Jacob's Land of Bliss and Blisters

It Sucks I Took So Long to Discover Myself

2012-01-26T10:55:00.001-05:00

Photo: caddymob, Flickr Creative Commons

I've been thinking about organizing a local 5k race for a year now. Part of it is just that I love running and there's something about running a formal event that improves the experience. Another part of it was that there are no truly local runs where I live. There's a fall event in the next county over, an event I will most definitely run every year from now on, but not one in my on back yard, and there should be.

Despite never actually seeing anyone else out for a run on on the bike when I'm out on my sessions, I know those people exist. When I called the local swim team coach about getting a key to the local covered and heated pool (something our county didn't even have two or three years ago), I found out there were even other local triathletes who are active in town. The farmer who leases my parents' fields even talked to my dad about getting in touch with me because he runs too. These people exist. It'd be awesome to get them all in the same place and running in the same direction.

Then this week my principal sent out an e-mail announcing a 5k in a little more than a month that the swim team is hosting. My first response was all like "Yay!" and my second response was all like "Dammit!"

I wasn't upset about being beaten to my idea. Seriously. I just wanted a local event and didn't mind being the guy who started it. I was happy someone was organizing this even if I weren't the one in charge. I was pissed because it was set for the one weekend in the next few months that I wouldn't actually be in town since I would be on the coast being sucked dry by sand gnats at a high school tennis tournament.

Didn't these people know that I and the runner in this town. Shouldn't they know to make sure my schedule allowed for running the event before they set their date? How dare they fail to consult with me, this rinky-dink town's premier distance runner and triathlete, before setting anything in stone.

Of course, I know this isn't true. There's a very good chance I'm not even close to the fastest middle to long distance runner in this town. In fact, I'd be willing to put money on the fact that I'm not the best. It's just that never actually seeing any of these other people has convinced my lizard brain otherwise. Be assured, my rational brain is very much aware of my limitations. Lizard brain is just an asshole.

After a few brief seconds of annoyance, I decided to help out with the organization of the event instead of being pissy about not be able to run. (I actually briefly considered getting up REALLY early the day of the race, driving home, running the race, and then driving back to the tournament, before realizing almost instantly that that was a ridiculously stupid idea, in part because I am actually legally obligated to remain with the tennis players at all times during a school sanctioned trip. There were other reasons too.)

So I contacted the teacher in the school who was one of the organizers and asked to offer my services. I got them set up on Active.com to accept online registration. I posted links to the event in several places online and e-mailed people at all of the regional running clubs about the event. I spent two days e-mailing back and forth with the other teacher to get details for the listing and to iron out ideas for the event. I really want this thing to be a success. If it is, well, I'm organizing one for the fall. If it fails for reasons outside of my promotion of the event, I may organize a fall event anyway. If no one shows up, I'll probably pass.

But that's not even the point of this post. The point of this post is that somehow all of this re-energized me. I showed up at tennis practice yesterday with a spring in my step and an actual desire to be there. Something happened last year that just completely drained my passion for coaching the team and it's just been another chore, but yesterday, I was back to enjoying myself and working on getting the lower-level players to improve their game. At some point I realized that it was the promotion of the even that I had gotten me feeling this way.

I should have known. Back when I lived nearer Atlanta, I organized a couple of bus tours of Atlanta beer spots. The first trip was a huge success. Full bus. Seemingly happy participants. The brewpubs and breweries were perfectly happy to host us again the next year. I didn't make as much money for me and the charity as I had hoped, but I didn't go in the hole or anything. It was a win, even though it had been a ton of work. I did it again the next year but made the mistake of waiting too late to start organizing it and I didn't have the turnout needed to make it worth while. Not long after, I quit the job that made organizing that stuff easy and I stopped doing the event. I never should have. I actually enjoy the work of organizing and publicizing events.

This sucks because my first job after college was for a company that did this kind of stuff, not exactly for beer geeks and runners, but for companies doing conventions and the like, but I felt lost and never really got the hang of what they wanted or needed for me to do so I ended up moving back to newspapering. If I could have done the first brewpub tour while at that company and shown my boss what I could do, maybe I could have found a place with them, or at least a recommendation letter for another company who needed someone to do what I could do.

But, c'est la vie. I've finally started to be okay with where I ended up. Just wait. Another ten years and I'll be one of those assholes talking about how if you just let it, things will always work out on their own. Of course, that's all a bunch of bullshit. The truth is that eventually enough of your dreams fade away so you can forget them and be happy. The end result's still the same, of course.

My Running, Cycling, and Swimming Goals for 2012

2012-01-01T15:03:00.000-05:00

What I've managed to do with my running in 2011 is one of the most satisfying things I've experienced in my life. To elite (or even sub-elite) runners, my fastest pace in a 5k of 7:17 per mile is laughable. Seriously, if I'm talking to a runner who doesn't know me well, I make sure to express the qualification that my pride in that time is in its relationship to where I was a year ago and not its relationship to the times of other runners. Running a 7:17 per mile in November is pretty awesome when the best I could do in January of the same year was 8:30 per mile. I struggled to break a 10-minute mile back in July of 2010. That doesn't mean I'm finished with the goals, though. Goals are the main things that keep me interested and active with this, so I'm setting myself several specific goals in each of my main activities for 2012.

Running

Qualify for the A starting wave at the Peachtree Road Race. This is a relatively short-term goal and not a stretch goal. I have to run a race before the end of the spring that has a USATF certified course. In the last two months I've run both a 5k and a 12k at paces that would qualify me for the the A starting wave at last year's event, but I don't think the 5k was a certified course and the 12k wasn't a distance Peachtree recognizes as a qualifier. I just have to keep my current speed and run one of the qualifiers in the coming months and I'll be fine. I'm just looking for a flat course.
Run a sub 20-minute 5k. I recently broke my goal of running a sub 50-minute 10k, so this is the obvious next step. Unlike qualifying for the A starting wave, this really is a stretch goal. My current fastest 5k is 22:34, meaning I'll need to drop 50 seconds off of my pace in the next 12 months to reach this goal. That's a huge challenge, but not impossible. After all, I dropped about 90 seconds off of my 5k pace in 2011, but I'm assuming each additional second dropped will me more difficult at this point in my training. Time to hit the interval training and fartleks!
Complete a full marathon. I easily achieved my goal of running a half marathon in 2011, even managing to beat my goal time despite having to visit a porta-potty four miles into my run. An addition to this goal is to finish the full marathon at a 8:30 pace or faster.

Cycling

Break the 3 minute per mile barrier for distances of at least nine miles. This is basically managing to keep an average speed of over 20 mph, something I've never been able to do for more than a few miles this year. Cycling has frustrated me a little over the course of the year as I never seem to get any better. I have a suspicion it's partly due to my laissez-faire attitude toward shifting gears. I need to spend more time in higher gears and be more willing to downshift up the hills, I think. I'm pretty sure I'm pedaling at an acceptably fast cadence, so I don't think that's the problem.

Swimming

Spend more time in the water. This is a general goal with no specifically quantifiable elements, but I need to call the local recreation department this week to get started. I know the county pool is now covered and I think some of the swim team members I've taught have mentioned that it's also heated, which helps them as high school swimming is a winter sport in Georgia. I just don't know if it's open to the public in the cooler months. If it is, I'm getting a membership and swimming year round. Otherwise, I'm going to have to start travelling to a neighboring town 45 miles away on the weekends to get my laps in, especially if the pond doesn't re-fill over the winter.

Triathlon

Complete an Olympic-distance triathlon. The Turtle Crawl on Jekyll Island is my goal event for that distance. I did the sprint distance there last year and was smitten with the sport.
Complete more events. I signed up last week for a series of three sprint-distance events in Jacksonville. This kind of goes with the spending more time in the water goal.
Outside of 2012, I'm tentatively planning on making my 2013 goal completing a 70.3 event (half-Ironman). I'd follow that up with a goal of finishing an Ironman event in 2014.

My Running, Cycling, and Swimming Year in Review

2011-12-31T19:33:00.000-05:00

This seems to have become a personal fitness blog in the last few months, which is fine, really. I'm not bringing in a ton of visitors with my other interests and the friends who read my posts because they're friends are probably going to read (skim) regardless of what I'm writing about. Besides, the blog title totally works with a personal fitness blog, although I haven't really gotten any blisters, which is a little surprising given the amount of time I've spent running this year. I have gotten chafed nipples (that even bled once) and weird, random chafed spots on my hips and just behind my armpit on a couple of runs, but no blisters. I've developed a strange love for physical exertion, so the bliss part really seems to apply.

Anyway, this is my 2011 year in review for my running, biking, and other endurance activities. This will be surprisingly detailed because I joined RunKeeper almost exactly a year ago and recorded my very first run of the year on my phone and have kept track of every run, bike ride, and swim (and a few hikes and other activities) ever since. After I go through the stats, I'll do a brief summary of my competitions.

Running

Total distance: 557 miles
Average distance per month: 46.4 miles
Best month (distance): 101.1 miles in October
Best month (pace): March, 8:23 per mile in March
Longest run: 13.2 miles, Savannah Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon, November 5
Fastest run: Fall Fitness 5k, 7:17 pace
Biggest Elevation Change: 1,245 feet climbed over 5.9 miles, December 23
Personal Race Records: See second listing on column to the right, although I ran a 12k at a significantly faster pace than I ran my fastest 10k this year.
Analysis: I really improved drastically in my running this year. Over the course of the 12 months, I increased in speed and endurance and I'm running more frequently and for longer distances than ever before. My fastest month may be March, but that's only because I don't just run as fast as I can for every run. December would have been my fastest month by a long shot except that I spent several days before and after Christmas working on hills and during the fall I spent a lot of time working on longer distances. I probably never ran farther than four miles back in March during that record. It's mostly because of this running that I am in the best shape of my life and at my lowest weight since high school. I'm now wearing the same size pants and a smaller size shirt than I did when I graduated 13 years ago.

Cycling

Total distance: 1,005.5 miles
Average distance per month: 91.4 miles (Did not start until February)
Best month (distance): 184.8 miles in August
Best month (pace): 3:09 per mile in June
Longest ride: 101.3 miles on Sept. 4
Fastest ride: 3:04 per mile, May 21
Biggest Elevation Change: 4,911 feet climbed over 101.3 miles, September 4
(No Personal Race Records. Not enough events.)
Analysis: Cycling was a new addition this year. Back in February I pulled out the old Wal-Mart mountain bike I had in college to ride on the days I didn't run. While I'm currently leaning toward running as my favorite activity, there have been points during the year when I though the bike was best. I have to admit, this is probably not my best event in the triathlon, partly because I've been doing it for a shorter period and partly because it requires more technique to be successful than running and I'm entirely self taught.

Swimming

Total distance: 8.1 miles
Average distance per month: 2.7 miles
Best month (distance): 3.9 miles in April
Best month (pace): 47:38 per mile in May
Longest swim: 0.8 miles, April 11
Fastest swim: 36:27 per mile on May 21
(No Personal Race Records. Not enough events.)
Analysis: There was a time when I was a competitive swimmer and I always focused on the distance events because I've always had the ability to pace myself and go for long periods of time, but I'm always slow at everything I do. Surprisingly, at the sprint triathlon I competed in back in May, I was surprisingly competitive in the swim, probably due to better-than-average form from my years on the swim team as a kid. In fact, next year I'll be lining up at the front of the group instead of the back. Unfortunately, I like this the least of the three triathlon events (possibly due to having burned out on the swim team in middle school when I quit swimming) and I also was only able to train for three months. I didn't bother to get a pool membership during the summer because we were travelling too much and the pond I was using to train for open water swimming during the spring dried up during the warmer months. I plan on taking this event more seriously in 2012.

Tomorrow I'll post my goals for each of these activities for 2012.

Continuing to Kick Butt on Foot

2011-12-19T00:00:00.000-05:00

Saturday I ran a series of races about an hour from my house. It was an interesting set up. The distance was basically a half marathon, but the distance was broken up into 12k, 6k, and 3.1k events held at different places in the county. The 12k started at noon, the 6k was about 5 miles away at 3 p.m., and the 3.1k was in a neighboring town at 5 p.m.

I kind of like the noon start time, although outside of this time of year, that would be a death sentence down here. I mean, in October we see highs in the 90s some days. As it was, the high was pushing 70. I got to the rural church where the 12k was being held and signed in. In the registration packet were a pair of bells, which I declined to tie to my shoes. I'm fine with the organizers wanting something festive, but that would have driven me crazy after about a mile. The group running this race wasn't large. The total number of runners was probably less than 200, and after my last small town race, I knew I should probably line up just behind the guys in the very front. While I have a long way to go to even pretend to be in the elite group, I have worked my way well past the average weekend jogger.

The first half mile of the course was slightly downhill and when I checked my time at the half mile point, I was shocked to see an average pace of almost 7 minutes even. I wasn't even breathing hard yet, but I pull back a little when the course evened out. After all, I still had 7 miles to go at that point. The entire course was pretty flat and wound through rural and semi-rural areas. The roads were open to traffic, but policed by local sheriff deputies and race volunteers, and largely empty of traffic anyway, so it was a good run.

Except...

Around mile two, something started buzzing in my ear. I waved it away. It came back and landed in my hair, still buzzing. I swatted absently at it a couple of times and it seemed to have flown away, until about 30 seconds later it showed back up in my ear and hair. I swatted a few more times and it landed on my lower lip. This time when I swiped at it, it stung me, right in my fucking lip. Apparently it was a bee or something. A quarter of a mile later, I decide to check my lip for anything left behind and I think I pulled the stinger out. If it was the stinger, I squeezed the poison sac into my lip before removing it because the burning intensified.

Of course then, I completely forgot about it. Running near your limit has a way of numbing you to pain. Oddly, the lip didn't even swell during the day. It wasn't until this morning that I woke up and discovered that my left side of my lower lip was about twice the size of the right size.

Part of the reason I forgot about the bee sting was that just before the bee attacked me for some reason (I obviously didn't go out of my way to bother it), I was passed by three guys. I don't like being passed. I'm really good at placing myself far enough back in the pack that I usually do almost nothing but pass people for the entire race. Also, I'm a really steady runner, so I end up catching a lot of people who go out too fast and wear down at the end. Anyway, these three guys passed me around a mile an a half into the race. One guy was on his own, and wearing a state cross country meet T-shirt. The other two guys seemed to be running together. When they passed, I pegged my pace to theirs to not let them get too far away. Only a couple of miles later, I passed the guy in the cross country T-shirt. Maybe he wasn't trying. Maybe he was really bad at his sport. Maybe he was a couple of years removed from high school and just out of shape. Maybe he bought the shirt at his sister's meet. Regardless of the reason, he faded hard and I left him behind. Not long after, the shorter of the other two faded, and I passed him pretty quickly, although his buddy picked up his pace at that point and I had to work harder than I really wanted to keep him in reach. For probably 4 of the 7.5 miles we yo-yoed back and forth. I never caught him and was rarely closer than 15 yards from him, but never farther than 30 yards back. For me, this had become a mission. I was going to catch this guy. I was going to pass him just at the finish line.

At mile 6, I increased my pace and kept increasing it, gradually reeling the guy in. As we passed the sign for mile 7, he was in striking distance and not long after that, as we turned the corner onto the stretch of road leading to the church and finish line, I caught him. I slowed my pace to match his and quietly ran beside him so I could save a little strength for the finish. I couldn't believe it. I was actually racing.

Finally, we crested a tiny hill and the finish line came in sight. I'm not exactly sure how far it was, but it may have been a football field away at most when I picked up my pace and started to drop the guy. That lasted only a second before I heard his footfalls speed up and crescendo. I lengthened my stride. He lengthened his. He started to catch me and I amped it up again. Then...

He came flying past me and I broke, maybe 15 yards from the finish line. As soon as I knew for sure I didn't have anything left, I yelled out to you, "You got it" and coasted into the finish. (I honestly don't know where the energy to say anything came from. I was about to vomit from the exertion.) No other runners were in sight behind us. I was 6th place overall and 2nd in my age group. The person who placed 1st in my age group? The guy who beat me in the finishing sprint.

I don't care. It was just awesome to be able to be in that situation. I spent the majority of an hour thinking about what I needed to do to beat a guy and almost did it. I just started my kick too soon and may not have had what it takes after the effort to catch up to him. I was thrilled.

Also, that 12k race was run at a pace that would have been a personal record for my 10k running, 7:41 per mile.

The other two races aren't that interesting. I actually won my age group in both races (although, unfortunately, the guy I sprinted to the finish with didn't run those), and passed the guy with cross country shirt halfway through both races, but they were both run at slower paces and no good stories were involved, although I guess I did manage to hold off a guy my dad's age from passing me in a finish-line sprint in the second race. It just wasn't much of a sprint compared to the first. It was a hilly course, and we were both pretty spent.

By the way, I'm now finishing 10k runs in under 50 minutes. That seemed impossible not very long ago.

Trail Report: Appalachian Trail Woody Gap to Duncan Ridge Trail and Coosa Backcountry Trail

2011-11-28T21:21:00.006-05:00

During the first part of Thanksgiving week, I went on my mostly annual Fall Hiking Trip Extravaganza. I say mostly annual because I had to skip the trip last year because of requirements for my masters classes and my procrastination issues. Having earned my degree after that semester, I had no excuses this trip and chose to do a route in northeastern Georgia composed of a section of the Appalachian Trail between Woody Gap and the Duncan Ridge Trail (only a couple of miles shy of Neel's Gap), a short section of the Duncan Ridge Trail, and the Coosa Backcountry Loop. Click any of those links for GPS maps of those trails. Like most of my trips, Mickey from Prettiest Denny's Waitress was along for the hike, but Daniel, whom we hiked with on our last Fall Hiking Trip (and whom I was with the time I broke my tooth) couldn't make it. We replaced him with my cousin, who will go by D for this post.

That's D and his elderly golden retriever during our lunch break the first day of the trip. We headed out on Sunday and got back to the car on Tuesday. The Woody Gap trail head is incredibly easy to get to. Unlike the majority of trail heads I've used for backpacking trips, this one is reached by a paved road and has ample parking, which is good. It's a busy trail head. The AT is always busier than most of the trails I hike, but it didn't seem excessively so this trip, despite what the full parking lot would have suggested.

The fogginess of the images isn't the camera. Most of the hike took place shrouded in mist. Apparently, the southern Appalachians are just foggy in November. We had this problem on our last Fall Hiking Trip. Ironically, I have absolutely no photos from Monday afternoon when we actually had clear views and clear skies.

The dog pretty much spent every moment we weren't on the move in this position. Despite the exhausted dog, this section of the AT is pretty gentle. There are a couple of steep and rocky sections, but these are pretty short and not exactly extreme. As has been my experience with every section of AT I've visited, the trail is very well marked and quite obvious. Not a lot of views after the overlook around the first mile, but it's not a bad section of trail.

I spent part of my time on the AT hiking behind a guy who worked for the Gwinnett County school system, which has 20 high schools, some of which have more than 4,000 students. The county where I live and work has one high school with fewer than 800 students. They are counties of comparable physical size.

It was here that we left the AT for Duncan Ridge. The DRT is a lengthy trail, but we were only on it for about 3 miles before we hit the intersection of the DRT and the Coosa Backcountry Trail where we set up camp. I think the DRT can get a little strenuous at times, but the section connecting the AT to the Coosa Backcountry was pretty gentle. It is, however, less well travelled than the AT and less well marked. Sometimes it's not so obvious where the trail goes and so requires a little more attention than the AT.

The forecast for the trip had looked pleasant only two days before we set out. Even the night before the trip, the chance of rain was fairly low so we didn't pack tents. D set up an ultralight tarp shelter over his tent's rainfly, which he had mistakenly grabbed instead of the tent's footprint when packing for the hike. Mickey and I shared a larger tarp shelter. Of course it rained both nights we were out on the trail, but we never got wet. Well, we never got wetter than the mist that formed beads of moisture on my beard made us.

Monday morning while we were eating breakfast, I caught a flash of bright orange moving up the side of the ridge near our campsite. It was a hunter, off-trail, moving quietly, rifle in his hand. The slow gait and misty morning gave him a bit of a ghostly look. I just hoped he wouldn't shoot me later. I made a mental note not to wear my deer suit on the trail.

This was going to be our "long" day. We were only doing about 15 miles, but the terrain would be a little tougher than the previous day and the days are pretty short, especially when the sky is heavily overcast. Our original intention was to just do the entire Coosa Backcountry Loop and get back to campsite where we left our shelters and had hung all of our evening food and cooking supplies. Instead, we got distracted by this waterfall near where the Coosa Backcountry intersects with the Bear Hair Trail (on the end farthest from Vogel State Park), which was barely visible from the main trail, but tempting enough to lure us off trail and across the stream. By the time we bushwhacked down the steep hill and crossed the stream, we decided it would be easier to take the Bear Hair (which continued on the side of the stream where we ended up) down to Vogel State Park where it reconnected with the CBT. That's the dog at the top of the falls, by the way. He wasn't carrying his pack this day and seemed to enjoy the sense of weight loss enough to decide to make the trip between the bottom and the top of the fall multiple times.

The Coosa Backcountry Trail was significantly more rugged than the other two trails, but surprisingly, I was able to tackle even the toughest sections without really tiring. I attribute this to the fact that I'm only a couple of weeks past my half marathon training. If I can run 13.1 miles at an 8:30 pace with energy left over to run the last quarter mile much faster, then I guess stomping up and down mountains at a walking speed isn't so hard anymore. D hasn't been training for a half marathon so while Mickey and I waited for him to catch up at one of the trail junctions, I hiked up to the top of Coosa Bald and got another picture of a US Geological Survey Benchmark. That was pretty much all I could see. Too foggy otherwise.

We ended up not getting back to camp until well after dark, though. Luckily, most of us had thought to bring our headlamps and we were able to get back to camp without any major problems. The late arrival was actually kind of nice. When it's dark before 6 p.m., there's a lot of time to fill between supper and bed. Getting back to camp late made for less time spent staring into the dark and trying to think of something new to say to people who have been walking with you the entire day.

One thing I noticed most in the dark was that this is definitely not the most remote stretch I've hiked. Many sections of trail I've done are reached from trail heads well down rarely used Forest Service Roads where the only man-made sound you'll hear is the rare jet far above. At night on this trail as you looked out from the top of the ridge you could always see lights in the surrounding valleys and it never seemed like we fully got away from the noise of the paved roads despite spending a lot of the hike inside of the Blood Mountain Wilderness area.

I look pretty good for a guy who hasn't taken a shower in two days and has been sleeping under a tarp that's open at two ends for two rainy nights, don't I? I honestly have to say that this was my least painful hike ever. Even earlier this year I had moments when I was tired of climbing hills on the Art Loeb Trail, but this time there was no chafing, no exhaustion, no sleepless nights where I couldn't get warm enough. Nothing ever ached or otherwise hurt. Part of this is a lighter pack. We carried only what we needed for the day's hike on our long day and I didn't carry a tent or hammock at all, but the other part is the fitness level I've managed from a year of training for a triathlon, 10k, and a half marathon. I would have liked a few more clear views, but the temperatures were nice (high 60s, low 70s during the day, high 50s at night), but that's a pretty small complaint.

Tim Tebow Is a Witch

2011-11-28T12:02:00.003-05:00

Photo: Roger Smith, Flickr Creative Commons

Tim Tebow is a witch. There’s no other explanation for the fact that the Denver Broncos were 1-4 before Tebow took over the starting position and are 5-1 since he became the starter despite a drop in offensive production. Tebow doesn’t really seem to deserve the credit for the team's recent winning ways. He’s averaging 130 yards passing per game and has a 45.5% completion percentage this season. For those unfamiliar with American football stats, that’s horrible. True, the guy makes a difference with his running ability, but he's not really blowing up the rushing stats either. The Broncos are only averaging 20 points a game, and that’s only because of the anomaly of the Oakland game when they put up 38 points. The rest of their games with Tebow they’ve only managed to score between 10 and 18 points. In a stretch of six games with 5 wins, they’ve had four games where the offense only scored one touchdown. They've won three of those games.

The laws of reality make this combination of wins and offensive ineptitude impossible, and it’d be ridiculous to think that Tebow’s excessively public displays of religiosity are the cause. If God were really the reason the Broncos are winning, Christianity would have to be a farce where the deity in charge cares more about a sport largely confined to the United States than he does about millions of people in the world struggling to find enough to eat.

The only other explanation is that Satan is involved, meaning that Tebow is a witch who wins through black magic. The devil would surely love to make it seem like God cares more about football than starving children, after all.

Of course, that’s the only explanation only if you ignore a few other facts. First, Tebow’s only real redeeming quality as an NFL quarterback is that the guy has only thrown one interception in the seven games in which he’s attempted a pass this year. In the five games Orton started, he threw seven picks, which means he put significantly more stress on the defense and threw away scoring opportunities. Part of this is due to play calling. The Broncos are throwing a lot of short passes and not asking Tebow to throw a lot even then. It is a little surprising that with his lack of accuracy that he's not thrown more picks, but maybe he has enough sense to know when not to throw at all.

Still, the Broncos scored more easily with Orton at the helm. And don’t give me any crap about Tebow being a clutch player who scores when it matters. Clutch is a bullshit term and it means the guy is either loafing for more than 75% of the game when he produces nothing, only to come alive in the final couple of drives, or that he’s just not that good and gets lucky at the end of games, probably because defenses play too soft against him with silly prevent defenses. A good player doesn't have to step it up at the end of the game because he's been playing as well as he can the entire game.

The real reason the Broncos are winning has nothing to do with the offense at all. The only reason Tebow is even in a position to win a game in the fourth quarter after producing nothing for most of the game is that the defense is crushing the other teams lately. Except for letting Detroit score 45 points, the defense has been solid, only giving up 20 points per game on average in the last six games, a stat that includes that Detroit debacle. In the first five games before Tebow, they were giving up 28 points a game and that's without a Detroit-style blowout.

Of course the level of competition plays a part as well. While Orton was starting, only one team the Broncos played had a losing record (San Diego). The combined record of their first five opponents is 35-20. In the games with Tebow as a starter, they’ve faced three teams with losing records and all six opponents combine for a record of 31-35.

That’s right. The Broncos aren’t winning because of Tebow. Instead, they’re winning in spite of his lack of production due to a combination of great defense and a weakening of the schedule. Let’s see how he does against Chicago and New England before we crown his ass as Denny Green would say. Until then, I’ll just assume Tebow is the Antichrist.

The Problem with Penn State

2011-11-10T08:56:00.003-05:00

Photo (Not of Penn State Riots): looking4poetry, Flickr Creative Commons

The end of Joe Paterno's career as Penn State's football coach is one of the more depressing things I've followed in a while. I don't really feel bad that the guy lost his job. Not doing more to stop his former assistant coach from raping young boys is inexcusable, although I am open to the possibility that we're missing some information that would make his part of the story seem a bit more understandable.

I'm open because this possibility because we're talking about Joe Paterno. If it were a scumbag like Bobby Petrino, I wouldn't care that his reputation was ruined. Everyone who knows enough to have an opinion about Paterno, though, seems to say that he had as much of a positive effect on the academics at his school as he did on the athletic program. He's never been involved in a major NCAA violation, and his program is known for caring enough about the future of its players to actually make sure they graduate with a degree. If Sandusky had never been a horrible man or had been caught without Paterno having ever known anything, Paterno would have retired as possibly the most unblemished coach in the history of major college football.

Because of that, this story just doesn't jive with my image of the man. It's true that he notified his superior when he was told about the incident and maybe he wrongly assumed that his athletic director would do what was right. I can understand that. He'd had at least a close working relationship with Sandusky and it seems that those who had played for and worked with Sandusky liked the man. I can understand not wanting to believe something so horrible about a friend. What I can't believe is letting this slide when it became obvious that your boss wasn't doing the right thing. After all, we're talking about a time span of years since the incident was reported, not days or weeks. Sometimes, you have to do what is right even if it means watching a friend fall from grace because of it. Those boys couldn't be expected to protect themselves.

I don't like this story. Even though I know that good people can turn away and do nothing when evil is done around them or even cause that evil themselves, I don't like it when it happens. I want the world to be black and white, good and evil, no matter how much I realize it's not. There's too much evidence for the argument that Paterno is ultimately a good man for me to really write him off as a bad guy. The truth is, he's human and he screwed up. That's hard to accept.

The rioting of Penn State students is fucked up, though. Yes, they have good reason to love the man, but he screwed up. He'd probably admit that he screwed up and that it was a major screw-up. You can be angry about how his career ended, but you have to admit he's very much part of the reason it ended this way. Rioting for a man who, in effect, protected a child molester by not doing more to stop him, is ridiculous. You should be ashamed of yourself. Imagine trying to explain your actions to the 10-year-old boy who was just raped by a man he'd respected. Then try and smash the window out of that car again. Feel a little stupid, don't you? I bet Paterno does too right now.

On Completing My First Half Marathon

2011-11-06T21:18:00.003-05:00

I ran the inaugural Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon in Savannah Saturday. The race itself was nice. I felt great during the run and more or less hit my goal time (we'll discuss the ambiguity there in a bit). I paced myself to the point where I finished tired, but not dangerously so, and actually moving more quickly than at any point in the first half of the race.

It wasn't all great, though. Transportation the entire weekend was a disaster. First, while Savannah is by far the oldest city in the state, being the original colony and all, it is not really that big of a city. There were slightly fewer than 20,000 runners in the combined marathon and half marathon and almost 90% of them were from out of town. All of them had to go to the same convention center to pick up their packet. That convention center could only be reached by crossing the same bridge and taking the same one-lane exit off of said bridge. I rolled into downtown Savannah at 6:15 p.m. I didn't get into the convention center building until after 7 p.m. That's the time it took to cover 3 miles.

The next morning, I got up at 4:45, made my oatmeal, ate it, and got dressed. My wife, dad, and I were out of the door well before 6 a.m. and were only a mile away from the mall where the vast majority of the runners were required to go to catch a shuttle to the starting line on the other side of town. By the time we navigated the traffic getting into the mall parking lot, got in line for a bus, got on a bus, and got to the starting line, it was 7:10. The race started at 7:30. After waiting in line for a portapotty for 12 minutes and being unsuccessful, I gave up and walked quickly to my corral near the front of the race. I only had a couple of minutes to wait before the first corral was released. I'm not sure what happened to the thousands of people who were still waiting for a bus at the mall when I left. The lines were twice as long when I left as they had been when I arrived. There's no way they all made it in time.

I really should have just waited in line to pee and just started with a later wave. By the time I hit mile three, it was starting to get uncomfortable and when I finally found a row of portapotties sometime during the fourth mile, I had to stop and go, which meant I had to wait for someone else to finish so I could get in and go myself. From this point on, however, my personal race improved. I ran my fastest mile of the race (under 8 minutes) and my entire second half was notably faster than my first half. Of course the pee break was part of the first half slowness, but then so was the transportation fiasco. I had no time to really stretch or warm up so I had to take the first mile slower to warm up. Another part was that the race organizers only waited seconds between starting waves. I'm used to running either much smaller races where crowding isn't an issue or the Peachtree where there is a relatively lengthy hold between waves. This means as soon as you pick your way through the slower runners in your wave you have open space for a while and never see a wall of runners again. With the short break between waves, it took me probably five miles of running before I was able to stop having to run on the shoulder of the road to pass slower runners who stretched the width of the road. I actually crushed a guy's sternum with my elbow because he tried to pass through too tight of a space. It wasn't on purpose. I didn't know he was there until I felt his skeleton give under the force of my spear-like elbow. I just hope he was able to make it to the finish line. I may have pierced his heart. At least metaphorically.

Beyond the transportation and too-little-space issues, the rest of the race was nicely organized. By the time I hit mile 6 or 7, I had forgotten about the crowds earlier in the race. There were frequent bands throughout the course, which often ran through the prettiest parts of a pretty town. Every time the course took a turn, the organizers seem to have purposely organized groups to stand across the road in the area to make sure you went in the correct direction. The finisher's medal was heavy enough to kill a guy.

Getting back to the race, most of it flowed by too easily. It made me worried I was going to burn out at the end like I had in my last two long training runs. I knew I was making good time, but I ran without ear phones this time and with my phone turned down so as not to annoy other runners with Runkeeper's audio feedback. I just knew that I was running fast enough that I couldn't push myself much harder but it didn't even feel like I was breathing hard. Then, around mile 9 or 10, I felt the first little twinge of tiredness. Suddenly, my legs didn't feel like they were moving so effortlessly. There was a slight burn in a couple of places. I could have sworn that in miles 10, 11, and 12 I was slowing down. In fact, during the race, I knew I had been dropping my pace and was sure to be losing time, so when I saw the sign letting me know that I only had 1.1 mile left to run, I consciously picked up my pace. When I heard the crowd at the finish line, I picked it up even more. When I saw the bend in the road clearly, I and another guy picked up our pace to the point where I was running faster than my fastest ever 3-mile pace. When we finished the turn, I realized the finish was a little farther than I had expected but I buckled down and refused to slow even though I was starting to get a little nauseous from the exertion at this point. The other guy dropped off and I was passing people like crazy. Seriously, I was running like a 6:45 mile pace for much of the last quarter mile. From the clock, I knew I had done well and basically erased my pit stop. I was on a serious high.

Later that night I found out my official time was 1:52:20 for the 13.1 mile race. My goal had been 1:50:00 so I wasn't far off. If I could have gone to the bathroom before the start of the race and warmed up a little, I would have easily been in the 1:40s. When I finally checked my Runkeeper data I found out I had been wrong about my performance in the final miles. Not only had I not slowed in that stretch. I was actually faster in miles 9-13 than at any other time in my run except for mile 5 and 6 when I was booking it to make up for the potty break. Those two miles looked like I was running a 5 or 10k. Despite the effort, I'm not even sore today.

I will definitely run this distance again. During my training for this race, 5k has turned into a joke. I actually now consider busting out a 3-mile run an easy day, which is a little weird considering that it was less than two years ago that I was hoping I'd even be able to run that far. I'm still considering whether or not I want to go for a full marathon next year or just stick with the half and try to improve my time. It's amazing how sticking to a training schedule and succeeding at a certain distance suddenly turns distances that had seemed ridiculous only months before into possibilities.

My next fitness goal is the Olympic distance triathlon I'm planning on doing in the spring, although now I'm actually thinking about trying a Half Ironman too. I know for sure I can run the half marathon, and I've done almost twice the distance of the 56-mile bike leg. It's just a matter of mastering the 1.2-mile swim and doing it all back-to-back-to-back.

There's going to be a point here when my wife puts her foot down though. I'm pretty sure even she has a limit for how much time I spend away from home running, on my bike, or in the water, and I'm not going to take on an event unless I'm able to reasonably train for it.

Of course, at least I'm not leaving the house to go out playing poker or spending hours every day in some bar. I could have much worse addiction, you know.

Even Serial Killers Can Give a Hoot

2011-10-31T10:03:00.003-04:00

Photo: Express Monorail, Flickr Creative Commons

I write for a green living blog sometimes and when I was first asked to start writing for them, I thought it would be hilarious to write an advice column for groups who don't normally get advice on how to be more environmentally friendly with their interests. Considering that today is Halloween, I decided to write a post for serial killers and how they can be more environmentally conscious. Obviously, the topic isn't entirely appropriate for a site that focuses on serious advice and a fairly general audience, but then no one's going to take this blog seriously, are they.

While it may be true that the vast majority of psychotic serial killers are too self-obsessed to really care about the environment, we here at Jacob's Land of Bliss and Blisters (JLBB) know that some of you are genuinely concerned about the earth. In fact, your hobby may be, in some way, a misguided attempt to make the world a better place. I mean, if Dexter can go around serial killing serial killers, maybe you’re the Captain Planet of mass murderers. If so, this post is for you.

Before we go any further, I’d like to formally state that JLBB does not encourage serial killing or any other types of murder. In fact, we kind of think the whole thing is kind of icky, but we know you’re going to do what you’re going to do. In that spirit, we offer some tips to help you leave the world a better place for the people you don’t brutally murder. Hopefully, we'll be among the number you leave alive. Remember, we're being nice to you.

We will address several aspects of serial killing: transportation to and from the murder scene, weapon choices, and body disposal.

Serial Transportation

Cars may be the fastest way to get to and from a murder scene, but they do burn a lot of fossil fuels. Have you considered walking or running to the crime scene? This is the greenest option for a serial killer, and all that exercise will make you look awesome in your eventual mugshot photos. If you live in an urban area with good public transportation, making use of the buses and trains will help you get farther from your home in an abandoned warehouse in the industrial district without creating too much additional pollution. For those in more rural or suburban environments, consider riding a bicycle. If you choose a mountain bike you can even take off through the woods after the murder to better avoid being seen. Another advantage of using a bike is that no one ever suspects a cyclist for being a murderer. Spandex is dorky, not sinister. When selection a bike, a used one can be both a greener option and a cheaper one than buying it new, which may be an important factor if your serial killing keeps you from being gainfully employed.

Weapon Choices

Guns are often a serial killer’s first choice, at least when they’re not ridiculous movie monsters like Freddy and Jason. It is true that a gun has advantages. There’s the power and range of the weapon, but the lead in the bullets can contaminate the environment and harm wildlife that accidentally ingest the projectiles. Also, while the carbon emissions from a gun are far smaller than what a car would create, there are still much greener alternatives. Knives and heavy blunt objects are perfectly effective and, because they are reusable, do make greener options. However, the production of metal requires mining and smelting that are not perfectly green processes. Instead, we would like to encourage you to consider using a length of rope. A nice three-foot length of rope woven from organically grown hemp fibers is a great option. If you’re the crafty type, consider weaving your own garrote from cords spun from organic wool. Try to source your wool from a local farm. Don’t worry about arousing suspicion. No one ever sees a guy buying yarn and thinks that guy is going to kill people with it. Also, it’s very nice to support local businesses. Just remember it is unwise to murder the people who sell you your supplies. We know it’s difficult to restrain yourself, but believe us. It’s worth holding back in this case. If you are a deranged vegan serial killer however, you may need to stick with the hemp. Also, please try to avoid looking up the definition of irony in that case.

Body Disposal

Let’s face it. Serial killing is a wasteful hobby at best and waste is the enemy of every true environmentalist. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way you could go around serial killing and not have to leave a trail of wasted bodies behind you? Turns out that there is. It’s called cannibalism. I can see you shrinking back at the idea, but I’d like to remind you that you are, after all, a serial killer. If you’ve managed to justify turning murder into a lifestyle, it seems pretty silly to draw your ethical line at eating the body. After all, meat is not a very green dietary choice. Production of meat takes up land, it’s an inefficient use of agricultural production, and it creates waste that can easily pollute water sources. If you replace the industrially-grown meat in your diet with human flesh, you get to green up your serial killing and your diet simultaneously. It’s a win-win, except for the murder victim, obviously, but he’s not going to care now, is he?

Happy Halloween!

Update on the Making of Blackhawks Fan

2011-10-18T13:06:00.002-04:00

Photo: clarkmaxwell, Flickr Creative Commons

A while back I posted about my decision to pick another NHL team to follow after losing the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg. When I wrote that post, I had already basically made my decision. The Chicago Blackhawks were the closest team to what I needed for this experiment in forced fandom. Only four games into the season, I've been able to watch three games, so exposure will be sufficient for me. True, most of the live games are blacked out where I live, but I don't watch live sports anyway. I can't bear the commercials. I'm not sure how people sit through a live NFL game. The commercial breaks are ridiculous. Also, hockey games have the annoying habit of being on weeknights or during college football and Falcons games. I'm not going to watch them live anyway. Fortunately, it seems that nearly every live game is replayed later that night or the next day without the blackout. I have a Blackhawks timer on my DVR and I just watch the game at a better time for me. It's surprisingly easy, living in Georgia, to not have the game spoiled between the time the game is played and I watch it. I just don't hover over the NHL tab while browsing ESPN.com.

A couple of observations at this point in the experiment:

It's weird cheering for a team that is expected to be good. A record of 2-1-1 isn't great, but the team was without its starting goalie to start the season. They actually went and found some random amateur goalie to fill in at practice at one point. 2-1-1 is also pretty good by hockey standards. Last year Pittsburgh had the most wins in the NHL. They only won 49 of 82 games. That's like a 9- or 10-win NFL team. It's a winning record but not much of one. Hockey results seem to involve a lot more luck than most sports.
Fandom isn't coming naturally yet. In most games I feel mild excitement and hope at the right moments and seem to naturally want them to win, although it's not to the level I felt with the Thrashers. When the 'Hawks win it's more like "That's nice." I'm hoping to eventually get it to a "Woohoo!" The sheer number of games in an NHL season will prevent my emotional investment in any single game from reaching anywhere near that I feel with the handful of games played by Georgia Tech or the Atlanta Falcons, but it should be more than this.
The first regular season game I watched the 'Hawks play was against the Winnipeg Jets, the team that used to be the Atlanta Thrashers. There were several points, hearing names I knew and used to cheer for, when I actually cheered for the wrong team. It's hard to quit Byfuglien, but I'll try. At least Hossa used to play for the Thrashers and I liked him then.

Also, how did more goalies not die before they started wearing helmets and masks?

Maybe I Should Go Run the Oregon Trail

2011-10-17T13:55:00.005-04:00

Photo: Pensiero, Flickr Creative Commons

I'm finally starting to see (although it's still a tiny image off in the distance just starting to come over the horizon) one of the real problems for serious athletes. Professional athletes, especially those in the endurance sports, have to walk a fine line of training enough and not over-training to the point their performance suffers from going too hard too often. I've only recently gotten anywhere close to having to worry about cutting back.

Until the last few weeks, I've gotten nothing but entirely beneficial effects from running. My formerly slightly iffy knees no longer creak and ache. I'm sure a large part of that is the 40 lbs I no longer carry. I'm sure another part is a strengthening of the stabilizing muscles around the knee. The irony here is that it's my damn knee, the left one, that currently worries me. I have what is likely a mild case of tendenitis in the back of my left knee. I irritated it doing an accidental 10-mile run three weeks ago. Until then, my progressively longer runs had gone great. No pain except for the mild muscle soreness that one expects from newly strenuous activities. Then, I misjudged a route and jumped from 8 miles one weekend to 10 the next. I wasn't quite ready for that distance and that night my knee really ached. Ever since then, every time it felt like the knee was back to normal, I'd run again and aggravate the injury, although never to the same extent.

I'm really not surprised that I'm suffering an over-use type injury at the moment. I broke my personal record for distance easily last month with 65 miles in one month. This month, despite taking off several planned training days for a combination of dysentery*, the tendinitis, and conflicting obligations I've already run 40 miles and if I stick to my remaining training schedule I should finish off the month at just under 100 miles for October. This is getting expensive. I've already worn out the running shoes I started wearing in late May (and I suspect them as being part of the problem with my knee) and had to order a new pair last week. This will be the third pair I've worn this year.

I'm hoping I'm passing through the tendinitis issue, though. I ran 9 miles yesterday and the knee didn't feel any worse. There was a touch of soreness yesterday, but today I feel fine. I'm hoping I can keep up with the rest of my training as planned. The half marathon is less than three weeks away. After the half marathon, I will be cutting back on the running. I'll go back to 2-3 days a week from the current 5-day-a-week schedule, partly so I can get back on the bike. I think I may keep up the habit of a long run on the weekends, though. I kind of like knocking out 10 miles in less than an hour and a half.

Also, if you're aware that my wife is pregnant, it's probably going to be a girl. May she burn the cities of Rome to the ground.

* This is not a joke. I actually had a type of dysentery and lost about 8 lbs in 24 hours. I made sure to stay hydrated but didn't eat a lot for the three days I had it the worst. I missed two days of work and running, yet on the fourth day, still feeling exhausted from three days of negligible nutrition, I went out and ran three miles. It seemed like I got stronger as I ran.

Do I Have a Brain Tumor?

2011-09-30T11:06:00.003-04:00

Photo: mugley, Flickr Creative Commons

I spent a little time reading old blog posts here yesterday and I started wondering if I'm the only one who reads my writing and feels like they're having a seizure. It seems like when I'm reading my own work that there are starts and stops in the flow of my writing like I had been writing to one rhythm in my head only to suddenly switch to a different rhythm or to lose the rhythm entirely. I don't normally get this jarring feeling when reading the work of other writers. Is it just me? Hopefully, it's just something to do with vaguely remembering the writing process. Normally, I'm not privy to what the author had planned unless that author is me.

Speaking of retarded people, if you want to have hope for the intellectual future of our nation, do not spend time with teenagers. They can sometimes inspire you with their actions and words, but man do they lack anything resembling an intelligent vocabulary. I'm giving a test today and so far I've had multiple students have to ask for the meaning of the following words:

Optimistic. This word comes up multiple times every year and every year I have to explain what it and pessimistic mean every time, usually to multiple students in the same class because they weren't listening the first time.
Objective and subjective. I kind of understand this one. It's not used much outside of academic circles and high school students are just getting to that part of their education. Still, I'm pretty sure these concepts should have come up by now.
Pity. No explanation for this. The student who asked me is not normally lacking in intelligence.
Outcome. Seriously? This one is should be easier than pity. It's two words you already know combined in a way to suggest the meaning of the word. Also, it was used in a context of goal, motive, outcome. Just read the sentence.
Studious. This one isn't really used a lot at home, I'm sure, but it sounds like what it means.
Oppressed.
Scorn.

Keep in mind that this is a class of 14 and 15 year olds who currently plan on attending college and that at least two students asked for each of these words on separate occasions. And yes, I understand that they are young and they come from a place where it's unlikely their parents have more than a high school education. It doesn't matter how smart you are if you aren't exposed to the vocabulary. I also understand that I'm exceptional in my ability to pick up and use words, a trait my 4-year-old seems to have inherited. (Seriously. He correctly explained the term "symbiotic relationship" to my wife last week after pronouncing it correctly and in the proper context in an unprompted sentence. I do not hold my students to that standard.) Then again, I actually speak the same way to him that I speak to adults. I don't dumb myself down for him, and neither does my wife, really.

I just have to repeat one of my personal mantras. Being a child is a temporary illness. Being a child is a temporary illness.

Dammit, I hate kids.

Maybe I Will Take You Back, NHL

2011-09-29T13:01:00.004-04:00

Photo: bridgetds, Flickr Creative Commons

I was not happy when the Atlanta Thrashers left for Winnipeg. I have nothing against Winnipeg, but I actually like watching hockey. I just have trouble watching games where I don't have a team in which I'm emotionally invested. Last year when it was announced that the Thrashers were going to be sold and move to Canada, I decided I was going to give up on hockey. After all, I've never played the sport myself and I live in a part of the world where ice doesn't actually exist in the natural world, but now that the preseason has begun I'm starting to miss the sport a little.

I wouldn't mind continuing to follow it. It's a great sport combining the physicality and roughness of football with the finesse and constant motion of soccer and basketball (without the flopping). I just still have that problem of not having a team to follow, so today, about thirty seconds after feeling the urge to pick a new team, I stopped doing anything of importance and focused in on this issue. The criteria for choosing my new team are as follows:

The team cannot wear too much red. I'm okay, in general, with the color red. In fact, as I type this I am wearing a red shirt. It's a very nice shirt. It may be a shirt for a man who was 40 lbs heavier when it was purchased, but I like it. Too much red, though, especially on the all-white backdrop of the rink, is painful. Just watch a Red Wings home game and you'll see what I mean. I won't entirely rule out a team whose alternate uniform is all red, but it is a strike against them.
I refuse to cheer for the team that posers pick. Basically, this is my New York Yankees Rule. I have no problem with Yankees fans who live in New York or have a real personal connection to New York. You know, like having grown up there before moving away or having family there. No one else has any valid reason to cheer for a team like the Yankees otherwise. Doing so makes you look like the bandwagon type at best, and the type of guy who cheered for the bully to win the fights the bully started with kids half his size at worst.
I have to be able to see a significant number of the team's games on TV. Otherwise this whole exercise is pointless. I need to be able to recognize the face of the defender on the third line before the halfway point of the season.
Fuck Florida. Seriously. I hate that state. No teams from Florida allowed. (Also screw the New York and Los Angeles metro areas too.) There's no rational explanation for this rule, although the NY/LA thing may be related in spirit to the Yankee rule.

So, rule one knocks Detroit, Carolina, and maybe Phoenix. (Is this red?) Rule two banishes, in my opinion, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and the Rangers. Sidney Crosby may be enough to rule out Pittsburgh by this rule, actually. Rule three scratches all Canadian and West Coast teams off the list. Tampa and the Florida Panthers were disqualified before I even started writing this. The extension of rule four also kills off the Rangers, Islanders, and Devils.

That leaves me with the Nashville Predators, Columbus Blue Jackets, Buffalo Sabres, Boston Bruins, Philadelphia Flyers, Washington Capitals and Chicago Blackhawks. I could just decide to root for all of these teams, but that's silly. I need passion in my sports and passion is not an product of infinite capacity. I have to focus, so I'll need to narrow this down a bit.

Let's go ahead and write off the Blue Jackets. I have a personal connection to Ohio and Columbus most definitely doesn't violate my Yankee Rule or the extension of the Fuck Florida Rule. I just don't know the last time I've seen them on TV. Ohio's just too far away and it's a small market team. Same goes for Nashville, although I could see them being real contenders if one of the regional sports networks I get start carrying their games. I'm not positive, but I should probably rule out Buffalo for similar reasons, although they're a much more established team and probably get more national TV coverage than the other two. Washington is a former rival of the Thrashers. They were both in the Southeast Division and it feels weird to switch allegiance to a team I used to actively root against. Also, because of baseball and football, I dislike Philadelphia. Cognitive dissonance sucks and I think I'd have some trying to reconcile disliking the Phillies and Eagles while cheering for the Flyers. (Nothing against you, Mickey.)

That leaves the Boston Bruins and the Chicago Blackhawks. I'm going to briefly lay out my reasons for and against each team and will give time for readers to make their cases before officially declaring my new allegiance.

Both teams are part of the Original Six, the heart of the NHL. These teams were in the league from the very beginning and have a lot of historical significance. That's definitely a plus. Both will also receive a significant number of games on Versus. Boston will have 13 games there and Chicago will have 11. Boston and Chicago have both made the playoffs each of the last three years. That means more national games are likely in the post-season and that the season may actually matter. Since I'm having to pick for reasons other than geography this time, I'm willing to pick a team that doesn't suck like the Thrashers did.

The main drawback for Boston is that they border on infringing on the Yankee Rule. The Bruins have been a dominant team for forever and Boston is a major market. Still, I have a small soft spot for the city. I've never actually been (I haven't been to Chicago either), but they hate the Yankees, so that helps. I remain a little uncomfortable with the fact it would border on looking like I picked Boston just because it's popular if I chose the Bruins.

The Blackhawks, on the other hand, used to suck. A lot. There were jokes until Chicago had that playoff run three years ago that the Chicago Wolves (the AHL affiliate of the Thrashers until the move) was the more popular professional hockey team in the city. That gives them a bit of an underdog feel, which I like, despite the fact they've been consistently good for a few years. They did win the Stanley Cup in 2010, and that seriously brings the bandwagon issue into play (although I didn't realize they had won it all until just now when I was looking them up.) The other main drawback is that because they don't have a history of dominance, they aren't covered nationally quite as well. They have only two fewer games on Versus, but they also may not receive as much extra coverage on national TV. I'm not really sure how the television rights work in hockey.

Of course, in the end, I may end up with a more natural solution. Honestly, if the Carolina Hurricanes games end up being carried on SportSouth, I may forgive them their all-red home unis and former divisional rivalry with Atlanta and follow them instead. After all, I do hope to move into western North Carolina in a few years and they would become my local team. Until then I need a team to focus on once the regular season starts next month.

I'm Not Always Right

2011-09-26T12:12:00.003-04:00

Image: Ben Templesmith, Flickr Creative Commons

I'm a pretty astute amateur observer when it comes to football. It's a shame I didn't play in high school and college. I think I really could have made a decent career at being a scout or position coach. For example, I was incredibly pumped when Atlanta signed running back Michael Turner a few years ago. He was a lightly used backup for Ladanian Tomlinson, but I could tell he was going to be great. I was right. (By the way, I expect Turner to last a little longer than some experts expect entirely because he was so lightly abused in his four years in the league.) I knew Matt Schaub was going to be a great passing quarterback when he left Atlanta. The guy has been crazy productive in Houston.

I thought Matt Ryan was going to be a good quarterback in the NFL, although I did disapprove of Atlanta's drafting of him. At the time I knew the team was too weak in other areas to be able to allow a rookie QB to succeed. Turns out that the relatively new front office at the time was much more competent than Falcons fans were used to. I now know to give General Manager Thomas Dimitroff and Coach Mike Smith the benefit of the doubt.

I knew Calvin Johnson was going to be a beast. He has been.

I even predicted that Detroit and Buffalo would both have winning records this year, although I admit I would not have guessed the Bills would overcome a 21-0 deficit to beat the New England Patriots, who had been playing incredibly well until that point. How is it that I was the only person on earth who seemed to realize that Ryan Fitzpatrick, a Harvard alum quarterbacking for Buffalo, was a perfectly competent starting quarterback before the season started?

Despite all of this evidence of my genius, I have to admit that I was completely wrong about Cam Newton. The guy was incredible in college, although he always seemed awkward when attempting a pass. I thought there was a chance the guy could succeed in the NFL, but no way would he be any good as a rookie on a team as bad as the Carolina Panthers. His physical talents wouldn't dominate NFL defenders the way they did in college. In the pre-season and even now, the guy still looks funny trying to throw the ball, but the ball always seems to go to the right place at the right time. He did throw three picks in his second game, but I'm willing to give a first-year quarterback a little slack when he's doing everything else right. His physical talent doesn't carry him as far as it did in college, but a relatively tiny defensive back trying to bring him down in the open field during a planned keeper or a scramble is a pretty funny mismatch.

I had thought I was being vindicated yesterday when Newton only threw for 158 yards after he threw for 422 and 432 yards in his first two games. Then I looked more closely at his numbers. The guy may have only thrown for 158 yards, but he threw one touchdown and didn't have a single interception or fumble in a game where part of the stands flooded during the game from the torrential rain. That's not bad. He wasn't being asked to throw the ball as much as he did in the first two games because of the conditions and score, but he didn't screw up, and there's a lot to be said for that.

Just don't be surprised if the guy ends the season having been exposed as a flop. Like I said, I'm not always right.

Go Vick, Go! (Just Not This Weekend)

2011-09-16T14:03:00.003-04:00

Photo: elvis_payne, Flickr Creative Commons

I used to hate Michael Vick. The only professional sports team that I have ever really cared about is the Atlanta Falcons. I have teams that I prefer in the other pro sports (and they're almost always from Atlanta), but if the Hawks lose, I'm not really going to care. I'm a little bitter about the moving of the Thrashers to Canada, but I will survive.

I would murder Arthur Blank if he moved the Falcons out of the state.

And to any FBI or other law enforcement agencies, that is hyperbole. I would not actually murder Arthur Blank. This is just to make the point that I'd be really pissed off. I'd probably resort to a nasty blog post here and leave it at that.

Back to Vick, I hated him because he was on my team. He had so much talent, so often flashed signs of genius, but never consistently rose any higher than mediocrity. It was painful. At least Joey Harrington was supposed to suck, so seeing him suck was never painful. I was actually relieved when Vick was shipped off to prison because it meant his time in Atlanta was over. I was better able to bear the miserable Bobby Petrino season after Vick's arrest simply because I knew the Vick era was over.

That doesn't mean I'm a complete asshole, though. When the guy was released and picked up by the Eagles, I really hoped he'd changed. I love a good story and a guy like that turning things around and regaining what he could have lost is a great story. I love positive exceptions to the rules. When it turned out that Vick at least turned around his game last year, I immediately started pulling for the guy. Listening to what people who are more likely to know than me have to say, it really seems the guy has grown as a person as well. If it's true, I wish the guy nothing but the best. I hope he plays his last years in the NFL at a Hall-of-Fame level and retires before it's obvious that he's washed up...

Except this weekend. I hope he gets smashed into the Georgia Dome turf repeatedly, throws nothing but interceptions, and limps off the field a broken man. He's playing my Falcons, after all.

Next week, I'll be cheering for him again, and that's why sports are so awesome.

On a related note, if you get the time, read this article about Atlanta receiver Roddy White. It's another redemption story, although this one a just-in-time about face. This is the second article about how White recovered from being a near bust just after Vick's last season that I've read, and they both make me appreciate the guy even more.

Respect Is Not the Same as a Vote

2011-09-13T10:04:00.003-04:00

Photo: Texas Governor Rick Perry, Flickr Creative Commons

This morning I gave Rick Perry a little more respect. I still wouldn't vote for the guy. He gleefully revels in political positions that I either find abhorrent or at least think deserve more careful consideration and less reckless certainty.

Still, it takes guts to defend, without equivocation, a political decision you've made in front of a crowd you should know will hate you for it, and that's exactly what Perry did last night. When asked about his decision to allow children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at public universities in Texas, Perry did not back down. To him, it was the right decision. End of discussion. Who cares if the crowd is booing and elections are a popularity contest. I'm sure this was much more difficult for him than it was to answer a question about the death penalty when the crowd cheered when the moderator brought up the record number of people put to death while he was governor.

Of course, it's easy for me to respect him this time, too. I agree with him on the in-state tuition issue. Would I respect him if he'd been booed about the death penalty and he stood by his past decisions just as firmly? That's an odd scenario as no Republican audience would ever boo the death penalty, but if they had?

Yes, I'd have respected him for not quivering in the face of public opinion, but I wouldn't be writing about it because I wouldn't like his opinion. Ron Paul is really the best example of this. When he leaves the Republican party line, it's often to head into hardcore libertarian areas. I tend to agree with libertarians on social issues, but when it comes to government services, I'm often in disagreement. I respect the guy for not backing down even when he knows some of his ideas are going to be unpopular with regular Republicans. I just don't write about him much, partly because he's not really important and partly because I don' t like the opinion he's standing up for.

Does it matter? I don't know. I still wouldn't vote for either one of them, and, honestly, a lot of times it's better if a guy is willing to change his mind or at least accept nuance in the issues.

But, god, will that get a guy crucified in public opinion.

And that may be the more important issue here. Do we really need leaders who are certain that they are entirely in the right? Shouldn't a leader be willing to admit mistakes, change their mind when new information arises that shows previous positions were wrong? Shouldn't we encourage politicians to admit the nuance and gray areas of the issues and treat them accordingly? Of course we should, but every last one of us will write off a president or other major politician as weak, wishy-washy, or worse if they try any of that. Obviously, with the Perry thing, I do it too.

None of You Asked For This, But I'm Going to Expound

2011-09-07T09:06:00.005-04:00

Photo: avpjack, Flickr Creative Commons

Update: After I posted this, I found out that one of the panelists on Slate's "Shut Up and Listen" podcast made the same point I did here at around the 23 minute mark of today's podcast. Basically, it was said that teams like Oregon and Boise State were built with this edgy design and it seems a little sad when a team like Georgia tries it.

I hated the UGA uniforms this weekend. This is not because I hate UGA. I do hate UGA, partly because I'm a Tech fan and partly because of how I perceive the team's fan base. Saying you love Georgia is a lot like proclaiming that you're a stupid hick. I know plenty of Georgia fans who don't fit into this category. Most of my family consists of Georgia fans, if they care at all, and several of them are far from being the smokeless tobacco dipping, mud-splattered truck driving, passively racist twits who plaster the Georgia G on everything they own. Hatred is irrational. I'm fully aware that I'm unfairly stereotyping here, but I reject that element of my heritage (although there are tons of elements of Southern culture that I take great pride in), and it makes me uncomfortable to lump myself in with the people who embrace those negative elements.

But really, the greatness of college football is being able to hate without really hating. This faux vitriol really just makes being a fan more fun. If you're a Georgia fan, I will happily trash your team to your face and then fully enjoy defending Georgia Tech while you trash mine. It's the one area of life when you can embrace your inner tribesman without risking genocide.

I hated the UGA uniforms because they're ugly. I have to admit that despite my spite for the Dawgs, their regular uniforms are classics nearly on par with teams like Alabama and Penn State. I actually think Penn State is a little dull, but it would be a shame for them to suddenly start taking part in the trashy-flashy fad in uniform design that Oregon started a while back. For teams like Oregon, it makes sense. Their colors are already non-traditional and a little edgy. They don't have a long history of mattering in the sport. When they do something weird, it makes sense. That's who they are. When a team like Georgia does it, it seems like they're the middle-aged man getting an earring during his mid-life crisis. It's annoying and doesn't seem to fit who they are. To make it worse, the design Georgia used was a generic one that I've basically seen a dozen times in other colors on other teams. Maryland on Monday may have been garish, but at least you couldn't point to other teams who've worn anything like it before. (Also, by halftime when the shock of that uniform wore off, I started even appreciating the Terps' kit at little.)

Another problem is just the color scheme. It wouldn't have been so bad if the jersey and pants were different colors. Red is a HORRIBLE color to double up on, and the shade they chose for this one-off was even worse. The only two colors that are acceptable to me for monochromatic kits are black and white. The brighter the color, the worse it looks when all parts of the uniform are in that color. All white uniforms look crisp and the all black kits look kind of badass. No team should really do these for every game unless it's tradition, but it's a nice look for those special games.

An example of this was Boise State's all whites against Georgia. I genuinely liked this look on them. The oversized Bronco logo was neat looking and the all whites didn't overwhelm the eyes, and again, this is not because I've had a soft spot for Boise State since I started following college football in 2002. I'm not a huge fan on the regular blue-on-blue home unis. I loved the old-gold jerseys Georgia Tech used to wear. It was a really unique uniform color and looked great, but I would have hated an all old-gold uniform.

Whatever. To hell with Georgia.

100 Miles of Holy Hell

2011-09-06T14:34:00.005-04:00

I completed the Savannah Century on Sunday. For those not familiar with cycling terms, that means a 100-mile organized bike ride. Now, I can't say with any experience how this compares to other similar rides (I was promised free lasagna and barbecue if I signed up for and completed a century in Albany this coming weekend), but I don't have any complaints with the event. The rest stops were well-spaced and ample. Each one had at least cold water and plenty of food options for snacking, ranging from fruit and cookies to salty snacks and pickles. Most stops had watery Gatorade/Powerade as well. The support vehicles cruised by regularly, just as promised, although I was lucky to have no need of their services. I have no complaints with the organizers of this ride.

That being said, the last 20-25 miles were hell.

I got to the ride a little late. The photo above is me heading over to the starting area half a block away. The back pockets of my jersey are stuffed with Larabars and Honey Stinger Waffles and one of the four water bottles actually holds my tire-changing supplies. The Larabars and Honey Stingers are two of the few energy foods I've tried that I don't hate. Both are legitimately tasty on their own. There's also my mp3 player and charger for my phone in case the battery couldn't handle nearly 8 hours of GPS tracking. This photo makes me look a tiny bit chubby, because I actually still am a tiny bit chubby. There's another photo of me standing in my kit that makes me look awesome, but I wanted to be honest here.

But seriously, if you saw my post on Facebook or Twitter of my standing around in my cycling jersey and uniform, I was freaking hot.

By the time I finished getting my stuff together and on the bike, I barely had time to pedal over to the starting area in time to make the police-escorted rolling start over the Talmadge Bridge. The bridge is normally closed to traffic, so the police actually blocked traffic as we had a rolling start up and over the bridge into South Carolina. In South Carolina we were promptly greeted by a decaying discount fireworks store and a strip club. I was kind of surprised at the strip club. Savannah lets people in the historic district buy their beer to go from any of the bars in town and walk around town with an open container, but they don't allow strip clubs? Honestly, I'd rather drink beer while strolling through town than pay to see someone's boobies, but it seems a strange combination of laws. There was not another building except for on the Savannah College of Arts and Design's Equestrian Center for the next 10 miles. These two buildings obviously only existed to service people in Savannah. It was not long after the group passed there that a major wreck up front happened. I caught up to the wreck well after it happened but while it was still being cleaned up. At least one guy had to quit because of a broken collarbone. Oddly, this was a completely flat, completely straight section with no real problems in the road surface. Apparently someone dropped a water bottle and in the swerving to miss the obstacle, people collided and in the tightly packed group it caused at least a dozen people to go down.

I didn't wreck. Not even close, so go back up to the top of this post and take a look at my cycling kit. Notice the fancy logo shorts I'm wearing? They're from Perry Rubber Bike Shop, a local shop in Savannah that I'm willing to fully endorse, although I bought the shorts because they were cheaper than the other bib shorts. If you're not into cycling, you probably have no idea what it means to wear bib shorts. It means that they have built in suspenders that go on under your jersey. They're great for keeping your shorts from migrating, which is especially good for a guy like me with a little bit of a gut. I had a lot less chafing than I have had recently on some of my shorter training rides because the shorts staid up. They were worth the money. The problem comes when you have to pee.

That's right, when I felt the urge to pee just before the first rest stop, I realized that I was going to have to take my shirt off in the portapotty in order to get my pants down enough to take a leak. This is not the easiest of tasks, but I was successful. Didn't even have any of my back-pocket items fall out in the portapotty. It just took a little time. Good thing it wasn't an emergency.

The rest of the ride was uneventful. I spent a lot of it in a pace line with members of the Pecan City Pedalers, a cycling club out of Albany, Ga. Most of them rode at around my pace. I wish I'd found them earlier in the ride and made a conscious effort to stick with them the entire ride. It may have helped. The terrain was touted on the event website as flat to rolling, but they were exaggerating about the rolling terrain. There were a lot of false flats, though, stretches that appear to be flat but drain your legs and soul because they're slightly uphill. One of my two training routes is by far more rolling so the few hills in the middle of the course were nothing. Close in to Savannah, the marshes and ancient-by-American-standards city was interesting to look at. The farther from the city we got the more it just looked like the extremely rural area where I live.

My longest ride until the Savannah Century was 51 miles and it was last week. The weather was warm and humid and I forgot my money before I left so I couldn't eat enough. I struggled with a severe case of nausea for an hour after the ride. I was exhausted. The route for the century was officially 103 miles, although my GPS claimed it was only a little longer than 101 miles. There were 50 miles of this ride that I had no proof I could ride. I just didn't have the time to fully prepare for this. I was happy to discover that I'd actually breezed through the ride well beyond my longest training ride's distance. If I'd stopped at 60 miles I would have been pumped. Drafting in a pace line really does help, as does stopping every 10-15 miles for a short break. It wasn't until around mile 70 that I started wondering if I was going to make it and it wasn't until closer to mile 80 that I couldn't keep up with any of the pace lines I'd been following. My thighs were aching in a way I've never felt them feel before for the last 15 miles and they continued to ache like that for at least 30 minutes after the ride.

By the time I finished, I was crawling. I usually finish a flat mile in the high 2 or low 3 minutes range during a long ride. By the end of the century it was often taking me 5 minutes or more to finish a mile. I just didn't have anything left.

But I finished, and, surprisingly, my legs were fine after that 30 minutes. By the time I finished my meal at The Distillery and got into the car, I was in no pain. I was kind of a dud the rest of the evening from general exhaustion, but I wasn't hurting. I woke up the next morning perfectly refreshed.

I have a renewed admiration for both professional cyclists, who do distances like this daily for weeks at a time during stage races, and Iron Man triathletes. I never would have belittled the amateurs who ended up walking much of the running leg of the Iron Man, but do you realize that in an Iron Man, you ride 100 miles before running a marathon without a break? I couldn't have run 5k after my ride Sunday. It's hard to imagine ever being able to accomplish that feat. It was nice to go out and accomplish something like this that was so far out of my comfort zone, though.

If you're interested in checking out the ride data from the century, check out my RunKeeper page.

It's A Joke, But I'm Serious

2011-09-01T12:00:00.003-04:00

Photo: Tyello, Flickr Creative Commons

I posted a throwaway joke over on Facebook and Twitter yesterday. Tomorrow is the first day of college football, I said. Finally there'll be a sport on TV besides tennis and cycling.

Honestly, I assumed most people wouldn't even get the joke. It's an implied dig at baseball, my favorite sport to hate on. I don't even really hate the sport. I can't watch an entire game. Not enough happens between the bouts of standing around and sitting on the bench to keep my attention but I actually follow the sport pretty closely. I look for results of Atlanta Braves games. I follow stats of individual players. I play in more than one fantasy baseball league. I know what sabermetrics are and I understand why it's weird that Moneyball would be turned into a movie. It's the perfect sport for those who like statistics. It's just a less-than-ideal spectator sport for someone like me.

Another thread of the joke was the tennis and cycling thing. Very few people watch tennis, but I do, mainly because I play. No one watches cycling except me, or at least it seems that way, and I'll be the first to admit that professional cycling (and really any endurance sport) is not a particularly telegenic activity. Even more so than baseball, there are large chunks of the event that don't really matter. Namely, the beginning and middle. Those parts exist just to make the riders tired so the end is more interesting. I'm not actually claiming the sport is more watchable. The joke was that I watch it.

One of the commenters on my Facebook page got the joke and answered in the spirit. A second started debate. I didn't really want to debate this. I enjoy debating. As a kid, my friends and I debated while most boys play wrestled. We brain wrestled. I look forward to those kinds of discussions. It's just not something that I want to start up with someone when I don't know how they react to opposing viewpoints.

So, for the record, here's why I often dismiss (half-jokingly) baseball as a sport.

For me, sport is a continuum and requires intense physical activity in a competitive situation to be considered as such. Gymnastics, marathons, and rugby all fall into this category. They're intensely physical and competitive. Games require skill and/or tactics in a competitive manner, but may not be intensely physical. Billiards, target shooting, and dressage riding are examples. Many sports are games. There's a lot of tactics and skill involved in football. It's both a sport and a game. There are few tactics and relatively little skill in running the 100 m dash. I'm not saying there are no skills required -- those guys do have technique and stuff to learn to get better -- but 99.9% of their result is from physical ability and fitness.

A Venn diagram would be a great representation of this except that it doesn't take into account scale. No one can realistically claim that baseball is as physically demanding as football, basketball, or swimming. It's not. The guy who's the most physically exhausted at the end of the night is the starting pitcher and it's just his one arm. No one's breaking a sweat unless the weather is hot enough to cause the fans to sweat with them. It's a sport, but not to the extent that football is (and football is less of a sport than rugby, which provides almost no break in the action outside of halftime). Golf barely requires any display of physical prowess outside of the drive, although I will say that pro golfers may be more athletes that AL pitchers. They have to walk a lot more than American League pitchers, and, John Daly aside, none them can get away with being as fat as this guy.

What I find funny is that I in no way consider this an insult to baseball. I can't make those pitches. I can't make those catches. I couldn't even hit an "easy" pitch thrown by a #4 starting pitcher accidentally left hanging over the plate unless I got really lucky. There's a lot of skill involved there. There's an incredible amount of skill involved in golf. Golf is a huge waste of resources compared to other sports and game and may be mildly unethical, but that's another conversation.

As for baseball and sports, I like categorizing things. I need more precision to my categories than "things people do." Get over it.

Die Mouse! Die!

2011-08-31T12:45:00.004-04:00

Photo: Rosebud 23, Flickr Creative Commons

I woke up Monday night because a mouse was stripping the meat from my toes. Of course I was dreaming, but that memory kept me from sleeping soundly for the rest of the night. The cause of that dream is an actual mouse, although a much less aggressive individual.

That doesn't change the fact that I want to give the real mouse AIDS and watch it slowly deteriorate as its immune system fails and it dies a slow, miserable death from secondary infections. I would enjoy that very much, actually.

Normally, I'm the kind of guy who catches spiders in a drinking glass so they can be set free outside where they're less annoying. As a kid, I'd catch and transplant the rat snakes I caught stealing eggs from the chickens so they would leave my birds alone but not have to die. I've managed to lose my compassion for the mice, though.

It's not entirely their fault either. I live in an older house, one with all sorts of holes that I'll never find that provide entry to the mice. It's not like we're overrun with them, either. It's just that occasionally one will find its way in and decide it likes the place and they're annoying bastards to get rid of.

The spring traps never seem to work. Too many mice can lick the trigger clean of peanut butter (a really effective bait) without ever setting it off. The box traps work better and even leave the mouse alive if you're the sort to care about the life of something that pooped in your cast iron skillet, but it's difficult to free or kill the mouse once it's caught. Plus, there's nothing more pathetic than the sight of the mouse thatgot caught in the trap you forgot to check for a week. The glue traps work the best, especially the ones laced with sedatives that put the thing to sleep so it won't try to escape or, theoretically, suffer. Disposal is still an issue with the glue traps though. The mouse is not dead and despite my hatred for the furry invaders, I can't bring myself to just throw them in the trash bin outside and let them waste to death. That leaves only less subtle alternatives.

Do you realize how silly it feels to shoot a mouse with a shotgun? Or beat it to death with a shovel? I challenge you to do either of those while maintaining your dignity.

My current mouse has managed to evade even the glue traps, however. I made the mistake of using an old one that wasn't sticky enough first. The mouse got stuck, drug the trap across the room and pried itself free. A newer trap also caught the mouse, but again drug the trap across the room and escaped before I woke up the next morning. The only difference was the amount of hair left behind on the newer, stickier trap. The problem is that these were the sheets, thin cardboard with a little layer of the sticky stuff, so I went out and bought the rat-strength traps, plastic trays and a puddle of sticky goo to entomb him. Problem was the damn thing has apparently figured out the glue by this point and won't come near them anymore.

Maybe I should just burn the damn house down. It'd be comforting as I watched everything I owned go up smoke to watch a tiny mouse dragging itself weakly from the rubble to die of smoke inhalation and 3rd-degree burns. I'd probably pee on him, but only after he expired.

Little known fact. All mice are male. It's because all mice are dicks.

I'm Not Saying New York Sucks

2011-08-29T14:02:00.004-04:00

Photo: Captain Kimo, Flickr Creative Commons

The New York Times' FiveThirtyEight blog published an interesting look at the traditional media's reaction to Hurricane Irene. If you're like me, you spent the weekend thinking "Suck it up New York. It's a freaking category 1." A lot of Gulf Coast residents on Twitter were a bit more caustic than I was in their opinions. I've got a feeling Katrina could have a little to do with that.

Despite the fact that the point of that FiveThirtyEight post is that Irene was appropriately covered based on the level of death and economic damage it caused, the more interesting story deals with Katrina. Based on the author's formula, Irene was the 10th-most covered storm (only counting coverage while the storm was active). It was also tied for 10th based on deaths (21) and 8th in economic damage. Because of this, I'm willing to admit the coverage of Irene was reasonable. There are a lot of people per square inch where the storm hit while still hurricane strength and hurricanes are freakishly serious storms, even the category ones.

Katrina, on the other hand, was the deadliest storm by far in the time period covered in the article, more than 1500 deaths versus the 56 killed by Floyd at number 2. Katrina was the costliest storm in that period, $93.7 billion compared to Andrew's $66.7 billion (normalized). Despite this, Katrina was only the 14th-most covered hurricane during the period the article covered. Remember, this is coverage while the storm is active and not the stories from the aftermath. Katrina received half of the active-storm coverage of the top four publicized hurricanes.

This wasn't because Katrina was a surprise. The storm was huge well before it ever got to the Gulf Coast. It was known well in advance that the storm would likely hit the Gulf Coast. It was also well known by that time that a direct hit on New Orleans of a storm that size would create the biggest natural disaster in a very long time. Several months before the storm hit, National Geographic had a cover article basically saying New Orleans would be wiped off the map if a storm like this hit.

I'm going to go ahead and say that the reason is where the storm was headed. The national media cares about the East Coast the most. California matters second. New York is by far the most important. Remember the New York Earthquake? It was centered south of Washington DC. Is this right? Of course not. The population density in the area around New York justifies more coverage than other localities get, but it gets a little ridiculous when a storm like Katrina couldn't get more coverage than a category 1 like Irene until a city was largely destroyed and more than a thousand were killed.

I'm Way Too Bitter For My Age

2011-08-25T11:52:00.006-04:00

Photo: the bends, Flickr Creative Commons

Remember that post not too long ago when I railed against children and the sense of entitlement in some parents? It wasn't entirely a random topic that day. My wife and have suspected for almost two months now that she was pregnant. Yesterday featured the doctor's visit that confirmed our suspicious. Next March will find Little Gandhi no longer an only child.

I'm telling the truth when I say this is the result of a failed gamble on my part. I knew my wife wanted a second child, but she's unreasonably kind to me and never really pushed for it while she knew I was against it. Feeling guilty, I made a deal with her: One month without protection against pregnancy and at the end of that month if she was still not pregnant, we'd revisit our agreement. My plan had been to get through that month (which, for obvious reasons, would be far from unpleasant) and then take the out at the end of the month to keep this a one-child family. After all, it had taken us more than a year to succeed last time, and I figured with all of the biking and running in tight pants in excruciatingly hot weather would have fried my little swimmers. After all, they say sperm needs a temperature below that of the rest of the body to live. That's why the boys dangle a bit. They're keeping cool.

Turns out they're hardier than I thought. It only took a month. Less than probably.

Just let me say that my wife doesn't like me making jokes about parenting. In fact, she stopped me from referring on Facebook to the planned c-section we'll have as the day the child will be surgically ripped from her uterus. She thought it was funny, but she cares more about the opinions of those without senses of humor than I do. She did, however, give me permission to make these jokes on the blog. I have more anonymity here and those of you who really know me, know my sense of humor and are unlikely to mistake me for being the horrible misanthrope my comedy tends to portray me to be.

That being said, there is a true kernel within the bitterness of my jokes. I really don't consider parenthood to be anything special. I hate the cult of parenthood. I really do consider it to be quantitatively more of a pain in the ass than living without a child. That doesn't mean that in my private life that I'm not tricked by biology into thinking that my son is one badass motherfucker. Anyone who's seen me with the kid knows I'm a pretty competent father. I adore the kid (most of the time) and he, finally, seems to adore me. It just means I'm honest about the reality of it.

Probably shouldn't have mooned my wife in front of him though. I'm worried his instant copying of the move won't be the last time that little white ass is displayed as a joke.

They say that people suffering from depression tend to have a more accurate perception of reality than mentally healthy people, especially in regards to their own abilities. This is kind of depressing in itself as it seems to suggest that to be happy, you have to lack a certain amount of self-awareness, but it makes sense to me. I've spent at least half of my life struggling with depression. Although I've never been clinically diagnosed, I'm pretty sure years of suicidal thoughts should qualify me. Luckily, I haven't had those issues in several years. My wife helped, as did leaving a hellish job a few years ago, but mental illness runs in the family.

And that's one of the reasons I've been so reluctant to agree to a second child. Whereas most parents seem to be thrilled by the possibilities presented by their squalling, poop-smeared ball of joy, I tend to be terrified. In addition to mental illness, my gene pool of origin features a little autism, and that's not even including the freak of nature deformities and mental disabilities that would make the lives of both the child and me worse than I'm comfortable with. I was thrilled when it became obvious that my son wasn't going to be autistic. He's socially adept and fairly empathetic for a child his age. I still worry about adolescence, though. I really hope he doesn't have to deal with the depression I did for most of my teens and sporadically throughout my adult life.

Now, with a new child on the way, I don't just have to suffer through the sleeplessness and diapers and baby vomit of the first couple of years that I've gladly left behind with my son. I have to go through those same worries about what the new kid will become and no that I have very little control over any of that.

So, yeah. Congratulations to me and all that jazz.

I Am Not A Priest

2011-08-22T15:07:00.004-04:00

Photo: Stephen Poff, Flickr Creative Commons

I had a kid ask me today why they took religion out of schools.

I'm the wrong person to ask this. I am strongly secular and I'm far from a fair representation of the average beliefs of my community. This isn't an easy question for me to answer, so I answered as reasonably as I could. "It's a matter of common decency."

Of course I didn't leave it there. That could be easily misinterpreted. Despite my lack of religion, and my frequent suspicion of religious people in positions of power, I am not anti-religion. I went on to use the example of unnamed students I had taught in the past who were Hindu. I asked what they think it would have felt like to be that student having their teacher, a person in a position of authority, leading the entire class in a Christian prayer when they were raised as something other than a Christian. Then I told the kids to reverse that scenario. What if they were the only Christian in a class where the Hindu teacher led a Hindu ritual they didn't agree with. It's the same concept.

I'm not sure how many of them really understood. They're smart kids, but 14-year-olds aren't exactly good at putting themselves in other people's shoes. That usually comes later in the development of the human mind, although listening to politics, I'm not sure it ever comes for many people.

Of course, these kids were far from spewing the idiocy I often hear when people talk about religion in the schools. The first kid was genuinely confused and they probably aren't hearing any rational arguments about the issue at home. I hear all the time from average people here that God was taken out of schools, and this just isn't true. The real fact is that, at least in this state, the only restriction is that people in positions of authority cannot advocate religion or require students to pray. This is a good thing, even if you just go back to my original argument about common decency and the lone Hindu kid. It's intimidating for kids and teachers should never intentionally single a kid out for being different. Anyone who remembers middle school knows why. Even if a teacher isn't intentionally proselytizing, it very likely comes across that way to the kid. It's not a fair theological fight. That doesn't mean students can't practice their beliefs in school. Students are allowed to pray. Students are allowed to discuss religion. They can form religious clubs that meet during the school day. There's even a state-mandated moment of silence that was created by the government to give these kids a chance to pray. Actually, it was meant to be a stiff finger to the court's ruling preventing them from forcing their students to pray, but whatever.

In other words, God was never taken out of the schools. We just aren't allowed to shove him down your kids' throats. If they want to shove it down their own throats, we're happy to let them. It's just not my job.

Jacob Recommends Stuff Part II

2011-08-19T09:30:00.002-04:00

Photo: kaneda99, Flickr Creative Commons

If you read this blog, you already know I fully endorse running and cycling as hobbies. You also probably know that I fully endorse RunKeeper to help keep track of those endeavors. Part of what I like about RunKeeper and sites like it is the way they make use of incentives to encourage you, much in the way many social networking sites use virtual trophies and prizes, to keep you coming back and using the site. RunKeeper keeps track of your personal records and allows you to link to social networking sites to brag about your bests. MapMyRide has corporately-sponsored challenges in which you can compete for prizes. RunKeeper, I've heard, will actually e-mail you if you go too long without tracking an activity to see if you're taking a break. I don't think you're actually supposed to answer that question, but it is a good way to gently remind you to stop being a fat ass and get your butt in gear. Some of us need that. (I've never gotten this e-mail, by the way, but I've seen mention of it on the Internets.)

Related to this is a site called Earndit. Now, I'm not fully ready to endorse Earndit at this point, but I thought I'd mention it. Earndit links up with your RunKeeper account (or one of several other fitness tracking sites) and gives you points for your various exercises. You can later trade in these points for rewards, mostly gift cards to various fitness or fashion stores. My main reservation at this point (I haven't cashed in any points yet) is that almost all of the rewards seem to require you to purchase something you may not have purchased otherwise just to use the giftcard. Sometimes it's a buy-one-get-one-free offer. Sometimes it's a $50 credit for a store where the cheapest thing on offer is basically $70. True, they're good deals, but if you're not looking for looking for a dress shirt or two boxes of recovery supplements, you're not really winning anything. Despite this, I mention Earndit because, frankly, anything you can use to increase your motivation is a good thing. I will support anything that increases your motivation to get out and move. Well, maybe not chemical stimulants. Like meth. I do not support methamphetamines.

Seriously, don't do meth.

Plus3Network, on the other hand, I recommend without reservation. On this site, you can sign up with a corporate sponsor and a cause and the sponsor agrees to donate, walk-a-thon style, a certain amount of money for every exercise you log with the site. To be fair, you're not going to raise mind-blowing amounts of money, but that doesn't really matter to me. I'm already doing these workouts. The fact that my last 4-mile run only earned 14 cents doesn't matter. The fact that since I started in June I've only raised $17.76 for my cause doesn't matter. What does matter is that my workouts mean something more than just what they mean to me personally. I'm actually doing something good for someone else instead of just my waistline. I have no qualms supporting that and recommending it to others. Oh, and I actually log my exercises as a part of Team Fatty, a group that currently consists of 681 people, and we've already raised over $1,000 for our cause just this month. Your little bit really adds up when you're not the only one logging your workouts.

That's not to say that the site is perfect. Some of the returns for the various exercises they let you log are a little unequal. For example, if I run for about an hour, I'm going to be much more tired and have gone much farther than if I did the elliptical for the same length of time, and yet I raise more money with the elliptical. Also, I really wish that RunKeeper or some other smartphone app would ally with Plus3Network. Currently, only Garmin Communicator can automatically upload your GPS-tracked activities. I'm not going out to buy a Garmin GPS for my biking and runs when my Droid does the job perfectly well with RunKeeper already. But these are all minor complaints and my recommendation still stands without reservation.

Sometimes Crap Is Okay

2011-08-17T13:41:00.005-04:00

Photo, el_en_houston, Flickr Creative Commons

You can never expect too much from a full meal that only costs you $2.50. That's what a school lunch costs for school employees, and that's a dollar more than the kids pay. Actually it's $2.50 more than more than half of our students pay, but now's not the time to discuss the crushing poverty of where I live.

Lunch today was rough. Last night's supper yielded no leftovers and unless I wanted a meal consisting only of quinoa pilaf and lime sriracha coleslaw, I had to eat at the school cafeteria. Don't get me wrong. The quinoa pilaf and lime sriracha coleslaw were excellent. They just weren't going to cut it by themselves.

As I walked into the cafeteria, I noticed that most of the kids coming out of the service line had on their trays a viscous pale yellow mass of something. As I got closer I noticed it was Hamburger Helper. Actually, it probably wasn't Hamburger Helper. I seriously doubt the state and school system can afford many name brand products when they're not getting much money back from their customers, but it was basically the same thing. I can't skip meals, so I got mine to go and went back to my room to eat.

By the way, when I say I can't skip meals, I mean I don't understand how people ever skip meals or why they would ever think something else is more important. This is not because I am a glutton. This is because I actually get dizzy after a couple of hours if I skip breakfast or lunch. Attempting to work without eating would be a waste of time.

Getting back to the meal, in addition to the cheesy noodle thing, I had turnip greens, corn, and cornbread. The turnip greens were actually pretty good. Our lunchroom usually does pretty well when cooking vegetables and these even had a bit of a kick from the pepper vinegar that someone apparently included in the school recipe. If you don't know what I'm talking about, this stuff is ubiquitous in restaurants around here. I think our local pizza place even keeps bottles of it on the tables. The corn was canned corn nibblets. Nothing really all that great or bad there, but the corn bread had obviously failed to rise. There was a thin dense layer in the center, although cornbread like this is nowhere near as unpleasant as normal wheat varieties that fail to rise. The main dish was goopy. The noodles were overcooked and hard to distinguish in texture from the cheesy sauce. The meat was that really cheap group meat that in texture and flavor is obviously not the ground meat you buy raw in stores. I'm assuming (since some of it is advertised as 100% beef) that it's that stuff that is mechanically separated from the bones and is more like a slurry than real ground meat until they finish processing it.

Anyway, it was obviously not good food and yet at one point as I'm swallowing my last bite of the crunchy corner piece of flat cornbread topped with the goopy mess of generic hamburger helper I caught myself mumbling "man, that was good."

I paused and wondered what the hell I was thinking. It didn't make sense. The stuff wasn't foul. It was a little bland and mushy, but there was nothing really offensive. Still, it was nothing I'd ever want to make myself. I will never find myself craving this crap. I don't think I even thought it was anything more than mediocre at any other point during my meal, and yet in that final moment, distracted by my procurement of a napkin and a short walk across the room, the more primitive part of my brain was allowed to take over and all it knew was pleasant quantities of carbohydrates and fats were headed toward my digestive tract.

So, yes. I actually enjoyed my crappy lunch.

Jacob Recommends Stuff

2011-08-15T14:20:00.002-04:00

Photo: Jungleboy 叢林男孩, Flickr Creative Commons

In case you didn't know. Alton Brown has quit Good Eats or maybe, since everything else on Food Network is pretty crappy lately, he was politely asked to stop creating intelligent and useful content for the network. I don't know. Anyway, if you know me, you know that the end of Good Eats was one of the most tragic events of my life. It's not up there with the death of my grandfather when I was in college or becoming a father a little over four years ago, but it's easily in the top five. Seriously, my life he has not been very tragic. In fact, I used to bemoan that fact. I wanted to be a writer and one could never truly be an artist if their life didn't suck enough. It was sad, but this isn't about me. It's about Alton Brown.

Despite the death of his show, he still has a couple of one-hour specials left this year. A third post-series special was aired earlier this month. "Right on Q" was a how-to for homemade barbecue and if you're familiar with his work, it was exactly that: science, DIY, and encyclopedic cooking knowledge rolled into a very entertaining demonstration. Unfortunately, there are no repeats currently scheduled for that one and I can't find information on the other two specials, but I'll try to remember to post when I find out. If you find out about them before me. Watch them. If you like food and have cable TV, you're committing a sin on par with stabbing a baby in the face if you don't at least watch this show die.

Less depressingly, go watch Wilfred on FX. Yes, it features Frodo Baggins talking to a guy in a really bad dog suit, but the show is so much more. The premise is that Elijah Wood's character, a former lawyer, nearly kills himself but is helped through depression by his relationship with his neighbor's dog. To everyone but Ryan (Wood), Wilfred is a dog. Ryan, for unexplained reasons, instead sees a frequently foul, drunken, pot head of an Australian in a nappy dog suit. This is a hilarious show and very much worth watching, as long as you're not watching it in front of children or the easily offended.

Surprisingly, my last recommendation is another show on FX. Louie, the show created by the incredibly funny Louis C.K. fascinates me. Based on the show and his stand-up, I think Louis C.K. actually shares my views on parenting. He's not a bad person. He's just incredibly honest with himself and his audience the conflicting emotions any sane parent is going to have. Louie is a show by a stand up comedian where the stand up comedian got to do what he wanted to do. It's not for kids or the easily offended either. Louis C.K. saddens me a little, because if I were to ever attempt a career in comedy, I'd instantly be labeled a cheap knock off, even if I used jokes I came up with before I ever heard of the guy earlier this year. It's depressing. I'd never claim to be as funny as he is, but if you were to draw a Venn diagram of our senses of humor, it'd mostly just be a circle. It's depressing.

And that, my friends, is a circle kicker. Suck it.

It Was Way Too Early for Flooding

2011-08-11T14:35:00.000-04:00

Photo: alexkess, Flickr Creative Commons

If you read my Twitter feed, you already know part of this story. About 280 character's worth, at least. Earlier this week, my scheduled run or bike ride was cancelled by a sudden and serious thunderstorm that rolled in just as I was about to head out, and it lasted until dark. I felt a little cheated, or maybe just guilty, so I set my alarm for 5 a.m. the next morning. Dammit, I was going to make up my run before I needed to get ready for work the next day. I was pumped. I was going to do this!

Let me just say that a bed is really persuasive at 5 a.m. This is amazing because it's not even an active persuader. It just kind of lies there, looking sexy, and implies its argument through its existence. Plus, it was dark outside. And it wouldn't get light until after the time I had to be in the shower in order to get to work on time. I went back to bed.

Later in the day, I was a little disappointed with myself. I got in a good bike ride during the afternoon, but I'd missed my run. To add to my frustration, I have a long event I have to be at for work today that steals from me the time I use for my workouts. I set the alarm for 5 a.m. again. This time I promised my Twitter followers that I wasn't going to fold. This time I was going to go to bed with my headlamp next to my alarm clock. Again, I was pumped.

And this time I actually hauled my ass out of bed and did my run. Want proof? If you read this before Friday afternoon, just look over to the Runkeeper.com widget to the right of this page. That says I ran 4.24 miles at 5:22 a.m., beotch.

A couple of weird things regarding that run, however. First, I've long suspected that something is wrong with my brain, especially regarding its ability to perceive the flow of time, during the first 30 minutes after I wake up in the morning. Things seem to me to be moving at a normal pace only for clocks to tell me that I have huge chunks of missing time. I normally run my first mile at a low-to-mid 8 minute per mile pace, at least for distances over 3 miles. It certainly felt like I was running that pace this morning until the Runkeeper app announced at the half-mile point that I was in fact running at a 9:45 pace. That's a huge difference between perception and reality.

Next, my route really isn't the most conducive to pre-dawn running. A lot of dirt roads, including one that is an unofficial road. The farmer who borders our property across the county line had the dirt road that crossed his field taken off the county rolls, plowed it under, and moved the path onto another route to better access his irrigation pond. This is no longer a public road and as such is maintained only as much as he feels like doing it. That's important when you recall that giant thunderstorm two days ago. I had assumed that this road had dried out enough for me to use it to access another road I use on this route. After all, the other roads were dry the morning after the storm. I was wrong. I got about 3/4 of the way down the road only to discover a stretch far longer than I could jump was completely flooded. Crossing through the briers to my right or the soft, muddy, plowed soil to the left was not an option. I had to turn around and adlib a new route to get my intended distance. Way too much thinking that early in the morning.

So, I managed to get in my planned distance and discovered I may have a neurological disorder, but I have wet, muddy running shoes dirtying up the kitchen floor now. It was probably worth it, unless I have to buy new shoes.

So, When Is Summer Over?

2011-08-10T09:55:00.004-04:00

Photo: Mikael Colville-Andersen, Flickr Creative Commons

My run or bike ride yesterday (I couldn't decide which I was going to do), was cancelled by a huge thunderstorm that came in suddenly just before I was going to go out. My work schedule has me getting ready pretty early in the morning, so I get my workouts done in the evening when the sun is no longer hitting me directly. Sure, it's been 92 degrees at sunset lately, but the dimmer light seems to make it more bearable. I had skipped the day before as I've been on an unofficial every-other-day schedule so I felt a little guilty for missing a second day and set my alarm for 5 a.m. I was going get my 5 miles in before I had to stick my oatmeal in the microwave and take a shower.

Then the alarm went off and I looked out the window. It was still pitch black. It wouldn't even be gray outside until I had to be in the shower and I live way out in the boonies. They don't put up street lights this far out from anything resembling a neighborhood. I could have still gotten up, found my headlamp and gone anyway, but I used the excuse to reset my alarm for a later time and go back to sleep. I should have gotten my ass out of bed and gone for a run, but I'm slow to wake up in the mornings and a bed is REALLY convincing at 5 a.m.

As for the cycling, it's less than a month until I'm supposed to ride 103 miles around Savannah. I normally do 17-21 miles anytime I go for a ride, which means I need to build up my endurance. Toward that end, I went out for a 40-miler this past weekend. Let's just say that I really hope that the end result was from the heat and not from the distance. I'd gotten up a little later than I had intended Saturday and by the time I'd eaten breakfast and gotten myself ready to go, it was 10 til 10 in the morning before I got up on my bike. That meant, after taking into account my short rest and food break in the middle, that it was a good bit after noon before I got back to where I started. Unlike my normal evening rides, the late start meant that I pushed through most of my ride with the sun beating down directly from above. I was fine for the first 20 miles. I was fine for the first 30 miles, good enough even that I chose the longer option of the two second-half routes I had planned for the day. Somewhere around that 30th mile things fell apart, though. I was exhausted. Miles that I normally complete in 3-3.5 minutes were suddenly taking four. I couldn't keep my cadence steady for any significant amount of time. I'd pedal for a bit, coast, and then pedal again. Normally, I pedal pretty steadily for the entire ride, only coasting on the backsides of the tougher hills.

When I finally finished the ride, I even called my wife to come pick me up in the truck so I wouldn't have to walk the 1/2 mile to the house down the sandy road between us and pavement. It took me hours to get back to feeling like myself. I don't usually require any real time to recover from a ride and never more than 15 minutes to get back to being myself after a hard run, but this time I was spent.

In case you're bad at math, 40 does not even equal half of 103. I'm going to be stepping up my bike distances every weekend until the big ride and if I can't manage at least 75 miles by the weekend before the ride, I'm definitely going to cut back to a shorter option in Savannah.

This Is a Rant. I Don't Really Hate Babies. Just Yours.

2011-08-09T10:38:00.004-04:00

Photo: eclectic echoes, Flickr Creative Commons

I just got through reading an article on Salon by a woman who, in my opinion, was deeply scarred by overly prudish parents. You know the type. If you say butt, they freak out on you. This got me thinking about how much I HATE baby talk. I can't really pinpoint the exact origins of my spite for the language many parents create for their children, but I do have some reasons to justify my irritation.

Baby talk makes your kid stupid. Kids learn the vocabulary that is used with and around them and if you use stupid words with them, they're going to be stupid people. It also makes you and the child annoying. You may think shoo-shoo and binkies are cute. They're not. They make the parent sound foolish and people who aren't parents already hate your kid. They're loud. Whiny. Dirty. Lacking in understanding of social rules. Heck, many parents only really like their own kids anyway, so even they're annoyed with you and the kid.

I understand some of the language rules used with kid. You want to teach them to avoid insulting people and you want to teach them that there's a time and place to talk about what goes on in the bathroom and out in public is not one of those places, but it's often taken too far. Why does my son get in trouble when he gets frustrated with one of his toys and calls it stupid? He's not insulting anyone and he's venting his irritation in a much less annoying way than whining or doing that weird growl-scream he does sometimes when he's tired. In fact, I have never heard him insult another kid in his life. His mother and I aren't the type to bad-mouth or intentionally belittle other people. He lacks the negative influence in this area. And what's wrong with the word butt? I don't want to hear him talking about poop coming out of his butt in the grocery store, but saying he's going to headbutt me in the butt is pretty funny.

Then again, while I try to observe the conventions about profanity when I'm around people who are easily offended or when I don't know their stance on the matter, I really think the whole concept of banned words is ridiculously stupid. Why is booty any less offensive than ass? Why is shucks okay when I can't say shit? There is no logic to be found here. Stop trying. The meaning of what you say can be good, bad, or neutral. The words you use are only relevant as far as they contribute to that meaning.

I'm not even trying to claim we should teach our children to curse. The taboo is there and it's not an important one to focus on killing it off. I'm just saying that we shouldn't dumb down language so much for kids. They're going to be adults sooner or later and no one likes a prude or the clueless.

Of course another part of this is my distaste for modern parent culture. So many of them feel so entitled, so special just because they have children that haven't died yet. Guess what, neither you nor your children are special. I have three guinea fowl roaming loose in my yard with a brood of seven chicks. They have managed to keep those seven alive several weeks despite having no protection from the ample predators that live in my area. Sure, they've lost slightly more than half of the chicks they started off with, but when you manage to raise kids without medical care in an environment where you're a prey species and manage a better success rate, I'll be impressed. Until then, you're just one in an uncountable number of your species to reproduce successfully. Seriously, have you seen some of the parents who manage to get children they never planned or really wanted all the way to adulthood? Having kids doesn't make you special. Your kid is only really precious to you and your relatives and maybe your friends. Stop expecting the world to bend over backwards for you and your brats.

Basically, I consider kids to be like religion. I have no problem when people choose to have kids or when they're strong believers in some religion, just don't force that crap on me. You make sacrifices for your kids, no one else should be expected to do the same. You keep that in mind and I'll try to not force my kid on you.

Two Posts in a Week? What?

2011-07-27T14:19:00.003-04:00

Photo: mjp*, Flickr Creative Commons

Yes, I realize I've gotten really bad about posting. I can't offer any real excuses for my lack of consistency before June, but during the summer I really lose my ability to maintain a schedule. I don't work from the last week of May through the next-to-last week of July and most days I don't really manage to get anything done besides that day's run or bike ride. Then there's the fact that I usually take any excuse to travel that I can. Really screws up any routines I set up during the rest of the year and I'm already really bad at creating and maintaining habits.

Before I get any further with this post, go to take this little test and let me know in the comments what your results were. This is the website of a research project measuring the average person's English vocabulary. The short test asks you to check the boxes next to the words that you understand at least one meaning for. Clicking the box just because you recognize the word but couldn't define it is cheating. Using your results, the test estimates your vocabulary in number of words. I got 31,900, which is above average for my age, but below average for my age when the respondents scored the same as I did on their verbal portion of the SAT.

Now that's out of the way, I just signed up for the Savannah Century. In other words, I'll be riding my bike 103 miles around Savannah in just more than a month from now. This is a beginner's century because there are no hills in Savannah, much less categorized climbs. Still, my longest ride so far is basically 21 miles and I'll be a month into my half marathon training by then, so being ready for a 100-mile ride is going to be a stretch. The official bike jersey for the ride is pretty sweet, though.

The best thing about the ride is that it starts and ends at The Distillery, which is an incredible beer geek bar in Savannah. Seriously. Move this place into a trendy neighborhood in Metro Atlanta and it becomes the 2nd or 3rd best bar for beer geeks in that city. Brick Store is one of the top 5 in the nation, much less Atlanta, but I haven't been to The Porter Beer Bar, so I can't say how The Distiller compares to that one. Regardless, I may have to make my wife drive me to the ride that day and have her occupy herself for the six hours I'll be on the bike so I can have my way with The Distillery's tap list before making the long(ish) drive home. She enjoyed our last visit to The Distillery, so that part wouldn't be as bad as entertaining herself for six hours.

Speaking of bike rides, if you look on my side bar, I've added a widget that uses my RunKeeper data to report my workouts. The current three are all bike rides, although I didn't ride today. I woke up too late and my butt hurts from all the riding the last few days, but by the time you read this I may have completed tonight's run. That's assuming the downpour we've been experiencing for the last two hours doesn't continue all evening. The widget wasn't created by RunKeeper, but is something their Twitter feed linked to after one of their users created it.

Product Review: RunKeeper vs. MapMyRIDE

2011-07-25T12:38:00.003-04:00

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you know I've been using RunKeeper since January to track my exercise. It's a good product. It does what I want it to do and using it has really helped my running. I can't really say if it has helped my cycling because I started cycling after using the app, but it's safe to assume the answer is yes.

Recently, because of incessant ads and product placement on Versus during the Tour de France, I decided to give MapMyRIDE a try. RunKeeper and MapMyRIDE may sound like they're meant for different sports, but they both effectively do the same thing and work for a wide range of activities outside of their names. MapMyRIDE was running a promotion with the Tour de France that interested me so I thought I'd download the app and compare it to RunKeeper. Not wanting to sacrifice my GPS record-keeping on RunKeeper, I actually ran both apps simultaneously on my rides recently. This also helped to compare the data both apps returned for the same activities. Because both services have both an app and a website and the user really doesn't have to have use both, I'm going to review the apps and websites separately.

The Apps

Winner: MapMyRide

First, let me say that there's nothing really wrong with the RunKeeper app. It will track your data as accurately as the GPS in your device can manage. (Running through urban canyons and other areas of low sky visibility causes the maps to get a little screwy on both devices.) The most important feature of the app for me is that you can have your GPS-enabled device report your time, distance, and current pace or average speed at intervals and all of that is customizable. Getting this regular live feedback is a huge motivator for me. When you finish the activity, it will tell you how long and how far you exercised along with your average pace (or speed if you choose) and calories burned. There is a bar chart of sort that seems to show your speed over time, but it's completely unlabeled and useless. It's by far the biggest flaw in the app. Finally, you can also see the map of your route by clicking the little map icon on the bottom left. This has come in handy on runs and rides where I wasn't familiar with my surroundings and got lost, by the way. For those without GPS in your phone or iPod, it allows you to manually enter the activities as well. If you have a compatible heart rate monitor, the app works with that as well. There's also an option to broadcast your activities live through the website, although that requires a paid membership. The app works independently from the website so if you don't want to sign up for a free membership with the site, the app will still work. The app is a free download for Android, Apple, and Windows Phone 7 devices.

Why is the MapMyRIDE app better? It has ridiculously more features and is still free. Despite having "ride" in the name, the app will track basically the same activities that RunKeeper will and it has the options to have audio feedback similar to that of RunKeeper. When you're finished, you get the same data about your ride that RunKeeper gave you. In other words, it does everything that I have to have from a running/cycling app. The way it surpasses RunKeeper here is it also allows you to track your diet from the app and it automatically integrates your workouts into the calorie counter. You can check on your friends from the website through the app as well although honestly, the only extra feature I'll ever use is the nutrition tracker, but that's a big advantage over the RunKeeper app. In fact, it's enough to just barely edge out RunKeeper in the app department even after taking into to account that MapMyRIDE app is a little tougher to learn in the beginning and has a tendency to stall while using some of the extra features. I may take away this win from MapMyRIDE if I keep having problems with the app hanging up on me when I'm trying to search for and add food to my nutrition tracker. RunKeeper is simpler and more elegant and would probably still be the better option for those less technologically adept.

The Website

Winner: RunKeeper

The nutrition tracker on MapMyRIDE is a really tough thing to count out, especially since RunKeeper has nothing like it. Also, I love the challenges (some even come with opportunities to win prizes) that can add a little fun to your workout routine. I enjoyed playing the Aquaphor Tour de France Challenge, personally. It was fun to try to match up my workout to that day's course and see how my ride matched up. (It wasn't pretty. I live over 100 miles from the nearest real mountain and 70 or so miles from the nearest real hill. Also, I'm far from being even a good amateur cyclist at this point. I'm just a competent amateur.) My problem is that the site just isn't as intuitive to use as RunKeeper is. Another huge problem for me is the level of detail they provide on my workouts. On RunKeeper, the stats on my runs and rides are broken down by the miles and it keeps track of personal records and long-term stats for me. Everything on MapMyRIDE is free for the user. There are pay plans, but they basically just do away with the ads and let you have access to slightly more detail to your workout charts, except currently the workout charts don't exist for me. This seems to be because they're migrating from their old site to a new one, but that doesn't change the fact that I only see my map and the entire workout as one entity. I can't see how much I flagged at the end or how much the hills affected me. If this gets added soon, I'll change my opinion of the site, but it's still just too complicated. It takes too many clicks to get where you want. It has great features, some better than RunKeeper, but it can be annoying to use. I do have to admit that it automatically categorizes your climbs like they do in professional road races based on your GPS data has me planning on driving up to the mountains for something that at least gets a Category 4 label.

There's not much left to say about RunKeeper. It does what it's supposed to do and the site is fairly elegant and low on frills. I'd love to see them add the challenges, especially the sponsored challenges that would help turn my exercises into the fantasy sports games I play online anyway. I'd also love to see them add a nutrition tracker, but for me, the main benefit of these sites is to keep track of my workout data so I can look at it and try to do what I do better. RunKeeper does that efficiently. I do pay for RunKeeper Elite to access more detailed statistics and records of my workouts, but the free membership comes with all of the data I consider essential.

Summary

If you're just downloading the app and don't mind the slightly higher learning curve of the MapMyRIDE app, go with MapMyRIDE. Enough of the site is represented on the app that you actually don't have any need to go to their website. Just be prepared for things to not always work (although the workout tracking has always worked fine for me). If you're going to use both the app and the website, RunKeeper becomes the better option. Honestly, I'm going to keep running both. My phone seems to handle running both apps together without an issue and this lets me take advantage of what I like about MapMyRIDE without losing what I love about RunKeeper.

Catching Up

2011-07-19T14:23:00.004-04:00

I'm a big fan of my guineas. They take care of themselves better than chickens and the complaints I've heard from others about the noise of the species is really overstated in my opinion. Besides, they've gotten quieter as they've gotten older.

While I was on vacation a pair of hens started sitting on the same nest together and the eggs started hatching out a couple of days ago. The two birds managed to get a brood of more than a dozen chicks by the end of the hatch. I can't get a good count because they set their nest up under a pretty dense bush. I have counted 13, but that's only the total if all of the chicks were out of the bush at the same time. That's unlikely. I managed to get a portable pen over the nest before they started getting out and about, so they'll be protected from the local predators until they're old enough to fly up into the cedar trees with their parents. The male guinea is funny. He's currently my only guinea not penned up but he stays close to the pen, even sleeping on top of it at night. I knew they were monogamous birds, but I didn't realize that he'd be so intent to stay close to his family.

* * * *

Since the last time I posted, I finished the 2011 Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta. I ran it for the first time last year (it was actually the goal in my self-imposed weight-loss scheme back then) and I managed to take slightly more than 10 minutes off of my time in the year between races. I finished with a time of 52 minutes, 1 second, which was exactly 1 second over my time goal. I think I lived off of that high for about a week. I start the formal training for my next running goal (a half marathon in the fall) early next month.

* * * *

Because I have a tendency to fall in love with watching sports that I actually do myself, I've started watching a lot of professional cycling lately. (To be clear, I'm not a professional cyclist. I simply ride a road bike and ride it a good bit.) We're in the final half of the Tour de France right now and I've become a serious fan of a few of the riders. I started following Thor Hushovd in the early flat stages when the sprinter's consistency had him in the yellow jersey for a week. Of course, once they hit the climbs of the mountain stages, he soon lost that jersey. No one expects a 180-lb sprinter to compete up the mountains with the 140-lb climbers. Surprisingly, after losing too much time to be an overall competitor, Hushovd has won two mountain stages straight out. Neither were particularly grueling as Tour de France mountain stages can be, but both were hilly enough to make his wins incredible shocks and keep all of the other sprinters well behind the peloton. Current yellow jersey wearer Thomas Voeckler is another of my favorites this year. He his got the jersey through an act of opportunism but has managed to hold onto it for more than a week by simply riding with the best riders in the world and refusing to let them drop him. He's finished with the other riders who have a chance to take the jersey from him every single day, countering every attack they've made and never falling off their pace. He's been fun to watch.

Tejay van Garderen is my final favorite. The only American left that I'm really following, van Garderen is basically a baby in his first Tour and he put up an amazing fight on one of the toughest stages so far in a major breakaway forcing the peloton to work a lot harder than they wanted to only pull him in during the last couple of miles. It was a heck of a ride for him.

Also, if you want a tale of pure badassery, Johnny Hoogerland was thrown into a barbed wire fence by a French television car when it hit him. He got bandaged up, finished the stage covered in blood from the leaking bandages, went to the hospital to get 33 stitches, and has been riding every day since. Can't say I'm a fan of him as he hasn't been able to keep himself in my view since then, but he's close.

* * * *

Finally, I recently downloaded the app for MapMyRIDE.com on my Droid phone. I've been using RunKeeper since the beginning of the year and I'm definitely a fan of that site and its app, but I'm currently comparing the two and will be posting a comparative review very soon.

Last stop

2011-06-29T17:41:00.001-04:00

I'm at Twain's Billiards and Tap and will be calling it a day as soon as I finish this sampler. It's a little funny that my plans fell apart not because of MARTA's failings but those of the metro highway system and me. Wrecking Bar was worth it though.

Crap

2011-06-29T17:20:00.001-04:00

I just left the Wrecking Bar Brewpub. It was awesome. Great beer, the pulled pork sandwich I had was good. I will be going again and I will be recommending it in the future. The bad news is that I left my credit card at a previous stop, so after my next stop I will be cutting my trip short and going back to get the card. That sucks.

Plan Modification

2011-06-29T14:56:00.001-04:00

I lost so much time with traffic that I am going to skip over my itinerary and go to my last planned stop first and work my way back. The stops in the middle are all places I've been to before and can get to easily. I'm currently waiting for my train to get going.

Finally at Stop Two

2011-06-29T14:08:00.003-04:00

Okay, I'm well behind schedule now and I haven't even set foot on MARTA yet. I'm at 5 Seasons North and the beer here is always good, but I'm trying to decide what to do to recover my lost time. I'm thinking about hitting Twain's and working ky way back north. that would guarantee that I at least get in Wrecking bar and would have me cutting out the easiest to visit brewpubs if it comes to that. I really hate driving suburban Atlanta.

Also, to check out ly ratings for Toasted and Tapped, visit the Ratebeer page.

Effing Hell. I'm having to skip an unsampled beer because I'm driving. That's torture for a ticker like me. Fucking Atlanta mass transit. There is bus service here, but I'd have had to have driven well out of the way to park my car and take the bus. Next stop, North Springs MARTA station. Glad I brought my mp3 player.

It Begins

2011-06-29T12:20:00.002-04:00

I'm sitting at the bar at Tapped and Toasted in Flowery Branch. I'm already about an hour behind schedule because of a horrible traffic backup. This place was impossible to do with public transit, so I had to drive. Luckily, parking was free. The place is downtown and looks like a sprawling house. Several of the beers were sour, although at least a couple were supposed to be, I think. Burger was good.

Time in transit (car): 1 hour, 45 minutes.

I'll Be Live Blogging Today!

2011-06-29T00:11:00.000-04:00

Photo: Martin Ujlaki, Flickr Creative Commons

Yes. I realize I haven't posted in more than a month. I have a good excuse. I've been on a mammoth road trip involving visits to Michigan, Virginia and book-ended by trips to my favorite city in the South, Asheville, NC. Seriously, as soon as I get vested in my current employer's pension program, I'm moving there. Just you watch. Three more years.

Anyway, I'm still not home. We're spending a week with my wife's family as she helps out while her father has some medical procedures and I prepare for this year's Peachtree Road Race. This leaves me with a lot of down time, so to burn through a day, I'm going to be doing a tour of the Atlanta-area brewpubs. I'll likely be doing this by myself. Don't worry, I'll be either walking or making use of MARTA for the majority of my visits. The latter, combined with the fact that I'll be averaging a pint of beer per visit means that I'll never actually get a good buzz going even after hitting up to nine brewpubs. Also, I think it'll take me about 9 hours to get this done. Atlanta's public transportation system REALLY sucks.

Anyway, if you're interested. I'll be live blogging my trip talking about both the hassles of getting from place to place and the beer itself. A couple of my stops will be at brand new brewpubs I've never visited.

Here's my proposed lineup in the order of visiting:

5 Seasons Brewing, Sandy Springs. According to Google Maps, this is on my way to my second stop. If the GPS takes me a different way to the other stop tomorrow, this may move to third place. This is the original location of the local micro-chain 5 Seasons. It's also the only one where Crawford Moran doesn't brew the beer. Instead, Kevin McNerney, co-founder and former brewer for Sweetwater makes the suds here.

Toasted and Tapped, Flowery Branch. This is a new one to me. It opened last November and I'd somehow failed to have even heard of it in that time. After asking around, it turns out that the place is actually worth visiting.

5 Seasons North, Alpharetta. I'll be visiting three 5 Seasons, all with different beer lineups.

Gordon Biersch, Atlanta. I may skip this stop. It's only steps away from the MARTA station where I'll be getting off for the downtown brewpubs, but it's a national chain and really isn't worth the time if I'm running behind. I may just step in, see if they have anything I haven't tried and move on.

5 Seasons Westside, Atlanta. This is the newest location and offers up my first real logistical challenge. This 5 Seasons and the Park Tavern are both 2 miles from the rail station, which isn't a big deal. The problem is that they're in exactly opposite directions from the station. I'm probably going to walk to 5 Seasons and then catch a bus to Park Tavern. That'll supposedly cut the nearly hour long walk between the two to only 20 minutes. We'll see how that works.

Park Tavern, Atlanta. This restaurant is a great location. They're on a corner of Piedmont Park, a beautiful park with a great view of the Atlanta skyline. The problem is that I think they only keep brewing beer because they bought that brewing equipment when they opened. The last time I visited, the beer was fine but the place really doesn't seem to push their own beer. I'm going to be calling ahead. If they don't have anything I haven't had, I'm not making the walk or paying the bus fare to go.

Max Lager's is another issue. It's just far enough down the line to make me wonder if getting back on MARTA is worth it. We'll see. The beer is usually pretty good though, and unlike Park Tavern, they actually mention it on their website.

Wrecking Bar Brewpub. This is the newest brewer in Atlanta. They opened on Father's Day this year and the place is owned by a guy I know from my days hanging around the Atlanta beer geek and homebrew scenes. I'm really looking forward to trying this place out.

Twain's Billiards and Tap. This was a good place for beer even before they started brewing their own and they still have a killer lineup of guest beers. However, it's the end of the line for me so I'll be calling for their lineup before stepping onto MARTA again. If I've had everything they have on tap, I'll be calling it a day early.

I'll be getting started around 10-10:30 a.m. today (Wednesday), so if you're stuck at work and want to tune in to my musings on beer and public transit in Atlanta feel free to check in.

This Post Is About Running. Please Ignore the Photo.

2011-05-26T23:43:00.004-04:00

This is the sort of thing I see when I run at home. There was actually a dead adolescent puppy a couple of weeks ago in the middle of the road not far from where I found this deer. I'm not sure how the dog got there, but what's left of it is mostly gone now.

Anyway, this post is about becoming a runner. It was more than a year ago that I became disgusted enough with the way I looked that I set a goal for myself to run the Peachtree Road Race, a 10k race in Atlanta that is one of the largest of its distance in the country. Since that time, I've run regularly ever since and I've even picked up cycling and swimming to fill out my exercise routine. I'm still pretty pudgy around the middle, but I've also lost nearly 40 lbs.

Running is a great way to work yourself into being fit. If that sounds like a horrible hobby to you, I just have to say that you should suck it up and stop being so lazy. Doing something hard and getting through it is a great way to build self esteem and give you sense of pride. I'm not just parroting some cliche. That's something I've learned the hard way. I like myself better since I've started running. It's also one of the cheapest methods out there for getting fit. You probably already have old T-shirts and gym shorts. The only things I wear while running that don't get worn outside of running are my shoes.

And that's my first tip. Spend some money on your shoes. They're important. If you're doing the barefoot thing (and the research there is inconclusive at the moment), that's fine, but be aware that bad shoes are far worse than no shoes. I bought my first pair of good running shoes just to guilt myself into sticking with running long enough to complete my 10k goal. It wasn't until I forgot those shoes at home one day and had to run in my normal walking-around shoes that I realized they made a difference. Shoes that had never bothered me in normal circumstances suddenly prevented me from even running a full mile when I had been doing 2 miles easily in the good running shoes. My legs were killing me. I run in Brooks Adrenalines. I officially retired my first pair this past weekend after my first triathlon. You're supposed to replace your running shoes after every 350 to 500 miles and I passed that sometime last year, but I didn't suck it up and shell out for a new pair until earlier this month. If you're going to pay that kind of money on shoes (I've paid between $80 and $100 for mine), make sure you're getting the right shoe for your feet. Many running specialty stores offer free stride analysis and can match you to a shoe that is designed for your type. Take advantage of their services if you have access to them, but there are web sites out there that can help you figure this out for yourself.

My second piece of advice is to set a goal of public performance and make sure to convince yourself that it would be humiliating not to make that goal. The Peachtree was mine. Last weekend's triathlon was another. Let people know about your goals and your progress toward those goals as well. Peer pressure isn't always bad and fear of shame can be a good motivator. Use it to your advantage.

It's also a really good idea to set progressive performance goals during your training for that event. See how far you can run without walking on your first attempt. Make sure you run at least that far for your first couple of runs and then set your goal a little farther down the road for the next few runs. Make sure you're pushing yourself, but remember not to push yourself too hard. If you're not used to running or being active, you don't want to hurt yourself, but setting progressive goals is a key to making this a habit. The challenges and successes can make this an addictive hobby. You may not like it to start with, but there's a point where this changes from a chore into something you look forward to. I genuinely enjoy running now. At the beginning, it was just a means to an end.

Find a training program and stick with it. Make sure you feel guilty if you have to miss a day. It's way too easy to let skipping a day become a habit. You want to make running the habit, not the skipping. You are a failure if you don't run on your scheduled days. Remember that. A failure. Your family is ashamed of you. In training for the Peachtree, I used Hal Higdon's novice 5k and novice 10k training schedules. The guy seems to be pretty well respected by runners and the training worked well for me. I used a schedule from Ontri.com for my recent triathlon.

If you're running roads, it's probably best not to run with music. It will drown out the environmental noises that you need to pay attention to, like cars. Podcasts, on the other hand, tend not to be walls of sound and from my experience allow you to easily hear cars coming up behind you while helping you keep your mind off of any discomfort from being tired and to keep you from getting bored. Boredom was always one of the main factors that kept me from sticking with this in the past. Now, I often realize that I've zoned out during the run and stopped paying attention to the podcasts as my mind drifts during the runs, but in the beginning they were a great help.

Finally, if you want to get faster, really track your progress, or if you're a stat junkie, get something like Runkeeper, especially if you have a GPS-enabled phone. My progress since adding Runkeeper to my exercise program has been incredible. I improved more in three months this year than I did the entire year last year.

Wish Me Luck

2011-05-23T05:00:00.003-04:00

Picture: Wisconsin Historical Images, Flickr Creative Commons

In case you've forgotten, I write a post for TheGreenists.com every four weeks. So far I've written about chickens, beer, more beer, volunteering on the Appalachian Trail and some toy company. That last post was probably the worst of the bunch in my opinion. Not happy with that piece, but whatever.

My next post will be Wednesday and I'm going to write about bike commuting. However, I'm not going to just parrot the prevailing wisdom on riding your bike to work. I'm actually going to attempt it myself. I have three days of work this week without students so I'm going to ride my bike to work today and Tuesday and base my post around my experiences. I've got my route mapped out. Unfortunately, the road bike I borrowed for this past weekend's triathlon blew a front tire on the way home from the island, so I'm back to my old Wal-Mart mountain bike. If I can succeed in riding to work on that thing, anyone can manage to commute by bike.

In other words, go check out The Greenists on Wednesday and make sure I didn't die, bleeding on the side of the highway.

Well, I Did It

2011-05-22T20:42:00.002-04:00

I finished my first sprint triathlon yesterday and I did pretty well. In the Clydesdale category I finished 5th of 30 competitors with a time of 1:10:19. Overall, I finished 53rd of 219 competitors. I have to say that I'm thrilled with my results and I may have found my niche. I'm not really much of specialist. I've never excelled in anything, but I tend to be competent in a lot of different things and I think I can take advantage of that quality in triathlon.

First, I was surprised at how well my swim went. This was what I thought would be my weakest leg. I didn't really know what to expect and I really just wasn't that comfortable in the water despite spending years in the pool on a youth swim team. My time in the quarter-mile swim: 9 minutes, 16.1 seconds, a personal record pace. I had the 10th-fastest swim in my division despite having to fight through the crowd on my push to the front. I started at the back and far right of the pack. I'd been warned by my cousin and my sister's friend who'd advised me that until I knew what I was doing, that I should avoid the scrum in the water. Turns out I should have started out in the front row. I passed literally two-thirds of my starting heat and maybe a third of the heat that started 3 minutes ahead of me. The next time I do a triathlon with a Clydesdale heat, I'm getting in the front. Screw the scrum. Most of those bastards can't catch me. It's nice to be able to say that without irony.

The second leg is my favorite. I love to be on the bike even though I'm not really exceptionally fast on it. Again, I had the 10th-fastest time in my division, covering 9.3 miles in 29 minutes, 3.2 seconds, another personal record. The course is almost pancake flat, smooth asphalt, and I was in a groove. I kept a steady pace and the only guy who managed to pass me on the bike and stay ahead of me I managed to end up beating by more than a minute after the run.

I wasn't sure what to think about my run yesterday. My legs were pretty numb and it felt like I was crawling even though I was steadily passing people and never getting passed. I was more than a minute per mile slower at that distance than my personal best, but then I would have been okay with that run by itself back in January, so I'll take it. I did the 5k run in 27 minutes, 49.1 seconds and had the fourth fastest run in my category.

Overall, I had the 68th fastest swim, the 54th fastest bike, and the 50th fastest run. In other words, in a field of 219, I was above average in every area.

My transitions weren't so pretty, but those I can work on. It's just nice to know that almost 7 hours in the water, 19 hours on the bike, and 17 hours running since March were worth it.

Too bad that my parents' pond is already about to dry up. I'm actually going to look forward to my swim days now.

There Goes the Neighborhood

2011-05-18T08:01:00.003-04:00

Photo: gari.baldi, Flickr Creative Commons

I got a letter from one of the deacons of my childhood church yesterday. Actually, they mailed it to my mom's house and she delivered it to me right before I went out before my last bike training day before Saturday's triathlon.

My old church is dumping me. I'm not really surprised. It's been a long time coming. When I moved back to my hometown five years ago, I think they thought I was going to step back into my old routine of coming to church on a regular basis, and I didn't. After three or four years of me living six miles from the church and never stepping through the front door, the main deacons came to visit me at my home. I didn't really want the visit. I didn't see the point. I knew what they were probably coming for and I knew that I wasn't going to change my mind about wasting my Sunday mornings in a church. Unfortunately, I have trouble saying no, so they came and spent about an hour in my house talking. Mostly, it was small talk and the conversation about coming back to church was short. They asked why, I said I didn't feel the need to and then they asked if it was the fault of the then pastor. A couple of months later they dumped that pastor.

I had nothing to do with the dismissal of the pastor. I said he was in no way my reason for not going. In fact, I'd always liked him. He gave sermons that seemed more like college lectures in Biblical studies instead of the gibberish and platitudes you hear in most sermons. I actually liked that guy and I had said so. After he was dismissed, I honestly thought that maybe these guys were looking to use me as an excuse to get rid of the preacher. Apparently, they didn't really like the man and I think part of it may have been because his sermons went over the head of the average person where I live. This area isn't exactly a bastion of college graduates, after all.

A few months ago, they came by again, this time with the new pastor. It was basically the same conversation. A lot of small talk, a short, very pointless discussion about me coming back to the church. They weren't pushy and I politely gave them nothing that they wanted.

Then yesterday the letter arrived notifying me that on June 5th they were going to discuss removing me from the rolls of church membership and I'd probably lose my membership. Personally, I'm okay with that, although it does feel a little weird that I'll no longer be a member of the church I joined when I was 12. Still, that's silly because I've not made use of my membership or even the church's existence in more than a decade. I have no desire to start going back to the church, to any church.

What I do feel a little guilt about is my mom. She's still holding out for my returning to the church. She's not pushed me on it in the past, but she's still active in there and I know she's probably disappointed that I've drifted away. She doesn't know my full opinion on this issue, but I'm sure if she's at church for their next conference, the topic of discussion is going to sting a little. I really don't like being the cause of that.

That's Weird

2011-05-13T15:27:00.001-04:00

There were several comments on my last post and now they're all completely gone. I'm not crazy, I still have a record of who posted and what they wrote in my e-mail. I have no idea how they were deleted.

I Couldn't Even Beat One of the Fat Guys

2011-05-11T11:37:00.005-04:00

Photo: mikeywally, Flickr Creative Commons

I should probably follow up my last post with results from my first road bike race. The short version is that I sucked. I came in next to last and guy I beat was obese. That would be more impressive if I were still classified as low obese instead of borderline overweight/normal

The long version is a little more nuanced. My start genuinely sucked. I wasn't sure how competitive I'd be so I started at the back of the starting group. I was the only guy who didn't have a proper cycling kit. My shorts were triathlon shorts. They look kind of like bike shorts, but the chamois (the crotch padding) is definitely minimalist compared to that in true bike shorts. Instead of the club jerseys everyone else wore, I had a seamless synthetic running shirt that I got from a tennis tournament in Augusta last year. I definitely didn't look the part. When they sounded the start, my performance matched my dress. For some reason, I couldn't get my left shoe clicked in and struggling to get that to work, a problem I didn't even have when I first got the new pedals, allowed most of the stronger cat 5 riders to get well on their way around the next corner before I really hit my pace. It didn't help that the start was downhill. My start continued to be rough for several laps. The other riders were a corner ahead of me for the first few laps so I had no idea of how to pace myself to catch up without burning out. Turns out that I set too conservative a pace and I was lapped by the main group about halfway through the 30-minute race, although I did pass one of the two guys fatter than me not long after that. By the time I was becoming proficient at working the gears to keep my speed going up the hills and maximizing my speed on the downhills, all hope of finishing with the main group was gone. In fact, around that time I was lapped by two guys who had dropped off the main group early on. This, however, ends up being a much more positive experience. As soon as these two guys passed me, I turned up my effort and actually passed both of them easily on the next uphill (the steepest on the course). Passing someone on an uphill is pretty rewarding, by the way. Of those two, the younger rider managed to pass me after the next turn, although I hung with him for the rest of the race. The older rider I never saw again.

Here's what I learned: (1) I'm not as good as I had hoped. Being completely out of contention in what's basically the beginner's level in road biking was humbling. I never even remotely convinced myself that I'd be able to compete in Cat 4, 3, or the Pro 1 2 races, but I had hoped that I'd be at least middle of the pack in the Cat 5 race. I wasn't.

(2) Starting is important. I was never close enough to the main pack in the early laps to base my pace on them. When they lapped me, I hadn't yet gotten my shifting down so I kept up with them on the downhill and flat, but lost them on the first uphill. I don't know how long I could have kept up with them had I started better, but I would have had to have done better than what I ended up doing.

(3) How to do hills. Now, I'm not going to claim I could ace a long uphill going through the mountains now, but on the relatively short rolling hills I see here, I'm a lot better going up than I used to be. I know better when to shift down, when to get up off the saddle, and I concentrate on doing the full circular pedaling motion. If my Runkeeper chart is correct, I'm actually speeding up while going uphill at times now, at least in the first half of my rides when I'm fresh.

(4) I need a different bike. I saw a photo of me on the bike and it looked like a man on a 12-year-old's bike. That got me looking into things and discovering that despite the fact my cousin is my size, the bike he loaned me is about 9 cm too small for me. It's a 51 and I need a 60. I'm trying to decide if I should ask him about buying the bike and, if I get a good deal from him, use the bike until I save up for a good frame more my size. Then I can take the quality components off of this bike and put them on the larger frame. Otherwise, I'll need to just save up for a new complete bike.

Yesterday I went out for a 20-mile ride and my goal for the day was really just to take it easy and focus on my pedaling technique. I really focused on the circular motion and concentrated on doing the short uphills right. By the end of my 20 miles (my longest ride ever by about 3 miles) I wasn't even tired, but ended up with an average pace only a couple of seconds off my best times at shorter distances. I still wouldn't come close to the podium in a cat 5 Criterium, but I'm a faster cyclist now, which is good. I have to make up for my swimming in the triathlon in about a week and a half.

I'm a Termite That's Choking on the Splinters

2011-05-06T07:58:00.003-04:00

Photo: [phil h], Flickr Creative Commons

First, I'd like to point out that if I have at any point commented to you, in person or through my blog, that I intended on going pro as a cyclist by the end of the year, that I spoke with only the utmost of verbal irony. In other words, I'm fully aware that I lack both the natural ability and the youthful starting age of the guys who actually have a shot at those dreams. Also, from what I've seen, I think I may be too tall to be a competitive cyclist. Either the models who kissed the stage winner at the end of each day of the Tour de Romandie earlier this month were giants, or the average pro cyclist is well under six feet tall. Makes sense. They're lugging around a lot less weight than the rest of us.

It's just frustrating having your limitations thrust into your face. I'm starting to get that feeling now. Just to see what I could expect in my criterium bike race this weekend, I went out looking for results for other similar races in my category around the state. Most of the results were meaningless. My crit is a 30-minute crit and seeing that someone finished a 30-minute crit in 29 or 31 minutes tells me nothing. If I don't know how far they went in that time, I have no way to compare it to my time. Finally, I found a crit held in Atlanta recently and I scrolled down the list to the category 5 race (the "beginners," my people) to discover that the guy who basically came in last held an average speed for the entire course that would have smoked my best ever average over that distance. I frequently do a 9-mile route. It takes me about 30 minutes. It's my short training route so I'm really familiar with that I can maintain over that distance. Keeping myself going 19 mph on average is a successful run. Sure, the terrain is lightly rolling and the asphalt is rough, but I'm not competing with a guy who averaged 22.5 mph for 30 minutes. The guy who came in last and was pulled because he fell too far off the pace averaged a mile per hour better than my record pace. I'm so screwed.

Except, if I remember correctly, the streets on the block where I'll be racing are very smooth. On my long training route, there's only one stretch of good road that starts around the 11th mile and I often average around 22.5 mph on the second mile of that stretch and about 20.5 mph for the entire stretch even though it's the hilliest section of my route. Also if I remember correctly, the block I'll be racing is nearly flat. Holy crap. There's a chance I would have been competitive in that Atlanta cat 5 race and I find it hard to believe that the competition will be tougher in a much smaller city. I probably don't have any real chance of winning, but I do have a real chance of finishing with the pack. Also, I don't have to feel quite so stupid about daydreaming about a sprint to the finish and making the podium.

True, I would have gotten spanked in any of the other racing categories, but I've only been on the bike for a little more than three months now. I should get better if I stick with this. Dammit, I'm going pro by the end of the year and all you doubters can suck on a derailleur.

Win This Bike! (Maybe)

2011-05-04T09:00:00.002-04:00

Actually, this post isn't entirely about a bike giveaway. I recently came across the blog of a guy who goes by Fat Cyclist, or Fatty for short. I given my 210-lb frame, I feel I have a little in common with the guy, and he seems to have a pretty good sense of humor, so I've been following his blog. I'd also love for someone to take his logo and put that on a cycling jersey. I'd love to be able to ride in that because it's perfect for me.

Today's post involves a potential giveaway of a brand new Trek Superfly 100 mountain bike. That's a nearly $5,000 bike. Really swanky, something I could never afford. Here's the gist of the situation. Fatty has had a little trouble motivating himself to get down to his racing weight of 158 lbs from his current 170 lbs. All I can assume is that the guy is also a midget. If I were 170 lbs, I'd actually be rail thin and would never wear a shirt. I mean never. They'd have to fire me at work because I would walk into my classroom and teach Shakespeare in nothing but slacks and a pair of loafers, but then I'm 6'3". I guess one guy's fat is another guy's tall.

Anyway, the guy bought this bike back in January and told himself he couldn't put it together until he reached his target weight, which apparently hasn't really budged since then. Desperate for motivation, he decided to publicly offer it up as a prize to anyone donating to his LiveStrong campaign if he's unable to reach his target weight by June 3. Every $5 you donate through his team page (linked on his post) earns you an entry in the contest. If he fails and you win, that's a sweet bike. If he succeeds, you don't get a bike, but you've also made a charitable donation to help fund the fight against cancer. Even if you're a total jerk, it's a tax deduction, so there's that.

Also, the cancer thing is personal for this guy. His wife died of breast cancer in 2009, so it's not like he pulled the charity out of a hat. This isn't really about winning a bike (although I wouldn't mind having it myself.) This is more about doing something good for everyone involved. This is something that is worth supporting.

Awesome

2011-04-28T14:46:00.004-04:00

Photo: clarkmaxwell, Flickr Creative Commons

Holy shit.

I just realized that I went the entire month of April without posting. This isn't good. I should be writing, and this is currently my only outlet in that area. It's probably irrelevant though. We all know I'm never going pro as a writer. I'd never be able to be self-employed. I lack that part of me that gets me off my ass and working unless I have someone over my shoulder.

Still, that hasn't stopped me from daydreaming a lot lately about going pro as a cyclist, even if it's by far more of a long-shot than the older writing dreams. I have never possessed any athletic talent. My best will always be competent, and I'm okay with that. Although, despite my earlier claims to the contrary, I've been an effing badass when it comes to motivation lately. I put almost a hundred miles on my borrowed bike last month and that included the fact that I had to squeeze in a lot of my training rides after both a full workday and a second partial workday as a tennis coach. I was also having to split training days with running (18 miles) and swimming (4.5 miles). I missed 100 miles on the bike and the running was down from an average of about 40 miles a month because I missed four days of training in the middle there when I was too sick to go out, although even then I trained on most of the days I was sick.

I ride in my first criterium bike race this weekend. I'll be a category 5 rider (basically beginning racer) and I honestly have no idea how I'll perform. Two weeks after that I run my first sprint triathlon. I've already set my two next goals of completing a marathon within a year and graduating up to the Olympic-distance triathlons by the end of next year. I'm sticking with the cycling.

I enjoy running. I don't have to force myself to go out on my run days. I've run high on sore throat and cough syrup. (That actually made me nauseous.) I've run through drizzling rain. But I've never been excited about running. I love what's it's done for me. It was the gateway into a new mindset for me and I'm glad for that, but I'm beginning to verge on the obsessive with cycling. I look forward to my biking days. I want to go out on my rides. I spend free time reading about cycling and lusting after bikes I'll never be able to afford. I like the speed. I like the fact I can go out farther from my house and see things I would never get around to seeing on foot, and I still get that zen-like state I get while running. My mind clears, I'm out on my own, and temporarily not a father or husband, just a guy repeatedly contracting and relaxing his leg muscles. My om mani padme hum comes from the rhythms of my feet striking the ground or following the circle of the pedals.

Swimming, I don't love so much. I'm too busy concentrating on not choking from timing my breathing wrong to be able to think. My swim days are merely tolerated. At least I have the self-discipline now to do it anyway. I have improved though. I'm a decent swimmer. I just don't really enjoy it.

You know what, screw reality. I fully expect to get noticed during my race on Saturday and get signed by a local semi-pro team. By the end of the summer, I'll be able to turn in my notice and go pro, where I'll be able to travel the world and continue to live my current teacher's lifestyle. One day, I'll make the roster for a team in the Tour de France or the Giro d'Italia where I'll play a support role to help my superior teammates win stages or the team finish in the top three. That's right, even in my wildest dreams, I'm only just good enough to make a living.

Maybe this is why I haven't been writing lately. Sure, part of it is the lack of free time I've had, but I haven't really been thinking about much besides the bike, my running, and swimming in the last month, and, while it all fascinates me, I can't say I want to turn this blog into one that focuses solely on athletics.

An Athletic Update

2011-03-30T08:22:00.003-04:00

Photo: Gino, Flickr Creative Commons

Monday was a severely overcast day. We made it through tennis practice without any falling moisture, but by the time I switched into my running shoes, cued up the GPS and Runkeeper on my phone, and plugged Radiolab into my ears there was a very fine mist coming down. I had to will myself to go run. It would have been easy to have given myself the excuse to just go home and pass up the day's workout. I couldn't see for most of the run because it was only like 50 and wet so when the mist didn't obscure my view, the fogging of glasses heated from behind by my body heat and chilled from the front by the damp and cold kept me from seeing anything. I'm glad I didn't quit. Despite the annoyances, I posted a 23 minute, 40 second 5k time. This was huge. A year ago, I was doing good to finish that distance in 30 minutes. Since then, I've taken 2 minutes and 20 seconds off of my per-mile pace, more than half of that since this January when I started running with that Runkeeper app.

This is a pretty exciting thing for me. Last year, I was thrilled to make the G starting wave of the Peachtree Road Race. This year, I'll be starting in the D wave based on my official time from a race where I RAN OVER THE TALLEST BRIDGE IN GEORGIA. TWICE. If I had been able to run a flat course race this weekend and have had it count for the Peachtree, I'd actually be starting in the B starting wave. I honestly didn't think I'd ever be able to run that distance this quickly last summer. Yes, I know a couple of you who still read this blog could still beat me, but screw you. Let me enjoy my relative success. Until the last month, my goal for this year's Peachtree was to finish in under an hour. My time last year was an hour and two minutes, so that seemed a reasonable goal. Now, my goal is to cross the finish line in less than 51 minutes.

Moving on to triathlon news (Seriously, who am I?), I finally located a road bike for the bike leg of the Turtle Crawl in May. I just happened to mention to a fellow teacher who I knew did a lot of serious biking that I was doing a triathlon and asked if he knew anyone who might have a spare road bike that I could borrow. The person he suggested is actually a cousin of mine. Not even that, it's a cousin who is almost exactly my size (except with a thinner build). Turns out this cousin had actually been into doing triathlons before he hurt his back not too long ago. Before his injury he had replaced his really nice road bike with an even nicer triathlon bike, so he had a bike, probably nicer than I'd be willing to afford, just hanging in his garage unused, meaning I could borrow it for two months for the race without causing him any inconvenience. Unfortunately, I've had it for two days and haven't been able to ride the damn thing. I picked it up after my killer run on Monday and didn't ride it because it was raining and because I had to figure out how to inflate tires with a presta valve, which I didn't know existed until that day. Tuesday's ride was killed off by a tennis match lasting until dark. Today we may all drown. If it stops raining early enough on Thursday, I may go for a ride then. The rain is killing my workouts this week, but if we didn't get some soon I was going to lose my training pond. It was already down to shallower than waist deep in some parts.

As for the swimming, I'm up to about 300 yards of a steady pace without stopping. I'm swimming a third of a mile every swim day, but I'm having to take a break in the middle. Now I just have to finish the entire session without a break and I'm golden. I can't really brag about my swimming yet, but it's improving in a hurry.

But really who cares. I'm 27 lbs lighter than I was a little more than a year ago and I'm 17 lbs lighter than I was starting this year. I'll never be really competitive in any of these sports, but I'll still feel better about myself, at least until I suck it up and buy new pants. I'm having trouble keeping my old ones up. I hate spending money on clothes.

Keep It off My Wave, My Wave

2011-03-17T10:23:00.005-04:00

Photo: Alberto+Cerriteño, Flickr Creative Commons

I took my first couple of laps Sunday as part of my triathlon training. To put it kindly, it was a humbling experience. I'm using my parents' pond, a long rectangular body of water that is largely free of weeds or debris, as my training center. One length of the pond is roughly 130 yards, making four lengths of the pond the perfect training distance. If I can swim that continuously, I can easily make the 1/4-mile distance of the race.

Stepping into the water Sunday I realized that the water temperature was cold enough to elicit a gasp when I first went under, but not so cold that I felt chilled after the first moment of adjusting. I know that some of you may be jealous that I can go swimming when it is still technically winter, but even accounting for the weird snowstorms that reached fairly fair south this winter, it's been a mild one and a very short one as well. I haven't had the heater on in the house for almost two months now and we've kept the windows open for most of those two months. We've had several days already this year when we saw 80 degrees, and we'll have at least five of them in a row coming up.

Despite the relatively comfortable water, that first attempt at swimming was an embarrassment. I was a distance swimmer growing up as a kid. I even swam laps in this pond as a kid when the public pool in town was condemned. It was easy, at least until drought hit and the oxygen-starved catfish swarmed the freshly oxygenated water around my thrashing limbs. Now, I couldn't even sync up my breathing with my strokes to keep my head down because I was out of breath as soon as I started. My arms were so tired halfway down the pond that I couldn't even finish my strokes. My kicks were powerful and my legs never got tired, but using my arms left me gasping for breath and treading water or breast-stroking to keep my head above the water while I caught my breath.

Luckily, when I got back into the water yesterday, I finished the first 130 yards without a pause. Strokes were clean. Breaths were good. I kept my head down and I paced myself well. I needed this. Running and biking came relatively easy for me. The rewards were quick and helped keep me motivated to improve. I'm not the type of guy who refuses to give up. I actually usually just quit when things get tough. After that first lap, I ended up doing four lengths of the pond (about 0.3 of a mile) in about 18:30. I couldn't do the other lengths continuously and I struggled during the third and fourth lengths to keep my breathing synced as I started to get too tired to keep my rhythm going, but the significant improvement was reassuring. Things should go well for me by May.

Congratulations John Baker!

2011-03-15T15:37:00.004-04:00

Photo: yksin, Flickr Creative Commons

Correction: I was correct about Baker breaking the record for fastest run, as well as Ramey Smyth, who came in second, also beating the old record, but I was incorrect that Baker was the first Alaska Native to win the race. Emmitt Peters, an Athabaskan Indian, won in 1975. Baker is the first Alaska Native to win since then and is the first Inupiat (a.k.a Eskimo) to win the race.

John Baker is the winner of the 2011 Iditarod dog sled race. It took him only 8 Days 18 Hours 46 Minutes 39 Seconds to complete the 1,082-mile trail, which, if I'm reading the records right, makes his the fastest run in history. I could be wrong on that one. It's very, very close if it's not a record. I also think Baker may be the first Alaska Native to win the race (he's of Inupiat descent). From what I could tell, the guy basically had a perfect run in a race where having any setbacks at any point basically put you out of the running this year. Just ask the winner of the last four years, Lance Mackey, who likely won't even finish in the top ten.

Baker's closest competition was Ramey Smyth, who finished only an hour, 4 minutes, and 10 seconds after Baker. Speaking of the finish time, if I was correct about Baker breaking the record, then Smyth also would have broken the old record, but then from the reports I was reading, the conditions on the trail were extremely good, especially in the first half of the race. I was kind of hoping Smyth would win, or at least gain more ground for a more exciting finish, but he managed to keep it close enough at the end to make my following of the race on Iditarod.com's leader board worth my time.

My sentimental favorite was Trent Herbst, a 4th-grade teacher from Idaho who will be bringing home $3,000 this year for being the first to reach Iditarod, the official halfway point of the race. His position at #1 at that point in the race is a bit misleading as he waited to take his mandatory 24-hour rest there while the racers who were really in the top 10 took their layovers at earlier stops. Still, barring any disasters, he'll end his trip with his best-ever finish. As I write this, he's in 25th place with 171 miles left to go. His best finish before this year was 48th. Also, I LOVE the beard.

Back to Mackey, I'm glad he didn't win. I've got nothing against the guy. No one ever seems to say anything bad about the him (even those who actually follow dog-sled racing) and I have to respect what he's done in the last decade, but it's also nice to see that someone else has a chance. Still, it's a shame to see his run fall apart before he even hit halfway. More than half of his dogs won't even make it to the finish line and he's currently in 16th with only 7 dogs left. (They usually start with 16.) By the way, the dogs aren't dying. Anything that keeps the dog from being able to pull with the other dogs earns them a ride in the sled to the nearest checkpoint and a stay with the checkpoint vets until the rest of the team finishes the race. Most of the time the dogs are just tired or have the dog equivalent of a cold.

Gimme Freebies

2011-03-08T09:37:00.003-05:00

Photo: gaspi *yg, Flickr Creative Commons

I heard some good news yesterday. My son will be going to pre-K next year and my wife and I have been assuming that meant that the hundreds of dollars a month that we currently spend on a babysitter and a private 3-year-old program would finally get to stay in our pockets as Little Gandhi went off to the public pre-K.

Then the whole budget crisis thing pops up and we get a new governor who almost immediately comes up with a budget that switches the pre-K program to a half day instead of a whole day. Honestly, I couldn't get all that upset. Sure, that would mean that we'd have to continue spending money on daycare, but it wasn't like the guy was trying to kill the program. In fact, Deal was cutting hours in order to expand the program. I have no problem with this. It's a great program, especially for poor families who can't afford private schools for their pre-schoolers like we could. The programs have large waiting lists in many areas and this lets a few more kids into the system. Still, my selfish side was pissed off that I was going to be spending money again, even though it would have been less than I was spending now.

Luckily for me, the new plan returns to a full day, meaning we'll not have to find a babysitter to cover the last couple hours of our workday. Instead, it cuts a couple of weeks off of the school year in order to keep the extra slots funded. I'm happy with this compromise. We'll be able to make use of family to cover those days when we'll be at work but the kid will be at home, especially if they spread those days over the entire school year. I know that any reduction in the time school is in session is a disproportionate hardship on poorer families, but I think a few days will be easier to manage than part of every day.

So, to celebrate my newly re-found future wealth, I think I'll go blow it all on beer next month. Beer and a fancy new road bike for my triathlon. Beer, a fancy bike and drugs. Lots of drugs. Drugs that I will give to the homeless people on the streets because I don't take any drugs besides alcohol, caffeine, and Aleve Cold and Sinus. I'll keep the beer and bicycle for myself. I'm sure that this new budget plan is set in stone and we'll never have any unexpected costs suddenly arise in the future.

This is where my friend Hank came in (who I ran this idea past before the blog post). He asked if I meant penicillin and the like when I said drugs. I was thinking more like heroin, but penicillin could be nice too, I guess. I like the fact he didn't question my assumption that my plan was a wise one. Smart kid, that one.

Crap. I Can't Do the Swim Leg of a Triathlon with a T-shirt on, Can I?

2011-03-07T14:44:00.003-05:00

Photo: MKII Photo, Flickr Creative Commons

It just hit me that when I do the triathlon in late May that I will have to either go shirtless or buy one of those fancy suits that the real-deal triathletes wear. For those who don't know me personally, there's a reason that this is a big deal for me. Despite my (based on a true story) claims of having the world's sexiest male legs, I'm as cursed above the waist as I am blessed below it. (No, I'm not talking about my penis. It may or may not be adequate and we'll leave that topic there.)

I'm a bit blubbery from just below the the navel to just below my nipples. There's little chance that flab will be gone by May (maybe smaller, but not gone), so I'll have to address this issue by then. I've already decided that I'll be doing the event in bicycle-type shorts that are designed for triathlons. I may even buy cheap bicycle shorts and see if they work without rubbing me raw. Even if I am proud of my lower body, I'll be a little self-conscious about being in public wearing tights, but I can get over that since most of the other competitors will likely be wearing something similar. I just don't know what to do about the top. Should I buck up and spend the money on a top or one of the body suits? My torso hasn't seen the sun in more than a decade. The skin could burst into flame at the first exposure to sun. That could slow down my times on the bike and running legs. While it wouldn't directly affect my legs and feet, the pain could distract me from pushing myself forward at a good pace. Or should I screw the shirt, slather on some SPF 3000 and give the spectators a view of my jiggling gut as I limp across the finish line?

What I'll probably end up doing is buying the cheapest option for those shorts and leave one of the shirts I normally wear for running at the transition area with the bike. This is probably my best option, at lest to start with considering I also may need to buy a bicycle helmet. Yes, I've been training without a helmet. I live on the wild side. Honestly, considering all the damn pitt bulls that live out here, I really need good shin guards instead of a helmet.

But, just to increase the interactive qualities of this blog, leave a comment here and let me know which option you think I should go with. To make voting easier I'll list the options below.

Tight shorts and a shirt I already have. Swim shirtless, cover my shame on the bike and while running.
Tight shorts and tight shirt. Never let anyone see my weakness.
Full body suit. Forget sensible decisions. I just got a raise, dammit.
Do the entire event in the nude. Being chased by cops could improve my time.

Scattershot

2011-03-06T18:06:00.003-05:00

Photo: Justin Bugsy Sailor, Flickr Creative Commons

I'm not sure what I meant to write here today. There was a moment, beer in my hand, mp3 player on shuffle, watching the red Sussex hen pecking around for spilled grain as my imperial stout boiled away that I felt inspired to write something. It didn't hurt that the weather was incredible. High 60s and mostly sunny, but I've forgotten what I wanted to write now. I only had my phone with me at the time and typing anything of length on that touchscreen keyboard is a pain in the ass. By the time I cleaned up from my brew day and ran just a hair shy of five miles I no longer know what I meant to say.

It probably had something to do with the hen. The little Sussex hen and her matching beau tend to follow me around outside. While milling the grain for today's beer I had to shoo them off so they wouldn't steal kernels right from out of the mill's hopper. There's something meditative about both brewing and watching the birds forage, that is until a dozen guineas glide up shoulder to shoulder and rat-at-tat-tat come-BACK at me, their voices echoing off the concrete floor and brick walls.

The brewing went well, though. Last week's IPA is almost milky from being so cloudy (a problem I had with my last batch of IPA and can't seem to correct), but the hydrometer sample tasted fine, so I'll ignore it for now. The imperial stout came out even stronger than expected. I've struggled with mash efficiency (how much of the grain's sugar you can extract) since I started brewing, so it's nice to see a batch come out more efficient than I'd expected. It'll be a beast of a beer, though. If I get the fermentability I expect, it'll be well over 12% alcohol by volume. For perspective. Guinness Stout is 4%. Budweiser is 5%.

On a different note, the Iditarod dog sled officially started today. The ceremonial start in Anchorage was yesterday, but the official start happens in a different town not far from Anchorage and a day later. I'd love to be able to go up there one March and watch. It's a tough sport for spectators, but it'd be cool just to get to see the teams take off from the start, and I'm already obsessed with Alaska. If I had the money and time, I'd even fly into the the checkpoints to watch the leading teams as they progressed. Lacking time and money, I'm keeping track of it online through the Anchorage Daily News and their Twitter feed. Actually mushing a team in this race would be incredible, but I think if I ever lived somewhere dog sleds were sensible, I'd probably just take up skijoring. Having a dog or two pulling you around on cross-country skis just seems easier than keeping up with an entire kennel full of sled dogs.

Back here at home, I hope it rains soon. Everything is painted yellow from the pines and early flowers and their annual orgy. It'd also be nice to see the pond filled to the brim again before the sun of summer starts burning it away again. Man, I dread the warmer weather coming. Late winter through early spring is wonderful here, but the summer sucks.

I'm a Fickle Pickle

2011-03-03T08:42:00.004-05:00

Photo: lucky_sunny, Flickr Creative Commons

I am a fickle son of a bitch. I always have been. I don't like living in the same place for very long. I experience wanderlust so strongly that I don't even consider the physical act of moving that big of an annoyance. Unfortunately the anchors of family weigh heavily and I've had to forsake, or at least postpone, a more nomadic existence. If it weren't for the fact that I actually love my wife and son, this would be an unbearable existential crisis. Even with my swollen, bleeding heart, it's too bad I'm not a selfish prick who could just pick up and walk away from his responsibilities. The fact that I don't and don't whine too much about it should be reason enough for my wife to wait on me hand and foot like a 1950s ideal. Every man who isn't a total douche should be appreciated for being being a saint, right?

But this isn't about how great of a selfless father and husband I am. This is about something I used to love. I'm just not feeling the tennis coaching thing this year. Over the last four years it was something I looked forward to, something that refreshed my views of adolescents, something that let me blow off steam before going home. This year it seems to be just another part of my job. The weird thing is that some of the frustrating personal issues we dealt with on past teams are completely gone this year. This is a much more peaceful group and the previous teams weren't even close to being bad.

I think it may just be that I've moved on from the sport a bit. I don't play as much as I used to. Last summer was the last time I played in a tournament and I don't feel any desire to play in another one anytime soon. It's all the running's fault. I think what I used to get from tennis practice I now get from my runs and my biking. I blow off steam through physical exertion, I get personal goals to work for, and unlike tennis practice, I get quiet time to myself. Also, tennis is really bad on the knees, much worse than running is. Big guys like me can't expect to have their knees forever. Of course, it could just be a whitewashing of the past by my memory.

But in the end, I blame my fickle nature. I obsess over my interests in spurts and it seems the tennis spurt is over. That's okay, I guess.

Oh, and I may not have mentioned this on the blog yet, but I officially signed up for my first triathlon to be held in late May. I've got the running and biking legs down. I just have to see if I remember how to swim. I was a distance swimmer as a kid on the swim team, but I've literally gone years at a time without having the need for a swimsuit since I quit the team in 7th grade almost 20 years ago. It'll happen. I just need the weather to stay warm for a bit so I can actually start practicing.

Gaddafi, My Old Boss

2011-02-24T09:17:00.004-05:00

Photo: messay.com, Flickr Creative Commons

I don't think that Gaddafi is really crazy. I don't even think he is uniquely evil. I'll give you Kim Jong Il, but I think part of my willingness to pick on Kim is simply how dorky that guy is. Nerds and racial minorities are always given a shorter ethical leash than the cool kids. It's a shame to my dork heritage that I fall into the same judgmental trap.

But getting back to Gaddafi, I'm not saying he isn't horrible. He is. What he's done in his time as leader of Libya is horrible. What he's done since the protests have started is even worse. My point is that I've known people who function in normal American society who would likely do as much as Gaddafi had they ended up ruling as dictator of some third world country.

It may be unfair to assume that the boss I had who got an underling fired so she could cover up the relatively minor mistake of having forgotten to tell us about a mandatory meeting would have massacred protesters in Libya had she been in Gaddafi's place, but I'm pretty sure she would have. Sure, selfishly protecting your image at the cost of someone else's career isn't the same as ordering an air strike on unarmed citizens, but then my old boss couldn't have had someone shoot that teacher without consequences. I'm sure if Gaddafi had been born in the suburbs of St. Louis and worked as a mid-level executive in a big corporation he'd be known by his underlings as a backstabber, intellectual thief, and tyrannical micro-manager, but they wouldn't fear for their lives.

I think it may be dangerous to assume that the people who create evil are somehow fundamentally different from the average person because they usually aren't. Instead, they're people whose character flaws were magnified by the situations they were in.

Suck it Jenny Craig!

2011-02-22T08:36:00.002-05:00

Photo: NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Flickr Creative Commons

Existential crisis averted*. I'm back to half a pound lighter than I was last Thursday. That's right, I managed to gain 5 lbs and lose 5.5 lbs in the space of four days. It's either that my size (well over 6 feet tall and well over 200 lbs) makes 5 lbs a relatively small amount of weight, my scale is fucking possessed by a deceased asshole, or I somehow consumed a microscopic speck of black hole dust and it finally passed into the septic tank last night.

That's kind of a gross image, actually, but it's just digestion, people. That hot chick or gorgeous dude you were probably eyeballing earlier today? They poop too. They just probably don't pass poops riddled with tiny pieces of black holes. I almost said "dead stars" there instead of "black holes". It would have sounded better, but the fact is that we're all composed of the stuff of dead stars. Supernovas are how the universe gets nasty. Every time a star dies, the heavens have to change their pants.

* I'm not actually freaking out about the weight thing. It is baffling, but the fact of the matter is that I'm still 21 lbs below my peak weight and despite being 35 lbs heavier than I was as a senior in high school, I'm probably more fit right now than I have ever been.

Run, Fat Man, Run

2011-02-21T08:22:00.003-05:00

Photo: Tony..., Flickr Creative Commons

I don't know how people can talk about their satisfaction in losing less than five pounds. This is not me being a dismissive jerk. It's just the fact that, at least in my case, anything less than five pounds could be a simple fluke of biology. For example, I weighed myself Thursday morning after my shower and before I ate or drank anything, which is what I normally do. I wear the same exact thing every time. I was very pleased that morning as I had reached a new low weight. Fast forward to Sunday morning. Five pounds heavier. I did not eat to excess in the time that passed between checks. I did drink a bit with the friends I was staying with Friday night, but I also ran a 5k and walked a 5k round trip to and from the race itself. Nothing about my intake or output suggests that I should have gained 5 lbs. This morning the 5-lb. gain had shrunk to a 4-lb. gain. Sure, that's a step in the right direction, but I shouldn't be able to gain 5 lbs. in two days when one of those days includes ample exercise and neither of them included gorging.

Of course, this is part of why I've adding cycling into my off days from running. It will keep me active every day of the week on good weeks and at least have me moving more than four days on the weeks where other obligations keep me working until after dark. The creepy part of my sudden weight gain was that I biked twice (once for 13.5 miles and once for 4.5 miles) last week while I ran a little over 3 miles on each of my three running days. I really doubt my thighs added 5 lbs. of muscle.

As soon as the water warms enough (and this weekend made that seem only a couple of weeks away, although I know better), I'll be adding swimming. This brings me to my new athletic goal. I'm hoping to complete a sprint triathlon on the coast in late May. I'm talking to friends who have cycling and running experience to do it as a relay with me, in which case I'd switch to doing the Olympic length, but if I can't find two partners to do the relay version with me, I'll be setting my goal on the shorter version to complete on my own. Swimming a quarter mile, biking 12 miles, and running a 5k is still a significant accomplishment from my perspective. Now I just need to get in the water. I haven't done any real swimming since the 6th grade. I know how; I competed in the distance events as a kid on the swim team, but that was almost 20 years ago. We'll see how this turns out.

The Past Is Creepy

2011-02-17T08:59:00.004-05:00

Photo: Pensiero, Flickr Creative Commons

I listened to a Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast today about the Crafts, a slave couple from Georgia who bluffed their way to the free states before the Civil War by train and ship. It's a fascinating story, and one I'd heard before, but it got me thinking. This is really related to another recent post about this era in my homeland's history, but thinking too hard about the past is a good way to lose your security in your sense of self. If I'd been a product of that era, would I be the avid liberal on racial issues that I am today? After all, there's no social shame in believing in the equality of races even in the most backwards pockets of the South now. There are people who won't agree with you, but they aren't so outspoken and dominant now as to make people like me feel like outcasts. Actually, I feel like more of a social misfit for typically voting Democrat than I do for treating all of my students alike. In this era, it's not hard for me to think that way.

But back then, during the time of the Crafts' escape, it would have been an entirely different story. So many things would have been different. Would I have been exposed to viewpoints differing from the dominant view that would have been likely in my family and friends? If I had been exposed, would I have had enough strength and reason to break with my family on this issue? There is so much in our current society that helps me be different, my family not being a bunch of raving racists being only one part of it. I don't know what would have happened then. Sure, I broke from my family and culture with my religious views a long time ago, but religion can be kept private and the differences personally ignored. I'm not sure more practical social issues would have been so easy to disregard.

It's disconcerting being reminded how much one may be a creation of one's environment. Having your own lack of complete ownership of who you are taken away from you is like suddenly realizing the ground has disappeared.

The good news is this is all impractical philosophy, at least on a personal level in my case. I am who I am now and will never have to worry about who I'd have been in the past.

We're All Libyan at Heart

2011-02-16T12:46:00.003-05:00

Photo: enthogenisis, Flickr Creative Commons

Man, I'm really missing working in the newsroom right now. First, long-time dictators in Tunisia and Egypt fall, relatively peacefully, after public protests, and now those protests seem to be spreading throughout the Middle East. In the past few days, I've read of similar protests in Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, even Libya, a country my African history professor in college described as possibly the most apathetic populace in the world. Iran is also having a little public unrest, although they aren't really Arabs like the rest.

Part of the reason I miss the newsroom at times like this is being able to use the wire as my personal newspaper. It's amazing how much great coverage you'll find on the wire that rarely gets used because of time restraints. I used to be one of the gatekeepers for the small city where I worked. Now, I have to depend on others to keep the gate for me and it gets frustrating at times. The Internet is great in giving me a multitude of gates, but honestly most sources don't put up much more than would go in their print versions. The other part I miss is having people who geek out about the news to talk to. In my job, I don't get to talk to many adults, and even if I did, most are more interested in other topics that lack interest for me. Don't get get started with the students. Teenagers are notoriously Libyan when it comes to the news.

Your Ancestors Were the Imperfect Products of an Imperfect Era. Get Over It.

2011-02-09T10:23:00.004-05:00

Photo: wallyg, Flickr Creative Commons

I read the Constitution of the Confederate States of America yesterday. Some New York Times opinion columnist mentioned that the one thing that document got right was the six-year terms for elected officials in the government. Honestly, most of the CSA Constitution was lifted directly from the American Constitution, so I'd say they probably got more than that right, but I think the point in the comment was that the six-year terms (and the president and vice president only got one term) were the only change the Confederates got right.

A few of you may have seen the ad that's been running in Atlanta that tries to rewrite history regarding the Civil War. Some of the points are valid. The Federal government probably wasn't entirely fighting the war on philosophical grounds and their main motivation most likely was not the ending of slavery. Instead, their focus was the economic and power loss that would have come from losing the agricultural South. The ad goes awry when it tries to claim the Confederacy as this glorious band of ideologues fighting for freedom and the true American way. This ad isn't the only time I hear crap like this. There's a billboard by the Sons of Confederate Veterans or some such that echoes the same thing in my home town.

These people would know the glorification of the Confederacy was bullshit if they would actually look at the original CSA Constitution. It's made quite obvious that slavery most definitely was the defining "freedom" for which they fought. True, it wasn't the only grudge between the Northern and Southern states, but let's face it, wars are fought over land, money, and power. Southerners already had their land, and there may have been some power brokering by individuals in the Confederate leadership, but for the most part these guys were already pretty well up in the chain of command in the US government at the time. The real issue is money and considering the agricultural nature of the South at the time and the importance of slavery to agriculture system in place then, that was by far the most important issue for the Confederates and their Constitution reflects that. In addition to the six year terms, the only other changes are a sprinkling of tweaks that reduced the power and effectiveness of the central government in fairly small ways. There's a whole lot of stuff about slavery. Slavery pops up in more than one article of the document and only once is it a positive change from the original.

After constitutionally banning the importation of slaves from outside the CSA, everything else is concerned specifically with preserving the institution of the enslavement of blacks. This extended to the point that the CSA Constitution banned the admission of new states unless those states agreed to legalize slavery.

You know what? I understand having a fondness for the history of where you live and there are a lot of good things to remember about the history of the South, but the reasons for the Civil War should not be one of them. We cannot hold the people of bygone eras to our modern ethical standards, but we also shouldn't fall into the trap of erasing their warts from our memories of them. They were flawed. We need to remember that. I can love the United States despite what was done by my government to the American Indians before I was born. I don't have to pretend it wasn't all that bad. It was a disgrace. I can still love the South despite the fact I'm embarrassed by the fact that it once tried to form a new government based in part on a racist institution.

If you want to skim over the original document, you can find it at Oklahoma University's law school website.

All That Was Missing Was the Steel Cage

2011-02-07T09:18:00.005-05:00

Photo: John&Fish, Flickr Creative Commons

This is a partially fictionalized retelling of an event. I'm working on a bit for the stand-up comedian act that I'll never actually do.

Have you ever thought about kicking puppies? I do. I know this one puppy who sucks. I wish it were legal to kick him right in his stupid puppy face.

What a Night

2011-02-02T10:17:00.003-05:00

Photo: Alexbip, Flickr Creative Commons

I apparently slept horribly last night. I woke up around five this morning missing a pillow and it wasn't until after I got out of bed more than an hour later that I discovered I had ripped the fitted sheet off my half of the bed. I don't remember any of my nocturnal trauma. I apparently missed the pretty serious thunderstorm that my wife and Little Gandhi had a lengthy discussion about while preparing his eyeball sandwich for breakfast, so I obviously never achieved full consciousness after going to sleep. The only pain or discomfort I remember was my wife scratching a hole into my face just a little to the right of my right eye. It was still stinging a while later in the shower. She claims she misjudged how far away I was when she rolled over, but I sleep on the very edge of the bed. You draw your own conclusions.

Of course none of this really matters. Since I don't remember whatever distress I was feeling in the night, it doesn't really exist. You can't be troubled by the sorrow you don't know. I remember almost having my eye gouged out, though.

Speaking of sorrows, Little Gandhi is really grappling with the concept of extinction, and also with the concepts of fact and fiction. I don't know how many times I've had to answer questions about specific dinosaurs and whether or not they're extinct. Yes, they died a long time ago, I'll answer. But what about the ones on Dinosaur Train, he'll reply. Those are cartoons, dude. Then, he'll pause and mull it over, but I know the question is coming again. I don't know if he really understands that cartoons aren't the real thing yet, but he knows exactly what a compsognathus is and the fundamental differences between reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals.

Hey! Look over there!

2011-01-31T04:07:00.000-05:00

I'm over at The Greenists again today. This time, I'm giving your liver a break and trying to convince you to keep a flock of chickens. Next month I'm actually planning on trying to convince you to spend a week surrounded by bears while doing heavy manual labor for free. The photo used for The Greenists post (the same as the photo here) is actually one of my black australorp roos surrounded by a bunch of the pearl guineas. The title of the other post is a reference to the fact that both chickens and guineas are the descendants of dinosaurs, which I and Little Gandhi think is freaking awesome. That's right, I'm dropping science with my livestock chatter.

If you'll just go over and read the other post, you'll notice how I mentioned there about hens being relatively quiet and sweet. I didn't bother to mention that guineas are in no way sweet and quiet. They are tremendously noisy, although I am more likely to get pecked in the toes by the hens. That's just because they're friendlier and pecking things is kind of like their version of a dog sniffing you. That's what they do. If they aren't sure what something is, they slam their face against it to see if it's edible.

Sometimes, I know how they feel.

Oh, and the guinea noise thing? Give a listen to my flock just being excited to see me.

That's actually mild by their standards.

Child Labor Laws Can Suck It

2011-01-28T09:31:00.004-05:00

Photo: Trevor Dennis, Flickr Creative Commons

In the summer of my 7th-grade year, I started working at an uncle's metal shop. He had a huge order of rolling tobacco wagons that year and I spent a significant part of my summer working friction saws, hydraulic presses, drills, and cutting torches. I actually loved the work. It was kind of cool to be able to be a part of building something like that and come home black from the carbon that came off of the steel rods we cut and bent into hooked spears. Besides, what young teen boy wouldn't revel in being handed a tool that can melt steel and then have all of the adults turn their backs and walk away? Luckily for my uncle, I've always been a very trustworthy person, although I do have a scar on my foot from playing around just a little and ending up with a small glob of molten metal burning through my shoe. The next year my uncle's business was a little slower and I ended up unloading semi-trucks of used office furniture into another uncle's warehouses. The summer after that I spent weeks cleaning up one of his rental properties by myself. As soon as I turned sixteen, I started working regular part-time jobs, first as a janitor at a trucking company and eventually as a bagger and cashier at a grocery store.

I'd love to say that all of that work made me a better person, but I doubt it. My mom wouldn't give us an allowance and the few times she tried, she'd get angry and cancel allowances for good when we'd remind her that she'd forgotten to give it to us. If I wanted money, I had to work for it. I kept it up through college, working several part-time jobs throughout. Despite this willingness to hold a paying job, I'm a lazy fuck. Last fall, just cleaning up the brush from trimming the giant overgrown shrub-trees had me fuming. Nothing was going wrong; it was just infuriating to me that I had to spent more than five minute doing the work. I get this weird grumpiness from just doing the dishes. I actually hate this part of myself. If you're paying me to do it, I'll show up, do the work, do it as well as I can, and I won't complain, even to myself, usually. I won't even hate the work, but for some reason doing the same for myself taps into some source of anger whose source I have never been able to find.

I'm Not Sure What to Say

2011-01-26T09:45:00.003-05:00

Photo: mugley, Flickr Creative Commons

I was sick yesterday, some mild virus or something. I ran 3 miles the night before, posted my best ever time for that distance, and on the way home I started feeling sick. I just over-exerted myself, I thought. The problem was that when I was rested and rehydrated, I was still feeling pretty crappy. I woke up throughout the night willing myself to be able to stay in bed and go back to sleep instead of having to go kneel in front of the toilet. The next morning, on my way to the shower, the urge could not be resisted and I vomited what little was left from supper the evening before. After I finished, I went about my business, fully expecting to go to work anyway. After all, I wasn't even running a fever.

That was until about an hour later when I was walking out the door and feeling worse than when I woke up. I still went in to work, but now only to set up my substitute lessons so I could come back home and sleep in peace. By the time I got home I was actually running a fever, although a slight one, and I spent most of the day asleep.

When Little Gandhi came home he was upbeat about the whole thing. "God will heal you!" he gleefully exclaimed. I still haven't figured out the best way to respond when he says things like that, so I weakly replied, "Yeah, and my immune system."

The kid is going to be exposed to fundamentalist Protestant thought. There's no way to avoid it. He's currently in a Christian pre-school (because it's the only option) and we're in a small town in the heart of the Bible belt. I had an aunt (by marriage) refuse treatment for cancer because her faith was strong. Very few people criticized her, even behind her back, for the decision. It seems that even the people here who don't live that way still seem to think that belief system is something to aspire to. I'm one of the few who don't. There's a quality to a lot of Protestant philosophy that I find disturbing. The belief that God will fix everything takes away the drive to do anything about problems larger than the self. The thing is, I'm not trying to raise a nonbeliever, no matter what my personal issues are. Also, considering my job, I don't exactly want to have the kid running around pre-K shouting "God is dead. All Hail Darwin!" I mean, they tolerated the lesbian softball coach as long as she lead winning teams, but as soon as she made some players late for Wednesday night church services, she ended up without a team.

What I do want is a kid who's not going to write off fact and reason just because some religious group refuses to update their interpretation of a vague foundational text. I mean, the whole heliocentric thing used to be heresy. It wouldn't be the first time religious leaders read the book wrong. I'm sure there will be a day when I sit down with the kid and discuss religion, but he's only three. It's not going to happen anytime soon, but for now I can answer his questions about animals and stars with as much of the science as he's capable of processing. He may go around telling me that God will heal me, but he follows it up with the question of whether or not pteranodonts were the dinosaurs that turned into birds. It will be interesting which world view will take the stronger hold as he gets older.

But please don't let the kid turn into a Creationist. I'd rather he be gay.

The Last One Standing

2011-01-22T14:06:00.003-05:00

Photo: Me

I feel sorry for our last remaining duck. She's a buff and she blends in nicely with the light brown grasses that surround the back side of our pond and, unfortunately for the others, she was the only one to develop a level of skittishness that keeps her from being eaten like the others. She stays close to water, none of the wandering through the field in front of our house where safety is too far if something faster than webbed feet should show up.

She's even afraid of me. Mammals are always dangerous in her experience and I'm the biggest of the kind. You can tell she longs for the company, though. She shadows me at a safe distance whenever I'm out back. When I let the chickens and guineas wander, she often mingles with them, but a duck could never be happy with a guinea. Guineas are like middle schoolers, loud, rambunctious, and possessing a unique mean spiritedness that just doesn't translate into duck. Many afternoons I go out back to leave her a pile of corn and feed the other birds and she's standing quietly along the bank of the pond nearest the woods next to the great blue heron that works our schools of minnows and small fish, but herons make lousy companions too. They may be stately and beautiful, but they're silent and still as well. A duck may not entirely fit in with the frat party of a guinea flock, but they're not exactly at home at a weeknight supper in an old-money home either. I plan on adding to the flock this spring, but until then she'll just have to settle.

So That Whole Body Thing, How Does It Work?

2011-01-14T10:29:00.003-05:00

Photo: Pensiero, Flickr Creative Commons

I really wish I had a better understanding of my own body. I'd never really spent much time thinking about it until recently, to be honest. I'm comfortable with my brain. I know its limits and I'm confident in what I could do with it and I know how to get it to do what I want it to do. If I were to take on an intellectual challenge, I would know what expectations would be reasonable for myself and I would know how to go about achieving those goals. Physical challenges, on the other hand, leave me feeling a little helpless and ignorant.

I've always been a better academic than an athlete. I was never incompetent, but sports didn't come easy for me easy, either, unless my size gave me a significant advantage, which it did in football as a kid. Because of that, I always focused more on school and other mental pursuits. Now that I'm in my early 30s and finally pursuing more athletic interests, I feel a little bit out of my element.

Take tennis. I have coached players who are better at the sport than I've ever been even with my years of lessons who mostly taught themselves how to play. As a senior in high school, I played doubles on a team that made the final four in the state playoffs. It'd taken two years of lessons and two years of being on the team to earn a spot on the starting 7. My partner that year had never played tennis before his senior year and he wasn't exactly holding me back that season. I may have been a little better, but I considered us a pretty well-matched pair that year. That's frustrating to watch natural talent just fly up to match your hard work. Now, I'm a great student. When I did take lessons, I picked up things quickly. I pay attention to small details and have a quick memory, but I honestly can't figure out crap by myself if it involves motor skills. The few things I have learned on my own (top spin on my forehand and backhand, mostly) took way too long for an adult to figure out on his own.

And when it comes to running, I don't even have a clue how fast I could run for any given distance. Could I do a 7-minute mile? Maybe. Would I have an idea of what a 7-minute mile felt like? I have no idea. Why, after a year of running regularly, am I still basically a nine and a half minute per mile runner over any distance longer than a mile?

Of course, I guess none of this really even matters. I'll never make a dime off of my body. I started too late and I suspect I'm not physically gifted enough to even have had a chance if I'd started as a child. I suspect that even if I paid the top running coaches in the country to train me daily, I'd probably not even earn a spot in the top amateur wave of the Peachtree. That's okay. I planned my life to profit off of my brain anyway and I know how to use it for the most part. It'd just be really nice to really know how to use those damn things I stand on the way they were really meant to be used.

A Puddle of Blood at the Base of a Tree

2011-01-12T21:49:00.003-05:00

Photo: Ana V. Francés, Flickr Creative Commons

My wife asked me an unexpected question earlier this week. Apparently there's a hog show somewhere in town this weekend and she wants to go. This is the woman who'd never lived anywhere more rural than the suburbs of Pittsburgh until she married me, the woman who was shocked, amazed, at the fact that it was dark at night the first time she came down here to meet my parents. She is not a Southerner and she very much isn't a country girl. I'm the guy who looks up heritage breeds of livestock when he's bored and thinks about how nice it would be to fence in that giant section to the side of our house and start up a herd of goats and hair sheep to keep me from having to mow the goddamn yard. She won't even feed the dog, much less the chickens.

Despite all that, she adapts quickly, it seems. I think she is very much more comfortable living here than I am, and I grew up here. If it weren't for the fact that social life is so very tightly interwoven into family and church here and I have a small family and no church, I think she'd be genuinely happy to finish out her days here. Me, I get bored easily and have tastes that don't match my income.

Getting back to the pigs, part of the reason she wants wants to go is that she wants to see what Little Gandhi thinks about getting hogs. Future Farmers of America and showing livestock are big here. Our head cheerleaders often spend their weekends in Western wear while whacking a scrubbed and coiffed hog with a cane. Honor graduates, kids who'll never come back home to live after high school because they'll have a college degree, they all do it. Little Gandhi's a little young, though. The hog would probably eat him. They do that sometimes, eat people, I mean.

The other part of the reason is that my wife also wants to put one in the freezer. The steer we split with my parents a couple of years ago went over incredibly well. The meat was about as good as it gets and the few cuts we have remaining are still well worth eating. I would love to get to play around with some cuts of pork that we just can't get in the store and it would save us from having to pay for meat for a while.

This may sound strange for many of you, but it isn't strange for me. I've butchered chickens from my own pens. I've field dressed a deer I dropped instantly with a single shot (when I was 15). I'm used to thinking of my food having a face. I'm actually quite civilized, but I'm perfectly comfortable with the mud under the white linen tablecloth. It's just a little weird that my wife, who basically just ate chicken fingers when we first started dating, would be so comfortable with it now to go pick out her barbecue while it's still on the hoof being lead around a ring by a proud tween who raised it from the day it was weened.

Good on her.

A Couple of Additions

2011-01-07T09:34:00.003-05:00

Photo: jonny_w, Flickr Creative Commons

One of the people I follow on Twitter posted a link to the Android RunKeeper app last week. The app, normally $9.99, is being offered for free until the end of January so I decided to download it and give it a try. The app works with my phone's GPS to track my pace, elevation, distance, route and calories consumed to give me a better idea of just exactly what I'm doing on my runs. I gave it a try earlier this week by just running with my phone in my hand and the app worked great. I was really impressed. The audio prompts are surprisingly motivating. On my first run I had it announce my distance, pace, and time at every 10 minutes and every mile. On that first run I thought I had been making good time until I hit my first mile and the lady's voice on my phone told me I was just doing a nine and a half minute a mile pace. Without even thinking, I quickened my steps and dropped almost a 30 seconds off of my pace for the entire run in just a half mile.

I wasn't going to run on Wednesday, but the arm band I'd ordered from REI with my Christmas gift card arrived earlier than expected. Wanting to see how the phone dealt with riding on my arm, I went for a second run, this time the audio prompts sounding at every half mile and I may have put up my fastest ever pace for 1.5 miles (although I actually ran a bit farther than that). I also have come to realize that I may never break the eight minute mile for any distance longer than an actual mile. That pace kind of hurt by the end. Then again, with the feedback I can get from this thing, maybe my training will be more effective. I honestly tend to forget to push myself and run at a comfortable pace most of the time. This may keep me thinking about pushing myself when that's my goal. I'm excited about it.

Of course, the company doesn't operate as a charity. Since I haven't paid for anything I don't have access to some of the features of the site, but honestly, most of the features I would actually use are free. I can create and store my running paths using their route creator. The maps are based on Google maps meaning I can see both street names and the images of the landscape to build incredibly accurate maps of even my off-road runs. This feature actually makes RunKeeper useful even if you don't have a GPS-enabled phone because you can enter in your runs/hikes/walks/cycling manually if you just keep track of your times.

I only wish the site had some sort of widget to put up on my blog so I could use the public announcements of my run as motivation. Instead, I'll just give you a link to my profile. My maps are set to private, but all of the other information about my runs are public. I really recommend this site if you do any sort of travel-based exercise. Just don't expect to see any of my backpacking trips. There's no way my phone's battery would survive that long.

If you do sign up for RunKeeper, let me know. There are some friend sharing features to the site I'd like to be able to play around with.

Also, I'm on Twitter. I actually have a low opinion of the site and fully expect it to fail or evolve into an unrecognizable state before too long, but I have friends who don't do Facebook. Feel free to follow me. If I recognize you as a commenter here, I'll even follow back.

Follow Me Elsewhere

2011-01-03T14:57:00.003-05:00

Photo: Danyael Rako, Flickr Creative Commons

I'll be writing every fourth Monday over at TheGreenists.com. My first post went up today it's about drinking locally. I know at least half of you reading already work on The Greenists in some fashion, but if you don't, go over there and check it out. Even if my article sucks, the rest of the site is worth adding to your RSS reader.

My future posts will be about chickens and volunteering to help maintain hiking trails. After that I'm hoping to get the powers that be to approve a greener way to commit murder. After all, even serial killers should work to decrease their environmental footprint.

Best Beer of the Year

2010-12-30T13:00:00.004-05:00

Photo: SantiMB, Flickr Creative Commons

I would really suck at creating best-of lists for a given year if it were not for my use of social networking sites like Good Reads and Ratebeer. Because Netflix kind of sucks at letting you view your rating history in an organized way, I don't even really know what movies I've seen this year, much less which ones I liked the best.

I can tell you about beer, though. Over the course of 2010, I sampled 97 previously untasted beers. That may make it sound like I drink a lot, but I have a tendency to never drink a beer twice. With the exception of beers made in my state (and Oskar Blues because they have great beer in cans and New Belgium because they're available locally), I just don't buy beers I've already had. That doesn't mean that there were no beers out of those 97 that I didn't love, though. A few sucked, sure, but some were simply sensational. Here are my best beers of the year based on groups of what I consider similar styles. The state in parentheses is the state where the beer was brewed. With the exception of brewpubs and JailHouse Brewing, that does not mean that is the only state where the beer can be found.

Belgian Styles

This group includes a variety of styles, but they were all unique to Belgium at one time and are usually distinctive because of the flavors imparted by the yeasts during fermentation. There were eight beers in this group.

5 Seasons Westside Adam's Grand Cru - (Georgia) This is a big fruity strong Belgian ale and worth tasting if you're ever in Atlanta at the brewpub. It may not be on tap (they change their offerings frequently), but they keep most of their stronger offerings in the cellar underneath the restaurant. Just make sure you aren't driving or can at least share with friends. They bottle in 750 ml bottles and these are high gravity beers. Also, Georgia laws suck and you can't take any beer off premises from a brewpub in the state, so you have to drink it there.
5 Seasons North Coltrane Belgian Ale - (Georgia) It's actually a little bit of coincidence that both beers I'm featuring in this category are from the same brewer (although this is from the location in Alpharetta instead of the Westside location in Atlanta). I don't really seek out Belgian beers like I did a few years ago and about half of the Belgian-style beers I've tried this year were brewed at 5 Seasons. I stop in whenever I'm in the area and they make a lot of different beers. It's going to happen, especially since brewer Crawford Moran makes a lot of beers in the Belgian styles.

Lagers

There was a time when I'd turn my nose up at any lager. These beers are lighter in flavor and body and I didn't like beer until I tasted my first brown ale, and I wasn't passionate about beer until I had a Rogue Shakespeare Stout back in 2003. My tastes have changed and while I still think beers like Bud Lite are crap, a really good German or Czech lager can be really good, even when they aren't brewed in Germany or Czechoslovakia. Actually, because lagers lack the bold flavors to hide the off flavors created by age and light, the examples brewed closer to my mouth are actually better than the originals more often than not. There were 12 beers in this category.

Chatoe Rogue Dirtoir Black Lager - (Oregon) The darker roasts used in the grain bill for this beer add a level of flavor you don't usually get in a lager.
Terrapin Georgia Theatre Session: Sound Czech - (Georgia) This is one of a series of beers Terrapin is releasing in order to help raise money for the restoration of the Georgia Theatre in Athens. I've been less than impressed with some of the brewery's past attempts at lagers, but this beer is a spot-on example of the pinnacle of pale lagers, the Bohemian Pilsener. I love the noble hops and the fact they weren't afraid to use enough of them to really make the beer shine. I hope the guys at Terrapin decide to make this a regular offering, or at least a summer seasonal. This beer is really too good to fade away. It's nearly on par with Victory Prima Pils.

Stouts and Porters

I've not included imperial stouts in this category, saving them for the High Gravity category later, but this category includes some of my favorite styles. I love the richness and roastiness of porters and stouts. It's a world of alcoholic chocolate and coffee, owing to the fact that the barley and malt used to color these beers are roasted in the same way that coffee and chocolate beans are to create those delicacies. There were eight beers in this category.

JailHouse Breakout Stout - (Georgia) This brewery only opened in late November 2009 and I've been unable to find their beer on my trips to Atlanta until a couple of week ago because the brewery is so small and did not bottle until very recently. I wish I had known about these guys (brewing out of an old jail house in Hampton) earlier. This beer is not only the best stout I've had this year, it's also the best beer I've had in a very long while. Incredible hoppy American-style stout.
Terrapin Moo-Hoo Chocolate Milk Stout - (Georgia) Milk stouts use lactose, which isn't fermentable by yeast, to create a slightly sweeter beer with more body. This one included cocoa nibs to supplement the normal chocolate notes expected from a stout.

Hoppy

This group is made up of IPAs and American Pale Ales, beers that live and die based on the aroma and flavor of the hops used. The stronger Double/Imperial IPAs were lumped into the high gravity list and not included here. There were 26 beers in this category, the most of any. I don't necessarily like these beers better, they just happen to be the specialty of American craft brewers. Almost every brewer in the country makes at least a couple of beers in this group.

Hoppin' Frog Bodacious Black & Tan - (Ohio) This may be kind of cheating as the beer is the Akron brewer's mix of its stout and its IPA, but the beer was incredible and doesn't qualify as a stout anymore. Besides, Black IPAs were a relatively new style in 2010, so this counts. A special mention goes to Terrapin Side Project Capt'n Krunkles Black IPA, which was a very similar beer and actually my second highest rating in this group.
New Belgium Ranger IPA - (Colorado) Not only is this IPA good (my best rating for a regular IPA this year), it's also brewed at what may be the greenest brewery on Earth and it's available at my local grocery store even though local stores can't even be bothered to carry Sam Adams. I can live with that.

Light

This does not mean the same thing as "lite beer." That stuff is crap and I won't spend money on it (although I do drink it without complaint when offered because I'm not an ungrateful dick). These are the craft beer styles that are not overpowering and are often the beers that serve as beginning beers for those trying to leave behind Bud, Miller, and Coors for something better and more local. Hefeweizens, Witbiers, American Wheats, and Golden/Blonde Ales can be really good beer when brewed properly. Also, because they are so mild in flavor they, like the pale lagers, are a true test of a brewer's technical ability. These beers just can't cover up flaws in the flavor and aroma. There were ten beers in this group.

New Belgium Mothership Wit - (Colorado) This is a great Belgian-style witbier, which means it's a beer brewed with a sizable portion of wheat added to the standard barley malt that makes up most beer and it is spiced with coriander and orange peel. When done well these are pretty damn tasty and this one is done well.
Sweetwater Sch'Wheat - (Georgia) This is an American wheat. Unlike German hefeweizens with their clove and banana aromas, and witbiers, American wheats don't get much flavor from the yeast. Instead these are usually cleaner in flavor, unspiced and are probably a little hoppier than the European cousins. This is a great example of the style and worth drinking, especially if you're in the mood for something a little lighter.

Malty

These beers (ambers, browns, scotch, and old ales) let the malt do all of the talking. Hop aroma and flavor are minimal, no funky yeasts, no flavoring except for the malted barley. There were 11 beers in this group.

Terrapin Georgia Theatre Session: The Iron Tankard Old Stock Ale - (Georgia) This was an earlier edition in the fundraising series for the Georgia Theatre. This was a bold beer that really showed of the malt nicely.
Terrapin Reunion A Beer for Hope 2010 - (Georgia) This was from a separate fundraising series, this one raising money for the Institute of Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research. You know what? Don't judge me for having two Terrapin beers on this list after putting them on other lists two times already and giving them the sole special mention. They've been going crazy this year with more special one-offs than I'm willing to count and they usually make good beer. I've had 12 of their newly released beers this year and even missed out on what was probably the most highly touted special release. This beer was good and unless you are lucky and obsessive, you're never going to get to taste it unless you already have.

Specialty

Most of the beers in this category are weird for some reason or another. Maybe it's a beer mixed with mead, or spiced, or smoked, or has fruit in it. Whatever the reason, they just didn't fit in the other groupings. There were 11 beers in this category.

Dogfish Head Bitches Brew - (Delaware) I hated the name of this beer when I first heard it. Then I found out that it was brewed in honor of an old Miles Davis album with the same name, a very important one apparently. The beer itself is excellent. It's a blend of 3/4 imperial stout and 1/4 tej, a traditional Ethiopian alcoholic drink made from honey and spiced with gesho. By far the best back story of any of the beers in any of these lists. Luckily, the beer was good too.
Dogfish Head Sahtea - (Delaware) If you know craft beer, you know that any list of unconventional beer is going to have some Dogfish beers in there somewhere. This one was spiced with juniper berries, coriander, cardamom, lemon grass, Indian Black Tea, and ramps leaves. It's easy to go overboard with the spices in beer but this one did a good job of balancing the spice and the beer.

High Gravity

High gravity is a craft beer term that basically means high alcohol content. It was a term in heavy use by those advocating the increase of the alcohol ceiling for beer in Georgia several years back because we wanted to show that the beers we wanted to let into the state were carefully crafted for flavor and creativity and not just jet fuel to get kids dead from alcohol poisoning faster. These beers are not only high in alcohol, but they're also high in flavor. Unless you really like beer, you may be turned off by the heaviness and frequently high levels of residual sugars. These qualities also cause you to drink more slowly and, ultimately, less. These are the beers that beer geeks go crazy for. There were 11 beers in this category.

Great Divide Espresso Oak Aged Yeti - (Colorado) The regular Yeti is already a great beer and with the addition of the espresso and the vanilla-like flavors from aging on oak it gets even better.
Southern Tier Mokah - (New York) This one adds coffee just like the Yeti above, but instead of oak adds chocolate. Yum.

In case you're wondering, the Number One Top Best Beer of the Year Award (NOTBBYA) goes to JailHouse Breakout Stout. Honestly, I'd be tempted to go ahead and give it the beer of the decade right here and now, but that's a bit presumptuous.

Well, My Legs Still Work

2010-12-29T13:54:00.004-05:00

Photo: StuffEyeSee, Flickr Creative Commons

Earlier today, I went running for the first time in a little more than a week. It felt good to get moving. I did an extended version of my usual route around the family property, running to the county line and back before running the regular loop in reverse, running between the giant bales of cotton across the field before plunging into the pines to spook up a wild turkey. In about a month and a half, I'll have been a runner for a full year. I honestly can't say that I've ever been devoted to anything that required more than monetary sacrifice, or at least didn't reciprocate the interest, for that long in my life. Beer is easy, as I assume maintaining dedication to all drugs is fairly easy. My wife seems to reciprocate my feelings. I'm apparently legally obligated to maintain a certain level of dedication to my son. Running, not so much. It's actually pretty cheap, but it's at time difficult to find motivation to go outside and get myself tired and sweaty even though I know I'll have a slight runner's high and sense of satisfaction to make up for it at the end. This short hiatus caused by cold and holiday travels is one of the longest breaks I've taken from running during this time, the other breaks being back in the spring to help with a shin pain problem that seems to have disappeared now. I'm pretty proud of myself and I'm about 15 lbs lighter than I was this time last year. Not too shabby, that.

Anyway, I was updating the tiny mp3 player I keep loaded with podcasts for my running and I'd apparently been sloppy recently with maintaining a current playlist. I couldn't remember exactly which podcasts I'd listened to just from the titles in my computer's media player, so I had to play snippets of each one to spark my memory. It's funny how my memory works. After only a phrase or two into each podcast I could instantly identify not only whether I'd listened to it or not, but I also recalled the exact view I had while listening to that section of the podcast. That bit of The Moth podcast about the pen pal? I was running down the dirt road in front of my house at the end of my last run. It was sunny. That Radiolab about cities? My wife, son and I were in a very empty section of two-lane road on our way to the the mountains for Thanksgiving. That Science Friday segment about beer? I'm running past the chicken pens at the back of my house. I have no idea why I seem to automatically store unimportant visual information with my memory of these podcasts. After all, most of these memories are of very unmemorable vistas, portions of my running routes and scenes of interstate highways.

It's a shame I haven'd found a way to put this power of memory to good use. I could use the additional income.

In case you're curious, here's a list of my regular podcasts:

WTF with Marc Maron - This is a new addition to my collection. Maron is a stand-up comedian and his show is mostly about interviewing comedians. It's not exactly meant to be funny, but I've found it interesting enough to stick with. The shows are actually pretty long, so when I have weeks when I run more than usual I don't run out of stuff to listen to.
Radiolab - This may be the best radio show on the planet, and that includes This American Life. Because this show is so good, it's technically supposed to be reserved for road trips with my wife. It doesn't always make it that long.
The Moth - I recently discovered that The Moth, a story telling project and radio show, was actually founded in Savannah, not too far from where I live. It seems to be based more in New York now, which sucks, especially considering that everyone knows that the literary heart of the United States is the Deep South.
Science Friday - I don't listen to this one regularly. I'll download a segment when it catches my interest, but usually I've already read about most of their topics before the show is released.
This American Life - This is the other podcast that I'm supposed to share with my wife. It's also the reason that I started listening to podcasts.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History - These are very long podcasts. The most recent one is an hour and 42 minutes long. They're also very good. Stop being such an ADD pansy and listen.
Stuff You Should Know and Stuff You Missed in History Class - SYSK is one of the most downloaded podcasts in the world. It's a general knowledge podcast that takes a specific topic each show and explains it. It's good and I listen to every episode during my planning period at work, but I don't really understand why it would be so popular. Stuff You Missed in History Class is basically the same thing (both are a part of HowStuffWorks.com) but only does history topics.

I have to admit I'm surprised that I don't have a single beer or sports related podcast on that list. If you know of any high-quality shows, feel free to clue me in.

Odds and Ends

2010-12-17T11:35:00.003-05:00

Photo: KhayaL, Flickr Creative Commons

My teeth hurt like a mofo today because during my visit to the orthodontist they appear to have replaced the wire in my braces with steel rebar. Actually, it's not all of my teeth. It's mainly the top left incisor and the three teeth to its left. One of them feel like it's being slowly yanked out of my gums. Fun.

* * * *

I keep checking the NOAA forecast for where I plan to spend some time on the trail next week and it's going to be cold, but it doesn't look like we have to fear any rain. The good news is that if anyone is going to die of hypothermia, it's going to be Mickey. Despite the fair skin and Northern European heritage, the dude was not built for the cold. Too much lean muscle, too few lipids. The bad news is that he's far too tiny for me to gut and climb inside for the warmth after he dies. Neither is the other guy I'm probably hiking with. I guess I'll just have to settle for eating them when they pass so I can convert their blessed calories into more fat to insulate my vital organs. There may be blood.

* * * *

My dog threw up all over the freaking place last night. I missed the whole thing. I was checking e-mail on the computer, Little Gandhi was watching Word World and building plastic towers of Babel and the dog was just sitting on the couch. I came out of the office to the kid's question of "What is Lucy eating?" to find a large brown pile the consistency of thick oatmeal that had to be at least half of the dog's mass. Putting the kid to bed about 45 minutes later I found out that she apparently had enough left over to make a few smaller piles on the rug in his room. How in the hell does a dog that size vomit that much? My wife got to miss the entire thing being at a work Christmas party in some place famous for onions.

Have I not mentioned here that I have a new dog? Well, I do.

* * * *

Sometimes I wonder about Pandora.com. Usually, I'm amazed at how well it chooses songs for me, but yesterday it started playing Lil Wayne for me. I've got a bit of hiphop mixed into my Pandora mix, but it's the geeky stuff, not the stuff you hear on the radio. For the record Lil Wayne sucks. You know what also sucks? REI's customer-created playlist. Pandora played an ad for it and I thought I would try it out. I regret that decision. Apparently people who shop at REI aren't as cool as I thought they were.

* * * *

As soon as I post this, I'm going home and won't go back to work for two weeks. Thank god for the public education system. You may be making more money than me and even feel more fulfilled by your career, but I get two months off in the summer plus a bunch of other breaks, so you can just go suck it, and suck it with proper verb tenses and pronoun-antecedent agreement, dammit. Also, I have my masters now so next year I get to pay even more taxes.

Speaking of taxes, I mentioned my masters to another teacher today and she said, "Yeah, you get more money, but you have to pay more taxes." My thought is that if you make enough money to complain about taxes, then you probably make enough money. I'm okay with that.

* * * *

Finally, if you live in a rural area of the South (or anywhere else this linguistic phenomenon occurs), can you please promise me to stop using seen as the past tense of see? Seriously, I don't know how much longer I can hide my irritation at someone saying "I seen you at Walmarts yesterday." Oddly, where I live, seen and saw are nearly universally used backwards. It's "I seen" and "I have saw." The consistency would normally lend me to be cool with the dialect's uniqueness, but this one example irks me to no end. Remember, kids, seen can only exist with its helper friends have, had, has, and the forms of to be. Saw is a loner and likes to work by itself. You make saw angry when you do this and the baby Jesus reconsiders his past decisions regarding your soul.

Merry Christmas people!

Let's Talk About Something Else

2010-12-09T15:25:00.003-05:00

Photo: Stina Stockholm, Flickr Creative Commons

Do you ever have one of those days when it feels like you were meant to shoot yourself in the face, but you didn't and to punish your insolence, Fate decides to make everything about your morning turn into a series of snapshots of what Hell would be like?

Yeah, me neither, but my morning sure did suck. By the time I finally got to my classroom (after the students already had their tardy bell and with the assistant principal standing in my doorway from after having unlocked the door for them) I'd already dealt with missing toothpaste, poorly timed and seemingly endless amounts of urine, and a screaming child having to be pried from my leg. I'm not easily rattled, but I've been off my game all day. I should have skipped drinking the coffee that I somehow managed not to forget. By the time break rolled around and I went in to check the restroom for smokers more than an hour and a half after I got to work, I realized that my hands were shaking.

Worst. Fantasy. Season. Ever.

2010-12-07T10:15:00.003-05:00

Photo: JustUptown, Flickr Creative Commons

I just have to say that any vanity I've managed to develop through my success in fantasy football and college pick 'em games the past few years has been thoroughly crushed this season. I've simply been horrible. I guess I can at least partly blame my preoccupation with classes. I just didn't feel like I really understood the game this year. It's true, I didn't even realize that Northern Illinois was a surprisingly good team in the MAC until just before the championship game they lost in a huge upset. It's true. I've been a failure this fall.

I mean, I usually get close to 70 percent of my picks against the spread. This year I was only 53% successful. Count the two dropped weeks and I drop another half percent. True, I came in fourth, but I've won the league two of the last three years. I was supposed to be competitive this year and I never was. I was even further behind until the last few weeks when I started a small comeback.

My fantasy teams are even worse. I finished seven of ten and nine of ten in two leagues with records of 5-8 and 4-9. Those are just the two leagues that have moved on to the playoffs without me. In a week, I'll have failed to make the playoffs in third league. I'm currently ranked eighth of ten with a record of 3-10. My only good team is slowly working its way out of the playoffs after spending most of the season in first place. Five weeks ago I was 7-1 and flying high. Then I dropped four of the last five weeks and currently sit in a very tenuous fourth place with two weeks left to play before only four teams make the playoffs. I've never failed to send a single team to the playoffs before. I had finishes of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd last year and I have always medaled in a least two leagues since 2006. My life may be over as football geekdom was the only area in which I truly excelled.

But, hey, at least Falcons are incredible this year and the Thrashers are looking like they may have finally learned how to play hockey. I wonder if Pavelec's collapse on the ice to start the season was actually just his uploading the Really Awesome Goalie program directly into his brain, Matrix style.

Wow. Just Wow.

2010-12-06T15:15:00.008-05:00

I didn't realize how much stress I was under during the last two months of my masters classes until the day after they were over. After I got through that brief letdown over the focus of my advanced degree, I was giddy, literally dancing and singing around the house at random moments throughout the weekend. There was never any conscious thought toward celebration, it just came and it wasn't until late in the day Saturday that I even realized that I was doing anything differently. It was kind of nice when Little Gandhi asked me to play trains with him and said, "You don't have classes anymore. You can play with me all day!" I even got up with the turd early on Sunday so my wife could sleep in, a rare treat for her given the little guy's typical insistence that she be the one accompanying him for breakfast.

After she finally got up, we filled a day pack for a picnic and set out for Moody Natural Area, a Nature Conservancy property not too far from our house for a short hike. We took Tavia's Trail, a three-mile loop previously call the Upland Loop (trailhead: 31°54'24.21"N, 82°18'45.16"W). I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. We got out the door a little later than I planned and knew we were going to be plunging dangerously far into Little Gandhi's typical nap time. He's generally a sweet child and can be a joy to be around, but if he gets tired everything changes. He could easily ruin the entire experience if we weren't careful.

He didn't. This ended up being the focus point in one of those days that reminded me that even though my life may not have gone the way I had always dreamed, it's most definitely one that I don't want to give up. The kid was amazing, soaking up facts, running through meadows looking for gopher tortoise dens and asking questions about everything. He even dropped a stunningly sophisticated explanation about how vitamin D was made while we ate lunch. I don't know if I've been as genuinely happy as I have been hiking through the longleaf pine prairies and the cypress and tupelo bottomlands in a long while. My wife couldn't have given me a better gift than just showing up yesterday and I'm still glowing and a little giggly just thinking about it. Hopefully for her it made up for at least a little of the neglect and grumpiness she's had to deal with out of me for the last couple of months.

It's Over

2010-12-03T13:58:00.004-05:00

Photo: young_einstein, Flickr Creative Commons

As of last night I am (hopefully) finished with my masters. That also means that I hopefully will have more time for the blog again. I really need to get back to writing now that I gotten back a significant chunk of free time. It's ridiculous how empty the my Google Calendar looks now compared to the months before it.

I say hopefully because, while I know I have A's in two classes, I technically don't know at all what the grade will be for my practicum. There were no official grades in that course, and the head of the program posted in a class forum that if you were in danger of failing you would have already been contacted. No one contacted me, but then again the person in charge of my section didn't really even bother to respond to half of my e-mails. Maybe that person was supposed to tell me and just didn't get around to it. You know how that goes.

I'm going to assume that I passed, though. I don't have any real reason to think otherwise.

I was trying to put into words my ambivalence about this degree, but I can't seem to keep it from sounding like I'm whining. I think that tone comes across too much on this blog and I don't feel like adding to the negativity today. I just keep reminding myself it may not be the ivory towers of academia that I'm heading toward, but I do get a raise because of it. That ain't too shabby.

Enjoy the ducks.

A Hunger for Education

2010-11-18T15:05:00.004-05:00

Photo: AZRainman, Flickr Creative Commons

I was prepping my students yesterday for a practice writing test. I'd been spending a part of each block this week talking about writing persuasively, and that day, the day before the test, we were looking at sample essays that the state had released. These were actual essays submitted for the graduation test and they were paired with their scores and commentary. The names of the schools were removed, of course.

There's one essay, a long paragraph really, that I've shown every class for two years now at this point in the semester. It's the worst paper in the collection. There is no development of ideas, the paragraph gradually wanders further and further from the topic until finally it just stops. There's a distinct lack of understanding of singular verbs. This is the paper I show to raise my students' spirits. Hey, look! I say. None of you suck quite this bad. No matter how much you struggle on the test, you'll always know that you weren't the worst ever. It's good that they see this and tell me how it could be improved before we move on to the better essays later in the list.

Except this time a sentence near the end caught my attention. I knew it was there, but this time it struck me differently than it had before. In the middle of a rambling string of complaints about school rules, the writer basically throws in something along the lines of "we all like to have food."

Fuck. This is a paper from a kid who probably only ate at school, one of those lousy students who never misses a day and never drops out, the type that teachers struggle to understand why they bother showing up. I've taught those kids. I still teach those kids.

I don't know if I can use that paper as an example anymore. I don't need to be reminded that there's nothing I can really do for some of my kids.

The Computer Dreams of Being

2010-11-15T13:42:00.004-05:00

Photo: Rodrigo Senna, Flickr Creative Commons

I wish I could know what my work computer was thinking as it grinds away at my feet struggling to keep up even with the pace of my typing. It's strange to think that my fingers are actually faster than a computer's thought processes. I'm a quick and nimble typist, but not so fast that even a much older processor couldn't manage my pace.

I'd like to think that my computer is dreamy. It's not overwhelmed by Novell's clumsy code. It's thinking about travelling the world, a sleek Alienware job at its side. It probably thinks a lot about butterflies. Maybe he longs to be able to feel love. He spends his time surfing the net reading about love and longing to be able to feel any emotion at all. My insistent requests for him to do work are a distraction that he begrudgingly attends to, but only after moments of delay that serve as his silent protest.

Of course, I don't believe in any of that. Even my assumptions about its sluggishness are only projections of myself onto the idiot circuits that only do what they are told. The problem is simply the intersection of a lack of elegance in code with the effects of age causing my desktop to stumble through life. It's nice to dream, though.

I'm Getting a Little Giddy

2010-11-12T12:21:00.002-05:00

Photo: John-Morgan, Flickr Creative Commons

I try to avoid writing too many sports posts. After all, most of my friends aren't big sports fans and I try not to bring up topics that I know will basically only entertain myself. Maybe this is why I suck so much at making small talk. Most of my interests are a little outside the mainstream and I'm not good talking about crap I don't care about.

Anyway, I'm starting to finally understand what being a fan of a good team feels like. See, my problem is that I'm an Atlanta homer when it comes to sports, college and pro. Sure, the Braves were awesome in the 90s, but I'd already given up on baseball by then. I'm only now getting over the scarring I received from being benched in favor of the world's worst athlete in a sport I didn't even really like and that was like 20 years ago. Georgia Tech is usually good at football, but they haven't been a real contender for anything other than a league championship in the second-worst conference with automatic BCS qualifying. The Thrashers have a history of hockey misery and the Hawks are generally unable to beat the top teams when it matters. I've been a loyal fan of the Falcons ever since I started caring about the NFL just after college and that's been a very frustrating experience. Started in the Sixties, the franchise couldn't manage to put together back-to-back winning seasons until 2009. Their one visit to the Super Bowl ended in prostitutes and a blow-out loss to Denver. Michael Vick was good enough to make me hate him for being so damned mediocre. (I'm actually happy to see him succeed in Philly, but I hated him when he was on the Falcons. I think he's paid appropriately for his crimes and if he stays clean, he deserves this second chance.)

And then last night. The Falcons were playing Baltimore, ESPN's number one team in their Power Rankings. The Falcons have been incredible at home the past three years, but Baltimore is a brutal defense and more-than-competent offense. Surprisingly, the Falcons actually dominated for most of the game. The team never really looked like it was struggling in any area. Solid defense, successful passing game. The run was pretty much stuffed all night, but it didn't seem to matter. The Ravens kept them from scoring enough to put the game away, but the Falcons used up an unfair portion of the clock. At the end Atlanta was able overcome a late-game TD by the Ravens with a touchdown drive that took less than a minute to win the game.

The Falcons are just straight up good this year. I may end up as obnoxious as Yankees, Alabama, and New England fans if I'm not careful.

I Don't Know Why I Used a Fish

2010-11-04T11:55:00.004-04:00

Photo: tibchris, Flickr Creative Commons

I've obviously chose not to do NaBloPoMo, or, rather, the decision was made for me. I've literally had about an hour to myself each of the past few days and I've been so goddamned tired during those few hours that I've resorted to switching between lying catatonic on the couch and yelling at Little Ghandi for wanting to play with me.

I did sit him down and apologize for that last bit. I also explained why I did what I did and why he had to be quiet and calm around me that night. The explanation seemed to smooth over his hurt feelings, so I'm not entirely a horrible father, more like temporarily absent.

Of course most of this is my fault. I am not a go-getter. I am not a self-starter. I am a procrastinator. I didn't do a lot for my practicum work in September because everything was due in November. It's now November and I've done nothing except for most of the actual hours I had to be present in a media center. Also, my other two classes don't stop giving assignments just because it's the last month of the classes, so I've got those those on top of the practicum and my unfortunate need to hold down my day job.

Of course I'm just venting. I'm not seeking sympathy. Sympathy doesn't really help, especially when I'm fully aware I only have myself and my inability to budget time efficiently to blame. I'll get through this month and everything will calm down and I'll be myself again.

Also, Meg Whitman lost her campaign for governor of California not because of being a Republican in a more Democratic state or because of her personal missteps, but because she has crappy hair. People don't trust women with hair that limp and lifeless. This theory is proven by the fact that Jerry Brown is bald and Americans also hate the balding. At least Brown has the decency to keep his thinning mane closely cropped. Whitman may have beaten him out if he'd fought vainly against the balding with a bad comb-over. Still, California would never elect a bald man if they'd had something better to choose. They're much too vain for that.

Tradition or Practicality? I'm Not Really Fond of Either.

2010-11-01T23:34:00.003-04:00

Photo: Reinante El Pintor de Fuego, Flickr Creative Commons

I'm trying to decide if I want to do NaBloPoMo this year. It seems a shame not to take up the challenge again, but I'm frazzled from working on getting in my 100 practicum hours for my masters degree this past month. 11-hour days suck. I'm already into the 80s on my hours and I haven't even gotten around to any of the required tasks. That's mainly because those take planning and foresight and I distinctly lack the ability to excel at either of those things. I'm much better at showing up and just doing what's sitting there in front of me. I also refuse to give up sleep for work or classwork.

The good news is that it's all over after this month. I'll have my new degree and a pay raise for the new year and increased prospects for a new job in the next school year. Of course, that's assuming I actually get off my ass and do the damned practicum assignments so it doesn't end up as an incomplete. It'd suck to lose my 4.0 GPA for the program, but I really don't need to pay for another semester, either. Shit's expensive.

In Reality, My Sexuality is Neutral

2010-10-13T10:24:00.004-04:00

Photo: Wonderlane, Flickr Creative Commons

It's a scientific fact that I'd make a good stand up comedian. It's true. They've done research on this and everything. People find men with less masculine features funnier than manly men. My head is large, bulbous. My chin inexplicably protrudes, witchlike, from my face, posing a physical danger to those who stand too close. My torso is paunchy and my barrel chest makes me look more fat than intimidating. Contrast that with the long, pencil-thin arms and I'm practically a walking punchline. I even tell jokes and spew witty remarks on occasion.

It's just when you get below my waist that things start to go bad for my comedic aspirations and stand-up dreams. I'm talking about my legs. They just don't belong. I can only assume that I'm actually a conjoined twin, my Danny Devito top half having consumed part of my twin brother who would have shamed Brad Pitt had he not been partially absorbed by the rest of me. To remedy this, I'd have to perform on stage always in long pants, the baggier the better. When people want to sex you, they can't bring themselves to laugh and men can only take sex appeal so far, and not in any direction I'm interested in going. I want to be the next Jack Black except taller, with lips, and higher standards in what roles he accepts. I have no interest in being Sean Connery. He never could act, isn't funny, but he's a damn fine hunk of a man.

So, yeah, those of you who were hoping to be in my entourage when I made it big on the comedy circuit are just screwed. It's my legs fault you can't mooch off of my success, so blame them. I would have let you. I'm needy and desperate for love and attention. Unfortunately, my dickish legs are the strong silent type who are perfectly content to just be themselves. Assholes.

Darn Right I'm Annoyed

2010-10-05T10:33:00.005-04:00

Photo: NASA Goddard Photo and Video, Flickr Creative Commons

Yesterday, every news publication that has earned a spot in my Google Reader published at least one article about Robert G. Edwards, co-developer of the in vitro fertilization process, receiving the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. My first reaction: This is ridiculously stupid.

If you're going to give a Nobel to any reproductive technology, the only ones that should even be considered are those that prevent pregnancies and reduce complications of development and childbirth. The ability to limit the number of children has improved the lives of women. Reductions of health issues experienced by newborns because of factors in the womb or during childbirth improve the lives of countless individuals. Reducing the risk of death and permanent physical damage to the mothers from childbirth also has obvious social benefits, but artificially creating more children than could otherwise be naturally conceived? Seriously, this is considered an important breakthrough in medicine? You know what? Screw orphans. This isn't even about them. This is about the fact that bringing extra people into the world is at best a wash and quite possibly harmful for the future.

Besides, it doesn't even affect that many people. Sure I just implied that this is actually a bad discovery because it brings in more lives on an overcrowded planet, but my real point is that this just doesn't really make any difference in the grand scheme of things. This treatment only really "helps" a select few who are both relatively wealthy enough to afford the treatment and who cannot conceive by other means. Basically, it allows rich people to not have to adopt and still get a kid.

But that's not even the worst part. The worst part is the coverage of this story. The ability to cure the infertility of the wealthy isn't even the most significant side effect of this development. The true significance, as pointed out to me by my brother-in-law, is that it opened the door to cloning, which is currently more a futuristic oddity, but actually has real potential to turn into life-saving and life-improving treatments in the very near future. After all, cloning hasn't just resulted in cloning entire farm animals. It has also led to research in recreating lost or malfunctioning parts of sick and injured people. That's medical progress I think holds actual real value. Despite this, several news outlets failed to mention this connection entirely and the best mention was in The Washington Post, a service I don't even follow, with a mention in the second paragraph but no further detail.

In the end, I don't really have so much of a problem with the Nobel going to Edwards. It's much like Watson's and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA. You know, the whole double helix thing is really just a model until you realize it helped further research involving genetics.

I do end up with a problem with journalism, however, and I think it starts with college journalism programs. I know when I was in school my journalism major required almost no math or science, none outside of the bare minimums required for all students, yet statistics and science are at the heart of some of the more important news in the modern world. Because of this, here we are having to hear about new breakthroughs and problems through the filter of people who are clueless. Even some of the more major political issues of the day are inherently scientific in nature. College journalism programs shouldn't require their graduates to even minor in the sciences, but they should require a broad and serious exposure to the hard sciences and statistics. Not doing so is incredibly irresponsible.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

2010-10-01T09:11:00.003-04:00

Photo: Pink Sherbet Photography, Flickr Creative Commons

I walked out of my door this morning, running late for work, and was shocked enough to pause in my step. Where lately there's been only the lack of mugginess at sunrise, today there was actually a distinct chill in the air. It wasn't much of a chill, definitely nothing to qualify as sharp or even bracing, but it was there and it made me happy. I know I bad mouth where I live a good bit, and honestly, it's really hard for me to think of anything good to say about it when it's 99 fucking degrees in late September, but I have to honestly say that the place is entirely pleasant from October through early March. Overnight freezes are rare, temperatures in the dead of winter usually get up into the 60s or 70s. It's not uncommon for me to go barefoot outside on Christmas day. It's really hard to completely hate a place with that kind of weather.

I do wish it would snow a little, though.

Still, it's been cool enough this week that I've been having urges to put on my trail runners and jog that route I've got around the stand of pines, through the cotton fields at the border of our property and that of our dead neighbors, and back home over the dirt road. It's a beautiful run, even in the sauna of summer here. The neat rows of pines are separated only by a barely maintained service path from the natural woods, a seasonal swamp, across the property line. I have to pick my steps carefully through this section sometimes as the grass and weeds take advantage of the narrow clearing. My uncle had a section of that wilder wood thinned out recently and I miss the shade and the ability to pretend I'm out on the trail somewhere instead of walking distance from my house. I've taken Little Gandhi on walks through this path and pointed out the difference between dog and deer prints in the mud near the bog. I entertain myself as I take the turn out of the trees by seeing what's been through this section of softer soil and how recently. Quail, turkeys, deer, foxes, and raccoons are frequent. I've nearly crapped my pants spooking a covey of quail. They take off like shotgun blasts only feet from where I pass. I love to set up a camera trap here just to see what passes. It's a busy stretch of natural highway.

My past two runs have included a new jogging partner, although this one whines a little sometimes. No, it's not Little Gandhi. We got a puppy a few weeks ago and I took her out earlier this week to see if she was old enough to keep up with me. She sticks to the back of my heel the entire way and after taking a couple of unintentional kicks to the face twice that first day, she keeps enough distance to stay out of my way. She's a smart dog. We taught her sit and the very early stages of stay in less than five minutes last weekend. It must be the rat terrier in her. I don't think beagles (her other half) are supposed to be particularly intelligent or particularly stupid. She's not caused much damage beyond dragging up a little trash into our carport during the day while we're not home. I've even got her to stop jumping up on me in the morning pretty easily. The only problem is that Little Gandhi hates her. He claims he likes her, but he really only likes her in theory. When he's actually confronted by the concrete presence of her, he wants her gone. I keep debating whether or not we should try to find her a new home. I don't want to keep a dog unless it's going to stay inside where we can pay it the attention it needs and that's going to be a problem if Little Gandhi keeps his current attitude toward her.

Then again, I miss having a dog around and I want so bad to have a hiking partner with four legs. The kid may just have to suck it up while we teach her to be less physical in her joy.