Monday, July 21, 2008

Riding Up Hills...

I felt better on the bike today than I have at anytime in the last five years. I rode in the long way this morning and there is a mile long hill towards the end of the ride that I watch my time on.

Hold on, back up, back in the old days, when Lee and I or Mike and I would ride all over the Eastside, I could climb hills like a mountain goat. I loved climbing the hills on my bike, the bigger and the steeper the better. Inglewood Hill Road was a fave, as was 24th from 40th to 132nd, and of course 51st and 70th.

FWIW - 70th was the first King of the Mountains points back when they had the Road Nationals in Redmond, the other points were had at the top of the hill on 116th above the soccer fields.

Anywho, the first time I timed myself coming up this particular hill I was getting up in about 6 minutes and the best time I had managed before this morning was 5:15, I made it in under 5 minutes today! (4:48). It may not sound like much to you, but for me to see an improvement in my climbing ability like that is HUGE. You'd be surprised how much having one lung can hamper your ability to put the large muscle groups into hard labor.

Then at lunch I decided to ride halfway to Moscow and back, it's a 12 mile ride, and on the way back onto campus I decided to try to climb the steepest hill on campus, College Street from Riverview to Spokane, it's about a quarter mile from bottom to Spokane at a 24% grade! This is a street that is too steep to open in the winter and the sidewalks have stairs on them. For you folks in Seattle, it's like riding up Madison from First to Second down by Pioneer Square. I felt like I was going to explode, but I was able to make it to the top and back to Bohler in one piece.

After that, the ride home after work up Larry Street and it's 5% grade was a piece of cake. Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it...

Friday, July 18, 2008

Dr. Horrible!



The best thing on the internet is happening RIGHT NOW! can be had on iTunes or just wait for the DVD...

Monday, July 7, 2008

Musical Ramblings

I find myself in the kitchen, doing dishes and baking cookies if you must know, and I have the iPod spooling through my music collection. Two songs came up consecutively, 'Baba O'Riley' by The Who followed by 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen. Both of these songs are outstanding in their own rights, stand outs from an era (the 70's) that is more remembered for disco and folk rock than anything else. Baba O'Riley has the outstanding electric piano opening, the trademark Daltrey scream, the infamous '...teenage wasteland..." chorus, and Townshends guitar riffs. I know that it was a formative song in my musical education, I played the vinyl version of Who's Next endlessly on that old turntable we had in the basement. I also understand the import of these formative songs and the impressions that they leave in our subconscious. All those things considered, the raw power of that song hit me as a physical presence as I stood in the kitchen. When the opening verse of Bohemian Rhapsody came out of the speakers, you know the one, 'Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?...' and I saw the other side of the raw power of Baba O'Riley. The complexity of the Queen arrangement was something that was really eye-opening to me. I understood rock and roll to be pretty straight forward, verse chorus verse, I didn't know anything about intros and bridges and outros (it could be accurately stated that I still don't) so this song came totally out of the blue. The lyrics add another layer of complexity that I didn't really come to understand until much later in life. Music is such a powerful medium, it carries the power of the olfactory in that a song can transport to a time and place just like smell. Music carries a great emotional weight as we can all remember people, places, happenings, as if they happened yesterday when we hear a given song. I have always placed an inordinate value on music and lyrics in my life, just ask anyone who had to listen to me talk about Pink Floyd in the late 80s, but I think that music has that power to move people like no other medium. Go out today and LISTEN to one of your favorite songs, I mean LISTEN to it, don't just have it on in the background, really listen to it and let it move you.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Random pictures from Pullman

The Space Capsule that Max and his team built during Camp Invention
The kids are ready to ride the Chipman Trail!
Playing with the gorilla pod and long shutter speeds on the 4th



Random thoughts on a Saturday night

Amy and the kids are up at Priest Lake with her family, I would be there except for the small matter of Geology 101 that I am smack dab in the middle of. I am enjoying the heck out of that class. The subject matter is terribly interesting, the prof is engaging, and the labs challenge me in ways that I have not been challenged in many years. I also enjoy my kids asking about my homework and such, it's kind of funny in a way. With the house being mostly empty, I am focused on getting all the stuff for Lopez ready to go. I got half the garage arranged today and now I need to see what we have and (more importantly) do not have. We have a ton of stuff that will be going with us and our three kids, but it will all be worth it (he says right now) when we are sitting on the beach at Odlin watching the sun go down on that first day.

With the kids away I went and saw Hancock tonight. It was entertaining and also quite unexpected for a super hero movie. It was not an earth shattering cinematic masterpiece, but it was a refreshing escape.

Yeah, Microsoft is pretty high on my list these days. Just before I moved to Pullman, the 360 got the infamous Red Ring of Death. They fixed it, for a fee, and got it back quickly. I was reasonably happy, thinking that now that that's happened I should be scot free. This was a reasonable expectation as they announced an extension of the warranty, a refund for all those that got charged for repairs, all for the folks that had the RRoD. Think again wise guy. I got up yesterday morning and went to put a movie in for the kids (Warner Bros. cartoons for a holiday morning) and, hey look at that, the Red Ring of Death had returned. So, what was going to be a week of fun and not kid friendly gaming at night (after home work and house work and all that) gets dashed upon the hard rocks of reality. I have had the Wii since before it (officially) launched and I have not had a single problem with it. Of course, now that I have said that, watch out. I now that they are like apples and oranges and they don't really compare on a pure hardware basis, but the fact is that I have had to send my 360 in for repairs twice, while in the same time frame all four of my Nintendo DSes and my one Wii have worked without fail for similar numbers of gaming hours. I really like the 360 and the games I have for it, but this reliability rate is not the consumers best friend.