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

Sunday, June 08, 2008

Well, it's been a week since I last posted and life has sort of returned to something more normal. There's been no racing, no pinning on numbers, no loading and unloading the car with the odds and ends that go with warming up and providing shelter and all the rest. Instead, this week has been filled with school, rest and chores. That's not to say that there's been no riding. I've done my planned recovery rides and yesterday I participated in the Jordon's annual BBQ and Bass ride. Robert's one of my teammates and he and his wife have a nice route out near their home in Monticello that they invite everyone to ride once a year. There's a rest stop at about 32 miles for beer (hence the Bass) and another at 65 for some BBQ and some more Bass. We finish at 75 miles miles with a final Bass or two for a day's worth of good riding and conversation and goofing off. There were a couple of hard efforts, especially when 50+ year old Bill and Ron decided to make things hard for former pro rider Chad Madan and our Team Director, Eddie after a water stop. The real enemy though was the heat. The temps were in the upper nineties by the end of the ride and that made the ride pretty hard, especially after the BBQ. Still, I had a great time and kind of wish we had a few more rides like that over the course of the year. Training is great but I think doing something like this is really good for the head and the morale.

We're back at it for summer school. I usually teach the System's Solar System Astronomy course first session and this week has been the week we start with having both lecture and lab days. That means that on Monday, Wednesday and Friday we go for five hours. Makes for some long days, especially if your body wants nothing more than a nap and a chance to recover. Still, it's fun to teach some of the naked eye astronomy stuff and my class is only 17 students which makes it a little more manageable to handle the grading load for the course.

This weekend's big project is to deal with the growing bat problem we have. Our house's eaves aren't completely sealed up and so as the neighbors have been driving the bats out of their homes, they've taken up residence here. We should have done more last year but with all of the stuff I had going on it was one of those things that slipped through the cracks. This year, as the smell has gotten worse, I've recommitted myself to doing something. Now that racing is over for a while, I started to make progress this weekend towards driving them out. Hopefully the smell of mothballs will be offensive enough to convince them to look for other haunts. I've placed them in places that will allow the fumes to go right into where they are nesting and I'm hoping today's 97+ temps will accelerate the process. We'll see because I'm not sure what to do beyond that.

The other thing that's wrapping up is my teaching at the local technical college. I decided two quarters ago that I really needed a break from the course and the students. I like the extra money but I'm getting tired of the attitude many of the students have that they should be told what to memorize, regurgitate and forget in order to be successful. It takes a toll on an instructor in a general core course when students only care about their grades. Well, the Tech College needed the course taught this semester for students trying to get into the very popular respiratory therapy program so I agreed to do it but I'm ready to be done. This Tuesday will be the final for that course and then I'll get about three months off. I'll miss the bump to my bank account but I'll appreciate having the one night a week back and the break from the attitudes of some of the students.

So, it's off to do some chores and to stock up the pantry for the coming week. Have a great week yourself and I'll check back in soon.

Thanks for Reading.

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