Allophile

...on running and radishes...

First, check out this NY Times article, about an event 'in our backyard' today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/sports/18tucson.html?src=me

And here's the official website:

http://www.mountlemmonmarathon.com/

Crazy people, eh? I mean--TWENTY-SIX MILES UPHILL all the way!!!!!

Down at the base of the mountain, I did my weekend 7-mile run in Sabino Canyon...doesn't really seem like an 'accomplishment,' when thinking of the hundreds of people who ran UP the Santa Catalinas today...and it was indeed a picture perfect October day in Tucson...

...entirely unrelated, now...

I was washing some vegetables this evening, getting ready to pack some work-lunches for the upcoming week, and I'm chopping the leafy tops off some radishes, when, from the childhood recesses of my brain come the words--the name, really--"Roger Radish."

Huh?

Yes, Roger Radish. And Penelope Strawberry...

Behold:

This is the cover of a children's book--and I actually had this book--one in a series--when I was a little kid...

(More information about this British series of children's books from the 1970's:

http://www.easyontheeye.net/ladybird/70s/garden/793.htm)

...ahh, the wonder of Google image search...a thought comes to me in the kitchen, and I can run in the next room and type something on the computer--and instantly a childhood memory is no longer simply a cerebral approximation, but a reproduction on the computer screen.

I think I was 4 or 5 years old, living in Germany, the last time I saw that book...

Radishes ready;

plan to run more later...

(...view of the entrance to Bear Canyon, parallel to Sabino Canyon, well below Mt. Lemmon;

ran with the cellphone one afternoon last week...)