Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Long Overdue Update

Sorry about being gone for so long. The recent perfect storm of activites, chores, teaching responsiblities, committee meetings and training have sucked most of the free time out of my life. This will be a brief update of the things that have been going on over the last week or so.

Training
Off season is over and I'm back on the bike again. Everything is slow base miles so the rides aren't really exciting and I have to keep telling myself that the fact that I'm riding fives miles per hour slower than I'm used to is actually a good thing. Over the break I did some upgrading of the road bike to give stiffer, more efficient cranks and better brakes; go faster, stop faster I guess. The most difficult thing is that when folks see that you have some time in your schedule they decide they have the right to fill it and then not givethe time back. I fight this some every year but this year seems to be a bit worse, probably in part because I decided to doa little more with my off time. I'm also in the weight room three days a week right now doing some power lifting (well, at least power lifting for a cyclist). Trying to do a long, relaxed base miles ride after a weight session is really an interesting thing.

Car
Well, the car's timing wasn't actually bad but the engine is. So it's still in Huntsville at the Subaru dealership. The dealership has been most unhelpful in getting us some options in terms of cost of repair or replacement or trading in for a new car. They have us over a barrel to an extent and I think they know it. I want to think that this isn't a Subaru thing but a dealership issue. Like a lot of Subaru dealerships this is really a Chysler/Jeep dealership that sells Subaru on the side. I get the imression that these guys are more on the stick-it-to-folks wavelength than the first Subaru dealership we visited. So we're slogging through trying to sort that out from 300 miles away in a borrowed Jeep Grand Cherokee. I really appreciate Kathy's brother helping us out and I'll never look a gift horse in the mouth but I don't think I'll ever be real interested in buying a Grand Cherokee. the thing drives like a barge and feels like it's going to rollover anytime we try to do anyhting the least bit radical. I miss my Outback.

School
Finals week is here which is always interesting. Watching 18 year olds handle stress is always an interesting endeavor. I don't mean to poke fun at them but many are still in the mode that every little thing is a crisis and they don't realize that very often it is mostly their attitude that creates these little "explosions" of stress. The sophomores aren't as bad but they still carry around some bad habits. I think the worst is the idea that finals week is just like any old other week. They still schedule long meetings with friends, extra hours at work and extended leisure hours. I guess I did some of the same things a few quarters at Southern Oregon State ( I went to the beach for one whole day in the middle of finals week once...) but usually the idea that the final was between 25-35% of my grade seemed to motivate me to pare back my other commitments. I still try to do the same now.

Anyways, enough for now. I'll try to update a few more times this week.

Thanks for reading.

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