I off down at the pier before taking off back to London.  We had a great time eating fish and chips and sitting on the beach.  After a short train ride back, we both went home and collapsed, long day.

On Monday I had a session out near Wembley stadium which is northwest of downtown London.  I had Sara come out and meet me after it was done so we could walk around Hampstead Heath, which is a great big park and easy to get lost in.  It definitely could be used in a horror film, with big droopy trees and winding paths into nowhere.  Our destination up there was Parliament Hill, which is supposedly the best view over the top of London (we thought it was.)  A little piece of history here…Guy Fawkes came here to watch what he thought was going to be Parliament blowing up.  You know, “Remember remember, the 5^th of November…” Thus comes the name, Parliament Hill.

 Tuesday we hit all the big tourist spots: Tower of London, Tower Bridge, changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, and a nice walk around Southwark along the River Thames.  Great day.

Wednesday was museum day: British museum and National Gallery.  Of course there was plenty to see and I think we did pretty well with getting most of it in before losing focus, not easy.  Since I don’t really cook at all, Sara was nice enough to cook a great big meal for everyone in the house.  It ended up being a few more than just who live here, but it was all good fun.  Everyone enjoyed home made falafel and we all went out afterwards.  Thank you Sara.  They are still talking about how much they liked the food. 

Thursday and Friday we didn’t do as much because I was up at the park running the London Mets baseball camp.  We had about 30-40 kids each day and it was a great success.  You can read about it at www.baseballsoftballuk.com. 

 Saturday was another game day, although by this I mean FOOTBALL.  It was the first ever Emirates Cup which is where the Fly Emirates Arsenal play.  Sara and I watched Valencia beat Inter Milan 2-0 and the Arsenal beat Paris 2-1.  The stadium was finished just last year and is amazing.  There isn’t a bad seat in the whole place.  Even though we spent all day failing to learn all of the chants and songs, Sara and I still felt like solid Arsenal fans. (I bought us both some Arsenal gear, we were very supportive.)

To cap the night off we ended up at the top of the Tate Modern for dinner looking right at St. Pauls and the rest of the City area (central London.)

I had two more games on Sunday against a lower division team, so they weren’t very close, but still fun.  Again, we got to show off the new uniforms to Sara and our “fans.”  For a conclusion of Sara’s visit we ventured down to the Angel area and found a great Sushi place called Yo Sushi, great name.  The way they serve the food is by a giant conveyer belt and you just pick up which ever food you want and they count your plates (color coded) at the end.  Interesting set up.

Thank you Sara for coming out and touring around with me.  Thanks for putting up with my sometimes not very good planning! That’s about it for the end of July and sorry it took so long to get it all out, I still have more to come on the way.  Until then…

Cheers,

 
Kyle

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to have a full day off.  I’ve been climbing with my Swiss buddy Marcel at the climbing gym for awhile now and he knew of a good place to go about an hour’s train ride away.  So off we went early in the morning to beat the crowd (I guess it’s not your average Joshua Tree trip where you can usually always find a place by yourself.) Now, the United Kingdom is famous for its world class limestone, or grit as most climbers call it.  It’s all over Europe, mostly up north where a lot of the good climbing is.  However, one of the best areas closest to London is down near a town called Tonbridge Wells, and all of the rock is sandstone.  Marcel and I went to a place in Eridge Green which is just near Tonbridge.  The train ride was great, a good break from the city.  We left the small station and walked about 20 minutes through English countryside.  It was mostly wheat fields, woods and grass, but we did walk through a few driveways that led to really old looking country homes, all completely brick.  I guess the climbers have an arrangement with the people that live there and they don’t mind if you just walk through their property. 

The actual climbing area was a bit more popular than I was expecting, but it was still a lot of fun.  The difference between climbing on this sandstone and climbing in J Tree is huge.  Think of a library or building similar built in the 60’s or 70’s.  You know that really coarse white texture that they sometimes use to cover the outside wall?  (I think we had it outside our house in Redlands too, back in the day, maybe it’s a west coast thing.)  Well that’s similar to J Tree rock.  Now think of a recently sanded piece of wood.  It’s dry but still very smooth.  That’s the sandstone we climbed on.   It obviously was easier on the hands but made positioning your feet a lot harder.  Anyway, we were there for the whole day and got our moneys worth out of the train ticket.  After hopping back on the train we passed out and woke up from the loud speakers telling us to leave because we were at London Bridge Station.  All in all it was a good day, although I’m still eager to get out and see and try out the famous grit. 

It’s been awhile since my last post, I’ve been a little busy the last few weeks.  Instead of writing a term paper length post, I’ve just broken it up.  Last week I went back to Washington D.C. to stand by my good buddy Troy at his wedding.  He’s been a friend since we were twelve, and I’ve known Natalie since high school.  I’ve never been a best man before, or been in a wedding party for that matter.  It was all new to me, so I was a little nervous heading back to the states.  I do have to say though, I think it all went as good as it could have gone.  Everyone showed up, things went right, and most everyone danced (always a plus.)

            Since most of you are probably wondering what I organized for the bachelor party, I’ll fill you in on minimal details.  In the morning we went out to Leesburg and went paintballing, most of us for the first time.  It was of course a lot of fun, men and their guns.  After lunch with Bryson, the minister in the wedding and a long term friend of Troy and I, we packed up the car and headed for Great Falls to go rock climbing.  The forecast was ten percent chance of thunderstorms mind you.  Adam and I had been arranging for a few weeks how we were going to get enough gear there for all of us (seven guys.)  We set it all up, two ropes, ready to go, about to rappel down to start climbing.  Crack, boom, rumble, rumble.  We decide to wait it out and about ten minutes later it’s pouring.  You can’t control the weather, god does what he will.  So we headed back early and got ready to go out.  We all went out to Adam’s Morgan, a fun place in D.C. and had a great time.  That’s it about the bachelor party. 

            The wedding day went great, as I said before.  The photographer took two thousand pictures, so I’m pretty sure it’s all well recorded and documented.  There were lots of people there I hadn’t seen in a long time, so it was nice to catch up.  Natalie looked amazing of course, and things just went smoothly.  If I do have to say though, the reception was a success for three reasons.  It was sunny, the food was really good (mashed potatoes), and Troy did the worm across the dance floor.  Case closed, good times.  Congratulations to Troy and Natalie and a fantastic time for everyone there.  I’m waiting for a visit now in California from Mr. and Mrs. Troy and Natalie Barnes, especially because I owe Troy and rock climbing adventure. 

Before I get to my next post, I just wanted to let you know where I’m writing these recent few.  I’m sitting in the café of the South Bank Centre overlooking the Thames.  It’s finally sunny after one of the wettest Junes in London history.  There is horrible flooding up north right now so we need as many dry and sunny days as we can get.  The South Bank Centre is a great place to come and get food, drinks, or just overlook the walkway which leads down to the London Eye and Westminster Bridge.  It also leads north and east all the way down as far as you want to go, beyond the Tower Bridge.  Sorry if that sounded like I was rubbing it in, but I thought it was relevant to the blog.

            This weekend, BSUK (baseball softball UK) hosted two big games at our field in Finsbury Park.  Johns Hopkins University came out to travel around the UK and play a few games.  Since they have a JV team in addition to the varsity team (unlike most D3 schools), they brought 36 players and their families, two bus loads in all.  JHU played a team up in Scotland made of all-stars from the Scottish men’s league.  I guess it wasn’t much of a game, JHU won pretty easily.  Well, I think that left an impression, because they showed up less than an hour before the doubleheader on Friday against the Great Britain National Team.  The GB team is a combination of all sorts of players from everywhere around the world.  As long as you have a British passport, you can play for the team.  GB won both games, by a few runs.  JHU lost to Keane in the last game of the regional finals this year.  Keane went on to win the D3 World Series Championship.  JHU was expected to win both GB games easily, I guess they didn’t show up mentally.  Either that or they spent too much time in the pub the night before, probably a little of both.

            There was a big barbecue afterwards, and I got to talking with some of the JHU guys.  It turns out one of them grew up in Burke, VA and went to Lake Braddock, my rival high school, small world.  In all four years playing east coast teams at Redlands during Spring Break, we never played JHU, so I didn’t know much about them.  They have quite a successful program now and should be pretty good next year.  I guess every three years they take both squads and travel outside the U.S. to play.  They’ve been to Russia and Cuba, not bad places to go with a team.

            Yesterday I played on the all-men’s league team against the GB team.  I pitched and threw four innings of no hit baseball, pretty good pitching actually, unlike my lucky games against the second division teams.  I got yanked after four for what reason I don’t know, but I know that GB was supposed to win the game. They weren’t happy while I was pitching, but rallied off the next two pitchers and won the game by a lot.  It was mostly just a game for the coaches of the GB team to evaluate some guys and pick who they want to take to the European Championship which is coming up I think.

            Well that’s all for now, there’s more to come. The battery on my computer is dying, so I’ll write another one back home.  Thanks for checking in on the updates.

Cheers.

One of the parts of my job out here is to travel around to different schools to teach baseball.  Although I do basically the same thing at each school, the kids are different and that always makes it interesting.  I start every session by asking them where they think I am from.  They all say America of course and then I ask what part.  About eighty percent of the time they all scream either New York, or Los Angeles.  I tell them that I came all the way from California just to teach them the game of baseball.  That usually grabs there attention.  We mostly just do throwing drills and then play a modified game.  There are two things that most of them have trouble remembering to do.  First, dropping the bat after they hit the ball.  I have to go over it time and time again because as soon as they hit the ball, all thirty kids are screaming a million different things and they usually can’t hear me.  The second is actually touching the bases.  Some kids will just hit the ball and run as fast as they possibly can in the general direction of each base. 

            Depending on the school and how the kids behave, managing a group of thirty isn’t always easy but I make it work.  I’m mostly around North London and close to where I’m staying.  Neil would have me go around to every school in the London area if he had enough time and money.  I’ve been to a few schools in rough parts of Hackney where the kids aren’t as well behaved or motivated to participate.  You have to learn how to keep everyone engaged and interested while making sure nobody punches somebody over who’s up next.  It’s fun and I like it, although sometimes it can be hard work.

            Most of the kids just have a blast and there are usually about four or five in each group that follow me out asking questions and telling me everything they know or have done having to do with baseball.  Last week, I heard a girl as she was walking back into the school say “Baseball is awesome!! America rules Kyle!!”  At a different school a boy chased me down before I left to tell me he wanted to be a baseball player when he grew up.  Fun times.  Although, I did have a ten year old girl ask me if I supported George Bush’s foreign policy.  It was rather intimidating, but I told her we could meet later for coffee to discuss American politics.  July looks to be the busiest month for me, because the schools close at the end of the month.  Neil wants me to get to as many schools before the kids get out.  I’m sure I’ll have some more interesting stories about the kids in a few weeks.

I waited a little to start talking about this subject, as to make sure my parents knew my intention over here was to see London, and not spend the whole time climbing.  But I do have to cover this topic a little, it does occupy some of my time.  About a mile away there is one of the largest climbing gyms in all of Europe.  Not only are there three floors of glorious man-made plastic geological rock features in this gym, but what covers it all is an enormous castle.  It used to be a water treatment facility that for some reason was designed as a castle.  I heard sometimes they let people climb up and rappel (the brits call it abseiling) off of one of the big towers.
 

I got a student membership that lasts for three months.  Unlike everything else in this city, this deal was much cheaper than anything you can find in the states.  The most difficult part about climbing out here is the different rating system.  For those of you who have not taken up climbing yet (its never too late), the U.S. uses a system called the Yosemite Decimal System.  It comprises of different “classes,” ranging from class 1 which is walking, to class 5 which is climbing with ropes.  Class 2 is basically steeper walking, class 3 and 4 are usually called scrambling, in which you look for hand holds and foot holds.  Then, the classes get broken down once you reach class 5.  Easier climbs are around 5.4-5.7.  When you get to 5.10, we start to add in letters.  So, the difference between a 5.8 and a 5.9, is the same between a 5.10a and a 5.10b.  The reason for this came with the evolution of climbing difficulty.  No one wanted to say “I was the first person to climb a 5.11,” when the hardest rating at that time was a 5.10, so they said, I’ll call it a 5.10a.  Now, people are climbing routes as hard as 5.15a, which involves some form of superpowers.  I have not found the source of these superpowers, but my search is still on.  So, after all the explanation, I get to tell you they use a completely different rating system for routes here in the UK.  

 
As far as the UK system, I don’t know how it started, I just know it starts at 4a and goes until about 7c or so.  Here, they only use a, b, and c, whereas the YDS uses a-d.  It took me awhile to figure out what I was able to climb and what I couldn’t.  I hope I haven’t lost everyone here, I just had to clarify.  The way you climb by yourself is called bouldering.  It involves more physically demanding, powerful and shorter climbing techniques, and rarely goes above 10-15 feet or so.  Below are thick pads, so it’s soft if you fall.  In trying to climb a certain route, its often very hard to figure out where and how to position yourself while climbing, like solving some sort of a problem.  In fact, that’s what they call bouldering routes, problems.  Last week I was working on a certain problem, and ended up figuring it out with the help of a Swiss guy named Marcel.  After that we chatted for a little, thus building up enough of a relationship to become climbing partners.  He is almost done with school here in London, working on his dissertation.  So now we try to meet together as much as we can, in order to climb higher and use ropes, which is a different kind of fun than bouldering.  We climb at about the same difficulty, so everything works out.  I often go just before practice, because the gym is halfway between where I stay and Finsbury Park. 

 
For those of you who didn’t know much about climbing, I hope now you know enough and are interested enough to go try it, which you should, it’s a lot of fun and never too late.  I’m hoping to find some good outdoor places outside of London, but I’ll let you all know about that when it happens. 

Cheers,

 
Kyle      

So said one of the teachers that brought about 25 kids to Finsbury Park (our home field) to learn about the game of BASEBALL, she was pretty old.  Thursday was my first all day session, in which I ran four basic clinics, an hour each, and taught ten and eleven year olds the simple rules of baseball.  We started with basic throwing, no gloves (we used the softer balls that t-ballers use) which the kids loved…baseballs were everywhere and all over the park, fun.  Then we threw in the glove, of course every kid put it on their throwing hand to start off.  For some reason when you introduce a glove into the equation, the kids forget to still try and use two hands.  With no glove they caught it fine, two hands, no problem.  Once the glove goes on, it’s more of a swing at the ball then anything, amusing.  With some pointers I got them all catching and throwing, and having a blast.  Neil gave me some advice on how to run the session and the most crucial thing he told me was to hide the bats until its time to hit.  Every time I brought the bats out there were just stares and oohs and ahs.  The last part of the session was just hitting balls off the tee, and then everyone got to hit on the field once.  Some kids did really well for not ever playing before.

            Before each session I would ask them all what they knew about baseball.  “It’s like rounders!” or “Its like cricket, but not!”  and then one misled and ignorant child remarked “It’s not as fun as football!”  I would run through the basic rules, they all could get the general understanding of the game, and everyone had fun, so I was happy.  There was a little girl though in the second session that asked another coach that helped me if the glove was leather.  He told her yes, and she immediately dropped it and stepped away as if it had just turned into a snake.  “I’m a vegetarian I can’t touch leather,” she says.  Quick thinking by Daniel, the other coach, “this one is leather, but all the other ones are plastic, handing her a new glove and covering up the “Rawlings Rawhide” label.  It was funny, the entire game of baseball is based around leather. 

            I ran practices for the club all week and they went well.  I met the team I will be coaching which is the Pony level team (under 16’s).  I was supposed to go with them to Plymouth on Saturday, which is about 4 hours away on a train, way towards the southwestern tip of England.  Some of the other parent coaches backed out this weekend however, and I had to coach a different team.  Every Mets team won this weekend, which was good (Broncos, Ponys, Men’s.)  We played the worst team in the league today, beating them twice and sending them to a 0-10 record.  I threw a no-hitter, with 13 strikeouts, they were bad.

            Last week I didn’t talk much about the older guys on my team.  One of them, Jason Holowaty, works for the MLB out here traveling all around Europe, and even into Africa.  His father is the ABCA Hall of Famer head baseball coach at Eastern Connecticut.  He’s been there almost 40 years and is one of the most successful baseball coaches in NCAA baseball.  They always are in the World Series, and have a great program.  They also always come out to play us every year, and usually lose to us, go Bulldogs.  Josh Chetwynd, the guy who emailed me first in March, is the channel 5 baseball analyst for London.  There were kids at the game last week who obviously watch any baseball news in London, because they all asked Josh for his autograph.  He’s also written two books on the emergence of baseball in Europe, and then just Great Britain specifically.  Josh and Jason are older, but are still pretty good and truly love the game of baseball, it’s great.

            On a tourist’s note, I did make it to Westminster Abbey which was of course very interesting.  I stayed for awhile and looked at all the famous chapels and tombs.  When I came around to the Coronation Chair though, I noticed there was a small dinosaur standing right underneath the seat.  I stood there and laughed a little, then checked to see if anyone else had seen it.  Every person that walked by stopped to look at the chair and then asked the person they were with if the dinosaur was supposed to be there, it was really odd.  Then I see two parents with a child come around the corner with one of the red-robed guides.  “Your toy is sitting on the Coronation Chair!” the guide said.  I guess he found it and stuck it up there.  He took it down and gave it to the child, who then looked at his new Royal Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Funny. 

            For the most part, I haven’t had a whole lot of problems with the usual English weather, it seems that I’ve brought a little California with me.  It’s been great with a lot of nice sunny days.  I’m still getting used to the sun coming up around four and going down around ten.  I’m starting to make friends at one of the kebab places down the street, they are so incredibly delicious.  There’s a lot more to talk about, but I’ll save it for another post.  I hope all is well back there, and will talk to you soon.

Cheers,

Kyle