a grand day out

Yesterday (October 21) was the birthday equivalent of the USS Constitution. For some reason, its commemorative jaunt to Castle Island and back (propelled by a tug boat, not by sails) was Friday the 20th. I hope there were lots of people at Castle Island, because where I was standing at the end of Battery Wharf (next to the Coast Guard station, and basically where the colonial era shipyard was) there were only a couple of dozen. I suspect it was the best viewing spot - one could see them (Old Ironsides, the tug boats, the police boats, the Massport and Boston fireboats, spouting all the way) approach, pause to fire 17 times (the significance is lost on me) and then head into the Charlestown Navy yard, back home. There were hardly any people by the water at the CG station, but maybe everybody else was off guarding the coast. Most of the cannon had red plugs, like a modern toy or otherwise out of commission firearm, but one on each side fired. A physics lesson. Even from a couple of hundred yards, the puff of powder was visible before the boom. I only once heard a human voice say (yell?) "Fire," but I'm sure it happened every time.
After that, being in the neighborhood, I went by Old North to drop off something for the ringers, since I had to miss yesterday's practice, and then went into the print shop to talk about the Boston Gazette and its slave ads. The printers (Gary wasn't there) were knowledgeable and helpful. One of them suggested that I buy a book of facsimiles of colonial newspapers, but I don't really need another weighty tome in the house. Apparently more and more information is becoming available about the publishers and their slavery connections. I will try to remember to check back in a few months. The on to errands and the journey home. Altogether pleasant.

If you can run, you can run

There is an anti-homophobia in sports project with the motto "If you can play, you can play."
http://www.youcanplayproject.org/
I thought of that (with the subject line twist above) in conjunction with the Runners World race time predictor.
https://www.runnersworld.com/tools/race-time-predictor
The questions one has to answer are times for other races, and how many miles a week of training. The questions that are not asked are sex or age, even though both of them are usually collected for race data. On average, women's marathon times are proportionally closer to men's than say 5k times (at the speedy end), but I guess the point of the not asking is that if you're in good enough shape to run (whatever distance at whatever speed), you're good enough to run whatever other distance. After that, training volume seems to matter most (the more the better is too simplistic, because the more miles you run, the higher your likelihood of tripping on a pothole or something, plus repetitive stress possibilities). Kind of obvious, but also nice to know.