Dan Koeppel's BlogBananas, Los Angeles, and Transit Geekery

That’s me and my friend Morgan Beeby; we ran the Nullarbor Plain in an attempt to prove that it could be done – and, in my case, to exorcise some old demons…

I’ve been obsessed with Robert Garside – who ran around the world, only to find that nobody believed him – for over a decade. I wrote the first version of this story in 2005, but it never got published, mostly because the story drove me a little bit insane. Proving that Robert Garside ran around the world became, sometimes, the most important aspect of my existence, something that created tension in my relationships, career, and especially my own sense of self. That’s because I was one of the people who didn’t believe Garside at first, and because my disbelief – publicly expressed – did great harm to what is, in my view, the greatest running achievement in history.

As part of my ongoing attempts to redeem myself and Garside, in 2010, with my friend Morgan Beeby, I ran a portion of Australia’s Nullarbor plain. The run is the framing device used in the published version of the story, which finally appeared in the August, 2012, issue of Runner’s World. The piece isn’t online yet, but you can find it on the newsstand via the magazine’s tablet editions. I’ve posted a link to a PDF of the piece below; please don’t redistribute it.

I’ll tell a little more of the story behind the story in a bit – I’m waiting for the RW version to appear at the magazine’s website – but I wanted to get the main story posted.

Download the story here.

After some weird and entirely avoidable database migration issues, I’m slowly rebuilding the site. Links and pictures are mostly broken; content and text are in fairly good shape. Hopefully all will be well soon.

LADWP proudly tweets a link to a story (below) that claims that it handled crisis communication perfectly during the windstorm last January. It even takes a dig at So Cal Edison for not doing the same.

So, as a DWP customer, let’s set the record straight:

- DWP’s Twitter updates and communications were a joke. In Northeast LA, we watched in darkness for three days as the number of homes without power in the agency’s update increased. There was almost zero presence in our neighborhood. Our normally not-so-effective city councilman actually had to call the agency and yell at them to get them out here.

- OK, so the agency was busy and doing the best it could. But why the dig at Edison? As far as I saw, DWP didn’t distribute fresh water; Edison did. DWP didn’t offer shelters and blankets; Edison did. I heard Edison people at least three times on local radio, once giving very concise explanations as to why these repairs took so long, explaining how the electrical grid works. DWP? Maybe it happened, but on that weekend, with little else to do but look at my phone for windstorm related news, I didn’t see it.

- And hey, best of all…the supposedly objective article saying how great LA DWP was, and how sucky Edison was…the author is a software vendor who happens to be the supplier of DWP’s emergency response system!

This is classic DWP. The agency really needs to review what went wrong in the wind response, as well as what went right; instead, it log-rolls with a vendor, pats itself on the back, and pretends that it was brilliant in the crisis.

Here’s the original tweet:

Here’s the article (read it.)

The authors bio…

And his client page…

Isn’t transparency the key to effective public relations? Both LA DWP and the author aren’t being totally up front here….

This is Dan Koeppel’s blog. For my latest writing about bananas, please check out my recent story in The Scientist. If you’re looking for a copy of my book, and Amazon is sold out, I sell signed copies direct at retail cost (plus shipping.) Chinese, Thai, and Korean editions also available. Japan is coming soon.

I’m on Twitter here; Facebook here.

The event is Saturday and Sunday May 21 and 22, 2011, with a prologue on Friday, May 20.

To learn what the Big Parade is, how to join it, why you can do it, and where we’ll go, visit the official Big Parade website.

To keep updated, join practice walks, and ask questions, visit the Big Parade Facebook page.

Photo: André Baranowski, from saveur.com

Unexpected and cool.

The story is a good read, if I say so myself, especially if you’re visiting my site for the first time via my appearance this morning on Chicago Public Radio’s Worldview program this morning.

The main feature concerns the state of banana innovation. I dream of supermarkets where many delicious varieties of the fruit are sold.

The companion piece describes five alternate varieties that actually could reach our shores.

The stories appeared in the May, 2010 issue of Saveur. It was one of eight pieces the magazine published last year that received nominations.

I also wrote a book about bananas, which is now in its fourth printing.