My best race in high school was the half-mile and as a freshman, my fastest time was 2:08. I ran the mile also and my best time was 5:35. I stopped competing after my freshman year and stopped regular running. I remember waking up early on my 18th birthday, having not run for a long time, and just jumping out of bed and running out the door for as long and far as I could. I’m not sure how long that was, but likely under four miles. I felt like three miles was my limit for races. My fastest 3-mile race was 20:20 and my only 4-mile race was around 35 minutes.
Today was a beautiful day – sunny, windy, and chilly. I thought I’d try to run faster than my last 3 mile run. However, when my first mile came in at 8:20, I began to feel a different universe. I remembered that last run I was able to run longer than 3 miles. It was feeling like today was going to be about extending my distance rather than decreasing my time. I tried a different trail and ran far into the woods so that I knew it would take me at least 4 miles total to get back to where I started. I was definitely running a slower pace. I imagined this was because I was weighted down by the extra clothes I was wearing to keep warm. I checked my 4.33 mi time and it was 13 minutes slower (at 42:18) than my 3.33 mi time last run. My time for 4.67 miles was 44:25 (9.29/mi pace). So by my Apple watch tracking, I ran the last third of a mile in 2:08, the same time as my best half mile. I did have more energy at the end of my run but I find it difficult to believe I ran at a 6:24/mi pace, so I question either the Apple watch or my memory. I do believe though that there is a universe where both my memory and Apple watch were working and I DID run at 6:24/mi pace. So my next challenge will be to return to (or find) a universe where I can run at a 6:24/mi pace for at least one third of a mile.
A couple of days ago I gave away my couch to Goodwill. I also donated my bed frame. I wasn’t completely sure how I was going to fit my couch in my RAV4, but I knew I needed to take it apart. There were a couple of metal bars connecting two recliner chairs. As I measured the width of the chairs at 43″, I realized that my RAV4 was barely too small. There was only about 1′ of 43″ width in the back and I needed 2′ of 43″ width. I pondered putting the couch on the roof of the RAV4. While all of this was going on, I saw a neighbor and asked if he could help me load my couch pieces. When he realized that my RAV4 was too small, he offered his larger SUV. The chair did barely fit into his Honda Passport. We then went down to the women’s shelter and found out they didn’t take furniture. We then went to Goodwill, dropped off the chair, and went back home to get the other chair. When we returned to the Goodwill, the guy at the loading doc told us someone had already come and taken the chair! For some reason, at this point I wondered if this is what entangled particles that are separated feel like. Did the person who took the chair think he was getting a complete chair? I didn’t really pay attention to which chair piece we took to the Goodwill first, but I knew when we took the second chair that the first piece must have been the opposite version. My understanding of entanglement is that for this analogy to be complete, both chairs need to be in a both states at the same time (say Left chair and Right chair) until the true state of the chair is “revealed”. So if Goodwill was in Quantum Land, then the chair we dropped off would be in both states and anyone getting the chair wouldn’t know which state it was in until the state was “revealed” at some future point in time/space. If a second person picked up the second chair we dropped off at Quantum Land Goodwill, then they also wouldn’t know the state of the chair until it was “revealed”. Since the chairs were entangled, then once one chair state was revealed, the other chair state would be known to be the matching state. For the purposes of this analogy, I’m going to say that the state of the chair is revealed whenever someone is sitting in the chair and is successful in reclining it using the lever that is either on the left or right side of the chair. Before revealing, each chair looks like the reclining lever is switching back and forth between the left and right side of the chair in a random way. Once one chair is revealed, the other chair stops switching back and forth instantaneously and the recline lever is seen only on one side of the chair.
surfing the universe 
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