Big Air, Part 2

Given the right conditions, it's possible to have a lot of fun sledding...even with low-tech equipment.

This photo shows Tanner going over the "jump" at Carter Park in Breckenridge. The hill was long, but not particularly steep...and with the spongy foam disc we brought, it wasn't possible to get enough speed to make it to the bottom of the hill.

And after that first peak, the bumps on the course were barely noticeable. But we still had plenty of laughs watching each other attempt to ride the hill without looking completely ridiculous. (No one was entirely successful, I'm afraid.)

I have a lot more photos from our mini-vacation, as well as other tales of adventures at the resort. We did not ski, but I did get to sit in a hot tub, listen to some live music, and eat enough s'mores and Mexican food to ensure that I'll be fat and slow at the State Meet this coming weekend. I hope to tell you more about it, but we'll have to see how much this week's proposal frenzy takes out of me. I'm a busy boy.

But Spring is finally here, and the season holds tremendous promise for fun and fulfillment. Get outside and have a great day, OK?

Big Air

I have never worn a helmet while skiing. But it's probably not a bad idea...especially because my reflexes may not be as razor sharp as they once were. Of course, this would only be a concern if I actually DID go skiing.

Hey, I might. After all, it was those fabulous Spring Break trips I took in college that drove me to move to Colorado at the first opportunity. On those trips, my roommate and I skied from the moments the lifts opened until they kicked us off the slopes in the evening. And we skied hard.

I'm sure I've told the story of when I skied with Jean Claude Killy and Spider Sabich (pictured above), so I won't re-tell that tale. And somewhere, I probably have photographs of the one-piece green coveralls that Mickey and I bought at K-Mart and then sprayed with Scotchgard to try to make them waterproof. (The idea was to avoid having to buy expensive skiwear. But in retrospect, the investment would've been worth it. Scotchgard was not designed for the level of snow immersion we experienced, and when our "Texaco" outfits got saturated, it wasn't comfortable at all.)

Anyway, Tanner is visiting, and he and I are going up to Breckenridge for the day. We probably won't ski, but it'll be fun to hang out at a ski resort. I'll be sure to tell him all my tales of college-era skiing exploits -- timber bashing in deep powder, getting hundreds of millimeters off the ground from catapulting off moguls, and picking up exotic Euro babes apres ski.

Well, OK, the babe-related activities were more aptly describes as "annoying them" as opposed to "picking them up," but at least we were trying. I'm sure I'd have scored big-time if I were solo, but my friend Mickey was not the best wingman. (He was charming enough, I suppose, but still hadn't quite figured out the inverse correlation between female desire and male public displays of explosive flatulence.) I'm sure I'd have done better if I'd have hung out with Spider.

Or maybe not -- his real name was "Vladimir," so I'd probably have been forced to beat him up for being a commie. I doubt that's why Claudine shot him; she was French, after all, and therefore pretty much a commie as well -- but nobody really knows what went on between them. Perhaps he said he thought Kirk was better than Picard or something.

Anyway, the point is that I hope to post pretty pictures of snow and stuff in the next few days. Very few things are prettier than ski slopes in the Spring. Have a great day!

That Thing Al Gore Invented

My favorite subject in school was math. It's the one discipline where opinion and vagueness don't count. (Well, at least until you get down into calculations of quantum physics. And maybe statistics; after all, I've played Lotto enough that the stats say I should've won by now...but I'm still broke. Sigh.)

In English class, the teacher was allowed to assert that Shakespeare was better than Gene Roddenberry, even though any moron knows that "Alas, poor Yorick" doesn't hold a candle to "He's dead, Jim," in the literary pantheon. And History teachers could only speculate as to whether wars were driven by economic or political forces. But in the math classroom, X plus 2 = Pie, and that's that.

I bring this up because I'm involved in an ongoing project to scan and archive thousands of old family photos. The last batch I did were over 100 years old, and contained images of my grandma and her parents, as well as assorted great-aunts and great-uncles. It occurred to me that other descendants from those particular ancients might be interested in seeing those photos, and the Internet would be the logical place to share them.

My highly casual research seems to indicate that the archive of choice would be Ancestry.com. I have thought about getting a membership, because it does appear that their resources would be of value in completing my genealogy charts, as well as the aforementioned archivery. But it's too expensive. Perhaps it would be worth it when I retire and can spend all day wandering around on the site. But right now, I could only get there once every 4 months or so, and I'm not wealthy enough to pay dues for months I don't use. So...no.

Snapfish lets me upload photos for free. But those don't get indexed by the great Googly Moogly. So those theoretical inquisitive relatives wouldn't be able to find the relevant pictures. I suppose that my current best option is to upload them onto my own website, with some keywords that might make them accessible to searching genealogists.

We really do live in amazing times, though. I searched Google Images for my great grandfather, Asa O. Gere, and not only found a newspaper in which he was quoted about hanging out with Abe Lincoln, but also saw the headstone of my paternal grandparents. That's some smart algorithm that can take an obscure great grampa and connect him to descendants who don't share the name.

Anyway, the point is that I am the sole source for a whole trunkful of ancient photos that I can upload to the web. This gives me the power to write some small bits of history as I see fit. If I label a picture of great uncle Homer as "Buckwheat Dharma, composer of the HotLine ringtone," his name could eventually end up as a Wikipedia entry.

I wouldn't do that, though. Everything I have ever posted on the Internet has been 100% true and accurate. I intend to continue my mission of spreading enlightenment and knowledge to the masses, and if ancestral photos are a part of that...well, I'll be sure to label them correctly. (As for great-grampy Asa hanging out with Ol' Abe, I'll just have to take his word for it. Since I have documents verifying that his parents owned a hotel in Illinois, it's certainly plausible that the top-hatted rail-splitter passed through at some point in his pre-Presidential wanderings.)

But I'm still really busy with proposals, and Tanner is in town for a visit...so uploading those photos may not happen for a while. Some of them are kinda cool, though, so I'll try to include that -- mixed in with trivia contests and griping about politics, and all the other weighty topics that we address here. Please keep checking in; I do appreciate your visits. Until then, stay warm, and have a great day!

St. Patrick's Day

Every year at this time, I am reminded of Will Stanton's famous declaration that "There's no mayonnaise in Ireland." I wonder if the snakes took it all with them when St. Patrick drove them into the sea.

Yeah, OK, whatever. While I'm sure that St. Patrick was a decent enough fellow, there's plenty of scientific evidence showing that there never were any snakes in Ireland. It appears that he really didn't do much other than a lot of preachin' and convertin' of heathens. And I'm not sure those accomplishments really merit parades and whatnot. And as for the pinching of folks who have better fashion sense than to wear green, well, that's just downright wrong. If you're thinking about trying that with me, you'd be wise to consider the possibility that I might possess a concealed carry permit. I'm just sayin'...

Don't get me wrong; I'm not at all opposed to letting the Irish celebrate their shamrock-eating roots. And I firmly believe that responsible adults should be allowed to consume green beer if they so choose. But I have absolutely no desire to hear any crappy Irish "U2" or "Riverdance flutes n' fiddles music." The Emerald Isle may have done the world a service by inspiring Lucky Charms, but their music sucks.

Regardless, I hope that you enjoy your St. Patrick's Day, and that the approach of Springtime is bringing you joy and delight. I know that I am excited to see the arrival of some decent weather, and am aching to get back outside for a good season of training.

This past weekend was decent enough. I had a good 7-mile run on Saturday, and rode the bike for about 30 miles on Sunday. The fun part was testing my new bike rack on the back of the car. I am pleased to report that it worked impressively well.



It's heavy (more than twice the weight of my mountain bike), so it's a bit of a chore to lug it out into the parking lot. But installing it onto the trailer hitch could not have been simpler, and loading the bike took mere seconds. Everything appeared to remain completely secure throughout the drive out to Waterton.

I was a little skeptical about the claim that the rack would fold down to allow the rear hatch to open without interference, but sure enough, it did.



The other nice feature of the Kuat rack is the built-in work stand. You can hang your bike to do maintenance before or after your rides. I'll probably use it to clean the mountain bike after each dirt session. Pretty handy.



Anyway, as you've probably guessed, I've been swamped with activities and tasks, and expect to remain buried until about the middle of April. I really do appreciate you stopping by to check the site, and will post updates when I can. I have a couple of really good quizzes in mind, and would love to share my review of the ballet based on William Shatner's music -- but those will have to wait until I can find a bit more free time.

In the meantime, enjoy your St. Pat's Day, have a green beer if that's your thing, and feel free to listen to all the annoying music you want. (Just keep the volume low, OK? Thanks.)

Have a great day!

Hardware

Like most people of a certain age, I went through a brief "Tetris" phase at one point. It didn't last long, and I never got past the first level. This is because I am missing the "efficient packing" gene.

Actually, I think they call it "spatial intelligence." And it was always the section of standardized testing in which I was least proficient. (If they'd have had a "fashion sense" section, that would've been my worst, but fortunately, the other sections were fun things such as vocabulary and math.)

Anyway, the point is that if you are looking for someone to help you figure out how to get a lot of stuff into a small space, I am NOT your man. My personal style for storage and transport is best described as "items randomly strewn across the landscape."

That's why I'm so impressed when I see something like this:



It's the box my bike rack came in; a magnificently example of efficient packaging. I truly have no idea how they secured everything so effectively using nothing but cleverly cut cardboard and a few stands of clear tape. And I quickly learned that I had no idea how to gracefully extricate the components from their corrugated shackles.

Seriously, it probably took me longer to get the pieces out of the package than it did to fully assemble the unit. The manufacturer had thoughtfully included all the tools needed (ie, two allen wrenches), as well as a set of pictorial instructions. They also had an instructional video on their website. Of course, neither the instructions nor the video were detailed enough to give confidence to someone of my limited mechanical aptitudes.

Still, I somehow managed to figure it out, and got the thing put together. The bike rack is quite a bit wider than my car, so we'll have to see if its size creates concerns within my limited carport space. The good news is that it's a solid and well-built unit, and should handle my bikes with ease.

This view is actually the bottom of the unit.



I was going to take a picture of it installed on the car, but Saturday's road gunk is all over the vehicle, and besides...it was just too cold to be outside fiddling with heavy metallic things. I'll install it onto the trailer hitch next weekend when it's almost officially Spring.

In other news, my friend Reynold Kalstrom took third place in his age group at the New Zealand IronMan race over the weekend. That’s an impressive accomplishment under any circumstances, but considering that he was sidelined with a nasty hamstring injury last year, it’s even more significant. I am especially pleased that he was first in his age group in the swim by a wide margin. I’d like to think that our swim team played a role in that feat.

On the other side of the southern hemisphere, the lovely and talented Sammy Achterberg was competing in the World Cup Pentathlon event in Acapulco. Unfortunately, the competition wasn’t completed: the heat and poor logistics planning resulted in health concerns (primarily hydration, as I understand it) for the people and horses during the equestrian competition…and the athletes staged a boycott that ended the competition. Sammy had made the finals, and ended up in 15th place in the standings after the segments that were completed. She is having a good season so far, and it’s just too bad that this competition wasn’t run well enough to let everyone finish.


As the weather warms up, there will be more athletic activity to report...both for myself and for the other folks on our swim team. I'll try to actually talk more consistently about sports and athletics in this space through the coming months -- but I always reserve the right to rant about something geeky every now and then. For example, you can probably expect a diatribe about talking on cell phones in the hot tub or locker room at some point in the near future. And then there's this:



Think about it for a sec. You'll get it.

Anyway, I'm excited about the upcoming new version of the "Cosmos" TV series. I'm looking forward to learning more about how the Universe works, and possibly finding out the secret to pitching at Coors Field.

Have a great day!

Finished with February

I had my annual checkup on Friday.

Apparently, I'm as healthy as could be expected for somebody who's this old and fat and clueless. My cholesterol seems to be under control and the suntanning of my youth doesn't seem to have sparked any additional skin cancer. I'm feeling pretty darn good.

My doctor is training for the Boston Marathon. I'm not sure there's data to back up this opinion, but I feel much more comfortable having my health assessed by an athlete. And I guess I take medical advice more seriously when it comes from someone who obviously takes care of himself better than I do. In any case, I'm happy to be healthy, but have a long way to go before I'm as fit as I'd like to be.

Speaking of serious athletes, my buddy Reynold Kalstrom just completed another IronMan race. As expected, he was first in his age group in the swim, and finished strong in the other two legs as well. And Sammy Achterberg qualified for the finals in the World Cup Pentathlon championship in Acapulco. I don't yet know the final results.

In other news, it's time to report on my "new thing" for February. I had originally planned to sit in a hot tub for a full hour; I had never done that before. The goal was to see if it would loosen me up.

It didn't take long for me to realize that such an undertaking would not be good for my health. The water was warmer than it usually is, and I was already hot from my workout. After 20 minutes, I decided to take a break, and slowly made my way up the jacuzzi steps. I'm pretty sure I could've passed out if I'd have tried to stand up too quickly.

I swam another 500 yards, and then got back in the hot tub for another 15 minutes -- 35 minutes total. And guess what? I'm just as stiff and sore today as I was before soaking for so long. My conclusion is that extended hot tubbing does not provide all that much of a therapeutic benefit.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll be delighted to know that I've got several controversial topics to rant about. But I'm out of time right now, so those eruptions will have to wait. Have a great day!