Boring

Very little excitement happened this week. The only thing out of the ordinary was that on Wednesday I hung out with a lot of St. Olaf people that I haven't seen for a long time. That was really nice. I also managed to put in 50 miles of commuting in 2 days.

For the weekend I'm at my parents house, because it seemed like a nice place to go to study for the weekend. I brought my camera along for the ride home and got some good pictures.


My new bike commuter image. T-shirt, rolled up jeans, sketchers (more wind proof that running shoes), and a big bag.


A somewhat artsy picture through some kind of construction frame. Note, this and the previous picture where taken by putting the camera on a 10 second timer while using burst mode.


The sun was setting over Saint Paul as I headed through Indian Mounds park on top of the bluffs.

Cuteness

Today, I saw one of the cutest things ever. I wanted to get out of the apartment and get some fresh air, so I went to a little park that is just down the street and sat on a bench to read. (Was reading Jeremiah, which is kind of tough going, but it was next in the endeavor to read through the bible.) Anyways, there was an old couple sitting on another bench in the park talking. They where probably in their 70's. So that was nice, an old couple sitting in a park on a Sunday afternoon. Then, the best part is that I looked up a little later and noticed them walk over to the swing set and playing on the swings. They where behaving just like little kids, but they where quite old. It was so cute.

I also spent a large part of the weekend trying to get linux working on my computer. I had already installed Ubuntu using a dual boot so that I could keep using windows. Ubuntu, however, does not support my wireless card, so this weekend, I found a workaround that lets me use a Windows XP driver for my wireless card. It's up and running, but it's still really flaky and only works sometimes. I also discovered that a lot of programs that can be downloaded for linux are not compatible with my architecture (AMD 64). So, alas, it looks like I still won't be a linux user.

In fitness news, I have been doing a little training for the possibility of a return to 24 hour racing next summer. This has manifested itself as going to the gym 3 times a week to work on strength and flexibility. Well, because of knee problems, I have been taking it easy when doing squats, but on Friday, I was feeling good and decided to push myself. So I upped the weight from 100lbs to 150lbs and did 2 sets. It was amazing. My muscles felt like they had a ton of tiny cramps or like they where ripping or something. When I got home, I ate 2 cans of tuna and iced my quads to try to limit the soreness. The icing worked pretty well on my quads but my hamstrings and butt were still sore because I didn't ice them.

In the interest of sharing some beauty, (because that's part of what I try to do with my blog) here is a picture from the U of M ...

... and a picture from St. Olaf.

Visiting St. Olaf

This weekend I decided to visit St. Olaf. Furthermore, I decided that I was going to bike commute down. It was quite an adventure because it's 45 mile ride, one way. I left at 3:30 on Friday and it took about 3.5 hours to get there. By the time I got to St. Olaf the sun was setting.


Unfortunately, the flash on my camera stopped working, so this was the last picture of the evening. It was really nice visiting people and talking to people at St. Olaf. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see everybody that I wanted to. I guess I will just have to visit again sometime soon.

I stayed the night in a friends room and the next morning, I was up early (because I'm on an early schedule from grad school). I wasn't sure how late people would be sleeping, so I didn't want to call anybody too early in the morning. So, to kill some time I went and sat in the chapel and read the bible. It was somewhat nostalgic because I used to go to morning chapel early to sit and read the bible. I also made some serious headway on my project of reading the bible cover to cover. I read the larger part of Jeremiah in the chapel, which is good because last time I read through the bible, I got bogged down in the prophets.

The ride home was like a long, drawn out train wreck. Before I even got off campus, I managed to sprain my hand when I went over a curb while trying to adjust my bag. Luckily, that didn't hurt to much until the next day. Then, because I haven't done much distance riding recently, I made some dumb nutrition mistakes, waiting too long to start eating. Then, when I realized I'd waited too long and desperately needed food, I shoved down ~1200 calories, which left me feeling kind of sick for the rest of the ride. On top of that, I am not in nearly as good of shape as I was when I was racing, and I was carrying 15-20 lbs of gear in my bag, so the 45 miles the day before had already taken a hefty toll on my body. By the time I got home my vision was starting to blur and I was becoming incoherent. I went to bed before 8:00 and was out cold for 11 hours.

New Apartment

Installation 3 in my catching up on my blogging.

Also in August, I moved into a new apartment. It is actual a house where 2 roommates and I are living in the second floor and a couple of girls are living in the first floor.


My room is still sparsely furnished. I decided to get a folding table instead of a desk because it was easier to move in and it gives me a lot of workspace. I also haven't gotten around to getting a bed, so I'm still doing the mattress on the floor thing.


I did, however, invest in a dresser, which I got for a very good price at a thrift store. Notice the stick in the corner next to the lamp. Ben Clifford found that our freshman year and thought that it would be good room decoration. It has been in my room ever since then, where ever I have lived.


This is our dining room (which isn't used as such very frequently). Behind it is the living room and behind that is a kind of windowed alcove type thing.


The back yard.


If you are familiar with the Space Tower at the State Fairgrounds, then you will know where my apartment is, because the Space Tower is right across the street. This is a picture out the front window.

The best part of the apartment is the location. It is 4 miles from school, 2 miles from the grocery store, 2 miles from a bike shop, 1.5 miles from the gym, 1 mile from church, and 10 miles from my parents house. Furthermore, there are excellent bike routes going to all of those places. Thus, bike commuting is very easy, which I quite enjoy. If it get's too cold to commute, there is a good bus system that isn't too hard to get on.

Cia comes to visit

And now for installation 2 of trying to catch up on my blogging.

Also in August, Cia came to visit for a weekend before going to Ireland for the semester. It was really nice to just hang out with her for a couple of days. The first day, we went to the zoo with the family, (extended family where also visiting from Michigan). It has been a long time since I've been to a zoo, so it was fun to visit one again. I realized that I'm still a little kid at heart, because I thought it was great fun to see the animals, especially the monkeys and the sea otter.

On Sunday, after going to church in the morning, we decided to go adventuring in the afternoon. It was super fun and slightly sketchy as we went to a weird park. It is straight East of downtown Saint Paul but still before you get to the bluffs. It used to be a railroad yard but they are trying to turn it into a park. In the process of exploring the park, we found...

A fun rock wall to try to climb on. With no crash pads, I didn't go very high.

A sketchy abandon building. We thought about trying to get in, but the door was locked and we didn't want to crawl through a broken window. Notice, there is both graffiti and broken glass in the picture.

An old beer cave. This was cut into the base of the bluffs. The bars where quite sturdy, so we didn't try to break in.

For how close the park was to downtown, there are some parts of it that are remarkably beautiful. Notice, you can see a silhouette of the capital towards the right side of the skyline.

Overall, it was a wonderful weekend and I was sad to see Cia go on Monday. But, she needed to head off to Ireland.

BWCA trip

I'm a bit behind on my blogging and haven't written anything since camp, so I'm going to try to catch up this weekend.

During August, my Dad, brothers and I all went camping in the BWCA. It was quite a fun trip for me because I am already it good shape from camp. I had already spent 30-40 hours in a canoe this summer, so the canoe was second nature and just plain fun. I was also in good enough shape that I was able to carry a pack and a canoe over a portage in one trip. Perhaps the best way to capture the trip is not by describing it but by showing some pictures.

This is all of the gear at one end of a portage. We had to pull it all out of the water and carry it over the portage.

Here, Jeremy demonstrates how to carry a canoe. Note he also also carrying a pack. Together, they probably add up to ~70 lbs.

This was my favorite portage, because it was short and it was quite pretty. It was on a stream and it was just there to get around some rocks and waterfalls.

Benjamin and I were canoe partners for the week. He made a solid power house. We meant to teach him how to steer, but didn't really get around to it, so I was in back all week.

There was a fire ban in effect for a lot of the week, but we were able to have one fire, which was really nice.

Overall, the BWCA is quite a beautiful place.

Last week of camp

Well, my last week of camp was another week of doing Pioneers. As with all of the programs I'm in charge of, it was a huge adventure. On our first day out in the canoes, I was listening to the weather radio in the morning, which forecasted rain, but nothing severe. Then, we were hearing thunder while we where out on the the river, so I flipped it on again. The first thing I heard was that there was nickel sized hail and 30-40 mph winds headed at us. There was really no cover anywhere close to where we where, so we pulled out on the side of the river on a little spit of land, because we didn't want to be out on the water if lighting hit. Then, we flipped the canoes over and put one end up on a log so that we could crawl under them if hail hit.


Until hail hit, however, we thought it was better to stay farther back in the trees for protection from lighting. Furthermore, by the time we got things arranged, we where already soaking wet and people where getting cold because of the wind and wetness so, we didn't want to go under the canoes because we wouldn't be able to huddle for warmth. Thus, we spent 30 minutes waiting out a storm with no real shelter from the rain and cold other than our huddle. It was quite an adventure but at the end of the week, campers said it was actually one of their favorite parts. Luckily it didn't hail and it blew over it in under an hour leaving us with sun for the rest of the day. So I turned one of my campers into a mermaid.


The rest of the canoe trip was relatively uneventful and the horse overnight after that was relatively uneventful, except that I ate too much bannock (deep fried bread) and had to puke in the middle of the night. The hiking overnight after that, however, was wrought with adventure. Bryce and Steph decided to bring out all of our luggage using the horse wagon. Bryce was pretty sure the horses could pull the wagon through the creek on the way out, but wasn't totally sure because he hadn't done it before. Turns out that the horses could, but it was a hard pull for them and it looked pretty sweet.

Bryce and Steph decided to stay for dinner, which was fun because we don't normally get guests on my programs. Dinner, however, continued to be an adventure because we got hit with a rainstorm. It greatly slowed down the process of cooking dinner, so we didn't eat until really late, but at least we had tents for shelter and some of us just sat under the horse wagon.

Some people thought that it was fun and a big adventure and some thought it was miserable






By the end of the week, I'm pretty sure that everybody thought that it had been a fun week and that the rain had just added to the adventure of it.